The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We are presently within an era of events which call for all the sensations of the human soul in the deepest, in the most important sense. We stand in the midst of events which cause that which is always posed as a riddle for our spiritual science—death—very often in relatively short time on earth. We are in a time which spreads out grief and pains about countless souls, and in a time of which we hope that it bears important forces in their laps for the future development of humankind. If so many things are to be born from pain and grief, and if just spiritual science teaches us that many things are to be born from pain and grief, just spiritual-scientific considerations can also stimulate some strength of confidence, some strength of hope in us in this destiny-burdened time. Let me today develop some considerations before you which are not connected directly, but indirectly with the sensations and emotions which can be aroused in this stormy and painful time.

What we see occurring so variously in our present is that human beings leave the physical plane at an early age of their physical existence. Just this is the peculiarity of such events like the present ones that they recall youthful lives from the physical plane. We know that the human being when he goes through the gate of death has to hand over his physical body to the elements of the earth that he is still united with his etheric and astral bodies and his ego at first, while he goes through the gate of death. We know that after a relatively short interval this etheric body is separated from the human being, and that then the human being continues his journey, which he has to do between death and a new birth, with his ego and astral body, united with those members of his spiritual nature that he can get only in the spiritual world.

The etheric body, however, separates from the human individuality and goes through its own way. Now it must strike us that the etheric body of an early deceased human being is in another condition than that of a dead one who attained a normal age. We know that the external natural sciences speak about the fact that forces can change that, however, they cannot get lost. For the external world of the physical existence the natural sciences recognise this truth absolutely that forces never get lost, only change. Spiritual science has to teach to acknowledge this also for the spiritual world. If an etheric body frees itself from a human being who went through the gate of death as young man, then his etheric body could still have supplied the life of this human being on the physical plane for many decades.

An etheric body must be arranged in such a way that it can give all that vitality which the human being has to take up until the highest age. If the human being goes through the gate of death, we say, in his twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, thirtieth year, his etheric body goes away from him, but this etheric body still has forces through which he could have preserved his physical life up to the sixtieth, seventieth, eightieth year. These forces are in the etheric body, these forces do not get lost. We are to be preoccupied with the question—just in such a time like the present one when so many of such etheric bodies are entrusted to the spiritual worlds: what happens with the etheric bodies of those human beings who went through the gate of death in early youth?—It will be good if we familiarise ourselves—to answer such a question rather thoroughly—with the way the etheric body of a human being goes through, while the human being goes through the life between birth and death.

The external physical body of the human being gets older and older. That it gets older and older does not apply to the etheric body even if that is hard to understand. But the etheric body gets younger and younger to the same degree as the physical body gets older and older. The etheric body arrives at a certain, one could say, childish level of etheric existence in the time when the human being goes through the gate of death in a normal age. So that we must say to ourselves: when we start our physical earth existence with birth, then that is old which has been united as an etheric body with our physical body—we can say comparatively—and gets younger and younger during life and arrives at its childish level when we go through the gate of death. We could also say: if a human being dies in his youth, his etheric body does not get young enough, but it keeps a certain level of its age.—What does that mean really? An example can teach us what that means. Some of you already know this example which I have again to mention here, a concrete example of the last time which could be experienced by a number of our friends.

This concrete example concerns, actually, to a very young child, the little son of a member of ours. It was just at an evening lecture in Dornach when we got to know after the lecture that a boy of seven years, the son of our friend Faiss, was missing. It was soon clear to us that a big misfortune must have happened. A van had come in the late afternoon nearby the Dornach construction, strangely in an area, in which long before no van has probably gone, and will also not after. This van had toppled over at a particular place. This had happened towards evening, nothing else had been noticed; however, the boy was missing. When our friends, together with others, endeavoured to lift the van between ten and twelve o'clock in the evening which had not been lifted by the people to whom it belonged—they had saved themselves it for the next day because the carriage had fallen very unfavourably and was very heavy. When the helpers had succeeded in lifting it, it became apparent that, indeed, the child, the little Theodor Faiss, had passed just at the moment when the van toppled over, and that the carriage had fallen on the child. This child was only seven years old—an exceptionally dear child, a child who had exceptionally nice qualities.

I would like to remind you of a logical consideration which I have often done in our circle to show such a fact in the light of our spiritual science. I have often said that one can mistake cause and effect using external thinking, untrained thinking, and that such mistakes of cause and effect appear exceptionally often. As an example I tried to illustrate this, an example which should be only a metaphor. Imagine that one sees a person in the distance going along a riverbank. One sees him falling into the river, one tries to approach him, and one sees a stone lying just where the person had fallen into the water. One tries to pull out the person from the river: he is dead. What is more obvious than to say: the person tripped over the stone, fell into the river and drowned? This does not need to occur at all in such a way, but here the simple physical investigation may teach us that at the moment when the person entered this place he got a cardiac arrest, without his destiny having to do anything with the stone or anything else. That is why he fell into the water, so that the cardiac arrest was the cause of the fall into the water, while one would say if one makes no effort to come to the cause that the fall into the water is the cause of his death. One would assume the opposite of the right thing.

Cause and effect are distinguished more difficultly if one deals with matters related to the spiritual world. That is why one has to say: in such a case like in the case of this child who really finds his death under such extraordinary circumstances—which were still extraordinary in some other respect—one does not have to remember from a higher point of view that now this has happened: that the removal van came and toppled over and the child got under the carriage by chance; that the carriage is the cause of the child's death. On the contrary, one thinks in such a case correctly spiritual-scientifically that the child's karma had run off, and that basically the carriage went to that place because the boy should find his death; that the carriage brought only about the external conditions to give the boy his death, which was predestined in his karma. One could say trivially: the higher ego of the child wanted to go through the gate of death and ordered the whole situation, all the events that way. Indeed, it would be something totally crazy for the human being, who thinks according to our time, to hear of such an idea. Spiritual science has to show us that something that the materialistically minded human beings of today consider as something crazy corresponds to the truth.

However, it is important that just in this case the etheric body of a seven-year-old child was separated from the individuality of the child, from that which goes then in connection with the ego and the astral body through the spiritual worlds. Now it should not be my object to speak about the further life of this individuality of the little Theodor Faiss, but my task is rather to draw your attention to the fact that the etheric body supplied the physical life with vitality only for seven years; but it had forces in itself to supply a long life with vitality between birth and death. These forces remain in the etheric body. The important matter is that somebody who dealt with our Dornach construction in any spiritual relation since the death of the little Theodor Faiss can now know what came into being from the etheric body of the little Theodor Faiss. Various things of the construction are to be accomplished. We still talk immediately about the Inspirations we have to get down from the spiritual world. One need supporting forces if everything comes down that should really come down from the spiritual world. There it becomes obvious that our Dornach construction is wrapped up by the enlarged etheric body of this child like by an aura since his death—up to a far-reaching circumference. It is possible to really determine the extension of this covering.

When you see the Dornach construction—those who have already seen it, know it, it is a double rotunda [see drawing next page]. Here we have built a heating house in a particular way according to the principles of spiritual science, and then here we have built another house where the glass panes are cut and engraved for the construction. Only by the way, I want to mention that there is the so-called “House Hansi”—this is the house in which we live. Now it is strange that towards the wood, then just along the heating house, dividing this construction in the middle where the glass panes are cut, and here along this house, House Hansi, not enclosing it, this aura of the little Theodor Faiss wraps up the whole construction. So that one enters this etheric aura if one enters the building.

(Bau = construction, Heizhaus = house of the heating system, Haus für Glasfenster = glazier's workshop, Umgrenzung der Aura = boundary of Theodor's aura, Villa Hansi = House Hansi, Wald = wood)

I have often pointed out to you that the etheric body extends if it becomes free of the physical body. Hence, it does not surprise us that this etheric body appears enlarged to us. In this etheric body are the mediating forces through which one finds certain impressions of the spiritual world one needs for the forms and artistic decoration of the construction. Somebody who has to work for the construction knows what he owes to this etheric aura. Never will I hesitate to admit that since the death of this little Theodor Faiss the work is thereby made possible for me that mediating forces are given for the Inspirations in this etheric body of the boy spread out over the construction. It would be much easier not to mention such a matter. One could boast about the fact that one does not have need of such mediating forces. But it does not concern such matters but that one recognises the truth.

If we imagine these just described facts, we get an impression of how it is with an etheric body which must separate from a human life if this life is finished by death in youth. Now it is important to take into consideration that as to us the etheric body of a human being does not remain only like a nebulous formation in which the physical body is embedded. We do also not recognise a physical human body by the fact that we describe it only like a mass of muscles and bones et cetera, but by the fact that we look at it as something like a temple of the godhead, as a microcosm. We only recognise the physical body correctly if we realise that its forms which are stamped on it are really taken out of the whole cosmos that the physical body of the human being is a miracle. Somebody, who can feel the emotions which are expressed in the first conversation of the second mystery drama The Probation of the Soul, can get an idea in which way an individual human being is put into his physical existence concerning his physical body by all kinds of hierarchies; that a whole world of gods aims at it as their goal to put this human being into the physical existence. We get to know so surely which significance this physical body has if we consider the clairvoyant knowledge a little.

The clairvoyant cognition is the cognition which comes about by the fact that the human being pulls out his psycho-spiritual entity from his physical body and that he can then be conscious and perceive outside his body in the psycho-spiritual realm. One cannot recognise any difference between the human being who perceives clairvoyantly and the sleeping human being who has also pulled out his psycho-spiritual of his physical body. However, because the clairvoyant consciousness can perceive outside the physical body, it can gain an idea what happens with the human being during sleep. This schematic drawing may make it easier. We assume that this is the physical body and this is the psycho-spiritual entity of the sleeping human being. Of course, the psycho-spiritual entity is in the physical body when he is awake. We imagine the human being in his sleeping state. The physical body and the etheric body lie there in the bed; they do not contain the astral body and the ego as they contain them when they are awake.

But one would like to say that what the astral body and the ego accomplish in the physical body during the waking state is not stopped completely in sleep. For all that which the human being can perceive at first the human being lying in the bed is lying there as lifeless. For the clairvoyant consciousness this physical human being and this etheric body which lie in the bed are not as lying there lifelessly. The clairvoyant must say something completely different of this sleeping physical and etheric human being. He has to say: during the whole day the area of the earth on which now the human beings are sleeping was shone on by the sun. Now it is night. I talk about the normal circumstances if one sleeps at night and is awake during the day, not about the modern urban or big-city circumstances. Darkness spreads out over the area on which the sun has shone during the day. It is strange, but one notices there that the earth as a being starts to think and the organs with which the earth thinks are these sleeping human bodies.

As well as the human beings think with their brains, the earth thinks with these sleeping human bodies. It perceives continually during the day—and the percipience consists in the fact that it is shone by the sun from the universe, this is the perception of the earth—and at night it processes thinking what it has perceived. The earth thinks, the clairvoyant says, and it thinks using the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes as it were a brain molecule of the earth. Our physical body is established so that the earth can think with it if we ourselves do not use it.

But as well as the earth thinks with the human physical body, it imagines—you know what an Imaginative knowledge is,—it imagines everything that is not earthly on earth that belongs to the earth from the whole universe. It imagines that in the etheric body. In the sleeping physical body of the human being one recognises brain parts of the earth, and in the etheric body of the sleeping human being one sees that cosmos imagining which belongs to the earth at first. One can behold this interplay of forces in the etheric body as miraculous pictures which must flow from the etheric world of the earth, so that the events of this earth can take place. As true as the physical human being belongs to the earth, he belongs as an etheric human being to the heavens. Only so we can use our physical body for ourselves as a mental organ because it is created for thinking because, so to speak, the earth gives him off during the waking state. That is why we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it gives us the vital forces because the heavens give it off during the waking state, and because the forces of Imagination of the heavens are transformed to vitality in us during the waking state. So that we will talk not only about our etheric body like about a nebulous thing, but about a microcosmic thing reflecting the heavens in it.

Our etheric body is handed over to us as a particularly perfect creation at our birth. At our birth our etheric body glitters internally and gleams from nothing but Imaginations which come from the big cosmos to it. It is a marvellous reflection of the cosmos. What the human being can get as education, as knowledge, as forces of will and soul during his life, while he grows old between birth and death, this is got out of this etheric body. The cosmic heavenly forces hand over to us what they have to hand over to us during the life between birth and death. Therefore, we are again young as etheric human beings when we have run through a normal life between birth and death, because we have then sucked out everything from this etheric body. If such an etheric body goes through the gate of death which belongs to a youthful body, then there is still a lot of unused heavenly light in it. Hence, it becomes a mediator of such forces as I have told. Completely apart from the fact what the individuality of such a human soul becomes, like that of which I talked before, the etheric body becomes something like a gift of the heavens, a gift of the spiritual worlds. That is why this etheric body can work inspiring in the described sense.

It would go too far to talk about the peculiar karma which has such a human soul who is able to make such a sacrifice. For this cannot be brought about artificially, but it must be connected with the whole karma of such a person. He has to do something that has to play a role in the spiritual world process of humankind as we intend it for this Dornach construction which should surround our spiritual-scientific efforts.

Now, however, consider that we go towards a time, in which many such etheric bodies, even if they are not so youthful concerning their age but their life, are in the spiritual atmosphere. Those who have gone on the bloody battlefields through the gate of death go in another way through the gate of death than somebody who goes in his bed or because of an everyday accident through the gate of death. They go in a certain way through the gate of death so that they reckon with their death, even if more or less in the subconscious—the astral body reckons with the death in a certain way. One can say that this death is always a sacrifice. All the etheric bodies which go up in this way from youthful human beings to the spiritual world have unused forces. A period of human development lies ahead to us in which human souls can consciously look up to the spiritual world and can say to themselves: a time has passed which has sent many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. In these unused etheric bodies forces are included, forces of which we can say spiritual-scientifically already today which significance they have for the development of humankind.

If one discusses such a matter, one must expressly point to the fact that that does not apply to every war which took place in the development of the human beings on earth. What happens spiritually and should be considered by spiritual science is not so simple as natural sciences make it easy to themselves. Other wars of former times required that one has to talk about them differently. What I have to say applies to the present destiny-burdened times. Think once the following: at different occasions I had to emphasise that it does not arise from arbitrariness if we cultivate spiritual science today, but that it really lies in the developmental process of humankind that the human beings get to know spiritual science gradually. We know that every epoch of the earth development of humankind has a particular task. We can gather this from different cycles of talks. We can recognise that the welfare of the future development of humankind can only blossom if really the revelations of spiritual science become mental property of more and more souls.

I assume that most of you are warmly enthusiastic for spiritual science, but take into account which difficulties are there with reference to the propagation of the spiritual-scientific truth in the present. Take into account that the human beings outside in the world oppose against this spiritual-scientific truth. Take into account that this truth is defamed, that the human beings consider it as mad, as distorted, as crazy, as a raving. Really impressive examples could be given, but, nevertheless, all the examples would be only a small part of that which basically everybody can feel if he is enthusiastic for spiritual science and faces the world from which he would like that it would take up spiritual science—and does so little today. Now the spiritual scientist may say to himself the following: what has to be accomplished with the bare earth forces of humankind seems to be rather weak compared to the task of spiritual science. But in the immediate future there are the unused etheric bodies which had to carry soul and life through the gate of death on the fields of the events in our time. The etheric bodies with their unused forces become inspiring forces, supporting forces in the immediate future. We only need to get the attitude—now not intellectually, not theoretically, but out of heart and soul—to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who have gone in early youth through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time.

We need to turn our souls as it were only in praying mood to these etheric bodies, and those who are enthusiastic for spiritual science only need to turn their souls to these forces—and they will have help from these etheric bodies. So that if ardent spiritual living together with these etheric bodies is possible because one is penetrated with a real spiritual-scientific attitude, one also finds those among the various fruits which are in the lap of our destiny-burdened time. For into the souls of the spiritual-scientific enthusiastic human beings of the future that will stream which lies in the forces of the sacrificed etheric bodies of our destiny-burdened time. Through the souls of those who live in the physical body in the next future the forces of the sacrificed etheric bodies can flow if these souls are penetrated with the real attitude. These are heavenly forces, forces of the spiritual world. Then quite different forces are able to prevail in the world to bring spiritual-scientific attitude into the world. We have only to find the possibility to bear witness of that which happens now in the sense of the just given explanation, then these destiny-burdened days are also deeply significant for somebody who stands in spiritual science.

Marvellous, we have said, are the Imaginative formations of the human etheric body. Nevertheless, they are different than they would be unless they had gone through an etheric body of a human being. But also on this field the sentence holds true: nothing comes into being from nothing.—This is not an absolute sentence, but it applies to this field. What a human soul adds as an etheric body, when it enters in the physical existence, gathers forces of the spiritual world which are used up during the physical life. These forces are not from nothing, they are there in the spiritual world. Indeed, one can find them also in the spiritual world, but if anybody wants to find them directly in the spiritual world, it is difficult. One must use much bigger instruments of power. If they have gone, however, once through a physical human being who has died early and show themselves as it were with that which they have in themselves because of the passage through the human being, it is easier to use their help.

All the forces which are in this young etheric body of the little Theodor Faiss, indeed, would also be in the spiritual world, but it would be a spiritual Herculean task to pull them, otherwise. Because they have come along on the detour through the boy, it was substantially easier to be inspired by them. Imagine then what a tremendously great significance for the whole further development of humankind it has that such a big amount of etheric bodies with still unused forces are given to humankind in the next future. But because these, I would like to say that repeatedly, heavenly forces have gone through human beings, they freed themselves as it were from the laws to which they are subjected in the universe outside. It is impossible that in the universe these forces, which are got directly from the universe, are used in a bad sense. Assuming that all the human beings who go now because of the military events or other circumstances through the gate of death, they would not deliver such a sum of etheric bodies if the war had not come. All these forces would also be in the universe, of course; then, however, they could not be used by the human beings, because it would be too difficult to use them. That is why they could not be used, because they would be used up in the lives by the human beings who reached their normal age. This is quite important that these heavenly forces have gone through human bodies. They thereby escape as it were from the usual progress of development. However, this freedom makes that these forces can be also used in another way than to the welfare of humankind.

They can also be used in another way. The human life must develop in the light of freedom. Assuming that Ahriman would really succeed in darkening the thoughts and reason of the human beings, so that they all would reject spiritual science. Then, nevertheless, these etheric bodies would be there, but there would be no spiritual-scientific enthusiastic souls who take these forces into the service of the earth progress. Then Lucifer or Ahriman would be able to intervene and would use these forces either in the world of Lucifer or in the world of Ahriman. Consider that I express something tremendously important with it. I express that it is put as it were into the hands of the human beings in which way the forces are incorporated in the earth process which were given to the world by sacrificial deaths. The fact that these forces can be used to the progress of earth development inspiring that which was aroused by spiritual science.

Otherwise, it could be—if materialism seized all minds or if nationalism spread out in a purely passionate way—that Lucifer or Ahriman would take these forces into their service. Then the earth progress could not have anything of these forces. The deep significance of spiritual science for the human earth development becomes apparent to somebody who considers these connections. He learns to say to himself: how necessary is it that sacrificial forces are used in the right sense in the development, how necessary is it that individual human beings can be touched by the spiritual-scientific attitude.—This spiritual science becomes something holy if one considers it in the connection with the spiritual development, as it expresses itself during our destiny-burdened days. The attitude which can originate from spiritual science becomes something like a prayer which can be summarised in the words: spirit of the world, let us rightly be penetrated with this spiritual-scientific attitude, so that we do not fail to wring that which can be used to the welfare and progress of the earth out of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Our construction should serve like a landmark what spiritual science should become to humankind as an attitude. Hence, it is arranged in such a way that its forms express artistically what spiritual science can give from itself. I would have to speak a lot if I wanted to explain to you what is put into every detail of this construction. You experience all that, if you visit the construction in the course of the years, and join in the matters which should take place there. Today I will only talk about one matter in connection with that which I have just explained.

At an important place of the construction, where it turns eastwards, a sculptural group will be. In this sculptural group should be expressed in particular that which has to penetrate the consciousness of our time to the right degree. This group consists of three figures basically, apart from that which will be added. Three beings find expression in this group. Something like a rock will be there. This rock has a projection forwards, and in this projection is a cave. The central figure stands on the rock projection. You may call it as you want, but you have to see the representative of the earthly human being in it in the truest sense of the word. If you want to see the ideal of the earthly human being in that human being who carried the Christ being for three years of his life on earth, you may also see Christ in this central figure. But this must not happen in such a way that you stand before this group with the consciousness that this should be Christ, but everything must be felt artistically. That is, it must not be interpreted externally as a symbol, but everything must result from the forms themselves.

Here on top is the second being. This being has a humanlike head. The head is really formed in such a way that one can say, a human head reminds of this head. Since this head is so formed that the skull is extremely developed, in particular the forehead. While these parts are relatively immobile with the human being, everything is mobile with this being. Everything is an expression of soul. As well as the human being can move his hands with the fingers, but not this part here, this being can move everything. One notices in the sculptural work that everything is movable. The lower part of the face recedes very much with this being. One may say that the mighty skull arches over the receding face.

I can only discuss some parts, because every single line of this figure is very significant. Then, however, it is the peculiar that a connection exists between that which has atrophied to the larynx with the human being and the ear of this figure. That which is as a little larynx in it bends up and constitutes the lower part of the ears. The upper part is formed by the forehead. On the other side, two formations, reminding of bird wings, adjoin between which a body is spread out resembling a reshaped human face on the whole. Wings and larynx and ear are formed as a unity, so that one recognises: with the wings the being lives in the music of the spheres inside, moves through the space, through the waves of the music of the spheres, and this is located in the ear. With the human being all that has atrophied. Because the human representative lifts the left hand to the figure on the rock, its wings are broken, and it falls off the rock.—You anticipate: this figure is Lucifer who falls off the rock with broken wings.

Here at the bottom, in the cave, is another figure. It does not have bird-like wings, but bat-like wings, a kind of worm-like or dragon-like body and a head again reminding of the human head. But what is a mighty forehead with Lucifer recedes in this lower figure completely, has atrophied. The lower parts toward the mouth are extremely developed with this figure. This figure is wrapped with the gold of the earth. The gold of the earth turns into chains, which tie up this figure therein. This figure writhes because of the effect which goes out from the downward showing hand of the human representative, Christ. This figure at the bottom is Ahriman, who is tied up with the gold of the earth.

What I have just said is, as it were, the idea of the whole. But with this idea I have only pointed to that which it concerns. Never will we adopt the bad habit of the old theosophists who have always worked with symbols, but everything that moves from spiritual science to the human feeling has really to be raised to the artistic realm. Hence, one must not say: these figures express this and that,—but they have to show the relation of the human being, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman artistically. That is why this cannot be expressed using the old artistic means. Each movement of the fingers, the way as the hands are formed, is important, because something important has to express itself in it. One could have the idea at first that Christ lifts the left hand up and would allow to emit forces which break the wings of Lucifer, so that he falls off. The forces by which Ahriman is tied up would be emitted by the right downward showing hand again. One would have imagined something completely wrong if one had imagined this.

To explain the especially important aspect of that, I may remind you of something that really belongs to the greatest pieces of art up to now: The Last Judgement by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There one sees Christ pointing the good to the heaven, the bad to the hell. One sees in Christ that he sends the ones to the good world, the others to the bad world. This Christ, as he is shown there, is not from now on the Christ whose true being we should only understand by spiritual science. The Christ who is the true Christ does not condemn, does not praise, using rage or usual love, but has an effect by his own nature. Lucifer's wings are not broken, but he breaks them because of his attitude while approaching Christ. Ahriman ties up himself because of the soul events while approaching Christ. Hence, the downward and upward lifted hands must not have anything that is not pure sympathy with the world. On top, Lucifer cannot endure on his part that the hand of Christ approaches him. The experience of this in himself breaks his wings, Christ does not break them.

That also holds good for Ahriman. Michelangelo did not yet know how to form Christ as He is in reality. The Christ Being is so significant, the understanding of the Christ Being is so difficult that this can only be reached in the course of time. The Christ Who persuades the beings by His nature, so that they condemn or release themselves, is understood in future. Christ in the picture of Michelangelo has something luciferic-ahrimanic because He leads the bad human beings to hell in His rage, the good to the heaven: He is engaged with His passions. In our sculptural group, Christ stands as somebody impersonal, and the beings condemn themselves who approach Him.

You see that the position of the human being in the world is expressed, in which luciferic and ahrimanic forces are included, at an important place of our construction. Beings must find expression that can be found only in the spiritual world. Any naturalism of art, any tendencies of art just in the last times when people were seized by materialism must be overcome by the art we cultivate here. Something novel, also in the field of art, has to enter the world by spiritual science, so that the greatest achievement of art is also overcome which was possible up to now: the Christ figure of Michelangelo in his Last Judgement.

One is allowed to express such things, if one emphasises, on the other side, what must not be forgotten: the fact that of course this construction can only be a primitive start. Everything is imperfect, everything is elementary, everything is only a start, but the start should already be something novel. The fact that everything is imperfect, this can be known of course, but one has to point to something that should come as an impulse in the whole human life.

Take into consideration that it suggests itself to pass a gift of the cosmic existence indifferently, which consists of the unused forces of human etheric bodies. Take into consideration that these forces could become a prey of Lucifer and Ahriman if the human being did not find the possibility to serve the welfare of the earthly development. There we have touched a tremendous secret of our earthly development: the secret of the relation of the Christ Impulse to the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This relation of the Christ Impulse to the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman can be understood by humankind more and more in the next future. Lucifer's and Ahriman's forces prevail in the world, and the human being must become with the help of his Christ consciousness like a being who sits in a boat which is always exposed to the storms Lucifer and Ahriman excite. The boat has to roll from side to side, however, it finds its way through the sea whose living substance consists of Lucifer and Ahriman, through which, however, the human being steers his Christ boat.

We do not come together in our branches to learn this or that theoretically what spiritual science can reveal to us, but we come together that everything that lives in our souls is filled with an attitude which can flow from this spiritual science. It does not depend on that which we think of spiritual science, but how we think, feel and will. Whether the smallest or the biggest what we can observe in the earth development of humankind stands before our soul eyes, everywhere can come before our eyes that it is necessary for the human being of the future to familiarise himself just with the significance of the triad of Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. Michelangelo could not correctly see, the past times could not correctly see this triad existing there in the world. But one will only recognise Christ properly by His being when one sees Him in His relation to that which works in the world like the North Pole and the South Pole: Lucifer and Ahriman.

Some of these matters are to be discussed for those who can be present still during the next days. Today I wanted to put on your souls that which allows spiritual-scientific attitude to appear to us as something very important also for important matters which can appear in the spiritual world in the next future to somebody who is able to understand also spiritually what happens physically.

One may beg the good gods and spirits guarding the earth and humankind that they give the human beings strength, so that that can happen which must happen for the welfare of humankind.

Above there the unused etheric forces of the human beings are who went through death in their youth. But human hearts and human souls have to be here on earth which look up to these forces, so that these forces can be brought in the correct direction of development by them. It depends not only on it that there above the forces are which could also become a prey of Lucifer and Ahriman, but it concerns that here below human souls are in physical bodies that send their pious mood to these sacrificial etheric bodies. It will depend on that in which sense the forces flow in the human development which are created on the fields on which the blood runs on which sacrifices are offered on which pains are suffered.

This shows the contribution of spiritual science to the course of the human development if that which can be recognised only by spiritual science is really seized by a number of human beings.

What can come into being from the present destiny-burdened days, I would like to express it in the end in some pragmatic words before your souls once again:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faust I, verses 3217–3234

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The earthly flame of spiritual knowledge

Brightly illuminates death's appearance;—

And something that she also confirms now:

The Self becomes cosmic eye and ear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

At our Düsseldorf branch consideration the day before yesterday we looked a little at that which one calls the passage through the gate of death by the human being. It is that which matters that the Western mental development is penetrated with a knowledge which overcomes death, as it were, through knowledge, overcomes it because it recognises death as a transformation of life.

It is a matter of course that just in our time, penetrated with materialistic views, death must appear more and more like a border of the world which the human being experiences. We can easily imagine that this was substantially different in ancient times; because, as we know, the human beings had leftovers of an old dreamy clairvoyance in these times. This dreamy clairvoyance was connected with an existence in the spiritual worlds. Because in those times in which our souls were embodied in such bodies in which still a clairvoyant existence was possible in the spiritual worlds, our souls were connected with the spiritual world. Death was to them at that time not a significant, not a final phenomenon as it is in our times. But this would become stronger and stronger if that knowledge did not come bit by bit into our time which should be opened by spiritual science. Hence, do not believe that this spiritual science which we acquire does not have the greatest significance already as spiritual science itself for the whole experience of the human being.

Indeed, many of us will say: we strive for two things on our way through the spiritual-scientific movement. First: to penetrate that reasonably which spiritual science gives us. Secondly: because we apply to our souls the spiritual-scientific methods, as they are outlined to us, for example, in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, we strive for getting the perception of the spiritual world already during our physical incarnation. But some will say: definitely only to some, only to few it is allotted by their karma to reach the spiritual world consciously in this incarnation. Indeed, everybody would and does come into the spiritual world in certain sense who only applies these rules; but noticing that he is in it; taking notice on it is more difficult than entering it. Some people are prevented from being aware in which way they are in the spiritual world even if they are really in it. Because they are unable to apply that fine, intimate attention on their experience. One would like to say, everybody who applies the instructions given in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? enters the spiritual world with his self after a relatively short time, but—he does not notice it. Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.

We have often said: the spiritual-scientific view is necessary, of course, to get the facts of the spiritual world. If, however, the facts are given, everybody can understand them if he uses his unbiased healthy reason not clouded by prejudices of the external materialistic world. We have to realise that it does not suffice if we intend or persuade ourselves that we are beyond the prejudices which the materialistic age gives. Indeed, concerning our will, concerning our longing we are beyond these prejudices of the materialistic time if we devote us seriously to the spiritual-scientific movement. Since basically nobody will confess honestly and sincerely to this spiritual-scientific movement who is not penetrated in the deepest inside by the longing for overcoming the materialistic prejudices. But they stick in our ways of thinking firmly, and that sticks especially firmly which is not directly a materialistic prejudice but which is connected with the materialistic prejudice. It is connected with the materialistic prejudice, with the whole materialistic world view that the human being cannot develop a comprehensive power of thinking in a certain way. Our time strives for intelligence and logic, but those who want to be at the head of the scientific or cultural efforts of our time do not possess a lot of keen mind and logic.

One does not aim at the whole clearness of thinking in our time at all. If one fully aimed at the clearness of thinking, one would also be able to understand spiritual science completely. Who thinks clearly cannot argue anything against that which spiritual science has to bring forward—of course on the whole; since the spiritual scientist can be mistaken as the human being can generally be mistaken. Countless examples could be given which show us that just our time is little inclined to apply clear, keen thinking.

I would like to give you an example only of our days. One could read it always as a very common judgment of a really great man,¹ a very significant person. This judgment has been repeated, and one of the German commentators on politics showed off particularly presenting this judgment time and again. A great man said once that war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means. This appears to some thinkers, who think just in the sense of our time, to be infinitely logic: war is a continuation of politics with different means. Of course, nothing should be argued against the significance of the man who said this. He means with it that the peoples have political intercourse with each other in a certain way, thereby they order their problems together; if this politics has arrived at a point where it cannot be continued, then—well, what then?—Then just war continues politics. In this sense, the judgment of all human beings can be justified and accepted immediately.

But if one thinks a little, one finds out how one-sided such a judgment is in most cases. Since this judgment is the same as one says, for example: there are two human beings who are friends or are in another relationship who always have got on well, maybe, have loved each other endlessly, and start then quarrelling. You could also say: quarrel is the continuation of love. The quarrel is externally considered the continuation of love. But about the nature of the quarrel one will have said nothing particular if one knows that this quarrel is the continuation of love. One has achieved nothing with it; of course, one has not stated the least about war if one looks at it, so that one says: war is the continuation of politics. It is really that way that judgments which are, nevertheless, rather one-sided judgments can appear tremendously significant in this time.

Today a judgment is appreciated that expresses nothing particular about the nature of the matter in question. However, such a judgment not always needs to be futile. It can even be very fruitful. But those who bear witness of our world view should penetrate the veil of maya a little also concerning the external life. Of course, one should not argue anyhow against the judgment which one reads in every third newspaper column, because it is a fruitful judgment. However, one would experience something peculiar with the correctness of the judgment if one wanted to examine it with a clear thinking. This also holds true if one can read almost in every newspaper column: we shall be victorious, because we must be victorious.—One can argue nothing against the justification of this judgment, against the fertility and the value of this judgment; but if anybody who stands before a river and has to cross over it says: I shall swim, because I must swim,—the correctness of the judgment depends whether he is able to swim. You can testify the correctness of the judgment of a non-swimmer in this case with a clear thinking: I want to swim, because I must swim. Which value does such a judgment have? It has a high value, because there are forces, there is courage and confidence, they penetrate the will. It is a judgment motivating the will. It is not a judgment which recognises anything, but it strengthens the will. That is why the judgment is significant and important. Do not misunderstand such matters. They are stated to show that a clear thinking understanding the matters is something different than that which is asserted so often. In our time, the materialistic ways of thinking are exceptionally developed.

However, our judgment is mostly obscured if we have to examine what the spiritual scientist says. It is true that everything can be seen that the spiritual scientist says, even if one has never looked into the spiritual world, if one applies a really healthy, correct thinking. There is nobody who, also without being clairvoyant, if he only had a healthy judgment, would have to be an adversary of spiritual science. There are other reasons in the nature of the human being, in the soul of the human being to be an adversary of spiritual science. One of these reasons is the following above all.

If the human being perceives in the physical world, his physical percipience is always supported by his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. These human members were created in the course of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, and were added to the human being through the forces of the divine hierarchies. Today, they are that which they have become in the past. The human being is put in that which was prepared for him for long times, when he enters his physical existence. All that supports him when he perceives in the physical world. Whenever we perceive, whenever we form a mental picture, an impression is made in our physical body. We know nothing about it, but this impression does take place in the physical body. That is why we have a memory during the physical life. You have to imagine this matter only correctly. If we put the question: why do we have a memory in the physical life?—We must say: whenever we form a mental picture, an impression on the physical body is made.

This impression is even more or less humanlike. Any mental picture which we form makes not only—like the materialist-fantastically thinking human being means—an impression here or there in the brain, but any mental picture makes an impression on the whole human being. Any mental picture which we form really delivers an impression reproducing a kind of the human head and upper parts of the chest. It is really true: if I now speak hundred syllables per minute to you, you have formed about fifty human beings within yourselves in these minutes, however, you have got rid of fifty human pictures quickly, and it alternates quickly between these two processes. You can imagine how many such human pictures you have formed in yourselves when the hour of this consideration is over. These human pictures are more or less identical in their external figure, but incomparable on the other hand; no picture is completely identical to the other. Any picture is different from the other, even if just a little. It is a childish idea if anybody believes if he has an impression of his outside world and remembers it tomorrow that this impression has sat in any form in him. It has not sat at all in him, but a picture which is humanlike has remained in the human being. Really, a humanlike picture remains of every impression of the outside world.

If you remember the impression again tomorrow, you transport your soul into this human picture which is in you. The reason why you see not this human picture, but remember the impression, is that you read in your astral body. It is really a reading activity, a subconscious reading activity. Exactly the same way as if you want to write down something and read it later, you describe not the letters, but that which the letters mean tomorrow if you remember the experiences of today. You do not look at the picture which originated in you, the human phantom which lives there in you, but you interpret it. You transport yourself into this human phantom in your soul, and your soul experiences something different than this human phantom. It experiences that which it experienced yesterday once again.

The human being needs not to be very surprised about that, because if you read Goethe's Faust—what do you deal with it? With a lot of paper and printer's ink of any shape. This is materially the complete Faust. You would never have the Goethean Faust if your soul were not able to work anything on that you have in paper and printer's ink before yourself. If you were not able to decipher this, it would just be paper and printer's ink. With regard to the external world the materialists debate perpetually that that does not exist which the spiritual scientist speaks about. But these materialists are as clever as a human being would be clever who says: what do you tell about the Goethean Faust, it does not exist at all, and there is only paper and printer's ink!—This judgment about Faust is completely identical to the judgment which today the materialists pronounce on the world. But that applies also to our memories. Tomorrow, nothing of an impression of today is there in our human being but the phantom, the image, and the soul has to cope with all the remaining matters working on this phantom. As well as from the paper and the printer's ink in our soul the whole Goethean Faust appears, something appears from that which has remained as a phantom in us. It is like a reanimation of the today's impression if we remember it tomorrow.

But this activity which must be carried out, so that we can remember, is carried out for us by means of our wonderfully formed physical body and our etheric body which were prepared through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. They arrange that, they act for us. The materialistically thinking human being feels that. Now take into consideration that the spiritual truth, which is gained, is gained without this help, that the help of the external physical body is not enlisted. The forces which work, otherwise, in the external body must come from the inside of the soul; there must be worked from the soul. If one has a spiritual view which is not managed by the external world, we cannot transport ourselves into an internal phantom which has remained if we want to remember it; for this is in the body. There we must work for the whole matter with a much bigger strength, without this support. This is nothing especially miraculous. Imagine only how the difference, which I mean, mirrors the matter in small details. Let us assume that today somebody reads a poem, and he keeps this poem till tomorrow, which he has read today. Then he can read it tomorrow again, the day after tomorrow again. However, we suppose that he does not keep it, and then he must say it by heart. You see the difference: once we do something, as it were, that has nothing to do with us; the external paper carries what we would have to do, otherwise, from one time to the other; the paper is a support to us. We must exert ourselves more if we reconstruct the poem by heart. Thus somebody who lives in the spiritual world has to exert his will more than somebody who relies on the support of his body. However, this is connected with the fact that everything that is gained in the spiritual-scientific field, even what should be only understood generally, demands big mental efforts. A materialist may be much more sluggish, lazier than a spiritual scientist. This is the reason or at least one of the reasons why the human beings are materialists. They are not materialists, because they are forced by means of a logic, but they are materialists from fear, but also from sluggishness, because they want that anything that takes place in the soul does not come into being by the internal forces of the soul, but that it happens by that which is imprinted in their bodies, which is recorded there.

These are matters which we have to consider if we want to see the reasons why many people are adversaries of spiritual science. Above all, however, it is difficult to manage with the thinking completely if anything is to be reached that the human being must still reach if he goes through the gate of death.

The day before yesterday, I have already pointed to that which is essential if one goes through the gate of death crossing: this is self-knowledge. Of course, this self-knowledge is not anything easy at all. Some of you have already heard as I have spoken about that that with regard to the external figures the human beings make the biggest mistakes very often. There is an often mentioned philosopher, who lived in Vienna; I do not mean the Hamburg Maack who grumbles about theosophy, but Ernst Mach, the philosopher to be taken seriously. He wrote an Analysis of Sensations. Therein he tells the following very naively: I walked once in the street; suddenly I had to stop, because a person met me, and I thought: this is a person with a very unpleasant face, even with an intolerable face. Lo and behold, I found out that I had passed a mirror, and the mirror was hanging in such a way that I had seen myself. There I took notice how little I was familiar with my own figure.—When he saw himself, he took himself for a disagreeable human being with an intolerable face. This is a philosophy professor, a famous professor of the present. And to confirm that which he had experienced he adds something else. When he was a professor already for a long time, one day he went by train, arrived very tired at a city and got in a bus. There he saw a man on the other side getting in, and he thought: what a down-and-out school master gets in!—Then, however, he saw on the opposite side a mirror hanging, and he found out that he had called himself a down-and-out school master. He draws attention to the fact that he, as he says, knew the type more exactly than his special figure.

It is already hard to recognise oneself concerning the appearance of the human being—with ladies it is perhaps easier, because they more often look in the mirror,—but it is still completely different if it matters the soul. There is almost no other possibility of self-knowledge in our time than to sharpen the knowledge forces we can take up from spiritual science. The concepts, the mental pictures we take up from spiritual science are suitable just in the best sense to sharpen our self-knowledge. Everything is founded on self-cognition generally speaking that we take up from the book Occult Science in Outline. Any mental picture we take up from this book means, actually, to recognise ourselves, to know what the human being is real. While we study how the human physical, etheric and astral bodies were gradually created during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, we get to know what is in us. While we get to know what is in us, our powers of imagination are sharpened to recognise ourselves much better than it is possible otherwise.

To which extent does this self-knowledge have significance for the moment of death? As long as we stay here in the physical body, self-knowledge is just knowledge. If we go, however, through the gate of death, everything changes to willpower that we have learnt as self-knowledge. The better we recognise ourselves, the stronger a kind of willpower comes into being just when we have taken off the physical body. Let us suppose for example, that we have realised here that we were, we say, a choleric person concerning certain things. You know that it is hard to transform us completely in the physical life to take off the violence even if we understand it. But at the moment when we take off the physical body when we only know: you were choleric—that becomes will. This will is directed to eliminate the violence from our being. Any knowledge judgment becomes, while we go through the gate of death, a will judgment; it becomes willpower. Then something very significant takes place that we can call—in certain sense—the reversal of something that is experienced before the birth of the human being that is forgotten, however, because the human being cannot look back to the times which he went through before his birth.

Let us imagine, however, the human being would already be able to do that which he develops in the Jupiter existence: if he were about to gradually return from the spiritual world to an incarnation, he would experience something in extremely strange way like looking at his future figure, his future life. He would also behold something of his physical figure. But he would never penetrate that in this physical figure which would appear to him in it like two points. Imagine that we would have our physical figure like in a fog when we walk to birth. We would see it as light, but there we would see impenetrable, dark points, dark balls, still some other things, but just these dark balls. Long before his physical birth, the human being sees—in time, not in space—before himself: you become this. He already sees how his physical constitution is formed out of the nature of the spirits of form. This appears to him as a light figure more or less, but in it two dark balls are floating. When the human being lives toward the physical life—he does this partially already in the body of his mother—there he absorbs certain forces from these surroundings which the mother forms then. He feels being gradually linked with this light figure, and then he senses, as if he were in these two balls inparticular. They have appeared to him as impenetrable before, now he himself is in it and feels the forces which come to him from all sides, they flow into him. Then he pierces these two balls, the space of the balls; the space loses its impenetrability.

These are the places where later the eyes are. If one approaches the physical-earthly incarnation that way, it is the eyes we cannot see but we can see by means of the eyes. They are like impenetrable balls toward which we live. Then one penetrates them in the last phase, before one enters the physical world. If anybody consciously lived through this, that would be, actually, a miraculous phenomenon. Imagine that the human being says to himself, leaving the spiritual world and entering the physical world: now you go with your soul toward this physical figure. You find two dark balls there. You cannot see through them with your present soul; this is full of spiritual substance.—Then one gets the strength to make transparent what was spiritually non-transparent first. If one “sees first the light of day” as one says, these spaces which were non-transparent are just the reason why one sees. You yourselves cannot see the eyes; if you saw them, you would not see the world.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, the sight of death is such a miraculous phenomenon in the spiritual human life after death, because he experiences something similar that took place here with his eyes. Only that the whole human being experiences it consciously. He has to get the feeling after death: there you left behind the world. Up to now he had the physical world in the eye as a physical experience, even that which the etheric body still shows as a tableau at the end. Now he goes through the gate of death with his self-knowledge, which then becomes willpower.—Imagine now that the dead would be here. He leaves behind his physical experiences. He radiates his willpower, which he has acquired from his self-knowledge. This radiating willpower which is acquired through self-knowledge gets rid of that which prevents us from looking into the spiritual environment.

(Aetherleib = etheric body, toter Mensch = dead soul, Willenskraft = willpower)

As well as we get rid of the clouding of the eye while going into birth, so to speak, we get rid of that which prevents us from looking into the spiritual world by means of this willpower. We make ourselves transparent after death. This is the significant event.

If the human being goes through the gate of death, he has an overview of his whole life like of a great tableau, as long as he has the etheric body in himself. This stands before him. But now he also gets the feeling: you see yourself. You are that while you lived between birth and death, you yourself are everything.—Now the complete strength of self-knowledge stirs in him, which he has gained to himself, and pierces it as I have described; the etheric body thereby leaves. Then it is, as if a veil fell, and the spiritual world behind it comes to the fore. It is this tremendous experience to go through the gate of death and to have the complete last life before oneself, because the etheric body has become free. Then the soul gets the feeling: this last life is a veil which covers a tremendous world to you which you could not see during life. Now the willpower, coming from self-knowledge, fights against this veil and removes it. While the veil tears, the spiritual world behind it comes to the fore.

One does not need to be anxious, because somebody could say to himself: in our present time many people have done nothing at all to get some self-knowledge. According to the judgment of many people one can hardly be cleverer and more intelligent than a present university professor of philosophy; this is the ideal of the present intelligence. However, somebody can be predisposed to such a small self-knowledge like that famous man, even a philosopher, who is really a significant person. Somebody could become faint-hearted and say: self-knowledge is in a bad way.—Of course, if the matters were that way that the human beings depend whether they only have that willpower from self-knowledge which results from the life of present time, then the human beings would be in a rather bad way. In certain respects, the human beings of the present are rightly very proud of the tremendous progress of knowledge, which has been achieved. Think only how a doctor of present time who knows any current trend of medicine proudly looks down on those who were doctors not yet long ago. These all were fools, he thinks, of course. With regard to the external knowledge, people have achieved a lot of things in the course of the last centuries and found out about the external world how the external phenomena are connected and so on. Big progress has been done. But with regard to self-knowledge, the ancient times which we have gone through in former incarnations were far ahead; so far ahead, actually, that the present human being if he thinks materialistically has no idea what he should do with that which comes from ancient times. Since everything that the human beings today regard as old prejudices was basically self-knowledge, while the souls of ancient times experienced it. Only the last left-overs of self-knowledge are reported.

The human being living on earth knows nothing of his former incarnations with the usual external consciousness. Indeed, we know that there are people among the theosophists who after a relatively short time know a lot of their former incarnations. Once I got to know a group of people in a European city where Seneca,² Frederic II of Prussia,³ the German Emperor Joseph II,⁴ the Duke of Reichstadt,⁵ Madame Pompadour,⁶ Marie-Antoinette⁷ and still some other people were sitting together at a coffee table. But apart from those who know so much about their former incarnation, after they have learnt a little theosophy, people do not know a lot, as everybody knows, or nothing at all about their former incarnations with their everyday external knowledge. Since, as true as it is that the human being knows nothing of his previous incarnations by that which just the present human cycle gives him, it is true that he has everything for his will development after death that remained to him from previous lives. There it is different between death and a new birth. Whereas people know nothing about their previous incarnations between birth and death here, they have all the forces of their previous incarnations in themselves in the life between death and a new birth, but also that which has always been experienced between death and a new birth.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, so he has not only that willpower which comes from self-knowledge that the human beings mostly do not have today, but all the willpower which do not come from the self-knowledge of this life but from the self-knowledge, which he got in former times. So that the human being when he goes through the gate of death just is not lacking willpower which gets rid of this veil that is woven by the own life. However, if the human being wanted to gain new willpower in the course of the next millennia, this self-knowledge of ancient times would be more and more appreciated in the present era. That is why spiritual science had to appear for the further human development. Since it is the course of humankind that the human willpower still suffices today that, however, now also the time begins when during the earth development this willpower can be invigorated while the human being familiarises himself with the spiritual world.

The earth development of humankind would be exposed to a risk if the human beings resisted up to the end of the earth development from now on in every respect to take up anything of spiritual science. Then, however, the human being would be less and less able to perceive anything of the spiritual matters and events over there in the spiritual world. He would be able to do this less and less. He would be less and less able to penetrate the veil of which I spoke. Thus you see which significance self-knowledge transformed to willpower has. Here this knowledge is a self-observation; over there it is self-will which is pulling off the veil from the spiritual world. Just in those who go through the gate of death one perceives how important it is for them that they themselves invigorate their willpower as I have explained now, the willpower that comes from self-knowledge. That is why it is rather significant that the human being, while he goes through the gate of death, through these different stages, occupies himself with that which is in him what is in his self what he was during his earth-life.

If anybody has community with a dead, then it is of big significance to make this community especially fruitful that one helps the dead to strengthen and fulfill his self-consciousness. This is definitely meant that way: suppose that anybody, who was here in the physical life with us, would go through the gate of death. While we have lived with him, we know how he was; we know what he has especially liked to do. When he has gone through the gate of death, he is in urgent need to summon up strong internal forces for everything that he wills. These must flow out of his retrospect. We can help him if we think of him how he appeared to us in life; if we pay attention to that, if we send thoughts to him which characterise him. Beside the different things which have already been said about our occupation with the dead who have passed from us, we can also help the dead showing them, as it were, the image of their nature. Thus we take a certain strain away from them developing that willpower which has to tear up the characterised veil.

That is why it happened to me that the other phenomenon has resulted of which I have already spoken to you the day before yesterday. It has resulted to me when I had to speak at the funeral of friends before short time that I felt it necessary to express that which lives in the friends as their nature, just at the funeral. There I spoke not out of memory, but I spoke while my soul was transported completely into the other soul, after this had already gone through the gate of death.

If you deal with a soul which has already gone through the gate of death, then it is about that you transport yourself into this soul. Here in the physical world, the object is there, you look at it from without. In the spiritual world, you are with your whole being in this psycho-spiritual element. In the individual case of which I spoke the day before yesterday, it was just possible to put myself in the soul of this person who had gone through the gate of death and was characterised by me as a person who for long years before her death occupied herself with our world view who lived completely in it, so that she was able to put into words her own contents, her nature, living in spiritual science and taking up certain forces, as long as she was in her etheric body. I managed to catch this from the dead and I had to speak this at the funeral.

It was different in another case. When I had to speak at the funeral of our dear Fritz Mitscher who is especially dear to the members of our branch here, I felt the necessity also to transport myself in this soul who had gone through the gate of death. But now the necessity arose to put into words that which this soul was during life for his friends and fellowmen, who were also members of our anthroposophical movement, to think this together with this soul after death and to experience together what motivates and increases that will which results from self-knowledge. I had to say some things just at this funeral which harmonise with that which our dear friend Fritz Mitscher experienced in the times of his development, after he had come to our spiritual-scientific movement, what he had learnt, how his internal karma had driven him. The words which I had to speak there are not my words, as I have said, they came from the forces of his own soul, but formed so that they expressed the essential part of the years which preceded his death.

I had to say that—not: I wanted to say what I had to say there. Of course, these words were not his own words directly; the concerning soul would never have said this from himself in life. It is that which the other soul felt, nevertheless, who is connected with the soul of the deceased, as well as one can feel only with a soul who is already disembodied. I want to inform you of these words which I had to speak at the funeral:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If these words must not be taken so that they are spoken by the soul, however, they were spoken in such a community with the soul that after relatively short time this soul revealed something that came now only from the soul; not at all from my soul, but only from the soul who had gone through the gate of death. Then this sounded in that way, and since that time these words sound to me always:

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

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

When I heard these words for the first time—since that time it has happened several times—from this deceased soul, there I got on only—for that which I read out there, is so written really word by word as it was heard in connection with the other soul—there I only got on that a dialog could come into being. At the cremation I had said:

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

“You” and “yours” appear in these stanzas. But it was not done by me anyhow. I noticed only, when the words came back from the deceased soul that these words were so formed that one may quote them just also in the first person:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light

You see a dialog reaching beyond the grave, a kind of communication.

With respect to this I would like to speak about something that is often mentioned in our spiritual-scientific movement which one cannot repeat enough. In the stanzas, which have been spoken to a deceased soul, you find something that reminds you of that which is expressed most significantly where it is said:

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

Take such a thing not as bare words. This speaks of something that is connected in the deepest sense significantly with the whole being of our spiritual-scientific movement.

If a soul has so striven like that about whom I speak here, so that he wanted to penetrate that which he could learn of knowledge, of experiences with the spiritual-scientific impulses, and goes so early through the gate of death, then such a soul can remain a loyal co-worker. Thus it was a little bit like an entreaty when I called these words to this soul that he may help us in our efforts for the future of earth. For you can consider this as something sure: the abyss between the living and the dead human beings must be bridged vividly through our spiritual science in the course of the earth development. We have to learn, just as we are together with human beings living in physical bodies, to look at the dead human beings not as dead, but as living among us, as living and creating. Those who are the so-called dead are working with us with forces available to them.

We have to seize that vividly and not theoretically which impulses spiritual science has to create and convert in us into the vivid life which we want to insert to the cultural development out of spirit. I have to say: concerning our external civilisation one needs the assistance of those in future who are in the spiritual worlds up there. Those who get entrance for the spiritual-scientific movement here on earth need the dead souls. That is why I said that we need the strength for our work on earth from spiritual realms for which we thank the dead friends. We make an entreaty, as it were, to the souls to work with us on earth. I mean such souls who go on working with the forces which are strengthened by that which they took up here and penetrated themselves with that which they have taken up in the spiritual worlds.

Sometimes it appears so symptomatically which difficulties and obstacles our anthroposophical earth work does find. Among various things you can observe time and again, I want to emphasise one thing only. In a South German magazine, an article appeared some years ago which caused a sensation, because it was rumoured that a very significant philosopher had written it. The editor of the magazine is called Karl Muth. That Karl Muth has accepted an article of many pages in those days. When my Occult Science in Outline was published, he has brought this article, just resuming this book Occult Science. It would not have been so especially difficult to me to eradicate the worst things of the article, the most foolish assertions. Since with the truth of that great philosopher it is as follows: many people regard him really as a great philosopher. But he appears to some whom he approached in life—he does not need to have approached them especially near, to have sat opposite to them only once,—clinging to them like a limpet. He appeared to me that way, and I had to fight off him. But after he had written postcard after postcard, letter after letter to me, he also sent me this article as a manuscript. I could not resolve to read the article, because it began already too foolishly. There the author said, for example: Steiner calls that occult science which he wrote there in his book. But there cannot be an occult science at all, because this is the nature of science that it is not secret, but is public.—So, an occult science is contradictory to the nature of science itself. Thus it started. Where one turned over a few pages, one got on such impertinent follies that it was fatal to me to read on, to read the manuscript. It still lies there somewhere. It is a folly, because one needs only to be able to speak German to feel this folly. This is just, as if anybody says: there are no natural sciences. However, there are natural sciences. There is not a secret science, of course, but there is an occult science. It was too foolish, but the editor of the magazine thought that it was an especially significant article. Many people read the article, and regarded it as something very clever that was written about spiritual science where it was criticised thoroughly.

Now the war came. That philosopher is no German, but now he counts himself to the worst enemies of Germany. Now he writes a number of letters to the same Karl Muth who in those days—you forgive the trivial expression—licked his fingers that he got the article of the famous philosopher. A lot of venom has already been emptied over Germany and the German nation, but anything more toxic, more dreadful has not been written, actually, than that which this famous philosopher wrote in letters to Karl Muth. The most horrible judgments and reviews about Germanness and German nature are found there. Now the following can be considered still as a good sign. The philosopher concerned wrote, after he had spit venom, unfortunately not with “occult science,” because the censorship did not stop it crossing the border, so that it arrived even in Munich, and Muth (Muth = courage) found the courage to print this venom again; now, however, not to print the “significant article of a significant man” but—after years the same Karl Muth prints this writing about the Germans and writes: of course, a man who writes that way should be in the lunatic asylum!—You see, Karl Muth needed this writing about the German nature to get on that the man is a fool. Some years ago, however, he let the same fool loose on our spiritual science. A reasonable person could know this already in those days, but fools are often regarded also as famous philosophers; it does not depend on it. But you see which unfavourable conditions spiritual science is exposed to. If the war had not come and Karl Muth had not been taught that, actually, the dear man, this professor Wincenty Lutoslawski, is a fool, he would have again accepted an article annihilating spiritual science from the feather of this “famous philosopher” at the next opportunity.

You also see that in our time human beings are not often inclined to get on with their judgment which point of view they have to take concerning spiritual science. I give this example only to show—one could give many such examples—which obstacles our spiritual-scientific movement is exposed to, that even those who must be regarded later as fools are let loose on it. Then the judgment may also be justified that some other things which are said against this spiritual science are not cleverer. Since where it could be proved once rather strikingly, there it has been proved.

We have to realise that we also need the forces of those who went through the gate of death, and who, before they went through this gate, took up that which is contained in the light of spiritual science. We need them to enliven the spiritual-scientific impulses. The abyss between the living and the dead must be cleared away first on our spiritual-scientific field above all. This is why something like an admonition must appear time and again: We want to keep the consciousness that we had souls being closer to us, as long as they walked in their physical bodies among us, as it was before, only just according to their other condition of life. We want to keep this, even if the souls concerned have gone through the gate of death. For it belongs to the nicest, to the most significant what we can gain from spiritual science if we can look at those who went through the gate of death as human beings living among us, meeting us; as those meet us who live in their physical bodies. This becomes an essential support, because now so many souls go through the gate of death as young people on the fields where something new prepares itself out of blood and death, and deliver their unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world.

The human etheric body is prepared in such a way that it can supply the human being with vital forces up to the highest age. If the human being goes now through the gate of death in his youth, the forces remain unused which could still have been used here if the human being grew up to a higher age. Now we can look up to the spiritual etheric world where the human being still stays some time after he has left the physical plane. There are just many youthful etheric bodies of those available who were killed in action and went through the gate of death. These etheric bodies do not dissolve immediately but keep holding together and containing the forces which could have supplied life for a long time.

These etheric bodies will be there, they will be forces which can help the human beings when these look up longing with the consciousness of spiritual science where that is contained in unused etheric bodies. From above these forces join with those who join consciously with these forces of the spiritual-scientific consciousness. Feeling and sensing that, we should turn to them. We have to lively bear witness to the spiritual world. We should be able to say to ourselves: there have to be human beings just in future, in the time which follows this war, here on our earth who carry souls in themselves which can look up at the spiritual world, so that these unused etheric bodies are realities to them; that it becomes reality to them through their knowledge of the spiritual world. Then spiritual science will be up to that which is not only knowledge, but real life; real life also because of the destiny-burdened events of our time. Then somebody can say: there are souls in the world who look up to the etheric bodies above there which develop their unused forces, and that is why they are able to take up these forces and to work even stronger. These unused forces of the etheric bodies of those who sacrificed themselves on the fields of blood and death are fruitful for the souls on earth in future.

For this reason, we also want to think again of that cooperation which can come into being between the human beings who are inspired and spiritualised with spiritual-scientific knowledge and look at that which remains of the etheric bodies from this war, what can come into being from this internal interaction of souls. We also want to write those words in our souls again which I would like to speak now at the end of our branch considerations, out of the whole interrelation of the events:

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

• 1. the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) in his unfinished work On War (1832)
• 2. Seneca (~1–65 A. D.), Roman philosopher
• 3. Frederic II of Prussia (1712–1786)
• 4. German Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790)
• 5. Duke of Reichstadt (1811–1831), Napoleon Franz Bonaparte von Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I.
• 6. Madame Pompadour (Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson) (1721–1764)
• 7. Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France (1755–1793)

Whereas on the last occasion that we were able to meet together here we focused our attention upon experiences of a more special kind, today our approach to spiritual science will be rather of a general nature. I Should like to make a start from something all of you have really known for a long time—that all study of spiritual science is based on knowledge which is not acquired through the instrument of the physical body but through the liberation of what belongs to soul and spirit from the physical instrument; whereby the soul and spirit enter into direct connection with the spiritual world.

In ordinary life and in ordinary cognition this direct connection with the spiritual world is broken off because, if we wish to maintain our relation to the ordinary world, we have in our waking condition to use the instruments of our physical body. In the sleeping condition all our will is concentrated on our connection with the physical body in such a way that the longing for the body spreads a cloud, as it were throughout soul and spirit, preventing us—both during sleep and in ordinary life—from experiencing anything at all in the spiritual world around us.

Now it is important that anyone actively interested in spiritual science should really understand the value of this activity, as such, and its relation to the personal striving which, by meditation, and concentration of the impulses of thought, feeling and will—or anything else of that nature—brings the human being into the spiritual world. For in this connection we must above all be clear about a deep and significant truth—namely, that the unity, which to a certain extent surrounds us in the ordinary world, in the spiritual world does not exist in the same way I have already indicated that this unity is founded on the whole way in which man, as soul and spirit, is fitted together. Now constantly do we hear men asking: What is the unifying principle in the world? And what satisfaction they find in being able to trace everything to a unifying principle!

Actually the physical world does appear to us eminently as a whole, as one formation; and those people who  are, as it were, obsessed by the ‘demon of unity’ arrive at all manner of abstractions in their thought by seeking for the unifying  principle in the world.

Characteristic of this are personalities such as an old gentleman who came to me one evening and told me, with all the enthusiasm of a discoverer, that he had found a unifying principle enabling him to explain all the phenomena of the world. In his joy at this discovery he declared that he could tell me all about it in just a few words, and he was so pleased about the matter that he said: I can now explain the whole cosmos. Hell, earth, heaven—he could explain them all in accordance with this unifying principle.

This episode was brought to my mind again the other day, when someone wrote urgently demanding an interview with me. He had made the acquaintance of a man able in five minutes to propound a completely satisfying world-conception. I need hardly say that there is no time for interviews of such a kind where a really serious spiritual stream is concerned. Those, however, who are possessed by the "unity demon”—always at the same time a demon who loves the easy path—are just now particularly numerous.

In connection with this we must above all take very seriously what is said in "Knowledge of the Higher World", namely, that directly we have crossed the threshold of the spiritual world we really come face to face with a threefold experience. In the book mentioned, I have especially emphasised that the soul is split, as it were, into three, that when the soul crosses the threshold into the spiritual world there no longer exists what makes it possible to believe in the unity-demon, the demon who loves ease.

Indeed, as soon as we pass the threshold of the spiritual world, with our whole being we feel that we are entering into three worlds—actually three worlds. We must never lose sight of the fact that once the threshold of the spiritual world is crossed we have the distinct experience of three worlds. We actually belong to these three worlds in the very construction of our whole physical body. I might say that the working together of three worlds, comparatively independent of one another, is a necessary factor in the wonderful structure of man as he confronts us in the physical world. When we consider the formation of our head, the formation of all that belongs to our head, we must be clear, even when only speaking of the head, that the formative forces of our head and the beings who are working and creating in these formative forces, belong to an entirely different world from, for example, the formative force of our breast, the formative force of all that has to do with our heart, including our arms and hands. To a certain extent it is as if the formative force of these material parts of man were to belong to a quite different world from the formative forces of our head. The lower organs of the body to gather with the legs, in their turn, belong to an entirely different world from the other members referred to.

Now you may ask what significance all this has. It has a great significance, because the present cycle of mankind is such that we attain unadulterated genuine and really true results in spiritual science only when what is of a soul and spiritual nature is lifted out of the head.  So that the clairvoyant aspect of a man observed in the light of spiritual science is this—that the soul-spiritual is for the most part lifted out and, as it were, joined to the forces of the cosmos as if by a spiritually electric contact. (See Diagram I.)

Thus everything must be drawn out—the ego, the astral body, up to the etheric body. This drawing out is obviously connected with the development of what are called the lotus flowers. The forces that set the lotus flowers in movement lie in those parts of the soul-spiritual in man that are lifted out—or on the way to being lifted out.

This clairvoyance that is a head-clairvoyance can come about in our time through spiritual science, for the result of this head-clairvoyance is of service to mankind.  Of a quite different nature is the clairvoyant result brought about by the lifting-out of the soul-spiritual from the organs of the heart, arms and hands. This lifting-out is distinct, too, in its inward significance from what comes about through—what I prefer to call—head-clairvoyance. The lifting-out from the material organ of the heart is, rather, the result of meditation which is related to the life of the will; it is brought about by human devotion to the world-process, whereas the head-clairvoyance is more the result of thought, of conceptions, but also of conceptions partaking of the nature of feeling.

Where these two kinds of clairvoyance are concerned it is generally so that the heart-clairvoyance or breast-clairvoyance to the degree to which it is destined to develop, develops simultaneously with the head-clairvoyance. This leads the breast-clairvoyance more in the direction of will-development, towards connection with the actions of the spiritual beings of lower hierarchies, like those, for instance, who are embodied in the various earthly kingdoms; whereas the head-clairvoyance leads man more to vision, cognition, perception in the more important, higher worlds: more important in the sense that knowledge of these higher powers is necessary for satisfaction of certain requirements—knowledge which must increasingly arise in present day mankind. The further we approach the future of our earthly evolution the less will men be able to live—if their soul life is not to wither away—when they are not able to absorb into their knowledge the results of this clairvoyance.

There is still a third kind of clairvoyance which arises when what may be called the soul-spiritual is freed from, lifted out of, the remaining part of man. Here I have to indicate (see Diagram II.) the lifting-out down below towards man's extremity. In spite of the inelegance of the expression let me call this the clairvoyance of the abdomen; so that we can actually differentiate the kinds of clairvoyance as those of be head, the breast and the abdomen.

Whereas in this cycle of mankind the head-clairvoyance leads pre-eminently to the acquiring of what is independent of the human being, the abdomen-clairvoyance leads chiefly to results connected with what gees on within man. What goes on within man himself must naturally be an object of investigation and, indeed, in the sphere of physical research—of anatomy and physiology—which is concerned with this matter, there are plenty of investigators. It should not be thought that this abdomen-clairvoyance is without value, in the best sense of the word. Certainly it has value. We must, however, be clear that abdomen-clairvoyance can teach man very little concerning what goes on impersonally in cosmic processes, but that it teaches him principally about what is within him, what may be said to go on within his skin.

Where the moral and ethical are concerned, comparatively the most important clairvoyance is that of the head. I shall therefore speak always of opposites. The breast-clairvoyance is in the middle—between head-clairvoyance and abdomen-clairvoyance. In respect of the ethical these two are easily distinguishable, even inwardly. Those who in an impersonal way, in the sense indicated in "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds", strive for vision into the higher worlds, those who do not let themselves be disheartened by the difficulty of this sure path, will develop something impersonal in their clairvoyance, above all an interest of a higher kind for objective knowledge of the world, for all that goes on in the world cosmically, and in the world of historical events.

Of man himself head-clairvoyance speaks pre-eminently in a ray that points to man’s place in the cosmic, in the historical course of life, drawing attention also to what man is in the whole world-process; and what arises as a result of this head-clairvoyance will always have what we might call the character of universal knowledge. It will contain information having significance—please note this well—for all human beings, not only for particular individuals.

The abdomen-clairvoyance is chiefly permeated by every possible kind of human egoism, and in general very easily leads to the clairvoyant in question being mainly concerned with himself, with the occult foundations of his own destiny, with the occult foundations of his personal worth and character. This shows itself as a self-evident tendency in what we call abdomen-clairvoyance.

Now where the nature of their perception is concerned a great difference is revealed between these two kinds of clairvoyance. Whoever, on the path given in "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds", strives to free the soul and spirit from his head, from his apparatus of perception, whoever to a certain extent loosens the soul-spiritual part of his head from the physical instrument and with this soul-spiritual part of his head is able to place himself within the spiritual world, will find it extraordinarily difficult to get away from clairvoyant experiences that are merely shadowy. This getting free from the head is connected at first with experiences, that certainly lack the colour, the fulness, of vivid memories, and therefore appear to be, in a way, inwardly colourless. Only by striving for further progress on this path does it come about that these experiences lose their shadowy character so that pale, shadowy experiences become tinged with colour and tone.

This then is the process taking place here—that we leave our head and actually enter a world very difficult for us to observe; for it is by gradually and slowly acquiring the ability to live outside our head that we strengthen the inner life-forces, with the result that the forces streaming towards us from the whole surrounding world are drawn together. Imagine, therefore, the forces out of the whole surrounding world have to be drawn together, and when we have thus gathered them together we get the tinging with what has colour and tone. Imagine we conceive it in this way (see Diagram III.) you have here (a) a surface very full of colour, a spherical surface; and now imagine this spherical surface extended over a wide surface (b, c). Here the colour becomes much paler, and if we extend it still farther the colour will become increasingly pale. Were we to withdraw it again, if here it were pale yellow, we should here have a much stronger, deeper yellow, because the colour would be more concentrated.

Now the head-clairvoyance confronts the whole cosmos; and spread out over the whole cosmos is what the human being has first with his life-forces to concentrate into what, clairvoyantly, is himself in his essential being. So that in reality it is only in the arduous course of inner evolution that he gradually tinges his shadowy experiences with colour. Then, when endless efforts have been made to gain the general experience of simply being outside the body, when this has been experienced for a long time with a growing feeling of ever more intensive experience - though not yet accompanied by colour and tone—then gradually the realms from the cosmos approach the head-clairvoyance.

This is a matter of lengthy, selfless development. It must particularly be pointed out that an indispensable factor in this development is the actual study of spiritual science. Over and over again it must be emphasised that spiritual science when given can really be understood. It cannot be emphasised too often that for the understanding of spiritual science there is no need of clairvoyance.  It goes without saying that to arrive at its results one has to be clairvoyant; but once these results are gained they can be understood without clairvoyance. What must precede actual vision is the understanding of spiritual science. Here, too, it must be said that the right way is the reverse of what is right in the physical world of the senses. In the physical world of the senses we first have the right perception, after which we pass on to observation by means of thought, thus forming for ourselves a judgment based on knowledge. This must be reversed when we rise into the spiritual world. There we have first to develop concepts, making every effort to live ourselves into spiritual science objectively; otherwise we can never be sure that we shall rightly interpret anything we observe in the spiritual world. There, knowledge must come before vision. This is what to many people is so infinitely tiresome—that they are suppressed to study spiritual science; they take it as an incomprehensible demand. For it is comparatively easy to have perceptions, but rightly to interpret them means to make one's way rightly—objectively, selflessly—into spiritual science, to go into it deeply.

Now where what may be called abdomen-clairvoyance is concerned, the reverse is the case. Here we start out from the soul-spiritual which has been working upon our bodily, physical nature. For everything in the world is founded upon the spiritual. When you have eaten a piece of kohlrabi, let us say—most of us here are vegetarians—and it is then worked upon in our organism, we have to do not merely with a process that is physical and chemical, brought about by the stomach with its forces and juices but, behind all this, etheric body, astral body and ego are active. All these processes have behind them processes which are spiritual. We should be wrong in believing that there are material processes having no spiritual processes behind them. Just imagine that after a more or less excellent midday meal you lie down and become clairvoyant, clairvoyant in such a way that what is of a soul and spirit nature in the digestive organs is lifted out from then. While your stomach and your other organ are effectively digesting you are living with your soul and spirit in the world of soul and spirit itself, and whereas the spiritual process going on in your etheric body, astral body and ego normally remains in the unconscious, when you become clairvoyant it rises into your consciousness. Then, while you are experiencing in soul and spirit, you are able to see all the working, forming and creating of the soul and spirit in the bodily members during digestion; you are able to see this because it projects itself into the world and, reflecting itself in picture-form, appears to you in the ether outside. Then, because now you have not to draw colour so much out of the cosmos but have the working of the whole process concentrated under your skin, you get the most beautiful clairvoyant images. Thus this wonderful thing taking place around you in the most sublime, radiating processes of colour and form is nothing but the process of digestion going on in man's spiritual organs—a process taking place in the body.

This clairvoyance is particularly distinguished from the other by the fact that the other proceeds from shadowy images and receives colour and tone only with effort, whereas the abdomen-clairvoyance proceeds from the most beautiful, the most sublime, sight it is possible for us to have. This may be expressed in the form of a law—when clairvoyance begins with the most sublime images—in particular colour images—then it is a clairvoyance related to processes taking place within the personality. I lay stress upon this as it can be of value for investigation into the spiritual world.  Just as anatomy and physiology investigate the process of digestion and other processes; it is also of the greatest worth to investigate in this way the spiritual processes behind those that belong to man. It would be bad, however, to give oneself up to any kind of deception or illusion and thus to give things a wrong interpretation.

Were it thought that clairvoyance arising in this way without suitable preparation could give anything more than what goes on in man and projects itself into the objective world—were it thought possible to approach more nearly to the ruling powers of the world, to the leading spiritual forces, through clairvoyance of such a kind, we should be sadly deceived.  Just as little as we can solve the riddle of the world by investigating human digestion, can we approach the riddles and mysteries of the world by developing abdomen-clairvoyance.

You see therefore how essential it is rightly to find our way about in the world we enter through liberation of the forces in our soul and spirit. What we have now been saying is not meant to make anyone feel aversion towards abdomen-clairvoyance.  But everyone should be clear about the way clairvoyance of this kind is related to what can be true spiritual clairvoyance, and how we have to rise superior to all superficial over-estimation of what can be attained on a clairvoyant path in such a way that it can have only a personal content. Only when, where these things having a personal content are concerned, we can disregard the personal and observe in the way an anatomist or physiologist observes what he experiences in course of dissection or investigation only then have these things a certain value. In any case no religious feeling of any kind ought to be attached to these things, but only to the results of head-clairvoyance. We shall have the right attitude to the other clairvoyance in proportion as we demand that it is to be treated in the same scientifically objective sense as the results of anatomy and the results of physiology.

I should like here to make a rather sweeping statement—namely, that not everything discovered on the path of clairvoyance is worthy of veneration, but it is all of value as knowledge. This is what we have to bear in mind. I have told you that for our present cycle it is particularly

Important to incorporate into the general spiritual culture of mankind the results of clairvoyance; this is really important.  Concerning this, I will just mention today one aspect of the matter. We are actually living at a time when men must prepare gradually to leave the realm of mere philosophical idealism and to enter into real consciousness of the spiritual world, the universal spiritual world, in which we live just as we live in the physical world.

Now we will start out from an experience of  the head- clairvoyance, which will be easily understood by those who have  gone at all deeply into what was said in the last Munich cycle,¹ and which is dealt with also in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World. I particularly mentioned there that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we free ourselves—especially where our thoughts are concerned—from the physical instrument of the head. I expressed myself at the time in a rather grotesque way, saying that when we are thus free our thoughts no longer have the character that they have in ordinary, everyday life. In our ordinary everyday experience we necessarily have the feeling—if we are not out of our mind—which we are in control of our thought-world, that when we have two thoughts—it is we who either combine or separate them.

When we remember we are conscious that in our inner life we pass over from our present experience to that of our past. We always have the feeling: it is we who stand behind the weaving and movement of our thoughts.  This ceases the moment we free the soul and spirit from our head and develop a thinking independent of the body. At that time I used a rather crude simile, saying it is as if we had put our head into ant-heap and then the characteristic confusion had arisen—this indeed is the way the thoughts begin to play into one another. When in ordinary life we combine two of our thoughts, as, for example, the two thoughts "rose" and "red", we know that in our thought-world we are free to combine these concepts—the rose is red. This is not so when we are outside. There we find life in the thoughts—thoughts have life of their own, every thought becomes a being. One thought runs into the other, while some other thought runs away from another.

Thus the thought-world acquires an individual life. Why is this so? Now what we experience in our ordinary, everyday thinking is merely pictures, merely shadows of thoughts. You can glean this from my book "Theosophy". As soon as we develop the thinking that is free of the body, every thought becomes like a husk, and into this husk there slips an elemental being. The thought is no longer in our control. We put it out like a feeler; it goes out into the world and into it slips an elemental being. Our thoughts are thus filled out, as it were, by elementals; and all this twirls and blusters about in us. So that it may be said: when we send out the soul- spiritual part of our head into the spiritual world (we have it outside only because we are within the physical head), when in this way we project it into the spiritual world, we no longer experience thoughts such as we do in the physical world, it is the life of being that we experience. As I said at the time, we put our head, as it were, into an ant heap, and experience the life of beings.

It is like this, in reality, right up to the highest of the hierarchies. If we wish to experience Angels, Archangels, or even Archai, this has to be in such a way that we live in our thoughts and in the beings, just as I have described. We send out our thoughts and a being slips in and moves about inside them. When on Venus or on Saturn we perceive beings, we let our thoughts slip out and then there slip into them Venus or Saturn beings. There is no need for us to be afraid of having the thoughts of hierarchies; we just have to accustom ourselves to live in the higher hierarchies with our head. We must say to ourselves: Our own thinking ceases and our head becomes the stage on which the higher hierarchies work

Now in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, thought has certainly reached its zenith in purity and clearness.  Whatever the height to which thought was able to soar at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is all implicit in this philosophy. The highest point which thought can attain has there been reached; the next step must go beyond it and lead into the actual whirling and weaving life of thought. Thus we live in an age when men are called to perceive the higher hierarchies. We are destined to be taken up into the world of the higher hierarchies and, confronted by the living and weaving of the hierarchies, we have to rid ourselves of our fear.

The nineteenth century was overflowing with this fear, with this terror, in face of the life of the higher hierarchies. Though they did not realise it, men had reached such a pitch that they were actually praying: O, dear Ahriman, protect me from having my life of thought seized upon by the weaving and living of the higher hierarchies, for otherwise some devil of a Saturn or Sun-being may enter! You will say that no one in the nineteenth century thought thus. But I can prove to you that they did.

 Ludwig Feuerbach, a philosopher of the nineteenth century, who particularly fought against the idea of immortality, who opposed all belief in a supersensible world, holding this belief to be that of fantastical, mystical dreamers and considering it harmful for the whole of mankind this Ludwig Feuerbach wrote the following. I beg you to make special note of this in your soul:

“The man who is actively occupied with the objects surrounding him in life has no time to think of death and consequently no need for immortality. If he thinks of death at all he sees in it merely a warning to lay out his share of life's capital wisely, to avoid wasting valuable time on unworthy thing but to use it to fulfil the task he sets himself in life.”

“Were man to find his fulfillment only beyond the earth, in the heavens, on Uranus, on Saturn, or wherever else he would, we should have no philosophy, no knowledge of any kind.  Instead of universal, abstract truths and beings, instead of the thoughts, knowledge, concepts of pure spiritual beings and objects that now dwell in our head, there would then dwell there our heavenly brothers—the beings of Saturn and Uranus.  In place of mathematics, logic, metaphysics, we should have the most faithful portraits of the dwellers in heaven .Those heavenly beings would indeed be encamped between us and the objects of our knowledge and thinking; they would obstruct our view of those objects and bring about a total eclipse of the sun in our spirit.”

For Feuerbach the sun is his thought.

He has, therefore, the whole picture of what would have to happen. He is so terribly afraid of it that he prays to the good Ahriman to preserve him from having the beings of Saturn and Uranus  dwelling in his head.

“They would be nearer and more akin to us than thoughts, ideas and concepts, for they are not purely spiritual abstract beings such as these, they are spiritual beings affecting the senses, beings who express only the essential nature of imaginative force. Our whole spirit would then be merely a dream, a vision of a more splendid future. Hence, whoever is prevented by the weight of his reason from swimming around on the surface of the ocean of imagination, will recognise that in the depths of our spirit, as if in an atmosphere impossible to be breathed in those depths, the life-light of the Angels, and all other similar heavenly beings, is extinguished ...."

If, therefore, these beings were to enter our thoughts our spirit would become a dream - so writes Feuerbach.  He feels secure only in the realm of thoughts; should the being of the Angels and other heavenly beings enter these thoughts he would then feel insecure. This is the prayer to Ahriman—that he should protect mankind from knowledge of the spiritual world; and in the forties of the nineteenth century this came about through Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of any spiritual world-conception. What does this mean? It means nothing or less than this—that the time is ripe for us to raise ourselves to the spiritual worlds; for we need only take in earnest what this man describes and the way will be found into the spiritual worlds. We need just to leave off struggling against it with the help of Ahriman. Thus you see that it is not the heavens that are to blame for spiritual science not making its way into the culture of our age, for it actually penetrates into the heads of its opponents. Spiritual science wills to enter the world. The heavens are not at fault; the gods are offering men wisdom—spiritual science is pressing its way in.  With the same fervour with which under Ahriman's lead men have brought resistance to bear, is it up to them now to leave off resisting and to find the courage to take spiritual science fully and genuinely in earnest.

The following must be said about the development of the nineteenth century. We must say: It is as if indicated by the spiritual world that after the materialistic age the spiritual age is to come, when it is man’s part to open his mind and heart to receive the spiritual world. What was in a supreme sense a materialistic world-outlook and found its characteristic advocate in the clever and greatly gifted philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, is like an assault, a resistance, against what is to come to mankind. From above, the spiritual forces come down; from below the forces of understanding, the forces of knowledge, must ascend. It may be said that Ludwig Feuerbach found the characteristic way to express himself when he said that an eclipse in the sun of the soul would have to begin were thoughts no longer to be thought, but that beings of Uranus, Venus, Saturn, and so on, were to play in—in other words, the higher hierarchies. Then would come an eclipse of the spirit of which these people have a dreadful fear. This Eclipse of the spirit not, however, brought about by heavenly beings—their desire is to bring their light to man. The darkness has come about through men entering into connection with Ahriman, when, surrounding themselves with a cloud, an aura of fear, they have sought to make good their attack against the oncoming of the spiritual world. We can see by this that the darkening has been the work of man; and we must say further that man has made more and more use of this darkening, of this obscuring, of a free knowledge that opens itself to the radiant light of the spirit

This is what men have prepared for themselves; and by this it can be seen how, in the course of the nineteenth century, a certain love has arisen, a certain sympathy, for all thoughts which are without sequence and quickly disposed of—for everything, indeed, which does not have to be thoroughly thought out. A preference, a sympathy, has arisen for everything for which no definite conclusion is desired. A cognition and thinking that are unprejudiced and free of hypotheses has become increasingly unpopular; hence we cannot wonder, if in public life this love of the nebulous, the vague, the thoughts that are incomplete, has taken on a morally unsound character. While this character finds favour, however, sympathy for the life of thought becomes dull, and this then has its effect on general conduct. From this, into the physical body. Thereby the activity of the etheric body is held up in the glands and rays back, making perceptible what is not perceptible to the brain. By this means thoughts can be perceived that the brain does not perceive; but all the same it remains a subordinate activity.

You see how it is possible to make a sharp distinction between what are called head-clairvoyance and the clairvoyance of the abdomen. It may be that you will ask: How can I decide which of these two I am develoiping? We can only say that head-clairvoyance will always be obtained when, in this present cycle of mankind, it is really sought on the path specified, namely, through meditation and concentration, and when everything on this path is developed. Abdominal clairvoyance is something that does not come from following this path. It rests on the glandular system being perceived, and this can happen in life through various kinds of abnormal conditions.  There is less effort in becoming an abdominal clairvoyant, because to a certain extent this comes of itself; whereas head-clairvoyance has in the strictest sense of word—to be acquired.

Therefore when clairvoyance arises of itself it is best not to say that one is divinely favoured by being given something which has not been earned; it is best to distrustful. It is possible to give examples of ways in which abdominal clairvoyance can arise. The only way in which head-clairvoyance comes about is by one’s rising to certain stages in the development of initiation through diligent and regular meditation and concentration. Where abdominal clairvoyance concerned I will—because in a rather different sense to our previous reference it is not without danger to speak of these things—mention one of the most harmless occasions for becoming clairvoyant.

Let us suppose that a man grows up in circumstances such as early develop in his soul the desire to become in ordinary physical life a very big gun indeed—Privy Councillor, shall we say, or something of the kind. Thus, let us suppose that this desire arises in life very early. When anything like this is wished for it means that one is ambitious. This ambition lives in the desire-nature, and in the desire-nature it can burn—burn terribly. The man is not aware of wanting to be a Privy Councillor, but it burns in his desire and with this burning desire he goes through the world, growing up in company with it. Hence it happens that his desires does not always enter his physical organization as it should. Something is in disorder. If anyone becomes a Privy Councillor this doesn’t make him an abdominal clairvoyant; but it is possible for him to become so if, wishing to be a Privy Councillor and not becoming one, he goes through the world full of this burning ambition which gradually devours him. This desire, however, must be very strong. I can say all this because there is no one among us pining to be a Privy Counsillor.

When this desire continues to feed in this way, it remains hidden in the organism; the glandular system becomes inured to throwing back the desire and through the reflected desire it is possible to become clairvoyant. It is also possible that, if this man lives at number 13 Schunhauserallee, Berlin, and someone else living at number 23 becomes a Privy Councillor, our man perceives the event by means of this specially developed clairvoyance. This comes from his glandular system having been made particularly receptive by his inherent desire to be a Privy Councillor. And when some other man becomes something else of approximately the same kind, he will develop for such things a delicate, intensive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance usually develops in a certain sphere.  Since you know that there are other desires in life besides my harmless example of wishing to be a Privy Councillor, you will understand by what desires the various forms and spheres of this clairvoyance can be awakened. For these desires stream into the organism because during physical life they are unsatisfied. You will therefore see by what desires abdominal clairvoyance can be promoted; it is always bred through desire though this is not in every case perceived. In the burning desire that is reflected back the events are mirrored which can then be perceived in the etheric body.

It is now possible for you to have a more real insight into the deeper connection between the clairvoyance of the head and that of the abdomen. We need all this because it is related to what I propose to deal with tomorrow.

• 1. Secrets of the Threshold

Through all that we have recently been discussing here there runs a basic theme. This basic theme is an expression of how at the present time, within the whole cultural development of mankind, the necessity may be seen for a new impulse—that is, a spiritual impulse, an impulse towards spiritual knowledge.

In these recent lectures it was intended to show from the most varied points of view that we have been passing through an age with a quite distinct character and that now a new age must begin. The age that has been running its course is the time when thinking and perceiving have reached their most pronounced form of materialism, the time when throughout the centuries materialistic thinking and perceiving have increasingly taken hold of the inner life of the human soul. But just as a pendulum that has swung to one side has then to swing in the opposite direction, we are now faced by an age when the human soul must once more come to the perception that in everything having to do with the senses, in everything material, spiritual impulses, spiritual forces, are experience of the spiritual forces behind material sense phenomena—spiritual forces to which for centuries mankind has been able to give but little attention and but little interest.

Now we all know how in our day the assertion that it is possible for the human soul to enter spiritual worlds is decried and considered heretical. We know how a multiplicity of factors in life—either conscious or unconscious—are directed against the coming of such a stream in world-conception as that of spiritual science. It is easy to see how at the present time what spiritual science must offer, for the ordering of life and the facts of life, would appear absolutely absurd, foolish, and fantastic. When, however, we enter into what is maintained even now by men of insight, out of a deeper impulse in life, all that has just been described: takes on a different aspect.

I should like first to point out to you that among men of deeper insight today there does not always exist antagonism against what spiritual science maintains—antagonism to spiritual science itself  is certainly there but not so much against what it stands for. Many, very many, examples of this might be quoted; today I will give you a characteristic one connected with a recent philosopher of repute—Otto Liebmann, who died a short while ago.

Most of you will not even know his name; that will not matter. But I should like to say that Otto Liebmann was one of the most clear-sighted of those who have recently analysed. Man’s life of thought—that he thoroughly ploughed the ground of epistemology, always putting the question: How much reality is human thought capable of grasping?

I should like to read you a short passage from Otto Liebmann’s philosophical writings because it is characteristic of a man who throughout his life made great efforts to fathom the nature of human thought and what at the present time can be said about it in the light of the results of modern science. This is what Otto Liebmann said: “Someone might hit on the idea that there is not just albumen and yolk in a hen’s egg, but besides these something of a ghostly nature - an invisible spirit. This spirit materializes itself and when it has completed this materialisation it bursts open the egg-shell with the sharp beak, darts upon the grain and pecks it up.”

It might occur to one, he says, that a spirit was in the egg and that when the egg-shell was broken this spirit came out and pecked up the grain. .. What will those people say who are building up a world-conception founded on present-day science? They will tell you:  If anyone says that a spirit is working in a hen's egg, he is a fool.—That is how the clever people of today will speak and their remark will apply to those who call themselves theosophists or anthroposophists. But what says the philosopher who has been at such infinite pains to analyse man’s present thinking? He says: The only thing to be said against this assertion is that the preposition "in" is nonsense when used in a physical sense, but in a metaphysical is quite right. It is true that we get nowhere by conceiving the spirit to be within the egg spatially; when, however, this is taken metaphysically no objection can be made; it is only that the preposition cannot be used in its ordinary sense.

We are therefore faced with the fact that a philosopher who has written an intelligent book, "The Analysis of Reality", and another on "Thoughts and Facts” (what is said about the "invisible spirit" comes in the second part of the 1899 "Naturerkenntnis")—that this philosopher owns that, in reality, it is possible to stand at the pinnacle of modern philosophy and yet be unable to do other than admit that an invisible spirit lies hidden in the egg of a hen.

It goes without saying that Otto Liebmann would have scorned to recognise the reasonable nature of spiritual science. We might ask why this is. Why would he—or anyone who thinks in the way he does—not pursue the matter further and perceive in spiritual science what would make him say: Strictly speaking, this spiritual science is merely wanting to confirm that in the hen’s egg there is actually an invisible spirit!—The name is not of importance; with us it would be called the etheric body, which for its part is permeated by the astral body. The spiritual scientist indeed says what it is that is hidden within as invisible spirit; thus spiritual scientist says nothing but what others are saying—yet there is this difficulty in turning to spiritual science. It is said to be foolish and fantastic in spite of being urgently needed for the science and the thinking of the day.

Now how far is it from the assertion that an invisible spirit is concealed in the hen’s egg to the other statement that in the human physical body too—anatomy and physiology examine only the physical—something invisible is hidden? If we could clear up the difficulty about the use of the preposition "in” (dwelt upon by the philosopher); we should come to the point of indicating what spiritual science says, namely, that what is "within" consists of etheric body, astral body and ego. Thus, spiritual science does nothing for which there is no ample proof that it is really demanded by all that has to do with present-day though and culture. Spiritual Science however, obviously has to go farther, for it cannot stop short at the vague idea that an invisible spirit is concealed in a hen's egg—especially when this same idea is applied to man. There we have to be clear that what is thus hidden in man is possessed of certain qualities, certain inner factors of reality. Whereas in the case of the hen's egg our conception can be what we might almost call of a ghostly nature—"an unknown spirit is concealed there"—if we go on to man we have to recognise that, when living in the physical body, he develops consciousness and does so for the very reason that the physical body is such a complicated apparatus. Thereby we sense that what has here been called invisible spirit must be recognised as underlying the visible. Now, if what is external has consciousness we have to take for granted that there is consciousness also in what is within, and that what is within cannot be deemed unconscious.

Science will lead to the perception of something like what spiritual science assumes, namely, that in the physical body there lives a spiritual man.  It is the nature of this spiritual man’s consciousness to which our attention is directed by spiritual science.

Today we know—have known for some -time how to give an answer about the precise qualities of the invisible spirit underlying man. If we take, to begin with, what today is offered us by philosophy, we shall admit that at the basis of man, too, there lies an invisible spirit. We now ask: Is it possible to know anything about this spirit? Most certainly it is. Just as man can acquire knowledge about the world outside through sense perception and the thoughts connected with the brain, this knowledge can go further; for in the spirit there lives Imagination—what has been described as Imaginative knowledge. We should then be able to see that it is not only in the hen’s egg that there lies an invisible spirit, but that in man is hidden an etheric body which, given the possibility (this is also mentioned in our writings), frees itself from the physical body and develops Imaginative knowledge—knowledge that works, in the world in Imaginations, standing before the soul in fluctuating Imaginations.

We must here ask: What is the reason for spiritual science meeting with so much opposition today, the fact that people who do not understand it arrived at, and give indications of, what is said by spiritual science?

My dear friends, here something must be said that it is dangerous to put into words—or in any case not without danger. Why would Otto Liebmann, had he picked up a book on spiritual science, have certainly said: I find this really foolish, ridiculous—while standing himself at the very gates of the spiritual world? Why was he living in such strange self-deception—standing before the gates but, the door being opened to him, saying: No, I am not entering—why? It is certainly not very reasonable!

Sometimes comparisons throw light, therefore it is with a comparison that I should like to answer the question: Why among the finest men today are there those who shy away from spiritual science?

I should like at the same time to draw your attention to something of which we have already spoken, namely, what I said about sleep and fatigue. There is much talk today about the reason for people having to sleep and it is said to because they are tired—so that tiredness is considered the essential cause of sleep. This is what is said today. Now from the most ordinary experience in life everyone knows that any leisured person who comes to a lecture, out of politeness shall we say, will often fall asleep when the lecture has hardly begun even if he isn’t tired—so that we may all come to the conclusion that fatigue is not entirely the cause of sleep. On the contrary, we should be nearer the truth in saying, not that we go to sleep because we are tired, but that we feel tired because we want to sleep. This would be more correct.

The essential nature of sleep consists in a man going with his ego and his astral body out of the physical and etheric bodies, thus feeding upon his physical body and etheric body from outside—we might even say feeding upon and digesting them; whereas when he is within his physical and etheric bodies he lives with his consciousness in the external world. Note well what is actually said here. If with ego and astral body we are outside our physical and etheric bodies, we apply all our will, all our desires, to these physical and etheric bodies; we feed on and digest physical body and etheric body from outside; whereas when we are within these bodes the outside world makes its impressions upon us.

Now everything in the world depends like the pendulum upon periodicity. When the pendulum has swung up to a certain point it descends again and then rises up to the same height on the opposite side through the force it acquires in its descent. In the same way that the pendulum can go not only up to here but has to return to the level it reached before it descended are  sleeping and waking opposed to one another. Roughly it may be expressed thus.

Let us suppose that from waking to falling asleep we have been interested in the outside world and what has passed there. This absorbing of the outside world can be likened to the swing of the pendulum in one direction. When we have sufficiently absorbed the world outside then by reason of the satiety this causes there develops the satisfaction formerly provided by the outside world—and we go to sleep. When we have exhausted this enjoyment of ourselves we are able to wake up again.  It is a swinging to and fro, a periodicity, which takes its regular course in the same way as in ordinary mechanics. Lucifer and Ahriman can, however, lift a man out of the whole course of nature. Thus the man who goes to a lecture or concert from sheer courtesy and not because he wants to listen, can be lifted out of himself so that he loses all interest. He withdraws from himself, feeds on himself, finding this more interesting than what is going on around him.  

Thus we can see that whoever falls asleep in an abnormal way simply has no interest in his environment and what is going on there. We find exactly the same thing among those, of whom I have spoken, who have had their attention turned to what spiritual science offers. In the sphere of spiritual science Otto Liebmann is just like a man who goes out of courtesy to a concert or lecture and at once falls asleep. He goes, yet is not actually willing to take in what he is offered there.

On a higher level we can say the same of men who are like Otto Liebmann. They come to philosophy, to the land of the spirit through conditions holding good in our world. Someone writes a thesis, a book, is then sent as teacher to a grammar school and, when proving himself to be a thinker, he is sent on to a university. Philosophising is world-courtesy, just world-courtesy—and there is no need for any call to the land of the spirit. One goes to the door, even goes inside, and then falls asleep; not immediately like the satiated concert-goer, who sleeps without even being tired, through lack of interested consciousness in the subject—but the philosopher cannot wake up to Imaginative consciousness. If it is impossible for people to awake to Imaginative consciousness then the moment anything is said about the spiritual world they fall asleep. In other words, it is too difficult for them to take in anything about spiritual science. It is therefore not without danger to make this assertion, for people will say: So you are the people who are making a study of what to other men, to men of consequence, is so difficult!—Since we are conscious of the difficulty, however, we shall not be too arrogant. For we shall know that the very points about which we ought to agree will be attacked by the world because people refuse to embark upon so difficult an affair—for the very reason that they find it too difficult.

Now let us examine these difficulties rather more closely. We will point the way by asking: What does ordinary human thinking consist in from the time of waking to that of failing asleep? In what does it consist? How whoever thinks in a grossly materialistic way holds the following opinion—that men have a brain that is of extraordinarily delicate construction, that in this brain processes go on and because they do so thinking arises. Thinking is a consequence of this brain-process; so he says.

I have already pointed out that this is just as if someone were to say: I go along a street where there are footprints and the tracks of wheels. Whence come these—tracks? It is the earth beneath which must have made them; the earth itself has made the traces of feet and wheels appear. Logically this is on a par with thinking that it is the brain that makes these impressions. When someone goes out, sees all kinds of tracks along the street and says: Aha—then it is the earth that is inwardly permeated by a variety of forces which make these tracks—the same as when the physiologist, examining the human brain, and substantiating the fact that all manner of processes are going on there, says: It is the brain that is doing all this. There is just as little reason for saying that it is the earth itself that makes the tracks which are really made by the men and vehicles moving around upon it as there is for saying that what the anatomists and physiologists discover is by the brain, when it is far rather the work of forces in movement in the etheric body.

By this you will be able to see in what the deceptive nature of materialist consists.  There is nothing in everyday life that does not make an impression on the brain. Just as every step makes an impression on the earth, and you can prove that each of your steps has made its impression, you can also prove that all that is willed and thought makes its impression, has its influence, on the brain. But that is only the trace, it is only what is left behind of the thinking. Thinking takes place indeed in the etheric body; in reality everything you perceive as thinking is nothing but the etheric body's inner activity. So long as we remain in the physical body we need this physical body for thinking. It is very easy to see why the materialist does not arrive at the true. The materialist says: For heaven sake, can’t you see that you must have a brain if you are to think?  And if you see this, you can also see that it is your brain which actually does the thinking.  And if you see this, you can also see that it is your brain which actually does the thinking.  This conclusion is about as clever as to say: I can prove that this track on the road has been made by the ground itself.  I shall remove part of the ground and you will see that without it you are unable to walk. The ground is indeed a necessity—it is also necessary to have a brain to be able, when in the physical body, to think.

It is necessary for us to be clear about these things for it is only then that that we learn under what illusion present day thinking labours, with what a host of illusions this thinking fools itself, and how the only cure for this must be effected through that knowledge so difficult to acquire which, we trust, does not fail to take the physical body into consideration. For when going about in the physical body we must have solid earth beneath our feet: When thinking in the physical world we must have support for our thinking; we must have a nervous system. When, however, we change the place of our thinking activity to our astral body, the etheric body will become for us what the physical body is when we think with the etheric body.

If we progress to Imaginative thinking we then think in the astral and the etheric body retains the traces as formerly, when thinking took place in the etheric body, the traces were retained by the physical body. When after death we are outside the physical body and have also laid aside the etheric body—in the way often described—then our support is the outer life—ether and what is developed by the astral body and later by the ego we write into the whole cosmic ether.

This, therefore, is the process we go through during what is called the first stage of initiation.  The process consists in our removing our thinking (it is no longer thinking, only the activity of thinking) from the etheric body to the astral body, getting over to the more volatile etheric body the retention of the traces which formerly the physical body held.  This is the essential feature of the first stage in initiation.  It is essential that the activity formerly carried on by the etheric body should be handed over to the astral body.

Thus we see that while living in Imaginative knowledge we, as it were, withdraw from the physical body to the etheric body, imprinting no further traces into the physical body. Through this it comes about that, for anyone who makes this first step in initiation, the physical body from which he withdraws becomes objective and is then outside his astral body and ego. Formerly it was within, now it is outside. He thinks, feels and wills in the astral body. He has an influence on the etheric body, leaves traces in it, but he no longer influences the physical body and looks upon it as something external.

This is approximately the normal course when it is a question of the first step in initiation—the normal course. It finds expression in a quite definite way in subjective experience.

By means of a diagram I will now make clear in what this first stage of initiation consists. Let us assume that this is the human physical head—and all around the human physical head we have the etheric body. When a man begins to develop what I have been speaking about, when he begins to develop Imaginative knowledge, then the etheric body grows in this way larger, and what is characteristic of this is that parallel with it goes on naturally what has been described as the cultivation of the lotus flowers. The man grows etherically out of himself and the strange thing is that, while he is doing so, something develops out of his body which I would call a kind of etheric heart.

As [a] physical human being we have our physical heart, and we all know how to appreciate the difference between a dry, abstract man who develops his thoughts in a machine-like way and a man who goes with his heart into everything that he experiences—with his physical heart, that is; we can all appreciate this distinction. From the man who slouches around without any interest in life and whose heart plays no part in the experiences of his soul, we do not expect much on the physical plane in the way of real cosmic knowledge.  A kind of spiritual heart develops outside our physical body, parallel to the phenomena I have described in “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”, just as the blood-system develops and has its center in the heart. The blood-system goes outside the body and outside the body we feel ourselves in our heart bound up with what we know in the way of spiritual science. Only we must not look to enter into the knowledge of spiritual science with the heart that is in our body but with the heart outside it, for it is with this heart that we enter into what we know of spiritual science.

On reading what is written in the sphere of spiritual science it is possible to say: But this too is scientifically dry—this is science—here we have to go back to school again! We must in any case do enough learning in life, and now we are supposed to learn what spiritual science has to say. There is no heart in that.—One will discover the heart in it when going into things deeply enough.

It is true that many people say:  Theosophy must consist above all in a man in his ego becoming one with the whole world.—This “becoming one", this “development in man of the divine man", this "discovery of the divine ego”, and so on—these are the pet phrases of those who want to be theosophists without having any knowledge of theosophy.  This all springs from lack of desire to develop warmth of heart even when no longer sustained by the living warmth of the physical heart.  Just as Lichtenberg said: “When a head and a book collide and there is a hollow sound, the book is not to be blamed”, we might say: If a man comes up against spiritual science and finds no warmth of heart in it, it is not spiritual science that is to blame. All that I have just been describing as the normal path to clairvoyance consists in man lifting out from his physical body, his etheric body and also the higher members of his organization, and providing himself with a heart outside the limits of his physical body.

What then do ordinary thoughts rest upon? A thought of this kind is actually only developed in the etheric body; it then comes up against the physical body and there makes impressions all over the brain. If we call up before our souls the essential feature of everyday thinking we can say: It rests on our thinking in the etheric body, and on what is thus thought sinking into the nervous system of the brain; there it makes impressions which do not, however, go very deep but rebound. In this way the thinking is reflected and thus enters our consciousness. A thought therefore consists above all in our having it in our soul as far as the etheric body; it then makes an impression on the physical brain, but cannot enter it and has to rebound. These reflected thoughts we perceive.  Then physiology comes along and points to the traces which have appeared in the physical brain.

Now how would it be were the thought not reflected back, were it to enter the brain and there merely to cause processes? Were the thought not reflected back we should not be able to perceive it; then it would go into the brain and be the cause simply of processes. It would be conceivable that the thought, instead of being thrown back, might enter the brain; then we should not be conscious of it, for it is only by the thought being reflected that consciousness arises.

There is, however, an activity of the soul which does enter the body and that is the will. Willing differs from thinking because thinking is thrown back from the bodily organization and perceived as a mirrored image—whereas willing is not. The willing enters into the bodily organization; thereby a physical bodily process is called into being. This brings it about that we walk, move our hands, and so on. Actual willing arises in quite a different way from thinking: which does so by being thrown back. But willing enters into the bodily organization, is not thrown back, but within the bodily organization brings about definite processes. Nevertheless in one part of our bodily organization there is the possibility for what thus sinks down being thrown back.

Follow carefully what I am about to say. The procedure in brain-thinking is this—thought-activity develops in the etheric brain, rebounds against the physical nervous system, thus bringing our thoughts into consciousness.  In the case of clairvoyance we, as it were, thrust the brain back; we think with the astral body and the thinking is thrown back to us by the etheric body.

Here (1 in diagram) is the outer world, here the physical body (when brain thinking is in question). Here (2 in diagram) for clairvoyance, is the outer world, what we work upon with our astral body; we let the etheric body throw this back and we altogether exclude the physical body.

Here (I), however, when we will, the activity of the soul goes down into the physical body. Hence when we walk, when we move our hand, this is done by the soul; but the activity of the soul has to bring about inner organic, material processes, upon which the activity of the soul expends itself. It might be put thus—that the will consists in the activity of the soul being exhausted by its material work in the body.

Let us now ask in what way we actually live when living in our thinking. My answer would be that in our thinking we are living close to the boundary of eternity. The moment we exclude the physical body and let our thoughts be rayed back from the etheric body we live in what we carry through the gate of death. As long as we let the physical body ray back the thoughts, we are living in all that is between birth and death; when we will, our will belongs entirely to our physical body. Our physical body is there to promote activity.  Whereas our thinking stands at the very gate of eternity, our willing is organized for the physical body.

Remember how I said in one of the lectures that our willing is the baby and when it is older it will become thinking. This is absolutely in accordance with what from another point of view we can develop today. Willing is under the ban of the temporal, and only because a man develops, becomes wiser and wiser and permeates his willing by thought, does he raise what is inherent in willing out of time into the sphere of eternity, and free his willing from his body.

But in a certain part of our body there is something inserted, namely, the secondary nervous system, the glandular system, the nervous system of the abdomen—part of which is often called the solar plexus. As developed in a man at present this nervous system is an unfinished organ; it exists only in an embryonic state. It will develop itself later. But just as of a child we know that he has qualities which can still go on developing as he grows up, we can know that this nervous system, today in the service of organic activity, will also develop further. This nervous system which works side-by-side with the systems of brain and spine and with the nerves that branch-out into the limbs, this abdominal nervous system is not so far developed today that it would be able to do what it will do when man has once reached Jupiter. By that time brain and spine will have lost ground and the abdominal nervous system will have progressed to something quite different from what it is today. It will then be placed on the surface of a man; for all that to begin with was within a man will later have its place on his surface.

For this reason for ordinary life between birth and death we make no direct use of this nervous system, letting it remain in the subconscious. Through abnormal conditions, however, it may happen that what a man has in his will and his capacity for desire enters his organism, and through these abnormal conditions—about which we shall speak presently—is thrown back by the abdominal nervous system in the same way as the thought is thrown back by the brain. The will goes into the glandular system but instead of becoming active it is thrown back by the glandular system and something arises in man that usually takes place in his brain—a process which may be characterized as follows.

When we bear in mind the transition from the ordinary waking state to clairvoyance, you can see how within us thinking, feeling and willing reflect themselves in the ordinary nervous system—feeling and willing, that is, to the extent that they are thoughts—and we let what is our willing sink down into our organization. In clairvoyance we form by these means—outside the space occupied by the body—a higher organ over against the brain. As the ordinary brain is connected with our physical heart, what develops as thought outside (in the astral body) is connected with the etheric heart. This is the higher clairvoyance—clairvoyance of the head.

A man can, however, take the reverse path. He can go into the organization with the baby-willing in such a way that willing becomes thinking, whereas otherwise he made thinking into will. This is the deeper distinction between what a little time ago I described here as head-clairvoyance and abdominal clairvoyance {See lecture 1}. In the case of head-clairvoyance we form a new etheric organ in which we are independent of the bodily organization we have in ordinary life. Where abdominal clairvoyance is concerned appeal is made to the glandular system, to what otherwise remains unnoticed. Hence the results of abdominal clairvoyance are more fleeting than ordinary waking experience; they have no significance for the soul when passing through the gate of death; whereas even for those souls who have gone through the gate of death, everything gained by head-clairvoyance has spiritual, lasting significance—greater significance than waking day-experience. What is acquired through abdominal clairvoyance has even less significance for life after death than ordinary waking day-knowledge.  All somnambulistic clairvoyance is below waking day-consciousness—not above.

This is certainly not to say that all manner of positional and other qualities cannot be developed through abdominal clairvoyance; because the moment abdominal clairvoyance arises it is really the glands which always send the willing particularly, there arises one of the main forces of opposition against spiritual science which strives in all directions after clearness.

Spiritual science must everywhere have real sympathy and love for consistent, complete thoughts, not for those that are incomplete. It must not be content with the vague and obscure, but on all sides press on towards what does not narrowly shed the mere semblance of light but spreads true light throughout the wide spaces of the world. In this connection, we still have much, very much, to overcome.

These are the things I wanted to make objects of our study, in order to show how through Ahriman, in the course of the centuries, thoughts have given rise to the denial of the spiritual world, but how the spiritual world itself has worked in the thoughts of those who deny it because—the time has come.

“The time has come.”  Appropriate here are these words from Goethe’s “Fairy Tale”.

This must very soon receive confirmation.

Yesterday I drew attention to the way in which a man is able with the higher members of his being - his etheric body, astral body and ego—to leave his physical body; and I pointed out how, having left his physical body, he then makes his first steps in initiation, and learns that what we call man's spiritual activity does not come only with initiation but, in reality, is there all the time in everyday life.

We had particularly to emphasize that the activity which enters our consciousness through our thoughts actually takes its course in man's etheric body, and that this activity taking its course in man's etheric body, this activity underlying the thought-pictures, enters our consciousness by reflecting itself in the physical body. As activity it is carried on in soul and spirit, so that a man when he is in the physical world and just thinks—but really thinks, is carrying out a spiritual activity. It may be said, however, that it does not enter consciousness as a spiritual activity. Just as when we stand in front of a mirror it is not our face that enters our consciousness out of the mirror but the image of our face, so in everyday life it is not the thinking but its reflection that as thought-content is rayed back into consciousness from the mirror of the physical body. In the case of the will it is different.

Let us keep this well in mind—that what finds expression in thinking is an activity which actually does not enter our physical organism at all, but runs its course entirely outside it, being reflected back by the physical organism. Let us remember that as men we are actually in our soul-spiritual being all the time.

Now this is how it might be represented diagrammatically. If this (a) represents man's bodily being, in actual fact his thinking goes on outside it, and what we perceive as thoughts is thrown back. Thus, with our thinking we are always outside our physical body; in reality spiritual  knowledge consists in our recognizing that we are outside the physical body with our thinking.

It is different with what we call will-activity.  This goes right into the physical body. What we call will-activity enters into the physical body everywhere and there brings about processes; and the effect of these processes in man is what is brought about by the will as movement.

We can thus say: While living as man in the physical world there rays out of the spiritual into our organism the essential force of the will and carries out certain activities in the organism enclosed within the skin. Between birth and death we are therefore permeated by will-forces; whereas the thoughts do not go on within our organism but outside it. From this you may conclude that everything to do with the will is intimately connected with what a man is between birth and death by reason of his bodily organization. The will is really closely bound up with us and all expressions of the will are in close connection with our organization, with our physical being as man between birth and death. This is why thinking really has a certain character of detachment from the human being, a certain independent character, never attainable by the will.

Now for a moment try to concentrate on the great difference existing in human life between thinking and what belongs to the will. It is just spiritual science that is capable from this point of view of throwing the most penetrating side-lights on certain problems in life. Do we not all find that what can be known through spiritual science really confronts us in life in the form of questions which somehow have to be answered? Now think what happens when anyone goes to a solicitor about some matter. The solicitor hears all about the case and institutes proceedings for the client in question. He will look into all possible ingenious grounds—puts into this all the ingenuity of which he is capable—to win the case for his client. To win the case he will summon up all his powers of intelligence and reasoning.

What do you think would have happened (life will certainly give you the answer) had his opponent outrun the client mentioned and come a few hours before to the same solicitor? What I am assuming hypothetically often happens in reality. The solicitor would have listened to the opponent's case and put all his ingenuity into the grounds for the defense of this client—grounds for getting the better of the other man. I don't think anyone will feel inclined to deny the possibility of my hypothesis being realized.  What does it show however?

It shows how little connection a man has in reality with his intelligence and his reason with all that is his force of thought, that in a certain case he can put them at the service of one side just as well as of the other. Think how different this is when man's will-nature is in question, in a matter where man’s feelings and desires are engaged. Try to get a clear idea of whether it would be possible for a man whose will-nature was implicated to act in the same way. On the contrary, if he did so we should consider him mentally unsound. A man is intimately bound up with his will—most intimately; for the will streams into his physical organism and in this human physical organism, induces processes directly related to the personality.

We can therefore say: It is just into these facts of life which, when we think about life at all, confront us so enigmatically, that light is thrown by all we gain through spiritual science.  Ever more fully can spiritual science enlighten men about what happens in everyday life, because everything that happens has supersensible causes. The most mundane events are dependent on the supersensible, and are comprehensible only when these supersensible causes are open to our view.

But now let us take the case of a man going with his soul through the gate of death. We must here ask: What happens to his force of thinking and to his will-force? After death the thinking force can no longer be reflected by an organism such as we bear with us between birth and death. For the significant fact here is that after death this organism, everything present in us lying beneath the surface of our skin, is cast off. Therefore, when we have gone through the gate of death, the thinking cannot be reflected by an organism no longer there, neither can an organism no longer there induce inner processes. What the thinking force is continues to exist—just as a man is still there when after passing a mirror he is no longer able to see his reflection. During the time he is passing it his face will be reflected to him; had he passed by earlier the reflection would have appeared to him earlier. The thinking force is reflected in the life of the organism as long as we are on earth, but it is still there even though we have left our physical organism behind.

What happens then? What constitutes the thinking force cannot, in itself be perceived; just as the eye is incapable of seeing itself so also is the thinking, for it has to be reflected-back by something—and the bodily organism is no longer there. When a man has discarded his physical organism what will then throw back the thinking force for whatever the thinking force develops in itself as process? Here something occurs that is not obvious to human physical intelligence; but it must, be considered if we really want to understand the life between death and rebirth. This can be under stood through initiates' teachings. An initiate knows that even during life in the body knowledge does not come to him through the mirror of his body but outside it, that he goes out of his body and receives knowledge without it, that therefore he dispenses with his bodily mirrors. Whoever cultivates in himself this kind of knowledge sees that what constitutes the thinking force henceforward enters his consciousness outside the body; it enters consciousness by the later thoughts being reflected by those that have gone before.

Thus, bear this well in mind—when an initiate leaves his body, and is outside it, he does not perceive by something being reflected by his body, he perceives by the thinking force he now sends out being reflected by what he has previously thought. You must therefore imagine that what has been thought previously—not only because it was thought previously—mirrors back the forces developed by the thinking, when this development takes place outside the body.

I can perhaps put it still more clearly. Let us suppose that someone today becomes an initiate. In this state of initiation how can he perceive anything through the force of his thinking? He does this by encountering, with the thinking forces he sends out, what, for instance, he thought the day before. What he thought the day before remains inscribed in the universal cosmic chronicle—which you know as the Akashic record—and what his thinking force develops today is reflected by what he thought yesterday.

From this you may see that the thinking must be qualified to make the thought of yesterday as strong as possible, so that it can reflect effectively. This is done by the rigorous concentration of one's thought and by various kinds of meditation, in the way described from time to time in lectures about knowledge of the higher worlds. Then the thought that otherwise is of a fleeting nature is so densified in a man, so strengthened, that he is able to bring about the reflection of his thinking force in these previously strengthened and densified thoughts.

This is how it is also with the consciousness men develop after death. What a man has lived through between birth and death is indeed inscribed spiritually into the great chronicle of time. Just as in this physical world we are unable to hear without ears, after death we are unable to perceive unless there is inscribed into the world our life, with all that we have lived through between birth and death.  This is the reflecting apparatus.

I drew attention to these facts in my last Vienna cycle.¹ Our life itself, in the way we go through it between birth and death, becomes our sense-organ for the higher worlds. You do not see your eye nor do you hear your ear, but you see with your eye, you hear with your ear. When you want to perceive anything to do with your eye you must do so in the way of ordinary science. It is the same in the case of your ear. The forces a man develops between death and rebirth have the quality of always raying back to the past earth-life, so as to be reflected by it; then they spread themselves out and are perceived by a man in the life between death and rebirth.

From this it can be seen what nonsense it is to speak of life on earth as if it were a punishment, or some other superfluous factor in man’s life as a whole. A man has to make himself part of this earthly life, for in the spiritual world in life after death it becomes his sense-organ.

The difficulty of this conception consists in this that when you imagine a sense-organ you conceive it as something in space. Space, however, ceases as soon as we go either through the gate of death or through initiation; space has significance only for the world of the senses. What we afterwards meet with is time, and, just as here we make use of ears and eyes that are spatial, there we need temporal processes. These processes are those carried out between birth and death, by which the ones developed after death are reflected back. In life between birth and death everything is perceptible to us in space; after death everything takes its course in time, whereas formerly it was in space that we perceived it.

The particular difficulty in speaking about the facts of spiritual science is that, as soon as we turn our gaze to the spiritual worlds, we have really to renounce the whole outlook we have developed for existence in space; we must entirely give up this spatial conception and realize that there space no longer exists, everything running its course in time—that there even the organs are temporal processes. If we would find our way about among the events in spiritual life, we have not only to transform our way of learning; we must entirely transform ourselves, re-model ourselves, acquire fresh life, in such a way that we adopt quite a different method of conception. Here lies the difficulty referred to yesterday, which so many people shun, however ingenious for the physical plane their philosophy may be. People indeed are wedded to their spatial conceptions and cannot find their bearings in a life that runs its course entirely in time.

I know quite well that there may be many souls who say: But I just cannot conceive that when I enter the spiritual world this spiritual world is not to be there in a spatial sense.—That may be, but if we wish to enter the spiritual world the most necessary thing of all is for us to make every effort to grow beyond forming our conceptions as we do on the physical plane. If in forming our conceptions of the higher worlds we never take for our standards and models any but those of the physical world, we shall never attain to real thoughts about the higher worlds—at best picture thoughts.

It is thus where thinking is concerned. After death thinking takes its course in such a way that it reflects itself in what we have lived through, what we were, in physical earthly life between birth and death. All the occurrences we have experienced constitute after death our eyes and our ears. Try by meditating to make real to yourselves all that is contained in the significant sentence: Your life between birth and death will become eye and ear for you, it will constitute your organs between death and rebirth.

Now how do matters stand with the will forces? The will-forces bring about in us the life-processes within the limits of our body—it is our life-processes which they bring about. The body is no longer there when a man has gone through the gate of death, but the whole spiritual environment is there. True as it is that the will with its forces works into the physical organism, it is just as true that after death the will has the desire to go out from the man in all directions; it pours itself into the whole environment, in the opposite way to physical life when the will works into man. You gain some conception of this out—pouring of the will into the surrounding world, if you consider what you have to acquire in the way of inner cultivation of the will in meditation, when you are really anxious to make progress in the sphere of spiritual knowledge.

The man who is willing to be satisfied with recognizing the world as a merely physical one sees, for example, the color blue, sees somewhere a blue surface, or perhaps a yellow surface; and this satisfies the man who is content to stop short at the physical world. We have already discussed how, even through a true conception of art, we must get beyond this mere grasping of the matter in accordance with the senses; how when we must experience blue as if we let our will, our force of heart, stream out into space, and as if from us out into space there could shine forth towards what shines forth to us as blue something we feel like a complete surrender—as if we could pour ourselves out into space. Our own being streams into the blue, flows away into it. Where there is yellow, however, the being, the being of the will, has no wish to enter—here it is repulsed; it feels that the will cannot get through, and that it is thrown back on itself.

Whoever wishes to prepare himself to develop in his soul those forces which lead him into the spiritual world, must be able in his life of soul to connect something real with what I have just been saying. For instance, he must in all reality connect the fact that he is looking at a blue surface with saying: This blue surface takes me to itself in a kindly way; it lets my soul with its forces flow out into the illimitable. But the surface here, this yellow surface, repels me, and my soul-forces return upon my soul like the pricks of a needle. It is the same with everything perceived by the senses; it all has these differences of color. Our will, in its soul-nature, pours itself out into the world and can either thus pour itself out or be thrust back. This can be cultivated by giving the forces of our soul a training in color or in some other impression of the physical world. You will discover in my book "Knowledge of the Higher Worlds" how this may be done.

When, however, this has been developed, when we know that if the forces of the soul float away, become blue (becoming blue and floating away are one and the same thing), this means to be taken up with sympathy whereas becoming yellow is to be repelled and is identical with antipathy—well, then we have forces such as these within us. Let us say that we have experienced this coloring of the soul when we are taken up sympathetically and that we do not, in this case, confront a physical being at all, but that it is possible through our developed soul-forces for a spiritual being with whom we are in sympathy to flow into us. This is the way in which we can perceive the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies and the beings of the elemental world.

I will give you an example, one that is not meant to be personal but should be taken quite objectively. We need not develop merely through the forces in our color-sense, it is possible to do so through any forces of the soul. Imagine that we arouse in our self-knowledge a feeling of how it appears to our soul when we are really stupid or foolish. In everyday life we take no notice of such things, we do not bring them into consciousness; but if we wish to develop the soul we must learn to feel within us what is experienced when something foolish is done. Then we notice that when this foolish action occurs will-forces of the soul stream forth which can be thrown back from outside. They are, however, thrown back in such a way that on noticing the repulsion we feel we are being mocked at and scorned. This is a very special experience. When we are really stupid and are alive to what is happening spiritually we feel looked down upon, provoked.  A feeling can then follow of being provoked from out of the spiritual world. If we then go to someplace where there are the nature-spirits we call gnomes, we then have the power to perceive them. This power is acquired only when we perceive in ourselves the feeling I have just described. The gnomes carry-on in a way that is provoking, making all manner of gestures and grimaces, laughing, and so on. This is perceptible to us only if when we are stupid we observe ourselves. It is important that we should acquire inward forces through these exercises, that with our will forces we should delve deeply into the world surrounding us; then this surrounding world will come alive, really and truly alive.

Thus we see while our life between birth and death becomes an organ, an organ of perception, within the spiritual organism that we bear between death and rebirth, our will becomes a participator in our whole spiritual environment. We see how the will rays back in initiates (in the seeing of gnomes, for example) and in those who are dead. When gnomes are seen it is an example of this, out of the elemental world.

Now consider how there once lived a philosopher who in the second half of the nineteenth century had a great influence on many people, namely, Schopenhauer. As you know, he exercised a great influence both on Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. Schopenhauer derived the world—as others have derived it from other causes—from what he called conception, or representation, and will. He said: Representation and will are what constitutes the foundation of the world.

But—obsessed by Kant’s method of thinking—he goes on to say that representation are never more than dream-pictures and that it is impossible ever to come to reality through them. It is only through the will that we can penetrate into the reality of things—this is done by the will. Now Schopenhauer philosophises in an impressive manner about representation and will; and, if one may say so—he does this indeed rather well.  He is, however, one of those who I have likened to a man standing in front of a door and refusing to go through it. When we take his words literally—the world is representation, the world is a mere dream-picture—we have to forgo all knowledge of the world through representation and can then pass on to knowledge of the representations themselves, pass on to doing something in one's own soul with the representations—in other words to meditate, to concentrate. Had Schopenhauer gone a step further he would have reached the point of saying: "I must renounce representations! If a representation is something produced within me, I must put it to an inward use.’ Had he made this step he would have been driven to cultivate his representations, to work upon them in meditation and concentration.

When he says: The world is will—when, as in his clever treatise on the "Will in Nature", he goes on to describe this will in nature, he does not take his own proposition in earnest. In describing the will we seek the help of representations and he denies those all possibility of knowledge. This reminds us of Munchausen who to pull himself out of a bog catches hold of his own pigtail. What would Schopenhauer have been obliged to be if had taken in earnest his own words—the world is will? He would have had to say: Then we ought to pour out our will into the world; we must use our will to creep inside things. We must delve right into the world, send into it cur will, no longer taking the color blue as mere representation, but trying to perceive how the will sinks down into it; no longer thinking of our stupidity as a representation, but realizing what can be experienced through that stupidity.

You can see that here too it is possible to arrive at a description which needs only to be taken in earnest. Had Schopenhauer gone further he would have had to say: If the representation is really only a picture we represent to ourselves, then we must work upon it; if the will is really in the things, then we must go with it right into the things, not just describe how things have the will within them.

 You see here another example of how a renowned Philosopher of the nineteenth century takes men to the very gates of initiation, right up to spiritual science; and how this philosopher then does everything he can to close these gates to men. Where people really take hold of life they are shown on all sides that the time is ripe for picking the fruits of spiritual science—only things must be taken in earnest, deeply in earnest. Above all we must understand how to take people at their word. For it is not required of spiritual science to stand on its own defense. For the most part this is actually done by others, by its opponents, though they do not know this, have no notion of it.

Now consider a certain class of human beings to which very many in the nineteenth century belonged—the atomistic philosophers, those who conceived the idea that atoms in movement were at the basis of all the phenomena of life. They had the idea that behind this entire visible and audible world there was a world of atoms in movement, and through this movement arose processes perceived by us as what appears in our surroundings. Nothing spiritual is there, the spiritual is merely a product of atomic movement, and all—prevailing atomic activity.

Now how has the thought of these whirling atoms arisen? Has anyone seen them? Has anyone discovered them through what they have experienced or come to know empirically?  Were this the case they would not be what they are supposed to be, for they are supposed to be concealed behind empirical knowledge.  Had they any reality, by what means would they have to be discovered? Suppose the movement of atoms were there—the understanding cannot discover them in what is sense-perceptible. What would a man have to be in order to possess the right to speak of this world of atoms?  He would have to be clairvoyant; the whole of this atom-world would have to be a product of inner vision, of clairvoyance. The only thing we can say to the people who have appeared as the materialists of the nineteenth century is: There is no need for us to prove that there are clairvoyants for either you must be silent about all your theories, or you must admit that to perceive these things you are possessed of clairvoyant vision—at least to the point of being able to perceive atoms behind the world of the senses.  For if there is no such things as clairvoyance it is senseless to speak of this material world of atoms. If you find it a necessity to have moving atoms you prove to us that there are clairvoyant human beings. 

Thus we take these people seriously, although they do not take themselves seriously when they say things of this kind.  If Schopenhauer is taken in earnest we must come to this conclusion—“If you say the world is will and what we have in the way of representation is only pictures, you ought to penetrate into the world with your will, and penetrate into your thinking through meditation and concentration.  We take you seriously but you do not take yourselves so.” Strictly speaking, it is the same with everything that comes into question.

This is what is so profoundly significant in the world—conception of spiritual science, that it takes in all earnest what is not so taken by the others—what they skim over in a superficial way. Proofs are always to be found among the opponents of spiritual science. But people never notice that in their assertions, in what they think, at bottom they are at the same time setting at naught what they think. For the materialistic atomist, and Schopenhauer too, set a naught what they themselves maintain.

Schopenhauer nullifies his own system when he asserts: Everything is will and representation. The moment he is not willing to stop there, however, he is obliged to lead men onto the development of spiritual science. It is not we who form the world-conception of spiritual science; how then does this world-conception come into being? It enters the world of itself—is there, everywhere, in the world. It enters life through unfamiliar doors and windows; and even when others do not take it in earnest, it finds its way into men’s cultural life.

But there is still something else we can recognize if, through considerations of this kind we really have our attention drawn to how superficially men approach their own spiritual processes, and how little in a deeper sense they take themselves seriously—even when they are clever and profound philosophers. They weave as it were a conceptual web, but with it they shy away from really fulfilling the inner life’s work that would lead them to experience the forces upon which the world is founded. Hence we see that the centuries referred to yesterday, during which ordinary natural science has seen its great triumphs, have also been the centuries to develop in human beings the superficial thinking. The more glorious the development of science, the more superficial has become investigation into the sources of existence.

We can point to really shining examples of what has just been touched upon here. Suppose we have the following experience—a man, who has never shown any interest in the spiritual world undergoes a sudden change, begins to concern himself about the spiritual world and longs to know something about it. Let us suppose we have this experience after having found our way into spiritual science. What will become a necessity for us when we experience how a man, who has never worried about the spiritual world, having been immersed in everyday affairs, now finds himself at one of the crossroads of life and turns to the spiritual world? As spiritual scientists we shall interest ourselves about what has been going on in this man’s soul.  We shall try as often as possible to enter into the soul of such a man, and it will then be useful for us to know what has often been stressed here, namely, that the saying in constant use about nature making no sudden jumps is absolutely untrue. Nature does make sudden jumps.  She makes a jump when the green leaf becomes the colourful petal, and when she so changes a man who has never troubled himself about the spiritual world that he begins to interest himself in it, this too is like a sudden jump; and for this we shall seek the cause.  We shall make certain discoveries about the various spiritual sources of which we have spoken here, and see how anything of this kind takes place. 

When doing this we shall ask: How old was the man? We know that every seven years something new is born in the human being: From the seventh year on, the etheric body; from the fourteenth year on, the astral body, and so on.  We shall gather up all that we know about the etheric and astral bodies, taking this particularly from an inner, not an outer, point of view.  Then we shall be able to gain a good deal of information about what is going on in a human soul such as this.

It is also possible to proceed in another way.  We can become interested in the fact that men in ordinary life suddenly go over to a life concerned with spiritual truths, and the profundities of religion. Some men may look upon spiritual science as a foolish phantasy, and when we examine into what is going on in the depths of his soul it is possible for us to discover what makes him find it foolish. But we can then do the following. We write, let us say 192, or even more, letters to people whom we have heard about as having gone through a change of this kind. We send these letters to a whole continent, in order to learn in reply what it was that brought about this change in their life.—We then receive answers of the most diverse kind….someone writes: When I was fourteen my life led me into all manner of bad habits. That made my father very angry and he gave me a good thrashing; this it was which induced in me a feeling for the spiritual world.—Others assert that they have seen a man die, and so on. Suppose then that we get 192 answers and proceed to arrange them in piles—one pile for the letters in which the writers say that they have been changed by their fear of death or of hell; a second pile in which it is stated that the writers come across good men, or imitated them; a third pile—and so on. In piles such as these matters easily become involved and then we make an extra pile for other, egocentric motives.  Then we arrive at the following.  We have sorted the 192 letters into piles and have counted how many letters go into each one; then we are able to make a simple calculation of the percentage of letters in each pile. We can discover, for example, that 14 per cent of the changes come about through fear, either of death or of hell; 6 per cent come from egocentric motives; 5 per cent because altruistic feelings have arisen in the writers; 17 per cent of them are striving after some moral ideal—supposedly those belonging to an ethical society; 16 percent through pangs of conscience, 10 per cent by following teachings concerning what is good, 13 per cent through imitating other men considered to be religious, 19 per cent by reason of social pressure, the pressure of necessity and so forth.

Thus, we can proceed by trying with love to delve into the soul who confesses to a change of this kind; we can try to discover what is within the soul; and for this we have need of spiritual science.  Or we can do what I have just been describing. One who has done this is a certain Starbuck who has written about these matters a book which has aroused a good deal of attention. This is the most superficial exposition and the very opposite of all we must perceive in spiritual science.  Spiritual science seeks everywhere to go to the very root of things.  A tendency that has arisen to the materialistic character of the times is to apply even to the religious life this famous popular science of statistics.  For, as it has clearly pointed out, this means of research is incontrovertible. It has one quality particularly beloved by those people who are unwilling to enter the doors of spiritual science—it can truly be called easy, very easy.

Yesterday we dwelt on the reason for so many people being unwilling to accept spiritual science, mainly, its difficulty.  But we can say of statistics that it is easy, in truth very easy. Now today people go in for an experimental science of the soul; I should have to talk about this science at great length to give you a concept of it.  It is called experimental psychology; outwardly a great deal is expected from it.  I am going just to describe the beginning that has been made with these experiments. We take, let us say, ten children and give these ten children a written sentence—perhaps like this: M… is  g… by st… We then look at our watch and say to one of the children: “Tell me what you make of that sentence.” The child doesn’t know; it thinks hard and finally comes out with “Much is gained by striving.” Then it is at once noted down how much time it took the child to complete the sentence. Obviously there must be several sentences for effort has to be made to read them; gradually this will be done in a shorter space of time. Note is then made of the number of seconds taken by the various children to complete one of these sentences, and the percentages among the children are calculated and treated further statistically. In this way the faculty of adaption to outer circumstance and other matters, are tested.  This method of experimental psychology has a grand-sounding name, it is called “intelligence tests”; whereas the other method is said to be the testing by experiment of man’s religious nature.

My dear friends, what I have given you here in a few words is no laughing matter.  For where philosophy is propounded today these experimental tests are looked upon as the future science of the soul to a far greater extent than any serious feeling is shown, not for what we subscribe to here, but for what was formerly discovered by inner observation of the soul.  Today people are all for experiment.

These are examples of people’s experiments today and these methods have many supporters in the world.  Physical and chemical laboratories are set up for the purpose of these experiments and there is a vast literature on the subject.  We can even experience what I will just touch upon in passing.  A friend of ours, chairman of one of our groups, a group in the North, had been preparing his doctorate thesis.  It goes without saying that he went to a great deal of trouble (when talking to children one goes to a great deal of trouble to speak on a level with their understanding) to leave out of his thesis anything learnt from spiritual science. All that was left out.  Now among the examiners of the thesis there was one who was an expert in these matters, who therefore was thoroughly briefed in these methods; this man absolutely refused to accept the thesis. (The case was even discussed in the Norwegian Parliament.) Anyone who is an experimental psychologist is firmly convinced that his science of the soul is founded on modern science and will continue to hold good for the future.

There is no intention here of saying anything particular against experimental psychology. For why should it not be interesting once in a way to learn about it? Certainly one can do so and it is all very interesting. But the important thing is the place such things are given in life, and whether they are made use of to injure what is true spiritual science, what is genuine knowledge of the soul. It must repeatedly be emphasized that it is not we who wish to turn our back on what is done by people who in accordance with their capacities investigate the soul—the people who investigate what has to do with the senses, and like to make records after the fashion of those 192 replies. This indeed is in keeping, with men's capacities; but we must take into consideration what kind of world it is today in which spiritual science takes its place. We must be very clear about that.

I know very well that there are those who may say: Here is this man, now, abusing experimental psychology—absolutely tearing it to shreds! People may seek thus just as they said: At Easter you ran down Goethe's "Faust" here and roundly criticized Goethe. These people cannot understand the difference between a description of something and a criticism in the superficial sense; they always misunderstand such things. By characterizing them I am wanting to give them their place in the whole sphere of human life. Spiritual Science is not called upon to play the critic, neither can what has been said be criticism.

Men who are not scientists should behave in a Christian way towards true spiritual science.

Another thing is to have clear vision. Thus when we look at science we see how superficially it takes all human striving, how even in the case of religious conversion it does not turn to the inner aspect but looks upon human beings from the outside.

In practical life men are not particularly credulous. The statisticians of the insurance companies—I have referred to this before—calculate about when a man will die. It can be calculated, for instance, about when an 18-year-old will die, because he belongs to a group of people a certain number of whom will die at a certain age. According to this the insurance quota is reckoned and correctly assigned. This all works quite well. If people in ordinary life, however, wanted to prepare for death in the year reckoned as that of their probable death by the insurance company, they would be taken for lunatics. The system does not determine a man’s the length of life. Statistics have just as little to do with his conversion.

We must look deeply into all these things. Through them we strive for a feeling which has within it intuitive knowledge. It will be particularly difficult to bring to the world-culture of today what I would call the crown of spiritual science—knowledge of the Christ. Christ-knowledge is that to which—as the purest, highest and most holy—we are led by all that we receive through spiritual science. In many lectures I have tried to make it clear how it is just at this point of time that the Christ-impulse, which has come into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, has to be made accessible to the souls of men through the instrument of spiritual science. In diverse ways I tried to point out clearly the way in which the Christ-impulse has worked. Remember the lectures about Joan of Arc, about Constantine, and so on. In many different ways I tried to make clear how in these past centuries the Christ-impulse has been drawn more into the unconscious, but how we are now living at a time when the Christ-impulse must enter more consciously into the life of man, and when there must come a real knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. We shall never learn to know about this Mystery of Golgotha if we are not ready to accept conceptions of the kind touched upon at Eastertide²—about Christ in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman—and if we do not permeate these conceptions with spiritual science.

We are living in a terribly hard time, a time of suffering and sorrow. You know that for reasons previously mentioned I am not able to characterize this time; neither do I want to do so but from a quite different angle I will just touch upon something connected with our present studies.

This time of suffering and sorrow has wakened many things in human souls, and anyone living through this time, anyone who concerns himself about what is going on, will notice that today, in a certain direction, a great deepening is taking place in the souls of men. These human souls involved in present events were formerly very far from anything to do with religion, their perceptions and feelings were thoroughly materialistic. Today we can repeatedly find in their letters, for one thing, how because of having been involved in all the sorrowful events of the present time they have recovered their feeling for religion. The remarkable thing is that they begin to speak of God and of a divine ordering when formerly such words never passed their lips. On this point today among those people who are in the thick of events we really experience a very great religious deepening.

But one fact has justly been brought before us which is quite as evident as what I have now been saying. Take the most characteristic thing, in the letters written from the front, in which can be seen this religious deepening. Much is said of how God has been found again but almost nothing, almost nothing at all—this has been little noticed—of Christ. We hear of God but nothing of Christ.

This is a very significant fact—that in this present time of heavy trial and great suffering many people have their religious feeling aroused in the abstract form of the idea of God. Of a similar deepening of men's perception of the Christ we can hardly speak at all. I say “hardly", for naturally it is to be met with here and there, but generally speaking things are as I have described.  You can see from this, however, that today, when it behooves the souls of men  to look for renewed connection with the spiritual world, it is difficult to find the way to what we call the Christ-impulse, the Mystery of Golgotha.

For this, it is necessary for the human soul to rise to a conception of mankind as one great whole. It is necessary for us not merely to foster mutual interest with those amongst whom we are living just for a time; We should extend our spiritual gaze to all times and beings, to how as souls we have gone through various lives on earth and thorough various ages. Then there gradually arises in the soul an urgent need to learn how there exists in man a deepening and then an ascending evolution. In the evolution of Time we must feel one with all mankind; we must look back to how the earth came originally into being, focus our gaze on this ascending and descending evolution, in the centre point of which the Mystery of Golgotha stands; we must feel ourselves bound up with the whole of humanity, feel ourselves bound up with the Mystery of Golgotha. Today the souls of men are nearer the cosmos spatially than they are temporally, that is, to what has been unfolded in the successive evolutionary stages. We shall be led to this, however, when with the aid of spiritual science we feel ourselves part of man's whole course of evolution. For then we cannot do other than recognize that there was a point of time when something entered the evolution of mankind which had nothing to do with human force. It entered man's evolution because into it an impulse made its way from the spiritual world through a human body—an impulse present in the beginning of the Christian era. It was a meeting of heaven with the earth.

Here we touch upon something which must be embodied into the religious life through spiritual-science. We shall touch upon how spiritual science has to sink down into human feeling so that men come into a real connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and find the Christ-impulse in such a way that it can always be present in them not only as a vague feeling but also in clear consciousness. Spiritual science will work. We have recognized and repeatedly stressed the necessity for this work. In reality, the fact of your sitting there is proof that all of you in this Movement for spiritual science are willing to put your whole heart into working together. When in the future hard times fall again upon mankind, may spiritual science have already found the opportunity to unite the deepening of men's souls not only with an abstract consciousness of God but with the concrete, historical consciousness of Christ.

This is the time, my dear friends, when perceptions, feelings, of a serious nature can be aroused in us and they should not avoid arousing in ourselves these serious, one might say solemn, feelings. This is how those within our movement for spiritual science should be distinguished from the people who, by reason of their karma, have not yet found their way into this Movement—that the adherents of spiritual science take everything that goes on in the world—the most superficial as also the profoundest—in thorough earnest.    

Just consider how important it is in everyday life to see that with our ordinary understanding bound up with our brain and with our reason we are outside what mostly interests us in ordinary physical experience, and that hence—as is the case with our hypothetical solicitor—we are strangers to our own thinking, strangers to ourselves. When we enter spiritual science, however, we develop a heart outside our body, as we said yesterday, and what we thoroughly reflect upon will once more be permeated by what is full of inner depth and soul. We can make use both of the understanding bound up with our body and of our reason, in various directions, only if we do not draw upon what unites us most deeply with the spheres in which we live with our thinking. Through spiritual science we shall draw upon this, and in what we think we shall become, with our understanding and with our reason, men of truth, men wedded to the truth; and life has need of such men. What we let shine upon us from the sun of spiritual science grows together with us because we grow together with the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Then our thinking is not so constituted that like that solicitor we can apply it to either party in a legal case. We shall be men of truth by becoming one with those who are spiritual truth itself. By discovering how to grasp hold of our will in the way described today, we shall find our path into the very depths of things. This will not be by speaking of the will in nature as Schopenhauer did, but by living ourselves into things, developing our forces in them.

Here we touch upon something terribly lacking at the present time, namely, going deeply and with love into the being of things. This is missing today to such a terrible degree. I might say that over and over again one has to face, the bitter-experience in life of how the inclination to sink the will into the being of things is lacking among men.

What on the ground of spiritual science has to be over-come is the falsifying of objective facts; and this falsifying of objective facts is just what is so widespread at the present time. Those who know nothing of previous happenings are so ready to make assertions which can be proved false.

When a thing of his kind is said, my dear friends, is to be taken as an illustration, not as a detail without importance. But this detail is a symptom for us to ponder in order to come to ever greater depth in the whole depth that is to be penetrated by our spiritual movement. This spiritual movement of ours will throw light into our souls quite particularly when we become familiar with what today cannot yet be found even by those whose hearts are moved by the most grievous events of the times in which they are living, and who seek after the values of the spiritual world. Spiritual science must gradually build up for us the stages leading to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—an understanding never again to be lost. This Mystery of Golgotha is the very meaning of the earth. To understand what this meaning of the earth is, must constitute the noblest endeavor of anyone finding his way step by step into spiritual science.

• 1. see..{"The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth."
• 2. (*see Festivals of the Seasons)

Automated Translation

We have already gained an insight into the complexity of the human being. This is not always borne in mind, because, out of a certain complacency in our quest for knowledge, we strive for simplicity, for a simplification of knowledge, for a certain schematism. Only a more exact study of the things we have observed over the years can show us the complexity of the totality of human nature.

Take, for example, the fact that the human physical body arose in relation to its first predisposition in the distant past, during the ancient Saturn period. What arose at that time as the first predisposition of the human physical body, we still carry within us today, but in such a way that we have to recognize it from the transformed product that we have gradually become. After we have passed through the evolution of the sun, moon and earth as a physical human body, it is no longer possible for us to recognize with ordinary perception what came into being during the ancient Saturn time. For this human body has been transformed during the time of the sun, moon and earth. During the time of the sun it has undergone a transformation through the etheric body permeating it; during the time of the moon it has undergone a transformation through the astral body permeating it, and during the time of the earth it has undergone a transformation through the I permeating it.

If we now consider only the physical human body, not yet the etheric body as such, not the astral body and not the I, but only the physical body, we must say that this physical body has undergone four main transformations.

Once it was there as a physical body, and the higher limbs of human nature were not yet in it. Then it was transformed under the influence of the ether body, then under the influence of the astral body and finally under the influence of the ego. But all this is the physical body, it is a product of the transformation of the physical body.

Let us make a note of this: first we have the first formation of the physical body during the old Saturn time. Then, under the influence of the solar time, we have what the etheric body makes of the physical body, that is, the original formation, and what the evolution of the sun makes of it. Then, under the influence of the moon-time, we have what the astral body makes of it, and during the earth-time, what the I makes of it. These are four forms of transformation of the physical body (see diagram on page 13). We have now considered what is brought about by the etheric and astral bodies and by the I in this physical body. But we have not considered the higher aspects of human nature in themselves, nor what changes have taken place over time in the etheric body, the astral body and the I. During the sun time, the etheric body is added; it undergoes its own development during the sun time and then undergoes changes during the moon time through the influence of the astral body and during the earth time through the influence of the I, so that this etheric body also has a threefold nature. Finally, during the moon time, the astral body is added; it develops for itself in its astrality during the moon time and during the earth time through the I. But now only during the earth time the I itself is added as a single one.

We can now also look at the whole from a different point of view. When we consider the I, we actually have a fourfold I within us. We have within us that which the I makes out of the physical body. We then have that which the I makes out of the etheric body, then that which it makes out of the astral body and then the I itself in the I.

But now let us pose a different question. When we see a person as they are on the physical plane – we know, when we count the sections of the diagram, that the person is a ten-fold being – so when they stand before us on the physical plane, what of their entire ten-fold being do we actually see?

1. Physical body 2. Etheric body 3. Astral body 4. I
5. Etheric body 6. Astral body 7. I
8. Astral body 9. I
10. I

Now, basically, very little of all this is initially present in the physical plane; most of what I have written here about this tenfold nature remains hidden. What is present initially is this I here (diagram p. 19: I 1). What is this I? This I is what the physical body is, what the I has made out of the physical body. Please pay close attention to what I am going to say, because only then can you get a real idea of it.

When you look at someone, the shape of their head, the physiognomy of their nose and mouth, when you see what they are like – even if you dissect them as an anatomist or physiologist – that is what the I has made out of their physical body.

What existence in the moon, the sun or Saturn has made of the physical body escapes your gaze, and remains hidden from you. Only what the I makes of the physical body is there before your physical eyes. Only by paying attention can we form a clear concept of the matter.

I will try to help you further with another consideration to explain the matter. If you have an animal in front of you, for example a dog, a wolf, a cat, then you have a form that is made by an astral body. When you look at a human being, you have a form that extends into the blood circulation, which is made by the I. When you look at an animal, on the other hand, you have a form that is made by the astral body.

What remains hidden is the configuration of the physical body, which is made by the etheric, the astral and the physical body itself. What we experience externally is actually an embodiment of the ego. Let us bear this in mind. It is an embodiment of the ego, and when we speak precisely about the human being, we should say: the human being in his entire form, right down to the blood circulation, is an ego embodied on earth.

So we perceive what the I does with the physical body. But what do we not yet perceive? What we do not yet perceive is precisely this I. If you call this I 1 and this I 4 (see the diagram on page 19), then I 1 is perceptible from the outside, I 4 is what you do not perceive from the outside, but only as a self-experience. When you experience yourself in your self-awareness, when you experience what you perceive, what you feel, what you think, in short, when you experience yourself as I, then you perceive this I as such: that is the I that philosophers speak of. I 4, then, you perceive as an inner experience.

Now you would not be able to perceive it as an inner experience if only the ego were really there. I have already told you that we not only sleep at night but also during the day. We are not fully aware of all our inner experiences, and to the extent that we sleep during the day, the beings of the higher hierarchies also live in us during the day.

In this I live, stretching out their impulses from the spiritual world, the Angeloi, the Archangeloi and the Archai. In that which sleeps most of all, in the decisive will, the power of the Archai lives first. The angels and archangels also live in the will, but the deepest impulses of the will always come from the archai. Only, as I have already explained to you, man knows very little about his will. The power of the archangels lives in man's feelings and the power of the angels in his thinking. We may say that the Archai, who give the will, the Archangeloi, who give the feelings, and the Angeloi, who give the thinking, live in us as unconscious self-awareness. And all this strives and weaves into the I and finally becomes what man calls his inner soul life.

But actually only the I is known. 1 Just as behind what we see as the embodiment of the I lies what the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body itself have made out of the physical body, so behind what we experience inwardly lies what the angels, archangels and archai bring about. So that we can say: In essence, the human being knows very little about what he actually is.

When one person meets another, they perceive the other person's I 1; when they look into themselves, they perceive their own I 4. So eight of the ten limbs remain hidden at first. But even if these limbs remain hidden from us, we can still say that their effects come to light in certain individual phenomena of human experience. What the I does with the etheric body remains hidden. How the I here, which I would like to call I 2, behaves in the etheric body remains hidden at first, but only seemingly so. We will see in a moment that something comes out.

What the I 1 looks like is revealed to us when we meet a person, in their shape and form. Of course, the I 2, that is, what the I makes out of the etheric body, can only appear to a clairvoyant in the same way that the I 1 manifests itself in the physical form for external perception. The etheric body is not a body of form but of motion. You can sense, even without clairvoyance, how the I2 sets the etheric body in very specific rhythmic movements, just as the I1 gives the physical body its form. But these rhythmic movements, these inner movements of the etheric body, come to expression in the physical body by pressing through into it, or rather, they come to expression in the physical world.

We try to express through eurythmy movements what the I can produce in the etheric body in terms of movements, I would say, to the extent that this can already happen in the present. If you could imagine a poem or piece of music eurythmized in such a way that you could abstract, disregard the physical body and only look at what the etheric body is doing, then you would have the I in the etheric body moving within.

We try to defy Ahriman with this eurythmy; because Ahriman has come into the world, the human etheric body has become so hardened that it could not develop eurythmy as a natural gift. People would perform eurythmy if Ahriman had not hardened the human etheric body to such an extent that the eurythmic cannot be expressed; for this eurythmic must force its way through only one limb of the human physical body and is held captive by the other limbs of the physical body.

The etheric body, which is actually caused to live in eurythmic movements through music, singing and also speaking, is held back by the heaviness of the physical body, that is, Ahriman, from actually carrying them out and can only express them through a single limb: it can only be deposited in the lungs and larynx by forcing the air through them. This is how speech and song come about. We can therefore say that the I, by wanting to thoroughly organize and thoroughly eurythmize the etheric body, must be content with one part of the human being in song and speech, instead of taking hold of the whole human being.

When a person sings or speaks, a spectrum of the whole person always comes to light in the tone and in the vocalization. What one hears is the tone, the vowel. But for the clairvoyant consciousness, what comes to light is basically the whole person, the whole person in a certain form of movement.

A, E, I, O, U, that is always a whole person, namely a spectrum, an ethereal ghost of the whole person. Only the etheric body is moved in a one-sided way, so that when you hear a person speak: A, E, I, O, U – it happens that you see five people in succession, only always in different forms of movement and in such a way that the whole person is not always seen fully and evenly, but sometimes more of the head, sometimes more of the hands, sometimes more of the legs. The other parts then, I would say, recede into darkness, into gloom.

But now, in connection with that same I 2, of which I have just told you, there is an entity from the series of the angels that resounds in its effects in language and song. But this Angelos is precisely the one of whom I have spoken several times in these lectures. This is something that, of course, cannot come to consciousness at all, because not even what I have just told you about the activity of the I in the etheric body comes to consciousness when people sing or speak. A being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi pours into all of this. This is a servant of the folk spirit, and in this way the particular language coloring comes into the human being from the folk spirit. The fact that the folk spirit belongs to the hierarchy of the archangeloi is connected to the higher realms. It is a complicated path by which the folk-like, the national, enters the human being. But that is how it is integrated, in this way and at this point. Behind this Angelos stands the folk spirit, which is an entity from the series of archangeloi.

We will now call this next ego, which again remains hidden, ego 3. Man does not experience this ego 3 directly either. For that which one experiences directly is ego 4. What one sees from the outside is ego 1. And when we perceive the effect of ego 2 from the outside, it is when a person sings or speaks. I3 lives in very subconscious regions; it lives in everything that man is capable of in the scope of his imaginative creativity. Everything that man can produce within himself in the way of imaginative pictures, pictures that are not copies of the physical external world, comes from I3, so that we can say: it lives as creative imagination in the broadest sense.

What you find in my Philosophy of Freedom under the title Moral Imagination would also have to be described here. It appears as a moral imagination that creates moral principles. Everything creative, for good or ill, belongs to this part of the human being. I said, “for better or for worse,” because you might think that there are many people who show a striking lack of imagination. One can only say, “Oh, if only they had more real imagination!” Because a little cultivation of real imagination is a good remedy for certain harms of life.

I would like to draw your attention to just one thing. There are people who seem to have no imagination at all in the areas where one often seeks imagination. Yes, when they sometimes take the opportunity to express themselves about imagination, they even show a pronounced hatred for all imaginative creations. But if you get at their souls, they show that they basically have a great deal of imagination: no sooner do they hear a word about their neighbor that is detrimental to him, than they invent whole stories and tell the most outrageous things about their neighbor. All lies are the product of the imagination, a transformation of the imagination into evil. And if you take this extension of the imagination into evil, you will realize that imagination is quite widespread in the human world. If you consider all the creations of fantasy that people bring about by saying this or that about their fellow human beings, or by otherwise passing this or that off as their own, you will find a considerable amount of fantasy even in those people who, in the ordinary, more noble sense, have little imagination. Human abilities sometimes go astray, and mendacity and slander are devious forms of fantasy.

All in all, we can say that down there in the stream of human nature, there rests I3, because in everything that man can create out of himself, that wells up out of the depths of his soul life, in good and in evil, is that which comes from I3. But this I-3 is influenced by beings from the category of the angels and beings from the category of the archangels, for better or for worse, by nature, by Lucifer or by Ahriman.

You get an image of human nature when you define it here. (See diagram: I 4, I 3, I 2, I 1.) When you define it here, you have the revelation of the human ego on the outside; when you define it here, you have the revelation of the human ego on the inside. Between the two, you have what I would call half-outside, the expression of the inside to the outside; that is I 2. I 3 is what is only half inside, namely coming from unknown depths into the inside. On the other hand, what lies upwards from this oblique line here is something of the hidden human nature that lies towards physical nature. What lies below this oblique line are the nearest spiritual hierarchies that are connected with the human being. Basically, when we speak of the human being on earth, we have in mind hardly anything other than what lies within this line. Above it, however, is everything that is present in man as a residuum, as a remnant from the old Saturn, Sun and Moon times.

If you draw a line here ( )), you get everything that is hidden in the moon time in man. If you draw a line here (©), you get everything that is hidden in the sun time in man. If you draw a line here (h), you get everything that is hidden in the Saturn time in man.

If you draw a line here (9), you get what will become apparent during the Jupiter period, when man will live among the Angeloi. If you draw a line here (9), you get what will become apparent during the Venus period, and here at the end you get what will become apparent during the Vulcan period.

This scheme gives you a rough idea of the complexity of human nature. It is good not only to look at things as they present themselves in the course of our cycles, but also to relate the individual things to each other. Today I wanted to give you an example of how these things can be related to each other.

There are various ways to find such a scheme. First, I will tell you how a clairvoyant arrives at such a scheme. The clairvoyant will say to himself: I meet a person; from this person, I first perceive his outer form with physical perception, everything that belongs to the outside. But now, with clairvoyance, I can deepen this form; in a sense, I get to the bottom of the outer form. If I then disregard the outer form, I perceive an ethereal being, and into this ethereal being play, song, and in general all sound expressions, play a part. This deepens the outer form for me. In the same way I can deepen my inner life. I can develop my self-awareness in the way one develops it in ordinary physical life. But then you can also deepen it. You can pour your inner life into the world, which otherwise only manifests itself as a fantasy. But then something real arises. Then imagination really arises, then fantasy ceases to be mere fantasy. The human being enters into a feeling that tells him: fantasy is no longer merely fantasy, but is immersed in something real. Something comes to meet you and you know that this is the inner and this is the outer (see drawing), and they come to meet each other.

This is how the clairvoyant consciousness experiences it. Then it has to piece together what it can experience in the vision by placing itself in the time of the moon, the sun and Saturn. In this way, one can clairvoyantly and creatively experience the necessity of such a scheme within oneself. Those who have gone through the first stages of initiation can experience it that way.

But even if you have not yet reached this stage, you can help yourself to a certain extent, so that you gradually come to experience inwardly what is approaching you from the outside. If you take everything that has been presented so far about spiritual science, you can put this scheme together yourself, as it is written here. You just have to make an effort not just to read in succession, but to try to connect the things that have been presented. You can form this scheme from the available cycle material. And that is very useful, because by processing the material offered in the cycles in this way, one progresses from an external assimilation to an internal processing. This internal processing has a high value for real progress.

Today I have given you an example of how to build such a scheme from the cycles. I now hope that many of you will gradually build such schemes. Then, firstly, there will be less uninspired speculation about the content of the cycles, and that is very good; and secondly, through such compilations, real inner evolution will take place. Individuals will progress when such fruitful compilations are made. You cannot just make a few such combinations from the cycles. From what is now available as cycle material, if you make it fruitful, you can make not only hundreds, but many, many thousands, perhaps even more, of such combinations. So you see, you have enough to do if you apply what is given in the cycles in a correspondingly fruitful way.

If you go from such a scheme to an expansion of the scheme, then you will go even further. If you separate what is actually on the physical earth plane, this fourfold formation of the ego, then you can say: everything here lies under the diagonal strip, and everything there lies above it. For these points, we just have to reverse the order. What has been written down here, you have to put up there. Then we have the six points at the top; so we have to make six points up there and write what are here six links on these six points. What is up here, we would have to write down below. We could make six points again and we could write the six points where the upper points are.

But we do not need to do that, because the cosmos has already done that for us. That which is on the earth is there; and although that which lives in us from the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods is hidden for the time being, and that which will come as the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan periods is also hidden, the traces of it are still 'present in the universe, in the Zodiac, in the zodiac.

So this scheme can be expanded. Everything that is not human on earth can also be found if we ascend or descend. This is just a hint of how you can connect our elementary teachings with what is contained in the cycles about the spiritual hierarchies and their connection with the worlds.

But you will also find much that can be applied to pedagogy, let us say. Even pedagogy will arise when we look at something like we have now discussed in the right way.

Consider that we have come to the conclusion that language and singing are present in I 2. So that we can say: language and singing have been driven out of the whole of human nature by Ahriman. Once this is properly understood, something extraordinarily important for real life will arise. First of all, the principle will arise for singing pedagogy that one must evoke an awareness in the person learning to sing of the part played by the etheric body in the process: so to speak, of the continuous transmission of sounds to the etheric body. Only when this involvement of the etheric body in singing is really taken into account will the impulse for change occur, which, with regard to vocal pedagogy, must necessarily come from our principles. In practical terms, this will be reflected in the fact that singing teachers will increasingly encourage their students to connect the feeling in the physical organs less consciously, but to develop more consciousness in what, so to speak, is adjacent to these physical organs. The singer must have a feeling, not so much of the movement of the organs, but of what the air in and around them does in its movement. An emancipation of the conscious experience of the sound in the air from the experience of the sound in the organ is what will follow from the correct recognition of the spiritual-scientific principles in singing pedagogy.

Likewise, with regard to speech technique, especially as regards recitation, it will become more and more apparent that here too it is a matter of becoming truly aware of the elementary interweaving while speaking artistically.

In this way it is possible for the tone to become a truly artistic tone, for the speaker to gain a sense of awareness that, in speaking artistically, one is not merely living locked up in one's own skin; rather, I would put it this way: the person speaking artistically will feel the sound in the air, feel the tone in the air as a living being, and through this feeling of the tone as a living being, there will be something like an undertone, like an undertone in speaking. Feeling the sound in living speech: this in turn will enrich the pedagogy of recitation.

It is precisely by responding to the intimacies of spiritual science that something meaningful for teaching and learning in life will arise. Much of what resonates when touching on such things as those touched on today is actually still quite unknown to humanity today. For example, it would be good to develop an awareness of how a certain new formulation of sounds has been attempted in individual areas of my Mystery Dramas. This can most easily be followed in the seventh picture of the first Mystery Drama. But there are also such passages in the other Mystery Dramas where this can be followed.

A certain inner shaping of the sound – in addition to everything else that is in it – is the expression of a new element in poetic creation, of which there is hardly a trace anywhere today, but which will take the place of what rhyme, end rhyme or initial rhyme was in earlier times. A certain inward, I would say ethereal-poetic experience of the sound as opposed to the more external-physical experience of the sound, as it is in end rhyme or in initial rhyme. There is a need, even in our increasingly prosaic recitation, to strip away the old forms. Not many people today are willing to use the initial rhyme, the alliteration, as Jordan tried to do; and not many reciters today are willing to emphasize the final rhyme as it was originally emphasized. It is better to emphasize the sense. But that is prose; it is not poetic speech if one merely recites in a manner that is analogous to the sense. Poetic recitation would be recitation with an excellent emphasis on that which is not the prosaic element in the artistic form. But that will only be possible again when one, instead of living in the externals of sound configuration in rhyme or external rhythm, lives in that inner rhythm. In this way one will have to live into the sound in the way I have discussed in another area: as I have discussed it in recent lectures, where I spoke of living into the individual tone in musical composition in the future.

All these examples show that it is not enough to learn the theories of spiritual science, but that it depends on an inner experience of what we take in and on a penetration of the whole soul with what spiritual science wants, as I have already said on another occasion.

And it is precisely with this that we should begin our work. Insofar as something that is capable of providing inspiration can be presented externally, it should be presented in this building, in order to feel an effect in the whole soul and not just in the eye through the contemplation of forms and colors. But what has been suggested will only be fully realized when we feel impelled to shape our whole life in the same way — wherever this is possible today — as was attempted in this building. But then we must also try to make spiritual science truly alive, to really pour it into what we undertake and want to do. It is necessary to become aware that with the spiritual-scientific world view, something is to be given that produces a kind of new human being in that old human being who has come to us like an heirloom from earlier earth evolution. At the same time, with spiritual science, we absorb the prerequisites that serve to help give birth to what is to be born for the future of the earth.

If one wants this, then one must indeed connect one's entire being deeply, deeply with spiritual science. We have already experienced beautiful examples of such penetration here and there. We have often spoken of an outstanding example. I would like to take this opportunity to mention a few words by our friend Christian Morgenstern, which represent such an example of how spiritual science can penetrate our hearts and souls as a soul experience. It is not by absorbing spiritual science in theory that it really penetrates us, but only when it is lived in every fiber of our being.

And this is one example, one example among many, of how spiritual science has been so beautifully expressed in a poem like Christian Morgenstern's. This poem could seemingly have been written from a different worldview, but in reality it breathes the spirit of our spiritual science in every line, and not only in every line, but also in the vocalization - but vocalization here taken in a spiritual sense.

I am born of God as all being is born of God.
I go to God to die with all that is mine.
I return home, O God, to live as Thine.

First I was given out of Thy I.
then it was a matter of acquiring what had been given,
of raising it breast to breast to Thee as a Thou.

But pride in the midst of it wanted to ruin it,
and it became You, and You were lost to it...
Until You, overpowering, summoned me!

Then I was born to You for the second time:
for I understood to die for the first time,
for I felt to live for the first time.

Bearing in mind what we sought to study yesterday, let us consider how matters actually stand in regard to what we call man's Saturn evolution.

If we remember the course of yesterday's lecture,¹ we know that there is concealed within us, within our human being, something that was first implanted in us during the Saturn period, namely, the first rudiments of our physical bodily nature. What we have acquired from the ancient Saturn evolution can be met with nowhere today in the external world. In primeval ages the Saturn evolution arose and again passed away; it possessed characteristics, forces, which seek in vain if we look around us today. For even if we look out to the stars in cosmic space we do not at first find what prevailed within the old Saturn evolution.

After this ancient Saturn evolution had died away, there came as you know, the Sun evolution and then the Moon evolution and today we are living in the Earth evolution. Three evolutionary periods have gone by. And all that formed their peculiar characteristics has passed away with them and is no more to be found in our field of vision. We can only find the characteristics of the Saturn evolution among the hidden occult activities which pulsate through the world. We can still, as it were, uncover the forces which at that time worked upon our physical body.

If you recollect what was shown in my book Outline of Occult Science you are aware that there was an active co-operation at that time between the Spirits of Will and the Spirits of Personality. This co-operation still exists today though it cannot be discerned externally. We find it if we look into what we call our personal karma. Please note, my dear friends, that our personal karma is woven in such a way that what befalls us in successive earth lives is connected as cause and effect. The forces active in our personal stream of destiny cannot be investigated by the official Natural Scientist. He will find nothing among the forces disclosed in the field of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology etc., which calls forth the connection of cause and effect that comes to expression in our personal karma. The laws prevailing there are withdrawn from physical observation as well as from the historical observation pursued today by the so-called cultural-scientist of a materialistic colouring. The modern investigation of historical evolution, the history which is written nowadays of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, up to our own time, contains laws which have nothing to do with the forces active in our karma. Thus the historian, the modern materialistic scientist studying civilization does not discover the laws dependent on man's personal karma.

History is looked upon as a continuous stream and no one considers to what extent historical evolution depends on the fact that human souls, for instance, who were personalities in ancient Roman times are present again today. The fact that they participate in current events and that the way in which they do so flows out of their personal karma finds no place in modern materialistically coloured history.

If we seek therefore for forces having something of the nature-forces of old Saturn we have to go to the law of our personal karma. Only when we learn to read what is in the surrounding cosmos and not merely to observe it, do we gain an insight into how the laws of ancient Saturn are still in a certain way active.

If we turn our attention to the ordering and out-streaming of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac as a cosmic script, and consider what radiating forces pour into human life from Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., we are then thinking in the sense of forces which were Saturn forces. And if we try to bring personal karma into connection with the constellations which relate to the zodiacal signs, we are then living approximately in the sphere of that world-conception which must be employed for the laws of the ancient Saturn epoch.

Thus nothing visible has remained, nothing that may be perceived, and yet there is still remaining an invisible element which may be interpreted out of the signs of the cosmos. Anyone who thought that Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., made his destiny would be living under the same delusion as a man who had been sentenced by a certain legal passage and then conceived a special hatred of this paragraph in the law and believed that it had sent him to gaol. Just as little as a legal paragraph printed on the white page can sentence a man, can Aries, Taurus, or Gemini, bring about destiny. Yet one can read from the star-script the connection between the cosmos and human destiny. And thus we can say that what follows from the star script is a remainder of the ancient Saturn evolution, is indeed the ancient Saturn evolution become entirely spiritual, but leaving its signs behind in the star-script of the cosmos.

When we proceed from the Old Saturn evolution to the Moon evolution we must be clear that at first there is nothing so directly (I said; at first, so directly) in our surrounding field of vision; external nature contains in the first place in the main no forces which resemble those of the Old Moon evolution. These forces of the Old Moon have also drawn back into concealment, but they have not yet become spiritual to the same degree as the Old Saturn laws. The Saturn laws have become so spiritual that we can only investigate them in the laws of our personal destiny, that is to say, quite outside space and time. When we observe human life as a whole we still find today these ancient Saturn laws, still find what cannot be seen when we confront a man in the physical world.

We have said that in meeting man in the physical world, we have the physical body as coming from the Old Saturn evolution, the etheric from the Old Sun evolution; the astral body from the Old Moon, and the Ego. And when we look at man externally and observe his form it is solely this embodiment of the ego which is not a relic from other periods of evolution. It is the laws of Earth which prevail and are active when the ego fashions man for itself and embodies itself. The laws of the Moon evolution, the laws of the astral body have already withdrawn and are no longer outwardly active. Now if we encounter a man we shall say: “You, O Man, as you confront me as material man are an embodiment of the Ego. But deep in the background of your being lies your invisible personal destiny.” How this invisible human destiny is determined comes under the rule of ancient Saturn laws. There we are already appealing to something entirely spiritual when, from the earthly laws of the embodiment of the Ego, we look towards the ancient Saturn laws. If, however, we look from what stands before us in the human being towards what still prevails in him from the Old Moon laws we find something not so spiritual. But this too has withdrawn from the external activity of the world, this too is not directly under the active forces of Earth-existence.

Where then must we seek for what has remained behind from the ancient Moon activity? We must we seek it protected and embedded, veiled from Earthly existence. For it is active in the period before man enters Earth existence through his physical birth, it is active before the external physical ray of light can penetrate his eye, it is active before he can first draw breath. It is active from the conception to birth, active in the embryonic life. I beg you expressly to notice, however, it is not active in that which develops from the ovum to the external physical human being; in what grows from the ovum, becoming greater and greater through continuous division, the forces of the Earth are working. But it is active in what exists only in the mother and dies away during the embryonic development, in what is lost with the birth and perishes. In all that envelops the earthly human being and cares for its nourishment before it is born, in all that ensheaths the growing human being and then falls away from it—in that rule the ancient Moon laws. And with this we have something that goes beyond the single human life, that forms a connection between the individual man and his ancestors and is included in the concept of heredity.

Thus we see something that existed during the Old Moon evolution still playing an active part, though not in the external world. In the outer world it acts only, so to say, as a dying away in human development, as something that is overcome as soon as the human being draws the first active breath for earthly life.

If one would study the laws of the Old Moon existence—or at any rate a part of them—purely physiologically and not clairvoyantly, the only way to do so today would be to study the laws at work in the sheaths surrounding the human embryo before it draws the first breath, enfolding it and nourishing it. What is there enclosed in the mother's body, what can only thrive during earthly evolution within the protecting sheath of the maternal body was the whole nature during the Old Moon evolution; it filled the whole field of vision.

Thus there die not only beings in so far as they have a sheath-nature, but whole types of natural laws, and exist in succeeding ages solely as last remains. Now you will have to ask the question: How does it stand with what is derived from the Sun?

Let us look at yesterday's diagram. We have seen that through all complications that appear here, we have to do with the complete human being, with his physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego,—etheric body, astral body, ego,—astral body, ego, and with the ego itself.

All that is above the dividing line is really the hidden part of human nature. If we wish to study the laws underlying the foundation of the physical body we must look to super-sensible laws determining man's destiny. If we look towards that which rules in the astral body and finds its embodiment in the physical body, we have something that is not so spiritual, so super-sensible, but something that melts from the sense-perceptible into the super-sensible. For the part that falls away from the human embryo becomes so to say more and more atomistic. The nearer the human being approaches birth the more it dissolves materially and becomes increasingly spiritual. For that which is attached to the human being as astral body and etheric body has originated through the spiritualising of those parts of the embryonic sheaths which fall away.

The question could now arise: how does it stand with regard to the Sun part? Can we find the Sun portion somewhere in the world? This too withdraws from sense perception. Whereas what we call karma, personal destiny, or, one might say, the Saturn part of man, lies in lofty spiritual regions, we have seen that we need not ascend so high in the case of the Moon part, for we found it still ensheathed in the sensible. Nor in the case of the Sun part need we ascend so high as for the Saturn part. One can still apprehend it but it is not easily recognised.

I should like to give you an example of something where you can still recognise the Sun-part that is active, although attention can only be directed to it in a veiled way. Those of you who have acquainted yourselves with the new edition of my book, Riddles of Philosophy in Outline will have found that four periods in the development of Philosophy are distinguished. I have called the first period “The World-conceptions of the Greek Thinkers”. This lasted from 800 B.C.—in round numbers—or 600 B.C. to the birth of Christ, i.e. into the age of the origin of Christianity. A second period lasted from the rise of Christianity to about 800 – 900 A.D. up to the time of John Scotus Erigena. Then came a third period which I have called “the World-conception of the Middle Ages”, and which lasted from 800, 900 A.D. to 1600 A.D. And then there is the forth period up to our own time; we are just in this period. Eight-hundred year periods have been assigned to the history of philosophy, presented in such a way as was possible in a book meant for a public still quite unacquainted with Spiritual Science.

The intention was to give everything that could stimulate the mind and let the spiritual structure of these periods work upon one. The characteristic of the first period consists in the fact that a transition is found from a very remarkable ancient thinking to what one can call the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our age has not made much progress in the understanding of such differences, the difference, for instance, between the thought life of our own time and that of ancient Greece. Our clumsy thinking believes that thought lived in an ancient Greek head just as it lives today in the head of modern man. Thought lived in Socrates, Plato, even in Aristotle quite differently from how it lives in present-day mankind; this present thought-life first awoke in the 7th, 6th century B.C. Before that there was no actual life of thought. As my book sets out, one can speak of a beginning, of a birth of thought-life in this age of ancient Greece.

People have conceived that most curious ideas about the great philosophical figures of Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, etc. It has been pointed out, for instance, that Thales believed that the world originated out of water, Anaxagoras out of air, Heraclitus from fire. I have shown how these ancient philosophers formed their philosophies from the human temperament. They were not based on speculation, but Thales established water as the original ground of things because he was of a watery temperament; Heraclitus founded the fire-philosophy because he was of a fiery temperament and so on. You find that shown in detail in my book.

Then comes the actual thought-life. And in the epoch described here the thought-life is still essentially different from that of modern times. The Greek thinker does not draw up thoughts from the depths of his soul, but thought is revealed to him just as external sound or colour is revealed to modern man. The Greek perceives the thought; he perceives it from outside and when we speak of Greek philosophy we must not speak of such a mode of thinking as is normal today, but of thought-perception. Thus in the first period we are concerned with thought-perception. Plato and Aristotle did not think in the way the modern philosopher thinks, they thought as today we see, perceive. They looked out into the world, as it were, and perceived the thoughts which they expound to us in their philosophies just as much as one perceives a symphony. They are thought-perceivers. The world reveals to them a thought-work; that is the essential character of the Greek thinker. And this perception of the thought-work of the world was brought to the highest pitch of perfection by the Greek thinker.

If the philosophers of today believe that they understand what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a universal symphony of thoughts, that is only due to a childish stage of the modern philosopher. The modern philosophers have a long way to go before they can fully grasp what Aristotle represents as Entelechy, what he gives as the members of the human soul nature—Aesthetikon, Orektikon, Kinetikon etc. The inner activity of thinking, where one draws the thoughts out of oneself, where one must make subjective efforts in order to think, did not as yet exist in Greece. It is completely foolish to believe that Plato thought he perceived thoughts. To believe that Aristotle already thought in the modern sense, is nonsense ... he perceived thoughts.

Modern man can hardly imagine what that is, for he makes no concepts of actual evolution. He gets slight goose-flesh if one tells him that Plato and Aristotle did not think at all in the modern sense, and yet it is a fact. In order that thinking in the modern sense might take root in the modern human soul, an impulse had to come that seized its inmost part, an impulse that has nothing to do with the thought-symphony in the surrounding world but which grips man's inmost being. This impulse came from Christ and hence this period of philosophy lasts up to the time of Christ.

In the second period we are concerned with a thinking that is still not man's own individual thought, but is stimulated by the impulse coming from the external world. If you go through all the systems of thought of the philosophers of the second period up to the time of Scotus Erigena you will find everywhere how the Christ-Impulse rules in them. It is what has flowed out of Christ himself, one might say, that gives man the first stimulus to create thoughts from within outwards. This gave the stamp, the physiognomy of the patristic philosophy of the Church Fathers, the philosophy of Augustine and others up to Scotus Erigena. We can therefore say that we no longer have thought-perception, but thought-inspiration stimulated by the spirit.

It was different again in the third period when the inner impulse proceeding from Christianity began to be seized by men themselves. In this third period man begins to be conscious that it is he who thinks. Plato and Aristotle did not think, but they could as little doubt that thought has a fully objective validity as a man seeing green on a tree can doubt that it has a fully objective validity.

In the second period it was the intense belief in the Christ Impulse that gave certainty to the awakening thought. But then began the period when the human soul began to say: “Yes, it is actually you yourself who thinks, the thoughts rise up out of you.” The Christ-Impulse gradually faded and man became aware that the thoughts arose out of himself. It began to occur to him that perhaps he framed thoughts that had nothing at all to do with what is outside. Was it possible that the objective external world had nothing to do with his thoughts?

Think of the great difference between this and the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle: Plato and Aristotle perceived thoughts and therefore they could not doubt that the thoughts were outside. Now, in the third period men became aware: ‘One creates thoughts oneself ... well, then, what have thoughts to do with objective existence outside?’ And so the need arose to give certainty to thinking,—to prove thinking as was said. Only in this period could it occur to Anselm of Canterbury, for instance, to create validity for the idea of God;—for one did not see thoughts as perception. In the former Greek thinking that would have been a complete nonsense, because at that time thoughts were perceived. How can one doubt that God exists when thoughts of the Godhead are as clearly to be seen outside as the greenness of the tree? Doubt first began in the third period when men became aware that they themselves produced the thoughts. The need arose to establish the connection of that which one thinks with that which is outside. In essentials this is the epoch of scholasticism—the becoming aware of the subjectivity of thinking.

When you consider the whole thought-structure of Thomas Aquinas it stands entirely under the aegis of this epoch. The consciousness is present throughout; concepts are created within, concepts are linked together in the same way as the laws of subjectivity. Thus a support must be found for the idea that what is created inwardly also exists outside. There is still at first an appeal to traditional dogmatism, but there is no longer the same attachment to the Christ-Impulse as in the second period of philosophical development.

Then comes the fourth evolutionary period; the independent rule of thought from the external thought-perception, the independent creation of thought from within: free creation of thought, that free creation that comes to light so magnificently in the thought-structures of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Decartes, and their successors, Leibniz etc. If we follow up these edifices of thought we observe that they are produced entirely out of the inner being. And everywhere we find that these thinkers had an intense desire to prove that what they created in themselves had also real validity externally. Spinoza creates a wonderful ideal-edifice. But the question arises: Now is that all merely created within, in the human spirit, or has it a significance in the world outside? Giordano Bruno, and Leibniz create the monad which is supposed to be a reality. How does something thought out by man as monad exist at the same time as a reality in the outer world? All the questions which have arisen since the 16th, 17th century are concerned with the endeavour to bring free thought-creation into harmony with external world existence. Man feels isolated, abandoned by the world in his free thought creation. We are still standing in the midst of this.

But now what is this whole diagram?

If we go back to the perception of thoughts which prevailed in the time of the old Greek philosophers then we must say: Philosophic thought in ancient Greece—in spite of the fact that it was the age of the intellectual or mind-soul in ancient Greece—was still a perceptive thinking, was still deeply influenced by the sentient soul, in fact by the sentient, the astral, body. It still clung to the external. The thinking of Thales, of the first philosopher was still influenced by the etheric body. They created their Water—Air—Fire—Philosophies out of their temperament, and the temperament lives in the etheric body. One can therefore say that the philosophy of the sentient body goes into the philosophy of the etheric body. Then we come into the Christian period. The Christ- Impulse penetrates into the sentient soul. Philosophy is experienced inwardly but in connection with what one can feel and believe; the influences of the sentient soul are present. In the third period, that of scholasticism, the intellectual or mind-soul is the essential element of philosophical development. Now the development of philosophy follows a different course from that of human evolution in general. And for the first time since the 16th century we now have philosophy coinciding with the general evolution of mankind, for we have the free thoughts ruling in the consciousness soul.—Consciousness soul! The magnificent example of how free thought prevails from the abstraction of existence up to the highest spirituality, how a thought-organism, leaving aside the world entirely, rules purely in itself, that is the philosophy of Hegel—the thought that lives solely in the consciousness.

If you follow this scheme it is actually the part that I could not show in my book for the public, though it lies in it. And if you read the descriptions given of the separate epochs you will, if you are proper Anthroposophists, very clearly connect them with what I have written here (see diagram). There is thus a development corresponding to that of man himself: from the etheric body to the sentient body, to the sentient soul, to the intellectual soul, to the consciousness soul. We follow a path like the path of man's evolution, but differently regulated. It is not the path of human evolution, it is different. Beings are evolving and they make use of human forces in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul etc. Through man and his works pass other beings with other laws than those of human development.

You see—these are activities of the Sun-laws!

Here we need not ascend to such super-sensible regions as when we investigate human destiny. It is in the philosophical development of mankind that we have an example of what remains from the Sun-laws.

We had yesterday to write here Angeloi as corresponding to the etheric body (see diagram).

Such Angeloi evolve. And while men believe that they themselves philosophise, Sun-laws work in them—inasmuch as men bear within them what the Sun-evolution laid down in their physical and etheric bodies. And the laws of the Sun-existence, working from epoch to epoch, cause philosophy to become precisely what it is. Because they are Sun-laws, the Christ, the Being of the Sun, could also enter them during the second period. Preparation is made in the first period and then the Christ, the Sun-Being, becomes active in the second period.

You see how everything is linked together. But inasmuch as the Christ, the Sun-Being, enters in, he comes into connection with an evolution which is not the human evolution, not man's earthly evolution, but actually Sun-evolution within Earth existence.

Sun-evolution within Earth existence! Just think what we have actually reached in these reflections. We are considering the course of philosophical development, philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greece, and when we consider how this has evolved from philosopher to philosopher we say to ourselves: there are active within not earthly laws, but Sun laws! The laws which at that time held sway between the Spirits of Wisdom and the Archangels come to light again on earth in the philosophical search for wisdom. Read in the book Occult Science how the Spirits of Wisdom enter during the Sun-evolution. Now during earthly evolution they enter again not into what is new but into what has remained from the Sun-evolution. And man develops his philosophy not knowing that in this development the Spirits of Wisdom are pulsing through his soul. The Old Sun existence lives in the evolution of philosophy; it really and truly lives within something that has stayed behind, something that is connected with the Old Sun-evolution.

Human beings, passing from generation to generation, evolve as external personalities in earthly evolution. But an evolution of philosophy goes through it from Thales up to our present time; the Sun-evolution lies within it. This gives opportunity for beings who have stayed behind to make use of the forces of philosophical evolution in order to carry on their ancient Sun existence; beings who remained behind during the Sun-evolution, who neglected at that time to go through the development that one can pass through in one's etheric body, sentient body, and sentient soul—in cooperation with Spirits of Wisdom and Archangeloi. These Spirits that missed their evolution during the Sun time can use man's philosophical evolution in order to be parasites within human evolution. They are Ahrimanic spirits!

Ahrimanic spirits yield to the enticement of creeping parasitically into what men strive for in philosophy and so of furthering their own existence. Men can thus evolve philosophically but at the same time they are exposed to Ahrimanic, Mephistophelean spirits.

You know that Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful spirits as long as one is not aware of them, as long as they work in secret. As long as they do not emerge and let men face them eye to eye spiritually Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful in one or another way. Let us suppose that a philosopher appears who develops thought of such a nature that one can grasp it in merely earth existence. He develops thoughts that can live through the instrument of earthly reasoning. That is Hegelian thought! It is pure thought, but only such as can be grasped with the instrument of the physical body and this as we know ends at death.

Hegel has achieved thought that is the deepest which can be thought in earthly life—but which must lose its configuration with death. Hegel's tragedy lies in the fact that he did not realise he grasped the spirit in logic, in nature, in soul-life, but only the spirit that exists in the form of thought and does not accompany us when we go through death. To have put this clearly before his mind he would have had to say: If I could believe that what goes through thought, that is to say what I think about abstract being by means of logic, thoughts of nature, thoughts of the soul and up to philosophy—if I could believe that this leads me behind the scenes of existence than I should be deceived by Mephistopheles!

This was realised by another: Goethe realised it and represented it in his Faust as the conflict of the thinker with Mephistopheles, with Ahriman. And in this fourth period of the evolution of philosophy we see how Ahriman presses into the Sun-evolution and how one has to face him consciously, really recognising and comprehending his nature.

Hence today we are also standing at a turning point of the philosophical thought of the outer world. In order to avoid falling prey to the allurements of Ahriman and becoming mephistophelean wisdom, philosophy must get behind this wisdom, must understand what it is, must flow into the stream of Spiritual Science.

Read the two chapters preceding the last one in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy. You will see that I tried to present the world concepts prevailing in the world, the philosophical concepts of the world, in order then in a concluding chapter to add A brief view of an Anthroposophy. There you will see how philosophy today in the free emancipated life of thought represents something which, to be sure, rises into the consciousness soul, but how this life, through the consciousness soul, must lay hold of what comes from Spirit itself, philosophically at first, otherwise philosophy must fall into decadence and die.

Thus you see at least one example of the working of the Sun-evolution in human earthly life. I said that one could encounter these sun-laws if one studied the course of philosophical evolution, though one does not always recognise that it is sun-law which is active in it. This must be recognised by Spiritual Science. Just reflect that in reality a Being is evolving which little by little acquires the same members as man himself.

If one were to go still farther back into ancient times one would find that not alone the etheric, but the physical body too gave rise to the forming of world concepts. It is difficult to give clear characteristics of the age that goes back beyond the 12th – 14th centuries B.C.; it lies before Homer, before historical times. But then something was evolving which is not man as man lives upon the earth.

Something lives in history which passes through the etheric body, the sentient body etc., a real, actual Being. I said in my book that in the Grecian era thought was born. But in modern times it comes to actual self-consciousness in the consciousness soul: thought is an independent active Being. This could not of course be said in an exoteric book intended for the public. The anthroposophist will find it however if he reads the book and notes what was the prevailing trend of its presentation. It is not brought into it, but results of itself out of the very subject matter.

You see from this that very many impulses of transformation as regards the spiritual life are coming forward in our time. For here we see something evolving that is like a human being except that it has a longer duration of life than an individual man. The individual man lives on the physical plane: for seven years he develops the physical body, for seven years the etheric body, for seven years the sentient body etc. The Being which evolves as philosophy (we call it by the abstract name ‘philosophy’) lives for 700 years in the etheric body, 700 – 800 years in the sentient body (the time is only approximate), 700 – 800 years in the sentient soul, 700 – 800 years in the intellectual or mind-soul and again 700 – 800 years in the consciousness soul. A Being evolves upwards of whom we can say: if we look at the very first beginnings of Grecian philosophy this Being has then just reached the stage of development which corresponds in mankind to puberty; as Being it is like man when he has reached the 14th – 16th year. Then it lives upwards to the time when a human being experiences the events between the 14th and 21st year; that is the age of Greek philosophy, Greek thought. Then comes the next 7 years, what man experiences from the age of 21 to 28; the Christ Impulse enters the development of philosophy. Then comes the period from Scotus Erigena up to the new age. This Being develops in the following 700 – 800 years what man develops between the ages of 28 and 35 years. And now we are living in the development of what man experiences in his consciousness soul: we are experiencing the consciousness soul of philosophy, of philosophical thought.

Philosophy has actually come to the forties, only it is a Being that has much longer duration of life. One year in a man's life corresponds to a hundred years in the life of the Being of philosophy. So we see a Being passing through history for whom a century is a year; evolving in accordance with Sun-laws though one is not aware of it.

And then only there lies further back another Being still more super-sensible than the Being that evolves as humanity except that a year is as long as a century. This Being that stands behind evolves in such a way that its external expression is our personal destiny, how we bear this through still longer periods, from incarnation to incarnation. Here stand the Spirits regulating our outer destiny and their life is of still longer duration than the life of those for whom we must say that a century corresponds to a year.

So you see, it is as if we look there into differing ranges of Beings, and how, if we wished, we might even write the biography of a Being who stands spiritually as much higher than man as a 100 years is longer than a year.

An attempt has been made to write the biography of a such a Being as had its puberty at the time of Thales and Anaxagoras, and has now reached the stage of its self-consciousness and since the 16th century has entered, so to say, into its ‘forties’. The biography of this Being has furnished a ‘History of Philosophy’.³

From this you see, however, how Spiritual Science gives vitality to what is otherwise abstract, and really animates it. What dry wood for instance, is the usual ‘History of Philosophy’! And what it can become when one knows that it is the biography of a Being which is interwoven in our existence, but evolves by Sun-laws instead of Earth-laws!

It was my wish to add these thoughts to what we have been considering lately about the life-forces which arise in us when we look at Spiritual Science not as a theory but seek it in the guidance to living. And it is just through Spiritual Science that we find the living. What is so unalive, so dry, and withered as the history of philosophy comes to meet us out of the mist as though we looked up to it as a Goddess who descends from divine cloud-heights, whom we see young in ancient times, whom we see grow even if with the slowness where a century corresponds to a year of human life. Yet all this becomes living—the sun rises for us like the Sun within Earth existence itself. For just as the sun rises on the physical plane, so do we see the ancient Sun still radiate into the earthly world in a Being that has a longer lifetime than man. As we follow man's development on the physical plane from birth to death so we follow the development of philosophy by seeing a Being within it. When in this way we look at what Anthroposophy can be to us we reach the point of seeing in it not only a guide to knowledge but a guide to living Beings who surround us even though we are unaware of them.

Yes, my dear friends, something of this was only felt by Christian Morgenstern. And by feeling this, feeling it in the deepest part of his soul, our friend Christian Morgenstern could put into writing a beautiful sentiment, a true anthroposophical sentiment which shows how a soul can express itself which in its inmost being knows itself to be one with our Anthroposophy—not merely as with something giving us various facts of knowledge—but as something that gives us life. In the wonderful poem Lucifer by Christian Morgenstern we have a wonderful example of this. The feeling of this poem lives entirely in the inspiration of which ones feels a breath when, as we have tried to show today, one finds the transition from the presentation of the idea in Anthroposophy to the grasping of living beings.

Lucifer

“I'll keep my light from light of your excluded,
I want you not, your light shall be precluded,
Until my light's my own and separated.

So do I bring the Evil to expression
As Spirit of negation, self-possession,
Yet is new world by ranks of mine created.

By off'ing to un-erring Beings resistance,
A race of err-ant gods has found existence
Who act on their—and not your—discretion.

Who have not walked in Truth from the beginning
Who only reach the Truth through suffering, sinning,
Who only read the truth through sin's transgression.”

Luzifer

“Ich will mein Licht vor eurem Licht verschliessen,
ich will euch nicht, ihr sollt mich nicht geniessen,
bevor ich nicht ein Eigenlicht geworden.

So bring ich wohl das Bose zur Erscheinung
Als Geist der Sonderheit und der Verneinung,
Doch neue Welt erschafft mein Geisterorden.

Aus Widerspruch zum unbeirrten Wesen,
Aus Irr-tum soll ein Gotterstamm genesen,
Der sich aus sich—und nicht aus euch—entscheidet

Der nicht vom Anbeginn in Warheit wandelt,
Der sich die Wahrheit leidend erst erhandelt,
Der sich dies Wahrheit handelnd erst erleidet.”

Christian Morgenstern

If the feeling in this poem leads you to reflect how alive something can becomes that is understood theoretically in Anthroposophy, so that, as it were, one can grasp the Beings who approach us out of the dark abyss of existence, if you take this poem, stimulated by feelings I wished to arouse through today's lecture, then you will see that this figure of Lucifer is really perceived, fashioned in a wonderful way. It is a model example of how what is brought to us by Anthroposophy can become alive and grip our whole soul.

• 1. “The Ego perceived externally as Speech and Song, as creative fantasy, as inner experience.” Dornach, 9th Jan. 1915 (Z69)
• 3. Riddles of Philosophy

The manifold studies which we have recently pursued have shown that all true Art eventually issues from the secrets of Initiation. We have frequently spoken of this fact, and we have indicated many examples. Great epochs of Art, when artistic deeds raying far and wide over humanity have taken place, derive their sources again and again from Initiation. This shows how Art brings spiritual life into the physical. Initiation opens out to man the possibility to advance from the physical plane into the spiritual worlds. That which can then be experienced, more or less consciously in spiritual worlds, true Art carries down into the physical forms wherein it finds expression.

But the inner connection of the facts to which we are here referring, cannot be fully penetrated unless we also bear in mind that the last few centuries of evolution have in reality eclipsed—made imperceptible to the vast majority of men—things that were not by any means a secret to the same extent, five, six or seven centuries ago, as they are today for those who call themselves civilised mankind.

To point to one significant example, we may choose a work of art which does indeed ray out over the ages—the Divine Comedy of Dante.

No one who lets the Divine Comedy work upon his soul will fail to perceive the spiritual note that pervades what Dante has here expressed. Nowadays, if it be a question of studying how Dante arrived at the magnificent pictures of his poem, people will readily be inclined to use the word fancy or imagination. Dante, they say, was filled with artistic imagination. They are content to leave it at that. Needless to say, I shall not deny that artistic imagination was at work in Dante. But even in the light of outer history it would be wrong to suppose that he created the whole of his magnificent poem, as it were out of the void, out of mere fancy.

Dante had a friend and teacher Brunetto Latini, who, as I think you will recognise from what we shall presently say, may be described as an Initiate in the true sense of the word. It is this connection between Dante and a man who was initiated according to the conditions of his time, which we, in the light of our ideas, must fundamentally point out.

One thing at any rate was known to that time. They knew that man, to reach the secrets of existence, must take the path that leads through his own re-birth. This above all was fully and absolutely living in that time: the recognition that the path to knowledge of the world must necessarily lead through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, however, must not be thought of in the superficial sense in which people often speak of it today. Who does not think himself able to know about himself? By way of introduction, let me bring home to you with an example, how difficult self-knowledge is even in the most elementary matters. How little a man is inclined to set out for what can truly be called self-knowledge!

I have here a book by a famous philosopher of today—Dr. Ernst Mach, who has written a number of works highly characteristic of the present time. At the very beginning of his book on the Analysis of Sensations, dealing with the connections of the physical and the psychical, the following remark occurs: ‘As a young man,’ he writes, ‘I was once going along the street when I saw a face which was highly distasteful to me. How astonished I was when I observed that it was my own face which I had seen by the chance combination of two mirrors in a shop-window!’

Thus, as he went along the street, his karma led him past a shop where two mirrors were so inclined that he could see himself. He saw the face, highly distasteful to him, and then discovered that it was his own. We see that even with respect to this most outer aspect, it is not quite easy for us to acquire the most elementary self-knowledge. But Mach makes another remark as well. He becomes a University professor; so he has some idea of the appearance of a scholar or a pedant.

‘Not long ago,’ he writes, ‘tired after a long railway journey, I got into an omnibus. Simultaneously another man entered from the opposite side. What a wretched-looking pedant, I said to myself, and presently discovered that I had only seen myself, for a looking-glass was hanging opposite the entrance.’ ‘Thus,’ he continues by way of explanation, ‘the class-type was far more familiar to me than my own special type.’ He had formed an idea in his mind of the typical pedant. He knew that the man, getting in opposite, looked rather like an out-of-work schoolmaster. Not until afterwards did he discover that it was himself. A pretty example of the often very deficient self-knowledge of men, even as regards their outer form. As to the knowledge of the soul, it is a great deal more difficult. Nevertheless, personal and individual self-knowledge is none other than the first elementary beginning of the path which leads through man into the universal secrets of existence.

When we regard the world externally, here in the physical world we have before us only that which belongs to the outermost nature of man—to the system of his physical body. Look out over the widespread environment which we can see on the physical horizon of this world; there we have everything that is related to our own outer body—the physical human body. We know that this is only a portion of our total being. Behind it is the etheric body; but man in the first place is unaware of all that in his environment which resembles his etheric body. Still less does he surmise that which resembles his astral body and his Ego.

Man, to begin with, on the Earth, is for himself the only example—the only document he has brought over from the spiritual world. Therefore he must pass through this, the document of his own being. He must go through himself. This was always known to those who experienced anything of Initiation. Thus it was known to Brunetto Latini, teacher and friend of Dante. Moreover, it is characteristic how Brunetto Latini's Initiation, as we may call it, was eventually brought about. It happened by a particular event. That is what frequently occurs. Fundamentally speaking, every one who sets his foot on the path of spiritual science is waiting for the portal of the spiritual world to be opened to him sooner or later, as indeed it will be. It may be—indeed it often is so—that the entry to the spiritual world takes place by degrees. Then we grow slowly into the spiritual world. Nevertheless, very, very frequently it happens that the world is opened to us as by a kind of shock which breaks in upon our life—by a sudden and unexpected event.

Thus, as Brunetto Latini himself relates, he had been sent as ambassador to the ruler of Castile. On his way back he learned that his party, the Guelphs, had been expelled from Florence. Florence had utterly changed during his absence. This message brought him into confusion. Such confusion of our state of soul which is suited to the outer physical world, often goes hand-in-hand with what becomes the starting-point for an entry into the spiritual world.

Brunetto Latini goes on to relate how as a result of his confusion, instead of riding home, he rode into a neighbouring forest, quite unaware of what he was doing (or so at any rate he afterwards believed when he looked back on it). Then, when he came to himself, he had a strange and unwanted impression. He saw no longer the ordinary world of the physical plane around him, but something that looked like an immense mountain. He did not come to himself again in that consciousness which normally confronts the physical world. He came to consciousness over against quite another world than that which was physically there around him. There was an immense mountain; but these things were such that they came and went—came into being and passed away again. There at the side of the mountain stood a woman, according to whose commands that which arose, arose, and that which passed away, passed away again.

Brunetto Latini now beheld the laws and principles of Nature's working in the forms of Imagination. All Nature's laws—the living and creative essence of Nature herself—came before him in an Imagination, in the figure of a woman who gave her orders for all these things to arise and pass away again.

We must imagine ourselves living in the time of the thirteenth, fourteenth century, when the natural scientific way of thought was slowly entering. In later times, men spoke abstractly of the Laws of Nature; they would on no account imagine that there was any reality of being behind the totality of Nature's laws. Brunetto Latini, however, saw it in the form of Imagination, as a woman, out of whose spirit proceeded all that was subsequently felt as abstract Laws of Nature, like a Word that held sway throughout this Nature, which stood before him in living Imagination.

This woman, he relates, then bade him deepen the forces of his soul; so would he enter more and more deeply into himself. Here it is interesting. Raying out over him her forces, as it were, she gives him the possibility to enter more and more deeply into himself. He dives down into his own being, and the sequence he now indicates is indeed, under certain conditions, the true sequence of Initiation.

The first thing, he tells us, which he now learned to know were the forces of the soul. Diving down into himself, man does indeed learn to know what otherwise remains unconscious in him—the forces of his soul. This recognition of his own soul-forces is a thing from which man will often flee, when he draws near to it. For when we perceive the forces of the soul, it often seems to us that we say to ourselves: ‘What an unsympathetic soul that is!’ We do not like this feeling, any more than the worthy professor did when he saw his own form, which was distasteful to him. We do not want to see. For with the chorus of the soul's forces we often see many a thing we have within us, which we by no means attribute to ourselves in ordinary life. We see it as something that is at work in the totality of our own being—enhancing our being, or making it smaller; making us of greater or lesser value for the Universe.

Thus, to begin with, we rise into the soul-forces. At the next stage, we experience the four temperaments. There it becomes clear to us how we are woven together, of the choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic, and how this weaving together lies deeper down than the soul-forces.

Then, when we have gone through the temperaments, we come to what may be called the five senses—in the occult sense. For in the way man ordinarily speaks of the five senses, he only knows them from outside. You cannot learn to know the senses inwardly till you have descended through the temperaments into the deeper regions of your own self. Then you behold the eyes, the ears, the other senses from within. You experience your own eyes, for instance, or your ears—filling them from within. You must imagine it thus. Just as you came into this hall through this door, and perceived the objects and persons that were already here, so when you undergo this descent into yourself you come into the region of your eyes or your ears. There you perceive how the forces are working from within outward, to bring about your seeing and your hearing. You perceive an altogether complicated world, of which a man who only knows the outer physical plane has no idea at all.

Some, no doubt, will say: ‘Maybe, but this world of the eyes and the ears will not impress me greatly. The world of the physical plane which I have around me here is great, and the world of the eyes and ears is very small. I should be gazing into a minute world.’

That, however, is maya. What you envisage when you are within your ears or within your eyes is far greater, fuller in content, than the outer physical world. You have a far more abundant world around you there.

Then and then only, when you have gone through this region, you come into the realm of the four elements. We have already spoken of all the properties of the several elements; but it is only at this stage that you feel really within them—within the earthy, the watery, the airy, and the element of warmth.

Man ordinarily knows his senses from without. Here now he learns to know them from within. Consciously entering into the eye from within, he then breaks through the eye, and breaking through the eye comes into the four elements. But he can likewise break through the ear, or the sense of taste.

By these four elements he is perpetually surrounded, only he does not know what they are inwardly. He cannot see it with outer organs of sense. He must first get out of the sense-organs—albeit, get out of them from within. He must leave them again, as though by a gateway. He must get out, through his eye or his ear. So he slips through—through the eye, through the ear—and comes into the region of the elements. And in the region of the elements he learns to know all the spiritual beings who are living there—the manifold Nature-spirits, and Beings who belong to the Hierarchies nearest to man.

Then, going on and on, he comes into the region of the seven Planets. He is already farther outside, and learns to know what is creatively connected with man, in the great Universe. And then at last he has to cross Oceanos—the great Ocean, as it has always been called.

The Soul-forces
the four Temperaments
the five Senses
the four Elements
the seven Planets
the Ocean.

What does this passing through the ocean signify? Man can approach the planets while with the last portion of his soul's being he still remains within the physical. But when he thus goes inward through the gates of the senses, eventually he must take with him the very last relics of his soul, so that he may consciously enter the condition in which he is normally only in sleep. Ordinarily, when he is with the planets, he still remains in the body with a portion, as it were, with a fragment of his soul. But when he draws even this last out of the body, it seems to him as though he were floating through the universal ocean of spiritual being.

All this, Brunetto Latini undergoes. He tells how he undertook one after another of these steps, at the behest of the woman who appeared to him in his Imaginative cognition. Then she instructed him that he must go still farther. This, however, was at a particular moment, which again is highly characteristic.

Think of the situation. Perplexed, at a loss on account of what has happened in his paternal city, he rides into a forest. He comes to himself again, but this awakening leads him not into the physical world. It leads him through all the regions which we have here described. Then, however, the moment arises when, not by accident, not by mere chance, but by the definite summons of this woman he sees himself in the forest once more. Having undergone all these things, having passed through the soul-forces and the temperaments and through the senses outward into the elemental world, where he already perceived abundant spiritual life; having perceived the seven planets, and through them the higher Hierarchies, circle on circle; having felt himself at length not on the solid ground but swimming as it were, swimming through the great ocean; now he awakens again in the physical world.

That is the very significant thing we recognise in all these Initiations. The disciple passes through a complete cycle and returns again into the physical world.

Having lived through all this, Brunetto Latini feels himself once more in his forest. Now he is really surrounded by all that is physically about him. And anon the woman is there again at his side, albeit he now has the physical forest around him. She tells him to ride on towards the right, and she gives him instruction, how he shall come to Philosophy and to the four Virtues of man, and to the knowledge of the God of Love.

Mark what a significant truth lies behind these things! A man of today will be quick enough with his reply: Philosophy—with that I am familiar! I have studied the whole history of philosophy. I know what philosophy is, and what it teaches. As to the four Virtues—Plato already named them: Wisdom, Courage, Balance or Moderation, and Justice. And the God of Love, who does not know of Him! You need only read the four Gospels. The man of today is familiar with all these things. But it is precisely the characteristic of spiritual knowledge: we begin to see that we do not really know all these things. We must first go through the understanding of the spiritual world and then return to what the physical provides. Then only do we understand the physical world.

If Brunetto Latini were to arise again today and a very learned man of our time were to approach him—a learned professor of philosophy, a famous man, let us assume—and were to say: ‘I am familiar with the whole range of philosophy,’ Brunetto Latini would answer: ‘Yes, yes, no doubt you are, but in reality you know nothing of it. You must first learn to know the aspect of the super-sensible worlds, you must know what things are like in the super-sensible. Then you can come back again to philosophy, and it will be something quite new to you. Then only will you begin to divine what you now imagine that you know quite well.’

The same thing may be put in another way. After all, who would not think it absurd! ... A famous thinker of our time writes a philosophic book. Surely then he must understand it. How should he not understand what he himself has written? ... And yet, it is literally true: he may have written the book and may yet understand nothing of what he has written. It is not at all difficult nowadays to write a book. Books almost write themselves. One pieces together the things one has learned to repeat. One need not penetrate into the deeper meaning to do so.

That is the greatness that meets us in Brunetto Latini. What others learn to know by external study—he only will claim to know it after having penetrated through the spiritual world. Then he meets it again. He meets again what others imagine that they know of the physical world—the knowledge of Philosophy, of the four Virtues, and of the God of Love.

I should like my meaning at this point to be quite fully understood. No doubt a certain kind of knowledge is also attainable without spiritual cognition. But these things appear in a new light when one has first made oneself familiar with that which lies behind the physical. So do we see it in this example of Brunetto Latini, whom I have only cited to show how outer artistic creation is concerned with Initiation. We see it in this example, in the relation of Brunetto Latini to Dante, revealing how Dante's great work of art is connected with Initiation.

Dante could never have reached his peculiar relation to the spiritual world if he had not had Brunetto Latini for his friend and teacher, to educate him into the spiritual world.

Every age has its own way of seeking the spiritual world. Already in the centuries preceding Dante's age, we find again and again with the most varied Initiates the woman of whom Brunetto Latini speaks—the guidance of man into the spiritual world by this woman. This line of evolution reaches back to the seventh and eighth centuries. Some of them actually refer to her as Natura—the living, creative Being of Nature. Initiates of old describe her living and creative Nature—as the counsellor of nous, of the Intelligence that works creatively throughout the world, Intelligence or Reason that permeates the world. Moreover, they call her a kinswoman of Urania. Out in the Cosmos, nous is counselled by Urania; here in this earthly realm, by Natura.

When we see clearly through this, we are led into still more ancient times, when the Initiates tried in another way to come near to certain secrets of existence. We find the same woman again in Proserpine—Persephone who weaves the garment for her mother Demeter. Thus do the Imaginations change in the course of centuries, showing, however, that the secrets of Initiation are always working in the progressive stream of human evolution.

To come thoroughly near to these things, it is also necessary for us to permeate ourselves with the living feeling, that in all that happens in the world, not only those forces and beings are at work which outer senses and intellect can perceive, but that the spiritual is working everywhere. We must take this into our reckoning. What man today describes—and for some time past has described as spiritual or intellectual development, is the development of forces that are bound to the physical body. This condition has developed gradually. We know that there was in ancient times the normal condition of clairvoyance. This gradually ebbed away and died down, and what we call spiritual today is altogether bound to the physical man. It is true that with the Mystery of Golgotha something great and mighty entered the evolution of humanity—so great that it will only be able to be understood in its fullness in the course of time. What man had hitherto was a kind of tradition. With the last relics of atavistic clairvoyant power, the writers of the Gospels wrote down what had happened. That, as I say, was a last exertion of the old powers. Now we are once more beginning, with a newly awakened, newly discovered power of clairvoyance, to understand the first truths of the Mystery of Golgotha. We must realise that coming ages will penetrate more and more deeply into these secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha. We are only at the beginning, but we are indeed beginning.

The impulse, however, of the Mystery of Golgotha has been working ever since the moment when the life of Christ passed through the Earth. Had the Christ-Impulse only been able to work through that which men were capable of understanding, they would only have had very little of Christ in the past centuries.

I have often given two examples—and I might give many more—to show how the Christ works in the human soul, in that which passes through mankind's historic evolution, but of which men know nothing. Truly, what the Emperor Constantine knew of the Christ-Impulse when he himself, being converted, made Christianity the State religion, was very little. But the whole arrangement which came about by his victory—the victory of Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, over Maxentius—was such that we see the Mystery of Golgotha at work on every hand. The Sibylline Books were consulted by Maxentius. I mentioned it in the Leipzig Lecture-Cycle a year ago. They told him how he should act, over against the advancing army of Constantine. Moreover, he had a dream. In obedience to his dream and to the Sibylline Books, he, with an army many times stronger, went forth from the city to meet Constantine—a grave error, according to all the rules of war.

Constantine also dreamed. He dreamed that he would be victorious if he let the symbol of the Cross of Christ be carried before his army, and he did so.

Not through all human wisdom of which one could partake at that time, but by dreams, all these things were decided. Something was working through these dreams which could not be understood or received into consciousness. None the less, it was the living impulse of Christ. Truly, these men could not understand what was working in them—livingly, actively carrying forward the evolution of the world, determining for that time the face of the European Continent.

Again we find an epoch when we observe men—not only with reason and intellect but with their faculty of feeling—wrangling with one another about all manner of dogmatic questions. These dogmas seem very strange to the ‘enlightened’ people of today. The question, for instance, whether it is right to receive the Holy Communion in one or in two forms, and the like ... Yet we know what an important part these conflicts played, for they subsequently worked themselves out in the Hussite movement, in Wycliffe and in others. There were all these conflicts, showing how little the intellect of man could reach to what the Christ-Impulse was in its reality. Where, then, did the Christ-Impulse really appear, in an important historic moment? This, too, I have often indicated. In a peculiar kind of vision, the Christ-Impulse manifested itself in a shepherd maid—the Maid of Orleans. We must know what this signifies. It represents a kind of helping hand, held out by the super-sensible, the spiritual forces that worked into the feeling of man at a time when they could not yet work into human concepts. In Joan of Arc it is particularly interesting to see how this happened. Her inner being was opened, as it were. But it was not that part of her inner life which was bound to the physical body. It was the perception of her ethereal and astral being that was spiritually opened, so much so that we find in her case a true analogy to the events of Initiation.

Recently, you will remember, at an appropriate season we spoke of the story of Olaf Asteson, who slept through the days after Christmas and did not reawaken until the day of the Three Kings, the 6th of January. In this connection we remarked, that in the season when the outer physical rays of the Sun have the least power, the spiritual power enveloping the Earth is greatest. Therefore the Christmas Festival is rightly placed in the season when the darkness is physically greatest. Then it is that illumination comes over the soul that is capable of illumination. Therefore, the legend tells, it was just in this season that Olaf Asteson attuned his inner life of soul, so that it was taken hold of by those forces which as spiritual light pass from the Sun into the aura of the Earth, at the time when the outer forces of the Sun are weakest. Until the 6th of January he really underwent an entry into the spiritual world.

The soul of the Maid of Orleans had to be kindled for a great historic mission. There had to be present in her soul the impulses that surge and weave their way throughout the world with the Christ-Impulse. They had to be there in her soul. How should they enter her? They could indeed have entered her, if at some time in her life she had undergone an experience similar to that of Olaf Asteson; if she had slept for the thirteen days after Christmas and had awakened on the 6th of January. And so indeed it was. Though she did not do so in the way of Olaf Asteson, still in a certain sense she underwent in sleep this time which is so favourable to Initiation. She underwent it in the last thirteen days of her embryonal life. She was borne by her mother, so as to pass through the Christmas season in the body of her mother in the last thirteen days of her embryo life. For she was born on the 6th January. That is the birthday of Joan of Arc. Thus she passed through the very time in which the spiritual forces weave and work most strongly in the Earth's aura.

Therefore we need not wonder, if even outer documents relate that on that 6 January 1412, the villagers ran hither and thither, feeling that something momentous had happened,—though what it was that happened on that 6th of January they did not know until a later time, when the Maid of Orleans fulfilled her mission. For one who penetrates into the spiritual facts, it is of great significance to find it recorded in our calendar of births that Joan of Arc was born on the 6th January.

Thus, even in such facts as shine out far and wide in history, we see how necessary it is to pass through an understanding of the spiritual and thence to return to earthly affairs, for it is only then that we can fully understand the latter.

I have put this before you once more in order to show how old and dry and arid has become what is commonly known as the spiritual and intellectual culture of our time. He who can understand anything of the deeper impulses flowing through the evolution of the world and humanity, will realise that we must now be approaching a renewal, wherein we ourselves must play an active part through our understanding of and longing for the spiritual world. The more intensely we realise that a renewal is necessary, the better shall we find the possibility to co-operate.

With pale and petty changes and reforms of the old, we cannot serve this future. Radically we must renew the spiritual life of humanity. Great as is the difference between ‘spiritual science’ in our sense of the word, and that which is taught about the spiritual life in wide circles in the outer world—equally great will be the difference between the civilisation of the future and that of today. And if the people of today find it so easy to judge the pursuits of spiritual science fantastic, foolish and absurd, it only means that they describe as foolishness and as absurdity all that will dominate the spiritual culture of the future.

Yet, in precisely such a time, a rebirth of the life of the human soul must take place. All branches of human life must find their way into the impulses of this renewal, this rebirth. And among other things, all the artistic life must come near again to Initiation. These are the real reasons why we with our Goetheanum had to make the attempt to create a beginning—I have often emphasised that it is only a beginning—which, with all its imperfections, is nevertheless related in all detail to what the science of Initiation has to say for our time.

The results of spiritual science must come to life in our souls. As a living and vital result they must find expression in the outer form. By this alone can that which is arising in our Goetheanum have its corresponding value. Then it will indeed have its value—not as anything complete, but as a new beginning. Would that there were an intensive consciousness in our circle of the intimate relation that exists between the spiritual science which we have been seeking to acquire for all these years, and that which our Building contains in every line, in every feature. If we ourselves are once filled with this recognition, then we shall be able to say to the world through our Goetheanum what must needs be said. Then we shall look with satisfaction into that future which will be destined to create, out of the primitive beginnings of this Building, something increasingly complete and perfect, it is true, yet in the same style and character.