The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Philosophy did not arise in the same way in which it is continued in modern times. In these days it is a connection of ideas which are not experienced in one's inner being, in the soul, in such a manner that a man, conscious of self, feels himself in these ideas as in a reality. Therefore we seek after all possible theoretical means to prove that the philosophic content does refer to a reality. But this way leads only to different philosophic systems, and of these one can say they are right to a certain extent; for mostly the grounds on which they are refuted are of as much value as those on which it is sought to prove them.

[ 2 ] Now with Anthroposophy it is a question not of attaining the reality of the philosophic content by theoretic thought, but by the cultivation of a method which on the one hand is similar to that by which in ancient times Philosophy was won, and on the other, is as consciously exact as the mathematical and natural scientific method of more recent times.

[ 3 ] The ancient method was semi-conscious. Compared with the condition of full consciousness of the modern scientific thinker it had something almost dreamy. It existed not in such dreams as concealed indirectly by their very nature their real content, but in waking dreams, which pointed to reality precisely by means of this content. Nor had such a soul-content the abstract character of the modern presentation, but rather that of picture-making.

[ 4 ] Such a soul-content must be regained, but in full consciousness, according to the modern stage of human evolution; exactly in the same sense of consciousness as we find in scientific thought. Anthroposophical research seeks to attain this in a first stage of supersensible knowledge in the condition of ‘imaginative consciousness’. It is reached through a process of meditation in the soul. This leads the entire force of the soul-life to presentations which are easily visualized and held fast in a state of rest. By this means we finally realize, if such a process is constantly repeated over a sufficient period of time, how the soul in its experience becomes free from the body. We see clearly that the thought of ordinary consciousness is a reflection of a spiritual activity which remains unconscious as such, after having become so by the incorporation of the human physical organism in its course.

All ordinary thinking is dependent on the supersensible spiritual activity which is reproduced in the physical organism. But at the same time we are conscious only of what the physical organism allows us to be conscious of. [ 5 ] The spiritual activity can be separated from the physical organism by meditation, and the soul then experiences the supersensible in a super-sensible way; no longer the physical but the etheric organism is the background of the soul's experience. We have a presentation before our soul's consciousness with the character of a picture. [ 6 ] We have before us in this kind of presentation pictures of the powers which, coming from the supersensible are the basis of the organism as its powers of growth, and also as the very powers which function in the regulation of the processes of nourishment. We gain in these pictures a real vision of the life-forces. This is the stage of ‘imaginative cognition’. This is life in the etheric human organism, and with our own etheric organism we live in the etheric Cosmos. There is between the etheric organism and the etheric Cosmos no such sharp distinction relating to subjective and objective as there is in physical thought about the things of the world.

[ 7 ] This ‘imaginative knowledge’ is the means whereby we can recall the very substantial reality of ancient Philosophy, but we can also conceive a new Philosophy, and a real conception of Philosophy can only come into being by means of this imaginative knowledge. And when this Philosophy is once there it can be grasped and understood by the ordinary consciousness; for it speaks out of ‘imaginative’ experience in a form which springs from spiritual (etheric) reality, and whose reality-content can, through the ordinary consciousness, be recalled in experience.

[ 8 ] A higher activity of knowledge which is forthcoming when meditation is extended, is required for Cosmology. Not only is intensive quietness cultivated on a soul-content or subject matter but also a fully conscious stationary condition of the quiet, content-less soul. This is after the meditative soul-content or subject matter has been banished from the consciousness. The stage ‘is reached where the spiritual content of the Cosmos flows into the empty soul—the stage of ‘inspired cognition’. We have in part of us a spiritual Cosmos, just as we have a physical Cosmos before the senses. We succeed in seeing, in the powers of the spiritual Cosmos, what takes place spiritually between man and the Cosmos in the process of breathing. In this and the other rhythmic processes of man we find the physical reproduction of what exists in the spiritual sphere in human astral organization. We attain to the vision of how this astral organism has its place in the spiritual Cosmos outside the life on earth, and how it takes on the cloak of the physical organism through embryonic life and birth, to lay it down again in death. By means of this knowledge we can distinguish between heredity, which is an earthly phenomenon, and that which man brings with him from the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In this way, through ‘inspired knowledge’, we attain to a Cosmology which can embrace man in respect of his psychic and spiritual existence. Inspired knowledge is cultivated in the astral organism because we experience an existence outside our bodies in the Cosmos of the Spirit. But the same thing happens in the etheric organism; and we can translate this knowledge into human speech in the images which present themselves in this sphere, and we can harmonize it with the content of Philosophy. So we get a Cosmic Philosophy.

[ 10 ] For Religious Cognition a third thing is necessary. We must dive down into those existences which reveal themselves in picture form as the content of ‘inspired knowledge’; and this is attained when we add ‘Soul-exercises of the Will’ to the kind of meditation which we have till now been describing. For instance, we attempt to present to ourselves events which in the physical world have a definite course, but in reverse order, from the end to the beginning. Doing this we separate the soul-life, through a process of will which is not used in ordinary consciousness from the cosmic externals, and let the soul sink into those Beings which manifest themselves by inspiration. We attain true intuition, a union with beings of a spiritual world. These experiences of intuition are reflected in etheric and also in physical man, and produce in this reflection the subject matter of religious consciousness.

[ 11 ] Through this ‘intuitive cognition’ we gain a vision of the true nature of the Ego, which in reality is sunk into the spiritual world. The Ego which we know in ordinary consciousness is only a quite faint reflection of its true proportions. Intuition provides the possibility of feeling the connection of this faint reflection with the divine primal universe, to which in its true shape it belongs. Moreover, we are enabled to see how spiritual man,, the true Ego, has his place in the spiritual world, when he is sunk in sleep. In this condition the physical and etheric organisms require the rhythmic processes for their own regeneration. In a waking condition the Ego lives in this rhythm and in the metabolic processes that are a part of it; in the condition of sleep, the rhythm and the metabolic processes of man have a life of their own as physical and etheric organisms; and the astral organisms and the Ego then take their place in the spirit world. The translation of man into this world by inspired and intuitive knowledge is conscious; he lives in a spiritual Cosmos, just as by his senses he lives in a physical Cosmos. He can speak of the content of the religious consciousness from knowledge, and he can do this because what he experiences in the spiritual sphere is reflected in the physical and etheric man. Moreover, the reflected pictures can be expressed in speech, and in this form have a meaning which throws religious light on the human disposition of ordinary consciousness.

[ 12 ] Thus we reach the heart of Philosophy by imaginative cognition, of Cosmology by inspiration, and of the religious life through intuition. Besides that already described, the following soul-exercise helps towards attaining intuition. One tries so to grasp the life, which otherwise unconsciously unfolds itself from one human age to another, that one consciously contracts habits which one did not have before, or consciously changes such as one had. The greater the effort that such a change necessitates, the better it is for gaining intuitive knowledge; for these changes bring about a loosening of the will-power from the physical and etheric organism. We bind the will to the astral organism and to the true form of the Ego and consciously immerse both of them into the spirit world.

[ 13 ] What we may call ‘abstract thought’ has been perfected only in the modern spiritual development of mankind. In earlier periods of evolution this kind of thought was unknown to man, though it is necessary to the development of human spiritual activity, because it frees the power of thought from the picture-form. We achieve the possibility of thinking through the physical organism, though such thinking is not rooted in a real world; only in an apparent world where the processes of Nature can be copied without man himself contributing anything to these pictures. We attain a copy of Nature, which, qua copy, can be genuine, because the life in the thought-copy is not in itself reality, but only apparent reality. But the moral impulses can also be taken up into this pseudo-thought, so that they exercise no compulsion on man. The moral impulses are themselves real because they come from the spirit world; the manner in which man experiences them in his apparent world enables him to adapt himself in accordance with them, or not. They themselves exercise no compulsion on him either through his body or his soul.

[ 14 ] So man strides on; thought which was in ancient times completely bound to the unconsciously imagined, inspired and intuitive knowledge, thought in which the subject matter was laid as open as Imagination and Inspiration and Intuition themselves, becomes abstract thought conducted through the physical organism. In this thought, which has a pseudo-life, because it is spirit substance translated into the physical world, man has the possibility of developing an objective nature-knowledge and his own moral freedom.

More details on this subject you will find in my Philosophy of Spirit Activity, my Knowledge of Higher Worlds and how to attain it, Theosophy, Occult Science, etc. What is necessary in order to return to a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religion that embrace all man, is to enter upon the province of an exact clairvoyance in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition; and this consciously—that is in contradistinction to the old dreamlike clairvoyance. Man attains to his full consciousness in the province of a life of abstract presentations. It remains to him, in the further advance of humanity, to bring this full consciousness of the spiritual world to bear on his daily life.

[ 1 ] The inner life of man assumes another form from that of ordinary consciousness when it enters upon imaginative knowledge. His relationship to the world is also changed. This change is brought about by the concentration of all the powers of the soul on a presentation-complex which can easily be seen in its entirety. This last condition is necessary to avoid any kind of unconscious process playing a part in the meditation; for in this everything must come to pass only within the psychic and spiritual spheres. The man who thinks out a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is employing only psychic-spiritual forces. Unconscious memories, influenced by feeling or will, will not enter into it. It must be the same with Meditation. If we take for it a thought which is brought up out of memory, we cannot know how much at the same time we introduce into the consciousness from the physical, or instinctive, or unconsciously psychical, and cause it to react in the soul on the presentation during meditation. It is, therefore, best to choose for a subject of meditation something which one knows for certain to be quite new to the soul. If we seek advice on this point from an experienced spiritual investigator, he will lay particular stress on this. He will recommend a subject which is perfectly simple and which quite certainly cannot have occurred to us before. It is of no importance that the subject should even correspond with some known fact taken from the world of the senses. We can take as an idea something pictorial, but not necessarily representing a picture of the outer world, e.g., ‘In Light lives streaming Wisdom’. It depends on the power of reposeful meditation with such an image-presentation. The spiritual and psychic powers are strengthened by such a calm meditation just as the muscles are strengthened by performing a piece of work. The meditation can be short at a time, but it must be repeated over a long period to be successful. With one person success can be attained after a few weeks, with another only after years, according to natural predisposition. The man who wishes to be a true Spiritual Investigator must do such exercises systematically and intensively. The first result of meditation in the way here indicated is that the man who practises it has through his inner life a greater control over the statements of a Spiritual Investigator than the man of ordinary healthy intellect, though the latter, if sufficiently unfettered and unprejudiced, is also quite capable of such control.

[ 2 ] Meditation must call to its aid the exercise in character strengthening, inner truthfulness, calmness of soul, self-possession and deliberation. For only then, when it is thoroughly imbued with these qualities, will the soul gradually imprint on the whole human organization what in meditation appears as a process.

[ 3 ] When success is reached by means of such exercises, we find ourselves in the etheric organism. The thought-experience receives a new form. We experience the thoughts not only in the abstract form as before, but in such a way that one feels the power in them. Thoughts of former experience can only be thoughts, they have no power to stimulate action. Whereas the thoughts we now have, have as much power as the powers of growth which accompany man from childhood to maturity, and just for this reason it is necessary to carry out meditation in the right way. For if unconscious forces intervene in it, if it is not an act of complete and deliberate thoughtfulness, and done in self-possession taking a purely psychic and spiritual course, impulses are developed which step in as do the natural powers of growth in our own human organism. This must in no wise occur. Our own physical and etheric organism must remain completely untouched by meditation. The right kind of meditation enables us to live with the newly-developed power of thought-content quite outside our own physical and etheric organism. We have the etheric experience; and our organism itself attains to a personal experience of a relationship with a relative objectivity. We look at it (our organism) and in the form of thought it radiates back what we experience in the ether. [ 4 ] This experience is healthy if we arrive at the condition in which we can with complete freedom of choice alternate between an existence in the ether and one in our physical body. The condition is not right if there is something which forces us into the etheric existence. We must be able to be in ourselves and outside ourselves in accordance with perfectly free orientation.

[ 5 ] The first experience which we can win through such an inner labour is a review of the course of our own past life on earth. We see it as it has progressed by means of the powers of growth from childhood upwards. We see it in thought-pictures which are condensed into powers of growth. They are not simply remembered scenes of our own life which we have before us. They are pictures of an etheric course of events, which have happened in our own existence, without having been taken into the ordinary consciousness. That which the consciousness and memory hold is only the abstract accompanying appearance of the real course. It is, as it were, a surface wave which is in its shape the result of something deeper.

[ 6 ] In the process of viewing this progress the working of the etheric Cosmos on man is brought out. We can experience this work as the subject-matter of Philosophy. It is wisdom, not in the abstract form of the conception, but rather in the form of the working of the etheric in the Cosmos.

[ 7 ] In ordinary consciousness it is only the young child who has not yet learnt to speak who is in the same relationship to the Cosmos as the man who uses his imagination correctly. The child has not yet separated the powers of thought from the general (etheric) powers of growth. This happens only when he learns to speak. Then the powers of abstract thought are separated from the universal powers of growth which alone were previously present. In the course of his later life man has these powers of abstract thought, but they are part of his physical organism, and are not taken up into his etheric being. He cannot, therefore, bring his relationship to the etheric world into his consciousness. He can learn to do this , through Imagination.

[ 8 ] A quite small child is an unconscious philosopher; the ‘imaginative philosopher’ is again a small child, but wakened to full consciousness.

[ 9 ] Through the exercise of ‘Inspiration’ a new capacity is added to those already developed, namely, the capacity to obliterate from the consciousness pictures which have been dwelt upon in meditation. It must be clearly emphasized that here the capacity must be developed again to obliterate when one likes pictures which have previously been taken up in meditation by one's freewill. It is not enough to obliterate presentations which have not been implanted in the consciousness by free choice. It requires a greater psychic effort to abolish pictures which have been created in meditation than to extinguish those which have entered into the consciousness in another way. And we need this greater effort to advance in supersensible knowledge.

[ 10 ] On such lines we achieve a wakeful, but quite empty soul-life; we remain in conscious wakefulness. If this condition is experienced in full thoughtfulness the soul becomes filled with spiritual facts, as through the senses it is filled with physical. And this is the condition of ‘Inspiration’. We live an inner life in the Cosmos just as we live an inner life in the physical organism. But we are aware that we are experiencing the cosmic life, that the spiritual things and processes of the Cosmos are being revealed to us as our own inner soul-life. Now the possibility must have remained of always momentarily exchanging this inner experience of the Cosmos with the condition of ordinary consciousness. For then we can always relate what we experience in Inspiration to something we experience in ordinary consciousness. We see in the Cosmos that is perceived by the senses a reproduction of what we have spiritually experienced. The process may be compared with that by which one compares a new experience in life with a memory-picture which rises in the consciousness. The spiritual outlook which we have won is like the new experience, and the physical view of the Cosmos like the memory-picture.

[ 11 ] This spiritual outlook, thus attained, differs from the imaginative. In the latter we have general pictures of an etheric occurrence; in the former, pictures appear of spiritual beings who live and move in this etheric occurrence. What we know in the physical world as Sun and Moon, Planets and Fixed Stars, these we find again as Cosmic beings; and our own psychic-spiritual experience appears enclosed in the orbit of these cosmic essences. The physical organism of man now becomes intelligible for the first time, for not only all that his senses take in Contributes to its shape and life, but also the beings who work creatively in the affairs of the sense-world. Everything which is thus experienced through inspiration remains completely shut out from the ordinary consciousness. Man would only be conscious of it if he experienced the process of breathing in the same way as he experienced the process of observation. The cosmic disposition between man and world remains hidden for ordinary consciousness. The Yoga-philosophy seeks the road to a Cosmology whereby the process of breathing is transformed into a process of observation. Modern western man should not imitate that. In the course of human evolution he has entered upon an organization which for him excludes such Yoga-exercises. He would never through them get quite away from his organism, and so would not satisfy the requirement to leave untouched his physical and etheric organism. Such practices corresponded with a period of evolution which has gone by. But what was attained by them had to be gained in the same way as has just been described for inspired knowledge; the method, that is, of experiencing in a state of full consciousness what in past times man had to experience in waking dreams.

[ 12 ] If the Philosopher is a child with fully-developed consciousness, the Cosmologist must become in a fully conscious way a man of past ages, in which the Spirit of the Cosmos could still be seen by means of natural faculties.

[ 13 ] In ‘Intuition’ man is completely translated—through the exercises of the Will described last time—together with his consciousness into the objective world of the cosmic, spiritual beings. He attains a condition of experience which alone on earth the first men had. They were in as close a connection with the inwardness of their cosmic surroundings as they were with the processes of their own bodies. And these processes were not completely unconscious as with modern man. They were reflected in the soul. Man felt in the soul his growth, and the chemical changes of his body, as in waking dream-pictures. And this experience enabled him to feel also the processes of his cosmic circumstances with their spiritual inwardness as in a dream. He had dreamlike intuition of which we find to-day only an echo in some people specially inclined to it. The world around him was, in the consciousness of primitive man, both material and spiritual; and what he experienced then in a semi-dream state was for him religious revelation, a direct continuation of the other aspects of his life. These experiences in the spirit world, of which primitive man was only half conscious, remain completely unknown to modern man. The man with supersensible, intuitive knowledge brings them into his full consciousness, and so in a new way he is transported back to the condition of primitive man, who still derived the religious content from his world-consciousness.

[ 14 ] As the Philosopher resembles the fully-conscious child, and the Cosmologist the fully-conscious man of a past middle human period, so the man with religious cognition in a modern sense resembles primitive man, except that he experiences the spiritual world in his soul, not as in a dream, but with full consciousness.

[ 1 ] We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things.

[ 2 ] To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man.

[ 3 ] In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature.

[ 4 ] Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity.

[ 5 ] Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life.

[ 6 ] Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly.

[ 7 ] If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. [ 8 ] We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man.

[ 9 ] Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one.

[ 10 ] By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death.

[ 11 ] Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge.

[ 12 ] Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul.

Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope.

A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism.

[ 14 ] A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

[ 1 ] WE speak to-day of the ‘Unconscious’ of ‘Subconscious’, when we wish to signify that the soul-experiences of ordinary consciousness—observation, representation, realization, volition—are dependent on a state which is not included in this consciousness. That knowledge which would base itself only on these experiences can no doubt, by logical sequence of argument, point to such a ‘subconscious’; but that is all it can do. It can bring no contribution to a definition of the unconscious.

[ 2 ] The imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge which has been described in the foregoing considerations, can give such a definition. Now we shall try to do the same for the soul-experiences of man during sleep.

[ 3 ] The sleep-experiences of the soul do not enter upon ordinary consciousness, for this rests on the basis of the physical organization; and during sleep the experience of the soul is outside the body. When in waking the soul begins, with the help of the body, to imagine, to feel, and to will, it joins up in its memory with those experiences which took place before sleep on the basis of the physical organization. The experiences of sleep reveal themselves only to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. They do not appear in the guise of memory, but as if in a psychic review of it.

[ 4 ] I shall now have to describe what is revealed in this review. Because it is hid from ordinary consciousness, such a description of this review must, when the consciousness is faced with it unprepared, naturally appear grotesque. But the foregoing explanations have shown that such a description is possible, and how it is to be taken. Although it may even be laughed at from some quarter or another, I shall give it as it emerges from the states of consciousness already described.

[ 5 ] At first, in falling asleep, a man finds himself in an inwardly vague, undifferentiated state of being. He sees there no difference between his own being and that of the universe; nor any between separate objects or people. His state of existence is universal and vague. Taken up into the imaginative consciousness, this experience becomes an ‘Ego-feeling’, in which the ‘universe-feeling’ is included. He has left the sphere of the senses, and has not yet clearly entered upon another world.

[ 6 ] We shall now have to use expressions such as ‘Feeling’, ‘longing’, etc., which also in ordinary life refer to something known; and yet we shall have to use them to denote processes which remain unknown to the ordinary soul-life. But the soul experiences them as facts during sleep. Think, for instance, how in daily life joy is experienced consciously. Physically an enlargement of the small blood vessels takes place, and other things, and this enlargement is a fact; when it takes place, joy is consciously felt. Similarly, the soul goes through real experiences in sleep; and this will be described in terms which refer to corresponding experience of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness. If, for example, we speak of ‘longing’ we shall mean an actual soul-process which is imaginatively revealed as longing. Thus the unconscious states and experiences of the soul will be described as if they were conscious.

[ 7 ] Simultaneously with the feeling of vagueness arid the absence of differentiation, there arises in the soul a longing for rest in what is spiritual and divine. The human soul evolves this longing as a counterbalance to the feeling of being lost in infinity. Having lost the sphere of the senses, it craves for a state out of the spiritual world that will support it.

[ 8 ] Dreams interweave themselves into the state of soul just described. They traverse the unconscious with half-conscious experiences. The real form of sleep experiences is not made clearer through ordinary dreams, but still less clear. This lack of clearness applies also to the imaginative consciousness if this latter is clouded by dreams arising spontaneously. One perceives the truth on the further side of life both awake and in dream by means of that conception of the soul which is attained by free will through the exercises previously explained.

[ 9 ] The next state through which the soul lives then is like a division or partition of itself into inner happenings which are differentiated from each other. During this period of sleep, the soul feels itself to be not a unity but an inner plurality, and this state is one suffused with anxiety. Were it felt consciously, it would be soul-fear. But the human soul experiences the real counterpart of this anxiety every night, though remaining unconscious of it.

[ 10 ] In the case of modern man there appears at this moment of sleep the soul-saving effect which corresponds in the waking condition to his self surrender to Christ. It was different, of course, before the events of Golgotha. Then men, when awake, received from their religious beliefs the antidote which carried over into the condition of sleep and was the medicine for this fear. For the man who lives after the events of Golgotha are substituted the religious experiences which he has in the contemplation of the life and death and being of Christ. He overcomes his fears through the working of this into his sleep. This fear prevents, as long as it is present, the inner vision of that which should be experienced by the soul in sleep, as the body prevents it in the waking state. The leadership of Christ overcomes the inner division and transforms the plurality into a unity. And the soul comes now to the point of having an inner life different from that of the waking condition. The physical and etheric organisms belong now to its outer world. On the other hand in its present inner self it experiences a reflection of the planetary movements. The soul experiences something cosmic in place of the individual, conditioned by the physical and etheric organisms. The soul lives outside the body; and its inner life is an inner reflection of the planetary motions. This being so, the inspired consciousness is aware of the corresponding inner processes in the manner which has been described in our previous studies. This consciousness perceives also how that which the soul receives through its contact with the planets continues to have an after-effect in the consciousness after waking. This planetary influence continues in awakeness as a stimulant in the rhythm of breathing and blood-circulation. During sleep the physical and etheric organisms are subjected to the effect of the planet-stimulation, which by day influence them, as described, as the after-effect of the previous night.

[ 11 ] There are other experiences side by side with these. In this phase of its sleep-existence, the soul experiences its relation to all human souls with which it had come into contact in earthly life. Considered intuitively this leads to certainty on the subject of repeated earth life; for these earth-lives reveal themselves in their relation to the soul. And the connection with other spirit-beings, which live in the world without ever assuming a human body, is also one of the soul's experiences. [ 12 ] But in this condition of sleep the soul experiences also what point to good and evil tendencies, and good and evil events in the predestined course of earthly life. In fact, what older philosophers have termed ‘Karma’ is now presented to the soul.

[ 13 ] In daily life all these happenings of the soul have so much effect that they help to cause the feelings, the general mood of the soul, of happiness or unhappiness.

[ 14 ] In the further course of sleep another state of the soul is added to the one just described. It goes through a copy or imitation of state of the Twin Stars. As the bodily organs are sensed in waking, so a reconstructing of the fixed constellations is now attempted. The cosmic experience of the soul is widening. It is now a spirit amongst spirits. ‘Intuition’ sees the sun and the other fixed stars as physical projections of spirits, in the manner just described. These adventures of the soul reverberate during daily life as its religious leanings, its religious feeling and willing. It can be said indeed that the religious longing, stirring in the depth of the soul, is in awake life the aftermath of the stellar experience during the state of sleep.

[ 15 ] But it is significant above all that in this state the soul is faced with the facts of life and death. It sees itself as a spirit-being, entering into a physical body through conception and the life of the cell, and unconsciously it sees the event of death as a passing over into a purely spiritual world. That the soul in its waking state cannot believe in the reality of what outwardly represents itself to the senses as the events of birth and death is therefore not only the imaginative picturing of a longing but a vaguely-felt reliving through things presented to the soul in sleep.

If man could recall to his consciousness everything he lives through unconsciously from falling asleep to waking up, he would have a consciousness-content giving the experiences of truth to his philosophical ideas in the first occurrence in which sense-phenomena merge Into a universal inner cosmic life, and in which a kind of pantheistic knowledge of God occurs. If he was conscious of this planet and fixed-star life of sleep he would indeed have a cosmology full of content. And the conclusion could be formed from the experience of star-life, that a human being has a life as spirit among spirits.

From falling asleep, through further states of sleep, man actually becomes an unconscious philosopher, cosmologist, and God-filled being. From the depths of experiences otherwise only possible in sleep, ‘Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition’ lift up that which shows what kind of being man himself really is; how he is part of the Cosmos and how he becomes one with God.

[ 16 ] This last happens to man in the deepest stage of sleep. From there the soul begins to return to the world of the senses. In the impulse leading to this return the intuitive consciousness recognizes the activity of those spirit beings which have their physical counterpart in the moon. The spiritual moon-activities are the ones recalling men in their sleep back to their presence on earth. Naturally these same lunar activities are also present in the New Moon. But the transformation of whatever changes visibly in the moon has its significance concerning the part lunar activities play in man's holding on to his earthly life from birth or conception to death.

[ 17 ] After the deepest state of sleep man returns to his waking state through the same intermediate states. Before awakening he goes once more through experiencing the universal world state, and the longing for God, in which dreams can play their part.

[ 1 ] IN the previous studies it was shown how a view of the eternal psycho-spiritual inner being of man can be attained through inspired and intuitive approach. Attention was drawn to the fact that the inner life of man was filled by reflections of cosmic happenings. In the last survey it was shown how man lives through such cosmic reconstructions during sleep. Man's inner world becomes the external world and vice versa: the spiritual part of the external world becomes an inner world.

[ 2 ] During the state of sleep the physical and etheric organisms of man form an outer world for his psycho-spiritual nature. They remain there in the same way in which, in waking, they can become again the instrument of the psycho-spiritual man. Man carries the longing for these two organisms over into the sleeping state. As shown in the last review, this longing is connected with those spiritual activities of the Cosmos which are reflected physically in the appearances of the moon. Man is only subjected to these lunar activities through his being part of this earth. The contemplation of that state in which man finds himself in the purely spiritual world for a certain time before his turning towards earthly life makes it clear that then he is not subjected to the influences of these lunar activities.

[ 3 ] In this state he does not recognize a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to him, as he does in sleep. But he recognizes them in other ways. He sees them as having their foundations in cosmic worlds, as growing out of the spiritual Cosmos. He contemplates a spiritual Cosmos which is the spiritual part of the cell of the physical organism, which at some future time he will put on. When we talk of a cell in this connection we designate something which in one sense is opposed to what we usually term cell. By ‘Cell’ we usually mean the small physical beginning of a growing organism. The spiritual organism on the other hand which man sees in connection with himself in his pre-earthly spiritual state, is large and contracts continually, as it were, to merge finally with the physical part of the cell.

[ 4 ] In order to represent these relationships clearly we have to make use of expressions ‘Large’ and ‘Small’. But we must remember all the time that the happenings of the spiritual world are spiritual and that for them space, in which physical happenings move, is non-existent. The expressions used therefore are only similes for something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, purely qualitative.

[ 5 ] During his pre-earthly existence man lives in the cosmic creation which is the spiritual germ of his future physical organism, and this spiritual stage is regarded as in unity with the whole of the spiritual cosmos and reveals itself at the same time as the cosmic body of the individual human being. Man feels the spiritual cosmos as his own innate powers. His whole existence consists in his experiencing himself in this cosmos. But he does not experience only himself in it. For this cosmic existence does not separate him from the other life of the cosmos, as does later his physical organism. Over against this existence he is in a kind of Intuition. The existence of other spiritual beings is at the same time his own existence.

[ 6 ] Man has his pre-earthly existence in the active recognition of the spirit-cell of his future physical organism. He himself prepares for this organism by working in the spirit world on the spirit-cell together with other spirits in the world of spirits.

As during his existence on earth he perceives through his senses a physical world round him in which he is active, so in his pre-earthly existence he perceives his physical organism being built in spirit; and his activity consists in helping its construction, just as his activity in the physical world consists in helping to shape the physical things of the outer world.

[ 7 ] In the spirit-cell of the physical human body which the psycho-spiritual man experiences in his pre-earthly existence, a whole universe is present, no less manifold than the physical outer world of the senses. Indeed intuitive knowledge may well say that man, incorporated in his physical body, though unknown to himself, carries a universe of such magnificence that the physical world cannot be remotely compared with it.

[ 8 ] This universe it is which man experiences in a spiritual manner in his pre-earthly state, and in which he is active. He experiences it in its growth, its mobility, but filled with spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] He has a consciousness within this world; with the Powers active in the growth of this Universe his own are bound up. His consciousness is filled with the collaboration of these spiritual cosmic powers with his own power. The state of sleep is in a sense a reconstruction of his activity.

But in its course of sleep the physical organism exists as an exclusive form, or system apart from and independent of the psycho-spiritual man. Here contemplation lacks the active powers representing the content of consciousness in the pre-earthly state. Therefore the state remains unconscious.

[ 10 ] In the further course of pre-earthly existence the conscious recognition of the growth of the future earth-organism becomes fainter. It never disappears completely from view, but it fades by degrees. It is as if man felt his own cosmic world get further and further away, as if he was growing out of it. What is at first a complete fusion with the spiritual beings of the cosmos now becomes only a revelation of these beings. One might say that while at one time man had a true ‘intuition’ of the spiritual world, it is now changed into a real ‘inspiration’, in which his nature acts upon man, revealing itself from the outside. [ 11 ] But with this a new phase begins within the psycho-spiritual man which might be identified with the ‘missing’ and the beginning of the ‘longing for the lost’. Expressions like these are used only to describe conditions of the supernatural world in terms of the natural world.

[ 12 ] In such a state of ‘missing’ and ‘longing’ the soul of man passes a later period of its pre-earthly existence. It no longer has consciousness of the full reality of experience of a spiritual world, but only of a revealed reflection thereof, with, as it were, less intensity of being.

[ 13 ] The human soul is now getting ready to experience the spiritual lunar activities, which up to now were beyond its sphere. It thus obtains a being through which it makes itself independent of the other spirit-beings with whom it lived before. One might say that at first its experience was permeated by spirit, and by God, and that later it feels itself as an independent spiritual being; the cosmos is now felt as an outer world, even though the experiencing of this revelation of the Cosmos is still a very intense one during the first phases, and only develops into a fainter one by degrees.

[ 14 ] In this experience man therefore leaves the existence permeated by spirit, and felt as reality, in order to enter one in which he is faced by a revealed spirit-cosmos. The first phase of this experience is the reality of that which later on appears as religious learning to one's perception. The second is the reality of what, if described, will result in a true Cosmology. For here the physical human organism is viewed also in its cosmic cell-form without which it cannot be comprehended.

[ 15 ] In the later phases man loses the capacity of viewing the spirit cosmos, which becomes less clear to the ‘spiritual eye’. On the other hand the experience of the inner soul which is connected with the spiritual lunar activities grows ever more intense. The human soul gets ready to receive from outside that which before she experienced within herself. The spiritual activity that has furthered the growth of the physical organism which man at first experienced consciously, is dropped by the organs of his soul, but it is transferred into the physical activity which reaches its climax in the reproductive development within the existence on earth. The previous experience of the human soul is transferred into this development as its directing force. Now for some time the human soul has its place in the spiritual world, for she no longer takes part in the shaping of the physical human organism.

[ 16 ] In this phase she becomes ripe to satisfy with the etheric cosmos that which in her is ‘missing’ something or ‘longing’ for it. She attracts the cosmic ether. And according to the faculties remaining to her, from her collaboration in the human Universe she forms her etheric organism. Thus man gets used to his etheric organism before his physical organism receives him on earth. [ 17 ] The events belonging to earthly existence and following an accomplished conception, and separated from the course of the last phases of the pre-earthly life of the soul, have brought the growth of the physical organism to physical cell-formation. With this the human soul which meanwhile has taken over her etheric organism, can unite. She can unite with it through the power of continued ‘longing’ and man thus begins his earthly career.

[ 18 ] The experience of the human soul in taking unto itself the etheric organism, the increase in growth, as it were, of this organism out of the world-ether, is an experience foreign to earth, for it is passed through without the physical organism. It has it, however, as its ‘longed-for’ object. That which happens in the experience of the little child is an unconscious memory of this experience. But it is an active memory, an unconscious working of the physical organism which was once the inner world of the soul and now is the outer case of it. The formative creative work which man unconsciously applies to his own organism during its growth is the visible sign of this active memory. What philosophy is searching for, and what she can only achieve as an inner reality by fully conscious imaginative treatment of the child's earliest experience, lies in this active unconscious memory. This explains in some measure the nature of philosophy which sometimes seems nearer and sometimes further away from the world.

[ 1 ] I attempted to show in my last observations how, in the realm of human evolution, the psycho-spiritual existence is transferred to that of the physical senses. Now it depends on the understanding which man can bring to bear on this transference whether he can gain a relationship, in accordance with modern consciousness, to the event of Golgotha and its reference to man's development on earth.

[ 2 ] If one does not realize in one's own physical nature how something psycho-spiritual has so changed itself from a spiritual form of experience as to become manifest in the physical world of the senses, one will also never know how the Christ spirit coming from spirit worlds was made manifest in the man Jesus on earth.

[ 3 ] But it must be once more emphasized that it is not a case of individual knowledge derived from observation, but rather of understanding with one's whole nature and being what observation has brought to light. Only a few men achieve the former, but the latter is possible to all. The man who realizes the worlds through which the human soul has passed in its pre-earthly existence, learns also to look up to Him who before the event of the mystery of Golgotha had lived as Christ only in those worlds, and who through this mystery and since its occurrence had united His life with mortal humanity.

[ 4 ] Our earthly souls have attained the condition in which they now live only through a gradual development. Ordinary consciousness takes the condition of the soul as it is to-day and constructs a ‘history’, in which things are represented as if man in the grey dawn of time had thought and willed and felt practically as he does now. But that is not so. There have been times in which the soul condition was quite different—times when there was no such sharp distinction between sleeping and waking. Dreams now are the only bridge between the two; and their content has something deceptive and questionable about them. Primitive man knew a stage between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and remote from the senses, but revealing something really spiritual, just as the sense-observation reveals something of the actually physical.

[ 5 ] In this life of pictures, and not of thoughts, early man had a dream-like experience of his pre-earthly existence. He felt his pre-earthly soul-nature as an echo of what he had gone through. On the other hand he had not that sense of self which present-day man has. He did not find himself in the same degree as to-day as an ‘Ego’. [ 6 ] This feeling has arisen only in the course of human spiritual evolution, and the decisive epoch of this development is that in which occurred also the event of Golgotha.

[ 7 ] At this time in the ordinary consciousness the psychic experience of an echo from pre-earthly existence grew ever fainter. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to what his physical sense-life on earth told him,

[ 8 ] Moreover from, this moment the perception of death took on a new meaning. Previously man knew, as I have described, of the central point of his being. He knew it through the contemplation of this echo in such case that he was convinced this echo could not be affected by death. At the moment of historical time when the view became limited to the physical nature of man, death became a disturbing problem for the soul.

[ 9 ] The further development of purely inner faculties of knowledge did not suffice to solve this problem. It was solved by the events of Golgotha occurring in the evolution of the earth.

[ 10 ] The Christ came down to earthly existence from those worlds in which man had passed his pre-earthly life. By combining the experience of the ordinary awake consciousness with the contemplation of the acts of Christ, man can find, since Golgotha, what he formerly found through a natural function of his consciousness.

[ 11 ] The ‘Initiates’ of the ancient Mysteries spoke to their followers in such a way that they saw in their considerations of pre-earthly life a gift of grace from that spiritual Sun-Being which has its counterpart in the physical sun.

[ 12 ] The Initiates who at the time of the mystery of Golgotha still continued the ancient initiation-methods, told those who had ears to hear how the Being who had before given to man the echo from spiritual worlds of pre-earthly existence that he could carry into the earthly life, had descended as the Christ upon the physical earth and taken flesh in the person of the man Jesus.

[ 13 ] Those who knew the truth about the mystery of Golgotha always, as in the early days of Christianity, spoke of the Christ-Being as one who had descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly one. The teachers of mankind of that time stressed particularly this aspect of the Christ coming from a higher world down to the earth.

[ 14 ] This view was conditioned by the fact that one still knew enough, from the ancient initiation, about the supernatural worlds, to see in Christ a Being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth.

[ 15 ] The remnants of this knowledge lasted into the Fourth Century, and then faded in man's consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event which was known only through the construction of political history.

The principles of initiation of the old world were lost to the outer world, and took root only in almost unknown places. Only now in the last third of the nineteenth Century has a stage in human evolution been reached again in which the new Initiation, as has been described leads to an aspect of Christ's nature within the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] It was necessary for the complete unfolding of the ego-consciousness, which was to come into being in the development of humanity, that initiate knowledge should disappear for a few centuries, and that man should turn his attention to the outer world of the senses in which the ego-consciousness could be freely cultivated.

[ 17 ] Thus it was only possible for the Christian community to direct the attention of believers to the historical tradition concerning the mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known by spiritual knowledge in ‘Dogmas of Belief’ for the Earth. The content of these Dogmas does not concern us here, but only the manner in which they affect the soul, whether through faith, belief or through knowledge.

[ 18 ] It is again possible to-day to have a direct knowledge of the Christ. The figure of Jesus stood for centuries in front of the ordinary consciousness, and the Christ who lived in him, had become an object of faith. But more and more the inclination to dogmatic faith grew less, precisely among the spiritual leaders of mankind; Jesus was seen more and more only as history made him appear to the ordinary consciousness. The sense of Christ was gradually lost; and so there grew up a modern branch of Theology which concerns itself really only with the man Jesus, and which lacks a living sense of the Christ. But a mere Jesus-Faith is really -no longer Christianity.

[ 19 ] In the consciousness which early man had of his pre-earthly existence, he had also an anchorage for a proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth.

In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him in primæval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’, that He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through them. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death.

[ 20 ] To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He must be recognized.

[ 21 ] The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study.

[ 22 ] Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus. In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the ‘Eternal Man’, the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.

[ 1 ] In the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as ‘himself’.

[ 2 ] Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego.

The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the present which point to the past only through their content.

[ 3] Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth becomes something present at the moment.

[ 4 ] But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the ‘imaginative’ consciousness knows the activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism.

[ 5 ] The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising from the depths of the soul which before had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the ‘imaginative’.

The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience of a visionary kind.

[ 6 ] In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has ‘imagination’ has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a different being.

[ 7 ] Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls imaginative experience at every moment. The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual ‘stepping-out’ from the physical organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical organism.

We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a visionary nature. It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses ‘imaginative cognition’ is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary way.

[ 8 ] When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial content. Only what is introduced into consciousness by imagination is found to be the substantial content of this ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking may indeed be compared to a mirrored picture. But while the mirrored picture rises in the ordinary consciousness the imagined picture is alive unconsciously.

We imagine also in our ordinary psychic life, but unconsciously. If we did not imagine we should not think. The conscious thoughts of ordinary psychic life are the reflections of unconscious imagining mirrored by the physical organism. And the substantial part of this imagining is the etheric organism which is manifest in the development of man's earthly life.

[ 9 ] A new element enters the consciousness with inspiration. In order to attain inspiration the individual human life must be abstracted, as has been described in the previous studies. But the power of activity which the soul has won for itself by imagining still remains. Possessing this power the soul can attain pictures of that which in the universe underlies the etheric organism just as this underlies the physical.

[ 10 ] And thus the soul is faced with its own eternal nature. In the ordinary consciousness it happens that the soul can only give its activity a conceptual form by grasping the physical organism. It dives into it and there finds the pictured reflections of that which it experiences with its etheric organism. This latter, however, the soul does not experience in its activity. This etheric organism is itself experienced in imaginative consciousness. But this happens through the soul having gone further back with its experience to the astral organism. As long as the soul merely ‘imagines’ it lives unconsciously in the astral organism, and both the physical and etheric organisms are contemplated; as soon as the soul attains ‘inspired’ knowledge the astral organism is also brought into contemplation; for the soul now lives in the eternal centre of its being, and can contemplate this by means of the continuation of ‘intuitive’ cognition. Through this it lives in the spiritual world, as in ordinary existence it lives in its physical organism.

[ 11 ] The soul learns in this way how the physical, etheric and astral organisms grow out of the spiritual world. But it can also observe the continued activity of the spiritual in the organization of the earthly being—man. It sees how the spiritual centre of man's nature sinks into the physical, etheric and astral organism. This sinking is not really a merging of something spiritual into something physical, so that the former dwells in the latter. But it is a transformation of part of the human soul into the physical and etheric organization. This part of the soul disappears during earthly life by being transformed into the physical and etheric organism. It is this part of the soul which is experienced through thought by the ordinary consciousness in its reflection. But the soul emerges again elsewhere.

This is the case with that part of it which in earthly existence is experienced as volition, which has a different character from thought. Volition even during wakefulness contains a section which is asleep. The soul receives a thought clearly. Actually man when he thinks is fully awake, which is not the case with volition. The will is stimulated by thought. Consciousness extends as far as thought. But then the act of volition sinks into the human organism. If I deliberately raise my hand I have the causal thought in my ordinary consciousness to start with, and the sight of my raised hand with all the accompanying sensations is the result of my act of will. What is between remains unconscious. What happens in the depths of the organism when a man puts his will into action escapes the ordinary consciousness just as do the events of sleep. Man has always a part of himself asleep even when he is awake.

[ 12 ] This is the part in which continues to live during earthly existence as much of the Spirit-Soul as had not been transformed into the physical organism. One perceives this when true intuition has been achieved by the exercises of the will previously described. Then we recognize behind the will the eternal part of the human soul, which is transformed into the head-organization; and disappears in its form-life during earthly existence, rises again on the other side to pass through death and to become ready once more to help in a future physical body and earthly life.

This brings this study to the event of death which is to be further touched upon in the next. For by the views I have put before you to-day we are led only to the continuity of the Will and to a knowledge of that part of the soul from the past, which is transformed into human head-organization. We have not reached the destiny of the ego-consciousness, which can only be treated in conjunction with the Christ-problem. Therefore that study will again lead us back to a consideration of the mysteries of Christianity.

[ 13 ] The customary Philosophy of Ideas consists of thoughts; but they have no life, no substance. The substance comes by leaving behind the physical organism in ‘Imagination’. As I have shown, formerly the ideas of Philosophy were only mirrored pictures. If these are built up into a Philosophy, and if one studies them without prejudice, one must feel their unreality. One feels vaguely the moment here described as the one in which all remembered thought entirely disappears.

Augustine and Descartes have felt this, but have inefficiently explained it to themselves as ‘doubt’. But Philosophy acquires life when the unity of life is substantiated in the soul.

Bergson perceived this, and has expressed it in his idea of ‘Duration’. But he did not proceed beyond this point.

Starting with this as a basis, we shall proceed to consider its bearing upon Cosmology and Religious cognition.

[ 1 ] The life of the soul in its earthly existence is passed in the facts of thinking, feeling and willing. In thinking we have a mirrored picture of the experience of the astral organism and the ego-being within the physical sense-world. These higher parts of the human nature were also experienced during the state of sleep. But this experience remains unconscious during the stay on earth. The soul is then too weak in its inner being to present its own content to its consciousness. As soon as the consciousness perceives this content, it takes it for a purely psycho-spiritual one.

[ 2 ] In awaking the astral organism and the ego enter into the etheric and physical organisms. Through thinking the sense-perceptions are experienced by the etheric organisms. But in this experience it is not the world surrounding man, which is active, but a copy of this world. In this copy the sum-total of the formative powers underlying the earthly course of man manifests itself. And a copy of the outer world is present in man at every instant. Man does not directly experience this thinking, but its reflection is presented to ordinary consciousness by the physical organism.

[ 3 ] Ordinary consciousness cannot perceive what is happening behind the reflective activity of thinking in the physical organism, it can only perceive the result, namely the reflected images, presented as thoughts. These unperceived happenings in the physical organism are activities of the etheric and astral organism and of the ego. In his thoughts man perceives what he himself is enacting in his physical organism as a psycho-spiritual being. [ 4 ] There is in the etheric organism a copy of the outer world as inner activity, filling the physical organism. In the astral organism there exists a copy of the pre-earthly existence; in the ego exists the eternal central being of man.

[ 5 ] In the etheric organism the outer world is active in man. In the astral organism continues to be active whatever man has experienced in the pre-earthly existence. This activity has not changed in kind during its earthly existence from what it was in its pre-earthly existence. It was of a kind which occurred in a spiritually changed physical organism. In the waking state it is similar. The inner head-organization of man strives continually to be changed from a physical state into a spiritual one. But this change can only remain a tendency during earthly existence. The physical organization resists it. Precisely at the moment at which the astral organism in its changing activity arrives at a point at which the inner physical head-organization would have to cease as a physical one, the state of sleep intervenes. It replenishes the inner head-organization with strength from the rest of the physical organization by means of which it can continue in the physical world.

[ 6 ] This strength lies in the etheric organism, which grows less and less differentiated inside the head-organization during the waking state. During sleep however it is differentiated internally into definite formations. In those formations are manifest the forces which during existence on earth act in rebuilding the physical organism.

[ 7 ] In the head-organization a two-fold activity is thus enacted during the waking state; one building up through the etheric organism and one tearing down, that is, one which destroys the physical organism. This destruction takes place through the astral organism.

[ 8 ] Through this astral activity man carries death in him continually during his existence on earth. Only this death is vanquished day by day by forces opposing it. But we owe to these constantly acting death tendencies the ordinary consciousness. For in the dying life of the head-organization is found that which is capable of reflecting the soul activity as thought-experience. An organically-growing activity urging towards life cannot produce a tissue of thought. For that a tendency towards death is required. The organically-growing activity reduces the machinery of thought to stupor or unconsciousness.

[ 9 ] What finally happens to the whole human organism in physical death accompanies human life during existence on earth as a tendency, as an always recurring beginning of death. And to this continued dying within him man owes his ordinary consciousness. Before this consciousness stand the etheric and the physical organism as non-transparent things; man does not see them but the thought-reflections mirrored by them and experienced by him in his soul. The physical and etheric organizations hide for him the astral organization and the Ego; and just because the consciousness of soul is filled by the reflections of the physical organism during existence on earth man is prevented from seeing his etheric and astral organization and his Ego.

[ 10 ] In death the physical organism separates from the etheric and astral one and from the Ego. Now man carries his etheric and astral organism and his ego in himself. Through the casting off of the physical organism the obstacle to man's perceiving the etheric organism has been removed. The picture of his life on earth just passed through stands before man's soul. For this picture is only the expression of the formative powers, which in their sum represent the etheric body.

[ 11 ] What is present in the etheric body has been woven into man from the etheric part of the Cosmos. He can never be entirely free of the Cosmos. The Cosmic-etheric act continues inside the human organization and this continuation inside man is the etheric organism. Thus it is when after death man becomes conscious of his etheric organism this consciousness begins already to change into a cosmic one. Man feels the world ether as well as his etheric organism as part of himself. This actually means that the etheric body dissolves after a very short while in the world ether. Man keeps that part which was bound to the physical and etheric organism during existence on earth, namely, his astral organism and his ego.

[ 12 ] The astral being is never wholly incorporated into the physical organism. The head-organization represents a total transformation of this astral organism and the Ego. But in everything that can be called the rhythmical organization of man, in the processes of breathing, blood-circulation, etc. the astral organization and the Ego continue to live with a certain independence, for their activities are not reflected by these processes as they are by the head-organization. The astral organization and the Ego can blend with the rhythmical processes. This union brings about a Being, of spirit and of body known to the ordinary consciousness as the ‘Feeling’ life. In man's Feeling life the astral organism and the Ego are united with man's experiences. [ 13 ] We must look at this union in its details. Let us assume that man has created something within the world of the senses. For his psychic life things do not remain there. He judges his own act. But this judgment is not only happening in the life of thought, the impulse towards it is derived from the astral organism, which in conjunction with the rhythmical processes also manifests itself in physical life. To thought-life which is passed in reflex pictures is added a reflection of moral judgment, which appears within the reflected thought-world as itself only bearing the character of the reflected thought-thing. But in the astral-rhythmical organism it lives in reality. This reality does not enter into the ordinary consciousness during existence on earth. Its entry is prevented because the physical rhythmical processes are felt more strongly than the spiritual processes accompanying them. When the physical organism is discarded in death and the physical rhythmical processes are no longer there, then the importance of the death of man to the spiritual-cosmic world is realized by the cosmic consciousness. This cosmic consciousness is formed after the separation from the etheric organism. In this state a man looks upon himself as a moral being as in earthly life he looked upon himself as a physical being. He now has an inner life formed by the moral quality of his activity on earth. He looks upon his astral organism. But the spiritual-cosmic world breaks in upon this astral organism. Whatever judgment this world pronounces on man's earthly activities is presented as facts to his soul.

[ 14 ] In death a man enters a form of experiences of another rhythm than during existence on earth. This rhythm appears as a cosmic imitation of his activity on earth. And into this imitative experience the spirit-cosmos enters continually as does the air into the lungs in breathing during existence on earth. In conscious cosmic experience we have a rhythm of which the physical one is a copy. Through the cosmic rhythm the activities of man on earth as a world of moral qualities are united to an amoral world. And man experiences after his death this moral kernel of a future cosmos, ripening within the cosmos, which will not only exist in a purely natural order like the present, but in a moral-natural one. The chief feeling passing through the soul during this experience in a cosmic world in the making is expressed by the question: Shall I be worthy to form part of a moral-natural order of things in a future existence?

[ 15 ] In my book Theosophy I have called the world of experience through which man passes after his death, the ‘Soul-world’. It is the consciousness of this world through ‘Inspiration’ which gives us material for a real Cosmology. Just as an ‘Imaginative cognition’ of the actual course of human life gives us material for a true philosophy.

[ 16 ] Man's soul cannot gain sufficient impulses out of that cosmic consciousness into which the cosmic after-effect of man's activities on earth have been reaching, to prepare spiritually for the future physical organism. This organism would be spoilt if the soul remained in a soul-world. It must enter into a world of experience in which the non-human, spiritual impulses of the cosmos are active. I have called this world the ‘Spirit-Land’ in the same book.

[ 17 ] The ancient Initiates were able to say to their followers out of the knowledge gained by initiation: That Spiritual Being, who, in the physical world, shows his reflected glory in the Sun, will meet you after death in the spiritual world. He will lead you out of the soul world into the Spirit Land; under His guidance you will be purified, so that you will be able to prepare a physical organism for the next world during your stay in the Spirit land.

[ 18 ] At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and during the first Christian centuries the Initiates had to tell their followers: The degree of Ego consciousness to which you will attain during existence on earth will by its own nature on earth be so light that its antithesis which will begin after death will be so dark that you will not be able to see the spiritual sun-guide. Therefore the sun-being has descended on earth as Christ and has consummated the Mystery of Golgotha. If therefore during your existence on earth you already let yourself be permeated by a lively feeling of your connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then its significance will become part of life on earth and will continue to be active in man after death. You can then recognize the Christ-guide through this result. [ 19 ] After the Fourth Century this old initiated knowledge was lost in the course of human development. A renewed Christian Religious knowledge should introduce once more from inspiration into cosmological science Christ's deed for humanity even into experiences after death. To expound how the events of human existence on earth, hidden by Will, have their effects even after death, will be the task of the next study.

[ 1 ] When the ordinary consciousness sets Will in action there is a part of the astral organism at work which is more loosely connected with the physical organism than the part which corresponds with feeling. And already this part of the astral organism corresponding with feeling is more loosely connected with the physical organism than is the part corresponding with thinking. At the same time we have in the astral organism of the will the true nature of the Ego. While something psychic-spiritual which is continually active in the rhythmical part of the physical organism corresponds with feeling, the will-part of the soul continually permeates the metabolic organism and the organization of the limbs. But it is only actively connected with these parts of the human body while in the act of volition.

[ 2 ] The connection between the thinking part of the soul and the head-organization is a surrender of the psychic-spiritual to the physical. The connection between the feeling soul with the rhythmical organization is an alternate surrender and drawing-back. But the connection of the will-part to the physical is at first felt to be something unconsciously psychic. It is an unconscious longing for the physical and etheric event. This will-part is by its own nature prevented from being resolved into physical activity. It stands back from it and remains psycho-spiritually alive. Only when the thinking part of the soul extends its activity into the metabolic and limb-organization, the will-part is stimulated to surrender itself to the physical and etheric organization and to be active in it. [ 3 ] The thinking part of the soul is founded on a destructive activity of the physical organism. During the making of thoughts this destruction extends only to the head-organization. When the will ordains something the destructive activity of metabolism and of the limb-organization takes charge. The thought-activity flows into the organization of trunk and limbs, where a corresponding destructive activity of the physical organism takes place. This stimulates the will-part of the soul to oppose this destruction with a re-building and the dissolving organic activity with a constructive one.

[ 4 ] Thus life and death are warring together in the human being. In thought is manifest an ever dying activity while will stands for something life-awakening, life-giving.

[ 5 ] Those exercises of the soul which are undertaken as exercises of the will, aiming at supernatural vision, are successful only when they become an experience of pain. The man who succeeds in raising his will to a higher level of energy will feel sorrow. In former epochs of the development of mankind this pain was directly occasioned by ascetic practices. They reduced the body to a state which made it difficult for the soul to absorb herself in it. This caused the will-part of the soul to break away from the body and to be stimulated to independent experiences of the spiritual world. [ 6 ] This kind of practice is no longer suitable to the human organization which has reached the present moment of earthly development. The human organism is now so constituted that the presentation of the ego-development in it would be disturbed if we went back to the old ascetic practices.

At present we must do the opposite. The soul exercises now wanted to set free the will-part of the soul from the body have been characterized in the previous studies. They do not achieve the strengthening of this soul part from the direction of the body, but from the direction of the soul. They strengthen the soul and spiritual part of man and leave the physical part untouched.

[ 7 ] Our ordinary consciousness makes us realize already how the experience of sorrow is connected with the development of psychic experience. Whoever has gained any kind of supernatural knowledge will say: The happy, joy-giving events of my life I owe to fate; but my really true knowledge of life I owe to my bitter and sorrowful experiences.

[ 8 ] If the will-part of the soul has to be strengthened as is necessary for the attainment of ‘Intuitive cognition’ we must first strengthen the desire which in ordinary human life is satisfied through the physical organism. This is done by the exercises described. If this desire becomes so strong that the physical organism in its earthly form cannot be a foundation for it, then the experience of the will-part of the soul enters into the spiritual world and intuitive vision is attained. And then in this vision the spiritual-eternal part of the soul grows conscious of itself. Just as the consciousness living inside the body realizes the body in itself, so spiritual consciousness realizes the content of a spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In the alternating processes of destruction and construction of the human organization, as they are manifested in the thinking, feeling and willing organization of mankind, we must recognize the more or less normal course of human life on earth. It differs in childhood from that of the grown-up man. The task of the true pedagogue is a perception of the effect of the destructive and constructive activities in childhood and of the influence of education and tuition upon them.

A true educational science can only arise from the supernaturally-derived knowledge of the human nature complete in its physical, psychic and spiritual being. A knowledge keeping solely within the limits of what is attainable to natural science cannot be called a foundation of a true educational science.

[ 10 ] In illness the more or less normal course of the inter-relation between the constructive and destructive elements is disturbed throughout the whole organization—or in separate organs. We get there an overbalancing either of construction in a prolific life or of destruction in shifting forms of single organs or processes. What exactly happens in this case can only be seen in the whole by someone who has complete knowledge of the human organization, according to its physical, etheric and astral organism, as well as to the nature of the ego; and the cure can be found only by means of such knowledge. For in the realms of the outer world are to be found mineral and herbal things in which constructive knowledge recognizes forces which counteract certain kinds of too strongly stimulating. or too actively lowering forces in the organism. In the same way such a counteraction can be found in certain functions of the organism itself, which in a state of health are not applied or stimulated. A genuine medical knowledge, a real Pathology and Therapy can be built up only on a knowledge of the human being which embraces spirit, soul and body, a knowledge, moreover, which knows how to value the products of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The demand for such a medical science is to-day called childish, because we view everything from the ground of a physical science. From this point of view this is quite intelligible, because according to it one has not the least idea how much more is a complete knowledge of the human being than mere knowledge of the human body. We can genuinely say that Anthroposophy is aware of the objections of its opponents and knows how to appreciate them. But just for this reason we also know how difficult it is to convince these opponents.

[ 11 ] The will part of the soul experiences also what passes in the feeling parts, unconsciously as far as the ordinary life of the soul is concerned; but in the depths of man's organization it occurs as a combination of facts. The evaluation of human earth-activity completed through feeling and will is there transformed into an effort to contrast in further experiences a more worthy deed with a less worthy one. The whole moral quality of the man is unconsciously experienced; and from this experience is formed a kind of spiritual-psychic being which during life on earth grows up in the unconscious region of the human being. This spiritual-psychic being represents whatever earthly life produces as a desirable objective, unattainable however by man in earthly life, because his physical and etheric organism with their forms predestined from former earth life, make it impossible. Therefore man strives through this spiritual-psychic being or nature to form another physical and etheric organism, through which the moral results of the earth-life can be transformed in the subsequent existence.

[ 12 ] This new form can be achieved only if man carries with him this spiritual-psychic nature through the gates of death into the supernatural world.

[ 13 ] Immediately after death the psychic-spiritual man retains for a short time the etheric organism. In his consciousness at this point he has no more than an indication of the moral value which has unconsciously arisen during earth-life in the spiritual and psychic part of him. For man is there completely pre-occupied with the vision of the etheric cosmos. In the following longer state of experience (which I have called the Soul-world in my Theosophy) a clear consciousness of this moral valuation is actually present, but not yet the strength to begin working at the construction of the spirit-cell which is to be a future physical earth-organism. Man then still has a tendency to look back at his earthly life because of his moral qualities acquired there. After a certain time man can find the transition to a state of experience in which the tendency is no longer there. (In my Theosophy I have called the region here traversed by man the real domain of the spirit.) From the point of view of the supernatural thought-content to which man attains—after death—in the cosmic consciousness—we might say: For a short while after death man lives turned towards the earth and is permeated with those spiritual activities which have their outward reflection in the physical phenomena of the moon. Outwardly he has been separated from the earth, but he is indirectly connected with it through a spiritual-psychic content. Everything of world-spiritual value that man during his presence on earth has developed into a real value in his astral organism (or as expressed above: in the unconscious region of his soul-life according to feeling and willing), all this is permeated by the spiritual moon-activities already described. This moral being with its spiritual quality is related by content with the spiritual moon-activities, and it is they which hold man bound to earth. But for the development of the spirit-cell for the future physical organism he must also sever himself psycho-spiritually from the earth. This he can only do by cutting himself loose at the same time from the region of the moon-activities. There he must leave behind that moral quality-being with which he is related. For the working for the future physical organism in conjunction with the spiritual beings of the supernatural world must take place unhampered by that quality-being.

[ 14 ] Man cannot obtain this severance from the region of the spiritual moon-activities through his own psycho-spiritual powers. But it has to be done nevertheless.

[ 15 ] Before the mystery of Golgotha the science of initiation could speak to man as follows: At a certain period of existence after death, human experience has to be withdrawn from the lunar sphere which keeps man within the region of planetary life. Man cannot himself bring about this withdrawal. Here it is that the being, whose physical reflection is the sun, comes to man's aid, and guides him into the sphere of pure spirit in which he, himself and not the spiritual moon beings are active. Man then experiences a stellar existence in such a way as to view the spiritual patterns of the fixed star constellations from the farther side, as it were; from the periphery of the cosmos. This vision is non-spatial even though the stars are made visible to him. With the powers now permeating man his ability to form the spirit-cell of physical organism out of the cosmos grows. The divine in him brings forth the divine. Once the spirit-cell has ripened, its descent to earth begins. Man enters once more into the lunar sphere and finds there the being of moral-spiritual quality which he left behind at his entry into the pure stellar existence; he adds it to his psychic-spiritual being to make it the foundation of his destined future life on earth.

[ 16 ] The Initiation-science of Christianity finds something else. In the absorption of the strength accruing to the soul through the contemplative and active sympathy with the earthly life of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, man gains, already while still on earth and not aided only by the solar-being after death, the faculty of withdrawing from the lunar activities at a certain point after his earthly existence, and of entering into the pure stellar sphere. This faculty is the spiritual counterpart, experienced after death, of the freedom brought about in earthly life by the ego-consciousness. Man then takes over in the period between death and re-birth his moral-spiritual quality-being, left behind in the lunar sphere, as the designer of his fate which he can thus experience in freedom in his new existence on earth. He also carries within him in freedom the earthly after-effect of his god-filled existence between death and rebirth as religious consciousness.

[ 17 ] A modern science of Initiation can recognize this and can see the activity of the Christ in human existence. It adds to a living Philosophy and to a Cosmology which recognizes also the spirit cosmos, a religious knowledge which recognizes the Christ as the mediator of a renewed religious consciousness and as the leader of the world in freedom.

[ 18 ] In these studies I have not been able to do more than sketch a possible beginning of a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religious Cognition. Much more would have to be said if the sketch were to be converted into a coloured picture with all its colours.

It is natural that different points of view exist among the members about their own relation to the Anthroposophical Society. A person may enter the Society with the idea that he will find in it what he is seeking out of the inmost needs of his soul. In his search and in the finding of what the Society can give him, such a member will then see the meaning of his membership. I have already indicated that no objection can properly be made to this point of view.

From the very essence of Anthroposophy, it cannot be for the Society to bring together a circle of human beings, and impose upon them when they enter it obligations which they did not recognise before, but are expected to take on simply on account of the Society. If we are to speak of obligations in the proper sense, it can only be of those of the Society towards its members.

This truth (it should indeed go without saying) involves another which is not always rightly understood, nay, is sometimes not even considered.

As soon as a member begins to be active in any way in the Society and for it, he takes upon himself a great responsibility, a very solemn sphere of duty. Those who do not intend to be thus active should not be disturbed in the quiet spheres of their work; but if a member undertakes any activity in the Society, he must thenceforth make the concerns of the Society his own, and this he must on no account forget.

It is natural for one who wishes to be a quiet member to say, for example, ‘I cannot concern myself with the statements of opponents about the Society’. But this is changed the moment he goes outside the sphere of silent participation. Then at once it becomes his duty to pay attention to the opponents and to defend all that is worthy of defence in Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society.

It was bad for the Society that this most necessary fact was not always observed. Members have the fullest right to expect that the Society will give them in the first place what it promises to give. It must surely seem strange to them to be called upon at once to undertake the same obligations as those who hold out these promises.

If, then, we speak of the duties of members to the Society, we can only be referring to those members who desire to be active. This question must not of course be confused with that of the duties which belong to man as such. Anthroposophy does indeed speak of duties. But these will always be of a purely human character; they will only extend the horizons of human responsibility in a way that results from insight into the spiritual world. When Anthroposophy speaks in this way, it can never mean obligations that apply only in the Anthroposophical Society. It will mean duties arising out of human nature rightly understood.

Once more, then, for the members who are active in it, the Anthroposophical Society by its very nature involves definite responsibilities, and these—for the same reason—must be taken most seriously. A member, for example, may wish to communicate to others the knowledge and perceptions of Anthroposophy. The moment his instruction extends beyond the smallest and most quiet circle, he enters into these responsibilities. He must then have a clear conception of the spiritual and intellectual position of mankind today. He must be clear in his own mind about the real task of Anthroposophy. To the very best of his ability he must keep in close contact with other active members of the Society; and it must be far from him to say, ‘I am not interested when Anthroposophy and those who represent it are placed in a false light, or even slandered by opponents’.

The Executive formed at the Christmas gathering understands its task in this sense. It will seek to realise in the Society what has here been expressed, and it can do no other than ask every member intending to be active to make himself a helper and co-operator in these matters.

Only so shall we achieve our purpose, and the Society will be equal to the promise which it holds out to all its members—and thereby to the world at large.

To take one example, it is distressing to have the following experience. It sometimes happens that the members in a certain place, who desire to be active, meet from time to time to discuss the affairs of the Society. In conversation with individuals who take part in these meetings, it will afterwards emerge that they hold certain opinions about each other, each other's activities for the Society, and the like—opinions which are not voiced at all in the meetings. A member, one will find, has no idea what those who are often associated with him think of his work.

It is essential for these matters to be guided into better channels, and this should follow from the impulse which the Christmas gathering has given. Those above all who claim and desire to be active members, should seek to understand this impulse. How often does one hear such members say: I really have the good-will but I do not know what is the right line to take. We should not hold an all too comfortable view upon this subject of ‘good-will’, but ask ourselves again and again, have we really explored all channels which the Society provides to find the right line in co-operation, on the strength of our good-will, with other members?