The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On July 15, 1889, I was standing in the St. Leonhard cemetery near Graz with the writer Rosegger and the sculptor Hans Brandstetter as the body of the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling was lowered into the grave.¹ Robert Hamerling had been called from the physical plane a few days earlier. He died after decades of unutterable suffering that grew to an unbearable level at the end of his life. Prior to the burial, the body had been laid out in the beautiful Stifting House on the outskirts of the Austro-Styrian town of Graz. The physical form left behind by his great soul lay there, a wonderful reflection of a life of striving to reach the highest levels of the spirit: so expressive, so eloquent was this physical form. It also bore the imprint of the unspeakable suffering this poet had had to endure in his life!

On that occasion a little girl of ten could be seen among the closest mourners. She was Robert Hamerling's ward and had brightened and cheered the poet's last years with the promise of her character. She was the girl to whom Robert Hamerling had dedicated the lines that fundamentally reveal his mood in the last years of his life.² And because they let us see so deeply into Hamerling's soul, please permit me to read you these lines:

To B.(ertha)

Child, like a butterfly harmlessly
Fluttering past the pain-racked invalid,
When having seen me begin the homeward journey,
In the wake of suffering
Do not think of me in your flush of youth:
A fleeting thought is all that you would give;
Nor when happily in love, in marriage or in motherhood:
Your memory would be only a pale reflection in the bustle of your life.
Only at sixty years of age, please think of me:
The poor sick man you saw
Year after year stretched on a bed of suffering,
Who, tortured by unceasing pain,
Spoke little, save laborious groans;
Nothing was he to you and nothing could he be.
At sixty years of age, child, think of him:
Then you will muse on him, muse long,
And late, deep compassion will rise in you
For him then long at rest from suffering.
A teardrop fills your eye as offering
For him long paled in death,
Who nothing was to you, and nothing could be.

It is not necessary to describe the situation of a poet who could write lines that speak so powerfully of his suffering in virtually the entire second half of his life. There was much gossip, even after Hamerling had already been confined to his bed for a large part of his life, and allegations about the sybaritic life the author of “Ahasver” supposedly led. It was even rumored that he lived in a sumptuous house in Graz, and that he had a large number of girls for his pleasure, who had to perform Greek dances day after day and other such things. All these stories were told at a time when illness kept him laid up while the sun was shining outside. He was forced to stay in bed in his small room, knowing that outside the sun was shining on the meadows, on the glorious nature he had enjoyed so much in the brief periods he was able to leave his sickbed.

And this same bright sun was shining gloriously when we accompanied the deceased to his last resting place on July 15, 1889. There are few indeed who lived under such outward constraints and yet were devoted with every fiber of their soul to what is great, beautiful, monumental, magnificent, and joyous in the world.

I remember one time sitting with a young musician in Vienna who was a great friend of Hamerling's. This young man was essentially a poor fellow who soon succumbed to a mental illness. He was deeply pessimistic and never tired of complaining about life. And since he loved Hamerling a great deal, he loved to cite the poet in his complaints about life. On this occasion, the young musician once again wanted to quote Hamerling as a pessimist. As we were sitting together in a cafe, I was able to call for a newspaper that contained a small occasional poem by Hamerling entitled “Personal Request.” I showed it to the young musician.

Personal Request

Say that I write bad verses,
Say that I steal the silverware,
Say I'm a rotten German
Because my diet says I can't eat Jews
And Slavs for breakfast;
Or that I betray our Austria
Because I sing the praise of Bismarck.
Say that I'm stricken with grief because
Praise for me is sadly lacking,
Slandered I am basely on occasion—
But I ask one thing only:
Do not say that I'm a pessimist,
That the last word in my singing
Belongs to blasé-modern
Stupid, dull unhappiness with living!
What? The poet is a pessimist
Because he makes complaining noises?
Just because the world is lovely
And life seems so charming to him
He would painfully regret it
If his part he were to forfeit.
If you call pessimists all persons
Who complain, then pessimistic
Is the man from whom a cry
Escapes while he is at the dentist!
Everything the critics say, believe them,
Except that I'm a pessimist!
I hate this word. To me it smells
Rather like its final syllable.³

These words characterize Hamerling's attitude and show that he lived in greatest pain (he wrote as much to Rosegger) at the time of writing this poem “Personal Request.” He wrote to Rosegger: “I am not worried about becoming a pessimist, but I do fear going mad or becoming an imbecile, as sometimes I can manage only a few minutes respite from the never-ending pain!”⁴ The man who began his poetic career with words truly sounding like a lifetime's program was worried about going mad or becoming an imbecile, but not about becoming a pessimist. For when Robert Hamerling sent his first major poem, “Venus in Exile,” out into the world, he gave it the motto:

Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.

That was his attitude throughout his life. We must recall one very memorable scene if we want to fully understand Hamerling's unique nature. A few months or weeks before his death, he moved from his flat in Graz—where he lived on the street then called Realschulstrasse; now it is Hamerlingstrasse—to a small summer house, called Stifting House, situated in a secluded area on the outskirts of the town. Two servants had to carry the invalid down; his flat was three floors up. Several times he almost fainted. But on either side of him he had a parcel tied up with a broad ribbon, which went round his neck like a stole; they contained the wrapped manuscript of his last work, The Atomistic Will.⁵ This was characteristic of the way this poet lived and of what he loved. He did not want the manuscript of this philosophical work to leave his hands for even a minute! He was so ill that two servants had to carry him down; yet he had to hold on to the thing that filled his life. So he was carried down and taken out to Stifting House in the most beautiful sunshine, sighing, “Oh, what pleasure to ride like this; if only I were less ill, less ill!”

The soul and spirit at work under these physical conditions remained open to all that is great and beautiful, all that is filled with spirit in the world. It worked out of the wellsprings of greatness, beauty, and spirituality in such a way that we cannot really be surprised by his attitude to pessimism. We cannot be surprised to see in Hamerling's spirit living cosmic evidence that the spiritual forces in us can triumph over material and natural forces, however obstructive they may be, in every situation.

Fifty-nine years earlier, that is in 1830, Robert Hamerling was born in Austria in an area called Waldviertel.⁶ Because of its special natural configuration that region is eminently suited—and was probably more so then than now when it is crisscrossed by railroad lines—to concentrate the soul inwardly if it is awake and to deepen the soul. The Waldviertel region is basically a backwater of civilization, although someone was born and lived there in the first half of the nineteenth century who was also widely known in Austria this side of the river Leitha. He has probably been forgotten by now, and at most continues to live in the memory of the people in the Waldviertel, in numerous folk legends. I have to add that I often heard tell of this person's fame because my parents came from the Waldviertel area. Thus, I could at least hear about the remnants of his peculiar fame, which is characteristic of the atmosphere of cultural isolation in that region. This famous person was none other than one of the “most famous” robbers and murderers of the time, namely, Grasel. This Grasel was certainly more famous than anyone else who came from the Waldviertel region.

In his later years, Hamerling wrote about the Waldviertel area, and I want to read you just a few lines from what he said about his native region where he lived for the first ten or fifteen years of his life, because I believe these words can throw much greater light on Hamerling's nature than any academic characterization. He writes:

I do not know how much the construction of a railroad skirting the Waldviertel area has affected the latter's isolation from the world. In 1867, the appearance of a stranger still created quite a stir there. If such a person came along on foot or by coach, the oxen plowing the fields came to a halt and turned their heads to gawk at the new apparition. The farmer made one or two feeble attempts to drive them on with his whip—but in vain, and finally, he did likewise, and the plow rested until the stranger had disappeared behind the next hill or forest. That, too, is the image of an idyllic atmosphere!⁷

Hamerling's life and personality are an example of a soul growing out of and beyond its environment, and of an individuality's development. He was the son of a poor weaver. Since they were completely impoverished, his parents were evicted from their home at a time when Hamerling was not yet capable of even saying “I.” His father was forced to go abroad while his mother remained in the Waldviertel area, in Schonau, with the young boy. There the child experienced the beauties of the Waldviertel region. A scene from that time remained always in his memory of an experience he believed actually gave him his own being. The seven-year-old boy was going down a hill. It was evening, and the sun was setting in the west. Something came toward him, golden, out of the golden sunshine, and Hamerling describes what was shining forth in the golden light as follows:

Among the most significant memories of my boyhood, but also most difficult to convey, are the often strange moods that passed through my soul when I was a roaming boy. In part they came from the moment's lively impressions and stimulation, usually from nature around me, in part they were waking dreams and premonitions. Speaking about himself, the mystic Jakob Böhme used to say that the higher meaning, the mystical life of the spirit was awakened in him miraculously at the moment when he was dreamily absorbed in gazing at a pewter bowl sparkling in the sunlight. ^{8Jakob Böhme, 1575–1624. German mystic. He was first a shoemaker, then had a mystical experience in 1600.} Perhaps every spiritual person has a pewter bowl like Böhme's as the origin of his real inner awakening. I vividly recall a certain evening when I was about seven years old. I was going down a hill, and the sunset shone toward me like a miracle, a spiritual vision. It filled my heart with an unforgettably strange mood, with a presentiment that today seems to me like a calling, reflecting my future destiny. In high spirits, I hurried toward an unknown destination; yet, at the same time my soul was filled with a melancholy that made me want to cry. If that moment could have been explained out of the surrounding circumstances, if it had not been so completely unique, it would surely not have remained so indelibly in my memory.⁹

Thus, in the poet's seventh year the poetic and spiritual muse drew near. At that time, the seed for everything that was later to become of this soul was laid into it from out of the cosmos, so to speak. The nice thing is that Hamerling ascribes his poetic calling to such an event, as if it were a miracle the cosmos itself performed on him.

Because of his parents' poverty, the boy had to be educated at the Cistercian monastery of Zwettl.¹⁰ In return for his school lessons, he had to sing in the monastery choir. At that time, Hamerling was between ten and fourteen years old. He formed a close relationship to a strange personality at the monastery, namely, Father Hugo Traumihler, a person completely given over to mystical contemplation and a strict ascetic life. At that time the boy already possessed a thirst for the beauty of the cosmos and an urge to deepen his soul. You can imagine that he was inspired by the inner experiences Father Traumihler described from his inner contemplation of the secrets of the heart and soul. He was a mystic of a very elementary, primitive kind who nevertheless made a deep impression on Hamerling's soul.

But it is impossible to talk about the poet Hamerling without mentioning what was such a great part of his longing: the longing to be a great human being. When he returned on a trip to the Waldviertel long after he had left the area, people who knew that he came from there asked him what he wanted to be.¹¹ But although he was already well past twenty, Hamerling had not thought about what he wanted to be. This realization brought it home to him that at that age you cannot avoid the question “What do you want to do?” The only thing he could tell himself was: “Well, I cannot really tell them what I want to be, because they would not understand. For when I am asked what I want to be, I want to answer: I want to become a human being!” So sometimes he said he wanted to be a philologist or an astronomer or something like that. People could understand that. But they would not have understood that someone who had finished his studies might intend to become a human being.

Well, much could be said about the development of Hamerling as a poet and, above all, about the unfolding of three things in his soul. The first he later described in The Atomistic Will by saying that the Greeks called the universe “cosmos,” a word connected with beauty.¹² That, to him, was characteristic of the Greek spirit, for his soul was filled with the beauty that resonates throughout the universe. And his heart's desire was to see humankind in turn permeated by that beauty; that was what he wanted to express in poetic form. So everything in him strove toward beauty, toward the beauty-filled world of the Greeks. Yet he saw so many aspects of life that cast a pall over the beauty intended by nature. For him beauty was identical with spirituality. He would often survey everything he knew about Hellenism and then look with sadness at modern culture, the readers of his poetry. He wanted to write poetry for this modern culture in order to fill it with sounds that would encourage people to bring beauty and spirituality back into life, and thus return happiness to life on earth. Hamerling found it impossible to speak of a discrepancy between the world and beauty in human life. He was inspired by the belief that life should be infused with beauty, that beauty should be alive in the world, and from his youth on he would have preferred to live for that alone. It was like an instinct in his soul. But he had met with much that showed him the modern age must struggle through many things that frustrate our ideals in life.

Hamerling was a student in 1848. He was a member of the liberation movement and was arrested by the police for this “great crime” and given a special punishment, as happened to many who had been part of the liberation movement in Vienna at that time. If they went beyond what the police thought permissible, they were taken to the barber where their hair was cut as a sign that they were “democrats.” These days you no longer risk having your hair cut just because you hold liberal views—progress indeed! The other thing not allowed at that time was the wearing of a broad-brimmed hat. This again was taken as a sign of liberal views. One had to wear a so-called “topper,” a top hat, which had full police approval.

Hamerling had to put up with this and much else. Let me just mention one more event as a small indication of how the world treated the great poet; I believe it leads to a much better characterization than an abstract description. The event I am referring to happened when Hamerling had concluded his years at university and was about to take his teaching examination. He had good grades in Greek, Latin, and mathematics. Indeed, he received excellent grades on his Greek and Latin. But if we read further in his report card, we find that although Hamerling claimed to have read some grammar books, his performance in the examination did not indicate a thorough study of the German language. This was said of the man who has enriched the German language so immeasurably through his unique style!

I would like to draw your attention to another experience Hamerling had. In 1851, he became acquainted with a family and one evening was invited to stay for a party. He would have gladly joined them, but he could not stay. Then the daughter of the family had a glass of punch sent over to his student quarters. What were his feelings then? He suddenly had the urge to take pencil and paper, and he felt himself transported into another world. At first he saw images of world history, presented as if in a large tableau. Then these images were transformed into a chaos of blossoms, rot, blood, newts, golden fruits, blue eyes, harp music, destruction of life, the thunder of cannons, and quarreling people. Historical scenes alternated with blossoms and salamanders. Then, as if crystallizing from out of the whole, a pale, serious figure with penetrating eyes appeared. At the sight of this figure, Hamerling came to. He looked at the piece of paper. The paper, blank before the vision, had written on it the name Ahasver and below, the outline for the poem “Ahasver.”

Hamerling's interest in everything that moves the human soul to its heights and depths was of rare profundity, and combined with a drunkenness with beauty, so to speak. That is why the ten years he spent teaching high school in Trieste on the glorious Adriatic and taking his vacations in neighboring Venice may be described as a happy time for him. He got to know Venice so well that years later he still knew all the nooks and crannies and little alleys where he had walked many times on beautiful evenings. There he saw radiant nature and southern beauty, for which his soul had such a yearning. This southern beauty blossomed in “Greeting in Song from the Adriatic.” Like his early works, this poem shows Hamerling's extraordinary talent. It was followed by “Venus in Exile.” Hamerling conceived of Venus not only as the embodiment of earthly love, but as the bearer of the beauty that rules and holds sway in the cosmos, a beauty that is in exile as far as modern humanity is concerned. Robert Hamerling's longing as a poet was to liberate beauty and love from their exile. Hence the motto I read to you:

Go on your way, a holy messenger,
And sing in joyful tones
Of the dawning day,
Of the realm of beauty to come.

But Hamerling's soul could not sing of the “dawning day, / Of the realm of beauty to come” without looking into all the dark recesses of the human soul. The vision of Ahasver shows what Robert Hamerling saw in those recesses. It continued to stand before his soul until he found the poetic form for the personality of Ahasver. Ahasver became the thread running through human life as the personification of an individuality who wants to escape life but cannot. This individuality is then contrasted with that of Nero in Rome, a man always seeking life but unable to find it in sensual saturation and therefore eternally searching.

We can see how life's contradictions confronted Hamerling. This becomes even clearer in his poem “The King of Sion” where he describes a person who wants to bring spiritual salvation from lofty heights to his fellow human beings but falls prey to human weaknesses in the process, to sensuality and so on. Hamerling was always reflecting on the proximity of opposites in life, and he wanted to give this poetic form. Greece arose before his soul in the form to which he wanted to restore it. In Aspasia, he described the Greece of his imagination, the country of his yearning, the world of beauty, including the negative aspects such a world of beauty may also bear. In the form of a three-part novel, Aspasia became a wonderful poem about cultural history.

Robert Hamerling was not understood, as I learned when I met a man in a godforsaken place whose eyes burned with resentment and whose mouth had an ugly expression. I do not mean physical ugliness, of course; physical ugliness can actually radiate beauty of the highest degree. This man was one of the most vicious critics of Aspasia. In comparison with the beauty-filled poet, that man appeared to be one of the ugliest men, and it was clear why his bitter soul could not understand Hamerling.

All of Robert Hamerling's endeavors were of this order. There would be much to tell if I were to recount the whole of his progress through history. He sought to deal with Dante and Robespierre, ending with Homunculus, in whom he wished to embody all of the grotesqueness of modern culture. There would also be much to tell if I were to describe how Hamerling's lyrical muse sought to find the reflective sounds permeating his works in the beauty and colors of nature and in the spirit of nature. Again, there would be much to say if I wanted to give you even just an idea of how Hamerling's lyrical poetry is alive with everything that can comfort our souls regarding the small things in the great ones, or how his poems can give us the invincible faith that the kingdom of beauty will triumph in the human soul however much the demons of discord and ugliness might try to establish their rule. Hamerling's soul suffered in life; yet in the midst of the deepest, most painful suffering, his soul could find joy in the beauty of spiritual activity. His soul could see the discords of the day all around, and yet could immerse itself deeply in the beauty of the night when the starry heavens rose above the waters. Hamerling was able to give meaningful expression to this mood.

I wanted to describe briefly, by means of a few episodes out of Hamerling's life, an image of Robert Hamerling as a poet of the late nineteenth century who was filled with an invincible awareness of the better future of humanity because he was steeped completely in the truth of the beauty of the universe. At the same time, he was a poet who could describe how the spirit can be victorious in us over all the material obstacles and hindrances to our spiritual nature.

It is impossible to understand the poet Hamerling without reference to his lifelong effort to answer the question: How do I become a human being? Everything he created has human greatness, though not always poetic excellence, for Hamerling's stature as a poet is a consequence of his human greatness. When he saw disharmony in life, Hamerling always felt an invincible urge in his soul to find the corresponding harmony, to find the way in which all things ugly must dissolve into beauty when we look at them rightly.

In conclusion, I want to read you a small, insignificant poem typical of Hamerling. In conception and thought it belongs to his early years, but it does characterize the mood, albeit in primitive poetic simplicity, that accompanied him throughout his life:

The Lion and the Rose

On a deep red rose
The angry lion trod
His paw caught fast the thorn
Of this delicate bud.

His paw swelled large;
In angry pain he died.
Refreshed, the red rose drank
The early morning dew.

Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure—
Beauty, triumphs over all.¹³

This mood—we can see it in everything he wrote—accompanied Hamerling through his life:

Be the delicate ever so delicate,
The rough ever so rough,
That which is fragile, gentle, pure—
Beauty, triumphs over all.

• 1. PeterRosegger, 1843–1918, Austrian poet and novelist. Hans Brandstetter, 1854–1925, Austrian sculptor. Robert Hamerling, pseudonym of Rupert Hammerling 1830–1889, Austrian poet. Best known for his epics Ahasverus in Rom 1865 and Homunculus (1888).
• 2. “An B(ertha),” Hamerling's last poem; written in the Stiftin House on June 18, 1889, three weeks before his death. In Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, in Hamerlings Sämtliche Werke (Hamerling's Collected Works), Leipzig 1893, 16 volumes, edited by Michael Rabenlechner, vol. 15, p. 90.
• 3“The Pessimist” in Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, p. 91. Translator's note. The final syllable of the German word “Pessimist” (mist) means “dung” in English.
• 4. Letter of June 11, 1888, in Peter Rosegger, Persönliche Erinnerungen an Robert Hamerling, Vienna 1891, p. 177.
• 5. Hamerling's philosophical work, published in 1891.
• 6. The Waldviertel is a region in northwestern Lower Austria.
• 7Robert Hamerling, “Die schönste Gegend der Erde,” vol. 16 in his Collected Works, p. 134, and “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft,” same volume, p. 17.
• 9. Hamerling, “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft,” p. 17.
• 10. “Stationen meiner Lebenspilgerschaft”, p. 45.
• 11. “People still have the bad habit of asking me what I want to become—well, a human being!” from “Lehrjahre der Liebe,” in Tagebuchblätter und Briefe (Diaries and Letters), entry of April 13, 1851. Volume 14 in Hamerling's Collected Works.
• 12. Literally: “The Greeks called the universe ‘beauty’ (cosmos).” In Atomtstik des Willens, Hamburg 1891, vol. 11, p. 226.
• 13. In Letzte Grüsse aus Stiftinghaus, vol. 15 in Hamerling's Collected Works, pp. 34–35.

Out of his conviction that we live in and are always surrounded by the spiritual world, the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said:¹ “I do not need to wait until I am removed from the things around me in the physical world to gain entry into the spirit realm. I already exist and live in the latter much more truly than in the former. It is my only firm basis, and the eternal life I took possession of long ago is the sole reason why I still wish to continue the earthly one. Heaven does not lie beyond the grave; it is here already, pervading all of nature and its light rises in every pure heart.”²

It is good to draw attention to such a statement, for in our time many people would have us believe that only stupid, superstitious characters or at least those inclined to fantasy speak of the spiritual world and have views on it. Interestingly enough, even those people who want to make us believe it is silly to talk of the spiritual world constantly speak of Fichte and others like him. So it is good if at least some people know that those with an anthroposophical outlook are of one mind with all the people who have carried throughout history a true knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world in their hearts, or at least a striving—in the highest and most noble sense of the word—for these things. And when materialists mention Fichte and pull this or that passage from his writings as it suits them, it is good when anthroposophically inclined souls know where Fichte's confidence in life, his courage for living, and his belief in life come from—they have their origin in his loyal adherence to the conviction that the human soul lives in the spiritual world and has a spiritual existence. When you hear a man such as Fichte quoted—as you know, he wrote the Addresses to the German Nation in difficult times—you should always be aware in your hearts that he had the strength to say what he said because he knew: The best part of me always lives in the spiritual world even while I am living in my physical body.³ The spiritual world surrounds me everywhere. This is true for others too; Fichte is only an example. People like Fichte were aware that their words were filled with a strength gained through a knowledge of the spiritual world that supported and worked on their souls.

There is another reason why it is good to recall such facts from time to time. After Fichte had delivered his lectures The Way toward the Blessed Life, which can be said to contain his life's teachings, to a small group of people, his audience asked him to have the lectures printed. The lectures had made a great impression on them, and they asked him to publish them because more people ought to have access to Fichte's encouragement for living, to his beautiful and noble striving for knowledge. And Fichte, strong, forceful, fired with the highest enthusiasm for his cause, made the following interesting remark in the foreword to these lectures:

I was, I might almost say, persuaded to publish these lectures by friends among the audience who had a favorable opinion of them. And because of the way I work, the most certain way never to complete them would have been to revise them once more for publication. Let it be my friends' responsibility, then, if they are not received as anticipated. I for my part have become so confused by the public at large when I see the endless bewilderment that greets every powerful idea, and also the thanks accorded to everyone who endeavors to do right, that I am unable to make a decision in matters of this kind and no longer know either how to speak to this public or whether it is even worth the effort to address it by means of the printing presses.⁴

I want to quote this remark particularly because it shows how very alone Fichte felt then—108 years ago now—with his tidings of the spiritual world in view of the general attitudes and spirit of the times. And yet, we cannot help but feel that anthroposophy is the fulfillment of what the great minds in human history longed and strove for in their endeavors. In view of the apathy and lack of judgment shown spiritual science today, we must evoke in our souls the harmony we can achieve with these great minds through our spiritual science to encourage and strengthen us. Nevertheless, it may take a long time even for those who are sympathetic with spiritual science to find the right inner energy to develop a feeling for the impulse it should give our culture. I mention this again only because I would like to see your hearts filled not only with the right kind of ideas about the spiritual world itself but also with the right kind of attitudes and feelings about our relationship to the spirit realm and our entire environment.

It is easy to see why spiritual science meets with incomprehension and misunderstanding in trying to establish itself in the world at large. Just try to understand how an ordinary citizen, a product of modern thinking, who has not really come into contact with anything spiritual, might relate to spiritual science. He has heard claims of one kind or another about the spiritual world. What must he do? Well, people have no choice but to try and make sense of these ideas on the basis of their own concepts. However, the ordinary person of our time does not possess any concepts that could help him grasp what true spiritual science says about the realm of the spirit. To begin with, he lacks the thoughts, concepts, and ideas to do this. He tries to penetrate what he is told with his ideas, which, of course, originated on quite a different level. How, then, is he supposed to avoid misunderstanding? How can we expect him to understand?

The central point in our relationship to spiritual science is to acquire new concepts, new ideas that we did not have before we encountered spiritual science and that we cannot bring with us from the outside, but have to learn gradually. This realization is fundamental for a right attitude of soul toward this spiritual stream. Consider the basic fact, namely, that spiritual science is to enable us to understand the spiritual world outside us. In the course of this year, we have heard many descriptions and all kinds of information about the spiritual world. We have always tried to enlarge our concepts and ideas so that we can really grasp properly what is going on in the realm of the spirit. For example, we speak about beings of the higher hierarchies, and you know what we say about them. We also speak of the souls of the dead as they exist between death and a new birth, and you know what we say about them. However, we must never forget that in speaking about these things we cannot use the concepts we learn in today's world or we will run into misunderstandings. Therefore I want to draw your attention to a concept you have already learned about, but I would like us to consider it in detail by examining how essential it has been to our various talks.

The physical world makes its impressions on our senses, and we try to understand this world with ideas and concepts tied to our nervous system, to our brain. When we look at this process, we find the central element is that we perceive the world. By looking at things, we perceive the human realm, human beings as physical beings, the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, clouds, mountains, rivers, oceans, stars, sun, and moon. We perceive these things to the extent that they are physical entities. We look at them, see their colors, hear their sounds, feel their warmth—in short, we perceive them. This is a perfectly correct description of our relationship to the physical world. But as soon as we look at the world of the spirit, we should feel the need for another expression than “I perceive,” because it is not quite correct to say “I perceive the beings of the spiritual world.” We need to understand that all so-called perception of the spiritual world is quite different from that on the physical plane. As we grow into the realm of the spirit and approach it, we have the impression that we are perceived. Here on earth we are, in a certain sense, the highest physical beings. A stone, a plant, or an animal might say they are perceived by human beings. And in terms of our physical body, we can say we are perceived by beings of our own kind. We are also perceived from the moment we grow into the spiritual world. The spiritual beings look down at us, and in a certain sense we become objects to them. It is indeed a first sign of having entered the spiritual world when we are perceived.

As I said in my last lecture, the way to rise toward the spiritual beings is to grow up to the level of their capabilities so that our being is perceived by them.⁵ That is how it is with regard to the higher hierarchies. We learn to see ourselves grow into a state of mind allowing us to feel we are perceived by the higher beings of the hierarchy of angels. Then as we develop further, we are perceived by those of the hierarchy of archangels, and so on. This feeling that we are looked at, that the will of spiritual beings is affecting us, is what I mean when I say “We are perceived.” We have to be quite clear about this and must not think that growing into the spiritual world is just a continuation of the panorama surrounding us in the physical world. Our whole soul mood changes because we become aware that we are living in the spiritual world, and that what we experience there is the feeling that the beings of the higher hierarchies perceive us. Their forces flow into us and are at work in us when we do something, when we act.

These things can best be explained with specific descriptions. So without any presumption—let me stress it again: without any presumption—and in all modesty, let me present the following example to show you what our relationship to the spiritual world is really like. When we undertake some work here on earth—whether it is spiritually inspired or not—we need forces coming to us from the physical realm. And these forces are outside our ordinary consciousness, of course. We cannot give them to ourselves; they are not really within our control. If you don't believe this, you can go to Dornach, to our building, and watch our friends there transforming large blocks of wood into capitals for the pillars and using their physical strength for this. Then you will have to admit that such forces come purely from the physical world. For my part, I admit quite openly that sometimes I wish I had more of this physical strength so I could help more with the work there. So, just as the strength of our hand muscles and other physical forces are involved in what we do physically, spiritual forces can also enter into our actions, flow into our souls from the spiritual world, and act from above downward, so to speak.

One of our tasks in past years was to express in our mystery plays what streams through our spiritual world view.⁶ Spiritually perceived facts had to be projected onto a physical stage; to use the common expression, they had to be “staged.” Such a production required new things compared with conventional stage productions. Over the years we have had to put on such plays with ever greater strength, one might say. But what I mean now refers not so much to external things, to what happens when everything is already there, but to the spiritual aspect of the matter.

In the early days of our work in spiritual science, a certain individual visited us.⁷ This person not only developed a profound and warm-hearted interest in our teachings as we had to present them then at the start of our work, but was also imbued with a wonderful artistic spirit, which was fused completely with her personality. One could say in the true sense of the word that she was an objectively kind person. She quickly assimilated everything we could say about the content of spiritual science at that time. Then, and this was in the early years of our work here, she left the physical world. In the years that followed, she worked in the subconscious depths that our souls reach after death and tried to integrate what she had learned about our spiritual science with her artistic sensibility. A spirit body was being built up in which these two forces were at work: the fruitful views of spiritual science and her kind, energetic and understanding artistic spirit. Many years passed, and then recently, when we were working in Munich, whenever I had to make decisions about inner matters of the Munich performances, I was always aware that this individual was looking down on everything that is happening. It is, of course, not true that such a being would tell us how to do things. We must have our own abilities for that. But through the blessing flowing to us from such an individual, we can feel strengthened for the task at hand. We can feel her radiant spiritual eye and her warm, sincere interest flowing into the things we have to do.

Things like this can show us that after death the soul gradually changes into a being involved and active here on the physical plane. Once we are conscious of this, we feel the presence of such beings as guardian spirits supporting us in the tasks we have to do here in connection with the spiritual world. Then we can set about our tasks knowing that there is a being in the spiritual world who protects our work.

Now you can see the concrete insight that should permeate our life in regard to the spiritual world. We gradually come to know that the dead do not really die, but merely move to another place. They still participate in what we do. This insight will be more than a vague feeling for us; we will gradually learn to point to the areas where they are active. We will learn to feel them with us when we need forces we cannot find on the physical plane, when we need support from higher regions. For the souls who have passed through death possess forces different from those on the physical plane, because they take the material for their development at that stage from another world. We can feel the true inner deepening we can gain by taking up spiritual science, not just in the form of abstract theories, but in lively understanding of concrete particulars. We can then realize the blessing our theories of spiritual science and also the whole spiritual stream connected with it bestow upon all human life.

Of course, I assume such explanations in a group like this are taken with the necessary reverence, for that is the only way we can proceed from the abstract to the concrete.

Let us look at the example of another person who left the physical world a short time ago. This man had been associated with us for five years and had gradually united the best of his being with the knowledge resulting from spiritual science.⁸ For many years, he was physically ill and had to fight against the attacks from his sick body. He truly demonstrated the triumph of mind over matter, particularly considering the strength he needed to create his last poems. From samples you have heard you already know the wonderfully poetic, intimate characterization of the spiritual world this man achieved. People will get many valuable insights when his last volume of poems appears in a few weeks.⁹ The author of this volume cannot witness its publication; yet it will show us how wonderfully his spiritual life triumphed over the physical body. When I spoke about his poetry in Leipzig late last year, I used an expression in a way similar to a person, or even a child, saying “the rose is red.”¹⁰ Such a statement can be quite correct without anyone needing to “know” the rose is red. In the same way, I knew then in Leipzig that I could use the expression I chose and that it was correct. Out of an inner necessity, I said his poetry not only reveals a wonderful expression of our world view, but one could almost say these poems have an aura! Something had entered this man's soul and taken hold of his personality so that words not only flowed from him but also contained something akin to an aura. In a nutshell, that is what I said and what I felt to be true. It is only now that I know why I said this. Of course, we can only know after death what the individual who wrote these poems intended to do in the spiritual world, what he was preparing for. He suffered much because his physical organism was deteriorating. But while his body was deteriorating, something developed in the soul far beyond the physical body, something that turned out to be quite different from what he initially thought it was. This new quality lived in the depths of his soul, and its light became ever brighter the closer his physical body came to destruction. And now we can see something shining in the spiritual world that prepared itself here on earth.

Let me use a picture to explain what I mean. Nature is everywhere around us in all its beauty and glory. Surely, anyone sensitive to the beauty of nature will think I was justified when I said here some time ago that a person may visit all the art galleries of Italy, finally go up to the Swiss mountains to see a sunrise, and then have the feeling that the spiritual beings who paint the sunrise are greater painters still than those who paint on canvas.¹¹ Even though this is true, we must also admit that while we may admire the beauty of nature with complete abandon, we find it infinitely precious when we see how a painting by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, or another artist, presents the content of the artist's soul as well as nature's beauty.¹² In art, we see a physical expression of what the soul can give us, enriching what we take from nature. I want to use this analogy to prepare your heart to understand what I want to say next.

The individual I have just mentioned is now in the spiritual world, and the spiritual formations once trapped in his body are now free of it. Here on earth we have his wonderful poetry, but in the spiritual world we find lighting up what grew out of the Imaginations that were prepared here during his long illness, and that now form the basis of his spirit body. A splendid cosmic image! In these Imaginations lives a wonderful element from the cosmos that is to the direct perceptions of spiritual research what a wonderful painting is to a direct experience of the beauty of nature. When the spirit realm presents itself to the inner gaze in the Imaginations of a human soul, and we ourselves perceive it also, infinitely much will be revealed to us. In fact, it is almost as though the cosmos is perceived twice; once as it appears directly to our clairvoyant gaze, and then again as it is revealed to the clairvoyant gaze through what a human soul attained on earth through much suffering and vigorous striving for spiritual knowledge. I do not have to remind you that all these things must be understood as karma; no soul can acquire anything of this sort merely by force of will. Whether such things are granted us lies in the grace of the wise cosmic powers. During the time we spend on earth, we, and others as well, must take care to remain on earth as long as possible and in as healthy a condition as possible. This should go without saying, but these things are so easily misunderstood. No one should ever attempt to do anything to cause suffering. That must not happen, and, in any case, nothing could be achieved this way. Therefore, no worse and more false conclusion can be drawn from all this than to decide to make oneself suffer in some way just to achieve something.

With these specific examples I wanted to present two ideas. The first is that spiritual beings send their powers to us through the gaze of their spiritual eyes, as I tried to show with the example of the guardian soul of our artistic work. The other idea demonstrates the inner wisdom of the cosmic powers, which allows us to see in the spiritual world what an individuality has drawn from his earthly existence. This can then in turn enrich our perception of the spiritual world, just as artistic perception enriches our experience of the physical world.

I could say much more now about individualities who are blessed to carry what they absorbed from the anthroposophical world view into the spiritual world. However, the time for that has not yet come. I quoted these two cases because I believe such concrete and familiar examples can help us better understand the thoughts and ideas necessary for real access to the spiritual world. We must adhere to those concepts from the beginning, if we really do want such access. After all, we meet in smaller groups so that we can, in a sense, speak the language we have gradually developed for the description of spiritual life. Through spiritual science, we can progress to where we no longer talk in general terms about the spirit around us, just as we do not talk of nature around us in general terms, either. We speak not only of nature this and nature that, but of grass in the meadows, corn in a field, trees on a hillside, clouds, and so on. Gradually we have to learn to speak of the spiritual world in equally specific terms. Therefore, I like to talk of the spiritual world in concrete terms by discussing a guardian soul such as the one I mentioned today in connection with our artistic work, or by mentioning a soul whose form after death mirrors the forces emanating from the spiritual cosmos itself, forces this soul gathered while the body was overtaken by infirmity here on earth. This soul teaches us things we would not easily learn otherwise.

People like this friend, whom you knew, become the best helpers to aid spiritual science in fulfilling its task in the world. Since spiritual science is received in many quarters with misunderstanding, contempt, and hostility, we may feel that it will truly be very difficult to make any progress toward achieving its real purpose. However, the insights we discussed today evoke the encouraging thought that those who have passed through the gate of death become true witnesses for the true nature and purpose of spiritual science. I would like this thought to speak to our hearts and souls.

With this in mind, we cannot help believing that even if it takes longer than our lifetime, spiritual science will become part of the spiritual progress of humanity. This thought can give us courage to face what confronts us in certain quarters; it can give us courage in our conviction that more and more people will come to see the need to develop new concepts, new ideas, sentiments, and attitudes for a true understanding of the spiritual world.

I hope explanations like these also provide a proper context for our role in our spiritual movement. Let us accept examples such as those with reverence, and let us also draw from them what is relevant for our convictions so that we will be strong enough to bear the brunt of attacks from the outside. People outside our movement approach us only with the concepts they have learned in the world, and we should not be terribly surprised that they impose those concepts on what they find out about us. There are major problems in the relationship between spiritual science and the outer world's statements and judgments about it.

As you know—and as one of our dear members told you last time out of firsthand experience and an enthusiastic heart—we want to begin a real, true work of art in Dornach, near Basel; a work of art that is a result of our world view. Everything depends on there being a few people in the world who really understand what we intend to do. It is crucial that we do not let only those people judge this endeavor who want to describe it in terms derived from the outside world. No matter how good people's intentions are, if they approach our building with conventional concepts, they will only get a conventional description.

For instance, we can see now that newspapers in every language are saying things about the building in Dornach that can easily sweep away in a short time what we have struggled for many years to achieve—by not telling the public what it does not understand anyway. The newspapers have asked, What age are we living in? Is this still the age of materialism? An enormous temple is being built—and so on. And they have described the columns in this temple as supposedly linked by pentagrams and such. Seeing this, we can only wonder where such descriptions of the things that should develop out of our spiritual stream will lead. Such descriptions are now circulating through the media—it's terrible!

We do not need to go into detail, but the most painful thing is that the original article, which was the basis for all the others, was the work of a good-natured soul who wanted to understand us and do a great service to the movement by writing about it. We even showed him around to avoid the worst excesses of reporting. We showed him, for example, that there is really no pentagram to be seen, but that in one place the seeker's mind has to feel its way cautiously and subtly to a perception of a pentagram. Then we found that although we had asked this person not to write anything that smacks in any way of journalism, he could not do anything else, and did not use the concepts and ideas learned from us but instead only those that can be picked up on the streets of our modern culture! It is deeply painful to me to see how our original intentions and aims are now presented in the newspapers. The articles and clichés are passed on from one paper to the next and are translated into every language, and in each language another distortion and more stupidity are added. Of course, it is not hard to understand what happens when the aims of our serious and sincere spiritual science clash with what the outer world can understand. But I want to show you how solemnly and reverently we must approach our cause. It is important that we be aware how deep our understanding for the tasks of spiritual science in the world must be.

You may want to ask why we could not continue to work with our concepts modestly and anonymously even among those who cannot understand us, as we did before we started the building in Dornach. Well, people in the present age have their eyes focused on the physical level. Spiritual things go unnoticed, but that a building is being erected in Dornach cannot be ignored. Such questions are, of course, completely unproductive and also irrelevant. What matters is that we should have a proper appreciation for and understanding of our cause in our hearts. I do not say this to accuse or criticize anyone, but to remind you once again how earnestly we must try to understand the new that is to grow in us to counterbalance what comes from the world outside, particularly in the opinions of other people. What comes from outside is not part of what our souls really need and thirst for. They need spiritual science and yearn for it. Therefore, we must put the temptations and seduction of materialistic thinking, particularly that due to spiritual arrogance, in proper perspective. We must not be blinded when we encounter such views and attitudes everywhere in the external world, but must find the strength within ourselves to participate fully in this world and to seek in ourselves the impulse for a proper relationship to the world around us. Then spiritual science can really become something that warms and strengthens us inwardly. It can give us foundations for our judgment so that we are not blinded by external influences, which may approach us with authority and power and therefore can deceive us again and again about the ability of our age to understand spiritual science.

This is what I wanted to present again to your souls today. For now as summer approaches and our meetings will become less frequent, we want to be certain of one thing: The impulses of spiritual science should live in our souls independently of time and space. They should be alive in us regardless of whether we meet more often or less often. What is important is the character of our meetings that we really bring them to life in us. That is what I wanted to discuss with you today.

• 1. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German philosopher.
• 2. In Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen (“The Vocation of Man”), vol. 3, section III, Berlin 1800.
• 3. Fichte gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1807/08.
• 4Fichte, “On the Publication of Same,” from the foreword to Die Anweisungen zum seligen Leben, Berlin 1806.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner, “Understanding the Spiritual World (I),” lecture of April 18, 1914, Lecture One in this volume.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner, Four Mystery Plays, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982). The four Mystery Dramas were premiered m Munich between 1910 an 1913 under Steiner's direction.
• 7. Steiner here refers to the actress Maria von Strauch-Spettini, 1847–1904. See Hella Wiesberger's short biography of Maria von Strauch-Spettini and her letters to Marie von Sivers in Aus dem Leben von Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Dornach 1956, p. 15ff.
• 8. Steiner here refers to Christian Morgenstern, May 6, 1871 – March 31, 1914. German poet, wrote lyrical verse as well as grotesque and nonsense verse. Also translated works of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hamsun.
• 9. Morgenstern, Wir fanden einen Pfad. (“We Found a Path”), first published by Piper Verlag, Munich, in autumn of 1914.
• 10. This lecture was given on December 31, 1913, as part of the lecture cycle Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963) at which Morgenstern was present. Rudolf Steiner's comments are in Die Kunst der Rezitation und Deklamation, volume 281 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1967), pp. 208–210.
• 11. See Steiner, Background to the Gospel of St. Mark, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968), Lecture Six, pp. 96–113.
• 12. Raphael, 1483–1520, Italian painter. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, Italian painter.

Dear friends, my heart is deeply moved now that I am able to be with you for a while in these serious times and talk to you. Our first thoughts, however, shall be for our dear friends who have often been here with us and have now been called to the front where such an intense battle is raging over the destiny of individuals and of nations. Let us stand for a moment and remember our friends loyally and in love at this hour, letting our thoughts go out to them, thoughts filled with strength, to let them gain in strength out there at the front.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

Let us call out to our friends that the Christ, of whom we have spoken so often, is with them in the field, ruling over them where the destinies of individuals and of nations are now being decided and giving them strength.

Dear friends, you know that the original intention had been for the building that is to be a watchtower for the life of the spirit in our present age—that is how we envisaged it—to be completed by the month of August this year.¹ Karma decreed otherwise and we had to accept this karma with composure. For a time we had thought that, in these days in particular, words might be spoken in this building of that certainty of victory in the spiritual life of which we have become more and more convinced, thanks to spiritual science. But the building at Dornach stands, or at the time stood, uncompleted. The encompassing structures are there. The columns that are to bear the domes representing the cosmic spheres of the spirit are in position and joined up with the symbols of the canopy of heaven. The rest of the building still has to be completed.

In July a certain stage had been reached where I was able to feel that something I had aimed for would indeed be achieved: that this building was also to demonstrate how form and design can provide for really good hearing, a truly acoustic space. Hope then arose that this would come about, for when I spoke words at certain points to check how the whole enclosing structure would treat the sounds, the result gave us hope that the aim may be achieved and that the right sounds would be heard in the right places. It is our hope that the words consecrated to our school of thought may thus resound in that space.

The first sounds heard by our friends working at Dornach were echoes of the firing that went on in the immediate vicinity. Sounds of the first acts of war, part of the momentous events that have entered into our lives. Our building looks down on the field in Upper Alsace that lies on the other side of the border. Not only were the signals to be heard of the momentous events now taking place, but from a number of points on the building it was also possible to see the flashes of cannon-fire in Upper Alsace. The events happening there first of all announced themselves as an echo in our area. Meeting to discuss things in the midst of our work, the thought lived in our hearts that out of the dire events that have come into our lives the soil may be created for peace, where blessings may arise and come to flower for the development of mankind.

An event like the one we are now experiencing, dear friends, sometimes speaks to an individual person in symbols. Some of you may already have the first volume of my book, The Riddles of Philosophy. In this the intention was to show how mankind progressed in the search for the great universal riddles, to show how thought progressed in the hearts of men and of nations. The second volume has not yet come out as you know. It is, however, set up in print as far as sheet 13. On the last pages printed on this sheet the philosophy of Boutroux and Bergson is discussed, and then Preuss. So the last part printed before the present events began considers Preuss, the solitary in the evolution of German philosophy and science, who, I feel, had a much more profound grasp of what Bergson was after. This thinker, Preuss, was tremendously powerful in presenting the scientific view on the life of the spirit. Sheet 13 thus brought together the thoughts that have arisen in Western Europe and those that arose in the heart of Europe. The printed material stops in mid-sentence, symbolically splitting apart, as it were, the intellectual life of peoples between whom the great struggle has now started on the physical plane, a struggle that concerns us so deeply. During the first days of August I often had to look at the blank pages of the sheet that remained unprinted, for this, too, seemed to my mind a peculiar symbol.

Dear friends, this is not a time when secondary issues in the life of man are decided. Events may have come upon us quickly, but they are profound in their effect and have arisen from a necessity no less than the one out of which the destiny of Europe evolved in the past—from the great, hard struggles that came with the Barbarian invasions. What the protagonist of spiritual science needs in these times is confidence in the victory and unconquerable nature of spiritual life and a firm faith that the spirits who are guiding world events will resolve the issues in a way truly in the interest of mankind.

Anyone needing consolation today, because people grown close in spiritual science are now under fire on opposite sides, may look for such comfort in the words that are spoken for us in the Bhagavad Gita. These refer to past times in human evolution, to the point where an originally primitive form of human life gave way to another form in which those who had earlier lived as brothers among brothers and sisters among sisters were united according to the spiritual laws familiar to us. A transition had occurred to another kind of life for mankind, a widening out of life. And within that new order people knowing themselves to be brothers were at that time, too, facing one another in battle. Yet the spirit that is always there in the evolution of mankind does find the right words to pour confidence and faith and certainty into the souls that find themselves on opposite sides.

Today we are once again living in a time where people have come together from many different parts of the world through the spiritual movement we have made our own, and because of the feelings they have experienced, because of something that deeply unites them from the very depths of soul, they have come to call one another brothers and sisters. And once again they have to stand on opposite sides. The karma of mankind demands this. But, dear friends, whatever we have taken into our hearts and into our souls of this spiritual movement of ours must have given us the certainty that the spirit moving everywhere in the evolution of mankind will strengthen us in these stormy days and fill us with confidence. This means that we may have faith in our hearts that events will take the right course within world karma—that there has to be strife, that blood and more blood has to be shed, in order to achieve what he who guides the destinies of the world wants to achieve for mankind on this earth. It will again be the blood of sacrifice, the sacred blood of sacrifice. And those we love who are going to shed this blood of sacrifice shall be powerful helpers for mankind in the realms of the spirit, for the best and most sublime of goals. For there are many ways in which the cosmic spirits speak to us men. They speak to us in the way familiar to us when among ourselves, in the words taken from our spiritual studies and our understanding of the spirit. They also speak to us, however, through the grim signals and the thunder of war. Many a soul may feel instant regret that the cosmic guidance of man also needs to use this language, yet souls taken hold of by the spirit must be able to reflect that such language is necessary in the karma of the world. To understand the true meaning of this language in the individual case will be the task of later times. Then men will be able to look back and see what benefit it has brought them that their ancestors made a sacrifice of their bodies so that the transfigured soul would rise swiftly from the sacrifice brought in the field of war up into the realms of the spirit for the good of mankind. With this spark in our hearts of being deeply touched by the spirit, we can with new strength enter into all the cares, all the deep sorrows and troubles, and also into all the hopes, all the confidence, presented and revealed to our eyes by events of such great moment as we are experiencing at present.

Dear friends, on 26 July, following a lecture concerning the business of our building project, I was able to speak to our friends gathered there certain words that referred to the grave events that lay ahead.² Among those present on 26 July were friends who are now already at the front in the midst of those momentous events. Standing beside the building project at Dornach, a building that is to become a watchtower of the spirit, I was on that occasion able to call up in the hearts of our friends the words: May everything we have gained in our spiritual movement and through our spiritual outlook enable every single one of us, in what lies ahead, to stand in the place where destiny puts us in the world, full of strength and confidence.

There has been evidence that our spiritual movement is able to give strength, real strength, even in the times we live in now and in the solemn events that have come to us. And perhaps it is also part of the forging of such strength that those who hear the bullets whistle past out there, who have to live in the roar and thunder of war, can be aware of our thoughts being with them in steadfast love, nurturing in our hearts the thoughts that will help and strengthen them, and be aware also of the fellowship among us. What state would our movement be in if it were unable to remain strong in heart and soul at a time when such strength of heart and soul is severely tested in this world. Let us hope that the strength we ourselves have gained will at all times provide a firm bond between us and our dear friends out yonder. And let us hope that this strength will be such that it counts for something in the world of the spirit, that the spirit we sought to take into ourselves can count for something in the working of the world. Let us hope that the love we know to be part of our spiritual endeavour may prove particularly strong out there in the physical world where our friends have to make a holy sacrifice.

Dear friends, we shall see many things happen still in consequence of what is now beginning. We have on many occasions spoken of strength and composure—let us hope that these can now be achieved in our souls. We are not speaking of an easy-going composure, looking on events in an uninvolved way, but of an active composure, looking for ways and means—and in steadfastly looking for them in the spirit also finding them—to do the right thing in the right place.

Many times I had to ask myself this August if it was right to keep our friends at their building work in Dornach and whether the one or other of them should not be doing more important work elsewhere at this time. Yet it appears that it is a good thing, that it is connected with certain forces the spirit needs in these times that the building work does not stop. Work therefore continues steadfastly, even in these hard times. The building work shall actively continue in the thought that it is indeed to be a token of rightful understanding of the great deeds that are done in our day, a token of understanding that the power of the spirit also needs to be present in everything that is happening in our day. And we cherish the thought that all our friends who are continuing their allotted tasks at Dornach, because it appears to be their karma, will also be able to fill their place in everything important that arises out of the deeply stirring events in the midst of which we stand, each at his post, where his karma has placed him. Let us try, dear friends, and do everything that may emerge out of what the day presents to our souls, what the day leads us to observe, as our duty at the present time. Let us try and do our duty in every case, a duty we have to consider as one of selfless love for humanity, the duty to be prepared for sacrifice in a time when so many sacrifices have to be asked of man. Let us take part in the rite of sacrifice for the development of man—whichever way karma appears to mete it out to us—according to our strength. Let us help wherever we are able to help. Let us look for opportunities where we may be allowed to help, and let us hold on to the conviction to which we have attained—that the help offered by human beings, service given in love, provides the spirit with an effective tool.

When our friends in Dornach also wanted to know something about giving aid in an external way, about first-aid dressings, a number of lessons were arranged within the building, in case one of us was called upon one day by his karma to make use of such knowledge.³ I also felt particularly concerned to speak to our friends the words that arise from spiritual insight, words arising in a soul as it gives loving aid, to allow practical spiritual love to pass from the hand applying the bandage, from the body of the helper—in a spiritual way—to the person who is receiving help. First of all I spoke of the healing powers present in the human organization as such, of the way the blood flowing from the wound also contains the living principle that has a healing effect on the wound. And then it was said that it is good if the heart is filled with the following words when healing is given to those in need of our aid:

Welling blood,
Work in your welling,
Restless muscle,
Stir germs of growth,
Tenderest care
From warmth of heart,
Be breath of healing.

I believe I can say that a soul filled with such intent will be able to lend healing powers to a hand reaching out to give help. And surely after all that has passed through our souls over the years we must carry the conviction that, being filled with the Christ spirit in our day, we shall be given the power to intervene in the right way wherever destiny demands, wherever destiny puts us. There will be many occasions in days to come when we shall be able to find out if we rightly have the Christ within us, the Christ who acts from our own hearts into the hearts of others, who will unite the suffering person, the person in pain, with ourselves to form a living unity. How often has it been said that as human souls advance into spiritual worlds they also grow able to join their own feelings to the pain that lives in another. And indeed, the one or the other of us will often be put in a position where the events of our time are causing pain. We shall then be able to see if we are strong enough to unite in the right kind of feeling with the pain of the other, if the pain living in the soul of the other can become pain felt in ourselves.

The potential is there for mankind to gradually reach a point where the pain living in another does not spare us, but lives on in us. It is for this purpose that the blood flowed on Golgotha. This is also why at this very time we are endeavouring to strengthen the attitude of heart and mind I have described. This may be achieved with words like the following, spoken as though entirely to oneself and as often as possible when our thoughts are full of the gravity of the present situation, and in the first place addressing the other person. The words are:
Whilst pain is felt by you alone And not by me.

Christ goes unrecognized
To do his work within the world.
For the spirit cannot grow strong
If it has power only to feel
The suffering your own body undergoes.

My friends, these are the days when every soul that has learned to look into the spiritual world needs to send imploring thoughts to the spirits it believes to be its guardians. These spirits may be asked to show us the right way into our age. And we shall know in our hearts what is right, shall be conscious of the right power in our souls, as we turn to the spirit that is to guide us through our incarnations on earth to what will be truly right for ourselves. You may ask how we are able to know that we are addressing the right spirit. We shall be able to be aware of this if we approach this spirit in a way that is in accord with the true Christ impulse.

For the spirit that guides us towards what is right—and we can be quite certain of this, dear friends—is allied with Christ, is in dialogue with Christ. This spirit is holding such a dialogue with the Christ in the spiritual world now—so that out of the purpose for which battles are fought and blood is shed the right thing may come for the good of mankind. It is in the spirit of Christ that we turn to the spirit who we hope will protect us. Then it will be the right spirit.

The nature of a spirit is, in the language of spiritual science, referred to as the ‘age’ of this spirit. The word is used in this way in the formula you will be hearing next. The term ‘age’ is more or less synonymous with the ‘nature’ of the spirit, for we have come to distinguish spirits on the basis of their age. We speak of Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits in exactly this way, knowing that they are now at an age when it is not right for them to develop something that during the right epoch would be the proper thing for the evolving world. This is why we speak of the age of a spirit when we mean its essential nature. The formula is as follows:

Spirit of my space on earth,
Reveal the light of thine age
To the Christ-endowed soul,
That striving it may find
In harmony of spheres of peace
Thee ringing with praise and power
Of mind of man all given up to Christ.

We must try and let the things that have been able to take root in our souls as we worked to attain to the spirit come to fruition, let them come to such fruition that we can hope to be able to face our trials. Let us try and affirm the belief that love is the soul of our efforts to reach the spirit, at a time when love is so much needed—Love and again Love.

That, my friends, is what I so much wanted to speak to you about tonight. May the love that we have invoked so often take firm root in us. May we find a way of keeping faith with each other in these difficult times and keeping faith with all that is sacred and good in mankind. I promise you, my friends, to keep this in my heart and again and again to unite my thoughts with yours in the times that lie ahead. May it be granted—after the symbols we have experienced and which I spoke of initially this evening, when the sounds of war echoed through our building at Dornach and the fires of war were reflected in it—may it be granted that sooner or later it will be possible to speak the Word in this building, of confidence that the spirit shall win the victory, shall be unconquered, aware that the building from its eminence will then look down on a human race that has gone through severe trials and the bitter strife of this day to win from them something that is right, that is good, and is beautiful and true within human evolution. Let us hope that the days of strife may be such that in the days of peace to come it will be possible to look back with contentment on the sacrifices these times have demanded.

It is my hope that the words I have attempted to speak to you this evening may touch your hearts with the same depth from which I believe they have arisen. I hope they will mean something to you in times when many of us have so much to bear. It is my hope that they will also be to you what now fills with noble enthusiasm and the courage to fight all the hearts that are filled with noble enthusiasm and the courage to fight so that the spirits who know what is right shall feel content with what they see in those hearts. Let this be in our hearts and minds and we shall be able to do the right thing in the right place. The spiritual work we have tried to achieve for so many years now shall, and no doubt will, lend us the strength we need.

So it is goodbye, dear friends, with this in our minds and with these feelings arising in our hearts.

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, Der Baugedanke des Goetheanum (GA 290). In English as The Architectural Conception of the Goetheanum Rudolf Steiner Press (London) and Anthroposophic Press (New York) 1938.
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner, Wege zu einem neuen Baustil (GA 286). In English as Ways to a New Style in Architecture. Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London, and Anthroposophic Press (New York) 1927.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner had given a first aid course in Dornach from 13 to 16 August 1914.

Dear friends, once again our thoughts must first of all be for those who are at the front, having to meet the challenge of our time with their bodies and their whole being. Let us therefore direct our thoughts to the spirits who are protecting the men who are at the front.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already passed through the gate of death in the course of these events, we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the spirit we have sought in our endeavours for so many years, the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ spirit, the spirit of courage, the spirit of strength, the spirit of unity, the spirit of peace—may he rule over everything you are asked to do these days.

More than at other times the serious purpose of our spiritual efforts must live in our souls during these days, these weeks—a seriousness which enables us to be aware how everything we aim for in our spiritual movement has to do with all that is truly human. We are aiming for something that addresses itself not just to human existence as it is for the moment, an existence that will pass with human physical body. We are speaking of laws, of forces in soul and spirit, that directly address the higher self in man, a higher self which is more than the self that may wither away with the body and its existence. We have frequently spoken of ‘Maya’ when referring to outward appearances, and it has often been stressed that outward appearances, the processes of physical life, become Maya because man does not properly penetrate them with his mind, his perceptive faculties. He therefore does not sense, does not perceive, what is really significant; the real essence of the things perceptible to the outer senses. Man uses his perceptive faculties to draw a veil, a tissue of deception, over the events of the physical world. This makes them become Maya.

There is one particular great truth that we should have in mind these days as we look for love and understanding, for a loving comprehension of what is happening all around us—an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at the centre of everything we aim for in spiritual science. In our day this has to present itself to our souls with the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is the realization—and this has by now become the simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual life—that life on earth recurs. The fact that in the course of time our souls progress from body to body. The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body through man's successive incarnations on earth. On the other hand, there is the part that has to do with human existence in a physical body, the part present on the physical plane that provides the configuration. the formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an outer physical body.

One particular thing that provides the outer stamp, determining the character of a person as it were, in so far as he is living in a physical body on the physical plane, is what may collectively be referred to as nationality. This is something we should never forget, especially today. If we turn the mind's eye to what we call man's higher self, the concept of nationality loses significance. For when we pass through the gate of death everything encompassed by the term ‘nationality’ is among the things we cast off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper to remember that in passing through successive incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a number of different nationalities. The part of him that links him to a particular nationality is among the things that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we pass through the gate of death.

Truths that belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which at times go against our feelings—truths we achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times, and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their full strength and clarity in difficult times such as these. A true anthroposophist must do this, and it will be exactly in this way that he arrives at a real understanding of the physical world around him. The basic elements for such understanding have already been presented in our anthroposophical work. You will find that the lecture cycle on folk souls' in a sense contains everything needed to gain insight into the way human beings, in so far as they are in the eternal realm, are connected with their nationalities. Those lectures were of course given in peacetime when souls are more ready and prepared to accept objective, unvarnished truths. Perhaps it will be difficult to take these truths as objectively today as they could be taken in those days. Yet this is the very way in which we can prepare our souls to develop the strength they need today, if even today we are able to take these truths objectively.

Let us bring before our mind's eye the picture of a warrior going through the gate of death on the field of battle. We need to understand that this is very much a special case, to go through the gate of death like this. We need to understand that entrance is made into a world that we are seeking with every fibre of our souls in spiritual science, so that it may bring clarity even into physical life. Let us remember that death means the entrance into that spiritual world and that it is not possible to take other life impulses directly into that world, for they would bear no fruit. The only life impulses we are able to take there are those that animate the efforts of our hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join all peoples on the earth in brotherhood. Then a simple popular saying can be seen in a new way in the light of anthroposophy. It is the proverb which says ‘Death is the grand leveller’. It makes them all equal—Frenchmen. Englishmen, Germans and Russians. That is indeed true. Considering this in relation to what is going on all around us on the physical plane today, we shall indeed become aware of the solid ground that enables us to overcome Maya in this field and look to events for their essential meaning.

Consider it in relation to the feelings of antipathy and hatred that fill the hearts of the peoples of Europe at present. Consider it in relation to all the things peoples in the different regions of European soil feel about the others, expressing it in spoken and written words. And let us also see in our mind's eye all the antipathy coming to full fruition in our time.

How should we see these things with the eye of truth? Where in this field do we find something that will take us beyond Maya, beyond the great illusion? We do not get to know about each other on earth by an approach that considers everything that is generally human as something abstract. We get to know one another by getting in a position where we are able really to understand the peculiar qualities of the peoples who are spread out over the whole earth, to understand them in concrete terms, in what they are in particular. We do not get to know a person in this life by simply saying: He is a human being like myself and must have all the same qualities that I have. No, we have to forget about ourselves and really consider the qualities of the other person.

In the lecture cycle on the folk souls I showed how the different aspects of the soul within us—the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul, the spiritual soul, the ego and the spirit-self—are distributed among the nations of Europe and how every nation fundamentally represents a one-sided aspect. I also said that the different nationalities will have to work together, to become the soul of Europe as a whole, just as the different aspects of our own soul need to work together. Looking at the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas we find that the national element comes to expression in the sentient soul. In France, it comes to expression as intellectual or mind soul. Moving on to the British Isles we see it coming to expression as spiritual soul. In Central Europe the national element comes to expression as ego. When we finally look to the East of Europe, that is the region where it fully emerges as spirit-self—though that is not quite the right way of putting it, as we shall see later. What comes to expression there is something that lies in the national character. But the eternal in man goes beyond what is national and this is what human beings are looking for when entering more deeply into the spirit. Compared to this, the national element is a mere garment, an outer envelope, and the more a person is able to gain insight into this the higher he will ascend. In so far as man lives in the physical world, he does live in the outward trappings of what is national and this gives his body its configuration and, fundamentally speaking, also provides the configuration for certain qualities, character traits.

Today we see the members of different nations facing one another in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking about what is going on in the combat situation. I am speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world through which it will now have to pass between death and its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an incarnation that will belong to quite a different nationality from the one it is now leaving. This is a fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’ today, someone with national feelings who directs his antipathy very particularly against the members of another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving against this other nation in his own country. What is the meaning of such ranting and raving, of such antipathy? It signifies a premonition—My next incarnation will be into this nationality! The higher self has already at subconscious level established links with the other nationality. This higher self is resisted by that part of us which on the physical plane. This is man raging against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume that other nationality at their next incarnation.

That is the full seriousness of what we teach, the moral greatness that lies behind it. There is much in man—very much, infinitely much—that wants to resist having to recognize his higher self, the part of him that is eternal. This is what makes it so tremendously difficult to speak objectively at the present time. It certainly is a strange phenomenon that before this war started infinitely appreciative comments reached us from England, appreciative of the German character, German competence and particularly the intellectual life in Germany. I attempted to give examples of this in my last public lecture.5 It is possible to give many more examples, and this shall also be done. What was going on there?

From the occult point of view, there had been an instinctive feeling that an element was being striven for in Central Europe that had to do with regaining youth—I spoke of the Faust type of soul in that last public lecture—a search for the spiritual, preparing for the spiritual, something the whole of Europe would one day turn to, truly turn to. This is something people were instinctively aware of in times gone by. The desire has been to understand what is going on in Central Europe. Yet being wholly bound up with the national element, we shall only be able to relate to this in full understanding in the life between death and rebirth. Then it will be possible to relate to this and understand, and the way will be found to the teachers of Central Europe. It is embarrassing to speak of this now for it may appear like boasting in someone who comes from Central Europe. Yet the objective truths must be told. So there is an instinctive feeling for something that will be looked for in the life between death and rebirth: a uniting with souls that have striven for what is altogether human—with the Goethe soul, the Schiller soul, the Fichte soul. [Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.] There has been some awareness of the fact that, having passed through the gate of death, we shall look above all for the Goethe soul, the Fichte soul, the Schiller soul and other souls that had their last incarnation in Central Europe. This fact had come to expression instinctively, and now once more, for the last time, infinitely passionate nationalistic feeling is rising against it. When we realize that the words so often heard now from the west and the north west are but covering up this feeling of resistance we shall have come to understand the truth, to replace Maya, misconception. We shall then understand how earth man, having eternal man within him, does not want what the eternal man within him wants; how the love he must feel in eternity is in the temporal world transformed into hatred.

We shall find that the best way of achieving love in understanding, and understanding in love, will be to get to know the characteristics of European peoples' using the means spiritual science is able to provide. We are allowed to do so in so far as we are always addressing the higher self in man. And all who want to share in our way of thought or feeling will recognize this higher self and therefore be able to listen to everything that has to be said with regard to the outer garb, knowing that we are speaking of the outer garb.

In a certain sense every nation has its specific mission.—In due course we shall be able to enter the building in Dornach and find that the sequence of columns, their capitals and the architraves above them, express in their forms what comes to expression in the impulses we discern in Europe. But I am not going to talk about this now for it is best to talk about it when we have the building before our eyes. That is what I did there a few days ago.⁶—If we consider the impression our soul may gain even without seeing the building, we note above all that the inhabitants of the southern peninsulas—Italy and Spain—are, in a way, bringing back in their modern mission the elements that in the past had appeared in the third post-Atlantean epoch, in Egypto-Chaldean civilization. As soon as we grasp this, we gain a true insight into the soul of an Italian or Spanish national. This can be traced down to specific details. It is possible to say that we find in reality what we have previously perceived in the spirit. What were the characteristic features of Egypto-Chaldean civilization? This is something we have spoken of many times. They had a feeling for the great, cosmic astrology. Stars and constellations were not seen the way we see them today. Instead, spiritual entities were perceived and the constellations were seen as their physical exterior. The spiritual was seen in everything. If this is to be repeated as the mission of a nation in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha it has to be repeated in such a way that it now is part of the inner soul—that the great cosmic tableau seen by the Egyptians and Chaldeans now presents itself as though born anew out of the soul. This is nowhere more evident than in Dante's Divina Comedia, a work representing the high point of culture on the Italian peninsula. [Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.] Even in details, the elements of ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture emerge again as though born out of the soul, resurrected in the inner life.

The essence of Greek culture is today found in the French nation, down to the character of their leading personalities. Voltaire [1694–1778] for instance can be understood only if one compares him to a real Greek. And if you consider the form Corneille [1606–16841] and Racine [1639–1699] gave to their works you can see how they were wrestling with the Greek form. This is of great significance in the history of civilization. The struggle with outer form, with what Aristotle [384–322 BC] established with regard to form, lives on in Racine and Corneille. If we look to French culture to find again the culture of the intellectual or mind soul that set the tone in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we should find what was best in that culture. With the intellectual or mind soul coming to grips with the world, we should find exactly what relates to this. The greatest poet therefore, beyond compare in that respect, will have to be one whose creative work arises out of the intellectual or mind soul. A nation achieves greatness where its incomparables are brought to the fore. And the French poet who is unsurpassable is Molière [1622-1673]. With him the French soul reached its true, characteristic height—there it is unsurpassable. An echo of this was still alive in Voltaire.

An element that repeats nothing of the past but belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, something that has come up new in this epoch as it were, is the British soul. The principal aim of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is to develop the spiritual soul, to bring it out. The spiritual soul is particularly in evidence in the essential nature of the British folk soul. It is characteristic of the British soul that it faces events. Fourteen, fifteen years ago, when I was writing the first edition of my Riddles of Philosophy⁷ I struggled to find a term to describe the British philosophers and it then became clear to me that they are onlookers in life. They face things the way the spiritual soul faces life as an onlooker. And the greatest creative spirit in the British soul, the man who stood there and faced the British character traits giving expression to all of them, down to the very depths of the soul, was Shakespeare. There the British soul is incomparable, in the onlooker mode.

Moving on to Central Europe we find ‘...what is forever evolving, and never actually is...’ as I have already described it in the public lecture. It is the ‘I’ as such, the innermost part of man. How does this relate to the elements of man's soul? It relates individually to the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul and the spiritual soul, developing links with all of them. Let us consider this in the case of Goethe. We note how he longed to go to Italy. And as it was in his case so all the best minds of Central Europe always longed for Italy, to achieve fertilization of the ego and let it conceive from the sentient soul. And the ego also exchanges forces with the intellectual or mind soul. Let us try and observe how that close bond between ego and intellectual or mind soul has really always been there through the centuries. Note how Frederick the Great [1712–1786], that most German of princes, really only spoke and wrote in French, how he had a special appreciation of French culture. This is evident, for instance, from his relationship with Voltaire. We can also note how the German philosopher Leibniz [1646–1716] wrote his works in French. That is exactly how the ego relates to the intellectual or mind soul. And when the ego is from the depths of the soul seeking the thing it strives for, something pushes up from the depths of the ego, from unfathomable depths of the ego: the spiritual soul tries to grasp it. This can be seen in the case of Goethe. I have often shown how he tried to grasp the way organisms evolve one from another. He established a whole system for organisms. That arose from the depths of the ego. But it is not immediately compreshensible. People need something that is easier to understand, they need things presented the way they arise from the spiritual soul. So they did not take up what Goethe had to offer but took up Darwin [1809–1882]. We still have not reached the point today where we are able to give recognition to Goethe's Theory of Colours.⁸ Transposed into the spiritual soul in Newton's [1642–1727] work it became what is currently accepted as the science of physics.

These things indicate the way in which individual, in this case national, characters are facing one another. We rise above the outer Maya which holds men captive and come to the truth when we learn to look at things in the light of spiritual science. We come to a truth that will show us that just as individual soul forces are warring with each other in a human being so the soul forces incorporated in the folk souls are at war with each other. It is not by chance that now in our day—when the teaching I have just presented has emerged—war makes its appearance as the great teacher, telling mankind in such a bloody, such a terrible way the very thing we are also telling them in spiritual terms. It is not by chance that whilst we are able to discuss this here there rages outside what is probably one of the bloodiest struggles ever. Fundamentally speaking, it represents the same truths but we must first penetrate them in their Maya to understand them as they really are.

In speaking about these things we must for once remove from the words that are spoken every nuance of feeling, of sympathy or antipathy, and use words merely for characterization. Then we shall understand things rightly. For these are things contained within the self of man, in so far as it is wrapped in the national element. We can follow this through in detail. To begin with, to prepare for what we must come to understand, let me say the following.

Let us take a Central European living in the ego culture. In my public lecture I said that the Central European aspires to his god in such a way that he will be joined to him. He wants to be united with his god. With regard to the thinking process, we can make the I generally say: ‘Man thinks’. Yet the statement ‘Man thinks’ really says very little indeed. We need to learn to look more carefully with the aid of spiritual science. We must gradually learn not to speak thoughtlessly but instead put things in the right way. For people who do not really care about the reality of things it is, of course, all right the way one just says it, but it is right only to say: ‘the Central European or Scandinavian thinks’—with ‘thinking’ here considered an activity because it is the evolving of thought that matters. ‘The ensouled being thinks’—that is what matters in Central Europe and in the Nordic countries. Man is so bound up with thought that this thought is the product of the soul's own activity, that the soul's activity consists of nothing else but the soul being caught up in thought.

The same cannot be rightly said for the Frenchman. In that case we have to say: ‘He has thoughts’. For ‘thinking’ and ‘having thoughts’ are not the same—there is a subtle difference. My Riddles of Philosophy can help to make this clear. In Western Europe people have thoughts. Thoughts are something that comes; they are given just as sensory perceptions are given. That is how it is with thoughts. They enter into the soul, they are fully alive in it, people have them, even grow intoxicated with them, are delighted to have them. One accusation made against the Germans is that their thoughts show a certain coldness. That may well be. A German has to form them first in his individual soul. They need to be warmed through there and only stay warm for as long as they are part of the immediate activity.

So much in preparation. For, indeed, the expression of individual national characteristics will always be found to show something coming alive that has already been put forward in the principles of spiritual science, something you will find in my lectures on folk souls. Let us consider individual expressions of national character.

The Italian and the Spanish character is determined by the sentient soul. We can observe this in life down to the finer detail. Everywhere we come upon the sentient soul. (This does not, of course, refer to life in the higher self.) As soon as a native of those countries is wholly within his national element he is within the sentient soul. This is particularly attached to everything connected with home and sensitive to everything that is not home but, rather, ‘alien country’. If you try, for instance, to understand all that is part of the national element in Italy you will find that an Italian sees another person who is not Italian as a foreigner who lives abroad. All the struggles that took place in Italy during the 19th century had specifically to do with home territory. Here we have a recapitulation of Egypto-Chaldean culture.

Next let us consider the people of Western Europe, those living on French soil. (Remember, we need to rid ourselves of anything to do with sympathy and antipathy.) They are recapitulating Greek civilization. Their attitude to someone from another country will be like that of the Greeks—they will call him a barbarian. Greek civilization is recapitulated here. We can understand this even if the wildest feelings of antipathy are raging. There always is a nuance present of the way people in ancient Greece considered non-Greeks.

The English people have the specific mission to nurture the spiritual soul and this comes to full expression in materialism. Here we specially need to rid ourselves of all antipathy. The nurturing of materialism results in men being simply positioned next to each other in space. This is something that was not experienced in the past: awareness of the rival. The spiritual soul is conscious of another person as its rival in physical life.

What is the situation as regards the Central Europeans, including the Scandinavians? It would be most interesting to go into full detail of this another time. What does a German feel when face to face with another national, in the position where the Italian sees the foreigner, the Frenchman the barbarian and the Englishman his rival? One needs to find the pregnant phrase always for these things. A German faces his opponent—this may also be in a duel and may have nothing at all to do with any feeling of antipathy even—it is merely an matter of fighting for existence or for something connected with one's existence. The enemy need not be denigrated in the least. Again it is possible to observe this even in fine detail. This war in particular shows how the German national faces his enemy as though in a duel.

Let us now turn to the East. We have spoken of the sentient soul coming into its own on the two southern peninsulas, the intellectual or mind soul among the French, the spiritual soul in the British Isles. In Central Europe and up north in Scandinavia the national element comes into its own in the I, the ego. It shows differentiation between different regions but overall is experienced by what is called the ego soul. As I have said, it lives as spirit-self in the East. How do we characterize the spirit-self? It approaches man, comes down upon him. In the ego, man is striving. In the three soul aspects, man is also striving. The spirit-self on the other hand descends. It will one day descend upon the East as a true spirit-self. These things are true, as we have often said. But it needs preparation, preparation to the effect that the soul conceives, that it becomes well versed in its conceiving.

Surely the Russian people have done nothing else so far but conceived. We have had the works of Soloviev, the greatest Russian philosopher, translated within our movement.⁹ If we consider his works in depth we find that it is all Western European culture and philosophy. It is a little different because it has been born out of the Russian folk soul. What is it that is approaching in the Russian soul in contradistinction to western European culture? Italy and Spain are a recapitulation of the third post-Atlantean epoch, the French people a recapitulation of the culture of ancient Greece. The Briton shows the new element that has come in, something we very definitely acquire on the physical plane. In Central Europe it is the ego that has to emerge clearly. In Russia we have receptiveness, conception. First it was Byzantine Christianity that was received, descending like a cloud and then spreading. And western European culture was received even during the reign of Peter the Great [1672–1725]. At present, one would say, only the material basis for conception is there. What we do have there is a reflection of Western European culture, and the soul's work consists in preparing itself for conception, making itself receptive. The Russian folk-soul will only be in its right element when it realizes that Western European elements have to be received the same way as the ancient Germans, for instance, received the Christian faith, or the way the Germanic people took in Greek culture through Goethe. It will be a while yet. The physical element in the people of the East is reacting against the things that need to be taken in, and so the East is still resisting what will be coming towards it. The spirit-self has to descend.

The element coming across from the West is not the spirit-self—but the soul uses it, in a way, to prepare, to practise, receptiveness. And how does a Russian see another national? As someone who stands in opposition, someone descending upon his consciousness. And so the person who is a foreigner to the Italian, a barbarian to the Frenchman, a rival to the Briton and an opponent to the German is a heretic in Russia. That is why, fundamentally speaking, the Russians have only fought religious wars until now—all their wars have so far been religious wars. The aim was to liberate all nations or bring them to the Christian faith—the Balkan countries and so on. And even now Russian country people feel the other person to be ‘evil’ incarnate. They see the other person as a heretic and always believe they are fighting for the faith—even today! These things are true down into detail and we come to understand them if we are truly willing really to look into things. And so we may also ask what it is we see confronting us in the East of Europe.

The way he is in physical life, man is in a way unjust to his higher self. Someone living in the intellectual or mind soul, a person whose imagination is particularly well developed, will ‘have’ thoughts. The concept of how he should appear to himself, in so far as he is a particular national, presents itself before his higher self. He feels that it is his glory; a third self as it were, a national self which stands between him as a higher self and as a national person. He fights on the basis of this. After death he first of all has to be overcome this unless he has already overcome it beforehand through spiritual science. He must pass through something that first of all presents itself to his soul as the Inspiration of his own image of himself.

Someone living in the spiritual soul as a national will above all be inclined towards the things the spiritual soul has made its own in the physical world. This will be like a grievous memory in the world that lies between death and rebirth.

The Central European is a seeker. This is evident even from derogatory remarks made by his enemies who may say he is fit only to plough the fields and search among the clouds. However far he may have advanced, he is, even here, seeking the self in. spirit. In the efforts he makes during his progress on earth he will therefore, in a sense, try already get rid of whatever has to be got rid of when we go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world.

Someone who has been in a Russian body during his last incarnation must first of all, on passing through the gate of death, assume the consciousness of an angelos, merge into the inner being of an angelos—unless he has gone through a different preparation with spiritual science—and share in all that comes down from the hierarchies above him.

All these are reasons why we may say that if we look to the West of Europe it seems natural that strife arises out of the very nature of men in so far as they are nationals, for the national element is connected with something that is an outer covering. It is quite natural for strife to arise. In the spiritual world anything that rightfully belongs there can spread without hindrance. But external means have to be used to assert the image one has of oneself. It needs to be able to spread in order to emerge. Anything looking for competition must of course be able to spread. It is perfectly understandable that strife comes from the people who represent the spiritual soul. If we are really seeking the I, the ego, in Central Europe, let us see if the qualities of the ego can already be brought to bear.

I have already stressed, for example, that the ego needs to be fanned to life again every morning. It is in an unaroused state when we enter into the sphere of sleep with it and needs to be fanned to life again every morning when we wake up. If I may refer to Austria—I heard it said even when I was young that Austria would one day fall apart when occasion arose. We knew different; it might have any amount of centrifugal force within it but it was held together from outside, it could not fall apart. Let us consider Germany. Does it show the ego character in its outer aspect, in its form? It is a fact of considerable import that for much of a century the Germans have pressed for unification. They did not achieve this from the inside. It took an external impulse, not from inside Germany but from outside, from the centre of France, to let the Germany of today come into being in accord with the ego character. We can only understand the world if we consider it in the light of spiritual science. Fundamentally speaking, the ego does not have the inclination to hit out; for the overweening forces from the physical plane would then go over into the spiritual sphere. This is something we could demonstrate over and over again in German history, in the history of Austria and the history of the Scandinavian peoples. The feeling is right, therefore, that a German, or a Central European, has to be made to come out in war. Fundamentally speaking, he is unable to start a war of his own accord. If he goes to war out of initiative, he does it the way the initiative does it in the ego, and there have of course been such wars in the interior. That is what we must feel the attitude of Central Europe to war to be.

And what emerges in the East for someone able to get a feeling for national character? For the Russian it is the most unnatural thing in the world to wage war. If he were to know himself he would feel it to be most unnatural for him to wage war. We of the West cannot become Tolstoyans, however well we understand all things Russian. But for the Russian it is unnatural to wage war. War has to be imposed on him, for it is totally against the national character. A Russian feels towards war the way he feels about religious war—it is something coming from outside. War cannot be made plausible to him for he would rather pray for what is to come to him. It is therefore quite natural to look for the motives that causes Russians to go to war not in the national character but in the motives imposed on them from outside. More than anywhere else we have to say in this case that it is not the people who make war—it is the people only in an external sense and seemingly—but rather whatever it is that they have to turn against most of all. In Russia war is always a 'Maya', illusion, in the worst sense. This is why we can state clearly and precisely what I posed as a question in my public lecture: Who could have prevented the war?—If we actually want to talk of the possibility of its being prevented.—For the French, war has been something natural since 1871 and it would not be natural to speak of their being able to prevent it. Anyone forced to fight his rivals naturally does not have the right to be indignant when neutrality has been breached in some place or other, and in this case the indignation needs to be reinterpreted into the national element. But it is natural for him to go to war. We cannot take that amiss. In that case war can no more be rejected than when, in interpreting the nature of living creatures, one has to find a different phrase out of the element of the spiritual soul than from the the standpoint of the ego and therefore speaks of the 'struggle for survival'. Goethe did not coin that phrase, because from the ego point of view it does not apply. But where it is a question of war being a falsehood, where it even has to be reinterpreted first into a religious war, there we have to say that it has risen externally and therefore could also have been prevented externally. Looking into all the depths one is able to look into—the war has indeed been a necessity but that is another thing—we have to say: It is true that Russia could have stayed an onlooker, and the war could have been prevented. If Russia had remained an onlooker the war could have been prevented. For here a war has been grafted onto a national character when basically it is something quite unnatural.

Such things, as we speak about them, come from the spiritual world. They arise from it. But it is always possible to verify them, to confirm them, in the outside world. Anything we arrive at out of the spiritual world finds confirmation in the outside world. We could say that it would be a natural gesture for the Russian national character to pray and wait for what is to come. It is very strange; even Russian intellectuals are waiting in expectancy—I have already referred to this—in the feeling that something belonging to the future has to come towards them. What will have to come for them still lies far ahead in the future and we have seen how there is refusal to accept what has to be taken up now. It is perhaps more than just an outer symbol that now, when battles are being fought on the Black Sea, the Russian still looks in that direction—to see an embodiment, as it were, of what he may expect in the spirit—pointing to the Hagia Sophia.¹⁰ Merezhkovsky [1865–1941] describes two visits he has made to the Hagia Sophia. He felt the Hagia Sophia to be the outer symbol, as it were, of something he did not know in his feelings but was expecting, and he called it the Christianity that is to come for the Russians. He would have seen it rightly if he had realized that it is a Christian faith that has gone through the Faust nature which will have to take hold of the Russian people. But that is something he does not yet know. He believes it is the Hagia Sophia which represents it. What is his attitude to the Christian faith? If we consider what Soloviev has to say on this, then I am able to say that he shows a certain understanding of it. For when problems were once again created for him by St Petersburg and the Holy Synod, he said: ‘Ah, that is how you fare when you have problems in getting them to understand what you want to say. The one side calls me a liberal Western European atheist, the other an orthodox believer, and others again even consider me a Jesuit.’ He concluded by saying: ‘Amazing what you can turn into when seen through the eyes of the Petersburg blackguards.’ These are not my words but those of a good Russian citizen, a Russian who shows us that it is not easy to rid oneself of feelings of sympathy or antipathy. But let us assume the Russian intellectual is left to himself. As I said, it is a world of expectancy, a natural mood of looking for what is to come, something not to be achieved with the sword and with cannon. That is why the Pan-Slavonic movement is such a lie. Left to himself, Merezhkovsky gave himself up to his feelings when face to face with the Hagia Sophia. He did however confuse it with the Christian faith of the Western European which has gone through the strivings of Faust. And how does he speak of it?

I have tried to find a succinct formulation for the feelings different nations may be seen to have towards war, saying that a Russian believes he is going to war for the sake of religion, an Englishman for competition, a Frenchman for the glory, an Italian or Spaniard for his homeland and a German to fight for existence. And we are therefore able to say that Italy wants to preserve the homeland; France conceives of its own idea of [glory] as the national ideal; the Englishman takes action and does business¹¹ the German aspires; the Russian prays—and that comes naturally. I am not speaking of external prayer, for it is a matter of the heart. What was it then Merezhkovsky said at the end of his book, which I mentioned the day before yesterday?¹²

The Hagia Sophia—brilliant, sad and flooded with the amber-coloured light of ultimate mystery—lifted up my soul which had fallen and was frightened. I looked up into the dome that is like the vault of heaven, and I thought: There it stands, made by the hand of man, and in it men are coming close to the triune god on earth. This close approach has been made and more still of this shall come in time to be. Surely those who believe in the Son must come to the Father who is the world. And surely those must come to the Son who love the world, which the Father also loved so much that he gave his Son for it. For they offer their souls for him and for their friends; they have the Son because they have Love, only they do not know the name.

They do not have it as a whole. And he concluded:

And I felt impelled to pray for them all, in the temple that at this hour belongs to the heathen but is the only temple for the future, to pray that my people be given that true, conquering strength: pray for conscious belief in the triune god.

So there you have the prayer. There you have the anomaly of a fight that goes from East to West.

In making this attempt to gain inner understanding of what meets us here, in attempting to escape from Maya and enter into the truth, we can indeed say to ourselves that were are not pursuing an abstract anthroposophy that is afraid to see. For it would be fear of seeing the truth if we were to shrink from seeing national characters in their true foundations, because of our ‘First Principle.’¹³ We are exactly following that Principle if we approach man as he is and endeavour really to look into his soul. Then we are most of all addressing the immortal aspect of man and we shall then also find the part of him that goes beyond the national, that goes towards the eternal, and the fine feelings that turn to the eternal in man. And then we shall find a way of bringing about what after all has to be brought about. For do you think progress and the good of mankind will not suffer if the temper now prevailing among nations is to persist? Tempers which in any case are merely born out of Maya? From the point of view of the necessity which demands that men get to understand one another again, that there shall be a continuation of what in a certain sense had already been started, arising from Central Europe, it is essential that this atmosphere we live in—a spiritual atmosphere that is one of such dreadful tumult today—receives also other elements into it and not only those of tumult. We cannot help but sense, if we have entered into spiritual life, the tumult that exists in the spiritual atmosphere today. The more deeply one has entered, the more one will be sensitive to this. Profoundly disturbing things may arise out of the spiritual life. The occultist has been able to learn much, but never has so much been experienced that was so deeply disturbing and has such impact as in the last three months.

Many is the time I have stressed the occult truth that things presenting themselves one way in the physical world are the opposite by nature in the spiritual world. Some of our friends will also be able to recall how often I have said that war was hanging in the spiritual air and was really only being held off by something which is a spiritual impulse also in physical life—by fear. Force of fear held it back for as long as it was astral by nature. Fear stopped it from breaking out earlier. Externally speaking, the war started of course with the assassination in Sarajevo. That, too, has its significance. That is what is so disturbing in this affair. We are among ourselves here, and so it must also be possible to say these things. The individual personality who was murdered on that clay [Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, assassinated on 28 June 1914] and went through the gate of death afterwards presented an appearance I had never before seen myself nor heard described by others. I have on several occasions described the appearance of souls as they pass through the gate of death. This soul however showed a peculiar feature. It was like a centre of crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear elements crystallizing around it, as it were, until war broke out. Afterwards it showed itself to be something quite different. Where before it had been a great cosmic force attracting all fear, it had then become something that was the opposite. The fear which had prevailed here on the physical plane had held everybody back. But once this soul had ascended to the spiritual plane it acted in the opposite way, bringing war.

It profoundly disturbs the soul to experience such things. And there are many such things that now exist within the heaving swell of the astral impulses that rise up into the spiritual world from the hearts and minds of men. And among ourselves I am able to say that I have never experienced anything like the things I experienced in these last months, something that stirred up the waves in human souls to such a dreadful extent. From this it is of course apparent what is going on in the spiritual atmosphere. And if that which has to be in the spiritual atmosphere is indeed to come about, thoughts must enter into that atmosphere that can only arise from souls that have grasped the spiritual world. Pleading with utmost passion, therefore, your souls are asked to conceive ideas, ideas we try to stimulate with reflections like those of today or of the last occasion. These are ideas arising from spiritual insight and only souls that have gone through spiritual science are able to send such thoughts up into the spiritual world. The souls will need such thoughts now whilst war is in progress, and even more so afterwards. For thoughts are reality!

The great wish is to send the most fervent prayer into the spiritual world that whatever arises out of this war and after it may originate not from human Maya but from the truth and from spiritual reality. The more you send such thoughts up into the spiritual world the more you are doing for what shall be the fruit of these worldwide struggles, and the more you are doing for what is needed for the whole evolution of mankind.

This prayer, then, shall be the culmination of all I intended to present to your souls with these thoughts. If the questions we have considered have truly entered into our souls, if our souls, as souls that have now lived in spiritual science, allow to stream up into the spiritual world that which brings peace to man. then our spiritual science has stood the test in these fateful times. It will have stood the test to the effect that our fighters out there have not in vain given full rein to their courage; that the blood of battle has not flowed in vain. Then the suffering of those who mourn, the sacrifices which have been made, will not have been in vain in the world. Then spirit fruit will grow out of these fateful days, all the more so to the extent human beings are able to send thoughts like those I have indicated up into the spiritual world.

I want to make it clear that the words I am about to speak form a sevenfold structure, making a kind of mantram. Please note that in the last but one line the words ‘Lenken Seelen’ should be taken to mean ‘wenn Seelen lenken’ (if souls turn).

This is what I wanted to put before you: that these events, which speak so much of reality, appear in the right light to us if we rise above Maya and to the true reality. Oh, the souls will be found that are able to see our present time in that way. Souls will be found if they are found also in the sense Krishna was teaching¹⁴ with regard to warrior-souls. And if it should truly prove possible for souls that have gone through spiritual science to send thoughts to fructify the spirit up into the spiritual world in these difficult, fateful days, then the right fruit will develop out of all that is happening in those hard struggles and cruel sacrifices. And so I am able to let the things I wanted to put before your souls today culminate in what I would so much like to see as the state of consciousness, the innermost consciousness, of souls that have gone through spiritual science:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 6. Rudolf Steiner, ‘Der Dornacher Bau als Wahrzeichen geschichtlichen Werdens und kiinstlerischer Umwandlungsimpulse’ (1914) Dornach 1937 (Proposed for GA 287).
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, Die Rätsel der Philosophie in ihrer Geschichte als Umriss dargestellt. (GA 18) Riddles of Philosophy. Tr. F. Koelin. Anthroposophic Press, 1973.
• 8. ‘Goethe's Theory of Colours’ in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schrifien, hersg. und kommentiert von Rudolf Steiner ( GA 1c).
• 9. Soloviev, Vladimir: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works), tr. Harry Kohler, with an introduction by Rudolf Steiner; Stuttgart 1921. Also Gedichte von Wladimir Solovjeff tr. by Marie Steiner, 2nd edn (Dornach 1949).
• 10. Santa Sophia. the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom, principal church of Constantinople, Built by Justinian in 532 –7, it was converted into a mosque when Constantinope fell to the Turks in 1453 (translator).
• 11. The German verb handeln means both ‘to act, to take action’ and ‘to trade’ (Translator).
• 12. Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Der Antnarsch des Pöbels (Tr. H. Horschelmann) Munich & Leipzig 1907.
• 13. First Principle: When he established the Anthroposophical Society in 1912/1913, Rudolf Steiner formulated the First Principle as follows: ‘The Society provides for all people to work together in brotherhood who consider the basis of their work together in love to be a common spiritual element that is in all human souls, irrespective of differences of creed, nationality, class, sex, etc.’
• 14. In the Bhagavad Gita. See also lecture of 1 September 1914.

Our first thoughts must once again be directed to the guardian spirits who are guiding those who are at the front where the events of our day are taking place. We address ourselves to the spirits protecting those who are with us in this movement but are now out there, and have to stand up with their life and the whole of their physical being in response to what the time is asking of them. And in a wider sense we are also turning towards the spirits who protect all who have to offer life and limb out there in the field, even though they are not part of our community.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already gone through the gate of death we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking in our movement, the spirit we have been seeking in coming together through the years, rule over you and spread his wings over you, so that you shall be able to complete your task according to your karma. Dear friends, I do not know how many of our friends were able to sense that it is much harder than usual to speak in public lecturers in the present day, lecturers like those given yesterday and the day before¹⁵—especially in public lectures of the type given yesterday. The reason is that the things which have to be said may only too easily be subject to misunderstanding. It is particularly when we are within our movement with heart and mind that we need to let a thought I also made reference to the last time I was able to speak to you here, enter more and more profoundly into our souls. It is the thought that, fundamentally speaking, external life—life on the physical plane as man normally encounters it, not in its reality—is Maya, a kind of ghostly dream, and that the truth, the reality, lies only behind this. It must be clear to us that this truth of the Maya cannot be grasped by theories only, nor indeed just with the intellect. It has to be grasped with all the powers of our soul, the whole of our soul-life and, above all, also the impulses of our heart and feelings. Our intellect is focused on things physical and finds it impossible to grasp that this world that surrounds us is not to be regarded as the true, real world. And our feelings, our will impulses, find this truth even more difficult to grasp. Entering into the life of spiritual science we not only have to learn to think differently but also to feel differently and go down to the wellsprings of our will activity in a different way.

It is difficult to find adequate expression for these things, for no words exist for what pertains to the spiritual world. It is therefore only too easy for the things I said yesterday to be taken to show a certain bias, a certain sympathy or antipathy, in the characterization of one folk soul or another in these days when human thoughts and feelings are so strongly tinged with the sympathies and antipathies that arise out of the mood of the time. And yet, when spiritual science is spoken of in the right frame of mind, it will have to be believed that things like the characterization of folk souls in fact cannot be presented in sympathy or antipathy in the usual sense, even if it is necessary to characterize them sharply. If they were presented in sympathy or antipathy they could not be true, they would have to be untrue, a lie. Why is this so?

It is very easy to think that someone developing his soul life in a certain way to attain to perception of the spiritual worlds, to an objective view of these spiritual worlds, might dry up in his inner feelings and will impulses. That definitely is not possible, however. It would be quite impossible for someone to attain to an objective vision of the spiritual world if he first allowed himself to dry up in the sphere of his living will and feelings, dry up in the inner fire of the impulses that are normally arising in the world of human feelings, sentiments and paSsions. On the contrary all the inner feelings there are, all the inner will activity, must be firmly taken hold of, must become as fiery as possible. But they need to be transformed in the soul. They cannot remain the way they are in ordinary life. They need to be transformed to such effect that through this life of feeling and will impulses the person achieves something of a new synthesis in the sphere of his will and feelings. It is exactly in this way that something must evolve which we may call the inner eye, the inner ear. It is impossible to become inwardly dried up when seeking the spiritual world. Yet once that world is perceived, once it has been reached after all the inner struggles, all inner victories, then it does present itself in such a way that, for example, it may still evoke sympathy and antipathy in us, but that any characterization given of it has as little in it of budding sympathy and antipathy as you would find of budding sympathy in a rose you arc looking at. We are able to experience sympathy with it and antipathy, but it is there before our eyes as an objective presence and if we wish to grasp its nature we are merely able to characterize. For a person who is forced, as it were, to characterize the spiritual world, it is in every single case an impossibility to speak in either sympathy or antipathy.

Yesterday the attempt was made to characterize the Italian, the French, the British and the German folk souls. There will, of course, have been some people in the audience who felt that what was presented was not objective characterization but sympathy and antipathy. Yet if sympathy and antipathy were to come to expression the characterization itself would have to be a lying one, it could never be reliable.

You will be able to understand this very well in this individual instance if I tell you the following. You all know that man is not merely the entity that stands before us when we look at him with our everyday eyes. There he is living in his physical body by his very nature, there he looks at us, as it were, through his physical body. Yet he has another reality, one he is not conscious of in ordinary life on earth for reasons you are aware of. This reality essentially lies within his ego and astral body, and he lives and passes through it quite independent of his physical and etheric body between going to sleep and waking up. A spiritual scientist obtains the results of his researches by illuminating for himself what normally remains unconscious between going to sleep and waking up. This gives him inner experiences of things that normally remain hidden behind the outer impressions of the world, the ghostly dreams of the world.

One thing I said in yesterday's lecture was that the folk spirit, the folk soul, lives specifically in the etheric body of man, and we are within this body from the moment we wake until we go to sleep. On waking we become immersed in the folk soul as we enter into the body. When asleep we are not in the folk soul—only between the moments of waking and going to sleep.

The question is: If the spiritual scientist brings inner life and light particularly into the aspects that are not within the physical body, what is the situation with regard to his life in the folk soul when separate from the body? There the folk soul has a divisive effect. The spiritual scientist cannot live within the folk soul when consciously going through the things man goes through in his sleep. The peculiar thing is that at any time, at any particular moment, a certain number of folk souls may be said to be reigning. The way these folk souls behave toward one another actually makes up the whole earth life of mankind, in so far as it is on the physical plane. Entering into the physical body we also enter into our folk soul. Coming out of the physical body, and having conscious experience outside it, we also enter into the folk-soul element—this is one of many experiences one has—but not into our own folk soul. We enter into the other folk souls and never our own, that is the one we live in during the day in our physical bodies. Accept the full weight of these words. On going to sleep we do not enter into one particular folk soul but into the concerted action, the dance as it were, of the other folk souls. The one soul which does not contribute to the dance is the one we enter into on returning to the physical body. In doing his researches, the spiritual scientist actually joins those other folk souls—which are acting in concert and with them lives through the same things we normally experience on the physical plane in relation to our own folk soul, the soul belonging to the nation within which we ordinarily find ourselves.

Let me ask you then: If a spiritual scientist really knows of life not only in his own folk soul but also in those other folk souls, if he has to go through this, would he then have any real reason to describe his own folk soul with a different kind of objectivity than other folk souls? He does not. Here the potential is given to rise above the prejudices of sympathies and antipathies and be objective. Of course it is not only the spiritual scientist who goes through this—and he does it consciously—but all human beings go through it. Between going to sleep and waking up every human soul lives in the sphere where all folk souls act in concert, except for the one his soul lives in when awake in the daytime.

This is something spiritual science offers so that the horizon of our feelings and sentiments can be truly widened. We often say that spiritual science is able to provide for genuine love, with no distinction of race, nation, class and so forth, because of the nature of the insights it makes possible. This statement is so profound that anyone who clearly sees himself as a human being in that part of himself that is of the spirit simply cannot shut himself away in hatred and antipathy from that which is humanity. He will have to say to himself that it is really senseless not to love. Yet in order to be able to say ‘It is really senseless not love’ spiritual science simply must come to us as something we live, not something we merely know. That is also why we pursue spiritual science not merely as knowledge but in such a way that in living together for years in our branches it truly becomes one with us, a spiritual nourishment that we take in and digest.

I have said that between going to sleep and waking man usually lives in the interplay of folk souls other than the one which is his own folk soul at the time. That is the usual way. There is a way, however, of living one-sidedly, as it were, in just one particular folk soul. There is a way in which one is forced, in this state between going to sleep and waking, to live not within the whole interplay of those other folk souls, within their dance as it were. Instead one is more or less under a spell to live together with one or several folk souls that are taken out of the total concord of all folk souls. There is such a way. It consists in our feeling a particular hatred for one or several folk souls or nations. This hatred we produce lends the special power that forces us in our sleep state to live with the folk soul we hate most or even hate altogether. There is no better way of preparing ourselves for entering completely into one particular folk soul when in the unconscious state between going to sleep and waking, and having to live with it the way we live with the folk soul we know when in our physical bodies, than to hate it—but to hate it sincerely, at the level of our feelings, not merely persuading ourselves that we hate it.

When such things are said we become aware how the reality of Maya has to be taken with profound seriousness. It is not only that our intellect, being what it is, does not want to see that things are different in their depths than in the outer ghostly dream they present, but our feelings, our will, also rise in protest against something which holds true for the spiritual world. If we consider such truths as the one of having to live in other folk souls, and particularly in the one we hate, we have to say to ourselves that the vast majority of people reject spiritual truth not only because it is not accessible to the intellect but also because they simply do not want it, because it upsets them also in the sentiments they ordinarily live with on earth. As soon as one enters more deeply and seriously into the realities of the spiritual world, they are not the least bit comfortable; they are not in the least the kind of thing man really likes when he desires to live on the physical plane only. They are uncomfortable. They shake us up and shake us through and the more profound they are the more they demand of us, really at every single moment, that we must be different from the way we usually are on the physical plane. As a living inner entity it demands something different from us than we are on the physical plane, and that is usually one of the reasons why people reject spiritual reality. We cannot do other than see ourselves linked, not with just one part of the world or of mankind but linked with the whole world and the whole of mankind.

Fundamentally speaking, our physical existence is merely the swing of the pendulum to one side. The swing of the pendulum in the other direction is in many respects the opposite, only we do not know of it in our ordinary life. It can be said that things are getting serious as soon as we consider the deeper truths of spiritual life. These deeper truths can become infinitely important in pointing the way for what human evolution, progress for mankind, demands of us at this very time. Let us take a particular example from spiritual science that can be of special importance for the present time.

Things being the way I have just described to you—so that in entering into physical body and ether body we join in experience what is normally called the folk spirit, the folk soul—you will easily understand how sharing in the experience of the fate of the individual folk spirit is one of the things we will gradually shed after death. Many things have been spoken of that man will shed after death; and one of these things is the link with the folk spirit. The folk spirit is active in the progress of earth evolution, it is active in the way mankind develops on earth from generation to generation. After death, between death and rebirth, we have to come free of the folk spirit in the same way we also grow out of other things. This at the same time lends significance to the hero's death, on the field of battle for instance, a significance that is felt. Any who feel it in the right way—and those going through such a death in the right frame of mind surely will feel this—will know that this death is a death of love. It is not suffered for personal reasons, not for the things one can keep with one for. the whole period between death and rebirth—it is suffered for the folk soul, in that this physical and ether body is given up selflessly. It is impossible to think of death in battle without knowing that it is filled through and through with genuine and most heartfelt love, with men being upheld by something that contributes to the future good of mankind. That is what is so great, so utterly tremendous in this death on the field of battle, if it is experienced in the right frame of mind. For it is impossible to conceive of it except in conjunction with love.

The association with our particular folk spirit has to be cast off between death and rebirth. It has to fall away from us. We have to reach a region where we do not live with the individual folk spirit as such. We shall not, however, be able to enter immediately into other folk spirits. That only happens between going to sleep and waking up. We have to free ourselves altogether of everything that is wholly of the earth, and enter into a life that is separate from anything to do with the evolution of mankind on earth. We must also free ourselves of everything that links us to folk spirits. And this again is something that widens and enlarges the horizons of our feeling life, if we make it something we know, for it lets us look towards the other element, an element we seek that is not around us when we live on the horizon of physical existence.

As you were able to see from the characterization of individual folk spirits given yesterday, it is so that in conscious awareness one of them may be more inclined towards the individual personality of man, to what man is as an individual personality, whilst another is less inclined that way. I have compared it with the way one person looks more into his inner life whilst another lives more in the life of the outer world. One particular folk spirit is more concerned with individual human personalities, another less so. As we belong to one folk spirit or another, this determines the way we relate to what the folk spirit is doing in our ether body, what is in preparation there. As a result there are certain differences in the casting-off process after death, in the gradual emergence out of what the folk spirit has made of us.

Let us take the French folk spirit, for example. It is a folk spirit whose Inspirations are connected with a highly developed culture, a culture that can only be seen as arising because this folk spirit is looking back to ancient Greek civilization. I have discussed this already. This folk spirit now works on the people belonging to that particular nation in such a way—and that is the very nature of the folk spirits that go hand in hand with highly developed civilizations—that deep impressions are made on the human ether body, that the signature of the folk spirit leaves a sharp imprint on the ether body. This has to do with something I pointed out yesterday, that the Frenchman becomes attached to the image he has created of himself. The consequence of the sharp impressions left on the ether body by the folk spirit is that when the soul leaves the body when death occurs, sharply distinct features are left in their ether body and also in the astral body of man. It is particularly if one belongs to a nation such as the French that the soul emerges from physical life with an astral body bearing distinct features. The consequence is that it takes a lot to cast off all that is left of the folk spirit after death.

If we compare the shedding of the essential folk spirit as it occurs in a member of the French nation with the same process for a soul that has been under the influence of the Russian folk soul, for example, we get really the opposite effect in the latter case. The Russian folk soul is young, as it were, and as yet concerns itself less with the individual human beings put in its care. Because of this, individual people passing through the gate of death bear little of the stamp of the Russian folk soul in the ether and astral bodies. Looking at the overall situation in the spiritual world we find, in looking at the souls that have passed through the gate of death, that we encounter sharply defined ether bodies and also sharply defined astral bodies in the souls of the French people whilst Russian souls show little of the imprint of the folk spirit on their ether and astral bodies. Because of this the different souls can be used for different purposes by the guiding spirits that have the task of furthering the evolution of mankind.

We are now in an age that truly cannot progress unless a certain sum of spiritual truth reveals itself to mankind. That has been discussed on many occasions, even to the point that it has been said that by a certain time-span in the present century the revelation of Christ will be made to man in the spiritual world. But we can take it in such a way that we say: A spiritual element has to come into the world. This spiritual element entering into human evolution is first of all the fruit of a struggle won by the spirits in the supersensible sphere. Higher spirits, spirits belonging to higher hierarchies, are fighting in this supersensible sphere to enable the spiritual stream to enter into human evolution. In this struggle they also bring into play forces deriving from human beings who have passed through the gate of death. In the life between death and rebirth man is always participating in the work that brings about what happens in the world. Being individual in his constitution he will also contribute in quite a different way, depending on whether he comes from a French body, for example, or a Russian one. That is why the spirits of the different higher hierarchies are able to use these souls in different ways.

The future development of mankind does, however, depend on a tremendous struggle taking place in the spiritual world at this moment. A struggle in the spiritual world does have a different meaning from one in the physical world. A struggle in the spiritual world means working together to give form and function to something fruitful. It is a struggle necessary for human evolution; in short it is a struggle that gets somewhere. It is being fought by certain spirits belonging to the higher hierarchies. They are fighting it by making use of certain young souls coming from the area of Eastern European civilization and certain souls coming from the Western European civilizations. It is a struggle that will go on for a long time yet, a struggle between Russian souls that have gone through the gate of death and French souls that have gone through death; a war waged by spiritual Russia against spiritual France. It is a terrible war if we use the words belonging to the physical plane. Looking into the spiritual world today one sees this struggle between spiritual Russia and spiritual France, and the spiritual world is full of it. It is a distressing struggle.

And now, in the light of this, let us look at what is happening on on the physical plane. An alliance is made. That is the mirror-image of the struggle in the spiritual world. Now this is the kind of problem one has to cope with in spiritual science. Please do not think that it is possible simply to generalize and say: ‘It is easy to arrive at spiritual truths by always thinking the opposite of what is happening on the physical plane’. If that were made the rule we would get the most silly and erroneous results. For it may hold true in five out of a hundred cases, but not in the other ninety-five. All spiritual truths are individual and have to be considered individually! They cannot be determined by mere dialectics. But the truth I have spoken of is one of those that make a particular impact today, for it can make us aware once again how very different the world looks when we see behind the veil of Maya and how the external doings of man may present the opposite of the true reality, of the spiritual.

If we take this point of view it is inevitable that our feelings must change in the contemplation of external happenings. We come to understand that proper discernment must first be used with regard to external events if the truth is to be seen. A cloud formation may look undefined when seen from a distance and quite different from near by. And that is also true for things that happen on the national scale. And right in the middle, I would say, between the warring parties in East and West, lies the German area in the spirit, and this exists for the purpose of mediating between the two sides, truly to mediate between the two, and also does this. And whilst in the spirit there is mediation between the two sides we see them hitting out from both directions and in both directions in the physical world.

In a sense the events we are now experiencing have to do with the deepest impulse in present-day human evolution. I have often said: Why do we actually pursue anthroposophy? We pursue it because it is a cosmic mission, a work the spiritual world demands of man. A number of Imaginations have to be conveyed to mankind; within the near future men will have to take in a number of spiritual truths. That is part of the plan, I would say, for human evolution. Against it there is the objection, the very real objection, the opposing view, that men have to mature gradually and that this takes a long time. But the Imaginations want to come in now into human evolution. Something has to enter into human evolution that lies a bit above the physical plane, I would say, something higher. Men are still rejecting it today, rejecting it as comprehensively as possible. As a result the counter-image appears. And the counter-image of Imaginations are passions, are emotional outbreaks arising from the depths of human nature, from a point as far below the physical plane as the Imagination are above it. When we see human beings face one another in hatred today, in genuine untruthfulness—what is this hatred, this untruthfulness? They are the mirror-images of the Imaginations that want to burgeon forth and are now emerging in this form because men resist them. An element present at a certain height above the physical plane emerges as a product of transformation, as something that lies at the same distance below the physical plane; it has to work itself out. Again it is possible to find the reason for these disagreeable events in the general karma of mankind.

Why does it have to be now, in our present age, that men receive a certain sum of spiritual truths? The question can be answered as follows.

Two things are possible. One is that a person has a certain feeling for spiritual truths and does not meet them with deaf ears, but rather takes them into his heart and his soul. That he becomes an anthroposophist, as it were, the way it is possible now to become an anthroposophist. Or it may happen that a person rejects spiritual truths, that he will say perhaps that all this is foolish, stupid nonsense; that it all comes out of the heads of a few foolish dreamers who would do better to take up something else.

When a person passes through the gate of death he does of course enter into the spiritual world. If someone were to say: ‘Do we only enter into the spiritual world if we acquire knowledge of that world in the time between birth and death?’ we might perhaps say to him: ‘Of course, a person who knows nothing of the spiritual world will also enter into it.’ But what it the difference between these two types of people? The difference is considerable. I am now always speaking only of our own time, for spiritual truths are individual. And if someone were to say in relation to what I described earlier: 'I assume Imaginations unable to come through will therefore always be transformed into a war of malice, like the one we have now?’ that would be the wrong view. At other times they may behave quite differently. Spiritual truths are always individual and what I am going to say now represents a truth that is individual to our time.

A person going through the gate of death without having made use of the opportunity to take in spiritual elements that exist in our time hands over his soul to the higher worlds on passing through the gate of death in almost the same state he received it when he went through birth to enter into physical existence. The higher worlds receive nothing from him but what they have given him on his incarnation. On the other hand, a person may make his own here on earth what it is possible to obtain from the spiritual world, not by mere faith, but by entering into the spiritual worlds in a living way. On his death he will not hand over his soul to the spiritual worlds the way he received it at birth. He will also hand over to the supersensible beings the concepts, ideas and feelings he has achieved here. These belong not only to him, they belong also to the supersensible beings. Any who do not bring these with them will, of course, also live into the spiritual world but make no contribution to human progress, and if people had always lived like that, or done so from a certain point of time, mankind would have remained as it was. There is progress, further development, and souls will always find something new on entering the earth in a new incarnation because they find opportunity to take in the particular mission of an age. In the final instance, a decision always has to be made as to whether we relate to the spiritual world or not. For instance, someone might say: ‘What do I care about the progress of mankind! What does the evolution of the earth matter to me? Let the earth come to a stop! I shall go on regardless.’ That is how a person may speak who has no real love, no interest in earthly progress. Any, however, who bear within them the love for human progress as their highest responsibility will be unable to choose that road. There is also freedom in this sphere. And souls will come to anthroposophy only through freedom and love for man's true progress and man's true good. So it is not possible either to become an anthroposophist out of mere egotism; in becoming one we contribute something to the progress which one otherwise withdraws from. One is active in love therefore—not merely for oneself but for something else.

This is something I hope will always shine through in all our discussions of the spiritual knowledge we are seeking: that this spiritual science is a living, active force. I am not talking about visions; I am talking of this science. Vision merely yields the results. I am speaking of the results coming alive in man. Spiritual science is something alive, something active, that takes up its abode in our souls, that is working and active in our souls.

I have often used the comparison that merely to speak of love—considering particularly the talking that goes on in the theosophical movement—is like standing in front of a stove and preaching that it shall grow hot, this being its duty as a stove. Even the best of sermons concerning its responsibilities as a stove will not make it grow hot. It will grow hot, however, if we put some wood in it and put a match to it. Basically that is how it is with all preaching of human love, and such preaching will prove hardly more successful when directed at men than a sermon directed at the stove, telling it to grow hot. Such preaching has been done at all times and the results can be seen. But anything that is not mere knowledge of the spiritual world, not mere idea, mere word, but is instead something alive, something active in the word, that is the wood we give to our soul, and it will burn if it is rightly taken in by the soul. This can be learned particularly from conflicts like the present one. There knowledge is set aflame, knowledge becomes love, for man is transformed by the spiritual life he has recognized in his depths, in his foundations. This profound transformation is indeed most uncomfortable for him; he rejects spiritual truth and would rather remain in Maya.

Basically, that is also the next reason for the often-heard statement that spiritual truths should not be offered too freely to the public. After all, these are not truths that act as neutrally as physics or chemistry when they are spoken, but truths towards which the human soul cannot maintain a wholly neutral attitude, having to either reject them or take them in. To take them in, however, the soul has to change in a certain way from what it is in ordinary physical life. So it is true that the world does get somewhat stirred up, excited, when the deeper spiritual truths are presented. Yet our age is ordained not to shrink from such excitement and really to go through this excitement. This will be the only way of preparing the ground for a new spiritual life, a spiritual life we must live towards, for we are now indeed at its starting point. And the signs of the times indicate that it is necessary to understand certain things. We may find many of the things that are happening in the outside world particularly in these days incomprehensible and senseless. Just try and take a number of things together. It is my task here, as it were, to speak to you in more intimate fashion than is possible in a public lecture. I have the task of formulating the things I said in my public lectures that were in the context of current events in such a way that they become effective truth; to formulate them in such a way that the words are the right ones for this our time. If you try and take a number of things together, you will see that one particular aim has been present all the time: to call forth ideas that are a little more the right ones, sentiments and feelings that are more the right ones, with regard also to current events, than those that come so easily and are so widespread.

Try, for instance, to hold on to the fact that in my first public lecture I endeavoured to show how the German people at heart really had a very strong inclination towards peace, towards peaceful progress, and how it really is quite accurate to say: the German people as such did not want the war. Though if we listen to our left and to our right we find they all say, they all stress: ‘We did not want the war!’ The French did not want the war. The English did not want the war. They had to go to war for 'moral reasons'. But those moral reasons were produced in just eighteen hours! They all stress they did not want the war. Let us hold fast to that—there is a lot of truth in it, a great deal of truth—and consider what I did when I said: the German people did not want the war. I did not follow this with the conclusion: this means the other side did want it. Instead, I said quite expressly in that first lecture that at most we could raise a question, the question as to who could have prevented the war. And there I pointed to the Russian East, for they could have prevented the war.

I have drawn special attention to the fact that the right answer depends on the right question being asked. If someone insists he did not want the war this does not necessarily mean the other person did want it. It is possible that both did not want it and yet it came about. Leaving aside the peculiar situation of Russia, we are basically able to say that the war really had not been wanted or intended—what we call ‘intend’ on the physical plane. This war arose with elemental necessity out of opposing forces; quite incomprehensibly out of forces in elemental opposition. Basically, it has never before happened in world history that an event popped up as though out of a box within such a few days. This has shown that whatever takes place in external events arises from spiritual contexts and presents itself as something physical.

From this point of view the events of today may serve as a lesson, to show mankind that we will never get the right answer by asking: ‘Did he do it?’ or ‘Did another do it?’ Instead you have to accept the premise that something else has been involved as well; you will have to make the effort and go somewhat deeper. Only then will we learn to speak of events in the right way.

There is yet another reason why it will be necessary to go to the effort of taking a deeper view of things. We are now experiencing how the world appears divided against itself. People are not yet able to do other than always blame another person. The time will come when the deeper truths relating to karma will have entered into the hearts and minds of men. Then this way of blaming the other for whatever has to be lived through will no longer exist. Then people will know that every nation is, in its karma, living through the things it has to live through for its own sake. A nation will be aware of the necessity to gain strength in battle—not because of another but for its own sake—to progress; the other is in a certain way only the agent. This will focus attention on the karma of folk souls. And seen from a higher point of view, the statement: ‘I am standing here and the other is standing there. It is his fault. He is responsible for my having to go through these events, these struggles. It is his doing’ is like a man of fifty looking at a child. The child is young, he is old; when the child did not yet exist he was not yet old, and as the child grows he is getting old. It is then as though he were to say: ‘It is the child's fault that I am getting old; for if the child were not to grow and get older I also would not get old!’ But the child can merely make him aware of getting old.

This is what we must take note of. Every nation has to experience whatever it does experience out of its karma, even the most serious of events. Do not say that such a truth, when it enters into the hearts and minds of men, will be something comfortless that enters into their hearts and minds. Instead, it will lead to a heroic view of life, a courageous view of life, a view of life that encompasses evolution. Once men are able to hold such a view of life it will appear to them as a waste of energy always to seek the fault in another and always to carry on to the usual conclusion. They will call upon the energies that can help them onward. They will learn to identify with their destiny in every sphere. We have seen, in my public lecture, that this destiny, generally seen as something external, can only be properly grasped when we surrender to this destiny. And it is the same with the karma of a nation. When love comes to earth then this attitude will arise among men.

Again, as on former occasions, I would appeal to you, dear friends, who have dedicated yourselves to a spiritual movement, to consider that in future it will be necessary to fill the mental horizon we live in not merely with the kind of thoughts that existed before, but to fill it with new thoughts. These, however, can only be thoughts arising from the spiritual world. It will not be immaterial whether or not a number of people send up thoughts into the spiritual world like those deriving from such considerations as have been presented today. In deciding to meditate on these truths you will help the events that are to happen in the future to happen in the right way, for the good of man. You are anything but inactive with regard to human progress if you meditate on the thoughts the present time calls for in order that man may truly progress. Let us hope that a good many of us succeed in doing spiritual work side by side with the work that is done with blood and death; spiritual work which consists in filling the World with the right thoughts, with thoughts that relate to the mission of age. We shall then be able to feel that these are the true thoughts of love. Looking for a quotation, many people have been reaching for the popular volume by Buechmann these days to find the right phrase and quoted the words of old Heraclitus, according to which war is the ‘father of all things’.¹⁶ Heraclitus was right in saying this and those who quote him are also right. Yet a father on his own cannot produce a child. The child has to have a mother. As war is the father, so anything achieved in peace-filled work is the mother. Unless the father is to remain sterile, there has to be a mother. And she in turn will have to come from the hearts and minds of those who understand the mission of our time in the spirit and know how to come to love out of understanding.

That is what I want to put into your souls in today's gathering, so that in keeping with the demands made in the present day our spiritual science shall not serve merely to satisfy our curiosity or thirst fa: knowledge but give us the right living energies, energies that we develop to make them a true comfort in the sorrows our time is bringing. True comfort does not result in weakness but leads to strength, courage to be active—spiritually active or physically active, but in any case active. Over and over again we have to remember how important it is in our time for a number of people to feel the free impulse to enter more deeply into the spirit. For this in itself means that progress is made not by the individual but by the whole of mankind.

And in this attitude of mind let us in conclusion return once more to the thoughts we are sending forth, in the way I have indicated, to those who are at the front.

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 15. Lectures given on 26 November 1914 (‘Die Menschenseele in Leben und Tod’) and 27 November 1914 (‘Die Seelen der Volker’) both in Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). The Human Soul in Life and Death (tr. V. Compton-Burnett, C. Davy, D.S. Osmond and K. Wegener) London, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1935 and The Soul of the People (tr. not mentioned) London, Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1934.
• 16. Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC), Greek philosopher of Ephesus: Fragment B53 in H. Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. I.

Dear friends, as on other occasions when I have been able to speak to you since the serious events of the present time took their beginning, let our thoughts go out at this moment to those who are at the front offering their souls and their bodies in sacrifice for the tremendous demands made in our time and having to take up, with the whole of their physical existence, the challenge of the time:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, the spirit we have long been seeking in our movement, may he be with You and guide you to the goals that you have to seek.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

My particular intention with the words I spoke here on the last occasion was to let a truth flow into your minds, a truth to be found through spiritual science, that the great and serious events in life really enable us to see how outward appearances have to be regarded in the light that comes to us from spiritual science. It is only then that they will no longer appear to us as Maya, the great illusion, but in their profound truth. This is not to say that these outward appearances in themselves are Maya or illusion—that is an erroneous view people often pick up from a philosophy with a more oriental orientation—but that our senses and our intellect err in the interpretation, in their comprehension, of outer events unless we illumine those external events with the light that comes to us from an understanding of the spiritual world.

Today I want to take certain individual facts that have already been touched on during the years of our anthroposophical work and present them in a perspective that is somehow in accord with our time.

We are fully conversant with the thought that since the Mystery of Golgotha intervened in events on earth, the impulses, the forces and entities that have gone through this Mystery of Golgotha have played an active role, as living forces, in all that happened in human evolution on earth. In other words, and to put it more concretely, I want to say: In all major events, in all the important and essential things that have happened, the Christ impulse has been active through those who are his servants, his spiritual helpers. At the present time the term Christianity is generally understood to cover only what men have been able to comprehend. But, as I stressed on many occasions, what has come into the world through Christianity is so great, so tremendous, that human reason, the human intellect, is in no position, or has not been in a position to the present moment, really to grasp even the most elementary aspects of the powers of the Christ impulse. If Christ had worked only on the basis of what men have been able to grasp of him, he would have been able to achieve little. But what matters is not what has entered into mankind through human reason and understanding, what concept men have been able to form of the Christ, but rather the fact that he has been present since the Mystery of Golgotha, active right among men and in their ways of doing things. It is not a question of how far men have understood him but that he has been present as a living entity and has entered wholly into all significant events in evolution.

Of course, our spiritual science enables us to grasp only a little of the profundity of the Christ impulse even today. Future times will come to understand and see more and more. There is no reason to feel pride in such understanding of the Christ impulse as we have so far achieved. Spiritual science will grasp a little more today than it has been possible to grasp of the Christ in the past. In past times people were able only to reflect on the Christ by using the means available through external intellect, external reason, external research. Now we have spiritual science as well, and with this we see into the supersensible worlds, and out of the supersensible worlds we are able to provide many answers concerning the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. Immediate comprehension of what the Christ is, and what the spiritual powers are that serve him as folk souls and the like, has been least possible for the peoples living in regions where the Christ still had to enter, as it were. Yet the Christ impulse had to come in, for instance in the Roman world. And there is one particular example which we have already considered in another context that will be the best way of demonstrating how the Christ is at work as a living power, directing his spiritual servants when events have to be brought about that are essential in evolution, to bring real progress for mankind.

The event I mean is one I should like to mention again. It happened in AD 312 that the man through whom Christianity became the official state religion, Constantine,¹⁶ son of Constantinus Chlorus, entered the field with his army against Maxentius, then the ruler of Rome. Of course, if one considers those two armies facing each other one would have to say that the situation was the worst possible for Constantine, his army being five times smaller than that of Maxentius. It is possible to imagine, however, that considering the state of the art of war at the time, both armies had a number of outstanding generals. Yet what mattered particularly at that time was not the the skill of men but that opportunity was given for the ongoing Christ impulse to influence mankind in a way commensurate with the needs of the time.

It is possible to see how much of the Christ impulse could be understood at the time, how much of that Christ impulse human hearts had been able to absorb in the state of consciousness then prevailing if we consider what happened a few decades later around Rome and out of Rome. Julian the Apostate¹⁷ fought Christianity out of honest conviction, on the basis of what could be gleaned from human knowledge in those times. Anyone considering the way Julian and his followers fought Christianity can say to himself: ‘There is no doubt that as far as human knowledge was concerned, Julian and his followers were very advanced for their time; they were much more enlightened in this respect than the Christians of their day, although they had reverted to worship of the old gods.’ They stood for what might be considered to represent human knowledge at that time. Yet in AD 312 it was not the stand of human knowledge that determined the issue; it was rather that the potential had to be there for the Christ and his servants to intervene in the historical evolution of mankind. However much Maxentius and his army were able to rely on the skills of their generals and on anything else human knowledge and human wisdom may have achieved at that time, if nothing else had happened, then, undoubtedly, something destined to emerge at that time would not have emerged. And what did happen?

What happened was the following. The continuing Christ impulse flowed into soul activities that were not within men's consciousness, into activities men were not aware of. And it did indeed guide men in such a way that what had to come about did come about. The battle between Constantine and Maxentius was fought by the Red Rock, the Saxa Rubra, on 28 October 312. It was decided not by human skill, but—and enlightened minds may refuse to accept this as much as they like—by dreams; that is by what is generally called ‘dreams’, though they are not just dreams to us. For through their dreams there entered into the souls of the two army leaders what could not enter into them out of human reason. Maxentius had a dream before the battle that he would have to leave his city. He consulted the Sibylline Oracle and was told that he would achieve what was to happen if he dared to join battle outside the city and not within it. It was the most unwise thing he could have done, particularly as his army was so much more powerful than Constantine's. He should have known that anything received from the higher worlds first had to be interpreted and that the oracle would mislead him. Constantine in his turn was told in a dream that he would win if he led his troops into battle under the sign of Christ. He acted accordingly. What had entered into the souls of these men by the roundabout route of a dream became deed, and as a result the world was greatly changed at that time. We need only reflect a little to be able to say: What would have become of the Western world if supersensible powers had not taken a hand in events in a way that is indeed perfectly apparent.

Let us now look at those events in more details. At the time souls had incarnated in the West and South of Europe who were destined to be bearers of Christianity. Even the most enlightened souls were unable to become bearers of the Christ impulse at the time by using their minds, their intellect, because the time for this had not come. They had to find the way to Christianity through what had been created around them, externally. We may say they assumed Christianity like a garment. Their deeper nature was not greatly affected by it. They became serving members rather than receiving the Christ impulse into their innermost being. Fundamentally speaking, that was to hold true for the best souls in the western parts of Europe for a long time to come, into the 8th and 9th centuries and beyond. They needed to assume Christianity as a garment, to wear this garment of Christianity in such a way that they wore it in their ether bodies and not in their astral bodies. You can judge what it means when I say they bore Christianity in the ether body. It means they assumed it in such a way that they were Christians when awake but were unable to take their Christianity with them when outside their physical and ether bodies. The way they went through the gate of death also was such that we can say: they were able to look down from the realm through which man has to pass between death and rebirth, look down at what they had been in their last earth life. But one thing that was not immediately possible for them at the time was to take the Christian impulses arising from their former life into their future life. They wore Christianity more as a garment.

Because of something I will come to shortly, let us hold on to this way in which the souls accepted Christianity in their outward lives and the way Christianity was not part of what souls were able to take with them through the spiritual world, when passing through the gate of death, to prepare for a new life on earth. Let us remember that these souls were only able to enter into a new earth life having forgotten Christianity. For we do not in a later earth life remember what we merely wore as a garment in our former life. If it were otherwise our children would not have to learn Greek again at grammar school, for many of them did once incarnate in Greece. They have no memory of their Greek incarnation, however, and therefore have to learn Greek again. Those souls who had incarnated in the West of Europe were unable to carry their Christianity through the life they had to go through between death and rebirth because they had not integrated these impulses inwardly with their ego and astral body. That was the particular way in which those souls lived on into later incarnations. Let us remember this and now move on to another fact, one I have also mentioned before.

We know that the time we live in now, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, began mainly around the 15th-16th centuries. That was the time when preparation was to be made for the European world for elements that were predominantly to lead to the development of the spiritual soul. That is really what our fifth epoch of civilization is about. Whatever had to be achieved there had to be achieved with regard to the fact that in the external aspect of earth life, too, conditions were arising on earth that were particularly favourable for the evolution of the spiritual soul—the soul able to develop by directing itself towards material earth life, the external facts of physical existence. That had to take its beginning and it did take its beginning. We merely need to recall how horizons expanded in Europe as the great discoveries were made and with everything they brought with them. The spiritual soul, therefore, had to develop primarily under the influence of the material world. We merely need to think of one thing, and again reference has already been made to this: the evolution and development of the spiritual soul is the special mission, the one-sided mission, of that which belongs to the sphere Of the British folk soul. Considering all the details, one could hardly imagine anything proceeding more according to plan than the way the British folk soul was directed towards these material roles in life. This was definitely predestined in the evolution of mankind.

Let us imagine, for instance, that during the 15th century England had been deflected from its propensity for those regions of the earth towards which it had been directed as the vast lands outside Europe were discovered, and that the British folk soul had instead experienced large territorial gains on the Continent of Europe. Let us imagine that the map of Europe had been changed to this effect. Then it would have been impossible in the first place to achieve what had to be achieved in the sphere of material civilization and, secondly, to achieve what had to be achieved in Europe by developing the inner life. This inner development proceeded specifically from that point onwards, overcoming all kinds of obstacles, with a role played also by Protestantism which in turn was influenced in many ways by German mysticism. Intervening in the process of evolution the Christ impulse had to ensure that the British Isles were kept away from the region where souls still had to be prepared to become outward, external bearers of the Christ impulse.

The Christ impulse had to flow into the deeds done on the Continent of Europe. It had to act in such a way that it achieved a great deal more than could come about through mankind, through the arts and skills of man. And what happened?

The marvellous thing happened that a poor shepherd girl from Orleans, Joan of Arc, [16 January 1412–30 May 1431] did everything those who were very advanced for their time had not been able to do. At that time it was indeed the Christ impulse acting in Joan of Arc, through its Michaelic servants, that prevented a possible merging of France and England, causing England to be forced back onto its island. And this achieved two things: first, France continued to have a free hand in Europe. This can be seen if we study the history of France over the following centuries—the essential element of the French spirit was able to influence European culture entirely without hindrance. The second thing which was achieved was that England was given its domain outside the continent of Europe. This deed, brought in through Joan of Arc, was a blessing not only for the French but also for the English, compelling them to take up their domain.

If we consider this in connection with what is implied by the advance of the Christ impulse on earth, the deed of Joan of Arc achieved something about which the following may be said: The degree to which she understood those things in a genuine human intellectual way was as good as zero compared to the deed which has given the map of Europe its present form. Events had to take that course so that the Christ impulse could spread in the right way. There we see the living Christ erupting into historical events out of the subterranean depths of human nature. That is not the Christ men think they know, for the Christ impulse may be seen in two ways. On the one hand we may ask ourselves: What did the people of that time understand of the Christ impulse? If we open our history books and study the history of mankind we find that over the centuries theologians were in dispute, defending or contending all kinds of theories, attempting to show how human freedom, the Holy Trinity and other things should be understood. So we see countless theologians fighting each other, acknowledging each other as orthodox theologians or else accusing each other of heresy. We observe how Christian doctrine spread entirely in accord with the situation as it was at the time. That is one side of it. But it is not the thing that matters, just as now it does not matter what people are able to do with their ordinary intellect. What matters is that the Christ lives among men, unseen but a living entity, and is able to stream up from depths beyond our perception and enter into the deeds of men. And he has done so at a point where there was indeed simply no need for him to come in through the human intellect, through a reasoning mind, but where he was able to come in through the soul of a girl of simple mind, through the soul of the Maid of Orleans. And when he came in like this, what was the attitude of those who were able to grasp Christianity in form of the orthodox doctrine? Well, they found they had to burn the girl who bore the Christ impulse at the stake. It has taken some time for official doctrine to take a different view. There may have been a point to it where official doctrine is concerned, but canonizing Joan of Arc is not exactly the right response to the events of that time.

This is a real example of how the Christ intervened in human evolution through his servants. As I said, he acted through his Michaelic spirit in the case of the Maid of Orleans. He intervened as a living entity, not merely through whatever men were able to understand of him. This particular example also shows something else, however. Christianity did exist. The people who were there around the Maid of Orleans, as it were, did call themselves Christians. Their Christianity did mean something to them. But all we can say about their understanding is: He whom you seek is not here,¹⁹ and the one who is here is not the one you seek, for you do not know him.

It must be clearly understood, however, that it was essential for Christ evolution to proceed within the evolution of Europe also in the form of an external garment. Souls were part of this development that were able to assume Christianity exactly as such an outer garment, who were able to wear it on the outside as it were. They were souls trailing behind, souls that had been incarnated there earlier and still did not take the Christ into their ego, merely into the ether body. The great difference between Joan of Arc and the others was that she had taken the Christ impulse into the very depths of her astral body and was acting for the Christ impulse out of the deepest forces of her astral body. This is one of the points where we can gain a clear understanding of something that really must become clear to us: the difference between the progressive evolution of nations and the progressive evolution of individual human personalities.

If we consider the French as they are today, for example, it is of course true that a number of individual human personalities exist within the French nation. These individual personalities were not, of course, part of the nation in their previous incarnation, part of a nation that had assumed the outer garment of Christianity there in the West of Europe. It was because a number of people had to assume Christianity as an outer garment in the West of Europe that they were in a condition on passing through the gate of death that necessitated their being united with Christianity in their astral body and ego in their next life, under different conditions. It was because they had been incarnated in the West of Europe that the necessity arose for them to have their next incarnation somewhere else. It is indeed very uncommon—note that I am saying uncommon, though it does not always have to be so—that a soul belongs to the same community on earth through a number of consecutive incarnations. Souls pass from one earthly community to another.

We have one example, however—and I am saying this without wishing to rouse sympathies or antipathies, and with no intention of flattering anyone—we have one example of souls actually assuming the same nationality a number of times. That is the case with the people of Central Europe. These Central European people include many souls that are incarnated among them today and have also been incarnated in the Germanic tribes in the past. This is a fact we are able to trace. It cannot always be fully explained with the means now available in occult science, but it exists nevertheless. A fact like that presented in last Thursday's public lecture on The Ancient Germanic Soul and the German Spirit,²⁰ for example, is illumined when we know that souls make repeated appearances within the Central European community. The fact is that cultural epochs were cut short within this particular community.

We only have to realize what it means that there was an epoch at the dawn of Germanic culture when the writers of the German poem the Nibelungenlied lived, or Walther von der Vogelweide (German lyric poet, minnesinger, c. 1170–12301 and others. And we need to realize that later there was a' time when a new flowering of German culture began and the first had been completely forgotten. For when Goethe was young nothing was known, as it were, of the first flowering of Germanic culture. It is because the souls return to the same community that it was necessary to forget what had gone before, so that the souls would find something new on their return and could not pick up the threads of what remained from earlier times. It has not happened with any other people that a metamorphosis was gone through, as it were, the way it happened in the case of the Central European people: from the height that had been reached in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries to that later height that came about the time between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries and which we may hope will continue. There is no continuous line from the first to the second of these periods, and this can only be explained once we know that souls do return particularly in this culture. It is possible that another deeply moving fact I have already mentioned to you is also connected with this, the fact that it was noted how the Central European fighters of the present continue the struggle once they have gone through the gate of death, that soon after they have passed through the gate of death it is possible to see how they continue to join the struggle. This fact can raise wonderful hopes for the future, because one can see how not only the living, in the physical sense living, but also the dead, those who have died, are making their contribution to events.

Let us now pose the question: What is the situation with souls that were incarnated in Western Europe at the time when Christianity was assumed like an outer garment, that is in the 6th, 7th 8th and 9th centuries, and accepted Christianity there, or also under the Romans, though they were not yet able to unite it with their astral body and their ego? What is the situation with those souls?

Grotesque as it may seem to modern man with his materialistic thinking, the things spiritual science can teach achieve real meaning for life if the concrete facts are considered. People still think reference to repeated earth lives is a matter of mere fantasies produced by a handful of foolish dreamers. The idea is one that is not accepted, though it is once again considered excusable to make reference to it in view of the fact that in an hour of weakness even the great Lessing accepted the idea of repeated earth lives.²¹ Yet if we take the findings made in occult research seriously we cease to be fools begging the forgiveness of greatly enlightened folk. It will be necessary for us to consider some of the things arising from occult research in detail, for that will be the only way of throwing light on something which otherwise has to remain a great illusion.

It is a strange thing that a great many souls that lived to the west of us towards the end of the Roman epoch, when Christianity was slowly gaining influence, finally becoming the established church, now come from the East, as souls growing up in the East, souls now among Russia's fighters. I said we must remember the fact I referred to earlier. For among the people killed in the East, those who are fighting there and being taken prisoners, are souls who towards the end of the Roman epoch lived in the western part of Europe. They now come towards us from the East, people who in those past times allowed the Christian faith to flow into their ether bodies and now, in a civilization that is relatively speaking at a lower level, take Christianity into their souls in a waking state and do so in such a way, due to the peculiarities of life in the East, that they have an emotional, instinctive bond with it. They are thus linking themselves to the Christ impulse in their astral bodies, doing now what they had been unable to achieve in their previous incarnations. This is a very strange fact brought to light by occult research in the present day. Many facts that deeply move the soul may come within the occult horizon triggered by the events of our time and this is one among them. What, then, can we learn from these facts?

We have to be clear about the following. We have to remember that is it part of the direct progress of the life of the spirit in Central Europe that the soul life of the German peoples is very consciously linked with the Christian faith, that it is taken upwards to the heights of a straight Christian culture. The streams, the paths, leading to this have been most marvelously laid out in advance over centuries. We see it all taking shape. It is specifically when we look at our own age with all its errors and mistakes that we see how the seed is there in Central European culture, how preparations have been made and no effort spared in the German folk spirit, the folk soul of the German-speaking peoples, so that now the Christ impulse may be taken hold of in conscious awareness.

That is a fact of infinitely greater importance than the 15th century event when Joan of Arc had to save France because that country had an important mission at that time. We therefore have before us the significant fact that the German spirit is called upon to take in the Christ impulse more and more consciously in future, take it in with the elements that have come into the life of the spirit in German countries and do so in a state of full waking consciousness. This Christ impulse had to announce itself in what went on at subconscious level over the centuries, as we have consistently shown. In the future it will have to unite with souls in such a way that there will be people—and in Central Europe there will have to be such souls—who in full awareness unite also their ego and astral body with the Christ impulse, exerting the powers of their conscious mind and not only the powers inherent in their physical and ether bodies. We can see efforts being made among the best. Let us take the best of them all: Goethe. We may quote Goethe as an outstanding example, but all souls have the potential within them, so long as they strive for it, however darkly.

Goethe showed Faust, the representative of mankind, to be striving for the highest.²² In Part 2 of the play he transports him to Greek civilization to share the experience of nations, guiding him into this in such a way that Faust has a significant experience of the future when he desires to wrest land from the sea and establish something that to him lies in the far distant future. And where does Goethe take Faust in the end? Goethe himself once expressed it like this in conversation with Eckermann: he had to make use of the vivid images of Christianity²³ to show Faust ascending into the spiritual world. And if you consider the profoundly beautiful picture of Faust's soul being received by the Mater gloriosa. you see it as the opposite image to that which led Raphael [1483–1520] to paint his famous Sistine Madonna, where the virgin mother is bringing the soul down. In the last scene of Faust we see the virgin mother upwards. That is the birth of the soul in death. And so we see a deeply inward striving arising from the human spirit in full conscious awareness. It is striving always to gain all that can be gained from Christianity in such a way that it may be borne through the gate of death and into the life man is going to live through in the new earth life that will follow preparation between death and rebirth. What we see there in Goethe himself is a character trait of the German people. It can give an indication as to the mission given to human beings. The mission is, and we can present this very clearly to our souls, that true benefit for the progress of mankind will arise only if within a certain group of people a harmonious relationship is established between Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

It is possible to visualize Eastern Europe expanding westwards, across Central Europe, by brute force. It is possible to visualize this happening. That, however, would be equivalent to a situation where Joan of Arc had not done her deed in the 15th century and England had annexed France in those days. If it had come to that, and I state this emphatically, something would have come about that would not only have brought calamity to France but would have meant calamity also for England. And if German culture were now to suffer through what may come from the East, this would be to the detriment not only of German culture but also of the East. The worst that can happen to the East is that it might expand for a time and have an adverse effect on German culture. For as I said, the souls formerly incarnated in Western Europe or on the Italian peninsula and now growing up in the East unite with the Christ impulse as though instinctively, in the unconscious depths of the astral body. Yet the Christ impulse that is to grow within them can never arise through linear progression of the instinctive element that lives in their souls under the name of orthodox catholicism which, on the whole, is Byzantine of course, for this is a name not an impulse. It is just as impossible for this to evolve into what it is predestined to become as it is impossible for a woman without a man to have a child. What is preparing in the East can only come to something if Central Europe strongly and consciously—that is in a state of full awareness—unites the force of the human ego and human powers of insight with the Christ impulse' out of what souls are striving for out of egoic nature.

What has to come about for the civilization and culture of the future will only come about if the German folk spirit finds souls that transplant the Christ impulse into their astral body and ego the way it can indeed be implanted there in a state of full conscious awareness' It has to come about through harmony being established, by uniting with that which is consciously achieved in Central Europe—more and more consciously.

This will need not just one or two centuries, but a very long time. The time needed will be so long that we may reckon on about two thousand years, I would say, counting from the year 1400. Adding two thousand years to 1400 we get the approximate time when something will emerge in the evolution of the earth that has had its seeds in the German life of the spirit, ever since there has been such a life of the spirit. We therefore realize that we have to consider a future lying not just centuries ahead but more than a thousand years. And the mission of the Central European, the German folk spirit, a mission already before us, is that there will have to be more and more of that nurturing of the life in the spirit through which men take op in conscious awareness—right into the astral body and ego—a comprehension of the Christ impulse that in earlier times moved through the peoples of Europe as a living but unconscious impulse. Once evolution takes this course then the East, too, will gradually, by twining upwards, reach the level reached in Central Europe because of what is already inherent there. That is the intention of the cosmic intelligence. We only interpret the intention of the cosmic intelligence rightly when we say to ourselves: It would be the greatest misfortune also for the East of Europe to harm the very spiritual power it needs to use as a support in twining upwards, a power the East should indeed revere, revere in friendship, foster and cherish. It will have to come to this. For the moment the East is very far indeed from achieving this. The very best of them still fall far short. Short-sightedly. they still refuse to accept what Central European culture in particular is able to give.

I went into this already in my first public lecture here in Berlin.⁵ Tonight you can see the deeper occult reasons behind what in the public lecture I was able only to put exoterically. in an extraneous way. This is of course something one always has to be careful about, to speak in terms close to the understanding of one's listeners in public lectures. The real impulses to say one thing and omit another, looking for the one context or the other, always have their occult reasons. At all events it is possible to see from what has been discussed today that when we look at things in an external way they present to us the great illusion, Maya. It is not that the outside world in itself is Maya. It is not. But we only gain understanding for it if we illumine it with the truths derived from the spiritual world. In the present case, the truths streaming from the spiritual world show that it is essential for Central Europe not to be overcome by Eastern Europe today, just as in 1429–1430 it was essential for France not to be overcome by England. It will of course be obvious, from what has been said, that for those in the East of Europe it is quite impossible to understand the crux of the matter and that, fundamentally speaking, this can be understood only in Central Europe. Surely this is understandable. In all humility, therefore, without any feeling of superiority, we must take on this mission, and we shall have to accept that it will be possible to misunderstand us. We must find that perfectly understandable. For what is preparing in the East will only be rightly understood in the East itself in time to come.

That is the one thing arising from what I have to say. The other is that we consider the great transition occurring in human evolution in our time exactly on a basis such as this. On previous occasions we have considered it from many different aspects. Now we consider it in such a way that we are able to see how the element which entered into man's evolution on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha needs to be understood in increasingly greater conscious awareness in our day, by those who are able to do so after this incarnation. In the days of Constantine or of Joan of Arc, for instance, it would have been impossible for the Christ impulse to bring about at a conscious level what it had to bring about at an unconscious level. But the time will have to come when it will be able to act at a fully conscious level. That is why we receive out of spiritual science what we are able to take into our soul in increasingly greater conscious awareness. Again it is possible to point to a particular fact—honestly, without getting worried about any sympathies or antipathies that may arise and with no intention of flattering anyone. After all, it is always better to base one's views on facts rather than on what they are so often based on today. For if we look out into the world a little bit we shall see that opinions really and truly are not always based on facts but on passion, on strong national feelings. Yet it is also possible to base the views that determine the attitude of the human mind on facts.

Anatole France²⁴ was a man who considered Joan of Arc from the rationalistic and materialistic point of view now current. In the cultural sphere of Germany it has been quite natural to understand Joan of Arc out of a supernatural context since Schiller's great deed.²⁵ There are people even in Germany today who think Schiller made a big mistake; but those are the literary historians and in their case that is understandable. After all, it is their function to 'understand' art and literature—which is why they are unable to understand it. No, the essential thing is for us to let arise before our eyes, from the depths of spiritual life as though glorified, the figure of which Schiller said: ‘The world indeed loves to blacken all that is radiant and drag down into the dust all that is sublime.’

And so it is indeed that acknowledgement of the fact that the Christ impulse intervened in a human individual in a situation not affecting our own nation can bring us the confidence to accept what I have put forward in my public lecture: that it is possible to perceive in the life of the spirit in Germany how it tends towards spirituality the way it has evolved, tends towards spiritual science. We can see that it is its special—though not exclusive—mission to take all that has been achieved and aimed for the life of the spirit in Germany and carry it upwards to perception and understanding of the spirit in the spirit. That is the mission of the German people. The other missions, being the same soul mission expressed in bodily form, as it were, have to serve it. What has to come to pass, out of cosmic wisdom, will come to pass. But, as I have said before, it will be necessary for the twilight we live in today to evolve into a true Sun-age for the future. To make this possible, there will have to be people in the future who have a connection with the spiritual worlds in order that the soil now being prepared with the blood and suffering of so many will not have been prepared in vain. The existence of souls capable of bearing within them their connection with the spiritual worlds justifies everything that happens, even the most horrific, terrible and fearsome, events, so that the Central European mission in spiritual life may be achieved. This, however, will depend on individual souls being able to get in touch with this spiritual life through their karma, and taking it wholly into themselves. Then, when the sun of peace is once again shining over the fields of Central Europe, they shall bear perception of things spiritual, a feeling for things spiritual, within them. Then the inclination developed in a few souls that are capable of this in their present incarnation will make it possible for that to happen which I want to condense in the following words. These words sum up all I wanted to put to you, so that we write the device into our souls under which souls will be able to grow in the right way towards the potential for the future that may arise out of these difficult times:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 16. Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC), Greek philosopher of Ephesus: Fragment B53 in H. Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. I.
• 17. Constantine I (the Great) (274 –337), Roman emperor 306-337 (sole ruler from 323). Victory over Maxentius at Pons Milvius, a bridge crossing the Tiber to the north of Rome, in 312. See also the lecture given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach on 30 January 1915 in Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (GA 161).
• 19. See Matthew 28:6; Mark 16:6; Luke 24:5,6.
• 20. Lecture given on 14 January 1915 ‘Die germanische Seele und der deutsche Geist vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft’ (GA 64).
• 21. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlecthtes (1780) paragraph 98:
  
  ‘Why should I not return as often as I am sent to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I carry off so much at one go that it is not worth the effort to return?’
• 22. See Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissenschafiliche Erläuterringen zu Goethes ‘Faust’ (Vol. I ‘Faust, der strebende Mensch’; Vol. 2 ‘Das Faust-Problem’ (GA 272 and 273). Engl. GA 272 in part translated and published in different books and journals: GA 273. The Problem of Faust in R Series of typescript lecture courses at Rudolf Steiner Library, London.
• 23. See J. P. Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, 6 June 1831:
  
  ‘And of course you'll admit that the conclusion, where the soul which has been saved is taken upwards, was very difficult to do. With something so noumenal, scarely to be intuited, I could so easily have ended up in vagueness, but I used the sharply defined figures and concepts of the Christian church to give my poetic intentions the much needed form and consistency.’
• 5. Lecture given on 29 October 1914 entitled ‘Goethes Geistesart in unsern schicksalsschweren Tagen und die deutsche Kultur’ in Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). In The Dramatic Art of the Goethenaum I (tr. L. Dreher) London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1936.
• 24. Anatole France, Vie de la Jeanne d 'Arc (49th edn, 2 Vols.) Paris 1927.
• 25. Friedrich Schiller, 3rd verse of the poem Das Mädchen von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans).

Once again, let us first of all direct our thoughts to those who are out there at the front, in the arena of present-day events, where they have to stand for what the time demands of them:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we have been seeking for so many gears in our movement, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, be present above you, may it stream through you and strengthen you for your difficult task.

It seems that not everyone is quite clear about the verse I have just spoken, so I am told. Let me stress that the proper version reads: Spirit of your souls. The verse has been phrased in such a way that it can be used when many people want to speak for one person or one for many or, indeed, many for many—as in the present case. If it refers to just one person, the only change which has to be made is to say ‘Spirit of your soul’ and so forth. It appears that I made a slip of the tongue when I said the verse for the first time here some weeks ago, so that the view has arisen that the words ‘Spirits of your souls’ may not be quite correct. But they are correct as they stand. The first line is addressed to the spirits of the souls requiring protection, as it were and the ‘your’ refers to those to whom our thoughts are directed. In the second line on the other hand, the 'your' relates to the 'guardians'. Let me remark that such verses are always such by nature that there can be problems with the purely grammatical construction. But they are given from the spiritual world for the specific Purpose, and it is true that there are occasional problems with putting the words together for such verses.

Dear friends, it was for good reason and, spiritually, also very much in accord with the work that has to be done in the present time, that two days ago we turned our attention to events in the evolution of man that show how spiritual impulses—and particularly the spiritual Impulses linked with the Mystery of Golgotha, with the Christ impulse—are living impulses within the evolution of man. We have seen how they were active in the evolution of man even though men were unable to grasp the nature of the Christ impulse with their reason, with their intellect.

It was with this intention that reference was made among other historical events to Joan of Arc through whom this Christ impulse resolved a major issue in the 15th century through its servant, the Michaelic spirit, and for the good and advancement of mankind. The reason why it was particularly important to refer to this event was that in our day, too, it does hold true that everything destined to regulate events on the historical scale is ordered and regulated from the spiritual worlds. We need to be aware that the forces, the impulses, for what is to happen come to us from the spiritual worlds. In this respect the same holds true today as in the days of Joan of Arc. But the times are different. What would happen in a particular way in the days of Joan or Arc has to happen in a different way in our time and in times to come; it has to take a different course. For our time is one that is entirely different. Since the 15th and 16th century—and the Joan of Arc event did, of course, come in that period—mankind had been guided in quite a different way. It is this difference, and consequently the basic nature of our time, that we shall consider to some extent today.

Between going to sleep and waking up we are in a soul state where that which we really are is outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside our physical and our ether bodies. Asleep, we live in our astral body and our ego. We need to have a very clear picture of this. That which we really are is then outside the body. We are, of course, bound to our body to an extraordinary degree between birth and death so that in terms of space we are not far away from our body when asleep. Our soul element is spread out in our surroundings, as it were; that is in everything that specifically makes up our environment.
Let us get a clear picture of how the environment has changed specifically over the last centuries—since the 15th and 16 centuries—at least for the great majority of the people whom we have to consider in relation to what fate has decreed for the present age. Just consider whether any of the machinery or the mechanical contrivances we use today also existed at the time when Joan of Arc did her work. We can certainly say that the world has changed completely since that time as far as mechanical things are concerned. Everything we experience in relation to machines has only come since then. There may be some observant people among you who have taken a ‘sleeper’ (train) to travel overnight. They may have had the strange experience of waking up—and this is the kind of occasion when one may wake up quite frequently—and finding that something was still rumbling on that was inherent in the machinery of the train all about them. Something can be perceived, as it were, when one is waking up but still in a dream state, of the croaking and squealing of the train or boat one happens to be on. This happens because the soul is not really in the body but in the area around the body and is placed among those mechanical contrivances.

Yet it is not only on such less usual occasions that we live among the hustle and bustle of the present age, and we can certainly say that the mechanized life has also spread to the countryside today. Fundamentally speaking, we are always within the mechanized life of the present age. When asleep, the soul merges into everything that is mechanism. Those are mechanisms, however, which we have constructed ourselves. A mechanism we have built is something quite different from nature outside us, for this has been constructed by the elemental spirits. When we are out in the woods, for instance, where everything has been built up by the spirits of nature, we are in an environment that is totally different from the environment of mechanical contrivances created by ourselves. What are we doing when we take things from nature and put them together to make the machines and appliances we use in our lives? We are in that case not merely putting together physical components, for in putting together physical components we always provide opportunity for a demonic Ahrimanic servant to unite with the machine. We do this with every machine, every mechanism, in everything of this kind that is part of modern civilization, providing a point of attachment for demonic elemental spirits of Ahrimanic nature. And living surrounded by machines we live together with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. We allow them to enter into us; we allow not only the squealing and groaning of machines to enter into us but also an element that is eminently destructive for our spirit and our soul.

Please note—and I have often made a similar comment on similar occasions—what I am saying is not intended to be a criticism of our Ahrimanic age. It has to be like this, that we allow demons to stream into everything and allow ourselves to the surrounded by them. It is part of the evolution of mankind. We have to acknowledge the simple necessity for this and understand the real impulse of spiritual science. And so we shall not sing the praises of people who say it is necessary, as far as possible, to protect oneself from the demons and to shun civilization and that we should set up a colony as far away as possible in the wilderness to save us from having anything to do with these demonic Ahrimanic elementals. That has never been the tenor of my words. I have always said that we must entirely accept what comes to us out of the necessity of evolution, that we must not let ourselves be induced to flee from the world. We need to take heed, however, we need to understand, that conditions are such in our age that we are filling our environment more and more with beings of a demonic nature, that we are more and more involved with the principle that is mechanizing our civilization. An age such as this cans for something quite different than the age out of which Joan of Arc was called to do her work. In the time of Joan of Arc it was necessary for the impulse out of which she was to act to be born out of the gentlest, the most subtle powers of the human soul. Just consider: she was a shepherd girl living a very simple, natural life, with nature at her most idyllic. She was very young when her visions came to her, and through the Imaginations given to her she had a direct link with the spiritual world. Out of her inner being she was to bring forth everything that was to be the foundation from which she acted, she was to let it grow forth from her inner being. And not only this, but it was necessary for very special circumstances to be brought about so that through the most subtle powers inherent in the human soul her mission could be imprinted in her soul, in her very heart of hearts.

We know that everything in the world goes in cycles, that things happen in such a way that important events come up in definite cycles. If we take the year of Joan's birth, 1412, we can ask a specific question relating to this. We are able to say that the year this Maid of Orleans was born the sun would of course have been in a particular position, astronomical position, coinciding with one of the constellations in the zodiac. The progress of the sun from one sign of the zodiac to the next marks a major time interval. Passing right through the zodiac the sun will go through all twelve constellations; the time interval needed for the sun to progress from one constellation in the zodiac to the next is approximately 2,160 years, and this is important. Going back approximately 2,160 years from the birth of Joan of Arc we come to the founding of Rome.

In the days when Rome was founded anyone needing information on major issues concerning the city which was then coming into being would go to see the nymph Egeria. There it was possible to get information, from a seeress. But, as I said, that was one solar cycle earlier. And so the times are renewed and everything goes in cycles. Let us visualize it like this: at the time when Rome was founded the sun was at a certain point in the constellation of the Ram, Aries. It then progressed to the Fishes, Pisces, so that it had moved through one-twelfth of the zodiac. And thus the cycle which inevitably has to be there In the evolution of mankind takes us from the nymph Egeria to the inspired deed of Joan of Arc. In ancient Rome, however, it was a matter of pagan Inspiration, of pagan deeds. If we try to think of the same visionary element that operated at the time when Rome was founded also having to operate in a Christian age, acting from within, through the most tender powers inherent in man, what did have to come about? You can imagine that something had to come about which again, in some way or other, had to do with the subtlest powers of the Christian faith.

Most of you will remember my telling you of the variation we get in the course of the year in the forces that link us with the spiritual world. In summer, at St John's tide when the sun's rays are most Powerful externally, one might perhaps achieve an external ecstasy and, as in the old Celtic mysteries, lift oneself up into the spiritual world in some way, but certainly in ecstasy. Yet when the days are shortest, when the sun's rays are least powerful and the winter night the darkest, around Christmas therefore, the opportunity exists also to win through to the spiritual worlds in our innermost soul life. All who have known of the cycle of the year have always maintained, quite rightly, that those who have the gift for it are able to enter into the most intimate aspect of our connection with the spiritual worlds during the time from the 21st, the 23rd of December to about the 6th of January—during those days and particularly the nights. There are legends—the Legend of Olaf Asteson has been read to you here—which tell of people having their most profound Inspirations during those days.²⁶ This, again, is connected with the celebration of Christmas at that time, of the birth of the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha and is connected with the innermost powers in human soul development. So, if the Inspiration of pagan Rome of old was to be resurrected one sun cycle later, 2,160 years later, it had to come in through the aspect of man that is most utterly childlike. This means that the soul of Joan of Arc had to be taken hold of at the point where souls are taken hold of most profoundly, where they are weakest in relation to earthly things, and where the Christ impulse is not yet hampered by worldly impressions—the souls not yet having taken up the earthly element, so that the Christ impulse can be the only one to enter into the soul sphere. The most favourable timing for this would have been for the Maid of Orleans to have gone through the time of the Thirteen Nights in her mother's womb immediately before her birth, before she took her first breath. And, indeed, she did—for she was born on the 6th of January.

Here we perceive the more profound forces at work which enter into the physical world from the spiritual worlds. We see how they find the channels they need, deeply mysterious channels. There can be nothing more marvellous for someone with insight into such things, nothing more open to explanation through spiritual science, than this fact that the Maid of Orleans took her first breath on earth in the time around Christmas, on the 6th of January, with the days of Christmas immediately preceding her entry on to the physical plane. We see how the girl who was to go through death at the age of 19 was taken hold of at the point where the most subtle of human powers lie, and we are therefore looking into a time when it was necessary for the divine spiritual powers to find a channel through the inmost inwardness of the human soul. That, however, was the last time when such a thing was to be. It was the time when a particular order was brought into Europe through the Christ impulse, as I indicated to you the last time, and this happened in the wonderful way in which it did happen through Joan of Arc. Since then, however, times have changed. Today is not the time when divine spiritual powers approach the human soul in such intimate fashion.

What was the mission of Joan of Arc, really, if we consider something that was present throughout her whole life? She was taken hold of from within by the forces of the divine spiritual world. In her soul these forces encountered the Luciferic forces. These Luciferic forces were mighty and powerful at that time. Joan of Arc bore something within her that made her vanquish the Luciferic forces. She vanquished the Luciferic forces, that is entirely obvious to anyone who wants to see. We have briefly considered the miracle of her birth and seen that she went through an unconscious initiation, in a way, up to Epiphany, the day known as that of the manifestation of Christ. But we can also point to her death which occurred because all the Luciferic forces of her enemies joined together to bring about her death. Her misadventure in a battle was brought about through the jealousy of the men who were the official leaders, appointed to guide the battle. All the jealousy then came to the fore over the manifestations of spiritual forces and spiritual powers that were made through her. She was put on trial. The records of the trial still exist and anyone studying them can see—unless of course his mind is as closed as that of Anatole France—that this Maid of Orleans, having come into the physical world in a very special way, through the thirteen nights, also left it in such a way. For it says in the records, so that there is historical proof, that she said that she would indeed die but that after her death the English would meet with a much greater reverse than any they had known before, and that this would happen within the next seven years.

If we take this rightly, in its spiritual sense, it means nothing less than that the soul of Joan of Arc on going through the gate of death was prepared to continue contributing to the work of shaping events after her death, to share in the work whatever her form of existence. And she did so. What the spiritual powers have to bring about will be brought about whatever the external conditions may be. Joan's adversaries were able to bring about her death, to mount the strongest possible attack against her, as it were. They were not able to prevent her mission.

However, the forces of Joan of Arc were only able to work in the subtle way they did during her time. In everything she did the Luciferic forces were ranged against her. We are also having to deal with hostile forces in our time, but these are predominantly Ahrimanic forces, the Ahrimanic forces that have come up with the materialistic age. These are in evidence even in the outer form and fashion of the whole of our age if we turn our attention to the mechanisms, the mechanical element of the age; if we are aware that, fundamentally speaking, we are offering an abode to demons when we produce our mechanical contrivances, surrounding ourselves with a whole world of Ahrimanic demons. It is evident also from other things that Ahrimanic powers are at work everywhere in our age. We need only look back a few years and pay a little attention to the occult substrate to our life on earth and we can see Ahrimanic forces influencing all aspects of our physical life on earth. Not only the kind of demons we create in our machines influence our earth life but also other kinds of Ahrimanic forces. The occultist has to put into words something I have often put into words for one group of friends or another: that, fundamentally speaking, the sad and painful events now happening all over Europe and a large part of the globe have long been in preparation. War has been present for a long time, as it were, in the astral world but was held back by something that was also astral: by the fear everybody was feeling. Fear is an astral element; it was able to hold the war back, to prevent it; fear was able to stop war from breaking out for all that time.

For fear was abroad everywhere. Fear is altogether something that is most dreadfully widespread in the depths of our souls in the present age. A time came, however, when there was an external indication in time of something often referred to when the starting points of this war are discussed. This outer aspect is not the one that matters, however, it is merely a symbol. As I said on a previous occasion, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke occurred and there emerged the event, so terrible to the soul, that I have already referred to. I had never before known anything like this, not from personal experience nor through other occultists. We know what the soul goes through when it has undergone death. In the case of the soul that went through death at that time something very specific showed itself. All the elements of fear began to gather around it, as though around a focal point, and something of a cosmic power could now be perceived in it. We know already that anything that has a specific character on the physical plane will have the opposite character in the spiritual world. This also held true in the present case. An element that first had had a dispersive effect where war was concerned was now acting in the opposite way, as a spur, an incitement, to war. So we see that a metamorphosis, as it were, of the elements of fear, of the Ahrimanic elements, became mixed up with all the things that finally led to the sad and painful events of the present time. Ahrimanic elements are indeed at work everywhere in our time. We must not rebel against this, nor should we aim to protect ourselves against it. We have to see it as something that is necessary in our time, something that has to be present in our time. The question is: How do we find the right attitude to this? How do we find the one thing that will show us what should be our attitude now, in the present age, if we want to make it possible for divine spiritual forces and powers to enter into our actions?

Here I must refer to an event in the spiritual world that happened a few decades ago. I have mentioned this on a number of occasions, in all kinds of different contexts. It is an event that occurred behind the scenes of our existence, in the spiritual world, in or about November 1879.²⁷ We know that there is a different regent of earth life for every epoch, as it were; one regent follows another. Until 1879 the spirit acting out of the spiritual world was the one we call the spirit Gabriel, if a name is to be used. From 1879 onwards it was the spirit we call Michael. It is Michael who directs events in our time. Anyone able to see into the spiritual worlds in conscious awareness will feel the spirit Michael to be the spirit who truly is the one to lead and govern in our time. Michael is in a way the most Powerful of the leading spirits of the age that follow one another. In a way, I said, he is the most powerful of these spirits. The others have been predominantly active in the spirit sphere. Michael had the strength to push the spirit right through into the physical world. He was the spirit who descended to earth ahead of the Christ, as it were, before the Mystery of Golgotha approached, and governed world affairs for four or five centuries at that time. Now in our time he is again the leading spirit on earth. We may make a comparison by saying that Michael is among the spirits belonging to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi as gold is among the metals. Whilst all other metals act predominantly on the ether body, gold also acts as a medicine for the physical body. In the same way all the other leading spirits act on the soul whilst it is Michael who at the same time is able to act on the physical intellect, on physical reason. Now that his age has come it is possible to act out of the spirit on the physical intellect, on physical reason. In the 15th century he was not the actual leader and therefore had to find a way in the case of Joan without making use of the human intellect, human understanding, human ability to form ideas; a way that was wholly an inner one, as it were, through the innermost powers of the human soul. The Christ influenced Joan of Arc through his Michaelic spirit, but he achieved what had to be done by any other means rather than the forces of the intellect and of reason.

Luciferic spirits are also present today. and these prefer to attack man from within. They want to generate all kinds of passions, but not the error of the intellect, the error of common reason that we have to struggle with in our present age. We therefore have to say that anything we wish to achieve in the spiritual sphere must be achieved in such a way that it is in accord with the forces that Michael, the leading spirit of the age, commands. We are in close alliance with Michael when we try to grasp what we have been attempting to grasp these last few days, when we try and grasp things as phenomena, to grasp what we call the German folk spirit. Two powers: Michael and the German folk spirit. These two are entirely in harmony, and it is their mission to bring the Christ impulse to expression specifically in our time, in accord with the character of our time. For it would be wrong for the people of our time to think that the same inward way of working that was appropriate to the 15th century could still be appropriate now that we are in the fifth post-Atlantean era. In the present age it is a matter above all of understanding that it is necessary to be chained to Ahriman, to Ahrimanic elements we ourselves create in our machines, and that it is necessary to recognize clearly how these things are connected. Otherwise we live in fear of many of the things that exist in the present age.

The question therefore arises: How do we offer resistance to this Ahrimanic element in our age, the way resistance was offered to the Luciferic element at the time of Joan of Arc? We offer resistance to the Ahrimanic element by taking exactly the path that has been so emphatically pointed out over and over again within our stream of spiritual science—the path towards a spiritualization of human culture, of man's ability to form ideas and concepts. This is why it has been stressed again and again that there is a way in which everything spiritual science can give us, even if to begin with it is largely presented to us from the spiritual world, can truly and wholly and utterly be grasped with the intellect, the reason man has been gifted with from the 16th century to this day. And if we say we do not understand, then that is only because we listen to the prejudices current in the materialism of our age. We must stop listening ever and again to the voice of present-day materialism, a voice that speaks loudly at times and then again in the faintest of whispers. Instead we must try and firmly focus our mind on such powers of understanding as we have. Then the things spiritual science produces for us will one day appear to be perfectly understandable, as something that can be understood just as well as some event or other in the outside world can be understood. We generate the great strength we need to offer resistance to the Ahrimanic forces by approaching the spirit not merely through the inmost powers of revelation and of faith, as in the case of Joan of Arc, but by trying to concentrate our powers of understanding most intensely on what spiritual science has to give. If we do this, the hour, the moment, will come when we have to say to ourselves: What comes to us out of spiritual science is the only thing that is rational and at the same time makes the world around us understandable, filling it with light. And when we are taken hold of in this way we are taken hold of by what the spirit has to give in our time so that we shall indeed be strong enough to face the Ahrimanic forces.

Someone with a disposition like that of Joan of Arc would not be able to achieve anything in our day and age. She would be an interesting personality and would be able to reveal many marvellous things through prophesy and in other ways. Such a person capable of making intimate revelations is capable of effectively countering Luciferic forces. Today, however, man has to resist Ahrimanic forces, has to make himself strong to cope with these forces, developing the strength required in the Michaelic age. Sun-like qualities are called for in the age of Michael, qualities we take into ourselves by spiritualizing the powers we have at our command between waking up and going to sleep: the powers of the intellect, of understanding, of insight. For these powers of understanding we possess will undergo a transformation in the soul if only we have sufficient patience. They are transformed to such effect that out of what emerges for us in spiritual science there arises the certainty that what we are grasping there is the direct expression of the thoughts of the spiritual world. So there can be no question today of withdrawing from the outside world which has Ahrimanic forces in it everywhere. No, it is necessary for us to stand in this world but at the same time also make ourselves strong to meet those Ahrimanic forces.

It is a matter therefore of finding the way towards understanding the spiritual world with the very same powers we also use to understand the outside world. That, of course, is the way—as we have said on these few occasions—that is inwardly bound up with the whole mission of the German people, and specifically with this mission as it has been from the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. This mission was in preparation during the preceding centuries. This is what is so remarkable—what has been going on in the intellectual life of Germany, through its poets, its artists and philosophers, is intimately bound up with the spiritual life. Here it really is a matter of boldly looking the facts in the face, without sympathy or antipathy, and seeing how they were first in preparation and gradually took shape. We have ourselves had the experience of simply having to stress one day that there is this necessity to be active in the life of the intellect and spirit as it continues to progress. Why should that be so?

Let us try and take a look at the theosophical movement we had external links with for a time, the theosophical movement in England. Try and build a bridge for yourselves between the general intellectual life in England, including the field of philosophy, and English theosophy. Externally they stand side by side, are two streams running side by side, and a bridge between the two is something we can only make in a very external way. Try on the other hand and consider the life of the mind and spirit that had its preparatory stages in the German mystics Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, and then evolved further through Jakob Boehme and Angelus Silesius.²⁸ In Lessing²¹ it brought acceptance of the idea of repeated earth lives, and in Goethe's Faust an out-and-out glorification of the ascent to the spiritual worlds.

There you have the straight route from the outer worlds to the spiritual world. If you then also include the stream that led from Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Fair Lily²⁹ to the dramatization of the basic forces of initiation³⁰ and take the two streams together, you will have the inner connection. There is an inner connection between that which finally makes its appearance as spiritual science and that which is striven for quite exoterically in the intellectual life of the physical world. The life of the mind and spirit which unfolds outside of spiritual science is of course striven for with the powers of the intellect, but it is compelled to move in the direction of what is found outside the body. I should like to put it like this: It is the mission of the German people that they cannot do anything else but let the river of all their endeavours finally enter into spiritual life. In spiritual terms that really means that the German people are called to unite inwardly with the element that comes into the world because Michael is the leader. Such a union is not achieved by passively, fatalistically, allowing oneself to be governed by the powers of destiny. It is achieved by recognizing the challenge of the time.

What I am trying to show has been revealed not only inwardly, in the evolution of German mysticism, but also outwardly in the whole way German life has developed within the context of European life. In the first of the last two public lectures I have given, ‘The Germanic Soul and the German Intellect’, I discussed the way the soul quality of the Germanic tribes flowed into the peoples of the West and the South, as it were, through those who became the outposts of those tribes, the Goths, Lombards, Vandals. The Germanic soul element was sacrificed on the altar of mankind. Later this was to repeat itself, though less obviously so. Consider first of all the most eastern part of Austria³¹ and the people known as the Transylvanian Saxons. They had emigrated from the Rhine, from the Siebengebirge (Seven Mountains), and there is external evidence to prove this. As time went on they lost their special characteristics. The soul substance gave itself up, to merge into that of the other nation, and little will be left of them one day except for some elements from their language; it was as folk substance that they flowed into the other nation. Now let us move on south to the Banat.³² Swabian immigrants settled there and the Magyar element overgrew the Swabian element. The same thing has happened in the Carpathian mountains in Hungary. To all appearances these immigrant elements have disappeared today. Yet they are still alive everywhere among the present-day population, sometimes emerging in tiny rivulets, like in the fascinating linguistic enclave of the people of Gottschee in Krain [Carniola]. And elsewhere as well. We see—and it would be possible to purse this a great deal further—how the Germanic soul-element has been sent out into the world, how it has an effect there. This happens out of an inner necessity. It happened like this in earlier ages and particularly also during the age of Gabriel. It happened throughout the age of Gabriel in that the blood—I would say the blood and the mixing of blood—was active, everything which, whilst connected with external circumstances in life, yet cannot be grasped externally, but again takes place at a more inward level.

Now the Michael age has come,the age when we must grasp how, through the whole past development of the life of the mind and intellect, the German spirit is able to take its place within the Sun force of Michael. That we simply have to realize. And it can be realized by giving recognition to spiritual science, by gradually—on the basis of what spiritual science is considering—getting an idea and an awareness of the spiritual powers that are at work, of the reality of spiritual powers. Then we shall gradually come to understand how senseless it is for people to say: ‘There are no spiritual forces, I cannot acknowledge them. And if I have a bar of iron in horseshoe form here, then it is just that, a bar of iron, and I see nothing but iron.’ But there may be magnetic forces within it. And in the same way something else, something quite different from magnetic forces, lies within the whole of the outside world. We come to recognize it if we really consider all that is presented to us as the characteristic form of things. That is the way to achieve the powers of mind needed in the age of Michael to resist the Ahrimanic powers, at a time when it is indeed our duty to withstand the Ahrimanic powers. Fundamentally speaking, everything the study of spiritual science has to offer is merely preparatory. One day an awakening of the soul will spring forth from the study of spiritual science, and the soul will know: Within you lives the spiritual world, from the Christ impulse down through Michael to the folk spirit which puts into effect what has to be put into effect.

I have said that the time of Joan of Arc was one when it was possible to act on the weakest, physically the weakest, powers of man. Our age is one where it is necessary to act on the strongest powers of man, to take hold of the will at a point where it is least inclined truly to unfold its powers. We can see it again and again: the thing people find most difficult to do is to unfold the will at the point where our earthly powers, the powers by which we form concepts, are made inwardly active. To bring ‘will-power’ to bear externally is something people still find relatively easy. But a different kind of ‘will-power’ is needed to guide our thoughts in such a way that they encompass the spiritual world. Spiritual science as such has to appeal to that strong will-power, for this must be there if spiritual science is truly to lead where it ought to lead in our Michaelic age. For we are not called to discuss the mechanical element in our age; we are not called to point out that this mechanical element in our age has laid hold of mankind; we are called to do something else.

Of course, if we squeeze the facts a little it will be possible for us to become a philosopher, to some degree even a great philosopher—this we admit without reserve. It is possible to look at the machines in our age and start to consider this very mechanistic aspect as the most pernicious of all things, ascribing it specifically to our enemies. And one then has the inclination, even if one may be considered a great philosopher, to hurl abuse like a market woman. One can then do the same as the philosopher Bergson³³ who only recently again managed to point out rather one sidedly—and many things tend to be perfectly correct if a one sided view is presented—how the mechanistic effect of the forces relates to the essential nature of the German people. But that is not the only thing we can point to—that German brainpower has achieved things in certain areas by applying mechanical principles—for something else may be pointed out as well. Nor is it necessary to hurl abuse like a market woman when discussing such matters, and instead we may say: Perhaps the very place where the intellect has the greatest powers to give form to the mechanistic and demonic element is also the place where these mechanistic and demonic powers can be overcome on the basis of our particular spiritual mission. Then however, a German may easily get himself misunderstood as he comes to see, in conjunction with the way the intellectual life has developed, that it is not his function to stop at the purely mechanical element that is of such great service to him also in the present day, with the challenges presented by the war. He must not stop at what is merely mechanism, for then he would merely create demons. No, he must develop powerful forces within him that can boldly face these demons. This means that we have to stand in the spiritual world, not blindly but in a way that arises from, and is guided by, conviction. If we set out to acknowledge that we are surrounding ourselves with a world of demons, a veritable hell, as we design and build machine after machine, we can of course understand why people speaking out of the materialistic spirit of the present age are saying over and over again that this scientific and materialistic age has taken us to the greatest height ever achieved by man. Of course we can understand this for it is in line with the materialistic thought of the present time, but we must know that with those machines we are introducing nothing but demons for mankind and we must know how to develop the right powers to resist these demons. We only gain the right attitude to the spiritual world by recognizing these demonic Ahrimanic forces, by knowing full well that they are present. For the harmful powers are harmful only when we remain unconscious of them, when we know nothing about them. Let me illustrate this by means of a comparison.

As you know, we hope after some time to have a building at Dornach near Basle where we can nurture our spiritual stream in suitable surroundings. It is not a question of erecting this building to escape the pressures of our time in some way or other, but rather of building it entirely out of the pressures of our time. It was necessary for instance to design a lighting system out of the most Ahrimanic forces of the present age, electric lighting, electric heating and so on. It is a matter of using the architectural form as such to render such potentially harmful things harmless. It could have been the case that anyone entering the building in the future would have been surrounded with everything the Ahrimanic culture of the present age leads to. The point, however, is not that it is present, but that people do not notice it. We are not suppose to notice it. To achieve this, a number of friends got together and they are erecting a separate building for this, giving it a special form, so that the demonic Ahrimanic forces are banished to this place. Anyone approaching the building, and also anyone entering it, will have it brought to their notice that the Ahrimanic forces are at work there. For as soon as we know this they are no longer harmful. The point is that the powers that have a bad effect on man cease to do so when we take a good look at the places where they are active, when we do not look at a machine thoughtlessly and say ‘a machine is simply a machine’ , but rather acknowledge that a machine is a place where a demonic Ahrimanic entity may be found.

If we take our stand in the world with knowledge in our souls we take the right stand in the Michaelic age. It means that we relate to the spiritual world in such a way that Michael, too, can be active within us; Michael with his present mission, as we have described it. The Point is that in every case we can either enter without thought into what exists in the mechanical contrivances men are producing at an unconscious level or we can see through life. If we see through it, if we become aware of the demonic elemental powers at work in the machines we produce, we shall find the way to the rightful givers of Inspiration who are true to the spirit. They are connected with the spirit who is to the other spirits concerned with guidance of man as gold is to the other metals—with Michael.

My aim today has been to show that the mission of our age is to seek the divine spiritual powers that will work for the good of mankind. It is different from the mission given to the human souls who lived at the time of Joan of Arc. At that time it was much more a question of holding back anything intellectual, holding back the Power of reasoning. Today, however, it is a question of cultivating everything to do with reason and intellect to attain to clairvoyance, for it is possible to cultivate it and attain to clairvoyance. Once there are people who cultivate the human soul in this way, the twilight period we are now living through will evolve into what it destined to evolve. Everything that evolves on the physical plane can only be the outer garment for the spiritual life that is to arise for mankind out of the Present time.

And it is true that those who are now sacrificing their powers in the years of their youth are prepared to send these powers down into our earthly existence. For these powers are never lost, they are indestructible- Now, however, they are destined to continue to act spiritually as they would have continued to act physically if the people concerned had not gone through the gate of death on the field of battle. They will continue to send their powers down to earth and into our time, so that we shall know what to do with these powers. These powers need to stream down into a human race that shall use them in such a way, during the time of peace that will follow the war, that spiritual life spreads more and more on earth. As the light of day always arises from the night, so a future filled with light will have to arise out of our present which so often seems like a dark night to us. This future will have to be filled not only with light but with everything the Michaelic age, which started in 1871, has to bring for mankind. Once there are souls capable of establishing as intimate a bond with the spiritual world as has been indicated today, we shall be able to hope that where the events of the present time are concerned, the thought expressed in the seven lines of the mantram will come to fruition. We may hope that it will all be fulfilled—if the first five lines are really and truly connected with the last two:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 26. See also Rudolf Steiner, ‘Welten-Neujahr—Das Traumlied von Olaf Asteson’, Dornach 31 December 1914, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (GA 158). In English as extract ‘World New Year’ in Anthroposophical News Sheet 14: 1, 2.
• 27. See, above all, Rudolf Steiner's lectures on 18 and 20 May 1913 in Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgotha (GA 152). In English, Michaelmas—The Festivals and Their Meaning (London) Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1957. Lecture of 18 May also as typescript translation Z 136, ‘The Michael Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha’ in Rudolf Steiner Library, London.
• 28. Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–c.1327).
  Johannes Tauler (c.1300 –c.1361).
  Jakob Boehme (1575 –1624).
  Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler) (1624–1677). Concerning the above mystics, see Rudolf Steiner: Die Mystik im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens und ihr Verhältnis zur modernen Weltanschauung (GA 7). In English as Eleven European Mystics (tr. K. Zimmer) (New York) Rudolf Steiner Publications 1971.
• 21. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlecthtes (1780) paragraph 98:
  
  ‘Why should I not return as often as I am sent to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I carry off so much at one go that it is not worth the effort to return?’
• 29. Rudolf Steiner: Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch semen Faust und durch das Marchen von der Schlange und der Lille (GA 22). In English as The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethes World Conception (tr.O.D. Wannamaker) (New York & London) Anthroposophic Press and Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. 1940.
• 30. Rudolf Steiner, ‘Die Pforte der Einweihung’ in Vier Mysteriendramen (GA 14). In English as ‘The Portal of Initiation’, in the Mystery Plays/Dramas tr. A. Bittleston/R. and H. Pusch.
• 31. Rudolf Steiner was referring to the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Transylvania (Siebenbuergen) is now part of one of the successor states—Rumania (translator).
• 32. The Banat lies just south-west of Transylvania and north of the Danube, in Yugoslavia and Rumania (translator).
• 33. Henri Bergson (1859–1941). See ‘La Signification de la Guerre’ in Pages Actuelles 1914/15 Paris 1915.

Due to circumstances, my departure has been postponed till tomorrow and so we can still have this evening together.

As usual, let us first of all direct our thoughts to the souls of those who are out at the front, having to stand up for the momentous events of our time.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here of earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha—the spirit we have been seeking in our spiritual movement over the Years so that he was able to influence our mind deeply—may he be with you and with the hard duties you have to perform.

Dear friends, I want to use this extra evening we have been given, as it were, to comment on a number of unrelated points that may of value to us in one respect or another.

First of all let me point out that in spite of the materialism of the present age, or perhaps exactly because of the materialism of our age, the souls of people doing scientific work in certain fields are guided towards the existence of a spiritual world even though they do not really intend this. Let me give you a specific example. It would of course be possible to pick up a great many threads with regard to what I have just indicated, but I should like to refer to a pamphlet which has appeared quite recently. It is number twelve in a series now being published with reference to the war written by Professor O. Binswanger, the well-known psychiatrist, under the title Die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges (The Psychological Effects of War).³⁴ It is not my intention to take up the more detailed points made by Binswanger concerning the psychological effects of war but merely certain comments he made in this pamphlet. A scientist like Binswanger now feels compelled, as it were, to do more than just hint at the existence of a spiritual life. Yet he also feels obliged to apologize for this, pointing out that the present age is not inclined, where the enlightened are concerned, to believe in any such thing as a life of the spirit or of the soul. In his pamphlet Binswanger refers to the more than well-known fact that there has been a major increase in nervous diseases in our day. He discusses a number of contributory causes and on page 10 makes the significant statement: 'It may seem strange to some of you that I put such great emphasis on the psychological element in these nervous conditions.' He is a psychiatrist entirely in the materialistic way, yet finds it necessary to speak of the psychological element, the soul element, as one of the causes of the diseases he is particularly interested in.

‘What does the psychological element have to do with a nervous stomach, with a nervous heart, nervous pain in the back, arms and legs? All I can say is that it is the general medical opinion that in the final instance, pathological nervous reactions in many different organs and parts of the body are largely due to disorders in the psychological sphere.’

We see how someone whose researches lead him to consider the facts of soul life is forced by those facts to confess that nervous stomach complaints, nervous heart complaints, nervous pain in the back and, indeed, also in the extremities—conditions as a rule only considered from the materialistic point of view today—have their causes in disturbances in the soul life.

The modern scientist will however tend to go no further than making this admission. He will go no further, not one step further. In the first place it has to be admitted that we are not getting anywhere if the causes of pathological processes of the kind described are sought only in the physical sphere. Yet people still lack the courage and energy to do some serious investigation of spiritual scientific aspects. The moment people hear anything positive relating to the field of spiritual science they feel they no longer have solid ground under their feet, as it were; as though everything we are able to gain from the spiritual world by applying the methods of spiritual science lacked the security of certainty. For a psychiatrist this is doubly fatal, one might say. If the causes of certain physical conditions lie in the processes occurring in soul-life, it will have to be admitted that the best way to deal with such conditions is through treatment directed at the soul life.

But how is one to treat a soul if one has not developed any concept as to how the soul relates to the body? The prescriptions for getting rid of spiritual disorders, as it were, can only be taken from the spiritual world. Yet it is only possible to perceive the relationship between the spiritual world and the outer material world if we know something of that spiritual world. And so one gets a peculiar lack of precision, lack of logic, very peculiar reasoning, when such people attempt to speak about the relationship between body and soul in a really positive way. This is something we can demonstrate in the case of this particular scientist. A few pages further on—on page 23—he says something very peculiar indeed. Wanting to speak of the Confidence he feels as to the successful conclusion of the German campaign in the light of his understanding of how the human soul is constituted, he says:

‘It is my conviction that the army whose soldiers have the better nerves will win, or, to put it in other words those with greater moral resilience.’

Let us consider this in all seriousness. A scientist who admits that the causes even of physical disorders, so-called nervous disorders, are psychological, says that victory is sure to go to the soldiers who have the better nerves, or—as he says—'...in other words, those with greater moral resilience'. It is hard to imagine anyone producing greater nonsense than this. Both statements are of course absolutely true, but it is nonsense to maintain that the one says the same as the other. Just imagine someone forming a very clear picture of the nervous system, able to trace this nervous system down to it smallest ramifications, and then saying that 'put in other words' stronger nerves are equivalent to greater moral resilience in a person. It means that purely physical nerve strands are, in other words, supposed to be moral resilience. The modern reader will, of course, fail to nonce such things. You will find he fails to notice the oddest things when reading anything he considers tremendously erudite. Such things are, nonetheless, genuine nonsense unless they are seen in relation to what spiritual science has to say about it. What view does spiritual science take of these things?

If we consider the moral power of a person, the moral element that ensouls him and fills the whole of his soul, it is in the first instance something entirely spiritual, nonphysical, something that has nothing to do with anything material. What we call the moral power of a soul is a spiritual power within it, in so far as this soul belongs to the spiritual world. When the soul returns to its body on waking up, as it always does, it uses the body as a tool for the physical world from the moment of waking until going to sleep. Between going to sleep and waking up the soul is living in the purely spiritual world, separate from its physical tool, the body,and it also gathers its moral power there. In the physical world, however, moral powers can be active only by using the physical body as their tool. They are in that case also active as spiritual powers. In the ego and astral body of man the element we call his moral power is active. It is something purely spiritual in them. But what does this purely spiritual element of moral power in the astral body and ego of man have to do with his nervous system?

Let me make a comparison. The moral power of a person has exactly as much to do with his nervous system as I have to do with the floor on which my feet are now standing. If the floor were not there, nor the ground on which it rests beneath it, I would be unable to stand here, being a physical human being. The floor has to be there, but it has nothing to do physically with anything within me. The floor or the ground has to be there for me to stand on. In the same way the nerves have to be there in the physical body merely to provide the Physical resistance which the moral powers of the astral body and the ego must encounter in the physical world in order to make their Presence felt.

There is another comparison I can make—one that really goes to the heart of the matter though it will be necessary to think it through in some detail before one can really see what lies behind it. I am going to use a comparison that again comes up in physical life.

Consider the process of digestion. It consists in some of the food stock becoming part of the organism whilst the rest is eliminated. If it were not possible for a certain part of our food to be eliminated, digestion would be impossible. The process of elimination has to be a very regular one. Yet no one would get it into their heads to say we obtain nourishment from the part of the food we eliminate. The processes going on in our nervous system when we develop moral Power within us are like processes of elimination, genuine processes of elimination in relation to what is fruitful for us, what really lies within us as our true human nature. The assertion of a specific moral impulse in the soul is connected with a process of elimination. The process of elimination—the part which drops out as it were, the waste material we produce—that is the process in the nervous system. This relates to what we are actually doing in the same way as the process of elimination relates to the process by which foods are assimilated in our digestion. People who refer to the spiritual process in which moral impulses are formed as a process in nervous system are really saying—with reference to another sphere—that human nutrition consists in elimination, and they then examine the products of elimination in order to establish what is particularly beneficial to man. That, then, is the back-to-front method used by materialistic science. The principle which the spirit has to eliminate in order to unfold is considered the real thing. In their efforts to get at the truth about the spirit modern scientists investigate exactly the things the spirit has no use for. The method is more or less like that used by someone examining the intestinal contents in order to find out what kind of substances man takes up into his muscles. One has to put this bluntly at times to show up the utter absurdity of modern materialism. The false picture produced by modern materialism carries such enormous conviction in the perverted mental climate of today that strong words have to be used in pointing out the nature of the terrible misconception which prevails.

I am now going to start from something quite different, though later we shall relate this to what I have already put before you. Let us consider the question of the different religious systems that have evolved in the course of human evolution. In the course of human evolution a number of different religious teachers have appeared, telling People one thing or another about conditions in the spiritual world. It really does not take much to arrive at a really clever view of those religious systems. (It is not really difficult to be clever in the present age, as we have seen with regard to a number of opinions held today. You know how this should be taken and that it does not imply criticism of the present age.)

Someone who may be considered clever can so easily point to the fact that different religious teachers have taught different things and draw the conclusion that none of it could therefore be true. For if it were to be true then surely they must all have taught the same. This in turn would lead to the conclusion that all the talk of higher worlds has been shown to be so full of contradictions that it cannot be considered to be based on anything that comes to mankind out of truth.

The only way of finding the right answer to the above question is to form an idea of how much of what man has lived through here on earth goes with him through the gate of death. You can easily form an idea of what we take with us if you consider the following. As soon as you close your eyes and put your hands over your ears you will see or hear nothing of the physical world around you. And now ask yourselves: How much of the impressions the soul takes into itself from morning to night, and how much of the ideas and concepts it holds within it, is in actual fact owed to the eyes and ears? If we had no eyes and ears, by far the greatest part of human soul content would simply not be there. Now, after death the human being quite definitely has neither eyes nor ears. Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can therefore only be carried through the gates of death through memory. There really is no need to reflect further on this. Anything taken in through the eyes and ears can only be carried through the gate of death as memory. The same applies to all the ideas we have formed on the basis of sensory impressions. And now you merely need consider how much has to be left behind when we enter into the spiritual world—everything which has come to man through external impressions is left behind.

What quality should an idea have if we are to take it with us through the gate of death? It most certainly cannot derive from any form of external impression; and one quality it must possess is that anyone thinking in materialistic terms will be able to say: ‘What you have before your mind's eye simply does not exist, for you are not able to see it with your eyes nor hear it with your ears.’ The nature of such an idea or concept must be such, therefore, that its subject is not perceptible to the outer senses, for anything we are able to perceive with the outer senses cannot go through the gate of death as an idea. My comment is that materialism is seduced into raising such objections because it is all the time talking of ‘being’ and ‘non-being’ without really understanding the ins and outs of ‘'being’ and ‘non-being’. It is sufficient for our present purpose to consider just the German language. The verb sein (to be) derives from sehen (to see). Anything said to be in ‘being’ therefore is said to be no more than ‘something I have actually seen’. All the rest of the talk about ‘being’, is really nothing more than communication about that what has been seen. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that we should not speak of the things we take with us through the gate of death in terms of ‘being’, for that would imply that we must have seen them with our physical eyes.

What did the founders of religions want to give to people in the ideas they presented?

They wanted to present ideas to people that would strengthen the spirit within them, endow it with the power of inner light. On passing through the gate of death and entering into the supersensible world man would then carry his own light, being able to illumine what he finds there out of his own power. People find it very easy to say: When I get you to tell me of the supersensible worlds how can I know that all these ideas are really correct?' Let us imagine someone was spreading ideas about the supersensible worlds, ideas accepted by a number of people, and these were in fact wrong, or one-sided, or did not turn out to be correct in the sense we speak of things being correct in the outer physical world. In such a case it would still have been better for people to have taken up the wrong ideas than to have taken up no ideas at all concerning the supersensible world. Why? It would have been better because the soul has to make an effort in accepting any kind of idea about the supersensible world. You may take up correct ideas or incorrect ideas but you have to make an effort, and it is this effort which counts in the spiritual world when we go through the gate of death. It is this effort that will benefit us after death or, indeed, benefits us altogether when we enter into the spiritual world.

Let us assume we had made our own what is a completely wrong view of the spiritual world. By taking it up we have developed our soul forces just as a gymnast develops his limbs. And whatever we have developed will be ours and we carry it with us into the spiritual world. By taking it with us into the spiritual world we then have something there that is similar to our having eyes here on earth. We shall no longer be blind in the spiritual world. Even if it were to be the case that everything we have taken up was wrong and the only thing we have done is to make an effort, this means we shall have developed the eye of the soul so that we are now able to see what it there in the spiritual world.

Now the situation is that the teachings of the different religious teachers are in no way completely wrong. It is rather that the truth concerning the supersensible world has been presented from different points of view and only appears to be contradictory. The one must be taken to complement the other. What is essential is that all these religious systems have something in common, and this is that they all provide the human soul with concepts the soul uses to make itself strong to enter the spiritual world, so that the soul is raised from death in its spiritual depths. Individual religious teachers give to the souls what those souls are capable of receiving, depending on the conditions given in individual races—I would say depending on climatic conditions of the country and on the time when such teachers come forth. They all have in common that they give power and strength to the souls of men. We may also say they make them radiant within so that the souls may be real not only in the physical world but also in the spiritual world. Food to strengthen the soul is the universal truth that has been given to men in all religious systems, depending on the given situation.

Our own age is now faced with the necessity gradually to accept a different view of the spiritual world compared to what people of Past ages were able to take in.

Certain ideas which have evolved with the flowering of modern science need to be strengthened inwardly in our age, to grow in inward Power so that these very ideas enable the soul to be alive in the spiritual world and not dead. It is through this that something more profound—more demanding but also more profound—than anything achieved in the various religions arises for the soul of its own accord. I have given a number of reasons over the years as to why our age is the one called to spiritual science. What I'd like to say is the following: For anyone close to spiritual life it is evident wherever we go—and that is what Is so deeply moving for us today—that one of the elements that has to come into the life of the present age, one form of leaven, is spiritual science.

Many, many souls have gone through the gate of death these last months, gone through the gate of death in the full vigour of youth. I have already told you that in the normal course of events the human beings whose souls have now gone through the gate of death could have expected to live longer on earth. When a human being goes through the gate of death we know that first of all he lays aside his Physical body and then, after a relatively short time, his ether body. This ether body then belongs to the outer ether world and the astral body and the ego continue to belong to the person concerned. It is usually said that the ether body dissolves in the spiritual world. But the time it takes to dissolve differs greatly. When a person has grown very old, i.e. has reached what we may call a normal life-span, he will have used up the forces of his ether body so that it dissolves quickly. But when a person goes through the gate of death in the vigour of youth, his ether body could still have served him for many years. This ether body is a cohesive, structured whole. It will not dissolve immediately in the second case. It will separate from the astral body and the ego and these will go their own ways in the spiritual world. The ether body will separate from them, but it will not dissolve immediately. It will seem quite natural to you that the human being maintains a certain connection with the ether body which has separated immediately but still continues to be present in the spiritual ether. We are therefore able to say that the sphere of this spiritual ether—taking it in absolute terms, close to the earth's aura—contains a very considerable number of unused ether bodies, ether bodies with vigorous forces. It is particularly impressive to see, when observing the spiritual world as it is at the moment, that we find there such a large number of unspent ether bodies. Something else may be noted at every point where we are able to be in touch with the feelings of the dead with regard to these, their ether bodies. (You are, of course, free to believe this or not. My only claim to credibility lies in the power of truth contained in what I have been telling you over many years.) As to the feelings one may perceive in the dead in relation to their ether bodies, one finds that a spiritual whisper reaches one, as it were, from all those who have now made the sacrifice of death: ‘The time has come! Mankind will only make rightful use of the unspent energies within our ether bodies if it becomes conscious of its relationship to the spiritual world.’

Many, many energies stream from those unspent ether bodies. They enter our world and men will only use them rightly if they direct their thoughts to the spiritual world. Then the energies from ether bodies given in sacrifice will be energies to benefit mankind. That, as it were, is what the dead are calling out to us today: ‘Do not allow our ether bodies to be wasted. Do not let the time go by when the energies of our unspent ether bodies are able to serve the spiritual progress of mankind.’

There is a special point I wish to make. On one or more previous occasions I have described the way in which it is possible to help the dead. Under specific conditions the dead are able to benefit if we make accessible to them, by reading to them, what we attain to in spiritual science. I have pointed out that it means much to a person who has gone through the gate of death when we read spiritual scientific material to them in the spirit, when we form a vivid picture of that person in our mind and read a chapter of spiritual science to them, not aloud of course, but in our thoughts. It could also be several or, indeed, many persons. This may seem absurd to people who believe that the whole spiritual world is present around the human being as he enters through the gate of death so that there is no need for us to read to him. But it is not all that absurd. Of course, someone who has died does have the spiritual world around him, he finds himself within it. But just as someone here on earth understands only little of the world of the senses although he is within it, so someone who has died does not have full knowledge of the spiritual world merely by virtue of going through the gate of death, even though he will then be within that world. Such knowledge has to be acquired. When we read to someone who has died it is as though we were giving him food—it flows into him. In the time that lies ahead mankind will be able to achieve much strength-giving power where spiritual things are concerned by using the mantram I have always used at the beginning of our meetings: ‘Spirits of your souls, guardian guides...’ and so forth (in the version making reference to ‘those whom you guard in the spheres...’ for those who have fallen in battle). Usually this Method can be used only with the dead whom we have known personally, but this particular mantram can also be addressed to those among the dead who were not personally known to us. Having used this mantram with true reverence we are then able to read out into the unknown, as it were. Dead people who have gone to their death in consequence of the events of the present time will be able to receive this. They will be able to gain benefit from this connection with us and use it to influence cultural developments on earth through their ether bodies. They will be working together with the people living on earth to advance spiritual life.

There is something else we can achieve in this way. It is perfectly true that we have been living in an age of the most miserable materialism and that the events of the war have triggered something which clearly bears the marks of spiritual life. Anyone travelling through Germany and observing people spiritually could note an enormous difference in spiritual life between July 1914, or even earlier, and then in August, September and especially now. The difference which emerges is that before everybody had his own egoistic aura that was well closed in upon itself and clung to a person, as it were. Now a common aura may be seen, with people's thoughts flowing into it as something uniform. All thoughts going in one direction—that is something highly significant in spiritual terms. It means that for this time of war something has been created in the spirit that was not there before. This is quite undeniable.

But now imagine—for that is how it will have to be—that peace returns. Then souls will grow all the more empty and barren unless they are able to find some kind of spiritual asset out of their inner life. It is something men have need of at all times, that they direct their thoughts to something that has nothing to do with any external reality. In some form or other this strengthens them for the spiritual world. Ideas concerning the supersensible world will strengthen them with regard to the good powers in the supersensible world. Ideas not relating to the supersensible or ideas not justifiable with regard to the supersensible will also strengthen men for the supersensible world, though in that case for the Luciferic or Ahrimanic world. But it simply is part of the makeup of human beings that the spiritual wants to come to expression within them. We might put it like this: Man has to have something that does not hold true for the external world. If he has refused for a long time to take anything into his soul that does not hold true for the external world then there will be a reaction, a reaction to the effect that he will have to believe in something that does not hold true for the external world. Such beliefs may then take hold of human souls in the strangest way. Certain souls completely subject to materialism may nevertheless be religious in an external sense. And such souls may experience that reaction in a particular way. They may, for instance—how shall I put it—all be in accord in believing that some people, some race with its own culture, were a race of barbarians, and they may make this an article of faith. Leaving aside certain other aspects, this is nothing more than the soul's yearning for faith, for something that has no reality in the physical world. It is because they are no longer in the habit of applying their minds to what is genuinely supersensible that such men then fill their souls with the belief that some people or other are barbarians. This becomes an article of faith, a dogma, that is now as fanatically adhered to as they previously adhered to various religious dogmas. It is a substitute for a faith that has long been absent. We need to realize, however, that in the long run this will not do. Once peace has been restored People will no longer be able to have this real-world substitute that finds expression in the belief that some people or other are barbarians. And then emptiness comes, dreadful desolation. That is the prospect for those regions where people are today creating a faith, creating dogmas for themselves in a way that at times is downright disgusting, being nothing but lies. A terrible emptiness of soul will be experienced in those regions. And this emptiness of soul can only be combated if the unspent ether forces of those dedicated to sacrificial death are used in the right way, as I have described. That is why all of them are saying to us—reminding us, as it were, to use their ether forces rightly—and expressing it in form of a spontaneous discovery made as they went through death: ‘Now is the time!’ Mankind has to develop spiritually and these events must now be seen as a twilight state out of which a new Sun-state shall arise.

That is the thought which should fill the hearts and minds of those who suffer great losses: Our age desperately needs to become spiritual, and this will be possible only with help from the spiritual world. The means of providing such help have to come out of painful events like those we are now living through.

To the spiritual scientist it is immediately obvious that these events should not be considered from a materialistic point of view only. Yet a purely materialistic way of looking at these events is about all one can find. It may happen—and we have seen this happen—that a number of people in one part of the world feel that there is hostility towards them and therefore issue some form of proclamation. This proclamation reaches enemy territory and from this enemy territory the question is put: ‘Who was it who wanted this war?’ Or the other party is accused of having wanted the war. Again and again they forget the one thing which must be understood if a deeper insight is to be gained into the situation. Some good for the future will also come out of looking into things more deeply. It has to be understood that all these events are indeed willed out of the spiritual world, because the spiritual world needs the powers that may be the fruits arising from the seed of those unspent ether bodies. If accusations were to be levelled one would also have to level them at the spiritual world. But there all thought of blame goes from one's mind. There we become aware of the iron necessity which exists, the iron necessity which, from the point of view of the spiritual worlds, has to regard our earth world in about the same way as we have to regard a situation where it is necessary to consume so and so much, kill it, take it out of its natural context by force, in order to build up something else. We can not build a house unless we destroy so-and-so many rock formations' There is no point here in speaking of blame. We have to speak of necessity in this case. And in the same way it is necessary in the spiritual world to demand the sacrifices that are now being demanded because seed is needed. This seed consists in the unspent ether bodies which will then be present in all that develops for humanity, and these have to be available if evolution is to proceed. Otherwise mankind would lack the energies it needs to progress. Today's events have their outward significance but, in addition, we must also take these facts fully into account if we want to understand their true inward meaning.

Taking this point of view, we say to ourselves: I may not be able to know from the beginning if everything I am receiving from the spiritual world is ‘correct’, as they say. One thing is true, however, and that is that by uniting these revelations from the spiritual world with my own soul I am exerting my soul, and in this way I am giving it powers so that my soul grows luminous for the spiritual world, is given eyes for the spiritual world.

Conditions are, however, different in the spiritual world than they are in the physical world. In the physical world we can be satisfied once we have formed a thought and recognized its truth. It is sufficient for the practical life of the physical world to have perceived the truth of a thought just once. What I mean is this: If a body of judges wants to establish whether a person is guilty in a particular case, the matter is settled once the conclusion has been reached that the person is guilty. Everything that is necessary has then been done. In the spiritual world, however, everything has not been done once a conclusion has been reached or a thought has been formed. It is necessary for the thought to recur over and over again. What matters in spiritual terms is the repetition. It is not just a matter of knowing something about things but of ever and again making that thought present in the soul. This is also what meditative life is based on, that we have the content of the meditation present in the soul by constant repetition. Anything made constantly present in this way will truly have the power to act like the drops falling on a stone that will finally make a hollow. A single drop falling on to a stone will leave no impression. Nor will it do so if it falls ten times or a hundred times. But in the end it will make a hollow. When we take such things into our soul just once it might appear that they make no impression at all. Nor will they if taken in ten times. But if we are patient we can get to the point where we perceive the essential core that is eternal in man. It is the power we develop in the process that matters. People tend to run away from this power. They do not want it. Why is it that they do not want this power?

The question as to why people do not want this power, why they fight shy of spiritual science even today, can be answered if we briefly look again at the significance of the images for life after death presented in spiritual science. The images which are most important after death are those which do not depict anything belonging to the outer world, do not relate to external existence and are such that a crude materialist will say they are of no significance in life. Yet it is these images which are the most important after death. To form such images calls for such a great power of reflection, of deliberation and attunement, that it will make the soul strong, letting it experience itself, perceive itself, in the spiritual world. Those are the images the souls needs on going through the gate of death.

How can we gain such images? We know the answer. We do so by exerting the soul to a greater degree than it normally exerts itself. If we want to take in the images the modern scientist takes in we merely need to look, if necessary through a microscope or telescope. We can stay nice and passive as we receive impressions of the world and record them. That is only too common. No one likes to make an inner effort, for with things that are invisible it takes greater effort than with things that are visible. And greater effort in thought is what People shy away from, run away from. We are really inwardly lazy, if you will forgive such harsh words; we like to take things easy. The most profound characteristic of modern scientific endeavour is this inner laziness—going for the easy way, not wanting to call forth power from the soul. But if we do this, if we call forth such powers from the soul, what effect does this have after death? Well, we do gain something for life after death out of these powers we have called forth, but it is something we usually do not like at all, because we tend to live with a certain illusion. Let me tell you why we usuallY do not like it. When we enter the spiritual world through death or through initiation, something has to be experienced after death that is like a second death. It is a kind of second death- As you know, we later have to separate also from our astral body and this maY be done consciously or we can sleep through it. There is a certain fear in people's hearts which they do not interpret correctly. It is the fear of waking up so much after death that they will then be conscious of everything around them. That fear is entirely the same as the one men have in the physical world, where they would find it preferable not to live their physical life too intensively, not to be fully awake all the time, but rather go through life in a bit of a haze. Life would be more pleasant that way. And the most comfortable way of all would be to spend all one's life in bed, going through life half asleep. Yet this cannot always be done. The human being has to wake up. And if he has been in a haze concerning what happens after death up to the point in time I have mentioned, he cannot be allowed to go on being in a haze after death. Man must wake up. But he is still afraid of this! Even people who come as close to spiritual science as a scientist who says that nervous disorders affecting the back, the arms and the legs arise from the soul sphere will struggle to resist. He will struggle because he is desperately afraid. He will be like someone who says: 'Something is missing. It's been stolen. The wind cannot have carried it away, so it cannot have been removed by natural forces—some person must have taken it.' And he will stop at that point. He won't go further because he is afraid he may get beaten up. That is how some scientists behave, Binswanger for example. They say that certain nervous disorders affecting the arms, legs and so on are psychological in origin. But they will stick at that. They do not go further because they are afraid of getting beaten up—ahem!—I mean because they like to sleep through what goes on in the spiritual world.

Something we have to become aware of is that modern scientists actually are brought face to face with the effects produced by the spiritual world but refuse to tackle that world. Once these scientists are prepared to tackle the spiritual world they will have to understand that it is not permissible to talk about conditions relating to the spiritual world in just any kind of general terms, but that spiritual science has to be approached in a positive way so that the very act of turning one's mind to spiritual science becomes a kind of healing Process. That is how one thing goes with another. It is not that mental illness as such has increased—it would be wrong to think so—but it is a fact that the type of condition we may call a nervous disorder has spread a great deal in more recent times. If things continue the way they have been going until now the result will be that nervous disorders have to get worse and worse and this will show itself in the course human evolution is taking.

It would be possible to quote some very interesting facts. Let us take one very simple case. There is the Austrian poet Robert Hamerling [1830-89], an excellent poet, some of whose work has also been presented to this group. This man spent much of the second half of his life in bed. He was very ill suffering from a serious illness that was gradually getting worse and worse. He did not develop a nervous condition, however. There is nothing of a nervous quality about his writing. Even when he was only able to lie on one side and was in the most terrible pain when writing, his style was not what we would call 'nervous'. The reason is that he belonged to that Central European culture which has not yet fallen into nervousness the way the spiritual life of other European peoples has done. The nervous state does not take anything away from the life of the spirit, but the facts still must be seen clearly. I have seen how in the 1870s and 1880s People still had a feeling for the things Robert Hamerling had to offer, for instance, and then suddenly in the 1880s tremendous enthusiasm came up for Dostoevsky. [1821-81] Of course I do not want to take anything away from Dostoevsky, but what he mainly has to offer is a very nervy, twitchy art, however great. Such nervy art would develop if the stream of materialism were to go on and on, for Dostoevsky's art is materialistic even if it is psychology’.

If this is not to happen it will be necessary to develop the great powers which the human soul has to come up with to enter into lines of thought like the one that says Saturn, Sun and Moon are earlier stages of earth evolution. Just try and present ideas like Saturn evolution, Sun evolution and so on to a proper modern man, expecting him to exert his mind to the point where such things seem absolutely natural. It is possible to find such things absolutely natural, but the soul has to make considerable efforts to reach that point, and the result will be that the nervousness is driven out. It does require patience, but the nervousness will be driven out. The general nervousness which would otherwise affect the whole of human civilization will be cured if men take up what arises from spiritual science through the widening of the spiritual stream. In a situation where mankind is in danger of going all twitchy, spiritual science comes from the other side to offer a cure.

A psychiatrist who has not yet entered into spiritual science will have to admit to himself that nervous symptoms are on the increase. On the basis of spiritual science, however, he may then perhaps be forced to admit that the best cure for nervous conditions is to tell his patients: ‘Take a book on spiritual science for three-quarters of an hour every day and try to think it through; this will make your nerves much stronger.’ They will definitely get stronger. But we shall only be able to believe this if we clearly understand that our soul life relates to nerve function only in so far as it initiates processes of elimination, as we have shown in the comparison made at the beginning of this lecture. The soul life cannot be cured by putting particular emphasis on eliminatory processes but only by strengthening from within the aspect which has nothing to do with the eliminatory processes. The soul must impregnate this by letting spiritual energies stream into itself. A time will come when prescriptions are written on the basis of spiritual science, prescriptions making use of one thing or another that can only be found through spiritual science, and this will apply particularly to the diseases of more recent times. Of course we are not anywhere near it yet. For a long time to come it will be thought that there is sufficient evidence to show that any kind of therapy that could be labeled ‘mystical’ is claptrap. The label ‘mysticism’ will be all the more freely applied the less people know what mysticism really is. We are the ones who use the term ‘mysticism’ least often. We use it only as a technical term. On the other hand, it is used most of all by people who have no idea as to the nature of mysticism.

In getting a clear idea of these things we cannot hide from the fact that we are living in a significant time of crisis. I have said on a number of occasions that I am not in the habit of saying we live in a time of transition. Every period has something that went before and something that is to follow. The point is to recognize the concrete nature of the transition, the specific sense in which a time is one of transition. In our own time, the concrete part of it is that everything that is now happening points to one thing: Men must find the way to Comprehend the spiritual worlds. They will find calm, inner firmness and inner certainty in those spiritual worlds. That is what mankind is in absolute need of.

If you want to let this idea really come to life in your soul of how a new kind of calm has to be won for the soul out of spiritual science, it is a good idea to meditate on the following. It is truly significant that for the last three or four centuries people gradually had to accept the idea that they are rushing through space, genuinely rushing through space. Of course anybody can say they know this. But people do not usually reflect on this—a fact they already learned at school—that they are rushing through space at tremendous speed.

This more or less brings to mind the story of the man lying in a ditch who was very comfortable as he lay there and yet felt highly dissatisfied. Asked as to the reason for his dissatisfaction, seeing that he did not have to do anything, he replied that after all he had to revolve around the sun with the earth but would find it more convenient to stay behind. That was a man who had taken the notion of that revolution seriously. As a rule people do not think about this, for there is an element in man which he does not normally keep in mind.

To continue in our line of thought: Over the last three or four hundred years people have got used to the thought of being part of the earth as it rushes through space. Resistance has to be put up against this, resistance coming from cosmic space. It really is true that there Was a feeling of security in the old thought that the earth stood still and the sun was moving. Now it will be a long time yet before people come to realize that the Copernican view Copernicus, Nicolas (1473–1543). is not correct. Things are not the way they are taught today. It will however be possible to reach a point where life is brought into the concepts of non-physical science to the effect that a person may be sitting in a railway carriage or travelling by boat and make such inner efforts to counteract the rumbling noises that he will cease to hear them, being wholly contained within himself. That can only be done today with the help of spiritual science-It must be remembered, however, that constant repetition will be required, for it is the strength developed in the process that matters. Then we remain contained within ourselves, calm and sure. This is a good subject for meditation: The powers of the spiritual world will be able to come in and join us if we go out to meet them in the right way in such calm. They can only enter into our awareness if we go out to meet them with the kind of living idea I have described to you

That characterizes the period of transition we live in. That is the transition in which we really find ourselves. A longing for the spiritual world is definitely present in human souls, though most people do not yet know it. A conscious longing for the spiritual world will however develop out of the particular events that now involve such a large part of the earth. Something the spiritual scientist is already aware of today is that all the unused ether bodies given in sacrifice will release a truly profound longing for the spiritual world. This most profound longing will come, the longing for a truth that has to be won not through external observation but inwardly, through efforts made by the soul. The German spirit is indeed prepared for this. It is prepared for a truth that reveals itself to be true out of itself, not requiring external verification. The German spirit is prepared for this and evidence of this may be found everywhere. The thoughts of those who were truly working within the essence of the German spirit have always taken the form of considering truth to be an inner gift of the human soul. What would such a person say to many of the things happening in the present time? During the first days of August statements appeared in the foreign press that Hamburg fay in ruins, that the Russians had entered Stettin and even Cologne. And all kinds of other things were spread about as well. As you know, the Emperor Franz Joseph died on 8 September!³⁶ What would a person of the type I characterized above have to say to this?

‘Brass may be sold for gold by some, forged bills of exchange rather than genuine ones, more than one side may claim a lost battle as a victory, and other lies concerning physical things and isolated events may be made credible for a time. But when it comes to knowledge of the essential reality where the conscious mind has direct certainty of its own existence, the thought of deception or illusion falls away.’

That could have been written out of the depths of what had to be experienced today. It was written by Hegel³⁷ who died in 1831. This is What is so strange: if someone is profoundly moved by the inner reality of truth he will say things that hold true for all times. What has been said out of an awareness of truth can be put forward again at all times. This is something that has to be said concerning the particular nature of the Central European spirit, concerning its very Special relationship to the truth. No one who takes the trouble to find out about these things can deny it. Today one has the feeling, of course, that one needs to ask again and again: ‘For what purpose have People been studying history?’ Perhaps they never actually have. It really is as though their souls had only been born after 1 August 1914, making no use at all of anything that happened earlier to help them form an opinion. But in the final instance all this exists only to make the reaction all the more powerful and intense, to arouse an even more powerful and intense desire for a truth that is true in itself. That is the nature of the transition we are going through now, at a time when this inner bond with the truth is often lacking and shows itself to be lacking. The reaction will be a most profound longing for the truth. Then the souls incarnated in bodies here will hear what those other souls are saying to them, the souls which have prepared themselves through their sacrificial death at this time to learn more of the truth than is generally known today.

That is what I have wanted to say to you in this lecture, to reaffirm once again what I have said on several occasions now in our time Concerning the way the events of the present time speak to us in a living way. For it is true: these events do speak of it. They offer courage and comfort to those who surrender to them ready to make sacrifices, to those who feel grief in considering the events of the present time—courage and comfort to lend new strength:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 34. O. Binswanger: Die Seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges in the series of political pamphlets entitled Der Deutsche Krieg. Stuttgart and Berlin 1914.
• 36. Rudolf Steiner was using irony here, referring to a rumour. Franz Joseph died on 21 November 1916.
• 37. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831). See Phänomenologie des Geistes (VIb); Die Aufkärung (Phil. Bibl. Bd. 114, Leipzig 1907 p.358).

Dear friends, let us first of all remember those who are at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be With you and the hard duties you have to perform!

This evening I intend to consider some of the things that are known about the way our physical world relates to the spiritual world, starting from certain events that concern us more closely within our own movement. This is such a closed and intimate circle that such a thing is possible. Above all, I know that I can justify what I am going to say also to those who were fellow-members during their physical life and will remain such during their further life. Some of the facts I intend to speak of today will relate to them.

Just in recent weeks, dear friends, karma brought it about that I was able to speak at the cremations of dear friends because I happened to be in the places where the cremations took place. No doubt something else also played a role, for at the time I was particularly concerned to obtain certain remarkable impressions arising from the presence of these individualities in the spiritual world by making contact with them when they had gone through the gate of death just a few days before.

As I have said a number of times, it depends on various circumstances whether one is able to gain impressions of one fact or another in the spiritual world. It depends above all on the degree to which it is possible to develop a strong inner bond with the souls concerned. One may sometimes believe one has a very special relationship with a particular soul only to find that it is not entirely so. On the other hand, there are souls where one does not realize that it is fairly easy to establish such a bond until actual contact is established after their death.

In the three cases I wish to speak of first of all, dear friends, an intense desire arose to receive impressions immediately after their death, impressions connected with the whole nature of those souls. I would say this came of itself in these particular cases. You know it is of course possible to pick up all kinds of threads when making a funeral oration, but in these cases something of an inner necessity arose to make really intense contact with the essence of those souls and put it into words at the cremation. I did not specifically intend to characterize the nature of the souls concerned at those ceremonies, but it arose like an illuminating necessity that this had to be. I am not saying that it would have to be the same in other cases. This illuminating necessity arose in the case of one of those souls because—and I am presenting this not as a law but as something I have gone through, an experience—after death the impulses arose for me from the spiritual world to define the essence of that soul. I did not have to find the words; the words arose of their own accord. They came. We shall see later on, dear friends, why that was so, for certain indications can already be given as to that soul's life after death.

First of all let me say a few things about the particular nature of such experiences so that the whole thing can be understood. If we Warn to gain an impression in the physical world we confront the object. We form ideas depending on the way we see or hear something or feel it by touch. We know that it is we ourselves who form the ideas. If one is dealing with a soul that has gone through the gate of death one will immediately notice that everything we produce Ourselves by way of thoughts, of words, really takes us away from the soul in question and that it is necessary to give ourselves up entirely to what is taking shape within us. If the impressions are then to be put into words it will indeed be necessary for us to have the potential within us for these words to form, being unable to do anything ourselves to make the words form in that particular way. We need to able to listen inwardly for those words. If we do listen for them Inwardly we also know with certainty: These words are not spoken by myself but by the soul which has gone through the gate of death.

That is what happened in recent weeks when an older member departed from us and from the physical plane.³⁸ This was an older member who had really entered into our movement with all her heart over a considerable number of years, bringing to life in her feelings, In her heart and mind, the idea and concepts spiritual science is able to give. With tremendous devotion she had identified in her soul with all that is alive and astir in spiritual science. It was now a matter of giving oneself over, as it were, to the impression that arose from this soul. And, strangely enough, it was the case—it has been possible to show this—that just a few hours after physical death had occurred Impressions arose that took the form not merely of verbal impressions but of audible, real words; like a characterization of that soul. Nothing could be done in relation to these words but as far as possible attempt to receive in its pure form what that soul was speaking through my own soul. One certainly must call it speaking in such a case. And those then were the words I spoke at the cremation. They were not my words, as I said, but words—and please consider the Words I shall now use carefully—that came from the soul which had gone through death:

Far into cosmic space I'll carry
My feeling heart; warm it shall grow
In fires wrought by sacred powers;

In cosmic thoughts I'll weave
My own thinking; clear it shall grow
In light of life that ever is renewed;

To depths of soul I'll guide
Devoted contemplation; strong it shall grow
For mankind's true and real goals;

In God's tranquility I thus will strive
Through life's hard struggles and all cares
Prepare my self to be a higher self.

Seeking the peace of joyful labours,
And sensing cosmic truth within my own,
I work towards fulfillment of man's task;

Then may I live in hope,
Going towards my soul's own star
Who in the spirit realm appoints my place.

When I spoke these words again at the end of the funeral oration I had to change the last verse as follows, though I had not known of this beforehand:

Then may I live in hope,
Going towards my star of destiny
Who in the spirit realm appoints my place.

It was clear what this was about. The individual concerned was endeavouring to impress into her very being that now had gone through death—the thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences she had received through spiritual science over the years—impress them in such a way that these ideas and experiences became forces that would mould this individual after death, leaving their imprint. This individual had therefore used the ideas and concepts of spiritual science to put their mark, their imprint, on her own essential nature, shaping the way this essential nature would then continue on the soul's path in the spiritual world.

Soon after this we lost another friend, another member of our movement.³⁹ Again an intense need arose to define the essential nature of this member. This could not happen the way it had happened in the Previous case, however. In the previous case it really was true to say of the way the words were chosen that a soul that had gone through the gate of death was expressing itself, saying what it felt itself to be and what it wished to become; it expressed itself. In this second case the situation was that one had to put one's own soul in confrontation, as it were, and consider this soul in the spirit. Then this soul, too, expressed itself, but in words that this time took the material needed for self-characterization out of the soul of the observer. What the soul which had gone through the gate of death was doing therefore merely provided the stimulus to express what one had to feel about its essential nature now that it had gone through the gate of death. And so the following words arose and had to be sent out after the soul at the cremation:

You came among us,
And a living, innate sweetness
Spoke from the quiet power of your eyes—
Calmness full of life and soul Flowed in the waves
That from your eyes
Would let your inward weaving
Go out to things and human beings.
This inner nature was the soul
within your voice, with eloquence—
More by the nature of the word
Than in the word itself—
Revealing what lay hidden
within the beauty of your soul.
To the devoted love
Of hearts in sympathy
It would without words be revealed.
Sublimest beauty, silent, calm.
Of world-soul creation
This being could reveal to the perceptive heart.

These words were spoken at the beginning and the end of the funeral oration, after which the cremation began. And it was possible to observe, dear friends, that this moment—please note, not the moment when the words were spoken but the moment when the heat of the furnace took hold of the body—was the time when something of a first conscious moment after death occurred. I shall go into this in more detail later on. What I mean by ‘conscious moment’ is this immediately after death a review of life presents itself in the fain of a tableau in the ether body. This goes away after a few days. Now' at the time it proved necessary to have a fairly long interval between death and cremation. Death had occurred at 6 p.m. on the Wednesday; the cremation took place the following Monday at 11 am. At that point the time had already been reached when the life tableau was disappearing. The first moment when there was some degree of consciousness after the life tableau therefore came when the heat of the furnace took hold of the body. It then became clearly apparent that such a nature become spirit has a different way of seeing things' a different way of regarding the world, from a human soul that still remains in its physical body.

When we are in our physical bodies our perception of things in space is that they remain where they are when we move away from them. So if there is a chair standing here and I see it, and I then go a bit further away and look back, the chair is still there. I look back at it. As I continue on my way the chair is still there, it stays where it is. It is not the same for events taking place in time whilst we are within our physical bodies. The events we have let go past us in time do not remain stationary. An event that has passed has passed and we are only able to look back on it in memory. The only thing that links us to the event is our past. It is not like this for a spiritual entity, for this sees events as stationary, the way we see objects remain stationary in space here on earth. And the first impression received by the soul I spoke of was of the funeral and everything that was done and said at the ceremony. This had happened five or ten minutes earlier but for the dead person it was still there, still stood there the way objects stand in space for physical man. The first impression was one of looking back on the words that had been spoken, that is, above all, the words now sounding for her, the words I have just read to You. It really is the way Richard Wagner once put it out of a profound Intuition: ‘Time turns into space’⁴⁰ What has passed has not in fact passed where spiritual experience is concerned. It stands there the way objects stand in space for physical man.

So that was the first impression gained after death—the funeral and the words spoken at it. In this case the situation was such that this look back in time and the vision, as it were, of what had happened at the funeral cannot be said to mean that consciousness lit up and then remained. The twilight state I shall discuss later returned and it was some time before consciousness lit up again. Once more, slowly and gradually, consciousness comes to shine forth again. It takes months until it is so complete that we can say the dead individual has the whole of the spiritual world all around him. But at a later time, exactly through consciousness lighting up at a later time, this particular individual showed a tremendous need to look to this moment again and again, to this particular moment, and to get a clear picture of this moment. This fully agrees with what we are able to know about the whole behaviour of the human being after death, as I intend to show presently.

There is a third case, one that will also deeply concern our Berlin members. It is the case of our dear friend and member Fritz Mitscher⁴¹ who died recently. Fritz Mitscher went through the gate of death just before be had completed his thirtieth year. He would have been thirty on 26 February which lies just ahead.

In the case of Fritz Mitscher, when my thoughts were directed towards him after his death, it was above all the impulses arising from his intense devotion to our spiritual movement that entered into my own soul, the soul of the observer. He had been a truly exemplary Personality in this respect. An exemplary personality in that he—being by nature inclined towards erudition—more and more felt the inner necessity, a deep inner need, to move in a direction where he placed the whole of his erudition, all the knowledge he might acquit!' at the service of the spiritual scientific movement. This made ill one of the people who are so essential to the progress of our philosophy based on spiritual science. What is needed in the present time is that external science, external scientific endeavour, is used in such a way by the soul that this external scientific endeavour joins into the stream of knowledge obtained out of the spiritual world towards which we wish to direct our efforts. And that was the inspiration in the young soul of Fritz Mitscher. One could not help feeling, even in looking upon him in physical life, that he was very much on the right path as far as our movement was concerned.

Our friends will recall something I said when another death had occurred many years ago: Individuals who have taken in, as it were, what physical science has to offer to the present time are the very individuals who make important contributions to our movement after an early death. Our movement depends not only on souls that are incarnated on earth. If we did not have the energies of souls that have gone through the gate of death with earthly knowledge and there remain connected with the will that must flow through our movement, we certainly would not be able in our materialistic age to maintain the hope which we must maintain so strongly to enable us to progress.

Something therefore came to me from Fritz Mitscher's soul that may be epitomized in words I found I could only bring to expression in the way I shall now read to you. These are also the words spoken at his cremation.

Happy prospect come before us,
You appeared upon the plane
Where the earth-grown flowers of spirit
May revealed be to the seeker
Through the power of soul reality.

At the root of all your striving
Lay the purest love of truth;
And to work in light of spirit
Was your life's profound intent,
Never would your efforts cease.

Splendid gifts you had and nurtured,
Faithful, to the truth adhering,
Undeterred by worldly opposition,
Firm of step the bright path you pursued
That to knowledge of the spirit leads.

And you used the organs of the spirit
With persistence and great courage;
They would push away all error
To the edges of your path,
For the truth a space creating.

Your own self you were transforming
To reveal the purest light;
Letting sun force of the soul
Shine with might within your heart—
Here your cares lay and your joy in life.

Other cares and other joys
Scarcely ever touched your soul;
Recognition of the truth
Seemed to you to give life meaning
And a value that was real.

Happy prospect come before us,
You appeared upon the plane
Where the earth-grown flowers of spirit
May revealed be to the seeker
Through the power of soul reality.

Painful loss, most deeply felt,
You now vanish from the plane
Where the earth seeds of the spirit
Ripened in the womb of soul reality
To become awareness for the spheres.

Feel our loving gaze directed
To the heights where you are facing
Now a new and different task;
From those lofty spirit regions
Lend your strength to those you left behind.

Hear the prayer of our souls;
In it speaks our truth and faith:
To fulfil our task on earth we need
Powers great from lands where spirits dwell,
Strength that comes from friends who have died.

Happy prospect come before us,
Painful loss, most deeply felt—
Let us hope that in far nearness
Never lost to us, our lives you'll guide
As a soul star in the spirit realm.

Words like these, dear friends, have been shaped in such a way that they must be considered to have arisen through identification with the soul that has passed through death. They arise from necessity though not spoken by that soul itself, for that soul only provided the stimulus. They arise from necessity, through the energies coming from that soul, to be spoken exactly the way they have been spoken down to every detail. There really was nothing else in my mind where these words are concerned but those words in the form I have just read them to you. It therefore was extremely moving for me when during the night following the funeral the soul of our Fritz Mitscher replied, in a way, to what had been spoken at his funeral—not out of conscious awareness as yet, but out of his essential nature. His soul replied the effect that the following words came from it, that is, now from the soul which had gone through death:

My own self I was transforming
To reveal the purest light;
Letting Sun-force of the soul
Shine with might within my heart
Here my cares lay and my joy in life.

Others cares and other joys
Scarcely ever touched my soul;
Recognition of the truth
Seemed to me to give life meaning
And a value that was real.

It had never occurred to me when I had to write down those verses that they could also be said in such a way that every ‘you’ would become a ‘me’, every ‘your’ a ‘my’. What had come to life for me had merely been:

Your own self you were transforming
To reveal the purest light;
Letting sun force of the soul
Shine with might within your heart—
Here your cares lay and your joy in life.

Other cares and other joys
Scarcely ever touched your soul;
Recognition of the truth
Seemed to you to give life meaning
And a value that was real.

Now those words had been transposed in that way, and they could be transposed without changing the grammatical structure, merely changing ‘your own self’ to ‘my own self’, ‘Shine with might within your heart’ to ‘Shine with might within my heart’, and so on.

So there you have a strange connection between the words spoken here and the soul that had gone through the gate of death, a connection showing that the words spoken here truly did not merely return as an echo out of that soul but had undergone a meaningful change on their return. Let me merely mention that a certain feeling really and truly went through my soul when those words were shaped, as of necessity, providing the following nuance: It appeared to me to be necessary to give a specific mission to this particular soul as it went through the gate of death. We know how much resistance there is to our spiritual movement in the present materialistic age; how far from ready the world is for our spiritual movement. And if we a clear picture of what man is capable of achieving when in his earthly body we can indeed say that he needs assistance. This feeling found expression in the words:

Hear the prayer of our souls:
In it speaks our truth and faith:
To fulfil our task here on this earth
We need powers great from lands where spirits dwell,
Strength that comes from friends who have died.

Asking this soul, as it were, to make further use of the seeds acquired here, using them specifically to further our spiritual movement. That seemed to me to be a feeling that had to arise of necessity especially in the case of this soul.

You will have noted that these three cases of people so close to us have something in common, however much they may differ. What they have in common is that thoughts as to its essential nature were prompted to come up before the soul contemplating these things, a soul specifically stimulated to such contemplation by karma, because a funeral oration had to be given. There was necessity to give expression to its essential nature.

In the case of the first individual I spoke of—you known the spirit in which I am saying these things; only to provide insight, not to show off in any way—the situation was that I had also got to know that individual on the physical plane when she had joined the Society. You get to know a few things that happen when people are within our Society; but our friends will know that it is not my way to make special inquiries into the circumstances and so on of anyone, nor ask about one thing or another these persons have lived through here in their physical life, and so on. So it was not personal satisfaction I gained but rather the satisfaction arising from insight when also characterized this individual according to the nature of her soul the way it had lived through this life on earth. The only thing I had before me was the soul after death. It was not that it spoke the words I read to you first, but I had the soul before me the way it was now after death, in its peculiar nature after death. I really knew practically nothing of what had happened to her before she had joined our Society, nor of her life in so far as it did not have to do with meetings and so on, or the kind of occasions where one meets our members now and then. Yet it was specifically in this case that I found myself Induced, as though of necessity, to speak of certain aspects of her life, aspects relating to her whole life. of the relationship of the individual who had died—and she .had reached a great age—to her children and the work she did in her life. And as I said, it was not a matter of personal satisfaction but rather of satisfaction in having gained insight when the family then told me the0y really were able to recognize the person in question on the basis of what was said there. with every word intensely characteristic of her. The right picture had therefore also been presented of her personal life during her time on earth and the only possibility of this had been in perceiving the fruits of this life now that it had concentrated in the soul. The specific insight we gain from this is that in the case of this particular soul we perceive an intense need after death to direct the eye of the spirit to her own life. It definitely was through no merit of my own that I was able to characterize the personal life of this individual. What happened was that this individuality, though not conscious at the time, directed her soul essence to her own life, preparing for the conscious life after death that was to come. She directed powers that later were to become conscious to her own life, to what she herself had experienced. The Wings I was made to say could then be seen in thought pictures that arose as her soul was directed towards her own experiences. What I had to describe, therefore, was what this individual was unconsciously thinking of herself after death. And the important thing, the thing to be emphasized, is the fact that after death this individual felt an intense need unconsciously to direct her gaze to her own essential nature.

In the case of the second person, who woke, as it were, when the flames took hold of her body, it later showed itself—in a further spontaneous awakening of this kind—from her attitude to the very characteristic of her essential nature, that she had need to reach back as it were, to go back to this essential nature, to the words that characterized her essential nature. And, indeed, in the language—if you can call language what finds expression in the relationship between souls, whether they are incarnated or else not incarnated and already spiritual entities, already dead—in the way one is able to speak of such intercourse it really had to be said: when at a later point I was able to perceive a further awakening in the case of this individual, I was conscious of a deep joy because I had been able to find those particular words. For it became apparent that there had really been good collaboration with the dead person. It could be concluded that the soul of this person—you know I am speaking in analogies—expressed itself more or less as follows: it is good that it is there ‘It is good that it is there in that place.’ Such a feeling was revealed on the second awakening, as though the dead woman were showing that something had been enhanced, as it were, in the spiritual world because it has also been put in human words here on the physical earth and that this was something she needed, and it was good that it had become more fixed through the physical words on earth than she herself had been able to fix it. There was a need there for her to fix this. And it was a help to her that it had been reinforced in this way.

In the case of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher you can of course see quite clearly that the night following the cremation he picked up the thread immediately and made use of the words spoken here, to get a clear picture of his own essential nature, to be clear about himself.

In all three cases, therefore, there has been a looking towards one's own essential nature. These, of course, are the things that first of all touch our souls, our hearts, because of their purely human quality, their purely human aspect. But spiritual insights can only be gained from the world that is at hand if they are ready to come to us as a boon. You cannot force it; such insights must be waited for. And it is particularly in this context that we can perceive the strange ways of karma.

The day after the second of the people I have mentioned had died in Zurich I was in Zurich myself. We were walking past a bookshop and in that bookshop I saw a book I had read years before. The way it is with the life I lead, I would not have found it easy to lay hands on that book in what is supposed to be my library, for that is in a peculiar state due to my living in many places. Years ago, as I said, I had read a book by the Viennese philosopher Dr Ernst Mach,⁴² and this bookshop was offering it secondhand. I felt I wanted to read it again, or at least look at it again. When I reached the third page something presented itself to my eyes that I had long since lost sight of, an interesting comment Ernst Mach had made about man acquiring self-knowledge, about the difficulty man had in getting to know himself. I am quoting almost word for word what it says on page 3 in the book written by Ernst Mach, a university professor, on Analyzing One's Feelings:

As a young man I was walking along a street one day and there encountered a person who aroused the feeling in me that he had a most unpleasant, disagreeable face. And it gave me quite a fright to discover that it was my own face I had encountered, my own face meeting me in a mirror.

So he was walking in the streets, and mirrors inclined towards each other reflected his own mirror image to him. And when he saw himself he said: That is someone with an unpleasant, disagreeable face I am coming up against there. Immediately afterwards the author adds another such comment concerning lack of self-knowledge. He says:

One day I returned home tired from a journey and got on a bus. I saw another man getting on from the opposite side and thought to myself: What kind of down-at-heel schoolmaster is that getting on there! And lo and behold, it was I myself. The mirror on the bus had shown me my own reflection.

Professor Mach adds: ‘I therefore knew the style and bearing of my profession better than I did my own.’

Here we have something of a pointer to show how difficult it is for man to recognise himself even when it comes to his purely external appearance. We do not even know what we look like in three dimensional space, not even if we are university professors. You can see that from this very candid confession.

It is interesting that such an example can be quoted in the context of the case I have referred to, for I think you'll agree that it shows how here, in the physical body, self-knowledge need not be all that much of an obstacle to whatever we need to achieve on earth. You can be a renowned professor and know as little about yourself as this man has told in his book. I have mentioned this example because it is strange that it presented itself to the mind's eye when the soul was, directed to take fresh note of how someone who has died feels a need to grasp his own essential nature, to perceive it. Here in the physical world it is perfectly possible to manage without self-knowledge, I'd say, with regard to anything concerning the purely material aspects of our lives. It is not, however, possible to gain knowledge of the spiritual worlds without self-knowledge. We shall discuss this in a week's time. For external, material concerns, however, we can manage without self-knowledge. Yet as soon as the soul has gone through the gate of death, self-knowledge will be the first thing it needs. This is particularly evident from the experience I have described. Self-knowledge has to be the starting point.

You see, a materialist tends to stick at the question as to whether consciousness persists after death. Spiritual science has shown that when the soul had gone though the gate of death it does not in fact suffer from lack of consciousness but rather has too much of it. A kind of awakening will come at a later stage, not because it is necessary to acquire a new consciousness after death but because there is dazzling consciousness, too much consciousness, and this needs to be gradually subdued in the early stages. You will find more about this in the Viennese cycle⁴³ which has also appeared in print. After death, man has too much conscious awareness, an overpowering awareness, and he needs to get his bearings first in this world of over- powering awareness. Gradually he will achieve this and as he does so his awareness will be less in degree than before. Conscious awareness must first be subdued, just as over-powerful sunlight has to be subdued. A gradual subduing of consciousness has to be achieved. So we cannot speak of an 'awakening' in the terms that apply in the physical world, but of recovering from a superabundance of conscious awareness to the point where it becomes bearable, depending on what we have experienced in the physical world. This requires the following: to get our bearings in this flood of light that is our awareness after death, we need knowledge of our own essential nature as a starting point. We have to be able to look back upon our own essential nature to find the guidelines, as it were, for an orientation in the spiritual world. Lack of self-knowledge is what hinders conscious awareness after death. We have to find ourselves in the flood of light. And so you see why a need arises to characterize the person who has died, to assist them to find themselves.

This is something we gain as a kind of general insight from such Personal experiences that concern us closely. After death, when the etheric life-tableau has disappeared. there is a gradual development. It is based on our getting to know our life, our own life here on earth, as it gradually dawns out of the spiritual worlds. Once the tableau has passed this is our only aim after death. Everything that is part of the spiritual world will be around us. What we have to get to know above all else, however, is our own essential nature. The concepts and ideas familiar to us from spiritual science will then help us, providing the means of orientation. As you can see in the first case, the self-criticism which showed itself had been possible only through the spiritual science she had taken in, so that it was possible to look at her own essential nature and the words could come: ‘To depths of soul I'll guide devoted contemplation; strong it shall grow for mankind's true and real goals’.

The real intention with all this is to lift our spiritual scientific movement out of mere theory and gradually make it into something that the soul is able to take hold of in a living way, into a stream within which we are truly alive, active and present. We shall then know what goes on in the spiritual world around us, just as in the physical world We know that around us is the air we breathe, however much the ignorant may, and indeed will, deny this. That is the future destiny of man: to know something of the fact that just as the air is there for and around the physical body, so the spiritual world is present all around and can be experienced by the soul. This spiritual world relates more to the soul, as it were, the way the air does to the body: it shapes and fashions the soul, filling it with its essence.

We are also able to give certain details of the fate of the soul after death in individual cases. The reason why such things are discussed in more intimate detail at the present time is that in the momentous, but also painful, events of our time, death is letting its breath pass through the world and our age is demanding countless deaths in sacrifice. We are specially challenged therefore to concern ourselves with the occurrence of death in the present age.

We know, dear friends, that when the human being goes through the gate of death he has handed over his physical body to the earth, to the elements of the earth; the ego and astral body have then departed from the physical body. Now, in the second case today we saw that the ether body had already been cast off when cremation took place; the ether body goes away within a few days. There is one particular question that really comes to the fore in the present time. So many people are going through the gate of death in the very flower of their youth these days. Transferring a purely physical concept to the spiritual sphere—where it has even greater validity than in physical life—we may ask the question: ‘What happens with the ether bodies of these people who have gone through the gate of death; the ether bodies that separate off after a number of days? What happens with such a youthful ether body?’ Such a person who goes through the gate of death in his twentieth, twenty-fifth, thirtieth, thirty-fifth Year' or even earlier, puts his ether body aside. This, however, is an ether body that could still have done work here in physical life, would have had energies still for many years. It was karma that this ether body could not use it energies, yet those energies are still within it. They could have continued to be effective here in physical life for Many years to come. Physicists are right in saying that energies are never lost; here on earth they are transformed. This applies even more so in the spiritual world. These energies relating to someone fallen in battle when still young, energies that could still have supported physical life for many years, do not convert to anything else. They are just there. And we are already able to say, particularly in view of the events of our time, that these energies become part of the essential being of the folk soul of the people concerned. This receives those energies so that they are then active everywhere within the folk soul. Those are true spiritual energies, energies from the human being which are present in addition to his ego and his astral body, his individual personality which he carries through the period between death and rebirth. For the future it will be important to understand as far as possible that these energies are also present in the folk soul, that they are present within it in the general activity this folk soul is going to unfold; present as energies, not entities. There they will be the most fruitful, I should say the most sun-like. radiant energies.

There is another instance I would like to refer to. one that is very close to our hearts. It has no direct bearing on present events, but the way it happened and what has become of it can all the same cast some light for us on all the cases where an unspent ether body is put aside when death has occurred at an early age. In the autumn we experienced the death of a member's child, a child seven years of age.⁴⁴ The death of this child occurred in a strange way. He was a good boy, mentally very much alive already within the limits set for a seven-year-old; a good, well-behaved and mentally very active child. He came to die because he happened to be on the very spot where a furniture van overturned, crushing the boy so that he died of suffocation. This was a spot where probably no van went past before nor will go past again, but one did pass just that moment. It is also Possible to show in an outer way that all kinds of circumstances caused the child to be in that place at the time the van overturned, circumstances considered chance if the materialistic view is taken. He was getting some food supplies for his mother and left a bit later that particular evening, having been held up. If he had gone five minutes earlier he would have been well past the place where the van overturned. He had also left by another door than usual; just on this one occasion by another door! Leaving by the other door he would have passed to the right of the van. The van overturned to the left. Studying the case in the light of spiritual science and of karma it will be seen to demonstrate very clearly that external logic, quite properly used in external life, proves flimsy in this case and does not apply.

One example I have quoted a number of times is that of a person who was walking by a river and fell into the water at a point where a stone was lying. Superficially it may indeed appear that the man stumbled over the stone, fell into the water and thus came to his death. The obvious conclusion will be that he drowned. A post mortem examination would however have shown that he suffered a stroke and therefore died and fell into the water. Thus he fell into the water because he was dead and did not die because he fell into the water. Cause and effect have been confused. Things that seem perfectly logical in external life may be completely wrong.

Superficially, the death of young Theodor Faiss could also be described as a most unfortunate accident. In reality, however, the karma of this child was such that the ego, to put it bluntly, had ordered the van and the van overturned to fulfil the child's karma. So there we have a particularly young ether body. The child could have grown up and reached the age of seventy. The energies in the ether body would have been enough for seventy years but they went through the gate of death after seven years. The whole event took place in Dornach as you know. The father had been drafted into the German army and was not there at the time: he died quite soon after, having been wounded at the front. The whole thing happened in the immediate neighbourhood of the building and from that time the aura of the building at Dornach contains the energies from the ether body of this child. A person working for this building and able to perceive the spiritual energies involved in the project will find within them the energies of this child. Quite apart, therefore, from the ego and astral body which have entered the spiritual world, to be active there between death and rebirth, the unspent ether body has now united with the whole of the spiritual aura of the building at Dornach. Deep and significant feelings attach to such insights for they do not represent knowledge of the dry numerical kind we take into our minds, but insights received into the soul with deep gratitude. Mindful of this, I shall never even for a moment fail to remember, in anything I have to do for that building at Dornach, that these energies are contributing to the project, helping me in the project. Here theoretical insight merges into life itself.

Being aware of this, dear friends, you will understand that it is possible to get some idea now, at a time when countless ether bodies pass through the gate of death without having achieved fulfillment on earth, as to what will happen when the sun of peace returns again, after the twilight of war. Then the energies, the ether forces of those who have passed through the gate of death, the gate of suffering, will want to unite with the souls that are active here on earth, unite with than for the good of the earth and for progress on earth. This means, however, that there will have to be people on earth who appreciate these things, who will be aware of the fact that the people who have made their sacrifice to the age are up there in the spiritual world in their residual ether bodies. They want to join in the work of this world. Their work will only be wholly fruitful if there are receptive souls here that are Prepare{ to unite their thoughts with what comes to them from the spiritual world. These are momentous times, but also difficult and painful times. For their fruits it is immensely important that thoughts are created out of a science that acknowledges the spirit, thoughts that are then able to unite with the thoughts coming down from the ether bodies of those who have died in sacrifice. Thus we have an indication that even in the midst of these difficult times, under the sign of suffering also and of death, we are under the sign of greatness, that the difficult things which are happening also remind us that they are intended to give rise to an age that is more open to the spirit than the past age has been. What must not happen is that those who have made the sacrifice will have to look down on an earth world for which they have given themselves, to contribute to its progress and salvation, and find themselves unable to take action because there are no souls sending receptive thoughts out towards them. We therefore must see spiritual science as something that is alive, a living element that will be needed in the time that is to come. particularly with regard to the events of the present day. It is this which I have been summing up again and again in the words I shall now speak, in the spirit of and in accord with what we have been considering:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 38. Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer. See Rudolf Steiner: Unsere Toten (GA 261), address given in Basle on 10 January 1915.
• 39. Sybil Colazza. See Unsere Toten (GA 261), address given in Basle on 10 January 1915.
• 40. ‘Time here turns into space.’—Gurnemanz in Parcifal, Act 1.
• 41. See Rudolf Steiner: Unsere Toten (GA 261), address given in Basle on 5 February 1915.
• 42. Mach, Ernst (1838 –1916): Analyse der Empfindtuigen und das Verhaltnis des Physischen vim Psychischen Jena 1900, p 3.
• 43. Rudolf Steiner: Inneres Wesen des Menschen und Leben zwischen Tod und newer Geburt (GA 153), 1914. English translation of some of the lectures in The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth (tr. D.S. Osmond and C. Davy) (London) Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1959.
• 44. The child in question was Theo Faiss. See Rudolf Steiner: Unsere Toten (GA 261), address given in Dornach on 10 October 1914.

Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be with you and the hard duties you have to perform!

Last week we gave some detailed consideration to souls who, if we want to look for them now, have to be looked for in the spiritual worlds. And we considered souls who are close to us, letting them tell us one thing or another that can illumine for us the time a soul entity spends in the spiritual world. Today I want to consider more the path the human soul may take to enter into the spiritual worlds While dwelling in a body here on earth, there to find the spiritual realms we spoke of last week, where what are called ‘dead’ souls may be found. It has to be stressed over and over again that the path into the spiritual worlds appropriate to the soul of modern man in the light of the whole evolution of mankind is a path with many preparatory stages, some of them difficult indeed, stages that have to be won through. Today I intend to speak of some aspects of the path to insight and I shall do so from a point of view that may be called imaginative perception.

Dear friends, you know very well already that in the spiritual world the human soul is really and truly able to learn and observe only in a Way that does not make use of the body as an instrument. Everything We are able to gain by using the body as our instrument can only provide knowledge and experience relating to the physical world. To experience the spiritual worlds we must find a way of doing so outside the physical body. That way is indeed open to modern man, though it is not easy to achieve observation of the spiritual world by going outside the body. Another point is that anyone not able to make such observations himself will be able to evaluate observations achieved in the spiritual world, once they have been achieved, on the basis of a genuinely sound common sense, that is not just the common sense generally called sound, but a genuinely sound common sense. Today, however, our subject will be the path as such, the way the human soul on the one hand comes out of the physical body, as we might put it, and on the other enters into the spiritual world. As I said, I want to use the approach of imaginative perception today. Last week we took another approach. Many things will have to be presented in the form of images and it will be up to you to pursue these further In meditation. In doing so you will find that this path is one of very special significance.

It is possible to enter into the spiritual world through three doors, as it were. The first may be called the Door of Death, the second the Door of the Elements and the third the Door of the Sun. Anyone Wishing to follow the path to knowledge in its entirety will have to take the road to knowledge through all three doors.

The Door of Death has always been very fully considered wherever the mysteries were taught. This Door of Death cannot be reached unless we seek to reach it through meditation, a term by now thoroughly familiar, which means by giving ourselves up to certain thoughts or feelings that are exactly the right ones at the time for our individual personality. We make them the absolute centre of our conscious minds, identifying with them completely. It is very easy for human effort to flag when this path is taken, for lack of ease and the overcoming of obstacles are part of this and are essential. So it will be necessary again and again to make those quiet, deeply personal efforts, endeavouring to give ourselves up to those thought contents, those feelings, in such a way that we forget the whole world and live only in those thoughts, those feelings. When we learn to achieve this over and over again we shall finally be in a position where we perceive something that is like a kind of independent life within the thought on which our conscious mind is focused. We shall get the feeling that until then we had merely been thinking that thought, making it the focus of our conscious mind; now, however, this thought will be felt to be developing a life of its own, an inner activity of its own. It is as though we found ourselves in a position where we are truly able to produce a distinct entity within us. The thought begins to take shape as an inner structure. That is an important moment, for we realize that this thought, this feeling, has a life of its own and we feel ourselves to be the enveloping form holding this thought, this feeling. We are then able to say to ourselves that our efforts have made us the arena where something has been able to develop that is now achieving a life of its own through us.

It is an important moment in the life of a person practising meditation when he awakens to himself and the thought held in meditation comes to life. He will then realize that spiritual objectivity has come to him, that the spiritual world is paying attention to him, that it has drawn close. Of course, it is not easy to reach this level of experience, for before it is reached we have to live through feelings and sensations for which the human being has a natural aversion. A certain feeling of isolation has to be experienced for example; a feeling of loneliness, an experience of being abandoned by the physical world as it were, the feeling that this physical world does many things that wear us down, threatening to crush us. It is through this feeling of isolation that we finally reach the point where we are able to bear the strong inner life to which our thought awakens, into which it is born, as I should like to put it. There is much indeed that goes against the grain. There is much in man that goes against him and this can lead to a real experience of thought coming to life within him. There is One particular feeling that comes up, an inner experience that comes up, which is one we really do not want to have. At the same time we will not admit to ourselves that we do not want to have it, saying instead: ‘Oh, I'll never do it! I'll go to sleep in the process. My ability to think will go, for this goes beyond my inner strength.’ In short, We will automatically come up with all kinds of excuses, for the experience to be gone through is that thought, in thus becoming enlivened, really becomes a distinct entity. It assumes reality, taking on a form of identity. Then the vision arises, and not merely the feeling, that the thought is like a small seed to begin with, a round seed one might say, and that it then grows and develops into something that has definite form, extending into the head from outside. Then a challenge is presented: ‘You have identified with the thought and now you are inside the thought and growing into your own head with the thought. Essentially, however, you are still outside.’ The thought assumes the form of a winged human head that continues into indefiniteness and then extends into one's own body through the head. The thought thus develops into something like a winged angel's head. That is what we must actually achieve. It is difficult to have this experience, and you will really believe you are losing all ability to think at the moment when the thought grows to assume that form. One feels one will be taken from oneself at that moment. And what so far has been the body we have known, into which the thought is now reaching, will feel like an automaton that has been left behind.

There are also a great many obstacles in the objective spiritual world to prevent this becoming visible to us. The winged angel's head truly becomes an inner vision but there are all kinds of obstacles against it becoming visible. Above all, the point reached is the actual threshold of the spiritual world. If we succeed in standing firm within ourselves the way I have described, we are then on the threshold of the spiritual world, truly on the threshold of the spiritual world. There, however,

stands the potentate we have always been calling Ahriman, though at first he will be quite invisible to man. We do not see him. And it is Ahriman who makes sure we do not see the thought entity taking the form I have described to you. He does not want us to see it. He wants to prevent that. The best way of reaching that point is by the path of meditation, of course, and this always makes it easy for Ahriman to bring to nought, as it were, what we want to achieve, so long as we cling to the prejudices of the physical world. And I really has to be said that people have no idea how much they cling to prejudice with regard to the physical world. They cannot imagine that there is another world with different laws from those of the physical world. It is not possible for me today to discuss all the prejudices we carry with us when we come to the threshold of the spiritual world, but let me present one very major prejudice, one of a fairly subtle nature.

You see, speaking of the physical world people speak of monist philosophy, of there being only one ultimate substance or principle, frequently saying to themselves: ‘I can only understand the world if I see the whole of it as a unity.’ We have had some strange experiences particularly in this respect. When we started our spiritual movement here in Berlin with just a few members—that is quite a few years ago now—people found their way to us who then discovered that after all they could not feel they belonged to us in every fibre of their being. There was a lady, for instance, who after a few months came and told us that what spiritual science had to offer was not really the right thing for her, for it meant one had to do a great deal of thinking and thinking wiped out exactly the things that were important to her. She said she always sort of went to sleep when thinking. She also felt that really there was only thing that counted, and that was unity! It became evident that in her case the unity of the world which monists look for in all kinds of spheres—and not only the materialists among monists—had become a fixed idea: Unity, unity, unity! She wanted to look only for unity. In the intellectual life of Germany, one particular philosopher, Leibniz, was very much a monadologist. He sought not unity, but the many monads⁴⁵ which for him were ensouled entities. He therefore knew quite clearly that as soon as one enters into the spiritual world it can be a matter only of plurality, not of unity. And so there are monists and pluralists. These views are considered philosophies. The monists fight the pluralists who are speaking in terms of plurality; they themselves only speak of unity.

For you see, it is like this: Unity and plurality are concepts that only apply to the physical world. And now people are thinking these things must also apply to the spiritual world. But there they do not apply. There we have to be prepared to see a unity at one moment and then having to overcome this unity the next moment, and that it will show itself to to be a plurality. It is unity and plurality at one and the same time. Nor is it possible to transfer ordinary arithmetic, physical mathematics, to the spiritual world. It is one of the most powerful, and at the same time also most profound, Ahrimanic Prejudices—wanting to apply concepts we have acquired in the physical world just as they are to the spiritual world. We really must arrive on its threshold without bag and baggage, unencumbered with all we have learned in the physical world. We have to be prepared to leave things behind on the threshold. All concepts and ideas, and, indeed, especially the concepts we have made great effort to achieve, have to be left behind. We have to be prepared to accept that in the spiritual world something quite new is given. Man has an enormous tendency to cling to what is given in the physical world. He wants to take his achievements from the physical world into the spiritual world. Yet it must be possible for him to face a clean slate, face utter emptiness, where his only guide will be the thought that is beginning to assume life. This entry into the spiritual world has been called the Door of Death because it is really much more of a death even than Physical death. In physical death people are convinced they put aside their physical body. On entry into the spiritual world we must resolve really to put aside our concepts and ideas and to allow our essential nature to be rebuilt.

Now we come to stand before the winged thought entity that I have spoken of. We shall come to stand before it if we really make every effort to live within a thought. All we need to know then is that when the moment that lies ahead makes-different demands on us from those we have envisaged we must truly stand fast, we must not turn back as it were. The turning back tends to be an unconscious reaction. We flag, but our flagging merely indicates that we are not willing to leave behind bag and baggage. We are not prepared to do this because it means that the soul has to die in a way, with all it has acquired on the physical plane, before it can enter into the spiritual world. This door therefore has to be called the Door of Death, such being its nature. Then we shall be able to use the winged thought as a spiritual eye we have acquired, or also a spiritual ear, for it is exactly through this thought entity that we hear, sense, perceive what is there in the spiritual world.

Dear friends, it is possible to speak of specific experiences we may gain that allow us the enter into the spiritual world. Nothing else is required if we wish to gain these experiences but to persist in meditation using the prescribed method. Above all, it must be clearly understood that certain feelings with which we approach the threshold of the spiritual world will have to be put aside beforehand. These feelings arise because we usually want the spiritual world to be different from the way it presents itself to us.

This, then, is the first door, the Door of Death.

The second door is the Door of the Elements. It is the second door to be gone through by all who practise meditation with true devotion. It is, of course, also possible for people to have the benefit of a constitution that lets them reach the second door without having gone through the first. This is not a good thing from the point of view of true insight, but it is possible to get to that point without having gone through the first door. Full and proper insight will be gained only by going through the first door and then approaching the second in conscious awareness. This second door comes about in the following way. You see, having gone through the Door of Death one first of all finds oneself in specific conditions which one can see are really similar to sleep if looked at externally, considering their effect en man and the way they are apparent in the life of man. Inwardly, however, they are quite different. Externally, man is as though in a sleep state when in these conditions. It is exactly at the point when his thought has begun to live, when it begins to stir, to grow, that external man is in a sleep-like state. He need not be lying down—he may be sitting on a chair—but he is in a kind of sleep state. Outwardly this state cannot really be distinguished from the ordinary sleep state; inwardly, however, it is very different. Returning to the normal state we have in life we then realize that we were not asleep but within the life of thought, just as we are now in a condition where we have woken to the physical world, as usual, and are looking through our own eyes at things which are luminous. Yet we also know that now when we are awake we are thinking, producing thoughts, putting them together. Just before, however, when we were in that other state, the thoughts were producing themselves out of themselves. One thought approached another; they illumined one another; one thought moved away from another—and what we usually do ourselves when thinking has there been doing itself. We know that whilst we are normally an ego that attaches one thought to another, we float first to the one thought and then to another, when in this other state we are united with them; then we are off and within a third thought and afterwards Come floating back again. We get the feeling that space has ceased to exist.

I think you will agree that in physical space the position is that if we feel drawn to a point and look back on it, then move away from it and finally want to approach it again, we would first have to make our way back again; we would have to make our way there and back. This does not apply in the other state. Space is not like the space we know then, and we jump through space, as it were. One moment we are at one point, the next we have gone. We do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased to exist. Here we are alive and active within thought itself. We know that the ego has not died. It is active within the life of thought, but we are not immediately masters of the thoughts within which we now live. The thoughts produce themselves—we are drawn along. We are not actively swimming in the currents of thoughts; instead the thoughts are taking us on their shoulders as it were, carrying us along. This state has to come to an end. It does so when we go through the Door of the Elements. Then We gain control of it all and are able to create a particular line of thought quite deliberately. Then our will is alive within the whole of thought life. This again is a tremendously important moment. I have even spoken of it exoterically in my public lectures.⁴⁶ The second goal is reached by identifying with our own destiny. This will enable us to bring the will into the world of living thought.

When we have first gone through the Door of Death we come to a point where various things are done with us in the spiritual world. We come to do things ourselves in the spiritual world by identifYing with our destiny. This is only achieved gradually. Then our thoughts assume a character identical with our own essential character- The deeds of our essential nature enter into the spiritual world. To do this properly it will be necessary to go through the second door. when we begin to use the power we derive from identifying with our destiny to take active control in our thoughts—not merely going along With a thought as though it were a dream picture but able to erase one thought or another as occasion arises and call up another—when we come to a point where we begin to be able to use our will in handling things, then we shall indeed have to go through an experience that may be referred to as going through the second door. It will be found that the will-power we shall now require presents itself to us as a fearsome beast. In the mystical tradition this has for many thousands of years been known as 'meeting the lion' . This encounter with the lion has to be gone through. It consists in a feeling of abject terror concerning what has to be done in the thought world, great fear of entering into a living union with the thought world. This terror must be overcome, just as the sense of isolation has to be overcome at the gate of death. We feel terror. This terror may present itself in all kinds i of ways, as a sensation that is not at all like fear or terror, yet it s essentially fear of what one is getting into there. It is important that we genuinely find a way of controlling the lion. The Imagination paints a very vivid picture of the beast opening its huge jaws ready to devour us. The will-power we want to use in the spiritual world is threatening to devour us. All the time the overriding sensation is that we must use our will, we must do something, we need to take hold of one thing or another, and at the same time another feeling arises in connection with all these elements of will activity into which we are entering. It is the feeling that they will devour us if we take hold of them, extinguish us in the world. That is the lion devouring us. What we literally must do—if we are to stay with the metaphor—is not to give in to fears that the will elements may take hold of us there in the spiritual world, devour us and strangle us; no, we must mount the lion and take hold of those will elements, using them to effect our deeds. That is the crux of the matter.

Your can see, of course, what this is all about. Having first of all gone through the gate of death we are then outside the body, and out there we can only use the forces of the wilt. We must fit into the cosmic harmonies. The forces to be used out there are also within us, it is only that they function at an unconscious level—the forces that make the blood move, make our hearts beat, derive from spiritual entities. And we become immersed in these when we immerse ourselves in the element of will. These forces are within us. If someone is taken hold of by the element of will without having followed the regular esoteric path, without having gone through the gate of death, he is taken hold of by the forces that normally circulate in his blood, beat to his heart. He is then not using the forces that exist outside his body but the forces present within his body. This would be ‘grey magic’. It would induce a person to intervene in the spiritual world of his Own accord with forces we should not use to intervene in the spiritual world. So it is important that we see the lion at this point, that we truly have this beast before us and know: That is what it looks like, that is how the forces of will want to take hold of us, and we must lay hold of it out there outside the body. If we do not go up to the second door we shall not see the lion and shall then be in permanent danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egotism. The right Path to knowledge is the one that leads first of all out of the physical body and existence as a human being, after which we approach the relationship we will need to form with the entities of the spiritual world.

Now, of course, most people are inclined to look for an easier way to the spiritual world than through genuine meditation. It is possible, for instance, to avoid the Door of Death and approach the second door if one's inner constitution permits this. This is achieved by giving oneself up to specific mental pictures, particularly of the fervent type, that are supposed to suggest general surrender to the whole universe. Mental pictures suggested by some mystic or other with only partial knowledge, suggested in good faith. But they mean we pass over thought effort as though in a dream, with feelings being stimulated directly. Feeling are whipped up, the emotions are enthusiastified. It will indeed be possible to reach the second door by this method, and one will also be given over to the will forces, but instead of controlling the lion the person is devoured by it and the lion will do as it likes with him. This means that things will occur that fundamentally speaking are occult, but in the main are egotistical. Despite a certain inherent risk it is therefore necessary from the point of view of the true esoteric teaching of today again and again not to draw attention to any kind of mysticism that merely whips up feelings and emotions. Such an appeal to elements that whip up the inner life of man, cracking the whip to drive him out of his physical body whilst keeping him in the context of his blood and heart forces, the physical forces active in the blood and the heart, will lead him to perceive the spiritual world iii a way; this cannot be denied and may indeed have much to be said for it that is good. But it makes man feel his way about in uncertainty in the spiritual world, so that he is not the least able to differentiate between egotism and altruism.

One finds oneself in a difficult situation having to stress this, for present-day minds are still very apt to got to sleep during proper meditation and anything relating to it. They prefer not to tighten uP their thinking to the point where it is possible to identify oneself with the thinking process. They much prefer to be told: Give yourself up to all-loving devotion, to the universal spirit, or something like that. The result is that thinking is avoided and the emotions are whipped up. People are indeed guided to spiritual perception in that way; but they are not in full conscious awareness and are unable to tell if the things they experience there, things they experience for themselves, arise from egotism or do not arise from egotism. Yes, parallel to selfless meditation there has to be enthusiasm brought into all our feelings, but the point is that this must run parallel to thought. Thought must not be excluded. Certain mystics are, however, seeking to achieve something exactly by the method of suppressing thought and giving themselves up entirely to the glow of whipped-up emotions.

This is a difficult point, for it does work and people who whip UP their feelings like that do progress much faster. They do enter the spiritual world and they have all kinds of experiences there, and that is what most people want. For most people it is not a question of entering the spiritual world in the right way but rather of getting there altogether. The uncertainty arises because if we do not first go through the Door of Death and instead approach the Door of the Elements directly, Lucifer will prevent us from actually perceiving the lion. We are then devoured by it before we see it, as it were. The problem is that we are no longer able to tell what relates to us and what is Part of the world out there. We come to know spiritual entities, elemental spirits. It is possible to get to know quite an extensive spiritual world without going through the Door of Death, but on the whole these are spiritual entities whose function it is to maintain the human circulation and human heart action. Such entities are of course always present in the spiritual, the elemental, world around us. These are spirits whose sphere of life is the air, the warmth flowing around us, and also light.

Their sphere of life also lies in the music of the spheres our physical organs are unable to hear. They are spiritual entities active and present in all that lives. That is the world we would then enter. It all gets very seductive because it really is possible to make the most marvellous spiritual discoveries in this world. You know, when someone who has not gone through the Door of Death but has marched straight up to the lion gate, failing to see the lion, perceives an elemental spirit whose function it is to maintain heart activity, such an elemental spirit—which also has to maintain the hearts of other people—may on occasion give news of other people, even of people from the past; or it may offer prophetic tidings relating to the future. So the business may bring great successes but it still is not the right path, for it does not give us free mobility in the spiritual world.

The third door to be passed is the Door of Sun. Again there will be a specific experience as we approach this door. At the Door of Death we must perceive a winged angel's head, at the Door of the Elements a lion. At the Door of the Sun we must perceive a dragon, a wild dragon. And we must take a proper look at this wild dragon. But now Lucifer and Ahriman will together make every effort to make the dragon invisible, to hide it from our spiritual vision. If we do perceive it we shall find that, fundamentally speaking, this wild dragon has above all to do with ourselves. It is the tissue of the instincts and feelings fundamentally relating to what in ordinary life we call our lowest nature. The dragon has within it all the forces we need for the process of digestion and many other things—if you'll forgive my reference to such base functions. The principle within us that enables us to digest food and perform a number of other functions linked to what strictly speaking is our lowest nature appears to us in the t-07. of a dragon. We must look at it as it emerges from us coil upon coil. It is far from beautiful, that dragon, and this makes it easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to influence our unconscious soul life and get us to a point where unconsciously we do not want to know about seeing the dragon. It is a tissue also of all our idiocies, all our vanities, our pride and self-seeking and also of our basest instincts.

The Door of the Sun is given that name because it is the forces dwelling in the sun that also weave the very tissue of which the dragon is composed. Sun forces make it possible for us to digest our food and perform those other organic functions. This truly comes about through living with the sun. If we do not perceive the dragon at the Door of the Sun the dragon will devour us and we shall become one with it in the spiritual world. We shall then no longer be different from the dragon; we shall actually be the dragon going through experiences in the spiritual world. And the dragon can experience things of great significance, it can learn magnificent things as it were. Those are experiences more enticing, I'd say, then those made at the Door of Death or after passing the Door of Death. The experiences made at the Door of Death are colourless to begin with, shadowy and subtle, so slight and subtle that they easily escape us and we are not much inclined to develop the degree of attention needed to take hold of them. And again a certain pitch must be reached in order that something so delicately coming to life in our thought may be able to expand. In the end it will expand into a world. But it calls for long term active effort and endeavour to reach the point where it shows itself as a reality full of colour, sound and life. We must let those forms that are without sound or colour take on life from all corners of infinity, as it were.

If for example we want to use what may be called ‘head clairvoyance’—meaning the type of clairvoyance that arises when thought is enlivened—to detect the simplest spirit of the air or of water, this spirit of the air or the water will initially be something so slight and shadowy as it flits across the horizon that it will not catch our interest. If it is to assume colour or to sound forth, colour has to come to it from the whole periphery of the cosmos. That however will only happen after a long period of inner effort. It will only happen if we watt for this to be given to us. Just think, if you have such a small spirit of the air, metaphorically speaking. and it is to come out in colour, to appear in colour, then the colour has to radiate in from a mighty part of the cosmos. It will be necessary to have the strength to make it radiate in. Such strength however can only be achieved through devotion. The radiant forces have to come in from out there through devotion. If we are all of a kind with the dragon, if we are One with it, and we see a spirit of the air or the water, the inclination will be to let the powers radiate out that are within us, specifically in the organs which in ordinary life are called lower organs. That Is much more easily done. The head is in itself a perfect organ, but the astral body and the ether body of the head do not have much colour to them. The colours have been used to form the brain, for instance, and particularly the cranium, the bony skull cap. If therefore you used head clairvoyance on the threshold of the spiritual world to lift your astral body and ether body out of the physical body, there would not be much colour to it. Colours are used to form the perfect organ, the brain. If on the other hand you use, shall we say belly clairvoyance, to lift the astral body and ether body out of the stomach. the liver, the gallbladder and other organs, the colours have not been used in the same way to form perfect organs. These organs are only on the way to perfection. What comes from the astral body and ether body of the belly is beautifully coloured; it glitters and glistens in all kinds of sun colours. Lifting your astral body and ether body out of that region you will bestow the most marvellous colours and hues upon the forms you are seeing. It is therefore possible for someone to see marvellous colours and paint pictures in gorgeous colours.

It is of course interesting to study the spleen, the liver and the gut. Anatomists find this interesting and for science it is indeed necessary. Yet if someone with knowledge goes into this, the beautiful and colourful pictures which appear represent what lies at the back of the digestive process two hours after a meal. There can be no objection to this being investigated. Today anatomists find it necessary to study these organs; one day science will gain a great deal from investigating them and knowing what the ether body is doing when the stomach is digesting food. One thing has to be clearly understood however—if we do not have conscious awareness as we go through the Door of the Sun, we will not know that we are offloading everything mere is in the ether and astral bodies of our bellies onto the dragon, separating it out. Letting this radiate out into the forms seen clairvoyantly we do indeed perceive a marvellous world. The beautiful result is also the one most easily achieved, but it does not in the first place arise through higher powers, out of head clairvoyance' but through belly clairvoyance. It is very important that we know this. For the cosmos nothing is low in the absolute sense, only relatively speaking. The cosmos needs to work with tremendously significant forces to bring about what is needed for the digestive system. The point, however, is that we must not fall into error, not deceive ourselves, but know things as they are. To know that something presenting itself from a truly marvellous aspect is nothing but the digestive process, that is something really important. If on the other hand we believe, say, that a special angelic sphere is revealing itself to us in such a picture, then we are indeed in error. A reasonable man will therefore not be against a science being nurtured on the basis of such knowledge but merely against such things being put in a false light. That is the real point. It may happen, for instance, that some process in the course of digestion results in someone always lifting out a specific part of his ether body at a specific stage in the digestive process; he may then be a natural clairvoyant. It is however important to know what is going on there.

Man will find it difficult therefore to use head clairvoyance—i.e. a sphere where all colour present in the ether and astral bodies has been used to bring about the marvellous structure of the brain—and make forms that are without colour or sound assume full colour and to resound. With ‘belly clairvoyance’ on the other hand he will find it relatively easy to see the most marvellous things in the world. This belly clairvoyance does of course also involve powers which man must learn to use. The powers used there for the digestive process are after all merely transformed power. We will experience them in their right form if we get better and better at identifying with our destiny. In this field, too, it will teach us to draw up not just the winged angel s head that came up first but the other part that follows, and it is important to draw up not just the powers that serve digestion but also those of a higher kind. Those are the powers that lie in our karma, in our destiny. Identifying ourselves with these we shall be able to send forth the spiritual entities we see around us, entities whose tendency is such that sounds and colours flow inward from the universe. Then, of course, the spiritual world will have its full content, it will be concrete, so real and concrete that we find ourselves within it the same way we find ourselves in the physical world.

A particular problem arises at the Door of Death. We really have the feeling—and this, too, has to be overcome—that we will lose ourselves there. Having made a real effort, however, to identify with the thought element we can also be aware that we may have lost ourselves but will find ourselves again. That is an experience one has there. We lose ourselves on entering into the spiritual world, but we also know that we shall find ourselves again. The step has to taken of reaching the abyss, losing ourselves in the abyss, but trust that we shall find ourselves again over there. That is an experience to be gone through. Everything I have described refers to inner experiences that have to be gone through. It is important to know what really happens to the soul there. It is just the same when we are supposed to see something; it is easier if a friend points it out than if we try and work it out for ourselves. But everything I have described can be achieved if you practise true devotion in giving yourself up again and again to your inner work and to inner overcoming through meditation. This has been described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in the second part of Occult Science.

This is especially important—that such different kinds of experience are met with beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If we desire—and this is only natural—to see a continuation of the physical world in the spiritual world, a duplicate of it; if we think everything is bound to look the same in the spiritual world as it does here in the physical world, we cannot enter that world. It will indeed be necessary to go through something that feels like a reversal of everything we have known here in the physical world. Here in the Physical world we are used to open our eyes, for example, and see light, to gain the impression of light. If we expect to be able to open a spiritual eye in the spiritual world and gain an impression of light, we cannot enter that world for we will have the wrong expectations. Something like a mist will be woven which veils the spiritual senses, hiding the spiritual world from us the way a sea of mist hides the mountains from view. It is not possible, for instance, to see objects illumined by light in the spiritual world. It must be understood that in the spiritual world we ourselves shine forth with the light. When light falls on an object in the physical world the object becomes visible to us. In the spiritual world we ourselves are inside the ray of light, touching the object with the light. One therefore knows one is swimming with the ray of light in the spiritual world; one knows oneself to be within the radiant light. This serves to indicate how we can acquire ideas that can help us get on in the spiritual world. It is extremely useful, for instance, to visualize the following: What would it be like if you were inside the sun now? Not being inside the sun you are seeing objects when they are illumined by the sun s rays, because they reflect the light. Imagine now you are inside the sun's rays and touching the objects with them. This contact is an experience we have in the spiritual world; in fact, experience in the spiritual world consists of our knowing ourselves to be alive within it. We know ourselves to be alive within the weaving of thoughts. It is just when this state begins, where we consciously know ourselves to be within the weaving of the thoughts, that there is an immediate transition to the state of knowing oneself to be within the bright radiance of light. For thought arises from light. Thought weaves in the light. But it will only be at that point that we experience ourselves as becoming immersed in light when we are within the weaving of thoughts.

Mankind is now at a stage where such concepts have to be acquired. Otherwise men will find themselves in completely unfamiliar worlds when they go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world. The capital resources men were given by the gods at the very beginning of earth evolution have gradually been used up. Men now no longer take with them through the gate of death the remnants of past inheritance. They now need to acquire ideas bit by bit here in the physical world that will enable them to pass through the gate of death and see the entities that come to meet them there offering the dangers of temptation and seduction. It is because of these great cosmic schemes that spiritual science has to be made known to man now, that spiritual science must come among men. And today in particular, in these fateful days, we can observe transitions really being made. People are presently going through the gate of death at a young age, as the great destiny of the age demands. They may be said to have consciously allowed death to approach them whilst still young. I am not so much speaking of the moment just before death occurs, say on the battlefield. In that situation many elements of enthusiasm and so on may be present and these make the moment of death far less elevated or far less a moment of utter concentration than we are Inclined to think. But when death has occurred it leaves an ether body that has not yet been used up, leaves an unspent ether body in our time. The dead individual can look at this and he will perceive this Phenomenon, this fact of death, with much greater clarity than he would see it when death has ensued due to illness or old age.

Death on the field of battle is an event of much greater intensity and has much powerful effects than death occurring in another way. It therefore has an effect on the soul that has gone through the gate of death, for it is instructive. Death is terrible—or at least can be terrible—to man whilst he is within his body! However, once he has gone through the gate of death and looks back to his death, death will be the most wonderful experience ever possible in the human cosmos. Looking back to his entry into the spiritual world through death is the most marvellous, the most glorious, magnificent and beautiful event on which the dead individual can ever look back during the time between death and rebirth. Birth has left little real trace in our physical awareness, for no one equipped with ordinary, undeveloped faculties will recall his physical birth. But death is certainly always there for a soul which has gone through the gate of death, from the moment consciousness develops. Death will always be present and present as the most beautiful, the one who brings resurrection into the spiritual world.⁴⁷ And death is the most marvellous kind of teacher, a teacher truly able to prove to a receptive soul that there is a spiritual world, because by its very own nature death destroys the physical and only lets the spiritual come forth. This resurrection of the spiritual element, with the physical completely cast aside, is an event that is always present between death and new birth. It lends strength, a marvellous, great event, and the soul gradually grows into understanding of this. It grows into this in a completely unique way if the event is to some degree one we have chosen, one might say; not a death we lave sought, of course, but nevertheless found of one's own free will by joining the ranks of one's own free will. This again brings greater clarity to that moment. Someone who otherwise has not thought much about death, who has concerned himself little or only to some extent with the spiritual world, can now find death a marvellous teacher once he has died, particularly in our time. This particular war can reveal something of tremendous significance for the relationship between the physical and the spiritual world. I have already drawn attention to this in a number of lectures given in these difficult times: what we are able to do by teaching merely by the word is not enough; but in future people will receive tremendous instructions because so many deaths have occurred. These deaths have an effect on the dead, and the dead in turn intervene in the process of the future civilization of mankind.

I am able to give you the words of one who has gone through the gate of death as a young man now in the present time. His words have come through to me and they really come as a surprise, one might say, because they show how this dead individual who is experiencing death with great clarity as something he went through on the field of battle is now finding his way into the different kind of experience one has after death. They show him working his way out of earthly ideas and into spiritual ideas. Let me communicate these words to you. They were picked up, if I may call it this, when one of those who died on the field of battle tried to let them reach those he left behind.

Here all is light
And I feel
Power of life.
Death has woken
Me from sleep,
From spirit slumber.
I shall abide,
And power of light
Arising in me
Will become deed.

That, as it were, is what the dead individual learned by looking on the death he went through, as if his essential nature was taking In all it must learn to live after death; and it also wants to make this known, wants to reveal it.

Here all is light and I feel power of life.

He feels that he is more alive now where his comprehension of the spiritual world is concerned than he was before his death. He experiences death as one who awakens us, as a teacher:

Death has woken me from sleep,
From spirit slumber.

And he feels that he will be one who does things in the spiritual world. But he feels the it is the radiant powers within him that do the doing, he feels light coming to life within him:

I shall abide,
And power of light
Arising in me
Will become deed.

It really is possible to see everywhere, and to see rightly, that anything perceived in the spiritual world will again and again provide absolute confirmation of the things that can also become generally known out of the spiritual world through what is called imaginative perception. And it is this one so much wants to see come to life through our spiritual movement: that we do not merely have knowledge of the spiritual world but that this knowledge really comes to life in us so strongly that we learn new ways of feeling with the world, share In the experience of the world as the ideas of spiritual science come to life within us. As I have said so often, fundamentally we are asked to bring inward life into the thoughts of spiritual science; this is the contribution we are asked to make to the further development of the world, that the spiritual thoughts born out of spiritual science may stream together and soar up into the spiritual world as powers of Illumination that are given back to the radiant universe; that the universe may unite with the element which those who have gone through the gate of death in these fateful times are making part of the movement of spiritual culture for mankind. Then the words will come true which again shall conclude our talk today:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 45. According to Leibniz, monads are the ultimate substantial constituents of the world and these must be unextended and therefore mental or spiritual by nature. God and human souls are considered monads in this philosophy. (Translator).
• 46. Rudolf Steiner, Geist-Erkenntnis in gliicklichen und ernsten Stunden des Lebens. Berlin, 15 January 1915. In Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). In English, extract in Anthroposophical News Sheet 14:37-8.
• 47. In the second of the available records (very detailed notes), this passage reads: