The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A few more remarks may be added to what was said in yesterday's lecture. We have seen how necessary it is—in order to cross the threshold rightly and enter the spiritual world with clairvoyant consciousness—to leave behind us all the perceptions of the physical world as well as everything we ordinarily think, feel, and will in this world. We have to be prepared to confront beings and happenings whose characteristics bear no relation at all to what can be perceived in the sense world. First, we have to strengthen the soul and its faculties, and then these strengthened, fortified soul faculties must be carried upwards with us. When we cross the threshold into the spirit realm, we must take something with us. We have pointed out that everything the sense world can give us, as well as the ideas and feelings we acquire there, are all images of what is perceptible to the senses. Nothing we acquire in this way can be of use in the spiritual world.

On the other hand, whatever is not an image of the sense world and has no significance for it—although it can there be aroused, called forth and given shape in free, inner soul experience—must be carried up into super-sensible worlds. In the last lecture we suggested using certain images of triads in their numeric relationships, images of the harmonious working together of opposites (especially the luciferic and ahrimanic elements) and of the intermediate condition. Such ideas have no immediate significance for the physical world—one can get on quite well without them—but one must have formed them in the physical world in order to carry them into spiritual worlds. That is why we tried to show through the teachings of Benedictus how the luciferic, the ahrimanic and the middle condition work into the triad of thought, word and writing in the development of human culture.

In connection with this I would like to mention something that can be of greatest use in understanding the life of humanity when looked at in the right way; it is what people from now on must acquire if our civilization is ever to progress properly. People will eventually see that they can no longer make do with the ideas that easygoing human beings today like to form in order to understand the times and social conditions. In Europe there are folk groups that speak different languages and there are also those that differ in their script. The western Europeans write with what are called Roman letters, but others use an entirely different form of writing, which is known as Black Letter or Gothic; these exist side by side. This is a significant phenomenon for anyone wishing to form a judgment about European culture. Although such things seem unimportant, they are symptoms arising out of very deep foundations of existence. When folk groups use different forms of writing, they will come to a genuine, mutual understanding only by taking up spiritual initiatives and aims together. Nations writing a different script give the ahrimanic impulse special points of attack; it is not enough to look for mutual understanding merely based on the requirements of the physical plane. A spiritual element must be taken up by both peoples, and through this, harmony can be sought. For nations that write with Roman letters, it will be necessary—in order to understand one another—to carry the spiritual element so far that understanding takes place even in regard to facts on the physical plane. One who understands such things can recognize this in regard to the relationships in European national life. It is of deep significance that in Central Europe both kinds of writing, expressing the peculiar relationship of ahrimanic and luciferic elements, exist side by side. The reason for this is that here a middle condition cannot be reached without special difficulties: the Roman alphabet, exposed more to the ahrimanic element, must be brought into a certain opposition to the Gothic, which is more open to the luciferic element; it shows a certain trend that in their handwriting many people have to mix together both scripts. Such an intermingling of scripts is of immense importance, for it points to something lying deep in the substrata of the soul, i.e., that such people have to come to terms with both the luciferic and ahrimanic elements in a special way. Much will depend on their making a tremendous effort (if they are writing in German) not to fall into Gothic when they intend to write Roman and not to fall into Roman when they intend to write Gothic. It is becoming more and more necessary to observe life in such minute details and to look at the symptoms which bring to the surface what is happening in hidden depths. In this way we shall learn how to acquire in the physical sense world the concepts, ideas and feelings we can carry fruitfully across the threshold into the realm of the spirit.

We will certainly have to recognize what extraordinary talent—even genius—for superficiality there is in our modern culture in regard to anything expressing itself as spirituality. Somehow we will have to acquire in the physical world the concepts for what shines out of the spiritual world and sends its rays into the physical sense world. Let us therefore look at another sphere where the luciferic and ahrimanic elements play into the physical world; we will speak first of the realm of art. In this we still hold to what has already been said, that in all human artistic development the luciferic element plays a part, that the luciferic element is present to the greatest extent in the development of art. But something more must be added. There are, in general, five principal arts to be found in the physical world: the art of building or architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry. Other arts combine and mix together the elements of these five; the art of the dance, we could say, is a combination of several arts. When one rightly understands dance, one does so on the basis of fundamental preconditions in the other arts. Naturally these can be combined.

Of the five arts, architecture and sculpture are those most particularly open to the ahrimanic impulse. In these arts we are concerned with form. To accomplish anything in architecture and sculpture we must find our way into the form element, which is dominant on the physical plane, for here the Spirits of Form are the ruling forces. To get to know them, one must plunge into their spiritual element, as I said before, when speaking figuratively of putting one's head into an ant hill. A person who has anything to do with sculpture must plunge his head into the living element of the Spirits of Form. In the realm of the physical world these Spirits work cooperatively with the ahrimanic element.

It is important, we will see, especially in such cases, not simply to assert in a superficial way that we have to protect ourselves from the ahrimanic element. We should always realize that such beings as the luciferic and ahrimanic ones have their particular domains, where normally they live and work, and that bad effects come about only when they overstep their boundaries. The ahrimanic impulses have their absolutely legitimate domain in architecture and sculpture.

On the other hand, we find that music and poetry are two arts where luciferic impulses are at work. Just as thought takes place in the solitude of the soul and thereby separates it from the rest of the world, the experience of music and poetry, too, belongs to our inner nature where these arts directly meet the luciferic impulse. In architecture and building we have to consider folk differences, simply because wherever Ahriman is, Lucifer will play a part as well, but these arts are directed only to some extent by the character of a people; in general this element remains neutral. However, poetry is essentially bound to the luciferic element, which comes to expression in the differences of folk character. Although one notices this less in music, here too things lead to differentiation, much more than in architecture and sculpture.

In this we see again that in order to form concepts for the higher worlds we cannot get on in the comfortable way many people would like to do. It is absolutely correct to say that the ahrimanic element works in architecture and sculpture, the luciferic more in music and poetry, yet it must also be said: as soon as we have to do with concepts that are valid also in the higher worlds, it is not so easy to answer the question once and for all, “In sculpture is Ahriman more active, or is Lucifer?” It is certainly easy in the physical world to answer the question, “What color is common chicory?” with the statement, “It is blue.” People would like things to be as easy as that for the higher worlds, but it is wrong to suppose that one can obtain such quick answers. Still, although all this holds good, the following is true. In architecture it is generally the case that the ahrimanic impulse is the stronger, but in sculpture the luciferic influence opposing Ahriman can be so strong that in some sculptural works Lucifer is more dominant than Ahriman. Nevertheless, what we said before is correct, for in the spiritual world there is not only the faculty of metamorphosis but one can say, everything is everywhere. In truth, every spiritual element tries to permeate everything. There can be luciferic sculpture and though poetry is chiefly under the influence of Lucifer, the ahrimanic influence can work very strongly on music, so that we can find music with more of Ahriman than of Lucifer.

In the middle between what is generally ahrimanic in architecture and sculpture and what is luciferic in poetry and music lies painting. In a way it is a neutral region but not such that we can comfortably settle down and say to ourselves, “Now I'll go ahead with painting, for here neither Lucifer nor Ahriman can get at me.” Actually it is just here in the middle that we are exposed on both sides most strongly to their attacks; at every moment we must be on our guard. In the realm of painting we are in the highest degree vulnerable to one or the other influence. The middle line is always the place where we have to bring about, in the very strictest sense of the word, the harmonious balance of polarities by means of human will and human action.

Looking at the sphere of art as we have done—it could have been any other sphere—you see that we acquire certain concepts without which, of course, we can manage quite well on the physical plane. For it is obvious that when we are willing to remain shallow and superficial, we can get along easily enough on this plane even if we don't find music luciferic and architecture ahrimanic! But if we want to manage without such concepts, we will not be able to form on the physical plane any ideas, thoughts, or feelings that will strengthen our soul and enable it to cross the threshold successfully and rise into the realm of spirit; we will have to remain here below on the physical plane.

We must therefore acquire concepts, feelings and ideas for the realm of the spirit if we really wish to cross the threshold, and while these must indeed be invoked by the physical, they will nevertheless have to rise above the physical-sense realm. Then with strengthened soul we will cross the threshold and become familiar with this world already characterized as a place of living thought-beings, engaged in spiritual conversation. With our strengthened soul we will become familiar with a world of beings that consist of thought-substance; through this thought-substance they are more alive, more individual, more real than any human being on earth. These beings within their thought-substance are just as real as any man of flesh and blood on the physical plane. We can gradually find our way in this world where a thought-language passes between one being and another, and where our soul is forced to carry on thought-conversations with the thought-beings if we want to arrive at a relationship with them. I have intimated this in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World; more details can now be added. Because of the great responsibility in writing all this, I have tried to avoid in the book a systematic description and instead have put in aphoristic form the things that can be useful even if you have already absorbed everything in earlier lecture cycles and books.

As living thought-beings, we have to adjust to the spiritual realm of which it can be said:

At this place words are deeds
and further deeds must follow them.¹⁴

A human being in the physical world carries out his actions through the movement of his hands; we have described how thoughts, living within the cosmic Word, are also direct actions. Whatever is spoken accomplishes a deed. That is what matters in the spiritual world. A being is active towards another being; a being is active in relation to the external spiritual world around it; both of these actions are contained in spirit conversations. The spoken word is action. Therefore we have to bring ourselves upward into spirit regions in order to find ourselves as living thought-beings among other living thought-beings. We must conduct ourselves as do the other thought-beings, that is, allow our own words to be actions, to put it simply.

What do we find in those spirit regions? No longer do we find for our own use what we find down in the physical or even in the elemental worlds. This self that we carry through the physical and elemental worlds is the sum total of our experiences, gathered together from the impressions of the physical world and from everything on the physical plan that thinking, feeling and willing developed in our soul. But neither the impressions nor the feeling, thinking, and willing as they meet us on the physical plane have any significance at all in the spiritual world. There, instead of the so-called human self of the physical and elemental worlds, we find something else; namely, the part of oneself that indeed is always present in the depths of soul even though the ordinary physical consciousness can not know it. Like another being we will find our other self; this second self we find in the spiritual world.

At the close of these lectures, as in the closing section of The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I shall indicate for anyone who wants to ferret out contradictions, how the terms employed here are related to the terminology I used in Theosophy and Occult Science. But here it can be said: a person lives in his physical body in the physical world around him. When he comes away from it and has experiences outside the physical body, he is having those experiences in his etheric body with the elemental world around him; and when he comes out of that world as well, he is experiencing the spiritual realm in his astral body. With this experience—feeling oneself in the astral body—there will be a meeting in the spiritual world, the meeting with the other self, the second self,¹⁵ of which Johannes Thomasius speaks at the end of The Guardian of the Threshold, and which stands throughout the whole action of The Souls' Awakening at the side of the first self of Johannes Thomasius, summoning forth his experiences. Let me describe the essence of this other self; it is what a person comes to recognize when he learns within his astral body to perceive and feel and observe in the spiritual world. It is what lives from one life on earth to another, from incarnation to incarnation. In moving from one life on earth to the next one, between death and a new birth, it weaves itself so mysteriously into our being that the physical consciousness usually cannot perceive this other self, for it is actually within the spiritual world even though bound up with our physical being.

How is this other self active? It has just been said that it belongs to the realm of the spirit as a living thought-being among other living thought-beings, whose words are deeds; they accomplish all they do through what we can call Inspiration. The second self acts inspiringly in man's nature. What does it inspire? Our karma, our destiny. Here we discover a mysterious process: whatever our experience, whether painful or joyous, whatever it is that happens in our life, it is inspired by our other self, working from the spiritual world into this one. If you are walking along the street and something happens to you that seems accidental, it is inspired by your other self from out of the spiritual world. So you see that something like Inspiration in the spiritual world reveals itself on the physical plane and brings about your destiny in large and small happenings. Your destiny is inspired by your other self, out of the realm of the spirit.

A clairvoyant soul entering this realm perceives in the spirit-conversation a revelation of what can be put into the phrase: words are deeds. However, everything that happens in the spiritual world stamps itself upon the physical World. Whether you see a stone, a plant, a cloud, or lightning—behind all these stand spiritual beings and spiritual processes. Furthermore, behind the physical events of your destiny stand spiritual beings and spiritual processes. What are they? Inspirations! They are brought about by a conversation in the spiritual world. The cosmic Word is active as the inspirer of human destiny! This is of great significance for your spiritual perception on meeting your other self. You no longer think then of your human personality within its ordinary limits alone, for you extend yourself—and this must include your other self—to cover your entire destiny. You are only then a truly whole human being when—in just the same way that you say, “This finger is part of myself and belongs on the physical plane to my ego”—you also say, “It is part of myself to bang my thumb or take a painful fall, for all these things are inspired by my other self.”

However, we must bear in mind just how we meet this other self on crossing the threshold into the realm of spirit. Again and again we must recollect and make clear to ourselves that in all we have learned, observed and experienced in the physical world and even in the elemental world, there is nothing in them similar to the characteristics of the spiritual world where thoughts are living beings. If we were to enter the spirit realm only with what we have discovered in the physical and elemental worlds, then we would be confronting nothingness. What indeed can we bring into this realm? Let us consider the question carefully. The soul must become accustomed not to perceive or think or feel or will in the spirit realm as it does in the physical or in the elemental worlds. All of that must be left behind. However, it must remember what it perceived, thought, felt, willed in the physical world. Just as we carry into later periods of life the memories of earlier times, so must we carry over into the spirit realm out of the physical plane everything that has been strengthened and invigorated in our soul. We must enter the spiritual world with a soul that recollects the physical world.

Then we have to endure a certain experience that can be described in the following way: Imagine a moment in your ordinary earth life when all your sense perception suddenly stops; when you can no longer see nor hear, no longer are able, to think or feel or desire anything new. Every kind of life activity stops. You would know only what you remember. In exactly this situation you find yourself, when you rise into the spiritual world with clairvoyant consciousness. There is nothing there at first that will provide new perceptions. Your understanding comes only through remembering; your existence depends on what has remained to you of your memories. Your soul is aware that it can say of itself, “You now are only what you once were; your existence consists of your past; present and future have no meaning for you; your being is made up of what you have been.” One could perhaps say all this easily enough—but to see oneself as nothing but memory, with no perception of the present moment, to speak of one's being as a mere ‘has been,’ is a remarkable experience.

When the clairvoyant soul has penetrated so far and endured this experience, then for the first time the human being will begin to have a true understanding for the being whose name has now been mentioned so often, for Lucifer. The human soul, in passing out into the spirit realm, realizes for a moment, “You are only a being of the past.” Lucifer is the one who has become in the cosmic order forevermore such a being of the past, a mere has-been, a remnant of earth epochs that have died away, of what cosmic epochs had brought to his soul. And Lucifer's life—because the other divine-spiritual beings of normal earth evolution have condemned him to the past—consists in fighting with the aid of his past to gain a present and future.

Thus Lucifer stands before the clairvoyant vision, preserving in his life and soul the divine spiritual glories of world creation, yet condemned to realize, “They were once yours.” And now this eternal struggle begins: fighting to add present and future to his past in the cosmic order. To perceive the macrocosmic resemblance of Lucifer to the microcosmic nature of the human soul as it crosses the threshold between the elemental and the spiritual worlds is to perceive the profound tragedy of this figure of Lucifer. And then we begin to divine something of the great cosmic secrets resting deep in the womb of existence, where not only one being struggles with another but even an epoch of time confronts another in battle, as they evolve into beings. A true picture of the world begins to take shape, pouring deep earnestness and dignity into the soul. Here we will sense something that can be called the breath of Eternal Necessities, such as those experienced in the World Midnight—where lightnings flash into existence, illumining even the figure of Lucifer, but they:

... die on recognition,
and dying shape themselves to scripts of fate
forever actively engraved in souls.¹⁶

The human soul itself, as it grows into life in the spiritual worlds, has a moment where it is a mere “has-been” and confronts nothingness; it is a single point in the universe, experiencing itself only as a point. But then this point becomes a spectator and begins to observe something else. Our human soul, become microscopic, has at first no content—just as a single dot has none, but now it finds itself belonging as a third entity to two others. The first to make its appearance is what lives in our memory. This is like an external world which we look back on, saying, “All that is my past.” At first, without really knowing it, we ourselves stand there next to this past existence that we have brought across the threshold into the spiritual world, providing it with a life as thought-being. If then we have a feeling of utter calmness in our soul, whatever we have brought there as our past begins a spirit conversation with the living thought-beings around it. We can observe—like an objective spectator, standing nearby, though at the same time a mere dot—the other two beginning their conversation. Whatever we have brought with us in the way of thought content unfolds a spirit conversation in cosmic language with a spiritual, living thought-being of that realm; there we listen to what our own past discusses with the living spiritual being. At first we are like nothing at all, but then, even as a nothing, we are born through listening to our own past converse with the spiritual beings of the spirit realm. Listening begins to fill us with new inward contents. We learn now to recognize ourselves when we are like a single point and feel ourselves as such, listening to the conversation of our own past with a living spiritual being. And the more we take in of this spirit conversation between our own past and the future, the more we actually become we ourselves become a spirit being.

In this process in the spiritual world we find ourselves within a triad. One member of the triad is our own past being, which we have carried up into the spiritual world; we have won it for ourselves in so far as it was able beforehand to reveal its spirituality in the sense world, and then across the threshold to perceive itself as our past life. The second member of the triad is the whole spiritual environment; the third member is our self. This is the threefoldness of the spiritual world: Within the triad, through the antithesis of past life and living spiritual being, the third, the middle part, the mere point-like part, develops itself and becomes—through listening to the spirit conversation of the other two—more and more filled out: a being that is developing itself within the spiritual world. In that world we thus “become” ourselves in clairvoyant consciousness.

This is what I wanted to convey to you—using words, of course, that are limited because they have to be borrowed from the language of the physical world. However, one has to try as well as possible with such words to characterize these sublime and profound relationships. For it is through these relationships alone that we can come to know our true being. And this, as I said, we receive in the spiritual world through listening to the two other thought-beings. It has been the task of this cycle of lectures to try to lead us toward understanding our true nature.

• 14. The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 3.
• 15. See The Guardian of the Threshold, Scene 10.
• 16. The Souls' Awakening, Scene 6.

We have talked during these lectures about the way the clairvoyant consciousness ascends into super-sensible worlds, where the true being of man, which is native there, can be thoroughly fathomed. And we have tried in these last few days to show how the human soul, crossing the threshold in its ascent, first passes through the elemental realm and then enters the spiritual world. We showed, too, how the soul meets with what we may call the other self of man.

The ascent could be described in the following way. At first we have a human being living in the physical body in the physical-sense world. When he sheds this physical organism, he goes on living in the etheric body, with the elemental world as his environment. (I have promised for tomorrow to clarify things for those troubled by a sense of possible confusion between the terms used here and in my book Theosophy.) When a person has shed his etheric body also, he ascends to the spirit world itself and this then forms his environment during the time he is living in his astral body, where he experiences his other self. We have emphasized that we experience this other self, which continues from incarnation to incarnation, in such a way that we feel almost as though we—as a third entity—were confronting two other entities. As a point-like being, we confront what we might call our past, brought into the spirit world in the form of memory and transformed into something spiritual by being brought there. And this past of ours begins a conversation in the region where living thought-beings converse. A spiritual conversation of this kind begins when the soul, as though newborn, has to listen to its own past conversing with the spiritual environment, thereby ripening and growing as a living thought-being itself.

Now a great many things can be observed in the process of growing into these spiritual worlds. Let us take the case, for a better understanding, of an ideally normal ascent into the spiritual world, in other words, the ascent of a soul in a completely undisturbed condition. Of course, hardly any such soul exists. That is exactly the reason why I tried to describe the spiritual path as I did, not just in general terms but dramatically as happens with every soul that starts out from its own particular departure point, making an ideally normal ascent out of the question.

Every soul has its own individual spiritual path.¹⁷ This can naturally be demonstrated only by showing how the individual ascent takes place, as, for example, in the case of Maria, Johannes Thomasius, Capesius, and Strader. But we can leave this for the moment. Let's picture instead how it would be if a soul's ascent were the ideal one, an example in which all the most ideal conditions for crossing the threshold and entering the spiritual world were met. Such a soul, on encountering its other self in the spiritual world, would not experience this encounter as though it were looking at a photograph of itself. Instead, what is subjective in the physical-sense and elemental worlds and what lives in our souls as abstract subjectivity, namely, the soul forces of thinking, feeling, and will, which we say are inside us, are now no longer within us. The thinking, feeling, and will we have in the physical world confront us objectively as a trinity on meeting our other self in the spiritual world. Encountering this trinity, we have to realize that these three are the self. I tried to represent them in the figures of Philia, Astrid, Luna; they are very real figures. There are as many of them in the world as there are human souls; once you know one, you know them all; it's like knowing all oat grains when you have seen one. But we should be clear that what is usually only a pale, shadowy presence in the human soul, becomes on meeting the other self a living trinity, experienced as three distinct entities. We ourselves are Philia, Astrid and Luna, but they are nevertheless thoroughly independent living thought-beings.

What a sufficiently strengthened soul must be aware of is that it is itself the unity of these three beings. And one must be further aware that what is called thinking, feeling and will is maya, the shadow cast into the soul by these three. Soul sickness would consist either in not recognizing oneself as these three beings in the spiritual world, seeing them as entities with whom one has nothing to do, or in an incapacity to keep them unified, perceiving instead one part of the soul as Luna, another as Astrid and a third as Philia. But it takes an ideal soul development, hardly to be found in human beings, to see this other self in its complete threefoldness.

We have to say, if we want to see things as they are, that the beings called Lucifer and Ahriman send their impulses into the physical-sense world. We have noted their influence there in a great many areas. But human souls that have taken the path of clairvoyant consciousness come into far more intensive touch with them on leaving the physical world and attempting to enter higher realms. Then Ahriman and Lucifer come at such souls and do their best to influence them in various directions.

Let us use the following to illustrate some of their actions. The human soul is pretty complicated and has many conflicting tendencies which it cannot control. These live deep down within it, beyond the reach of our ordinary consciousness. As I have already mentioned, the experience of entering the elemental world can be likened to the grotesque act of sticking one's head into an ant hill. As we stick our consciousness into the elemental realm, every thought becomes an individual living thought-being and begins to lead an independent life, in which our consciousness is immersed.

Now the clairvoyant has the following experience. All human beings have elements in their souls beyond their full control, elements to which they are emotionally attached. Ahriman becomes particularly active towards these especially intense attachments. The soul contains portions that can be pried loose from its entirety, and because we do not fully control these components, Ahriman pounces on them. Through Ahriman's unjustified activity, overstepping his proper domain, a tendency arises for those parts of man's etheric and astral being that are inclined to separate from the rest of the soul's life and become independent to be formed by Ahriman and even given human shape.

As a matter of fact, there are all sorts of thoughts sitting in us that are capable of taking on human form. When Ahriman has the chance to make these parts of the soul independent and give them human shape, they confront us in the elemental world as our Doppelgänger, or double. We have to be aware that everything changes as soon as we leave our physical body and enter the elemental world. One can't encounter oneself while in the physical body, but we can be in an etheric body on entering the elemental world and still see this etheric body from outside as one sees the double.

In terms of its substance, the double is a large part of the etheric body. We retain part of that body, but another part of it separates off and becomes objective. We look at it and see that it is part of ourselves, to which Ahriman has given our own shape. Ahriman tries to squeeze everything to make it conform to physical laws. The physical world is ruled by the Spirits of Form, who share this rulership with Ahriman. Therefore Ahriman can shape part of the human being into the double.

This encounter with the double is in the nature of an elemental phenomenon. It can happen as a result of subconscious soul impressions and impulses even to a person who is not clairvoyant. The following can occur: Somebody or other may be an intrigant and thereby have done harm to other people. He may have gone out and set another intrigue in motion. On returning home, he may enter his study, where papers are lying on his desk, papers that may contain things he made use of in his intrigues. Now what may happen, despite the cynical cast of his ordinary consciousness, is that his subconscious may be seized by these impulses to make intrigues. He comes in, looks at his desk—and what does he see? He sees himself sitting there!

It's an uncomfortable encounter, to enter one's own room and see oneself sitting at the desk. But such things belong to the realm of the possible; they happen often and most easily to those given to intrigue. What one encounters is indeed the double. The double is one among many tasks I have set myself to tackle in the two plays, The Guardian of the Threshold and The Souls' Awakening. We know that the double is experienced by Johannes Thomasius. It is due to his peculiar development and to the strange experiences he has lived through that he has these encounters with the double in the scenes shown;¹⁸ Ahriman can form a part of his soul in such a way at this soul fragment—essentially a part of his etheric body—is filled with self-seeking soul elements. This sort of thing occurs only when the preconditions are such as those in Johannes Thomasius's case. You can get quite an idea of Johannes's particular soul in the course of the four dramas. A certain stage in his soul development is also indicated at the end of The Guardian of the Threshold.¹⁹ Such a stage is reached by many seekers on the spiritual path.

Let us summarize how things stand with this Johannes Thomasius. Looking back to the Portal, we find him, as it were, experiencing the higher world. But how does he experience it? We might say that if we observe him only in this early part of the dramas, The Portal of Initiation, he hasn't advanced very far—not beyond what might be called “imaginative soul experiences,” with all the imbalance and mistakes attendant on them. All the experiences presented there are subjective, except for the scenes that are not part of the action, the Prelude and the Interlude preceding Scene Eight. All the other action is the subjective imaginative experience of Johannes Thomasius; he doesn't get beyond this stage in the Portal. Everything we see on the stage should be conceived as happening in Johannes's soul as imaginative insight. This is very clear from the stage directions, which—except for the two scenes mentioned—require Johannes to be on stage throughout; this is very tiring for the actor. Even though in the Temple scene at the end of the drama, Johannes Thomasius says all sorts of things that theoretically have objective validity, we might agree that people say a lot of things in various temples that do not reflect maturity, for which a longer growth period is needed. But words are not what matter here; we see from the whole presentation that we are dealing with the subjective imaginations of Johannes Thomasius.

New developments come about in The Probation of the Soul. A higher ascent is brought about by Johannes's achieving impressions of earlier earth lives. This does not remain in the realm of imagination but extends into the objective world where spiritual facts are encountered, which exist independently of his soul. We move away from his subjectivity into the objective world. In the course of these first two plays, Johannes gradually frees himself from his subjective state and enters the objective spiritual world. That was why it happened so naturally—since in The Probation of the Soul Johannes was achieving the first stage of actual initiation—that Lucifer gains the seductive influence shown at the end of the play.²⁰ Thus conditions are met that allow the further development of a soul like that of Johannes Thomasius, as portrayed in The Guardian of the Threshold.

In this play Johannes Thomasius is brought into the objective spiritual world. His work impels him at first to a more subjective encounter with Ahriman there; as a result of this meeting, Johannes develops an egotism counter to the divine world order. But now begin his objective experiences and these are Lucifer's domain. Here we are definitely no longer dealing with the merely subjective but with a picturing of the spiritual world apart from man. The spiritual world is a spiritual experience just as the physical world is a physical one.

Johannes Thomasius now enters the objective spiritual world for the first time. This means that he is able to bring in with him all the possibilities of erring of which the soul is capable, especially his strange relationship to Theodora. Johannes enters the higher world, burdened with all the slag of his lower self, but even so, confronting the higher world. If I may use a shallow term for it, I would have to say that Johannes Thomasius falls occultly in love with Theodora. Certain physical impulses intrude into the higher world in this relationship. As he goes through all this, Johannes Thomasius reaches the point described at the end of The Guardian of the Threshold. Here he experiences his ordinary self, belonging to the physical and elemental worlds, as well as the other self he met upon entering the spiritual world. In Scene Nine, the Morning Walk, as well as in Scene Eleven, the Temple, in the presence of Hilary, Johannes reaches what one might describe as his inner sensing of both these two selves. But it is clear that he has not yet created any balance in the relationship between the ordinary and the other self; he wavers back and forth between the two. Considering that at the end of the Guardian and thus at the beginning of The Souls' Awakening, Johannes Thomasius stands before us as a soul who feels the separate yet parallel activity of these two selves, we can understand that much exists in his soul-being that can be dug out, so to speak. At first Ahriman digs out the double. But there is more in Johannes's soul to be extracted.

Let me emphasize that I am not describing all this as a commentary on the dramas²¹ but in order to make use of what they portray to illustrate actual spiritual conditions and spiritual reality. If we consider human karma, the lawful order of human destiny, we must say that there is a great deal of fulfilled karma in the human soul but also much that is unfulfilled. We have gone through a great deal in a former earth life that requires harmonizing; for the moment it may be lying unresolved in the depths of the soul. Every soul has unresolved karma of this kind.

Johannes Thomasius has to become conscious of an especially large amount of unresolved karma, when his inner being separates into his ordinary and his other self. When this happens, much of his unresolved karma is separated from him. Those elements are detached that are readily felt by every soul gradually developing clairvoyance to be detaching themselves. Such souls are born into physical existence possessing the game qualities all young people have. Even clairvoyants start out in life as ordinary children do, to their own benefit; we do not always find them ready to become, the sort of person Krishnamurti was made into.²² Then a moment comes—a karmically determined moment—when the spiritual world lights up. But it often happens—and this is important—that a clairvoyant soul experiences the sight of its own youth as though it were an objective being,²³ when the soul is in an extremely elegiac or tragic mood. We behold our outgrown youth and ask ourselves, what would have become of this now almost alien youth, if we had not found our way into a spiritual clairvoyance? A real splitting apart takes place. One experiences a kind of rebirth and looks back to one's own youth as to something alien. We have to say of a great deal of the karma of our youthful years that it cannot be resolved in this incarnation. Much of this karma lies buried and will have to be resolved later, or else one has to make an effort to start working it out now. Johannes's soul is burdened by much unresolved karma.

Unresolved karma of this kind and the looking back at one's younger self as though at someone else are both inwardly experienced. Lucifer finds entry here; he can take away a substantial part of the etheric body and, as it were, ensoul it with the unresolved karma. It becomes a shadow-being under Lucifer's influence, a being like that portrayed in the Spirit of Johannes's Youth. A shadow-being of this kind is an actual being. It is there, separate from Johannes Thomasius, but involved in gruesome concerns, running as it does counter to the world order. This shadow-being outside Johannes Thomasius ought really to be within him; the fact that it is not has caused what we feel to be the tragic fate of this being, which lives outside as a part of his etheric body in the elemental and spiritual worlds.

A person who has this important, meaningful experience gathers from it the insight that his unresolved karma has loaded a burden of cosmic debt upon himself and has created a being that rightly belongs not outside but within him. The Other Philia makes Johannes Thomasius aware in The Souls' Awakening that he has given birth to a soul-child, who suffers a sort of illegitimate existence off by itself. The remarkable thing about growing up into the spiritual world is that one encounters one's own being but can encounter it in multiple, spiritually objective copies. In Johannes Thomasius's case we are dealing with manifold duplication. One part of his being comes to meet him as his double, and then another part—for karma belongs to the essential nature of a human being—comes as the Spirit of his Youth.

And now a third element enters the picture, for Johannes is not yet ready to undergo what Maria has gone through. She has had a relatively normal development. In Scene Nine, Astrid and Luna appear to her—not in the company of the real Philia—just these two soul forces. This is still a comparatively normal development. It would have been completely normal for Maria to have experienced the presence of all three, with thinking, feeling, and will so objectified that Maria felt them to be a unity. But such a normal development scarcely exists. Let me emphasize that the soul forces I tried to characterize here are real figures, so that the situation described is fully possible. Maria's consciousness soul and intellectual soul are more evenly developed than her sentient soul; she therefore meets Astrid and Luna but not Philia. A soul like hers still has a highly normal development.

However, Johannes Thomasius's development deviates considerably from the normal. First of all, his double appears. As he nears his other self, the double and then the Spirit of his Youth appear. All this accompanies his approach to the other self, because the latter brings these inner conditions to light. If Johannes Thomasius were to get really close to the other self, he would be confronted by all three soul forces. But he has to undergo a great deal that looms up on the way to his other self. Since Johannes does not at once attain to the other self, he is met by the Other Philia, who is more closely related to his subjectivity. The Other Philia is, in a sense, the other self. But the other self, which is still resting in the soul's depth and has not fully separated from it, is still connected with what in the physical world is most similar to the spiritual realm. This soul force is also linked with an all-prevailing love and because of this, it can guide us into higher worlds. And so the Other Philia, the third figure, is encountered by Johannes Thomasius on the way to his other self. If a soul were to meet all three soul forces, it wouldn't have to contend with any obstacles. As it is, however, the whole being of man can take objective form and appears in the outside world in its entirety. That is the case when we see the Other Philia at the end of Scene Two of The Souls' Awakening.

Now I explained to you that as a man grows into the elemental world and even into the spiritual world, he must acquire the capacity to transform himself, because everything in those worlds is always in a state of transformation; nothing there remains in static or finished form. Finished form exists only in the physical realm, whereas in the elemental world everything is mobile and capable of change.

But since everything is constantly changing, mixups can occur. If one is not alert enough, one can mistake one being for another. That is what happens to Johannes Thomasius: first the Other Philia appears and later on he mistakes the double for her. Mistakes of this kind can happen very easily. We must realize that we have to work our way very gradually to an exact beholding of higher worlds and that because of the constant change there, mixups can well occur. And the way these mistakes come to light is extraordinarily significant for the course of a soul's development.

Johannes has had an experience three times over,²⁴ as you will remember; the nature of this experience is due to the particular way he has developed. The first is with the Other Philia, the second with the double, the third again with the Other Philia—a triad of experiences. Everything in the world comes in threes! If we don't find them, we should look for them. The fact that Johannes Thomasius encounters the Other Philia twice and the double only once, and on one occasion mistakes one for the other, is due to the stage of development he has achieved. His perceiving of his soul-child, the Spirit of his Youth, goes back to the same fact. Of course, Lucifer helped create this child, which now exists as an independent being. It is one of the most shattering experiences the clairvoyant can have to find the spiritual world peopled by shadowy beings created by Lucifer from parts of unresolved Karma. We can find many such shadow-beings, which we ourselves, prompted by Lucifer, have placed in the spiritual world through our unresolved karma. These experiences with shadow-beings correspond to the point our soul development has reached.

Let us assume that Johannes Thomasius's case had been different. He would have made two mistakes, would have been wrong twice and once right, have seen the double twice and the Other Philia once. But the actual fact was that he was too caught up in subjectivity. Maria, in contrast, has gone so far in the direction of objectivity as to be confronted by two soul forces. But Johannes has to strengthen his soul to a point where what still remains rather subjective can confront him objectively: “enchanted weaving of one's own being.” These words strengthen his soul. And as this enchanted weaving of his own being becomes more evident and brings him closer to his other self, Johannes confronts himself in his double, in the Spirit of his Youth and in the Other Philia.

Johannes Thomasius would have to have a different make-up to experience this triad differently—making two mistakes, let's say, and seeing the double twice. He would not have seen just one Spirit of his Youth as The Souls' Awakening has it; he would instead have seen many of his soul-children in the realm of shadows. Here great secrets of soul life make themselves felt.

You can see from all I've been saying that the clairvoyant path to man's true being is complicated, for the soul itself is complex. To approach it means to ascend step by step into spiritual realms. It means also that you become a being of memory, a being of the past, for you become aware that you are not in the present nor for the moment have you any future. You are what you have been and carry your past into the present. Your further spiritual growth is then such that what you have thus carried into realms of the spirit, what you experience spiritually, starts a spiritual conversation with the surrounding spirit world. You grow as you listen to this conversation of your own past with the living thought beings of the spiritual world. But when you feel yourself thus transposed into the spirit world wherein you come upon your other self, you will also have a feeling that can be described like this: “You are now indeed in the spiritual world. You can find your other self as a spiritual being, due to the fact that you are living in the realm of the spirit clothed in the astral body. But as yet you cannot find your ultimate true being in this world. In spite of ascending into spiritual realms, you cannot yet find the being whose shadow is your ego in the physical world.” One learns little by little what a significant experience one must still undergo in order to penetrate to the true ego, the true inner being, enveloped in the other self.

Man's being is indeed complex and lives far down in the soul's depths. And actually to reach the real ego requires living through a variety of experiences. It has been emphasized how one can penetrate into the spiritual world with memory, how no new impressions are received, how what one has been must be allowed to speak, and how one, now a point-like being, must listen to the spiritual conversation between one's past and one's spiritual environment. We retain this memory. It also stays with us between death and rebirth.

The memory of real sensory existence between birth and death stays firmly present in the soul between death and rebirth. But if one penetrates to the true ego after having become clairvoyant, one comes to realize that a decision, a spiritual deed is necessary. And it can be said of it: This must be a strong, determined decision of the will, to root out, to forget the memory of what we have been, in all its detail. With this we come to something that was also dimly apparent in earlier clairvoyant and cognitive stages of experience. In Scene Three of The Souls' Awakening where Strader stands at the abyss of his existence, there is a foreshadowing of this experience that one has in spiritual realms. But one stands in the fullest sense of the word at the abyss of existence when one makes the decision in true freedom and energy of will, to blot out and forget oneself.

All these things are completely true of all human beings; nevertheless people are unaware of them. Every night we are required to blot ourselves out, without being conscious of it. But it is an entirely different matter fully consciously to give over to destruction and to forget one's remembering ego—to stand in the spiritual world as a nothing on the edge of the abyss of nothingness. This is the most shattering experience one can have; one must approach it with great confidence that the true ego will he brought to us out of the cosmos. And this is indeed the case.

We know, after we have achieved forgetfulness on the edge of the abyss, that everything we have ever experienced is blotted out, and this we did ourselves. But out of an as yet unknown world—a world I might call super-spiritual—our real ego, whose only remaining concealment has been the other self, comes toward us. Only now do we meet our true ego, whose shadow or maya as it exists in the physical world is the lower ego. For man's true ego belongs to the super-spiritual world. All this is inner experience: the ascent to the super-spiritual realm, the perceiving of a completely new world at the edge of the abyss, the receiving of the true ego from this world.

I wanted this description to serve as a bridge to tomorrow's lecture. You should mull it over. We will continue tomorrow, linking up with what I have said today in regard to the encounter that takes place at the edge of the abyss.

• 17. See Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (note 13).
• 18. See The Probation of the Soul, Scene 5.
• 19. See The Guardian of the Threshold, Scenes 9 and 10.
• 20. The Probation of the Soul, Scene 12.
• 21. After his introductory words, Rudolf Steiner added, Because of so many requests each year I've taken up my pen and made not only a beginning but have something worked out as a kind of explanation of our four mystery dramas. But each time I've laid the thing aside for the same reason I indicated in the “Remarks” introducing The Souls' Awakening: ‘I am averse to adding material of this kind to a portrayal intended to speak for itself.’ It is disagreeable to me to make an intellectual commentary on something that truly had no theoretical or intellectual origin but stands complete in all its scenes like an inspiration from the spiritual world. I could really say nothing more about it intellectually than anyone else would do who went into the matter. When things are given in this way, there is a definite need to let them speak for themselves, and not to suck them dry with clear theoretical thinking. However, we may be able to address several points in this lecture cycle.
• 22. Krishnamurti: in 1911 Mrs. Besant had named this young Hindu boy as the newly appeared Christ; later as a young man, Krishnamurti repudiated this attribution.
• 23. Rudolf Steiner, Mysterienstaetten des Mittelalters (GA 233a), (Jan. 5, 1924), (Dornach Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner Verlag). Not available in English.
• 24. The Souls' Awakening, Scenes 2, 4, 10.

We come now to the end of this cycle of lectures, during which thoughts about the so-called “culture” of the present day may well have occurred to you. We have had to direct our attention in some detail to the remarkable way the ahrimanic and luciferic forces penetrate this culture. A discerning person who has some understanding of the insights of spiritual science will look objectively at modern life and surely perceive all its confusion and chaos. For many years it has been my custom to point to this as little as possible and instead, by helping to open up the spiritual world, to use our time together in a more positive way. But it must be emphasized, now as always, that a good many misunderstandings have crept into our work, into our active efforts, through this self-imposed moderation—the word is indeed not chosen arrogantly; even so, we shall not deviate greatly from this custom of ours. And in consideration of this, two things are essential: first, a clear, objective understanding that evolution, the development of the post-Atlantean world, has led far and wide to the chaotic, complex, to some extent inferior, second-rate condition of modern civilization, but that for this there is a certain valid necessity. It is not enough merely to criticize; a clear, objective understanding is needed.

On the other hand, we have to oppose the chaos and confusion of modern intellectual life with clarity of vision, as long as we are supported by the perspectives revealed by spiritual science. Ever and again we have well-meaning, good-natured friends exclaiming that here or there something quite anthroposophical has appeared; then we have to recognize the deficiency of these so-called anthroposophical things. I have said I would not deviate from my custom, but now, at the end of this cycle, I would like to refer to at least one especially grotesque example of this tendency. There are those nowadays who like to blow themselves up into a professional stance without the least understanding of anything—and people who don't practice discrimination can very easily be carried away, given the chance, by high-sounding phrases. This must really disappear from our circles. We must acquire, each one for himself, the power of clear, objective discrimination. Then we would have a better idea than has been the case up to now of the relationship of second-rate movements and individuals to our own movement.

Tendencies of this kind come up in many different ways. I would like to mention just one of them, not to criticize or to lay before you a case of specific hostility toward our work but merely to characterize the problem. A publisher in Berlin²⁵ has brought out an edition of The Chymical Wedding and other writings of Christian Rosenkreuz. Many of our friends and others interested in occult movements will obviously snap up this new reprint of works that have never been easy to find. But now there is an Introduction to the Chymical Wedding that really outdoes everything imaginable in grotesque erudition—I won't give it a more exact name. Let me read you a few lines of this Introduction, on page 2, without going any further into the rest of the article.

“When we approach the occult sciences with precise critical methods”—with these words, many people will be misled—“one will soon be aware that from this point on, one can get in touch with the two poles mentioned above.” I shall not discuss what these poles are, for it is all merely ...; I will forego any description. “For this the newly formulated concept of Allomatics is especially valuable, as under its guidance one easily masters difficulties coming from both sides.” Allomatics is something that will impress many people. “Allomatics is the study, the science and the philosophy of the Other (the word is derived from Greek allos, the other, in contrast to autos, self). Allomatics teaches the nothingness and nonexistence of the Ego. Everything is and comes from the non-Ego, from outside, from above, from below, in short, from the Other.”

All this erudition continues throughout the article, in order to prepare the reading public for The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz. I would call it—and I am not speaking from animosity but with objective logic—absolutely the same thing as originating a “Pearology” or “Pearomatics” in the place of xenology or allomatics. With exactly the same logic that this remarkable duffer derives the world from I and non-I, we could also derive the world from a pear and everything not a pear, that is, the Other of the pear. We could use the same words and concepts in order to explain the whole world as pear and non-pear. Nothing is missing from the world and its phenomena, according to this gentleman, if we explain it by means of Pearomatics, the doctrine of pear and non-pear instead of the doctrine of Ego and the Other.

Allomatics is presented as a work of great learning, with parallels to embryology in order to appear erudite. Its tone is that of many academic works that are taken seriously and are often honestly received by our friends—I say this again not with animosity but in fact in a spirit of brotherliness—as though they were important works and not merely the products of our inferior age. This points up a lack of discrimination between what has inner value and what is pure nonsense at a low level of literature. Since the author of this introduction is also one of the people who originated or repeated the foolish Jesuit tale, ²⁶ it can be said quite objectively that we can estimate from this the kind of opposition springing up lately from all sides against our movement. It is important to achieve the right attitude to everything in occultism that, creeping out of so many corners of the world, is regarded by many as of equal significance to profound, scrupulous spiritual science. Another important thing to acquire, if you wish to profess honestly your allegiance to spiritual science, is the right sensitivity to these various gentlemen and their writings; this sensitivity will lead to ignoring them instead of kowtowing and hailing everything they bring out. One should actually suggest to them that instead of taking the time to produce such writing, they could make themselves more useful to humanity in other ways, for instance by taking up fretsaw work.

We really must look at such things with complete objectivity; we must get used to sizing up correctly and turning our backs on very many ingredients of modern culture. For this we need only the right kind of thinking and the sensitivity to such people and their work. One thing we have to be clear about: the phenomena of our time are perfectly comprehensible if we remember how the ahrimanic and luciferic forces have thrust themselves into human development.

Every impulse and tendency of human evolution changes from age to age; in the same way, as I have often pointed out, the ahrimanic and luciferic influences also change. Our epoch is to some degree a sort of reversed repetition of the Egyptian-Chaldean age, but as a reversed repetition the luciferic and ahrimanic forces generally play a different role today in the external culture. During the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean age the human soul, looking out on what was happening, could say: From one side the ahrimanic influence is coming; from another, the luciferic. In this ancient civilization the distinction, outwardly, could still be made. However, by the Greco-Roman age one can say that Lucifer and Ahriman confront the human soul directly and hold themselves in balance there. Anyone who enters deeply into the fundamental nature of the Greco-Roman civilization will be able to observe the state of balance between Lucifer and Ahriman. But in our time it has changed again. Lucifer and Ahriman now are in league together in a kind of partnership in the outer world. Before these forces reach the human soul, they are knotted together externally. In ancient times the skeins of influence from Ahriman and Lucifer were quite separate, but nowadays we have them tangled and knotted together within the development of our civilization. It is extremely difficult for a human being to unravel the entanglement and find a way out of it. Everywhere in our cultural happenings we find luciferic and ahrimanic threads interwoven in a higgledy-piggledy mixture, stirring up a great deal of violent political agitation and even playing into many of the abstract ideas and superficial proceedings in full swing now and in times to come; until we are clear about this, we will not be able to form a sound judgment of the conditions around us.

We need to be watchful of the chaotic entanglement of luciferic and ahrimanic threads. For no one today is more challenged to come to terms with these forces than he who is on the path of spiritual knowledge, he who is trying to arm his soul with clairvoyant capacities in order to discover something he cannot know with his ordinary consciousness: the real being of man. This must always be the true goal of spiritual science. From the descriptions already given, it is evident that as soon as a person approaches the higher worlds, he has to step across a threshold. As an earth-being who has made his soul clairvoyant, he must go back and forth across that threshold and know how to conduct himself rightly in the spiritual world on the far side, as well as on this side in the physical world. Both in lectures and now repeatedly in our Mystery Dramas, this important threshold experience has been referred to as the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.

A person can actually ascend into the spiritual worlds—this has often been said—and have quite a few experiences there without having a meeting with the Guardian, something that is partly terrifying but on the other hand highly significant, indeed of infinite importance for the sake of a clear, objective perception of those worlds. I have pointed to this and everything connected with it in my book, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, at least as far as I could while treating the material in an aphoristic way. I have gone further in the course of these lectures, and now I should like to add only a few details to characterize the Guardian of the Threshold. Should I try to describe everything about the meeting with the Guardian, I would indeed have to hold another long cycle of lectures.

May I point out again that when a human being leaves his physical body in which he lives with the physical world around him, he enters the elemental world and lives in his etheric body, just as in the physical world he lives in the physical body. Then when he leaves the etheric body clairvoyantly, he lives in the astral body surrounded by the spiritual world. We have pointed out that on leaving the astral body the human being can then be within his true ego. Around him will be the supra-spiritual world. When he enters this world, he has finally attained what he has always possessed in the depths of his soul, his true ego. He reaches now the spiritual world in such a way that his true ego, his other self, is revealed, actually enveloped in the element of living thought-being.

All of us walking about on the physical plane have this other self within us, but our ordinary consciousness not only is not aware of it but cannot know that we will not perceive it until we ascend into the spiritual and supra-spiritual worlds. Our true ego is actually our constant companion within us, but when we meet it on the threshold of the spiritual world, it is there in a remarkable way, in fact one can say, decked out quite peculiarly. There on the threshold our true ego is able to clothe itself in all our weaknesses, all our failings, everything that induces us to cling with our whole being either to the physical sense world or at least to the elemental world. Thus we confront our own true ego on the threshold.

Abstract Theosophy can simply say: that is oneself, the other self, the true ego. But in the face of the actual reality, we won't find much meaning in the phrase: it is oneself. Of course, we all move about in the spiritual world in the form of our other self, but there we are entirely another. When we dwell consciously in the physical world, our other self is actually very much another, a stranger to us, a being that is much more foreign to us than any other person on earth. And this other self, this true ego, decks itself out in our weaknesses, in everything we should really forsake but don't wish to forsake, habits of the physical sense existence that we still hang on to when we wish to cross the threshold. And there on the threshold we actually meet a spirit being different from all other spiritual beings we could meet in the super-sensible worlds. The other beings appear to us in coverings more appropriate to their nature than those of the Guardian of the Threshold. He arrays himself in everything that arouses in us not only anxiety and distress but also disgust and loathing. He clothes himself in our weaknesses, in things that bring us to admit: Our fear of separating from him makes us shudder, or it makes us blush, overcome with shame, to have to look at what we are, at what the Guardian has wrapped himself in. While indeed this is a meeting with oneself, it is more truly the meeting with another entity.

To get past the Guardian of the Threshold is not at all easy. Actually it is much easier to behold the spiritual world than it is to behold it rightly and truthfully. To catch a few impressions of the spiritual world, especially in our modern time, is not all that difficult. To enter that world, however, in such a way that we behold it in its full reality, we must be well prepared for the meeting with the Guardian, however long it delays in coming to us; then we will experience the spiritual world correctly. Most people, or at least very many of them, get as far as the Guardian. The important point is that we should come consciously to him. Every night we stand unconsciously before the Guardian. Certainly he is a great benefactor of mankind in not allowing himself to be seen, for very few human beings could endure it. To bring into consciousness what we experience every night unconsciously is to meet the Guardian of the Threshold. People usually get just to the edge of the boundary where, one can say, the Guardian stands. But at that moment, something very peculiar happens to the soul: it perceives this moment in a twilight state between consciousness and unconsciousness and will not allow it to come to full consciousness. On that borderline the soul has the impulse to see itself as it really is, clinging to the physical world with all its weaknesses and faults, but this is unbearable. Before the event can become fully conscious, the soul—through its utter loathing—deadens, as it were, its awareness. Such moments of the soul's obliterating its consciousness are the best points of attack for the ahrimanic beings.

We come indeed to the Guardian of the Threshold by developing a sense of self that is especially strong and forceful. We have to strengthen our sense of self, if we wish to rise into the spiritual world. But in the process of strengthening our sense of self, we also strengthen all the tendencies, habits, weaknesses and prejudices that are held back and limited in the external world through our education, through custom and through the outward culture. On the threshold, the luciferic impulses assert themselves strongly from within, and when the human soul tends to deaden its awareness, Lucifer immediately unites with Ahriman, with the result that the entrance to the spiritual world is barred.

If a person with a healthy inner life searches out the insights of spiritual science without dwelling in a state of morbid craving for spiritual experiences, nothing particularly harmful will happen at the boundary line. If he attends to everything that should be attended to in the form of rightful, genuine spiritual science, nothing more will happen than that Lucifer and Ahriman balance each other for the striving soul at the threshold and the soul simply does not enter the spiritual world. But when the person has a special craving to get in, a so-called “nibbling at the spiritual world” can take place.²⁷ Ahriman then, condensing what the soul has “nibbled,” pushes into the soul's consciousness what otherwise couldn't enter it. With this, the person experiences in condensed form what he has taken from the spiritual world, so that it looks exactly like the reproduction of physical impressions. In short, he will be the victim of hallucinations and illusions; he will believe he has approached a spiritual world, because he has come as far as the Guardian of the Threshold. However, he has not passed the Guardian but has been thrown back because of his nibbling at the spiritual world. Everything he took in has condensed to what could contain genuine pictures of that world but does not contain the most important element, the one that will guarantee the soul a clear perception of the truth and the value of what he sees.

In order to pass the Guardian of the Threshold in the right way, it is absolutely necessary to develop self-knowledge: truly genuine, unsparing self-knowledge. It is a neglect of one's duty to the progress of evolution if one refuses to rise into the spiritual worlds, should karma make it possible in this present incarnation. It would indeed be wrong to say to oneself, “I shall not enter the spiritual worlds for fear of going astray.” We should strive as intensely as we can to enter them. On the other hand, we must clearly understand that we may not shrink from what the human being is most apt and most willing to shrink back from: genuine, truthful self-knowledge. Nothing is actually so difficult in life as plain, honest self-knowledge. What a lot of queer things one can find in this regard! One meets people who continually emphasize out of their ordinary consciousness that they're doing this or that with complete selflessness, that they desire simply nothing at all for themselves. In trying to understand such souls, we often find that they really believe it's so, and yet, in their subconscious they are thoroughgoing egoists and want only what suits themselves. Oh, we can also find people who out of their upper consciousness, let's say, make speeches, lay down the law, publish things and in a few short pages put down words such as love and tolerance eighteen to twenty-five times, actually without having the very slightest trace of love or tolerance in their make-up. There is nothing we can be so easily deceived about as ourselves, if we fail to watch continually the practicing of honest, sterling self-knowledge. However it is difficult indeed to practice self-knowledge in a direct way. People have shut their eyes to it so completely that instead of acknowledging what they are at the present time, it has happened that they prefer to admit to being apes during the Moon epoch²⁸—actually prefer that to acknowledging what they are today, so great can be our delusions in contrast to the moral obligation of genuine, honest self-knowledge.

A good exercise for someone striving in the spiritual sphere would be to say every so often something like this: “I will think back over the last three or four weeks—or better still, months—letting all the important happenings in which I was involved pass before my inner eye. I will deliberately disregard whatever injustice may have been done to me. I will omit all the excuses for my difficulties that I've expressed so frequently, such as, for instance: it was someone else's fault. I will not for a moment consider that any other person could have been to blame but I myself.” When we reflect on how constantly we are inclined to make others and not ourselves responsible for what we don't like, we will be able to judge how valuable such a review of our life can be, in which we knowingly eliminate thoughts of injustice done to us and in which we do not allow criticism or blame of another person to arise. If you undertake such an exercise, you will discover that you are gaining a totally new relationship to the spiritual world. Such an effort will bring about a great change in the disposition and mood of one's soul.

In seeking the path to clairvoyance, the extreme difficulty of entering the higher worlds without danger, as we have said repeatedly, shows how essential it is not to come apart, not to fall to pieces, when we have to “put our head into the ant hill.” We need then an immensely strengthened consciousness of self, such as a person may not develop in the physical world if he is not to be a rank egoist. In higher worlds, however, if he wants to maintain himself, stay aware of himself, realize himself, he must enter those worlds with an intensified feeling of self. Then, on coming back to the sense world, he must also have the ability to do away with this consciousness of self, in order not to be a thoroughgoing egoist. Thus, two contrasting statements can be made: in the higher worlds of spiritualities, man needs a strengthened consciousness of self; but in contrast, despite the strong feeling of self that one must find in the spirit world, what one must find in the physical world is that the spirit must come to life in a particular way: in all that one can describe as love in the physical world, the capacity for love, for sympathy and compassion, for the sharing of joys and sorrows.

Those who enter clairvoyantly into the higher worlds, know that what Maria says in The Souls' Awakening is true,²⁹ that really the ordinary sense-consciousness we have on the physical plane is a kind of sleep when compared to what we feel and experience in higher worlds; our entrance there is an awakening. That human beings living in the physical world are asleep in relation to the experience of higher worlds, is absolutely true. It is only because they are always asleep that they are not aware of sleeping. What the clairvoyant soul crossing the threshold experiences in the spiritual world is an awakening into a strengthened feeling of self. In the physical world, on the other hand, there can be an awakening of the self through love, the kind of love characterized in one of our first lectures here as “the love for another person's disposition and qualities, for him and for his sake.” That kind of love is protected from the luciferic and ahrimanic influences and in the physical sense-world is actually under the sway of the, good, progressive powers of the universe. The character of love is most clearly evident in the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. The egoism we develop in the physical world, without being willing to acquire self-knowledge, shows up when it is carried into spiritual worlds. Nothing is so disturbing, nothing can be so bitter and disheartening as to experience the result of our failure to develop love and compassion in the physical world. Ascending into the spiritual world, we are filled with anguish by the selfishness and lack of love we have achieved in the physical-sense world. When we cross the threshold, everything is revealed, not only the obvious but also the hidden egoism that rages in the depths of men's souls. Someone who with outward egoism frankly insists that he wants this or that for himself is perhaps much less egoistic than those who indulge in the dream that they are selfless, or those who assume a certain egoistic self-effacement out of theosophical abstractions in their upper consciousness. This is especially the case when the latter declaim their selflessness in all sorts of repetitions of the words “love” and “tolerance.” What a person carries up into higher worlds in the form of an unloving lack of compassion is transformed into hideous, often terrifying figures he meets on entering the spiritual worlds, figures that are extremely disturbing for the soul.

At this point comes one of the very significant moments that should be taken into account when we speak about the kinds of knowledge and experience we meet in higher worlds. As soon as a person comes into those worlds and finds himself in a region of loathsome things, it would then be best for him to face them boldly, with courage, while admitting to himself, “Yes, I have indeed carried all this egoism up into the higher worlds ... it would truly be best for me to face this egoism boldly and honestly.” But the human soul usually tends to shake off these repulsive things before becoming thoroughly conscious of them, and gives a kick, one can say, just as horses do, to get rid of these disagreeable forms. And then, at the very moment when we get rid of the results of our egoism, Lucifer and Ahriman have an easy game with the soul: in partnership, it is not at all difficult for them to lead the human soul into their special kingdom where they can produce all sorts of spiritual worlds, which the human being will take for the truly genuine one grounded in the cosmic order. We can say that developing truly genuine love and thoughtful, honest compassion are the right preparation for the soul that wants to find its way clairvoyantly into the spiritual worlds. When you reflect a little on how hard it is to acquire true compassion and the true capacity for love in this world of ours, you will not find these words completely unimportant.

We should be clear that these descriptions, characterizing our crossing the threshold into the spiritual world, will lead to a truly genuine knowledge of the being of man. It is only through such descriptions that we will discover what man really is, and discover too our relationship to the way the human being approaches the higher, spiritual worlds, this time between death and a new birth, in a somewhat different but still natural way.

Here I must say a few words about something I pointed out in the last chapter of The Threshold of the Spiritual World. From earlier descriptions in Theosophy and Occult Science we know that when we step through the portal of death and lay aside our physical body, we still have the etheric body for a short time, perhaps only a few days; then we put this aside as well. Now we can say that after putting aside the etheric body, we are at first within the astral body; in the astral body the soul goes on a sort of further journeying. The etheric body is laid aside; its destiny depends on the world which it now enters, the elemental world. You remember that we discussed how the force of transformation holds sway in this elemental world. Everything is in continual change. The etheric body, separated now from the human soul, is delivered up to the elemental world and there goes through its destined transformations. In the following years, for some a shorter time, for others longer, we live within the astral body in what from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness can be called the elemental world. However, in the period immediately after death we find that the soul has a quite definite impulse. In the physical world we are not apt to look continually at our own liver, spleen or stomach—for this would be impossible. We simply cannot see inside the body. People on the physical plane are not in the habit of turning their eyes inward into the body; they look instead at the world around them. But just the opposite is the case after we have passed through the portal of death and live in the world that is called the Soul World in my Theosophy. There the characteristic tendency of the soul is to direct its particular attention to the destinies of its own etheric body. The soul's outer world, its environment, consists of the transformations our etheric body passes through during the whole kamaloka time. We observe how the elemental world takes our etheric body into itself. If one has been “a decent sort” here on the physical plane, one will see how the “decentness” gets on well with the laws of the elemental world. If one has been “a bad sort,” one will see how poorly the etheric body (for it has had its share in being “a bad sort”) gets on with the laws of this world; it is everywhere rejected. Even though our etheric body has been laid aside, we direct our whole attention to it. By looking at the ever-changing fate of our etheric body, we are made aware of what we once were: this is our kamaloka experience.

People should not criticize anthroposophy for saying all this. Aristotle and others taught quite differently: for example, that this looking back on one's own destiny after death would last a whole eternity; a man might live to be eighty or ninety years old and then would have to look eternally at what he had done to his own etheric body. Anthroposophy teaches the truth, that this looking back on the etheric body and on the destinies we have brought about in it by what we have been, lasts one or two or three decades. And this is our environment in the elemental world, an environment formed by beings similar to the human etheric body and by the transformations of these beings as well as by the transformations of the human etheric body itself. One can describe this pictorially and come to the same characterization that I have given in my book Theosophy as the passage of the soul through the soul world.

In order to describe the spiritual world in the right way, one cannot keep pedantically to the hard and fast concepts so useful in the physical world. We should be clear that our whole environment during the kamaloka time is dependent on our mood of soul, dependent in such a way that the elemental world we have just described gradually adapts itself to the soul world. In the elemental world more than anything else one sees a dispersing, little by little, of etheric substance, which as it evanesces can be described from stage to stage as has been done in my Theosophy

The time comes, in this period between death and a new birth, when there takes place what the clairvoyant consciousness has to bring about somewhat less naturally, as we have discussed earlier. After laying aside his etheric body, the human being lives in his astral body, until the time comes when this astral body detaches itself from the true ego; it is in the ego that he will live from that point onwards. This detaching of the astral body is quite unique; it is not like a snake slipping off its skin but rather a loosening on every side, a growing larger and larger until the astral body becomes one with the whole cosmic sphere. In doing this, it becomes ever thinner, while being absorbed by the whole surrounding world. At first one stands, in a sense, in the very center of one's own spiritual environment. On every side the astral body loosens itself and is absorbed in all directions, so that the environment we have about us after death, after this loosening, consists of the spiritual world and also of all that has been absorbed into it from our own astral body. We see this astral body of ours gradually go forth, becoming less and less distinct, of course, as it grows larger. We feel ourselves within the astral body—as has been described in many lectures—and nevertheless separate from it. These things are extremely difficult to describe. To picture it, just imagine a great swarm of gnats. From a distance it looks like a dark-colored ball, but when the gnats fly off in all directions, there's no longer anything to be seen. It is just the same with the astral body. While being absorbed by the whole cosmic sphere, it becomes less and less distinct. We watch it gradually drifting away until it is lost. What is lost is the astral body that is always with us when we pass through the gate of death; one can call it our past, what we once were. It was our link with the experiences we had in the physical world, living in our physical and etheric bodies. We see our own being, as it were, disappearing into the spiritual world, and this experience is very similar to the one created voluntarily by a human being seeking the discovery of his true ego in the spiritual world. The harrowing and significant impression that someone can have who is journeying on the path to a clairvoyant consciousness takes place naturally after death as just described. After death, however, a real forgetting takes place, all the sooner the less the soul proves to have been prepared and strengthened. Selfless, unegoistic souls, often criticized as weak in physical life, are precisely the strong ones after death; for a long time they will be able to watch the memories that had urged them on from physical existence towards the spiritual world. The so-called strong egoists are the puny souls after death; their astrality, dispersing gradually as a sphere, leaves them very quickly.

And now the time has come when everything one can remember disappears. It returns, but in an altered manner. Everything lost is brought back to us again. In the way it gathers together, it shows—as a consequence of what has departed—what it should become: A befitting new life must be constructed according to karma on the foundation of the old earth life. Thus there thrusts in from infinity towards a central point what must return to our consciousness from oblivion and be given back to us; with this we can become carpenters of a new life shaped by karma. In this sense an experiencing of nothing but oneself within the true ego, which is a kind of forgetting, takes place at the middle point between death and a new birth.

Today most human souls are still so little prepared for this forgetting that they experience it in a sort of spiritual soul-sleep. Those who are ready for it, however, experience just at this moment of forgetting, which is the transition from the preceding earth life to the preparation of the coming one, what is called the Cosmic Midnight in The Souls' Awakening. The scene of the Cosmic Midnight, in which one can enter deeply into the necessities of existence, is indeed connected with the most profound mysteries of human existence. We can say that the mystery of the human being, his true nature in which he lives between death and a new birth, is something the ordinary consciousness can never discover, although it discloses itself to the clairvoyant soul. We have described here, from the standpoint of the clairvoyant consciousness, the experience of having one's astrality absorbed by the spiritual world; it has also been described exactly, step by step, as the actual spirit-land in my Theosophy and Occult Science. What comes naturally to the soul after death can be brought about voluntarily for the clairvoyant consciousness; this has been described in Theosophy. The same terms are used here as in Theosophy and Occult Science.

We have tried in both this lecture cycle and in the drama cycle to characterize the nature of the cosmos and the entity of man, who has a share in the cosmos. After such a discussion, it may perhaps be permissible to add for any person setting out on the path here described that he will need to continue it to some extent on his own. On trying to penetrate ever more deeply into The Souls' Awakening, you will notice that so many answers to the mysteries of life are dawning on you that you realize, the dramas are there to unveil and reveal the mysteries.

I can point out an example to you. Try to experience further in meditation what is shown in The Souls' Awakening and what I have said here about Ahriman as the Lord of Death in the world. Beginning with Scene Three this appears clearly, but it was already hinted at in Scene One with the words Strader says to the Business Manager, “And yet will come what has to come about.” The Manager hears in these few words something like a gentle whisper from the spiritual world; it gives rise to the beginning of his spiritual discipleship. There it is more or less hinted at, but gradually, from Scene Three onwards, we see more and more clearly how the moods and forces preparing the death of Strader are coming closer. We shall not understand why Theodora appears and tells Strader what she will do for him in the spirit-land, unless we get the feeling—though a somewhat vague one, as it has to be at this point—that something important can be expected. In the same scene, we shall not perceive rightly what Benedictus means when he describes his clairvoyance as being impaired unless we can feel how the forces of Strader's approaching death are influencing this clairvoyance. In Scene Eleven, a simple, straightforward but very significant scene, we shall not get the right impression of the dialogue between Benedictus and Strader unless we connect Strader's visionary picture with his presentiment that everything he is using to strengthen his soul will turn its destructive, power at some time on himself; unless, too, we connect this with the repetition of Benedictus's speech about his spirit vision being impaired, so that we have a premonition of what is looming ahead. The mood of the approaching death of Strader is diffused over the whole, development of even the other persons in this play from Scene Three onwards. When you bring this together with what has been said about Ahriman as the Lord of Death, you will enter more and more deeply into knowledge that leads to the mysteries of the spirit, especially by considering also how Ahriman takes a hand in the mood of the drama, which is dominated by Strader's death impulse.

Again, the last meeting of Benedictus and Strader, a meeting intended to be of real significance towards the end of the drama, as well as the final monologue of Benedictus, cannot be understood unless we bear in mind both the rightful and the unlawful interference of Ahriman in the world of the human soul and in the Word of cosmic realms. These things were not intended merely to pass through your minds, but in order for you to immerse yourselves more and more deeply in them.

It is an objective fact rather than criticism to point out how clearly it can be shown that the published writings and lecture-cycles of the last three or four years have really not been read as they could have been read in order to grasp what was implied or even what was stated quite obviously. This is not meant as a reproof—far from it. No, it is said because almost every year at the close of the Munich lecture course, through everything having to do with it, thoughts stand before the soul that sound an alert concerning the presence of our Anthroposophical Movement in the modern world. One has to consider what should be the rightful place of the Movement within the chaotic happenings of our present so-called culture. Clear, awakened thinking about this rightful place of the movement will not be reached unless we keep one thing in mind: that our present-day life will most certainly stagnate and become sclerotic unless it receives refreshment and healing from the flowing springs of serious, genuine occultism. On the other hand, just such a series of lectures that makes us aware perhaps of the need to turn to spiritual science could also stress something important to everyone of us: the feeling of responsibility.

In the deepest layers of our souls is imprinted everything connected with our feeling of responsibility, as are our efforts to understand how this movement of ours can make itself felt, the movement that is so urgently needed today, even with all its faults and darker sides. There, too, in those deepest layers we perceive in various ways the kind of movement ours should be and what, quite understandably, it only can be at present. This can hardly be expressed in words, and the one who bears it rooted deeply in his heart will preferably not put it into words. For sometimes this responsibility weighs so heavily on one's soul that it seems thoroughly disheartening. Disheartening, because the occultists are turning up on every side today and so little of the necessary feeling of responsibility is at hand.

Certainly for the healing and development of humanity we would welcome the blossoming of anthroposophical wisdom as the finest and greatest thing that could happen now and in the near future; at the same time, we would also like to welcome, as the best and often the most satisfying addition to it, the feeling of responsibility streaming into and awakening every individual who is taken hold of by spiritual science. Still more highly should one value the emergence of a feeling of responsibility.

In truth, we would consider our movement especially fortunate if we could see it flowing out into the world with this feeling of responsibility as a lovely echo on all sides. Many of those who are sensitive to the meaning of responsibility would be able to bear things more easily if they could observe an abundance of such echoes. Still, there are many things that one can only hope for and await in the future; one must have faith while waiting, and have confidence that the human soul through its own integrity will grasp what is right and trustworthy, and that what ought to happen will really happen. As we now separate after this course of lectures, we can clearly feel all this. Actually, one would so much like to leave in each soul something that could awaken it and radiate as warm enthusiasm for our movement but also as a feeling of responsibility for it.

The most splendid sign and seal on our spiritual scientific striving would be for us all to be able to feel how strongly linked together we are—even when we are far apart—in a true spirit community of souls having a similar warm enthusiasm for our movement, a similar love and devotion to it, and at the same time with a feeling of responsibility for it.

And now let these be my parting words to you as we go our separate ways after the time we have spent here together: May the reality and truth of the spiritual life grow ever stronger through our heart's participation in it, so that we are still together, even when we are separated in space. Let us be united by the reality of the warm enthusiasm alive in us, radiating from an open-hearted, devoted participation in the truth. And let us combine with it a genuine, upright awareness of responsibility, or at least an effort to attain it, for all that is sacred to us and so urgently needed for the world. Such a feeling brings us immediately together in the spirit. Whether our destiny brings us together in space, whether our destiny scatters us apart to our various tasks and occupations in life, our hearts will certainly be united by our enthusiasm and our feeling of responsibility. Joined together in this way, we are entitled to hopeful trust and confidence in the future of our movement, for it will then make its way into our culture, into the spiritual development of humanity, as it must do. It will find its way and find its home, so that we discern our anthroposophy like a gentle sounding from the spiritual world that brings warmth to our hearts.

What ought to happen will happen—and it must happen. Let us try to be so equal to this spiritual community of ours that insofar as it lies in us, what ought to happen, what must happen, shall happen through us.

• 25. Dr. Ferdinand Maack, ed., Chymische Hochzeit, (Berlin, Hermann Barsdorf Verlag, 1913).
• 26. Dr. Ferdinand Maack, Zweimal Gestorben. (Leipzig, 1912).
• 27. See Lecture II in this volume.
• 28. Besant and Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither.
• 29. See Maria's speech in The Souls' Awakening, Scene 2.

This cycle of lectures has had four German editions, in Berlin 1914 (Cycle 29), in Berlin 1930, edited by Adolf Arenson, in Freiburg in 1955 by the Novalis Verlag and in 1982 by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag. The first English translation edited by H. Collison was published in 1928 by Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London and Anthroposophic Press, New York.

Rudolf Steiner gave these lectures twice on the same day, mornings and evenings, in the “Princes' Hall” of the Cafe Luitpold in Munich. The performances of the two Mystery Dramas at the Volkstheaters were also given twice. The title of the drama receiving its first performance was given in the program announcements as “The Awakening of Maria and Thomasius (or The Other Side of the Threshold).”

A list of the Munich performances and lecture cycles will be found on the next page. A fifth Mystery Drama was planned for the summer of 1914, and a cycle “Occult Hearing and Occult Reading” would have been given August 18 – 27, but the beginning of World War I prevented any further Munich Festivals. In Dornach four lectures with the title Occult Reading and Occult Hearing were given in October, 1914. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1975).

A word to new readers of Rudolf Steiner seems necessary. As with many of Steiner's lecture cycles a certain familiarity with anthroposophy on the part of the listeners was assumed. This means acquaintance at a minimum with his introductory writings such as Theosophy or Occult Science. The reader unfamiliar with these works is advised to turn first to these books as a way of increasing his understanding and appreciation of this volume.

You have heard, my dear friends, that our Drama Festival had to begin this year with a cancellation. To my great regret we have not been able to give the performance we had intended of The Soul Guardian (La Soeur Gardienne) by our dear friend Edouard Schuré. Even though there were many good reasons for this postponement, it was especially unfortunate in that just at this time, just in this place, the important message in our friend's work should have been brought before our hearts and souls. This dramatic presentation of the undercurrents and fluctuations in human evolution could have given us a better understanding of the tempestuous happenings of our own day as they come and go. The ordinary intelligence of western Europe, schooled nowadays only at the physical level, is unable to throw light on the deeper substrata of these events.

If you look carefully and ponder the events in eastern Europe, you will find significant issues agitating what one can call the folk souls there. What is happening can only be explained by studying the currents surging below the surface of the physical world into the lives of the peoples.³⁰ It is odd how little understanding of heart and soul the western Europeans—with all their intelligence—bring to the roots deep beneath these convulsive movements.

Because of these immediate happenings, therefore, it would seem to be a hint of destiny to see a drama that brings to the surface such national antagonisms. It would have been fascinating not only as an artistic creation but also as a stimulus to our understanding of present-day happenings. It would have brought before our soul vision two contrasting groups of characters: in one, the impulse from the ancient Celtic folk soul still to be found in western Europe; in the other, the genuine Franco-Roman element. We would have been able to see the waves surging out of occult depths playing into our human world and revealing themselves outwardly in the life of the senses. In Schuré's drama, in fact, we are shown that through certain happenings a falsehood is spreading abroad in the physical world, in such a way that relationships among the characters give expression to this untruth. Then—as if from unfathomed depths of soul life (in this case, from what is alive in the secrets of the blood)—a certain amount of truth pours into the false relationships of the sense world. The drama would have brought all this before our inner eye. It is indeed important in our time to let such things work on our hearts, for the force of national feelings lying below the surface is erupting before us right now here in Europe, and these feelings and forces cannot be understood unless we turn our soul vision upon them.

There is little difference, basically, in these outer happenings today from those that were agitating the hearts and minds of the peoples of eastern and southeastern Europe many centuries ago and are even now erupting fatefully into external life. One can say that destiny is being carried out imperceptibly for the outside world, a destiny connected with something that is only a symptom on the physical plane and can be expressed in four syllables. The seeds for what is now manifesting itself so fatefully were sown when that famous, much disputed filioque controversy, inflaming the emotions of the European peoples, divided them into a separate East and West. How can our modern mentality nowadays understand the contention that led to the division of eastern and western Europe: whether what is known as the Holy Spirit originates from the Father God above, as the Eastern church has it, or originates from both Father and Son (filio), as the West maintains?

There were valid reasons for the West at that time to add filioque to the origin of the Holy Spirit from the Father; involved in this were all the forces of culture and civilization developing for the future of Europe. The theological quarrels arising out of this Credo need not concern us here. Of importance are the soul events expressing themselves once upon a time in such a way that the former unified faith was divided between those who said that the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, while others believed that the Spirit originates only from the Father.

That statement expresses what is working into our own time, bubbling and boiling under the surface, something that can be understood only when you venture a little way into the mysterious activity in the occult depths of the folk souls. At the moment that the dogma of the Spirit emanating from both the Father and the Son was enforced by the Carolingian sword—for it was not the papal church but the imperial power that was effective—at that moment the ground was laid within European culture for all those powerful, emotional waves we see surging upward today.

If we could have immersed ourselves in Schuré's drama, quite a few rays of light would have illuminated present happenings. The reason for postponing it was the otherwise happy circumstance that so many applications came in for The Guardian of the Threshold and The Soul's Awakening, the title of our latest play, that many friends would have had to be turned away if we had kept to the original program. It might have been possible to keep to it; everything was ready: the scenery was all finished, every costume was made—so that if the situation just described had not arisen, this third play could have been performed. But then a number of our friends would have had to be turned away from the festival, and it is naturally more fitting to postpone one of the dramas than to exclude from the events any of those who wish to be present.

What we would have gained from a performance of The Soul Guardian lies in the fact that it is the work of our highly esteemed friend, Edouard Schuré. When we hear this name, we should realize that through Schuré's book The Great Initiates (Les Grands Inities) and his other work, he has been in a sense the first standard-bearer of the western esotericism to which we have resolved to devote ourselves. Again and again, we should remember the influence that Edouard Schuré has had on our present-day culture and for the future of human development. Therefore not only do I wish from the depths of my heart but also from the hearts of all those friends assembled here to express our great joy in having Edouard Schuré here among us again for this Munich lecture and drama festival. He will be present at the morning lectures as well as on those occasions when we are all together; you will happily find yourselves then in the presence of the man whose lofty spirit, whose insight into esoteric relationships led him from inner conviction to place himself at our side again during the battle we have recently been saddled with,³¹ as you all know, a battle that we did not seek but that was thrust upon us. The close bond with Edouard Schuré was shown us, too, by his frank letter,³² which has been frequently printed also in our “Mittellungen” and in our friend Eugene Levy's excellent booklet Mrs. Annie Besant and the Crisis in the Theosophical Society. He stood with us in the struggle that has thrown significant rays of light on where the truth and where an enmity against the truth (for it must be called this) are to be found in connection with our endeavors.

It is altogether typical of the other side that after all this time they have decided to withdraw their senseless accusations of my being a Jesuit, but you can't help noticing their deep-seated reluctance and their desire to draw a veil over this admission. They couldn't accomplish this, however, without adding what one can well call an insulting disparagement of the contents of Edouard Schuré's public letter, written out of his earnest sense for truth. The difficulties of bringing about this Munich Festival, never in any case an easy task, have been increased by the strife thrust upon us (which we will not go into any further), strife that has cost us so much labor and thought and which was truly unnecessary, just as it is unnecessary to continue it.

It would be important now to note briefly for our friends what has been done to bring out the truth. Besides the letter just mentioned and our friend Levy's excellent book that can now be had also in German, I will mention the brochures by Dr. Unger, Frau Wolfram, Herr Walther, to be available with other books at the book table, writing truly wrung from our friends who undoubtedly had something better to do than to enter into an unnecessary battle for the truth. Therefore, for their sake, it is important for the pamphlets not only to be written but also to be read. The time will come, too, when those of our friends who are serious about the truth will have to know what has been happening, un-edifying as the knowledge may be. It is clear that all this has been holding up our work in Munich very badly.

When I come now to speak about this work—as I should like to do again this year—the following must be said: for the people carrying out backstage all the difficult, nerve-racking jobs for this festival, the canceling of one of the dramas did not make their tasks a whit easier. Since the organization as a whole had to be overturned, the work not only was not lessened but was decidedly increased. Therefore please don't assume that with the omission of one of the plays, the burden of the preparations will have been made lighter, for just this main part of the organization, under Fraulein Stinde and Grafin Kalkreuth and their assistants, was considerably more difficult.

This year too I feel the need to point wholeheartedly to the devoted, selfless way in which such a large group of our friends has dedicated itself to bringing about this Munich gathering of ours. It could never take place without the dedication of so many of our friends. This year, as in the past, preparations had to begin in June. Our crew of artists, the gentlemen Linde, Hass and Volckert, had again to devote an enormous amount of time to the work, which they delivered, as mentioned before, completely finished; with them, a whole troop of faithful individuals were busy, working quietly behind the scenes even before the scenery came into being. It is wonderful indeed and will ever and again be a wonder to encounter so much self-sacrifice in this work. To mention a typical example: one of our friends who was asked to undertake two important parts, one in The Guardian of the Threshold and The Soul's Awakening, the other in the Schuré drama, didn't really know whether his strength would hold out through the many necessary rehearsals of the three plays and yet he cheerfully took on the task. All these things bear witness to the selfless dedication that has been growing in a wide circle of friends in our Anthroposophical Society. All those who had to begin their tasks so early, the artist-painters, also Fraulein von Eckhardtstein in charge of the costumes, have been at it since June. The people taking part in the performances are at work the whole day, so that they can hardly undertake anything else. They will forgive me for not naming them all, for they are well known to our friends in the Anthroposophical Society. In view of the long, long list that I would have to read off, they will not be offended if this year again I speak in general about those who have contributed their help. I must say that my heart is overwhelmed with gratitude to them, as are the hearts of each one of you, I am sure, who have been able to enjoy what our friends have prepared for this Munich festival.

Even though to some extent our enemies are springing up on every side, we can also see how our work and our efforts are received ever more widely. Many friends have been attracted by what one can call a new branch of our endeavors, consisting of expressive gesture, expressive movement carried out with beauty and dignity, something one has usually termed art of the dance. A few of you have had the chance to discover what has been shown here as eurythmy and there will be a further opportunity, for at one of our social gatherings this week we want to show our friends something more of this branch of our activity.³³

This, dear friends, is in substance what I had to say in a personal way before beginning our lecture cycle.

• 30. Two short wars in the Balkan, 1912 – 1913, which prepared the way for World War I in 1914.
• 31. Struggles in the Theosophical Society.
• 32. To Charles Bleck, President of the Theosophical Society in France, March 1, 1913, announcing Schure's resignation from the Society which had offered him honorary membership in 1907.
• 33. See Rudolf Steiner, An Introduction to Eurythmy (Spring Valley, Anthroposophic Press, 1984).

When speaking about the spiritual worlds as we are doing in these lectures, we should keep the following well in mind: the clairvoyant consciousness which the human soul can develop in itself will change nothing in the nature and individuality of a person, for everything entering that consciousness was already long present in man's nature. Knowing a thing is not the same as creating it; a person learns only to perceive what is already there as a fact. Obvious as this is, it has to be said, for we must lead our thoughts to realize that the nature of the human being is hidden in the very depths of his existence; it can be brought up out of those depths only through clairvoyant cognition. It follows from this that the true, inmost nature of man's being cannot be brought to light in any other way than through occult knowledge. We can learn what a human being actually is not through any kind of philosophy but only through the kind of knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness. To the observation we use in the sense world and to the understanding limited to the sense world, the being of man, the true, inmost nature of man, lies in hidden worlds. Clairvoyant consciousness provides the point of view from which the worlds beyond the so-called threshold have to be observed; in order to perceive and learn, quite different demands are made on it from those in the sense world. This is the most important thing: that the human soul should become more or less accustomed to the fact that the way of looking at and recognizing things that for the sense world is the correct and healthy one is not the only way.

Here I shall give the name elemental world to the first world that the soul of a human being enters on becoming clairvoyant and crossing the threshold. Only a person who wants to carry the habits of the sense world into the higher super-sensible worlds can demand a uniform choice of names for all the points of view the higher worlds can offer.

Fully new demands meet the life of soul when it steps over the threshold into the elemental world. If the human so insisted on entering this world with the habits of the sense world, two things might happen: cloudiness or complete darkness would spread over the horizon of the consciousness, over the field of vision, or else—if the soul wanted to enter the elemental world without preparing itself for the peculiarities and requirements there—it would be thrown back again into the sense world. The elemental world is absolutely different, from the sense world. In this world of ours when you move from one living being to another, from one happening to the next, you have these beings and events before you and can observe them; while confronting and observing them, you keep your own distinct existence, your own separate personality. You know all the time that in the presence of another person or happening you are the same person that you were before and that you will be the same when you confront a new situation; you can never lose yourself in another being or happening. You confront them, you stand outside them and you know you will always be the same in the sense world wherever you go.

This changes as soon as a person enters the elemental world. There it is necessary to adapt one's whole inner life of soul to a being or event so completely that one transforms one's own inner soul life into this other being, into this other event. We can learn nothing at all in the elemental world unless we become a different person within every other being, indeed unless we become similar, to a high degree, to the other beings and events.

We have to have, then, one peculiarity of soul for the elemental world: the capacity for transforming our own being into other beings outside ourselves. We must have the faculty of metamorphosis. We must be able to immerse ourselves in and become the other being. We must be able to lose the consciousness which always—in order to remain emotionally healthy—we have to have in the sense world, the consciousness of ‘I am myself.’ In the elemental world we get to know another being only when in a way we inwardly have ‘become’ the other. When we have crossed the threshold, we have to move through the elemental world in such a way that with every step we transform ourselves into every single happening, creep into every single being. It belongs to the health of a person's soul that in passing through the sense world he should hold his own and assert his individual character. But this is altogether impossible in the elemental world, where it would lead either to the darkening of his field of vision or to his being thrown back into the sense world.

You will easily understand that in order to exercise the faculty of transformation, the soul needs something more than it already possesses here in our world. The human soul is too weak to be able to change itself continuously and adapt itself to every sort of being if it enters the elemental world in its ordinary state. Therefore the forces of the human soul must be strengthened and heightened through the preparations described in my books Occult Science and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds from these the life of soul will become stronger and more forceful. It can then immerse itself in other entities without losing itself in the process. This being said, you will understand at once the importance of noting what is called the threshold between the sense world and the super-sensible world. We have already said that the clairvoyant consciousness of a human being on earth must go back and forth continually, that it must observe the spiritual world beyond the threshold while it is outside the physical body and must then return into the physical body, exercising in a healthy way the faculties which lead it to the right observation of the physical sense world.

Let us suppose that a person's clairvoyant consciousness, when returning over the threshold, were to take back into the sense world the faculty of transformation it has to have in order to be at all aware of the spiritual world. The faculty of transformation I have been speaking about is a peculiarity of the human etheric body, which lives by preference in the elemental world. Now suppose that a person were to go back into the physical world keeping his etheric body as capable of transformation as it has to be in the elemental world. What would happen? Each of the worlds has its own special laws. The sense world is the world of self-contained forms, for here the Spirits of Form rule. The elemental world is the world of mobility, of metamorphosis, of transformation; just as we continually have to change in order to feel at home in that world, all the beings there are continually changing themselves. There is no enclosed, circumscribed form: all is in continual metamorphosis. A soul has to take part in this everchanging existence outside the physical body if it wants to unfold itself there. Then in the physical sense world we must allow our etheric body, as an entity of the elemental world capable of metamorphosis, to sink down into the physical body. Through this physical body I am a definite personality in the physical sense world; I am this or that distinct person. My physical body stamps my personality upon me; the physical body and the conditions of the physical world in which I find myself make me a personality. In the elemental world one is not a personality, for this would require an enclosed form. Here, however, we must note that what the clairvoyant consciousness recognizes in the human soul is, and always has been, present within it. Through the forces of the physical body, the mobility of the etheric body is restrained only for the time being. As soon as the etheric body sinks back into the physical encasement, its powers of movement are held together and adapted to the form. If the etheric body were not tucked into the physical body as if into a tote bag, it would always be impelled to continuous transformation.

Now let us suppose that a soul, becoming clairvoyant, were to carry over into the physical world this desire of its etheric body for transformation. Then with its tendency towards movement it will fit rather loosely into the physical body, and thus the soul can come into contradiction with the physical world that wants to shape it into a definite personality. The etheric body, which always wants to move freely, can come back over the threshold in the wrong way, every moment wishing to be something or someone else, someone that may be quite the opposite of the firmly imprinted form of the physical body. To put it even more concretely: a person could be, say, a Scandinavian bank executive, thanks to his physical body, but because his etheric brings over into the physical world the impulse to free itself from physical constraints he may imagine himself to be the emperor of China. (Or, to use another example, a person may be—let us say—the president of the Theosophical Society, and if her etheric body has been loosened, she may imagine that she has been in the presence of the Director of the Universe.)

We see that the threshold that sharply divides the sense world from the super-sensible world must be respected absolutely; the soul must observe the requirements of each of the two worlds, adapting and conducting itself differently on this side and that. We have emphasized repeatedly that the peculiarities of the super-sensible world must not unlawfully be carried over when one comes back into the sense world. If I may put it more plainly, one has to understand how to conduct oneself in both worlds; one may not carry over into one world the method of observation that is right for the other.

First of all, then, we have to take note that the essential faculty for finding and feeling oneself in the elemental world is the faculty of transformation. But the human soul could never live permanently in this mobile element. The etheric body could as little remain permanently in a state of being able to transform itself as a human being in the physical world could remain continually awake. Only when we are awake can we observe the physical world; asleep, we do not perceive it. Nevertheless we have to allow the waking condition to alternate with the sleeping one. Something comparable to this is necessary in the elemental world. Just as little as it is right in the physical world to be continually awake, for life here must swing like a pendulum between waking and sleeping, so something similar is necessary for the life of the etheric body in the elemental world. There must be an opposite pole, as it were, something that works in the opposite direction to the faculty of transformation leading to perception in the spiritual world. What is it that makes the human being capable of transformation? It is his living in imagination, in mental images, the ability to make his ideas and thoughts so mobile that through his lively, flexible thinking he can dip down into other beings and happenings. For the opposite condition, comparable to sleep in the sense world, it is the will of the human being that must be developed and strengthened. For the faculty of transformation, thinking or imagination; for the opposite condition, the will.

To understand this, we should consider that in the physical sense world the human being is a self, an ego, an ‘I’. It is the physical body, as long as it is awake, that contributes what is necessary for this feeling of self. The forces of the physical body, when the human being sinks down into it, supply him with the power to feel himself an ego, an ‘I’. It is different in the elemental world. There the human being himself must achieve to some degree what the physical body achieves in the physical world. He can develop no feeling of self in the elemental world if he does not exert his will, if he himself does not do the willing. This, however, calls for overcoming something that is deeply rooted in us: our love of comfort and convenience. For the elemental world this self-willing is necessary; like the alternation of sleeping and waking In the physical world, the condition of ‘transforming oneself into other beings’ must give way to the feeling of selfstrengthened volition, just as we have become tired in the physical world and close our eyes, overcome by sleep, the moment comes in the elemental world when the etheric body feels, ‘I cannot go on continually changing; now I must shut out all the beings and happenings around me. I will have to thrust it all out of my field of vision and look away from it. I now must will myself and live absolutely and entirely within myself, ignoring the other beings and occurrences.’ This willing of self, excluding everything else, corresponds to sleep in the physical world.

We would be mistaken if we imagined that the alternation of transformation with strengthened ego feeling were regulated in the elemental world just as naturally as waking and sleeping are in the physical world. According to clairvoyant consciousness—and to this alone it is perceptible—it takes place at will, not passing so easily as waking here passes into sleep. After one has lived for a time in the element of metamorphosis, one feels the need within oneself to engage and use the other swing of the pendulum of elemental life. In a much more arbitrary way than with our waking and sleeping, the element of transforming oneself alternates with living within with its heightened feeling of self. Yes, our consciousness can even bring it about through its elasticity that in certain circumstances both conditions can be present at the same time: on the one hand, one transforms oneself to some degree and yet can hold together certain parts of the soul and rest within oneself. In the elemental world we can wake and sleep at the same time, something we should not try to do in the physical world if we have any concern for our soul life. We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you do not find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop—you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.

Thus we see that the habits of our soul life must change when we cross the threshold from the physical into the super-sensible world. If we were then to return to the physical world with the activity we have to bring to bear on the living thought entities of the elemental world and failed to develop in ourselves sound thinking with these passive thoughts, wishing rather to hold fast to the conditions of the other world, our thoughts would continually run away from us; then hurrying after them, we woud become a slave to our thoughts.

When a person enters the elemental world with clairvoyant soul and develops his faculty of metamorphosis, he delves into it with his inner life, transforming himself according to the kind of entity he is confronting. What is his experience when he does this? It is something we can call sympathy and antipathy. Out of soul depths these experiences seem to well up, presenting themselves to the soul that has become clairvoyant. Quite definite kinds of sympathy and antipathy appear as it transforms itself into this or that other being. When the person proceeds from one transformation to the next, he is continually aware of different sympathies or antipathies, just as in the physical world we recognize, characterize, describe the objects and living beings, in short, perceive them when the eye sees their colour or the ear hears their tones, so correspondingly in the spiritual world we would describe its beings in terms of particular sympathies and antipathies. Two things, however, should be noted. One is that in our usual way of speaking in the physical world we generally differentiate only between stronger and weaker degrees of sympathy and antipathy; in the elemental world the sympathies and antipathies differ from one another not only in degree but also in quality. There they vary, just as yellow here is quite different from red. As our colours are qualitatively different, so are the many varieties of sympathy and antipathy that we meet in the elemental world. In order therefore to describe this correctly, one may not merely say as one would do in the physical world—that in diving down and entering this particular entity one feels greater sympathy, while in immersing oneself in another entity one feels less sympathy. No, sympathies of all sorts and kinds can be found there.

The other point to note is this. Our usual natural attitude to sympathy and antipathy cannot be carried over into the elemental world. Here in this world we feel drawn to some people, repelled by others; we associate by choice with those who are sympathetic and wish to stay near them; we turn away from the things and people who are abhorrent and refuse to have anything to do with them. This cannot be the case in the elemental world, for there—if I may express it rather oddly—we will not find the sympathies sympathetic nor the antipathies antipathetic. This would resemble someone in the physical world saying, ‘I can stand only the blues and greens, not the red or yellow colours. I simply have to run away from red and yellow!’ If a being of the elemental world is antipathetic, it means that it has a distinct characteristic of that world which must be described as antipathetic, and we have to deal with it just as we deal in the sense world with the colours blue and red—not permitting one to be more sympathetic to us than the other. Here we meet all the colours with a certain calmness because they convey what the things are; only when a person is a bit neurotic does he run away from certain colours, or when he is a bull and cannot bear the sight of red. Most of us accept all the colours with equanimity and in the same way we should be able to observe with the utmost calmness the qualities of sympathy and antipathy that belong to the elemental world. For this we must necessarily change the attitude of soul usual in the physical world, where it is attracted by sympathy and repelled by antipathy; it must become completely changed. There the inner mood or disposition corresponding to the feelings of sympathy and antipathy must be replaced with what we can call soul-quiet, spirit-peacefulness. With an inwardly resolute soul life filled with spirit calm, we must immerse ourselves in the entities and transform ourselves into them; then we will feel the qualities of these beings rising within our soul depths as sympathies and antipathies. Only when we can do this, with such an attitude toward sympathy and antipathy, will the soul, in its experiences, be capable of letting the sympathetic and antipathetic perception appear before it as images that are right and true. That is, only then are we capable not merely of feeling what the perception of sympathies and antipathies is but of really experiencing our own particular self, transformed into another being, suddenly rising up as one or another colour-picture or as one or another tone-picture of the elemental world.

You can also learn how sympathies and antipathies play a part in regard to the experience of the soul in the spiritual world if you will look with a certain amount of inner understanding at the chapter of my book Theosophy that describes the soul world. You will see there that the soul world is actually constructed of sympathies and antipathies. From my description you will have been able to learn that what we know as thinking in the physical sense world is really only the external shadowy imprint, called up by the physical body, of the thinking that, lying in occult depths, can be called a true living force. As soon as we enter the elemental world and move with our etheric body, thoughts become—one can say—denser, more alive, more independent, more true to their own nature. What we experience as thought in the physical body relates to this truer element of thinking as a shadow on the wall relates to the objects casting it. As a matter of fact, it is the shadow of the elemental thought-life thrown into the physical sense world through the instrumentality of the physical body. When we think, our thinking lies more or less in the shadow of thought beings. Here clairvoyant spiritual knowledge throws new light on the true nature of thinking. No philosophy, no external science, however ingenious, can determine anything of the real nature of thinking; only a knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness can recognize what it is.

The same thing holds good with the nature of our willing. The will must grow stronger, for in the elemental world things are not so obliging that the ego feeling is provided for us as it is through the forces of the physical body. There we ourselves have to will the feeling of ego; we have to find out what it means for our soul to be entirely filled with the consciousness, ‘I will myself’; we have to experience something of the greatest significance: that when we are not strong enough to bring forth the real act of will, ‘I will myself’, and not just the thought of it, at that moment we will feel ourselves falling unconscious as though in a faint. If we do not hold ourselves together in the elemental world, we will fall into a kind of faint. There we look into the true nature of the will, again something that cannot be discovered by external science or philosophy but only by the clairvoyant consciousness. What we call the will in the physical world is a shadowy image of the strong, living will of the elemental world, which grows and develops so that it can maintain the self out of its own volition without the support of external forces.We can say that everything in that world, when we grow accustomed to it, becomes self-willed.

Above all, when we have left the physical body and our etheric body has the elemental world as its environment, it is through the innate character of the etheric body that the drive to transform ourselves awakens. We wish to immerse ourselves in the other beings. However, just as in our waking state by day the need for sleep arises, so in the elemental world there arises in turn the need to be alone, to shut out everything into which we could transform ourselves. Then again, when we have felt alone for a while and developed the strong feeling of will, ‘I will myself’, there comes what may be called a terrible feeling of isolation, of being forsaken, which evokes the longing to awaken out of this state, of only willing oneself, to the faculty of transformation again. While we rest in physical sleep, other forces take care that we wake up; we do not have to attend to it ourselves. In the elemental world when we are in the sleeping condition of only willing ourselves, it is through the demand of feeling forsaken that we are impelled to put ourselves into the state of transformation, that is, of wanting to awaken.

From all this, you see how different are the conditions of experiencing oneself in the elemental world, of perceiving oneself there, from those of the physical world. You can judge therefore how necessary it is, again and again, to take care that the clairvoyant consciousness, passing back and forth from one world to the other, adapts itself correctly to the requirements of each world and does not carry over, on crossing the threshold, the usages of one into the other. The strengthening and invigorating of the life of soul consequently belongs to the preparation we have often described as necessary for the experience of super-sensible worlds.

What must above all become strong and forceful are the soul experiences we can call the eminently moral ones. These imprint themselves as soul dispositions in firmness of character and inner resolute calm. Inner courage and firmness of character must most especially be developed, for through weakness of character we cripple the whole life of soul, which would then come powerless into the elemental world, this we must avoid if we hope to have a true and correct experience there. No one who is really earnest about gaining knowledge in the higher worlds will therefore fail to give weight to the strengthening of the moral forces among all the other forces that help the soul enter those worlds. One of the most shameful errors is foisted on humanity when someone takes it on himself to say that clairvoyance should be acquired without paying attention to strengthening the moral life. It must be stressed once and for all that what I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as the development of the lotus flowers that crystallize in the spirit body of a student/clairvoyant may indeed take place without attention to supportive moral strength, but certainly ought not to do so.

The lotus flowers must be there if a person wants to have the faculty of transformation. That faculty comes into existence when the flowers unfold their petals in a motion away from the human being, in order to grasp the spiritual world and adhere to it. Whatever a person develops as the ability to transform himself is expressed for the clairvoyant vision in the unfolding of the lotus flowers. Whatever he can acquire of a strengthened ego-feeling becomes inner firmness; we can call it an elementary backbone. Both of these must be correspondingly developed: the lotus flowers so that one can transform oneself, and an elementary backbone so that one can unfold a strengthened ego in the elemental world.

As mentioned in an earlier lecture, what develops in a spiritual way can lead to a high order of virtues in the spiritual world. But if this is allowed to stream down into the sense world, it can bring about the most terrible vices. It is the same with the lotus flowers and elemental backbone. By practising certain methods it is also possible to awaken the lotus flowers and backbone without aiming for moral firmness—but this no conscientious clairvoyant would recommend. It is not merely a question of attaining something or other in the higher worlds, but of knowing what is involved. At the moment we pass over the threshold into the spiritual world we approach the luciferic and ahrimanic beings, of whom we have already spoken; here we meet them in quite a different way from any confrontation we might have in the physical world. We will have the remarkable experience that as soon as we cross the threshold, that is, as soon as we have developed the lotus flowers and a backbone, we will see the luciferic powers coming towards us with the intention of seizing the lotus flowers. They stretch their tentacles out towards our lotus flowers; we must have developed in the right way so that we use the lotus flowers to grasp and understand the spiritual events and so that they are not themselves grasped by the luciferic powers. It is possible to prevent their being seized by these powers only by ascending into the spiritual world with firmly established moral forces.

I have already mentioned that in the physical sense world the ahrimanic forces approach us more from outside, the luciferic more from within the soul. In the spiritual world it is just the opposite: the luciferic beings come from outside and try to lay hold of the lotus flowers, whereas the ahrimanic beings come from within and settle themselves tenaciously within the elementary backbone. If we have risen into the spiritual world without the support of morality, the ahrimanic and luciferic powers form an extraordinary alliance with each other. If we have come into the higher worlds filled with ambition, vanity, pride or with the desire for power, Ahriman and Lucifer will succeed in forming a partnership with each other. I will use a picture for what they do, but this Picture corresponds to the actual situation and you will understand that what I am indicating really takes place. Ahriman and Lucifer form an alliance; together they bind the petals of the lotus flowers to the elementary backbone. When all the petals are fastened to the backbone, the human being is tied up in himself, fettered within himself through his strongly developed lotus flowers and backbone. The results of this will be the onset of egoism and love of deception to an extent that would be impossible were he to remain normally in the physical world. Thus we see what can happen if clairvoyant consciousness is not developed in the right way: the alliance of Ahriman and Lucifer whereby the petals of the lotus flowers are fastened onto the elementary backbone, fettering a person within himself by means of his own elemental or etheric capacities. These are the things we must know if we wish to penetrate with open eyes and with understanding into the actual spiritual world.

Our study of the life of Christ Jesus according to what I have called the “Fifth Gospel” will certainly have brought home to us all the significance of what took place after the conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother, of which I spoke here. And I want now to speak, in the way that may be possible in the intimate circle of a group like this, of what transpired immediately after that conversation, that is to say, of what happened to Jesus of Nazareth on his way to the Baptism by John in the Jordan.

What I have to tell consists of a number of facts which are revealed to the eye of Intuition; they are simply narrated, so that it is for each of you to form your own thoughts about them.

We have heard that after the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth until about his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, a conversation took place between him and the mother who was, actually, his step- or foster mother. In this conversation, the effects of the experiences through which he had passed poured with such intensity into the words uttered by Jesus of Nazareth that together with his words a mighty force flowed into the soul of the foster-mother, a force of such power that the soul of the mother who had borne the body of the Nathan Jesus was able to descend from the spiritual world (for since the twelfth year of the Nathan Jesus the soul of his mother had been in the spiritual world), and permeated the soul of the foster mother. From then onwards, the foster-mother bore within her the soul of the mother of the Nathan Jesus. What had happened in Jesus himself was that together with the words, the Zarathustra-Ego had to a certain extent gone out of him. The being who now made his way to the Baptism in the Jordan was the Nathan Jesus as he had been up to his twelfth year, that is to say, without the Zarathustra-Ego; but the effects left by the Zarathustra-Ego were still present—the effects of all that the Zarathustra-Ego had been able to pour into the threefold sheath. And so we can understand that Jesus was prompted to make his way to the Baptism in the Jordan by an undefined Cosmic urge -—that is to say, in him it was an undefined urge, but in the Cosmos it was definite and deliberate. It is also obvious that this being was not like an ordinary human being, for the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him and only the effects remained. The “Fifth Gospel” reveals that as this being, Jesus of Nazareth, made his way to the Jordan, he met, firstly, two Essenes. They were two with whom he had often conversed on the occasions of which I have told you. But as the Zarathustra-Ego had gone out of him, for to physical eyes the outer physiognomy—which had developed under the influence of the indwelling Zarathustra-Ego—had not changed. The two Essenes addressed him with the words:

“Whither go you, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Jesus of Nazareth said: “I go whither souls of your kind are unwilling to gaze, where the pain of humanity can feel the rays of the forgotten Light!”

The two Essenes did not understand his words, and they perceived that he had not recognised them. Then they said to him:

“Jesus of Nazareth, do you not know us?”

And be said:

“You are like lambs gone astray, but I was the shepherd's son from who you strayed. When you truly recognise me you will stray yet again. It is so long since you fled from me into the world.”

The Essenes were greatly perplexed for they did not understand how such words could be uttered by any human soul, and they gazed at him questionly. He spoke again:

“What manner of souls are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in sheaths of deceit? Why does there burn within you a fire that was not kindle in my Father's House? You have upon you the mark of the Tempter. With his fire he has made your wool shining and glistening. The hairs of this wool prick my eyes, you erring lambs. The Tempter has filled your souls with pride. You met him on your flight.”

When he had said this, one of the Essenes answered:

“Have we not shown the Tempter the door? He has no longer any part in us!”

And Jesus spoke:

“True, you showed him the door, but he ran and came to the other men. Therefore he leers at you from the souls of these others. Do you then believe that you can exalt yourselves by abasing others? You do not exalt yourselves when you abase others; you think yourselves exalted but this is only because the others have been abased. You remain as you were, and it is only because you have abased the others that you imagine yourselves to be great.”

The Essenes were afraid, but at this moment Jesus of Nazareth vanished from their sight. And after their eyes had been as if clouded for a little while, they beheld in the distance a kind of Fata Morgana, revealing to them, but enlarged to gigantic proportions, the countenance of the one who had just stood before them. And then from this Fata Morgana they heard words which filled their souls with dread:

“Vain is your striving, for your heart is empty. Your heart is filled only with the spirit which conceals pride in the deceptive guise of humility.”

And when they had stood there for a time as it stupefied by this countenance and these words, the Fate Morgana vanished. But Jesus of Nazareth too had passed further on his way. The two Essenes went home and spoke to no one of what they had experienced, keeping silence about it their whole life long.

As I said before, I shall simply narrate the facts as they present themselves in the Akashic Record, and each one of you must think about them as you will. This is important at the present time, because it is possible that this Fifth Gospel will be revealed in greater detail as time goes on, and may kind of interpretation at this stage might well be a disturbing factor.

When Jesus of Nazareth had gone a little further on his path to the Jordan, he met a man in whose soul there was deep despair. And Jesus of Nazareth said:

“Whither hath thy soul led thee? Aeons ago I saw thee; then thou wert different.”

And the despairing man said:

“I was of high degree; I have risen to high positions in life; I have filled offices of distinguished rank. And often I said to myself that my learning and accomplishments had made me an exceptional human being. Then one might when I was asleep, I had a dream and in the dream it was as if a question were put to me. I knew at once that in the dream I was beholding myself, for the question was thine Who hath made me great? And there stood before me in the dreams, being who said: I have raised thee up, and in return for this thou art mine!—And I was ashamed, for I had believed that I owed everything to myself. And now this being was telling as that it was he who had raised me to a high position! Then, in the dream, I took flight; I left all my offices and honours behind and now I wander about seeking for something but not knowing what I seek.”

As the despairing man was speaking, the being he had seen in the dream again stood before him, between him and Jesus of Nazareth. And a feeling came to the despairing man that this being had something to do with Lucifer. Then Jesus of Nazareth vanished, and the other being too; and the man saw that Jesus of Nazareth had already passed on. And be went on
his way.

As Jesus of Nazareth continued his path, he met a leper, and to him he said:

“To what hath thy soul led thee? Aeons ago I saw thee; then thou wert different.”

The leper answered:

“Men have thrust me away; they have made we an outcast because of my disease; none would come near me; I could not even beg my bread. Then I wandered about, and in my wanderings I came one night into a wood. There I saw a shining, luminous tree which drew me towards it. And as I drew near, it was as if a skeleton came from the shimmering light of the tree. Dearth himself stood before me, and said: I am in thee. I feed on thee. Fear not! Why art thou fearful? Didst thou not once love me?—And yet I knew that I had never told him! And as he said: ‘Didst thou not once love me?’ his nature changed into that of a beautiful Archangel. And when I awoke in the morning I found myself beside the tree and my leprosy grew steadily worse.”

Then the being who had been transformed into the Archangel stood again before the leper and he knew: Ahriman or a being of Ahrimanic nature is standing before me. While he was still gazing, the being disappeared, and Jesus of Nazareth also, and the leper was left to go on his way.

After these three experiences Jesus of Nazareth came to the Jordan for the Baptism. And here too, I repeat that the Baptism in the Jordan was followed by an event that is also described in the other Gospels, namely, the Temptation. But in this Temptation Christ Jesus was confronted not only by the one being—the Temptation took its course in three stages. First there came a being who was now known to Him because he had seen him when the despairing man had come to him; hence he could recognise him as Lucifer. And then, through Lucifer, came the Temptation that is expressed in the words: “All these kingdoms and their glory I will give to thee if thou wilt acknowledge me as thy Lord.” Lucifer's attack was repulsed, but now came two attacks. Lucifer came again, but with him the being who had stood between Jesus of Nazareth and the leper, and whom He therefore now recognised as Ahriman.

And then came the Temptation which in the Gospels is clothed in the words: “Cast Thyself down; nothing can happen to Thee if Thou art the son of God.” But as Lucifer and Ahriman mutually paralysed each other's power, their attack failed. It was only the third Temptation—“Make stones into
bread”—that was not fully answered. This Temptation came from Ahriman alone. And the fact that Ahriman was not completely satisfied, led to events taking the course they did. Because of the unanswered Temptation, Ahriman was able to work through Judas, and all the later events became possible in the way of which we shall hear.

You see, my dear friends, an “Akasha-Intuition” here sheds light on the moment that is of such infinite significance in the whole development of the life of Christ Jesus and in the evolution of the Earth. It was as if the connection of Earth-evolution with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces were mirrored in the events between the conversation with the mother and the Baptism by John in the Jordan. He who was the Nathan Jesus, who for eighteen years had borne the Zarathustra-Ego within him, was made ready, by these events, to receive the Christ Being.

And this bring, us to the point where it is of vital importance to have right and true conceptions. That is why I have tried to bring together various results of occult investigation which can make our human evolution on the Earth intelligible. It may, perhaps, be possible to speak here too about matters that were the subject of the Lecture-Course in Leipzig, where I tried to indicate the connection between the Christ Event and the Parsifal event. To-day I will speak of one or two points only.

I want to show you how the whole meaning and course of the evolution of humanity comes to expression in manifold events if only they are understood in the right light. I do not want to go into the idea behind the story of Parsifal and its connection with the development of the Christ Impulse, but to speak of something that underlay everything that was said in Leipzig. I shall begin by asking: How does the figure of Parsifal come before us?—Parsifal was one who some centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha was destined to represent an important stage of the further development of the Christ Impulse in a soul. We know the story. Parsifal was the son of an adventurous knight; his mother was Hezeleide. The knight bad ridden away before Parsifal's birth. His mother suffered deep pain and grief before he was born. She wished to shield her son from the vaunted qualities of knighthood and she reared him in isolation, protecting him from the consequences of intercourse with others. He was to know nothing about what goes on among other human beings. We are also told that be knew nothing about what the external world calls religion. From his mother he heard only that there is a God, a God behind all things, a God whom he must serve... but more he did not know. But a meeting with two knights caused him to leave his mother, in order that be might discover to what his inner urge was leading him. And after may wanderings he was led to the Castle of the Holy Grail. What he there experienced is described best of all by Chrestian de Troyes—a source upon which Wolfram von Eschenbach also drew.

We are told that one day Parsifal came to wooded country at the edge of a lake where.two men were fishing. In answer to his question, these men directed him to the Castle of the Fisher-King. He went into the Castle and there found a man lying weak and ill on his bed. The sick man gave him a sword—it was the sword which belonged to Parsifal's mother. Then came a page carrying a lance from which blood was dripping on his blood; then came a maiden, carrying a golden Cup radiating light more brilliant than all the lights in the room. This Cup was carried into the adjoining room where lay the father of the Fisher-King, who is nourished by what this Cup contains. Now Parsifal had previously been advised by a knight to abstain from asking many questions. At the time, therefore, he put no questions but the next morning decided that be must ask about these strange things. When he woke up the following morning, however, the Castle was empty. In the courtyard be found his horse ready saddled and when he had mounted and galloped away the drawbridge was immediately raised behind him. There was no sign of any of those whom he had found in the Castle the previous day.

As we know, the point of salient significance is that Parsifal asked no questions, although miraculous things had been revealed to him. And as the story goes on we hear again and again from those persons who meet Parsifal and who are connected with his mission, that he ought to have asked, that his troubles were to some extent due to this. He is told that by not asking he has brought about disaster.

And now think of Parsifal. He had remained apart from outer civilisation and culture; he is led to the Holy Grail with his virgin soul untouched by the mundane world... Now the Christ Impulse was a Deed which mankind had not at once been capable of understanding, But because the Christ had passed into the Aura of the Earth, He was working on—as indeed men had conjectured in their dogmas and teachings. Christ was working in the hidden foundations of the human soul, in the hidden depths of historical evolution, not in the surface consciousness of men or in the wranglings of Theology. In Parsifal we have a picture of the moment when a further stage was to be reached; therefore he had learned nothing of the teachings of the Gnostics, the Apostolic Fathers or the various theological movements. He was to know nothing of these things; his connection with the Christ-Impulse was to be purely in the life of soul, in his sub-consciousness, where standards of contemporary life played no part. His connection with the Christ Impulse would have been impaired and clouded by knowledge of man-made doctrines. Only the supersensible influences in the onflowing Christ Impulse were to work in Parsifal. External doctrine belongs to the material world but Christ works in the supersensible and it was this supersensible influence that as to come to expression in Parsifal. He must ask only at that place where the living essence of the Christ Impulse confronts him, that is to say, in the Holy Grail. He should have asked what the Holy Grail contains, what the Christ Event actually signifies. He should have asked!

Mark this word my dear friends. There was another, the disciple of Sais, who was not allowed to ask. The disciple at Sais was doomed in that he felt constrained to ask why it was not lawful for him to ask; he desired that the veils of Isis should be lifted. The disciple at Sais represents the Parsifal of the epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha! But in that age the disciple was told: “Take heed that what is behind the veil be not disclosed until thy soul is prepared and ready.” The disciple at Sais after the Mystery of Golgotha is represented in the figure of Parsifal. Parsifal was to undergo no special preparation; he was to be led to the Holy Grail with a virgin soul. And he missed the vital opportunity, for he neglected to do what the disciple at Sais was forbidden to do.—Parsifal ought to have asked about the mystery of his soul... Thus do the times change in the onward march of evolution.

To begin with we can only think of these things in a more abstract sense... What was the mystery of Isis? We are told of Isis with the Child Horus, of the mystery of the connection between Isis and the Child Horus, of the Connection between the Son of Isis and Osiris. A deep, deep mystery lies here. The disciple at Sais was not ripe for the disclosure of the mystery.

When Parsifal rode away from the Grail Mountain, having neglected to ask about the wonders of the Holy Grail, one of his first experiences was that he met a woman, a bride, weeping over the dead bridegroom in her arms.—A true picture, this, of Mary mourning for her Son—the motif of so many Pietàs later on. This is the first indication of what Parsifal would have experienced if be had asked about the wonders of the Holy Grail. Knowledge would have come to him of the new connection between Isis and Horus, between the Mother and the Son of Man. Parsifal ought to have asked. Now significantly this points to the progress that had taken place in the evolution of mankind! What was not lawful before the Mystery of Golgotha, was now, after the Mystery of Golgotha, both lawful and necessary. For in the meantime the evolution of mankind had progressed.

These things are only of value when we turn them to real disciple at Sais is that in accordance with the nature of the times, we must put the right kind of questions, for here lies the secret of ascent. Since the Mystery of Golgotha there have been two main currents in evolution: one which bears within it the Christ Impulse, the other which is, as it were, the continuation of the process of decline and leads to the materialism of the present age. In our age, by far the greater part of external culture is steeped in materialism. And everything that Spiritual Science can tell us about the Christ Impulse makes us realise how deeply the souls of men need the inner impulse of spirituality to counteract the steadily increasing materialism, of external life. To this end we must all learn to question, to ask! But the current of materialism leads men away from questioning. Let us compare the two currents.—There are people who really cling to materialism, even while they assert their belief in this or that spiritual dogma, or profess to acknowledge the existence of a spiritual world in words and theories. Mere words are of no account. What matters is that we shall live with our whole soul in the current of spiritual life. It can be said of those who cling to materialism that they do not question, for they claim to know everything already! It is characteristic of materialistic culture that even the young and immature think they know everything and therefore do not question. To give one's opinion at every turn is thought to be a matter of personal freedom. But it is not usually realised to what these opinions amount.—We grow up in the world, absorbing more and more without noticing it; according to our Karma, we find one thing more pleasing, another less; we reach, say, the respectable age of twenty-five and feel absolutely mature and certain in our judgment because we think it comes from our own soul. But such judgment contains absolutely nothing more than our experiences in the external world. And in that we feel obliged to assert our own judgment in the outer world, we become all the more slavishly dependent upon our inner life. We pass judgment, but we omit to question, to ask. We learn to ask aright only when we acquire that inner sense of proportion which maintains respect and reverence for the things that are holy as sacred in life, when we enter the sacred domains of life in an attitude of waiting without asserting our own judgment. A certain diffidence is necessary in face of things that are holy. We must ask the spiritual world—to which we bring, not our own judgments but our questionings, and a mood-of-soul which asks. Try, my dear friends, to understand the difference between facing the spiritual world in an attitude of “judging” and in an attitude of questioning. There is a radical difference between the two attitudes. Moreover something is connected with this to which we ought to give particular heed in our Movement, for this Movement will not thrive unless we understand the difference between questioning and judging. Naturally, we must also judge, but over against the mysteries of the spiritual life we must unfold the attitude of questioning, of expectancy. The progress of our Movement will be furthered by this attitude of questioning; it will be hindered by the contrary attitude. And when in solemn moments we ponder the story of the one who ought to have asked about the Mystery of the Holy Grail, the figure of Parsifal becomes the personification of an Ideal for our Movement.

Human souls before the Mystery of Golgotha possessed the old, inherited clairvoyance which had been carried over from incarnation to incarnation, but it was gradually fading away. This fading clairvoyance was bound up with that upon which our external sight and other sense-activities are also dependent. When human beings who lived before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were growing up as children, they learnt not only how to walk and talk, but they also learnt clairvoyance. Clairvoyance arose from the nature and organisation of man, just as speech arises from the organisation of the brain and larynx. Human beings in those times did not stop at learning to speak, but they also learnt clairvoyance. The old clairvoyance therefore was bound up with the human organism. as it was in the physical world. Clairvoyance in one who was a libertine was tainted by his particular characteristics; clairvoyance in a pure man bore the mark of his purity. The consequence of this fact was that a certain mystery, the mystery of the connection between the spiritual world and the physical world as it existed before the descent of Christ, might not be disclosed to an ordinary, unprepared human being. His constitution must first have become mature and ready. It was not lawful for the disciple at Sais to gaze upon the image of the soul of Isis.

In the Fourth post-Atlantean age, when the mystery of Golgotha took place, the old clairvoyance had faded away. The new constitution of the human soul is such that the soul must remain shut off from the spiritual world if it does not ask concerning the spiritual world, if it lacks the urge that is contained in questioning. The harmful forces which in ancient times drew near any human soul who desired to penetrate into these mysteries without due preparation, cannot now approach when a man asks in the right way about the Mystery of the Holy Grail. For in this Mystery there is concealed the power which since the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed into the aura of the Earth but was not previously there. It remains shut off, however, from one who does not ask. There must be an urge really to unfold what is contained in the soul. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this urge was not present, for the Christ had not yet passed into the Aura of the Earth. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, merely by gazing at the image of Isis and striving to fathom the mystery in the lawful way with such powers of clairvoyance as still existed, a human being would have poured all his forces into such an act and thus have recognised the mystery. In the age after the Mystery of Golgotha, a soul who learns to ask in the right way will be able to perceive and feel the new Mystery of Isis. Hence, my dear friends, everything depends upon asking, upon the right attitude to the spiritual conception of the world that is made known in our time. One who comes merely with the intention of judging, may read all the books and the lecture-courses, but he will gain nothing whatever, for he lacks the attitude Parsifal. If a man comes as one who truly asks, a great deal more than what the mere words contain will be revealed to him—for the words will then bear fruit in his soul as actual experience. And this above all is important—that the spiritual teachings should become actual experience.

These things are brought home to us by such events as transpired between the time of Jesus of Nazareth's conversation with the mother, and the Baptism by John in the Jordan. Such things will have meaning for us only when we ask what it is that distinguishes the time before the Mystery of Golgotha from the age that followed it... It it best to allow these things to work upon the soul; all that they can say to us is really contained in the story.

At this point in our study of the “Fifth Gospel” I wanted merely to indicate how important it is in this age to understand the attitude of Parsifal. It was brought to the fore by Richard Wagner, who tried to clothe it in musical and dramatic form. I do not propose to enter the lists of the fight that is going on about it in the outer world, because it is not for spiritual science to mingle in such strife. I shall not pronounce judgment as between those who wish to preserve it in Bayreuth and those who want to consign it to Klingsor's realm—which has, as a matter of fact, already happened. My aim is to show that in the onward flow of the Christ Impulse, the Parsifal attitude must come into play in domains that are beyond the reach of the power of judgment belonging to man's ordinary consciousness but to which this consciousness can more and more be directed by a spiritual conception of the world.

It seems to me that our studies of what I have allowed myself to call the “Fifth Gospel” will have helped us to form a closer conception of what has so often been said regarding the evolution of humanity on the Earth and the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha upon this evolution. From very many angles we have also tried to elucidate what came to pass at the baptism by John in the Jordan, when the Christ being united with Jesus of Nazareth, and this has brought home to us the vital significance of the Mystery of Golgotha in the evolution of mankind. But now, having heard the story of the youth of Jesus of Nazareth as it is revealed to spiritual-scientific investigation, we may be able to picture how Jesus of Nazareth makes his way to John the Baptist when the Christ is to descend into him.

With the knowledge gathered from these detailed studies of the Fifth Gospel, we will now try to enter more deeply still into all that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. To-day we will think, primarily, of the figure of John the Baptist and of certain aspects of his mission. To understand John the Baptist and Christ Jesus' relation to him (there are indications of this, too, in the Gospel of St. John) it will be necessary to think of the character of the spiritual life from which John the Baptist had issued. It is, of course, the world of ancient Hebrew culture. And now let us consider once again all the essential features of this culture. It had, as we know, a special mission in the evolution of humanity. We remember that Earth-evolution has proceeded from the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-evolutions and that during this Earth-evolution the Ego, or “I” is added to those principles of man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body—which came over from the earlier stages. The “I”, however, cannot unfold as an active principle all at once. Indeed the purpose of the Whole of Earth-evolution is to enable the “I” to develop in such a way that man may find his place in the stream of Eternity. Realising this, we must regard the Earth as the theatre in the Cosmos that is allotted to man for the development of the “I”. Ancient Hebrew culture venerated Jahveh or Jehovah az the Being of the higher Hierarchies under whose influence it had been established. The biblical story of Creation shows very clearly how the first Elohim—Jahve or Jehovah—issues from the sevenfold Elohim, the sevenfold host of the Beings of that Hierarchy. By way of comparison lot us say that just as the whole human organism develops into its highest expression in the head, so are the seven Elohim represented in one of themselves, in Jahve or Jehovah who becomes the leading Being in Earth-evolution. Ancient Hebrew culture recognised this and worshipped Jehovah, seeing in him that Being of the higher Hierarchies with whom man must be related in order to unfold the “I”. Ancient Hebrew culture represented a definite stage, in the process of the development of the “I”' in mankind and the influence of Jehovah was felt to be such that by establishing relationship with him, the “I” could gradually be awakened. This is connected with what I said in the lectures at Leipzig. (Lecture-Course XXXI. Christ and the Spiritual World)

What is the nature of the being Jahve or Jehovah? We must conceive hi as a Being who is most intimately connected with Earth-evolution. He is the Lord, the Regent of the Earth, or better said, he is the Being whom Hebrew antiquity regards as the Lord of Regent of the Earth. The whole of ancient Hebrew culture looks upon Jehovah as the God of the Earth, conceives the this Divine-Spiritual Regent is interwoven with the Earth and that men who aspire to be conscious of their connection with the Universe as beings of Earth must cleave to Jehovah, the God of the Earth. The ancient Hebrew conception that Jehovah had made man out of Earth is expressed by the very name given to the original man—“Adam”—that is to say, the ‘being who was created from Earth’. And whereas the aspirations of neighbouring religious systems were directed to that which does not derive from the Earth but comes into the Earth from higher worlds, whereas these neighbouring religions sought in the higher worlds for the Gods they worshipped, the ancient Hebrews sought and worshipped their God Jehovah in the realm of the Earth and its Elements.

Certain peoples of antiquity looked to the stars—their religion was “'astral” religion. Other peoples observed the forces manifesting in thunder and lightening and asked: How are the Divine-Spiritual Beings expressing themselves here? The religions of the peoples around the ancient Hebrews took their symbols from phenomena connected with the stars or the atmosphere beyond the Earth; they sought in these spheres for the signs indicating man's connection with the super-earthly reality. It was inherent in the nature of the ancient Hebrews to think of themselves as connected wholly and entirely with what comes from the Earth. This is a point to which far too little attention is paid. All the indications show that connection of the ancient Jews with the Earth, with what originates from the Earth. If in a phenomenon produced by the forces of the Earth. If in certain volcanic districts of Italy a piece of paper is lighted, clouds of smoke at once come out of the ground. We must conceive the pillar of fire to be a phenomenon produced by the forces of the interior of the Earth. In the same way the column of water or mist must by thought of as originating in the wilderness, not in the upper atmosphere. We must also look for the origin of the Great Flood itself in forces which surge in and through the Earth; the Flood was the result of tellurian, not of cosmic causes. This was at the bottom of the protest put up by the ancient Hebrews against the neighbouring peoples—for the God of Hebrew antiquity was the God of the Earth. The ancient Hebrews felt that everything coming from above, from outside the earth, did not really belong to the mission of Earth-evolution; they conceived it as having been preserved in Earth-evolution by the Being who had remained at a backward stage during the Old Moon-period, namely, Lucifer. In the other religions men felt: We must look away from the Earth, out in the Cosmos; we must revere and worship that which has its origin in the forces of the Cosmos... But the ancient Hebrews said: We worship the one true God and the one true God is connected with the Earth.—Far too little notice is taken of this because at the present time people assume that a word like “God” must always imply the same. Because, after nearly two thousand years of development under the influence of the Christ Impulse, humanity now rightly looks upwards once again, it is thought that the ancient Hebrews, too, looked upwards. On the contrary! The ancient Hebrews felt that what came from above was symbolised in the Serpent of Paradise.

But the Jews absorbed a very great deal from the neighbouring peoples. This too is comprehensible. Of all religions in antiquity, theirs was the subtlest. They believed—and this is well-nigh incredible to the modern mind that Jehovah is an Earth God, who works in the Moon-forces that are connected with the Earth and who is therefore also a Moon God, as described in the book Occult Science. It seems incredible to-day that men can ever have looked towards the centre of the Earth when they spoke of their God, but it was indeed so. Nevertheless the impulse to look upwards was, in the nature of things, not entirely absent from the Jews, above all when they saw the neighbouring peoples worshipping what comes from above. But the great difference between those who had knowledge of the Jewish secret doctrine and those who had not, was this.—The former knew that it was a temptation to be obedient to laws other than the laws of those forces which work from the Earth as far as the Moon-sphere. (Certain elements that come to light again to-day in our own spiritual-scientific teachings were present in ancient Hebraic wisdom). But as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha approached, Hebrew culture was veering more and more from its original direction and looking upwards for the Gods.

Then came one who felt it his mission to point to the path which the Jews ought, in reality to follow. This was John the Baptist. He felt it his mission to bring home to the Jews, where their true strength lay. And perceiving what the religion of the Jews had become, he spoke the significant words: “You call yourselves children of Abraham! If you were Abraham's children you would know that your God Jehovah who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is a God of the Earth—as witnessed by the fact that he formed the first man out of the Earth. But you are no longer children of Abraham; you have allowed yourselves to be led astray by what other peoples believe; you have been led astray by those who look upwards by what belongs to the Serpent. Ye are of the brood of the Serpent.

These words of John the Baptist are of deep significance. If only people to-day would be a little more candid and admit that they do not really understand what they read! What is the expression “generation of vipers” taken to mean to-day? That John was heaping abuse! But if it is desired to make a deep appeal to human souls, no particular purpose is served by invective. Neither can it be said that John the Baptist's words gave vent to a divine wrath within him—for others too may voice their divine wrath. The meaning here is that John the Baptist was striving to bring home to the Jews: “You no longer understand your true mission; you no longer call upon the forces of the Earth but upon the forces of the Serpent, upon what has been made known to you as the Serpent.”

And now let us try to understand the attitude of John the Baptist. Had he not his reasons for speaking in this way to those who came to him at the Jordan? (This is not derived from the Fifth Gospel for in speaking of the content of the Fifth Gospel we have not yet come to the figure of John the Baptist, I am speaking now from other sources). He had his reasons for speaking as he did to those who came to him at the Jordan, for he observed that they had adopted certain customs of the heathen; the very names they gave to these customs were abhorrent to him. In the region where John the Baptist was preaching, certain ancient teachings were prevalent—somewhat to the following effect.—At the beginning of the evolution of humanity, man and the higher animals were endowed by Jahve with the power of breathing air, but in consequence of the deed of Lucifer, this power was contaminated. Only those animals which do not breathe air have remained uncontaminated, namely the fishes. Many people went to the waters of the Jordan (indeed it happens to this very day) at a certain season of the year and shook their clothes in order that their sins might be cast to the fishes and carried away. John the Baptist had witnessed such customs which had been adopted from the heathen peoples and this was in his mind when he cried: “You have understood more of the Serpent than of Jehovah; you call yourselves unlawfully the children of Jahve, the children of Abraham. I say unto you that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could return to his original mission and produce from the stones, that is to say, from the Earth, a race of men who would understand him better.”

Let us think of such words in the Bible as:“God is able of these stones to raise up children of Abraham.” In the language of those days many words had more than one meaning and were used with the deliberate purpose of indicating a deeper meaning lying underneath. But we cannot really understand these things, my dear friends, unless we connect what has here been said with the mission of Paul. I have spoken many times of the mission of Paul. Why was it that Paul, who had not allowed his experiences in Jerusalem to convince him of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha—why was it that the Event at Damascus convinced him of the truth of Christ's Resurrection? We must here consider the manner of Paul's preparation, and his background. Schooled as he was in the wisdom of the Jewish Prophets, he knew that up to a certain point of time the evolution of humanity involved adherence to the God of the Earth; but he also knew that a time must come when the “Above”, that which comes into the Earth from super-earthly worlds, would again assume significance. It is of the utmost importance to realise that before Christ entered into the Aura of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, He dwelt in supersensible regions of the Cosmos. We can study the religions whose worship was directed to the Powers of super-earthly worlds and discover how the Christ worked in those spheres before He passed into the Aura of the Earth through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Paul knew that this time would come; but before the Event at Damascus he had not perceived Christ's actual presence in the Aura of the Earth. He was, however, prepared for this, and in Corinthians II., Chapter 12, verses 1-5, he says: It is not expedient for me to boast: I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ above 14 years ago... and so on. Paul is, of course, referring to himself. What does he really say in this passage? Nothing else than that 14 years before (chronologically this would be about 6 years before the Mystery of Golgotha) he was already able to look clairvoyantly into the spiritual worlds. He says that there is in him a man who can look into the spiritual worlds; it is of this man he boasts, not of himself. Paul realises now that formerly he had seen Christ while He was still in the spiritual world. The Event at Damascus had revealed to him Christ had now passed into the Aura of the Earth and was living in the Aura of the Earth. That is the great truth concerning which so many who lived in the early centuries of Christianity uttered such strange words. They said: Christ is the true Lucifer. They understood: In former times it was right to adhere to the Serpent; since the Mystery of Golgotha He Who is the Conqueror of the Serpent has come and He is now the Lord of the Earth.

Now all these things are part of the evolutionary process of mankind. For what is the meaning behind the protest put up by ancient Hebrew culture against “astral” religion, against religions which have clouds, lightening, thunder, as their symbols? The meaning is that the human soul must so prepare to receive the “I” that the revelation of the Spirit is no longer received through the starry script, no longer through the forces manifesting in lightening and thunder, but through the Spirit itself. In former times when men strove to look upwards to the Christ, they could only do so by gazing, as Zarathustra had gazed, at what may be called the physical sheath of Christ, the “Ahura Mazdao”, the physical Sun and its forces. Therein dwelt the Christ. But now the Christ had departed from the realm of the physical forces of the Sun, had passed into the spiritual Aura of the Earth. After those who worshipped Jehovah had prepared the way, Christ was able to permeate the Aura of the Earth. In this sense and in this sense only are the words of John the Baptist to be understood.

And now, as the time of the Mystery of Golgotha drew near, Christ Jesus and John the Baptist came face to face.—I shall now speak rather more abstractly.—Bearing in mind what has just been said, we shall understand this meeting between Christ Jesus and John the Baptist. Christ stands before one who knows what it signifies to worship the Spirit of the Earth. The Jews, and others too—for there were others as well as the Jews—were endowed with faculties which enabled them to worship the Spirit of the Earth in the right way. Whence were these faculties derived? Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha these faculties were bound up with physical heredity! What I am going to say will, of course, be considered utter foolishness by modern science, but it may be the kind of foolishness that can be wisdom before God.

Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, the faculties of knowledge as they are called, were dependent in a certain way upon heredity conditions. And the progress of human evolution is constituted by the fact that intellectual knowledge becomes independent of the factor of heredity. In certain Mysteries therefore, it was a true and right principle to allow an office to pass from father to son. But as evolution progresses, knowledge becomes an affair purely of the soul. The innermost core of the human soul becomes an affair of the soul itself, no longer depending upon the external factors of heredity. Now by what means did it become possible for man to keep intact the innermost core of his being? Let us realise what is meant by saying that man can no longer, in the real sense inherit his faculties from his forefathers.—Certainly many people think that they inherit their faculties and talents from their forefathers—but it is not so, in reality. Goethe was one among countless others whose genius was not transmitted to his descendants. But if man had not derived spiritual power from another source, what would have been the inevitable result? Their faculties of knowledge would have been orphaned! The position of the human being on the Earth would have been such that each according to his karma would have been obliged to wait for what the Earth bestows for the impressions bestowed by the Earth upon his senses. But this would have been of essential or lasting value to him and under such circumstances he would have been glad to slip away from the Earth. Buddha's teachings emphasise this very clearly for they draw man away from the realm of sense-perception and from all connection with the Earth.

Christ, in Jesus of Nazareth, could speak concerning Himself somewhat as follows.—At the Baptism by John something came down from the supersensible world which can be a quickening power in the “I” that has now been left to its own resources, and hereafter the human soul will contain within it forces that are not merely inherited. Whatever knowledge was formerly available to man, came to him through heredity, was transmitted from generation to generation by physical heredity. And the last man who unfolded higher faculties from the soil of heredity is John the Baptist, “the greatest of these born of woman.” This is an indication of how the ancient times are to be distinguished from the now. In ancient times man spoke truly when he said: ‘If I seek for the power which ought to live in my soul and lead me to the heights I must remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for the faculties through which the heights of human existence are attained came down to me in the line of heredity from these ancestors.’ But now these faculties must be derived from regions beyond the Earth. No longer to look to the Earth alone and to find in Christ the God of the Earth, but to be conscious of the inflow of the Heavens—it is this to which Christ points when he speaks of John the Baptist as “the greatest of those born of woman.”

Here, my dear friends, we have the answer to a question of paramount importance for our age. At the time when the Third Epoch began to re-emerge in the life of our Fifth Epoch, the consciousness of men began to turn again to what can be revealed to the earthly human being as super-earthly reality. Men could not, however, experience this re-born “astral” religion as the ancient Egyptians or Chaldeans had experienced it. In this later age it came to them in the form in which it was experienced by on well-qualified to speak. In 1607, the following words were written... (Here followed a long extract from one of Kepler's works. See also: Günther's Kepler und die Theologie. 105-111.) Thus in the 17th century we again find evidence that the soul is gazing upwards, but now the experience is permeated with the Christ Impulse. These words were written by a profoundly spiritual man. By whom were they written? By the one who was the founder of all modern astronomy, without whom our modern astronomy could not have existed, namely, John Kepler. Is there a single Monist who will not sing the praises of Kepler? The attention of those who profess to be Monists should be called to the words just quoted for so much of what is said about Kepler is... well, something to which I prefer to give no name.

These words of Kepler are an indication of the new tendency, the new way of gazing upwards to the heavens, of that reading of the starry script to which we aspire in Spiritual Science. The question indicated at the beginning of the lecture is thus answered, namely:—How can we draw near to Christ? How can we understand Him? How can we make our life of feeling worthy to receive Him? By learning to speak with the same ardour the same depth of feeling as did an ancient Hebrew, when he said: ‘I look up to Abraham, the primal Father when I speak of the foundation of whatever is valuable in me.’ ...but to-day, with the same intensity of feeling, we must look upwards to the Being Who quickens us spiritually—to the Christ! When we ascribe our faculties and gifts, all that makes us truly Man, not to any earthly power, but to Christ, then we enter into living relationship with Him! Just as a Jew in ancient times spoke of being carried by death into Abraham's bosom, so do we truly express the nature of the age after the Mystery of Golgotha when to the ancient “Out of God we are born” we add the “In Christ we die.” Therefore when we understand the Mystery of Golgotha we can enter into a living relationship with Christ, just as in the age of Hebrew antiquity men felt their living relationship with the God who was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This relationship was expressed in the avowed belief: ‘I return to Abraham, the primal Father’—In those who live after the Mystery of Golgotha there must live the consciousness; “In Christ we die.”

(The German transcript has been slightly abbreviated)

The information revealed by the “Fifth Gospel” sheds new light upon the great steps taken, as it were in the whole Cosmos, in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. Spiritual Science conceives the Mystery of Golgotha to be a kind of interim culmination of other happenings with which it is connected in the streams of world-realities.

We have heard that the Jesus boys were born in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. One of them was the “Solomon Jesus Child” who bore within him the Ego of Zarathustra. The age of the two boys was approximately the same and when they were twelve years old, the Zarathustra-Ego passed over into the body of the other Jesus boy who had descended from the “Nathan line” of the House of David. Then—from the source of the Fifth Gospel—it was possible to give details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His three bodily sheaths were those of the Nathan Jesus Child and the Zarathustra-Ego was present these three sheaths until Jesus of Nazareth reached his thirtieth year. You have also heard of the conversation with the mother which then took place and how, as he poured his very Self—his Ego—into the words, the Zarathustra-Ego departed from the bodily sheaths. Then, at the Baptism by John in the Jordan, the Christ Being descended into the threefold bodily sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth.

This conception of the Being Christ Jesus gives us an infinitely deeper and grander impression than is possible to those who draw only upon the sources of hitherto existing knowledge and the information contained in the Gospels.

Thee Event which, together with the “Crucifixion” and the “Resurrection” we call the Mystery of Golgotha, followed three other Events as a kind of culmination.

One of these other Events had taken place in very ancient Lemurian times; the second in the early period of the Atlantean epoch, and the third towards its end. These first three Events, however, transpired in the spiritual worlds, not on the physical plane. We have therefore to turn our eyes to four Events, of which the last only—the Mystery of Golgotha itself—took place on the physical plane. The three others were Events in the spiritual world, as it were in preparation for the fourth.

I have told you that the altogether unique character of the Being we know as the Nathan Jesus was revealed in that immediately after his birth he spoke certain words—albeit in a language unintelligible to everyone except his mother, who in her heart and feeling was able to discern what the words implied. It must be realised that the Nathan Jesus boy was not an ordinary human being; unlike the Solomon Jesus boy who bore within him the Zarathustra-Ego and, as other human beings, had passed through many earthly lives, the Nathan Jesus boy had no earthly incarnations behind him for the whole of his previous existence had been spent in the spiritual worlds.

I have spoken of this in earlier lectures by saying that when, from the Lemurian epoch onwards, human souls were coming down to earthly incarnations, something was as it were kept back in the spiritual worlds and incarnated for the first time in the Nathan Jesus. Jesus of Nazareth therefore was not the bearer of a human Ego in the ordinary sense, for the “human Ego” passes on from one earthly incarnation to another, whereas the previous existence of this Being had been spent in the spiritual worlds. And only the Initiates in the ancient Mysteries who were able to see into the spiritual worlds knew that this Being—who would eventually be born as the Nathan Jesus and become the bearer of the Christ—had been connected with certain previous Events in the spiritual worlds. In order to understand the nature of these Events we must remind ourselves of the following.

Most of you will remember that in lectures on Anthroposophy given here some years ago, I spoke of the human senses. I emphasised then that in reality man possesses twelve senses—the five usually enumerated forming only a part of these twelve. We will not enter into this in greater detail to-day but speak of something else, namely, that the senses of man, the senses in the physical body, would have suffered a fate portending ill for human nature had not the first Christ Event taken place in the spiritual worlds during the epoch of ancient Lemuria in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Lemurian epoch the foundations of the senses were actually present in man's bodily structure. But we know, too, that in this same epoch the Luciferic powers began to operate in human evolution and influenced the whole organism of man. If in the Lemurian epoch nothing else had happened than the descent of man to earthly incarnations and the onset of the Luciferic influence, the senses would not have developed into the organs they are to-day. They would have been hypersensitive, over-sensitive. We should have gone about the world with ‘untempered’ senses. The colour red, for instance would have affected the eye so strongly as to cause actual suffering; other impressions too would have caused pain to the senses. For example: the eye would have felt as if it were being drawn away, sucked away by the colour blue. And it would have been the same in all the other senses. The human being would have been obliged to go about the world with senses over-susceptible to pain or to immoderate, and therefore unhealthy, sensations of pleasure. Sensory activity would have been stronger and more intense than is healthy; the senses would have been affected by every single impression coming from the world outside. This would have been the outcome of the Luciferic influence, and it was averted from humanity not by anything that transpired in the physical world but by the first of the three Events which took place in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Lemurian epoch, the same Christ Being Who later on, at the Baptism in the Jordan, came down into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, united at that time with a being still living in the spiritual world—the being subsequently born as “Nathan Jesus boy.”

If we say of the Event in Palestine that the Christ Being then united with a body, of this first Event we must say that in the spiritual world, during the Lemurian epoch, He “ensouled” (verseelte sich) a Being who in a later epoch came down to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus boy.

Thus there was present in the spiritual worlds a Being of soul-and-spirit Who through this union with the soul of the later Jesus of Nazareth and through all the consequences of this Deed, averted the calamity that would have befallen the human senses. It was as though this Being radiated His light from the spiritual worlds upon humanity in order that the senses might be saved from the suffering attendant upon over-sensitiveness. The first Event in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha was for the well-being and salvation of the senses. The fact that we can go about the world with senses functioning as they now do, is due to this first Christ Event.

A second Event took place towards the beginning of the Atlantean epoch. The same being—the later Jesus of Nazareth—was again “ensouled” by the Christ Being, with the result that another evil was averted from human nature. Although the first Christ Event had brought salvation to the senses, the Luciferic and, later on, the Ahrimanic influences had so affected the seven life-organs of man that if the second Event had not taken place, human life in the world could not have been as it now is; man would have vacillated between wild, inordinate desire (in certain limits this is what we not call ‘sympathy’) and utter disgust for what he imbibes through his life-organs, for his means of nourishment. In the lectures on “anthroposophy” I also spoke of these seven life-organs. In the physical body they are vesicular organs, but what underlies them is actually a certain formation of the etheric body. Moreover for everything that found its way to his organs of breathing, too, man would either have felt inordinate desire or deepest loathing. Therefore the seven life-organs too would have become over-active as a result of the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman. The second Christ Event took place—again in the supersensible worlds. And this Event brought ‘moderation’ into the life-organs, enabled them to function with a certain restraint. Just as our senses would never have been able to face the world “in wisdom” if the first Christ Event had not taken place in the Lemurian epoch, so our life-organs could never have functioned with temperance and moderation if the second Christ Event had not transpired at the beginning of the Atlantean epoch.

But man was faced by yet another evil. This third evil threatened the astral body, in connection with thinking, feeling and willing and their due fields of activity. A certain harmony is maintained to-day in man's thinking, feeling and willing, and when this harmony is upset, the healthy life of the soul is disturbed. When thinking, feeling and willing do not interact in the right way, a man falls into conditions of extreme hypochondria, melancholy or actual insanity. As a result of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, therefore, men's thinking, feeling and willing would have lapsed into utter disorder if, towards the end of the Atlantean epoch, the third Christ Event had not taken place. Once again the Christ Being united with the “Nathan-Jesus soul” in the supersensible worlds, bringing order and harmony into the soul-powers of thinking, feeling and willing.

These three Events all worked upon man from the spiritual worlds; they were not Events of the physical plane. But memories of the third Event in particular, have been well preserved in myths and legends; and as in many other cases, spiritual knowledge leads us to a much deeper understanding of the wisdom they contain.

We are all familiar with imagery often used for the portrayal of supersensible beings; the Archangel Michael, or St. George overcoming the Dragon, vanquishing death. This is a pictorial presentation of the third Christ Event: St. George or the Archangel Michael is inspired by the Christ Being; and the ‘Conquest of the Dragon’ indicates the overcoming of those elements in the desire-nature of man which would bring confusion and disorder into thinking, feeling and willing.

There is deep meaning in these pictures; they have not been created for the intellect but for the feeling, in order that what eludes intellectual understanding may be presented to the human soul in the form of visible symbols.

In earlier lectures we have heard how in its world of Gods and Spirit-Beings, Greek culture preserved the shadow-images of the Divine Spiritual Beings who in the Atlantean epoch had been present, in all their reality, in the sphere immediately above the world of men. The Greeks had preserved definite consciousness of the third Christ Event, the Event that is portrayed elsewhere as St. George or the Archangel Michael overthrowing the Dragon.—In their Apollo the Greeks portrayed the Christ Being permeating the soul of the later Jesus boy. And we may say with truth that in ancient Greece, St. George and the Dragon are real beings, cosmic beings. The Greeks had their Castalian fountain on Parnassos; vapours arose from a gorge in the earth and these vapours, winding around the mountain like snakes, were a picture of those wild tumultuous passions of men which cast thinking, feeling and willing into confusion and disorder. At the place—it was the abode of Python—where these curling, snake-like vapours issued from the gorge, the Greeks erected the sanctuary of the Pythian Oracle. Sitting there on her tripod above the gorge, she was transported by the rising vapours into a state of visionary consciousness and her utterances were conceived to by the words of Apollo himself. Those who sought advice addressed themselves to the Pythian Oracle and received it from Apollo through her mouth.

In Greece, therefore, Apollo was a real and living Being. We know now that he was the Being who was ensouled by the Christ and later on became the Nathan Jesus boy. This being was known to the Greeks as “Apollo.” He eliminates the effects of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences from what rises out of the earth into the soul of the Pythian Oracle. And because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences no longer creep into her soul with the vapours which had been purified by Apollo, the forces issuing from her no longer bring thinking, feeling and willing into confusion but into order and harmony on the Earth.

And so we perceive in the figure of Apollo the idea that the God whom we in later time call Christ sent His influence into the thinking, feeling and willing of men.—He was the God Who sacrificed Himself at that time by uniting with the soul of the later Nathan Jesus, in order that harmony and order might prevail in the thinking, feeling and willing of the human soul, instead of the confusion wrought by the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman.

In the supersensible worlds, therefore, three Christ Events take place in preparation for the Event of Golgotha.

What was actually achieved by this Event? What is it that would have fallen into chaos and disorder if the Event of Golgotha had not taken place?

In the Fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, humanity was ready for the development of the ‘I’. The first peoples who were ready for this were those who inhabited the lands stretching from Western Asia across Southern Europe and into Middle Europe. The encounter between the Roman peoples and the Germanic peoples in Middle and Southern Europe was to give a strong impetus to this development of Ego-consciousness. The ‘I’, the Ego, was to develop in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—but something would have gone wrong with this development had not the Mystery of Golgotha taken place in that same epoch. Just as the senses would have been impaired in the Lemurian epoch if the first Christ Event had not taken place; just as irregularity would have crept into the development of the seven life-organs if the second Christ Event had not taken place at the beginning of the Atlantean epoch; just as thinking, feeling and willing in man's life of soul would have been cast into disorder if the third Christ Event had not taken place towards the end of the Atlantean epoch... so, too it would have been with the development of the ‘I’, if the fourth Christ Event—the Mystery of Golgotha—had not taken place in the Greco-Latin epoch. For as we know, in this fourth post-Atlantean epoch men had reached the stage of Egohood, of ‘I’-consciousness.

For human beings not belonging to this particular phase of evolution, a different kind of revelation was given. The characteristic difference between the Buddha revelation and the Christ revelation is that the Buddha revelation was given to human beings not destined to unfold consciousness of the ‘I’ which passes through the series of incarnations. Without understanding what this implies, it is not possible to have a true conception of Buddhism. I have often spoken of a simile employed in a later phase of Buddhism, to the effect that the true Buddhist likens what passes over from one incarnation to another to the fruit of the mango which, when it is laid into the earth, produces a new tree upon which new fruit grows; the new mango fruit has in common with the old only ‘name’ and ‘form.’ The ‘form’ alone remains, the individual entity disappears and nothing that has real being passes on. Buddhism teaches nothing about the transmission of the Ego—for the reason that the Eastern peoples had not yet reached full consciousness of the ‘I’. And to this very day we find that when adherents of purely oriental teachings endeavour to understand Western thought and philosophy, they come to a standstill at the point where Egohood becomes an essential and basic factor. The Ego was destined to come to birth in the peoples of the West.

The time for the birth of the Ego was the Fourth post-Atlantean epoch, but if nothing had intervened, irregularity would have set in. This is indicated by something that made its first appearance in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, namely Greek Philosophy. Greek philosophy is a significant sign of the birth of the Ego, but side by side with Greek philosophy we find the Sibylline soothsayers. Unlike the Pythia under the influence of Apollo, the Sibyls were women whose life of soul lacked order and harmony, who allowed the revelations they received to work chaotically in their thinking, feeling and willing. Great and sublime truths were often contained in these Sibylline revelations which began to play a part from about the eighth century B.C. and continued right on into the Middle Ages.—But the wisdom was confused and chaotic, fraught with all kinds of extravagance. Sibylline ‘wisdom’ is a striking example of he fact that the birth of Ego-consciousness (just as would have happened to the twelve senses in the Lemurian epoch, the seven life-organs in the earthly Atlantean epoch and the three soul-faculties at the end of the Atlantean epoch had it not been for the first three Christ Events. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, disorder would have crept into the development of Ego-consciousness if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place.

The Mystery of Golgotha comes down as it were by stages, from those lofty heights of Spirit where the Christ Event had taken place in the Lemurian epoch, to the physical plane itself—as our earthly Mystery of Golgotha.

Here again we have an indication of the supreme significance of this unique Event in Earth-evolution, prepared for as it had been by great and momentous happenings in the spiritual worlds. The connection with the sublime Sun Being we know as the Christ is revealed, too, in the Greek Apollo, for Apollo is the ‘Sun God.’

I have spoken in bare outline only of matters which help me to realise the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha. All these things could be expounded in detail and would reveal the untold Cosmic significance of this Event.

We have been considering the Mystery of Golgotha from the aspect of the Cosmos; but it is possible, too, to make a different approach.

A human being passes into the spiritual world through the Gate of Death or through initiation, but we will think now only of one who enters the spiritual world through death. He lays aside his physical body and this outermost sheath is given over to the earthly elements through burial or through cremation. Suppose that after death a man looks back from the spiritual world upon what is happening to his physical body as it passes over through decay or through cremation into the physical elements of the Earth.—What he beholds in the processes here taking place can be called a ‘happening of Nature’, like any other, in which no moral concepts, for example, are involved—for we do not apply moral concepts when clouds form, when lightening strikes from one cloud to another, and so forth. Man looks at his physical body in process of dissolution, just as he looks at these phenomena of Nature. But for a few days, as we know, his connection with the ether-body remains and then the second separation, the separation of the ether-body from the astral body and Ego takes place.

As man looks back upon the discarded ether-body, the processes in which it is involved are not of the same character as those operating in the discarded physical body. After death we can by no means look at what the ether-body is and what is becoming of it, as if it were a ‘phenomenon of Nature’. The ether-body reveals its own individual character, coloured by the feelings and sentiments we have harboured during life. The whole gamut of our feelings—good or bad—is revealed to us by the ether-body. The temper and tenor of our soul is stamped into the ether-body and becomes visible to us after death. Then by a complicated process it dissolves into the universe of ether, is absorbed into the other world.

Looking back in this way upon what becomes of our ether-body, we have before us an image of what we ourselves were in earthly life. And this image tells us: ‘If your feelings were good, if you were truly devoted to the spiritual worlds, then you have given over to the universe of Ether something that is good and beneficial; if your feelings were unrighteous, if you turned a deaf ear to information concerning the spiritual worlds, then you have given over to the Cosmos of Ether something that is injurious and harmful.

In the spiritual world it is part of the destiny of our soul, that is to say of our astral body and Ego, to behold ourselves in the fate of the ether-body—which cannot be changed once the separation from the physical body has taken place. It is a moment of paramount significance after death when we realise that just as in the world of sense we saw clouds and mountains, so now, after death, we see, as a kind of background, all that we ourselves laid into our ether-body through our feelings and tenor of soul. The picture expands as the ether-body dissolves, becomes as it were a “firmament” against which everything else stands out in relief. After death, therefore, man sees what is happening to his ether-body.

Something else is revealed as well, namely, two different kinks of properties, or forces, in the now dissolving ether-body: one of these properties gives rise to an impression that must always weigh heavily upon the soul after death. The best way to understand what this means is to think of the destiny confronting the physical Earth.

The destiny of the physical Earth is recognised to-day even by the physicists, who rightly speak of the “Wärmetod” (equilibration of heat and cold) to which the physical Earth will succumb. The relation of heat to the other physical forces is such that as scientific calculations already show, a time will come when all temperature will be reduced to a dead level. No life or existence in the physical kingdom of Earth will then be possible; the whole physical Earth will perish.

Materialists are bound to assume—for otherwise they would be inconsistent—that this equilibration of temperature, the Wärmetod, also entails the end of everything know to them as culture, the end of all human thinking, reflection, aspiration, endeavour, in short the disappearance of all human existence.

Those who understand the conditions as revealed by Spiritual Science know what this means, namely, that the physical Earth will fall away from the Spiritual like a corpse, just as the physical corpse falls away from that part of a man's being which passes onwards through the Gate of Death. At death, the corpse is discarded and as a being of soul-and-spirit, man lives through an intermediate period between death and a new birth, passing over from one state of existence to another. In the same way the spiritual part of the Earth will pass over to the ‘Jupiter existence’ when physical existence comes to an end. This ‘Jupiter existence’ will be a further embodiment of everything that is connected spiritually with the Earth.

And so when we are able after death to look back at the ether-body, we realise that in very truth one part of the ether-body has to do with everything in the realm of Earth that will ultimately perish. Certain forces in our ether-body have to do with the process by which the Earth is led onwards to its end. But the ether-body contains other forces too, quite different forces. We can picture the relation of these forces to the physical Earth by thinking of the seed of the plant surrounded by substance out of which the next plant arises. Similarly, we perceive in the ether-body, forces which have only to be active as long as the Earth exists, until the Earth comes to an end with the Wärmetod. But there are other forces too, ‘young’, fertile forces, and these are connected with everything that makes the Earth capable of germination in the Cosmos, of passing over to its next embodiment. This ‘fertile’ part of the ether-body can only be perceived—and here we come to another significant secret disclosed by Spiritual Science—when the human being has established a certain relationship with the Christ, the Christ Impulse. For this part of the ether-body is permeated with the Christ Forces which since the Mystery of Golgotha have poured into the sphere of the Earth. It is these Christ Forces in the ether-body which enable the ‘fertile seed’ in the human soul, too, to pass over to the Jupiter embodiment of the Earth. Our connection with the Christ Impulse therefore, enables us to perceive the fertile seed, the seed of the future within our ether-body. And this brings the certain knowledge that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha has flowed, in very truth, into the Earth-sphere and that this power was responsible for quickening the spiritual forces of the Earth with which we ourselves, as human beings, are inwoven. When a human being who has attained Ego-consciousness in the real sense—as is the case in the West to-day—gazes upon his ether-body after death, he must not find this ether-body devoid of the forces flowing from the Christ Impulse. For it means a life of unblessedness after death if the vista of the ether-body reveals that ether-body is not permeated by the Christ Impulse.

I have said many, many times that Christ has come to the Earth as a Real Being and that even those who in their surface-consciousness to-day resist the Christ Impulse... they too will gradually find their way to it, although perhaps one or two incarnations later than the peoples of the West. Man's blessedness after death depends upon the realisation that the Christ Impulse is present in the ether-body; whereas he is doomed to tribulation if he can perceive in the ether-body only that which must inevitably perish with the Earth. A man belonging to Western civilisation, born as he is with the clear Ego-consciousness to which the Oriental peoples have not yet attained, is doomed to a state of unblessedness if, after death, he must look back upon an ether-body lacking the‘substance’ of the Christ Impulse and containing only those forces by which Earth-evolution is finally led to its end. When a man cannot perceive the young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse in his ether-body, it is rather like having to live after death under the constant impression of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption.

These young, fertile forces of the Christ Impulse... what are they?

Of one aspect I have spoken many times, namely, of the part played by the blood in the physical body of Christ Jesus. The blood is, of course, one of the physical components of the body, and in the case of an ordinary human being it dissolves away at death in the physical Elements. This did not happen to that part of the blood in the body of Christ Jesus which flowed from the wounds on Golgotha. This blood was ‘etherised’, was actually taken up into the etheric forces of the Earth. The blood that flowed from the wounds on Golgotha became Ether-Substance. And perceiving this Ether-Substance gleaming and glistening in the ether-body after death, man knows it to be the young, fertile life by which he is borne onwards into the future.

These quickening, freshening life-forces pour into the human ether-body from yet another source. Contemplation of the Fifth Gospel reveals—it is a deep and solemn impression—that after the body of Christ Jesus had been laid in the Grave, a certain happening led, in actual fact, to the scene described with such marvellous exactitude in the Gospel of St. John: the clothes lay scattered around the empty Grave. The Fifth Gospel reveals that it was indeed so. An undulating earthquake had produced a rift in the earth and into this rift the body of Christ Jesus fell. The rift then closed again and, as described in St. John's Gospel, the clothes in which the body had been shrouded were hurled about the empty sepulchre by the tempest. When these things are revealed to one from the Fifth Gospel, it is a deeply moving experience to find them confirmed in the Gospel of St. John.

And so something else too flowed into the human ether-body. What had been received into the rift in the earth poured through the blood now agleam in the Ether, making this gleaming blood visible in the human ether-body. As I said before, the ether-body expands after death and man sees it as a ‘firmament’ against which everything else stands out in relief. And the feeling arises: The body of Christ Jesus, empty of blood, spreads through the expanding ether-body like a basic substance. The body which had fallen into the chasm passed into the Earth, and the etherised blood now reveals itself in the tableau of the human ether-body, filling the tableau with life. And from this revelation arises the certainty: Mankind does not perish, but lives on as the spiritual essence of Earth-existence when the Earth falls away, just as the corpse falls away from the indwelling spiritual being on man. True, the ‘I’ and astral body guarantee freedom and immortality for man; but he would live on only for himself, he would pass over to Jupiter only to find himself in an alien world if the forces poured by the Christ Impulse into the Earth-sphere were not carried over to Jupiter.

If individual human beings were not rooted within an Earth-sphere that has been pervaded by the Christ Impulse, they would pass over to Jupiter in ‘poverty of soul’, with faculties hardly richer than those belonging to the Lemurian epoch. And this ‘poverty of soul’ which would give the conviction that earthly life is doomed to perish would betoken a state of unblessedness for man between death and rebirth; whereas realisation of what the Christ Impulse has wrought for the spiritual part of the Earth brings blessedness to the soul in the life between death and rebirth.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha, every experience by which the human soul is quickened and enriched comes from what was poured into the spiritual aura of the Earth by the Christ Impulse.

The theme on which I propose to speak in these lectures seems to me of peculiar importance in view of present conditions. At the very beginning let me emphasise that there is no element of sensationalism or anything of that kind in the choice of the title: The Fifth Gospel. For I hope to show that in a definite sense and one that is of particular importance to us in the present age, it is possible to speak of such a Fifth Gospel and that in fact no title is more suitable for what is intended.

Although, as you will hear, this Fifth Gospel has never yet been written down, in future times of humanity it will certainly be put into definite form. In a certain sense, however, it would be true to say that it is as ancient as the other four Gospels.

In order that I may be able to speak about this Fifth Gospel, we shall have, by way of introduction, to study certain matters which are essential to any real understanding of it. Let me say, to begin with, that the time is certainly not very far distant when even in the lowest grade schools and in the most elementary education, the branch of knowledge commonly called History will be presented quite differently. It is certain—and these lectures should be a kind of confirmation of it—that in times to come the concept or idea of Christ will play quite a different and much more important part in the study of history, even the most elementary, than has been the case before. I know that such a statement seems highly paradoxical, but let us remember that there were times by no means very far distant, when countless human hearts turned to Christ with feelings of immeasurably greater fervour than is to be found to-day, even among the most learned Christians in the West. In earlier times these feelings of devotion were incomparably more intense. Anyone who studies modern writings and reflects on the main interests of people to-day will have the impression that enthusiasm and warmth of feeling for the Christ Idea are on the wane, especially so in those who claim an up-to-date education. In spite of this, I have just said that as this age of ours advances, the Christ Idea will play a much more important part than hitherto in the study of human history. Does this not seem to be a complete contradiction?

And now we will approach the subject from another side. I have already been able to speak on several occasions in this very town about the significance and the content of the Christ Idea; and in books and lecture-courses which are available here, many deep teachings of Spiritual Science concerning the secrets of the Christ Being and of the Christ Idea are to be found. Anyone who assimilates w hat has been said in lectures, lecture-courses and indeed in all our literature, will realise that any real understanding of the Christ Being needs extensive preparation, that the very deepest concepts and thoughts must be summoned to his aid if he desires to reach some comprehension of Christ and of the Christ Impulse working through the centuries. If nothing else indicated the contrary, it might possibly be thought that a knowledge of the whole of Theosophy or Anthroposophy is necessary before there can be any true conception of Christ. But if we turn aside from this and look at the development of the spiritual life of the last centuries, we are met from century to century by the existence of much profound and detailed knowledge aiming at a comprehension of the Christ and His revelation. For centuries and centuries men have applied their noblest, most profound thought in attempts to reach an understanding of Christ. Here too, it might seem as if only the most highly intellectual achievements of men would suffice for such understanding. But is this, in fact, the case? Quite simple reflection will show that it is not.

Let us, as it were, lay on one scale of a spiritual balance, everything contributed hitherto by erudition, science and even by theosophical conceptions towards an understanding of Christ. On the other scale let us lay all the deep feelings, all the impulses within men which through the centuries have caused their souls to turn to the Being called Christ. It will be found that the scale upon which have been laid all the science, all the learning, even all the theosophy that can be applied to explain the figure of Christ, will rapidly rise, and the scale upon which have been laid all the deep feelings and impulses which have turned men towards the Christ will sink. It is no exaggeration to say that a force of untold strength and greatness has gone forth from Christ and that erudite scholarship concerning Him has contributed least of all to this impulse. Truly it would have boded ill for Christianity if, in order to cleave to Christ, men had had to resort to all the learned dissertations of the Middle Ages, of the Schoolmen, of the Church Fathers, or even to what Theosophy contributes to-day towards an understanding of Christ. This whole body of knowledge would be of very little help. I hardly think that anyone who studies the march of Christianity through the centuries with an unprejudiced mind can raise any serious argument against this line of thought; but the subject can be approached from still another side.

Let us turn our thought to the times before Christianity had come into existence. I need only mention something of which those sitting here are certainly aware. I need only remind you of the ancient Greek dramas, especially in their earlier forms. When portraying a god in combat or a human being in whose soul a god was working, these dramas make the sovereignty and activity of the gods concretely and perceptibly real. Think of Homer and of how his great Epic is all inwoven with the workings of the Spiritual; think of the great figures of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. These names bring before our mind's eye a spiritual life that in a certain domain is supreme. If we leave all else aside and look only at the single figure of Aristotle who lived centuries before the founding of Christianity, we find there an achievement which, in a certain respect, has remained unsurpassed to this very day. The scientific exactitude of Aristotle's thinking is something so phenomenal, even when judged by present-day standards, that it is said: human thinking was raised by him to an eminence unsurpassed to this day.

And now for a moment we will take a strange hypothesis, but one that will help us to understand what will be said in these lectures. We will imagine that there were no Gospels at all to tell us anything about the figure of Christ, that the earliest records presented to man to-day in the form of the New Testament were simply not in existence. Leaving on one side all that has been said about the founding of Christianity, let us study its progress as historical fact, observing what has happened among men through the centuries of the Christian era ... In other words, without the Gospels, without the story of the Acts of the Apostles, without the Epistles of St. Paul, we will consider what has actually come to pass. This, of course, is pure hypothesis, but what is it that has really happened?

Turning our attention first of all to the South of Europe in a certain period of history, we find a very highly developed spiritual culture, as represented in Aristotle; it was a sublime spiritual life, developing along particular channels through the subsequent centuries. At the time when Christianity began to make its way through the world, large numbers of men who had assimilated the spiritual culture of Greece were living in the South of Europe. If we follow the evolution of Christianity to the time of Celsus—that strange individual who was such a violent opponent of Christianity—and even on into the second and third centuries after Christ, we find in Greece and Italy numbers of highly cultured men who had absorbed the sublime Ideas of Plato, men whose subtlety of thought seems like a continuation of that of Aristotle. Here were minds of refinement and power, versed in Greek learning; here were Romans who added to the delicate spirituality of Greek thought the element of aggressive personality characteristic of Roman civilisation. Such was the world into which the Christian impulse made its way. Truly, in respect of intellectuality and knowledge of the world the representatives of this Christian impulse seem to be uncivilised and uneducated in comparison with the numbers and numbers of learned Romans and Greeks. Men lacking in culture make their way into a world of mellowed intellectuality. And now we witness a remarkable spectacle. Through these simple, primitive people who were its first bearers, Christianity spreads comparatively quickly through the South of Europe. And if with an understanding of the nature of Christianity acquired, let us say, from Theosophy, we think of these simple, primitive natures who spread Christianity abroad in those times, we shall realise that they knew nothing of these things. We need not think here of any conception of Christ in His great cosmic setting, but of much simpler conceptions of Christ. Those first bearers of the Christian impulse who found their way into the world of highly developed Greek learning, had nothing to bring into this arena of Greco-Roman life save their own inwardness, their personal connection with the Christ Whom they so deeply loved; for this connection was as dear to them as that with their own kith and kin. Those who brought into the Greco-Roman world in those days the Christianity that has continued to our own time, were not well-informed theosophists, were by no means highly educated people. The Gnostics who were the learned theosophists of those times had, it is true, risen to sublime ideas concerning Christ, but even they contributed only what must be placed in the rising scale of the balance. If everything had depended upon the Gnostics, Christianity would certainly not have made its victorious headway through the world. It was no highly developed intellectuality that came over from the East, causing the comparatively rapid decline of the old Hellenic and Roman culture. There we have one side of the picture.

We see the other side when we consider men of intellectual distinction, beginning with Celsus—the opponent of Christianity who even then brought forward all the arguments that are still valid to-day—down to Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher on the throne. We think of the Neo-Platonists with their subtle scholarship, whose ideas make those of philosophy to-day seem mere child's play, so greatly do they surpass them in loftiness and breadth of vision. Thinking of all the arguments against Christianity brought from the standpoint of Greek philosophy by these men of high intellectual eminence in the world of Greco-Roman culture, the impression we get is that they did not understand the Christ Impulse. Christianity was spread by men who understood nothing of its real nature; it was opposed by a highly developed culture incapable of grasping its significance. Truly, Christianity makes a strange entry into the world—with adherents and opponents alike understanding nothing of its real nature. And yet ... men bore within their souls the power to secure for the Christ Impulse its victorious march through the world.

And now let us think of men like Tertullian who with a certain greatness and power entered the lists on behalf of Christianity. Tertullian was a Roman who, so far as his language is concerned, may almost be said to have re-created the Latin tongue; the very certainty of aim with which he restored to words a living meaning lets us recognise him as a personality of real significance. But if we ask about his ideas, there is a very different story to tell. In his ideas and thoughts he gives very little evidence of intellectual or spiritual eminence. Supporters of Christianity even of the calibre of Tertullian do not accomplish anything very considerable. And yet as personalities they are potent—these men like Tertullian, to whose arguments no highly educated Greek could attach much weight. There is something about Tertullian that attracts one's attention—but what exactly is it? That is the point of importance.

Let us realise that a real problem lies here. What power is responsible for the achievements of these bearers of the Christ Impulse who themselves do not really understand it? What power is responsible for the influence exercised by the Church Fathers, including even Origen, in spite of all their manifest ineptitude? Why is Greco-Roman scholarship itself unable to comprehend the essential nature of the Christ Impulse? What is the reason of all this?

But let us go further. The same spectacle stands out in still stronger relief when we study the course of history. As the centuries go by, Christianity spread over Europe, among peoples like the Germanic, with quite different ideas of religion and worship, who are, or at least appear to be, inseparable from these ideas and who nevertheless accepted the Christ Impulse with open hearts, as if it were part and parcel of their own life. And when we think of those who were the most influential missionaries among the Germanic peoples, were these men schooled theologians? No indeed! Comparatively speaking, they were simple, primitive souls who went out among the people, talking to them in the most homely, everyday language but moving their very hearts. They knew how to put the words in such a way as to touch the deepest heart-strings of those to whom they spoke. Simple men went out into regions far and wide and it was their work that produced the most significant results. Thus we see Christianity spreading through the centuries. But then we are astonished to find this same Christianity becoming the motive force of profound scholarship, science and philosophy. We do not undervalue this philosophy but we will focus our attention to-day upon the remarkable fact that up to the Middle Ages the peoples among whom Christianity spread in such a way that it soon became part of their very souls, had lived hitherto with quite different forms of thought and belief. And in no very distant future, many other features will be stressed in connection with the spread of Christianity. So far as the effect produced by this spread of Christianity is concerned, it will not be difficult to agree with the statement that there was a period when these Christian teachings were the source of fervent enthusiasm. But in modern times the fervour which in the Middle Ages accompanied the spread of Christianity seems to have died away.

And now think of Copernicus, of the whole development of natural science on into the nineteenth century. This natural science which since the time of Copernicus has become an integral part of Western culture, might appear to run counter to Christianity. The facts of history may seem, outwardly, to substantiate this. For example, until the 'twenties of the nineteenth century the writings of Copernicus were on the so-called Index of the Roman Catholic Church. That is an external detail, but the fact remains that Copernicus was a dignitary of the Church. Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by the Roman Church but he was, for all that, a member of the Dominican Order. The ideas of both these thinkers sprang from the soil of Christianity and their work was an outcome of the Christian impulse. To maintain that these teachings were not the fruits of Christianity would denote very poor understanding on the part of those who claim to hold fast by the Church. These facts only go to prove that the Church did not understand the fruits of Christianity. Those who see more deeply into the roots of these things will recognise that what the peoples have achieved, even in the more recent centuries, is a result of Christianity, that through Christianity, as also through the laws of Copernicus, the gaze of the human mind was turned from the earth out into the heavenly expanse. Such a change was possible only within Christian culture and through the Christian impulse. Those who observe the depths and not merely the surface of spiritual life will understand something which although it will seem highly paradoxical when I say it now, is nevertheless correct. To this deeper observation, a Haeckel, for all his opposition to Christianity, could only have sprung from the soil of this same Christianity. Ernst Haeckel is inconceivable without the base of Christian culture. And however hard modern natural science may try to promote opposition to Christianity, this natural science is itself an offspring of Christianity, a direct development of the Christian impulse. When modern natural science has got over the ailments of childhood, men will perceive quite clearly that if followed to its logical conclusions, it leads to Spiritual Science, that there is an entirely consistent path from Haeckel to Spiritual Science. When that is grasped it will also be realised that Haeckel is Christian through and through, although he himself has no notion of it. The Christian impulses have given birth not only to what claims to be Christian but also to what appears on the surface to run counter to Christianity. This will soon be realised if we study the underlying reality, not merely the concepts and ideas that are put into words. As can be seen from my little essay on “Reincarnation and Karma,” a direct line leads from the Darwinian theory of evolution to the teaching of repeated earthly lives.

But in order to understand these things correctly we must be able to perceive the influence of the Christian impulses with entirely unprejudiced eyes. Anyone who understands the doctrines of Darwin and Haeckel and is himself convinced that only as a Christian movement was the Darwinian movement possible (although Haeckel had no notion of this, Darwin was aware of many things)—anyone who realises this is led by an absolutely consistent path to the idea of reincarnation. And if he can call upon a certain power of clairvoyance, this same path will lead him to knowledge of the spiritual origin of the human race. True, it is a detour, but with the help of clairvoyance an uninterrupted path from Haeckel's thought to the conception of a spiritual origin of the Earth. It is conceivable, of course, that someone may accept Darwinism in the form in which it is presented to-day, without grasping the life-principles which in reality are contained in it. In other words, if Darwinian thought becomes an impulse in someone who lacks any deep understanding of Christianity—which nevertheless lies in Darwinism—he may end by understanding no more of Darwinism than he does of Christianity. The good spirit of Christianity and the good spirit of Darwinism may alike forsake him. But if he has a grasp of the good spirit of Darwinism, then—however much of a materialist he may be—his thought will carry him back over the earth's history to the point where he recognises that man has not evolved from lower animal forms but must have a spiritual origin. He is led to the point where man is perceived as a spiritual being, hovering as it were over the earthly world. Darwinism, if developed to its logical conclusion, leads to this recognition. But if someone has been forsaken by the good spirit of Darwinism and happens to believe in the idea of reincarnation, he may imagine that he himself once lived as an ape in some incarnation of the planet Earth. [The reference here is to certain assertions made by the theosophists Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater.] Anyone who can believe this lacks all real understanding of Darwinism and of Christianity and must have been forsaken by the good spirits of both! For Darwinism, consistently elaborated, could lead to no such belief. In such a case the idea of reincarnation has been grafted into the soil of materialism. It is possible, of course, for modern Darwinism to be stripped of its Christian elements. If this does not happen, we shall find that on into our own times the impulses of Darwinism have been born out of the Christ Impulse, that the impulses of Christianity work even where they are repudiated. Thus we find that in the early centuries, Christianity spreads quite independently of scholarship or erudition in its adherents; in the Middle Ages it spreads in such a way that the Schoolmen, with all their learning, can contribute very little to it; and finally we have the paradox of Christianity appearing in Darwinism as in an inverted picture. Everything that is great in the Darwinian conception derives its motive power from the Christian impulses. The Christian impulses within it will lead this science of itself out of and beyond materialism.

The Christian impulses have spread by strange channels—in the absence, so it appears, of intellectuality, learning, erudition. Christianity has spread irrespectively of the views of its adherents or opponents—even appearing in an inverted form in the domain of modern materialism. But what exactly is it that spreads? It is not the ideas nor is it the science of Christianity; nor can we say that it is the morality instilled by Christianity. Think only of the moral life of men in those times and we shall find much justification for the fury levelled by men who represented Christianity against those who were its real or alleged enemies. Even the moral power that might have been possessed by souls without much intellectual education will not greatly impress us. What, then, is this mysterious impulse which makes its victorious way through the world? Let us turn here to Spiritual Science, to clairvoyant consciousness. What power is at work in those unlearned men who, coming over from the East, infiltrated the world of Greco-Roman culture? What power is at work in the men who bring Christianity into the foreign world of the Germanic tribes? What is really at work in the materialistic natural science of modern times—the doctrines of which disguise its real nature? What is this power?—It is Christ Himself Who, through the centuries, wends His way from soul to soul, from heart to heart, no matter whether souls understand Him or not. It behoves us to leave aside the concepts that have become ingrained in us, to leave aside all scientific notions and point to the reality, showing how mysteriously Christ Himself is present in multitudinous impulses, taking form in the souls of thousands and tens of thousands of human beings, filling them with His power. It is Christ Himself, working in simple men, Who sweeps over the world of Greco-Roman culture; it is Christ Himself Who stands at the side of those who in later times bring Christianity to the Germanic peoples; it is He—Christ Himself in all His reality—Who makes His way from place to place, from soul to soul, penetrating these souls quite irrespectively of the ideas they hold concerning Him.

Let me here make a trivial comparison. How many people are there who understand nothing at all about the composition of foodstuffs and who are none the less well and properly nourished? It would certainly mean starvation if scientific knowledge of foodstuffs were essential to nourishment. Nourishment has nothing whatever to do with understanding the nature of foodstuffs. Similarly, the spread of Christianity over the earth had nothing to do with men's understanding of it. That is the strange fact. There is a mystery here, only to be explained when the answer can be found to the question: How does Christ Himself wield dominion in the minds and hearts of men?

When Spiritual Science, clairvoyant investigation, puts this question to itself, it is led, first of all, to an event from which the veils can really only be lifted by clairvoyant vision—an event that is entirely consistent with what I have been saying to-day. This above all will be clear to us: the time when Christ worked in the way I have described, is past and gone, and the time has come when men must understand Christ, must have real knowledge of Christ.

It is therefore also necessary to answer the question as to why our age was preceded by that other age when it was possible for the Christ Impulse to spread independently of men's understanding. The event to which clairvoyant consciousness points is that of Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit. Clairvoyant vision, quickened by the power of the Christ Impulse, was therefore directed, in the first place, to this event of Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Spirit. It is this event that presents itself first and foremost to clairvoyant investigation carried out from a certain standpoint.

What was it that happened at the moment in the earth's evolution described to us, somewhat unintelligibly to begin with, as the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles? When with clairvoyant vision one investigates what actually happened then, an answer is forthcoming from Spiritual Science as to what is meant when it is said that simple men—for the Apostles themselves were simple men—began to utter in different tongues, truths which came to them from the depths of spiritual life and which none could have thought them capable of uttering. It was then that the Christian impulses began to spread, independently of the understanding of those human beings to whom they made their way. From the event of Pentecost pours the stream that has been described. What, then, was this event of Pentecost? This question presented itself to Spiritual Science and with the spiritual-scientific answer to it begins—the Fifth Gospel.