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274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: January 6, 1924 06 Jan 1924, Dornach Rudolf Steiner

274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: January 6, 1924 06 Jan 1924, Dornach Rudolf Steiner
Automated Translation We will take the liberty of presenting to you here once again this year one of the Christmas plays that come from ancient German folklore. Perhaps I may start with something personal. I myself got to know these Christmas plays – the Paradeis-Spiel and the Christ-Geburt-Spiel, which are not being performed in public this year, and the Dreikönig-Spiel, which is being performed today – about forty years ago, I can say. At that time, I got to know these plays from my old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer, who was a university professor in Vienna at the time he named these games to me, was a professor in Pressburg, which today belongs to Czechoslovakia, but in the mid-19th century, in the 1840s and 1850s, was in a German colony in Hungary, western Hungary. If you go just a little further east along the Danube from Prefburg towards Budapest, you come to the so-called Oberufer region. There was a German colony in this Oberufer region. In my youth, it was very German, as were the German colonies in Hungary in general before the Magyarization: in the Spiš region, the Transylvanian Saxons, in the Banat and so on. Now, when Schröer was a professor in Preßburg, he once heard that interesting folk Christmas plays were being performed out in Oberufer by the descendants of those German colonists who had moved from the west towards Hungary to settle there, from areas that were probably located north of the Rhine in southern Germany, directly bordering Switzerland, north of the Rhine and as far as Alsace. And that seems to be the origin of these Christmas games. It is the case – and we can still see this today – that these Christmas games were really still being played in the 13th and 14th centuries across the Rhine, perhaps later in northern Switzerland, at most in Brienz. The people then moved eastward, took these Christmas games with them as an expensive spiritual heirloom with a deep piety and then held it in extremely high regard. And throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, they were then played around Christmas and Epiphany in these villages by the so-called Haidbauern. It was a great annual experience of Christian piety in these German areas of Hungary. Because these Christmas plays had precisely this fate, I would like to say, they remained completely unadulterated until very recently. Because, you see, Christmas plays originated everywhere in older times, before and after the Reformation, and were gladly played. But in later times, they were improved by so-called intelligent people, which is what it is called, that is, their popularity was thoroughly expelled from them. And the improvements that the intelligentsia wanted to make have become a fundamental deterioration, so that these folk games could only be found in a really poor state in the more westernized areas. But down there, these Christmas games meant nothing to the intelligentsia. When Karl Julius Schröer came to the villages in the early 1850s, the schoolteachers and the village notary found that these games were neglected. The “intelligent people” saw it as useless stuff. And so these Christmas plays have remained completely unadulterated because no one has improved them, that is, in reality, made them worse. They have remained that way throughout the centuries, and that is how Karl Julius Schröer found them in the mid-19th century. They were no longer played every year, but only when it was thought that the necessary personnel were available. When the grape harvest was over in October, the village dignitaries would gather at their regular table and say: “This year we have young men again – because only young men were allowed to play – to be able to perform these Christmas plays, and it does our people good to get a little piety back in their veins. Now we want to do it again this year. And there was always one among them – it was always a respected family among the farmers of the village – who was the owner of the “manuscript”. They were not printed, these Christmas plays. He had received it from his father and his father before him, and so on. In this way they had been preserved through the centuries. And when the time came after the grape harvest, the person in possession of the manuscript would gather the boys around him and be their teacher, preparing the performances for the Advent and Christmas season, around the time of the Epiphany. And these performances were really carried out with the utmost seriousness. There were strict rules for the boys who were to take part. For example, these boys were not allowed to get drunk during the entire period in which they were supposed to prepare these plays. Anyone who knows these areas – I lived there for a long time – knows that it was a great, an extraordinarily great deprivation for these young boys if they were not allowed to get drunk from the grape harvest until Epiphany; nor to fight, for example. Who knows what else happened in those days when, for example, a mayor or even a district councilor was elected – that was one of the county's trusted officials – what it all meant in these areas: the boys were not allowed to fight on Sundays! So they had to lead a very pious life. It was really genuine piety, popular piety. Furthermore, it was prescribed that they not go to the Dirndl at any time. And no secular music was allowed to be performed in the villages where they traveled throughout the weeks. All the rules that we have here with our players, of course, we cannot enforce, that is, we can enforce those mentioned so far; but not the others. If, for example, someone had forgotten something they had learned, they had to pay a fine. We couldn't do that at our place. Nor could we enforce the rule that no one could be late and so on. So all these things were handled in the strictest sense there. It was really something extraordinarily disciplining for the boys of the place. The Christmas games themselves – when the time came, they were celebrated in such a way that you could say: real, genuine popular Christian piety mixed with what was there as folk customs, not sentimentality. There was real popular piety in it: honest piety, not some kind of hypocritical piety, but honest piety, which is also mixed with a certain earthiness. That was precisely the sincere piety of old. It had been preserved until the 19th century. Then, as the performances approached, some things came up that we can't imitate in the same way, because I don't know how it would be received if we did imitate them, for example. The devil had to go around the whole village with his long tail when the performance was approaching and blow his horn everywhere and tell people that they had to come to the Christmas play now. I don't know how it would be received; it might well be that people would like it! And we can't imitate that here either, with the devil jumping on every cart and doing his mischief when the performance is approaching and so on. When the people had gathered in the inn, sitting on the benches all around, the performance was given in the middle of the inn hall. Something else that we cannot imitate here was that people paid only two kreutzers, that is four rappen, as an entrance fee. That was an extraordinarily high entrance fee for that time; children paid half. When Karl Julius Schröer found these plays, everything was still preserved exactly as it had been in the mid-19th century, including the customs from the 16th century, when the people moved there and brought these Christmas plays with them. And it was back then, forty years ago, that I developed this endless love for these wonderful Christmas plays, and I truly believe that something beautiful can be preserved if you play them again where you have the opportunity. Because there, in the former German areas of Hungary, they have not been played for a long time. The last family that had them has probably died out, and they have not been renewed, so what we have done for these games, which we started doing before the war, is actually a real renewal of the matter. There is a piece of German folklore in these games. Something has really been preserved that used to be very honored and appreciated among the people. And here I believe that this still has its special value in that the Swiss remember, perhaps still in northern Switzerland, but most certainly when they have turned their eyes across the Rhine, that these games were played everywhere there in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. So it is here in particular that we can connect very good memories with it, and that is why we believe that it is also quite good to bring these games here for demonstration. With this in mind, we ask for your attention for these games. Of course, we have to work with completely new means, with the means that a contemporary stage operation, as far as we have it here, provides, but within that we try to give the form, with the dialect and everything, as it was performed by the people. So we may call them: Christmas plays from ancient folklore. This is the last speech by Rudolf Steiner about the Oberufer Christmas Plays. In the fall of the same year, he became seriously ill and died on March 30, 1925.

274. Introductions for Traditional Christmas Plays: January 6, 1924 06 Jan 1924, Dornach

Rudolf Steiner

Automated Translation

We will take the liberty of presenting to you here once again this year one of the Christmas plays that come from ancient German folklore. Perhaps I may start with something personal. I myself got to know these Christmas plays – the Paradeis-Spiel and the Christ-Geburt-Spiel, which are not being performed in public this year, and the Dreikönig-Spiel, which is being performed today – about forty years ago, I can say. At that time, I got to know these plays from my old friend and teacher, Karl Julius Schröer. Karl Julius Schröer, who was a university professor in Vienna at the time he named these games to me, was a professor in Pressburg, which today belongs to Czechoslovakia, but in the mid-19th century, in the 1840s and 1850s, was in a German colony in Hungary, western Hungary. If you go just a little further east along the Danube from Prefburg towards Budapest, you come to the so-called Oberufer region. There was a German colony in this Oberufer region. In my youth, it was very German, as were the German colonies in Hungary in general before the Magyarization: in the Spiš region, the Transylvanian Saxons, in the Banat and so on. Now, when Schröer was a professor in Preßburg, he once heard that interesting folk Christmas plays were being performed out in Oberufer by the descendants of those German colonists who had moved from the west towards Hungary to settle there, from areas that were probably located north of the Rhine in southern Germany, directly bordering Switzerland, north of the Rhine and as far as Alsace. And that seems to be the origin of these Christmas games.

It is the case – and we can still see this today – that these Christmas games were really still being played in the 13th and 14th centuries across the Rhine, perhaps later in northern Switzerland, at most in Brienz. The people then moved eastward, took these Christmas games with them as an expensive spiritual heirloom with a deep piety and then held it in extremely high regard. And throughout the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, they were then played around Christmas and Epiphany in these villages by the so-called Haidbauern.

It was a great annual experience of Christian piety in these German areas of Hungary. Because these Christmas plays had precisely this fate, I would like to say, they remained completely unadulterated until very recently. Because, you see, Christmas plays originated everywhere in older times, before and after the Reformation, and were gladly played. But in later times, they were improved by so-called intelligent people, which is what it is called, that is, their popularity was thoroughly expelled from them. And the improvements that the intelligentsia wanted to make have become a fundamental deterioration, so that these folk games could only be found in a really poor state in the more westernized areas.

But down there, these Christmas games meant nothing to the intelligentsia. When Karl Julius Schröer came to the villages in the early 1850s, the schoolteachers and the village notary found that these games were neglected. The “intelligent people” saw it as useless stuff. And so these Christmas plays have remained completely unadulterated because no one has improved them, that is, in reality, made them worse. They have remained that way throughout the centuries, and that is how Karl Julius Schröer found them in the mid-19th century. They were no longer played every year, but only when it was thought that the necessary personnel were available. When the grape harvest was over in October, the village dignitaries would gather at their regular table and say: “This year we have young men again – because only young men were allowed to play – to be able to perform these Christmas plays, and it does our people good to get a little piety back in their veins. Now we want to do it again this year.

And there was always one among them – it was always a respected family among the farmers of the village – who was the owner of the “manuscript”. They were not printed, these Christmas plays. He had received it from his father and his father before him, and so on. In this way they had been preserved through the centuries. And when the time came after the grape harvest, the person in possession of the manuscript would gather the boys around him and be their teacher, preparing the performances for the Advent and Christmas season, around the time of the Epiphany. And these performances were really carried out with the utmost seriousness. There were strict rules for the boys who were to take part. For example, these boys were not allowed to get drunk during the entire period in which they were supposed to prepare these plays. Anyone who knows these areas – I lived there for a long time – knows that it was a great, an extraordinarily great deprivation for these young boys if they were not allowed to get drunk from the grape harvest until Epiphany; nor to fight, for example. Who knows what else happened in those days when, for example, a mayor or even a district councilor was elected – that was one of the county's trusted officials – what it all meant in these areas: the boys were not allowed to fight on Sundays! So they had to lead a very pious life. It was really genuine piety, popular piety. Furthermore, it was prescribed that they not go to the Dirndl at any time. And no secular music was allowed to be performed in the villages where they traveled throughout the weeks. All the rules that we have here with our players, of course, we cannot enforce, that is, we can enforce those mentioned so far; but not the others. If, for example, someone had forgotten something they had learned, they had to pay a fine. We couldn't do that at our place. Nor could we enforce the rule that no one could be late and so on. So all these things were handled in the strictest sense there. It was really something extraordinarily disciplining for the boys of the place.

The Christmas games themselves – when the time came, they were celebrated in such a way that you could say: real, genuine popular Christian piety mixed with what was there as folk customs, not sentimentality. There was real popular piety in it: honest piety, not some kind of hypocritical piety, but honest piety, which is also mixed with a certain earthiness. That was precisely the sincere piety of old. It had been preserved until the 19th century.

Then, as the performances approached, some things came up that we can't imitate in the same way, because I don't know how it would be received if we did imitate them, for example. The devil had to go around the whole village with his long tail when the performance was approaching and blow his horn everywhere and tell people that they had to come to the Christmas play now. I don't know how it would be received; it might well be that people would like it! And we can't imitate that here either, with the devil jumping on every cart and doing his mischief when the performance is approaching and so on. When the people had gathered in the inn, sitting on the benches all around, the performance was given in the middle of the inn hall. Something else that we cannot imitate here was that people paid only two kreutzers, that is four rappen, as an entrance fee. That was an extraordinarily high entrance fee for that time; children paid half. When Karl Julius Schröer found these plays, everything was still preserved exactly as it had been in the mid-19th century, including the customs from the 16th century, when the people moved there and brought these Christmas plays with them.

And it was back then, forty years ago, that I developed this endless love for these wonderful Christmas plays, and I truly believe that something beautiful can be preserved if you play them again where you have the opportunity. Because there, in the former German areas of Hungary, they have not been played for a long time. The last family that had them has probably died out, and they have not been renewed, so what we have done for these games, which we started doing before the war, is actually a real renewal of the matter. There is a piece of German folklore in these games. Something has really been preserved that used to be very honored and appreciated among the people.

And here I believe that this still has its special value in that the Swiss remember, perhaps still in northern Switzerland, but most certainly when they have turned their eyes across the Rhine, that these games were played everywhere there in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. So it is here in particular that we can connect very good memories with it, and that is why we believe that it is also quite good to bring these games here for demonstration. With this in mind, we ask for your attention for these games.

Of course, we have to work with completely new means, with the means that a contemporary stage operation, as far as we have it here, provides, but within that we try to give the form, with the dialect and everything, as it was performed by the people. So we may call them: Christmas plays from ancient folklore.

This is the last speech by Rudolf Steiner about the Oberufer Christmas Plays. In the fall of the same year, he became seriously ill and died on March 30, 1925.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Technology and Art 28 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Technology and Art 28 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
The main intention of these lectures is to build a bridge from spiritual-scientific knowledge to the kind of conception of life which our time demands, and I intend also giving a few indications on this theme in the coming days. What we call modern life takes living hold of all those people who, through living in towns or in similar circumstances, have been torn away from a direct connection with nature. And we know that since the advent of modern life people have always thought about its significance both for the intellectual as well as the material progress of human civilisation. And now it is time that the impulses we are acquiring from spiritual science should enter into modern life. Gradually we shall have won through to the feeling that with respect to many a thing that meets us in life today we need spiritual science as a kind of compensation for those things in modern life that weaken, we might actually say destroy, something of the general divine-spiritual life forces of man. People who are able, by means of the first stages of the life of initiation, really to let modern civilisation affect them in all its aspects, will have experiences that give them deeper insight into the significance which modern life has for man's whole existence, than that obtained from an external view of life unsupported by spirituality. People who have taken the first steps in the life of initiation will pass differently through the experience of spending a night in a train or on a steamer, especially if they sleep on the journey. What is different for the person who is in these first stages of initiation and the one who has not had any connection with it is that the experiences become conscious for the former, and he finds out what is actually happening to him when he spends a night travelling on a train or a ship, especially if he goes to sleep. Of course the person who does not acquire initiation knowledge of things also undergoes the effects that an experience of that sort has on the whole human organism. With regard to the whole effect on the human being there is, of course, no difference. If we want to understand what these indications actually mean we must recall to memory a spiritual scientific truth which you no doubt know, namely, that whilst we are asleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric body. In fact, because of certain limitations which cosmic laws impose on us in the natural order of things, our ego and astral body are very close to our physical body and etheric body in a case like this, so that if we are asleep on a train journey our ego and astral body are right inside all the rattling, rumbling and braking going on in the wheels and the engine of the train. And it is just the same on a modern steamer. We are inside everything going on around us. We are inside these not exactly musical experiences in our surroundings, and you need only have taken the very first steps in initiation to notice on waking up that when the ego returns with the astral body into the physical body and etheric body they bring with them what they experienced while they were being squeezed through the machinery, for they really were inside the moving machinery right up to the moment of waking. We bring all this disharmonious squeezing and tearing back into our physical and etheric body, and if you have ever woken up with all the after-effects of what the engines of a steamer or a train have done to your ego and astral body, and bring that into your waking consciousness, you will notice how little it synchronises with what is going on within you in the way of a kind of experience the ego and the astral body have of the inner harmony of the physical and etheric body. You do in fact bring back with you the wildest confusion, the most frightful din of pulling, screeching and rattling and if you are sensitive to it you will feel that the effect on the etheric body really is as though your physical body were being bruised and dismembered—which is, of course, a clumsy expression, but you will not misunderstand. This is an absolutely unavoidable side-effect of modern life, and I want to give a word of warning right at the outset, as the kind of lecture I want to give today can very easily rouse what I would call theosophists' hidden arrogance, which flourishes very well here and there. I am not making a general allusion, of course, let alone a particular allusion, for when one holds a talk on a matter like this, one immediately provokes judgments. I think that in the case of this theosophists' arrogance, it can easily happen that people imagine they must take great care not to expose themselves to these destructive forces; that they must protect themselves from all the influences of modern life; that they must closet themselves in a room containing the right surroundings, with walls of the colour indicated by theosophy, to make sure that modern life cannot reach them in any way that would be harmful to their bodily organisation. I really do not want my lectures to have this effect. Everything of the nature of withdrawing and protecting oneself from the influences of all that we necessarily have to encounter as world karma arises out of weakness. But anthroposophy can only strengthen the human soul (Gemüt), and should develop those forces that inwardly strengthen and arm us against these influences. Therefore, never within the compass of our spiritual movement could any kind of recommendation be given to cut oneself off from modern life, or to turn spiritual life into a kind of hothouse culture. This could never apply in the realm of true spiritual culture. Although it is understandable that weaker natures prefer to withdraw from modern life and go into one or another kind of settlement where they are out of reach of it, the fact remains that this arises not from strength but from weakness of soul. Our task, however, consists in strengthening our soul life by permeating ourselves with the impulses of spiritual science and spiritual research so that we are armed against the onslaughts of modern life, and so that our souls can stand any amount of hammering and knocking and are still capable of finding their way into the divine-spiritual realms right through the hammering and knocking of the ahrimanic spirits. One thing must be taken into account, however, which I have often referred to. We human beings do not only sleep at night. We actually sleep in the daytime as well, only we do not notice our daytime sleep as much as our nighttime sleep. During the night our thought life is dimmed down, and because our soul lives predominantly in our thoughts we are, as a matter of course, more aware of the dimming down of our thought life during nighttime sleep. During the day our life of will is more at rest, yet we are less aware of this because we live less in our will. All the arguing the philosophers have done about the freedom and lack of freedom of the will is due to this. As they have not taken into account that they are investigating the will whilst they are daytime sleepers and therefore cannot arrive at its true nature, they talk a lot of nonsense about free will and unfree will, indeterminism and determinism. In actual fact, whilst we are open to the waking life of day, we are only conscious of our will life to a very small degree; it dips down into the subconscious, into the region that belongs purely to the astral body. Thus during our waking day, too, we are involved in all that modern life has produced around us in the way of the stress and noise of modern technology. During the night it is more our life of thought and feeling that becomes submerged in the noise and stress, during the day it is more our life of feeling and will. Now in the course of human evolution what we call modern life has not always existed. It came on the scene essentially at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.⁴ The beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch actually coincides with the beginning of the modern age. What does modern intellectual culture say about the beginning of the modern age? As we know, modern intellectual culture is proud of the achievements of modern life. It is expressed somewhat like this: Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages people were incapable of developing a real observation of nature such as could have led to natural science. This did not happen until modern times. And when people talk of modern times like this they are speaking of the time which began with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. That was when people broke away from the old way of observing nature and observed it impartially, solely according to abstract laws. And it was through this knowledge of the laws of nature that natural science came into the position of opening up the possibility of mastering the forces of nature, and mastering them in an unprecedented way, as we so often hear. Yet this is just what modern technology is. And the characteristic nature of modern technology arose as a result of man acquiring knowledge of natural laws and then proceeding to use the material world to fashion his machines according to these natural laws, machines with which he can then work back on nature and life by filling modern life with them and creating his own technological setting; that is, modern life in its essence and function. Thus we see that it is the modern age that has established real natural science and the resultant mastery over nature and its forces. You often hear people speaking like this. However if we speak like this we are speaking Ahriman's language for this is using the language of Ahriman. But let us see if we can translate this language of Ahriman into the real and true language that we are trying to acquire again by means of spiritual science, a language where words not only acquire the meaning ascribed to them through observation of external nature, but also acquire the meaning ascribed to them when we look at the cosmos in its entirety, that is, both as nature and as spiritual life. Let us start by looking quite superficially at what happens when we develop modern technology. What is happening in the first place is just work being carried out in two stages. The first stage consists of destroying the interrelationships of nature. We blast out quarries and take the stone away, maltreat the forests and take the wood away, and the list could go on—in short, we get our raw materials in the first instance by smashing and wearing down the interrelationships in nature. And the second stage consists of taking what we have extracted from nature and putting it together again as a machine according to the laws we know as natural laws. These are the two stages, if we look at the matter on the surface. But what is it like if we look below the surface? Looking at it from inside, the matter is like this: When we take things from nature, mineral nature to begin with, we know from previous lectures that this is linked with a certain feeling of well-being belonging to the elemental spiritual beings that are within it. This, however, does not concern us so much now. What is important here is that we cast out of nature the elemental spirits belonging to the sphere of the regular progressive hierarchies who, in fact, are the very spirits who maintain nature. In all natural existence there are elemental spiritual beings. When we plunder nature we squeeze out the nature spirits into the sphere of the spirit. That is, in fact, what is constantly happening during the first stage. We smash and plunder material nature and thus release the nature spirits, driving them forth from the sphere allotted them by the Jehovah gods into a realm where they can fly about freely and are no longer bound to their allotted dwelling places. Thus we can call the first stage the casting out of the nature spirits. The second stage is the one where we put together what we have plundered from nature, according to our knowledge of natural laws. Now when we construct a machine or a complex of machines out of raw material according to our knowledge of natural laws, we put certain spiritual beings into the things we construct. The structure we make is by no means without its spiritual beings. In constructing it we make a habitation for other spiritual beings, but these spiritual beings that we conjure into our machines are beings belonging to the ahrimanic hierarchy. Thus at the first stage we encounter nature spirits who are in progressive evolution and cast them out and at the second stage we unite these ahrimanic spirits with our mechanisms or other products of technology. This means that by living in this technological milieu of modern times we create an ahrimanic setting for everything that goes on in us in a sleeping state, by night or day. So it is no wonder that a person at the first stages of initiation, bringing back with him into his waking life all that he has experienced outside in the way of noise and confusion, feels its destructive character when he comes back into his physical and etheric body with this in his ego and his astral body. For he is bringing back into his own organism the results, as it were, of his having been in the company of the ahrimanic elemental spirits. Thus we could say that at the third stage, at the cultural level, we have technology around us, stuffed full of ahrimanic spirits which we have put there. This is what things look like from inside. Now if we turn our attention away from the occult side of modern life and look back at those times when people slept with only a thin partition dividing them from nature, a partition through which spirit could easily pass, and when their daytime work was within the realm of nature that still harboured regular spirits of the Jehovah hierarchy, we have to admit that in those times people's souls, their egos and astral bodies, brought back into their physical and etheric bodies the kind of nature spirits that had an enlivening effect on their inner life of soul. And the further we go back in the history of mankind's evolution the more we find what is becoming a greater and greater rarity today, namely that people did not fill themselves with the ahrimanic spirits of technology, but with nature spirits that were progressing on a straight path and which the good spirits of the hierarchies, if we may use the expression, have linked to the events and being of nature. Now man will only attain the kind of connection he needs in order to be truly human if he seeks it in his inner life, if he delves so far down into the depths of his soul that he reaches the forces that connect him with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which he was born and in which he is embedded, but from which he can be separated. A separation has already taken place in his sense perception and intellect, and now again through his being filled with ahrimanic beings in the course of modern life, as we have seen. Only by penetrating into the depths of his own being will man find the connection with divine spiritual beings that he needs for his salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing on a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies for which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Man is being, as it were, torn away from his spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which he should be developing within him to maintain his link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened. A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man's spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. He will also notice that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies—please do not misunderstand the word. When a person who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort, of course, to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the etheric body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you. Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone. It would be the worst possible mistake to say that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman by cutting ourselves off from modern life. In a certain sense this would be spiritual cowardice. The real remedy for this is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort. You so often hear people saying “These books of modern spiritual science are difficult; they make you exert yourself in order to develop your soul forces and really penetrate into spiritual science.” This is why ‘well-meaning’ people—and I am saying this in inverted commas—keep on coming to me and saying that they want to smooth out difficult passages for their fellow men and change what is written in rather a difficult style into something as trivial as can be—and these last words are not said in inverted commas. However, it belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing and another, but of how you take it in. You should take it in by dint of effort and soul activity. To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul—please forgive me for not being very polite. That belongs to the business of spiritual science, if you will excuse the mundane expression. It shows a further misunderstanding of the actual nerve of spiritual science if people shy away from the difficult ideas and conceptual structures of spiritual science. And don't we know how many people shy away from it, how many people would prefer to dream—the Lord gives it to His Own in sleep! They would far rather have things conjured up before them in all kinds of visions of the spiritual world than acquire knowledge through the activity of exerting their inner life of soul. We know how many people there are who prefer having visions rather than sitting down and studying a difficult book of spiritual science, even though it is capable of speaking to the human soul forces that are asleep during ordinary daily life, for spiritual science really does activate the part of man that is otherwise unconscious and transport him into the life of the spiritual world. The right approach is not to receive conscious daily life apathetically and to grope in the dark, but to make an effort out of soul activity to get through what is given for the development of thoughts and ideas. For when you make an effort and have the courage to make yourself at home in this development of thoughts and ideas, this brave and active effort will bring you to the stage where mere theorising on what is given and mere acceptance in thought passes over into seeing and really being in the spiritual world. However, the really modern conception of life that arises for us from these considerations is that, because of our technological surroundings, we descend into a kind of ahrimanic sphere and become filled with ahrimanic spirituality. The most terrible calamity would have come about in earth evolution if, in earlier ages, provision had not been made for these experiences of ahrimanic spirituality that world karma is bringing to modern mankind. Life always progresses like the swing of a pendulum. It is experienced like a pendulum swinging in one direction or the other. You cannot say “Beware of Ahriman!” for nothing can protect you from him. And if someone longs to shut himself up in a room surrounded by the colour that suits him best, where he has no factories near him or trains passing by if he can possibly help it, but is completely cut off from modern life, there are many, many ways in which ahrimanic spirituality can get into his soul. Even though he withdraws from modern life, modern spirituality will still reach him. Now something entered into human evolution that, as it were, held off the calamity, and I gave an indication of this a long time ago in a lecture cycle in Munich.³ We must take all these things together, for that is also part of the active experiencing of modern spiritual science. Man has been given art; art, which also takes its raw material from nature by reducing and wearing it down, and at the second stage puts it together again to make something new, with a breath of life in it, although it is only of a pictorial nature. The life of the artistic impulses given us in the past has the capacity, as I said in Munich, to imbue its material with a more luciferic spirituality. Luciferic spirituality, beauty as an illusion, in fact everything that has an effect on man through the medium of art, leads man away from matter into the spirit, yet it does so through the life in the material. Lucifer is the spirit who constantly wants to flee from matter and bear man into the life of the spirit in an unjustified way. That is the other swing of the pendulum. It is only because we have to go through a technological atmosphere in the present incarnation that it is possible for us to come into connection with Ahriman, whereas in earlier incarnations we were more connected with a quality that could be steeped in art. Thus we are countering certain luciferic forces by means of the present-day ahrimanic forces, which together form a balance, whilst the pendulum of life swung one way in the past and swings the other way now. What spiritual science quite specifically has to want at the present time is that human beings do not sleep and dream through what world karma is imposing on them. Yet people who wish to know nothing about spiritual science do sleep and dream through all the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer. They are exposed to these influences even if they themselves know nothing about them. But ‘life cannot go on like this; life has to be lived consciously from now on, and that is what spiritual science is for, so that people do not go through the world sleeping and dreaming, but understand what is around them. For this to happen, however, we must really get down to the subtleties of our spiritual-scientific business—if you will forgive the word. Such subtleties often go unnoticed, and this is the sort of thing I find when I read through transcripts of lectures I have given. Often what is of essential importance to me does not appear at all in the transcript. Just look at two examples of this. I used a certain sentence a little while ago and did not say that spiritual science wants something, but that spiritual science should want it, or has to want it. That is a particular expression which comes quite naturally to a person who is speaking out of the spirit of spiritual science, for spiritual science leads as a matter of course to a more impersonal grasp of the truths of spiritual life than other sciences do. Speaking in the manner of other sciences we would say “Spiritual science wants something”. But spiritual science says “what it should want or must want” And I say “The way I must express myself” and not “The way express myself”. A great deal depends on such subtleties; we must not pass them by. On the contrary we must begin to believe that everything depends on spiritual science taking hold of man's innermost soul forces, and that it is capable of transforming them. Therefore it will not do to approach spiritual science with the kind of thinking one is in the habit of using in ordinary life. People are still largely unaware of what I mean by this. This can be seen, actually sensed, so to speak, in certain crude symptoms in the evolution of ordinary science. Let us take one example out of many. Modern science of religion—irreligious science of religion—is especially proud of the fact that it has found a connection between New Testament utterances and commandments and Old Testament and heathen utterances and commandments. People have followed up the origin of every phrase in the Lord's Prayer, for instance, and said “This particular phrase comes from here and that one from there”. If you hear it like this it can sound credible. Yet the moment you approach the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual world-historical light you notice that all these things appear in a new context, and that the important thing is not the discovering that all these expressions were there in earlier times but looking at them in the context which gives them a new shade of meaning. In this respect the Old and the New Testament differ entirely. Subtle things like this convey the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The words and even the word connections often stay the same but their shade and colouring is different, and that makes all the difference. There is something tremendous behind the fact, for instance, that the conception of the ego in the whole evolutionary system of language is quite differently constructed the further back we go in pre-Christian times, than it is later on when we go forwards from the Mystery of Golgotha. The way people spoke about the ‘I’ changed, and this can be seen in the configuration of language. When the ‘I’ becomes part of the word for the verb, as is the case in many languages, it signifies something entirely different from when it is separated from the verb and spoken as a separate word, and so on. The important thing is to work our way with the help of spiritual science to an approach to life which looks consciously at the things which influence our human organism of spirit, soul and body. The way I have described man's relationship to his technological surroundings is, of course, only in its beginning stages. It was about four centuries ago that things began to get like they are today. Then the nineteenth century that was so proud of itself took a tremendous leap forward in the ahrimanisation of human life. Yet a great deal more will take place in future human evolution in the direction of this ahrimanisation. We have been in it for about four hundred years. It is coming slowly and gradually. It has already reached a certain climax among the vast numbers of our fellowmen who, because of the isolation caused by living in towns, hardly have any connection any more with real nature spirits. I once said, symbolically, that it is important for man's development to be able to distinguish oats from barley. Yet really, how many people are there in a town environment today who cannot tell the difference any more between oats and barley! Perhaps they can distinguish the plants, as that is comparatively easy in the case of oats and barley, but where the grains are concerned they can no longer tell the one from the other. If they have lived in a town or were actually born there, they usually cannot tell the difference. Now it happens like this in the evolution of mankind, that when human beings have progressed a stage, this progress is always bound up with another experience that is at another stage, as it were, in a parallel stream. And this has happened. Whilst technological life has been drawing modern man closer to Ahriman in the way I have described, he has also been getting closer to him in another way. When a spiritual view of history replaces the crude way of viewing history introduced by materialism, people will understand what spiritual science has to say on this matter. If we go back to the time that preceded the last four centuries, man not only had a different relationship to his environment than he has today, but he had, above all, an entirely different relationship to something that comes to expression in himself, really comes to expression in himself; he had a different connection with his speech, to the way he spoke. Speech does not only contain what modern materialistic science believes it does; there is something in speech which in many ways is connected with man's not fully-conscious experiences, which often occur in the subconscious realms of his being, and which are therefore interpenetrated by spiritual beings. Spiritual beings live and are active in man's speech, and when man forms words, elemental spiritual beings pour into these words. During human conversations spiritual beings fly about the room on the wings of the words. This is why it is so important that we pay attention to certain subtleties of speech, and do not simply let uncontrolled feelings get the better of us when we speak. Right into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we could say that man still possessed the remnant of a living experience of the elemental spirituality contained in language. The spirituality of language was still active within him, for language is in a certain respect more inspired and spiritual in many ways than an individual human being. It is only occasionally nowadays that we notice a person reverting from a materialistic way of thinking to a feeling for the inspired spirituality of language. On one occasion⁴ here I gave a very clear if trivial example showing in what way a person's mind can revert from the materialistic role of today. On the whole it still happens to many people, but they are not immediately aware of it. If someone is travelling down the Rhine and he speaks for instance of the ‘old Rhine’, what does he mean? No doubt he feels something. But what is he referring to? When people speak of the ‘old Rhine’ I do not think they mean the riverbed, the hollow in the ground. That would be the only permanent part, of course. But we cannot discover what else the ‘old Rhine’ is supposed to be, for the water is certainly absolutely new; it keeps flowing on, and if you try and find anything old except the hollowed out riverbed, it cannot be done. The old Rhine! Language is more inspired than man, because the language obviously means the River God, even if people are not conscious of it. One is describing the elemental being that belongs to it very suitably when one says the ‘old Rhine’. That is a rough example. This spirituality, this belief in spirituality exists throughout language. And a feeling, at least, for this connection with spirituality in language still really existed in the disposition of soul of all the peoples of Europe, during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and right up to modern times as far as the fifteenth and sixteenth century. If you are not aware of this fact you cannot have the right feeling for the beginning of the St. John's Gospel. For the opening words of the St. John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word”, arose, in fact, out of a consciousness that the part the word plays within the whole human organism and human life, provides the connection for man, by way of elemental spirituality in the first place, to the whole of the world lying behind the world of the senses. If, with the means that spiritual science puts at our disposal, we observe the way human life has run its course from the Middle Ages up to modern times, and are able to look right into the soul, we shall in fact find that man's relationship to speech was altogether different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, even in the last phase of it that lasted up till the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Whenever they spoke people heard undertones, genuine undertones. People no longer believe this, because nowadays human beings really only live in the material aspect of the sounds of speech. A spiritual element joined with the sound as though it sounded again an octave lower. Thus when people spoke, or heard people speaking, something resounded in the words that was not differentiated according to one or another language, but was of a universal human character. One can really say that when human experience comes to expression, as it were, in the flowering of the separate languages, mankind today experiences the flowering as a vibrating of sounds in the ear, and experiences the sounds as something that have a meaning. Whereas in earlier times they experienced a steeping of the whole element of speech in something that joined with it and was not differentiated into the various languages. The dividing line between the one experience and the other fell in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Mankind was torn away from the genius of language. Nobody can understand the actual jolt mankind was given in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, unless he studies the special character of this damping down of undertones in the experiencing of speech. Something was lost to mankind, and this comes to light in the happenings of the times, whether they be battles or peacetime creations. Before the point of time mentioned the human soul still experienced it. Whenever people spoke, this resounding of undertones in the experiencing of speech still lived in human souls. That is why the whole of history has an entirely different quality before this turning point, than afterwards. Through spiritual science we must develop a spiritual ear, as I would like to call it, for the completely different tone that events had in the Middle Ages than they have today, as human souls were connected to their experiences in quite a different way in those times. I will choose the Crusades as an example of a general human soul-experience. They are only conceivable in the way they came about in the Middle Ages if we know of the existence of these spiritual undertones in the experiencing of language. The present-day peoples of Middle and Western Europe would most certainly not be so affected by the words of Clermont's synod:⁵ God wills it—Dieu le vent—as the peoples of the Middle Ages were. The reasons for this, however, can only be recognised if we take into account what has just been said. An important phenomenon in all modern intellectual life is also connected with this. The whole formation of modern history has to do with this. If you once envisage history with these subtle language undertones in mind, you will understand why, at the point of time I have indicated, the various European nationalities grouped themselves together, those nationalities who before that time had quite different relationships with one another; who were governed by quite different impulses in their relationships to one another. The way the different nationalities group themselves in the various parts of Europe, right up to the present day, has to do with impulses that we interpret quite falsely if we go back from the present to the Middle Ages to look for the origins of nations, without bearing in mind the tremendously important rubicon that had to be crossed in the life of the soul. I can only give you indications of these themes whereas they would actually require a whole series of lectures. The most important part of all this must be left to your meditation, which will discover what can be found as a result of these indications. What I would hope to have achieved is to have given you a picture of how to build a bridge between spiritual science and knowledge of life, and shown you how spiritual science can lead to a conscious approach to the reality in which we live. Having spoken of the real foundations on which these indications are based, it would appear quite natural that this modern age of ours makes a renewal of many things necessary, compared to the past. Through being placed today by world karma in a setting that functions in an especially ahrimanic way, and through having to make our soul forces strong enough to find our way into spiritual spheres, despite all the hindrances that come to us from ahrimanic spirituality, our souls are in need of different kinds of sustenance than before. For the same reason art must also adopt new paths in all its branches. Art obviously had to speak differently to the souls that were less exposed to the attacks of Ahriman than we are today. Art has to speak in a new way to souls today, and our Goetheanum building⁶ is meant to be the very first step, really and truly the very first step towards art of this kind, and not anything perfect. It is an attempt actually to create the kind of art that calls on the soul to be active, on the lines of the whole conception of modern life, yet a spiritual conception of modern life. Let us remember the frightfully trivial comparison I made regarding the Goetheanum building a few weeks ago. I asked, “How does the effect our Goetheanum building is intended to have, compare with that of an older building, or an older work of art in general? A work of art from the past made an impression by means of its forms and colours. Its forms and colours made an impression. If we make a diagram of it and the form is like this, this form had an effect on the eye (he did a drawing). What was in space and what the form was filled out with, was what made the impression. And it is the same with the colours. The colours on the walls made the impression. I said that our building is not intended to be like that; our building is meant to be—and this is the terribly trivial comparison—like a jelly mould that does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of the jelly. Its function is to give a form to what is put into it, and when it is empty you can see what it is for. What it does to the jelly is the important thing. And the important thing with our building is what a person who goes inside it experiences in the innermost depths of his soul, when he feels the contours of the forms. All that the forms do is set the process going that creates the work of art. The work of art is what the soul experiences when it feels the shape of the forms. The work of art is the jelly. What has been built is the jelly mould, and that is why we had to try and proceed on an entirely new principle. Likewise what you will find in the way of paintings in our Goetheanum building will not be there for their direct effect, as used to be the case with art in the past, but will be there for the soul to encounter, so that the experience resulting from this encounter will be a work of art. This of course involves a metamorphosis—I can only give indications of all this—the metamorphosis of an old artistic principle into a new one, which we can depict by saying that when the sculptural, the pictorial element is taken a stage further, it is led over into a kind of musical experience. There is also the opposite step, from the musical element back into the sculptural-pictorial. These are things which are not created arbitrarily by the human soul, but have to do with the innermost impulses we have to go through, because we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It has been, as it were, ordained by the spiritual beings that guide this evolution. A start has to be made in every realm. If people find things about our building that are imperfect they may be assured that the people who are actually engaged in building it will find far more imperfections than the people who criticise it—far, far more. There are faults to be found in it which people who just look at it would not think of. But that is not the point. The point is that a start is being made, for there are so many things that have to happen. The important thing is not the perfection we achieve in what we must will to happen, but that a start is made on what has to come to life here, however imperfect it has to be. For everything new that comes into the world is imperfect compared with old things that have stood the test of time. Things that are old have reached their highest level, whereas new creations are still in their infancy. That is quite obvious. I will begin tomorrow where we have stopped today, and consider the renewal of an artistic conception of the world and the connection this has with the whole cultural life of today. 4. 1413. See Rudolf Steiner's Occult Science, an Outline, chapter on ‘Future Evolution of the World and of Mankind#8217;, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979. 3. Secrets of the Threshold, lecture VI, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London 1928. 4. On 3rd October 1914, towards the end of the first lecture on Occult Reading and Occult Hearing, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1975. 5. convened by Pope Urban II in 1095. Here the decision was taken for the First Crusade. 6. Laying of foundation stone 20th September 1913. Burning of the Goetheanum, 31st December 1922.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Technology and Art 28 Dec 1914, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

The main intention of these lectures is to build a bridge from spiritual-scientific knowledge to the kind of conception of life which our time demands, and I intend also giving a few indications on this theme in the coming days.

What we call modern life takes living hold of all those people who, through living in towns or in similar circumstances, have been torn away from a direct connection with nature. And we know that since the advent of modern life people have always thought about its significance both for the intellectual as well as the material progress of human civilisation. And now it is time that the impulses we are acquiring from spiritual science should enter into modern life. Gradually we shall have won through to the feeling that with respect to many a thing that meets us in life today we need spiritual science as a kind of compensation for those things in modern life that weaken, we might actually say destroy, something of the general divine-spiritual life forces of man.

People who are able, by means of the first stages of the life of initiation, really to let modern civilisation affect them in all its aspects, will have experiences that give them deeper insight into the significance which modern life has for man's whole existence, than that obtained from an external view of life unsupported by spirituality. People who have taken the first steps in the life of initiation will pass differently through the experience of spending a night in a train or on a steamer, especially if they sleep on the journey. What is different for the person who is in these first stages of initiation and the one who has not had any connection with it is that the experiences become conscious for the former, and he finds out what is actually happening to him when he spends a night travelling on a train or a ship, especially if he goes to sleep. Of course the person who does not acquire initiation knowledge of things also undergoes the effects that an experience of that sort has on the whole human organism. With regard to the whole effect on the human being there is, of course, no difference.

If we want to understand what these indications actually mean we must recall to memory a spiritual scientific truth which you no doubt know, namely, that whilst we are asleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric body. In fact, because of certain limitations which cosmic laws impose on us in the natural order of things, our ego and astral body are very close to our physical body and etheric body in a case like this, so that if we are asleep on a train journey our ego and astral body are right inside all the rattling, rumbling and braking going on in the wheels and the engine of the train. And it is just the same on a modern steamer. We are inside everything going on around us. We are inside these not exactly musical experiences in our surroundings, and you need only have taken the very first steps in initiation to notice on waking up that when the ego returns with the astral body into the physical body and etheric body they bring with them what they experienced while they were being squeezed through the machinery, for they really were inside the moving machinery right up to the moment of waking.

We bring all this disharmonious squeezing and tearing back into our physical and etheric body, and if you have ever woken up with all the after-effects of what the engines of a steamer or a train have done to your ego and astral body, and bring that into your waking consciousness, you will notice how little it synchronises with what is going on within you in the way of a kind of experience the ego and the astral body have of the inner harmony of the physical and etheric body. You do in fact bring back with you the wildest confusion, the most frightful din of pulling, screeching and rattling and if you are sensitive to it you will feel that the effect on the etheric body really is as though your physical body were being bruised and dismembered—which is, of course, a clumsy expression, but you will not misunderstand. This is an absolutely unavoidable side-effect of modern life, and I want to give a word of warning right at the outset, as the kind of lecture I want to give today can very easily rouse what I would call theosophists' hidden arrogance, which flourishes very well here and there.

I am not making a general allusion, of course, let alone a particular allusion, for when one holds a talk on a matter like this, one immediately provokes judgments. I think that in the case of this theosophists' arrogance, it can easily happen that people imagine they must take great care not to expose themselves to these destructive forces; that they must protect themselves from all the influences of modern life; that they must closet themselves in a room containing the right surroundings, with walls of the colour indicated by theosophy, to make sure that modern life cannot reach them in any way that would be harmful to their bodily organisation.

I really do not want my lectures to have this effect. Everything of the nature of withdrawing and protecting oneself from the influences of all that we necessarily have to encounter as world karma arises out of weakness. But anthroposophy can only strengthen the human soul (Gemüt), and should develop those forces that inwardly strengthen and arm us against these influences. Therefore, never within the compass of our spiritual movement could any kind of recommendation be given to cut oneself off from modern life, or to turn spiritual life into a kind of hothouse culture. This could never apply in the realm of true spiritual culture. Although it is understandable that weaker natures prefer to withdraw from modern life and go into one or another kind of settlement where they are out of reach of it, the fact remains that this arises not from strength but from weakness of soul. Our task, however, consists in strengthening our soul life by permeating ourselves with the impulses of spiritual science and spiritual research so that we are armed against the onslaughts of modern life, and so that our souls can stand any amount of hammering and knocking and are still capable of finding their way into the divine-spiritual realms right through the hammering and knocking of the ahrimanic spirits.

One thing must be taken into account, however, which I have often referred to. We human beings do not only sleep at night. We actually sleep in the daytime as well, only we do not notice our daytime sleep as much as our nighttime sleep. During the night our thought life is dimmed down, and because our soul lives predominantly in our thoughts we are, as a matter of course, more aware of the dimming down of our thought life during nighttime sleep. During the day our life of will is more at rest, yet we are less aware of this because we live less in our will. All the arguing the philosophers have done about the freedom and lack of freedom of the will is due to this. As they have not taken into account that they are investigating the will whilst they are daytime sleepers and therefore cannot arrive at its true nature, they talk a lot of nonsense about free will and unfree will, indeterminism and determinism. In actual fact, whilst we are open to the waking life of day, we are only conscious of our will life to a very small degree; it dips down into the subconscious, into the region that belongs purely to the astral body.

Thus during our waking day, too, we are involved in all that modern life has produced around us in the way of the stress and noise of modern technology. During the night it is more our life of thought and feeling that becomes submerged in the noise and stress, during the day it is more our life of feeling and will.

Now in the course of human evolution what we call modern life has not always existed. It came on the scene essentially at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.⁴ The beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch actually coincides with the beginning of the modern age. What does modern intellectual culture say about the beginning of the modern age? As we know, modern intellectual culture is proud of the achievements of modern life. It is expressed somewhat like this: Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages people were incapable of developing a real observation of nature such as could have led to natural science. This did not happen until modern times. And when people talk of modern times like this they are speaking of the time which began with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. That was when people broke away from the old way of observing nature and observed it impartially, solely according to abstract laws. And it was through this knowledge of the laws of nature that natural science came into the position of opening up the possibility of mastering the forces of nature, and mastering them in an unprecedented way, as we so often hear. Yet this is just what modern technology is. And the characteristic nature of modern technology arose as a result of man acquiring knowledge of natural laws and then proceeding to use the material world to fashion his machines according to these natural laws, machines with which he can then work back on nature and life by filling modern life with them and creating his own technological setting; that is, modern life in its essence and function. Thus we see that it is the modern age that has established real natural science and the resultant mastery over nature and its forces.

You often hear people speaking like this. However if we speak like this we are speaking Ahriman's language for this is using the language of Ahriman. But let us see if we can translate this language of Ahriman into the real and true language that we are trying to acquire again by means of spiritual science, a language where words not only acquire the meaning ascribed to them through observation of external nature, but also acquire the meaning ascribed to them when we look at the cosmos in its entirety, that is, both as nature and as spiritual life.

Let us start by looking quite superficially at what happens when we develop modern technology. What is happening in the first place is just work being carried out in two stages. The first stage consists of destroying the interrelationships of nature. We blast out quarries and take the stone away, maltreat the forests and take the wood away, and the list could go on—in short, we get our raw materials in the first instance by smashing and wearing down the interrelationships in nature. And the second stage consists of taking what we have extracted from nature and putting it together again as a machine according to the laws we know as natural laws. These are the two stages, if we look at the matter on the surface.

But what is it like if we look below the surface? Looking at it from inside, the matter is like this: When we take things from nature, mineral nature to begin with, we know from previous lectures that this is linked with a certain feeling of well-being belonging to the elemental spiritual beings that are within it. This, however, does not concern us so much now. What is important here is that we cast out of nature the elemental spirits belonging to the sphere of the regular progressive hierarchies who, in fact, are the very spirits who maintain nature. In all natural existence there are elemental spiritual beings. When we plunder nature we squeeze out the nature spirits into the sphere of the spirit. That is, in fact, what is constantly happening during the first stage. We smash and plunder material nature and thus release the nature spirits, driving them forth from the sphere allotted them by the Jehovah gods into a realm where they can fly about freely and are no longer bound to their allotted dwelling places. Thus we can call the first stage the casting out of the nature spirits. The second stage is the one where we put together what we have plundered from nature, according to our knowledge of natural laws. Now when we construct a machine or a complex of machines out of raw material according to our knowledge of natural laws, we put certain spiritual beings into the things we construct.

The structure we make is by no means without its spiritual beings. In constructing it we make a habitation for other spiritual beings, but these spiritual beings that we conjure into our machines are beings belonging to the ahrimanic hierarchy. Thus at the first stage we encounter nature spirits who are in progressive evolution and cast them out and at the second stage we unite these ahrimanic spirits with our mechanisms or other products of technology. This means that by living in this technological milieu of modern times we create an ahrimanic setting for everything that goes on in us in a sleeping state, by night or day. So it is no wonder that a person at the first stages of initiation, bringing back with him into his waking life all that he has experienced outside in the way of noise and confusion, feels its destructive character when he comes back into his physical and etheric body with this in his ego and his astral body. For he is bringing back into his own organism the results, as it were, of his having been in the company of the ahrimanic elemental spirits. Thus we could say that at the third stage, at the cultural level, we have technology around us, stuffed full of ahrimanic spirits which we have put there. This is what things look like from inside.

Now if we turn our attention away from the occult side of modern life and look back at those times when people slept with only a thin partition dividing them from nature, a partition through which spirit could easily pass, and when their daytime work was within the realm of nature that still harboured regular spirits of the Jehovah hierarchy, we have to admit that in those times people's souls, their egos and astral bodies, brought back into their physical and etheric bodies the kind of nature spirits that had an enlivening effect on their inner life of soul. And the further we go back in the history of mankind's evolution the more we find what is becoming a greater and greater rarity today, namely that people did not fill themselves with the ahrimanic spirits of technology, but with nature spirits that were progressing on a straight path and which the good spirits of the hierarchies, if we may use the expression, have linked to the events and being of nature.

Now man will only attain the kind of connection he needs in order to be truly human if he seeks it in his inner life, if he delves so far down into the depths of his soul that he reaches the forces that connect him with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which he was born and in which he is embedded, but from which he can be separated. A separation has already taken place in his sense perception and intellect, and now again through his being filled with ahrimanic beings in the course of modern life, as we have seen. Only by penetrating into the depths of his own being will man find the connection with divine spiritual beings that he needs for his salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing on a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies for which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Man is being, as it were, torn away from his spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which he should be developing within him to maintain his link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened.

A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man's spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. He will also notice that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies—please do not misunderstand the word. When a person who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort, of course, to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the etheric body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you. Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone.

It would be the worst possible mistake to say that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman by cutting ourselves off from modern life. In a certain sense this would be spiritual cowardice. The real remedy for this is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort.

You so often hear people saying “These books of modern spiritual science are difficult; they make you exert yourself in order to develop your soul forces and really penetrate into spiritual science.” This is why ‘well-meaning’ people—and I am saying this in inverted commas—keep on coming to me and saying that they want to smooth out difficult passages for their fellow men and change what is written in rather a difficult style into something as trivial as can be—and these last words are not said in inverted commas. However, it belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing and another, but of how you take it in. You should take it in by dint of effort and soul activity. To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul—please forgive me for not being very polite. That belongs to the business of spiritual science, if you will excuse the mundane expression.

It shows a further misunderstanding of the actual nerve of spiritual science if people shy away from the difficult ideas and conceptual structures of spiritual science. And don't we know how many people shy away from it, how many people would prefer to dream—the Lord gives it to His Own in sleep! They would far rather have things conjured up before them in all kinds of visions of the spiritual world than acquire knowledge through the activity of exerting their inner life of soul. We know how many people there are who prefer having visions rather than sitting down and studying a difficult book of spiritual science, even though it is capable of speaking to the human soul forces that are asleep during ordinary daily life, for spiritual science really does activate the part of man that is otherwise unconscious and transport him into the life of the spiritual world. The right approach is not to receive conscious daily life apathetically and to grope in the dark, but to make an effort out of soul activity to get through what is given for the development of thoughts and ideas. For when you make an effort and have the courage to make yourself at home in this development of thoughts and ideas, this brave and active effort will bring you to the stage where mere theorising on what is given and mere acceptance in thought passes over into seeing and really being in the spiritual world. However, the really modern conception of life that arises for us from these considerations is that, because of our technological surroundings, we descend into a kind of ahrimanic sphere and become filled with ahrimanic spirituality.

The most terrible calamity would have come about in earth evolution if, in earlier ages, provision had not been made for these experiences of ahrimanic spirituality that world karma is bringing to modern mankind. Life always progresses like the swing of a pendulum. It is experienced like a pendulum swinging in one direction or the other. You cannot say “Beware of Ahriman!” for nothing can protect you from him. And if someone longs to shut himself up in a room surrounded by the colour that suits him best, where he has no factories near him or trains passing by if he can possibly help it, but is completely cut off from modern life, there are many, many ways in which ahrimanic spirituality can get into his soul. Even though he withdraws from modern life, modern spirituality will still reach him.

Now something entered into human evolution that, as it were, held off the calamity, and I gave an indication of this a long time ago in a lecture cycle in Munich.³ We must take all these things together, for that is also part of the active experiencing of modern spiritual science. Man has been given art; art, which also takes its raw material from nature by reducing and wearing it down, and at the second stage puts it together again to make something new, with a breath of life in it, although it is only of a pictorial nature. The life of the artistic impulses given us in the past has the capacity, as I said in Munich, to imbue its material with a more luciferic spirituality. Luciferic spirituality, beauty as an illusion, in fact everything that has an effect on man through the medium of art, leads man away from matter into the spirit, yet it does so through the life in the material. Lucifer is the spirit who constantly wants to flee from matter and bear man into the life of the spirit in an unjustified way. That is the other swing of the pendulum. It is only because we have to go through a technological atmosphere in the present incarnation that it is possible for us to come into connection with Ahriman, whereas in earlier incarnations we were more connected with a quality that could be steeped in art. Thus we are countering certain luciferic forces by means of the present-day ahrimanic forces, which together form a balance, whilst the pendulum of life swung one way in the past and swings the other way now.

What spiritual science quite specifically has to want at the present time is that human beings do not sleep and dream through what world karma is imposing on them. Yet people who wish to know nothing about spiritual science do sleep and dream through all the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer. They are exposed to these influences even if they themselves know nothing about them. But ‘life cannot go on like this; life has to be lived consciously from now on, and that is what spiritual science is for, so that people do not go through the world sleeping and dreaming, but understand what is around them. For this to happen, however, we must really get down to the subtleties of our spiritual-scientific business—if you will forgive the word. Such subtleties often go unnoticed, and this is the sort of thing I find when I read through transcripts of lectures I have given. Often what is of essential importance to me does not appear at all in the transcript. Just look at two examples of this. I used a certain sentence a little while ago and did not say that spiritual science wants something, but that spiritual science should want it, or has to want it. That is a particular expression which comes quite naturally to a person who is speaking out of the spirit of spiritual science, for spiritual science leads as a matter of course to a more impersonal grasp of the truths of spiritual life than other sciences do. Speaking in the manner of other sciences we would say “Spiritual science wants something”. But spiritual science says “what it should want or must want” And I say “The way I must express myself” and not “The way express myself”.

A great deal depends on such subtleties; we must not pass them by. On the contrary we must begin to believe that everything depends on spiritual science taking hold of man's innermost soul forces, and that it is capable of transforming them. Therefore it will not do to approach spiritual science with the kind of thinking one is in the habit of using in ordinary life. People are still largely unaware of what I mean by this. This can be seen, actually sensed, so to speak, in certain crude symptoms in the evolution of ordinary science.

Let us take one example out of many. Modern science of religion—irreligious science of religion—is especially proud of the fact that it has found a connection between New Testament utterances and commandments and Old Testament and heathen utterances and commandments. People have followed up the origin of every phrase in the Lord's Prayer, for instance, and said “This particular phrase comes from here and that one from there”. If you hear it like this it can sound credible. Yet the moment you approach the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual world-historical light you notice that all these things appear in a new context, and that the important thing is not the discovering that all these expressions were there in earlier times but looking at them in the context which gives them a new shade of meaning. In this respect the Old and the New Testament differ entirely. Subtle things like this convey the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The words and even the word connections often stay the same but their shade and colouring is different, and that makes all the difference.

There is something tremendous behind the fact, for instance, that the conception of the ego in the whole evolutionary system of language is quite differently constructed the further back we go in pre-Christian times, than it is later on when we go forwards from the Mystery of Golgotha. The way people spoke about the ‘I’ changed, and this can be seen in the configuration of language. When the ‘I’ becomes part of the word for the verb, as is the case in many languages, it signifies something entirely different from when it is separated from the verb and spoken as a separate word, and so on.

The important thing is to work our way with the help of spiritual science to an approach to life which looks consciously at the things which influence our human organism of spirit, soul and body. The way I have described man's relationship to his technological surroundings is, of course, only in its beginning stages. It was about four centuries ago that things began to get like they are today. Then the nineteenth century that was so proud of itself took a tremendous leap forward in the ahrimanisation of human life. Yet a great deal more will take place in future human evolution in the direction of this ahrimanisation. We have been in it for about four hundred years. It is coming slowly and gradually. It has already reached a certain climax among the vast numbers of our fellowmen who, because of the isolation caused by living in towns, hardly have any connection any more with real nature spirits. I once said, symbolically, that it is important for man's development to be able to distinguish oats from barley. Yet really, how many people are there in a town environment today who cannot tell the difference any more between oats and barley! Perhaps they can distinguish the plants, as that is comparatively easy in the case of oats and barley, but where the grains are concerned they can no longer tell the one from the other. If they have lived in a town or were actually born there, they usually cannot tell the difference.

Now it happens like this in the evolution of mankind, that when human beings have progressed a stage, this progress is always bound up with another experience that is at another stage, as it were, in a parallel stream. And this has happened. Whilst technological life has been drawing modern man closer to Ahriman in the way I have described, he has also been getting closer to him in another way. When a spiritual view of history replaces the crude way of viewing history introduced by materialism, people will understand what spiritual science has to say on this matter.

If we go back to the time that preceded the last four centuries, man not only had a different relationship to his environment than he has today, but he had, above all, an entirely different relationship to something that comes to expression in himself, really comes to expression in himself; he had a different connection with his speech, to the way he spoke. Speech does not only contain what modern materialistic science believes it does; there is something in speech which in many ways is connected with man's not fully-conscious experiences, which often occur in the subconscious realms of his being, and which are therefore interpenetrated by spiritual beings. Spiritual beings live and are active in man's speech, and when man forms words, elemental spiritual beings pour into these words. During human conversations spiritual beings fly about the room on the wings of the words. This is why it is so important that we pay attention to certain subtleties of speech, and do not simply let uncontrolled feelings get the better of us when we speak.

Right into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we could say that man still possessed the remnant of a living experience of the elemental spirituality contained in language. The spirituality of language was still active within him, for language is in a certain respect more inspired and spiritual in many ways than an individual human being. It is only occasionally nowadays that we notice a person reverting from a materialistic way of thinking to a feeling for the inspired spirituality of language.

On one occasion⁴ here I gave a very clear if trivial example showing in what way a person's mind can revert from the materialistic role of today. On the whole it still happens to many people, but they are not immediately aware of it. If someone is travelling down the Rhine and he speaks for instance of the ‘old Rhine’, what does he mean? No doubt he feels something. But what is he referring to? When people speak of the ‘old Rhine’ I do not think they mean the riverbed, the hollow in the ground. That would be the only permanent part, of course. But we cannot discover what else the ‘old Rhine’ is supposed to be, for the water is certainly absolutely new; it keeps flowing on, and if you try and find anything old except the hollowed out riverbed, it cannot be done. The old Rhine! Language is more inspired than man, because the language obviously means the River God, even if people are not conscious of it. One is describing the elemental being that belongs to it very suitably when one says the ‘old Rhine’.

That is a rough example. This spirituality, this belief in spirituality exists throughout language. And a feeling, at least, for this connection with spirituality in language still really existed in the disposition of soul of all the peoples of Europe, during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and right up to modern times as far as the fifteenth and sixteenth century. If you are not aware of this fact you cannot have the right feeling for the beginning of the St. John's Gospel. For the opening words of the St. John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word”, arose, in fact, out of a consciousness that the part the word plays within the whole human organism and human life, provides the connection for man, by way of elemental spirituality in the first place, to the whole of the world lying behind the world of the senses.

If, with the means that spiritual science puts at our disposal, we observe the way human life has run its course from the Middle Ages up to modern times, and are able to look right into the soul, we shall in fact find that man's relationship to speech was altogether different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, even in the last phase of it that lasted up till the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Whenever they spoke people heard undertones, genuine undertones. People no longer believe this, because nowadays human beings really only live in the material aspect of the sounds of speech. A spiritual element joined with the sound as though it sounded again an octave lower. Thus when people spoke, or heard people speaking, something resounded in the words that was not differentiated according to one or another language, but was of a universal human character. One can really say that when human experience comes to expression, as it were, in the flowering of the separate languages, mankind today experiences the flowering as a vibrating of sounds in the ear, and experiences the sounds as something that have a meaning. Whereas in earlier times they experienced a steeping of the whole element of speech in something that joined with it and was not differentiated into the various languages. The dividing line between the one experience and the other fell in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Mankind was torn away from the genius of language.

Nobody can understand the actual jolt mankind was given in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, unless he studies the special character of this damping down of undertones in the experiencing of speech. Something was lost to mankind, and this comes to light in the happenings of the times, whether they be battles or peacetime creations. Before the point of time mentioned the human soul still experienced it. Whenever people spoke, this resounding of undertones in the experiencing of speech still lived in human souls. That is why the whole of history has an entirely different quality before this turning point, than afterwards. Through spiritual science we must develop a spiritual ear, as I would like to call it, for the completely different tone that events had in the Middle Ages than they have today, as human souls were connected to their experiences in quite a different way in those times.

I will choose the Crusades as an example of a general human soul-experience. They are only conceivable in the way they came about in the Middle Ages if we know of the existence of these spiritual undertones in the experiencing of language. The present-day peoples of Middle and Western Europe would most certainly not be so affected by the words of Clermont's synod:⁵ God wills it—Dieu le vent—as the peoples of the Middle Ages were. The reasons for this, however, can only be recognised if we take into account what has just been said.

An important phenomenon in all modern intellectual life is also connected with this. The whole formation of modern history has to do with this. If you once envisage history with these subtle language undertones in mind, you will understand why, at the point of time I have indicated, the various European nationalities grouped themselves together, those nationalities who before that time had quite different relationships with one another; who were governed by quite different impulses in their relationships to one another. The way the different nationalities group themselves in the various parts of Europe, right up to the present day, has to do with impulses that we interpret quite falsely if we go back from the present to the Middle Ages to look for the origins of nations, without bearing in mind the tremendously important rubicon that had to be crossed in the life of the soul.

I can only give you indications of these themes whereas they would actually require a whole series of lectures. The most important part of all this must be left to your meditation, which will discover what can be found as a result of these indications. What I would hope to have achieved is to have given you a picture of how to build a bridge between spiritual science and knowledge of life, and shown you how spiritual science can lead to a conscious approach to the reality in which we live. Having spoken of the real foundations on which these indications are based, it would appear quite natural that this modern age of ours makes a renewal of many things necessary, compared to the past. Through being placed today by world karma in a setting that functions in an especially ahrimanic way, and through having to make our soul forces strong enough to find our way into spiritual spheres, despite all the hindrances that come to us from ahrimanic spirituality, our souls are in need of different kinds of sustenance than before. For the same reason art must also adopt new paths in all its branches.

Art obviously had to speak differently to the souls that were less exposed to the attacks of Ahriman than we are today. Art has to speak in a new way to souls today, and our Goetheanum building⁶ is meant to be the very first step, really and truly the very first step towards art of this kind, and not anything perfect. It is an attempt actually to create the kind of art that calls on the soul to be active, on the lines of the whole conception of modern life, yet a spiritual conception of modern life. Let us remember the frightfully trivial comparison I made regarding the Goetheanum building a few weeks ago. I asked, “How does the effect our Goetheanum building is intended to have, compare with that of an older building, or an older work of art in general?

A work of art from the past made an impression by means of its forms and colours. Its forms and colours made an impression. If we make a diagram of it and the form is like this, this form had an effect on the eye (he did a drawing). What was in space and what the form was filled out with, was what made the impression. And it is the same with the colours. The colours on the walls made the impression.

I said that our building is not intended to be like that; our building is meant to be—and this is the terribly trivial comparison—like a jelly mould that does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of the jelly. Its function is to give a form to what is put into it, and when it is empty you can see what it is for. What it does to the jelly is the important thing. And the important thing with our building is what a person who goes inside it experiences in the innermost depths of his soul, when he feels the contours of the forms. All that the forms do is set the process going that creates the work of art. The work of art is what the soul experiences when it feels the shape of the forms. The work of art is the jelly. What has been built is the jelly mould, and that is why we had to try and proceed on an entirely new principle.

Likewise what you will find in the way of paintings in our Goetheanum building will not be there for their direct effect, as used to be the case with art in the past, but will be there for the soul to encounter, so that the experience resulting from this encounter will be a work of art. This of course involves a metamorphosis—I can only give indications of all this—the metamorphosis of an old artistic principle into a new one, which we can depict by saying that when the sculptural, the pictorial element is taken a stage further, it is led over into a kind of musical experience. There is also the opposite step, from the musical element back into the sculptural-pictorial.

These are things which are not created arbitrarily by the human soul, but have to do with the innermost impulses we have to go through, because we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It has been, as it were, ordained by the spiritual beings that guide this evolution.

A start has to be made in every realm. If people find things about our building that are imperfect they may be assured that the people who are actually engaged in building it will find far more imperfections than the people who criticise it—far, far more. There are faults to be found in it which people who just look at it would not think of. But that is not the point. The point is that a start is being made, for there are so many things that have to happen. The important thing is not the perfection we achieve in what we must will to happen, but that a start is made on what has to come to life here, however imperfect it has to be. For everything new that comes into the world is imperfect compared with old things that have stood the test of time. Things that are old have reached their highest level, whereas new creations are still in their infancy. That is quite obvious.

I will begin tomorrow where we have stopped today, and consider the renewal of an artistic conception of the world and the connection this has with the whole cultural life of today.

4. 1413. See Rudolf Steiner's Occult Science, an Outline, chapter on ‘Future Evolution of the World and of Mankind#8217;, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979.
3. Secrets of the Threshold, lecture VI, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London 1928.
4. On 3rd October 1914, towards the end of the first lecture on Occult Reading and Occult Hearing, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1975.
5. convened by Pope Urban II in 1095. Here the decision was taken for the First Crusade.
6. Laying of foundation stone 20th September 1913. Burning of the Goetheanum, 31st December 1922.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I 29 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I 29 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
In the course of the following considerations I shall be speaking to you about the important impulses of transformation present in our era for the artistic evolution of mankind. I would like to connect this with what may occur to you as a result of your own observation of this building, or rather with that of which this building is merely a beginning. But as a basis for these considerations it will be necessary to establish a connection between art and the knowledge we have gained about man and his relationship with the world in general. I will begin today with these seemingly more theoretical considerations and continue tomorrow with our actual theme concerning the impulses of transformation in artistic development. Though I said that I would begin today with a seemingly more theoretical basis, in actual fact anyone who looks upon spiritual science as something living will find these preliminaries very much alive and not at all theoretical. They will, however, only be quite clear to those for whom the ideas of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on, are not mere designations in a diagram of man's being but the expression of actual experiences in feelings and ideas relating to the spiritual world. If we consider the different forms of art, it appears that architecture is the one that has become most separated from the human being as a whole. Architecture is separated from the human being, because it is placed at the service of our external impulses, either those of utility, which call for utilitarian structures, or those having idealistic aims, as in the case of religious buildings. We shall see during the course of the lecture how other forms of art have a more intimate connection with the real being of man than has architecture. Architecture is in some way detached from what we describe as the laws of man's inner being. And yet, seen from the point of view of spiritual science, this external character of architecture very largely disappears. When we begin to look at the human being, the part that first strikes us, because it is the most outward, is the physical body. But this physical body is permeated and penetrated and filled by the etheric body. The physical body might be simply called a space body or described as an organisation in space. But the etheric body, which dwells in the physical body and, as you know, also extends beyond the limits of the physical body and is intimately connected with the whole cosmos, cannot be contemplated without the aid of time. Basically everything in the etheric body is rhythm, a cyclical rhythm of movement or activity, and it has a spatial character only in as far as it inhabits the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is true, the etheric body also has to be conceived in spatial pictures; but these do not show its essential nature, which is cyclic, rhythmic, moving in time. Music takes up no space, but is solely present in time. In the same way, what matters with regard to the human etheric body in reality (not in the imaginative picture we draw) is mobility, movement, formative activity in rhythmic or musical sequence, in fact the quality of time. Of course, this is a difficult thing for the human mind to conceive, accustomed as it is to relating everything to space; but in order to gain a clear concept of the etheric body we must try much harder to allow musical ideas rather than spatial ideas to come to our aid. In order to bring to the fore another characteristic of the etheric body it can be said: Occupying the physical body and extending, as it does, its activity and rhythmical play into this physical body, it is above all a body of forces. It is a flowing-out of forces, a manifestation of forces, and we notice them in a number of phenomena that occur during the course of a man's life. One of these phenomena, to which not much attention is paid by external science or from an outward view of the world, but one which we have often stressed, is the ability of the human being to stand upright. On entering the world at birth we are not yet able to assume this vertical posture, which is the most important of all postures for the human being. We have to acquire the ability. It is true that this is initiated by the astral body, which as it were transfers its power of upward-stretching to the etheric body, but it is the latter which in the course of time sets about raising the physical body into a vertical position. Here we see the living interplay of the astral and etheric bodies in the formation of the physical body. But this acquisition of the upright posture is only the most striking of these phenomena. Whenever we lift a hand a similar process takes place. In our ego we can only contain the thought of lifting a hand; this thought must at once act upon the astral body, and the astral body transfers its activity, which lives in it as an impulse, to the etheric body. And what happens then? Let us assume that someone is holding his hand in a horizontal position. Now he forms the idea: I want to raise my hand a little bit higher. The idea, which in life is followed by the act of lifting the hand, passes over to the astral body; there an impulse arises and passes over from the astral body to the etheric body. And now the following happens in the etheric body: The hand is at first horizontal; then the etheric body is drawn up higher, then the physical hand moves, following what occurs first as a development of force in the etheric body. The physical hand follows the etheric. I shall explain the whole process tomorrow. At the moment I simply want to point out that the making of any movement involves a development of force which is followed by a state of equilibrium. In the life of our organism we are continually dealing with a development of force followed by a state of equilibrium. Of course the human being has no conscious knowledge of what is really going on within him; but what takes place is so infinitely wise that human ego cleverness is nothing by comparison. We would be unable to move a hand if we had to depend on our own cleverness and knowledge alone; for the subtle forces developed by the astral body in the etheric body and then passed on to the physical body are quite inaccessible to ordinary human knowledge. And the wisdom developed in this process is millions of times greater than that required by a watch-maker in making a watch. We do not usually think of this, but this wisdom actually has to be developed. It must be developed and it is developed as a result of our being left to ourselves with our ego. But the moment the ego sends the impulses of its concept into the astral body we need the help of another being; unaided we can do nothing here. We are dependent on help from a being belonging to the hierarchy of the angels. For even the tiniest movement of a finger we need the assistance of such a being, whose wisdom is far in advance of our own. We could do nothing but lie on the earth immobile, making concepts in utter rigidity, if the beings of the higher hierarchies did not constantly surround us with their activity. Therefore the first step towards initiation is to gain an understanding of how these forces act upon the human being. I have tried to show here what is involved even in a movement as simple as resting the head in the hand. We learn to know, in the form of a spatial system of lines and forces, the exterior of our being, that which happens to our physical body through the activity of the etheric body. If we carry this spatial system of lines and forces constantly active in us out into the world, and if we organise matter according to this system, then architecture arises. All architecture consists in separating from ourselves this system of forces and placing it outside in space. Thus we may say: Here we have the outer boundary of our physical body, and if we push the inner organisation, which has been impressed by the etheric body on to the physical body, outside this boundary, then architecture arises. All the laws present in the architectural utilisation of matter are to be found also in the human body. When we project the specific organisation of the human body into the space outside it, then we have architecture. Now we know, in our way of looking at things, that the etheric body is attached to the physical body. Looking once more at any work of architecture, what we can say to ourselves about it? We can say that here, carried into the space outside us, is the interaction between vertical and horizontal and between forces that react together, all of which are otherwise to be found within the human physical body. In the same way we can carry what streams from the etheric body into the physical body, not outside ourselves this time, but down from the etheric into the physical body. In other words we can bring about something which we do not separate from ourselves by placing it outside us, but which we only push down into ourselves. This is the process by which the laws of the etheric body, which it has received from the astral body, can become physical, just as in architecture the laws of the physical body are projected into the space outside us. Through this process, sculpture arises out of the etheric body, just as architecture arises out of the physical body. In a way we push the laws of the etheric body down one step. Physical Body Architecture Etheric Body Sculpture Just as in architecture we push the laws of the physical body into the space outside us, so in sculpture we push the laws of the etheric body one step downwards. We do not separate these laws from ourselves, we push them directly into our own form. Just as we find in architecture the expression of the laws of our own physical body, so we find in sculpture the natural laws of our etheric body; we simply transfer this inner order into our works of sculpture. In architecture we transplant into the space outside ourselves only the laws of the physical body, its spatial lines and interplay of forces, taking nothing of the etheric body, nothing of the astral body, nothing of the ego. In the same way, where sculpture is concerned, we take only the laws of the etheric body and bring them down one step lower, using nothing of the astral body and nothing of the ego except in so far as they send impulses into the etheric body. This is why a work of sculpture appears to be alive. It would actually be alive if it contained also the ego and the astral body. So if we seek the laws of sculpture we must realise that they are in fact the laws of our etheric body, just as the laws of architecture are to be seen in the laws of our physical body. If we do the same in connection with the astral body, as it were pushing what is in us of an astral nature a step lower down into the etheric body, we are pushing down what lives inwardly in man. Now nothing arises that could truly have a spatial nature, for the astral body, when it moves down into the etheric body, is not entering a spatial element: the etheric body is rhythmic and harmonious, not spatial. Therefore what arises can only be a picture, indeed a real picture, in fact the art of painting. Painting is the form of art which contains the laws of our astral body, just as sculpture contains the laws of our etheric body and architecture those of our physical body. Physical Body Architecture Etheric Body Sculpture Astral Body Painting If we now take the fourth member of the human being, the ego, and push it with its laws down into the astral body, there allowing it to move and act, then we obtain yet another form of art. This art does not contain what works in the ego as something which can be expressed in language or ordinary ideas; it is something that has moved from the ego down one step towards the subconscious. It is as though the horizon of consciousness were to be moved down by the amount of half a member of the human being; we take half a step downward, our ego descends into the astral body: then music is born. Physical Body Architecture Etheric Body Sculpture Astral Body Painting Ego Music So music contains the laws of our ego, though not as they are manifested in ordinary, everyday life, but pressed down into the subconscious, into the astral body; the ego dives, as it were, beneath the surface of the astral body, there to flow and stream within the organisation of the astral body. If we go on to speak about the higher members of the human being, starting with the spirit-self, we can refer to them only as something which is still outside the human being. For, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we are only just beginning to make this spirit-self one of our inner members. But if we accept it as a gift from a higher sphere and sink it into our ego, if we dive down, like a swimmer into the water, into our ego, taking with us what as yet can only be dimly felt of the spirit-self, then poetry is born. Physical Body Architecture Etheric Body Sculpture Astral Body Painting Ego Music Spirit-self Poetry And proceeding still further, one can say, though to a limited extent: Round about us, in the environment of soul and spirit which we shall absorb at a later stage, the life-spirit is also present. Therefore one day the life-spirit may come to be lowered into the spirit-self. But of course at the moment this is something that will only reach a certain degree of perfection in the very distant future. For when he tries to lower the life-spirit into the spirit-self, man will have to be living entirely in an element which as yet is absolutely strange to him. So what we can say in this domain is like the babbling of a child when compared with the later perfection of speech. One can foresee for the far distant future that there will be an art of great perfection that will stand out beyond poetry, as poetry stands out beyond music, music beyond painting, painting beyond sculpture, and sculpture beyond architecture (this being a question not of superiority, but of arrangement). You will guess, of course, that I am referring to something of which we know only the most elementary beginnings today: Something of which we can only receive the very first indications: the art of eurythmy. Eurythmy is indeed something that must appear in human evolution at this time; but there is no call for pride, for at present it can be a mere babbling compared with what it will become in the future. Physical Body Architecture Etheric Body Sculpture Astral Body Painting Ego Music Spirit-self Poetry Life-spirit Eurythmy We can now begin at any point with a somewhat more extended view. But in order to do so we must realise that the organisation of man's being is not nearly as simple as we would like to imagine in our intellectual indolence. It is incredibly easy simply to imagine that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on. If one is able to enumerate these various members and has an approximate conception of them, one may easily consider this rather simple form of knowledge quite satisfactory. But things are not so simple. Physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego are not simply sheaths which fit easily into one another; they are, on the contrary, very complex structures. Take, for instance, the astral body. It is not enough merely to say: This is the astral body and nothing more. Things are much more complicated. Words here are only an approximation, but we could say that the astral body, for instance, is in itself structured and consists of seven members. Just as the human being can be said to have seven members (physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man), so the astral body has a connection with each of these. There is as it were a ‘thinnest’ part of the astral body which could be described as being especially moulded and fashioned for the physical body. That is to say: there is a living system of laws in the astral body for the physical body, a living system of laws in the astral body for the etheric body, a living system of laws in the astral body for itself, a living system of laws in the astral body for the ego, a living system of laws in the astral body for the spirit-self, for the life-spirit, and for the spirit-man. Thus each member of the human being has in turn seven members. So taking into consideration that the human being consists of seven members which are in turn each structured into seven members, we already find we have a total of forty-nine members. This of course sounds perfectly horrible to modern psychologists, who like to regard the soul as a unity and would prefer to have nothing to do with these things. But for true knowledge, which must gradually arise in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is certainly not without significance. For when we know that the astral body is sevenfold in its nature and that it is an organism of inner living impulses, then we shall say to ourselves: Within this astral body, with its sevenfold organisation, individual activities must surely take place between the various members. The part of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body must have a certain interplay with the part that corresponds to the etheric body and with the part that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. These are no mere abstract suppositions; it is quite possible in the human organism for a man to feel inwardly—though more subconsciously than consciously—a movement of that part of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body. And then something may produce another movement which will have to start in that member of the astral body that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. This is not a mere theory; it really happens. Now imagine the seven members of the astral body to be interrelated as are the tones of the scale: tonic, second, third, fourth, etc. If you allow the effect of a melody to work upon you, you will find that your human organisation permits this to occur because the various tones of the melody are experienced inwardly in the corresponding member of the astral body. The interval of a third is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself. A fourth is experienced in the part of the astral body which—well, let us now be more specific—corresponds to the intellectual or mind soul. A fifth is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the consciousness or spiritual soul. And remembering that when we divide the human organism more exactly we find it contains nine members, we must, accordingly, structure the astral body in the same way. Instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body” when enumerating the various members, I could now say “the member experienced in the tonic”. Instead of “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the etheric body”, I could say “the member experienced in the second”. And instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself” I could say “the member experienced in the third”. Figure 1 You can now also see that the existence of the major third and the minor third really corresponds to the incorporation of the astral body in our whole human organisation. If you look up the relevant passage in my book Theosophy you will see that there is an overlapping of what we call the sentient soul on the other. Therefore what I described as an interval of a third can correspond either to the astral body or to the sentient soul: in the one case we have the major third and in the other the minor third. It is a fact that our ability to experience a musical work of art depends upon this inner musical activity of the astral body: only while we listen to the music with our ego we immediately sink the experience into our astral body, into certain realms which are subconscious. This leads us to a very important fact. Let us look at ourselves as astral beings, as possessors of an astral body: what is our nature in this respect? As astral beings we have been created out of the cosmos according to musical laws. Inasmuch as we are astral beings we are musically connected with the cosmos. We are ourselves an instrument. Let us now suppose that we do not need to hear the physical sound of tones, but are able to listen to the creative activity of the cosmos that has brought us into existence as astral beings out of the cosmos: in such a state we should hear the universal music, what has always been called the music of the spheres. Let us suppose that we are able to dive down consciously into our astral entity, developing its spiritual strength to such an extent that we can hear the creative activity of the cosmic music; we could then say to ourselves: With the help of our astral body the cosmos is playing our own being. This thought, which I have just expressed to you, was alive in men in ancient times, really alive. And in pointing this out one is also pointing to the way in which right into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch human evolution has become more and more materialistic. For we all know that this thought is not alive in the external human culture of today; humanity knows nothing about the fact that, so far as the astral body is concerned, the human being is a musical instrument. But this was not always the case, and the fact that it was not always the case has been, so to speak, forgotten. For there was a time when men said: A man once lived who was called John, and this John was able to transport himself into a state of spiritual consciousness in which he could hear the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. They said: All earthly music can only be a copy of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind. And the more religious part of humanity felt that by passing over into the world of physical desires, man had absorbed impulses which veiled and darkened the celestial music for him. But at the same time they felt that there must exist in human evolution—through purification from external and chaotic life—a road leading to the goal of hearing the spiritual cosmic music, as it were, through and beyond the external music of the physical world. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, this relation between external, materialistic music, of which the divine origin was pointed out, and its heavenly prototype, was still beautifully expressed: men were required to employ music as a form of sacrificial or religious service and were expected to free themselves of their connection with the purely chaotic and—as it was felt to be—impure outer world when they produced musical sounds. Life in ordinary external speech was felt to be impure. People felt themselves transported to spiritual heights when they lifted themselves up from speech to music, which is the image of celestial music. This feeling was expressed in the following words. Ut queant laxis resonare fibris mira gestorum famuli tuorum solve polluti labii reatum, S.J. (Sancte Johanne) To translate this we would have to say: “So that thy servants may sing with liberated vocal cords the wonders of thy works, pardon the sins of the lips which have become earthly—one might say which have become capable of speech—O Saint John.” It was to one who could hear the heavenly Jerusalem that men looked up in this connection. Let us extract certain things that lie hidden in such a verse: Ut (this word was later replaced by do), resonare (re), mira (mi), famuli (fa), solve (sol), labii (la), S.J. (si). So you find that ‘do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si’, the names of the notes in medieval musical notation, have been carefully hidden in this verse. In such an instance we can go back to what still lived in human minds right until the eleventh or twelfth centuries through atavistic clairvoyant cognition, and we see how it all disappears in the flood of materialistic views and passes out of the consciousness of men. But now we are living at a time when through spiritual knowledge we must find it again and recreate it. Everything points clearly to the way in which evolution has made a descent so deep that a swamp has formed. The muddy water of this morass is made up of all the ideas originating in a materialistic view of the world. And now we are about to struggle up again out of the swamp of materialism, to ascend and rediscover what mankind has lost in its descent. I have pointed out that properly speaking we do not sleep by night only but that certain parts of our being also sleep by day. At night it is principally the thinking and feeling parts which sleep, while during the day it is more the willing and feeling parts which sleep. It is in this will sphere that we are submerged when we dive down with the ego into the astral body. And when we hear a musical work, what happens is that we consciously dive down with our ego into the part of us which is otherwise asleep. When you sit and listen to a symphony, the inner process which takes place is a dulling of your ordinary, everyday thought life while you plunge with soul and spirit down into a region which otherwise sleeps during daytime consciousness. This brings about the connection between the effect of music and all the life-giving forces in the human organism, all that streams with living force through the whole human being, letting him grow together as one with the streaming volume of sounds. And at night we sleep; then our ordinary thought life is dulled in an element which as yet is not present in our normal consciousness. But if we succeed in bringing into ordinary everyday consciousness that which awakens when we sleep; if that in which we live when asleep dives down into our waking experience, then . . . . Just in contrast: I have just said that when we experience music the ego's awareness dives down into a region which sleeps during the day. But when we submerge what we experience at night into the consciousness of daytime, then poetry arises. This is what people like Plato felt when they called poetry a ‘divine dreaming’. When we thus explore the connection that exists between man and the whole cosmos, which we can do to a certain extent under the guidance of art, we can bring a certain measure of life into what otherwise remains a mere skeleton of ideas. Please do realise that these things are not a mere skeleton! Some people take such pleasure in arranging what I have described in my book Theosophy in the pattern of a diagram; no doubt they thought that it was from pure obstinacy that I deviated from the pattern of earlier theosophical teachings, when I described three threefold organisations¹ that are not separate but interlaced. But if these matters are approached through what one experiences and what is absolutely real, then even the nature of major and minor melodies will show that things are deeply rooted in the whole structure of the cosmos. Only when things are taken as living entities out of the whole structure of the cosmos do they correspond to a true reality. Of course it was necessary in the beginning to say a number of things, the reasons for which have only appeared by degrees during the course of many years. This naturally involved the risk that people would start to criticise, because they did not know on what certain statements were based, nor how things of necessity present themselves when the whole structure of the cosmos is taken into consideration. This is still the case with many matters. Many things that are said now are open to numerous objections if they are approached with superficial ideas. But in the course of years even decades they will certainly be verified. And the knowledge gained through spiritual science will become fruitful as soon as it is no longer a theory but a living experience. All depends upon the capacity to surmount the first ideas presented by the words: physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., so that these ideas can become alive; a real understanding of the universe radiates from this process of bringing to life. Those who are able to do this should now compare the kind of aesthetics that have come to the fore during the last century and a half, with what can be learned from a knowledge of the human being in discovering the origin of the arts. Those who make this comparison will see that, unless there is an understanding of the human organisation, it is impossible to reach a real comprehension of what lives around us and gives us joy. I want to awaken in you a recognition of the fact that spiritual science is itself an initial impulse that will continue to grow and develop, that we are in a sense called upon to make the very first steps, and that we can imagine what these first steps will lead to, long after we have laid aside our bodies in our present incarnation. 1. see diagram p. 49 in Kunst im Lichte der Mysterienweisheit, Dornach 1980.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution I 29 Dec 1914, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

In the course of the following considerations I shall be speaking to you about the important impulses of transformation present in our era for the artistic evolution of mankind. I would like to connect this with what may occur to you as a result of your own observation of this building, or rather with that of which this building is merely a beginning. But as a basis for these considerations it will be necessary to establish a connection between art and the knowledge we have gained about man and his relationship with the world in general. I will begin today with these seemingly more theoretical considerations and continue tomorrow with our actual theme concerning the impulses of transformation in artistic development.

Though I said that I would begin today with a seemingly more theoretical basis, in actual fact anyone who looks upon spiritual science as something living will find these preliminaries very much alive and not at all theoretical. They will, however, only be quite clear to those for whom the ideas of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on, are not mere designations in a diagram of man's being but the expression of actual experiences in feelings and ideas relating to the spiritual world.

If we consider the different forms of art, it appears that architecture is the one that has become most separated from the human being as a whole. Architecture is separated from the human being, because it is placed at the service of our external impulses, either those of utility, which call for utilitarian structures, or those having idealistic aims, as in the case of religious buildings. We shall see during the course of the lecture how other forms of art have a more intimate connection with the real being of man than has architecture. Architecture is in some way detached from what we describe as the laws of man's inner being. And yet, seen from the point of view of spiritual science, this external character of architecture very largely disappears.

When we begin to look at the human being, the part that first strikes us, because it is the most outward, is the physical body. But this physical body is permeated and penetrated and filled by the etheric body. The physical body might be simply called a space body or described as an organisation in space. But the etheric body, which dwells in the physical body and, as you know, also extends beyond the limits of the physical body and is intimately connected with the whole cosmos, cannot be contemplated without the aid of time. Basically everything in the etheric body is rhythm, a cyclical rhythm of movement or activity, and it has a spatial character only in as far as it inhabits the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is true, the etheric body also has to be conceived in spatial pictures; but these do not show its essential nature, which is cyclic, rhythmic, moving in time.

Music takes up no space, but is solely present in time. In the same way, what matters with regard to the human etheric body in reality (not in the imaginative picture we draw) is mobility, movement, formative activity in rhythmic or musical sequence, in fact the quality of time. Of course, this is a difficult thing for the human mind to conceive, accustomed as it is to relating everything to space; but in order to gain a clear concept of the etheric body we must try much harder to allow musical ideas rather than spatial ideas to come to our aid.

In order to bring to the fore another characteristic of the etheric body it can be said: Occupying the physical body and extending, as it does, its activity and rhythmical play into this physical body, it is above all a body of forces. It is a flowing-out of forces, a manifestation of forces, and we notice them in a number of phenomena that occur during the course of a man's life. One of these phenomena, to which not much attention is paid by external science or from an outward view of the world, but one which we have often stressed, is the ability of the human being to stand upright. On entering the world at birth we are not yet able to assume this vertical posture, which is the most important of all postures for the human being. We have to acquire the ability. It is true that this is initiated by the astral body, which as it were transfers its power of upward-stretching to the etheric body, but it is the latter which in the course of time sets about raising the physical body into a vertical position. Here we see the living interplay of the astral and etheric bodies in the formation of the physical body.

But this acquisition of the upright posture is only the most striking of these phenomena. Whenever we lift a hand a similar process takes place. In our ego we can only contain the thought of lifting a hand; this thought must at once act upon the astral body, and the astral body transfers its activity, which lives in it as an impulse, to the etheric body. And what happens then? Let us assume that someone is holding his hand in a horizontal position. Now he forms the idea: I want to raise my hand a little bit higher. The idea, which in life is followed by the act of lifting the hand, passes over to the astral body; there an impulse arises and passes over from the astral body to the etheric body. And now the following happens in the etheric body: The hand is at first horizontal; then the etheric body is drawn up higher, then the physical hand moves, following what occurs first as a development of force in the etheric body. The physical hand follows the etheric.

I shall explain the whole process tomorrow. At the moment I simply want to point out that the making of any movement involves a development of force which is followed by a state of equilibrium. In the life of our organism we are continually dealing with a development of force followed by a state of equilibrium. Of course the human being has no conscious knowledge of what is really going on within him; but what takes place is so infinitely wise that human ego cleverness is nothing by comparison. We would be unable to move a hand if we had to depend on our own cleverness and knowledge alone; for the subtle forces developed by the astral body in the etheric body and then passed on to the physical body are quite inaccessible to ordinary human knowledge. And the wisdom developed in this process is millions of times greater than that required by a watch-maker in making a watch.

We do not usually think of this, but this wisdom actually has to be developed. It must be developed and it is developed as a result of our being left to ourselves with our ego. But the moment the ego sends the impulses of its concept into the astral body we need the help of another being; unaided we can do nothing here. We are dependent on help from a being belonging to the hierarchy of the angels. For even the tiniest movement of a finger we need the assistance of such a being, whose wisdom is far in advance of our own. We could do nothing but lie on the earth immobile, making concepts in utter rigidity, if the beings of the higher hierarchies did not constantly surround us with their activity.

Therefore the first step towards initiation is to gain an understanding of how these forces act upon the human being.

I have tried to show here what is involved even in a movement as simple as resting the head in the hand. We learn to know, in the form of a spatial system of lines and forces, the exterior of our being, that which happens to our physical body through the activity of the etheric body. If we carry this spatial system of lines and forces constantly active in us out into the world, and if we organise matter according to this system, then architecture arises. All architecture consists in separating from ourselves this system of forces and placing it outside in space. Thus we may say: Here we have the outer boundary of our physical body, and if we push the inner organisation, which has been impressed by the etheric body on to the physical body, outside this boundary, then architecture arises. All the laws present in the architectural utilisation of matter are to be found also in the human body. When we project the specific organisation of the human body into the space outside it, then we have architecture.

Now we know, in our way of looking at things, that the etheric body is attached to the physical body. Looking once more at any work of architecture, what we can say to ourselves about it? We can say that here, carried into the space outside us, is the interaction between vertical and horizontal and between forces that react together, all of which are otherwise to be found within the human physical body.

In the same way we can carry what streams from the etheric body into the physical body, not outside ourselves this time, but down from the etheric into the physical body. In other words we can bring about something which we do not separate from ourselves by placing it outside us, but which we only push down into ourselves. This is the process by which the laws of the etheric body, which it has received from the astral body, can become physical, just as in architecture the laws of the physical body are projected into the space outside us. Through this process, sculpture arises out of the etheric body, just as architecture arises out of the physical body. In a way we push the laws of the etheric body down one step.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Just as in architecture we push the laws of the physical body into the space outside us, so in sculpture we push the laws of the etheric body one step downwards. We do not separate these laws from ourselves, we push them directly into our own form. Just as we find in architecture the expression of the laws of our own physical body, so we find in sculpture the natural laws of our etheric body; we simply transfer this inner order into our works of sculpture. In architecture we transplant into the space outside ourselves only the laws of the physical body, its spatial lines and interplay of forces, taking nothing of the etheric body, nothing of the astral body, nothing of the ego. In the same way, where sculpture is concerned, we take only the laws of the etheric body and bring them down one step lower, using nothing of the astral body and nothing of the ego except in so far as they send impulses into the etheric body. This is why a work of sculpture appears to be alive. It would actually be alive if it contained also the ego and the astral body. So if we seek the laws of sculpture we must realise that they are in fact the laws of our etheric body, just as the laws of architecture are to be seen in the laws of our physical body.

If we do the same in connection with the astral body, as it were pushing what is in us of an astral nature a step lower down into the etheric body, we are pushing down what lives inwardly in man. Now nothing arises that could truly have a spatial nature, for the astral body, when it moves down into the etheric body, is not entering a spatial element: the etheric body is rhythmic and harmonious, not spatial. Therefore what arises can only be a picture, indeed a real picture, in fact the art of painting. Painting is the form of art which contains the laws of our astral body, just as sculpture contains the laws of our etheric body and architecture those of our physical body.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

If we now take the fourth member of the human being, the ego, and push it with its laws down into the astral body, there allowing it to move and act, then we obtain yet another form of art. This art does not contain what works in the ego as something which can be expressed in language or ordinary ideas; it is something that has moved from the ego down one step towards the subconscious. It is as though the horizon of consciousness were to be moved down by the amount of half a member of the human being; we take half a step downward, our ego descends into the astral body: then music is born.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

So music contains the laws of our ego, though not as they are manifested in ordinary, everyday life, but pressed down into the subconscious, into the astral body; the ego dives, as it were, beneath the surface of the astral body, there to flow and stream within the organisation of the astral body.

If we go on to speak about the higher members of the human being, starting with the spirit-self, we can refer to them only as something which is still outside the human being. For, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we are only just beginning to make this spirit-self one of our inner members. But if we accept it as a gift from a higher sphere and sink it into our ego, if we dive down, like a swimmer into the water, into our ego, taking with us what as yet can only be dimly felt of the spirit-self, then poetry is born.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

Spirit-self

Poetry

And proceeding still further, one can say, though to a limited extent: Round about us, in the environment of soul and spirit which we shall absorb at a later stage, the life-spirit is also present. Therefore one day the life-spirit may come to be lowered into the spirit-self. But of course at the moment this is something that will only reach a certain degree of perfection in the very distant future. For when he tries to lower the life-spirit into the spirit-self, man will have to be living entirely in an element which as yet is absolutely strange to him. So what we can say in this domain is like the babbling of a child when compared with the later perfection of speech. One can foresee for the far distant future that there will be an art of great perfection that will stand out beyond poetry, as poetry stands out beyond music, music beyond painting, painting beyond sculpture, and sculpture beyond architecture (this being a question not of superiority, but of arrangement). You will guess, of course, that I am referring to something of which we know only the most elementary beginnings today: Something of which we can only receive the very first indications: the art of eurythmy.

Eurythmy is indeed something that must appear in human evolution at this time; but there is no call for pride, for at present it can be a mere babbling compared with what it will become in the future.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

Spirit-self

Poetry

Life-spirit

Eurythmy

We can now begin at any point with a somewhat more extended view. But in order to do so we must realise that the organisation of man's being is not nearly as simple as we would like to imagine in our intellectual indolence.

It is incredibly easy simply to imagine that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on. If one is able to enumerate these various members and has an approximate conception of them, one may easily consider this rather simple form of knowledge quite satisfactory. But things are not so simple. Physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego are not simply sheaths which fit easily into one another; they are, on the contrary, very complex structures. Take, for instance, the astral body. It is not enough merely to say: This is the astral body and nothing more. Things are much more complicated.

Words here are only an approximation, but we could say that the astral body, for instance, is in itself structured and consists of seven members. Just as the human being can be said to have seven members (physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man), so the astral body has a connection with each of these. There is as it were a ‘thinnest’ part of the astral body which could be described as being especially moulded and fashioned for the physical body. That is to say: there is a living system of laws in the astral body for the physical body, a living system of laws in the astral body for the etheric body, a living system of laws in the astral body for itself, a living system of laws in the astral body for the ego, a living system of laws in the astral body for the spirit-self, for the life-spirit, and for the spirit-man. Thus each member of the human being has in turn seven members. So taking into consideration that the human being consists of seven members which are in turn each structured into seven members, we already find we have a total of forty-nine members. This of course sounds perfectly horrible to modern psychologists, who like to regard the soul as a unity and would prefer to have nothing to do with these things. But for true knowledge, which must gradually arise in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is certainly not without significance. For when we know that the astral body is sevenfold in its nature and that it is an organism of inner living impulses, then we shall say to ourselves: Within this astral body, with its sevenfold organisation, individual activities must surely take place between the various members. The part of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body must have a certain interplay with the part that corresponds to the etheric body and with the part that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. These are no mere abstract suppositions; it is quite possible in the human organism for a man to feel inwardly—though more subconsciously than consciously—a movement of that part of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body. And then something may produce another movement which will have to start in that member of the astral body that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. This is not a mere theory; it really happens.

Now imagine the seven members of the astral body to be interrelated as are the tones of the scale: tonic, second, third, fourth, etc. If you allow the effect of a melody to work upon you, you will find that your human organisation permits this to occur because the various tones of the melody are experienced inwardly in the corresponding member of the astral body. The interval of a third is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself. A fourth is experienced in the part of the astral body which—well, let us now be more specific—corresponds to the intellectual or mind soul. A fifth is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the consciousness or spiritual soul. And remembering that when we divide the human organism more exactly we find it contains nine members, we must, accordingly, structure the astral body in the same way. Instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body” when enumerating the various members, I could now say “the member experienced in the tonic”. Instead of “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the etheric body”, I could say “the member experienced in the second”. And instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself” I could say “the member experienced in the third”.

You can now also see that the existence of the major third and the minor third really corresponds to the incorporation of the astral body in our whole human organisation. If you look up the relevant passage in my book Theosophy you will see that there is an overlapping of what we call the sentient soul on the other. Therefore what I described as an interval of a third can correspond either to the astral body or to the sentient soul: in the one case we have the major third and in the other the minor third.

It is a fact that our ability to experience a musical work of art depends upon this inner musical activity of the astral body: only while we listen to the music with our ego we immediately sink the experience into our astral body, into certain realms which are subconscious.

This leads us to a very important fact. Let us look at ourselves as astral beings, as possessors of an astral body: what is our nature in this respect? As astral beings we have been created out of the cosmos according to musical laws. Inasmuch as we are astral beings we are musically connected with the cosmos. We are ourselves an instrument.

Let us now suppose that we do not need to hear the physical sound of tones, but are able to listen to the creative activity of the cosmos that has brought us into existence as astral beings out of the cosmos: in such a state we should hear the universal music, what has always been called the music of the spheres. Let us suppose that we are able to dive down consciously into our astral entity, developing its spiritual strength to such an extent that we can hear the creative activity of the cosmic music; we could then say to ourselves: With the help of our astral body the cosmos is playing our own being. This thought, which I have just expressed to you, was alive in men in ancient times, really alive. And in pointing this out one is also pointing to the way in which right into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch human evolution has become more and more materialistic. For we all know that this thought is not alive in the external human culture of today; humanity knows nothing about the fact that, so far as the astral body is concerned, the human being is a musical instrument. But this was not always the case, and the fact that it was not always the case has been, so to speak, forgotten. For there was a time when men said: A man once lived who was called John, and this John was able to transport himself into a state of spiritual consciousness in which he could hear the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. They said: All earthly music can only be a copy of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind. And the more religious part of humanity felt that by passing over into the world of physical desires, man had absorbed impulses which veiled and darkened the celestial music for him. But at the same time they felt that there must exist in human evolution—through purification from external and chaotic life—a road leading to the goal of hearing the spiritual cosmic music, as it were, through and beyond the external music of the physical world.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, this relation between external, materialistic music, of which the divine origin was pointed out, and its heavenly prototype, was still beautifully expressed: men were required to employ music as a form of sacrificial or religious service and were expected to free themselves of their connection with the purely chaotic and—as it was felt to be—impure outer world when they produced musical sounds. Life in ordinary external speech was felt to be impure. People felt themselves transported to spiritual heights when they lifted themselves up from speech to music, which is the image of celestial music. This feeling was expressed in the following words.

Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris
mira gestorum
famuli tuorum
solve polluti
labii reatum,
S.J. (Sancte Johanne)

To translate this we would have to say: “So that thy servants may sing with liberated vocal cords the wonders of thy works, pardon the sins of the lips which have become earthly—one might say which have become capable of speech—O Saint John.” It was to one who could hear the heavenly Jerusalem that men looked up in this connection. Let us extract certain things that lie hidden in such a verse: Ut (this word was later replaced by do), resonare (re), mira (mi), famuli (fa), solve (sol), labii (la), S.J. (si). So you find that ‘do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si’, the names of the notes in medieval musical notation, have been carefully hidden in this verse.

In such an instance we can go back to what still lived in human minds right until the eleventh or twelfth centuries through atavistic clairvoyant cognition, and we see how it all disappears in the flood of materialistic views and passes out of the consciousness of men. But now we are living at a time when through spiritual knowledge we must find it again and recreate it. Everything points clearly to the way in which evolution has made a descent so deep that a swamp has formed. The muddy water of this morass is made up of all the ideas originating in a materialistic view of the world. And now we are about to struggle up again out of the swamp of materialism, to ascend and rediscover what mankind has lost in its descent.

I have pointed out that properly speaking we do not sleep by night only but that certain parts of our being also sleep by day. At night it is principally the thinking and feeling parts which sleep, while during the day it is more the willing and feeling parts which sleep. It is in this will sphere that we are submerged when we dive down with the ego into the astral body. And when we hear a musical work, what happens is that we consciously dive down with our ego into the part of us which is otherwise asleep. When you sit and listen to a symphony, the inner process which takes place is a dulling of your ordinary, everyday thought life while you plunge with soul and spirit down into a region which otherwise sleeps during daytime consciousness. This brings about the connection between the effect of music and all the life-giving forces in the human organism, all that streams with living force through the whole human being, letting him grow together as one with the streaming volume of sounds.

And at night we sleep; then our ordinary thought life is dulled in an element which as yet is not present in our normal consciousness. But if we succeed in bringing into ordinary everyday consciousness that which awakens when we sleep; if that in which we live when asleep dives down into our waking experience, then . . . . Just in contrast: I have just said that when we experience music the ego's awareness dives down into a region which sleeps during the day. But when we submerge what we experience at night into the consciousness of daytime, then poetry arises. This is what people like Plato felt when they called poetry a ‘divine dreaming’.

When we thus explore the connection that exists between man and the whole cosmos, which we can do to a certain extent under the guidance of art, we can bring a certain measure of life into what otherwise remains a mere skeleton of ideas. Please do realise that these things are not a mere skeleton! Some people take such pleasure in arranging what I have described in my book Theosophy in the pattern of a diagram; no doubt they thought that it was from pure obstinacy that I deviated from the pattern of earlier theosophical teachings, when I described three threefold organisations¹ that are not separate but interlaced. But if these matters are approached through what one experiences and what is absolutely real, then even the nature of major and minor melodies will show that things are deeply rooted in the whole structure of the cosmos. Only when things are taken as living entities out of the whole structure of the cosmos do they correspond to a true reality.

Of course it was necessary in the beginning to say a number of things, the reasons for which have only appeared by degrees during the course of many years. This naturally involved the risk that people would start to criticise, because they did not know on what certain statements were based, nor how things of necessity present themselves when the whole structure of the cosmos is taken into consideration. This is still the case with many matters. Many things that are said now are open to numerous objections if they are approached with superficial ideas. But in the course of years even decades they will certainly be verified. And the knowledge gained through spiritual science will become fruitful as soon as it is no longer a theory but a living experience.

All depends upon the capacity to surmount the first ideas presented by the words: physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., so that these ideas can become alive; a real understanding of the universe radiates from this process of bringing to life. Those who are able to do this should now compare the kind of aesthetics that have come to the fore during the last century and a half, with what can be learned from a knowledge of the human being in discovering the origin of the arts. Those who make this comparison will see that, unless there is an understanding of the human organisation, it is impossible to reach a real comprehension of what lives around us and gives us joy.

I want to awaken in you a recognition of the fact that spiritual science is itself an initial impulse that will continue to grow and develop, that we are in a sense called upon to make the very first steps, and that we can imagine what these first steps will lead to, long after we have laid aside our bodies in our present incarnation.

1. see diagram p. 49 in Kunst im Lichte der Mysterienweisheit, Dornach 1980.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II 30 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II 30 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
We can obtain maybe the best survey of what ought to enter into our souls and hearts as a result of our efforts in spiritual science if we turn our attention for a moment to the greater part of what I have dealt with in my book Occult Science, an Outline. Leaving aside the introductory chapters, which are necessary as a preparation for the subject, we can begin with those chapters that introduce us to the being of man, his relation to birth and death, and his life in the spiritual worlds. After this comes a description of the great cosmic relationships, of course only in rough outlines; we are led through the transformations of our earth before it became the earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions leading up to our present Earth evolution. Then follows a sketch in the form of brief hints giving us a glimpse of the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Finally, instead of a more detailed description of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions we have an account of what must be undergone by the individual who wishes to set in motion within his being those inner soul experiences which must eventually lead him to initiation. These processes have been described in greater detail up to a certain stage in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved?. It will become apparent that for us spiritual science falls into two parts. In one part we describe cosmic relationships; we describe how what we have before us today as the earth and its beings and as the rest of the cosmos has been coming into existence out of the very, very distant past, and we describe the prospect of how it will develop further. If you review the many observations that we have made, you will see that a large part of them are in a way under the influence of what we take into ourselves concerning the development and coming into being of the cosmos. The other part of spiritual science is concerned for us with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds or, in other words, to reach initiation. It is these inner experiences, conquests, battles, redemptions, and achievements of the soul with which we are always concerned in this second sphere of observation. Our observations always belong essentially to one or other of these two spheres. Starting now with the first sphere of observations, we see that by describing the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions up to the present Earth evolution, we are placing something in the world which is entirely contrary to both the religious and the scientific world concepts of today; indeed the modern world for the most part considers these descriptions to be absurd. It is quite natural that to our modern minds a description of a world order appropriate, for instance, to the conditions of the Saturn evolution must appear too fantastic; the description of a cosmic order of this kind must appear to our present way of looking at things as absolute nonsense, as something that cannot exist, as the outcome of fantastic speculation. And this is just as true of the other parts of our portrayal. Now bear in mind a remark that I have made here several times: The human being does not only sleep at night, when his conscious thoughts and ideas are dulled, but a part of his being is also asleep during the day. At night it is more the life of concepts that is asleep; but during the day, in a part of our being, the life of the will is more asleep. The will sleeps in the depths of our bodily being, or at least a large part of the will sleeps thus. This sphere of our will is much more comprehensive than the part which we develop consciously; the latter is only a small part. We may say with complete assurance that in his ordinary daily consciousness, either at work or enjoying leisure, the human being is really for the most part a sleepwalker. A vast number of things take place within him unconsciously; and even a great part of what seems to be done consciously is, in reality, done half or more than half unconsciously. If we observe the human being exactly in what he does half or more than half unconsciously, then we may see with our spiritual eyes that during sleep he is not nearly so unbelieving as when awake. When awake his modern view of the world prompts him to say: The description of the Saturn evolution in a book like Occult Science is pure and absolute nonsense! Of course he must say this. But as a complete human being he does not speak like this; for he carries within himself something through which he—if I may say so—knows unconsciously that there was once upon a time a Saturn existence. He does something which proves that he in a certain way unconsciously remembers this Saturn existence: he becomes an architect. Architecture would never have come into being if man did not now carry within himself the laws which were imprinted on his physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws in the physical body can be projected into the space outside, where they become the laws of architecture. Man mysteriously projects into the laws of architecture all that he took into his being during the ancient Saturn period. Obviously he has to use such means as are at his disposal today; accordingly the present aspect of architecture is quite different from what we know of ‘Saturn architecture’. But the essential and living elements in our architectural activities stem from what was implanted in us during the ancient Saturn evolution. Let us enter still deeper into the matter which we thus place before our souls. What does the human being do when he becomes totally absorbed in the creativity of architecture, either as the architect or as the observer or admirer? He lives within the Saturn laws of his physical body; if he immerses himself entirely into the laws of architecture, he forgets all about the life of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego: he becomes once more a Saturn man. All the impressions produced by architecture, its austerity, its chaste proportions, its silence which is yet so eloquent, result from the fact that, abandoning the higher members of his being, he immerses himself in what was given to him by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, the Thrones and Archai, who were active at the beginning of the Saturn period. It was mainly these two groups of higher spirits who were active then, assisted by the other beings belonging to the higher hierarchies. So when he creates or enjoys architecture (where it is a case of real art of course), the human being really lifts himself not only out of the present Earth existence but also out of the more distant past and places himself once more into the period of Saturn existence. Let us now pass on to sculpture. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body which have been pressed down one step into the physical body. Just as that which lives in the physical body, when compelled into the space outside, becomes architecture, so sculpture appears when what lives in the etheric body is made to descend into the physical body. In enjoying sculpture we abandon the astral body, the ego, and all the higher members of our being, living as though we had only the physical body, and in the physical body an expression of the etheric body; in such a condition we are once more participants of the ancient Sun condition. All that the ancient Sun evolution planted in us reappears when we enjoy or create works of sculpture. On the one hand these works appear so congenial to us because they give us back our own very distant past which is still creative within us, our Sun period; and on the other hand they are so smooth and cold in their marble because what rays out to us from them is like light coming to us from the far distances of the cosmos. Now let us pass on to painting. We know that painting comes about when the inner impulses of the astral body are pressed down into the etheric body; in painting we abandon the ego and live as though we were only in the astral, but were pressing it down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that the ancient Moon evolution has implanted in us, this being our inner astral nature as human being. Painting is, as it were, the outward projection of this inner astral nature of ours. Just as we experience in our astral nature sorrow or joy, things that affect or impress us, whatever fate brings us, so do we experience what the painter conjures upon the canvas for us, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being. If you try to enter a little into what is described in Occult Science as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, you will discover that an architectural mood underlies the description of the Saturn evolution, a sculptural mood underlies the description of the Sun evolution, and a pictorial mood underlies the description of the Moon evolution; an attempt was made to express these moods by choosing suitable words. The presentation of occult events definitely requires more than the current literary equipment of today. It would be an entire misconception of the style of an occult description to believe that it could be achieved by the dreadful literary devices of our time. We now come to the Earth evolution. Here we are in the immediate present, in the reality appointed for us; what we experience here we do not immediately feel the need to place before ourselves in the form of art. But the need the human being feels of projecting his inner life outward in the form of art is not exhausted by, as it were, recreating his cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting out of the memory implanted in him. Our need for art progresses further and we can find the spiritual foundation for this if we turn again to the book Occult Science. After the descriptions of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions and after the brief outline of the future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions, we come to the description of the processes of initiation, which are essentially at first inner human processes. These initiation processes are, in the form in which we encounter them today, the beginning of important changes for the life of human beings on earth and for the whole of future humanity. Is it not so that our deeper experience of the life of humanity on earth is expressed in the words: Alas, in so far as man is consciously aware during life on earth he appears to be but an orphan in the cosmos, a child abandoned by the cosmos, or even a traveller who has lost his way in the cosmos! For his everyday waking consciousness man does not know the origin of what lives in him as a result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; nor does he know what will become of him in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Knowing neither his origin nor his future he wanders about at the edge of the abyss that bounds our earthly valley. Sometimes his consciousness may give him a feeling of assurance or he may feel secure as to his future; nevertheless, neither the past nor the future can be determined objectively and competently by man on earth. But something capable of giving him clear guidance in his life will appear before his soul. This will come about when man makes himself acquainted with the guidelines given him in the laws of initiation. Initiation, in ancient times, took the form of a kind of inheritance left to men by the gods, which manifested itself as atavistic clairvoyance; but in the course of our progress towards the future it must take hold of man more and more firmly and actually shape his inner soul life. The path to initiation has two sides. The one side leads man to discover the secrets, the riddles of life so that he can enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side may be called the more subjective side of initiation that takes place more within the soul itself. It is, at the same time, the side from which men shrink the most, because it presents in fact something which does not fit in with the comfortable indolence of experience to which the soul so easily yields or wants to yield. An extremely wide and detailed range of inner experiences awaits the one who is to be gradually led by his inner experience to initiation. Conquest and liberation, hindrance and redemption alternate in manifold ways with inner experience on the way to initiation. One goes through everything the soul experiences when it suddenly feels it has become an entire stranger to itself; as though it had been cast into an abyss where it cannot help feeling that it is eternally lost and can never recover anything which it may have acquired during any lifetime. It may feel an unlimited dismay and grief at the loss of the existence already won. Then the soul may feel itself forced into complete fragmentation, as though it must disintegrate into an endless multiplicity and dissolve into all the beings out of which the cosmos is composed. Further the soul may feel itself wandering through the beings of the cosmos, becoming akin to one of them, then leaving it again and becoming akin to another, in the way I have described it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World, in the part dealing with experiences that are always attended by painful privations, painful loneliness as they are passed through one by one. Then comes the experience of the most radical transformation of all, when the soul must decide to undergo what can be expressed with the words: Now you must lose yourself for a while, you must thrust yourself away from yourself; but you must have faith that while you are losing yourself, while you are thrusting yourself away from yourself, beings reposing in the wide expanses of the divine hierarchies will protect you, will cause you to find yourself again after you have lost yourself. This is the passage through births and deaths. This is to be undergone among the inner experiences which lead to initiation. At last comes the awful passage through all the forces which are not necessary for life on earth, but which are necessary for the life of the extra-terrestrial cosmos and which become the forces of evil when they are brought without justification into the life of the earth by Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the dreadful passage through the forces of evil, together with all the disruptive, devouring, engulfing forces they represent throughout the cosmos. And finally man passes through a stage when he ought to feel himself to be only an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak; he becomes symbolically what his larynx is as a single organ, he becomes the larynx of the divine spiritual beings, he feels himself to be resting in the all-powerful divine world. And then at last a condition will be reached in the future in which this feeling emerges into sharing the experience of the divine will, working in the cosmos itself. Only single stages have been described here. But the grades of experience through which the soul passes are infinite. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and, more descriptively, in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, you will find set forth as far as is necessary for the present time, how the soul is able to adjust itself to all these states and how, at each stage, it advances one step further into the spiritual world. All that the soul passes through on the path to initiation is consciously undergone and consciously experienced. This is why this path of knowledge is so beset with pain and yet so full of liberation. But long, long before the human being enters consciously into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path to initiation, he is able to express these experiences in his own way in pictures, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a process of life taking its course in tones, which is an external picture of what the soul experiences consciously in initiation. If he remains in the everyday sphere, the human being cannot at once accomplish what we described yesterday as the submerging of the ego in the astral body. To submerge the ego in the astral body in the right way is to enter into the divine world, and this is the passage through initiation. A picture of this is given to us in the processes we perceive in musical compositions. When he surrenders himself to musical creativity, either as the composer or the listener, the human being abandons his ego, he pushes it back; but at the same time he surrenders it to those divine spiritual powers who are to work upon his astral body when he has ascended to existence on Jupiter. Please observe how we are entering upon a consideration of the creative art of music which links us with the future of mankind. It is almost, one feels, lacking in modesty to say that musical creativity is called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to become continually more profound, and that the musical creativity that has entered into our world so far is still more or less at the experimental stage, even though so much greatness and so much genius has already been involved. So far we have made attempts at what will be infinitely more meaningful in the musical creativity of the future. And this musical art of the future will be most significantly stimulated when human beings begin to engage in learning to know the inner nature of the path of initiation. When one day what can be described concerning the path of initiation will no longer be experienced by human beings as it is today, but will be experienced in such a way that the description of what the soul must feel will cause human beings to go through bliss and bitter disappointment; when the knowledge that can be gained by reading about the path of initiation has become a complete inner experience: only then will it be possible for human souls to be so deeply moved through their participation in the destinies of all those beings who take part in the events of the cosmos outside the human realm, that they will feel within themselves the shocks, privations and liberation that will impel the soul to express in tonal relationships what is experienced through the description of the path of initiation. In time to come there will be individuals who will feel what is described as the path of initiation; they will feel that things which are put before us in such an apparently abstract way can be intensely experienced, much more intensely than is the case with our outward physical experience. Then a moment will come when those who are able to experience the truth of what is described as the path of initiation will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing does not connect me with the realm of nature that surrounds me on the earth but with all that lives and weaves in the cosmos; not only can I experience all this, but I am able to sing it, to set it to music! In what can thus be described we have an indication of what spiritual science is to become for human beings. Spiritual science must be a living stimulus for the human soul; it should be more than mere theory, mere understanding, mere knowledge. Spiritual science must live in the soul, taking hold of all its powers, transforming the human being into another being. Or vice versa, the human being must transform himself into another being when he becomes devoted to spiritual science. In ancient times, even in the case of the Greeks who were Sun men, an atavistic clairsentience led men to abandon their astral and their ego beings completely and only to express the laws of the physical human form created during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. Thus Greek statues were made, those works of sculpture that really stand before our physical eyes as the mankind of the Sun evolution must stand before our spiritual eyes, when we understand that the human being of that period consisted only of the physical human body which contained within it the living etheric forces but not as yet the astral. Indeed, a work of Greek art such as the Venus of Milo stands before us as the personification of absolute chastity, since unchastity is only possible in the astral body, in all that permeates the astral body as passion and desire. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was a heritage from the gods bestowed upon men which caused them to create such works of art. The human being has lost this ability to feel himself within the etheric and physical bodies alone, without the ego or the astral body. When he awakes and submerges his ego and his astral body into his etheric and physical bodies, he feels and experiences only what is present in his ego. Even the processes in the astral body are in the subconscious realm, and he has no inner knowledge at all of what takes place in the etheric and physical bodies. The ancient Greeks were still dimly aware of all this. But today, when we seek to bring spiritual knowledge to life once more within ourselves and cause it to embrace not only our abstract and theoretical thoughts but also the whole of our soul life, we gradually penetrate the different members of our being and learn to know what permeates our astral and etheric bodies in rhythmical and harmonious cycles. Then we become able to follow with the soul the etheric forces which pulsate through the body and through space, calling forth forms out of the etheric. An attempt of this kind was made in the creation of the columns and architraves in our Goetheanum building; it was a diving down into the spheres made accessible to us by spiritual science which have been forgotten by mankind. In this we must indeed take deeply seriously what spiritual science can mean to us. You can glean from all that has so far been said about spiritual science that when we enter consciously into the spiritual world (and one must enter the spiritual world consciously), in other words when with understanding we give form to what lives in the etheric world and in the human etheric body and wish to enjoy what we have thus formed, then we must inevitably make the acquaintance of those beings which are called the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits. Now consider how much of what we create today has an ahrimanic character. You will remember¹ what I have said with regard to our modern technical environment; and of course we cannot do otherwise than use modern technical methods in our work. If we wished to do without them we would produce the equivalent of hothouse plants. So it afforded me a certain satisfaction that we were able to use concrete, one of the most modern building materials, for part of our building here. For progress consists not in shutting oneself off, as in a hothouse, from the life around one, but in using what is offered by it. By grasping the spiritual nature of the world through spiritual science, we try to use modern materials in such way that what we know through spiritual science finds a living expression in them. Of course this is only possible up to a certain point, and you will understand why this is so when you perceive all the implications of what has been said about the technical environment. For it is not possible to separate technical methods from ahrimanic forces, for instance, if we wish to create something in architecture or sculpture for ourselves. Thus it was a difficult task to take what of necessity had an ahrimanic nature in our building and, as it were, banish it from the building as something rendered harmless. It really was a difficult task, for we know that the ahrimanic element is inseparable from modern technology. For a while it seemed that Ahriman would easily gain the upper hand. Then we should have been compelled to incorporate into our main building all the technical equipment necessary for running it. As a result, Ahriman would have been permanently installed within the building. We had to think of a way of excluding the ahrimanic forces from the building, and the only possibility was to take the boiler house out and make it a separate unit. This has been done, as you can see for yourselves, and with great success. It has been possible to create, in the most modern building material, forms that truly express the following: Here, near the building, but outside it, stands the part that must not be included in it, though it must be present outside; and the material out of which it has been formed represents an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual-scientific knowledge. It was of immense importance that this should be achieved, particularly as the most modern building materials were employed. For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true. Things must be made visible. But we must not let the matter get on our nerves; we must not develop a condition in which, if we happen to pass by the picture of Ahriman and look at it unconsciously, we then carry the image within ourselves. For this image will then be invisible inside us, thus making us nervous or excited. You will also see, if you study our ahrimanic chimney along with the whole boiler house, how it is indeed possible to make an architectural structure of what belongs, one might say, to the most blatant elements of ahrimanic civilisation in our time. Certain defects of this civilisation will not vanish until mankind resolves to give architectural form to the things that concern the ahrimanic elements of our civilisation. Apart from all else, apart from our having a building for our own purposes, it is simply important that the first step should be taken in relating our present culture to art and in relating spiritual science to our present culture. Our boiler house is a first small step in this direction, and will lead, it is hoped, to the solution of other problems later. One enormous problem, for instance, would be to find a suitable form for the modern railway station; for the horrors and abominations which perform that function today are a contradiction of all decent human requirements. In its entire form our boiler house is not only suited to its specific purpose but also corresponds to the whole relationship of Ahriman to our building; in the same way the form of a railway station must correspond to what happens through it, with it, and in it within the framework of our modern civilisation. Such things as these should indicate the way in which spiritual science can provide inspiration for artistic creativity and for many other fields. And we may rest assured, if we enter into the true sense and spirit of what is to develop for us out of spiritual science, that one day, when human beings immerse themselves in the nature of the Saturn condition, then the deeper laws of architecture will reveal themselves; and if people immerse themselves in the nature of the Sun condition, the the deeper laws of sculpture will reveal themselves; and if they immerse themselves in the nature of the Moon condition, then the deeper relationships between form and colour and the nature of chiaroscuro will become apparent, creating inspiration for the art of painting. And from the description of the path of initiation will spring inspirations and intuitions for the creation of music and yet further for the creation of poetry. Then the time will come when poetic creativity in the true sense of the word will reappear in the world. For poetic creativity has to a certain extent died away. The ‘divine dreams’ incorporated in the work of the true poets were the last vestiges of the ancient heritage from the gods. But a time must come when, out of an understanding of the mysteries of initiation, poets will speak in dramatic or epic or lyric poetry about those intimate processes which take place in the soul when the human being is not alone with himself, but lives together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future people will be saying: Stop bothering me with your perpetual jingles about men's experiences in the physical world; your daily routine of love and hate and enjoyment is your own affair. It is about what they experience together with the gods when they have found their way outside earthly experience, that men will sing in their music and in their dramas, epics, and lyrical poems. For we know that all men's experiences with the extra-terrestrial world must be brought into these arts through true creativity that is not involved in everyday life. We have now seen what impulses of transformation lie in the knowledge brought to us by spiritual science, even in the field of artistic appreciation. And we have now seen how, if we enter into spiritual-scientific knowledge, we can dimly perceive the forces which must reign over the spiritual culture of future humanity. Indeed, we may believe that without achieving a profound inner transformation nobody can really make contact with spiritual science; and we may believe that spiritual science is something which can grasp man in a deeply inward way, leading beyond the narrow connections of physical life alone. If we bear in mind this ideal of spiritual science, if we bear in mind that spiritual science can lead out into a sphere that is different from ordinary experience, then it is always an event of immense significance to see somebody within the spiritual-scientific movement, really igniting within himself the spark that leads him out of and beyond the narrow limits of ordinary personal experience. In a way, the only joyful experience which is so far made possible for us through the spiritual-scientific movement is, that as a result of this movement, individuals can appear among us who really find their way out of their personal sphere into those spheres where the personal element ceases to exist. In our everyday life we must, of course, cultivate the personal element; but in so far as we are together as students of spiritual science, all personal willing and feeling is changed into something impersonal if we take hold of spiritual science in the right way. And every victory over personal feelings and over the weight of personal feelings and over the weight of personal matters in life is of immense significance and value. But on the other hand it is one of the bitterest disappointments if something that is striven for in spiritual science with a will that is purely spiritual, becomes entangled again in the merely personal will and purpose of human beings, and if personal matters begin to play a role within a society whose object it is to unite us in striving for spiritual-scientific knowledge. I shall not elaborate on these concluding remarks or go into more detail because I believe that there are a good many among you who will perhaps understand much of what is meant by them, who will understand that they were intended as an indication of a number of things that are satisfactory and a number that are disappointing. Today, having tried for a while to walk together along a path of spiritual science, it is good to think about these things for a moment; for there are various reasons why we should reflect and ask ourselves to what extent our own soul is participating in the sincere and honest effort to achieve the spiritual purposes which are nourished by the current of spiritual science. What a superb perspective unfolds before us when we say: Life, science, religion, and also art can receive impulses of transformation from spiritual science when it is truly understood. In the case of the pictorial and plastic arts the impulses come from what we learn in spiritual spheres about the past; and in the case of the arts involving music and speech the impulses come from that which we are striving for inwardly, in order to be able to approach the future. This perspective is so immense and so powerful that we cannot bring enough realisation to bear on it, in order to make it more intensely clear to ourselves. And the more we succeed in making clear to ourselves the inner mood resulting from this vision, the better we shall be as true members of that great organism known to us as spiritual science, an organism which is small today, but which has within it great possibilities. With this today I not only want to appeal to your reason and your understanding, but I also want to sow it as a seed in your souls and in your hearts. 1. see lecture ‘Technology and Art’, p. 5 et seq. of this volume.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Impulses of Transformation for Man's Artistic Evolution II 30 Dec 1914, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

We can obtain maybe the best survey of what ought to enter into our souls and hearts as a result of our efforts in spiritual science if we turn our attention for a moment to the greater part of what I have dealt with in my book Occult Science, an Outline. Leaving aside the introductory chapters, which are necessary as a preparation for the subject, we can begin with those chapters that introduce us to the being of man, his relation to birth and death, and his life in the spiritual worlds. After this comes a description of the great cosmic relationships, of course only in rough outlines; we are led through the transformations of our earth before it became the earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions leading up to our present Earth evolution. Then follows a sketch in the form of brief hints giving us a glimpse of the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Finally, instead of a more detailed description of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions we have an account of what must be undergone by the individual who wishes to set in motion within his being those inner soul experiences which must eventually lead him to initiation. These processes have been described in greater detail up to a certain stage in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved?.

It will become apparent that for us spiritual science falls into two parts. In one part we describe cosmic relationships; we describe how what we have before us today as the earth and its beings and as the rest of the cosmos has been coming into existence out of the very, very distant past, and we describe the prospect of how it will develop further. If you review the many observations that we have made, you will see that a large part of them are in a way under the influence of what we take into ourselves concerning the development and coming into being of the cosmos.

The other part of spiritual science is concerned for us with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds or, in other words, to reach initiation. It is these inner experiences, conquests, battles, redemptions, and achievements of the soul with which we are always concerned in this second sphere of observation. Our observations always belong essentially to one or other of these two spheres.

Starting now with the first sphere of observations, we see that by describing the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions up to the present Earth evolution, we are placing something in the world which is entirely contrary to both the religious and the scientific world concepts of today; indeed the modern world for the most part considers these descriptions to be absurd. It is quite natural that to our modern minds a description of a world order appropriate, for instance, to the conditions of the Saturn evolution must appear too fantastic; the description of a cosmic order of this kind must appear to our present way of looking at things as absolute nonsense, as something that cannot exist, as the outcome of fantastic speculation. And this is just as true of the other parts of our portrayal.

Now bear in mind a remark that I have made here several times: The human being does not only sleep at night, when his conscious thoughts and ideas are dulled, but a part of his being is also asleep during the day. At night it is more the life of concepts that is asleep; but during the day, in a part of our being, the life of the will is more asleep. The will sleeps in the depths of our bodily being, or at least a large part of the will sleeps thus. This sphere of our will is much more comprehensive than the part which we develop consciously; the latter is only a small part. We may say with complete assurance that in his ordinary daily consciousness, either at work or enjoying leisure, the human being is really for the most part a sleepwalker. A vast number of things take place within him unconsciously; and even a great part of what seems to be done consciously is, in reality, done half or more than half unconsciously.

If we observe the human being exactly in what he does half or more than half unconsciously, then we may see with our spiritual eyes that during sleep he is not nearly so unbelieving as when awake. When awake his modern view of the world prompts him to say: The description of the Saturn evolution in a book like Occult Science is pure and absolute nonsense! Of course he must say this. But as a complete human being he does not speak like this; for he carries within himself something through which he—if I may say so—knows unconsciously that there was once upon a time a Saturn existence. He does something which proves that he in a certain way unconsciously remembers this Saturn existence: he becomes an architect. Architecture would never have come into being if man did not now carry within himself the laws which were imprinted on his physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws in the physical body can be projected into the space outside, where they become the laws of architecture. Man mysteriously projects into the laws of architecture all that he took into his being during the ancient Saturn period. Obviously he has to use such means as are at his disposal today; accordingly the present aspect of architecture is quite different from what we know of ‘Saturn architecture’. But the essential and living elements in our architectural activities stem from what was implanted in us during the ancient Saturn evolution.

Let us enter still deeper into the matter which we thus place before our souls. What does the human being do when he becomes totally absorbed in the creativity of architecture, either as the architect or as the observer or admirer? He lives within the Saturn laws of his physical body; if he immerses himself entirely into the laws of architecture, he forgets all about the life of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego: he becomes once more a Saturn man. All the impressions produced by architecture, its austerity, its chaste proportions, its silence which is yet so eloquent, result from the fact that, abandoning the higher members of his being, he immerses himself in what was given to him by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, the Thrones and Archai, who were active at the beginning of the Saturn period. It was mainly these two groups of higher spirits who were active then, assisted by the other beings belonging to the higher hierarchies.

So when he creates or enjoys architecture (where it is a case of real art of course), the human being really lifts himself not only out of the present Earth existence but also out of the more distant past and places himself once more into the period of Saturn existence.

Let us now pass on to sculpture. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body which have been pressed down one step into the physical body. Just as that which lives in the physical body, when compelled into the space outside, becomes architecture, so sculpture appears when what lives in the etheric body is made to descend into the physical body. In enjoying sculpture we abandon the astral body, the ego, and all the higher members of our being, living as though we had only the physical body, and in the physical body an expression of the etheric body; in such a condition we are once more participants of the ancient Sun condition. All that the ancient Sun evolution planted in us reappears when we enjoy or create works of sculpture. On the one hand these works appear so congenial to us because they give us back our own very distant past which is still creative within us, our Sun period; and on the other hand they are so smooth and cold in their marble because what rays out to us from them is like light coming to us from the far distances of the cosmos.

Now let us pass on to painting. We know that painting comes about when the inner impulses of the astral body are pressed down into the etheric body; in painting we abandon the ego and live as though we were only in the astral, but were pressing it down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that the ancient Moon evolution has implanted in us, this being our inner astral nature as human being. Painting is, as it were, the outward projection of this inner astral nature of ours. Just as we experience in our astral nature sorrow or joy, things that affect or impress us, whatever fate brings us, so do we experience what the painter conjures upon the canvas for us, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being.

If you try to enter a little into what is described in Occult Science as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, you will discover that an architectural mood underlies the description of the Saturn evolution, a sculptural mood underlies the description of the Sun evolution, and a pictorial mood underlies the description of the Moon evolution; an attempt was made to express these moods by choosing suitable words. The presentation of occult events definitely requires more than the current literary equipment of today. It would be an entire misconception of the style of an occult description to believe that it could be achieved by the dreadful literary devices of our time.

We now come to the Earth evolution. Here we are in the immediate present, in the reality appointed for us; what we experience here we do not immediately feel the need to place before ourselves in the form of art. But the need the human being feels of projecting his inner life outward in the form of art is not exhausted by, as it were, recreating his cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting out of the memory implanted in him.

Our need for art progresses further and we can find the spiritual foundation for this if we turn again to the book Occult Science. After the descriptions of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions and after the brief outline of the future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions, we come to the description of the processes of initiation, which are essentially at first inner human processes. These initiation processes are, in the form in which we encounter them today, the beginning of important changes for the life of human beings on earth and for the whole of future humanity.

Is it not so that our deeper experience of the life of humanity on earth is expressed in the words: Alas, in so far as man is consciously aware during life on earth he appears to be but an orphan in the cosmos, a child abandoned by the cosmos, or even a traveller who has lost his way in the cosmos!

For his everyday waking consciousness man does not know the origin of what lives in him as a result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; nor does he know what will become of him in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Knowing neither his origin nor his future he wanders about at the edge of the abyss that bounds our earthly valley. Sometimes his consciousness may give him a feeling of assurance or he may feel secure as to his future; nevertheless, neither the past nor the future can be determined objectively and competently by man on earth. But something capable of giving him clear guidance in his life will appear before his soul. This will come about when man makes himself acquainted with the guidelines given him in the laws of initiation. Initiation, in ancient times, took the form of a kind of inheritance left to men by the gods, which manifested itself as atavistic clairvoyance; but in the course of our progress towards the future it must take hold of man more and more firmly and actually shape his inner soul life.

The path to initiation has two sides. The one side leads man to discover the secrets, the riddles of life so that he can enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side may be called the more subjective side of initiation that takes place more within the soul itself. It is, at the same time, the side from which men shrink the most, because it presents in fact something which does not fit in with the comfortable indolence of experience to which the soul so easily yields or wants to yield. An extremely wide and detailed range of inner experiences awaits the one who is to be gradually led by his inner experience to initiation. Conquest and liberation, hindrance and redemption alternate in manifold ways with inner experience on the way to initiation. One goes through everything the soul experiences when it suddenly feels it has become an entire stranger to itself; as though it had been cast into an abyss where it cannot help feeling that it is eternally lost and can never recover anything which it may have acquired during any lifetime. It may feel an unlimited dismay and grief at the loss of the existence already won. Then the soul may feel itself forced into complete fragmentation, as though it must disintegrate into an endless multiplicity and dissolve into all the beings out of which the cosmos is composed. Further the soul may feel itself wandering through the beings of the cosmos, becoming akin to one of them, then leaving it again and becoming akin to another, in the way I have described it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World, in the part dealing with experiences that are always attended by painful privations, painful loneliness as they are passed through one by one. Then comes the experience of the most radical transformation of all, when the soul must decide to undergo what can be expressed with the words: Now you must lose yourself for a while, you must thrust yourself away from yourself; but you must have faith that while you are losing yourself, while you are thrusting yourself away from yourself, beings reposing in the wide expanses of the divine hierarchies will protect you, will cause you to find yourself again after you have lost yourself. This is the passage through births and deaths. This is to be undergone among the inner experiences which lead to initiation.

At last comes the awful passage through all the forces which are not necessary for life on earth, but which are necessary for the life of the extra-terrestrial cosmos and which become the forces of evil when they are brought without justification into the life of the earth by Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the dreadful passage through the forces of evil, together with all the disruptive, devouring, engulfing forces they represent throughout the cosmos. And finally man passes through a stage when he ought to feel himself to be only an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak; he becomes symbolically what his larynx is as a single organ, he becomes the larynx of the divine spiritual beings, he feels himself to be resting in the all-powerful divine world. And then at last a condition will be reached in the future in which this feeling emerges into sharing the experience of the divine will, working in the cosmos itself.

Only single stages have been described here. But the grades of experience through which the soul passes are infinite. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and, more descriptively, in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, you will find set forth as far as is necessary for the present time, how the soul is able to adjust itself to all these states and how, at each stage, it advances one step further into the spiritual world. All that the soul passes through on the path to initiation is consciously undergone and consciously experienced.

This is why this path of knowledge is so beset with pain and yet so full of liberation. But long, long before the human being enters consciously into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path to initiation, he is able to express these experiences in his own way in pictures, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a process of life taking its course in tones, which is an external picture of what the soul experiences consciously in initiation.

If he remains in the everyday sphere, the human being cannot at once accomplish what we described yesterday as the submerging of the ego in the astral body. To submerge the ego in the astral body in the right way is to enter into the divine world, and this is the passage through initiation. A picture of this is given to us in the processes we perceive in musical compositions. When he surrenders himself to musical creativity, either as the composer or the listener, the human being abandons his ego, he pushes it back; but at the same time he surrenders it to those divine spiritual powers who are to work upon his astral body when he has ascended to existence on Jupiter.

Please observe how we are entering upon a consideration of the creative art of music which links us with the future of mankind. It is almost, one feels, lacking in modesty to say that musical creativity is called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to become continually more profound, and that the musical creativity that has entered into our world so far is still more or less at the experimental stage, even though so much greatness and so much genius has already been involved. So far we have made attempts at what will be infinitely more meaningful in the musical creativity of the future. And this musical art of the future will be most significantly stimulated when human beings begin to engage in learning to know the inner nature of the path of initiation.

When one day what can be described concerning the path of initiation will no longer be experienced by human beings as it is today, but will be experienced in such a way that the description of what the soul must feel will cause human beings to go through bliss and bitter disappointment; when the knowledge that can be gained by reading about the path of initiation has become a complete inner experience: only then will it be possible for human souls to be so deeply moved through their participation in the destinies of all those beings who take part in the events of the cosmos outside the human realm, that they will feel within themselves the shocks, privations and liberation that will impel the soul to express in tonal relationships what is experienced through the description of the path of initiation.

In time to come there will be individuals who will feel what is described as the path of initiation; they will feel that things which are put before us in such an apparently abstract way can be intensely experienced, much more intensely than is the case with our outward physical experience. Then a moment will come when those who are able to experience the truth of what is described as the path of initiation will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing does not connect me with the realm of nature that surrounds me on the earth but with all that lives and weaves in the cosmos; not only can I experience all this, but I am able to sing it, to set it to music!

In what can thus be described we have an indication of what spiritual science is to become for human beings. Spiritual science must be a living stimulus for the human soul; it should be more than mere theory, mere understanding, mere knowledge. Spiritual science must live in the soul, taking hold of all its powers, transforming the human being into another being. Or vice versa, the human being must transform himself into another being when he becomes devoted to spiritual science.

In ancient times, even in the case of the Greeks who were Sun men, an atavistic clairsentience led men to abandon their astral and their ego beings completely and only to express the laws of the physical human form created during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. Thus Greek statues were made, those works of sculpture that really stand before our physical eyes as the mankind of the Sun evolution must stand before our spiritual eyes, when we understand that the human being of that period consisted only of the physical human body which contained within it the living etheric forces but not as yet the astral.

Indeed, a work of Greek art such as the Venus of Milo stands before us as the personification of absolute chastity, since unchastity is only possible in the astral body, in all that permeates the astral body as passion and desire. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was a heritage from the gods bestowed upon men which caused them to create such works of art. The human being has lost this ability to feel himself within the etheric and physical bodies alone, without the ego or the astral body.

When he awakes and submerges his ego and his astral body into his etheric and physical bodies, he feels and experiences only what is present in his ego. Even the processes in the astral body are in the subconscious realm, and he has no inner knowledge at all of what takes place in the etheric and physical bodies. The ancient Greeks were still dimly aware of all this. But today, when we seek to bring spiritual knowledge to life once more within ourselves and cause it to embrace not only our abstract and theoretical thoughts but also the whole of our soul life, we gradually penetrate the different members of our being and learn to know what permeates our astral and etheric bodies in rhythmical and harmonious cycles. Then we become able to follow with the soul the etheric forces which pulsate through the body and through space, calling forth forms out of the etheric.

An attempt of this kind was made in the creation of the columns and architraves in our Goetheanum building; it was a diving down into the spheres made accessible to us by spiritual science which have been forgotten by mankind. In this we must indeed take deeply seriously what spiritual science can mean to us. You can glean from all that has so far been said about spiritual science that when we enter consciously into the spiritual world (and one must enter the spiritual world consciously), in other words when with understanding we give form to what lives in the etheric world and in the human etheric body and wish to enjoy what we have thus formed, then we must inevitably make the acquaintance of those beings which are called the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits.

Now consider how much of what we create today has an ahrimanic character. You will remember¹ what I have said with regard to our modern technical environment; and of course we cannot do otherwise than use modern technical methods in our work. If we wished to do without them we would produce the equivalent of hothouse plants. So it afforded me a certain satisfaction that we were able to use concrete, one of the most modern building materials, for part of our building here. For progress consists not in shutting oneself off, as in a hothouse, from the life around one, but in using what is offered by it. By grasping the spiritual nature of the world through spiritual science, we try to use modern materials in such way that what we know through spiritual science finds a living expression in them.

Of course this is only possible up to a certain point, and you will understand why this is so when you perceive all the implications of what has been said about the technical environment. For it is not possible to separate technical methods from ahrimanic forces, for instance, if we wish to create something in architecture or sculpture for ourselves. Thus it was a difficult task to take what of necessity had an ahrimanic nature in our building and, as it were, banish it from the building as something rendered harmless. It really was a difficult task, for we know that the ahrimanic element is inseparable from modern technology. For a while it seemed that Ahriman would easily gain the upper hand. Then we should have been compelled to incorporate into our main building all the technical equipment necessary for running it. As a result, Ahriman would have been permanently installed within the building. We had to think of a way of excluding the ahrimanic forces from the building, and the only possibility was to take the boiler house out and make it a separate unit. This has been done, as you can see for yourselves, and with great success.

It has been possible to create, in the most modern building material, forms that truly express the following: Here, near the building, but outside it, stands the part that must not be included in it, though it must be present outside; and the material out of which it has been formed represents an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual-scientific knowledge.

It was of immense importance that this should be achieved, particularly as the most modern building materials were employed. For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true. Things must be made visible. But we must not let the matter get on our nerves; we must not develop a condition in which, if we happen to pass by the picture of Ahriman and look at it unconsciously, we then carry the image within ourselves. For this image will then be invisible inside us, thus making us nervous or excited.

You will also see, if you study our ahrimanic chimney along with the whole boiler house, how it is indeed possible to make an architectural structure of what belongs, one might say, to the most blatant elements of ahrimanic civilisation in our time. Certain defects of this civilisation will not vanish until mankind resolves to give architectural form to the things that concern the ahrimanic elements of our civilisation. Apart from all else, apart from our having a building for our own purposes, it is simply important that the first step should be taken in relating our present culture to art and in relating spiritual science to our present culture. Our boiler house is a first small step in this direction, and will lead, it is hoped, to the solution of other problems later. One enormous problem, for instance, would be to find a suitable form for the modern railway station; for the horrors and abominations which perform that function today are a contradiction of all decent human requirements. In its entire form our boiler house is not only suited to its specific purpose but also corresponds to the whole relationship of Ahriman to our building; in the same way the form of a railway station must correspond to what happens through it, with it, and in it within the framework of our modern civilisation.

Such things as these should indicate the way in which spiritual science can provide inspiration for artistic creativity and for many other fields. And we may rest assured, if we enter into the true sense and spirit of what is to develop for us out of spiritual science, that one day, when human beings immerse themselves in the nature of the Saturn condition, then the deeper laws of architecture will reveal themselves; and if people immerse themselves in the nature of the Sun condition, the the deeper laws of sculpture will reveal themselves; and if they immerse themselves in the nature of the Moon condition, then the deeper relationships between form and colour and the nature of chiaroscuro will become apparent, creating inspiration for the art of painting.

And from the description of the path of initiation will spring inspirations and intuitions for the creation of music and yet further for the creation of poetry. Then the time will come when poetic creativity in the true sense of the word will reappear in the world. For poetic creativity has to a certain extent died away. The ‘divine dreams’ incorporated in the work of the true poets were the last vestiges of the ancient heritage from the gods. But a time must come when, out of an understanding of the mysteries of initiation, poets will speak in dramatic or epic or lyric poetry about those intimate processes which take place in the soul when the human being is not alone with himself, but lives together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future people will be saying: Stop bothering me with your perpetual jingles about men's experiences in the physical world; your daily routine of love and hate and enjoyment is your own affair. It is about what they experience together with the gods when they have found their way outside earthly experience, that men will sing in their music and in their dramas, epics, and lyrical poems. For we know that all men's experiences with the extra-terrestrial world must be brought into these arts through true creativity that is not involved in everyday life.

We have now seen what impulses of transformation lie in the knowledge brought to us by spiritual science, even in the field of artistic appreciation. And we have now seen how, if we enter into spiritual-scientific knowledge, we can dimly perceive the forces which must reign over the spiritual culture of future humanity. Indeed, we may believe that without achieving a profound inner transformation nobody can really make contact with spiritual science; and we may believe that spiritual science is something which can grasp man in a deeply inward way, leading beyond the narrow connections of physical life alone. If we bear in mind this ideal of spiritual science, if we bear in mind that spiritual science can lead out into a sphere that is different from ordinary experience, then it is always an event of immense significance to see somebody within the spiritual-scientific movement, really igniting within himself the spark that leads him out of and beyond the narrow limits of ordinary personal experience. In a way, the only joyful experience which is so far made possible for us through the spiritual-scientific movement is, that as a result of this movement, individuals can appear among us who really find their way out of their personal sphere into those spheres where the personal element ceases to exist.

In our everyday life we must, of course, cultivate the personal element; but in so far as we are together as students of spiritual science, all personal willing and feeling is changed into something impersonal if we take hold of spiritual science in the right way. And every victory over personal feelings and over the weight of personal feelings and over the weight of personal matters in life is of immense significance and value. But on the other hand it is one of the bitterest disappointments if something that is striven for in spiritual science with a will that is purely spiritual, becomes entangled again in the merely personal will and purpose of human beings, and if personal matters begin to play a role within a society whose object it is to unite us in striving for spiritual-scientific knowledge.

I shall not elaborate on these concluding remarks or go into more detail because I believe that there are a good many among you who will perhaps understand much of what is meant by them, who will understand that they were intended as an indication of a number of things that are satisfactory and a number that are disappointing. Today, having tried for a while to walk together along a path of spiritual science, it is good to think about these things for a moment; for there are various reasons why we should reflect and ask ourselves to what extent our own soul is participating in the sincere and honest effort to achieve the spiritual purposes which are nourished by the current of spiritual science. What a superb perspective unfolds before us when we say: Life, science, religion, and also art can receive impulses of transformation from spiritual science when it is truly understood. In the case of the pictorial and plastic arts the impulses come from what we learn in spiritual spheres about the past; and in the case of the arts involving music and speech the impulses come from that which we are striving for inwardly, in order to be able to approach the future. This perspective is so immense and so powerful that we cannot bring enough realisation to bear on it, in order to make it more intensely clear to ourselves. And the more we succeed in making clear to ourselves the inner mood resulting from this vision, the better we shall be as true members of that great organism known to us as spiritual science, an organism which is small today, but which has within it great possibilities. With this today I not only want to appeal to your reason and your understanding, but I also want to sow it as a seed in your souls and in your hearts.

1. see lecture ‘Technology and Art’, p. 5 et seq. of this volume.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Cosmic New Year: the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson 31 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Cosmic New Year: the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson 31 Dec 1914, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
Our end-of-year festival will begin with Frau Dr. Steiner giving us a recitation of the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of whom we are told that at the approach to Christmas he fell into a kind of sleep which lasted for thirteen days; the thirteen holy days that we have explored in various ways. In the course of this sleep he had significant experiences, that he was able to narrate when he awoke. During these past days we have examined various things that make us aware that the spiritual-scientific outlook gives us a new approach to an understanding of gems of wisdom which, in past times, people realised belonged to spiritual worlds. Time and again we shall encounter this prehistoric knowledge of the spiritual worlds in one instance or another, and we shall continually be reminded that what was known in former ages, was due to the fact that the human being was so organised at that time that he had the kind of relationship with the whole of the cosmos and its happenings that we would now call being immersed with his human microcosm in the laws or the activities of the macrocosm, and that in this process of immersion in the macrocosm he was able to experience things that deeply concern the life of his soul, but which are hidden from him as long as he lives as microcosm on the physical plane and is equipped only with a knowledge given him by his senses and an intellect bound to the senses. We know that only a materialistic outlook can believe that man is the only being in the world order equipped with thinking, feeling and willing, whereas a spiritual point of view must acknowledge that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human stage of thinking, feeling and willing. The human being can live his way into these beings when, as microcosm, he immerses himself in the macrocosm. However, in this case we should have to speak of the macrocosm not only as a macrocosm of space, but as if the course of time were of significance in cosmic life. Just as in order to kindle the light of the spirit within him when he wants to descend into the depths of his own soul, man has to shut himself off from all the impressions his environment can make on his senses and has, as it were, to create darkness round him by closing off his sense perception, likewise the spirit we can call the spirit of the earth has to be shut off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The outer cosmos has to have least effect on the earth spirit if the earth spirit is to be able to concentrate its forces within. For then the secrets will be discovered that man has to discover in conjunction with the earth spirit, because the earth has been separated as earth from the cosmos. The time when the outer macrocosm exercises the greatest effect on the earth is the time of the summer solstice, midsummer. And many accounts of olden times connected with festive presentations and rituals remind us that festivals like these take place at the height of summer; that in the midst of summer, the soul, in letting go the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, surrenders in a state of intoxication to the impressions from the macrocosm. On the other hand, the legendary or other kind of presentations of that which could be experienced in olden times remind us that when impressions from the macrocosm have least effect on the earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences within the eternal All, the secrets of the earth's life of soul, and that if man enters into this experience at the point of time when the macrocosm sends least light and warmth to the earth, he learns the most holy secrets. This is why the days around Christmas were always kept so sacred, because whilst man's organism was still capable of sharing in the experience of the earth, man could meet the spirit of the earth during the point of time when it was most concentrated. Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the son of earth, experiences various secrets of the cosmic All whilst he is transported into the macrocosm during the thirteen shortest days. And the nordic legend which has recently been extricated from old accounts, tells of these experiences Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year up till the 6th January. We often have reason to remember this former manner in which the microcosm took part in the macrocosm, and we can then take these things further. First of all, however, let us hear the legend of Olaf Åsteson, the earth son, who during the time in which we are now, experienced the secrets of cosmic existence in his meeting with the earth spirit. Let us listen to these experiences. The Dream Song I Come listen to my song! The song of a nimble youth. Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. II He laid him down on Christmas Eve And soon lay deeply sleeping. Nor could he awaken Until the people went to church Upon the thirteenth day. Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. He laid him down on Christmas Eve And he slept long indeed! He could not awaken Until the bird was on the wing Upon the thirteenth day. Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. Olaf could not awaken Until the sun shone o'er the peaks Upon the thirteenth day. Then saddled he his nimble horse And rode in haste to the church. Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. The priest was at the altar Reading holy mass When Olaf alighted at the gate To tell the many dreams That had passed through his soul When he did sleep so long. Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. Then old and young they all gave heed, To Olaf's words they harkened That told them of his dreams Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing, Who lay and slept so long. III ‘I laid me down on Christmas Eve And soon lay deeply sleeping. Nor could I awaken Before the people went to church Upon the thirteenth day. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I was borne up into the clouds Thrown down to the ocean's depths, And whosoever will follow after Good cheer he will not find. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I was borne up into the clouds Then hurled into murky swamps, And I saw the horrors of hell And also heaven's light. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I had to go through deep, dark clefts Where heaven's rivers rushed and roared. The power to see them was not mine Yet I could hear their roaring. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. My coal-black horse he did not neigh, Nor did my good hounds bark, The bird of morning did not sing For a wonder lay on all. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I had to travel in spiritland Through stretch on stretch of thorny heath, My scarlet mantle was torn to shreds The nails of my feet likewise. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. Then I came to the Gjallar Bridge Suspended in the windblown heights, Studded it is with rich red gold And the nails thereon have sharp points. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. The spirit snake he struck at me The spirit hound bit me, And lo! the bull did bar the way. These are the three beasts of the bridge, Most wicked are they all. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. The hound he is a snappish beast The serpent waits to strike, The bull is ready to attack! And no one may pass o'er the bridge Who will not honour truth! The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge On dizzy heights and narrow. I who had waded in the swamps . . . . Behind me now they lie! The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. I had waded in the swamps There seemed no foothold I could find As I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge Earth did I feel within my mouth As the dead who lie in their graves. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. To the waters then I came, ’Twas where the icy masses gleamed Like unto flames of blue. . . . And God did guide me in my steps That I did not come close. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. So I went on the wintry way And saw on my right hand: Like unto paradise it was, Light shining far and wide. The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. God's Holy Mother then I saw Amidst most wondrous glory! ‘Now take thy way to Brooksvalin, the place where souls are judged!’ The moon shone bright And all the paths led far away. IV In other worlds I tarried then Through many nights and long; And God alone can know The suffering I saw there— In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. I could see a young man Who in life had killed a child. Now he must carry him always And stand in mud to his knee In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. Also I saw an old man Wearing a cloak of lead; Thus was he punished, The miser on earth, In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. And men appeared before me Wearing apparel of fire; So does their dishonesty Weigh on their poor souls In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. Children I also saw, Glowing coals beneath their feet, In life they did their parents ill, Now must their spirits feel it In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. And to a house I had to go Where witches toiled in blood; This was the blood of those Who had enraged them whilst on earth, In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. Now there came riding from the North Wild hordes of evil spooks, Led by the Prince of Hell, In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. This horde riding from the North Was the wickedest ever seen; And the Prince of Hell rode out in front, And he rode on his coal-black steed In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. Yet now came a host from the South Bringing holy calm, And at their head rode Saint Michael At the side of Jesu Christ In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. The souls weighed down by sin Had to tremble in anguish and fear! Their tears ran down in streams To hear of their wicked deeds In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. Michael stood in majesty And weighed the souls of men Upon his heavenly scales, And near him, judging, stood The Lord of Judgment, Jesu Christ In Brooksvalin, where souls World judgment undergo. V Blessed is he who in earthly life Gives shoes unto the poor; He does not need, with naked feet, To walk on the heath of thorn. Thus speaks the Balance, And World truth Sounds forth in spirit heights. Blessed is he who in earthly life Unto the poor gave bread! For nothing of harm can come to him From the hounds of spiritland. Thus speaks the Balance, And World truth Sounds forth in spirit heights. Blessed is he who in earthly life Gave corn unto the poor! The horns of the bull are no threat to him When he crosses the Gjallar Bridge. Thus speaks the Balance, And World truth Sounds forth in spirit heights. Blessed is he who in earthly life Unto the poor gives clothes! He need not fear the freezing wastes Of ice in Brooksvalin. Thus speaks the Balance, And World truth Sounds forth in spirit heights. VI And young and old they all gave heed, To Olaf's words they harkened That told them of his dreams. You have slept long indeed. . . . Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson! My dear friends, we have just heard how Olaf Åsteson fell into a sleep that was to reveal to him the secrets of worlds that are hidden from the world of the senses and ordinary life on the physical plane. This legend brings us tidings of ancient knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, which we shall regain once more through what We call the spiritual-scientific world outlook. You have often heard the words that are included in all proclamations concerning the human soul's entry into the spiritual world, namely, that man beholds the spiritual world only when he experiences the gates of death and then enters into the elements. This means that the elements of earth existence do not surround him in the way they do in ordinary life on the physical plane, in the form of earth, water, air and fire, but that he is lifted above this sensory exterior of the elements and enters into what these elements really are when you know their true nature, where beings exist that have a relationship with man's soul experience. We could feel that Olaf Asteson experienced something of this descent into the elements when we come to the part where Olaf reaches the Gjallar Bridge and crosses over it on to the paths of the spiritual world that all led far away. What a vivid description we are given of his experience as he descends into the element of earth. It is described in such detail that he tells us he himself feels earth in his mouth like the dead who lie in their graves. And then there is a clear indication of his going through the element of water, and of all that can be experienced in the watery element when one also experiences its moral quality. Then he also indicates how man meets with the elements of fire and of air. All this is described in a wonderfully graphic way and centred in the experience of the human soul meeting the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found at a later date; it was collected at the place where it lived orally among the people. Parts of the legend in their present form are no longer the same as in the original. No doubt the graphic description of the experiences in the earth realm originally came first and then the experiences in the realm of water. And the experiences in the realms of air and of fire were no doubt far more differentiated than they are in the feeble after-echo that we have today, and which was found centuries later. The conclusion was undoubtedly also much more impressive and less sentimental, for in its present form it does not in the least remind us of the sublime language of olden times, nor of the capacity to raise one on to a superhuman plane that used to exist in folk legends. The present conclusion merely moves on on a human level, and the reason why it is moving is purely because of its connection with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience. If we rightly understand the season of the year in which we now are, we have a strong urge to remember the fact that humanity used to possess a knowledge—even if it was less defined and clear-cut—that has been lost and which has to be regained. And the question can arise in us, that as we surely recognise today that that particular kind of knowledge has to return if mankind is to be made whole, then should we not consider it one of our most urgent tasks to do everything we can to bring knowledge like that into the culture of the present? Many things will have to happen in order for this change to come about in the right way, in what I would like to call the feeling content of man's world conception. One thing will be particularly necessary—I say one, for it is one among many, but you can only take one at a time—it will be essential for human souls to acquire on the basis of our spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream, reverence and devotion for what was known in ancient times in the old manner about the deep secrets of existence. People must arrive at the feeling that during the materialistic age they have neglected the development of this reverence and devotion. We must get the feeling of how dried-out and empty this materialistic age is, and how proud of our intellectual knowledge mankind was in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in face of the revelations of ancient religion and knowledge handed down from former times, which, when approached with the necessary reverence, truly give us the feeling that they contain the most profound wisdom. Fundamentally speaking we have no reverence for the Bible nowadays, either! Disregarding the kind of atrocious modern research that tears the whole Bible to shreds, we have merely to look at the dry and empty way we approach the Bible today armed, as it were, only with the knowledge of the senses and ordinary intellectual powers, and at the way we can no longer muster a feeling for the tremendous greatness of human perception that comes to meet us in some of its passages. I would like to refer to a passage from the second Book of Moses, chapter 33, verse 18: And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’ But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’ And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’ If you gather together various things we have taken up in our hearts and souls during the years we have been working with spiritual science and then approach this passage, you can have the feeling that infinite wisdom is speaking to us there and how, in the materialistic age, human ears are so deaf that they hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that comes to us from this passage. I would like to take this opportunity to refer you to a booklet that has been published under the title Worte Mosis by Bruns Publishing Co. in Minden, Westphalia, because certain things out of the five Books of Moses have been translated better in this booklet than in other editions. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, the publisher of Worte Mosis, has taken a lot of trouble over the interpretation. The fact that man, if he wants to penetrate to the spiritual world, has to acquire a totally different relation to the world than that which he has to the sense world, has often been stressed. Man has the sense world all about him. He looks at the sense world and sees it in its colours and forms and hears its sounds. The sense world is there, and we are in the midst of it, feeling its influence, perceiving it and thinking about it. That is how we relate to the sense world. We are passive and the sense world, as it were, works its way into our souls. We think about the sense world and make mental images of it. Our relationship is quite different when we penetrate into the spiritual world. One of the difficulties consists in getting the right idea of what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have attempted to characterise some of these difficulties in my booklet Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt (‘The Threshold of the Spiritual World’). We make mental images of the sense world and we think about it. If we go through all a person has to go through if he wants to follow the path of initiation, something occurs that can be described like this: We ourselves relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as the things around us relate to us; they make a mental image of us, they think us. We think the objects around us, the minerals, plants and animals; they become our thoughts, whereas we are the conceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on. They take us in, in the same way as we take in the plants, animals and human beings. And we must feel their sheltering protection when we say, ‘The beings of the higher hierarchies think us, they make mental images of us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls’. In fact we can actually picture that when Olaf Asteson fell asleep he became a mental image of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and in the course of his sleep these beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit were experiencing (these are, of course, a plurality for us). And when Olaf Asteson sinks back into the physical world he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him. Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting out on the path of initiation. How can we relate to the spiritual world, which is a host of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, into which we wish to enter? How can we relate to them? We can appeal to them and say ‘How can we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us?’ And then, when we have acquired an understanding of the different kind of relationship the human soul has to the higher worlds, there will sound forth to us, as it were from the spiritual worlds, ‘You cannot perceive the spiritual world the same way as you perceive the sense world, the way the sense world appears before you and impinges on your senses. We must think you, and you must feel yourself in us. You must feel the kind of experience in you which a thought you think in the sense world would have if it could experience itself within you. You must surrender yourself to the spiritual world, then the beings of the higher hierarchies who can reveal themselves to you will enter into you. This will stream into your soul and live within it, bringing grace, in the same way as you live in your thoughts when you think about the sense world. If the spiritual world wishes to favour you and have compassion on you, it will fill you with its love!’ But you must not imagine that you can approach spiritual beings in the same way as you approach the sense world. Just as Moses had to creep into the cave, you must go into the cave of the spiritual world. You have to put yourself there. Like a thought lives in you, you must be taken up into the life of the spiritual beings. You yourself must live as a universal thought in the macrocosm. To have experiences there of your own accord is not possible during earthly life between birth and death, but only after you have passed through death. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, yet the spiritual world can come close to you, bless you and fill you with its love. And if after, or whilst you are within the spiritual world, you develop your earthly consciousness, the spiritual world will shine into this consciousness. Just as when an object is outside us we confront it, and when it enters our consciousness it is inside us, the soul of man is within the cave of the spiritual world. The spiritual world passes through him. Here, man confronts things. When man enters the spiritual world the beings of the higher hierarchies are behind him. There, he cannot see their face, just as a thought cannot see our face when it is within us. Our face is in front and the thoughts are behind, so they cannot see our face. The whole secret of initiation is concealed in the words Jehovah speaks to Moses. And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’ And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’ But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live.’—Initiation does indeed bring you to the Gate of Death. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a cleft of rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’ It is the opposite of the way we perceive the sense world. You must muster a lot of the spiritual-scientific effort you have developed over the years, in order to encounter a revelation like this with the right kind of reverence and devotion. Then human souls will gradually acquire more and more of this feeling of reverence towards these revelations; and this reverence, this devotion, is among the many things we need in order that the change we have been speaking of can come about in mankind's spiritual culture. The time when the macrocosm sends down least influence to the earth, the days from Christmas over New Year until roughly the 6th of January, can be a suitable time not only for remembering the facts of spiritual knowledge, but also for remembering the feelings we have to develop as we take up spiritual science. We are really and truly taken up again into the life of the spirit of the earth, together with whom we form a whole, and in which ancient clairvoyant knowledge lived, as this legend of Olaf Åsteson shows us. Humanity in the materialistic age has in many ways lost this reverence and devotion for spiritual life. It is most essential to see to it that this reverence and devotion come back, for without them we shall not develop the mood to approach spiritual science in the right way. Unfortunately the mood with which spiritual science is spproached to start with is still the same mood we have for ordinary science. A thorough change will have to come about in this respect. Having lost the understanding for the spiritual world, mankind has also lost the proper relation to the being of man, to humanity. The materialistic world conception produces chaotic feelings about universal existence. These chaotic feelings about the world and humanity were bound to come in the age of materialism. Think of a time—and this is our time, the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—when people no longer had any real awareness that the being of man is threefold: a bodily nature, soul and spirit. For it really is like that. The threefold nature of man, which, to us, is one of the basic elements of spiritual science, was something that people did not have the slightest notion of from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch right into our time. Man was just man, and any talk of membering his being in the way we do into body, soul and spirit was considered complete nonsense. You might imagine that these things are valuable only in the sphere of knowledge, but that is not so. They are important not only as knowledge, but for the whole manner in which man faces life. In the fourth century of modern times, or, as we say in our language, during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, three great words came to the fore in which people saw, or at least endeavoured to see, the essence of human striving on earth. Important though these words are, what made them significant was the fact that they appeared at a time when mankind knew nothing of the threefold nature of man. Everyone heard of liberty, equality and fraternity. It was a profound necessity that these words were heard at a certain time in modern civilisation. People will only really understand these words when the threefold membering of the human being is understood, because until then they will not realise the significance these words can have with regard to man's real being. Whilst these words are being approached with the sort of chaotic feelings that are engendered by the thought that man is man, and the threefold membering of man is nonsense, human beings will find no guidance in these three words. For the three words, as they stand, cannot be directly applied to one and the same level of human experience. They cannot be. Simple considerations which do not perhaps occur to you because they seem too simple for such weighty matters, can go to show that if they are taken on the same level, what these three words mean can come into serious conflict. Let us start by looking at the realm where we find fraternity in its most natural form. Take human blood relationship, the family, where there is no need to instil brotherly love because it is inborn, and just think how it warms the heart to see real genuine brotherhood among a family, to see everyone united in a brotherly way. And yet—without losing any of the wonderful feeling we can have about this brotherly love—let us have a look at what can happen to a family fraternity just because of this brotherliness. Brotherliness is justified within a family, yet a member of a family can be made unhappy by it, and can long to get away from it because he feels he cannot develop his own soul within the family fraternity and must leave it in order to develop in freedom. So we see that freedom, the unfolding in freedom of the life of the soul, can come into conflict with even the best-meant brotherliness. Obviously a superficial person could maintain that it is not proper brotherliness if it does not agree with a person's freedom. But people can say anything they like. No doubt they can say that everything agrees with everything else. I recently saw a thesis in which one of the articles that had to be proved was that a triangle is a quadrangle. You can of course plead for a thing like that, you can even prove exactly that a triangle is a quadrangle! And you can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the point. The point is that for the sake of freedom many a realm of brotherliness has to be—and in fact is—forsaken. We could give further examples of this. If we wanted to count up the discrepancies between fraternity and equality it would take us a long time. Obviously we can say in abstracto that everyone can be equal, and can show that fraternity and equality are compatible. But if we take life seriously it is not a question of abstractions but of looking at reality. The moment we realise that the human being has a bodily nature that lives on the physical plane, a soul nature that actually lives in the soul world, and a spiritual nature that lives in the spiritual world, we have the right perspective for the connection between these profound words. Brotherliness is the most important ideal for the physical world, freedom is for the soul world, and insofar as man enters into the realm of the soul we ought to speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of the kind of social conditions that fully guarantee the soul its freedom. If we bear in mind that in order to develop the spirit and enter spirit land we, that is, each one of us, has to strive for spirit knowledge from our own point of view, we shall soon see where we would get with our spiritual conceptions if each one of us only went his own way and we all filled ourselves with a different content. As human beings we can only find one another in life if we seek the spirit, each one for himself, yet can arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. We can speak of fraternity on the physical plane and with regard to everything that has to do with the laws of the physical plane and which affects the human soul from the physical plane; liberty with regard to all that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the soul world; equality with regard to everything that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the spirit land. So you see, a Cosmic New Year must come about, where there will be a sun that will increase in power to give warmth and to radiate light: a sun that must bring light-filled warmth to many a thing that lived on during the age of darkness, yet was not understood. It is characteristic of our time that many a thing is striven for and expressed in words, yet is not understood. This, too, can bring us to feel reverence and devotion for the spiritual world. For if we ponder on the fact that many people strove for fraternity, liberty and equality in the fourth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and uttered these words without understanding them properly, it is possible for us to see an answer to the question, ‘Where did these words come from?’ The divine-spiritual universal order implanted them into the human soul at a time when we did not understand them, in order that key words of this kind might lead us on to true universal understanding. We can notice the wise guidance in world evolution even in things like this. We can observe this guidance everywhere, whether in past ages or in more recent times, observing that often we do not notice until afterwards that something we did previously was actually wiser than the wisdom we had at our command at the time. I drew attention to this at the very beginning of my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man. However, if you look, for instance, at the fact that in world evolution, in the evolution of man, a part is played by directional words that can only gradually be understood, you might be reminded of an image we can use when we want to characterise this period of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that is drawing to a close. In many respects it can really be compared with the season of Advent where the periods of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now in our time, when we can begin to have knowledge of revelations of the spiritual worlds again, evolution is entering the phase that we can picture as the days growing longer and longer, and we can speak of this season really being comparable to the thirteen days and to the time of increasing daylight. But it goes deeper than this. It would be absolutely wrong if we were only to find bad things to say of the materialistic age of the past four centuries. Modern times were ushered in by the great discoveries and inventions that are called ‘great’ in the materialistic age, sailing round the world, for instance, discovering lands that were not previously known and starting to colonise the earth. That was the beginning of materialistic civilisation. And then the time gradually came when people were almost stifled by materialistic civilisation. The time arrived when all our spiritual forces were applied to understanding and grasping material life. Insights, understanding and visions of the spiritual world existing in ancient knowledge were forgotten more and more, as we have seen. Yet it is wrong to have nothing but bad things to say about this age. It would be far better to put it this way: ‘The human soul has been thinking materialistically and founding a materialistic science and culture in the part of it that is awake, but this human soul is a totality.’ If I wanted to put it schematically I could say that one part of the human soul founded materialistic civilisation. This part was inactive before that, and people knew nothing about external science and outer material life; at that time the spiritual part was more awake. (He did a drawing.) During the past four centuries the part of the soul was awake that founded materialistic civilisation, and the other part was asleep. And, in truth, during the age of materialistic culture, the seeds were being sown in the sleeping parts of the soul for the forces we can now develop in humanity to bring us to spirituality again. During these centuries mankind was really an Olaf Asteson as far as spiritual knowledge was concerned. That really was so. And humanity has not yet woken up! Spiritual science must awaken it. A time must come when both old and young must hear the words that are being spoken by the part of the human soul that was asleep in the age of darkness. The human soul has slept long indeed, but world spirits will approach and call to it, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Asteson!’—Only we have to prepare ourselves in the right way, so that it does not happen that we are faced with the call, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!’ and have not the ears to hear it. That is why we are engaged in spiritual science, so that we shall have the ears to hear, when the call to be spiritually awake sounds in human evolution. It is a good thing if man remembers sometimes that he is a microcosm and that he can be receptive to certain experiences if he opens himself to the macrocosm. As we have seen, the present season is a good one. Let us try to make this New Year's Eve a symbol for the New Year's Eve that has to come to mankind in earth evolution, a New Year's Eve that will herald a new era bringing ever more light, soul light, vision, knowledge of what lives in the spirit and which can stream and flow into the human soul from out of the spirit. If we can bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's Eve into connection with the macrocosm of human experience over the whole earth, we shall then have the kind of feelings we ought to experience, sensing as we do the dawning of the great new Cosmic Day of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, at whose beginning we stand, and the midnight of which we want to understand worthily. The Dream Song: Draumkvaedet, see collection Norske Folkeviser, edited by Thorwald Lammers, Kristiania 1910, by Aschehoug & Co. Rudolf Steiner spoke about the Norwegian Dream Song of Olaf Asteson on 1st January 1912, 7th January 1913 and 31st December 1914, and his talks were always accompanied by Marie Steiner-von Sivers reciting the Dream Song. These three lectures or addresses were put together as a volume and published in 1958 as an enlarged new edition of the lecture ‘Cosmic New Year’. Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm, the Norwegian poetess (1878–1964), drew Rudolf Steiner's attention to the old legend, and it is largely due to her initiative that this extraordinary folk epic has acquired such an important place in the anthroposophical movement. Through her help we are in a position to include in this edition the notes she made of her conversation with Rudolf Steiner. We have also included in the references, several points from a lecture Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm gave on the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson, which she kindly put at our disposal in translation, and which we have attributed accordingly. Notes on the Dream Song by IngeborgMöller-Lindholm of Lillehammer In June 1910 Dr Steiner held a cycle of lectures in Oslo entitled The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology. As I lived in Oslo and had a large room at my disposal, I invited to tea about forty anthroposophical friends who had come to Oslo for this occasion. Dr Steiner and Frau Marie Steiner had also agreed to come. I asked Dr Steiner the previous day whether he could tell us something about the unusual Norwegian folk epic, ‘The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson’. Rudolf Steiner smiled amiably and said he would first have to have read or heard it. I saw the point of this. Then he himself made the suggestion that he should arrive the next day an hour before the other guests, so that I could read the song to him and make a rough translation. And that is what happened. While I read it to him, Dr Steiner sat with his eyes closed and listened intently. He was obviously deeply affected by the unusual content of the song. After tea the Dream Song was read out in Norwegian by a member of the Society, whereupon Dr Steiner gave a short but moving lecture on the song. In particular he dwelt on the fact that these events took place during the time of the twelve holy nights when extraterrestrial influences are at their strongest. He also gave special mention to the name of Olaf Asteson. Olaf or Olcifr means the ‘one left behind’ after his predecessors have gone. He is the one who passes on the blood of the father of the generations. Ast means love; so he is ‘the Son of Love’. Dr Steiner asked me to translate the song into German. He himself did not know Norwegian, let alone the old dialect in which the Dream Song had been written down, and which was difficult even for modern Norwegians. To begin with I made the excuse that I did not have a sufficient command of the German language to convey the wonderful musical rhythm. Dr Steiner said that did not matter, I should just translate the song literally word for word, so that he could get an exact picture of the content. I did this in the course of the autumn and sent him the translation, which was very prosaic and in many respects extremely inadequate. Later on Rudolf Steiner put the song into its own characteristic rhythms and gave several lectures on it. It was also used for eurythmic presentation, especially at Christmas time. Dr Steiner told me in 1913 that I should not think that Olaf the Saint was the original Olaf Åsteson. (St. Olaf, a Norwegian king, died in 1035 at the battle of Stiklestad, championing the cause of Christendom.) There had been several people with the name of ‘Olaf Åsteson’, said Dr Steiner. It was a kind of mystery title. Dr Steiner was in Norway again after the First World War, in 1921 and 1923. On these occasions he stayed with engineer Ingero. Mrs Ragnhild Ingero, who died a few years ago, told me that Dr Steiner had talked to her about the Dream Song. He had meanwhile gone into it further and discovered new things. One of these was that the song was much older than people believed. It originated about 400 AD. At that time there was a great Christian initiate in this country. He founded a mystery school in Southern Norway; the place was not mentioned. His mystery name was Olaf Asteson, and the song describes his initiation. Originally, so Dr Steiner says, the song was much longer and had twelve sections, one for each sign of the zodiac. The song describes Olaf Asteson's journey through the whole zodiac and what he saw and experienced there. Today we only have fragments of the original song. The aforesaid mystery school continued into the early Middle Ages. The leader was always called Olaf Åsteson Dr Steiner said that in course of time he would publish these facts and other important things connected with the song. However he did not want to do this until he had found certain external proofs of his findings. He thought he would be able to find these . But the burning of the Goetheanum, excessive work and finally illness and death prevented this intention being realised. Now these indications are all we have. I have given much thought to these findings of Dr Steiner's and have come to the conclusion that this mystery school was possibly in Skiringssal. This place is or rather was in Vestfold, a region in south-western Norway. In old legends it has always been described as a holy place. Vikings who died on foreign soil wished to be buried in Skiringssal. There was also a kaupang there (market). Archaeologists are excavating things at present which they assume to be remains of this market. Up to now, though, nobody has been able to prove conclusively where Skiringssal is. At the time of the mystery school it lay on the coast; however loam deposits have now ‘pushed’ the place further inland. Skiringssal means ‘The Hall of Purification’. Skim means baptism or purification (old Norwegian) Where did the first Olaf Asteson come from? It has been historically proved that Irish-Scottish monks were in this country long before Christianity was officially introduced. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea came to the British Isles as early as the first century AD, and began his missionary work there. There have been mystery centres in Ireland since very early times. The tribes on the neighbouring islands were heathen. The Irish-Scottish Church, also called the Culdee Church, arose as a result of the confluence of the work of the Christian missionaries and ancient Druid wisdom. It flourished in many places as early as 300 to 400 AD. There were churches, schools and monasteries, despite the fact that these were always under attack from powerful heathen tribes of the neighbourhood. Many priests and monks died a martyr's death. This Culdee Church was based in particular on the Gospel of St. John and the preaching of the apostle John. It was like the first communities of Christians and contrasted strongly with the Petrine or Roman Catholic Church. But the latter was victorious. The Culdee Church was destroyed and dissolved in the year 664 AD. It sent a lot of missionaries to various European countries both before and after being externally destroyed. This Church was definitely of an esoteric nature. Many things suggest that the first Olaf Asteson was a representative of this spiritual stream. ‘Among these Norwegian people, who still possess many things in their popular tongue that approach very closely the threshold of occult secrets, possibilities existed for souls to remain connected longer with everything living and working behind outer material phenomena,’ said Rudolf Steiner in his lecture on Olaf Asteson in Berlin on 7th January 1913, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (Man's Connection with the Elemental World), GA 158, 1970.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Cosmic New Year: the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson 31 Dec 1914, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

Our end-of-year festival will begin with Frau Dr. Steiner giving us a recitation of the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of whom we are told that at the approach to Christmas he fell into a kind of sleep which lasted for thirteen days; the thirteen holy days that we have explored in various ways. In the course of this sleep he had significant experiences, that he was able to narrate when he awoke.

During these past days we have examined various things that make us aware that the spiritual-scientific outlook gives us a new approach to an understanding of gems of wisdom which, in past times, people realised belonged to spiritual worlds. Time and again we shall encounter this prehistoric knowledge of the spiritual worlds in one instance or another, and we shall continually be reminded that what was known in former ages, was due to the fact that the human being was so organised at that time that he had the kind of relationship with the whole of the cosmos and its happenings that we would now call being immersed with his human microcosm in the laws or the activities of the macrocosm, and that in this process of immersion in the macrocosm he was able to experience things that deeply concern the life of his soul, but which are hidden from him as long as he lives as microcosm on the physical plane and is equipped only with a knowledge given him by his senses and an intellect bound to the senses.

We know that only a materialistic outlook can believe that man is the only being in the world order equipped with thinking, feeling and willing, whereas a spiritual point of view must acknowledge that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human stage of thinking, feeling and willing. The human being can live his way into these beings when, as microcosm, he immerses himself in the macrocosm. However, in this case we should have to speak of the macrocosm not only as a macrocosm of space, but as if the course of time were of significance in cosmic life. Just as in order to kindle the light of the spirit within him when he wants to descend into the depths of his own soul, man has to shut himself off from all the impressions his environment can make on his senses and has, as it were, to create darkness round him by closing off his sense perception, likewise the spirit we can call the spirit of the earth has to be shut off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The outer cosmos has to have least effect on the earth spirit if the earth spirit is to be able to concentrate its forces within. For then the secrets will be discovered that man has to discover in conjunction with the earth spirit, because the earth has been separated as earth from the cosmos.

The time when the outer macrocosm exercises the greatest effect on the earth is the time of the summer solstice, midsummer. And many accounts of olden times connected with festive presentations and rituals remind us that festivals like these take place at the height of summer; that in the midst of summer, the soul, in letting go the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, surrenders in a state of intoxication to the impressions from the macrocosm.

On the other hand, the legendary or other kind of presentations of that which could be experienced in olden times remind us that when impressions from the macrocosm have least effect on the earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences within the eternal All, the secrets of the earth's life of soul, and that if man enters into this experience at the point of time when the macrocosm sends least light and warmth to the earth, he learns the most holy secrets. This is why the days around Christmas were always kept so sacred, because whilst man's organism was still capable of sharing in the experience of the earth, man could meet the spirit of the earth during the point of time when it was most concentrated.

Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the son of earth, experiences various secrets of the cosmic All whilst he is transported into the macrocosm during the thirteen shortest days. And the nordic legend which has recently been extricated from old accounts, tells of these experiences Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year up till the 6th January. We often have reason to remember this former manner in which the microcosm took part in the macrocosm, and we can then take these things further. First of all, however, let us hear the legend of Olaf Åsteson, the earth son, who during the time in which we are now, experienced the secrets of cosmic existence in his meeting with the earth spirit. Let us listen to these experiences.

The Dream Song

I

Come listen to my song!
The song of a nimble youth.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

II

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could he awaken
Until the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And he slept long indeed!
He could not awaken
Until the bird was on the wing
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Olaf could not awaken
Until the sun shone o'er the peaks
Upon the thirteenth day.
Then saddled he his nimble horse
And rode in haste to the church.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

The priest was at the altar
Reading holy mass
When Olaf alighted at the gate
To tell the many dreams
That had passed through his soul
When he did sleep so long.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Then old and young they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

III

‘I laid me down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could I awaken
Before the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Thrown down to the ocean's depths,
And whosoever will follow after
Good cheer he will not find.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Then hurled into murky swamps,
And I saw the horrors of hell
And also heaven's light.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to go through deep, dark clefts
Where heaven's rivers rushed and roared.
The power to see them was not mine
Yet I could hear their roaring.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

My coal-black horse he did not neigh,
Nor did my good hounds bark,
The bird of morning did not sing
For a wonder lay on all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to travel in spiritland
Through stretch on stretch of thorny heath,
My scarlet mantle was torn to shreds
The nails of my feet likewise.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

Then I came to the Gjallar Bridge
Suspended in the windblown heights,
Studded it is with rich red gold
And the nails thereon have sharp points.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The spirit snake he struck at me
The spirit hound bit me,
And lo! the bull did bar the way.
These are the three beasts of the bridge,
Most wicked are they all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The hound he is a snappish beast
The serpent waits to strike,
The bull is ready to attack!
And no one may pass o'er the bridge
Who will not honour truth!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
On dizzy heights and narrow.
I who had waded in the swamps . . . .
Behind me now they lie!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had waded in the swamps
There seemed no foothold I could find
As I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
Earth did I feel within my mouth
As the dead who lie in their graves.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

To the waters then I came,
’Twas where the icy masses gleamed
Like unto flames of blue. . . .
And God did guide me in my steps
That I did not come close.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

So I went on the wintry way
And saw on my right hand:
Like unto paradise it was,
Light shining far and wide.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

God's Holy Mother then I saw
Amidst most wondrous glory!
‘Now take thy way to Brooksvalin,
the place where souls are judged!’

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

IV

In other worlds I tarried then
Through many nights and long;
And God alone can know
The suffering I saw there—

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

I could see a young man
Who in life had killed a child.
Now he must carry him always
And stand in mud to his knee

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Also I saw an old man
Wearing a cloak of lead;
Thus was he punished,
The miser on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And men appeared before me
Wearing apparel of fire;
So does their dishonesty
Weigh on their poor souls

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Children I also saw,
Glowing coals beneath their feet,
In life they did their parents ill,
Now must their spirits feel it

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And to a house I had to go
Where witches toiled in blood;
This was the blood of those
Who had enraged them whilst on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Now there came riding from the North
Wild hordes of evil spooks,
Led by the Prince of Hell,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

This horde riding from the North
Was the wickedest ever seen;
And the Prince of Hell rode out in front,
And he rode on his coal-black steed

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Yet now came a host from the South
Bringing holy calm,
And at their head rode Saint Michael
At the side of Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

The souls weighed down by sin
Had to tremble in anguish and fear!
Their tears ran down in streams
To hear of their wicked deeds

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Michael stood in majesty
And weighed the souls of men
Upon his heavenly scales,
And near him, judging, stood
The Lord of Judgment, Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

V

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives shoes unto the poor;
He does not need, with naked feet,
To walk on the heath of thorn.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gave bread!
For nothing of harm can come to him
From the hounds of spiritland.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gave corn unto the poor!
The horns of the bull are no threat to him
When he crosses the Gjallar Bridge.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gives clothes!
He need not fear the freezing wastes
Of ice in Brooksvalin.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

VI

And young and old they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams.
You have slept long indeed. . . .
Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!

My dear friends, we have just heard how Olaf Åsteson fell into a sleep that was to reveal to him the secrets of worlds that are hidden from the world of the senses and ordinary life on the physical plane. This legend brings us tidings of ancient knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, which we shall regain once more through what We call the spiritual-scientific world outlook.

You have often heard the words that are included in all proclamations concerning the human soul's entry into the spiritual world, namely, that man beholds the spiritual world only when he experiences the gates of death and then enters into the elements. This means that the elements of earth existence do not surround him in the way they do in ordinary life on the physical plane, in the form of earth, water, air and fire, but that he is lifted above this sensory exterior of the elements and enters into what these elements really are when you know their true nature, where beings exist that have a relationship with man's soul experience.

We could feel that Olaf Asteson experienced something of this descent into the elements when we come to the part where Olaf reaches the Gjallar Bridge and crosses over it on to the paths of the spiritual world that all led far away. What a vivid description we are given of his experience as he descends into the element of earth. It is described in such detail that he tells us he himself feels earth in his mouth like the dead who lie in their graves. And then there is a clear indication of his going through the element of water, and of all that can be experienced in the watery element when one also experiences its moral quality. Then he also indicates how man meets with the elements of fire and of air.

All this is described in a wonderfully graphic way and centred in the experience of the human soul meeting the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found at a later date; it was collected at the place where it lived orally among the people. Parts of the legend in their present form are no longer the same as in the original. No doubt the graphic description of the experiences in the earth realm originally came first and then the experiences in the realm of water. And the experiences in the realms of air and of fire were no doubt far more differentiated than they are in the feeble after-echo that we have today, and which was found centuries later.

The conclusion was undoubtedly also much more impressive and less sentimental, for in its present form it does not in the least remind us of the sublime language of olden times, nor of the capacity to raise one on to a superhuman plane that used to exist in folk legends. The present conclusion merely moves on on a human level, and the reason why it is moving is purely because of its connection with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience.

If we rightly understand the season of the year in which we now are, we have a strong urge to remember the fact that humanity used to possess a knowledge—even if it was less defined and clear-cut—that has been lost and which has to be regained. And the question can arise in us, that as we surely recognise today that that particular kind of knowledge has to return if mankind is to be made whole, then should we not consider it one of our most urgent tasks to do everything we can to bring knowledge like that into the culture of the present?

Many things will have to happen in order for this change to come about in the right way, in what I would like to call the feeling content of man's world conception. One thing will be particularly necessary—I say one, for it is one among many, but you can only take one at a time—it will be essential for human souls to acquire on the basis of our spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream, reverence and devotion for what was known in ancient times in the old manner about the deep secrets of existence. People must arrive at the feeling that during the materialistic age they have neglected the development of this reverence and devotion.

We must get the feeling of how dried-out and empty this materialistic age is, and how proud of our intellectual knowledge mankind was in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in face of the revelations of ancient religion and knowledge handed down from former times, which, when approached with the necessary reverence, truly give us the feeling that they contain the most profound wisdom. Fundamentally speaking we have no reverence for the Bible nowadays, either! Disregarding the kind of atrocious modern research that tears the whole Bible to shreds, we have merely to look at the dry and empty way we approach the Bible today armed, as it were, only with the knowledge of the senses and ordinary intellectual powers, and at the way we can no longer muster a feeling for the tremendous greatness of human perception that comes to meet us in some of its passages. I would like to refer to a passage from the second Book of Moses, chapter 33, verse 18:

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

If you gather together various things we have taken up in our hearts and souls during the years we have been working with spiritual science and then approach this passage, you can have the feeling that infinite wisdom is speaking to us there and how, in the materialistic age, human ears are so deaf that they hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that comes to us from this passage. I would like to take this opportunity to refer you to a booklet that has been published under the title Worte Mosis by Bruns Publishing Co. in Minden, Westphalia, because certain things out of the five Books of Moses have been translated better in this booklet than in other editions. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, the publisher of Worte Mosis, has taken a lot of trouble over the interpretation.

The fact that man, if he wants to penetrate to the spiritual world, has to acquire a totally different relation to the world than that which he has to the sense world, has often been stressed. Man has the sense world all about him. He looks at the sense world and sees it in its colours and forms and hears its sounds. The sense world is there, and we are in the midst of it, feeling its influence, perceiving it and thinking about it. That is how we relate to the sense world. We are passive and the sense world, as it were, works its way into our souls. We think about the sense world and make mental images of it.

Our relationship is quite different when we penetrate into the spiritual world. One of the difficulties consists in getting the right idea of what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have attempted to characterise some of these difficulties in my booklet Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt (‘The Threshold of the Spiritual World’). We make mental images of the sense world and we think about it. If we go through all a person has to go through if he wants to follow the path of initiation, something occurs that can be described like this: We ourselves relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as the things around us relate to us; they make a mental image of us, they think us. We think the objects around us, the minerals, plants and animals; they become our thoughts, whereas we are the conceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on. They take us in, in the same way as we take in the plants, animals and human beings. And we must feel their sheltering protection when we say, ‘The beings of the higher hierarchies think us, they make mental images of us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls’. In fact we can actually picture that when Olaf Asteson fell asleep he became a mental image of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and in the course of his sleep these beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit were experiencing (these are, of course, a plurality for us). And when Olaf Asteson sinks back into the physical world he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him.

Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting out on the path of initiation. How can we relate to the spiritual world, which is a host of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, into which we wish to enter? How can we relate to them? We can appeal to them and say ‘How can we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us?’ And then, when we have acquired an understanding of the different kind of relationship the human soul has to the higher worlds, there will sound forth to us, as it were from the spiritual worlds, ‘You cannot perceive the spiritual world the same way as you perceive the sense world, the way the sense world appears before you and impinges on your senses. We must think you, and you must feel yourself in us. You must feel the kind of experience in you which a thought you think in the sense world would have if it could experience itself within you. You must surrender yourself to the spiritual world, then the beings of the higher hierarchies who can reveal themselves to you will enter into you. This will stream into your soul and live within it, bringing grace, in the same way as you live in your thoughts when you think about the sense world. If the spiritual world wishes to favour you and have compassion on you, it will fill you with its love!’

But you must not imagine that you can approach spiritual beings in the same way as you approach the sense world. Just as Moses had to creep into the cave, you must go into the cave of the spiritual world. You have to put yourself there. Like a thought lives in you, you must be taken up into the life of the spiritual beings. You yourself must live as a universal thought in the macrocosm. To have experiences there of your own accord is not possible during earthly life between birth and death, but only after you have passed through death. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, yet the spiritual world can come close to you, bless you and fill you with its love. And if after, or whilst you are within the spiritual world, you develop your earthly consciousness, the spiritual world will shine into this consciousness.

Just as when an object is outside us we confront it, and when it enters our consciousness it is inside us, the soul of man is within the cave of the spiritual world. The spiritual world passes through him. Here, man confronts things. When man enters the spiritual world the beings of the higher hierarchies are behind him. There, he cannot see their face, just as a thought cannot see our face when it is within us. Our face is in front and the thoughts are behind, so they cannot see our face. The whole secret of initiation is concealed in the words Jehovah speaks to Moses.

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live.’—Initiation does indeed bring you to the Gate of Death.

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a cleft of rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

It is the opposite of the way we perceive the sense world. You must muster a lot of the spiritual-scientific effort you have developed over the years, in order to encounter a revelation like this with the right kind of reverence and devotion. Then human souls will gradually acquire more and more of this feeling of reverence towards these revelations; and this reverence, this devotion, is among the many things we need in order that the change we have been speaking of can come about in mankind's spiritual culture.

The time when the macrocosm sends down least influence to the earth, the days from Christmas over New Year until roughly the 6th of January, can be a suitable time not only for remembering the facts of spiritual knowledge, but also for remembering the feelings we have to develop as we take up spiritual science. We are really and truly taken up again into the life of the spirit of the earth, together with whom we form a whole, and in which ancient clairvoyant knowledge lived, as this legend of Olaf Åsteson shows us. Humanity in the materialistic age has in many ways lost this reverence and devotion for spiritual life. It is most essential to see to it that this reverence and devotion come back, for without them we shall not develop the mood to approach spiritual science in the right way. Unfortunately the mood with which spiritual science is spproached to start with is still the same mood we have for ordinary science. A thorough change will have to come about in this respect.

Having lost the understanding for the spiritual world, mankind has also lost the proper relation to the being of man, to humanity. The materialistic world conception produces chaotic feelings about universal existence. These chaotic feelings about the world and humanity were bound to come in the age of materialism. Think of a time—and this is our time, the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—when people no longer had any real awareness that the being of man is threefold: a bodily nature, soul and spirit. For it really is like that. The threefold nature of man, which, to us, is one of the basic elements of spiritual science, was something that people did not have the slightest notion of from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch right into our time. Man was just man, and any talk of membering his being in the way we do into body, soul and spirit was considered complete nonsense.

You might imagine that these things are valuable only in the sphere of knowledge, but that is not so. They are important not only as knowledge, but for the whole manner in which man faces life. In the fourth century of modern times, or, as we say in our language, during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, three great words came to the fore in which people saw, or at least endeavoured to see, the essence of human striving on earth. Important though these words are, what made them significant was the fact that they appeared at a time when mankind knew nothing of the threefold nature of man. Everyone heard of liberty, equality and fraternity.

It was a profound necessity that these words were heard at a certain time in modern civilisation. People will only really understand these words when the threefold membering of the human being is understood, because until then they will not realise the significance these words can have with regard to man's real being. Whilst these words are being approached with the sort of chaotic feelings that are engendered by the thought that man is man, and the threefold membering of man is nonsense, human beings will find no guidance in these three words. For the three words, as they stand, cannot be directly applied to one and the same level of human experience. They cannot be. Simple considerations which do not perhaps occur to you because they seem too simple for such weighty matters, can go to show that if they are taken on the same level, what these three words mean can come into serious conflict.

Let us start by looking at the realm where we find fraternity in its most natural form. Take human blood relationship, the family, where there is no need to instil brotherly love because it is inborn, and just think how it warms the heart to see real genuine brotherhood among a family, to see everyone united in a brotherly way. And yet—without losing any of the wonderful feeling we can have about this brotherly love—let us have a look at what can happen to a family fraternity just because of this brotherliness. Brotherliness is justified within a family, yet a member of a family can be made unhappy by it, and can long to get away from it because he feels he cannot develop his own soul within the family fraternity and must leave it in order to develop in freedom. So we see that freedom, the unfolding in freedom of the life of the soul, can come into conflict with even the best-meant brotherliness.

Obviously a superficial person could maintain that it is not proper brotherliness if it does not agree with a person's freedom. But people can say anything they like. No doubt they can say that everything agrees with everything else. I recently saw a thesis in which one of the articles that had to be proved was that a triangle is a quadrangle. You can of course plead for a thing like that, you can even prove exactly that a triangle is a quadrangle! And you can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the point. The point is that for the sake of freedom many a realm of brotherliness has to be—and in fact is—forsaken. We could give further examples of this.

If we wanted to count up the discrepancies between fraternity and equality it would take us a long time. Obviously we can say in abstracto that everyone can be equal, and can show that fraternity and equality are compatible. But if we take life seriously it is not a question of abstractions but of looking at reality. The moment we realise that the human being has a bodily nature that lives on the physical plane, a soul nature that actually lives in the soul world, and a spiritual nature that lives in the spiritual world, we have the right perspective for the connection between these profound words. Brotherliness is the most important ideal for the physical world, freedom is for the soul world, and insofar as man enters into the realm of the soul we ought to speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of the kind of social conditions that fully guarantee the soul its freedom. If we bear in mind that in order to develop the spirit and enter spirit land we, that is, each one of us, has to strive for spirit knowledge from our own point of view, we shall soon see where we would get with our spiritual conceptions if each one of us only went his own way and we all filled ourselves with a different content.

As human beings we can only find one another in life if we seek the spirit, each one for himself, yet can arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. We can speak of fraternity on the physical plane and with regard to everything that has to do with the laws of the physical plane and which affects the human soul from the physical plane; liberty with regard to all that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the soul world; equality with regard to everything that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the spirit land.

So you see, a Cosmic New Year must come about, where there will be a sun that will increase in power to give warmth and to radiate light: a sun that must bring light-filled warmth to many a thing that lived on during the age of darkness, yet was not understood. It is characteristic of our time that many a thing is striven for and expressed in words, yet is not understood.

This, too, can bring us to feel reverence and devotion for the spiritual world. For if we ponder on the fact that many people strove for fraternity, liberty and equality in the fourth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and uttered these words without understanding them properly, it is possible for us to see an answer to the question, ‘Where did these words come from?’ The divine-spiritual universal order implanted them into the human soul at a time when we did not understand them, in order that key words of this kind might lead us on to true universal understanding. We can notice the wise guidance in world evolution even in things like this. We can observe this guidance everywhere, whether in past ages or in more recent times, observing that often we do not notice until afterwards that something we did previously was actually wiser than the wisdom we had at our command at the time. I drew attention to this at the very beginning of my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man.

However, if you look, for instance, at the fact that in world evolution, in the evolution of man, a part is played by directional words that can only gradually be understood, you might be reminded of an image we can use when we want to characterise this period of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that is drawing to a close. In many respects it can really be compared with the season of Advent where the periods of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now in our time, when we can begin to have knowledge of revelations of the spiritual worlds again, evolution is entering the phase that we can picture as the days growing longer and longer, and we can speak of this season really being comparable to the thirteen days and to the time of increasing daylight.

But it goes deeper than this. It would be absolutely wrong if we were only to find bad things to say of the materialistic age of the past four centuries. Modern times were ushered in by the great discoveries and inventions that are called ‘great’ in the materialistic age, sailing round the world, for instance, discovering lands that were not previously known and starting to colonise the earth. That was the beginning of materialistic civilisation. And then the time gradually came when people were almost stifled by materialistic civilisation. The time arrived when all our spiritual forces were applied to understanding and grasping material life. Insights, understanding and visions of the spiritual world existing in ancient knowledge were forgotten more and more, as we have seen.

Yet it is wrong to have nothing but bad things to say about this age. It would be far better to put it this way: ‘The human soul has been thinking materialistically and founding a materialistic science and culture in the part of it that is awake, but this human soul is a totality.’ If I wanted to put it schematically I could say that one part of the human soul founded materialistic civilisation. This part was inactive before that, and people knew nothing about external science and outer material life; at that time the spiritual part was more awake. (He did a drawing.) During the past four centuries the part of the soul was awake that founded materialistic civilisation, and the other part was asleep. And, in truth, during the age of materialistic culture, the seeds were being sown in the sleeping parts of the soul for the forces we can now develop in humanity to bring us to spirituality again. During these centuries mankind was really an Olaf Asteson as far as spiritual knowledge was concerned. That really was so. And humanity has not yet woken up! Spiritual science must awaken it. A time must come when both old and young must hear the words that are being spoken by the part of the human soul that was asleep in the age of darkness.

The human soul has slept long indeed, but world spirits will approach and call to it, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Asteson!’—Only we have to prepare ourselves in the right way, so that it does not happen that we are faced with the call, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!’ and have not the ears to hear it. That is why we are engaged in spiritual science, so that we shall have the ears to hear, when the call to be spiritually awake sounds in human evolution.

It is a good thing if man remembers sometimes that he is a microcosm and that he can be receptive to certain experiences if he opens himself to the macrocosm. As we have seen, the present season is a good one. Let us try to make this New Year's Eve a symbol for the New Year's Eve that has to come to mankind in earth evolution, a New Year's Eve that will herald a new era bringing ever more light, soul light, vision, knowledge of what lives in the spirit and which can stream and flow into the human soul from out of the spirit. If we can bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's Eve into connection with the macrocosm of human experience over the whole earth, we shall then have the kind of feelings we ought to experience, sensing as we do the dawning of the great new Cosmic Day of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, at whose beginning we stand, and the midnight of which we want to understand worthily.

The Dream Song: Draumkvaedet, see collection Norske Folkeviser, edited by Thorwald Lammers, Kristiania 1910, by Aschehoug & Co.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about the Norwegian Dream Song of Olaf Asteson on 1st January 1912, 7th January 1913 and 31st December 1914, and his talks were always accompanied by Marie Steiner-von Sivers reciting the Dream Song. These three lectures or addresses were put together as a volume and published in 1958 as an enlarged new edition of the lecture ‘Cosmic New Year’. Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm, the Norwegian poetess (1878–1964), drew Rudolf Steiner's attention to the old legend, and it is largely due to her initiative that this extraordinary folk epic has acquired such an important place in the anthroposophical movement. Through her help we are in a position to include in this edition the notes she made of her conversation with Rudolf Steiner. We have also included in the references, several points from a lecture Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm gave on the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson, which she kindly put at our disposal in translation, and which we have attributed accordingly.

Notes on the Dream Song by IngeborgMöller-Lindholm of Lillehammer

In June 1910 Dr Steiner held a cycle of lectures in Oslo entitled The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology. As I lived in Oslo and had a large room at my disposal, I invited to tea about forty anthroposophical friends who had come to Oslo for this occasion. Dr Steiner and Frau Marie Steiner had also agreed to come. I asked Dr Steiner the previous day whether he could tell us something about the unusual Norwegian folk epic, ‘The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson’. Rudolf Steiner smiled amiably and said he would first have to have read or heard it. I saw the point of this. Then he himself made the suggestion that he should arrive the next day an hour before the other guests, so that I could read the song to him and make a rough translation. And that is what happened.

While I read it to him, Dr Steiner sat with his eyes closed and listened intently. He was obviously deeply affected by the unusual content of the song. After tea the Dream Song was read out in Norwegian by a member of the Society, whereupon Dr Steiner gave a short but moving lecture on the song. In particular he dwelt on the fact that these events took place during the time of the twelve holy nights when extraterrestrial influences are at their strongest. He also gave special mention to the name of Olaf Asteson. Olaf or Olcifr means the ‘one left behind’ after his predecessors have gone. He is the one who passes on the blood of the father of the generations. Ast means love; so he is ‘the Son of Love’.

Dr Steiner asked me to translate the song into German. He himself did not know Norwegian, let alone the old dialect in which the Dream Song had been written down, and which was difficult even for modern Norwegians. To begin with I made the excuse that I did not have a sufficient command of the German language to convey the wonderful musical rhythm. Dr Steiner said that did not matter, I should just translate the song literally word for word, so that he could get an exact picture of the content. I did this in the course of the autumn and sent him the translation, which was very prosaic and in many respects extremely inadequate. Later on Rudolf Steiner put the song into its own characteristic rhythms and gave several lectures on it. It was also used for eurythmic presentation, especially at Christmas time.

Dr Steiner told me in 1913 that I should not think that Olaf the Saint was the original Olaf Åsteson. (St. Olaf, a Norwegian king, died in 1035 at the battle of Stiklestad, championing the cause of Christendom.) There had been several people with the name of ‘Olaf Åsteson’, said Dr Steiner. It was a kind of mystery title.

Dr Steiner was in Norway again after the First World War, in 1921 and 1923. On these occasions he stayed with engineer Ingero. Mrs Ragnhild Ingero, who died a few years ago, told me that Dr Steiner had talked to her about the Dream Song. He had meanwhile gone into it further and discovered new things. One of these was that the song was much older than people believed. It originated about 400 AD. At that time there was a great Christian initiate in this country. He founded a mystery school in Southern Norway; the place was not mentioned. His mystery name was Olaf Asteson, and the song describes his initiation. Originally, so Dr Steiner says, the song was much longer and had twelve sections, one for each sign of the zodiac. The song describes Olaf Asteson's journey through the whole zodiac and what he saw and experienced there. Today we only have fragments of the original song. The aforesaid mystery school continued into the early Middle Ages. The leader was always called Olaf Åsteson

Dr Steiner said that in course of time he would publish these facts and other important things connected with the song. However he did not want to do this until he had found certain external proofs of his findings. He thought he would be able to find these . But the burning of the Goetheanum, excessive work and finally illness and death prevented this intention being realised. Now these indications are all we have.

I have given much thought to these findings of Dr Steiner's and have come to the conclusion that this mystery school was possibly in Skiringssal. This place is or rather was in Vestfold, a region in south-western Norway. In old legends it has always been described as a holy place. Vikings who died on foreign soil wished to be buried in Skiringssal. There was also a kaupang there (market). Archaeologists are excavating things at present which they assume to be remains of this market. Up to now, though, nobody has been able to prove conclusively where Skiringssal is. At the time of the mystery school it lay on the coast; however loam deposits have now ‘pushed’ the place further inland. Skiringssal means ‘The Hall of Purification’. Skim means baptism or purification (old Norwegian)

Where did the first Olaf Asteson come from? It has been historically proved that Irish-Scottish monks were in this country long before Christianity was officially introduced. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea came to the British Isles as early as the first century AD, and began his missionary work there. There have been mystery centres in Ireland since very early times. The tribes on the neighbouring islands were heathen. The Irish-Scottish Church, also called the Culdee Church, arose as a result of the confluence of the work of the Christian missionaries and ancient Druid wisdom. It flourished in many places as early as 300 to 400 AD. There were churches, schools and monasteries, despite the fact that these were always under attack from powerful heathen tribes of the neighbourhood. Many priests and monks died a martyr's death. This Culdee Church was based in particular on the Gospel of St. John and the preaching of the apostle John. It was like the first communities of Christians and contrasted strongly with the Petrine or Roman Catholic Church. But the latter was victorious. The Culdee Church was destroyed and dissolved in the year 664 AD. It sent a lot of missionaries to various European countries both before and after being externally destroyed. This Church was definitely of an esoteric nature. Many things suggest that the first Olaf Asteson was a representative of this spiritual stream.

‘Among these Norwegian people, who still possess many things in their popular tongue that approach very closely the threshold of occult secrets, possibilities existed for souls to remain connected longer with everything living and working behind outer material phenomena,’ said Rudolf Steiner in his lecture on Olaf Asteson in Berlin on 7th January 1913, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (Man's Connection with the Elemental World), GA 158, 1970.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Moral Experience of the Worlds of Colour and Tone 01 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Moral Experience of the Worlds of Colour and Tone 01 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
Everything in the world, each event and every act of human conduct has two sides, which are, as it were, polar opposites. Yesterday it was my task to point out to you that through a feeling understanding of our spiritual-scientific world outlook, the human soul should acquire reverence and devotion for the spiritual worlds. The opposite pole to this devotional attitude is energetic work on our inner life, an energetic taking-in-hand of the evolutionary factors of our own soul, making a point of always using our experiences for the purpose of learning something from them and making progress with regard to our inner forces, so that—whatever meets us in life and whatever takes place around us, whether it is easy to understand or not—we shall always avoid the danger of losing ourselves. May we always have the chance of keeping hold of ourselves and of finding within ourselves the strength to develop an understanding for what can encounter us in an often incomprehensible way, and may the kind of devotion for things we were talking about yesterday make such an impact on the development of our souls, that we acquire a proper understanding of universal existence; this, my dear friends, is the New Year greeting I wanted to give you today at the start of the year. We have just been remembering devotion, and I would like to follow that with a reminder of the energetic work on our inner life. The full moon shining down on us out of the cosmos on New Year's Eve is a symbol for the sequence in which we are remembering these things. If it had been the other way round, and the year had started with the new moon, I should have done the right thing in bringing these reminders to you in the opposite order. I should then have closed the year with a reminder of the power of inner development and should have had to leave the thoughts on reverence until today. We must attach more and more importance to really noticing a symbol like this that shines on us out of the macrocosm. And in our quiet moments this year let this indication work on us in such a way that it can have a special significance, to think first about the transformation the power of reverence can bring about in us, then to follow this with thinking about the transformation that the power of inner preservation, the maintaining of inner soul energy, should bring about in us. The sequence of these thoughts has been set for the coming year by the writing of the stars, and the world will gradually come to realise again that reading the star script really has a meaning for man. So let us try even in details like this to pay heed to the great law of human existence and to strive for harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The macrocosm is speaking to us over these days in the most obvious way and we shall find how to keep our microcosm in harmony with the macrocosm, if we conduct ourselves in line with it, in the course of this year that has begun amidst such painful events. If you try and notice what has been the prevailing mood of our talks in the last few days you will discover that, regarding the facts that spiritual science has made significant for us, we live in a time of change, in a time of hope, as it were, for we should now be getting an inkling of the direction the further course of human cultural development should take; of the change that has to come about from a purely materialistic world conception to a spiritual one. What is meant here, however, cannot really fully take place unless it enters every sphere of life and particularly takes hold of the spiritual cultural areas to a marked degree. We have already had various indications showing that an understanding of the spiritual-scientific outlook, which has taken hold of our feelings and is not merely rational, is bound to bring a change into both artistic creativity and artistic appreciation, because the forces we gain from this can give us an artistic conception of the world. And in our Goetheanum building we have just made the attempt to show at least a small part of what can take an artistic form, from out of spiritual-scientific impulses. We can see a time coming when we shall be able to enter fully into the feelings that can arise from the spiritual-scientific world conception, a time when the way to artistic creation will in many respects be different from the past; it will be much more alive and the medium of artistic creation will be experienced much more intensely in the human soul; the soul will be capable of experiencing colour and sound far more inwardly, in a kind of moral-spiritual way, and in artists' creations we shall meet, as it were, traces of the artists' experiences in the cosmos. In essentials, the attitude of artistic creation and artistic appreciation in this past epoch was a kind of external observation, an appeal to something that affects the artist from outside . The need to refer to nature and to a model for external observation has become greater and greater. Not that in the art of the future there is to be any one-sided rejection of nature and outer reality. Far from it, for there will be a much more intimate union with the external world; so strong a union that it will cover not merely the external impression of colour and sound and form, but that which one can experience behind the sound and colour and form; what is revealed in them. Human beings will make important discoveries in the future in this respect. They will actually unite their moralspiritual nature with the results of sense perception. An infinite deepening of the human soul can be foreseen in this domain. Let us pick a particular example to start from. We will simply imagine that we are looking at a surface shining all over with the same shade of strong vermilion, and let us assume we succeed in forgetting everything else around us and concentrate entirely on experiencing this colour, so that we have the colour in front of us, not merely as something that works upon us but as something with which we ourselves are united, that we are within. You will then be able to feel as though you were in the world, and in this world the whole of you has become colour, the whole of your innermost soul, and wherever your soul goes in the world you will be a soul filled with red, living in, with and out of red. Yet you will not be able to experience this intensely in the soul unless the corresponding feeling is transformed into moral experience, real moral experience. If we float through the world as though we were red, had identified ourselves with red, and our very soul and the whole world were entirely red, we shall not be able to help feeling that this whole red world is filling us with the substance of divine wrath, coming towards us from all sides in response to all the possibilities of evil and sin in us. In this infinite red space we shall be able to feel as though we were before the judgment of God, and our moral feeling will become the kind of moral experience our souls can have in infinite space. And when the reaction comes, when something emerges in our soul as we are having this experience in infinite red or, I could also say in the one and only red, I can only describe it by saying we learn to pray. If you can experience the raying and glowing of divine wrath, together with all the possibilities of evil in the human soul, and if you can experience in the red how one learns to pray, the experience of red is enormously deepened. We can also experience the form red takes on when it enters space. We can then understand how we can experience a being that radiates goodness and is full of divine kindness and mercy, a being that we want to feel in the realm of space. Then we shall feel the need of expressing this divine mercy and goodness in a form which arises out of the colour itself. We shall feel the need to let space be pushed aside so that goodness and mercy may shine forth. Before space was there it was all concentrated at the centre, and now goodness and mercy enter space and, just as clouds are driven apart, space is rent asunder and recedes to make way for mercy, and we have the feeling that what is being scattered must be drawn in red. Here in the centre (a drawing was done) we shall have to indicate faintly a kind of magenta shining into the scattering red. We shall then be present with our whole soul as the colour takes on form. And with our whole soul we shall feel an echo of how the beings who belong especially to our earth process felt, when they had ascended to the Elohim stage and learnt to fashion the world of forms out of colours. We shall learn to experience something of the creative activity of the Spirits of Form who are the Elohim, and we shall then understand how colour can create forms, as indicated in our first Mystery Play. We shall also understand something of how the surface nature of the colour becomes something that has to be overcome, as it were, because we accompany colour into the cosmos. If strong desire is also present, a feeling can arise like Strader has when he sees the portrait of Capesius, and says he would like to pierce the canvas. You will see that an attempt has been made in these Mystery Plays really to show in artistic form what it is like for the soul, when it attempts to expand in the cosmic forces and to feel what the spirits of the cosmos are feeling. That was, in fact, the beginning of all art. But the materialistic age had to come, and ancient art, with its divine quality of differentiation, in which spirit was revealed in matter, had to change into secondary, materialistic ‘after’-art, which the art of the materialistic age is, in essence; the kind of art which cannot create but only imitate. The sign of all secondary art, all after-art, is that it needs objects to imitate, and that it does not produce the form primarily out of the material. Let us take another example. Let us imagine we do the same thing with a more orange coloured surface that we did with the red surface. We shall experience something quite different this time. If we submerge ourselves in it and unite with it, then instead of feeling divine wrath bearing down upon us, we shall have the feeling that what comes to meet us here has much less of the serious side of wrath about it and does not only want to punish us, but wants to impart itself to us and arm us with inner strength. When we enter the world and unite with the orange surface we move in such a way that with every step we take, we feel that by experiencing orange, by living in the forces of orange, we are becoming stronger and stronger, and that what comes to us out of orange does not come merely to punish us and break us with its judgment, but is a source of strength. This is how we go into the world in orange. We then feel the longing to understand the inner nature of things and to unite it with ourselves. By living in red we learn to pray, by living in orange we experience the desire for knowledge of the inner nature of things. If we do the same thing with a yellow surface we feel as though we were transported back to the beginning of our cycle of time. We feel that we are then living in the forces out of which we were created when we entered upon our first earthly incarnation. You feel an affinity between what you are throughout the whole of earth existence, and what comes to meet you from the world into which you take the yellow with which you are united. And if you identify yourself with green and accompany green into the world—which can be done very easily by gazing at a green meadow, shutting out everything else and concentrating completely on it, and then trying to immerse yourself in the green meadow as if the green were the surface of a coloured sea—you experience an inner increase in strength in what your are in that particular incarnation. You feel yourself becoming inwardly healthy, yet at the same time becoming inwardly more egoistic, you feel a stimulus of the egoistic forces within you. If you did the same with a blue surface, you would go through the world with the desire to accompany the blue forever and to overcome your egoism, become macrocosmic, as it were, and develop devotion. And you would find it a blessing if you could remain like this for your meeting with divine mercy. You would feel blessed by divine mercy if you could go through the world like this. Thus we learn to know the inner nature of colour and, as I said before, we can foresee a time when an artist's preparation will mean a moral experience in colour of this kind, when the experience preparatory to artistic creation will be much more inward and intuitive than it ever was in past ages. For these are only a few indications I am giving you, and they will be developed much further in the future. They will take hold of men's souls and enliven them with a tremendous sense for artistic creativity, whereas the materialistic culture that has entered our modern age has dried up the soul and made it passive. Souls must be stimulated again by a power from within; they must be taken hold of by the inner forces of things. As a specific example I have taken the colours that flood the world. The world of sound will deepen and enliven the life of soul in a very similar way. During the period that is now drawing to a close, the essential thing was that a person experienced a tone as such, and the relationship of one tone to another. In the future people will be able to experience what is behind the tone. They will regard the tone as a kind of window through which they enter the spiritual world, and then it will not depend on vague feeling of how one tone is added to another, to form melodies for instance, but by going through the tone the soul will also experience a moral-spiritual quality behind the separate tones. The soul will enter the spiritual world as though through a window. The secrets of the individual tones will be discovered in this experience behind the tones. We are still a long way away from this feeling of being able to go from the sense world to the spiritual world through the window of each tone. But this will come. We shall experience the tone as an opening made by the gods from the spiritual world yonder to this physical-material world, and we shall climb through the tone out of the physical-material world into the spiritual world. Through the tonic, for example, which we experience as absolute and not in reference to previous tones of the scale, we experience danger as we pass from the sense world into the spiritual world. We are threatened on entry with being taken captive; the tonic wants to suck us in most horribly through the window of the tone and make us completely disappear in the spiritual world. Assuming that we experience the tonic as absolute, we shall feel that we are still too weak in a spiritual sense in the physical world, and that we are sucked up by the spiritual world when we climb through this window. This is the moral experience to be had on entering the spiritual world through the tonic. I am over-simplifying it now, though; we shall have a very differentiated experience which contains an infinite variety of detail. When we climb out of the physical world into the spiritual world through the window of the second, we shall have the impression of powers in the spiritual world yonder that, as it were, take pity on our weakness and say, ‘Well! so you were weak in the physical sense world! if you only climb into the spiritual world through the tonic I must dissolve you, suck you up and break you to pieces. But, if you enter through the second, I will offer you something from the spiritual world and remind you of something that is there.’ The peculiar thing is that when we climb from the physical to the spiritual world through the second, it is as though a number of tones rang out to receive us. We enter a totally silent world if we enter the spiritual world through the absolute tonic. If we enter through the second we come to a world where, if we listen, various quiet high-pitched tones ring out wanting to comfort us in our weakness. Yet we must go through the window in a way we most certainly could not do in a physical-material house, for the owner would give us a strange look if we were to walk in through the window and take the whole window with us. But in the spiritual world that is what you have to do, take the tones with you and, in union with them, live over there in the beyond, the other side of the thin partition that separates us from the physical-material world, and in which we have to imagine the tones as windows. If you enter the spiritual world through the third, you will have the feeling of an even greater weakness. If you enter the spiritual world this way, you will feel that you were really very weak in the physical-material world, where its spiritual content is concerned. But with regard to the third—and remember that you have become sound; you yourself have become a third—you will feel that there are friends over there who, although they themselves are not thirds, approach you according to the kind of disposition you had in the physical-material world. If you enter through the second, it is like a gentle sounding of many tones, with whom you share life in general when you enter through them, whilst tones that are, as it were, friends with one another, come to meet you through the third. People who want to become composers will have to enter especially through the third, for that is where the tone sequences, the tone compositions are, that will stimulate their artistic creativity. You will not always be met by the same tone friends, for which ones you meet will depend on your mood and your feeling and your temperament—in fact how you are disposed to life at the time when you go through the third into spiritual life. This results in an infinite variety of possibilities. If you penetrate through the fourth into the spiritual world, you will have a strange experience. Although no new tones appear from any direction, those that have come before, when you were experiencing the third, will live lightly in the soul as memories. And you will find that in continuing to live with these tone memories they perpetually take on a fresh colouring; at one time they become as bright and cheerful as can be, at other times they descend to the utmost sadness; now they are as bright as day, now they sink down to the silence of the grave. The modulating of the voice, the way the sound ascends and descends; in short, the whole mood of a tonal creation will have its origin along this path, from these sound memories. The fifth will produce experiences that are more subjective, that work to stimulate and enrich the life of the soul. It is like a magic wand that conjures up the secrets of the sound world yonder, out of unfathomable depths. Experiences of this kind will come to one when one no longer just looks at the things and phenomena in the world, or just listens to them, but experiences them from within. These are the kind of experiences mankind must have, particularly through colour and sound, but also through form; in fact, altogether through the realm of art, in order to get away from the purely external relationship to things and their functioning—which is characteristic of the materialistic age—and to penetrate into the inner secrets at the heart of things. Then something tremendously significant will happen to man, and he will be filled with the awareness of his connection with the divine spiritual powers, which are sub-conscious when his awarenesss is confined to the material realm, and which guide and lead him through the world. And then, above all, he will have inner experiences, such as experiencing the forces which guide man from one incarnation to the next. If we omit to heat a locomotive, it cannot pull a train. The forces which make things happen in the world have to be continually stimulated. The forces which drive mankind forward also need to be stimulated. And this does happen. However, man has to learn that he is connected with these forces. I once had the following remarkable experience. There was a lawyer, a famous advocate, in the town where I lived for a while, an extraordinarily famous advocate, whom the people absolutely flocked to, because they believed he was bound to win the most difficult lawsuits. And this was often the case. His legal dialectic was extraordinary, and people who knew him had the deepest respect for it. Now he was once entrusted with the difficult case of a rich man. The rich man would have to suffer a severe penalty if the lawsuit resulted in his being sentenced. The advocate used his greatest dialectic and the most wonderful of his legal skills. He made a long speech, and the people who heard him were convinced that if the jury were not to acquit the accused, nothing further could be done about it. Everyone who heard the advocate's amazing skill were absolutely convinced the jury would now withdraw and acquit the accused. But in the law court there was not only a skilful counsel but also a skilful judge, and although the hour was not yet so advanced that a judgment could no longer be given, the judge said, ‘Let us close the session for today and continue tomorrow.’ So the jury's session was to take place the following morning, and this gave them time to think the matter over again during the night. The following day came. This ‘overnight delay’ as he called it, had already proved very irksome for the advocate. The session began, the jury withdrew, and everyone awaited their return with tense expectation, most of all our advocate. The jury came back after only a quarter of an hour, and when the advocate heard them coming back from the conference room so soon, he fainted. Yes, he fainted. He did recover again, and a friend helped him up. The accused really had been sentenced, but the advocate only heard this after he had recovered from fainting. Now what could be said about the course of events looked at from the point of view of external perception? One could say that the advocate was a very ambitious man, for he cared so much about winning this lawsuit that he lost consciousness before the verdict was pronounced. As soon as he saw that the jury had only conferred for a short time he was sure the accused had been sentenced, for if they had acquitted him they would, of course, have taken much longer. But that was not how the matter stood; it only appeared to be so from an external point of view. There was a kind of second layer of events behind what I have just told you. This other layer, or story, is like this: Before this lawsuit took place this advocate had become addicted to what one can call the demon of gambling—I knew him well, of course. He used the sums of money entrusted to him, as deposit to gamble with. It was an absolute passion with him, and not long before this lawsuit began he had reached the point where he had gambled away large sums of money entrusted to his care. But he had been promised that if he should win this suit, he would be paid so much that he could more or less balance the difference. So he did not faint only out of wounded ambition; he fainited when the jury returned with the verdict after only a quarter of an hour, because his existence had in fact been destroyed. For he had no hope any more of replacing the deposit money he had lost. Therefore his whole existence had depended on the outcome of the lawsuit. He fainted as symbolic indication that he was now completely ruined for this incarnation. He had to escape to America after that, and had to endure a not very enviable existence there for the rest of his life. An example of this sort shows us that judgment can very often be wrong, for some people might never have had the chance to hear anything about what went on behind the lawsuit. If these people had only heard the clever advocate during the lawsuit and seen him fainting, they could very well have concluded that some people are so ambitious that they lose consciousness if a speech of theirs misfires. And they could have left it at that. To be able to judge correctly you would therefore have to know a further layer of facts. In many instances you would even have to know several more layers, otherwise you could be correct with regard to the layer you can see and yet make a wrong judgment. That is the external aspect. But the matter has more behind it. The fellow also had to find a way of getting from this incarnation to the next one. And here we have an example of how wise world guidance puts into the soul the forces it needs to lead it from one incarnation to the next. The man was in such inner conflict that it had destroyed his existence. He was in a terrible position. A situation had been created in which there were no forces left to carry him over to his next incarnation. Also, a situation had been created in which forces of that nature could not be brought to his conscious mind. So his consciousness had to be extinguished for a moment. During short breaks in consciousness all kinds of other spirituality can enter the human soul. And in that moment he received forces capable of restoring his impulse to go forward into the next incarnation. Of course an impulse like this can be given in many different ways. What I have described here was one particular case. These impulses are always there. But I just wanted to show you that man's conscious life is linked with an ongoing process in the unconscious, and that in man's conscious life there are really points where the consciousness is suppressed so that something can enter out of the unconscious. Sometimes these unconscious moments need not be long; they can be short spells similar to fainting. Yet a tremendous amount of spiritual life forces can stream into the human being at such moments, both good and bad, and capable of good and evil. What I want to show you with this example is that, in observing the world, mankind must try to notice links of this kind, which are of no significance to a materialistic outlook. You will gradually reach the point of becoming so perceptive for living links that you will recognise the moments in which the spirit comes near to each human being. In the future the world will no longer be explained so unequivocably as it is now, on the basis of material causes, but matter will be relegated to its right place, and at the same time people will realise that the material phenomenon is not the only thing, for spirit shines through it. We have seen that colours and sound are windows through which we can ascend spiritually into the spirit world, and life also brings to us windows through which the spiritual world enters our physical world. The advocate's fainting fit was this kind of window. If we interpret this phenomenon correctly we have to say that spiritual life streams down to us through this window. It is clear to us that these forces flowing into us cannot be explained on a purely material level. So there are windows in the tones through which we ascend from the physical-material world into the spiritual world; and there are also windows through which, if we remain in the physical-material world, the spirit can descend to us. If we do not perceive the fact that spirit descends to us through such windows, it is like someone opening a beautiful book who cannot read. He has the same thing in front of him as someone who can read, but if he cannot read he sees unintelligible scribble on the white pages which, at the most, he can just describe. Only a person who can read is capable of following a biography, perhaps, or a piece of information that has been laid down in these strange signs. A person who cannot read world phenomena is like a cosmic illiterate where these phenomena are concerned. A person who can read, however, reads the ongoing process of the spiritual world in them. It is characteristic of the present materialistic age that materialism has made people illiterate with regard to the cosmos, almost a hundred per cent so. At a time when people are so proud of having reduced the percentage of illiteracy in civilised countries to such a great extent, they are enthusiastically heading towards illiteracy where the cosmos is concerned. It is the task of spiritual science to eliminate this cosmic illiteracy. Few people nowadays are illiterate in the ordinary sense. In the time of ancient clairvoyance human beings were far less illiterate in the spirit. But this must not make us conceited. It is a fact that when we acquire an inkling of our task in the spiritual-scientific stream, we ought to change from being illiterate to becoming people who can read the cosmos. Yet we should remain humble, for the times are such that we are still very much in need of the elementary level of education. We can hardly read yet, but only spell out the letters. Yet we can be gripped by the impulse to change, an impulse which is breaking in upon mankind through these things. And if we are gripped by them we shall have the right attitude to what the signs of the times are demanding of us, and we shall enter into them as people who rightly belong to the spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Moral Experience of the Worlds of Colour and Tone 01 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

Everything in the world, each event and every act of human conduct has two sides, which are, as it were, polar opposites.

Yesterday it was my task to point out to you that through a feeling understanding of our spiritual-scientific world outlook, the human soul should acquire reverence and devotion for the spiritual worlds. The opposite pole to this devotional attitude is energetic work on our inner life, an energetic taking-in-hand of the evolutionary factors of our own soul, making a point of always using our experiences for the purpose of learning something from them and making progress with regard to our inner forces, so that—whatever meets us in life and whatever takes place around us, whether it is easy to understand or not—we shall always avoid the danger of losing ourselves. May we always have the chance of keeping hold of ourselves and of finding within ourselves the strength to develop an understanding for what can encounter us in an often incomprehensible way, and may the kind of devotion for things we were talking about yesterday make such an impact on the development of our souls, that we acquire a proper understanding of universal existence; this, my dear friends, is the New Year greeting I wanted to give you today at the start of the year. We have just been remembering devotion, and I would like to follow that with a reminder of the energetic work on our inner life. The full moon shining down on us out of the cosmos on New Year's Eve is a symbol for the sequence in which we are remembering these things. If it had been the other way round, and the year had started with the new moon, I should have done the right thing in bringing these reminders to you in the opposite order. I should then have closed the year with a reminder of the power of inner development and should have had to leave the thoughts on reverence until today.

We must attach more and more importance to really noticing a symbol like this that shines on us out of the macrocosm. And in our quiet moments this year let this indication work on us in such a way that it can have a special significance, to think first about the transformation the power of reverence can bring about in us, then to follow this with thinking about the transformation that the power of inner preservation, the maintaining of inner soul energy, should bring about in us.

The sequence of these thoughts has been set for the coming year by the writing of the stars, and the world will gradually come to realise again that reading the star script really has a meaning for man. So let us try even in details like this to pay heed to the great law of human existence and to strive for harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The macrocosm is speaking to us over these days in the most obvious way and we shall find how to keep our microcosm in harmony with the macrocosm, if we conduct ourselves in line with it, in the course of this year that has begun amidst such painful events.

If you try and notice what has been the prevailing mood of our talks in the last few days you will discover that, regarding the facts that spiritual science has made significant for us, we live in a time of change, in a time of hope, as it were, for we should now be getting an inkling of the direction the further course of human cultural development should take; of the change that has to come about from a purely materialistic world conception to a spiritual one. What is meant here, however, cannot really fully take place unless it enters every sphere of life and particularly takes hold of the spiritual cultural areas to a marked degree.

We have already had various indications showing that an understanding of the spiritual-scientific outlook, which has taken hold of our feelings and is not merely rational, is bound to bring a change into both artistic creativity and artistic appreciation, because the forces we gain from this can give us an artistic conception of the world. And in our Goetheanum building we have just made the attempt to show at least a small part of what can take an artistic form, from out of spiritual-scientific impulses.

We can see a time coming when we shall be able to enter fully into the feelings that can arise from the spiritual-scientific world conception, a time when the way to artistic creation will in many respects be different from the past; it will be much more alive and the medium of artistic creation will be experienced much more intensely in the human soul; the soul will be capable of experiencing colour and sound far more inwardly, in a kind of moral-spiritual way, and in artists' creations we shall meet, as it were, traces of the artists' experiences in the cosmos.

In essentials, the attitude of artistic creation and artistic appreciation in this past epoch was a kind of external observation, an appeal to something that affects the artist from outside . The need to refer to nature and to a model for external observation has become greater and greater. Not that in the art of the future there is to be any one-sided rejection of nature and outer reality. Far from it, for there will be a much more intimate union with the external world; so strong a union that it will cover not merely the external impression of colour and sound and form, but that which one can experience behind the sound and colour and form; what is revealed in them.

Human beings will make important discoveries in the future in this respect. They will actually unite their moralspiritual nature with the results of sense perception. An infinite deepening of the human soul can be foreseen in this domain. Let us pick a particular example to start from. We will simply imagine that we are looking at a surface shining all over with the same shade of strong vermilion, and let us assume we succeed in forgetting everything else around us and concentrate entirely on experiencing this colour, so that we have the colour in front of us, not merely as something that works upon us but as something with which we ourselves are united, that we are within. You will then be able to feel as though you were in the world, and in this world the whole of you has become colour, the whole of your innermost soul, and wherever your soul goes in the world you will be a soul filled with red, living in, with and out of red. Yet you will not be able to experience this intensely in the soul unless the corresponding feeling is transformed into moral experience, real moral experience.

If we float through the world as though we were red, had identified ourselves with red, and our very soul and the whole world were entirely red, we shall not be able to help feeling that this whole red world is filling us with the substance of divine wrath, coming towards us from all sides in response to all the possibilities of evil and sin in us. In this infinite red space we shall be able to feel as though we were before the judgment of God, and our moral feeling will become the kind of moral experience our souls can have in infinite space. And when the reaction comes, when something emerges in our soul as we are having this experience in infinite red or, I could also say in the one and only red, I can only describe it by saying we learn to pray. If you can experience the raying and glowing of divine wrath, together with all the possibilities of evil in the human soul, and if you can experience in the red how one learns to pray, the experience of red is enormously deepened. We can also experience the form red takes on when it enters space.

We can then understand how we can experience a being that radiates goodness and is full of divine kindness and mercy, a being that we want to feel in the realm of space. Then we shall feel the need of expressing this divine mercy and goodness in a form which arises out of the colour itself. We shall feel the need to let space be pushed aside so that goodness and mercy may shine forth. Before space was there it was all concentrated at the centre, and now goodness and mercy enter space and, just as clouds are driven apart, space is rent asunder and recedes to make way for mercy, and we have the feeling that what is being scattered must be drawn in red. Here in the centre (a drawing was done) we shall have to indicate faintly a kind of magenta shining into the scattering red.

We shall then be present with our whole soul as the colour takes on form. And with our whole soul we shall feel an echo of how the beings who belong especially to our earth process felt, when they had ascended to the Elohim stage and learnt to fashion the world of forms out of colours. We shall learn to experience something of the creative activity of the Spirits of Form who are the Elohim, and we shall then understand how colour can create forms, as indicated in our first Mystery Play. We shall also understand something of how the surface nature of the colour becomes something that has to be overcome, as it were, because we accompany colour into the cosmos. If strong desire is also present, a feeling can arise like Strader has when he sees the portrait of Capesius, and says he would like to pierce the canvas.

You will see that an attempt has been made in these Mystery Plays really to show in artistic form what it is like for the soul, when it attempts to expand in the cosmic forces and to feel what the spirits of the cosmos are feeling. That was, in fact, the beginning of all art. But the materialistic age had to come, and ancient art, with its divine quality of differentiation, in which spirit was revealed in matter, had to change into secondary, materialistic ‘after’-art, which the art of the materialistic age is, in essence; the kind of art which cannot create but only imitate. The sign of all secondary art, all after-art, is that it needs objects to imitate, and that it does not produce the form primarily out of the material.

Let us take another example. Let us imagine we do the same thing with a more orange coloured surface that we did with the red surface. We shall experience something quite different this time. If we submerge ourselves in it and unite with it, then instead of feeling divine wrath bearing down upon us, we shall have the feeling that what comes to meet us here has much less of the serious side of wrath about it and does not only want to punish us, but wants to impart itself to us and arm us with inner strength.

When we enter the world and unite with the orange surface we move in such a way that with every step we take, we feel that by experiencing orange, by living in the forces of orange, we are becoming stronger and stronger, and that what comes to us out of orange does not come merely to punish us and break us with its judgment, but is a source of strength. This is how we go into the world in orange. We then feel the longing to understand the inner nature of things and to unite it with ourselves. By living in red we learn to pray, by living in orange we experience the desire for knowledge of the inner nature of things.

If we do the same thing with a yellow surface we feel as though we were transported back to the beginning of our cycle of time. We feel that we are then living in the forces out of which we were created when we entered upon our first earthly incarnation. You feel an affinity between what you are throughout the whole of earth existence, and what comes to meet you from the world into which you take the yellow with which you are united.

And if you identify yourself with green and accompany green into the world—which can be done very easily by gazing at a green meadow, shutting out everything else and concentrating completely on it, and then trying to immerse yourself in the green meadow as if the green were the surface of a coloured sea—you experience an inner increase in strength in what your are in that particular incarnation. You feel yourself becoming inwardly healthy, yet at the same time becoming inwardly more egoistic, you feel a stimulus of the egoistic forces within you.

If you did the same with a blue surface, you would go through the world with the desire to accompany the blue forever and to overcome your egoism, become macrocosmic, as it were, and develop devotion. And you would find it a blessing if you could remain like this for your meeting with divine mercy. You would feel blessed by divine mercy if you could go through the world like this.

Thus we learn to know the inner nature of colour and, as I said before, we can foresee a time when an artist's preparation will mean a moral experience in colour of this kind, when the experience preparatory to artistic creation will be much more inward and intuitive than it ever was in past ages. For these are only a few indications I am giving you, and they will be developed much further in the future. They will take hold of men's souls and enliven them with a tremendous sense for artistic creativity, whereas the materialistic culture that has entered our modern age has dried up the soul and made it passive. Souls must be stimulated again by a power from within; they must be taken hold of by the inner forces of things. As a specific example I have taken the colours that flood the world.

The world of sound will deepen and enliven the life of soul in a very similar way. During the period that is now drawing to a close, the essential thing was that a person experienced a tone as such, and the relationship of one tone to another. In the future people will be able to experience what is behind the tone. They will regard the tone as a kind of window through which they enter the spiritual world, and then it will not depend on vague feeling of how one tone is added to another, to form melodies for instance, but by going through the tone the soul will also experience a moral-spiritual quality behind the separate tones. The soul will enter the spiritual world as though through a window. The secrets of the individual tones will be discovered in this experience behind the tones.

We are still a long way away from this feeling of being able to go from the sense world to the spiritual world through the window of each tone. But this will come. We shall experience the tone as an opening made by the gods from the spiritual world yonder to this physical-material world, and we shall climb through the tone out of the physical-material world into the spiritual world. Through the tonic, for example, which we experience as absolute and not in reference to previous tones of the scale, we experience danger as we pass from the sense world into the spiritual world. We are threatened on entry with being taken captive; the tonic wants to suck us in most horribly through the window of the tone and make us completely disappear in the spiritual world. Assuming that we experience the tonic as absolute, we shall feel that we are still too weak in a spiritual sense in the physical world, and that we are sucked up by the spiritual world when we climb through this window. This is the moral experience to be had on entering the spiritual world through the tonic. I am over-simplifying it now, though; we shall have a very differentiated experience which contains an infinite variety of detail.

When we climb out of the physical world into the spiritual world through the window of the second, we shall have the impression of powers in the spiritual world yonder that, as it were, take pity on our weakness and say, ‘Well! so you were weak in the physical sense world! if you only climb into the spiritual world through the tonic I must dissolve you, suck you up and break you to pieces. But, if you enter through the second, I will offer you something from the spiritual world and remind you of something that is there.’ The peculiar thing is that when we climb from the physical to the spiritual world through the second, it is as though a number of tones rang out to receive us. We enter a totally silent world if we enter the spiritual world through the absolute tonic. If we enter through the second we come to a world where, if we listen, various quiet high-pitched tones ring out wanting to comfort us in our weakness. Yet we must go through the window in a way we most certainly could not do in a physical-material house, for the owner would give us a strange look if we were to walk in through the window and take the whole window with us. But in the spiritual world that is what you have to do, take the tones with you and, in union with them, live over there in the beyond, the other side of the thin partition that separates us from the physical-material world, and in which we have to imagine the tones as windows.

If you enter the spiritual world through the third, you will have the feeling of an even greater weakness. If you enter the spiritual world this way, you will feel that you were really very weak in the physical-material world, where its spiritual content is concerned. But with regard to the third—and remember that you have become sound; you yourself have become a third—you will feel that there are friends over there who, although they themselves are not thirds, approach you according to the kind of disposition you had in the physical-material world. If you enter through the second, it is like a gentle sounding of many tones, with whom you share life in general when you enter through them, whilst tones that are, as it were, friends with one another, come to meet you through the third. People who want to become composers will have to enter especially through the third, for that is where the tone sequences, the tone compositions are, that will stimulate their artistic creativity. You will not always be met by the same tone friends, for which ones you meet will depend on your mood and your feeling and your temperament—in fact how you are disposed to life at the time when you go through the third into spiritual life. This results in an infinite variety of possibilities.

If you penetrate through the fourth into the spiritual world, you will have a strange experience. Although no new tones appear from any direction, those that have come before, when you were experiencing the third, will live lightly in the soul as memories. And you will find that in continuing to live with these tone memories they perpetually take on a fresh colouring; at one time they become as bright and cheerful as can be, at other times they descend to the utmost sadness; now they are as bright as day, now they sink down to the silence of the grave. The modulating of the voice, the way the sound ascends and descends; in short, the whole mood of a tonal creation will have its origin along this path, from these sound memories.

The fifth will produce experiences that are more subjective, that work to stimulate and enrich the life of the soul. It is like a magic wand that conjures up the secrets of the sound world yonder, out of unfathomable depths.

Experiences of this kind will come to one when one no longer just looks at the things and phenomena in the world, or just listens to them, but experiences them from within. These are the kind of experiences mankind must have, particularly through colour and sound, but also through form; in fact, altogether through the realm of art, in order to get away from the purely external relationship to things and their functioning—which is characteristic of the materialistic age—and to penetrate into the inner secrets at the heart of things.

Then something tremendously significant will happen to man, and he will be filled with the awareness of his connection with the divine spiritual powers, which are sub-conscious when his awarenesss is confined to the material realm, and which guide and lead him through the world. And then, above all, he will have inner experiences, such as experiencing the forces which guide man from one incarnation to the next.

If we omit to heat a locomotive, it cannot pull a train. The forces which make things happen in the world have to be continually stimulated. The forces which drive mankind forward also need to be stimulated. And this does happen. However, man has to learn that he is connected with these forces.

I once had the following remarkable experience. There was a lawyer, a famous advocate, in the town where I lived for a while, an extraordinarily famous advocate, whom the people absolutely flocked to, because they believed he was bound to win the most difficult lawsuits. And this was often the case. His legal dialectic was extraordinary, and people who knew him had the deepest respect for it. Now he was once entrusted with the difficult case of a rich man. The rich man would have to suffer a severe penalty if the lawsuit resulted in his being sentenced. The advocate used his greatest dialectic and the most wonderful of his legal skills. He made a long speech, and the people who heard him were convinced that if the jury were not to acquit the accused, nothing further could be done about it. Everyone who heard the advocate's amazing skill were absolutely convinced the jury would now withdraw and acquit the accused.

But in the law court there was not only a skilful counsel but also a skilful judge, and although the hour was not yet so advanced that a judgment could no longer be given, the judge said, ‘Let us close the session for today and continue tomorrow.’ So the jury's session was to take place the following morning, and this gave them time to think the matter over again during the night. The following day came. This ‘overnight delay’ as he called it, had already proved very irksome for the advocate. The session began, the jury withdrew, and everyone awaited their return with tense expectation, most of all our advocate. The jury came back after only a quarter of an hour, and when the advocate heard them coming back from the conference room so soon, he fainted. Yes, he fainted. He did recover again, and a friend helped him up. The accused really had been sentenced, but the advocate only heard this after he had recovered from fainting.

Now what could be said about the course of events looked at from the point of view of external perception? One could say that the advocate was a very ambitious man, for he cared so much about winning this lawsuit that he lost consciousness before the verdict was pronounced. As soon as he saw that the jury had only conferred for a short time he was sure the accused had been sentenced, for if they had acquitted him they would, of course, have taken much longer.
But that was not how the matter stood; it only appeared to be so from an external point of view. There was a kind of second layer of events behind what I have just told you. This other layer, or story, is like this: Before this lawsuit took place this advocate had become addicted to what one can call the demon of gambling—I knew him well, of course. He used the sums of money entrusted to him, as deposit to gamble with. It was an absolute passion with him, and not long before this lawsuit began he had reached the point where he had gambled away large sums of money entrusted to his care. But he had been promised that if he should win this suit, he would be paid so much that he could more or less balance the difference.

So he did not faint only out of wounded ambition; he fainited when the jury returned with the verdict after only a quarter of an hour, because his existence had in fact been destroyed. For he had no hope any more of replacing the deposit money he had lost. Therefore his whole existence had depended on the outcome of the lawsuit. He fainted as symbolic indication that he was now completely ruined for this incarnation. He had to escape to America after that, and had to endure a not very enviable existence there for the rest of his life.

An example of this sort shows us that judgment can very often be wrong, for some people might never have had the chance to hear anything about what went on behind the lawsuit. If these people had only heard the clever advocate during the lawsuit and seen him fainting, they could very well have concluded that some people are so ambitious that they lose consciousness if a speech of theirs misfires. And they could have left it at that.

To be able to judge correctly you would therefore have to know a further layer of facts. In many instances you would even have to know several more layers, otherwise you could be correct with regard to the layer you can see and yet make a wrong judgment. That is the external aspect. But the matter has more behind it. The fellow also had to find a way of getting from this incarnation to the next one. And here we have an example of how wise world guidance puts into the soul the forces it needs to lead it from one incarnation to the next. The man was in such inner conflict that it had destroyed his existence. He was in a terrible position. A situation had been created in which there were no forces left to carry him over to his next incarnation. Also, a situation had been created in which forces of that nature could not be brought to his conscious mind. So his consciousness had to be extinguished for a moment. During short breaks in consciousness all kinds of other spirituality can enter the human soul. And in that moment he received forces capable of restoring his impulse to go forward into the next incarnation. Of course an impulse like this can be given in many different ways. What I have described here was one particular case.

These impulses are always there. But I just wanted to show you that man's conscious life is linked with an ongoing process in the unconscious, and that in man's conscious life there are really points where the consciousness is suppressed so that something can enter out of the unconscious. Sometimes these unconscious moments need not be long; they can be short spells similar to fainting. Yet a tremendous amount of spiritual life forces can stream into the human being at such moments, both good and bad, and capable of good and evil.

What I want to show you with this example is that, in observing the world, mankind must try to notice links of this kind, which are of no significance to a materialistic outlook.

You will gradually reach the point of becoming so perceptive for living links that you will recognise the moments in which the spirit comes near to each human being. In the future the world will no longer be explained so unequivocably as it is now, on the basis of material causes, but matter will be relegated to its right place, and at the same time people will realise that the material phenomenon is not the only thing, for spirit shines through
it.

We have seen that colours and sound are windows through which we can ascend spiritually into the spirit world, and life also brings to us windows through which the spiritual world enters our physical world. The advocate's fainting fit was this kind of window. If we interpret this phenomenon correctly we have to say that spiritual life streams down to us through this window. It is clear to us that these forces flowing into us cannot be explained on a purely material level. So there are windows in the tones through which we ascend from the physical-material world into the spiritual world; and there are also windows through which, if we remain in the physical-material world, the spirit can descend to us.

If we do not perceive the fact that spirit descends to us through such windows, it is like someone opening a beautiful book who cannot read. He has the same thing in front of him as someone who can read, but if he cannot read he sees unintelligible scribble on the white pages which, at the most, he can just describe. Only a person who can read is capable of following a biography, perhaps, or a piece of information that has been laid down in these strange signs. A person who cannot read world phenomena is like a cosmic illiterate where these phenomena are concerned. A person who can read, however, reads the ongoing process of the spiritual world in them. It is characteristic of the present materialistic age that materialism has made people illiterate with regard to the cosmos, almost a hundred per cent so. At a time when people are so proud of having reduced the percentage of illiteracy in civilised countries to such a great extent, they are enthusiastically heading towards illiteracy where the cosmos is concerned.

It is the task of spiritual science to eliminate this cosmic illiteracy. Few people nowadays are illiterate in the ordinary sense. In the time of ancient clairvoyance human beings were far less illiterate in the spirit. But this must not make us conceited. It is a fact that when we acquire an inkling of our task in the spiritual-scientific stream, we ought to change from being illiterate to becoming people who can read the cosmos. Yet we should remain humble, for the times are such that we are still very much in need of the elementary level of education. We can hardly read yet, but only spell out the letters. Yet we can be gripped by the impulse to change, an impulse which is breaking in upon mankind through these things. And if we are gripped by them we shall have the right attitude to what the signs of the times are demanding of us, and we shall enter into them as people who rightly belong to the spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture I 02 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture I 02 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
It will be relatively easy—I am saying relatively, of course—for a person to take up more or less theoretically what we understand by the spiritual-scientific world outlook, or anthroposophy. But it will not be easy to fill our whole being and life itself with the impulses coming from spiritual science. To absorb anthroposophy theoretically, so that you know that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and so on, in the same way as you know that one or another tone has so-and-so many vibrations, or that oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water, is the way we have grown accustomed to learning things through the natural-scientific approach mankind has gradually acquired over the last few centuries. We are less accustomed, however, to allowing our feelings and attitude of mind to be affected by the kind of knowledge spiritual science has to offer. Yet the kind of approach we must have to spiritual science is fundamentally opposite to the approach we must have to natural science. Emphasis is often laid on the fact that everyone feels that science is dry and stops us having a warm contact with life and its happenings; that dry science has something cold and unfeeling about it and robs things of their dewy freshness. Yet one could say that to a certain extent this has to be so with ordinary science. For there is an enormous difference between the impression made on us by a wonderful cloud formation in the evening or morning sky and the bare reports an astronomer or a meteorologist gives us. There is such abundant richness in the natural world around us that its effect on us is to warm us through and through whereas, in comparison, science, with its concepts and ideas, appears dull and dry, cold, lifeless and loveless. Yet there is every justification to feel this way as far as external, natural-scientific knowledge is concerned. There are good reasons why external, natural-scientific knowledge has to be like this, but spiritual science is not this kind of knowledge. On the contrary it ought to bring us nearer and nearer to the living abundance and warmth of the outside world and of the world altogether. But this means learning to bring certain impulses to life in us that a person of today hardly possesses at all. A present-day person expects it to be in the nature of what he calls science that it has a cold and sobering effect on him, like the character of Wagner in Goethe's Faust. He expects that if he assimilates science the riddles of nature will be solved, and then he will know how everything is constituted and be perfectly satisfied with what he knows. Science even makes some people shudder nowadays, for a quite specific reason. They maintain that what made life so rich and fresh in the past, was the fact that man had not solved every riddle and could still wonder about the unsolved ones. And then science comes along, they say, and solves the riddles of nature one after the other. And they imagine how boring life will be in the future when science will have solved all the mysteries and there will be no further possibility of wondering about anything, or having any feelings of an unscientific kind. What terrible desolation would befall mankind; we have every reason to be horrified at the prospect. But spiritual science can kindle different feelings than these, and although those feelings would be less in keeping with modern times than the solving of riddles, they show how awakening and life-giving spiritual science can be. If we absorb anthroposophy in the right way—not just take notes of what is being said, so that we can make use of them like they do in ordinary science, and perhaps even do a neat diagram, so that we can take it all in at a glance like physics—if we do not do it so much that way, but let what anthroposophy has to say reach our hearts and we unite with it, we shall notice that it comes to life in us and grows, it awakens our independence and initiative and becomes like a new living being within us, that is forever showing new aspects. To approach external nature with our souls thus filled with anthroposophy, is to find more riddles in nature and not less. Everything grows even more puzzling, which broadens instead of impoverishing our life of feeling; you could say that spiritual science makes the world more mysterious. Of course the world becomes a desolate place when the physicist says to you ‘You see the sunrise . . . .’ and then, showing us a diagram, he tells us which particular refractions are taking place in the rays of light so that the glow of dawn appears. This is certainly horrible, not from the point of view of human reason, but for the human heart and an understanding connected with the heart. It is quite different when spiritual science tells us, for example, When you see the sunrise or hear one or another piece of music, it must feel to you as though the Elohim were sending their punishing wrath into the world. Then we become aware of the mysterious living weaving of the Elohim behind the glow of dawn. To know the name of the Elohim and to be able to give them a place in the ninefold diagram we have drawn in our notebook, is not knowing anything about the Elohim. But out of the living feeling we can have in looking at the sunrise will come a perception of movement and life in rich abundance, just as we know that when we look at a human being, any amount of conceptual knowledge about him will not tell us the whole of his nature, nor fathom the universal life within him. Likewise, we shall become aware that the dawn is revealing something to us of the unfathomable life of the cosmos. Spiritual-scientific knowledge makes life more enigmatic and mysterious in a way that kindles richer feelings within us. And it is a fundamental feeling of this kind our souls can acquire, when we bring spiritual science to life within us and when we try to make ourselves at home in the kind of ideas I have just indicated. Then we shall never be tempted to complain that spiritual science only appeals to our heads and does not take hold of our whole being. We just need to be patient until the message of spiritual science becomes a living being within us and forms itself anew, filling us not only with its light but also with its warmth. Then it will take hold of our hearts and our whole being and we shall feel the richer for it, whereas, if we take up spiritual science in the same way as ordinary science, we are bound to feel the poorer. Yet, on the other hand, it is quite natural that, to begin with, anthroposophy seems to many people to lead to an impoverishment, because they have not yet been able to find the inner life of the message of anthroposophy that can reach their heart, and because anthroposophy does not yet have the same effect on them as, for instance, the warm words of a fellow human being speaking to us. But we have to learn that anthroposophy can become alive that it can give us as much support and encouragement as we can otherwise only receive from another human being. Our hearts find this so difficult at the present time because we have lost the habit of uniting ourselves with the life of things. It is difficult enough if one tries in small doses to re-introduce this living with things. This was attempted in our four Mystery Plays. You have only to think of the scene in spirit land, in the fifth act of The Soul's Awakening, where Felix Balde is sitting on the left side of the stage—seen from the audience—after he has ascended to Devachan, and a spiritual being on the other side of the stage speaks to him of his experience of weight. Here one should feel the weight that is descending in the distance. When people see something descending, they are accustomed nowadays only to be aware of the descending and only to see the thing higher up to start with, and then coming lower and lower down. They are quite unaccustomed to creeping into things and feeling the experience of weight, feeling the thing pressing down all the time. With an expression like that I am hoping to lift people out of their egoistic bodies right in the middle of the play, and to plunge them into the life of things outside themselves. If this cannot happen, then real artistic feeling will not be able to arise again. In order that, for instance, a true feeling for architecture can come again, the concepts we receive from spiritual science must come alive. To begin with it makes very little difference which particular anthroposophical concepts we carry round with us. But if we really do something like this we shall see how much richer our soul life becomes. We shall gain a lot if, for instance, as well as just seeing this diagram we try and submerge ourselves in it and try to feel what is going on: weight pressing down here, and weight being supported there. We want to go even further and not just look at it, but feel that the beam needs to have a certain strength, otherwise the load will crush it, and the supporting pillars must also have a certain strength, otherwise they too will be crushed. We must feel the way the sphere on top is pressing down, the pillars supporting and the beam keeping the balance. Not until we creep into the elements of weight, support and balance, between the pressing down and the supporting, shall we feel our way into the element of architecture. But if we follow a structure of this kind not only with our eye but, as it were, crawl into it and experience the weighing down, the supporting and the balance, then we shall feel that our whole organism is becoming involved, and as if we have to call on an invisible brain belonging to our whole being and not just our head. Then we can awaken to the consciousness, ‘Ah! now we are beginning to feel!’ To take our simple example, we shall feel a supporting element, an upward striving, supporting luciferic element; a weighing and pressing down ahrimanic element, and a balance between the luciferic and ahrimanic which is a divine quality. Thus, even lifeless nature becomes filled with Lucifer and Ahriman and their superior ruler, who eternally brings about the balance between them. If we thus learn to experience the luciferic, ahrimanic and divine elements in architecture, so that architecture affects us inwardly, we shall become conscious of a richer feeling of the world which leads or, one could almost say, pulls the soul into the things of the world; for our soul is now not only within our body's skin but belongs to the cosmos. This is a way of becoming conscious of this. We shall become aware, too, that whereas outside, the architectural element is supporting, weighing down and creating a balance, we ourselves in this encounter with the architectural element, develop a musical mood. Architecture produces a musical mood in our inner being, and we notice that even though the elements of architecture and music appear to be so alien in the outer world, through this musical mood engendered in us, our experience of architecture brings about a reconciliation, a balance between these two elements. This is where, from our epoch onwards, living progress in the arts will lie, through learning to experience the reconciliation of the arts. This was dimly felt by Wagner, but it can only really come about when the world comes alive with spiritual science. Reconciling the arts: that is what we attempted to do—for the first time, and in a small, elementary way—in our Goetheanum building. We did not want only to talk in a cold, abstract way about it, but show in the architecture of the building itself an impression, a copy of this reconciling of a musical mood with architectural form. If you study what is presented in our series of pillars and everything connected with them, you will discover that we were making the attempt to bring the elements of support, weighing down and the balance into living movement. Our pillars are not merely supports, and our capitals no longer mere supporting devices, and the architraves that extend above the pillars do not just have the character of rest, serving only to round the pillars off at the top, but they have a character of living growth and movement. We attempted to bring architectural forms into musical flux, and the feeling one can have from seeing the interplay between the pillars and all that is connected with them, can of itself arouse a musical mood in the soul. It will be possible to feel invisible music as the soul of the columns and the architectural and sculptural forms that belong to them. It is as though a soul element were in them. And the interpenetration of the fine arts and their forms by musical moods has fundamentally to be the ideal of the art of the future. Music of the future will be more sculptural than music of the past. Architecture and sculpture of the future will be more musical than they were in the past. That will be the essential thing. Yet this will not stop music from being an independent art; on the contrary, it will become richer and richer through penetrating the secrets of the tones, as we said yesterday, creating musical forms from out of the spiritual foundations of the cosmos. However, as everything that is inside must also be outside, in art—all that lives in it must be embodied in a kind of organism—the world of soul within the series of pillars and everything belonging to them must also become embodied. This happens, or at least is about to happen in the painting of the domes. Just as the pillars and everything belonging to them are, as it were, the body of our building, so is all that is going to appear in the domes—when you are inside the building—its soul; and just as the world appears to be filled with spirit, when our organs are directed outwards, our windows executed in the new art of glass shading shall represent the spirit. Body, soul and spirit shall be expressed in our building. Body in the column structure, soul in everything to do with the domes, and spirit in what is in the windows. Where these things are concerned karma has brought various things about for which we can be grateful, for just in the case of the Goetheanum building, karma has indeed helped us in several matters. The soul of a human being is so constituted that from outside we perceive it in his physiognomy, but we have to have resources like love and friendship to penetrate into a person's soul, if we want to get to know it from inside, as it were. When I was travelling from Christiania to Bergen on my last lecture tour in Norway, I happened to see a slate quarry which gave me the idea of trying to get slate from there. We were successful, and it really was what one might call a karmic happening, for when we look at the roof of the domes that are now tiled with this slate with its quite unique qualities, we are sure to say that it has something of the quality of the life of the soul, that at one and the same time both discloses and conceals what is within. Now if we really want to feel the domes as soul life we shall have to develop a love for spiritual science. For what is going to be painted inside the domes should really appear to us as a kind of reflected image in colour and form, of what spiritual science can mean to us. To see this we have to go inside. But when the building is really finished, no one will be able to understand what he sees when he goes inside if he has not developed a love for spiritual science; otherwise what he sees there will probably remain something that can cause a bit of a sensation, but will not be anything that particularly appeals to his heart. What he gets from it will easily tempt him to deny that the architecture has anything to offer the feelings. Just as we have seen in this instance that what comes to life out of anthroposophy can be rediscovered in the world, life can also be fructified through anthroposophy, in realms in which we can more readily see that our heart's understanding needs to be warmed and fructified. For it is not only artistic and scientific areas that are to be fructified by spiritual science, but the whole of life has to be. Let me take as an example a realm in which we can see particularly well how anthroposophical concepts can come alive in outer life. I will choose the realm of education, any kind of art of education. Let us begin from the fact that children are educated by grown-ups. What does the materialistic age envisage when it speaks of a child being educated by a grown-up? Fundamentally speaking, the materialistic age sees in both of them, both the grown-up and the child, only what you get from a materialistic outlook, namely, a grown-up teaching a child. But it is not like that. Externally the grown-up is only maya, and seen from outside the child is only maya too. There is something in the grown-up not directly contained in maya, namely the invisible man, who passes from one incarnation to another, and there is also an invisible part in the child that goes from incarnation to incarnation. We shall speak about these things again. But I would like to tell you a few things today from which you will see in the course of time—if you meditate on them—what else there is in spiritual science. I will start with the fact that a person, as he appears in the external world, cannot teach at all, nor can the person who stands before us, externally, as a child, be educated. In reality something invisible in the teacher educates something invisible in the pupil. We shall only understand this properly if we focus our attention on what is gradually unfolding in the growing child, as the outcome of previous incarnations. And when everything coming from previous incarnations has made its appearance, the child withdraws, especially in present times. What we are actually educating is the invisible result of previous incarnations. We cannot educate or have any effect on the visible child. That is how the matter stands with regard to the child. Now we will look at the teacher. During the first seven years of the child's life he can only educate by means of what the child can imitate; in the second seven years it will be through the influence he has as an authority; and finally in the following seven years it will be through the educational effect of independent judgment. Everything that is active in the teacher all this time is not in his external physical part at all. The part of us which do the educating will not take on physical form until our next incarnation. For all the qualities in us which can be imitated, or the qualities upon which our authority is based, are germinal qualities and will form our next incarnation. When we are teachers our own next incarnation converses with the previous incarnation of the pupil. It is an illusion to think that as present people we speak to the child of the present. We only have the right feeling for this if we say to ourselves, ‘The very best in you which your spirit can think and your soul can feel, and which is preparing itself to make something of you in the next incarnation, can work on the part of the child that is sculpturing its form out of times long past.’ The musical element in us is what enables us to educate. What we should educate in the child is the element of sculpture. Take as a whole all that I have said in these lectures about the musical element and of how, in its most exalted form, it corresponds to what man meets with in initiation. Music is related to everything that is in a process of development and lies in the future, and the realm of sculpture and architecture is related to what lies in the past. A child is the most wonderful example of sculpture we can see. What we need as teachers is a musical mood, which we can have in the form of a mood pervaded by the future. If you can have this feeling when you are involved in teaching it will add a very special tone to the relationship of the teacher to the child. For it will make the teacher set himself the highest aims, whilst having the greatest measure of understanding for the children's naughtiness. There really is an educational force in this mood. Once the world comes to see that the right atmosphere for teaching arises when a musical mood in the teacher is combined with seeing the sculptural activity in the pupil; once it is established that this is what is required for a love of teaching, then education will be filled with the right impetus. For then the teacher will speak, think and feel in such a way that in the course of his lessons, what comes from the past will learn to love what reaches out to the future. The result will be a wonderful karmic adjustment between the teacher and his pupils. A wonderful karmic balancing. If the teacher is egoistic and only tries to make the child an imitation of himself, then the teaching is purely luciferic. Education becomes luciferic when we try as far as possible to turn the pupil into a copy of our own opinions and feelings, and are only happy if we tell the pupil something today and he repeats it word for word tomorrow. That is a purely luciferic education. On the other hand an ahrimanic education comes about if the pupil is as naughty as possible in our lessons and learns from us as little as he possibly can. However, there is a state of balance between these two extremes, just as there is between weighing down and supporting. This is arrived at through the interplay of the musical-sculptural elements I have just been speaking about. We must learn to distinguish between the teacher's intentions and what the child turns out to be. If we have the right mood, then even though we have been trying to teach our pupil something quite specific, we shall be overjoyed to realise that he has not turned out as we intended, but that the child has developed into something quite different from what we intended him to be. This is the remarkable thing, that the teacher can only rid himself of his egoism in teaching, if he overcomes the desire to turn the child into a copy of his own views on what is good and right, and especially of his own favourite thoughts. The best thing we can achieve, as teachers, is to be able to face perfectly calmly the thought of the child becoming as different from us as possible. But you cannot come along and say, ‘Please give me a recipe for it, write a few rules down for me on how to teach like that.’ That is the remarkable thing about the spiritual world outlook, that you cannot work according to rules, but you really have to absorb spiritual science, so that you are filled with it and your impulses of feeling and will are increased. Then the right thing will happen, whatever particular task you face in life. The essential thing is to tackle it in a living way. Now you could ask, ‘Which is the right teaching method from the point of view of spiritual science?’ And the correct answer would be, ‘The best spiritual-scientific method of teaching is for as many teachers as possible to engross themselves in spiritual science in a living way, and to acquire the feelings that come from spiritual science’. This is less convenient, of course, than reading a textbook on the art of spiritual-scientific education. Yet spiritual science is forever being asked, ‘What is the spiritual-scientific point of view on this or that?’ Now spiritual science does not have a point of view, or, if you like, it has as many points of view as life itself. But spiritual science itself must become life. Spiritual science must be absorbed and brought to life within us, then it will be able to bear fruit in the various realms of life. People will then get beyond whatever it is that makes life so dry and dead: we could call it the request for uniformity. External science requires uniformity, but spiritual science gives manifoldness and variety, the kind of variety that belongs to life itself. Thus, spiritual science will have to bring transformation into the furthest reaches of life. Let us look at what some realms of life are like today. Learning takes place up to a particular age; you learn one thing up to one age and something else up to another. Then comes the time when you go out into life, as we say, and do not want to learn any more; even when you go in for a scientific career you do not like having to learn any more. The ones who do go on learning in order to keep up with their science are thought to be the odd ones. In the general run people learn until a certain age and after that they play cards or other useless things in their spare time, or they develop an attitude like this one I came across. I had been invited to give a series of lectures on the history of literature in a circle that included some ladies with a thirst for knowledge. Now it could be said that the softer, or if you prefer it, ‘retarded’ brain that ladies have has retained more the receptivity and flexibility of ancient times, when learning continued throughout life. This is more often found among women than men. But these ladies had the feeling that they ought to bring the gentlemen along too, to the lecture cycle. So the gentlemen were there, and they did not all go to sleep. Some of them really listened. Then there was conversation, tea and cakes, in other words they did what is considered to be essential in some circles, if the lectures are not to be too dry. So there was conversation too. And after I had been lecturing on Goethe's Faust, some of the men summed up their attitude by saying, ‘When you see Faust on the stage it is not really the kind of art you can enjoy, it isn't even recreation, it is science.’ This was their way of saying that when a person has been working in an office all day, or has been serving customers, or standing in a court of law interrogating witnesses and sentencing the accused, by the evening he is in no state to listen to Goethe's Faust any more and needs recreation and not science. This is an example of a common attitude with which no doubt you are familiar. You only need to mention it, for everyone knows how widespread it is, and that a lot of people would find it strange the way we gather here in such a studious fashion and want to go on learning, despite the fact that several of us are fairly old. They think they know a much better way of spending time. Yet a complete change will have to take place in people's approach to spiritual science, in that they will not just want to let it remain a study, but will want to have a living and permanent relationship with it. This will come. You cannot learn anthroposophy the same way as you learn science, by taking it down in a notebook; anthroposophy must stay alive. It becomes dead if we only learn its content and do not remain connected with it through living activity. It becomes dead and withers away, whereas it should be kept alive. Spiritual science must work in this way to enliven us and keep our hearts receptive for all they can receive from the spiritual worlds, so that we develop further all the time. There is no doubt that in our epoch humanity shows a quality of old age; on the whole it does not have the kind of youthfulness it had in mythical times. Spiritual science must be people's draught of youth, so that they will feel able to learn from life throughout their lives. Nowadays we can experience odd things in this connection. I know a man with an active mind, a person who has had all kinds of connections with modern intellectual culture all through his life. Now he celebrated his fiftieth birthday recently, and gave a leaflet out on this occasion containing some very peculiar notions. For instance he said—but I want to alter things a little bit, so that you will not guess who it is—he said, ‘I have been offered a post in the realm of art that I had been longing for, for many years. But now that I have reached the age of fifty, old age in fact, I do not really want it any more. For to fill a post of that kind and to inspire the people around you, you need to be young, you need to be full of fantastic illusions. And these illusions have to consist of thinking that what you are doing and the people you have to deal with are the whole world and nothing else matters. What really counts is what is right there. Fifteen years ago I was of an age when I could have done it. Now I am past it. You should not wait until people have grown old before you offer them influential positions, but let them be privy councillors, for instance, when they are between thirty and forty.’ This was the gist of what this ‘old’ man said. This mood is absolutely in line with the whole quality of our contemporary culture. It is a mood very easily acquired by people who accept what materialistic culture has to say about the human being, for materialism has not the power to penetrate the whole being of man; the content of this materialistic knowledge is not powerful enough to have the kind of influence on his soul life that will last right into old age. Spiritual science proves that even if a person grows old externally he can stay young in soul, and if he has not done anything special by the age of fifty, although he does not need to succumb to the illusion that what he is doing is of prime importance and everything else can fall by the wayside, he can still be young enough to devote all his strength to what he has to do. He can be youthful, in fact childlike enough to concentrate the whole of his forces on what has to be done, just as a child concentrates all his forces in play. Spiritual science must become a magic draught of youth and not just a theory. That is also an impulse of transformation. Tomorrow I will talk about other impulses of transformation.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture I 02 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

It will be relatively easy—I am saying relatively, of course—for a person to take up more or less theoretically what we understand by the spiritual-scientific world outlook, or anthroposophy. But it will not be easy to fill our whole being and life itself with the impulses coming from spiritual science. To absorb anthroposophy theoretically, so that you know that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and so on, in the same way as you know that one or another tone has so-and-so many vibrations, or that oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water, is the way we have grown accustomed to learning things through the natural-scientific approach mankind has gradually acquired over the last few centuries.

We are less accustomed, however, to allowing our feelings and attitude of mind to be affected by the kind of knowledge spiritual science has to offer. Yet the kind of approach we must have to spiritual science is fundamentally opposite to the approach we must have to natural science. Emphasis is often laid on the fact that everyone feels that science is dry and stops us having a warm contact with life and its happenings; that dry science has something cold and unfeeling about it and robs things of their dewy freshness. Yet one could say that to a certain extent this has to be so with ordinary science. For there is an enormous difference between the impression made on us by a wonderful cloud formation in the evening or morning sky and the bare reports an astronomer or a meteorologist gives us. There is such abundant richness in the natural world around us that its effect on us is to warm us through and through whereas, in comparison, science, with its concepts and ideas, appears dull and dry, cold, lifeless and loveless. Yet there is every justification to feel this way as far as external, natural-scientific knowledge is concerned.

There are good reasons why external, natural-scientific knowledge has to be like this, but spiritual science is not this kind of knowledge. On the contrary it ought to bring us nearer and nearer to the living abundance and warmth of the outside world and of the world altogether. But this means learning to bring certain impulses to life in us that a person of today hardly possesses at all. A present-day person expects it to be in the nature of what he calls science that it has a cold and sobering effect on him, like the character of Wagner in Goethe's Faust. He expects that if he assimilates science the riddles of nature will be solved, and then he will know how everything is constituted and be perfectly satisfied with what he knows.

Science even makes some people shudder nowadays, for a quite specific reason. They maintain that what made life so rich and fresh in the past, was the fact that man had not solved every riddle and could still wonder about the unsolved ones. And then science comes along, they say, and solves the riddles of nature one after the other. And they imagine how boring life will be in the future when science will have solved all the mysteries and there will be no further possibility of wondering about anything, or having any feelings of an unscientific kind. What terrible desolation would befall mankind; we have every reason to be horrified at the prospect.

But spiritual science can kindle different feelings than these, and although those feelings would be less in keeping with modern times than the solving of riddles, they show how awakening and life-giving spiritual science can be. If we absorb anthroposophy in the right way—not just take notes of what is being said, so that we can make use of them like they do in ordinary science, and perhaps even do a neat diagram, so that we can take it all in at a glance like physics—if we do not do it so much that way, but let what anthroposophy has to say reach our hearts and we unite with it, we shall notice that it comes to life in us and grows, it awakens our independence and initiative and becomes like a new living being within us, that is forever showing new aspects. To approach external nature with our souls thus filled with anthroposophy, is to find more riddles in nature and not less. Everything grows even more puzzling, which broadens instead of impoverishing our life of feeling; you could say that spiritual science makes the world more mysterious.

Of course the world becomes a desolate place when the physicist says to you ‘You see the sunrise . . . .’ and then, showing us a diagram, he tells us which particular refractions are taking place in the rays of light so that the glow of dawn appears. This is certainly horrible, not from the point of view of human reason, but for the human heart and an understanding connected with the heart.

It is quite different when spiritual science tells us, for example, When you see the sunrise or hear one or another piece of music, it must feel to you as though the Elohim were sending their punishing wrath into the world. Then we become aware of the mysterious living weaving of the Elohim behind the glow of dawn. To know the name of the Elohim and to be able to give them a place in the ninefold diagram we have drawn in our notebook, is not knowing anything about the Elohim. But out of the living feeling we can have in looking at the sunrise will come a perception of movement and life in rich abundance, just as we know that when we look at a human being, any amount of conceptual knowledge about him will not tell us the whole of his nature, nor fathom the universal life within him. Likewise, we shall become aware that the dawn is revealing something to us of the unfathomable life of the cosmos.

Spiritual-scientific knowledge makes life more enigmatic and mysterious in a way that kindles richer feelings within us. And it is a fundamental feeling of this kind our souls can acquire, when we bring spiritual science to life within us and when we try to make ourselves at home in the kind of ideas I have just indicated. Then we shall never be tempted to complain that spiritual science only appeals to our heads and does not take hold of our whole being. We just need to be patient until the message of spiritual science becomes a living being within us and forms itself anew, filling us not only with its light but also with its warmth. Then it will take hold of our hearts and our whole being and we shall feel the richer for it, whereas, if we take up spiritual science in the same way as ordinary science, we are bound to feel the poorer.

Yet, on the other hand, it is quite natural that, to begin with, anthroposophy seems to many people to lead to an impoverishment, because they have not yet been able to find the inner life of the message of anthroposophy that can reach their heart, and because anthroposophy does not yet have the same effect on them as, for instance, the warm words of a fellow human being speaking to us. But we have to learn that anthroposophy can become alive that it can give us as much support and encouragement as we can otherwise only receive from another human being.

Our hearts find this so difficult at the present time because we have lost the habit of uniting ourselves with the life of things. It is difficult enough if one tries in small doses to re-introduce this living with things. This was attempted in our four Mystery Plays. You have only to think of the scene in spirit land, in the fifth act of The Soul's Awakening, where Felix Balde is sitting on the left side of the stage—seen from the audience—after he has ascended to Devachan, and a spiritual being on the other side of the stage speaks to him of his experience of weight. Here one should feel the weight that is descending in the distance. When people see something descending, they are accustomed nowadays only to be aware of the descending and only to see the thing higher up to start with, and then coming lower and lower down. They are quite unaccustomed to creeping into things and feeling the experience of weight, feeling the thing pressing down all the time. With an expression like that I am hoping to lift people out of their egoistic bodies right in the middle of the play, and to plunge them into the life of things outside themselves.

If this cannot happen, then real artistic feeling will not be able to arise again. In order that, for instance, a true feeling for architecture can come again, the concepts we receive from spiritual science must come alive. To begin with it makes very little difference which particular anthroposophical concepts we carry round with us. But if we really do something like this we shall see how much richer our soul life becomes. We shall gain a lot if, for instance, as well as just seeing this diagram we try and submerge ourselves in it and try to feel what is going on: weight pressing down here, and weight being supported there.

We want to go even further and not just look at it, but feel that the beam needs to have a certain strength, otherwise the load will crush it, and the supporting pillars must also have a certain strength, otherwise they too will be crushed. We must feel the way the sphere on top is pressing down, the pillars supporting and the beam keeping the balance. Not until we creep into the elements of weight, support and balance, between the pressing down and the supporting, shall we feel our way into the element of architecture.

But if we follow a structure of this kind not only with our eye but, as it were, crawl into it and experience the weighing down, the supporting and the balance, then we shall feel that our whole organism is becoming involved, and as if we have to call on an invisible brain belonging to our whole being and not just our head. Then we can awaken to the consciousness, ‘Ah! now we are beginning to feel!’ To take our simple example, we shall feel a supporting element, an upward striving, supporting luciferic element; a weighing and pressing down ahrimanic element, and a balance between the luciferic and ahrimanic which is a divine quality. Thus, even lifeless nature becomes filled with Lucifer and Ahriman and their superior ruler, who eternally brings about the balance between them.

If we thus learn to experience the luciferic, ahrimanic and divine elements in architecture, so that architecture affects us inwardly, we shall become conscious of a richer feeling of the world which leads or, one could almost say, pulls the soul into the things of the world; for our soul is now not only within our body's skin but belongs to the cosmos. This is a way of becoming conscious of this. We shall become aware, too, that whereas outside, the architectural element is supporting, weighing down and creating a balance, we ourselves in this encounter with the architectural element, develop a musical mood. Architecture produces a musical mood in our inner being, and we notice that even though the elements of architecture and music appear to be so alien in the outer world, through this musical mood engendered in us, our experience of architecture brings about a reconciliation, a balance between these two elements.

This is where, from our epoch onwards, living progress in the arts will lie, through learning to experience the reconciliation of the arts. This was dimly felt by Wagner, but it can only really come about when the world comes alive with spiritual science.

Reconciling the arts: that is what we attempted to do—for the first time, and in a small, elementary way—in our Goetheanum building. We did not want only to talk in a cold, abstract way about it, but show in the architecture of the building itself an impression, a copy of this reconciling of a musical mood with architectural form. If you study what is presented in our series of pillars and everything connected with them, you will discover that we were making the attempt to bring the elements of support, weighing down and the balance into living movement. Our pillars are not merely supports, and our capitals no longer mere supporting devices, and the architraves that extend above the pillars do not just have the character of rest, serving only to round the pillars off at the top, but they have a character of living growth and movement.

We attempted to bring architectural forms into musical flux, and the feeling one can have from seeing the interplay between the pillars and all that is connected with them, can of itself arouse a musical mood in the soul. It will be possible to feel invisible music as the soul of the columns and the architectural and sculptural forms that belong to them. It is as though a soul element were in them. And the interpenetration of the fine arts and their forms by musical moods has fundamentally to be the ideal of the art of the future. Music of the future will be more sculptural than music of the past. Architecture and sculpture of the future will be more musical than they were in the past. That will be the essential thing. Yet this will not stop music from being an independent art; on the contrary, it will become richer and richer through penetrating the secrets of the tones, as we said yesterday, creating musical forms from out of the spiritual foundations of the cosmos.

However, as everything that is inside must also be outside, in art—all that lives in it must be embodied in a kind of organism—the world of soul within the series of pillars and everything belonging to them must also become embodied. This happens, or at least is about to happen in the painting of the domes. Just as the pillars and everything belonging to them are, as it were, the body of our building, so is all that is going to appear in the domes—when you are inside the building—its soul; and just as the world appears to be filled with spirit, when our organs are directed outwards, our windows executed in the new art of glass shading shall represent the spirit. Body, soul and spirit shall be expressed in our building. Body in the column structure, soul in everything to do with the domes, and spirit in what is in the windows.

Where these things are concerned karma has brought various things about for which we can be grateful, for just in the case of the Goetheanum building, karma has indeed helped us in several matters. The soul of a human being is so constituted that from outside we perceive it in his physiognomy, but we have to have resources like love and friendship to penetrate into a person's soul, if we want to get to know it from inside, as it were.

When I was travelling from Christiania to Bergen on my last lecture tour in Norway, I happened to see a slate quarry which gave me the idea of trying to get slate from there. We were successful, and it really was what one might call a karmic happening, for when we look at the roof of the domes that are now tiled with this slate with its quite unique qualities, we are sure to say that it has something of the quality of the life of the soul, that at one and the same time both discloses and conceals what is within. Now if we really want to feel the domes as soul life we shall have to develop a love for spiritual science. For what is going to be painted inside the domes should really appear to us as a kind of reflected image in colour and form, of what spiritual science can mean to us. To see this we have to go inside. But when the building is really finished, no one will be able to understand what he sees when he goes inside if he has not developed a love for spiritual science; otherwise what he sees there will probably remain something that can cause a bit of a sensation, but will not be anything that particularly appeals to his heart. What he gets from it will easily tempt him to deny that the architecture has anything to offer the feelings.

Just as we have seen in this instance that what comes to life out of anthroposophy can be rediscovered in the world, life can also be fructified through anthroposophy, in realms in which we can more readily see that our heart's understanding needs to be warmed and fructified. For it is not only artistic and scientific areas that are to be fructified by spiritual science, but the whole of life has to be.

Let me take as an example a realm in which we can see particularly well how anthroposophical concepts can come alive in outer life. I will choose the realm of education, any kind of art of education. Let us begin from the fact that children are educated by grown-ups. What does the materialistic age envisage when it speaks of a child being educated by a grown-up? Fundamentally speaking, the materialistic age sees in both of them, both the grown-up and the child, only what you get from a materialistic outlook, namely, a grown-up teaching a child. But it is not like that. Externally the grown-up is only maya, and seen from outside the child is only maya too. There is something in the grown-up not directly contained in maya, namely the invisible man, who passes from one incarnation to another, and there is also an invisible part in the child that goes from incarnation to incarnation.

We shall speak about these things again. But I would like to tell you a few things today from which you will see in the course of time—if you meditate on them—what else there is in spiritual science. I will start with the fact that a person, as he appears in the external world, cannot teach at all, nor can the person who stands before us, externally, as a child, be educated. In reality something invisible in the teacher educates something invisible in the pupil. We shall only understand this properly if we focus our attention on what is gradually unfolding in the growing child, as the outcome of previous incarnations. And when everything coming from previous incarnations has made its appearance, the child withdraws, especially in present times. What we are actually educating is the invisible result of previous incarnations. We cannot educate or have any effect on the visible child. That is how the matter stands with regard to the child.

Now we will look at the teacher. During the first seven years of the child's life he can only educate by means of what the child can imitate; in the second seven years it will be through the influence he has as an authority; and finally in the following seven years it will be through the educational effect of independent judgment. Everything that is active in the teacher all this time is not in his external physical part at all. The part of us which do the educating will not take on physical form until our next incarnation. For all the qualities in us which can be imitated, or the qualities upon which our authority is based, are germinal qualities and will form our next incarnation. When we are teachers our own next incarnation converses with the previous incarnation of the pupil. It is an illusion to think that as present people we speak to the child of the present. We only have the right feeling for this if we say to ourselves, ‘The very best in you which your spirit can think and your soul can feel, and which is preparing itself to make something of you in the next incarnation, can work on the part of the child that is sculpturing its form out of times long past.’ The musical element in us is what enables us to educate. What we should educate in the child is the element of sculpture.

Take as a whole all that I have said in these lectures about the musical element and of how, in its most exalted form, it corresponds to what man meets with in initiation. Music is related to everything that is in a process of development and lies in the future, and the realm of sculpture and architecture is related to what lies in the past. A child is the most wonderful example of sculpture we can see. What we need as teachers is a musical mood, which we can have in the form of a mood pervaded by the future. If you can have this feeling when you are involved in teaching it will add a very special tone to the relationship of the teacher to the child. For it will make the teacher set himself the highest aims, whilst having the greatest measure of understanding for the children's naughtiness. There really is an educational force in this mood.

Once the world comes to see that the right atmosphere for teaching arises when a musical mood in the teacher is combined with seeing the sculptural activity in the pupil; once it is established that this is what is required for a love of teaching, then education will be filled with the right impetus. For then the teacher will speak, think and feel in such a way that in the course of his lessons, what comes from the past will learn to love what reaches out to the future. The result will be a wonderful karmic adjustment between the teacher and his pupils. A wonderful karmic balancing.

If the teacher is egoistic and only tries to make the child an imitation of himself, then the teaching is purely luciferic. Education becomes luciferic when we try as far as possible to turn the pupil into a copy of our own opinions and feelings, and are only happy if we tell the pupil something today and he repeats it word for word tomorrow. That is a purely luciferic education. On the other hand an ahrimanic education comes about if the pupil is as naughty as possible in our lessons and learns from us as little as he possibly can. However, there is a state of balance between these two extremes, just as there is between weighing down and supporting. This is arrived at through the interplay of the musical-sculptural elements I have just been speaking about. We must learn to distinguish between the teacher's intentions and what the child turns out to be. If we have the right mood, then even though we have been trying to teach our pupil something quite specific, we shall be overjoyed to realise that he has not turned out as we intended, but that the child has developed into something quite different from what we intended him to be. This is the remarkable thing, that the teacher can only rid himself of his egoism in teaching, if he overcomes the desire to turn the child into a copy of his own views on what is good and right, and especially of his own favourite thoughts. The best thing we can achieve, as teachers, is to be able to face perfectly calmly the thought of the child becoming as different from us as possible.

But you cannot come along and say, ‘Please give me a recipe for it, write a few rules down for me on how to teach like that.’ That is the remarkable thing about the spiritual world outlook, that you cannot work according to rules, but you really have to absorb spiritual science, so that you are filled with it and your impulses of feeling and will are increased. Then the right thing will happen, whatever particular task you face in life. The essential thing is to tackle it in a living way.

Now you could ask, ‘Which is the right teaching method from the point of view of spiritual science?’ And the correct answer would be, ‘The best spiritual-scientific method of teaching is for as many teachers as possible to engross themselves in spiritual science in a living way, and to acquire the feelings that come from spiritual science’. This is less convenient, of course, than reading a textbook on the art of spiritual-scientific education. Yet spiritual science is forever being asked, ‘What is the spiritual-scientific point of view on this or that?’ Now spiritual science does not have a point of view, or, if you like, it has as many points of view as life itself. But spiritual science itself must become life. Spiritual science must be absorbed and brought to life within us, then it will be able to bear fruit in the various realms of life. People will then get beyond whatever it is that makes life so dry and dead: we could call it the request for uniformity. External science requires uniformity, but spiritual science gives manifoldness and variety, the kind of variety that belongs to life itself. Thus, spiritual science will have to bring transformation into the furthest reaches of life.

Let us look at what some realms of life are like today. Learning takes place up to a particular age; you learn one thing up to one age and something else up to another. Then comes the time when you go out into life, as we say, and do not want to learn any more; even when you go in for a scientific career you do not like having to learn any more. The ones who do go on learning in order to keep up with their science are thought to be the odd ones. In the general run people learn until a certain age and after that they play cards or other useless things in their spare time, or they develop an attitude like this one I came across. I had been invited to give a series of lectures on the history of literature in a circle that included some ladies with a thirst for knowledge. Now it could be said that the softer, or if you prefer it, ‘retarded’ brain that ladies have has retained more the receptivity and flexibility of ancient times, when learning continued throughout life. This is more often found among women than men. But these ladies had the feeling that they ought to bring the gentlemen along too, to the lecture cycle. So the gentlemen were there, and they did not all go to sleep. Some of them really listened. Then there was conversation, tea and cakes, in other words they did what is considered to be essential in some circles, if the lectures are not to be too dry. So there was conversation too. And after I had been lecturing on Goethe's Faust, some of the men summed up their attitude by saying, ‘When you see Faust on the stage it is not really the kind of art you can enjoy, it isn't even recreation, it is science.’ This was their way of saying that when a person has been working in an office all day, or has been serving customers, or standing in a court of law interrogating witnesses and sentencing the accused, by the evening he is in no state to listen to Goethe's Faust any more and needs recreation and not science.

This is an example of a common attitude with which no doubt you are familiar. You only need to mention it, for everyone knows how widespread it is, and that a lot of people would find it strange the way we gather here in such a studious fashion and want to go on learning, despite the fact that several of us are fairly old. They think they know a much better way of spending time. Yet a complete change will have to take place in people's approach to spiritual science, in that they will not just want to let it remain a study, but will want to have a living and permanent relationship with it. This will come. You cannot learn anthroposophy the same way as you learn science, by taking it down in a notebook; anthroposophy must stay alive. It becomes dead if we only learn its content and do not remain connected with it through living activity. It becomes dead and withers away, whereas it should be kept alive. Spiritual science must work in this way to enliven us and keep our hearts receptive for all they can receive from the spiritual worlds, so that we develop further all the time.

There is no doubt that in our epoch humanity shows a quality of old age; on the whole it does not have the kind of youthfulness it had in mythical times. Spiritual science must be people's draught of youth, so that they will feel able to learn from life throughout their lives. Nowadays we can experience odd things in this connection. I know a man with an active mind, a person who has had all kinds of connections with modern intellectual culture all through his life. Now he celebrated his fiftieth birthday recently, and gave a leaflet out on this occasion containing some very peculiar notions. For instance he said—but I want to alter things a little bit, so that you will not guess who it is—he said, ‘I have been offered a post in the realm of art that I had been longing for, for many years. But now that I have reached the age of fifty, old age in fact, I do not really want it any more. For to fill a post of that kind and to inspire the people around you, you need to be young, you need to be full of fantastic illusions. And these illusions have to consist of thinking that what you are doing and the people you have to deal with are the whole world and nothing else matters. What really counts is what is right there. Fifteen years ago I was of an age when I could have done it. Now I am past it. You should not wait until people have grown old before you offer them influential positions, but let them be privy councillors, for instance, when they are between thirty and forty.’ This was the gist of what this ‘old’ man said.

This mood is absolutely in line with the whole quality of our contemporary culture. It is a mood very easily acquired by people who accept what materialistic culture has to say about the human being, for materialism has not the power to penetrate the whole being of man; the content of this materialistic knowledge is not powerful enough to have the kind of influence on his soul life that will last right into old age. Spiritual science proves that even if a person grows old externally he can stay young in soul, and if he has not done anything special by the age of fifty, although he does not need to succumb to the illusion that what he is doing is of prime importance and everything else can fall by the wayside, he can still be young enough to devote all his strength to what he has to do. He can be youthful, in fact childlike enough to concentrate the whole of his forces on what has to be done, just as a child concentrates all his forces in play. Spiritual science must become a magic draught of youth and not just a theory. That is also an impulse of transformation. Tomorrow I will talk about other impulses of transformation.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Future Jupiter and Its Beings 03 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Future Jupiter and Its Beings 03 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
If you recall the talks we had in connection with the evolution of the Earth through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, you will know that at each of these evolutionary stages, one particular kind of being from among what we would now call the higher hierarchies, attained their human level, as it were. We know that during the ancient Saturn period the Spirits of Personality, the Primal Beginnings, the Archai reached their human level, during the Sun period the Archangels, during the Moon period the Angels and during the Earth period, mankind. You will also have seen from our talks on evolution, that each level of beings that reaches a certain stage of development, received preparation in advance. We know that the human being was being prepared throughout the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and that what we nowadays call man's completed physical body has been evolving since the Saturn period, the etheric body since the Sun period, the astral body since the Moon period, and that the ego was only added to these during the Earth period; that is, all the beings that are at a certain level are prepared as a whole. Now you may be anxious to know whether, in our present period of evolution, beings are being prepared to attain their human level in the Jupiter period. Another thing you know is that during the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods—you can look it up in my book Occult Science—the spirits of the higher hierarchies took part in the preparation of humanity. There is a description of how the Angels, Archangels and Archai were involved in the development of human beings, and therefore an obvious question is whether human beings, during their Earth existence, are possibly involved in preparing the beings who will reach their human level during the Jupiter period? This question is certainly a vital one for every feeling person, if his feelings have been inspired by spiritual science, as we have been describing. For it could be the case that human behaviour in general during the course of Earth evolution could either help, or omit to help, the beings who might attain their human level on Jupiter. We might say, ‘What could be worse than behaving in such a way during Earth evolution as to make it impossible for proper Jupiter beings to arise through our deeds?’ We must of course take it for granted, if we want to talk about these things, that there is a certain goodwill, for these are truly important secrets of initiation, the kind of initiation secrets that modern science detests as a matter of course. One certainly has to prepare one's feeling to be able to look at the attitude modern science is bound to have to the real truths of life. In the previous lectures I have already tried to say a little about the way modern science necessarily relates to life. It cannot make direct contact with the secrets of life. It cannot even want to; it must not even pretend to want to reach these secrets of life. It is surely a good thing to make hard-boiled eggs for the people who like eating eggs when they are hard-boiled, and hard-boiled eggs are useful for those who like them. But if someone wanted to go and say that he takes the eggs away from the hens to hard-boil them, and then lets them hatch them after that, he would be doing something absurd. A person does exactly the same thing as far as the cosmos is concerned, if he sets out to solve the secrets of the cosmos and wants to use modern science for it; this is the same attitude as wanting to hatch hard-boiled eggs that have nothing left in them to be hatched out. I will show you by means of a comparison just how misleading this science is that is bound up with the whole way of modern thinking, particularly when it approaches the real riddles of life. If somebody wants to hold forth about whether science is helpful or harmful he will usually start off by asking, ‘Is science right about this or that?’ And if he can prove that it is right in one or another instance, he will swear by it as a matter of course. But this is just what we have to get away from, this attaching so much importance to the question of whether what science says is right or not. We must reach the point of seeing that this is not the main thing when it comes to the solving of riddles of life. If someone sees a horse-drawn cart with a man in it, he will be quite right in saying that the horses are pulling this person in the cart, and drawing him along behind them. This is correct, of course. And anyone who wanted to say that the horses were not drawing the cart and the man sitting in it, would obviously be wrong. But it is also true that the man sitting in the cart, through the way he guides the horses, is controlling the direction in which they should pull him; and that is surely the more important aspect from the point of view of the destination. Modern science can be compared to the statement of the person who denies that the man in the cart is guiding the horses, and insists that the horses are drawing the man in the cart. If you think the comparison through in detail, you will get the right idea about the relation of modern science to modern research into truth. I have to say these things over and over again, because a person who bases himself on our world outlook, must come more and more into the position where he can defend and protect our spiritual-scientific outlook against the attacks of the modern world outlook. But you will be able to do this only if you enlighten yourself as to the relation of modern external science to a genuine research into truth. You must always approach spiritual-scientific questions with a certain attitude and a certain kind of feeling, otherwise you will not make the proper connection with them. Now our question concerning the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter is connected in very truth with the deepest questions of man's Earth evolution. There is something in our Earth evolution that has always been a philosophical problem, namely the relation between man's moral behaviour and his natural existence. As an earthly being, man has to decide to what extent he is the kind of being who is ruled by his instincts, has to obey and satisfy them, and is at the mercy of his instincts and their satisfaction, because the laws of nature simply insist on their being satisfied. That is one side of human nature. In this respect we say, ‘We do these things because we have to. We have to eat and we have to sleep.’ But there is another realm of human conduct on this earth, a realm in which we cannot say ‘must’, for it would lose its whole significance if we were to say ‘must’ here. This is the wide realm of ‘shall’, a realm where we feel that we have to follow a purely spiritual impulse as distinct from instinct and everything arising out of ourselves on a natural level. ‘You shall’ never speaks to us from out of our instincts but directs us in a purely spiritual way. ‘You shall’ comprises the realm of our moral obligations. There are some philosophers who cannot find any connection between what is implied by the ‘you shall’ and ‘you must’. And our present age that is almost bogged down in materialism, especially where moral life is concerned, and will get more and more bogged down, would like to turn all the ‘you shalls’ into ‘you musts’. We are heading for times where, in this respect, the turning of ‘you shall’ into ‘you must’ will be blazoned forth with a certain amount of pride, and actually called psychology. Terrible aspects present themselves if we look at what has begun to develop in the field of criminal psychology. It is already evident that the human being is being conceived of in such a way that people do not ask whether he has overstepped a ‘you shall’, but try to prove that he was driven to one or another destructive act out of the necessity of his nature. Strange experiments are on the increase to define crime merely as a particular case of illness. All these things arise out of a certain materialistic lack of clarity in our times, regarding the relation of ‘you shall’ to ‘you must’. What does this ‘you shall’, or in other words the categorical imperative, actually signify within the whole framework of human existence? Whoever obeys the ‘you shall’ is known to carry out a moral action. Whoever does not obey the ‘you shall’ commits an immoral action. This is of course a trivial truth. But now let us attempt to look at ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, not only with regard to the external maya of the physical plane, but with regard to the truth and what is actually behind physical maya. Here the moral element corresponding to the ‘you shall’ appears to initiation science as something that hits you in the eye, spiritually, to put it rather crudely. If you look at a person—these truths which the materialistic outlook detests have to be told sometime—if you look at someone in certain temperature and weather conditions—you see this even better in horses, but we are not speaking about horses now—you will see him breathing out, and the breath becoming visible as vapour in the air. Obviously as far as materialistic science is concerned, this breath a person exhales, disperses and dissolves and has no further significance. But it has significance for a person who follows up the phenomena of life with initiation science, for he sees in the patterns of the breath the exact traces of the moral or immoral conduct of the person. A person's moral or immoral behaviour can be seen in the steamy breath, and the breath of a person who is morally inclined is quite different from the breath of a person who is inclined to immorality. You know, with regard to various things in the human being, the more delicate qualities can only be seen in the more delicate parts of the etheric and astral aura. But man's moral and immoral nature in the ordinary sense of the word is actually visible in the etheric-astral content of the steamy breath. The physical part of it dissolves. But what is incorporated in it does not dissolve; for it contains a genie, which, in the case of steamy breath, has a physical, an etheric and an astral part, only the physical is not earthly, just watery. Something that has an extremely differentiated form can be seen in this breath. Deeds which arise out of love show something quite different from deeds which are done out of enthusiasm, a creative urge or the urge for perfection, for instance. But in every case the form in the breath reminds one of beings that do not exist on earth at all as yet. These beings are a preparation for the ones that will reach their human stage on Jupiter. Their forms are very changeable and will pass through further changes in the future, for these beings are the first advance shadow images of the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter. In a certain way we also owe our existence to the exhalation of the Angeloi on the Moon, and it is one of the moving experiences of spiritual life to know that Jupiter human beings of the future will evolve out of what we breathe out in present ages. If we turn to the Bible with such knowledge in mind, and read the opening words, we can tell ourselves, ‘Now we begin to understand what is meant when it says that the Elohim formed earthly man by breathing into him.’ I will confess that I would never have understood the part about the Elohim breathing the living being of man into his mouth and nose, if I had not known beforehand that the breath of earthly human beings also contains the first germinal beginnings of the beings who will become human on Jupiter. But Jupiter human beings can only arise from the kind of breath that owes its existence to deeds that obey the ‘you shall’, and which are therefore moral actions. Thus we see that through our earthly morality we take a creative part in the whole cosmic order. It is indeed a creative power, and we can see that spiritual science gives us a strong impulse for moral action by telling us that we are working against the creation of Jupiter human beings, if we do not act in a moral way on earth. This gives morality a very real value and makes its existence worthwhile. Our human conduct is very strongly formed by what we acquire through spiritual science, especially as we become acquainted with real secrets regarding the cosmos. I have already made references to similar things and mentioned at various times that language also symbolises man's own future creativity. I do not wish to dwell on this today though, but just wanted to show you, to begin with, what significance moral behaviour has in the whole of the cosmos. You could now ask, ‘What about immoral behaviour?’ Immoral behaviour also comes to expression in the formation of the breath. But immoral behaviour imprints a demonic form on it. Demons are born through man's immoral conduct. Let us look at the difference between the demons that arise through immoral behaviour and the spiritual beings—spiritual in so far as they only have a watery existence on earth—the spiritual forms that are created by moral actions. These beings that incarnate as far as a transitory watery existence and arise from moral conduct, are the kind of beings that have an astral, an etheric and finally a physical body condensed to the level of wateriness, just as, in the Moon period, we had an etheric, an astral and a physical body, and this physical body was also only condensed to a wateriness. We were more or less like that, even if not exactly the same. And this creature, with a physical body, etheric body and astral body that arises out of moral actions, is predestined to receive an ego, just as in the Moon period our physical, etheric and astral body were predestined to receive an ego. They have the basis for receiving an ego, and beings of this kind are qualified to undergo a regular progressive evolution in the cosmos. The other beings, the demons created out of immoral actions, also have an astral body, an etheric body and a physical body, at the watery stage, of course, but they do not have the basis for developing an ego. They are born without heads, as it were. Instead of taking up the basis for progressing along a regular evolutionary path to the Jupiter existence, they reject this basis. By doing so they fall victim to the fate of dropping out of evolution. But this only increases the hordes of luciferic beings, for they come under their power. As they cannot progress in a regular way they have to become parasites. This is what happens to all the beings that reject their normal path; they have to attach themselves to others in order to move on. These beings that arise through immoral actions have the particular inclination to be parasites in human evolution on earth under Lucifer's leadership, and to seize hold of the evolution of the human being before he makes his physical entry into the world. They attack man during the embryonic period and share his existence between conception and birth. Some of these beings, if they are strong enough, can continue to accompany the human being after birth, as seen in the phenomena of children who are possessed. What is brought about by the criminal demon parasites attached to unborn children is the cause of the deterioration of the generation succession, which are not as they would be if these demons did not exist. There are various reasons for the decline of families, tribes, peoples and nations, but one of them is the existence of these criminal demon parasites during man's embryonic period. These things play a great part in Earth evolution as a whole, and they bring us into contact with deep secrets of human existence. This is often the cause of people acquiring certain prejudices and points of view before they are born into earth existence. And people are tormented by doubts and uncertainties in life and all kinds of other things, because of these demonic parasites. There is not much more these beings can do with the human being once his ego has entered and made itself felt, but they prey on him all the more before he is born or during his earliest years. Thus we see that evil actions have a significant effect in the cosmos, too, and work creatively, but their creativity works in the direction of the ancient Moon existence. For what man passes through in the embryonic period when these demonic beings can prey on him, is basically the heritage of the old Moon period, which makes its appearance in subconscious, instinctive behaviour. Something that even physical science preserves an instinct for is that, in older and better times, man's embryonic period was not calculated according to ordinary months but lunar months, therefore it speaks of ten lunar months, and knows certain other things, too, concerning the connection of embryonic development with the phases of the moon. So we see that our Earth evolution contains two tendencies: good deeds that contain the impulse to work creatively on Earth in preparation for Jupiter, so that man's successor on the human level can come into being. But evil deeds have also brought into our evolution the tendency to drag the Earth back again to the ancient Moon period and make it dependent on everything to do with the subconscious. If you think about it, you will find a great number of things that are connected with these subconscious impulses; in fact, there are far more of these subconscious impulses in materialistic humanity of modern times, than there were in bygone ages when people were less materialistic. I believe that the kind of things I have been telling you about again today will make you feel what a deep impression spiritual science can make on your outlook on life, and that it really and truly will not only give you theoretical knowledge but will be capable of giving human life a new direction. A time will come when life will become quite chaotic if people do not use the chance of giving it a new direction out of spiritual-scientific knowledge. Man must get beyond a knowledge that is restricted to the physical body. Our materialistic age does not want knowledge of any other sort than the kind that is restricted to the physical body. But man has to lift his knowledge out of the physical body. And what we know today as the first exercises in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds will gradually—though ‘gradually’ will be quite a long time—they will gradually turn into something he does naturally, something he will feel to be second nature. Particularly what we call thought concentration will come naturally to people. People will more and more feel the need really to concentrate their thoughts, to focus their whole soul activity on sharply defined thoughts which they place in front of their consciousness. Whilst they would otherwise let their senses roam from one thing or fact to another, they will more and more often direct their thought life to certain things of their own choosing; even if only for a short time, they will concentrate on a definite thought, so as to focus their soul activity on this thought. They will then discover something that a lot of you know very well. Everyone makes a certain discovery in the course of concentrating. If we place a thought in the centre of our consciousness and focus all our soul activity on it, we shall notice the thought growing stronger and stronger. Certainly it does. But then there comes a point where it does not get stronger any more but gets weaker and fades away. This is an experience lots of you will have had. The thought has to fade away, it has, as it were, to die away inside. For the kind of thoughts we have to begin with and the way we think, are through the instrument of the physical body, and we concentrate the kind of thinking we do by means of the instrument of the physical body until the moment the thought dies, then we slip out of the physical body. We would go into the unconscious altogether if, parallel with this concentration exercise, we did not attempt to do something else to maintain our consciousness when we have slipped out of our physical body. What we have to do to maintain our consciousness when we are outside, is what we call leading a calm and composed life and accepting the things of the world calmly. We can do even more than accept things calmly. We can take seriously a theory we know so well, namely the concept of karma. What do I mean? A person is not at all inclined, to start with, to take the idea of karma really seriously. If he has only a small mishap that hurts him, or anything at all happens to him, he sometimes gets furious, but at any rate he has antipathy for it. We encounter what we call our destiny with sympathy or antipathy. It cannot be any different in ordinary life, as it is absolutely essential that we feel sympathy for some of the occurrences of destiny and antipathy for others. To us, destiny is something that meets us from outside. If we take the idea of karma seriously, we must really recognise our ego in our destiny and realise we ourselves are active in what happens to us through destiny; that we are the actual agents. When someone offends us it is certainly difficult to believe we are hidden behind the offender. For it may be necessary in physical life to punish the offence. But we must always keep a corner within us where we admit to ourselves, ‘Even when someone offends you it is you offending yourself, when someone hits you it is you hitting yourself, when unpleasant blows of destiny hit you, it is you, yourself, dealing yourself these blows.’ We forget that we are not only within our skin but are in our destiny; we forget we are within all the so-called chance happenings of our destiny. It is very difficult really to acquire the attitude that one's own ego brings one one's destiny. But it is true that with our own ego we bring ourselves our destiny, and we get the impulses for this in the life between death and a new birth according to our earlier incarnations, so that we can bring ourselves our destiny. We have to unite with our destiny and, instead of warding off hard blows of destiny with antipathy, tell ourselves more and more often, ‘Through having this blow of destiny, that is, through meeting yourself in this blow of destiny, you are making yourself stronger, more vigorous and robust.’ It is more difficult to form a union with your destiny in this way than to resist it, but what we lose when our thought passes away can only be regained by drawing into ourselves, like this, what is outside us. We cannot stay in what is within our skin if the thought fades when we concentrate on it, but it will carry us out of ourselves if we have taken hold of our destiny, our karma, in the true sense. We thus awaken ourselves again. The thought dies, but we carry forth the identification we have grasped between our ego and our destiny, and it carries us about the world. This composure with respect to our destiny, this sincere acceptance of destiny, is what gives us existence when we are outside our body. Obviously this does not need to alter our life on the physical plane. We cannot always do that. But the attitude we have to acquire in a corner of our soul must be there, for the moments when we really want to be able to live consciously outside our body. Two maxims can be our guiding principles and can mean a very great deal to us. The first of these to impress upon our minds is: Strive for the dying away of the thought in the universe. For the thought becomes a living force outside, only when it dies away in the universe. Yet we cannot unite ourselves with this living force unless we work at the content of the second maxim: Strive for the resurrection of destiny in the ‘I’. If you achieve this, you unite what has been reborn in the thought with the resurrected ego outside you. There is a great deal in human nature, though, which makes it difficult to progress in the spirit of these maxims. It is particularly hard to look at the relationship between inner and outer in the right way. The more ethics we can learn from spiritual science in this connection, the better. And we can learn ethics from it in so far as certain ethical concepts acquire life and blood for the first time through what spiritual science can bring to them. For instance, there are people who are perpetually complaining about other people and the awful things they do to them. They go as far as to say that other people persecute them. Everything of this kind is always connected with the other pole of human nature, you only have to observe life in the right way, which means according to spiritual science as properly understood. Of course there is good reason to complain about unkindness, but in spite of this you will always find, if you go through life with vision that has been made somewhat clairvoyant by spiritual science, that most of these complaints come from egoists, and that the suspicion that everyone wants to be nasty to them arises most often in egoistic natures, whereas a loving disposition will not readily suspect persecution, nor that people are trying to harm them in all kinds of ways, and so on. When it is put into words like this it is easy to agree with it in theory. I am actually convinced that most people will admit to it theoretically, if they stop to think about it. But to live accordingly is what matters. Now you may ask, ‘How do we live accordingly?’ And again the answer must be, ‘You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can.’ That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses. This was the main reason that led us to make the Goetheanum building a kind of focal point for this living anthroposophical striving, for as I mentioned yesterday, the Goetheanum building, in its form, and in the whole way it has been built, has a bodily, a soul and a spiritual nature in a spiritual-scientific sense. It is itself a token of the fact that we are striving according to impulses from the spiritual world to bring into human evolution what it so badly needs, if the immediate future is to go the way it should. The very fact that you can perceive the being of spiritual science in the forms of the Goetheanum building makes it a sort of centre, a focal point around which the kind of anthroposophical striving can crystallise, that has to become an essential part of the evolution of humanity. We probably often say that we live in troubled times and that many things exist today which stand out in stark contrast to spiritual science. Yet our karma has allowed us to come so far as to overcome, as it were, the material basis out of which our Goetheanum is built, so that it can be a token of spiritual science even in its external form. Each one of us can acknowledge this to himself, as I often do, especially in the difficult times we are going through in face of the strong attacks being made on anthroposophy at present. Some people can question how much personal progress we have made on our part towards what ought to be crystallising around the Goetheanum. Even if one or another individual cannot be physically present any more in the work being done on the physical plane, the fact that the building is there, and that our karma has brought it to us, is an important step forward. And if we bear in mind that people with as deep an understanding of spiritual science as Christian Morgenstern, for example, remain united, even after physical death, with what the Goetheanum is intended to be, then our building can also be a token in our time of the kind of activity within our spiritual movement that is not concerned with boundaries between what is usually called life and death. We can really feel united with this building, and therefore it can stimulate us to think the kind of serious thoughts which it is quite natural for us to think at a time like ours, when materialism is at its peak. Even if this building finds one or another individual co-operating only as a spiritual being, the building will be important for the continuation of our movement. This, you will understand, is said only to show you that our movement has a seriousness that goes beyond life and death. We have encountered this seriousness to a special degree this week. And if one thing happens, why should not other things be able to happen soon, too? It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve what I have spoken about and mentioned again this time. I have stressed that I give the strictest attention to choosing and finding exactly the right words for which I can be fully answerable to the spiritual worlds. So it is to be desired that these words shall be heard and received in the same spirit. Times will certainly come when people will be able to be more light-hearted with regard to the anthroposophical movement. But now, right at the beginning, we must get used to taking things very, very seriously. A while ago I talked here about occult research, among other things, because I thought it would be of use to some of you. I was mainly describing facts. I thought these would be of help to one or another of you in understanding our present difficult times. But that which I presented with this intention has not been treated with sufficient caution—there are one or two exceptions, of course, but I am right in saying that not everyone has treated it with the necessary discretion and regard, and it has transpired that it was repeated here and there in a form that conveyed exactly the opposite of what I said here. If I just think of what has been made out of something that cannot have been misunderstood because it is already in print, regarding the classification of the peoples of Europe according to sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness soul and the ego, which was truly not meant to express a superiority; if I think of the statements that have gone out into the world and the opposition and bad feeling they have aroused, it is easy to see that the principle of taking things quite exactly, even in such difficult cases, has not been given due consideration. If, for instance, I have ever said that the ego activity which is there among the European peoples ought to be effective in organising the European population, I would have been talking nonsense. Yet this is one of the things that has been made public, and it creates the most fearful misunderstandings and bad feelings. So I am duty-bound not to say a word about these things in my lectures for the time being. I must desist from any mention of them, and whereas everybody else is free to speak about it, it has become impossible for me to do so because of the way people have misconstrued what I said. All these things go to show that we should look at ourselves and see if we cannot take the anthroposophical movement absolutely seriously. For sometimes we completely fail to notice how much feeling of responsibility there is for each sentence of the communications of genuine spiritual research, when the matter is taken seriously. To stir up emotions is certainly not what spiritual science is for, nor to oppose or pacify them. And if anyone says these things are communicated in order to oppose somebody, he ought to ask himself whether the right or wrong use has been made of that which has been communicated with the utmost objectivity and reverent love of truth. These are things which add even more pain to my occult experiences, which are already painful enough. Even if I cannot mention certain important things, and a lot has to be omitted which I thought we could investigate soon, there are still some important and substantial matters left for us to discuss during our time together.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Future Jupiter and Its Beings 03 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

If you recall the talks we had in connection with the evolution of the Earth through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, you will know that at each of these evolutionary stages, one particular kind of being from among what we would now call the higher hierarchies, attained their human level, as it were. We know that during the ancient Saturn period the Spirits of Personality, the Primal Beginnings, the Archai reached their human level, during the Sun period the Archangels, during the Moon period the Angels and during the Earth period, mankind.

You will also have seen from our talks on evolution, that each level of beings that reaches a certain stage of development, received preparation in advance. We know that the human being was being prepared throughout the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and that what we nowadays call man's completed physical body has been evolving since the Saturn period, the etheric body since the Sun period, the astral body since the Moon period, and that the ego was only added to these during the Earth period; that is, all the beings that are at a certain level are prepared as a whole.

Now you may be anxious to know whether, in our present period of evolution, beings are being prepared to attain their human level in the Jupiter period. Another thing you know is that during the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods—you can look it up in my book Occult Science—the spirits of the higher hierarchies took part in the preparation of humanity. There is a description of how the Angels, Archangels and Archai were involved in the development of human beings, and therefore an obvious question is whether human beings, during their Earth existence, are possibly involved in preparing the beings who will reach their human level during the Jupiter period?

This question is certainly a vital one for every feeling person, if his feelings have been inspired by spiritual science, as we have been describing. For it could be the case that human behaviour in general during the course of Earth evolution could either help, or omit to help, the beings who might attain their human level on Jupiter. We might say, ‘What could be worse than behaving in such a way during Earth evolution as to make it impossible for proper Jupiter beings to arise through our deeds?’ We must of course take it for granted, if we want to talk about these things, that there is a certain goodwill, for these are truly important secrets of initiation, the kind of initiation secrets that modern science detests as a matter of course. One certainly has to prepare one's feeling to be able to look at the attitude modern science is bound to have to the real truths of life.

In the previous lectures I have already tried to say a little about the way modern science necessarily relates to life. It cannot make direct contact with the secrets of life. It cannot even want to; it must not even pretend to want to reach these secrets of life. It is surely a good thing to make hard-boiled eggs for the people who like eating eggs when they are hard-boiled, and hard-boiled eggs are useful for those who like them. But if someone wanted to go and say that he takes the eggs away from the hens to hard-boil them, and then lets them hatch them after that, he would be doing something absurd. A person does exactly the same thing as far as the cosmos is concerned, if he sets out to solve the secrets of the cosmos and wants to use modern science for it; this is the same attitude as wanting to hatch hard-boiled eggs that have nothing left in them to be hatched out.

I will show you by means of a comparison just how misleading this science is that is bound up with the whole way of modern thinking, particularly when it approaches the real riddles of life. If somebody wants to hold forth about whether science is helpful or harmful he will usually start off by asking, ‘Is science right about this or that?’ And if he can prove that it is right in one or another instance, he will swear by it as a matter of course.

But this is just what we have to get away from, this attaching so much importance to the question of whether what science says is right or not. We must reach the point of seeing that this is not the main thing when it comes to the solving of riddles of life. If someone sees a horse-drawn cart with a man in it, he will be quite right in saying that the horses are pulling this person in the cart, and drawing him along behind them. This is correct, of course. And anyone who wanted to say that the horses were not drawing the cart and the man sitting in it, would obviously be wrong. But it is also true that the man sitting in the cart, through the way he guides the horses, is controlling the direction in which they should pull him; and that is surely the more important aspect from the point of view of the destination. Modern science can be compared to the statement of the person who denies that the man in the cart is guiding the horses, and insists that the horses are drawing the man in the cart.

If you think the comparison through in detail, you will get the right idea about the relation of modern science to modern research into truth. I have to say these things over and over again, because a person who bases himself on our world outlook, must come more and more into the position where he can defend and protect our spiritual-scientific outlook against the attacks of the modern world outlook. But you will be able to do this only if you enlighten yourself as to the relation of modern external science to a genuine research into truth. You must always approach spiritual-scientific questions with a certain attitude and a certain kind of feeling, otherwise you will not make the proper connection with them.

Now our question concerning the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter is connected in very truth with the deepest questions of man's Earth evolution. There is something in our Earth evolution that has always been a philosophical problem, namely the relation between man's moral behaviour and his natural existence. As an earthly being, man has to decide to what extent he is the kind of being who is ruled by his instincts, has to obey and satisfy them, and is at the mercy of his instincts and their satisfaction, because the laws of nature simply insist on their being satisfied. That is one side of human nature. In this respect we say, ‘We do these things because we have to. We have to eat and we have to sleep.’ But there is another realm of human conduct on this earth, a realm in which we cannot say ‘must’, for it would lose its whole significance if we were to say ‘must’ here. This is the wide realm of ‘shall’, a realm where we feel that we have to follow a purely spiritual impulse as distinct from instinct and everything arising out of ourselves on a natural level. ‘You shall’ never speaks to us from out of our instincts but directs us in a purely spiritual way. ‘You shall’ comprises the realm of our moral obligations.

There are some philosophers who cannot find any connection between what is implied by the ‘you shall’ and ‘you must’. And our present age that is almost bogged down in materialism, especially where moral life is concerned, and will get more and more bogged down, would like to turn all the ‘you shalls’ into ‘you musts’. We are heading for times where, in this respect, the turning of ‘you shall’ into ‘you must’ will be blazoned forth with a certain amount of pride, and actually called psychology. Terrible aspects present themselves if we look at what has begun to develop in the field of criminal psychology. It is already evident that the human being is being conceived of in such a way that people do not ask whether he has overstepped a ‘you shall’, but try to prove that he was driven to one or another destructive act out of the necessity of his nature. Strange experiments are on the increase to define crime merely as a particular case of illness. All these things arise out of a certain materialistic lack of clarity in our times, regarding the relation of ‘you shall’ to ‘you must’.

What does this ‘you shall’, or in other words the categorical imperative, actually signify within the whole framework of human existence? Whoever obeys the ‘you shall’ is known to carry out a moral action. Whoever does not obey the ‘you shall’ commits an immoral action. This is of course a trivial truth. But now let us attempt to look at ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, not only with regard to the external maya of the physical plane, but with regard to the truth and what is actually behind physical maya. Here the moral element corresponding to the ‘you shall’ appears to initiation science as something that hits you in the eye, spiritually, to put it rather crudely. If you look at a person—these truths which the materialistic outlook detests have to be told sometime—if you look at someone in certain temperature and weather conditions—you see this even better in horses, but we are not speaking about horses now—you will see him breathing out, and the breath becoming visible as vapour in the air. Obviously as far as materialistic science is concerned, this breath a person exhales, disperses and dissolves and has no further significance. But it has significance for a person who follows up the phenomena of life with initiation science, for he sees in the patterns of the breath the exact traces of the moral or immoral conduct of the person. A person's moral or immoral behaviour can be seen in the steamy breath, and the breath of a person who is morally inclined is quite different from the breath of a person who is inclined to immorality. You know, with regard to various things in the human being, the more delicate qualities can only be seen in the more delicate parts of the etheric and astral aura. But man's moral and immoral nature in the ordinary sense of the word is actually visible in the etheric-astral content of the steamy breath. The physical part of it dissolves. But what is incorporated in it does not dissolve; for it contains a genie, which, in the case of steamy breath, has a physical, an etheric and an astral part, only the physical is not earthly, just watery. Something that has an extremely differentiated form can be seen in this breath.

Deeds which arise out of love show something quite different from deeds which are done out of enthusiasm, a creative urge or the urge for perfection, for instance. But in every case the form in the breath reminds one of beings that do not exist on earth at all as yet. These beings are a preparation for the ones that will reach their human stage on Jupiter. Their forms are very changeable and will pass through further changes in the future, for these beings are the first advance shadow images of the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter.

In a certain way we also owe our existence to the exhalation of the Angeloi on the Moon, and it is one of the moving experiences of spiritual life to know that Jupiter human beings of the future will evolve out of what we breathe out in present ages. If we turn to the Bible with such knowledge in mind, and read the opening words, we can tell ourselves, ‘Now we begin to understand what is meant when it says that the Elohim formed earthly man by breathing into him.’

I will confess that I would never have understood the part about the Elohim breathing the living being of man into his mouth and nose, if I had not known beforehand that the breath of earthly human beings also contains the first germinal beginnings of the beings who will become human on Jupiter. But Jupiter human beings can only arise from the kind of breath that owes its existence to deeds that obey the ‘you shall’, and which are therefore moral actions.

Thus we see that through our earthly morality we take a creative part in the whole cosmic order. It is indeed a creative power, and we can see that spiritual science gives us a strong impulse for moral action by telling us that we are working against the creation of Jupiter human beings, if we do not act in a moral way on earth. This gives morality a very real value and makes its existence worthwhile. Our human conduct is very strongly formed by what we acquire through spiritual science, especially as we become acquainted with real secrets regarding the cosmos.

I have already made references to similar things and mentioned at various times that language also symbolises man's own future creativity. I do not wish to dwell on this today though, but just wanted to show you, to begin with, what significance moral behaviour has in the whole of the cosmos.

You could now ask, ‘What about immoral behaviour?’ Immoral behaviour also comes to expression in the formation of the breath. But immoral behaviour imprints a demonic form on it. Demons are born through man's immoral conduct. Let us look at the difference between the demons that arise through immoral behaviour and the spiritual beings—spiritual in so far as they only have a watery existence on earth—the spiritual forms that are created by moral actions.

These beings that incarnate as far as a transitory watery existence and arise from moral conduct, are the kind of beings that have an astral, an etheric and finally a physical body condensed to the level of wateriness, just as, in the Moon period, we had an etheric, an astral and a physical body, and this physical body was also only condensed to a wateriness. We were more or less like that, even if not exactly the same. And this creature, with a physical body, etheric body and astral body that arises out of moral actions, is predestined to receive an ego, just as in the Moon period our physical, etheric and astral body were predestined to receive an ego. They have the basis for receiving an ego, and beings of this kind are qualified to undergo a regular progressive evolution in the cosmos. The other beings, the demons created out of immoral actions, also have an astral body, an etheric body and a physical body, at the watery stage, of course, but they do not have the basis for developing an ego. They are born without heads, as it were. Instead of taking up the basis for progressing along a regular evolutionary path to the Jupiter existence, they reject this basis. By doing so they fall victim to the fate of dropping out of evolution. But this only increases the hordes of luciferic beings, for they come under their power. As they cannot progress in a regular way they have to become parasites. This is what happens to all the beings that reject their normal path; they have to attach themselves to others in order to move on. These beings that arise through immoral actions have the particular inclination to be parasites in human evolution on earth under Lucifer's leadership, and to seize hold of the evolution of the human being before he makes his physical entry into the world. They attack man during the embryonic period and share his existence between conception and birth. Some of these beings, if they are strong enough, can continue to accompany the human being after birth, as seen in the phenomena of children who are possessed.

What is brought about by the criminal demon parasites attached to unborn children is the cause of the deterioration of the generation succession, which are not as they would be if these demons did not exist. There are various reasons for the decline of families, tribes, peoples and nations, but one of them is the existence of these criminal demon parasites during man's embryonic period.

These things play a great part in Earth evolution as a whole, and they bring us into contact with deep secrets of human existence. This is often the cause of people acquiring certain prejudices and points of view before they are born into earth existence. And people are tormented by doubts and uncertainties in life and all kinds of other things, because of these demonic parasites.

There is not much more these beings can do with the human being once his ego has entered and made itself felt, but they prey on him all the more before he is born or during his earliest years. Thus we see that evil actions have a significant effect in the cosmos, too, and work creatively, but their creativity works in the direction of the ancient Moon existence. For what man passes through in the embryonic period when these demonic beings can prey on him, is basically the heritage of the old Moon period, which makes its appearance in subconscious, instinctive behaviour. Something that even physical science preserves an instinct for is that, in older and better times, man's embryonic period was not calculated according to ordinary months but lunar months, therefore it speaks of ten lunar months, and knows certain other things, too, concerning the connection of embryonic development with the phases of the moon.

So we see that our Earth evolution contains two tendencies: good deeds that contain the impulse to work creatively on Earth in preparation for Jupiter, so that man's successor on the human level can come into being. But evil deeds have also brought into our evolution the tendency to drag the Earth back again to the ancient Moon period and make it dependent on everything to do with the subconscious. If you think about it, you will find a great number of things that are connected with these subconscious impulses; in fact, there are far more of these subconscious impulses in materialistic humanity of modern times, than there were in bygone ages when people were less materialistic.

I believe that the kind of things I have been telling you about again today will make you feel what a deep impression spiritual science can make on your outlook on life, and that it really and truly will not only give you theoretical knowledge but will be capable of giving human life a new direction. A time will come when life will become quite chaotic if people do not use the chance of giving it a new direction out of spiritual-scientific knowledge. Man must get beyond a knowledge that is restricted to the physical body. Our materialistic age does not want knowledge of any other sort than the kind that is restricted to the physical body. But man has to lift his knowledge out of the physical body. And what we know today as the first exercises in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds will gradually—though ‘gradually’ will be quite a long time—they will gradually turn into something he does naturally, something he will feel to be second nature. Particularly what we call thought concentration will come naturally to people.

People will more and more feel the need really to concentrate their thoughts, to focus their whole soul activity on sharply defined thoughts which they place in front of their consciousness. Whilst they would otherwise let their senses roam from one thing or fact to another, they will more and more often direct their thought life to certain things of their own choosing; even if only for a short time, they will concentrate on a definite thought, so as to focus their soul activity on this thought. They will then discover something that a lot of you know very well. Everyone makes a certain discovery in the course of concentrating. If we place a thought in the centre of our consciousness and focus all our soul activity on it, we shall notice the thought growing stronger and stronger. Certainly it does. But then there comes a point where it does not get stronger any more but gets weaker and fades away. This is an experience lots of you will have had. The thought has to fade away, it has, as it were, to die away inside. For the kind of thoughts we have to begin with and the way we think, are through the instrument of the physical body, and we concentrate the kind of thinking we do by means of the instrument of the physical body until the moment the thought dies, then we slip out of the physical body.

We would go into the unconscious altogether if, parallel with this concentration exercise, we did not attempt to do something else to maintain our consciousness when we have slipped out of our physical body. What we have to do to maintain our consciousness when we are outside, is what we call leading a calm and composed life and accepting the things of the world calmly. We can do even more than accept things calmly. We can take seriously a theory we know so well, namely the concept of karma. What do I mean?

A person is not at all inclined, to start with, to take the idea of karma really seriously. If he has only a small mishap that hurts him, or anything at all happens to him, he sometimes gets furious, but at any rate he has antipathy for it. We encounter what we call our destiny with sympathy or antipathy. It cannot be any different in ordinary life, as it is absolutely essential that we feel sympathy for some of the occurrences of destiny and antipathy for others. To us, destiny is something that meets us from outside.

If we take the idea of karma seriously, we must really recognise our ego in our destiny and realise we ourselves are active in what happens to us through destiny; that we are the actual agents. When someone offends us it is certainly difficult to believe we are hidden behind the offender. For it may be necessary in physical life to punish the offence. But we must always keep a corner within us where we admit to ourselves, ‘Even when someone offends you it is you offending yourself, when someone hits you it is you hitting yourself, when unpleasant blows of destiny hit you, it is you, yourself, dealing yourself these blows.’ We forget that we are not only within our skin but are in our destiny; we forget we are within all the so-called chance happenings of our destiny.

It is very difficult really to acquire the attitude that one's own ego brings one one's destiny. But it is true that with our own ego we bring ourselves our destiny, and we get the impulses for this in the life between death and a new birth according to our earlier incarnations, so that we can bring ourselves our destiny. We have to unite with our destiny and, instead of warding off hard blows of destiny with antipathy, tell ourselves more and more often, ‘Through having this blow of destiny, that is, through meeting yourself in this blow of destiny, you are making yourself stronger, more vigorous and robust.’ It is more difficult to form a union with your destiny in this way than to resist it, but what we lose when our thought passes away can only be regained by drawing into ourselves, like this, what is outside us. We cannot stay in what is within our skin if the thought fades when we concentrate on it, but it will carry us out of ourselves if we have taken hold of our destiny, our karma, in the true sense. We thus awaken ourselves again. The thought dies, but we carry forth the identification we have grasped between our ego and our destiny, and it carries us about the world.

This composure with respect to our destiny, this sincere acceptance of destiny, is what gives us existence when we are outside our body. Obviously this does not need to alter our life on the physical plane. We cannot always do that. But the attitude we have to acquire in a corner of our soul must be there, for the moments when we really want to be able to live consciously outside our body.

Two maxims can be our guiding principles and can mean a very great deal to us. The first of these to impress upon our minds is:

Strive for the dying away of the thought in the universe.

For the thought becomes a living force outside, only when it dies away in the universe. Yet we cannot unite ourselves with this living force unless we work at the content of the second maxim:

Strive for the resurrection of destiny in the ‘I’.

If you achieve this, you unite what has been reborn in the thought with the resurrected ego outside you.

There is a great deal in human nature, though, which makes it difficult to progress in the spirit of these maxims. It is particularly hard to look at the relationship between inner and outer in the right way. The more ethics we can learn from spiritual science in this connection, the better. And we can learn ethics from it in so far as certain ethical concepts acquire life and blood for the first time through what spiritual science can bring to them.

For instance, there are people who are perpetually complaining about other people and the awful things they do to them. They go as far as to say that other people persecute them. Everything of this kind is always connected with the other pole of human nature, you only have to observe life in the right way, which means according to spiritual science as properly understood. Of course there is good reason to complain about unkindness, but in spite of this you will always find, if you go through life with vision that has been made somewhat clairvoyant by spiritual science, that most of these complaints come from egoists, and that the suspicion that everyone wants to be nasty to them arises most often in egoistic natures, whereas a loving disposition will not readily suspect persecution, nor that people are trying to harm them in all kinds of ways, and so on.

When it is put into words like this it is easy to agree with it in theory. I am actually convinced that most people will admit to it theoretically, if they stop to think about it. But to live accordingly is what matters.

Now you may ask, ‘How do we live accordingly?’ And again the answer must be, ‘You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can.’ That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses.

This was the main reason that led us to make the Goetheanum building a kind of focal point for this living anthroposophical striving, for as I mentioned yesterday, the Goetheanum building, in its form, and in the whole way it has been built, has a bodily, a soul and a spiritual nature in a spiritual-scientific sense. It is itself a token of the fact that we are striving according to impulses from the spiritual world to bring into human evolution what it so badly needs, if the immediate future is to go the way it should. The very fact that you can perceive the being of spiritual science in the forms of the Goetheanum building makes it a sort of centre, a focal point around which the kind of anthroposophical striving can crystallise, that has to become an essential part of the evolution of humanity.

We probably often say that we live in troubled times and that many things exist today which stand out in stark contrast to spiritual science. Yet our karma has allowed us to come so far as to overcome, as it were, the material basis out of which our Goetheanum is built, so that it can be a token of spiritual science even in its external form.

Each one of us can acknowledge this to himself, as I often do, especially in the difficult times we are going through in face of the strong attacks being made on anthroposophy at present. Some people can question how much personal progress we have made on our part towards what ought to be crystallising around the Goetheanum. Even if one or another individual cannot be physically present any more in the work being done on the physical plane, the fact that the building is there, and that our karma has brought it to us, is an important step forward. And if we bear in mind that people with as deep an understanding of spiritual science as Christian Morgenstern, for example, remain united, even after physical death, with what the Goetheanum is intended to be, then our building can also be a token in our time of the kind of activity within our spiritual movement that is not concerned with boundaries between what is usually called life and death.

We can really feel united with this building, and therefore it can stimulate us to think the kind of serious thoughts which it is quite natural for us to think at a time like ours, when materialism is at its peak. Even if this building finds one or another individual co-operating only as a spiritual being, the building will be important for the continuation of our movement. This, you will understand, is said only to show you that our movement has a seriousness that goes beyond life and death.

We have encountered this seriousness to a special degree this week. And if one thing happens, why should not other things be able to happen soon, too? It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve what I have spoken about and mentioned again this time. I have stressed that I give the strictest attention to choosing and finding exactly the right words for which I can be fully answerable to the spiritual worlds. So it is to be desired that these words shall be heard and received in the same spirit.

Times will certainly come when people will be able to be more light-hearted with regard to the anthroposophical movement. But now, right at the beginning, we must get used to taking things very, very seriously. A while ago I talked here about occult research, among other things, because I thought it would be of use to some of you. I was mainly describing facts. I thought these would be of help to one or another of you in understanding our present difficult times. But that which I presented with this intention has not been treated with sufficient caution—there are one or two exceptions, of course, but I am right in saying that not everyone has treated it with the necessary discretion and regard, and it has transpired that it was repeated here and there in a form that conveyed exactly the opposite of what I said here.

If I just think of what has been made out of something that cannot have been misunderstood because it is already in print, regarding the classification of the peoples of Europe according to sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness soul and the ego, which was truly not meant to express a superiority; if I think of the statements that have gone out into the world and the opposition and bad feeling they have aroused, it is easy to see that the principle of taking things quite exactly, even in such difficult cases, has not been given due consideration. If, for instance, I have ever said that the ego activity which is there among the European peoples ought to be effective in organising the European population, I would have been talking nonsense. Yet this is one of the things that has been made public, and it creates the most fearful misunderstandings and bad feelings.

So I am duty-bound not to say a word about these things in my lectures for the time being. I must desist from any mention of them, and whereas everybody else is free to speak about it, it has become impossible for me to do so because of the way people have misconstrued what I said.

All these things go to show that we should look at ourselves and see if we cannot take the anthroposophical movement absolutely seriously. For sometimes we completely fail to notice how much feeling of responsibility there is for each sentence of the communications of genuine spiritual research, when the matter is taken seriously. To stir up emotions is certainly not what spiritual science is for, nor to oppose or pacify them. And if anyone says these things are communicated in order to oppose somebody, he ought to ask himself whether the right or wrong use has been made of that which has been communicated with the utmost objectivity and reverent love of truth. These are things which add even more pain to my occult experiences, which are already painful enough. Even if I cannot mention certain important things, and a lot has to be omitted which I thought we could investigate soon, there are still some important and substantial matters left for us to discuss during our time together.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture II 04 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture II 04 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
I should like to begin today by saying a few words about the boiler house attached to the Goetheanum and the architectural principle underlying it. If you want to study what motivated the architectural forms of this house, you must bear in mind that it is part of the whole Goetheanum building and belongs to it. This fact of it belonging to the building has to come to expression in the artistic conception of the building itself, if this conception is correct. It should not be an abstraction but has to be expressed in the artistic form. Now let us have a look at the whole question of related artistic forms. We get closest to this if we do what human beings unfortunately do far too seldom, and think of the tremendous artistic creative activity we find exemplified if we are able to look at the spiritual aspect of nature and recognise natural creation as a product of the spirit. I would like to draw your attention to the forms of the bony system because it is easiest to see there. Man's bony system, especially, is less difficult to study than the forms of any other living organisms. You will know that I have been trying for decades to arouse some understanding in the world for the significant discoveries Goethe made in the field of anatomy and physiology, which I should like to call his second major achievement in this realm. I will not touch on the first one today but only refer to the second. This second significant discovery owes its origin to what one might, in the external materialistic world, call the combination of chance and human genius. Goethe himself relates that one day when he was going for a walk in the Jewish cemetery in Venice he found a sheep's skull that had fallen apart at the seams. Picking it up and looking at the form of the bones the thought occurred to him, ‘When I look at these head bones, what actually are they? They are transformed dorsal vertebrae.' You know, of course, that the spinal cord that encloses the spine marrow as a nerve cord is composed of rings which fit into one another, rings with a definite shape and processes (procesus vertebralis). And if you imagine one of these rings expanding so that the hole the marrow passes through—for the rings fit into one another—begins to get larger and the bone gets correspondingly thinner and expands like elastic, not only in a horizontal direction but also in other directions, then the form that arises out of this ring form is nothing else but the bone formation which forms our skullcap. Our skullcaps are transformed dorsal vertebrae. On the basis of spiritual science we can develop this discovery of Goethe's even further and can say today that every bone man has is a transformation, a metamorphosis of a single form. The only reason we do not notice this is because we have very primitive views of what can arise through transformation. If you think of a bone of the upper arm—you know of course what it looks like—a tubular bone like that would not immediately strike you as being similar to a bone in our head. But that is only due to our not having developed the concept of transformation far enough. The first idea you will have is that the tubular bone has to be puffed up until it is hollow inside, then you ought to arrive at the form of the head bone. But that is not the principle underlying the shapes of the bones. A tubular bone would first have to be turned round, and you would not see the similarity it has to the skullcap until you had turned it inside out like a glove. But when a person turns a glove inside out he expects it to look the same as it did before, doesn't he? This is because the glove is something dead. It is quite different with something living. If the glove were alive, the following would happen when it was turned inside out: changes would occur like the thumb and the little finger getting very long, the middle finger very short, and the palm contracting, and so on. The turning inside out and the varying elasticity of the material would bring all sorts of changes about, in fact, the glove would acquire a totally different form, although it would still be the glove. This is how you must imagine a tubular upper arm bone being turned inside out, and then a skullcap would emerge. You will realise that the wise powers of the Godhead in the cosmos possessed a greater wisdom than arrogant man has today, to be able to set the forces of transformation in motion that are needed to form a skull.The inner unity in nature comes from the very fact that, fundamentally, even the most dissimilar forms are transformations of one archetypal form. There is nothing in the realm of life that could not arise as a metamorphosis of a primary form. In the course of this metamorphosis something else happens as well. Certain parts of the primary form become larger at the expense of others, and other parts become smaller; also various limbs expand, but not all to the same extent. This produces dissimilarities, although they are all transformations of the same primary form. Now look at the primary form of our whole Goetheanum building. I can only give you a very sketchy account of what I want to tell you, and only mention one point of view. If you look at the Goetheanum you will see that it has double domes and that the domes rest on a cylindrical sub-structure. The fact that it is a building with double domes is vital, for these double domes are an expression of the living element. If there had only been one dome then in essence our building would have been dead. The living quality of our building is expressed in the fact that the consciousness of the one dome is reflected in the other, as it were, that the two domes mirror one another, just as the part of man that is in the external world is reflected in man's organs. The basic concept of the double dome must be borne in mind in relation to anything organically connected with the Goetheanum, for if it were not to contain the double dome form, however hard it was to recognise, it would not express the essential nature of the concept of the building. Therefore the annexe must also contain the concept of the double dome. Figure 1 Now look at the double dome and its additional constructions. First of all we have the interpenetration of the two dome motifs, whose importance I have often referred to. They represent a kind of new innovation in architecture and, as you know, were done with the help of Herr Englert. The interpenetration of the two domes is of special importance in the main building because it expresses the inner connection of the two elements which mirror one another. I am giving you this concept of mirroring in an abstract way at the moment. A very great deal is contained in this interpenetration of the two dome motifs; an infinite amount of different aspects. The further stage of the building, the artistic stage, that expresses the image of the concept of spiritual science, can only come into being because we have succeeded in achieving this interpenetration of the double dome motifs. So we have this interpenetration in the main building. If we were to cancel the interpenetration and separate the dome motifs, we move towards the ahrimanic principle. If we bring them closer together or overlap them completely, by building one inside the other, we would approach the luciferic principle. So the ahrimanic principle has to be taken out of the building. In the annexe the domes have to be pushed apart, for in the case of the annexe, too, the dome concept is vital. And now imagine the domes kept apart. Imagine that on one side, this side motif (south portal of the main building) has shrunk to nothing, so the dotted line has gone, and on the other side it has grown considerably larger (and become the chimney). With the main building in mind, imagine that here (south) you have the separated domes, here is a front structure, and here the whole thing has been pushed in (see a). There the whole thing has been pulled out instead of being pushed in (b) but here (a) it has shrunk to nothing instead of growing. Imagine that on the other side (the front structure of the north portal) it developed considerably, and you have the transformation motif for an annexe of our main building which has developed out of the primary forms. For if you imagine this getting smaller and smaller (the chimney), that coming out again and the whole thing pushed together, then the annexe would be transformed into the main building. (Dr. Steiner was using a model of the boiler house as he spoke.) Figure 2 The point is that this metamorphosis of our main building shall be suitable for its purpose. Just as a vertebra arises out of the same primary form as the human skull, and you can think of one changing into the other, you can also think of the main building and the annexe changing from one to the other. The concept of the form can pass from one form to the other, if it metamorphoses and becomes alive. We really have to become apprentices of the creative hierarchies who created by means of metamorphosis, and learn to do the same thing ourselves. Now imagine the kind of force necessary to enlarge this insignificant-looking part on this side (north portal of the main building which becomes the chimney). If you have a small rubber bag that you want to enlarge, you have to press it this way and that way from inside so that it gets bigger. A force has to be there that can enlarge things and develop them. So if one of these side wings really has to be puffed up, it would have to be done by a force working from inside, from here (see left diagram). Figure 3 What kind of forces can they be, in there? You can study these forces in the forms of the architraves. If you imagine the forces in the architraves jumping into the side structure and pushing this up, you get this form (chimney and back wall). You have to try and slip inside these forms of the architraves with your formative artistic thinking and contract and expand them. Imagine, that because you have slipped inside, you enlarge what is small in there. Then this form arises (chimney and back wall). There is no other way of going about creating things that belong together, than by trying to get inside them. This slipping into things and being inside them is another way of imitating the creative forces in nature, and unless modern industrial civilisation does this, it will not overcome its godforsakenness. It would be impossible to imagine the ordinary kind of chimney as a product of natural creation. It only exists because there is a denial of divine-spiritual forces in nature. There is hardly anything outside in nature that you could compare with an ordinary chimney except possibly the rather hideous-looking asparagus plant. But that is a kind of exception. Whatever grows with the forces of earth can never go straight upwards like a chimney. If you want to study the forces that work in an upward direction, a tree is the best example in which to find what corresponds to the hidden forces in the earth, for a tree does not only develop a trunk in the vertical, but also has to reach out with its branches. The point obviously is not to imitate this directly in the model, but to study those forces which radiate out from the earth and overcome the purely vertical direction of the tree trunk by reaching out breadthways and putting forth branches. This part here does justice to the centrifugal forces in space, in the cosmos, to what I would like to call the branchlike centrifugal forces (on the chimney). Although I have only been able to show you the roughest principles, I could justify the principles behind this architectural form in minute detail in the case of every single plane, but it would take too long. Now a form such as this is only complete when it is fulfilling its purpose. If you look at the form now it is not complete. It will only be complete when the heating is actually functioning inside and smoke is coming out; smoke belongs to it, it really belongs, and this has been included in the architectural form. One day when the rising of the smoke is observed clairvoyantly, and the smoke coming out of the chimney, the spiritual part of the rising smoke will also be taken into consideration—for we shall know, when we have really observed it clairvoyantly, that the physical also contains a spiritual element. For just as you have a physical, an etheric and an astral body, the smoke also has at least an etheric part. And this etheric part goes a different way from the physical: the physical part will go upwards, but the etheric part is really caught by these twigs that reach outwards. A time will come when people will see the physical part of the smoke rising while the etheric part wafts away. When this kind of thing is expressed in the form, a principle of all art is gradually being complied with, namely, the presenting of the inner essence in outer form, really making the inner essence the principle according to which the outer form is created. As I said, I would have to do a lot of talking if I were to go into all the details on which these architectural forms are based, although these might be far more interesting than those we have already discussed. One of these interesting things is that it was possible to express everything that had to be expressed in this modern material, and build with concrete. For it will be possible to go a long way with form-making in this modern material, especially in the designing of buildings in this style that will serve modern ahrimanic civilisation. In fact it is essential to do so. There is no need for me to go into any further details, because I am more concerned with showing you the principle of this building and everything to do with it. This principle can he modified in many respects. For instance the dome can be modified so that it does not look like a dome any more, if it is looked at merely from the geometrical-mathematical point of view and not organically, and so on. But today I wanted to discuss the particular principle of inner metamorphosis and transformation, the life principle within these. I wanted to cite this to show you in what way real artistic creativity, when it has to do with our spiritual-scientific conception, has to differ from any kind of symbolic interpretation, for that is external. It is a matter of getting an inner grasp of what you are being shown here and following the process with your whole soul. When the building is eventually finished we do not continually want to be asked, ‘What does this mean and that mean?', and have to witness people happily believing that they have discovered the meaning of some of these things. Regarding some of these interpretations, we have come into a strange position along some of the by-paths of theosophy, with respect to quite a number of poetic and literary works. For instance, people have explained plays by saying that one person means manas, another person buddhi and a third person atma, and so on. If you want to, you can of course explain everything like this. But we are not concerned with this kind of interpretation, but with entering into things and joining in the process of creativity that came from the higher hierarchies and fills and forms the whole of our world. There is no need to avoid doing this just because it is more difficult than symbolic or allegorical interpretation. For it leads into the spiritual world and is the very strongest incentive for really acquiring imagination, inspiration and intuition. A vital part of the present-day impulses for change is that we acquire more and more understanding for the way the human soul rises into the realms that open up to imaginative, inspirational and intuitive observation. For these realms contain the elements that will make our world whole again, and which will lift us up out of mere maya and lead us to true reality. It has to be stressed again and again that the new spiritual knowledge we are moving towards, cannot consist of repeating the results of earlier clairvoyance. There are certainly a lot of people striving to repeat earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is over, and it is only atavistic echoes of ancient clairvoyance that can possibly occur in these few individuals. But the levels of human existence to which we must ascend will not open up to a repetition of ancient clairvoyance. Let us have another look at the essential basis of this new clairvoyance. We have often referred to the principle of the thing, and now we want to try and approach it from another angle. Again we will start with something we all know, namely, that during waking day man lives with his ego and his astral body within his etheric and his physical body. But I have already emphasised during the past few days that, awake as he is between waking up and going to sleep, man is not fully awake, for something in him is still asleep. What we feel as our will is really only partly awake. Our thoughts are awake from when we wake up until we go to sleep, but willing is something we carry out completely in a dream. This is why all the pondering about freedom of will and about freedom altogether has been in vain, because people have failed to notice that what they know about the will during the daytime is actually only the dreaming of their will impulses. If you have an impulse of will and make a mental image of it you are certainly awake. But in waking life man only dreams with regard to how the will arises and goes over into action. If you pick up a piece of chalk and make a mental image of picking it up, that is of course something you can have a mental image of. But with only your day consciousness and without clairvoyance you know no more about how the ego and astral body stream into your hand and how the will spreads out, than you know about a dream whilst you are dreaming. We can only dream about the actual will with ordinary waking consciousness, and where most things are concerned we do not even dream, we just sleep. You can clearly visualise putting a mouthful of food on your fork, and to a certain extent you can visualise chewing it, but you do not even dream about swallowing it. You are usually quite unconscious of it, as you are unconscious of your thoughts while you are asleep. So during waking life a major part of our will activity is carried out in waking day sleep. If we did not sleep with regard to our desires and the feeling impulses bound up with them, something strange would begin to happen. We would follow the course of our actions right into our body; everything we do out of will impulse would be followed up inside us in our blood and throughout the whole circulation. That is, if you could follow the picking up of a piece of chalk from the point of view of the will impulse, you would follow what is going on in your hand right into the blood circulation; you would see the activity of the blood and the feelings that are bound up with this from inside. For instance, you would have an inner perception of the weight of the piece of chalk and become aware that you are seeing the nerve channels and the etheric fluid inside them. You would feel yourself moving through the activity of the blood and the nerves, which would amount to an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But we have to be free of this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity during earthly life, otherwise we would go through life wanting this inner enjoyment to accompany everything we do. Our enjoyment of self would increase enormously. But as man is now constituted he should not have this enjoyment. And the secret of why he should not have it can again be found in a passage of the Bible, for which we ought to feel greater and greater reverence. After what had occurred in paradise and is told in the paradise myth, man was permitted to eat from the tree of knowledge but not from the tree of life. Now this inner enjoyment would be the enjoying of the tree of life, and man is not permitted to do this. I cannot develop this theme further today as it would lead too far, but through meditating on it yourselves you will be able to discover more about it. Another thing that can have special significance for us in connection with these present lectures and arises out of this, is the following: not being able to eat from the tree of life means not being able to enjoy the blood and nerve activity going on within us. Yet just because we know the outer world by means of our senses and our reason, something comes about that surely has something to do with this kind of enjoyment. Whenever we perceive anything in the outer world and whenever we think about it, we follow the course of our blood circulation in the region of the senses—eyes, ears, nose and taste nerves—and, in the case of thinking, the nerve channels. But we do not have the perception of what is going on in the blood circulation and nerve channels, for what we would have perceived in the blood is reflected and mirrored by the senses, thus causing the sense impressions to arise. And what is conducted through the nerve channels is also reflected and conducted back to the nerve ends, where it is then mirrored as thought. Now imagine for a moment a human being who is in the following situation: he does not just follow the course of his blood as it responds to the outer world and then receive a mirror image of what his blood does, nor does he just follow the course of his nerves and receive a mirror image of what his nerves do, but he is in a position to experience within himself what is denied us with regard to our blood and our sense nerves; he experiences the blood moving towards the nerve and the eyes. If this were the case he would enjoy his own inner process, at least in the blood and the nerves in this area. This is how the inner pictures of atavistic clairvoyance arise. What we see reflected are only pictures, filtered pictures as it were of what is in the blood and the nerves. There are world secrets in the blood and nerves, but the kind of world secrets that have already given their substance to creating us. It is only ourselves we get to know when we acquire the imaginations resulting from experiencing the blood circulating to the senses, and it is only the inspirations which have the task of building up our bodily nature we get to know, when we experience ourselves in the nerves leading to our senses. A whole inner world can arise in this manner, and this inner world can be a collection of imaginations. Yet although, when perceiving the outer physical world in a way that is proper for our earth evolution, we perceive reflections of our blood and nerve activities, we still cannot get beyond the senses when we indulge in inner enjoyment, but reach only to the point where the blood circulation flows into the senses. Then the experience of the imaginative world is comparable to swimming in blood like a fish in water. But this imaginative world is in reality not an outside world but a world living in our blood. If one lives in the nerves leading to the senses one experiences an inspirational world full of music of the spheres and inner pictures. This is cosmic again but it is nothing new. It has already fulfilled its task in that it has flowed into our nerve and blood systems. The kind of clairvoyance arising in this way, and leading man further into himself instead of beyond himself, is self-enjoyment, veritable self-enjoyment. This is why a kind of refined voluptuousness is brought about in people who become clairvoyant in this way and experience a world which is new to them. And on the whole we must say that this kind of clairvoyance is a return to an earlier stage of evolution. For although this experiencing of a person's own sense organs and blood, as I have been describing to you, did not exist then in the form in which it does today, the nervous system was already there in a germinal state. This kind of perception was the normal one for man on ancient Moon, and what he had then in the way of the beginning of nerves served to give him an inner perception of himself. The blood had not yet taken form inside him. It was more like a warm breath coming towards him from outside, like we receive the rays of the sun. Therefore what is now, on the earth, a perception of the inner blood system was regular, normal perception of the outside world at the Moon stage. You could say that if this is the borderline between man's inner and outer world (a diagram was drawn), then, what are now our nerves were already there, in germinal form, on the Moon. By following the course of the nerves he could perceive what was within him, as a world of inner imagination. He saw that he himself belonged in the cosmos. He also had an imaginative perception of what came to him as a breath from outside and not from inside. That has now ceased, and what was outside, on ancient Moon, has become internalised as the blood circulation in Earth evolution. So it is a regression to the old Moon evolution. It is good to know of these things, because that kind of clairvoyance keeps on making its appearance. It does not need to be acquired along the hard path of meditation and concentration described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The kind of clairvoyance that arises as a result of learning to experience one's nerves and blood as an inner enjoyment is just a more refined development of organic life, a further development of the experience of eating and drinking. This is certainly not mankind's present task, but is a kind of hot-house plant which arises when self-enjoyment of things such as eating and drinking is developed to a fine art. Just as a wine connoisseur has an inner after-taste which is only an imagination of the taste and is not formative, some people have a subtle inner enjoyment which is their clairvoyance. A lot of clairvoyance is nothing more than a subtle, refined, forced kind of after-taste of life. We must become aware of these things again in our time. For people have not known about these secrets nor referred to them in literature since the first half of the nineteenth century. Then the second half of the nineteenth century came, with all the discoveries that are considered so wonderful, and they certainly are wonderful from their point of view, and an understanding of these things and the finer connections of existence were lost. But what has not yet been lost—and this is said in parenthesis—is the enjoyment of the effects of the coarser things we imbibe. Mankind continues to be able to live in the after-enjoyment of eating and drinking, and, precisely in the materialistic age, has cultivated this to an extent. But mankind lives in a rhythmic cycle where things like this are concerned. Of course, because it has eradicated the general feeling it used to have of indulging in self-enjoyment in the senses, nerves and blood circulation, which people had to a greater extent in the past, the materialistic age can devote itself even more strongly to the effects of eating and drinking. You can easily study the whole change and rapid development that has taken place in a relatively short time in this realm. You have only to compare a hotel menu of the 1870's with a present-day one (1915), and you will see the progress that has been made in the sphere of refined pleasures, in the self-enjoyment of one's own body. Yet things of this kind also move in cycles, and achievements are only carried to a certain level. Just as a pendulum can only swing to a certain point before it has to go back again, the indulgence in mere physical pleasure will also have to go in the other direction once it has reached a certain point. This will occur when the keenest epicureans, that is, people with the most longing for pleasures, will look at the choicest dainties and say, ‘Ugh! I don't feel like having that, that is just too much!' This moment will certainly come, for it is a necessary development. Everything moves in cycles. Man experiences the other side of life during sleep. His thought life is asleep and quite different conditions prevail, of course. Now I said that it was chiefly the first half of the nineteenth century that had insight into these matters still; and the kind of clairvoyance that arises when one follows the course of one's own blood and nerve channels was still called pythian clairvoyance at that time, from certain memories the people had, and it is indeed related to the foundations of ancient pythian clairvoyance. Other conditions prevail during sleep. Man is outside his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body. In ordinary life thoughts are then suppressed and devitalised. But between falling asleep and waking up man lives continually with the longing for his physical body. This is precisely what sleep consists of, acquiring a longing for his physical body from the moment he falls asleep. This rises to a climax and then urges him more and more to return to his body. When he is asleep the longing to return to his own physical body becomes stronger and stronger. And because the longing pervades the ego and the astral body like a mist, the life of thought is dimmed. Just as we cannot see the trees any more when mist encloses them, we cannot experience our life of perception within us when the mist of our longing envelops us. Now it can happen that this longing grows so strong during sleep, that man does not keep it outside his physical and etheric body, but that his greed grows to the extent that he partly takes hold of his physical and etheric body and comes into touch with the extreme ends of his blood and nerve channels; he penetrates from outside as it were through his senses into the extreme ends of his blood circulation and his nerve channels. In ancient times, when man still had experiences like these with the help of the gods, as it were, it was a normal and healthy process. The old Hebrew prophets, who accomplished so much for their people, acquired their prophetic gifts through making use of the tremendous love they bore precisely for the blood and nerve composition of their own people, so that even during sleep they did not want to let go altogether of that which lived physically in their people. These prophets of Jewish antiquity were seized with such longing and filled with such love that even in sleep they wanted to remain bound to the blood of the people to whom they belonged. This is precisely what gave them their prophetic gifts. This is the physiological origin of these prophetic gifts, and splendid achievements came about through this channel. This is precisely why the prophets of the various peoples had such significance for their people, because even when they were outside the body they maintained a contact with it in this way. As I mentioned, there was still a certain awareness right up to the first half of the nineteenth century, of this connection in the life of humanity. Just as they called the other kind of clairvoyance pythian clairvoyance, this kind of clairvoyance, which came about through contact of the ego-astral nature of man with the blood and nerve channels of the physical body during sleep, was called prophetic clairvoyance. If you look at the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century you will find descriptions of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance, even if they are not as precise as spiritual-scientific descriptions of them would be today. People do not know the difference between them any more, since they have no understanding for what they can read about them in the books of the first half of the nineteenth century. But neither of these kinds of clairvoyance can really help humanity forward today. Both of them were right for olden times. Modern clairvoyance, which has to develop further and further in the future, can come about neither through enjoying what is going on in our bodies while we are awake, nor by entering into the body from outside in a sleeplike state, urged on by love—even if it is not for ourselves, but for the part of mankind to which our body belongs. Both these levels have been superseded. Modern clairvoyance must be a third way, neither a taking hold of the physical body from outside, in loving longing, nor an enjoying of the physical body from inside. Both these phenomena, that which lives within and floods the body with pleasure, and that which can seize hold of the body from outside, have to go out of the body, if modern clairvoyance is to occur; they may only have the sort of relationship with the body, during incarnation between birth and death, in which they neither enjoy nor love the blood and nerves, either from inside or from outside, but remain connected with the body whilst freely abstaining from such self-enjoyment or self-love. The connection with the body has to be maintained nevertheless, of course, otherwise it would mean a dying. Man must remain bound to the body that belongs to him in physical incarnation on earth, and this must be done by means of the organs which are remote, as it were, or at least relatively remote from the activity of blood and nerves. A detaching from the activity of blood and nerves must be achieved. When a person no longer indulges in enjoyment of self along the channels leading to the senses, nor takes hold of himself, from outside, as far as the senses, but has the kind of relationship to himself, both from inside and from outside, in which he can actually take living hold of what symbolises the death of physical life, then the proper condition has been reached. For we actually die physiologically because we are able to develop the bony system. When we are capable of taking hold of the skeleton which folk wisdom recognises as the symbol of death, and which is as remote from the blood system as it is from the nervous system, then we come to what we can call spiritual-scientific clairvoyance, which is higher than either pythian or prophetic clairvoyance. With spiritual-scientific clairvoyance we take hold of the whole and not just part of the human being, and it actually makes no difference whether we take hold of it from inside or outside, for this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an act of enjoyment. Instead of being a subtle enjoyment it is an opening up and rising into the divine-spiritual forces of the All. It is a uniting with the world. It is no longer an experiencing of the human being and the mysteries that have been woven into him, but an experiencing of the deeds of the beings of the higher hierarchies, whereby one truly lifts oneself out of self-enjoyment and self-love. Man must become a thought as it were, an organ of the higher hierarchies, just as our thoughts are organs of our souls. To be thought of, pictured and perceived by the higher hierarchies, is the principle of spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. To be received, not to take oneself. I would like to express the wish that what I have just been saying might become a real object for your meditation, for precisely that which I have been telling you today can bring many, many things to life in all of you and enliven the actual impulses of our spiritual-scientific movement to an ever greater extent. And how seriously we have to take the enlivening of our spiritual-scientific movement has often been spoken of during these days together. We could bring to realisation a further part—I will not say of what was intended—but of what ought to be intended within this spiritual-scientific movement, if as many people as possible would resolve to think about this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds in a living way, so that our thoughts become clearer and clearer about what, at bottom, we all intend, and which can become so easily confused with what can be had much more comfortably. Truly, it is not for nothing that we work from cycle to cycle to accumulate more and more concepts and ideas. It is not needless work studying these concepts and ideas, for it is precisely the way to prepare the soul impulses that will lead us to real spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. By snatching up one or two ideas given by anthroposophy you can sometimes make a chink in one or another part of the human organisation, causing fragments of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance to arise, enough to make people proud of themselves. If this is the case, we often hear statements like this, ‘I don't need to study everything in detail, and I don't need what the cycles say. I know all that, I knew it already.’ And so on. Many people are still satisfied with the principle of living in a few imaginations which we could call blood and nerve imaginations. A lot of people fancy they have something really special if they have a few blood and nerve imaginations. But this is not what can lead us to selfless co-operation in mankind's development. Indulging in blood and nerve imaginations actually leads to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a more subtle form of egoism. Then, of course, the cultivation of spiritual science can be the very thing that breeds an even more subtle kind of egoism than you ever find in the outside world. It is taken for granted that one is never referring to the present company nor to the Anthroposophical Society, which is, of course, here. But it should be permissible to mention that there are societies in which some people manage to turn the principles in their favour, and without really giving their unselfish support, make use of one or another thing, preferably those things which stimulate blood or nerve imaginations, and then imagine they can spare themselves the rest. As a result they acquire an atavistic clairvoyance, or perhaps not even that, but only the feelings that accompany that kind of imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not an overcoming of egoism, just a heightened form of it. You find in societies like this—the Anthroposophical Society excepted for politeness’ sake—that although it would be people's duty to develop love and harmony out of the depths of their hearts from one member to another, you find disharmony, quarrelsomeness, people telling tales about one another, and so on. I can say things like this, for as I said, I always make an exception of the members of the Anthroposophical Society. This shows us that dark shadows are thrown just where a strong light is about to appear. I am not finding such faults because I imagine these things can be exterminated overnight. That cannot happen, because they come from nature. But at least each person can work on himself; and it is not a good thing if you are not made aware of these things. It is thoroughly understandable that just because a particular movement has to be founded, the shadow sides also make themselves felt in these societies, and that what is rampant in outside life is far more rampant within them. Yet it always gives one a bitter feeling if this happens in societies which, by their very nature—otherwise there would be no point in having a society—should develop a certain brotherliness, a certain loyalty, but just because they come closer together, certain faults that are short-lived in the outside world develop all the more fiercely. As the present company, the Anthroposophical Society, is excepted, it will give us all the more opportunity to think and reflect about these things quite objectively and impartially, so that we really know what they are about. Then if we come across them somewhere, we shall know them for what they are, and not imagine that if someone thinks he has a particularly deep grasp of anthroposophy, that we cannot understand that faults which occur in the outside world appear much more strongly in him. We shall understand it, but we shall also know that we have to combat them. Sometimes we cannot combat them until we have really understood them. This is another example showing how closely connected life is with the spiritual-scientific outlook; that this spiritual- scientific outlook cannot, in fact, achieve its aim unless it becomes an attitude to life, an art of life, and is brought into the whole of life. How wonderful it would be if in—let us now say the Anthroposophical Society—all the various human relationships proved to be as harmonious as we have tried to make the forms of our Goetheanum building, where they change from one to the other and each is in harmony with the other. If it could be the same in life as it is in the Goetheanum, and the whole life of our Society could be like the wonderful co-operation among the people engaged in building the Goetheanum, so that even this very building activity is a harmonious and noble image of what comes to expression in the building itself. Thus, the inner significance of the life principle of our Goetheanum building and the inner significance of the co-operation among the souls—no, I would rather not say that—the inner significance of the harmony of the forms of our building, should find their way into all the various human relationships in our society, and their inner formative force should stand before us as a kind of ideal. I should just like to assure you that the wrong words did not slip out just now, when I stopped in mid-sentence. I stopped quite deliberately, and sometimes the thing is said without actually saying it. To summarise the theme I have given in many variations over these days; what I want to recommend to you most warmly is not only to look at the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual research, with your intellect and reason, but to take what lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of mankind's future progress really depends on this. This can be said without presumption, for anyone can see it if they try at all to study the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our times. With these thoughts I will close the series of lectures I ventured to give you at the turn of the year.

275. Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom: Working with Sculptural Architecture II 04 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Pauline Wehrle, Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

I should like to begin today by saying a few words about the boiler house attached to the Goetheanum and the architectural principle underlying it. If you want to study what motivated the architectural forms of this house, you must bear in mind that it is part of the whole Goetheanum building and belongs to it. This fact of it belonging to the building has to come to expression in the artistic conception of the building itself, if this conception is correct. It should not be an abstraction but has to be expressed in the artistic form.

Now let us have a look at the whole question of related artistic forms. We get closest to this if we do what human beings unfortunately do far too seldom, and think of the tremendous artistic creative activity we find exemplified if we are able to look at the spiritual aspect of nature and recognise natural creation as a product of the spirit. I would like to draw your attention to the forms of the bony system because it is easiest to see there. Man's bony system, especially, is less difficult to study than the forms of any other living organisms.

You will know that I have been trying for decades to arouse some understanding in the world for the significant discoveries Goethe made in the field of anatomy and physiology, which I should like to call his second major achievement in this realm. I will not touch on the first one today but only refer to the second. This second significant discovery owes its origin to what one might, in the external materialistic world, call the combination of chance and human genius. Goethe himself relates that one day when he was going for a walk in the Jewish cemetery in Venice he found a sheep's skull that had fallen apart at the seams. Picking it up and looking at the form of the bones the thought occurred to him, ‘When I look at these head bones, what actually are they? They are transformed dorsal vertebrae.'

You know, of course, that the spinal cord that encloses the spine marrow as a nerve cord is composed of rings which fit into one another, rings with a definite shape and processes (procesus vertebralis). And if you imagine one of these rings expanding so that the hole the marrow passes through—for the rings fit into one another—begins to get larger and the bone gets correspondingly thinner and expands like elastic, not only in a horizontal direction but also in other directions, then the form that arises out of this ring form is nothing else but the bone formation which forms our skullcap. Our skullcaps are transformed dorsal vertebrae.

On the basis of spiritual science we can develop this discovery of Goethe's even further and can say today that every bone man has is a transformation, a metamorphosis of a single form. The only reason we do not notice this is because we have very primitive views of what can arise through transformation. If you think of a bone of the upper arm—you know of course what it looks like—a tubular bone like that would not immediately strike you as being similar to a bone in our head. But that is only due to our not having developed the concept of transformation far enough.

The first idea you will have is that the tubular bone has to be puffed up until it is hollow inside, then you ought to arrive at the form of the head bone. But that is not the principle underlying the shapes of the bones. A tubular bone would first have to be turned round, and you would not see the similarity it has to the skullcap until you had turned it inside out like a glove. But when a person turns a glove inside out he expects it to look the same as it did before, doesn't he? This is because the glove is something dead. It is quite different with something living. If the glove were alive, the following would happen when it was turned inside out: changes would occur like the thumb and the little finger getting very long, the middle finger very short, and the palm contracting, and so on. The turning inside out and the varying elasticity of the material would bring all sorts of changes about, in fact, the glove would acquire a totally different form, although it would still be the glove. This is how you must imagine a tubular upper arm bone being turned inside out, and then a skullcap would emerge.

You will realise that the wise powers of the Godhead in the cosmos possessed a greater wisdom than arrogant man has today, to be able to set the forces of transformation in motion that are needed to form a skull.The inner unity in nature comes from the very fact that, fundamentally, even the most dissimilar forms are transformations of one archetypal form. There is nothing in the realm of life that could not arise as a metamorphosis of a primary form. In the course of this metamorphosis something else happens as well. Certain parts of the primary form become larger at the expense of others, and other parts become smaller; also various limbs expand, but not all to the same extent. This produces dissimilarities, although they are all transformations of the same primary form.

Now look at the primary form of our whole Goetheanum building. I can only give you a very sketchy account of what I want to tell you, and only mention one point of view. If you look at the Goetheanum you will see that it has double domes and that the domes rest on a cylindrical sub-structure. The fact that it is a building with double domes is vital, for these double domes are an expression of the living element. If there had only been one dome then in essence our building would have been dead. The living quality of our building is expressed in the fact that the consciousness of the one dome is reflected in the other, as it were, that the two domes mirror one another, just as the part of man that is in the external world is reflected in man's organs. The basic concept of the double dome must be borne in mind in relation to anything organically connected with the Goetheanum, for if it were not to contain the double dome form, however hard it was to recognise, it would not express the essential nature of the concept of the building. Therefore the annexe must also contain the concept of the double dome.

Now look at the double dome and its additional constructions. First of all we have the interpenetration of the two dome motifs, whose importance I have often referred to. They represent a kind of new innovation in architecture and, as you know, were done with the help of Herr Englert. The interpenetration of the two domes is of special importance in the main building because it expresses the inner connection of the two elements which mirror one another. I am giving you this concept of mirroring in an abstract way at the moment. A very great deal is contained in this interpenetration of the two dome motifs; an infinite amount of different aspects. The further stage of the building, the artistic stage, that expresses the image of the concept of spiritual science, can only come into being because we have succeeded in achieving this interpenetration of the double dome motifs. So we have this interpenetration in the main building. If we were to cancel the interpenetration and separate the dome motifs, we move towards the ahrimanic principle. If we bring them closer together or overlap them completely, by building one inside the other, we would approach the luciferic principle.

So the ahrimanic principle has to be taken out of the building. In the annexe the domes have to be pushed apart, for in the case of the annexe, too, the dome concept is vital. And now imagine the domes kept apart. Imagine that on one side, this side motif (south portal of the main building) has shrunk to nothing, so the dotted line has gone, and on the other side it has grown considerably larger (and become the chimney). With the main building in mind, imagine that here (south) you have the separated domes, here is a front structure, and here the whole thing has been pushed in (see a). There the whole thing has been pulled out instead of being pushed in (b) but here (a) it has shrunk to nothing instead of growing. Imagine that on the other side (the front structure of the north portal) it developed considerably, and you have the transformation motif for an annexe of our main building which has developed out of the primary forms. For if you imagine this getting smaller and smaller (the chimney), that coming out again and the whole thing pushed together, then the annexe would be transformed into the main building.

(Dr. Steiner was using a model of the boiler house as he spoke.)

The point is that this metamorphosis of our main building shall be suitable for its purpose. Just as a vertebra arises out of the same primary form as the human skull, and you can think of one changing into the other, you can also think of the main building and the annexe changing from one to the other. The concept of the form can pass from one form to the other, if it metamorphoses and becomes alive.

We really have to become apprentices of the creative hierarchies who created by means of metamorphosis, and learn to do the same thing ourselves.

Now imagine the kind of force necessary to enlarge this insignificant-looking part on this side (north portal of the main building which becomes the chimney). If you have a small rubber bag that you want to enlarge, you have to press it this way and that way from inside so that it gets bigger. A force has to be there that can enlarge things and develop them. So if one of these side wings really has to be puffed up, it would have to be done by a force working from inside, from here (see left diagram).

What kind of forces can they be, in there? You can study these forces in the forms of the architraves. If you imagine the forces in the architraves jumping into the side structure and pushing this up, you get this form (chimney and back wall). You have to try and slip inside these forms of the architraves with your formative artistic thinking and contract and expand them. Imagine, that because you have slipped inside, you enlarge what is small in there. Then this form arises (chimney and back wall). There is no other way of going about creating things that belong together, than by trying to get inside them.

This slipping into things and being inside them is another way of imitating the creative forces in nature, and unless modern industrial civilisation does this, it will not overcome its godforsakenness. It would be impossible to imagine the ordinary kind of chimney as a product of natural creation. It only exists because there is a denial of divine-spiritual forces in nature. There is hardly anything outside in nature that you could compare with an ordinary chimney except possibly the rather hideous-looking asparagus plant. But that is a kind of exception. Whatever grows with the forces of earth can never go straight upwards like a chimney. If you want to study the forces that work in an upward direction, a tree is the best example in which to find what corresponds to the hidden forces in the earth, for a tree does not only develop a trunk in the vertical, but also has to reach out with its branches. The point obviously is not to imitate this directly in the model, but to study those forces which radiate out from the earth and overcome the purely vertical direction of the tree trunk by reaching out breadthways and putting forth branches. This part here does justice to the centrifugal forces in space, in the cosmos, to what I would like to call the branchlike centrifugal forces (on the chimney).

Although I have only been able to show you the roughest principles, I could justify the principles behind this architectural form in minute detail in the case of every single plane, but it would take too long.

Now a form such as this is only complete when it is fulfilling its purpose. If you look at the form now it is not complete. It will only be complete when the heating is actually functioning inside and smoke is coming out; smoke belongs to it, it really belongs, and this has been included in the architectural form. One day when the rising of the smoke is observed clairvoyantly, and the smoke coming out of the chimney, the spiritual part of the rising smoke will also be taken into consideration—for we shall know, when we have really observed it clairvoyantly, that the physical also contains a spiritual element. For just as you have a physical, an etheric and an astral body, the smoke also has at least an etheric part. And this etheric part goes a different way from the physical: the physical part will go upwards, but the etheric part is really caught by these twigs that reach outwards. A time will come when people will see the physical part of the smoke rising while the etheric part wafts away. When this kind of thing is expressed in the form, a principle of all art is gradually being complied with, namely, the presenting of the inner essence in outer form, really making the inner essence the principle according to which the outer form is created.

As I said, I would have to do a lot of talking if I were to go into all the details on which these architectural forms are based, although these might be far more interesting than those we have already discussed. One of these interesting things is that it was possible to express everything that had to be expressed in this modern material, and build with concrete. For it will be possible to go a long way with form-making in this modern material, especially in the designing of buildings in this style that will serve modern ahrimanic civilisation. In fact it is essential to do so. There is no need for me to go into any further details, because I am more concerned with showing you the principle of this building and everything to do with it. This principle can he modified in many respects. For instance the dome can be modified so that it does not look like a dome any more, if it is looked at merely from the geometrical-mathematical point of view and not organically, and so on. But today I wanted to discuss the particular principle of inner metamorphosis and transformation, the life principle within these. I wanted to cite this to show you in what way real artistic creativity, when it has to do with our spiritual-scientific conception, has to differ from any kind of symbolic interpretation, for that is external. It is a matter of getting an inner grasp of what you are being shown here and following the process with your whole soul.

When the building is eventually finished we do not continually want to be asked, ‘What does this mean and that mean?', and have to witness people happily believing that they have discovered the meaning of some of these things. Regarding some of these interpretations, we have come into a strange position along some of the by-paths of theosophy, with respect to quite a number of poetic and literary works. For instance, people have explained plays by saying that one person means manas, another person buddhi and a third person atma, and so on. If you want to, you can of course explain everything like this. But we are not concerned with this kind of interpretation, but with entering into things and joining in the process of creativity that came from the higher hierarchies and fills and forms the whole of our world. There is no need to avoid doing this just because it is more difficult than symbolic or allegorical interpretation. For it leads into the spiritual world and is the very strongest incentive for really acquiring imagination, inspiration and intuition.

A vital part of the present-day impulses for change is that we acquire more and more understanding for the way the human soul rises into the realms that open up to imaginative, inspirational and intuitive observation. For these realms contain the elements that will make our world whole again, and which will lift us up out of mere maya and lead us to true reality.

It has to be stressed again and again that the new spiritual knowledge we are moving towards, cannot consist of repeating the results of earlier clairvoyance. There are certainly a lot of people striving to repeat earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is over, and it is only atavistic echoes of ancient clairvoyance that can possibly occur in these few individuals. But the levels of human existence to which we must ascend will not open up to a repetition of ancient clairvoyance. Let us have another look at the essential basis of this new clairvoyance. We have often referred to the principle of the thing, and now we want to try and approach it from another angle.

Again we will start with something we all know, namely, that during waking day man lives with his ego and his astral body within his etheric and his physical body. But I have already emphasised during the past few days that, awake as he is between waking up and going to sleep, man is not fully awake, for something in him is still asleep. What we feel as our will is really only partly awake. Our thoughts are awake from when we wake up until we go to sleep, but willing is something we carry out completely in a dream. This is why all the pondering about freedom of will and about freedom altogether has been in vain, because people have failed to notice that what they know about the will during the daytime is actually only the dreaming of their will impulses. If you have an impulse of will and make a mental image of it you are certainly awake. But in waking life man only dreams with regard to how the will arises and goes over into action.

If you pick up a piece of chalk and make a mental image of picking it up, that is of course something you can have a mental image of. But with only your day consciousness and without clairvoyance you know no more about how the ego and astral body stream into your hand and how the will spreads out, than you know about a dream whilst you are dreaming. We can only dream about the actual will with ordinary waking consciousness, and where most things are concerned we do not even dream, we just sleep. You can clearly visualise putting a mouthful of food on your fork, and to a certain extent you can visualise chewing it, but you do not even dream about swallowing it. You are usually quite unconscious of it, as you are unconscious of your thoughts while you are asleep. So during waking life a major part of our will activity is carried out in waking day sleep.

If we did not sleep with regard to our desires and the feeling impulses bound up with them, something strange would begin to happen. We would follow the course of our actions right into our body; everything we do out of will impulse would be followed up inside us in our blood and throughout the whole circulation. That is, if you could follow the picking up of a piece of chalk from the point of view of the will impulse, you would follow what is going on in your hand right into the blood circulation; you would see the activity of the blood and the feelings that are bound up with this from inside. For instance, you would have an inner perception of the weight of the piece of chalk and become aware that you are seeing the nerve channels and the etheric fluid inside them. You would feel yourself moving through the activity of the blood and the nerves, which would amount to an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But we have to be free of this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity during earthly life, otherwise we would go through life wanting this inner enjoyment to accompany everything we do. Our enjoyment of self would increase enormously. But as man is now constituted he should not have this enjoyment. And the secret of why he should not have it can again be found in a passage of the Bible, for which we ought to feel greater and greater reverence.

After what had occurred in paradise and is told in the paradise myth, man was permitted to eat from the tree of knowledge but not from the tree of life. Now this inner enjoyment would be the enjoying of the tree of life, and man is not permitted to do this. I cannot develop this theme further today as it would lead too far, but through meditating on it yourselves you will be able to discover more about it. Another thing that can have special significance for us in connection with these present lectures and arises out of this, is the following: not being able to eat from the tree of life means not being able to enjoy the blood and nerve activity going on within us. Yet just because we know the outer world by means of our senses and our reason, something comes about that surely has something to do with this kind of enjoyment. Whenever we perceive anything in the outer world and whenever we think about it, we follow the course of our blood circulation in the region of the senses—eyes, ears, nose and taste nerves—and, in the case of thinking, the nerve channels. But we do not have the perception of what is going on in the blood circulation and nerve channels, for what we would have perceived in the blood is reflected and mirrored by the senses, thus causing the sense impressions to arise. And what is conducted through the nerve channels is also reflected and conducted back to the nerve ends, where it is then mirrored as thought.

Now imagine for a moment a human being who is in the following situation: he does not just follow the course of his blood as it responds to the outer world and then receive a mirror image of what his blood does, nor does he just follow the course of his nerves and receive a mirror image of what his nerves do, but he is in a position to experience within himself what is denied us with regard to our blood and our sense nerves; he experiences the blood moving towards the nerve and the eyes. If this were the case he would enjoy his own inner process, at least in the blood and the nerves in this area. This is how the inner pictures of atavistic clairvoyance arise. What we see reflected are only pictures, filtered pictures as it were of what is in the blood and the nerves. There are world secrets in the blood and nerves, but the kind of world secrets that have already given their substance to creating us. It is only ourselves we get to know when we acquire the imaginations resulting from experiencing the blood circulating to the senses, and it is only the inspirations which have the task of building up our bodily nature we get to know, when we experience ourselves in the nerves leading to our senses.

A whole inner world can arise in this manner, and this inner world can be a collection of imaginations. Yet although, when perceiving the outer physical world in a way that is proper for our earth evolution, we perceive reflections of our blood and nerve activities, we still cannot get beyond the senses when we indulge in inner enjoyment, but reach only to the point where the blood circulation flows into the senses. Then the experience of the imaginative world is comparable to swimming in blood like a fish in water. But this imaginative world is in reality not an outside world but a world living in our blood. If one lives in the nerves leading to the senses one experiences an inspirational world full of music of the spheres and inner pictures. This is cosmic again but it is nothing new. It has already fulfilled its task in that it has flowed into our nerve and blood systems.

The kind of clairvoyance arising in this way, and leading man further into himself instead of beyond himself, is self-enjoyment, veritable self-enjoyment. This is why a kind of refined voluptuousness is brought about in people who become clairvoyant in this way and experience a world which is new to them. And on the whole we must say that this kind of clairvoyance is a return to an earlier stage of evolution. For although this experiencing of a person's own sense organs and blood, as I have been describing to you, did not exist then in the form in which it does today, the nervous system was already there in a germinal state. This kind of perception was the normal one for man on ancient Moon, and what he had then in the way of the beginning of nerves served to give him an inner perception of himself. The blood had not yet taken form inside him. It was more like a warm breath coming towards him from outside, like we receive the rays of the sun. Therefore what is now, on the earth, a perception of the inner blood system was regular, normal perception of the outside world at the Moon stage.

You could say that if this is the borderline between man's inner and outer world (a diagram was drawn), then, what are now our nerves were already there, in germinal form, on the Moon. By following the course of the nerves he could perceive what was within him, as a world of inner imagination. He saw that he himself belonged in the cosmos. He also had an imaginative perception of what came to him as a breath from outside and not from inside. That has now ceased, and what was outside, on ancient Moon, has become internalised as the blood circulation in Earth evolution. So it is a regression to the old Moon evolution.

It is good to know of these things, because that kind of clairvoyance keeps on making its appearance. It does not need to be acquired along the hard path of meditation and concentration described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The kind of clairvoyance that arises as a result of learning to experience one's nerves and blood as an inner enjoyment is just a more refined development of organic life, a further development of the experience of eating and drinking. This is certainly not mankind's present task, but is a kind of hot-house plant which arises when self-enjoyment of things such as eating and drinking is developed to a fine art. Just as a wine connoisseur has an inner after-taste which is only an imagination of the taste and is not formative, some people have a subtle inner enjoyment which is their clairvoyance.

A lot of clairvoyance is nothing more than a subtle, refined, forced kind of after-taste of life. We must become aware of these things again in our time. For people have not known about these secrets nor referred to them in literature since the first half of the nineteenth century. Then the second half of the nineteenth century came, with all the discoveries that are considered so wonderful, and they certainly are wonderful from their point of view, and an understanding of these things and the finer connections of existence were lost. But what has not yet been lost—and this is said in parenthesis—is the enjoyment of the effects of the coarser things we imbibe. Mankind continues to be able to live in the after-enjoyment of eating and drinking, and, precisely in the materialistic age, has cultivated this to an extent.

But mankind lives in a rhythmic cycle where things like this are concerned. Of course, because it has eradicated the general feeling it used to have of indulging in self-enjoyment in the senses, nerves and blood circulation, which people had to a greater extent in the past, the materialistic age can devote itself even more strongly to the effects of eating and drinking. You can easily study the whole change and rapid development that has taken place in a relatively short time in this realm. You have only to compare a hotel menu of the 1870's with a present-day one (1915), and you will see the progress that has been made in the sphere of refined pleasures, in the self-enjoyment of one's own body. Yet things of this kind also move in cycles, and achievements are only carried to a certain level. Just as a pendulum can only swing to a certain point before it has to go back again, the indulgence in mere physical pleasure will also have to go in the other direction once it has reached a certain point. This will occur when the keenest epicureans, that is, people with the most longing for pleasures, will look at the choicest dainties and say, ‘Ugh! I don't feel like having that, that is just too much!' This moment will certainly come, for it is a necessary development. Everything moves in cycles.

Man experiences the other side of life during sleep. His thought life is asleep and quite different conditions prevail, of course. Now I said that it was chiefly the first half of the nineteenth century that had insight into these matters still; and the kind of clairvoyance that arises when one follows the course of one's own blood and nerve channels was still called pythian clairvoyance at that time, from certain memories the people had, and it is indeed related to the foundations of ancient pythian clairvoyance.

Other conditions prevail during sleep. Man is outside his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body. In ordinary life thoughts are then suppressed and devitalised. But between falling asleep and waking up man lives continually with the longing for his physical body. This is precisely what sleep consists of, acquiring a longing for his physical body from the moment he falls asleep. This rises to a climax and then urges him more and more to return to his body. When he is asleep the longing to return to his own physical body becomes stronger and stronger. And because the longing pervades the ego and the astral body like a mist, the life of thought is dimmed. Just as we cannot see the trees any more when mist encloses them, we cannot experience our life of perception within us when the mist of our longing envelops us.

Now it can happen that this longing grows so strong during sleep, that man does not keep it outside his physical and etheric body, but that his greed grows to the extent that he partly takes hold of his physical and etheric body and comes into touch with the extreme ends of his blood and nerve channels; he penetrates from outside as it were through his senses into the extreme ends of his blood circulation and his nerve channels.

In ancient times, when man still had experiences like these with the help of the gods, as it were, it was a normal and healthy process. The old Hebrew prophets, who accomplished so much for their people, acquired their prophetic gifts through making use of the tremendous love they bore precisely for the blood and nerve composition of their own people, so that even during sleep they did not want to let go altogether of that which lived physically in their people. These prophets of Jewish antiquity were seized with such longing and filled with such love that even in sleep they wanted to remain bound to the blood of the people to whom they belonged. This is precisely what gave them their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these prophetic gifts, and splendid achievements came about through this channel. This is precisely why the prophets of the various peoples had such significance for their people, because even when they were outside the body they maintained a contact with it in this way.

As I mentioned, there was still a certain awareness right up to the first half of the nineteenth century, of this connection in the life of humanity. Just as they called the other kind of clairvoyance pythian clairvoyance, this kind of clairvoyance, which came about through contact of the ego-astral nature of man with the blood and nerve channels of the physical body during sleep, was called prophetic clairvoyance.

If you look at the literature of the first half of the nineteenth century you will find descriptions of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance, even if they are not as precise as spiritual-scientific descriptions of them would be today. People do not know the difference between them any more, since they have no understanding for what they can read about them in the books of the first half of the nineteenth century. But neither of these kinds of clairvoyance can really help humanity forward today. Both of them were right for olden times. Modern clairvoyance, which has to develop further and further in the future, can come about neither through enjoying what is going on in our bodies while we are awake, nor by entering into the body from outside in a sleeplike state, urged on by love—even if it is not for ourselves, but for the part of mankind to which our body belongs. Both these levels have been superseded.

Modern clairvoyance must be a third way, neither a taking hold of the physical body from outside, in loving longing, nor an enjoying of the physical body from inside. Both these phenomena, that which lives within and floods the body with pleasure, and that which can seize hold of the body from outside, have to go out of the body, if modern clairvoyance is to occur; they may only have the sort of relationship with the body, during incarnation between birth and death, in which they neither enjoy nor love the blood and nerves, either from inside or from outside, but remain connected with the body whilst freely abstaining from such self-enjoyment or self-love. The connection with the body has to be maintained nevertheless, of course, otherwise it would mean a dying. Man must remain bound to the body that belongs to him in physical incarnation on earth, and this must be done by means of the organs which are remote, as it were, or at least relatively remote from the activity of blood and nerves. A detaching from the activity of blood and nerves must be achieved.

When a person no longer indulges in enjoyment of self along the channels leading to the senses, nor takes hold of himself, from outside, as far as the senses, but has the kind of relationship to himself, both from inside and from outside, in which he can actually take living hold of what symbolises the death of physical life, then the proper condition has been reached. For we actually die physiologically because we are able to develop the bony system. When we are capable of taking hold of the skeleton which folk wisdom recognises as the symbol of death, and which is as remote from the blood system as it is from the nervous system, then we come to what we can call spiritual-scientific clairvoyance, which is higher than either pythian or prophetic clairvoyance.

With spiritual-scientific clairvoyance we take hold of the whole and not just part of the human being, and it actually makes no difference whether we take hold of it from inside or outside, for this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an act of enjoyment. Instead of being a subtle enjoyment it is an opening up and rising into the divine-spiritual forces of the All. It is a uniting with the world. It is no longer an experiencing of the human being and the mysteries that have been woven into him, but an experiencing of the deeds of the beings of the higher hierarchies, whereby one truly lifts oneself out of self-enjoyment and self-love. Man must become a thought as it were, an organ of the higher hierarchies, just as our thoughts are organs of our souls. To be thought of, pictured and perceived by the higher hierarchies, is the principle of spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. To be received, not to take oneself.

I would like to express the wish that what I have just been saying might become a real object for your meditation, for precisely that which I have been telling you today can bring many, many things to life in all of you and enliven the actual impulses of our spiritual-scientific movement to an ever greater extent. And how seriously we have to take the enlivening of our spiritual-scientific movement has often been spoken of during these days together. We could bring to realisation a further part—I will not say of what was intended—but of what ought to be intended within this spiritual-scientific movement, if as many people as possible would resolve to think about this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds in a living way, so that our thoughts become clearer and clearer about what, at bottom, we all intend, and which can become so easily confused with what can be had much more comfortably.

Truly, it is not for nothing that we work from cycle to cycle to accumulate more and more concepts and ideas. It is not needless work studying these concepts and ideas, for it is precisely the way to prepare the soul impulses that will lead us to real spiritual-scientific clairvoyance. By snatching up one or two ideas given by anthroposophy you can sometimes make a chink in one or another part of the human organisation, causing fragments of pythian and prophetic clairvoyance to arise, enough to make people proud of themselves. If this is the case, we often hear statements like this, ‘I don't need to study everything in detail, and I don't need what the cycles say. I know all that, I knew it already.’ And so on. Many people are still satisfied with the principle of living in a few imaginations which we could call blood and nerve imaginations. A lot of people fancy they have something really special if they have a few blood and nerve imaginations. But this is not what can lead us to selfless co-operation in mankind's development. Indulging in blood and nerve imaginations actually leads to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a more subtle form of egoism. Then, of course, the cultivation of spiritual science can be the very thing that breeds an even more subtle kind of egoism than you ever find in the outside world.

It is taken for granted that one is never referring to the present company nor to the Anthroposophical Society, which is, of course, here. But it should be permissible to mention that there are societies in which some people manage to turn the principles in their favour, and without really giving their unselfish support, make use of one or another thing, preferably those things which stimulate blood or nerve imaginations, and then imagine they can spare themselves the rest. As a result they acquire an atavistic clairvoyance, or perhaps not even that, but only the feelings that accompany that kind of imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not an overcoming of egoism, just a heightened form of it. You find in societies like this—the Anthroposophical Society excepted for politeness’ sake—that although it would be people's duty to develop love and harmony out of the depths of their hearts from one member to another, you find disharmony, quarrelsomeness, people telling tales about one another, and so on. I can say things like this, for as I said, I always make an exception of the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

This shows us that dark shadows are thrown just where a strong light is about to appear. I am not finding such faults because I imagine these things can be exterminated overnight. That cannot happen, because they come from nature. But at least each person can work on himself; and it is not a good thing if you are not made aware of these things.

It is thoroughly understandable that just because a particular movement has to be founded, the shadow sides also make themselves felt in these societies, and that what is rampant in outside life is far more rampant within them. Yet it always gives one a bitter feeling if this happens in societies which, by their very nature—otherwise there would be no point in having a society—should develop a certain brotherliness, a certain loyalty, but just because they come closer together, certain faults that are short-lived in the outside world develop all the more fiercely. As the present company, the Anthroposophical Society, is excepted, it will give us all the more opportunity to think and reflect about these things quite objectively and impartially, so that we really know what they are about. Then if we come across them somewhere, we shall know them for what they are, and not imagine that if someone thinks he has a particularly deep grasp of anthroposophy, that we cannot understand that faults which occur in the outside world appear much more strongly in him. We shall understand it, but we shall also know that we have to combat them. Sometimes we cannot combat them until we have really understood them.

This is another example showing how closely connected life is with the spiritual-scientific outlook; that this spiritual- scientific outlook cannot, in fact, achieve its aim unless it becomes an attitude to life, an art of life, and is brought into the whole of life. How wonderful it would be if in—let us now say the Anthroposophical Society—all the various human relationships proved to be as harmonious as we have tried to make the forms of our Goetheanum building, where they change from one to the other and each is in harmony with the other. If it could be the same in life as it is in the Goetheanum, and the whole life of our Society could be like the wonderful co-operation among the people engaged in building the Goetheanum, so that even this very building activity is a harmonious and noble image of what comes to expression in the building itself.

Thus, the inner significance of the life principle of our Goetheanum building and the inner significance of the co-operation among the souls—no, I would rather not say that—the inner significance of the harmony of the forms of our building, should find their way into all the various human relationships in our society, and their inner formative force should stand before us as a kind of ideal. I should just like to assure you that the wrong words did not slip out just now, when I stopped in mid-sentence. I stopped quite deliberately, and sometimes the thing is said without actually saying it.

To summarise the theme I have given in many variations over these days; what I want to recommend to you most warmly is not only to look at the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual research, with your intellect and reason, but to take what lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of mankind's future progress really depends on this. This can be said without presumption, for anyone can see it if they try at all to study the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our times. With these thoughts I will close the series of lectures I ventured to give you at the turn of the year.

275. Pythic, Prophetic and Spiritual-Scientific Clairvoyanc 04 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Martha Keltz Rudolf Steiner

275. Pythic, Prophetic and Spiritual-Scientific Clairvoyanc 04 Jan 1915, Dornach Translated by Martha Keltz Rudolf Steiner
The following lecture is included in Bn/GA 275. It is lecture 8 of 8 in the series entitled, Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom. It is also known as, Working with Sculptural Architecture—2. To the impulses necessary for the transformation of the present age belongs an ever wider and more comprehensive understanding of the processes of the human soul in those regions which open to Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive observation. For what first makes our world into a whole, raising us above Maya and leading us into true reality, lies within those spheres which open to this observation. It must be emphasized again and again that what we are striving towards as a new spiritual knowledge cannot consist in any warming-up of the results of an earlier clairvoyance. It is true that many people aspire to such a warming-up of an earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is past, and only atavistic echoes of it can appear in certain individuals. However, the stages of human existence that we must surmount do not disclose themselves through a revival of old clairvoyance, and thus we will endeavor to consider once again that which must lie at the basis of the new clairvoyance. We have often spoken of the principle of this, and today we shall try to do this again, but from another side. Let us start once more from something we all know, from the fact that, during daytime waking consciousness, man lives with his ego and astral body in his physical and etheric body. During the last few days I have emphasized that this waking state of man, from waking until falling asleep, is not a fully-awake condition, because there is still something asleep in man. What we experience as our will is really only partially awake. Our thoughts are awake from waking until falling asleep, but the will is something which we exercise quite dreamily. On this account much of the pondering on the freedom of the will, and on freedom in general, is in vain, because people have not noticed that what they know of the will in waking daily life is really only a dream or a tale of will impulses. When they will, and represent something to themselves concerning it, they are of course awake. But how the will arises and passes over into action, of this man can only dream in daily waking life. If you lift a piece of chalk and then think about this action, then you have of course an idea of it in your mind. But without clairvoyance, how the ego and astral body flow into the hand—how the will spreads out there—you can know nothing more of this in ordinary day consciousness than you know of a dream while you are dreaming. Man only dreams of real willing during ordinary waking life, and in most things we do not even dream, we sleep. You can clearly conceive of how you put a morsel of food on a fork; you can also conceive to a certain extent of how you bite this morsel; but how you swallow the morsel, this you do not even dream. For the most part you are quite unconscious of it, just as you are unconscious of your thoughts when you are asleep. A great part of the activity of will while man is awake is similarly performed in a half-sleeping condition. For instance, if we were not asleep as regards our powers of desire and the feeling impulses connected with them, we would develop an extraordinary activity. We would follow the actions we perform right into the body; everything we fulfilled as will impulse we would follow inwardly—into our blood, and into all the blood vessels. This means that if you could follow the lifting of a piece of chalk with reference to the will impulse, you would be able to follow what takes place in your hand, right into all the blood vessels. You would see from within the activity of the blood and the feelings attached to it, for example, the gravity of the particles of chalk, and things of that nature, and would thereby become aware that you were following your nerve-paths and the etheric fluidity found therein. You would inwardly experience yourself, along with the activity of blood and nerves. This would be an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But during our life on earth this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity must be withheld from us, otherwise we would go through life in such a way that in everything we did we would experience this inner self enjoyment. But man, as he has become, may not have this enjoyment, and the secret of why he may not we again find expressed in a part of the Bible towards which we should always feel the greatest reverence. After those things had taken place which are expressed in the Paradise-Myth, man was permitted to eat of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life. Eating of the Tree of Life would mean this inner gratification, and this must not happen to man. I cannot develop this motif further here today because it would us lead too far, but through your own meditation on the motif here touched upon you will be able to make further discoveries for yourselves. However, starting from this point, there is something else you can keep in mind which can be of essential importance for you: we are unable to eat of the Tree of Life, i.e., enjoy within our inner being our own blood and nerve activity—we cannot do this—yet something happens, especially when observing the world through our senses and our intellect, which is closely connected with such an inner enjoyment. In the perception of any object in the outer world, and in pondering over any object in the outer world, we follow the senses, that is, when we follow the eyes, nose, ears and taste nerves, we follow the path of the blood vessels. And when we think, we follow the path of the nerves. But we cannot perceive what else might have been perceived along the path of the blood and the nerves. What we might have perceived in the blood is reflected through the senses; it is as it were thrown back, and from this, sense impressions arise. And that which is conducted along the path of the nerves is also reflected and brought to where the nerve paths reach their end, and is then reflected as our thoughts. Just suppose for once that a man appeared who was in a position not merely to follow along the path of his blood under the influence of the outer world, and then to receive reflection of what his blood does; not merely to follow his nerves, and receive reflected back what his nerves do, but to experience inwardly what is denied us in regard to the blood and sense nerves, to experience inwardly what leads to the eye, to experience inwardly the blood as it tends towards the nerves and the eyes. This he would enjoy inwardly, at least in regard to those parts of the blood and nerves. It was in this way that those forms arose that belong to the old clairvoyance. For what is reflected back for us are but images, finely filtrated images, as it were, of what is contained in the blood and nerves. Cosmic mysteries are contained in our blood and nerves, but such cosmic mysteries as are already exhausted, because we have developed beyond them. We only learn to know ourselves when we learn to know the Imaginations which are revealed to us when we experience ourselves within the blood extending to the senses; and we only learn to know those Inspirations destined to up-build us when we live within the nerves extending to our senses. A whole inner world is thus built up. This inner world can consist of a sum of Imaginations, whereas in perceiving the outer physical world in a way fitted to our earth evolution we perceive reflections and reflected images of what takes place in blood and nerves. We are unable, when deeply sunk in the inner enjoyment of ourselves, to get beyond the senses, but only reach the point where the blood streams enter the senses. Man then experiences the Imaginative world so that he seems as it were to swim in the blood as a fish in water. But this Imaginative world is in truth no outer world, but a world which lives in our blood. When a man lives in the nerves which extend to the senses, he experiences an Inspired world, a world of sphere-tones, and a world of inward pictures. This is also cosmic, but it is nothing new, it is merely something which has completed its task in that it has streamed into our nerve and blood system. The clairvoyance which thus arises, and which does not lead man beyond himself, but leads him rather deeper into himself, is a self-enjoyment, truly a real self-enjoyment. This is why in a certain sense it produces a higher bliss in people when they become clairvoyant in this way, that is, when they experience a new world. This way of becoming clairvoyant is on the whole a falling back to an earlier stage of evolution. For what I have just described, the life within ones own sense organs and blood, did not exist at that time in the form it does now, although the nervous system was already foreshadowed. This kind of perception was the normal kind of perception on the Old Moon, and in what existed at that time in the tendencies toward the formation of nerves, a man was inwardly aware of himself. Blood was not yet developed within him, it was more something which came to him from outside like a warm breath, as the sun's rays come to us. Therefore what now on earth is a conscious perception of the inner blood system was on the Moon the normal perception of the outer world. If therefore the nerve is here the boundary between the human inner and outer world, then what is now nerve was already foreshadowed on the Moon. While following the nerves a man was able to perceive what revealed itself to him as an inner, Imaginative world, which was a part of himself. He perceived how he himself is included in the cosmos. He also was aware Imaginatively of what came to him as a breath from outside… not from within. This perception has now fallen from him, what was outside him on the old Moon has become inward, as the circulation of the blood in earthly evolution. The old perception is therefore a going-back to the Old Moon evolution. It is well to know of such things, because again and again things arise that are of this kind of clairvoyance. What appears clairvoyantly in this way has no need of being developed by those difficult paths of meditation and concentration described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This clairvoyance, which arises through learning to live inwardly in ones nerves and blood—to feel satisfaction in oneself—is in general but a finer development of the organic life, a refinement of what a man experiences when he eats and drinks. When all is said such clairvoyance is not the task set before man today, but is rather something that arises as a hothouse plant through our bringing to a more refined existence that self-enjoyment afforded us by eating, drinking and similar things. Just as an inner after-effect arises in an epicure when he has drunk Rhinewine or Mosel, which of course rises only to an Imagination of taste but does not work formatively, so in many people a refined inner enjoyment arises, and this is their clairvoyance. A great deal of clairvoyance is nothing else but a refined, rarified, hothouse-like after-enjoyment of life. Attention must frequently be drawn to these things in our day. For I may tell you that the last time the secrets concerning these things were still known, when people still spoke of them in literature, was really the first half of the 19th century. Then came the second half of the 19th century, with its so highly-rated discoveries—highly-rated from their point of view—when all understanding for these things and for the finer connections of existence was lost. It may be added parenthetically that people have not yet lost the enjoyment experienced under the influence of the coarser, let us say more selfish enjoyment; they can still live with the after-pleasure of eating and drinking, in fact these have even been developed to a certain high degree in this materialistic age. But in such things, man lives in a cyclic, rhythmic movement. And the materialistic age, because it has extinguished what was formerly a general feeling—the passing of self-enjoyment into the senses, nerves, and blood-circulation—can therefore give itself up ever more thoroughly to the impressions of eating and drinking. We can easily observe the complete “volt face” and transformation which has taken place in this connection within a relatively short time. We have but to look at a hotel menu card from the 70's, and compare it with one of today, and we see what strides life has made in refined enjoyment, in the self-gratification of our own bodies. But such things also progress in cycles, for everything can only be reached to a certain degree, and just as a pendulum can only rise to a certain point and must then return, so mere physical enjoyment must recede when it has reached a certain point. It will then come to pass that when the keenest epicures, those who have the greatest longing for enjoyment, stand before the most daintily prepared repast, they will not yearn for it, but will say: “Ah! I cannot. All that is finished for me.” This also will come in time, for it is a necessity of evolution. Everything passes in cycles. The other side of life is that which man experiences during sleep. His life of thought is asleep, and naturally, entirely different connections make their appearance. I have already said that in the first half of the 19th century people still had insight into these things. The clairvoyance which arises through following ones own blood and nerve paths was still called, in accord with certain memories, the *Pythic* clairvoyance, because it was in fact related to what lay at the root of the pythic clairvoyance of antiquity. Other connections are present during the life of sleep. Man with his ego and astral body is then outside the physical and etheric body. Ideas from ordinary life are then suppressed and weakened, but man lives continually from falling asleep till waking in a state of longing for his physical body. Sleeping consists essentially in this, that man, from the moment he begins to sleep, develops longings for his physical body. These longings increase until a climax is reached when he is forced back more and more towards his physical body. The longing for ones physical body becomes ever greater and greater in the state of sleep. And because longing fills the ego and astral body like a cloud, the life of thought is dimmed. Perceptions become dim because desire for the physical body pervades the ego and astral body like a cloud. Just as we cannot see the trees in a wood if mist spreads over everything, neither can we ask variance of our inward life of perception if the mist of our desire spreads over it. But it may happen that this life of desire becomes so strong during sleep that man not merely develops this desire when outside his physical and etheric body, but he becomes greedy to such an extent that he partially seizes on this inner part of his physical and etheric body so that he reaches with his desire to the furthest limits of his blood and nerve paths, he sinks through as it were from outside into the extremities of the senses of circulation, and into the ultimate ends of the nerve paths. In ancient times, when the Gods still helped man with such experiences, they were entirely regular and good. The ancient Hebrew Prophets, for example, who did such great things for their people, performed what they did and received their prophetic gifts because they applied such infinite love to the blood and nerve structure of their people, and even in the sleeping state they did not entirely absent themselves from what lived physically in this people. These ancient Hebrew prophets were seized by such longing, filled with such love, that they remained united even in sleep with the blood of the people to whom they belonged. It was because of this that they received their prophetic gifts. This is the physiological origin of these gifts, and most beautiful and splendid results came from what has just been told you. The prophets of different peoples were of such significance to these peoples just because, while outside the physical body, they still lived with this physical body in the way described. As explained, a certain consciousness of this still existed up to the first half of the 19th century in the life of mankind. As the first clairvoyance described here was called Pythic clairvoyance, so the clairvoyance of which I have just spoken, in which a man dives down into the blood and nerve paths of the physical body with what otherwise lives outside the physical and etheric body during sleep, was called *Prophetic* clairvoyance. If you pursue the literature of the first half of the 19th Century—even if it cannot be described with the exactitude and precision of modern spiritual science—you still find descriptions of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance. The distinction between them is not recognized today, because people can no longer understand what they read of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance. Neither kind of clairvoyance is that which is really capable of advancing mankind at the present time. These are the kinds of clairvoyance that were valid for ancient times. The modern clairvoyance, which must develop more and more towards the future, can come neither by enjoying what penetrates our body from within during waking conditions, nor by diving down into this body from outside in a state of sleep, but from love—not for ourselves, but for that portion of mankind to which our body belongs. The earlier forms are stages of development which have been outgrown. Modern clairvoyance must develop as a third kind of clairvoyance that does not involve desire for laying hold of the physical body from without, nor as enjoyment of the physical body from within. That which lives within and is capable of penetrating our body, enjoying it inwardly, and that which can seize the body from without, must be detached from the body if modern clairvoyance is to arise. Neither must enter into any further connection with the body other than in the [normal] incarnation between birth and death, so that blood and nerves can be enjoyed neither from within nor from without; but each must remain connected with the body in pure renunciation of such self-enjoyment and such self-love. A connection with the body must nevertheless remain, for otherwise, death would take place. Man must remain united with the body which belongs to him during his physical incarnation on earth, remain united with it through those members which in a sense stand far, or at least relatively far, from the activity of blood and nerve. A release from blood and nerve activity must be attained. When man no longer finds inward enjoyment along the paths which lead to his senses, or penetrates his own being from outside as far as to the senses, but when he can enter into such union with himself both from within and from without so as to really lay hold in a living way of that which in physical existence is the symbol of death, and can unite himself with that which gives the expectancy of physical death, the condition we are considering is then reached. For considered physiologically, we really die because we are capable of developing a bony system—a skeleton. When we are capable of comprehending our bones, which through a wonderful intuition people recognize as the symbol of death—the bony skeleton—and which is so far removed from the blood and nervous systems, we then attain to something which is higher than pythic and prophetic clairvoyance, we come to what we can call the Clairvoyance of Spiritual Science. In this spiritual scientific clairvoyance, we no longer grasp only a part of human nature, we grasp the whole man. And fundamentally, it is all one whether we grasp it from within or from without, because this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an “enjoyment,” it is no longer a refined pleasure, but a going forth into the divinely spiritual forces of the All. It is a becoming-one with the cosmos, an experience no longer of man and of what is secreted in man, but an experience that is a living within the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, a real raising of oneself above self-enjoyment and self-love. Just as our thoughts are members of our souls, so man must become, as it were, a thought, a member of the higher Hierarchies. To allow oneself to be thought, pictured, perceived by the higher hierarchies, this is the principle of the clairvoyance of spiritual science. It is being taken up, not taking up. I hope that what I am now saying may very definitely become the subject of your further meditations, for precisely those things that I have explained today are capable of stimulating very much in all of you, and this can serve toward an ever deeper and more comprehensive penetration to the real impulses of our spiritual scientific stream. How much earnestness is necessary for this penetration into our spiritual scientific stream has been spoken of often in these past days. Something might be realized of what is—I do not say willed, but what must be willed—within this spiritual stream, if as many as possible would resolve to ponder in a living way this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds, so that clearer and ever clearer ideas might arise concerning what we all desire at bottom, and which is so easily confused with what is far easier and more comfortable to acquire. We have in fact worked from cycle to cycle of lectures for no other purpose than to bring together, ever more and more, ideas and concepts. It is necessary to study these ideas and concepts, and in this way we prepare in ourselves those impulses of soul which lead to real spiritual scientific clairvoyance. Often because one has sipped a little here or there of what is imparted within our spiritual scientific stream, and thereby given some part of our human nature to pythic or prophetic clairvoyance—because of this one may perhaps become proud and haughty. When this is the case opinions arise as are often heard when one or another says: I need not study every detail, I do not require what is said in this cycle. What I hear I already know, and so on. The principle of living in a few Imaginations which might be called blood and nerve Imaginations, still exists in many. Many think they possess something quite special if they have a few blood and nerve Imaginations. But this is not what leads us to selfless labor for human evolution; such a tarrying in blood and nerve imaginations leads only to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a refined egoism. In this event, it may be that a more refined egoism is cultivated through the pursuit of spiritual science than exists even in the outside world. Naturally, in referring to such things, one never speaks of these matters to those who are present, and never of the members of the anthroposophical society who are present. Yet it may be mentioned that societies exist in which people are to be found who, according to the principles of these societies, bring themselves to co-operate, not with true selflessness, but to undertake preferably that which kindles the blood or nerve Imaginations. They then think they can be excused from anything else. They attain to such an atavistic clairvoyance—or perhaps they do not attain to it, but merely to the feelings which are held to be an accompaniment of the phenomenon of such Imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not a conquest of egoism, but only a higher blossoming of it. One finds within such societies—the anthroposophical society being excepted from politeness—that although their duty is to develop love and esteem, harmony and compassion, at the profoundest depths of their souls one finds disharmony, quarrelsomeness, mutual calumniation, etc, growing more and more from member to member. I venture to express myself thus, because, as I have said, I always exclude the members of the anthroposophical. society. We then see how, that where an especially strong light should arise, deep shadows are also cast. It is not so much as if I wished to place blame on such things, or believed they could be rooted out at once, between today and tomorrow. That is impossible because they arise naturally. However, each one can at least work on himself. And it is not good if the consciousness is not at least directed to such matters. One can thoroughly understand that just because a certain stress must be worked out within such societies, the shadow-sides also make themselves felt, and that what flourishes outside in life often flourishes all the more vigorously within such societies. Nevertheless a certain bitter feeling is evoked when this appears in societies that should naturally (otherwise the society would have no meaning) develop a certain brotherliness and unity, and when, with this closer contact, certain qualities that exist but fleetingly outside are developed with all the greater intensity. Since the Anthroposophical Society—being present—is excepted, it is all the more possible for us to think over these things objectively, as non-participators, so that we can learn to know them more intimately. And if we find such things anywhere in the world, we do not regard them as anything other than what they are. We believe—if anyone thinks he understands anthroposophy with especial depth, yet reveals certain qualities which not only show themselves in him as they do in the world, but more intensely—that these things are not incomprehensible, but realize that they are comprehensible, yet as matters we must fight. We can frequently only fight them when we have really understood them. This is also something which shows us how life is connected with the spiritual scientific view, and can only reach its goal when it is understood as acceptance of life, as an art of life; when it is carried into all life. How beautiful it would be if each single relationship of life, let us now say of the Anthroposophical Society, showed itself to be in such mutual harmony as is attempted in the forms of our building, where the separate forms pass over into each other, and all are in harmony one with another; if it could be in life as it is in the building, if the whole life of our society could be as we would have it through the beautiful co-operation of those who are active on the building; so that this labor which is already something harmonious and noble, might be a copy of that which finds expression in the building itself. Thus the inner meaning of the life-principle of our building, and the inner meaning of the co-operation of the souls should ... no, would rather not say that. Thus the inner meaning of the co-operation in the forms of our building should find a path outwards into each separate relationship of the life of our Society—should in its inward construction stand before us as an ideal. I should like to assure you that I did not make a slip when I omitted a sentence just now. I left it out with full intention, and many a time that also is said which one did not say. Summing up, what I have put before you during the last few days is a theme varying in the most diverse manner, and what I would fain lay on your hearts especially is this: that you not only place the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual investigation, before your intellect, before your reason, but that you receive that which lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of the future progress of mankind really depends upon this. I say this without presumption, and anyone who attempts to study but a little the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our time can recognize this for himself. With this the series of lectures, what I have permitted myself to give you at this turning point of the year is concluded.

275. Pythic, Prophetic and Spiritual-Scientific Clairvoyanc 04 Jan 1915, Dornach
Translated by Martha Keltz
Rudolf Steiner

The following lecture is included in Bn/GA 275. It is lecture 8 of 8 in the series entitled, Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom. It is also known as, Working with Sculptural Architecture—2.

To the impulses necessary for the transformation of the present age belongs an ever wider and more comprehensive understanding of the processes of the human soul in those regions which open to Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive observation. For what first makes our world into a whole, raising us above Maya and leading us into true reality, lies within those spheres which open to this observation. It must be emphasized again and again that what we are striving towards as a new spiritual knowledge cannot consist in any warming-up of the results of an earlier clairvoyance. It is true that many people aspire to such a warming-up of an earlier clairvoyance, but the time for this clairvoyance is past, and only atavistic echoes of it can appear in certain individuals. However, the stages of human existence that we must surmount do not disclose themselves through a revival of old clairvoyance, and thus we will endeavor to consider once again that which must lie at the basis of the new clairvoyance. We have often spoken of the principle of this, and today we shall try to do this again, but from another side.

Let us start once more from something we all know, from the fact that, during daytime waking consciousness, man lives with his ego and astral body in his physical and etheric body. During the last few days I have emphasized that this waking state of man, from waking until falling asleep, is not a fully-awake condition, because there is still something asleep in man. What we experience as our will is really only partially awake. Our thoughts are awake from waking until falling asleep, but the will is something which we exercise quite dreamily. On this account much of the pondering on the freedom of the will, and on freedom in general, is in vain, because people have not noticed that what they know of the will in waking daily life is really only a dream or a tale of will impulses. When they will, and represent something to themselves concerning it, they are of course awake. But how the will arises and passes over into action, of this man can only dream in daily waking life.

If you lift a piece of chalk and then think about this action, then you have of course an idea of it in your mind. But without clairvoyance, how the ego and astral body flow into the hand—how the will spreads out there—you can know nothing more of this in ordinary day consciousness than you know of a dream while you are dreaming. Man only dreams of real willing during ordinary waking life, and in most things we do not even dream, we sleep. You can clearly conceive of how you put a morsel of food on a fork; you can also conceive to a certain extent of how you bite this morsel; but how you swallow the morsel, this you do not even dream. For the most part you are quite unconscious of it, just as you are unconscious of your thoughts when you are asleep. A great part of the activity of will while man is awake is similarly performed in a half-sleeping condition.

For instance, if we were not asleep as regards our powers of desire and the feeling impulses connected with them, we would develop an extraordinary activity. We would follow the actions we perform right into the body; everything we fulfilled as will impulse we would follow inwardly—into our blood, and into all the blood vessels. This means that if you could follow the lifting of a piece of chalk with reference to the will impulse, you would be able to follow what takes place in your hand, right into all the blood vessels. You would see from within the activity of the blood and the feelings attached to it, for example, the gravity of the particles of chalk, and things of that nature, and would thereby become aware that you were following your nerve-paths and the etheric fluidity found therein. You would inwardly experience yourself, along with the activity of blood and nerves. This would be an inner enjoyment of your own blood and nerve activity. But during our life on earth this inner enjoyment of our own blood and nerve activity must be withheld from us, otherwise we would go through life in such a way that in everything we did we would experience this inner self enjoyment. But man, as he has become, may not have this enjoyment, and the secret of why he may not we again find expressed in a part of the Bible towards which we should always feel the greatest reverence.

After those things had taken place which are expressed in the Paradise-Myth, man was permitted to eat of the Tree of Knowledge but not of the Tree of Life. Eating of the Tree of Life would mean this inner gratification, and this must not happen to man. I cannot develop this motif further here today because it would us lead too far, but through your own meditation on the motif here touched upon you will be able to make further discoveries for yourselves. However, starting from this point, there is something else you can keep in mind which can be of essential importance for you: we are unable to eat of the Tree of Life, i.e., enjoy within our inner being our own blood and nerve activity—we cannot do this—yet something happens, especially when observing the world through our senses and our intellect, which is closely connected with such an inner enjoyment. In the perception of any object in the outer world, and in pondering over any object in the outer world, we follow the senses, that is, when we follow the eyes, nose, ears and taste nerves, we follow the path of the blood vessels. And when we think, we follow the path of the nerves. But we cannot perceive what else might have been perceived along the path of the blood and the nerves. What we might have perceived in the blood is reflected through the senses; it is as it were thrown back, and from this, sense impressions arise. And that which is conducted along the path of the nerves is also reflected and brought to where the nerve paths reach their end, and is then reflected as our thoughts.

Just suppose for once that a man appeared who was in a position not merely to follow along the path of his blood under the influence of the outer world, and then to receive reflection of what his blood does; not merely to follow his nerves, and receive reflected back what his nerves do, but to experience inwardly what is denied us in regard to the blood and sense nerves, to experience inwardly what leads to the eye, to experience inwardly the blood as it tends towards the nerves and the eyes. This he would enjoy inwardly, at least in regard to those parts of the blood and nerves. It was in this way that those forms arose that belong to the old clairvoyance. For what is reflected back for us are but images, finely filtrated images, as it were, of what is contained in the blood and nerves. Cosmic mysteries are contained in our blood and nerves, but such cosmic mysteries as are already exhausted, because we have developed beyond them. We only learn to know ourselves when we learn to know the Imaginations which are revealed to us when we experience ourselves within the blood extending to the senses; and we only learn to know those Inspirations destined to up-build us when we live within the nerves extending to our senses.

A whole inner world is thus built up. This inner world can consist of a sum of Imaginations, whereas in perceiving the outer physical world in a way fitted to our earth evolution we perceive reflections and reflected images of what takes place in blood and nerves. We are unable, when deeply sunk in the inner enjoyment of ourselves, to get beyond the senses, but only reach the point where the blood streams enter the senses. Man then experiences the Imaginative world so that he seems as it were to swim in the blood as a fish in water. But this Imaginative world is in truth no outer world, but a world which lives in our blood. When a man lives in the nerves which extend to the senses, he experiences an Inspired world, a world of sphere-tones, and a world of inward pictures. This is also cosmic, but it is nothing new, it is merely something which has completed its task in that it has streamed into our nerve and blood system.

The clairvoyance which thus arises, and which does not lead man beyond himself, but leads him rather deeper into himself, is a self-enjoyment, truly a real self-enjoyment. This is why in a certain sense it produces a higher bliss in people when they become clairvoyant in this way, that is, when they experience a new world. This way of becoming clairvoyant is on the whole a falling back to an earlier stage of evolution. For what I have just described, the life within ones own sense organs and blood, did not exist at that time in the form it does now, although the nervous system was already foreshadowed.

This kind of perception was the normal kind of perception on the Old Moon, and in what existed at that time in the tendencies toward the formation of nerves, a man was inwardly aware of himself. Blood was not yet developed within him, it was more something which came to him from outside like a warm breath, as the sun's rays come to us. Therefore what now on earth is a conscious perception of the inner blood system was on the Moon the normal perception of the outer world.

If therefore the nerve is here the boundary between the human inner and outer world, then what is now nerve was already foreshadowed on the Moon. While following the nerves a man was able to perceive what revealed itself to him as an inner, Imaginative world, which was a part of himself. He perceived how he himself is included in the cosmos. He also was aware Imaginatively of what came to him as a breath from outside… not from within. This perception has now fallen from him, what was outside him on the old Moon has become inward, as the circulation of the blood in earthly evolution. The old perception is therefore a going-back to the Old Moon evolution.

It is well to know of such things, because again and again things arise that are of this kind of clairvoyance. What appears clairvoyantly in this way has no need of being developed by those difficult paths of meditation and concentration described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This clairvoyance, which arises through learning to live inwardly in ones nerves and blood—to feel satisfaction in oneself—is in general but a finer development of the organic life, a refinement of what a man experiences when he eats and drinks. When all is said such clairvoyance is not the task set before man today, but is rather something that arises as a hothouse plant through our bringing to a more refined existence that self-enjoyment afforded us by eating, drinking and similar things. Just as an inner after-effect arises in an epicure when he has drunk Rhinewine or Mosel, which of course rises only to an Imagination of taste but does not work formatively, so in many people a refined inner enjoyment arises, and this is their clairvoyance.

A great deal of clairvoyance is nothing else but a refined, rarified, hothouse-like after-enjoyment of life. Attention must frequently be drawn to these things in our day. For I may tell you that the last time the secrets concerning these things were still known, when people still spoke of them in literature, was really the first half of the 19th century. Then came the second half of the 19th century, with its so highly-rated discoveries—highly-rated from their point of view—when all understanding for these things and for the finer connections of existence was lost. It may be added parenthetically that people have not yet lost the enjoyment experienced under the influence of the coarser, let us say more selfish enjoyment; they can still live with the after-pleasure of eating and drinking, in fact these have even been developed to a certain high degree in this materialistic age.

But in such things, man lives in a cyclic, rhythmic movement. And the materialistic age, because it has extinguished what was formerly a general feeling—the passing of self-enjoyment into the senses, nerves, and blood-circulation—can therefore give itself up ever more thoroughly to the impressions of eating and drinking. We can easily observe the complete “volt face” and transformation which has taken place in this connection within a relatively short time. We have but to look at a hotel menu card from the 70's, and compare it with one of today, and we see what strides life has made in refined enjoyment, in the self-gratification of our own bodies. But such things also progress in cycles, for everything can only be reached to a certain degree, and just as a pendulum can only rise to a certain point and must then return, so mere physical enjoyment must recede when it has reached a certain point. It will then come to pass that when the keenest epicures, those who have the greatest longing for enjoyment, stand before the most daintily prepared repast, they will not yearn for it, but will say: “Ah! I cannot. All that is finished for me.” This also will come in time, for it is a necessity of evolution. Everything passes in cycles.

The other side of life is that which man experiences during sleep. His life of thought is asleep, and naturally, entirely different connections make their appearance. I have already said that in the first half of the 19th century people still had insight into these things. The clairvoyance which arises through following ones own blood and nerve paths was still called, in accord with certain memories, the Pythic clairvoyance, because it was in fact related to what lay at the root of the pythic clairvoyance of antiquity.

Other connections are present during the life of sleep. Man with his ego and astral body is then outside the physical and etheric body. Ideas from ordinary life are then suppressed and weakened, but man lives continually from falling asleep till waking in a state of longing for his physical body. Sleeping consists essentially in this, that man, from the moment he begins to sleep, develops longings for his physical body. These longings increase until a climax is reached when he is forced back more and more towards his physical body. The longing for ones physical body becomes ever greater and greater in the state of sleep. And because longing fills the ego and astral body like a cloud, the life of thought is dimmed. Perceptions become dim because desire for the physical body pervades the ego and astral body like a cloud. Just as we cannot see the trees in a wood if mist spreads over everything, neither can we ask variance of our inward life of perception if the mist of our desire spreads over it.

But it may happen that this life of desire becomes so strong during sleep that man not merely develops this desire when outside his physical and etheric body, but he becomes greedy to such an extent that he partially seizes on this inner part of his physical and etheric body so that he reaches with his desire to the furthest limits of his blood and nerve paths, he sinks through as it were from outside into the extremities of the senses of circulation, and into the ultimate ends of the nerve paths.

In ancient times, when the Gods still helped man with such experiences, they were entirely regular and good. The ancient Hebrew Prophets, for example, who did such great things for their people, performed what they did and received their prophetic gifts because they applied such infinite love to the blood and nerve structure of their people, and even in the sleeping state they did not entirely absent themselves from what lived physically in this people. These ancient Hebrew prophets were seized by such longing, filled with such love, that they remained united even in sleep with the blood of the people to whom they belonged. It was because of this that they received their prophetic gifts.

This is the physiological origin of these gifts, and most beautiful and splendid results came from what has just been told you. The prophets of different peoples were of such significance to these peoples just because, while outside the physical body, they still lived with this physical body in the way described.

As explained, a certain consciousness of this still existed up to the first half of the 19th century in the life of mankind. As the first clairvoyance described here was called Pythic clairvoyance, so the clairvoyance of which I have just spoken, in which a man dives down into the blood and nerve paths of the physical body with what otherwise lives outside the physical and etheric body during sleep, was called Prophetic clairvoyance.

If you pursue the literature of the first half of the 19th Century—even if it cannot be described with the exactitude and precision of modern spiritual science—you still find descriptions of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance. The distinction between them is not recognized today, because people can no longer understand what they read of pythic and prophetic clairvoyance.

Neither kind of clairvoyance is that which is really capable of advancing mankind at the present time. These are the kinds of clairvoyance that were valid for ancient times. The modern clairvoyance, which must develop more and more towards the future, can come neither by enjoying what penetrates our body from within during waking conditions, nor by diving down into this body from outside in a state of sleep, but from love—not for ourselves, but for that portion of mankind to which our body belongs. The earlier forms are stages of development which have been outgrown.

Modern clairvoyance must develop as a third kind of clairvoyance that does not involve desire for laying hold of the physical body from without, nor as enjoyment of the physical body from within.

That which lives within and is capable of penetrating our body, enjoying it inwardly, and that which can seize the body from without, must be detached from the body if modern clairvoyance is to arise. Neither must enter into any further connection with the body other than in the [normal] incarnation between birth and death, so that blood and nerves can be enjoyed neither from within nor from without; but each must remain connected with the body in pure renunciation of such self-enjoyment and such self-love. A connection with the body must nevertheless remain, for otherwise, death would take place. Man must remain united with the body which belongs to him during his physical incarnation on earth, remain united with it through those members which in a sense stand far, or at least relatively far, from the activity of blood and nerve. A release from blood and nerve activity must be attained.

When man no longer finds inward enjoyment along the paths which lead to his senses, or penetrates his own being from outside as far as to the senses, but when he can enter into such union with himself both from within and from without so as to really lay hold in a living way of that which in physical existence is the symbol of death, and can unite himself with that which gives the expectancy of physical death, the condition we are considering is then reached. For considered physiologically, we really die because we are capable of developing a bony system—a skeleton. When we are capable of comprehending our bones, which through a wonderful intuition people recognize as the symbol of death—the bony skeleton—and which is so far removed from the blood and nervous systems, we then attain to something which is higher than pythic and prophetic clairvoyance, we come to what we can call the Clairvoyance of Spiritual Science.

In this spiritual scientific clairvoyance, we no longer grasp only a part of human nature, we grasp the whole man. And fundamentally, it is all one whether we grasp it from within or from without, because this kind of clairvoyance can no longer be an “enjoyment,” it is no longer a refined pleasure, but a going forth into the divinely spiritual forces of the All. It is a becoming-one with the cosmos, an experience no longer of man and of what is secreted in man, but an experience that is a living within the deeds of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, a real raising of oneself above self-enjoyment and self-love. Just as our thoughts are members of our souls, so man must become, as it were, a thought, a member of the higher Hierarchies. To allow oneself to be thought, pictured, perceived by the higher hierarchies, this is the principle of the clairvoyance of spiritual science. It is being taken up, not taking up.

I hope that what I am now saying may very definitely become the subject of your further meditations, for precisely those things that I have explained today are capable of stimulating very much in all of you, and this can serve toward an ever deeper and more comprehensive penetration to the real impulses of our spiritual scientific stream. How much earnestness is necessary for this penetration into our spiritual scientific stream has been spoken of often in these past days. Something might be realized of what is—I do not say willed, but what must be willed—within this spiritual stream, if as many as possible would resolve to ponder in a living way this threefold form of knowledge of higher worlds, so that clearer and ever clearer ideas might arise concerning what we all desire at bottom, and which is so easily confused with what is far easier and more comfortable to acquire.

We have in fact worked from cycle to cycle of lectures for no other purpose than to bring together, ever more and more, ideas and concepts. It is necessary to study these ideas and concepts, and in this way we prepare in ourselves those impulses of soul which lead to real spiritual scientific clairvoyance. Often because one has sipped a little here or there of what is imparted within our spiritual scientific stream, and thereby given some part of our human nature to pythic or prophetic clairvoyance—because of this one may perhaps become proud and haughty. When this is the case opinions arise as are often heard when one or another says: I need not study every detail, I do not require what is said in this cycle. What I hear I already know, and so on. The principle of living in a few Imaginations which might be called blood and nerve Imaginations, still exists in many. Many think they possess something quite special if they have a few blood and nerve Imaginations. But this is not what leads us to selfless labor for human evolution; such a tarrying in blood and nerve imaginations leads only to a heightening of self-enjoyment, to a refined egoism. In this event, it may be that a more refined egoism is cultivated through the pursuit of spiritual science than exists even in the outside world.

Naturally, in referring to such things, one never speaks of these matters to those who are present, and never of the members of the anthroposophical society who are present. Yet it may be mentioned that societies exist in which people are to be found who, according to the principles of these societies, bring themselves to co-operate, not with true selflessness, but to undertake preferably that which kindles the blood or nerve Imaginations. They then think they can be excused from anything else. They attain to such an atavistic clairvoyance—or perhaps they do not attain to it, but merely to the feelings which are held to be an accompaniment of the phenomenon of such Imaginative clairvoyance. These feelings are not a conquest of egoism, but only a higher blossoming of it. One finds within such societies—the anthroposophical society being excepted from politeness—that although their duty is to develop love and esteem, harmony and compassion, at the profoundest depths of their souls one finds disharmony, quarrelsomeness, mutual calumniation, etc, growing more and more from member to member. I venture to express myself thus, because, as I have said, I always exclude the members of the anthroposophical. society.

We then see how, that where an especially strong light should arise, deep shadows are also cast. It is not so much as if I wished to place blame on such things, or believed they could be rooted out at once, between today and tomorrow. That is impossible because they arise naturally. However, each one can at least work on himself. And it is not good if the consciousness is not at least directed to such matters.

One can thoroughly understand that just because a certain stress must be worked out within such societies, the shadow-sides also make themselves felt, and that what flourishes outside in life often flourishes all the more vigorously within such societies. Nevertheless a certain bitter feeling is evoked when this appears in societies that should naturally (otherwise the society would have no meaning) develop a certain brotherliness and unity, and when, with this closer contact, certain qualities that exist but fleetingly outside are developed with all the greater intensity. Since the Anthroposophical Society—being present—is excepted, it is all the more possible for us to think over these things objectively, as non-participators, so that we can learn to know them more intimately. And if we find such things anywhere in the world, we do not regard them as anything other than what they are. We believe—if anyone thinks he understands anthroposophy with especial depth, yet reveals certain qualities which not only show themselves in him as they do in the world, but more intensely—that these things are not incomprehensible, but realize that they are comprehensible, yet as matters we must fight. We can frequently only fight them when we have really understood them.

This is also something which shows us how life is connected with the spiritual scientific view, and can only reach its goal when it is understood as acceptance of life, as an art of life; when it is carried into all life. How beautiful it would be if each single relationship of life, let us now say of the Anthroposophical Society, showed itself to be in such mutual harmony as is attempted in the forms of our building, where the separate forms pass over into each other, and all are in harmony one with another; if it could be in life as it is in the building, if the whole life of our society could be as we would have it through the beautiful co-operation of those who are active on the building; so that this labor which is already something harmonious and noble, might be a copy of that which finds expression in the building itself.

Thus the inner meaning of the life-principle of our building, and the inner meaning of the co-operation of the souls should ... no, would rather not say that. Thus the inner meaning of the co-operation in the forms of our building should find a path outwards into each separate relationship of the life of our Society—should in its inward construction stand before us as an ideal. I should like to assure you that I did not make a slip when I omitted a sentence just now. I left it out with full intention, and many a time that also is said which one did not say.

Summing up, what I have put before you during the last few days is a theme varying in the most diverse manner, and what I would fain lay on your hearts especially is this: that you not only place the thoughts and ideas of spiritual science, the results of spiritual investigation, before your intellect, before your reason, but that you receive that which lives in spiritual science into your hearts. For the salvation of the future progress of mankind really depends upon this. I say this without presumption, and anyone who attempts to study but a little the impulses of our evolution and the signs of our time can recognize this for himself.

With this the series of lectures, what I have permitted myself to give you at this turning point of the year is concluded.

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