The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You all know that the title of today's lecture, “Blood is a very special fluid,” is taken from Goethe's “Faust.” You know that Faust, the representative of striving humanity, is opposed by Mephistopheles, the emissary and prince of hell; he demands a contract from Faust in which Faust commits himself to the evil powers, and demands the signature in blood. Faust considers this a grotesque, a quirk, but Mephisto remarks: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

There are entire libraries explaining Faust, and this saying has also been explained in countless ways. One of the latter is the highly curious one from Professor Minor of Vienna, which goes: Mephisto, the emissary of hell, cannot stand blood, hates it, and that is why he demands a signature in blood. There may be some erudition in the explanation, but there is no reason in it. Mephistopheles would not demand a signature in a substance he hates. On the contrary, Mephistopheles places particular value on blood. This material has already undergone a long development of legends. In the sixteenth [seventeenth] century we already find in the Pfitzer's Faustbuch that Faust signs over himself to the devil with blood, and in older versions of this legend it is described exactly how the vein on the left hand is opened, the blood runs out, coagulates and in coagulating forms the letters: “Oh man, flee!”

Blood also appears in other legends and always has a special meaning. In these legends in particular, we see events that were significant for the last few centuries. Fairytales and myths all have a theosophical basis, and anyone who engages with theosophical wisdom can see that they contain figurative expressions for spiritual and profound truths. The legend of Faust is one such expression, and in particular this expression, in which Goethe used theosophical wisdom as a basis.

We want to point out the whole significance of blood in the world and in humanity, and we will see that the saying is to be taken literally. If we try to get it out of our minds, we say: It will get ahold of Faust especially when it has his blood in its name.

Theosophy wants to point to the near future, how to colonize, how humanity should mix. To understand what blood means, it must be explained from the point of view of theosophy.

To find access, one must place the old sentence at the top, the Hermetic principle: As above, so below; and vice versa.

At first incomprehensible, it contains a whole world view. All who have this guiding principle say: All that is material is the expression of a spiritual substance.

To those who look more deeply, it presents itself as ice and water.

If someone tells you: Ice is not water, you say that they just don't know the context.

Just as ice is nothing but condensed water, matter is nothing but condensed spirit.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a part of it.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a part of it.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a part of it.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a If someone says to you: Ice is not water, you can say that he does not know the context. Just as ice is nothing other than condensed water, so matter is nothing other than condensed spirit. In all material things we can find the underlying spirit. The true spiritual researcher calls spirit the upper part, the material, so to speak, the physiognomic expression, the lower part. When you look at a face, you can tell from the expression what is going on in the soul behind it, whether it is joy or sadness. To the true spiritual researcher, everything in the world, all of nature, is an expression of the spirit. For example, to the researcher, one flower is the expression of the joy of the earth spirit, another of pain.

In this way, the spirit expresses itself in everything. There is no matter that does not express spirit, and no spirit that is not expressed somewhere in matter. One understands why a face smiles, why it cries, when one knows the underlying pain and joy; one understands the lower when one knows the upper. Thus we will understand what corresponds to blood in the spiritual when we understand what blood means in the world.

To do this, we have to consider the fourfold nature of the human being. To the spiritual seer, the physical body is only one part of the human being. It consists of the same substances as nature outside. Only its juices can move, grow, digest, reproduce, the substance cannot do this by itself; for this it needs the etheric body, which it shares with plants. The third link, the astral body, the carrier of pain, joy, pleasure, displeasure, passions and base representations, is not present in plants, but in humans and animals. The fourth link, whereby humans become the crown of creation, is their ability to say “I” to themselves. This is what underlies all religions. In the ego, God speaks to the human soul, and a shiver went through the line of Jews in the temple when the priest pronounced the name of the ineffable God, “Yahweh”.

The higher limbs that make up the spiritual structure of the human being need not concern us today. You know that we can only perceive the sensual body sensually, and the other supersensible parts are therefore called the upper limbs. And each of these upper members has an instrument in the physical body, the parts of which are all of different kinds and not of equal significance. We shall understand this connection if we imagine that the physical body contains the same substances as the inanimate products of the external world. Think of a crystal. It is just a stone, but if you look at it more closely, you say to yourself: This stone could not be like this if everything in the world were not as it is. Each individual thing is a mirror of the whole. It takes on this form through the forces of the outside world and could not exist in this way on another star with different forces.

The brilliant Frenchman Cuvier says: Give me a human bone, and I will determine the entire figure from it. For the whole figure determines the individual bone. It is the same with the earth. Likewise, with only a physical body, man would be a mirror of the universe, but without consciousness; he could not express anything in it.

Now, however, we are not just looking at the physical being, but at the being that lives. You cannot find anything that does not grow and move its juices in a certain way, individualizes. You see growth, reproduction and so on in the plant as a physiognomic expression for the etheric body, so that two parts exist, firstly, in which there are only chemical processes, and secondly, the activity of the etheric body, which brings movement.

Now let us move on to the animal. It not only sets matter in motion, but is also able to reflect joy and suffering within itself. When a plant rolls up its leaves when touched, it is reacting to a stimulus, not sensing; it only becomes sentient when the external process is followed by an internal one. This requires a nervous system; this is provided by the astral body, so that when you have a human being in front of you, you can say: First of all, the human being has what only the physical part works on; these are the sense organs; they are lived through by the etheric body, but are not built by it. Its actual tool is growth, and so on. The astral body's tool is the nervous system, from the solar plexus to the finest nerves of the spine.

A being that has a nervous system will indeed reflect the outside world within itself, but without the fourth link it will never know the expression for its ego. It finds its tool in the blood. The fact that a being has blood enables it to feel joy and suffering from its innermost individuality, its very own being. I must first relate the ideas to myself in my blood, then the pain becomes my pain, the joy my joy. Hence the connection between inner processes and the bloodstream. Blushing and turning pale are a matter of the soul.

We speak of consanguinity. The name is not quite right. The recently told story of Anzengruber and Rosegger illustrates what underlies it. Anzengruber had farmers for ancestors, which is why he can describe them. As figurative as this may seem, it is still the actual truth. Blood itself is not inherited; it is always newly formed. Blood and all its organs are the last to form in the animal and human germ. What is inherited is what lies behind the blood, the shape and structure of, for example, the nose, the brain and so on. We connect what we have inherited with our innermost selves by letting it affect our blood; in this way it becomes our property. Thus the blood pulses through entire generations, although it is always new blood.

Certain things in the Bible are impossible to understand without understanding the meaning of blood. Right at the beginning of the Old Testament, you find that Adam, Abraham and so on live to be 800, 900 years old. At that time, there was a different way of naming, a different meaning of the word.

I must mention a fact here that was an important event in the development of humanity: the transition from close marriage to distant marriage. In all peoples, there comes a time when this ancient law is broken. When this happens, something always takes place in spiritual development. In the case of close marriage, the ancestors lived on in memory to a much greater extent. Everyone retained the memory of what had been done generations before. The moment that distant marriage occurs, memory is limited to the time between birth and death. In the past, you would find a great cult of ancestors for a tribal leader, to whom the whole tribe can be traced back. As long as blood comes to blood, the individual remembers, and so long the same name remains. As long as the memory of Adam lasts, his name remains. So you see that blood is like a tablet; what is inherited is the inner structure of the body, which is written into the blood. The same ego remains wherever the same is written into the blood.

We have the group soul and also speak of such a thing in animals. Therefore, we do not refer to the individual lion as an ego; and the further we go back in man, the more we come across the group soul.

It is only through long-distance marriage that the individual ego develops. The more distant the people who mix are from each other, the more the old view is killed and the outside world flows in; the earlier sense of identity with one's ancestors is pushed into the background. The more that flows in from the outside, the more the differences of personality develop; because the outside world is different everywhere. You can see that, for example, in different countries.

What primarily determines a person must have an effect on his blood. What you say to a person will only make an impression if his blood is stirred. You must not have access to his intellect or to his nervous system; you must make his blood pulsate, then you will touch his I, for the blood is precisely its instrument.

All ancient schooling consists not in theory but in influencing the I itself. Faust is to be understood in this way. At the moment when one takes possession of the blood of a being, one forms a bond with that being. He who wishes to assert his power in an unauthorized way does this; he who wishes to gain influence over a being in the good sense may only do so much that this being retains its independence at every moment — may not give him anything that the other is not willing to accept.

It is clear that where one wants to plant and foster a spiritual life, one must act on the blood.

In terms of colonization, cultures can only develop where the blood mixing of the peoples allows a good tone together. Where this is not the case, where the blood mixing does not go together, the culture that is already present will be destroyed. Those who look into this will see that the introduction of European culture into distant countries often appears to be an illusion and a deception. In the future, a culture will come that will ask about this law. Then colonization will no longer be based on blind chance, but on the theosophical significance for indirect life.

So you see that Mephistopheles really gets Faust under his control through the blood, and that the desire for the signature in blood is not a quirk or a grimace.

It has been more than 100 years since Schiller made the momentous statement: “Science and philosophy will continue to go their separate ways for a long time, only to come together in harmony in a distant time.

Have we come closer to the period of reconciliation in some respects? As a philosopher, Schiller came to the confession and observation that spiritual life is behind the physical.

What we call theosophy today brings us a different kind of knowledge of the spiritual world. Science, too, has experienced a lot in a century. That knowledge of the spiritual world shines into what is important to us, it speaks to our feelings and emotions. It might now seem that we are far from an understanding between science and philosophy. Those who only half understand a theosophical lecture or read about it often think that theosophy is empty chatter, a fantasy, and the theosophist who is under the influence and hypnosis of the scientific creed finds this justified. For many, theosophy is a temporary folly.

Today I want to give you a picture of the real situation today between natural science and spiritual science. I will sketch out the picture of natural scientific views and show you, firstly, the contradiction and how Theosophy stands in relation to it. Secondly, we will see how human life stands in relation to it.

What is the basis of this world? First, let us see what the mind can make of it. If we look around, we are surrounded by the world of sound, the world of colors, the world of smells, tastes and feelings. All of this assails our senses. Now, in the course of the nineteenth century, a certain scientific creed has emerged. In our educational institutions, the image is no longer emphasized so strongly, but through books and many other channels, it has become so widespread that it is generally assumed to be true. This raises the question of what lies behind these perceptions. From a seemingly fully developed scientific premise, it is assumed that all this diversity actually exists only in our sensory perception.

Many emphasize that, for example, color only exists in us, while outside there is only vibrating, moving matter. Color arises from ether vibrations. If we close our eyes, there is no red, only colorless moving matter. If we continue in this direction and assume that all beings lose their eyes, there would no longer be any red, only colorless, vibrating ether matter.

This has been imagined not only in relation to color, but to all sensory perceptions. At that time, for example, it was said: If you dip your hands into a kettle of hot substance and feel warmth, this perception is only contained in your feeling; in the kettle is only moving matter. If there were no eye, the world would be dark and colorless, only moving matter. If you take away all beings, what remains is moving matter. — You also said: Behind the diversity of our perceptions, the world is filled with colliding particles of matter; they give color and warmth.

In their time, there were some consistent scholars who are not held in particularly high regard today, but who had the courage to think these ideas through consistently and draw conclusions. Büchner, [Vogt], Moleschott: what did the image of the world reveal to them? It follows that man also consists of nothing more than moving atoms and molecules.

What happens then? Here you are, there is the world, and there arises the whole world that you imagine. It is impossible for this to remain mere theory. For these thinkers, it did not remain theory. They said: If man is nothing but swirling matter, then death is a falling apart, and all existence that is supposed to continue is a delusion. They regarded all talk about immortality as playing with words, and thought it should be consigned to the past.

Helmholtz, a cautious thinker, regards all sensory perceptions as signs of objective existence.

It was now found that these substances, which surround matter, can be broken down, and 70 different substances were distinguished. They said to themselves: All matter in space is divided into the smallest parts, into granular matter. They imagined that water is formed in this way: oxygen and hydrogen face each other in the smallest parts, and when they march through each other, they embrace and are water.

So what is eternal after all? Eternal is only the atom of a simple element. Science makes the atom its fetish, its idol. Everything else is a rising and falling of matter. Everything disappears in death, the world is haze and fog, behind it lies the eternal atom.

Now let us consider the second question and see how human life relates to it. When the question arose: Where did man come from, where did he come from? – it was found: Man originated from lower, imperfect creatures. It was said that speech, thought, and moral sense are only a development of what the animal also has. The animal has a voice and shows memory; the dog shows an echo of religious feelings in the loyalty with which it worships its master; these are echoes of the feelings of man towards his God.

Let us, instead, replace these with the two images of the theosophical world view. For them, color, warmth, properties, are real existence. We can experience color, sound, smell, taste, feeling; and when we find them, like color, hardness and so on, in a thing, we recognize a material body. For the theosophist today, these sensory perceptions are something that can be experienced and learned. The one who sees spiritually sees the active spirit.

Just as ice is related to water, so is matter related to spirit in spiritual research. Theosophy sees, roughly speaking, condensed spirit in all matter. Sound, color, even movement is condensed spirit. What we see behind it, we know because we experience it ourselves. If we search within ourselves, we feel spirit; we see the active spirit in things, the spirit of whose substance we ourselves consist.

What does spiritual science have to say against the atomistic worldview? We ask: What is the atom? We cannot regard as reality that which is not colored, that which does not taste, for these are not qualities of the atom. The atom has no color, no, for this is caused by the movement of matter. The atom would be a figment of the imagination if it were presented as reality.

What is the attitude of natural science towards this atomistic world view? Du Bois-Reymond expressed himself in a lecture to the effect that I am briefly hinting at here, that the genuine, true natural scientist traces everything he perceives in the world back to moving matter. He said something at the time that is important for spiritual science today. He repeated Leibniz, who said: Imagine that the human brain is so large that you could put yourself inside it. If the soul has the perception that I see red, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ, then one could examine how certain parts of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen move. The movement in the brain could also be seen, but the sensation of “I see red” cannot be understood. Du Bois-Reymond says: A bridge will never be built, it is never possible to see how the atoms move. He concluded his observation as follows: Let us now consider a sleeping person. For him, the experience of “I see red” has sunk into an unconscious darkness. The natural scientist can explain what is lying in the bed, but when “I see red” arises in the morning, we cannot build a bridge to this sensation. “Ignorabimus” — we will never recognize. The natural scientist can never build a bridge to the spiritual.

Here is another view. I will tie in with a natural science meeting. In his speech ‘Overcoming Materialism’, the chemist Ostwald showed that the assumption of a material behind the phenomenon makes no sense. What lies behind it is forces, energy. When you receive a blow, you are first interested in the force of the blow. Thus a sum of force took the place of a sum of atoms. We see from this how a doubt arose in the mind of a natural scientist. Then a natural scientist came up with the idea that man descended from apes, from imperfect living beings.

What does spiritual science have to say in place of this view? What is man in his sleep to spiritual research? It would be nonsense to think that the sum total of experiences disappears in the evening only to reappear the next morning. What is the carrier of “I see red” is not united with the sleeping person. In the theosophical view of the world, we recognize four real parts of the human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and the “I”. The physical and etheric bodies are, roughly speaking, a condensed astral body. The astral body is nothing more than a tumult of pain, joy, suffering, and inner experiences. Material processes are the effects of spiritual processes.

In response to this, it has been said: You don't imagine that pain and suffering resonate freely in space? This “great foolishness” is true.

What is the material effect of the spiritual? I will mention two processes: the feeling of shame and the feeling of fear and terror. These are mental processes. The blood is distributed differently in the organism.

There is a materialistic world view: pragmatism – a combination of cause and effect – which says: a person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.

They know that the emotional process of feeling fear causes material effects. What today appears to be only a kind of residue was present to a much greater extent in the past.

What is the sleeping human being for spiritual science? Physical and etheric body. The astral body with the ego is elevated. In the future, when we have developed astral qualities, we will know more during sleep than during the day. What does the astral body have to do at night? It is busy removing the accumulated fatigue. The materialist will also say: Don't you know that science knows the reasons for fatigue? The answer to this is a [parable]: a person gives another a good slap in the face. A third person says: I know very well that anger is the reason. The other person says: You fantasist, you are talking about emotional events, I only saw him raise his hand and strike.

Man started out as spirit. Let me give you an image of the development: Imagine many lumps of water. Suppose a part inside formed into ice lumps; in some the ice lump would fall out, in others it would be retained. In the latter case, the ice lump can become larger and larger. Now some of these would let a larger ice lump fall out. Those that fell out remained on their step, those that remained inside continued to develop until each had created its own image in the water. That is the image of man.

The astral man forms a tiny physical body for himself. Some of them fell out. Today these are the most imperfect creatures. In others, in whom the development continued, where more was forced in, the fish emerged; then other animals followed until the development of man. He left the stages of his continuous development behind in the animals. They are degenerated developments of man.

Perfection consists in his expressing in an external material image that which he previously had only internally.

What does science say about its own image of the origin from the ape? Some naturalists have come to the conclusion that, no, when we look at the ape, we can no longer justify the assumption that the ape is the ancestor of man. We cannot find the intermediate form. We can only follow the mammal downwards, man is in the ascent. Thus, natural science is on the right path. It can only not yet imagine that what forms man is of a spiritual nature; but we see it in the direction of seeking man's origin in the spiritual.

But a new discovery has brought about a revolution in natural science: radium. What does this discovery hold for us? The fact that there are substances that have very different effects, effects on photographic plates, among other things. These effects are produced by gas emissions and electrical air. It loses this property after some time and then regains it. It is the uranium salt.

I mention here what natural science has learned about transformation. It has been forced to the following: It used to proclaim: the atom is eternal, indestructible. Now it has learned: this atom decays, becomes fragmented.

And the matter went further. The English scholar Ramsay shows how diverted substance passes over into quite different substance, into the metal helium. Here one would like to say: There the dreams of the old alchemists have been fulfilled. But if one substance passes over into another, what has become of the eternal?

In his lecture on the philosophy of life, Balfour, the English minister, declared that the atom is electricity flowing in space.

Others have said: When chlorine and copper combine, something else happens. When they march together, heat is released and flows out. The strange thing is that this heat must be the same when chlorine and copper separate. We imagine this as sacks that are puffed up with warmth. If you release them and then give them warmth again, they will puff up again. Atoms are shells, their interior is warmth. They themselves are nothing but condensed warmth. Today, science calls matter condensed electricity. It is on the way to recognizing matter as condensed spirit.

Thus we have seen in two areas, firstly, a transparent and clear picture of the world, and secondly, that the facts of natural science point to the spiritual.

The doctrine of the atomic world is based on fantasy. Theosophy is a dissolution of all fantasy. The facts themselves will shine in and show how the atom is being split. Natural science is on its way up to spiritual science. We see how Theosophy shines in, and what our eyes see becomes explainable up to our physical existence.

We stand at the threshold of a new era. In those days, natural science was earthbound; today, through the latest research, it is being pushed up to the spiritual.

Natural science and philosophy must be reconciled. It will come to the true salvation and progress of the human race.

Lessing had faith in rebirth.

In Herder we find the ideas of re-embodiment in his writing on the development of the human spirit.

In Schiller we find it in his correspondence: Julius and Raphael (Schiller and Körner), Theosophy of Julius, and in the letters on the advancement of the aesthetic education of man.

Novalis had the belief in it.

Goethe presents the development of the human being from the lower to the higher powers of the soul in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. His view was: Only the one who has gone through the stages of development, who has felt drawn into it, who has gone through doubts, has gained the great conviction, the great faith, and struggled through disharmony to harmony. His Faust is a song of human perfection. We do not need to look for it in the Bhagavad Gita. We also find the great problem in Faust. He sets himself the task of solving the mystery of evil.

Faust (Part One) Here we see the young man full of the feeling of disharmony. Earth spirit is not a symbol, but a real being for Goethe. He assumed that there are planetary beings in the planets, and that they have their bodies, just as we have our bodies of flesh.

His, that is to say, Goethe's creed: the earth spirit had taught him not only to see, but to feel and sense the unified essence of stone, plant, animal, and human. He taught him the brotherhood of all created things up to man, the crown of [creation]. He expressed his creed at the age of eighty in “the mysteries” – pilgrims walk to the monastery, the rosary is a sign of the three kingdoms of nature; stone, plant, animal is cross. Roses are love.

Goethe himself later said that each of the twelve personalities represents one of the great world creeds or religions. The purpose was to seek the true inner core of the world religions.

Three worlds: first, the dream world; second, the astral or soul world; third, the mental or spiritual world.

The awakening of the spiritual eye first brings about tremendous changes in the dream life. When the new vision, the new world, opens up, it takes on great regularity. Of course, no science may be founded on what the human being experiences there.

The disciple or chela must learn to bring the consciousness of the second, the astral world, into their daily consciousness through the dream. Later, in dreamless sleep, he experiences the spiritual and mental worlds. The consciousness of the astral world expresses itself in images. The consciousness of the spiritual world in spiritual hearing. The Pythagoreans called it the music of the spheres.

Prologue in Heaven – the spiritual world.

In Mephistopheles, Goethe created the image for an ancient idea that is contained in all profound spiritual wisdom. He tried to solve the mystery of evil. Evil is the sum of all those forces that oppose the progress of human perfection. If truth consists in further development, then every obstacle is a lie. The one who corrupts through lies is called Mephistopheles.

Part Two

Faust had to end as a mystic. In “Conversations of Eckermann with Goethe”, Goethe says: “For the initiate, it will soon be apparent that there is much depth to be found in this Faust.” The main idea of “Faust” presents the three main parts of human nature: spirit, soul, and body.

The spirit is eternal, was there before birth and will be there after death. The soul is the link between spirit and body; in its development it first tends more towards the body, then towards the spirit, and with this towards the lasting, the eternal. The development of the spiritual eye helps in this.

The realm of the mothers represents the source of all things; the spirit comes from this.

To enter the spiritual realm – Devachan in theosophy – requires a moral qualification. The aim of theosophy is to lead people upwards. To do this, a person must first make themselves capable, worthy. When Faust leads Helen up for the first time, he is consumed by wild passion, and this causes Helen to scatter.

Helena represents the various incarnations.

Homunculus is a soul. In the classical Walpurgis Night, it is shown how a soul comes into being. Goethe sees the gradual development before him. Homunculus is to receive a body. He must begin with the mineral kingdom; then the plant kingdom follows. Goethe's expression: “It grunts so”.

Faust's blindness represents: the physical world dies away for him; now his inner vision opens up. A magnificent image! Whoever does not have this, this dying and becoming...

Jakob Böhme puts it this way: And so death is the root of all life. And in another place:

He who does not die before he dies
Will perish if he dies.

Chorus mysticus:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable
The inadequate,
Here it becomes an event
The indescribable,
Here it is done;
The eternal feminine
Draws us onward.

In all mysticism, the striving human soul is described as something feminine. The union of the soul with the mystery of the world: spiritual union in mystics is expressed as the marriage of the lamb. This view brought Goethe even deeper into the above-mentioned fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily.

Euphorion embodied poetry.

Goethe himself said about the last part of Goethe's “Faust” that he wanted to depict Faust's ascent in the image of the end – Montserrat.

The poem suggests: Parzival, a hiker in the valley. When Faust went blind, he was given the opportunity to develop rapidly. He entered the higher regions; we would call it Devachan or Suschupti. But Goethe brought Catholic ideas with him. So he had Father Marianus appear in the cleanest cell. This indicates: liberation from all sexual things, thus standing above man and woman. That is why he also gave him a woman's name with a masculine ending. Now the dual sex was replaced by the single sex. He had awakened completely in Budhi. Budhi, the sixth basic element, had gained the upper hand over everything else.

We should never confuse things with words, especially with slogans. If we understand the enrichment of one's own self as egoism, we would have to place egoity in a category to which it belongs. [If we strive for the enrichment of our own self, we must first deal with human nature and here I come first to the ego, which can assert itself in various ways in the three human bodies.] I have often spoken to you about our four bodies. The ego within is just another name for the self. It permeates the three bodies with its substantiality, asserting itself in them with varying degrees of force.

With regard to the physical body, man does not have it at his discretion to rein this ego, which asserts itself more firmly within him than it should. It does not work. Why does it do that? Because at some point in his development, man has experienced an influence in the Lemurian period, the Luciferic influence. Man is permeated by the Luciferic entities. This asserts itself in all three realms of the body. [Later, man will succeed in acting on all three bodies; now he only succeeds in acting on his astral body, on his desires and passions.] You know that man is increasingly able to rework the bodies. Today he has this in his hands with the astral body. It is more difficult with the etheric body. And with the physical body [he has no influence at all], but that lies in the distant future. It will only become possible through the occult development of the breathing process, [in which he develops “Atma” within himself, which happens through a special breathing]. The part of the etheric body that we are reworking [develops “Budhi” within itself, and now that it can act on its astral body, it develops “Manas”. These influences are transformations of the different bodies. The influence that took place at that time through satanic entities is designated as “serpent,” and through this influence on man, the I of man was brought to stronger activity. If today the I asserts itself more strongly in the physical body than it would be without the satanic influence in the Lemurian time – serpent in Paradise – then man can do nothing. Lucifer brings the I to a more intense effect in the physical body. The first thing that came about as a result is death. Death is the direct consequence of a strengthened I. [And death will no longer come when the influence of the luciferic beings is overcome.]

What would have happened without Lucifer? We only need to describe what man would be like. He would grow old, but would begin to soften his muscles and bones through the powers of the soul, detach parts, gradually sweat out material parts. He would thus be able to attract other matter and rebuild the body. There would be a transformation that would take place consciously, a beneficial process. [He is not yet able to do that, and that is why death occurs, to dissolve the matter.] Death has occurred due to the densification of the bone system. [There would be no illness if the power of the ego were not working so strongly.] This inability to dissolve one's own matter, that is death. When the earth will have reached the end of its development, it will undergo a metamorphosis. It is different now because of the solidification by Lucifer. Through his influence, illness comes. Man has no influence on this at the moment. In the processes that should take place like dissolution and composition, and now do not take place that way, the cause of the illnesses predominates. The daytime thinking is a continuous dissolution of substances in the brain. [During the night, the dissolved parts are reassembled by the spiritual world.] The night is there to send forces from the spiritual world. [Somehow there must be balance in the breakdown and construction.] In the moment when not so much is built in at night as is dissolved during the day, the disease is there. The disease can only occur because there is an ego in the organism that is exerting itself too strongly.

Now, in the etheric body, how is the activity [through a too strongly acting ego]? It asserts itself through the possibility of error on the one hand and of lies on the other. Man is subject to error because the ego works too much in the etheric body, not in harmony with the outside world. Now, and the lie? When we lie, this thought form is formed as a real fact, and in the spiritual world there arises what we call an explosion in the physical world. If the I did not merge in the etheric body, the person would know that what is not in accordance with the truth, with reality, causes destruction, an explosion. We have to take this into our karma, destroying our life's journey until we have balanced it again. A liar destroys as much in his karma as bomb explosions in the physical world. Lies and errors are caused by the ego asserting itself too strongly in the etheric body.

The astral body is filled with what is called selfishness and egoism because the I goes beyond the measure of assertion. We must be clear about this when we study selfishness in the astral body. The astral body consists of a sentient body and a sentient soul. We must distinguish this exactly. The sentient body is of an astral nature, but built up from the outside during the lunar period. Now, in the sentient body, the substance of the sentient soul is secreted at a subconscious level. What the sentient body is, that is quite all right with humans. Therefore, they have the ability to properly perceive their environment. Schopenhauer [only retained the idea]: the world as an idea. [He said:] Without the eye there is no light. But it is also true that without light there is no eye. This is because physical light is completely flooded with astral light, and that is what the eye has developed [from the human being]. So it is the astral that brings out and then chisels out the astral in the human being.

[First, the astral senses are developed through the influx of astral substance.] This is how we come into harmony with the outside world. If we only had the sentient body, we would be soulless creatures, [we would see with the eye] but without joy; [the outside world would only be reflected in us]. But now we have the sentient soul in addition. In the sentient body, the 'I' will be able to be a little stronger than the correct measure would have been without the influence of Lucifer. [The influence of the Luciferic entities asserts itself in the sentient soul; it does not reach the sentient body.] This has an effect in the sentient soul. Then the discord arises. That is egoism. When the I constricts the forces of the sentient soul too strongly, then egoism arises. The sentient body also takes in beautiful impressions, but the sentient soul cannot rejoice in them. The world gives the colors. The sentient soul should pour itself into what the sentient body gives. He who finds the possibility of going out of himself so far as to embrace the world strengthens his ego. This egoism is healthy because it is rich in content. All beings should do this.

When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.

Schiller says:

Are you seeking the highest, the greatest? The plant can teach you. What it is without will, be you the willing one – that's it!

Angelus Silesius:

The rose has no why,
it blossoms because it blossoms;
it pays no attention to itself,
does not ask if it is seen.

The person who develops their own abilities as much as possible will serve their fellow human beings the most. Not leaving any of our inner powers undeveloped leads us to salvation. [But in the pursuit of developing our powers as much as possible,] there is a danger of falling into destructive selfishness, but without that, human beings could not develop any freedom. And so, for some, selfishness can lead to good fortune, while for others it can lead to disaster. Plants are prevented from growing beyond measure. When a blossom is at its most beautiful, it has brought forth its own essence. At the moment when there is a danger of its ego being emphasized, of its selfhood developing, the pollen arrives and the blossom must merge with the germ and die. This law also applies to a certain extent to human beings. When they create harmony between the sentient soul and the sentient body, they also experience that the moment they harden and do not pour themselves out into the world, they wither away. There are people who create harmony between what flows into the soul and what it experiences. They are then harmonious. This must be the aim of education. But people in whom the I is too active in the sentient soul, without balance in the outer life, where the inflow and outflow are not in harmony, these people become desolate. They cannot feel anything, not even in front of a work of art. This is the secret of what happens in egoism. People must find a way to become inflamed by the impressions of nature, [to learn to feel something when confronted with works of art]. The physician should put himself in the place of what the soul experiences; [an inner feeling must penetrate even into external movements, for example, when doing gymnastics]. He must be able to take joy in his surroundings; that is a spiritual person.

In other areas, we must establish this harmony, for example, in the knowledge of ourselves. We must find harmony in our knowledge of ourselves. “Know thyself” is often misunderstood. To reconcile our true self with knowledge of the world is self-knowledge, and it is part of the education of the human being to achieve that self-knowledge, which is selfless; to achieve justified selflessness so that the ego can pour itself out into the world again. Just don't brood! That hardens us. Self-knowledge is something that leads us to flourish. Otherwise we wither away as misfits, as pale envious people. If we seek the God only in us, we place ourselves in discord with the world. If we seek him in world knowledge, [we work outwardly], then there is a restorative equilibrium in our will impulses. This is an important law in relation to what we want. For nothing works as long as it remains within us, but only when it emerges from us. Then it works for our benefit when it [from outside] meets us in the mirror. These are the best conceivable deeds: to put out into the world what has been done. They are the invigorating ones. [A person can enrich his ego as long as the advancement of his own ego invigorates him.] The best deeds of the egoist, done for his own sake, do not further him. The moment egoism goes beyond a certain degree, it stifles the soul. Many are unsatisfied and desolate; many egoists live in withering. Egoism, overshooting its goal, turns against the egoist himself. When man crosses the boundary in the development of his ego, he becomes desolate. The egoist lives in withering. This would be more apparent if man did not live in an external society. We are interrelated, we human beings, and so the egoist does not bear the effects of his egoism alone; someone else must bear them too. For the egoist himself, this only expresses itself in karma.

“Wilhelm Meister” deals with the problem of the egoist. What does Wilhelm Meister want? Nothing other than to make his individuality as rich and perfect as possible. That is why he leaves his profession for the profession in which he expects the greatest freedom, so that everything can have an effect on him from the outside. Goethe shows where Wilhelm Meister's error has led him. He knew that there is a spiritual law. Goethe himself called humanity the great individual and so on. He said: Wilhelm Meister is a pretty poor fellow. But there is a guiding force in man that always leads him to do the right thing. That is the great law of karma, which does not allow us to do foolish things without making us do sensible things in the next life. It has been severely criticized that Goethe allows the secret guidance to be noticed. No one can see more in another person than he or she is. Thus, modern biographers depict Goethe as a philistine – [Engel is a grotesque, outrageous interpreter of Goethe]. In 1780, Goethe became a member of the Masonic Lodge “Duchess Amalie” – a symbol of spiritual leadership.

The best explanation of “Hamlet” is in “Wilhelm Meister”. In the “Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”, Susanne von Klettenberg reveals herself – almost word for word – as a reflection of her development. During her illness Makarie brooded as much as possible within herself, but her inner nature sought the outer world again within her own inner being, found contact with divine beings in her own nature, and enjoyed this pre-mystical life. She attained a high level. Her healthy nature pushed beyond this and came to the question [through an important event]: Is God only within? Then her gaze turned to Palestine, to Christianity. Christ became man, went through everything to the point of death. When she thoroughly understood this, she said: 'In every flower, the deity reveals itself from within to the world.' Now she lives with the event of Golgotha. Susanne von Klettenberg gave Goethe a significant push for his inner development. He never stopped.

The “apprenticeship years” were completed under Schiller's criticism. The “travel years” were created under peculiar circumstances. It turned out that the typesetter printed faster than Goethe could write; and in the beginning, he helped out with things he had written earlier: St. Joseph, Man of 50, Melusine and others. In the end, he could not keep up, so he gave it to Eckermann to revise. This is how the “Wanderjahre” came about. But it should be considered that everything Goethe wrote is full of the highest wisdom [and it is a concise excerpt of his own development]. Each one signifies a stage in his own development, a stage in Goethe's development. Thus life flows like a composition, if only it is taken up in the right way and can have an effect on individuality. Much has emerged from Goethe's development. Take the “Pedagogical Province”: the boys have three gestures. [Signs of] insight into the effect of the symbols. [There are three religious levels.] The best of the three religious categories: [a gesture upwards, downwards, towards one's own kind symbolizes real reverence for the highest, for those below us, and for our own kind.] Upwards, Goethe calls the first direction of reverence, the second to one's own kind, then reverence downwards. What is below us has also come from God. Then we have reverence for religion because the divine has descended. As the student immerses himself in what the gesture shows, the gesture should draw itself into his soul. The boys are dressed differently. Why? To develop their individuality, they should choose the colors themselves.

The conclusion shows how the self expands to embrace the whole world in Makarie, who looks inwardly at the laws of the stars – she has an astronomer at her side – and takes her measurements from the solar system. Selfless knowledge that is absorbed into the world – where Goethe subtly describes the entire intuitive life of such clairvoyant beings. At the end of “Wilhelm Meister”, the occult view of the world is described in Makarie, because Goethe wants to describe the unfolding of the self.

Thus, in 'Wilhelm Meister', Goethe shows the self rising from stage to stage, becoming richer and richer as the self grows into the world problem. In order for the human being not to lead to death, the shell must tear. The work is true and genuine.

Art is something that appears essential or inessential for life to different people, depending on their temperament and life experiences. How different were the points of view in the past: Plato had drafted that powerful plan of statecraft, but he saw poets and artists as dispensable in the whole organism. Schiller saw art as an uplift for humanity.

What does art have to say about the true forces of life? Theosophy lets things speak for themselves and asks: What has art shown us in the different ages of the world? We must first try to find our way around in sketch form. Theosophy is something quite new in this form. It is based entirely on a certain premise, on the premise that the supersensible spiritual world can be investigated. There are powers in the human soul that can be developed through awakening the soul's powers of spiritual vision. This is as much a fact as learning to see after undergoing an operation for blindness.

In the past, art did not look the same as it does today. It has changed a great deal over centuries and millennia. Today, this is often not taken into account. The ancient Greeks were not the same as we are. At that time, they were much closer to the state of soul in the spiritual world, which lies behind the physical. In prehistoric times, there were countless people who, through their natural gifts, were able to see into the spiritual world. This was linked to the fact that people were different then than they are today, both in themselves and in their feelings. Today, people have to develop the same qualities in their outer lives as others. Everything that prehistoric people did was influenced by the supersensible world. They saw, for example, the spiritual power behind stone and plant. Now, the one who is spiritually developed, who sees into it, knows that there is a spiritual lawfulness in it, and that what happens in the physical world is the reflection of spiritual processes. For the ancient Greeks, it was quite clear that when something happened in the physical world, the reason for it lay in the beyond.

For the ancient Greeks, there was one very special event: they transitioned to a completely different way of life. What we today call intellectual cultural life did not exist back then. They were beings who developed from clairvoyance. They had various clairvoyant abilities. Some outstanding individuals, what we now call geniuses, were those who knew their way around the spiritual world. Those who transformed their higher clairvoyant gift into action were the masters of the heroic age. This clairvoyance was a fact back then. Today, genius is not bound to heredity, but back then it was bound to blood. There were very specific families who were able to acquire this clairvoyant leadership. The heroes and rulers were people who had an instinctive connection with the supersensible world. They did not need to think about what to do, they acted out of their instincts, their desires. They followed them without rational consideration. That was the significant change, that feeling was transformed into intellectual culture. Such a Greek may well have felt in later times: Our ancestors acted on the direct impulse of their soul, but now such a quality is no longer inherited. The Greeks expressed this in images: the gods have taken this gift of clairvoyance from us and brought it to Asia Minor to the priestly state of Asia Minor, by having the most beautiful Greek woman, Helen, the wife of Menelaus, as the representative of clairvoyance, carried off to Troy, the priestly state of Asia Minor. Helen is another word for Selena – moon. It was felt that the service to the sun had replaced the old moon culture. Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus were seen as belonging to the age of the moon. Homer ties in with that event with his Iliad.

The Iliad begins: Singe, o Muse, mir vom Zorn des Achilles. Von Leidenschaften sollte gesungen werden, um auf die Zeit hinzuzuweisen, die der Verstandeskultur voranging.

The woman as a representative of clairvoyance is lost in two ways. The fight is for what has been lost, what has been banned to the priest-state of “Troy”. Homer describes the second way in which the ban is lifted when the storm rises, and it is only appeased when Iphigenia is sacrificed at [Aulis]. Greek legend shows us the replacement of the culture of clairvoyance with the culture of reason. Odysseus is the bearer of the modern culture of reason – a wooden horse, with the horse being a symbol of reason. He forms the transition to this.

Poseidon, the god of the sea, is the protector of the old. Athena is wisdom, and also a symbol of reason. Athena guides Odysseus home. Here, the fate of nations is to be described, and people are only used to illustrate it. The poet looks at the great world events and uses art to provide answers to them.

Plato, on the other hand, took the view that it is those who live that count, not those who come afterwards and tell the tale. He associated priestly poetry in the pre-Homeric period with looking up to the gods. This poetry was the first to contemplate life; before that, such contemplation did not exist.

Aeschylus is still completely absorbed in the contemplation of the supersensible world. The Eumenides and Prometheus Bound show the supersensible world growing into the sensual one.

More and more people grew into the culture of reason, and now we come to the thirteenth century, when Dante wrote his “Divine Comedy”. What does he present to us? A world of supersensible being. The whole philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus lived in Dante. Dante was a sage before he wrote that poem. The supersensible vision was before his soul. He was led through hell, through purgatory, his soul wandered through heaven. Man then became aware of his individual individuality. He asked about his relationship to his environment. This meant progress for humanity. Goethe says, for Goethe felt this as something powerful: What high thanks are to be said to him who brought us this world so freshly!

Again we skip a few centuries and come to the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, to Shakespeare. Humanity was different. It had made progress in physical-sensual reality. How did Shakespeare create? For whom, first of all? He did not create for those who set the tone in education. He wrote for the lower classes and created his dramas in a completely abandoned society. The educated would never have come there, exposed themselves to shame and ridicule. Those who set the tone at the time were completely absorbed in the physical world, but the lower classes still retained a receptivity. Shakespeare takes man as he is in his actions, his destinies. The impulses of his characters were played out in the physical world, but it only created an image. He described only individual destinies. If Shakespeare had lived for centuries, he could have singled out many more such individual destinies and written many more such dramas. The greatest poet, Goethe, could not have created a second drama like “Faust”. “Faust” is what goes beyond the individual human being. Up to Shakespeare, man stands on the ground of the sensual world. Goethe rises above it and seeks to reconnect heaven and hell. Faust describes what is not the fate of an individual.

Schiller's search for and expression of the task of poetry can be found in his Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man. He asks: How does the human being rise from the everyday to the higher, the supersensible?

Wherever Goethe creates a single work of art, there is always a falling out of man from himself.

In this way, art moves in step with the development of man. Goethe leads from the sensual world into the supersensible one. The longing for the supersensible world is clearly shown to us at the end of “Faust”. The twentieth century will bring us Goethe's testament. In spiritual science, humanity is to absorb what art longed for. Now art is to lead humanity into the supersensible. Art is a secret manifestation of the laws of the world.

Spiritual science will be a fulfillment of the longing that Goethe expresses at the end of “Faust” in the “Chorus mysticus”:

All that is transitory
Is but a parable
The inadequate,
Here it comes to pass;
The indescribable,
Here it is danced
The eternal feminine
Draws us on.

You all know the Greek temple motto “Know Thyself”. It contains the deepest wisdom of life and is brought home to people again and again. Although it can be a beneficial guide through life, it can also be misunderstood. “Know Thyself” is a truth. It should not be understood as meaning that a person should brood and think within themselves, thinking that they are already a finished person. Rather, it is an invitation to develop the inner slumbering powers of the soul, to increase and expand them, to develop the talents and seeds. Striving and searching are much better tools for self-knowledge than believing that everything is already finished within us.

Let us consider how a person develops from birth to death, as it truly is.

For anyone who hears about the nature of man from a spiritual-scientific point of view, these things appear to be associated with manifold doubts and challenges. I can only give you a brief sketch here. That which the materialistic mind regards as only one link in the human being for the spiritual researcher. We call this the physical body. It is composed of the same substances and forces as minerals and stones. But a stone, a mineral, these inanimate bodies have the ability and power to maintain themselves through themselves. The physical body of man does not have that. It is precisely because of its physical and chemical powers that it is impossible for him to do so; as a corpse, he decays. We can understand the actual principle of life as an entity that fights every moment to prevent the disintegration of the physical body. We call this entity the etheric body; it is, as it were, the architect of the physical body, ordering the chemical and physical substances. In the past, it was common in natural science to speak of this principle of life as life force. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, it became fashionable to speak of living matter as if it were assembling itself, just as if a house were putting itself together out of wood and bricks. Just as a house is built according to the architect's plan, so the forces of the etheric body are used to build the physical body. The etheric body is thus the second link in the human being.

The third is the astral body. It is the bearer of all desires, passions, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. But what makes man the crown of creation is the power to say “I”, which is the fourth link in the human being. These four parts of the human entity have been observed for thousands of years and universally recognized as the expression of the forces that make up the divine human being. These four parts are explained in all schools of initiates. Pythagoras first made it clear to his students that the human being consists of these four parts, only then were they allowed to learn about the higher levels. With that, they had to take an oath: to receive the higher secrets with seriousness, dignity and fervor. This oath-like formula reads: “I swear by the one who has imprinted in our hearts the holy wisdom, the sublime pure symbol, the primal source of nature and all creation of the gods.

The human being at the lowest level, the “savage”, already has these four entities, as does the average European, an idealist like Schiller and also a spiritual person like Francis of Assisi. They differ in that the “savage” initially follows his instincts and passions and surrenders to them. The person who has progressed further in their development, in whom the I, the center of their being, has already worked on developing the three limbs and thus already had a refining effect on their desires and passions, has already realized that they can follow certain things and not others. He has developed a second limb of his astral body, and thus a fifth, his spiritual self, the manas.

But man can also work in the etheric or life body through all the impulses of art, and there he also develops a second limb, and that is the sixth limb of man: the Budhi, that is the spirit of life, are the religious impulses that transform the etheric body unconsciously. This transformation has been taking place since the human race came into being. The etheric body is the carrier of memory, of habits and of what is called conscience. This transformation takes place more slowly than that in the astral body; and these activities can be compared with the minute hand on a clock in the latter and with the hour hand in the former.

Imagine yourself back at the age of eight and compare what you have learned in terms of concepts and life experience since then. It is an enormous amount. That is the change in your astral body. But if I had a violent temper as a child, it has not changed that much. Our ego can only slowly work on the life body. This happens unconsciously. The higher disciple, however, consciously works at transformation. He receives guidance to change his habits and temper. Once the disciple has learned to consciously transform certain basic traits, for example, to change a domineering nature into a humble one, he can hope to ascend higher and higher, and higher gates will open for him. This is relatively difficult, but it is even more difficult to work within his physical body. What power does he have over his pulse, his breathing, over the functions of his physical body? What the disciple learns to develop towards higher development is the seventh limb, the spiritual man, Atma. Thus man then consists of seven limbs.

We will now consider how these seven members develop in the period from birth to death. Man begins his existence with physical birth; actually, he only continues life in the womb, but even this is only a continuation of previous life. Before physical birth, man was surrounded on all sides by the mother's body, which also supplied him with forces and juices. When the physical body emerges, it pushes back the maternal covering; while it was protected before, it now enters the physical world. The eye and ear had formed, but man could not perceive light and sound; he only learns this in the physical world. He has changed his scene through birth.

But with this birth, only the one link, the physical body, is born. Now there is a second and a third birth for man. When man is born, he is still surrounded by an invisible etheric and astral covering. Just as this covering is pushed back in the womb and at birth, so too is the etheric covering pushed back when the teeth change and the etheric body is fully born. This is the second birth. It takes place slowly and accompanies the time when the milk teeth are replaced by other teeth. When a person has left his etheric body, he is still surrounded by the astral body. The third birth occurs at puberty. Then the astral cover is pushed back and the person becomes receptive to astral influences. These are important moments that must be taken into account. The first seven years: the first epoch. The second epoch – from seven to fourteen years – is essentially different, and so is the third, from fourteen to twenty-one years. Then the human being develops his astral body in a free way through the I that lies behind it.

In the first epoch, physical organs have to be formed up to a certain point. Although the human being continues to grow even then, the growth up to the seventh year and after is very different. The change of teeth is a kind of final year. By then, the human being has been given the direction that he retains, the basis of his form remains. What a person has not developed by the age of seven can no longer be made up for. Only one aspect is to be considered. Up to the age of twenty-one, development will be more educational in nature, then it will take on a different character. What makes it so that the organs of the human being receive the right imprint? The surrounding world does it. Goethe says that the eye is formed by light itself. Light is the creator, the shaper. The ear forms sound and so on. What light and air can create in a human being is most intensively formed in the first epoch until the teeth change. A suitable environment is creative for the physical body of the human being.

For example, it is not irrelevant whether a child is surrounded by invigorating or dulling colors. A nervous, excited child should therefore be surrounded by lively colors, reddish, reddish-yellow colors. It depends on what has a creative effect on the child. Here is an example. If you look sharply at a white cloth with red spots and then look away from it, you perceive the opposite color and see green spots. This green has a beneficial effect. Therefore, an excited child should wear a red dress, while a calm child should be dressed in dull colors. It depends on the stimulation of the inner forces. A perfect doll does the child a disservice, because the imagination is no longer active. And the child has a sense of well-being in shaping the internal organs, and that is what is taken away from him. The child must take pleasure in its surroundings. You cannot do enough to bring joy and happiness into the first epoch of life. Not asceticism.

Another thing is love. The love that surrounds the child blends into its etheric and astral sheaths. It even brings favorable instincts.

Here I would like to mention food. Do not think that children should be overfed with eggs. This food spoils the favorable instincts for nourishment. The less a child is overfed with eggs, the healthier its instincts for nourishment will be. Spiritual science is considered a practical thing that gives you practical guidance here in life.

In the second epoch – from the change of teeth to sexual maturity – the astral body is actually born. Until now, the life body – ether body – has been shrouded; now everything that is memory and habit must emerge so that the child can become a useful member of human society. If you want to influence the child with something similar before then, it would be like trying to supply light and sound to the child in the womb from the outside. You cannot do it. But it is the time until the seventh year when joy and pleasure, desire and instinct are guided in the right direction. You have to write two magic words in his heart: imitation and example. These are the two forces at work. A role model must be given, not a command.

Here is an example. The parents discovered that their well-behaved child had taken their money. The parents called it stolen. But the child had bought gifts for poor children. He had done what he saw his parents doing. In the physical environment, nothing should be done that the child should not imitate. Teaching is of no use at this age; it only takes effect when the etheric body is uncovered. Jean Paul calls the example the greatest slogan of education. You may ask a world traveler, and he will say that he has learned more from his mother or wet nurse in his early years than from all his travels. Under the protection of the outer physical environment, which love works into the outer shell, infinite powers develop. Jean Paul also says here: Look at the child, it learns the language and also the spirit of the language in inner education. What would man have achieved for later language formation if such power were preserved for him. The child has language-forming power; for example, it calls the person who makes the bottles, the flascher - and other things. The worst thing is if you don't keep the right order in education. Jean Paul says: “Consider the words the child uses” and then ask whether his father can explain it philosophically. This is how the talent for imitating letters comes about, but the child only learns to understand the meaning of the letters after the seventh year.

During the time between the seventh year and sexual maturity, memory, inclination and character are transformed. There are three aspects to consider: thinking, willing and feeling. These are fed by different teachers. The thinking that he has instinctively developed through the etheric body must be transformed. He has learned language, but now the meaning of what is spoken must be taught to him, the meaning of what he has imitated in forms. Therefore, didactic instruction should not be started too early, only when it is imaged in the child. Then the feeling and mind should be worked on with things that are called history. Try to let the child look up to the great personalities of world history. Religion is to be made the indispensable basis of education. The human being undergoes a process of will formation that appears to him as the primal being of the divine essence. The absorption of pictorial representations must form concepts, not the abstract form. Today it is not easy for the teacher to find the comparison for death, like from chrysalis to butterfly: the chrysalis opens and out flies the moth. In this way, the soul separates from the body at death. What one believes oneself has an effect on the child. Goethe says: “Everything that is transient is only a parable.” This is the image of the butterfly. There is a point of view where the spiritual person really believes it. Then the child is shown the supersensible image through a sensory image.

From this point of view, I would like to talk about a matter that is being presented very strangely today. What concern does the “stork's nest” pose? Our highly enlightened contemporaries say today that we must not teach children such lies. That is not the case. In five hundred years, our descendants will say of us: What strange people they are, who have crudely depicted the physical event. That is much more of a lie. The stork's nest image comes from a time when it was known that the process found spiritual expression in it. From the spiritual realm, the soul comes down, and that is the most important thing in this process. All going down and all going up is associated with flying beings. So it was also the flying being, the stork. The little song “Fly, beetle, fly” and so on - “Pommerland” means children's land – tells us about the flying scele that the mother brings out of the children's land. All fairy tales bring spiritual truth in a form that the child can understand. What is important is that the powers be developed. If in the first epoch the two magic words imitation and example must work, then in the second epoch it is succession and authority. The question of schooling will become a question of the teacher. Each person must choose the teacher who allows him to follow in the footsteps to Mount Olympus. What the child believes is what matters. The truth must be expressed in person, must have become flesh. Authority is the magic word in which the child's conscience, character and temperament are vividly recreated in the teacher.

With sexual maturity, the astral body is born. What confronts the human being in the world is laid bare within him. The time of the birth of the astral body is when the sexes become aware of what separates them; the child himself becomes acquainted with the relationship between male and female and learns to distinguish between them. Therefore, at that time, as little as possible of all this should be dealt with in theory. It is a mistake to think that a person only needs a period of exposure to the world from the age of fourteen onwards in order to become mature enough to judge for themselves. The astral body must mature, mature under the authority of the world, which has to add what it has to give. And then comes into consideration what the maturation brings about, the forces. From the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, ideal forces must be developed, life forces and desires. Whatever his ideal is, that is his strength. As the astral body matures, the muscular system strengthens. And just as school ends with sexual maturity, so the apprenticeship ends with the twenty-first year. After the apprenticeship, the birth of the free ego actually follows. It is there that the human being enters the world as an independent worker, where the wandering time begins. He must learn to work independently before he has matured, to influence life as a master.

During all this time, the human being is in a state of growth, and just as the human being continues to grow in his external organs until the age of twenty-eight, or even thirty, he also has an inner growth, because the body is the expression of the soul. This is how a person develops a foundation. First, the child develops by imitating a role model, then by following authority in their apprenticeship, and in their travels in free association. Then comes a time when everything in the person is exposed; this is the actual time of manhood and womanhood. From then on, the influence from outside ceases to a certain extent. At the age of thirty, fat begins to accumulate in the body and the person begins to broaden. This is a sign that the forces to be active within have diminished.

In the thirty-fifth year, the person begins to process the forces within him or herself beneficially. Until then, he works on the temporal part of his soul, which he brought with him from previous embodiments. From the age of thirty-five onwards, he begins to work on the eternal part of his soul. That is why everything we have learned only bears fruit from the age of thirty-five onwards, and we have something to give to the world. It is the time when we become firm within ourselves and gain weight within ourselves. If up to that time man must learn through the world and through life, then only from the thirty-fifth year onwards can the world learn from him. The youth should be advised, but only he who has risen above the sun's height can advise. Then he can give more than he takes from it. This is because the astral body comes out with sexual maturity, then it can work inwardly in its etheric body. As long as the muscles are still growing, this is not possible. When the muscles are no longer left to the body itself, the life body – ether body – becomes more and more solid, and it gives what is worked in it to the environment. Particularly gifted people can do this before the age of thirty-five, but it only has weight from the age of thirty-five. The ancient Greeks would never have allowed a person to guess before that time. Doing well, but not guessing. In all secret schools, all students before the age of thirty-five only entered the preparatory program.

Only when the powers had been released could they rise higher. When man grows old in this world, he only becomes young for the immortal one. It is a great fortune – a healthy developed person, he will have something modest around him and will choose his hero until then, whom he will emulate to reach Olympus. In particular, this must be a cause for great caution when young people with the highest knowledge of the world want to work in the world. This requires maturity and standing in the spiritual world. More and more, people internalize themselves, and there are no specific periods for this. Those who undergo a certain training – even if their hair has already turned white and their skin is wrinkled and withered – may still be the youngest. Those who have the youth of the soul will acquire the greatest powers even in old age. Even when memory declines, the formative power begins to weaken, the power of ideals dies, then one saves one's strength for all that, and they serve the cultivation of the immortal. Old age withers outwardly and brings forth the eternal in man.

This is also proof of human continuity. What grows and develops is the indestructible, incorruptible core of the human being. The more the environment loses interest in it, the more important what the person says and thinks at this age is for the world. That is why the ancients took the elders as their guides, also for the social order. They had the say, the thinking, that should remain, the imperishable in the perishable.

That is why spiritual science allows us to see this life in the right light. It gives us not only theories, but something that gives us strength and security in life, confidence in the great future of the world. Then the course of a person's life, with its ascents and deaths, has something very meaningful about it when we know how to live with this wisdom, according to the sublime saying: know thyself. It shows him how the world creates him and how he works out of himself. It shows us how we owe our existence to the world, but also that we can give. The bliss of taking and giving shows us this path.

Illness and health are words that interest everyone and that are, to a certain extent, at the center of our thoughts and feelings; not only for selfish reasons, but because our ability to live and our life's work are connected with them. Those who enjoy good health can be of greater help to their fellow human beings than those who are weighed down by illness and suffering; they will fulfill their work, their profession and their mission in the world with more joy.

When we speak of health and illness from a spiritual scientific point of view, we must be aware that we have to take a different point of view than the materialist. We have to raise our approach to a higher level. But to justify the term “disease delusion” to some extent, I would like to present two images. From the first, you will see that disease delusion is something modern, and from the second, you will see to what extent one can speak of disease delusion.

I was traveling with a well-known personality past many ruins picturesquely situated on the hills, but among the many newer buildings built up on the hills, many sanatoriums also appeared. The fellow traveler said: “Those ruins are a reminder of the strength and power of times gone by, and all the sanatoriums, on the other hand, are a reminder of weakness and illness.” I had the need to visit a sanatorium for a short time, a quarter of an hour. At that time, I just saw all the patients passing by for lunch. I got the impression that most of them could do something better than be there.

Another picture: I traveled from Rostock to Berlin with a gentleman and a lady. They shared their ailments with each other. The lady recommended various prescriptions to the gentleman for his various ailments, but he, on the other hand, drew her attention to Lahmann's book, which he had with him and which led him to the sanatorium. The woman had a few ailments, but the man certainly lacked the will to get well. For someone who does not observe himself much, it is what is called an imaginary illness. When you hear about it, you imagine it to be something slight. Even if the man lacked the will to get well, it is not so easy to give him the will without knowing the real cause of the illness. There is a cause for the illness. He was in pain from all sorts of things, and here too one could not speak of an imaginary illness. When we speak of delusions, we must be clear about how the cause of the illness relates to the imagined illness.

Anyone who observes life, first of all the physician who has acquired the ability to see and has recognized what is mental disposition and what is physical basis, can say a great deal about the role that imagination plays. For example, if a much-read article about some disease describes all the sensations that are felt by the patient, many people will come to the doctor who feel that they have a predisposition for this disease. Without that article, this would not have been the case!

The following example shows how a doctor can act in such a case: a famous doctor was called to a family where not only the family but also the family doctor believed that the young girl was suffering from meningitis. At first he suspected that love stories were to blame; then he found out that the young girl was to leave school, although she had an urgent desire to be taught subjects that particularly interested her. He promised to see that she was, on condition that she dress immediately and be at the family table in ten minutes. There was no trace of meningitis. It was generally a matter of some combination of mental states.

Another example: a lady had suffered from a long-lasting foot ailment since the death of her husband; it was attributed to her mental state. A doctor found a large corn on the sole of her foot, and after it was removed, the nerve pain was also lifted.

A doctor experienced the following: A brother was watching his brother perform knee surgery and heard a crack that seized him so energetically that he suddenly felt pain in his knee, while the person being operated on felt nothing. — Sleeping pills often have deceptive effects. Those who cannot distinguish in such cases where the line lies will never come to clarity. Certain forms of illness originate in the soul; they are connected with the life of the present time in the broadest sense.

If we want to understand this, we must turn to spiritual science for help. We must take into account the interaction of the different parts or members in the human being. The physical body is completely permeated by the etheric body; the latter forms the physical body. If the physical body were left to its own devices, it would disintegrate. The etheric body fights every moment to hold the physical body together. When it separates, the physical body is a corpse.

I would like to touch on one thing here: one of the hopes of science is that in the future, living things could be built in the laboratory. Spiritual science is clear that this will one day be the case. What holds the chemical substances together is what we call the etheric body. The carrier of desires, of pain and joy, suffering and pleasure, is the astral body. Every being feels a push as pain; humans feel this in the same way as animals.

Now let us speak of the fourth limb of man, of which I in relation to his three bodies. Whoever visualizes this structure will clearly understand that what we call pain, joy, and displeasure presupposes an astral body. Pain is only present where an astral body is present. How do these three bodies relate to one another?

Pleasure and suffering are not just the result of what happens in the physical body; pleasure and suffering are the formers of the etheric and physical bodies. The astral body was the first and was already there long before. Why are they structured the way they are? Ultimately, the astral body did. If we go back far, far, we come to a state of man when he was only the astral body.

You ask: What did such bodies look like millions of years ago? To our modern concept they looked grotesque and comical, with their boneless, soft bodies and long tentacles that could stretch out and retract. At that time, the soul first took possession of this strange body and gradually formed it into its present shape. A faint echo of this influence can still be seen today in the blanching or the blush that comes from fright. You see how a physical change can take place through a feeling in the soul. In those days man could still work mightily upon his body because the body was still quite soft. The astral body first works upon the etheric body and this in turn upon the physical body.

Let us make it clear how this influence occurs. Let us take any pain, any pleasure in the astral body; what arises in the etheric body? An image, a form, and this form is what lives into the physical body, so that the physical body is an imprint of this image.

Where did the astral body get its joy and sorrow from in ancient times? It was not something inner. It experienced its environment. At that time it did not experience it through the eyes and ears. Body forms are the expression of the joy and sorrow of the environment. You must think of the four parts or limbs of the human being in a much more intimate connection than was the case with the previous world. Man increasingly became absorbed in his physical self. In the past, the astral body was more creative. It transformed the physical body. In essence, this transformation is now almost complete; that is why we also experience what is happening in the physical body.

Let us try to understand the nature of pain that is caused from within. What causes pain? The astral body is the agent. Let us take the following case: If a finger is cut off, it only affects the physical finger; the astral one cannot be cut. Why does it hurt? Because the connection between the two is inhibited. Inhibition of the astral body is pain. Where the activity is not inhibited, there can be no pain.

What is to be considered here? Here is a comparison. Someone was quite clear that he had a defect in his eye that made him see a kind of ghost at dusk or in certain light effects; there was a cloudiness in his eye. The same thing that happens in the physical body can also happen to the higher body, the etheric body. A person's etheric body receives an incorrect impression, a clouding. The person's own clouding inhibits the astral process. What then occurs? Pain without a physical cause. The astral body has to create images. If the ether body is not right, then distorted images appear. Pain can arise from the physical body being damaged, but it is also possible for the astral body to form its own obstacle. If the ether body produces false images, it contradicts the physical body. This creates a false sense of being in the physical world,

Without a cause of the illness, imitation can occur. This has a profound consequence for our world view. It makes us independent. But it also makes it clear to us that a physical illness can only be cured by acting on the physical body. Whether we are outwardly injured or have a stomach upset, in truth it is outward injuries that must also be healed from the physical realm. What is it different when inhibition arises in the astral body? What harm does it do? If you hold that these are not three separate parts, if you assume that the higher bodies are formers, albeit within narrower limits than before, then you must assume that it cannot be meaningless for the physical body when inhibitions occur in the astral body. If you cut into the flesh, it hurts; cutting off hair and nails does not hurt. This fact is of fundamental importance for understanding. Everything that can be injured in a living being and does not hurt will grow again. In plants, the leaf or flower is replaced because it does not feel pain. Lower animals do the same; they can be cut into pieces and the detached parts are replaced again. The astral body is the carrier of pain and desire; the etheric body is the carrier of growth.

Pain is something that has a destructive effect on the etheric and physical body. Persistent pain gradually kills the limb that it seizes. How can we achieve a healing effect? The physical doctor achieves results through physical means. But he will never be able to intervene on the astral body, which imitates the disease, through physical means. What should we do then? If you were to give medicines, no effect would be achieved, and perhaps a disease would be created. In a pharmacopoeia you can read: a poison makes the body sick, except when it can fight with another poison in the body. Therefore, one must carefully distinguish the causes of disease.

How can we treat an ailing etheric body? Here I would like to point out just one specific fact: everything that affects a person in a way that is in harmony with the harmonious laws of the world destroys all such symptoms of illness that take hold in the physical body.

Here two modes of perception are important. One is where a person is always concerned with his ego. The other mode of perception goes beyond the ego, is concerned with art, takes pleasure in the world of the stars, in nature and in others, and can become absorbed and forget itself in this. The prevalence of the first mode of perception breeds bodies that tend towards illness and produce illness. Those who forget themselves are able to forget pain or causes of pain that arise in the astral body. Just as the former mode of perception can have a negative effect, the latter can have a healing effect. Every pain that is overcome is constructive. We must overcome pain through the power developed within us. For those who are devoted to the great cosmic connections, the processes of their astral body will be creative; where they are lacking, illness is produced.

Where do the many ailments of our time come from? The real reason is that so few people turn to the great interests of the universe. Those who send their spirit up there bring healing. Those who stand before a motley of color splotches that has no deep meaning derive no benefit. But those who stand before a work of art through which the divine spiritual shines through will feel a healing effect. To the extent that the materialism of our time exerts its effect, the astral and physical bodies must become ill. Such illnesses are all nervous disorders, neurasthenia and others. Plagues and epidemics can occur as materialism increases. If people were to free themselves from their limited ego, much would be released from them. The truth is that a high world view is the only thing that can heal and restore health.

But there is also a downside to this: if you brood over something once or twice, it does no harm. But if you do it several times, it has a bad effect because then the person is too concerned with his or her own ego. But anyone who seeks to break away from their ego, who seeks to bring themselves into harmony with the laws of the world and turns to the great facts of the universe, will come to the truth about how to get well. Superstition is the disease of the present time. It is more useful to do something to get away from oneself and to turn one's gaze thoroughly to the great spiritual world connections.

Theosophy and spiritual science are not given to satisfy curiosity, but so that man may learn to get away from the ego. In this way he will found his health more firmly.

Those researchers will not be harmed by materialism, such as Haeckel, who immersed himself in it in a particular way. When thoughts indirectly affect the three bodies, their frequent recurrence has an effect on the whole human constitution. In this way, the soul affects the physical. I would always like to point out that if we can attune ourselves to the harmony of the universe, we can expect real healing. The soul has built its body, and if the soul is given healthy spiritual nourishment, it will shape the body healthily.

Answer to question

{The question has not been handed down.]

Answer: Irreligiosity has a very special significance; it can be a cause of illness. Not only the thought, but also the feeling that turns to the divine, has its importance. [Question not handed down.] Answer: If one works with the whole person, overwork is almost out of the question.

The work must, however, be of benefit. All fruitless labor is harmful.

Today's discussion is a kind of continuation of what we were only able to touch on in broad, sketchy lines yesterday, a topic of great importance. Yesterday we spoke of the delusion surrounding being ill, so today we will deal with something that seems quite similar: the health fever.

There are so many things available today to maintain or improve our health. Here is an example: a friend who felt overworked went to a sanatorium to recover. He showed me a note of his daily activities there. Every hour was filled with something different. So I asked him: “When did you have more to do, now or during your usual working hours?”

Everyone seeks to find health, and the ways to do so are constantly changing; even experts admit that. Whether someone tries it in a “Christian scientific” or unchristian way is irrelevant. No one is to be blamed for seeking health. The only question is: [What is] the right way? Is this “feverish” search for health really justified?

Let me choose an analogy. There are two ways of pursuing prosperity. One is to acquire prosperity in order to have the opportunity to serve others. However, it is different if you accumulate money for the sake of money. Then it does not fulfill its purpose in the world. Similarly, the pursuit of health becomes an end in itself and thus an enemy of health. The underlying reason for this is that today people are no longer aware that there is a spiritual world. However, it is not enough to know the seven basic parts of the human body. It is dry theory if it is not put into practice in life.

What is the use of just looking for health? Does anyone today think of asking about the etheric or astral body in order to test the correctness of a food? In many cases today, nutrition is discussed from a purely materialistic point of view. Today we want to do this from a spiritual scientific point of view.

We must be clear that the physical body is only a chemical structure. What is the function of the etheric body? When we study plants, we can see how many stages a form of existence repeats through, how the same species reappears year after year. Repetition is the essence of the forces that are in the etheric body. The principle of the etheric body is based on similarity or partial similarity and partial modification. In the human being, an organ only changes gradually. You can observe this in the human spine, how the ring-shaped bones of the spine gradually change until they form the vertebra in the head, where they enclose the brain. This repetition is interrupted by the forces of the astral body. The astral body must restrict them and therefore produces pleasure and pain. This restriction gives rise to sensation in animals and humans.

However, we must distinguish between animals and humans. Man has, so to speak, a two-part astral body; man has a body permeated by an ego. Because man has a two-part astral body, man can be subject to completely different symptoms than animals.

What must the physical body carry within itself to be complete? It must be able to properly carry out physical and chemical processes. The etheric body must express its power; it must reproduce and bring forth again. If it cannot do this, it will be the source of illness. The astral body is the source of pleasure, suffering and joy. Every elevated mood also expresses the thriving mood of the etheric body. Just as the etheric body is only healthy when it can bring forth, so the astral body is healthy when it is able to experience comfort and enjoyment. These three things must harmonize with each other.

Let me give you an example to show how animals and humans differ from each other. The animal has an astral body - the lion, tiger, monkey - from which no limb can be removed or reshaped. In humans, however, a transformation is constantly taking place. The part that is shaped by the ego must be brought into the right relationship with these lower limbs. Culture changes the human being; the animal cannot step out of its living conditions because its astral body has a certain form. The human being must reshape everything from his ego, and this has an effect on himself. Monkeys are healthy in the wild; they cannot tolerate captivity, they become tubercular. Why? Because their astral body has a certain form and cannot adapt to artificial conditions. If a human being were in the same situation, a state of culture would be impossible. How must a human being work in his culture? He must find ways to ensure that his astral body has an effect on his other two bodies: the etheric and physical bodies.

We want to start here with the consideration of external facts. Science – and that is good – proceeds with microscopic examinations. I will give you some connections from spiritual science. The human being consists of soft tissues that gradually develop into muscles, cartilage and bones. Lower animals have only soft tissues. The cartilage mass is there so that bone mass can be inserted. In the course of development, this ossification has been initiated. The ossification of the human being is very important; it is a disadvantage if it does not reach its correct goal. The ossification of the human being is completed by the age of seven. From then on, a different period of life begins. From birth onwards, the ossification must proceed in the right way, the soft parts must lag behind. If his organism is such that he cannot build enough into this etheric body, this shows most drastically in the teeth; they become defective. But it is not only related to the teeth. There is something wrong with the etheric body. Bad teeth and childbed fever are connected.

Human development must progress. In animals, development stops. Six thousand years ago, the brains of humans were formed quite differently, even the ossification. The change is seemingly small, but for the nature of man it is very big. The development ties in with the ossification. All human beings have a certain struggle in their own bodies – spiritually trained people can see this: soft tissue has the tendency to hold back ossification. Wherever something is wrong, you can see the tendency towards effeminacy – rickets. Here it is the skipping of a certain principle that is necessary for development.

This is also the case with something else – the external appearances are of no concern to us in relation to the spiritual: the form of the disease as tuberculosis. Here, as it were, a skipping, an over-snapping has taken place. The process of hardening is a correct principle, only here it is distorted into exaggeration.

The following is an important consequence: the human being must adapt to the process of civilization, although this adaptation can also go too far in one direction or the other. What are the causes of disease? These are connected with the process of progress, which is a source of disease-causing agents. The ego must find the right balance here. As a trained occultist, one can indicate what should be done so that there is no overburdening of the forces. The human organism is not designed to return to natural conditions; the person would have to deny the process of civilization.

Now I want to state a categorical sentence: it is not at all important to fight the causes of illness, but to strengthen the person to endure these conditions of illness, to create the most favorable conditions possible to transform their existence. If a person has lost their hand, they must be given the opportunity to live with this defect as well as possible, while remaining healthy and strong. There is a standard that is necessary for the self. I am linking this to vegetarianism.

It is quite good for a person to live this way, but it is only a stopgap. In the true, occult sense, there is only one reason and that is that one cannot eat meat. People eat without understanding, without doing so in the sense of devoutness in the occult sense. Gobbling is as unoccult as possible. One should enjoy food with thoughts of how it arises in nature, what path it has taken to maturity. Then one eats spiritually. It is not about putting so and so much material into the body. Man must eat with soul and spirit: the sun has shone on the leaf and the herb, the root has sunk into the earth and so on. Harmony arises when man eats thoughtfully. It is non-occult to see matter only as matter. Matter is condensed spirit. It is a good thing for people to pray before eating, that the divine is in it, that one eats the spirit of the world. This creates a feeling of elevation.

There is a certain point in occult knowledge where you know the nature of incarnation; you can no longer eat it, it disgusts you because you recognize what meat is. It depends on an unspoiled taste. The animal has it, man must first acquire it again, must arouse comfort and enjoyment in him, which is healthy for him, disgust for what is harmful to him. Man will learn what he must have.

All this feverish hunting for externally prescribed rules and laws is contrary to a truly healthy view of life. If sunbathing is really pleasant for you, it is helpful for you. If someone travels to the south, he may have short-term success. But what matters is to create living conditions that fill people with enjoyment and comfort. Enjoyment is the creator; it brings back into balance what was thrown out of balance in the astral body. A healthy sense of comfort must be achieved. Asceticism does not do it. It depends on what one is comfortable with. If people feel comfortable frequenting dives, it is no use trying to get them out of them. You have to make it so that they no longer feel comfortable there. If we find spiritual satisfaction, then we belong in the spiritual sphere. If we want to promote health, we must teach people comfort, pleasure and joy for the spiritual.

We can cultivate the etheric body by stimulating the creative power. After the seventh year, we should be careful not to give the child concepts, but images; these stimulate. Religious writings, which have a thousand-fold meaning, make the child creative. Expose children to artistic creations: Laocoon, a statue of Zeus, Pallas Athena and the like; later on, let them read classical works. How the versatility of thought is stimulated! So much has been written about Goethe's “Faust”, and how different it all is! Thank God that people can argue about it, that everyone can still think for themselves. Where there is free, spiritual movement, there is invigorating power. Everything must awaken the feeling. Let us do gymnastics, let us move outdoors – everything that is beneficial for my health must awaken the feeling in us: I become strong, I grow.

The ancient Greek games were so captivating; even the entire watching population was drawn into this feeling. Michelangelo had such a vivid sense of space! How the space is distributed in the [Sistine] Chapel in Rome, how the painting is adapted to the spatial conditions, how it connects to the towering ceiling. When you feel the work of art in this way, the etheric body is transformed.

Here I would like to draw on the sunbath. It is only useful insofar as it evokes a sense of comfort and a sense of life in us. We need to feel the power of the sun as an invigorating force.

We would live much healthier lives if we could harmonize the feeling of growth with our lives. We should go there, we should do that, which makes us feel stimulated. We can best promote health when it is not an end in itself and when we seek out what awakens pleasure and joy in being. One must seek to transform the human being so that he adapts to the circumstances. Ultimately, it must come to pass that the human being can be the measure of his own health. The more independent and free, the better. The more we seek to regard the human being as a given, the better it is for us. If we are able to make the human being more joyful in life, then we are truly working for his health. We should think like Paracelsus, who says: “The physician must be an artist who considers each individual case on its own merits.

One must recognize the living conditions that go beyond life. Thus, our contemplation points us to the spirit, and we recognize that theosophy is something that has a profound effect and will serve people.

Answer to question

[Questions not provided.]

Answer: As a rule, coffee has an instant stimulating effect; over time, it weakens. It promotes logical thinking; one thought is carried out and another is logically connected. It is quite natural, for example, for a journalist to visit cafes; in fact, coffee helps him to develop ideas.

Tea enjoyment does not result in the coupling of thoughts, but in the jumping of thoughts, making witty people feel witty. It is the drink of diplomats. However, the effects are different for different peoples. The Russians are still a youthful people; tea has a different effect on them than on older peoples. Smoking tobacco is fairly indifferent for occult training. In fact, the smoke even helps to drive away elemental beings.

Alcohol is poison for occult training.

Milk is life-promoting; although it comes from animals, milk formation follows very special paths.

Meat has a withering effect, because meat is a product of decay. Those who eat pork really enjoy something of the character of the pig, thus eating the whole pig.

When we eat fish, we eat – enjoy – the entire animal kingdom.

Question: Monks, who at least in the monasteries had occult training, enjoyed plenty of fish?

Answer: It was just in an earlier time, where wine was drunk by the monks, they drank a lot of wine. Occult training also changes.

{Question not handed down.

Answer: If children want to, let them eat meat. But all of humanity will develop in the direction of not eating meat anymore. You can't quibble over works of art, that's brooding or pondering; they simply have to affect us.

Two prejudices exist against Theosophy. Firstly, it is accused of being unscientific – I will deal with this later in my lecture on “Haeckel's World Riddle and Theosophy” – and secondly, it is accused of turning people away from their religion, namely Christianity.

What is the theosophical position on Christ? The way in which the Christian religion has been taught so far arose from childish prejudices. But the striving person is not satisfied with that; he must go beyond it. Many of them have rediscovered their Christianity through Theosophy. Through Theosophy they learned to find the core of wisdom in it; for Theosophy and Christianity are completely compatible. All of our Western culture, the work of our great thinkers, and all artists as well, have been shaped by Christianity and are permeated by the source of Christianity. Theosophy has to unfold the core of truth in it.

That this is its purpose was also stated by the important Indian brahmins Chakravarti at the 1904 congress in Chicago: materialism has taken hold of all circles, including the Indian people; Theosophy has given us the opportunity to return to the old ideal of truth; she has a world vocation, so she has a mission to all religions, including Christianity. Once we accepted the faith of our ancestors with faith and simplicity. Through science, many have become doubters. If the faithful turn to Theosophy, something completely new will open up for them, the doubters or unbelievers will return to Christianity and recognize the infinite greatness of it. All religions have the same truth; only Christianity has expressed the ancient wisdom in its best form.

What is this truth? Let us first look at the Gospel of John in the New Testament. Christianity is based on the truth that there is a lower and a higher human being in us. This higher human being can be born out of the soul through immersion, contemplation, and integration. The everyday person strives to follow his desires, his inclinations, while the other seeks to ennoble himself, endeavors to make something visible of this higher human being. The divine nature in us can be awakened in two ways: lower way: by awakening the moral inclinations; higher way: in an ever higher aspiration for the divine nature in us.

Higher nature is only just beginning to be noticeable in us; we divide the lower nature into: firstly, the physical body, secondly, the etheric body, thirdly, the astral body.

We divide the higher nature into: manas, budhi, atma. What is manas? Translated literally, it means “spiritual self”. Everyone reflects and seeks to understand the world around them, in their own way. I don't just mean the scholars, but everyone; the farmer behind the plough has his ideas and mental images. But if there were no original world thoughts, man would have no thoughts; they arise in him only as thought-images.

To develop the spirit itself, cooling and warming are necessary, and here we come to the second element, to Budhi, that is love. We have to compare the things of the spiritual world with the things outside. A comparison in the sensual realm is, for example, the warmth radiating from the brooding bird to call new life into existence. That is a form of sensuality. We can also speak of spiritual lust in the elaboration of thoughts. The birth of thoughts, that is the element of spiritual love. Any artist can express it to you. Anyone who sends original thoughts out into the world can feel it. The great leaders of mankind all knew it.

Take the greatest of them all: Christ Jesus. He was permeated by this spiritual sun-glow, by this love. It is this that transforms thoughts into forces. This is called Budhi or Chrestos; or the Christ principle. That, then, is Budhi! The third element is Atma, the Father. This only comes to expression in man gradually; and through work everyone can bring about the manifestation of these three within him. The most significant event in world history was the appearance of this Christ Jesus; through him, the principle of truth was brought to our realization.

In the past, there were schools of initiation — among the Egyptians, the Asian peoples, the Greeks — with different levels leading to knowledge, to the new birth.

First stage: Man must gain the knowledge to distinguish between higher and lower in the world; for example, the plant needs the mineral soil for its nutrition, thus the kingdom below it; the animals need the plant kingdom. They could say to the plant kingdom: We owe our existence to you. And man? All kingdoms are subservient to him; and he must be grateful to them, these kingdoms. So we see: one must perform the lower services in order to serve the higher. Thus man must develop a feeling of gratitude towards everything that is below him, that serves him. And he who wants to be great must be a servant. This first step of initiation is symbolically expressed in the washing of the feet. This is a stooping down to be a servant to all in a free way.

The second step is to develop strength within oneself, to become insensitive to all the hostility we face from the outside world. This means enduring blows to the cheeks, scourging, and bearing everything so that we stand firm in the face of it all.

The third step is to remain inwardly calm in the face of all the contempt and scorn that the world brings us. This is symbolized by the crown of thorns.

The fourth stage is reached when one becomes indifferent to one's own body as if it were a foreign body. Then the soul is ready to lead its independent life; then it no longer lives in the body, but takes it upon its shoulders like a burden: the carrying of the cross.

Fifth stage: Everything becomes objective for man; he dies to all ordinary life. He suffers the mystical death, and there he grows together with the whole earth; and this is the sixth stage or the sixth act: the burial.

The seventh stage is resurrection and ascension.

The initiate must experience all of this; only then has he resurrected the higher man within himself. This took place in the mystery centres; first in the temple and then through years of association with initiates. But it took place only in the astral body. Now it should also take place in the ether body, that is, the ether body must also be freed from the physical body with the astral body. A state of sleep was needed for this.

When a person sleeps, only the astral body is released. But in lethargic sleep, the etheric body could be freed. Such a state of sleep lasted three days; then the sleeper was awakened; he was now also freed from the etheric body and the Chrestos had awakened in him.

During such sleep he entered into the supersensible life. The supersensible had now conquered the sensual.

Who was it that could know this? Those who had seen it! They had become blessed, they had penetrated the spirit with the soul. That was the pre-Christian state. But now something new was coming; all this took place as a historical event in Palestine. Now the physical body of the earth experienced all this. The symbol became a reality, a truth. In this personality, this Christ Jesus, they who believed could experience it even if they did not see. In the past, only those who had seen it in the mysteries could become blessed; now the physical eye could experience it through faith in the manifestation.

The wisdom teachings are the same everywhere; but Christ Jesus brought the inner experience to external view. And therefore he could say:

Logos used to be a teaching; he made Logos come to life. The Christian mystics of the Middle Ages recognized this. Master Eckhart put it this way:

Most people look at Christ as one loves a cow. One must first let him live in oneself so that one can recognize him in the outside world.

For Tauler, the life of Christ was not a theory; for him, these facts were real. In order to understand these facts, one must first have experienced the inner Christ. Angelus Silesius expressed this most beautifully. He says:

The body must come to life in the soul, but the soul must come to life in God if you want to live in bliss. And elsewhere:

If Christ were born a hundred times in Bethlehem and it were not born in you, you would be lost forever.

Why did this faith without vision take the place of the old initiation? Because it had become a necessity for the outer man. At the time when the pyramids and other structures that appear to us as miracles were built, the world forces had developed within man. Now the spirit had to develop in the physical world; the spiritual eye had to be opened. But what has become of the world forces, the physical forces of man? They have receded, regressed, as an eye regresses when it is not kept active – for example, in the animals in the Kentucky cave.

In the first 2000 years of Christianity, the doctrine of karma receded. On Mount Tabor (“mountain” is synonymous with solitude, seclusion from people), Jesus explained something to his disciples, his most intimate students, Peter, James and John, and led them into the sanctuary. He showed them something they could only see outside their bodies, Elijah and Moses. His testament spoke to them of reincarnation and karma, of his return: “until I return to you” (Mk 9,9). What is this return? The awakening of the Christ in the soul of man. As long as people were to live in the world of the senses, it was enough for them to satisfy their spiritual needs by observing historical events. Thus Theosophy is not hostile or opposed to Christianity, but seeks to be a servant of Christianity.

Only those who view mythologies superficially can overlook the profound wisdom that is expressed in them, and only they can fail to recognize that something much deeper is hidden there than mere poetic fantasy, popular fantasy. Real spiritual research knows that there have always been select personalities who stood higher than other people. Such superior personalities were, for example, Buddha, Pythagoras, Moses and the greatest initiate, Christ Jesus. These are individuals who are far ahead of other people; it is such individuals who know the higher worlds from their own experience, who have knowledge of what lies hidden behind the physical world. They know the spiritual world themselves. They have brought a part of the truth to the nations to which they came. The wisdom is the same at all times. But it must be brought differently to different peoples at different times. That which is true is preserved by the great leaders, the initiates of humanity, and they clothe it in those concepts that any people can understand at a particular time. The various religions are the one truth, adapted to different peoples according to their aptitude and their character.

The collective wisdom, which we also call the secret doctrine, expresses itself in the most diverse religious beliefs. To understand why one people have these ideas and another people have different ideas, we must get to know the nature of the people. We must examine the nature of the ancient Germans and the Indian peoples.

First, we will give a brief sketch of the secret doctrine, which is preserved by the initiated leaders of humanity. The basic tenet of the common secret doctrine of all these different peoples is that man is a dual being, that he consists of a spiritual-soul part and a physical-corporeal part, and that the spiritual-soul part is called upon to uplift, ennoble, purify and bless the physical-corporeal part. Schiller speaks of the purification of the lower parts of man in the letters on the aesthetic education of the human race. There he speaks of how the whole development of man consists in purifying and refining the lower nature. The whole development of man consists in his ascending to ever higher and higher levels in this purification. This view connects the Secret Doctrine with a very specific idea about the relationship between man and the world. All mysticism calls man the microcosm in comparison to the macrocosm, to the great world. If you now go through the natural kingdoms and then examine the powers, abilities and qualities of man, it turns out that man is a confluence of all the powers that are out there in the world. Paracelsus said: “When you look out into nature, you see the letters everywhere, and man is the word that is composed of these letters.” Schiller wrote to Goethe about his conception of man: “I see how you take all of nature to explain man. You look for the parts everywhere to explain man from the totality of appearances.” All the essences of the individual forces of nature have merged in the essence of man; this is how the Secret Doctrine presents man.

Man's foundation is also an image of that cosmos. The battle between the lower and higher nature in man is an image of the great cosmos. Man is a battleground of the spiritual against the physical. This is also the case in nature. But man is still in the middle of the battle. He looks back to a time when he was still in the midst of the battle and to a future when he will have overcome the struggle. The spiritual, the physically invisible forces, are fighting against the physically visible world. This struggle is presented in various ways to the most diverse peoples in the Secret Doctrine. The story of the battle of spiritual forces of nature can be found among all peoples. Out in the world, the battle has already been decided. There the lower nature kingdoms have been left behind. When man in the future has cast off his lower nature, he will have achieved what the gods have already achieved. The nature kingdoms are the traces left behind by the gods. Man looks up to the divine beings, who give a picture of what man will one day be. The gods are the elder brothers of man. Man is on the way to becoming a god. Outside in the world, man also sees the conquest of the lower nature by a higher one. This is expressed in the old legends and myths in some images common to them. In ancient India we find the god Dhyans, in new India the god Indra. He conquers the serpent. In Germanic mythology we find the god Dhin or Dhinz. It is said that he overcame a dragon in ancient times. The gods Wotan, Wille and Weh overcame the giant Ymir and formed the microcosm out of him. The old gods Wotan, Wille and Weh emerged from what remained in nature. Another concept of the Secret Doctrine is that man is the younger brother of the gods and that he who is an initiate comes closer to the gods. He has passed through certain stages to become divine. The various mythologies have regarded nature as the traces left behind by the gods. This secret doctrine found different expressions depending on the different dispositions of the peoples. The Germanic peoples had a very special expression for it.

To understand how the ancient Germans arrived at their ideas, one must delve deeper into their way of thinking. The ancient Germans did not simply make up their sagas as scholars have believed. German scholarship could have provided a good basis for a correct understanding. There is a work that presents a thorough study of legends: Das Rätsel der Sphinx (The Riddle of the Sphinx) by Ludwig Laistner. He used to take the same view as the old German scholars of legends that people have symbolized natural phenomena. In his work, Die Rätsel der Sphinx, he has succeeded in getting to the bottom of the legends that still live in the people today. There is a widespread legend, the legend of the Noon-Day Woman. If a farmer stays out in the fields instead of going home at noon, the Noon-Day Woman appears and asks him three questions. Those who cannot answer these questions will be killed by the Noon-Day Woman. In some areas, it is said that you can only ward her off by reciting the Lord's Prayer. Ludwig Laistner has shown that this legend is nothing more than a reflection of what a person actually encounters when they stay out in the fields at midday. They fall asleep and enter a state in which they perceive their surroundings as the symbol of the witch of noon.

Dreams are symbolic. The ticking of the clock next to our bed is perhaps symbolized as the clatter of horses. Dreams are symbolic, even when they are about external sensory events. That is the peculiarity of dream experiences: they are symbolic.

Everything in the world has developed, including consciousness. The present day consciousness has developed from a kind of somnambulistic consciousness. Everything has gradually come into being. Thus, from a certain clairvoyant consciousness, today's consciousness has emerged. Some organs that used to serve a purpose are now only present as rudiments. The dream is also a rudimentary state. It is the last remnant of an earlier so-called astral consciousness. In the clairvoyant, out of the dream consciousness, the clairvoyant consciousness is developed. He attains a consciousness that is not only the physical consciousness, but also a spiritual consciousness. The somnambulists seek to tune down the ordinary physical consciousness in order to induce the so-called trance consciousness. With the advent of the day consciousness, people have lost the astral trance consciousness. In the past, people needed a somnambulistic, clairvoyant consciousness. In the future, the earlier clairvoyant consciousness will return and will be developed alongside the daytime consciousness. People who have less developed intellect often still have traces of the old clairvoyant consciousness. It is not uncommon for people in the countryside to have a clairvoyant consciousness.

If we go back in time, we would find people who use their senses very little but still have the old Atlantean clairvoyant consciousness. They knew that the gods are nothing more than creations of the old astral consciousness. The soul of the people has retained remnants of the astral consciousness. Germanic mythology is an expression of spiritual experiences. Our ancestors still had spiritual consciousness. The ancient Germans preserved their astral experiences in their mythology. The ancient German saw the gods fighting with the lower forces of nature in the astral world. The whole of Germanic mythology comprises tales of experiences within the astral world. The sagas describe how ancient clairvoyant humanity moved downwards. Baldur once dreamt that he would soon die. All creatures swore an oath not to harm him. But Loki used mistletoe, which had been forgotten, to make Hödur, the blind Hödur, kill Baldur. Humanity, which has become blind to the spiritual world, is Hödur. His ancestor with the old somnambulistic consciousness is Baldur. Only that which belongs to him can kill him: mistletoe, which dates back to an earlier epoch of development. At that time there was a mineral kingdom on earth that was half plant-like; plants grew in it as if in a living being. Mistletoe is a remnant of that plant kingdom that can only grow on another living plant.

The ancient Germans realized that the spiritual world is also a world of light, but that humans cannot perceive it. Baldur is a man of light from this spiritual world. He can perceive the astral world. Hödur, however, is the new man who does not see the astral world. Germanic mythology also expresses that man is a younger brother of the gods. In Germanic mythology, we are told how Wotan hung on the gallows of the cross for nine days and nine nights and that Mimir gave him a drink. This is reminiscent of Christ Jesus. Here, too, the crucifixion is presented as a symbol. Wotan is portrayed here as an initiate. It is then said that Wotan crawls through the crevices of the earth as a snake and that he reaches Gunnlöd, the Valkyrie. He stays there for three days and three nights. She hands him the potion of wisdom. The initiate remained in the cave in lethargy for three days and three nights. There he was to unite with his higher soul. The higher consciousness of man has always been represented as something feminine. The feminine is the higher consciousness that man attains when he enters the realms of the spiritual world.

The story of Wotan is adapted to the abilities of the human race at that time, which is told by all initiates. Gunnlöd is the Valkyrie. She is the higher consciousness. This is also referred to as the Valkyrie in other Germanic legends. Siegfried also reaches the Valkyrie when he attains his higher consciousness. — This portrayal of the Valkyrie Gunnlöd takes us deep into Germanic mythology. The Germanic peoples were a warlike people who placed the greatest value on bravery. A warrior who fell on the battlefield was led to Valhalla by the Valkyrie. Those who fell on the battlefield reached their higher soul part. This came to meet him as the Valkyrie. The human being who passed through the gate of death had to unite with the Valkyrie. That is why Wotan stayed with Gunnlöd. In Germanic mythology, every initiate was thought of as being connected to the Valkyrie.

Siegfried is said to have worn the magic hood of invisibility. The initiate is hidden in a certain way. People do not recognize the initiate. The hood of invisibility hides him from people. Siegfried is an initiate; he unites with the Valkyrie Brunhild. He becomes invulnerable like all initiates. He remains vulnerable only where he carries the cross, between the shoulder blades. A greater initiate is promised, who will also be invulnerable there. Because the ancient Germans had retained their astral beliefs for a long time, the secret teachers were able to give them the teachings in the astral consciousness.

Almost all Asian peoples are descended from the ancient Atlanteans. Their ancestors came from Atlantis. The ancestors of the ancient Germans had also come from Atlantis. They had remained in Europe, while another part had continued to migrate as far as Asia. Those who had advanced further had first developed sensory consciousness and intellectual consciousness. They were already living with advanced spiritual ideas. Hence the urge arose in India to take an artificial path to penetrate into the other worlds. For this, the Indian needed an artificial path. This is what is called yoga, a certain training that leads from the sensual world to the spiritual world. A yogi is a person who seeks to find his way back to the spiritual world. In India, the intellect found expressions for the artificial clairvoyance that was developed through the practice of yoga. The ancient Germans also had astral vision. In India, on the one hand, artificial clairvoyance developed, and on the other hand, intellectual philosophy. Those who no longer have astral vision need external symbols and rituals, as found in Indian symbolism. These are sensual expressions for the spiritual worlds. In India, what had now developed in its most glorious form was also in Christianity. Germania had also been pointed to Christianity. In Siegfried, one saw an initiate who was invulnerable except for the one spot. Kriemhild pinned the cross to that spot. This is a picture that prophetically points to the future of Germania. Here is the place where the cross will lie, making it invulnerable. Thus the old saga points here to Christianity, which made this place invulnerable.

Because the Germanic world felt so close to what came over through Christianity, that is why Christianity found such an entrance there. Within Europe, there was no need for Indian philosophy. We could do without it altogether. What is gained from the correct immersion in the Germanic sagas of the gods must appear even more profoundly.

These concepts will come to life again when that which is still alive, albeit veiled, in the soul of the people is awakened to life. This treasure will be unearthed; then we will understand in a unique way what our European ancestors have to say to their descendants.

Theosophy is intended to create a brotherhood across all of humanity, causing people to carry into the future what they understand from the past.