The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends!

On January 29, 1827, Goethe said to his friend Eckermann about the then already advanced second part of “Faust”:

But everything is sensual and, when presented on the stage, will catch everyone's eye. And that is all I wanted. If only the crowd of spectators take pleasure in the appearance; at the same time, the initiated will not miss the higher meaning, as is the case with The Magic Flute and other things.

In this way, Goethe expressed that he himself allows a deeper meaning to be recognized in his works. It is well known that explanations of Goethe's deeper worldview are met with the objection: You yourselves put all sorts of things into the works that Goethe did not mean at all. This objection could easily be refuted. Only someone who does not want to apply all the powers of their soul to get behind the meaning of the poem can say this. We will counter all these objections with what Goethe said in his conversation with Eckermann. Goethe appears to us as one of those artistic figures who did not allow themselves to be inspired by the arbitrariness of fantasy or the randomness of external experience, but rather strove to recognize and explore the great riddles of existence. Goethe was a serious and profound seeker. The direction of his quest can be seen in his very earliest childhood disposition. Nowhere can such a direction confront us as powerfully as in what Goethe told us about the time when he was seven years old. He takes the best minerals and rocks from his father's collection of natural objects and arranges them in a regular form on a music stand. This is the altar on which he wants to offer sacrifices to the god of nature. At the top he places incense cones, which he ignites with the help of a burning glass through the collected rays of the rising morning sun. For him, natural products are the expression of the primal divine forces of nature. Through the rays of the morning sun that he had captured, he had kindled a natural fire, a sacred fire through the essence of the divine forces of nature itself. With this, he wanted to make an offering to the god of nature; in this way, he wanted to come closer to the great god of nature. In this childlike way, Goethe's entire spiritual relationship to the cosmos is expressed. On higher levels, we see young Goethe's confession again in his prose hymn “Nature”, when he was already working in Weimar:

Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her – unable to step out of her, and unable to get deeper into her. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries on with us until we are tired and fall out of her arms.

Then he addresses all the beings of nature, how they are revelations of the spirit that is present in nature. Finally, he says:

She has brought me in, she will also lead me out. I trust her. She may do with me as she pleases. She will not hate her work. I did not speak of her. No, what is true and what is false, she has spoken everything. All is her fault and all is her merit.

And before that it says:

With a few draughts from the cup of love, she indemnifies for a life full of toil.

After his student days in Leipzig, Goethe had an important inner experience: on his sickbed, he learned to feel the seriousness of life. In Frankfurt, he then undertook all kinds of strange studies with friends and delved into many mystical and alchemical works. He met people who were involved in mysticism and who sought the God, the Christ, within themselves. Then in Strasbourg he met the other great mind, Herder, by whose side he gained a keen eye for nature, which was then expressed in his scientific studies and writings. When Goethe had moved to Weimar, we often find him in Jena, like a student, listening to the lectures of Loder and other scholars in order to get closer to the divine power in nature. He always sees a manifestation of the spirit in everything that presents itself materially. While he was still in Strasbourg, he came across a book by a materialistic French encyclopedist. It made a great impression on him. He says about it in “Poetry and Truth”:

But how hollow and empty we felt in this dreary atheistic half-night [...] Matter was supposed to have existed from eternity, and moved from eternity, and now, with this movement, right and left and in all directions, it was supposed to produce the infinite phenomena of existence without further ado.

Then he continues:

But he knew as little about nature as we do: for having nailed up a few general concepts, he immediately leaves them behind in order to transform that which appears in nature as higher than nature, or as higher nature, into material, heavy, and indeed moving, but directionless and formless nature, and thereby believes he has gained a great deal.

This is a critique that Goethe could also make of today's materialistic science. Those who immerse themselves in Goethe will soon notice that when he talks about nature, he speaks from great depths, from the spirit that we call the theosophical worldview. It was in the fourteenth century when this was already being cultivated in the Rosicrucian current. Nothing reliable about it has been reported by outsiders. Only the initiates knew what really mattered.

There is a poem by Goethe, “The Mysteries”, where a personality comes to a kind of monastery and meets a gathering of enlightened personalities, twelve in number. A thirteenth is with them, who is about to die. His twelve brothers speak of him in the most beautiful, appreciative terms. Some traits of this great man, who stands as the knower of the world, are then told. It is said that as a boy he had already killed the adder, which signifies the overcoming of the lower nature. Then, after many meaningful words, the lines follow:

From the power that binds all beings,
The man who overcomes himself is freed.

One who has overcome himself is presented in this poem “The Secrets” by Goethe. The whole situation in which the brother, to whom this greatness is being told, is led into, appears to the knowledgeable as the Grail or Parzifal situation. Goethe could not complete the poem, the material was too great. He once gave a student an explanation of it. He hinted at a league of enlightened people who had joined together in a brotherhood. Each of them represents one of the great religious systems of the world. The great emissaries of these are united in a brotherhood, where there must be one of the leaders who sees the unity, the core of wisdom, in the religions. What Goethe says here could be made the principle of the theosophical movement. Goethe points here to what every initiate knows, that there is a secret union. Goethe lets the newcomer see the mysterious symbol at the gate: the cross with the roses entwined. Goethe wanted to point out that there is such a mystery within the modern world, as there have been such initiates in all times.

Goethe then sought God further as an artist during his Italian journey. He sought God in the universe, in all his creations that breathe the divine greatness; he also sought him in the creations of men, in art, which was a continuation of nature for him. He wrote on September 6, 1787 in the diary of his Italian journey:

These great works of art, which are also the greatest works of nature, have been created by man according to true and natural laws. All that is arbitrary and imagined collapses; there is necessity, there is God.

Of Greek art, Goethe says:

I have a suspicion that they proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds and which I am on the trail of.

He expresses the connection between man and nature beautifully in his book about Winckelmann:

When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as a great, beautiful, dignified and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight – then the universe, if it could feel itself, would exult as if it had reached its goal and would admire the summit of its own becoming and being. For what is the purpose of all the effort of suns and planets and moons, of stars and milky ways, of comets and nebulae, of worlds that have come into being and are still in the process of becoming, if not ultimately for a happy human being to unconsciously enjoy his existence?

That which lives in man, in the depths of man, as a spiritual-mental entity, that is Nature herself, and for man she becomes conscious in the soul of man. It was this intuitive perception that guided Goethe when he attempted to shape the legend of Faust in a new form. This legend expressed what a number of people felt at that time. In the medieval Faust, we see a man who wants to recognize the divine in nature itself. In the Middle Ages, the search for the divine in nature was seen as apostasy. The divine was only to be found in the religious record of the Bible. On the other side was the legend of Faust, who seeks the divine in nature and makes a pact with the devil. On the other side was Luther, who, as the legend goes, threw the devil's inkwell at his head. Faust falls prey to the devil; he became a worldly man and a physician who wants to recognize the great God in nature. In the Middle Ages, such people were called “sons of the devil”. Goethe brings something new to the Faust idea; his guiding principle is:

Whoever strives, we can redeem.

A striving person who seeks the sources of nature, who seeks the spirit of nature, must reach the goal. Goethe is serious about the interpretation. Where man not only seeks something soulful and spiritual in himself, but where he rises to the realization that everything around us is ensouled, there he is on the right path. When we look at the human being, we have to say that our finger, for example, is only conceivable as a limb of our entire organism. Man lives under the illusion of personal self because man devotes himself to the idea that he is independent and self-sufficient, and not a member of the whole earth organism. But if man were to be lifted several miles above the earth, he would no longer be able to live; he would have to [suffer a miserable death by] suffocation and wither away like the finger of my hand if it were to be cut off. Goethe recognizes the earth organism. There is a deep recognition in his desire to let Faust penetrate to the sources of life and to characterize the spirit of the earth with the words:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
an eternal sea,
a changing weaving,
a glowing life,
so I create at the whirring loom of time
and weave the living garment of the Godhead.

How Goethe has placed himself in the spirit of the cosmos, how he feels and senses the spirit in the cosmos, and how he also lives in the human heart, is shown when he has Faust speak with the same Earth Spirit elsewhere. There we recognize that Goethe sees the same work in every tree, every plant, as in man:

Exalted Spirit, thou hast given me, given me everything
I asked for. Thou didst not turn thy face to me in fire in vain.
Thou gavest me the glorious kingdom of nature
and the power to feel and enjoy it. Thou dost not
allow only cold, astonished visitors,
granting me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
the giant spruce toppling, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks squashing down,
And her fall dull hollow the hill thunders,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and my own chest
Secret deep wonders open up.

We will find the theosophical ideas in Goethe again, without compulsion.

There is talk of Pythagorean music of the spheres. At higher levels of human development, there are experiences that are similar to those of a person born blind who undergoes a successful operation and suddenly gains sight – only much more magnificent and powerful. Such a spiritual operation does exist. In it, we learn about things and beings that are all around us in the world. The world of the spirit, of which Fichte spoke to his audience in 1813, then opens up for us. He says: “A new sense is needed for this.” When one speaks of these worlds to people, it often happens to those who speak as it happens to a seeing person among a group of blind people, to whom he speaks of color, shine and light. Everything that is said theosophically about this spiritual world is spoken entirely in the spirit of Fichte. The theosophist does not speak of a beyond. How many worlds we perceive around us depends on how many organs we have for perceiving these worlds. As many dormant abilities as are awakened in us open up as many new worlds for us. For the human being of today, there is initially a level of consciousness through which he perceives sensual and externally perceptible things. Then there is another level of consciousness for those who have attained the ability of higher vision. A new world of color, splendor and light opens up before their mind's eye. This world is called the astral world. An even higher world can be perceived when one attains continuity of consciousness, where the manifestations of a higher world manifest themselves in a way called sounds. The devachanic world is a sounding world. This world is then taken over into everyday consciousness so that one can also perceive it when walking among everyday things, among tables and chairs. The theosophical worldview speaks of a world of the soul, the astral world, and of a devachanic world, the world of the spirit, which can be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes and ears are open. Where Goethe has Faust placed between the forces of good and evil, he lets the words resound:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
In the spheres of the brothers' song,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderclap.

When most people say that this is a poetic image, they misunderstand the poet if they think he is making up a phrase. A true poet does not do that. The physical sun does not resound. But if we look at the sun as the expression of a spiritual organism, then we can speak of the sun resounding. In the second part of Faust, Goethe lets him encounter a similar situation. It says:

Hark! Listen to the storm of the hours!
For spiritual ears,
The new day is already being born.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus' wheels roll and clatter,
What a roar is brought by the light!
It drums and trumpets, eye blinks and ear is amazed,
unheard-of things are not heard.

These are the depths of wisdom from which Goethe draws. Those who do not know that Goethe sought to draw from the sources of esoteric wisdom do not understand Goethe well. He himself said that the deep meaning of his poetry would not remain hidden.

The second part of “Faust” has always been a big problem for people, also the fact that Mephistopheles, the representative of evil forces, is associated with Faust. Goethe researchers have also written an infinite amount about Mephistopheles. The word is composed of “Mephis” – is equal to Verderber – and “Tophel” – is equal to liar. At the same time, this leads us to the fact that Goethe was able to draw from sources where exactly this meaning of Mephistopheles could be found. We get to know the esoteric Goethe from the second part of “Faust”. People have thought a great deal about the homunculus. Some interpreters of Faust suggest that the homunculus represents humanistic research. Faust scholars can also be seen grappling with the question of what the “mothers” represent.

Occult teachings have always distinguished between the physical, mental and spiritual nature of the human being. Even today's materialistic science regards the physical nature. The soul world belongs to what we have characterized as the astral. The spirit belongs to the devachanic world. As in all mysticism, for Goethe the physical body is the transient one. The soul is that which forms the connection between what is transient in time and the spiritual eternal. For Goethe, the human being is also composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit. For the one who thus considers the structure of human nature, what happens to him when a person enters this world? He comes from the eternal sphere of Devachan. The source of spiritual existence is spoken of as the “Mothers”. The threefold source of the human being is with the Mothers. The eternal corresponds to the spirit. The soul also has an eternal archetype. In Theosophy, this is referred to by the Sanskrit words: Atma, Budhi, Manas. This is referred to as the divine trinity, which is with the mothers, of which man is a threefold image. Goethe wants to depict this, the way in which the threefold nature of man is composed of spirit, soul and body. A long-dead person is to stand before Faust: Helen. The example of Helen is to be used to illustrate the development of humanity. The re-emergence of the spirit in a new form is to be shown there. The three parts of the human being are to come together again.

Goethe depicts the soul itself through the homunculus, which is the astral body of the human being; it longs to be embodied. The spirit must join it; it is with the mothers. Now Goethe actually describes the journey to the mothers in a very appropriate way. Mephisto says to him as Faust enters the realm of the mothers:

Sink away! I could also say: rise!

There is no difference between up and down in Devachan. Then he shows him the tripod, which shows him the way to the mothers, the threefold nature of man. Faust succeeds in bringing up the ghost of the deceased Helena. Faust is not yet ready to fully understand this. When he wants to embrace Helena passionately, an explosion follows.

Homunculus is created; this is precisely the human astral body. This astral body is to receive a physical body. Goethe has him guided down to the ancient Greek philosophers. He wants to have the “thoroughly practical” for the astral soul. Now he is to learn from the Greek philosophers how to come into being and develop. The entire development through stones, plants and up to the human being is then described. The process of passing through the plant kingdom is aptly described as “it grunts so”. Finally, we see the possibility arise that the body connects with the soul when Eros comes. Homunculus is dashed to pieces against the shell carriage of Galathea; as a spirit he no longer exists, he has connected with the elements.

In the great world poem, we see how Goethe embodied his view in it. Goethe describes his view differently in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The way the “fairy tale” was created should make it clear that what is expressed here is possible. During the time of their friendship, Goethe and Schiller published the Letters on Aesthetic Education as a kind of dowry. Schiller asked Goethe to make a contribution. Goethe wrote to him that he could not express what he had to say in a philosophical way, but that he would present it in a pictorial form. So he wrote the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. If we want to understand what Goethe meant by the “fairytale”, we only need to read what Schiller wrote to Goethe at the time. Schiller sees in the realm of beautiful appearance, in the realm of artistic appearance, an intermediate realm that elevates people from the realm of necessity, of sensual nature, to inner freedom. He sees in the artist the person who finds the spiritual in the physical, so that the sensual is spiritualized. In this way, art can help people to rise above the sensual world. It is a means for them to purify and spiritualize their instincts. People may then follow their instincts when they have been so purified that they no longer go against the spirit, so that people cannot help but want the ideal. Goethe presents this in a great image, but one that is drawn from infinite depths. In the will-o'-the-wisp in the fairy tale, who cross a river and have to promise the ferryman to pay for their journey with three onions, three artichokes and three cabbages, we recognize the lower self of man , the ego nature, which has the potential to develop the three-part, higher, future nature, namely the wisdom nature or manas, the kind nature or budhi, piety and the strength nature or atma, strength. The development of man to this higher trinity is called initiation, which is carried out in the mysteries. Gradually, in the great process of evolution of humanity, all people will become initiates.

In all esotericism, water is used to describe the astral world.

Human soul, how like thou art to water!

says Goethe. There are two types of human nature: one that acquires wisdom in selfishness, the other that acquires wisdom by working from experience to experience. If the astral — the river — is to accept the gold, the wisdom acquired in vanity, then it will flare up. In esotericism, the original is represented by the lotus flowers, by something that can be peeled off so that a germ remains. The will-o'-the-wisps represent the human ego that only wants to shine; the snake represents the human ego that identifies itself with wisdom. Goethe once said:

If the eye were not solar
How could we see the light?

When the snake glows from within, it can enter the temple, where humanity acquires the three highest goods, which are represented by three kings: wisdom, piety or beauty and strength. The old man with the lamp represents the way in which most people are now enlightened. Religion is symbolized by the old man's wife. The beautiful lily represents the eternal, which man can only attain when he has been purified. The highest kills all that is living and immature. But through mystical death, man attains the highest spiritual gifts. In this fairy tale, Goethe has embedded the deepest truths of esotericism. In it, he shows how man attains the highest goods of humanity through the sacrifice of his lower nature. The same idea is expressed in the saying that appears in the West-Eastern Divan, in the poem that begins:

Tell no one, only the wise,
Because the crowd would scoff.

In the end, he speaks of the sacrifice of the lower nature and the spiritual rebirth of man:

And so long as you do not have this,
this: Die and become!
If you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

In our time, the result of the struggle is often seen as something that brings about progress. One often hears it said that forces must be steeled by meeting resistance. It is thought that only through struggle can one move forward. This is also believed to be the case in the spiritual life. It is believed that the best way to help young people to progress is to present life to them as a kind of battlefield. This view is far removed from another one, which has at least as many adherents as the other. This view is related to the world view that Buddha characterized with the words: hatred is not overcome by hatred, but by love. This contains the exact opposite of a fighting spirit. Genuine Christianity, too, is built on a different attitude than one that makes struggle the lever of progress. But in our time, precisely the deepest minds, in order to bring about what many long for, have believed that they are delivering the best for the progress of humanity in development in the fighting spirit.

The most radical expression of a militant attitude is found in Nietzsche. He says: “I love only the great war.” This view is that man develops through struggle towards greatness. In science, this view believes it finds its support. If that is so, we cannot easily dare to try to object to such an attitude. But we must try to see whether this science itself is based on solid ground. This is opposed to what the theosophical world view is supposed to solve.

Among the many questions that the theosophical world view addresses are those of brotherhood and the struggle for existence. The Theosophical Society and the theosophical current are there to bring about a new era in this area as well, to support in a different way many things that have so far been based on struggle, and to place them on solid ground.

The three principles of the Theosophical Society only appear to be unrelated. They are all connected. But especially the second and third are connected with the first, with the principle of bringing about a foundation for a general brotherhood of man. The theosophist, by thinking seemingly impractically, idealistically, has precisely the most practical thing in mind. We want to put ourselves in the shoes of our fellow human beings so that we can understand where the combative attitude can come from. We hear about the class struggle, the struggle for the liberation of women, for the liberation of the worker. Wherever we see the big issues of the day raised, we see them literally shrouded in the question of struggle. Because this is rooted in the soul of the times, it has led to the struggle being presented as the principle of progress, and especially since Darwin. How do Darwinian materialists think of progress? They think: perhaps there was once something imperfect and inappropriate in nature, alongside something perfect and more appropriate. The appropriate has overcome the inappropriate. Those who embrace this view believe that in the struggle for existence, the better will continually gain supremacy. The idea of the struggle for existence is linked to the idea of progress. This also continues in human life. The world of beings around us is like a gladiatorial fight, in which the strongest remains victorious and the weaker is overcome. Some Darwinians have justified the view that something similar is necessary in human life as well. In Haeckel's work, you can read that the strong triumph and that the weak must perish. Alexander Tille says that from our view that we must help our depressed brothers and sisters, draw them to us, warm them with our love, embrace them with our feelings, another view must emerge that replaces compassion with struggle; that the weak should not be protected precisely for the sake of general human progress. What Nietzsche said about the great struggle, about the great war, also stems from this opinion. It is significant that this struggle for existence has even been laid into nature.

We must assume something in the nature of time, the soul of time. If it is the case that those animals have the best chance of developing that oppress their weaker brothers, then we would have to draw a peculiar conclusion about the soul of time. If this is not the case, then man has been mistaken, then he has seen the struggle in nature, and he himself is now particularly predisposed for this struggle. Our public life is hardly based on anything other than the struggle for existence. Even people who are close to each other are in such a struggle for existence. Our minds often face each other quite differently than we face each other as persons in reality. Our lives have become alien to the way our institutions are. Suppose two people were involved in different business relationships. The two businesses are in fierce competition. But the minds of the two people love each other. In truth, however, they fight each other behind the scenes of personal life.

Our public life is in fact based on the war of individuals against others. We must realize that today our circumstances are so complicated that it takes a great deal of insight for people to face each other consciously in such a way that our whole life is built on brotherhood. For this we need a world view that permeates all areas of life, that can reach into everything, that is based on this brotherhood. One should get to know Theosophy by approaching it through individual practical questions in life and showing how the theosophical view can be applied to the individual questions. Here in Western Europe, we can learn a lot about the struggle for existence, and we do not know that for 25 years there has also been a trend in natural science that has almost proved to an obvious extent that the view of the struggle for existence in nature is wrong. In 1880, the Russian naturalist Kessler gave a lecture in which a highly plausible scientific view was clearly explained, namely that it is not the animals whose individuals fight with each other that progress best, but those that provide the most mutual help.

Of course, there is struggle in nature. But it is not what war causes that is progressive, but rather that which works against war and in favor of mutual assistance. Since that time, much work has been done in the field of natural science. If we familiarize ourselves with this, we become more and more convinced that it was in the soul of those who established the struggle for existence as a principle to see this struggle for existence as the principle of progress. — On the other hand, souls that have the spirit of brotherhood within them will also find brotherhood outside in nature. If we consider this, we will no longer be able to hold on to the idea that the human race is progressing through mutual conflict. The human race is a species. It will only progress as a species if its entire life is built on mutual assistance. This is where the theosophical worldview comes in, in that it regards mutual help not as based on an indefinite feeling, but on the deepest knowledge of the nature of man. The two great teachings that the theosophical worldview shows us appear absurd to those who approach them with prejudice. When a meteorite was once exhibited, a certain academy of sciences declared that it was impossible for this stone to have fallen from the sky. The teachings of reincarnation and karma, of human destiny and universal justice, are also still regarded by many as absurd.

Our life between birth and death is not the only one; we have an immortal core of existence within us. This was there before the physical body was there, and it will still be there when the physical body has disintegrated. We have often lived before, and we often return. Life becomes infinitely more understandable through these teachings. I see a person born into deepest misery, with little ability, condemned to live his whole life in poverty and misery; I see another endowed with great abilities, so that the whole of life is an easy matter for him. The theosophical world view tells us: That which we see here carries within itself an essential core, an imperishable soul that has prepared its destiny in previous lives. Everything we experience in this one lifetime is the consequence of our previous incarnations. When I do something that I consider justifiable now, I am building my future life. Through my work in previous times, I have built my present life.

Let us look back to a time when this world view was a general sentiment. The Egyptian slave could perform the hardest labor in building the pyramids without grumbling, because he knew that this incarnation was one among many, that he would one day stand where his master stood, that his fate was his karma, the consequence of previous embodiments, and that he himself would one day prepare his next embodiments. When this becomes the deepest consciousness, then a calm spreads in the soul, the peaceful resting in existence; and in the spiritual relationship, a life in bliss spreads in man. Then it is deeply written in the soul: My brother stands beside me. I see him. He is perhaps what is called a bad person. And I judge him, even though Christianity prescribes: Do not judge! As long as I only know the sensual existence, I may judge rightly. But if I know that this person may not be facing me for the first time in the world, then I may well think that I was with him in a past life – I myself may be to blame for the fact that he is not different. Perhaps as a father or as an educator, I neglected my duty towards him. If I have an inkling of a past life, the principle of brotherhood becomes even more profound. Even if someone does me wrong, I must realize that what he does to me I may have brought about myself in a previous life. If we think of life spiritually as permeated and entwined by a network, then the feeling of brotherhood arises from this.

Those who understand theosophical life will learn of other reasons why spiritual threads intertwine from person to person. We recognize how the deeper spiritual essence in all of us is one. You have to gradually feel the unity with all the powers of the soul. If I separate the hand from the body, it withers. It is only valuable on the communal organism. A few miles above the earth would be enough to kill us instantly. Only at this height above the earth can we live. Just as the hand is attached to the body, so man is attached to the earth. Our whole being continues outside as well, it is not only there within our skin. Anyone who recognizes this says to his entire physical environment: That's you. As human souls, we are all connected to each other by even stronger bonds. If we look at the spiritual, we will feel that no one could be there without their fellow human beings. If we wanted to peel the soul out of the rest of humanity, then our soul would wither. The task of the theosophical movement is to empathize with all of humanity and to recognize ourselves as a part of it; to know that if we take out one part, we will cause that part to wither. The individual human soul, taken out of the whole human community, no longer remains the soul, the living soul; it withers. It becomes more and more understandable to those who immerse themselves in the spiritual world view that just as the individual cells subordinate themselves to the body and fit into the whole, so must the individual souls fit into the whole. If the individual cells were to go their own way, we could not live. The soul lives on a higher level than the individual cells. The cells work together in a community. They create a new center. The soul works in it; so the souls also work together. The law of cooperation also applies in every other area of existence.

Imagine a community of people whose souls give up their own existence, think together with their thoughts, feel together with their feelings, want together with their will impulses, as cells join together. When we join together in this way, we create a new center for a higher being; we give an invisible being the opportunity to express itself here as often as people join together like cells. A true being of a higher kind can then work through the powers of human beings, as a soul works through the cells. For this, something more is needed than what is called the brotherly disposition, something that reaches deep into the soul of man. At the turn of the eighteenth century, the principle of liberty, equality and fraternity was established. We have indeed managed to respect personal liberty. At least in principle this is recognized, in theory. But there is a much deeper principle of fraternity, equality and freedom. Here something comes into consideration that is capable of conquering a world. It is not so easy for me to recognize that I am interfering with the freedom of the other person through my words, thoughts and feelings. When two people talk to each other, you often hear that one does not wait to hear what the other is saying. He contradicts outwardly or, if that is not possible, inwardly. There is an art of listening. There is an enormous amount of self-discipline involved in learning the art of listening, in fully tolerating even the opposite opinion, appreciating it in all its dignity. Our lives would take on a completely different shape if we learned to hold back with our words and thoughts. This is the second principle: we want to recognize the kernel of truth in all religions. If we make an effort to understand others, to embrace their opinions with love, even in religious matters, then we find that all opinions contain a kernel of truth. In all world views and religions, different religions, we seek the kernel of truth so that we can live together fraternally. If souls tolerate each other inwardly, then they will also outwardly create such conditions that serve the principle of brotherhood. This is where the full practice of life truly begins. The present way of life is fundamentally different from what has been characterized. All our institutions have arisen from what is not tolerance. The public institutions are images of what lived in the souls of our ancestors. If we start from the deep principle of brotherly love, then we also pour brotherly love into the institutions of social life. This clear brotherly love must be built on a clear view of the human soul.

Here followed the example of the government councilor Kolb, who went to America to work among the workers and gain experience – who came to the realization there of how little the gentlemen at the study table know of what matters.

We must test our present world view against the theosophical world view. The theosophical world view does not stop at the mask of life, but leads into the spirit. In every single personality lives the reflection of the one spirit. In earlier times, the idea of brotherhood was more present than one might think. In the time when the myriad small towns emerged into what we today call the bourgeoisie, we find everywhere that life, where it is formed in a new way, is based on the principle of brotherhood. Today, the bond between the lawyer and the one he has to judge is abstract and intellectual. In the Middle Ages, the judge knew the one he had to judge. Brotherhoods were founded at that time among those who were united by common interests. These old forms no longer fit our times. But Theosophy is to create new forms for the new conditions.

It is the same with religions. The founders established the individual religions for the abilities of the different peoples. Now the whole globe is connected by common thinking. Man must also understand man inwardly. The advent of the theosophical world view is linked to the cultural progress in the material realm through inner bonds. It is intended to achieve the same in the spiritual realm as culture has done in the material realm. The theosophical world view is suitable for deepening all areas of life again: medicine, education, law, and so on. The fact that there is little understanding of the spiritual means that all these areas of life suffer.

If we imbue each of these areas of life with theosophically trained thinking, then everything will be completely transformed. Anyone who has once passed through the thoughts that the theosophical worldview has provided will see into the innermost essence of things. He learns to train his thinking in a completely different way. All this shows how the theosophical world view understands the principle of brotherhood, which is based on a true knowledge of the world and life. Looking into the soul of the other and seeing oneself in the mirror image is the highest fruit of theosophy. The old teaching “know thyself” is given new validity here. A new life built on brotherly love, because this brotherly love is built on knowledge. Opening one's spiritual eyes and looking into the soul of another person, becoming tolerant of what lives in the soul of the other person, leads to truly loving them. Know thyself in the other, embrace with the feeling of community the common essence that is in all. Learn to say of the other as of yourself: That is you.

My dear attendees, as soon as a person looks at the world around them, they will find the greatest secrets and mysteries everywhere. Wherever they look, they see phenomena that they cannot understand the cause of, and the greatest mystery for humans is arguably humans themselves. And this can be very well understood in our very materialistically colored time, when we consider that today's science attempts to explain man on the basis of a hypothesis, which says that man developed from the animal kingdom, that the animals developed from the plant kingdom, and that the plants developed from the mineral kingdom. Spiritual science admits that, as long as one takes this point of view, it is completely impossible to explain the human being. Everything would be easier to explain as the human being, as long as one starts from this materialistic view that man has developed from the lower natural kingdoms, and it is precisely spiritual science that will be able to show, clearly show, that man is not a being as science imagines him to be.

Let us look at the world and try to be clear about what we see around us when we want to look at the human being. The first thing we see about such a person is his physical body. This physical body is composed of all the elements that we see in the nature around us. We can examine the human physical body chemically and then we will see that all the forces and laws that we also find in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms prevail in it. We can therefore say: the human being has the physical body in common with the three lower kingdoms of nature.

But if we were to consider only the part of the human being that we call the physical body, no one would claim that this body could be a human being. We see that the human being has different characteristics from those of the minerals. We see that the human being has the power within him by which he grows, by which he reproduces, by which he can feed himself. We cannot go into this in too much detail today and just want to say that the power that manifests itself in the functions is the result of the etheric or life body. By ether, we do not mean the ether that science has assumed as a hypothesis. This etheric body or ether has very specific tasks to fulfill, such as nutrition, reproduction and so on. But this life body has yet another completely different task, which remains together with the physical body from birth to death. And the ether body ensures that the physical body does not follow the physical laws. If the physical body were to follow the physical laws, the physical body would immediately fall apart. Only because a physical body is enclosed and permeated by the etheric body, the physical body retains its shape and does not disintegrate. We can say that during life, from physical birth to death, the etheric body is a fighter against the decay of the physical body, and this etheric or life body is shared by humans with all plants and animals. Minerals do not have an etheric body as I have described it.

If man had only a physical body and an etheric body, he would have the ability to grow and nourish himself and so on, namely, all the things we see in plants. But man has something else that is much closer to him than all these qualities, namely his joy and pain, pleasure and suffering, his urges, desires and passions, and man would not have all this if he were composed only of an etheric body and a physical body. We cannot go into this in any more detail here, but for now we can merely state that the astral body is the body that makes it possible for a being to feel joy and pain, pleasure and suffering, instinct, desire and passion. The astral body also has many other characteristics, which can be precisely described by spiritual science, but for our consideration today we need only state what has just been said.

We see that where the astral body is the carrier of the above-mentioned qualities, a being that has such an astral body leads an inner life. And if we now look at nature, we see that only the human kingdom and the animal kingdom have such an inner life. Just as man has the physical body in common with the minerals, plants and animals, and the etheric or life body in common with the plants and animals, so he has the astral body in common with the animals. But if man had only a physical body, etheric body and astral body, he would not differ from animals. However, if we take a closer look at man and see how he differs from animals, we will find that man has an ability that no other being in the aforementioned realms has. Man has self-awareness. He can say “I” to himself. Take any other thing: at table it can say “table”, at the clock “clock”, at roses “roses”, at cloth “cloth”; but no human being can say the word “I” if it does not mean only itself. Every human being is a “you” to me, and I am a “you” to every other human being. The “I” or self-awareness is what distinguishes humans from all other beings in the natural kingdoms mentioned.

Thus we see that man is composed of four parts, namely, the physical body, which is composed of physical and chemical substances and laws; an etheric or life body, which protects the physical body from decay; an astral body, which enables man to lead an inner life; and finally, the ego, through which man attains self-awareness. All this was known to people in earlier times, and only when humanity has allowed itself to be fertilized again by spiritual science will people recognize again what great truths can be found in the sacred books of all nations. In these books we find messages about this compilation, only our present-day science cannot understand this because it is not willing to be taught, but because it thinks it can find out everything itself, which has been secretly written in the old books.

We have already had the opportunity to speak here in this city about other issues that touch on spiritual science, or as it is called in our time, theosophy, namely reincarnation and karma. We have spoken here before about the fact that the spiritual part, the I of the human being, goes from embodiment to embodiment in order to gain new experiences in each new incarnation, and that through the great law of karma, the human being has to bring balance into all his actions and all his experiences. When a person dies, what happens then? First, he lays down his physical body, which is returned to the physical earth. The physical body decays and the elements dissolve. The etheric body, the astral body and the self move out. After a short time, the etheric body separates. An extract of the etheric body is preserved and absorbed by the self. After the time on the astral plane, or as it is called in theosophical literature: Kamaloka, the astral body also disintegrates. An extract of this astral body is also taken by the ego, and now the ego goes through other states, which we do not need to describe here. After a certain time, the ego comes back, takes an astral body, an etheric body and reincarnates itself again on our earth.

If we take a closer look at this process, we will find that the ego takes a new physical body each time through the various reincarnations, which is given to it by its parents. This physical body therefore has the characteristics of the parents, and the physical body inherits the physical traits from its parents, grandparents and so on. But the ego is not inherited; that is something completely different, which was there long before the physical body was there. Only the physical body a person gets from his parents. Tonight we do not want to go into or at least not go too far into the etheric and astral body in relation to inheritance.

Material science claims that man is the product of heredity and imagines, for example, that genius is the result of heredity. As an example, it cites the fact that in the Bach family, about twenty more or less important musicians lived within two hundred years and now says that this gift is the result of heredity, or it proves that in the Bernoulli family there were six or eight important mathematicians within a short period of time and attributes this to heredity. But if science wanted to prove something, then it would have to start at the top with a genius and then prove that the genius was inherited in further generations. But this is not possible because, as is well known, it would be difficult to prove such cases. But how is it that there were so many great musicians and mathematicians in the Bach or Bernoulli families?

The first requirement for being a musician like Bach is a good ear, a good physical ear. Without such an ear, a person cannot be a musician. Now, a very good ear was formed in the Bach family through inheritance, and therefore people were born into this family who had to undergo a certain development in the field of music. This is not a matter of mere chance, but very definite laws are the basis of these incarnations. If the same people had lived in other families, had been born of other parents, who did not possess such an excellent ear, these people would simply not have been musicians, and exactly the same applies to the Bernoulli family. Certain physical predispositions are also necessary for a mathematician, and these physical necessities were present in this family.

We have now seen that the physical body is recreated each time, while the I remains. If nothing stood between the body and the I, then all people would be more or less the same. But something stands between the physical being of the human being and the I, and that is temperament. Every person has their own unique temperament. As you know, there are four temperaments: choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic.

As we said before, man consists of four parts, which together form his being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. These four parts have not been created at the same time, but there has been a very long development before man reached the stage he is at today. You can find more detailed information about this in my article 'Akasha Chronicle' in 'Lucifer – Gnosis' (numbers 13 to 35).

Humanity has so far gone through four stages of development, and at each stage a part of its being has been developed. First, its physical body was developed, then its etheric body, then its astral body and finally the I. Now each of these four parts expresses itself in a physical part of the human being, and in such a way that the physical body expresses itself in the senses, the etheric body in the glands, the astral body in the nerves and the ego in the blood. The blood, as we can see it in humans today, is the expression of the ego, and there was no blood before the ego came into being.

Now every person has the four bodies, as stated above, and thus every person also has sense organs, glands, nerves and blood, but these four bodies are not equally developed in all people. There are all kinds of mixtures, and it is through this mixture that the difference in temperaments arises, as we shall see.

As I said, blood is the expression of the ego. We recognize a person as a choleric person if they have a strongly developed ego; we recognize someone as a sanguine person if they have a strongly developed astral body. We recognize a person as a phlegmatic person if they have a developed ether body, and we recognize a person as a melancholic person if they have a developed physical body. Spiritual science is able to explain this precisely because it knows how things relate to each other.

Take the choleric type, for example. As I said, the person has developed his ego strongly. The person in question has an excellent blood principle. When we look at such a type, we see something compressed in his build. A very good example is found in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the German philosopher. This is because the blood constricts the nerves, and thus the growth is, so to speak, restrained. We also see this in Napoleon. These are people with a strongly developed ego, which manifests itself in the choleric temperament. When we see such people walking, it is as if they want to stomp through the ground, not just put their feet on the ground, no, it is - / gap. The coal-black eyes look sharply into the world. The whole body gives the impression of willpower and energy, to which the bridled nature contributes. This is not to say, of course, that the choleric person must be small, only that if the same person were not a choleric person, he would be somewhat taller.

Now let us take the sanguine type. As we have seen, the sanguine type has a strongly developed astral body, and consequently a strongly developed nervous system. What is the result of this? Such a person walks very hoppily, everything springs out, because his astral body has the power and is not held back by the blood. Such a person always walks hopping, looks lively through his light blue eyes, has blond hair. But the sanguine person has very little lasting interest. As soon as he sees something, it gives him interest, but the same is not permanent. Tomorrow he sees something else, and that arouses his interest more, and so it goes on and on. But because he is interested in everything, he faces the world with a certain joy in life.

But let us now look at the phlegmatic person. As I said, this person has the most developed glandular system, which gives such a person an inner comfort. Such a person has no interest in the outside world, and we can see that from his dull eye and his calm gait. He is not interested in anything around him, and as I said, the reason for this is that the etheric body or the glandular system is in control.

Now let us take the melancholic. He has developed his physical body strongly, not the musculature, but the principle of the physical body. Such a person is weighed down, we would say, by the weight of his body. He cannot lift himself up, he cannot get ahead, and so everything is too much for him.

We have now seen how these four temperaments relate to the bodies, but it would not really have much practical value if we did not look at the matter further.

Not only can we apply what we are about to discuss to ourselves, but it is also of great importance in education. Take, for example, a choleric child. His disposition compels him to achieve the best in everything, it is not difficult for him to achieve the best because his temperament and disposition give him the ability to do so. How should we educate such a child? Many parents today are willing to say: The child does everything so easily, we don't need to worry about that – and yet that is not right. If we let such a child go, the time will come when the child will not go through all difficulties so easily. The child must be guided in a very specific way. If we want to give such a child a proper teacher, we must look for someone who is able to answer every question the child asks, so that the child gains respect for that person's knowledge. The child must realize that there is someone who is far more knowledgeable than he is, and precisely because of this the child acquires the ability to respect that which is above him. In general, we will see that such children do not have many opportunities to show their full strength, and although it may be unpleasant for [parents], it would be good if such a child were to have the opportunity to test his strength to the utmost. We can go even further ourselves, we have to let such a child do something that we know in advance he cannot do. In this way the child develops what we might call respect for the force of facts, and in this way we can keep such children on the right track. A choleric person – and a child like that too – will carry out everything he does to the letter; in other words, he will maintain an interest in his cause.

But now let us take a sanguine child. As I said, such a child has no lasting interest. Many parents now think they have found the right way to force the child to develop lasting interest by means of punishment and beating, but that does not work. We have to take into account what the child has, not what is not there, and what is not there is the disposition for lasting interest. We have to take that into account. All external things pass quickly. But there is one thing that all sanguine people recognize as lasting interest, and that is love for a particular personality. Where the choleric person must have someone beside them who forces respect through their knowledge, there is nothing to be done with such a personality with the sanguine person. The sanguine child needs to have someone by their side whom they can love, and if you have such a person, they will be able to guide the sanguine child in the right direction. As I said, the sanguine child jumps from one interest to the other, so to speak. To change this, there is no point in punishing the child. But you can try the following: You give the child something that he is a little more interested in and take it away before his interest has waned. You can also give the child something that is good for temporary interest. If you take these two tests in a tactful way, you will see that lasting interest will arise very soon. As I said, it is useful for such a child to have someone they can love, because a lot depends on that. Not through knowledge will anything be achieved with such a child, but only through love.

Now we come to the phlegmatic temperament. As we have seen, a phlegmatic person, and also a phlegmatic child, has a strongly developed etheric body and thus leads a comfortable inner life, as a result of which no interest arises for external things. A phlegmatic child has no interest in the outside world as far as it is concerned in relation to the outside world. But there is something else. Where the phlegmatic has no interest in what concerns himself, he does have interest in the things and affairs of others. If we bring a phlegmatic child into the environment of other children, we will see that such a child becomes interested in the affairs of others. Being with other children also has a strong suggestive effect, and a lot can be achieved in this way. If we try to force the child to take an interest, we will see that this is quite futile, but interest can still be taught in the way described above.

The melancholic child has developed the principle of the physical body excellently, and as a result, everything feels heavy to him. Even when there are no external causes, the child is in a bad mood. If you now think that this can be changed by getting the child a pleasure – which as a rule is not much pleasure – you will soon find out that this is not possible and that such contrived distractions are futile. This is also because the child does not have what is needed to respond to such joyful things. We have to work with what is available, not what is not. We do well to show such a child the suffering of other people, because this will help the child to see that its complaints are unjustified. However harsh it may sound, it is absolutely right for us to give such a child the opportunity to complain where there really is reason to complain. If the reason has disappeared, the child will feel relieved, and in this way we bring a certain change, whereby the child learns to appreciate the pleasant, and in this way we can contribute a great deal to distracting the melancholic temperament. Of course, a great deal of tact is required, and this is precisely what is important in education.

What we have said here for children applies equally well to adults. If, for example, a person is strongly melancholic, then he should deliberately seek out opportunities to feel uncomfortable. In this way he learns to appreciate the better. The same applies to sanguine people. If, for example, we see that we are too flighty, that we cannot keep our interest in one thing, then we can either be torn away from things that interest us very much – which can also happen – before the interest has expired. We can also force ourselves to do something for a week, for example read a book that does not interest us at all. We force ourselves to do it, and by doing so we learn to distinguish between what is worth our interest and what does not deserve our interest as much. If people would really take the trouble to hear what spiritual science has to say about such things, they would not take the position that today's materialistic science takes and claim that it is all fantasy or worse. Spiritual science is really able to provide answers to important questions about life and solve the riddle of man. One should not think that spiritual science will provide a recipe for every person, telling them what to do and what to avoid, but it does indicate the paths that a person who is really serious about life should follow. A person who just wants to get involved in everything that materialistic science has to say will certainly be able to learn a great deal about the laws of physics and the chemical composition of physical matter, but it is not possible for a person to find what is most relevant to him on the basis of this materialistic science. Spiritual science or theosophy fully recognizes the great achievements that materialistic science has given to the world, but it also knows that on the basis of this science, man can only recognize a part of his being. If man really wants to strive to know his inner being, then he has to listen to what spiritual science has to say, because this science is able to give people what today's humanity needs.

Dear attendees! When a person, after a day's work and toils, takes a little time to reflect and tries to find his way in the life of the soul, the question arises as to how the individual facts of life, how the individual experiences are connected with the whole human destiny, with the great goal of human life in general. One of the questions that then arises for the soul is undoubtedly that of the meaning of human knowledge.

When we talk about knowledge, we can initially mean that knowledge which relates to the direct services of practical life, to everything that enables us to get to know the outside world in such a way that we can put it at the service of our practical interests. The question becomes somewhat different when we consider knowledge that attempts to penetrate the deeper foundations of life, the riddles of existence – knowledge that does not lead us to an immediately practical work and activity. It is said that man has an immediate urge to know and that knowledge is valuable in itself. Those who look deeper will hardly be satisfied with such an answer. What value would knowledge have if it were only an inner image, only a repetition of what is outside in the world? Why should that which is weaving in the world be effective in the outer world and be repeated in one's own soul only as in a mirror? Is it really only the satisfaction of a soul urge that pushes for knowledge that reaches beyond the everyday? This question will occupy us today: the goal and destiny, essence and significance of human knowledge.

If we mean the concept of knowledge that many people have today, which consists in saying that knowledge should provide us with a true reflection of what the world is experiencing, then it will not be easy to relate knowledge to the great goals and tasks of human existence. We will have to ask ourselves: Is knowledge really only the repetition of something external? Or is it one of the forces that must work in our soul in order to advance it on the paths it must traverse in its existence in the world?

This question cannot be answered by external science; it can only be answered if we consider the whole human being. External science only provides us with information about what our senses perceive and our minds grasp. But beyond this ordinary science, there is something that is trying to become part of our entire spiritual life today, which can be called spiritual science or anthroposophy.

What does theosophical spiritual science seek to comprehend? It seeks to comprehend the whole human being. Let us first agree on what that means, the whole human being. When we look at a person, we see two strictly separate states within the normal human existence of today. These two states, which life presents to us, are so familiar to the human being that he does not even notice that the greatest riddles of existence are hidden in them. We express these states in the words “waking and sleeping”. We recall that from time immemorial many philosophies have called sleep the little brother of death. We can combine these words with two others, namely with the words “life and death”. In these words we have a large part of what we can count among the riddles of existence.

Let us try, starting from what presents itself to us in the most ordinary way, to understand the changing states of waking and sleeping. In the waking state, we try to comprehend all the impressions that constantly flow into our soul - impressions that our senses transmit to us, everything that fills us with joy, desire and pain, in short, what constitutes what we call our mental life. We see this ebb and flow of drives, desires, passions, and so on, plunging into an indeterminate darkness in the evening. During sleep, it transitions into another state, that of unconsciousness. It would be absurd to say that the human being as a being of soul disappears in the evening and is reborn anew in the morning. We must ask ourselves: where is that which works in us throughout the day, where is it when we let our soul life sink into an indeterminate darkness in the evening? We are immediately pointed to answers that cannot be given from an ordinary, sensory perspective, because that perspective escapes precisely that which hides behind the nocturnal state in the evening. The question of where the soul is at night can only be answered by theosophical spiritual science, because it rises from the knowledge of the sensual to the knowledge of the supersensible, from the visible to the invisible.

We need to come to an understanding about how theosophical spiritual science can arrive at such supersensible insights by once again taking a brief look at what really fulfills our entire life during the day. We can say that we live with our soul during the day through external stimulation, through external impressions. In the evening, the external stimuli fade away, creating the emptiness of the sleeping state. But because a person in the normal life of today's existence can lead a soul life only when external perceptions evoke from his soul that which we are currently experiencing, we can imagine that the inner work of the soul dies, withers away when the external stimuli are not there. Must it be so?

That it need not be so can be seen if one accepts the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. What knowledge of the sensory world is comes about through the stimulus of the sensory world. Supersensible knowledge can only come about through the soul's willingness to unfold work within itself, in order to develop powers and abilities even when there are no stimuli from the external sensory world. The possibility of developing such inner powers is given to us by the method of spiritual schooling. This method is there for those who want to penetrate into the knowledge of the supersensible world. This method can only be briefly hinted at here. Those who want to get to know it thoroughly can find it in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. We shall only briefly indicate here how man can find within himself the abilities to ascend to knowledge of the higher worlds.

The first thing is that man learns to artificially evoke, through a strong willpower, what otherwise only comes in the state of unconsciousness, namely, what man experiences when the sensory impressions cease. He must be able to command all outer impressions to stop; all outer impressions around him must fall silent, just as they do in the evening when we fall asleep. But this moment must take place through his will, in full consciousness. He would be like a sleeper if he could awaken nothing in his own soul. But although all outer impressions fall silent, he learns to unfold strong powers; he draws out of the deep recesses of his soul what slumbers there. No outer efforts are needed; they are intimate soul processes. There is a sinking into strong, vigorous thoughts, which are not given from without, but which the soul forms for itself.

This is meditation or concentration, as it is called – a drawing together of thoughts. Without external impressions we must feel joy and sorrow. The spiritual researcher lets powerful, strong thoughts arise in his own soul, thoughts that have nothing to do with the external world, and these are ideals as well as impulses of the will. These must have a stronger effect than external impressions; the soul must be seized by them intensely and powerfully. If a third element were not added, these perceptions would have the effect of volcanoes. This is that through a strong effort of will an inner calm and quiet can be brought about despite these impulses. Then the spiritual researcher experiences - even if only after a long time - the great moment that can be compared to the moment when a blind person suddenly regains his sight after an operation. Just as the impressions of the external world flood into the soul of the blind man after an operation, so too does everything that was previously unavailable to him.

This fact makes it clear to us that there can only be a supersensible world for us if the organ of perception for it is present. When this organ is awakened, a new world opens up. We must not decide about what we do not know, but only about what we know. These organs, which are necessary for recognizing the supersensible world, are developed through meditation or concentration in the calm of our soul. Then “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears” arise - to use an expression of Goethe. It could now be objected: Yes, it may be that the spiritual researcher experiences a higher world, but what do the spiritual worlds have to do with the others who cannot ascend to them? — That is not correct. The spiritual eye is necessary for recognition [of the supersensible worlds], but to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say, unbiased reason is sufficient, and therefore it concerns all people.

Someone in whom the higher organs are awakened can observe such a phenomenon as sleep. It is a very different state from that of waking. Only part of the human being remains in the physical world during sleep, the other part, the soul-spiritual, withdraws from the physical body when falling asleep and returns to its home, the spiritual world. The spiritual world need not be imagined as a different place; it is all around us. We have human nature, divided into two parts; during waking these are together, but during sleeping they are separated. But human nature is not yet fully explained. We can get a rough idea of the two parts that go out at night by comparing man with the animals that are closest to him of all visible creatures. We also find instincts, desires, and feelings in animals. Even if they are not present in the same perfection, they are still more or less present in animals, and only those who cannot rise to a higher [contemplation] will consider them to be the same as in humans. We need only think of something that is usually not emphasized in external science; we need only remember that, for example, in the German language there is a word that cannot be called to anyone from the outside, [the word “I”]. This name cannot sound [from the outside] to our ear when it means our own self; it must arise from one's own soul life. All true religions have recognized this. This is an announcement of what is essentially the same in man as in the divine. Correctly understood, “I” means the ineffable name of God, because Yahweh, correctly translated, means “I am,” no matter what philology may otherwise interpret. This does not mean that man is to be made a god. Just as a drop of water is not the sea, so man is not God.

That which withdraws itself in the evening divides again into two parts: that which is the carrier of desires, passions, etc., and that which lets all these perceptions flow together in us and works through them - the I. Through the I, man becomes the crown of all creatures on this earth. But that which goes out at night is composed of the I and the astral body. What does a human being leave behind? The physical body, and we have that in common with every mineral. It consists of the same forces. The inanimate mineral, the crystal, takes its form from the forces within it; this is not the case with a living being. In the case of humans, we see that their physical body is subject to chemical laws only in one instance, and only at death. In death, we see what the forces imprinted on the mineral do to the body. In life, it never follows these forces. What remains in bed at night is imbued and permeated by another body, and we call this the etheric or life body. This prevents the body from following the chemical and physical laws; it is a faithful fighter against them.

Now we can ask ourselves: Why does this happen every evening, that a person must return to their spiritual home, so to speak? Why must they withdraw into a spiritual world every evening? In the evening, external impressions fade; we are overcome by fatigue. When the astral body and the ego withdraw into the spiritual world, the person falls into unconsciousness. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and pain, urges, passions and so on. Why does all this disappear from our soul life? How can it be that all this dies away at night? We shall soon understand why this is so. The astral body and the I are the bearers of pleasure and pain, of perceptions and concepts. But in order for this to become conscious to the human being, it is necessary that they are mirrored by the physical body and the etheric body. We perceive nothing but what lives in ourselves. It is like a kind of echo that is produced in us by the physical and etheric bodies. Man does not perceive directly what he feels, but what he experiences is mirrored to him through the astral body and the I, through the etheric and physical bodies. But the work of the astral body involves conjuring up what we call the soul life. The real work is done by the astral body and not by the mirror – just as it is necessary for a person to be active at a mirror in order to create this or that image. The astral body has to work from morning till evening to extract from the physical what we can call the content of our soul. The forces that the astral body needs to work during the day, it must draw from the spiritual world. When these forces are exhausted, fatigue sets in, and it must draw new forces again.

Sleep has a profound significance. In the spiritual world is the source of everything we conjure up during our daily lives. If we look at our daily life in this way, we ask: What is the significance of our daily life if the soul has to draw its strength from the spiritual world? The soul and the ego do not enter the astral world empty, but take something with them from our outer world every evening. Life during the day is not without fruit for the soul's life. We need only look at what is characteristic of our soul in its deepest meaning and what is taken from our daytime life into our nighttime life. This can be seen indirectly when we look at our soul during our youth and in old age. This gives us an idea of development. In youth, we see germinal tendencies, but undeveloped, and later we see our soul transformed, with richer content. How can we transform ourselves? By the soul forming a kind of essence every evening from the external impressions we have received. We carry our daytime experiences into the night, and in the morning that which was the soul's spiritual experience has entered the soul; it joins what is already there, and in this way the soul develops.

You only have to look at people who cannot sleep, and if you are an attentive observer, you will notice how the soul's progress suffers when it cannot get the right amount of sleep. We can only imprint something on our memory if we have had a proper amount of sleep. Only in this way can we develop the forces that lead us ever higher. We imprint in our soul what the world reveals to us during our waking life, and in this way our soul becomes wiser. Knowledge is an important means of developing our soul between birth and death. But let us now ask ourselves how much transformation we can actually achieve. How narrow are the limits within which we find ourselves? We can increase our soul development. We can see this in individual abilities, for example in learning to write. Writing encompasses a whole group of abilities. When we look back, we see what a wide range of abilities were involved, how much work and effort and so on went into learning the art of writing. Or think of the first attempt we made to draw the first letter, of everything that then flowed together into the one skill of writing. From what we experienced then, we extracted an essence, and through such weaving together a soul skill arises.

Whatever has a deeper impact on our lives can only develop within very narrow limits in the time between birth and death. If someone pursues the riddles of the world or has gone through this or that life experience in deep pain, you can even see that reflected in their physiognomy and in their movements. From decade to decade, this is expressed more and more, even in the body. But we can develop in this direction only to a limited extent. Why? Because we have our souls before us like a malleable material, but we cannot work with what our inclinations have created between birth and death into the body, no matter how many experiences we have gathered. Let us take the example of music. If we do not have a finer ear, if we are not musical, we are unable to develop the ability during our lifetime that could change our physicality in this respect between birth and death. We are powerful in the face of the soul, but powerless in the face of the facts of our physicality. But we know that when we face the external world and conjure up all these images, they are born out of our soul - not only, but through its activity, because it could never conjure up such reflections if something were not given from outside. And this outside includes the same forces that make up our physical body. It seems so mysterious to us because we cannot penetrate there. We would have to conjure up a fine musical ear and so on from the same world. It is something like a veil, like a shell. But behind it is something that, if we could master it, would give us the ability to transform our physical body just as much as the astral.

We can gain knowledge, but we cannot utilize it; we cannot transform our body with the knowledge. But there is a possibility to transform our physical body in the same way as the astral one. Even if we recognize the forces, we could not apply them directly, because our physical and etheric bodies are given to us as dense material. Here we want to refer to a law that will be incorporated into modern spiritual life through Theosophy.

In the 17th century, not only laymen but also naturalists believed that worms and fish could arise from mud. If we go back to the 17th century, we find scholarly works that describe how wild animals grew out of other animals – for example, hornets out of a dead ox that had been beaten until it was brittle, bees out of a horse carcass, and wasps out of a donkey carcass. It was [the naturalist] Francesco Redi who first uttered the sentence: Living things can only arise from living things. There must be a germ of something living in order for something living to arise. Redi was almost burned [as a heretic] for saying this. Today, anyone who claims otherwise would be considered backward. Spiritual science says: Spiritual-soul things can only arise from spiritual-soul things. Just as an earthworm does not come from mud, so the spiritual does not come from the inheritance of the father and mother.

We have to distinguish between the environment of the spiritual and the spiritual itself. In spiritual science, this leads us to the law of reincarnation [of what lives spiritually in man]. Today those who have recognized this law are perhaps not exactly called heretics – fashions change. Today the [true] enlightened are declared to be fantasists, dreamers. But in the not too distant future, people will no longer be able to understand how anyone could have believed otherwise. Thus, we see in what comes into existence through birth the repetition of an earlier earthly existence. And what lies between death and birth is a purely spiritual existence. When we look at a child with undeveloped features, we see what it has brought with it from previous lives on earth, and we can understand something that is very important.

Why can we only develop mental abilities during our lifetime? When we wake up, we find the same body with the same organs. But when a person passes through the gate of death, the great moment arrives when he discards his physical body and only what is spiritual and mental remains. Now he is no longer bound to the body. The conditions are quite different than during sleep. In the morning, when we wake up, we find the same physical body; we cannot destroy it and rebuild it. But when the physical falls away at death, what we have taken in knowledge during our life is united with our soul. In accordance with the knowledge and experiences we have had, we can now reshape them and incorporate them into a new body.

Thus, in each life, we build our body according to what we have gained in the last life; we make it the product of our experiences in the last life. Life experience in the present life is our existence in a next life. This is how knowledge works in us; it is one of the most important forces of existence, shaping itself. We are grateful for the knowledge of the last life; it has produced a body in the present life and preserves that with which we have enriched ourselves in the present life, and that will bring us higher in the next life. Now we also understand why there can be a huge difference between different people when we consider the strength and weakness of their cognitive abilities.

Now you will ask: why does man not remember his previous lives? That is also a matter of development. A four-year-old child cannot count. But it would be a false conclusion to say that this is not a human being, because humans can count. Wait until he is ten years old. There comes a time for every person when he begins to remember. One can only remember that which is present. Fichte was right to say that most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than a self. The realization of what the self is is still missing. Just as the flowers can only be recognized through sensory impressions, so can the spiritual only be recognized through spiritual research. From the intimate study of the self, it follows that the self must be there as a conscious idea before one can remember. Only when we have generated the idea of self can we reflect back on ourselves. Thus, knowledge as self-knowledge leads us to build up our memory in such a way that we consciously expand life beyond the life that is enclosed between birth and death. If we can continue to work from life to life, if through knowledge we succeed in shaping ourselves and thus awaken the eternal in us, then the knowledge of development helps us in the shaping of all that is eternal in us. Now we give the work of knowledge and its meaning for our whole life. It brings us immortality and gives us knowledge of our immortality.

Immortality and knowledge belong together. In a particular life, our body appears to be something that has been worked into it from the previous life. We often cannot use the knowledge in this life, but we need it to build a new body. This certainty gives spiritual science a practical meaning in life. It must not remain mere theory, but we must permeate ourselves with it completely. We then see death in a new light. Knowledge has built up our present body. Through the disintegration of our body, we become free from it and gain the opportunity to build a new one. Thus, even if we look at death in pain when it touches others, or with fear when it approaches us, it appears to us in a completely different form. If we can rise to a higher point of view, we can say that we are grateful for death, because it gives us the opportunity to build a new body for ourselves - for a higher life. The old spiritual researchers have always recognized this and also said so. Goethe puts it so beautifully in front of our soul, how we bring in from fresh life what we have worked for in the previous life:

As on the day when you were given to the world
The sun stood in greeting of the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you entered.
So you must be, you cannot escape yourself,
So the Sibyls said, so the prophets said;
And no time and no power can dismember the form that has been stamped, which develops itself alive.

Dear attendees! Spiritual science or theosophy is, through what it gives us as human beings for knowledge, at the same time a basis for life practice. The fact that we are able to see through the sensible, through what is merely comprehensible to the external mind, into the supersensible, makes this spiritual science a tool for us to feel that we are part of the supersensible world. In this way, Theosophy gives us the nourishment of knowledge that flows like spiritual blood into our entire spiritual organization, and we gain security and strength of life by absorbing knowledge of the supersensible world. But we are only in such a case when we seek to bring that which is supersensible into our knowledge. It is a different matter when we are confronted with the developing human being, as he enters into existence through birth, as he is compelled, through the normal course of life, to assert, step by step, through the material of the body, that which is rooted as a human spirit in indeterminate depths and comes more and more to the fore in the course of development. Here we are in a different situation from when we acquire knowledge, for we seek to bring the spirit out of its hiddenness into real existence, not only through our knowledge but also through our help and deeds. This prospect of passing from the external physical to the spiritual will have to arise in our soul when we consider the question that is the subject of our meditation today.

It must be emphasized at the outset that a prerequisite in the sense of spiritual science must be made for this question. Spiritual science goes beyond what presents itself to us in human life between birth or from the development before birth until death as an individual life. It penetrates to the essence of the human being, to the spiritual soul that exists before birth and that remains after death - to the core that can be traced from life to life through spiritual research, because we are indeed talking about repeated lives on earth. We make a strict distinction between these lives, which a person repeatedly spends on earth between birth and death, and the lives that lie in between in a purely spiritual world. When a human soul-spiritual comes into existence through birth, it is the case that it brings with it into this life all the effects of those causes that are to be found in previous lives. When we look at the developing human being, we see emerging like a sacred riddle what he has acquired in previous lives and brings into this life. The human being enters into the present life and lives spiritually, but he envelops himself with the qualities, characteristics and abilities that lie in the line of inheritance. Thus, the human being brings with him into his life the spiritual and soul essence, and he experiences in a certain way the strengths and abilities that the talents, characters and other qualities of his ancestors can give him. What a person brings with them from the spiritual world and what they inherit from their ancestors comes together in their development. To truly answer the question of education in a more intimate sense, we must be able to gain insight into the relationship between inherited traits and the spiritual-soul core of the person.

If we treat these repeated earthly lives and the effects of earlier lives on later ones as a spiritual scientific fact, this will provoke the opposition of many people who do not want to be informed in detail about the evidence that can be provided by spiritual science. It is not possible to convince oneself that this truth really exists in any other way than through practice. One can discuss at length whether a piece of iron, which is claimed to be a magnet, really is one. One can put forward many reasons against it; one could say that the person making the claim seems credible and so on, and so it can be argued about for an infinitely long time. But proof is there if one takes a small piece of iron and sees whether it is attracted. Through practice, evidence is provided. In a similar sense, one can be convinced of the truths of spiritual science.

The educator can now say: What I encounter in the child puzzles me; I must try to see whether what spiritual science claims is true, whether something really comes into the world as a spiritual-soul core of being. It will be shown that such a principle bears fruit for education by enabling us to enrich the child's life and to divine and coax out his or her gifts. We must focus on the way in which the gifts are formed if we want to distinguish the spiritual-soul core of the being from what the child has inherited. To do this, we must allow the human being's predisposition – everything that gradually comes to us in the way of qualities, abilities, talents and so on – to come to the fore, and we then find that it is characteristic of the human soul to allow the individual forces to interact so that they support and sustain each other in an overall organism. But still we see that the soul-forces of man, for example, thinking, feeling and willing, or other forces, appear independently of each other in their strength, yes, so independently that we find, for example, people in whom the power of thought is so highly developed that they can be good thinkers, while the power of will, on the other hand, recedes. Others are men of will and are equally ready to tackle an action, but are not always able to keep their thoughts together and follow them logically in a comprehensive way. They act, but do not think much. There are still other people who are pushed by their feelings to do this or that without thinking too long. So we see: the individual abilities can be developed to different degrees. For example, a person is very musical, and the other abilities recede. Some people, on the other hand, do not have the ability to do extensive calculations and so on.

The abilities are therefore independent of each other, but come together to form a complete organism. When we visualize the soul forces of a person, it becomes clear that he or she enters into existence with a very specific tendency and nature that brings soul forces into relationship and connection. If we turn our attention to what is inherited, that is, to the line of inheritance, and then to what enters into existence from a previous life, we can see what connects the forces and abilities. It is in fact the case that what the person brings with them as a result of previous lives has the ability to organize the abilities and shape them into a whole organism. The emotional tendencies, qualities, talents and so on point us in the direction of the line of inheritance. There is no more interesting observation to be made than to see how, on the one hand, the spiritual core of the being works to connect the soul forces and form an overall organism, and how, on the other hand, the individual forces are inherited from the ancestors.

Spiritual science is able to indicate very definite laws as to the relationship between these two elements. These can be understood in the same way as natural laws, but on a higher plane. When such laws are stated, one must not come and try to refute them with casual observation. That is child's play, even in the field of chemical physics. Let us suppose that a physicist establishes that the line traced by a stone thrown through the air is a parabola. If someone now follows the line externally, he will see that it is not exact. The line varies due to the resistance of the air and other external circumstances, but one can only arrive at the truth by going back to the law. One can only arrive at what underlies the spiritual life as a law by penetrating behind the scenes of existence.

Now, two types of forces present themselves in the soul life of man; we can describe one type more as the intellectual principle, and also as that of the imagination: everything that man has as a life of ideas, the way he conceives something, whether he goes slowly from one idea to another or can grasp rapid associations of thoughts, whether he can follow thoughts sharply and over a long distance, and the like. We have to take people who easily develop pictorial representations, who are able to clothe facts in images of the imagination, in short, who have the element of the intellectual and imaginative particularly active, who have inventiveness and the ability to think of many things, we have to take them as representatives of one side of the soul life. The other side, on the other hand, is the side of affects, passions and drives, the way someone is quickly captivated by this or that, whether they have many interests or are dull and so on. The latter is more connected with what we call the element of character, the former more with the reflective, the internalization. We must strictly distinguish these two sides, because if we are observers of life, the laws of development only reveal themselves to us when we can follow how the spiritual-soul essence of the human being, going from life to life, acquires one or the other element.

In general, we find that the child inherits the side that has to do with interest, passions, and attention more from the father; the spiritual-soul core of the human being borrows these elements from the father where it finds what passions are, what confronts events in life, what intervenes in the outer life. When a person wants to embody themselves, they are drawn to the father as if by magnet, who can transfer the qualities of interest, strength of character and so on, which are suitable for their individuality. They seek out the father who can give them this. The intellectual and imaginative qualities are more likely to come from the mother. Generally speaking, if we disregard more specific causes, we can say that the child's mental character comes about because the spiritual core of the being brings about something like a mixture of the intellectual and imaginative qualities of the mother with the temperament and drives of the father. How these qualities are mixed depends on the overall disposition of the spiritual core of the being. We can see what the elements are that belong to the nature of will and passion by looking at the father. We must look to the mother for what the core of the being has in the way of imagination and intellectuality. The children of the same parents are so different because the spiritual-soul core of their being mixes the paternal and maternal elements in different ways.

But we must go into this in more detail and distinguish between male and female offspring. Real observation of life will also confirm this law – that is, if the reservation is made in the same way as with physical laws and the secondary circumstances are not made the main thing. That which is in the soul character of the mother is more easily inherited by the sons, and in such a way that it is transformed in the son to a certain extent. If the mother is imaginative but only works in the narrowest circle, the soul of the mother works in such a way that it descends a step in the son, as it were, and gives him the outer organ predisposition so that he expresses this predisposition to a greater extent. The mother remains in the soul element in the narrow circle; the son shows what she has in her soul but imprinted in the brain as his tool. He has as a world ability what she experienced in the innermost circle. A talent for which the mother shows the disposition can come about in this way. And what descends more into the physical disposition through the mother is mixed and imbued with what is inherited from the father. This is how it is with sons.

It is different with daughters. Here it can be seen how what the father lives in his profession and so on is more expressed in the overall personality. What is the predisposition of the father's physical body is reflected in the soul of the daughter. What the father had as external qualities is realized in the soul. In the daughter, we encounter in spiritualized form what was more in the physical man in the father. It is particularly interesting, and one can almost express it as a law of nature, that the mother in the son descends in relation to her soul and appears in the physical, while the father ascends in the soul of the daughter with what he is in the physical man.

This can be demonstrated in hundreds and thousands of cases, and life will prove it right across the board. Here it will be explained only by means of one particularly characteristic example – in Goethe, in whom this general law shows itself especially clearly: What was admired in the mother's innermost circle as a spiritual quality was manifested in a “lowered” form in the son and was admired by the world. Frau Goethe had a desire to tell stories, which could have a stimulating effect in the innermost circle. In Goethe's case, it became a mental disposition, so that he became a world-affecting personality.

We also see the opposite in a wonderful way in his sister Cornelia. Councillor Goethe was extremely likeable due to his strong character and the serious way he led his life. He stood firm in the outer life as a thorough and earnest man. Let us take a look at how Goethe relates to his father. It is peculiar that the outer character traits, temperament, thoroughness and so on are inherited by the son. When people with the same disposition live next to each other, they sometimes repel each other. There was never any intimate relationship between father and son Goethe. But the sister had absorbed her father's thoroughness into her soul as depth of soul and seriousness, mixed with intimacy, as is often the case when external qualities are transformed into soul qualities and come to us. That is why the siblings were such loyal companions, because the qualities that Goethe did not like in his father had penetrated into the soul of his sister.

Can we not see this peculiar survival of maternal soul qualities in the external organ systems of the son everywhere? Throughout world history, we see the relationships of sons to mothers, for example in the poet Hebbel. He was the son of a bricklayer. If you knew him and were with him, you would know that the gnarled, pedantic character he had within was already apparent on the outside. His hands were much too long, his legs even longer, and his movements were angular. He got all that from his father, but he and his father did not get along. On the other hand, he got his mother's simple nature, which he relates so beautifully. We see how her soul, descended by one level, reappears in his poetic personality. This is how the two came to understand each other, and it was only through his mother that he escaped the fate of becoming a mason. Wherever we look, in everyday life and in history, we can see that this law applies universally.

But how should we proceed as educators when we see this complex interaction between inherited traits and the spiritual and psychological core? We must direct our attention as much as we can to the way in which certain traits that we see in children can be found in their parents at a different level. But we must not regard the child as a copy of [the parents], for then we would not consider the transformation, how the soul qualities of the mother descend into the body of the son, and how, conversely, the physical nature of the father is transformed in the soul of the daughter. Today, people are inclined to admit transformations of natural forces; natural science, for example, shows how natural substances transform into heat. But it is not admitted that these laws also apply to the spiritual. A real art of education can only come about when people become aware that spiritual science can flow into such areas of life as education.

We are always talking about individuality. But what is individuality? Today, we only refer to the word in a very abstract way. However, if we know how individuality arises, in that the spiritual-soul core of the child not only absorbs the qualities of the father and mother, but transforms them, we can grasp it in a concrete way. Then education comes from the abstract to the concrete, from materialistic abstraction to true reality. Now someone might object: You tell us that the soul-spiritual core of the being envelops itself in what is given to it in inherited powers. But we see the human being as a unified being, and how can we distinguish between what is inherited and the spiritual core of the being?

If we consider development only superficially and see only the individual, we will not make any progress. But life offers us proof, sufficient proof, to show how the spiritual-soul core of our being is enveloped and permeated by what comes from our parents and ancestors. Great minds such as Newton or Humboldt, who achieved great things, did not do particularly well at school and were considered to be poorly endowed. Many other people with great names could be named who also developed slowly, while child prodigies progressed rapidly. In the case of Newton or Humboldt or others, they brought a rich core of being into this life, with much sprouting and budding in the soul, and this working into what had been inherited from the parents had to happen slowly. The rich inner core needs more time, because it must first chisel out, transform, precisely gradate and so on, what it has inherited in powers. So rich natures, which are called to give much, must work longer on adapting the inherited material.

This will become increasingly clear, because today a person who brings strong soul forces with them has to fight against all the tough obstacles, because very rigid, sober, fixed hereditary traits are inherited that are not very flexible, so it takes a long time to adapt them precisely to the individual core of the being. Child prodigies are quickly finished, because they quickly process the abilities that lie in the line of inheritance and absorb them in a one-sided way. But it soon becomes apparent that their talents dry up and wither away. When we look at these most extreme cases, we see the slowly developing genius or the quickly developing prodigy and all the stages in between, as the spiritual and psychological core of the being works its way through the obstacles.

This slow process of working one's way through can also be found in Goethe. If, like me, you have spent three decades studying Goethe in detail and with humility, you can safely say, without running the risk of being misunderstood: If one surveys Goethe's life, one notices a slow progression in the development of his abilities and talents. We find the tendency towards what he became in him even as a child sacrificing to the great God, but what effort he had throughout his life to bring what was in him through the many obstacles of his physicality. We recognize him when he expresses his great thoughts, for example in the second part of Faust, as a mature human being, in contrast to young Goethe, who, compared to old Goethe, wrote many immature things. How does what is said here go against the judgment of our time, where the editions of the youthful works are particularly praised – there, it is thought, he achieved the greatest things. The young Goethe, it is said, brought forth great and powerful things. He is praised to the skies. And of the old Goethe, some say that he produced the second part of Faust in his old age. Few people understand that he developed and deepened slowly and gradually, that the Italian world fostered him inwardly, and that his essential core increasingly removed external obstacles. In short, they do not understand the old Goethe because he is too lofty for them. Even during his lifetime, he had to suffer from the fact that his later works were decried as products of old age. He expresses this in the following verse:

They praise Faust,
And what else
In my writings roars,
In their favor;
The old Mick and Mack,
That pleases them very much;
The pack of rags and tags thinks,
It would no longer be!

In Goethe's case, it is particularly evident how the spiritual and mental core of his being rose to its height in the second half of his life, and no one who believes that the whole of Goethe was already present in his youthful writings understands him. People understand the young Goethe better, but they attribute this not to the fact that they do not understand the old Goethe, but to the fact that he has declined. Thus, we can also find it true in this great spirit how the spiritual-soul core of being works its way into the outer shells.

Someone might object that we are talking here about an essential core that must be there to group and organize abilities. But we need only point out that the most important qualities nevertheless lie in the line of inheritance and can be explained from it. For example, in the last few centuries there were 25 to 28 musicians in the Bach family. So how can you say that the essential core is the main thing? Similarly, there were a whole series of important mathematicians in the Bernoulli family in Basel. In their case, it is particularly clear how seemingly mere inheritance works, because some of them were destined for something completely different, but nevertheless, in later life, it drove them to mathematics.

To understand this correctly, one must consider the relationship between the spiritual-soul core of one's being and one's inherited disposition and talents. To be a musician, one needs a musical ear; but this belongs to the physical organization, that is, to the shell. Just as one inherits the shape of one's nose, hands and so on, one also inherits the finer inner organs that lie hidden beneath the surface of the physical body. A soul-spiritual core that strives to receive physical tools for musicality will be drawn to families that can pass on musical organs. What is musical talent based on? Not on the brain, which is the organ of logic, but on the shape of the ear canals. One must look at the individual relationships very carefully. Such auditory ossicles of a certain shape are inherited from generation to generation. It is similar with the Bernoullis. Those who need a predisposition for geometry can seek out such a family. Thus, what life shows us here again coincides with what spiritual science asserts. We can understand and illuminate life better if we bring before our soul the connection between heredity and predisposition and the harmony or disharmony that arises from it.

If we distinguish between the spiritual-soul core of our being and the environment in which it is embedded, then life means an interaction between these two elements. Let us look at a child in the very first weeks of its life. His features are still undefined, his organs not yet fully functional; he cannot yet walk and so on. But if we think properly, we know that where features and abilities are still undefined, the core of the being is still dormant and is only gradually working its way to the surface to become defined. What the person will become later works its way out of the vagueness of movements, gestures and so on. It works its way up from indeterminate depths to the surface, and more and more the outer shell becomes an expression of what lives inside the person. In later life, much more is expressed on the outside, as the person really is. In the youthful child, the forces that will one day express themselves in his features, in his gestures, in his hand movements, and so on, are still dormant. In later life, the human being shows the imprint of the soul's inner character in the physical. The outer, the envelope-like, becomes more and more [a mirror] of itself; in the physical, what he is as a spiritual human being shows.

During the first period of life, the human being works more into his physical being. There is something very interesting connected with this fact, and it is connected with the same lawfulness as a physical law. With regard to inheritance, a distinction must be made between what children inherit who are born in the first years of marriage and what those who are born in later years of marriage inherit. The first children show in a remarkable way the ability to shape the inherited traits in the freest way; they can do this more with an individual style independent of their parents. The later children are more constrained to yield to the strong element of heredity; they become more of an imprint of their parents. Children born in the early years of a marriage find it easier to mix the inherited traits with each other; inheritance is less tyrannical towards them. Those born in the later years of the marriage have to apply stronger forces, because the power of inheritance is stronger in their case. Thus we see how these children become more and more like their parents. Of course, this can be broken by the most diverse circumstances, but in the sense of today's scientific research, this is a law.

When we consider these laws of inheritance, the right relationship between a person's disposition, talents and upbringing becomes apparent. Such laws can only be made useful for the soul's life if they do not remain mere theories and insights, but if they are transformed into feelings and intuitions. It is a remarkable thing how feelings kindled by knowledge give us the gift of tactfully divining what qualities are striving for expression in a human being. If we have goodwill and a sense for it, we stand face to face with the developing human being as with a sacred riddle. The secret of education lies in our approaching the child with such a feeling, for then he will solve the riddle for us. He shows us what abilities can be drawn out of him. Then there is no need for much speculation; tact will guide us so that we do not burden the child with something that cannot be developed in him. This brings the educator into the right relationship with the child. Then we stand before the human being we have to educate as before a sacred riddle and not – as many an educator often does – as before a vessel, where one can discuss what is best to be poured into it. That is a very external point of view! We must not forget that life often forces us to bring the child to something that, in our opinion, is not within his or her individuality, so that he or she can get ahead in life. But generally speaking, all the talk about education is usually less about what the child is more or less suited for and more about family relationships and education befitting one's station in life. But we must grasp the demands of life and individuality in a concrete sense, harmonize the blending of the soul-spiritual essence and the inherited predispositions, and endeavor to solve the riddle according to the circumstances of life. A riddle can be solved in different ways, but one must recognize it, then one can let the child become different, otherwise one will often not hit the right thing despite all speculation.

It is precisely in such areas [as education] that the fruitfulness of spiritual science for life becomes apparent. Spiritual science is not just theory, but something that can and will prove itself in life every day and every hour - for the progress of all humanity and of each individual. It places us in life in such a way that we acquire the security, strength and confidence we need for life. This chapter on disposition, talent and education thus proves to us that, indeed, through having gone through many lives, the human being carries an enigma at the core of his being and that life, in the broadest sense, must be a solution to this enigma.

The better we can answer the riddle within us, the happier, more secure and more fruitful a person's life will be – we must take this as our motto.

The spiritual and soul essence that goes through many births and deaths is a riddle, and life is the solution.

We have come here today for the opening of the group founded by our friend, Professor C. This group wishes to dedicate itself to the spiritual life of the present and future in the way that is customary in our Movement. On such an occasion it is always good to remember why we associate in groups and to ask ourselves why we found working groups and cultivate in them the spiritual treasure to which we dedicate our forces.

If this question is to be answered truly, we must realize that we make a distinction, even if only in thought, between the work we do in a group like this and our other work in the world. Those who are unwilling to enter deeply into more intimate truths connected with the spiritual progress of humanity, might ask if we could not cultivate spiritual science without forming ourselves into groups, but simply by finding lecturers and providing opportunities for people who may not know each other to come together and have access to the spiritual treasure of which we speak. We could, of course, proceed in this way. But as long as it is at all possible to establish, in the wider and narrower senses, associations of human beings who are known to one another and who come together in friendship and brotherliness within these working groups, we will continue to found them in full consciousness of the attitude of soul that is part and parcel of spiritual science. It is not without meaning that among us there are human beings who want to cultivate the more intimate side of spiritual knowledge and who sincerely intend to work together in brotherliness and harmony. Not only are relationships and intercourse affected by the fact that we can speak quite differently among ourselves, knowing that we are speaking to souls consciously associated with us—not only is this so, but something else is also to be remembered. The establishment of individual groups is connected with the whole conception that we hold of our Movement if we understand its inmost nature. We must all be conscious that our Movement is significant not only for the existence known to the senses and for the existence that is grasped by the outward turned mind of man, but that through this Movement our souls are seeking a real and genuine link with the spiritual worlds. Again and again, in full consciousness, we should say to ourselves that by the cultivation of spiritual science we transfer our souls as it were into spheres that are peopled not only by beings of earth but also by the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the invisible worlds. We must realize that our work is of significance for these invisible worlds, that we are actually within these worlds. In the spiritual world, the work performed by those who know one another within such groups is quite different from work carried on outside such a group and dispersed about the world. The work carried out in brotherly harmony within our groups has quite a different significance for the spiritual world than other work we may undertake. To understand this fully we must remind ourselves of truths we have studied in many aspects during recent years.

Earth evolution in the post-Atlantean age was sustained in the beginning by the culture of the ancient Indian period of civilization. This was followed by the ancient Persian epoch—the designation is only more or less appropriate but we need not go into that now. Then came the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian period of culture, then the Greco-Latin, then our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Each of these epochs has, on the one side, to cultivate a particular form of culture and of spiritual life primarily concerned with the external and visible world. But each epoch must at the same time prepare, bear within it in a preparatory stage, what is to come in the ensuing period of culture.

Within the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian epoch, that of ancient Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch was prepared, and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean epoch must prepare the coming sixth epoch of culture. Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth epoch of culture. Thus it has been in each of the post-Atlantean epochs. The centers of the mysteries were the places in which the form of external life belonging to the next epoch of culture was prepared. The mysteries were associations of human beings among whom other things were cultivated than those cultivated in the outer world. The ancient Indian epoch was concerned with the cultivation of the human etheric body, the ancient Persian epoch with the cultivation of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Our own epoch, throughout its duration, will develop and unfold the consciousness or spiritual soul. But what will give to external culture in the sixth epoch its content and character, must be prepared in advance. Many characteristics of the sixth epoch of culture will be entirely different from those of our age. Three characteristic traits can be mentioned, of which we must realize that they should be carried in our hearts for the sixth epoch of culture and that it is our task to prepare them for this sixth epoch.

There is lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth epoch, will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that epoch, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not, of course, be found among those who in the sixth epoch have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most significant characteristics of men living on the earth at the peak of culture in the sixth epoch, will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other human beings in the world in less happy circumstances than his own. It is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be said of the people who are particularly sensitive. In the sixth epoch, the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering. If they see a hungry man they will feel the hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger of the other man will be unendurable to them. The moral characteristic indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the fifth epoch, in the sixth epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its work, so in the sixth epoch a common consciousness will lay hold of the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured humanity of the sixth epoch.

A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth epoch, complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity in the sixth epoch of culture. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental right of the human being.

The third characteristic will be that men in the sixth epoch will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. What is known as science today with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name of science in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It will be regarded as antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the super-sensible world, regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition. Similarly, in the sixth epoch all materialistic beliefs including science, too, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.

The whole purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth epoch of culture. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that epoch. We found communities of human beings within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built upon the soul's free assent to the teachings. Herein we prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch.

But we must look still more deeply into the course of human evolution if we are fully to understand the real tasks of our associations and groups. In the first post-Atlantean epoch, too, in communities that in those days were connected with the mysteries, men cultivated what subsequently prevailed in the second epoch. In the associations peculiar to the first, the ancient Indian epoch, men were concerned with the cultivation of the astral body, which was to be the specific outer task of the second epoch. It would lead much too far today to describe what, in contrast to the external culture of the time, was developed in these associations peculiar to ancient India in order to prepare for the second, ancient Persian epoch. But this may be said that when those men of the ancient Indian epoch came together in order to prepare what was necessary for the second epoch, they felt: We have not yet attained, nor have we in us, what we shall have when our souls are incarnated in the next epoch. It still hovers above us. It was in truth so. In the first epoch of culture, what was to descend from the heavens to the earth in the second epoch still hovered over the souls of men. The work achieved on earth by men in intimate assemblies connected with the mysteries was of such a nature that forces flowed upwards to the spirits of the higher hierarchies, enabling them to nourish and cultivate what was to stream down into the souls of men as substance and content of the astral body in the second, ancient Persian epoch. The forces that descended at a later stage of maturity into the souls incarnated in the bodies of ancient Persian civilizations were like little children in the first epoch. Forces streaming upwards from the work of men below in preparation for the next epoch were received and nurtured by the spiritual world above. So it must be in every epoch of culture.

In our epoch it is the consciousness or spiritual soul that has developed in us through our ordinary civilization and culture. Beginning with the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, science and materialistic consciousness have laid hold of the human being. This will gradually become more widespread, until by the end of the fifth epoch its development will have been completed. In the sixth epoch, however, it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch. We may therefore picture to ourselves that by uniting in brotherliness in working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self—the spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on earth in the sixth epoch of civilization. In our groups we perform work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self.

So you see, it is only through the wisdom of spiritual science itself that we can understand what we are really doing in respect of our connection with the spiritual worlds when we come together in these working groups. The thought that we do this work not only for the sake of our own egos, but in order that it may stream upward into the spiritual worlds, the thought that this work is connected with the spiritual worlds, this is the true consecration of a working group. To cherish such a thought is to permeate ourselves with the consciousness of the consecration that is the foundation of a working group within the Movement. It is therefore of great importance to grasp this fact in its true spiritual sense. We find ourselves together in working groups which, besides cultivating spiritual science, are based on freedom of thought. They will have nothing to do with dogma or coercion of belief, and their work should be of the nature of cooperation among brothers. What matters most of all is to become conscious of the true meaning of the idea of community, saying to ourselves: Apart from the fact that as modern souls we belong to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture and develop as individuals, raising individual life more and more out of community life, we must in turn become conscious of a higher form of community, founded in the freedom of love among brothers, as a breath of magic that we breathe in our working groups.

The deep significance of West European culture lies in the fact that the quest of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is the consciousness soul. The task of West European culture, and particularly of Central European culture, is that men shall develop an individual culture, individual consciousness. This is the task of the present age. Compare this epoch of ours with that of Greece and Rome. The Greek epoch exhibits in a particularly striking form, especially among the civilized Greeks, a consciousness of living within a group soul. A man who was born and lived in Athens felt himself to be first and foremost an “Athenian.” This community between city and what belonged to the city meant something different to the individual from what community between human beings means today. In our time the individual strives to grow out of and beyond the community, and this is right in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In Rome, the human being was first and foremost a Roman citizen, nothing else. But in the fifth epoch we strive above all else to be man in our innermost being, man and nothing else. It is a painful experience in our day to see men fighting against one another on the earth, but this, after all, is just a reaction to the perpetual striving of the fifth epoch for free development of the “human universal.” Because the different countries and peoples shut themselves off today from one another in hostility, it is all the more necessary to develop, as resistance to this, the force that allows human beings to be men in the full sense, allowing the individual to grow out of and beyond every kind of community. But on the other hand the human being must, in full consciousness, make preparation for communities into which he will enter entirely of his own free will in the sixth epoch. There hovers before us as a high ideal a form of community that will so encompass the sixth epoch of culture that civilized human beings will quite naturally meet each other as brothers and sisters.

From many lectures given in past years, we know that Eastern Europe is inhabited by a people whose particular mission it will be in the sixth epoch, and not until the sixth epoch, to bring to definite expression the elementary forces that now lie within them. We know that the Russian peoples will not be ready until the sixth epoch of culture to unfold the forces now within them in an elementary form. The mission of Western and Central Europe is to introduce into men qualities that can be introduced by the consciousness soul. This is not the mission of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the spirit self comes down to the earth and can permeate the souls of men. This must be understood in the right sense. Understood in the wrong sense it may easily lead to pride and superciliousness, precisely in the East. The height of post-Atlantean culture is reached in the fifth epoch. What will follow in the sixth and seventh epochs will be a descending line of evolution. Nevertheless, this descending evolution in the sixth epoch will be inspired, permeated by the spirit self. Today the man of Eastern Europe feels instinctively, but often with perverted instinct, that this is so; only his consciousness of it is, for the most part, extremely hazy and confused. The frequent occurrence of the term, “the Russian man,” is quite characteristic. Genius expresses itself in language when, instead of saying as we do in the West: the British, the French, the Italian, the German—Eastern Europe says, “the Russian man.” Many of the Russian intelligentsia attach importance to the use of the expression, “the Russian man.” This is connected deeply with the genius of the particular culture. The term refers to the element of manhood, of brotherhood that is spread over a community. An attempt is made to indicate this by including a word that brings out the “manhood” in the term. But it is also obvious that the height to be reached in a distant future has not yet been attained, inasmuch as the term includes a word that glaringly contradicts the noun. In the expression, “the Russian man.” the adjective really nullifies what is expressed in the noun. For when true manhood is attained there should be no adjective to suggest any element of exclusiveness.

But at a much, much deeper level there lies in members of the Russian intelligentsia the realization that a conception of community, of brotherhood must prevail in times still to come. The Russian soul feels that spirit self is to descend, but that it can only descend into a community of men permeated with the consciousness of brotherhood, that it can never spread over a community where there is no consciousness of brotherhood. That is why the Russian intellectuals, as they call themselves, make the following reproach to Western and Central Europe. They say, “You pay no heed at all to a life of true community. You cultivate only individualism. Everyone wants to be a person on his own, to be an individual only. You drive the personal element, through which every single man feels himself an individuality, to its highest extreme.” This is what echoes across from the East to Western and Central Europe in many reproaches of barbarism and the like. Those who try to realize how things really are, accuse Western and Central Europe of having lost all feeling for human connections. Confusing present and future as they do now, these people say, “it is only in Russia that there is a true and genuine community of life among men, a life where everyone feels himself the brother of the other, as the ‘Little Father’ or the ‘Little Mother’ of the other.” The Russian intelligentsia say that the Christianity of Western Europe has not succeeded in developing the essence of human community, but that the Russian still knows what community is.

Alexander Herzen, an excellent thinker who lived in the nineteenth century and belonged to the Russian intellectuals, brought this to its ultimate conclusion by saying, “In Western Europe there can never be happiness.” No matter what attempts are made, happiness will never come to Western European civilization. There humanity will never find contentment. Only chaos can prevail there. The one and only salvation lies in the Russian nature and in the Russian form of life where men have not yet separated themselves from community, where in their village communities there is still something of the nature of the group soul to which they hold fast. What we call the group soul, out of which mankind has gradually emerged and in which the animal kingdom still lives, that is what is revered by the Russian intelligentsia as something great and significant among their people. They cannot rise to the thought that the community of the future must hover as a high ideal, an ideal that has yet to be realized. They adhere firmly to the thought: We are the last people in Europe to retain this life in the group soul; the others have risen out of it; we have retained and must retain it for ourselves.

Yes, but this life in the group soul does not in reality belong to the future at all, for it is the old form of group soul existence. If it continued it would be a Luciferic group soul, a form of life that has remained at an earlier stage, whereas the form of group soul life that is true and must be striven for, is what we try to find in spiritual science. But be that as it may, the urge and the longing of the Russian intellectuals show how the spirit of community is needed to bring about the descent of spirit self. Just as it is being striven for there along a false path, so must it be striven for in spiritual science along the true path. What we should like to say to the East is this: It is our task to overcome entirely just what you are trying to preserve in an external form, namely, an old Luciferic-Ahrimanic form of community. In a community of a Luciferic-Ahrimanic character there will be coercion of belief as rigid as that established by the Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia. Such community will not understand true freedom of thought; least of all will it be able to rise to the level where complete individuality is associated with a social life in which brotherhood prevails. That other form of community would like to preserve what has remained in blood brotherhood, in brotherhood purely through the blood. Community that is founded not upon the blood, but upon the spirit, upon community of souls, is what must be striven for along the paths of spiritual science. We must try to create communities in which the factor of blood no longer has a voice. Naturally, the factor of blood will continue, it will live itself out in family relationships, for what must remain will not be eradicated. But something new must arise! What is significant in the child will be retained in the forces of old age, but in his later years the human being must receive new forces.

The factor of blood is not meant to encompass great communities of human beings in the future. That is the error that is filtering from the East into the dreadful events of today. A war has blazed up under the heading of community of blood among the Slavic peoples. Into these fateful times all those elements are entering of which we have just heard, elements that in reality have in them the right kernel, namely, the instinctive feeling that the spirit self can only manifest in a community where brotherhood prevails. It must not, however, be a community of blood: it must be a community of souls. What grows up as a community of souls is what we develop, in its childhood stage, in our working groups. What holds Eastern Europe so firmly to the group soul, causing it to regard the Slavic group soul as something that it does not want to abandon but, on the contrary, regards as a principle for the whole development of the state—it is this that must be overcome.

A great and terrible symbol stands before the eyes of the world. Think of the two states where the war had its starting-point. On the one side, Russia with the Slavic world in general, declares that the war is based on brotherhood of blood, and on the other side, there is Austria, which comprises thirteen distinct peoples and thirteen different languages. The mobilization order in Austria had to be issued in thirteen languages because Austria encompasses thirteen racial stocks: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Magyars, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes (among whom there is a second and separate dialect), Bosnians, Dalmatians and Italians. Thirteen different racial stocks, apart from all minor differentiations, are united in Austria. Whether the implications of this are understood or not, it is obvious that Austria consists of a collection of human beings among whom community can never be based on blood relationship, for what its strange boundaries contain shoots out into thirteen different lineages. The most highly composite state in Europe stands in opposition to the state that strives most intensively for life in a group soul, or for conformity. But this striving for life in a group soul brings a great many other things in its train. This leads us to another matter, the significance of which we will think about today.

In the public lecture yesterday I mentioned the great philosopher Soloviev, one of the most significant thinkers of all Russia. Soloviev is an eminent thinker, but a thoroughly Russian thinker, a mind that is exceedingly difficult to understand from the Western European point of view. Anthroposophists, however, should study his work and try to understand him. I propose to speak from our more intimate standpoint about Soloviev's main and central idea. Soloviev is far too good a philosopher to adopt for himself without question the principle of life in a group soul. He has difficulties with it and he disagrees in many respects. But one idea predominates in him, not quite consciously it is true, but in such a way that one only wishes he were clairvoyant and could thus anticipate what his soul will have to wait to see on the earth when he is incarnated in the sixth epoch of culture. The following conception that is extremely difficult for the men of West and Central Europe to understand became the main and central idea in Soloviev's mind.

In Western Europe, as a preparation for the sixth epoch, we try among many other things to grasp the meaning of death, the significance of death for life. We try to understand how death is the manifestation of a form of existence, how the soul is transformed in death into another form of existence. We describe the life of a man within his body and the manner of life between death and new birth. We endeavor to understand death, to overcome death by realizing that it is only semblance, that the soul in very truth lives on when it has passed through death. It is an essential aim with us to overcome death through understanding. But here we come to one of the points, indeed to one of the most vital points, where spiritual science deviates altogether from the central idea held by the great Russian thinker, Soloviev. His idea is this: There is evil in the world, wickedness in the world. If we, with our senses, behold the evil and wickedness, we cannot deny that the world is full of both. This, says Soloviev, refutes the divinity of the world, for when we behold the world with our senses, how can we believe in a divine world, since a divine world can certainly not exhibit evil! But the senses perceive evil everywhere and the extreme evil is death. Because death is in the world, the world is revealed in all its evil and wickedness. The arch-evil is death!

Thus does Soloviev characterize the world. He says—and I am quoting almost word for word: Look at the world with your ordinary senses; try to understand the world with your ordinary mind. You can never deny the existence of evil in the world, and to desire to understand death would be absurd! Death exists. Knowledge acquired through the senses reveals a world of wickedness, a world of evil. Can we believe, asks Soloviev, that this world is divine when it shows us that it is full of evil, when it shows us death at every step? Nevermore can we believe that a world that shows us death is a divine world. For in God there can be no evil, no wickedness, above all, not the arch-evil death. In God there cannot be death. If, therefore, God were to come into the world (I am repeating what Soloviev says practically word for word)—if God were to appear, should we be able immediately to believe him to be God? No, we should not! He would have to establish his identity first. If a being claiming to be God were to appear, we should not believe him. He would have to prove his identity by producing something of the nature of a world document that would enable us to recognize him as God! Nothing of the kind exists in the world. God cannot prove his identity through what is in the world, for everything in the world contradicts the divine nature. By what means, then, can he prove his identity? Only by showing, when he comes into the world, that he has conquered death, that death can have no power over him. We should never believe Christ to be God if He did not prove his identity. But Christ did so, inasmuch as He has risen, inasmuch as He has shown that the arch-evil, death, is not in Him.

This is what Soloviev says. It is a consciousness of the divine that is based solely upon the actual, historical resurrection of Christ, Who, as God, proves His identity. Soloviev goes on to say: Nothing in the world, with the single exception of the Resurrection, enables us to realize that a God exists. If Christ had not risen, all our belief would be vain, and everything we could say about a divine nature in the world, this too would be vain. Soloviev quotes these words of St. Paul again and again.

This, then, is the fundamental outlook of Soloviev. If we look at the world we see therein only evil, wickedness, degeneration, senselessness. If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless, therefore Christ has risen! Note this sentence well, for it is a cardinal saying of one of the greatest thinkers of Eastern Europe: “If Christ had not risen the world would be senseless, therefore Christ has risen.” Soloviev has said: “There may be people who think it illogical when I say, if Christ had not risen the world would be senseless; therefore Christ has risen—but this is far better logic than any you can adduce against me.”

We come together today, my dear friends, first and foremost, to commit the celebration of the institution of that branch which has been founded by our dear friend professor Craemer and which will dedicate its forces to the spiritual life of the present and of the future in the way of our spiritual-scientific movement. On such an occasion it is always good to think of the real sense of our union in single branches, to ask us: why do we come together as study groups, and why do we care for the spiritual wealth within such study groups to which we want to dedicate our abilities? If we want to answer this question correctly, we must get clear in our mind that we still separate our work which we perform here in a certain way, even if only in thoughts, from the way preparing our other work.

That human being in our present who generally does not want to familiarise himself with certain more intimate truth of the spiritual progress of humankind could ask: could you not simply care for spiritual science, without uniting in single closed groups, while you find lecturers and freely gather human beings who also do not know themselves and can come together to let their souls get to know the spiritual wealth about which you talk?—Of course, we could also proceed that way. But as long as it is possible for us in any way to produce connections of human beings in the farther and narrower sense who know themselves who are connected in certain respect most friendly and brotherly in these study groups, we want to do this out of full consciousness of our attitude connected with spiritual science. Since it is not without reason that with us human beings meet for the care of the more intimate part of our spiritual wealth who vow to themselves seriously to be together in brotherly love and unity. Not only that it has a certain significance for the way as we associate with each other that we can speak in a quite different way if we know, we speak to related, with us consciously connected souls, not only that this is that way, but it is something different. Indeed, we do something with such a union in the single branches that is connected intimately with the whole view which we must have of our spiritual movement if we understand it in the deepest inside. Our spiritual movement has to penetrate our consciousness that it has not only significance for the sensory and intellectual existence of the human beings. Our spiritual movement has to realise that our souls search for a real and true connection with the spiritual worlds through it. We must say to ourselves as it were with consciousness repeatedly: while we cultivate spiritual science, we transport our souls in certain way to those worlds which not only earthly beings, but which the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the invisible worlds inhabit as their place of existence.

That we are therein as it were, that our work has significance for these invisible worlds that we are in these invisible worlds really—it is this of which we become fully aware at our work. Indeed, it is in a certain way that within the spiritual world the spiritual work, which we do, while we co-operate—knowing each other—in single study groups, has a different significance than if we performed such a work not within such study groups, but without, dispersed in the world. So the working together within our groups in brotherly unity has a different significance for the spiritual worlds than the work which we could otherwise perform. To understand this completely we must remember something significant that faced us at our spiritual-scientific work of the last years in manifold way.

Let us consider that our earth development took place for us human beings so that in the post-Atlantean age this earth development was carried by that cultural community we call the Ancient Indian culture-epoch. This culture-epoch was continued by that which we term with a more or less matching expression—it does not depend on that now—Ancient Persian culture-epoch. Then the Egypt-Chaldean-Babylonian culture-epoch, the Greek-Latin epoch followed, then our fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. Any such culture-epoch has to care for that in culture and in spiritual life in particular which is allotted to it at first for the external visible world. But at the same time every such culture-epoch must prepare, must bear in its womb, as it were, what should come there in the next culture-epoch.

The first post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the Ancient Indian one, had to prepare the Ancient Persian one in its womb, the Ancient Persian epoch the Egypt-Chaldean one and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch must prepare the sixth culture-epoch of the next age. I emphasised repeatedly that it is our spiritual-scientific task not only to learn—that is all right—and gain spiritual wealth for our individual souls; this is allotted to us for the eternal life of our souls. However, it is also our task to prepare what the sixth culture-epoch should have as its contents for its particular external work. It was in each of the single post-Atlantean culture-epochs that way. The sites where that was prepared which was the externally significant for the next culture-epoch were the mystery sites. These were unions of human beings where different matters were cultivated than the external world did.

You also know that it mattered particularly that the first post-Atlantean culture-epoch, the Ancient Indian culture-epoch, cultivated the human etheric body, the Ancient Persian one the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean one the sentient soul, the Greek-Latin epoch the intellectual or mind-soul. Our culture-epoch cultivates and develops the consciousness-soul up to its end. That must be prepared which delivers, as it were, the contents, the character of the external culture in the sixth culture-epoch. This sixth culture-epoch will have various characteristics in itself, various characteristics which differ even very much from the characteristics of our time. Above all we can emphasise three characteristics of which we must know that we must already carry them as our ideals for the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in our hearts that we have to prepare them for this sixth culture-epoch.

Something does not yet exist in the human community what will be there in the sixth culture-epoch with those human beings who reached the aim of the sixth culture-epoch who did not lag behind this aim; they are not among those who are maniacs or barbarians in the sixth culture-epoch. In the sixth culture-epoch the culturally leading human beings will have a moral characteristic, as it were, as one of the most important characteristics.

Now only a little of this characteristic is to be noticed within humankind. Today the human being must be organised more sensitive if it should hurt him in his soul that except his own existence he has to look at other human beings in the world who have it worse than he has it. Indeed, already today more sensitive souls also feel grief because of the grief which is poured on many human beings in the world—but these must be more sensitive souls. In the sixth culture-epoch, those human beings who are at the peak of this culture not only feel as pain what we today feel as pain of misery, grief, and poverty which are wide-spread, but then the human being feels any grief of another human being as his own grief. If he sees a starving human being, he feels the hunger so lively in his physical nature that this hunger of the fellowman is intolerable to him. What is indicated here that it is not in the sixth culture-epoch any more as it is still in the fifth epoch, that rather it is a moral characteristic of the sixth culture-epoch that the welfare of the single human being completely depends on the welfare of all the human beings. As well as now only the welfare of a single human member depends on the health of the whole body, and if the whole human being is not healthy, also the single member is not in the mood to do this or that, a common characteristic seizes the civilised humankind of the sixth culture-epoch. The individual human being will share, like a member of the totality, all the suffering, all the need, all the poverty or wealth to a much higher degree. This is the first, mainly moral characteristic of the civilised humankind in the sixth culture-epoch.

The second characteristic will be that everything we call religious goods depends on the individual human being to a much higher degree than this is the case today. Spiritual science expresses that in such a way that in any religious field in the sixth culture-epoch entire freedom of thought and longing for the freedom of thought seize the human beings. Everything is put into the strength of the individuality that a human being wants to believe and wants to be convinced in particular in religious respect. Religious relationship, as it exists even today so often, religious relationship, which prevails among the single human communities most differently, will no longer rule over that part of humankind in the sixth culture-epoch which is then the civilised one. Everybody feels as a necessary characteristic of human beings that in the field of religion entire freedom of thought holds sway.

The third characteristic will be that the human beings of the sixth culture-epoch only suppose to have knowledge generally if they recognise that spirituality is spread out in the world and that the human souls must be united with the spiritual. What one calls science today, and what has a materialistic colouring as a science, is not called science in the sixth culture-epoch at all. One will consider it as an old superstition which can only be characteristic for those human beings who remained on the level of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. Today we regard it as an old superstition, if the black thinks that no limb of his body may be separated from his body after his death, because he cannot enter the spiritual world as a whole human being. The black connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the conviction that any copy of his complete form must enter the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically, but believes in immortality, whereas we know today from our spiritual science that we have to separate the spiritual element from the body and that only the spiritual element enters the supersensible world. As well as we must today look at that materialistic faith of immortality as a superstition, any materialistic confidence, also that of science, is an old superstition in the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. As science only will be regarded by the human beings what is founded, as spiritual science says, on pneumatology, on spirituality.

You see, our spiritual science is completely intended to prepare the above-mentioned matters for the sixth culture-epoch. We try to cultivate spiritual science to overcome materialism and to prepare that way what must be there in the sixth culture-epoch as science. We found human communities in which nothing of any trust in authority, of recognition of a doctrine may hold sway, only because it is delivered from the one or the other personality. We found human communities in which everything must be built on the free agreement of the soul to the teaching. We prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. While we unite in brotherly unions to care for our spiritual science, we prepare what should penetrate the sixth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

But even deeper we have to look at the course of the human development if we completely want to understand what is about our brotherly unions, actually. In the first post-Atlantean culture-epoch one also cultivated what held sway then in the second culture-epoch in the communities which were mysteries in those days. That is, the astral body was nurtured already in the special unions of the first post-Atlantean, the Ancient Indian culture-epoch. It would go too far if one wanted to describe what was nurtured in these special unions of the ancient India, different from the external ancient Indian culture, to prepare the Ancient Persian culture-epoch. But this should be said if these human beings of the Ancient Indian culture-epoch united to prepare the second culture-epoch, then they felt: this is not yet reached; this is not yet with us which will be with us when our souls are reincarnated in the next culture-epoch. This hovers, as it were, still over us.

It is correct that way. In this first culture-epoch was that still hovering over the souls which should descend in the second epoch only, one would like to say, from the heaven onto earth. The work was managed in such a way that the spirits of the higher hierarchies got the forces ascending from the work which the human beings performed on earth in closer unions, in mystery unions, so that they could nurture that which had to descend then as contents of the astral body to the souls of the human beings in the second, the Ancient Persian culture-epoch. One would like to say, they existed as little children who descended as adults down to the souls who were embodied in ancient Persian bodies. Above in the spiritual world they received the forces of the human work which flowed from below, preparing the next culture-epoch, and these forces nurtured the forces which had to flow down then. Thus it must be in any further culture-epoch.

In our culture-epoch, it must be in such a way that we realise: what developed in us by the usual civilisation must be the consciousness-soul. It must be that which since the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth centuries started seizing the human beings as a science, as an external materialistic consciousness that will spread out farther, and is completely developed until the end of the fifth culture-epoch. That, however, which must seize the sixth culture-epoch must be the spirit-self. Then the spirit-self must be developed in the souls like now the consciousness soul is developed. However, this is the characteristic of the spirit-self that it presupposes these three traits of which I have spoken in the human souls as spiritual science says it: brotherly social living together, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. A human community just needs these characteristics within which the spirit-self is developed as the consciousness-soul in our souls of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch by the external culture. Hence, we are allowed to imagine that, because we unite in study groups brotherly, that hovers invisibly over our work. It is like the child of those forces which are the forces of the spirit-self which is cultivated by the beings of the higher hierarchies, so that it can flow down into our souls when they are there again in the sixth culture-epoch. In our brotherly study groups we perform work which flows up to the growing forces preparing the spirit-self.

So you see how we can understand basically only from the wealth of wisdom of our spiritual science what we do, actually, concerning our connection with the higher spiritual worlds if we unite in such study groups. The idea that we do such a work, which we perform in our study groups not only for our egotism, but that we do it that it flows up to the spiritual worlds. The idea of this work in connection with the spiritual worlds gives the right inauguration to a working branch. While we have such an idea, we penetrate ourselves with the idea of inauguration which founds such a study group within our spiritual movement. Hence, it is of a particular significance that we grasp this fact very spiritually. We meet in study groups which dive their work in brotherly co-operation except that they do spiritual science, pneumatological science, except that they want to be founded on freedom of thought and know nothing of any dogma, nothing of any religious coercion. It depends on whether we take up this idea of community correctly in our consciousness that we say to ourselves: except that we as present souls belong to the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch and develop individually, get out the individual-personal of the community life, we have to feel a higher community, which we found on free brotherly love, like a magic breath we inhale in our study groups.

This is the deep meaning of the West-European culture: that the consciousness-soul should be searched for within the fifth post-Atlantean culture. It is the task of the West-European and particularly the Central European culture that the human beings develop an individual culture, an individual consciousness more and more in their souls. It depends on that in the present. We can compare our culture-epoch with the Greek one, the Roman one. In the Greek culture-epoch, it is especially remarkable that the group-soul holds sway particularly, a consciousness of a group-soul just among the civilised Greeks. Somebody who lived and was born in Athens felt as an Athenian above all. This community of the city and that which belongs to it had a different significance for the individual human being than a human community has today. Today, the human being wants to grow out of the community, and this is the right task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. In Rome, the human being was nothing but a Roman citizen; this was that which he was first and foremost. However, the time has come in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we want to be a human being above all, a human being and nothing but a human being in our innermost nature.

We experience so painfully today that the human beings quarrel on earth. That is only a reaction to the incessant striving of the fifth culture-epoch for free development of general humanness. While the single countries and peoples shut off themselves today, the forces should be developed in this opposition all the more which allow the human beings to be completely human beings and to grow out of any kind of community. That is why they must again prepare the communities, which are founded on full consciousness, which they will freely join in the sixth culture-epoch, which they impose on themselves only. We have this community in mind like a lofty ideal which comprises the sixth culture-epoch, so that it will be a matter of course that the civilised human beings stand facing each other sincerely like brothers and sisters.

We know from the numerous talks which were held during the past years that in the East of Europe people live that have a vocation in particular to develop that which is as elementary forces in them only in the sixth culture-epoch. We know that the Russian people are ripe only in the sixth culture-epoch to develop the forces which exist in them elementarily today. Western Europe and Central Europe have the vocation to develop that in the human souls which can be brought in by the consciousness-soul. The East does not have this vocation. The East of Europe has to wait, until the spirit-self descends on earth and can penetrate the human souls. This has often been mentioned; we have to understand it rightly. If it is understood wrongly, it can lead very easily to arrogance just in the East.

The summit of the post-Atlantean culture is already reached in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. A downward development follows in the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. However, it will take place in such a way that this downward cultural development in the sixth culture-epoch is inspired, is penetrated by the spirit-self. Today, the human being of the East who is called by the spirits of the East “the Russian human being” feels instinctively, but one would like to say, often rather wrongly instinctively, that it is certain way; he mostly has an extremely unclear consciousness of it. It is typical that this expression “the Russian human being” could arise so often. A genius holds sway in language if such a matter is got out of the language and one does not say like in the West: the Briton, the French, the Italian, the German, but “the Russian human being.” Many Russian intellectuals attach a certain value to the fact that one always says “the Russian human being.” This is deeply founded in the genius of the corresponding culture. One means that which spreads out as humanness, as it were, as brotherliness over a common characteristic. One wants to indicate it using the term human. But one shows at the same time that one is not yet on the summit which one has to reach in distant future, while one adds something that is basically contradictory to the noun. The “Russian” human being: one takes back, as it were, in the adjective what is expressed in the noun. Since if humanness is to be reached, it must not have any such adjective which again makes this humanness something excluding.

But presently something is founded much deeper just in the members of the Russian intelligence that a certain idea of community has to hold sway, an idea of brotherliness. In this regard the Russian soul already feels: the spirit-self descends once, however, it can descend only to a human community which is filled with brotherliness. It can never spread out in a human community which is not filled with brotherliness. That is why the Russian intellectuals, as they are called, accuse the West of Europe and also Central Europe. They say: you do not pay attention at all to that which is a real community life, you only care for individualism. Everybody wants to be an individual; everybody wants to be individuality. You take the personal, through which any single human being feels as a self, as an individuality, to extremes.

This is that which sounds in a lot of reproaches concerning barbarity et cetera to Central Europe and Western Europe from the East. Those who want to realise what is there, actually, say: Western Europe and Central Europe have already lost any sensitivity of human connections. While one confuses present with future, one says: the real human connections where everybody feels as the brother of his fellowman where somebody who stands above the other feels as his “daddy” and “mummy,” real human community life is only in Russia.—The Russian intelligence states that. That is why it says, the West-European Christianity did not manage to care for the real human community life. The Russian still knows, they say, the community. Such an excellent Russian intellectual like Aleksander Herzen,¹ living in the nineteenth century, said as the last consequence: in Western Europe, happiness can never come into being. Whatever may be attempted in the West-European culture and civilisation, happiness will never come into being there. Humankind is never able to be contented. There only chaos can prevail. The only blessing lies in the Russian nature where the human beings have not yet separated from the community life where they have something else like a group-soul in their villages to which they stick.

What we call group-soul of which humankind has struggled out gradually and in which still completely the animal nature lives inside, just the Russian intellectuals revere this with their people as something particularly great and significant. They cannot rise to the thought that they should have in mind the future community life as a lofty ideal, an ideal which only has to be asserted. They stick to the thought: we look at that which has remained to us as the last in Europe. The others have already lifted themselves out of the group-soul, we have still kept it; we must keep it.

In future, it is not allowed to live in the group-soul in reality, because this is the old way of living in the group-soul. It would get a luciferic colouring remaining on a former level, while the true life in the group-soul which is to be striven for is that which we search for within our spiritual science. But you can recognise just by the desire and the longing of the Russian human beings, in particular of the intellectuals, that one needs the community spirit to the descent of the spirit-self. As it is searched for there only on wrong ways, it must be searched for in our spiritual-scientific current correctly. We would like to call to the East: we must just overcome what you try to preserve externally: the old luciferic-ahrimanic community.

The community life of luciferic and ahrimanic type will have such a firm religious coercion as the Orthodox remaining Catholic Church in Russia had to found it. This community life does not understand the freedom of thought, and it cannot rise to the complete individuality and, nevertheless, to the social brotherly living together least of all. Hence, it would like to preserve what has stuck to blood brotherhood, to mere unity by blood. Spiritual science has to strive for a community which is based not on the blood, but on the spirit, on the community of the souls. It is that which we strive for, while we say to ourselves: we must strive for communities in which the blood does not speak any more. The blood will survive, of course, it will enjoy life in family connections—what must remain is not extirpated, but something new must come into being. What is significant in the child will be preserved in the forces of the old aged human being, but the human being has to do something new in his later age.

The role of the blood must not be reinterpreted in such a way, as if it encompasses the big human communities of the future. This is the big mistake, which the East contributed in these bloody events that one unleashed a war under the title of a community of the Slavic peoples based on the blood. There everything is a contributory factor in our destiny-burdened time that I have now explained and that again contains the right core in itself, namely the instinctive feeling: the spirit-self can appear only in a brotherly community. However, it must not be a community of the blood, but it must be a community of the souls. What arises then as a community of the souls we care for this in its infancy in our study groups, in our branches. As the East of Europe sticks to the group-soul, calling, for example, the Slavic group soul something that it does not want to leave that on the contrary it wants to consider as the encompassing principle of forming states, this is something that must be overcome.

It is a great and very important symbol that the two states from which the war originated call on the one side blood brotherhood as the reason of the war—Russia with all the Slavs—and the other state, which stands facing it, has thirteen official peoples and thirteen languages. The mobilisation in Austria had to be issued in thirteen languages, because thirteen peoples are united in Austria: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Rumanians, Hungarians, Slovaks, Serbians, Croatians, Slovenes—and an additional particular Slovenish dialect,—Bosnians, Dalmatians and Italians. Thirteen different peoples are united in Austria that way, apart from any small differentiations. Whether one sees this or not, it shows that this Austria consists of a interrelation of human beings where the common characteristic can never be founded upon blood brotherhood, because from thirteen different origins comes that into being which prevails within this peculiar region. One would like to say, the most composed state of Europe faces that state which mostly strives for something like a group-soul or for conformity.

But this striving for something like a group-soul has something different as consequence. Now we still find something that we may remember today as significant. Yesterday in the public lecture, I have already mentioned the great philosopher Solovyov as one of the most significant spirits of Russia. Solovyov is actually an excellent spirit, but a quite Russian spirit. He is a spirit who is exceptionally hard to understand from the West-European point of view. But anthroposophists should get to know him. Those who stand on the ground of spiritual science should get to know him; they should be able to bring themselves to understand Solovyov to a certain degree. Now I want to put, I would like to say, a prime and central idea of Solovyov once before your souls from our intimate point of view. Solovyov is too much a philosopher, as that he could really accept the group-soul for himself so easily. The matter makes trouble for him, and he comes into various contradictions. But he is not completely controlled with an idea, so that one has to say: if this Solovyov is clairvoyant that he may behold in advance what his soul only can see on earth when it is incarnated in the sixth culture-epoch.

The idea which is hard to understand to the West- European from its starting point, of course, also to the Central European, became a prime and central idea with Solovyov. This is the following. We in Western Europe look just for that which we care for as the preparation of the sixth culture-epoch, among a lot of other things, to understand death in its significance for life. We try to understand how death is the appearance of a way of life, how the soul is transformed in death to another way of life. We describe how the human being lives in his body, and what he experiences between death and new birth. We try to understand death. We try to overcome death, while we understand it, while we show that it is only an appearance that the soul lives in truth, while it goes through death. But this is the main thing to us that we try to overcome death through understanding.

However, there we have, for example, one of the points, one of the most principal points, which distinguishes our spiritual-scientific striving completely from the idea of Solovyov, the great Russian spirit: there is evil in the world, there is the bad in the world. The bad, the evil is there in the world. If we look with our senses at the evil, the bad, then we cannot deny that the world is full of the bad. This contradicts the belief, Solovyov says, that the world is divine. Why can you believe in a divine world if you look at the world with your senses, because a divine world cannot explain the bad. But the senses see the bad everywhere and the worst is death. Because death is in the world, the world appears in its entire badness, in its entire evil. The primal evil is death.

This is Solovyov's characteristic of the world. He says—I quote almost literally: look at the world with your bare senses. Try to understand the world with your bare reason. There you can never deny the evil in the world. It would be absurd to strive for an understanding of death. Death is there. It appears. A sensory knowledge can never recognise death. Hence, the sensory knowledge shows a bad world, a world of the evil. Can we believe now—Solovyov says—that this world is divine if it shows us that it is full of evil? If it shows us death wherever we go? We can never believe that this world, which shows us death, is a divine one. Since the evil cannot be in God, cannot be the primal evil at all. Death cannot be in God. If God came to the world—I repeat almost literally what Solovyov says—if God came to the world if He appeared in the world, could we believe Him easily that He is God? No, we could not believe God easily that He is God. He would only have to prove His identity. If a being came and stated, he were God, then we would not believe him. Then he would only have to prove his identity. It would have to show only something—Solovyov speaks that way—as a world document, something through which we can recognise: this is God.

We cannot find such a thing in the world. God cannot prove His identity through that which is in the world, because everything that is in the world is contradictory to the divine. How can He prove His identity? He only can prove His identity that He shows when He came into the world that He defeated death that death can do no harm to Him. Never would we believe that Christ is God if He did not prove His identity. He did it, while He rose again, while He showed that the primal evil, death, is not in Him.—So we have a consciousness of God which is only based on a real, historical Resurrection of Christ, which legitimised God as God. Nothing in the world but the Resurrection reveals to us that there is God. If Christ did not rise—this saying of St. Paul is principal, Solovyov quotes it repeatedly,—all our faith would be null and void. Everything would be null and void that we can say about something divine in the world.

Hence, the sentence of Solovyov: if we look at the world, we only see evil and bad, decay and futility everywhere in the world. If Christ did not rise again, the world would be pointless. So Christ rose again.—Notice this sentence well. For this sentence is a cardinal sentence of one of the greatest spirits of the East. If Christ did not rise again, the world would be pointless. So Christ rose again!—Solovyov said: there may be people who believe, it would not be logical if I say: if Christ did not rise again, the world would be pointless; so He rose again!—However, this is a much better logic—Solovyov means,—than all logic which you can hold out towards me.

I have shown you definitely, just in this peculiar demanding of a document for the divinity of God by Solovyov, how peculiar the thoughts are in the East; how peculiarly the thoughts ascend to seize once that by which God shows directly that He is God. How different it is in the West, how different in Central Europe. What do we use our spiritual-scientific striving for? Try to compare and to take an overview of everything that we do in spiritual science. What does it have as an objective at which we get then? We want to realise, out of the knowledge, that the world has a sense that the world has significance that evil and decay are not only in it. Using immediate knowledge we want to understand that the world has a sense. We just want to prepare ourselves for experiencing Christ while we understand that the world has a sense. We want to grasp the living Christ. Indeed, as a gift, as a mercy of Christ we want to accept all this. We know that it can be given us according to the saying: I will be with you always, to the end of time.² We want to accept everything that Christ promises to us perpetually. Since He speaks not only by means of the Gospels but also in our souls. He means this with the saying: I will be with you always, to the end of time. He can always be found as living Christ. We want to live in Him, take up Him in us: not I, but Christ in me.³ This is our most principal Pauline saying: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me. So that we see by Him: everywhere we get, there is sense. Faust already wanted to say this, while he expressed his whole world view in the words:

Spirit sublime, all that for which I prayed,
all that you now have granted me. In fire
you showed your face to me, but not in vain.

You gave me for my realm all Nature's splendor,
with power to feel and to enjoy it. You grant
not only awed, aloof acquaintanceship,
you let me look deep down into her heart
as if it were the bosom of a friend.

You lead the ranks of living beings past me,
and teach me thus to know my fellow creatures
in air and water and in silent wood.

And when the storm-swept forest creaks and groans,
when, as it falls, the giant fir strips down
and crushes neighbouring boughs and trunks, and when
the hill echoes its fall as muffled thunder,
you guide me to the safety of a cave,
reveal my self to me, and then my heart's
profound and secret wonders are unveiled.

Faust I, verses 3217–3234

We have to comprehend the external and internal things, to grasp sense everywhere, to comprehend death as something significant that it is the passage from one life form to the other life form. While we search for the living Christ, then we also follow Him through death and resurrection. We do not start from the resurrection like the East European human being. We follow Christ Who inspires us, Whom we take up in our Imaginations. We follow Christ up to death. We follow Him not only, while we say: ex deo nascimur,—but while we say: in Christo morimur.—We observe the world and know that the world is the document by which God expresses His divinity. We cannot say in the West, while we want to experience and grasp the spiritual weaving and prevailing: we require a document if God comes into the world and has to identify Himself,—but we search for God everywhere. In nature and in the human souls we search for God.

That is why this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch also needs what we cultivate in our brotherly branches. It needs the conscious care, as it were, of that spiritual aura which still hovers over us which is nurtured by the spirits of the higher hierarchies and flows into the human souls when they live in the sixth culture-epoch. We do not want to turn to anything dead, like the East to something like a group-soul, to the rest of a community life. We want to care for the living from its infancy on, and this is the community spirit of our branches. We do not want to look at that which rumbles there below in the blood to call together only those with whom something common rumbles in the blood and care for that in any community. We want to call together the human beings who resolve to be brothers and sisters and feel the good genius of brotherliness hovering over them, while they care for spiritual science.

We take up this as an inauguration thought at the first meeting of one of our branches. We open a branch that way when we found it. Community life and liveliness. We search for community life above ourselves, the living Christ in ourselves, Who needs no document that authenticates Him only because of His Resurrection. He is authenticated, because we experience Him in ourselves. Community life above us, Christ in us: we make this our motto, our inauguration motto, while we found a branch. We know: if two or three or seven or many are united in this sense in the name of Christ, in those Christ is alive. All the human beings who acknowledge Christ as their brother in this sense are sisters and brothers. Christ will accept this human being as his brother who accepts the other human being as his brother.

If we are able to take up such an inauguration motto in ourselves, to do our work with such an attitude, then the right spirit of our spiritual-scientific movement prevails in this work. Also in this difficult time, our spiritual-scientific friends from out of town have united with those who have here founded their branch. This is always a nice custom. Since thereby the others who work in other branches carry the inauguration thoughts, the inauguration motto outwards. They vow to each other to think always of those who have vowed in a branch to work with each other for the purposes of our movement. Thus this grows and grows which we want to found as our invisible community by the kind of our work. However, when such an attitude, connecting with our work, spreads out more and more, we do justice to the demands of spiritual science for the progress of humankind. Then we are allowed to believe that those who guide there as the Great Masters of Wisdom the human progress and the human knowledge are at our work among us. And in this respect you work here in this spiritual-scientific attitude of ours, in the same sense I know that the lofty masters, who guide our movement really from the spiritual worlds, are also in the middle of your work.

From this point of view, I call the strength and the mercy and the love of these Masters of Wisdom who direct and guide what we do as a work in brotherly unions in our branches. I call the mercy, I call the strength, and I call the love of these Masters of Wisdom, who are in immediate connection with the forces of the higher hierarchies, for the work of this branch, too. The good genius of you, Great Masters, and the good genius of our spiritual-scientific movement may be with this branch. May they prevail and work in it.

• 1. Aleksander Ivanovich Herzen (1812–1870)
• 2. Matthew 28:20
• 3. “not I, but Christ in me or the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me:” Galatians 2:20

In connection with some spiritual-scientific considerations, I have often said that it concerns within our spiritual-scientific movement and its efforts of taking up those concepts and ideas not only in theory which one can learn by spiritual science, but that the spiritual-scientific results have to penetrate the innermost movements, the innermost impulses of our soul life. Indeed, we have to start from the results of the spiritual-scientific knowledge, and we can gain such knowledge if we just study it if we occupy ourselves with it. But spiritual science is not to be taken up like another science, so that one knows only afterwards that one has heard this or that, that this or that is true concerning one or another matter in the world. Spiritual science has to work on our souls so that the souls become different in this or that field of feeling that they become different taking up what can flow out of spiritual science. The concepts, ideas and mental pictures which we take up by means of spiritual science have to rouse our souls in the core, have to unite with our feelings, so that we learn through spiritual science to look at the world not only differently, but also to feel differently than without it. The spiritual scientist, actually, has to familiarise himself with certain circumstances quite differently than this is possible without spiritual science. If he is able to do this, he has basically only arrived at what has to flow to us from spiritual science.

We live in a grievous time today, in which to us one of the most important questions of spiritual science, the question of death, appears in so countless cases before our eyes, before our souls, before our hearts, closer to one, closest to the other. The spiritual scientist has also to be able to prove spiritual science in his feelings in this grievous time. He should be able to have a different attitude to the events of time than the others, even if these events touch him so near. Indeed, the one needs consolation, the other needs encouragement; but both should find this also in spiritual science. If this can be the case, we have only correctly understood the intentions of spiritual science.

We have thereby to experience a certain shock in our souls through the ideas of spiritual science already that we learn to feel quite differently about some matters than we can feel without spiritual science about anything in the world. If you summarise all that which has already been said about the mystery of death within our spiritual science, you can understand what I would also like to explain today not only repeating, but something adding to former considerations. We must learn to think about death not only differently, but we must learn to feel about death differently. Since, indeed, the mystery of death is connected with the deepest world mysteries. We should be quite clear to ourselves that we take off all that through which we get perception and knowledge in the physical world, through which we experience something of the external world when we go through the gate of death. We get impressions about the world in the physical world by means of our senses. We take off these senses when we enter the spiritual world. Then we do not have the senses any more. This must already be a proof to us that we must try if we think about the supersensible world to think differently than we have learnt to think by means of our senses.

Indeed, we have a clue of sorts, while also in the everyday life, which we spend between birth and death, something analogous, something similar of the experiences in the spiritual world projects. These are the dream experiences projecting into the everyday life. The dream experience does not come into being to us through our senses; our senses have really nothing to do with the dream experience. Nevertheless, it is in the pictures that sometimes remind of the sensory life. We have in these dream pictures, even if a weak reflection, just a reflection of that type, as the spiritual existence faces us as an Imaginative world between death and a new birth. We have Imaginative perception, however, after death; the experience appears in pictures. Only if you see, for example, a red colour in the sensory world and must have the thought: what is behind this red colour?—Then you will say to yourselves: there is something that fulfils the space, something material is behind it.—The red colour also appears to you in the spiritual world, but there is nothing material behind it, nothing that would exercise a material impression in the usual sense. Behind the red is a psycho-spiritual being; behind the red is the same which you feel as your world in your soul. One would like to say: from the sense-impression of the colour we descend externally in the physical down to the material world, from the Imaginations we ascend to spiritual regions of the spiritual world.

Now we must be aware—this has been emphasised strongly in the new edition of my Theosophy—that also these Imaginations do not appear to us like the sensory impressions of the physical world. They are there indeed, these Imaginations, but they appear as experiences: the red, the blue colours are there experiences. One can rightly call these Imaginations red or blue, but they are something different than the sensory impressions of the physical world. They are more intimate; we unite more intimately with them. Without the red colour of the rose you are yourself; within the red colour of the spiritual world you feel to be therein, you are united with the red colour. While you perceive a red colour in the spiritual world, a will, a very effective will of a spiritual being develops. This will shines, and that which it shines is red. But you feel to be in the will, and you call this experience red, of course. I would like to say that a physical colour is like the frozen spiritual experience. Thus we must get the possibility in many fields to think something different, to give our ideas other values and meanings if we really want to rise to an understanding of the spiritual world.

Then we have to realise that above in the spiritual world the Imaginations do not have the same relationship to the spiritual beings—whose expression, for example, the colours are—as a colour has to a sensory being. The rose is red; this is a quality of the rose. But if a spirit comes to the nearness and we must have the consciousness according to that which I have now said: the spirit shines red, and then the red does not mean a quality of the spirit like the red of the rose is a quality. This red colour is more something like a revelation of the inside of the spiritual being; it is more a character which the spiritual being puts in the spiritual world. You have only to behold through the Imaginations. The activity which you develop there is to be compared in the physical world only with its ahrimanic image, namely with reading. We look at the red colour of the rose and know: it is a quality of the rose. We do not only look at the red colour in the spiritual world, but we interpret it, but not fantasising—I must warn about it always again. However, our soul itself already finds that something is given like a sound, a letter, like something that should be deciphered, should be read, so that it recognises the meaning.

The spiritual being means something if he manifests himself as a C sharp or G sharp or as red or blue or green colours. The spiritual being means something with it; one starts speaking with him, one starts reading his writing. The external culture is based on it that such matters which have their deep wisdom in the spiritual world are transplanted then also to the external world. We speak rightly of an occult reading, because somebody who attains the clairvoyant consciousness, who enters the spiritual world, who is able to see out over the Imaginations and reads in them, looks through them at the bottom of the souls living in the spiritual world, not only through colours, but also through other impressions, such impressions which remind of sensory impressions, and those which are added in the spiritual worlds.

This activity which is a purely psycho-spiritual activity is subordinate, as it were, to the government of the really progressive spiritual beings. Here in the physical world, Ahriman creates a reflection just of that which I have characterised now. The external reading of characters in the physical world is an ahrimanic reflection of this occult reading. Since reading in the physical world by signs which were developed artificially is an ahrimanic activity. Not without good reason, the invention of the art of printing was felt as an ahrimanic art, as a “black art,” as one called it. You are just not allowed to believe that you could escape the claws of Lucifer and Ahriman using any performances. Lucifer and Ahriman must be in the external culture. It is only that you find the balance, the way if life turns perpetually to the luciferic or the ahrimanic side. If anybody did not want to be touched at all by Ahriman, never would he have to learn reading. But this is why it concerns not that we flee Ahriman and Lucifer, but that we get the right relationship to them, that we position ourselves correctly to them, although they are as forces round us. If we know that we follow what we have described so often as the Christ Impulse which lives in us, and if we get the spiritual sensations which impose the intention to follow Christ to us at every moment of our life, then we are also able to read. Then we can get to know—and we already shall do it if it is right according to our karma—that Ahriman also established reading, and we see this ahrimanic art in the right light. If we do not experience this, we declaim something about the ahrimanic culture, about the progress and the splendour of the ahrimanic culture, for example, about reading.

But all these matters also impose duties, and this is why it concerns that such duties are also kept. Just in our present time, a lot can be stated to defend or accuse this or that. Really, we have what we can call a flood of war literature. Every day produces not only brochures, but also books et cetera. There you can often read: this country has so and so many illiterates, in this country so and so many people can read and write, and the like. Adopting this easily would not be according to what somebody who is well-versed in spiritual science has to say out of his responsibility. If I wanted to indicate, for example, that which I have to state with regard to our time, all the especially bad of a nation and say that in this nation are so and so many people who cannot read and write, I would not correctly speak spiritual-scientifically. There only matters must be stated for which one can take responsibility to the occult duties.

You see—I wanted to give only an example—that spiritual science must go over into life and imposes duties in this deeper sense. If the spiritual scientist says such things which the others also say, you are always able to notice that they are said in a different context, and it depends on this. Hence, something appears rather strange to somebody who does not know spiritual science, if it is said in spiritual science, because he is accustomed to have other ideas and must say to himself sometimes: this spiritual science calls the black white, and the white black.—This is necessary sometimes, because if one ascends to the spiritual world with the usual ideas and concepts which one learns in the physical world, some ideas and concepts must be changed thoroughly.

From this point of view let us take one of the most important, most enigmatic concepts which we have to acquire out of the impressions of the physical world, the concept of death. In the physical world, the human being sees death always only from one side, from the side that he sees developing the human life up to the point where the human being dies. That is where the physical body is separated at first from the higher members of the human nature and is dissolved then within the physical world. One can really say what the human being sees as death within the physical world: looking at death from one side. However, looking at death from the other side means to look at it in an opposite light, to see it as something totally different.

When we enter the physical life by birth, we experience something at first in such a way that the peak of our physical consciousness is not yet reached. You know that we do not remember the first years of our experience with the usual physical consciousness. Nobody can remember his birth with the usual physical consciousness. At least no one will appear in the world who states that he can remember with his usual consciousness how he was born. We can say: this is a characteristic of the physical consciousness that the birth of the human being must be forgotten. It is forgotten; also the first years are forgotten. If we look back at our life between birth and death, we remember up to a certain point. Then memory ends. The point where it stops is not our physical birth, but an experience precedes. Nobody can know from experience that he is born. He can only conclude it. We conclude that we are born—and only from that—that after us human beings are born whose birth we perceive. If the naturalist states that he only admits what can be seen, nobody could claim his birth after this principle if he wants to be logical, because it is impossible to perceive his own birth without being clairvoyant; one can only conclude it.

Now exactly the opposite takes place with regard to death. The whole life through between death and new birth the moment of death which he experienced stands before the soul eye of the dead as the liveliest, as the brightest impression. However, do not believe that you are allowed to possibly conclude from it that this would be a painful impression. Then you would believe that the dead looks back at what you see in the physical world of death, of decay, of decline. He sees death, however, from the other side; he sees something in death what one must call the most beautiful also in the spiritual world. Since the human being can experience nothing more beautiful than the sight of death in the spiritual world first of all. Seeing this victory of the spirit over the material, this lighting up of the spiritual light of the soul from the deep darkness of the material is the greatest, the most significant that can be beheld on the other side of life which the human being goes through between death and a new birth.

If the human being takes off the etheric body between death and new birth and has fully developed his consciousness what happens not very long time after death, then he has not the same relationship to himself as here in the physical world. If the human being sleeps here in the physical world, he is unaware, and if he is awake, he realises that he knows now: I have a self, an ego in myself. After death in the spiritual world, this is something different—there is his self-consciousness on a higher level,—then it is not just the same. I will immediately speak about that. But there is also something like a self-contemplation. Exactly the same way as one must call to mind the self in the morning while waking up it is in the spiritual world. But this self-contemplation is a looking back at the moment of death. Always it is in such a way, as if we say to ourselves to perceive our ego between death and a new birth: you have really died, so you are a self, you are an ego.

This is the most important thing: one looks back at the victory of the spirit over the body, one looks back at the moment of death which is the most beautiful of the spiritual world that can be experienced. In this looking back one notices his self in the spiritual world. This is always, one cannot say like waking up—one would stamp the concepts one-sidedly,—it is the self-contemplation to look back at his death. That is why it is so important that the human being has the possibility to look really back at the moment of death with full postmortal consciousness—with a consciousness which enters after death. So he dreams not only in any way what he beholds there but can completely understand what he beholds; this is extremely important. We can already prepare ourselves during life while we try to practice self-knowledge. In particular, this is necessary for humankind from now on to practice self-knowledge. Basically all spiritual science is there to give that self-knowledge to the human being which is necessary to him. For spiritual science is an introduction to the enlarged self of the human being, that self by which one belongs to the whole world. I said that the consciousness after death is something different than here in the physical world. If I might to plot the consciousness after death diagrammatically to you, I could do it in the following way.

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(sehendes Auge = seeing eye, sinnlicher Körper = material object, geistige Wesenheit = spiritual being)

Imagine we would have an eye here, and here we would have an object. How do we attain the consciousness that there is an object outside us? Because the object makes an impression on our eye. The object makes an impression on our eye, and we learn to know something about the object. The object is outside in the world, it makes an impression on our senses, and we take up the mental picture, which we can form of the object, in ourselves, in our souls. The object is outside us. Then it has delivered the mental picture which we form then. It is different now in the spiritual world. Because I cannot draw it graphically differently, I would want what I always call soul eye to draw as a soul eye, although it is wrong strictly considered. Now this soul eye which the human being has after death has the disposition that after death the human being sees, for example, an angel or another human soul who is also in the spiritual world not as he sees a flower in the physical world, but this soul eye has the disposition—we disregard a human soul at first, we look only at a being of the higher hierarchy—that it does not have as an eye the consciousness if here an angel, an archangel is: I see this angelic being outside myself,—but: I am seen by the angelic being, he sees me.—It is just the opposite of the physical world. We familiarise in the spiritual world so that we get the consciousness of the beings of the higher hierarchies that we are known by them that they think us. We feel embedded in them, we feel that we are conceived by the angels, archangels, spirits of personality like the realms of minerals, plants, and animals feel to be conceived by us.

Only concerning human souls we have the feeling that they see us as we also have the feeling that our view goes into them. We see them and the human souls see us. As to all the other beings of the higher hierarchies, we have the feeling that we are perceived by them, are thought, imagined by them; and while we are perceived by them, are thought, are imagined by them, we are in the spiritual world. Now imagine that we walk around as souls in the spiritual world, like we walk around in the physical world. We then have the feeling everywhere to get a relationship to the beings of the higher hierarchies, like we have the feeling here in the physical world to get a relationship to the mineral, plant, and animal realms. Only we need the meditation repeatedly that we have a self. Then we look at our death and say to us: this is you.—This is a continual consciousness, continual contents of our conscioussnes.

What I have said today is to be added to the various ideas which you can take up from talks and books. It is spoken more emotionally than that which is spoken, for example, in the book Theosophy more from an external point of view. But only while you look at such a matter emotionally, you can feel as if you are in the sensations which one must have towards these matters and generally towards the spiritual world.

Hence, self-knowledge is that which supports us which makes us strong for the life between death and a new birth. That could face me recently again with particular liveliness when I had the task to speak several times at the cremation, after some of our friends had deceased. There it was necessary to speak about something that is connected intimately with the character, with the self of that who had gone through the gate of death. Why did this Inspirative or Intuitive come into being to speak something to the dead that is connected with their beings? This appears in the life of the persons concerned after death. It comes to their assistance what invigorates the forces of their self-knowledge. While speaking about these qualities, which they feel in themselves, immediately after death when their consciousness had not yet awoken, one let flow, as it were, something of the strength towards them that they need to gradually develop the ability to look at the moment of death. Their whole being seems to be concentrated there, as it has developed between birth and death. One helps the dead if one lets flow something towards them just after death that reminds them of their qualities, of their experiences et cetera. One thereby fosters the strength of self-knowledge. If anybody has the possibility as clairvoyant to familiarise himself with the soul of such a dead person, then he feels the desire in his soul to hear something just in this time about the kind, as he was, about this and that which he has gone through or which his main qualities are. You can understand that here on earth the life of a human being does not resemble the life of the other, but that all human beings have lives which are different from each other. It is the same with those who have gone through the gate of death. Not one soul-life resembles the other between death and new birth. I would like to say: every soul-life which one can observe there is a new revelation, and one can always emphasise individual particular qualities only. I would like to speak about such matters today and then also in Cologne the day after tomorrow. I would like to speak of a concrete case as an example.

In Dornach before some time, we saw a member leaving the physical plane who was rather old-aged (Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer). A member who had spent her life, in any case, in industrious work, caring work, but during the last years, since longer time already, she was connected in the deepest soul with our spiritual-scientific world view and had completely developed it in her heart, in her soul. So that one may say: this personality had come so far that in the last times of her physical existence she was completely one in her feeling with our world view. Now you know that the human being if he/she goes through the gate of death takes off his physical body first, carries the etheric body in himself still for a while and then takes off the etheric body, too. There comes a time when the human being must only gain the consciousness gradually which he has to possess between death and a new birth. Immediately after death, the human being is in his etheric body. There he experiences, we know this, a complete review of his life as a big life tableau. In this time, particularly the powerful impulses also appear in his soul, I would like to say, all at once, so that something that is important just in this regard can appear after death that is completely different than during life.

During life the human being is often tied up by the restrictions which his physical body places on him. Immediately after death, the human being has overcome what burdens, presses, solidifies him, and also the physical that weakens the clearness of some soul impulses. One has not yet lost the etheric body and, hence, the memory of life. It is an Imaginative world which contains the pictures of the past life, and also contains the especially strong impulses. If now a soul has taken up the impulses of spiritual science during life so intensely, if this soul has brought these impulses up to the innermost feeling in herself, she can develop these impressions after death also in another way, because she has the elastic, malleable etheric body at her disposal, then she is no longer tied up to that which the physical body allows.

One could see this with that personality in particular about which I have just spoken who shortly after death let flow out of her soul what had lived from the spiritual-scientific impulses in her, after I had just succeeded in transporting myself completely into this soul. Of course, it would not have stamped this in such words during her physical life. Because the etheric body was still there, she could dress it in physical words. It was not yet out of her elastic etheric body, when she developed what she had taken up from spiritual science, so that it became the expression of her soul. Then I had the necessity at the cremation of the concerning personality a few days later that I had to speak these words, which sounded from her being, which belonged to her, not to me:

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfill my human duty;

May I live in anticipation,
Oriented toward my soul's star
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

I would like to say that these are the words expressing the sensation after death what the soul has become through spiritual science. Then came the time which everybody has to go through after death more or less which one improperly calls the time of sleeping. Because if you have taken off the etheric body, you are actually in the spiritual world, only the fullness of the spiritual world is dazzling you. You cannot have an overview of everything, you have only to adapt your strength which you have brought into the spiritual world; you have to belittle yourself. You see too much after death; the consciousness is there, you have to reduce it to the level of the forces which you have acquired. Then you can orientate yourself and live really in the spiritual world. It is spoken not quite properly if anybody says that one becomes conscious after some time, but one has to say that somebody has too much consciousness and has to reduce it to the levels which he can endure. This means waking up. That is why the soul of which I have just spoken to you reached this condition—when the etheric body is taken off—that she was unable to endure the spirit light. But she had a lot of strength in herself. You notice that in the words which I have read, and that this strength had been completely filled bit by bit with that which spiritual science can make of the human feeling and willing. That is why this being, this soul got a consciousness which was tolerable to her some time after death. Of course, one would have to describe a lot of the time which begins then for a soul when one wanted to describe everything that such a soul experiences there. One only describes parts always; and while we are within our movement, it belongs, of course, to the most significant matters you can observe in the souls what connects these souls with our movement. You can learn what generally human souls connects with the whole world after death; but you can observe best of all in such souls what is the life of the soul after death, particularly when it has approached you like this soul of whom I speak now. Therefore I could observe just with this soul how she got the orientating consciousness while taking part in our meetings, really taking part in our meetings. And she completely took part in a Dornach Easter festival of this year, in that Easter festival when I tried to explain the particular depth of the Easter thought to our dear friends there in Dornach. This soul was present there. She took part as she had taken part once with intimate warmth; she took part now as a soul. She wanted to express herself like somebody has the need in the physical body to express himself afterwards about that which he has taken up. She wanted to express herself, and the peculiar is that she stamped such words, because thereby the possibility exists to communicate, that she formed such words describing her present life and its experience of this Easter lecture. The soul added something like a supplement of that which had come from her at that time after death. This supplement which came out of the consciousness is the following:

I will steer in human souls
Spirit feeling, so that willingly
It wakes in hearts the word of sacrifice;

I will think with human spirits
Soul warmth, so that powerfully
It can feel the Risen One;

I had taken care just in those Easter talks and in some other talks, which I held at that time, to draw attention—as I did it repeatedly—to the significance of spiritual science not only here for the life on earth, but for the whole world. Somebody who goes through the gate of death can also experience and get to know what is done here in spiritual science. That is why I advise so many people if they have dear dead to read out to them or to tell about the spiritual-scientific teachings, because what is stamped in spiritual-scientific words has not only significance for the souls living in physical bodies, but it has full significance also for the souls who are disembodied. It is to them like spiritual air of life, like spiritual water of life, or one could also say, they perceive light by us here below. This light is for us symbolic at first, one would like to say, because we hear words and take up them as thoughts in our souls; the dead see it, however, really as a spiritual light.

Now it is very significant that just this soul who has often heard this wanted to say really: I have understood this, and it is real that way.—Since her words in this regard are:

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge
Brightly illuminates death's appearance;

This is the fact for the soul. She wants to say: what you speak there below shines like a flame.—She expressed this, while she said “earthly flame:” it “brightly illuminates death's appearance ...” Why does she say “death's appearance?” If you meditate, you find out it. She said it, because she had always heard that we call the world maya: on earth she is in the appearance of the senses; now she is also in an appearance by which she only has to behold the being:

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge

Brightly illuminates death's appearance;—

And something that she also confirms now:

The Self becomes cosmic eye and ear.

She means cosmic ear. She means that now the whole self becomes a powerful sense-organ, becomes the perception organ for the whole universe. It is a nice way by which the dead shows how she becomes conscious that that becomes true which spiritual science says. For this soul it is typical that she wants to express herself straight away after death and wants to say: yes, now I am so far that that which I have learnt on earth appears to me as the right thing.

These words were to me of a certain importance, because they came after some time, maybe a few weeks later, from the spiritual world from that soul of which I have spoken, after shortly before, a few weeks before, another event satisfying me took place.

Friends of our movement lost a rather young son in the current war who had volunteered for the army. The young man fell. He had half approached spiritual science; one would like to say, in his last earth time which he went through. He was only seventeen, eighteen years old. Now he had gone, he had fallen. After some time I could behold the soul of this young man really approaching his parents. With many souls who have now gone through the gate of death during the war this is the case that they become conscious rather rapidly. It was thus—I could really hear it,—as if he said to them: now I would like to make it comprehensible to you that that which I have often heard of spiritual science, of spiritual light and spiritual beings in your home can become clear to me that it is true that it helps me what I heard there.

I do not mention this, because it is something special, but because it just shows how the relationship is between the earthly life and the spiritual life. Nevertheless, I want to mention something strange besides. At that time after a lecture which I held in one of our branches—I had written down the words which had come through to me, I went to the parents of the young man and told this to them and also gave the night in which the young man approached his parents and spoke as it were to their souls. There said the father: this is quite strange, I dream very seldom. However, I dreamt this night, this same night of my son that he appeared to me and that he wanted to say something to me; however, I have not understood it.

It touches those people strangely even today who are outside our spiritual movement if these matters are explained to them. Hence, we keep them among us. But it must be important to us to deal specifically also with these matters, because our knowledge is composed of these single stones of the experiences of the spiritual world. We only get a concrete picture if we do not want to limit ourselves only to hear nice theories of the spiritual world but if we can enliven spiritual science in our souls, so that we endure that which one speaks of the spiritual world really, like reasonable human beings just speak of that which they experience in the sensory world. Spiritual science thereby becomes life in the right sense in us, and it should become life in us, that we gain a life by it—not only a teaching, a knowledge. It should bridge the abyss which results from materialism which extends outside spiritual science and must become bigger and bigger. It bridges this abyss between the physical-sensory realm, which we go through between birth and death, and the spiritual realm in which we live between death and a new birth, so that we gradually learn to become citizens also of the spiritual world. What matters is that we learn to feel: somebody who has gone through the gate of death has only taken on another condition of life and has an attitude towards our feeling after death like somebody who just had to move because of the events of life to a distant country in which we can follow him only later. So we have to endure nothing but a time of separation. But this must be felt vividly by means of spiritual science. If you risk forming an idea about single concrete facts, you will already see that these facts also correspond to it and support each other for somebody who does not look into the spiritual world. That is why the confidence, which one has, before one beholds in the spiritual world, is actually no blind confidence, no trust in authority, but a confidence which is supported by the feeling which is deeper than critical knowledge, by the original feeling of truth indigenous to the human soul.

We live in a time in which the external destiny-burdened events make it clear that the human life has to be deepened. It would be much better if the human beings looked at these military events as a warning to deepen the souls more than the predominating majority of the human beings do. They discuss instead who has the war guilt, who does this or that. I said, while I discussed the most important matters before you: concerning some matters we must learn by spiritual science to change our ideas, our concepts. We can count the concept of war to these concepts—today this may be still added to our consideration about such a significant object like death.

One will be right, also from the spiritual-scientific point of view, to consider the war as an illness of development. Indeed, it is an illness, but you remember only once that you also do not do justice to an illness if you condemn it. What matters in illness is often that which has preceded the illness in the human body: the disorder, the disharmony has preceded. Then the illness comes into being which often is there to work just against the disorder in the body. Even if the human being goes through an illness before death, it is this way. He carries disharmonies in himself which make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world. Perhaps, the spiritual world would be obscured to him too long, or other obstacles would be there, because disharmonies are in him which cannot just be brought into the spiritual world. This is why an illness infects him before death. It frees his soul from disharmony so far that he can enter the spiritual world.

If it is an illness which leads to recovery, then this illness is there to compensate that which has preceded the illness which was caused by the karma of previous lives, maybe of thousands of years. One would not do well to say at all: the child has the measles; had it not got these measles.—One cannot know what would have come about the child if it had not got the measles. Because that came out which sat deeply always in the child and looked for its compensation.

It is also good to consider the war, and to see the evil not so much in that which must be experienced now in blood and iron but also to look at that which happened since long, long times in the cultural currents. The human beings must learn to look deeper at the connections. After this war, a time will come when the human beings start thinking about this war. There they will get on how many hollow words were talked if one said: this one has the guilt, that one has the guilt.—Something will just happen, even if it takes place only long after the war. Then the people will say something different than today. There will be people who say: if one studies history the way as one studied it up to now, indeed, one finds in these acts of the diplomats this, in those acts of diplomats that; here and there or this and that was written.

But if one proceeds that way as history treated all that up to now, and wants “to objectively judge” everything, as one says, then one never finds out why this war came into being. Then one will discover that it is necessary to look at the deeper reasons beyond the external causes which then spiritual science has to explain. Unfortunately, I can make only remarks about these matters. One will find that at various places just at the outbreak of this war this or that happened where not the consciousness played the most significant role, but something unconscious, something under the threshold of the external events was a contributory factor; so that those matters are not exhausted at all which the historian is accustomed to consider as something decisive for the causality. Just with this example one learns: history, as we are accustomed to it up to now, explains nothing at all to us. It is an admonition to go into deeper reasons.

As I had to admonish our souls at the end of almost each talk which I held in the last time, I would like to do it also again today.

A certain responsibility arises for you simply from the fact that you have approached the spiritual-scientific world view. You must become able to have the thoughts by the spiritual-scientific world view at least that those superficial judgments which are delivered everywhere today, because materialism controls the world, should also not become judgments of ours who we are supporters of spiritual science. What plays a role in the world today is a superficial hatred from nation to nation. I have often spoken about that in our branch talks. It must not penetrate us to the same degree, but we also must not become unfair. For we can learn from the old Theosophical Society to become rather unfair. They have impressed on their supporters with regard to the religions: all religions are equal.

This is approximately the same, as if one liked to impress on the human beings: on the table are pepper, salt, sugar, paprika; now, they all can be used as spices, one should not prefer anything. So, here I have a cup of coffee, I put some pepper into it, because everything is the same. The identical logic is in it if one speaks of the fact that the same core of truth forms the basis of all religions. This logic saves one from studying the great miraculous world development in its details, because one gets by with the sentence: a core of truth forms the basis of everything. But we have freed ourselves from the most superficial judgments since long. Thus that cannot prevent us from recognising rightly to go into any national characteristic with affectionate understanding, where we have to stand with our hearts out of knowledge. It is not possible that all friends agree in this regard. That does not matter, but that our souls try to get over the point of view of the external world and to deal with the characteristics of the different folk-souls.—Then we will already see that the belief in our spiritual-scientific world view imposes a certain responsibility to us in many respects, the responsibility to deal with the matters as thoroughly as possible and to pay more attention on them on the basis of spiritual science.

One experiences painful things sometimes. Not any human being does remember the big admonition of our destiny-burdened events, so that he feels obliged to turn his heart really deeper, more thoroughly to the events instead of judging superficially in the way of the external materialism we just want to overcome. In this regard, one would like to wish and long for that the human beings who are within our movement form a host, as it were, which deals thoroughly with the deeply moving questions of today. Thoroughness is necessary concerning a lot of matters. You do not imagine at all what is possible in our time.

Oh, I could tell a lot about that which can make the heart bloody to somebody who pursues the time really with the goodness of his heart. Today a lot of views and thoughts are spread, sometimes with the best intention, from an unhealthy, ahrimanic world view. But looking at the flood of war literature we have just to deeper meditate about the tasks of the cultural development. I attempt this now in my talks showing the real position of the single human beings. Because it is often a matter of defending thoroughness against superficiality. You could experience something very strange, for example, during the last weeks. Because of comprehensible reasons I would not like to mention the title of a book which has appeared abroad, even in German, and some people state that a German would have written it. Expressly I would like to stress that you can bring yourselves to understand any point of view. Perhaps, you can understand the most anti-German standpoint if the one or the other shows it. You may try to understand it, you need not share it, but perhaps you are able to understand it.

But the concerning book has characteristics to which it does not depend on the fact that it takes a thoroughly anti-German standpoint, that it reviles Germanness and the German nature on every line. One may understand that it is written viciously. But nobody is allowed to come and say: if a German speaks about the book that way, we can understand this, because he talks disparagingly about Germanness.—However, it depends on something different. The book is written, so that somebody who has a little feeling for internal professionalism and internal thoroughness, who is educated a little, must find: it is the most terrible simulation of the cheapest literature.—Completely apart from its standpoint, its literary level is so low that somebody who finds something in the book shows that he accepts the most trivial literature as something that one can take seriously, a book cobbled together with ignorance, I would like to say, with the most obvious ignorance.

So the standpoint does not matter; but you see from the way, as it is written like anybody who learnt thinking would not write, that one deals with a quite inferior sort of book. Nevertheless, I also had to hear judgments that this book whose title I do not mention because of particular reasons is taken seriously. If such matters appear, it is just to us not to shrink from forming a judgment on the basis of certain versatility. If anybody agrees to certain sentences which are expressed in that book as regards content, he does not need to take such a book seriously, already because the book is a terrible concoction, and because one does not take a terrible concoction seriously, because one cannot wish that even the truth is expressed terribly in the worst affect and in an uneducated way. I wanted to characterise such an example, because I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it depends on various things if the spiritual scientist tries to form a judgment about the world.

If it were possible to take a book for good, even if it is stylistically a horror book, then somebody would admit that he has not enough enlivened the spiritual-scientific feeling in his heart, in his soul. Not to express anything differently but to draw attention to the fact that spiritual science has to penetrate our feeling and thinking vividly in the most profound sense, concrete examples are also given in this field. It is very necessary that such concrete impulses are searched for in our souls. I have to admit what satisfied me particularly up to now, travelling through Germany, that I could not notice terrifying cheering after great victories. One noticed that pain about the enormous losses was in every soul at the same time. I believe that it is that way. Futile joy of victory must not be there. Since these destiny-burdened days demand not only enormous sacrifices, but they open up enormous wounds, also spiritual wounds if one considers the behaviour of many human beings. That is why it is very necessary that we remember now and again, just if we look at important matters in the field of spiritual science which responsibility is imposed on our souls and that we must long for times in which the effects of the young, unused etheric bodies and the souls can really meet who still are below in the bodies of the human beings and can send their sensations and abilities up to them.

A time will come after this war when the unused etheric bodies of those work who went through the gate of death and developed forces out of the sacrifices they made and which they could send down now for the spiritualisation of humankind. But below there must be souls who are able to receive this, who look up in lively confidence at that which went up in the spiritual world from the early deceased to shine down the forces of the spiritualisation of humankind.

There I would want that it appears to our eyes in the sense of the words which I would like to speak at the end of this consideration again:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

Notes

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge
Brightly illuminates death's appearance;
The Self becomes cosmic eye and ear.

The translation of these verses in Our Dead contains some mistakes; perhaps, they occurred because Steiner used a script consisting of normal Latin but also of old German letters (Sütterlin script):

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Es leuchtet hell dem Todesscheine
Des Geisteswissens (not: Geisteswillens) Erdenflamme;
Das Selbst wird Welten (not: Wellen)-Aug und Ohr.

a book which has appeared abroad: Richard Grelling J'accuse. By a German. Third edition, Lausanne, 1915