The Rudolf Steiner Archive

During these three days, we shall deal with a specific “topic.” We shall speak about the paths that the human soul can take in the present in the sense of a spiritual-scientific worldview, and about the goals of theosophical life. Today's lecture will provide a kind of introduction to this. Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, we will then penetrate to the very heart of our consideration. Today, we want to take the standpoint more from the outside, so to speak, and first ask ourselves the questions: Is what we feel as a spiritual-scientific world view something that has been brought about by the will of individuals, or is it rooted in the soul of the time itself? Do we have something before us that is connected with the deepest needs of our epoch? We can best approach an answer to this question if we realize that all those who come to spiritual science from the most diverse walks of life, whether rich or poor, strong or weak, are seeking souls. They are all seeking souls who do not always know exactly what they are seeking, but feel that they are seeking something. They are often souls who have taken the most diverse paths and allowed themselves to be affected by what the present can give. Souls that have sought to satisfy their longings in this or that field of art, souls that have looked around in what science can give; souls that have felt, more or less darkly, more or less brightly after much laborious seeking, that they cannot find in the present what coincides with the soul's seeking. Such souls are often touched by what the spiritual-scientific movement can give, and they say: Yes, here lives an impulse that is different from anywhere else, different from what comes from the life around me.

What do such souls feel, or what might they feel when they come into contact with what today we might call Theosophy? We must not believe that these seeking souls who find their way to spiritual science are the only ones who seek. They are chosen, or they choose themselves from a great multitude of seeking souls. Those who listen to what is spoken from the deepest need of our time will see that there are many souls who say: “We long for means to solve the great riddles of the world, and we cannot find that all that tradition has brought, all that modern science has to say, can solve these riddles.

Let us listen for a moment to what these souls, the best among them, have to say. They say something like the following, and in these words, which flow from hundreds of thousands of such searching souls, we encounter something like the yearning heart of our time: We look back into distant times and see how from century to century, from millennium to millennium, different ideas about God and nature have followed one another, how they have replaced one another and led to the struggle between their representatives. Much has come down to us. Millions of people profess such beliefs, adhere to them in sincere truthfulness, but just as many can no longer profess what has been handed down out of such a sense of truth. They feel compelled out of love for the truth to let go of the old views.

What was it like in the dim and distant past? There, for example, people looked at the river that went from the heights to the plains, saw the beneficial effect of this river and asked themselves: What speaks to us from the roar of this river? What is it that works in this river? And they found in it something that they also found in themselves. They found that it was based on a spiritual something, a divine being, and they found in the flowing stream a divine-spiritual power that rewarded, that gave man what he needed for his good. In the blowing of the wind, in the rolling of the thunder, in the flashing of the lightning, they found a spiritual activity similar to that which underlies the flowing of the stream, the rushing of the sea surf. They saw in it something of which they said: “The murmuring of the brook, the raging of the storm, is akin to what lives in my soul. They may speak differently, but there is something similar there, and I feel that I can understand it.

Those to whom Moses brought down the tablets of the law felt the same way. They felt that a being was speaking to them from them, infinitely greater than the father of a family, but still related to what spoke from the thunder and what spoke from the venerable head of the family. They felt the spirit. They sensed a living bond between what lived in them as pain and joy and the outside world. A bond that this man of the past could understand.

That is how the best speak. And if you go where serious science speaks, not trivial superficiality, you can hear the following: Our ancestors looked up to spiritual powers. They not only saw trickling water, blowing wind, and the fire of lightning. They also saw spiritual beings in these natural forces, gnomes, undines, sylphs, salamanders. However we may feel about these people, they found understanding among their contemporaries, those people who projected their beliefs into the outside world, from which they drew strength and stability.

And now the best of these seeking souls add: We can no longer believe in gnomes, undines, sylphs, salamanders, in spiritual beings of nature. For we have been taught that iron laws operate down to the smallest atom. And we must think of the outer world as a construction of it. We can no longer animate it as our ancestors did, we can no longer perform sacrificial ceremonies and cultic acts that send up our voices, we can no longer say when pain overwhelms us: take comfort, for life in the spiritual world will give you all the more comfort. — And a great number of people say: our whole world has become different. We no longer build on what was built on in the past. If, for example, a rusty iron had been driven into a person's arm in the past, they would have sought comfort in spiritual beings. Today we do better to go to the doctor and use external medicine. Today we treat with what lives in the soul what used to be treated with what lives in the soul.

It is countered: But we cannot be without faith in a spirit, we cannot do without it. A spirit rules in all laws, works in thunder as in the atom. And it takes only someone to be beyond the worst trivialities of materialism in order not to be able to close themselves off from this insight. When the word spirit is spoken by seeking souls, what is meant by that? What is spirit? Where does it have its roots? How does man come to have an idea of spirit?

A strange view is being propagated today. In America, people are talking about a new religion. This religion only wants to recognize a God who works in the laws of nature, right down to the atom. No one today can imagine a God who has a human form, says the representative of this doctrine, but we cannot do without a divine spirit. And so this personality comes up with a strange saying: the laws of chemistry are not enough. But where can we find the content for an idea of God? — And so we hear the following: We must think of the spirit that rules in the laws of nature as being endowed with the noblest qualities of the human soul. — So one is not willing to imagine a God who is endowed with human qualities, but one would still like to have something that gives this idea of God a content.

And here we have the result: We cannot help it, we cannot take the content of the idea of God from anywhere other than from within man. — And further, the representative of this world view points out that in earlier times divine beings were worshiped who were inspirers who filled man with their power and pushed him towards a task. Now, of course, we can no longer believe that there are supernatural entities that act as inspirers. But the future will worship advanced helpers, richer spirits who have something to give to the poorer ones.

You see, feelings will nevertheless be set up in place of the former, which cling to those who can give comfort. After every earthquake, for example, there will be those who give comfort to the many who have lost their loved ones. Human love will exist when there are no longer supersensory helpers.

Do you not see that there is a strange contradiction here too? We are supposed to look to those who give comfort. But where do they get from within their soul what they need to be able to give comfort and love? We find that the best people search, but that the soul must feel confronted with a void.

And what about science? Is comfort found there in what science has brought us? We want to fully acknowledge the beneficial effects of science, but there is one thing we must not forget. How much of the purely physical pain that man has had to endure since ancient times is alleviated? Humanity has certainly not become stronger and healthier since then. Of course, there are many remedies that provide relief. But attention must be called to a contradiction here. External science believes that nothing can be lost. For example, when rubbing, the force becomes effective as warmth. What disappears reappears as a different force. Anesthetic agents relieve pain, and people talk as if the pain has disappeared. Here there is a contradiction with that simple law. If the pain disappears, it still reappears in a different place. No matter how much external pain is alleviated, it turns into mental anguish. And man does not know that this is connected with the alleviation of external pain. This does not prevent us from doing what our insight suggests to alleviate external pain, but we must learn to recognize the connections and not indulge in illusions in the spiritual realm.

The seeking souls have no inkling that the human being, placed as he is today in the outer life, for example in the powerfully developing fields of industry and technology, can indeed be enraptured by what presents itself to his eyes. But those who look more deeply know: This intoxication, this enthusiasm, comes at a price. They know that souls are becoming more and more barren and desolate, feeling less and less the answer to the riddles of existence. Certainly we should bring into all areas what can alleviate external suffering, but we should not forget that even if we satisfy the outer physical body, we can leave the soul more and more starved, causing the soul more and more suffering through unfulfilled longing. This is the mood that overcomes those who not only look lovingly at the hustle and bustle of human life, but who also see the course that the future will take.

Much is said about the goals that man can set for himself. In the intoxication that overcomes his soul when the whirlpool of today's outer life takes hold of him, he does not realize that this soul must remain a searching one. And why? Let us place before our soul only the deepest background of all the contradictions in today's perception. If we cut our finger and heal it with the best means at our disposal, we know that the same natural laws prevail in it as in the surrounding world. We are formed out of the whole of nature, out of the laws that prevail around us. But at the same time, we feel the need to see something else in us. We see that spirit flashes from a person's eye, that spirit speaks from their hand, that spirit resounds from their voice. And in recognizing this, we also feel that we are still the bearers of the spirit. We feel that we have arisen out of our environment, but not out of it alone. What governs this environment? Physical laws, chemical laws, what are known today as ironclad laws of nature. That is not enough to explain the spirit. What physics, chemistry, biology give is not enough for that.

Where does that which can be addressed as spirit have its root? It is within us, in ourselves, but homeless, rootless. We can understand the chemical composition of blood, can grasp exactly the combustion process that takes place in us, and everything that is subject to physical and chemical laws in the external world. But as soon as we see the outer nature in a spiritless way, everything is rootless. We cannot say: just as blood is subject to the laws of blood circulation, so some spiritual substance follows the laws of the environment. A spirit cannot be found in it, says the seeking and erring soul of the present time. From there the answer to the questions that torment me cannot come. From where will it come to me?

Now we see where the problem lies. We see that our ideas about the external world are becoming increasingly clear. But now the human being wants to root himself with his spirit, with his soul, in something. The soul cannot help but want that. It cannot flee from itself into a barren physical-chemical existence. That is where the conflict arises. The soul has the need to imagine a spiritual being, but nowhere in the outer world can it find what corresponds to its present ideas about a spiritual being. This gives rise to a deep falsehood. Modern man cannot believe in sylphs, salamanders, undines and gnomes. But what could give him satisfaction is not available. The soul stands there without content.

The more deeply this is felt, the more untrue it becomes to speak only of spirit. Either one finds spirit, or one has to insert it artificially. It may seem to some that what has just been said is too far removed from daily feeling. But everywhere we will find souls whose pain stems from this. What spiritual science brings wants to meet this great quest. Its endeavour is to build a bridge between the soul itself and that which is outside, whether the soul listens to the raging of the storm or watches the lovely movements of the sea waves. Man is no longer able, on the basis of human qualities, to idealize gods that are active behind air and water. We have to refrain from seeing an anthropomorphic image of ourselves in what we call divine beings. That is the realization of today. But the other thing is the powerlessness of the seeking soul. From one side it is told: If you want to find a god, you must not endow it with human qualities. On the other hand, it turns out that we are not able to create a substitute for ourselves. Because these searching souls lack something that would justify this self-evident fact, they are at a loss. Where can they find the firm ground that gives them security?

This is only possible because man is again acquiring the right to research the spiritual, to look deeper into his inner being. What was once enough for man is now not enough. Spiritual science says to modern man: You have taken the wrong path. Are the qualities that man has found so far all there are? Is there no deeper substratum? Do we not find something hidden from view that we can say: Yes, this could be related to what I feel to be the divine?

There must be something that is more deeply rooted than anything that man has known about himself so far, that gives him the right to transfer human-soul qualities to the divine. But how to find the way to the hidden foundations within ourselves?

Here spiritual science points us to paths that only a few people have taken in the past. Today, many need guidance along these paths. There are two paths: firstly, the path of mysticism and, secondly, the path of occultism in the true sense of the word.

Let us consider these two paths. What is the path of mysticism? To understand this, we need only take a moment to consider our own souls. You all know that in spiritual science we speak of the fact that a person is not the same being in sleep as they are when awake. When falling asleep, the inner being of the person emerges, and when waking up, it descends again into the physical body and the etheric body. In general, people do not notice that something special is happening in the process. Do we ever see what descends from within? A tremendous change takes place in a person at that moment. When he descends, he does not see his etheric body and his physical body from within. Otherwise he would see that his corporeality is illusion and maya. As ordinary people, we see the environment and that part of ourselves that we can see from the outside. What works and lives in him, the human being sees nothing of that. He sees only the outside, which he also sees in stones and minerals. For his gaze is distracted to the outer world as soon as he descends into his lower bodies. Those who have striven for a conscious awakening were the mystics. They experienced a conscious descent into the outer man. All the images of the inner life known to the mystics are what the human being can see when he turns his gaze away from the outer world, from what otherwise captures his gaze. The mystic experiences what the human being is when he looks at himself from within. He does not see, for example, how the blood circulates, but he sees that the blood is the carrier of divine activity; he sees that the blood is a shadow of spiritual reality. That is what the mystic experiences: the spiritual motor of his own being instead of the external Maya.

What the mystics tell us is true. Listen to what they report: This descent is associated with what we call trials and temptations, the awakening of selfish instincts. Read the descriptions of what the soul is capable of unfolding in terms of base instincts. We have to go through a whole layer of passions, desires, selfish impulses that we hardly thought we were capable of anymore. All this must be overcome if we want to penetrate into the deep layers of our own being. It is wisely arranged that our gaze is initially diverted from our own inner being, because man is not mature enough to consciously descend into his own inner being. He must fight everything that rears up in him when he has embarked on the path of overcoming his own egoism. Only then does he find the true human being, who is concentrated in the smallest space, in the I-point. Only then are we completely within ourselves, recognizing ourselves in good and evil, seeing what the human being really is when he is beyond the layer formed by his instincts and desires, and when he has outgrown all that has been instilled in him by education and convention. We have to go through this layer if we want to penetrate into our inner selves.

There is yet another way to recognize the spirit and ourselves. It is not easy to enter and is protected from the immature, because it also contains its dangers. In addition to the important moment of waking up, there is also the moment of falling asleep, which is equally significant for the contemplation of the human being. Let us examine it more closely. At the moment of falling asleep, the human being passes into the spiritual world, into the world beyond physical reality. His consciousness ceases, it fades away. The normal person has no spiritual world around him in a conscious way. If he were to enter the spiritual world in an immature state, he would experience to the utmost degree what in the physical world is blindness. He would be blinded by the direct vision of the spiritual poured out through the outer world.

Again it is necessary to make man so strong that he will not be blinded by this spirit poured out through the outer world. This is done through the occult path. Through this path he finds his ego, not crowded together in the narrowest part of his own inner being, but poured out over the whole outer world, one with that outer world. That is the occult path.

When man learns to go both ways, the mystical path and the occult path, a significant fact comes to his attention. Let him seek out the point where he is most compressed, most crowded in his own interior, and let him be poured out over the whole outside world, then he experiences the one great, the mighty. What you experience when you descend into the depths of your own self and when you pour yourself into the infinite is the same: mysticism and occultism go in opposite directions and lead to the same goal. Man discovers something that has slumbered in him, that is enchanted in the outer world, that can be found in the depths of his own soul and outside in the world of appearances. He finds that which lives as spirit behind the phenomena, and he finds the spiritual in himself when he has connected with the mystical path of knowledge and with the occult path of knowledge. That is the bridge by which the abyss can be bridged, which the seeking soul of today faces when it realizes that it itself is something different from the world of appearances outside and cannot connect with its qualities to what surrounds it outside.

Today there is the possibility of finding a way that shows how what lives in us is the same as what lives in the outside world. The seeking souls who are outside of our aspirations do not yet know it. The spiritual science shows the way. The theosophical world view aims to be a signpost for this goal. It will provide answers to the questions posed by the bleeding, struggling souls of today. These questions will resound to the windows of the present, and spiritual science will provide the answer. This gives it its inner justification and shows that it has not arisen arbitrarily from a few minds, but from the needs of the time. Spiritual science will again indicate means and ways to find harmony between what lives in the environment and what lives in the human soul. It will lead us to recognize the laws governing nature not as empty abstractions, but as thoughts of divine spiritual entities. In this way, it will rediscover the spirit in the outer world. The fact that the soul cannot do this today is what accounts for its emptiness and desolation. It can only find consolation, help and strength by seeking the paths and goals of the spiritual human being. This shows how deeply justified this spiritual-scientific endeavour is.

If we understand spiritual science in its deepest sources, we will give the soul the nourishment it craves, we will open up sources of spiritual activity for it, and, because everything external is an expression of the spiritual, in the course of time also health. From the yearning and searching of today, spiritual science will be given its goals.

When speaking of the paths and goals of spiritual man, the question will arise again and again: Why should one think of going such special ways? Why are we being pointed to the fact that we should set ourselves such goals through spiritual science? - What we have to give as an answer must be transformed into feeling and sentiment for us. It has been pointed out time and again that forces lie dormant in the human being and in nature, striving to develop, which can be unfolded. In addition to the human being who sees and hears in the physical world, every human being has a higher human being within him. This is present as a kind of seed, germinating. Spiritual science brings this to our attention more and more urgently. It is a human being of whom ordinary consciousness does not know much.

We must be clear about the following: what we can see now is our ordinary everyday human being. But the one who slumbers in us, who is in us as a seed, is a spiritual human being. Whether this seed develops or not depends on our ordinary human being. We can prepare the ground with the powers of our ordinary self, but we can also leave it uncultivated and not take care of it. Then we fail in our duty to our spiritual self. Through spiritual science itself, through what it can give us as teachings and messages, we can prepare the ground for this higher self. If we transform this insight into feeling and sentiment, it will give us the answer to the question: Is it not a higher selfishness to occupy ourselves with ourselves in this way? — As long as we have not learned anything from spiritual science, it is our karma to wait. But once we have heard about the higher human being slumbering within us, it is our duty to do what can develop its powers in order to better fulfill our tasks in the world. We cannot speak of selfishness here, but only of our obligation to our spiritual self.

This is the right point of view for a Theosophist to take in relation to the outer life. Theosophy gives us a number of communications that have been obtained through spiritual research. However, not everyone who wants to live theosophy needs to be a spiritual researcher. The more we are able to follow the path of our inner development, the better. But before we ourselves can achieve results in the field of spiritual research, we must have its contents related to us by others. When we have presented the question to ourselves long enough, the outer life will confirm the communications of the spiritual researchers. If we have grasped these communications through sound logic, we are given the opportunity to ascend to higher worlds. Reason and logic are the surest guides for this.

The question may arise: How should we use these messages? How should we relate to them? — Let us take the truth that we call the law of karma. It states that in later lives on earth we find events that point back to previous incarnations. The more we apply such a law of spiritual research in life, the more we will see how true it is. Just as we never find a triangle in the sense world whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees, so the circumstances of life must always confirm what is recognized as a law in spiritual research. And if the karmic effects do not appear to us to be consistent, this will at most correspond to the slight deviation that may occur when measuring a circle with the help of the planimeter. The result may be 361 degrees one time and 359 the next, but that does not negate the law itself. Nor is the law of gravity overthrown because a push causes the plumb line of a falling machine to swing to the side. This only proves that a different result is achieved when a new force is added.

Spiritual research also shows how we encounter repetitions of previous periods of time within our lives between birth and death. For example, what we acquire between the ages of three and seven in our first childhood will come back to us in its karmic effect in our old age. If you examine how someone was allowed to spend their first childhood, you will discover a remarkable connection with those childhood years in their old age. If, instead of being subject to the external constraints of certain rules, he has developed healthy needs, his old age will take a different shape. In many cases, however, what is considered right is implanted and crammed into the child's soul. However, it is not what is implanted that matters, but that the child must have the need to do this or that of his own free will. It turns out that people can maintain their health in old age, that they retain freshness and inner strength until the last stage of their lives.

However, there are even more significant connections. From people's writing, you can learn a lot about how their past has shaped them.

During the age of seven to fourteen years, it is necessary that man not be educated to premature use of his reason. Authority must cause truth to appear to us as such. If we can admire the people who surround us during this period of our lives, it will serve us well in the penultimate stage of our lives. Devoutly looking up at natural wonders and being in the mood for prayer are beneficial factors for later on. Happy recognition of authority comes back, transformed in a way that makes it self-evident that such a person has authority. The devotion that children are able to develop during this period results in them becoming people who, without having to do anything, merely need to be in the company of others to have a blessing effect. The hand that has never been able to fold in devotion with the other will never be able to bless. Those who have never learned to bend their knees will never be able to bless. If you have penetrated such a law, you will find it confirmed. In this way, the effect of the law of karma can be seen in the course of a single human life. Thus, life everywhere provides us with evidence of a lawfulness that is effective in all fields.

Of course, circumstances can arise that conceal the law. In physics, for example, we know the law of gravity. Imagine an object that is moving through space at any given moment without support, completely left to its own devices. According to the law of gravity, this object will approach the earth with increasing speed until it hits the earth. The object will move in the direction of the center of the earth according to very definite laws; it will fall. Let us further imagine that the falling object is suddenly hit by a horizontally directed blow. The naive observer, who expects the object, falling vertically due to the law of gravity, to arrive at the relevant point on the earth, will in this case wait in vain. The object stays away. Does that mean that the law of fall is repealed? Not at all. Through the horizontally guided blow, only a new force has been added, and the object now moves under its effect in a curve that corresponds quite lawfully to the result of gravity and the later added force, towards the earth. At the point where the object hits the ground under these circumstances, its fall will be seen by any observer as something quite random and unpredictable. But this is not the case. The lawfulness is complete and incorruptible.

The same applies in full to the law of karma, although we can rarely follow it in all its composite and intricate effects. That is why man is always inclined to doubt his karma. But however confused we may be by the outer Maja, we should only let ourselves be guided by what has become law in our soul. Many who wish to develop the powers of the spirit within themselves will not find it easy, for the physical life is always intruding. There but for the grace of something in our existence, how easily we are carried away by wrong judgment, for instance, to insults, without thinking of the consequences of our actions. We strike a blow at a person and do not know that we have raised our hand against ourselves, because this blow will strike us again in our own hour. The law of karma is at work everywhere. Everything that happens to us in life happens under the law of karma. But merely considering this law as a doctrine, as a theory, does not make us theosophists.

There are two feelings that we must acquire if we want to work on our spiritual development. On the one hand, we must say to ourselves: There is nothing about us that can be perfected, nowhere is there a limit to our ascent. At every moment, the feeling of imperfection should urge us to climb higher and higher on the ladder of perfection, which knows no highest rung. We must keep reminding ourselves of this, otherwise we will not make any progress in our work on our spiritual self. On the other hand, we should say to ourselves: a second step is necessary. In every moment we must feel that there is an infinite possibility for perfection within us. We must make our hidden self as great as possible. This is an apparent contradiction, and the human being must feel it as such. Between these two points, the feeling of one's own imperfection and the striving to make the hidden self as great as possible, development is included.

The one who strives as a mystic, who descends into his own inner being, who wants to advance through an inner deepening, must pass through the first point. He must acquire humility. The best rule a mystic can set for himself is this: to think of everything that arises within him as imperfect as possible, to detach himself completely from his own personality. For anyone who enters into his own inner being must be prepared to experience terrible things. Stories of tragic experiences take place in the inner world of the person who dares to venture into the depths of his own being. A Tauler, a Eckhart, a Paulus can tell of it. And how was the help that these sought against the dangers? Paul says: Not I, but the Christ in me wants to act. Take with you the Master, the Ideal, but feel with it that the ego must be driven out. Not from your own ego should all feeling, all willing, all thinking be done. Your unworthy ego had to be driven out. This feeling is very similar to the sense of shame in the ordinary man. Wanting to be another, wanting to organize another into your own soul, that is the way of mysticism.

And what belongs to the path of occultism? The path of the occultists leads into the outer world. If a person wants to follow the occult path, he must live in such a way that he gradually learns to bear the higher world when he has left his body during sleep. He must develop a feeling for perfecting himself in the Infinite. But here too a danger lies in wait for him, as it does for the mystic when he descends into his own inner being. We have been permitted to mention the dangers that beset the mystic; the mystic himself reports about them. The dangers that beset the occultist are not mentioned. Each one must acquaint himself with this danger.

When we look into our own inner being, it would be bad if we had not learned to feel ourselves as a unity that is poured out over our entire being. This ability to hold on to a unity is disrupted by every passion that overcomes us. Anger, envy, hatred destroy our power to focus on unity. And worst of all is when we have not learned to concentrate, when we are driven hither and thither. Firm and uninfluenced, we must learn to feel as one.

But if we, as occultists, seek the way into the outer world, we must eliminate our personality, as it has just been characterized. Here one must not seek a unity underlying the whole outer world. For when we turn to the spiritual world, we encounter an infinite variety of beings and conditions. If the occultist were to attempt to penetrate the unity that underlies the entire manifested world, he would perish. Imagine a drop of red liquid being poured into a large basin of water. Liquid as the drop is, it would immediately dissolve in the mass of water, it would melt away. This is what happens to the unstable ego when it wants to enter the world of the All-One. We dare not venture to penetrate there alone, for we will lose ourselves as the red drop loses itself in the mass of water. If we want to enter the astral realm, we are pointed to a multiplicity. We must ask about the multiplicity, from the beings who stand higher than we do, from those who have themselves gradually gone through a higher development, from the hierarchies of that world. We must not want to skip anything, for it would be presumptuous to want to go straight to the highest. We must gradually learn to study with the help of the higher beings if we want to grasp the unity. The arrogance of wanting to reach the highest level will surely lead to failure. We must not let ourselves be tempted by our monotheistic ideas into believing that when the veil that separates us from the spiritual world slides aside, we will see only a single divine oneness. It is the multiplicity that we look into, and it is on the multiplicity that we must focus our gaze.

But how are we to find our way? Pythagoras said: “Seek not the manifold with your eyes, ears and senses, seek it through number!” Equipped with number, we are to approach the manifold. Just as the mystic must pour the ideal of higher perfection into his inner being, so the occultist must appeal to number. And here one quality is absolutely essential, namely certainty. We must feel secure. For if man wavers, what is he? A will-o'-the-wisp, a flickering light, and the world is a labyrinth. We need an Ariadne's thread to find our way back. The number makes us firm, we must keep it in mind. If you want to enter the spiritual world, you have to step out of yourself, you have to enter the chaos of the many first. How do we find this factor? Where is the organizing principle? We find it through the number, through the lawfulness of the number. We have to penetrate into the essence of the number and get to know its real value. The number alone can become our guide in the labyrinth. The number can teach us a great deal, and certain numbers are based on profound secrets.

Take the number two, for example. Everything that comes into being manifests itself in twos. There is no right without left, no light without darkness. Everything that manifests itself outwardly is subject to the number two. The number two is the number of revelation, the number of manifestation.

The number three is the number of the conformity to law of the soul: thinking, feeling and willing. Insofar as something is organized and structured in the soul, it is subject to the number three. Where the number three reveals itself as a conformity to law, something soul-like underlies it. We can find the number three in countless relationships. In the three logoi we have the three fundamental powers, which point back to something divinely soul-impregnated.

In relation to all that is temporal, the number seven applies: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, which denote the seven successive states of evolution.

Where we see something interacting simultaneously, we get the number twelve: the twelve gods, the twelve apostles, and so on. The reduction of the fixed stars to the twelve signs of the zodiac is also connected with this. The number twelve teaches us yet another law. Let us think of materialism. Is materialism wrong? It does not have to be, as long as man does not carry it into the soul. If one wants to be a materialist, then one must pay homage to vitalism, then one learns to understand material life. But one must choose a different point of view for the soul and for the spiritual. If we want to understand the world in its fullness, then we must be able to place ourselves in different points of view. We must take the practical spiritual path.

Now one may well hear a person express the principle: You must make a certain system for yourself if you want to penetrate into the higher worlds. But that is the worst way to go. Instead, one should first step out of one's own personality: from the center that this personality occupies in its existence, to the horizon of our physical existence. Only here in the horizon should we place ourselves on a certain point of view, first the materialistic one, and look at it from the inside out, from the one point of view through which, as already mentioned, we get to know the material life. Only then can we walk around the horizon and choose twelve different points of view. This is the only way that can lead to real knowledge. The practical occultist must become very selfless before he can walk around the horizon in a circle. By having to forget his personal self twelve times, he maintains uniformity in both the external and the internal.

If you ask people outside of their everyday consciousness: What is it that can be called the self? — the answer would be that you have to look for this self-awareness within the boundaries that the skin encloses. Our view can be proven by the fact that the seat of the soul is to be found in the head and heart. But in the sense of spiritual science, it is different, only this is not easy to recognize.

One comes closer to spiritual reality when one tries to make the supersensible facts clear. With the concepts and words that man uses without these researches, he does not come closer to the truth. One will get a good concept if one ties into a unified picture.

Let us think of a sailor navigating the seas. All external factors form the essentials, the determining factors; for the purpose of navigating the ship, it is important to know whether the sea is calm or agitated, whether islands are emerging in the sea, whether the sky is clouding over, and much more. The captain and the sailors take action based on all these external facts; all external facts are the essential ones for them. Now some might think that when the ship has entered the harbor, it is at rest and all work is over for a while. But that is not the case. Another kind of work begins. The ship no longer performs work, but work is done on the ship. What has suffered during the voyage is repaired. The hold is filled with a new cargo and so on. In this way, the voyage and the ship's layover in port can be compared to human life, to life during the day and to life during the night. There is only one major difference, and that is that people do not care about the night work. During the work in port, the ship must be made useful for the onward journey by workers and sailors. But everything that drives man to act through the senses during the day, ceases to work at night. Our senses, which have carried out the work in our body during the day, rest during the night. The work of the day rests like the ship in the harbor. And yet a work is going on in man that enables him to start a new day's work.

This brings us closer to the concept of what the actual spiritual part of a person is. It is not enclosed by the skin of the person, but extends beyond the physical person. The actual spiritual part extends its feelers into the person; it sends the essential, the spiritual part into the person.

Where is the actual I located in the human being? Outside of the human being, around the physical human being, one finds the spiritual human being, the supersensible I-human being. And if we look at the human aura, which is shaped like an egg, then the I-consciousness will be most effective in the shell, in the auric egg. This fact leads to the correct solution of the problem.

I have pointed out twelve points on the horizon. The occultist must know them. They exist there even if they are not recognized by everyone. These twelve points continuously send their forces into man; he is attacked by these twelve points in the various points of his aura. Only by surrounding himself with his ego is he able to make the cosmic forces one with himself. Man must feel that he belongs to the universe. Through this he enters into the faculty of perception, and through this it becomes possible for him to acquire the abilities to perceive that correspond to the points mentioned. He is embedded in these twelve points. The divine spiritual forces work through these points on man. If you can bear this in mind, you will understand the ways and aims of the spiritual man.

Man must be able to integrate this feeling into his life. Through spiritual science he will become acquainted with a sum of forces through which he can accomplish these transformations in himself. Let us think for a moment about everyday life. People rush through the world, and many things come their way that they could reflect on, that they could process in their minds, but they make no effort whatsoever to put their experiences into practice or even to reflect on them more deeply. They just want to experience and chase from one sensation to the next.

There are other people who go through life without paying the slightest attention to the external world. They brood and speculate about their own thoughts. They do not notice what is going on around them; they brood over and over again. Neither of these extremes is good for a person. But there is a middle way, and that is to interweave everything you experience with your own thoughts. This middle state is the most beneficial for the human being of the external world.

Suppose a young man is preparing for an exam. He has been working hard, the exam time is approaching and with it the exam anxiety. Again and again, the young person realizes that on the day of the exam, the questions could be about the things he is least sure about, the things he does not know for sure. This works in his thoughts. The exam went well, it is crucial for the whole of life. It is the gateway to his future life. Now it may happen that he is haunted by an 'I' space in the further course of his existence, and in this dream the exam anxiety of his youth emerges in him, everything that he did not believe he knew at the time. The soul is intimately connected with it, and the occult observer sees the fabric that is woven in the dream. What is woven into it did not contribute to the life that has passed. But the occultist knows that it can become a useful force in the next life.

It can also happen differently. From the age of forty-five, dreams cease. The one who observes himself finds that completely new character traits emerge. For example, it may be experienced that in advanced years he has far more courage than he ever possessed in his youth. The states of fear in his youth and the will to conquer them have done their quiet work in the inner man; after forty-five years these forces have been transformed into reverse forces. Something is always weaving and working within the human being, and what works there is the astral body. It works in the etheric body until the experience has spun itself into the etheric body and really become a quality. Under ordinary circumstances, it only appears as a quality in the next life, but there may also be quite abnormal cases, such as the one just mentioned.

This is how a person processes his external experiences, and it is the same with the extrasensory circumstances of life, which demand that we process them with the ego. How does the spiritual person work in relation to his external circumstances? The external circumstances approach us, but the fabric that transforms our abilities is spun from within. We weave into the person what comes from the eternal spiritual. We must go to the external, but the spiritual comes to us.

Let us assume that a person, for one reason or another, takes an interest in something, for example, that he wants to take a closer look at a tree. He must then approach the tree, he must go to the tree to get a result. But it is different with spiritual results. These come to us, we have to wait for them to come.

The essential thing about external experiences is that they are of a transitory nature. But those that come to us through the path of 'Theosophy are grounded in spirituality. We weave them into our inner being as something imperishable. We must go to the external, but the spiritual must approach us, and the more we make ourselves capable of receiving the spiritual within us, the more it comes to us from the spiritual worlds and becomes our property. Those people who live among us as poets and have created and produced something are always those who in times gone by have allowed the supersensible to flow into them. We must learn to reflect more. We must be able to think logically and reasonably and then keep our soul completely still. Then we will not have to wait in vain. The corresponding spiritual substance will flow into our soul, for which we ourselves have paved the way. We must learn to maintain the expectant mood. Not what we brood over is best. We should want to attain everything through our thought work, not through ourselves. Only through sharp thinking and subsequent waiting can we fertilize our spirit. It must flow to us when we have learned to observe the right processes, and these processes must work together with thinking, feeling and willing.

There are three aspects to our soul life: thinking, feeling and willing. A person sees a rose. Through his thought life, he recognizes it as such. He admires the shape and the color; this awakens certain feelings in him. He stretches out his hand to grasp the rose, thereby expressing an act of will. However, important results, which can be decisive for a person's entire life, depend on how he or she treats these qualities.

For example: A person meets another who instills a pronounced antipathy in him. He sees that he cannot free himself from the person who arouses antipathy in him, and the feeling that is caused him by the compulsion makes him angry. Thinking, feeling and willing are involved in this process.

In our daily lives, we can often observe how differently these processes unfold. The anger of one person quickly disappears; they may not dwell on such feelings for long, and the better feelings gain the upper hand in them. Another person, on the other hand, carries their anger around with them all day long; they cannot find the resilience to shake it off. The first person, who quickly fights his emotions, will remain mentally healthy and may reach a ripe old age. The other person, who flies into a rage over every trifle and carries this rage around with him for a long time, will age prematurely. The constant emotions will take their toll on his body.

A proverb says: “Don't take anger to bed with you.” This is where the affects begin to weave in the soul, and we weave the passions into the human being. What we experience from the spirit will have an effect on our soul, and it makes a significant difference whether our experiences remain only in theory or whether they pass over into feeling.

Let us assume that a person absorbs much that is spiritual, and that what is absorbed penetrates into the person. It will only bear fruit for the spiritual person when he embraces what he has absorbed with enthusiasm and love. Only then does the work also become a work of the inner man, only then does he extract the spiritual and make it part of his spiritual self. It is feeling that helps us to make the spiritually acquired our own.

Man lives in his aura, and when the theosophical truths are absorbed by the spiritual man, the aura is strongly agitated. The I is the motor of this movement. How does this process present itself to the clairvoyant eye? When love and enthusiasm for great spiritual thoughts take hold of man, everything in the aura comes to life, and the result of this higher thought life is that it has a purifying effect on the aura. All material desires and thoughts, which are expressed in the human aura, clump together into balls, and with increasing spiritual work these balls condense more and more, becoming smaller and smaller, until the purifying light of spiritual thinking has dissolved and driven them away.

When the clairvoyant eye observes a person watching a sunrise, similar phenomena can be observed. The devout joy that a person can feel at the natural spectacle causes a similar process to take place in the aura of the person watching. As long as such a person allows beauty to affect his inner being, the effect of this process is a dissolving one in the aura, and much that is bad is transformed into good. The ability to rejoice and to immerse oneself has a purifying effect on the soul, and in such moments the soul is capable of absorbing new spiritual things because the stream of higher forces has found an entrance.

But the opposite can also take place. If a person does not dwell on a great natural spectacle that has affected him in his thoughts, if none of the beauty remains within him and he turns to other things after a fleeting enjoyment, the following can occur: everything in the aura of such a person becomes concentrated. A spiritual-soul task that came his way has been carelessly set aside and is now working itself out in the dark. It may happen that lies find their way into his inner being. To develop the ability to let something resonate and to empathize is the work of a spiritual person.

If we all learned this, spiritual science would lead to paths and goals that would create widespread blessings. If only intellectual work were done, if quarrels and discord prevailed among the theosophists, little would be transformed from bad to good. The law of karma will show man how to work in the right way.

For those who can feel Theosophy with enthusiasm and know how to draw comfort from it, the higher spiritual sciences are beneficial, for they bring comfort and strength in all circumstances. No one leaves these sciences without consolation. The greater our aims, the more our striving will be imbued with ideals, and man carries them out into the world. We pursue spiritual science and interweave it with our inner being. It permeates us, and we can carry it out to others.

We must work towards these goals as much as we are able. We have no right to ignore the paths and goals of the spiritual human being. It is our duty to weave the soul into the physical world. The human being is the gateway, the only gateway of spirit into the physical-material world, into which heaven is to flow. We can loosen the lead of materialism by allowing spiritual truths to penetrate it. Only by working on the development of humanity does man contribute to life and not to death. To walk in the ways and to strive for the goals of the spiritual man means to pursue the task of making the supersensible soul-like.

We gradually press into the spiritual world through our exercises, but we can't do this without coming into contact with Lucifer and Ahriman. We find the story of man's fall into sin in the Bible, through which Lucifer and then Ahriman gained an influence over men. They work into a man in such a way that it's difficult for him to stand his ego when he ascends into the spiritual world. Some people can't even stand the outer sign for the ego in the physical world, that is, they faint when they see blood.

The fall into sin gave us self-knowledge, albeit a limited one, and every time we take a step forward in self-knowledge new temptations approach us, but no more than we can stand; for just as we pass out from pain to our body after a certain point, so the forces that enable us to stand the spiritual world are limited.

Since Lucifer and Ahriman drove us out of Paradise, they're the ones whom we meet when we want to get into the spiritual world via meditation, and who let us feel our limitations. Ahriman is in all spiritual sounds, words, etc., that one can hear. One should always be distrustful of these, for untruth lies in the speech that's differentiated into various languages, although not everything we say is untrue. There can only be as much truth in “voices” as there is in speech. If voices would always tell the truth, then Lucifer at the Temptation should not have said: “You will be as Gods” but he would have had to say: “I'm lying.”

Lucifer gives visions. One has to break through them, otherwise one doesn't break through the shell that's around every man and covers the real spiritual world. Visions and voices are around us like the shell around a chick. One might see an angel in a vision and when one presses through the vision the angel will change into a snake, Lucifer's symbol, for at the Temptation he appeared as a snake. Or one might see the colour blue in one's meditation—if one breaks through it the blue can become red, and then it turns out that we saw our own passions. As a result of his temptation by Lucifer man doesn't have everything that the Gods have; he received knowledge, but not life. Thereby everything that we know and perceive is permeated by Lucifer and Ahriman. Actually this is also the case with the content of our exercises. If one looks at one's exercises one will find that they're constructed in such a way that they never appeal to human egoism—which many people feel is very unpleasant. We don't meditate about love or truth, for that would only promote egotism. However concepts such as light and warmth that we find in our exercises are things of the physical world, which a man only knows through his physical senses to begin with. These too are Lucifer's gifts. That's why we should let the content drop after meditation and make the soul entirely empty of these impressions also. Thereby we renounce everything that comes from Lucifer and Ahriman and prepare ourselves for the pure spiritual world. Then the sense world disappears for us, and a spiritual world opens up before us that has nothing in common with the physical world. An ordinary man is like the chick that would consider its shell to be the real world. If the chick could see it would see the egg's contents as if it were the whole world. Likewise we see our eggshell or aura spread out around us as the blue dome of the heavens. If we break through our shell the sun and moon become darkened, the stars fall down onto the earth and the spiritual world spreads out in its place.

A man lives in his eggshell—his aura. The Elohim gave us our aura, and through the fall into sin it has become like a shell around us, and we're in it like a chick in an egg. The stars in the heavens are our boundary and we must break through it with our soul force, just as a chick must break out of its shell through its own power. Then we get into a new world, just as a chick has a new world before it when it has crept out of the egg. And since men all have the same eggshell around them an astronomy could arise that lets the heavenly bodies move along the celestial dome. The eggshell is the Ex Deo nascimur. To break through it and to bring something with us into the spiritual world we must bring what penetrates the shell from the outer spiritual world and that's common to all; and that's the Christ. That's why we say: In Christo morimur and hope that when we've broken through the shell we will be awakened again: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

I want to speak in a rather aphoristic way this evening about a subject which I consider of importance, especially at the present time.

Many of our studies have been concerned with the Christ Impulse, with the Impulse which since the Mystery of Golgotha has been working in the evolution of humanity. And this evening I want to speak of the Impulse itself and of its significance for evolution. It must be emphasised at the outset that the Christ Impulse is a difficult subject because if even an approximately adequate conception of it is to be acquired, the teachings still being given in the various Christian denominations must be left out of account. Perhaps you will ask: How can the Christ Impulse be studied at all if such teachings are to be entirely disregarded? How can we learn about the working of this Impulse from any sources other than the beliefs that have been held for centuries? The answer must be this.—Everyone will admit that it would be unfortunate if the effects of the Sun upon human beings living on the Earth were dependent upon some generally accepted teaching about the nature of the Sun. No matter what hypotheses are put forward, the effects of the Sun are quite evident. Science admits that it does not yet know precisely what electricity is, yet electricity is put to innumerable practical uses. Therefore it is certainly justifiable to speak of the effects of the Christ Impulse without believing that the study is in any way dependent upon what has been thought about Christ in the different centuries.

The Mystery of Golgotha, the penetration of the Christ impulse into the Earth sphere, into the evolution of humanity, took place in a particular epoch. The point of time at which it occurred has been determined with at least approximate accuracy, for our time-reckoning in the West is based upon it. What kind of epoch was it? We know that different civilisations have taken their course in the process of evolution—in the post-Atlantean era, the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman and our own. One of the characteristics distinguishing these culture-epochs is that a different form of human understanding, human wisdom, existed in each of them. In the ancient Indian epoch, for example, men were possessed of penetrating insight into certain cosmic mysteries. In those times the etheric body was the most active member of man’s constitution. Then, as evolution proceeded, the etheric body receded more into the background and in the ancient Persian epoch the sentient body, the astral body, became predominantly active. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch the sentient soul was predominant, in the Graeco-Latin epoch the intellectual or mind-soul, in our own epoch the spiritual or consciousness soul, and the epoch of the Spirit-Self lies in the future. Because different members of man’s constitution are predominantly active during the several epochs, individuals confront the world in each epoch with a different kind of understanding.

Now there is a certain striking and very illuminating fact in connection with the Graeco-Latin epoch. This was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, and it lasted from the eighth century B.C., approximately from the time of the founding of Rome, until the fifteenth century A.D. Because the intellectual or mind-soul was developing during that epoch, the forces in individuals who were essentially typical of this function of soul-life became particularly important. This province of the soul was undergoing a special process of development for a little more than two millennia. Since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul. Not very much of this epoch has passed as yet, for not until the present century and two more centuries have taken their course will a third of the time appointed for the development of the consciousness-soul have elapsed. Quite different faculties will develop in man’s soul during the following epochs. Seven such epochs constitute the post-Atlantean age.

Let us now ask: Which of those epochs was least qualified to understand the Christ Being? Conceptions of the nature of man differed in all of them. The epoch least qualified to form adequate conceptions of the nature of Christ was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, from the eighth century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. And the remarkable fact is that this is the very epoch when the Mystery of Golgotha took place!

If, to speak hypothetically, the Christ had appeared on the Earth in the days, let us say, of the holy Rishis of ancient India, there would have been widespread understanding of who He was. So too in ancient Persia, where men had been taught of the Sun Spirit. Had the Christ descended into a human body during that epoch men would have known that the Sun Spirit had come down into the body of a man on the Earth. And in the epoch of the Egyptian Temple Wisdom, something equivalent might still have been possible. But in the epoch when understanding of the nature of Christ was farthest from men’s reach—in that very epoch the Christ appeared on Earth.

It is not easy to add anything to this strange fact by way of illustration, for the conclusion to be drawn is that obviously hardly anything about the real nature of the Christ Being is to be found in the teachings formulated in that epoch and that understanding can therefore be expected only in later centuries.

Since the fifteenth century men may have begun to pride themselves on their intellectual acumen and to believe that in respect of an understanding of Christ better times have come with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In a certain sense it is so, but in another sense it is not.

What is there to be said about the intellectual faculties of men of the present age, since the fif-teenth century? Generally speaking these faculties have in no sense become more spiritual than they were in earlier times. In a certain respect man’s life of soul has sunk still more deeply into matter—as indeed was necessary in order that the stage of the consciousness-soul might be attained. So we find that Spiritual Science—which before the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries was still a matter of remembrance, of recollection—fell into the background and materialism steadily increased. Spiritual Science blossomed in certain personages of the Middle Ages, reached a certain height as it were through the elemental forces working in individual mystics, and then receded. But from the eleventh and twelfth centuries onwards it is obvious that something else is beginning to appear. A symptom is that men attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of God. Only people with very strange ideas about the world could fail to recognise what that means. As a rule we try to ‘prove’ what we do not know or understand. We try to prove that someone has stolen when we did not actually see him commit the theft. And when men lost all inner experience of God, when they no longer knew by what paths to seek for the Divine, they set about trying to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. This is irrefutable proof that men were beginning to lose all knowledge of God. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch must necessarily be the epoch of materialism because since it began man has been obliged to view nature as presented to the senses and intellect; for only so can the Ego in its full power become conscious.

To understand what I mean, let us think back to the epoch of ancient Persia. In the epoch of ancient India it would have been still more clearly in evidence, and even in the Egyptian epoch it was still apparent to a certain extent. A man belonging to the ancient Persian civilisation would have been astonished that a cosmological system such as that of Copernicus should be derived from observation of the planetary movements.—I must here say something highly paradoxical.—A man in ancient Persia would have been very surprised if attempts had been made to teach him astronomy in anything faintly resembling its modern form. He would have said: Am I supposed to be so stupid that if I want to walk about, someone must show me how to do it? When the Sun is moving along its path through cosmic space, my soul accompanies it.—He knew this just as a man today knows which way he is going when his body moves. Out of his innate knowledge the ancient Persian drew a spiral corresponding exactly with the course of the Sun through cosmic space. In that epoch the human soul felt united with the Earth-soul and the path taken by the Earth was indicated by the Caduceus, the Staff of Mercury. Not until later was man thrust out of his spiritual environment so drastically that he was obliged to plan and calculate the path of the Earth, his own planet.

On the other hand, if man’s relation to the external world had remained at the earlier stage, he would never have been able to develop full self-consciousness. He would have lived through the Graeco-Latin civilisation-epoch, when intellect and soul-life in general would have been left to their own resources, as it were smouldering inwardly; a condition would have come about in which the soul has no longer any direct knowledge of its relation to the world but makes progress only in itself. It was necessary for the human soul to emerge from that condition too, and pass into the epoch of the consciousness-soul. Man was to learn to live altogether in his ‘I’, in his Ego. He was to disassociate everything external from his ‘I’ and cognise the world through logic alone. He was thrust out of the spiritual content of the world.

In the Graeco-Latin epoch the soul still contained the active intellectual principle which although it no longer experienced the happenings in the external spiritual world directly, nevertheless did still experience the Divine. In the modern age men lost the Divine! It would never have occurred to Aristotle to attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. The intellectual or mind-soul still experienced the indwelling Divine, although it could offer no proof of Christ. Then from the fifteenth /sixteenth century onwards even that experience was lost. Nevertheless when this stage too is over man will be capable with his own powers of evolving a conception of the Divine.

From the fifteenth century, for four hundred years, the self-dependent human intellect has been unable to penetrate to the idea of the Divine. Something very strange has happened—and the fact that we commented upon it caused great offence. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, lived in the eighteenth century. What happened to him was that he confused the particular nature of the human soul since the fifteenth century with the nature of the human soul in general. Hence he came to the conclusion that it is impossible for man, by means of his own powers, to acquire knowledge of the Divine. What he ought to have said was that this had been impossible only since the beginning of the fifteenth century. But as Lucifer had Kant firmly by the collar and had made him an arrogant individual, he believed that what he said applied to the whole human race!

It might be thought from this that the prospects of understanding the Christ Being are even less hopeful than in the previous centuries. But it is not so. Men have faculties of knowledge other than those they possessed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and different, too, from the only faculties that are used today for grasping the nature of the Ego. The other powers of cognition lie more in the underground province of the soul and have to be drawn up from there. But a modern man does this only under coercion. As long as it was possible for the human soul at surface level to cognise the Divine, men did not make efforts to bring their deeper forces into action. But now, in our present time, as man can make no real approach to the Divine, reaction compels him to delve to greater depths within himself and to summon into activity forces other than those operating on the surface of the soul. Connected with this is the fact that we are approaching an age when an understanding of the Christ Being through the deeper forces in man’s nature is beginning-to take root.

A few days ago in Oslo I ventured to speak of a Fifth Gospel.¹ Through the Fifth Gospel information is given in addition to what is contained in the other four Gospels. The Fifth Gospel tells us still more of the nature of Christ. There can be no question of presumptuousness when this apparently new information about the nature of the Christ Being is given, for communications of this kind are made only when the times demand it. What has been said about the Christ Being here in Copenhagen, for instance, and printed in the booklet The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, and in various lecture-courses—this too belongs in a certain way to the Fifth Gospel. Such communications are made when the times demand that they shall come to the knowledge of men. If you think only of what was said in that booklet about the two Jesus children, you will agree that all the intelligence of our present age—consisting as it does of the forces operating on the surface of man’s soul—not only does not understand these things but rages against them when they are communicated.

We are on the threshold of a new conception of Christ. It will not be an intellectual understanding. People will certainly be able to grasp its meaning but it will be discovered through the more deeply lying forces of soul. When the eye of clairvoyance desires to have any prevision of the future of humanity in the next centuries, also of the next incarnations of individuals now living, it must be remembered that the forces operating on the surface of soul-life will become increasingly less effective. Mankind will feel more and more drawn to the revelations of the deeper forces of the soul.

Of the Graeco-Latin epoch it is rightly said that the nature of the human beings then living was inwardly whole, inwardly complete. Fundamentally speaking, this can no longer be said of even healthy souls today and will in future be less and less the case. If humanity in the future were to be taught only of matters accessible to the superficial forces of cognition, the life of soul would become increasingly barren, barren in a remarkable respect.

We have not yet reached the point when religious teaching is no longer given in schools, but already there are demands that only what is authenticated by science shall be taught. The demands made by people of this mentality will become so powerful an influence in outer life that very soon mankind will become dangerously superficial. Human beings today still learn to write, but in a future not far distant people will have to remind themselves of the fact that once upon a time hand-writing was a custom! A kind of mechanical stenography will become general—executed, furthermore, on machines. Mechanisation of life! I will indicate it by just one symptom. Think of a civilisation at its prime, when the historic truth will be unearthed that once upon a time there were human beings who wrote by hand. This historic truth will be unearthed just as we today unearth the contents of the Egyptian temples. Handwritten texts will be excavated as we excavate the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. But a reaction of the life of soul against mechanisation will also take place. True as it is that in future times our handwriting will be no less a wonder than the Egyptian hieroglyphs are a wonder to us, it is also true that the souls of men will long once again for the direct revelations of the spirit. Outer life will become more and more superficial but the inner life will claim its rights.

People may scoff today at Spiritual Science but the materialists will eventually be forced to retreat before man’s cry of longing for the spiritual world. And so a real understanding of Christ will begin in times when the doors are open for spirituality, although admittedly through reaction against the conditions prevailing in external life.

Let us now consider still another aspect of the subject. Maybe the following picture will evoke an echo in your souls. We can think of the women who, according to the Gospels, seek for the body of Christ and find the grave empty. The Angel says to them: He whom ye seek is not here; He is risen! That is, He lives in the Spirit. The One for whom they were seeking in the physical world appeared subsequently to the Apostles, teaching them for a time as exceptional individuals who had responded to Him with a certain measure of understanding. Christ appeared to them as a spiritual figure. And in the spirit He moved through Greece, Rome, to the Germanic peoples, moved from East to West and then to the North. We shall not look for an intellectual, abstract or scientific interpretation of the Christ Being among the great Roman philosophers who speak of Him without understanding. Nor among the somewhat inarticulate Germanic peoples shall we find evidence of understanding. The souls of men are drawn to Christ but without intellectual understanding. He lives in their hearts, only in their hearts.

In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the picture is not of the women who go to the grave to seek for the body of Christ and do not find it. Whole hosts of European peoples feel urged to seek for the grave of Christ. This is the age of the Crusades. Men journey from the West to the East to find the grave where the women had once sought. And what do these hosts experience?—He for whom ye seek is not here!—Truth to tell they were seeking for something that was living in their souls, but they understood it so little that they journeyed to the East to look for the physical grave, and finally, after many disillusionments and sufferings, were destined to know: He whom ye seek is not here!—Where, then, was the object of their quest?

On the one side there are the journeys to the East and on the other side European Mysticism at its preparatory stages in Tauler and Meister Eckhart, reaching its prime later on in Jacob Boehme. There was the one for whom men had sought in the East and had not found. Thither He had gone, but His Presence took effect in a particular way. What is the most significant characteristic of this medieval Mysticism?

Eckhart, Tauler and the others do not claim to understand the Divine Being, the Christ, but they resolved to lead a life of piety in order to experience Christ in their souls. And the greater the intensity of this experience, the more deeply they longed to be permeated by the Divine, by the Christ, in the way suitable for their time. The Crusaders had experienced no more than this: He whom ye seek is not here!—What they were seeking came to life in the form of European mysticism.

We too are living in an epoch with very definite characteristics. Not only the peoples of Europe but also those of America participate in the remarkable conditions now prevailing. Let me give one striking example—from Berlin. On February 1st, 1910, a famous modern theologian came out with the following ‘ingenious’ utterance: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I challenge you to bring me a single sentence attributed to Christ Jesus which I cannot prove to have been current in pre-Christian spiritual life.”—That is an entirely typical attitude today. Evidence is brought forward in attempts to prove that the content of Christianity, including even the Lord’s Prayer, was previously in existence. The words of the theologian quoted are in complete conformity with the current attitude, and similar utterances will become more and more common. What kind of impression is made by the statement that all Christ’s sayings were already current before His coming?—I was once listening to an address by a very erudite scholar and a child happened to be present. Someone asked the child: “What have you been told?” His answer was: “He has told me nothing new. I already knew all the words!”—Theologians too are familiar with the words and detect nothing new resounding through them.

These things should really be self-evident but nowadays are invariably met with resistance. The attitude that a cultured individual may still have something to learn is seldom present but it is widely held that everyone is capable of judging according to his own standard. We have witnessed a striking exhibition of this attitude. When materialism came to the fore, theology began to eliminate all divinity from Christ Jesus and to speak only of the man Jesus, although acknowledging his superiority. This view became widespread in the nineteenth century and was given grotesque expression in Ernst Renan’s famous book, The Life of Jesus, published in 1863. He spoke of Jesus in wonderfully beautiful language but his description of the Lazarus miracle suggests that in reality no awakening of a dead man had taken place, that Jesus had simply allowed His followers to spread reports to this effect; hence the so-called miracle was in the nature of a swindle! Thus something resembling a chapter from a cheap novel has been inserted into an otherwise genuinely fine work. There seems to be no reason for Renan having written any words of reverence, for the figure he describes merits no particular veneration. But for half a century this was all accepted without thought and it is only one example from literature in which tribute is paid to Christ Jesus as a man—but simply as a man.

Now, however, it has been realised that a great deal of what is reported of Jesus Christ would be impossible if He had been a mere man—especially the assertion made by Jesus that He himself was the Christ—therefore more than a man. Many contradictions were found. Then, more recently, God—an imaginary God—was again substituted for man. Christ Jesus became a phantom, a fetish—but a limited fetish. This was a truly remarkable state of things! For centuries men had eliminated Divinity from Christ Jesus and had made Him a man, and now the Divinity made the manhood an impossibility. Such arguments will go on ad infinitum and there is ample evidence that we are taking a path along which understanding is beyond the reach of the forces at the surface of human nature. To put it differently.—In the twentieth century men have attempted a kind of crusade in search of the historical Christ Jesus. And once again the answer will be: He whom you seek is not to be found here!—Those who seek in this way for the historical man Jesus will no more be able to find Him than could the women at the tomb or the Crusaders who thronged thither. The Crusaders could not find Christ because they were not seeking for Him inwardly; nor can the modern crusaders find Him because they do not seek with the inner forces of the soul by which alone Christ can be found.

Within the stream of spiritual life a deepening of the forces of soul-and-spirit is in process. And whereas the spiritual forces lying at the surface will deny the Christ more and more insistently, deeper forces of soul will rise up and seek for Christ. Increasing numbers of people will see the Christ, who will appear in the etheric realm and will be found by those who are sensitive to this experience. We therefore speak of an etheric appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. Those who have this experience will have direct knowledge that at the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled the Christ Being entered in very truth into the Earth sphere and in ever greater numbers individuals will know with certainty who the Christ is.

Knowledge of Spiritual Science will deepen souls to such an extent that men’s vision will be awakened and the Christ revealed. A wonderful prospect opens for the eye of prophetic clairvoyance. The forces belonging to the superficial activities of the soul will become more and more ineffective and human beings born as time goes on will comparatively soon have finished with these surface-forces of their souls. An epoch reminiscent in a remarkable way of the Christ Event is approaching.

In the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ entered into him. A new life of soul began in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, for the Christ had taken the place of the Zarathustra-Ego which had departed from that body. That was at the beginning of our era. An epoch is now approaching when into increasing numbers of men from their thirtieth year onwards, knowledge of Christ—not Christ in His full reality—will penetrate as though through enlightenment. In the thirtieth year of the life of these men a new, all-embracing soul-life will begin because they will have vision of the Christ in His etheric form.

We understand our epoch in the sense of Spiritual Science when we realise what this prospect signifies. When the souls now living are again incarnated—and this will happen to many sooner than the normal period—numbers of individuals, from a particular age onwards, will feel through actual experience that something has penetrated into them of which they could previously have known only by having been informed of it. They will be able to say: I myself know through actual vision who Christ is; vision has enabled me to understand. When that time comes, efforts to prove the existence of Christ will cease, for the number of those who can testify to direct experience of Christ moving over the Earth as it Spirit Being, will constantly increase. Men will no longer search for the historic Christ.

There are two aspects to the picture of the future: On the one side barrenness will become more and more widespread owing to the activity of the superficial soul-forces; on the other side, as reaction against the barrenness, the soul-forces lying in the depths of man’s being will be evoked. We spread Anthroposophy in order that this shall be made known.

Men should not heedlessly allow impressions however faint to pass them by, for strong impres-sions are rare. As a result of the spread of true Anthroposophy the souls of men will not allow enlightenment, when it comes, to elude them, for if they do it would be beyond their reach for several incarnations. Other people, however, who make use of the superficial soul-forces will speak of those who have known enlightenment as fools or lunatics. A terrible beginning in this direction has already been made. Psychiatrists have already begun to investigate the problem of Christ Jesus. The Gospels are studied with the aim of discovering in Him symptoms of insanity! Such phenomenal occurrences should not be ignored; they should rather lead to the insight that Christ, who came into humanity in an age when He could least be understood, is working perpetually to prepare the understanding that will come in future ages.

A person who looks into the future should not generalise about it in abstract phrases. The future reveals two aspects: the aspect of barrenness of soul, of complete absorption in materialism, but also the aspect of the birth of a new spiritual world, not only in thoughts or in vision but in existence itself. For Christ will come to the side of men and be their counsellor. This is not a mere image. In actual reality men will receive the counsels they need from the Living Christ who will be their adviser and friend, who will speak to their souls just like someone who is physically near. If men needed a prophetic proclamation at the time when He was to appear in a human body, they need such a proclamation even more at this time, when He will come in an etheric form. What has now been said should be regarded as a preparatory announcement of what will and indeed must come to pass.

Have no illusion about the future. We are not giving way to illusion when we picture what outer, material life will be like in a future when handwriting will be spoken of in the same sense as we today speak of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The last vestiges of a spiritual culture still survive, even today, for writing still expresses characteristics of the soul; but the traces of soul will soon have disappeared from external culture as completely as Egyptian culture has vanished from our ken. People will speak of many things which in our time are still imbued with soul, as of something belonging to a far distant past. But the same voice that will proclaim the existence in the past age of a kind of hand-writing, will proclaim out of spiritual knowledge that in the spirit the living Christ is again moving among humanity. Men will have to exchange the spirit of mere intellectual conjecture for the spirit of direct vision, of direct feeling and experience of the Living Christ moving as a reality in the spirit by the side of the souls of men.²

• 1. See, The Fifth Gospel. Seven lectures given in Oslo and Cologne in 1913. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)
• 2. See also The True Nature of the Second Coming. Rudolf Steiner. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

In these two lectures I should like to speak to you from the point of view of Spiritual Research, on the question so frequently and urgently put: “What is the meaning of life?” If in these two evenings we are to get anywhere near this subject we shall have to create first of all a kind of foundation or basis, on which to construct the edifice of knowledge, and from this deduce the answer in outline.

When we contemplate the things around us, those which exist for our ordinary sense-perception and our ordinary experience, and then turn to our own life, the result is at best the formulation of a question—the presentation of an oppressive, a painful problem. We see how the beings of external nature arise and decay. We can observe every year in spring how the earth, stimulated by the forces of the sun and the universe, bestows on us the plants which sprout and bud and bear fruit through the summer. Towards autumn, we see how they decay and pass away. Some remain indeed throughout the year, some for very many years, for instance, our long-lived trees. But of these also we know that even though in many cases they may outlive us, they also pass away at last, disappear and sink down into that which, in the great world of nature, is the realm of the lifeless. Especially do we know that even in the greatest phenomena of nature there rules this growth and decay: even the continents on which our civilisations develop did not exist in times past, for they have only risen in the course of time, and we know for certain that they will one day pass away.

Thus we see around us growth and decay; we can trace it in the plant kingdom and in the mineral kingdom as well as in the animal kingdom. What is the meaning of it all? Ever an arising, ever a passing away all around us! What is the meaning of this arising and this passing away? When we consider our own life, and see how we have lived through years and decades, we can recognise there also this coming into being and decay. When we call to mind the days of our childhood: they are vanished and only the memory of them remains. This stirs within us anxious questionings about life. The most important thing is that we ourselves have progressed a little through it, that we have become wiser. Usually, however, it is only when we have accomplished something, that we know how it ought to have been done. If we are no longer in a position to do a thing better, we still know how much better it might have been done, so that actually our mistakes become a part of our life; but it is just through our mistakes and errors that we gain our widest experiences.

A question is put to us, and it seems as if that which we can grasp with our senses and our intellect is unable to answer it. That is the position of man to-day; all that surrounds him confronts him with the problem, with the question: “What is the meaning of existence as a whole?” and particularly “Why has man his peculiar position within this existence?”

An extremely interesting legend of Hebrew antiquity tells us that in those old Hebrew times there was a consciousness that this anxious question which we formulated as to the meaning of life, and especially as to the meaning of man, occurs not only to man, but to beings quite other than man. This legend is extremely instructive and runs as follows:—When the Elohim were about to create man after their own image and likeness, the so-called ministering angels, certain spiritual beings of a lower grade than the Elohim themselves, asked Jahve or Jehovah: “Why is man to be made in the image and likeness of God!” Then Jehovah collected—so continues the legend—the animals and the plants which could already spring forth on earth before man was there in his earthly form, and He gathered together the angels also, the so-called ministering angels—those who immediately served Him. To those He showed the animals and plants and asked them what they were called, what were their names? But the Angels did not know the names of the animals and plants. Then man was created, as he was before the Fall. And again Jehovah gathered around him Angels, animals and plants, and in the presence of the Angels he asked man what the animals whom He made to pass by in succession before man’s eyes, were called, what their names were. And behold! Man was able to answer: “This animal has this name, that animal has that, this plant has this name, that plant has that,” Then Jehovah asked man: “And what is thine own name?” And man said: “I must be called Adam.” (Adam is related to Adama, and means: “Out of the earth: earth-being”). Jehovah then asked man: “And what am I myself to be called?” “Thou shalt be called Adonai,” man replied, “Thou art the Lord of all created beings of the earth.” The Angels now began to have an idea of the meaning of man’s existence on the earth. Though religious tradition and religious writings often express the most important riddle of life in the simplest way, there are many difficulties in understanding them, because we have to get behind their simplicity. We must first penetrate into the meaning behind them. If we succeed in this, great wisdom and deep knowledge are revealed. It may well be so with this legend, which we shall just keep in mind for a moment, for these two lectures will give us, in some sort, an answer to the question which it contains.

Now you know that there is a religion which has put the question as to the meaning and value of life by placing it in a wonderful form into the mouth of its own founder. You all know the story of the Buddha, how it tells us that when he left the palace in which he was born, and came face to face with the real facts of life, of which in that incarnation he had as yet learned nothing, he was most profoundly dismayed, and pronounced the judgment: “Life is suffering,” which as we know comprises the four statements: “Birth is suffering—disease is suffering—old age is suffering—death is suffering,” and to which is added “to be united with those we do not love is suffering, to be separated from those we love is suffering, not to be able to attain that to which we aspire is suffering.” We know then that to the adherents of this religion the meaning of life can be summed up by saying: “Life, which is suffering, only acquires a meaning when it is conquered, when it transcends itself.” All the various religions, all philosophies and views of life, are, after all, attempts to answer the question as to the meaning of life. Now, we are not going to approach the question in an abstract, philosophical way. Rather we shall review some of the phenomena of life, some of the facts of life, from the point of view of Spiritual Science, in order to see if a deeper occult view of life furnishes us with something wherewith to approach this question as to the meaning of life. Let us take the matter up again at the point we have already touched—the annual growth and decay in physical nature, the life, growth and decay in the plant world. In Spring we see the plants spring up out of the earth, and that which we see there as germinating, budding life, calls forth our joy and delight. We become aware that the whole of our existence is bound up with the plant world, for without it we could not exist. We feel how that which springs up out of the earth at the approach of Summer is related to our own life. We feel in the Autumn how that which in a certain sense belongs to us, again decays.

It is natural for us to compare with our own life that which we see germinating and decaying. For an external observation based only on what can be perceived by the senses and judged by the intellect, it is very natural to compare the vernal springing up of the plants with, let us say, man’s awakening in the morning; and the withering and decaying of the plant world in Autumn with man’s falling asleep at night. But such a comparison is quite superficial. It would leave out of account the real events with which we can already become acquainted through the elementary truths of occultism. What happens when we fall asleep at night? We have learned that we leave our physical and etheric bodies behind in bed. With our astral body and our ego we withdraw from our physical body and etheric body. During the night, from the moment of our falling asleep to the moment of our waking, we are with our astral body and our ego in a spiritual world. From this spiritual world we draw the forces which we require. Not only our astral body and our ego, but our physical and etheric bodies go through a kind of restorative process during our sleep at night, when the latter lie in bed, separated from the astral body and ego.

When one looks clairvoyantly down from the ego upon the astral, the etheric and physical bodies, one sees what has been destroyed by waking life; one sees that that which finds its expression in fatigue, is present as a destructive process and is made good during the night. The whole conscious life of the daytime is in fact, if we look at it in its connection with human consciousness and in its relation to the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of destructive process as regards the physical and etheric bodies. We always destroy something by it, and the fact that we destroy expresses itself in our fatigue. That which is destroyed is made good again at night.

Now if we look at what happens when we have withdrawn our astral body and our ego out of the etheric and physical bodies, it is as if we had left behind us a devastated field. But in the moment we are out of them, out of the physical and etheric bodies, they begin gradually to restore themselves. It is as if the forces belonging to the physical and etheric bodies begin to bud and blossom, and as if an entire vegetation should arise on the scene of destruction. The further night advances and the longer sleep lasts, the more do the forces in the etheric body bud and blossom. The nearer morning approaches and the more we re-enter our physical and etheric bodies with our astral body, the more a kind of withering or drying up sets in as regards the physical and etheric bodies.

In short, when the ego and the astral body look down from the spiritual world on the physical and etheric bodies, they see at night, at the moment of falling asleep, the same phenomenon which we see in the great world outside, when the plants bud and germinate in Spring. Therefore, to make a real comparison, we must compare our falling asleep and the earlier part of the sleep condition at night with Spring in nature; and the time of our awakening, the time in which the ego and the astral body begin to re-enter the physical and etheric bodies, with Autumn, in external nature. Spring corresponds to our falling asleep and Autumn to our awakening.

But how does the matter stand, when the occult observer, he who really can look into the spiritual world, directs his gaze to external nature and watches what takes place there in the course of the year? That which then presents itself to the occult vision teaches us that we must not compare things in an outward, but in an inward way. Occult observation shows that just as the physical and etheric bodies of man are connected with his astral body and his ego, so is there connected with our earth what we call the spiritual part of the earth. The earth also must be compared with a body, a widespread body. If we consider it only as far as its physical part is concerned, it is just as if we were to consider man with regard to his physical body only. We consider the earth completely when we consider it as the body of spiritual beings, in the same way in which, in the case of man, we consider the spirit as being connected with the body, yet there is a distinction. Man has a single nature controlling his physical and etheric bodies; a single psycho-spiritual nature belongs to that which is his physical human body and etheric human body. But there are a great many spirits belonging to the Earth-body. What in man’s psycho-spiritual nature is a unity, is, as regards that of the earth, a multiplicity. This is the chief distinction. With the exception of this difference everything else is in a certain way analogous. To occult vision is revealed how in the same measure as green plants come forth from the earth in Spring, those spirits whom we call the earth-spirits, withdraw from the earth. Only here again they do not, as is the case with man, absolutely leave the earth; they move round it, they pass in a certain way to the other side of the earth. When it is Summer in one hemisphere it is Winter in the other. In the case of the earth, the spiritual part moves from the northern to the southern hemisphere when Summer is approaching in the north. But that does not alter the fact that to the occult vision of a man who experiences the Spring on any given part of the globe, the spirits leave the earth; he sees how they rise and pass out into the cosmos. He does not see them move to the other side, but he sees them go away, in the same way as he sees the ego and the astral body leave man at the moment of his falling asleep. In the Autumn the earth-spirits approach and re-unite themselves with the earth. During the Winter, when the earth is covered with snow, the earth-spirits are directly united with the earth. In fact something similar then begins for the earth to what is found in man: a kind of self-consciousness. During the Summer the spiritual part of the earth knows nothing of what goes on around it in the universe. But in Winter the spirit of the earth knows what is happening in the universe around, just as man, on waking, knows and beholds what is taking place around him.

The analogy is thus complete, only it is the reverse of that which the outer consciousness draws. It is true that if we wish to go into the question fully, we cannot simply say: “When, in Spring, plants bud and spring from the earth, the earth spirits go away,” for with the budding and sprouting of plants there arise, as if out of the depths, out of the interior of the earth, other and mightier spirits. Therefore the mythologies were right when they distinguished between the higher and the nether gods. When man spoke of the gods who left the earth in Spring and returned in Autumn, he spoke of the higher gods. But there were mightier, older, gods, called by the Greeks the Chthonic gods. These arise in Summer when everything is budding and flourishing, and they descend again when in Winter the real earth spirits unite with the body of the earth.

Now, I should here like to mention that a certain idea, taken from scientific and occult research, is of immense importance for human life. For this shows us that when we consider the individual human being, we have really before us something like an image of the great Earth-being itself. What do we see when we turn towards plants which are beginning to sprout and bud? We see exactly the same as takes place in man when his inner life is active, we see how the one exactly corresponds to the other. How single plants are related to the human body, what their significance is for the human body, can only be recognised when such connections are understood. For it is in fact true that, on close examination, one sees how, when man falls asleep, everything begins to sprout and bud in his physical and etheric bodies: how a whole vegetation springs up in him: how man is in reality a tree or a garden in which plants are growing.

Whoever follows this with occult vision sees that the sprouting and germinating within man corresponds to what is germinating and budding in nature without. Thus you can form an idea of what will be possible when, in the future, Anthroposophy—often considered as foolishness to-day—is applied to life and made fruitful. We have for example, a man who has something wrong in his bodily life-activities. Let us now observe, when he falls asleep, what kind of plants are wanting when his physical and etheric bodies begin to develop their vegetation. When we see that on earth whole species of plants are missing, we know that something must be wrong with the life of the earth. And it is the same with the deficiency of certain plants in the physical and etheric bodies of man. In order to make good the defect we have only to seek on the earth for the plants which are missing in the man in question, and introduce their juices either in the form of diet or medicine and then we shall find the relation between medicine and disease. From this example, we see how Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will intervene directly in life, but we are only at the beginning of these things.

In what I have just said I have given you, in a comparison drawn from nature, some idea of the composition of man and the connection of his whole being with the environment in which he is placed. We shall now look at the matter from a spiritual point of view. Here I would like to call attention to a matter that is of great importance, namely, that our anthroposophical outlook on life, while letting its gaze range over the evolution of mankind from the point of view of occultism, in order to decipher the meaning of existence, gives no preference to any one special creed, or any one view of life over any other. How often has it been emphasised in our occult movement that we can point to that which our earthly humanity experienced and developed immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe—the Flood. We passed through, as the first great post-Atlantean civilisation, the sacred civilisation of Ancient India. Here, at Copenhagen, we have already spoken of this old sacred Indian civilisation, and we laid stress upon the fact that it was so lofty, that that which has survived in the Vedas or in written tradition is only an echo of it. It is only in the Akashic Records that we can catch glimpses of the primeval teachings that issued from that time. There we gaze on heights which have not been re-attained.

The later epochs had quite a different mission. We know that a descent has taken place since then, but we know also that there will be again an ascent and that, as already mentioned, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science has to prepare this ascent. We know that in the seventh post-Atlantean age of civilisation, there will be a kind of renewal of the ancient, holy Indian civilisation. We do not give preference to any religious view or creed, for all are measured with the same measure, in every particular they are described: in each the kernel of truth is sought.

The important thing is that essentials be kept in view. We must not allow ourselves to stray in the consideration of the nature of each separate creed, and if we keep this in mind, in approaching the various points of view, we find one fundamental difference. We find views on life which are of a more oriental nature, and others which have permeated our Western civilisation. Once we make this clear to ourselves, we have something which throws light on the meaning of existence. We then find that the ancients were already in possession of something which we have to regain with difficulty, viz., the doctrine of reincarnation. The oriental stream possessed this as something springing from the profoundest depths of existence. You can still realise how the oriental mind shapes the whole of life from this doctrine, when you look at the relation of the oriental to his Bodhisattvas and his Buddhas. If you keep in view how little it concerns the oriental to select a single figure with this or that definite name, as the ruling power in human evolution, you see at once how he attaches much more importance to tracing the individuality which goes on from life to life. Orientals say that there are such and such a number of Bodhisattvas, high beings who have sprung from men, but who have gradually evolved to a height which we can describe by saying: A Being has passed through many incarnations, and then has become a Bodhisattva, as did Gautama, the son of King Sudhodana. He was Bodhisattva and became Buddha. The name Buddha, however, is given to many, because they passed through many incarnations, became Bodhisattva, and then ascended to the next higher stage, that of Buddhahood. The name Buddha is a generic name. It denotes a degree of human attainment, and has no sense apart from the spiritual being who goes through many incarnations. Brahmanism fully agrees with Buddhism in regarding the individual who goes through the different personalities, rather than the single person. It comes to the same whether the Buddhist says:—“A Bodhisattva is destined to ascend to the highest degree of human attainment, and for this he has to go through many incarnations; but for me the highest is the Buddha.” Or whether the adherent of Brahmanism says: “The Bodhisattvas are indeed highly developed beings, who ascend to Buddhahood, but they are inferior to the Avatars, who are higher spiritual individualities.” You see, consideration of the persisting spiritual entity is what characterises both these oriental points of view.

But now let us turn to the West, and see what is the thing of greatest importance there. In order to enter a little more deeply into this connection, we must consider the ancient Hebrew point of view, where the personal element enters. When we speak of Plato, of Socrates, of Michelangelo, of Charlemagne, or of others, we are always speaking of a person: we place before men the separate life of the personality with all that this personality has done for mankind. In our Western life we do not direct our attention to the life which has gone from personality to personality, for it has been the mission of Western civilisation to direct attention for a time to the single life. When in the East the Buddha is spoken of, it is understood that the designation “Buddha” is an honourable title which may be applied to many personalities. When, on the contrary, the name “Plato” is uttered, we know that this refers only to a single personality. This has been the education of the West.

Let us now turn to our own day. In Western civilisation, mankind has been trained for a time to direct his attention to the personality, but the individual element, the “individuality” has now to be added to the personal element. We stand now at the point where we must reconquer the individual element, but strengthened, vivified, by the contemplation of the personal.

Let us take a definite case. In this connection we look back to the old Hebrew civilisation, which preceded that of the West. Let us turn our attention to the mighty personality of the prophet Elijah. To begin with, we may describe him as a personality. In the West he is seldom regarded in any other way. If we leave aside details and look at the personality from a wider point of view, we see that Elijah was something very important for our evolution. He gives the impression of a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

On looking back to the time of Moses, we see how something had been proclaimed to the people; we see that the God in man was proclaimed. “I AM the God Who was, Who is, Who is to come.” He has to be comprehended as in the ego, but among the ancient Hebrews He was comprehended as the Folk-soul of the race. Elijah went beyond Moses, though he did not make clear that the ego dwells in the single human individual as Divinity, for he could not make clear to the people of his time more than the world was then able to receive. While even the Mosaic Culture of the old Hebrews was conscious of the fact that “the Highest lies in the Ego,” and that this Ego found expression in the time of Moses in the Group-Soul of the people, we find Elijah already pointing to the individual human soul. We see a forward leap in evolution. But a further impulse was needed, and again a forerunner appeared, whom we know as the personality of John the Baptist. Once more it was in a significant expression that the quality of John the Baptist as a “Forerunner” found expression. A great occult fact is here indicated that man, as primeval man, once possessed ancient clairvoyance, so that he could look into the spiritual world—into Divine activity—but he gradually approached towards materialism; the vision of the spiritual world was cut off. To this fact John the Baptist alludes when he says: “Change the attitude of your soul; look no longer at what you can gain in the physical world: be watchful, a new impulse is at hand (he means the Christ-Impulse). Therefore I say unto you, seek the spiritual world that is in your midst; there the spiritual element appears with the Christ-Impulse.” Through this saying John the Baptist became a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

Now we can direct our gaze to another personality, to the remarkable personality of the painter Raphael. This remarkable personality presents itself to us in an unusual way. In the first place, we need only compare Raphael to—let us say—Titian, a painter of a later period. Whoever has an eye for such things, even if he look at the reproductions, will find the distinction. Look at the pictures of Raphael and at those of Titian! Raphael painted in such a way that he put Christian ideas into his pictures. He painted for the people of Europe as Christians of the West. His pictures are comprehensible to all Christians of the West, and will become so more and more. Take, on the other hand, the later painters. They painted almost exclusively for the Latin race, so that even the schisms of the Church found expression in their pictures.

With which pictures was Raphael most successful? With those in which he was able to demonstrate the impulses that lie in Christianity. He is at his best where he could represent some relationship of the Jesus-Child to the Madonna, where this Christ-relation appears as something that is an impulse to feeling. These are the things which he really painted best. We have for instance, no Crucifixion of his, but we have a Transfiguration. Wherever he can paint the budding and germinating aspect, that which is self-revealing, he paints with joy and there he paints his greatest and best pictures.

It is the same with the impression which his pictures produce. If some day you come to Germany and see the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, you will realise that that work of art—of which it is said that the Germans may rejoice to have such a celebrated picture among them, Yes! that they may even regard it as the flower of the painters’ art—you will realise that this work discloses a mystery of existence.

When Goethe in his time traveled from Leipsic to Dresden, he heard something quite different about the picture of the Madonna. The officials of the Dresden Gallery said something like this to him: “We have also a picture of Raphael’s, but it is nothing particular. It is badly painted. The look of the Child, the whole Child itself, everything to do with the Child, is common. The same with the Madonna. One can only think that she is painted by a dauber. And then these figures down below of which one does not know whether they are meant for children’s heads or angels!” Goethe heard this coarse opinion, so that at first he had no right appreciation of the picture. Everything which we hear about the picture at the present time only came to be understood later on, and the fact that Raphael’s pictures made their triumphal march through the world in reproductions, is a result of this better appreciation. We have only to call to mind what England has done for the reproduction and circulation of these pictures. But what was effected in England by the trouble which has been taken for the reproduction and circulation of Raphael’s pictures, will only be recognised when people have learned to look at the matter from the point of view of spiritual science.

Thus through his pictures, Raphael becomes for us the forerunner of a Christianity which will be cosmopolitan. Protestantism has long regarded the Madonna as specially Catholic; but to-day the Madonna has penetrated everywhere into Protestant countries and we are rising more to the occult interpretation, to a higher inter-denominational Christianity. So it will be more and more. If we may hope for such results as regards interdenominational Christianity, what Raphael has done will also help us in Anthroposophy.

It is remarkable that the above three personalities confront us in this manner: all three have the quality of being forerunners of Christianity. Now let us direct occult observation to these three persons. What does it teach us? It teaches us that the same individuality lived in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael. However impossible it may seem, it is the same soul which lived in Elijah and in Raphael.

When it is revealed to occult vision—which searches and investigates and does not merely compare in a superficial way—that it is the same soul that is present in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael, we may ask how it is possible that Raphael the painter becomes the vehicle for the individuality which lived in John the Baptist? One can conceive that this remarkable soul of John the Baptist lived in the forces which were present in Raphael.

Occult research comes in here again, not merely to put forth theories, but to tell us how things actually are in life. How do people write biographies of Raphael to-day? Even the best are so written that they simply state that Raphael was born on Good Friday of the year 1483. It is not for nothing that Raphael was born on a Good Friday. This birth already proclaimed his exceptional position in Christianity and shows that in the deepest and most significant way he was connected with the Christian Mysteries. It was on a Good Friday that Raphael was born. His father was Giovanni Santi. He died when Raphael was eleven years old. At the age of eight years his father sent him as a pupil to a painter, who was, however, not of any special eminence. But if one realises what was in Giovanni Santi, Raphael’s father, one gets a peculiar impression which is further strengthened when the matter is investigated in the Akashic Records. There it appears that there lived in the soul of Giovanni Santi much more than could be expressed in his personality and then we can agree with the duchess, who at his death said: “A man full of light and truth and fervent faith has died.” As occultist, one can say that in him there lived a much greater painter than appeared outwardly. The outer faculties, which depend on the physical and etheric organs, were not developed in Giovanni Santi. That was the original cause why he could not bring the capacities of his soul to full expression; but really a great painter lived in him.

Giovanni Santi died when Raphael was eleven years old. If we now follow what takes place, we see that man certainly loses his body, but that the longings, the aspirations, the impulses of his soul continue to exist, and continue to be active where they are most closely connected.

There will come a time when Anthroposophy will be made fruitful for life, as it can already be made fruitful by those who have grasped it vitally and not merely theoretically. Permit me here to interpolate something before going on with Raphael. What I tell you in the examples I give is not mere speculation; on the contrary, it is always taken from real life. Let us suppose that I had children to educate. Whoever pays attention to the capabilities of children can notice the individual element in every child, but such experiences can only be made by those who educate children. Now if one of the parents of a child dies while the child is still young and the other parent is still living, the following may be noticed: Certain inclinations will show themselves in the child which were not there before and which consequently cannot be explained. But one who has charge of children has to occupy himself with these things. Such a one would do well if he said: “People generally look upon what is in Anthroposophical books as mere folly: I will not take this for granted, but will try whether it is right or not.” Then he will soon be able to say “I find forces at work which were already there and again there are other forces playing into those which were already there.” Let us suppose that the father has passed through the gates of death and there now appears in the child, with some strength, certain qualities which had belonged to the father. If this assumption is made and if the matter is looked upon in this way, the knowledge which comes to us through Anthroposophy is applied to life in a sensible way, and then, as is soon discovered, we find our way in life, whereas before we did not. Thus the person who has gone through the gateway of death, remains united, through his forces, with those with whom he was connected in life. People do not observe things closely enough, otherwise they would see more often that children are quite different before the death of their parents from what they are afterwards. At present there is not enough regard for these things, but the time is coming when they will receive attention.

Giovanni Santi, the father, died when Raphael was eleven years old; he had not been able to attain great perfection as a painter, but powerful imagination was left to him and this was then developed in the soul of Raphael. We do not depreciate Raphael, if, while observing his soul, we say: Giovanni Santi lives on in Raphael, who appears to us as a completed personality, as one incapable of higher attainment because a dead man gives life to his work.

We now realise that in the soul of Raphael are reborn the vigorous forces of John the Baptist and in addition, there live in his soul the forces of Giovanni Santi; that together these two were able to bring to fruition the result which confronts us as Raphael. It is true that to-day we cannot yet speak publicly of such extraordinary things, but in fifty years’ time this may be possible, because evolution is progressing quickly, and the opinions held to-day are rapidly approaching their decline. Whoever accepts such things, sees that in Anthroposophy our task is to regard life everywhere from a new point of view. Just as in the future people will heal in the way to which I have referred, so they will reflect on the strange miracle of life wherein men attract to their assistance, from the spiritual world, the achievements of those who have passed through the gates of death.

I should like to draw your attention to two things, when speaking on the riddles of life; things which so truly can illuminate the meaning of life. One is the fate that has befallen the works of Raphael. Whoever looks to-day at the reproductions of his pictures, does not see what Raphael painted. And if he travels to Dresden or to Rome, he finds them so much spoiled that he can hardly be said to see the pictures of Raphael. It is easy to see what will become of them when we consider the fate of Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” which is falling more and more into decay. These pictures, in times to come, will fall into dust, and everything which great men have created will disappear. When these things have vanished, we may well ask: “What is the meaning of this creation and decay!” We shall see that really nothing remains of what the single personality has created.

Still another fact I should like to put before you, and that is the following: If when to-day, with Anthroposophy as an instrument, we desire to understand, and must understand, Christianity as an Impulse that works for the future, we have need of certain fundamental ideas through which we know how the Christ-Impulse will continue to work. This we require. And we can point to a development of Christianity for which Anthroposophy is necessary. We can point to a person who presents Anthroposophical truth in special form—namely, that of aphorisms. When we approach him we find much that is significant for Anthroposophy. This person is the German poet Novalis. When we study his writings, we find that he describes the future of Christianity from out of the occult truths it contains. Anthroposophy teaches us that we have here to do with the same individuality as is in Raphael, John the Baptist and Elijah.

We have here again to glance into the further development of Christianity. That is a fact of an occult nature, for no one reaches this result by reasoning. Let us once more put the different pictures together. We have the tragic fact of the destruction of the creations and works of single personalities. Raphael appears and allows his interdenominational Christianity to flow into the souls of men. But we have a foreboding that some day his creations will be destroyed, that his works will fall to dust. Then Novalis appears to take in hand the fulfilment of the task and continue the work he had begun. The idea is no longer now so tragic. We see that just as the personality dissolves in its sheaths, so the work dissolves, but the essential kernel lives on and continues the work it had begun. Here once again it is the individual to which our attention is directed. But because we have kept firmly in mind the Western view of life and therewith the personality, we are able to grasp the full significance of the individuality. Thus we see how important it is that the East directed its attention to the individuality, to the Bodhisattvas, who go through many incarnations; and how important it is that the West first directed its attention to the contemplation of the single personality, in order, later on, to grasp what the individuality is.

Now I think there are many Anthroposophists who will say: “Well, this is something we have just to believe, when Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis are mentioned.” For many the main thing is that they must just believe. It is essentially the same as when from the scientific side some fact is asserted that many people have to believe, such as that this or that spectrum appears when certain metals are examined by spectrum analysis, or when for instance, the nebula in Orion is so examined. Some people have certainly investigated it, but the others, the majority, have to believe. But that is after all not the essential point. The essential point is that Anthroposophy is at the beginning of its development, and will bring souls to the point of examining for themselves such matters as we have discussed to-day. In this respect, Anthroposophy will help forward human evolution very rapidly.

I have put before you a few instances, which I submit as resulting from the occult point of view regarding life. Take only the three points which we have considered and you will see that by knowing in what way life is related to the Spirit of the Earth, the art of healing can be given a new direction and supplied with new impulses; how Raphael can only be understood when not only his personal forces are taken into account, but also those forces which came from his father. The third point is that we can educate children when we know the interplay of forces acting on them. Outwardly people admit that they are surrounded by numberless forces which incessantly influence them, that man is continually influenced by air, the temperature, his surroundings and the other Karmic conditions under which he lives. That these things do not interfere with his freedom everyone knows. They are the factors with which we have to reckon to-day. But that man is continually surrounded by spiritual forces and that these spiritual forces must be investigated is what Anthroposophy has to teach men: they will have to learn to take these forces into account and will have to reckon with them in important cases of health and disease, of education and life. They will have to be mindful of such influences as come from without, from the super-sensible world, when, for instance, some one’s friend dies and he then shares those sympathies and ideas that belonged to him. What has been said does not hold good for children only, but for all ages. It is not at all necessary that people should know with their ordinary consciousness in what way the forces of the super-sensible world are active. Their general frame of mind may show it, even their state of health or illness may show it. And those things which signify the connection of man’s life on the physical plane with the facts of the super-sensible worlds have a still wider bearing.

I should like to put before you a simple fact which will show you the nature of this connection, a fact which is not invented, but has been observed in many cases. A man notices at a certain time that he has feelings which formerly he did not know; that he has sympathies and antipathies which formerly he did not know; that he succeeds easily where before he found difficulties. He cannot explain it. His surroundings cannot explain it to him, nor do the facts of life itself give him any clue. In such a case it can be found, when we observe accurately (it is true that one must have an eye for such things), that now he knows things which he did not know before and does things which he could not do before. If we examine matters further and have had experience of the teachings of Anthroposophy, it may be that we shall hear something like the following from him: “I do not know what to think of myself. I dream of a person whom I have never seen in my life. He comes into my dreams, though I never had anything to do with him.” If we follow the matter up it will be found that till now he had no occasion to occupy himself with this person. But this person had died and now first approaches him in the spiritual world. When he had come near enough to him he appeared to him in a dream which was yet more than a dream. From this person, whom he had not known in life, who, however, after death, gained influence on his life, came the impulses which he had not known before. It is not a question of saying: “It is only a dream.” It is far more a question of what the dream contained. It may be something which, although in the form of a dream, is nearer to reality than the outer consciousness. Does it matter at all whether Edison invents something in a dream or in clear waking consciousness? What matters is whether the invention is true, is useful. So also it does not matter whether an experience takes place in dream-consciousness or in physical consciousness; what is of importance is whether the experience is true or false.

If we now summarise what we are able to understand from what has just been said, we may say “It is clear to us when we learn to apply Anthroposophy, that life appears to us in quite a different light from before.” In this respect people who are very learned in materialistic ways of thought are but children. We can convince ourselves of this at any time. When to-day I came here by train I took up the pamphlet of a German physiologist in its second edition. In it the writer says that we cannot speak of “active attention” in the soul, of directing the attention of the soul to anything, but that everything depends on the functioning of the various ganglia of the brain; and because the tracks have to be made by thoughts, everything depends on how the separate brain cells function. No intensity of the soul intervenes, it depends entirely upon whether this or that connecting thread in our brain has been pulled or not. These learned materialists are really children. When we lay our hands on anything of this kind one cannot help thinking how guileless these people are! In the same pamphlet one finds the statement that lately the centenary of Darwin was celebrated, and that on that occasion, both qualified and unqualified people spoke. The author of the pamphlet thought himself of course quite specially qualified. And then follows the whole brain-cell theory and its application. But how is it with the logic of the matter? When one is used to considering things in accordance with truth and then sees what these great children offer people concerning the meaning of life, the thought occurs to one that after all it comes to the same as if someone should say that it was simply nonsense that a human will had any part in the way the railways intersect the face of Europe! For it is just the same as if at a given time one considered all the engines in their varied parts and functions, and said that these are organised in such and such a way and run in so many directions. But the different roads meet at certain junctions and through them the engines can be turned in any direction. What would occur if this were done would be a great disarrangement of trains on the European railways. Just as little, however, can it be asserted that what takes place in the human brain cells as the life of human thought depends only on the condition of the cells. If such learned people then happen, without previous knowledge, to hear a lecture on Anthroposophy, they look upon that which is said as the most utter nonsense. They are firmly convinced that a human will can never have anything to do with the mode and manner in which the European engines run, but that it depends on how they are heated and driven.

So we see how at the present day we stand confronted by questions regarding the meaning of life. On the one side there is darkness, on the other the spiritual facts press in upon us. If we grasp what has been said to-day we can, with this as a basis, put the question before our soul in the way in which it has to be put in Anthroposophy, namely: What is the meaning of life and existence, and especially of human life and human existence?

It would be a grave error if one were to believe that the question as to the meaning of life and existence could be put in such a simple way that one could ask: “What is the meaning of life and existence?” and then someone could give a simple answer in a few words, saying perhaps: “This or that is the meaning of life.” In this way no real feeling, no idea could ever be gained of the sublimity, majesty, and power which lie behind this question as to the meaning of life. It is true that an abstract answer might be given, but you will realise by what I say later on how little satisfactory such an answer would be. It might be said that the meaning of life consists in the fact that spiritual beings to whom we look up as Divine Beings gradually bring man to the stage where he is permitted to co-operate in the evolution of existence, so that man who was imperfect in the beginning of his development and was incapable of taking part in the whole construction of the universe, might in the course of evolution gradually be trained to participate more and more in this evolution.

That would be an abstract answer, telling us very little. Rather must we penetrate into certain secrets of existence and life, if we would grasp something like an answer to a question of such far-reaching importance. So we may take as a basis the facts considered yesterday: penetrating yet a little more deeply into the mysteries of existence. When we observe the world around us, it is not really enough that we see growth and decay. Yesterday we drew attention to the fact that this growth and decay affect our souls mysteriously when we ask ourselves what is the meaning of it all. But there is something that is a still more difficult problem. We see already in the origin and growth of things something that is highly remarkable, which if only observed superficially gives us a feeling of sadness and of tragedy. If, with the knowledge gained from the physical world, we look into the depths of the ocean or into the vast fields of any other form of existence, we know that countless germs of life arise and that but few of these become fully developed beings. Only think how many germs of different fish are produced yearly in the sea which do not reach their goal of development, but disappear again before reaching it, and how only a small number of these germs attain maturity.

Yesterday we turned our attention to the fact that everything which comes into existence perishes again. But now the other fact forces itself on our attention, that out of a limitless domain of immeasurable possibilities but few realities emerge, and that already in the origin of things there is something enigmatical, in the fact that what strives to come into existence cannot really develop.

Let us take a concrete case. If we sow a field with corn, we see springing up a great number of ears of corn. We know quite well that out of every single grain in these ears of corn a new ear of corn can come into existence.

And now we ask: “How many of all those grains of corn we see on the corn-field reach this goal?” Let us think for a moment of the numberless grains which go quite a different way from that which is their object, namely to become ears of corn in their turn. In concrete form we can therefore assert that the life surrounding us only comes into existence as such, through the fact that, in its birth, it seems to push down numberless life-germs as if into an abyss of non-fulfilment. Everywhere in our surroundings, what exists is built on a groundwork of infinitely rich possibilities which may become realities in the ordinary sense of the word. Let us keep in mind that on such a foundation of possibilities realities do arise, and let us regard this as one view of the mysterious life-existence that is presented to us.

Now we shall look at the other side of the picture which also exists, but of which we are only aware when we enter deeply into spiritual truths. The other side is that which presents itself to man when he follows the path to Anthroposophy. This path is sometimes described, as you know, as dangerous. And why? Simply for the reason that if we wish to follow the path to spiritual knowledge we enter a realm which may on no account be accepted off-hand in the form in which it presents itself to us.

Let us suppose that a man were following the spiritual path by methods known to you, and which are to be found in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and that such a person reached the point when what we call imaginative pictures arose out of the depths of his soul. We know what imaginative pictures are. They are visionary images, confronting a man when he is following the spiritual path as an entirely new world. If a man is really seriously following this path, he comes to the stage at which the whole of the physical world around him grows dim. In the place of this physical world there appears a world of moving images, a world of surging impressions of the nature of sounds, smell, taste and light. This presses on and whirls within our spiritual horizon and we experience what may be called imaginative visions which then surround us on all sides and constitute the world in which our souls live and move.

Now let us suppose that a man were convinced that in the visionary world which appeared before him, he had something entirely real; such a man would be subject to a very grave mistake. And here we are at the point where danger begins. The realm of visionary life is immeasurable as long as we do not ascend from Imagination, which conjures up a visionary world, to Inspiration. It is the latter which first tells us to direct our attention to one particular picture, to turn our spiritual gaze to it, and that then we shall experience truth; and the countless other pictures that surround this one must vanish into lifeless space. This one picture will arise from countless others and will prove itself to be an expression of the truth.

Thus, when we find ourselves on the spiritual path, we enter a realm where countless visions are possible and we must develop, so that we can select, as it were, out of this realm of infinite possibilities of vision, those which express a true spiritual reality. No other guarantee is possible than the one just mentioned, for if anyone were to come and say: “I enter a realm infinitely rich in visions, tell me which are true and which are false, can you not give a rule whereby I can distinguish the one from the other?”—no genuine occultist or spiritual investigator would answer these questions with a rule, but he would have to say: “If you wish to learn to discriminate, you must go on developing yourself. Then it will happen that it will be possible for you to direct your vision to that which remains. The visions which endure are those that have reached a certain level; but those which must be wiped out by you are merely images of mist.”

Now danger lies in the fact that many people feel themselves extremely pleased and comfortable in the realm of visions. When once surrounded by a visionary world they do not trouble to develop themselves further, or go on striving, because this visionary world pleases them extremely well. But it is impossible to attain reality in the spiritual life when we simply surrender ourselves to this feeling of bliss, to revelling, as it were, in the visionary world. We cannot then ascend to reality of truth. It is necessary to go on striving with all the means at our disposal; for only then does spiritual reality really emerge out of the limitless possibility of visions. Now compare the two things which I have described. On the one hand, the world without, where we find numberless possibilities for life-germs, whereof only a few can attain their goal; on the other hand the inner world to which the path of knowledge leads us: an infinite world of visions which is to be compared with the world of infinite possibilities for the life germs. A few of these are such visions to which we at last attain, and which may be compared to the few real lives which emerge from among the numerous life-germs. These two things correspond completely; they belong entirely to each other in the world.

Now let us carry this thought a little further: “Is that man right who is faint-hearted and sad about life and existence because in this life numberless germs can only, so to speak, half emerge and but few reach their goal?” Is it possible for us to be sad about these facts? Is it possible to say: “All around there is a wild struggle for existence from which only a few accidentally escape?” Let us consider our concrete example of the cornfield. Let us suppose that all the grains of corn which grow there were really to reach their goal and become ears of corn. What would be the result? The world would then be impossible, for the things which are nourished on the grains of corn would have no food. In order that certain things or beings well known to us may reach their present stage of development, other things or beings have to fall short of their goal, have to sink down into the abyss as far as their own destiny is concerned. But notwithstanding that, we have no reason for sadness, for if we concern ourselves with the world, if we concern ourselves with its existence, the world consists only of beings and those beings must be able to find nourishment. If they are to be nourished, then other beings must sacrifice themselves. Therefore, only few life-germs can really reach their goal. The others must go another way. They have to go a different way because the world has to exist, because it is really the only way in which the world can be wisely ordered. We are thus surrounded by a world which is such as it is because certain beings sacrifice themselves before they have reached their goal. If we follow the way of those which are sacrificed, we find them within other beings which are more highly organised; beings who have need of this sacrifice in order that they may exist. Here, in a nutshell, as it were, we can grasp the meaning of existence, which is so seemingly difficult to understand in the coming forth of beings into existence and their annihilation. Yet we have discovered that it is precisely in this that wisdom and meaning in existence are revealed, and that it is only our reflection that does not go far enough, when we lament that so many things must apparently disappear without reaching their goal.

Now let us turn to the other, the spiritual side. Let us take what we have called the limitless world of visions. Here we must in the first place understand what this boundless world of vision really means. It is not simply false in such a sense that we can say: that which disappears is false, that which finally remains is true. Not in this sense is this world false. That would be as short-sighted a judgment as if we were to believe that the life-germs which do not come to fruition are not really life-germs at all. Just as in external life the fact confronts us that only a few beings reach their goal, so it is only possible for a few things out of the limitless spiritual life to enter our horizon. And why?

This question as to the “why” will be extremely instructive for us. Let us suppose that a man would simply surrender himself to the visions floating in on him in immeasurable variety. If once this visionary world is opened, the visions pour in incessantly, one after another, they come and go and surge and flow into one another. It is quite impossible to shut ourselves off from the pictures and impressions which pulsate around us in the spiritual world. But on closer observation we find something very peculiar in a person who thus simply surrenders himself to this visionary world. In the first place we find when we encounter a person who does not want to develop any further, but just wishes to remain at the visionary stage, that he has experienced something, that he has had this or that experience.

Good, we say, you have experienced things that are realities to you. Excellent, that is a manifestation from the spiritual world. But very soon we shall notice that when another person comes and tells us what visions he had in connection with the same thing, and this second one is no further advanced than the first, that his visions about the same thing have quite a different form, so that two different statements may be presented on the same subject. Indeed, we may even make worse discoveries. We find that such men who wish to remain at the mere visionary world even give different statements about one and the same matter; that sometimes they tell us one thing and sometimes another. Only it is unfortunate that visionaries generally have bad memories and have forgotten what they related the first time. They are not themselves aware of what they have related. In short, we have to do with a numberless variety of phenomena. If, as human beings with our present ego we would rightly judge of everything which presents itself in the visionary world, we should have to compare an infinite number of visions. But that would lead to no result. It must be taken as a principle that this visionary world is in the first pace a manifestation of the spirit, but that it has not the slightest value as information. However many visions may come to us, they are manifestations of the spiritual world, but they are not realities. If they are to become truths, the different visions of many persons would have to be compared and that is impossible. Instead of that there is the possibility of further development to the stage of Inspiration, we find that all their statements are alike. Then there are no more differences nothing which appears differently to different persons. Then the experiences are actually the same in the case of all who have reached the same stage of development.

Now we pass to the other question, which also in a certain way corresponds to what we find in the outer world. There the few life-germs which reach their goal can be compared to the many which sink down into the abyss. We know that this loss is necessary in order that the outer world may exist. But how is it in the spiritual world, with these visions and inspirations? Here we must first of all understand that what we have before us, when we have selected the visions, stands before us as a spiritual reality, that in them we have not mere images which only give us knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word. That is not the case, and the fact that it is not so I shall make clear to you by a very important example. I shall explain how the selected visions stand in relation to the world just as we previously made it clear to ourselves how the life-germs which have reached their goal stand related to life-germs in general. These are used as nourishment by the others. How is it now with the selected visions, with those which really live in man as visions?

Here I must draw attention to one thing. You must not believe that the person who has become clairvoyant has reached a point at which the world of the spirit lives in him and does not live in others. You must not think of clairvoyance in such a way that you say: “Here is a clairvoyant and here is another person; in the soul of that clairvoyant lives the expression of the spiritual reality, but not in the soul of the other.” That would not be right. Rather must you say, if you would express it correctly: “Here we have two men, the one is clairvoyant, the other not. That which the clairvoyant sees lives in both. In the non-clairvoyant as well as in the clairvoyant the same things, the same spiritual impulses live; these things are also present in the soul of the non-clairvoyant.” The clairvoyant only differs from the non-clairvoyant in the fact that he sees them, whereas the other does not. The one bears them within him and sees them, the other bears them within him and does not see them. Whoever believes that the clairvoyant has something within him which the other has not would be making a great mistake. Just as the existence of a rose does not depend on whether man sees it or not, so it is with the clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant and in the soul of the non-clairvoyant. The reality lives in the soul of the clairvoyant, although the latter does not see it; the distinction consists in the fact that the one sees it and the other does not. Thus the fact is that there live in the souls of all men on earth all the things which the clairvoyant can perceive by means of his clairvoyance. Let us impress this on our minds before going on. We shall now pass on to an apparently different realm of observation which will later bring us back again to what has been said. We shall turn our attention to the animal world. The animal world surrounds us in manifold forms, in forms of lions, bears, wolves, lambs, sharks, whales, etc. Man distinguishes between these animal-forms by forming ideas of them, by forming the idea of the lion, the wolf, the lamb, etc. But now we must not confuse that which man forms as an idea with what the lion or the wolf is in reality. In Anthroposophy we speak of so-called group-souls. All lions have a common lion group-soul, all wolves a wolf group-soul. It is true that certain abstruse philosophers say, that that which the animals have in common only exists in ideas, that “wolf-hood” does not exist externally in the world. That is not true. Whoever believes that the “wolf-hood” as such, that is, that which exists objectively in the spiritual world as the group-soul, does not exist apart from our ideas, has but to consider the following. In the outer world there are beings which we call wolves. Let us now assume that the soul nature and characteristics of the wolf result from the kind of substance which forms the body of the wolf. We know that the substance of an animal’s body changes continually. An animal assimilates new substance and eliminates the old. In this way the consistency of the substance changes continually. But what matters is the fact that something is present in the wolf which changes the substance it assimilates into wolf-substance. Let us suppose that with all the means and methods of science we had found how long the wolf needs to renew his substance. Let us suppose further that we shut up a wolf for that time and feed it on nothing but lambs, so that for the time necessary to renew the substance of its physical body, it was fed on nothing but lamb-substance. If the wolf were nothing more than the physical substance from which its body is built, then it ought to have become a lamb by that time. But you will not believe that the wolf by eating lamb for ever so long becomes a lamb. So you will see that the ideas we form of the different animals correspond to realities which are superphysical in regard to that which is in the outer sense world.

It is the same with all animals. The group-soul, that which lies behind the whole animal species, causes one animal to be a wolf, another a lamb, one a lion, and another a tiger. We must however form clear ideas regarding the group-souls. The ideas which we generally form of the animal world are very incomplete. That they are incomplete is due to the fact that man in his present condition penetrates but very little into realities, that he really only clings to the surface of things. Were he to penetrate more deeply, then on forming the idea of a wolf, he would have not only the abstract idea in his mind, but he would have the state of feeling which corresponds to this idea. With the idea, a state of feeling would be evoked, and while forming the idea of the wolf man would experience that which constitutes wolf-nature; he would feel the ferocity of the wolf, the patience of the lamb.

That this is not the case to-day is due to the fact that man, after having come under the Luciferic influence, was prevented by the gods from having the “life” as well as the “knowledge.” He was not to eat of the “Tree of Life.” Therefore he has only the knowledge and cannot experience the reality of the life. This he can only do when, in an occult or spiritual way, he penetrates into this realm. Then he not only has the abstract idea, but lives in that which we describe with the expressions “the ferocity of the wolf” and “the patience of the lamb.” Now you will understand how great is the difference between these two things; how all these things are surging within us because our ideas are permeated by the most inward life of the substance of the soul. But these ideas the occultist and the clairvoyant must form for himself; he must rise to these ideas. When the clairvoyant has ascended thus far it may he said that something of the soul-substance is already living in him. Indeed a living reflection of the whole animal world that is without does live within him. One might say here: “How fortunate it is for those who have not become clairvoyants.” But I have already pointed out that in this connection the clairvoyant does not differ from other men. What is in the one is also in the other. The difference is that the one sees it and the other does not. The whole world of which I have spoken is really within the soul of every man, only the ordinary man does not see it. This whole world surges up out of the hidden depths of the soul, makes man restless, throws him into doubt, draws him hither and thither, and makes him unbalanced in his desires and instincts. That which does not rise beyond a certain threshold and which only faintly finds expression, is none the less present. The person whose mental disposition makes him sensitive to these influences is so connected with the world that these feelings possess him, enter into his life struggles and bring him into serious relations with men and other beings. This is a fact—and why?

If this were not so, then the development of our earth along with the animal kingdom would in a certain respect come to an end. The animal kingdom, as it is, would then have been a kind of final stage, it could not have progressed. All the group-souls of the animals which live around us would not be able to carry their development over into subsequent incarnations of our earth. That would be a remarkable thing. These group-souls of the animals would be in the position (pardon the comparison, but it will make it clear to you what is meant) of a community of Amazons where never a man was allowed, which would of necessity die out as a community of human beings. It is true that it would not die out spiritually, for its soul would pass over into other realms, but as a community of Amazons, this would be its fate. In the same way the community of the animal group-souls would have to die out if nothing else were there. For that which lives in the animal group-souls must be fertilised, and it cannot otherwise bridge the gulf in earthly evolution, which leads to the Jupiter incarnation, if not fertilised as I have described. The outer forms of the animals of the earth die out, but the group-souls are fertilised and appear on Jupiter ready for a higher state of being and thus they attain their next stage of development.

What is it that takes place through man’s furthering down here the development of the living form of the group-souls? He provides thereby the fertilising seed for souls which otherwise could not develop further. If we keep this in mind, then we can say: Hence we see that where man looks on the animal kingdom outwardly, he evolves from within certain inner impulses which have to be stimulated from without; these are fertilising seed for the animal group-souls. These impulses, which are the fertilising seed for the animal group-souls, arise through stimulus from without. But not from outward stimulus do the visions of the clairvoyant arise, nor those visions either which are selected as real. These exist only in the spiritual world, and live within the souls of men.

But you must not believe that nothing takes place in the spiritual world when out of a multitude of grains of corn certain of them are consumed, while but few develop again into heads of corn. While the grains are consumed, the spiritual part connected with the grain passes over into man. This is most evident to clairvoyant vision when directed towards a sea in which there are many fish-germs, and it is seen how few develop into full-grown fish. In those which develop into full-grown fish small flames may be observed, but those which do not develop physically, which disappear into the abyss physically, develop huge flaming light-forms. In these the spiritual element is so much the more considerable. So it is also with the grains of corn which are eaten. The material part of them is eaten. When crushed, a spiritual force which fills the space around, issues from those grains of corn which have not reached their goal. It is just the same for the clairvoyant, when he looks at a man who is eating rice, or something similar. When he assimilates the material, the spiritual forces connected with the corn flow forth in streams. All this is not such a simple matter for spiritual observation, especially when the nourishment is not of a vegetable kind. But I will not enter into this to-day, because Anthroposophy must not agitate for any party movement, and therefore not even for vegetarianism!

Thus it is that spiritual beings are linked together. Everything that apparently perishes, gives up its spiritual part to the environment. This actually unites with what lives within man when he becomes clairvoyant, or is by any other means in his visionary world; and the selected visions (after Inspiration) are what fertilise the spiritual part that has been forced out of those life-seeds that do not reach their goal; the visions fertilise it and bring it to further evolution.

So our inner nature, through that which it inwardly evolves, is in continual relationship with the outer world, and works in connection with this outer world. This outer world would be condemned to perish, could not develop further, if we did not bring to meet it fertilising germs. Outside in the world spirituality exists, but only a half spirituality, as it were. In order that this spirituality outside may have offspring, the other spirituality that is within us must approach it. That which lives within us is by no means a mere reflection of the other, perceived mentally, but something that appertains to it. It unites with that which is outside us, and evolves further, just as the north and south poles have to come together as magnetism or electricity in order that something may be achieved. That which takes form in our inner world of visions must unite with that which flashes forth from those things which apparently perish. These are wonderful mysteries, which are however, gradually solved, and which show us how the inner is connected with the outer.

Now let us glance at what surrounds us in the outer world and at what we possess as selected visions, singled out from the measureless possibility of visions. That which we exalt as a vision that is worthy serves for our inner development. That which sinks down when we overlook all the immeasurable field of visionary life, that which disappears, does not sink away into nothingness; it merges with the outer world and fertilises it. What we have selected from the visions serves to our further development. The other visions leave us, and unite with what is around us, with the life which has not reached its goal. Just as living beings must assimilate that which has not attained to life, so we must absorb that which we do not hand over to the outer world in order to fertilise it. This has also its aim. All that is continually coming to birth spiritually in the world must perish, if we do not let our visions go, and do not select those only which are revealed in accordance with Inspiration. Now we come to the second point, to the danger of the visionary life. What does the person do who simply takes the innumerable and varied visions for truth, who does not select what is right for him, and extinguish by far the greater number of the visions! What does such a person do? He does spiritually the same as a man would do (when we interpret it physically you will at once see what he does) who, confronting a cornfield would not use the greater part of the corn for nourishment but who would utilise all the grains as seed. It would not be long before there was no room on the earth for all the corn. Such a thing could not go on, for all other creatures would die out, there would be no nourishment left for them. It is the same with the man who looks on everything as truth, who does not destroy a single vision and retains everything within him. He does the same as if he were to gather all the grains of corn and sow them again. Just as the world would soon be covered with nothing but cornfields and grains of corn, so the man who did not select his visions would be overwhelmed by them.

I have described what is around us, physically as well as spiritually, the animals and also the ideas which man forms of them. I have also shown how man has to assign an aim to his visions, and how this visionary world must be united with the outer world, in order that evolution may proceed. But how is it now when we turn our attention to man? He meets an animal, considers its group-soul, and says: “wolf,” that is, he has formed the idea “wolf,” and while saying “wolf” the picture has arisen in him of which the non-clairvoyant, to be sure, has not the “feeling-substance,” but only the abstract idea. That which lives in the “feeling-substance” unites with the group-soul and fertilises it at the moment the man pronounces the word “wolf.” If he were not to pronounce the name, the animal kingdom as such would die out. And the same holds good for the vegetable kingdom.

What I have described with regard to man, holds good for him alone; not for the animals, nor for the angels; these have quite other missions. Man alone exists in order that with his own being he can confront the world around him, so that life-giving germs may arise that find expression in “names.” It is thus that the possibility of further development is implanted in the inner nature of man. Let us now go back to the starting point we chose yesterday. Jahve or Jehovah was asked by the ministering angels for what purpose he wished to create man. The angels could not understand why. Then Jehovah gathered the plants and the animals and asked the angels what were the names of these beings. They did not know. They have tasks other than fertilisation of the group-souls. Man, however, was able to tell the names. In this way Jahve shows that He has need of man, because otherwise creation would die out.

In man those things evolve which have come to an end, and which have to be stimulated anew in order that evolution may go forward. Man had therefore to be created, so that the life-giving germ might be born which finds expression in “names.”

Thus we see that we are not placed in creation without a purpose. Think man away, and the transitional kingdoms would not be able to develop further. They would meet the fate which would befall a plant world that is not fertilised. Only through the fact that man is placed into Earth existence, is the bridge built between the world which was and the world which is to be, and man takes for his own path of development that which exists as “name” in the vast sum of created beings; thus does he bring about his own ascent together with that of the rest of evolution.

Here, but in no simple abstract way, we have answered the question, “What is the meaning of life?” although, after all, the abstract answer is contained therein. Man has become a co-worker with spiritual beings. He has become so through his whole nature. What he is has come about through his whole nature. He must exist, and without him there could be no creation. Knowing himself to be a part of creation, man thus feels that he is a participator in Divine spiritual activity.

Now he knows also why his inner life is such as it is, why outside is the world of stars, the clouds, the kingdoms of nature, with all that spiritually belongs thereto, and within there is a world of the soul. He now sees that these two worlds belong to one another, and that only through their mutually reacting on each other does evolution proceed. Outside in space, the infinite world is unfolding to our view. Within is our soul-world. We do not notice that that which lives within us shoots forth and blends with that which is outside, we are not aware that we are the stage on which this union is carried out. What is within us forms as it were the one pole, what is outside in the universe—the other; these two must unite in order that the evolution of the world may proceed. Our meaning, the meaning of man, consists in this—that we take part in it. The ordinary knowledge of the normal consciousness knows little of these things. But the more we progress in the knowledge of such things, the more we become conscious that in us lies the point where the North and the South Poles of the world (if I may make the comparison) exchange their opposite forces, and unite, so that evolution may advance. Through the teaching of the spiritual world we learn that in us is the stage where the adjustment of forces takes place. We feel how within us, as in a focal point, the Divine world of spirit dwells, how it unites with the world outside, and how these two mutually fructify one another.

When we feel ourselves to be the scene where all this takes place, and know that we take part in it, we find our right place in life, grasp the whole meaning of life and realise that that, which at first is unconscious in us, will become more and more conscious through our progress in Anthroposophy. All magic is based on this. While it is not given to the normal consciousness to know that something within us unites with something outside, it is given to the magic consciousness to see it all. That which belongs to the outer world develops of its own free will. Hence it is necessary that a certain state of maturity be reached and that what is within should not be indiscriminately mixed up with what is without. For as soon as we ascend to a higher stage of consciousness, what lives in us is reality; it is appearance only as long as we live in the ordinary normal consciousness. We shall participate in Divine spiritual activity. But why shall we thus participate? Is there then, after all, sense in the whole thing if we are only an apparatus for balancing opposing forces? A very simple consideration shows us how the matter stands. Suppose that here is a certain quantity of force: one part within, the other without. That they confront each other is not owing to us. At first we keep them apart. Their coming together depends on us. We bring them together within ourselves. This is a thought that stirs the very deepest mysteries within us if we consider it rightly. The gods present the world to us as a duality: without is the objective world, within us the life of the soul. We are present and are those who close the current, as it were, and thus bring the two poles together. All this takes place within us, on the stage of our consciousness.

Here enters freedom for us. With this we become independent beings. We have to regard the whole universe not merely as a stage, but as a field for co-operation. It is true that this induces a thought which the world does not easily understand, not even if it be presented philosophically, for that is what I tried to do years ago in my booklet Truth and Science, in which it is stated that first the sense-activity appears and then the inner world, but that union and co-operation between them are necessary. There the thought is developed philosophically. I did not at that time try to show the spiritual mysteries behind, but the world did not at that time understand even the philosophy of it.

Now we see in what way we have to think of the meaning of our life. Meaning enters into it. We become co-actors in the world process. That which is in the world is divided into two opposing camps and we are placed in the midst in order to bring them together. It is by no means the case that we have to imagine this as a work within narrow limits. I know a humorous gentleman in Germany who writes much for German periodicals. Lately he wrote in a newspaper that it was necessary for the evolution of the world that man should ever remain at the point of not being able to solve the ordinary problems of existence and that it would not be right if he should be able intellectually to grasp and solve them. For if man should have solved the intellectual problems there would be nothing left for him to do. Thus there must always be a doubt about these intellectual problems and imperfect things must always occur. But this man has no idea that when the normal consciousness has come to an end, consciousness itself progresses and a new polarity appears which represents a new task, the poles of which have to be again united. How long will they take to be united? Till man has actually reached the point at which the Divine consciousness has been recapitulated in his own consciousness.

Now, after we have gained an idea of the immeasurable greatness of the problems, we can proceed to the abstract answer, for we know that in us fertilising germs are springing up for a spiritual world, which without us would not be able to develop further. Now we shall see also how it is with regard to the meaning of life, for now we are working on a broad basis. Now we can say: “Once, at the beginning of evolution, there was the Divine consciousness.” It was there in its infinity. Therewith we stand at the beginning of existence. This Divine consciousness first forms copies of itself. In what way do the copies differ from the Divine consciousness? In that they are many, whilst the Divine consciousness is one. Further, in that they are empty, whilst the Divine consciousness is full of content, so that in the first place the copies exist as a multiplicity, and further they are empty, just as our empty Ego was confronted by a Divine Ego that contained a whole world. But this empty Ego becomes the stage where the Divine contents which are divided into two opposing camps continually unite, and because the empty consciousness is continually bringing about adjustment it becomes more and more filled with what was originally in the Divine consciousness. Thus evolution proceeds in such a way that the individual consciousness becomes filled with what in the beginning was contained in the Divine consciousness. This is brought about through the perpetual adjustment of individuals.

Has the Divine consciousness need of this for its own development? So ask many who do not quite understand the meaning of life. Does the Divine consciousness need this for its own perfection, for its own development? No, the Divine consciousness does not need it. It has everything within itself. But the Divine consciousness is not egoistic. It wishes that an infinite number of beings may have the same content as itself. But these beings must first fulfil the law, so that they may have the Divine consciousness within them and that thereby the Divine consciousness may be multiplied, That which existed at the beginning of world-evolution as unity then appears in multiplicity, but in course of time it falls away again on the path of complete permeation with Divinity.

Evolution as it has now been described was really always so as regards humanity; it was so during the Saturn period; it was similar during the Sun and Moon periods. We have explained it clearly to-day as regards the earthly period. On Saturn this activity created the first rudiments of the physical body and at the same time fructified in an outward direction; on the Sun it created the first beginnings of the etheric body and so on. The process is the same, only it becomes more and more spiritual. There remained outside ever less and less which still needed fructification. As humanity evolves further, ever more and more will enter into life and ever less will remain outside that has still to be fructified. Therefore, in the end, man will have more and more within him of what had been outside. The outer world will have become his inner world. Making things “inward” is the other side of forward development.

To unite Divinity with what is external, to make inward what is external—these are the two directions in which man makes progress in evolution. He will resemble Divinity more and more and will at last become more and more inwardly enriched. In the Vulcan stage of evolution everything will have been fructified. Everything external will have become internal. To become inwardly enriched—is to become Divine. That is the aim and the meaning of life.

But we only get at the truth of the matter when we think of it in such a way that we do not merely set up abstract ideas, but really enter into details. Man must go deeply into the matter and so enter into details, that when he pronounces the name of plants or animals, something rises within him that unites the content of the word with that which lies at the basis of the plant or animal germ, and then lives on in the spiritual world. Our view of life needs improvement in the course of its evolution; for what has Darwinism performed in this direction? It speaks of the struggle for existence, but it does not take into account that that, which, from its point of view, is defeated and destroyed, is also undergoing further development. The Darwinist sees only the beings which reach their goal and the others which perish. The spirit, however, flashes out of those which perish so that it is not only that which conquers in the physical struggle which is developing. That which apparently perishes goes through a spiritual development. That is the important point.

In this way we penetrate into the meaning of life; nothing, not even that which is defeated, or that which is eaten, is destroyed, it is being spiritually fertilised and springs up again spiritually. Much has disappeared in the whole course of the evolution of this earth and of humanity without man having anything directly to do with it. Let us take the whole of pre-Christian development. We know what this pre-Christian development was like. In the beginning man came forth from the spiritual world and gradually descended into the physical sense-world. That which he possessed in the beginning, that which lived in him, has vanished, just as have the life germs which have not reached their goal. Throughout human evolution we see countless things sink down as into an abyss. Whilst innumerable things are perishing in the outer development of human civilisation and of human life, the Christ-Impulse is developing above. Just as man develops life-giving germs for the world that is around him, so does the Christ-Impulse give what is necessary for the development of that which apparently perishes in man. Then the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. This is the fructification from above of what has apparently perished. Here actually a change takes place in that which apparently had fallen away from the Divine and sunk into the abyss. The Christ-Impulse enters and fertilises it. And from the Mystery of Golgotha onwards, we see in the course of the further development of the earth a renewed blossoming and a continuation through the fructification received with the Christ-Impulse.

Thus what we have learned about polarity is also proved true in this greatest event of the earthly evolution. In our epoch the seeds of civilisation sown in the old Egyptian civilisation are coming to life. They are there in the earth evolution. The Christ-Impulse has come and has fertilised them and as a result of this fertilisation we have a repetition in our own epoch of the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation. In the civilisation which will follow our own, the old Persian civilisation will re-appear fructified by the seed of the Christ-Impulse. In the seventh age the old Indian civilisation, that lofty spiritual civilisation which came from the holy Rishis, will reappear in a new form, fructified by the Christ-Impulse.

We see in this continuous development, that what we have learned with regard to man may also become a reciprocity; an inner and an outer, a spiritual and a physical, mutually fertilising each other. Fertilisation with the Christ-Impulse is active above and below. Below the progressing earthly civilisation; from above, entering with the Mystery of Golgotha—the Christ-Impulse.

Now we can also understand the meaning of the Christ-Event. The earth has to participate in the cosmic mysteries just as the individual man has to participate in the Divine mysteries. Through this, polarity was implanted in man, as it is in the earth. That which is above the earth and that, which, through the Mystery of Golgotha, first united with the earth, have evolved like two opposite poles. Christ and the earth belong to one another. In order to be able to unite they had first to develop apart from one another. Thus we see that it is necessary, in order that things may really come to fruition, that they differentiate into polarities, and that the polarities then reunite in order that life may progress. That is the meaning of life. If we look at it like this, then it is true that we feel ourselves standing in the centre of the world, feel that the world would be absolutely nothing without us. As deep a mystic as Angelus Silesius made the remarkable statement which at first may astound people: “I know that without me no God can live; were I brought to naught, he would of necessity have to give up the ghost.” Sectarian Christians may disagree with such a statement, but they should not forget the historical fact that Angelus Silesius, even before he became a Roman Catholic (which he did in order according to his opinion to stand entirely on the ground of Christianity), was a very pious man, and yet he pronounced this dictum. Whoever knows Angelus Silesius will know that this statement was not prompted by impiety. All things in the world would stand opposed to other things, like poles that cannot meet, were man to be thought away. Man stands in the midst and forms a part of it. If man thinks, the world thinks in him. He is the stage on which the action takes place; he only brings the thoughts together. When man thinks and when he wills, it is even so.

We can now estimate what it means when, directing our gaze into vastness of space we say: It is Divinity that fills it, and Divinity is that which must be united with the Earth-seed. “In me is the meaning of life!”—man may exclaim. The gods have set before them certain aims; but they have also chosen the stage on which these aims are to be carried out. The souls of men are the stage. Therefore, if the human soul looks but deeply enough into itself, and does not only try to solve problems in the vastness of space, it finds within itself the stage where gods are accomplishing their deeds—and man himself is taking part in them. That is what I tried to express in the words which can be found in my Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation how in man’s inner being the gods work, how the meaning of the world finds expression in the soul of man and how the meaning of the world will live on in the soul of man. What is the meaning of life? It is, that this meaning lives in man himself. This I tried to express in the words which the soul addresses to itself:—

“Within thy thinking cosmic thought doth live,
Within thy feeling cosmic forces play,
Within thy will do cosmic beings work;
Abandon thou thyself to cosmic thought,
Experience thyself through cosmic force,
Create thyself anew from cosmic will.
End not at last in cosmic distances,
By fantasies of dreamy thought beguiled.
Do thou begin in farthest spirit-realms
And end in the recesses of thy soul.
The plan Divine then shalt thou recognise
When thou hast realised thy Self in thee.”¹

If we wish to say something that is true, not something which has merely occurred to us, it must always be said out of the depths of spiritual secrets. That is extremely important. Therefore you must not think that words which are used in occult works, be it in the form of prose or poetry, arise in the same way as do words in other works. Such spiritual or occult works which really spring from truth, truth about the world and its mysteries, come into existence when the soul really allows world-thoughts to speak through it, really lets world-feelings not its own personal feelings inflame it and has really created these feelings and thoughts from beings of cosmic or universal will.

It is part of the mission of the Anthroposophical movement that man should learn to discriminate between what is sounding forth out of the cosmic mysteries and that which his own arbitrary imagination has invented. Ever more and more the development of civilisation will rise to the point where, in the place of arbitrary invention, there will appear that which lives in the human soul in such a way that it is the other pole of the corresponding spirituality. Things created in this way are in their turn life-giving seed which unite with the spirit. They have a purpose in the world process. It gives us quite a different feeling of responsibility as regards what we do ourselves, when we know that what we bring about are living germs—not sterile ones which simply perish. Then we must allow these germs too to spring up from the depths of the World-Soul.

Now it may be asked: But how is this to be attained? By patience. By approaching more and more to the stage where all personal ambition is killed out. Personal ambition tempts us ever more and more to produce that which is merely personal, without listening to that which is the expression of the Divine. How are we to know that the Divine is speaking in us? We must kill out everything that only comes from ourselves and first of all we must kill out every tendency to ambition. This generates the right polarity in us and produces real fructifying germs in the soul. Impatience is the worst guide in life. It is that which destroys the world. If we are successful in this, you will see, as I have been explaining to you, that the meaning of life is reached in the way described, through the fructification of what is outward by that which is inward. Then we shall also understand that, if our inner nature is not right, we sow wrong fertilising seed in the world. What is the result of that? The result is that deformities are born into the world. Our present civilisation is rich in such deformities. All over the world, books are written to-day one could almost say by steam-power; whilst even in the eighteenth century a celebrated author wrote: “A single country to-day produces five times as many books as the earth requires for its good.” To-day it is much worse. These are things which surround the present civilisation with spiritual entities which are not fit for life, which would not and should not come into existence, if man had the requisite patience. That will also come to birth within the human soul as a kind of opposite pole—patience: so that the human soul does not simply scatter around what is merely a product of ambition and egoism!

This must not be taken as a kind of moral sermon, but as the representation of a fact. It is a fact that productions springing from ambition and desire for renown give rise in our souls to such seeds as bring deformities to birth in the spiritual world. To suppress these and also gradually to transform them is a fruitful task for the far future. It is the mission of Anthroposophy to accomplish this task, and it is the meaning of life, that in doing so the anthroposophical world conception should take its place in the whole meaning of life; that everywhere meaning should flow in on us in life, that everywhere life should be full of meaning. What Spiritual Science desires to teach men is this: that we are in the midst of this meaning, and can express it truly thus:—

“Within thy thinking cosmic thought doth live,
Within thy feeling cosmic forces play,
Within thy will do cosmic beings work;
Abandon thou thyself to cosmic thought,
Experience thyself through cosmic force,
Create thyself anew from cosmic will.
End not at last in cosmic distances
By fantasies of dreamy thought beguiled.
Do thou begin in farthest spirit-realms
And end in the recesses of thy soul,
The plan Divine then shalt thou recognise
When thou hast realised thy Self in thee.”

That, my dear anthroposophical friends, is the meaning of life, as man must understand it at present. This is what I wished to consider with you. If we understand it fully and make it entirely our own, the souls which have become Divine will make it effective in your souls.

What is difficult to understand in these lectures you must ascribe to the circumstance that Karma obliges us to restrict such an important subject as “The Meaning of Life” to two short lectures; much could therefore merely be hinted at, which can only be developed in the soul of each one for himself. Consider this also as a polarity: an impulse must be given which through meditation is developed further, that through this further development all our intercourse acquires meaning—reality; it ought to become so full of meaning that our souls should be able to play one into the other. It is of the essence of real love that it is also an equilibrium of polarities. At the point where anthroposophical thoughts find entrance to a soul, the other pole is stimulated and agreement found. It is this that can work like an anthroposophical “Music of the Spheres.” When we work thus in harmony with the spiritual world, when we really are living anthroposophical life, we also live united in this life.

This is the way in which I should like you to take our meeting here in these two days. Such spiritual subjects are an expression of the Spirit of Love and are consecrated to the Spirit of Love amongst true anthroposophists. This love, through the touchstone we possess, will be instrumental in the exchange of our spiritual content; it will be something through which we not only receive, but through which we are also stimulated more and more to anthroposophical efforts. In this way Anthroposophy will become a means of spreading a love that touches the inmost depths of the human soul. Such love lives on. For as members of the Anthroposophical Movement, we have something that causes the love of those who are separated in space to endure until Karma again unites us on the physical plane. So we remain united and find the true cause for remaining so in the fact that with all the best in our souls, with the best of our spiritual powers, we have together risen to Divine spiritual heights. In this way, we also desire, my dear friends, to continue to be united with one another.

• 1. See Four Mystery Plays

Introductory Comments to the Lecture Cycle The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity Copenhagen, June 5, 1911

The Mission of the New Revelation of the Spirit

In the next few days I will have the opportunity to speak here about a theosophical subject that is important to me, namely, the spiritual guidance of the individual and humanity. Since our friends here have asked me to, I will preface my lecture series today with a few comments that may serve as a kind of introduction to the subject.

Theosophists must have as a characteristic what we may call an inherent yearning for self-knowledge in the broadest sense. Even people only slightly familiar with theosophy can sense that such self-knowledge will give birth to a a comprehensive appreciation for all human feeling and thinking as well as for all other beings. This appreciation must be an indispensable part of our whole theosophical movement.^S1

Often people do not understand clearly that in our German theosophical movement what lights up our way is the sign you know as the mark of the Cross with Roses. It is easy to harbor misunderstandings about our spiritual, theosophical movement that seeks to live into the spiritual life of today—that is, into our hearts and their feelings, our will and its deeds—under the sign of the Rose Cross. People easily misunderstand our movement. Many people, even those with good intentions, have difficulty realizing that our spiritual movement, working under the sign of the Rose Cross, is inspired in all its principles—in its whole feeling and sensitivity—to be understanding and tolerant of every human striving and every aspiration. Though this tolerance is an inherent characteristic of the Rosicrucian movement, it may not be obvious at first glance, because it lies in its depths. You will find, therefore, that people who confuse tolerance with the one-sided acceptance of their own opinions, principles, and methods are particularly likely to misunderstand our movement.

It is very easy to imagine this tolerance; yet to attain it is extremely difficult. After all, we find it easy to believe that people who disagree with us are our opponents or enemies. Similarly, we can easily mistake our own opinion for a generally accepted truth. For theosophy to flourish and be fruitful for the spiritual life of the future, however, we have to meet each other on an all-inclusive basis. Our souls must be filled with profound understanding not only for those who share our beliefs but also for those who, compelled by the circumstances of their own experience, their own path through life, may perhaps advocate the opposite of what we do. The old morality, now on the wane, taught us to love and to be tolerant of those who share our thoughts and feelings. However, with its truth, theosophy will more and more radiate a much more far-reaching tolerance into people's hearts. This more profound tolerance will enable us to meet others with understanding and encouragement and to live in harmony with them, even when their thoughts and feelings differ completely from our own.

This touches upon an important issue. What do people come upon first when they turn to the theosophical movement? What are they compelled to acknowledge first? Normally, the general insight people encounter first when they approach theosophy is the idea of reincarnation and karma—the idea of the continued working of causes from one life into the next. Of course, this is not a dogma for us. Indeed, we may have different opinions about this basic insight. Still, the conviction of reincarnation and karma forces itself upon us right from the start of our acquaintance with theosophy. However, it is a long way from the day we first become convinced of these truths to the moment when we can begin, in some way, to see our whole life in the light of these truths. It takes a long time for the conviction to become fully alive in our soul.

For example, we may meet a person who mocks or even insults us. If we have immersed ourselves in the teaching of reincarnation and karma for a long time, we will wonder who has spoken the hurtful, insulting words our ears have heard. Who has heaped mockery upon us—or even who has raised the hand to hit us? We will then realize that we ourselves did this. The hand raised for the blow only appears to belong to the other person. Ultimately, we cause the other to raise his or her hand against us through our own past karma.

This merely hints at the long path from the abstract, theoretical conviction of karma to the point where we can see our whole life in the light of this idea. Only then do we really feel God within us and no longer experience him only as our own higher self, which teaches us that a tiny spark within us shares in God's divinity. Instead, we learn to be aware of this higher self in such a way that a feeling of unlimited responsibility fills us. We feel responsible not only for our actions, but also for what we suffer, because what we suffer now is after all only the necessary result of what we did in the far-distant past.

Let us experience this feeling pouring into our souls as the warm, spiritual life blood of a new culture. Let us feel how new concepts of responsibility and of love arise and take hold of our souls through theosophy. Let us recognize that is no empty phrase to claim that the theosophical movement arose in our time because human beings need new moral, intellectual, and spiritual impulses. And let us be aware that a new spiritual revelation is about to pour itself forth into our hearts and our convictions through theosophy, not arbitrarily, but because the new moral impulses and the new concepts of responsibility—and, indeed, the destiny of humanity—require such a new spiritual revelation. Then we can know in an immediate, living way that it has a coherent meaning for the world that the same souls present here now repeatedly lived on earth in the past. We have to ask what this meaning is—why are we incarnated again and again?

We find this meaning when we learn through theosophy that every time we see all the wonders of this world with new eyes in a new body, we get a glimpse of the divine revelations veiled by the sensory world. Or, with our newly formed ears, we can listen to the divine revelation in the world of sound. Thus, we learn that in every new incarnation we can and should experience something new on earth. We understand that some people are destined by karma to announce prophetically what all of humanity will gradually, bit by bit, accept as the meaning of an epoch.

What people in the Theosophical Society—and in the theosophical movement in general—know because of these revelations from the spiritual world has to flow into all aspects of human culture. The souls living in this world now in their physical bodies feel drawn to theosophy because they know that this new element must be added to what human beings have already gained for themselves from the spiritual world in the past. We must keep in mind, however, that in every epoch the whole meaning of the mystery of the universe must be understood anew. Thus, in every epoch we have to meet anew what is revealed to us out of the spiritual worlds.

Our epoch is unique; though people often carelessly characterize every age as one of transition, this term—which is often just an empty phrase—applies in its truest sense to our time. Indeed, an epoch is dawning when we will have to witness many new developments in the evolution of the earth. We will have to think in a new way about many things. In fact, many people still conceive many new things in the old style and the old sense, finding it impossible to grasp the new in a new way. Our old concepts often lag far behind the new revelations.

Let me point out only one example of this. It is often emphasized—and rightly so—that human thinking has made tremendous progress in the last four centuries because it has been able to fathom the physical structure of the universe. Of course, it is only proper to highlight the great achievements of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bruno, and others. Nevertheless, this has led to an argument that sounds rather clever and goes roughly as follows. Copernicus's ideas have led us beyond the earth into space. In the process, what Giordano Bruno suspected has turned out to be true: our earth is only a small celestial body among countless others. And in spite of this, so the argument goes, we are supposed to believe that the greatest drama ever, the central event of evolution, took place on this earth and that the life of Christ Jesus is at the center of evolution. Why would an event of such great importance for the whole universe have been played out here on this small planet earth, which—as we have learned—is only one tiny planet among countless others?

This argument seems plausible—so much so that to our intellect it looks clever and intelligent. However, this argument does not consider the depth of spiritual perception revealed in the simple fact that the starting point of Christianity, the beginning of the greatest event on earth, is set neither in a royal palace nor any other glamorous place, but in a manger with poor shepherds. Clearly, spiritual perception did not content itself with locating this great event on our earth, but also moved it to a remote corner of the earth. It is small wonder, then, that this perception strikes us as odd and peculiar next to the claim that we cannot possibly continue to “have the greatest drama of world evolution take place in a provincial theater.” (These words have indeed been used.) However, it is in the nature of Christianity to have the greatest drama of the universe take place in a provincial theater as well as elsewhere.

We can see from all this how difficult it is for us to respond to events with the proper, true perception. We have to learn a lot before we will understand what the right thoughts and feelings about human evolution are. Turbulent times are ahead of us—both for the present and for the near future. Much of the old is used up and worn out, and the new is being poured into humanity from the spiritual world. People familiar with human evolution predict—not because they want to but because history compells them—that our whole soul life will change during the coming centuries and that this change will have to begin with a theosophical movement that has a correct understanding of itself. But the theosophical movement must fill its role in this change with humility and with a true understanding of what has to happen for humanity in the coming centuries.

Only gradually and over time did people learn to study the structure of the universe with their intellect as Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Kepler, and Galileo did. It was only in recent centuries that people learned to interpret the world intellectually—in earlier times, they attained knowledge in a very different way. In the same way, new spiritual insights are to supersede intellectual knowledge today. Even now, human souls in their bodies are already yearning to look at the world not just intellectually. If materialism had not done so much to suppress these spiritual impulses, such souls, in whom we can virtually sense the passionate yearning for spiritual contents, could appear even more. These spiritual impulses could then make themselves felt more strongly in people who are only waiting for an opportunity to look at the universe and existence in a different way than they did up to now.

Privileged people, endowed with what we usually call “grace,” can often see in their minds' eyes what becomes the general vision of all humanity centuries later. As I have pointed out frequently, the experience of the impulse of the Christ event that Paul, an individual filled with grace, had on the road to Damascus will eventually become the common property of all human beings. As Paul knew through a spiritual revelation who Christ was and what he had done, so all people will eventually receive this knowledge, this vision. We are at the threshold of the age when many people will experience a renewal of the Christ event of St. Paul. It is an intrinsic part of the evolution of our earth that many people will experience for themselves the spiritual vision, the spiritual eye, that opened up for Paul on the road to Damascus. This spiritual eye looks into the spiritual world, bringing us the truth about Christ, which Paul had not believed when he had heard it in Jerusalem. The occurrence of this event is a historical necessity. This is what has been called the second advent of Christ in the twentieth century. Christ will be recognized as an individuality. People will realize that Christ has continually revealed himself by coming ever closer to the physical plane—from the moment when he appeared to Moses, as though in a reflection, in the burning bush to the time when he lived for three years in a human body. Seeing this, people will understand that Christ is at the center of earthly evolution.

A body has only one center of gravity; a scale has only one suspension point.If you support the scale beam in more than one place, you interfere with the effects of the law of gravity. A body needs only one center of gravity. That is why, concerning the central or pivotal point of evolution, occultists from antiquity to the present have acknowledged that evolution was headed toward one point, namely, the Mystery of Golgotha, and that human evolution began its ascent at this point. Still, it is very difficult to understand what the Christ event, the Mystery of Golgotha, really means for the spiritual guidance of humanity. To understand this rightly, we have to silence all the feelings and opinions from this or that denomination within us. We have to be as impartial and objective in regard to the Christian methods of education, which have prevailed for many centuries in the west, as we are regarding other religious methods of education. Only then can we really come to know the spiritual center of the earth's evolution. Nevertheless, in the coming centuries those who proclaim the spiritual central point of human evolution most fervently will be seen as “bad Christians”—or even as unworthy of being called Christian at all.

Many people find even the idea that Christ could incarnate in a human body only once, and only temporarily—for three years—difficult to understand. People who have familiarized themselves in more detail with what Rosicrucian theosophy has to say about this know that the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth had to be very complicated to accommodate the powerful individuality of Christ. As we know, one human being would not have been sufficient for this, and therefore two persons had to be born. The Gospel of St. Matthew tells the story of one of them, the Gospel of St. Luke follows the life of the other. We know, too, that the individuality who incarnated into the Jesus child we meet in the Gospel of St. Matthew had completed tremendous achievements in its development in earlier earth lives. At the age of twelve, in order to develop further capacities, this “Matthew-Jesus” individuality left its body to dwell in another earthly body—that of the “Luke-Jesus”—until its thirtieth year. Thus, everything humanity had ever experienced that was noble and great, as well as everything that was humble, worked together on the personality of Jesus of Nazareth so as to enable his body to take in the being we call Christ. We will have to develop a profound understanding to grasp what occultists mean when they say that there can be only one event on Golgotha—as in mechanics a body has only one center of gravity.

An epoch that faces great soul events, such as the ones we have briefly outlined here, is particularly suited to lead us to search our souls. Indeed, searching our own souls and hearts is now one of the many tasks of all true theosophists in the theosophical movement. We need to search our own hearts and souls—return within ourselves—to help us realize that it requires sacrifice to follow the path to the understanding of that singular truth of which the occultism of all times has unambiguously spoken.

Such times in which the shining lights of truth and the warm gifts of love are to be poured out over humanity also bring events confirming the truth of the proverb that “strong lights cast deep shadows.” The deep, black shadows that enter together with the gifts we have just spoken of consist of the potential for error. The human heart's susceptibility to error is inseparably bound up with the great gifts of wisdom that are to flow into human evolution. Let us not delude ourselves, therefore, into believing that the erring human soul will be less fallible in times to come than it has been in the past. On the contrary, our souls will be even more susceptible to errors in the future than ever before. Occultists have prophesied this since the dawn of time. In the coming times of enlightenment, to which I could only allude here, the slightest potential for error as well as the greatest aberrations can gain ground. Therefore, it is all the more necessary that we squarely face this potential for error and realize that because we are to expect great things, error can all the more easily creep into our weak human hearts.

Regarding the spiritual guidance of humanity, we have to draw the following lesson from this potential for error and from the age-old warnings of occultists: We must exercise the great tolerance we spoke of in the beginning, and we must give up our habit of blindly believing in authority. Such a blind belief in authority can be a powerful temptation and can lead to error. Instead, we must keep our hearts open and receptive to everything that wants to flow out of the spiritual worlds into humanity in a new way. Accordingly, to be good theosophists, we must realize that if we wish to cultivate and foster in our movement the light that is to stream into human evolution, we must guard against all the errors that can creep in with the light.

Let us feel the full extent of this responsibility and open our hearts wide to see that there has never been a movement on this planet earth that fostered such open, loving hearts. Let us realize that it is better to be opposed by those who believe their opinion is the only true one, than to fight them. It is a long way from one of these extremes to the other. Nevertheless, those who take up the theosophical movement spiritually will be able to live with something that has run through all history as a seed sentence, a motto for all spirituality—and rightly so.

Upon realizing that though there is much light, the potential for error is great, you may have doubts and wonder how we weak human beings can find our way in this confusion. How are we to distinguish between truth and error? When such thoughts arise within you, you will find comfort and strength in the motto: The truth is what leads to the highest and noblest impulses for human evolution, the truth should be dearer to us than we are to ourselves. If our relationship to truth is guided by these words and we still make a mistake in this life, the truth will be strong enough to draw us to itself in the next incarnation. Honest mistakes we make in this incarnation will be compensated and redeemed in the next. It is better to make an honest mistake than to adhere to dogmas dishonestly. After all, our path will be lit by the promise that truth will ultimately prevail, not by our will, but by its own inherent divine power.

However, if our circumstances in this incarnation propel us into error instead of into truth, and if we are too weak to obey when truth pulls us toward itself, then it will be good if what we believe in disappears. For then it does not, and should not, have the strength to live. If we are honestly striving for truth, truth will be the victorious impulse in the world. And if what we have now is a part of the truth, it will be victorious, not because of what we can do for it, but because of the power inherent in it. If what we have is error, however, then let us be strong enough to say that this error should perish.

If we take this as our guiding motto, we will find the standpoint that enables us to realize that, under any circumstances, we can find what we need, namely, confidence. If this confidence imbues us with truth, then the truth will prevail, regardless of how much its opponents fight it. This feeling can live in the soul of every theosophist. And if we are to impart to others what flows down to us from the spiritual world, evoking feelings in human hearts that give us certainty and strength for life, then the mission of the new spiritual revelation will be fulfilled—the revelation that has come to humanity through what we call theosophy to lead human souls gradually into a more spiritual future.

• S1. For the sake of historical accuracy and to indicate the tone of the original, we have not substituted or added “anthroposophy” where Steiner speaks of “Theosophy” or “anthroposophical movement” where he speaks of “Theosophical movement.” Nevertheless, the continuity between Rudolf Steiner's theosophy and anthroposophy should always be kept in mind. (See note 1)