The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Very much more could be said about the present subject; however, some indications, only, could be given and with these we must for the moment be satisfied. Today I shall try, by means of a kind of comprehensive overview, to show how the soul of man is incorporated into world evolution as a whole.

When we, as ensouled beings between birth and death, let the external world act upon us, we receive in the first place a number of impressions. Present-day man has for centuries been in the habit of regarding the external world as the most essential; this attitude is largely due to the scientific education which he receives already from the lower school onwards. Lately even psychology is dealt with as if it were one of the natural sciences, not only by the experts but by the simplest people. This all stems from the fact that modern man has little talent for examining his own inner being. Consequently, it is not easy for him to become aware of things such as those we spoke about yesterday. Present- day man has no inclination to look into himself objectively; he is not in the habit of doing so. He is aware of all that which I referred to yesterday as the up-surging waves of instinctive life—urges, cravings and passions—in fact, all emotions in general. But he is little inclined to look at these in an objective way because when he observes himself all that emerges are just these cravings. Through education they often become refined, but it is still instinctive life that wells up. On the other hand, man forms at least some ideas concerning the external world in which he is not personally involved; these ideas therefore have a certain objectivity.

There are many people who do not care for such objective ideas; they prefer to keep to what is subjective and personal. However, modern cultural life brings up in every field such objective concepts concerning external nature and has done so for centuries. These concepts about the world fill man's inner being. Whether it is only a little local paper he reads or one of the Sunday supplements, he is learning, in both, to look at the world according to such concepts. He is not aware that, even from the smallest publication, he absorbs a natural-scientific view of the world, but he does so nonetheless. So it can be said that the only thing that really occupies man today is the external world. I am not saying this in criticism of individuals. It is more a criticism of the age; or, better said, a characterization of the age, for there is no point in criticizing. The whole situation is simply a necessary outcome of the time. People today are so little interested in man as such that it has become a matter of indifference whether a living actor is seen on the stage or a specter on the cinema screen. In reality, it naturally does make a considerable difference. But today there is no deep fundamental feeling for this difference. If there were, then there would also be more concern for the considerable part played by the cinema and similar phenomena in the decline of our civilization.

The concepts which are today imparted to man's soul are simply accepted through blind faith in authority. When told that science has achieved this or established that, he is immediately convinced. One really must be clear about the fact that utterly blind faith in authority is involved in the way ideas about the world are conveyed. Things are accepted simply on the basis of a statement without the slightest knowledge of what actually takes place in the laboratories and so on.

It was by no means always so. I have often drawn attention to the fact that if we go back in the history of mankind's evolution, we arrive at a time when something was present in man which I have always designated as an instinctive, dreamlike clairvoyance. This clairvoyance was indeed instinctive and dreamlike, yet far better able to enter into the nature of things than the so-called scientific ideas of today. Through those conceptual pictures, which today are considered to be merely symbolic or allegoric or else flights of fancy, one was actually transported into the reality of things. Whether a particular picture corresponded quite exactly to the external object was not what mattered. Of importance was rather that, with the picture, one also received the spiritual reality of the object. Today it is, of course, essential that the idea one has formed corresponds exactly to the external fact, for this correspondence is all man has to hold on to.

This touches on something we must be quite clear about because it is of immense importance for judging our present civilization. It must be strongly emphasized that, formerly, man in his instinctive clairvoyance had a living quality within him. Modern man believes that it was mere fantasy and that it had nothing to do with external objects.

In a certain sense, it is of particular importance, if our insight is firmly rooted in Anthroposophy, that we accept this modern approach in which, disregarding the inner reality of external nature, we formulate faithful copies of her. Perhaps you are aware of how scientifically scrupulous Anthroposophy does just that, by declining every kind of hypothesis about the phenomena of nature. On the contrary, we remain in our phenomenalism, as it must be termed, strictly within the phenomena themselves—that is, within what nature conveys—and that we allow the phenomena to explain themselves, in the Goethean sense.¹ We do not think into them all kinds of atom-bombardment or atom-splitting and the like, as is usually done nowadays because of the inertia of old habits. When we speak about external nature, on the basis of Anthroposophy, it is essential that we do not hypothetically add anything to what the phenomena themselves reveal.

Modern technology is an example of how not to think anything into the phenomena. It has arisen with the natural- scientific world view in recent times. When we utilize nature's laws in technology we actually create the phenomena ourselves. True, something is left out of account in the phenomena, in electricity, for example, of which the modern researcher says that he uses it, but does not know what it is. He speaks similarly about all nature forces such as heat and light, etc. In other words, there is always an element which is not explained. However, what really matters in technology is that which we want to control. And as it is we ourselves who put everything together in the experiments, we can survey every detail.

It is just because every detail is surveyable that one can have an immediate feeling of certainty about what is built up technically—for example, in chemistry; whereas, when one turns to nature there is always the possibility of several interpretations. So it must be said that a thinking which is truly of our time is to be seen at its most perfect in the technician. Someone with no inkling as to how a machine or a chemical product is made, and works does not yet think in the modern way. He lets other people think in him, as it were; people who are in the know, who think technically. The external achievements of technology such as mechanisms, chemistry and so on, have gradually become the basis for a modern view of the world. In the course of time this approach has spread to what is today regarded as a world conception.

What is modern astronomy? For a long time it has represented nothing but a world mechanism. The way the sun is seen in relation to the planets and their movements is nothing but the picture of a huge machine. Lately, chemistry has been added to this in the form of spectral-analysis.² Astronomy does not venture further. This science of the universe is today only concerned with the question of whether our mental picture of it will correspond to reality if it is simply built up on concepts taken from technology; that is, if what can be derived from technology is imagined transposed into outer space. We should then have a science, it is thought, containing valid ideas, if one excludes those of neo-vitalism³ and all talk of psychoid⁴ and the like. A world view would be obtained in which the effectual ideas would be those applied in chemical preparations and the construction of machines. These ideas are then carried over to the structure of the universe and thus represent that, too, as a huge mechanism in which certain chemical processes occur.

This was not always the view. Right up to the 15th Century—I am referring to the civilized part of the world—man lived with mental pictures of the world which were not merely technical. They were inner pictures in which he could participate. What is of a technical nature is quite external to man; it is completely separate from him. Formerly, man experienced what he knew; he, so to speak, lived within his knowledge. Modern man does not participate in what he knows. This is why, nowadays, clever people in particular feel that man in former times dreamed all kinds of things into his environment, he indulged in fantasies; whereas today we have at last the possibility to represent the world to ourselves without such fantasy. It is even believed that technical concepts are the only kind that ought to be applied to the world, because only then can the danger of fantasy be avoided, and true knowledge obtained.

However, something of a very much more fundamental nature lies at the basis of what has just been stated; something which was prophesied already in the ancient mysteries by initiates who had attained a certain grade. In fact, it is characteristic of the mysteries, at the time when the ancient clairvoyance was prevalent, that they prophetically foresaw the kind of view of the world that was bound to come.

Something like the following was said: If the view of the world prevalent today—this “today” was in very early times when man, in an instinctive, dreamlike way, participated in his environment—is preserved for future mankind then the human being will never become free. His impulse to action will always come from his inner experience of the world. In his heart a divine world will speak, but a divine world that makes him dependent. People in the ancient civilizations were always unfree. They were aware that, when they were not obeying laws of state, laid down by their rulers, they followed divine commands. They were, so to speak, beings who simply carried out the impulses prompted by the divine within them. Therefore, in the mysteries it was said: A time must come when the divine influence within man must cease. A time must come when he looks out on an external world and sees only objects and events that have nothing to do with his humanity, a world of which he only takes into his soul the external aspect. Man can be free inwardly just when he witnesses, and experiences only forces of nature and not those that sustain him. Then his inner being will be unburdened because nothing will fill his soul except what is external to his nature.

A phase had to come in mankind's evolution when he would see external nature as something apart from himself and thus achieve independence. This was foreseen in the ancient mysteries where the initiate said: What at present we can give human beings, whose instinctive clairvoyance enables them to meet us with understanding, will not always be possible to give to men, because it makes them dependent. Man must acquire a knowledge which does not determine his inner impulse to action but leaves him free. A knowledge that only conveys concepts of what exists outside his being will awaken his inner impulse to freedom.

This characterizes the extreme problem I was faced with when I felt impelled to write, first the introductory essays, and then my Philosophy of Freedom. The fact had to be fully recognized, with all its implications, that the age in which we live is completely orientated towards knowledge of a technical nature. There is no choice but to adapt to this approach; otherwise the doctrines derived from the instinctive experience of the world in ancient times, and still preserved in the creeds and so on, will be distorted. No other possibility exists than to make use of concepts which are also applicable to the construction of machinery and so on. We live in a world that is thought of as a huge machine and as a huge chemical plant. If we are to find again what is spiritual in the world then we must simply break completely with everything that has come down in the form of mysticism from former times. In the mechanical world, devoid of spirit, given us by modern science, there we must find the spirit.

Let me sketch on the blackboard the situation that had to be reckoned with when I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom. If this is man (see drawing on the left, white lines) and this his surrounding world (yellow lines) then one must depict the situation in ancient times as follows: When man looked into the environment he experienced—also within himself—what his instinctive, dreamlike, clairvoyant pictures transmitted to him (red lines). And he related his inner experiences to what he saw outside. Therefore, he perceived the environment as spiritual through and through (red lines within yellow ones). He saw elemental and also higher beings in everything, because he brought towards them the right inner condition.

Modern man of the civilized world, for whom in the early Nineties I wrote my Philosophy of Freedom, has a different relation to his environment (drawing on the right). He no longer unites his inner being with what he perceives; he focuses on what can be worked out in technical terms. He traces the laws at work in the environment, but these are laws of nature and in them no moral impulses are to be found; whereas man in ancient times, as I drew it here (drawing on the left), was still inwardly connected with the environment. He saw in stone, animal, and plant moral impulses, because everything contained divine spiritual beings. In the laws of nature there is only what applies to mechanical construction.

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What then did the Philosophy of Freedom set out to do? The necessary task to be accomplished was to show that if man is unable to find moral impulses, when he stands outside of nature, because through his senses he can reach only natural laws, then he must go out of himself. He can no longer remain within the confines of his body. I had to describe this first going out, when man leaves behind his bodily nature. This first going out is accomplished in pure thinking in the way it is described in the Philosophy of Freedom. Here man does not project himself into the environment by means of instinctive clairvoyance; he goes out of his body altogether. He transfers his consciousness into the external world (green lines). And what does he attain there? He attains moral intuition because he has reached the very first delicate degree of clairvoyance—or you may wish to use the subjective term I used then: moral imagination. Here man goes out of himself to find within the technical the spiritual—the spiritual is, after all, within it—where it is first to be found: in the sphere of morality.

But people do not recognize that what is described in the Philosophy of Freedom is the very first degree of the new clairvoyance. This is not recognized because people still think that clairvoyance means plunging into something obscure and unfamiliar. Here it is just the familiar that is sought; here one goes out with a thinking that has become independent of matter. It is a thinking that sustains itself, so that, through this self-sustaining thinking, the world is grasped for the first time purely spiritually. Indeed, the world is grasped through the very purest spirituality.

Mystics find in the Philosophy of Freedom too much emphasis on thinking. According to them it is just too full of thoughts. Others, such as rationalists and scientists and even modern philosophers, can make nothing of it for the very reason that it leads into a realm of spiritual sight where they do not want to go. They want to remain within the realm of external sight even when their subject is philosophy. The whole approach and content of the Philosophy of Freedom fulfils the obligation placed upon modern man.

This is what in an elementary way can be said in connection with what was prophetically forecast in the ancient mysteries. The initiates saw the future situation in exact details, both in relation to the human soul and also to world evolution. They saw clearly that the world, which man would later come to know, would be not only external to man but also to the Gods. It would be a world outside the realm of that divine creation about which they—the initiates—spoke. They sought revelations of the divine through initiation; thus, they were able to commune with the Gods. The various heathen peoples communed with their own divinities. The Jews, for example, with Jahve or Jehovah, and, insofar as they were initiates, did so not just in thought, but in actual fact. It is absolutely correct to speak about real communion with divine beings. The initiates achieved this within the mysteries. When they and their pupils were in the outside world they saw the surrounding world, and in it what their instinctive clairvoyance conveyed. The initiates in particular and also their pupils knew that the external world they saw resisted, in a certain sense, what they projected into it through their clairvoyance. They knew that a time would come when it would no longer be a question of resistance only, but one would only see merely that which can be seen without such projection.

These initiates recognized a truth which modern man would not have the courage to admit because his knowledge would be too shallow. The initiates said, “The external world we see is non-divine unless we project into it what the Gods have bestowed upon us.” For what they saw within the external world had been bestowed upon them by the Gods since the beginning of world evolution. They said, “We have around us a world which has not originated from the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries.”

It was this which later, in the Middle Ages, led to a particular form of contempt for nature and to asceticism and which still is to be found in certain religious confessions, though often hypercritically. This attitude had its first beginning in the ancient mysteries when man had to acknowledge: When I look into my inner being I can commune with the Gods, but the world I see around me does not originate from them. This world is not created by those Gods whom I seek when I go through initiation.

Through initiation within the mysteries it was learned that the external world had not originated from the Gods. This was accepted more and more as a fundamental objective truth. The Gods had intended quite a different world.

A particular event had caused man to sink down into a world not at all willed by the Gods. If time allowed, it could be shown that all ideas concerning the fall of man—his expulsion from paradise—stem from the recognition that the world around him is not a world created by the Gods.

Attempts were made to discover the will of the Gods in regard to the world they had not created, and it was realized that what the Gods wanted was the disintegration, the annihilation of that world. This fact, too, the initiates in ancient times had to face. The Gods whom they reached up to revealed that their decision regarding this world was its destruction. Yet the initiates also knew that man, in order to become independent, had at some time to derive his human knowledge precisely from the world which the Gods found ripe for extinction.

In the early Greek mysteries this knowledge was understood in a specific way. There the aim was to interpret the world through art. At that time there was no inkling of a natural-scientific approach such as we have today. Through plastic art and particularly through the Greek tragedy—in fact, through art in general—the aim was to create something through man which, though associated with this world, nevertheless transcended it. The initiated Greek said to himself: The world I see around me with its trees, its springs and so on, all this will disintegrate; however, what from this world has been secreted into a Venus de Milo, a Zeus or Athene, or into the dramas of Sophocles, will surely pass over from the realm of the visible into the invisible. The thoughts which had gone into a work of art would remain and would secure the continuation of the earthly world—which otherwise might disappear completely—even if the earth itself disintegrated.

Already the very early Greeks, at the time when art still proceeded from the mysteries, visualized that the world must be saved through art. For the world, though derived from the Gods, had absorbed a content which the Gods themselves wished destroyed. Certain fundamental facts of science were fully known to the initiates; this can be proved even historically. Certainly we have added much by way of technical construction in the course of recent centuries, particularly the 19th Century. But certain fundamental things which are still operative in technology were well known to the initiates of old. They knew much more than can be derived from what they told others who were not initiated. This knowledge led the initiates in the mysteries to say: If by combining natural forces we simply put together something technically we shall have something in the nature of a machine. We shall be making something which will be destroyed together with that aspect of the earth which the Gods themselves wish annihilated. For every initiate knows, and did know, that those Gods they venerated and communed with in the ancient mysteries—and with whom one can naturally still commune—those Gods hate nothing so much as, for example, a locomotive or a motor car. That to them is something dreadful. Those Gods say, “Not only must we endure that Ahriman has made the earth machinelike: now added to that, human beings are imitating the work of Ahriman. Our task in destroying Ahriman's endeavors is great enough and now we have in addition all these steam engines, all these electric machines and all that trash which has to be destroyed as well.”

Therefore, the initiate in ancient times said: It is of no help at all if we simply add to the outer forces of nature, which no longer contain anything spiritual, by constructing technical works like machinery or chemicals. The initiates were absolutely convinced that this was how matters stood and they decided, therefore, that as much as possible of the world must be rescued. As mentioned already, in Greece the impulse to do so was through art. If we go further towards the East people would say: As far as man's true evolution is concerned, everything that works according to so-called natural laws has, in reality, no meaning. The Gods will eventually destroy it. We shall, therefore, clothe all we do in such a way that the spiritual can live within it. This is how the cult in its earliest form originated. The spiritual cannot enter a creation such as a machine or a chemical, but it can enter the act of worship. It was considered that what one did should be something sacramental, something in which the spirit could live and participate. The aim of the cult was to rescue as much as possible from earth evolution.

I have often spoken of this on earlier occasions when I illustrated it by saying that we must reach a point in our technical research when the bench in the laboratory becomes an altar for divine service; so that we perform a moral-spiritual deed on the bench which in the laboratories of physics or chemistry has become an altar. I have often spoken of this; today I approached it more from the historical aspect.

This was the origin of religious cults to which people are again returning because they cannot rouse themselves to spiritual activity. It is remarkable that it is just people of intelligence who are today returning in great numbers to the bosom of the Catholic church. They do this for the simple reason that they want to be saved. They want to stay with what will remain when the earth disappears without trace, through the will of the Gods. Little attention is paid to what is happening in our time; so this present flow of intelligent people into Catholicism goes on unnoticed. It is happening because people want to escape from destruction. They want to participate in something, like the Catholic ceremonies and Mass, which, resting as they do on very old traditions, will at least belong to what will remain. It is happening because people lack the motivation to discover something new and essential for the future. People lack inner strength because they have lost it in our technical age.

At a certain moment it ought to have been realized that our world of technology is a negative world; it contains no inner impulses as was formerly the case. It should have been recognized that now it is necessary to achieve moral intuition and moral imagination. It is just those who are blind to this necessity of the age who are now returning to Catholicism. The explanation lies in the weakness of our time.

That this situation would arise was known to the initiates in ancient times. They asked themselves: What is going to happen? We know that the Gods with whom we commune in the mysteries want the destruction of the earth. But if human beings are to become free and independent they must of necessity become ever more like the things of earth. Only through technical knowledge can man become free. If the initiates of old could have foreseen no more than this, they would have faced a dreadful prophetic revelation. They would have foreseen that man, in order to become truly man, had to entangle himself completely in the Ahrimanic world bereft of God, and must turn to dust with the earth when the Gods dissolve it. Men themselves would gradually become mechanisms, become ever more like machines. Eventually, only technical impulses would activate their thoughts. Astronomy is basically nothing but thoughts about a huge world machine. Man's thoughts concerning astronomy are of a mechanical nature. If the thoughts are of the same technical pattern it ultimately makes no difference whether one thinks of nuts and bolts or about Venus and Mercury.

But in the mysteries, prophetically, something else was foreseen before it happened on earth: the Mystery of Golgotha. Once it had taken place it would gradually be understood more and more. This the initiates in ancient times learned from their Gods with whom they communed. The Gods knew all things; from them the initiates could receive an all-embracing wisdom. But there was one thing they could never learn from these Gods; they could never learn anything relating to birth and death. Particularly about death the Gods knew nothing. But in the mysteries, it was known that the God who was later called the Christ would come down, and that on earth he would know death. Thus, the Mystery of Golgotha consists of the fact that one of the Gods, who till then had known neither death nor birth and heredity, would learn to know death. Through knowing death, he could unite with earth evolution and create a counterweight to what necessarily had to happen for the development of freedom: the ever-increasing union of man with the disintegrating earth. Man can now create in himself the counterweight. He must, on the one hand, devote himself completely to modern cognition, really take into himself modern natural-scientific knowledge; yet, on the other hand, turn to the God who has come to know death and birth—the Christ. Now it is possible for man to incline fully towards what is necessary for attaining freedom; but he must, on the other hand, find the counterweight by balancing this knowledge with that of the other realm. He must find the path leading to the Pauline saying, “Not I, but the Christ in me.” Then man will again find the possibility, through pervading the world with his Christianized thinking, to transform from within himself what must otherwise fall away from the world of the Gods, to which man, in reality, belongs.

Thus, the Ahrimanic powers, active on earth in what is disintegrating, are being opposed by the Christ, Who through an extra-earthly decision of the Gods is now active in the earth. It was not necessary for him to become free; He is a God and remains a God after going through death. He does not become akin to the earth. He lives as a God within the being of the earth. As a consequence, man now has the possibility to restore the balance by the development of freedom. He can go to the highest limit of individualism; for only in individual man can moral imagination be attained.

My Philosophy of Freedom has been called the most extreme philosophy of individualism. It cannot be anything else because it is the most Christian of philosophies. Thus, one must place on one side of the scales everything that can be attained through knowledge of the laws of nature, which can only be penetrated with spirituality by ascending to pure independent thinking. Independent thinking can still be restored within pure technical knowledge. However, there must be placed on the other side of the scales a true recognition of Christ, a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha.

It was, therefore, a matter of course that I wrote, on the one hand, the Philosophy of Freedom and, on the other, found it essential to point to the Mystery of Golgotha in my Christianity as Mystical Fact and Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age. These two things simply belong together. Yet there are people who superficially see a contradiction in these two kinds of books. To them it is as if meat were placed on one scale and a weight on the other and they exclaim: What nonsense—these two things belong together. In short, everything must be mixed up. So, they take the weights and put them with the meat. Well, you do not get balance that way. Yet that is the way of modern critics. Having placed mysticism on one side and philosophy on the other they proceed to mix them together. But if modern man wants to stand in the right way within world evolution then there must live in his soul, on the one hand, a strong impulse towards freedom, towards independence, and, on the other, a strong impulse towards a deep inner experience of the Mystery of Golgotha.

This must gradually develop in the life of the individual and must also be developed in the sciences. The individual must overcome the old instinctive mysticism and clairvoyance. He must rely solely on knowledge of the kind needed for understanding, say, how a steam engine works. In my

Philosophy of Freedom, when I spoke of knowledge of external nature, I presupposed only the kind of concepts needed for understanding a steam engine. However, in order to understand a steam engine, one must set aside one's whole human personality except for the very last: pure thinking. The latter must be inwardly cultivated and then carried outside into the object, where it will be found to exist already.

Thus, one can take one's stand fully on the ground of freedom provided one also stands fully on the ground of the Christ fact. This applies also to science. And it will be seen to apply when it is realized that, no matter how extensively external nature is investigated according to Haeckel,⁵

something is always left unexplained, something always remains which cannot be understood with concepts of that kind. Let me put it somewhat more strongly: We are, after all, earnest people who have come together to understand something and not to enjoy five o'clock tea. So let me put it this way: The two things of which I have spoken must enter civilization in the right manner. In earlier times, when one was aware through instinctive clairvoyance of man's connection with the spiritual in the external world, it led to depicting the halo. The halo was particularly cultivated in very early times, appearing frequently in many different forms, even in the cult itself. With the approach of the Middle Ages and the first awakening of materialism there was a preference for depicting something else: the pregnant woman. Just look at the many pictures from the Middle Ages in which all the women are pregnant. So, you have, on the one hand, the halo which is the loftiest proclamation of the spiritual world and points to man's salvation after death, and, on the other, what points to that which again and again brings man into the physical world—birth.

When the present-day world is contemplated one cannot but recognize the need for the things I have described. There is nothing nebulous about it; the need is comprehensible through and through. It must, therefore, be said that the soul in its striving towards freedom brushes against the Ahrimanic. In the soul's religious experiences, even when they concern the Mystery of Golgotha, it comes very near the Luciferic. If egoistical religious instincts alone are cultivated, which is often the case today, it is all too easy to cultivate Luciferic instincts and desires as well.

This is what in the immediate present must concern the human soul; it is also what Christ taught his intimate disciples directly after the Resurrection. His intimate disciples were successors of the initiates of old. They were to teach that He had descended from the world of the Gods who did not yet know death, and who therefore in primordial times could tell man nothing about death. They were to teach that Christ had descended in order to experience the mystery of birth and death. Teachings about the birth and death of Christ have remained so obscure because human beings could not find a way to explain these things. Yet after the Resurrection, in the original Christian mysteries, Christ Himself imparted to His first initiated pupils the secret of a God's learning about earthly death. In their true form the Christian mysteries disappeared already in the Fourth Century. They disappeared because the impulse to freedom had to be developed first. However, the original wisdom had already been imparted to man by the ancient Gods. It had increasingly been transmitted to later generations, becoming all the time more diluted. What Christ imparted to His intimate disciples after the Resurrection was the original revelation concerning the meaning of earth evolution. This revelation was the spiritual foundation for the further life of the human soul. What the ancient Gods had taught in the mysteries was basically the secrets of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The essential secret of the Earth could be imparted to the human soul only after this secret had been experienced by a God on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Birth and death, in the human sense, did not occur until the earth evolution. Previously only metamorphosis and transformation took place.

Thus, the most fundamental revelation after the death of Christ is at the same time the foundation from which the human soul can set out to accomplish the salvation of earthly life.

You see how human souls are connected in manifold ways with the evolution of the earth, indeed with the evolution of the world as a whole, not only through the various facts I have presented to you during the last few days, but above all through their understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what I wished to impart to you in these lectures.

• 1. Goethe's Natural-Scientific Writings.
• 2. Spectral-analysis: Chemical analysis by means of spectroscope.
• 3. Neo-vitalism: developed by Hans Driesch, 1867—1941, biologist.
• 4. Psychoid: Concept of Vitalism. Description of certain strata of soul (C.G. Jung).
• 5. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919. Natural scientist. Founder of Monism. Defender of Darwin's Origin of Species.

We have often discussed the development of the human being during the first periods of life. Many years ago I first drew attention to the fact that up to about the time of the change of teeth the child behaves to a great extent as an imitative being. He instinctively participates in everything that goes on in his environment. Later in life, though man is not aware of it, this participation continues but only in the sense organs.

A process takes place in our eyes, for example, which in a certain sense imitates what goes on in the external world, reproducing what is there just as a camera reproduces what is in front of the lens. The human being becomes aware of what is reproduced in his eyes and thus learns about the external world. The same applies to the other senses. It is only in later life that this imitative principle becomes confined to the periphery of the human being. In early childhood, until the change of teeth, the whole body participates in the imitative process, though to a lesser degree. At that time the whole body has, in a certain respect, the same relationship to the external world as the senses have in later life. The child is predominantly an imitative being and he inwardly adapts to the effects upon him of the external world. Therefore, it is very important to let nothing happen in the young child's environment, not even in thoughts and feelings, which is not suitable for it to absorb and adopt.

With the change of teeth, the possibility arises for the child to cease reacting as a sense organ and assimilate thoughts and ideas. The child is more and more guided by what he is told; whereas, formerly, he was influenced by deeds done in his environment, he now begins to grasp what he is told. Authority becomes the decisive factor between the change of teeth and puberty. What the child is told must be of such a nature that he can be guided by it and follow it quite naturally. The child learns language through imitation but what is expressed through language—i.e., what grownups impart to the child—becomes significant for him only from the change of teeth onwards. Not until puberty does real power of judgment awaken and the child or adolescent begins to make his own judgment. Only then can one assume the child's judgment to originate within himself.

This is merely an external description of how the child adapts to the world, which any unbiased observation can verify. These things are, however, connected with significant inner processes of which I want to speak today. I have often mentioned that only up to the time when the change of teeth occurs does the human ether body live in intimate union with the physical body. Therefore, it can be said that the change of teeth marks the actual birth of the ether body. We can likewise speak of puberty as marking the actual birth of the astral body. But, as I said, this is merely an external description of what takes place; today we shall try to reach a deeper insight into these processes.

When we observe man in the spiritual world, long before he develops an inclination to leave that world and descend to physical embodiment, we see him as a being of soul and spirit in a world of soul and spirit. So were we all before we descended to unite with what was prepared as physical body in the maternal organism. We unite with this physical body in order to go through our earthly existence between birth and death. But long before this we were spiritual-soul beings in a spiritual-soul world. What we are and what we experience there differs considerably from what we experience here on earth between birth and death. Hence, it is difficult to describe the experiences between death and new

birth; they are utterly different from earthly conditions. Yet one can make use only of ideas and mental pictures relating to earthly experiences. However, today we will not deal so much with man's life in the spiritual-soul world—this will be the subject for tomorrow and the day after—but rather focus our attention on how he draws near his descent to earth in order to penetrate a physical body.

Before man approaches his physical body, or rather the embryo, he draws to himself the forces of the etheric world. The characteristic of the physical world we live in here, is that we perceive it through our senses and understand it with our earthly intellect. Yet everything in the physical world is permeated by the etheric world. Everything we see and hear and so on is everywhere permeated with the etheric world, the world in which man lives prior to his life on earth. Before uniting himself with the physical world, through the embryo, he draws forces from the etheric world and fashions his etheric body.

In order to represent this more exactly let me draw a diagram on the blackboard. Let us imagine this to be the soul and spirit of man approaching from the spiritual world (see drawing, violet). That which man draws towards himself from the general ether becomes his etheric body. He clothes himself, as it were, with his etheric body (orange) as he descends from the spiritual world. But to say that is to say very little. We must enter somewhat more closely into the nature of this etheric body. The etheric body which develops within man is a world in itself. One might say that it is a universe in the form of images. In its circumference it has something like stars (yellow stars), and in its lower part something reveals itself which is more or less an image of the earth. It even contains a kind of image of the sun and moon.

It is of extraordinary significance that we, in our descent into earthly life, draw together forces from the universal ether and thus take with us, in our ether body, a kind of image of the cosmos. If one could extract the ether body of man, at the moment when he is uniting himself with the physical body, we should have a sphere which is far more beautiful than any formed by mechanical means—a sphere containing stars, zodiac, sun and moon.

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These configurations of the ether body remain during embryonic development, while the human being grows together more and more with his physical body. Though they fade a little they remain. Indeed, they remain right into the seventh year, until the change of teeth. In the ether body of a little child this cosmic sphere is always recognizable. But with the seventh year or with the change of teeth these structures, which are to be seen in the ether body, begin to ray out; up until then they were more star-like. I will make a schematic drawing of how it appears between the ages of seven and fourteen—i.e., roughly between the change of teeth and puberty (see drawing, red rays). As I said, the structure begins to grow paler during embryonic development and continues to do so but is still clearly present. From the change of teeth, it becomes quite pale, at the same time it sends rays inwards (red). One could say that the stars dissolve within the human ether body and become rays which have a tendency to come together inwardly.

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All this takes place gradually throughout the period of life between the change of teeth and puberty. At puberty the process is so far advanced that these rays, having grown together at the center, form, as it were, a distinct structure (red). It could be said that the surrounding stars become very pale and so too the rays, though something is still discernable. By contrast, what has come together into a ball-like formation in the center becomes particularly vivid and alive. Within this structure the physical heart, with its blood vessels, is suspended by the time puberty sets in (blue).

Thus, we have this extraordinary situation that the star- ether body draws inwards. As ether body it is, of course, present throughout the body but in later life it is undifferentiated at the periphery. During the time from the change of teeth until puberty it rays intensely from without inwards. It forms a center within which the physical heart is suspended.

You must not suppose that until then man has no etheric heart. He certainly has one, but one obtained differently from the way in which he acquires the etheric heart he now has. For what has thus rayed together into a center becomes, at the time of puberty, the etheric heart. The etheric heart he had before this time he had received as heritage through forces inherent in the embryo. When man gathers his ether body and with it approaches the physical organism a kind of etheric heart, a substitute etheric heart, so to speak, is drawn together by the forces of the physical body. But this etheric heart which man has in childhood slowly decays—this may not be a very nice expression, but it does fit the situation—and is replaced gradually, as the decaying processes take place, by the new etheric heart. The latter is formed by a raying together of the whole universe. In reality, it is an image of the cosmos which we bring with us as an etheric structure when, through conception and birth, we enter earthly existence. Thus, we trace, throughout the time from birth or rather conception until puberty, a distinct change in the structure of the etheric body. One can say that not until puberty is man's own etheric heart present—formed out of his own etheric body. Thus, he no longer has a provisional heart.

All the ether forces active in man up until the time of puberty have a tendency to provide him with a fresh etheric heart. It can really be compared with the change of teeth in the physical sphere. At the change of teeth, the inherited teeth are pushed out and replaced with our own. Likewise, the inherited etheric heart, which we have until puberty, is pushed out and we get our own etheric heart. This is what is essential: that we get our own etheric heart.

Parallel with this, something else occurs. When we observe man soon after his entry into the physical world, that is, when we observe a very young child, we find an extraordinary number of organs distinguishable in his astral body. As just described, man gathers together an ether body which is an image of the external cosmos. But in his astral body he brings with him an image of the experiences he has undergone between his last death and his present birth. Much, very much is to be seen in the astral body of the young child; great secrets are inscribed there. Very much is to be seen of his experiences since his last death. This astral body is extraordinarily differentiated and individual. The strange thing is that during the time when all that I have described takes place in the etheric body, the highly differentiated astral body becomes ever more undifferentiated. Originally, it is a structure of which one must say—if one observes it with understanding—that it comes from a different world. It has entered into this world from a realm that can be neither the physical nor the etheric. Up to the time of puberty all the many individual structures living in the astral body slip into the physical organs, as it were, primarily into those which are situated above the diaphragm (that is not quite exact but approximately so). Wonderful structures, radiantly present in the astral body in the first days of life, gradually slip into the brain and also penetrate the sense organs. Other structures slip into the organs of breathing, yet others into the heart and through the heart into the arteries. They do not slip directly into the stomach; but through the arteries they spread into the abdominal organs. Gradually, one sees the whole astral body, which man brings with him into physical existence through birth, dive down into the organs. The astral body slips, as it were, into the organs. One could express it by saying that by the time we reach adulthood our organs have imprisoned within them the individual structures of our astral body. This may sound strange to ordinary consciousness but it corresponds absolutely to the reality. It also provides a deeper knowledge of the human organs. One cannot fully understand the human organs unless one understands the astral body that man brings with him. One must know that each individual organ, in a certain sense, harbors within it an astral inheritance, just as the first etheric heart is an inheritance.

Gradually, the inherited astral is completely permeated by what man brings with him as his astral body. This astral body dives down, bit by bit, into the physical and etheric organs. The heart is as it were an exception. Here, too, the astral dives down; but in the heart, not only the astral process, but the etheric, too, is concentrated. This is also the reason why the heart is such a uniquely important organ for man.

The astral body becomes ever more indefinite because it sends the distinct structures it brought over from another life through birth into the physical organs in which they become confined. This causes the astral body to become more or less like a cloud. But the interesting thing is that while, on the one hand, the astral body becomes cloud-like, on the other, new differentiations enter in, slowly at first, but from puberty onwards quite regularly.

When a baby kicks with its little legs this is not particularly noticeable in the astral body. True, the effects are there but the differentiations which the astral body brought with it are so strong that the following occurs: Let this be the astral body with its wonderful structures (yellow). (This sketch is, of course, merely an indication, but it does illustrate the reality.) These structures gradually disappear; they slip into the physical organs and the astral body becomes ever more cloud-like. But, as I said, when the baby kicks, all kinds of effects are to be seen in the astral body. They

impinge upon the structures within it and from these the effects are reflected and disappear (red). It is comparable with making an impression on an elastic ball—the ball at once recovers its shape. No matter how forcefully the child kicks, while it does make impressions in the astral body they do not last. However, more and more is retained in the astral body in proportion to the child's learning to speak and form mental pictures which are retained in memory. To the extent that the child speaks and develops memory, to that extent less and less is thrown back. Rather does one see how the movements which the child now makes—no longer kicking, but reasonable movements with arms and legs and so on—are retained in the astral body. Indeed, an extraordinary amount can be inscribed in the astral body.

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At forty-five practically all movements have left their traces in the astral body and much else besides, as we shall see. The astral body will by that time have taken up much of what has happened since the person, as a child, learned to speak and to think and the astral body's own configuration dissolved. Therefore, the wonderful structure, which the astral body of the child presents, gradually becomes undifferentiated; though not completely so, as its content disappears into the organs. Into this undifferentiated structure all the movements we make with our arms and legs are inscribed. And so, too, are the actions resulting from these movements. For example, when we guide a pen in writing, all that comes about in the external world through this action is inscribed. When we chop wood, or we give someone a box on the ear, all is inscribed into the astral body. Even when we do not do something ourselves but instruct somebody else to do it, this too is inscribed. In the latter case it happens through the relation that exists between the content of our words and the deed. In short, the whole of man's activity which finds expression in the external world is inscribed into the astral body (red in yellow). Thus, our astral body becomes differentiated in the most varied manner through our human activity. As already mentioned, this begins when the child learns to speak, endowing its speech with thoughts. Those concepts which the child receives but cannot later remember are not so inscribed. It begins only at the time to which our ordinary memory reaches back in later life. From then on practically everything a man does become inscribed in his astral body.

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The strange thing is that what is thus inscribed has a tendency to meet inwardly just as the rays in the ether body meet in the etheric heart. All human deeds also meet there. This coming together is due to an outside cause. As human beings we must, right from childhood, engage in some activity. All this activity expresses itself as indicated throughout the astral body; but there is a constant resistance to its being inscribed. The influence on the organism cannot always take full effect in the upper part (upper part in drawing). It meets resistance everywhere in this part and is pushed down. Whatever we do with the help of our physical organs has a tendency to stream upwards to the head. But the human organization prevents this from happening by holding it back. This causes the influences to collect together and form a kind of astral center (red).

This, again, is clearly developed at the time of puberty, so that at the same place where our own—not the inherited- etheric heart formed itself we have also an astral structure which centralizes all our deeds. Thus, from puberty a central organ is created wherein all our doing, all our human activity is centered. In the same region where man has his heart the sum total of all his activity is centralized, but in this case neither physically nor etherically, but astrally. The significant thing is that at the onset of puberty—the astral process coincides only approximately with the physical process—man's etheric heart is so far prepared that it can take into itself the forces which develop from our activity in the external world. Thus, to describe what actually occurs one could say: From puberty onwards, the totality of man's actions pours, via the astral body, into the etheric heart—i.e., into the organ which is an image of the whole cosmos.

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This is a phenomenon of extreme significance. When you think about it you will realize that it amounts to an interconnection of man's earthly deeds with the cosmos. You have in the heart, as far as the etheric world is concerned, a whole cosmos drawn together, and, at the same time, as far as the astral world is concerned, the totality of man's activity drawn together. This is where the cosmos and its processes join with man's karma. Only in the region of the heart is there such a close correspondence between the astral and etheric bodies and man's organism. The reality is that the ether body which man brings through birth is an image of the whole cosmos; and this essence of the

cosmos within him permeates itself with all his deeds. This flowing into one another in mutual permeation provides the opportunity for human actions continually to be inserted into the essence of the cosmic images.

When man goes through the portal of death and lays aside his physical and etheric bodies, this etheric-astral structure—within which the physical heart, as it were, swims—contains all that which man takes with him into his further soul-spiritual life. Because within the heart, in the etheric body, the substance of the whole cosmos is drawn together, man is able, as he grows spiritually larger and larger, to hand over to the cosmos his entire karma. The etheric structure, which is an essence of the cosmos drawn together in the heart, now returns to the cosmos. The human being expands into the whole cosmos and is received into the soul-world. He then continues his passage through what I described in my book Theosophy as the Soul World and Spirit Land.

When we observe the human organization in its becoming we have to say: In the region of the heart the cosmic and the earthly come together. They form a union in such a way that the configuration of the cosmos is taken into the etheric heart and there it prepares to receive all our deeds. Then when we go through the gate of death and enter a new cosmic existence, we take with us the outcome of this intimate union of the etheric and our human actions.

This is, in fact, a concrete description of how man lives his way into his physical body and how he is able to withdraw from it again through the fact that his deeds give him the force to hold together what he formed out of the essence of the cosmos.

The physical body is built up within the physical-earthly realm through heredity—i.e., through embryonic forces. With this unites that which man brings down from the spiritual world after having drawn together the ether body. This T,' which has gone through many earth-lives and has a certain development behind it, lives within that wonderful structure he has brought with him as his astral body. His T has a certain sympathy for the structures that exist in the astral body. When they slip into the organs of the physical body as described, the `I' retains this inner sympathy which now extends to the organs. (The word `sympathy' denotes the concrete reality.) The `I' expands more and more within the organs and takes possession of them. Indeed, the `I' has already in earliest childhood a relation to the organs; however, at that time the hereditary conditions are present, as I explained, and the relation is, in consequence, an external one.

Gradually the `I' and astral body slip into the organs of the physical body. This occurs as follows: To begin with the `I' has a somewhat separate existence along the bloodstream within the child, then it begins to unite ever more closely with the blood circulation until at puberty they are fully united. Thus, while you have an astral structure surrounding the etheric and physical heart (see drawing, page 94, orange), the `I' takes another path to the heart. Let us say the `I' slips into the lungs—it will then, through the veins leading to the heart, gradually approach the latter. The `I' follows the circulating blood, becoming more and more intimately united with it, so that here again, via the detour of the ego forces circling with the bloodstream, the `I' enters the structure formed by the union of the etheric and astral heart. This structure alone makes it possible for the cosmic-etheric to grow together with a human astral. I said earlier that the astral body gradually comes to contain an extraordinary amount because all our deeds are inscribed in it. But more than that is inscribed. Through the fact that the `I' has sympathy for everything concerning the astral body, our intentions—that is, the ideas on which we base our actions—also become inscribed. In this way human karma unites with cosmic laws.

Of all this taking place in man's inner being, practically nothing is known nowadays. What is known are the results of man's physical actions which are judged according to laws of nature; also known are his moral actions which are judged according to laws of morality. But man's moral and physical deeds come together in the heart. Therefore, these two things, which for man today go on side by side independently of each other, are discovered to be a unity when one learns to understand the whole configuration of the human heart. That is to say, when we understand what takes place in the heart, albeit in a much more hidden way, it is comparable to what occurs openly at the change of teeth.

We inherit our first teeth and form the second ones out of the organism. The first fall out, the second remain. The first have an inherent tendency to decay; even if they did not fall out they would not last. The reason that the second teeth sometimes decay is due to external circumstances; to these belong the external causes within the organism itself. Hidden from sight, at the onset of puberty, our inherited etheric heart succumbs to forces of decay and we acquire a kind of permanent etheric heart. Only the permanent etheric heart is fully adapted to take into itself our deeds. Therefore, it makes a great difference whether a person dies before or after puberty. When a person dies before puberty he has only the tendency to bequeath his earthly deeds to karma. Separate earthly deeds may be incorporated in their karma when children die before puberty, but these will be indefinite and changeable. The real building up of karma only begins from the moment when the astral heart has fully penetrated the etheric heart, so that the two form a unity. One could say that this union constitutes, as it were, an organism for the forming of karma; what has thus united and contracted within man, becomes after death ever more cosmic. In the next earthly life, it is again incorporated into the human being. Thus, something is incorporated in us out of the cosmos which retains the tendency to hand over our deeds after death to the cosmos. The laws that shape our karma are effective within the cosmos so that at the start of a next earthly life we carry into it the consequences of what the cosmos made of our deeds.

I spoke yesterday about how man's etheric and astral bodies develop. Today I want to indicate how during different epochs man attained knowledge of this kind. A description of how higher knowledge is attained provides insight into man's being from various aspects and also into his relation to the world. It is by no means necessary that everyone should be able to repeat these practices, but a description of how higher knowledge was arrived at in the past and how it is arrived at now will throw light on matters of vital importance for every individual.

The paths by which in very remote times men acquired supersensible knowledge were very different from those appropriate today. I have often drawn attention to the fact that in ancient times man possessed a faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance went through many different phases to become what may be described as modern man's consciousness of the world, a consciousness out of which a higher one can be developed. In my books Occult Science—an Outline and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment and other writings is described how man at present, when he understands his own times, can attain higher knowledge. Today I want to describe these things from a certain aspect with reference to what was said yesterday.

When we look back to the spiritual strivings of man in a very distant past we find among others the one practiced in the Orient within the culture known later as the Ancient Indian civilization. Many people nowadays are returning to what was practiced then because they cannot rouse themselves to the realization that, in order to penetrate into supersensible worlds, every epoch must follow its own appropriate path.

On previous occasions I have mentioned that, from the masses of human beings who lived during the period described in my Occult Sciences as the Ancient Indian epoch, certain individuals developed, in a manner suited to that age, inner forces which led them upwards into supersensible worlds. One of the methods followed is known as the path of Yoga; I have spoken about this path on other occasions.

The path of Yoga can best be understood if we first consider the people in general from among whom the Yogi emerged—that is to say, the one who sets out to attain higher knowledge by this path. In those remote ages of mankind's evolution, human consciousness in general was very different from what it is today. In the present age we look out into the world and through our senses perceive colors, sounds and so on. We seek for laws of nature prevailing in the physical world and we are conscious that if we attempt to experience a spirit-soul content in the external world then we add something to it in our imagination. It was different in the remote past for then, as we know, man saw more in the external world than ordinary man sees today. In lightning and thunder, in every star, in the beings of the different kingdoms of nature, the men of those times beheld spirit and soul. They perceived spiritual beings, even if of a lower kind, in all solid matter, in everything fluid or aeriform. Today's intellectual outlook declares that these men of old, through their fantasy, dreamed all kinds of spiritual and psychical qualities into the world around them. This is known as animism.

We little understand the nature of man, especially that of man in ancient times, if we believe that the spiritual beings manifesting in lightning and thunder, in springs and rivers, in wind and weather, were dream-creations woven into nature by fantasy. This was by no means the case. Just as we perceive red or blue and hear C sharp or G, so those men of old beheld realities of spirit and soul in external objects. For them it was as natural to see spirit-soul entities as it is for us to see colors and so on. However, there was another aspect to this way of experiencing the world; namely, that man in those days had no clear consciousness of self.

The clear self-consciousness which permeates the normal human being today did not yet exist. Though he did not express it, man did not, as it were, distinguish himself from the external world. He felt as my hand would feel were it conscious: that it is not independent, but an integral part of the organism. Men felt themselves to be members of the whole universe. They had no definite consciousness of their own being as separate from the surrounding world. Suppose a man of that time was walking along a river bank. If someone today walks along a river bank downstream he, as modern, clever man, feels his legs stepping out in that direction and this has nothing whatever to do with the river. In general, the man of old did not feel like that. When he walked along a river downstream, as was natural for him to do, he was conscious of the spiritual beings connected with the water of the river flowing in that direction. Just as a swimmer today feels himself carried along by the water—that is, by something material—so the man of old felt himself guided downstream by something spiritual. That is only an example chosen at random. In all his experiences of the external world man felt himself to be supported and impelled by Gods of wind, river, and all surrounding nature. He felt the elements of nature within himself. Today this feeling of being at one with nature is lost. In its place man has acquired a strong feeling of his independence, of his individual `I'.

The Yogi rose above the level of the masses whose experiences were as described. He carried out certain exercises of which I shall speak. These exercises were good and suitable for the nature of humanity in ancient times; they have later fallen into decadence and have mainly been used for harmful ends. I have often referred to these Yoga breathing exercises. Therefore, what I am now describing was a method for the attainment of higher worlds that was suitable and right only for man in a very ancient oriental civilization.

In ordinary life breathing functions unconsciously. We breathe in, hold the breath and exhale; this becomes a conscious process only if in some way we are not in good health. In ordinary life breathing remains for the most part in unconscious process. But during certain periods of his exercises the Yogi transformed his breathing into a conscious inner experience. This he did by timing the inhaling, holding and exhaling of the breath differently and so altered the whole rhythm of the normal breathing. In this way the breathing process became conscious. The Yogi projected himself, as it were, into his breathing. He felt himself one with the indrawn breath, with the spreading of the breath through the body and with the exhaled breath. In this way he was drawn with his whole soul into the breath.

In order to understand what is achieved by this let us look at what happens when we breathe: When we inhale, the breath is driven into the organism, up through the spinal cord, into the brain; from there it spreads out into the system of nerves and senses. Therefore, when we think, we by no means depend only on our senses and nervous system as instruments of thinking. The breathing process pulsates and beats through them with its perpetual rhythm. We never think without this whole process taking place, of which we are normally unaware because the breathing remains unconscious.

The Yogi, by altering the rhythm of the breath, drew it consciously into the process of nerves and senses. Because the altered breathing caused the air to billow and whirl through the brain and nerve-sense-system the result was an inner experience of their function when combined with the air. As a consequence, he also experienced a soul element in his thinking within the rhythm of breathing.

Something extraordinary happened to the Yogi by this means. The process of thinking, which he had hardly felt as a function of the head at all, streamed into his whole organism. He did not merely think but felt the thought as a little live creature that ran through the whole process of breathing which he had artificially induced.

Thus, the Yogi did not feel thinking to be merely a shadowy, logical process, he rather felt how thinking followed the breath. When he inhaled he felt he was taking something from the external world into himself which he then let flow with the breath into his thinking. With his thoughts he took hold, as it were, of that which he had inhaled with the air and spread through his whole organism. The result of this was that there arose in the Yogi an enhanced feeling of his own T, an intensified feeling of self. He felt his thinking pervading his whole being. This made him aware of his thinking particularly in the rhythmic air-current within him.

This had a very definite effect upon the Yogi. When man today is aware of himself within the physical world he quite rightly does not pay attention to his thinking as such. His senses inform him about the external world and when he looks back upon himself he perceives at least a portion of his own being. This gives him a picture of how man is placed within the world between birth and death. The Yogi radiated the ensouled thoughts into the breath. This soul-filled thinking pulsated through his inner being with the result that there arose in him an enhanced feeling of selfhood. But in this experience, he did not feel himself living between birth and death in the physical world surrounded by nature. He felt carried back in memory to the time before he descended to the earth; that is, to the time when he was a spiritual-soul being in a spiritual-soul world.

In normal consciousness today, man can reawaken experiences of the past. He may, for instance, have a vivid recollection of some event that took place ten years ago in a wood perhaps; he distinctly remembers all the details, the whole mood and setting. In just the same way did the Yogi, through his changed breathing, feel himself drawn back into the wood and atmosphere, into the whole setting of a spiritual-soul world in which he had been as a spiritual-soul being. There he felt quite differently about the world than he felt in his normal consciousness. The result of the changed relationship of the now awakened selfhood to the whole universe, gave rise to the wonderful poems of which the Bhagavad Gita is a beautiful example.

In the Bhagavad Gita we read wonderful descriptions of how the human soul, immersed in the phenomena of nature, partakes of every secret, steeping itself in the mysteries of the world. These descriptions are all reproductions of memories, called up by means of Yoga breathing, of the soul—when it was as yet only soul—and lived within a spiritual universe. In order to read the ancient writings such as the Bhagavad Gita with understanding one must be conscious of what speaks through them. The soul, with enhanced feeling of selfhood, is transported into its past in the spiritual world and is relating what Krishna and other ancient initiates had experienced there through their heightened self-consciousness.

Thus, it can be said that those sages of old rose to a higher level of consciousness than that of the masses of people. The initiates strictly isolated the “self' from the external world. This came about, not for any egoistical reason, but as a result of the changed process of breathing in which the soul, as it were, dove down into the rhythm of the inner air current. By this method a path into the spiritual world was sought in ancient times.

Later this path underwent modifications. In very ancient times the Yogi felt how in the transformed breathing his thoughts were submerged in the currents of breath, running through them like little snakes. He felt himself to be part of a weaving cosmic life and this feeling expressed itself in certain words and sayings. It was noticeable that one spoke differently when these experiences were revealed through speech. What I have described was gradually felt less intensely within the breath; it no longer remained within the breathing process itself. Rather were the words breathed out and formed of themselves rhythmic speech. Thus, the changed breathing led, through the words carried by the breath, to the creation of mantras; whereas, formerly, the process and experience of breathing was the most essential, now these poetic sayings assumed primary importance. They passed over into tradition, into the historical consciousness of man and subsequently gave birth later to rhythm, meter, and so on, in poetry.

The basic laws of speech which are to be seen, for instance, in the pentameter¹ and hexameter² as used in ancient Greece, point back to what had once long before been an experience of the breathing process. An experience which transported man from the world in which he was living between birth and death into a world of spirit and soul.

This is not the path modern man should seek into the spiritual world. He must rise into higher worlds, not by the detour of the breath, but along the more inward path of thinking itself. The right path for man today is to transform, in meditation and concentration, the otherwise merely logical connection between thoughts into something of a musical nature. Meditation today is to begin always with an experience in thought, an experience of the transition from one thought into another, from one mental picture into another.

While the Yogi in Ancient India passed from one kind of breathing into another, man today must attempt to project himself into a living experience of, for example, the color red. Thus, he remains within the realm of thought. He must then do the same with blue and experience the rhythm: red- blue; blue-red; red-blue and so on, which is a thought- rhythm. But it is not a rhythm which can be found in a logical thought sequence; it is a thinking that is much more alive.

If one perseveres for a sufficiently long time with exercises of this kind—the Yogi, too, was obliged to carry out his exercises for a very long time—and really experiences the inner qualitative change, and the swing and rhythm of: red- blue; blue-red; light-dark; dark-light—in short, if indications such as those given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds are followed, the exact opposite is achieved to that of the Yogi in ancient times. He blended thinking with breathing, thus turning the two processes into one. The aim today is to dissolve the last connection between the two, which, in any case, is unconscious. The process by which, in ordinary consciousness, we think, and form concepts of our natural environment is not only connected with nerves and senses: a stream of breath is always flowing through this process. While we think, the breath continually pulsates through the nerves and senses.

All modern exercises in meditation aim at entirely separating thinking from breathing. Thinking is not on this account torn out of rhythm, because as thinking becomes separated from the inner rhythm of breath it is gradually linked to an external rhythm. By setting thinking free from the breath we let it stream, as it were, into the rhythm of the external world. The Yogi turned back into his own rhythm. Today man must return to the rhythm of the external world. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you will find that one of the first exercises shows how to contemplate the germination and growth of a plant. This meditation works toward separating thinking from the breath and to let it dive down into the growth forces of the plant itself.

Thinking must pass over into the rhythm pervading the external world. The moment thinking really becomes free of the bodily functions, the moment it has torn itself away from breathing and gradually united with the external rhythm, it dives down—not into the physical qualities of things—but into the spiritual within individual objects.

We look at a plant: it is green and its blossoms are red. This our eyes tell us, and our intellect confirms the fact. This is the reaction of ordinary consciousness. We develop a different consciousness when we separate thinking from breathing and connect it with what exists outside. This thinking yearns to vibrate with the plant as it grows and unfolds its blossoms. This thinking follows how in a rose, for example, green passes over into red. Thinking vibrates within the spiritual which lies at the foundation of each single object in the external world.

This is how modern meditation differs from the Yoga exercises practiced in very ancient times. There are naturally many intermediate stages; I chose these two extremes. The Yogi sank down, as it were, into his own breathing process; he sank into his own self. This caused him to experience this self as if in memory; he remembered what he had been before he came down to earth. We, on the other hand, pass out of the physical body with our soul and unite ourselves with what lives spiritually in the rhythms of the external world. In this way we behold directly what we were before we descended to the earth. This is the consequence of gradually entering into the external rhythm.

To illustrate the difference, I will draw it schematically: Let this be the Yogi (first drawing, white lines). He developed a strong feeling of his `I' (red). This enabled him to remember what he was, within a soul-spiritual environment, before he descended to earth (blue). He went back on the stream of memory.

Let this be the modern man who has attained supersensible knowledge (second drawing, white lines). He develops a process that enables him to go out of his body (blue) and live within the rhythm of the external world and behold directly, as an external object (red), what he was before he descended to earth.

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Thus, knowledge of one's existence before birth was in ancient times in the nature of memory, whereas at the present time a rightly developed cognition of pre-birth existence is a direct beholding of what one was (red). That is the difference.

That was one of the methods by which the Yogi attained insight into the spiritual world. Another was by adopting certain positions of the body. One exercise was to hold the arms outstretched for a long time; or he took up a certain position by crossing his legs and sitting on them and so on. What was attained by this?

He attained the possibility to perceive what can be perceived with those senses which today are not even recognized as senses. We know that man has not just five senses but twelve. I have often spoken about this—for example, apart from the usual five he has a sense of balance through which he perceives the equilibrium of his body so that he does not fall to the right or left, or backwards or forwards. Just as we perceive colors, so we must perceive our own balance or we should slip and fall in all directions. Someone who is intoxicated or feels faint loses his balance just because he fails to perceive his equilibrium. In order to make himself conscious of this sense of balance, the Yogi adopted certain bodily postures. This developed in him a strong, subtle sense of direction. We speak of above and below, of right and left, of back and front as if they were all the same. The Yogi became intensely conscious of their differences by keeping his body for lengthy periods in certain postures. In this way he developed a subtle awareness of the other senses of which I have spoken. When these are experienced they are found to have a much more spiritual character than the five familiar senses. Through them the Yogi attained perception of the directions of space.

This faculty must be regained but along a different path. For reasons which I will explain more fully on another occasion the old Yoga exercises are unsuitable today. However, we can attain an experience of the qualitative differences within the directions of space by undertaking such exercises in thinking as I have described. They separate thinking from breathing and bring it into the rhythm of the external world. We then experience, for instance, what it signifies that the spine of animals lies in the horizontal direction whereas in man it is vertical. It is well known that the magnetic needle always points north-south. Therefore, on earth the north-south direction means something special, for the manifestation of magnetic forces, since the magnetic needle, which is otherwise neutral, reacts to it. Thus, the north-south direction has a special quality. By penetrating into the external rhythm with our thoughts we learn to recognize what it means when the spine is horizontal or vertical. We remain in the realm of thought and learn through thinking itself. The Indian Yogi learned it, too, but by crossing his legs and sitting on them and by keeping his arms raised for a long time. Thus, he learned from the bodily postures the significance of the invisible directions of space. Space is not haphazard but organized in such a way that the various directions have different values.

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The exercises that have been described which lead man into higher worlds are mainly exercises in the realm of thought. There are exercises of an opposite kind; among them are the various methods employed in asceticism. One such method is the suppression of the normal function of the physical body through inflicting pain and all kinds of deprivations. It is practically impossible for modern man to form an adequate idea of the extremes to which such exercises were carried by ascetics in former times. Modern man prefers to be as firmly as possible within his physical body. But whenever the ascetic suppressed some function of the body by means of physical pain, his spirit-soul nature drew out of his organism.

In normal life the soul and spirit of man are connected with the physical organism between birth and death in accordance with the human organization as a whole. When the bodily functions are suppressed, through ascetic practices, something occurs which is similar to when today someone sustains an injury. When one knows how modern man generally reacts to some slight hurt then it is clear that there is a great difference between that and what the ascetic endured just to make his soul organism free. The ascetic experienced the spiritual world with the soul organism that had been driven out through such practices. Nearly all of the earlier great religious revelations originated in this way.

Those concerned with modern religious life make light of these things. They declare the great religious revelations to be poetic fiction, maintaining that whatever insight man acquires should not cause pain. The seekers of religious truths in former times did not take this view. They were quite clear about the fact that when man is completely bound up with his organism, as of necessity he must be for his earthly tasks—the gain was not to portray unworldliness as an ideal—then he cannot have spiritual experiences. The ascetics in former times sought spiritual experiences by suppressing bodily life and even inflicting pain. Whenever pain drove out spirit and soul from a bodily member that part which was driven out experienced the spiritual world. The great religions have not been attained without pain but rather through great suffering.

These fruits of human strivings are today accepted through faith. Faith and knowledge are neatly separated. Knowledge of the external world, in the form of natural science, is acquired through the head. As the head has a thick skull, this causes no pain, especially as this knowledge consists of extremely abstract concepts. On the other hand, those concepts handed down as venerable traditions are accepted simply through faith. It must be said though, that basically, knowledge and faith have in common the fact that today one is willing to accept only knowledge that can be acquired painlessly, and faith does not hurt any more than science, though its knowledge was originally attained through great pain and suffering.

Despite all that has been said, the way of the ascetic cannot be the way for present-day man. On some other occasion we will consider the reason. In our time it is perfectly possible, through inner self-discipline and training of the will, to take in hand one's development which is otherwise left to education and the experiences of life. One's personality can be strengthened by training the will. One can, for example, say to oneself: Within five years I shall acquire a new habit and during that time I shall concentrate my whole will power upon achieving it. When the will is trained in this way, for the sake of inner perfection, then one loosens, without ascetic practices, the soul-spiritual from the bodily nature. The first discovery, when such training of the will is undertaken for the sake of self-improvement, is that a continuous effort is needed. Every day something must be achieved inwardly. Often it is only a slight accomplishment, but it must be pursued with iron determination and unwavering will. It is often the case that if, for example, such an exercise as concentration each morning upon a certain thought is recommended, people will embark upon it with burning enthusiasm. But it does not last, the will slackens and the exercise becomes mechanical because the strong energy which is increasingly required is not forthcoming. The first resistance to be overcome is one's own lethargy; then comes the other resistance, which is of an objective nature, and it is as if one had to fight one's way through a dense thicket. After that, one reaches the experience that hurts because thinking, which has gradually become strong and alive, has found its way into the rhythm of the external world and begins to perceive the direction of space—in fact, perceive what is alive. One discovers that higher knowledge is attainable only through pain.

I can well picture people today who want to embark upon the path leading to higher worlds. They make a start and the first delicate spiritual cognition appears. This causes pain, so they say they are ill; when something causes pain one must be ill. However, the attainment of higher knowledge will often be accompanied by great pain, yet one is not ill. No doubt it is more comfortable to seek a cure than continue the path. Attempts must be made to overcome this pain of the soul which becomes ever greater as one advances. While it is easier to have something prescribed than continue the exercises, no higher knowledge is attained that way. Provided the body is robust and fit for dealing with external life, as is normally the case at the present time, this immersion in pain and suffering becomes purely an inner soul path in which the body does not participate. When man allows knowledge to approach him in this way, then the pain he endures signifies that he is attaining those regions of spiritual life out of which the great religions were born. The great religious truths which fill our soul with awe, conveying as they do those lofty regions in which, for example, our immortality is rooted, cannot be reached without painful inner experiences.

Once attained, these truths can be passed on to the general consciousness of mankind. Nowadays they are opposed simply because people sense that they are not as easy to attain as they would like. I spoke yesterday about how the changed astral body unites, within the heart, with the ether body. I also explained how all our actions, even those we cause others to carry out, are inscribed there. Just think how oppressive such a thought would be to many people. The great truths do indeed demand an inner courage of soul which enables it to say to itself: If you could experience these things you must be prepared to attain knowledge of them through deprivation and suffering. I am not saying this to discourage anyone, but because it is the truth. It may be discouraging for many, but what good would it do to tell people that they can enter higher worlds in perfect comfort when it is not the case. The attainment of higher worlds demands the overcoming of suffering.

I have tried today, my dear friends, to describe to you how it is possible to advance to man's true being. The human soul and spirit lie deeply hidden within him and must be attained. Even if someone does not set out himself on that conquest he must know about what lies hidden within him. He must know about such things as those described yesterday and how they run their course. This knowledge is a demand of our age. These things can be discovered only along such paths as those I have indicated again today by describing how they were trodden in former times and how they must be trodden now.

Tomorrow we shall link together the considerations of yesterday and those of today and in so doing penetrate further into the spiritual world.

• 1. Pentameter: in prosody, a line scanning in five feet.
• 2. Hexameter: Greek measure of six—in poetry, line scanning in six feet.

Today I want to bring forward certain matters which are connected with what was spoken about yesterday and the day before, matters which concern mankind's evolution insofar as this evolution is dependent upon man's relationship with certain spiritual powers during the earth's future.

The day before yesterday we saw how man's inner being appears to spiritual examination. We saw how it is possible, through exact observation of this kind, to gain insight into the fact that within the physical-soul-spiritual being of man something comes together which, in a certain sense, belongs to the external world, insofar as this world consists of etheric forces and beings. Man draws together these forces to form his ether body as he descends to earthly life. We saw also that with this entity, consisting of forces from the external etheric world, there unites the effect of man's earthly deeds, of everything he causes to happen; in short, his karma.

Yesterday we saw how, during the different epochs of human evolution, man not only sought but actually did, by various methods, gain insight into the spiritual world.

I have often mentioned that a new stream of spirituality is now ready to pour into man's earthly existence. The present forms a link in mankind's evolution between an era of mainly intellectual development—which began in the first third of the 15th Century and has now practically run its course—and a future devoted to the spiritual. The most important task for mankind in the era of intellectuality was the development of reason through the investigation of external nature and the development of technology.

In this direction great and impressive results have been accomplished in recent centuries. However, it must be said that the intellect has begun to lose its creativity, though we still live with its heritage. The most creative period was from the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno right up to the 19th Century. Especially in Western civilization the greatest intellectual achievements have been attained in recent centuries.

It is obvious, even to an external unbiased observation, that the intellect has lost some of its creative power. In general, mankind has no longer the same enthusiasm for intellectual accomplishments. Yet the practice of centuries continues through a certain cultural inertia. Thoughts run along the old grooves, but the intellect brings nothing new of real importance to the fore. This is particularly noticeable in our young people. Not so long ago it was a real pleasure to listen to a young person who had studied some subject. It may not have applied to everyone but certainly to those who had achieved something; one was eager to hear what they had to say, and it was the same everywhere in Western academic circles. But a change has come about in the last few decades; when a young person, fresh from university, speaks, one is no longer curious about what he will say next. One is not curious because one knows it already; it comes out automatically; it is as if the brain itself has lost its vitality. One gets the feeling that the activity of the intellect has slid down from the head to some deeper region. That human intelligence has become something mechanical which no longer springs from the region of the head must be obvious even to external observation. This situation has come about because intelligence was originally a natural endowment which mankind was predestined to develop predominantly between the 15th and 19th Centuries.

However, in order to fructify the developed intellect, a stream of spirituality, from higher regions of world existence, now seeks entry into the earthly life of mankind.

Whether this will happen depends upon man opening his heart and soul to what thus seeks entry, through many doors, as it were, into the earthly world from the spiritual world. It will be necessary for man not only to become conscious once more of the spiritual in all nature, but able to perceive it.

Consider how in the older civilizations, like those described yesterday, mankind in general perceived—in all the kingdoms of nature, in every star, in every moving cloud, in thunder and lightning—spirit and soul. On the background of this general consciousness the Yoga exercises evolved. As I explained yesterday, the Yogi attempted to penetrate to his own self. Through inner exercises he sought to attain what today is taken for granted because we are born with it: consciousness of the `I', the feeling of selfhood. This the Yogi had first to develop in himself.

But, my dear friends, it would be a great mistake to compare the ordinary consciousness of self, that we have today, with that of the Yogi. It makes a difference whether something is achieved through one's own human effort or whether one simply has it. When, as was the case with the Yogi, one first had to struggle to attain consciousness of self, then, through the inner effort one was transported into the great universal laws; one participated in world processes. This is not the case when one is simply placed into the sphere of self-consciousness. To belong willy-nilly to a certain level of human evolution is not the same as attaining that level through inner exercises.

You will realize from what was said yesterday that mankind must gradually acquire knowledge in a different way; he must set his thought processes free from the breathing process. As I explained yesterday, this has the effect that thinking, by no longer being bound up with the subject, is able to unite itself with the rhythm of the external cosmos. We must go with our thinking out of ourselves into the external world, whereas the Yogi crept into his inner being, by hitching together, as it were, the systems of thought and breath. In so doing he identified himself with what his spirit-soul nature was able to experience on the waves of the inner rhythm of breathing. By contrast, we must give ourselves up to the world in order to participate in all the various rhythms which go through the mineral, plant, animal and human worlds right up to the realm of the Hierarchies. We must enter into, and live within , the rhythm of external existence. In this way mankind will again gain insight into that spiritual foundation of nature which external knowledge does not reach.

The sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology which are pursued nowadays provide mankind with a vast amount of popular information. What they actually do is explain how sense observation, interpreted by the intellect, sees the world. But the time has come when mankind must rediscover what lies behind the knowledge provided by external observation and intellectual interpretation.

If one has in mind their physical aspect only, when speaking about the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, then it makes no difference whether one uses these terms or prefers the more recent ones of solid, liquid, aeriform bodies and conditions of heat. When they are referred to today all one has in mind is how the physical substances within them are either combined or mixed, or else separated. However, it must be stressed that everything of a solid, earthen nature has as its foundation an elementary spirituality. Today's “enlightened” people may laugh when reminded that older folks used to see gnomes in everything earthy. However, when knowledge is no longer obtained by means of combining abstract, logical thoughts, but by uniting ourselves through our thinking with the world rhythm, then we shall rediscover the elemental beings contained in everything of a solid earthy nature. The outstanding characteristic of these elemental begins, dwelling in solid earth, is cleverness, cunning, slyness, in fact, a one-sidedly developed intellect.

Thus, in the solid earth element live spiritual beings of an elementary kind who are very much more clever than human beings. Even a person of extreme astuteness intellectually is no match for these beings who, as supersensible entities, live in the realm of solid earth. One could say that just as man consists of flesh and blood, so do these beings consist of cleverness, of super cleverness. Another of their peculiarities is that they prefer to live in multitudes. When one is in a position to find out how many of these astute beings a suitable earthy object contains, then one can squeeze them out as if from a sponge—in a spiritual sense, of course—and out they flow in an endless stream. But counting these gnome-like beings is a difficult task. If one tries to count them as one would cherries or eggs—i.e., one, two, three- one soon notices that they will not be counted that way. When one has reached say three, then there are suddenly a lot more. So counting them as one would on the physical plane is no use; nor is any other form of calculation, for they immediately play tricks on you. Suppose one put two on one side and two on the other in order to say that twice two makes four. One would be wrong, for through their super cunning they would appear as seven or eight, making out that two times two makes eight, or something like that. Thus, these beings defy being counted. It must be acknowledged that the intellect, developed by man in recent times, is very impressive. But these super-intelligent beings show a mastery over the intellect even where it is merely a question of numbers.

The elemental beings dwelling in the fluid element—i.e., in water—have particularly developed what is, in man, his life of feeling and sensitivity. In this respect we humans are really backward compared with these beings. We may take pleasure in a red rose or feel enchanted when trees unfold their foliage. But these beings go with the fluid which as sap rises in the rosebush and participate in the redness of the blossoms. In an intimate way they share feelingly in the world processes. We remain outside of things with our sensitivity, whereas they are right inside the process themselves and share in them.

The elemental beings of air have developed to a high degree what lives in the human will. It is splendid that the analytical chemist discovers the atomic weight of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and that he finds out how hydrogen and oxygen combine into water to be further analyzed or else how chloride of lime is analyzed, and so on. But elemental spiritual beings are active behind all this and it is essential that man should acquire insight into their characteristics. During the period in which man developed the intellect—as already mentioned, this was from the first third of the 15th Century to the end of the 19th Century—these elemental beings were pushed to one side, as it were. While the intellect played a creative part in man's cultural life there was not much they could do; and because the elemental beings dwelling in solids had, in a certain sense, to hold back and leave the intellect to man, they also held back the beings of water and air. But now we live at a time when the intellect has begun to decline within the civilized world; it is falling into decadence. If mankind does not become receptive to what streams towards him from the spiritual world then the result of this dullness on man's part will be—and there are signs already of it happening—that these elemental beings will gather together to form a kind of union and place themselves under the leadership of the supreme intellectual power: Ahriman.

If it should happen that the elemental beings come under the guidance of Ahriman with the clear intention of opposing human evolution, then mankind would be unable to make further progress. The possibility would arise that the Ahrimanic powers in union with the elemental beings would divert the earth from its intended course. The earth would not continue what is described in my Occult Science Occult Science—an Outline#8212; an Outline as the Saturn-Sun-Moon-Earth evolution. The earth can only become what it was originally intended to become if man, in each epoch, tackles his task rightly.

One can see already how matters stand. Those who have reached a certain age know that formerly one gained insight into another human being's inner thoughts and feelings simply through normal conversation and exchange of ideas. One took it for granted that a person's reason and intellect resided in his head, and what was in the head would be conveyed through the spoken word. There are many people today who no longer take it for granted that reason is located in the head of many of their contemporaries; rather do they assume it to have slid further down. So instead of listening they now analyze. This is just one example from one misunderstood aspect of the whole problem. But I would say that when one starts to psychoanalyze people instead of just letting them talk, then that is, in fact, an admission that reason no longer resides in the head. It is assumed to have slid down into deeper regions of human nature and must be psychoanalyzed to be brought up gain to consciousness. In this age of a declining intellect there are already people who dislike it if one appeals to their intelligence; they prefer to be analyzed. This is because they do not want to participate with the head in what their soul brings to light.

Nothing is achieved by looking at these things merely from an external point of view. To see clearly what is involved they must be considered—as we have just done—in the wider context of world evolution. Certain aspects of psychoanalysis may do some good. There are conditions which formerly were simply accepted but are no longer tolerated and must be cured. However, as so many cures are needed, physical ones do not suffice, so one resorts to psychological ones. Why this should be so must be seen in a wider context.

Superficially judged, there is no point in objecting to all the good reasons and beguiling arguments put forward by psychoanalysts, not even from the wider viewpoint of world evolution. People want to avoid seeing things in their wider context, though it would lead them to the recognition that a spiritual stream is seeking to enter our present civilization to replace the declining intellect.

What we have considered so far amounts to one aspect of what in the future threatens mankind. There is another aspect—just as the lower elements of earth, water and air are inhabited by elemental beings, so are the higher elements of light ether, chemical ether and life ether. However, these beings of the higher elements differ considerably from those of the lower ones. The beings of light, and particularly those of life, do not aim at becoming multitudes. The ones who strive the most to become multitudes are the beings of the earth element. The beings of the etheric element strive rather towards unity. It is difficult to differentiate them from one another; they do not express any individuality and rather strive to amalgamate.

Certain initiates in ancient times, through whom certain teachings of the Old Testament originated, turned their attention particularly towards the etheric elements. The strong tendency of these elements towards unification created an influence which resulted in the strict Monotheism of Judaism.

The religion which is based on the worship of Jehovah originated mainly from a spiritual vision of the realm of the ethers. In this realm live spiritual beings who do not strive to separate from one another and become many individuals. Rather do they strive to grow together and disappear into one another; they seek to become a unity.

If these beings are disregarded by man—i.e., if he does not turn to spiritual knowledge and the insight that what exists up in the sky is not merely the physical sun, but that with the sun's warmth and light ether beings stream down to earth—if man's comprehension stops at the external material aspect, then the possibility exists that these beings will unite with Luciferic powers. In order for the earth to become what it was originally intended to become, man must wake up to the dangers that threaten from both sides—on the one hand, the danger that those beings who dwell in the lower elements will join forces with Ahrimanic powers, and on the other, that the Luciferic powers will unite with those of the higher elements in their striving for unity.

The significance of spiritual knowledge for man's earthly destiny cannot be emphasized too strongly. Unless man draws near to spiritual reality something completely different from what ought to happen will happen to the earth. No matter how far or how deeply our sophisticated sciences of physics and chemistry investigate the material world around us, the fact remains that what is investigated will all disappear along with earth existence itself. In the last resort, chemistry and physics have no value whatever beyond the earth. When the evolution of the earth comes to an end, all mineral substances will turn to dust and dissolve in the cosmos. Only what pertains to the plant, animal, and human world will pass over to the Jupiter existence. Therefore, all the magnificent achievements of these sciences are related only to what is transitory. It is essential that knowledge is attained of that which endures beyond the earth.

As already mentioned, whatever physical laws are discovered, whatever is investigated concerning the atomic weight of individual elements or whatever chemical formulae are produced—all these things are concerned only with what has merely transient significance. Man must grow beyond earth existence through knowledge of the kind of things I have explained. These are matters of great import and significance.

Today I would like to speak about an aspect of Anthroposophy which closely concerns the being of man.

It is obvious that our contact with the world between waking and sleeping is, to begin with, through our senses. We perceive different aspects of the world around us through our various senses. By means of a certain inner soul activity we build up a picture of the world on the basis of our impressions. With this I merely want to indicate how anyone may observe the course and content of his waking state. However, our existence within the world embraces not only the waking state but also that of sleep. While we sleep we are, with our soul being and our `I', outside of our body in a realm which is unknown to ordinary consciousness.

What I have just said is applicable to present-day man in the way his soul life has developed since the 15th Century. I have often indicated the extraordinary importance of this particular period in mankind's evolution.

The question arises: What is our relationship, in our sleeping state, to that realm which is closed at least to our ordinary consciousness? There are difficulties in describing this relationship, especially at this point in mankind's evolution, unless we bear in mind that man has evolved and has gone through a great many different stages. At present, in our so-called civilized age we find, when we consider man's soul life, that he must exert himself considerably when forming concepts and mental pictures. We are often thoughtless when we regard earlier periods of human life which did not have such systems of education as we now find necessary. We are superficial in the way we look at that culture which arose, in ancient times, over in the East, although the human beings were not undergoing education from childhood as is the case nowadays.

In present-day Europe it is practically impossible to imagine how differently education was regarded in the ancient Orient. Yet things were created of an exalted nature, uplifting to heart and mind. One need only think of the Oriental writings such as the Vedas and all that is contained in the wisdom of the Orient. Today everything originating in mental activity is evaluated on the basis of the circumstances of a person's upbringing and education and on what, as a result, he further accomplishes in life. The necessity to be educated and well informed is, in the first place, because each individual today must be able to form his own thoughts about life. Without this ability he would be lost in the modern world. Man has actually not yet come very far in the art of formulating thoughts. It is essential, particularly in the system of education, that progress is made in furthering the art of formulating concepts about the external world.

The necessity for this began already in ancient Greece. In Greece, though strongly influenced by the Orient, arose the first cultural life within Europe. A system of education developed which included a rudimentary cultivation of mental activity. In the Orient no appeal was made to mental effort and this still influenced Greek cultural life; in general, no exertion was made to form one's own mental pictures of external objects. Socrates¹ is rightly admired within Western culture as one of the first to induce people to form their own concepts.

However, it would be quite wrong to conclude that man was obliged to produce his thoughts by his own effort within the cultural life of the West, while there was no life of thought in the Orient. Indeed, a powerful thought life existed and the further we go back in Oriental culture the stronger and the more powerful it was. We find already before the existence of the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy a powerful thought life. As I have often pointed out, the Vedas, the Vedanta philosophy, do not represent the very first stages—which were not written down—of Oriental spiritual life. It had all fallen into decadence two or three millennia ago. People of the Orient today live in the afterglow of a once quite remarkable thought life, but a thought life utterly different from ours. We must exert ourselves—indeed, we have to sweat inwardly—forgive the crude expression, which is meant only figuratively—in order to produce our thoughts, whereas Oriental thought life was inspired. Thoughts and thought combinations arose in the ancient Oriental of their own accord. His picture of the world was inspired in him; he felt that what he thought was bestowed upon him. Inner exertion in combining thoughts was unknown to him. Between waking and sleeping he felt that thoughts were granted him. This colored his whole soul life; he felt grateful to the Gods that they bestowed thoughts upon him. The Oriental felt that when, as a human being, thoughts lived within him, it was because divine spiritual power streamed into him. It was a completely different attitude to thought life from ours.

In ancient times in the Orient the life of thoughts and feelings were not so separate as they now are for ordinary consciousness. Because man felt his thoughts bestowed upon him he also felt uplifted by them and a religious feeling united itself with every thought. He felt he must approach, with religious devotion, the powers that bestowed the readymade thoughts and thought combinations upon him.

If one seeks the external objective reason why Oriental man experienced the world in this way, one finds that it is because his sleep life was different from that of modern man. During sleep our soul and our `I' abandon the body mainly in the region of the head; the organs of metabolism and limbs are not separated from man to the same degree. These parts are still penetrated by man's `I' and soul being during sleep. I have often spoken of this but should like to place it before you once more schematically. Let this be man when awake (see drawing, left). The `I' and soul being, which I have drawn in red, penetrate the physical and etheric bodies. It would be wrong if I drew sleeping man in such a way that I had the physical and etheric bodies lying on the bed and simply drew the `I' and astral body (or soul) alongside. I must draw it so that—when the physical organs and limbs are here (drawing, right, white lines)—I draw the `I' and soul being outside man only in relation to the head. For, strictly speaking, it is only in regard to this region that man in sleep is separated from his physical and etheric bodies (red).

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When we go back to those ancient times of which we spoke, the situation was different. During man's sleep the organs of his head—mainly the system of nerves and that part of the breathing system that penetrates the head—were the scene of activity for those divine spiritual beings who were concerned with the earth.

It is simply describing the reality to say that in the very earliest days of mankind's evolution on earth, divine spiritual beings withdrew from man when he woke up. When he slept they took up their abode in the human head, which was then bereft of man's `I' and soul being. During his sleep, divine spiritual beings carried out their activity in the head. When man woke in the morning—i.e., when he again sank into his head—he found the result of this activity. The divine spiritual beings regulated his nerve processes and worked right into the blood circulation. Through the ether body they exerted their influence even in the organic processes in the physical body. In general, the human beings were not clearly aware of this. Only those schooled in the Mysteries realized it; the great masses of humanity experienced it but without full awareness. Thus, when he woke man found the result of the Gods' activity in his head. And when he perceived the configuration of his thoughts, during waking life, it was because during sleep Gods had been active in his head. Thus, ancient Oriental man found every morning a heritage left by the Gods during his sleep, with the consequence that he felt his thoughts to be inspired within him. He felt the Gods' deeds as inspiration. In other words, the divine spiritual beings did not inspire man directly during his waking life; they did it during his sleep by pursuing their own activity in his head.

In those ancient times man's social behavior was induced by inspiration. Divine spiritual beings could completely regulate earthly affairs. Through their activity during man's sleep they brought about a mutual trust among human beings and also the obedience felt by the great masses towards their leaders, and so on. There was interaction throughout between the divine spiritual world and the earthly world in the ancient Orient. It was possible because man's whole organization was different.

I have often mentioned the fact that people nowadays imagine that throughout history man has always been as he is now. They assume that the physical nature of his body was the same and so, too, his soul being and the spirituality of his `I'. When a modern historian writes about ancient Egypt and deciphers its documents, then he thinks that though the people were not as clever as he is, they nevertheless thought, felt and acted more or less as he does. The view is that if one goes back far enough then man appears as a kind of higher ape, a state from which he then progresses to—well, to whatever the historian imagines. Nevertheless, it is assumed that from the time historical records began, man has been the same as he is now. This is assumed both in regard to his thinking, feeling and willing, and in regard to his etheric-physical organization.

However, that is not the case; man has altered quite considerably, also during historical times. Just consider the instance I mentioned earlier of how the physical sight of the ancient Greeks differed from ours. They did not see the color blue as we see it; they saw in fact only the reddish color shades. Modern man is mistaken when he thinks that the Greeks, because they were surrounded by beauty, particularly appreciated the beautiful blue of the sky. The Greek did not really differentiate between blue and green; he saw plainly the warm reddish-yellow colors. The sky to him therefore looked quite different from the way it is seen with normal consciousness today. The eyes have changed in the course of mankind's evolution, though in inner subtle ways. In fact, the whole sense system has become different in the course of historical times; and in the Orient, in those ancient times we are considering, the senses were so organized that man could not be deluded by them, nor did they prevent his devoting himself to the result of the divine deeds that remained in his organism when he woke from sleep.

Gradually, man's senses changed and caused him to become so intensely connected with the external world that the moment he woke his attention was drawn away from that which as a heritage was left in his organism. Because man was now differently organized the Gods no longer carried out their activity in his head during sleep. This activity no longer furthered mankind's evolution; had it continued it would not have benefited man. On the contrary, as man has now, through his senses, become so strongly absorbed in the external world he would no longer be able to pay attention to what the Gods bequeathed to him during the night. Their activity would no longer be felt as inspiration, and as a consequence of not being taken into man's consciousness it would flow back into the body, causing the organism to become old prematurely.

Man could live united with the world of the Gods because in ancient times, unlike today, his senses were not particularly orientated towards the external world. In his waking state he could absorb what he had experienced in sleep. This was a real living with the Gods, for though he could not behold them with his senses, man, in ancient times, was at least adapted to experience their deeds.

Later, in the millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, man's senses, particularly the eyes, began to develop—also in the Orient—the sensitivity to external impressions which they have now. The system of senses gradually developed to what it later became. At first man retained, in addition, in his system of nerves, what still enabled him to experience the divine spiritual deeds. His experience of them had formerly been in their purity—i.e., not mingled with sense perceptions. But now they were taken up by the senses. This had the strange result that for a large part of mankind the Gods, the spiritual beings, were drawn, as it were, into the physical organization. In consequence, what had formerly been a pure spiritual experience of divine spiritual beings, became a belief in ghosts.

The belief in ghosts is not so very ancient; what is ancient is the pure spiritual beholding of divine spiritual beings. Belief in ghosts arose first through the mingling of sense perception with beholding the divine. When the culture of the Oriental Mysteries penetrated into Europe, for example, into the magnificent spiritual life of Greece, into Greek art and philosophy, there followed in its wake, also, the seeing of ghosts by the general masses of people.

Thus, in the last millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, the former pure spiritual perception which the Oriental people possessed, had fallen into decline. It had become, particularly by large sections of the masses, a kind of perception of ghosts. This belief in ghosts wandered over into Europe; in the Orient it had been pure spiritual perception but had now become transformed into something physical. Thus, it can be said that the belief in ghosts is the last offshoot, the end product of a lofty, albeit dreamlike, spiritual seeing, which had once signified a cultural flowering in mankind's evolution.

I have described how in ancient times Oriental people felt that during sleep the head was the earthly scene of activity for divine spiritual beings. This was something of which people in general were dimly aware; those who had undergone initiation in the Mysteries were fully conscious of the fact. What I have described has a counterpart in the cultural life that has since developed.

The cultural life of more recent times is still in its early stages. The further West we go the stronger it comes to expression. To the ancient Oriental it would have made no sense had he been told that thoughts do not pulsate through the will. He knew from experience that what lived in his will, and even in his blood, was something bestowed upon him by the Gods. They formed his thoughts and during sleep they developed a powerful force in him which he experienced as inspiration.

Even today, when we look towards the East, we find, for example in the philosophy of Soloviev,² the last remnants of how things were experienced in the past. And, clearly, Soloviev would have found it incomprehensible if told that thought is not a force that impels and carries the will. However, it is the opinion today, especially in America, that thought is not the ruling factor in man. Physiology and biology as developed in America are clear demonstrations of this view. When one goes into the finer details one finds that science in America is, in this respect, something quite different from that of Europe, let alone the Orient. Modern man in the Western world is all too aware that he produces his thoughts himself. Thoughts, however, must relate to something, so it is maintained that far more important for man than the thoughts he absorbs, is the kind of family into which he is born, the way he is brought up, the political environment in which he grows up, the religious denomination he might join. All these things act on his emotions and determine his will. Thus, the will is supposed not to be directly influenced by thoughts, but is determined by such environmental factors as family, politics, country and so on. Thus, in America, in fact, Western man in general, is of the opinion that thought is not the ruler in man; at most its position is that of prime minister. The ruler is the human organism with its instincts and will impulses. Quoting Carlyle² it is said that thought may be a devoted minister, but its function is only that of an executive. And it must be emphasized that today's broad mass of humanity thinks likewise, shown by its eagerness to confirm that ancient traditions should be superseded. This is why there is today such an interest in the study of primitive man. It is thought that he lived through instincts and desires of which his thoughts were only a kind of mirror image.

Thus, today Western man looks into his inner being and asks why it is that he is driven by instincts and cravings. To him they appear devoid of spirit because he is not yet organized to perceive the spiritual in them. Yet every instinct or craving, whether good or bad, is spiritual. It may be a very evil instinct that comes to expression in one or another person, but even the most brutal urge is spiritual. The human race is always in the process of development; it must advance to such spirituality that when man looks into himself and perceives his instincts, urges and cravings he sees everywhere in them the spiritual. This will come about in the future.

It makes no difference in this respect whether a person has good or bad instincts; if they are bad it is because either Luciferic or Ahrimanic spirits hold sway in him. But they are spirits.

The assumption that the driving force in man is his instincts is, as far as being aware of the spiritual reality is concerned, similar to the earlier assumption in regard to ghosts. In ancient times spirituality was perceptible to man in the Orient. As it evolved further it became, as I have described, in the first millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, a belief in ghosts, a perception of ghosts (see drawing, blue).

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From where we are at present within world evolution we look back to a time when a belief in ghosts emerged from a former spirituality; at the same time, we look towards the future and foresee a time when once again pure spiritual perception will emerge. But at present we also have a belief in ghosts, in inner ghosts. Those who believe in outer ghosts fail to see the spiritual reality in them and regard them as something that can be seen with physical eyes. Western man today, when he looks into himself, also fails to see the spiritual reality. The way he regards instincts, urges and cravings makes them into ghosts which today precede a future spirituality (red), while the ghosts of old followed an earlier spirituality (blue).

One could also say that from East to West an ancient pure spirituality developed which was followed, in the course of time, by a belief in ghosts, of which remnants are still with us. From West to East, approaching us, a later spirituality is developing which will become reality in a far distant future. The way modern man visualizes urges, instincts and cravings, in which the beginning of the new spirituality reveals itself, makes them as ghost-like as the former ghosts. This outlook makes the educated person regard with disdain the common belief in ghosts. At the same time, he attributes to man ghost-like instincts, urges and cravings. What he does not realize is that the belief in ghosts held by the masses, has as much scientific validity as his belief in desires, urges and instincts. His belief is in ghosts announcing a new beginning just as the masses have a belief in ghosts that marks an ending. Our European civilization has become so chaotic because it is the scene of collision between the old and the new ghosts.

In a West-East aphorism I have briefly characterized how, on the one hand, modern man has been for some time influenced by the ancient heritage of Oriental spirituality which has become a belief in ghosts, and how, on the other hand, he is influenced by the beginning of a spirituality that is now germinating which, through a materialistic interpretation, has turned man's instincts, urges and desires into ghosts. Those which are usually called ghosts are spirits which appear materialized through man's organization. The modern ghosts, pointing to the future, consisting of man's urges, instincts, desires and passions, have not yet become dematerialized; they have not yet become spiritual.

Man's inner soul life, particularly in Europe, takes its course within this peculiar chaotic condition created by the interaction of old and new ghosts. It is essential that man attain spiritual insight in order to arrive at a clear understanding of both. Not only man's view of the world is dependent upon such insight; but also, human life on earth as a whole is dependent upon it. That this must be so follows from the fact that it is not only man's spiritual or cultural life that is derived from his particular nature; but also, his life of rights or political life and his economic life.

But what is the origin of this particular development? I said that the earthly concern of the Gods, of the divine spiritual beings, was within the human head. We differentiate threefold man into the nerve-sense man, whose abode is mainly in the head, the rhythmic man, who lives in the middle, and the metabolic-limb man consisting of the limbs and their continuation inward in the organs of metabolism (see drawing). We differentiate this threefold man and we know that during the sleeping state of humanity in ancient times the Gods, when carrying out their earthly task, made the human head their scene of action. What is the situation at present?

The Gods also carry out their activity in present-day humanity during sleep, but no longer in the head; now it takes place in the metabolic-limb organism. The significance, the all-important point about this is, that for man, the metabolic-limb system remains unconscious also during his waking state. You will remember how I have often spoken about the fact that man is awake in his conceptual life, but completely unaware of what happens deep down in the organism to cause a muscle to carry out a movement. When present-day man has a mental picture of lifting his arm or moving his hand he has, in his ordinary consciousness, no awareness of how his mental life affects his organism. This remains unconscious even during the waking state. In other words, the scene of action of the Gods on earth nowadays is such that—unlike the situation in ancient times—man's natural evolution prevents him, to begin with, from taking possession of the divine heritage when he wakes.

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Divine spiritual processes take place in man, today, between falling asleep and waking, but his present nature prevents him from having any impression while awake of the Gods' activity during sleep. In ancient times, man was so constituted that his very organization enabled him to feel his thoughts to be inspired. Present-day man produces his own thoughts, and divine spiritual deeds do not yet enter into this activity; mankind must first reach the appropriate stage of development. This is precisely the task—I would say cosmic task—which Spiritual Science must set itself. And a system of education must be part of such a plan, to enable human beings to recognize, out of their own effort and in full consciousness, the divine spiritual deeds within them. When this stage is reached man will also cease to see his urges and instincts as inner ghosts. The way they are imagined at present they are as much ghosts as the external ones. The external ghosts are not mere delusions; they are divine spiritual forces which appear materialized by being incorrectly seen through man's senses. The divine spiritual forces active in man today are seen incorrectly when they are visualized as urges and instincts.

The external ghosts are scorned today, but what is looked upon as a science deals with nothing but inner ghosts. Man must participate to bring about the transformation intended for him within cosmic evolution. Impulses in this direction ought to permeate every aspect of our culture. This would provide the possibility for man to overcome the forces of decline in their chaotic interaction with forces of ascent against which man still fights, and then strive towards the future stages in mankind's evolution by being inspired and motivated from the spirit. On this everything depends.

What I have tried to convey to you today can be seen as a kind of contemplation of the East in relation to the West, though from an esoteric point of view. Contemplation of East and West is at present altogether timely—I do not use the expression in a trivial sense. It is only through such considerations that mankind can arrive at the relevant level of consciousness.

Thus, in earlier times of earth evolution during sleep (the human being is “man” also during sleep when he does not have his physical body about him) man was in such a relationship to the Gods that he could behold, with eyes of soul and spirit, how they took up their abode in his head. In his waking state all that remained of this experience was a kind of afterglow in his life of feelings. Man became ever more distant from the divine spiritual world which he nevertheless perceived as in a dream when he looked back after having plunged into the body. That was the earlier situation; later, he only felt after waking that he was inspired.

Since then the Gods have drawn deeper down, as it were, into his physical body and man has now entered into such a connection with the Gods that they make his metabolic-limb system the scene of their activity within his earthly nature. However, as man does not completely forsake his earthly nature during sleep, he will, as a consequence, be able to experience again—coming from the divine world—impulses of will and also impulses for his life as a social being—i.e., for his relationship to other human beings—not, however, during sleep—he must experience these spiritual impulses as a complete human being while awake. It can only be attained through increasing conscious knowledge of the spiritual world. To attain this must become man's strongest aim.

This was what I wanted to convey to you as a contribution to an East-West contemplation.

• 1. Socrates, 469-399 B.C. Athenian philosopher.
• 2. Wladimir Soloviev, 1853-1900. Russian philosopher.
• 2. Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881. English philosopher and historian.

We have often explained how the development of man takes place during the first periods of life, and it is many years since I first indicated how the child behaves to a great extent as an imitative being during the period up to the change of teeth. More or less instinctively—and intensively—he experiences all that is going on in his environment. Later on it is only in the sense organs that the processes of the outer world are thus intensively experienced, although we are not conscious of this fact. In our eyes, for example, we have a process imitating in a certain sense what is going on in the outer world—reproducing it, just as the camera reproduces whatever is there in front of the lens. The human being becomes aware of what is thus imitatively reproduced in his eyes, and thus he gains information about the external world. It is the same with the other senses. But this restriction of the imitative principle to the periphery of the human organism occurs only at a later stage in life.

In early childhood, until the change of teeth, the whole body partakes in this imitative process, though to a lesser extent. At this stage the whole body is in a certain respect related to the outer world as the senses are during the rest of human life. The child is still in the main an imitative being. He follows the way in which outer things work in upon him and he imitates them internally. Hence it is very important to let nothing happen in the young child's environment, not even in the forming of our thoughts and feelings, which the child cannot rightly absorb and make his own.

With the change of teeth it begins to be possible for the child to behave no longer like a sense organ but to assimilate something in the nature of ideas. The child begins to take as his guideline what we say to him. Previously he has taken as his guideline all that we did in his environment; now he begins to grasp what we say. Authority thus becomes the decisive factor between the change of teeth and puberty. The child will quite naturally follow and be guided by what is said to him. Language itself he will of course learn by imitation, but that which is expressed and communicated through language—this can become a determining factor for the child only after the change of teeth. And a true power of judgment, when the child or adolescent begins to make his own faculty of judgment felt, comes only at the time of puberty. Not until then can the child begin to form real judgments of his own.

So far I have been describing quite simply, from an external viewpoint, how a child grows into the world. These facts can be observed by anyone with an unbiased sense of truth. But they are connected with highly significant inner processes, and it is of these that I want to speak today.

I have often pointed out how the human etheric body lives in intimate union with the physical body until the change of teeth begins. Therefore, as I have also said, we can describe the change of teeth as marking the essential birth of the etheric body. Likewise we can refer the birth of the astral body to the time of puberty. However, that again is only an external account. Today we will try to arrive at a rather more inward characterization of these processes.

Let us consider man in the spiritual world, long before he develops the tendency to descend into physical embodiment. We see him there as a being of soul and spirit in a world of soul and spirit. So were we, all of us, before we descended to unite with what was prepared for us, as physical body, in the maternal organism. With this physical body we then united, to undergo our period of earthly existence between birth and death. Long before this, as I said, we were beings of soul and spirit. What we were, and what we experienced there, is very different from what we experience between birth and death here on earth. Hence it is hard to describe the experiences between death and a new birth; they are so utterly different from earthly conditions. Man models his ideas on his earthly experiences, and it is to these ideas that we must always have recourse for our descriptions. Today, however, we will not dwell so much on the character of man within the world of soul and spirit; we will rather envisage him, to begin with, on his descent, when he approaches the earth to imbue himself with a new physical body.

Before he approaches his physical body—or rather the germ, the embryo, of it—man draws into himself the forces of the etheric universe. Here on earth we live in the physical world—in the world characterized by all that we see with the senses and understand with earthly intellect. But there is nothing in this world that is not permeated by the etheric world. And before man gets the inclination to unite—through the embryo—with the physical world, he draws to himself the forces of the etheric world, and, in so doing, he forms his own etheric body. But to say that man clothes himself with his etheric body is to say very little. We must enter a little more closely into the nature and constitution of this body.

The etheric body, as it forms and develops itself in the human being, is a universe in itself—a universe, one might say, in picture form. At its circumference it manifests something in the nature of stars, and in its lower portion something that appears more or less as an image of the earth. It even has in it a kind of image of the sun nature and the moon nature.

This is of great significance. On our descent into the earthly world, when we draw to ourselves the forces of the universal ether, we actually take with us in our etheric body a kind of image of the cosmos. If we could extract the etheric body of a man at the moment when he is uniting with the physical, we should have a sphere—far more beautiful than has ever been wrought by mechanical means—a sphere complete with stars and zodiac and sun and moon.

These configurations of the etheric body remain during the embryonic time, while the human being coalesces more and more with his physical body. They begin to fade away a little, but they remain. Indeed they remain right on into the seventh year—that is, until the change of teeth. In the etheric body of the little child, this cosmic sphere is still quite recognizable. But with the seventh year—with the change of teeth—these forms that we behold in the etheric body begin to ray out, in a manner of speaking, previously they were more star-like; now they begin to be like rays. The stars dissolve away in the human ether body; but as they do so they become rays, rays with a tendency to come together inwardly.

All this goes on gradually throughout the period of life between the change of teeth and puberty. At puberty the process is so far advanced that these rays, having grown together here in the center, form as it were a distinct structure—a distinct etheric structure of their own. The stars have faded out, while the structure which has gathered in the center becomes especially living. And in the midst of this central etheric structure, at the time of puberty, the physical heart, with its blood vessels, is suspended.

So we have this strange phenomenon of the star-ether-body drawing inwards. As etheric body it is, of course, undifferentiated at the periphery of the organism—very little can be distinguished in there. On the other hand, during the time from the change of teeth until puberty, it is intensely radiant, raying from without inwards. Then it gathers itself together, and there, clearly suspended within it, is the physical heart.

You must not suppose that until then man has no etheric heart. Certain he has one, but he obtains it differently from the way in which he acquires the etheric heart that will now be his. For the gathered radiance that arises at the time of puberty becomes the true etheric heart of man. The etheric heart he has before this time is one that he received as a heritage through the inherent forces of the embryo. When a man gets his etheric body, and with it makes his way into the physical organism, a kind of etheric heart—a substitute etheric heart, so to speak—is drawn together by the forces of the physical body. He keeps this etheric heart during his childhood years, but then it gradually decays. (This may not be a very beautiful expression, by our usual standards, but it meets the case exactly.) The first etheric heart slowly decays, and in its stead, as it were constantly replacing that which falls out in the etheric process of decay, there comes the new, the real, etheric heart. This etheric heart is a concentration of the whole cosmic sphere we brought with us as an ether form, a faithful image of the cosmos, when we proceeded through conception and birth into this earthly life.

Thus we can trace, throughout the time from birth or conception until puberty, a distinct change in the whole etheric form that the human being bears within him. One may describe it by saying: not until puberty does the human being possess his own etheric heart—that is, the etheric heart formed out of his own etheric body, and not supplied provisionally by external forces.

All the etheric forces that are working in man until puberty tend to endow him with this fresh etheric heart. It is, in the etheric sphere, a process comparable to the change of teeth. For, as you know, until the change of teeth we have our inherited teeth; these are cast out, and their place is taken by the second teeth—those that are truly our own. So, likewise, the etheric heart we have until puberty is cast out, and we now receive our own. That is the point—we receive our own etheric heart.

But now there is another process running parallel with this. When we observe man just after his entry into the physical world—i.e., as a very young child—we find a multitude of single organs distinguishable in his astral body. Man, as I have said, builds for himself an etheric heart, which is an image of the outer universe. In his astral body, however, he brings with him an image of the experiences he has undergone, between his last death and his present birth. Much, very much, can be seen in this astral body of a little child, great secrets are inscribed there. Much can be seen there of what the human being has experienced between his last death and his present birth. Moreover, the astral body is highly differentiated, individualized.

And now, this is the peculiar thing: during the very time when the aforesaid process is taking place in the etheric body, this highly differentiated astral body becomes more and more undifferentiated. Originally it is an entity of which we can say it comes from another world, from a world which is not there in the physical, or even the etheric universe. By the time of puberty, all that is living in this astral body—as a multitude of single forms and structures—slips into the physical organs—primarily into those organs which are situated (to speak approximately) above the diaphragm. Marvelous structures, radiantly present in the astral body in the first days of life, slip by degrees into the brain formation and saturate the organs of the senses. Then, other structures slip into the breathing organism; others again into the heart, and through the heart into the arteries. They do not come directly into the stomach; it is only through the arteries that they eventually spread into the abdominal organs. Thus we see the whole astral body, which man brings with him through birth into this physical existence—we see it diving down gradually into the organs. It slides into the organs. This way of putting it is quite true to reality, though naturally it sounds strange to the habitual ideas of today. By the time we have grown to adult life, our organs have imprisoned in them the several forms and structures of our astral body.

Precisely herein lies the key to a more intimate knowledge of the human organs; they cannot be truly understood unless we also understand the astral which man brings with him. We must know in the first place that every single organ bears within it, in a sense, an astral inheritance, even as the etheric heart is, to begin with, an inheritance. Moreover, we must know that this inherited astral becomes permeated gradually, through and through, with that which man brings with him as his own astral body, which dives down bit by bit into the physical and etheric organs.

The heart is an exception, in a certain sense. Here, too, an astral part dives down; but in the heart not only the astral process but the etheric, too, is concentrated. Therefore the heart is the uniquely important organ which it is for man.

The astral body becomes more and more indefinite, for it sends into the physical organs the concrete forms which it brings with it from another life. It sends them down into the physical organs, so that they are imprisoned there; and thereby the astral body itself becomes more or less like a cloud of mist. But—and this is the interesting thing—while from this side the astral body turns into a cloud of mist, new differentiations come into it from another side—first slowly, then with full regularity and increasingly from the age of puberty onwards.

When the baby is kicking with its little legs, you notice very little of this in the astral body. True, the effects are there, but the differentiations which the astral body has brought with it are far more intense. Gradually these forms disappear, they slide into the physical organs. The astral body more and more becomes a cloud of mist. When the child kicks and fidgets, all manner of effects come up into the astral body from these childish movements, but they impinge on what they find there, they are cast back and disappear again. It is as though you made an impression on an elastic ball: the ball recovers is shape immediately. All this, however, changes proportion as the child learns to speak and develops ideas which are retained in memory. We then see how his movements—intelligent movements, now, walking about, moving the arms, and so on—are increasingly retained in the astral body.

Yes, indeed, untold things can be inscribed in this astral body. When you are forty-five years old, almost all your movements are inscribed in traces there, and many other things too, as we shall see. The astral body can absorb very much of all that has taken place since you learned to speak and think and since its own configuration was dissolved. Into this undifferentiated entity all that we do now is inscribed—the movements of our arms and leg, and not only these, but all that we accomplish through our arms and leg. For instance, when we hold a pen in writing, all that we thus accomplish in the outer world is there inscribed. When we chop wood, or if we give someone a box on the ears, all is inscribed into the astral body. Even when we do not do something ourselves but give instructions to a person and he does it, this, too, is inscribed, through the relation of the content of our words to what the person does. In short, the whole of man's activity which finds expression in the outer world is written into the astral body; thus the astral body becomes configurated in manifold ways through all our human actions.

This process, as I said, begins when the child learns to speak—learns to embody thoughts in speech. It does not apply to ideas which the child receives but cannot remember afterwards. It begins from the time to which he can remember back, with ordinary consciousness, in later life.

And now the strange thing is that all that is thus inscribed in the astral body has a tendency to meet inwardly, just as the radiations of the ether body meet in the etheric heart. All that our human deeds are—this, too, comes together within. Moreover, this has a kind of outer causation. Simply as human beings on earth, we are bound to enter into many forms of activity. This activity expresses itself, as I said just now, throughout the astral body. But there is a perpetual resistance. The influences that are exerted on the human organism cannot always go right up, as it were. There is always a certain resistance; they are driven down again. All that we do, in connection with our physical organs, tends to stream upward to the head, but the human organization prevents it from reaching there. Hence these influences collect together and form a kind of astral center.

This, once again, is clearly developed at the time of puberty. At the same place where the etheric heart—our own etheric heart—has formed itself, we now have an astral structure too, which gathers together all our actions. And so from puberty a central organ is created wherein all our doing, all our human activity, is centered. It is so indeed: in the very region where man has his heart, all his activity is centralized—centralized, in this case, neither physically nor etherically, but astrally. And the important thing is that in the time when puberty occurs (naturally, the astral events coincide only approximately with the physical) man's own etheric heart is so far formed that it can receive these forces that develop out of our activity in the outer world. Thus we can truly say (and in so saying we mark a real event in the human inner being): from puberty onwards man's whole activity becomes inserted, via the astral body, in his etheric heart—and in that which has grown out of the pictures of the stars, out of the images of the cosmos.

This is a phenomenon of untold importance. For, my dear friends, we have here a joining together with the cosmos of what man does in this world. In the heart, as far as the etheric universe is concerned, you have a cosmos gathered up into a center; while at the same time, as far as the astral is concerned, you have a gathering together of all that man does in the world. This is the point where the cosmos—the cosmic process—is joined to the karma of man.

This intimate correspondence of the astral body with the etheric body is to be found nowhere in the human organism except in the region of the heart. But there, in truth, it is. Man has brought with him through birth an image of the universe in his etheric body, and the entire universe, which is there within him as an essence, receives all that he does and permeates itself with it. By this constant coming together—this mutual permeation—the opportunity is given throughout human life for human actions to be instilled into the essence of the images of the cosmos.

Then when man passes through the gate of death, this ethereal-astral structure—wherein the heart is floating, so to speak—contains all that man takes with him into his further life of soul and spirit, when he has laid aside the physical and the etheric forms. Now, as he expands ever more widely in the spirit, he can hand over his entire karma to the cosmos, for the substance of the whole cosmos is contained within him; it is drawn together in his heart, in the etheric body of his heart. It came from the cosmos and changed into this etheric entity, then it was gathered up as an essence in the heart, and now it tends to return into the cosmos once more. The human being expands into the cosmos. He is received into the world of souls. He undergoes what I described in my book, Theosophy, as the passage through the world of souls and then through spirit land.

In truth it is so. When we consider the human organization in its becoming, we can say to ourselves: in the region of the heart there takes place a union of the cosmos with the earthly realm, and in this way the cosmos, with its cosmic configuration, is taken into our etheric body. There it makes ready to receive all our actions, all that we do in life. Then we go outward again, together with everything that has formed itself within us through this intimate permeation of the cosmic ethereal with our own human actions. So do we enter again into a new cosmic existence, having passed through the gate of death.

Thus we have now described in a quite concrete form how the human being Lives his way into his physical body, and how he is able to draw himself out of it again, because his deeds have given him the force to hold together what he had first formed within him as an essence out of the cosmos.

The physical body, as you know, is formed within the physical and earthly world by the forces of heredity, that is, the forces of the embryo. What man brings with him from the spiritual world, having first drawn together his etheric body, comes into union with this. But we must now go further. In the astral, that wonderful entity he has brought with him, there Lives the ego, which, having passed through many earthly lives, has a long evolution behind it. This ego lives in a certain connection of sympathy with all the complex forms that are present in the astral body. (By using the word “sympathy” in this connection, I am once more describing something absolutely real.) Then, when these astral forms slide into the organs of the physical, as explained above, the ego retains this sympathy and extends the same inner sympathy to the organs themselves. The ego spreads out increasingly into the organs and takes possession of them. From earliest childhood, indeed, the ego is in a certain relation to the organs. But at that time the inherited condition, of which I spoke, is still prevailing; therefore the relation of the organs to the ego is a more external one.

When, later on, the ego slips with its astral body into the organs of the physical, this is what happens: whereas, in the little child, the ego was present only outwardly along the paths of the blood, it now unites with the blood circulation more and more inwardly, intensively, until—at puberty once more—it has entered there in the fullest sense. And while you have an astral formation around the etheric and the physical heart, the ego takes a different path. It slides into the organs of the lung, and with the blood vessels that pass from the lung to the heart approaches nearer and nearer to the heart. More and more closely united with the blood circulation, it follows the paths of the blood. By way of the forces that run along the courses of the blood, the ego enters into that which has been formed from the union of the etheric and the astral heart, wherein an etheric from the cosmos grows together with an astral from ourselves.

As I said, this astral body comes by degrees to contain an immeasurable amount, for all our actions are written in it. And that is not all. Inasmuch as the ego has a relation of sympathy to all that the astral body does, our intentions, our ideas, too, are inscribed there—the intentions and ideas, I mean, out of which we perform our actions. Here, then, you have a complete linking up of karma with the laws of the whole cosmos.

Of all that thus goes on within the human being, people today know “heartily little” (herzlich wenig); and we can repeat the words with emphasis, for all these things, of which people today are ignorant, relate to the human heart. They know what goes on here in the physical world, and they consider it in relation to moral laws. The real fact is that all that happens in the moral life, and all that happens physically in the world, are brought together precisely in the human heart. These two—the moral and the physical—which run so independently and yet side by side for modern consciousness today, are found in their real union when we learn to understand all the configurations of the human heart.

Naturally, all that takes place in the heart is far more hidden than the event which happens openly with the change of teeth. We have our inherited teeth; then we form teeth again out of our own organism. The former fall away, the latter remain. The former have an inherent tendency to go under; nor could they ever keep themselves intact, even if they did not fall out. The permanent teeth, on the other hand, are destroyed chiefly by extraneous conditions—including, of course, those of the organism itself. Likewise at puberty: in an invisible way, our etheric heart is given over to disintegration, and we now acquire a kind of permanent ether heart.

Only this permanent ether heart is fully adapted to receive into itself our activities. Therefore it makes a great difference whether a human being dies before puberty or after. When he dies before puberty, he has only the tendency for what he has done on earth to be karmically inherited later on. Even when children die before puberty, this or that can certainly be incorporated in their karma, but it is always rather vague and fleeting. The forming of karma, properly speaking, begins only at the moment when the astral heart takes hold of the etheric heart and they join together. This, indeed, is the real organism for the forming of karma. For, at death, what is gathered up and concentrated there in the human being becomes increasingly cosmic; and in our next earthly life it is incorporated in the human being once again out of the cosmos. Everything we do, accordingly, concerns not ourselves alone. Incorporated within us is something that comes from the cosmos and retains the tendency, after our death, to give over our deeds to the cosmos once more. For it is from the cosmos that the karmic laws work themselves out, fashioning our karma. So do we bear the effects of what the cosmos makes of our deeds back again into earthly life, at the beginning of our next life on earth.

This lecture is the 7th of 9 lectures in the series entitled: The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution.

The paths by which in very remote times men acquired super-sensible knowledge were very different from those appropriate today. I have often drawn attention to the fact that in ancient times man possessed a faculty of instinctive clairvoyance. This clairvoyance went through many different phases to become what may be described as modern man's consciousness of the world, a consciousness out of which a higher one can be developed. In my books Occult Science: An Outline and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and other writings is described how man at present, when he understands his own times, can attain higher knowledge.

When we look back to the spiritual strivings of man in a very distant past we find among others the one practised in the Orient within the culture known later as the Ancient Indian civilization. Many people nowadays are returning to what was practised then because they cannot rouse themselves to the realization that, in order to penetrate in to super-sensible worlds, every epoch must follow its own appropriate path.

On previous occasions I have mentioned that, from the masses of human beings who lived during the period described in my Occult Science as the Ancient Indian epoch, certain individuals developed, in a manner suited to that age, inner forces which led them upwards into super-sensible worlds. One of the methods followed is known as the path of yoga; I have spoken about this path on other occasions.

The path of yoga can best be understood if we first consider the people in general from among whom the yogi emerged—that is to say, the one who sets out to attain higher knowledge by this path. In those remote ages of mankind's evolution, human consciousness in general was very different from what it is today. In the present age we look out into the world and through our senses perceive colours, sounds and so on. We seek for laws of nature prevailing in the physical world and we are conscious that if we attempt to experience a spirit-soul content in the external world then we add something to it in our imagination. It was different in the remote past for then, as we know, man saw more in the external world than ordinary man sees today. In lightning and thunder, in every star, in the beings of the different kingdoms of nature, the men of those times beheld spirit and soul. They perceived spiritual beings even if of a lower kind, in all solid matter, in everything fluid or aeriform. Today's intellectual outlook declares that these men of old, through their fantasy, dreamed all kinds of spiritual and psychical qualities into the world around them. This is known as animism.

We little understand the nature of man, especially that of man in ancient times, if we believe that the spiritual beings manifesting in lightning and thunder, in springs and rivers, in wind and weather, were dream-creations woven into nature by fantasy. This was by no means the case. Just as we perceive red or blue and hear C sharp or G, so those men of old beheld realities of spirit and soul in external objects. For them it was as natural to see spirit-soul entities as it is for us to see colours and so on. However, there was another aspect to this way of experiencing the world, namely, that man in those days had no clear consciousness of self.

The clear self-consciousness which permeates the normal human being today did not yet exist. Though he did not express it, man did not, as it were, distinguish himself from the external world. He felt as my hand would feel were it conscious: that it is not independent, but an integral part of the organism. Men felt themselves to be members of the whole universe. They had no definite consciousness of their own being as separate from the surrounding world. Suppose a man of that time was walking along a river bank. If someone today walks along a river bank downstream he, as modern, clever man, feels his legs stepping out in that direction and this has nothing whatever to do with the river. In general, the man of old did not feel like that. When he walked along a river downstream, as was natural for him to do, he was conscious of the spiritual beings connected with the water of the river flowing in that direction. Just as a swimmer today feels himself carried along by the water—that is, by something material—so the man of old felt himself guided downstream by something spiritual. That is only an example chosen at random. In all his experiences of the external world man felt himself to be supported and impelled by gods of wind, river and all surrounding nature. He felt the elements of nature within himself. Today this feeling of being at one with nature is lost. In its place man has acquired a strong feeling of his independence, of his individual ‘I’.

The yogi rose above the level of the masses whose experiences were as described. He carried out certain exercises of which I shall speak. These exercises were good and suitable for the nature of humanity in ancient times; they have later fallen into decadence and have mainly been used for harmful ends. I have often referred to these yoga breathing exercises. Therefore, what I am now describing was a method for the attainment of higher worlds that was suitable and right only for man in a very ancient oriental civilization.In ordinary life breathing functions unconsciously. We breathe in, hold the breath and exhale; this becomes a conscious process only if in some way we are not in good health. In ordinary life, breathing remains for the most part an unconscious process. But during certain periods of his exercises the yogi transformed his breathing into a conscious inner experience. This he did by timing the inhaling, holding and exhaling of the breath differently, and so altered the whole rhythm of the normal breathing. In this way the breathing process became conscious. The yogi projected himself, as it were, into his breathing. He felt himself one with the indrawn breath, with the spreading of the breath through the body and with the exhaled I breath. In this way he was drawn with his whole soul into the breath.

In order to understand what is achieved by this let us look at what happens when we breathe. When we inhale, the breath is driven into the organism, up through the spinal cord, into the brain; from there it spreads out into the system of nerves and senses. Therefore, when we think, we by no means depend only on our senses and nervous system as instruments of thinking. The breathing process pulsates and beats through them with its perpetual rhythm. We never think without this whole process taking place, of which we are normally unaware because the breathing remains unconscious.

The yogi, by altering the rhythm of the breath, drew it consciously into the process of nerves and senses. Because the altered breathing caused the air to billow and whirl through the brain and nerve-sense system, the result was an inner experience of their function when combined with the air. As a consequence, he also experienced a soul element in his thinking within the rhythm of breathing.

Something extraordinary happened to the yogi by this means. The process of thinking, which he had hardly felt as a function of the head at all, streamed into his whole organism. He did not merely think, but felt the thought as a little live creature that ran through the whole process of breathing, which he had artificially induced.

Thus, the yogi did not feel thinking to be merely a shadowy, logical process; he rather felt how thinking followed the breath. When he inhaled he felt he was taking something from the external world into himself which he then let flow with the breath into his thinking. With his thoughts he took hold, as it were, of that which he had inhaled with the air and spread through his whole organism. The result of this was that there arose in the yogi an enhanced feeling of his own ‘I’, an intensified feeling of self. He felt his thinking pervading his whole being. This made him aware of his thinking particularly in the rhythmic air-current within him.

This had a very definite effect upon the yogi. When man today is aware of himself within the physical world he quite rightly does not pay attention to his thinking as such. His senses inform him about the external world and when he looks back upon himself he perceives at least a portion of his own being. This gives him a picture of how man is placed within the world between birth and death. The yogi radiated the ensouled thoughts into the breath. This soul-filled thinking pulsated through his inner being with the result that there arose in him an enhanced feeling of selfhood. But in this experience he did not feel himself living between birth and death in the physical world surrounded by nature. He felt carried back in memory to the time before he descended to the earth, that is, to the time when he was a spiritual-soul being in a spiritual-soul world.

In normal consciousness today man can reawaken experiences of the past. He may, for instance, have a vivid recollection of some event that took place ten years ago in a wood perhaps; he distinctly remembers all the details, the whole mood and setting. In just the same way did the yogi, through his changed breathing, feel himself drawn back into the wood and atmosphere, into the whole setting of a spiritual-soul world in which he had been as a spiritual-soul being. There he felt quite differently about the world than he felt in his normal consciousness. The result of the changed relationship of the now awakened selfhood to the whole universe gave rise to the wonderful poems of which the Bhagavadgita is a beautiful example.

In the Bhagavadgita we read wonderful descriptions of how the human soul, immersed in the phenomena of nature, partakes of every secret, steeping itself in the mysteries of the world. These descriptions are all reproductions of memories, called up by means of yoga breathing, of the soul—when it was as yet only soul—and lived within a spiritual universe. In order to read the ancient writings such as the Bhagavadgita with understanding one must be conscious of what speaks through them. The soul, with enhanced feeling of selfhood, is transported into its past in the spiritual world and is relating what Krishna and other ancient initiates had experienced there through their heightened self-consciousness.

Thus, it can be said that those sages of old rose to a higher level of consciousness than that of the masses of people. The initiates strictly isolated the ‘self’ from the external world. This came about, not for any egotistical reason, but as a result of the changed process of breathing in which the soul, as it were, dived down into the rhythm of the inner air current. By this method a path into the spiritual world was sought in ancient times.

Later this path underwent modifications. In very ancient times the yogi felt how in the transformed breathing his thoughts were submerged in the currents of breath, running through them like little snakes. He felt himself to be part of a weaving cosmic life and this feeling expressed itself in certain words and sayings. It was noticeable that one spoke differently when these experiences were revealed through speech. What I have described was gradually felt less intensely within the breath; it no longer remained within the breathing process itself. Rather were the words breathed out, and formed of themselves rhythmic speech. Thus the changed breathing led, through the words carried by the breath, to the creation of mantras; whereas, formerly, the process and experience of breathing was the most essential, now these poetic sayings assumed primary importance. They passed over into tradition, into the historical consciousness of man and subsequently gave birth later to rhythm, metre, and so on, in poetry.

The basic laws of speech, which are to be seen, for instance, in the pentameter and hexameter as used in ancient Greece, point back to what had once long before been an experience of the breathing process—an experience which transported man from the world in which he was living between birth and death into a world of spirit and soul.

This is not the path modern man should seek into the spiritual world. He must rise into higher worlds, not by the detour of the breath, but along the more inward path of thinking itself. The right path for man today is to transform, in meditation and concentration, the otherwise merely logical connection between thoughts into something of a musical nature. Meditation today is to begin always with an experience in thought, an experience of the transition from one thought into another, from one mental picture into another. While the yogi in ancient India passed from one kind of breathing into another, man today must attempt to project himself into a living experience of, for example, the colour red. Thus he remains within the realm of thought. He must then do the same with blue and experience the rhythm: red-blue, blue-red, red-blue and so on, which is a thought-rhythm. But it is not a rhythm that can be found in a logical thought sequence; it is a thinking that is much more alive.

If one perseveres for a sufficiently long time with exercises of this kind (the yogi, too, was obliged to carry out his exercises for a very long time) and really experience the inner qualitative change, and the swing and rhythm of red-blue, blue-red, light-dark, dark-light—in short, if indications such as those given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds are followed—the exact opposite is achieved to that of the yogi in ancient times. He blended thinking with breathing, thus turning the two processes into one. The aim today is to dissolve the last connection between the two, which, in any case, is unconscious. The process by which, in ordinary consciousness, we think and form concepts of our natural environment is not only connected with nerves and senses; a stream of breath is always flowing through this process. While we think, the breath continually pulsates through the nerves and senses.

All modern exercises in meditation aim at entirely separating thinking from breathing. Thinking is not on this account torn out of rhythm, because as thinking becomes separated from the inner rhythm of breath it is gradually linked to an external rhythm. By setting thinking free from the breath we let it stream, as it were, into the rhythm of the external world. The yogi turned back into his own rhythm. Today man must return to the rhythm of the external world. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you will find that one of the first exercises shows how to contemplate the germination and growth of a plant. This meditation works towards separating thinking from the breath and letting it dive down into the growth forces of the plant itself.

Thinking must pass over into the rhythm pervading the external world. The moment thinking really becomes free of the bodily functions, the moment it has torn itself away from breathing and gradually united with the external rhythm, it dives down not into the physical qualities of things but into the spiritual within individual objects.

We look at a plant: it is green and its blossoms are red. This our eyes tell us and our intellect confirms the fact. This is the reaction of ordinary consciousness. We develop a different consciousness when we separate thinking from breathing and connect it with what exists outside. This thinking yearns to vibrate with the plant as it grows and unfolds its blossoms. This thinking follows how in a rose, for example, green passes over into red. Thinking vibrates within the spiritual, which lies at the foundation of each single object in the external world.

This is how modern meditation differs from the yoga exercises practised in very ancient times. There are naturally many intermediate stages; I chose these two extremes. The yogi sank down, as it were, into his own breathing process; he sank into his own self. This caused him to experience this self as if in memory; he remembered what he had been before he came down to earth. We, on the other hand, pass out of the physical body with our soul and unite ourselves with what lives spiritually in the rhythms of the external world. In this way we behold directly what we were before we descended to the earth. This is the consequence of gradually entering into the external rhythm.

To illustrate the difference I will draw it schematically. Let this be the yogi (first drawing, white lines). He developed a strong feeling of his ‘I’ (red). This enabled him to remember what he was, within a soul-spiritual environment, before he descended to earth (blue). He went back on the stream of memory.

Let this be the modern man who has attained super-sensible knowledge (second drawing, white lines). He develops a process that enables him to go out of his body (blue) and live within the rhythm of the external world and behold directly, as an external object (red), what he was before he descended to earth.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Thus, knowledge of one's existence before birth was in ancient times in the nature of memory, whereas at the present time a rightly developed cognition of pre-birth existence is a direct beholding of what one was (red). That is the difference.

That was one of the methods by which the yogi attained insight into the spiritual world. Another was by adopting certain positions of the body. One exercise was to hold the arms outstretched for a long time; or he took up a certain position by crossing his legs and sitting on them and so on. What was attained by this?

He attained the possibility to perceive what can be perceived with those senses, which today are not even recognized as senses. We know that man has not just five senses but twelve. I have often spoken about this—for example, apart from the usual five he has a sense of balance through which he perceives the equilibrium of his body so that he does not fall to the right or left, or backwards or forwards. Just as we perceive colours, so we must perceive our own balance or we should slip and fall in all directions. Someone who is intoxicated or feels faint loses his balance just because he fails to perceive his equilibrium. In order to make himself conscious of this sense of balance, the yogi adopted certain bodily postures. This developed in him a strong, subtle sense of direction. We speak of above and below, of right and left, of back and front as if they were all the same. The yogi became intensely conscious of their differences by keeping his body for lengthy periods in certain postures. In this way he developed a subtle awareness of the other senses of which I have spoken. When these are experienced they are found to have a much more spiritual character than the five familiar senses. Through them the yogi attained perception of the directions of space.

This faculty must be regained but along a different path. For reasons, which I will explain more fully on another occasion, the old yoga exercises are unsuitable today. However, we can attain an experience of the qualitative differences within the directions of space by undertaking such exercises in thinking as I have described. They separate thinking from breathing and bring it into the rhythm of the external world. We then experience, for instance, what it signifies that the spine of animals lies in the horizontal direction whereas in man it is vertical. It is well known that the magnetic needle always points north-south. Therefore, on earth the north-south direction means something special, for the manifestation of magnetic forces, since the magnetic needle, which is otherwise neutral, reacts to it. Thus, the north-south direction has a special quality. By penetrating into the external rhythm with our thoughts we learn to recognize what it means when the spine is horizontal or vertical. We remain in the realm of thought and learn through thinking itself. The Indian yogi learned it, too, but by crossing his legs and sitting on them and by keeping his arms raised for a long time. Thus, he learned from the bodily postures the significance of the invisible directions of space. Space is not haphazard, but organized in such a way that the various directions have different values.

The exercises that have been described, which lead man into higher worlds are mainly exercises in the realm of thought. There are exercises of an opposite kind; among them are the various methods employed in asceticism. One such method is the suppression of the normal function of the physical body through inflicting pain and all kinds of deprivations. It is practically impossible for modern man to form an adequate idea of the extremes to which such exercises were carried by ascetics in former times. Modern man prefers to be as firmly as possible within his physical body. But whenever the ascetic suppressed some function of the body by means of physical pain, his spirit-soul nature drew out of his organism.

In normal life the soul and spirit of man are connected with the physical organism between birth and death in accordance with the human organization as a whole. When the bodily functions are suppressed, through ascetic practices, something occurs which is similar to when someone today sustains an injury. When one knows how modern man generally reacts to some slight hurt, then it is clear that there is a great difference between that and what the ascetic endured just to make his soul organism free. The ascetic experienced the spiritual world with the soul organism that had been driven out through such practices. Nearly all of the earlier great religious revelations originated in this way.

Those concerned with modern religious life make light of these things. They declare the great religious revelations to be poetic fiction, maintaining that whatever insight man acquires should not cause pain. The seekers of religious truths in former times did not take this view. They were quite clear about the fact that when man is completely bound up with his organism, as of necessity he must be for his earthly tasks—the aim was not to portray unworldliness as an ideal—then he cannot have spiritual experiences. The ascetics in former times sought spiritual experiences by suppressing bodily life and even inflicting pain. Whenever pain drove out spirit and soul from a bodily member, that part which was driven out experienced the spiritual world. The great religions have not been attained without pain but rather through great suffering.

These fruits of human strivings are today accepted through faith. Faith and knowledge are neatly separated. Knowledge of the external world, in the form of natural science, is acquired through the head. As the head has a thick skull, this causes no pain, especially as this knowledge consists of extremely abstract concepts. On the other hand, those concepts handed down as venerable traditions are accepted simply through faith. It must be said though, that basically, knowledge and faith have in common the fact that today one is willing to accept only knowledge that can be acquired painlessly, and faith does not hurt any more than science, though its knowledge was originally attained through great pain and suffering.

Despite all that has been said, the way of the ascetic cannot be the way for present-day man. In our time it is perfectly possible, through inner self-discipline and training of the will, to take in hand one's development which is otherwise left to education and the experiences of life. One's personality can be strengthened by training the will. One can, for example, say to oneself: Within five years I shall acquire a new habit and during that time I shall concentrate my whole will-power upon achieving it. When the will is trained in this way, for the sake of inner perfection, then one loosens, without ascetic practices, the soul-spiritual from the bodily nature. The first discovery, when such training of the will is undertaken for the sake of self-improvement, is that a continuous effort is needed. Every day something must be achieved inwardly. Often it is only a slight accomplishment but it must be pursued with iron determination and unwavering will. It is often the case that if, for example, such an exercise as concentration each morning upon a certain thought is recommended, people will embark upon it with burning enthusiasm. But it does not last, the will slackens and the exercise becomes mechanical because the strong energy, which is increasingly required, is not forthcoming. The first resistance to be overcome is one's own lethargy; then comes the other resistance, which is of an objective nature, and it is as if one had to fight one's way through a dense thicket. After that, one reaches the experience that hurts because thinking, which has gradually become strong and alive, has found its way into the rhythm of the external world and begins to perceive the direction of space—in fact, perceive what is alive. One discovers that higher knowledge is attainable only through pain.

I can well picture people today who want to embark upon the path leading to higher worlds. They make a start and the first delicate spiritual cognition appears. This causes pain so they say they are ill; when something causes pain one must be ill. However, the attainment of higher knowledge will often be accompanied by great pain, yet one is not ill. No doubt it is more comfortable to seek a cure than continue the path. Attempts must be made to overcome this pain of the soul, which becomes ever greater as one advances. While it is easier to have something prescribed than continue the exercises, no higher knowledge is attained that way. Provided the body is robust and fit for dealing with external life, as is normally the case at the present time, this immersion in pain and suffering becomes purely an inner soul path in which the body does not participate. When man allows knowledge to approach him in this way, then the pain he endures signifies that he is attaining those regions of spiritual life out of which the great religions were born. The great religious truths which fill our soul with awe, conveying as they do those lofty regions in which, for example, our immortality is rooted, cannot be reached without painful inner experiences. The great truths do indeed demand an inner courage of soul which enables it to say to itself: If you could experience these things you must be prepared to attain knowledge of them through deprivation and suffering. I am not saying this to discourage anyone, but because it is the truth. It may be discouraging for many, but what good would it do to tell people that they can enter higher worlds in perfect comfort when it is not the case. The attainment of higher worlds demands the overcoming of suffering.

I have tried today, my dear friends, to describe to you how it is possible to advance to man's true being. The human soul and spirit lie deeply hidden within him and must be attained. Even if someone does not set out himself on that conquest he must know about what lies hidden within him. He must know about such things as those described yesterday and how they run their course.¹ This knowledge is a demand of our age. These things can be discovered only along such paths as those I have indicated again today by describing how they were trodden in former times and how they must be trodden now.

• 1. See lecture given on 26 May, 1922 in The Human Soul in Relation to World Evolution

Today I want to bring forward certain matters which concern mankind's evolution in so far as this evolution is dependent upon man's relationship with certain spiritual powers during the earth's future.

We have seen how it is possible, through exact observation, to gain insight into the fact that within the physical-soul-spiritual being of man something comes together which, in a certain sense, belongs to the external world, in so far as this world consists of etheric forces and beings. Man draws together these forces to form his etheric body as he descends to earthly life. We see also that with this entity, consisting of forces from the external etheric world, there unites the effect of man's earthly deeds, of everything he causes to happen—in short, his karma.

I have often mentioned that a new stream of spirituality is now ready to pour into man's earthly existence. The present forms a link in mankind's evolution between an era of mainly intellectual development which began in the first third of the fifteenth century and has now practically run its course—and a future devoted to the spiritual. The most important task for mankind in the era of intellectuality was the development of reason through the investigation of external nature and the development of technology.

In this direction great and impressive results have been accomplished in recent centuries. However, it must be said that the intellect has begun to lose its creativity, though we still live with its heritage. The most creative period was from the time of Copernicus, Galileo and Giordano Bruno right up to the nineteenth century. Especially in western civilization the greatest intellectual achievements have been attained in recent centuries.

It is obvious, even to an external unbiased observation, that the intellect has lost some of its creative power. In general, mankind has no longer the same enthusiasm for intellectual accomplishments. Yet the practice of centuries continues through a certain cultural inertia. Thoughts run along the old grooves but the intellect brings nothing new of real importance to the fore. This is particularly noticeable in our young people. Not so long ago it was a real pleasure to listen to a young person who had studied some subject. It may not have applied to everyone but certainly to those who had achieved something; one was eager to hear what they had to say, and it was the same everywhere in western academic circles. But—when a change has come about in the last few decades, when a young person fresh from university speaks one is no longer curious about what he will say next. One is not curious because one knows it already; it comes out automatically; it is as if the brain itself has lost its vitality. One gets the feeling that the activity of the intellect has slid down from the head to some deeper region. That human intelligence has become something mechanical which no longer springs from the region of the head must be obvious even to external observation. This situation has come about because intelligence was originally a natural endowment which mankind was predestined to develop predominantly between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.

However, in order to fructify the developed intellect, a stream of spirituality from higher regions of world existence now seeks entry into the earthly life of mankind. Whether this will happen depends upon man opening his heart and soul to what thus seeks entry, through many doors, as it were, into the earthly world from the spiritual world. It will be necessary for man not only to become conscious once more of the spiritual in all nature, but able to perceive it.

Consider how in the older civilizations mankind in general perceived—in all the kingdoms of nature, in every star, in every moving cloud, in thunder and lightning—spirit and soul. On the background of this general consciousness the yoga exercises evolved. As I explained yesterday, the yogi attempted to penetrate to his own self. Through inner exercises he sought to attain what today is taken for granted because we are born with it: consciousness of the ‘I’ the feeling of selfhood. This the yogi had first to develop in himself.

But, my dear friends, it would be a great mistake to compare the ordinary consciousness of self that we have today with that of the yogi. It makes a difference whether something is achieved through one's own human effort or whether one simply has it. When, as was the case with the yogi, one first had to struggle to attain consciousness of self, then, through the inner effort, one was transported into the great universal laws; one participated in world processes. This is not the case when one is simply placed into the sphere of self-consciousness. To belong willy-nilly to a certain level of human evolution is not the same as attaining that level through inner exercises.

You will realize from what was said yesterday that mankind must gradually acquire knowledge in a different way,—he must set his thought processes free from the breathing process. As I explained yesterday, this has the effect that thinking, by no longer being bound up with the subject, is able to unite itself with the rhythm of the external cosmos. We must go with our thinking out of ourselves into the external world, whereas the yogi crept into his inner being by hitching together, as it were, the systems of thought and breath. In so doing he identified himself with what his spirit-soul nature was able to experience on the waves of the inner rhythm of breathing. By contrast, we must give ourselves up to the world in order to participate in all the various rhythms which go through the mineral, plant, animal and human worlds right up to the realm of the Hierarchies. We must enter into, and live within, the rhythm of external existence. In this way mankind will again gain insight into that spiritual foundation of nature which external knowledge does not reach.

The sciences of physics, chemistry and biology which are pursued nowadays provide mankind with a vast amount of popular information. What they actually do is explain how sense observation, interpreted by the intellect, sees the world. But the time has come when mankind must rediscover what lies behind the knowledge provided by external observation and intellectual interpretation.

If one has in mind their physical aspect only, when speaking about the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, then it makes no difference whether one uses these terms or prefers the more recent ones of solid, liquid, aeriform bodies and conditions of heat. When they are referred to today, all one has in mind is how the physical substances within them are either combined or mixed, or else separated. However, it must be stressed that everything of a solid, earthen nature has as its foundation an elemental spirituality. Today's ‘enlightened’ people may laugh when reminded that older folks used to see gnomes in everything earthy. However, when knowledge is no longer obtained by means of combining abstract, logical thoughts, but by uniting ourselves through our thinking with the world rhythm, then we shall rediscover the elemental beings contained in everything of a solid earthy nature. The outstanding characteristic of these elemental begins dwelling in solid earth is cleverness, cunning, slyness—in fact, a one-sidedly developed intellect.

Thus, in the solid earth element live spiritual beings of an elemental kind who are very much more clever than human beings. Even a person of extreme astuteness intellectually is no match for these beings who, as super-sensible entities, live in the realm of solid earth. One could say that just as man consists of flesh and blood so do these beings consist of cleverness, of super-cleverness. Another of their peculiarities is that they prefer to live in multitudes. When one is in a position to find out how many of these astute beings a suitable earthy object contains, then one can squeeze them out as if from a sponge—in a spiritual sense, of course—and out they flow in an endless stream. But counting these gnome-like beings is a difficult task. If one tries to count them as one would cherries or eggs—i.e., one, two, three—one soon notices that they will not be counted that way. When one has reached say three, then there are suddenly a lot more. So counting them as one would on the physical plane is no use; nor is any other form of calculation, for they immediately play tricks on you. Suppose one put two on one side and two on the other in order to say that twice two makes four. One would be wrong, for through their super-cunning they would appear as seven or eight, making out that two times two makes eight, or something like that. Thus these beings defy being counted. It must be acknowledged that the intellect developed by man in recent times is very impressive. But these super-intelligent beings show a mastery over the intellect even where it is merely a question of numbers.

The elemental beings dwelling in the fluid element—i.e., in water—have particularly developed what is, in man, his life of feeling and sensitivity. In this respect we humans are really backward compared with these beings. We may take pleasure in a red rose or feel enchanted when trees unfold their foliage. But these beings go with the fluid which as sap rises in the rose bush and participate in the redness of the blossoms. In an intimate way they share feelingly in the world processes. We remain outside of things with our sensitivity, whereas they are right inside the process themselves and share in them.

The elemental beings of air have developed to a high degree what lives in the human will. It is splendid that the analytical chemist discovers the atomic weight of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and that he finds out how hydrogen and oxygen combine into water to be further analysed or else how chloride of lime is analysed, and so on. But elemental spiritual beings are active behind all this, and it is essential that man should acquire insight into their characteristics. During the period in which man developed the intellect—as already mentioned, this was from the first third of the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century—these elemental beings were pushed to one side, as it were. While the intellect played a creative part in man's cultural life there was not much they could do, and because the elemental beings dwelling in solids had, in a certain sense, to hold back and leave the intellect to man, they also held back the beings of water and air. But now we live at a time when the intellect has begun to decline within the civilized world; it is failing into decadence. If mankind does not become receptive to what streams towards him from the spiritual world, then the result of this dullness on man's part will be—and there are signs already of it happening—that these elemental beings will gather together to form a kind of union and place themselves under the leadership of the supreme intellectual power: Ahriman.

If it should happen that the elemental beings come under the guidance of Ahriman with the clear intention of opposing human evolution, then mankind would be unable to make further progress. The possibility would arise that the ahrimanic powers in union with the elemental beings would divert the earth from its intended course. The earth would not continue what is described in my Occult Science: An Outline as the Saturn-Sun-Moon-Earth evolution. The earth can only become what it was originally intended to become if man, in each epoch, tackles his task rightly.

One can see already how matters stand. Those who have reached a certain age know that formerly one gained insight into another human being's inner thoughts and feelings simply through normal conversation and exchange of ideas. One took it for granted that a person's reason and intellect resided in his head, and what was in the head would be conveyed through the spoken word. There are many people today who no longer take it for granted that reason is located in the head of many of their contemporaries; rather do they assume it to have slid further down. So instead of listening they now analyse. This is just one example from one misunderstood aspect of the whole problem. But I would say that when one starts to psychoanalyse people instead of just letting them talk, then that is in fact an admission that reason no longer resides in the head. It is assumed to have slid down into deeper regions of human nature and must be psychoanalysed to be brought up again to consciousness. In this age of a declining intellect there are already people who dislike it if one appeals to their intelligence; they prefer to be analysed. This is because they do not want to participate with the head in what their soul brings to light.

Nothing is achieved by looking at these things merely from an external point of view. To see clearly what is involved they must be considered—as we have just done—in the wider context of world evolution. Certain aspects of psychoanalysis may do some good. There are conditions which formerly were simply accepted but are no longer tolerated and must be cured. However, as so many cures are needed, physical ones do not suffice, so one resorts to psychological ones. Why this should be so must be seen in a wider context.

Superficially judged, there is no point in objecting to all the good reasons and beguiling arguments put forward by psychoanalysts, not even from the wider viewpoint of world evolution. People want to avoid seeing things in their wider context, though it would lead them to the recognition that a spiritual stream is seeking to enter our present civilization to replace the declining intellect.

What we have considered so far amounts to one aspect of what in the future threatens mankind. There is another aspect—just as the lower elements of earth, water and air are inhabited by elemental beings, so are the higher elements of light ether, chemical ether and life ether. However, these beings of the higher elements differ considerably from those of the lower ones. The beings of light, and particularly those of life, do not aim at becoming multitudes. The ones who strive the most to become multitudes are the beings of the earth element. The beings of the etheric element strive rather towards unity. It is difficult to differentiate them from one another; they do not express any individuality and rather strive to amalgamate. Certain initiates in ancient times, through whom certain teachings of the Old Testament originated, turned their attention particularly towards the etheric elements. The strong tendency of these elements towards unification created an influence which resulted in the strict monotheism of Judaism.

The religion which is based on the worship of Jehovah originated mainly from a spiritual vision of the realm of the ethers. In this realm live spiritual beings who do not strive to separate from one another and become many individuals. Rather do they strive to grow together and disappear into one another; they seek to become a unity.

If these beings are disregarded by man—i.e., if he does not turn to spiritual knowledge and the insight that what exists up in the sky is not merely the physical sun, but that with the sun's warmth and light etheric beings stream down to earth; if man's comprehension stops at the external material aspect, then the possibility exists that these beings will unite with ahrimanic powers. In order for the earth to become what it was originally intended to become, man must wake up to the dangers that threaten from both sides—on the one hand, the danger that those beings who dwell in the lower elements will join forces with ahrimanic powers, and on the other, that the ahrimanic powers will unite with those of the higher elements in their striving for unity.

The significance of spiritual knowledge for man's earthly destiny cannot be emphasized too strongly. Unless man draws near to spiritual reality something completely different from what ought to happen will happen to the earth. No matter how far or how deeply our sophisticated sciences of physics and chemistry investigate the material world around us, the fact remains that what is investigated will all disappear along with earth existence itself. In the last resort, chemistry and physics have no value whatever beyond the earth. When the evolution of the earth comes to an end, all mineral substances will turn to dust and dissolve in the cosmos. Only what pertains to the plant, animal and human world will pass over to the Jupiter existence. Therefore, all the magnificent achievements of these sciences are related only to what is transitory. It is essential that knowledge is attained of that which endures beyond the earth.

As already mentioned, whatever physical laws are discovered, whatever is investigated concerning the atomic weight of individual elements or whatever chemical formulae are produced, all these things are concerned only with what has merely transient significance. Man must grow beyond earth existence through knowledge of the kind of things I have explained. These are matters of great import and significance.

To-day I feel called upon to explain to you a few anthroposophical facts closely connected with the human being.

We are, to begin with, connected with the world through our senses; we are connected with it—and this is clearly evident—from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep. We perceive the various spheres of life through our senses, and a certain soul-activity within us constructs a picture of the world from these perceptions. I only allude to this, in order to draw attention to the way in which we can study our waking life and all that it concerns.

Yet we do not only live in the world during our waking condition, but also when we are asleep. During our sleep, we live outside our body with our Ego and our soul, in an environment, which is, at first, unknown to the ordinary human consciousness.

All that I am telling you now, applies to the present-day human being; that is, to man and the way in which he has developed his soul-life from the time which I have often indicated as an extraordinarily significant moment in the evolution of humanity—from the 15th century onwards. Yet we must ask ourselves: How are we connected with a world which is closed to our ordinary consciousness? How are we connected with it, when we are asleep? When we ask this question, we immediately encounter an obstacle, particularly in the present moment of human evolution, unless we bear in mind the development of humanity, and the fact that its soul-life has passed through many stages.

If we reflect upon the soul-life of modern man, we find that the human being belonging to our so-called civilised world must make the greatest effort to form his ideas and concepts. Nowadays we frequently look back into earlier epochs of human development without any clear thoughts. At that time there was no educational system of the kind required to-day, and we look back without really thinking about it into that ancient culture which developed and flourished in the East, when it was not necessary for man to have the education through childhood upwards, that he has to-day.

In Europe it is almost impossible at this time to imagine how differently the men of earlier epochs regarded education in the Orient. In those times, powerful Eastern teachings were created, which uplifted heart and spirit, such as the Vedas and all that is contained in the wisdom of the East. To-day all that arises through the spirit is judged in accordance with the way in which we have been educated and taught from childhood upwards, and the way in which we have developed through our education, and what we have learned through our life in the external world. At first, it seems obvious to our ordinary way of thinking that we must be educated, for we must learn to form our thoughts on life. If we were unable to do so, we should be helpless in the present-day world. I might say, that at the present time, we have not yet progressed very far in the art of forming thoughts. One of the aims of education should be that of more and more perfecting in us by our own effort this art of forming thoughts about the things in the world.

This was prepared for in the Greek epoch. The Grecian life was to a certain extent completely under the influence of the Orient, and consequently the education there aimed only at a very elementary development of the thinking forces. Oriental influences streamed into Greek cultural life, and these did not encourage thought-efforts, they did not induce man to form ideas himself on the objects around him, if I may express this trivially.

In the spiritual life of the West, we now admire Socrates, and rightly so, as one of the first who stimulated man to form thoughts about surrounding objects. Yet it would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that there was no thought-life in the Orient, simply because in Europe man had to develop a thought-life through his own effort. The Orientals had a powerful life of thought, which we find all the more powerful, the further we go back into the cultural life of the East.

A rich spiritual life existed in the East, even before the time of the Vedas and of the Vedanta philosophy. As I have frequently explained, the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy are not the first stages of spiritual life of the East, for these first stages were never recorded in writing. During the last two or three thousand years before Christ, this powerful Oriental life had already reached a decadent stage. What the Oriental now admires, is but the last remnant of this ancient spiritual life.

This life of thought was not like ours, which makes us (please forgive the materialistic expression, which is only used as a comparison) grow hot inwardly and perspire in our efforts to bring it into being. The Oriental life of thought was an inspired one.

For the Oriental, the thoughts ordered themselves, as if of their own accord. He obtained his world-picture in the form of an inspiration. He always had the feeling: “My thoughts are given to me,” and he did not know the inner soul-effort which we must make in order to construct our thoughts. From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, he felt that his thoughts were gifts bestowed upon him. His whole soul-life had a corresponding nuance. When he nurtured thoughts, he felt grateful to the gods who gave him these thoughts. When he was able to say: “Thoughts live in me, who am a human being,” he felt in these thoughts the instreaming of divine-spiritual powers. Thus it was quite a different way of thinking.

For this reason, the Oriental life of thoughts of remoter epochs was not so severed from the life of feeling and from the life of the heart, as it is to-day, for the normal human consciousness. Just because man could feel that thoughts were given to him, he felt uplifted as a human being, and a religious feeling was connected with every one of his thoughts. Man felt that he must meet the divine powers who gave him his thoughts with a kind of religious piety, and he experienced these thoughts more as a united whole, than as single thoughts.

But what was the objective external cause of this? It was caused by the fact that in these ancient times man's sleep was different from ours. When we are asleep now, we are forsaken especially in the head by the Ego and the soul. The metabolic organs and the extremities do not become separated so completely from the human being. Even when we are asleep, our soul and our Ego still penetrate into the extremities of the body and into its metabolic organs. We should not think that during sleep the Ego and the soul forsake our whole being, but instead we should picture to ourselves that the head is the most forsaken part.

I have often explained this, and now I would like to put it before you schematically. In the waking human being, the Ego and the soul permeate the physical and the etheric body. Now it would be wrong to draw the sleeping man so as to indicate here the physical and etheric bodies lying on the bed, and the Ego and the astral body just there, beside them. Instead, they should be so drawn that if the physical organs and the extremities, including the arms, which are also extremities, are indicated here, then the Ego and the soul which are outside the human being would have to be drawn outside it only in the vicinity of the head. Strictly speaking, when we are asleep, the Ego and the soul are outside the physical and the etheric body only as far as the head is concerned.

If we now return to those remoter times to which I have alluded, we find that when the human being was asleep, the organs of the head—that is, principally the nervous-sensory system and a part of the respiration which permeates the head—were the field of action used by the divine-spiritual beings connected with the earth.

If we refer quite seriously to realities, it can indeed be said, without speaking metaphorically, that in the most remote epochs of human evolution the divine-spiritual beings on earth withdrew from the human being when he was awake. But when he was asleep they took up their abode in his head. The human Ego and the human soul abandoned the head: and there, the divine-spiritual beings directed their activities. When the human being woke up in the morning, he once more dived into his head, and there he found the results of all that had taken place under the influence of the deeds of the divine-spiritual beings.

These beings ordered man's nervous processes in accordance with their laws, and they exercised an influence even upon the circulation of the blood and penetrated into the organic processes in the etheric body and in the physical body. Yet this was not clearly realised; only those men who were schooled in the Mysteries had an insight into such things. The great majority of men did hot realise this, yet they could EXPERIENCE it.

On waking up, the human being thus found in his head the deeds of gods. And when he then lived through his waking life and was able to perceive the structure of his thoughts, this was due to the fact that the gods had been active in his head while he was asleep. The ancient Oriental thus discovered within him every morning the heritage of the gods, the results of what they had done in him while he was asleep. He perceived this in thoughts, in the form of an inspiration. The divine-spiritual beings did not inspire him directly, when he was awake.. They inspired him when he was asleep, while they were active in his head.

In those ancient times, everything that led to man behaving socially in this or in that way, was really inspiration. It might be said: At that time, the divine-spiritual beings still had the possibility of ordering earthly affairs in such a way that while human beings were asleep, they arranged the trust men felt in one another, and they brought about the obedience of the large masses to their leaders, etc. etc. In that ancient Oriental epoch there was still cooperation between the divine-spiritual world and the earthly world. But this was only possible, because the whole human organisation was different from the present one

I have often mentioned that now people imagine that everything connected with man as he is to-day has always been the same; that the physical part of his physical organism, the psychic part of his soul, the spiritual element of his Ego, were then as they are now. When a modern historian writes about ancient Egypt and unriddles its documents, he believes that the Egyptians may not have been as clever as he is, but that essentially speaking, they had the same thoughts, feelings and impulses which we have to-day.

One generally thinks that if we go far back into time, man was a kind of higher ape, and that from this stage he passed on to a condition which they only imagine. And when the time began which interests them from the historical standpoint, then they have to admit that man was more or less what he is to-day, with the thoughts, feelings and impulses which he now possesses.

Yet it is not so. Even in the course of history, man underwent considerable changes. You only have to remember how the Greek viewed the world, quite physically. The Greek did not see the colour blue, as we see it now. He only saw the reddish tones of colour. If a modern man contemplates the beautiful blue sky and thinks that the Greek, who was steeped in beauty, must have loved it, he is mistaken. The Greek saw the warm, reddish and yellow tints, and could not distinguish green from blue. He therefore saw the sky quite differently from the way in which we see it, with our normal consciousness. Even the eyes have changed completely in the course of human evolution, although this only applies to the more intimate and finer traits. The whole sense-organisation has changed in the course of history. During those ancient Oriental times of which I have spoken, the organisation of the senses did not prevent man from surrendering to that which came from his organism when he was awake, as the result of what remained to him from the activity of the gods in his body, while he was asleep.

Gradually, man's sense-organs changed; his senses connected him with the external world in so living a way, that when he awoke, this connection prevented him from noticing what might still remain in him as a heritage from the gods, left there while he was asleep.

Even if the gods were still to be active in his head during sleep (they are no longer active in it, for man's organisation has changed, and this would no longer have a meaning for the development of mankind), man's progress and further development would not profit by it. On the contrary, he would not be able to perceive this heritage which comes to him from his sleep, because on waking, his fully developed senses immediately attract him strongly to the external world. What remains from his sleep, would therefore pass over into his body, instead of being taken up by his consciousness. To-day man would not be able to experience himself through the inspiration of the gods in his sleep, and were they still to use his head-organisation as a field for their activities, these inspirations would retreat into his body and prematurely age his organism.

In older times, man's sleep-experiences could be assimilated during his waking condition, because his senses were not directed so strongly towards the external world as they are to-day, and man could at that time live in union with the world of the gods.

This existence was a real LIFE in union with the world of the gods. The gods cannot be perceived through the senses, and in ancient times, man had to rely on being able to experience at least the deeds of the gods. He could do this, because his senses were not yet so strongly turned towards the external world as to-day.

Now, however, a time came—speaking generally, in the thousand years preceding the Mystery of Golgotha—when in the Eastern countries man's senses, especially the eyes, first began to be receptive to the impressions of the outer world; this receptivity developed as time went on. Man gradually developed the sense organisation which he now has, adding it to the nerve organisation, which still remained from former times and which enabled him to experience the divine-spiritual deeds.

Earlier he had experienced these divine-spiritual deeds in their purity, without mingling them with sense experiences. At that time, the human being could still, experience something, because the gods had not as yet completely forsaken him, but these experiences were immediately absorbed by the sense-organisation, with the strange result that among the great majority of men, the gods, the spiritual beings, were, so to speak, drawn into the sense organisation. I might express this by saying that out of the former purely spiritual contemplation of divine-spiritual beings a belief in ghosts arose.

This belief in ghosts does not reach back into very ancient times in man's history, but the contemplation of divine-spiritual beings is very ancient. The belief in ghosts only arose when sense perceptions were intermingled with the contemplation of the divine. When the Mystery-culture of the East came over to Europe and was taken up, for instance, by the wonderful spiritual life of Greece, flowing into Greek art and Greek philosophy, then the great masses of men coming from the East brought with them also the belief in ghosts.

So we may say, that during the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Oriental conception as such was already becoming decadent and a kind of belief in ghosts became widely prevalent among the masses of mankind. This belief came over into Europe from the East, and it was the transformation into sense-perception of the former, purely contemplative spirit of the East. We may therefore say that the belief in ghosts is the last ramification, the end of a lofty, though dreamy spiritual vision, which had once constituted a high stage of culture in the evolution of man.

All that has been described to you, how that during sleep the ancient Oriental felt his head to be the earthly field of action for the world of the gods, this could only be experienced by him as man, but the initiate of the Mysteries knew it. This contrast can already be seen to-day, in the development of a new culture.

This culture is still in its infancy, and the further West we go, the more does it make itself felt. For an ancient Oriental it would have been meaningless to say, for instance, that human thoughts do not pulsate through the human will, for he knew that what lived in his will, and even in his blood, came to him from the gods. The gods made his thoughts and during his sleep condition the gods developed a mighty power in his head. This he felt as inspiration.

Even to-day, when we look across to the East and view the last remnants of Eastern culture, still existing for instance in Solovieff's philosophy, we find, particularly in Solovieff, that he would have been quite unable to understand it, if he had been told that thoughts bring no impulses to man and have no bearing on his will.

Yet Western people, particularly the Americans, have this view. Americans describe what lies immediately before them; even their physiology and biology are represented in this way. If we penetrate into its more intimate fundamental character, we shall find that American science greatly differs from European science. The Westerner portrays how little significance thoughts really have for the human will, for he is far too strongly aware of the fact that it is man who forms the thoughts. Nevertheless he cannot form them out of the blue, and so the modern American declares it to be of far more importance than his actual thoughts, how a man is rooted in a certain family or political party through his social life-conditions, or in the way he has grown into a certain sect. All this, he declares, stirs up emotions in him and determines his will. It is really impossible to influence the will through thought. The will is determined by such life foundations as family, political party, nationality, sect, etc. The American and the Westerner in general argues that thought is not the real ruler in man, but is only the Prime Minister of the ruler, an expensive minister, as Carlyle expressed it. This ruler is the human organism, which is will, instinct, passion, and thought is only the executive organ.

We really have to admit that this is the way of thinking of the great masses of people to-day, who rush forward to assert their own views in the face of old traditions in the world. This is why men like so much to study the ways of primitive man, because they think that he followed his instincts and passions, and that his thoughts were merely a kind of reflexion of these instincts and passions.

Consequently, regarding man in this way, the Westerner says he is driven by his instincts and passions. Why?—Because man is not yet organised in a way which enables him to perceive the spiritual behind these instincts and passions, he can only see an instinct or a passion and nothing spiritual behind them. Yet when an instinct or a passion rises up in man, evil though it may be, and no matter in what form it may appear in this or in that man, the SPIRIT lives behind this instinct or passion, even behind the most brutal ones. But to-day man cannot as yet perceive this spirit, for the human race is still in a state of development. It must gradually approach a spirituality which enables man to perceive the spirit whenever he looks within his own being and beholds his instincts and passions. In the future this will be possible. It is a matter of indifference whether a man has good or evil instincts. When he has evil instincts, then Ahrimanic or Luciferic beings lie hidden within him, but these are spiritual beings!

In advancing the view that instincts and passions are the driving powers, we have before us the same case as that of the ghosts in comparison with the spirituality of the past. You see, an ancient spirituality existed in the Oriental conception. This spirituality continued to develop, and as I have already said, during the last thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha the final product was the belief in ghosts, in seeing ghosts.

We now stand within the evolution of the world in such a way, that on the one hand we see how the belief in ghosts arose out of an ancient spirituality; but at the same time, we see that in the future a purely spiritual contemplation will once more arise. To-day, however, there is still an inner belief in ghosts. Just as those who believe in ghosts think that ghosts are sensory things and look like something which the eyes can see, so a man of to-day, a Westerner, does not yet discern the spiritual, when he looks into himself; he only sees something spectral, something ghostly.

All passions, instincts and desires are ghostly spectres, which to-day precede the spirituality of the future, whereas the old ghosts in which people believed succeeded the spirituality of the past. It might be said that the old pure spirituality developed from East to West, then came the belief in ghosts, and the last traces of this belief are still among us. From West to East a future spirituality is developing, which is gradually drawing near, and which will become a reality in a distant future. The first traces of this spirituality, however, appear to be just as spectral as the ancient ghosts, namely the instincts, passions, etc, such as we see them to-day. The scholar of to-day must necessarily from his own point of view attribute to man himself his instincts and passions, yet he regards with contempt the general belief in ghosts. He does not realise that this belief of the masses in ghosts has just as much cognitive value and substance as has his own belief in human desires, instincts and impulses. He too is a believer in ghosts, but they are the ghostly spectres which are only now beginning to appear, whereas the great masses believe in ghosts belonging to a time now coming to an end. That is why our European civilisation has become so chaotic, because the old and the new spectres collide with one another.

There is a brief description in one of my “West-East Aphorisms” showing how humanity has been influenced for a long period by an ancient traditional Oriental spirituality on the one hand (a spirituality which had condensed itself into a belief in ghosts), and on the other hand in the belief in the spectres of instincts and passions, which is only now beginning to spring into life and which has not yet lost its sensory character. Ghosts, as they are generally called, are spirits which have acquired a sensory-physical character (or have become tangible) through the human organisation, whereas impulses, instincts, desires and passions are modern spectres pointing towards the future, spectres which have not yet been raised to spirituality.

The inner soul-life of a modern European lives in this particularly chaotic co-operation of old and new spectres and a spiritual conception must be found which throws light on both. These questions are not only connected with man's conception of the world, but with the universal human life upon the earth. How can it be otherwise, seeing that not only the spiritual life, but also the juridical, political and economic life depend on such questions, since they all proceed from the particular constitution of man. What, then, is the origin of this whole development?—we must ask ourselves.

I have said that the divine-spiritual beings have their earthly concerns in the human head. In man we distinguish a threefold being: The nervous-sensory being centred chiefly in the head, the rhythmical being which lives in the middle part, and the metabolic limb being, which is contained in the extremities and in their inner ramifications, that is to say, in the real metabolic organs.

Now we know that the gods ordered their earthly concerns during the sleeping condition of the older type of humanity; that they opened their workshop, as it were, in the head of man while he was asleep. What takes place in the man of to-day?

It happens also at the present time that the gods open their workshop in man while he sleeps, but they no longer work in his head, they work now in his metabolic system. But the limb-metabolic organism—and this is what is now most significant and fundamental—remains unconscious even when the human head is awake. Remember how often I have told you that man is awake in his thoughts and ideas; but when, for instance, the thought comes to him, “Now I will raise my arm, I will move my hand,” he does not really know what takes place below, so that the muscle may carry out these movements. This is not known to the man of to-day through his normal consciousness. The whole way in which his thought-life influences his organism remains in the dark. This leads to an unconscious life even when man is awake. The gods' field of action upon the earth to-day is therefore of such a kind that during his waking life man's own natural development no longer enables him to receive this inheritance of the gods when he wakes up.

However, there is a divine-spiritual activity at work in man to-day, from the time of falling asleep to the moment of his awakening, but his surrounding natural conditions no longer enable him to gain an impression of the gods' activity. In the past, man's organisation was so constituted that he felt inspired by his thoughts. To-day, man forms his own thoughts, but in this activity the divine spiritual deeds do not yet work. This capacity must first be developed in mankind.

This is the task—I might call it a cosmic task—which spiritual science must set itself. It must bring man forward in his development, and even pedagogy must be encompassed within such development, enabling him to recognise out of his own inner being and in full consciousness the divine-spiritual deeds. At the same time it will come about that he will no longer see these inner spectres. Pacing man's real inner being, the instincts and passions, as they are imagined to-day, are nothing but spectres, even as ghosts are seen outwardly, though these ghosts are not merely fragments of :he imagination; they are divine-spiritual forces which have become- delusively perceptible to the senses and which are incorrect, untrue imaginings. Similarly the divine-spiritual forces which are active in man's inner being are. thought of in the wrong way to-day if we think of them as instincts and passions.

External ghosts are now despised, but what is regarded as so-called science is but a collection of spectres, of inner spectres, and these must be transformed with man's co-operation during the course of cosmic development. Our whole culture must be permeated by impulses which go in this direction. Therein will lie the possibility of breaking away from the forces of decay, or from the chaotic interplay of such decadent forces with constructive forces (though mankind still struggles against the latter). Then we can advance to future stages of human development inspired and driven by the spirit. All this is essentially important.

What I wished to explain to you to-day is even a kind of East-West contemplation, but expressed, I might say, more esoterically. These East-West contemplations are to-day quite in harmony with the times, and this is not meant trivially. Only by such thoughts and considerations can humanity attain a certain degree of consciousness.

We must therefore say: In past times of earthly evolution, man was even in sleep (for he is a human being when he is asleep, even though he does not carry his body about with him) connected with the gods in such a way, that he could perceive with his soul's eyes, with spiritual eyes, how the gods took up their abode in his head, but when he woke up, only the echo of these feelings remained. Man gradually withdrew from this divine-spiritual world, although he could still perceive it dreamily.

The gods descended deeper into the human physical form, and man is connected with them at the present time in such a way that they have now chosen his metabolic system and his extremities as a workshop for the earthly being. But man does not completely abandon this earthly being during sleep. And because this abandonment is not complete, he will once more be able to experience, from the world of the gods will-impulses, impulses for his social life, and these he will experience not only in sleep, but also as a complete human being, when he is awake. In other words: Man must acquire mere and more consciously the knowledge of the spiritual world.

It is exceedingly difficult for modern consciousness to see any relation between the soul and spirit of man and the purely material, physical world around him; and there is, indeed, some justification for the failure to understand Anthroposophy when it says that the soul and spirit of man—that is to say, the astral body and ego—leave the physical and etheric bodies and continue to exist outside them.

Where, then, are the astral body and ego? This is the question put to us by people who draw their knowledge from the materialistic consciousness of the present day. They naturally cannot conceive that an element of soul may find its place within the bounds of space. At most they can recognise that somewhere or other air exists and that space is pervaded with light—but the idea that soul and spirit exist in space is, for them, beyond the realm of possibility.

This impossibility is but a short way from that other impossibility of conceiving whither the soul and spirit pass when, at the moment of death, they leave the human body. True, modern man says he can “believe” in such things. The moment, however, he begins to make use of his own powers of thought, he finds himself immersed in endless conflicts. These conflicts cease when he strives upwards to Spiritual Science. But the ideas which have then to be assimilated are somewhat strange and unfamiliar to modern man, and he can approach them only slowly and by degrees. At this point let us turn to the consideration of certain facts of spiritual history which today are but little known in the outer world.

We know that the old traditional conceptions, which were incorporated later on into various religions and became matters of faith, may be traced back to primeval wisdom. We know that in ancient times there existed the Mystery centres which really fulfilled the functions alike of churches, places of learning and schools of art. These Mystery centres were the source of all the knowledge which flowed into the masses of the people, and of the impulses determining their activities.

In these centres the initiates dwelt—men who by dint of special training had attained to higher knowledge. As a result of the tests through which they had passed, they had entered into a definite relation with the cosmos—a relation which enabled them to learn, by giving heed to cosmic processes, to the progress of cosmic events, what they wished to know with regard to the world.

It is only the later, more or less corrupt forms of such an understanding that have been preserved for us in external history. You know that in Greek temples, where the oracles were given, certain individuals were wont to pass into a mediumistic condition, and when, at certain times, vapours rose out of the earth, these individuals fell into a state of consciousness which at the present day would be called “trance” by those who persist in maintaining a superficial attitude towards spiritual things. No true knowledge, no knowledge corresponding to reality can ever be attained through trance; everything is a confused jumble and has no foundation in fact. But in times when the old methods of entering into relationship with the cosmos had already deteriorated and become corrupt, people turned to the oracles as a last resource. And all that was revealed from this trance-like consciousness was looked upon as a revelation of the aims of the Divine-Spiritual Beings behind all cosmic processes. Men ordered their lives in accordance with the utterances of these oracles.

Now at the time when men turned to the oracles, they had already lost the faculties which had once been possessed by the initiates in the Mysteries. That was why they relied upon other and more external means for regulating their actions. I shall now try to make clear to you one of the ways by which, in very ancient times, those initiated into the Mysteries penetrated into the secrets of the universe, into secrets which expressed the purposes of the Divine-Spiritual Beings whose mission it is to direct and govern the phenomena of Nature. Such initiates, after they had undergone a long period of preparation during which they so worked upon their whole being that they were able to observe the more subtle life-processes, finally reached a point in their development when, gazing upon the rising sun, they entered into a definite mood. This was a practice to which the old initiate constantly applied himself. He tried to become spiritually receptive to all that took place at daybreak. When the sun was slowly rising above the horizon, a feeling of awe and intense inner devotion was called up in the soul of the initiate. It is difficult today to form any conception of this mood—it was a feeling of the deepest reverence combined with a yearning for knowledge.

A last echo of this mood can, I think, still reach us from the outer world when we read the wonderfully beautiful description of the rising sun by the German poet and writer, Johann Gottfried Herder. This description was, however, written more than a hundred years ago, and it differs from anything that might emanate from some of the insignificant modern poets. For Herder looks upon the sunrise as a symbol of all waking life—not only in Nature, but also in the human soul, in the human heart. The feeling of dawn within the human soul itself, as though the sun were rising from inner depths—this was wonderfully portrayed by Herder when he tried to show how the poetic mood entered into human evolution, and how this poetic feeling had once upon a time been quickened by all that man could experience when he looked at the rising sun.

Still more intensely was the mystery of the sunrise felt by a man such as Jacob Boehme, whose first work was called, as you know, Aurora, or the Coming of Dawn. And the following words from Goethe's Faust: “Up, Scholar, away with weariness—bathe thy breast in the morning red,” are not unconnected with the secrets of the dawn.

The farther we go back in the history of human evolution, the more wonderful do we find the moods that were awakened in the human soul at the moment of sunrise, when the first rays of the morning sun carried down on their waves the pulsating, quickening light of the cosmos. And in the centres of the Mysteries, the old initiates, when they had prepared themselves in a definite way, were able, just at this moment of sunrise, to put their most solemn and sacred questions to the cosmic spirits, and to send these questions, rising from the depths of their hearts, far out into cosmic space.

Such an initiate said to himself: “When the sun sends the first rays of light down upon the earth, that is the best time for man to send his questions out into the wide spaces of the cosmos.” And so the old initiates poured out into cosmic distances the riddles which filled their souls and hearts. They did not, however, look for answers in the trivial way that we are used to in our physical science; they entered into a mood in which they said: “We have now given over our riddles and our questions to universal space. These questions rest now in the cosmos; they have been received by the gods.”

People may think as they like about such things. They were as I have described them; such were the practices in ancient times. Then the initiates waited, and again at night-time they made their hearts ready. But now they did not give themselves up to a questioning mood; they made themselves receptive, and in a devotional mood they stood awaiting the rays of the full moon as it rose above the horizon. They felt that now they would receive an answer from the cosmos. In the older Mysteries this was a very usual procedure. At certain times, questions and riddles were sent out into cosmic space, and the answers were sent back to earth by the gods through the rays of light from the full moon.

In this way man communed with the cosmos. He was not then so proud that he turned over certain questions in his head, as a modern philosopher might do, and then immediately expected an answer. He was not so conceited as to believe that he could sit down with a piece of paper in front of him, and by means of the human brain alone solve the great riddles of existence. Rather did he believe that he must hold counsel with the divine-spiritual powers working and weaving in the cosmos if he were to discover the answers to cosmic riddles. For he knew: “Outside me, in the cosmos, I do not find merely the content of my ordinary sense-perceptions. A spiritual element is everywhere living, working and weaving. And at the moment when the rays of the sun penetrate to me, I can myself send out to meet them the whole content of my will.” This secret has been completely lost to modern research. At one time, however, such things were understood by man and lived in him as true knowledge and wisdom. In Europe, one of the last to reserve this tradition was Julian the Apostate. He was imprudent enough to take these things seriously, and as a result he fell a victim to his enemies.

Nowadays men describe the sun by saying that it sends its rays down upon the earth. The old initiate would have said: “That is only the physical aspect. The spiritual truth is that men live upon the earth and upon the earth they develop their will, and while the rays of the sun pour down from the heavens upon the earth, man can send his will out into the direction of the sun—far out into cosmic space.” On the waves of the will which as it were streams out from the earth towards the sun, the old initiates sent forth their questions into the cosmos. And while a man of today says: “There on the other side is the moon, and the moon sends its rays down upon the earth”—the old initiate said: “That again is only the physical aspect. The truth is that thoughts are brought down to the earth on the waves of the moonlight.” Thus the old initiate entrusted his questions to the rays of will which stream up, from the earth towards the sun, and he received the answers from the rays of thought which come down to the earth from the moon.

Modern science knows only one side of the picture. The scientist sees only the physical properties of sun and moon. The old initiate said: “While the sun continually sends its light down upon the earth, the earth sends its rays of will—the combined will-forces of all the human beings living on earth—into the cosmos. And when man allows the light of the moon to shine upon him, rays of thought are sent down to him from out of the cosmos.”

The human organism has undergone many changes. Anyone, therefore, who is today seeking super-sensible knowledge cannot proceed in the old way. Man's power of understanding is cruder than it was in ancient times. It is true, of course, that even today the rays of his will stream out into the cosmos. But he no longer feels that the rays of his will could carry his questions out into the cosmos; they no longer burn within him, as once they did. He has become too intellectual, and the intellect cools the intensity of all questions. We have very little feeling or the insatiable yearning which once existed in man for knowledge of the most sacred riddles of the universe. We are no longer passionately eager for knowledge; we are merely inquisitive and would like to know everything as quickly as possible without taking the trouble really to understand the world around us.

In our present age only lovers like to dream in the moonlight! Men of learning would deem it frightful superstition if they were asked to believe that answers to the most burning riddles of existence could be brought down to them by the rays of the moon. For modern man, the world is utterly bereft of the spirit, and he understands nothing of the spirit which reveals itself everywhere in the world; or, if he speaks of the spirit he does so in a vague, pantheistic sense, with no concrete knowledge of how, for instance, the rays of the will are related to the rays of the sun, how human forms of thinking are related to the light coming from the moon.

By means of an initiation suited to modern times, however, we are enabled to enter once more into relationship with the cosmos and with the spirit of the universe. The only difference is that the modern intellect has to do it in another way. The preparatory exercises leading to initiation are described in my books, particularly in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment The purpose of such exercises is to bring the man of today to a point at which it is possible for him really to receive answers to his questions—not merely in his modern pride to turn the questions over in his head, and expect answers to arise from his own brain. The latter method may indeed result in exceedingly clever ideas; but mere “cleverness” can never lead to true answers to the riddles of life. This continual turmoil in his head shuts man off from the universe.

The modern initiate must also ask questions, but he must have patience and not expect to receive the answers immediately. The modern initiate gradually reaches a stage in his development at which he no longer merely observes the outer world in order to satisfy his curiosity with the impressions received through his eyes, ears and other senses. True, he receives external impressions by means of his senses, but while he observes just as definitely, just as intimately as others, all that is around him—the flowers, the sun, moon, stars, other human beings, plants and animals—while he turns his senses in all directions, and allows all these external impressions to flow through and into him, he sends out to meet them a current of force from his own being. And it is this force which represents the question he wants to ask.

Such a man looks, maybe, at a beautiful flower. He does not, however, look at it merely passively, but fixes his gaze upon its yellow colour, and allows yellow to make an impression upon him, At the same time he sends his question out towards the yellow of the flower; he plunges the questions and riddles of existence into the colour yellow, or perhaps into the rosy colour of the sunrise or into some other perception. He does not render up all the questions of his heart to one particular impression—as, for example, to the impression of the rising sun—but he pours them out into each and all of his sense-perceptions. Were he now to expect to receive his answers from these sense-perceptions themselves, it would be just as if an old initiate had sent his problems out towards the sunrise and had then expected the answers to come from the sun, instead of waiting, as we know he did, until the time of the full moon. The old initiate had to wait at least fourteen days; for it was at the time of the new moon that he put his questions to the rising sun, and he received his answers only when the moon was full.

A modern philosopher would hardly be prepared to wait as long as fourteen days. By that time he would expect his book to be in the hands of the printers; or, let us say, he would have expected this before it became so difficult to find a publisher! Today, however, he must again learn to have patience. When a man delivers his questions over to the impressions of his senses, when he allows these questions to be plunged in all manner of things, he must not expect that these same sense-impressions will immediately bring him anything in the nature of a revelation. He must wait—and this is easy for him if he has carried out the preparatory exercises for a long enough time—wait often for a long, long while, until at last all that he has rendered up to the world outside rises up within him in the form of an answer. Should you throw out questions at random, in a haphazard kind of way, you might perhaps receive fortuitous answers of a kind—answers which might afford certain people a measure of egotistical satisfaction—but of one thing you may be sure: they would not be real answers. You must cast your problems into flower and ocean, into the great vault of heaven and its stars, into everything which comes to you as an impression from without—and you must then wait until sooner or later the answers emerge from your innermost being. You have not got to wait for exactly fourteen days; it is not for you to determine, as the old initiates were able to do, the duration of the period. You have merely to wait until the right moment comes, the moment when all that was previously external impression becomes inward experience, and the answer rings from your own inner being

The whole art of spiritual investigation, of investigation of the cosmos, consists in being able to wait, in not imagining that answers will be immediately forthcoming. It follows also, as a matter of course, that definite questions must be put if answers are to be obtained. Should you enquire from those who have already obtained true knowledge, as this is understood in the sense of modern initiation, you will hear the same thing from them all. Such a man may perhaps tell you the following story: “When I was thirty-five years old I became aware of this or that great problem of existence, and all that I had experienced in connection with it entered profoundly into my being. At that time I entrusted this problem to some particular impression which came to me from the outer world; and when I was fifty years old the solution to the problem arose from within me.”

In days of old, the initiates placed their questions within the womb of space in order that out of space they might be born again. The solar element passed through a lunar metamorphosis. Today the riddles that man would fain unravel, all that he fain would learn in converse with spiritual Beings, must first be laid by him within the stream of time. The cosmic element must appear once more, born out of the human soul after a period of time determined by the cosmic powers themselves. But it is necessary for man to reach a point where he is able to feel and know when a divine, cosmic answer stirs within him, and to distinguish between such an answer and one that is merely human.

Thus the real content of ancient initiation is still present, but in another form. It is, however, necessary to be quite clear about the following. If a man desires to penetrate into the great mysteries of existence, he must be able to enter into a spiritual relationship with spiritual Beings, with cosmic Beings. He must not remain a hermit in life, he must not try to settle everything to please himself in his own egotistical way. He must be willing to wait until the cosmos gives him the answer to those riddles and problems which he has himself sent out into cosmic space.

It is evident that if a man has once learnt to send the forces of his soul out into the cosmos and to receive cosmic forces into himself he is much better able to understand the mysteries of birth and death than he was before he had attained to such knowledge. When a man has begun to understand how the element of will inherent in the soul streams out towards the rays of the sun, how it streams into all the sense-impressions he receives from the outer world—he also begins to understand how his soul and spirit stream out into the universe on the waves of a spiritual element, of a cosmic element, when his physical body has fallen a victim to the forces of death. Moreover, he learns to understand how spirituality is brought back again to earth by the moon, by the moonlight. He realises that his highest thoughts are given back to him from cosmic space. For although in this present age thoughts rise up from within man's own being, it is, nevertheless, the lunar element in the human organism that generates the thoughts.

In addition to all this, a man who has had these experiences learns to measure the true significance of certain transitory phenomena which stand, as it were, midway between processes regarded as physical and cosmic in their nature, and those which are cosmic and spiritual. The man of today, owing largely to his materialistic education, describes everything from the physical point of view. He says: “An eclipse of the sun is due to the fact that the moon comes between the sun and the earth, cutting off the rays of the sun.” This is a physical explanation, built up from physical observation and as obvious as if we were to say: “Here is a light, and there an eye. If I place my hand in front of the eye, the light will be darkened.” As you see, it is a purely physical, spatial explanation, and that is as far as modern consciousness goes.

We must strive once more for a true knowledge of such phenomena. They are not of everyday occurrence, and on the comparatively rare occasions of their appearance they should be studied not only from their physical but also from their spiritual aspect.

At the time of a solar eclipse, for instance, something totally different takes place in the part of the earth affected from what is happening when there is no eclipse. When we know that on the one hand the rays of the sun penetrate down to the earth and on the other hand the forces or rays of will stream out to meet the sun, it is possible to form some idea of how a solar eclipse can affect these radiations of will which are altogether spiritual in their nature. The sunlight is blocked by the moon; that is a purely physical process. But physical matter—in this case the body of the moon—is no obstacle to the forces streaming out from the will. These forces radiate into the darkness, and there ensues a period of time, short though it may be, in which all that is of the nature of will upon the earth flows out into universal space in an abnormal way. It is different altogether from what takes place when there is no eclipse. Ordinarily, the physical sunlight unites with the radiations of will streaming towards it. When there is an eclipse, the forces of will flow unhindered into cosmic space.

The old initiates knew these things. They saw that at such a moment all the unbridled impulses and instincts of humanity surge out into the cosmos. And they gave their pupils the following explanation. They said: Under normal conditions the evil impulses of will which are sent out into the cosmos by human beings are, as it were, burned up and consumed by the rays of the sun, so that they can injure only man himself, but can do no universal harm. When, however, there is an eclipse of the sun, opportunity is given for the evil which is willed on earth to spread over the cosmos. An eclipse is a physical event behind which there lies a significant spiritual reality.

And again, when there is an eclipse of the moon, the man of today merely says: “Now the earth comes between the sun and the moon; hence we see the shadow cast upon the moon by the earth.” That is the physical explanation. But in this case also the old initiate knew that a spiritual reality was behind the physical fact. He knew that when there is an eclipse of the moon, thoughts stream through darkness down upon the earth; and that such thoughts have a closer relationship with the subconscious life than with the conscious life of the human being. The old initiates often made use of a certain simile when speaking to their pupils. It is, of course, necessary to translate their words into modern language, but this is the gist of what they said: “Visionaries and dreamers love to go for rambles by moonlight, when the moon is full. There are, however, certain people who have no wish to receive the good thoughts coming to them from the cosmos, but who, on the contrary, are desirous of getting hold of evil, diabolical thoughts. Such people will choose the moment of a lunar eclipse for their nocturnal wanderings.”

Here again we approach a spiritual reality in a physical event. Today we must not absorb such teaching in its old form. Were we to do so, we should be led into superstition. But it is very necessary to reach a point at which we are able once more to perceive the spiritual which permeates all cosmic processes. Eclipses of the sun and moon, recurring as they do in the course of every year, may really be looked upon as “safety-valves.” A safety-valve is there to avert danger, to provide an outlet for something or other—steam, for instance—at the right moment. One of the safety-valves which makes its appearance in the cosmos and to which we give the name of a solar eclipse, serves the purpose of carrying out into space in a Luciferic way, the evil that spreads over the earth, in order that evil may work havoc in a wider, less concentrated sphere. The other safety-valve, the lunar eclipse, exists for the purpose of allowing the evil thoughts which are present in the cosmos to approach those human beings who are desirous of being possessed by them. In matters of this kind people do not, as a rule, act in full consciousness, but the facts are nevertheless real—just as real as the attraction of a magnet for small particles of iron. Such are the forces at work, in the cosmos—forces no less potent than the forces we analyse and investigate today in our chemical laboratories.

Man will not be able to free himself from the forces in his being which tend to drag him downwards until he develops in himself a certain feeling for spiritual concepts such as these. Then only will the path leading to a true comprehension of birth and death be opened up to humanity. And such a comprehension and understanding is sorely needed by humanity today, when men are plunged in spiritual darkness. We must learn again what it really signifies when the sun sends its light towards us. When the sunlight streams towards us, the surrounding space is made free for the passage of those souls who must leave their physical bodies and make their way out into universal space. When the sun sends its light down to earth, the earth sends human souls out into cosmic space, where these souls undergo many metamorphoses. Then, in a spiritual form, they approach the earth once more, passing in their descent through the sphere of the moon, and taking possession once again of a physical body which has been prepared for them in the stream of physical heredity. It will not be possible for us to enter into a right relationship with the universe until such time as we begin to feel and experience these things in a real and living way.

Today we learn astronomy, spectroscopy and so on. We learn how the rays of the sun penetrate down to earth, and we fondly imagine that there is nothing more to be said. We learn how the rays of the sun fall upon the moon, and from the moon are reflected back again to earth, and we look upon the moonlight in this way only, taking into consideration merely its physical aspect. By such means the intellect is brought into play. Intellectual knowledge cuts man off from the cosmos and tends to destroy inner activity of soul. This inner life of soul can be reawakened, but man must first win back for himself his spiritual relationship with the cosmos. This he will be able to do only when he is once more to say to himself: “A man has died. His soul is radiating out towards the sun. It streams out into the cosmos, traveling the path made for it by the rays of sunlight, until it comes into a region where space has an end, where one can no longer speak in terms of three dimensions, but where the three dimensions are merged into unity. In this region, beyond space and beyond time, many and various things happen: but later on, from the opposite direction, from the direction of the moon, of the moonlight, the soul returns once more and enters into a physical human body, is born again into earthly life.”

When man learns once more that the souls of the dead go out to meet the light rays of the sun, that the shining beams of the moon draw the young souls back again to earth, when he learns to feel concretely how natural processes and phenomena are everywhere permeated with spirit—then there will arise once more on earth a knowledge which is at the same time religion; a truly devotional knowledge. Knowledge that is based entirely upon materialism can never become religion. And religion that is founded on faith alone, that does not spring from the fountain of knowledge, can never be made to harmonise with all that man sees and observes in the universe around him. Today men still repeat certain prayers from ancient times. And if anyone maintains—as I have done in the booklet entitled “The Lord's Prayer”¹—that deep spiritual truths are concealed in these ancient prayers, the clever modern people say: That is mere visionary dreaming, mere fantasy. But it is not fantasy; it is based on knowledge of the fact that these prayers, which can be traced back to ancient times, and which tradition has preserved for humanity, have been conceived out of a profound understanding of cosmic processes. We must win back for ourselves once more a knowledge and an understanding that will enable us to call up in our souls a feeling akin to religion whenever we are confronted by great cosmic events. We must be able to say, with the men of old: “O sun, thou sendest towards me the rays of thy light. These rays form a pathway to me upon earth—and along this pathway, but moving in the other direction, the souls of human beings, the souls of the dead stream out into cosmic space.” And again: “O moon, thou shinest down with gentle radiance upon the earth from thy place in the heavens. And borne on the waves of thy gentle light from far cosmic spaces, are those souls who are on their way once more into earthly existence.”

That is how we can find again the connection between the light and radiance of the outer world and all that lives and weaves in the inner being of man himself. We shall then no longer say thoughtlessly: “Man is surrounded by the physical universe and he can form no conception of what will become of his soul, when, separated from the body, it passes out into this purely material universe.” On the contrary, we shall know that while the piercing rays of the sun make their way through space, they are all the time working towards the forces streaming out from the human will, and preparing a pathway for them. We shall recognise also that the moon does not shed its gently undulating light over the earth without aim or purpose, but that a spiritual element surges and streams through space, borne on the waves of the moon-beams.

When once perceptions such as these enter into our consciousness, we shall no longer be able to look with indifference on a plant, let us say, when it is bathed in the light of the early morning sun. For at such a moment very special processes are taking place in the plant. It is then that the juices in the plant are carried up by its delicate vessels into blossom and leaf. It is then that the rays of the sun, as they fall upon the plant, make way for the forces of will coming from the earth. And it is not only the juices described by our modern scientists which stream through the plant at such a moment; those forces of will which have their seat in the depths of the earth, stream upwards also from the root of the plant into its flower. And in the evening, when leaves and petals close, when the rays of the sun no longer prepare a pathway for the emanations of will streaming upwards from the earth, the inner activity of the plant ceases for a time, and its life rests.

The plant, however, is also exposed to the gentle light of the moon. The moonlight does not cast its spell on lovers only—it has an influence too on the sleeping plant. Interwoven with the moonlight, cosmic thought streams down into the plant and works within it.

Thus in the plant-world we learn to look for the combined forces of “earthly will” and “cosmic thought.” And we study the form of many different plants in order to discover how far each one is woven out of “cosmic thought” and of “earthly will.” And when we learn how spiritual, healing forces spring up from these cosmic thoughts, and from this earthly will, the healing properties of plants make themselves known to us, and we learn to see in the plant the medicinal herb. But it is only when one has attained to an intimate knowledge of cosmic processes that it becomes possible to recognise the remedial potentialities of the several plants.

We must win this knowledge afresh. We must reach the point, when we can understand how the human head is actually moulded in the image of the earth herself. In the human embryo it is the head which first takes shape. It is moulded in the likeness of the earth, and the rest of the body is joined on to it. When the human head is bathed in light, and the sunlight penetrates it, then that which in the human head is analogous to “earthly” will shines out into the cosmos with a living power.

If, now, we consider a plant whose root contains the forces of “earthly will” in marked degree, we can be sure that the root of such a plant seeks continually to evade the light of the sun; and we can be equally sure that it is specially subject to the influence of the moonlight, which, feebly though its rays seem to us to shine down upon the earth, nevertheless penetrates right through to the roots of the plants.

If, by burning the root of such a plant, we bring to it the element of light, and if we preserve the ashes thus obtained and make a powder out of them, then we have the means to prove how such a powder is able, by virtue of the cosmic processes inherent within it, to work upon the human head, for the forces of will in the head are similar in their nature to the forces of will in the earth. The point is that we should learn to fathom the connection which everywhere exists between matter and spirit—a connection which does not differ whether we are dealing with the smallest particle of matter or the greatest mass. Then we shall be able to do something which at present holds good only for mathematics; we shall be able to apply to the whole realm of nature truths which first come to us as purely spiritual apprehensions.

A cube, we know, is made up of six squares. Such a thing can be spun out of thought; it is a thought-picture. In salt, in ordinary cooking-salt, we find the cube again in nature herself, and here we discover the connection between a spiritual principle—something “thought out”—and a material substance in outer nature. But I ask you:—What does the average man of today know of the degree in which spiritual forces—cosmic forces of thinking, earthly forces of will—are present in the root of any particular plant? And yet the process is the same as that which we carry out today, albeit in the most abstract manner possible, when we first conceive of the cube, and then proceed to find it again in ordinary salt.

What we do today only when we are thinking in terms of mathematics, we must learn to do again with everything that comes within the range of the human soul. The study of mathematics does not, as a rule, give rise to a devout, religious attitude of mind. Such a man as Novalis could, it is true, be rapt in devotion when given up to the study of mathematics. For Novalis, the science of mathematics was a great and beautiful poem. But one comes across few people who enter into a devout mood of soul when studying mathematics!

When, however, we go a step farther, when we conjure up the spirit from the depths of man's being and bear this spirit out into the cosmos, where of course it already is (one merely learns to recognise it again)—then science becomes permeated with religion; harmony between religion and science is once again achieved.

• 1. Anthroposophical Publishing Company. Second English edition.