The Rudolf Steiner Archive

These lectures will perhaps have given you some idea of what a complicated being man is and from how many sides we must consider him if we would come near to his real nature. I want now to point to one more fact of evolution, and it is one that may be classed among the most significant of all the results we can arrive at when, with the help of clairvoyant research, we study the whole course of man's evolution—looking back over the period from very ancient times until to-day, and looking forward to what shall come for the race of man in the future. I have, in the course of these lectures, drawn your attention to a perception that man can acquire when he educates his faculty for knowledge in the way we described; when, that is to say, his soul in its efforts after knowledge enters into the moods we characterised as wonder, reverence, wisdom-filled harmony with the events of the world, and lastly, devotion and surrender to the whole world process. You will remember I explained how if the soul enters upon these moods or conditions, man's faculty of knowledge can gradually rise to a perception of two converse processes that are everywhere around him. Man learns to distinguish in his environment between what is becoming and what is dying away. He says to himself at every turn: Here I have to do with a process of becoming, something that will reach perfection only in the future, and here again, on the other hand, I encounter a gradual dying away, a gradual disappearing. We perceive the things of the world as existing in a region where everything is either coming into being or passing away. And I pointed out in particular how the human larynx is really an organ of the future, how it is called to be in the future something entirely different from what it is to-day. To-day it merely communicates to the outer world by means of the spoken word our inner moods and conditions, whereas in the future it will communicate what we ourselves are in our entirety; that is to say, it will serve for the procreation of the whole human being. It will be the reproductive organ of the future. A time will come when the larynx will not merely help man to express by means of the word what is in his heart and mind, but man will use the larynx to place his own self before the world; that is to say, the propagation of man will be intimately connected with the organ of the larynx.

Now in this complicated microcosm, in this complicated “little world” which we call “man,” for every such organ that is only as yet a seed and will later on in the future attain a higher degree of perfection, there is another corresponding organ which is gradually dwindling, gradually dying away. And the corresponding organ for the larynx is the organ of hearing. In proportion as the hearing apparatus little by little disappears, in proportion as it grows ever less and less, will the larynx grow more and more perfect and become more and more important. We can only estimate the greatness of this fact when we look back, with the help of the Akashic Records, into a far distant past of mankind and then from what our research reveals are in a position to form some conception of what the ear was once like. Great new vistas are opened up for a knowledge of the nature of man when we trace back the human ear to its original form. For in its present state this hearing apparatus of ours is no more than a shadow of what it once was. To-day it hears only tones of the physical plane, or words that express themselves in tones on the physical plane. But that is only a last remnant of what used to flow into man through the hearing; for through this hearing apparatus once flowed into man the mighty movements of the whole universe. And as to-day we hear earthly music with our ear, so in ancient times did world music, the music of the spheres, flow into man. And as to-day we men clothe words in tones, so in times past did the divine Word of the Worlds clothe itself in the music of the spheres—that Word of the Worlds of which the Gospel of St. John tells, the Logos, the divine Word. Into what we may call man's hearing in the old sense of the word, there flowed from the spiritual world a heavenly music, the music of the spheres, just as now into our hearing flows the human word and the earthly music, and within the music of the spheres was what the divine Spirits spoke. And as to-day man compels the air into forms with his word and his singing and his tone, so did the divine words and the divine music bring forth forms.

And now let us consider that most wonderful of all the forms created by Divine music. We may approach it in the following way. When to-day you give utterance to a word or even only to a vowel, let us say the sound “A”—then through this sound the possibility arises of creating a form in the air. It was in like manner that form entered into the world out of the cosmic Word, and the most precious of all these forms is man himself; man himself was created in his original state by being spoken out of the divine Word. “The Gods spake!” As to-day the air comes into forms through the word of man, so did our world come into its form through the Word of the Gods. And man is the most excellent of these forms. The organ of hearing was, of course, then infinitely more complicated than it is now. It is to-day quite shrunk and shriveled. To-day it is an external organ, penetrating only a limited distance into the brain, but once it extended inwards over the whole human being. And everywhere throughout man's being moved the paths of sound which spoke man into the world, as the utterance of the Word of God. Thus was man created—spiritually—through the organ of hearing, and in the future, when he has ascended again, he will have an ear that is quite small and rudimentary. The meaning and purpose of the ear will have completely gone. The ear is in a descending evolution; to compensate for this, however, the larynx, which is to-day only like a seed, will have developed to greater and greater beauty and perfection. And in its perfection it will speak out what man can bring forth for the world as the reproduction of his being, even as the Gods have spoken Man into the world as Their creation. So is the world process in a sense reversed. When we consider the whole human being as he stands before us we have to see in him the product of a descending evolution, and when we take an organ like the ear we find it has already reached a densification of the bony matter in the small bones of the ear, it is, as it were, in the last stage of descending evolution. The sense as such is disappearing. Man, however, is developing on into the world of spirituality, and his ascending organs are the bridges that carry him over into spirituality. Such is the relationship between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. The world of the senses makes itself known to us in descending organs, and the world of the spirit in ascending organs.

And it is the same everywhere. In the whole world as it presents itself to our view we can follow in some way this becoming and dying. And it is important that we should learn to apply the idea to the other things in the world. It will teach us a great deal. Thus in the mineral world, for example, we can also find something that is in an ascending evolution, something that is to-day only at the seed stage. It is quicksilver. Quicksilver is a metal that will undergo transformations in the future but transformations that will lead to greater perfection. Quicksilver as metal has not yet pulverised all the forces that every substance possesses in the spiritual before it becomes substance at all. Powers that belong essentially to the nature of quicksilver still remain in the spiritual, and these it will in the future be able to bring forth and place into the world. It will assume new forms. Thus quicksilver corresponds in the world of the minerals to the human larynx, and also in a sense to the organ that is attached to the larynx—the lung. Other metals—copper, for example—are in a kind of descending evolution. Copper will, in the future, show itself as a metal that has no more inner spiritual forces to place out into the world, and that is consequently more and more obliged merely to split up and crumble to cosmic dust.

I have here set before you a few examples of connections which will in future increasingly become an object of study. Men will study more and more the relationships between the processes of becoming and of passing away in the several kingdoms of nature, and will learn to find—not through experiments and tests but through an Imaginative knowledge—relationships between particular metal substances and particular organs in the human body. And as a result substances whose effects are already partially known from external experience will, through Imagination, be able to be known in all their healing power, in all their reproductive and restorative power over the human body. All kinds of relationships and connections will be discovered between the several things and beings of the world.

Thus, man will come to recognise that the virtues which lie in the seed of a plant are differently connected with man than the virtues contained in the root. All that we find in the root of a plant corresponds in a manner to the human brain and to the nervous system belonging to the brain. [see Summary] It goes so far that in actual fact the eating of what is to be found in plant roots has a certain correspondence with the processes that take place in the brain and nervous system. So that if a man wants his brain and nervous system to be influenced from the physical side in its task as physical instrument for the life of the spirit, he receives with his nourishment the forces that live in the roots of plants. In a sense we may say that he lets think in him what he thus receives in food, he lets it do spiritual work in him, whilst if he is less inclined to eat of the root nature of plants it will be rather he himself who uses his brain and nervous system. You will see from this that if a person consumes a quantity of root food he is liable to become dependent in respect of his experiences as soul and spirit; because something objective and external works through him, his brain and nervous system surrender their own independence. And so if he wants it to be more himself who works in him, then he must diminish his consumption of roots. I am not, my dear friends, giving suggestions for any particular diet, I am merely informing you about facts of nature. And I warn you expressly not to set out to follow what I have said without further knowledge. Not every person is so far advanced as to be able to dispense with receiving the power of thought from something outside himself; and it may very easily happen that a man who is not ripe to leave it to his own soul-life to provide him with the power of thinking and feeling—it can easily happen that if such a man avoids eating roots he will fall into a sleepy condition, because his soul and spirit are not yet strong enough to evolve in themselves out of the spiritual those forces which are otherwise evolved in man quite objectively, and independently of his soul and spirit. The question of diet is always an individual question and depends entirely upon the whole manner and condition of the development of the person in question.

Again, what lives in the leaves of plants has a similar connection with the lungs of man, with all that belongs to the system of the lungs. Here we may find an indication of how a balance can be created, for example, in a person whose breathing system, owing to inherited tendencies or to some other condition, works too powerfully. It would be well in such a case to recommend the person not to eat much of what comes from the leaves of plants. There may be another person whose breathing system requires strengthening, and then we shall do well to advise him to eat freely of such food as comes from leaves. These things have their close connection also with the healing forces that are in the world in the several kingdoms of nature, for those parts of the individual plants which have a definite relationship to man's organs contain forces of healing for those regions of man's organism. Thus, roots contain great forces of healing for the nervous system, and leaves for the lung system.

The flowers of plants contain many healing forces for the kidney system, and seeds in a particular way for the heart, but only when the heart sets itself too strongly in opposition to the circulation of the blood. If the heart yields too easily to the circulation, then it is rather to the forces that are in the fruits, i.e. in the ripened seeds, that we must turn. These are some of the indications that result when we take into consideration that the moment we pass from man to surrounding nature all that presents itself to our senses in the world of nature is actually only the surface.

• Roots—Brain.
• Leaves—Lungs.
• Flowers—Kidneys.
• Seeds—Heart.
• Fruits—Blood system.

In the plants, what belongs to the world of the senses is only on the surface. Behind what reveals itself to sight and taste and smell are the soul-and-spirit forces of the plant. But these soul-and-spirit forces are not present in such a way that we could speak of each single plant as ensouled, in the same way that each single human being is ensouled. That is not the case. Whoever were to imagine it would be giving himself up to the same delusion as a man who thought that a single hair or the tip of the ear, or, let us say, a nose or a tooth, were ensouled. The whole human being is ensouled in his totality, and we only learn to look into the soul nature of man when we pass from the parts to the whole. And we must do the same in the case of every living thing. We must take care to observe it spiritually and see whether it is a part or in some sense a whole. All the various plants of the earth are by no means a whole for themselves; they are parts, they are members of a whole. And as a matter of fact we are only speaking of a reality when we speak of that to which the several plants belong, as parts belong to a whole. In the case of man we can see at once to what his teeth, his ears, his fingers belong; physically they belong to the whole organism. In the case of the plants we do not see with the eye that to which the single plant belongs, we cannot perceive it with a physical organ at all, for the moment we reach the whole we come into the realm of the spirit. The truth about the soul nature of the plant world is that it has the plants for its individual organs. There are, as a matter of fact, for our whole earth only a few beings who are, so to say, collected together in the earth and have as their single parts the plants, just as man has the hairs on his body.

We can, if we wish, refer to these beings as the group souls of the plants. We can say, when we go beyond what our senses can behold of the plant, that we come to the group souls of the plants, which are related to the single plant as a whole to a part. Altogether there are seven group souls—plant souls—belonging to the earth, and having in a way the centre of their being in the centre of the earth. So that it is not enough to conceive of the earth as this physical ball, but we have to think of it as penetrated by seven spheres varying in size and all having in the earth's centre their own spiritual centre. And then these spiritual beings impel the plants out of the earth. The root grows towards the centre of the earth, because what it really wants is to reach the centre of the earth, and it is only prevented from pushing right through by all the rest of the earth matter which stands in its way. Every plant root strives to penetrate to the centre of the earth, where is the centre of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs.

You see how extraordinarily important is the principle we laid down—to go always to the whole in the case of every being or creature, to see first whether it is a part or a whole. There are scientists in our days who look upon the plants as ensouled, but they look upon the individual plant in this way. That is no cleverer than if we were to call a tooth a man; both stand at the same mental level. Many people are ready to think, when they hear views like this put forward, that they are quite theosophical, just because the plants are regarded as having soul; but really all such talk on the part of science has no value at all for the future, the books are so much waste paper. To look for individual souls in the separate plants is to say: I will extract a tooth from a human being and look in it for a human soul. The plant soul is not to be found in the single plant but has its most important point in the centre of the earth, whither the root tends, for the root is that force in the plant which strives ever towards the most spiritual part of plant existence.

When we are considering a theme such as this we shall find, my dear friends, that we come across statements made from the standpoint of the present-day view of nature which can bring us near to the gateway of truth, but only to the same degree as Mephistopheles can bring Faust into the realm of the Mothers—namely, just to the outermost door and no further. For as little as Mephistopheles can go down with Faust into the realm of the Mothers, so little can present-day natural science enter into the spiritual. But as in a certain sense Mephistopheles gives the key, so does natural science. Natural science gives the key, but it does not want to enter itself, even as Mephistopheles does not want to enter himself into the realm of the Mothers. It is true in a sense that natural science gives us clues which, if we have acquired the mode of knowledge described in these lectures, can often bring our knowledge to the gateway of truth.

Natural science to-day, following the impulse of Darwin, has drawn—from observation of the world of the senses alone—an important conclusion; natural science speaks of the principle of the so-called “struggle for existence.” Who is not ready to see this struggle for existence all around him as long as he takes cognizance only of what the external world of the senses affords? Why, we meet with it at every turn. Think of the innumerable eggs laid by the creatures of the sea, how many are destroyed and perish, and how few actually grow up and become new creatures. There you have, apparently, a fearful struggle for existence. One could well begin to lament over it if one listened only to the world of the senses, and say: of the millions and billions of eggs so many, so very many, go under in the struggle for existence and so few survive. But this is only one side of a thought, my dear friends. Take hold now of the same thought at another end! In order to bring your thinking on in a certain direction, let me ask you to grasp the same thought at another point. You can also lament in a similar way over the struggle for existence in another connection. You can cast your eyes over a field of corn where so-and-so many ears are standing, each holding so-and-so many grains of corn, and you can ask the question: How many of these grains of corn are lost in some way or other and never fulfil their true purpose; and how few of them are planted again in the earth that they may become new plants of the same kind as the old ones? We can thus look over a field of corn that is promising a rich and plenteous harvest and say to ourselves: How much of all that sprouting life will perish without having attained its goal! Only a very few grains will be buried in the earth for new plants of the same kind to arise. Here again we have an instance, only in a rather different sphere from that of the sea-creatures, where also only a very few come to fulfilment.

But now let me ask you what would become of the human beings, who must eat something, if every single grain of corn were buried again in the earth? Let us suppose that it were possible—theoretically we can suppose anything—for such an abundant growth to take place that every single grain of corn could come up again; but we must also think of what would happen to the beings who have to find their nourishment from corn. Here we come to a strange pass; a belief that might appear justified when we look at the world of the senses is shaken. When we look at a field of corn in respect of its own physical existence we might seem quite justified in concluding that every single grain should grow into a whole plant. And yet the standpoint is perhaps false. Perhaps in the whole connection of things in the world we are not thinking correctly when we ascribe to each single grain of corn this aim and object, namely to grow into a whole plant. Perhaps there is nothing to justify us in saying that the grains of corn which serve other beings for food have somehow failed in their cosmic aim. Perhaps there is nothing that compels us to say that the eggs of the creatures of the sea have failed in their aim when they have not grown into fishes. It is in reality no more than human prejudice to suppose that every single seed ought to become again the same being. For we can only measure the tasks of the individual beings when we turn our eyes to the whole. And all the eggs that perish by the million in the sea every year, and do not grow into fish, provide food for other beings who are only not yet accessible to man's vision. And in very truth those spiritual substances which struggle their way through to existence and become the countless eggs of the sea that are apparently lost—they do not lament that they have missed their goal; for their goal is to be nourishment for other beings, to be received up into the very being of these other beings. Man stands outside with his intellect and imagines that only that has meaning which strives towards the goal which he, through his senses, is bound to see as the ultimate goal. But if we look at nature without prejudice and with an open mind we shall see in every single stage of every single being a certain perfection and fulfilment, and such perfection does not rest only in that which the being will eventually become, but is contained already in what it is.

These are some of the thoughts, acquired in occultism, which must take root in your heart and minds. And if you now turn away from the external world and look into your own soul you will observe that you have there in your soul a rich store of thoughts. Thoughts are perpetually streaming into your soul, perpetually lighting up within it; and only a very few of these thoughts are clearly grasped, only a very few become a conscious part of the human soul. When you go for a walk in the town, reflect how much enters your soul by way of your senses, and yet how little you observe in such a way that it becomes a permanent part of your soul-life. You are continually receiving impressions, and the sum of all the impressions you receive is related to the portion of them which becomes a permanent conscious possession of your soul as the great mass of fish spawn in the sea that is brought into being year by year is related to the proportion of it that actually grows into fish. You, as well, have to be forever going through this same process in your own soul, the process of bringing, over a vast region, only a very small quantity to fulfilment. And when man begins to lift the veil a little and gain some vision of the great flood of pictures of fantasy and of thought out of which he emerges when he emerges from sleep—the dream affords for many persons a last trace of the immeasurably rich life man leads in sleep—then he can come to realise that there is meaning in the fact that he receives so many impressions that do not come to clear consciousness. For the impressions that actually come to clear consciousness are lost to the inner work of man, they cannot work upon the system of the sense organs, nor the system of the glandular organs, nor the system of digestion, neither can they work upon the systems of nerves, muscles and bones. That which becomes conscious in the soul, and which present-day man carries in him as his conscious inner soul-content, has no more power to work upon the organism; its characteristic is that it is torn loose from the mother earth of the whole human being and thus comes into his consciousness. All the rest of the soul-content—which bears the same relation to these conscious thoughts and ideas as the many eggs do to the few that become fish—all the countless impressions that come into our soul from without and do not come into consciousness, work upon the whole human being.

Everything in his environment works continually upon man in his totality. The dream can sometimes teach you how far what lives on in your soul as conscious idea, how very far that is from being all that enters your soul; many other impressions are entering your soul all the time. You have only to give attention to such things and you will find they occur constantly in life. You dream of some situation. Perhaps you dream you are standing opposite a man who is talking with another man. You are standing there and making a third. In your dream you have a clear and exact picture of the countenance of the man opposite you. You say to yourself: “How do I come to have such a dream? It gives the impression of being concerned with people I know in physical life, it seems to relate itself to physical life. But where does it come from? I have never heard or seen this person.” And now you pursue it further; and when you examine carefully you find that a few days ago you were opposite this person in a railway carriage, only the whole experience passed by you without your consciousness being awakened. In spite of that, however, it entered deeply into your life. It is only owing to inexactitude of observation that people as a rule know nothing about these things.

The conceptions that dreams bring before us in this way are by no means the most important of the impressions that work upon the soul. The most important are quite other impressions. Think for a moment, my dear friends, how the process I described to you yesterday has been continually happening all the time in the evolution of humanity. By means of his bony system man has been continually producing Imaginations, by means of his muscular system he has been sending into the world Inspirations, and by means of his nervous system Intuitions. All these are now there in the world. The outstreamings that are evil, each man must himself receive back again and carry away through his destiny. But the rest builds up and takes form and is perpetually there in man's environment. In very deed all the Imaginations and Inspirations and Intuitions that man has given out into the earth world, even only since the Atlantean catastrophe, are present and are part of our environment. The good things man has given out—these the individual men do not need to take back again in the course of their Karma; but what they have sent out into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth all through the centuries of the successive epochs is actually present for the men who are now living on earth, just as much as the air is present for physical man. As man breathes physical air, as the air from his environment enters right inside him, so do the Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions that have been developed penetrate into man, and man partakes of them with his soul and spirit. And now it is important that man should develop a real relation to all this in his environment, that he should not meet what he has himself imparted to the earth in earlier epochs of its existence as if it were strange to him, as if he were unconnected with it. He can, however, only become connected with this spiritual content he has given to the earth when he gradually acquires the power to receive it into his soul.

How can this come about? When we come to make a deep study of the spiritual meaning of earth evolution we discover that in the time when post-Atlantean man had still something left of ancient clairvoyance, Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were communicated in great abundance to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. That was a time when spiritual substance was given forth in large measure. Since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and especially from the present day onwards, we gradually send out less and less; what falls rather to us is to receive the old substance, for it is something with which we are intimately connected; we have the task to take up again into ourselves what has been sent out. That means it is required of man to replace an earlier spiritual outbreathing by a spiritual inbreathing. Man must grow ever more sensitive and receptive to the spiritual that is in the world. In ancient times that was not so necessary, for men of those olden times were able to put forth from them spiritual substance, they had, so to speak, a reserve store. But this reserve of spiritual substance has been so deeply drawn upon since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch that in future man will, in a sense, only be able to send out what he has first absorbed, what he has first inbreathed. In order that man may be able to take his place with full understanding in this new task in earth existence—to this end is Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science there in the world. When a man feels drawn to Anthroposophy it is not just that it takes his fancy as one among many other things in the world that take his fancy. He is drawn to Anthroposophy because it is intimately and deeply bound up with the whole of earth evolution, intimately bound up with the task that lies immediately before man to-day in evolution, namely to develop understanding for the spiritual all around him. For from the present time onwards it will be the case that those who do not develop understanding for the spirit behind the senses, for the world of the spirit behind the world of the senses, will be like men whose breathing system is so injured that they cannot take in air and they suffer from difficulty in breathing. To-day we still have left in our ideas a certain inheritance from primeval human wisdom, and we feed upon these old ideas. If, however, we are able to observe the evolution of mankind in modern times with the eye of the spirit we shall perceive that while discoveries abound in the field of the material and external, in the spiritual a kind of exhaustion shows itself, a strange poverty of spiritual content. New ideas, new concepts, arise less and less among mankind. It is only those who do not know of ancient concepts and who are always rediscovering the old for themselves—that is to say, their whole life long remain in a sense immature—who can imagine that it is possible for ideas to develop and mature in these days. No, the world of abstract ideas, the world of intellectual ideas is exhausted. There are no more new ideas springing up. The time of Thales marks the rise of intellectual ideas for Western thought. And now we stand at a kind of end; and philosophy as such, philosophy as a science of ideas, is at an end. Ideas and thoughts belong only to the physical plane, and man must learn to lift himself up to what lies beyond ideas and thought, that is, beyond the world of the physical plane. To begin with he will lift himself up to Imaginations. Imaginations will again become for him something real and actual. That will bring about a new fructification of the spiritual in mankind. That is why, my dear friends, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science gives Imaginations of great and mighty world processes. Note how different from everything else of its kind is the description given of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Compare it with the abstract concepts of natural science. Everything in Spiritual Science has to be given in pictures, it has to be presented in such a way that it is not directly realisable in the external world of the senses. We say of Old Saturn that it had a condition of warmth, of warmth alone. That is sheer nonsense for the present-day world of the senses; for the world of the senses knows nothing of warmth substance as such. But what is nonsense for the world of the senses is truth for the world of the spirit, and the next step required of man in the near future is to live his way into the world of the spirit. Those who will not resolve to breathe the air of the spirit—and Spiritual Science has come into the world to make the soul of man susceptible to the air of the spirit—those who do not want to make themselves responsive to Spiritual Science will actually approach a condition of spiritual shortness of breath and spiritual exhaustion. One can already see many persons approaching this condition, and it leads on to a spiritual wasting and decline, to an actual “consumption” of the spirit.

Such would be the lot of men on earth if they wanted to stop short at the world of the senses. They would go into a spiritual decline. In the future development of civilisation there will be men full of sensitiveness for the spiritual, full of heart for all that Spiritual Science will give, and for the world of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as it springs up spontaneously in the souls of men. So will it be for a part of humanity: they will have understanding and devotion for this world of the spirit. And it will be these men who will fulfil the task that is set before the earth in the near future. Others perhaps will be content with the world of the senses, not wanting to go beyond it, not wanting to go beyond that shadow picture which the conceptions of philosophy and of natural science afford. Such people are moving in the direction of spiritual shortness of breath, spiritual consumption, spiritual sickness and disease. They will become dried up in earth existence and not attain the goal that has been set for earth evolution. Evolution goes on, however, in such a way that each one is compelled to ask himself the question: Which way will you choose? In the future men will stand, as it were, on two paths, to the right and to the left. On one path will be those for whom the world of the senses alone is true, and on the other will be those for whom the world of the spiritual is the truth.

And since the senses, such as the ear, for example, will disappear, since at the end of the earth all the senses that belong to the earth will have completely disappeared, we can form some idea of what that consumption and wasting away will be like. If we abandon ourselves to the world of the senses we abandon ourselves to something which abandons man in the future of earth evolution. If we press through to the world of the spirit we develop ourselves in the direction of something that wills to come nearer and nearer to man in the future of earth evolution. If we want to express it in a symbol we may say that it is possible for man to stand there at the end of the earth evolution and to speak as Faust did when he had been blinded physically—(for man will be not only blinded to the world around him but deaf to it in addition, he will stand there blind and deaf and deprived of taste and smell)—he will be able to say with Faust: “But in my inmost spirit all is light—yes, and all is glorious ringing tones and words of men!” Thus will the man be able to speak who has turned to the world of the spirit. But the other, the man who wanted to remain at the world of the senses would be like a Faust who, after he was blinded, would be compelled to say: “Blind hast thou become without, and within shines no light of the spirit, darkness alone receives thee.”

Man has to choose between these two Faust natures in his relation to the future of the earth. For the first Faust would be one who had turned to the world of the spirit, whilst the second would be one who had turned to the world of the senses and had thereby become closely united with something of which man must feel that it is unsubstantial and unreal, and moreover that it robs him of his own reality and being. Thus does that appear which we set out to discover and bring from occult heights—thus does it appear, my dear friends, in its relation to the immediate daily life of man. I think I need not spend words in pointing out what moral principles and will impulses for present-day humanity can proceed from a real understanding of occult science.¹ For out of a rightly understood wisdom will a rightly understood goodness and virtue be born in the human heart. Let us strive after a real understanding of world evolution, let us seek after wisdom—and we shall find without fail that the child of wisdom will be love.

• 1. Printed by C. F. Hodgson & Son, Ltd., 2 Newton St., London, W.C.2.

It affords me great pleasure to be with you this evening on the occasion of my presence here in Vienna, which was necessitated by certain other circumstances. As this is a special meeting, I would like to speak about more intimate matters that can only be dealt with in smaller groups long acquainted with spiritual science.

In occult research one cannot check often enough the facts one has repeatedly investigated, and about which one has spoken, for they are facts of the spiritual world that is not easily accessible and comprehensible to man. There is a constant danger of misinterpreting in one way or another, and events may be viewed incorrectly. This is the reason the results obtained must be checked again and again. The principal events of life in the spiritual world have, of course, been known for thousands of years, yet it is difficult to describe them. I am deeply grateful that recently I had the opportunity to concern myself more intimately again with an important aspect of occultism, namely, the realm of life between death and a new birth. It is not so much that new facts come to light, but that one has the possibility to present things in a more exact and accurate way. So today I would like to speak of the period that for super-sensible perception is of the utmost importance, that is, the period between death and rebirth. I will not deal so much with the period immediately following death, the kamaloca period, descriptions of which can be found in my writings, but with the succeeding period, the actual sojourn of man in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. This description will be prefaced briefly by the following remarks.

One learns to know the period between death and rebirth either by initiation or by going through the portal of death. Mostly one does not take sufficiently seriously the difference that exists between knowledge acquired in the sense world by means of our senses and intellect and knowledge acquired of the spiritual world, either through initiation in a physical body in this life or without this body when we have gone through the gate of death. In a sense, everything is reversed in the spiritual world. I will refer to two characteristics to show how fundamentally different are the spiritual world and the normal sense world.

Let us consider our existence in the sense world during waking consciousness from morning until night. The objects we perceive by means of our eyes and ears come to us. Only in the higher realms of life, so to speak, in the spheres of knowledge and art, do we have to exert ourselves to participate in drawing things towards us. Apart from this, in the rest of outer life everything from morning until night that impinges on our senses and our intellect is brought to us. Wherever we go, in the street, in the daily round of life, every moment is filled with impressions, and apart from the exceptions mentioned we make no effort to bring them about. They come about of their own accord.

It is different as regards what happens through us in the physical world. Here we have to be active, move from place to place, be on the go. It is an important characteristic of daily life that what is presented to our perception comes to us without our activity. However grotesque it may appear, the opposite is true in the spiritual world. There one cannot be active, one cannot draw anything towards one by moving from one place to another. Nor can one bring anything to one simply by moving a limb—by the movement of a hand, for example. Above all, for something to happen in the spiritual world it is essential that there be absolute calmness of soul.

The quieter we are, the more can happen through us in the spiritual world. We simply cannot say that anything happens in the spiritual world as a result of hurry and excitement. We need to develop loving participation in a mood of soul calmness for what is to happen, and then wait patiently to see how things come to pass. This calmness of soul, which in the spiritual world is creative, does not quite have its equal in ordinary physical life. It is similar on higher levels of earthly existence to the sphere of knowledge and of the arts. Here we have something analogous. The artist who cannot wait will not be able to create the highest he is capable of. For this, he needs patience and inner calmness of soul until the right moment dawns, until the intuition comes. One who seeks to create according to a schedule will produce only works of inferior quality. He who seeks to create, be it the smallest work, prompted by an outer stimulus will not succeed as well as if he had waited quietly with loving devotion for the moment of inspiration. We might say for the moment of grace. The same is true of the spiritual world. In it there is no rush and excitement but only calmness of soul.

Fundamentally, this must also be the way with the growth of our movement. Propaganda campaigns and a desire to force spiritual science on our fellow men are useless. It is best if we can wait until we meet those who inwardly need to hear about the spirit, who are drawn to it. We should not nurture longings to bring everyone to spiritual science. We shall find that the calmer we are, the more people will come to us, whereas forceful propaganda merely puts people off. Public lectures are held only in order that what has to be said should be said and those who wish to receive what is communicated can do so. Our attitude within our spiritual scientific movement must be a reflection of the spiritual so that what has to happen can happen and is awaited with inner silence.

Let us consider an initiate who knew that something was to happen at a particular time out of the spiritual world. I have often drawn attention to an important event that had its origin in the spiritual world but which does not yet reveal itself in a marked way. I refer to the year 1899, the end of the small Kali Yuga. That year brought a certain impulse that was to give mankind the possibility of an inner soul-awakening. In earlier times it was produced by external stimuli from the spiritual world, usually denoted as chance occurrences.

I would like to relate a particular instance. In the twelfth century there lived a certain personality named Norbert, who founded an order. At first he led a worldly, dissolute life. Then one day he was struck by lightning. Such events are by no means rare in history. A flash of lightning can have the effect of shaking up the physical and ether bodies. His whole life was changed. Here we have an example of how an outer happening is used by the spiritual world to alter the course of a man's life. Such chance phenomena are not uncommon. They completely shake up the connection between the physical and ether bodies and radically transform the individual concerned. That was the case in this instance. It is not a question of coincidence. Such events are carefully prepared in the spiritual world so as to bring about a change in a person. Since the year 1899, however, such happenings have taken on a more intimate character. They are less outward and the human soul is deepened more and more inwardly. In fact, in order to produce such a universal revolution as that of 1899, not only all the powers and beings of the spiritual world had to cooperate, but also the initiates who lived on earth. They do not say, “Prepare yourselves.” They do not shout it in people's ears, but they act in such a way that the impulse comes from within so that people learn to understand it from within. Then people remain inwardly calm, concern themselves with such thoughts, allow them to work within the soul, and wait. The more quietly such thoughts are carried in the soul, the more strongly such spiritual events occur. The most important thing is to wait the moment of grace, to wait for what will happen to us in the spiritual world.

It is different in regard to the acquisition of knowledge in everyday life. Here we have to gather things together to work and exert ourselves in order to obtain it. In the physical world the rose we find along the wayside gladdens us. This would not happen on the spiritual plane. There something similar to a rose would not appear unless we had exerted ourselves to enter a particular realm of the spirit in order to draw it towards us. In fact, what we have to do here to act, we do in the spiritual world in order to know, and what has to happen through us has to be awaited in stillness. Only the higher activities of man, where the spiritual world weaves into the physical, afford a reflection of the events in the spiritual world. That is why it is essential, if one wishes inwardly to understand what is imparted by spiritual science, to develop two qualities of soul. Firstly, love for the spiritual world, which leads to an active grasping of the spirit and is the surest way of enabling us to bring the things of the spirit towards us, and secondly, inner rest, a calmness of soul, a silence free from vanity or ambition anxious to attain results, but capable of receiving grace, able to await inspiration. In actual cases this patient expectation is not easy, but there is a thought that can help us to overcome obstacles. It is difficult to accept because it strikes so deeply against our vanity. This thought is that in the universal pattern it is of no importance whether something happens through us or through another person. This should not deter us from doing everything that has to be done. It should not prevent us from performing our duty, but it should keep us from hurrying to and fro. How glad every individual feels that he is capable, that he can do it. A certain resignation is necessary for us to feel equally glad when someone else can and does do something. One should not love something because one has done it oneself, but love it because it is in the world irrespective of whether he or someone else has done it. If we repeatedly ponder this thought it will lead most certainly to selflessness. Such moods of soul are essential to enter into the spiritual world, not only as an investigator but also to understand what has been discovered. These inner attitudes are far more important than visions, although they, too, have to be present. They are essential because they enable us to evaluate the visions rightly.

Visions! One need only mention the word and everybody knows what is meant by it. Actually, the whole of our life after death once kamaloca is over consists of visions. When the human being has gone through the gate of death and kamaloca and then enters the actual spiritual world, he lives in a realm in which it is as if he were surrounded from all sides by mere visions, but visions that are mirror-images of reality. In fact we can say that just as we perceive the physical world by means of colors that the eye conjures forth for us, and sounds mediated by the ear, we experience the spiritual world after death by means of visions in which we are enveloped.

Now, as I wish to speak more intimately of these things, I shall have to use a more descriptive form. Certain things may sound rather strange, but that is how they reveal themselves to genuine spiritual investigation.

The kamaloca period unfolds as I have described it in my book, Theosophy, but it can be characterized also in a different way. One may for instance ask, “When a person has gone through the gate of death, where does he feel himself to be?” One can answer this question by asking, “Where is man during his kamaloca period?” This can be expressed spatially in words that express our physical world. Imagine the space between the earth and the moon, the spherical space described when the orbit of the moon is taken as the outermost path away from the earth. Then you have the realm in which man, loosened from the earth, dwells during the kamaloca period.

It may sound strange, but when the kamaloca period has been completed, a human being leaves this sphere and enters the actual celestial world. Also in this connection, accurate and genuine investigation shows that things are reversed in relation to the physical plane. Here we are bound outwardly to the earth, surrounded by the physical world and separated from the heavenly spheres. After death the earth is separated from us and we are united with the heavenly spheres. As long as we dwell within the Moon sphere we are in kamaloca, which means that we are still longing to be connected with the earth. We proceed beyond it when we have learned through life in kamaloca to forego passions and longings. The sojourn in the spiritual world must be imagined quite differently from what is customary on earth. There we are spread out in space, we feel ourselves in the whole of space. That is why the experience, be it of an initiate or of a person after death, is one of feeling oneself spread out in space, expanding after death (or as an initiate) and being limited by the Moon orbit as by a skin. It is like this and it is of no avail to use words our contemporaries would more easily forgive because by doing so one would not express the facts more correctly. In public lectures such shocking things have to be left out, but for those who have concerned themselves with spiritual science for a longer time it is best to say things plainly.

After the life in kamaloca we grow further out into space. This will depend on certain qualities that we have acquired previously on the earth. A long span of our evolution after death, and our ability to expand to the next sphere, is determined by the moral attitude, the ethical concepts and feelings we developed on earth. A person who has developed qualities of compassion and love—qualities that are usually termed moral—lives into the next sphere so that he becomes acquainted with the beings of that sphere. A man who brings a lack of morality into this realm dwells in it like a hermit. It may be best characterized by saying that morality prepared for us living socially together in the spiritual world. We are condemned to a fearful loneliness, filled with a continual longing to get to know others without being able to do so, as a result of a lack of morality in the physical world of the heart as well as of the mind and will. Either as a hermit or as a sociable being who is a blessing in the spiritual world, do we dwell in this second sphere known in occultism as that of Mercury. Today in ordinary astronomy this is known as the Venus sphere. As has often been mentioned, the names have been reversed.

Now man's being expands up to the orbits of the morning and the evening stars, whereas previously it expanded only to the Moon. Something strange happens at this point. Until the Moon sphere we are still involved in earthly matters is not entirely severed. We still know what we have done on the earth, what we have thought. Just as here we can remember, so we know there. But recollection may be painful! On earth if we have done a person some injustice or have not loved him as much as we should, we can make up for these feelings. We can go to him and put things right. This is no longer possible from the Mercury sphere onward. We behold the relationships in recollection. They remain but we cannot alter them.

Let us assume that a person has died before us. According to the earthly connection we should have loved him, but did not do so as much as we should have done. We meet him again since we were related to him previously because after death we do in fact encounter all the people with whom we were connected. To begin with, this cannot be altered. We reproach ourselves with not having loved him enough, but we are incapable of changing our soul-disposition so as to love him more. What has been established on the earth remains. We cannot alter it. These facts relating to the correct, unchangeable perception of love made a strong impression on me during my recent investigations this summer. Much comes to light that eludes most people. I wanted to convey this to you.

One learns to know these strange facts by means of spiritual cognition. One lives in the Mercury sphere in former relationships with people, and they cannot be altered. One looks back and unfolds what one has already developed.

Although I have concerned myself a great deal with Homer, yet a particular passage became fully clear only during recent occult investigations when the facts described came powerfully to me. It is the passage in which Homer calls the realm after death, “the land of the shades where nothing can change.” It can be understood by the intellect but what the poet seeks to convey about the spiritual world, how he speaks as a prophet, that one only learns to know when the corresponding discovery has been made by means of spiritual research. This is true of every genuine artist. He need not understand with his everyday consciousness what comes to him in inspiration. What humanity has received through its artists in the course of centuries will not fade because of the spreading of our spiritual movement. On the contrary, art will be deepened and mankind will value all the more its true artists when, as a result of occult investigation, the spiritual realm is reached—the realm out of which the artist has drawn his inspiration. Of course, those who at one time or another have been regarded as important artists but are not truly great will not be singled out. Passing greatness will be recognized for what it is. It contains no inspiration from the spiritual world.

The next sphere is termed the Venus sphere in occultism. We now expand our being up to Mercury, which is known as the occult Venus. In this sphere the human being again is strongly influenced by what he brings. He who has something to bring becomes a social being, and he who has nothing to give is condemned to loneliness. A lack of religious inclination is dreadfully painful. The more religious the disposition of soul we have acquired, the more social we become in this sphere. People who lack religious inclination cut themselves off. They cannot move beyond a sheath or shell that surrounds them. Nevertheless, we get to know friends who are hermits, but we cannot reach them. We continually feel as if we have to break through a shell but are incapable of doing so. In the Venus sphere, if we have no religious inwardness, it is as if we were to freeze up.

This is followed by a sphere in which, however strange it may appear, the human being, and this is so for everyone after death, expands up to the Sun. In the not too distant future different concepts will be held about the heavenly bodies from those adhered to by astronomy today. We are connected with the Sun. There is a period between death and rebirth when we become Sun beings. But now something further is necessary. In the first sphere we need moral inclination and in the Venus sphere, a religious life. In the Sun sphere it is essential that we truly know the nature and being of the Sun spirits and above all, the ruling Sun Spirit, the Christ, and that we made a connection with Him on earth.

When mankind still possessed an ancient clairvoyance, this, with the Christ connection, was established by living into the divine grace of the past. This has vanished and the Mystery of Golgotha, prepared by the Old Testament, was there to bring an understanding of the Sun Being to man. Since the Mystery of Golgotha mankind has naively endeavored to draw towards the Christ. Today this no longer suffices. In our time spiritual science must bring an understanding of the Sun Being to the world. It was clearly understood for the first time during the Middle Ages when the Grail Saga found its deeper origin in Europe. Through the understanding given by means of spiritual science what was brought by the lofty Sun Spirit, by the Christ, the Christ Who came down and through the Mystery of Golgotha has become the Spirit of the earth will be retrieved.

The impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha is destined through spiritual science to unite all religious creeds in peace over the whole earth. It remains the basic challenge of spiritual science to treat all religions with equal attention without giving preference to any of them for outer reasons. Because we place the Mystery of Golgotha at the fulcrum of world evolution, our movement is accused of giving a preference to the Christian religion. Yet this accusation is quite unjustified. Let us understand how matters really stand with such accusations. If a Buddhist or Brahman were to accuse us of this we would say, “Is the only issue what is to be found in sacred writings? Providing one does not reject a religion, is what is not to be found in its books to the detriment of a religion? Cannot every Buddhist accept the Copernican system and yet remain a Buddhist?” To be able to do so is a sign of progress for humanity at large. So is the knowledge that the Mystery of Golgotha stands in the center of the evolution of the world, irrespective of whether it is mentioned in ancient writings or not.

If we understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and realize what happened there, then in the Sun sphere we become sociable spirits. As soon as we have gone beyond the Moon sphere, we are spiritually surrounded by visions. On encountering a deceased friend after death we meet him in the form of a vision, but he dwells in this reality. They are visions, nevertheless, built up on the basis of recollections of what we have done on earth.

Later, beyond the Moon sphere, this is still the case but now the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies illumine us. It is as if the Sun rose and irradiated the clouds in the Sun sphere. Just as we only learn to know the spiritual hierarchies in the Mercury sphere if we have a religious inclination, so in the Sun sphere we must be permeated by a Jehovah-Christian mood of soul. The outer spiritual beings approach us. Again something remarkable occurs, confirmed by objective occult research. Beyond the Moon the human being is like a cloud woven out of spirit, and when he enters the Mercury sphere, he is illumined by spiritual beings. That is why the Greeks called Mercury the messenger of the Gods. In this sphere lofty spiritual beings illumine man. We gather mighty impressions when we unfold out of the realm of occult investigation what has been given to humanity in the form of art and mythology.

So, Christ-filled, we live into the Sun sphere. As we proceed we enter into a realm where the Sun is now below us, as previously was the earth. We look back towards the Sun, and this is the beginning of something strange. We become aware that we have to recognize yet another being, the spirit of Lucifer.

The nature of Lucifer cannot be rightly evaluated after death unless we have previously done so by means of spiritual science or initiation. It is only when we arrive beyond the Sun sphere that we recognize him as he was before he became Lucifer, when he was still a brother of Christ. Lucifer changed only in the course of time because he remained behind and severed himself from the stream of cosmic progress. His harmful influence does not extend beyond the Sun sphere. Above this there is still another sphere where Lucifer can unfold his activity as it was before the severance. He does not unfold anything harmful there, and if we have united ourselves rightly with the Mystery of Golgotha, we journey onward led by Christ and are rightly received by Lucifer into yet further spheres of the universe. The name Lucifer was correctly chosen, as indeed names were wisely given in olden times. The Sun is below us and so is the light of the Sun. Now we need a new light-bearer who illumines our path into the universe.

Thus, we arrive in the Mars sphere. As long as we dwelt below the Sun, we gazed towards the Sun. The Sun is now below us, and we look out into the widths of universal space. We experience the widths of universal space through what is often referred to but little understood as the harmony of the spheres, a kind of spiritual music. The visions in which we are enveloped hold less and less significance for us. Increasingly what we hear spiritually grows meaningful. The heavenly bodies do not appear as they do in earthly astronomy that measures their relative speeds. In fact, the faster or slower sounding together produces the tones of the music of the spheres. Inwardly the human being feels increasingly that only what he has received of the spirit on earth remains for him in this sphere. This enables him to make the acquaintance of the beings of this sphere and retain his sociability. People who cut themselves off from the spiritual nowadays cannot enter the spiritual world in spite of their moral inclination and religious disposition. Nothing can be done about it, although it is of course possible that such people draw near to the spirit in the next incarnation.

Without exception all materialistically inclined people become hermits once they have gone beyond the Sun into the Mars sphere. It may sound foolish, yet it is true that the Monistic Union will not survive once its adherents have reached the Sun sphere because, as each of them is a hermit, they cannot possibly meet.

A person who has acquired spiritual understanding on earth will have yet another experience on Mars. As we are speaking more intimately today, I shall relate it. The question can be put within our own world conception that we develop as spiritual science in the western world. What has happened to Buddha since his last earthly incarnation? I have mentioned this on previous occasions. Buddha lived as Gautama during his last incarnation six hundred years B.C. If you have studied my lectures carefully you will recall that he has worked since on another occasion when he did not incarnate as Buddha, but only worked spiritually at the birth of the Luke Christ-child. Spiritually he sent his influence from higher spheres unto the earth. But where is he? In Sweden at Norrköping I drew attention to yet another influence of the Buddha on the earth. During the eighth century at a Mystery Center in Europe on the Black Sea, Buddha lived spiritually in one of his disciples. This disciple was later to become Francis of Assisi. So Francis of Assisi was in his previous incarnation a pupil of Buddha and absorbed all the qualities necessary for him to work later in the extraordinary way he did. In many respects his followers cannot be distinguished from those of Buddha, except that the ones were disciples of Buddha and others were Christian. This was due to the fact that in his previous incarnation he was a pupil of Buddha, of the spiritual Buddha. But where is the actual Buddha, the one who lived as Gautama? He became for Mars what Christ has become for the earth. He accomplished a kind of Mystery of Golgotha for Mars and brought about the extraordinary redemption of the Mars inhabitants. He dwells there among them. His earthly life was the right preparation in order to redeem the Mars inhabitants, but his redeeming deed was not quite like the Mystery of Golgotha. It was somewhat different.

Spiritually, man lives in the Mars sphere as indicated. Then he proceeds further and lives into the Jupiter sphere. His connection with the earth, which up until now still continued slightly, has become quite meaningless. The Sun still has a limited influence on him, but now the Cosmos begins to work powerfully upon him. Everything is now working from outside, and man receives cosmic influences. The entire Cosmos works through the harmony of the spheres, which assumes even other forms the further we investigate life between death and rebirth. It is not easy to characterize the change that occurs in the harmony of the spheres. As it cannot be expressed in words, we may use an analogy. The harmony of the spheres transforms itself in the passage from Mars to Jupiter as orchestral music would change into choral music. Jupiter as orchestral music would change into choral music. It becomes increasingly tone, filled with meaning, expressive of its actual being. The harmony of the spheres receives content as we ascend into the sphere of Jupiter, and in the Saturn sphere full content is bestowed upon it as the expression of the Cosmic Word out of which everything has been created and which is found in the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word.” In this Word cosmic order and cosmic wisdom sound forth.

Now the one who is prepared proceeds into other spheres—the spiritual person farther, the less spiritual not so far—but he comes into quite a different condition from the previous one. One might characterize it thus. Beyond Saturn a spiritual sleep begins, whereas during the previous stages one was spiritually awake. From now onward consciousness is dimmed, man dwells in a benumbed condition that makes it possible for him to undergo still other experiences. Just as in sleep we do away with tiredness and gather new forces, so as a result of the dimming of consciousness, when we have become a fully expanded spatial sphere, spiritual forces stream in from the cosmos. First we have sensed it, then we have heard it as a universal orchestra. Then it has sung forth and we have perceived it as the Word. Then we fall asleep and it penetrates us. During this period we again travel through all the spheres, but with a dimmed consciousness. Our consciousness becomes ever dimmer. We now contract, quickly or slowly according to our karma, and during this process of contraction we come once more under the influence of the forces emanating from the Sun system. We journey back from sphere to sphere through the cosmos. Now we are not sensitive to influence from the Moon sphere. We proceed, unaffected, unhampered, as it were, and continue to contract until we unite ourselves with the small human germ that goes through its development before birth.

Unless physiology and embryology receive their facts from occult investigation, they cannot contain the truth, for the embryo is a reflection of the vast cosmos. The whole cosmos is carried within it. The human being carries as a potential power within him what happens physically between conception and birth, and also what he undergoes during the period of cosmic sleep.

Here we touch upon a wonderful mystery. It actually only has been indicated or portrayed in our time by artists. In the future it will be understood better. We shall come to experience what really lives in the Tristan story, in the Tristan mood. We shall understand that the whole cosmos streams into the love of Tristan and Isolde, and we shall recognize it truly as the course of man's development between death and rebirth. What has been gathered from the cosmos, from Saturn, influences lovers who are brought together. Many things are turned into cosmic events. They should not be analyzed intellectually, but we should experience what connects man truly to the whole cosmos. That is why spiritual science will certainly succeed in developing a new sense of devotion, a true religion in people, because it will be understood that often the smallest things have their origin in the cosmos. We learn rightly and wisely to relate what lives in the human breast to its origin when we consider its connection with the cosmos. Thus, from spiritual science an impulse can pour out for the whole of life, for the whole of mankind, towards a really new attitude that has to come. Artists have prepared it, but a true understanding must be created first through a spiritual inclination.

I wanted to convey these indications on the basis of renewed, intimate investigations of the life of man between death and rebirth. There is nothing in spiritual science that will not also move us in our deepest feelings. When rightly understood nothing remains a mere abstract representation. The flower we behold gives more joy to us than when the botanist tears it to shreds. The far distant starry world can evoke a vague sensing in us, but the reality only dawns when we are able to ascend into the heavenly spheres with our soul. We rob the plant by our dissection, but not the starry world when we ascend beyond the plant and recognize how the spirit is related to it.

Kant made the remarkable utterance of a man who understands morality in a one-sided way. Two things moved him deeply—the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Both are really the same. We only gather them into us out of heavenly realms. If we are born with a moral inclination, it means that on the return journey during the condition of sleep the Mercury sphere was able to bestow much upon us. It was the Venus sphere, if we are endowed with religious feelings. As every morning on earth we awaken strengthened and refreshed with new forces, so we are strengthened by the forces given by the cosmos, and we receive them in accordance with our karma. The cosmos can bestow forces that are predispositions from birth inasmuch as karma will allow.

Life between death and rebirth falls into two parts. To begin with it is unalterable. We ascend, the beings approach us. We enter into a condition of sleep and then change can occur. The forces now enter with which we are born. Considering the evolution of man in this way, we see that the human being after death first lives in a world of visions. He only learns to recognize later what he really is as a soul-spiritual being. Beings approach us from outside and they illumine us as the golden light of the morning illuminates the things of the outer world. Thus we ascend and the spiritual world penetrates into us. We do not live into the spiritual world from outside until we have become mature enough to experience what we are in our visionary world, until we encounter the beings of the spiritual world who approach us from all sides like rays.

Transfer yourself into the spiritual world as if you could behold it. There a man emerges, in the form of a visionary cloud, as he truly is. Then the beings can approach and illumine him from outside. We cannot see the rose when it is dark. We switch on the light and because the light falls on the rose we can see it as it really is. So it is when the human being ascends into the spiritual world. The light of spiritual beings draws near to him. But there is one moment when he is clearly visible, illumined by the light of the Hierarchies so that he reflects back the whole of the outer world. The entire cosmos now appears as if reflected by man. You can imagine the process. First you live on as a cloud that is not sufficiently illumined, then you ray back the light of the cosmos and then you dissolve. There is a moment when man reflects back the cosmic light. Up to this point he can ascend. Dante says in his Divine Comedy that in a particular part of the spiritual world one beholds God as man. This is to be taken literally, otherwise it would not make any sense at all. One can of course accept it as a beautiful thought, as aesthetes do, and fail to understand its inner content. This is again an instance where we find the spiritual world mirrored in the works of great artists and poets. This is also the case with the great musicians of more recent times, in a Beethoven, a Wagner and Bruckner. It can happen with one as it did with me a few days ago, when I had to resist a certain piece of knowledge because it was too astonishing.

In Florence we find the Medici Chapel where Michelangelo created two memorial statues to the Medici and four allegorical figures representing “Day” and “Night,” “Dawn” and “Dusk.” One easily speaks about a cold allegory, but when one looks at these four figures they appear anything but a cold allegory. One of the figures represents “Night.” Actually, research in this domain is not particularly enlightened, for you will find it mentioned everywhere that of the two Medici statues depicting Lorenzo and Giuliano, Lorenzo is the thinker. But occult investigation has confirmed that the opposite is true. The one said to be Lorenzo by art historians is Giuliano, and vice versa.

This can be proved historically with reference to the natures of the two personalities. The statues rest on pedestals, and it is likely that in the course of time they have been interchanged. But this is not really what I wanted to say. I only draw your attention to this to show that in this respect outer research misses the mark!

The figure “Night” can be made the object of a fine artistic study. The gesture, the position of the resting body with the head supported by the hand, the arm placed on the leg—in fact the whole arrangement of the figure can be studied artistically. We can sum it up by saying that if one wished to portray the human etheric body in its full activity, then one could only represent it in the form of this figure. That is the outer gesture expressing a human being at rest. When man sleeps, the etheric body is most active. In the figure of “Night” Michelangelo has created the corresponding position. This reclining figure represents the most expressive portrayal of the active etheric or life body.

Now let us go over to “Day” which lies on the opposite side. This represents the most perfect expression of the ego; the figure “Dawn,” of the astral body; “Twilight,” of the physical body. These are not allegories, but truths taken from life, immortalized with remarkable artistic penetration. I kept away from this knowledge, but the more accurately I studied it, the clearer it became. I am no longer astonished at the legend that originated in Florence at the time. It tells that Michelangelo had power over “Night” and when he was alone with her in the Chapel she would stand up and walk about. As she represents the etheric body, it is not surprising. I only mention this in order to show how clear and intelligible everything becomes the more we view it from the aspect of occultism.

The greatest contribution to the development of spiritual life and culture will be accomplished when human beings meet in such a way that each presupposes and then senses the occultly hidden in the other. Then will the right relationship be established from man to man, and love will permeate the soul in a truly human way. Man will meet man in such a way that one will sense the sacred mystery of the other. It is only in such a relationship that the right feelings of love can be cultivated.

Spiritual science will not have to stress continually the outer cultivation of general human love, but it will receive by way of genuine knowledge the power of love in the soul of man.

The clairvoyant encounters on the astral plane a great number of beings who are group souls, whose effects spread over the world like the trade winds.

Along the spinal cord of animals runs a glow-light, the current of which is connected with the group soul. Spiritual beings permeate each other.

From a spiritual perspective it is not astonishing that the group-souls of plants are located at the centre of the Earth. The human being is also connected to the centre of the Earth through his etheric body.

Although plants only possess an etheric body, an astral glow-light swirls about the bud and flower. The principle of repetition applies to the etheric body, it would endlessly shoot out only leaves. The astral body interrupts this influence and produces changes. Wherever we have hair, the etheric body is dominant.

The group-souls of animals are of a kind with which we can communicate, and the highest of them possess characteristics that are in part higher than those of a lower kind of human individualities.

Beings other than those who have an influence on the human blood influence the lymph, which is a juice similar to white blood cells. Others exert an influence on the nutritive juice, the chyle, others on the sense organs.

The forces of the chyle, for example, deliver the fat-containing substances from the chyme into the blood, and the protein-containing ones to the lymph.

Mental and physical health depends on the spiritual beings who regulate these forces.

The Moon beings have a subtle physical body and resemble in their form six to seven year old children; their actions are most often harmful for us, yet these pygmies act unconsciously. They are known as roarers, their sounds are heard far beyond the Moon; their activity is the strongest at the time of the full Moon. They feel most attracted to being in the proximity of mental institutions as well as spiritistic mediums.

If the human beings were masters of their blood, as they must be and as they are destined to be, the Moon beings could do them no harm.

On Venus beings dwell whose thoughtful speech points to a high logic, their countenance reflects a high morality—but even there are some who have predatory desires, and also others who are in all kinds of intermediate stages between gentle and wild. When the Earth’s population will have accepted Christianity and a unified bond of brotherhood spans the Earth in ever-widening circles, then it will draw nearer to the Venus beings. These exert an influence on our nutritional juices. Food is not only a chemical production, but with it a spiritual power flows through the throat. It reflects the actions of the mysterious beings and powers, how they influence the plants; each plant only grows under special conditions, so that in accordance with the ground and soil specific types of people, communities and tribes can form itself.

With our sensory perceptions we always gain spiritual impressions, through sound spiritual streams, likewise through the picture. Through the olfactory sense the deeds of spiritual beings stream in the most intense way through our senses; their dwelling place is in the upper Devachan.

Through history the important role of smell can be proven, which intrigues were spun with it. Musk and patchouli for example, are harmful smells for human beings. Those (olfactory) beings have their physical corporeality on Saturn. Although they lack thinking like we know it through the brain, they are born inventors. They love progress and at their dwelling place they constantly turn things around. Our conservatives would be utterly horrified by them. People who possess ready-wit and presence of mind have something of their nature.

It is really not indifferent which smells we chose to surround us with and which ones we love. That which is incited by harmful smells belongs to the area of black magic.

It is necessary to cultivate the good smells.

The human being is left at the mercy of many powers and towards these he is as blind as a mole. He always becomes aware of only a part of reality, but this reality concerns us—we must have strong impulses to get away from and out of the sphere of influence of harmful demons.

The human being is like the rainbow with its seven colours.

In reality, the physical body is an optical illusion. It is an amalgamation of spiritual efficacies, which intersect in it a thousand times and produce the most manifold effects.

Figure (unclear)

When the sun disappears, the rainbow is gone; when the spiritual forces withdraw, the human being is dead.

Reality must be searched for in the spiritual facts, these have true reality. What we see is the revelation of spiritual activity.

The full weight of facts should cause us to let the good beings act and to expel the demonic ones.

We have to deal with four types of entities that affect the I, through the blood, through the lymph, through the nutritional juices in the chyle, and through the sensory currents.

To protect ourselves from the forces of the Moon, which are harming us, we have to strive first and foremost to gain an independent disposition. Free inner soul forces have a purifying effect on the blood, thus Moon beings cannot harm us.

We approach the forces of Mars that affect the lymph in a good way through clear thought.

Diseases can be a discharge of an uncontrolled hateful mindset. Through such thoughts, a human being harms the people around him—through clear thinking he promotes general health. Thus, it is of greatest importance to always compose oneself and practice good clear thinking.

Noble thoughts must animate our soul towards the Venus beings who act on the chyle juice. Pure intentions determine the sensory-nervous currents on which beings who reside on Saturn exert an influence. Honesty in thinking and a listening attitude keep bad influences away.

Moon beings act instinctively. The Martian beings act consciously up to a degree; the Venus beings act eminently highly spiritually—the bad ones, however, unconsciously.

The human being consciously and unconsciously influences all other beings. We must strive to become more and more conscious so that we can light up stars. Thus, the star to Bethlehem lit up when the mighty individuality of Jesus consciously embodied itself. It is a cosmic event when such high people are born. The initiates know that worlds can collapse when the word "Yahveh" is put together in a special way. Man would not become so strong if he did not have to overcome evil.

The so-called “Traumlied” (Dream Song), which will be performed today, requires a few remarks to be made beforehand.

I already referred to this Dream Song in my Christmas address to you a few days ago. There I was able to say that the establishment of Christmas is by no means an imaginary one, one that has arisen from thought, but that the establishment of Christmas arises during the course of the year from very specific inner processes that can take place in the human soul when this soul comes to clairvoyant visions as the highest fruits of the soul, either through certain powers inherent in the natural course of things or through trained clairvoyance. We can best understand what may actually lie at the root of the human soul by visualizing the following thought.

All the plants, all the sprouting and sprouted growth that sunlight and solar warmth conjure up in spring and allow to flourish throughout the summer, all this, as it were, enters into a winter sleep, into winter darkness, on a kind of winter path at the time when Christmas was moved from the historical consciousness of humanity. The time in which Christmas is celebrated seems to us like sleep, like the darkness of the natural world. It is the opposite with the human soul as it is with the natural world. While the beings of nature descend into darkness and accompany the human soul into this realm of outer eclipse, it becomes, or can become, lighter in the human soul. She can, through the natural course of things, which we have often hinted at as a certain inherited clairvoyance, or through trained clairvoyance, dive straight into the brightest spiritual world, where the secrets of the spirit, hidden behind the outer sensual things, then dawn on her. And just as this descent of the plant world around the time of the winter solstice is subject to a regular law, so too the spiritual blossoming of human beings is subject to such a law, so that it coincides in its luminous brightness with the natural darkness into which the Christmas festival is placed.

It might seem as though such things are only being expressed out of today's schooled clairvoyance, or, as our opponents say, out of mere fantasy. But there will always be a living, fully valid proof of what people and nations experience outwardly. Therefore, it was extremely interesting for me that, after I had spoken about this Christmas clairvoyance within our movement for several years, which introduces us to the meaning of the Christ-being, to the arising of the Christ-being precisely when the human soul is most strongly immersed in clairvoyance , and I once again came to Norway, which is spiritually related to us, for a lecture cycle — that a remarkable vision was brought to me up there, of which, however, anyone who is familiar with such things must immediately say: Yes, it is reminiscent of many similar visions that have always been experienced by Germanic peoples, visions that many people have seen with their clairvoyant vision during the period of the thirteen nights from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, January 6. There the human soul can look into the spiritual world and see the fate of the human soul in the disembodied state, when it goes through Kamaloka and it then becomes clear to it how a relationship is established between the higher spiritual worlds and the deeds of people here on earth. And it is interesting that the person of whom we are told in this dream song and to whom these visions in this Nordic region are attributed through this dream song is a person who bears the name Olaf Åsteson. It is said of him that during these thirteen nights he underwent in a kind of clairvoyant experience what the Nordic man can feel as a vision in his way. He first learned how human deeds continue to unfold after the human being has passed through the gate of death, but he also learned how that which we call the Christ-being , how the office of judge of Jesus, the Christ, enters into the Nordic spiritual order of life after death, as the old world judge, the so-called face of Jehovah, the archangel Michael. So that, in addition to everything else that appears to the clairvoyance of Olaf Åsteson, the penetration of Christianity into the north can be heard, and that everything becomes clairvoyantly clear to him during the period of the Jesus birthday festival in the thirteen nights that he sleeps through.

Which consciousness becomes clear? It is now strange that this is already hinted at in the name, which quite obviously originally meant in the north such a human consciousness, which is inherited from the forefathers, from the ancestors. Olaf is truly himself in those times when the ancient, clairvoyant ancestral consciousness arises again in him. He who has inherited his consciousness, his inner being, from his ancestors: that is contained in the name Olaf. And Äste means love, the love that is passed down in the blood from generation to generation. Olaf is the son of this love, Åsteson, is the consciousness that has been passed down from generation to generation from the old clairvoyant times, is like resurrected ancestry. Olaf, who is born with this clairvoyant consciousness, recognizes the destiny of the human soul, and at the same time sees the intervention of the being we celebrate in Jesus' birthday festival as his entry into earthly existence. And strangely, while such visions have certainly always been experienced, especially in Germanic countries, this dream song seems to have been forgotten. In 1850, the preacher Landstad set out to collect folk songs in Telemarken, a lonely mountain valley where few people lived at the time. And among the many folk songs, he did not know since when, he did not know for how long, the song of Olaf Åsteson was alive in the vernacular – the song of Olaf Åsteson, who in the thirteen nights saw the destiny of the human soul after it had passed through the gate of death, and the coming into the world of Christ Jesus. He did not know when this song of initiation of the human soul came into being, for it was always recited in the vernacular, leaning on a musical mood. The few people in the lonely mountain valley enjoyed it, and there it was read by the preacher Landstad, in that it spoke to him of the secrets that had been uncovered – as if from the folk mind itself – about initiation in ancient times. And so it came to be that Landstad found it in the vernacular. Many people naturally believe that it alludes to Saint Olaf, who introduced Christianity in 1030 AD and whose mother was called Love. This is the case with many things that have both a historical and a spiritual significance.

Furthermore, it is interesting that this dream song has now quickly penetrated a large part of the Nordic people and lives in the hearts of the Norwegian people. There is, after all, a great movement in Norway to bring the old days back to life, and with that to revive the old language, which is very close to the ancient Germanic language, the Nordic language, in contrast to the Danish language, which was introduced later. Now this song is in a language that echoes the oldest language that has been preserved there, and the people who want to revive their antiquity in the first place, to whom this song spoke to the heart, and in the last ten to fifteen years it has not only penetrated into the hearts of the people, but also into the schools. It is sung and recited everywhere, and everywhere you hear, so to speak, where the soul awakens to the old folkways, the dream song of Olaf Åsteson, who in the thirteen nights from Christmas to January 6, so to speak, was naturally initiated into the sacred secrets of humanity. And for this reason, we would like to present this dream song of Olaf Åsteson to you today. Miss von Sivers will recite it. I tried to make a provisional arrangement so that it could be recited in German. Mrs. Lindholm helped me to make the peculiar language in which the song lives and now lives more and more and has become an aria of folk song possible in German. So we will now hear it in this provisional arrangement, which I was able to create in a few days.

The Dream Song

I.

So listen to my song!
I will sing to you
of a nimble youth:

It was of Olaf Åsteson,
Who once so long slept.

Of him I will sing.

II.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A heavy sleep soon fell on him,
And he could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
He slept for so long!
He could not wake
Before the thirteenth day
The bird spread its wings!

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
I will sing of him.

Olaf could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The sun shone over the mountains.
Then he saddled his nimble horse
And rode hastily to the church.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
I will sing of him.

The priest was already standing
At the altar reading the mass,
When at the church door
Olaf sat down to tell
The content of many dreams,
Which in the long sleep
Filled his soul.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing to you.

And young and old alike
Listened attentively to the words,
Which spoke of his dreams of Olaf.

It was Olaf Åsteson,
Who once slept so long.
Of him I will sing to you.

III.

“I went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A strong sleep soon embraced me;
And I could not awaken
Before on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I was raised up in the clouds
And thrown into the bottom of the sea,
And anyone who wants to follow me
Cannot be overcome by serenity.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I was raised up to the height of the clouds
Then plunged into gloomy swamps,
Beholding the terrors of hell
And also the light of heaven.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

And I had to travel in the depths of the earth,
Where the streams of the gods rush terribly.
I was unable to see them,
But I could hear the rushing.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

My black horse neighed not,
And my hounds did not bark,
Nor sang the morn's bird,
There was a single miracle everywhere.

The moon shone bright
And far the paths extended.

I must have traveled in the ghost land
er Dornenheide weites Feld,
My scarlet cloak was torn from me
And also the nails of my feet.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I came to the Gjallarbridge.
In highest wind heights this hangs,
With red gold it is studded
And nails with sharp points it has.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far.

The ghostly snake struck me,
The ghostly dog bit me,
The bull stood in the middle of the road.
These are the three creatures of the bridge.
They are of a terribly evil nature.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out wide.

The dog is snappy,
And the snake wants to sting,
The bull, he threatens mightily!
They let no one cross the bridge
Who does not want to honor the truth!

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I crossed the bridge,
Which is narrow and dizzying.
I had to wade through the mire....
They are now behind me!

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I had to wade through swamps,
They seemed bottomless to my feet.
When I crossed the bridge,
I felt earth in my mouth
Like dead people lying in graves.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out far and wide.

Then I came to water,
In which the ice masses shone brightly like blue flames
...
And God, he directed my mind
So that I avoided the area.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched far and wide.

I turned my steps to the winter path.
On the right I could see it:
I looked as if into paradise,
Which shone brightly in the distance.

The moon shone brightly
And the paths stretched out wide.

And God's high Mother,
I saw her there in the splendor!
To Brooksvalin to go,
So she called me, announcing,
That souls are judged there!

The moon shone bright
And the paths stretched far and wide.

IV.

"In other worlds I dwelt
Through many a night's length;
And God only can know
How much of soul-afflict I saw —

In Brooksvalin, where souls
To the world's judgment are subject.

I could see a young man
who had murdered a boy:
Now he had to carry him forever
on his own arms!
He stood in the mud so deep

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

I also saw an old man,
He wore a cloak of lead;
Thus he was punished for Living in greed on the earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

And men appeared,
Who carried fiery substances;
Dishonesty weighs
On their poor souls

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the judgment of the world.

I could also see children
Who had glowing coals beneath their feet;
They did evil to their parents in life,
Which weighed very heavily on their spirits

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

And to approach that house,
It was laid upon me,
Where witches were to work
In the blood they had angered in life,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

From the north, in wild hordes,
There came riding evil spirits,
Led by the prince of darkness,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

What came from the north
Seemed evil above all else;
He rode in front, the prince of darkness,
On his black steed.

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the world's judgment.

But from the south came
Other hosts in lofty calm.
Saint Michael rode ahead
At Jesus Christ's side

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the world's judgment.

The souls, laden with sins,
They had to tremble in fear!
The tears ran in streams
As evil deeds follow

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

In majesty stood Michael
And weighed the human souls
On his scales of sin,
And standing by in judgment
The Judge of the world, Jesus Christ.

In Brooksvalin, where souls
Are subject to the Last Judgment.

V.

"Blessed is he who in life
Gives shoes to the poor;
He need not walk with bare feet
In the field of thorns.

Then speaks the tongue of the scales,
And world truth
Sounds in the spiritual state.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives bread to the poor!
He cannot be hurt
By the dogs in the other world.

Thus the tongue of Libra speaks,
And world truth
Resounds in the spiritual state.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives grain to the poor!
He cannot be threatened
By the sharp horn of the bull
When he must cross the Gjallar bridge.

Then the tongue of Libra speaks,
And world truth
Sounds in the mind.

How blessed is he who in earthly life
Clothes to the poor gives!
He cannot freeze to death
The ice masses in Brooksvalin.

Then speaks the tongue of Libra,
And world truth
Sounds in the mind.

VI.

And young and old alike
Listened intently to the words,
Which told of the dreams of Olaf. You have slept for so long... Wake up now, O Olaf Åsteson!

It is a time, in which in quick succession as a result of many deaths the connection of the human being with the spiritual world approaches us. It is the world the human being enters when he goes through the gate of death. Under quite special circumstances these quick successive, almost simultaneous deaths face us. These special circumstances are given because numerous earthly people go through the gate of death that could have lived still for decades on earth under the circumstances that one may assume for earthly people. And whenever the human being goes through the gate of death prematurely as it were, extraordinary conditions come also into being.

We know that the human being going through the gate of death leaves behind, hands over as it were what falls off as his physical body from him to the earth element. We know that then the so-called etheric body is considered as the second that, however, also separates from the individuality. Then the individuality, consisting of astral body and ego, passes the spiritual regions between death and new birth. The etheric body, however, keeps on working, detached from the ego and astral body. This etheric body, which now enters the spiritual world next to us, the etheric world, is different with each human being. You may imagine that an etheric body of somebody who passes the gate of death prematurely looks differently as that of somebody who has lived his life till old age. For the etheric body which has to go with an early deceased human being through the gate of death would have the power to supply the physical body with life under normal conditions still for many years, decades. Now a force does not get lost in the spiritual world just as little as in the physical world. This force which supplies, otherwise, the physical body with life continues to exist. So that we can say: if now thousands go through the gate of death, nevertheless, almost every day, etheric bodies enter into the elemental world which are still capable of surviving, which have other forces in themselves than older etheric bodies have. What happens now with these etheric bodies still capable of surviving?

Yesterday, I spoke of the real folk-soul in the public lecture. This folk-soul is a real being. It needs quite particular forces just in our time. It needs such forces also at other times, of course, but particularly in our time. This folk-soul takes up these etheric bodies still capable of surviving. The human being himself goes other ways with his ego and astral body—those ways which prepare him then for his next life on earth. But these etheric bodies separate from the human individualities, they go over into the being, the substance of the folk-souls. After such a destiny-burdened time as we now experience we go towards a time when the folk-soul contains the etheric bodies in itself—like forces living in it—which have been handed over by those who have gone in the battles through the gate of death. A time comes near when the spiritual scientist can know that that is not lost which was sacrificed on the altar of the big events. A time comes near when effective strength emits from the folk-soul into the individual souls, that simultaneously goes out from that which in the first, second, third decades of youth numerous people have taken up here on earth, which they could still have kept for many decades, which they have handed over, however, to the folk-soul. This is in the forces in future the folk-soul drips into the individual souls; that is not lost.

Let us take that really to heart. Imagine how our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual may be enlivened in our feeling life if we keep in mind that we can speak of the folk-soul in future that the fruits of the sacrificial deaths are in it as effective forces. That is particularly important in the next time. In other times this would be different, for the next time; however, it will be significant because of a quite special reason.

We lived in a bad time of materialism. The souls, who could not approach spiritual science, were immersed in a strong aura of materialism. To fight against this aura is the task of the folk-soul in the next time. Forces will flow towards this folk-soul for the fight of materialism by the fact that the etheric bodies of the early dead linger on in this folk-soul, just linger on as forces. These etheric bodies—sacrificed on the altar of human evolution—will be the strongest fighters against materialism.

So we have to make a distinction between that which moves as a single human being through the regions of the spiritual world and remains united with the human individuality, from that which the etheric body delivers on its detour to the general community; which keeps on working in the spiritual general community in the sense cited here, in the substance of the folk-souls.

That may stamp itself especially deeply in our souls if we put two human types concerning this spiritual difference before our souls: the warrior killed on the battlefield who goes, completely devoted to the task of his people, through the gate of death—who as it were at the moment when he enters the battlefield when he only resolves to enter the battlefield must also resolve to face death. Compare this human type with the ascetic. Just if you consider what the forces of the etheric body signify in human life, you get an idea of the difference of the warrior killed on the battlefield and the ascetic. The ascetic works on himself. He tries to work on himself in such a way that he overcomes the physical in himself completely, that he becomes still free from this physical during his lifetime. Since the ascetic works that way, a significant transformation also takes place in his etheric body. He uses up, so to speak, the forces of this etheric body the strongest to incorporate them in his ego and astral body. What makes the ascetic free from the physical, this is of benefit completely for his individuality, and this serves the transformation of his individuality. So that such a human being who becomes an ascetic can serve humankind only on the detour of that which he makes out of himself. He, however, who frees himself from the physical body in early youth, because he has to surrender to the requests of war, hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general community; he incorporates them to the general work. You have to feel this difference, it is a significant difference. It points us again a little bit to that which prevails as a reality in the human life. It is also significant to look just at the path through the gate of death concerning the etheric body.

At the moment when the human being goes through the gate of death, he is still united with his etheric body. We have often described what happens to this. This connection with the etheric body gives the human being the possibility to live in all ideas that the last life aroused in him to merge completely like in a mighty tableau in everything that the last life has given him. But this is a kind of vision that lasts for a relatively short time; it fades away with the liberation of the etheric body from the ego and astral body. Yes, you can say, it immediately begins to fade away after the moment of death. The impressions become weaker and weaker which are still due to the possession of the etheric body. Then that makes itself felt which is authoritative after the physical death. What is authoritative there is properly imagined only to a lower degree by the people who want to get ideas about the life after death. It is even difficult to coin words for those quite different conditions, compared with the conditions we experience in our physical bodies. One thinks simply that the human being after he has gone through the gate of death has only again to get a consciousness for himself. It is not really that way. The human being experiences no lack of consciousness when he passes the gate of death. On the contrary, his soul experiences a superabundance of consciousness. He lives and weaves completely in consciousness, and as well as the strong sunlight dazes the eyes, he is dazed at first by consciousness, he has too much consciousness. First, this consciousness must be dampened, so that he can orientate himself in the life, into which he has entered after death. This lasts for a longer time; more and more moments happen in which the consciousness makes such an orientation possible. The soul becomes conscious for a more or less short time and then it again enters into a condition similar to sleep as you may call it. Then such moments become gradually longer and longer, the soul comes more and more in such conditions, until it is able to orient itself entirely in the spiritual world.

Also this makes difficulties to get clear ideas of the way how the soul perceives his environment after it went through the gate of death. We buried a dear anthroposophical friend in the last week, and on account of the wish of the dead I had the task to make a funeral celebration for her friends at the place where she died. In the time I spoke and directed my words to the dead person, the dead person was as it were like sleeping. Then the heat had an effect, the flames seized the body, and at this moment a moment of consciousness came over the soul, like a moment of orientation. The dead had the whole image of the funeral celebration and the funeral speech before herself, as somebody has something spatial at the same time before himself. Time becomes there really space. You do not see the past as you see the past running in time during life, but you see the past as something spatial before yourself. So that that which had already run off, which had happened a quarter of an hour before, then stood before the soul of the dead like the first lighting up moment of consciousness. Then a state of daze came again in the flooding light of consciousness to go in this condition towards those other conditions in which the soul gradually learns to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

It is important if we want to really get good ideas about the life after death for ourselves that we understand these quite different conceptions of time, that we see how there time is not something of which one can say, it has passed, and one remembers of the matters that happened in time, but the past stands there. Like the desk stands there and this desk does not go along with me when I go over there and look back at it, in the same way that remains after death which happened, which can be just only reminded, stands there; and the dead looks back at it as one looks back in the body at the spatial objects. This is very important to understand. Furthermore, that is of particular importance to understand that we really remain in connection, that our life on earth remains in connection with that what we experience between death and a new birth; at least it remains in close connection up to the point in time I called midnight hour in my last mystery drama.¹

Nevertheless, I would not like to fail to give our friends ideas of these relations to be difficultly described bit by bit. At that which we as earthly people have experienced between birth and death the soul, which has gone to death, looks back—but not, as if that which one has experienced there only would be there, but some conditions of life of the dead play a part in a peculiar way. The condition of life of the dead is not the same as the condition of life between birth and death of living people. The condition is such a one that the human being feels enclosed by his skin and looks out into the world by means of his senses. As soon as one enters as a dead the spiritual world, he/she has flowed out into the whole spiritual world. The soul feels like fulfilling the whole spiritual world bit by bit. What the human being has experienced during his physical earth existence, he feels like something that remains to him—not as a physical body, of course, but as that which constitutes the form, the forces of the physical body. This remains after death, but the soul has it as somebody has the human eye in the physical body. As you have the eye for seeing, you have then yourself, the life on earth, which you have experienced, as a cosmic sense-organ to perceive the world with it. What our eye is now for our body, this is our life on earth for our spiritual life after death.

Our life on earth is implanted to us as it were as an eye, as a sense-organ. You will understand gradually only after longer meditation what significant, actually, is pronounced that our life on earth becomes a sense-organ for our life between death and a new birth. That resembles to the process when the human being falls asleep and leaves the physical and etheric bodies with his ego and astral body. When initiation comes into being and the human being starts beholding in the spiritual world outside his physical and etheric bodies, then he knows: in the spiritual world you perceive like by means of a sense with the spiritual part of your physical body, and you think in the spiritual world with your etheric body. Your etheric body is real like your brain in the spiritual world and your former physical body is a sense-organ. However, you yourself are poured out with all your vital forces over the spiritual worlds. You have spread, you do not feel crowded together to one place because of your skin, and you feel poured out, extended over the spiritual world.

This is a quite different existence. With it is connected that somebody who himself enters the spiritual world, either by death, or by initiation, lives united with the other beings of the spiritual world, with beings of higher hierarchies or with human souls, which live between death and a new birth. However, he lives united with them in such a way that he does not experience them as you meet earthly men outside where you are separated spatially from them. But he experiences them as being contained in a common spiritual space, penetrating each other. What another soul experiences one does not experience by the fact that it says something, like with earthly people, but that one settles in the other soul and witnesses its thoughts. Hence, it is also that you can only be certain to experience that in yourself really what, for example, a dead experiences if you know: you are as it were in the dead, you do not only report something that you hear after the model of something which you experience on earth, but you hear: the dead himself speaks through your being.

I would also like to explain that to you by an example².

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 the eternal life;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted meditation, 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 for work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
to fulfil my human duty;

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

I would like to put this before your souls as a clear example of the mysterious course which the human soul takes just through the point in time which separates the life between birth and death from the life between death and a new birth, where everything that was still external experience to us in the life on earth becomes internal wealth of the soul and lives in us that way. Here one takes on spiritual science still as something external. Immediately after death, however, it appears how it lives in the soul, yes, we say, as well as muscular strength now lives in our physical bodies. You have to feel that once if you want to grasp the internal sense, the internal meaning of that which spiritual science can be for the human soul. Then bit by bit you get a conception—you must have patience—of the quite different relations in the spiritual world. If we form words and concepts of the relations in the sensory world, we can give symbols at most of that what is in the spiritual world. You must work in patience towards concepts and sensations and feelings which express that fairly correctly and truly what the relations of the spiritual world are.

The logic of the life on earth—yes, there is only one logic of the life on earth—is already sometimes rather fragile for the life on earth. I have already stated how one can pass the real facts using the logic of the life on earth. I have often stated the example: assuming a person is walking along a brook. We see him falling into the brook. We rush over and find out that he is already dead. We see a stone where the person has fallen into the brook, and can now form a quite logical, but superficial judgment. We can say: the person has tripped over the stone, has fallen into the brook and drowned. He has died the death of drowning.—But this can be quite wrong. If one examines the matter purely anatomically, it can become apparent that the person had experienced a heart failure; thereby he fell in the water. The heart failure is the cause of his death. With the everyday correct logic we conclude wrongly. Such conclusions—this would be noted, only by the way—are made perpetually in human life and in particular in science. Science is full of such conclusions where cause and effect are mistaken.

But the matter becomes important when questions of human destiny are considered. We have experienced such a stroke of fate in Dornach in autumn, which is instructive in the most important sense. One evening the little, seven-year-old son of our member, Theo Faiss, who was an exceptionally dear, bright child, was reported missing. It was just during an evening lecture. The mother searched for the child, it was not to be found. When the lecture was over, one heard, actually, only that the mother misses her boy, and one could imagine nothing else that the death of the boy were in connection with a removal van, which had toppled over. A member of our society had let send his pieces of furniture in a removal van, and this removal van had toppled over in the evening where the boy stood. It was ten a quarter clock in the evening and we applied everything to lift the carriage. The mobilised military met us to help, to lift this removal van. The removal van was lifted, and one found the boy crushed under the carriage. Now think, in this area a removal van did never go generally before; nor thereafter. The boy was here, one could state this later by all possible things one calls incidents and chances, just in the time—it has concerned only minutes, around a moment—where the removal van toppled over. However, it was strange that first of all those who were here where the carriage had toppled over were only concerned to bring the horses to safety. One had no idea that the removal van had fallen on the little boy.

The child was dead. The materialist view may say: well, the removal van toppled over by chance there at this hour; the child got under it and was crushed. The materialist view will say that, of course. Before the spiritual view this is completely nonsense. For that what is there is the karma of the child, and this karma of the child steered all single circumstances. It has also steered the removal van there just at the hour when the child needed the death because the karma of the child wanted it. The karma of the child had expired. We deal here with the necessity to reverse cause and effect.

By such relations and the view of them one is able to ascend bit by bit to the real view of life which persuades us to reverse that what the external appearance presents to the senses. We must often turn around this. But the matter becomes quite significant when one experiences after that what comes into being by such a fact. The soul of a human being goes through the gate of death. This soul was embodied for seven years in a physical body. Why could the little Theo not have become also seventy, eighty, ninety years, externally considered if the karma had not made it impossible? An etheric body is there which could have supplied life still for decades; an etheric body which was really filled by forces of the eternal, of the good. It was an excellent boy.

You know that then the real individuality, the ego and astral body, go on their way. But the etheric body frees itself, this etheric body, in which all tender, nice forces are woven which have developed in the childhood, in which, however, all forces also live which come from the former incarnations. Now imagine what you have before you facing such an etheric body. The individuality comes from the former incarnations. It embodies itself anew in this incarnation; it implies what comes from previous incarnations. The life of this incarnation is as it were the fruit, realising that what was cause in a life in previous incarnations. Through the whole life these fruits could have enjoyed life to the full. Then everything would have gone into this etheric body what comes from the fruits of the former incarnations. This has not happened. In return everything is in this etheric body what still has causes in the former incarnations. And now the strangest thing is: somebody who tries to explore the aura of our Dornach construction finds this etheric body of the little Theo in the aura of the Dornach construction. There he is, there he hovers over, lives around the Dornach construction. He who has to deal with the Dornach construction or will still deal after that late autumn afternoon in which the little Theo went through the gate of death knows what has been changed in the spiritual aura of the Dornach construction by the fact that that etheric body was incorporated into this aura. This etheric body contains the forces which would else have been used for decades for the supply of a physical human body, and this etheric body is just poured out in this aura of the construction.

So mysterious are the ways that wisdom flooding through the world has to experience with its creatures. There are only correct ideas of the kind how the whole human life runs—to which in the most remarkable sense the life between death and a new birth belongs—if one goes into details of these matters. Because our anthroposophical movement should really be not anything abstract, but something in which we are with our whole being, in which also those are who just belong to us, we are also allowed to speak of such matters. We unite not only like other societies with a certain program, but we want to be with our whole souls in our spiritual-scientific movement. We want to conceive this spiritual-scientific movement as a concrete stream to which everybody belongs who really bears witness to it in a feeling way. We can say: there we speak as somebody just speaks in an enlarged family about the relatives there or there. For that what touches us, so to speak, in an informally familiar way gives us the highest, the most significant, the most important explanations of the spiritual world at the same time.

From such an attitude I would like to mention the death of one of our friends who are just often affected by deaths in the last time. Our infinitely dear friend Fritz Mitscher has recently gone through the gate of death. The necessity arose to me to subsume in words what the own soul felt, while it leant to the soul, which has just gone through the gate of death. Notice the difference between the preceding words which I have read out to you, and the words which I want to read out to you now. The words that I have read out just here are out of the soul of the dead. The words which I will read out to you now are stimulated in my own soul at the sight of the dead Fritz Mitscher, who was still combined with his etheric body. It is the impression which the dead made that is reported now in these words. Perhaps, you know that Fritz Mitscher was already as a young teacher at the most different place, especially in Berlin, active for our Anthroposophical Society. And many of us also know that he was just inclined in such a nice way to combine everything that he could acquire of earthly science and learning with the noblest, nicest anthroposophical consciousness. This also expresses itself after his death when in his whole being was combined what he was, and what shines now again after his death from the soul relieved of the body which still had its etheric body. And it seems to me that this had to be expressed what Fritz Mitscher was after death with the words, which I had to send on to him at the cremation.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to your life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our soul's entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Unlost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

These are the words which were sent to the dead out of the being of the dead. And then some time passed after these words were spoken at the cremation, and out of the being of the dead, not yet out of the well-organised consciousness, but like from the being sounding, there the following words sounded now from the dead in the night after the cremation.

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within myself
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

The words sounded back that way. Only after that I myself found out that two stanzas which are in the middle can be converted immediately from “you” to “I” and from “to you” to “to me.” I did not know that before. Since I heard the stanzas as I read them to you first. And now they came back from the being of the dead, spoken by him:

That shows that as well as in the time in which the consciousness does not yet have the shape which the soul has then again after this time through the whole realm between death and new birth, it shows as even in lively transformation, in meaningful transformation the words come from the dead. You have only to feel the spiritual-scientific world view becoming really alive creating the connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. For it may run like a shiver through our souls when we feel at such an example how the words are called to the dead—and he returns them changed to us. Like we feel on one side that they went to the dead because they resound from him, not only like an echo, but meaningfully changed by him.

These are matters that give us the certainty, the confidence also for our present that the souls living here in earthly bodies are connected with the spiritual powers weaving and prevailing in the world. In this stream of prevailing and weaving spiritual powers the deceased are woven, are in it, because in it they experience their further postmortal destinies.

If we allow the connection of the physical and spiritual worlds to have an effect on our souls, we can contemplate various things. I pointed already once also here to the fact that with this cooperation of the physical and spiritual worlds proceeding in the concrete sense also the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha comes near to us. We know that now we only start contemplating the sense and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ Being by spiritual science completely. Up to now the human beings did that by means of reason. And what did result from this reason? If the effectiveness of Christ had depended in the human earth-life on that what the human beings have understood of it, the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse on earth could had been not very strong. The human beings have understood theological squabbling, all kinds of disputes in their reason, that was they understood of Christianity. But Christ has had an effect out of lively power.

I have probably stated also here the example of the battle which Constantine fought against Maxentius, by which the fate of Europe was decided at that time. Thus Christianity was only accepted, actually, and became then the ruling power in Europe. This battle was not won through the art of strategy nor by the armies of Constantine. Maxentius had to defend Rome. By looking up in the Sibylline Books and by a dream, which he had, it was put in his head that he should lead his army out of Rome. Then he would destroy the enemies of Rome. His army was five times stronger than that of Constantine, who approached Rome. Now he really led his army out of Rome, strategically the most inept what he could do. Since according to strategy everything spoke well of letting his army in Rome and letting the hostile armies approach. However, he led his army out of Rome. Also on the side of Constantine who led his armies against Rome these were not warlike-scientific reasons which gave him the strength, but he also had a dream. The dream said to him: if you allow bearing the monogram of Christ in front of your army, you will defeat Rome.—At that time and still for later the whole map of Europe was transformed through the victory of Constantine with his weaker army. Also the spiritual life of Europe has thereby become different. That what people could understand in those days would not have been sufficient to accomplish these achievements. The Christ Impulse had an effect in the subconsciousness of the human beings, in that what lived in the depths of the souls what people only could dream of, what came up to them at most in dream pictures.

We have a later, quite important example of the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse with the Maid of Orleans.³ Who studies history really, not as one often studies history today, but that one tries to recognise the real connections, he can know that again the fate of Europe was absolutely determined for the next centuries through that what the Maid of Orleans did. Neither strategy, nor the wisdom of the politicians, but that what the shepherd girl of Orleans did was vital for the destiny of Europe, especially also for the destiny of France. Now, however, the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans, through its Michaelic representative. It worked into the soul of the Maid of Orleans. Her soul was completely infiltrated, inspired by the Christ Impulse. Exactly in the same way as in those days when the battle was decided between Constantine and Maxentius the Christ Impulse worked, without people knowing about it in their upper consciousness. The Christ Impulse also worked there, when the Maid of Orleans sent the French armies against the English armies. The whole continent would have changed, also England if at that time France had not won. Also England would not be that what she has become if she had not been defeated. However, the subconscious forces which came up in dream pictures caused the victory. The abilities of the Maid of Orleans were inspired by them. So that you can say: what the Maid of Orleans did was influenced through a more or less unaware initiation. It is of course an unaware, you may also say, an atavistic initiation. A clean psychic vessel had to be seized just unconsciously, as it was the Maid of Orleans through whom the Christ Impulse could work, by his Michaelic representative—a clean vessel.

Let us look at the matter more exactly. If anybody today goes consciously through an initiation—there are rules for that. The ABC is in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” There are rules by which one is able to develop gradually. One cannot speak of such a conscious initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. But a spirit which is otherwise not united with the human soul had to take its place in this human soul, to permeate this human soul. Especially favourable circumstances had to come into being. A spirit of higher spheres cannot always intervene in the souls who are enabled for it. Especially favourable circumstances must occur, so that a single human being comes in connection with higher worlds without initiation, without conscious work on himself. Especially favourable circumstances exist in the time when as it were the spirit of the earth is particularly awake: in the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. When in summer the sun stands highest, when the physical heat radiates mostly to the earth, then the conditions of initiation are the worst because then the spirit of the earth is sleeping. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in the winter darkness, at the winter solstice.

Hence, it is not only a legend, but corresponds to a truth when it is told in old legends that during the thirteen nights which precede the 6th January certain particularly suitable souls were initiated, so that they could go into the spiritual world, that they could experience there what we call Kamaloka and devachan. We here in Hanover probably remember that the legend of Olaf Åsteson⁴ was once reported who—sleeping for these thirteen nights—went through the whole way which can be the way through Kamaloka and devachan. Olaf Åsteson tells then what he experienced during these thirteen days.

If the external physical darkness of the earth is the strongest, the conditions are the most favourable to lead a soul into in the spiritual world. It would have been the most favourable for souls like the Maid of Orleans, who are initiated for the whole humankind for such an action not by directly conscious exercising but by especially favourable circumstances, if she could have slept during the thirteen nights. Thus she could have been brought into connection with the spiritual world; if she could have accomplished that in a sleeping state. The Maid of Orleans went really through such a sleeping state. For the Maid of Orleans spent these thirteen days up to the 6th January in the body of her mother in a condition in which the human being still sleeps. Since the human being only wakes up for the physical life when he is born and does the first gasp. With the Maid of Orleans the last sleeping nights of the embryo fall in the time of the thirteen nights, because she was born on the 6th January. There you have a deeply significant internally historical connection. There you have the basis of the mission of the Maid of Orleans, who was chosen to receive the initiation as this clean soul before her first gasp during the last thirteen nights of the pregnancy of her mother, in this sleeping state, just under the especially favourable circumstances of the earth-life. The calendar shows it simply to you. Open the calendar: on the 6th January you find the birthday of the Maid of Orleans. The calendar shows you how here a deeply intimate connection exists between the physical world and the processes in the spiritual world. Of course, it was necessary that the soul of the Maid of Orleans was prepared by her preceding incarnations. During the thirteen nights this soul and that what could come from this soul made it possible just at this point of the human development that the spiritual world was able to influence the physical world.

The spiritual world with its ingredients is always there. The spiritual world is always among us. The ways of working in the physical world are manifold, which the spiritual world selects. And our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual world becomes stronger and stronger, the more we express the connections between the physical and spiritual worlds especially deeply in such details, while such connections stand vividly in front of our souls.

On the other side, one must say: also that what happens here in the physical world may prepare a kind of connection with the spiritual world and our physical world. And if anybody who has taken up that as intensely as Fritz Mitscher what flows through our spiritual science, and then went across in the spiritual world in the thirtieth year of his life—on the 26th February his thirtieth birthday would be—and has infiltrated his soul with that what can penetrate as a strength into the soul by our spiritual science, then we have a powerful individuality who will further stay together with us in the spiritual world who is an assistant of the most immense kind. And if you imagine how difficult the striving for spiritual science is just in our time, in this time which is, nevertheless, completely impregnated with materialism. Then one may also say that he who is connected with all the fibers of his life with the spiritual world has the biggest hopes for those who can become spiritual assistants who become spiritual assistants after they have laid down their physical bodies. One does not need to say, of course, that the passage through the gate of death is never allowed to be a personal decision, but that it must be caused only by karma. These spiritual assistants are those who give us consolation and hope if we see how difficult it is, just in the present, to provide for our spiritual-scientific movement because of the manifold inhibitions. However, we know how higher spiritual forces have an effect on earth, so that the current of the spiritual worlds flows into the purposes of the physical earth. Thus the unused forces of the human souls come up to the spiritual worlds to work there just with their forces, combined with other forces. Hence, I said the words to our Fritz Mitscher in my obituary really from the bottom of my heart:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

When we try to advance our spiritual movement to its purpose honestly, then we are aware that in the forces which we apply here on earth also those forces are working which our friends already brought through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

We summarise now all that also for the understanding of the general situation of the world. On one side, the human souls who go now due to the destiny-burdened events through the gate of death carry their etheric bodies to the folk-souls. On the other side, they carry everything that they have summoned up in sacrificial devotion, while they have gone just by these events through the gate of death with their individualities. And all that will be poured out as effectiveness into the coming age. It is the matter of the human beings who then experience peace to produce the connection with that what will be there in the spiritual world. Those who today experience as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters or other relatives the death on the battlefield of a human being dear to them can take up the fact in their consciousness that with the etheric body something extremely significant passes over into the general effectiveness of the earthly humankind for the future. Not only that they can know that the individualities go invigorated by death to a later stronger life on earth, but they can also know: that what the warrior after death has handed over to the folk-soul weaves and lives really. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers have those who have gone young through the gate of death twice, one must say, now in the folk-soul and also as individuality. This idea will only be of great value when it has completely become feeling, so that one does not only speak of immortality, but that one knows in the feeling: the dead are there, are among us. If this bond is such a strong one that also for our feeling death will be, actually, an untruth. Since the dead can appear even more real than often in the physical embodiment if he can take together everything of his being and if he does no longer have his physical body as an obstacle. Immense currents of consolation, currents of internal strength of self-consolation go out from that what spiritual science can give to the souls in lively consciousness and lively sensations. When this is felt that way, then in particular those who bear witness to spiritual science can look full of consolation into the future. They can feel something like twilight in the turn of an era during these present, destiny-burdened events after which a time of sunny peace will also follow. But important will be in the spiritual effectiveness of this time of sunny peace that what is won through the sacrificial deaths of so many people.

That can be made fruitful here on earth particularly creating a bridge, a connection between the living human beings who are incarnated in physical bodies here on earth and the souls who are above and want to radiate down that which they have taken with them. Here it is where the real understanding of spiritual science knocks on our hearts and asks us to do that what we can do from the consciousness we have gained by spiritual science what we can do feeling, so that the great, destiny-exciting, painful events of the present time, as far as we are concerned, contribute to the fertility and welfare of humankind. Those who know something about spiritual science can know feeling and feel knowing by which means the bridge is built up into the spiritual world: because the souls, who remained on earth, send the thoughts and sensations which can be enkindled by spiritual science. The horizon for that will be a horizon of peace. Above, the souls will be who send down spiritual beams of light. Below, human beings must be who have learnt to send such thoughts and feelings out of their souls from below which are stimulated by spiritual science. If there are really souls who turn their senses conscious of spirit to the spirit land, then the bridge will be built, then the time will have come when just through such painful, destiny-burdened events, as they happen in our time, an intimate bond must be woven between the physical and spiritual worlds, for which we strive by our spiritual science.

So we summarise what should be our knowledge and our task and what should arouse confidence in the words:

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.

• 1. The Soul's Awakening in Four Mystery Dramas, volume 14 of Steiner's Collected Works
• 2. Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer
• 3. Maid of Orleans (1412-1431)
• 4. Cosmic New Year. The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson. Lecture (Hanover, 1st January 1912) in The Connection Between the Human Being and the Elemental World … volume 158 of Steiner's Collected Works

My dear friends!

Let us first remember the protecting spirits of those who are out there in the fields of difficult present decisions:

Guiding spirits of your souls, watchers ever active,
May your wings carry
The love of our souls
To the earthly beings who trust in your protection.
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may helpfully shine
On the souls it lovingly seeks.

And turning to the protecting spirits of those who have already passed through the portals of death:

Spirits of their souls, watchers ever active,
Your wings may bear
Our souls' imploring love
To the sphere-men you guard.
That united with your power, our request may helpfully shine on the souls it lovingly seeks.

And the spirit that we seek to approach through our spiritual science, the spirit that has gone to the salvation of the earth, to the freedom and progress of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha, be with you and your difficult duties.

My dear friends, it must be self-evident that in these difficult times that have befallen humanity, the thoughts of the souls that want to participate in the general destiny that can become human beings, that these thoughts turn to what is currently flowing through our time; what, above all, presents us with such difficult, difficult riddles in our time. For there is no doubt that difficult riddles are to be lived through in our time, which is truly - and this is certainly not a cliché - different from other times that we have not only been able to live through in our lives so far, but that humanity has been able to live through for a long time. When we think of some people with whom we lived before 1914, and who passed through the gate of death before 1914, we might well ask ourselves today: How would these people have related to what they are experiencing today in terms of their feelings and perceptions? Of course, if we think in terms of our spiritual science, how such souls, after they have freed themselves from the body in the spiritual world, look down, it is different. Then, when we understand what is happening from the records of the spiritual world. But it is perhaps still a need to think about how people who lived with us, if they were still alive, would judge the time in which we live.

In the lectures I have given and the reflections I have presented, I have often mentioned the name Herman Grimm. He is a personality who certainly did not stand on the ground of spiritual science, but who, with all his thoughts and ideas, grew out of the great impulses of spiritual life in the first half of the nineteenth century. And it was always interesting to either read or hear what Herman Grimm judged about what was going on in the world around him. If he were still alive today - he died at the beginning of the twentieth century - one cannot imagine how he would judge the violence of the events that surround us today based on his thoughts and feelings. Whenever I mentioned his name up until 1914, and that happened often, it was as if he were standing next to me, representing a different school of thought, but one that was always interesting to listen to. He could be thought of as a contemporary. Since 1914, it is as if he were a personality who could just as well have lived and died centuries ago. The way he thought, the way he related to world events, seems to one - as I said, not when one considers the soul in the spiritual world, but what it would have thought if it were embodied in the body - one cannot form any idea of how he would have expressed himself about current events, based on what he has otherwise judged, how he has formed feelings about them.

We have actually lived through so much in these three years that what we have lived through before must seem to us like a myth, like a legend, centuries behind us. And anyone who experiences our time with a truly feeling heart and a truly moving soul can already realize that in these three years he has lived through something that can otherwise only be lived through in centuries. All scales become different for the judgment of the events. We are confronted with things from the periphery of the world that could make one believe that humanity would not have been up to them at all before they appeared on the horizon of existence.

Of course, these things could be foreseen to a certain extent, my dear attendees, but the fact that they were so little foreseen testifies to how little people wanted to understand what was being pointed out about what was to come. I remind you of one thing today. Again and again, even after public lectures, I was asked how man's repeated lives on earth could be reconciled with the increasing population on earth, with the fact that the population is constantly growing. One would think that if souls were to return again and again, the population would remain constant in a sense. I had to say many things against this prejudice, but I always repeated one thing, as those who heard it will remember: the time could come when people would be horrified to realize that not only an increase in population but also a quite considerable decimation of the population could take place.

Of course, one could not point out the terrible prospect with dry words. But anyone who takes what I said at the time in the Vienna cycle in 1914, and considers it, will see that it points to stages in the development of humanity that make much of what has had to be experienced in the last three years understandable. Only, my dear friends, one could say that in many respects people have not yet really come to their senses. Experience and experience can be very different in the present. In this respect, it happens that people believe they are experiencing the present, but meanwhile they are oversleeping it. And today one can meet a great many people who, in the most important matters, always judge as they did in January 1914, although their hearts should be deeply moved by such terrible trials. But for the person who views the world from a certain spiritual-scientific point of view, what is now taking place within humanity must present not just one, but many, many riddles. The desire to solve these riddles with what are today superficial ideas, which pass through the general consciousness or general education in this way, should actually pass away. One should develop a longing, an urge to seek out the deeper forces that prevail in human development and that make it understandable why humanity has entered into such a crisis.

This evening, my dear friends, we want to occupy ourselves with such a consideration of the deeper developmental impulses of humanity.

We cannot understand the things that are happening in the present because they have far-reaching causes if we only look at the present itself. But over the years we have gathered enough ideas from the spiritual world to be able to gain an understanding from the wider perspective of world observation.

We must start from what we have already considered from different points of view, and what we want to consider today from such a point of view, which is of the greatest possible importance for our immediate present. But first, let us at least make a few comments on the particular way in which many things in the present show us their signature, their special nature. In this present time, I have often thought of an experience that goes back to my early youth and that is so very characteristic, although at first it seems far-fetched. It is so very characteristic of the deeper foundations of our current development.

An old friend of mine was very close to another man. This man was an excellent, fine spirit. He did not write much, did not have much printed, but what he did have printed had an enormously significant weight and would have, if it had penetrated, come to the consciousness of people, could have had a significant effect on people's souls in the second half of the nineteenth century. The man who had the little that was published printed — I will talk about this in more detail in a moment — once fell and broke his leg and died from it. The leg could easily have been set, but he could not be brought through the fall because he was malnourished. So it was said after his death, and rightly so: “You see, that was one of the deepest minds of Central Europe, Deinhardt. He died many decades ago. He remained undernourished because no one was interested in his particular kind of spirituality.

Now, what did he want? Yes, he wanted something that people today cannot even begin to grasp, that has actually been disregarded. And yet, precisely because we cannot grasp it, it is so significant for our time. My dear friends, this man wanted nothing more than to make the tremendous spiritual impulse that lies in Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man pedagogically fruitful for all of humanity. To this end, he wrote a small number of works that are tremendously ingenious. I believe that today they have all been pulped. I don't think that any of these writings can be preserved. And he died of hunger. No one was interested in the fact that something could be drawn from these letters about the aesthetic education of the human being that could raise the entire intellectual level of humanity through an incredibly profound social pedagogy. Of course, by the time the nineteenth century came to an end and the twentieth century began, humanity had absorbed other ideas. Let us also make clear to ourselves by means of an example what ideas humanity has actually absorbed.

You see, one of the leading spirits of France – but since before the war the world was not as divided into nations as it is now, he was also one of the leading spirits of the whole of Europe, and he was listened to in Germany as well as in France – was Maurice Barres. He initially belonged to the free-thinking French youth. As he went further and further in his aspirations, and actually could not befriend the materialism of the nineteenth century, he tried to find his way to a more spiritual direction, but he knew of no other spiritual direction than Catholicism. And so he surrendered to Catholicism, which made him “pious” to such an extent that he became one of the most rabid haters and denigrators of Germans. But let us turn to another side of his nature. Maurice Barres said the following words to justify that today a person who strives for the spiritual must profess Catholicism. I ask you to take these words with the full seriousness, because they are characteristic of the present-day life of ideas. Maurice Barres says:

["It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist! And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us give ourselves to the Church, first of all because she is inextricably linked with the tradition of France. And then, because she formulates with the authority of centuries and great practical experience the rules of that ethics that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society."

Now, my dear friends, in the deepest sense, one cannot imagine a greater frivolity or cynicism than when a person says: Whether there is a hereafter, one can never know; maybe there is none. But let us give ourselves to the Church, not because we are attracted by what it contains, but because it has been able to adapt the generous world view of the Savior to the needs of modern society.

Yes, my dear friends, there is a cynical judgment, but a judgment that lives today in many minds as a feeling; as that feeling that does not know how to take anything very seriously, that does not want to go anywhere into the true depth of reality, because then it would have to penetrate into the spirit, which belongs to reality. But we are not dealing with a light criticism of this time. We have to understand this time. Because only those who understand what is going on can really do their duty in the place where they are. And so we want to try to understand this time by answering the question of how it has developed. As I said, we have to gain a broader perspective and look at the whole time since the great Atlantic catastrophe from a certain point of view.

We have said, my dear friends, immediately after the great Atlantic catastrophe befell the earth, there came the first, the Ur-Indian cultural period; that cultural period of which no historical documents exist. For what is available as documents comes from later times. But the first spiritual culture that could be brought to humanity developed in this post-Atlantic period within the ancient Indian cultural epoch. Life in this time was quite different. And anyone who believes that life on Earth once took a similar course to that of the present time is quite considerably mistaken; they are just too lazy to recognize how humanity has developed through spiritual science. They do not want to recognize how it has developed, and so of course they cannot fully understand what is happening in the present.

Above all, for the people of the first cultural epoch, the ancient Indian cultural epoch, one can say that the whole environment was not yet as it is now. Now the environment for human beings is such that they have air around them; that they have around them what the mineral earth is; that cloud formations rise into the air, which in turn fall down as rain; the water that rises and falls in these cloud formations is contained in the rivers and seas; the air is interspersed with warmth and cold, that is, with the element that was called fire in ancient times. For people today, these are physical things: fire, air, water; physical things that they see in such a way that they ascribe to them the properties that they perceive with their senses. It was not so for the people of the ancient Indian cultural epoch. In those days, people did not yet perceive fire, air and water in the same physical way that today's people perceive fire, air and water in the physical sense. It was an enormous mystery for the people of this first cultural epoch when they saw the flame rise; when they felt the warmth sweeping over the earth with the breeze; when they perceived the air itself in its blowing; when they heard the water rushing; when they saw the water in the air as a cloud or falling as rain. And they had consciousness, these people of the first cultural epoch: just as in a person whom one stands before, not only what one sees with the senses lives in him, but a spiritual-soul life also lives in him , a spiritual soul that belongs to the spiritual worlds, so too does spiritual soul live in the fire that rises with the flame, lives in the blowing air, in the rising and descending water. And that is what they felt, these people: This spiritual-soul aspect belongs to us, belongs to the human being, just as the air, for example, belongs to us as a physical thing; we breathe it in and out. The air that is outside is inside us, then outside again; we are not a separate entity, but what is in us is inside, outside - inside, outside. But for them it was the same with the spiritual aspect of warmth. By sensing warmth, they sensed the spirit of warmth. And so with air and water. In the elements, they felt how spiritual things live in them.

But this feeling asserted itself in a very strange way in a young person during the first cultural period. He felt the elements of fire, air and water as a kind of riddle. But he could not solve this riddle. He had a feeling that it was actually his physicality, his physical corporeality, that prevented him from solving these riddles. He said to himself: “At night, when I sleep, I am outside of my physicality with my real self.” But during his youth he could not really do anything with this sleeping state. Although life in his sleep at that time was infinitely more lively than later or even today. Dreams were not so chaotic, they had some significance. But the physicality with which a person remains connected even outside of their body prevented young people in that first cultural epoch from perceiving the spiritual beings in the elements when they were out of their bodies, sleeping or dreaming.

But this physicality was arranged differently back then. Mankind changes quite a bit over the course of centuries. As strange as it seems, spiritual research shows us that in those days, people remained, one might say, childlike in their developmental capacity for much longer than they do today. Today, people complete the course of their development relatively early. In very early childhood and youth, our mental and spiritual development is quite strongly dependent on our physical development. The child can only scream when it needs something or when it is naughty. But then the structural conditions of the brain change and with the change of the physical, the mental and spiritual also change. And this continues throughout the years. We know that what is spiritual and soul-like is intimately connected with what is physical in development. How the muscles grow stronger, how the metabolism changes, all these things that occur in the human being are expressed in this spiritual and soul-like development. But this stops with increasing age. We will talk later about when it actually stops being important for human development in the present day. For people in the ancient Indian cultural epoch, it did not stop as early as it does now. The human being of the first cultural epoch went through his youth, his growth into his twenties. Then he came to that epoch of life where the human being, as it were, remains static, where he enters middle age, around 35, and enters the descending line. The body sags again, one mineralizes. Today we do not experience any of that. At most, we notice when we reach a certain age that memory declines a bit, but nothing else comes naturally instead. When old people complain that their memory is failing, and we know that this is because the brain and nervous system are becoming mineralized, then nothing else takes its place. It can be the same with the other spiritual powers. It was not so in the first cultural period. Then the soul and spiritual aspects of the human being fully participated in development, even when the human being entered the descending phase of life. Not only did their memory decline, but as their physical bodies decayed, their souls became more and more spiritual and were able to see into the spiritual world. It was precisely when their physical bodies were decaying and mineralizing that they were able to gain what they could not have during the time when their physical bodies were growing, flourishing and thriving. In this case, physical maturation and the strengthening of the imagination are hindered. The change in the physiognomy, in the nerves, holds back the soul and spiritual aspects. Today, we have no means in our external lives to counteract the body's tendency to collapse and mineralize. But in the first cultural epoch, this counteraction was there by itself. The soul still had the strength to draw directly on new forces from beyond the body, but these were spiritual forces. And then man underwent the strongest development, the actual development of maturity, immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe, at about the age of 56. Then it went down to the ages of 55, 54, 53 and so on to the age of 48. And when man had descended to the age of 48, the first, the primeval Indian cultural epoch was over. Therefore, in this leading culture, social life proceeded in such a way that everyone knew: if you ever reach your fiftieth year, you will become enlightened. The development of humanity itself provides the opportunity to live with the elements; to perceive in the fire how it is permeated by the archai, the spirits of personality; how the air is permeated by the archangeloi, the archangels; how the water is permeated by the angeloi, the angelic beings. That is why in those ancient times, the elderly were shown such tremendous respect and honor, because people knew that they were maturing and growing together with the elements. But by becoming so familiar with the elements, the spirit of the elements also took part in everything a person did. And so it came about that in those times, the way the elemental spirits worked on people was naturally specified according to the individual areas of the earth. That which lived in air and water and fire worked differently in India, in Europe, in Africa, and in America. And under the leadership of those who were enlightened in the 1950s, people drew the forces of their lives from their immediate natural surroundings, which were also perceived as spiritual. The land with air and water and fire, that is, its thermal conditions, imposed its peculiarity on those who lived on it. People were differentiated according to this. And just as our body is so differentiated that everyone grows a nose and not an ear, so the earth is such that a certain spiritual culture could only grow in India, and another in Greece, for inner reasons. Thus, out of the elemental nature of the earth, what the spirits of the elements brought into man grew.

If you imagine this, you have the earth itself as a spiritual realm of a very strange kind, which is properly expressed in the face. This gives this first cultural life in the ancient Indian epoch such a strange character. So you can say: the spirits themselves ruled on earth; the spirits. You see, the human ego did not yet have the significance that it had later. Just as little influence does man today have over his breathing, so little influence did he have in those days over what he thought and what he did. For that is what the elemental spirits in him thought.

In the next period, in the second cultural epoch, things were already different. People did not remain capable of development for as long. One could say that the age of general humanity decreased. Just as the second cultural epoch began, people only remained capable of development until the age of 48; then in the further course of time until the age of 46, 45 and so on until the age of 42. Then the second cultural epoch came to an end. So human development lasted well into the forties. Yes, but not everything was perceptible until that time. People would have had to develop well into their fifties if they were to feel and sense all the spirituality of the elemental forces and see it flowing through their beings. They could not do this to the same extent now, because in the 48th year the possibility of growing into it ceased, into that which one can naturally only grow into at the age of 48. The consequence of this was that people became duller in their feelings and perceptions, in their whole thinking and nature, towards the elements of fire, air and water. They did not become as dull as people are today, but they did become duller. One could say that they felt the elements more physically naked. They felt something like this during this time – but only when they reached their forties. Until then, they had to wait, until then they went through the ascending development of youth, went through the middle of life at the age of 35. But then, in their forties, they grew into a certain consciousness, which I could characterize in the following way.

They said to themselves: Yes, wherever there is wind and water and fire, there is also spirit; the bright spirit. When you reach your forties, you grow into this spirit. But the body itself, when it is really growing physically, really thriving physically, prevents one from growing into it. So with the soul one actually belongs to the bright spiritual realm, the spiritual that permeates all elements. The body hinders one, it pulls one back into the darkness again and again. And so, during this period, this struggle in which the human being finds himself between light and darkness was particularly emphasized. In the later Persian period, this became the struggle between the spirit of light, Ormuzd, and the spirit of darkness, Ahriman.

They felt, the people, by waking up, by coming back into the physical body: Yes, there we descend into darkness. And the youth, the young people, they knew: Because we are still in the state of growing, we have to wait until the forties, then we will be enlightened. They were not yet enlightened enough to have a living awareness of the human being's place in the struggle between light and darkness.

But with that, what was on earth ceased to be as strongly differentiated as it used to be. In the past, so to speak, every piece of culture that was above a certain area of the earth was so that it belonged there. But now that people were becoming more indifferent to the elements and were seeing more the light that fights against darkness, now came the time when less was adapted to the elemental forces that developed as culture on a stretch of the earth. There was more commonality across all of humanity. People did not have much in common in the first cultural epoch; they had as little in common as the nose has with the ear. Now the individual groups of people became more and more like one another in their belonging to their group souls.

In the third cultural epoch, things were even more different. There, in the 42nd year, people stopped being capable of development by themselves. They only remained capable of development until the 42nd year, into the 41st year and so on until the 35th year. They became even more dull to life in the elements, in fire, air and water. What lived in the elements became even more alien to them. But something else became more familiar to them. The workings of the great cosmos in light and darkness became familiar to them. Try to realize this clearly: during the day, people woke up, lived in their work, lived in the activities of the day. Then he felt that he was thrust down into the physical with his soul; there he lives in darkness. But when his soul and spirit are free, that is, from falling asleep to waking up, then this soul - in youth one did not know it, but between the ages of 42 and 35 one knew it - then the free soul is given to the spiritual environment. And one no longer felt the spirits of the elements, that is, the archai, archangeloi and angeloi, but one felt their signs shining in the stars, in the constellations, in the planetary constellations in the space in which the soul was when it was free outside the body. And so the person felt: if you descend into the darkness, then you are removed from the star constellations; but with your spiritual soul you are placed in them. There you are exposed to cosmic space; it is a star constellation where you are placed.

But consider, this star constellation is different at every point on earth. And if in the first cultural period one had directly sensed the spirits of the elements, one might say, as they descended into man, now one looked up at the stars in cosmic space and said: hence come the light forces of man. But they come differently to every place on earth. One place on earth is under this star constellation, another place on earth is under that. And it began in this third cultural period, when one became wise between the 42nd and 35th year – after that one had to become wise from the depths of the soul, one had to have what one still wanted to absorb from the stars. But it did not happen by itself, as I have characterized it now, so that one became mature between the ages of 42 and 35, and then knew very well about the dependence of the free soul on the star constellations; then people said to themselves: There are places on Earth that are under this star constellation, other places on Earth under that star constellation. If you look at Greece, you would have to say: Greece is not just this spot on Earth. It is the spot on Earth that is under a particular star constellation at a particular time of the year. Troy is the spot on Earth that is under a very specific star constellation at a particular time.

You see, it was out of these foundations that, in that third cultural period, what you have been taught as the strange struggles developed until the end of this third cultural period, when the Trojan War took place. Because what is told as the legend of Helen and Paris is only the reflection of a star constellation. And by fighting over Troy and Greece, or the Greeks fighting in Troy, and vice versa, they fought for the star constellation. And the wise men between the ages of 42 and 35 said what it meant in Greece or in “Troy to be, to possess Greece or Troy. To speak of the struggle between nations in that time, in this third cultural period, which ends in 747 BC, is to speak of something different than speaking of the struggle between nations today. At that time it meant observing how the souls of the nations fight in their own corner of the earth, how the leaders of the nations go forth to fight for their people, who are now no longer meant to express merely the physiognomy of a particular region of the earth, but something that flows down from the starry worlds, to fight for this piece of earth for this people. That is why I said: It is necessary to imagine how times will change, how something different will always happen.

To speak of the struggles between nations of that time in the same way as one speaks of them today means knowing nothing at all about the development of humanity, since this Trojan War was inspired by what the wise men of that time divined from the constellations that ruled over Greece and Troy. To speak of this war as one does today is to want to engage in fantasy and to want to know nothing of the actual nature and essence of man.

Then came the time when the general age of people had decreased again, the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period. Since one was no longer capable of development beyond the age of 35, the possibility of perceiving spirituality in the elements had disappeared altogether. One simply listed the elements in physical terms: fire, air, water, earth. At most, there was still a hint that something spiritual was in the elements, which the first Greek philosopher Thales said, that water is the origin of everything. That is not just physical water alone, but the spirit of water that lives in everything. This fourth post-Atlantic cultural period begins in 747 BC. But there was one thing that people still knew during this period, and it was still capable of development until well into the thirties. They no longer knew the spirit that ruled out there in the air, in the water, but they knew that there is a spirit within oneself. When you moved your finger, you knew that there was something spiritual living in you. To imagine the body as today's man imagines it, as today's science imagines it, that would not have been possible for the Greek. That was still something absolutely impossible for the Greek. But he perceives what is physical as spiritual and soul at the same time. He perceives that in every movement, in growth, in everything that happens in the body, the spiritual and soul-like prevails. Therefore, during this period, which begins in 747 BC and ends in 1413 AD after the Mystery of Golgotha, the view was developed that the human being consists of body and soul. But something remarkable developed within Greek culture. It is interesting to look at the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example. He reached the pinnacle of wisdom that a Greek could reach. But he was not initiated into the mysteries. This is very important.

Those who were initiated into the mysteries were also able to attain to that which was not given to people by themselves. But Aristotle could only come to what a person without initiation could come to. But there he was at the summit of this wisdom. How did Aristotle imagine immortality? That is characteristic. He said something like this: If I cut off one arm of a human being, it is no longer a complete human being. If I cut off two arms, it is no longer a complete human being at all. And if I take the whole body, then it is of course no longer a complete human being. Therefore, the soul, which Aristotle thought was immortal, in the sense of a Greek, in the sense of Aristotle, is immortal. But this immortal man is, after death, not a complete human being, but an incomplete one. Therefore, Aristotle expresses philosophically what I have often quoted from the Greek Homer, who says: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows,” because man could only be complete in the Greek view if he had body and soul. He is an incomplete human being, even though he is an immortal human being. The soul is no longer a whole human being for him. It is cut off from its surroundings if it has no body with its sense organs, which bring it into relation with the world.

You see, it turns out that what can be called: Man was brought more and more down to his physical nature. He remained incapable of development in the periods in which he could have received illuminations about the spiritual world. Only those initiated into the mysteries received such illuminations. So it came about that, to a certain extent, people lost their connection with the spiritual and were brought down to their physical nature.

This fourth period begins in 747 BC. You see, at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, human beings remained capable of development until about the age of 33. They remained capable of development until the age of 33 at the time the Mystery of Golgotha occurred! What one can take up by oneself in development up to that point, people took up, but that did not give them the possibility – it can be seen best in Aristotle – to speak of an immortal in man. One could only speak of the fact that man is an imperfect human being when he goes through death; that he is actually no longer a whole human being. Not that this was true, but it was no longer possible through human insight to imagine what lives beyond death.

You can easily say: But why were people not simply initiated into the mysteries, and why did not the mysteries reveal to people the immortality of the human being? Yes, the mysteries were already there. They had to continue to have an effect little by little, because people would have lost their connection to the spiritual world through natural development. So there had to be at least one way into the spiritual world, but precisely because people were increasingly pushed down into the physical, in that the powers of the human being were claimed in order to thrive and prosper, it came down to the fact that one could only learn something [about the spiritual world] from the mysteries. On the one hand, man placed more and more value on the feeling of being in a body; on the other hand, he had to say to himself: Yes, you are connected to the spiritual world, but you can only gain insight into the spiritual world in the mysteries.

So what happened? What happened was that the rulers in the Greco-Latin period, the Roman Caesars, the Roman emperors, forced themselves to be initiated. The first Roman Caesar, Augustus, was an initiate. He had the power, he could force himself to be initiated. He made little misuse of it. You see, my dear friends, what has come about, this prevalence of external power, this placing of man in the development of the earth as a citizen of the Roman Empire - because one first became a “citizen” there - it only became possible when man no longer felt himself a citizen of the spiritual world. Only then did man become involved in everything that comes from the “flesh”. But one could force oneself - if one was the mightiest man in the flesh, if one was Roman emperor - to be initiated into the mysteries. And not only Caesar Augustus had forced himself to be initiated, but also a man like Caligula forced himself to be initiated. And what history reports refers to truths. Because Caligula was able to speak with the spirits of the elements, with the spirits of the moon. He could consciously use the formulas that were used at that time by the initiates. He knew that “man is of divine nature,” so he allowed himself to be worshipped as a god. But for people like Augustus, Caligula and Nero, who were all initiates because they forced initiation, their initiation led to an insistence on power in the physical world, but at the same time to a real contempt for the physical. For this Caligula, when he once heard of a court case in which an innocent man had been convicted, he said: That does not matter, because the innocent man was certainly just as guilty as the guilty man. And another time he said: Well, the judges who condemned the guilty man are just as guilty.

A personality like Nero's can also be understood from such backgrounds. For what did they say when they were as initiated as Nero? He did not understand Christianity. But when you were as initiated as Nero, you said to yourself: natural development no longer provides anything spiritual. The spiritual realm must come into the world in a different way. In a different way, the spirit must come to earth. It must descend in a different form than before, when one grew into what surrounded one as a spirit through natural development. This was wrung out in the insane mind of Nero and showed itself in how he wanted to demand the coming of the spirit. He knew from physics: it no longer gives the spirit, it has peeled itself out of the spiritual. Therefore, he wanted to set Rome on fire and from there ignite the world fire. It was his idea to destroy the earth because it no longer yielded the spirit. Nero was completely convinced that human physicality has now been completely abandoned by the spirit. Only if one does not rely on the body, but only on the spirit and soul, did he want to seek the spiritual realm from a completely different direction. Why then this earth, human flesh, which is in any case only unchaste? Neros called all human flesh, all physical unchaste. When one speaks of psychoanalysis today, one is strongly reminded of Nero. One can say: He was the first psychoanalyst who sought everything in the human flesh. That was the other side.

Briefly, before the time of Nero, the human race was actually only developing up to the age of 33. And now, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ grew up to the age of 33, to this lifetime of man. Human beings had descended in their development from 56 to 33 years of age; the Christ Jesus grew contrary to this age of man. He found death in the 33rd year of life and radiates his impulses into the earth. He merged with the earth's substance.

Imagine this miracle. The human race is getting younger and younger until it is 33 years old. The Christ comes at this time, he develops up to the 33rd year, then passes through the gate of death and radiates his own being there. It is a supreme moment when one contemplates this connection between the Mystery of Golgotha and the development of humanity. This is how the Mystery of Golgotha is part of human development. The 33 years of Christ Jesus are not a coincidence. It had to be so because his ascending age had to coincide with the descent of humanity.

You see, my dear friends: spiritual science does not take us away from an understanding of Christianity; spiritual science leads us more and more into this understanding of Christianity. We get more and more feeling for the great significance of Christianity. From this we can see how crazy it is to accuse spiritual science of not being able to relate to Christ in the right way. And by what kind of people is it accused? By people who want to relate to Christ in a strange way. Take a statement such as the one that was recently made in the magazine 'Die Furche' in 1915. There, in a way that is not actually initially unkind, spiritual science, insofar as it is represented by me, is spoken of, but then it is said:

Therefore, one must not only [call out the following words of Rudolf Steiner to certain aberrations of this spiritual activity, but to all those who are influenced by this movement: “Those who do not want to trust completely dark powers, whose true nature and origin they cannot know, should avoid getting involved in such things.”]

Yes, my dear friends, I am telling you this because otherwise this article is not without favoritism. But that also arises from a feeling that must be counted among the great lies of our time. What do people of this kind actually want? Well, that the Christ has redeemed them, no matter how they behave now; if only they can always speak the name “Lord, Lord” and talk about it.

Of course, spiritual science must relate to Christ Jesus in a different way. It must bear in mind the words of Christ Jesus: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Spiritual science does not want to leave unused the divine power that is in people, but seeks the path to Christ. Out of laziness, out of the great lie of life, that which speaks in such a way as is spoken at the end of this article is asserted. No attention is paid to how, especially in our time, the spiritual forces must flow in such a way that, through spiritual science, they can lead precisely to the secrets of the Christ being. Here again you have a glimpse of the terrible superficiality of the present time, through which humanity must pass. It wants to leave everything to Christ Jesus without making much effort or exerting itself. What a comfortable point of view! But this is the point of view of those today who call themselves Christians and reject spiritual science as un-Christian. True spiritual science, as you can see, dear friends, leads to such a deep understanding that one experiences the harrowing fact that the descent of the ages of humanity grows together with the 33rd year, the 'year of the death of Christ Jesus'. Right down to the last detail, spiritual science proves to open up understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

And now, since 1413, we have been living in the age where humanity is only capable of development on its own, from 1413 to the age of 28. Today we have come down to the age of 27.

From this you can see, my dear friends, that spiritual science did not arise out of an arbitrary whim or out of some principle of agitation, but rather: Man simply cannot develop further in our time through himself than up to the age of 27. What is to develop further, the soul must drive forward through its own inner impulses, which come from the spiritual world. The body can no longer provide it.

And anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has the task of leading souls beyond the development that they can find through the body alone. There you have a secret of our time. Anyone who does not try to understand spiritual science, even if only in a rational, intellectual way – you can understand spiritual science without undergoing an inner development – but this understanding must ignite the connection of the soul with the spiritual world, must feel it. If you don't come into contact with the spiritual world through spiritual science, you won't live past the age of 27. Today, one can only grow older through spiritual development. This is very significant, my dear friends, this is something tremendous. When the riddles of the present weigh heavily on you, when you want to know what has happened and what has to happen, when you are looking for an answer to the question: What is the purpose of spiritual science? How is it challenged by the interests and impulses of the present?

Then we look at the leading, most influential people, for example, of the present time. Going into more detail is not exactly appropriate in our time of non-existent freedom of the press. So one can choose an example, but it is truly not chosen from the chaos created by the war. I have spoken in cycles about what happened before the war, when the feelings that the war had produced were not yet alive in people. But you can see from this that I was already able to see certain personalities at that time as they are happening today. I always had to ask myself again: Which personalities clearly show that people cannot grow older than 27 years if they are not seeking a spiritual impulse? And then I found that a characteristic person of this kind is the President of North America, Woodrow Wilson. He is one of those people who cannot get older than 27 years old – even if they live to be a hundred – because he only takes in what humanity gives of itself. You see, that is why such a person can send great ideas into the world; one can have a spiritual and intellectual pleasure in these ideas, one can lick one's fingers because one feels such pleasure, but they are still only immature ideas. They do not even reach the age of 35, the middle of life, they are 27 years old – yes, they are boyish ideas. Humanity sleeps through these facts, that these ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, because it cannot think things in such a way that the man who sits in one of the most powerful places on earth today solves the mystery for us, why he sends nothing but abstract, nothing but big, resounding words without real reality into the world. Because his ideas are no older than twenty-seven years, therefore they cannot find their way into reality. The man who sits in the most important place today, who therefore says all the tirades in his / gap in the transcript] message, which speak of freedom of peoples and the like. So today people find beautiful words, ideal words. They sound so nice to people that they say: He is an idealist, he has good ideas.

But what matters today, my dear friends, is not that someone has beautiful ideas, but that someone has ideas that can reach into reality, that really have the power to work in reality. What matters is not that someone has ideas to secure peace and then issues a manifesto that in a few weeks creates war in their own country. There is a great difference between the beauty, logic and idealism of ideas and the reality of ideas. That is why I emphasized so strongly in my last book that today we cannot just have beautiful ideas and feel them with a certain voluptuousness, but that we can descend into reality with our ideas, that we have practical ideas for life that can become reality, that can have an effect on reality as a force. Today, beautiful ideas can be precisely those of the most immature people. I would like to give you a trivial example of this. You can hear people saying, “Oh, we are living in a great spiritual change; this war will bring about a completely new era. In the future, it will no longer be as it was before, but the most capable man will be in the right place.” What beautiful ideas! One can lick one's fingers with sheer voluptuousness at having uttered such beautiful ideas. But if the son-in-law or the nephew is “the most capable,” then the whole beautiful idea is worth nothing. These beautiful ideas do not intervene in reality. What matters is not that a person grasps the full reality and regards ideas only as the instrument for immersing themselves in reality, but that they grasp reality. Today, people do not even feel what is meant by such words. They do not feel how far they are from reality because they have become accustomed to listening for beautiful ideas that mean nothing at all. What is at stake is that we ourselves must immerse ourselves in reality with our souls, we must become akin to reality. That is why today, in every field of knowledge, there are only unrealistic ideas. Political economy has only unrealistic ideas. What is now called political science, you can go through it, everywhere at the universities it consists only of unrealistic ideas. Nowhere are the ideas suitable for immersion in reality. Now an excellent man, who is even sympathetic towards my ideas, has published a book – yes, from beginning to end the book is full of abstract ideas. Nowhere can one find the slightest sense of immersion in reality.

But my dear friends, what happens among people depends on what people think and feel. Therefore, it is necessary to realize: we need a wisdom that is related to reality. We must permeate the ideas with which we want to rule the world with the spirit that is taken from reality itself.

And so the task at hand is to become familiar with reality. But this can only be achieved by building on a spiritual-scientific foundation. We have already become very alienated from reality. People can think an awful lot in the present. Some people are so clever. But these clever ideas are all abstract and have no reality value, because the human being has no reality value when it comes to ideas. In the case of man, one speaks only of the dead product in physiology, in biology; of that which has no reality value itself. How can one have anything real in economic ideas, in political science ideas, if the starting points do not contain concepts that have reality.

Try to understand this correctly, my dear friends, and you will realize that this spiritual science must not be taken as many do, as a mystical, nebulous construct that wants to lead people away from the practice of life. The opposite is true. I have often used the example of a horseshoe magnet. You can say, “Well, that's a horseshoe, we'll shoe a horse's hoof with it.” That would be nonsense, of course, because the horseshoe-shaped magnet is to be used as a magnet. The world only sees the horseshoe and shoes a horse's hoof with it. This is what today's humanity does with the world. Namely with the social order of people, because it has no concepts that really grasp what is in reality, as magnetism in the horseshoe magnet.

And here, my dear friends, is what it is all about, because no one who does not understand this understands the deeper reasons for the terrible times in which we live. And as people have moved away from reality, they have also moved further and further away from the true, real understanding of the facts.

Today it can easily happen that, for example, A says to B: Hey, C did this and that. B thinks that because A said that C did this, B actually said: C is a bad guy. A didn't say that, he just listed facts. But B goes to C and says: Hey, A said you were a bad guy.

This is a paradigm for much of what happens today. People no longer know how to distinguish between what they think of things and the facts. Enormous harm is caused by this because people do not look at what arises from such inaccuracies received through thoughts. A sense of fact is what people need. But do they have it? Do they have this sense of fact? An example that could stand for hundreds, for thousands, for millions: There is a magazine called “The Invisible Temple”. A certain Horneffer publishes this magazine.

Many people now say: Oh, “The Invisible Temple”, that is certainly something very deep, something very, very deep. And now you read; you read all kinds of beautiful things; you can have voluptuous sensations from these beautiful things. But, you see, I have the February issue right now. It contains a discussion about monism and theosophy:

[As different as the monists are from the theosophists, and as eagerly as they fight and despise each other, they are strangely similar in one respect: they monopolize the word 'science'. What they do themselves is true, pure science; what other people do is sham and pseudo-science. This can be read in Haeckel and Rudolf Steiner.]

I ask you, where? Open all the things I have written, all the things I have said, and see if I have ever spoken these words! But this is in a magazine that now comes out with the pretension of calling itself “The Invisible Temple”. In the face of this, one must get used to calling a lie a lie. You have to call a lie a lie, because that is a lie. It does not matter whether it is he who lies or they who lie, those who appear with pretension, in the blue freemason magazine under the title “The Invisible Temple” to put forward all sorts of strange chatter, not to say anything worse, who do not want to make a judgment about where lies are present. By alienating oneself from reality with one's concepts and ideas, by saying this or that without having the sense to immerse oneself in reality, one also distances oneself from the sense of the truth. But this is something that must come first: a sense of the truth if salvation is to come for our time.

And so, my dear friends, since we have actually run out of time, I would like to add to this reflection something that really shows how, even in our circles, in the so-called anthroposophical circles, and only recently, what is alienation from the sense of fact plays a role.

I started today's reflection by saying that a person could, so to speak, starve to death by wanting to popularize Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. They are truly not popular. After all, who actually knows them? Who, in particular, understands the tremendously deep meaning of the impulses they contain?

Have we not seen how, in the course of the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, people have increasingly distanced themselves from the spiritual world and increasingly degenerated in their instincts? Schiller raises the big question in one of the first centuries of our time – the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period begins in 1413 – in his letters on aesthetic education: how do instincts find their way back to the spiritual? How do you find your way back? At that time there was still no spiritual science, as Schiller wrote, in the way one could think about these things at that time, how man finds his way back from instincts to spirituality. This is magnificently, powerfully, incomparably stated in these letters. And it was actually a regression in later times that one did not want to pick up the thread into the spirit that Schiller wanted to take.

And basically, within our ranks, little was understood of how everything was actually designed to truly follow the right path of spiritual science dictated by the times. One of the first publications is my lectures on Schiller, which I gave at the Berlin Free University, where we talked about the “Letters on Aesthetic Education” in connection with his spiritual development. This is one of the first publications of the Theosophical Society, which then became the Anthroposophical Society. There were difficult struggles. But, my dear friends, there is still much to come, because today we see the matter as having reached a kind of climax. I do not want to be misunderstood in this. Therefore, allow me to deal with matters in a few moments that only appear to be personal matters.

[In truth, they are really not personal matters for me. And when some members of the Anthroposophical Society, at the time when the terrible battle had to be fought against Annie Besant, withdrew in a noble way and said: we do not want to have anything to do with personal matters, is actually incomprehensible. Because you have to distinguish between who is the attacker and who is the attacked, otherwise things come about as they have now come about.

Let us take a harsh example, so that we can visualize how it is necessary to see with one's whole soul to form an opinion. You see, spiritual science could flourish without a society. If you had a few people in different German cities who organized lectures every winter, spiritual science could flourish for humanity without the Anthroposophical Society. There are two things: the Anthroposophical Society and spiritual science. The Anthroposophical Society must be something in itself, must be a reality in itself in its impulses. Therefore, one must stand within it with full judgment. Now, I have to discuss here things in which the Hanover branch is less involved, but which nevertheless affect the unity of the Society.

Do you see what happened years ago? There was a certain Mr. Grasshoff, who was pushed in by a member. He went from lecture cycle to lecture cycle, from lecture to lecture; he copied everything down, bought all the books, all the cycles? He also copied everything that was privately written down. After a few months, he had everything that had been said in the lectures and that had been written together.

Now you might say, after all that happened later: Why was the man admitted? Yes, you can't turn someone away because of what they will do in the future. That's a dilemma. When a person enters society, you can't tell them — forgive the harsh expression — you can't say: you won't be accepted because you would turn out to be a bastard later. So there is the dilemma. So the man had written down everything he could get his hands on. Except for the title he gave his book – “The Rosicrucian World Conception” – everything else is mine. But he had written a preface. In this book, he not only included what he had found in printed books, so that he had published something in America, but also things that had not yet been published here. But he wrote a preface. And in it he says: Yes, of course he used a lot in this book, included a lot that he had learned from me and my books. But that would not have been enough. Then one day he was called to a master in Transylvania, who then gave him the deepest knowledge, so he could give so much more in his book. But what you find “more” is just copied from cycles and lectures. That's how this book was made.

Now you can say: That's American. Fine. You can forgive a lot under that flag. But that wasn't the only thing that happened. A German publisher was found, but Hugo Vollrath's publishing house had this book translated into German and published it as individual Rosicrucian lesson letters in Germany. And there it had a preface in which it is said: “Some of it has already been said here, that is, in Germany, but much of it was unclean; it first had to be cleansed in the pure air of California.” And so you get so-called Rosicrucian letters in which everything is stolen, everything is theft, but on top of that, theft with defamation.

You see, such an outrage is impossible in the outer literary life, because something like that would become known and be dealt with accordingly. I have discussed this repeatedly, but with us it goes in at one ear and out the other. It is not discussed further. It is not taken into account that such an outrage must be reported and made known, otherwise it will have consequences. It will also be known if one only forms the right judgment about it. It depends on the judgment. Not only that one forms logical judgments, but that one also knows in such things how great the disgrace is that is possible in the world.

You see, things like that have consequences. You know that there was a member – a member until recently – who could not be rejected either. He was a member for a long time. In fact, because we were sympathetic to this member, one of his writings was even published by our publishing house. But then he wanted to publish another writing. In this book, 'Who Was Christ?' the author also makes use of all kinds of things from the cycles. But then he says: 'Dr. Steiner did hint at such things, but he never went into them in detail; one must treat the subject more thoroughly'. Dr. Steiner took offence at that. I myself only said that Dr. Steiner had probably taken offence, but that I had not dealt with it myself. I only read one passage, which was enough to understand that this book had to be rejected. This man had been looking for years to find some kind of field of work in the Anthroposophical Society — as a follower; he was a strange follower, though. You see, the man gets this book rejected and then becomes an opponent; even an enemy, not just an opponent. Yes, then he wrote an article in the so-called “Psychischen Studien” (Psychical Studies). An article in which he wanted to prove alleged contradictions in my writings. But if he had only written about the contradictions, he would not have attracted much attention. Whatever can be said objectively should be said. Yes, let a hundred or a thousand pamphlets appear; spiritual science has no opposition to fear. But objectivity is out of the question in this case. The man in question - it is Privy Councillor Seiling - weaves slander, defamation and lies into his foolish arguments about contradictions. He has adopted the strategy of trying to drive spiritual science into a kind of scandal, and he finds compliant editors who are far too lazy to fight spiritual science objectively; they would have to study it, and they don't want to do that. So they push the whole thing into scandal, defamation, by throwing mud at those who want to represent this spiritual science. Such things are sometimes done in a very subtle way, my dear friends! For example, Hofrat Seiling published an article that followed the article about the so-called contradictions. This article is a perfect example of what a subtle desire for defamation can do. You see, the most harmless thing that can happen is that it is of no concern to anyone – it was our marriage. A scandal arose about it among people who, of course, had no right to do so. It was nobody's business. But the fact that a number of women - not to use any other word - used the opportunity to create a scandal about this matter is characteristic of the way these women see things. This scandal was absolutely none of our business; the others made it. But how does Seiling formulate this matter? He formulates it in such a way that this marriage has led to scandals in Dornach. And so everyone must believe that the marriage itself led to a scandal, while it was these - yes, I am now making points - while it was these... women who made this scandal. - This is how you write sophisticated defamatory articles.

But other things were written as well. Many of our members know that I allowed the cycles to be printed. But I had to make up my mind to do so, firstly because the members wanted it; the transcripts that circulate among the members are often downright terrible. For example, we had to experience that we saw a transcript that was going around saying that I had said that prostitution was set up by great initiates in the sixteenth century. So I really had enough of these private transcripts. But I couldn't see all of these things.

Seiling was one of those people who did not make my life easy. Now he is noble enough to say: If Steiner did not give so many conversations to members, then he could see through the cycles and there would be no need for 'Unseen Postscript'. And Seiling cannot stop grumbling about the Anthroposophical Society and the way members behave. One can think of countless details in such matters. And just with Seiling, one only needs to think of it when he now speaks of how much time was taken for the discussions with members, then one only needs to think of the fact that it was Seiling who, for example, in Munich, saddled me with a completely insane person who did not visit me, whom I, to do Seiling a favor, visited more often. Of course, what the man wanted as advice turned into terrible vindictiveness and hatred for me.

Yes, my dear friends, to look into what happened there is a terrible thing. Therefore, one should not talk about opposing writings that only want to be factual. One must make a strict distinction. If someone has made a judgment that is as dismissive as can be, but remains objective, then I agree with it. You see, our dear, good Ludwig Deinhard – he died recently. He has done almost more than anyone else in recent times for spiritual science. Wherever he could, he published beautiful, significant articles. But he worked hard to get there because he was initially involved in a completely different field. And at the time when I began lecturing, under the influence of Deinhard — one may say this because he was later one of the most loyal and active supporters, and the latter is even more valuable — the following appeared: “The Berlin traveler in spiritual science has arrived!” That's okay. That's an opinion; anyone can take a position on this opinion. It is not a defamation, but an opinion, and one may have opinions. As I said, Deinhard has long since outgrown it, but even if he hadn't, you're allowed to do it; you're allowed to characterize, that's literary license. But you're not allowed to slander; you're not allowed to say things that are simply not true, that are objective untruths. But that is what distinguishes Seiling's attack from such attacks. And that is why it is quite worthless to refute this “discussion of contradictions.” Rather, the world must know: the man started this whole story purely because he was rejected by our publishing house with this brochure “Who Was Christ?” That is the real reason. And it is this real reason that must be pointed out, that is what matters.

Now another case. Many years ago, a man from central Germany wrote to Dr. Schüßler: He did not know what to do, whether to marry into a family or whether to turn to another change in his life. And when she wrote to him that we were not there to give advice on such matters, he gradually became more involved with the Theosophical Society at the time, initially within it in Berlin, albeit in a peculiar way, so that people got the impression – I am not saying that he did it, but that people got the impression, and very credible people – that he would now take care of the marriage for himself in the Society. Then, at a general assembly, without any artistic feeling and without a clue, he unleashed Schiller's Cassandra on the heads of the shocked members. Then he went to Munich. Now we had the misfortune of unsuspecting people approaching us and asking us to let him learn how to paint. But he didn't want to learn to paint, he wanted to be able to paint. He didn't want to become a painter, he wanted to be a painter. We just didn't know how to go about it. We wanted to help him in every way. A great deal has been done for the man, but he could do nothing. He wanted to be a genius, and he was terribly resentful that he could not be made a genius. Just as with what is called development, people resent the fact that they have to work for it. They would actually like me to take care of it: I turn to him, then I have to develop myself – he will do it. – Well, this man was concerned with not learning anything and yet wanting to be something. He went wild over it. That is the reason for his wildness. But now he writes that through the exercises he is supposed to have received – I don't know – he has developed spots on many parts of his body. And now he writes the most incredible articles in all sorts of places, which are as ridiculous on the one hand as they are defamatory on the other.

For example, he writes: The exercise would have particularly harmed him, that he should have thought: What is happening in my environment is good and necessary. — Isn't it, you have to be so ruthless as to give someone such an exercise! It bruised him in many places. But this exercise is actually in Schopenhauer's works. You will find the words in Schopenhauer, who considers it healthy for every human being. So he has not been given anything particularly magical, as you can see, but a very generally human exercise. But today – well, those editors who included the article by Erich Bamler also know Schopenhauer. The truth is that the man wrote these articles. What is in them are objective untruths and even stupidities. The truth is that the man did not become a genius and went wild about it. Yes, that's how it is.

And now we are happy that they have started - and that the story seems to be to be continued - that not only am I being thrown dirt, but they are now no longer stopping at Dr. Steiner - and in a “tone that is not there at all. Nothing like this has been printed yet, the way it is now being printed against what is being done and written here as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Yes, for example, there is rambling about the disgracefulness of the exercises that the doctor is said to have given to a young girl. And how did she give these exercises? When the young girl was called to account for how she could claim that, since it is common knowledge that Frau Doktor never gives exercises, when she was asked how she could claim that Frau Doktor had given her exercises that had harmed her, since it is quite untrue, she said, “Yes, she didn't give them to me in such a way that she would have told me.” Yes, but how then, they asked her. Well, the young girl said, I listened to Dr. Steiner's recitations for eurythmists. Poems by Lienhard, poems by Uhland. Of course the poems were only meant for the others, but for me they contained exercises, so she gave me exercises. She didn't consciously receive the exercises, it was said, but she was simply Dr. Steiner's medium.

Yes, these things – that they are insane is not our concern, but that they are invented, that they are objective untruths, that is our concern. The matter has finally come to a head, that in the same article in the “Psychischen Studien” it says - the Anthroposophical Society really had to be found in order to have members who would believe something like this from a magazine - it says something like this: Dr. Steiner wrote about the Lazarus miracle in the book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, and he wanted to perform the Lazarus miracle with me. He wanted to transform me as Christ transformed Lazarus. This is connected with the fact that she burst into my bedroom one morning in a terrible fit of raving madness. She actually wanted to assault Dr. Steiner, but her door was locked. She was then taken to a sanatorium. This does not prevent her from writing these things now. Among other things, she says that it is all because Dr. Steiner sent her chocolate. Dr. Steiner just wanted to do her a kindness and bought her chocolate and other times apples or oranges. They wanted to be kind to her. — Because at the time she was thought to be ill, she was in a sanatorium. Now she writes that this chocolate was sent to her to thicken the blood so that the Lazarus miracle could take place. That's what's in the magazine now, and the editor adds the note:

[These are the kinds of madness that can land a healthy person in the asylum! - Ed.]

That's what really makes it personal. So the treatment consisted of sending the sick girl chocolate to the sanatorium, not to thicken her blood, but to eat, that's the treatment.

These are the kinds of things that are so terribly ridiculous on the one hand, like the Goesch case. It was said: Yes, the Goesch case is yet to come and will be one of the most difficult. The Goesch case is also, on the one hand, so terribly ridiculous and, on the other hand, so defamatory and disparaging, because today the intention is to eliminate spiritual science not by honest debate but by discrediting the person, by telling things that are pure invention and so foolish that people can say, Well, if they go to such lengths to perform a Lazarus miracle, then you can't take this spiritual science seriously. On the other hand, people can say: people go crazy with spiritual science, it is dangerous. It is the best policy to count on people's addiction to scandal; it is the best policy one can adopt to make something impossible. It is written in a tone, in a way that is simply incredible. And the editor makes the comment that one could believe it.

If some defenders now come forward, so we know that there are people in this society who “consider Dr. Steiner to be the Christ”. Yes, my dear friends, anything is possible in this day and age! I recently received a letter from a neighboring town. The letter said that the gentleman had attended a public lecture of mine. I spoke about the repeated incarnations of Christ and made it clear that I am laying claim to the present one. And he noted that he heard this with his own ears and not only he, but also some friends who were sitting with him in this lecture. So today people tell stories that are the crassest nonsense; they swear by them under certain circumstances.

You see, people still have their secondary purposes. What do people want to achieve? The young lady's article was written from the attitude from which all things come. This article is entitled “Anthroposophy: Sexual Magic”. It is interesting that everything leads to the sexual realm.

People who are themselves under the influence of sexuality – well, it is easy to understand that they want to drag everything into this area. But there are other purposes behind it as well. The strange thing is that if you read Goesch's writing today - which has not yet been published, but they are threatening to publish it - if you read this writing, you will find the strange thing that he constantly proves what he says against me by referring to passages from the mystery dramas. He refutes me from books of mine, from lectures, from my writings. It has never happened before that such a method has been used. It is quite a novelty. A person in Dornach writes to Goesch to bring him a little more to reason. He receives the answer from Goesch, which is supposed to make it clear to him that he will not allow himself to be converted: “I only need to remind you of a profound saying - or something like that - that clarifies your situation:

I hear not the friend,
I hear a ghastly creature.

That is actually from the Rosicrucian Mystery. Yes, what people actually want is to get the matter onto a track where everything is made public. Whether they want to urge you to publish everything in a justification, or whether they want to urge you to bring a lawsuit in which everything must be made public. They want to have everything. In today's world, you can no longer keep anything secret from humanity, which is going through a crisis that is clearly evident in these matters.

For those who are familiar with spiritual science, this is not surprising, but the judgment must be brought into the right channels. Those who have to speak about spiritual matters, especially esoteric ones, know very well that if they speak to about 120 people, 70 of them are potential opponents. This is simply because one has to speak to certain depths of the human soul. At most, 50 can remain loyal. The others, if they do not die earlier, will become opponents. But the big difference is whether they become decent opponents. For the time being, we live in a time when most are not decent. One can be satisfied with decent opponents, because spiritual science will only slowly and gradually become part of human development. That goes without saying.

All this that I have explained to you shows the absolute necessity for me to take certain measures. For it is impossible to allow what spiritual science is supposed to achieve to be dragged through the mud. As long as only people like Freimark and the like spread their calumnies about spiritual science, the matter could still be ignored. But now that those who throw mud at everything and do the worst are recruiting from society itself, even if they are resigning, I have to take a measure - together with another one - a measure that means that I have to suspend all private meetings for the near future. It is no longer possible for me to hold private meetings. Those who are honestly seeking esoteric knowledge may be patient; a substitute will be found for these esoteric discussions. Anthroposophy must be brought into the full light of the public, and all private discussions must cease. No one can feel more sorry and wistful than I feel sorry and wistful, because I have enjoyed serving people. But since I have said many things so often in vain, it must now be pointed out by facts that a correct judgment must prevail. It cannot continue like this, that one considers fools to be initiates and the like. So it is impossible to get along. Therefore, all private discussions must stop in the near future. As I said, a replacement will be created for those who continue to strive esoterically honest.

But this measure must be supplemented by another, and anyone who does not say this second measure when saying the first, does not remain with the truth. This second measure is that I allow everyone to say everything that has ever been said to them in these private conversations, if they want to. Nothing need be kept secret that has ever been said in private conversations. For it is precisely about these private conversations that an enormous amount of lies are told. Precisely these private conversations are used to drag spiritual science into the mud, because they cannot be refuted by spiritual science itself. Therefore, these private conversations must cease; one must submit to this necessity; without exception they must cease. And besides, as I said, I authorize anyone to pass on the content of the private conversations if they so desire. This should help to silence those dreadful tongues that are now opening up such a campaign of defamation, if these measures are carried out for a while and if it is seen that not only spiritual science itself but also everything that happens in society does not need to shy away from the light of day.

But there would be a lot to do, because there would still be a lot of this mudslinging that has developed up to now, and there would be a lot to do if one had to deal with everything that has developed from the worst instincts.

You have to get to know people in society. So far, as a rule, it has been done the way a lady in Berlin did it. There were scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach who attacked me and the doctor in the most terrible way. A lady who was related to one of the scandal-mongering ladies in Dornach wrote to the doctor saying that she should do something to bring the scandal-mongering ladies to their senses in a benevolent way. It has become the custom to interpret the first principle of our society as meaning that anyone can commit any disgraceful act, so one must treat them with love and goodwill because one has to apply this principle to all people. The one who is attacked is seen as the sinner. At least we can assure you that there is no kind of impertinence that has not been directed at us in the course of anthroposophical work. I have to take these two measures not only because of the content, but also to make it clear that we must finally take the demand for sound judgment seriously, so that morbid judgments cannot persist. I also pronounced these measures in Munich. Someone said: Why should everyone have to suffer when a few people do such things? I had to answer: Yes, you turn to those who cause such things, and not to those who then have to carry out such measures under duress. If they had wanted to, they could have found a way, maybe not now that the avalanche has started – but they should have found ways and means at the time when it was still just a snowball. But in the future, the only way to help is to take such strict measures.

Please do not take it amiss that I had to add this consideration to the actual spiritual consideration that I wanted to make here.] One would like so much not to have only words at one's disposal to say what needs to be said in today's world, to find one's way to the hearts and souls of people. Language has already become a purely abstract product. And the words, how they are heard, already weak and abstract. I would like to give another example of this.

Just think, people today hear someone say, “He did it pretty well.” Who will think differently today if someone speaks as if they wanted to say “almost well.” “Pretty well” equals “almost well.” But “pretty” has the same root as the word “geziemt,” which means “what befits.” And 'pretty good' does not just mean 'almost good', but, if you feel the word in the right way, then you feel: 'in the way of 'good', so when something is done 'pretty well', that you have done it so that it can please, that it is appropriate, that it is well done. Who listens in this way today? However, spiritual science must speak in this way. Then the Seilingers come along and say: It is bad German. The worse Seiling writes, the worse he finds what is cultivated in my books or cycles as a “German style”, but which is entirely based on spiritual science.

Who today senses in the words “between”, “two”, “doubt”, that which divides? This lies in the doubt that something divides when one is confronted with a division. Who senses this so concretely in the word? Who also senses it in the word “purpose”? - “Zw” - And so with all the words. Language has also become abstract.

My dear friends, when one has to discuss such important contemporary issues as I have today, when one has to speak of the necessity to grasp reality again in a conscious sense, one would like to be able to handle something other than mere words, which have already become abstract today.

Perhaps some of you can still hear in your hearts, as today's abstract words are felt, what was said first about the demands of the time and about the position of spiritual science in humanity.

Think about it a lot, my dear friends; many of the riddles that confront us today in this terrible time find their solution in the development of today's reflection.

Verse for Saturday. Every esoteric makes progress if he does his exercises with the proper perseverance and intensity. If he doesn't progress it's because he doesn't pay enough attention to what comes from the spiritual world. This is very intimate and subtle. One must immerse oneself entirely in the words that are given as exercises, everything else must not be there for the meditator, he must be as if removed from his physical body. He must only be aware of his I. At the end of meditation the content of the same must be extinguished, and only the waking I must be there with an empty content. These are the most productive moments, in which the spiritual world can flow into the meditator. Or else during the day one suddenly has the feeling that something is flitting by, so that one knows that something from the spiritual world was just there. Then a feeling of deep piety takes hold of one.

The content of what flows to a meditator when he empties himself of the after-effects of the meditation depends upon merit. It'll never be the same from one time to the next. This content depends on our morality, love of truth and on how we've lived and been since the last meditation. If we weren't entirely truthful or if we let anger and aggravation arise in us, then nothing from the spiritual world can stream into us. We get what we deserve. If we trace these things back attentively we'll always find the reason why we weren't blessed with the spirit in some lie, in a surging up of anger or the like.

If someone who knows nothing about theosophy says the Lord's prayer or some other one, he easily gets a warm feeling or one of warm piety, but this comes from his personal feelings. When an esoteric prays he will first have a cold feeling; he shouldn't bring anything personal into his prayer, he must only let the spiritual content of the same work. Inner, real warmth then comes from the spiritual world and not from his personal life.

If one occupies oneself with an object that one has chosen for concentration every day—the first subsidiary exercise—connects one thought after another with it, then if one lets 15 minutes pass without plunging back into daily activities, after months of serious exercising one will feel as if something was coming into the head or brain, as if the etheric body was coming back into the brain in waves. In the second subsidiary exercise, initiative action, in which one exerts one's will in some activity at particular times, after the exercise one will gradually feel as if one had been active in one's etheric body; one has the feeling: I felt myself in my etheric body. Then a feeling of deep reverence and piety moves into the meditator's soul.

In the third subsidiary exercise—harmony between joy and sorrow—we're supposed to find our way into all happenings and fit ourselves into them. Our etheric body will then gradually expand into heavenly distances. Then we won't feel that we're in our body and the whole world is around us, but we feel that our body is spread out into the whole periphery. We feel expanded and poured into spiritual worlds. One feels and knows that one is in the spiritual world.

In these three subsidiary exercises we experience the two first lines of our rosicrucian verse—how we were entirely embedded in divine-spiritual forces and came down from them, and how in the third exercise we pour ourselves into the spiritual world, into the Christ. For the Christ is in the earth's aura, in the earth's atmosphere now; we must let him reign in us or as it were next to us.

In the fourth exercise, positivity ... [gap in text] Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Just as we walk over a meadow with blue and red flowers and we know that they're blue and red, so we'll get to the point where we experience the truth in our rosicrucian verse:

Ex Deo nascimur
In Christo morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Three occult things are important for occult development: the lamp of Hermes Trismegistos with three flames, the thrice folded mantle of Apollonius, the staff of the masters that's divided into three parts.

The three flames through which one must become familiar with the teachings are thinking, feeling and willing (get into teachings with thinking and feeling and don't just do will exercises).

The mantle is the skin that one is supposed to leave. Stepping out is the second folding of the mantle and turning back towards the body is the third one. Tripartite staff.

Two sayings are given to pupils in Rosicrucian schools to support them in their meditations: Beware of drowning in your esoteric striving. Beware of burning in the fire of your own ego.

There's an outer and an inner way to strive towards the spiritual.

Everything around us is like a veil, like a cover before the spiritual that we must punch through to get to the spiritual behind it. But in which direction? This cover surrounds us on all sides, above below front back right and left. And inwardly, everything that we experience as joy, pain, etc., is like a veil, like fog that conceals the spiritual in us, and this spiritual is the same one that we find when we break through the outer cover.

So that mankind can evolve further and get into the spiritual there's always men from time to time who're more advanced than is permitted by the momentary stage of human development, and who have things to tell us about states of human evolution that reach far into the future. Such advanced beings must exist to lead men further. John, the writer of the Apocalypse, was such a man. When he wanted to write a revelation of the future, he told himself: If I write this book out of the whole surroundings in which I'm living here and now it'll be influenced by the self that's in my body, since I'm connected with everything around and in me. I must free myself from all of this. He had to place himself on something like a rock that served him as a firm support, on which he didn't wobble and wasn't influenced by anything that surged around and in him. And he moved himself to the evening to 9-30-395, to Patmos Island, as the sun had already disappeared under the horizon, though its effect could still be felt, and as the moon and stars appeared. The Virgin constellation was there in the western sky, irradiated by the last gleam of the sun that had set, with the moon under it. This picture is reproduced in one of the seals—the virgin with the radiating sun and the moon under her feet. Thus, all of these seals were produced out of deep mystical connections.

John broke through the cover that surrounds us in this one direction—that of Virgo. There are 12 of these signs. Seven of them are good—the ones reproduced in the seals; the other five are more or less dangerous. Just as John chose this particular point in time and space to become completely separated from himself and all temporal things around him, so a Rosicrucian pupil must acquire a firm foundation in himself. The best way to do this is to let theosophical teachings work on us. Our astral body and thereby our etheric body become expanded by listening to theosophical ideas. This is the effect on anyone who hears anything about theosophy But the effect on those who are inclined towards theosophy is different than on those who aren't. The former feel the etheric body's expansion and fill it up with theosophical teachings, by accepting them. The other feel an emptiness in their etheric body through its expansion because they don't accept these ideas and so don't fill the expansion. Then doubt and skepticism arise through this emptiness. Whereas with the first men, it's like a pouring of oneself into the universe, which they can't let go too far, for they'll get a feeling of hollowness, of not feeling at home in these widths of space, like a fish that's taken out of water and can't live in air, because its organs haven't adapted themselves to this changed element. When a theosophist devotes himself to the teachings and his astral body expands evermore, he loses himself in this unfamiliar element One must avoid drowning here. And this is possible if one studies theosophy seriously, takes it in, elaborates it, and grasps it with feeling, not just with thinking and will, but permeates it completely with feeling. One can only do this with great earnestness. One must gain a firm support within oneself—like John when he wanted to write the Apocalypse and he transported himself to Patmos Island at sundown of Sept. 30, 395.

The configuration of the sun, Virgo and moon on that evening can be checked astronomically, and this was done. From this materialistic science draws the conclusion: Therefore the Apocalypse was written at that time. And then we're told that science has ascertained this. That's the way science ascertains things.

On the inner path one finds all the joys and sorrows, pains and blissfulness that live in us. But all of this is attached to our lower, perishable ego This whole desire world surrounds us like a fog that covers the spiritual for us. It keeps us from seeing and noticing the spiritual. We must break through it to get to the spiritual. There are forces that approach an esoteric pupil to make this fog even denser. The fog gets even denser if we don't resist it. We must burn it to avoid burning in the fire of our passions. If we don't overcome this fog, if we don't resist its becoming ever denser through Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, we're prisoners, as occultists say. There actually are men today who are born with great capacities and reach certain stages very quickly, but are then completely wrapped up in such a fog by the adversarial powers that they can't get out. One calls this occult imprisonment.

Our desire world consists entirely of egoism. And we can only overcome this egoism in deep humility. Which thought can lead us to an over-coming of egoism? The thought that we already spoke about yesterday in the exoteric lecture, the thought that we killed Christ. We're murderers, yes, that's what we are. We can transform this fact, but only if we let Paul's words live and become truth in us, “Not I, but Christ in me.” We shouldn't kill the divine in us through egoism, through our life of desires, etc., we should let Christ live in us. We should begin to carry out this easy and yet so difficult thing in us with shivering earnestness.

We arose from the divine: Ex Deo nascimur. We should take all suffering upon us willingly and patiently with the thought that we killed Christ; we should devote ourselves to him completely and die in him: In Christo morimur. Then we'll be reborn, reawakened through the Holy Spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. This verse sounds different exoterically than esoterically, but the difference is in only one word that's left out in the esoteric version. As we leave this word out and don't speak this word in shy reverence for what this word expresses, our feeling goes out to what is left unspoken in shy reverence.

Ex Deo nascimur
In … morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

This tells us that man arose from the spiritual; that he was originally contained in the spirit:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

Today we'll ask ourselves what we learned through our exoteric study of theosophy. At least theoretically the answer will be that we've become aware that the whole world and our physical body is maya or illusion. At least we assume this theoretically, and it more or less remains a hypothesis for us. But when we begin an esoteric training this acceptance of a mere hypothesis should increasingly become a truth. We should become deeply aware that we don't really have a firm ground in which we can take root that we only live on the surface of the foaming sea of life, that we never dive down into the real sea of reality, and that therefore we're always a plaything for illusions. Those who want to tread an esoteric path should and must arrive at this insight A certain feeling of despair, fear, and being abandoned will arise in most of them. The fear will be like that of someone standing at the edge of an abyss. Despair and forlornness will envelop a budding esoteric, because all the supports he thought he had in life will fall away from him like maya or illusion. His God seems to be torn away from him, because he only sees the false and delusive things in creation; this knowledge can make an atheist out of him.

And why must we tread this path, why must we look deep into the world of illusion, why have the Gods placed us in this unreal world? For they could have given us true reality instead of this play of life's wave on the surface. We'll see later that it's wise and good that the world is maya, illusion. If everything was true reality, we wouldn't look for truth and perfection any more. We couldn't develop any capacities, and since there wouldn't be anything wrong, no vices could exist. So we couldn't acquire virtues, we couldn't develop freely at all. Since we would always be living in the active, ruling Godhead, we'd never have an opportunity to freely dive down into the depths of reality, or to look for real knowledge. We would stop looking for God. “Looking for God” has a deep biblical meaning that one can only understand esoterically. After creating for six days, God rested on the seventh day. God had been active during the recapitulations of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, and he rested on the seventh day, after the world had been created. Then God couldn't be found anymore out to the horizon of our earth evolution. He was invisible, and this is deeply significant.

What's really divine is hidden behind visible creation—that's the great truth that we must look for behind sensory illusion. And since the world is illusion, it gives us an opportunity to develop our I through all false maya so that we shall find reality and the Gods. And what path does estoteric training point out to us, what means does it give us so that we can arrive at a knowledge of higher worlds faster than a man in everyday life? It gives us certain concentration and meditation exercises through which the soul forces in us can be awakened and that would otherwise remain slumbering in us for a long time yet. I want to emphasize that a pupil shouldn't go on this path out of blind confidence in his teacher or out of a blind reverence for him, because that would be the completely wrong way. He should use his own intellect in everything he does, and he shouldn't let other people think for him. He should test everything including what's connected with his exercises and meditation. When he's immersed in meditation, he shouldn't think that it has a suggestive effect, for that would be an entirely wrong assumption. They can't have a suggestive effect because they're put together in such a way that anyone can arrive at the imagination to which the exercises only point. Let's look at the meditation: In pure rays of light … what could have a suggestive effect here, since the content indicates something unreal? For anybody who says this knows that the Godhead can't be found in light rays. The exercise is like a symbol that stimulates us to create an imaginative picture while we try to immerse our soul in the Godhead of the world. We should let our own intellect speak and not act out of blind faith. It's better to remain in doubt until we arrive at a knowledge of the truth through our own efforts. Someday we'll get to that point.

And what's the other unavoidable experience one has by faithfully doing the exercises? It's a splitting of the personality.

A man will begin to feel as if something was accompanying him, something that thinks and hears with him and even speaks with him if he's inwardly weak. It's a second ego that emerges, a doppelganger that one has placed outside one. The more seriously someone treads the esoteric path, the more of his old man he places outside him, that is, he sheds one skin after another like a snake. These skins become like a second body, a doppelganger who never leaves one again for the rest of one's life. In the old Egyptian mysteries someone who had placed his double outside him was called a kha man. The double is chained to the kha man to constantly remind him what he was or still is. That's not always a pleasant feeling. But the awareness that he always has his double with him will remind him of his defects and that he should improve himself. He should constantly feel this presence, otherwise things would get dangerous, and because of his many, high ideals and intentions, he would forget what his inner life and defects are. Under certain circumstances it could even endanger a high initiate's life if in spite of his high striving he would forget this double for even a moment. He could actually lose his physical body through death, somewhat like one who's concentrating on a sublime problem, forgets to pay attention to traffic and gets run over. The more the double appears the better it is for our development, for otherwise, we would be living under great delusions about ourself. For we can't see the progress we've made; only our teacher can. Let's recall the place in the story of creation where the Elohim had ascended to the sun after they created man. It was only there that they could judge their work: “And the Elohim saw everything that they had made and behold it was very good.” They had attained perfection and that's why they could judge their work.