The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear Friends,

We tried in the first lecture of this Course to form some idea of the way in which man, here on Earth, is related to Beings and forces belonging to worlds beyond the Earth. Then, in the second lecture we spoke of the life of the human being in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth. In the present lecture I want to follow this up a little further. As our study proceeds, we shall find that a complete and inwardly harmonious picture will rise up before us.

We have seen that when a human being has passed through the gate of death and come into the super-sensible world, he reveals himself there to Imaginative vision in a spirit-form. You must understand, of course, that perception of the spiritual is quite different from perception of an object in the world of sense. For instance, those who are endowed with the faculty of spiritual vision will say: “Yes, I saw the phenomenon, but I could not tell you anything about the size of it.” The phenomena of the spiritual world are not spatial in the sense that a material object presented to the eye is spatial. Nevertheless, we can only describe them in such a way that they seem to resemble a visual image seen by the physical eye—or whatever other sense-impression we make use of in our description. You must bear this in mind in connection with all the descriptions I shall now be giving of what takes place in the super-sensible.

When a human being has passed through the gate of death, the spirit-form, of his head gradually fades away. On the other hand, the whole of the rest of his form becomes “physiognomy,” a physiognomy which expresses, for instance, how far the man was, in earthly life, a good man or a bad man, a wise man or a fool. These qualities can remain hidden in the material world; an out-and-out villain can walk about with an absolutely innocent face. But when the gate of death has been passed, they can no longer be concealed. There is no doing it with the face, for the face fades right away; and the rest of the form, which grows more and more like a physiognomy, allows nothing to be hid. We have, moreover, to remember that when a human being passes into the spiritual world, his whole relation to the universe changes. The faculty of thinking, especially that abstract thinking by which men set so much store on Earth, is by no means prized yonder in the spiritual world. No value is attached in the spiritual world to the faculty of which the head is the instrument; it is quite useless there. We have to leave behind us the thinking of which we are so proud and by means of which we evolve thoughts about the phenomena of the material world. It is only on Earth that there are philosophers! The kind of philosophy that consists in abstract thinking must be left behind. The further we pass out into the spiritual, super-sensible world, the more does our life of soul become a beholding, a perceiving. The thoughts which are in the objects come to us with the very act of perception. Here on Earth we evolve the thoughts; yonder in the spiritual world the thoughts are revealed by the things themselves; the thoughts come to us. Thought is achieved by means of perception. Nor is this true only of thought. Everything man has to undergo comes to him, in the spiritual world, in perception.

We have around us in the world of sense-perception certain phenomena which help us to describe the spiritual world in which man lives between death and a new birth. We look up to the stars. What the stars and planets of our system reveal to sense-perception on Earth is merely their outward aspect. In their inner reality they are something quite different; they are hosts of Spiritual Beings who have gathered together in diverse ways at the places where the stars appear in the heavens. When we look at a star with our physical eyes—what it really means is that there, in that particular direction, is a colony of Spiritual Beings in the Cosmos. The physical star we see merely gives us the direction; it is, if you like, a kind of signpost. Descriptions of the stars as given by physical science are of quite secondary importance, for physical science is dealing with what are no more than signs to indicate direction. The fact that somewhere in the sky we see a star means that in that direction there is a colony of Spiritual Beings.

The first sphere into which the human being passes after death is the sphere of the Moon; that is to say, he enters the region of the Spiritual Beings who have their dwelling-place in the Moon. What kind of Beings are these?

From what has been said in my book Occult Science, you will know that the Moon was not always out in the heavens where it is now. As a matter of fact, there are many strange things to be observed about the Moon. It is curious, for instance, that in ordinary text-books and school-books no mention is made, as a rule, of the fact that every year the Moon is coming nearer to the Earth. Most people are not aware of this, because they do not find it in the text-books; it is true, nevertheless. The Moon was not always out there in the Cosmos; there was a time when the Moon and its substance were within the Earth. The Moon then separated from the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos. It is therefore only in the course of Earth evolution that the Moon has become a dwelling place in itself for Spiritual Beings. And for what kind of Spiritual Beings?

In my books and lectures I have often spoken of the great primeval Teachers who lived among men in very ancient times of Earth evolution. When we look back with real understanding to ancient times, we cannot but be filled with deep inner reverence for the marvellous wisdom that was given long since to men on Earth by these great, superhuman Teachers. For the first Teachers of the human race on Earth were not themselves human; they were Beings standing higher in the scale of evolution than man, and in the Mysteries they appeared not in physical but in ether bodies—which, since then, they have for the most part laid aside, for they are now in astral bodies. These primeval Teachers left the Earth and passed out into the Cosmos—to the Moon. The heavenly body we know as the Moon is therefore the colony, out in the Cosmos, of the primeval Teachers of mankind. There they have their dwelling, in the Moon. To crude perception the outer aspect of the Moon reflects merely the light of the Sun. But for a finer perception the Moon mirrors a vast number of cosmic forces. And what is reflected thence to the Earth from the forces of the Cosmos is connected with all that is sub-human in man—with what man has to-day in common with animal nature. We find, therefore, in the Moon these high Spiritual Beings who were once the primeval Teachers of mankind, and at the same time, together with them, the animal forces of man's nature.

This is the first region the human being enters when he has passed through the gate of death; here his first experiences are undergone. Try to form a living picture of how, with his moral—or immoral—physiognomy, a human being comes into the region of the physical and spiritual radiations of the Moon and how, to begin with, he sees himself and other human beings each with his physiognomy. He does not see with physical eyes; he becomes aware of the others through a kind of “feeling” perception—almost a kind of touching, but touching from a distance. Let me try to describe it to you in the following way. A human being comes into the vicinity of another being in this region. He has his physiognomy which is mobile in itself—as it were, soft and pliable. He draws near to the other being, and at once tries to give himself a physiognomy similar to that revealed by the other being. But if a man who was an out-and- out villain in earthly life and has now passed through the gate of death were to attempt to do this in the proximity of one who has been a saintly man, in order that he might perceive and feel what the saintly man is in his physiognomy, he would not find it possible. Despite all his efforts he would continue to give himself the physiognomy of a villain. He can do no otherwise. You will realise from this that for a certain period of time after death a man is only capable of seeing other human beings who in respect of their moral qualities were of like nature with himself in Earthly life. This is the first impression that is experienced by the human being, the first of many powerful impressions that are at the same time like so many judgements passed upon him. For man really feels the experience as a dispensation of strict justice. He stands there under the constant impression: As those others are, so are you yourself; you can move only among human beings who are like yourself! It is so, indeed. Man does not see those who are different from himself; to begin with, he simply cannot see them.

Now the particular forces which are contained in this Moon environment do not permit of the Angels drawing near to man. The Angels—in their lovely form—cannot, to begin with, come into the neighbourhood of the human being. For the Moon is the heavenly body of which the Earth has rid herself; she has, as it were, put it out into the Cosmos. It is true that with the Moon have gone also, as we saw, the holy Teachers and Sages; but there are present, in addition, in its vicinity Ahrimanic Beings. Ahrimanic forms are to be seen there. And so it comes about that when a man sees other human beings in physiognomies that are the reverse of good, and has the impression that he is seeing himself along with them, then he and they seem, to his despair, to resemble the Ahrimanic forms that appear in this region. The Angels are hidden from his sight because they have forms into which he cannot yet find his way again. He sees other human beings in forms that are all differing expressions of evil, and he notes the resemblance of these to the Ahrimanic forms. This, then, is the second impression which comes to man in the Moon sphere: You yourself resemble the Ahrimanic forms! Once again is a stern judgement passed upon man after death.

The third experience makes an impression which never leaves the human being. It begins with the realisation that in the first region through which he has to pass are the wise and holy primeval Teachers of early humanity. But now he cannot help feeling that a mysterious connection exists between the Ahrimanic beings with whom he comes in contact in the way described, and these primeval Teachers of mankind. From the human point of view it is of course quite understandable that men will judge such things as I am telling you in the attitude of the famous King of Spain who was once shown a map of the stars and their movements and the whole solar system and, finding it very difficult to grasp, said that if God had left him to create the Universe he would have made it much simpler, it was all far too complicated! It is not to be wondered at that numbers of people think very much the same and are for ever wanting to correct something in the Divine Plan of the Universe. Human beings have, as you know, infinite faith in their own power of insight. There was actually a philosopher who said: “Give me matter, and I will make a universe.” That philosopher was Kant. It is a good thing he was not given matter, for he would have made something perfectly horrible out of it!

So, too, when people hear about Ahrimanic beings, they cannot understand why these beings have not long ago given up all hope of gaining the victory over the Earth Spirits. Human beings know quite well that the ultimate victory will not be with the Ahrimanic beings. But Ahriman does not know it! He strives unceasingly for victory. And out of this striving for victory there arises a strange and remarkable connection between those Ahrimanic beings who belong chiefly to the Moon sphere and the wise, primeval Teachers of mankind. Let me put it in this way. The Ahrimanic beings are continually trying, in their sinister way, to flatter and cajole these primeval Teachers, they would so much like to win them over to their side! For what is it these Ahrimanic beings are trying to achieve? They would like to hold the Earth fast at a certain point in its development and not allow it to make any further progress. It is Ahriman who is constantly saying: “The evolution of human beings has reached a certain point, and now it must come to a standstill; they must not evolve any further. I have resolved that human beings shall harden at this point and continue their further journey in the Cosmos as hardened, rigidified beings—not as beings involved in a progressive evolution.” This is what is whispered every night into the ears of men by the Ahrimanic beings. And it is what the Ahrimanic beings desire in regard also to the Earth itself; they want to hold it fast at a given point in its evolution.

And now think of the great primeval Teachers of man. It was they who left behind them on Earth what we know as the ancient, primordial Wisdom. This ancient Wisdom has grown dim in the course of the ages and is no longer understood. Once upon a time, in the old Mystery-sanctuaries, it was taught to men; but that could not continue. For if human beings had gone on receiving this Wisdom, they would not have made progress. Above all, they would not have attained to freedom, to free inner spiritual activity; they would not have acquired free will. The wisdom was by its very nature able to speak only to the instincts of men, not to clear, self-conscious deliberation. It was thus for the well-being of humanity that at a certain moment these great Teachers should withdraw. If they had never lived on Earth man would have been without an initial impetus for his evolution. But when they had once given the impetus which enabled him henceforth to continue his evolution independently, they withdrew from the Earth and went to the Colony of the Moon. As long as the primeval Teachers were still upon Earth, the Ahrimanic beings did their utmost to keep them there in order that the instinctive Wisdom should remain as it was. Even to-day, when a man has passed through the gate of death and come into the Moon sphere, they think they can still do something; and so they try again and again to cajole and persuade these primeval Teachers to approach the dead. They cannot achieve their end, least of all in the case of those human beings who wear a physiognomy of evil. None the less, the Ahrimanic beings continue to draw near to the souls of human beings in the Moon sphere and goad them on by pointing to the great primeval Wisdom and saying: “That was once all there for you!” Human beings who wear features of evil have, therefore, now to pass through a third experience. The Ahrimanic beings speak to them of the primeval Teachers of mankind. But they, with their nature, cannot see these Teachers. They gaze into an empty void.

This experience makes a profound and lasting impression. Once again man feels that a judgement has been passed upon him. For the thought lies heavy on his soul: “Those who gave the human race its first impulse are hidden from me; I cannot see them, I am spurned and rejected.” Powerful and acute is the experience that comes thus to human beings who do not show a physiognomy expressive of the good.

These are the three impressions which must needs come to man when, with a physiognomy of evil, he passes over into the world that lies beyond the gate of death. And it must of course be remembered, that no human being is wholly good; in the very best of men there is, after all, a great deal that is bad. Hence it falls to the lot of a great many human beings to undergo, at any rate in part, the experiences here described. But the more a man is able to assume the physiognomy of the good after death, the more readily will he behold those whom he has through his goodness come to resemble, and the less will he respond to the Ahrimanic beings. Their influences will fall away from him; on the other hand he will have understanding for the Angel Beings who now enter the sphere in which he is living. And that will enable him to permeate his being with forces,—to begin with, forces especially of will. For it is not thought or reflection, but first and foremost the faculty of will that man possesses after death. Will becomes itself perception, becomes man's whole world of life. He has to perform an act of will whenever he wants to perceive anything. For he must form. and fashion himself in accordance with what he wants to see. That is, he must will. He must become like what he wills to perceive. It is above all the will that is developed when a man has passed through the gate of death, and upon it work, for good or ill, the impressions of which I have spoken in connection with the Moon sphere.

The next sphere into which the human being passes is that of Mercury. By this time—and often at the cost of great suffering—the human being has been able so far to adjust his physiognomy to the forces of the super-sensible world that he has laid aside the physiognomy of evil and has gradually come to resemble the forms of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The process is in many cases slow, but eventually man enters the sphere of Mercury, the dwelling-place of the beings of the Third Hierarchy, and has to live there among them and undergo what I have already described. This is the sphere in which he gradually unfolds understanding of what, previously, was more or less blank perception—although it exercised a potent influence upon the domain of his will. In the Mercury-sphere understanding for all that has been perceived begins to dawn within man. In the present age human life is such that those who investigate these matters with Imaginative perception have tragic experiences. For the state in which the souls of the dead find themselves in this Mercury sphere depends to a great extent upon whether, here on Earth, they were materialists and rejected in thought and deed everything of a super-sensible nature, or whether they had understanding for the super-sensible. A man who in earthly life rejected all that transcends the material, confronts the Beings in the Mercury sphere with comparatively little understanding. It is the same when he comes to the next sphere, where he lives among Beings who also belong to the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai but have reached a somewhat higher stage of development. If a man was a rank materialist in earthly life, he has no understanding at all of the Beings in the Venus sphere. For here the forces of cosmic love pour down upon him. If he has not acquired on Earth the capacity of love, the region he now enters is strange and foreign to him in the highest degree. The forces of cosmic love flood his being in the Venus sphere if, on Earth, he possessed the faculty of love; but if, on Earth, he consciously or unconsciously harboured hatred in his breast, these forces of the Venus sphere are changed within him into forces of wrath. This is the mystery of man's sojourn in the Venus sphere. For those who bring with them from Earth considerable remains of forces of hatred, it is as though metamorphosed forces of love—forces, that is, of wrath and fury—were to rise up within them from out of their will. Man sees himself in a manifestation that impels him to say: It must all be subdued, it must be chastened and brought into harmony with the Cosmos. It is ultimately always the will that receives, shall I say, special care and nurture in the Venus sphere—the will, which in earthly man has its seat in the limb and metabolic system in the lower part of his organism, that is to say, in the part of man that becomes after death “physiognomy.” It is therefore the will that comes to expression in this physiognomy.

All this time man is coming, by degrees, to resemble the Beings that are present in the spiritual Cosmos, and he is gradually passing on into the sphere of the Sun. In the Sun sphere the forces work chiefly on that in man which in its earthly reflection we know as feeling. What the Sun shows us, when we look up to it with our physical eyes, is its outward aspect only. In its inner aspect the Sun is the great cosmic meeting-place of all those Spiritual Beings who guide and direct the destinies of the Earth and of the men on Earth. The Sun is, above all, the colony of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. Whereas before entering the Sun sphere man lives only among human beings with whom he is linked by destiny, others now approach him. His circle of acquaintances—if one may be allowed the expression—grows wider and wider. This takes place in the sphere of the Sun. Here, too, a new and particularly vivid experience befalls man.

There below him lies another world—the Earth he has left behind but which he must tread again. In the Sun sphere, as you have heard, the metamorphosis of man's being takes place; here is wrought out the great change of which I have told you, when man's lower being is transformed into the upper being in preparation for the next earthly life. The legs are wrought into the spirit-form of the lower jaw, the arms into the spirit-form of the upper jaw and cheek-bones, and so on. This is a wonderful work which proceeds in the spiritual world, and in comparison with it any work that is done on earth in whatsoever domain is utterly insignificant. Great and majestic is the work that is accomplished by man in the spiritual world in union with higher spiritual Beings! There, in the sphere of the Sun (using the word in its wider sense) the secret of man's being is worked out. But now comes another experience.

If we are healthy in soul and spirit during our life on Earth, we are bound to realise that there is another world, a spiritual world, even if we cannot pierce through to it with actual knowledge. We take the existence of the spiritual world for granted; we say that beyond the material world there is a super-sensible world. This is how it is in earthly life. But during existence in the Sun sphere between death and a new birth, it is the other way round. In his Sun existence, an experience befalls man that teaches him to speak of a world beyond—but this “world beyond” is the Earth! It is an intensely living experience, not so much now of one's own destiny, but of the whole intrinsic character of Earth existence. And there is one feature of it which you can observe and should test for yourselves. People of to-day can hardly yet succeed in this, but you must try. When you are reading history and following it back through the centuries, it may well be that you have a curious experience. You are living now in the year 1923. You go back through history—through the world war, through still earlier events, until you come at length to the period, let us say, between the years 1500 and 1550. There you begin to feel that it is all familiar to you. Consider for a moment an intimate experience of this kind. You seem to know all about events that happened several centuries ago. You say to yourself: Surely I must have had a share in these events! A superficial student will immediately conclude that this was the period of his previous incarnation on Earth. This is, however, in most cases incorrect. As a rule it is that period between death and rebirth when, in the Sun sphere, you experienced most vividly your connection with earthly existence. Earth life presented itself to you then as a “beyond,” very much as the super-sensible life presents itself to you on Earth as a “beyond.”

Let us now pause for a moment in our study of man's path of evolution after death. We have seen that when man has gone away from the Earth he completes first the Moon existence, then enters upon the Mercury existence, then Venus and then the Sun. Of what follows we shall speak later on. But now it must be clearly understood that these events and processes are not isolated events and processes in the spiritual world but are all related to what happens on the physical Earth. And the relationship is of a distinctive character. The Moon existence is permeated through and through with the Beings of whom we have been speaking to-day—the great primeval Teachers of the human race. In a remote age of antiquity they left the Earth and went out into the Cosmos to form the cosmic colony of the Moon. But in later times we may still find here and there human beings, initiated in the Mysteries, who were possessed of quick inner sight and hearing, and could apprehend the wisdom which had once been living on Earth thanks to the presence of these primeval Initiates. Thus, in the ancient Indian period of civilisation there was still present in the Mysteries a living knowledge of the Wisdom of the Moon Initiates. There must we look, to find the source of all that can so deeply stir our wonder and admiration in the echoes we still possess of ancient Indian Wisdom. Nor is this all. Influences continue to pour down from the super-earthly world in which man lives between death and a new birth,—and the influences change with each succeeding epoch. As time goes on, their power grows continuously weaker; that is to say, human beings grow gradually less and less conscious of these influences. The Mercury influences, for example, were particularly strong during the period of ancient Persian civilisation, but human beings were already becoming less conscious of them: the myth of Ahura Mazdao is the outcome of a somewhat darkened knowledge of the influence exercised upon the Earth by Mercury. During the Egypto-Chaldean epoch the Venus influences were principally at work. Then came the wonderful epoch of Greek culture, continuing on into the Latin, when the Sun influences worked upon the Earth with greatest strength. Man was, however, in this Graeco-Latin epoch still less observant of such influences. Two factors were working together. When in his existence between death and a new birth man entered the Sun sphere, he felt an urgent desire to experience the Earth from the Sun. That is one factor. The second is that everything connected with the Sun and the nature of the Sun had a very strong influence upon the Greeks. All that the forces of the Sun give to the Earth had a deep meaning for them, especially for those generally known as the Athenians, in contrast to the Spartans. Yet everywhere in Greece the Sun, in its spiritual aspect as well, exercised a remarkably deep influence on the whole form and development of civilisation. Throughout this phase of evolution there was a strong aptitude on Earth for the perception of the spiritual, the purely spiritual, in the starry heavens. Perception of the material aspect of the heavens did not really begin until the time of our fifth Post-Atlantean period, which is, as you know, only a few hundred years old. The fact that these influences are working in our time indicates that we have passed out of the region where men feel themselves related, on Earth, to the feeling they had of being in the Sun-existence between death and a new birth. We to-day are much more susceptible to what follows. After the time spent in the Sun man comes to the domain of Mars. The strongest cosmic influence working upon humanity to-day is the impulse which comes from Mars existence. We can become acquainted with these Mars influences between death and a new birth when the Noontide hour of existence has been passed and we begin once again to approach the Earth. It must not, however, be thought that the influences connected with the Sun existence cease to work upon a man when he has passed into the Mars sphere. The Sun extends the sphere of its activity over those planetary phases of existence which follow. The Sun's influences remain; but the Mars existence begins to be a significant factor in what happens on Earth. I shall speak further of the journey of the human being through the Mars existence, but I want now to connect what we have just been learning of the spiritual world with what we find at work precisely in our own, fifth Post-Atlantean age.

In our time we are learning what cosmic battle is. We can “sense” it taking place. Most of us cannot unravel its mysteries; but we know that in cosmic existence war is being waged to-day between all manner of good and evil spirits. And here the Sun existence acquires a particular significance for our age. It is exceedingly difficult to-day for the results of spiritual insight to make any headway in face of material science! People are so proud of the fact that physics has investigated the Sun! The Sun is described for us in scientific text-books; but these descriptions, instead of stimulating in us a true conception of the Sun, really serve only to put our minds off the track. What then is actually the influence of the Sun in regard to the Earth to-day? I will indicate one only of its activities. It may seem to you that I am descending here into very material realms that are in strange contrast to the spiritual events of which we have been speaking; but what I am now going to say is of importance for the further progress of the studies upon which we are engaged.

You are, of course, familiar with the phenomenon of the Sunspots which appear with a certain regularity. Dark spots are observed on the Sun. These Sun-spots and their meaning are the cause of much dispute in material science, but a more accurate research would reveal the following. A constant impulse arises from within the Sun to throw out Sun-substance into the Universe through these dark portals. And the Sun-substance thus thrown out appears within our solar system in the form of comets, meteors and shooting stars. Now it is particularly in our age that the Beings who rule over the Universe from within the Sun are casting forth these comets, meteors and shooting stars. They did so in earlier times as well, but in our time this activity of theirs has a new significance. You will remember I said how in earlier times it was the purely spiritual impulses in the starry system that were particularly at work. In our time it is the impulses contained in the iron thrown out from the Sun that have special significance for human beings. And these impulses are used by Him whom we know as the Michael Spirit, in the service of the spiritual in the Cosmos. In our age there are thus present in the Cosmos impulses which were not working with the same strength in earlier periods of civilisation. This cosmic iron, in its spiritual nature, makes it possible for the Michael Spirit to mediate between the super-sensible and the material on Earth. We find, therefore, on the one side a spirit of warfare abroad in the world man enters, when in our time he reaches to what lies behind outer sense-existence. When a man crosses the Threshold with super-sensible sight and instead of directing his gaze to matters which concern him personally turns his attention to great affairs of the Universe which underlie our whole civilisation, then he sees warfare and battle, spiritual battle. There is strife, there is war and conflict in the spiritual, behind the veils of existence. And the iron which, even to the point of physical manifestation, is thrown out by the Sun Spirits into the Cosmos—with this iron Michael arms Himself for His task in the cosmic war. For Michael has the task of helping humanity to go forward in the right way in face of these Powers of Strife behind the veils of civilisation. On the one hand—battle and warfare. On the other hand—the labours and strivings of Michael.

Moon—Ancient Indian civilisation

Mercury—Ancient Persian civilisation

Venus—Egypto-Chaldean civilisation

Sun—Greco-Latin civilisation

Mars (Iron)—

Now all this is again connected with the development of man's freedom, man's free spiritual activity. As earthly men we have iron in our blood. If we were beings with no iron in our blood, the feeling and impulse of freedom would still be able to arise in our souls, but we should not have bodies which could be used for putting this impulse into operation. That we are able not only to conceive the idea of freedom, but also to feel in our body the power to make the body itself into a bearer of the impulse of freedom, is due to the fact that in our age we can learn how Michael takes the cosmic iron, which was cast out also in former times, into His service. And we ourselves, if we understand the Michael impulse aright, can learn how to place the iron that we have within us into the service of the impulse of spiritual freedom. Matter in any case has meaning for us only when we learn to understand it as an expression of the Spiritual in the Universe. In this age what we have to learn is to make the right use of the iron in our blood. For wherever iron is, there too is the impulse for the development of freedom. This is true in the Cosmos and true also in man. It was out of a deep instinct that the Initiates of old ascribed iron to Mars—iron which has a significance for human blood, and therewith also a cosmic significance.

These things can be known to-day through Spiritual Science, It is not a question of a revival of ancient traditions but of a re-discovery by Spiritual Science itself. If Anthroposophy is found to be in agreement with ancient lore, that does not show that Anthroposophy is merely a revival of the old. Anthroposophy investigates things by studying them in their own intrinsic nature. Their significance is then brought home to one anew when one finds that men had this same knowledge long ago under the influence of the ancient Divine Wisdom possessed by those Beings who afterwards took their departure to the Moon and to-day people the cosmic colony of the Moon.

The age in which we live is, therefore, also bound up with the experiences through which man passes between death and rebirth. Perception of what is happening on Earth is strongest during the period of existence in the Sun-sphere, but it is always there after death in greater or less degree. From the super-earthly regions in which he lives between death and a new birth, man is perpetually looking down at the earthly world. If it were not so, the earthly world would become foreign to him during the long journey between death and a new birth.

The experiences of man in the super-sensible world can be described in many ways. Yesterday I described them to you in another way; now I have been describing them to you in connection with the world of stars and with what takes place on Earth in the consecutive epochs of civilisation. All these descriptions must gradually be built up together into one whole. It would be a mistake to say: Yes, but how is it that on one occasion you describe man's life between death and rebirth in one way and on another occasion in quite a different way? If a man goes to a city once or twice or three times, he will certainly describe things differently, as his knowledge of the city grows. The details of all his descriptions have then to be put together. In the same way must the descriptions of man's experiences in the super-sensible world be brought together, be considered and pondered in all their connections. Thus alone can we gain an impression of what the super-sensible world really is and what man experiences there. This was the point I wanted to reach in the present lecture. In the lecture this evening I will speak of further experiences undergone by the human being in his existence between death and a new birth.

My dear Friends,

In the lecture this afternoon the life between death and a new birth was pictured as a journey, and we considered the sense in which the positions of certain stars in the heavens can be taken as viewpoints whence we may behold this journey of man through certain spiritual regions. Before proceeding further, we will study in a little more detail how we must picture this journey through regions indicated for us by certain heavenly bodies.

It might seem that the super-sensible existence of man between two earthly lives has been adequately presented in such a book as Theosophy. For the early stages of study, that is quite true, but you will surely agree that knowledge must also progress and expand. As we go further in our study we have constantly to bear in mind the oneness of the Universe, we have to remember that there is an unbroken, harmonious interplay between the super-sensible and the sensible worlds. The conditions of existence in the different regions through which man passes between death and a new birth express themselves outwardly in the relationships of space and of time that exist between the heavenly bodies concerned. When, therefore, we speak of these spiritual regions in terms of heavenly bodies, we are using a correct picture. There is a connection between the place of a visible star in the heavens and some particular region of super-sensible life. As an objection to this it could be said that the life which stretches between death and a new birth cannot be conceived in terms of space or at most only to a very limited degree. That is perfectly true, but super-sensible existence is nevertheless reflected into space. The world that is beyond space and beyond time, plays into space and into time; and as man's thinking and ideation have necessarily to be in terms of space and time, the imagery of the stars in the heavens is an excellent one for giving a picture of the super-sensible. One thing, however, we must not omit to make clear. We are taught in physics that the processes we have in the physical world—processes that are subject to the force of gravity—undergo a change, when we go out into space. Physical science tells us the exact proportion in which the force of gravity decreases. We are taught that the force of gravity (and also the intensity of light) decreases in proportion to the square of the distance. Science will not, however, admit that the same is true in relation to all knowledge of material things which has been acquired here on Earth. Science has derived this knowledge from the Earth; and if the figures which apply to gravity and light in the immediate environment of the Earth have to be modified as we go out into space, it is not unreasonable to suppose that only so long as we remain in the actual environment of the Earth are we justified in applying the scientific knowledge of to-day. Just as the power of gravity decreases in proportion to the square of the distance, so does the truth of our conclusions decrease, the further we are away from the Earth. When the astronomer or astro-physicist tries with ordinary thinking to determine, for instance, what is happening in some nebula out in cosmic space, it is just the same as if one set out to calculate, according to the conditions prevailing on the Earth, the weight of a stone in that nebula far away in the heavens. It ought not therefore to surprise us when Spiritual Science says: Here on Earth things present such and such an aspect, but out in the cosmos they are in reality quite different. On Earth we see the Moon as it appears in the sky. In reality the Moon is a cosmic colony of many Beings—I described it to you in the last lecture. It is the same with all the stars and constellations. This fact must be borne in mind throughout our present study.

The lectures so far have brought us to the point where, during his life between death and a new birth, man passes into the Sun sphere. In this region the spirit-form of the lower part of the human being is transformed into the head of the next earthly life. It must of course be remembered that man's path between death and new birth is such that he passes through all these planetary spheres twice. After death he passes, first of all, into the Moon sphere, then he goes on into the Mercury sphere, the Venus sphere and the Sun sphere. That is as far as we came in our description. In the Sun sphere the lower man begins to be transformed into the upper man. The limb structures are transformed—spiritually, of course, at this stage—into the future head-system. This work of metamorphosis is a work of infinite grandeur and sublimity. Those who study the human head merely as a physical structure have no notion of all the manifold work that has to be performed in the Cosmos in order to bring into being the spirit-germ of the human head,—which later on will unite with the physical embryo. After this work has been begun in the Sun sphere, man passes into the Mars sphere, then into the Jupiter sphere and into the Saturn sphere. The Saturn sphere is really the last, for Uranus and Neptune do not come into consideration here. During all this time, work is proceeding upon the spirit-germ of the head. Man's path then leads him still further out into the cosmic expanse, out into the wide ocean of the cosmos, where the work of metamorphosis continues, until the time comes for him to take the path of return. Then, going back through the regions of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars to the region of the Sun, he comes again at length to the sphere of the Moon. Of the path of return we shall hear later on; at this point we will consider the experiences through which the human being passes, after his time in the region of the Sun is over.

Before he reaches the Sun sphere, man's experiences are for the most part closely connected with himself. In the last lecture I told you how man wears a physiognomy which expresses his good and bad qualities and how this enables him to see other beings similar in nature to himself. I told you how he gradually changes his spirit-form and comes to resemble the beings who belong to the super-sensible world, and how then he is able to behold the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the Beings also of the second Hierarchy. If we want to describe the human being up to the stage of the Sun existence we must fix our attention on his spirit-form or figure, and describe that. But having entered the Sun region man undergoes an experience which I called living his way into the Cosmic Music, the Music of the Spheres. He hears, in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody, the meaning, as it were, of all the interworking of the starry worlds. For this working together of the stars, which is at the same time an expression of the working together of the Spiritual Beings that are in these regions—this it is, ultimately, that comes to revelation in cosmic harmony and cosmic melody. It is chiefly the life of feeling in its spiritual metamorphosis that is quickened and stimulated in the Sun existence. Every experience man has is like cosmic melody and cosmic harmony vibrating through his entire being. What we need at this stage of life between death and a new birth is not anything of the nature of theory, nor indeed anything that lends itself at all to expression in words. What we need is to feel—with a universal feeling that fills our being through and through—the harmonies and melodies born from the inter-workings of the different orders of Beings in the Cosmos.

Then a further experience comes to us, an experience which reveals unmistakably the connection between the physical world of sense and the super-sensible, superphysical world. When we pass into the Sun existence where the melodies and harmonies of the spheres—the whole Music of the Spheres—sound to us from every direction of the Cosmos, we are still aware of the last remnants of one of the spiritual faculties we possessed during earthly existence, we can still feel the last remnants of speech. At this stage of existence between death and a new birth, our spirit-form has already fallen away and we have come to resemble in form the cosmic sphere itself; our form has undergone metamorphosis into what will become head in the next incarnation. Everything about it that was still reminiscent of the form we bore in earthly existence has by this time fallen right away. But the faculty of soul that enabled us to speak, to make our thought articulate in words, follows us, and being present with us in memory brings a kind of discord into the Music of the Spheres. Yes, discord is introduced into the Music of the Spheres, by reason of the fact that man carries right up into Sun existence the remnants of his faculty of speech. And this discordant element that is brought by man into the Sun existence becomes the basis for the work of certain higher Spirits whose task it is to help forward Earth existence from the Cosmos. For it is when they see what comes to expression in human speech and language as it is to-day, that they take knowledge of how things have degenerated on the Earth and grown corrupt. In none of its European or American forms to-day is speech a faculty that emerges from the being of man with elemental power. It may be that what speech once was will be able to come again on Earth in the following way. Some of us are learning Eurythmy. What happens when one learns Eurythmy? To-day we lightly utter words without the faintest inkling of how the configuration of the words is connected with the inner life and experience of the soul. To speak words to-day is really nothing but an acquiescence in convention. It never occurs to people that when they say “a” (ah)—as a sound, by itself—they are expressing something which as pure sound springs from astonishment or wonder in the soul. When we utter the sound “b,” we mean that we are covering something, enveloping it, wrapping it round. Consonantal sounds invariably signify forms; vowel sounds express feelings, the inner life and being of the soul. The “b” sound is primordially connected with an act of covering. “B” is really the “house.” If I say “a” (ah), this is an expression of a wonder that is felt in the very depths of the soul. The consonantal sound of “t” expresses a settling oneself down, making a halt, staying there. “D” is the same, but has a gentler shade of meaning, less abrupt. Suppose I utter the (German) word “Bad.”* [* English “bath.”] If I were to go back to the origin of the word, to the time when it was still felt and seen, I would have to say: The water is around me like an enveloping sheath: “b.” It is comfortably warm: ah! (Now I am at the sound “a.”) I shall stay in it: “d.” The whole experience is contained in the word itself. To speak in such a way seems to us almost absurd, for nowadays no actual experience is any longer connected with words. If we wanted to experience the word “B-a-d” we should have to say: “The house in which I feel wonder, in which I sit.” In reality speech is filled through and through with soul; man's inner experience of soul streams into and permeates it.

In days of yore this was felt and known. In the original, primitive tongues, speech was born from perception of feeling and of form—feeling in the vowel, form in the consonant. To-day these elements are no longer associated with speech; it has become a mere matter of convention. In Eurythmy, however, the sounds—“b,” “a,” “d”—are changed back again into the gestures that correspond to them. In making the gestures, the Eurythmist begins again to experience speech. One may cherish the hope that if love for Eurythmy is born in ever widening circles, humanity will be able to find its way back to what was contained in primitive tongues,—to a speech that is felt and seen. So will Eurythmy in the future be something more than it is to-day; it will be man's guide and show him how the life of soul and spirit can be borne along on the surging waves of speech. To-day we have come to the point when speech is so little articulated—let alone, ensouled—that numbers of people cannot really be said to “speak” at all. They “spit” the words out! Speech as it is to-day is certainly not born from the life of soul! It is enough to make one despair, when one has to listen to words that have no longer any soul in them, any life,—nay, are not even articulated.

So it comes about that in our day a shrill discord sounds up from Earth into the Cosmic Music when man enters the Sun existence after death. And this quality that has crept into speech makes manifest to certain Spiritual Beings the degeneration that earthly existence has suffered, showing them too at the same time how the right forces and impulses can be found that will lead once again to an ascent.

Man continues his wandering and comes into the Mars existence. What do we mean when we say: Man conies into the Mars existence? It is now no longer possible, you must remember, to speak of man in his spirit-form, for by this time he is wholly changed; he has become a spiritual image of the great cosmic sphere. On and on leads the path, through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, out into the surging waves of the Cosmos. In the Mars region the human being lives among the “population” of Mars—if I may so express myself. The inhabitants of Mars are discovered to be either discarnate human souls or Beings of the Hierarchies, but above all those of the Hierarchies from whose entire being Cosmic Speech sounds forth into universal space. For man is now in the region where Cosmic Music becomes Cosmic Speech. At first he hears it; then he is himself interwoven into the Cosmic Speech. Instead of the imitative speech of humanity, he hearkens to a speech that is creative, a speech out of which things are born and have their being. During man's passage through the sphere of Mars he acquires conscious knowledge of the Beings who people this region. The spiritual population of Mars consists of Beings who are the Knowers of the Cosmic Speech. There are other Beings too,—for example. Beings who are warlike in nature. But so far as man is concerned, the most important Beings in the Mars sphere are those who in their whole nature are Cosmic Word. They are the Guardians of the Cosmic Speech.

Man's journey then leads him into the region of Jupiter where dwell the Beings who are the guardians of the Cosmic Thoughts. These Beings radiate thought-beings into our planetary system and its environment. Through this region also man must pass, and he is involved there in a process of metamorphosis which I can only describe in a rather prosaic way.

Picture to yourselves that man becomes a kind of image of the cosmic sphere; that is to say, his whole being is really the spirit-germ of the head as it will be in his next life on Earth. In the Sun existence, having experienced the shrill discord set up by earthly speech, he learns to lay aside this earthly speech. During his passage through Mars he becomes part of the Cosmic Speech, he grows one with it, and begins also to lay the foundation for an understanding of Cosmic Speech. For it is like this. The metamorphosis of the lower man has begun—the legs into the lower jaw, the arms into the upper jaw, and so on. In community with the Beings of the Hierarchies the human being builds the spirit-germ of his future head. But, to begin with, this head is built for understanding the Cosmos—not the Earth! It learns first to understand Cosmic Speech, Cosmic Thoughts. Cosmic Thoughts and Cosmic Speech find a home in the human head; just as here on Earth man knows of minerals, plants and animals, so, during his journey through the spheres of Mars and Jupiter, he is made acquainted with the mysteries of the spiritual Universe. We shall never have a true feeling or perception of the nature of man until we realise in clear consciousness that between death and rebirth the human being has learned to know the names of the wonderful and majestic Beings of the higher Hierarchies, has learned to understand the work and creative activities of these Beings in the Cosmos, has learned to follow in his thought—not little everyday problems of personal life, such as, How am I to get back to Amsterdam?—but such a question as: How is one world-epoch born out of another through the workings of the higher Hierarchies? So much for man's experience in his passage through Jupiter.

Now comes the passage through the Saturn existence. Saturn bestows upon the human being what I will call Cosmic Memory—for in the Saturn sphere dwell those Spiritual Beings who preserve the memory of everything that has ever come to pass in our planetary system. Saturn is the mighty bearer of the memory of all the happenings of our planetary system. Just as in the Mars sphere man learns the speech of the Gods, and in the Jupiter sphere the thoughts of the Gods, so in his first passage through the Saturn existence he learns to know all that lives in the memory of the Gods of our planetary system. Hence it comes about that man's head in the spiritual spheres—which is the spirit-germ of his future earthly head—receives incorporated into it everything that enables him to be a citizen of the Cosmos and to live in the Cosmos among the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, even as he lives on earth among the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms.

Then, having been so deeply enriched in his spirit-existence that he has learned to understand the speech of the great world, the speech of the Macrocosm in the widest sense of the word, man passes out of the spheres of planetary activity and enters the sphere of activity of the Fixed Stars. Here the work upon the primal germ of the human head, the pre-figuring and shaping of it, is brought to completion by influences pouring in from infinitudes of spiritual worlds.

The time has now come for man to take the path of return. He comes again, first, into the Saturn sphere. The fact that during his earlier sojourn in the Saturn sphere he received into himself the planetary memories, enables the foundation to be laid now in his head for the faculty of memory that will be necessary in his life on Earth. The cosmic memory implanted into his being is, as it were, made “earthly.” Cosmic memory is transformed again into the germ of the faculty of human memory. And in the Jupiter sphere, all that man acquired through having perceived the thoughts of the Gods, is transformed on the path of return into the faculty to conceive human thoughts which can then be reflected in ordinary consciousness when the germ of the head unites with the physical embryo.

On the return path through the Saturn sphere the detailed elaboration of the metamorphosis of the lower man into the various parts of the head-organisation can also begin. This is a wonderful work,—one human being working upon another, in accord too with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Verily, the work that is wrought here for the forming of the human head is like the creation of a whole world. For in the sphere of existence between death and rebirth of which I am now speaking, each single human head is seen to be a wonderful world,—a world of infinite variety and detail; and the work upon it calls for the devotion of human beings who are linked together by destiny, with the co-operation also of Beings of the Hierarchies who, knowing the mysteries of the Cosmos, understand how such a human head must be built and formed.

Wonderful it is beyond all telling, to come in this way to a knowledge of what is in man. Nor can such knowledge ever lead to pride or conceit. Yonder, between death and a new birth, the world in which we live sees to it that we do not succumb to pride! It would be, my dear friends, an absurdity to fall victim to human pride and arrogance among the Beings of the Hierarchies, among Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones! The human being must remain for ever little in comparison with the Beings among whom he works. And when in this earthly existence a man comes to learn of what he is in the great Macrocosm between death and a new birth, he has good reason to say to himself: “You have not brought very much with you into earthly existence! You have no great cause to pride yourself upon your present condition; nor have you any occasion to be particularly proud of what you were among the Gods!” What can grow within us as the result of looking upon the life of man between death and a new birth is a sense of responsibility which makes us say: “We must strive with all our might to be worthy even here on earth, of being ‘man.’” For this is indeed what we feel, when we measure the significance of being “man” by the work performed upon the human being by the Gods in the period that lies between death and a new birth.

Going now further on his path of return, man comes again into the Mars existence, where the work upon his being continues. It is here that the spirit-germs for the new body are added—for the breast system and for the limb structures, as they will be in the next earthly life. For it is really so, that the foundations of the limbs of the previous earthly life come forth as the foundations of the head in the new incarnation, and so now during man's passage through the planetary world on the way to his next earthly life the germs for breast system and limb structures have to be laid anew. It must of course always be remembered that these germs are spiritual; the whole process is a spiritual process. As man passes again through Mars existence, the lofty spirituality with which he was imbued during his first passage through the Mars sphere, and which enabled him to experience the cosmic Word, is now transformed into spiritual substance of a somewhat lower order—into that spiritual substance from out of which, later on, the human Ego manifests itself. It is also during this return journey through the Mars sphere that the spirit-germ of the larynx and lung formations are added.

Man comes then again to the Sun. The second passage through the Sun sphere is significant in the highest degree. Since he completed his first sojourn in the Sun existence, man has passed through the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, to the world of the Stars, and then made the return journey through Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. All this time his whole being has been given over to the Cosmos; he has become one with the Cosmos, one with the World-All. He has been living in the Cosmos; he has learned cosmic speech, he has learned to weave cosmic thoughts into his being, he has been living, not within his own life of memory—that only dawns for him later—but within the memory of the whole planetary system. He has felt himself one with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in his memory of the cosmic thoughts and of the cosmic speech. Now however, when he returns once again to the Sun, he begins to shut himself off more as an individual being. Very faintly the feeling dawns that he is becoming separate from the Cosmos. This is connected with the fact that the first foundations of the heart are now being laid within him. The return journey continues. For the second time man passes through the Venus sphere and the Mercury sphere, where the spirit-germs of the other organs have to be implanted within him.

At the moment of entrance for the second time into the Sun existence—all these happenings and processes take a very long time, and long before man enters upon earthly existence he experiences, as we shall see, what is for him a very significant turn of destiny—at the moment when, out in the Cosmos, the spirit-germ of the heart is laid within our being on the return journey to the earth, there is of course not yet a physical heart. True, there is already an indication of a physical heart form, but it is surrounded and inter-woven with all that constitutes the worth of the human being as the outcome of his previous earthly lives. The fact that we receive into ourselves in the Sun sphere the first germ of the physical heart is less important than the fact that in this germ of the heart is concentrated all that we are morally, all our qualities of soul and spirit. Before the spirit-germ of the heart unites with the embryonic germ of the future body, the heart in man is a spiritual being, a moral being of soul and spirit out in the Cosmos; only later does this moral being of spirit and soul—which man now feels living within him, which man has, as it were, acquired in the course of his return journey to Earth—unite with the embryo. This concentration, in the germ of the heart, of his whole soul-and-spirit being is experienced by man in communion with the sublime Sun Beings—those Sun Beings who rule over the creative forces of the planetary system and therewith of earthly existence. Let me try to describe it to you in a picture. The expressions may sound strange but they are really appropriate.

At the time when this cosmic heart is bestowed upon man, he is living among those Spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies in whose hand lies the leadership of the whole planetary system in its connection with earthly existence. The experience is one of infinite grandeur and splendour. It is difficult to find words to describe what the human being experiences in this phase of existence. In a certain respect his feeling resembles a feeling he can have in physical existence. For just as in physical existence he feels that he is bound up with his heart-beat, with the whole activity of the heart, so, out in the Macrocosm, through his macrocosmic spiritual heart, he feels himself at one with his whole being of soul and spirit. The moral being of soul and spirit which he has become at this moment of his experience is, as it were, a spiritual heart-beat within him. His whole being seems now to be in the Cosmos, in the same way as his heartbeat is in him; he becomes aware also of a kind of circulation in connection with this heart-beat. Just as on Earth we feel in the heart-beat the blood circulation and breathing which give rise to it, so, when on the return journey through the Sun existence we begin to be aware of the beating of our spiritual, macrocosmic heart, it feels to us as though streams or currents were uniting this spiritual heart-beat with the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Even as the blood flows to the heart from the veins in the physical organism, so into our being of spirit-and-soul pour the words of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis,—what they have to say concerning the World and the World's judgement upon man. The words and sounds of the spirit of the World-All are the circulation that now centres itself in this spiritual, macrocosmic heart, in this human being of soul and spirit. There, at the centre, beats the spiritual heart of man. And the beat of the spiritual heart of man is the heart-beat of the world in which he is living. The blood-stream of this world is the deeds of the creative Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the forces which stream out from them. And just as the blood-stream on Earth centres itself in the heart where it is unconsciously experienced by man, so at this point of time between death and a new birth it is given to man, as a grace bestowed, to hold and cherish within him a cosmic heart—one of the organs of perception, one of the cosmic hearts, created out of the pulse-beat of the Macrocosm, even the deeds of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. For let it be remembered that the physical heart is a sense organ, which perceives the movement of the blood, not a “pump” as the physiologists imagine. The spirituality and vitality of the human being—these it is that cause the movement of the blood.

The return journey continues—through the Mercury and the Venus spheres. But before this, indeed in that cosmic moment when the human being feels himself living in very truth within the spiritual heart of the Cosmos, his gaze has already fallen upon the hue of generations, at the end of which stand the parents who will give him birth. The connection with the line of generations is, as you see, made relatively soon. We are born of father and mother, our parents again have each of them father and mother, and these too have their father and mother. This takes us back about a hundred years. But we must go further back, through many centuries; for long before a human being is born on Earth, he has united himself with the line of generations which culminates in the family into which he is born. It is quite early that the connection with the line of generations is determined, namely, when man is passing through the Sun existence for the second time. And in his passage through the cosmic colonies of Venus and Mercury he can, so to speak, arrange for his destiny to be brought as closely as possible into line with the outer experiences that must come to him through being born into a particular family and a particular nation.

After this, man comes again into the sphere of the Moon. Let me remind you how during his first passage through the Moon sphere man's thoughts were directed, for good and also for ill, to the primeval Teachers of the human race, to the starting-point of earthly existence, when superhuman Teachers imparted superhuman wisdom to the men of Earth. When he comes down into the Moon existence for the second time, there is less inducement for him to turn his attention to what was on Earth long ago. For now the period of time that man spends—above, in the Cosmos—in this Moon existence, is the same period of time as takes its course on Earth below between conception and birth. Man's embryonic life runs hand in hand with a particular cosmic development. Up there in the Moon sphere he is passing through a definite phase of evolution while below, stage by stage, the physical embryo is being prepared—the physical embryo with which he then gradually unites.

How does this macrocosmic life of the human being take its course during this second period of evolution in the Moon sphere? What does man accomplish there?

In all the experiences I have been describing, man's consciousness is far clearer and more awake than the ordinary consciousness of his life on Earth. It is most important to distinguish the various degrees of human consciousness. Consciousness during dream-life is dull, consciousness during waking life is clear, consciousness after death still clearer. As a dream is to reality, so is all our life on Earth in comparison with the clarity of our consciousness in the life after death. Moreover, at each new stage in the life after death, consciousness becomes still clearer, still more alert.

When we pass through the Moon existence on the upward journey, consciousness grows clearer owing to the fact that in the Moon sphere we come into the environment of the wise, primeval Teachers of humanity. Clearer and ever clearer grows our consciousness as we pass on through the spheres of Mercury and Venus; and its clarity continues to be intensified every time we enter a new sphere of the heavens. But when we are returning again and approaching a new life on Earth, consciousness is dimmed and darkened stage by stage. During the phase of Mercury existence on the return journey, we still have a consciousness that is clearer than any consciousness can be in ordinary earthly existence. But when we come to the Moon sphere, and are in an environment that reveals to us what man was at the beginning of earthly evolution, then our consciousness begins to be obliterated. In the same sphere where, on the upward journey, the super-sensible world first lit up for us in a clearer consciousness than was possible on Earth, consciousness is now dimmed. We are returning to the Earth and consciousness becomes ever dimmer and dimmer, until it remains in us only as growth-force—the power of growth that is present in the little child, the dreaming little child. Consciousness has dimmed into dream! This is the moment when the being of soul-and-spirit can unite with the physical embryo. In order that this momentous event may come to pass, in order that the human being at a certain point of his development make connection with the physical embryo, he must pass through a Moon evolution in communion with the primeval Teachers of humanity, while the physical embryo down below is passing through its ten lunar months in the body of the mother. And the Moon evolution that he has to undergo consists in this—that a whole host of the Teachers of mankind are engaged in the task of dimming down the cosmic consciousness which the human being still possessed during his Mercury existence, toning it down to the dream consciousness in which he lives at the beginning of his life on Earth.

Physical man, with all that we can see of him here on Earth, is, in truth, only to be understood in the light of a knowledge of super-sensible man. And super-sensible man can never be explained by the facts of Earth, but only by the facts of the great World, the Macrocosm. My object in these lectures has been to show you how earthly man is born as Spirit-man out of the Spiritual Cosmos.

It remains for us in the lecture tomorrow to study in this connection the significance of earthly life itself, in so far as the being who is spiritual and superhuman passes over into this earthly life. We shall come to understand the significance of the fact that when he passes through the gate of death the human being carries out again into the spiritual world what remains to him of all he has acquired and experienced in earthly life. Having, therefore, learned to understand, in some of its aspects, the spirit nature of man, his super-sensible being, we will return tomorrow to the study of the connection between super-sensible man and physical man.

My dear Friends,

We have tried, so far as is possible in a few short hours, to picture the journey of man through the super-sensible world. For that is the world in which man verily lives his life between death and a new birth. But in the physical world too, where man is living in his physical and etheric bodily nature,—here too his forces extend into the super-sensible world. In the physical world he feels his super-sensible existence more or less as a riddle; and unless he be able to find at least a partial solution to the riddle, his soul will not attain inner harmony, inner balance, inner security. Nay, more, his life will lack energy and vigour; and human love that is really worthy of the name will be beyond him.

A study of man as he is on Earth presents an aspect in relation to his super-sensible being which can give us insight into the reason why the Divine-Spiritual worlds have sent him down to this world of the physical senses. It is, after all, in the physical world that appeal has to be made to man to interest himself in knowledge concerning the super-sensible world. We would have to deal quite differently with the riddles of the super-sensible world if we were going to speak of them to the dead, to those who are passing through their existence between death and a new birth. It will accordingly be well, in bringing our study to a certain conclusion to-day, to take the indications that have been given in the last few days concerning the mysteries of the super-sensible world, and let them light up again in our hearts in connection with the sojourn of man on Earth.

Let us think, to begin with, of man as he is here in earthly life,—of ourselves, that is. We have in the first place our senses. Our senses give us information of all that is around us; they are the occasion of our earthly joy and happiness and also of our earthly suffering and pain. We are apt to forget how very much sense impressions and sense experiences signify in life. Studies such as we have been pursuing in this course of lectures take us beyond the life of the senses into spiritual regions, and it might well seem that the tendency of Spiritual Science would be to lead to an undervaluing of the life of the senses, making us feel that it is, after all, of secondary importance and that we should flee from it even while we are still in earthly life. Such a feeling can never be the final outcome of Spiritual Science. It can only serve to bring home to us that there is an inferior way of taking the life of the senses incompatible with the dignity and nobility of human existence, but that it is possible for man to lose the life of the senses in its less worthy aspects, and find it again in its deeper meaning from a higher, super-sensible angle of vision. We would naturally shrink from studying things in their spiritual aspect if we were obliged to tell ourselves that all the loveliness and wonder of the world of nature which makes such a deep impression on our souls, all the beauty of plants, of the blossoming flowers, of the ripening fruits, all the majesty of the starry heavens, mean so little in human life that they must be regarded as beneath our notice in comparison with spiritual-scientific knowledge. This is not so at all. If you look back to the impulses given by Initiates and Masters in different epochs for the enhancement of the dignity of human life, you will find that the words uttered by Initiates never undervalue the beauty, the splendour, the majesty of the earthly life of the senses. Wonderful, full of poetry and artistic imagination are often the words used by Initiates to express the most lofty super-sensible truths! Think only of the image of the lotus flower—to take one example among many—and you will realise that the Initiates have never considered it unworthy to speak of the development of spiritual life in imagery drawn from the world of the senses. They have invariably held that in the contemplation of the sense-world something is immediately present, or can at any rate be discovered, that leads man on to the highest.

The sense-world, however, as man perceives it in ordinary consciousness, cannot in itself afford him satisfaction. And for this reason. The impressions that come to man through his eyes, ears and other senses, are indeed connected with his Ego, with its whole life and development, but they can do nothing to promote the inner stability of the Ego. There they cannot help man. We turn our gaze outward to the beauty and splendour of the flowers; we have before us a world of infinite variety. We turn our gaze inward, to our Ego; and for ordinary consciousness it seems, to begin with, as if this Ego is vanishing away from us. It seems to be just a point within us, a spiritual point, capable of saying little more than the mere word “I.” Nor can we wonder at this. We need only consider how man's senses have to be wholly surrendered to the world if they are to mediate between him and the world. The eye, in order that it may see, must renounce itself. It must be completely transparent if the splendour and beauty of the outer world of sense is to shine through it in all the lustre and radiance of colour. It is the same with the other senses. We really know nothing of our senses. Is there, then, any way by means of which we can begin to know and understand what they are in their real nature? There is indeed, but here again we must tread the path which leads to the super-sensible world. Knowledge even of the senses has to be sought in the super-sensible world.

You are familiar with the descriptions I have given of the paths which lead to the higher worlds. Try to picture livingly the consciousness that can develop into Imaginative cognition. In a certain respect we withdraw from physical perception of the outer world when we enter into Imaginative cognition. But the most interesting thing of all that happens on this path is the following. I will describe it for you in a picture.

When, in meditation—in accordance with the exercises given in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment—you draw near to the world of Imagination, when, that is, as a result of your strivings, your etheric being begins to emerge from your physical being and this first super-sensible member begins itself to possess a kind of consciousness, you can as it were, “catch” yourself at a stage that lies between ordinary sense-perception and Imaginative vision. You have not yet advanced to a fully developed Imaginative vision, but you are on the way to it. We will now suppose that a man who is already on the way to Imaginative vision goes into some high mountainous region that is particularly rich in primeval silicious rock. Forces of soul will be readily quickened in him where there is an abundance of quartz-containing silicious rock. Certain inner faculties of soul can, as it were, suddenly spring to development as a result of a vivid impression caused by silicious rock on high mountains. Ordinarily, this kind of rock is slightly transparent, slightly translucent. But when our faculties of soul have pressed forward to the stage of which I have spoken—at that moment silicious rock becomes wholly transparent. We climb up on to a high mountain, and behold, the silicious rock appears to us with the transparency of glass. We feel moreover that something is streaming out from our own being and uniting with it. Here, at the outermost surface of the Earth, by a kind of natural surrender of our consciousness we become one with the whole Earth's surface. It is as though our eyes were sending out rays that enter right into the silicious rock; and in that moment we begin to feel ourselves one with the whole Earth. When we have this experience, beginning at the same time to feel ourselves one with the whole World, with the Cosmos, then, if we are to attain, not to a dream, nor to any abstract thought, but to a first actual realisation of oneness with the Cosmos, we must carry the experience further. An inner consciousness can light up within us which I may perhaps express in the following words. “Thou, O Earth, art not alone in the World-All! Thou, O Earth, together with me and all the other beings upon thee, art verily one with the great World-All!” Living in this experience of oneness with the silicious rock, we no longer see the Earth separated from the rest of the Universe. We see the Earth as an ether-sphere, emerging from the sphere of the cosmic ether.

This is a first feeling that can come over us. Many an ancient song, many an ancient myth, brimful of wonderful revelations, rings to us across the ages from a literature born in the time when mankind was possessed of instinctive clairvoyance. People read these songs and myths to-day, and like to persuade themselves that they are uplifted in heart and soul by what they read. But the truth contained therein eludes them. It is quite impossible to experience, or to have any insight into the real mood and feeling of the Bhagavad Gita, for example, or of other Indian and Oriental literature, without having at least begun to learn, through spiritual knowledge, in how real a sense man can become one with the Earth and thereby one with the Cosmos. Many a time the mood of such a song will have been born from a realisation of oneness with the Cosmos, a kind of “going in consciousness” with the light—even with the light that penetrates the hard silicious rock, so that now the light enfills and permeates it with the human soul itself, making this hard rocky substance into a cosmic eye through which man gazes out into the wide expanses of the Cosmos.

It is indeed so, that when out of real knowledge we begin to describe super-sensible man, we find ourselves quite naturally turning away from abstract, theoretical expressions. We cannot help speaking a language in which the whole feeling-content of the human soul is united with the ideas. In all our study of super-sensible man we must realise in the depths of our hearts that knowledge of the super-sensible cannot be clothed in words without making will and feeling one with the thoughts and ideas, without letting our whole being pour into the words. Life has, we all know well, to be endured and much that life brings is hard to bear. But for one who is conscious of the deeply human quality of super-sensible knowledge, the thing that is hardest of all is to listen to this super-sensible knowledge being expressed in theories and abstractions. The pain that is caused him by hearing people speak of the super-sensible world in a theoretical manner, is just like the physical pain caused to a finger by putting it into a flame.

When further progress has been made in super-sensible knowledge, when, through Imagination, we understand the working of the super-sensible forces in the human being during earthly life, then we can go on to attain the knowledge that belongs to Inspiration. Through Inspiration we can gaze into what man was before birth, before he descended to earthly existence, and also into what he will be when he has passed through the gate of death. We can look upon all that I have been describing to you in these lectures,—the journey through the different planetary regions, where the forming of the “physiognomy” takes place, and then the process of metamorphosis from an earlier to a later earthly life. At the stage of Inspiration we can follow the human being in his whole journey through the several starry worlds.

Now this knowledge, by means of which we can penetrate to the depths of our inner being, receives a new quality, a new colouring when we realise that what has been described in connection with the life stretching between death and a new birth lives within us even during our life on this physical Earth. It is all there within man when he is on Earth—tiny and insignificant as he appears from a spatial point of view, standing there in his physical body, enclosed by his skin. Within him live all the splendours of the Cosmos, and we must not omit to tell of these when we are describing the true and essential being of man. Man belongs to the worlds of the stars and to yet higher worlds—the worlds of the Hierarchies. And in such measure as our knowledge is able to penetrate to what is thus living within us—this earthly heritage of what we were in our true being, between death and a new birth—we can at the same time do something more. We can penetrate to the depths of our Earth planet, to the veins of the metals—lead ore, silver ore, copper ore—we can learn to perceive what lives in the rocks through the presence there of the metals and their ores. Seen with the eyes of sense, the metallic substances are little more than indications of different kinds of earth. But if we are able to gaze into the Earth with that spiritually sharpened perception which we owe to the super-sensible part of our being, the metallic substances in the Earth can give rise to wonderful experiences. The copper, silver and gold within the Earth begin to speak a language full of richness and mystery. Then something happens which brings us, men living on the Earth, into close kinship with the living soul of the Earth herself. The metallic ores tell us something; they become for us cosmic memories.

Think for a moment how it is with you when in quietude of soul—inwardly active quietude of soul—you let old memories rise up within you, memories which bear on their wings many an event of long ago. You feel as if you were living through past experiences, as if you were together again with many a one who has been dear to you in the course of your life, maybe with many a one long since gone hence. You are wafted right away from the present moment, you are living in the sorrows and joys of days gone by.

An exactly similar experience arises—but on a majestic scale—when, imbued with a spirit-knowledge that is also felt, you become one with the veins of metal in the Earth. It is not now as it was with the silicious rock which carried you out with seeing eyes, out into the cosmic spaces; in this new experience it is as though you became one with the very body of the Earth. And as you listen inwardly to the wonderful story told by the metals, you say to yourself: “Now I am one with the inmost beat of the soul and heart of the Earth herself. I have memories which are not my own personal memories; memories of the Earth herself are sounding into my being,—memories of earlier times, of ages when she was not yet the Earth we know, when there were no animals, no plants upon her surface, least of all any minerals in the bosom of the Earth. I remember, together with the Earth, those ancient days when the Earth was one with the other planets of our planetary system. I remember ages when there was no separate Earth, because the Earth was not yet dense, not yet firm in herself as she is to-day. I remember the time when the whole planetary system was a living organism of soul, and human beings indwelt this living organism, in quite a different form.” Thus do the veins of the metals in the Earth lead us to the Earth's own memories.

Now this experience leads us on to see quite clearly why it is that we have been sent down to the Earth by the Divine Beings who rule over the World-Order.

Living thus in the Earth's memories, we feel for the first time the true measure of our thinking. Having once taken hold in this way of the Earth's memories, we feel how our thinking is bound up with the Earth. And the moment we make the Earth's memories our own, we have around us the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. This, then, is the way whereby we can have around us even in earthly life those Beings who, as we have heard, are round us again during a certain period of our life between death and a new birth. We know now with full conviction that we come in contact with these Beings of the Second Hierarchy while we are incarnated on Earth between birth and death. The task of these Beings is not only that of working together with us between death and rebirth at the metamorphosis of our being; they have also their part in the whole forming and shaping of the Cosmos. We are able now to see how these Beings of the Second Hierarchy are entrusted by the spiritual World-Order with the task of bringing about in the Earth what is wrought there by virtue of the metallic ores.

Let us look back once more at the experience we had with the silicious rock. We were not then able to grasp the fact of which I am now going to speak, for at that stage it was not sufficiently clear. Only now at last does full clarity come from the marvellous experience of perceiving the Earth's memories in the veins of the metals. Having once reached this further stage, we can go back again and understand something which perhaps, to begin with, we did not understand. When our consciousness is borne out into the universe on the wings of the light that fills and pervades the silicious rock, the Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angels, Archangels and Archai—are all around us. We know now that what the ordinary eyes of sense tell us when we go up a high mountain is not really true. Neither do our eyes tell us true when we descend into the deep places of the Earth and gaze upon the veins of the metals. On a high mountain, among the silicious rock, around and over the rocky peaks weave the Angels, Archangels and Archai; and when we go down into the Earth we find the Beings of the Second Hierarchy moving in the paths of the veins of the metals. Once again therefore we can say to ourselves that even during earthly life we are in the company of spiritual Beings who are connected with our own innermost being in the life which extends from death to a new birth.

In our life after death we pass consciously, after a time, into the world of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. In the discarnate state we unfold a consciousness in which we know that these Beings of the Third Hierarchy are around us, just as on Earth the three or four kingdoms of Nature are around us. When, in this higher state of consciousness, we behold the Angels, Archangels and Archai, all that the senses on Earth can perceive has of course vanished, for our senses have been given over, with our body, to the elements. Between death and a new birth we can see nothing that the senses perceive in earthly life. But the Angels, Archangels and Archai tell us—I can use this expression, for it exactly accords with the reality—the Angels, Archangels and Archai relate to us the story of what they are doing down below on the Earth. They tell us that they are not only active in the life which we ourselves are now sharing with them. They whisper softly into our souls: “We take our share too in the creative work of the Cosmos, we are creative Beings in the Cosmos and we look deep down in the Earth and behold in what earthly forms the silicious rock and kindred substances are fashioned.” And then man realises, when he is among the Angels, Archangels and Archai, that he must come down again to Earth. He learns to know these Beings of the Third Hierarchy between death and a new birth, and he hears them speak in wonderful manner of their deeds upon the Earth. He knows then that he can only behold these their deeds, by descending to Earth, clothing himself in a physical, human body and partaking in the world of sense-perception.

The deepest mysteries of sense-perception—not only of perceptions connected with the silicious rock on high mountains, but the deepest mysteries of all sense-perception—are revealed to us in wonderful words by the Beings among whom we live between death and a new birth. The beauties of material Nature on Earth are so full of greatness and mystery that the memories we take with us through the gate of death are only seen in their full and true light when we hear the Angels, Archangels and Archai describing to us all that our eyes have been able to see, our ears to hear and our other senses to perceive down here in earthly life.

Such is the connection between the physical and the super-physical; such too the connection of man's physical life with his superphysical life. The universe is full of splendour, and it is right that what we see in material existence should delight and uplift us. Its real mysteries we learn to know when we have passed through the gate of death. The more we have learned to rejoice in the physical world, the more deeply we have entered into all the joys which the sense-world has to bestow, the greater the measure of understanding we shall bring to the world of the Angels, who are waiting to tell us of these mysteries which here on Earth we do not yet understand and shall only learn to understand when we have passed over into the superphysical world. The same is true of our relation to the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, among whom we also live for a certain period between death and a new birth. We can, on Earth, come into a special relation to these Beings when, following the path of the light into the veins of the metals in the Earth, we awaken within us the Earth's memories. But here again, only when we have come over yonder into the region of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy are we able to understand all the experiences we have had on Earth in connection with the metals.

One of the most wonderful experiences man can have is to be able to investigate and prove the manifold connections that exist between the metals and the health of man, and I have good hope that the Anthroposophical Movement will do a great deal to open up the truly beautiful aspect of this field of knowledge. Every metal and every metal-compound has its relation to the health of man. As man goes through life, whether in health or disease, he is in connection all the time with that which gives to the Earth her memories—namely, the metals and their various compounds. We must get beyond mere theorising as to the healing influences of lead and lead compounds, of copper and copper compounds, and so forth. These substances are all extremely significant and important remedies, if we know how to prepare them in the right way, and we must not be satisfied with speaking in an abstract manner of the wonderful connections between the metals and the being of man. A feeling of holy awe does indeed even now arise within us when we contemplate the veins of metal in the depths of the Earth, but we must go a step further and develop also a deepened insight into the marvellous connection of the metals with the being of man—a connection which is revealed to us only when we have first studied the human being in health and in disease. As I indicated, it is to be hoped that the Anthroposophical Movement will be able to spread this knowledge in the hearts and minds of men, for it is of the greatest importance. In times gone by it was not so important, because men knew instinctively the connections, for example, between the lead-process or the silver-process with some process in the human head. In days of yore these connections were spoken of a great deal. Nowadays people read what was written long ago without understanding a single word. Approaching it from the point of view of modern science, they talk of it as if it were nothing but empty abstractions. When through Anthroposophical knowledge man attains to the deepened feeling and insight which can come to him in contemplation of the wonderful connection between the metals of the Earth and the sickness and health of the human being, then indeed he will carry up into the spiritual world through the gate of death something that will help him to understand the speech of the Second Hierarchy. The greatest mysteries of the world will be able to reveal themselves to him, precisely because he has prepared himself in this way on Earth and brings with him the necessary understanding. For it is really so, my dear friends. We learn what Anthroposophy has to teach us not merely for the sake of satisfying human curiosity, but in order that the knowledge may bear fruit after we have passed through the gate of death. For only what we learn and receive through spiritual science can bring us into a right relation, between death and a new birth, to those Spiritual Beings whom we must needs contact with our whole being, since it is they who are then our cosmic environment.

It is thus possible to give a detailed picture of how we come into relation with the Beings of the Hierarchies between death and a new birth. But there is still a further experience that can befall us as we pass through those regions, and it must now be described.

When we can grasp the connection between the metals in the Earth and the being of man in health and disease, secrets of Nature are revealing themselves to us. Within these secrets something more lies hid. We hear the Beings of the Second Hierarchy speaking of the nature of gold, silver, lead, copper and the other metals. But in our relation to the great spiritual world, it is with us now as it is here on Earth when we are beginning to learn to read and it dawns upon us that learning to read will enable us to fathom many a world-mystery which might otherwise remain for ever beyond our ken. I say this only by way of comparison, for the speech through which we learn to understand the Beings of the Second Hierarchy in a certain sphere of existence between death and a new birth—the speech which tells of the metals and their relation to man in health and disease—will only be true when, in the spiritual world, we can hear it, not as prose, but as cosmic poetry,—let me rather say, when we ourselves rise to the level of cosmic poetry. At first we listen in much the same way as someone with no appreciation of poetry may listen to the recitation of a poem. But just as we can, on Earth, learn—unless we are quite devoid of poetic feeling—to appreciate what is contained in the swing of the verse, in the rhythm, in the whole artistic form of the poem, so is it possible for us, after death, to rise from the prose to the poetry of that world beyond the Threshold, from the speech of the Second Hierarchy which tells us of the relation of the metals to man in health and disease, to a higher stage, where we understand the mysteries of moral existence in the Universe,—that moral life in which not only human souls but the divine souls of all the Beings of the Hierarchies are involved. We have come to a region where the mysteries of the life of soul begin to lie open before us.

Then we can go a step further. I have described the experiences that can be ours when we go up a mountain, and again when we go down a deep mine. It was all still and quiet; we contemplated the crystals at rest on the ridges of rock, and the veins of the metals at rest in the bosom of the Earth. Now we can go further and contemplate something else that is usually only regarded from the prosaic aspect of utilitarian considerations. Such considerations are not to be despised; we must always have our feet planted firmly on the Earth if we want to penetrate into the spiritual world healthy in soul and body. But suppose we are looking at a metal that is passing, under the influence of intense heat, from the solid into the liquid condition. Then, if we can get beyond the utilitarian point of view, wonderful revelations will be vouchsafed to us. If we walk through foundries and watch how the iron becomes glowing and fluid in the furnaces, above all if we can watch metallic ores such as antimony ore being led over from the solid into the liquid and by and by into other conditions, then if we can receive deep into our soul the impression of this destiny of metallic substance in fire, an entirely new element will be born in the spiritual knowledge that has awakened within us; we shall receive a strong and profound impression of the mysteries of our own existence.

Think of the human being in relation to the animal. (I have frequently spoken of this.) Anatomical comparisons, such as are made to-day, comparing the bones, muscles, and even the blood of man and animal reveal the existence of certain affinities. But the secret of what it is that places man higher than the animal cannot be discovered until we give attention to some facts that have more significance than is generally realised. The spine of the animal lies in the horizontal direction, parallel with the surface of the Earth, whereas man stands upright. The faculty of speech is denied to the animal, whereas man not only speaks, but from speech evolves thought. When we observe how the faculties of speaking and thinking begin to unfold in a little child and how its body rises into the upright position that it may have the right orientation for human life on Earth, we are then beholding the marvellous forces by means of which the child finds its bearings in the dynamics of the universe. And then we see how the forces of orientation living in the limbs of a little child express themselves also in the melody, in the articulation of speech. We see the human being building and forming himself in the sense world. We see the formative forces working calmly and quietly within him. Wonderful it is beyond all telling to watch month by month how the little child gradually leaves off crawling and begins to stand upright, how his limbs and body orientate themselves to the dynamics of the universe! Then the faculties of speaking and thinking begin to emerge, as it were, from the bodily nature. There is no more beautiful sight than to watch a little child learning to walk, to speak and to think. But now if on the one hand we can contemplate this process in all its wonder and calm majesty, beholding it with mind at rest, sensitive to its surpassing beauty, and if on the other hand we are able to look with a higher power of vision at the metals melting in the fire, then we can perceive there, in its spirit form, the force by means of which the child can learn to walk and to speak. The archetype of this power is revealed to us when the flames lay hold of the metal, melt it and make it fluid. The more fluid, the more volatile the metal becomes, the more clearly are we able to perceive the inner resemblance between this process—which really constitutes the destiny of the metal—and the process which, smelted and volatilised in the fires of the Cosmos, enables the little child to walk, to speak and to think.

We know now that the activity of the Beings of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—is a two-fold activity. They speak to us out of that spiritual world into which we pass during the middle period of our life between death and a new birth, they reveal to us there the mysteries of planetary life; and they work down also into the visible world. Here, in the visible world, the influences of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are active in the little child as he learns to walk, to speak and to think, and we behold also their working wherever fire has part in the process of the Earth, wherever metals melt and are fused in fire. Our Earth has been built up by the smelting and fusing of metals in the cosmic fire. In the smelting of the metals by the cosmic fires, we see the deeds of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones within the earthly world. We gaze back into remote ages of the past when the metals, all aglow and incandescent through the power of fire, played an essential part in the coming-into-being of the Earth's body. The Thrones, above all, were active in this process, though with them worked always the Seraphim and Cherubim. The Cherubim it is who play the chief part in the unfolding of the child's faculties of walking, speaking and thinking. But everywhere the Beings of the First Hierarchy work and weave together in unison.

With this kind of knowledge, death in earthly life is linked on to resurrection in the life beyond the Threshold. For when such knowledge reveals the kinship of the cosmic fires by which the metals are melted, with the powers that make man truly man, then the whole world becomes one and we realise that there is no difference between the earthly life that stretches from birth to death and life in the spiritual world beyond the Threshold. The life between death and a new birth is a metamorphosis of earthly life. By knowing how the one passes over into the other, we realise that the one is but a different form of the other. When the soul is deepened by this knowledge, then an understanding of still other mysteries can be added. This further understanding can also be reached on quite another path.

If you think about what I have told you of the connection of the melting and dissolving of metals in fire with the unfolding of the faculties of walking, speaking and thinking in the little child, if you place these pictures before your imagination, meditating upon them and deepening thereby your understanding, then a power will quicken and strengthen your soul and enable you to find the solution of a great riddle—the riddle of the working of karma, or human destiny. In between what happens when a child learns to walk, to speak and to think and what happens when metals become fluid and volatile under the influence of great heat,—amid all the sulphurous and phosphoric glow and gleam of colour in the burning metal, amid the working of the right and true transition from animal to man that takes place in the little child as he learns to walk, to speak and to think, karma stands revealed. There lies the way to a true understanding of karma. Karma is a super-sensible reality that works straight into the very deeds and actions of man's life.

Rising up therefore in this way in meditation, we learn to know the mysteries of destiny that weave through our life. On the one side we have the picture of the destiny of the metal in the fire, on the other side the picture of the essential and primordial destiny of man when he descends to Earth, expressed in the learning to walk, to speak and to think. Within these pictures man can find revealed as much of the riddle of destiny as he needs for his life.

So it is, that for the riddle also of human destiny super-sensible man speaks into the world in which “sensible” man is living. Of this too I wanted to speak to you, for it belongs essentially in our study of super-sensible man. Such a study can never be merely a matter of assimilating theories. In order to understand the being of man we must reach out on every hand to the mysteries of the universe—mysteries of Nature and mysteries of Spirit. For man is intimately and closely bound up with all the mysteries of the Natural as well as of the Spiritual Universe. Man is in truth a universe in miniature. Only it must not be imagined that what takes place out in the great expanses of the Cosmos takes place in exactly the same way in the microcosm. The majestic flames of cosmic fire that rise up from the molten metals stream out to the boundaries of cosmic space—for boundaries there are! Try, my dear friends, to picture to yourselves these cosmic fires in which the metals are being smelted and made volatile. What is thus made volatile streams out into cosmic space, to return once again in powers of light, radiations of warmth and light. And what thus returns from cosmic space enables the tiny child who cannot yet speak or walk but only crawl, to become a child who stands and walks. Upward and outward radiate the streaming forces from the molten metals, and when they have gone far enough out into the cosmos they turn and come back again and are then the forces which enable the child to stand upright. Here you have a picture of ascending and descending cosmic forces, as they work in the universe, and of their many metamorphoses and variations.

You will now also be able to understand the true meaning of something which in days of yore was connected with the science of those times, namely, the priestly sacrifice. The sacrificial flame, together with what was burning in it, was sent forth into cosmic spaces to the Gods that it might come down again thence to work in the world of men. As he stood before the fire on the altar the priest would say: “To thee, O Flame, I commit what is mine on Earth, that the Gods may receive it when the smoke rises upward. May that which is borne upwards by the Flame be changed into divine Blessing and pour down again to Earth as creative and fructifying power!”

Thus, as we listen to the words of the priest of olden time, who is speaking of super-sensible worlds, we may hear how he too gives utterance to the cosmic mysteries in the midst of which man stands.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to say to you about the super-sensible nature of man, anthroposophically perceived and understood.

Translated by Luise Boeddinghaus

At present there is a general opinion that there are certain limits to human knowledge, not only temporary knowledge owing to the fact that one had not achieved everything in the time that has already passed, and one would have to leave some things for the future, but in quite a general sense one speaks today of limits of perception, limits to knowledge for humanity. One thinks that man is constituted in such a way that he can only know about certain things, while other things are above his ability to know about them; and that it is mainly the facts of the so-called supersensible world which man is supposed not to be able to perceive and for which he has to be satisfied with what is called a belief, an assumption arising out of obscure feelings and such like. Particularly the endeavours of the past centuries and of the present time, which have yielded the greatest successes in the field of natural science and which have also brought about the greatest practical results, are considered proof by contemporary humanity that one has to come to a halt at that which can be observed by the senses, which can be proved by experiments and so forth, namely the sense perceptible real world. This is, when one speaks of man, only that world which man traverses between birth and death, or conception and death.

Now it cannot be denied that natural science owes its great successes to the fact that it has limited itself to the exploration of every aspect of the sense world and does not in any way draw any conclusions from the sense world to the supersensible world. But on the other hand there is connected with this, as one believes, fully proven acceptance of limits to knowledge altogether, something inwardly immeasurably tragic for the sensitive human being, something tragic which today does not yet come to the consciousness of many people, but which lives in many human souls in vague feelings, in all sorts of subconscious sensations, making them unsure in life, even unsure and unable in outward actions, in relationships to their fellow human beings and so on. For it is gradually felt more and more that the limits at which one wants to stop in this way are not only those of an outward supersensible world, but that with these limits to knowledge, if rightly perceived, there is still something quite different involved. Man gradually feels that his own true being must be of supersensible nature, that his true being which as man gives him his value and dignity must be found in the spiritual, in the not-sensible. If one calls a halt to all knowledge before the supersensible, then one calls a halt before human self-knowledge. Then one renounces insight into the most precious, the most valuable in the human being himself.

But thereby one also undermines one's real inward self-confidence. Whereby does man feel himself to be part of the natural world which today has been so successfully explored? Only because he bears this world of nature within himself in his outer physical body. Everything that exists in our surroundings as natural substances and natural laws we carry within us, at least most of it. Through this we can feel connected with physical nature. We would not feel that we existed in this physical nature if we were not part of it with our own body, or if we could not explore ourselves as physical beings. But in the same way it is with the supersensible, with the as truly felt spiritual inner being of man, even though men do not as yet bring it to full consciousness. If we cannot feel ourselves as belonging to a spiritual world, as beings who take into themselves and bear within themselves the forces and substances of the spiritual, then we cannot accept ourselves as spiritual human beings at all. But then we must lack the self-confidence towards that which after all we feel to be our most precious, our most dignified, that by which we actually are human beings, indeed want to be human beings. This has another side to it. We feel that that which we call our moral impulses, which we call the content of our moral-spiritual forces, does not flow out of natural life, certainly not out of what takes place in muscles and bones. We feel them to be coming from a spiritual world, but we experience uncertainty about this whole spiritual world if we have to call a halt before the supersensible with our perception.

And in this way present day humanity cannot really build a bridge between that which in outer nature is to it a brutal - as I would like to call it—fact, and that which flows to it out of the most intimate spiritual inner life as the content of the moral world order. One does not have the courage to bring to full clarity what it is that the human soul has to contend with here. Natural science has worked thoroughly towards being able to say something, albeit hypothetically, about the present day creatures out of which man is supposed to have developed. One describes, at least hypothetically, how once upon a time our present world is supposed to have developed out of the world mist. Hypotheses are also made about the end of our planetary system or the system altogether to which we belong. One imagines this whole system which exists in time as somehow contracting, constituting itself out of natural substances and natural forces. One imagines physical man then emerging out of a part of these forces at a certain time. Electricity, magnetism, warmth and so on, they can be outwardly observed, there the thinking human being feels safe with the content of his consciousness. But when the need arises in him to think of that which does not come from his physical nature, the moral spiritual impulses as working in the world, when he must think of as working in the world what he brings about out of a spiritual elemental force, what now must also be in the world, when he must have experiences in the world which must not pass away together with that which passes away with the physical—then man has no stand to say to himself out of that which is accepted by the limits to knowledge: these moral forces are just as valid as that which comes out of the brute forces of physical nature.

From this there come to man today not only theoretical doubts but insecurity of the whole soul life, insecurity apparent everywhere even though people deceive themselves about this. For this is the very character of present civilization that one deludes oneself about the deepest questions of civilization. But in the subconscious these questions are nevertheless active, they express themselves—albeit not in theories, but in the whole tenor of soul, in the confidence and capability of the soul life. That is the inner tragedy which can actually be noticed in the depths of every soul, even of the most superficial. And this is where then that arises which can seem paradoxical in the present time, there arises the longing in many people just for supersensible knowledge! One might say in the spiritual realm it is just the same as with hunger and thirst. One doesn't long for food and drink when one is satisfied, but one longs for them when one is hungry. And from an inmost need present humanity longs for the supersensible because it doesn't have it. While on the one hand philosophers and natural scientists today want to prove more and more that there are unsurpassable limits and borders before the supersensible, we see on the other hand an insatiable thirst of already many human souls for supersensible knowledge, and the number of these people will get ever greater.

To come to this supersensible perception there is a point of view, or I could rather say a method of investigation of which I would like to speak to you today. But I do not want to speak to you of a method of investigation of the supersensible which today one often wants to achieve in a very easy way, but I shall speak to you of a method of perception which, although it is an absolutely intimate matter of the human soul, but in this just as scientific, indeed as exact, not only as an outer scientific result, but as the mathematical or geometric results of science itself.

But while one is striving towards such knowledge and just comes to a knowledge of that which is the supersensible in man, one immediately enters something which right from the start causes all kinds of doubts, causes uncertainties right from the start.

When we look outside we soon notice that the natural scientists and philosophers who speak of limits to knowledge are right as concerns the immediate outer perception. So we must look inside. But when we look inside and we remain within the ordinary consciousness, with that which we have in ordinary life and also in the usual science, then in the beginning nothing confronts us either than a kind of thought picture of the outer world again. When one is completely honest in one's striving for self-knowledge and asks oneself: What is there, when instead of looking out into the world you look back into yourself, what is there actually inside you?—Then one will have to realize that one finds the world inside again, albeit in a picture. What one has experienced has imprinted itself onto our life of concepts, of feeling. We experience as it were a thought picture and feeling picture of that which is outside as well. We have only directed our gaze backwards. This gives us at first nothing new, but only in a dimmed down way in picture form that which is outside too. Only as a general feeling man senses that he is present in these weaving thoughts, ideas and sensations as an I, as a self. But that is so general and undefined, that initially he cannot do much with it.

That is why in the Middle Ages, in the times when one approached self-knowledge, knowledge of the human soul, in a more intensive way, one didn't initially pay much attention to that which one can gain by a merely backward directed self-observation during the ordinary consciousness, but one tried to achieve knowledge of the soul in a different way. This different way is actually interesting, and I must start from this different, often much desired way of knowledge of the soul, so that we can understand one another about the knowledge of soul which I actually mean. But I mention beforehand that I only start from this other knowledge of soul in order to explain what I want to bring, but that I don't want to attribute a special value to it. Therefore nobody should believe that because I start from the dream I already give it value for knowledge. However, this dream life is immensely meaningful.

Those who at some stage have sought knowledge of soul through the dream life, will have noticed that in a certain sense the soul life appears much more characteristically in a dream than when one merely looks into oneself and, as one often says, wants to observe oneself. You have observed the dreams and have initially found two types of dream. As you know, the dream conjures up weaving pictures of a fantastic reality which is initially not as abstract as the thoughts we have in our day consciousness.

But the dream creates initially something which appears enigmatical, on the one side by its composition, on the other side by its content.

There are two things which man experiences as pictures in a dream. Initially pictures of experiences which we went through during our life on earth, reminiscences from life. This arises and shows us the one or other thing which we experienced many years ago. But what there asserts itself rises up next to other things in a connection with was not supplied by life. Occurrences which took place ten years ago are tied together with others which took place the other day. The most removed from one another comes together. By putting together fragments of life, dreams create impossible pictures, chaotic pictures. Everything which outer life gave to us by way of occurrences which we experienced is conjured up to us in dream in a chaotic fashion. That is one kind of dream. The other kind is that in which our own bodily condition is conjured up before us in a kind of symbolic image. Who would not have dreamt of suffering from the heat of a boiling hot stove? He has seen the flickering flames; he awakes and has strong palpitations of the heart. Or we dream that we are walking past a fence. We see how one or two poles are damaged and then we wake up with toothache. In the one case, when we dreamt of the boiling hot stove with its heat, it was a picture of our heart which was palpitating strongly. In the other case, when we dreamt of the fence, it was a picture of our row of teeth which somehow gave us pain. And someone who can penetrate more deeply into these things knows that a certain area of dreams is characterised by inner organs being shown to us symbolically in the dream. However, one must be quite knowledgeable about all the facts which come into play, if one wants to recognise in the symbols what actually expresses itself of the inner being of man in them. Then one will find that there is hardly an organ or an inner process which cannot be conjured up for us inwardly by dreams.

Now former psychologists who have worked with dreams have developed a very valid view about the relationship of man to dreams. They said to themselves: that which we bear within us, we can only feel, but we do not see it, we don't have it in front of us like an outer object. But when we have our own heart beat in front of us in the picture of a boiling hot stove, then we have at least a picture in our consciousness that we make for ourselves, that looks like the picture of an outer object. We have to be separated from the outer object if a picture of it is to arise in us. That which one is oneself, even if it is one's own body, one feels, one feels it sometimes painfully when something organic is not in order, but one does not look at it. When one looks at something in picture form one must be outside of it. And so the former psychologists, which still existed in the 19th century, argued: If I am dreaming in symbols about my own body and its processes, I cannot be in my body, for then I would not experience it. Therefore I must be outside my body in such a case. The picture in any case shows me something of an independent soul-spiritual life over against the body. And furthermore they argued: When I dream in any, however hidden way, of reminiscences of life, then the outer natural existence as it is would have to present itself to me. But there something is constantly changing; there the dream conjures up for me the most fantastic relationships. There again I must be inside, for nature as it usually surrounds me would not be able to show me the occurrences which I have experienced with it, nor the occurrences of human life which I have experienced, in quite a different order.

In this way something was put together of which one could say: It was a valid conviction for these former psychologists, that there they caught something of the soul in a condition where it is separated from the physical body. For firstly man cannot be united with his body if the occurrences of the body, even though only in symbols, in the dream appear to be separated. He must then be outside his body. But again, we must also be inside the reminiscences of our experiences, be together with them, when we have the second kind of dream, for nature does not alter the connection in which experiences have occurred. That we must alter ourselves. Therefore we must be outside, outside our body, when we have the first kind of dreams, and in the same way we must be inside our experiences in the second kind. That means we must actually be outside our physical body with our experiences of soul when we dream. In so far that which former psychologists said to themselves is absolutely indisputable, one cannot say anything against it.

But something else has to be said. The dream cannot give me any sure knowledge about the self. It can lead us to the way of how one can come to such a certainty. Because what we are inside during the time between going to sleep and awakening when we are outside the body: that, which the dream is showing us there, that we certainly are not; for those are on the one hand pictures of our bodily interior, even symbols of this bodily interior, thus that again which is taken from our bodily interior. How can we, when sleeping we are outside our body, be the same which we are in the interior of our physical body? So something else must be the case. We must be something outside our body, but that does not assert itself. We are initially not able to lay hold of the actual nature of the soul in the sleeping state. That conceals itself and masks itself at first; it surrounds itself with pictures of its own bodily nature and shows itself in relationship to its own life in arbitrary compositions of its experiences. The former psychologists have rightly deduced that we are outside our body when we dream, but that the dream shows us something about this being which is outside our body, that is not the case, although they believed it. Because it doesn't show us anything except what we have formerly experienced within the body, and our own body in symbols. Therefore if we are something outside our body, then this is masked in the dream, then the dream is wearing a mask in respect of this. If we want to discover our own being, then we must be able to take this mask off the dream, that is off the soul—for the dream is this mask.—Up to here a more intimate view of the dream leads us onto a path. As former psychologists realised that the dream ultimately doesn't show anything besides what it takes out of the sense world, they of course also had their doubts. And just as one could not believe to have certainty by means of an ordinary backward looking self-observation, so one was also not satisfied with that which the observation of the dream world could give one. Over against this there now appears that which I always call the anthroposophical world view or anthroposophical way of investigation. This initially maintains: If the dream shows us that we are something outside our body, then it proves itself to be too weak by itself to show, to reveal its own being. To reveal itself it uses bits and pieces of reminiscences of life, of symbols of its own bodily nature. Therefore we have to strengthen the soul life so that we come to that which in the soul life stands masked before us in the dream. This one can do. One can do it by copying the dream in full consciousness by a systematically exact so-called meditative life as I have described it in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds” and other writings. But not copying it by artificially creating dreams, but awakening in the soul in full consciousness that which in dream arises spontaneously from the subconscious. One comes to this by accustoming oneself to proceed in the same way as the dream proceeds spontaneously—to proceed by imagining things which one knows well symbolically in inner meditation. The dream conjures up symbolically for us our own bodily nature.

One now practices—as neither our own inner being nor outer nature give us symbols—strictly systematically to imagine symbolically. In this way concepts are by force of will brought into a symbol by us, just as the dream conjures it up or us spontaneously. It must be created by inner activity, but that means, the dream must be strengthened.

In outer life we give ourselves over to passive observations and perceptions. Then the inner activity is shadowy. Everyone really senses how shadowy the abstract concepts are, how the thoughts are given over to the outer world and then proceed in a shadowy way. Everyone speaks of the shadowy thought compared to concrete reality. But when one now rises to imagine symbolic things, one has to create these symbols.

And when one is a fully conscious human being and no fool, then one knows that one makes them oneself. Then one is by no means a dreamer but a normal waking person, nay even more than a normal waking person. To the dreamer the symbols come spontaneously, to the waking person the conceptual images come through outer stimulation. The waking person who makes alive within himself that which dreams give, who places before the soul symbols with all inner strength and imitates the dream in full consciousness, awakens himself as it were to a higher activity of thinking and imagining and with this to an altogether higher activity of soul than one has in ordinary consciousness. That however must then be really practiced quite systematically.

And likewise the other side of dream can be imitated. We take experiences from our life that can be separated from one another by years. We can combine them in such a way that the one stands next to the other, but now not chaotically as in dream but from a point of view which may perhaps be from fantasy, but which we quite consciously determine, which is not imposed on us by our inner being, but which we ourselves create inwardly. And in this way we gradually educate ourselves to remain in an inner life of soul; to remain strongly in a life of soul which proceeds totally from the inner activity.

Today one usually underestimates what actually happens there with the human being when he does such exercises, because one does not love the inner activity of thinking, because one already finds it very active when one lives in thoughts induced by outer observation. But he who in all seriousness becomes a true imitator of dream in full consciousness, experiences that he strongly intensifies his inner mobility of soul, that he definitely strengthens it. But he is, if he is no fool but a sensible human being, fully conscious that he himself is making all these pictures and life associations, that is, that he is living in illusion. With a dream one first has to wake up in order to realize the illusion of the dream from the point of view of waking life. The dream can only be unmasked from the point of view of waking; the dreamer imagines the content of the dream to be reality, although his feeling for reality is not such a fictitious one. He who becomes an imitator of dream becomes aware of how a living inner being, something active, quickening is awakened in him, but how he has a content which is absolutely self-image, illusion. Therefore he comes to the point of not bothering with that which is present in him as content, but to concentrate on that which works within him, is active within him. In short, that which we usually only have as a general feeling of ego or self becomes a strongly felt inner activity. If one wants to become a spiritual scientist and not a vague mystic, one must remain conscious and exact. But if one persists in this one will also come more and more to experience the nature of the illusionary. One knows: You imagine nothing, but you have an imagination. Through this one will also the possibility one day to develop the capacity of soul with which one truly doesn't imagine anything and is yet as active as one has learnt it in the imitation of dream.

I point you here to an activity of soul which must absolutely be cultivated by the investigator of spirit. One usually believes, and those who judge things superficially often say it: spiritual investigation is something where man gives himself up to his thoughts and fantasies—that is easy, while to do research in the laboratory, the clinic and the observatory is difficult, something where you have to renounce things.—But this is not so. Because that which one has to acquire as such an inner capacity of soul requires at least just as much time, nay sometimes much longer time of inner work than any outwardly acquired scientific ability as is common in natural science today. Those who want to gain knowledge about that which is here called spiritual investigation should not raise the objection: In natural science one must not be a dilettante if one wants to have a say, there one must really understand something.—What the spiritual investigator alleges is usually regarded as though it were gained effortlessly compared to that which in natural science is reached with much trouble. But it is only the path which is different. In natural science outer observations and facts are used to come to a conclusion, while the spiritual scientist must first develop his own inner capacity for observation. He develops it as an imitator of dreams but in such a way that in the meditative activity that which in dream is conjured up is overcome by him. In dream we do not become conscious of an activity, the images of the dream conjure it up for us; but on the first step of supersensible knowledge the illusion is totally perceived. One knows: you don't imagine anything—but one notices the inner strengthened, empowered activity and in the end learns by a lot of practicing how one can call up this activity without first needing an illusionary activity for this, without first having to imitate the dream. So it is in imitation that one develops this capacity of soul. Once the capacity is there, one knows what one can do with it. Because then one is in a state where one has an empty but very much awake consciousness, but also inner activity. After one has discarded the illusion of this activity, one has initially no content. But the state in which one lives just as one gets to the point of developing the capacity of inner activity without initially also having a content, this state demands a strong inner struggle. And actually this struggle which one needs for this is the touchstone and test whether this spiritual investigation is an honest and true one. For at that moment when one just gets ready to live with empty consciousness, with normal waking consciousness without this waking consciousness having a content, at this moment an unspeakable pain, an unlimited privation spreads itself over the whole soul life. All that one can otherwise experience as pain in the world is really insignificant compared with this spiritual soul pain which one experiences at this moment of cognition. And one has to overcome this pain. For it is this pain which is the expression of a force which has its physical counter image in all sorts of forms of deprivations: in hunger, which instructs us to eat, in thirst, which forces us to drink and so on. Now we feel something in the soul which has to come towards us and we feel it as an unspeakable pain. But when we live for a while in this pain, when we feel our inner being itself as one filled with pain, that is, when we are for a while pain, when our own human being is for our consciousness for a while nothing else but a conglomerate of pain, then this consciousness no longer remains empty, then this consciousness fills itself, and it now fills itself not with sense content which we receive through eyes, ears and so on, but it now fills itself with spiritual content. And we receive as the first thing which comes to us as spiritual content in this way our own spiritual being as a unified spiritual organisation—but living in time, not in space—as it extends from birth or conception up to the present moment to which we have lived the earthly life. Just as we can look into a spatial perspective and see objects which are far away again in perspective, so we can learn to look from the present moment of our life into our own past. We don't see the bodily at that moment, we only remember it, but we have to remember it, otherwise we are destroyed in our consciousness. But he who wants to become an investigator or spirit may not become a person inclined to fantasy nor a confused mystic, he must use his consciousness and his good sense just as a mathematician would for a mathematical problem. But just as we normally see objects of space in perspective, so we now look into a time perspective.

Everything that we have experienced in our existence now stands before us in a time tableau, but in a living time tableau. But not only that which we ourselves have experienced now stands before us thus, but also that which shows us how we have come into being, how inner spiritual soul forces have built up our body from birth or conception, how the sculptural forces are which have worked on our body. We see ourselves outwardly. But that which we see there, through which our own soul life stands before our soul, that now also differs qualitatively from the experience of this time tableau.

When one looks back on one's life in the usual way, one experiences the happenings as they come towards one: one experiences for instance how a person has come towards one, how he has approached one, lovingly or with hatred, how he did this or that as he came towards one. One experiences oneself in this memory picture in the way the outer world has come towards one.

In this other memory picture however, which now stands there in real pictures of which one knows that they reflect the own spiritual nature of the human being just as the usual memory pictures reflect the outer nature, in this other memory tableau is reflected to us how we have approached the outer world. There is shown how one was oneself when for instance one approached another personality. How in our soul forces unfolded which found their satisfaction, their delight, their happiness just through that personality. One really looks at oneself how one was as earthly human being. And then one sees how now in the reality both sides in which the dream was masked flow together.

Now the dream becomes a fully conscious reality. It even becomes more than the ordinary consciousness sees. One initially sees the spiritual entity which lives inside the body, which during sleep is independent of it, indeed which is the creator of the body. This one sees. And then one realises, this spiritual entity also contains, but in a spiritual way, metamorphosed, something like the laws of nature but—you are already protesting against it—in a spiritual existence. Into that which one here experiences the moral world is already entering. In this the moral laws are already present in such a way that one now knows: in the same way in which one's own spirituality works, the moral laws are working. There the moral laws begin to stand with equal validity next to the laws of nature.

But with this one only gets as far as the experience of man's own spiritual existence in earthly being. If one wants to go further one has to develop still other capacities in the soul.—The particulars about this you can read up in the above mentioned books, for this can only be achieved by the practicing of many details. Here only the principle shall be described.—Imagine that at a certain time of day you are remembering back to the morning when you got up, or woke up. If you try hard, the course of the day up to this moment can stand before your soul. Now if you don't place the course of the day in such a way before your soul that you start with the morning, then go on to the experiences of the forenoon and so on, but if you place the course of the day backwards before your soul, so that you start at the certain time and now trace it backwards, then you can also say that you get up to the night when you have slept. But there you then don't add anything, there something remains empty, and that which connects again with the backwards imagined happenings is the last experience before going to sleep, and then you can again place the course of the previous day before your soul.

In short, when the human being remembers in this way in ordinary life, there always remain gaps between the conscious experiencing—the gaps which we lived through unconsciously during sleep. Now in order to go further with the exercises which can link up with this backward experiencing, it is necessary to develop a very strong sense of reality. Such a sense of reality is initially not very prevalent among present day people. It is even something which is not all that easy to achieve, because in relation to remembering people usually remain with that which in some way is closely connected with their personality. In their thoughts they do not connect the threads towards the outer world so strongly, that these threads to the outer world connect with their memories. The human being usually has no inclination at all to live in the outer world, in reality in the outer world, with his memories. How much this is the case, of this one can convince oneself in daily life. I have known people who for instance have seen a lady in the morning who had interested them very much, and when one asks them: What colour was the lady's dress?—they don't know it. Therefore it is as though they had not seen the lady at all, for if they had seen her, they would surely also have seen the colour of her dress. How tenuously is one thus connected with the outer world, if in the afternoon one doesn't even know what colour the dress of a person was whom one had seen in the morning! Indeed, I have even known people who had been in a room and who didn't know afterwards whether there were pictures in the room or not.

One can have the most unbelievable experiences in this regard. Therefore he who wants to acquire a sense of reality must first train himself to live fully also in the outer sense reality, so that that which he passes by stands before him as it is out there in the real world. Truly, the investigator of spirit does not become a man of phantasy; he must acquire a sense of reality to the point that it cannot happen to him that he doesn't know in the afternoon what dress the lady was wearing to whom he was speaking in the morning. He must really be able to live with a sense of reality already in the sense world.

Only when one trains oneself to connect that which one remembers of things to the outer world of reality, then one develops the sense which can achieve a fruitful remembering back for such a spirit knowledge. Because for human beings' usual capacity of remembering the memory picture before the last going to sleep can very easily be joined to that after the last awakening. Without any difficulty people simply leave out that which lies between these two pictures as a night-abyss, they tie the picture of the first happening after waking up directly onto the last happening before going to sleep. They usually don't even notice with a lively consciousness that something lies between the two. But if one wants to acquire such a consciousness that one connects that which one has experienced inside with the picture which is there from the outer world, then one must realise that that which one experiences in the morning after waking up is connected with the whole of nature which makes an impression on us, is connected with the rising sun, with all the impressions one has through the rising sun and so on—and that which one has as the last happenings before the last going to sleep is connected with something which in nature doesn't belong together, namely with that which one experienced after the last awakening. There one will notice with the pictures that are standing next to each other: there is something missing!—But by practicing this, by awakening again capacities of soul that don't exist in ordinary life, one gains the strength that as one looks back to where one now has the first picture after the last awakening and wants to proceed to the last picture before the last going to sleep, one now does not see a stretch of darkness in between, but sees that this darkness is beginning to light up spiritually, that something places itself into this darkness.

Just as in the day waking states one only follows that which one has experienced, so there suddenly comes something in between the first experience after the last awakening and the last experience before the last going to sleep of which one now says: you remember something—only something which you haven't known before. It is just the same as in normal remembering, except that one hadn't known anything before of that which now surfaces. Now one begins to remember that which one has previously missed by sleeping through it, even while sleeping through it in dreamless sleep. The empty time which one is conscious of between the last experience before going to sleep and the first after waking up, this is now filling up. And just as our ordinary consciousness is filled with the experiences of natural existence, so our consciousness is now filled with that which surfaces like a remembrance, but of a remembrance of which one now knows that one has experienced it in the unconscious.

Our consciousness is now filled with the soul content which hasn't taken part in the outer experiences but has withdrawn from the outer experiences, has gone asleep. Now one learns to recognise how the sleeping soul is in reality when it doesn't have the strength to bring its experiences which it has during sleep in the spiritual world to consciousness in such a way as man in day waking life brings to consciousness the happenings of physical life. Now one really gets to know the inner being of man as spirit and soul, and at this moment one sees beyond the earthly life. And one will only now be able to connect that, which one sees in the described way like a great but concrete memory tableau of one's earthly life up to this point, to that which one was as a soul-spiritual human being in a purely spiritual world before one descended into this physical world through birth or conception.

And in the same way another experience joins this one. If one develops another capacity together with all this during one's practicing, a capacity which normally is not seen as a capacity of knowledge but which is one too, if one develops that which is love of soul, full devotion to that which meets one, so strongly that this love remains with one even when one now looks at one's own self, that one can love that which appears as something new in the soul with a truly devoted love—then the possibility develops to free oneself in the waking state in full consciousness in one's inner experiencing from the bodily. But at this moment when one has freed oneself from the bodily in one's inner experiencing, one knows how it is with the human being when he lives his life without his body. And in a picture the fact of the passing through the gate of death, of dying, stands before one's soul. If one has once realised what it means to experience oneself free of the body in one's spiritual forces, then one also knows what one is in the spiritual existence after one has left the body and has passed through the gate of death. And one also gets to know the environment which will then be there for man. One learns to know how together with the body when it has been laid aside that falls away which connects us to the sense world. But that remains, which formerly has fashioned us as a human being, the soul-spiritual of man.

In this way one gets to know the experiences which one has had with other people. But that which was within these sense experiences, how soul has found soul, what happened in the relationships with other people, those that were closer to one and those who were more distant, that which happened in space and time—the eternal-spiritual one gets to know, how it rids itself of the earthly form of experiencing.

And more and more the soul now experiences that which was spiritually present within it as relationships to other people. And that which otherwise is only the object of belief, certainty of knowledge. This human beings experience when they themselves have passed through the gate of death. That which the human soul usually longs for as immortality, only enters real human knowledge in this way. But only by recognising the truly eternal in man by exercising our forces to such an extent that we recognise this eternal in our existence in the pre-earthly, spiritual-soul existence, we also gain that for ourselves which gives us certainty about life after death. There is no longer a word for the pre-earthly as something eternal in the human soul in today's civilisation because we only know the one half of eternity, we speak of immortality. Older languages had the other side, the not-yet-being-born, that is, our existence before we entered earthly life. But only both sides—not-yet-being-born and immortality constitute eternity. And it is a fact that man has to pay for his longing for immortality, that it becomes a mere belief if he wants to forgo knowledge of not-yet-being-born, because he will only understand eternity when he recognises both sides of eternity, the not-yet-being-born as well as the immortality of his being in unity. With this then man has advanced to a real taking hold of that which he is, to a real self-knowledge.

I have to emphasise again and again on such occasions that such a spiritual investigation can indeed only be made by someone who has acquired the relevant capacities by exercising or in another way through destiny, but when the results of such an investigation are made known, they can be as plausible to everyone as for instance the results of astronomy. And just as one doesn't have to be a painter in order to experience the beauty of a picture—for if that would be necessary, only the painters would be able to experience it—just as little does one necessarily have to be a spiritual investigator oneself in order to take up the knowledge of spiritual investigation, although one can become one up to a certain degree, because man wants truth and not confusion and error. Just as one can stand before a painting and admire its beauties with one's healthy judgement, so one can experience that which is presented by spiritual investigation, if one does not oneself put obstacles in one's way, such as prejudices and the like. One can understand it when one dedicates oneself to it with one's sense of truthfulness, and the accusation of those who say of the adherents of spiritual science that they only believe blindly is absolutely unjustified. Especially in the present time Anthroposophy will be able to give human souls if by using their sense of truth or by investigation in the indicated way to come to a self-knowledge of the human being, that for which they pine as I have said in the introduction to today's lecture. Even though this demand of the times does not yet come to consciousness in many people, even if it only shows itself undefined or even just in unfitness in life—it is there in that which expresses itself so clearly in the civilization of the present time. Natural science and many philosophical word views speak of insurmountable borders of knowledge. With this the border which leads to man himself is insurmountable. But man cannot in perpetuity do without true self-knowledge.

In tomorrow's lecture I shall continue where I have left off today and depict the ethical-religious life, how it is enriched and made more inward within the human being. With this I shall then tomorrow give the application to the immediate practical life. In today's lecture I wanted first to show how this demand of our time, which as a demand of heart and soul appears in ever more and more people in the present civilisation with its boundaries to knowledge, can be met by a real spiritual knowledge, by a knowledge of that which man wants to know about his own immortality and that which is connected with it, nay must know, because only in this way a true self-knowledge can be achieved, and only with this true self-knowledge a getting hold of oneself and a feeling of self can be connected. Because only through this man will be able to stand before his own soul with its eternal nature, that he acquires knowledge of how he as spiritual-soul being is woven into the spiritual-soul sphere of the world, just as he has his existence in the physical world a physical being. Only when he has acquired a knowledge of himself as spirit amongst spirits, will he also be able to acquire true inner security. Only when the human being knows his worth and dignity in the world, he stands in the world with that consciousness of himself as man, which out of an undefined feeling he can acknowledge as the only right human consciousness. And only because human beings will seek again for such a light of self-knowledge and spiritual knowledge of the world, only through this the hunger of the present time for a true penetrating of the own human nature will be able to be satisfied. For humanity will not be able to manage with all the demands of the progressing civilisation unless it realises: self-knowledge of man cannot be anything else but knowledge of spirit, for man can only feel himself as true man if he recognises himself as spirit amongst spirits, just as he can feel himself in his transient earthly existence as physical being amongst physical beings.

This is the 4th of 7 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at The Hague, in November of 1923. The title of this series of lectures is: The Supersensible Human, Anthroposophically Comprehended, and published in English as: Supersensible Man, and At Home in the Universe. This lecture is also known as: Anthroposophy / Spiritual Science as a Human and Personal Way of Life. This lecture first appeared in English in The Golden Blade of 1950.

The road that leads to a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual world differs in many respects from the method of knowledge that meets with general acceptance to-day.

As I have explained on other occasions, not only is it possible in our time to travel on this road, but there is in the man of the present day a deep need—yes, a hunger—for knowledge of the super-sensible. Certain preparatory inner experiences are, as you know, required in order to awaken in man the hitherto slumbering consciousness of the spiritual world and of the eternal in his own being. Man cannot, therefore, follow this path of knowledge without its affecting him in his innermost soul. Here we have at once a radical difference from the way of cognition to which we are accustomed.

Consider for a moment the scientific knowledge we acquire to-day by the activity of the intellect—and all present-day knowledge is so acquired, whether it be based on observation or on experiment. Where, to begin with, is this knowledge? For the most part, in books, in writing. The path of knowledge is in consequence well-defined, and man has continually to accept—and is often glad to accept—the limits marked out for recognised knowledge. How readily, when entering into some question of practical life, a man will defer to books—or shall we say, for it sounds a little better, will seek the requisite knowledge along purely scientific lines! This knowledge once acquired, he is, of course, ready to be himself—to be man—again. He has no wish to remain, in life, in the mood that accepts without question, maintaining even with a certain pride: it has been scientifically proved. ... When anyone brings forward something he has discovered out of his own experience, it will frequently happen that one who is au fait in scientific matters will immediately reply: But that does not tally with what is already known and proved, with what has been established as scientific fact. Knowledge has become severed from direct personal experience, so much so indeed that it is regarded as genuine only if acquired and experienced quite apart from any relation to what springs from the heart of man.

The path of knowledge which leads to a recognition of the spiritual world and of the eternal in the human being has quite another character. It calls upon the personal in man; he cannot so much as take one step upon it without heart and soul being directly concerned. And I want to-day to speak of the results for the life of man when knowledge is in this way brought into immediate connection with the personal in the human being.

Knowledge of the spiritual world is not just a continuation or extension of the knowledge that prevails to-day; rather does it imply a change in the whole way of experiencing knowledge.

Let us look a little more closely at a distinctive feature of the knowledge that has made such advances in our day and generation. Do not think I want to criticise this method of knowledge. It has achieved a very great deal on its own ground, and has brought to humanity quite remarkable blessings of a material kind, although it must be admitted that these are, in the present age of civilisation, somewhat heavily cancelled out! Present-day knowledge has, throughout, this characteristic: it starts from the assumption that things are either “true” or “untrue”, and sets out to decide between the alternatives by the exercise of the intellect. We make a point, do we not, of being logical and of basing our conclusion on the facts of experience. Once we have come to see that some scientific statement is true or untrue, then it stands there before us in its truth or untruth and our personality has very little concern with it. We can of course—and should—be filled with enthusiasm for the truth, and turn with loathing from error and falsehood; but if we compare our personal relation to the scientific findings of our time as regards their truth and falsehood with other relations of life, we find a considerable difference.

Let me take a simple, practical example. When we satisfy our hunger, we are doing something in which we are ourselves personally involved; the satisfied hunger cannot be said to stand before us as something objective to ourselves. Whereas when we come to a conclusion between truth and untruth in the realm of science we seek rather to keep our personality out of the decision. If yesterday we were in error on a certain matter, and to-day are no longer so, the implication is, we have arrived at a conclusion, but in doing so we have not essentially changed in our personal being. If, on the other hand, we have eaten something we never tasted before, and have enjoyed it, then we are not quite the same as we were.

Now it will be found that the concepts “true” and “untrue”, “true” and “false” become changed when we begin to have immediate experience of the truths of spiritual science. As we gradually find our way on this new path of knowledge, we stop saying: This is true, that is false. The criterion holds good for the material world; there we can rightly let it be our guide. Few people, however, are aware of its origin. If we trace back the word “true” in the various languages, we make an interesting discovery. The abstract concept, it denotes to-day is comparatively new; it is a product of evolution. In earlier times, anything to which man felt he owed acknowledgement and assent was said to be “what the Gods willed.” The world was divided for man into what the Gods have willed and what the Gods have not willed. In many languages the word “true” still retains this older meaning as well. “True” meant “true to the Divine Order”; the abstract meaning came later. When the intellect took command in the field of knowledge, men forgot the origin of the word “true”. And so to-day we have this completely impersonal relation to knowledge.

The new way of knowledge, however, leads us again to associate something actual and vital with what we assent to or reject. In spiritual science we are not content to say of something that it is true or correct; we ascribe to it a quality, an effectual quality. We speak of knowledge being sound, wholesome—or unwholesome, and to be discarded. The concepts “true” or “correct”, and “untrue” or “incorrect”, which are really valid only for the physical world, are replaced by the concepts “sound” and “unsound”. We are thereby obliged to come into a nearer, more personal relation with the whole of knowledge. For we must needs regard as desirable what is sound and wholesome, we incline to it; on the other hand, we turn away from, we reject, so far as we are able, what is unsound or unhealthy. And as we begin to discern in the field of knowledge whether ideas enrich life or impoverish it, strengthen and aid life, or render it sick and feeble, we begin to realise how intimate is the connection of ideas with life. The knowledge of the present day we approach rather as we do a person to whom we are more or less indifferent, with whom we have merely a conventional relation. Not so with the Spiritual Science I am representing here. We approach it in the way we would a friend whom we love.

As we come to apprehend the truths of the pre-earthly life of man—the life he had as a being of soul and spirit in a purely spiritual world—or as we take our way into the realms of the spiritual world through which man lives between death and new birth, we begin to feel deeply connected with these worlds and with all that they contain; we feel impelled to unite our very being with what we recognise as sound and healthy knowledge, giving us a sound, healthy outlook on life, while on the other hand we naturally reject and cast behind us views that we cannot help seeing are unhealthy, unsound.

Let me illustrate my point by comparison once again with a familiar everyday experience. Normally, man takes nourishment, and this, when it has undergone change inside him, enables him to replace what he has used up in his body; and in this metamorphosis of the means of nourishment man has a feeling of well-being. Conditions, however, may arise, owing to which he is unable to take food—perhaps because his organism is not in a state to digest it, or for some other reason. When this is so, man feeds on what is in his own body; he begins, so to say, to devour himself. Certain illnesses are associated with this condition. This is not unlike what happens with us in the pursuit of knowledge. As we gradually acquire knowledge of the spiritual world, we come to feel how, through such knowledge, we are being brought together with the spiritual world, we are becoming one with it; we are finding our way to the Gods, and to our own immortal soul, finding our way to what we shall experience in the spiritual world when we have passed through the gate of death, and to what we experienced there before we came down to earth. It is almost as though we had offered up our own existence, surrendered it in devotion to the world; but that thereby our life had become richer, inwardly richer. We have become the world, and in so doing we begin to apprehend ourselves for the first time in our full human inwardness. We discover that the whole being and existence of man depends on his coming together with the world in this way. Similarly, too, we learn to understand how the lack or neglect of such truths is like having to live in the world without the organs for receiving nourishment, driven to feed on our own body.

It is different on the intellectual plane. Here we can dispute and argue about idealism and materialism, and so forth; to one we may feel kindly disposed—to another perhaps not, but we do not suffer on that account; none of them affects us deeply. But when we have learned to apprehend sound spiritual truths, then ideas that have a materialistic orientation give us pain; for we know, such truths leave man to feed upon himself.

Now we shall find that the experience I have described enables us to distinguish spiritual truths in yet another way, for it brings home to us that truth is related to love, that healthy and sound knowledge is related to selflessness in man—not the selflessness that loses the self but that leads rather to the possession of the self in the true sense. When man has learned to go out of himself and into the world, becoming in this way not empty but filled with world content, then it is that he finds his true manhood.

Devotion, loving devotion to the spiritual facts of life, becomes a characteristic of one who is able to receive spiritual knowledge. We do not, as a rule, find that the pursuit of purely intellectual knowledge has any specific effect on character; but when a man has probed to the heart of spiritual knowledge, he knows that he cannot apprehend such knowledge without its affecting his character, without its entering—to speak in a paradox—into the flesh and blood of his soul, developing in him an inclination to selflessness, to love. He comes also to understand that when man receives knowledge that lacks this health-giving impulse, it drives him—spiritually speaking—to feed on himself, and from this he can learn the true nature of egoism.

The effect upon character is one of the most important results that can accrue from spiritual knowledge. Abstract intellectual knowledge is like an artificial root; it has been constructed by the intellect—no plant can grow from it. This is true of all the scientific knowledge that men respect and revere to-day, useful though it be, and by no means to be disparaged. From a real root grows a real plant; and from a real knowledge, whereby man can unite his spirit with the Spirits of the World, grows little by little the complete man who knows what true selflessness—selfless love—is, and what egoism is, and from this understanding derives impulses to act and work in life—the impulse, where it is right, to be selfless; or again, where he perhaps has need to draw forth something from his own being in preparation for life—there, openly, without any disguise, to develop egoism.

A certain clairvoyance will be found to enter into this self-observation, and into the way it is led over into deed and action. From the root of spiritual knowledge springs the plant of the higher man, the man of soul and spirit. Spiritual knowledge leads therefore quite naturally and inevitably to morality. As regards present-day knowledge, we tend to be proud of the fact that it has no connection with morality or ethics. We assume as a matter of course that we have to examine the inorganic processes in Nature in accordance with their laws, looking in them for cause and effect and not expecting to find in them any ethical working. We boast that we can even go on to apply these methods to living processes, to our study of the plant, of the animal and of the human being, allowing ourselves to concede the presence of a moral element only when we come to consider the deeper impulses that rise up in human hearts and souls: impulses of which, however, we cannot say that they are able to demonstrate their independent existence by accomplishing the transition to objective reality.

Knowledge of the spirit, on the other hand, leading as it does to an intensive development of the experience of selflessness, of that loving devotion to the matter in hand, without which spiritual knowledge is unattainable, and on the other hand to a fine perception of the nature of egoism, brings us right into the moral world-order. The moral world-order begins to be for us an immediate reality. Let us examine a little how this comes about.

We begin to speak no longer merely in an abstract way of a pre-earthly life of man, but actually to look into the spiritual world in which we lived before we descended to Earth, even as we look out: with our physical eyes on our physical surroundings; and we find that we are surrounded there by beings who never take on a physical body, just as here in the physical world we have around us beings who have, like ourselves, a physical body. The spiritual world and its beings become actual and objective; we begin to be familiar with them.

What is the secret of our bodily existence on earth? Even as through the years of childhood, from birth onward, we are continually being impelled, unconsciously or half consciously, to find our way into our body, to grow increasingly one with it, so do we in like manner, throughout our physical life on earth, gradually approach the world, feeling our way towards it by means of our physical organs. When we are active and creative, we—so to speak—lose ourselves in our body; soul and spirit are surrendered to the body and we lose consciousness of them. The content of the world is communicated to us through our bodily nature. Materialism is quite right as far as earthly consciousness is concerned, for we are obliged to make use of the body as long as we remain in the earthly consciousness, and so have to be content with perceiving only what is bodily. If, however, man wants to comprehend the spiritual world and his own super-sensible being, he has to undergo in himself a development wherein the body acts as a hindrance. For the body would wrench us away from the spiritual world, would alienate us from it, driving us back again and again upon ourselves and our own egoity; whereas in spiritual knowledge we have to come right out of ourselves—rather as we do when we love another human being. And in so far as we become able to do this, a deeply significant truth begins to dawn upon us, namely, that man passes through repeated earthly lives.

As a matter of fact, many of the feelings and impulses that we carry in our soul are there as a result of earlier lives on earth; only we do not observe them as such because we remain in our body. Suppose we meet someone, and the meeting leads to a friendship that alters the whole course of our life. When we look back over the earlier years, we discover with the eye of the spirit what we could never find by the aid of bodily vision alone: namely, that our whole life up to the moment of meeting him was a search for that person. One who is already a little older and looks back in this way is able to see his life as the working out of a plan; he recognises how, when he was quite a little child, his life took a direction that was to bring about eventually the meeting with this friend. We can go further in this kind of observation of life and discover that all we do, though it may seem to result from the working of earthly physical forces, is in reality guided from elsewhere. We come in fact to recognise that the life we are now living is dependent on earlier lives on earth. And between these have been also lives in a spiritual world.

Now we can come to a knowledge of the other lives we have lived on earth only when we learn to imbue with love the faculty of cognition. It is by no means so easy as some people think, to discover the man we were! For he is a complete stranger to us now. Only a selfless, love-imbued faculty of cognition can grasp this other person, so that he enters into our consciousness.

This is how it is with all stages of higher, spiritual knowledge. Our knowledge has to become a loving knowledge, intimately bound up with our personality, a knowledge that simply cannot be at all without our personality taking part in it. And as we grow into this larger world, and learn to look beyond birth and beyond death, to look also beyond and behind the world of the senses—for in the plant, animal, and mineral kingdoms we begin to behold beings, spiritually active beings—as we do this, we come into a kingdom of reality, where the ethical impulses that inhere in our knowledge have place. I will give you an example.

Destiny, we say, is hard to bear. So little good seems often to result from actions that spring from the highest motives, whilst others that flow from evil motives reap marvelous success! How is this? The reason is that this physical world of the senses, not-withstanding that we have taken for ourselves a fragment of it to form, as it were, a garment for our souls, has in it no moral impulses. The moral and ethical impulses that are behind our actions have no place there; they are wiped away out of whatever we do or make in the physical world; the nearest approach to moral working is a purely formal compensatory effect. But this physical world is permeated throughout with spirit; we carry our moral or immoral actions into the world of the spirit. And here, even as we found that “true” comes to mean for us sound or healthy, we recognise that when man devotes himself to moral truth, he becomes in his inner being, strong, well developed; whereas when he gives himself up to error he becomes a cripple in soul and spirit.

In the present cycle of evolution this does not find expression in the physical body (there we carry the results of what we did and achieved in our previous life on earth); but when we have laid down our physical body and gone through the gate of death, then there is no longer anything to prevent our soul and spirit from assuming the physiognomy we have acquired from the ethical quality of our experience. There in the spiritual world we, as soul and spirit, are strong and well-developed, or crippled and weak. Then, later on, comes the time for us to resume a physical body; and in forming it we build, from within, our own destiny. For we may, on the one hand, be able, having brought from an earlier life a harmonious soul-and-spirit nature, to form the new body in perfect order and proportion, so that we can employ it in good and useful activity; or, coming into incarnation, as it were, as a moral cripple, we may find ourselves able only to form and guide the new body in a clumsy and awkward fashion, from embryo up to adult age. And now this inner destiny becomes our outer destiny. For it is clear to an unprejudiced observation that whatever befalls us from without is closely connected with what we ourselves have prepared as our inner destiny. In all our intercourse with the world outside, we make use of the body as an instrument, and according as we use it skillfully and well, or badly and clumsily, we occasion, at any rate in part, the events that befall us. And then, in the further lives that follow, come new compensation and balancing-out. Thus in the spiritual world we find the formative forces that belong to our moral life. The moral world becomes for us a reality.

We see how an ethical impulse cannot in one earth-life effect a change in the physical body, but when it passes over into the next life on earth, can work there quite definitely as a health-giving influence, no less truly than heat works in the physical world, or light, or electricity. That we imagine the moral world—order to be no more than a man-made abstraction is due to the fact that we take cognisance only of the physical world, tracing everything back there from effect to cause; we can, however, equally well recognise this law at work in the spiritual world; only there we have to trace the effects, as they show themselves in one life, back to causes in an earlier life on earth. In other words, we need to know the level on which the law of cause and effect has to be applied to human destiny.

Now all that sounds very well, someone might say, but as things are, men have not this spiritual knowledge of which you speak; only a researcher in the spirit can see into the spiritual world-others must be content with the words and ideas in which he clothes his perceptions. To this I would reply: To paint a picture, one must be an artist; but to experience the beauty and inner content of the picture one need not be an artist, one has only to approach the picture with a sincere and open mind. It is the same with spiritual knowledge. In order to “paint” in ideas, one must be a researcher in the spirit; but once the picture is painted, it stands there for others to behold. And if these, who are not themselves “artists”, are free from prejudice and are sincere seekers after truth, they will receive health and healing from the descriptions of the spiritual world.

We are actually, at the present day, in a peculiar position in this respect. Spiritual Science, in the sense we understand it here, is, comparatively speaking, a new thing in our civilisation. The person who is able to represent it from immediate experience, stands alone; and all he can do is to clothe it in words and ideas, and impart these to his fellow men. It might even be thought that what he has to say concerns himself alone! In any case, that is how the position is to-day. One earnestly hopes it will soon alter, for Spiritual Science has power to quicken and awaken man inwardly. As things still are, however, mankind remains to-day a recipient only of spiritual knowledge.

For him who acquires spiritual knowledge, the case is very different. There comes a point where he has to undergo a pain with which no other pain can be compared. It is at the moment when he passes beyond his own spiritual experience between birth and death and launches out into the vast ocean of eternity in which we shall be when we have gone through the gate of death, and in which we were before we descended through birth to physical life on earth. An indescribable pain is involved in leaving, on the path of knowledge, the world of the physical senses, and entering the world of the spirit. The whole being is, as it were, steeped in pain. And now a remarkable thing happens. At first the higher knowledge seizes hold of the traveler in his entire being; but then, it wrests itself free of him with unbelievable force and certainty.

Since we have set out in this lecture to show where the personal has place in the path of knowledge, you will allow me, I think, to describe at this point what is, on the face of it, an entirely personal matter. As we shall find, however, what seems most personal in it has nevertheless an impersonal character. It is an experience that can befall anyone who comes into a similar situation.

To begin with, as I said, the knowledge of the spiritual takes hold of the entire human being. Ordinary intellectual knowledge is a concern of the head, the intellect. It is in the head alone that we have to exert ourselves. True, the acquisition of this kind of knowledge often obliges one to sit still for long hours at a stretch, so that one may be glad to break off for sheer weariness! It is nevertheless true to say that ordinary knowledge does not call upon the whole human being. But if we try to acquire, with the aid of the intellect alone, knowledge of the spiritual and super-sensible, it evades us like a dream; its great and far-reaching conceptions slip from our grasp. When we have, so to speak, pressed forward to the spiritual world, when we have passed what is spoken of as the Guardian of the Threshold, we have the greatest trouble to bring to consciousness—not the content; that one can acquire as a matter of knowledge—but the experience.

It is a fact that very many people become able, comparatively quickly, to have experiences in the spiritual world. But presence of mind is needed to grasp these experiences. With the majority of persons it happens that before they can give their attention to some experience, it is gone again. Presence of mind is altogether indispensable for the attainment of spiritual knowledge, as you will know from my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. When one succeeds in acquiring knowledge of things that are beyond space and beyond time, they seem like a dream, and only with the greatest difficulty can one lift them on to a higher level of consciousness. They vanish-away like a dream if one tries to grasp them with the head alone.

Now it is important for one who speaks about the spiritual world in ideas to have always the spiritual world before him as he speaks; and he can acquire the habit of standing in this way within the spiritual world only if his whole being participates in the knowledge. Everyone will find his own way of doing this. I, for example, find it necessary to fix the results of spiritual knowledge by jotting down either brief notes or symbolical drawings. I need hardly say, I mean by this nothing of a mediumistic nature, but a perfectly conscious and deliberate action. Putting down some note at once ensures that the activity is not confined to the head alone but is shared in by the whole human being. It is of no consequence whether later on one refers to these notes: the point is, to make them. I can assure you I have used up whole cartloads of notebooks in this way and never looked at them again. What has been seen in the spiritual world is more strongly retained when the experience is allowed to flow into an impulse of will that leads to the activity of writing; for ultimately, all depends on experiencing the truths of the spiritual world—let me say—”organically”, experiencing them with one's whole being.

Initiation-knowledge of the present day has perforce another characteristic, which need not continue indefinitely and was not present in earlier and other paths to initiation. I mean the following. Suppose one has produced some spiritual knowledge, and later on has occasion to come back to it. If one is, let us say, as old as I am, and produced some 40 years ago much of what one has to communicate, then as far as the inner spiritual activity is concerned, it is almost as though one had to deal with something one was reading for the first time in an old book. Please understand me aright. Knowledge one has oneself produced many years ago becomes as strange to one as a book one has never seen before. It is not remote in the way that we feel abstract knowledge to be remote, but spiritually it severs itself from one. A man who stands outside initiation-knowledge, may feel how this knowledge, when he receives it, becomes united with his very being; but for the one who has produced it, it separates itself from him; he feels as if he had before him another human being.

Many a book, I assure you, by one or other of our friends, strikes me as more familiar than the books I wrote myself in earlier years. In fact, I read these only when I must: for instance, to revise them for a new edition. The teaching of the spiritual researcher severs itself from him and becomes objective; he is quite unable to feel any particular pleasure or satisfaction in it—as one might naturally expect in other circumstances! This has nothing to do with the knowledge as such; it arises only from the fact that one is obliged in the present day to attain the knowledge in solitude. In earlier times, when the path of initiation knowledge was far more instinctive and less conscious, it could not rightly be pursued in solitude. There were societies for the fostering of initiation knowledge. Such societies exist even in our time, but they merely carry on a tradition. If to-day one speaks from direct personal experience in knowledge, one is compelled to stand alone.

How was it arranged in societies of this kind? And how will it be in the future, when knowledge of the spiritual will be received again into civilisation and be called upon to enter once more into all the practical spheres of life? For spiritual knowledge will be able to do this, when once man begins to take hold of it. The societies of which we have spoken were ordered in the following way. An agreement was come to, freely and willingly on the part of all, that one of their number should undertake a particular field of knowledge, another, another field, and so on. One, for example, would concentrate all his powers on inquiring into the influence exercised upon the life of man by the world of stars, another on investigating the path leading from pre-earthly existence into the sphere of the earth.

This plan made it possible for the several fields of knowledge to be investigated in detail. For if it takes ten years to get to know something of the influence of the stars on human life, it takes, not ten years, but a lifetime to explore in detail even a few steps of the way from pre-earthly into earthly life. There was accordingly good reason for distributing among different persons the several realms of knowledge. Each made a deep study of the field of knowledge upon which he set himself to concentrate, and for the rest, allowed himself to take the knowledge from his companions. He had thus the double experience; he knew what it was to produce knowledge himself inwardly, and he had also the experience of receiving knowledge he had not himself produced.

When men learn to be more open-hearted and to approach knowledge with real warmth of soul, then it will afford them the same kind of experience one may have from the painting of a great artist. Man's own natural feeling for reality will enable him to take hold of what lives in the idea he has not himself produced; he will have a direct inner experience of the idea. He will undergo also the pain and suffering of which I told you—all the phases of inner personal experience that come from meeting spiritual knowledge face to face. This can be achieved by one who receives spiritual truths; he can grasp them, take hold of them with the entire forces of his soul. Such an experience is, however, in large measure denied to the spiritual researcher of the present day; he has to forgo it in so far as he produces the knowledge.

The fruits of spiritual knowledge can accrue to those who receive the truths with warmth of heart. And within the societies of earlier times provision was always made for the receiving of knowledge. When a particular field of spiritual research was allotted to one member—or the member chose it for himself—then, as far as that field was concerned, he went without the receiving which gives so much help and enrichment to life; on the other hand he experienced the blessing of receiving, in that he received knowledge from his companions who undertook other fields of research. Something, of the kind must come again in the future.

Do not think I speak out of a desire to attach importance to my own experiences; I want rather to draw your attention to the fact that in order to reap the fruits of spiritual knowledge, one does not need to have produced the knowledge oneself. Let a man follow the exercises—in meditation, concentration, etc.—described in my book, How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Then, if he succeeds in rousing himself to inner activity of soul, and takes but a few first steps towards an understanding of life, his heart will be open to receive what the spiritual researcher can give, and what he receives will unite itself with him in quite an intimate manner, for it speaks directly to the personal in him, and he will find the way, as personal man, to the deep sources of life whence the eternal in his own being is derived; he will enter into the experiences man has in the spiritual world before his life on earth, and into those also that await man when he has passed through the gate of death and come again into the spiritual world. And as he makes this knowledge his own, a second higher man will grow up within him.

On this path of knowledge we learn to feel, as it were, at home in the spiritual world in the way we feel at home in the world of nature, with its secure and stable laws. The fact that we have muscles and bones unites us with nature; our own physical nature makes us feel at home in the physical nature of the world around. And when we begin to apprehend the reality of spiritual conceptions and to see their content as part of the spiritual world, then we begin to feel at home in a divine spiritual world—even as with our body we feel at home in the world of the senses. And it is this feeling at home in the spiritual world that is so important, for thereby we attain to a knowledge of ourselves as having eternal spiritual existence in the eternal divine spiritual world.

For not only is it true that mankind in general is rooted in a spiritual world. Every single human being, just through that which is most personal in him, just through that which he, as an individual, can experience by being on earth in a particular place and at a particular time, is rooted in, and belongs to, a spiritual world which bears the stamp of eternity. As we come to realise this, we begin to feel as though a voice were calling to us: “Make not yourself a cripple in soul and spirit!” For not merely man in general, but each single human being, is relied upon to play his part.

It is also through what is most individual and personal in him that man finds his way to religion, and to all true artistic experience. Hence it is that Spiritual Science leads directly into a religious mood of life. You will find abundant evidence in our literature of how Christianity is deepened, and can stand forth in its true light and in its true being, when we try to understand the personal experiences of the Christ Who appeared in a personal form.

Attaining thus by a personal path to our own eternal being, we know how to give personality its right place and meaning in the world, conscious that each one of us is needed and reckoned upon as single personality. Knowledge of the spirit has become for us a human and personal path in life. We feel inwardly seized and quickened by the content of spiritual knowledge, in the same way that our body is seized and quickened by the power of the blood.

The meaning we have been led to discern in our personal, our individual existence, may perhaps be best conveyed in a picture. A meeting has been called, and we are summoned to attend the meeting, because it is important for just that to be said in it which we alone can contribute. Suppose we take some action which has the result of preventing our being present. We are not there; we—who are expected, who are looked for—do not appear.

Whatever we do and accomplish under the impulse of spiritual knowledge serves, we shall find, to enrich our life; we begin indeed to recognise how our path in life leads always in a direction where we are needed and expected. In the world where spiritual beings are at work, creating and fashioning our individual existence, we begin to see that we are counted upon to do our part, and we understand that the only way we can fulfill what is expected of us and join with our companions in a higher spiritual world, is by following this personal path of life into the spiritual world, and finding within us, as we tread the path, the higher eternal man, the soul and spirit of our being.

Thus does this human knowledge of the spirit bring us face to face with the challenge: Are we going to arrive in that place where it is given to human beings to unite in a common experience of the spiritual—for we are expected there, we are awaited—or, having passed through many births and deaths, shall we come at length to a point where the word of reproach rings out: You were expected, and you did not come!