The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anyone who superficially and casually reads a brochure about the aims of spiritual science or Theosophy and what their goals are can easily come to a judgment, as undoubtedly many, many of our contemporaries do who listen to this kind of Theosophy. This judgment is: What does spiritual science or Theosophy actually have to say about the practical training of thinking? For many people form their opinion from such superficial acquaintance that spiritual science or Theosophy is something that floats in cloud-cuckoo-land, is alien and far removed from the world, and that it draws people away from the true, genuine practice of life, and that it can therefore say the least about the demands of practical thinking, which should actually be linked to the demands of practical life.

Those who delve a little deeper into the nature of spiritual science or Theosophy will come to a different conclusion and will recognize that there are two reasons why it is particularly suited to say something about thinking as a practical task in life.

The first reason is that Theosophy or spiritual science is not intended to educate impractical, unworldly and hostile people. On the contrary, in all that it seeks to be, it can reach into the most everyday life, one might say, into the handholds of the hourly life with which we deal in the practice of life. Only then is the task of spiritual science or theosophy properly grasped when it permeates us into all our individual activities, when it not only makes us wise, not only teaches us about the highest tasks and riddles of existence, but when it also makes us skillful and practical for the most everyday life. That is one reason. The other is one that is more closely related to the task and mission of spiritual science or theosophy.

It has often been emphasized here in this city that what spiritual science or Theosophy has to say about the highest problems of existence, about the secrets of life, about the riddles of man, what is presented through the observations of clairvoyant consciousness, that all this, when presented, can be understood by the unprejudiced, healthy human mind. That has been said often. Research and investigation into the laws and secrets of existence in the higher worlds can only be carried out by those who have developed the abilities and powers slumbering in their souls, the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear. When what has been researched in the higher worlds is then related, it can be understood by anyone who does not let themselves be deterred from this understanding by the prejudices that flow into them through the suggestion of our contemporary culture or any other culture.

If Theosophy can be understood in this way, then it is not only useful but necessary for everyone, regardless of their station in life. It is what makes them a true human being, so to speak. It is therefore a universal human good, and it can and must also be of interest to those who perhaps say to themselves: I will never get around to becoming a spiritual researcher myself in this life, to having my eyes opened to see into the spiritual worlds. You don't need to do that to get to know spiritual science or theosophy; but from certain points of view, spiritual science or theosophy is a preparation for this opening of the spiritual eyes, of the spiritual organs of perception and cognition in general. It should lead people up into the spiritual world.

So for anyone who wants to penetrate into these spiritual worlds, who, so to speak, wants to acquire clairvoyant consciousness, the right foundation is not enthusiasm, not overheated enthusiasm, but for them the right foundation is to stand firmly on the ground of life with both feet. One would almost like to say, although it may sound grotesque, that the less a person approaches spiritual research with overheated imagination and reveries and fantasies, the better it is. Not the enthusiast, not the person with a particularly vivid imagination, not they are the ones who can actually become the spiritual researcher's dearest students, but rather those who stand firmly on the ground of life. He prefers sober people, because enthusiasm comes from the thing itself, when the great facts of life affect us. Then we are already raised to the poetic, enthusiastic attitude by the facts, and that is what is healthy — not by letting an overheated inner self bring us to enthusiasm.

Therefore, a practical thinking that stands firmly on the ground of life is also a good, even the very best prerequisite for those who aspire, so to speak, to clairvoyant consciousness. The more sober a person is, the more practical, the better if he is to be raised to the spheres of clairvoyant vision.

All this can show you that, on the one hand, spiritual science has every reason to believe that something can be said about the practice of thinking and its training on the basis of its results, and that, on the other hand, it has a profound interest in giving a great deal of practical thinking. However, it will therefore quite easily come into conflict with those people who usually, especially today, call themselves practitioners of life, with those practitioners of life who, when they hear just a few words about spiritual science, will immediately speak of fantasy and say: This is something that contradicts all practice.

But what is life practice for these practitioners, for those who are so proud of their life practice, who are so full of themselves about their life practice, who reject everything that does not fit neatly into their life practice? For those who are able to observe life, it is the case that these people are accustomed as early as possible, early and diligently accustomed to walking on well-trodden paths – to observe what one sees, how it is done, and to observe it in such a way that one can see how it is done, whether in the trading office or in the workshop, everywhere, and yes, yes, not to step out of the usual hand movements; otherwise, if you wanted to step out, you expose yourself to the danger of being expelled from the spheres in which you want to be included; that is the usual practice of life, that you only muddle through in the way it has become everywhere.

For those who are able to observe life, this practice consists of short-sightedness, habit, intolerance, always with certain additives - this will soon be apparent to the psychoanalyst - brutality. This is necessary so that everything that does not want to fit into this dogmatic practice of life can be trampled down. But then very strange things happen.

It is best to illustrate this with examples, some of which have already been mentioned here. Today, we want to bring one of these examples to mind in order to hold up our usual way of life to it. Who would not find it practical today that you don't have to go to the post office with every letter and that you don't have to open a huge book to look up how far away the place is to which the letter is addressed, and then determine, based on half-pennies, how much postage you have to pay? In the few cases where you still have to do that today, you can see how practical it is to have what is known as the penny postage stamp, the standard stamp, even for long distances. That was not the case eighty years ago. In the forties of the last century, you still had to go to the post office counter with a letter and it was very complicated. It was not a postal practitioner who invented this standard stamp, but an Englishman named Hill, who was not from the “practical” side of life. He was the first to say what advantages there would be if postage stamps were introduced. This is no myth. You can read it in the records of the English Parliament. The one who was the practitioner said: Oh, I don't believe what Hill has calculated; because such a device certainly cannot improve our traffic as he claims. And even if it were true, then one would have to be against it, because then one would have to make the post office building three times as large as it is. – That was the practical man, while the impractical man has just made this world-changing discovery of the penny postage stamp.

And I need only remind you of something that should be known here. When the first railroad was to be built, a medical council was asked whether, for hygienic reasons, railroads should be built. The document can be read, and the judgment was passed by the practitioners – it is not that many years ago – that railroads should not be built because, as the practitioners judged, people would destroy their nervous systems. But if you wanted to build railways anyway and people could be found to ride them, then you would have to build high board walls on both sides so that those who pass by the railroad would not get concussions. Another example of such a judgment based on practical experience is when the postmaster Nagler in Potsdam said: “I already send two stagecoaches out every day with no one sitting in them; how is anyone supposed to sit in the train if I send even more every day?”

These are all facts from practical life. With such a view of the practice of life, however, truly practical thinking can come into conflict. But these truly practical thinkers must penetrate a little deeper into the nature of actual thinking, and there I may perhaps start from something very concrete. Here we have a case of thinking that is quite impractical. During my time as a student, I experienced an instance of impractical thinking that was so pronounced that it revealed to me a type of impractical thinker that I would call “the inner prankster.” This category can be used to describe many people in terms of their thinking.

And I can make it clear to you what these inner pushers of thought are. During my time as a student, a colleague approached me with a red face and said: I have now made a wonderful invention; I have to go quickly to Radinger – that was the departmental representative – and explain my invention to him. It's something revolutionary. — He couldn't be stopped, he ran to the specialist and came back a little dejected. He had to wait an hour and yet had no time to lose with his world-changing invention! In the meantime, he wanted to explain the matter to me. He started. He was very perceptive and told me about an extraordinarily well-designed machine construction. He couldn't come to any other conclusion than that he had solved the problem: by using as little steam power as possible, which the machine initially consumes, with the help of the most diverse translations, it ultimately achieves a huge amount of work. I had the matter explained to me and finally I said: Yes, you see, if you boil the matter down to a simple idea, it is just as feasible as the important problem of standing inside a railroad car and pushing it. As surely as you move it forward, so surely does this machine work. — He also saw the matter immediately and no longer went to the expert.

The way this man thought at the time is how many people think, and that is why they can be called the “inner pushers”. They think in certain contexts that represent a limited area. They do not see what goes beyond that. They are inside the matter and find everything very astute, as it must be inside the matter. But people do not think that there must also be something out there. It is actually the case, without people realizing it, that the vast majority of them move in a very limited circle, without even looking out into the distance and without knowing that you have to look for resistance outside in order to push. People don't think about the fact that you can't push from the inside as long as you're just fiddling around inside the car, in your own limited area. They think they need not know anything about what is going on outside. But the world has little to do with these pushers. They make no progress in the world, just as the cart pushed from the inside makes no progress. But many people make no progress because they think in the same way as this category.

What is important is that we learn to develop our thinking so that we can see beyond the wagon. Even if we also have an overview of the sciences, we very, very often find precisely this element, the thinking of pushing the wagon inwardly, within them. For it is usually — and this is characteristic of our sciences — the person who works in a particular field who does not see beyond the narrowest view. I have already explained this. Think of the Kant-Laplace theory. For many people it is still something to which they cling, even if it is no longer held to in some places. But the other theories are no better.

This theory, which assumes an original nebula, lets it rotate, lets it secrete the rings and planets, it sensualizes very nicely in our schools, very cute, on a small scale the formation of a world system. You take a certain substance that floats on water, make large drops out of it, cut a map sheet into a circle and slide it into the equator direction. Then you take a pin, stick it in and make the drop rotate. Droplets separate and rotate. You have a nice, cute little planetary system; the sun in the middle and the planets around it. How could one, people think, more vividly show that things can really come into being through something like this? You see it coming into being on a small scale. That is obvious proof. It's quite pretty. But that is an inner cart-pusher thinking. The experimenter has forgotten that he is turning and that the cute thing would not come into being if he did not turn. Of course, you don't need to think that there is a giant standing out there in the room setting the primeval nebula in motion. But you must not forget the spiritual foundations that must underlie what is taking place mechanically.

All this shows you how necessary it is for our outer life and for our life in science that our thinking is truly rooted in the soil of thinking practice. Spiritual science itself can now show us three things that must be fulfilled if we really want to train our thinking in a practical sense. And it is the case that, however little it may initially appear to lead to thinking practice, the person who applies it to themselves will experience how their thinking becomes clearer, sharper and more comprehensive.

We will look at these three stages of practical thought training in a moment. But first we must consider the basic condition, the attitude needed if we want to think about acquiring the right attitude towards thinking. I have already used the image. No one should think they can draw water from a glass that contains none. Those who think about thinking today think according to this pattern. They think that they can draw thoughts from a world in which there are none. This alone gives our thoughts and concepts and ideas that arise in our soul the possibility of meaning something, of not being something insubstantial, but rather that the world is only really built according to the thoughts that we find in it. Only a world that has arisen from the thoughts that we find is entitled to be thought through thoughts. The person looking at a clock will readily see that the thoughts inherent in it were had by the clockmaker. Only he who reflects on the world would wish to believe that the world is ordered according to thoughts that are only conceived afterwards by man. He would only accept thoughts that the soul forms, and would not believe that things are only formed according to the thoughts that man forms last.

Aristotle coined the phrase: What man finds last in things is what was first put into them. If man finds thoughts last, it is because they were first put into things. But if you take this seriously, you gain, above all, what could be called trust in such thinking, which seeks to be in league with reality. If I know that thinking is not only found in the mind, as materialistic thinking believes, but that everything that confronts me is thought, then I will seek to see the thoughts in the things, to hold to the things when I should think.

A psychologist of Goethe's time, Heinroth, has just Goethe's thinking - because Goethe was born into this life as if by predisposition with the aim of thinking about things with thinking, as it were, in thinking in things, not abstractly. Heinroth called Goethe's thinking concrete thinking, which, so to speak, only thinks what is in the objects, and only thinks what can really flow into the objects. And Goethe himself found this to be extremely true. Truly, Goethe had this disposition – as we shall perhaps see more clearly, to think precisely in things – so that thinking was not separate from things, but immersed in the fabric of things.

Those who are not born with such an inclination but have to gradually acquire this practical, objective thinking that lives in things must observe three things: First, if we want to become practical thinkers, we as human beings must have a certain relationship to the objects and facts around us, and this relationship can be expressed as follows: We must strive as much as possible to have interest in the objects and facts of life. Interest in the outside world is the first magic formula for acquiring practical thinking.

The second is: Our own actions, our own activities must be controlled as activities of joy and love.

The third is: When we think for ourselves, when we go beyond life and turn our thoughts inward, then we must preferably have inner satisfaction for doing so.

These are indeed the three gradations, the magic means of all practical thinking: interest in the environment, pleasure and love for all activities, and inner satisfaction, as one says, in reflection, that is, in the thinking that we do silently to ourselves, apart from things. But we must really have these things.

Yes, but what is interest in things, really? Interest in things is nothing other than a real introduction to practical thinking, when we do not approach things with our templates, with our preconceived notions, but when we are inclined to take things as individualities at every moment and to say to ourselves: They always have something to tell us.

It seems to be saying little, but it means an enormous amount when applied to life practice. Most people approach people and the things around them with stereotyped concepts. And they look at an individual person, for example; but they do not see this person, only something superficial and fleeting, and if that fits with their stereotyped concepts, then they are done. This never leads to practical thinking.

It is very difficult to be understood in these matters. When I gave this lecture recently, someone said afterwards: Yes, I always have the idea: If someone has a thick, red neck and also looks very thick in other ways, then he is a materialist, the person himself “tells” me that through his appearance. — The person who spoke has heard everything that has been said, but has not understood it. He has been in the case that he has formed the dogmatic concept: When he sees a man with a red, thick neck, who is also otherwise thick, he judges him to be a materialist, instead of looking at the individual being and thinking: “She has something to say to me, she has the spiritual-conceptual within herself, I have to respond to her; each individual can still say something to me.”

That is one thing. But then it is not just a matter of cultivating such an interest for this individual thing, but for the course of events itself. And here one can go a long way by means of special exercises. Suppose you are confronted with a very specific event, a specific fact; you observe the fact; a person does this or that. You record this faithfully. Then form the following thoughts: If this happens today, then, on the basis of this fact, I will form an idea of what may have happened yesterday as a prerequisite for what is happening today. I will construct in my mind what has gone before, that is, I extend the fact backwards in my mind. And then I go about and research how it was. At first, the person will find that he was mistaken, but little by little he will realize that by doing such exercises, by constructing backwards the causes up to a certain time and then then, by looking at the facts, he will see whether his thinking is based in such a way that it meets reality. After some time, he will see that he thinks from the facts themselves, that they guide him, that he makes the right assumptions.

But you can also do it differently, like this: You can examine a natural event or any event in human life that happens today, and then you constructively imagine in your thoughts what will happen tomorrow as a result of this event. You wait quietly for what actually occurs and compare it with what you have thought up yourself. Again, you will see that you are initially wrong. But if you stick so faithfully to real facts and have the confidence: you immerse yourself in the facts and let that arise in your thoughts, which must also arise in reality, you stick to the event and demand of yourself that the thoughts themselves take a course like the facts, then you will get ahead.

These are tremendously effective exercises that can be done in relation to practical thinking. But there is one thing to watch out for. Such an exercise must be done selflessly in a certain way, otherwise it will not work. That is experience. It is ineffective if this selfishness is involved, which can be expressed in this way: if a person imagines that this or that must happen, and then when it actually happens, he says, “Didn't I predict it just like that?” This selfish joy is an obstacle to the power we are developing actually working. This is a fact, a real experience that anyone who does the exercises can experience for themselves. These things are subject to certain laws, just like the facts of chemical analysis and synthesis.

So we see how man can, as it were, creep into things, can identify himself with facts in thought. Then what he thinks takes place in the sense of the facts. I am speaking today to adults – it would be going too far for children – but let me just say this: if someone wants to develop real thinking that is connected to the outside world, so that, as it were, their thinking corresponds to what is going on outside, then they must be careful not to do such exercises in such a way that one event is placed next to the other, but they must take care to develop a feeling for the weight of an event. This is something that is connected with the practical training of thinking, but which very few people today know. Anyone who observes knows how little people have a feeling for the fact that it makes a difference whether one thing is said by one person or another. Both can express the same thing. But the way one presents himself to us gives his statements a different weight than the way the other presents himself to us. For the weight of what we acquire, we must, above all, acquire a certain feeling.

Goethe was born with such talents. He had developed them in previous incarnations. Therefore, he became something — for those who know the facts, this is clear —, therefore he became something that many who call themselves practical today are not at all. Goethe, of course, became a lawyer and also practised law. Those who know of his work in this field are aware that although his legal knowledge was not very extensive, his legal work was characterized by the opposite of what can be observed today: a lawsuit is in progress and it is handed over to a lawyer. You go there and want to ask him something. But there is no real reflection. You are not immersed in it. Bundles of files are opened, notes are looked at. You can find the most impractical thing there. For many, the people you have to turn to as practitioners are those who make things as impractical as possible. Goethe was practical. He didn't know much about law, but what he touched, he touched in the most practical way. We must not imagine that a person like Goethe is necessarily impractical. If the files that Goethe created as a minister in Weimar are ever released, we will see that he was a practical man. Goethe's practice was quite different from that of non-poets, although this is not meant as a dig at practitioners who are so arrogant.

Another thing can be said about Goethe: it is well known that he accompanied his duke to Apolda and that he practically carried out everything that needed to be done during the recruitment of new soldiers. And when they were finished, he worked on his “Iphigenia”, and he was already working on it during this process. Now we have to say, how many of our poets would not feel disturbed if they had to dig up recruits in addition to writing down their brilliant ideas! But I don't think that the “Iphigenia” has become worse than some contemporary poetry because it was worked on during the recruitment of recruits. But Goethe did that because his thoughts were concrete, so that his thoughts worked in the things, not detached from the things, not speculative.

This is evident when Goethe was able to explain the connection between his train of thought and the course of events outside in the most eminent way. Goethe studied meteorology. Today's meteorologists look down on the dilettantism of his knowledge of the weather; but with him things were such that they were practical eye movements, eye movements that sensed when they looked over something what an event would become in the near future. It often happened that Goethe would stand at the window, look out and see a small piece of sky and say: “In three hours it will rain.” That was a better prediction than many today. Goethe wove his thoughts into the things within it. It is precisely through his interest in the world around him that we can also artificially acquire this level of intellectual practice.

A second important thing is the joy and love for what we do. This means that we must try to have joy and love for the hand movements themselves, regardless of what comes of them. Then we will also gladly do what can be missed, where nothing comes of it but that which leads to beautiful results. This is really a condition of practical thinking.

I knew a young person who practised his practical thinking by binding his schoolbooks himself. He took great pleasure in doing all the various steps involved in binding a book. This is a better training for practical thinking than all brooding and ruminating. The necessity to check, so to speak, every thread that you stretch and pull for its effectiveness, to always pay attention to how the fingers move, that is really a good pre-school for practical thinking. And the more you have made futile attempts, the better for practical thinking.

Even excellent people in the field of theory and practice, such as Leonardo da Vinci, emphasize this, and they never tire of characterizing the details. Leonardo da Vinci talks about how to try to draw a template, first drawing the template on tracing paper; then you place the drawing over the template and memorize where you have deviated. Then you draw again, taking special care in those places. This simple matter was not too insignificant for Leonardo da Vinci to fill an entire page of his works with it. And you can try to apply this instruction to all possible areas of life to shape your thinking into a practical one.

The third thing is the inner satisfaction of the thought process. Everyone should have this, regardless of their station in life. Even if you devote only a little time to it, it will come back to you in abundance, even in material terms. No matter what area of life you are in, you should be able to reflect not only on the things you are involved with, but also on other areas. You should have moments of reflection on this or that question. Such minutes of reflection, in which you think in such a way that you do not desire that your thoughts flow into the outside world, should fill you with inner satisfaction. As a human being, you will get nowhere by solving problems that are actually far removed from what you are thinking in relation to the immediate practicalities of life. If you initially only have inner satisfaction from what you are doing with your thoughts, you will get ahead as a human being. If the carpenter only thinks about making tables and chairs, he will get nowhere as a human being. As a human being, you get ahead when you think about what gives you inner satisfaction. This trains the thinking organs. As a human being, and indirectly as a practitioner, you get ahead. No one will deny that you face life differently if you are this or that being. There is a big difference between a dog and a human standing before the Sistine Madonna. Man has a completely different relationship to it. Because man always remains in a certain area, he does not go beyond himself. Because he engages in thought and finds satisfaction in it, he advances. Through the process of reflection, in which he finds satisfaction, he affects practice differently than without it, and it is precisely through this that he will transcend a narrow field. He will rise above the standpoint of the inner coachman with an inwardly satisfying thinking, which is nothing more than what grants and seeks inner satisfaction.

Here one can also find the reasons why it is wrong that it is emphasized over and over again by our schools: Oh, what things are taught that cannot be applied in practical life! If only they are taught properly, then these things, which cannot be applied directly, are of immense importance. They transform the human being, these things that cannot be applied in life. What flows into life flows less into the human being himself; what does not flow into life forms the fine organs. This helps people to progress. It makes them more independent, and their minds are so imbued with the ferment of thought that it goes right to their limbs. You can see that a person develops such inner, satisfying thinking that does not directly involve the outside world; they become more agile, more skillful in their limbs.

There is no substitute for such training of the mind. Anyone who has experience in these matters can very precisely distinguish between those who do the exercises mentioned and those who do not. If you are traveling, for example, you can easily recognize the “practitioners”. Those who are practical in the workshop are sometimes quite awkward in other respects. It makes one feel peculiar when one sees how the simplest finger movement cannot be performed when the situation is different from what it usually is. This is a direct result of the fact that they have not been accustomed to developing thoughts inwardly and deriving satisfaction from them. Of course, one does not have to do one without the other. Those who only want to live in reflection become a foe of life and a speculator. But the person in whom the two things are in balance, who looks at things calmly and reflects calmly, will live his whole life, one might say, with skill. He will be able to do anything; he will even use the soup spoon differently than someone who does not do that.

This can be taken into the details of life, because thoughts are realities. They communicate with the material in all possible ways. That is what matters. In this way, we train our thinking for right practice. We then look out the windows of the car in which we sit and see the laws that are given by the fact that the car is still connected to the world, and not just pushing inside. This pushing inside is very widespread; and especially in today's culture, as it is so intimately and intensely influenced by science, those who have engaged in real practical training of thinking can see how much depends on the mere impracticality of thinking.

If people had any idea of what practical thinking is, they would see from the impracticality of thinking that certain things must be wrong. The facts investigated by science can be admirable, but the conclusions drawn from them are often dreadful because of the impractical thinking of the person drawing them. How can it be proved to many today that there is actually no soul, that everything a person accomplishes is based on purely mechanical laws? Yes, you can still find a very strange conclusion in the first pages of a “Outline of Psychology” — written by a person who is highly respected. Anyone with even a spark of understanding and practical thinking will immediately be able to reduce this to its true value. It says: Earlier times said that there was an independent soul; but today man has also been drawn into this web of the preservation of strength. It was first investigated, they say, in animals that everything that is fed to them is only transformed, and that what they do is transformed food. What the animals receive as strength is only converted food. How could there be an independent soul when only what you have stuffed in comes out converted?

They were not satisfied with showing this in animals; they also tried to show in humans that what you put into people in the way of the energy values of food comes out again in other forms. Why do you need a soul for that? This was tried on students. The calculations are very ingenious and are supposed to prove that there is no soul in it, that everything is converted food energy, what a person thinks and does. The facts are admirably observed. The methods are very well thought out, the instruments are magnificent. But the conclusions are the most gruesome one can imagine. One only has to trace the thought back to the simplest elements to see this immediately.

The thought is constructed exactly according to the following pattern. We line up at a bank. We know that money is carried into it. Now we check all the money, we write everything down, individually. Then we check what is carried out. We then come to the wonderful conclusion that the money that is carried out is exactly the same amount as what is carried in. From this we conclude that there is no need for officials inside; because just as much money is carried out as comes in. The other judgment is equally astute: just as much work and thought goes out as food value goes into people.

But it goes into much more subtle areas. Today we have a wonderful field of research that shines a light into the smallest organs of beings. There we find very significant small organs. The research methods are admirable, through which one is able to prove something in plants that imitates the human soul organs. It is proven that there are faceted organs that form the eye. Yes, they even photograph images that arise in the plant eyes, and from this it is concluded – nothing is to be disparaged about the wonderful research method, but only the conclusion is to be put into the right perspective – it is concluded: because it can be observed in this way, the plant must be ensouled in a similar way to animals and humans. One sees certain plants that draw insects through their organs and consume them. They develop a certain digestive activity; they attract insects and, as it were, digest them. And the conclusions that are drawn from this are very likely to blur the difference, which must not be blurred, between plants, animals and humans.

Someone who is familiar with practical thinking can say the following: I also know a strange creature that has the property of attracting small creatures by certain actions within itself, as if with magnetic force, and, when they approach, not only to transport them into its interior, but even to kill them there. That is the mousetrap. And the thought form that is now applied to the mousetrap is formed according to the same pattern as the thought forms that some people apply to something that is supposed to open up a new field of plants, to the soul life of plants.

When you consider things like this, you can begin to appreciate how important it is to really train this thinking through the specified means in practice. You cannot just train the circumspection of thinking, but also achieve a certain clarity of thinking through artificial means, through the following exercises. Again, the exercises differ from the habits of thinking.

Most people will not be able to form their judgments about any matter quickly enough. And once they have them, they are satisfied. They do not consider that it could have been different; if someone else says otherwise, they are a fool. This is not how you learn to think. You learn it by considering other possibilities for thought when you have formed an opinion, by not clinging to what you yourself have thought, but also putting the other opinion alongside in all love. You will see that it is possible, which can only be characterized by saying: Only those who disregard their own opinion can recognize the truth.

It is very useful when answering a question or solving a task to first consider the different ways in which it can be resolved, and then to leave it at that, to say to yourself: “Now I'll leave it.” You have to have a belief that is very important for practice, the belief that you have something within you, a kind of higher person who can think even better than you think when you are present. You don't have to be so selfish that you want to be everywhere in your soul and believe that you know the very best. Those who believe in the real validity of thinking and have confidence in it will say to themselves: my thoughts will progress most beautifully and objectively through their own powers if I am not there at all, if I switch off and turn to something else, and then present it all to myself again tomorrow or the day after. You will notice that, if you have not been there, you have become much wiser about this question. The possibilities of thought then work in one, and one comes to a decision in a much more favorable sense. This is of tremendous importance. And if one believes that selflessness has not yet allowed a decision to be made a second time, then it is of tremendous educational importance to wait again. And one will very soon notice how thinking becomes clearer and more forceful. It becomes much easier to quickly put things together once you have trained your thinking.

In this way, you can specify the things through which thinking can gradually be trained. Again, something of great importance is that you pay attention to the following for practical training in thinking: As long as you are interested in something, you should look at it, observe it and remain silent. You should only speak when you no longer have any direct interest in it, when you have risen above it. As long as you are still too involved in your interest in something, you should consider it and remain silent. It is best to speak when you no longer have a direct interest in something, but have detached yourself from it with joy and sorrow. Those who can do this will get very far. Those who resolve to form an opinion only when their interest has waned, who can take an interest in anything and hold back with their judgment, who only form their opinion in retrospect, will go a long way. This is a very significant pointer to how one can essentially train one's practical thinking.

And what is particularly important now is that one is not at all with what one already is, with the way thinking develops. It is very important for those who want to train themselves practically to try not to think at all for certain periods of the day. For the best training of the thinking is achieved when we harm it as little as possible by our thinking. When we can refrain from all thoughts, when we are able not to grasp the thoughts we can grasp, but to think nothing, then the inner, ever-present power of the soul takes effect and actually brings us a step forward.

This is very difficult and requires a great deal of energy. But it is of immense value to suppress all those errant thoughts that surge up and down within us and to think nothing at all. What is thinking in us is also there when we are not thinking along with it. This is best achieved when we are not present for a while. Because then we do not stand in the way through our personality, through our individuality. Just as it is work when we consider various possibilities and then let the thoughts work by themselves, it is essential that we let the power of thought work without us being there, that we let the thinking being develop in us, even if only for a few moments, without our intervention. Anyone who does this for a long time will notice the great benefit of such a thing.

Fichte was right when he said something completely different. You see, he was talking about the “destiny of the scholar” and knew in advance that he would have to set such high ideals that people would not go along with them because they would find them impractical. So he says:

We know full well that ideals cannot be applied directly in real life. We only claim that reality must be judged by them and modified by those who feel the strength within themselves to do so. Even if they cannot be convinced, once they are what they are, they lose very little; and humanity loses nothing. It merely makes it clear that they cannot be counted on in the plan of ennobling humanity. The latter will undoubtedly continue on its way; let benign nature prevail over the former and give them, in due course, rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment and an undisturbed circulation of the fluids, and with that, wise thoughts.

Thus says Fichte about those who speak of the impracticality of ideals. A benevolent providence does indeed do its part in relation to human thinking. For much of what man spoils of his power of thought, the balance is created by man sleeping. If he were always awake and impairing his mental power with his thoughts, it would be unbearable. The fact that a person sleeps gives him the opportunity to repeatedly advance into his inner thinking power. However, thinking is much more effectively promoted when a person decides not to think, even though he is awake. The moments of not thinking are the greatest educational means for thinking.

Only isolated points could be selected from the whole range of what could be said and what could not be exhausted in twenty lectures. These points can indicate how one can find one's way out of the laws of spiritual science or theosophy and how thinking can be trained for practical life. For truly, thinking is trained by such things, it is trained for both perspicacity and clarity as well as for presence of mind. We make constant progress if we do not let ourselves be annoyed when we apply such things. One would like to say: If only such inner schooling of thinking were applied pedagogically early enough, everything that can be chiseled out inwardly would permeate the human organism so completely that it would become skillful.

What has been said today is concrete thinking that makes people skillful. I tell you, as strange as it sounds: nature still ensures that people can pick up what they have dropped. But if one were to train the powers of thinking as it has been said today, one would bring people to the point where they can pick up with their toes what falls down. It is only the lack of training of thinking that makes us so clumsy in many things, because the training of thinking does not work in the center of the human being, does not go to the center. This principle lies in everything that has been said today: to go to the center of the human being, to let the forces radiate out from there into all human limbs, so that the human being is enabled to use even the soup spoon correctly.

When spiritual science introduces proper schooling of the thinking, then people will systematically see an example in Goethe, and they will arrive at valid thinking by immersing themselves in things. It is precisely by training one's thinking in this way that one comes to find the simplest thoughts everywhere, to find what can be easily grasped. It must be possible to trace all things back to their simple thought construction. This is only possible if thinking is trained in the indicated way, otherwise thinking goes its own way. In detail, the thoughts can be correct, but as a whole they are not useful.

Isn't it true that, especially today, science is proving that or the other, which clear thinking recognizes as an error at first glance. There are people today, for example, who say: Actually, there is no substance, only movement. A witty brochure has recently been published that takes the view that everything is movement. It really says that when a person walks from one place to another, he does not carry what appears to us to be his substantiality from one place to another, but only movement, and by walking to the other place, he adds a new movement. This is thought of in terms of the pattern of the sun being up there, the solar particles are moving, they are dancing; by dancing, something does not go from the sun to us, it is said, the nearest ether environment dances, and the ether dances down to us. Only the movement is transmitted, it is said, and that is perceived as light. In this perceptive book, this whole ether dance is applied to the human being. The whole human being is actually just a dance. When I go to the next place, I create a new movement and so on. One would just like to advise the good man, when he walks, never to forget that he is creating the movement again, otherwise he would have to disappear into nothingness.

This is an example of how everything today is traced back to movement. But Goethe, in his straightforward thinking, had to experience that in his time everything was traced back to rest. All this is caused by impractical thinking, which is incapable of reducing complexity to simplicity. Goethe, as a practical man, faced all this, and the fact that he found his way through all the quirks is based on what he said in his practical thinking.

Let us also say this to ourselves in conclusion. It can also indicate the right point of view for the attitude we should acquire. He experienced that people who thought impractically confronted his practical way of thinking, and there he said the principle that one should really write for all thinking practice in one's soul, the principle:

Enemy eyes may meet mine,
But I will keep calm and silent;
And though they deny you movement,
Go on as if before them I do not exist.

Today we are to speak about the subject of asceticism. This subject is one that is judged differently from various sides. In asceticism, a spiritual current is usually already seen that, in what it represents in itself, already shows a kind of illness and that cannot at all proceed from healthy foundations of existence. But asceticism is an effective means of perfecting life, of reaching higher levels of existence. Sometimes asceticism is also seen as a withdrawal of human energies that could be used for existence; thus moderation and asceticism are considered to be more or less synonymous. The word is well suited to asceticism:

Confused by the hatred of the parties,
its image in history fluctuates.

Asceticism was something quite different in ancient Greece than it was in the Middle Ages. The nuance established by the Middle Ages for asceticism is indeed a questionable one. But spiritual science or theosophy has every interest in putting asceticism in its true light.

Asceticism in the sense in which it was meant in ancient Greece and wherever the word was understood in its general meaning has something to do with what underlies Theosophy. Asceticism is something that can lead to the highest heights of existence, but taken to an extreme, it can become idleness or even worse. “Asceticism” means ‘exercising one's powers’ so that one is able to develop and exercise one's highest abilities. ‘Askesis’, the Greek word, is related to ‘athlete’ and means ‘to make oneself strong’. In that the word indicates this in its original meaning, it has to do with the basis of spiritual research in Theosophy. And now we want to go into the distinguishing feature of asceticism in relation to many other scientific currents.

The theosophist has a different concept of knowledge than that which many other people have of knowing the world and what underlies it. With the senses one can know the external world, says the intellect; but one cannot explore everything about it, it exceeds the limits of its knowledge. Speaking in this sense means professing the opposite of what theosophy is; it says: reality is unlimited! It would even be able to give man a new sense, a physical sense, of reality if necessary. There are no limits to being, being is infinite. Man's soul is indeed limited in time to one stage of development, but it is up to man to expand this soul within it.

Man must not presume to want to exceed the limits of his knowledge, as science says against it. But spiritual science says: Try to expand your spiritual knowledge, your spiritual-scientific knowledge, as much as possible. The goal is the development of the soul, of the cognitive abilities of the human being. It must be admitted that there is something in the soul, something germinal in it. A person should not say, “This is how I am,” and be satisfied with it, but should say, “This is how I am now, and I will achieve new forms of existence to practice my powers.” This is asceticism.

Asceticism is something that enriches the human soul and makes a person stronger, opening up true and new realms of reality to them. Usually, asceticism is described as someone who practices it appearing gaunt and hollow-eyed, being idle, hating life and being disgusted by all the joys and demands of life. But an ascetic, properly understood, is akin to an athlete; true asceticism is elevation, expansion, enrichment of the true essence of man. Spiritual science or theosophy makes its knowledge and research accessible to a larger circle of people today. But you need not think that everyone must therefore also do the exercises - meditation and concentration and so on - and that the result will be the same for everyone as for the blind person who would have to be operated on, the opening of the eyes. Not everyone needs to do this, and not everyone will experience it; and not everyone can or needs to become a researcher in the spiritual world. But he, for his work in the spiritual world, needs the clairvoyant consciousness. To understand the messages of the researcher, none of this is necessary, one should just take them in impartially and examine them seriously. Everyone should test them against their own logic and sense of truth, which every person carries within them as a natural thing that they can rely on; this will then teach them to reject what a charlatan says and to agree with what a true spiritual researcher says; it will also teach them to distinguish one from the other.

It often happens that messages from the spiritual world arouse interest among listeners, especially those that deal with the subject of what kind of exercises and so on are necessary to enter the spiritual world. We will now begin with such a description today; how far one can follow it will be best seen from the subject itself.

The asceticism that is concerned with living in the spiritual world – and this is the only thing that matters for spiritual science – endeavors to develop abilities and perceptions in people that are silent in ordinary human life. Consider that you perceive from morning till evening through stimulation from the outside world; so you have a consciousness of yourself and of what is around you. In the evening, when you are tired, your soul can no longer perceive, your consciousness is silent, it falls silent. While you sleep, you are in the spiritual world, but you know nothing of it; why? Because today's man needs those external stimuli to see, which, as it were, entice perception. If he could give himself this push, which the objects give him as an external stimulus, this impetus from within, then man would have within him a stronger inner power than that which drives him from outside to perceive. But then he could also perceive in a world to which he drives himself from within, while he must perceive through external stimuli.

Let us assume that the former would be the case and that man would be blind and deaf to external stimuli, but would be able to receive the impulse to perceive within himself through invisible senses; then man would have awakened inner spiritual abilities in himself. But this can also happen in another way, namely in the sense in which we speak of asceticism in spiritual science. That is, a person commands himself through strong inner strength that he does not want to see or hear the external world; it sinks away for him, but not through fatigue, but through his arbitrariness. It is an inner world that then emerges, the outer one sinks.

Now let us turn to what man must do to achieve this. The preparation for this consists in his devoting himself to certain exercises. True asceticism has nothing to do with external means; what happens is an intimate, albeit energetic, process of the innermost of man's spiritual powers. The first thing he has to acquire is an especially heightened, intensified power of imagination! This occurs when a person stimulates his inner powers in such a way that he awakens within himself what had previously been dormant forces within him. ...

(As an example of this, Dr. Steiner cites the dialogue that one can imagine between the secret teacher and the mystery student when the student is being instructed in the contemplation of plants and humans.

Not to forget, however, that this dialogue never took place in this way.

(Description of the dialogue.)

This is to tell us: Man can stray, but the plant leads a pure chaste existence. The chaste red plant sap and the passionate human red blood. These thoughts must be transformed into an image and tried to visualize as a real ideal of man. Through this exercise, man will then gradually reach a stage of development through his own arbitrariness, as the plant has already reached a lower stage today. Goethe expresses this beautifully:

But if you do not have
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

In order to understand this ascent of man over himself, man must overcome something in himself, so as not to let it gain mastery over himself in self-aggrandizement. The disciple was told: Imagine that which should die as a withered piece of wood in the shape of a cross, and that which should come to life when man has conquered that which is expressed by his red blood, as a symbol of the purified plant-juice, think of it as the red rose. Imagine this vividly before your soul, surround the wood of the cross with living red roses, and you have before you the “Rose Cross”. Feel this mighty symbol deeply in your soul, do not just stare at it rigidly, but put into it all your perceptions and feelings, put them all into it as they fill you with devotion and devotion; when you compare the whole path of development through plants and humans up to the ideal of man in whom the red blood again flows pure and chastened, as in the red plant-juice in the petals of the red rose, feel and see this symbol, so that the Rosicrucian symbol becomes not merely an idea, a symbol, but a living power. Let all your feelings come to life in you as you contemplate and imagine, and let your heart warm as you do so, let this symbol come to life in you!

It is not an object that can be awakened by external perception and stimulation of the senses, nothing that can be seen in external reality, something that cannot awaken an external image in us. Hundreds and hundreds of such symbols could be cited from spiritual science or theosophy. But it is precisely such symbols, which do not come from external reality, that make man strong inwardly, that steel his will so that he can perceive a new world around him. The aim of such asceticism is the inner development of the human being's powers. We have characterized and shown what true asceticism is by the above example, and how through it man can become a citizen of the higher worlds. Asceticism is that which truly opens up a new, spiritual world to man and through which much can be communicated to him from it. At first, man should learn to hear the communications of the secret researcher and not immediately practice them himself. It is better if he first seeks to understand with his logic what the secret researcher says as a message from the spiritual world. So what we call asceticism leads us up into the spiritual worlds; and now let us see how humanity can relate to it. At first there will be those who say that these are fantasists, dreamers; and they will reject these explanations; but they will not always be wrong with us; because those who speak thus should say to themselves, one must first examine before one rejects. And we must say to ourselves that we must first know the reason why they reject, and we must have patience and consider that it is indeed a new world that is being shown to people. Wherever something like this is given, there is something that flows into us; we are to acquire new concepts, new ideas, which is not easy for everyone. For example, someone who initially only has a certain amount of abilities in his or her self cannot absorb this new, spiritual knowledge; for him, absorbing it would be like overeating in a spiritual sense. For him, to reject it is nothing more than his ego showing that he is incapable of absorbing it at first. It is instinct and self-preservation that tempt such people to reject spiritual science. These truths would extinguish their inner being; that is the one extreme where those poor egos of the present reject the truths of the spiritual researchers.

Others have a tendency to absorb everything that comes up and can be heard, but they also lack the will to penetrate it with understanding. Out of laziness, they don't want to make an effort, but they have an inclination to absorb, but they don't have the will to grasp what they hear with their will. But only then can harmony arise between the listener and what is heard; because only through receiving and processing does understanding arise. So one part is organized in such a way that it is unable to expand its spiritual abilities; it must reject the truths of Theosophy out of a sense of self-preservation. Others come from a sense of sensationalism, which is even less good; if one only wants to receive and not understand, that gives rise to blind faith in authority. One then hears them say: He said it, and so it must be true! But the one about whom this is said would rather be considered an authority less often, but in return be better understood.

(Example: What Lessing says about Klopstock).

The same applies to the secret researcher: he does not want to be praised at all and much rather not revered as a master personality, but to be understood and tested! For it is true, as has already been mentioned elsewhere, that if one wants to examine comfortably and not logically, it is then dangerous for the teacher to make the communications from the spiritual world to such people, for they can no longer distinguish truth from humbug and deception. There is only one way for the layman or the disciple to find the truth, and that is to examine everything with the strictest logic.

Now, we want to draw the attention of those who just want to absorb everything and who say, “the master said it,” to the danger of just blindly believing and not checking; you lose the strength and the educational result of the truth itself. For what truth is for man, its immense significance lies precisely in the fact that it is established in the innermost being of man. I know that three times three is nine; and if a million people come and claim that it is ten! This makes truth that great, that powerful educational tool, that the guiding principle for it lies within man, in his own inner being. This is why man makes something else the guiding principle of his inner being when it is not only about what comes from external sense perceptions.

But whoever only wants to hear new things abandons the educational means of truth, whereby truth is that strict means of education. Those who allow themselves to be overfed with truths allow the lack of judgment to take root in their habits; they allow someone else to be their judge of truth, thereby losing their sense of truth and falling into a habitual attachment to and love of untruthfulness. Out of laziness, true people can develop a tendency towards dishonesty, lying, dishonesty. Man must realize that truth research is a duty; but this realization must spur him on to examine logically and rationally everything he is taught from the spiritual world. What people who are too lazy to examine do to themselves can be compared, in a very good sense, to drowning. The person in question loses their self; this kind of reception of spiritual truths is drowning.

Now we want to discuss another thing that is even closer to what we call askesis or spiritual exercise. What does this askesis present itself as? We work on ourselves in order to become stronger for the world. Askesis is the practice of those powers that are not used at the present moment. Askesis can thus be compared to a healthy maneuver. The powers that are to be applied in an emergency are tested, tried and steeled there. Just as a military maneuver is related to war, so is asceticism related to the application of these forces themselves. The purpose of practicing the forces is for the sake of developing the forces; and the development of the forces must be done for the sake of growing the forces, so that they are there when you need them; therefore, you have to train them beforehand. You have to practice them before you need them, otherwise you won't have them when you need them. Example: If you train to be a singer, you have to practice a lot before you can perform and sing. Those who want to practice asceticism must practice and renounce the immediate use of their strength. You have to approach true asceticism as something that you only do to practice.

This kind of asceticism can be compared with something else: with children's play; they also practice their strengths now on objective things, which, so to speak, they are not yet touched by, but they practice them in preparation to have them and to be able to develop them in the time when the seriousness of life approaches them. To make one's powers pliable, flexible and mobile is the meaning of asceticism in relation to higher worlds and levels of knowledge; to develop these powers into abilities is the purpose of true asceticism.

In the development of spiritual abilities, something else comes into consideration. Through certain exercises, through meditation, through the presentation and contemplation of the Rosicrucian, man can strengthen his abilities and can also achieve certain visionary, clairvoyant abilities; powerful images and so on can be awakened in him, visionary clairvoyance is attained. Now the special thing occurs that the development of such powers can become dangerous if they are not directed towards something real, that is why study is such a necessary and important part of the student's task. One should not develop inner abilities without at the same time devoting oneself to an external, logical, rational understanding of the knowledge of the higher worlds. When a person becomes clairvoyant, a strong awareness must arise in him at the same time, and this is where the inner ability must be directed. Otherwise there is danger for the person. If a person has not previously acquired knowledge logically before entering the spiritual world, then the person does not know what to do with the inner ability. It is then a case of illusory images, of filling oneself with clairvoyant abilities; the process is then like an internal burning. For the awakening of such abilities is linked to the fact that the person feels the transition of abilities into passions, instincts, desires and so on. This is the other danger to which those who practice asceticism and who want to develop themselves in this way into the higher worlds, but without study, are exposed.

These are the two dangerous pitfalls – drowning, self-destruction, and burning to death – that await those who do not properly and thoroughly practice the ascent to the spiritual world and do not strictly follow the instructions.

Some will say, yes, meditation and all that stuff, that's fatal, I don't do that; but not eating meat, not drinking wine, I could dare to do that. But doing that is not so easy and not so simple and not successful either. Because only for the one who has already prepared his soul through spiritual work, for him the external measures and means are allowed as a relief for the journey. One must realize that they are only a relief, never anything else. Our body forms a resistance for our soul, and man would be able to do many things if he did not have this cumbersome body. Through external measures and aids, man can make this body more docile; he can prepare it as a better servant of the soul. A meat-free diet makes the body more docile in this respect and also more efficient.

In our time of true health fanaticism, where sunbathing and all kinds of other natural remedies are used, it happens that precisely those who are passionate about sunbathing, when they have to spend a quarter of an hour in the sun or stay in it, sigh and moan: “Oh, it's unbearable!” But anyone who practices true asceticism can also take a good walk in the sun, because it teaches people to endure life. Preparing oneself, making oneself capable of living, that is true asceticism!

Nothing can be achieved by external means alone. This only weakens the body – that is, if one only applies external means one-sidedly and does not regard them as adjuvants – because the body should be attuned to the soul. If the soul is lazy, so is the body. Otherwise the disharmony is too great. Those who apply and want to apply only external means to penetrate the spiritual world are preparing their body for a soul that they should first create. The soul must develop in parallel with the body.

Here we have reached the limits of our consideration, where asceticism can lead to the soul and body becoming unhealthy. You have to take care of your body and soul when you start practicing, because higher cognitive abilities are developed that then become realities in our soul; and every reality affects our body and soul. What can be achieved through true asceticism is a reality. A robust person must have a strong connection with the physical world; because there is a certain connection between the external world and the human being. — Example: What Fichte says about ideals, namely that those who have them know very well that they cannot be applied directly in the world, but are nevertheless their driving force.

A person who is whole within himself is also healthy when there is harmony between him, his inner self and the outer world. Based on this feeling, many people reject what they are not attuned to, for example, Theosophy. When a person takes in something and is not attuned to it and does not process it, then disharmony arises; this then takes hold of the physical body and what was previously only described as untruthfulness and so on, as the drowning of the soul, that is what then also makes the body sick. We must bear in mind that messages from the external world do not affect us so strongly that they cause such physical disharmony in the body; but messages from the spiritual world are realities, and therefore they affect the physical body; for everything physical is, after all, only an expression of the spiritual. This means that we make ourselves physically ill through the wrong reception and application of spiritual truths from the spirit.

This is even worse if the soul has been enriched by clairvoyant abilities without logical study; then the person burns inwardly, and this is transferred all the more as a consuming fire to the outer body, and the body becomes diseased. Therefore, man must strive to remain in balance with soul and body and their inner powers. Study and attainment of inner abilities must go hand in hand. If this is not the case, the consequence is otherwise the soul burning within and a morbid exterior. With correct asceticism, the organism becomes supple and flexible; but if a person digresses in either direction, then through asceticism, misunderstood or misapplied, the person will fall into and pass over into mental and physical illness. This is the great responsibility for those who make communications from spiritual science. And the leaders of the movement must always be aware of the existence of this responsibility in the most serious sense. The greatest caution and care is therefore required when accepting each disciple. But this responsibility must not deter anyone who is called to show the way, to give advice, nor deter anyone from coming. For the saying of Heraclitus applies to every soul, and with this I will conclude:

You cannot fathom the soul's limits,
even if you were to wander through all the streets and squares.

If it must always be close to the human soul and the human mind, and must be one of its most intimate concerns, to raise the question that is to be the subject of today's reflection, — in our time, when so many, many have to go through the gateway of death at a young age, it must be even more important for the soul to direct one's feelings and thoughts to that which is immortal in the human being. Admittedly, in our time, a consideration such as the following is met with prejudice after prejudice, especially those prejudices that come from those who, from their firm ground, as they say, of the scientific world view, regarding this question, either considering it as something that transcends the limits of human knowledge, or regarding it as something about which anything that is said must be in clear contradiction to the achievements of the scientific way of thinking. If there were to be a sentence tonight that could not stand up to the strictest criticism of the scientific world view, I would prefer to leave this consideration unsaid. For what natural science has to say about this question from its point of view must, from the point of view of the spiritual-scientific world view, from which this is spoken, - it must not only be anticipated by him, but, insofar as it proves to be justified in our time from the point of view of current science, it must also be recognized as fully justified. But those who raise objections to expositions of the following kind from a standpoint that appears to be a natural-scientific world view, always proceed from the assumption that even in our time one can still make do with the thoughts and ideas, or, better said, the thought habits of a world view that is drawing to a close, in the face of advanced spiritual science. And it is still extraordinarily difficult for people today to understand that anyone who wants to talk about such questions of spiritual world view must appeal to insights into the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit, that go beyond what natural science is able to produce, that, so to speak, enter the terrain of a completely different field of knowledge, but that, alongside and above natural science, can exist as fully as natural science. The spiritual-scientific world view wants to let that which it has to say flow into the spiritual development of humanity, just as that which we today call the natural-scientific world view flowed into this process of development three to four centuries ago. And just as this natural scientific world view was at that time contrary to the thinking and prejudices of a wide circle and yet found its way to the human sense of truth, so spiritual science will take this way to the human sense of truth, even if today, quite understandably — I say it explicitly — it must still meet objection after objection; and if something like what has to be said today must, quite understandably, be seen by many as a flight of fancy, as a fantasy.

Because that which can answer the question: What is immortal about the human being? can be answered, must first be drawn from the hidden depths of the human soul. A research method is needed that is based on intimate inner soul work, that rests deep within the human soul, that reaches for nothing but what is present in every human soul, but what eludes observation and the attention of this human soul in the everyday life of this human soul. What a person carries through the gateway of death, what they carry up into a spiritual world in which they find themselves when they have laid down their bodies, cannot be grasped with everyday powers, cannot be grasped with the powers of knowledge that one has for everyday life as a way of observing the world. A more intimate inner work of the soul is necessary for this. Already on repeated occasions have I been allowed to speak here in this city about this intimate inner path, the purely spiritual-soul path that man has to go through if he wants to enter the field of spiritual entities and spiritual realities. From a particular point of view, this path of the soul to the spiritual will be illuminated again this evening.

We cannot recognize from the everyday life of the person standing before us what belongs to the spiritual world about this person. Nor can we recognize this as we can see from the water that the hydrogen, which is quite different from water, is contained in this water. First chemistry must come and separate hydrogen from water by its laboratory method; then one obtains something that can come out of water and which shows quite different properties from those of water. While water is liquid, hydrogen is gaseous; while water extinguishes fire, hydrogen burns. But no one who only has water in front of him can know what the properties, the peculiarities, the essence of hydrogen are. Chemistry must first come and separate hydrogen from water. Just as little can one recognize in the human being who stands before us in everyday life what lives in him for eternity, for immortality. One would like to say that the spiritual-scientific method must come like a spiritual chemistry and separate from the body that which cannot appear in connection with the body. And however fantastic and dreamy, perhaps even foolish it may still appear to some today, there will be a science of the future that is clear about the fact that there are spiritual-soul methods that bring the spiritual-soul of man, the immortal part of man, out of its connection with the body, so that man can really know: “I now live with my soul outside my body; I experience myself in the soul outside the body!” And only through this research, which leads to a knowledge whereby the soul experiences itself cognitively outside the body, can one enter the realm in which the soul has its immortal members. But it is not external methods, not tangible methods, such as those used by external natural science, that can serve to, so to speak, chemically separate the soul from the mortal body, if the crude expression may be used, but rather intimate soul methods, inner soul experiences. Of these soul methods, these inner soul experiences, we want to present two in particular today.

The first method is called, I would say, using a technical term from spiritual science: the concentration of the life of thought, of feeling, of the life of will impulses. When described in this way, this concentration of the life of thought, of feeling, of the life of will impulses seems easy; but, to quote Goethe's Faust, “Yet the easy is difficult!” And what I have to describe concerns the soul's experiences of tremendous inner impact, experiences in the face of which we stand in recognition of a much greater inner tragedy, I would say, than one can ever stand in the face of physical death. That is why those who have been close to spiritual science at all times have always emphasized that the path into the spiritual worlds, the path into spiritual knowledge, leads to the gate of death. It seems simple — but this simplicity must be grasped with all intensity, with all energy — what one has to do to free the soul from the experience with the body. A thought, a feeling or a series of thoughts, a series of feelings, must first be fully grasped with the soul, making them fully present in the soul, then placing them at the center of consciousness, so that nothing but these thoughts and feelings, placed at the center of our consciousness at will by our soul, stand in this consciousness; that, as it were, the whole world around us, with all sensory impressions, with all other sensations and thoughts; and only that which we place at the center of our consciousness through our free will must merge completely with the soul and its powers, the soul must know itself to be completely one with that which it thus places at the center of consciousness.

This is a task for a long, long time. Depending on the person's aptitude for it, it may take weeks, months, years; even if he only devotes a few minutes to it during the day, it will take a long time to evoke in the soul that inner faculty capable of rejecting all other thoughts and perceptions, all other feelings and volitions, and of placing only a certain kind of thought at the center of consciousness. It does not matter so much what the content of the thoughts is, but it does matter that they place a clearly perceived sensation or thought at the center of our consciousness in such a way that we actually live only in what we are thinking or feeling, that we forget ourselves in doing so, that we know ourselves to be completely one with it. In this way we concentrate all the powers of the soul on this single sensation, this single thought. At first, however, a person must be clear about the fact that, as already mentioned, this seems easy; but the easy is difficult. Various things are important when practising the concentration of thought. Above all, it is important that we place such a thought at the center of our consciousness that we can fully comprehend it. With most of the thoughts we have, all kinds of inner sympathies and antipathies, all kinds of feelings, memories, play a role; they color our thoughts, so that we usually do not even know what is going on in our soul when we have a thought in everyday life and concentrate on it. Anyone who is grounded in psychiatry or psychology or modern science today naturally has a cheap objection to all this. He will say: When the spiritual researcher concentrates on a thought, he cannot know what is playing out in this thought from the subconscious depths of his soul and how he then lives in self-suggestion and fantasies. It is certainly quite understandable that such objections are raised from a scientific point of view; they are seemingly fully justified in a certain way, and the spiritual researcher can well see that they have to be made. However, what usually has to be observed in all these things is not taken into account. You will find a detailed and careful compilation in the two books: “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in my “Occult Science”. But often one passes by what should be fully observed. It is important to place a thought or feeling at the center of one's entire soul life that can be easily surveyed, that cannot remind us of anything, that cannot evoke anything from the subconscious depths of the soul. Therefore, it is even better not to place in the center of one's consciousness an idea that is taken from some external reality, an idea that depicts something, but rather an idea that is purely allegorical, purely symbolic , in which it is only important that we concentrate the soul forces, that we focus all the work of the soul forces on detaching ourselves from everything else in order to concentrate purely on this one point. I will give a very simple example. Someone can immerse themselves in the idea:

And one would not be able to follow, one would feel how the soul, as it were taken out of the body, unites with the general spirit that blows and works through the world. One would feel estranged from oneself. Therefore, the exercise that is implied by this must be modified by another, which must proceed simultaneously with it. And anyone who takes the path to spiritual research as I have described it in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” will thereby receive the individual rules by which he can really modify what I have just described, so that it does not happen that we feel, as it were, wrenched from the best part of ourselves. Something else must therefore be added. The first thing that separates the soul from the body was the concentration of thought, the intensification of the life of thought. Through this intensification of the life of thought, we are, as it were, snatched from ourselves.

The second contradicts the first, so to speak; it is something opposite, the other pole; but life proceeds in polar fashion, passing through opposites. Therefore, if one has a realization that is not to be a realization in abstract terms, but a realization of the laws of nature, of life, one must move through opposites. The second is what one might call a complete surrender of the will to the ruling, present, and active world powers. Just as, in the first case, we bring our sensory perception, our intellect, which otherwise plays according to the guidance of external sensory perception, to a standstill, so in the second case we must bring to a standstill every inner stubborn will, in a sense, everything in us that is will. Now there is a certain means by which one can develop the strength within oneself to make one's own will truly subservient to the general weaving of the world: this is when one acquires a completely new attitude towards what we call our destiny. How do we experience our destiny in our ordinary existence? Well, we experience our destiny in such a way that we regard what befalls us as fate in good and evil as something that befalls us; that we encounter it with sympathy or antipathy, so that we regard what is, so to speak, what befalls us, what happens to us, as something that comes to us, so that we stand outside of it, we see ourselves as the I-, the self-being, on which fate has an effect, to which it comes.

Even in ordinary life, it can be seen through truly rational reflection that we basically cannot relate to fate at all. If you look at yourself at a particular point in time in your later experience, you will say to yourself: what you are then, what you experience in your inner being, what you can do and achieve, is inconceivable without the ordinary destiny of life between birth and death. Just think about it carefully. Everything we can do in the present moment – if we trace it back to our ordinary life between birth and death, we have to say to ourselves: it is connected to something we went through earlier. The fact that I can do something now may be connected to the fact that the person who was responsible for my education once brought me into this or that sphere. What happened to me then united with me, became strength in me; now it is my ability. Whenever you really think deeply, “What am I actually, what is there in me?” you will see that what is in you or in other people at the present moment is woven together out of fate. And if one pursues this thought properly, one might say in one's soul, one comes to understand how one must, as it were, grow ever more together with one's destiny, how one must recognize that which one calls one's self as a weave of destiny. What one otherwise speaks of as a coincidence is now found within oneself, interwoven within oneself; one finds oneself as the result of fate. One grows so close to fate that one identifies with it. Just as in the earlier way of spiritual research one identified with a thought or a feeling, so now one must recognize oneself as identical with one's destiny through the circumstances themselves. What I am saying now must not remain merely theoretical, it must not be just an abstract consideration, but it must be lived through inwardly, felt in one's innermost being. Then we feel how we gradually see our will streaming out into our destiny, and we see how we say to ourselves: “You have so far regarded something as a twist of fate, but it was you yourself. That which is in you has brought this twist of fate upon you, otherwise you would not be this being, this I!

In essence, when one meditates on one's destiny for weeks, months or years, depending on one's disposition, one experiences an emotional surrender to fate. One learns to recognize that one must go out of oneself from the little room in which one has previously felt locked up. One learns to flow with the stream of one's destiny. When one thus recognizes how the self, the I, actually lives outside, how in what we call “happens” to us, in truth our will rests, how the I flows along in destiny, then this will is torn out of us again with us, as we surrender ourselves to our destiny. And that is the second. But it must be achieved, must be achieved in inner emotional and mental experience. It must fill the whole person, that is, it must be surrendered emotionally to fate. Then one feels how one grows together with fate and with spiritually effective world forces that permeate and interweave the external world. What seems to flee from us in the concentration of thought, what seems to take away our selfhood, is then followed — that is, the thought is followed — by an element of will, an emotional element of will. While we feel the thought flowing out of our head in the way indicated earlier, we now draw something out of our whole being. We sacrifice the will to the thought. And then the soul, the thinking, the feeling, the sensing, the willing steps out with the thought and we go with it.

What I have described is a real process, an actual stepping out of the soul from the body. It is something that can be experienced just as truly and intensely and really — one might say experimentally — as the hydrogen leaving the water, the hydrogen detaching from the water. It is like the soul detaching from the body, which then remains behind so that this body, with all its outer experiences, becomes an external object; the soul has stepped out of the body. As one otherwise regards the table or the chair in the sense world, so the soul regards its body, which it has left. And what is most important, it does not just experience itself in the abstract, but as truly as it develops an inner experience in the body, so truly it develops an inner experience outside of the body, of which it knows it is a spiritual-soul experience. Fully in the inner experience, so the soul experiences itself. And truly, just as people did not know for a long time that oxygen could be separated from hydrogen and had to learn it first, so the spiritual culture of humanity will learn that the spiritual-soul can be separated from the physical, however baroque, foolish, and absurd this may still appear to present-day humanity. A real spiritual science is that which the future will have - and through which the future of the human soul will bring that knowledge which the human soul needs when the forces that have been there from time immemorial have matured in it for such things. We await such a time. Only he can deny it who misjudges the signs of the time, who does not know the deepest longing that lives today in numerous souls, consciously in some, unconsciously in others, and that will take hold of all mankind: the longing to know about the spiritual. But when the soul seizes itself in the actual experience free of the body, then it becomes acquainted with powers within itself, which one does not have in everyday life, which one cannot unfold in the body. One power becomes known to us, which may be described in the following way:

When we live through our everyday life, in which the soul develops the power of imagination, feeling and will, we come to what is ultimately called memory. And anyone who reflects a little on memory knows what this memory means for the whole cohesive being of the human being. We could not develop a sense of self if we did not remember the experiences we have gone through since a certain point in time after birth. It is only because the stream of memories does not break off, because we know that it was we who have lived through this stream, that we are a self, a self. Even world views can only work with memories that the soul stores and can then bring these memories into a harmonious or logical context. We can therefore understand what the soul has before it in everyday life as its final experience, as memory. What is the basis of remembering, of memory? Well, from an external point of view, we can say that when we go through experiences, we form ideas, we feel this or that about the experiences. Then we have a picture stored in our soul, and when we have long since moved beyond the experience, we know that we can look back on the picture in our inner experience; the experience itself is not there, but only the inner picture is there, something is there that our soul is just weaving. In order to approach this image, to approach the essence of memory in general, we can now consider the following – I can only sketch it out in broad strokes, as it were, with charcoal lines, which you can then follow in detail in the literature of spiritual science.

If we want to approach this memory, we find that in the first period of life after birth, after entering the world, this memory is not yet alive. This memory only occurs in the earliest childhood; up to a certain point in early childhood, we remember back later. What happened before that must be reported to us by our environment, but we do not remember back. What is the basis for remembering back? It is based on certain powers that the soul can use to retain images, powers that enable the soul to store these images within itself. These powers were already there before the memory was there, they were already present immediately after birth, but they had a different task then. They had the task of still working on the delicate organs of the human being, on the nervous system and the brain of the human being; on the nervous system and brain they have to work plastically. They were still formative forces of the human organism, of that which is still soft, so to speak – roughly speaking, but it means a reality – that which must first be formed so that the human being is this particular human being. As formative forces, these still run into the physical organization in the earliest childhood. And when this organization has hardened — again, this is a figure of speech — so much so that these formative forces no longer flow into it, then they are reflected back from the physical into the soul. The physical works like a mirror. And what we then experience in our soul, especially what is stored up in our memories, are mirror images reflected back from our physical life. In truth, we remember because our body is a mirroring apparatus. Science will fully understand this when it continues on its path. Then it will also see through the contradictions that it still raises when such things are presented. It is as if one mirror were hanging on the wall after the other and we were passing by, we would only see ourselves as long as we were standing in front of the mirrors. The mirror reflects our own image. It is the same with our inner spiritual experience. The body is a mirroring apparatus; it reflects what the soul experiences. Through this, the soul itself experiences what were previously formative forces in the most tender childhood, what was used, so to speak, to build the mirror in the first place.

A further stage is this: Imagine the following – I present it to you as a comparison, but it means something very real – imagine standing in front of a mirror that gives you the opportunity to see yourself, to see what you yourself send to the mirror as a ray of light. You see yourself because the mirror reflects your physical image. In the same way, your body reflects that which is in the soul. But now imagine, if — in the soul — you were to acquire the strength to dispense with the mirror altogether, you would develop such great strength that you would, as it were, look into space at that which the mirror otherwise reflects as your own image. But this happens through the soul exercises that I mentioned: concentration of thought, immersion in the will - surrender to the order of the world, you could also say. In this way the soul powers are so strengthened that what would otherwise be reflected back from the body, which is only like a mirror image, emerges as one's own inner, soul experience, that it becomes inwardly alive through the soul's own power. Therefore, what the spiritual researcher experiences inwardly when he has separated his soul from his body is a higher developed, active memory work. While in ordinary life we only go as far as memory, for which we depend on the reflection of the body, the exercises suggested here now give us the ability to develop inner soul forces and to make our soul's inner life actively engaged, so that it radiates an inner reality.

When the soul reaches the point where it creates its inner forces, as it were, but in truth draws them from the deepest inner being, then it will notice that it not only unfolds these forces, but that with the unfolding of these forces, with the creation of the inner mirror image, so to speak, something else takes place that we can call: perception, direct grasping of a spiritual world. However, this perception is quite different from the perception of external sensory reality. When we perceive external sensory reality, we look at objects with our eyes, we listen to sounds with our ears, and we touch external objects with our hands. In this case, it is the object that we approach that has an effect on us from the outside. But when we develop what I have described as the inner powers of the soul, which really come to life so that the soul knows itself outside the body in a system of inner forces, then what is spiritual essence, spiritual reality, flows into these forces. I will use another comparison: When I touch this corner here with my hand, perceive it through the senses, the corner is outside of me; the corner touches my hand from the outside. It is not the same in spiritual perception, but rather, if this were a soul power, which the hand now represents, and if I do not let it work, then the spiritual flows into the hand from the rear, as it were. While the physical touches things from the outside, the spiritual does not touch from the outside; the spiritual flows into the soul forces, so that we have to acquire completely new concepts if we want to speak of this spiritual recognition and perception. We perceive external things; in order to enter into a relationship with the spiritual, it is necessary that we develop powers into which this spiritual world flows. That means that we must say: through soul development we experience the great and powerful that the spiritual world perceives us, that we become something like a thought, like a will impulse of higher spiritual beings that invisibly and supersensibly stand above us. The spiritual researcher must speak of these spiritual beings, which are invisible and supersensible in relation to the cognitive powers of the soul just discussed, in the same way that the natural scientist speaks of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and the physical human kingdom, as the four natural kingdoms that are outside of us. And just as we, when we stand before these beings of the four kingdoms, say: We perceive, we reflect on these entities - they are outside, and we make sensory images of them - so we must say: as we go out of our body with our soul we ourselves become — but in a much higher, in an inner liveliness and essentiality — we ourselves become thoughts, feelings, and volitional impulses of the higher spiritual beings. We are perceived, we experience ourselves being perceived by the higher spiritual beings.

From this you can see that anyone approaching the question, “What is immortal about the human being?” cannot ask themselves the question in the way that people still so often do today. They approach such a question and say: Well, I have acquired this or that concept. How can I be proved the immortality of the soul? Yes, with these concepts, which one has acquired in the outer life and in science, one cannot prove it; because these concepts relate to what the soul experiences in everyday life and what is only an inner reflection. Just as a mirror image does not remain when the mirror is no longer there, what the soul thinks, feels and wills in everyday life does not remain either, because it is only a mirror image of the body; even the memory in which it is stored is a mirror image of the soul. He who would prove the immortality of the soul by thinking, feeling and willing is on the same path as he who would prove the permanence of the mirror image from the picture in the mirror. Everything that is a mirror image must be admitted to the natural scientist — and nothing else is presented to him. All that which in ordinary life we call the soul does not pass through the portal of death. But the soul contains something — for what spiritual science brings up is contained in the soul — that passes through the gate of death, and passes through the gate of death in such a way that it can only be grasped in concepts and ideas that one does not have at all unless one first develops them. While for ordinary experience one must say that the human soul perceives, for spiritual experience one must say: the soul is perceived by higher beings. While in sensory experience one perceives oneself, for spiritual experience one must say: after death, the human being is received by the higher spiritual beings. When man incorporates his thoughts from external natural things into his soul, then the entity that rules over him supersensibly incorporates itself into him; he is remembered, he is carried away into the spiritual world. That is why it is so difficult to answer the question: What is immortal about the human being if you want to answer it with the ordinary concepts of the day, which do not apply to it at all.

And all philosophers who have tried to approach the immortality of the human soul, to answer the question of the immortality of the soul, have always come back to saying: there must be something fine and substantial that goes beyond death. We have seen that nothing of the substantial remains, but that the soul's powers are themselves a highly developed memory life, that it is a being perceived, a being born in the spiritual world. They all know that such processes in the life of the senses even have their symbols, their analogies. When one billiard ball strikes another, the physicist says: the state of motion of the first ball passes into the second. What has passed from one ball to the other? It is not the substance of the first that has passed into the second, but only the force passes.

Those who have thought about the immortality of the soul have always thought of it as something that is in ordinary life and passes through the gate of death; while what passes through the gate of death must first be sought, because it lies so deeply hidden in the soul that it is not noticed at all, that attention is not focused on it in ordinary life; but it is there after all. And when someone who has so truly, chemically, as it were, separated the soul and spirit from the body, then experiences this soul and spirit as it is sheltered in a supersensible world of spiritual beings that stands above it, then he also knows that in this of the soul — just as hydrogen is hidden in water —, that in this he has something that works very secretly, so to speak between the lines of life; which absorbs the finest powers of the soul, of experience, of the moral abilities of the human being, just as the small plant germ absorbs the forces from the whole plant in order to concentrate them. And just as, after withering, after the leaves wither and the blossom dies, the plant carries over into the following plant as a small germ what lived in the previous plant, what the plant has saved as a germ — so it is in the human soul. If you distill it out in this way, you realize that, in every moment of life, waking and sleeping, this human soul works in the depths of everyday life, working out everything we acquire in terms of abilities acquires is permeated, deeply permeated, by what it has done in the way of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness. And then one knows that what lives hidden in the soul goes through a life between death and a new birth – and then returns to earthly life. In the life between death and a new birth, man gathers strength from a spiritual world, but these become formative forces so that through a new birth he can unite with what he has received from his father and mother and from his line of ancestors. Thus the human soul does not live through one earth life, but successive earth lives.

The complete life on earth therefore consists of a succession of lives that take place between birth and death, and of the life between death and a new birth, which are longer than the lives on earth where the soul dwells in purely spiritual spheres, where it is active and occupied there – where it has grown together with the spiritual world just as it has here with the physical world. That the human soul experiences repeated lives in its universal, that each subsequent life on earth is the effect of previous lives on earth, is what spiritual science will gradually incorporate into the spiritual culture of humanity, just as the Copernican worldview has been incorporated into external culture. It is certainly still the case today that people often say: Yes, what you are telling me, contradicts what the five senses consider to be true! Well, people have even had to experience quite different things that contradict their five senses. For thousands of years, people believed according to their five senses that the sun and the starry sky moved around the earth. That it is the other way around, that the earth moves around the sun, he had to believe despite the contradiction of the five senses. Thus, what must now contradict the five senses, that man goes through repeated earth lives, will also enter into the thinking habits of men. But then man will speak out of a real science about what is immortal in the human being. He will seek this immortal, as it were, between the lines of ordinary experiences, will know within himself an inwardly working being, which is sheltered in a spiritual world, just as the thinking being is sheltered in the sensual outer world in our ideas and thoughts and sensations.

Then the human being will know himself connected with his eternal, his immortal, connected with the spiritual world. This is the destiny of the evolution of humanity. And we may truly remember this in our time, in the time of difficult but also glorious trials; we may remember how precisely German spiritual life — you will not find it incongruous if I mention this in the last part of my discussion — how precisely German spiritual life has been working for a long time to gain such a science. We need only recall Lessing, the great standard-bearer of modern German intellectual life, and consider the store of enlightened ideas for him and for humanity that he gathered in his soul. He summarized them, as if in a testament, in his beautiful essay 'The Education of the Human Race'. Of course, many people today, especially the very clever ones, say: Well, Lessing! He wrote and said many things throughout his life, then he grew old, his mental powers weakened, and then he also wrote such complicated stuff, in which he advocated something like the doctrine of repeated lives on earth, of intermediate lives between death and a new birth in the spiritual world! People consider it a crazy idea, and they forgive the great minds if they also come up with such complicated ideas, which are not seen as such in ordinary life, which can be grasped with the five senses. But Lessing said something very significant at the end of the work: 'There have always been people in the most ancient times who, through ancient clairvoyance, through ancient abilities of the human soul that were still closer to the spiritual forces of the world, knew something about repeated earthly lives. And Lessing says: “Is it to be denied that the soul of man has achieved something through original powers, before it was corrupted by the sophistry of school?”

Lessing was right. Spiritual science will show humanity that what was effectively there at a primitive stage of development will come at the highest level of truly developed scientific knowledge, when science has progressed to the point where it not only chooses as its tools not only external, tangible methods that can be grasped with the five senses, but when it allows spiritual-soul experiments as such methods — which has just been described as a kind of spiritual chemistry. And it is precisely German spiritual life that has always pointed to this intimacy of the soul life, through which the soul comes beyond itself into a higher life of feeling, which is not a mere life of memory but an immersion into spiritual reality. A higher life of thought, a higher life of feeling, a higher life of will. To achieve this, to strengthen the soul's powers so that it can leave the body, has always been the aim of German spiritual life; and this is one of the germs of German spiritual life to which I referred yesterday, which has yet to come to fruition as the blossoms and fruits of this German spiritual life.

We see, of course, how very remarkably inward-looking minds, such as the wonderful Novaks, how these German minds always and again, through the inner living contemplation, through the contemplative experience of their soul, arrive in direct contemplation at the knowledge that this as an immortal soul through the portal of death; and how they then arrive at concepts that seem foolish to ordinary experience, but which, because they do not fit ordinary experience, are precisely suited to an experience that goes beyond ordinary experience. He who in spiritual science wants to find only the ordinary concepts cannot come to it. This spiritual science requires an inner mobility, an elasticity of mind, so that one can come to new concepts. Most people would like to spare themselves this out of inner laziness. They believe that the spiritual world must be something like a finer copy of the sensual world; they imagine the spiritual world to be material and substantial again. But when you experience the world spiritually, nothing of what you are accustomed to remains in it; instead, something completely new awakens that you have not yet known, but with which you must enrich your soul in order to experience within yourself what is immortal in the human soul.

So when such people speak of the spiritual world, to which the soul belongs in the immortal, they must first form the words, the concepts. That is why I have to apologize to you, so to speak, for today's lecture. In a lecture like this, where one speaks of the spiritual world but in words that are coined for ordinary life, one has to struggle with the words. One has to demand that one's formulations use words that are uncomfortable for those who want to stick to the familiar. Time and again, critics come along and say: What you have said does not even exist! I know that. Of course, these gentlemen know an infinite amount, but when they apply their old concepts to something that must have completely new concepts, then their criticism does not apply to what they want to characterize. But in German intellectual life we have minds – Novalis is one of them – who know how to speak in a language that is indeed the German language, but which seems like a wonderfully living essence distilled from the German language to show something that is as real as the sensory world, that is the reality into which the soul passes when it walks through the gate of death. What such people say can have an effect on those who are receptive to it.

And now I will give you a remarkable example; it is too beautiful for me to withhold from you, because it shows how Novalis has worked. I will purposely relate to you his effect on a Belgian-French poet-philosopher who studied Novalis, who, as he claims, immersed himself completely in Novalis, and who received an impression that he describes in the following way.

Before I present this, I must say that another Franco-Belgian poet and philosopher, Maurice Maeterlinck, immediately after the outbreak of the war and repeatedly, found particularly harsh words about the German barbarians and launched a most outrageous attack on this barbaric culture. That is Maurice Maeterlinck, for whose fame in the world German intellectual life has done more than French. But gratitude is not something that needs to be demanded in this day and age. He really did insult and revile these German barbarians, much as the others I mentioned yesterday.

In contrast to this, there is another Belgian-French poet-philosopher, Novalis, who has allowed himself to be influenced by one of the most German of German poet-philosophers, with all that he has to say about what is immortal in the human being, and he then talks about this influence. He cannot but say: When one reads Sophocles and Shakespeare in this way, when one sees what Sophocles' figures, what Shakespeare's characters experience, what Hamlet even experiences, then what these people do and suffer is entirely earthly; it only interests the earthly human being. But if – so the Belgian-French poet-philosopher believes – a spirit were to descend from another planet, it would not be able to take an interest in what the characters of Sophocles and Shakespeare experience; these are only earthly matters. But in Novalis, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher finds a soul that has something to say that would interest even spirits who would descend from the universe to pay a visit to Earth; because Novalis speaks of the eternal of the human soul, which not only interests the human souls insofar as they live in the body, but must interest all beings that belong to the extra-terrestrial world. And with beautiful words, this Belgian-French poet-philosopher speaks of what he has experienced in Novalis, the German poet-philosopher:

“But if other proofs were needed, they would lead him among those whose works almost touch silence” – he means, the ordinary language of the day is for what is transitory; but what is immortal, one should actually remain silent about it or find another language for it —, “she would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without caring about the little gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness is heightened by a degree, and where all those who are plagued by restlessness about themselves attentively circle the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. It would go with him to the borders of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. Only at this level are there thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble it and are as compelling as itself. There, humanity has ruled for a moment; and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth to the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a foreign reason; but the people I am talking about have come out of the little village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community!"

Such are the words of the Belgian-French poet-philosopher. If he were to hear Maurice Maeterlinck railing against the barbarians, the same barbarians who gave rise to the subject of the Belgian-French poet-philosopher's words, would he not call him a useless brawler? Yes, but there is a catch, because the words were written by Maurice Maeterlinck himself – before the outbreak of the war, though!

These are the things we experience today; that is why I said yesterday: what we are experiencing in the world today is a characteristic chapter of psychiatry. For what follows from the incredibly paradoxical fact that the same Maurice Maeterlinck utters these words about the German Novalis – and then goes on to revile and curse the entire German people as barbarians? What follows from the fact that what he said years ago and what I have read to you is deeply untrue and false? It is indeed a peculiarity of our present culture that because it is so full of what has been accumulated through language and external influences, the soul can also produce very beautiful words, words that sound beautiful but which may be false on the inside. But it is precisely one of the soul's paths that lead to the spirit in the way I have described, that everything the soul produces and experiences is profoundly true, truly true, shockingly true. If only a single phrase, only a single lie is in the soul on the way into the spiritual world, then one cannot find this way into the spiritual world. This path of truth is a following of the one who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” — that is, the connection of the three. Such a path of imitating the one who said this is this path of truth. And if he is only a phrase, however beautiful a phrase may sound, he will not find the truth; he will only find the great deception, which can also penetrate into the soul where the soul wants to find that with which it is connected as with its immortal part. Inner truth alone connects the soul with what, as the Divine, permeates and permeates the world.

And when, again, the German spiritual life gives voice to the beautiful and profound words of Meister Eckhart, the philosopher, that there is a spark in the mind that ignites that which of the divine in the individual can live of the Divine in the individual human soul, one must say that the human soul can only experience authentically what is to be kindled like a spark in the mind if it is deeply inwardly true.

This, however, requires self-knowledge. But this self-knowledge is difficult to achieve in life. When a person, as I have explained, manages to rise out of the physical with his soul and spirit, then he has his ordinary earthly self before him, as he otherwise has external things before him. But he must be able to see his earthly self and, before he begins this spiritual path, must be able to acquire self-knowledge as an inner habit. But how difficult it is, a comparative example to illustrate: a rather famous contemporary professor, the Viennese philosopher Dr. Ernst Mach, who wrote various books that are highly esteemed today, gave a sample on the third page of his book 'Analysis of Sensations' of how difficult it is to come to self-knowledge, even in terms of one's physical form. He recounts: “As a young man, I once saw a face in profile in a shop window where two mirrors faced each other as I was walking down the street. I thought: what a person with a repulsive, even revolting face do I encounter here; and I was not a little surprised when I discovered that I had my own image in front of me, which was shown to me by the fact that the mirrors were arranged in this way.” And as a second example, the same professor tells the following story on the third page of his book: “Once, when I arrived quite tired from a journey, I got into a bus. I saw a man getting in from the other side, and I thought” — he says, he admits it, he is completely honest — “what a run-down, unpleasant schoolmaster is getting in there. And again I saw: it was myself.” And he adds: ‘So I knew the habitus of the species better than my own.’ A lady who had heard this, after I had said it in other lectures, related an example of such a lack of self-knowledge with regard to appearance, which she had observed in a relative. This relative went into a restaurant in a strange city. She did not know her way around. Then, as she walked towards the wall, she saw a lady coming towards her from the other side. “Well, what kind of ugly country girl is that?” she thought. She was a very elegant city woman. It was only when she spoke to the lady and the lady did not answer that she recognized herself.

These are examples that I would say are taken from the coarsest external sensuality. But if a person has so little insight into his external physical sensuality, he has even less insight into the soul in ordinary life. But this possibility of looking at oneself, of knowing oneself as an external object, is part of the real grasp of what is immortal in the human being. And anyone who really immerses themselves in the spiritual world and can then also follow what is real in this spiritual world, who can therefore follow the human being not only in their life between birth and death, but beyond death, knows that when he communes with the soul, the soul looks back at death, precisely in that it looks back at itself in self-knowledge, at what one has experienced between birth and death. Self-knowledge is, as it were, the eye of the immortal spirit. Through self-knowledge we must see the whole spiritual world in the time that we live through spiritually between death and a new birth. All this is really so that we can say: the seeds that must come to further development and evolution are contained in German intellectual life, and these must be grasped vividly in the course of time. Then real insight and real spiritual comprehension will emerge from this German intellectual life in the future.

If you take a brief look at the intellectual cultural history of modern times, you will also be led to recognize how the German spirit, in particular, is called upon to develop its idealism, which it has developed in its great philosophers, into spiritualism, into spirit-cognition, into spirit-experience, into scientific knowledge. One is tempted to say that the German spirit was pressed, suppressed and suppressed by the foreign spirit. We see how Goethe, who is rooted entirely in the German spirit, sighs under what is coming from France, especially in his time. While the German mind is actually geared to recognize more and more intimately the spirit that pervades and interweaves the world, the French mind is more geared to grasp everything that can be grasped by the intellect, to rationalize. This can even be seen in the peculiarity of French poetry. Reason, however, being bound to the brain, is basically only capable of developing materialism. Therefore, materialism is basically a genuine French product. Materialism is not inherent in the German character when it comprehends itself in its deepest intimate interior. This inner Frenchness, this inner materialism, must also be defeated by the German spirit in the course of time.

And if we follow a characteristic phenomenon of the development of world views in the British Isles, precisely in terms of the leading philosophy that comes from there, we can summarize it as follows: The British philosopher – and this can be proved in detail everywhere – starts from the same point as Locke, Hobbes and so on: only to accept what the senses perceive and what is combined from them, and to make the intellect only a servant of sense perception. This leads to external empiricism or to skepticism, to a search for doubt. But this has also deeply influenced the German mind, and that is also something from which it must free itself. After all, we are experiencing many things in our time, just below the surface of our soul. While England, with its world-view, was called upon to swear by mere sensory appearances, and France was called upon to cultivate man from out of rationalism, out of the intellect, to the point of the sentence 'Man as a machine', the German spirit, after it had emancipated itself from France, cultivated idealism, which is the predecessor of spiritualism, of the actual spiritual science. Idealism does not seek to stop at materialism, which is tied only to the intellect; it does not seek to stop at the empiricism of Englishness, which wants to hold only to the senses, nor at the rationalism of Frenchness, but seeks to grasp what lives in the soul. But by liberating himself from foreign influences, by the German fully relying on himself spiritually, German idealism will incorporate the living spiritual knowledge of the culture of the future.

If you try to do something for this living spiritual knowledge today, you will, however, initially encounter a great deal of resistance. If I may mention this here in a personal capacity: since the 1980s, I have been striving to establish Goethe's theory of colours and its depth against the materialistic English Newtonian physics. It is easy to understand why physics objects to Goethe's theory of colours; one can easily list all the objections. But the Goethean Theory of Colors is itself a living penetration into the physical reality of colors as a scientific product; and as spiritual knowledge will take hold of human culture, it will be realized how infinitely higher this Goethean Theory of Colors stands than the English one. Today, however, one is still talking to deaf ears; the corresponding writings are not yet being read – or only by a small circle. But it is always like that.

As the ancestor of true spiritual science, Goethe established a naturalistic world view of the development of living beings. I have been writing about this since the 1880s in an effort to show how this Goethean theory of development is a spiritual view. It is based on the fact that Goethe was able to make true what he was able to emphasize to Schiller, that he already sees the idea in reality. But here too, one still preaches to deaf ears; for the other is more comfortable. This Goethean teaching was inconvenient for humanity to accept. And when Darwin came along and presented all of this in a way that was more comfortable for the senses, in an outwardly sensual way of looking at things, in a way that the English mind so relishes, it was accepted, it flooded the world; and the difficult, uncomfortable, but spiritual Goethean teaching was ignored by people. When Darwin conveniently brought the theory of evolution, it was accepted.

And the great philosopher Hegel, who also has a lot to do with this city, has shown another example. He has shown how the German astronomical philosopher, philosophical astronomer, to whom science owes so much, Johann Kepler, has achieved great things in terms of understanding the world's context. Yes, it was indeed the case that Kepler was affected by Kästner's famous epigram, because he saw through the course of the stars, because he saw through all of this and expressed it in wonderful formulas, he had to lead a life of which the epigrammist Kästner says:

No mortal had ever risen higher
than Kepler rose – and died of starvation.
He knew only how to amuse the minds,
so the bodies left him without bread!

But Hegel goes even further and shows that Newton's famous theory of gravitation, on which, as every physicist says, modern physics is based, is nothing more than what the Swabian Kepler achieved, expressed in mathematical formulas. The real thing is Kepler's. One is faced with a historical lie when one speaks of the justification of Newtonism.

The German spirit will have to stand on its own. This will stand out from the many sad but also glorious events of our time as a marker of the historical development of humanity. However, what has worked so thoroughly from the west and northwest has worked on human souls in such a way as to make the path I have described, the path into the spiritual world, more difficult.

I will now say something, forgive me, that many will consider very stupid; but I know that it is a truth. Perhaps the time will come when this truth can be shown in detail. All that is needed is time. I can only state the fact that the opportunity for the free development of the powers of the soul, as indicated, to pave the way to the spiritual world, has been thoroughly lost to souls from childhood on. As a result, for example, the path has been lost – I am not speaking out of national chauvinism, I am speaking out of psychological, cultural-historical knowledge – the path has been lost because the poison of Robinson by Defoe still poisons and contaminates the lives of many boys and girls; and in this lies that which takes root in the soul in order to imbue it with the empiricism of Englishness.

Many internal victories, which are in the interest of German culture, will still have to be fought. But what is happening now is the great, bloody, but also glorious harbinger. And those who now go through the gate of death as heroic souls – especially the spiritual scientist must point this out, because he knows how souls go through death as realities and how those who are dead only live on in a different form – they will be among us in a high sense with their unspent powers. For in their soul-spiritual there is something that could have supplied the body with formative forces for decades to come — after all, these are young, flourishing human lives that are leaving the earth in our time —, that could have supplied the body with formative forces for a whole long life. But this will still weave and live in its immortal soul; it will be there in the spiritual sphere; it will be there and will help when humanity approaches it with understanding in the creation of a truly spiritual worldview, a worldview that is spiritual through and through, that is scientific in the fullest sense, in the strictest sense of the word. Spiritual science will thus be able to be something very much alive and real. For the spiritual scientist knows that when what he has to give as the result of research comes to life in souls, then these souls will become so immersed in earthly life that the great gulf, which today gapes as a materialistic world-view between the physical and the supersensible, will be bridged. In a much more real sense than one suspects today, people will live into a world view that, in addition to the directly present earth citizens, will also show them people in their effectiveness who have passed through the gate of death. But this is a world view that at the same time admonishes us for the large number of deaths that our fateful time has brought upon us. Much blood, much death, much adversity, much suffering and pain, much courage, much willingness to make sacrifices, tremendous greatness rushes and weaves through that which surrounds us in our fateful, momentous, and historically significant present. But it is particularly appropriate in this present time to point to that which points beyond all death, beyond all mere temporal life, to the hidden, to that which is immortal in the human being.

Not everyone will be able to become a spiritual researcher, just as not everyone can become a chemist. But times will come when just as what the few chemists have to give will be made fruitful for all, so too what the individual spiritual researchers have to give will benefit all of humanity and its coexistence. One need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to find the truth of what spiritual researchers discover; one need only be free of the prejudices that today's habits of thought put in one's way, and the things that have been hinted at today, spiritual science, can be understood. In order to discover the facts for oneself, to give just one example of what formed the main subject of today's discussion, one must follow the path of spiritual research oneself. In order to penetrate into the spiritual world, where divine spiritual beings, just as real as the things and beings of the physical world, dwell, in order to speak of these worlds appropriately, in order to really bring messages from this world and these beings, one must go the way of spiritual research oneself. To understand what is brought from the spiritual worlds, one really needs only to approach the matter with an unprejudiced sense of truth. People who are unable to believe this sense today, combined with what spiritual research says, do not realize that it is not the sense of truth, but the habits of thinking caused by prejudice. But when these habits of thinking have been done away with, as the old habits of thinking were done away with in the face of the Copernican world-picture, then spiritual science will bring something infinitely more fruitful for the soul and spiritual life than natural science has brought for the outer life. For what natural science brings relates to what surrounds us, to what we build for ourselves, to many things by means of which we make our life comfortable and pleasant, what is useful to us. But what spiritual science has to give is something that every soul desires, if only it becomes aware of the powers of this desire in the spiritual and soul; that which gives people the opportunity to develop in such a way that desolation, loneliness, disharmony of life, but what strengthens the soul so that the soul can also face life strongly, and that will demand more and more of the soul in the future. Spiritual science will incorporate something of the spiritual development that will evoke a living consciousness in the soul of what is immortal in the human being. And in this coexistence with the immortal part of the soul, man will become more aware that the world is more comprehensive than what the senses see, than what one experiences in time. The knowledge, which will not remain abstract or theoretical, will be concentrated in certain feelings that will inwardly gladden and uplift the soul, but will also make it industrious, strong and capable.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize in a few words what can be awakened in the soul through spiritual science. These words may fade away what I, as I said, could only say in brief strokes, like a charcoal drawing, about the question today: What is immortal in the human being? This may fade away into the words that are, so to speak, the residue of feeling of spiritual scientific knowledge and of the spiritual scientific confession in relation to the question of today's contemplation:

The senses of man speak:
The things in the vastness of space;
They change with the course of time.
Awakening itself, the human soul awakens
From the vastness of space
And unperturbed by the course of time
In the stream of becoming in eternity!

Dear attendees! It is often said that there is a deep truth to the statement that the greatest mystery of all is man himself. Although this saying is often uttered, in its depth, in its full meaning, it is not understood. Rather, the full mysteriousness of man is felt and sensed deeply enough only in the rarest of cases. In truth, not only does man face himself as a significant, difficult-to-solve riddle when he looks beyond the most superficial things in life, but also every fellow human being faces us, in a certain, and very deep way, as a riddle in turn. And what should interest us today in particular is that when we talk about the human puzzle, we cannot hope to have solved this human puzzle with a single answer; but if we proceed not theoretically but in accordance with life, we must say: in this human puzzle there are basically as many individual puzzles as there are people in the world.

Within certain limits, each person can be seen as a separate puzzle within the greater puzzle of the human race. And what we are to deal with today is intimately connected with this view of the human being: that peculiar coloring of the human being, that fundamental tone of human individuality, which we encounter in one person in this way, in another differently, and which we describe with the word: the human temperament.

Everything that can enlighten us about the diversity of human nature is encompassed by this word, and we may hope that if we are able to shed some light on the mystery of human temperaments, we may also gain a handle to solve the human puzzle a little in its most diverse forms. Of course, when we approach this human puzzle not in a general, theoretical way, but in a lively, individual way, we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, will somehow lead us to solve the human riddle in its most diverse forms. temperament; if we approach this human puzzle individually and full of life, then we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, could somehow lead us further.

For spiritual scientific or, let us say, theosophical consideration, as we have often been able to mention here, the human being is a very diversely composed being, and we only understand him if we not only look at the outside of himself, at what eyes see and hands touch, what the outer senses can perceive, what the human, brain-bound mind can dissect, but we can only hope to fully understand man little by little if we also consider the supersensible aspects of human nature. And since it has often been said which are the members of human nature, they need only be mentioned briefly today, insofar as we need to do so in order to then enter into the consideration of human temperaments.

That which eyes see, hands grasp, and the physical organs can perceive in a person is, after all, only the outermost link of the human being for spiritual scientific observation, the link of the human being that it shares with the entire seemingly lifeless mineral nature around it. Beyond that, we have the next link of the human being, a link that cannot be perceived by the outer senses, which already belongs to the supersensible, invisible links of human nature. And while we call that which man has in common with inanimate nature the physical body, we call this supersensible first the etheric or life body. We find it in every living being, in plants, which it permeates and organizes just as much as it does in human beings, and in animals. In spiritual science, we do not speak of this etheric or life body in the same way that materialists speak of life, as if life were just something that emerges as an effect from the physical body and the interaction of the forces and substances of the physical body. No, for spiritual science this etheric body is not only something independent, something that the consciousness of the human being, which can see behind the world of the senses with clairvoyance, really sees as reality, just as the physical eyes see the physical body, but this etheric body is actually that which underlies the physical body as the first, as the actual creator. The physical body is not the cause but the consequence of the finer, the etheric or life body. Just as – this image has also been used here often – just as for someone who looks into a container in which there is water, ice can condense out of this water into lumps, so the spiritual is around us, and the physical is the condensation of the spiritual. Thus, within the human etheric body, the physical body, with all its substances and powers, is a condensation of the etheric body. And so it is with all living beings.

A third link in the human being, which he has in common only with animals, is the so-called astral body, the carrier of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires, urges and passions, ideas and thoughts. The astral body is the carrier of all that surges up and down within the human soul. Just as the physical body is a densification of the etheric body, so the astral body is a densification of the astral body. The objection raised by the materialist is a very cheap one: Can you imagine that somewhere in the world there are passions, thoughts, feelings, desires and suffering flying around freely? Must they not be bound to a physical body? Of course, if someone has a vessel of water in front of them and only begins to see when the water has condensed into ice, then they may deny the water. So the materialist is quite right when he says that only the physical exists for him; but the one who recognizes the higher organs of the human being, which Goethe describes as spiritual eyes, must also recognize that our world is truly only filled with tangible and visible content, but with entities, with processes that only exist in passions and drives and desires that weave through each other and that can condense into the etheric and the physical. In short, we distinguish the third limb in the human being, the so-called astral body, the bearer of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires and thoughts.

And as a fourth link, we have always recognized in the human being that which encompasses the name of the human being, which can only sound from within if it is to denote what it is applied to; as a fourth link, we denote the bearer of the human ego, of human self-awareness. The I can only name itself; only from within can it give itself the name “I”; the name “I” cannot possibly reach your ears from the outside if it is to mean you.

This is only a rough sketch of how we think of the human being as a four-fold creature. All these aspects interact in the most diverse ways. The I has an effect on the physical, etheric and astral bodies, the astral body on the I, the physical and etheric bodies, and so on, and so on. These four members of human nature are in a perpetual interaction. It is important that, in addition to this interaction, which can always be observed by clairvoyant consciousness during waking, we also consider the changes that can occur in the context of these four members, first of all those changes that take place every day in the alternation of the waking day consciousness and the sleeping consciousness.

When a person falls asleep, his physical and etheric bodies remain in bed. The astral body and the ego leave. In the morning, the ego and the astral body plunge back into the etheric and physical bodies and make use of the organs through which the environment can be seen as physical. The human being also exists at night, even if unconsciousness spreads around him. He just cannot see anything because, in his current state of development, he does not have spiritual ears and eyes in his astral body. He has to use the physical organs, and he can only do that if he submerges into the physical body. That is the change that a person goes through day after day. Human nature undergoes yet another change, the change that is characterized by the meaningful words that basically already encompass a large part of the human mystery: birth and death – or life and death.

Today, once again, we must briefly call ourselves to mind what happens to a person when they pass through the mysterious portal of death. It is not like when a person falls asleep. In death, the physical body remains as a corpse, and the I, the astral body and the etheric body separate from this corpse. What does not occur between birth and death, that the etheric body leaves the physical body, happens in death. We can see from this that throughout life, and indeed both during waking and sleeping states, the etheric body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Where the etheric body does not fight against disintegration, the physical body follows its own substances and forces and disintegrates, decays. This is the nature of the physical body, which it unfolds as a corpse. That it does not reveal them during life, that it does not follow the chemical-physical forces as it does in death, is due to the etheric body, which is a loyal defender against the disintegration of the physical body between birth and death. And when a person has passed through death, then, having discarded his physical body, he can live on in the spiritual world with the fruits that he has harvested in the life between birth and death, which he has harvested through his experiences. The etheric body, which withdraws from the physical body, contains a true image of all experiences between birth and death, and it is something like an essence, like an extract of the etheric body, which we take with us into the following life after death, into the life in the spirit. We take something like an extract of our etheric body with us, which usually also detaches from us as a second corpse after a few days, and this extract remains with us for all eternity. It contains something like a brief excerpt from the last life; we take this with us into the future life.

Now, however, we still have a task after death. We have to undergo a kind of probationary period, a period of getting out of the habit. You can best imagine this time if you start from a simple consideration, if you say to yourself: the astral body of man is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of instincts, desires, all pleasures. The physical body is not the carrier of these; it only provides the instruments for enjoyment. The enjoyment itself lies in the astral body. But you take the astral body with you after death. Immediately after death, it is exactly as it was in life. Let us assume that a person was a gourmet. After death, he still has his astral body; it always longs for tasty morsels. But there is no possibility of satisfying this craving. It can only be satisfied if you have a palate. The physical body is discarded, so the astral body craves the pleasures of life after death. It is the same with everything that can only be satisfied by physical tools. All of this must be weaned off within a certain period of time.

This period of disaccustoming, during which man learns to have no more desire for anything that can only be satisfied by the physical organs, is usually called the time of desires, Kamaloka. For when man has gone through this period of disaccustoming, when he no longer desires anything that can only be satisfied by the physical senses, then he discards the third corpse. First he has discarded the physical body, then the etheric body, which dissolves a few days after physical death, and then he discards the unusable part of the astral body. And then man is that purely spiritual being who undergoes a time of purely spiritual life.

The transition from the period of weaning from physical passions makes itself felt in that man first has, as the innermost part of his experience, something that can be described as a feeling of bliss. Now begins the time when he works towards a new existence, when he begins to apply what he has learned in previous lives, what he has received as fruit, and to gradually develop it into a spiritual archetype, of which the next life can become an image. Creation is always connected with a feeling of bliss. And that creation in which we gradually form the archetype for a next existence, that is supreme bliss. I will not even talk about the bliss associated with every spiritual production, but there is bliss when only - forgive the comparison - the hen participates in the production of the new chicken. There is a bliss that permeates a being in all creation. It is therefore also a bliss that a person experiences when he is free from all the limitations of the physical world, when he brings everything together spiritually, which, when it is spiritually developed, leads to a new existence on this earth.

When the human being has fully developed his spiritual core, which takes a long time, then the descent into the physical world begins again, and then it is the case that the human being surrounds himself with three new bodies. Depending on the person's qualities, the substances from the astral world attach themselves, forming his new astral body. We can compare this formation with, say, when we have spread metal filings on a thin plate and pass a magnet underneath; these metal filings then arrange themselves into all kinds of shapes, in which they then shine. In the same way, the astral substance arranges itself around a spiritual core during the descent.

Then the person is led to a pair of parents and, through the connection of this spiritual core of the being, which has incorporated its astral cover, with what takes place between the parents, the further human covers around this core of the person's being are formed. In the interaction of what descends with the parents, a new etheric body and a new physical body are formed around the descending, so that every time we see a person enter into an existence, we have to say to ourselves: This human being receives from two sides what he actually is for this earthly existence. The inner being descends from spiritual heights. Because the human being is spiritual and astral, he descends from higher worlds. Through that which is inherited from generation to generation, from ancestors to descendants, what we see as the outer shell is formed around the human being, but also much of what belongs to the etheric body, to the fighter against the disintegration of the physical body.

And now, having realized that the human being is formed from two sides, let us ask ourselves what would happen if one or the other extreme were to prevail. Let us assume that a person brings with him only a few qualities from the spiritual heights, then his astral body would also have a little richer content, and what is structured around the person as an etheric and physical shell would have an overwhelming effect. That is to say, a person who brings only poor content with him would be in all his ancestors, a repetition, so to speak, within the line of inheritance. The richer the content that a person brings down, the more that which goes from the ancestors to the grandson, that which lies in the line of inheritance in general similarities, the more it is driven into the individual being changed. People who descend into poverty from a spiritual point of view are, so to speak, overwhelmed by the external, which closes around them through race, tribe, family and class. They have the character traits of their people, their family. People who descend with a rich content, with a significant inner development of strength, emerge as sharply defined individuals. They also absorb what passes from ancestors to descendants, but the similarity recedes in the face of the individual traits that are a consequence of the spiritual development of the individuality. We can see this when we look at “primitive” people, or especially when we turn our spiritual gaze back to the primeval times of the earth. The people of a nation resemble one another. Why do they resemble one another? Because the people who incarnated in such primeval times have experienced few past stages of existence, have learned little in earlier stages, and therefore bring little with them from the spiritual. With more developed peoples we have more developed stages; there we find people who have many, many lives behind them, who have absorbed rich, rich fruits from earlier lives and therefore bring down into the spiritual what they have carried up as fruits through many lives, and shape an individual existence for themselves. But every human being in our present period of humanity must, so to speak, make this compromise; he must descend and encase himself in a physical shell, which he must take from the line of inheritance. This duality is present in every human being and forms a whole. On the one hand, the human being is similar to what flows down through the ancestors; on the other hand, he is a being of his own.

Of course, materialistic thinking objects to such things in particular. For example, it is said: Oh, what are you talking about the descending human being; it's all inherited! We can also find the qualities of the greatest genius in our ancestors. There are people who take Goethe or Leibniz or this or that person and research them up to the earliest ancestors, and then find the characteristics that emerge in genius scattered among the ancestors, one characteristic in this person and one in that. And so these people tell us: You can see that genius is based solely on inheritance. Genius is very rarely found at the beginning of a generation, but usually at the end of it, so it has inherited its characteristics from its ancestors. – What a strange logic this is! For anyone who considers this logic will find that it says the opposite of what it claims. This logic wants to prove that genius inherits its characteristics. It would prove it if it could be shown that Here is a genius, the son has inherited his qualities, the grandson again and so on. But that is not the case. That is precisely what is denied. The genius is infertile. It is rare that one can simply inherit genius. If the genius is at the end of a line of succession, this does not mean that this individuality flows down in its entirety in the line. Of course, the physical and etheric bodies, which are the instruments of the human essence, come from the line of inheritance, and it is not surprising that they show the characteristics that can be read together here or there. That is just as clever as telling someone who has fallen into water and been pulled out: This one is wet. That is self-evident. So it is with the characteristics that one inherits. The logic that is usually applied to somehow refute the well-established fact that a person flows together from the two lines, one of which goes from generation to generation and is called race, people, tribe, family, but the other lies within the spiritual world, where a person progresses from life to life and, in long periods between death and a new birth, prepares for that new birth in a purely spiritual world, is wrong. These two lines merge.

How is the agreement created between what comes from the spiritual world and what lies within the line of inheritance and is determined by words like people, family? How is a balance created? This balance can only be created by the fact that the qualities that distinguish people in that they belong to a race, a tribe, a family, that these are countered by others that are similar to them and combine with those that come from below. If we were only the automata that reproduce in the line of inheritance, we would say: This is how we are. We look up the line of ancestors and find the qualities that are in our physical and etheric bodies in our ancestors. We find not only the shape of the nose and forehead, hair color and physiognomy in our ancestors, but also inner qualities, which come close to what can be described by the word “moral”, are inherited. There are concepts, for example about sensations and feelings, that are native to this family or that race or that tribe. How do they reproduce? If reproduction only took place from physical body to physical body, then people would only be similar in relation to this. The fact that they also agree in such qualities, which are character traits of a tribe, stems from the fact that an etheric body belongs to that which also continues through the generations. And just as the physical body reacts from below up onto the etheric body, which properties of the physical body from below up imprint on the etheric body after it is formed, these become the racial peculiarities. Originally, the physical body came into being as if through a kind of condensation of the etheric body. But once it is there, it absorbs impressions from the outside world. These in turn have an effect on the etheric body, and to the extent that they have an effect, they are transmitted within the line of inheritance. Thus, the etheric body of each person is endowed with very specific, typical, stereotyped, even racial characteristics, due to the fact that the latter is, so to speak, a descendant of some ancestor.

The spiritual core of the human being, in which he descends into the physical world, must adapt to what is available to him in this physical world as a cover. This must offer something that is related to the properties of the etheric body. In other words, the descending ego must now be able to imprint such properties into the etheric body that the etheric body, through these properties imprinted on it from above, from the astral body, can form a compromise between what comes from below and what comes from above. When a person enters a new existence, certain qualities flow together in the etheric body, which is connected to the physical body below and other qualities flow through it from above, which are imprinted on it by the descending astral body.

The properties that are imprinted on the etheric body by the descending astral body establish the human temperament. This is where temperament is located. The human being brings this temperament with them. They do not yet have it when they only have the astral body; they have it because this astral body, as it descends, has to connect with the etheric body, which has certain characteristics of the race, of the people. Since it develops certain qualities, so to speak, that correspond to the lower nature, but are also appropriate to the original, core characteristics of the human being, temperament is something that is both individual and that, so to speak, casts its tone over the general characteristics that the human being shares with race, tribe, and family. If we only inherited the peculiarities of race, tribe, and family, we would be average figures; if we came from above with our core nature and now had to drive into it, so to speak, then little would fit. What we bring with us, what we may have developed thousands of years ago, would not match well with what we find. What can adapt as an individual to the stereotyped general from below is temperament.

Thus, through his temperament, the human being escapes from being a completely individual being. For through his temperament, the human being moderates his full obstinacy as an individual being, dulling it. But at the same time, he removes the stereotyped nature. Therefore, we also see that people's temperaments arise from the mixing of basically a few basic temperaments.

You all know these four basic colors of temperament, which are referred to as melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. Actually, there are not only these four, but seven shades of temperament. Only the choleric temperament is basically separate. The sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments all have an active and a passive side, so they occur in two ways. This gives seven colors, just as seven colors can be distinguished in the rainbow, seven tones in the musical scale. The eighth is just a repetition of the prime. But that should concern us less. We should realize that we can never ascribe any one of these temperaments to any one person, but that each person is a mixture of all these temperaments; only the predominant one of the four makes him appear melancholic or phlegmatic or sanguine, and depending on that, we describe him as such or such. The melancholic contains the others, only they recede in comparison to the melancholic basic mood. You could easily prove this by looking at someone like Napoleon, for example; he certainly had a choleric temperament. Think about how phlegmatic he was in very specific things that didn't interest him. He could be very phlegmatic in certain fields. A person has one prominent characteristic, but is composed of the four, or rather seven, basic colors of temperament.

Now the question arises: when is a person primarily a melancholic, a phlegmatic, a sanguine, a choleric? It has already been said in the introduction that all aspects of human nature interact with each other. Thus, all higher aspects of human nature interact with the physical body. If the human being had no ego, no individually constituted ego, then his blood and the whole blood circulation would not be as they are. The blood circulation is the expression of the ego. The ego is purely spiritual, but the effect of this spiritual, this ego, is the blood in its whole circulation. How the blood circulates in us is the expression of our ego. The expression of the astral body is the nervous system – at least one expression. The expression of the etheric body is the glandular system. Only that entity can have a glandular system that is permeated by an etheric body; for the etheric body permeates the physical body with the glandular system, which is necessary for all life, for nourishment and reproduction. Only a being that has an astral body can think and feel, because an astral body permeates the physical body with a nervous system. And only a being that is an ego can have a blood circulation, because that is the physical expression of the ego. Thus, every limb that we count among the higher limbs has an effect on the physical body. But conversely, the physical body has an effect back again.

We have seen that the temperaments have their particular expression in the etheric body. Through this balance, which takes place between what is imprinted in the etheric body from above when a person descends and what comes into the etheric body from below in the form of certain qualities, the temperament arises. If, in a particular incarnation, a person has a physical body that makes a stronger impression on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego, then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in that person. Due to the nature of the descending astral body, because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body, this physical body, with all its heaviness, has an effect on the ether body, and this is how the melancholic temperament arises. In particular, in the case of a person, it must be that part of the physical body that is the physical instrument of thought, of the spiritual life in general, which, in the case of the melancholic temperament, has a retroactive effect on the etheric body, on the person's entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, through his astral body and ego, cannot, so to speak, master the physical brain, that which is otherwise the physical instrument for thoughts, will be under the control of his thoughts. The physical body forces the etheric body to do this, so that the person is not master of his thoughts, but is ruled by them.

This is the cause of the melancholic person's tendency to brood. They drag themselves along behind their masses of thoughts and feelings, which keep coming back, because the physical body has the predominant influence on the ether body. And wherever the physical body has a predominant, that is, too great an influence on the human being, wherever his life proves to be such that he cannot be fully controlled by the higher limbs, the consequences of this are evident, even when they become pathological. It is only the consequence of the fact that the higher members of human nature cannot exercise their full dominion over the physical body when, for example, epileptic seizures or nervous headaches occur. As soon as the melancholic character tends towards the pathological, such things can occur.

That is why in Greece, where they still had clairvoyant feelings, they called a person a melancholic when the densest part had the most predominant influence. The physical body is what humans have in common with mineral beings, which are grouped together under the concept of the earth. The ancient Greeks still knew what is no longer known today, namely that the human physical body is formed by its various fluids. These were not merely seen as something physical, nor were they merely examined in the chemical retort. Rather, it was known that they underlie everything spiritual. therefore designated this temperament, in which the physical body exercises the predominant influence, as black — melas —, as the melancholic temperament, because one saw the secretion of juices in man, which causes the tenacity of the physical body, whereby the latter withdraws from the normal influences of the higher limbs and thus makes man a dark, introspective being. For through his higher members, man belongs to a much greater totality. Through his etheric and astral bodies and his I, he would feel himself as belonging to the great whole, the great cosmic I, the Godhead. That which is the human being's spiritual being is precisely what makes him personal, in that he is enclosed in the skin of his physical body. This is why the melancholic person finds it so difficult to detach from their physical existence, because this physical aspect exerts the predominant influence.

If the etheric body is not strongly influenced by either the physical body or the astral body and I, if the impulses of the family, the peculiarities of the race, are not strongly pronounced, if there is no strong effect on the etheric body from above and below, if it remains neutral, so to speak, then the phlegmatic temperament arises. The phlegm is the balanced part of the etheric body. In this case, neither the physical nor the astral body and the I have a particularly strong effect. In this case, the person has the balanced phlegm of the forces of his ether body surging through him. You can see this in the physical form of the body, which you can see projected outwards. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, and so what is surplus in life settles in the fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must see in the spiritual; the physical is in every detail an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we grasp the spiritual.

When the distribution of the faculties is such that the astral body has a predominant effect on the etheric body, making its impressions particularly strong, and suppressing what comes up from the physical body, then what we call the sanguine temperament arises. Here the astral body is active; the surging feelings and sensations are lively and animated. The person is open to all impressions from the outside world. We will soon hear that it is the ego that contains the images that arise in the astral body and have their physical instrument in the nervous system, and that the blood, the expression of the ego that contains them, is physical. In fact, the blood and nervous systems work together in a very strange way. Imagine that the blood weakens. What happens? Fantastic images, hallucinations, fantasies that do not correspond to reality appear. The right inhibitions for these hallucinative and imaginative powers are formed physically by the blood and spiritually by the ego. There is nothing pathological about the sanguine person, but he is therefore open to all impressions from the outside world because the actual ego does not yet appear strong enough. What appears strong is the astral body and the nervous system. That is why the sanguine person is open to all impressions; that is why the sanguine person is mobile because his astral body is mobile. Look at the sanguine gait of the sanguine child, how it bounces, how it is interested in this and that. If it were not the case that the child is alternately interested in this and that, then the impressions would have to be regulated by the ego and the blood.

This is the case with the choleric person. When the I and its blood are active, predominantly active, and have an effect on the etheric body, then this establishes the choleric temperament, which goes too far in the other direction, which does not rush from image to image, but instead develops forces that contain the change. These forces are there with him.

Thus we see how we learn to understand the different shades of temperament, which are caused by the impact of what comes from above and below. If the influence of the physical body on the etheric body predominates, the result is the melancholic temperament; if the etheric body is neutral, the phlegmatic temperament. If the astral body is particularly active internally, we have the sanguine temperament, and if it is the ego that is primarily given the right of mastery in the human individuality, then the choleric temperament is the result.

Once you have grasped these things in the spiritual, you will also find them distinctly manifested in the physical. Imagine choleric people, people in whom the I is strongly developed. They contain the astral body. And now this is the original creator of the physical body. The astral body has the need, the longing, to make the physical body as slender as possible, to develop it as diversely as possible. In the case of choleric people, the ego works against this, thus curbing growth. Now look around you at choleric people, and you will see the repressed growth of the physical body. I would like to draw your attention to the picture of a spruce that was a choleric person; it had precisely this expression in the physical body; and I only need to mention Napoleon and the expression of the small, stocky figure. Here, too, the restrained growth has been expressed.

In particular, the characteristics of temperament are revealed precisely in what the person can give through his or her individuality, can give in contrast to what generally characterizes him or her. You can see how the human being flows together from these two currents. The human being has firmly established forms in himself; that which is permanent, rigid in facial expression, is inherited. What is mobile becomes an expression of the individual, which comes down from the spiritual. It is into this mobile element that temperament is laid. The facial features can be an expression of rigidity, of what has been inherited; the gaze comes from the person's individuality. The gaze is the expression of temperament: the piercing gaze of the choleric, the restless gaze of the sanguine, the restrained gaze of the melancholic, and the dull gaze of the phlegmatic. As for me, take a look at the shape of the feet. Those who are connoisseurs would be able to say that this breed has this foot shape, another that. But it is different when it comes to walking. In that, we have an individual expression. At most, the basic forms of the gait show the racial character, but otherwise the individual comes into it. Therefore, the gait is something like the mediation between the individual and the general. You can see the sanguine person's bouncing gait, the choleric person's firm gait, the melancholy person's heavy step, which is caused by the heavy physical body with its predominant influence on the etheric body, and you can see the phlegmatic person's casual gait. In all the characteristics where the individual plays a role, what is semi-individual is revealed because it has to balance with what is generally racial in man; temperament plays a role here.

If we now understand this secret of temperament and how it works, then on the one hand we will say to ourselves: Oh, it is precisely in such subtle peculiarities of the human being that we see how we can only understand the human being if we understand not only the physical body but the whole being. And on the other hand, it also shows us how necessary it is to know all this when we work on a person by promoting their development. We know from other lectures that the physical body develops until the age of seven, the etheric body from then until the age of fourteen, and then the astral body and the I. The individual parts are interlinked. We see, therefore, that we can only grasp the right thing if we listen to the peculiar nature of the chemical composition — so to speak — of the temperaments, to hear something of the unique imprint of the developing human being. Only in this way can we, as educators or counselors, cultivate human nature if we understand this unique, almost chemical composition that presents itself to us through the four temperaments. Truly, just as every human being is composed of four elements - the physical, etheric, astral body and the I - so the influences of these four mix and show themselves to us in all possible nuances, which can be traced back to these four or seven temperaments. And now we see - because such a multiple mixture can be - how each individual person can be an enigma, and how only if we grasp the person in a lively way can we understand him. If we perceive each person as an enigma, then we are truly facing him for the first time.

Temperament is not something theoretical, but something that works from person to person. We will not only want to unravel the human being with our minds, but we will accept the whole person and let him perceive us as a riddle. Then we will approach the human being with full respect and love when we perceive his or her individual nature in such a way that he or she ultimately appears to us as a riddle that we marvel at and admire, but that we grasp in our perception, in the way we approach each individual through our respect and love, through our appreciation. Oh, there are also other riddles than just those that are solved with the mind. People are all riddles, and they are not solved merely with the mind, but the way we appreciate, honor and respect them, how we approach them with our feelings and how we act for them, that is also a way of solving riddles, and we will develop this way when we learn to feel how the individual mixes with the general through its intermediate thing, the temperament. Indeed, we see two currents flowing together in the human being when he enters this earthly existence. And we see at the same time that these currents must work together in order to bring forth fruit through this life, to take it with him for a subsequent life, to live out in a new embodiment. There is change and there is eternity in man. The eternal core ascends from spirit world to spirit world; but that which is changing is not unnecessarily experienced. In the balance between temperament and racial character, we create the fruits out of our etheric body, which we take with us through our entire subsequent life.

And so it is absolutely true for this area, too, that freedom exists alongside necessity, that we enter into life through the confluence of the two currents and are shaped by necessary laws, but that nothing is destroyed that we ourselves shape within our individuality and the general.

Freedom and necessity are equally beautiful, one as much as the other, expressed in Goethe's word - if only we fully understand it - which is meant to tell us how the law passes through human nature; when we see how the temperaments interact in their chemical mixture, then we find, especially in this mystery of the human temperament, the truth of what the Symbolum Goethe so beautifully says and with which we want to conclude:

Just as on the day you were born,
The sun greeted the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you came into being.
That is how you must be, you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time and no power dismembered

It is not the aim of Spiritual Science merely to satisfy curiosity or a greed for knowledge but to be a spiritual impulse penetrating deeply into the culture of the present and immediate future. It will begin to dawn upon us that this is indeed the mission of Spiritual Science when we realise that its impulse has already made itself felt in the form either of clear or vague premonitions, in various domains of modern life. To-day we shall consider how an impulse akin to that of Spiritual Science lived in one of the greatest artists of our time. In speaking of Richard Wagner, I certainly do not mean to imply that he was fully conscious of this impulse. It is so meaningless when people say: ‘You tell us all kinds of things about Richard Wagner, but we could prove to you that he never thought of them in connection with himself.’ Such an objection is so patent that even those who think as we do could raise it. I am not suggesting for a moment that the impulse of which we shall speak lived in Richard Wagner in the form of definite ideas. Whether or not one is justified in speaking of it, is quite another matter. Detailed evidence in support of this point would lead us too far, but a comparison will show that our method of approach is fully justified. Does a botanist not think about a plant and try to discover the laws underlying its growth and life? Is not this the very thing that helps him to understand its nature? And will anyone deny him the right to speak about the plant from this aspect just because the plant itself is not conscious of these laws? There is no need to reiterate the generalisation that ‘an artist creates unconsciously.’ The point at issue is that the laws which help us to understand the achievements of an artist need not be consciously realised by him any more than the laws of growth are consciously realised by the plant. I say this at the outset in order to clear away the above-mentioned objection.

Another stumbling-block which may crop up now-a-days, is connected with the word ‘Mysticism’ itself. Quite recently it happened that somebody used the word among a small group of people, whereupon a would-be learned gentleman remarked: “Goethe was really a Mystic, for he admitted that very much remains obscure and nebulous in the sphere of human knowledge.” He showed by this remark that he associated ‘Mysticism’ with all ideas about which there is something nebulous and vague. But true Mystics have never done this. Precisely to-day we hear it said in academic circles: ‘To such and such a point clear cognition can attain; from that point onwards, however, we grope blindly among the secrets of Nature with vague feelings, and Mysticism begins.’ But the opposite is the case! The true Mystic enters a world of the greatest possible clarity—a world where ideas shine into the depths of existence with a light as radiant and clear as that of the sun. And when people speak of obscure feelings and premonitions this simply means that they have never taken the trouble to understand the nature of Mysticism. In the first centuries of Christendom the word Mathesis was not used because this kind of experience was thought to be akin to mathematics but because it was known that the ideas and conceptions of a Mystic can be as lucid and clear as mathematical concepts. Men must have patience to find their bearings in the domain of true Mysticism, and it is purely in this sense that the word will be used here in connection with the name of Richard Wagner.

And now let us speak of what is really the fundamental conviction of everyone who is a true student of Spiritual Science.—It is that behind the physical world of sense there is an invisible world into which man can penetrate. This, too, is the attitude of Mysticism. Did Wagner himself ever express this conviction? Most certainly he did! And the significant thing is that he expressed it from the musician's point of view, indicating thereby that to him music or art was far more than a mere adjunct to existence, was indeed the most essential element of life. He speaks in a wonderful way about symphonic music. He regarded symphonic music as a veritable revelation from another world, a revelation by which the threads of existence are elucidated far better than by logic. And from his own experience he knew that the convictions which arise in a man when he listens to the speech of symphonic music are so firmly rooted in his being that no intellectual judgment can prevail against them. Such words as these were not uttered at random; they were indications of a deep and profound theory of knowledge.

And now let us see whether we can explain these words of Wagner in the light of the conviction that is characteristic of Mysticism. Again and again we find Mystics describing the nature and mode of their knowledge in definite terms. They say: In the act of knowledge, man uses his intellect when he endeavours to understand the laws of the natural and spiritual worlds. But there is a higher mode of knowledge.—Indeed, the true Mystic realises that this higher kind of knowledge is much more reliable than any intellectual judgment. Curiously enough it is invariably characterised by an image—which is, however, more than an image. Those who really know what they are talking about, speak of music. The ‘Music of the Spheres’ spoken of in the old Pythagorean Schools was no mere figure of speech, in spite of what superficial philosophy may say. The Music of the Spheres is a reality, for there is a region of the spiritual world in which its melodies and tones can be heard. We are surrounded by worlds of spirit, just as a blind man is surrounded by the world of colour which he does not see. But if a successful operation is performed upon his eyes, colour and light are revealed to him. It is possible for the faculty of spiritual sight to awaken in a man. When his higher senses open, the higher world will emerge out of the darkness. To the surrounding spiritual world that lies near us, we give the name of the astral world, or world of light, while a higher, purely spiritual world is designated as that of the ‘Music of the Spheres.’ It is a real world into which man can enter through a higher birth. Initiates speak openly of this world. We are reminded here of certain words of Goethe, albeit they are generally thought to be mere fantasy. Indeed our interpretation of these words will be put down as inartistic because of the current opinion that so far as intelligence and reason are concerned, a poet must necessarily be vague and indefinite. But a poet as great as Goethe does not use phrases; and if there were no deeper underlying truth, he would be using a phrase when he writes:

“The sun with many a sister-sphere
Still sings the primal song of wonder, ...”

These words are either an indication of deeper truth or mere phraseology, for the physical sun does not ‘sing.’ It is unthinkable that a poet with Goethe's deep insight would use such an image without reason. As an Initiate, Goethe knew that there is indeed a world of spiritual sound and he retains the image.

To Richard Wagner the tones of outer music were an expression, a revelation of an inner music, of spiritual sounds and harmonies which pervade the created universe. He felt the reality of this music and stated it in words. On another occasion he said something similar in connection with instrumental music (Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven): “The primal organs of creation and of nature are represented in the instruments. What these instruments express can never be defined in clear, hard-and-fast terms, for once again they convey to us those archetypal moods arising from chaos in the first days of creation, when as yet there was no human being to receive them into his heart.”

Such words must not be analysed by the intellect. We should rather try to live into their mood and atmosphere and then we shall begin to realise how deeply Wagner's soul was steeped in Mysticism. To a certain extent Wagner was aware of his particular mission in art. He was not one of those artists who think they must ‘out’ with everything that happens to be living in their soul. He wanted to realise his destined place in evolution and he looked back to a far remote past when as yet art had not divided into separate branches.

Here we reach a point which was constantly in Richard Wagner's mind when he realised his mission, a point too, upon which Nietzsche meditated deeply, and tried to characterise in The Birth of Tragedy. We shall not, however, go into what Nietzsche says, because we are here concerned with Mysticism as such, and Mysticism can tell us more about Richard Wagner than Nietzsche was able to do. The study of Mysticism carries us back to very early stages in the evolution of humanity—to the Mysteries. What were the Mysteries?

Among all the ancient peoples there were Mystery-centres. These centres were temples as well as institutes of learning and they existed in Egypt, Chaldea, Greece and many other regions. As centres alike of religion, science and art, they were the source of new impulses in the culture of the peoples.

And now let us briefly consider the nature of the Mysteries. What were the experiences of those to whom the hidden teachings were revealed after certain trials and tests had been undergone? They were able to realise the union of religion, art and science—which in the course of later evolution were destined to separate into three domains. The great riddles of the universe were presented to those who were admitted to the rites enacted in the Mysteries. The rites and ceremonies were connected with the secrets of spiritual forces from higher worlds living in the minerals and plants, reaching a stage of greater perfection in the animal and finally to self-consciousness in the human being. The whole evolution of the World-Spirit was presented in the form of ritual to the eyes of the spectators. And what they saw with their eyes, they also heard with their ears. Wisdom was presented to them through colour, light and sound and to such men the laws of the universe were not the abstract conceptions they have become to-day. Cosmic laws were presented in a garb of beauty—and art arose. Truth was expressed in the form of art, in such a way that men's hearts and souls were attuned to piety and devotion. External history knows nothing of these things and indeed repudiates them. But that matters not.—Just as in the ancient Mysteries, religion, science and art were one, so were the arts which later on broke off along their several paths. Music and dramatic representation were part of one whole, and when Wagner looked back to primeval times he realised that although the arts had once been indissolubly united, they had been forced into divergence as a result of the inevitable course taken by evolution. He believed that the time had now come for a re-union of the arts, and with his great gifts set himself the task of bringing about this re-union in what he termed an “all-comprehensive work of art.” He felt that all true works of art are pervaded by a mood of sanctity and are therefore verily acts of religious worship. He felt too, that streams which had hitherto been separated were coming together in his spirit, there to give birth to his musical dramas. To him, there were two supreme artists: Shakespeare and Beethoven. He saw in Shakespeare the dramatist who, with marvellous inner certainty, staged human action as it unfolds in outer happenings. He saw in Beethoven the artist who was able to express with the same inner certainty experiences which arise in the depths of the heart but do not pass over into deed. And then he asked himself: ‘Is this not evidence of a severance that has taken place in human nature in the course of the development of art?’ Man's inner and outer life is directed and controlled by himself; he is aware of desires and passions which rise up and die down again within him and he expresses in action what he feels and experiences in his inner being. But a cleft arose in art. Richard Wagner found passages in Shakespeare's plays which gave him the impression: There is something at this point which had perforce to remain unexpressed, for between this action and that action there is something in the human heart which acts as a mediator, something that cannot pass over into this kind of dramatic art. Again, when human feeling would fain express itself in a symphonic whole, it is doomed to inner congestion if a musician must limit himself to tones. In Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner felt that the whole soul of the composer is pressing outwards and as it becomes articulate is striving to unite that which in human nature is in reality one and undivided but has been separated in art. Wagner felt that his own particular mission lay in this same direction, and out of this feeling was born his idea of a comprehensive work of art in which the inner life of a human being could express itself outwardly in action. That which cannot be expressed dramatically, must be contained in the music. That which the music cannot express must be contained in the drama.—Richard Wagner was striving to synthesise the achievement of Shakespeare on the one side and of Beethoven on the other. This was the idea underlying all his work—an idea that had arisen from profound insight into the mysteries of human nature. Herein he felt his call.

A way into the inner depths of human nature was thus opened up for art. Richard Wagner could not be a dramatist of everyday life, for he felt that it must once again be possible, as it was in the Mysteries, for the deepest and most sacred experiences to be expressed in art. When he tells us in his own words that symphonic music is a revelation of an unknown world, that the instruments represent primal organs of creation, we can well understand why in his musical dramas he feels it necessary to express much more than the physical part of man's being. Towering above this physical man is the ‘higher man.’ This ‘higher man’ surrounds the physical body like a halo and is much more deeply connected with the sources of life than can be expressed in outer life. It was just because Richard Wagner's aim was to give expression to the higher nature of the human being that he could not draw his characters from everyday life. And so he turned to the myths, for the myths portray Beings far greater than physical man can ever be. It is quite natural that Wagner's stage characters should be mythological figures, for he was thus able to express cosmic laws and the deeds of Beings belonging to an unknown world through the dramatic action and the music—albeit in a form not always understood. I can only give a few examples here, for to enter into every detail would lead too far. But it is everywhere apparent that in the depths of his being, Richard Wagner was connected with the teachings of Spiritual Science.

Now what does Mysticism tell us with regard to the relation of one human being to another? To outer eyes, men stand there, side by side; in the physical world they work upon each other when they speak together or when one becomes dependent on another. But there are also much deeper relationships between them. The soul living in the one man has a deep, inner relationship with the soul living in the other. The laws manifested on the surface of things are the most unimportant of all. The deep laws which underlie the soul are spun from the one man to the other. Spiritual Science reveals these laws, and, as an artist, Richard Wagner recognised and knew of their existence. Therefore he uses themes in which he is able to show that laws far deeper than the outer eye can perceive are working between one character and another.

This urge to reveal the mysterious connections of life is apparent in one of Wagner's earliest works. Do we not feel that something is happening invisibly between the Dutchman and Senta, and are we not reminded of another mysterious influence in the medieval legend entitled Der arme Heinrich, when miracles of healing follow the sacrifice of a virgin? Such images as these are the expressions of truth deeper than the superficial doctrines of conventional erudition. There is a deep reality in a sacrifice made by one being for the sake of another. These mystic threads—unfathomable by the superficial intellect—express one aspect of the universal soul, albeit this universal soul must be thought of as a reality, not as a vague abstraction. Wagner is expressing a profound truth when he uses the image of one human being sacrificing himself for another.

I shall here repeat certain teachings of Spiritual Science which will help you to understand these things. We know that the world evolves and that in the course of its evolution certain beings are continually destined to be thrust down. There is a law of which we learn in Spiritual Science, namely, that every stage of higher evolution is connected with a fall. Later on, compensation is made, but for every saint, a sinner must arise. Strange as this may appear it is nevertheless true, because the necessary equilibrium has to be maintained. Every ascent involves a descent and this implies that at a later stage, the powers of the being who has ascended in evolution must be used for the redemption of the other. If there were no such co-operation between beings, there would be no evolution. Thus is the flux of evolution maintained. And a picture of one human being sacrificing himself for another reminds us of the mysterious link that is created by the ascent of the one and the descent of the other. Such truths can only be expressed with the greatest delicacy. Richard Wagner realised and understood the mysterious thread that binds soul to soul, and when we study the fundamental features of his works we find that the mystical life is the source of them all.

And now when we turn to his most famous work—the Nibelung—we shall see out of what depths of spiritual scientific wisdom it was created. But first we must consider certain things which are explained by Spiritual Science, however contradictory they may be of the views of modern science.

Our remote ancestors lived in a region lying to the West of Europe, between Africa and America. Science itself is gradually beginning to admit the existence of a continent there in the far past—a continent to which we give the name of Atlantis. Atlantis was the home of our ancient forefathers whose form was very unlike our own. As I say, science is already beginning to speak of old Atlantis. An article on Atlantis appeared in a magazine entitled Kosmos, issued under the direction of Haeckel. True, it only spoke of animals and plants and omitted all mention of human beings, but Spiritual Science is able to speak with greater clarity of what natural science is only now beginning to surmise.

In old Atlantis, the atmosphere was quite different from the atmosphere around us to-day. There was no division of water and the sun's rays in the air. The air was permeated with vapours and clouds. Sun and moon were only seen through a rainbow-haze. Moreover man's life of soul was entirely different. He lived in a far more intimate relationship with Nature, with stone, plant and animal. Everything was immersed in cloud-masses. In very truth the Spirit of God brooded over the face of the waters! The wisdom that lived on among the descendants of the Atlanteans was possessed in abundance by the Atlanteans themselves. They understood all that was living in Nature around them; the rippling brooks were not inarticulate but the actual expression of Nature's wisdom. Wisdom streamed into the men of Atlantis from everything in their environment, for those ancient forefathers of ours were possessed of dull, instinctive clairvoyance. Instead of objects in space, colour-phenomena arose before them. They were endowed with clairvoyant powers. Wisdom was there in the mists and clouds and they perceived it with these powers. Such things can, of course, only be indicated here in the briefest outline. As evolution proceeded, the mists condensed into water, the air grew clearer and clearer, and man began, very gradually, to develop the kind of consciousness he has to-day. He was shut off from outer Nature and became a self-contained being. When all men live in close connection with Nature, wisdom is uniform among them, for they live and breathe in a sphere of wisdom. This gives rise to brotherhood, for each man perceives the same wisdom, each man lives in the soul of the other. When the cloud-masses condensed into water, man emerged with the beginnings of Ego-consciousness; the central core of his being was felt to lie within himself, and, when he met another Ego-being, he began to make claims on him.—Brotherhood gave way to the struggle for existence.

Legends and myths are not the phantasies they are said to be by erudite professors. What are legends and myths, in reality? They represent the last echo of the ancient clairvoyant experiences of men. It is nonsense to say that the myths are merely records of struggles between one people and another. Learned professors speak of the ‘poetic folk-phantasy,’ but it is they who are indulging in phantasy when they say that the ‘Gods’ were simply poetical allusions to clouds. That is the kind of nonsense we are expected to believe! But even nowadays it is quite easy to understand the real origin of myths.—The legend of the ‘Noonday Woman’ is still familiar in many regions. This legend is to the effect that when labourers stay out in the fields at noon and fall asleep instead of returning to their homes, a figure of a woman appears and puts a question to them. If they cannot answer within a given time, the woman slays them. This is obviously a dream which comes to a man because he is sleeping out of doors with the full heat of the sun pouring down upon him. Dreams are the last vestige of ancient clairvoyant consciousness.—The example given indicates that legends do indeed originate from dreams. And the same is true of the Germanic myths. For the most part these are myths which originated among the last stragglers of the Atlanteans. The old Germanic peoples looked back to the ages when their forefathers lived away yonder in the West and wandered towards the East in the times when the mists of Atlantis (Nebel-land) were condensing and giving rise to the floods now spoken of as the Deluge, when the air was becoming pure and clear and waking consciousness beginning to develop. The ancient Germanic peoples looked back to the ‘Land of Mists,’ to ‘Nifelheim.’ They knew that they had left Nifelheim and had passed into a different world, but they also knew that certain Spiritual Beings had remained behind at the spiritual level of those times. And they said that such Beings had retained the characteristics and qualities of Nifelheim while sending their influences down into a later age, that they were ‘Spirits’ because they did not live a physical existence.

We can never understand such marvellous interweavings by reference to pedantic text-books. We must rather have an eye to the interweaving of phantasy and clairvoyant faculties, of legend and myth. Nor should we divest these ancient legends of the magic dew upon them.

The ancient Germanic peoples looked back to the time when the mists of Nifelheim were condensing, and they conceived the idea that the water from these same mists was now contained in the rivers in the North of Central Europe. It seemed to them that the waters of the Rhine had flowed out of the mists of old Atlantis. In those ancient times wisdom came to men from the rippling of brooks and the gushing of springs. It was a wisdom that was common to all, a wisdom from which the element of egoism was entirely absent. Now the age-old symbol of a wisdom that is common to all is gold. This gold was brought over from Nifelheim. What became of the gold? It became a possession of the human Ego. The universal Wisdom, once bestowed by Nature herself now became a wisdom flowing from the Ego into human deeds and confronting them as a separate independent power in each individual. Man had built a ‘Ring’ around himself and the Ring changed brotherhood into the struggle for existence among human kind. The element of wisdom common to all men in earlier times lived in water, and the last vestige of this water flowed in the Rhine.

Now just as human beings have developed Ego-consciousness, so too must the Nibelungen. The Nibelungen knew that they possessed the old universal wisdom and they now forged the Ring which thence-forward surrounded them as the Rising of Egoism. This shows, albeit in brief outline, how true realities stream into the world of phantasy and imagination. Gold represents the remaining vestige of the ancient wisdom flowing through the mists; the wisdom-filled Ego builds the Ring which gives rise to the struggle for existence.—Such is the deeper truth underlying the myth of the Nibelungen.

This was a theme which Richard Wagner could reproduce in the form of dramatic action and in the tones of a music expressing the invisible world behind the world of sense. And so he wrote a modern version of the Nibelung myth and in his picture of this whole process of evolution we feel how the new Gods who rule over mankind have come forth from the ancient Gods.

And now think once again of old Atlantis.—Clouds and mists, wisdom sounding from all creation.—As time went on, the Gods could no longer work through a wisdom possessed uniformly by all men; they could work only by means of commandments and decrees. When Wotan, one of the new Gods has to fulfil his covenant to deliver up Freia, since he himself is now entering into the sphere of Ego-wisdom symbolised by the Ring, a figure personifying ancient, primordial consciousness appears before him—a personification of the Earth-consciousness wherein all men were enveloped in the days of Atlantis.

This consciousness is represented in the figure of Erda:

“My musing is the ruling of wisdom;
For when I sleep I dream,
And all my dreams are sovereign wisdom.”

A great cosmological truth is contained in these words, for all things were created by this wisdom as it lived in the springs and brooks, rustled in the leaves and swept through the wind. It was this all-embracing consciousness out of which individual consciousness was born and it was verily sovereign wisdom.

This wisdom was mirrored in the ancient clairvoyant faculties of man, in an age when his consciousness was not confined within the boundaries of his skin. Consciousness flowed through all things. One could not say: here is Ego-consciousness and there is Ego-consciousness.

“All that the depths conceal,
All that pervades the hills and vales,
Water and air, is known to thee.
Thy breath doth blow throughout creation;
Thy mind is there wherever knowledge dwells:
All, it is said, is known to thee.”

All is known to Erda in this consciousness. And so step by step, we can see how through his intuition Wagner was able to draw upon amounts of primordial wisdom and express this in the Nibelung myth.

And now let us consider the time of transition from the old phase of evolution to the new.—Again let it be repeated, however, that Richard Wagner's achievement was not the outcome of any conscious realisation on his part.—The old Atlanteans were possessed of a consciousness of brotherhood in the truest sense of the word. This was followed by the transition to Ego-consciousness. And now think of the beginning of the Rhinegold. Is not the coming of this Ego-consciousness expressed in the opening notes themselves, in the long E flat on the organ? Do we not feel here that individual consciousness is emerging from the ocean of consciousness universal? In motif after motif we find Richard Wagner expressing in the tones of music a world that stands behind the physical world, using the instruments verily as if they were the primal organs of Nature.

And now, if we turn to Lohengrin, what do we find? Lohengrin is the emissary of the ‘Holy Grail.’ He comes from the citadel of the Initiates, where a higher wisdom has its home. The legend of Lohengrin is connected with a universal tradition which indicates that the Initiates send down their influences into human life. We must always turn to legends for enlightenment in regard to significant turning-points in evolution, for the truths they contain are deeper than those recorded in history. Legends show us how the forces and influences of Initiates intervene in the course of history and they are not to be regarded as accounts of happenings in the outer world.

The time of transition from the universal clairvoyant consciousness to individualised Ego-consciousness was of the greatest significance, and we find it set forth in the Lohengrin myth. It is an age when the new spirit emerges from the old. Two ‘Spirits of an Age’ confront one another. Elsa, the feminine principle, represents the soul who is striving for the highest. Conventional interpretations of Goethe's words in the Chorus Mysticus at the end of his Faust are terribly banal, whereas in reality they emanate from the very depths of Mysticism:

“The Eternal Feminine leads us upwards and on.”

The human soul must be quickened by those mighty events through which new principles find their way into evolution. What enters thus into evolution is represented in the Initiates who come from mysterious lands. Spiritual Science speaks of advanced individualities and again and again one is asked: Why do these individualities not reveal themselves? But if they were to do so, the world would enquire about their civic name and rank. This is of no significance in regard to one who is working from spiritual worlds, for the position of an Initiate whose mission is to proclaim the mysteries of existence is so sublime that to ask about his birth, name, rank or calling, is meaningless. To put such questions shows such a lack of understanding of his mission that parting is inevitable.

“Ne'er shalt thou ask
Nor yearn to know,
Whence I have come
And what my name and nature”

These words of Lohengrin might be spoken by all those whose consciousness transcends that of the everyday world, when they are questioned about their name and rank. This is one of the notes struck in Lohengrin, where the clear, true influences of Mysticism are apparent in music and drama alike.

Now there is a certain profound mystery bound up with humanity and it is depicted symbolically in a myth. When at the beginning of our evolution Lucifer fell from the ranks of those Spirits who guide humanity, a precious stone dropped from his crown. This stone was the cup from which Christ Jesus drank with His disciples at the Last Supper and in which the Blood flowing on Golgotha was received. The cup passed to Joseph of Arimathea who brought it to the West. After many wanderings it came into the hands of Titurel through whom the Citadel of the Grail was founded. The cup was guarded by the “holy love-lance,” and the legend says that all who looked upon it took something of the Eternal into themselves.

And now let us think of the mystery contained in this myth as a parallelism of the progress of human evolution, as indeed it is known to be by those who understand the mysteries of the Grail. In the earlier phases of evolution on the earth, all love was bound up with the blood. Men were united by the blood-relationship. Marriage took place between those who were united by the blood-tie. The point of time from whence onwards marriage took place between those who were not of the same kith and kin marked an important turning-point in the life of the peoples. Consciousness of this truth is expressed in many sagas and myths. To begin with, as we have said, love was bound up with blood-kinship and later on, the circle within which human beings were joined by marriage grew wider and wider. This was the one stream in evolution: love that is dependent upon uniformity of flesh and blood.

But later on, a different principle began to hold sway—the principle of individual independence. In the age preceding that of Christendom these two streams were present: the stream expressed in love bound up with the blood-tie, and the principle of independence, freedom. The former represented the power of Jehovah, whose name means “I am the I am,” and the latter the Luciferic principle of independence. Christianity was to bring into the world a love that is independent of blood-kinship. The words of Christ are to be interpreted thus: He who forsakes not father and mother—that is to say, he who cannot substitute for a love that is bound up with flesh and blood, a love that flows from soul to soul, from brother to sister, from a man to all men—he “cannot be my disciple.”

A stone falls from Lucifer's crown and this stone becomes the holy cup wherein the Christ-Principle is united with the Lucifer-Principle. Knowledge of this mighty impulse developed the power of the Ego in the Knights of the Grail. And to those who were pupils in the Mysteries of the Holy Grail the following teaching was given:—(I will give in simple dialogue form what the pupils of the Grail were made to realise step by step. Many people will say: This is unheard of! None the less it is truth but truth that will be subjected to the same fate as those emissaries who were sent from civilised States to the courts of barbarians—as Voltaire relates. First, unworthy treatment and then, afterwards, recognition and acknowledgment.) This, then, was said to the pupils of the Grail: ‘Look at the plant. Its flower may not be compared with the human head. The flower, with its male and female organs of fertilisation, corresponds to the sexual system in man. It is the root of the plant that corresponds to the human head.’ Darwin himself once rightly compared the root of the plant with the head of man. The human being is a plant reversed. He has accomplished the complete turn. In chastity and purity the plant stretches out its calyx towards the light, receiving its rays, receiving the ‘holy love-lance,’ the ‘kiss’ which ripened the fruit. The animal has turned only half-way.—The plant, whose ‘head’ bores into the earth, the animal with its spine in the horizontal direction, and the human being with his upright posture and his upward gaze—these together form the cross. To the pupils of the Grail it was further said: ‘Verily, Plato spoke truly when he said that the World-Soul lies crucified in the Body of the World. The World-Soul, the soul pervading plant, animal and man, lives in bodies which, together, represent the cross.’ This is the original signification of the cross—All other interpretations are meaningless.

In what sense has man accomplished the complete turn? According to the insight of true Mysticism, the plant has the consciousness of sleeping man. When he is asleep, the human being is, in a sense, like a plant. He has acquired the consciousness that is his to-day by having permeated the pure plant-body with desires, with the body of passions. Thereby he has risen higher on the path to self-consciousness. But this has been achieved at the cost of permeating pure plant-substance with desire.

The pupils of the Grail were told of a state to which man would attain in the future. Possessed of clear, alert consciousness, his being would be purified, the substance of his body would become as pure and chaste as that of the plant, and his organs of reproduction transformed. The idea living in the minds of the Knights of the Grail was that the man of the future will have powers of reproduction not filled with the element of desire but as chaste and pure as the calyx which turns towards the ‘love-lance’—the rays of the sun. The Grail Ideal will be fulfilled when man brings forth his like with the purity and chastity of the plant, when he brings forth his own image in the higher calyx and becomes a creator in the Spirit. This ideal was known as the Holy Grail the transformed reproductive organs which bring forth the human being as purely and as chastely as the word is brought forth to-day by the waves of air working through the larynx.

And now let us see how this sublime ideal lived on the heart and soul of Richard Wagner.—In the year 1857, on Good Friday, he was standing on the balcony of the summer-house at the Villa Wesendonck and as he looked out over the landscape he saw the budding of the early spring flowers. The sight of the young plants revealed to him the mystery of the Holy Grail, the mystery of the coming-to-birth of all that is implicit in the image of the Holy Grail. All this he felt in connection with Good Friday and in the mood that fell upon him the first idea of Parsifal was born. Many things happened in the intervening period but the feeling remained in him and out of it he created the figure of Parsifal—the figure in whom knowledge is sublimated to feeling, the figure who having suffered for others, becomes “a knower through compassion.” And the Amfortas-mystery portrays how human nature in the course of evolution has been wounded by the lance of defiled love.

Such, then, is the mystery of the Holy Grail. It must be approached with the greatest delicacy; we should try to get at the whole mood and feeling and let the ideas in their totality stand before our souls. Wherever we look we find that as an artist and as a human being, Richard Wagner's achievements were based upon Mysticism. So clear, so full of mystical feeling was his realisation of his mission that he said to himself: The art which is living in me as an ideal must at the same time be divine worship. He realised that the three streams (religion, science, art) converge into one another and he desired to be a representative of this re-union. Out of his insight was born that feeling which though mystical in essence is yet clear as daylight and which lived in all the great masters. It lived, too, in Goethe who wrote: “The man who overcomes himself breaks that power which binds all beings.” When this urge to give freedom to the Ego, to penetrate into world-mysteries pulsates through all a man's forces and faculties, then he is a Mystic—in every domain of life. No matter whether his activities in the outer world are connected with religion, science or art—he works through to the point of unification. Goethe was trying to express this mystery of man as a whole and complete being, when he clothed the secret of his own soul in the words: “He who has science and art has religion too. He who has not these twain, let him think he has religion!”

If we look back upon the evolution of humanity, if we look back—let us say—as far as history permits it, we shall encounter something very strange. Various phenomena enable us to examine what we thus encounter. Above all, (and we shall see to-day that what we are about to say may be applied to every human heart, to every human soul) we may examine the evolution of humanity with the aid of various documents, traditions and writings which have been pre served. We shall find in them something very strange and peculiar. If we go back to the conceptions which were formed by the various peoples of ancient times in connection with the origin of the world and of the sources of what is good and moral, we shall find that the conceptions which thus arose are laid down in legends—in myths and legends. We come across such legends and myths in a more or less beautiful, lofty, sublime or even less significant form among the various peoples of the earth. A modern man is so very much inclined to consider these myths and legends as poems and to say: They were invented by the peoples during their infancy, because they did not as yet possess the sources of modern science. They have, for instance, formed all kinds of ideas about the origin of the world: the Greeks and their gods, the ancient Germanic peoples and their gods, and, if you like, the American peoples, whose legends have recently been dscovered and which are found to correspond with what exists among other peoples. If we learn that among the Central-American peoples Quetzalcoatl and Vitzliputzli play a role which is more primitive but similar to that of other mighty characters created by other races we shall see that such legends and myths exist among all these peoples ... And, as already stated, a modern man is easily inclined to say: These are poems, fantastic inventions of man's spirit, in order to explain the origin of the various beings of the world and of the various phenomena of Nature!

Among the various documents, there is one which I have already considered with a greater number of the friends who are now present. It is a lofty, mighty document: the Genesis, the beginning of the Old Testament. At Munich we have already seen how infinitely deep are the contents of the Genesis.¹ Several of you have also heard the explanations supplied by spiritual knowledge in connection with the various Gospels, which are, as it were, the last documents of this kind. We find that such documents have been preserved and that they have arisen at various periods of time as we were passing through our preceding incarnations, periods of time through which we have passed during our preceding lives on earth. Those who advance in spiritual knowledge must learn to realize that they have lived during times when men spoke, for instance, of Zeus, Hera and Chronos, and so forth, when they spoke of the phenomena of Nature in a different way from the one which is usual to-day, that they spoke of them in the form of myths, legends and fairy-tales. We must bear all this in mind. We must say to our selves: How do matters stand with our soul that has taken up these things (most people are not aware, so to speak, of what has been deposited within them) which now come to the fore again?

I shall now describe to you very simply what happens with a person who takes up within him these documents—to begin with, in the form of legends, myths and poems—and who then penetrates into occult science, into occultism, and who uses occult science as an instrument enabling him to understand them more and more. He will experience something very strange. I will take, for instance, just one case: What will take place within him in connection with the Old Testament?

In the case of the Old Testament, which most modern men read in such a way that they consider it as a very beautiful collection of all kinds of images about the world's origin, he will find that he will gradually say to himself: Infinite wisdom is contained in these things which are rendered in such a peculiar way! And he will gradually discover that the single words and sentences contain things—provided he understands them rightly—to which occult investigation can lead him along entirely independent paths. And his respect for these writings will grow. The most efficacious means perhaps of increasing our appreciation of these documents is to penetrate to some extent into spiritual science.

A question may then arise and may be placed before our soul. The human being may then say: How do matters really stand as far as this question is concerned? The ancient documents have been preserved: if we penetrate into them we discover in them the deepest, most significant spiritual meaning. Even if today we cannot feel entirely convinced of the fact that these documents contain, indeed, an overwhelming wisdom, we should persevere in our search and penetrate into them more and more. We shall then see that the wisdom which they contain is indeed overwhelming. It is not we who bring anything into them ... it would be quite ridiculous to say that we bring anything into them. The documents themselves contain this wisdom. Indeed, the greatest discoveries which can be made in the, sphere of spiritual science, the loftiest things which can be found again with great effort through occult investigation—all this may afterwards be discovered, for instance, in just one word of the Bible in the Genesis. This is very strange, is it not so?

We find, however, that there is a certain difference between the Old Testament and all the other legends, myths and documents. This is a fact which we should bear in mind. For there is a difference. Consider, for instance, the legends of the Greeks, of the ancient Germans, even what is contained in the Vedas of the Hindoos, or Persian documents. Take whatever you like—if you compare it with the Old Testament you will find a tremendous difference. This difference appears quite clearly to the unprejudiced investigation of an occultist the more he penetrates into these things. This difference appears in the following way: We shall gradually discover that all the other documents set forth in a legendary form the riddles of the phenomena of Nature, the riddles connected with all these phenomena of Nature, and also with the human being, in so far as he has a kind of natural form of life, in so far as the powers of Nature compel him to do this or the other thing. The Old Testament, however, is the one and only document in which we find the human being described from the very beginning as an ethical soul-being, not merely as a being of Nature. And everything in the Old Testament is described in such a way that the human being is placed within the course of evolution, as an ethical soul-being. Every other statement made by modern science rests upon a very weak foundation; it dissolves into nothing if we really observe things. This is the great difference which appears to us. We may therefore say: Everything else in the world shows us that men have obtained mighty revelations from one or the other direction, they have obtained mighty revelations which were expressed in the legendary form of myths and which have arisen out of deep wisdom. We may also say that as far as the Old Testament is concerned the human beings have had certain definite revelations which are connected with the ethical soul-mysteries of man. This is a fact which is, in any case, quite clear.

Another difference appears, however, if we compare the New Testament with all the other documents of this kind. We find in it a spirit which differs entirely from the one contained in any other document, even in the Old Testament. How can we grasp this difference if we approach the question as anthroposophists? We shall realize this difference if we first place another phenomenon before our soul.

Let us imagine, first of all, a man who has never heard anything about spiritual science, who is entirely the product of a scientific or of another so-called sensible education of our modern time, and who has, therefore, never had the chance to permeate the ancient documents with spiritual science. We may perhaps imagine him as a learned person or as an unlearned person—the difference is not so great—we may imagine him in any case as a person who has had no contact with spiritual science and we see him approach these ancient documents, Greek, Persian, Indian, Germanic documents, and so forth. We imagine him approaching these documents, equipped with everything which modern thinking can give him, if he is really unable to feel even a breath of what constitutes spiritual investigation a very strange thing will appear. There will be a difference according to his more or less greater inclination toward poetry or toward a matter-of-fact mentality, but on the whole we may say that something very strange will appear. Such a man will never be able to understand the ancient documents, he will never be able to penetrate into the way in which wisdom is offered by them, he is simply unable to do it, it is quite impossible for him to understand them. In this sphere, we come across the strangest examples; it may suffice to refer to one of the most recent attempts to explain these ancient documents. A little book has just appeared, which is extremely interesting because it is so absurd. It attempts to explain, as it were, all the myths up to the Gospels, beginning with the earliest documents of the most primitive peoples. It is really a book which is extraordinarily interesting because of its grotesque way, its grotesquely stupid way of grasping things. It is entitled “Orpheus,” and its author is Salomon Reinach, who is well known in France as an investigator in this sphere, and among scientists he is a characteristic example of a man who has not even had the slightest inkling of the way in which it is possible to penetrate into such things. In this book, a definite method is applied to everything, and the author passes sentence upon everything. He sees nothing but symbols, and there are no real beings behind Hermes, Orpheus, etc. These characters are merely symbols and allegories to him ... It is not proper to repeat the explanations which he gives for these symbols; he speaks of them in such a way that it is not necessary to repeat them. Every reality contained in these things can thus be proved to be non-existent ... the reality of Demeter and of Persephone is explained away, he decrees that they do not exist. According to this author, all these names are merely symbols. He follows a method according to which it would be easy to prove to children, eighty years hence, that a man named Salomon Reinach has never lived in France at all, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but that the civilization of that time has merely comprised the contents of this book in the name of Salomon Reinach. This could be proved quite well! In spite of all, these things have caused a great sensation. And according to this same method evidence has been produced in Germany to the effect that Jesus has never lived at all. This too has caused a great sensation.

You see, we may now ask: Why is it not possible to-day to penetrate into these things without the aid of spiritual science, (and it is a fact that it is not possible to do this without spiritual science) what is the true reason for this? If we wish to understand the true reason for this, we must gain a deeper insight into the evolution of humanity. We must look back a certain while into this evolution of humanity. And as a result we shall really feel compelled to say: Indeed, the science which men possess to-day, the science which is taught to-day in the elementary schools concerning the sun, and so forth, this is something which the ancients did not possess they did not possess a science which could be grasped with the understanding, with the intellect. This is something to which the human race has advanced little by little. And when our souls were born during earlier incarnations, they were certainly not able to take up this form of science, for this did not exist, this was not as yet incorporated in our civilization But the more we go back into the course of evolution, the more we shall find (quite apart from the fact of seeking the reasons for this which have often been explained to many of you here, in this or in that direction) that men possessed a deep wisdom of an entirely different kind from the one of to-day, wisdom concerning spiritual things which modern men are unable to express in their scientific form. This wisdom ruled in the souls of men, it lived in their souls. Wisdom was simply there. Particularly the initiated leaders of humanity possessed this wisdom, and if the anthroposophical spirit lives within us, it can be proved historically that a primal revelation, a primal wisdom was spread over the whole human race upon the earth, a wisdom which took on this or that form, ac cording to the various stages of evolution. If anyone considers history with a truly anthroposophical spirit he will discover this primal, original revelation. But something else is needed: the ordinary, modern scientific mentality must pass through a preparation if it wishes to penetrate into these documents and grasp their true meaning—I shall now relate a simple fact—a preparation is needed enabling a modern man to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. If he passes through this preparation he will be able to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. This preparation consists in the study of the only documents which can be studied to-day in a direct and immediate way, namely, the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. If we are filled with an anthroposophical spirit it is possible to approach these documents in a direct and immediate way and to understand them.

Even if we know nothing whatever about Anthroposophy, but if our feelings are filled with an anthroposophical spirit (this can be the case with many people) we may feel that something special lives in the Gospels and in the Epistles of St. Paul. This is indeed a strange fact! And in the case of an occultist another strange thing arises, something quite special will arise in his case. Namely, in the case of an occultist we may find that in accordance with modern prejudices he has, let us say, a certain aversion to approach these Gospels. It is quite possible to be filled with an occultistic spirit and yet to feel an aversion to the Gospels, to say, that they are only one religion among many others. No attempt is made to approach the Gospels, and it is possible to understand this aversion. But if we do this as occultists, if we have this strange attitude as occultists, we shall find that we cannot grasp what is contained in other documents. Everywhere we shall find something which we cannot understand. We may be content with this, but if we continue to penetrate more and more deeply into these things we shall never reach a goal unless we have passed through a preparation by studying the Gospels. On the other hand, it is a fact that if someone who may even be a well-trained occultist approaches an oriental or an occidental document and comes across a very hard nut which he cannot crack ... he will immediately be enlightened about the things contained in other documents if he approaches—even if it is only in spirit—the events of Palestine and if he allows them to inspire him. This is an undeniable fact. A ray of light can go out of the Gospels, and this is an experience which can be made. We must admit that the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul are indeed necessary if we wish to go back into earlier times. It is not possible to ignore them, to take no notice of them. Particularly the occultist will always realize this. If he is really able to read the spiritual documents, the Akasha Chronicle, it will not be necessary for him to consult the written Gospels—but he must approach the events of Palestine, he cannot ignore them. Otherwise, certain preceding things will always remain dark. I am therefore not drawing your attention to the records, or to the written word, but to the events, in the form in which they have rea1ly taken place within the course of human evolution. This is a very important fact.

I wish to throw some light upon this fact also from another side. Let us bear in mind what I have already stated. It is not possible to ignore, as it were, the event of the Christ, and if we wish to understand what has been given to humanity in the form of a primordial revelation we shall always trip up somewhere. I must say the following if I wish to describe the true aspect of things. Let us suppose that a modern occultist investigates the past and that he has no understanding (for it is this understanding which is so important) for the event of the Christ. He disregards the event of the Christ and proceeds to investigate earlier events of human evolution. He will then find that he grows uncertain everywhere, really everywhere. Of course, he can persuade himself that he feels quite certain about these things, but if he is honest he will have to admit that things are not entirely as they should be. Let us now imagine an occult investigator before the time of Christ Jesus, an occult investigator who has reached such a high degree of development in clairvoyance and also in other directions that he is able, even before the Christian era, to survey the whole past in such a way that, had he lived after the event of the Christ, he would have passed through the Christ event in his retrospective survey, a man who is therefore in advance of his time. Let us suppose that he lived five or six centuries before Christ and that he reached the maturity of a modern occultist; that is to say he is able to go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event. And we may then ask ourselves: How would an occultist who is so much in advance of his time, that even five or six centuries before Christ he can go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event, how would such an occultist have to appear in order to avoid falling a prey to the luciferic and ahrimanic powers? Let us suppose that it would really be necessary for him to pass through the Christ event ... This Christ event, however, has not yet taken place at the time in which he lived. In the case of such a man it appears that he will easily content himself with what he discovers—and he will then speak of all kinds of things which are not quite correct, for it is not possible to speak correctly about things if they are not seen correctly—but otherwise nothing will happen to him. Or else he will reach the point of saying: “There is something amiss, something I cannot find when I turn my gaze backwards. I cannot discover this something which I need along my path.” And he will then have to admit to himself: “Here I begin to grow uncertain. I must find this missing ‘something,’ but it does not exist as yet upon the earth. It cannot as yet be found within the evolution of the earth.”

You see, I have now painted theoretically, as it were, the portrait of a personality who lived during the 5th and 6th century before Christ, a personality who would have been mature enough to discover Christ Jesus in a retrospective survey, but he could not discover him because Christ Jesus had not as yet appeared upon the earth. He could not discover Christ Jesus as an earthly fact. A short time ago this theory took on the form of a vivid reality. I experienced it this year during a visit to one of our groups abroad which has adopted the anthroposophical manner of contemplating the world, during a visit to our group at Palermo. As the ship approached Palermo, I suddenly realized: “The solution of a riddle will present itself to you, a riddle which can only be solved easily here, at this place, through the immediate impressions which can be gained here.” Soon afterwards I found the solution of the riddle. The personality concerning whom I have just spoken to you in a theoretical manner, immediately appeared in the whole atmosphere of Sicily, I might say, in the whole astral body of Sicily. His presence was an altogether living one. In the whole atmosphere of Sicily continued to live a personality that is very enigmatic in many respects, the personality of Empedocles, the ancient philosopher. This ancient Greek philosopher has in fact lived in Sicily during the fifth century before Christ, and even external history knows that he was a profound initiate in many different spheres and that he accomplished magnificent things just here, in Sicily.

If to begin with, we turn, as it were, our spiritual gaze upon this man he will appear to us, from an occult standpoint in a very strange light. The occult fact which presents itself to us is the following. If we look back upon the development of Empedocles, if we follow his occupations as statesman, architect and philosopher, if we follow him upon his journeys, if we see him in the midst of his enthusiastic pupils initiating them into the various mysteries of the world—if we follow him spiritually in this manner, without the aid of external history, we shall discover in him a personality who possessed an infinite amount of scientific knowledge of the kind which is only known to a modern man. Empedocles had an altogether modern mentality, a modern aura, and he was indeed constituted in such a way that he sought to discover the origin of the world. In fact, according to his degree of development and everything which had taken place, he would necessarily have found the Christ in his retrospective survey. But the Christ had not yet appeared. It was not possible as yet to find Him upon the earth; He was still absent from the earth. These experiences in particular made Empedocles waver and developed within him a strange desire, and in his case it transformed itself into something entirely different from what takes place in the superficial minds of modern times. This desire transformed itself into the passion to consider the world in a materialistic way. Lucifer approached him. We should try to form a vivid picture of the way in which this took place. Empedocles possessed a modern spirit, but at the same time he was initiated in many different mysteries. He was clairvoyant to a high degree. Let us now imagine vividly that his modern way of thinking made him feel inclined to consider the world from a materialistic aspect; he has, in fact, drawn up a materialistic system which describes the world more or less from the stand point of a modern materialistic chemist, namely, as a combination and separation of elements. The one difference is that Empedocles distinguishes only four elements. He thought that various beings arise according to the way in which these four elements combine. As a result of these thoughts he felt the strong desire to discover in a true and real way what lies behind these material elements, what air and water really contain. If we peruse the Akasha Chronicle today and look into water, air, fire and earth we shall discover in them etherically the Christ. Empedocles could not find Him, but he felt the tremendous impulse to discover something in air and water, fire and earth, to find out what they really contain. And we can see how this personality is seized by the strong desire to penetrate at all costs into what constitutes the material elements. This desire finally induces him to make a kind of sacrifice. It is not merely a legend that Empedocles threw himself into the crater Aetna in order to unite himself with the elements. The luciferic force, the strong desire to grasp the elements, led him to a bodily union with the elements. The death of Empedocles continues to fill the atmosphere of Sicily, and this is a great mystery connected with this strange country.

Let us now picture the soul of Empedocles who has laid aside his body by allowing it to be burned. His soul is born again in a later period of time, when the Christ has already appeared upon the earth. Entirely new conditions now exist for this soul. In the past, this soul has, as it were, sacrificed itself to the elements. Now it is born again. But now it can discover the Christ when it looks back into time. And all the past knowledge concerning the elements rises up again in a new form, the knowledge which this soul once possessed arises in a completely new form. In fact, the personality of Empedocles was born again later, but at the present moment it is not permissible for me to mention his name. If we study the reincarnation of Empedocles in a more northern country, if we observe him as he then lived at the turning point of the Middle Ages and the modern time and if we compare this character with the Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Aetna, we shall see livingly before us the gigantic impulse which has arisen through the fact that the Christ event has in the meantime taken place upon the earth.

What thus takes place in the case of this one definite personality applies, however, to every soul, to the souls of each one of you. At the time in which the Christ event was drawing nigh, all these souls have looked back with a certain feeling of discomfort into past, even if they have not felt the mighty impulse experienced by Empedocles. They felt uncomfortable because they had lost their bearings and because the time of the modern scientific man who looks back into the past ... was gradually approaching, and something resembling the case of the men of earlier times begins to spread ... If we go back to earlier times we find that those who have preserved this tradition faced the masses and related to them—let us imagine this vividly—mighty tales which are contained, for instance, in the legends told to the ancient Greeks. But this induced the ancient Greeks to experience the truth of these legends, when they were, let us say, in a special condition which was still possible at that time to a greater extent than now, and these legends gave them, as it were, a push enabling them to look into the spiritual world. But the human beings lost this capacity. The inner force enabling them to rise into the spiritual world was lost to the extent in which intellectual knowledge began to develop. You may calculate and find in any little manual when our modern conceptions began to arise, these modern conceptions which children take up, if not with the mother's milk, at least with the school milk! These modern conceptions reach back to a few centuries before our Christian era. This is a tremendous turning-point. And if we wish to go back still further, if we wish to understand the ancient documents, it will not be possible for us to understand them, for now they appear to us merely as poems, legends and myths. We cannot go back further, and this is something which should really be borne in mind more clearly. More and more it will be the case that people who do not bring with them, as it were, an inherited disposition to understand the ancient documents, will be unable to understand them.

The opinion will gradually spread that there is a great field of illusion behind everything which is accepted as science, because the majority of scientists believes that now we fortunately know how the earth moves round, and that all the explanations of earlier times in this connection are nonsense. This opinion is already prevalent to-day. We go backwards into time ... The Copernican world-conception arises somewhat later, but even in the case of geometry we cannot go back further than Euclid. And further back, behind all this, a modern man can only see black darkness. He cannot find wisdom and the primordial revelation, he cannot find the path which leads into them. If we really accept this as a fact, something resulting from the deepest anthroposophical studies may then condense itself to a fundamental conviction—and this may take place even in the simplest mind, provided the feelings are sound.

Man must, after all, reach the point of saying to himself “The form in which I see the world is not its true aspect.” If this were its true aspect it would not be necessary to investigate it. Investigation would not be necessary at all, for the world would immediately appear in its true aspect. Modern investigation, however, does not consider the world in this way. The Copernican system would not exist if men were simply to accept what the senses reveal to them. Even external science contradicts the experiences gained through the senses. If we progress we shall see that we cannot stay by what the senses give us, by what we obtain through the external experiences which we make in the physical world. These must in any case be corrected, even by external science. This fact is perhaps not generally recognised; nevertheless, it is true. As soon as we begin to understand our own being—even if it is only with the aid of ordinary thinking and with what we can learn to-day—we shall be obliged to admit that the essential point of everything is to have an insight into the illusion created by the senses, for otherwise science would not exist and reflection would not exist. If this is indeed the case, we must discover something which enables us to understand without any difficulty in which direction and toward which goal the world is gradually developing. We shall find the confirmation of this fact if we consider matters a little in the light of Anthroposophy. We may therefore say to ourselves: Once upon a time there was a primordial wisdom; the human beings were constituted in such a way that they received a primordial wisdom which they could only see in pictures, but nevertheless they possessed such a primordial wisdom, and they have gradually lost the understanding for such a wisdom the more human evolution progressed; men were less and less able to grasp this primordial wisdom. And another fact is quite clear, namely, that they began to lose this understanding to the extent in which science and the intellectual understanding developed. We may now ask: What can have arisen at a certain definite moment?

Let us imagine the whole situation. Let us picture a man of pre-Christian times, who lived under certain conditions. He will have looked out into the world, he will have seen all manner of things, but within his soul there also lived the possibility of seeing behind these things. He still possessed this disposition. Consequently, it was an undeniable fact for him that there is an etheric body behind every flower. This was a fact for him. Gradually he began to lose this capacity. He lost it because it was banished by the intellectual understanding which rules to-day. The intellectual capacity cannot be united with the other one, for they are two hostile forces. This is an undeniable fact, and every occultist knows by experience that the understanding, or ordinary thought, sears and burns the clairvoyant manner of looking upon things. Even in the course of history, the knowledge based upon the ancient clairvoyance was lost to the extent in which the understanding, or the intellect in the ordinary meaning, have arisen, and the loss of the old clairvoyant wisdom also implied the loss of the capacity to understand the ancient traditions. A few centuries had to pass, and the kind of man I have just described to you had to be replaced by another kind who might perhaps have said: “It would, of course, be a serious prejudice to think the truth can be discovered in the way in which the world presents itself to our senses. Human reason must supplement everything!” Particularly this belief in human reason was the decisive factor; human reason must first pounce upon the phenomena which appear to the senses and then grasp them logically.

Such a kind of man would perhaps have said: “The special advantage of the human being over all the creatures of the earth is the fact that he is endowed with reason, that he can understand cause and effect as they manifest themselves behind the sense-phenomena. He is able to discover this. And his intellect enables him to communicate with other men through the means of speech. For it is easy to see that speech is a child of reason.” And he might also have said: “Reason is, of course, the highest of all things.” Now, if we wish to draw a vivid picture of such a person, we should imagine him saying to himself: “Rely on your understanding and reason, dissect everything with your reason, and then you will surely reach the truth!” Let us suppose that we are actually facing such a man. I have given you a description from a theoretical standpoint, yet this particular type of man has appeared very frequently. A characteristic thinker of this kind was Cicero, who lived shortly before Christ. If you study Cicero you will immediately see that he thinks exactly in this way, namely, that reason is able to grasp everything. It is not true that the world appears as it presents itself to the senses, nevertheless human reason is able to grasp everything! Just in the case of people who lived shortly before Christ we find an invincible faith in reason. They even identify reason with God himself, who rules within things. Cicero adopts this standpoint.

Let us suppose, however, that someone succeeds in discovering the secrets connected with all this. Let us suppose that someone contemplates all this in an entirely unprejudiced way and sees how everything results little by little. How would he then describe the whole period? Let us suppose that one century before Christ a man who is endowed with deep insight contemplates all these things ... How would the whole course of history appear to him? Well, he would say: “We can see two currents in humanity. One is the old clairvoyant power, with a descending course. Reason appears in its place, and it roots out and destroys within the human being the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. A great darkness spreads over the spiritual world. Those who accept the authority of reason will indeed think that their reason can discover what lies behind things. But these people forget the true nature of reason, about which they talk so much. Reason is linked up exclusively with the brain. It is a force which can only use the brain as its instrument. It belongs to the physical world and must, therefore, share the qualities of the physical world” ... Such a man would say: “You may, if you like, rely on your intellect and I say that it enables you to grasp what lies behind things, since the things in themselves are not real. Consider, however, that reason itself belongs to these things. You are a physical being among other physical beings, and your reason belongs to the physical world. If you think that reason enables you to discover what lies behind all the other things, you will demolish the foundation under your feet.” This is what he would say, and he would add: “Indeed, men are more and more inclined to use their reason, to rely upon their intellect. They have this inclination. But in doing so, they raise up before them a wall hiding the spiritual world, for they make use of an instrument which can not be applied to the spiritual world, for it is limited to the physical world. Humanity, however, unfolds in the very direction of developing this instrument.” And if this man had known the real course of events, he would also have said: “If men return to the spiritual world at all, they should not only be able to use their intellect, which can be applied solely to the physical world, but an impulse must arise enabling them to ascend once more to the spiritual worlds, an impulse which drives the intellect itself along this upward path. But this can only take place,” this person would have said, “if something dies within the human being, if something which calls forth in him the firm belief in the exclusive rule of reason perishes. This must die.” In fact, we imagine the human being gradually descending into the material world and developing his brain more and more. If the human being were to depend exclusively on his reason, he would be unable to abandon it, to come out of it. His physical body would then deceive him and persuade him to do away with everything which cannot be grasped by earthly reason. But it is the physical body which dulls man in this manner, because it gradually develops to a very high degree, and man does not realise that he thus remains within the physical world. Try to imagine this and you will see that the human being is then caught as if in a trap. He is quite unable to escape out of himself. Human evolution has so far reached the point of preventing man from going out of his own self, and so he faces the danger, of being gradually overwhelmed by his physical body. What can help the human being at all in this case? If just at the time when the intellect reaches this point, there arises the possibility of changing the intellect so, that the part which blinds it, dies, then this part must die. An impulse must arise which is able to overcome once and for all that part in man which can overwhelm him through a blind faith in mere reason. Try to feel the power of this impulse; try to feel that this was the meaning of human evolution! The bodily constitution developed in such a way that it would have overwhelmed man. He would have reached the point of thinking that he must remain within the physical world and yet be able to penetrate through Maya, without bearing in mind that he himself lived in this Maya through his intellect. This would have taken place had not something arisen which can tear him out of it, as soon as he accepts it, and which is able to counteract the fall into the physical sphere. Indeed, its influence reaches as far as the etheric body, so that the etheric body is then able to kill what leads man into a similar illusion. The human being would otherwise have remained imprisoned in this trap.

Let us now turn away from such a person who would have spoken in this way when the time of Christ Jesus was approaching, and let us consider the way in which a modern man, or anyone of us, would look at things. He would say to himself: If I consider the development of man in an unprejudiced way and see how the intellect, this instrument belonging to Maya, has gradually gained strength, I would undoubtedly be on the wrong track if I follow merely the course of the world's evolution. For, this is arranged in such a way that if I do not take up within me the impulse which kills that part leading me astray in this direction, I am unable to free myself from the intellect. What must therefore have taken place? I must be able to look back upon a time in which this impulse has entered. I must find something within the historical evolution of humanity which brings about the fact that the continuous stream of evolution has been reversed in a materialistic sense. If to-day I were to look within my own being without finding anything of this kind, what would I then have to find? I would trace in that case the gradual growth of the intellect, until I reached a time, at the beginning of our era, when the intellect began to work ... and further back? There it grows dark, pitch black darkness rules there, and I shall need something entirely different. Then it will grow light, and here everyone must encounter the Christ! Anyone who is at all willing to believe in the possibility of progress, and that during the following incarnations he will have within him something which will lead him upwards and will prevent his being overwhelmed by Maya, must meet the Christ when he looks back into time. Upon looking back, everyone must encounter the Christ. This can give him an impulse leading him upwards.

Let us now suppose that the gospels did not exist, and that we would not need them as anthroposophists. Let us suppose that we do not need the gospels; that all we need is to study the course of human evolution in an unprejudiced way and to say: What would become of every human being if he were unable to look back upon an event which has swung the whole meaning of the earlier course of evolution over to the other side? We simply must encounter the Christ if we go back into the course of evolution! Anthroposophists must be able to find Him, and the clairvoyants will find him under every circumstance. This is a mystery which is connected particularly with Christianity. Documents may be questioned. Indeed, the gospels are not real historical documents. All the clever people, Jensen and others, who decree in a trivially learned manner that the gospels do not exist and upon them as mere legends, have a certain justification for doing this, because they depend solely upon their external reason. But if we are anthroposophists we are able to say that we do not need the gospels; we only need the facts supplied by spiritual science itself, and if we go back into time we shall discover the living Christ, as He appeared to Paul in the event of Damascus. Paul has experienced in advance what we, too, are able to experience if we search for the Christ in a truly anthroposophical spirit. Paul was, after all, in the same position of a modern anthroposophist who does not wish to accept the gospels. At his time the gospels did not exist, but Paul was able to go to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, this did not convince him, for otherwise he would not have left Jerusalem. The events described in the gospels did not convince him. It is not necessary, therefore, that the contents of the gospels should convince a modern person. All that is necessary is that he should be in a position to experience, through Anthroposophy, what Paul has experienced, and this experience will then become for him an event of Damascus. He will then have the proof of Christ's existence, in the same way as Paul, without the aid of documents.

Of course, this points to very deep things in human evolution, to extraordinarily deep things in the evolution of man. In a certain sense, every human being, even the simplest man, may experience what the reincarnated Empedocles has experienced during the 15th and 16th century, who looked back into earlier times and was able to see what he was unable to see before. Before, he had grown so uncertain that he threw himself into Mount Aetna. He cast his glance backwards during the 15th and 16th century and what he was unable to grasp in any way during his previous incarnation he was now able to grasp clearly through the Christ principle. And this enabled him to become one of the most remarkable personalities of the later era.

This is how matters appear to every human being, without the aid of any document, simply through retrospection. At some later time, all men will be able to look back into an earlier incarnation and they will distinguish exactly the incarnations before and after Christ. What may be felt to-day instinctively by a simple soul who reads the gospels, will arise, later, in the form of knowledge. This is the chief difference between the gospels and other documents: they are the first documents which we must understand. The gospels are a great, beautiful and mighty point of transition. It we pass through it, light begins to spread, while everywhere else there is darkness.

It is indeed so. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution, and a modern man may find that he often loses his thread when he investigates earlier things. But if he returns to one of the events in the life of the Christ he will feel inspired, and it will grow light about him. Even a simple person may experience what occultists discover, namely, he will be able to feel within his soul a reflection, as it were, of what I have just explained. He may feel very depressed owing to his human weaknesses and mistakes and he may admit to himself: “What I am to-day, is the result of all the generations!” But then he would deny this and would have to admit to himself, instead, that he himself has been his own father and his own mother. There is, consequently, something within us connecting us with the rest of humanity, and we may feel very depressed by all human mistakes, weaknesses and illnesses. Nevertheless, even the simplest soul always has the possibility of rising. These words should not be understood in the orthodox meaning. What is possible for an occultist is also possible for the simplest soul. Such a simple man may feel as weak possible, but if he begins to read the gospels, strength will flow out of the gospels, because the power of the Word streams out of them and penetrates into the etheric body. The gospels are strengthening words, words of strength. They do not speak merely to the intellect, but penetrate into the deeper forces of the soul. And they are not merely based upon the intellect which exists in Maya, but they penetrate into the deeper forces, which can, as it were, console the intellect concerning its own nature. This is the great strength of the gospels; they exist for every one of us, and this is the powerful element distinguishing them from all the other documents. This fact, too, may not be accepted, but its rejection would imply that the possibility of human progress is denied altogether.

You see, this points to a fact which cannot be grasped right away. And now you will be able to realize what was needed for the preparation of a person whom I have already set before your soul hypothetically, who announced, one century before our era: “A man must come who will give us the impulse which will bring about the great turning point in the course of events.”

This person was a significant man, and he also underwent the necessary preparation. For a long time, the attempt had already been made, among those who knew things, to bring about the possibility that at least a few people, as it were, should understand the times which were approaching, that they should understand what was being prepared, namely, that, on the one hand, men were being drawn into a snare, and that, on the other hand, through the appearance of the Christ, they could be led upwards again. This was taught prophetically. The man who was chosen to teach this prophetically, more than one century before our era, within the circles of people who were able to understand these teachings, was an initiate of the community of the Essenes, which was closely related to the circles frequented by the Christ. He announced the coming of One Who would lead men upwards again. The man who taught this within the community of the Essenes was a very significant individuality. External history really knows very little about him, but at least a few writers mention the legends referring to him which were handed down traditionally. Thus he is not merely a mythological character, or one who is named exclusively in occultism, He lived a hundred years before Christ and he even instructed one of his five or six pupils to write down his teachings. One of the pupils of this man, who drew attention to the Christ and announced His coming, understood the meaning of his teachings. This man, therefore, had a pupil, who was called Matthew, and he wrote down the mysteries relating to the Christ. The individuality who taught them was Jeshu ben Pandira.² He had to suffer martyrdom because he taught these things, he was stoned to death in his own country, and afterwards his lifeless body was hanged. We should not confuse Jeshu ben Pandira with Jesus of Nazareth. Jeshu ben Pandira, the great prophet of the Christ, instructed his pupils to write down what he knew, and these documents then came into the hands of the man who included them with the mysteries which they contained, into the gospel which is known to us as the Gospel according to Matthew. It is an important, a preeminently important fact to realize, in the first place, the necessity of the Christ impulse, and in the second place, in an occult historical way, how Jeshu ben Pandira, through the fact that he was first stoned and immediately afterwards crucified, set forth, as it were, symbolically what took place afterwards in the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ was not stoned, but crucified, and a wonderful thing took place simultaneously with His death, for at the very moment when His blood streamed out of His wounds something passed over into the atmosphere of the earth, which brings to those who take up this event in their etheric body when they look back into time, to those who pass through this event and look, as it were, into the grave of the Christ, something leading them into a past filled with light, because they have passed through this moment. But without this experience, darkness spreads over everything which lies before it.

Consider what has been said to-day. It was my task to point this out to you. This subject, however, is so vast and encompassing that mere indications can be given. Nevertheless, these indications were treated so that if you investigate what you already know and what you carry in your heart, you will find to what a great extent life itself and your own soul prove the truth of what I have told you to-day.

• 1. Secrets at the Bible Story of Creation
• 2. Compare the lecture published in German by the Philos. Anthrop. Verlag “Jeshu ben Pandira, der Vorbereiter für ein Verständnis des Christus-Impulses.”

These lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner during a period of intense productive activity, involving many journeys. In March and April, 1911, he had given fundamental lectures in Prague and in Italy. In June he gave in Copenhagen the short but pregnant course on “The Spiritual Guidance of Humanity.” In August the first performance was given in Munich of his second Mystery Play, “The Soul's Probation.” In October the course “From Jesus to Christ” was given in Karlsruhe; here he gave the fundamental spiritual concepts for the understanding of the Resurrection of Christ. With the exception of the course on St. Mark's Gospel, which followed in September 1912, the great courses on the Gospels had already been given during the preceding years, from 1908 onwards. Dr. Steiner had lectured also in many places about the renewed experience of the Christ in the twentieth century; in the Karlsruhe course he described in detail the work of Christ as lord of human destiny—a theme taken up again in these Nurnberg lectures.

For some years the most significant figure among the group of students of Rudolf Steiner resident at Nurnberg had been Michael Bauer, the friend and biographer of the poet, Christian Morgenstern. Not long before these lectures were given, Michael Bauer had come to know Dr. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, who had become widely known in Germany as a preacher and pastor, working from Nurnberg. Through Bauer, Rittelmeyer came to Rudolf Steiner himself.

These lectures may well have been among the first by Rudolf Steiner that Rittelmeyer could have heard. Certainly we may find in them an indication of the great mysteries of destiny that worked in these encounters, and which led towards the foundation, eleven years later, of the Christian Community. For example, Rudolf Steiner describes in these lectures the meaning of the altar in early Christianity.

The theme of Faith, Love and Hope appears in a wonderful way in the second Mystery Play. At about this time Rudolf Steiner gave lectures under this title in other places also, for example in Vienna.

A. B.

This evening and tomorrow evening we are going to attempt a coherent study of the being of man, and of his connection with the occult foundations of the present time and the near future.

From various indications I have given here you will have grasped that to-day we are, to some extent, facing a new revelation, a new announcement to mankind. If we keep in mind the recent periods of man's evolution, it may well be that we shall best understand what is approaching if we connect it with two other important revelations. In doing so we shall be considering, it is true, only what has been revealed to mankind in times relatively near to our own.

These three revelations—the one now to come and the two others—may be best understood when compared with the early development of a child. Observing the child rightly, we find that on its first coming into the world it has to be protected and cared for by those around it; it has no means of expressing what is going on within it or of formulating in thought what affects its soul. To begin with, the child cannot speak, cannot think; everything must be done for it by those who have received it in their midst. Then it starts to speak. Those who watch it attentively—this is mentioned in my book, The Education of the Child—will know that first it imitates what it hears; but that in the early days of talking it has no understanding which can be attributed to thinking. What the child says does not arise out of thought, but the other way round. It learns to think by talking; learns gradually to apprehend in clear thought what previously it was prompted to say out of the obscure depths of feeling.

Thus we have three successive periods in the child's development—a first period when it can neither speak nor think, a second when it can speak but not yet think, and a third when it becomes conscious of the thought-content in what it says. With these three stages in the child's development we may compare what mankind has gone through—and has still to go through—since about 1,500 years before the Christian era.

The first revelation of which we can speak, as coming to mankind during the present cycle of time, is the revelation proceeding from Sinai in the form of the Ten Commandments. Anyone going more deeply into the significance of what was revealed to mankind in these commandments will find great cause for wonder. The fact is, however, that men take these spiritual treasures so much for granted that little thought is given to them. But those who reflect upon their significance have to know how remarkable it is that in these Ten Commandments something is given which has spread through the world as law; something which in its fundamental character still holds good to-day and forms the basis of the law in all countries, in so far as, during the last 1,000 years, they have gradually adopted modern civilisation. Something all-embracing, grand, universal, is revealed to mankind as if in these words: There is a primal Being in the spiritual world whose image is here on earth—the Ego. This Being can so infuse His own power into the human ego, so pour Himself into it, that a man is enabled to conform to the norms, the laws, given in the Ten Commandments.

The second revelation came about through the Mystery of Golgotha. What can we say about this Mystery? What can be said was indicated yesterday in the public lecture, “From Jesus to Christ”. It was shown there how we have to trace back all men in their bodily nature to the original human couple on earth. And as we can understand men in their bodily nature only as descending through the generations from this couple, so, in order rightly to understand the greatest gift coming to our ego, we have to trace this fact, that must sink more and more into our ego during earthly existence, back to the Mystery of Golgotha.

It need not here concern us that in this connection the old Hebrew tradition has a different conception from that of present-day science. If we trace back men's blood-relationship, their bodily relation, to that original human couple, Adam and Eve, who once lived on earth as the first physical personalities, the primal forebears of mankind, and if we must therefore say that the blood flowing in men's veins goes back to that human pair, we can ask: Where must we look for the origin of the most precious gift bestowed on our soul, that holiest, most valuable gift, which accomplishes in the soul never-ending marvels and makes itself known to our consciousness as something higher than the ordinary ego within us? For the answer we must turn to what arose from the grave on Golgotha. In every human soul that has experienced an inner awakening there lives on what then arose, just as the blood of Adam and Eve continues to live in the body of every human being.

We have to see a kind of fountainhead, a primal fatherhood, in the risen Christ—the spiritual Adam who enters the souls of those who have experienced an awakening, bringing them, for the first time, to the fullness of their ego, to what gives life to their ego in the right way. Thus, just as the life of Adam's body lives on in the physical bodies of all men, what arose from the grave on Golgotha flows in like manner through the souls of those who find the path to it. That is the second revelation given to mankind; they are enabled to learn what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha.

If in the Ten Commandments men have received guidance from outside, this guidance may be compared to what happens to the child before it can either speak or think. What is done for the child by its environment is achieved by the old Jewish law for all mankind, who until then have, as it were, lacked the power of speaking and thinking. People, however, have now learnt to speak—or, rather, have learnt something that may be compared with a child's learning to speak: they have gained knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha through the Gospels. And the way in which they first understood the Gospels may be compared with how a child learns to speak. Through the Gospels there has come to human souls and human hearts some degree of understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha, which has found its way into human feelings and perceptions, and into the soul-forces arising in us when, for example, we allow the deeply significant, intuitive scenes and pictures drawn from the Gospels by great painters to work upon us. It is the same with traditional pictures—pictures of the adoration of the Child by the Shepherds or by the Wise Men from the East; of the flight into Egypt, and so on. All this leads back in the end to the Gospels; it has reached men's understanding in such a way that they may be said to have learnt to speak, in their fashion, about the Mystery of Golgotha.

In this connection we are now moving towards the third period, which may be compared with how the child learns the thought-content in its own speech and can became conscious of it. We are approaching the revelation which should give us the full content, the thought-content, of the Gospels—all they contain of soul and spirit. For at present the Gospels are no better understood than the child understands what it says before it can think. In the context of world-history people are meant to learn through Spiritual Science, to reflect upon the thoughts in the Gospels; to let the whole deep spiritual content of the Gospels work upon them for the first time. This indeed is connected with a further great event which mankind can feel to be approaching, and which they will experience before the end of this twentieth century. This event can be brought before our souls in somewhat the following way: If once again we enter into the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, we realise that those elements of the Christ which rose from the grave of Golgotha have remained with the earth, so that they can directly affect every human soul, and can in each soul awaken the ego to a higher stage of existence. Speaking thus of the Mystery of Golgotha we may say: Christ then became the Spirit of the earth and since that time has remained so. In our day, however, a change in relation of the Christ to men is coming, an important change connected with what all of you have come to know something about—the new revelation to men of the Christ.

This revelation can also be characterised in another way. For this indeed we must turn to what happens when a man goes through the gate of death. (This is something that could not be described in books, but must now be spoken of.) When a man has passed through the gate of death, has experienced the backward survey over his previous earthly life and has come to the point when his etheric body is laid aside and the time has come for his Kamaloka, he is first met by two figures. Usually only one is mentioned, but to complete the picture—and this is a reality for every true occultist—we must say that before his Kamaloka the man is confronted by two figures. What I am now telling you holds good, it is true, only for men of the West, and for those who, during the last 1,000 years, have been connected with Western culture. The man after death is confronted by two figures. One of these is Moses—the man knows quite clearly that it is Moses who stands before him, holding out the tables of the law. In the Middle Ages they spoke of Moses “with his stern law”. And in his soul the man is keenly aware of how far in his inmost being he has transgressed against this law. The other figure is “the Cherubim with the flaming sword”, who pronounces judgment on these transgressions. That is an experience a man has after death. Thus, in accordance with our Spiritual Science, it can be said that there is a kind of settlement of the man's karmic account by these two figures—Moses with the stern law and the Cherubim with the flaming sword.

In our time, however, a change is approaching, an important change which can be described in this way. Christ is becoming Lord of Karma for all those who, after death, have experienced what has just been discussed. Christ is entering upon His judgeship. Let us look more closely into this fact. From the world-conception of Spiritual Science we all know that a karmic account is kept of our life; that there is a certain balancing of the deeds standing on the credit side of the account the sensible deeds, the fine deeds, those that are good—and, on the other side, the bad, ugly, lying deeds and thoughts.

Now it is important, on the one hand, that in the further course of a man's earthly life he should himself adjust the balance of this karmic account. But this living out of the result of his good and splendid deeds, or those that are bad, can be done in many different ways. The particular adjustment in our future life is not always determined after the same pattern. Suppose someone has done a bad action; he must compensate for it by doing a good one. This good action, however, can be achieved in two ways, and it may require the same effort on the man's part to do good to a few people only as to benefit a considerable number. To ensure that in future, when we have found our way to Christ, our karmic account will be balanced—inserted in the cosmic order—in such a way that the settlement of it will benefit as many people as possible—that will be the concern of Him who in our time is becoming Lord of Karma—it will be the concern of the Christ.

This taking over by Christ of the judging of a man's deeds is a result of His direct intervention in human destiny. This intervention is not in a physical body, but on behalf of those men on earth who will increasingly acquire the capacity of perceiving Him. There will be people, for instance, who, while carrying out some deed, suddenly become aware—there will be more and more cases of this from now on, during the next 3,000 years—of an urge to refrain from what they are doing, because of a remarkable vision. They will perceive in a dreamlike way what appears to be an action of their own; yet they will not be able to remember having done it.

Those who are not prepared for such a thing to happen in the course of their evolution will look upon it merely as imagination run wild or as a pathological condition of the soul. Those, however, who are sufficiently prepared through the new revelation coming in our time to mankind through spiritual science—through, that is, this third revelation during the latest cycle of mankind—will realise that all this points to the growing of new human faculties enabling men to see into the spiritual world. They will also realise that this picture appearing to their soul is a forewarning of the karmic deed that must be brought about—either in this life on earth or in a later one—to compensate for what they have done.

In short, people will gradually achieve, through their own efforts, the faculty for perceiving in a vision the karmic adjustment, the compensating deed, which must come about in future. From this fact it can be seen that in our time, too, we should say, as did John the Baptist by the Jordan: Change your state of soul, for the time is coming when new faculties will awake in men.

But this form of karmic perception will arise in such a way that here and there the figure of the etheric Christ will be directly visible to some individual—the actual Christ as He is living in the astral world—not in a physical body, but as for the newly awakened faculties of men He will manifest on earth; as counselor and protector of those who need advice, help or solace in the loneliness of their lives.

The time is coming when human beings, when they feel depressed and miserable, for one or other reason, will increasingly find the help of their fellows less important and valuable. This is because the force of individuality, of individual life, will count for more and more, while the power of one man to work helpfully upon the soul of another, which held good in the past, will tend constantly to diminish. In its stead the great Counselor will appear, in etheric form.

The best advice we can be given for the future is, therefore, to make our souls strong and full of energy, so that with increased strength, the further we advance into the future, whether in this incarnation—and certainly this applies to the young people of to-day—or in the next, we may realise that newly-awakened faculties give us knowledge of the great Counselor who is becoming at the same time the judge of a man's karma; knowledge, that is, of Christ in His new form. For those people who have already prepared themselves here for the Christ-event of the 20th century, it will make no difference whether they are in the physical body, when this event becomes a widespread experience, or have passed through the gate of death. Those who have passed through will still have the right understanding of the Christ-event and the right connection with it, but not those who have thoughtlessly passed by this third great forewarning to mankind given through Spiritual Science. For the Christ-event must be prepared for here on earth in the physical body. Those who go through the gate of death without giving even a glance into Spiritual Science during their present incarnation, will have to wait until their next before gaining a right understanding of the Christ-event. It is an actual fact that those who on the physical plane have never heard of the Christ-event are unable to came to an understanding of it between death and rebirth. They, too, must wait until they can prepare for it on their return to the physical plane. When, therefore, their present incarnation ends at death, these men in their essential being remain unconcerned in face of the mighty event referred to—the taking over of the judgeship by Christ and the possibility of His intervening, in an etheric body, directly from the astral world in the evolution of mankind, and His becoming visible in various places.

It is characteristic of human evolution, however, that old attributes of men, not closely connected with spiritual evolution, gradually lose significance. When we consider human evolution since the Atlantean catastrophe we can say: Among the great differentiations prepared during the Atlantean Age, present-day men have become accustomed to those of race. We can still speak, in a certain sense, of an old Indian race, of an old Persian race, of an Egyptian or a Graeco-Latin one, and even of something in our own time corresponding to a fifth race. But the concept of race in relation to human evolution is ceasing to have a right meaning. Something that held good in earlier times will no longer do so in the sixth culture-epoch which is to follow our own—namely, that it is essential to have some spatial centre from which to spread the culture of the epoch. The important thing is the spreading of Spiritual Science among men; without distinction of race, nation, or family. In the sixth culture-epoch those who have accepted Spiritual Science will come out of every race, and will found, throughout the earth, a new culture no longer based on the concept of race—that concept will have lost its significance. In short, what is important in the world of Maya, the external world of space, vanishes away; we must learn to recognise this in the future course of our spiritual-scientific movement.

At the beginning this was not understated. Therefore we see how, when we read Olcott's book, The Buddhist Catechism, which once did good service, we have the impression that races always go on like so many wheels. But for the coming time such concepts are losing their significance. Everything subject to limitations of space will lose significance. Hence anyone who thoroughly understands the meaning of human evolution understands also that the coming appearance of Christ during the next 3,000 years does not entail Christ being restricted to a body bound by space, nor limited to a certain territory. Neither will His appearance be limited by an inability to appear in more than one place at a time. His help will be forthcoming at the same moment here, there, and everywhere. And as a spiritual being is not subject to the laws of space, anyone who can be helped by Christ's direct presence is able to receive that help at one end of the earth just as well as another person at the opposite end. Only those unwilling to recognise the progress of mankind towards spirituality, and what gradually transforms all the most important events into the spiritual—only these persons can declare that what is implied by the Christ-being is limited to a physical body.

We have now described the facts concerning the third revelation and how this revelation is already in process of throwing new light on the Gospels. The Gospels are the language, and, in relation to them, Anthroposophy is the thought-content. As language is related to a child's full consciousness, so are the Gospels related to the new revelation that comes directly from the spiritual world—related, in effect, to what Spiritual Science is to become for mankind. We must be aware that we have in fact a certain task to fulfil, a task of understanding, when we come—first out of the soul's unconscious depths, and then ever more clearly—to discern our connection with Anthroposophy.

We must look upon it, in a sense, as a mark of distinction bestowed by the World-Spirit, as a sign of grace on the part of the creative, guiding Spirit of the world, when to-day our heart urges us towards this new announcement which is added, as a third revelation, to those proclaimed from Sinai and then from the Jordan. To learn to know man in his entire being is the task given in this new announcement—to perceive ever more deeply that what we are principally conscious of is sheathed around by other members of man's being, which are nevertheless important for his life as a whole.

It is necessary for our friends to learn about these matters from the most various points of view. To-day we will begin by first saying a few words about man's inner being. You know that if we start from the actual centre of his being, from his ego, we come next to the sheath to which we give the more or less abstract name of astral body. Further out we find the so-called etheric body, and still further outside, the physical body. From the point of view of real life we can speak about the human sheaths in another way, and to-day we will take directly from life what can, it is true, be learnt only from occult conceptions, but can be understood through unprejudiced observation.

Many of those who, on account of their so-called scientific world-conception, have become arrogant and overbearing, now say: “The ages of faith are long past; they were fit for mankind in their stage of childhood but men heave now progressed to knowledge. To-day people must have knowledge of everything and should no longer merely believe.” Now that may sound all very well, but it does not rest on genuine understanding. We must ask more questions about such matters than merely whether in the present course of human evolution knowledge has been gained through ordinary science. These other questions must be put: Does faith, as such, mean anything for mankind? May it not be part of a man's very nature to believe?

Naturally, it might be quite possible that people should want, for some reason, to dispense with faith, to throw it over. But just as a man is allowed for a time to play fast and loose with his health without any obvious harm, it might very well be—and is actually so—that people come to look upon faith merely as a cherished gift to their fathers in the past, which is just as if for a time they were recklessly to abuse their health, thereby using up the forces they once possessed. When a man looks upon faith in that way, however, he is still—where the life-forces of his soul are concerned—living on the old gift of faith handed down to him through tradition. It is not for man to decide whether to lay aside faith or not; faith is a question of life-giving forces in his soul. The important point is not whether we believe or not, but that the forces expressed in the word ‘faith’ are necessary to the soul. For the soul incapable of faith become withered, dried-up as the desert.

There were once men who, without any knowledge of natural science, were much cleverer than those to-day with a scientific world-conception. They did not say what people imagine they would have said: “I believe what I do not know.” They said: “I believe what I know for certain.” Knowledge is the only foundation of faith. We should know in order to take increasing possession of those forces which are forces of faith in the human soul. In our soul we must have what enables us to look towards a super-sensible world, makes it possible for us to turn all our thoughts and conceptions in that direction.

If we do not possess forces such as are expressed in the word ‘faith’, something in us goes to waste; we wither as do the leaves in autumn. For a while this may not seem to matter—then things begin to go wrong. Were men in reality to lose all faith, they would soon see what it means for evolution. By losing the forces of faith they would be incapacitated for finding their way about in life; their very existence would be undermined by fear, care, and anxiety. To put it briefly, it is through the forces of faith alone that we can receive the life which should well up to invigorate the soul. This is because, imperceptible at first for ordinary consciousness, there lies in the hidden depths of our being something in which our true ego is embedded. This something, which immediately makes itself felt if we fail to bring it fresh life, is the human sheath where the forces of faith are active. We may term it the faith-soul, or—as I prefer—the faith-body. It has hitherto been given the more abstract name of astral body. The most important forces of the astral body are those of faith, so the term astral body and the term faith-body are equally justified.

A second force that is also to be found in the hidden depths of a man's being is the force expressed by the word ‘love’. Love is not only something linking men together; it is also needed by them as individuals. When a man is incapable of developing the force of love he, too, becomes dried-up and withered in his inner being. We have merely to picture to ourselves someone who is actually so great an egoist that he is unable to love. Even where the case is less extreme, it is sad to see people who find it difficult to love, who pass through an incarnation without the living warmth that love alone can generate—love for, at any rate, something on earth.

Such persons are a distressing sight, as in their dull, prosaic way, they go through the world. For love is a living force that stimulates something deep in our being, keeping it awake and alive—an even deeper force than faith. And just as we are cradled in a body of faith, which from another aspect can be called the astral body, so are we cradled also in a body of love, or, as in Spiritual Science we called it, the etheric body, the body of life-forces. For the chief forces working in us from the etheric body, out of the depths of our being, are those expressed in a man's capacity for loving at every stage of his existence. If a man could completely empty his being of the force of love—but that indeed is impossible for the greatest egoist, thanks be to God, for even in egoistical striving there is still some element of love. Take this case, for example: whoever is unable to love anything else can often begin, if he is sufficiently avaricious, by loving money, at least substituting for charitable love another love—albeit one arising from egoism. For were there no love at all in a man, the sheath which should be sustained by love-forces would shrivel, and the man, empty of love, would actually perish; he would really meet with physical death.

This shriveling of the forces of love can also be called a shriveling of the forces belonging to the etheric body; for the etheric body is the same as the body of love. Thus at the very centre of a man's being we have his essential kernel, the ego, surrounded by its sheaths; first the body of faith, and then round it the body of love.

If we go further, we come to another set of forces we all need in life, and if we do not, or cannot, have them at all—well, that is very distinctly to be seen in a man's external nature. For the forces we need emphatically as life-giving forces are those of hope, of confidence in the future. As far as the physical world is concerned, people cannot take a single step in life without hope. They certainly make strange excuses, sometimes, if they are unwilling to acknowledge that human beings need to know something of what happens between death and rebirth. They say: “Why do we need to know that, when we don't know what will happen to us here from one day to another? So why are we supposed to know what takes place between death and a new birth?” But do we actually know nothing about the following day? We may have no knowledge of what is important for the details of our super-sensible life, or, to speak more bluntly, whether or not we shall be physically alive. We do, however, know one thing—that if we are physically alive the next day there will be morning, midday, evening, just as there are to-day. If to-day as a carpenter I have made a table, it will still be there tomorrow; if I am a shoemaker, someone will be able to put on tomorrow what I have made to-day; and if I have sown seeds I know that next year they will come up. We know about the future just as much as we need to know. Life would be impossible in the physical world were not future events to be preceded by hope in this rhythmical way. Would anyone make a table to-day without being sure it would not be destroyed in the night; would anyone sow seeds if he had no idea what would become of them?

It is precisely in physical life that we need hope, for everything is upheld by hope and without it nothing can be done. The forces of hope, therefore, are connected with our last sheath as human beings, with our physical body. What the forces of faith are for our astral body, and the love-forces for the etheric, the forces of hope are for the physical body. Thus a man who is unable to hope, a man always despondent about what he supposes the future may bring, will go through the world with this clearly visible in his physical appearance. Nothing makes for deep wrinkles, those deadening forces in the physical body, sooner than lack of hope.

The inmost kernel of our being may be said to be sheathed in our faith-body or astral body, in our body of love or etheric body, and in our hope-body or physical body; and we comprehend the true significance of our physical body only when we bear in mind that, in reality, it is not sustained by external physical forces of attraction and repulsion—that is a materialistic idea—but has in it what, according to our concepts, we know as forces of hope. Our physical body is built up by hope, not by forces of attraction and repulsion. This very point can show that the new spiritual-scientific revelation gives us the truth.

What then does Spiritual Science give us? By revealing the all-embracing laws of karma and reincarnation, it gives us something which permeates us with spiritual hope, just as does our awareness on the physical plane that the sun will rise tomorrow and that seeds will eventually grow into plants. It shows, if we understand karma, that our physical body, which will perish into dust when we have gone through the gate of death, can through the forces permeating us with hope be re-built for a new life. Spiritual Science fills men with the strongest forces of hope. Were this Spiritual Science, this new revelation for the present time, to be rejected, men naturally would return to earth in future all the same, for life on earth would not cease on account of people's ignorance of its laws. Human beings would incarnate again; but there would be something very strange about these incarnations. Men would gradually become a race with bodies wrinkled and shriveled all over, earthly bodies which would finally be so crippled that people would be entirely incapacitated. To put it briefly, in future incarnations a condition of dying away, of withering up, would assail mankind if their consciousness, and from there the hidden depths of their being right down into the physical body, were not given fresh life through the power of hope.

This power of hope arises through the certainty of knowledge gained from the laws of karma and reincarnation. Already there is a tendency in human beings to produce withering bodies, which in future would become increasingly rickety even in the very bones. Marrow will be brought to the bones, forces of life to the nerves, by this new revelation, whose value will not reside merely in theories but in its life-giving forces—above all in those of hope.

Faith, love, hope, constitute three stages in the essential being of man; they are necessary for health and for life as a whole, for without them we cannot exist. Just as work cannot be done in a dark room until light is obtained, it is equally impossible for a human being to carry on in his fourfold nature if his three sheaths are not permeated, warmed through, and strengthened by faith, love, and hope. For faith, love, hope are the basic forces in our astral body, our etheric body, and our physical body. And from this one instance you can judge how the new revelation makes its entry into the world, permeating the old language with thought-content. Are not these three wonderful words urged upon us in the Gospel revelation, these words of wisdom that ring through the ages—faith, love, hope? But little has been understood of their whole connection with human life, so little that only in certain places has their right sequence been observed.

It is true that faith, love, hope, are sometimes put in this correct order; but the significance of the words is so little appreciated that we often hear faith, hope, love, which is incorrect; for you cannot say astral body, physical body, etheric body, if you would give them their right sequence. That would be putting things higgledy-piggledy, as a child will sometimes do before it understands the thought-content of what is said. It is the same with everything relating to the second revelation. It is permeated throughout with thought; and we have striven to permeate with thought our explanation of the Gospels. For what have they meant for people up to now? They have been something with which to fortify mankind and to fill them with great and powerful perceptions, something to inspire men to enter into the depth of heart and feeling in the Mystery of Golgotha. But now consider the simple fact that people have only just begun to reflect upon the Gospels, and in doing so they have straightway found contradictions upon which Spiritual Science alone can help to throw light. Thus it is only now that they are beginning to let their souls be worked on by the thought-content of what the Gospels give them in language of the super-sensible worlds. In this connection we have pointed out what is so essential and of such consequence for our age: the new appearance of the Christ in an etheric body, for his appearance in a physical body is ruled out by the whole character of our times.

Hence we have indicated that the Christ, in contradistinction as it were to the suffering Christ on Golgotha, is appearing now as Christ triumphant, Christ the Lord of Karma. This has been fore-shadowed by those who have painted Him as the Christ of the Last Judgment. Whether painted or described in words, something is represented which at the appointed time will come to pass.

In truth, this begins in the 20th century and will hold good until the end of the earth. It is in our 20th century that this judgment, this ordering of Karma, begins, and we have seen how infinitely important it is for our age that this revelation should come to men in such a way that even concepts such as faith, love, hope, can be given their true valuation for the first time.

John the Baptist said: Change your mood of soul, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. That is, take to yourselves the human ego that need no longer abstain from approaching the spiritual world—a saying which points clearly to what is here in question, namely, that with the event of Palestine the time came for the super-sensible to pour light into the ego of man, so that into his ego the heavens are able to descend. Previously, the ego could come to men only by sinking into their unconscious. But those who interpret everything materialistically say: The Christ, reckoning with the weaknesses, errors and prejudices of His contemporaries, even foretold, like the credulous people of His time, that the millennium would be realised or that a great catastrophe would fall upon the earth. Neither of these events, however, came about. There was indeed a catastrophe, but perceptible only to the spirit. The credulous and superstitious, who believe Christ to have foretold how His actual coming would be from the clouds, interpreted His meaning in a materialistic way.

To-day, also, there are people who thus interpret what is to be grasped only in spirit, and when nothing happens in a material sense they judge the matter in just the same way as was done in the case of the millennium. How many indeed we find to-day who, speaking almost pityingly of those events, say that Christ was influenced by the beliefs of His time and looked for the impending approach to earth of the Kingdom of Heaven. That was a weakness on Christ's part, they say, and then it was seen—and remarked upon even by distinguished theologians—that the Kingdom of Heaven has not come down on earth.

It may be that men will meet our new revelation, too, in such a way that after a time, when the enhancement of men's faculties is in full swing, they will say, “Well, nothing has come of all these predictions of yours”, not realising that they just cannot see what is there. Thus do events repeat themselves. Spiritual Science is meant to gather together a large number of people, until fulfilment comes for what has been said by those with a right knowledge of how during this century the new revelation and the new super-sensible facts are appearing in human evolution. They will then continue their course in the same way, becoming ever more significant throughout the next 3,000 years, until important new weighty facts are once more revealed to mankind.

Yesterday we tried to gain a conception of the importance in human life of what may be termed the super-sensible revelation of our age. We indicated that this was to be reckoned the third revelation in the most recent cycle of mankind, and should, in a certain sense, be regarded as in sequence to the Sinai revelation and the revelation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. We ought not to look upon this feature of our age as something affecting us merely theoretically or scientifically; as Anthroposophists we must rise to an ever fuller realisation that men, in their evolution, are neglecting something essential if they hold aloof from all that is being announced to us now and will be announced in the future. It is quite appropriate that at first the external world should pass this by, or even treat it as sheer fantasy; and quite natural also that, to begin with, many people should not pay attention to the harmful consequences of disregarding what is here in question. But Anthroposophists should be clear that the souls in human bodies to-day, irrespective of what they absorb at present, are approaching an ineluctable future. What I shall have to say concerns every soul, for it is part of the whole trend of change in our time.

The souls incorporated to-day have only recently advanced to the stage of that genuine ego-consciousness which has been in preparation during the course of evolution ever since the old Atlantean period. But for the people of those ancient days, up to the time when the great change was intimated by the Mystery of Golgotha, this ego-consciousness was gradually freeing itself from a consciousness of which present-day people no longer have any real knowledge. To-day modern men generally distinguish only between our ordinary condition of being awake and the state of sleep, when consciousness is in complete abeyance. Between these states they recognise also the intermediate one of dreaming, but from the present-day standpoint they can regard it only as a kind of aberration, a departure from the normal. Through dream-pictures certain events from the depths of the soul-life rise into consciousness; but in ordinary dreaming they emerge in such an obscure form that the dreamer is scarcely ever able to interpret rightly their very real bearing on deep super-sensible processes in his life of soul.

In order to grasp one characteristic feature of this intermediate state—a state well understood in earlier times—let us take an ordinary dream of which a scientific modern investigator of dreams, able to interpret it only superficially and in a materialistic way, has made a regular conundrum. A highly significant dream! You see, I am taking my example from the science of dreams, which—as I have mentioned before—has to-day been given a place, little understood though it is, among sciences such as chemistry and physics. The following dream, a characteristic one, has been recorded. I might easily have taken my example from similar, unpublished, dreams; but I would like to deal with one which raises certain problems for present-day commentators, who have no key to such matters.

Now the case is this. A married couple had a much beloved son, who was growing up to the joy of his parents. One day he fell ill, and his condition worsened in a few hours to such a degree that, at the end of this one day, he passed through the gate of death. Thus for the ordinary experience of this couple, their son was abruptly snatched from them, and the son himself torn from a life full of promise. The parents, naturally, mourned their son. During the months following there was a great deal in the dreams of both husband and wife to remind them of him. But, quite a long time—many, many months—after his death, there came a night when his father and mother had exactly the same dream. They dreamed that their son appeared to them saying he had been buried alive, having only been in a trance, and that they merely had to look into the matter to be convinced that this was true.

The parents told each other what they had thus dreamed on the same night, and such was their attitude to life that they immediately asked the authorities for permission to have their son's body disinterred. In such matters, however—conditions being as they are—authorities are not easily persuaded; the request was refused. The parents had this further cause for grieving.

Now the investigator who gave his account of the dream, and could think of it only in a materialistic way, was faced with great difficulties. To begin with it is very easy to say: Yes, this is quite intelligible. The parents were thinking so much about their son that it is obvious they would both have dreamt of him. But the puzzling thing was that they should have had the same dream on the same night. The investigator finally explained it in a remarkable way which is bound to seem very forced to anyone reading it. He said: We can only assume that one parent had the dream, and the other, hearing it when awake, got the idea that he (or she) had dreamt it also. To present-day consciousness this interpretation at first seems fairly obvious, but it doesn't go very deep. I have expressly mentioned that for anyone well-versed in dream-experiences there is nothing unusual in several people having the same dream at the same time.

Let us try now to look into this dream-experience from the point of view of Spiritual Science. The results of spiritual investigation show how a man who has gone through the gate of death lives on as an individuality in the spiritual world. We know, too, that there are definite connections between every thing and every being in the world, and that this is evident in the link that unites those who have departed with people still on earth, when the latter lovingly concentrate thoughts on their dead. There is no question of there not being a connection between those on the physical plane and those who have left it for the super-sensible world. There is always a connection when thoughts are turned at all to the dead by those left on the physical plane—a connection that may continue even when their thoughts are directed elsewhere. But the point is that human beings, organised as they are now for life on the physical plane, are unable when awake to become conscious of these bonds. Having no knowledge of a thing, however, does not justify denying its existence; that would be a very superficial conclusion. On that basis, those now sitting in this room and not seeing Nuremberg could easily prove there is no such place. So we must be clear that it is only because of their present-day organisation that men know nothing of their connection with the dead; it exists all the same.

However, knowledge of what is going on in the depths of the soul can occasionally be conjured up into consciousness, and this happens in dreams. It is one thing we have to reckon with when considering dream-experiences. Another thing is the knowledge that passing through death is not the sudden leap imagined by those knowing nothing about it; it is a gradual transition. What occupies a soul here on earth does not then vanish in a moment. What a man loves, he continues to love after his death. But there is no possibility of satisfying a feeling which depends for its satisfaction on a physical body. The wishes and desires of the soul, its joys, sorrows, the particular tendencies it has during incorporation in a physical body—these naturally continue even when the gate of death has been passed. We can therefore understand how strong was the feeling in this young man, meeting with death when quite unprepared, that he would like to be still on earth, and how keen was his longing to be in a physical body. This desire, working as a force in the soul, lasted on for a long, long time during his Kamaloka.

Now picture to yourselves vividly the parents, with their thoughts engrossed by this beloved dead son. Even in sleep the connecting links were there. Just at the moment when both father and mother began to dream, the son, in accordance with the state of his soul, had a particularly keen desire that we may perhaps clothe in these words: “Oh! If only I were still on earth in a physical body.” This thought on the part of the dead son sank deep into his parents' soul, but they had no special faculty for understanding what lay behind the dream. Thus the imprint of the thought on their life of soul was transformed into familiar images. Whereas, if they could have clearly perceived what the son was pouring into their souls, their interpretation would have been: “Our son is longing just now for a physical body.” In fact, the dream-image clothed itself in words they understood—“He has been buried alive!”—which hid the truth from them.

Thus, in dream-pictures of this kind we should not look for an exact replica of what is real in the spiritual worlds; we must expect the actual objective occurrence to be veiled in accordance with the dreamer's degree of understanding. To-day it is the peculiar feature of the dream-world that—if we are unable to go into these matters more deeply—we can no longer regard its pictures as faithful copies of what underlies them. We are obliged to say: Something is always living in our soul behind the dream-picture, and this picture can be looked upon only as a still greater illusion than the external world confronting us when we are awake.

It is only in our time that dreams are appearing to people in this guise; strictly speaking only since the events in Palestine, when ego-consciousness took on the form it has now. Before then, the pictures appeared while men were in a state different from either waking or sleeping—a third state, more like the one prevailing in the super-sensible world. Human beings lived with the dead in spirit far more than is feasible nowadays. There is no need to look back many centuries before the Christian era to realise what a countless number of people were then able to say: “The dead are certainly not dead; they are living in the super-sensible world. I can perceive what they are feeling and seeing, what they now actually are. This holds good also for the other Beings in the super-sensible world; those, for instance, whom we know as the Hierarchies.”

Thus, for human beings in certain states between waking and sleeping, these were experiences of which the last degenerate echoes linger on in dreams. Hence it was very important that men should then feel this disappearance of something they once possessed. In that traditional epoch of human evolution, when the great events were taking place in Palestine, there was indeed cause for saying: “Change your mood of soul; quite different times are coming for mankind.” And among the changes was this—that the old possibility of seeing into the spiritual world, of personally experiencing how matters stood with the dead and with all other spiritual beings, was going to pass away.

The history of those olden days offers ample evidence of this living with the dead—notably in the religious veneration arising everywhere in the form of ancestor-worship. This was founded on belief in the reality and activity of those who had died. And whereas it continued almost everywhere during the transitional period, men's experience was this, though perhaps not put clearly into words: “Formerly our souls could rise to the world we call that of the spirit, and we were able to dwell among the higher Beings and with the dead. But now our dead leave us in quite another sense; they disappear from our consciousness and the old vivid contact is no more.”

We come here to something exceptionally difficult to grasp, but the intelligent mind, the intelligent soul, can learn to do so. It was the early Christians who felt most vividly the loss of direct psychical contact with the dead, and it was this that made their worship of God so full of meaning, so infinitely deep and holy. They compensated for what was lost by the reverent feeling they brought to their religious ceremonies; when, for instance, they sacrificed at the graves of their dead or celebrated the Mass, or observed any other religious rite. In fact, it was during this period of transition, when consciousness of the dead was seen to be wanting, that altars took the shape of coffins. Thus it was with a feeling for mortal remains of this kind—unlike that of the ancient Egyptians—that the service of God, the service of the spirit, was reverently performed. As I have said, this is something not easy to understand. We need, however, only observe the form of an altar, and allow our hearts to respond to this gradual change in men's whole outlook, and feeling and understanding will then arise for the change and its consequences.

We see, therefore, that slowly, gradually, the present state of the human soul was brought about. From indications given yesterday it can be gathered that what has thus come into being will again be succeeded by a different state, for which people are already developing faculties. The example I gave you yesterday of how a man will see, in a kind of dream picture, his future karmic compensation for some deed, means the re-awakening of faculties that will lead the soul once more to the spiritual worlds. In relation to earthly evolution as a whole, the intermediate state when the soul has been cut off from the super-sensible world, will prove to be comparatively short. It had to come about for men to be able to acquire the strongest possible forces for their freedom. But something else of which I have spoken was bound up with the whole progress of human evolution—that only in this way was a man able to acquire a feeling of the ego within him; to have, that is, the right ego-consciousness. The farther men advance into the future, the more firmly will this ego-consciousness establish itself within them, always increasing in significance. In other words, the force and self-sufficiency of men's individuality will be increasingly accentuated, so that it becomes necessary for them to find in themselves their own effective support.

Thus we see that the ego-consciousness men have to-day does not go back as far as is usually imagined. Only a few incarnations ago, men had no ego-feeling such as is characteristic of them to-day. And as the ego-feeling is intimately connected with memory, we need not be surprised that many people should not have begun, as yet, to look back on their previous incarnations. Because of the undeveloped state of this feeling for his ego during early childhood, a man does not even remember what happened to him then; so it seems quite comprehensible that, for the same reason, he is unable yet to remember his earlier incarnations. But now we have come to the point when man has developed a feeling for his ego, and the forces are unfolding which will make it necessary in our coming incarnations to remember those that have gone before. The days are drawing near when people will feel bound to admit: “We have strange glimpses into the past, when we were already on the earth but living in another bodily form. We look back and have to say that we were already then on earth.” And among the faculties appearing more and more in human beings will be one which arouses the feeling: It can only be that I am looking back on earlier incarnations of my own.

Just think how in the human souls now on earth the inner force is already arising which will enable them, in their next incarnations, to look back and to recognise themselves. But for those who have not become familiar with the idea of reincarnation this looking back will be a veritable torment. Ignorance of the mysteries of repeated earthly lives will be actually painful for these human beings; forces in them are striving to rise and bear witness to earlier times, but this cannot happen because all knowledge of these forces is refused. Not to learn of the truths now being proclaimed through Spiritual Science does not mean neglecting—let us say—mere theories; it is on the way to making a torment of life in future incarnations. In these times of transition, accordingly, something is happening; the slow preparation for it can be gathered from our second Mystery Play, “The Soul's Probation,” where we are shown earlier incarnations of the characters portrayed—incarnations of only a few centuries before. The event was then already in preparation; and now, thanks to the wisdom of cosmic guidance, human beings will be given positive opportunities of making themselves familiar with the truths of the Mysteries.

At present comparatively few find their way to Spiritual Science; their number is modest compared with that of the rest of mankind. It may be said that interest in Anthroposophy is not yet very wide-spread. But, in our age, the law of reincarnation is such that those now going through the world apathetically, ignoring what experience can tell about the need for exploring the riddles of life, will incarnate again in a relatively short time, and thus have ample opportunity for absorbing the truths of Spiritual Science. That is how it stands. So that when perhaps we see around us people we esteem, people we love, who will have nothing to do with Anthroposophy, are even hostile towards it, we ought not to take it too much to heart. It is perfectly true, and should be realised by Anthroposophists, that refusing to look into Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy, means preparing a life of torment for future incarnations on earth. That is true, and should not be treated lightly. On the other hand, those who see friends and acquaintances they care for showing no inclination towards Anthroposophy can say: “If I become a good Anthroposophist myself, I shall find an early opportunity, with the forces remaining to me after death, to prove helpful to these souls”—provided the living link we have spoken of is there. And because the interval between death and rebirth is becoming shorter, these souls, too, will have the opportunity of absorbing the Mystery-truths that must be absorbed if torment is to be avoided in men's coming incarnations. All is not yet lost.

We have, therefore, to look upon Anthroposophy as a real power; while on the other hand we must not be unduly grieved or pessimistic about the matter. It would be mistaken optimism to say: “If that is how things are, I need not accept the truths of Spiritual Science till my next incarnation” If everyone were to say that, when gradually the next incarnations come, there would be too few opportunities for effective aid to be given. Even if those wishing for Anthroposophy can now receive its truths from only quite a few people, the situation will be different for the countless hosts of those who, in a comparatively short time, will be eagerly turning to Anthroposophy. A countless number of Anthroposophists will then be needed to make these truths known, either here on the physical plane, or—if they are not incarnated—from higher planes.

That is one thing we must learn from the whole character of the great change now taking place. The other is that all this has to be experienced by the ego so that it should rely increasingly upon itself, becoming more and more independent. The self-reliance of the ego must come for all souls; but it will mean disaster for those who make no effort to learn about the great spiritual truths, for the increasing individualism will be felt by them as isolation. On the other hand, those who have made themselves familiar with the deep mysteries of the spiritual world will thereby find a way to forge ever stronger spiritual bands between souls. Old bonds will be loosened, new ones formed. All this is imminent, but it will be gradual.

We are living at present in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which will be followed by a sixth and then by a seventh, when a catastrophe will come upon us, just as one came between the Atlantean and post-Atlantean periods. When the lectures on the Apocalypse were given here in Nuremberg, you heard a description of this coming catastrophe, of how it will resemble and how it will differ from the one in old Atlantis.

If we observe life around us, we might express the particular feature of our age in this way: The most active element in human beings to-day is their intellectualism, their intellectual conception of the world. We are living altogether in an age of intellectualism. It has been brought about through quite special circumstances, and we shall come to understand these if we look back to the time before our present fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the Graeco-Latin, as it is called. That was the remarkable period when human beings had not reached their present state of detachment from the outer manifestations of nature and knowledge of the world. But at the same time it was the epoch in which the ego descended among men. The Christ-event had also to happen in that epoch, because, with Him, the ego made its descent in a special way.

What then is our present experience? It is not just of the entering-in of the ego; we now experience how one of our sheaths casts a kind of reflection upon the soul. The sheath to which yesterday we gave the name of “faith-body” throws its reflection on to the human soul, in this fifth epoch. Thus it is a feature of present-day man that he has something in his soul which is, as it were, a reflection of the nature of faith of the astral body. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch there will be a reflection within man of the love-nature of the etheric body, and in the seventh, before the great catastrophe, the reflection of the nature of hope of the physical body.

For those who have heard lectures I am giving in various places just now, I would note that these gradual happenings have been described from a different point of view both in Munich and in Stuttgart; the theme, however, is always the same. What is now being portrayed in connection with the three great human forces, Faith, Love, Hope, was there represented in direct relation to the elements in a man's life of soul; but it is all the same thing. I have done this intentionally, so that Anthroposophists may grew accustomed to get the gist of a matter without strict adherence to special words. When we realise that things can be described from many different sides, we shall no longer pin so much faith on words but focus our efforts on the matter itself, knowing that any description amounts only to an approximation of the whole truth. This adherence to the original words is the last thing that can help us to get to the heart of a matter. The one helpful means is to harmonise what has been said in successive epochs, just as we learn about a tree by studying it not from one direction only but from many different aspects.

Thus at present it is essentially the force of faith of the astral body which, shining into the soul, is characteristic of our time. Someone might say: “That is rather strange. You are telling us now that the ruling force of the age is faith. We might admit this in the case of those who hold to old beliefs, but to-day so many people are too mature for that, and they look down on such old beliefs as belonging to the childish stage of human evolution.” It may well be that people who say they are monists believe they do not believe, but actually they are more ready to do so than those calling themselves believers. For, though monists are not conscious of it, all that we see in the various forms of monism is belief of the blindest kind, believed by the monists to be knowledge. We cannot describe their doings at all without mentioning belief. And, apart from the belief of those who believe they do not believe, we find that, strictly speaking, an endless amount of what is most important to-day is connected with the reflection the astral body throws into the soul, giving it thereby the character of ardent faith. We have only to call to mind lives of the great men of our age, Richard Wagner's for example, and how even as an artist he was rising all his life to a definite faith; it is fascinating to watch this in the development of his personality. Everywhere we look to-day, the lights and shadows can be interpreted as the reflection of faith in what we may call the ego-soul of man.

Our age will be followed by one in which the need for love will cast its light. Love in the sixth culture-epoch will show itself in a very different form—different even from that which can be called Christian love. Slowly we draw nearer to that epoch; and by making those in the Anthroposophical Movement familiar with the mysteries of the cosmos, with the nature of the various individualities both on the physical plane and on the higher planes, we try to kindle love for everything in existence. This is not done so much by talking of love, as by feeling that what is able to kindle love in the soul is prepared for the sixth epoch by Anthroposophy. Through Anthroposophy the forces of love are specially aroused in the whole human soul, and that is prepared which a man needs for gradually acquiring a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For it is indeed true that the Mystery of Golgotha came to pass; and the Gospels have evoked something which yesterday was likened to how children learn to speak. But the deepest lesson—the mission of earthly love in its connection with the Mystery of Golgotha—has not yet been grasped. Full understanding of this will be possible only in the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch, when people grow to realise more and more that the foundations for it are actually within them, and out of their innermost being—in other words, out of love—do what should be done. Then the guidance of the Commandments will have been outlived and the stage reached that is described in Goethe's words: “Duty—when one loves the commands one gives to oneself.” When forces wake in our souls which impel us to do what we should through love alone, we then discover in us something that must gradually become widespread in the sixth culture-epoch. Then in a man's nature quite special forces of the etheric body will make themselves known.

To understand what it is that must come about increasingly in this way, we have to consider it from two sides. One side has certainly not come yet and is only dreamt of by the most advanced in spirit; it is a well-defined relation between custom, morals, ethics and the understanding, intellectuality. To-day a man may be to a certain extent a rascal, yet at the same time intelligent and clever. He may even use his very cleverness to further his knavery. At present it is not required of people to combine their intelligence with an equal degree of morality. To all that we have been anticipating for the future this must be added—that as we advance, it will no longer be possible for these two qualities of the human soul to be kept apart, or to exist in unequal measure. A man who, according to the reckoning-up of his previous incarnation, has become particularly intelligent without being moral, will in his new incarnation possess only a stunted intelligence. Thus, to have equal amounts of intelligence and morality in future incarnations he will be obliged, as a consequence of universal cosmic law, to enter his new incarnation with an intelligence that is crippled, so that immorality and stupidity coincide. For immorality has a crippling effect upon intelligence. In other words, we are approaching the age when morality and what has now been described for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch as the shining into the ego-soul of the love-forces of the etheric body, point essentially to forces having to do with harmonising those of intelligence and morality. That is the one side to be considered.

The other side is this—that it is solely through harmony of this kind, between morality, custom, and intelligence, that the whole depth of the Mystery of Golgotha is to be grasped. This will come about only through the individuality who before Christ-Jesus came to earth prepared men for that Mystery, developing in his successive inearnations ever greater powers as teacher of the greatest of all earthly events This individuality, whom in his rank as Bodhisatva we call the successor of Gautama Buddha, was incarnated in the personality living about a hundred years before Christ under the name of Jeshu ben Pandira. Among his many students was one who had at that time already, in a certain sense, written down a prophetic version of the Matthew Gospel, and this, after the Mystery of Golgotha had been enacted, needed only to be given a new form.

There have been, and will continue to be, frequent incorporations of the individuality who appeared as Jeshu ben Pandira, until he rises from the rank of Bodhisatva to that of Buddha. According to our reckoning of time this will be in about 3,000 years, when a sufficient number of people will possess the above-mentioned faculties, and when, in the course of a remarkable incarnation of the individual who was once Jeshu ben Pandira, this great teacher of mankind will have become able to act as interpreter of the Mystery of Golgotha in a very different way from what is possible to-day. It is true that even to-day a seer into the super-sensible worlds can gain some idea of what is to happen then; but the ordinary earthly organisation of man cannot yet provide a physical body capable of doing what that teacher will be able to do approximately 3,000 years hence. There is, as yet, no human language through which verbal teaching could exert the magical effects that will spring from the words of that great teacher of humanity. His words will flow directly to men's hearts, into their souls, like a healing medicine; nothing in those words will be merely theoretical. At the same time the teaching will contain—to an extent far greater than it is possible to conceive to-day—a magical moral force carrying to hearts and souls a full conviction of the eternal, deeply significant brotherhood of intellect and morality.

This great teacher, who will be able to give to men ripe for it the profoundest instruction concerning the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha, will fulfil what Oriental prophets have always said—that the true successor of Buddha would be, for all mankind, the greatest teacher of the good. For that reason he has been called in oriental tradition the Maitreya Buddha. His task will be to enlighten human beings concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, and for this he will draw ideas and words of the deepest significance from the very language he will use. No human language to-day can evoke any conception of it. His words will imprint into men's souls directly, magically, the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence in this connection also we are approaching what we may call the future moral age of man; in a certain sense we could designate it as a coming Golden Age.

Even to-day, however, speaking from the ground of Anthroposophy, we point in full consciousness to what is destined to come about—how the Christ will gradually reveal Himself to ever-higher powers in human beings, and how the teachers, who up to now have taught only individual peoples and individual men, will become the interpreters of the great Christ-event for all who are willing to listen. And we can point out how, through the dawning of the age of love, conditions for the age of morality are prepared.

Then will come the last epoch, during which human souls will receive the reflection of what we call hope; when, strengthened through the force flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha and from the age of morality, men will take into themselves forces of hope. This is the most important gift they need in order to face the next catastrophe and to begin a new life, just as was done in this present post-Atlantean age.

When in the final post-Atlantean epoch our external culture, with its tendency to calculation, will have come to a climax, bringing no feeling of satisfaction but leaving those who have not developed the spiritual within them to confront their culture in utter desolation—then out of spirituality the seed of hope will be sown, and in the next period of human evolution this will grow to maturity. If the spirit is denied all possibility of imparting to men's souls what it can give, and what the Anthroposophical Movement has the will to convey, this external culture might for a short while be able to hold its own. Ultimately, however, people would ask themselves what they had gained and say: “We have wireless installations—undreamt of by our ancestors—to transmit our thoughts all over the earth, and what good does it do us? The most trivial, unproductive thoughts are sent hither and thither, and human ingenuity has to be strained to the utmost to enable us to transport from some far distant region, by means of all kinds of perfected appliances, something for us to eat; or to travel at high speeds round the globe. But in our heads there is nothing worth sending from place to place, for our thoughts are cheerless; more-over, since we have had our present means of communication, they have become even more cheerless than when they were conveyed in the old snail-like fashion.”

In short, despair and desolation are all that our civilisation can spread over the earth. But, in the last culture-epoch, souls who have accepted the spiritual in life will have become enriched, as if on the ruins of the external life of culture. Their surety that this acceptance of the spiritual has not been in vain will be the strong force of hope within them—hope that after a great catastrophe a new age will come for human beings, when there will appear in external life, in a new culture, what has already been prepared spiritually within the soul.

Thus, if we permeate our whole being with Spiritual Science, we advance step by step, in full consciousness, from our age of faith, through the age of love and that of hope, to what we can see approaching us as the highest, truest, most beautiful, of all human souls.

Spiritual Science—The Gospel—The Future of Mankind

In the autumn of this present year Nuremberg can celebrate an important centenary, for it was in 1808 that this city received one of the greatest German spirits within her walls. He was one of those spirits of whom we hear little to-day and whose works are understood still less; but he will signify very much for man's intellectual life in the future when he is once understood. He is doubtless difficult to understated and it may be some time before people grasp him again. In the autumn of 1808 Hegel became Director of the Royal Grammar School in Nuremberg.

Hegel made a statement that we may perhaps take as foundation for what we are going to study. He said: The most profound thought is connected with the figure of Christ, with the outer historical figure. And it is the greatness of the Christian religion that every grade of consciousness can grasp the historical external figure, while at the same time it is a challenge to the most earnest labours of the mind and the deepest penetration. The Christian religion is comprehensible at every stage of culture and yet at the same time it challenges the deepest wisdom.—These are the words of Hegel, the German philosopher.

That the Christian faith, the message of the Gospel, can be understood at every stage of consciousness has been taught for a period to be reckoned almost in millennia. To show that it is a summons to the deepest thought, to a penetration into humanity's whole fund of wisdom, will be one of the tasks of Spiritual Science, if this is understood in its true sense and inmost impulse and made the guide of human life. What we are to consider to-day will be misunderstood if it is thought that Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science is in any way a new religion or desires to establish a new religious faith in place of an old one. One might say, not to be misunderstood, if Spiritual Science is grasped aright, it will be clear that though it is a sure and firm supporter of religious life, in itself it is no religion, nor will it ever contradict any religion as such. It is another matter, however, for it to be the instrument to explain the profoundest truths and the most earnest and vital secrets of religions and show how they may be understood.

It may seem somewhat far-fetched if we make the following comparison in order to show the relation of Theosophy or Anthroposophy to religious documents (and to-day we shall be concerned with the religious documents of Christianity). Anthroposophy is related to the religious documents as mathematical instruction is related to the books on mathematics which have appeared in the course of mankind's history. We have an old work which is really of interest only to students of history versed in mathematics, namely, the geometry of Euclid. It contains for the first time in a scholastic form the mathematical and geometrical facts that are now taught to children in school. How few of the children are aware, however, that all that they learn about parallel lines, triangles, angles, etc., stands in that old book, that it was given to humanity then for the first time. It is quite right to make the child conscious that one can realize these things in oneself, that if the human spirit sets its forces in motion and applies them to the forms of space it is able to realize these forms without reference to that ancient book. Yet someone who has never heard of the book and has been taught mathematics and geometry will value and understand it in the right sense if he one day comes across it. He will know how to prize what was given to mankind by the one who set this work for the first time before the human spirit. In this way one might characterize the relation of Spiritual Science to religious documents.

The sources of Spiritual Science are of such a nature that if it is understood in its true impulse it is not to be referred to any kind of document or tradition. Just as knowledge of the surrounding sense-world is given us by the free use of our forces, so can the knowledge of the super-sensible, the invisible lying behind the visible, be given us by the deep-lying spiritual forces and faculties slumbering within the human soul. When man uses the instruments of his senses he can perceive things lying before him and combine them with his intellect. In the same way someone using the means given him through Spiritual Science can look behind the veils of sense-existence to the spiritual causes, to where beings weave and work which are imperceptible to the physical eye and ear. Thus it is in the free use of man's forces, though they are still slumbering as super-sensible forces in the majority of men, that we have the independent source of spiritual knowledge, just as the source of external knowledge lies in the free use of forces directed to the sense-world. And when man possesses the knowledge which introduces him into the super-sensible behind the sensible, the invisible behind the visible, a knowledge as definite as his knowledge of outer objects and events, then he may go to the traditional books and records. Furnished with super-sensible knowledge he may approach the records through which, during the course of evolution, tidings have reached man of the super-sensible world, just as the geometrician approaches the geometry of Euclid. And then he tests them as the modern geometrician tests the geometry of Euclid; he can prize and recognize these documents at their true value. Nor does one who approaches the records of Christianity equipped with knowledge of the super-sensible world find that they lose in value; indeed on the contrary, they appear in a more brilliant light than they showed first to the mere believer, they prove to contain deeper wisdom than had been dreamt of earlier, before the possession of anthroposophical knowledge.

But we must be clear on another point before we can realize the right relation of Anthroposophy to the religious documents. Let us ask ourselves who is better able to judge the geometry of Euclid—one who can translate the words and give the contents without having first penetrated into the spirit of geometry, or one who already understands geometry and is therefore able to discover it in the book? Let us think of a mere philologist, one who knows nothing of geometry, how many incorrect statements would appear if he tried to convey the meaning of the contents. Many have done this with the records of religion, even those who are supposed to be chosen to fathom their true sense. They have gone to these records without first having any independent knowledge of super-sensible facts. And so we have to-day most careful explanations of religious documents, explanations that explore the history of the time and show how the documents originated, and so on. But the explanations resemble explanations of Euclid's geometry by a non-geometrician. Religion—and this we will hold fast—can only be found if one is aided by spiritual-scientific knowledge, although Spiritual Science can only be an instrument of the religious life, never a religion itself. Religion is best characterized through the content of the human heart, that sum of feelings and emotions through which man's sensitive soul sends up all that is best in it to the super-sensible beings and powers. The character of a man's religion depends on the fire of these feelings, the strength of his sensitivity, just as it depends on the warm pulse-beat in the breast and on the feeling for beauty how a man will stand before a picture. True it is that the contents of the religious life is what we call the spiritual or super-sensible world. But just as little as an aesthetic feeling for art is the same as an inner grasp of its laws—though it may assist understanding just as little are the wisdom, the science, that lead into the spiritual worlds the same as religion. This science will make religious feeling more earnest, worthier, broader, but it will not be religion itself. Grasped in its true sense it may lead to religion.

If we wish to understand the force and significance, the real spirit of the Christian religion we must penetrate far into spiritual life. We must look back into times of a primeval past, the pre-religious age of mankind, and try to envisage the origin of religion. Is there a pre-religious age of humanity? Yes, a time existed on earth when there was no religion; this is acknowledged by Spiritual Science though in a very different sense from the assertions of materialistic civilization. What does religion signify for mankind? It was and for a long time will still be that which the word itself signifies. The word “religion” means the uniting of man with his divine element, with the world of the spirit. The religious ages are essentially those in which man has longed for union with the divine, be it out of the sources of knowledge, or from a certain feeling, or because he felt that his will could only be strong if it were permeated by divine forces. Ages in which man had an inner premonition rather than definite vision, in which he rather sensed that a spiritual world was around him, than saw it—these are the religious ages of our earth. And before these ages were others when man did not need such a sense of longing for union with the super-sensible spiritual world, because he knew that world, as to-day he knows things of the sense world. Does man need to be convinced of the existence of stones, plants, animals? Does he need documents or doctrines to prove to him or let him surmise that there are rocks, plants, animals? No, for he sees them round him and needs therefore no religion of the sense-perceptible world. Let us imagine someone from quite another world, possessing quite different senses and organs of knowledge, one who would not see the stones, plants and animals because to him they were invisible. Let us imagine that he was informed through writings or in some other way of their existence, which to you is a matter of direct sight and knowledge. What would that be for him? It would be religion. If he were informed through some book of the existence of stones and plants and animals it would be religion to him, for he has never seen them. There was a time in which humanity lived amongst those spiritual beings and deeds that are recorded in the religious teachings and teachings of wisdom.

The word “evolution” has become a magic word in many fields of thought to-day, but it has been applied by science solely to outer sense-perceptible facts. To one who regards the world from the standpoint of Spiritual Science everything is in process of evolution, and most of all the human consciousness. The state of consciousness in which man lives to-day, through which when he wakes in the morning he is able to grasp the world with his senses, this state has evolved from a different one. We call the present consciousness the clear day-consciousness. But this has evolved from an ancient state which we call the dull picture-consciousness of mankind. There, however, we reach back to humanity's early evolutionary stages of which anthropology tells nothing, since it uses only the instruments of the senses and methods of the intellect. It believes that man has gone through stages in the far past which are the same as the animal creation passes through to-day. We have seen in earlier lectures how the relation of man to the animal is to be understood. Man was never such a being as the present animal, nor is he descended from beings like them. If we were to describe the forms out of which man has evolved they would prove very different in appearance from the present-day animal. These are creatures which have stayed behind at earlier stages of evolution, con-served these stages and hardened them. The human being has grown beyond his earlier evolutionary stages, the animal has gone down below them. So in the animal world we see some-thing like laggard brothers of humanity, who no longer, however, bear the form of those earlier stages.

The earlier stages of evolution took their course when there were different conditions of life on the earth, when the elements were not distributed as they are to-day, when the human being was not encumbered with the kind of body he now bears, and yet was man. He was able to wait, figuratively speaking, within the course of evolution for his entry into the flesh, was able to wait until the fleshly materiality had reached a condition in which he could develop the forces of the present spirit. The animals were not able to wait, they became hardened at an earlier stage, took on flesh earlier than was right. They were therefore obliged to stay behind. We can thus picture that the human being has lived under other conditions and other forms of consciousness. If we follow these back for thousands and thousands of years we shall always find different ones. What to-day we call logical thought, intellect, understanding, has only evolved late in man's history. Much stronger were certain forces in him which are already beginning to decline, such, for instance, as memory. In an earlier age memory was far more developed than it is now. With the growth of the intellect in mankind, memory has stepped essentially into the background. If one uses some measure of practical observation one can recognize that what Spiritual Science relates is not said without foundation. People might assert that if that were true about memory, then a person remaining backward in development by some accident, should be backward least of all in memory. It could also be claimed that if intellectuality were fostered in a person artificially kept back, then his memory would suffer. Here in this city a characteristic case of this very nature is to be found.

Professor Daumer, whom one must hold in the highest esteem, observed this case very thoroughly. It was the case of that human being, so enigmatic for many people, who was once placed into this city in a mysterious way, and who in just as mysterious a way met his death in Ansbach. An author, in order to indicate the mystery of his life, wrote that as he was carried out to burial the sun was setting on the one horizon and the moon was rising on the other. I speak, as you know, of Caspar Hauser. If you disregard all the pros and cons that have been asserted, if you look only at what has been fully verified, you will know that this foundling—who was one day simply there in the street, and who since he did not know whence he came, was called the Child of Europe—could neither read nor write when he was found. At an age of twenty years he possessed nothing of what is gained through the intellect but he had a remarkable memory. As they began to instruct him, as logic entered his soul, his memory disappeared. This transition in consciousness was accompanied by something else. He possessed at first an incredible, an entirely inborn truthfulness and it was precisely in this truthfulness that he went more and more astray. The more he nibbled, so to say, at intellectuality, the more it vanished. There would be many things to study were we to enter deeply into this human soul which had been artificially held back. It is not difficult for the student of Spiritual Science to credit the popular tradition, so unacceptable to the learned people of to-day, which relates that while Caspar Hauser still knew nothing, while he still had no idea that there were beings besides himself of different form, he exercised a remarkable effect upon quite savage creatures. Savage animals humbled themselves and became mild, something streamed from him that made such beasts gentle, although they savagely attacked anyone else. We could in fact penetrate deeply into the soul of this remarkable personality, so enigmatic to many, and you would see how things that cannot be explained from ordinary life are led back through Spiritual Science to spiritual facts. Such facts cannot be learnt by speculation but only by spiritual observation, though they are comprehensible to an unbiased and logical thinking.

All this has only been said in order to show you that the modern consciousness has evolved from another, an age-old-state when man was not in direct touch with outer objects in the modern sense, but on the other hand was in connection with facts and beings of the spiritual world. A human being did not see another's physical form—nor did this form resemble that of to-day. When another being approached him a sort of dream-picture arose and by its shape and colouring he knew whether the other was antagonistic to him or sympathetic. Such a consciousness perceived spiritual facts and the spiritual world. To-day man is among beings of flesh and blood, at that time, when he turned his gaze to himself and himself was soul and spirit, he lived among spiritual beings. They were present to him, he was a spirit among spirits. Although his consciousness was only dreamlike, yet the pictures that arose in him were in living relation to his environment. That was the far distant age when man still lived in a spiritual world. Later he descended from it in order to take on a corporeal nature suited to his present consciousness. Animals already existed as physical creatures while man still perceived in spiritual realms. He lived at that time among spiritual beings, and just as you need no proof to be convinced of the presence of stones, plants and animals, so man in those primeval times needed no testimony in order to be convinced of the existence of spiritual beings. He lived among spirits and divine beings and therefore needed no religion. That was the pre-religious age.

Then man descended, the earlier form of consciousness changed into the modern. Colours and forms are no longer perceived as floating in space, colour is laid upon the surfaces of sense-objects. In the same measure as man learnt to direct his senses to the outer world, did this outer world draw itself like a veil, like the great Maja, over the world of spirit. And humanity had to receive tidings of the spiritual world through this sheath, religion became necessary.

There is also a state, however, between the time preceding a religious consciousness and the time of actual religion: there is an intermediate condition. Thence are derived the mythologies, sagas, folk-stories of the spiritual worlds. It is a dreary arid learning that has no inkling of real spiritual events and asserts that all the figures of Nordic or German mythology, of Greek mythology with its accounts of the deeds of the gods are merely inventions of popular fantasy. They are not inventions, the peasant folk do not indulge in such fancies and if they see a few clouds stretched across the sky, say that they are little sheep. That the people have such fantasies is a fiction of our modern learnedness which abounds in lively fantasy about such things. The truth of the matter is quite different. The old saga and stories of the gods are the last relics, the last memories of the pre-religious consciousness. They are records of what men themselves have seen. Those who described Wotan, Thor, Zeus, etc., did so because they remembered that such things had been experienced once upon a time. Mythologies are fragments, broken pieces of what had once been experienced. The intermediate stage was shown in another way as well. Even when clever men had already—let us say—become very clever, there were still persons who under exceptional conditions (call them states of insanity or being carried away, as you will) could see into the spiritual worlds, who could still be aware of what in earlier times was seen by all. They recounted that they themselves still saw something of the spiritual world. This was linked with the memories and led to a living faith among the people. That was a state transitional to the state of actual religion.

We may ask: what paved the way in mankind to an actual religion? It was because men found a means of so developing their inner being that they were once more able to behold the worlds from which they had sprung, which they used to see in a dull consciousness. And here we touch upon a chapter which to many modern minds contains but little probability, the question of initiation. What are initiates? They were those who so developed their inner nature of soul and spirit through certain methods that they grew again into the spiritual world. There is initiation! In every soul super-sensible forces and faculties lie dormant. There is, or at least there can be, a great and mighty moment when these forces awaken. We can gain some idea of this moment if we picture the general course of human evolution. To speak in the words of Goethe we can say that we look back into the far past when the human body had no such physical eye or physical ear as exist to-day. We look back to times when there were undifferentiated organs, able neither to see nor to hear, at the places where these organs are now situated. A time came for physical humanity when such blind organs evolved to radiant points, gradually evolved until light itself dawned upon them. In the same way a time came when the human ear had developed to such a stage that the former silent world revealed itself in tones and harmonies. The sun's forces worked upon the formation of the human eye. And to-day man can live the life of spirit and thus develop the organs of soul and spirit which are largely undeveloped in present mankind.

The moment is possible and for many has already dawned when the soul and spirit are transformed just as once the external physical organism was transformed. New eyes and ears arise through which the light shines and tones resound out of the spiritually dark and silent world. Development is possible, even to the point of living into the higher worlds. That is initiation. And the Mystery Schools provided methods of initiation as in ordinary life the methods of the chemical laboratory or of biological research are made available. The difference is only this—official science has to prepare instruments and other apparatus for its use, while he who would become an initiate has but one instrument to perfect, namely, himself in all his forces just as the force of magnetism can lie dormant in iron, so there slumbers in the human soul the power to penetrate into the spiritual world of light and sound. And so the time came when normal humanity saw only physical sense-existence and when the leaders were initiates. These could see into the spiritual worlds and give information and explanation of the facts of that world in which man had earlier lived.

To what does the first stage of initiation lead? How does it appear to the human soul? Do not imagine that this development is merely a matter of philosophic speculation, a spinning out, a refinement of ideas. The ideas man has about the sense-world are transformed when he grows into the spiritual world. No longer does he apprehend things through sharply outlined concepts, but through pictures, through Imaginations. For the human being grows into the spiritual process of world creation. The firm definite contours of the physical material world exist, in fact, nowhere else. In the world creative process the animal does not appear with clear outline. One has there something like a basic idea of the animal from which the diverse external forms can originate, a living reality, membered in itself. One must take one's stand strictly on the basis of Goethe's words: “All things corruptible are but a semblance.” The initiate learns at first to know and grasp in pictures, he learns to ascend into the spiritual world. There his consciousness must be more mobile than that which serves us for apprehending the surrounding sense-world. Hence this stage of development is called the Imaginative Consciousness. It leads man again into the spiritual world, but not in a dull twilight state. The initiate consciousness to be gained is clear and bright, as clear as man's consciousness by day. There is thus an enrichment, the spiritual consciousness is added to the day-consciousness. In the first stage of initiation man lives in the imaginative consciousness. The documents of humanity record what the initiates experienced in the spiritual world just as information with regard to the science of geometry was imparted to mankind through Euclid. We recognize what stands in these records when we go back to the sources—the spiritual vision of the initiates.

Those were the conditions prevailing among men up to the appearance of the greatest Being who has trodden upon the earth, Christ Jesus. With his appearance anew element entered evolution. If we would understand the essential nature of the new element bestowed on mankind through Christ Jesus, we must realize that in all pre-Christian initiation the candidate was completely withdrawn from ordinary life, he must work upon his soul in centres of profoundest secrecy. Above all we must realize that when man raised himself again into the spiritual world something of that merely dreamlike picture-consciousness still remained. Man had to retreat from this sense-world to be able to enter the spiritual world. That this is no longer necessary to-day has been brought about through the appearing of Christ Jesus on earth. Through the fact that the Christ-principle has entered humanity, the Central Being, the very Centre of the spiritual world, has once existed historically in a human being on this earth. It is the same Being for whom all these have longed who have developed a religious life, who have beheld in the Mystery Centres, who have left the sense-world in order to enter the spiritual world. The Being of whom it has been proclaimed that man confronts it as his highest nature, this has entered humanity's evolution with Christ Jesus. One who understands something of genuine spiritual science knows that all religious proclamation before the coming of Christ Jesus is a prophecy of him.

When the ancient initiates wished to speak of the highest that was accessible to them in the spiritual world, of that which they were able to see as the origin of all things, then under the most diverse names it was of Christ Jesus that they spoke. We need only remember the Old Testament, itself a prophecy. We remember how when Moses was to lead his people he received the command: “Say to thy people that the Lord God has said unto thee what thou shalt do.” Then Moses asks: “How will the people believe me, how can I convince them? What shall I say when they ask who has sent me?” And he was commanded: “Say the ‘I-am’ has sent thee.” Read it again and compare as exactly as you can with the original text and you will see its significance. The “I-Am,” what does that mean? The “I-Am” is the name for the divine Being, the Christ-principle of man—the Being of whom man feels like a drop, a spark, when he can say “I am.” The stone, the plant, the animal cannot say “I am.” Man is the crown of creation inasmuch as he can say “I am” to himself, he can utter a name which does not hold good for anyone but the one who utters it. You alone can call yourself “I”; no one else can call you “I.” Here the soul speaks within itself in a word to which none other has entrance except a Being which comes to the soul through no external sense, on no outer path. Here Divinity speaks. Hence the name “I-Am” was given to the Godhead whose being fills the world. “Say that the ‘I-am’ has told thee !” Thus was Moses to speak to his people.

Men learn only gradually to understand the true, deep meaning of this “I-am.” Human beings did not feel themselves as individuals at once. You can still find this in the Old Testament, these men did not as yet feel individual. Even the members of the German tribes, right into the time of the Christian Church, did not feel themselves to be individualities. Think back to the Cherusci, the Teutons, etc., the German tribes in whose land modern Germany now lies. The separate members felt the tribal ego, and themselves as a part of it. A man would not have said “I am” in the clear, definite way it is said to-day; he felt himself part of an organism composed of those who were related by blood. This blood-relationship assumes the greatest proportions among the followers of the Old Testament religion. The individual felt himself sheltered in the whole folk which for him was ruled by one Ego. He knew the meaning of “I and the Father Abraham are one,” for he traced the blood-relationship back through the generations to Abraham. If he wished to go beyond his single ego he knew himself to be sheltered in the Father Abraham, from whom flows all the blood through the generations, which is the external bearer of the common Folk-Ego.

Now if this expression, which signified the highest they knew to the people of the Old Testament is compared with what has been brought through Christ Jesus then a lightning-flash illumines the whole advance that has come about through Christian evolution. “Before Abraham was, was the ‘I-am.’” What does this mean? “Before Abraham was the ‘I-am.’” (That is the right rendering of the biblical passage.) It means: Go back through all generations, and you find something in yourself, in your own individuality which is even more eternal than what flows through all blood-related generations. Before the ancestors were, was the “I-am,” that Being which draws into every human being, of which each human soul can directly feel something in itself. Not “I and the Father Abraham,” not I and a temporal Father, but I and a spiritual Father, who has no part in anything perishable, we are one! I and the Father are one. The Father dwells in each separate individual, the Divine Principle lives in him, something which was, which is, and which is to be.

Men have actually only begun after 2,000 years to feel the force of this world-impulse; in future ages, however, they will realize the significance for mankind of this forward step in the remission and evolution of the earth. What the ancient initiates tried to reach could only be realized if one went beyond the individual human being and grasped the spirit of a whole people. If the normal man heard that he would say: That is a transient entity which begins with birth and ends with death. But if he were initiated in the secrets of the Mysteries, he saw as the Folk Spirit, as the actual Being who flows through the blood of the generations, that which was only dimly sensed by the others. He could see what can be reached only in the spiritual realm and not in external reality. He could see a divine Being who flows through the blood of the generations. To stand face to face in the spirit before this God could only take place in the Mysteries.

Those who were round Christ Jesus with full understanding as his intimate pupils were conscious that a Being of divine spiritual nature stood outwardly before them, clothed in the flesh as human personality. They were sensible of Christ Jesus as the first human being to bear a Spirit who otherwise was felt only by interrelated groups, and who could only be seen in the spiritual world by initiates. He was the Firstborn among men.

The more individualized a man becomes the more he can become a bearer of Love. Where the blood links men together they love because they are led to what they should love. When man is granted individuality, when he tends and nurtures the divine spark within him then the impulses of love, the waves of love, pass from man to man out of the free heart. And thus with this new impulse man has enriched the old bond of love that is bound to the blood-tie. Love passes over gradually into spiritual love which flows from soul to soul and which will ultimately encompass all humanity in a common bond of brother-love. But Christ Jesus is the Force, the living Force, once historically and externally present, through whom for the first time mankind has been brought to the bond of brother-love. Men will learn to understand this bond of brother-love as the perfected spiritualized Christianity.

People say very lightly to-day that theosophy should seek the common kernel of truth in all religions, for the contents of all religions are the same. People who talk like that and only compare religions in order to note the abstract resemblance have no understanding of the principle of evolution. World evolution is not without meaning. All religions undoubtedly contain the truth, but inasmuch as they evolve from form to form they evolve to higher forms. It is true that if you search deeply enough you can find teachings in other religions that are also to be found in Christianity. Christianity has not brought new doctrine. The essential element of Christianity does not lie in its teachings. Take the founders of pre-Christian religions, in their case it was a matter of what they taught. If they themselves had remained unknown, their teaching would have been preserved and this would have been enough. But with Christ Jesus that is not the point. What matters is that he was there, that he has lived here on this earth in a physical body. Not belief in his teaching but in his Person—that is the essential thing. The point is that he has been beheld among mortals as the Firstborn; whom one asks: if Thou wert in the position in which I find myself, wouldst Thou feel as I do? Wouldst Thou think as I am now thinking? Will, as I am willing? That is the important thing, that he is the greatest example as Personality, with whom it is not a matter of listening to his teaching, but of looking at him himself, and seeing how he acted. And so the intimate pupils of Christ Jesus speak quite differently from the pupils and disciples of other religious founders. It is said of those: The Master has taught this or taught that. The disciples of Christ Jesus say: We are not telling you invented myths and doctrines; we say to you what our eyes have seen, our ears heard. We have heard his voice, our hands have touched the Source of Life whereby we have community with you. And Christ Jesus himself said: “You shall bear witness for me in Jerusalem, in Judea to the end of the world.” These words contain a very great significance; testimony shall you bear for unto the end of the world. That means that there will at all times be those who, just as the men in Judea and Galilee, could say out of direct knowledge who Christ was, in the sense of the Gospel.

“In the sense of the Gospel”—what does that mean? Nothing less than that he was from the beginning the Principle that lived in all creation. He says, “If you do not believe in me, believe at least in Moses, for if you believe in Moses, then you believe in me, for Moses has spoken of me.” We have to-day seen this. Moses has spoken of him by saying: The “I-Am” has said it to me; the “I-am,” who up to then was only perceptible in the spirit. The fact that the Christ has entered visibly into the world, appearing as man among men, is what distinguishes the Christ-gospel from the divine proclamations of other religions. In all of these religions spiritual wisdom was directed to something which was outside the world. Now, with Christ Jesus, something entered the world which was to be grasped as the sense-perceptible itself. What did the first disciples experience as the ideal of their wisdom? No longer merely to understand the life of the spirits in spirit-land, but how the Highest Principle could have been present on the earth in the historical Personality of Christ Jesus. It is much easier to deny divinity to this Personality than to acknowledge it. Here lies the distinction between a certain doctrine of early Christian times and what we may call inner Christianity—the distinction between Gnosis and esoteric Christianity. The Gnosis certainly recognizes Christ in his divinity, but it could not raise itself to the conception that the Word has become flesh and dwelt among us, as the writer of the John Gospel emphasizes. He says: You shall look upon Christ Jesus; not as something to be grasped purely in the invisible, but as the Word which has become flesh and dwelt among us. You must know that with this human personality a force has appeared which will work into the farthest future, which will encircle the earth with the true spiritual love as a force that lives and works in all that lives into the future.

And if man gives himself up to this force he grows into the spiritual world from which he has descended. He will ascend again to where the initiate's vision can already reach to-day. Man will divest himself of what belongs to the senses when he penetrates into the spiritual world. The candidate who was initiated in ancient times could see in retrospect the far past of spirit-life; those who are initiated in the Christian sense through receiving the impulse of Christ Jesus are enabled to see what becomes of this earthly world of ours when humanity acts in the sense of the Christ Impulse. As one can look back to earlier conditions, so, starting from the coming of Christ, one can look into the farthest future. Consciousness will alter again, there will be a new relation of the spiritual to the sense-world. Earlier initiation was directed to time past, to age-old wisdom; Christian initiation reveals the future to one who is to be initiated. That is a necessity; man is to be initiated not only in wisdom, or in feelings but in his will. For then he knows what he is to do, he can set himself a goal for the future. Ordinary everyday people set themselves aims for the afternoon, for the evening or the morning; the spiritual man is able, out of spiritual principles, to set himself distant aims which pulse through his will and make his forces quicken. To set goals before humanity means in the true, highest sense, in the sense of the original Christ principle, to grasp Christianity esoterically. In this way it was grasped by the one who has written the great principle of the initiation of the will—the writer of the Apocalypse. We misunderstand the Apocalypse, if we do not understand it as the impulse given for the future, for action and deed.

Everything that we have let pass before us to-day can be understood out of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. I have been unable to give more than a slight sketch. When through Spiritual Science one grasps what lies behind the sense-world, one can look with understanding at all that has been given in the Gospels, at what has been proclaimed in the Apocalypse. And the more deeply penetrating is one's approach to the super-sensible worlds, the more profound is what one will find in the Christian documents. The records of Christianity will appear in higher brilliance, with deeper truths when one goes to them strengthened with the spiritual vision that may be gained by the help of Anthroposophy. True it is that the simplest heart can have some feeling of what truths lie hidden in Christianity. But man's consciousness will not be satisfied for ever with a dim sensing, it will evolve higher and wish to have knowledge and under-standing. Yet even when it mounts to the highest teachings of wisdom, there will always be mysteries in Christianity still more profound. It is for the simplest heart but also for the most developed intellectuality. The initiate experiences it again as pictures, and so the naive consciousness may divine what truths are slumbering there. Man, however, will demand knowledge and not faith—and even then he will find satisfaction in Christianity. If the explanations of the Gospels are given him through Spiritual Science he will be able to find the fully satisfying content in Christianity. Hence Spiritual Science will take the place of the highest philosophies of the past. It will bear testimony to the beautiful words of Hegel quoted at the beginning: “Profoundest thought is linked with the historical external figure of Christ Jesus, and every degree of consciousness—therein lies the greatness of Christianity—can grasp it externally. At the same time, however, Christianity demands the deepest and most penetrating wisdom. Christianity is for every stage of culture, but it can meet and satisfy the highest demands.”

During the next few days we are to occupy ourselves with a very profound theosophical subject. Before beginning our studies let me express my great satisfaction that we are able to place before friends from so many parts of Germany, and indeed of Europe, this deep and important subject. Especially do I express it to our friends in Nuremberg, who for their part are certainly not less happy than the speaker to cultivate for a short period of time anthroposophical life in this city in common with our foreign friends. There has always been in this city a very earnest search for the knowledge of great spiritual truths, and a deep understanding of anthroposophical life, of the true anthroposophical attitude towards life, has always been manifest.

This kind of life which is only understood when our anthroposophical doctrines are not merely a theoretical interest, but something which spiritualizes, kindles and uplifts our inmost life, links us in closer bonds with our fellow-men and with the whole world. It means much to man to feel that everything he sees in the outer world in his objective sense-existence can be recognized as the external physiognomy of an invisible super-sensible existence lying at its foundation. The world and all it contains will at length become to one who applies Anthroposophy to life more and more a physical expression of divine spiritual realities; and when he observes the visible world around him it will be to him as if he penetrated from the mere features of a person's face to his heart and soul. All that he sees externally, the mountains and rocks, the vegetation of the earth, the animals and human beings, human activities—everything in the world surrounding him—will be to hint the physiognomical expression, or the countenance, as it were, of a divine existence lying behind it. From this mode of observation new life rises up within him and permeates him; and a different, a noble enthusiasm fires all that he wishes to undertake.

Let me give you a small symptomatic example from my experience on one of my latest lecture tours, showing how significant world history is when looked upon as the expression of the divine spiritual, and how it can speak to us in a new language. A few weeks ago in Scandinavia I noticed that in the entire life of Northern Europe there is still an echo of that ancient period of the Norse world when all spiritual life was permeated by the consciousness of the beings who were to be found as the gods of northern Mythology. One might say that in those countries one may hear the echoes everywhere of what the Initiates of the Druidic and Trotten Mysteries imparted to their pupils and which constituted the old Norse spiritual life. One becomes aware of the magic breath of that spirit life pervading the North; one sees something like the expression of beautiful karmic connections. One feels oneself placed—as it was my privilege in Upsala—in the midst of all this, when one contemplates the first German translation of the Bible, the Silver Codex of Ulfilas ... It came to Upsala through karmic complications of a peculiar kind. It had previously been in Prague. In the Swedish war it was taken as booty and brought to Upsala, and there it now lies; a token of something which can be penetrated by one who is able to look a little more deeply into the nature of the ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries within the ancient European civilizations in which pupils were taught how to penetrate into the spiritual world were all pervaded and permeated by a remarkable characteristic, which could be observed more deeply by those who received initiation in those ancient tines. Their hearts were filled with a feeling of tragedy when it was made clear to them that although they were indeed able to glimpse the secrets of existence, nevertheless, something would appear in the time to come which would give the most complete solution of the riddle. They were shown again and again that a higher light was to ray into that knowledge which could be given in the ancient Mysteries. One might say that in all these Mysteries it was prophetically indicated what was to come about in the future, namely, the appearance of Christ Jesus. The undertone, the attitude of expectation, this mood of prophecy lay in the nature of the Northern Mysteries.

The statement I am now about to make must not be pressed too far or too sharply outlined in thought. It is only intended to express symptomatically the deeper truth which lies behind in the legend of Siegfried, which has remained like a last page out of the traditions of the old German Mysteries, there is something like an echo of that mood. When we are shown that Siegfried is really the representative of the ancient nordic initiation, that on the place where he is vulnerable there lies a leaf, that this place is on his back, then one who is able to feel such a thing symptomatically feels: That is the spot on the human being where something different will rest, when such injury as the initiates of the ancient Northern Mysteries experienced can no longer touch him. This spot the Cross shall cover, there the Cross of Christ Jesus shall rest. It did not yet rest there in the case of the initiates of the ancient Northern Mysteries. In the old Mysteries of the German peoples, this is indicated in the legend of Siegfried. Thus even here is symptomatically indicated how the ancient initiations of the Druids and Trotten should be thought of as harmonizing with the Christian Mysteries. The placing of the first German translation of the Bible in the northern world reminds one of this like a physiognomic gesture. And the fact that it is like a karmic chain may also appear symbolically to you by the circumstance that eleven leaves were once stolen from this Silver Codex and that the one who possessed them later on felt such qualms of conscience that he would not keep these eleven leaves and so returned them. As already said, these things ought not to be pressed too far, but they may be taken as a pictorial representation of those karmic developments which come to physiognomical expression in the placing of the first German translation of the Bible in the northern world. And just as in the case of this historical event, so will everything which meets us in life, great or small, also be deepened and irradiated with a new light through the anthroposophical outlook, which sees everything physically perceptible as the physiognomical expression of super-sensible spirit. May we, during this course of lectures, be filled with the conviction that this is the case, and may the spirit and feelings which are to fill our hearts and minds during this series of twelve lectures proceed from this conviction.

In this frame of mind let us approach these lectures which will deal with the most profound document of Christianity, the Apocalypse of John. The deepest truths of Christianity can be considered in connection with this document, for it contains nothing less than a great part of the Mysteries of Christianity, the profoundest part of what may be described as esoteric Christianity. It is therefore not to be wondered at that of all Christian documents this one has been most misunderstood. Almost from the beginning of the spiritual movement of Christianity it has been misunderstood by all who were not really Christian initiates. And it has always been misunderstood at various times according to the prevailing thought and disposition of those times. It has been misunderstood by the ages which, one might say, have thought in a spiritually materialistic way; by the ages which have forced great religious movements into one-sided fanatical party affairs; and it has been misunderstood in modern times by those who, its the grossest and most sense-bound materialism, believed themselves able to solve the riddle of the universe. The high spiritual truths announced in the early days of Christianity, and witnessed by those who were able to understand them, are disclosed as far as is possible in writing in the Apocalypse of John, the so-called canonical Apocalypse. But even in the first ages of Christianity exotericists were little inclined to understand the deep spiritual truths contained in esoteric Christianity. Thus in the very first ages of Christianity the idea came into exotericism that things which in the world's evolution first take place in the spiritual, and are recognizable by those who can see into the spiritual worlds—that such purely spiritual proceedings were to take place externally in material life. And so it came about that while the writer of the Apocalypse expressed in his work the results of his Christian initiation, others only understood it exoterically; and their opinion was that what the great seer saw—and of which the Initiate knows that spiritually in it takes place over thousands of years—must happen in the very far future in external life and be visible to the senses. They imagined that the writer indicated something like a speedy return of Christ Jesus, a descent from the physical clouds. As this did not happen, they simply lengthened the period and said, “With the advent of Christ Jesus a new period has begun for the earth as regards the old religious teachings, but”—this again was understood materialistically—“after a thousand years the earliest events represented in the Apocalypse will take place in the physical world.” Thus it came about that when the year A.D. 1000 actually drew near, many people waited for the coming of some power hostile to Christianity, for an Antichrist who should appear in the sense world. As this again did not occur, the period was further extended, but at the same time the whole prediction of the Apocalypse was elevated to a kind of symbolism—whereas the crass exotericists represented this prediction more literally. With the advent of a materialistic world-conception these things were enveloped in a certain symbolism; external events were invested with a symbolic significance. Thus in the twelfth century Joachim of Floris, who died at the beginning of the thirteenth century, gave a notable exploration of this mysterious record of Christianity. It was his opinion that Christianity contained a deep spiritual power, that this power would have to expand more and more, but that historical Christianity had always given this esoteric Christianity an external interpretation. Thus many people came to this point of view, which was that the Romish Church with the Pope at its head, this externalization of the spirituality of Christianity, was something hostile and anti-Christian. And this was particularly fostered in the following centuries through certain Orders attaching higher value to the fervent spiritual aspect of Christianity. Thus Joachim of Floris found followers among the Franciscans, and these looked upon the Pope as being the symbol of Antichrist. Then in the age of Protestantism this conception passed over to those who looked upon the Romish Church as an apostate of Christianity and Protestantism as its salvation. They considered the Pope as Symbol of Antichrist, and the Pope retaliated by calling Luther the Antichrist. Thus the Apocalypse was understood in such a way that each party drew it into the service of its own view, its own opinion. Each regarded the other party always as Antichrist and their own party as having the true Christianity. This continued into modern times when modern materialists developed, with which, for grossness, the materialism I have described as belonging to the early centuries of Christianity cannot be compared. For at that time spiritual faith and a certain spiritual comprehension still existed. Men could not understand, only because they had no initiates among them. A certain spiritual sense was there; for although it was crudely imagined that a Being would descend in a cloud, there still belonged to it a spiritual faith. A spiritual life such as this was no longer possible with the crass materialism of the nineteenth century. The thoughts of a genuine materialist of the nineteenth century regarding the Apocalypse may be described somewhat as follows: “No man can see into the future, for I myself cannot. No one can see anything more than I can see. To say that there are initiates is an old superstition. Such persons do not exist. What I know is the standard. I can scarcely see what will happen in the next ten years, therefore no man can say anything about what is to happen in thousands of years. Consequently he who wrote the Apocalypse, if he is to be taken as an honest man, must have been describing something which he had already seen—for I only know what has already taken place and what I can discover from documents. Therefore the writer of the Apocalypse could see nothing more either. What, therefore, according to this, can he relate? Only what has happened to him. Consequently it is obvious that the events of the Apocalypse, the conflicts between the good, wise and beautiful world and the ugly, foolish and evil world, this dramatic contrast is only intended to represent what the author had himself experienced, what had already taken place.” The modern materialist speaks in this way, it is his opinion that the writer of the Apocalypse describes things as he himself does.

What, then, was the most dreadful thing to a Christian of the first century? It was the beast which made war against the spiritual power of Christianity, against the true Christianity. Unfortunately only a few people perceived that there was something behind this, but they did not know how to interpret it correctly.

In certain esoteric schools there was a kind of writing in numbers. Certain words which it was not wished to impart in ordinary writing were expressed by figures. And, like much else, some of the deep secrets of the Apocalypse were hidden in numbers, particularly that dramatic event in the number 666. It was known that numbers were to be dealt with in a particular way, especially when such a distinct indication is given as in the words, “Here is wisdom.” “The number of the beast is 666.” When such an indication was given it was known that the figures must be replaced by certain letters, in order to ascertain what was intended. Now those who had heard something, and yet really knew nothing, came to the conclusion in their materialistic conception that when letters were substituted for the number 666, the word “Nero” or “Caesar Nero” resulted. And nowadays in a large part of the literature dealing with the deciphering of the Apocalypse you may read: Formerly people were so foolish that they imagined all sorts of things in connection with this passage, but the problem is now solved. We now know that nothing else is intended than the Emperor Nero. Therefore the Apocalypse must have been written after Nero's death, and the writer wished to say by all this that the Antichrist had appeared in Nero, and that what is contained in this dramatic element is an enhancement upon what had preceded it. We need now only investigate what happened immediately before and we shall discover what the writer of the Apocalypse really wished to describe. It is reported that earthquakes took place in Asia Minor when the struggle between Nero and Christianity was raging. Therefore it was to these earthquakes that the writer was referring in the opening of the seals and the sounding of the trumpets. He also mentions plagues of locusts. Quite correct! We know from history that at the time of the persecution of the Christians by Nero there were plagues of locusts. He was, therefore, speaking of these. Thus the nineteenth century has come to materialize the profoundest document of Christianity so far as to see nothing in it but the description of what may be found by a mere materialistic observation of the world.

I have only mentioned this in order to point out how fundamentally this deepest and most important document of esoteric Christianity has been misunderstood. I shall postpone to the last lectures what is to be said about the historical part of the Apocalypse until we have understood what is contained in the Apocalypse. To those who have studied Anthroposophy but little, there can be no doubt that even the introductory words of the Apocalypse show us what it is intended to be. We need only remember that it says that he from whom the contents of the Apocalypse proceeded was placed in an island solitude, which had always been surrounded by a kind of sacred atmosphere, in one of the ancient places of the Mysteries. And when we are told that the author was in the spirit, and that in the spirit he perceives what he gives us, it may indicate to us that the contents of the Apocalypse originate from the higher state of consciousness, to which a person may attain through the evolution of the inner creative capacity of the soul, through initiation. In the Secret Revelation of the so-called John is contained that which cannot be seen and heard in the sense world, and cannot be perceived with external senses; and it is given in the way in which it can be imparted to the world through Christianity. In the Apocalypse of John we have therefore the description of an initiation, a Christian initiation. For the present we need only briefly recall what initiation is. We shall, indeed, go more and more deeply into the question as to what takes place in initiation, and how initiation is related to the contents of the Apocalypse, but to begin with we will only draw something like a rough sketch and paint in the details later.

Initiation is the development of the powers and capacities slumbering in every soul. If we wish to have an idea of the manner in which it really takes place we must clearly bear in mind what the consciousness of the present normal man is; we shall then also recognize in what way the consciousness of the initiate differs from that of the ordinary man of the present day. What is, then, the consciousness of the normal human being? It is a changing one; two entirely different states of consciousness alternate, that of the day, and that during sleep at night. The waking day-consciousness consists in our perceiving sense objects around us and connecting them by means of concepts which can only be formed with the aid of a sense organ, namely, the brain. Then, each night, the astral body and the Ego withdraw from the lower principles of the human being, the physical and etheric bodies, and therewith the sense objects around man sink into the darkness; and not only this, for until re-awakening unconsciousness prevails. Darkness spreads around man. For the human astral body to-day under normal conditions is so organized that it is unable of itself to perceive what surrounds it. It must have organs. These organs are the physical senses. Therefore in the morning it must plunge into the physical body and make use of the sense organs. Why does the astral body see nothing when during sleep at night it is in the spirit-world? For the same reason that a physical body without eyes or ears could experience neither physical colours nor physical sounds. The astral body has no organs with which to perceive in the astral world. In primeval times the physical body was in the same position. It too did not yet possess what later was plastically worked into it as ears and eyes. The external elements and forces moulded the physical body, formed the eyes and ears, and thus the world was revealed to man, a world which previously was hidden from him. Let us imagine that the astral body, which is now in the position in which the physical body was formerly, could be so treated that organs could be built into it in the same way that the sunlight plastically moulded the physical eyes, and the world of sound the physical ears in the soft substance of the physical human body. Let us imagine that we could mould organs in the plastic mass of the astral body; then the astral body would be in the same condition as the present physical body. It is a question of moulding the organs of perception for the super-sensible world into this astral body, as a sculptor moulds his clay. This is the first thing. If a man wishes to become a seer, his astral body must be treated as a piece of clay by the sculptor; organs must be worked into it. This was, in fact, always done in the schools of initiation and the Mysteries. The organs were plastically formed in the astral body.

In what does the activity consist by means of which it is possible for the astral body to have organs plastically moulded into it? It might be thought that a person must first have the body in front of him before he can work the organs into it. He might say: “If I could take out the astral body and have it in front of me, I could then mould the organs into it.” That would not be the right way, and above all, it is not the way for modern initiation. Certainly an initiate who is able to live in the spiritual worlds could mould the organs like a sculptor, when during the night the astral body is outside. But that would entail doing something with a person of which he is not conscious; it would mean interfering in his sphere of freedom, with the exclusion of his consciousness. We shall see why this has not been allowed to happen for a long time past, and particularly not at the present time. For this reason, even in esoteric schools such as the Pythagorean or old Egyptian, everything had to be avoided whereby the initiates would have to work from outside upon the astral body which was taken out of the physical and etheric bodies of the neophyte. This had to be avoided from the very outset. The first step towards initiation had to be undertaken with man in the ordinary physical world, in the same world where man perceives with the physical senses. But how can this be done? For it is exactly through physical perception coming into earthly evolution that a veil has been drawn over the spiritual world formerly perceived by man, although but dimly. How can one work from the physical world upon the astral body? Here it is necessary that we should consider what happens with regard to our ordinary everyday sense perceptions. What happens in these cases? What happens while man is perceiving all day long? Think of your daily life, follow it step by step! At every step the impressions of the outer world press in upon you, you perceive them; you see, hear, smell, etc. When you are doing your work impressions storm upon you all day long and you work upon these impressions with your intellect. The poet who is not an inspired poet permeates them with his fantasy. All this is true! But all this cannot, to begin with, lead man to the consciousness of the super-sensible spiritual which lies behind the sensible and material. Why does it not come to his consciousness? Because all this activity which man exercises with respect to the surrounding world does not correspond with the essential nature of the human astral body as it exists to-day. When in the primeval past the astral body proper to man saw the pictures of the astral perception rise up—those pictures of joy and sorrow, of sympathy and antipathy—inner spiritual impulses were present, causing something to rise in man which formed organs. These were killed when man had to allow all the influences from outside to stream in upon him, and at the present time it is impossible for anything to remain in the astral body from all the impressions received during the day which could mould it plastically.

The process of perception is as follows: All day long we are subjected to the impressions of the external world. These work through the physical senses upon the etheric and astral bodies, until the ego becomes conscious of them. The result of what affects the physical body is expressed in the astral body. When the eyes receive impressions of light, these influence the etheric and astral bodies and the ego becomes conscious of them. So, too, with the impressions made upon the ears and other senses. Thus the whole of one's daily life affects the astral body through-out the day. The astral body is continually active under the influence of the outer world. Then in the evening it withdraws from the physical body. It now has no power in itself to become conscious of the impressions in its present environment. The ancient forces of the distant past were killed with the first perception of the present sense world. During the night it has no power because the entire life of the day is incapable of leaving anything in the astral body which could work formatively upon it. All the things you see around you produce effects as far as into the astral body, but that which then takes place is unable to create forms capable of becoming astral organs. It must be the first step of initiation to allow a person to do something during the life of the day, to allow something to play into his soul, which continues during the night when the astral body is withdrawn from the physical and etheric bodies. Imagine that—pictorially expressed—something were given to a person while he is fully conscious, which he has to do, which he has to allow to happen, and which is so chosen, so constructed that it does not cease working when the day is over. Imagine this activity as a sound, which continues when the astral body is withdrawn; this resounding would then constitute the force which worked plastically on the astral body, as at one time external forces have worked upon the physical body. This was always the first step of initiation—to give a person something to do during the life of the day, which has an after-effect in the life of the night. What is called meditation, concentration, and other practices which a person undertakes during his daily life, are nothing but exercises of the soul, the effects of which do not die away when the astral body withdraws, but reverberate, and then in the night become constructive forces in the astral body.

This is called the purification of the astral body, the purification from all that is unnatural to it. This was the first step, which was also called catharsis, purification. It did not yet constitute activity in super-sensible worlds; it consisted in exercises of the soul which the pupil performed during the day as a training of the soul. It consisted in adopting certain forms of life, certain feelings, a certain way of treating life, so that it could reverberate; and this worked upon the astral body until it had been transformed, until organs had developed in it. When the pupil had progressed so far that these organs had developed in the astral body, the next thing was that everything which had been formed there should be imprinted in the etheric body. Just as the characters on a seal are imprinted in sealing-wax, so must everything which has been formed in the astral body be imprinted in the etheric body. This imprinting is the next stage of initiation; it was called illumination. For it brought with it an important stage in initiation. A spiritual world then appeared around the pupil, just as formerly the sense world was around him. This stage is also characterized by the fact that the events of the outer spiritual world do not express themselves as physical objects do, but in pictures. At this stage of illumination the spiritual world first expresses itself in pictures. The pupil sees pictures. Think of the ancient initiate I referred to yesterday who saw the group-soul of a people. When he had progressed to this stage, he at first saw this group-soul in pictures. Imagine an initiate such as Ezekiel, who, when his illumination began, became aware of spiritual beings as folk-souls, group-souls; he felt himself in their midst; he saw group-souls in the form of four symbolical beasts.

To begin with, the spiritual world appeared to the pupil in significant pictures—that was the first stage. Then followed a further penetration into the etheric body. What at first was present as the impression of a seal, continued as a further penetration into the etheric body. Then there began to be added to the pictures what was known as the music of the spheres. The higher spiritual world is perceived as sound. The higher initiate having, through illumination, perceived the spiritual world in pictures, begins spiritually to listen to those sounds which are perceptible to the spiritual ear. Then he comes to the later transformation of the etheric body, and afterwards in a still higher sphere something else approaches him. If, for example, there is a screen here and behind it a man is speaking whom you cannot see, yet you may hear sounds. It is somewhat similar with the spiritual world. At first it appears in pictures, then sounds are heard, and then the last veil falls away, so to speak—as if we were to take away the screen behind which the man is standing and speaking. We see the man himself; we see the spiritual world itself, the beings of the spiritual world. First we perceive the pictures, then the sounds, then the beings, and lastly the life of these beings. It is indeed only possible to give a hint of what exists as pictures in the so-called Imaginative world by making use, as symbols, of pictures from the sense world. One can only give an idea of the harmony of the spheres by comparing it with ordinary music. Now what may be compared with the impressions of the beings at the third stage? It is comparable alone with that which to-day constitutes the inmost being of man, his acting in accordance with the divine will. If the pupil works according to the will of the spiritual beings who are helping the world onwards, the being within him will then become similar to these beings and he will perceive in this sphere. He perceives that the element within him which opposes the evolution of the world, which retards its progress, is something which must be thrown off in this world, something which must fall away like a last covering.

Thus the pupil first perceives a world of pictures as a symbolic expression of the spiritual world, then a world of sphere-harmony as a symbolic expression of a higher spiritual sphere, then a world of spiritual beings of whom he can to-day only form an idea by comparing them with the depths of his own being, with that which works within him in accordance with the good powers or even in accordance with the evil spiritual forces.

The neophyte passes through these stages, and they are faithfully portrayed in the Apocalypse of John. The start is made from the physical world. That which is first to be said by means of the physical world is said in the seven letters. What we wish to do in outer civilization, what we wish to say to those working in the physical world, we say in letters. For the word expressed in the letter can produce its effect in the sense world. The first stage provides symbols which must be brought into relation with what they express in the spiritual world. After the seven letters comes the world of the seven seals, the world of pictures of the first stage of initiation. Then comes the world of the sphere-harmonies, the world as it is perceived by those who can hear spiritually. It is represented in the seven trumpets. The next world, where the initiate perceives beings, is represented by those who appear at this stage and who strip off the shells of the forces opposed to the good. The opposite of the divine love is the divine wrath. The true form of the divine love which carries the world forward is perceived in this third sphere by those who for the physical world have stripped off the seven shells or husks of wrath.

Thus the neophyte is led step by step upward into the spheres of initiation. In the seven letters of the Apocalypse of John we have that which belongs to the seven categories of the physical world, in the seven seals that which belongs to the astral imaginative world, in the seven trumpets that which belongs to the higher world of Devachan, and in the seven husks of wrath that which must be cast aside if the pupil wishes to rise into what is spiritually the highest to be attained in our world, because this spiritually highest is still connected with our world.

To-day we wished to give merely a sketch of the outer structure of the Apocalypse of John, which serves to show that this is a book of initiation. In our next lecture we shall begin to fill in this brief sketch.