The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I will have to organize the reflections we are now cultivating here in such a way that today I present the arguments developed yesterday in a broader way, in order to then come to a certain preliminary conclusion tomorrow. Therefore, today's lecture will have more of an episode to it.

In the present, one has a great deal of reason to reflect on this or that, including current events, if one does not intend to oversleep the most important impulses of our time. Particularly striking in the present, and, I would say, challenging questions is the phenomenon, which is well known to you, that in the broadest sense, the most monstrous dishonesty has taken hold in this present time, that precisely where the comprehensive plays out today, dishonesty is present. Such things, such an effective and drastic occurrence of untruthfulness, then also prompts spiritual scientific investigation into all kinds of related matters. And there, one can say, one often encounters in particular the fact, which I have also touched on here several times, that what is usually communicated as human history is a kind of fable convenante. It is not so much a matter of the facts that are communicated not being considered correct to a certain extent, but other facts – you will recall that I recently discussed here how the most profound influences of a person from Roman history have simply been erased – they are simply erased. The Church has erased an enormous amount of facts from history because it was important to the Church that certain facts not come to the knowledge of men.

Yesterday, we again spoke from one point of view about the period that introduced the Greco-Latin cultural period, about the important period in the 8th century BC. It is a time from which not much of the historical traditions speak. The historical traditions are already very, very uncertain, but a personality shines out from the beginning of this epoch, who has wrested considerations of the most diverse kind from very, very many people. The name of Pyzbagoras stands out from the time of origin, that is, after the 8th century BC, and with it the name of the Pythagorean School. And yesterday I pointed out what Pythagoras was able to receive from the remnants of the ancient Egyptian mystery truths, what these things were that Pythagoras was able to receive.

Now it is not only interesting to look at what Pythagoras and his students said and did, which was very incisive, because they not only developed a teaching activity, but also an extensive political activity. What Pythagoras and his students did is interesting, but it is also significant to consider the world that, in a sense, surrounds this Pythagorean activity, the world from which later Greek culture also grew, which had already absorbed a certain influence of that which, illuminated by special splendor, one finds in Pythagoras. If we take the life that later developed into Greek and Latin, in the 7th, 6th, and 5th centuries BCE, and we locate it on the Greek peninsula and the neighboring countries and the Italian peninsula, then, if you look at things not in terms of historical fable convenue, but if you look at them in the light of truth - and spiritual scientific research must always contribute to this - you will notice that one characteristic of humanity was very widespread in this life. There was hardly a time when so much lying occurred as during this period in the Mediterranean countries. The lies that people told one another were a very striking characteristic of the whole of that life out of which the later Greek and Roman civilizations developed.

There is no need to deceive ourselves in such matters. All that we see developing in Roman civilization—the tremendous beauty, the admirable sum of imaginative creations of Greece, the greatest sum of abstractions that the world has ever seen— , all of this grows out of the same soil as the plant world grows out of fertilizer, out of a soil that extends over the Mediterranean countries, out of a soil that is inhabited by people who are full of the addiction, the passion of lying. This is something that is not emphasized by history, but it must be understood if one wants to properly understand the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period. We are dealing with the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period, coming from earlier centuries and millennia to the eighth century BC. And the people who were the cultural bearers of the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period were essentially great liars. This is also the epoch in which the ability I spoke to you about yesterday developed in a very special way, and which is so extraordinarily interesting: the ability to form language out of the cosmic of reason. And the greatest talent was present precisely at that time, in addition to such things as I discussed yesterday in the great addiction to lying.

In these matters, one must not be deceived if one wants to see reality, just as one must not be deceived about the fact that the violet, which blossoms in spring, will wither away again and already carries within itself the forces of the ephemeral while it blossoms beautifully and gloriously. In the violet, one has, so to speak, successive formative and destructive forces. In human life, especially in the great life of humanity, we see this very, very often, even at the same time. We do not grasp reality if we do not grasp the necessity for such things to develop side by side: evolution and devolution, the possibility of having a constructive effect, as in the formation of language, for example, and at the same time that devastating effect, which has a destructive effect on spiritual life.

This is, so to speak, the other side of what I discussed with you yesterday. There is also a bright side. This bright side is of an even more spiritual-scientific nature. I already pointed out yesterday that it would not be possible to speak with such certainty about the things of language formation that we discussed yesterday if the life of man after death did not give one clear proof of it, in that what is composed here in life, for example, from individual word atoms or parts of words, is in turn dissolved. And this disintegration of words, this atomization of words, plays a significant role in the life of the dead. In a sense, the dead person lives from this atomization of words. And the dead person has the most definite feeling that he was cut off from the spiritual world in which he finds himself after his death by forming words out of sounds, out of letters, during his life, that is, before his death. The dead person has the feeling that language is, so to speak, a carpet that was laid in front of the spiritual world during life. And in the disentanglement of this carpet, in the disintegration of words, he has the feeling that he is now entering the spiritual world again. Therefore, one of the characteristics of the dead person is to dissolve, to pull apart, to disintegrate into their component parts the human passions that the person in question has encountered during the time between birth and death. The dead person, for instance, experiences a very solemn, great feeling when he succeeds in acquiring a certain understanding through such dissolution. I have often told you that the moment of death is, in a way, something frightening for the life here in the physical body. People also like to turn their faces away from death. After death the vision of death is always there – I have emphasized this often enough – but it does not mean anything terrible then; but by looking at his own death from the other side of life, there is always the certainty in this vision that he is an ego and remains an ego. I have emphasized this often.

But now it is a matter for the 'dead man to understand that which is revealed to him in the sight of death from the other side of life. He understands this better and better by the fact that, depending on whether he has spoken this or that language, he dissolves these or those words. The ancient Hebrews, and to a certain extent the Romans, had their so-called sacred name, the unutterable name of God, Yahweh. For the Hebrews, this unutterable name consisted of a certain combination of sounds that we perceive as five vowels, which were thought of as connected during physical life. Even in the Roman Jovis, Jupiter, only another form of the name of Jahwe is hidden; fundamentally, in relation to the five vowels, it is connected in a certain way in Jovis. In the dissolution of that which was connected here in this name of God, the dead man lived, and by dissolving the vowels that were composed in life, the meaning of death was also revealed to him at the same time, one could say. One must only try to fathom the revelation of this meaning of death in the right way. One must understand that this meaning of death is revealed to the dead through the dissolution of the holy name into its components, which then fade away and fade away into the world. The dissolution of this holy name is connected with the understanding of the spiritualization of death. It is a concept that is extremely difficult to describe. Death, viewed from the other side, can be called spiritualization. By looking at death from the other side, this sight is connected with the emergence of spirituality. And in the dissection of the word after the vowels, the spiritual reveals itself out of the decay that death signifies. Decay is at the same time the birth of the spiritual, the emergence of the spiritual. While we perceive decay in an unpleasant way, as something ugly, like any destruction, when seen from the other side, this destruction reveals itself as a spiritual illumination, which is then understood in the fading away. It is as if the sacred word resounded and radiated far and wide, and in radiating out dissolved into its vocalic components, which are then audible as if coming from the periphery of the world, and then make audible the meaning of death, the spiritual meaning of death.

This will already suggest to you that it is justified, just as one speaks of the members of human nature here in life – physical body, etheric body, astral body and I – to speak of the members of human nature that human nature has between death and a new birth. For inasmuch as I have, as it were, presented to you the central phenomenon that man continually has between death and a new birth, this unveiling of the spiritual meaning of death itself, the question must arise: What does this world, which is said to be revealed to people after death, actually look like? But this cannot be grasped other than by getting to know something of the nature and essence of the human being itself.

Today, let us first try to describe the dead in the same way as one would otherwise describe the living. We can begin with that part of the dead person that still has a great deal of connection – not kinship, but connection – with what a person experiences here between birth and death. So we are dealing here with the first part of human nature, which we can also call the ego, as we call, so to speak, the highest part of human nature between birth and death. We shall now omit the fact that immediately after death it still has the cover of the etheric body, which is then detached, and still has the cover of the astral body, which is also detached over time; these are components that, so to speak, do not belong. When we speak of the dead person, the only thing that can be recognized as the dead person's very own element is the ego. I said that there is a connection with the ego of earthly life, but not an actual kinship; for in fact, after death, this ego presents itself in a completely different way than the ego is experienced between birth and death. Between birth and death, the ego is, so to speak, something fluid, something that feels the power to change every day. Just think how terrible it would be in your physical life between birth and death if you were unable to grasp the thought: I did something bad yesterday, but I can make amends for it, I can do something good in return. Or if you, even younger, would have to say: I have learned little, but I cannot learn anything new. At no moment in life between birth and 'death is the ego so fixed that it could not, so to speak, be changed from within by its own willpower. That which you experience as the ego after death is something that has become fixed, that has taken on certain characteristics that cannot be changed immediately; it remains as it is. The transformation of the ego, which is in a state of constant flux during life between birth and death, into a fixed entity in which nothing can change, and which remains as it has formed itself during life, is the essential thing that must be grasped in order to understand this ego after death. There can be no question of development after death, which we must indeed speak of for the ego between birth and death. After death, the ego is, so to speak, a fixed spiritual entity that arises out of the vision of death itself, and nothing about this ego can be changed. One could say, if one wanted to express this matter in a more or less banal way: after death, man is condemned to view all the details of his life as something fixed. Just as you, when you look over a field, see the nearby plantings and the distant plantings next to each other, and as you see nothing fluid in them, but a fixed, extensive, and enduring structure, so you see the whole course of your course of your life, but not in such a way that what is in front is always obliterated by what is behind, as it is in the life of the physical body. You see it as a permanent, concrete field in which you cannot change anything at first merely by looking at it. It would also be bad for the dead person if that were not the case; for his gaze, the gaze of the dead person, is actually primarily absorbed by this ego. He is as if transfixed in this ego. And if this ego were to disappear, it would be for the dead person just as if the surrounding world of the senses were to disappear for the living. The individual human being in his ego is actually, if I may express it thus, as important to himself — but in saying this we are speaking an important truth — as the whole world of the senses, which we as human beings have in common, is for the human being here in physical life. A tremendous abyss would open up, an abyss of nothingness, if we were not able to see the frozen ego, the ego frozen from the liquid state, after death.

Secondly, we have a kind of spiritual being that we can also call a spirit self by analogy with what we already know. So, as the second link of the human being after death, we have a kind of spiritual being. This spiritual being is mainly perceived by the human being in such a way that this awareness of the spirit self arises from within. While the I presents a kind of external view, the consciousness of this spirit self arises from within. And to the same extent that one feels that this spirit self comes to life, to the same extent the beings of the higher hierarchies emerge from consciousness so that one knows that they are there. I call this, therefore, the spirit-self. I must define it exactly as I now write it on the blackboard, otherwise I would be writing something inaccurate for you.

What I have written now gives the facts quite correctly. You have the feeling that there is a being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the hierarchy of the exusiai, that is now directing its gaze to your ego. By directing your gaze to the I, either through some being of a hierarchy or through the fact that you know that your gaze is now directed to the I through a being of the other hierarchy, you get to know this hierarchy within the activity of your spiritual self. So you get to know the hierarchies through your own activity. Through your spiritual self you begin to find yourself in the company of the hierarchies. And while before this spirit self lights up, you still have the feeling that only you are dealing with it, directing your gaze at your own ego, you get the feeling more and more clearly that more and more entities of the higher hierarchies are taking care of you and interfering with your looking, directing your gaze. By developing your higher sensory activity, you feel more and more that the beings of the higher hierarchies are co-operating with you in this sensory activity. What would be unbearable for a person in the sense world here, becomes the very element of life for a person in the state after death.

Imagine you are standing here at the window looking out and observing the surroundings. One of you stands there and wants to look at the surroundings, and the first person sitting here goes over, turns your head to one side so that you look at something in that direction; a second person goes over, turns your head up a little so that you look at something else; a third person in turn a little around, so that you look at something else, and so the whole company sitting here would approach you from behind, and you would only have the aspect of your surroundings outside in that what is sitting here inside would constantly turn your head towards it. Do not think of this now from the outside, but as an inner experience, as an inner feeling. Then you have something that is quite analogous to this experience, which you have as your spiritual self. You become more and more immersed in the life of the higher hierarchies by the fact that these higher hierarchies come into your line of vision.

In the dissolution of words, of which we have already spoken, the beings of the higher hierarchies are already at work. That is one aspect of what is experienced. But it is the continuous enrichment of life that arises from gradually becoming more and more familiar with the hierarchies. And in a very similar way, one becomes acquainted with the beings with whom one has been somehow karmically connected before death. And there one feels that one is, so to speak, guided and directed. That is what can be said about the second link of the human being in the life between death and a new birth.

The third link is something that might at first seem a little shocking to a person's understanding. One gradually feels, by living into this life after death, permeated by a certain power, I might perhaps say, by a context of powers. By first feeling that the hierarchies approach and guide one in the supersensible activity of the senses – if I may use the expression – one gradually feels that these hierarchies imbue one with power and give one power. One gradually feels filled with this power, which the hierarchies infuse along with themselves, by implanting themselves in one, by instilling their nature in one. One feels this power gradually. One feels that one is not only directed by the hierarchies to this or that, but one feels that one oneself becomes inwardly filled with power through this activity of the hierarchies, which initially appears as an activity that mediates vision. One feels the forces of the cosmos, really the cosmos within oneself, flowing in like invigorating juices. But now, what is shocking, is that the forces that one now feels flowing into oneself are of a very peculiar kind. They are forces that are not at all constructive at first, but rather dissolving and destructive for what we call life here in the physical world. One gradually feels filled with cosmic, death-bringing world power.

It is important to take in such strange ideas, because only in this way can the spiritual world be truly understood. Imagine for a moment that you, in your spiritual and soul essence, are gradually filled with forces, by becoming aware of them within yourself: Through these powers, everything that lives here on earth would be killed if you were to touch it. — So, thirdly, you clothe yourself in what I can call, in analogy to something we already know, the spirit of life. You clothe yourself in something that can be called the spirit of life, but which derives its main properties from the fact that it is deadly to that which can otherwise be called the power of the life body. And you acquire a third link to your being, through which you are able to kill any etheric body that comes your way. Everything you touch through this link of your being becomes dead in the sense in which one speaks of death here on earth. And by killing through the powers you receive, you awaken spiritual substance from what you have killed, initially actually soul substance. It is a remarkable experience, which consists in the fact that through the touch of the living, the living is killed, but from this killing, soul-like arises, soul-like is released. It is a killing, but at the same time it is a release of the soul-like from the bonds of life. So that one can say: The spirit of life kills earthly life, releasing the soul in it. And one comes to this strange experience through the fact that in life, in the living, the soul is, as it were, enchanted, and that through this process, which is practiced after death, the enchanted soul is released from the living. One might be inclined to see something terrible and unappealing in the killing, in which, after all, the power we are talking about essentially works. This is not the case for life after death, because in killing, in the killing power, lies the continuous illumination of the soul, because through this the continuous arising of the soul is ignited. But the dead must be aware of this: not only must he always look to the death he himself has undergone, but he must also be aware that what is the essence of his death, so to speak, spreads over the foundation of everything he now experiences in the spiritual world. It is as if one now lived in the spiritual world in such a way that one can say: Here in this spiritual world, spiritual forms arise continually, initially actually soul forms; the soul shines forth in the most diverse ways. But if one were to inquire what the soil is from which all these soul forms sprout, it is this killing power that we have just discussed. So this life-destroying power, which is found here on earth, is our essential soul, which we have to acquire between death and a new birth, just as we have to acquire our physical body here in life.

As a fourth link, I can say, again in analogy to what we already know: the spiritual man. This spiritual man is felt to be something that one is inclined to count towards oneself in the time between death and a new birth, in that now, with the forces that are already being instilled through the hierarchies, as I have described, the possibility is now instilled in one, not only to kill, destroy, dissolve life - what one calls life here on earth - but also to destroy forms or to transform them into others. [It is written on the blackboard:]

1. The ego
2. The spiritual self
3. The spirit of life
4. The spiritual man.

directed by the hierarchies to the ego kills earthly life, releasing the soul in him.

It is naturally becoming more and more difficult to describe these things. But essentially the power of this spiritual man, as one has it between death and a new birth, consists in doing the opposite activity - if I may express it this way - of all that could be called: producing forms in the broadest sense. Here, if I want to concentrate on a specific example, I draw triangles, squares, and so on. After death, by virtue of the forces that are developed here, one 'redraws', one dissolves all that has been drawn, the forms. But the peculiar thing is that this does not just mean that one redraws something, but that at the same time it is a cosmic activity. One is now part of the cosmic activity, one is linked to the cosmic activity. For this dis-forming, this dis-solving of forms, is a cosmic activity, and man, by acquiring, after being imbued with the spirit of life, this power of dis-solving, has become part of the cosmic world. He works within the cosmos.

What we call destruction and downfall here on earth has a lot to do with formation and development in the spiritual worlds, and vice versa. What appears here as destruction, as demise, as a dissolving of forms and signs, has much to do with the genesis in the other, in the spiritual worlds. So that when I speak of dissolving of forms and signs, I am not speaking of demise in the spiritual world, but only of demise in the soul world, whereas I am speaking of the emergence of spiritual novelty in the spiritual world.

These things are connected with many secrets in the world. Today they approach southern Italy from central Italy; as you approach southern Italy, you come to areas that are poor, not particularly fertile, where few natural resources are available to people. These are the same areas where Pythagoras worked at the time of the rising of the fourth post-Atlantic period. And Pythagoras' effectiveness was at that time in the midst of the most fertile, richest, lushest areas. As short as the time has been since that epoch: by pointing out this very spot on earth where Phythagoras worked, one has transformed the transformation from a fertility and lushness that went to the degree of Sybatis, the Sybaris into poverty, even to the emergence of worrying disease phenomena. In place of the burgeoning, abundant life that existed in those times, of which only a little history remains, something develops that, compared to that abundant, burgeoning life, is also a poverty of nature. And it is really most interesting to observe such transitions in the outer world. In this outer world, the process of becoming is constantly giving rise to decay. People, in their historical research, do not think far enough to properly link the continuous process of becoming with decay. In the midst of the luxuriant abundance, in which there was a great deal of lying, Pythagoras developed his activity, and this activity continued after his death. And that which Pythagoras and the Pythagorean souls had to do after death is in many ways connected with what manifested itself in the decline of the flourishing, sprouting life in the midst of which Pythagoras was. Pythagoras and the souls of his followers were not entirely uninvolved in the work of destruction that took place in the post-Pythagorean period. And if you want to understand the world as a whole, you just have to realize that from the different aspects here between birth and death and between death and new birth, things look quite different. He who would commit an outrage if he were to artificially undermine abundant, burgeoning life here is, as it were, only doing something that happens in the sense of eternal necessity when he participates in such a work in the life between death and new birth, which here obviously means destruction.

With the third post-Atlantic period, something should also perish, and that left its shadows. Much should perish in a different area than the one just discussed. And it is essentially connected with this decline of the third post-Atlantean epoch that there was so much lying at that time. People lied on earth because, as I explained to you yesterday, they were still in contact with the cosmic powers. But the cosmic powers that were involved in the evolution of the earth before the 8th century BC were often lying powers. Demonic liars were active in the sphere into which the human being's soul developed by developing words in the way I discussed yesterday. He had to, as it were, plunge the head of his soul into a sphere in which he could do so: the sphere of cosmic reason. But when he put the head of his soul into it, there was in it that Ahrimanic power, which expressed itself in the activity of innumerable demons of lies. And out of this same source, out of which the speech-forming power of that time was drawn, out of the same power developed on the soil of Mediterranean culture this enormous power, this gigantic power of lying. Men lied because the demons who were connected with those other demons who inspired the speech-forming faculty were liars. And these demonic liars, who were of an Ahrimanic nature, had the task of bringing to destruction that which had to be destroyed in order that the third post-Atlantean period might go down and the fourth post-Atlantean period might come up.

The world is organized according to necessity, and one must look to this necessity if one wants to answer the great question that we posed yesterday at the beginning of our reflections, the great question of the connection between the moral and the ideal with the natural event. I will talk about this further tomorrow, in order to bring these reflections to a small conclusion for the time being.

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.

To-day and in the next few days I should like to draw from our recent studies some conclusions about human life itself. I will first mention certain thoughts which are brought against Anthroposophy from outside, and will then show how with regard to these ideas we should lay hold of and emphasise certain conceptions.

Now in the life of nature, in the natural order, everyone to-day recognises—in terms of the natural order, certainly—the same kind of thing that we want to establish through Spiritual Science for the spiritual life, the spiritual order. The anthroposophical outlook would be wrongly interpreted if it were to infuse modern Spiritual Science with any kind of old errors or mystical ideas, bordering on superstition. We must accustom ourselves to use such terms as Ahrimanic, Luciferic—now familiar to us—for the spiritual order, in the same way, though certainly on a higher level, that a natural scientist speaks of positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on. In contradistinction to the prejudices of present-day natural science, however, we must be clear that directly we rise to consideration of the spiritual order of the world, those concepts which in natural science have a fixed and highly abstract content, must be grasped in a more concrete and spiritual sense.

Now we know that during the life between birth and death man has what we are accustomed to call his physical body; beyond this is the etheric body or—to use the more workable expression I am trying to introduce—the body of formative forces; then comes the astral body which has a conscious character, but not yet that of our present-day consciousness. What many people to-day call the subconscious appertains to the astral body. Then comes what is called our ordinary consciousness, which alternates between the states of sleeping and waking. In the sleeping state it is represented only by chaotic dreams. In the waking state, not content with perceptions only, it has recourse to abstract judgments and concepts.

All these aspects of consciousness belong to the part of man's being we call the “I,” or ego. At the present time it is only in this last member of the human organism, in the ego itself, that man can find his bearings. The ego is mirrored for him in his consciousness. It is in this ego that are really enacted all the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul. Everything else—astral body, etheric body, and the physical body in its true form—lies outside his consciousness and also outside the ego. For all that is stated about the physical body in ordinary science, in anatomy, physiology and so forth, refers only to its outer aspect—to as much of it as enters our consciousness in the same way as other external objects are perceived. What we consciously perceive is an external picture of the physical body, not the physical body itself.

Thus the three members of man's being which, in accordance with their evolution, we call pre-earthly—you know about this evolution from my Occult Science—these three members are outside the field of normal human consciousness. Now you know that with regard to the spiritual order we speak of Beings who, as members of the various Hierarchies, are ranged above man, just as below him are ranged the three kingdoms of nature—the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. As soon as we consider man in a spiritual sense, we can no longer speak only of those contents of the astral, etheric and physical bodies of which ordinary science or even Anthroposophy speak when they are concerned only with human life in the sense-perceptible world. Therefore in our earlier studies this autumn I mentioned that if we look at these lower members of man's nature (let us call them that) as they truly are, we find that Spirits of the individual Hierarchies are essentially connected with them.

In the sense of my recent remarks on Goethe's world-conception, we may say: In so far as through these three members man develops himself in the course of time, in so far as he goes through the evolution open to him between birth and death, he is connected with certain spiritual forces which lie behind his evolution. I tried to make this clear to you by saying: If we look upon this as man's present-day being

(diagram), we have to think of it as connected from its evolutionary past with the spiritual Powers whom we have recognised as belonging to the higher Hierarchies. As you know, in a normal man these spiritual Powers, with the exception of the Spirits of Form, the Exusiai, do not work directly within the ego. Thus, except for the Spirits of Form, the Powers who endow man with his original form, the remaining spiritual Powers do not work into his present consciousness.

We can get some idea of the Spirits of Form—a very meagre idea but in some degree relevant—if we look at one aspect of the human bodily form which is acquired during the earliest period of physical life. We are all born as more or less crawling beings, with no power to stand vertically. Now a great deal in the whole being of man is connected with his upright posture, or rather with the force which makes this posture the true one for him. And when we consider the merely outward features which distinguish man from the animals, we should not look at the things usually seen, the bones, muscles, and so on, which in essentials are common to both man and animal; we should focus our attention on this force of uprightness which gives the growing human being his form. It is only part of the difference, but it is an essential part. This force of uprightness that intervenes in our physical development is of the same nature as all the forces that bestow on earthly man his form. It is only forces of this kind that penetrate into our ego.

But there are also the forces of cosmic movement, cosmic wisdom, cosmic will—Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Thrones, if we use their ancient names while approaching them in a modern spirit. These forces intervene in the unconscious parts of man's being—those therefore that appertain to his astral body, his body of formative forces or etheric body, and his physical body. And so, when these members of man's nature are observed without the spiritual content to which I have referred, we are concerned with mere illusions, mere phantoms. In truth, we are not to be found in our outward appearance; our real being is in the aforesaid spiritual forces.

Now—as I said recently in connection with Goethe's world-conception—there are forces which work upon man for a time, without being directly involved in his evolution. These two forces we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic working more spiritually (see red in diagram), the Ahrimanic more in the subconscious (lilac in diagram).

Hence we have a threefold cosmic intervention in human life. We can say: In man's nature there are certain spiritual

forces connected directly with the course of his evolution. And there are two other kinds of forces, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, not directly connected with his evolution; they work upon him for a time and are thus an addition to his inherent constitution.

Let us now consider life. When we consider life, we do not see only the stream of forces that actually belongs to us; we always see something flowing together out of the three streams. Whatever we survey, the outer world of the senses, or the historical life of man taking its course between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, action and inaction, we see it in such a way that the three streams are flowing into one another. In ordinary life we do not go in for what the chemist does when, instead of leaving water as the simple liquid it appears to be, he analyses it into hydrogen and oxygen. Spiritual science must undertake this analysis. Spiritual science must go in for spiritual chemistry; otherwise it will never be possible thoroughly to understand human life.

From various points of view we have described the special characteristics of the type of being we call Luciferic, and those of the type of being we call Ahrimanic. Our task now is to go into these things from yet another point of view, so as to relate them directly to human life. Where in man's life is the point at which Luciferic forces acquire particular influence, and where the point at which particular influence is acquired by the Ahrimanic forces?

Now if man could give himself up to the quiet development proper to his original being (you know from earlier studies that he would then be able to acquire self-knowledge only in the second half of life) he would not have been exposed to the periodic ingress of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But in real life, as we have to live it, man is exposed to the periodic ingress of these powers—yes, he must indeed reckon with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Now in all that belongs more to the sphere of the conscious in man, but in such a way that he does not strive after this consciousness through nature but by going beyond nature (we go beyond nature when, for example, we acquire self-knowledge during the first half of life)—in everything he strives for through consciousness there lies something we can describe only as super-consciousness. But for this element of super-consciousness, our consciousness would appear quite different. It is super-consciousness that enables man to introduce into historical life more than he could do if he had to depend solely on his physical development. At the present juncture in man's earthly evolution we should have a very different form of culture if this super-consciousness had not flowed in. With this super-consciousness, however, the possibility of ingress is quite definitely given to Luciferic powers.

We must recognise in the right way how these powers work into human consciousness. Without them, man would never be induced to develop a form of thinking different from that which I recently described to you as the ideal of the Goethean world-conception. With the aid of Luciferic powers, he forms hypotheses, builds imaginative pictures that transcend reality. He does not simply seize upon reality; with his consciousness he unites super-consciousness. He forms all manner of ideas about reality—ideas that enable him to come to closer grips with reality than he otherwise would do. And if we turn our gaze to the whole sphere of art, where the super-conscious plays so large a part, we must emphasise that if art is not to degenerate into mere naturalism, the highest possible degree of Luciferic activity must come in. It is no use saying—I have emphasised this again and again—that man should keep the Luciferic away from his life. If he could do so, he would be unable to lead a real life; he would have to become an arch-philistine. It is the Luciferic activity which like a leaven saves him over and over again—spurs him on to struggle out of Philistinism.

This Luciferic activity, however, is at the same time the cause of man's tendency to look at the world from the airy viewpoint of a bird, as it were. All that arises in the course of history as wonderful programmes, marvellously beautiful ideas, by which it is always believed that in some way or other a return can be made to the Golden Age—all this has its origin in the Luciferic tendencies which flow into man. Everything by which he tries to loosen his connection with reality, to soar above his actual circumstances—all this points to the Luciferic. So, too, does the impulse that is always tending to diminish the interest we take in our fellow-men. Were we to follow our original nature, in accordance with the evolutionary forces that truly belong to us, we should feel an interest in our fellow-men far beyond the usual measure. The Luciferic element in our nature produces a certain lack of interest in other people. And if we study the real being of man, we ought to lay great emphasis on the following point—that a great deal in the world would be different if we were to recognise in its reality this urge of ours towards an excessive interest in our own concoctions and a much too meagre interest in what other people think and feel and will. Knowledge of man in the right sense is acquired only if we permeate our approach with the question: What is it that impels me to lose interest in other people? It must be a future task of human culture to develop this knowledge of man. To-day, knowledge of man is often said to consist in what anyone may say about people in accordance with his own idea of what they are or what they should be. Taking people as they are and being quite clear that everyone is as he is, even the criminal—we must go as far as that—tells us more important things about the world than any personal fancies we may have about the being of man, however beautiful they may be. To say this to ourselves is to set up a counterpoise to the Luciferic element within us.

An endeavour to gain a knowledge of man in this way would reveal an endless amount. And a genuine interest in the real nature of man has never been further off than it is to-day. But what is meant here is not to be confused with a lack of critical attitude towards human beings. Anyone who starts out with the idea that all men must be looked upon as good and have to be given equal affection is dealing with the matter in a most comfortably Luciferic way, for all that is pure fantasy. This notion of regarding all men as equal is sheer Luciferic fantasy; the point is not to cherish a general idea but to penetrate to the actual character of every individual man and to develop for it a loving—or, perhaps better, an interested—undemanding.

Now you may ask: What is the object of the presence of this Luciferic force in us, if it prevents us from being tolerant towards human nature in a wise sense and from developing interest in it? What is this Luciferic force in us meant for? In the household of the spirit it is thoroughly justified. The Luciferic force has to be there because if we were only in the progressive stream of cosmic influence and were to develop a tendency to know each individual man in accordance with his nature and spirit, then we should be drowned in ail our knowledge about man. We should go under and never be able to find ourselves properly. A fact connected with many of the secrets of existence is that there is truly nothing in life which, if carried to an extreme conclusion, does not turn into something bad or unfortunate. That which rightly draws us to other people, and enables us to find the other man in ourselves, would have the effect of drowning us in our knowledge of man if the Luciferic goad were not always there, ready again and again to save us from drowning, to raise us to the surface, bringing us back to ourselves and kindling interest in our own being. It is just in our human relations that we live in a continuous fluctuation between our own original force and the Luciferic force. And anyone who says: Would it not show more intelligence if man were to follow his own original force without being touched by the Luciferic force?—anyone who maintains this ought also to maintain that if he had scales with two pans he would prefer to dispense with one pan and weigh simply with the other. Life runs its course in states of balance, not in absolutely fixed conditions. This is what can first of all be said of the Luciferic grip upon human life. It lays hold of human consciousness, but in such a way that super-consciousness intermingles with consciousness.

The Ahrimanic element, on the other hand, exerts its influence chiefly in the subconscious. In all the subconscious impulses in man's nature, often subtle impulses, the Ahrimanic fortes mingle. If we want to characterise Ahriman and Lucifer we might say: Lucifer is a proud Spirit who likes to soar away into the heights where lofty visions open out. Ahriman is a morally lonely Spirit who does not readily make his presence known; he sets his nature to work in man's subconscious, works upon man's subconscious, conjures judgments out of it. People then believe that they judge out of their own consciousness, whereas they often derive an opinion from subconscious instincts, out of subtle subconscious impulses, or they even allow it to be conjured forth by the Ahrimanic forces themselves.

Religious descriptions have, as we know, often sprung from old conceptions which have now been taken over by Spiritual Science. And Peter was not far wrong in calling Ahriman a “prowling lion seeking whom he might devour.” For Ahriman really does prowl in the hidden parts of man's nature, in his subconscious; he strives to reach his earthly goal by diverting man's subconscious force to himself, so as spiritually to attain different ends in world-evolution from those lying in the direct human stream.

Where historical life is concerned it is always Luciferic forces that lead us to hatch out far-reaching world-dreams which fail to reckon with the nature of man. In the course of human thought what a vast number of ideas have been devised for making the world happy! And in the firm opinion of those who devise them, the world can become happy only through these particular ideas. This is because such Luciferic thinking is of an airy kind, soaring aloft and taking no account of all that is swarming around below, and believing that the world can be organised on the lines of these airy notions. Such ideas of how to make the world happy, resting always upon a defective knowledge of man, are of a Luciferic nature; dreams of world power derived from particular realms of human activity are of an Ahrimanic kind. For these dreams are developed out of the subconscious. It is Ahrimanic to take a certain realm of human activity and to wish to bring the whole world under its aegis. All that is connected with man's lust for ruling over his fellows, all that is in opposition to healthy social impulses, is of an Ahrimanic nature. The man of whom it could be said—not in a superstitious way but in our own sense—that he is possessed by Lucifer, loses interest in his fellow-men. The man possessed by Ahriman would like to have as many men as possible in his power and then to proceed—if he is clever—to make use of human frailty in order to rule over men. It is Ahrimanic to seek in the sub-earthly, in the subconscious, for human weaknesses as a means of ruling men.

Now we must ask: Where does all this come from? That above all is the question which must interest us: Where does it all come from? We have to ask: Of what nature are such forces as the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in their true being? Now we know that our Earth is—to use a Goethean expression—a metamorphosis of previous cosmic world-bodies, the fourth metamorphosis. And in order to have names for them, we have said: The Earth was first incorporated as Saturn, then as Sun, then as Moon, and is now incorporated as Earth.¹ Thus we know that this Earth is the fourth incorporation of its cosmic being, the fourth metamorphosis; and it will go through further metamorphoses. We must take this into consideration if we now go on to ask: In the whole cosmic framework which embraces man, what significance have the forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings? We know that with the formation assumed by that part of the cosmos most nearly concerning us—our Earth—the Spirits of Form are connected. And if we examine a particularly characteristic feature of this Earth-formation, we find it—as I said before—to be identical, though only in a limited respect, with the way in which we overcome gravity through our own power of standing upright. These Spirits of Form are in a certain sense the ruling forces in earthly existence—that is, in the present metamorphosis of our planet. As we know, however, these Spirits of Form work through other Spirits whom we call Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, using old names in a modern connotation.

Now, with regard to these Beings, we are interested above all in the Archai, the Primal Forces, Primal Beginnings. We know that in the ranks of spiritual Beings, the Spirits of Form come immediately above the Archai. Hence we find that in the course of man's original evolution the forces of the Archai are to a certain extent in the service of the Spirits of Form. Into the being of man there work Archai and Exusiai—the Spirits we also call Primal Forces and those we call Spirits of Form. Besides this, however, there are also certain Spirits of Form who are disguised as Archai. They can be Exusiai, but they act only as Archai; they take on that rôle. This is an essential fact we discover—how spiritual Beings can take on a certain rôle which differs from the actual stage of their own evolution.

This has a quite definite consequence. Earthly form can be just as dependent on those Primal Forces who are really Spirits of Form, as it is upon the ordinary Spirits of Form. But the important thing is that everything in our earthly existence which is connected with space through taking shape in space is shaped out of the non-spatial. We comprehend the spatial only if we trace it back in its picture-nature to primal pictures that are outside space. Naturally, one of the difficulties for Western thinking is to form a conception of the spaceless. Yet it is true that everything connected with our primeval manhood, everything proceeding from the Spirits of Form, when it takes shape in space, is an effect of the spaceless. To speak concretely, when as individual human beings, who first crawl on all-fours, we learn to stand upright and thus overcome gravity in our upright posture, we place ourselves into space. But the force that is fundamentally responsible for this makes its way into space out of the spaceless.

If therefore as men we were subject only to the Spirits of Form proper to us, we should in every way place ourselves into space, bring the spaceless to realisation in space, for the Spirits of Form do not live in space. Anyone who seeks the Divine in space will not find it ... that goes without saying. Anything which arises as form in space is a realisation of the spaceless.

Those Beings who are Spirits of Form but act as Archai, as Primal Forces, should really, according to their essential nature, belong to the spaceless. But they enter space, they work in space. And this is characteristic of the Ahrimanic—that spiritual Beings who in their true nature are intended to be spaceless have preferred to work in space. This enables forms to arise in space that do not ray in directly out of the spaceless. Thus the spatial is portrayed in the spatial, so that one spatial form reflects another.

Perhaps I may take a concrete case. We men are all different from one another because we are placed here out of the spaceless. Our archetypes are in the spaceless. Everything is different from everything else. You have heard the famous story of how, at the instigation of Leibniz, certain princesses—for sometimes princesses have nothing better to do—searched the garden for two leaves absolutely alike and did not find them, for there are no two identical leaves. We also are forms created out of the spaceless, in so far as we do not resemble each other. But from another aspect we are alike—especially when we are blood relations. We resemble one another because there are spiritual Beings who form the spatial according to the spatial, not merely the spatial according to the spaceless. We resemble each other because we are permeated by Ahrimanic forces. This must be recognised, or we shall merely inveigh against Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces without any wish to understand them.

This example illustrates very clearly how Ahriman plays into our life. In so far as you can venture to say to yourself, “According to my form I am individual man, different from any other,” you are in the direct line of evolution. And were this the only fact valid in the world, and if there were no Ahrimanic side-streams to it, a mother would not be able to rejoice that her little daughter resembles her so wonderfully, for it would strike her that each individual human being is a spatial image of something outside space, that nothing spatial is a replica of anything in space. The entry into space of certain Spirits of Form gives the Ahrimanic its opportunity. Naturally this Ahrimanic element is not confined to similarity among human beings—it extends to many other things; we have simply taken one example of it.

Now I will ask you to call to mind what I added—not for your comfort but as arising out of our subject—after having told you that man really becomes apt for self-knowledge only in the second half of life. I said: In so far as our life takes this course in time, and if nothing else worked upon us, we could, in fact, arrive at self-knowledge only in the second half of life. But—so I said at the time—in the first half of life Luciferic forces work on us and produce a self-knowledge that is not the result of our own original human nature. In contrast to human life as it would be if it followed its original pattern, I set what I have called the realm of duration. In regard to everything that belongs to our original human nature we are different persons at fifty from what we were at twenty; we develop. In regard to everything in us that we do not develop, we belong not to our bodily nature but to the realm of soul and spirit and are connected with the realm of duration, with that realm in which time plays no part. Just as the spaceless lies at the basis of everything spatial, so at the basis of everything temporal there is duration.

We should be quite different human beings if we were not connected with the realm of duration. As I said a short while ago, we should wake out of a certain life of dreams only at twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. We live, however, in the realm of duration, and this gives balance to our dozing through the first half of life and the terrible intellectual brightness of the second half.

Now to this realm of duration belong, as we know, all the spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, with the single exception of the Spirits of Form. They play into the kingdom of evolution in time. But because they live both spatially and spacelessly, because they pass their life between space and the spaceless, they call spatial forms into existence out of the spaceless. This admits of a time-process; their life plays into time. The other Beings, however, of a higher rank than the Spirits of Form among the Hierarchies, belong entirely to duration. It is only by way of comparison that they can be spoken of as Beings of time; if this is meant to correspond to reality, it is nonsense. It is most difficult to talk about these things for the simple reason that, at the present stage of evolution, so very few men have any lively sense of concepts and ideas developed outside space and outside time. Most people would explain away the spaceless as sheer fantasy; and it is the same with the timeless, the enduring, the imperishable, and even the immutable.

Beings above the rank of the Exusiai, accordingly, belong only to the realm of duration. But there are those among them who take on the role of Beings in time, who enter time. Just as those other Beings, the Ahrimanic Beings I have described, enter space, so there are Beings who enter time. These are Luciferic Beings, who really belong to the ranks of Spirits of Wisdom, but because they work in time they do so in the character of Spirits of Form. And that which would otherwise work timelessly in man's soul during life is brought into time by these Spirits. Hence it comes about that certain things which could always be in existence for us were we allowed to take our course according only to the realm of duration, succumb to time. For instance, we may forget them, or remember them either more or less well, and so on, and this remembrance depends only upon our bodily-soul nature, not upon our soul-spiritual nature.

Spirits of Duration, therefore, who act as Spirits of Time—they are Luciferic powers; in the cosmic order they are really of a much higher rank than those Powers of whom many clergymen, however highly educated in theology they may think themselves, speak when they talk of the divine. ... In reality they are referring to much less exalted Powers, as I have indeed said before.

These Luciferic Beings are able to transfer into time what would otherwise appear to our human perception as purely spiritual and timeless—they give it the semblance of running its course in time. And this temporal semblance, imparted to certain phenomena in ourselves, is the sole reason why people maintain that their spiritual activity has a material origin. Were we not permeated in our souls by Luciferic Beings, our spiritual activity would appear to us as coming directly from the spiritual. We should never imagine that spiritual activity could depend on the material. We should see that the image I often use is the only right one—that whoever believes his spiritual activity arises from the material is like a man who goes up to a mirror and thinks that the reflection arises from a being behind it. Certainly the image depends upon how the mirror is constructed, and so is our thinking dependent upon our bodily nature. The body, however, does nothing more than the mirror does; if the Luciferic semblance were absent, the mirror would directly reveal to human perception that spiritual activity is merely given its form by the material. In so far as Lucifer is implicated in our super-consciousness, he calls forth the semblance that leads us by the nose in the same way as if we were to go up to a mirror and break it in order to find out how whoever was behind it had managed to get a hold there.

This illusion that the spiritual can originate in the material is essentially Luciferic. And anyone who maintains that the spiritual is a product of the material is in fact declaring—though he may not say so—that Lucifer is his God. The assertion that the spiritual comes forth from the material, which is exactly the same as saying that a mirror produces a reflection, as if there were beings behind the mirror ... this assertion that the material produces the spiritual, the spiritual in man, is identical with declaring, even if not in words: Lucifer is God.

Now we can also seek knowledge about the opposite pole. A Luciferic misrepresentation is that the mirror, the material, drives out the spiritual from itself. The opposite pole is this—the illusion also exists among men that the content of the physical world of the senses has power to work upon the inner being of man. If the Ahrimanic illusion, which arises through forces entering space out of the spaceless were not present, man would perceive how no influence could ever be exercised upon his inner being by forces anchored in the material. The assertion that in the material there are forces, energies, which are able to work on further in man, is an entirely Ahrimanic assertion; whoever makes it, even without words, is declaring Ahriman to be his God.

Nevertheless man sways between these two illusions. First, the illusion that repeatedly deceives him—that the mirror itself produces pictures of real beings, as if the material were able to bring forth spiritual activities. And the other illusion—that in the external existence of the senses energies are contained which are somehow transformed so as to bring about human activities. The first is the Luciferic illusion; the other, the Ahrimanic.

What is so characteristic of our present time is that it has no inclination to go into the spiritual in the same way that it goes into the natural order. It is certainly easier to speak about the spirit from the standpoint of a nebulous mysticism, or in terms of abstract ideas, than to enter concretely into spiritual processes and spiritual impulses in a truly scientific way, as is done in the case of nature itself.

We live now in an age when man must consciously begin to make clear to himself what is working in his soul. We know why the time is past when man could draw from an unconscious source the impulses he needed to guide him further. To-day he must begin consciously to enter the realm in which lives his soul-nature, and this soul-nature is generated by consciousness.

Thus we are able to say that if man were to follow in his evolution only his original nature and the good spiritual forces in the world, he would be a very different being from what he now is, when he pursues this age-old development in conjunction with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces working upon him in time.

The question now is this: How is a balance set up between these three forces? In order to set up this balance, or at least to recognise how it can be done, we must look at the following.

External natural science is quite content to judge in certain realms according to this principle: a knife has to do with eating, so one goes to the razor-case for a razor and cuts up the food. That is how many judgments in natural science are formed nowadays—for example, about death. Modern natural science does not go much further with its ready-made ideas about the phenomenon of death than to call it the cessation of an organism. That is easy, for then—as is done in a grotesque way to-day by many so-called scientists—we can speak of plant death, animal death, human death, all in the same sense. That, however, is really no different from speaking of a knife and putting a table-knife and a razor in the same category. In truth, what can be called death is different in plants, different in the animal, different in the case of human beings. But because in all three a cessation of organic functions is seen, people generalise.

When we study human death—and we have very often talked of it—then we find that it can be looked upon in a certain sense as the counterpoise for the Luciferic forces. Death, as you know, is not just a once-only phenomenon, for a man actually begins to die the moment he is born. The impulses of death are already laid in him and death itself comes about at a certain point of time. Everything in the way of impulses leading to death is at the same time a force which sets up a counterpoise to the Luciferic forces. For through death man is led out beyond the temporal into the realm of duration.

Now we know that the Luciferic forces really belong by nature to the realm of duration, and that what they are meant to do in the realm of duration they carry into the temporal. This would not be balanced if death, which leads man out of the temporal into the realm of duration, were not introduced into the kingdom of the temporal. Death balances the Luciferic. The Luciferic force carries duration into time; death carries time out into duration. There we have it in abstract words—but in this abstraction there is a very great amount of the concrete.

And what have we had to say of Ahriman? He is responsible for similarity. I have given you a concrete case of human similarity which is connected with Ahriman. And here, too, a counterpoise must be set up. But strangely enough, similarity is often related to this counterpoise through one of those confused concepts that arise when one does not enter into the deeper connections. The counterpoise to human similarity is the force of heredity; we are not alike merely in the shaping of our outward form, but we bear inner forces of heredity within us. Through these forces we actually work against similarity of form. It is only a confused science that identifies similarity with heredity. We look like our parents, but at the same time in our inner man we have certain forces inherited from them which strive to recapture the original image of the human being. These inherited forces do actually fight against similarity. A more subtle observation of man's life can show us this, without any supersensible powers, but solely through external observation. Just try to ask the question of life in the right way; try to observe men who in some outward characteristic particularly resemble their parents, grandparents and so on; and then look at the inherited moral impulses. You will soon see that these inherited moral impulses are, as a rule, working against similarity of outward appearance.

If in the case of distinguished personalities mentioned in history you are impressed by how much their pictures make them look like their forefathers, you will always notice that their biographies bring out attributes of soul—and these are precisely the inherited attributes—which are opposed to those from which the similarities of form have come. This is essentially one of the mysteries of life. Forebears would understand their descendants far better, and parents their children, if they were able to look this fact in the face completely without prejudice. If, for example, a mother has a little son who is very much like her, she can be pleased; but when it comes to education it might be useful for her to say: “What will happen if my son develops those qualities which are like the qualities that make for quarrels between my husband and me?” These concrete impulses have a tremendous importance in life and should be noticed. To know of them will be particularly necessary for the task of education, for the evolution of human beings in the future. For it will not be possible in the future to derive our education from abstract principles; we shall have to educate on an empirical, concrete basis. And we do not discover these empirical, concrete bases if we have no power to read life. We must be able to read life; but for that we must learn its alphabet. As you know, there is much more to it than that, but the most necessary alphabet that will suffice for the immediate future is to know three letters—normal evolution, Ahrimanic evolution, Luciferic evolution. Just as no-one can read a book without knowing his ABC, so anyone who is ignorant of these three letters cannot read—they are simply the letters through which one learns how to read life. Only by our learning to read life will the Utopian spirit so widespread among men be overcome. And people will then have to embark on a study of those forces which play into life.

Now naturally someone may say: “You have been talking here about the original being of man, but it is nowhere to be found.” That goes without saying; but as an objection it is no different from this: “You have been telling me here of how in the flowing water of a river there is hydrogen and oxygen, but I see nothing of all that.” It is indeed necessary to go into these things, above all to have a correct concept of what form is. I have previously used a comparison which I should now like to repeat.

One can arrive at Coblenz, or some other place, even at Basle, and admire the Rhine, perhaps feeling impelled to say: “This Rhine, it flows on, we don't know for how long it has done so but certainly for centuries, perhaps for an incalculable time. How old this Rhine is!”—What part of it is actually old? The water you look at will be at a quite different place in a few days; it will be far away; so it is certainly not old, for a few days ago it was not yet there, but somewhere quite else. What you see there is definitely not old; you have no right to call it centuries old. And when you speak of the Rhine, you probably do not mean its bed, the channel where its waters flow. In reality you are speaking of something not present before you. When you speak of reality, you cannot indeed refer to what you have before your eyes, for that is a confluence of forces working through the world and is merely a state of equilibrium. In whatever direction you may look, there is merely a state of equilibrium. You have to work through to the realities. And only by working through to the realities is it possible to learn the alphabet of life.

To-morrow I shall be speaking of the connection of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses with the Christ-Jahve impulse, so that you may see how, in reality, the Christ-Jahve impulse flows into these streams.

• 1. Op. cit. Chapter IV of Occult Science—an Outline.

From the manifold indications and details I have given concerning the Christ Mystery, you will be aware that we must differentiate between what had come to be present in the general course of human evolution at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and what came in through the Mystery of Golgotha. You know that in human evolution we have to do with a continuous stream of forces proceeding from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who belong to man's original nature, and also with two side-streams, the Luciferic stream and the Ahrimanic stream.

Now the point is that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic streams reached a certain climax, the climax of the usefulness of their working within human evolution, just at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and—if one may put it like this—mankind was threatened by the danger of this climax being overstepped, so that the necessary equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces in the whole evolution of mankind might have been lost. If we look at mankind's evolution as progressing in a straight line (see diagram), we can say: To the course of this evolution belong the Lemurian age (we will start there), the Atlantean age, and our own age, the fifth, which we always refer to as the post-Atlantean age. If I draw in the strength of the Luciferic influence as a red line, we can say: In the Lemurian age a certain strength is there which first grows, then decreases, becomes very slight, and disappears entirely in the Atlantean age—to arise again in the post-Atlantean age. So that, strictly speaking, in the Atlantean epoch (I am talking not of the evolution of individuals but of mankind as a whole) very little of the direct influence of the Luciferic is there (see red line in diagram).

But in this Atlantean age the Ahrimanic development was there instead, where I have put in a yellow line. I have to show it as particularly strong in the Atlantean age, and later, in the post-Atlantean times, becoming weaker. I am referring now to historical evolution, and when we characterise anything in this way, we must always pay heed to what I said recently: when Lucifer is working particularly strongly, he calls up Ahriman in the subconscious. Thus, if in our fifth age the Luciferic curve is specially noticeable, this does not mean that because Lucifer is active, Ahriman is somewhat outside our sphere. On the contrary, it means that, because Lucifer is working strongly among the forces of history, Ahriman sets to work particularly in the subconscious regions of man.

You see, therefore, that in man's earthly evolution a kind of waving line is there in the case of Ahriman's activity, just as in that of Lucifer. These degrees of strength of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic both have to be balanced. But in the course of history this state of equilibrium has never come to perfection. There have been times when the Luciferic was working with great strength, and times when the Ahrimanic was doing so.

If we look at the period of human evolution when mankind was approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces was extraordinarily fluctuating, vacillating—no real balance was there. We have on one hand the stream of mankind which is moving towards the Mystery of Golgotha and manifests historically in the evolution of the Semitic peoples. This stream is particularly susceptible to the Luciferic influence, whereby a strong Ahrimanic activity is brought about in the subconscious.

On the other hand, the Greek nature is highly susceptible to the forces of Ahriman, and this brings about great Luciferic activity in the subconscious. We can fully understand the Semitic and Greek cultures—polaric opposites of one another—only by keeping in mind this vacillation in human evolution between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered Earth evolution from without, the influence of Greece was of enormous importance for the people of the West. This influence, however, was already beginning to wane, or, more exactly, it had passed its peak. Greek culture was threatened with a decline which can be characterised in the following way. Precisely through the Ahrimanic intervention experienced by the Greeks, and manifest as a Luciferic element of their art, they had developed a lofty wisdom. And—as we have often said—this wisdom took on a very individual, humanly individual, character. But fundamentally it was at its greatest where there still shone into it out of primeval times the teachings received from actual spiritual Beings.

We know that in those times the Teachers of mankind were those who were inspired, initiated, directly from the spiritual world. But through them spiritual Beings spoke; and, if we look back into those remote ages of mankind's evolution at the beginning of the fifth epoch, we can see into a wonderful primeval wisdom. Among the Greeks it was so highly clarified in its concepts and ideas that in this way it had adapted itself to the nature of man. Whereas in earlier times it was given out through the great Initiates in a more pictorial, imaginative way, with the Greeks it was grasped in ideas, in concepts, and thereby was adapted to the human nature of that time. What is so admirable among the Greeks, however, is that resounding through the philosophy of Plato is an echo of that primeval wisdom which mankind may be said to have received from the very lips of the Gods. But men were threatened with the loss of this wisdom.

When we look back to the period of Greek spiritual development that Nietzsche has called the “tragic age,” we are looking back at the great figures of Greek philosophy, at Anaxagoras, at Heraclitus, and in them we can see the final bearers of a divine wisdom which, however, is already converted into ideas and concepts. Thales is to a certain extent the first to take his stand solely upon natural concepts; he is already at some distance from the directly living impression of the primeval wisdom of mankind which we can still discern in Anaxagoras. Mankind was threatened with the gradual loss of this wisdom. But out of this primeval wisdom there had flowed something which in ancient days gave men the capacity to gain some knowledge about man. Knowledge of man was indeed something in which the Greek and all primeval wisdom were destined to be steeped. The Mysteries were meant to give knowledge of man; from them came the aphorism, “Know thyself!” This ancient knowledge of man, however, was mediated by way of Lucifer, and men worked upon it with the aid of Ahrimanic forces. It was bound up with a state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers.

Now at the time when the ancient world was passing away and from the other side came the Mystery of Golgotha, the Ahrimanic forces began to gain a slight ascendancy; they were then particularly strong. And since the sixteenth century something similar is happening again—a kind of renaissance of the Ahrimanic forces. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the Ahrimanic forces were specially strong. And through them man's life of soul was driven in the direction of the abstract—towards that abstraction which meets us in the thoroughly abstract nature of the Romans. We have now to ask: What would have happened to mankind if the course of evolution had continued on these lines and there had been no Mystery of Golgotha? The result would have been that men would have no longer been able to have any concept, any idea, any perception, of the human personality itself.

This is a fact of extraordinary significance. Because it would no longer have been possible for anything to be said to man by way of the Gods, because even the tradition of this divine source of wisdom concerning human personality was being lost, man was threatened with finding himself ever more and more of a riddle. We must feel the full implications of this truth—without the Mystery of Golgotha, man would have been faced by the threat of becoming an ever-increasing riddle to himself. He would indeed have been able to wring forth wisdom, but only about nature, not about himself. And he would gradually have forgotten his divine origin; he would have had to lose all knowledge of it.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. And among all the diverse points of view from which the Mystery of Golgotha can be characterised, this one must be specially considered—that through the incursion of the Mystery of Golgotha men were given from spiritual heights, which were no longer within their reach on earth, a renewed capacity for grasping themselves as persons. The Christ Impulse brought men the possibility of once more grasping their personalities, but now of doing so through inner forces.

To-day it is extraordinarily difficult for human beings to conceive how men of old arrived at their consciousness of personality, because one thing people refuse to believe is how entirely different for men of old was their conception of the external world. It is impossible to understand such a figure as Julian the deserter, the apostate, in all his world-historic significance. if it is not known that he was one of the last who still saw the sun differently from the way in which it is seen to-day.¹ The man of to-day sees the sun as a physical body. The influence of the moon through its natural effects has stayed with him longer. In the moonlight lovers still stroll and sentimentally dream; in the moonlight imagination grows and flourishes; moonlight is like twilight—and poetry written in that key, both true and false, is still widespread. The same feelings that people still have in moonlight, the men of old had, but much more intensely, when on waking they first caught sight of the sun. They did not talk merely of the sunlight; they said something like this: “Out of this heavenly being there streams into us a radiance which permeates us with warmth and light, making of each one of us a personality.”

This was still felt by Julian the Apostate, and he believed it could be preserved. That was his mistake, and also his great tragedy, for man no longer experienced his personality through the physical rays of the sun. This knowledge of the personality was brought to man by a spiritual path. That which the sun out there in space could no longer give him, the experience that could no longer come to him from outside, now had to rise up from his own inner depths. Christ Himself had to unite His cosmic destiny with mankind, so that in the continual fluctuation of the balance between Ahriman and Lucifer men should not fall away from their onward path.

We must take fully and deeply in earnest that Christ had descended from spiritual heights and has united His destiny with that of men. What does this mean? When before the Mystery of Golgotha men looked into the world of the senses, they saw at the same time a spiritual element there; this I made clear when speaking to you about the perception of the sun. All this was lost to men. They had to receive something in place of it; they had to receive something of a spiritual nature, and at the same time gain from this spirituality an impression of reality in the sense-perceptible world. That is a salient point in the Mystery of Golgotha and its relation to human knowledge.

And this Mystery of Golgotha, which gave lo earth-evolution its real meaning, actually took place in a little corner of the earth, unnoticed by the Romans; and even Tacitus knew practically nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, although he wrote his excellent work on Roman history a hundred years later. History says really nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha, for the Gospels are not to be reckoned as history. They were written in the way I have shown in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact; they are really Mystery-books applied to life. However much trouble the theologians may give themselves, the Mystery of Golgotha will never be part of the history that applies to other events. For this is exactly what is meant to be characteristic of the Mystery of Golgotha: that historically, by way of history founded on external facts, nothing about it is to be known. Those who wish to know anything about the Mystery of Golgotha must have faith in the supersensible. The Mystery of Golgotha does not admit of historical proof by the senses.

In the same way that men of old looked into the world of the senses and apprehended at the same time the supersensible, so must modern man, if he does not wish to lose his knowledge of the personality, look upon the Mystery of Golgotha as upon the supersensible; that is how he must come to the conviction that this historical event, for which there is no historical evidence, did indeed take place. Whoever does not keep in mind that there is no history concerning the most important historical event in the course of man's evolution, that no external account of this event can be called historical—whoever does not grasp this has no understanding of the whole relation to modern man of the Mystery of Golgotha. For concerning the Mystery of Golgotha modern man is meant to turn to an actuality of which history can tell him nothing. And this actuality is to have an operative effect. For what did we speak of yesterday as coming from Ahriman and Lucifer? We said that Lucifer turns men's hearts from interest in other men. Were only the Luciferic to work in mankind, we should increasingly lose interest in our fellow men. What one or other person was thinking would concern us very little. We can very well take the measure of the Luciferic in a man by asking: Is he interested objectively, tolerantly, in others, or is he interested only in himself? Luciferic natures take very little interest in their fellows; they grow stiff and hard, considering as right only what they themselves think and feel, and they are not accessible to the opinions of others. Had the Luciferic gone on working in human evolution in the same way that it worked up to the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind would have gradually entered on a way that we might characterise as follows: People would have become hard and detached in their souls, each thinking only of his own affairs, each holding his own ideas as conclusive, and having no inclination to look into the hearts of his fellows.

This, however, is merely the reverse side of the loss of personality. For by losing the possibility of recognising man as a personality, we lose also our understanding of the personality of those around us. Just at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching, there were very many people—more than is generally thought—in the Greek and Roman worlds, in Africa, in the West of Asia, who were in a certain sense spiritually proud, people who went through the world as—one cannot say peculiar people—but as proud, lonely men who hugged their loneliness. There were many such, and also those who made it a philosophy not to trouble about other people, but merely to follow the way of their own choice. This was brought about by the Luciferic falling out of balance.

And indeed the Ahrimanic was present in excess. This is best shown in the outlook of the first Roman Emperors, the Julians, of whom the very first, Augustus, was the only one to be initiated, though in a rather questionable way. Among the other Emperors there were some who at best obtained initiation by force, but they all regarded themselves as sons of God; that is, they considered themselves initiates by claiming divine descent.² For the Ahrimanic is particularly revealed by a man not being willing to live among other men as a personality among other personalities, but wanting to develop power in the way I referred to yesterday—wanting to rule by exploiting the weaknesses of others. The two great dangers threatening the world at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, dangers to which men would have succumbed if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come, were lack of interest in other men, and the lust for domination in every individual. The Christ, by uniting His destiny with that of mankind, implanted into humanity something of extraordinary depth. You may perhaps understand me best if I give you an outline of what this really was. As I have shown you, we men possess forces that we develop through our original being. You know that in a certain sense we become clever, through our original being, only in the second half of our life. I have spoken of this fully and repeatedly. But that is not quite all; what I was then referring to as the growth of cleverness in man between birth and death is, strictly speaking, valid only for earthly evolution; we are intended to become still cleverer during the evolutionary stages of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. And the forces we are to develop in the course of the Jupiter and Venus stages are already latent in us.

Now the following has come about. You know that during the first half of life a man is unable to acquire self-knowledge through his original being; he has to acquire it through Lucifer, while his original being goes on developing further. The Luciferic infuses him with self-knowledge during the first half of life; in the second half of life this brilliant self-knowledge is clouded over by Ahriman. With the Christ Impulse, another stream enters man's evolution; it speaks to the very depths of the human being. And if man had to rely on his original forces for developing the faculty that would of itself lead him to those cosmic insights which come into Earth-evolution through Christ, then he would not acquire this faculty until the Venus stage of evolution. Thus, however clever a man might become during his life on earth, up to the time of his death he would never be able to reach the point that can be reached through the Christ Impulse having united its destiny with Earth-evolution.

We live through our earthly life, therefore, without being able to understand the Christ Impulse with the help of our original evolution. From this you can gather the following. There were contemporaries of Christ, His disciples; they went about with Him; through the traditional primeval wisdom they could acquire so much wisdom about Him that later they were able to produce the Gospels—but they could not really understand Him. Right up to their deaths they certainly never reached an understanding of the Christ Impulse. When was it, then, that they could achieve this? After their death, in the time after death. Given that Peter or James, let us say, were contemporaries of Christ, when were they ready to understand Christ? Only in the third century after the Mystery of Golgotha—for up to their deaths they were not sufficiently mature; they became mature only in the third century.

We are touching here on a very important secret which we must bring with all exactitude before our souls. The contemporaries of Christ had first to go through death, had to live in the spiritual world until the second or third century; and then, in the life after death, knowledge of Christ could dawn upon them, and they could inspire those who, towards the end of the second century, or from the third century on, wrote about the Christ Impulse. Hence the writings about the Christ Impulse from the third century onwards take on a special character, for through the Church Fathers they received inspiration, more or less clear or more or less clouded. Thus Augustine, whose authority prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, falls into this period. Hence we can see how the only way in which people could be given an understanding of the Christ Impulse was to be inspired on earth by the Venus wisdom, if I may so call it, which at present man can experience only after death and in subsequent centuries. And it was a piece of good fortune—a foolish expression but there is no better one—that in the second and third centuries this inspiration could begin. For had men been obliged to wait longer, beyond the year 333, they would have become increasingly hardened towards the spiritual world and would have been incapable of receiving any kind of inspiration.

You see, the working of the Christ Impulse into mankind during the centuries of Christian development was bound up with numerous mysteries. And anyone wishing to seek for it again to-day finds the most important elements in knowledge about the Christ Impulse only by achieving supersensible cognition. For the first actual teachers of mankind concerning the Christ Impulse were really the dead, as you have been able to see from what I have now been saying—persons who were contemporaries of Christ, and only in the third century became mature enough to gain a full understanding. This understanding was able to grow during the fourth century, but at the same time the difficulty of inspiring men increased. In the sixth century this difficulty went on increasing, until finally the time came when the inspiring of men through spiritual mysteries concerning the Christ Mystery, and the opposition to it caused by the hardening of mankind, were brought under regulation by Rome. This was done by Rome in the ninth century, in 869, at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was finally done away with. This whole matter of inspiration became too far-fetched for Rome, and the dogma was laid down that man possesses in his soul something of the nature of spirit, but that to believe in the spirit is heresy. Men had to be enticed away from the spirit. This in essentials is what is connected with the Eighth (Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 869, to which I have often referred. It is merely a consequence of this abolition of the spirit when Jesuits to-day—I have mentioned this recently—say: “In earlier times there was indeed such a thing as inspiration, but to-day inspiration is devilish; we may not venture to strive for supersensible knowledge, for then the devil comes in.”

These things, however, are connected with the deepest matters which must interest us if we wish truly to enter into Spiritual Science. They are connected particularly with a certain recognition of the character of wisdom which many so-called spiritual scientists, especially those who foregather in so-called secret societies, do not recognise. A certain deception, one might say, is constantly spread abroad among men—spread abroad by those who know spiritual secrets. This deception is veiled by a false contrast, a false polarity. Have you not heard people saying: “There is Lucifer and his opponent is Christ?” and setting up Christ-Lucifer as polaric opposites? I have shown you that even Goethe's Faust-concept suffers from a confusion between Ahriman and Lucifer; from Goethe's inability to distinguish between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The second part of my little book, Goethes Geistesart, treats of this.

But behind this there is something extraordinarily significant. The real contrast, imparted by those who wish to speak the truth out of the spiritual world, is between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the Christ Impulse brings in something different. It has nothing to do with the Ahriman-Lucifer polarity, for it works in equilibrium. Something of tremendous importance rests on a recognition of this fact; we will speak of it further tomorrow.

• 1. See Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in Spiritual Worlds, Lecture I, “The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ.” This lecture was given in London, April 24th, 1922. See also Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume IV, Lecture VI, given in Dornach, September 16th, 1924.
• 2. See the lecture cycle: Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (notably lectures 5–8) given in Berlin, March 27th to April 24th, 1917.

Yesterday I made two observations drawn from the science that we must call the science of Initiation, and I should like to remind you of them, for we shall need them as a connecting link. First, I said that the truths, the deepest truths, relating to the Mystery of Golgotha must by their nature be of the kind that cannot be substantiated through external historical evidence perceptible to the senses. Anyone who sets out by an external historical route to find a proof of the facts concerned with the Mystery of Golgotha, in the same way as historical evidence is sought for other facts, will be unable to discover it, for the Mystery of Golgotha is meant to relate itself to mankind in such a way that access to its truths is finally possible only by a supersensible path. If I may put it rather briefly—where the most important event in earthly existence is concerned, men are intended to accustom themselves to approaching it by supersensible means, not through the senses.

The second thing I said yesterday is that man, with the understanding he possesses according to his development as an earthly being, is never able, right up to his death, to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha through his own understanding developed within the sense-world. I went on to say: It is only after his death, during the time he spends in the supersensible world, that there develops in man the understanding, and the forces for that understanding, which can fully make clear the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence I stated yesterday something which will quite naturally be held up by the external world as an absurdity, a paradox. I said that even the contemporaries of Christ were unable to reach such an understanding until the second or third century after the Mystery of Golgotha, during their life beyond the threshold; and that what has been written about the Mystery of Golgotha in those centuries was inspired by men who had been contemporaries of it and, from the spiritual world, from the supersensible world, had an inspiring influence on the writers of that period.

Now there is an apparent contradiction to this in the fact that the Gospels are inspired writings (as you may gather from my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact; they are inspired writings of Christianity. The inspired Gospels, therefore, could give expression to the truth about Christianity only because—as I have often emphasised—they were not written out of the primal nature and being of man, but with the remnants of atavistically clairvoyant wisdom.

What I have said here about the relation of mankind to the Mystery of Golgotha is drawn from the science of Initiation. If in this way something has been given out of supersensible knowledge, the question may well be asked: How does it appear when compared with the facts of external historical life? Hence at the beginning of this lecture to-day I want to put forward, as a particularly characteristic case—at first only as a question which should receive an answer by the end of our studies to-day—a typical ecclesiastical author of the second century. I might just as well—but then naturally I should have to give the whole treatment a different form—choose some other writer of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, or any other. But I am choosing one who is often mentioned—Tertullian. With regard to the personality of Tertullian I should like to ask how the external course of Christian life is related to the supersensible facts of which I was speaking yesterday, and have repeated in essence to-day.

Tertullian is a very remarkable personality. Anyone who hears the ordinary things said about Tertullian—well, he will hardly get beyond the knowledge of Tertullian that is generally current. He is said to have been the man who justified belief in the being of Christ, in the sacrificial death and the resurrection, by saying, Credo quia absurdum est—“I believe because it is absurd,” because no light is thrown upon all this by human reason. The words, Credo quia absurdum est, are not to be found in any of the other Fathers of the Church; they are pure invention, but they are the source of the later opinion about Tertullian that has been held, often dogmatically, right up to the present day.

When, on the other hand, we come to the real Tertullian—there is no need to be an actual follower of his—then the more exactly we get to know his personality, the more we respect this remarkable man. Above all we learn to respect Tertullian's use of the Latin language, the language which expresses the most abstract way of human thinking, and had come in other writers of his time to exemplify the thoroughly prosaic character of the Romans—Tertullian makes use of it with a true fieriness of spirit. Into his style of treatment he brings temperament, brings movement; he brings feeling and holy passion. Although he is a typical Roman who expresses himself as abstractly as any other Roman about what is often called reality—and although in the opinion of people versed in the Greek culture of that time he was not a particularly well educated man—he writes with impressiveness, with inner force, and in such a way that while using the abstract, Roman language, he became the creator of a Christian style. And the way in which Tertullian himself speaks is impressive enough. In a kind of apologia for the Christians he writes in such a way that one seems to be listening directly to the speech of a man in the grip of a holy passion.

There are certain passages where Tertullian is defending the Christians who, when they are accused under a procedure very like torture, do not deny but testify that they are Christians—testify to what they believe. And Tertullian says of them: In all other cases those who are tortured are accused of denying the truth; in the case of the Christians it is the reverse; they are declared infamous when they testify to what is in their souls. The aim of torturing is not to force them to speak the truth, which would be the only sense in torture; the aim is to force them to say what is untrue, while they continue to speak the truth. And when out of their souls they testify to the truth, they are looked upon as malefactors.

In short, Tertullian was a man with a fine sense of the absurd in life. He was a subtle observer who had already identified himself with what had developed as Christian consciousness and Christian wisdom. So it is really significant when he makes such a statement as: You have familiar sayings; very often you say out of immediate feeling in your soul: “God be with you,” “It is God's will,” and so on. But that is the belief of the Christians: the soul—if only unconsciously—is confessing itself to be Christian.

Tertullian is also a man of independent spirit. He says to the Romans, to whom he himself belongs: Consider the Christians' God and then reflect upon what you are able to feel about true piety. I ask you whether what you as Romans have introduced into the world is in keeping with true piety, or whether true piety is what the Christians desire? Into the world you have brought war, murder, killing (said Tertullian to his fellow-Romans); that is precisely what the Christians do not want. Your sanctuaries are blasphemies (so said Tertullian to the Romans) because they are trophies of victory, and trophies of victory are signs of the desecration of sanctuaries. ... Thus spoke Tertullian to the Romans. He was a man of independent feeling. And turning to the ways of Rome he said: Do men pray when they instinctively look up to the sky, or when they look up to the Capitol? Thus Tertullian was in no way a man entirely merged in the abstractions of Rome, for he was permeated with a lively sense of the presence in the world of the supersensible.

Anyone who speaks on the one hand with the independence and freedom of Tertullian, and at the same time out of the supersensible—such a man is very rare, even in those days when the supersensible was nearer than it later came to be. And Tertullian was more than merely rational. To declare that “when the Christians say what is true, you claim them to be malefactors, whereas men should be claimed as malefactors only if when tortured they say what is untrue ...” certainly that was rational, but it was also courageous. And Tertullian said other things, too, for instance: When you Romans look up to your Gods, who are demonic beings, and really put questions to them, you will receive the truth. But you do not want to receive the truth from these demonic beings. If an accused Christian is confronted by someone who is possessed by a demon, and out of whom the demon speaks, and if the Christian is allowed to question it in the right way, the demon will admit that it is a demon. And of the God whom the Christian acknowledges the demon will say—though with fear: “That is the God who now belongs to the world!” Tertullian does not call on the evidence of Christians alone, but also on that of demonic beings, saying that they will confess themselves to be demons if they are simply questioned, questioned fearlessly; and that, just as it is described in the Gospels, they will acknowledge Christ-Jesus to be the true Christ-Jesus.

At all events we have here a remarkable personality who, as a Roman, confronts his fellow-Romans in the second century. This personality strikes us especially when we consider his relation to the Mystery of Golgotha. The words spoken by Tertullian concerning the Mystery of Golgotha are approximately these: The Son of God is crucified. Because this is shameful, we are not ashamed. The Son of God has died; this is easy to believe because it is foolish. Tertullian's words are: Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. It is credible, perfectly credible, because it is foolish. Thus: God's Son has died; this is perfectly credible because it is foolish. And He has been buried, He has risen again; this is certain, because it is impossible. From the words, Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est, the other untrue words have originated: Credo quia absurdum est.

Let us rightly understand what Tertullian says here about the Mystery of Golgotha. He says: The Son of God is crucified. If we men contemplate this crucifixion, because it is shameful we are not ashamed. What does he mean? He means that the best that can happen on earth is bound to be shameful, because it is the way of man to do what is shameful and not what is excellent. Were anything declared to be a most splendid deed, says Tertullian, a most splendid deed brought about by man, it could not be the most excellent event for the earth. For the earth the most excellent deed will indeed be one that brings shame to men, not fame—this is Tertullian's meaning.

To continue: “The Son of God has died. This is perfectly credible because it is foolish.” The Son of God has died; it is quite credible because human reason finds it foolish. Were human reason to pronounce it sensible it would not be credible, for what is found sensible by human reason cannot be the highest; it can never be the highest thing possible on earth. For human reason with its cleverness is not so high that it can arrive at what is highest; it arrives at the highest when it is foolish.

“He has been buried and has risen again. It is certain because it is impossible.” As a natural phenomenon it is impossible that the dead should rise again; but according to Tertullian the Mystery of Golgotha has nothing to do with natural phenomena. Were anything to be counted as a natural phenomenon, it would not be the most valuable thing on earth. What has most value for the earth can be no natural phenomenon and must, therefore, be impossible in the kingdom of nature. It is just on this account that He has been buried and has risen again, and it is therefore certain because it is impossible.

I should like to put Tertullian before you, with these words of his just quoted from his book, De Carne Christi, as a question. I have tried to describe him, first as a free, independent spirit, secondly as one who in man's immediate surroundings perceives the demonically supersensible. But at the same time I quoted three propositions of Tertullian's on account of which all clever people must look upon him really as a simpleton.

In matters of this kind it is certainly remarkable how one-sidedly people judge. When they put forward a proposition as false as Credo quia absurdum est, they are pronouncing judgment on the whole man in accordance with it. It is, however, necessary to take the three propositions—which certainly are not at first glance intelligible, for Tertullian is not to be easily understood—to take them first together with his complete awareness of the inter-working of the supersensible world into the human environment.

And now we want to bring before our souls something which in some measure is suited to spread light over the Mystery of Golgotha from another point of view. I have in mind two phenomena about which I said a few words during our studies of the day before yesterday. These two phenomena in the life of mankind are, first, the phenomenon of death, and secondly the phenomenon of heredity—death which is connected with the end of life, and heredity with birth. Where these are concerned it is important to have a clear insight into human life and the being of man. From all that I have been describing to you for some weeks you will be able to gather the following.

When man looks around with his senses at his environment and wishes to grasp the world of the senses with his understanding, then among the phenomena of the senses he encounter? also the phenomena of inheritance, for to a certain extent the characteristics of forefathers can be traced in their descendants, who are subject to the unconscious working of these inherited forces. Things connected with the mystery of birth, all the various inherited characteristics, are often studied without our knowing it. When, for example, we are learning about folklore, we are always speaking about inherited characteristics without noticing it. We cannot study a people without seeing all that we are studying in the light of inherited characteristics. When you speak of a particular people—of Russians, for example, of Englishmen, of Germans—you are speaking of qualities belonging to the realm of heredity, qualities the son acquires from the father, the father from the grandfather, and so on. The realm of heredity, connected as it is with the mysteries of birth, is indeed a wide realm, and when talking about external life we are often speaking of the facts and forces of heredity without being aware of it.

The fact that the mystery of death plays into the life of the senses is indeed constantly before us at the present time; it needs no reiteration. But if we look back over the human faculty for knowledge, something different becomes apparent. We see that this facility is adapted for grasping a great deal in the natural order, but it regards itself as sovereign and wants to grasp in terms of the natural order everything found therein.

Now this human faculty for knowledge is never adapted for grasping either the fact of heredity, which is connected with birth, or the fact of death. And so it turns out that the whole of man's outlook is permeated by false concepts, because it assigns to the sense-world phenomena which indeed are manifest in the sense-world but in their whole being are of a spiritual nature.

We count human death—it is different with animals and plants, as I have shown—we count human death among the phenomena taking place in the sense-world, because that is what it appears to be. But with this we get nowhere in learning about human death. It would never be possible for a natural science to say anything about the death of human beings; for on those lines we arrive merely at exchanging our whole human outlook for a delusion, with the facts of death mixed into it everywhere. We learn something about the truth of nature only when we omit death, and omit also inherited characteristics. A typical feature of human knowledge lies in its becoming corrupted, becoming mere appearance, because it claims to be able to deal with the entire world of the senses, including death and birth. And because it mixes death and birth into its whole outlook, its outlook concerning the world of the senses is falsified. We shall never perceive what man is as a sense-being if we ascribe to the sense-world the inherited qualities, which are indeed connected with death. We corrupt the whole picture of man developing along his normal straight line—I have told you of three streams, the normal straight line and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic side-streams—we corrupt the whole picture of mans development if we ascribe birth and death to his essential being in so far as he belongs to the world of the senses.

That is the strange situation in which we find the human faculty for knowledge! Under the guidance of nature itself this faculty is driven to thinking falsely because, were it able to think in accordance with truth, it would have to separate off from nature a picture of human life in which there was no heredity and no death. We should have to rule out death and heredity, paying no attention to death and birth, making our picture without them—then we should have a picture of nature. Inherited characteristics and death have no place in Goethe's world-outlook. They do not come into it and are not in keeping there. It is indeed the special characteristic of Goethe's world-outlook that you are unable to fit death and heredity into it. It is so good just because death and heredity have no place there, and that is why we can accept it as a true picture of the reality of nature.

Now up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha people still thought about death and heredity out of certain spiritual depths, and more in conformity with nature. The Semitic peoples looked upon inherited characteristics as a direct continuance of the working of the God Jahve. They eliminated everything connected with heredity from nature, seeing it as the direct working of Jahve—for as long, at least, as the Jahve-outlook was properly understood. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, signified the continued working of inherited characteristics.

On the other hand, the Greek outlook—though in its decadence it had little success—sought to grasp something in the nature of man that lived in him between birth and death but had nothing to do with death. The Greeks sought to raise out of the sum-total of phenomena something with which death had no power to interfere. They had a certain horror of the very idea of death. Just because they concentrated on the realm of the senses, they had no wish to understand death; for they instinctively felt that when the human gaze is directed purely to the world of the senses—as it was with Goethe—death becomes a stranger. It is not in keeping with the sense-world; it is foreign to it.

But now there arose other outlooks, and the alteration in certain ancient outlooks appeared most typically among the leading peoples and individuals at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. Men increasingly lost all ability to look into the spiritual world in the atavistic way; and so they came more and more to believe that birth and death, or heredity and death, belong to the world of the senses. Heredity and death—they do indeed play their part, very palpably, in the world of the senses, and men came more and more to the view that heredity and death belong there. This view wormed its way into the whole of man's outlook. For centuries prior to the Mystery of Golgotha the whole human outlook was permeated by the belief that heredity and death have to do with the world of the senses. Thereby something very, very remarkable came into being. You will understand it only if you allow the spirit of what I have been telling you in the last few days to work upon you in the right way.

Now the fact of heredity was easily seen by observing how it figured among the phenomena of nature, and it was thought to be a natural phenomenon. Increasingly the belief gained ground that heredity is a natural phenomenon. Every fact of this kind, however, evokes its polar opposite: in human life you can never cultivate a fact without that fact evoking its opposite. Man's life runs its course in the balancing of opposites. A basic condition of all knowledge is the recognition that life runs its course in opposites, and a state of balance between opposites is all we can strive for. What, therefore, was the consequence of this belief that heredity has its place among natural phenomena and belongs to them? The consequence was the bringing of the human will into terrible discredit; and this took the form—because its opposite developed—of bringing into the human will a fact belonging to the past, a fact we know in Spiritual Science as the influence of Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits. And the effect on the soul of looking for heredity among the phenomena of nature was so potent that it led irresistibly to a moralistic world-outlook. For out of this misunderstanding of heredity its opposite came into being—the belief that once through the human will something had happened which went on to permeate the world as “original sin.” It was precisely through the introduction of heredity into the phenomena of nature that this great evil originated—the placing of “original sin” into the moral realm.

In this way human thinking wasted astray; it was unable to see that the way original sin is generally represented is blasphemy, terrible blasphemy. A God as conceived by the majority of people, a God who permits out of pure ambition, one might say, what happens in Paradise—according to the usual telling of the story—a God who does not do this with intentions of the kind described in the book Occult Science, but in the way usually described, would be no God of the heights. And to attribute this ambition to God is blasphemy. Only when we come to the point of not setting inherited characteristics in a moral light, but seeing them as a physically perceptible fact in a supersensible light; only when we relate them to the supersensible without any of this moral interpretation; when in the supersensible light we decline to fit them into a moral world-picture in the manner of rabbinical theology—only then do we come properly to terms with this matter.

Rabbinical theology will always give an elaborate intellectual interpretation of what are manifest in the world of the senses as the forces of heredity; but we should school ourselves through a spiritual outlook to discern the spirit in the inherited characteristics found in the sense-world. That is what it really comes to. And the essential thing is for you to see that, but for the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind would by then have reacted to the point of denying the spirit because people would have ceased to recognise the spirit in the inherited characteristics within the sense-world; for men have increasingly replaced the conception of the spirit by rabbinical and socialistic interpretations.

A tremendous amount is involved when a man is constrained to say: You understand nothing about the sense-world if you are not prepared for those phenomena which, because of their spiritual connections, do not really belong there. We must point to the connections of heredity with spiritual perception, supersensible perception. When the intellect takes hold of the realm of the senses, which is itself permeated with a spiritual, supersensible element, and turns it into a realm of morality, intellectually measurable—that is the spirit to which the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the Mystery of Golgotha, stands opposed. I mean this with reference to heredity and to death.

Certainly the Church Fathers were able to verify that even among the heathen there were many who were convinced of immortality. But what was involved in this? Only in ancient times had it been truly recognised that in the world of the senses death is indeed a supersensible phenomenon. By the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the prevailing outlook had been corrupted by an acceptance of death as an experience of the sense-world; and thereby the forces of death were extended over the rest of that world. Death has to be looked upon as a stranger in the sense-world. Only then can a genuine science of the natural order arise.

A further element came in with the reflections of various ancient philosophers on immortality. They turned to the immortal in man. They were right in doing so, for they said: Death is there in the world of the senses. But they said it out of a corrupted world-outlook; for otherwise they would have been impelled to say: Death is not there in the world of the senses; only in appearance does it enter there. Out of their corrupted world-outlook they said that death is in the sense-world. ... And they gradually pictured the sense-world in such a way that death had a place there. In consequence, all other things are corrupted ... it goes without saying that everything else goes wrong when death is given a place in the sense-world. When this was said out of a corrupted world-outlook, other things too had to be said, for instance: We must turn to something in opposition to death, to something of a supersensible nature that opposes death. And indeed, because in the last days of antiquity and out of a corrupted world-outlook people turned to an impersonal spirituality, this world of spiritual immortality—even when called by some other name—was the Luciferic world. What people call something is unimportant; what matters is the active reality behind the picture in their minds. And in this case the reality was the Luciferic world. Even if the words sounded different, these philosophers of late antiquity had in all their interpretations said nothing but: “As souls approaching death we want to take flight to Lucifer, who will receive us, so that immortality will be ours. We die into the kingdom of Lucifer.” That was the true meaning of their words.

I have told you about the forces that prevail in human knowledge, as a result of all the conditions I have described—well, these forces have remnants which can be seen still active to-day. For what must you admit if you take in earnest the words I have spoken to-day out of Initiation-wisdom? You will have to say: Man has his origin and his end. Neither may be understood with the human intellect that serves to understand nature; for by introducing birth and death into the sense-world, where they do not belong because they are strangers, we arrive at a false outlook about both the supersensible and the sensible. Both are corrupted—the comprehension of the spirit and the comprehension of nature. And what is the consequence? One consequence for example, is this: there is an anthropology which traces the origin of man to very primitive ancestors, and it does so quite scientifically and very cleverly. Go through these anthropological writings which trace men back to primitive ancestors, who are portrayed as though the characteristics which still belong to savage peoples were the starting-point of the human race. Scientifically, this opinion is quite in order, but the conclusion which should be drawn from it is the following: Just because it is scientifically in order to believe that birth and death belong to the world of the senses—on that very account it is false; on that account the real origin of man was different. When Kant and Laplace thought out their theory, they built it up from natural science. On the surface there is nothing to be said against it—but things were different for the very reason that the Kant-Laplace theory is correct from the standpoint of natural science. You arrive at the truth if, both for man's beginning and his end and for the origin and end of the earth, you acknowledge the opposite of what holds good for natural science in its present-day form. What Anthroposophy has to say about the origin of the earth will be all the more in accordance with the truth, the more it contradicts what can be said by a natural science that is correct in the sense of to-day.

Hence Anthroposophy does not contradict the natural science of to-day. It allows validity to natural science, but, instead of extending it beyond its boundaries, it shows the points where supersensible perception must come in. The more logical Anthroposophy is, the more correct will it be in respect of the present natural order, which is necessary for man and inherent in him, and all the more will it refrain from saying what is not true concerning the origins of man's existence and of the earth. And the less natural science divines what death really is, the more will it indulge in fantasy where death is concerned. But without the Mystery of Golgotha it would have been human destiny to think unavoidably out of a corrupted world-outlook about the most important things. For this did not depend at all on human will or human guilt; it depended entirely on human evolution.

In the course of his evolution man simply came to regard as his real being the combination of flesh, blood and bones in which he found himself. An Egyptian of ancient days, in the older and better period of Egypt, would have thought it terribly comic had anyone maintained that what walked around on two legs, and consisted of blood, flesh and bones, was really man. These things, however, do not depend upon theoretical considerations; they cannot be spun out of rumination. Gradually it came to seem natural for a man to accept as himself a form consisting of flesh, blood and bones—a form which in truth is a reflection of all the Hierarchies. So much error was spread abroad on these matters that, curiously enough, those very individuals who were led to see the error blundered into a still greater one.

Certainly there were some who arrived at the idea—but in an Ahrimanic-Luciferic way—that man is not just flesh and blood and bones. They now said: “Well, if we are something better than this combination of flesh, blood and bones, we will despise the flesh; we will look upon the human being as something higher and rise above this man of the senses.” But this image of flesh, blood and bones, together with the etheric and astral bodies, as seen by man is an illusion; in reality it is the purest likeness of the Godhead. As I have explained, the error we have been talking about is not an error because we ought to be seeing the devil in the world; but it is an error to identify ourselves with physical nature because in our own world we

should be seeing God in us. It is also false to say: I am a quite high being, a tremendously high being, a tremendously lofty soul ... and everything around me is inferior and ugly (see blue in diagram, I). It is not like that. This is how the matter really is: There are the kingdoms of the higher Hierarchies, all divine Beings (diagram, II); they have considered it to be their divinely-appointed aim to give shape to a form that is in their image (blue circle). This form presents itself outwardly as the visible human body. And into this form, which is a copy of the Godhead and is shamefully belittled when looked upon as something inferior, the Spirits of Form have planted the human ego, the present soul—the youngest of man's members, as I have often said (the point in the blue circle.)

If the Mystery of Golgotha had not come about, man would have been able to gain only false conceptions about heredity and about death. And these false conceptions would have become ever more exaggerated. At present they appear at times in an atavistic way (as in many socialistic groups to-day an atavistic world-outlook prevails), so that death and birth are reckoned as phenomena of the senses. It would have been a necessity in man's further evolution for the door of the supersensible to be altogether closed to him. And what he could find of the supersensible within the sense-world—heredity and death—would have betrayed him, coming in a treacherous way to say: “We are of the senses” ... whereas they are not. Only by refusing to believe in a nature that shows us death and birth in a false light shall we reach the truth—such is the paradoxical way in which man is placed into the world.

There had to be planted into man something to bring equilibrium into his evolution—something able to lead him away from the belief that heredity and death are phenomena of the senses. Something had to be put before him to show clearly that death and heredity are not phenomena of the senses, but are supersensible. For this reason the event that gives man the truth about these things must not be accessible to his ordinary forces, for these are on the road to corruption and have to be set right by a powerful counter-shock. This counter-shock was the Mystery of Golgotha, for it entered human evolution as something supersensible, and so it gave men the choice—either to believe in this supersensible event, approaching it in a supersensible way but now consciously, or to succumb to those views which must result from regarding death and inherited characteristics as belonging to the world of the senses.

Hence two facts that are inseparable from a true view of the Mystery of Golgotha are those which form, as it were, its boundaries: namely, the Resurrection, which cannot be understood independently of the Virgin Birth—born not in the way that makes birth a delusive fact few mankind, but born in a supersensible way and going through death in a supersensible way. These are the two basic facts that have to act as boundaries to the life of Christ Jesus. No-one understands the Resurrection, which is meant to stand in opposition to the false idea that death belongs to the world of the senses—no-one understands this truth who does not accept its correlate, the Virgin Birth, the birth that is a supersensible fact.

Men wish to understand these truths, and modern Protestant theologians want to understand them in terms of theology, with the ordinary human intellect. But the ordinary human intellect is but a pupil of the sense-world, and, moreover, of a corrupted view of the sense-world which has arisen since the Mystery of Golgotha. And when they cannot understand these truths they become followers of Harnack, or something of the sort; they deny the Resurrection, while talking round and about it in all sorts of ways. And as for the Virgin Birth—well, they look upon that as something no reasonable being can even discuss.

Nevertheless, with the Mystery of Golgotha is intimately connected the metamorphosis of death—in other words, the metamorphosis of death from a fact of the sense-world into a supersensible fact; and the metamorphosis of heredity means that what the sense-world reflects in an illusory way as heredity, connected with the mystery of birth, is changed in the supersensible into the Virgin Birth.

However much that is erroneous and inadequate may be said about these things, man's task is not to accept them without understanding them. His task is to acquire supersensible knowledge, so that through the supersensible he can learn to grasp these things, which cannot be understood in the sense-world. If you think of the various lecture-courses in which these things have been spoken of, if you think particularly of the content of what I have given as the Fifth Gospel, [ Seven lectures given in Christiania (Oslo) from October 1st to 6th, 1913.] you will discover a whole series of ways by which these things may be understood, but understood supersensibly only. For it is right that, as long as the intellect of the student keeps to the realm of the senses, in accordance with the outlook of to-day, these facts cannot be understood. It is just when the most sublime facts of earthly life are such that they are unintelligible to the intellect of the student of the sense-world—it is just then that they are true. Hence it is not surprising that the science of Initiation is opposed by ordinary science, for it speaks of things which—just because they do not contradict true natural science—must contradict a natural order derived from a corrupted view of nature. Theology, too, has largely fallen a victim to this corrupted view of nature, though in a different direction.

When you take the other matter of which I was speaking yesterday, that only after death is man able to come to a right conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, then, if you reflect a little, you will no longer find it inconceivable that through the gate of death man enters a world where he cannot be tricked into thinking that death belongs to the world of the senses, for he sees death from the other side—I have often described this—and from this other side he learns increasingly to study death. And by this means he becomes ever more fitted to contemplate the Mystery of Golgotha in its true form. Thus we have to admit that had the Mystery of Golgotha not come about (but what is said in this connection can be understood only through supersensible knowledge), death would have taken possession of man. Evil also would be in the world, and wisdom also. But since men through their evolution had to fall into a corrupted view of nature, they were bound to have a false view of death. In wishing for immortality they turn to Lucifer, and in wishing to turn to the spirit they fall victim to Lucifer. If they do not turn to the spirit they become like dumb animals, and if they do turn to the spirit, they fall into Lucifer's grip. Looking to the future implies a wish to be immortal in Lucifer; looking towards the past means interpreting the world in such a way that inherited characteristics, which are supersensible, are viewed in terms of morality, thereby inventing the medieval blasphemy of original sin.

A real devotion to the Mystery of Golgotha is a protection against all these things. It brings into the world a true conception of birth and death, gained on a supersensible path. By a true conception of this kind men should be healed from the effects of the corrupted conception. Thus Christ Jesus is the Healer, the Saviour. And therefore—because men have not chosen to follow a corrupted conception of the world because they are good for nothing, but have come to it through their evolution, through their nature—therefore the Christ works healingly; therefore He is not only the Teacher but the Physician of mankind.

These things must be pondered—as I have said and must always repeat, they can be discerned only through supersensible knowledge—but if we are to ask ourselves: What kinds of knowledge could be reached by the souls who inspired such a spirit as Tertullian in the second century?—we must look to the dead who were perhaps contemporaries of Christ Jesus and have thus inspired Tertullian. Certainly, since there was much corrupted knowledge in the world, many things came through in distorted, clouded colourings. If, however, through the words of a Tertullian we hear the inspiring voices of the contemporaries of Christ, we shall understand how Tertullian was able to say such words as: “God's Son has been crucified. Because it is shameful, we are not ashamed of it.” Through a corrupted outlook men were bound to fall into shame; that which gives greatest meaning to the earth is manifest in human life as a shameful deed. “God's Son has gone through death. It is perfectly credible because it is foolish”—Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. Precisely because it is foolishness by any criterion that man can reach with his ordinary intelligence up to the end of his physical life—for that very reason it is true in the sense of what I have been telling you to-day. “He is laid in the grave and has risen again; this is certain because it is impossible”—because within the corrupted phenomena of nature it does not happen.

When in the supersensible sense you take Tertullian's words as being inspired by Christ's contemporaries, who by that time had long been dead, you may say: Certainly Tertullian has absorbed all this, just in the way he could do in accordance with the constitution of his soul! ... But you will be able to divine how he came to be so inspired. Indeed, such a source was accessible only to a man who with his inner knowledge was so firmly grounded in the supersensible that he referred to demons being witness to the Divine, just as he spoke of human witnesses. For Tertullian spoke of how the demons themselves say they are demons and recognise the Christ. That was the preliminary condition for Tertullian being able to lay hold of what was given him through inspiration.

For those who incline to be Christians in a false way, there is something very disconcerting, thoroughly disconcerting, here. For just think, if even demons tell the truth and point to the true Christ, the demons might ultimately be questioned by a Jesuit—someone or other whom the Jesuit maintained was possessed by demons might be impelled by these demons to speak about the real origin of the Jesuits' Christ, and the demon might then say to the Jesuit: “Yours is not the Christ; the Christ of that other is the true one.”—You can understand the Jesuitical fear of the spiritual world! You can see how alarming it is to be exposed to the possible danger of being disowned in some corner of the spiritual world! Then someone might call Tertullian as witness for the Crown and might say: “Now see here, my dear Jesuit, the demon says himself that your God is a false God—and Tertullian, whom you have to recognise as a bona fide Church Father, says that demons tell the truth about themselves and about the Christ, just as the Bible states.” In short, the matter becomes very ticklish as soon as it is admitted by the supersensible world—even though in an unorthodox form—that demons witness to the truth. For even were we to cite Lucifer, he would not say what is untrue about the Christ! But it might leak out that something else is untrue about the Christ.

Now the truths of Initiation often sound different from what human beings find it convenient to acknowledge. Certainly this leads to things going rather criss-cross when to-day an endeavour is made to introduce Initiation truths to the external world—especially when they have to be introduced into the midst of immediate reality. Yes, as soon as the field is open for statements coming from the supersensible, some very remarkable conflicts may arise—when these statements are opposed by others which owe nothing to the supersensible!

This can often be applied to ordinary life. It has brought me a certain satisfaction that a suggestion I made really to myself during my lectures—and things I say during lectures I give out as my own conviction, with no intention of compelling others to accept them—this suggestion has been followed up, and our Building, out of all the conditions experienced at the present time, has been called the “Goetheanum.” And even if this has been with the assistance of certain supersensible impulses, it seems to me to be both right and good. But if I am asked by anyone for the reasons from an intellectual standpoint—as though I ought to count them all up on my fingers—if I am asked to give all the reasons for this, I should appear to myself a prodigious Philistine if I were to count up all the reasons for what has been felt out of a deep necessity—all the reasons for and against would seem to me like sheer hair-splitting.

One is often in this situation precisely when ascribing supersensible impulses to the will. People often say: “I don't understand this, I can't grasp what it means.” But is it terribly important whether you or anyone else grasps what a thing means? For what does this grasping (begreifen) mean? It really means putting a matter in the light where repose the thoughts which for decades a person has found comfortably suitable for himself. Otherwise its meaning is no different from what people call “understanding.” What people themselves call understanding often signifies very little where truths revealed from the spiritual world are concerned. Just in the most supersensible spheres—where truths are not mere theory but are meant to seize upon the will, to strike into the world of deeds—just here there is always something rather questionable when people ask intellectually: Why, why, why is this so? Or: How is this or that to be understood? In this connection we ought to accustom ourselves to finding for certain things belonging to the supersensible world an analogy—but only an analogy—with recognised facts of nature. If you leave here and a dog bites you and you have never before had a dog bite you, I don't know whether you will ask, Why has it bitten me? Or, How am I to understand it?—For what sort of connection has it with the intellect! You will simply relate the facts. So it is with certain supersensible things—we simply relate the facts. And there are many such things, as you can gather from what I have told you to-day—that in the sense-world there are two apparent events which conceal their real meaning: human death and human birth, which bring the supersensible into the world of the senses and are strangers in that world. They disguise themselves as sense-phenomena and in that way they extend their disguise over the rest of nature, so that the rest of nature also is bound to be seen in a false light by human beings to-day.

Thoroughly to understand these things, to absorb them thoroughly into our own approach to knowledge, is one of the future demands that will be made on human life. The Time Spirits will make this demand especially on those who are seeking knowledge for the future and wish to bring active will-impulses into some particular sphere. Particularly must the spiritual branches of culture be taken in hand—theology, medicine, jurisprudence, philosophy, natural science, even technics and social life, even politics—yes, truly, politics, even that strange creature! Into all this, those who understand the times ought to introduce the fruits of Spiritual Science.

You have come to know from the most diverse aspects that the evolution of modern man passed through a decisive moment in the fifteenth century, when the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch began. As we are well aware, this epoch received its special character from the entry of mankind into the development of the Consciousness Soul,¹ whereas in the previous epoch, the Graeco-Roman, human evolution ran its course pre-eminently in the sphere of the Intellectual or Mind Soul. Now it is important that such a truth as this—that with the fifteenth century the age of the Consciousness Soul began—shall be taken not merely theoretically and in the abstract but with all possible earnestness in life, so that we have the will constantly to ask ourselves: What must be our attitude of soul, what must we do to this attitude of soul, in order to do full justice to the fact that we are living in the epoch of the development of the Consciousness Soul?

The main point is that through this epoch of the Consciousness Soul mankind receives the impulse to strive consciously for certain conceptions that were not striven for consciously in earlier epochs. We know that among the many more or less important things with a bearing on this circumstance, we find the most important event ever enacted in earthly life—the Event of Golgotha. For we have often emphasised that the Event of Golgotha entered human evolution in such a way that its significance could not at first be grasped by the human soul in full consciousness; fully conscious comprehension can come only little by little.

We have often emphasised that, by reason of forces well known to us, the inclination is always arising in man to lag behind in his evolution on the one hand, and on the other hand to overshoot his mark. Thus in cultural history we see numerous endeavours to retain the unconscious realisation of the Event of Golgotha, while applying to it as little as possible the development of consciousness that mankind is going through. Quite recently, in the sphere of a religious community, we have witnessed a struggle between the endeavour to maintain as far as possible only the traditional and unconscious relation to the Mystery of Golgotha, while Roman Catholic modernism has tried—though certainly with inadequate means—to claim equal validity for its endeavour to press on to a more conscious understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Opposition to the spiritual-scientific approach to the Mystery of Golgotha represents simply the striving of those who wish to keep the Mystery of Golgotha as much as possible in the unconscious regions of man's soul.

If we wish to approach fruitfully the comprehension particularly necessary for the development of the Consciousness Soul, we must above all try to enlighten ourselves from the most varied aspects concerning man's own being—not by discussion but by getting our bearings from the facts. Let us therefore consider our epoch as much as possible in accordance with the facts; let us first pay attention to those facts which in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul are of special importance for its development.

In these times, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the scientific age is spoken of with great pride, even with real arrogance. In a certain sense those who speak thus have right on their side, for most educated people to-day are living in the scientific stream of the age. For it does not matter whether we think as modern botanists do about plants, zoologists about animals, anthropologists about man; nor does it matter how much we learn from anthropology, botany or zoology; what does matter is whether people form their thoughts about the world so that these are in line with scientific thinking. This line is followed to-day by most people who have any kind of schooling and are therefore not illiterate or nearly so. Thus the people whom we have to consider pursue a scientific kind of thinking, but that does not hinder many of them from diligently attending church to hear the sermon, or from being what is called religious, pious. Now just ask yourselves to what extent this religious piety is still working in the general life of men, even when they believe themselves to be pious or believe they should be. The religious feelings developed in any particular religious faith have extraordinarily little power to work into thoughts about the world. Everywhere to-day in external life, in the widest circles, thinking takes a scientific direction. Nowadays for most people religion is more or less a side line. One can indeed say that this modern epoch of the Consciousness Soul is proud even to arrogance of its scientific achievements and of the scientific kind of thinking that goes with it. And it adopts an attitude of condescension towards earlier ages.

Just think with what feelings, what narrow-minded, self-satisfied feelings, the thoroughly modern man looks back on his forebears when referring to their belief in ghosts. There is no need to object to the assertion that our ancestors had this belief! They certainly had it. To-day we will take the statement—our ancestors believed in ghosts, but we are so clever that we no longer believe in them—and pay attention not so much to the idea it expresses as to the feeling it arouses in us—the feeling we have when we see how the present age passes judgment on our stupid ancestors who believed in ghosts and is sure that in this scientific age we have at last left all that behind. The statement that our forebears believed in ghosts is in itself a half-truth, and on that account extraordinarily dangerous; for half-truths are often more harmful than downright falsities, because a downright falsity can be easily detected, whereas half-truths haunt the world themselves like ghosts.

It is indeed true that if we go back to the time before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, or further back to the third post-Atlantean culture-epoch, we find that people for the most part believed in ghosts, in demons, as I mentioned recently in the case of the great Tertullian. This is indeed so. But there is a still earlier epoch when men also talked of ghosts, but not in the sense that ghosts were believed in during the epochs just described. In the second and in the first post-Atlantean culture-epochs they spoke of ghosts, but they were conscious that the ghosts were visualised by their own minds, and were pictures of the spiritual world existing behind them. Thus for a long period men had conceptions of ghosts, but with the knowledge that behind these ghosts, seen as pictures, there was a spiritual world. In their conceptual world, with its ghostlike visualisations, they formed an image of the spiritual world. But then men more or less forgot the spiritual world, or perhaps we might say it disappeared from their vision; there remained mere pictures which were looked upon as realities, and from this there arose the superstition about ghosts which is the debased form of those earlier beliefs.

Thus it may be said that the men of old developed their consciousness in such a way that they brought to development just those forces that were bestowed upon consciousness, and they instinctively limited themselves to having in their conceptions nothing but ghosts. In ancient times they pictured the Gods as ghosts, and later took the ghosts to be realities. Not that the ghosts were false: what was false was the attitude of men towards them.

The fact that our forefathers conceived of ghosts, and that all such notions are superstition—this is taken for granted by modern man in his judgment on the people of former ages; he pats himself on the back and thinks he is very clever. He docs not get as far as recognising that through ghosts, in still older times, people formed their conception of the spiritual world; for to-day it is not the spiritual world that interests people but the world of nature. The ability of modern men to form conceptions about nature makes them feel infinitely superior to their forefathers. But the age of the Consciousness Soul asks of us something different from what our forefathers could do; we must be clear what it is that we actually have in our outlook on nature.

Now as strictly modern, self-satisfied men, enlightened, clever men, out of our consciousness we form conceptions about nature. But when we take this whole world of conceptions about nature and test it, test it without prejudice—well, then we find that we have the conceptions, certainly, but with these conceptions we are unable to lay hold of nature. There are, as people say, limits to our knowledge of nature. I have often cited a present-day philosopher, little known by his writings, who has said openly many things that others have not said, because they have not gone so deeply into the matter. I am speaking of Richard Wahle, who has written two big books and all manner of small ones. One of the larger books, published in the eighties, was called The Whole of Philosophy and its End, and a few years ago he wrote The Mechanism of the Human Spirit.

This Richard Wahle might be called a spokesman of the men of to-day; in fact we could say that as Richard Wahle thinks, so do all those who find their way about in life through natural science. They think as he does, but he carries things to their logical conclusion, and so in him we have the strange and flagrant case of a Professor of Philosophy who wrote a large tome about the end of philosophy—a tome in which he sought to prove, out of the scientific method of thinking, that there ought to be no such thing as philosophy.

In his book, The Mechanism of the Human Spirit, this Professor of Philosophy, this philosophical author, expresses himself about his fellow-philosophers in the most singular way. This is approximately what he says.—Philosophers and philosophy resemble a restaurant in which formerly there used to be cooks and waiters preparing unappetising food and handing it to their patrons; now the cooks and waiters stand about with absolutely nothing to do. Thus, this cook, or waiter, or philosopher, says that formerly philosophy was to be compared with a restaurant where indigestible foods were concocted and served by cooks and waiters—the colleagues of our professor—and that now things have come to such a pass that not even indigestible foods are cooked any longer by the philosopher-cooks, and the cooks and waiters just stand around. Naturally, since our author is a cook, waiter, or philosopher of this kind, he must appear to himself as standing quite uselessly around.

In his two books, then, he has set himself, as he thinks, a final task: henceforth there should be no more philosophers, he is to be the last. This is the deeper meaning of his books. He is to be the last philosopher, for he has set himself this task ... now how is this to be explained? Richard Wahle as waiter or cook among other waiters and cooks who have formerly concocted indigestible food, and now have nothing whatever to do except with other cooks and waiters to concoct a poison which will be the end of them all—this is an extraordinarily interesting spectacle! When we accustom ourselves to studying symptomatically the development of history, we find this to be a symptom of the times which is worthy of our attention. For this philosopher is quick-witted and deeply imbued with the problems of scientific thinking.

Now I am quite convinced that the majority of you, on taking up these books, would very soon put them down again; for they are written in the learned language of modern philosophers and this language has a terminology unintelligible to those who are not versed in it—they first have to learn it. Nevertheless, whoever can cope with this language knows, or can know, that concealed in these books there is an immense amount of ingenuity of the kind that is possible to-day, and that in their painfully roundabout style there lies a kind of prophetic knowledge—though this should certainly be cultivated in a way quite different from his. However, we might perhaps say that this characteristic passion of his, to get to work on concocting the poison I spoke of for the other cooks and waiters, bears witness to the inner activity of this knowledge; otherwise, as an established Professor of Philosophy, he would never have said r Man has no more wisdom than an animal and is differentiated from the animal only by the fact that the animal lacks the mental capacity to seek after wisdom; man docs indeed seek after wisdom and is therefore rational because he has a foreshadowing of something he is unable to acquire.

These words are symptomatic of important knowledge—knowledge of a more or less negative character, knowledge about present-day natural science. This natural science is meant to treat of nature; it is meant in a certain sense to bring home nature to modern consciousness in a conceptual way. If, however, we look around at these conceptions, which to-day are formed about nature in the most learned way, we find, curiously enough, that human consciousness is merely inventing ghosts; but whereas the people of old invented ghosts to represent the Gods, to-day they are invented to represent the facts of nature. For what modern men conceive as natural science is related to nature as a ghost is related to reality. It was indeed divined by Richard Wahle that the age of the Consciousness Soul had come to this conclusion: We are not after all so superior to our forefathers; they used the forces of consciousness and formed conceptions of ghosts; we too form conceptions of ghosts. The only difference is that they had more beautiful ghosts than those invented by scientific thinkers, which, to speak the truth, are a horrible weaving in abstract concepts. But they are ghosts, just as the ghosts pictured by our forefathers were ghosts. And these ghosts of natural science are related to reality, this ghostly natural science itself is related to reality, in the same way as the ghosts of old were related to divine reality.

Now it behoves this age of the Consciousness Soul to realise that this is so—that living in conceptions is really living with ghosts. In this age of the Consciousness Soul it is extraordinarily important for man to face this significant fact. The men of old did not live in the age of the Consciousness Soul; hence they had no need to be aware that they were forming conceptions of ghosts. Our natural scientists also form conceptions of ghosts, but in this age of the Consciousness Soul it is our task to know that we also are forming conceptions of ghosts—not conceptions of nature but only of ghosts of nature. And as our forefathers were preceded by their own remote forefathers, who took ghosts to be images of divine activity, images of supersensible intelligence and not real in themselves, so by virtue of this age of the Consciousness Soul we have once more to rise again to a recognition of the truth: to recognise that our scientific ghosts have not the reality ascribed to them by modern scientists, but are only pointers to a reality which is to be sought through them. If we are deceived by the ghostly nature of natural science, we can never come to any clear knowledge of man. With our ghostly conceptions we are still able to perceive nature, for nature appears before our eyes in her true form; as to man himself, in the age of the Consciousness Soul we have to experience him consciously. It will not do to apply merely ghostly conceptions to man, for then we turn ourselves into ghosts. This has indeed happened to a very large extent.

The theory of evolution, Goethe's theory of evolution, is not wrong; it takes the right direction because it wishes to grasp man in his reality. The materialistic theory of evolution, with its Darwinian colouring, talks of man's descent from the animals. The truth, however, is this—there is something in us which originates in the animals, or at least has a common origin with the animals, yet this is not what we are as human beings; it is the ghost that natural science takes for man. Science turns man also into a ghost because it knows him only as a ghostly phenomenon, and then it asks: Whence comes this ghost? When we reach the point of recognising that it is not man but only his ghost that can be dealt with in the manner of modern science, then in this sphere we shall reach the truth. You will surely be ready to admit that you would never have come here had you sent only Homunculus, the ghost, which is the conception of yourselves forced upon you by natural science. And if only the Homunculi who represent you in your consciousness were here, I should not be able to speak to them! You carry real human beings here with you, but not in your consciousness. The age of the Consciousness Soul, however, has to raise into consciousness the real man. From Homunculus he must rise to man. If this were not to come about, man would get to the point of experiencing the polaric opposite of his ghostly being. The men of old did conceive of themselves as ghosts, it is true, but they could also receive the reality because atavistic forces were still active in them, whereas into the men of to-day there can enter only what comes through the Consciousness Soul; and when in the Consciousness Soul man has only the ghost of himself, moral spiritual impulses cannot get through. And when you perceive the accompanying phenomena of a ghostly natural science, then you find that this modern age, with its ghostly natural science, will never allow that impulses for moral action come down from the spiritual world. The moral impulses with which men work to-day are of primeval origin, springing from times when atavistic forces were still strong; for people to-day, when impulses for action arise, will not ask the spirit, they will only ask nature: What is the nature of man? What kind of driving forces are there in human nature?

It is terrible how in these days men are willing only to question nature—and of nature they can know only its ghost. Hence the reality becomes oppressively active in the unconscious, demanding entrance into consciousness, for we live in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

Thus I have made clear to you something important in the situation we are facing to-day. I have led you to see how it is that men form ghostly conceptions of nature, while scientific experimenters are found on all sides. ... Then a man in his reality appears before them, and the scientists study him. But the ghostly concepts of natural science are inadequate for this; hence the scientists are observers not of man, but only of his ghost—psycho-analysts. Psycho-analysis is the unmistakable child of a ghostly natural science; thus I always speak of psycho-analysis as working with inadequate means.

At this point we may ask: How has this situation come about? It has come about through the pattern of events which has taken shape in earthly evolution, causing a quite definite relation between the primeval evolution of man and the two side-streams, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. I have shown you the normal evolution from diverse aspects, and then the two side-streams—the Luciferic flowing into earthly life in the Lemurian period, the Ahrimanic in the Atlantean. Thus they are within human evolution, these three streams, and all that happens in the evolution of mankind is under their influence.

As a consequence of all that goes with these streams, human evolution as a whole came to an important crossroads in a certain definite year. During this year the three streams flowed together into a critical conjunction which was concealed only by a confusion in outer conditions, so that only the confusion was seen but not what was actually happening. This critical point occurred about 666 years after the Mystery of Golgotha. At that time—666 years after the birth of Christ—something was due to happen and could have happened, but did not happen. The reason why it did not happen you will now hear.

In the year 666 there could have come—visibly for ordinary people, particularly for men of the West—an important being who would not have entered the physical plane, but would have made himself very clearly perceptible to mankind even in an external way, so that they would have become his victims. Had this being appeared in the form he intended, we should not be writing 1918 to-day but 1918 minus 666, or 1252; for this being would have inspired men in such a way that they would have regulated their chronology accordingly. Had he been able to appear according to plan, this being would have brought about something very strange. Now the matter is like this: 333 years earlier, or 333 years after Christ, we have exactly the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch; the middle, that is, of the Graeco-Latin epoch. Now you can do this sum: it begins with 747 B.C. and ends with 1413; this makes 2,160 years, as it should. Take half 2,160 years and you get 1,080 years, so that 1,080 years since 747 B.C. had gone past by the middle of the post-Atlantean epoch. Take away 747 and you have 333, so that the year 333 of our era was the middle of the Graeco-Roman epoch. It was not before the Mystery of Golgotha, this mid-point, but after. It signifies the highest possible reality but not an external reality, because in external reality the two other streams flow in. If, however, evolution had proceeded in a straight line, without the side-streams flowing in, then 747 would have been the true centre and it would have been the zenith of the epoch of the Intellectual or Mind Soul. The Intellectual or Mind Soul would then have reached its highest degree of external development:

But it did not come about like that, because in a certain sense the serpent was already at work, having planned to apply in 666—333 years later—a quite definite procedure to human evolution. The intention of this being, the Sorat, the Beast—who had fully developed the Consciousness Soul, whereas man had reached only the age of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—was to bestow prematurely on men all the soul-spiritual achievements unobtainable through the Intellectual or Mind Soul, and within reach only of the Consciousness Soul. In effect, the culture-epoch of the Consciousness Soul was to come prematurely to man. According to world conditions, 666 was the most favourable point of time for this; the Sorat would then have been able to exercise such influence upon the earth that he could have said: “I am now teaching men everything they will ever be able to gain through the Consciousness Soul. Little by little I am pouring into man now, in the epoch of the Intellectual or Mind Soul, all that the other gods, whom I oppose, wish to give him only in the next culture-epoch.” An unjustified mingling of the Intellectual or Mind Soul with the Consciousness Soul was the object in view.

It would hardly have been possible to bring the content of the Consciousness Soul into the Intellectual or Mind Soul in the case of every man, for naturally men were at various stages of evolution; but in the case of a great number the attempt might have met with success, in the following way. When this being had reached his aim, a number of geniuses would have arisen, particularly among educated people in the West. For geniuses they would have been—just think of the middle of the epoch which began in 1413; when you add half a culture-epoch—1,080 years—to 1413, you get 2493. The knowledge that in the normal way men will have in 2493 would have sprouted up in 666, not indeed in men as they then were by nature, but through prophetic imagination inspired with the forces of genius, and would have revealed itself to unsuspecting Western peoples.

Remarkable phenomena were planned. If you consider the scientific ideals of to-day and hear people describing the wonderful progress made in recent decades ... just think what sort of picture these people could form of humanity in 2493, when in 1918 they are already so clever! People would not have built machines and so on, would not have made experiments, would not have gone the slow way ... with the forces of genius they would have foreseen everything and would also have created much. This year 666 was intended to deluge humanity with a knowledge and a culture which the primal gods had intended for men only during the third millennium. It cannot be conceived—need not be conceived—into what situation the so-called civilised world would have come if it had been deluged with this wisdom in the year 666! With their lack of self-discipline people would have come utterly to grief. For go to your history books and see what they say about man's unbalanced mood of soul in 666, and you will get some idea of how people would then have behaved if in this way genius had come among them. They have indeed brought things to a wonderful pass in what they have developed up to the year 1914 ... whatever would have become of them had they been deluged with all this wisdom of the Beast? It was nevertheless planned by certain higher spirits, particularly by a being of Ahrimanic nature who was to lead these spirits, that this being should appear, even if not on the physical plane—but he was to appear.

This had to be prevented. However many people there are who believe that nothing of this kind that can be given to mankind should be withheld, it had to be prevented, because it did not belong to human evolution in the spiritual sense. It could be prevented by the establishing of balance. Now, consider: 333 was the mid-point of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch; 333 years after that brings us to 666, when the Ahrimanic powers in all their strength would have brought to a climax the whole pride of materialism, but through the forces of genius. A state of balance could be maintained only by the appearance 333 years earlier—that is, at the beginning of our era—of that Being who threw into the balance His own substance, and prevented that being of whom I have spoken from appearing 333 years after 333. There you have one side of the scales—from 333 to 666 is 333 years. Here you have the other side bringing about equilibrium—from 333 back to the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus a state of balance was brought about. Thereby something has been enacted behind the scenes of external profane history. Something that could have happened was prevented by an actual event—which, however, as I have lately explained, can be grasped only with supersensible forces, because for earthly evolution the whole proceeding was of supersensible significance.

What, then, was meant to happen from 666 on, if the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred and the Beast of that time had been able to intervene in the evolution of mankind; what could have happened? You will be able to form some idea of what might have happened if you think over what I have just been describing. Men were hurrying on towards the fifteenth century; if the Beast had gone on stirring up mischief among men from 666 until the fifteenth century, he would by then have gained complete control of what was approaching. What was approaching was the grasping of the world through a ghost-like natural science—and with that the unleashing of human instincts. Because the Consciousness Soul was to grasp man as a mere ghost, the real man lagged behind; he did not understand himself. And in the age of the Consciousness Soul man can become man only by becoming conscious of what he is; otherwise he remains an animal, lags behind in his human evolution.

But the aim of the being who hoped to intervene in 666 was to make himself God. He said: “Men will come who no longer direct their gaze to the Spirit—the Spirit will not interest them. I shall see to it (and this he actually brought about) that in the year 869 a Council will be held in Constantinople at which the Spirit will be abolished. Men will no longer be interested in the Spirit; they will turn their attention to nature and form ghostlike concepts of nature. Then I shall do something that men will not notice, because they will not recognise themselves as real men, only as ghosts. I shall get complete control of the Consciousness Soul. I shall lead men astray about their own nature; I shall let them go on grasping only the ghost of themselves and I shall pour all the wisdom of the Consciousness Soul into their Intellectual or Mind Soul. Then I have them—then I shall have caught them.”

What would that signify? If man is to evolve at all normally, with no further intervention from this being, he will have to progress to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man; and of this possibility he would have been absolutely deprived. He would have remained at the stage of the Consciousness Soul; he would have been able to receive what the earth could give him but never to go on to the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions. If he succeeds in acquiring the content of the Consciousness Soul in the proper epoch through his primal forces, then, because of the evolution he will have gone through in the normal way, the predisposition will be in him to rise to Spirit-Self and so on. But that was to be prevented. He was to receive the Consciousness Soul with its content into the Intellectual or Mind Soul as an inoculation. Then he would have remained at the stage of the Consciousness Soul, and he would have been an automaton in face of the knowledge that from the sixth epoch onwards would have been poured into him. But then it would have been all over with him: he would have developed no further. He would have drawn this knowledge into his Consciousness Soul, would have placed it all with the utmost egoism at the service of the Consciousness Soul.

That was the intention of the being who wanted to appear in 666—to cut off the possibility of all future earthly evolution. After the evolutions of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth had run their course, evolution was to be finished; man would have gone no further along the path on which those Beings of the higher Hierarchies wished to accompany him who from the beginning have taken his normal human evolution in hand.

This could be prevented only by this balance, this state of equilibrium, flowing into the world-evolution of man; by the fact that Christ intervened, through the Mystery of Golgotha, at the point in time which lay as far behind the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch as the point of time when the Beast wished to intervene lay ahead.

You see what connections are concealed behind the maya of externally apparent facts. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul the essential thing is for men to be enlightened about such matters—to become conscious of them. Just think—we are involved in what could be brought about only through the Beast being put in chains by Christ Jesus, as an Epistle expresses it. It is a most remarkable fact that in this Epistle of Barnabas,² looked upon as genuine in many early editions of the New Testament but judged as apocryphal by the Western Church, there is an indication of this most important fact of Christ holding the Beast in balance. Certain circles knew very well what needed to be withheld from Western man if an increasing knowledge of the Christ Mysteries was to be prevented from passing into the Consciousness Soul.

If you take what I have said to-day, you will not be surprised that the writer of the Apocalypse speaks of this rather heatedly. What I have said to-day from the temporal aspect you can easily connect with what I have said about the Beast of 666 from other aspects—these matters are always given light from various directions. You know we have to do this. The writer of the Apocalypse expresses himself with a certain vehemence in the passage where he speaks of the appearance of the Beast, and he uses approximately these words: The number of the Beast is 666 and it is the number of a man. Or, put better: It is the number of the man, the man who struggles against saying “Not I, but Christ in me.” These things must become ever more conscious for men, since men have now entered upon the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

If you will only take the facts as they come before you to-day! Do not just criticise them pedantically; take them as a challenge to real activity—but consider how it would be if you were to speak of such things to the clever people of to-day in the way we have just been doing. Suppose you were to sit down with one of these very clever people, a shining light in some sphere or other, and you told him about a matter of this sort—imagine what sort of opinion he would form! But take in real earnest the picture you must make for yourselves, and you will have to say: We have certainly entered the age of human evolution in which one meets with the least understanding when speaking of the spiritual knowledge most suited to this particular age.

I might say that never have two parties in the world understood each other so little as do the spiritual and the non-spiritual to-day. Those who are spiritual can certainly understand the non-spiritual; that is not particularly difficult; but the non-spiritual defend themselves with all the weapons they have—especially with their tongues—against any understanding of the spiritual.

Now these facts should not astonish us, for other things too are out of harmony to-day, and our age is the age of great disharmonies, great discrepancies, with opposing sides coming into direct conflict. If nowadays some article on the matters that are lectured about here comes into the hands of a man who is numbered among the “clever” folk, he will say: “It is remarkable to find all this appearing in our time; it is quite out of keeping with the present day.” For he considers that his own outlook is the only one suited to the times; anything else he regards as out of place. To-morrow and the day after we shall be discussing how all this, if it does not harmonise with the sense-world, is nevertheless in harmony with the supersensible.

There are other things, however, in these days which are out of harmony—you need only bring a serious study of life to bear on some of the descriptive accounts, reflective accounts, which tell you how in this twentieth century mankind has come such a wonderfully long way in humane feeling and understanding between peoples! From the beginning of the century you will find high-sounding articles—whole books—on these lines, written with unction and heavily sugared, so that a properly progressive man of to-day could take in this picture of his times as though he were tasting honey.

There are indeed such descriptions, innumerable descriptions, of how splendidly far mankind has progressed! Well—compare all this with the last four years, ask whether it is all sweet harmony.

All this springs from the fear men have at the entry into the Consciousness Soul. For if we are really to enter into the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, many truths about human evolution will have to emerge. In the most important matters to-day so much folly is shown just because men are full of fear; because everyone should be speaking with conscious awareness, and that is just what they do not want to do.

• 1. Sometimes translated “Spiritual Soul.”
• 2. See Excluded Books of the New Testament (published by Eveleigh Nash and Grayson, London). The relevant passage occurs in Section 4 (p. 214) of The Epistle of Barnabas, translated by Bishop Lightfoot. In the Introduction to this collection of early Christian documents, J. Armitage Robinson, D.D., refers to four books (of which The Epistle of Barnabas is one) as being “so near to the possibility of being included in the Canon of the New Testament that they are actually found in one or other of two of our earliest manuscripts of the whole Greek Bible.” The text of The Epistle of Barnabas is included at the end of the Sinaitic Codex (fourth century).

Yesterday we were trying to describe in accordance with its inner nature an extraordinarily important fact in the evolution of man; we tried to describe it from an unfamiliar point of view, but one of outstanding significance. Let us briefly recall this. I was trying to show that a certain state of equilibrium was brought about in the evolution of Europeans because the event which was meant to happen in the year 666 of our era had been opposed by that other event known as the Event of Golgotha. I said that men are in the course of an evolution predetermined for them, in a certain sense, by those Regents of the world from whom mankind received its origin. If we follow this evolution in detail, we come to see just how the soul can take its place in any epoch into which it is born. We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which began in the fifteenth century and will last until the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth millennium. In this epoch men are intended to enter upon the development of what we call the Consciousness Soul. All the affairs of this epoch point finally to the goal that may be termed the perfecting of the Consciousness Soul. Painful events, joyful events, events that put men to the test and events that we may call divine gifts for the blessing of mankind, all that is full of light, all that is full of shadow in this epoch—all this is meant to serve the purpose of enlightening man about himself and his connection with the world. To find his place consciously in the world and thereby to strive for what has hitherto been pervaded with so much fantasy that it has never been rightly known—to strive to reach for the first lime through self-discipline what may be called the free human personality, a real control of the will founded upon self-education: that will be the task drawing men on in this epoch. In simple terms we might say that what is thus going on has been decreed by the Divine Beings with whom man has been united since his starting-point, Beings who lead him on from stage to stage, and are opposed from two sides by those Powers we know as Ahrimanic and Luciferic Powers.

Now I said: Let us put the hypothetical case that the Event of Golgotha never happened, that no Christ decided to unite His divine destiny with that of earthly men—what would then have come about? We can never know the true facts of history if we take note only of what is apparent, for then we never achieve a real, correct valuation of events. If to-day, for example, some event prevents our undertaking something we should otherwise have done; if we are thus prevented from being next day in some place where a railway accident might have caused our death, then it cannot be said that the event in question is rightly estimated if it is merely recorded. For quite certainly this event, if we consider it only in itself, may be entirely insignificant, and yet it may be sufficient to keep us from being where death might have met us; and we cannot understand the event if we consider only what concerned us at the time. It is just because men take things so materially and intellectually, never asking what might have happened—it is just on this account that they fail to gain insight into the true value and reality of events.

We therefore ask the question: If we assume that the Christ through the Event of Golgotha had never united His divine destiny with the destiny of man, what would have happened? Now I told you yesterday that in the year 666, by reason of certain measures which would then have been possible, men would have gone through a quite different point in their evolution; that through certain geniuses who would have arisen, men would have acquired an enormous amount of great wisdom, somewhat fantastic wisdom, but all the same a great amount of wisdom. This wisdom would have had a tremendous significance, for if men—as was predetermined for them by the Divine Spirits connected with their origin—had gone on developing gradually to receive this wisdom in the normal course of events, they would have had to wait, as I indicated, for thousands of years. They will indeed receive it in a different way, because they will acquire it through their own efforts.

Thus something would have been received prematurely that men through their own exertions can acquire only in the course of a long, long time. And men would have been unripe for it. It is hardly possible to-day to picture what course history would have taken for so-called civilised mankind if this had happened. Men would have acquired an unripe knowledge out of a kind of instinct—but the instinct of genius; they would have been overwhelmed to a certain degree by this knowledge, as though paralysed, disabled by it, and their future evolution would have been cut short. They would have come to the point of acquiring the Consciousness Soul not in a natural way, as was to happen from the fifteenth century on, but artificially in the seventh century through a kind of inoculation. But the whole evolution to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man, would have gone by the board. People would have become extraordinarily perfected as men of the earth, but they would have been shut out from all further evolution. This is what is referred to in such vehement terms in the Apocalypse, in the Revelation of John, as the appearance of the Beast. There is mentioned the number 666, which gives many scholars so much trouble to explain; they have all more or less missed the real meaning of it.

Now in order to ensure that this should not happen, and that a force opposed to it should come to the aid of mankind, the Event of Golgotha had to enter into human evolution at a prior date, after which men could receive what has flowed into their evolution through the appearance of Christ Jesus.

This is yet another point of view for judging rightly what the Event of Golgotha is in human evolution—it is something which has given the whole of Earth-evolution its meaning. Thus in order to indicate the significance of the Event of Golgotha for Earth-evolution, I have often said: If a being from another planet in our solar system—a being equivalent to earthly man but not at home on this planet—were to land one day on the earth, naturally everything on the earth would be strange to him. Such a being, if suddenly precipitated into earthly existence, would find a very great deal that he could not understand; but one thing he would understand. If you took this being—wherever he came from—and showed him Leonardo's “Last Supper,” pointing out the action of the Christ, he would in his own way get some feeling for the meaning of the earth. You might show him also what the earth has in the way of natural products, or the wide range of works of art—he would understand only what is in any way interwoven with the destiny of Christ Jesus. What I mentioned yesterday is drawn entirely from spiritual perception. Spiritual perception alone can be a guide to the important facts of human life to-day. Through supersensible perception of that which is fulfilled in the course of time, this polarity is revealed between the year of the birth of Christ Jesus and the year 666. But now let us look in external history for knowledge of this; let us ask external history if anywhere it confirms that such a thing has actually happened.

Now as ordinary scholarship does not know much of these things, it has never in its chronicles taken a great deal of notice of the relevant events. But when we know the truth, we find that even external history can lead us to these events, and that they then throw light on the most important matters. Here in life certain things happen, and behind these things there is the same spiritual world. Anyone who is aware of the connections knows how one or other event is related to its spiritual background. For anyone who is studying how modern man has emerged from the old Graeco-Latin cultural evolution, and looks only at the external facts of history, a very great deal remains problematical. It is from the inner connections that light comes.

Just take the event, of very little interest to ordinary people, but all the same an extraordinarily significant event—take the event of the year 529, when the Emperor Justinian prohibited the further functioning of the Greek schools of philosophy—those schools which were the shining light of antiquity. So all the scholarship of olden times which had been drawn into the Greek schools of philosophy, and had produced an Anaxagoras, a Heraclitus, and later a Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle—all this was swept away in 529 by a decree of the Emperor Justinian. True, it is possible to gain from history some idea of why Justinian swept away the old knowledge in Europe; but if we reflect honestly upon these matters, we shall remain dissatisfied with any of the explanations given. We fed the working of unknown forces. And it is strange that this event coincides—not exactly, but historical facts often appear to belong together when they are looked at from a later time—this event ties up with the expulsion of the philosophers from Edessa in the year 489 by the Isaurian, Zeno Isauricus. So from the most important places of that world the most learned men were driven out. And these men, who had preserved the ancient wisdom that had not yet been influenced by Christianity were obliged to wander forth. They fled to Nisibis, journeyed then to Persia and founded the Academy of Jundí Sábúr. (See note at end of lecture, p. 103.)

Now even among philosophers very little is said about this Academy of learning at Jundí Sábúr. But unless one has some knowledge of the character of this Academy, founded by those who had belonged to the ancient schools of learning, nothing about the whole evolution of modern humanity will be understood. For this ancient learning, carried over into Persia by the sages whom Justinian and Isauricus had banished, provided the basis for an enormously significant teaching which was given out in the seventh century at Jundí Sábúr. It was in Jundí Sábúr that Aristotle was translated. And the remarkable thing is that Aristotle (whose works might otherwise have been completely lost) had first been translated into Syrian, in Edessa, by those very men of learning who were later driven out by Zeno Isauricus. The Syrian translation was brought to Jundí Sábúr, and there translated into Arabic.

This rendering of Aristotle from the Greek into Arabic, by way of the Syrian language, indicates something very remarkable. Anyone who has an insight into the transformation that thoughts undergo when they are translated into another language—or when an attempt is made to translate them—will be able to grasp how, to put it hypothetically, a certain intention could have gone into presenting, not Aristotle the Greek, but the Aristotle who made his way into Arabic through the Syrian. Thus it came about that Aristotelian concepts were imbued with an Arabian light, thrown over them by the remarkable souls of the Arabians of that time, in whom the keenest thinking was united with a certain visionary capacity—a capacity, however, which took its course on logical lines and rose to actual perception. And so, in the light of this characteristic teaching, an impressive world-outlook developed in Jundí Sábúr during the seventh century.

What I have been referring to is not an imaginary event, nor something that never took place on earth; it was in Jundí Sábúr that the teaching I spoke of yesterday was given—a teaching which in its essential nature forms the greatest imaginable contrast to all that has developed from the Event of Golgotha. And it represented a definite endeavour by the sages of Jundí Sábúr. This endeavour—just as I told you yesterday—was on behalf of an all-embracing knowledge which was meant to replace the exertions of the Consciousness Soul. It would have made of man a mere man of the earth and would have shut him off from his true future—his evolution into the spiritual world. Men of wisdom would have arisen, but materialistically thinking men, men entirely of the earth. They would have been able to see deeply into what was spiritual and supersensible in the earth, but they would have been cut off precisely from the evolution intended for man by his creators—the evolution to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Whoever has any inkling of the wisdom of Jundí Sábúr will indeed regard it as in the highest sense dangerous for mankind, but also as a phenomenon of great power. And the intention was to deluge with this learning not only the immediate vicinity but the whole of the then known civilised world—Asia, Europe, and everywhere.

The preliminaries for this were prepared. But the influence that was to have gone out from Jundí Sábúr was deadened, held back by retarded spiritual forces, which were nevertheless connected—although they form a kind of opposition—with the outflow of the Christ Impulse. Through the appearance of Mohammed and his visionary religious teaching, there was a deadening of the influence that was meant to go out from Jundí Sábúr. Above all in those regions where it was wished to spread the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr, Mohammed took the ground from under its feet. He skimmed the cream off it, and so the Jundí Sábúr influence was left to trail behind and could accomplish nothing in face of what Mohammed had done. Here you can see the wisdom in world-history; we come to know the truth about Mohammedanism only when, in addition to other things, we know that Mohammedanism was destined to deaden the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr, to take from it the strong Ahrimanically seductive force which would otherwise have been exercised upon mankind.

However, this wisdom of Jundí Sábúr has not entirely disappeared. We must follow attentively the evolution of mankind from the seventh century up to our own time, if we are to understand what has happened in connection with the Gnostic movement of Jundí Sábúr. The eminent teacher, whose name is unknown, but who was the greatest opponent of Christ Jesus, failed to achieve his purpose—the purpose of the teaching he gave to his pupils at Jundí Sábúr—but something else was achieved. Careful studies, however, are necessary in order to recognise what this was.

The question may be asked: How has it really come about that our present science has arisen, with its particular method of thinking? What I am now about to say is not unknown to conscientious historians. This present scientific method of thinking, as I described it for you yesterday, has not developed in a direct line from anything in Christianity—no, in reality it has nothing to do with Christianity as such. It is possible to trace step by step, from decade to decade, how the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr—certainly in a deadened form—spread over Southern Europe and Africa to Spain, to France, to England, and then over the Continent by way of the monasteries. We can trace how the supersensible is driven out and only the sense-perceptible retained; we can trace the tendency, as it were, the intention. And that which arises from the deadening of the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr is Western scientific thinking.

In this connection it is particularly interesting to study Roger Bacon—not Bacon of Verulam but Roger Bacon. Although he was a monk—not, however, looked upon very favourably by his colleagues—we can see how the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr flowed into him. So little do men to-day know of the sources of what is working in their souls that they imagine they have a scientific thinking free from prejudice, whereas this “impartial scientific thinking” derives in fact from the Academy of Jundí Sábúr.

It is not true that the findings gained from spiritual vision are incapable of corroboration; but we have to set about it in the right way if in the life of outward experience we are to show how what is brought from the spiritual actually emerged. In the near future these considerations will be of extreme importance. For if men wish to extricate themselves from the confusion of to-day, the confusion of recent years, they will have to see the past in its true colours. The fact that to-day they are inclined to look at everything from a scientific angle has nothing directly to do with Christianity; it is the result of the conditions I have been describing. Thus in the evolution of Western culture we have these two forces, these two streams—on the one hand the Christian stream, on the other hand the stream that has so deeply influenced Western thinking, and can in fact be studied when we examine the spiritual life of the Middle Ages.

This spiritual life of the Middle Ages is studied very one-sidedly. But go and look at the pictures which were painted about the way in which the Schoolmen behaved towards the Arabian philosophers; see how in the sense of Western Christian tradition the Schoolman is shown standing there with his Christian doctrine and preparing to tread the Arabian men of learning under foot ... over and over again this same passionate theme, the treading under foot of the Arabian men of learning by the force of Christ. Look at this in the pictures arising from the Christian tradition of the West, and you will understand how there lives in these pictures the passionate wish of the Middle Ages to set Christianity in opposition to all that sprang originally from the enmity of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr towards the Christ; all the passionate feeling about the Arabian learning and its spreading over Europe, right up to the time of Maimonides Ramban and Avicenna—everywhere we find the echo of what I have been describing. But just think—man was intended, aided by the Mystery of Golgotha, to find the Consciousness Soul out of his personality, and then to rise further to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. The purpose of the genius of Gnostic learning, however, was that man should receive something through direct revelation, without needing from the fifteenth century onwards to develop his Consciousness Soul. He was to acquire as a revelation of genius all that otherwise he would have had to find through his own personal capacity, in conjunction with the divine-spiritual Beings appointed for him, among whom even Christ Jesus belongs. The thoughts of men such as Averröes, who had acquired the Gnostic wisdom of Jundí Sábúr in its deadened form, were focused upon this. Who would ever really understand, on reading the foolish, disconnected information given to-day in school-books about Averröes, why this Spanish-Arabian man of learning said: “When a man dies, it is only the substance of his soul that flows into the universal spirituality. Man has no personal individuality; all that is soul in separate men is merely a reflection of the one universal soul.” Why did he say this? He said it because it is part of the Jundí Sábúr wisdom, which told people not that each individual is to develop the Consciousness Soul, but that the wisdom of the Consciousness Soul was to come to them as a revelation from above. Then it would have been an Ahrimanic revelation, and the content of the Consciousness Soul would have really merged into monism, with the individual consciousness becoming merely semblance. Everything that lives in the cultural evolution of the West is illuminated when things are considered spiritually. Now we must ask ourselves over and over again, first: How can this evolution of the Consciousness Soul come about?—for it has to come about; and secondly: What prevents men to-day from turning to Spiritual Science, which alone can show them the way to the Consciousness Soul?

Now yesterday I explained to you how the knowledge of nature—of which modern man is inordinately proud—leads to conceptions that do not reflect nature, but only its ghost. What men know of nature is not the truth; it is a ghost, and related to the reality of nature in the same way that a ghost is related to reality. But scientists are not aware of the ghostly nature of their knowledge, nor are they aware that what they know as Man is not Homo but Homunculus. Now the course of human evolution, which in its present character began during the fifteenth century and will continue to the middle of the fourth millennium, will be such that man will have increasingly to discern what he is really striving for in, let us say, his knowledge of nature, and how far he approaches reality with this knowledge. He will have to strive for knowledge and he will have to avoid the obstacles that meet him on the way. The most important obstacles—we have already described them from a certain point of view but we will call them up again before our souls—arise because in our scientific age, which is a child of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr, man pursues a ghostly knowledge, for he forms conceptions about nature from which all that is spiritual has departed. And we may ask—Why docs he do this?—for then we shall gain some idea of what man has to overcome. Why, then, does man unconsciously want this ghostly knowledge of nature and why is he so proud and overbearing about it? Why?

My dear friends, the moment we recognise, recognise fully, that this knowledge gives only the ghost of nature, we feel impelled to press on to the true reality behind the ghost; then we want to have nature in her reality. We might indeed characterise our scientific world-outlook also from the following aspect, and say: This scientific world-outlook arrives at ghostly conceptions, and is satisfied because it believes it then has conceptions about real nature. It goes on to invent all kinds of concepts, atoms, molecules and so on, which as you know do not exist and are mere inventions. It also invents all sorts of laws, such as the conservation of energy, the conservation of matter, which in fact do not exist. It looks for all kinds of hypotheses for what has no existence, for what it conceives of in a ghostly way in accordance with these natural laws. And why does it do all this? It is because the secret fear we have already mentioned makes itself felt immediately in the deep places of the soul; but the man concerned knows nothing of this fear because it is unconscious—I might even call it cowardice. For what would happen if he found courage enough to say: “You want a concept of nature, not the ghost of nature? Then you must press on to the reality.”—But then one will not find atoms, or molecules, or the concepts of Oswald or Haeckel; then one comes to Ahriman and his hosts! And it all becomes spiritual. Anyone who makes his way through true natural science to reality discovers Ahriman. But men are afraid of this, for they think they are falling into an abyss if, when they are seeking solid matter, there is in truth nothing, and they find spirit there. For the Spirit who is revealed is one to whom we cannot pray; we must protect ourselves against him and meet him in full consciousness.

Truly it is no arbitrary act to place the Christ in our sculptured group together with Ahriman and Lucifer; it is because this grouping is connected with the deepest problems of our present life, and because man must be fully aware of these matters. Our natural science is a ghostly one, must be ghostly, as long as we have not the courage to look for the spiritual in nature—but then we find Ahriman. And our knowledge of the soul does not give us the real soul, only an image of the soul. Strictly speaking, we get no more than this image from what is taught to-day in academies and universities as psychology. And this image blinds us to the reality; for were man to investigate further the path on which this image arises, then Lucifer would show himself. He is the next spiritual Being to be found.

Indeed, anyone who can really get through to what remains to-day of the intended knowledge of Jundí Sábúr, even though it has been blunted in the course of history, will find that these methods lead to a very exact knowledge of Lucifer and Ahriman. And they were indeed meant to lead only to Lucifer and Ahriman, and not to the guidance of mankind by Christ Jesus.

Now this is something that was felt by the medieval Scholastics who wanted to tread the Arabian men of learning under foot and always saw themselves in this attitude; and it was felt on account of its connection with the deepest evolutionary impulses of mankind. What was to have been revealed to man by Ahrimanic intervention—instead of his having to secure it by his own efforts during the course of centuries—would have been a highly dangerous wisdom because of its connection with three things. Man is on the way laboriously to acquire this wisdom through the Consciousness Soul, but at that time, in the seventh century, it was to have come to mankind in the way I have described. It is not a forbidden wisdom for man, but a wisdom he was meant to strive for under the guidance of the Christ Impulse. Now the three things to which the wisdom is related are, first, the nature of birth and death. We have said a good deal about birth and death, and from the way we have spoken of them you know it is only by supersensible knowledge that man can master birth and death. Through the fact that man is born, and dies, the supersensible makes its appearance in the world of the senses. Birth and death remain riddles for those who try to grasp them merely from the point of view of the senses, for they are not sense-phenomena. To regard them as sense-phenomena is not in accordance with truth; the truth is that they are supersensible events. When, however, we try to investigate the mysteries of birth and death supersensibly, with real observation, certain accompanying phenomena make themselves known. Above all there appears the accompanying phenomenon which makes us realise that as we live here in the sense-world, we have only an apparent life of soul. In the West, men have struggled against this truth for centuries. You can follow their struggles in my book Vom Menschenrätsel, where I speak of it right at the beginning. But there I had to express myself more cautiously, for these things still cannot be given to the outer world to-day; they are still considered paradoxical. You know how the whole Western world has come under the influence of the proposition formulated by Descartes, but really going back to Augustine: Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am. Men believed that in thinking they were laying hold of the reality of the soul. The proposition would have to run differently if we wished to establish the truth about man as he lives in the world of the senses. We should have to say: I think, therefore I am not. For the moment we begin simply to think, the moment we develop purely inward thinking, we are no more. What is then within us? This is certainly a very complicated phenomenon, but by tomorrow it will have become clear to us.

Let us take this to be man's life (diagram), and this to be

what throughout life he experiences as a conceiving, thinking being. Then this (red) is merely an appearance, running from birth to death like a hollow reed, for the truth lies further back. The truth is there before birth, or let us say before conception; in the supersensible spiritual world is our reality; and at the boundary where we enter the world of the senses only the image of us is allowed through. We are only an image of our life before birth, or before conception. The truth is not that something now living is speaking to you; only the images of it have been allowed to pass through. The truth is that what was in the spiritual world continues to speak to-day. We are not eternal because we go on existing, but because we are still to-day what in truth we were before birth or conception, and it is this which speaks into the present. Through having been drawn down into bodily existence, we have really become an illusory appearance of our essential being for the term of our earthly life. “I think, therefore I am not”—philosophy from Augustine to Descartes has sought to spread darkness over this profound truth. People will never gain knowledge of the mysteries of birth and death while this darkness prevails. For they ask: “When did the soul have its beginning?” “At birth.” “When does it cease?” “At death.” If we recognised the supersensible truth we should speak differently and say: When did the soul cease to unfold its life as soul ? When we were born, or conceived. When will the soul begin again to unfold its life as a supersensible being? When we die. Here on earth this life is interrupted so that not only the supersensible should work into our life, but that we may absorb what can be gained through the senses and make it part of our life as a whole. There will be no question here of a fanatical asceticism; the obvious fact is that earthly life is absolutely necessary to the whole life of man. But this earthly life is so important, and appears under the guise of materiality, precisely because our true human life as super-sensible beings ceases when we enter earthly life, and begins again when we live on after death.

The mysteries of birth and death begin to reveal themselves only when we know that we are supersensible beings, and are only the image of what we are before birth, and after death, as soul-beings. But then we must have the courage to look steadily at ourselves. If here (see diagram) there is only a hollow reed, only an image, we must find the courage to say: Do not let us be blinded by the image, but let us with full knowledge confront Lucifer. The gaining of knowledge is fruitful for life; it demands courage, inner courage. This must be repeatedly emphasised. That is one thing: knowledge concerning birth and death.

The second thing is knowledge concerning the course of our life itself. Because we look upon our relation as soul to body falsely—though the falsity is justified for the reasons you can find in my Occult Science—we have a false conception also of the course of our life. We form it on the lines of the illustration I made use of here a few days ago: you remember how I took the image of Father Rhine. Someone stands on the bridge in Basle, looks down and says: “There's the old Rhine; the old Rhine ...” yes, but what do you mean by the old Rhine? The water I see flowing there below is not old, for in the course of an hour it will be far away, and in a few days somewhere in the wide ocean; the water is certainly not old. And what you mean does not seem to be merely the river-bed, hollowed out of the earth between the Swiss mountains and the North Sea. Then what is Father Rhine, the old Rhine, so often spoken of? It is not at all a substantial thing; no substance is left once you have the idea of Father Rhine. And this is no less true of our own bodily nature. This bodily nature of ours is a continuously running stream: a destroying and renewing of the vital fluids; a destroying and renewing of the vital fluids. Nothing remains but the form, which is of spiritual origin. Substance continually pours into the form; it appears, pours itself in, is destroyed—just like the waters of Father Rhine.

Because of the illusion, the may a, that permeates the outer world, we do not see this flux of continuous dissolution and renewal which is the truth about the life perceived by the senses. We behold instead what comes to birth—the lump of flesh filled with bones and blood, which is to grow bigger until it is full-grown, and then remains so until death. This is conceived of in much the same way that Father Rhine is conceived of as a piece of water, which of course it is not; but just as we might picture a piece of water stretching from the Swiss mountains to the North Sea, and then imagine it lying there at rest in its bed, so do we form a conception of the human body. It is continually flowing, whereas we believe it to be something rigid—it is difficult to find a good word for this—a rigid something between birth and death. If we had a correct vision of ourselves, we should see the continuous flux, and could never suppose that this continuous flux has anything to do with our true being. But if we could see the underlying forces of dissolution which are continually at work there, we should acquire a knowledge of medicine, a spiritual medical knowledge which would certainly take a different form from our modern medical knowledge. You will not get the right idea of this spiritual medical knowledge if you say: “Yes, indeed—that is how illnesses would be healed!” Illnesses cannot be healed in the way men would like to-day. All we do with true spiritual medical knowledge is to keep intact the forces of healing. Genuine therapeutics would consist in so ordering life that a man would be master of the forces that bring about continuous excretion, dissolution, and renewal in his organism. We should need no drugs from the chemist if the individual man not only knew how to apply this mastery to his own person, but were so to live with his fellows that it could be accepted by the whole human race. I have often mentioned this. That is the second thing.

The third thing to be connected with this knowledge is a true natural science. What is true natural science, my dear friends? As I have often emphasised, Spiritual Science is not hostile towards natural science in its present form, but it realises that this natural science does not give the whole truth about nature; it gives only a ghost. There is no point in fighting this ghost—in our various ways we must just put up with it. It is no good thinking out a poison, like the philosopher Richard Wahle in the story I told you yesterday—even though it were a poison meant only to destroy a philosophy, a philosophical poison, nothing more. It is no use thinking out some poison to rid the world of all those who think scientifically; the useful thing is to discover how far they are right. We should say to scientists: If you were to insist on the accuracy of your research, we should entirely agree; but at the same time you ought to admit that through this research, which is accurate from the scientific point of view, you arrive at conceptions only of nature's ghost and not of nature's reality. But we have to get through to reality; that is precisely the task of this age of the Consciousness Soul. The scientist will claim that he has this or that good reason for not letting his knowledge of nature become ghostlike, to which the spiritual scientist must reply: But you are quite right to have your ghostly knowledge of nature. For if you seek any substance in nature beyond its ghost, you will be wrong; you are right only if behind the ghost you look for what is Ahrimanic, when you look for what is spiritual. You are therefore right in seeking a ghostly knowledge.—Now what I have told you about man's bodily nature takes on a decidedly ghostly character. And anyone who looks right into nature from a higher point of view beholds as a true natural phenomenon, about which he is under no illusion, a quite different phenomenon from those substantial ones commonly brought to our notice. The peculiar thing—I will say more about it tomorrow—is that in spite of everything the world at some points is always indicating the truth. Somewhere a pointer to the truth can be found, if people want to know how they should think about the reality of the natural phenomena which lie open to our senses on all sides.

What then should we be looking for? Is there anything in nature itself to enlighten us? Yes, there is: for example, the rainbow—the rainbow is a true picture of a natural phenomenon. Just think—of course you know this—if you could get to where the rainbow is, you could quite comfortably pass through it; it is brought about simply by the inter-working of certain processes. Just as spectre-like, just as ghost-like, are all the processes of nature, only this is not perceived; they are not what they appear to be to the eye, the ear, or the other senses; they are the combined outcome of other spiritual processes. We tread the earth, believing we have solid matter below us; in reality it is merely what we perceive as with the rainbow—and when we believe we are treading on firm ground it is Ahriman sending up the force from below.

Directly we get free from what is merely spectre-like, ghost-like, in natural phenomena, we meet the spiritual. In other words, all searching for so-called solid matter is really rather nonsensical. If man will only give up looking for anything coarsely material as the basis of nature—and this he will do before the fourth millennium—he will come to something quite different; he will discover rhythms, rhythmical orderings, everywhere in nature. These rhythmical orderings are there, but as a rule modern materialistic science makes fun of them. We have given artistic expression to them in our seven pillars, and so on, in the whole configuration of our Building.¹ This rhythmical order is there in the whole of nature. In the plants one leaf follows another in rhythmical growth; the petals of the blossoms are ordered rhythmically, everything is rhythmically ordered. Fever takes a rhythmical course in sickness; the whole of life is rhythmical. The discerning of nature's rhythms—that will be true natural science.

By learning to understand the rhythms in nature we shall even come to a certain application of the rhythmical in technology. This would be the goal for future technics: harmoniously related vibrations would be set going; they would be small at first but would act upon each other so that they became larger and larger, and by this means, simply through their resonance, a tremendous amount of work could be done.

Now tomorrow I will show you in greater detail why it is so truly wise on the part of the Christian world-order—which in this sense is the wise divine world-order—to let mankind become ripe in the course of centuries for the knowledge of which I have just been speaking, whereas the Academy of Jundí Sábúr wanted to force it upon men. For men must have something else as their aim if this knowledge is to come to them. These forms of knowledge may be bestowed upon mankind only if, simultaneously with a development towards them, there comes into being as widely as possible, in connection with our third point, an entirely selfless social order. No rhythmical technics can lie introduced without causing harm to mankind, unless at the same time a selfless social order is striven after; to an egoistic society they would bring only hurt.

Again, in connection with the second point, I mentioned a force which is bound up with healing power. I spoke of how one could come to see processes of dissolution and renewal, excretion and assimilation, occurring under the influence of this force. As I have said from other points of view, this force cannot be given over to mankind unless progress is made in other directions at the same time. Men will have first to cultivate a strict conscientiousness, in relation not only to outwardly visible things, but also to things not outwardly visible. They will have to learn to control not only what is visible, but also, under the guidance of conscience, their thinking and feeling. For with a knowledge of this force—which is hidden by the fact of our looking on the flow of life between birth and death as a rigid body—with a mastery of this force tremendous harm could be done, if it were not developed in the light of a strictly responsible conscience even towards what is not apparent.

And the third thing would correspond with my first point, with knowledge of the mysteries of birth and death. These mysteries of birth and death presuppose likewise that mankind will first come to experience a certain maturity; they presuppose that man will really be able to confront Ahriman and Lucifer consciously. Anyone who knows how to reflect upon the meaning of what is meant by this first point, realises the following, which I will now put before you in conclusion; tomorrow we shall be saying more about it. He realises the following.

My dear friends, it is possible to study natural science as mere ghostly knowledge and not to realise that it is mere ghostly knowledge; it is possible to content oneself with this untrue knowledge. This is helpful; it actually helps us, for then we do not face the danger of meeting Ahriman. You can make Ahriman invisible, but then you must accumulate knowledge of nature merely in the present-day sense, which does not reach the truth. To remain content with this knowledge of nature, and so with what is untrue, is a good way of defending yourself against Ahriman. But you must choose: either you want the truth, in which case you will have to make acquaintance with Ahriman at work supersensibly in the world; or you can keep to what is untrue. If you cultivate what is untrue, you will say: “The ghostly knowledge of nature gives us the true nature.” Well and good; then be content with what suits Ahriman; he wants lies, he lives upon lies. And he can really live very well on these hidden lies; nothing pleases him more than to see holding sway the lie that a ghostly knowledge of nature is real knowledge of nature.

Again, I have spoken of that which is a mere semblance of the supersensible; I described it as the image that is allowed through. Here too is a choice. We can penetrate to the supersensible—but then we have to look Lucifer (spiritually, of course) in the eye. Or we can keep to what is untrue and take the semblance of the soul for its reality. Then, however, we can never come to understand birth and death, or immortality; for then we shall be looking not upon the soul, the immortal soul, but only upon its image. This is what I have wanted to place before your souls by way of introduction. To-morrow we will go on from here.

You can see how important these thoughts are. In this age of the Consciousness Soul, earthly man has the choice of striving for the truth, which requires him to confront the spiritual with courage; or of avoiding the spiritual, when he can remain in illusion, holding to the untrue. The Academy of Jundí Sábúr wanted to spare man this striving for the truth, to spare him the trouble of further evolution; therefore it wished to reveal to him what it had itself received as an Ahrimanic revelation. The Academy of Jundí Sábúr, of which the last shadows, the ghost, remain in the scientific illusions of to-day, wanted to make of man an entirely earthly being. These endeavours were overcome by what had been destined for mankind from his very beginning—by the Mystery of Golgotha.

• 1. The first Goetheanum, subsequently destroyed by fire.

Yesterday we saw how the mood of soul, towards which in this age of the Consciousness Soul we have to aim, was in a certain sense prepared historically. Let us keep clearly before us the relevant situation in the external world. We may say: The year 333 after Christ represents a kind of equilibrium (see diagram), distinctly perceptible in the course of historical events, but figuring very little in external history, for the simple reason that affairs revolve round it, and the actual pivot—this holds good even in mechanical motion—does not belong to the system that is moving. Take a pair of scales. You see the movement of the scales and of the beam, but the pivot itself is an ideal point—something we cannot really see. Yet it is obviously the most important part of the balance and must essentially have proper support.

It is particularly necessary for us to grasp what happened in this important year 333, as little noticed by the external world as is the pivot in a pair of scales. The year 333 is indeed the mid-point of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the midpoint of that significant epoch which ran its course from the founding of Rome, 747 years before the Mystery of Golgotha, until approximately 1413, when the Graeco-Latin epoch came to an end and was followed by the epoch which will last until the middle of the fourth millennium—the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. When we consider outward events, this midpoint of 333 is as little apparent as the mid-point of a balance. But we could indicate something else, 333 years later—the year 666. Of this year we can say that what later developed as the scientific method of thinking was already then evident in the activities of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr, which were later blunted by Mohammedanism. We tried yesterday to follow up how a certain mood of spirit, or mood of soul, spread among the people of Southern Europe—that typically scientific mood which still pervades modern natural science and has extended very widely into modern ways of thought. This was 333 years from the time when people still only looked back to the old days, as Julian the Apostate did. Up to 666 is 333 years; if we then go back and take the other side of the scales, 333 years earlier, we come to the preparations for the Mystery of Golgotha through the birth of Christ Jesus.

Fundamentally, we have been considering these events in such a way as to ask: What would have happened if the Mystery of Golgotha had never taken place? For the whole founding of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr and all that it brought about, was independent of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Schools of Philosophy in Athens had already come into contact with Christianity, but Justinian had closed them in 529. A purely Greek wisdom passed through Syria to Jundí Sábúr, in the new Persian kingdom. And everything else bound up with this, in so far as it was not blunted and was actually intended by Jundí Sábúr, was thought out without reference to Christianity, without reference to the Mystery of Golgotha. In reality, nothing has happened since the very beginning of our era without the working of the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha; but of course many things have been aimed at.

In fact we may say that even the impulses which were active in non-Christian souls during the fourth century, at the time of the turning-point, can be seen in their essentials only if we ask: What would have become of the evolution of mankind in the West if the Mystery of Golgotha had never taken place? This can indeed be studied, even historically—for example, in the case of Augustine, who offered both sides for later people to contemplate. At first he is quite independent of Christianity, seeking to find in Manichaeism an answer to the problems that weighed on him, and only afterwards is drawn to Christianity.

But we can go further back and then a significant question arises. Suppose we were to look at human evolution during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and ask: How was it in all the regions untouched by the occurrence in Palestine of the Mystery of Golgotha? (Strictly speaking, outside the narrow circle of Christ's activity, this would apply to all the regions of the earth.) How did people look on things, especially in Rome, when the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha spread later on, and became particularly effective?

This question is of quite special importance just now; it is truly no mere theoretical question: How were things in Rome when the Mystery of Golgotha took place in Palestine? For presently we shall see how similar—but in another sphere—our immediate present is to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. We should never forget something that is easily forgotten when we look back to that time: we must repeatedly feel our way back in imagination to the culture of the old Roman Empire, where people were ignorant of the fact that over in Palestine a solitary human personality had arisen with a few followers, a personality who went through a certain life, suffered death by crucifixion, and with whom was linked the knowledge, the important knowledge, that men in the future will have concerning birth and death. We must increasingly accustom ourselves to the idea that although this event, which to-day sheds its rays as a fully risen sun into the history of man, was enacted at the beginning of our era, it developed at that time in such a way that throughout the world there was little recognition, either inwardly or externally, of this Palestinian Mystery of Golgotha. Hence the question must be asked: How was it looked upon, especially in Rome?

Now we shall understand each other better if we take our start from the desire that was present later, in 666, among those who were particularly influential in bringing the Academy of Jundí Sábúr to the fore. As I said yesterday, the desire was to give men through revelation, received on an Ahrimanic path, that which can only later be acquired by the Consciousness Soul through the efforts of men themselves. The year 666 was still in the age of the Intellectual or Mind Soul, when men could not by their own efforts think in such a way as to be conscious of everything. So the desire was to give them prematurely something that was intended to come thousands of years later. The whole thing, however, was completely reversed at the very beginning of our era, during the age when the Mystery of Golgotha itself was enacted. Three hundred and thirty-three years after 333, the wish was to give men something belonging to the future, something destined for them only in the future. Three hundred and thirty-three years before 333, just at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, there was a wish to force men back to a condition which in the normal way had entered human evolution thousands of years earlier.

It is very difficult, my dear friends, to speak of these things, for the very reason that history, which itself has a history, has developed in such a way that in these matters people have actually been driven into error by history. Happenings in the southern districts of Europe—happenings with important consequences—have been covered up; people have not been allowed to know about them. In the history books we have a picture, for instance, of the personality of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.¹ But in what sense he was an important, an incisively effective personality—of this no understanding is called forth, intentionally from a certain side, but for the most part unintentionally. For the Emperor Augustus was the centre-point of quite conscious Roman endeavours to bring about a world-wide form of civilisation that would cast a veil over all that the Intellectual or Mind Soul had brought to mankind—over everything that men had been able to achieve in the way of culture by their own efforts since 747 B.C. Above all, people were to be limited to what they had acquired for themselves prior to the age of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is, in the age particularly of the Sentient Soul, in Egypto-Chaldean times.

Thus whereas in 666 the sages of the Jundí Sábúr Academy wanted to bring to an earlier time something that was meant to come later, in the days of the Emperor Augustus there was to be an extinguishing of that which men could acquire in their own epoch. Instead, they were to have, in its ancient glory and significance, that which had been proper to the people of earlier times, the time of ancient Persia, and of the Egypto-Chaldean culture. And when, through all the undergrowth heaped up as history, we look back at the reality, we must ask: Among certain Romans there was a deliberate wish to preserve something from the past, and this project was defeated by the Christian impulse—what exactly did the Romans want to preserve?

It was above all of a twofold nature. First, there was the wish to preserve a feeling for the meaning of the old cults, those cults which thousands of years before had been customary among the Egyptians, in Asia Minor, and deeper into the heart of Asia. The aim was to render inoperative the capacity for intelligent understanding and to allow only the Sentient Soul to come to fruition. This was to be done by presenting all the significant, sublime, powerful rituals which had proved effective in earlier times, before people had acquired intelligence and when the cults of the Gods had arisen out of the Sentient Soul, so that men should not be left without Gods. There were great rituals then, full of significance, designed to take the place of reflection—rituals which, according to old, atavistic customs, were to arouse the soul in a half hypnotic condition to a living experience of the Gods and of blissfulness through the Divine, It was this experience that some people in Rome wished to infuse with new life.

We can get to know the specific character of this by observing the finer points of distinction between the Roman and the Greek outlooks—although Greek culture was then approaching its outward decline. This feeling, which the Emperor Augustus in particular, with his powerful initiation-impulse turned towards the past, wished to introduce into Rome—all this was unknown over in Greece. The Greeks had no wish to bring back the past; they preferred to keep their eyes on what they could understand and could feel at one with. And if the Christian impulse had not come at a quite early date, and if it had not worked very quickly against the intentions of Augustus and his followers, the old rituals would have been revived in Rome with a much greater display of brilliance than they actually were.

Let us, therefore, to begin with, hold fast to this: it was the intention of Augustus and his supporters that there should go out from Rome—just as later a prophetic wisdom was intended to go out from the Academy of Jundí Sábúr—a powerful ritual which was to spread a haze over the whole world so that the possibility of acquiring the Intellectual Soul, as well as the later Consciousness Soul, would be ruled out. Had the Academy of Jundí Sábúr straightway given man the Consciousness Soul in order to cut off what was to come later—to cut off Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man—Augustus and his supporters in Rome would not have wanted the Consciousness Soul ever to be acquired. They would have wished—333 years before the turning-point—to blot out all possibility of the Intellectual or Mind Soul, and to place before mankind powerful rituals, intended to lead the soul to a consciousness of God. This was one side, meant to be introduced in accordance with the wishes of the initiate Augustus.

But the Intellectual or Mind Soul has always two aspects. One of its aspects tends towards the Sentient Soul. You know that we have the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul. The first to be developed was the Sentient Soul; its evolution came to an end in 747 B.C. The Intellectual or Mind Soul evolved from 747 to about A.D. 1413. These are approximate dates. Then follows the age of the Consciousness Soul. Now the Intellectual or Mind Soul inclines on one side towards the Sentient Soul, when it wishes to permeate itself with the past, as we have seen. This tendency is what Augustus wanted to infuse with fresh life. What then is brought about by this forcing back of the Intellectual or Mind Soul to the standpoint of the Sentient Soul—what becomes of the part that inclines towards the future, towards the Consciousness Soul? What becomes of the more intelligent inclination? We have to ask this question, and in the age of Augustus it had to be raised as a great cultural question. What happens if the Intellectual or Mind Soul is now allowed to develop further; what becomes of the human soul that wishes to strive towards the Consciousness Soul? A striving backwards towards the Sentient Soul through a renewal of old rituals is satisfying to men, more than is permissible for their normal development—but what is provided to meet a striving towards the Consciousness Soul? In this connection a certain word is always avoided, in order that a particular fact of human evolution since that time may not be seen in its true light: we need only mention this word and we shall understand what is involved. For this other side of the soul, rhetoric is provided—rhetoric which gives mere husks in place of permeating the soul with substance, with inner content; mere husks which, where living concepts should hold sway, are concerned with the forms of words and the construction of sentences.

Yes, indeed, my dear friends, under the influence of Augustus something developed in Rome very different from anything experienced earlier in Greece. However similar the Roman attire was to the Greek, a Roman in the folds of his toga no longer felt as a Greek had felt; the toga was looked on as a garment meant to be decorative. A certain glamour reflected from the exaltation of the old rituals is there in the fall of the folds of the Roman toga, quite in contrast to the Greek garment. And a strong distinction would be felt—if only people had a feeling for such distinctions—between Demosthenes, who stuttered, but still expressed the Greek nature, though not in rhetoric, and the Roman rhetoricians, among whom there was no stutterer, but men who well understood how to formulate the order of words and the structure of sentences.

From this Augustan age came the wish to give mankind, on the one hand, the incomprehensible old cults; there was indeed an endeavour to keep people from understanding them, even from asking what anything in the ritual meant This attitude is still prevalent in all sorts of realms even to-day. There are Freemasons who say the most curious things. For instance, one says to them: “You have an extensive symbolism in which very much is concealed, but modern Freemasons do not bother about the real meaning of the symbols.” One may say this to people who answer: “That is just what I find so beautiful about Freemasonry to-day; everyone can think what he likes about the symbols.” A person of this kind mostly thinks what his simplicity allows him to think, and this is far, very far, from the profound significance of the symbols—a significance that leads us deeply into the hearts and souls of men.

This is what it was intended to bring about in Rome at that time—a cult with no questions asked as to what it all meant, no attempt to approach the ritual with intelligence and will. The other pole, necessarily connected with this, is rhetoric devoid of content—rhetoric which does not take effect only in speeches, but which as rhetoric went into the laws of Justinian, and afterwards flooded the Western world as so-called Roman law. This Roman law bears the same relation to what should be active in souls approaching the development of the Consciousness Soul as rhetoric does to a soul-warming substance of speech. The frigidity inherent in Roman law has been the cause throughout the world of Roman law being related to warmth of soul in the same way that rhetoric is related to what is spoken out of the warmth and light of the soul—even if spoken with a stuttering tongue.

My dear friends, the fact that nothing willed by Augustus in this connection came fully to fruition was a result of the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha flowing in from the East. Yet just as the aftermath of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr has been preserved in our present-day science, so has the after-effect of what Augustus aimed at been preserved. It could no more come to fruition in the form he intended than could the Academy of Jundí Sábúr achieve its purpose. It was simply the supersensible that was banished from the impulse of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr, and this is still evident in the scientific attitude of our own time. But the supersensible was driven out also from what Augustus aimed at—at least the grander supersensible element through which he wished to bring about a real renewal of the old religious feeling of the Sentient Soul. The supersensible was driven out, and of the rest—which in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was founded chiefly in Rome—there remained only Catholicism, the Catholic Church; for the Catholic Church is the continuation, the true continuation, of the Augustan age. The fact that the Catholic Church has taken the form it has is the result of its not being founded upon the Mystery of Palestine, not upon the Mystery of Golgotha. Only a breath of this has passed over it. The most active element that runs through the Catholic Church is at best its ritual. And into this ritual there are woven only some threads derived from the Mystery of Golgotha; in its forms and ceremonies it has come over from the age of the Sentient Soul.

At the centre of this ritual there is something truly great, truly holy, because it brings the holiness that from primeval times has been woven into mankind (everything has its great and powerful aspects and needs only not to be developed one-sidedly), but we can relate ourselves rightly to this central point, the sacrifice of the Mass, which is an image of the highest Mysteries of all time, only if new life is brought into what is dead and was intended for the age of the Sentient Soul. The new life must come from all that Spiritual Science has to say in our modern lime concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. All that is found again, in the normal course of human evolution, by the researches of Spiritual Science—all this can be carried into the designs of Augustus, in so far as these have been preserved by Catholicism. In the same way, that which Spiritual Science can bring from the spiritual world must be carried into what has remained—physically blunted—of the aims of the Jundí Sábúr Academy. Spirit must be drawn into science.

Spirit must be drawn down into all that is enacted in the sacraments, to which men must turn again.

The weighty, momentous content of what I have just said will be taken in only by those who feel—and anyone who has studied Spiritual Science for more than a short time can fed it—how like our age is, in terms of what lives for the most part unconsciously in our souls, to the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching mankind. I have often mentioned, and you will find it brought out in the first of my Mystery Plays, The Portal of Initiation, that as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha men stood facing the turning-point of the fourth post-Atlantean age, the year 333, so we to-day are facing a turning-point. The time is rather shorter because the movements of the higher Spirits change in velocity; we cannot reckon that to-day we have 333 years again before the turning-point. It changes somewhat in the course of time, this speed with which the various separate Spirits of the higher Hierarchies move on. Thus to-day, in the first third of the twentieth century, we are facing the approach of an important event for mankind. And all the convulsions, all the catastrophes, are nothing else than the earth-shaking occurrences which precede a great spiritual event of the twentieth century. It is not an event now in the physical world, but an event that will come to men as a kind of enlightenment, reaching them before the first third of the twentieth century has run out. If the phrase is not misunderstood, one can call it the reappearance of Christ Jesus.² But Christ Jesus will not appear in external life, as at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but will work in man and be felt supersensibly. He is present in the etheric body. Those who are prepared can constantly experience Him in visions, constantly receive His counsel; in a certain sense they can enter into a direct personal relation with Him. All this that lies before us is comparable with what the Romans felt prior to the Augustan age, as the physically real Mystery of Golgotha that was approaching.

But, my dear friends, for things such as these one must have the true feeling. In face of various external phenomena that have come about, and have finally led to this terrible world-catastrophe, we must feel how the urge towards religious ritual exists once again in men. It has been long in coming. Just reflect, just consider—but with real attention, I beg you—how for more than a century sensitive spirits have repeatedly felt this urge to move away from the prosaic, rational intellectualism of the Protestant religion towards ritual. See how just those spirits among the Romantic writers who were able to feel something of the whole significance of ritual for the soul, strove after Catholicism. Because they were still incapable of gaining illumination from Spiritual Science as to what was seeking to enter the world sacramentally, they looked to Catholicism. Such spirits as Novalis—and just because of the specially deep spirituality that arose in him at a comparatively youthful age, he is a particularly characteristic personality—such spirits as he are not satisfied with prosaic Protestantism and strive after the forms of Catholicism, but they are healthy enough by nature to be shielded from stepping over into Catholicism. Such spirits give expression to what our age must express if it is to be healthy—the endeavour to feel once more in the world something sacramental, something corresponding to ritual. But they have no use for anything that wants to drag in merely an old cult, as is so often done to-day, when seeds appear which are no longer capable of growth, where spiritual invalids appear—among whom I would certainly place my old one-time friend, Hermann Bahr. Where these invalids of the soul are concerned, we see how even to-day they incline towards a misunderstood Catholicism, as with Herman Bahr, Scheler, Börres von Münchhausen. With all these people—they are very numerous and I know many of them—in the weakness of their soul-life they strive after Catholicism. One knows very well this attitude of soul; it springs from these people being unable to make the effort towards a life of soul that is inwardly active, a genuine, courageous activity in their soul-life, because in their soul-life they have become invalids and so they turn to what is offered them as a finished article. This permeates all Scheler's books of myths, which are very gifted, and all the quite mythical writings of Hermann Bahr's later period, and so on and so forth. It is all invalidism of the soul in a certain sense. It is the comfortable attitude that refuses to call forth out of the soul's depths what the times demand, in order to rediscover in the age of the Consciousness Soul, the way towards a true natural science, and to see in the whole of nature herself something sacramental—to see all nature as an expression of the divine-spiritual World-Order.

In the age of the Consciousness Soul, man must very soon develop the possibility of having not merely the abstract, dry natural science which petrifies the whole of him—a science which is to-day extolled as the salvation of the world—but a science that can deepen itself to a reverent perception of all the sacred symbols spread out over the world by the Godhead, in all the deeds giving joy to man, but also in everything by which the Godhead puts man to the test. If man is able once more to do his laboratory experiments sacramentally, on a higher level, and to make the operating table an altar, instead of a carpenter's workshop and a shambles, then the time will have come which is demanded for and souls to-day by divine evolution. Hence it is not surprising that at such a time as this much can be misunderstood, misunderstood above all through the aftermath of the Jundí Sábúr Academy, and is therefore taken up into natural science without any wish for a connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. Because of this, natural science becomes a purely Ahrimanic science, corresponding to all the Ahrimanic needs of mankind, corresponding to the state of mind which wants to organise the world according to externals alone. It may be said that the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha has always to be sought anew; we must take in earnest the words: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”—even to the time when all the cycles of the earth have been accomplished. These words have to be taken seriously. If we wish to remain connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, we must keep our souls fresh, so that we can take up the new impulses which flow out repeatedly from the spiritual world—not always in cycles but because of the wish to approach mankind from time to time.

It is true that over against this we have a natural science without any desire to know of such influences; a science which wants simply to install its scientists in laboratories or in hospitals where the work is a matter of routine. There, as we know, research is carried on which works like invisible radiations and no-one concerns himself about what is thereby let loose in the world. Things are tried out, aspirin or phenacetin, and given to patients. When such things are administered one after another, all that has to be done is to record what is perceived physically—there is no need to call upon any activity of the soul. This is the state of mind which in essentials has come from the impulse of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr. For if men had been permeated by those impulses in the past, they could have taken their ease to-day, with no need to do anything more. They would have been endowed through grace with everything they would otherwise have to work for in developing the Consciousness Soul. Translated into physical terms, this attitude is present in external science.

The other attitude comes from what has been poured out into the world by Rome. It lives on in the most varied impulses, derived, not from Palestine, not from the Mystery of Golgotha, but from Rome, and it has developed in two directions—the burning of incense for the carrying out of a ritual which makes no demand on intelligence but only on the Sentient Soul; and, secondly, rhetoric, which is concerned only with the forming of sentences, or with giving human actions a character such that there is rhetoric even in the resulting laws that are made. Both these two attitudes have lived on. There can be no help for either unless it is clearly seen how in the future there should not be a science devoid of spirit; without fighting against science, we shall have to recognise its limits. There is no need to fight against it, for if it is studied in a positive way it offers magnificent and powerful gifts, and no-one has the right to say anything against science who is not well acquainted with its fruits. Anyone who is not acquainted with science, and yet harshly criticises it, is wrong; only someone who believes in it, is thoroughly acquainted with it, has gone into it deeply and made its methods his own—only such a person has acquired the right to judge it, to specify its limits and point out how science itself will have to advance towards a spiritual comprehension of the world.

Hostile opinion has found among other things in my writings that I have spoken with appreciation of Haeckel and modern science. My dear friends, from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, out of which I speak, I should never dare to utter a word of criticism about science had I not previously made it every acknowledgement. For from the ground of the positive life of spirit we have the right of negative criticism only if we are able to show that within its acceptable limits we fully appreciate what we are fighting against. I believe I have fully earned the right to make known a spiritual development of mankind, a spiritual evolution, in doing which I have given out what the senses do not teach, because I have shown also what significance Darwinism and Haeckelism have for scientific life.

On the ground of Spiritual Science it must be asked that the words one speaks should be taken rather differently from the way in which they are generally taken. Hence I should not like anything I may say about Catholicism, or any other present-day movements, in the way I have been speaking to-day, to be understood from the standpoint of the ordinary philistine, or confused with criticism put forward about Catholicism or similar movements by one or other society with liberal views. Nothing is meant beyond what has been stated here; nothing is meant that cannot be fully justified from the standpoint of spiritual-scientific research. Research in natural science needs to be deepened so that it gradually leads into spiritual life. What has been preserved from ancient times, what has fallen into disuse—to some extent rightly—in the course of human life, is now appearing anew for reasons I have mentioned—man's need for the sacramental and his need for expressive forms. To see in forms the signature of the Divine in the world, but to understand these forms; not to speak in terms of dogma about Lucifer, Ahriman and Christ, but to have this trinity before us in artistic forms—this is what we need.

Out of this thought will arise the creation that is to be the centre-point of our Building, the wood-carving of Christ-Lucifer-Ahriman; out of this thought, the creation in an expressive unity of forms demanded by human evolution; but in such a way that while looking at the forms we penetrate to the spirit. The creation of such forms had to be the very foundation of our Building. No-one has the right to take this Building in a trivial sense; it must be understood in accordance with the essential aims arising from the great demands of our age, and with the needs of an age which once again, and now in a new way, has to approach the Mystery of Golgotha.

As we are given the necessary point of time in this age for finding the Christ anew, for finding the Christ on a higher level, so opposition to the Christ must also occur. These opposing forces were there in the past. We know that Christianity prevented the aims of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr from coming to fruition. We know that Augustus in Rome was aiming at something quite unconnected with the Christ Impulse. The persecution of the Christians by Nero, by Diocletian, even the rejection of Christianity by Apollonius of Tyana—all this came about because some people in Rome did their utmost to resist Christianity. It was meant to be quite rooted out—but it did not allow itself to be rooted out. So it is that Romanism, by taking from Christianity as much as suited it, became the Catholic Church, which developed also in this spirit; for directly there comes to mankind a new revelation, leading to further knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Catholic Church turns not towards it but away from it.

Only think—we must constantly look this fact in the face—when Copernicus, who was himself Canon of a cathedral, and therefore a true Catholic, advanced his theory, the Catholic Church condemned it as heretical. Up to the year 1827 orthodox Catholics were forbidden to accept the Copernican theory; since that time they have been allowed to believe in it. It has also become possible for a university professor of Catholic philosophy to say: Certainly the Catholic Church proscribed the Copernican theory and treated Galileo in the way it did. But it is no longer appropriate to think in that way (so said Professor Müllner, a Catholic philosopher, in his inaugural address as Rector of Vienna University); to-day it is appropriate to say that through these very discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo concerning the secrets of the external universe, the miracle of Divine Omnipotence has become all the more clearly a miracle of Divine Omnipotence. That, it is true, was spoken in a Christian way, but if it were judged critically by former standards, it would certainly not be regarded as spoken in a Roman Catholic way. Thus it has taken a good deal of time for the Catholic Church to be compelled by external pressure to recognise that knowledge of the cosmos does no harm to Christianity but helps it forward. How long it will take the Catholic Church to recognise the results of Spiritual Science—well, we will wait and see; we must certainly resign ourselves to the probability of no such outcome during our present incarnations. That is one side of the matter, my dear friends.

Confusions and misunderstandings, however, can very easily arise. They can arise from the subconscious urge in souls to experience the sacramental. The whole of mankind to-day is striving for a higher level of sacramental experience. Naturally, the Catholic Church makes use of this for its own advantage. And to-day, when men, alas, are so deeply asleep, one must earnestly wish that they would at least be awake to the most important things that are happening, even if as individuals they can do little to change them in many cases. There is no need to say: How can I alone change anything?

Often we must let time tell; in many cases we can work only when conditions are right. We need not apply the same prescription to everything; but we do need to be clear in our consciousness, to know how to observe, so that when something is asked of a man in his own sphere he really knows what he has to do. Above all, we must realise that most people nowadays who believe they do a great deal of thinking, in fact go to sleep whenever they can; they sleep when they might be won over—though this is difficult—to real knowledge of the impulses at work in human evolution. But others are awake! And these powers make use of every opportunity, every channel, in order to prevent human life from developing so as to meet the demands of the Consciousness Soul, and to make it develop only in accordance with their own aims. If people would only wake up to what is being willed in this direction, if they would only recognise things that often lie close at hand and are judged from quite another point of view, this would be of tremendous significance for the solution of those questions which arise out of the chaos of the present day and in the near future will have to be solved. Hence a recognition of such a fact as we have been speaking about yesterday and to-day is of very great importance. We should not judge the world to-day in accordance with abstract principles, for then we only fall into a deeper doze; we should make it our aim to judge with actual knowledge. For what must happen in these coming years can be brought about only by those who draw their principles, the impulses for what they do and will, from a spiritual knowledge of world-evolution. From this point of view—I must add—we dare not allow the healthy, genuine, welcome and refreshing trend that leads human souls towards sacramentalism—we dare not allow this to be used for the revival of ancient cults. For this would be using it not to gain knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha, but to preserve a symbolism without spirit, the very thing that was inaugurated in the Augustan age and is now promoted in certain quarters for their own advantage. This is one aspect of what can be done to expose men's souls to misunderstandings—misunderstandings about sacramentalism, misunderstandings about ritual, misunderstandings about rhetoric, about living in concepts, in mere words. The formalization has indeed not sprung from the endeavours of Demosthenes in Greece, who put pebbles on his tongue because he stuttered, but wished to share with his countrymen the warm, loving content of his soul. It derives from rhetoric, and people who are not fully awake to the impulses at work in the evolution of mankind absorb it with enthusiasm.

The other side is made up of those who swear by the crudest science, who refuse to accept the spiritual, who value science only as technology, rejecting all that can be discovered concerning the spiritual content of the world through the great and powerful phenomena of nature. I once said, and this was truly not said rhetorically, but out of the deeper knowledge of the soul: Until our physics, our mechanics, the whole of our external science, come to be permeated by the Christ Impulse, science will not have reached its goal. Not only history should speak of the Mystery of Golgotha: men should also realise that since the Mystery of Golgotha natural phenomena have to be observed in such a way that Christ is known to be on the earth, whereas He was not on the earth before. A truly Christian science will not seek for atoms, not for atoms and their laws, nor for the conservation of matter and of energy; it will seek for the revelation of Christ in all the phenomena of nature, and these will thereby reveal to men their sacramental character.

From a contemplation of nature in this light there will spring a feeling for moral, social, political and religious principles in human life which will really answer to the demands of human living. If we absorb the divine element in nature, if we draw upon the power of Christ in our knowledge of nature, then we shall carry into the rules of conduct that we set up for mankind, and into all that we want to exemplify, whether in caring for the poor or in any other realm of social service—we shall carry Christology into all our works. If we are unable to look upon nature around us as permeated by Christ, if we are unable to discover the activity of Christ in all that lives in human deeds even when they are halting deeds, neither shall we be able in our social, moral or political life to meet the real demands of our time. In that case we should be left on the one hand with our crude science, which simply refuses to know anything about the supersensible, or with mere rhetoric, which is a legacy of Romanism, the ghost of Romanism. And if, when we speak of sacramentalism and ritual, which are both misunderstood, we must refer to Rome, in fact to present-day Rome, to the Rome that has become great especially through the shrewdness of Pope Leo XIII, then we have also to find the name which goes with the empty phrase-making of rhetoric—the kind of phrase-making which anyone really permeated by anthroposophical understanding of spiritual life must recognise.

We have often referred to this rhetoric. I must now go into actualities. I generally do this when enough time has been spent on other aspects of a subject. Where do we find the rhetoric that confronts a no longer healthy ritual, just as the Roman pulpit rhetoric of the Jesuits does? Where do we find the rhetoric that confronts modern science, which is craving for spirituality, the rhetoric that threatens our contemporaries because in a sleeping condition they are absorbing something which for external reasons is perhaps necessary for them? But should the people who recognise these things remain inwardly aloof, entirely aloof, from what is spreading through the world as mere rhetoric? This is Wilsonism! Woodrow Wilson is the name which has to be imprinted on this life in rhetoric, on the stringing together of words without substance. Call it a League of Nations, call it what you will, it is all a wallowing in mere rhetoric. This is something that mankind should not sleep through. People should feel impelled in one way or another to wake up to what is here emphasised—that Wilson ism is essentially opposed to the true progress of mankind; and this must be recognised in the very nature of its rhetoric; an idol with feet of clay.

These things, my dear friends, cannot be expressed through a few bourgeois, philistine ideas. That which threatens our time from the direction indicated, and has to be looked at soberly when present events are considered, must also be recognised in all its significance. We must not allow the world to be Wilsonised because everyone is asleep. Let there be followers of Wilson in America, in Europe, or anywhere else, but there must also be people who know that a deep connection exists between Jesuitism on the one hand and Wilsonism on the other. There must be people who realise this. Certainly they will have to grow beyond the philistinism of to-day; they must not form their opinions according to what the day brings, or even the years; they must be able to take account of what the centuries conceal, and yet reveal to us, if really and truly, with the innermost active force of the soul, we are able to look up to the hill where stood the Cross of Golgotha, the symbol for everything that as a revelation of the primeval Mysteries has poured into human life. But it will remain always youthful, always bringing fresh revelations to mankind.

• 1. See Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, lecture 5.
• 2. See True Nature of the Second Coming. Two lectures given at Carlsbad and Stuttgart in January and March, 1910.

The city of Jundí Sábúr was founded by a Persian king, Shapur I (A.D. 224–241). Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, was put to death there in 276. The first of the several events that led to the rise of the Academy of Jundí Sábúr occurred in 545, when the Bishop of Edessa enforced the decrees of the Council of Chalcedon against the Nestorians in his diocese; some of them migrated to Persia. A further purge of Nestorians occurred in 487, and in 489 the Emperor Zeno finally closed the Edessa school. The Academy of Jundí Sábúr, however, was not formally set going until after the Greek schools of philosophy had been closed by the Emperor Justinian in 528–29, during the reign of the Persian King Khusraw I (531–578).

Dr. De Lacy O'Leary, in his How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs (Routledge, 1949), says of Khusraw I: “He was a great admirer of Graeco-Roman culture and especially desired to introduce Greek science into his dominions. It was he who offered hospitality to the philosophers who were turned adrift when Justinian closed the schools of Athens, and provided for their safety and welfare when they desired to return to Greece. He desired to have in Persia a great Greek academy like that at Alexandria, and such an academy he established in the city of Jundí-Shápúr. There the Alexandrian curriculum was introduced and the same books of Galen read and lectured upon as at Alexandria.” The Academy became celebrated especially for its medical teaching; the other main subjects studied there are said to have been astronomy (there are records of an observatory) and mathematics.

These various events are referred to by Dr. E. G. Browne in his Arabian Medicine (Cambridge University Press, 1962): “The great development of the school of Jundí-Shápúr was ... the unforeseen and unintended result of that Byzantine intolerance which in the fifth century of our era drove the Nestorians from their school at Edessa and forced them to seek refuge in Persian territory. In the following century the enlightened and wisdom-loving Khusraw Anusharwan, the protector of the exiled Neo-Platonist philosophers, sent his physician Burzuya to India, who, together with the game of chess and the celebrated Book of Kalila and Dimna, brought back Indian works on medicine and also, apparently, Indian physicians to Persia. The school of Jundí-Shápúr was, then, at the time of the prophet Muhammad's birth, at the height of its glory. There converged Greek and Oriental learning, the former transmitted in part directly through Greek scholars, but for the most part through the industrious and assimilative Syrians, who made up in diligence what they lacked in originality.”

On the later history of the school, Dr. O'Leary writes: “When Baghdad was founded in 762, the Khalif and his court became near neighbours of Jundí-Shápúr, and before long court appointments with generous emoluments began to draw Nestorian physicians and teachers from the academy, and in this Harun ar-Rashid's minister Ja'far ibn Barmak was a leading agent, doing all in his power to introduce Greek science amongst the subjects of the Khalif, Arabs, and Persians.... Thus the Nestorian heritage of Greek scholarship passed from Edessa and Nisibis, through Jundí-Shápúr, to Baghdad.”

Dr. O'Leary quotes from E. Le Strange's Lands of the Eastern Khalifate (Cambridge, 1909): “Eight leagues north-west of Tustar, on the road to Dizful, lie the ruins now called Shahabad, which mark the site of Junday Sabur or Jundí-Shápúr. Under the Sassanians, Junday Sabur had been the capital of Khuzistan.”

See also the note on Jundí-Shápúr appended to The Redemption of Thinking, by Rudolf Steiner, translated and edited by Canon A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll (Hodder and Stoughton, 1956).

Further interesting references will be found in The Legacy of Persia, edited by A. J. Arberry (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1953).

C. D.

First of all, I would like to remind you of something we discussed yesterday, so that we can then proceed to further considerations. Yesterday, I essentially explained that one cannot gain insight into the relationship between the ideal or spiritual and the material in the world, or into the purely causal natural order, without taking into account the nature of human sleep.

We started from St. Augustine's thought that he wanted to experience true certainty about the world in his inner experience. I said that we can no longer base ourselves on this thought for the simple reason that we have to know today that every human sleep refutes this thought. For we could never somehow hold on to the idea that what a person experiences within himself is preserved post mortem, after death, and that what a person experiences within himself is truly eternal, if we had to look at it from the point of view of the time from falling asleep to waking up, as ordinary consciousness today looks at it. The ordinary consciousness of today sees how, during sleep, what is experienced within the human being dawns. But now we said that as soon as a person completes the first step of looking into the spiritual world, he realizes that from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, what we call the human being's ego and its astral body – that is to say, the human being's actual spirit-soul nature – is so connected from within with the nature of the angels, archangels and archai, as the human being is otherwise connected here during waking life with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Only because man's consciousness is dulled during sleep by the powers opposed to the world is he not aware that during sleep he is connected to the hierarchy of angels, archangels and archai, that they imbue his ego and his astral body with their own being, that they hold and carry his astral body and his ego. And we have explained how three things arise from this connection between human beings and spiritual beings: Firstly, that we have the feeling of personality more or less clearly even in our ordinary consciousness. We know ourselves as an ego. We would never know ourselves as an ego with only what is available to us during waking hours. The feeling of free personality that continues during the day, while we are awake, is a kind of after-effect of what we experience during sleep. This comes from the fact that from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are connected with the angelic being from the spiritual world to which we belong. But the archangelic being, or actually a series of archangelic beings, is also connected with our spiritual soul being. And this is the reason why, when we are awake, we know ourselves as members of the whole of humanity, that we recognize ourselves as human beings on earth.

Every human being actually has an awareness of their free personality, even if it is not entirely clear. The awareness that one is a human being in general is already more shadowy in the background. Yes, certain philosophers, like Fewerbach or even Auguste Comte, have argued that it is a significant discovery for a person to come to feel that they are a human being in general, a member of the whole of humanity. And yesterday we heard Auguste Comte speak of the Great Being; by this he means nothing other than the human being. But Comte speaks from the standpoint of ordinary materialistic science; he does not know what underlies spiritually this consciousness that one is human, which lies in the background of our soul life. One would have no inkling of being a human being if that which is separated from our physical and etheric bodies during sleep were not imbued with the nature of the archangels.

And again, we are imbued with the nature of the archai from the hierarchy of the so-called Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age). But what comes from this remains a rather dark, shadowy consciousness. Indeed, today's humanity does not have it at all if it does not feel part of history, of historical life. The oriental world view has not penetrated to this consciousness of living as an earthly human being at all. This has been the particular task of Western culture: to feel like a historical being, as a being – let us say for ourselves – who belongs to the 19th, 20th century. But the present materialistic consciousness of humanity knows little more than the date and some other external historical data – we will hear shortly how little these actually have any significance for real life. For only spiritual science leads us to recognize how the human soul changes from millennium to millennium, how human beings become different, and how we now look back to ancient times and know that the people of the third post-Atlantic period, the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, had a very different soul and human condition than we do today. This sense of being at home in the whole development of humanity is an echo of our connection with the archetype, with the arche, during the time from falling asleep to waking up. So that we should know that we are connected with this third spiritual hierarchy from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. Now, how does our life differ from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, that is, every day, from the life between death and a new birth? Every evening when we fall asleep, we lay aside, I would say provisionally, our physical and etheric bodies. These remain with us. There we are connected with these entities of the third hierarchy; when we wake up, we return to our physical and etheric bodies. It is different when we can no longer return, when we have died. Then our physical and etheric bodies are apparently handed over to the driving forces of that which is becoming earthly. We know that this is only apparent, as we have recently discussed; but for our experience, our physical and etheric bodies are handed over to the spaces of earth and heaven. During this time between death and a new birth, we not only come into contact with the beings of the third hierarchy, as we do in sleep, but we also come into equally intimate contact with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the exusiai, that is, the Spirits of Form, with the Dynameis, the Spirits of Movement, with the Spirits of Wisdom, Kyriotetes, and also with the beings of the first hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Just as we, here in our human existence, focus on the world and, in the surrounding world, everything that is contained in the realms of nature appears to us, so we become aware, now not externally but internally, of the intervention of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth. From a certain point of view, this is essentially the difference between sleep and death in a human being: that during sleep we are actually only indirectly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, but after death we are connected with the beings of all three hierarchies, up to the highest spiritual beings.

Now, if you hold on to this, you will be able to see how man is placed in the whole universe, how man, as a microcosm, is connected to the whole universe, to the macrocosm. Let us visualize what I have said schematically. Let us say, then, that after death our spirit is inwardly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the beings of the first hierarchy, just as it is outwardly connected here with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, from which it is built. But there is another connection. When you get to know all the things that the beings of the third hierarchy initially work on – they also have other tasks, but we are only ever talking about things in parts, aren't we? The beings of the third hierarchy are individual beings that work individually and also through their work together through their effects, which bring forth something, create something. If you visualize what these entities of the third hierarchy work, it is first of all everything, I say, that happens in the historical life of humanity (see drawing on page 57). You can also grasp the thought in this way: No one knows anything of the reality of the historical life of humanity without having an inkling that what actually constitutes history is not made by human beings, but by the beings of the third hierarchy. The beings of the third hierarchy – angels, archangels, archai – actually make history, and man participates in the work of this third hierarchy by having his consciousness as a personality, his consciousness as a human being, as a historical being on earth, in the characterized way. So that man stands in the world is because these entities make up historical life, and man, in turn, has what he is inwardly and through which he is inwardly connected to historical life from these entities. The external historical life, which is recorded in popular history, which is essentially a fable convenante, is only a reflection of the inner historical life that is created in his development by the beings of the third hierarchy.

Now we may ask: What is the similar task of the beings of the second and first hierarchy, that is, the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes, the form spirits, the movement spirits, the wisdom spirits? Yes, they have a much more comprehensive task. We will initially disregard their relationship to humans. You can best imagine this task in front of the soul when you focus on your etheric body. Right, when you start from your self and go inward, you come to your astral body. Through your astral body, you are connected to the historical life of humanity. In turn, the beings of the third hierarchy, who make up the historical life of people, have an effect on the historical life of humanity. But if you go further, if you go down to the etheric body, this etheric body is a very complicated entity. In today's consciousness, man is not aware of much of the complexity that underlies this human etheric body. But you do get a certain idea of what has to work in this ether body when you study “Occult Science in Outline”; there you are shown, in the succession of Saturn, Sun and Moon time, that is, the successive embodiments of our Earth, how this ether body develops from the entire cosmos, and how the beings of the higher hierarchies participate. If we express this in a vivid formula, we can say from a certain point of view: Everything in the becoming of the world that is now more comprehensive, with which our etheric body is just as connected as our astral body is with the historical life of humanity, is created and formed by the beings of the second hierarchy, by the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes. So, to illustrate this, I will say: The beings of the second hierarchy create everything that has an effect on the human etheric body.

But this in turn gives rise to something else. When you wake up in the morning and immerse yourself in your etheric body, you actually plunge into the creature of the beings of the second hierarchy. And you also submerge into your physical body. Of this physical body, which is why the being of mystery calls it the temple of man, what the external anatomy and physiology reveal is really only the very, very outermost shell. One can only grasp this tremendous, wondrous structure of the human physical body if one knows that it is the creature of the interaction of the beings of the first hierarchy. When you descend into your physical body upon waking in the morning, you actually descend into the work of the highest hierarchies. So think about how things are distributed in life: here between birth and death, when we are awake, we first descend into our astral body, in which the historical life of humanity is effective. But we also dive into our etheric body, the creature of the second hierarchy, in which much of the cosmos is effective, the etheric life of the cosmos. And we dive into our physical body, which is the creation of the beings of the first hierarchy. And when we live between death and a new birth, we do not live with the creature, but with the creators themselves.

Now you have one of the considerable differences in the life between birth and death and the life between death and a new birth. Here you descend by immersing yourself in your physicality, in all that is a creature of the higher hierarchies. When you die, you descend into the hierarchies themselves. You go from the creature to the creators. That is how things are connected.

And now, looking at what we have just discussed, let us ask: What exactly is our Earth? What geology and other sciences usually explore of our Earth is, after all, only the outer shell. What exactly is our Earth? As you know, we have our physical body in common with the entire mineral kingdom. Because we share our physical body with the entire mineral kingdom, we stand in it in a part of the earth when we are awake. We share our etheric body with the entire plant kingdom, standing in a second link of our earth. We share our astral body with the animal kingdom. We have the I for ourselves. There we stand in the three kingdoms of the earth, and our whole earth actually consists of the three kingdoms. This is the ground, so to speak, on which we stand, not physically, but with our human nature. But this cannot be seen, it remains supersensible. By standing on this ground, its lowest link is the mineral kingdom.

Now you remember from the “Geheimwissenschaft” that the mineral kingdom was not present during the earlier embodiments of our earth; the moon did not yet have a mineral kingdom, nor did the old sun, nor did Saturn. You only need to read about it in the “Geheimwissenschaft”. It was only on the earth, during the fourth embodiment of our earth, that the mineral kingdom came into being. I ask you to take careful note of this. It is a difficult matter, but it is an extraordinarily important one. In a sense, three formations had to precede it before the mineral earth could develop. We call these three formations the three elemental realms; the mineral realm is the fourth. We could also speak in these terms about the earlier embodiments: During the Saturn embodiment of our Earth: first elementary realm; during the Sun embodiment of our Earth: second elementary realm - the beings that were in the mineral realm at that time were earlier in the elementary realm -; during the Moon time - not the present time, the old Moon time -: third elementary realm. As we progress to Earth, the mineral realm arises as the fourth realm. Man carries this within himself.

To stand in the mineral kingdom is to stand in the fourth formation. We carry this mineral kingdom within us; only through this are we actually visible beings. But this mineral kingdom is also the only closed one in us. Only when the earth will have reached its end, when it will have entered into a different embodiment, will man be just as closed in the plant kingdom as he is today in the mineral kingdom. Then he would stand in the fifth formation. So the Earth will come to an end state and will arise anew: Jupiter time; man will then have his relationship to the plant kingdom as he has his relationship to the mineral kingdom today. He will stand in the fifth formation. To stand in the plant kingdom means to stand in the fifth formation.

There will come a new incarnation of our Earth, we call it the Venus incarnation, the Venusian age. Man will then stand for himself in the animal kingdom, not be an animal, but stand in the animal kingdom; as you know, this is different from being an animal. But to stand in the animal kingdom means to stand in the sixth formation. And then comes the conclusion, I would say, the seventh of all becoming. We call it the volcanic embodiment of the earth. Man has then reached the highest level of his education, only then has he become fully human. To stand in the human kingdom means to be in the seventh education, to stand in the seventh education. And in seven educations the life of man is complete.

Let us take a look at the human being today. He stands, as we do, in the mineral kingdom; he does not yet stand in the plant kingdom. When man stands in the plant kingdom, his whole life will be different. He will not feel as a personality, but as he feels today as a personality, he will feel as a human being, he will feel as a member of the whole of humanity. He will, for example, when he once stands in the plant kingdom, find it unbearable that he has a certain degree of happiness when someone next to him is surrounded by misfortune. Today, the human being feels as if he is closed off from other people by a partition. It must be so, otherwise man would never be able to develop his personality. But in the future kingdom of Jupiter, where man will be in the fifth education, it will be different; then it will be an absolutely unbearable thought that one can be happy and the other unhappy next to him, because people do not feel like an organism, as one says in abstracto. Now they do not feel as an organism: but that is an untruth, a deception, a maja. But the time will come when man will stand in the plant kingdom, where he will not find individual happiness tolerable when there is unhappiness next to him.

This thought underlies those spiritualists of whom I spoke to you yesterday. I told you: in the future, the English spiritualists will have to fight a great battle against the entire English popular culture. The flower of this popular culture is utilitarianism; and what this utilitarianism has driven out in Bentbam is essentially the principle that was called the maximation of happiness. This utilitarianism will increasingly fill their thinking. Therefore, only the opposition of the spiritually minded will enable this thinking to become spiritualized. That is the perspective for the future: the spiritually minded will have to overcome popular culture, to overcome it to the point of annihilation. That is why I was able to quote to you that Bentham, who, starting from popular culture, came to the principle that the good on earth consists in the happiness of the greatest number of people, has his most fierce opponents in the spiritually minded people of his own country, who tell him: That is a purely devilish definition, because this definition can only be made if you consider nothing but the mere present. If you think a little about the future of development, you know that the thought is quite unbearable: the happiness of the greatest number, because the opposite would be the unhappiness of the least number, and that would have to be evil. But evil and bliss have nothing to do with each other; for in the future, when man feels that he is in the plant kingdom, he feels that he is a member of the whole of humanity, and this opposite will be an impossibility. Just as today an important organic limb cannot simply be cut out of a human being without the whole human organism perishing, so in the future, when the earth is in the plant kingdom, not one particular group of people will be able to suffer without the whole suffering. That is a certain state of development that is coming. And because Bentham's definition of happiness has no future, only the present, it must be fought against, especially by those who aspire to spirituality.

Yes, why should it be a contradiction when it is said that good is defined by Bentham as the happiness of the greatest number, and evil is defined as the happiness of the least number? It is not an abstract contradiction for the rational mind, but the spiritualist does not think abstractly; the spiritualist thinks concretely. He does not think: What is the opposite of the other? but he thinks of the real that develops and that mostly does not agree with the mere thoughts of people.

And in an even higher degree the individual human being will participate in the whole when he is in the sixth education. And then especially when he is a full human being, a completely spiritualized human being, in the seventh education.

Yes, but we have seen from this that, as we now stand on the firm ground of the earth, we as human beings, insofar as we are creatures, actually only come to the fourth education. We have the mineral kingdom, that is finished. The other kingdoms, as they exist today, will partly perish, and man will develop them in a different way: the plant kingdom, as I have described it. We will not describe the animal and human kingdoms today, but next time.

Thus, today, when man regards himself as a creature standing among other creatures, he stands in the fourth formation. But he extends into the other formations, for we have seen that even in sleep man is under the influence of the third hierarchy. This hierarchy is further than he is, and is already in the fifth formation today, and the other beings are further still. So he extends into the higher levels of formation. I ask you to have the patience to really think through these subtle thoughts, because you now have to make the distinction between thinking of yourself as a creature and thinking of yourself as an independent spiritual being, which you are, for example, in sleep or between death and a new birth. Insofar as you think of yourself here in your physical, in your etheric body, astral body and I, insofar as you think of yourself as a creature on earth, you are in the fourth formation; but you reach into the fifth, sixth and seventh formations. By not living only in your body, but also outside of your body, in sleep or in death, you reach into the other hierarchies, and these other hierarchies are further. We can therefore say: If we regard the earth, with everything on and in it, as a created being, then it has reached the fourth level as a created being, and we have also reached the fourth level with it. But we rise up into the other spheres, into the other elements of formation, because we feel that we are independent personalities, that we feel that we are human, that we feel that we are members of the evolution of the earth, that we know that our etheric body is a creature of the second hierarchy, our physical body is a creature of the first hierarchy.

But the seventh education is not the end. Evolution continues, and by projecting into the higher forms of education, we also project into an eighth form of education, the famous eighth sphere. We can safely say: in a sense, by reaching up to highly developed levels of higher entities, we reach into the eighth sphere of education by standing in the pool of God or the spirit realm – as you like. But we reach into this eighth sphere of education with the finest components of our spiritual being. This reaching into the eighth education is a great secret, but we can still get an idea of a, I would say, very slight, not very intensive reaching into the eighth education, if we imagine the following.

We know that at the center of the earth stands the Mystery of Golgotha. If we look back at this Mystery of Golgotha, as it took place from the year 1 to 33 of our era, in the 747th year since the founding of Rome, it is in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantic period. We speak of the cultural development of humanity into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, as of the fourth post-Atlantic cultural level. We know that the third post-Atlantean cultural stage was preceded by the Greco-Latin cultural epoch. We are now in the fifth, because the fourth, into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, ended in the 15th century AD. So we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Now, the human being develops through the cultural periods, but when we describe these cultural periods, we are actually describing something that the human being does not fully experience. You were all embodied in the old Egyptian-Chaldean period, which is the third post-Atlantic period, then again in the Greek-Latin cultural period and in the present one; but you only ever experience the successive time – if things go well, don't they, even if someone lives to be eighty – just eighty years, and in between lies the much longer time that passes between death and a new birth. So of what we describe by describing the successive developmental periods of the earth, the human being only experiences a part.

You could, of course, say: Well, man only experiences a part here in the physical body; but he truly does not live in vain in the physical body: he experiences the world from the point of view of the physical body because he could not experience what he experiences from the physical body between death and a new birth. Whether what a person experiences in the pure spiritual realm between death and a new birth is valued more highly or less highly is not what we wish to discuss today. But it is different from what a person experiences here through his body, and it is very important to take this into account. And it is truly not in vain that man is placed in the world through his body; for he could not experience through his body in the world, always in episodes of the development of humanity as a whole, if he did not have the development of the body. It is a thoroughly false idea to have an ascetic attitude towards the development of the physical body on earth, regarding it merely as the enemy of the higher human being. In truth it is not that, but that which gives man something that he could not attain in any other way. And the man is very much mistaken who despises the life in the body, who regards the body as something low, for it means just a highest, an most important, a most meaningful in the whole life of man. And spiritual science can least of all follow that mysticism or that wrong direction of Christianity – not the right direction, but the wrong one – which despises what it calls the earthly world. Between death and a new birth, the human being experiences the world from a different perspective; he experiences it as he can experience it: now it is not the creatures that affect him through the physical body and etheric body, but the creators themselves. There he experiences something different.

This is why we have the task during our earthly career not only to get to know the world of the senses, but also the supersensible. For the historical life of humanity, which is a result of the third hierarchy, we cannot get to know from the perspective of earthly life. And for our time – I ask you to pay attention to the fact that I say: for our time, because it was not so in the pre-Christian era – for our time it is essential that the human being becomes aware: he must, while he lives here on earth between birth and death, also get to know, if he wants to get to know himself as a historical being, what angels, archangels and archai work as historical life. If we only get to know the world in the way that today's scientists want to know it, if we only get to know the world as history describes it, as if history were made by human beings alone and not by the beings of the third hierarchy, then we only get to know the outermost layers of historical development. Only he gets to know history who is aware that he must, so to speak, contemplate here in the physical body what the beings on earth do between death and a new birth in a completely different way - if I may use the expression, which is only used comparatively - which he gets to know personally, individually, in their heavenly deeds. He must get to know it in its effects on earth in historical life.

'But it was not always like that; that is how it is in the time in which we now live. Above all, it was not like that in the third post-Atlantean period, before the year 747, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period. We know that the whole spiritual life, the whole state of mind of people was different then. Then the supermundane life radiated into the ordinary human life, then man knew, even if he interpreted it differently than we now interpret it in the mythologies: the entities of the third hierarchy worked into his ego and his astral body. He meant the beings of the third hierarchy, called them Osiris or Zeus or Apollo or Minerva or whatever, but he knew: these beings, which he only invented and interpreted in this way – but the invention and interpretation related to these beings – they have an effect. Even if he had not wanted to see them, he would have seen them inwardly, for in those ancient times there was not the same delusion of consciousness as there is today; but there was only the delusion of life, which, as one says, anthropomorphized these figures. But one knew about these figures.

This is also one of the points through which the whole life of people has changed. Today, people in their ordinary consciousness do not know what is playing into their lives. Man was born as a soul being in this third post-Atlantean time, was born again in the fourth post-Atlantean time, and was born again in our time. He does not see what the beings of the third hierarchy bring about as historical life, but he should get to know it, he should really get to know it! Not in its true form, but in mythological form, did the old man get to know it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of such a human soul – there are more incarnations, as you know, but let us consider three consecutive ones: one Egyptian, one Greek, one from the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period – let us put ourselves in the shoes of such a human soul. During the third, during the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period, it experiences what it could experience through the fact that the entities of the third hierarchy played into life. This had gradually dawned. Some had still experienced it in the fourth, in the Greco-Latin period; many people had still experienced it in an orderly way until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, then it gradually disappeared; then people had to more and more confine themselves to what is present in the external sense world, if they did not develop inwardly in such a way that they could get to know the spiritual world again in a different way and thus ascend to the entities of the third hierarchy.

And now, when we look at such a soul that is returning, it comes with all that it has absorbed in the third post-Atlantean period, in the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period. It comes with all that, but let us assume that such a soul refuse to look at the deeds of the third hierarchy in the historical life of humanity in the present incarnation and say to herself: What do I care what the angels, archangels and archai have done; for me, history is what human beings have ever done here on earth. Such a soul does not take into account that in everything that human beings have done on earth, the deeds of the third hierarchy are involved. Let us now assume for the sake of clarity – for some souls it also applies to the fourth, the Greco-Latin period, up to the year 333 – but let us assume for the sake of clarity that such a soul comes over from the Egyptian-Chaldean, from the third post-Atlantean period , from the third post-Atlantean period, it would not need to make any effort to know about the deeds of the third hierarchy, because that came into human life by itself; that is what this soul still carries within it. So we say that this soul was able to process back then, and that is what it carries within it. One could not have said to an ancient Egyptian – he had no real concept of historical life, but he did look to historical life – but one could not have said to him about this historical life: people make history. He would only have laughed, because he saw that the entities of the third hierarchy made history, even if he also presented them in a sensuous way in his own way.

All this is within the present-day human being, but unconsciously, of course; it has descended into the subconscious. Now they believe that history is something that people on earth have made. This gives rise to a strange state of mind, which I ask you to consider very carefully. If we were to look at such a soul in the present, we would say that this soul refuses to place itself in the historical life of humanity in reality; it says: I want to know nothing of the deeds of the archai, the archangels, the angels; I only want to know from external testimonies what people have done since those ancient times. But in this way such a soul cannot develop further; in reality such a soul remains at the point of view at which it stood in the old Egyptian times; it only has the maturity of a soul of the old Egyptian times, it does not allow itself to grasp reality. The angels, archangels and archai have developed further, they have done what could be experienced by humanity since then. Such a soul says: What the hierarchies have already done up there in the spiritual world, I will not get involved in that; I will only get involved in my own abilities. But the abilities are none other than those which she already had during the ancient Egyptian times.

Numerous such souls live in the present, and think of the peculiar situation of such a soul! Until the year 333, a soul could not yet come into this situation, because the spiritual world still extended into it by itself; but now, since that time, souls can be in a strange position: they cannot resist reality, in reality they are naturally in it, in what the angels, archangels and archai do, but they deny this with their consciousness, they only take up in their consciousness that which has been brought about here on earth by people themselves.

This is a case where people as creatures are in the fourth formation, because the fourth stage of formation is everything that happens in a creaturely way. So what men on Earth have done since Egyptian times belongs to the fourth education, but man himself rises above that, and due to the fact that since the year 333 he cannot consciously reach into it at all with his whole being, into what he actually reaches, due to that he even stands with his nature above the seventh level of education, he stands in the eighth level of education. So that today there is the possibility that souls are in fact in the eighth stage of education, but do not recognize it because they do not recognize the activity of the historical life of men through the angels, archangels and archai, but only recognize the fourth stage, so that the eighth sphere remains unconscious in them. This is an extraordinarily important fact.

If a world view arises from this state of mind, what then arises? Man ignores his own reality, he does not admit that he extends into a high spiritual realm, although he really does extend into it, but he only admits that he is in the human realm. This state of mind has only clearly come to light in what I have called the industrial age in recent days. Only the fact that people are immersed in the whole of industrial life has led them to completely ignore the fact that man reaches up into the spiritual world within a world view and only to take into account the external deeds of men. That is something significant. One cannot understand the present if one does not know that there are numerous people today who, with their world view, reach into the eighth sphere, and ignore this fact, that is to say, they bring all the damage to earth that reaching into a sphere of the world brings when one denies its existence. For by denying that he is projecting into the eighth sphere, into the eighth stage of education, he shuts himself out from the good beings of that stage of education and delivers himself into the hands of the Ahrimanic spirit of that stage of education. His thinking becomes, instead of divine or spiritual, Ahrimanic.

When speaking in spiritual scientific terms, one must point to the facts of this world in their truth. And the truth is, for example, that something like the materialistic historical view of Karl Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, that Karl Marx's world view is a purely Ahrimanic one. Its secret is based on the fact that only what is materially occurring on earth is recognized, that the way in which the human being's spirituality reaches up into the supersensible worlds is ignored, and that as a result of this ignorance, the human being falls prey to the Ahrimanic powers. For as soon as man excludes his consciousness from the worlds into which he reaches up, he falls prey to the ahrimanic or luciferic, in this case the ahrimanic, powers.

Now, we are faced with the fact that numerous people today advocate a purely Ahrimanic world view, fight for this purely Ahrimanic world view, and thereby also conjure up over the earth all that must come when the Ahrimanic order spreads over the earth instead of the divine order. Bentham's philosophy, of which I spoke to you yesterday, is in the first place an external theoretical expression of this Ahrimanic view of life. Marxism is such an expression, which is also already creative, which is formative, which has an enormous influence. And the indolence of bourgeois life knows nothing about it and has not cared for decades what elements of such world views have developed in the sphere of social life. Marxism is an extreme expression of this. It will continue to have an effect. What at first was only meant to be knowledge will become an event, will actually become reality. Only insight into these things, which in turn forms the will, can help in these matters.

Such truths are drastic, such truths are truly not suitable for mere Sunday sensationalism; such truths are that which is most intimately connected with the whole cultural life of the present day. And much will depend on people's willingness to recognize that which lives in their thoughts in connection with the whole order of the world. For in our time we have entered the cycle of time in which we cannot advance without falling into terrible catastrophes if we do not understand how what takes place in the human being relates to the evolution of the whole cosmos.

Such truths, when they are discovered in the search for truth – you can take my word for it – are initially disturbing. If you have a feeling for the impact of the great truths in the world, you also know the feeling of being disturbed by these great truths. It is not easy to live in the life of truth. Only the superficial might think that it is not disturbing to have to say to oneself: people, a great number of whom believed – and that is also true! – that they honestly strove for the truth, are permeated by the spirit of Ahriman! It strikes at the heart, my dear friends! Therefore, when such truths arise, one tries to come to terms with them. These truths are not there to be let in at one ear and out at the other. Nor are they there to be found in one's lonely meditation and accepted as sensations. These truths are not there for that. One must come to terms with them. One must be able to find how what one knows as world evolution, what is all around one, also agrees with what people judge, that something like that is there.

Anyone who, like me, has seen how many people there are today - now people can see for themselves through external facts - who live by Marxism or Marxism-like views, is faced with the necessity of taking a closer look at these things. One often says to oneself: Perhaps you are an illusionist after all! Of course one need not immediately doubt the whole spiritual world, but with regard to such concrete truths one often says to oneself: Perhaps you are succumbing to illusions after all! — The deep sense of responsibility towards the truth must arise precisely in the face of spiritual truths. Then one seeks to dig deeper and deeper. But there is indeed not a little, but a great deal, a great deal, which provides terrible confirmation of what I have just explained to you as the ahrimanic character of, for example, Marxism or similar world views.

When I spoke here some time ago, I made a certain demand of you. I spoke about the fact that the time as we experience it is actually an illusion, that time is in reality something quite different from how man experiences it, because man does not take time perspectively, I said at the time. Man experiences space perspectively; he sees the more distant trees smaller than the nearby trees. In reality, time is also to be seen perspectively. Events that lie far apart in time are to be seen differently than those that lie close together in time. But this is only the basis for time really being what the researchers of all times have regarded it as: time is the most important medium of human deception. We imagine, for example, that the beings of the higher hierarchies also flow through time as our own soul life flows through time: there is no truth in this. In reality, the essence of the higher hierarchies lies in elapsed times, but they work across from the elapsed times, as one can work across in space from a distant place, for example, through light signals or something similar, to beings in a nearby place in space. Time is not what people see it as, nor is time what philosophers like Kant see it as, but time in its reality is something completely different. And what man sees as reality is also a maja, a great deception. Above all, what we believe to be past remains, because we live in time as a deception. But it remains there; time really becomes something like space. And one looks at past events in the same way that one looks at distant objects in space, if one truly sees. Time is an illusion.

And further, spiritual science knows that the sources of other great illusions in human worldviews arise from the fact that man succumbs to deception with regard to time. If there were many physicists among you, I could express myself here in purely physical terms. I could show you with the help of physical formulas that just as the physicist introduces time - t, as he merely calls it - into the physical formulas, this time is only a number, and thus something quite unknown, not a reality but pure appearance. The only thing that is real is the speed, but the physicist regards this as a consequence of time. Since you are not physicists and probably will not get involved in understanding the matter, I will not go into it further either.

Time is an illusion, that is a profound truth, because time as an illusion underlies many other illusions of life. For example, if you apply time incorrectly in the course of history, you see everything in the wrong light. People in the first three Christian centuries thought that certain things that had happened were over and done with. In reality, they should have thought: the archangel or being from the hierarchy of archai who guided the events of that time is still there; it continues to have an effect in a different way. The past is only an illusion. It is very important for people to realize that time has a perspective character for spiritual reality, that they must be just as mistaken about events in the course of time – while they do not believe this – as they are about events in space if they do not allow for perspective. Consider how great the deception would be if you did not allow for perspective, if you regarded what is far away in space as having the same effect as what is close by. You are looking at a distant mountain. Your health depends to a great extent on the air around you; the air on the distant mountain does not, because if you want it to be beneficial to your health, you have to go there. As soon as we are dealing with reality in life, reality is essentially connected with perspective. But it is the same with regard to time. We live in the present when we do not believe that the more distant events of the past can be weighed as much as the near events. If we look at the Egyptian-Chaldean period in the third post-Atlantic period and only consider what the documents provide and register them as Torengeschichte registers, the fable convenue, which today calls itself history, then we make the perspective mistake. For what people did outwardly during the Egyptian period has no significance at all for today's life, but what the angels and archangels and archai did has significance; but this only emerges in the perspective formed by observation. Therefore, it is a principle, and not only today, when we all have to rediscover these things on the basis of anthroposophy, but in all times it was a principle for all spiritual researchers, that time as such is an illusion, and never was time counted in such a way by a real knower of reality that it was thought to be a truth, that it itself would have been thought of as a true reality.

Now the strange thing came to light, this Karl Marx of whom I have spoken to you, to whom millions swear today, albeit more or less in shades, more or less in formulas - but that's not what . Those who know these things know that thousands of people swear by him, or if they do not swear consciously outwardly, they do so subconsciously. This Karl Marx tried to answer the question: what are the true goods of humanity? What is it really that is achieved in humanity? — He answers the question in an extraordinarily original way, for it has never been answered before; human goods have always been considered in some other way than Karl Marx considers them. What human goods are was considered, let us say, for example, in terms of whether it had to be brought from afar, whether a lot of understanding was needed to find it, or the like. I once tried to make this clear to you by saying: Human labor must also be considered qualitatively; one must generally get involved in the concrete. We consider the elaborate Gotthard Tunnel. No one today who builds something like the Gotthard Tunnel is unfamiliar with differential and integral calculus, and differential and integral calculus is a Leibniz or, if it is better liked in England, a Newtonian - the two were arguing about the honor - invention. So one can say that Newton or Leibniz helped to create the Gotthard Tunnel. Yes, without them it would certainly not have been built! Now, the work of Newton or Leibniz must be evaluated in a completely different way than the work of someone who lays one stone on top of another in the Gotthard Tunnel. This is one way of evaluating human goods, human labor. The theory of the value of human labor, of human life, has taken various forms. Labor, goods of life, have been evaluated from the most diverse points of view, but never as Marx evaluated them. Karl Marx takes up a single element in his theory of value. For him, everything that has value in human life is only valuable because it is condensed time, namely condensed working time. Whether something can be produced in three hours, six hours, or twelve hours is the measure of its economic and global economic value. A large part of Marx's theory, which is so common today that it is possible to see it when someone from the so-called higher classes talks about work from his point of view, is based on this. A real socialist, a worker, stands up and says: “Please look it up in Karl Marx – of course he doesn't have the book with him – please, page 374, you will find this or that there.

One must really know life in order to be able to judge life, otherwise one will be amazed everywhere that this or that happens here or there. What happens happens out of the impulses of the human soul. But if one cares as little as people on earth have cared in recent decades about what has actually been going on at the bottom of the human soul, then one should not be at all surprised when the whole thing finally collapses catastrophically. But I have explained this for a special reason. It is the first time that the original has occurred, that what is only the source of deception has been made the standard of all economic values: time in the form of working hours.

So take this from a higher perspective. People who understand reality have always known that time is an illusion. Now someone comes along and says: But what has value in the world has only as much value as condensed working time is contained in it. Does that not mean in other words that your reality is an illusion and only that which is condensed time has real value? The deception is made into reality right down to the form of time by those who want to be completely materialistic, who want to stand only on the ground of reality, and reality is overlooked.

This is just one example. I could show you numerous things that comfort when one is dismayed by truths that, if one has a heart for the life of humanity, thunder into the mind. But when one then studies the matter in detail, when one looks at the hand of someone like Karl Marx, whose spirit is known to be Ahrimanic, and asks him: How do you proceed in detail? — then it is indeed the case that one comes across the Ahrimanic, and one feels: You may admit such truths to yourself. — I just wanted to give you one example here. It is not easy to have to say: Everything that protrudes into the world anachronistically today does so because people have left the spiritual world, which thus becomes their eighth sphere, and they only perceive the world in material terms. If you take this, then you will feel with all its weight what it means when I repeatedly emphasize: Today it does not matter at all whether a person says something beautiful, something that can be admitted, but what really matters is what comes from what one says or does. I must tell again and again how I have been repeatedly tested – you know I am not saying this out of some silly vanity – to draw attention to the fact that it does not matter what one thinks, but that one sees what effect one's thoughts have. You can have a thought that is absolutely wonderful. But if you have no idea how this thought will work in reality, it can have the opposite effect. I have been trying to make such things clear in various examples for years. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, I once gave a lecture in which I said – I will now summarize much of what was discussed at the time in a few words, because I just want to illustrate –: Today there are more people who are programmatic pacifists, talking very nicely about the leadership of humanity from their pacifist point of view. Pacifism has never actually assumed such proportions as in this time – so I spoke at the beginning of the century. And that is, I said, a clear sign that we are facing the greatest war of humanity. For people in the past did not think about human interrelations in such an unrealistic way as they have done within these circles, they only went so far as the content of their thoughts, and had so little awareness of the real effectiveness of what lives in the soul that one can only recognize it through the whole world perspective. This is only done in the age in which all the things we have been talking about have been spreading.

How is it that something that is no more than a train of thought, and a very unreal one at that, can set the tone for many people, a thought that can never have anything to do with what is happening? This is Woodrow Wilson's train of thought, Wilsonian train of thought, which is nothing more than Egyptian-Chaldean train of thought, which does not care that there is a spiritual reality in history, but only adds abstract thoughts to each other. It comes from all these peculiarities of our age. A future historiography will have to baptize everything that our time has produced in terms of unreal thoughts that bring about the opposite, in the name of Woodrow Wilson.

That is what is decisive in our world view, what must be decisive, and what must be considered not from today to tomorrow, but from the point of view of the whole of cosmology, from the point of view of being placed in it. He who answers such questions from the point of view that arises out of a complete world-view judges such people as Woodrow Wilson is, not from sympathies or antipathies, but judges as one judges objectively about something. But that is the anachronism, that very many people today cannot get involved in it, because it is uncomfortable to look things in the face. You cannot look things in the face if you do not research them in depth. This must be said of such souls, who today have no connection to historical life: they are souls who ignore what real history has been through the third hierarchy and therefore do not deal with the real impulses when they speak, but basically only with empty words.

This is a fundamental requirement of our time: that we come to terms with it and realize that, even if we have the most beautiful concepts that the human mind can grasp, the most beautiful concepts that are quite sufficient to explore the nature that is spread around us, we will never understand anything about history. For history does not unfold as natural life unfolds; history unfolds as the deeds of spiritual entities. This is what must be added to the other world views. From theocracy, as I described to you yesterday, people emerged by still remembering the old theocratic order during the time of theocracy; then the metaphysical time came, which essentially developed the civil service throughout the world; then the purely materialistic time came, the time of industrialists. This would lead completely into the unreal in relation to the spiritual, if it were not for the counterweight of working one's way back into the real, into the actual, which, however, can only be observed if one can ascend to that which is veiled for man in ordinary life in the present time cycle. We must learn again to speak of supersensible things if we want to speak of history. In the nineteenth century people often spoke of historical ideas. Everyone knows that you can't chop down a tree with ideas, but the followers of Ranke and similar historians believe that the historical life of humanity is brought about by ideas. We must realize that this time, the mere metaphysical time, must also be overcome, otherwise that world view, which is purely limited to the sensual, will become overgrown. Mankind must work towards the spiritual. It can only do so if it first works its way through the field of history, from the apparent succession of events in time to the real event, which, I might say, is so tangible behind the external sensory reality, especially in the case of history. Then, however, one will no longer create social or similar programs based on ideas that relate only to the external life, but one will proclaim one's social programs again based on the revelations of the spiritual world. But the programs that people create today are very, very different from these revelations from the spiritual world.

We will discuss this next time. I will continue these reflections next Friday; they cannot be concluded so quickly.