The Rudolf Steiner Archive

... I have frequently spoken to you here of that important event which came to pass in the last third of the nineteenth century, the event through which a special relationship was established between the Archangelic Power, that Being whom we call the Archangel Michael, and the destiny of mankind.

I have reminded you that since November, 1879, Michael is to be the Regent, as it were, for all those who seek to bring to humanity the right forces necessary to their healthy progress.

My dear friends, in our day we know that when such a matter is indicated, the indication refers to two different things:—first, to the objective fact, and second, to the way this objective fact is connected with what men are willing to receive into their consciousness, into their will. The objective fact is simply this, that in November, 1879, beyond the sphere of the sense world, in the super-sensible world, that event took place which may be described as follows:—Michael has gained for himself the power—when men come to meet him with all the living content of their souls—so to permeate them with his power, that they are able to transform their old materialistic intellectual power—which by that time had become strong in humanity—into spiritual intellectual power, into spiritual power of understanding. That is the objective fact; it has taken place. We may say concerning it that since November, 1879, Michael has entered into another relationship with man than that in which he formerly stood. But it is required of men that they shall become the servants of Michael.

What I mean by this will become quite clear to you through the following explanation.

You are aware that before the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished upon earth, the Jews of the Old Testament looked up to their Jahve, or Jehovah. Those who, among the Jewish priests, looked up in full consciousness to Jahve, were well aware that they could not reach him directly with human perception. The very name, Jahve, was held to be unutterable, and if it had to be uttered, a sign only was made, a sign which resembles certain combinations of signs which we attempt in the art of Eurhythmy. The Jewish priesthood, however, was well aware that men could approach Jahve through Michael. They called Michael the countenance of Jahve. Just as we learn to know a man when we look into his face, just as we draw conclusions about the gentleness of his soul from the gentleness of his countenance, and about his character from the way he looks at us, so the priesthood of the Old Testament, through the atavistic clairvoyance which flowed into their souls in dreams, desired to gain from the countenance of Jahve, from Michael, a knowledge of Jahve, whom it was not yet possible for mankind to reach.

The position of this priesthood towards Michael and Jahve was the right one. Their position towards Michael was right because they knew that if a man of that time turned to Michael, he could find through Michael the Jahve-power, which it was proper for the humanity of that time to seek.

Other Soul-Regents of humanity have appeared since then in the place of Michael; but since November, 1879, Michael is present again and can become active in the soul-life of those who seek the paths to him. These paths to-day are the paths of spiritual scientific knowledge. We may speak of “the paths of Michael”, just as well as of the “paths of spiritual scientific knowledge”.

But just at the time when Michael entered in this way into relationship with the souls of men, in order again to become their inspirer for three centuries, at this very time the demonic opposing force, having previously prepared itself, set up the very strongest opposition to him, so that a cry went through the world during our so-called war-years, in reality years of terror, a cry which has become the great world-misunderstanding which now fills the hearts and souls of men.

Let us consider what would have become of the Jewish people of the Old Testament, if instead of approaching Jahve through Michael they had sought to approach him directly. They would have become an intolerant people, a national self-seeking people concerned with the aggrandizement of their own nation, a nation thinking only of itself. For Jahve is the God who is connected with all natural things, and in the external historical development of mankind, he manifests his Being through the connection of generations, as it expresses itself in the essential qualities of the people. It was only because the ancient Jewish people desired at that time to approach Jahve through Michael, that they saved themselves from becoming nationally so egoistic that Christ Jesus would not have been able to come forth from among them. Because they had permeated themselves with the Michael power, as this power was in their time, the Jewish people were not so strongly impregnated with forces given over to national egoism, as would have been the case had they turned directly to Jahve or Jehovah.

To-day Michael is again the Regent of the World, but it is in a new way that mankind must become related to him. For now Michael is not the countenance of Jahve, but the countenance of Christ Jesus. To-day we must approach the Christ-impulse through Michael. In many respects humanity has not yet struggled through to this. Humanity has retained atavistically the old qualities of perception by which Michael could be approached when he was still the intermediary to Jahve; and so to-day humanity has a false relationship to Michael. This false relationship to Michael is apparent in a very characteristic phenomenon.

During the years of the war we heard continually the universal lie: “Freedom for individual nations, even for the smallest nations.” This is an essentially false idea, because to-day, in the Michael period, the all-important matter is not groups of men, but human individuals, separate men. This lie is nothing else than the endeavour to permeate each individual nation not with the new force of Michael, but with the force of the old, the pre-Christian time, with the Michael-force of the Old Testament. However paradoxical it may sound, there is a tendency among so-called civilized nations at the present day to transform what was justifiable among the Jewish people of the Old Testament, into something Luciferic, and to make of this the most powerful impulse in every nation.

People wish to-day to build up the republics of Poland, of France, of America, etc., upon methods of thought suited to Old Testament times. They strive to follow Michael as it was right to follow him before the Mystery of Golgotha, when men found through him Jahve, a national God. To-day it is Christ Jesus whom we must strive to find through Michael, Christ Jesus the divine leader of the whole human race. This means that we must seek for feelings and ideas which have nothing to do with human distinctions of any kind on the Earth. Such feelings and ideas cannot be found on the surface. They must be sought where the spirit and soul-part of man pulsate—that is, along the path of Spiritual Science. The matter lies thus; that we must resolve to seek the real Christ upon the path of Spiritual Science:—that is, upon the Michael-path. Only through this striving after spiritual truth is the real Christ to be sought and found; otherwise it would be better to extinguish the lights of Christmas, to destroy all Christmas trees, and to acknowledge at least with truth, that we want nothing that will recall what Christ Jesus has brought into human evolution ...

... In the first period after the great Atlantean catastrophe, the life of man was intimately connected with the spirit; each human being could be told the nature of his Karma, according to the moment of his birth. At that time astrology was not the dilettantism it often is to-day, but signified rather a living participation in the deeds of the stars. And from this living participation, the way in which each human being had to live was revealed to him out of the Mysteries. Astrology had a living significance for the experience of each human life. Then came a time about the sixth, fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, in which men no longer experienced the secrets of the starry heavens, but experienced instead the course of the year. What do I mean by saying that men experienced the “course of the year”? It means that they knew through immediate perception, that the earth is not the coarse lump modern geology sees in it. No plants could grow on the earth, if it were what geology imagines; even less could animals or human beings appear on it—this would be quite impossible; for according to geologists the earth is a mineral, and there can be direct growth out of the mineral only when the whole universe works upon it, when there is a connection with the whole universe. In ancient times men knew what to-day must be learned over again, namely, that the earth is an organism and has a soul.

You see, this earth soul too has its particular destiny. Suppose that it is winter where we are, Christmas-time or the time of the winter solstice,—then that is the time in which the soul of the earth is completely united with the earth. For when the earth is decked with snow, when as it were, a frosty cloak envelops the earth, then the earth-soul is united with the earth, rests in the interior of the earth. We find then, that the soul of the earth, resting within the earth, maintains the life of countless elemental spirits. The modern naturalistic conception which thinks that the seeds sown in autumn simply lie there until next spring is quite false, the elemental spirits of the earth must preserve the seeds throughout the winter. This is all connected with the fact that the soul of the earth is united with the body of the earth throughout the time of winter.

Let us take the opposite season: midsummer time. Just as man draws in the air and exhales it, so that it is alternately within him and outside him, so does the earth inhale its soul during the winter. And during the time of mid-summer in the height of summer, the soul of the earth has been exhaled entirely; breathed out into the wide spaces of the universe. The body of the earth is then, as it were, “empty” and does not contain the earth-soul; the earth shares with its soul in the events of the cosmos, in the course of the stars, etc. For this reason Winter Mysteries existed in ancient times, in which one experienced the union of the earth-soul with the earth. There were Summer Mysteries too, in which it was possible to perceive the secrets of the universe, when the soul of the initiate followed the soul of the earth out into the cosmic spaces and shared in its experiences with the stars.

The old traditional remnants still extant to-day can show that men used to be conscious of such things. Long ago,—it happened to be actually here, in Berlin—I often used to spend some time with an astronomer who was very well known, and who agitated violently against the very disturbing idea that the Easter Festival should fall on the Sunday immediately after the first full moon of spring; he thought it terrible that it did not fall each year, let us say on the first Sunday of April. It was of course useless to bring forward reasons against this idea; for what underlay it was this: If Easter falls each year on a different date, a frightful confusion comes about in the debit and credit of account books! This movement had even assumed quite large proportions. I have mentioned here before that on the first page of account books one generally finds the words “With God”, whereas as a rule, the things contained in such books are not exactly “with God”. In the times in which the Easter Festival was fixed according to the course of the stars,—the first Sunday after the spring full moon was dedicated to the Sun—there was still the consciousness that the soul of the earth is within the earth during the winter, and outside in the cosmic spaces during midsummer time, while in spring it is on its way out towards cosmic space. The Spring Festival, the Easter Festival, cannot therefore be fixed on a particular day, in accordance with earthly things alone, but must take into account the constellations of the stars. A deep wisdom lies in this, coming out of an age in which men were still able to perceive the spiritual nature of the year's course through an ancient instinctive clairvoyance. We must again come to this. And we can come to it again, in a certain sense, if we grasp the tasks of the present time by connecting them with what we have discussed and studied together here.

On several occasions I have stated here that amongst the spiritual Beings with whom man is united every night in the way I have described—for instance, with the Archangels through speech—there are some Beings who are the ruling spiritual powers for a particular period of time. During the last third of the nineteenth century, the Michael period began, that period in which the spirit otherwise designated in writings as Michael, has become the most important one for the concerns of human civilisation. Such things repeat themselves periodically. In ancient times, something was known about all these spiritual processes. The old Hebrew period spoke of Jahve. But it always spoke of the “countenance of Jahve or Jehovah” and by “countenance” it meant the Archangels, who were actually the mediators between Jahve and the earth. And when the Jews were awaiting the Messiah on earth, they knew: the Michael period, in which Michael is the mediator for Christ's activity on earth, is here; only the Jews misunderstood this in its deeper connection. Since the seventies of the nineteenth century the time has once more come on earth in which the Michael force is the ruling spiritual power in the world, and in which we must understand how to introduce the spiritual element into our actions, and how to arrange our life out of the spirit. “Serving Michael” means that we should not organise our life merely out of the material, but that we should be conscious that Michael, whose mission it is to overcome the base Ahrimanic forces, must, as it were, be our genius in the development of our civilisation.

Now he can achieve this if we remember how we can link again in a spiritual sense to the course of the seasons. There is really a deep wisdom in the whole world process, manifested in our being able to unite the Festival of the Resurrection of Christ Jesus with the Spring Festival. The historical connection (I have often stated this) is absolutely correct: the Spring Festival, i.e. the Easter Festival, can only fall on a different day each year, because it is something that is seen from the other world. It is only we on earth who have the narrow-minded conception that “time” is continuous, that every hour is just as long as another. We determine time mathematically, by our earthly means alone, whereas for the real spiritual world, the cosmic hour is endowed with life. One cosmic hour is not like another, but shorter or longer than another. Hence we are always likely to err when we try to determine from the earth what should be determined from a heavenly standpoint. The Easter Festival is rightfully determined in accordance with the heavens.

What is the nature of this festival? It is the festival that should remind us, and once did remind people in the most living manner, that a Divine Being descended to the earth, took His dwelling in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, in order that during the time in which mankind was approaching the Ego evolution, human beings might find their way back, in the right way, through death into spiritual life. This I have often described. Thus, the Easter Festival is the festival in which man contemplates death and the immortality which follows it, through the Mystery of Golgotha. We look at this springtime festival aright when we say: The Christ has strengthened man's immortality through His own victory over death; but we human beings understand the immortality of Christ Jesus in the right way only when we acquire this understanding during our life on earth, i.e. if we awaken to life within our souls our connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, and are able to free ourselves from the materialistic conception which takes away from the Mystery of Golgotha all its spiritual nature. To-day the “Christ” is hardly taken into consideration, but only “Jesus”, “the simple man of Nazareth.” One would almost blush before one's own scientific knowledge if one were to admit that the Mystery of Golgotha contains a spiritual mystery in the midst of earth-existence, namely, the Death and Resurrection of the God.

But when we experience this in a spiritual manner, we prepare ourselves to experience other things also in a spiritual manner. It is for this reason so important for modern man to gain the possibility of experiencing the Mystery of Golgotha above all as something entirely spiritual. He will then be able to experience other spiritual things, and will find through the Mystery of Golgotha the paths leading into the spiritual worlds. At the same time, man must understand the Resurrection in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, while he is still alive; and if he is able to understand the Resurrection in his feelings while he is alive, this will also enable him to pass through death in the right way. This means that death and resurrection, contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, should teach man to invert the relationship: to experience resurrection inwardly, within the soul, during life, so that after having experienced this inner resurrection in his soul, he may go through death in the right way. This experience is the exact opposite of the Easter experience. At Easter we should submerge ourselves in Christ's Death and Resurrection. But as human beings we must be able to submerge in what is given to us as the resurrection of the soul, in order that the risen human soul may go through death in the right way. Just as in the spring we acquire the real Easter feeling in seeing how the plants spring up and bud, how Nature reawakens to life and overcomes winter's death, so we are able to acquire another feeling when we have lived through the summer in the right spirit and know that the soul has ascended into cosmic spaces; that we are approaching autumn, that September and the Autumn Equinox are drawing near; that the leaves which were shooting so green and fresh in the spring, are now turning yellow and brown, are withering away; that the trees stand there almost bare of their leaves; Nature is dying. Yet we understand this dying Nature when we look into the fading process, when the snow begins to cover the earth: and say: the soul of the earth is withdrawing again into the earth and will be fully within the earth when the winter solstice has come.

It is possible to experience this autumn season just as intensely as we experience springtide. Just as we can experience the Death and Resurrection of the God in the Easter season in spring, so can we experience in the autumn the death and resurrection of the human soul, i.e. we experience resurrection during our life on earth in order to go through death in the right way. Moreover, we must understand what it means for us and for our age that the soul of the earth is exhaled at midsummer into the world's far spaces, is there united with the stars and then returns. He who fathoms the secrets of the earth's circuit during the course of the year will know that the Michael force is now descending again through the Nature-forces—the Michael force which did not descend in former centuries. Thus we can face the leafless autumn, inasmuch as we look towards the approach of the Michael force out of the clouds. The calendars show on this day the name of “Michael”, and Michaelmas is a country festival: yet we shall not experience the present spiritually, linking human events on earth with Nature's events, until we understand again the year's course and establish festivals of the year as they were established in the past by the ancients, who were still endowed with their dreamy clairvoyance. Men of old understood the year, and out of such mysteries, which I could to-day outline only briefly, they founded the Christmas, Easter and Midsummer (St. John) festivals. At Christmas time we give each other presents and do certain other things as well; but I have often explained in the Christmas and Easter lectures I have given here, how very little people still receive to-day from these festivals, how everything has taken on a traditional, external form. When, however, the festivals which we celebrate without understanding them, will again be understood, then we shall have the strength to establish out of a spiritual understanding of the year's course, a festival which only now for present-day humanity, has real significance: this will be the Michael Festival. It will be a festival in the last days of September, when autumn approaches, the leaves wither, the trees grow bare and Nature faces death,—just as it faces a new budding life at Easter time,—and when we experience in Nature's fading life, how the soul of the earth is then united with the earth and brings with it Michael out of the clouds. When we acquire the strength to establish such a festival out of the spirit,—a festival that brings with it once more a feeling of fellowship into our social life,—then we shall have established it spiritually: for we shall then have founded something in our midst which has the spirit at its source. Far more important than other reflections on social conditions—which can lead to no results in our present chaotic conditions, unless they contain the spirit—would be this: that a number of open-minded people should come together for the purpose of instituting again on earth something proceeding out of the universe, as, for instance, a Michael Festival. This would be the worthy counterpart of the Easter Festival, but a festival taking place in autumn, an Autumn Festival. If people could determine upon something, the motive to which can be found only in the spiritual world, something which can kindle feelings of fellowship amongst those who assemble at such a festival—arising out of the fullness and freshness of the human heart through immediate contact—then something would exist which could bind men together again socially.

For in the past, festivals used to bind human beings strongly together. Just think, for instance, of all that has been done and said and thought in connection with festivals for the whole of civilisation.

This is what entered physical life through the establishment of festivals directly out of the spirit. If men could determine in a dignified worthy way to establish a Michael Festival during the last days of September, this would be a most significant deed. But the courage would have to be found amongst them not merely to discuss external social reforms, etc., but to do something that connects the earth with the heavens, that reconnects physical with spiritual conditions.

Thus something would again take place amongst men, constituting a mighty impulse for the continuation of our civilisation and our whole human life; because the Spirit would once more be introduced into earthly conditions.

There is naturally no time to describe to you the scientific, religious and artistic experiences which could arise, just as in the ancient festivals—through such a new festival, established in a great and worthy way out of the spirit. How much more important than all that is going on to-day in the shape of social tirades would be such a creating out of the spiritual world. For what would that imply? It implies a great deal for an insight into man's inner nature if I can fathom his way of thinking, if I can really understand his words aright. If to-day one could see the working of the whole universe when autumn approaches, if one could decipher the whole face of the universe, and acquire creative force out of it, then the establishment of such a festival would reveal, not only the will of human beings, but also the will of Gods and Spirits. Then the Spirit would again be among mankind!

What I have to say to you to-day will be expressed in the form of pictures drawn from the imaginative life, which is the expression, the revelation, of the spiritual world. The human being is woven with his whole existence and activity into the spiritual world. We know from the many and varied descriptions of it that have been given here, that an abstract manner of speaking, such as is applied to external, sense-perceptible nature, cannot be used in speaking of the spiritual world, if actual manifestations of that world are in question. We know too, however, that the manner of speaking we must then adopt is no unreal one, but, on the contrary, one far more realistic than the logical, abstract speech we employ to express merely natural truths. This I wanted to say about the attitude to be adopted in what I shall now put before you.

When man finds, with spiritual vision, the way out beyond the physically sense-perceptible world, there reveals itself to him a world of spirit. In that world he feels led to make use of the phenomena of the physical world as pictures, with which to express what is spiritually revealed to him. So let me now put a picture at the centre of our considerations; a picture which is in truth a deep reality. Mankind, throughout its evolutionary history, has always been guided by impulses from the spiritual world. Those who could see so far found these impulses written as it were in brazen letters in a spiritual light, indicating the direction they should take. What is thus found in the spiritual world might be compared with the signposts of the physical world; not those that have just a pointing hand perhaps, and the name of some place or other, but signposts on which is expressed in powerful words—or at least in powerfully sounding words—what changes are due to take place in human thinking, feeling, willing. I am speaking of spiritual signposts. Such directions in the spiritual world, however, are usually drawn up for human beings in a remarkable manner, and have been so in all epochs—namely, in a kind of riddle-language. One has in a certain way to make an effort to get behind the riddle. In order that one of these signposts in the riddle-language may become a real impulse for life, a great deal of what one knows has to be brought together. And so just at the present time, as something suited to our immediate present and the near future, one finds in the astral light, as I may call it, such directing words as can become impulses for mankind. On the most varied occasions—I might say in the most varied places—there comes before one to-day, if one has the faculties needed to behold it, something that is like a warning, having moreover the quality of a riddle, and it calls forth in man the feeling that he should be guided by it, should take it as a strong impulse into his will, into his whole life of soul. What thus shines out to meet us in the astral light, as one such spiritual milestone, consists approximately of the following words:—

Thou mouldest it to thy service,
Thou revealest it according to the value of its substance
In many of thy works.
Yet it will only bring thee healing
When to thee is revealed
The lofty power of its Spirit.

First of all there is a challenge to discover what is actually meant. Some sort of impulse is referred to, something which is already present, something known to man, since otherwise one could not reckon on his finding an answer:

Thou mouldest it to thy service,
Thou revealest it according to the value of its substance
In many of thy works.
Yet it will only bring thee healing,
When to thee is revealed
The lofty power of its Spirit.

The explanation of these words, which, as has been said, how themselves in the astral light like a directing impulse or human beings, will be the purpose of to-day's lecture.

Let us recall a number of things that I have already explained here. Let us recall how the year's course, in its regular sequence through Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, has a spiritual content; how spiritual occurrences, superensible occurrences, are revealed in what happens in the course of the year just as a man's super-sensible soul and super-sensible spirit are revealed in what happens in his bodily life between birth and death. Let us reflect how, in what appears outwardly during the year's course, in Winter's snow, Spring's sprouting, waxing life, in Summer's life of blossoming and Autumn's life of ripening and fruiting—how in all this which discloses itself physically to men something spiritual is hidden, something spiritual sustains it. And so let us turn our gaze first to what takes place in this yearly course, from spring to summer and on towards the autumn.

In all that Earth reveals, in stone and plant, in everything that has being, spiritual beings live; not a mere washed-out spirituality, but separate spirit-beings, Nature-spirits. These Nature-spirits hide during the winter in the bosom of the Earth; they are breathed in, as it were, by the Earth; they are within the Earth. When spring comes, Earth breathes out, as it were, her spirituality; these Nature-spirits strive upwards. They aspire upwards with the forces of springing, sprouting life; they are active in the life which is felt in the light-radiant, sun-warmed air; within this they aspire upwards. And as we approach St. John's Day and the time of midsummer, then in the heights above us, if we look up to them, we have a picture revealed there, embodied in the forms of clouds, embodied mightily in lightning, too, and thunder, embodied in all the meteoric element above us, all that lived in the form of Nature-spirits during winter in the Earth's dark bosom. During winter we must look down to the Earth and feel, or behold how, hidden beneath the covering of snow, Nature-spirits are working, so that out of winter shall come spring again, and summer, from the productive Earth. But if in summer we look down to the Earth, then the Earth is as if impoverished by the loss of those Nature-spirits. The Nature-spirits have gone out into the wide universe; they have united themselves with the cloud-structures and everything that human sight encounters in the heights above. In all the ways I have mentioned they have streamed up to the heights, these Nature-spirits, and with them they have taken, in an extremely subtle form, extremely fine dilution, that which manifests outwardly as crude and lifeless sulphur. And in fact these Nature-spirits, as they billow and surge in cloud-forms and the like, during summer's height, weave and live pre-eminently in sulphur, the sulphur that is then present there in an extraordinarily subtle way, in the heights of the earthly realm. If we could speed through these high reaches of our earthly world during the height of summer with a sort of tasting-feeling sense, we should be aware of a sulphurous taste and even of a sulphurous smell, though in an extraordinarily dilute, subtle and intimate form. What develops up there, however, under the influence of the Sun's warmth and light, is akin to the process that goes on in the human organism when cravings, wishes, emotions and so on come welling up. Anyone who has the faculty for beholding and feeling such things knows that the Nature-spirits in the heights during midsummer live in an element which is as much saturated with desire as is the desire-life that is bound up with the animal nature of man—that animal part of man wherein he, too, is sulphurised, is permeated with sulphur in a very diluted form. We see, as it were, man's lower aspect, that which is animalised in him, arched as Nature's formation above us at the height of summer, filled with the life of Nature-spirits. What we thus recognise in its sulphurous quality when it weaves and lives in human nature, we call the Ahrimanic; in it the Ahrimanic actually lives. So we can also say: when in high summer-time we turn spiritual vision towards the heights, then in the cosmic sulphurous desires the Ahrimanic is revealed to us. So if we conceive of man in relation to this whole world nexus, we must say to ourselves: the Earth takes up in winter what exists in man as his lower nature and spreads over it crystalline snow, and in so doing the Earth receives the Ahrimanic from it. When in high summer the Ahrimanic is free, it works as cosmic desires out in the wide spaces of the world and is, indeed, subject to laws which proceed from the planetary neighbours of the Earth and are effective on them. And now we see how against this Ahrimanic desire-element, against this animal desire-nature of man turned inside out, as it were, in the cosmos, an opposing force is present. The force which brings the human being into subjection through his emotions, dragging him down below the human to the animal level, and is revealed in full summer high above us—against this a counter-force is provided in the cosmos. This counter-force is seen in those remarkable products which from time to time fall on to the Earth as products of the cosmos and contain meteoric iron. If you look at a piece of meteoric iron, you have in it a remarkable witness of the iron dispersed in the cosmos. In the shooting stars which come so frequently in August and bring iron into special activity, as it were, in the cosmos, we see revealed this counter-force of Nature acting against the desire-element which by that time is out there in the cosmos. And in this cosmic iron, condensed to meteoric stones, we have the arrows which the cosmos sends out against the animal desire element which, as I have just described, is cosmically manifest.

So we can look with understanding and reverence upon the wisdom-filled guidance of the cosmos. We know, of course, that man needs this animal desire nature, precisely because in overcoming it, and not otherwise, he can develop the forces that first make him fully human. And man could not have this desire nature, this animalising element, if the same animal desire element were not a part also of the cosmos. The sulphur, then, the sulphurous Ahrimanic element is, as it were, one pole out in the cosmos, and the arrows discharged by the Cosmos through space to combat this sulphurous element are concentrated in meteoric iron—in the meteoric projectiles, so to say, of the universe.

Now man is a true microcosm, really a little world. Everything that manifests in the great world outside in gigantic and majestic phenomena such as the phenomena of meteors, manifests also within, in the inward nature of what he is himself as physical being. For this physical being is only an expression, a manifestation, of his spiritual being. And so in a certain way we bear within ourselves, starting from the animal lower nature, the sulphurous element. We must say to ourselves: this sulphurous Ahrimanic element storms through the human organism, stirs up his desire-nature, stirs up his emotions. We feel it within us; we behold it at high summer-time in the cosmic desire-covering above our heads. But we also behold how into this over-arching cosmic desire-covering there shoot the iron arrows of the meteoric phenomena, cleansing and clarifying it, acting as an opposite pole to the animal-like desire-nature. For through this shooting in of the meteoric iron arrows from the cosmos, the animal desire-covering of high summer time above us is purified. And what takes place in majesty and grandeur out there in the great cosmos, goes on continually also in us. We produce tiny iron particles in our blood, in combination with other substances, and while, on the one hand, there pulses through our blood the sulphurising process, there works against it inwardly, meteorically, as the other pole, the iron inside us, bringing about the same process as is effected outside in the cosmos by the meteoric iron. We can then so picture man's relationship to the cosmos that in the flashing meteoric element we find the cosmic counterpart of what within us is a million upon million-fold flashing forth of the meteoric element that sets us free by means of the iron in our blood, cleansing and clarifying us from the sulphurising process which is also active in the blood itself.

Thus we are inwardly a copy of the cosmos. In the cosmos this process is accomplished during the height of summer; man, because he stands within Nature as one emancipated from her in regard to time, has continually midsummer as well as the other seasons in himself, just as he has within him in the continuity of memory his former experiences. Outwardly they have vanished, but inwardly they remain. So is it too with what is present in Man as Microcosm in relation to the Macrocosm. What he thus carries in his physical body, however, he must grasp in soul and spirit, must become able to experience it within himself; he must learn to experience this meteoric shag of the blood-iron into the blood-sulphur as freedom, or initiative, as the strength of his will. Otherwise it remains an animal or vegetative process in him at the best. What precisely constitutes our becoming [a] human being in soul and spirit is that we grasp the processes which go on in us, such as this iron-sulphur process, with our soul and spirit, that we send the soul and spirit into them as an impulse. Just as when we have made an instrument and know how to handle it properly, we are able to perform something by means of it, so can we turn to the service of our will what works and lives in us as does this process of iron and sulphur, when once we know how to handle it; when, as human beings, we can handle and make use of what goes on as living processes within our body.

Let us now turn again to the cosmos and away from man. You can realise that what takes place out there in the cosmos is an earnest admonition to men. For this meteoric iron-process in the cosmos truly brings to mind our inner physical nature; this nature, however, can be placed at the service of our spiritual inner being. So now we come to the meaning which has to be ascribed to that brazen writing in the astral light:—

Thou mouldest it to thy service,
Thou revealest it according to the value of its substance
In many of thy works.

If we look round us at modern life, as it has developed in the course of recent centuries, we can see that the chief feature of this materialistic culture is the use of iron in the realm of earthly life. Look in any direction where our form of civilisation has flowered in recent times; it is iron that has planted in the physical world everything which has led to the culmination of this materialistic culture. We look for what it was that in so unparalleled a way has brought people together, and has laid down the paths for the various branches of materialistic culture and made them smooth; and everywhere we see it was iron and what can be developed out of it. When we speak of materialism in the life of thought it is true that the essence of materialism consists in the idea that everything is matter, and Spirit is a kind of vaporous result of the activities of matter. But the materialism of mankind in the last four centuries is shown not merely in the fact that people think materialistically; materialism is manifest also in the way we handle outer things. Out of the cultural impulses of recent times man has applied iron to this material culture, while the meteoric iron which falls from heaven is treated merely as a rarity, or as something one seeks to explain by means of a science that cannot grasp much about it. This meteoric iron, however, which falls to earth from out of the cosmos, which purifies and clarifies the animal-like life, is actually an admonition to us that we should look up from using iron materially for earthly purposes, and see what heavenly service iron performs in its meteoric aspect up above us, and, more especially, within us. For these meteoric processes within us go on all the time.

And so the first part of this warning speech, shining forth to meet us in the astral light, takes on the likeness of a word written in brazen letters, saying: O Man, thou hast put iron to thine earthly service.

Thou mouldest it to thy service,
Thou revealest it according to the value of its substance
In many of thy works.
Yet it will only bring thee healing,
When to thee is revealed
The lofty power of its Spirit.

It is not merely that we should look up in our thoughts from the materialistic world-conception to a spiritual world-conception, but that we should also look up from what we use in the service of material culture to the spiritual and cosmic aspects of what serves us in material form. And so precisely through these words, which have first to be unravelled like a riddle, we are directed to that Spiritual Being who lives in the universe in the revelation of meteoric phenomena, especially in what is revealed by meteoric phenomena at the height of summer. For at that time the Ahrimanic sulphurising process, which is otherwise present only within man, is there as a cosmic process, and the meteoric process is a counter-process to it; we have here the arrows which the cosmos discharges into the animalised cravings in the heights.

If one lets all this work upon the soul, one feels how truly man is connected with all that surrounds him in the world, and, within, one feels how one's very blood is permeated with soul, saturated with spirit. One feels in it this opposition between the Ahrimanic and that which purifies the Ahrimanic element, the iron in the blood; one feels the inner meteoric process. One looks up with comprehension to what is accomplished outside when the cosmic spirit-forces send the iron arrows into the animalised desire-world of the cosmos; one feels oneself entirely bound up with the cosmos and surrendered to it. Precisely in these particular phenomena, one feels entirely surrendered to the cosmos.

When one feels all this in full earnestness, then from this feeling there takes form a cosmic Imagination; one can indeed do no other than form and picture this cosmic Imagination. Just as animals have a different attitude towards outer Nature, being unable to form concepts or ideas of it, but only general impressions, whereas man forms pictures and ideas, so, when the soul has risen to exact clairvoyance, it is not possible for it to do otherwise, when it experiences such things as this—when its feeling turns inwardly towards its own meteoric process, and when looking outward it beholds in the cosmic meteor-process that rich fullness of life which is thus revealed—than to bring it all together in a comprehensive, inwardly saturated picture form, an Imagination in which is displayed how the human being, the Microcosm, and the Macrocosm are grown together. This does not mean that such an Imagination is merely built up out of fantasy; rather is it a real and true expression of a living process permeating the world and the human being; in this case, of a process that lives in the phenomena of the yearly course.

The Imagination which comes before man out of this experience is one that springs out of a living together with the natural processes of the year's course from midsummer on towards autumn, as far as the end of summer, the beginning of the autumn; And from this experience there arises, coming before the soul in living actuality, the figure of Michael. Out of what I have described to you is revealed the figure of Michael in his fight with the Dragon, with the animal nature of Man, the sulphurising process. And when one understands what is actually going on there, then the soul, which takes its own form and origin from the interweaving life forces of the cosmos, cannot but bring forth the fight of Michael with the Dragon. There appears as the outward expression of what is working out there in the cosmos in battle with the animalised desire nature, Michael himself. But he appears with a pointing sword, pointing it towards the higher nature of man. He shines forth with this pointing sword, and we picture Michael rightly when we find in his sword the iron that has been cosmically smelted and forged for this purpose. Thus there comes forth, one might say, out of the spiritual cloud-formations the figure of Michael with positive, searching and directing gaze, his eye like a guiding sign, its gaze sent outwards, never drawn back into himself; and the arm of Michael appears to us in the midst of a sparkling shower of meteor-iron, as though this were molten in cosmic desire forces and fused together again to form the flaming sword of Michael. Rightly do we picture Michael then, quite in accord with reality, when we think of his countenance as woven from the golden light of summer, with a positive gaze which is like a sign, as it were pointing outwards; like a ray of light from within which is sent actively out. We picture Michael rightly when his outstretched arm is flaming with flashing sprays of meteor iron, molten and fused together into the sword wherewith he shows humanity the way from the animal-like to man's higher nature, pointing the way from the summer season, when man most makes himself one with outer Nature, most nearly comes to a Nature-consciousness, to that other season, the time of autumn, when man, were he to continue to live united with Nature, could share only in her dying in the death she brings on herself. But it would be terrible for man, if he could only share with Nature, as autumn comes, this natural path to death, this self-destruction. When we experience Spring, then if we are really fully man, we yield ourselves to Nature in her sprouting, waxing, flourishing. If we are fully man, we blossom with each blossom, sprout with every leaf: with every seed we grow ripe ourselves. It is then that we give ourselves over to Nature's mounting, springing, sprouting life. For it is then her will to live, and we feel this impulse of life in experiencing hers. And we do well to devote ourselves to Nature at this season. But in autumn we cannot unfold this nature-consciousness in ourselves, for if we did that onesidedly we should have to share in the experience of the paralysis and death which she makes her own. Man dare not go with her in that direction; in the face of that he must rather increase his strength. Just as he must accompany living Nature in his own life, so must he set against dying Nature, against death, the Self. Nature-consciousness must be transformed into self-consciousness.

This is the great and powerful picture given us in the approach of autumn, so that from out of what happens in the cosmos we read the admonition: Nature consciousness must change in man into consciousness of self. But for this he needs the strength to overcome with his qualities of soul and spirit the inwardly death-bringing quality of animal-like Nature. For this he is given guidance when he looks out into the phenomena of the cosmos; to this he is guided by what is revealed in the figure of Michael, with his positive gaze and the flaming meteor-sword in his right hand. And Michael appears to us in that fight with the animalised desire-nature of which, also, a picture emerges from the loom of life. If we wish to paint this whole Imagination, we cannot paint it in any humanly arbitrary way; it can be painted only out of what is given by the cosmos. And the only way to picture the sulphurous element in it, rising into the heights with the elemental spirits in yellowish reddish shades, is in the figure of the Dragon, which takes shape from out of the sulphur. So that above the sulphurous Dragon, in whose burning head, as I might call it, is exhibited the desire-like process, above this Ahrimanised and sulphurised Dragon, we have Michael in the form I have described to you.

He who understands the world can describe it in Imaginations. And whosoever believes that one can paint the fight of Michael with the Dragon in any way one chooses, sins against the inner reality of the world. For the interplay of forces in the world has a definite ordering in relation to human beings. And all the great paintings and other works of art in the world have not come into existence out of arbitrary human choice. If that were so, they would scarcely have continued to appeal to man for centuries, even thousands of years. They have sprung from a real understanding of what weaves and lives out there in the cosmos, and also within the human being. And when out of the living and weaving in Nature and in man, in their mutual connection, there is created the substance of Imaginations, with all that is revealed from the mysteries of Nature, even to the colours and the way the colours gleam and shine, and the details of the forms—when all this is given artistic form, then it is that the great, genuine works of art arise, the great works that were created by the seers, that are imitated by the imitators and are decked out by the bunglers with all kinds of frippery till the real greatness that should go forth from these works, born out of the creative weaving of the cosmos, is no longer recognised. This is what gives these works of art the power to influence humanity through long periods of time. The great artistic motifs of painting and sculpture never would have become what they are had they not been created out of impulses seen to arise from the life of Nature and the life of man.

So we are able to direct our vision to what appears if Michael and the Dragon are painted in the spiritual sense of to-day (for older ways of apprehending it had to paint it according to their own knowledge); the countenance pictured in golden sun-gleam, the gaze positive, outward-looking, the sword of flame, molten and shaped anew out of the meteor-iron of the cosmos; and below, the Dragon, tormentor of human nature, the Dragon who manifests at high summertime, the sulphurous Dragon revealed in the weaving of flames rising up and at once fading again. This Dragon moving below in his own sulphurous element, taking form as the tormentor of humanity and the opponent of the higher hierarchies—this gives the necessary contrast over against the war-waging Michael, who compels the meteoric iron to his spiritual service.

Here you have an example of how the true iron passes over into art, must always pass over into art, since with abstract concepts one cannot compass the whole of reality. And this is the admonition to our times—that we should grasp just such a picture as this, for the awakening of strength, for the awakening of mankind. Therefore one would like to inscribe this picture in particular, this modernised picture of the fight of Michael with the Dragon, deep, deep into the human soul, the human heart, so that it may exert its influence in human forces of will and thought in the present time and in the future. And one can know that if a part of mankind were to take this picture in earnest, if a part of mankind were to understand how this picture takes shape from Nature's very self, and from the directive admonitions in the astral light, then to the material use of iron in the last few centuries, especially the 19th century, there would be added a spiritual element penetrated with the meaning and sense of iron. Then this picturing would kindle in man the force of soul and spirit which makes him able to take hold of the purpose of the meteoric iron within him, the iron that shoots into his blood, warring against sulphur. We must learn not to let this process go on in the subconsciousness, merely shaping the lower nature of Man; we must learn to place this process, this iron process in human blood, in the service of the soul-and-spiritual. That it is, that Michael wills in us.

This is what calls on us from the astral light—to celebrate worthily once more the Michael Festival when autumn is beginning. When now we speak of this Michael Festival which should take its place with the Easter and Christmas festivals and that of St. John, it must truly not be understood as meaning that here or there one celebrates a festival in an external way; the point is that we can celebrate such a festival only when we know how to link it with something really significant. The festival of Christmas has not arisen through any arbitrary convenient resolve, but because it is linked with the birth of Christ Jesus; the Easter Festival is linked with the Mystery of Golgotha; and these are very important events in the historical life of mankind. The Michael Festival must be linked with a great and sustaining inner experience of man, with that inner force which summons him to develop self-consciousness out of Nature-consciousness through the strength of his thoughts, the strength of his will, so that he may be able to master the meteoric iron process in his blood, the opponent of the sulphurising process.

To be sure, sulphur and iron have flowed in human blood ever since there was a human race. What takes its course there between sulphur and iron determines the unconscious nature of man. It must be lifted into consciousness. We must learn to know this process as the expression of the inner conflict of Michael with the Dragon; we must learn to raise this process into consciousness. Something has then come about to which the Michael Festival may be linked. But it must first be there, be fully understood, inwardly, deeply understood. Then it will be possible to celebrate the Michael Festival in the way a festival drawn from the cosmos can be celebrated by men. Then we shall have the knowledge which is really able to see something in iron other than what the chemist of to-day or the mechanic sees in it. Then we shall have what teaches us how to take in hand the iron in our own organism, in the inner part of our human nature. Then we shall have the majestic picture of Michael in battle with the sulphurous Dragon, of Michael with the flaming sword of iron, as an inspiring impulse to what man must become, if he is to develop the forces of his evolution for progress and not for decline.

This it is, which shows itself to us as an admonition from the spiritual world in the brazen letters that grow into enigmatic words but that can be understood precisely out of the conditions of our present time:—

O Man,
Thou mouldest it to thy service,
Thou revealest it according to the value of its substance
In many of thy works.
Yet it will only bring thee healing,
When to thee is revealed
The lofty power of its Spirit.

That is Iron. Let us learn to know iron, and equally all other substances, not merely in terms of material value; let us learn to know them in their majestic spirit power! Then there will be human progress once again, progress for the Earth; and that is what we must will, if we want to be man in the true sense of the word.

The Michael period into which the world has entered ever since the last third of the 19th century, and into which human beings will have to enter with increasing consciousness, is very different from former periods of Michael. For in the earthly evolution of mankind different ones among the seven great Archangel Spirits enter from time to time into the life of man. Thus, after given periods of time a certain guidance of the world—such as the guidance of Gabriel or Uriel, Raphael or Michael,—is repeated. Our own period is, however, essentially different from the preceding period of Michael. This is due to the fact that man stands in quite another relation to the spiritual world since the first third of the 15th century than he ever did before. This new relation to the spiritual world also determines a peculiar relation to the Spirit guiding the destinies of mankind, whom we may call by the ancient name of Michael.

Recently I have been speaking to you again of the Rosicrucian movement. Rosicrucianism, I remarked, has indeed led to charlatanry in many quarters. Most of the so-called “Rosicrucianism” that has been transmitted to mankind is charlatanry. Nevertheless, as I have explained on former occasions, there did exist an individuality whom we may describe by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz. This individuality is, in a sense, the type and standard: he reveals the way in which an enlightened spirit—a man of spiritual knowledge—could enter into relation with the spiritual world at the dawn of the new phase of humanity.

To Christian Rosenkreutz it was vouchsafed to ask many questions, deeply significant riddles of existence, and in quite a new way when compared to the earlier experiences of mankind. You see, my dear friends, while Rosicrucianism was arising, directing the mind of man with “Faustian” striving—as it was afterwards described—towards the spiritual world, an abstract naturalistic Science was arising on the other hand. The bearers of this modern stream of spiritual life—men like Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus or Kepler, worthy as they are of fullest recognition—were quite differently situated from the Rosicrucians, who wanted to foster, not a merely formal or abstract, but a true knowledge of things. The Rosicrucians perceived in their own human life and being how utterly the time had changed, and with it the whole relation of the Gods to mankind.

We may describe it as follows. Quite distinctly until the 4th century A.D., and in a rudimentary way even until the 12th and 13th century, man was able to draw forth from himself real knowledge about the spiritual world. In doing the exercises which belonged to the old Mysteries, he could draw forth from himself the secrets of existence. For the humanity of olden times it really was so: the Initiates drew forth what they had to say to mankind, from the depths of their souls to the surface of their thought—their world of ideas. They had the consciousness that they were drawing forth their knowledge from the inner being of the human soul. The exercises they underwent were intended, as you know, to stir the human heart to its depths,—so to inform the human heart and mind with experiences which man does not undergo in the ordinary round of life. There-by the secrets of the world of the Gods were, so to speak, drawn forth from the depths, from the inner being of man.

Man, however, cannot see the secrets he draws out of himself while in the very act of doing so. True, in the old instinctive clairvoyance man did behold the secrets of the world; he saw them in Imagination; he heard and perceived them in Inspiration; he united himself with them in Intuition. These things, however, are impossible so long as man merely stands there alone,—just as little as it is possible for me to draw a triangle without a board. The triangle I draw on the board portrays to me what I bear in a purely spiritual way within me. The triangle as a whole,—all the laws of the triangle are in me; but I draw the triangle on the board, thereby bringing home to myself what is really there within me. So it is when we make external diagrams. But when it is a question of deriving real knowledge out of the being of man, after the manner of the ancient Mysteries, this knowledge too must, in a certain sense, be written somewhere. Every such knowledge, in effect, to be seen in the spirit, must be inscribed in that which has been called from time immemorial “the astral light,”—i.e., in the fine substantiality of the Akasha. Everything must be written there, and man must be able to develop this faculty of writing in the astral light.

This faculty has depended on many and varied things in the course of human evolution. Not to speak, for the moment, of pristine ages, I will leave on one side the first Post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Indian. At that time it was somewhat different. Let me begin with the ancient Persian epoch, as described in my Outline of Occult Science. There was an instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge of the divine-spiritual world. This knowledge could be written in the astral light so that man himself could behold it, inasmuch as the earth, the solid earth, afforded resistance. The writing itself is done, needless to say, with the spiritual organs, but these organs also require a basis of resistance. The things that are thus seen in the spirit are not inscribed, of course, on the earth itself; they are written in the astral light. But the earth acts as a ground of resistance. In the old Persian epoch the seers could feel the resistance of the earth; and hence the perceptions they drew forth from their inner being grew into actual visions.

In the next, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, all the knowledge that the Initiates drew forth from their souls was able to be written in the astral light by virtue of the fluid element. You must conceive it rightly. The Initiate of the old Persian epoch looked to the solid earth. Wherever there were plants or stones, the astral light reflected back to him his inner vision. The Initiate of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch looked into the sea, into the river, or into the falling rain, the rising mist. When he looked into the river or the sea, he saw the lasting secrets. Those secrets, on the other hand, which relate to the transient—to the creation of the Gods in transient things—he beheld in the downpouring rain or the ascending mist. You must familiarise yourself with the idea. The ancients had not the prosaic, matter-of-fact way of seeing the mist and rain which is ours to-day. Rain and mist said very much to them—revealed to them the secrets of the Gods.

Then in the Graeco-Latin period, the visions were there like a Fata Morgana in the air. The Greek saw his Zeus, his gods, in the astral light; but he had the feeling that the astral light only reflected the gods to him under the proper conditions. Hence he assigned his gods to special places,—places where the air could offer the proper resistance to the inscriptions in the astral light. And so it remained until the 4th century A.D. Even among the first Fathers of the Christian Church, and notably the old Greek Fathers, there were many (as you may even prove from their writings) who saw this Fata Morgana of their own spiritual visions through the resistance of the air in the astral light. Thus they had clear knowledge of the fact that out of Man the Logos, the Divine Word, revealed Himself through Nature. But in the course of time this knowledge faded and grew feeble. Echoes of it still continued in a few specially gifted persons, even until the 12th or 13th century. But when the age of abstract knowledge came—when men were only dependent on the logical sequence of ideas and the results of sense-observation—then neither earth nor water nor air afforded resistance to the astral light, but only the element of the warmth-ether. It is unknown, of course, to those who are completely wrapped up in their abstract thoughts that these abstract thoughts are also written in the astral light. They are written there indeed; but in this process the element of the warmth-ether is the sole resistance.

The following is now the case. Remember once more that in the ancient Persian epoch men had the solid earth as a resistance so as to behold their entries in the astral light. What is thus contained in the astral light—all that, for which the solid earth is the resistance—rays on and out, but only as far as the sphere of the Moon. Farther it cannot go. Thence it rays back again. Thus it remains, so to speak, with the Earth. We behold the secrets reflected by virtue of the earth; they remain because of the pressure of the lunar sphere.

Now let us consider the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. The water on the Earth reflects. What is thus reflected goes as far as the Saturn-sphere, which presses once again. Thereby the possibility is given for man to remain with his visions on the Earth. And if we go on into the Graeco-Latin period—even into the 12th or 13th century—we find the visions inscribed in the astral light by virtue of the air. This time it goes to the very end of the cosmic sphere and thence returns. It is the most fleeting of all; yet still it is such that man remains united with his visions. The Initiates of all these epochs could say to themselves every time: Such spiritual vision as we have had—through earth or water or air—it is there. But when the most modern time arrived, only the element of the warmth-ether was left to offer resistance. And the element of the warmth-ether carries all that is written in it out into the cosmic realms, right out of space into the spiritual worlds. It is no longer there.

It is so indeed. Take the most pedantic of modern professors with his ideas. (He must at least have ideas. You would first have to make sure of it in the individual case; modern professors seldom have ideas!) But if he has ideas, then they are entered through the warmth-ether in the astral light. Now the warmth-ether is transient and fleeting; all things become merged and fused in it at once, and go out into cosmic distances.

Such a man as Christian Rosenkreutz knew that the Initiates of olden times had lived with their visions. They had confirmed what they beheld through knowing that it was there, reflected somewhere in the heavens—be it in the moon-sphere or in the planetary sphere, or at the end of the Universe—it was reflected. But now, nothing at all was reflected. For the immediate, wide-awake vision of man, nothing at all was reflected. Now men could find ideas about Nature; the Copernican cosmology could arise, all manner of ideas could be formed, but they were scattered in the warmth-ether, out into cosmic space.

So then it came about that Christian Rosenkreutz, by inspiration of a higher Spirit, found a way to perceive the reflected radiation after all, in spite of the fact that it was only a reflection by the warmth-ether. It was brought about as follows. Other conditions of consciousness—dim, subconscious and sleep-like—were called into play; conditions in which man is even normally outside his body. Then it became perceptible that that which is discovered with modern abstract ideas is after all inscribed, although not in space, but in the spiritual world. This, therefore, was the peculiar outcome for the Rosicrucian Movement: the Rosicrucians, as it were in a transition stage, made themselves acquainted with all that could be discovered about Nature in this epoch. They received it into themselves and assimilated it as only man can assimilate it. They enhanced into true Wisdom what for the others was only Science. Holding it in their souls, they tried to pass over into sleep in highest purity and after intimate meditations. Then the divine spiritual worlds—no longer the spatial end of the universe, but the divine spiritual worlds—brought back to them in a spiritually real language what had been conceived at first in abstract ideas.

In Rosicrucian schools not only was the Copernican cosmology taught, but in special states of consciousness its ideas came back in the form I explained here during the last few days. It was the Rosicrucians, above all, who realised that that which man receives in modern knowledge must first be carried forth, so to speak, and offered to the Gods, that the Gods may translate it into their language and give it back again to men.

The possibility has remained until this present. It is so indeed, my dear friends. If you are touched by the Rosicrucian principle as here intended, study the system of Haeckel, with all its materialism; study it, and at the same time permeate yourselves with the methods of cognition indicated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Take what you learn in Haeckel's Anthropogenesis: on the Ancestors of Man. In that form it may very likely repel you. Learn it nevertheless; learn all that can be learned about it by outer Natural Science, and carry it towards the Gods; then you will get what is related about evolution in my Occult Science.

Such is the connection between the feeble, shadowy knowledge which man can acquire here with his physical body, and that which the Gods can give him, if with the proper spirit he duly prepares himself by the learning of this knowledge. But man must first bring towards them what he can learn here on the Earth, for in truth the times have changed.

Moreover, another thing has happened. Let a man strive as he will to-day; he can no longer draw anything forth from himself as the old Initiates did. The soul no longer gives anything forth in the way it did for the old Initiates. It all becomes impure—filled with instincts, as is evident in the case of spiritualist mediums, and in other morbid or pathological conditions. All that arises merely from within, becomes impure. The time of such creation from within is past; it was past already in the 12th or 13th century. What happened can be expressed approximately as follows: The Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote very much in the astral light with the help of the resistance of the earth. When the first Initiate of the old Persian epoch appeared, the whole of the astral light, destined for man, was like an unwritten slate. I shall speak later of the old Indian epoch. To-day I shall only go back to the ancient Persian epoch. All Nature: all the elements—solid, liquid, airy and warmth-like—were an unwritten slate.

Now the Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote on this slate as much as could be written by virtue of the resistance of the earth. There, to begin with, the secrets destined to come to man from the Gods were written in the astral light. To a certain degree the tablet was inscribed; yet judged by another standard it was empty. So the Initiates of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch were able to continue the writing in their way; for they gained their visions by the resistance of the water. Another part of the tablet was inscribed.

Then came the Greek Initiates; they inscribed the third portion of the tablet. Now the tablet of Nature is fully inscribed; it was quite fully inscribed by the 13th or 14th century. Then human beings began to write in the warmth-ether; that, however, scatters and dissolves away in the vast expanse. For a time—until the 19th century—men wrote in the warmth-ether; they had no inkling that their experiences also stood written in the astral light. But now, my dear friends, the time has come when men must see that not out of themselves, in the old sense, can they find the secrets of the world, but only by so preparing themselves in heart and mind that they can read what is written on the tablet which is now full of writing. This we must prepare to do to-day. We must make ourselves ripe for this—no longer to draw forth from ourselves like the old Initiates, but to be able to read in the astral light all that is written there. If we do so, precisely what we gain from the warmth-ether will work as an inspiration. The Gods come to meet us, and bring to us in its reality what we have acquired by our own efforts here on Earth. And what we thus receive from the warmth-ether reacts in turn on all that stands written on the tablet by virtue of the air and water and earth.

Thus the Natural Science of to-day is actually the true basis for spiritual seership. Learn first by Natural Science to know the properties of air, water and earth. Attain the corresponding inner faculties. Then, as you gaze into the airy, into the watery, into the earthy element, the astral light will stream forth. It does not stream forth like a vague mist or cloud; but so that we can read in it the secrets of world-existence and of human life.

What, then, do we read? We—the humanity of to-day—read what we ourselves have written in it. For what does it mean to say that the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians wrote in the astral light? It was we ourselves who wrote it in our former lives on Earth.

You see, my dear friends: just as our inner memory of the common things that we experience in earthly life preserves them for us, so too the astral light preserves for us what we have written in it. It is the astral light which spreads around us, as a fully written tablet with respect to the secrets which we ourselves have inscribed. There we must read, if we wish to find the secrets once more. It is a kind of evolution-memory which must arise in mankind. A consciousness must gradually arise that there is such an evolution-memory, and that in relation to former epochs of culture the humanity of to-day must read in the astral light, just as we, at a later age, read in our own youth through ordinary memory. This must come into the consciousness of men. In this sense I have held the lectures this Christmas-time, so that you could see that the point is to draw forth from the astral light the secrets that we need to-day. The old initiation was directed mainly to the subjective life; the new initiation concentrates on the objective,—that is the great difference. For all that was subjective is written in the outer world. All that the Gods have secreted into man, . . . what they secreted in his sentient body, came out into the old Persian epoch; what they secreted in his sentient soul, came out in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch; what they secreted in his intellectual or mind-soul came out during the Grecian epoch. The spiritual soul which we are now to evolve is independent, brings forth nothing more out of itself; it stands over against what is already there. As human beings we must find our humanity again in the astral light.

That is the peculiarity of the Rosicrucian movement: in a time of transition it had to content itself with entering into certain dream-like conditions, and, as it were, dreaming the higher truth of that which Science discovers here—in a dry, matter-of-fact way—out of the Nature around us.

And this is the peculiarity since the beginning of the Michael epoch, since the end of the 1870's, the last third of the 19th century:—The same thing that was attained in the way above-described in the time of the old Rosicrucians, can now be attained in a conscious way. To-day, therefore, we can say: We no longer need that other condition which was half-conscious. What we need is a state of enhanced consciousness. Then, with the knowledge of Nature which we acquire, we can press into the higher world; and the Nature-knowledge we have acquired emerges and comes towards us from that higher world. We read again what has been written in the astral light; and as we do so, it emerges and comes to meet us in spiritual reality. We carry up into a spiritual world the knowledge of Nature here attained, or again, the creations of naturalistic art, or the religious sentiments working naturalistically in the soul. (Even religion has become naturalistic nowadays). And as we carry all this upward—if we develop the necessary faculties—we do indeed encounter Michael.

So we may say: the old Rosicrucian movement is characterised by the fact that its most illumined spirits had an intense longing to meet Michael; but they could only do so as in dream. Since the end of the last third of the nineteenth century, men can meet Michael in the spirit, in a fully conscious way.

Michael, however, is a peculiar being: Michael is a being who reveals nothing if we do not bring him something from our diligent spiritual work on Earth. Michael is a silent Spirit—silent and taciturn. The other ruling Archangels are talkative Spirits—in a spiritual sense, of course; but Michael is taciturn. He is a Spirit who speaks very little. At most he will give sparing indications, for what we learn from Michael is not really the word, but—if I may so express it—the look, the power, the direction of his gaze.

This is because Michael concerns himself most of all with that which men create out of the Spirit. He lives with the consequences of all that men have created. The other Spirits live more with the causes; Michael lives with the consequences. The other Spirits kindle in man the impulses for that which he shall do. Michael will be the true spiritual hero of Freedom; he lets men do, and he then takes what becomes of human deeds, receives it and carries it on and out into the cosmos, to continue in the cosmos what men themselves cannot yet do with it.

Other beings of the Hierarchy of Archangeloi give us the feeling that from them come the impulses to do this or that. In a greater or lesser degree, the impulses come from them. Michael is the Spirit from whom no impulses come, to begin with; for his characteristic period of rulership is that which is now coming, when things are to arise out of human freedom. But when man does things out of spiritual activity or inner freedom, consciously or unconsciously kindled by the reading of the astral light, then Michael carries the human earthly deed out into the cosmos; so that it becomes cosmic deed. Michael cares for the results; the other Spirits care more for the causes.

However, Michael is not only a silent, taciturn Spirit. Michael meets man with a very clear gesture of repulsion for many things in which the human being of to-day still lives on Earth. For example, all knowledge that arises in the life of men or animals or plants, tending to lay stress on the inherited characteristics—on all that is inherited in physical nature—is such that we feel Michael constantly repelling it, driving it away with deprecation. He means to show that such knowledge cannot help man at all for the Spiritual World. Only what man discovers in the human and animal and plant kingdoms independently of the purely hereditary nature, can be carried up before Michael. Then we receive, not the eloquent gesture of deprecation, but the look of approval which tells us that it is a thought righteously conceived in face of the cosmic guidance. For this is what we learn increasingly to strive for: as it were to meditate, so as to strike through to the astral light, to see the secrets of existence, and then to come before Michael and receive his approving look which tells us: That is just, that is right before the cosmic guidance.

So it is with Michael. He also sternly rejects all separating elements, such as the human languages. So long as we only clothe our knowledge in these languages, and do not carry it right up into the thoughts, we cannot come near Michael. Therefore, to-day in the spiritual world there is much significant battle. For on the one hand the Michael impulse has entered the evolution of humanity. The Michael impulse is there. But on the other hand, in the evolution of humanity there is much that will not receive this impulse of Michael but wants to reject it. Among the things that would fain reject the impulse of Michael to-day are the feelings of nationality. They flared up in the nineteenth century and became strong in the twentieth—stronger and stronger. By the principle of nationality many things have been ordered, or rather, disordered in the most recent times. For they have in fact been disordered.

All this is in terrible opposition to the Michael principle; all this contains Ahrimanic forces which strive against the in-pouring and throbbing of the Michael-force into the earthly life of man. So then we see this battle of the up-ward-attacking Ahrimanic spirits who would like to carry upward what comes through the inherited impulses of nationality—which Michael sternly rejects and repels.

Truly to-day there is the most vivid spiritual conflict in this direction. For this is the state of affairs over a great portion of mankind. Thoughts are not there at all; men only think in words, and to think in words is no way to Michael. We only come to Michael when we get through the words to real inner experiences of the spirit—when we do not hang on the words, but arrive at real inner experiences of the spirit.

This is the very essence, the secret of modern Initiation: to get beyond the words to a living experience of the spiritual. It is nothing contrary to a feeling for the beauty of language. Precisely when we no longer think in language, we begin to feel it; we begin to have it streaming in us and out from us as an element of feeling. That, however, is a thing to which the man of to-day must first aspire. Perhaps, to begin with, he cannot attain it in his actual speech, but through his writing. For in respect of writing, too, it must be said: To-day men do not have the writing but the writing has them. What does it mean, ‘the writing has them’? It means that in our wrist, in our hand, we have a certain train of writing. We write mechanically, out of the hand. This is a thing that fetters man. He only becomes unfettered when he writes as he paints or draws—when every letter beside the next becomes a thing that is painted or drawn ... Then there is no longer what is ordinarily called ‘a handwriting.’ Man draws the form of the letter. His relation to the letter is objective; he sees it before him—that is the essential thing.

For this reason, strange as it may sound, in certain Rosicrucian schools learning-to-write was prohibited until the fourteenth or fifteenth year of age; so that the form, the mechanism which comes to expression in writing, did not enter the human organism. Man only approached the form of the letter when his spiritual vision was developed. Then it was so arranged that simultaneously with his learning of the conventional letters, needed for human intercourse, he had to learn others—specifically Rosicrucian letters—which are regarded nowadays as a secret script. They were not intended as such; the idea was that for an A one should learn at the same time another sign: O. For then one did not hold fast to the one sign but got free of it. Then one felt the real A as something higher than the mere sign of A or O. Otherwise, the mere letter A would be identified with that which comes forth from the human being, soaring and hovering as the living sound of A.

With Rosicrucianism many things found their way into the people. For it was one of their fundamental principles: from the small circles in which they were united, the Rosicrucians went out into the world, as I have already told you, generally working as doctors. But at the same time, while they were doctors, they spread knowledge of many things in the wide circles into which they came. Moreover, with such knowledge, certain moods and feelings were spread. We find them everywhere, wherever the Rosicrucian stream has left its traces. Sometimes they even assume grotesque forms. For instance, out of such moods and feelings of soul, men came to regard the whole of this modern relationship to writing—and, a fortiori, to printing—a black art. For in truth, nothing hinders one more from reading in the astral light than ordinary writing. This artificial fixing hinders one very much from reading in the astral light. One must always first overcome this writing when one wants to read in the astral light.

At this point two things come together, one of which I mentioned a short while ago. In the production of spiritual knowledge man must always be present with full inner activity. I confessed that I have many note-books in which I write or put down the results I come to. I generally do not look at them again. Only, by calling into activity not only the head but the whole man, these perceptions which do indeed take hold of the entire man come forth. He who does so, gradually accustoms himself not to care so much for what he sees physically, what is already fixed; but to remain in the activity, in order not to spoil his faculty of seeing in the astral light. It is good to practise this reticence. As far as possible, when fixing things in ordinary writing, one should adhere not to the writing as such, but draw in the letters after one's pleasure (for then it is really as though you were painting, it is an art). Or again, one does not reflect upon what one writes down. Thereby one acquires the faculty not to spoil the impressions in the astral light.

If we are obliged to relate ourselves to writing in the modern way, we mar our spiritual progress. For this reason, in our Waldorf School educational method, great care is taken that the human being does not go so far in writing as in the ordinary educational methods of to-day. Care is taken to enable him to remain within the spiritual, for that is necessary.

Thus the world must come to receive the principle of Initiation as such, once more, among the principles of civilisation. Only in this way will it come about: man, here on the Earth, will gather in his soul something with which he can go before Michael, so as to meet with Michael's approving gaze, which says: “That is just before the Universe.” Then the will is strengthened and made firm, and the human being is incorporated in the spiritual progress of the Universe. Hence man himself becomes a co-operator in that which is about to be instilled into the evolution of mankind on Earth by Michael—beginning now in this present epoch of Michael.

Many, many things must be taken into account if man wishes rightly to cross that abyss of which I spoke yesterday, where in truth a Guardian is standing. We shall show in the next lectures how this abyss was opened out in the 1840's, and how, under the influence of such knowledge as I have set forth once more to-day, man, looking back to this abyss, can relate himself to this same Guardian.

When we turn our gaze back into earlier times of human evolution, we are inevitably struck with the change that has come about in the pictures man makes for himself—pictures, on the one hand, of Nature, on the other hand, of Spirit. Nor do we need to go back very far to observe the change. As late as the eighteenth century the forces and substances of Nature were thought of in a much more spiritual manner than they are to-day, while spiritual things were conceived more in pictures taken from Nature. It is only in quite recent times that men's ideas of the Spirit have become so utterly abstract and their ideas of Nature been referred to a spirit-estranged matter that human perception cannot hope to penetrate. For the human understanding of the present-day Nature and Spirit fall apart, and men can find no bridge that shall lead over from one to the other.

The consequence is that sublime world-pictures which in past times had great significance for man as he sought to comprehend his place in the Universal Whole have passed completely into the region of things deemed to be no more than airy fancy—mere fancy to which man could only give himself up so long as an exact science was not there to forbid him. Such a cosmic picture is that of Michael fighting with the Dragon.

This picture belongs to a time when man traced back his own evolution quite differently from the way that is taught to-day. To-day as we follow the history of man back into primeval times, we look to find beings less and less human, from whom the man of the present day is descended. We pass from more spiritual to less spiritual beings. In earlier times it was different. Then as men traced back the evolution of mankind, it led them to more spiritual conditions of existence than prevail to-day.

They looked back to a pre-earthly condition when the present form of man did not as yet exist. They pictured to themselves beings in the existence of that time who lived in a finer substance than that of which man is composed to-day. These beings were ‘more spiritual’ than the men of to-day. Of such a nature was the Dragon-being whom Michael fights. He was destined one day in a later age to assume human form. But he must bide his ‘time.’ The time did not depend on him, but on the decree of Spirit-Beings who stood above him. Until that time it was for him to remain entirely within the will of these higher Spirit-Beings.

But now before his hour was come, pride was begotten in him. He wanted to have an “own will” in a time when he should have been still living in the higher Will. Thus did he set himself in opposition to the higher Will. Independence of will was only possible to such beings in a denser matter than then existed. If they persisted in opposition, they must needs change and become different beings. This being found it impossible any longer to live in the same spirituality. His fellow-beings felt his existence in their realm as disturbing, nay even destructive. Michael felt it so. Michael had remained in the Will of the Spirit Beings. He undertook to compel the opposing being to assume the form which was alone possible for an independent will at that stage of the world's development, to assume that is, animal form, the form of the ‘Dragon’, of the ‘Serpent.’ Higher animal forms had not yet made their appearance. This ‘Dragon’ was of course not even then imagined as visible, but as super-sensible.

Such was the picture the man of an earlier time had in his mind of the fight of Michael with the Dragon. For him it was a fact that had taken place before ever there was a Nature visible to the human eye, before even man was, in his present form.

The world we know has proceeded from out of the world in which this event took place. The kingdom into which the Dragon was driven has become ‘Nature,’ and is now so constituted as to be visible to the senses; it is, as it were, in substance the deposit of the earlier world. The kingdom in which Michael has preserved his spirit-devoted will, has remained ‘above’—purified, like a liquid from which a substance once contained in solution has been deposited. It is a kingdom that must still continue invisible to the senses.

Nature however, considered apart from man, has not succumbed to the Dragon. The power of the Dragon was not strong enough to come to visibility in Nature. It remained in her as invisible Spirit. The Dragon had to sunder his being from Nature. She became a mirror of the higher spirituality from which he had fallen.

Into this world Man was set. He was able to partake in Nature and in the higher spirituality. He became thus a kind of double being. In Nature herself the Dragon remained powerless. In Nature as she comes to life in man, he retains his power. The Nature man receives into himself lives in him as desire, as animal lust. Into this sphere the fallen spirit has entrance. And so we have the ‘Fall of Man.’

The Adversary has found his abode in man. Michael has remained true to his nature. When man turns to Michael with that part of his life which has its origin in the higher spirituality, then there arises in the soul of man the inward fight of Michael and the Dragon.

As recently as the eighteenth century such a conception was still current. External Nature was still to many men the mirror of a higher spirituality, Nature in man still the seat of the Serpent, which the soul must fight through devotion to the power of Michael.

And now, when conceptions of this kind were living in a man's soul, how must he look out upon external Nature? The time of the approach of Autumn must needs recall the fight with the Dragon. The leaves fall from the trees, all the flowering and fruiting life of the plants dies away. In gentle and friendly guise did Nature receive man in Spring; tenderly she cherished him through the long Summer days, nurturing him with the warmth-laden gifts of the Sun. When Autumn comes, she has nothing more to give him. Her forces of decay press in upon him, through his senses he beholds them in pictures. From out of his own being man must give himself what hitherto Nature has given him. Her power grows weaker and weaker within him. From out of the Spiritual he must create for himself forces that shall help where Nature fails. And with Nature the Dragon too loses his power. The picture of Michael rises up before the soul—Michael the opponent of the Dragon. That picture was dimmed, when Nature, and with her the Dragon, was all-powerful. With the oncoming of the frost, the picture looms up again before the soul. Nor must we think of it merely as a picture, it is a reality for the soul. It is as if the warmth of summer had dropped a curtain before the spiritual world, and this curtain were now lifted. Man partakes in the life of the year, he goes with it in its course. Spring is his earthly friend and comforter; but she enmeshes him in that kingdom where the ‘adversary’ sets the ugliness of his invisible power within man over against the beauty of Nature.¹

With the beginning of autumn appears the spirit of ‘strength in beauty’ the while Nature hides her beauty, driving the adversary too into concealment.

With such thoughts and feelings did men of ancient times keep the Festival of Michael in their hearts.

• 1. See also The Cycle of the Year as Breathing Process of the Earth, 5 lectures, Anthroposophical Publishing Co.

In the picture of the fight of Michael with the Dragon one thing is clearly and strongly present; that is, the consciousness that man himself must give to his inner life of soul the direction and guidance that Nature cannot give. Our present-day thinking is inclined to mistrust such an idea. We are afraid of becoming estranged from Nature. We want to enjoy her in all her beauty, to revel in her abundance of life, and we are loath to let ourselves be robbed of this enjoyment by admitting that Nature has fallen from the Spiritual. In our striving for knowledge moreover we want to let Nature speak. We fear to lose ourselves in all kinds of fantasy, should we allow the Spirit, that transcends the perception of external Nature, to have a voice concerning the reality of things.

Goethe had no such fear. He found nowhere in Nature any estrangement from the Spirit. He opened his heart to her beauty, to the inner power and might of all that she revealed. In the life of man he felt the presence of much that was inharmonious, much that grated and jarred, or that gave rise to doubt and confusion. And he felt an inner urge and impulse to live in communion with Nature, where the eternal laws of sequence and compensation prevail. Some of his most beautiful poems have sprung from such a life with Nature.

Goethe was however at the same time fully conscious of how the work of man must fulfil and complete the work of Nature. He felt all the beauty of the plants. But he felt too something incomplete in that life which the plant displays before man. In that which weaves and works unseen within the plant, there lay for him far more than manifests itself to the eye within the bounds of visible form. For Goethe, what Nature attains is not the whole. He felt as well what we may call the purposes of Nature. He did not let himself be deterred by the fear of personifying Nature. He knew well that he was not as it were dreaming such purposes into the life of the plant out of any subjective fancy, he beheld them there quite objectively, just as truly as he could behold the colour of the flowers.

This is why he was so indignant when Schiller designated as ‘idea’ and not ‘experience’ the picture Goethe had sketched with a few strokes for his poet friend of the inner striving of the plant towards life and growth. Goethe's reply was that if that were an idea, then he could see ideas with his eyes just as well as he could perceive colours and shapes.

Goethe was conscious of how there is in Nature not only an ascending but also a descending life. He felt the growth from the seedling to leaf and bud and blossom and fruit; but he felt too how all in turn withers, decays, dries up and dies away. He felt the Spring: but he felt also the Autumn. In Summer he could partake with his own inner sympathy in the unfolding of Nature, but in Winter he could also partake in her death with the same openness of heart.

We may not find in Goethe's works a clear expression in words of this twofold experience with Nature, but we cannot fail to be sensible of it in his whole manner of thought. It is as it were an echo of the experience of Michael's fight with the Dragon. Only, the experience is lifted in Goethe to the consciousness of a later age.

The nineteenth century has not given us any further development of thought on these lines. The new perception of the Spirit that is now being attained must set itself to strive after a continuation and development of Goethe's understanding of Nature.

Our experience of Nature is incomplete as long as we partake in our inner being with her ascending life alone—seed, shoot, leaf, bud, blossom, and fruit. We need to have a feeling also for the withering and dying away. Nor shall we thereby become estranged from Nature. We have not to shut ourselves up from her Spring and her Summer, we have but to enter as well into her Autumn and her Winter.

Spring and Summer require of man that he give himself up to Nature; man lives his way out of himself and into Nature. Autumn and Winter would have man withdraw into his own human domain and set over against the death and decay of Nature the resurrection of the forces of soul and spirit. Spring and Summer are the time of man's Nature-consciousness; Autumn and Winter are the times when he must experience his own human self-consciousness.

As Autumn approaches, Nature withdraws her life into the depths of the Earth; she takes away all sprouting and blossoming far from the sight of man. What she leaves to his view bears within it no fulfilment; therein lies hope, hope for a new Spring to come. Nature leaves man alone with himself.

Then begins the time when it rests upon man to prove by his own forces within him that he is quick and alive and not dead. Summer said to man: I receive your Ego, your ‘I’; I let it bloom in my bosom with the flowers. Autumn begins now to say to man: Descend into the depth of your soul, there to find the forces whereby your ‘I’ may live, the while I hold my life hidden in the depths of the Earth. Goethe resented Haller's thought:

Ins Innere der Natur dringt kein erschaffener Geist;
glückselig, wem sie nur die äussere Schale weist.²

Goethe's feeling was:

Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale;
alles ist sie mit einem Male.³

Nature has need of death for her life; man can also live this dying through with her. Thereby he enters only more deeply into the inner being of Nature. In his own organism man experiences his breathing process and his blood circulation. They are for him his life. The germinating life of the Spring is in reality as near to man as his own breathing, it entices him out into Nature-consciousness. So too the death and decay of Autumn is in reality no further away from man than his own blood; it steels self-consciousness within him.

The Festival of Self-consciousness, bringing man near to his true humanity—wherever the leaves are falling, there it is solemnized, man only needs to become conscious of it. It is the Festival of Michael, the Festival of the Beginning of Autumn. The picture of “Michael Triumphant” can be there; it can live in man. In Summer man is received lovingly into Nature; but if he would not be deprived of the centre and balance of his being, he must not lose himself in her but be able to rise up in Autumn in the strength and might of his own spirit-being. Then will the picture of Michael Triumphant live within him.

• 2. No created spirit can penetrate the inner being of Nature: happy is he to whom she shows even the outer shell.
• 3. Nature hath neither shell nor kernel; Nature is all, and all in one.

AT THE PRESENT time of severe trials it must be quite natural to anyone who has a heartfelt interest in the endeavors of anthroposophical spiritual science to reflect upon the relations existing between the fact that this spiritual-scientific movement started at the beginning of the twentieth century to send its impulses into the evolution of mankind and the other fact that mankind of the present age has been engulfed by catastrophic events. How catastrophic these events are for mankind has not yet been fully understood, for people are accustomed today to a life without the spirit. To live without the spirit, however, is to live superficially; and to live superficially causes human beings to sleep away the important impressions of the events taking place around them. To sleep through important events is a special characteristic of the human being of the present age. There are few people today who arrive at an adequate conception of the severity and incisiveness of present-day events. Most of them live from day to day. If an attempt is made to speak of a time which might come later, people—and in many instances precisely those upon whom matters depend—reject it most violently. If among its many tasks spiritual science succeeds in making the human soul more energetic, more awake, it will have fulfilled an important one for our present time. Spiritual-scientific concepts demand a greater exertion of thinking, a greater intensity of feeling than is employed in other concepts, particularly those current in our time.

It is important today to become acquainted with the concepts of spiritual research which can direct and guide us in the understanding of the present age in the most comprehensive sense. Today I shall develop some fundamental concepts upon which we shall build ideas in our next lecture which will throw light upon important factors of the present age. I shall proceed from more general thoughts, touching upon the personal in man, which, from a certain point of view, will furnish the foundation for our subsequent spiritual-scientific considerations.

My dear friends, in the course of our spiritual-scientific studies we must, again and again, emphasize the fact that a change in our state of consciousness runs through our life between birth or conception and death: the change between sleeping and waking. In a general sense, we know the difference between sleeping and waking; in a more intimate way, only spiritual-scientific perception is able to demonstrate to the human soul the true difference between sleeping and waking. In ordinary life we believe that we sleep from falling asleep until awakening, and that we are awake from awakening until falling asleep. But this is only an approximate truth. In reality, the boundary between sleeping and waking is incorrectly drawn. For the state of dull consciousness, which in many respects is unconsciousness, through which we pass as the sleep state extends into our day life; we are also within this state with a part of our being between awakening and falling asleep. We are by no means awake with our entire being between awakening and falling asleep; we are awake only with a part of it and another part continues to sleep even though we consider ourselves to be awake. We are always, in a certain respect, sleeping human beings. It is really so. We are really awake only in regard to our perception and our thinking. By perceiving the external world through our senses, by hearing, seeing, and perceiving. We are completely awake there. We are also awake, although to a lesser degree, in thinking, visualizing. When we form thoughts, when visualizations arise in us, when memories emerge out of the dark recesses of our soul life, we are awake in regard to the processes which we experience. We are awake in regard to the processes of perception and thinking.

You know, however, that besides perception and thinking, our soul life contains feeling and willing. In regard to feeling we are not awake, even though we believe we are. The degree, the intensity of consciousness we have while feeling equals the degree and intensity of consciousness we have while dreaming. And just as dreams arise as pictures out of the unconscious recesses of our souls, so do feelings arise as forces in us. In feeling we are awake to the same degree as in dreaming; the only difference is this: we carry our dreams over from sleep into ordinary waking consciousness, remembering them and thus distinguishing them from the waking state, while in the case of feelings all this takes place simultaneously. Feeling itself is being dreamt in us, but we accompany our feeling with our conceptions. Feeling is not within the conceptions, but we look from conceptions upon feeling just as we look back, after awakening, upon the dream. And since we do this, simultaneously in the case of feeling, we are not aware of the fact that we have only the conception of feeling in actual consciousness, while feeling itself remains in the dream region, like any dream.

And will itself, my dear friends! What do you know of the process occurring when you resolve to take hold of a book and your hand then actually seized the book? What do you know of that which takes place between your conscious thought: “I want to take hold of the book,” and the mysterious processes then occurring in your organism? We know what we think about willing, but willing itself remains unknown to us in ordinary consciousness. Whereas we “dream away” our feeling, we “sleep away” the actual, essential content of our willing.

Through perception and thinking we learn to know a world around us which we designate as the physical-sense world; through feeling and willing we do not learn to know the world in which we exist as feeling and willing human beings. We are constantly in a super-sensible world; the forces of our feeling and willing originate in this super-sensible world, just as our perception and thinking originate in the physical world. We have no bodily organs for feeling and willing; we do have bodily organs for perception and thinking. Many physiologists believe that organs for feeling and willing exist; this shows that they do not know what they are talking about. Physiologists who really think do not believe this.

What I have described above is the ordered state in which we live between birth and death, a state in which we are awake in regard to perception and thinking, but asleep in regard to feeling and willing.

The condition is different between death and a new birth; it is reversed, in a certain sense. We begin then to be awake in regard to our feeling and willing, and we sleep away our perception, our thinking, although sleep is a different state in the world in which we then dwell with our souls. From what I have just stated you will see that the so-called dead are different from the so-called living in that the so-called living sleep away feeling and willing which constantly stream through their being; the dead stand within this feeling and willing. It will not be difficult for you to understand that the dead dwell in the same world in which we dwell as the so-called living. We are separated from the dead merely because we do not perceive the world in which they live and weave. The dead are always around us; we are surrounded also by those being who live without having physically incarnated. We only fail to perceive them.

You need only form the conception of a human being sleeping in a room: objects are around him, but he does not perceive them. The fact that something is not perceived is no proof that it is not there. In regard to the world of the dead we are in exactly the same position in which we are in regard to the world of physical beings while we sleep. We live in the same world with the dead and with the higher hierarchies: they are in our midst, but we are separated from them merely through the nature of our consciousness.

My dear friends, from this it follows that the human being perceives and understands only a part of that reality within which he actually exists. If the human being were to grasp full reality, his knowledge would be quite different from what it is today. This knowledge, then, would be comprised not only of the forces that come from the kingdom of nature known to us, but also of the forces of the higher spiritual beings and the forces that come from the realm of the so-called dead. Today these facts are considered extremely grotesque by the great majority of people. Yet, for ever wider circles of mankind and especially for those whose concern it is to be interested in the evolution and progress of human life these ideas should become a matter that must be penetrated by cognition. For right up to our time, more or less, the human being was guided by dark, unknown forces in regard to all that he cannot perceive in his surroundings. Guidance by these obscure, unknown forces has more or less ceased in our age. (We shall have to speak about this in our next lecture.) Today the human being must enter into conscious relationship with certain forces which reach over into our world from the realm of the so-called dead.—It will not be easy to make human beings conscious of these things to the degree that is necessary in order to put the real, the true in the place of the fantastic inadequateness which pervades our age and which has brought about such great catastrophes. In regard to this I should like to draw your attention to only one point, on fact:

Among the many so-called “scientific” courses there are historical studies. History is taught and studied in schools. But what is this history? Any well-informed person who is acquainted with the literature of earlier times knows that what today is called the science of history is not much more than a hundred years old. I do not want to say more about this. People consider and write history with the same thoughts and concepts they employ in external ordinary life when observing nature. But no one asks whether it is permissible to observe historical life in the same way one observes external nature. It is not permissible. For the historical life of mankind is governed by impulses which cannot be grasped with the concepts of our waking consciousness. Anyone who is really able to observe history knows that we are governed by impulses in historical life which, for ordinary consciousness, are only accessible to the dream state. Just as mankind dreams away the life of feeling, so it dreams away the impulses of history. If we attempt to observe the historical life of mankind with the concepts which are excellent for natural science, we cannot truly grasp it: we observe it only on its surface. What is it that is taught and studied as history in the schools? It is nothing more, in regard to real history, than the description of a corpse is in regard to the whole human being. History as it is taught today is the study of a corpse. The study of history must undergo a complete transformation. In the future it will only be possible to understand what works in history with inspired concepts, with inspiration. Then we shall have true history. Then we shall know what is in that governs mankind, what it is that works from historical life into social life.

My dear friends, what I am stating here has a deep significance. People think they understand social-historical life. They do not understand it, because they want to grasp it with the ordinary concepts of daily waking life. This does not become evident when history is written, for little seems to depend upon whether or not the facts are actually true. I should like to give you an example of this: We learn from history books that America was discovered in 1492. Generally speaking, this is correct; but from what is thus written in history books we form the conception that prior to 1492 America was completely unknown, as far as we may go back in history. But this is not the case. America was unknown for only a few centuries. Still in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there existed a lively traffic between Iceland, Ireland and America. Medical herbs and other goods were imported into Europe from America. For certain reasons connected with the inner karma of Europe and the early role of Ireland, Rome made every possible effort to cut Europe off from America so that America would be forgotten. This effort on the part of Rome was not detrimental to European conditions at the time; it was well meant.

I only intend to show by this example that a fact need not necessarily be a historical fact; that we may be completely ignorant historically regarding an important matter.

To have historical knowing or to be historically ignorant in regard to the social life of mankind is, on the other hand, of great importance. How often today do we hear people say: we must think thus and so about this or that event because history teaches thus and so. Take modern literature, especially present-day magazines and newspapers and you will see how often the phrase is employed: “History teaches thus and so,” The human being partly sleeps away the historical events in the midst of which he lives, but he nevertheless forms a judgment about them or one is inculcated in him. The phrase: “history teaches thus and so” is very frequently heard, and at the beginning of the war, important men states what history taught them concerning the duration of the war. It was the honest conviction of the so-called “clever people” that, according to the general social and economic conditions of the earth, the war could not last longer than from four to six months! The outcome of this prophecy was similar to that of another historical prophecy made by a much greater spirit, to be sure, but which was formed by the ordinary conceptions of ever-day consciousness. Such conceptions cannot lay hold of history, because history is dreamt away, even partly slept away. It can only be grasped with great concepts. When Friedrich von Schiller became professor of philosophy at the University of Jena, he delivered his world-famous inaugural speech about the study of history. This was shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. He stated his conviction derived from history but gained with ordinary concepts. I am not quoting literally, but the following is what Schiller, who certainly was not an insignificant personality, propounded as his conviction: History teaches that many quarrels and wars occurred in ancient times, and from what took place then we can expect disharmony among the European peoples in the future. They will, however, consider themselves members of a great family and will no longer tear each other to pieces.—thus Friedrich von Schiller. Shortly thereafter in 1789, the French Revolution broke out. All that befell the European family of peoples in the nineteenth century, and what is happening now, so many years later, has certainly annihilated the co-called historical judgment of Schiller in a most thorough fashion.

History will only teach us something if we are able to penetrate it with inspired concepts. For the historical life of mankind is influenced not only by the so-called living, but by the souls of the dead, by the spirits with whom the so-called dead live, just as we live with the beings of the animal, plant, and mineral realms. Mankind attaches great value to mere phrases. But it must wean itself from this habit. It can do so only if it acquires true concepts, concepts permeated with reality. A very important concept is that which shows us that we are separated from the so-called dead only through our consciousness which is a sleeping consciousness in regard to the world of feeling and willing in which the dead surround us. It is a sleeping consciousness similar to the consciousness in which we dwell between falling asleep and awakening as regards the physical objects around us.

Clairvoyant consciousness confirms, step by step, that which has been characterized here in general terms.

The question, however, may arise: How is it that the human being knows nothing about the world in which he lives, through which he passes with every step of his life? Well, my dear friends, the very way in which clairvoyant consciousness offers concrete enlightenment concerning the intercourse with the so-called dead is the living proof of the fact that for ordinary consciousness the world in which the dead live must remain unknown. I need only relate some of the characteristic traits of this intercourse with the so-called dead which may take place with developed clairvoyant consciousness, and you will see from this why we know nothing in ordinary life about this intercourse with the dead. It is possible—although it is, in a certain respect, a very delicate matter—still, it is possible that the world of the dead may lay itself open to awakened consciousness, that the world of the dead may be perceived by the human being, that he may enter into conscious relationship with the individual dead person. The human being must, however, acquire a completely different consciousness if he wishes to enter into an actual and secure relation with the dead person. He must acquire a consciousness which is completely different form the one employed in the physical world. Let me describe here a few characteristic traits.

In the physical world we have certain habits in our relation to another human being. If I speak to someone here on the physical plane, ask him something, communicate something to him, I am conscious of the fact that the speech proceeds from my soul, through my speech organs, and passes over to him. I am conscious of the fact that I speak. I am conscious of this fact also in regard to external perception. And if this other human being here on the physical plane answers me or communicates something to me, then I hear his words, his words sound out to me.

This is not the case in fully conscious intercourse with the dead. (In half-conscious intercourse the matter is somewhat different, but I am speaking here of fully conscious intercourse.) In fully conscious intercourse with the dead matters are reversed. They are quite different from what we expect. When I confront the dead person, he speaks in his soul what I intend to ask him or what I wish to communicate to him: this sounds out to me from him. And what he intends to say to me sounds out of my own soul. We have to become accustomed to this, my dear friends. We must accustom ourselves to hearing what the other person says as sounding out of the spiritual outer world. This is so different from everything we are accustomed to experience here in the physical world that it does not occur to us at all to take any stand in regard to it. For just consider the following: At one time or another in life something speaks within your soul. You certainly will ascribe it to yourself. The human being is in certain respects egotistical, and if something arises within his soul he is inclined to ascribe it to his own imagination, to his own genius. We only learn to recognize through clairvoyant consciousness that much that arises in our souls is in truth told us by the dead. The realm of the dead constantly plays into our will, into our feeling. Something arises in us which we may call a good idea: in truth it is a communication from the dead. We also are unfamiliar with the other aspect of the matter and pay no attention to what may appear, out of the grey spiritual environment, as if it were our own thoughts surrounding us. If a human being can be sufficiently objective in regard to his own thoughts to experience them as if they were hovering around him, then the dead understand these thoughts.

It is true that the human being, even in ordinary consciousness, is in connection with the dead, but he does not become aware of it because he is not able to interpret the facts which I have just described. For we must realize that besides sleeping, waking and dreaming, we have two other states of consciousness. We have two other, extraordinarily important states of consciousness, but we pay not attention to them in ordinary life. We fail to pay attention to them for a certain reason which you will appreciate at once when I name these two states of consciousness: we have the state of falling asleep and the state of waking up. They are of short duration and pass so quickly that we pay no attention to their content. But the most important things occur at the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking up. If we learn to know the real nature of these two moments, we all, in a certain respect, acquire the right concepts concerning the relationship of the human being to the world in which the dead co-exist with us.

Man is constantly in connection with the world of the dead, and this connection is especially vivid at the moment of falling asleep and the moment of waking up. Clairvoyant consciousness shows that at the moment of falling asleep the human being is especially fitted to ask questions of the dead, give information to the dead; in general, to turn to the dead. At the moment of waking up the human being is especially fitted to receive communications, messages from the dead. He receives them rapidly and since he wakes up directly afterwards, they pass him by quickly and the tumult of waking life drowns them out. Not so long ago, more primitive people in their atavistic state knew these facts and they hinted at them; but under the influence of our materialistic culture such things perish even in remote regions. Anyone who grew up among the old peasants in rural districts knows that one of their fundamental rules was that on awakening in the morning one should remain quiet for a moment and refrain from looking out of the window into the light. These people tried to protect what worked upon the soul at the moment of waking from the rush and turmoil of waking life; they tried to remain quiet for a moment in their darkened room and not look out of the window immediately upon awaking.

It is not too difficult to observe that the moments of waking up and of falling asleep are of a quite special character. But in order to become aware of such things we need a certain wakefulness of thinking. Wakefulness of thinking is a faculty which has never been lacking to such an extent as it is today. I could give you grotesque examples of this. Let me quote one of the banal examples that permeate every-day life and can be met at every turn, as it were.

A few days ago I noticed an advertisement in a newspaper which filled about one eighth of the page. It advertised the wide-spread Memory Course of a man called Poehlmann. It stated that only by employing the method of Herr Poehlmann was it possible to gain influence over other people. No other method would do. I am not speaking now about whether it is permissible or not, whether it is right or wrong to try to “gain influence” over other people; this does not concern us at the moment. I am drawing your attention to the form of the advertisement. It stated: Certain people pretend to be able to gain influence over others by means of personal magnetism or by strengthening this or that force in human nature. It can easily be proved that these people do not speak the truth, for not one will be able to say that he succeeded through his personal influence in making Mr. Rothschild, or any other rich man, give him a million dollars. Since it is a proven fact that this did not occur—and it certainly would have been tried had there been a chance of success—it is also a proven fact that no influence may be gained over people by this method. Influence may only be gained on the path of science and education.—And then the method of Poehlmann is described.

Now we know that quite a number of people will become convinced through this advertisement that all other methods of trying to influence people are useless, for, has it not been proved that they were unable to influence Mr. Rothschild to leave them his millions? But how many people are there, you may ask yourselves, who read this advertisement and at once raise the objection: does this Poehlmann have students who succeeded in gaining Rothschild's millions? You need only ask yourselves to how many people this obvious thought will occur!

This is a trivial example, but an example which shows you how thinking fails to wake up in regard to what we read. I have chosen this example, first, because of its every-day character, and secondly, because it goes without saying that among those present there is nobody who would fail to observe that even this Poehlmann did not succeed in getting the millions. It is a foregone conclusion that all those who would be taken in by such an advertisement are not present here, and out of politeness I do not mention an example which could appeal to any of my present hearers! But what I want to say is that from morning to night, people read these things. It occurs in countless instances. They say: We pay not attention to them. Is that really so? The other day I read a speech in which the following sentence occurred: “Our relationship with a certain country is the core which must give the direction to our politics in the future.” Just imagine the construction of this thought: a “relationship' is a “core” which becomes a “direction”! People who think like this are in a position to do all kinds of things in life! But we do not notice the connections that exist between such crippled thinking and the public life.

It is necessary today to pay attention to this lack of wakefulness in thinking which is a mark of our culture. To have thoughts that can be carried out: this is the first demand if we wish to become aware of the revelations of the moments of going to sleep and of awakening.

I once listened to an address by a very famous professor of literature and history; it was his inaugural address and he tried his best. He formulated all kinds of literary-historical questions and at the conclusion he said: You see, gentlemen, I have led you into a forest of question marks.—I pictured it to myself: a forest of question marks? Just think: a forest of question marks!

Only he who is accustomed to carrying through the concepts which arise in him, that is, he who develops wakefulness in his thinking, is prepared to pay attention to such things as the moments of waking up and falling asleep. However, even though something is not perceived, it nevertheless exists. And the intercourse between the human being and the dead exists and is especially strong at the moment of falling asleep and at the moment of waking up. In reality, every human being poses countless questions and gives information to his beloved dead at the moment of falling asleep and receives messages and answers from them at the moment of waking up. This intercourse with the dead, however, may be cultivated in a certain way. We have previously described several ways of cultivating it; today we shall add the following:

There is a certain difference in regard to the thoughts which will lead us to a relation with a dead person at the moment of falling asleep; not every thought is equally suitable. Anyone who does not merely lead a sensual-egotistical life will, out of a healthy feeling, have the longing not to interrupt the relation which karma has brought him with certain personalities who have now passed through the portal of death. He certainly will frequently connect his thoughts with these personalities. And the thoughts which we connect with our conception of the departed personalities may produce an actual intercourse with the dead; even though we are unable to pay attention to what happens at the moment of falling asleep. Certain thoughts, however, are more favorable than others for such an intercourse. Abstract thoughts, thoughts which we form with a certain indifference, even perhaps only from a sense of duty, are little suited to pass over to the dead at the moment of falling asleep. But thoughts, concepts, which arise from the experience of a special interest which united us in life are well suited to pass over to the dead. If we remember the dead person in such a way that we do not merely think of him with abstract thoughts and cold concepts, but recall a moment when we grew warm at his side, when he told us something dear to our heart; if we remember the moments we have lived through with him in a community of feeling, and in a community of willing; if we remember the times we undertook and decided something together which we both valued and which led us to a common action—in short, something which made our hearts beat as one; if we recall vividly this mutual beating of our hearts: then all this colors our thought of the departed one so it is able to stream over to him at our next moment of falling asleep. It does not matter whether we have this thought at nine in the morning, at noon, or at two in the afternoon. We may have it at any time during the day: it will remain and stream over to the dead person at the moment of our falling asleep.

At the moment of waking up we may, in turn, receive answers, messages from the departed one. It does not necessarily have to be at the moment of waking up that this arises in our soul, since we may be unable to pay attention to it then; but in the course of the day something may arise in our soul in the form of a good idea, an inspiration, we might say, if we believe in such things. But also in regard to this certain conditions are more favorable, others less so. Under certain conditions it is easier for the dead to find access to our soul. The conditions are favorable if we have acquired a clear conception of the being of the departed one, if we were so deeply interested in his being that it really stood before our spiritual eye. You will ask: Why does he say that? I someone was close to us we certainly have a conception of his being!—I do not believe this at all, my dear friends. People pass one another in our time and know each other very, very little. This may not alienate us from the other being here in the physical world; but it alienates us from the being who dwells in the world of the dead. Here in the physical world there are numerous unconscious and subconscious forces and impulses which bring people close to one another, even though they do not want to learn to know each other. It is supposed to happen in life, as some of you probably have read, that people may be married for decades and yet have very little knowledge of one another! In such cases the impulses which bring these people together do not rest upon mutual knowledge. Life is permeated everywhere by subconscious or unconscious impulses. These subconscious impulses bind us together here on earth, but they do not bind us to the being who has passed through death before us. In order to effect such a connection it is necessary that we have received into our soul something through which the being of the departed one lives vividly in us. And the more vividly it lives in us, the easier it is for that being to have access to our soul; the easier it is for him to communicate with us.

This is what I wanted to tell you about the intercourse, constantly occurring, between the so-called living and the so-called dead. Every one of us is in constant intercourse with the so-called dead, but the reason we do not know it is that we are unable to observe sufficiently the moment of falling asleep, the moment of waking up. I have told you all this in order to give a more concrete form to your connection with the super-sensible world in which the dead dwell. This connection will take on a still more definite shape if we consider the following relationships:

The young die and the old die. The death of younger people is different from the death of older people in its relation to the living human beings they leave behind. Such things can only be discussed if it is possible to focus one's attention upon definite individual conditions in this field. I describe this not out of a general knowledge, but as a summary of what has actually occurred in definite individual cases. If clairvoyant consciousness observes what happens when children die, when young people leave their parents and family and pass through the portal of death, and if one learns to know how these souls live on, the knowledge which thus arises may be summarized in the following words:

The consciousness of these young people that have passed through the gate of death may be characterized by saying that they are not lost to the living; they remain here, they remain in the neighborhood, in the being of those they have left behind. For a long time these young people do not separate from those they have left behind; they remain within their sphere—The matter is different in the case of older people that have died. It is easiest to express these things epigrammatically. The souls of these human beings who have died in the later years of their lives do not lose, on their part, the souls of those who have stayed behind. Thus, while those who have remained behind do not lose the younger souls, the older people, after having passed through death's door, do not lose the souls of the living in spite of the latter's being here on earth. They take along with them, as it were, what they wish to have from us. It is easy for them to do so; while the souls of younger people can have what they need from us only if they remain more or less within the sphere of the survivors. And this is just what they do.

It is possible to study these relationships in a way that will ascertain the facts I have just described. The study will, of course, have to be carried out with clairvoyant consciousness. If clairvoyant consciousness studies grief and the pain of separation, it will find that these are two completely different states. Human beings do not know this, but if one observes the grief, the sorrow in the soul of a person over a deceased child, one will find it something quite different from the grief and sorrow which may be observed if an older person has died. Although human beings do not know it, these inner soul states are fundamentally different.

It is a strange fact: If parents mourn a child that has died at an early age, this mourning, has it its actual content and deeper impulse, is only a reflection in the soul of the parents of what the child experiences. The child has remained here and what he feels penetrates into the souls of those who mourn him, calling forth an impulse. It is a pain of compassion; it is in reality the pain or sorrow of the child himself which the parents experience; of course, they ascribe it to themselves, but it is a compassionate grief. Do not misunderstand me, my dear friends; we must take the expression I am going to use in a reasonable sense, without attaching to it any secondary meaning. We might say: If a young person dies we are possessed by the pain from the departed one's soul life (—we are “possessed” in a normal fashion which is not detrimental), he lives on in us, and what expresses itself as pain in his life in us.

It is different when we mourn an older person who has left us. There a pain appears which is not the reflection of what lives in the departed one, for he is really able to receive what lives in our soul; he himself does not lose us. It is impossible for us to be possessed by his pain, by his feelings, for he has no longing to penetrate us with his feelings, for he has no longing to penetrate us with his feelings, because he draws us after him. He does not lose us. Therefore this pain, this mourning is an egotistical path, an egotistical mourning. This is not meant as a reproof, for such pain and mourning are justified; but it is necessary to differentiate between the two kinds of mourning.

After having thus spoken about mourning our departed ones and the way we continue to live with them, let us now proceed in our considerations to the dead themselves. Since the relation to a person that has died in youth is so different from the relation to a person that departed later in life, you will readily understand that there must be a difference in the way of commemorating them. In regard to a child we shall choose the right ritual, the right commemoration, we shall bear him in our memory in the right way, if we take into consideration that the child has remained with us, that he lives with us and that he loves to become familiar with that which we would have been able to impart to him, had he lived. Experience shows that children after their death long to find in the commemoration which we offer then, general human relationships; they long to find in the funeral service that which is of general interest and has little to do with special interests. Therefore, the Roman-Catholic funeral service is most suitable for children; it is a general ritual, valid for everyone in the same way. A child that has died would like to have a funeral service that is of a general human character, valid for everyone, and not for him alone.

The Protestant funeral service during which a speech is made, entering upon the special, individual life relationships of the departed one is most suitable for the commemoration of an older person who has died. And if we wish to foster the memory of an older departed person, it is best to cling to details of his life which were characteristic of him and to look in his special, individual life for the thought with which we celebrate his memory.

From this you see, my dear friends, that, properly considered, spiritual science cannot remain mere theory. It shows us something of the relationships which exist in the world from which we are separated merely through the fact that we dream away our feelings and sleep away our will impulses. It speaks of the worlds within which we exist with feeling and will. If we take hold of spiritual-scientific thoughts with sufficient intensity, with proper energy, they will not remain thoughts but will act upon feeling and will.—Just imagine the fruitful effect of these ideas upon life! Clergymen who do not adhere to mere abstract theology will be helped by these ideas in conducting funeral services in the proper way and with the proper tact.

This is not surprising; for the world of which spiritual science speaks is the real world in which our feelings and our will impulses live. Thus, what spiritual science is able to give works, in turn, upon feeling and will. It works upon feeling if we develop our feelings in regard to the dead. But it must also work upon the will impulses. We should pay special attention to this in our time. For, my dear friends, if we were to trace the will impulses of the human beings of the present day, we would not come upon very deep regions of the human soul. It is imperative today that men look for spiritual impulses for their external life. As I have already said, people still reject this. But they will have to learn it; for this age will become the great task master for the generation that must live through it, the task master to a much greater degree than has been the case so far.

We shall link our next lecture to the concepts I offered to you today, which were concerned with the individual personal element, and shall then speak about the conditions of our present age from a truly spiritual-scientific viewpoint.

IT WILL be my task today to proceed in our spiritual observations from the foundations which we laid here the last time to such spiritual processes which lie immediately behind the events our age that speak so seriously to our souls.

If we live, in the sense of our spiritual science, with the forces that stream from the so-called dead into the realm in which we dwell during our incarnation, it is possible to observe with great vividness what it is spiritually that under-lies such a difficult time. To be sure, people of the present age have little longing to know the spiritual background of existence. Such lack of interest is closely connected with the fact that his great catastrophe has befallen mankind in the present age. I have drawn your attention to the fact that in the last third of the nineteenth century, in contrast to earlier periods of time, great changes took place in human evolution. I have repeatedly pointed to the end of the seventies of last century and have shown that the end of the seventies was an incisive moment in the evolution of mankind. Very few people of the present time are aware of the fundamental difference in the spiritual life since the end of the seventies as compared to the spiritual life that preceded it. Human beings lack the perspective to see this; for such a thing only becomes apparent if one is able to observe the differences from a certain distance. If mankind is not to expect still greater misery, this perspective must be gained as soon as possible. For, my dear friends, our present age is governed by a strange and very vivid contradiction. I shall describe this contradiction to you, and you will find it very grotesque: There is no time within historical human evolution that is so spiritual as the time in which we live, the time since the end of the 70's. From a historical point of view, we live in the most spiritual of times. Still, it is an undeniable fact that people who consider themselves spiritually developed believe that our time is completely materialistic! As far as life is concerned, our time is not materialistic; but as far as the belief of many people and its results are concerned, our time is certainly materialistic. What do we really mean if we say: “ours is a spiritual time”?

Well, my dear friends, consider the natural-scientific world conception of the present day; compared to it, the natural-scientific world conception of the past is materialistic. Today we have a natural-scientific world conception which rises to the most subtle, the most spiritualized concepts. We see this if we observe existence beyond the immediate physical present.

Most spiritual conceptions today, although well-meant, mean very little to the so-called dead. But the natural scientific conceptions of the present age, if reflected upon without prejudice, mean extraordinarily much to them. It is an interesting fact that so-called materialistic Darwinism is conceived of and employed in a completely spiritual fashion in the realm of the dead. In full life things appear quite different from the way they appear in the frequently erroneous belief produced by what people experience in the body. What do I really mean by pointing to the natural-scientific spiritual? Well, in order to be able to form these concepts, to rise to such thoughts as are developed today in regard to evolution, and so forth, a spirituality is needed which did not exist in previous ages. It is much easier to see ghosts and to take them for something spiritual than to form sharply defined concepts for that which seems to be only material. This has brought about the fact that human beings develop in their soul life the most spiritualized concepts, and then proceed to deny them. These spiritualized concepts are mistakenly believed to relate only to material things. The materialistic interpretation of the present natural-scientific world conception is nothing but a denial of its true character. It has sprung from a tendency to cowardice, pure cowardice! One cannot bring oneself to live with one's feelings in these spiritualized concepts and to grasp this spirituality in the rarefaction needed for the forming of clear-cut concepts about nature. One does not dare to acknowledge that one lives in the spirit when one develops these rarefied, spiritualized concepts. One deceives oneself by saying: these concepts relate merely to material things; for this is not true, it is mere self-deception.

The same holds good for other spheres of life. As I pointed out to you the day before yesterday, {Rudolf Steiner, Das Sinnlich-Uebersinnliche in seiner Verwirklichung durch die Kunst. Not yet translated. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} many artistic creations of the present time show values through this spiritualized, refined feeling which did not exist in the art development of earlier epochs. This change in the spiritual life has been brought about through a quite definite spiritual event which I should like to characterize today from a certain point of view.

At the beginning of the forties of the nineteenth century, when the middle of that century had not quite been reached, the Archangel Michael gradually rose from the rank of an Archangel to that of a Time Spirit. He began at that time to undergo an evolution which enabled him to work into human life not merely from the super-earthly standpoint, but directly from the standpoint of the earthly. He had to prepare himself to descend to the earth itself, to emulate, as it were, the great procedure of the Christ Jesus Himself, to take his starting point here upon the earth and to be active henceforth from the point of view of the earth. From the forties to the end of the seventies of the last century this spiritual being prepared himself for this task. Thus it may be observed that the period between the forties and the year 1879 presents a significant battle in that super-earthly sphere which borders immediately on the earthly sphere. {See Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen, Vol. II: Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} This spiritual being whom we call the Archangel Michael had to fight a hard battle against certain opposing spirits. If we wish to understand what actually happened there, we must consider these opposing spirits.

These spiritual beings who had to be fought by the Archangel Michael becoming a time spirit have always affected the life and evolution of mankind; during the past millennia, prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, their task in the spiritual world was to create differentiation among human beings. Those spiritual beings who are the direct followers of the Archangels strive to lead human beings back to the group soul, to spread uniformity over the whole of mankind. If these beings alone had been active, mankind would have become one indistinguishable species, similar to the animal species, but on a somewhat higher level. These spiritual beings, however, against whom the Michaelic principle had to fight had the task of spreading differentiation among mankind, to split humanity into races and peoples; to bring about all those differences that are connected with the blood and with the nerved temperament. This had to happen. They may be called Ahrimanic beings, and we must realize that the Ahrimanic principle was a necessity in the course of mankind's evolution.

Now at time of great significance arrived in the evolution of mankind, beginning with the forties of the nineteenth century. The time arrived when the old differentiations had to vanish, when the divided human race had to be formed into a unity.

You see, the cosmopolitan views which, to be sure, sometimes turned into cosmopolitan slogans in the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century are simply a reflection of what occurred in the spiritual world. The tendency exists in mankind to wipe out the various differences which were fostered by the blood and the nerve temperament. It is not a tendency of the spiritual worlds to create further differences among mankind, but it is a tendency of the spiritual worlds to pour a cosmopolitan element over mankind. Although, under the impressions of our catastrophic times, people have little understanding for this, still it has to be stated as a true fact. If this fact, mirrored in the earthly events, is observed in its spiritual background, clairvoyant vision shows that it was the spirit who was to become the time spirit of the modern age that from the forties onward fought against the race spirits, the folk spirits that produced the difference between peoples. What has always been represented by a significant symbol took place here, although at a different stage. The symbol refers also to other stages of evolution, for matters repeat themselves at various stages, and what I am telling you now is only a repetition at a certain stage of a spiritual event that took place at other stages. It is the event that is represented by the symbol of the conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael. This conquering of the dragon by the Archangel Michael, which means that the counter-striving powers have been cast out of the realm in which the Archangel Michael rules, took place in a certain sphere, beginning with the forties of the last century. Certain spiritual beings whose task in the spiritual world it was to divide mankind into races and peoples were cast out of heaven down upon the earth. These spiritual beings who up to the forties produced these differentiations among mankind have no longer any power in the region bordering the earthly world. They have been cast down among men upon the earth with everything they could bring with them.

This is what spiritual science designates as the victory of the Archangel Michael over the counter-striving spirits, which took place at the end of the seventies; the pushing down upon the earth of certain spirits resisting him.

Thus, since the end of the seventies, since 1879, we have two things: we have on earth for those who may be said to be of good will—if we understand the expression in a qualified sense—the rulership of the Time Spirit Michael who enables us to acquire spiritualized concepts, a spiritualized intellectual life. We also have on earth the counter-striving spirits who deceive us into denying the spirituality of the present time. If we fight against the materialism of our time, we should be constantly aware of the fact that we must not fight against what is good in our age but against the lies of our age. For the spirits that have been pushed out of heaven down upon the earth are chiefly spirits of falsehood who, as spirits of hindrance, prevent us from looking for the spiritual in our grasp of natural existence.

If one learns to know those human beings who descended to earthly incarnation from the spiritual world after the year 1841 and who have died since, one can indeed see how these things are considered from the other side, as it were. One is then in a position to correct much of that which here in the physical world, is very difficult to see through.

You see, at the beginning of the twentieth century it gradually became apparent how necessary it is to point again to the most varied fields of spirit in life; and those who drew attention to this fact were the human beings who, after the year 1848—more precisely, after 1840—had participated in the hard battle which was carried on by the Archangel Michael in the spiritual world and which ended in 1879 with the casting down of the counter-striving spirits into the life of the earth, where they now are among human beings. One participates in the battle of the Archangel Michael if one rises against these spirits and tries to drive them from the field. {See: Rudolf Steiner, Goethestudien und goetheanistische Denkmethoden. (Not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.}

Now, there exists a certain law which states that from every point in world history evolution may be traced in two directions: backward as well as forward. If we focus our attention on any point in the historical development of mankind, we may say: At this point of time this or that happened. Now, as time goes on, the events may be observed; but time may also be observed retrospectively. We may go back from 1879 to 1878, 77, 60, 50, and so on, and may then observe the spiritual world in retrospect. The following then presents itself: In the deeper structure of events as they proceed we may discover a repetition of what preceded them. If one expresses something great in a simple way, it may easily sound trivial. But I shall speak simply. If we consider the year 1879, we can proceed to 1880, or we can go back to 1878. If we proceed to 1880, we shall observe in the deeper spiritual structure of that year that what has happened in 1878 is still active within it; behind the events of 1880, there stand, as active forces, the events of 1878, and behind the events of 1881 there stand, as active forces, the events of 1877. As we go back, it is as if the line of time reversed itself, and the events which lie back of a certain point of time placed themselves behind the events which lie ahead of that point of time. Much can be understood if we grasp these things.

Now I beg you to remember that I have for many years spoken about the year 1879, and not only since 1914, which would be cheap. This is important, my dear friends, and I ask you now to make a simple calculation with me. Count back from the year 1879, count back to the year which I have often designated as the other boundary. I have always stated that the battle of which I am now speaking started at the beginning of the forties, around 1840, 1941, count back: 1879, 1868, 1858, 1848, and 8 or 9 years more; this is 38 or 39 years. Now count forward: 1879, 1889, 1899, 1909, 1914, and right up into our days (1918), and you also have 38 or 39 years. If you observe the year 1917, you will find a surprising result. You will realized the deep significance of the occultist's statement that, in starting from an incisive historical event, you will find the preceding spiritual event repeated in the subsequent one. Behind the earthly events of our days there stand the spiritual events that began in the forties and which we designate as the Archangel Michael's battle against the counter-striving spirits. These events stand behind present-day events. We have a repetition today of what took place at the beginning of the forties. You can imagine how differently one looks at the events of our time if one pays attention to this law. One will develop a deeper understanding of events that now pass unnoticed, that do not penetrate into one's soul. One will realize that the battle of the Archangel Michael against the counter-striving powers has, to a certain degree, returned to its starting point.

It is, in general, very difficult to speak to human beings of the present day about these deeper relationships, because they violently reject that which would help them to understand the present time and enable them to act in the proper manner. It is necessary today to rid ourselves of old prejudices and consciously to understand the facts.
For things happen here on the physical plane which are of a much more spiritual nature than events in general. This is connected with the descent of the Archangel Michael into our earth region. Many people speak of this descent. But if they are seriously called upon to take this fact on its true background, then they do not follow, they do not want to follow. Yet it is extremely necessary that a spiritual understanding of the most important impulses of our age lay hold of ever more extended circles of our contemporaries. Therefore it was very important, during all these years of our group meetings, to draw attention to the necessity of not sleeping away the stream of events which in our time is so strongly influenced by the spirit. For to sleep away events is a characteristic trait of our time. People pass by the events as though asleep, and it can be said that the more incisive, the more significant an event is that enters the physical plane, the more human beings sleep through it.

The events of March, 1917—if I may indicate a concrete fact {Outbreak of the Russian Revolution. Abdication of the Czar. (Editor)}—were of tremendous significance and will produce results of such great importance of which mankind does not even dream today; and it is really unbelievable how little understanding exists among people for the necessity of a complete revision of their judgments, of a complete revision of all that people have believed prior to 1914.

On this occasion, I may perhaps be permitted to point to the fact that in 1910 I delivered a number of lectures in Kristiania (Oslo) about the European folk souls. In the first of these lectures you may read that human beings will soon be called upon to understand something about the relations of the European folk souls. {Rudolf Steiner, the Mission of Folk Souls in Connection with Germanic-Scandinavian Mythology. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} The following has been repeatedly emphasized in our lectures: turn your gaze toward the immediate East; what happens there is important for human evolution. How often has this been said! Every one of my listeners has heard it. And in the spring of 1914, in my Vienna lecture cycle about the life between death and a new birth, {Rudolf Steiner, The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} I dared to make the emphatic statement that the social life of our time may be compared with a special form of disease, namely, with a carcinoma; I stated that a creeping cancerous disease permeates social life. Naturally, my dear friends, under our present conditions these things cannot be stated in another form; but they must be understood.

We must not think of world events following one another in continuous progression, as historians imagine. They believe that the later event develops out of the preceding one, which has in turn developed out of the one preceding it, and so forth. The prejudice which maintains that the later must develop in the most tranquil fashion out of what preceded it we may leave to those who do not have the sense for reality which is expected of the anthroposophist. We may leave this prejudice to the politicians. Reality, however, is quite different. We must think of the course of events as of a pair of scales in full motion, the scale-beam descending first on the right side, and then on the left. Therefore, the time since the beginning of the forties may be characterized as follows: Great possibilities existed if only the attempt had been made during the period from 1840 to 1914—the year 1879 divides this period into two parts—to prepare in an adequate manner the spiritualization of mankind which is striven for by the Archangel Michael; if the attempt had been made on a larger scale to imbue mankind with spiritual concepts, spiritual ideas. Mankind, however, must depend in our age on its own free will; and if, out of its own free volition, mankind fails to grasp such possibilities, then the scale-beam sinks to the other side. What could have been reached on the spiritual path is now discharged through the blood. What we experience in our catastrophic times is an equalization of the scales. Mankind who has rejected spiritualization must be forced to accept it. This can happen through a physical catastrophe.

This idea may be verified if we place ourselves upon the following firm foundation: We live here in this physical world; but we are awake in this physical world only through our perceptions and our concepts, as I described the day before yesterday. We dream with our feelings and sleep with our will impulses. This is a matter of course for man. But if we familiarize ourselves, through imagination, inspiration and intuition with the spiritual world which is always around us like the air, and in which the so-called dead exist, together with us, in which their impulses are active, then we perceive how life, here in the physical world, is connected with the life of the so-called dead. The dead are able to receive from human hearts only spiritual thoughts.

Recall what I told you the day before yesterday. I said: If a human being dies in his youth, he has, in a spiritual sense, not actually left his family; he has, in reality, remained here. Something of great importance to the dead is connected with this and I beg you to take this very seriously. For the departed one it is not merely a question of being here. For him it is a question of being able to bear this existence. If the dead person is present in a materialistically inclined family which does not cultivate spiritual thoughts, he is constantly oppressed and distressed; the family constitutes a nightmare for him, comparable to the nightmare we experience when we inhale too great an amount of air. Only spiritual thoughts among those with whom he has remained can rid him of this nightmare and make life among them bearable for the departed one.

And again, I told you: If an older person is torn from his family, he takes their souls with him, in a certain respect. He draws them after him; but if they are not permeated by spiritual thoughts, they likewise constitute a nightmare for him.

Now let us consider the following: We can learn a great deal if we observe the sudden death of a human being caused by outer or abnormal inner conditions. Let us say, a human being is slain or shot. In such an instance, death is brought about in a way which is very different from gradual death through illness. Imagine the following case: A human being is shot in his thirty-fifth year; his life is destroyed through outer circumstances. If the bullet had not struck him (certainly, there are karmic connections, but what I am going to say nevertheless holds good) this human being's constitution might have enabled him to live another thirty-five years. He bears within him the constitution for another thirty-five years. This, now, produces a quite definite effect.

My dear friends, if a human being dies by violence with his life forces are still very active, he has tremendously significant experiences at the moment of death. Condensed into one moment, he experiences things which would have been spread over long periods of time. What he could have experienced during the next thirty-five years he now experiences in a single moment. For the important experience in the hour of death is the following: the human being sees in truth his body from outside; he sees the transition it passes through; he sees that it relinquishes the control of the forces it possessed when the soul dwelt in the body, and that it now becomes a nature-being, given over to the nature forces, to the external physical forces. The tremendously significant experience at the moment of death is that the human being then beholds the relinquishing of his organism to the physical nature forces. If a human being suffers a violent death, he is suddenly delivered not only to the normal nature forces, but his organism is treated by the bullet shot as if it were an inorganic, lifeless body; it is completely relegated to the inorganic world. There is a great difference between a slow death through illness and a sudden death through the interference of the external world with the human organism, be it in the form of a bullet or in any other form. In this moment there is a sudden flaring up, a sudden flashing forth of a tremendous amount of spirituality. The flaming up of a spiritual aura takes place, and the one who has passed through the portal of death looks back upon this flaming up. This flaming up greatly resembles the event that takes place only when the human beings devote themselves to spiritual concepts. These are values, my dear friends, which are interchangeable. It is extremely interesting to see the following similarity: the departed one perceives from the other side the sentient thought which arises in a person when he enjoys or creates an image, a painting, that is born out of spiritual life; the departed one then sees how similar this sentient thought, seen from the beyond, is to the sensation a person has (who is of course unconscious of this) when he suffers an external injury, let us say, to his arm and pain arises from it. There is a great relationship between the two events; one may take the place of the other.

Now you will grasp the karmic connection between the two events. Naturally, quite a number of people knew the “aspect of the stars” when the forties of last century approached. If occultists wish to designate such an event as the battle of the Archangel Michael with the dragon, they do so by using the technical expression: “this is the aspect of the stars.” There existed at that time quite a number of people who knew that such a significant event was taking place. There were some who wanted to take precaution, but one of the scales of the balance was too heavily weighted: the materialistic inclination was too strong. Thus the worse measures possible were restored to. People who understand the signs of the times were fully aware of the fact that spiritual life must enter mankind. If this spiritual life had entered mankind from the beginning of the forties onward, mankind would have been spared many catastrophes. For what took place would have taken place, but in another form. What is karmically necessary happens; but it may occur in various forms. This must always be kept in mind.

I shall express myself more explicitly. There are two ways of thinking about what ought to happen in the social sphere or any other field. We may present a program, may form programmatical concepts; we can think out how the world should develop in a certain field; this can be presented in beautiful words. We can swear by these words, take them as dogmas, but nothing will result from them, nothing at all! We might have the most beautiful ideas about what ought to happen, but nothing will come of them. Ideas, however beautiful, need not result in anything. Thought-out programs are the most worthless things in life. In contrast to this, we can do something else, and many a person does it without any special clairvoyance. We may, simply through a naive, intuitive knowledge of the condition of the times, ask ourselves: What is bound to happen in the next twenty or thirty years? What is it that in our time wishes to become reality? Then, if one has discovered what will inevitably happen, one can say to oneself: Now we can choose; people can either come to their senses and guide the course of events in the direction it must take in any case: then matters will turn out well. Or they can fail to do this by being asleep and simply allowing matters to run their course: in which case that which must take place will be brought about by catastrophes, revolutions, and cataclysms. No statistics, no programs, however well thought out, are of any value. Only the observation of what wills to appear out of the hidden depths of the times is of value. This must be taken up into our consciousness; by this the intentions of the present must be governed.

In the forties of the last century the many people who adhered to programs have won the victory over the few who understood what I have just stated. From this sprang all kinds of attempts to spiritualize mankind: spiritism (spiritualism,), for instance, is one of them; it is an attempt to spiritualize and reform mankind with inadequate means; to reveal the spiritual worlds materialistically. Even our thinking may be materialistic. It is a materialistic thought that says: This or that particular group of mankind is in the right. Why do the spiritual powers not intervene and help them vindicate their rights?—How often do we hear people say today: Why do the spiritual powers not intervene? The day before yesterday I gave an answer to this in a more abstract form: Mankind today must rely on its own freedom. Those who ask: why do the spiritual powers not intervene? proceed from the assumption that ghosts instead of men should make politics. That would certainly be easy progress if ghosts instead of human beings were to introduce the necessary reforms. This, of course, they do not do, because human beings must rely on their freedom. The expectation of help from ghosts is what most decidedly confounds human beings; it draws their attention away from what ought to happen. Thus the period in the life of mankind in which refined spiritual concepts were gradually developed was precisely the time when mankind was exposed to the strongest materialistic temptations. Human beings simply are unable to distinguish between refined spiritualized concepts and sensations on the one hand and that which, on the other hand, approaches them as temptation and counter-acts the grasping of the spiritualized element within them. Therefore, because people did not comprehend at the right time how evolution must proceed, our catastrophic age, our present difficult times have become a necessity. Without the present hard experiences mankind would have sunk still deeper into doubt of itself. To be sure, it would have developed spirituality, but it would have rejected it to a still greater degree.

This is part of the background of historical development. I should like very much, indeed, to throw light from this background upon much that lies in the foreground; but you will appreciate the reasons why this cannot be done in our present age. I must leave it to the individual to illuminate for himself what lives in our immediate present, seen from the background I have just described.

You see, my dear friends, the sleeping away of events which I have characterized causes an inward overlooking of the sharp angles and contours of life. But if we overlook the sharp angles and contours of life, compromises arise. Now, there may be times which are suitable for compromises. The time that preceded the forties of the nineteenth century was one; but this is not true of our time. Our time demands that we see things as they are, with all their angles and contours, in sharp relief; but it also arouses in the human soul the urge—just because of the presence of these sharp angles and contours—to close its eyes sleepily to them. What I have just stated may be observed even in regard to the greatest, the most significant events in human evolution.

In regard to the greatest event in world history, human evolution has brought about just these angles and contours! Indeed, even in regard to the greatest event of world history, namely, the Mystery of Golgotha. We know all the observations made in the course of the theological development of the nineteenth century concerning the Mystery of Golgotha. From the time Lessing began to speak about the Mystery of Golgotha right up to the time of the theologian Drews, all kinds of statements have been made regarding it. And it may well be said that the whole theological development of the nineteenth century offers complete proof of the fact that people have entirely forgotten how to understand the mystery of Golgotha. But there are some very interesting publications concerning the Christ Jesus. Very interesting publications, indeed! Take for instance, a Danish one {Emil Rasmussen Jesus, A Comparative Psychopathological Study.} This Danish publication is written entirely from the standpoint of the modern natural-scientific thinker. The author states: I am a psychologist, a physiologist, and a psychiatrist; I observe the Gospels from this standpoint. And at what conclusion does he arrive? Quite factually, in the sense of modern psychiatric judgment, he arrives at the following one: The picture which the Gospels sketch of the Christ Jesus is a pathological one. We can only conceive of the Christ Jesus as a person suffering from insanity, epilepsy, morbid visions, and similar conditions; he possesses all the symptoms of a serious mental illness.—If one reads the most important passage of this book to people, as I have recently done, {See: Rudolf Steiner, Geistige Wesen und ihre Wirkungen (Spiritual Beings and Their Effects), Vol. IV, first lecture (not yet translated) Anthroposophic Press, New York.} they are shocked. This is comprehensible; for, if what they consider sacred is described as a pathological case, people are horrified. But what are the real facts in the matter? My dear friends, the facts are as follows; Among the great number of dishonest compromisers one arose who takes his stand completely upon the natural-scientific viewpoint; he makes no compromises whatsoever but states: I am a scientist: therefore I must speak as I do; for these are the facts.—If people would place themselves honestly upon the standpoint of natural science, they would have to hold such views. There are these sharp angles and contours from which they cannot escape. They cannot escape unless they forsake the natural-scientific standpoint and go over to the spiritual-scientific standpoint: in this case they will remain honest,—or they may choose to remain honest upon the natural-scientific standpoint; then they are obliged to observe matters, without compromising, in the way of such a scientist who, although entirely honest in his field, is thoroughly limited in his views and does not try to conceal his limitations. He is thoroughly limited, but consistent. This has to be understood. If people would see today what must of necessity result if certain things are consistently carried through, they would see life without compromise.

Someone recently handed me an interesting slip of paper mentioning a book that is already known to me, but since I do not have it with me here, I can only read you what is written on this slip of paper. It was handed to me in order to show me what things are possible today.

“Anyone who has attended high school will remember the unforgettable hours when he had to ‘enjoy’ in his studies of Plato the conversations of Socrates with his friends. Unforgettable because of the fabulous boredom which was engendered by these conversations. He will perhaps remember that these conversations of Socrates struck him as extremely stupid; but, of course, he did not dare utter this opinion, for after all, the man in question was Socrates, ‘the greatest philosopher.’ Alexander Moszkowski's book, Socrates the Idiot, (published by Heysler & Co., Berlin) completely does away with the unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written book, the historian Moszkowski undertakes to divest Socrates thoroughly of his philosophical honors. The title, Socrates the Idiot, is to be taken literally. We shall not go wrong in assuming that this book will call forth scientific discussions.”

Now, you will think it dreadful that such things are written. But I do not find it dreadful at all. I think it is self-evident and quite honest of Moszkowski; for, according to his concepts and sentiments, he cannot do otherwise, if he wishes to remain consistent, than to call Socrates an idiot. In doing so he is more honest than many others who, in keeping with their views, should call Socrates an idiot, too, but who prefer to make compromises instead.

I do not need to say, my dear friends, that you should not go out now and spread the news that I am in agreement with Moszikowski when he declares Socrates to have been an idiot. I hope that you understand what I really mean.

But I must acknowledge the fact that people arrive at certain judgments in our time because they make dishonest compromises. It is impossible to think about soul-pathology as modern psychiatrist do and not write a book such as that by the Danish author concerning the Christ Jesus. It cannot be done. One is dishonest if one does not either reject these concepts and replace them by spiritual concepts, or take the standpoint that the Christ Jesus was a mental case.—If one is acquainted with the views of such people, if one knows Moszkowski's opinion concerning the whole structure of the universe, his peculiar views about the theory of radiation and the theory of the quantum, one can appreciate why he, if he wishes to remain honest and consistent, must consider Socrates and also Plato idiots.

What is especially necessary for mankind is the rejection of compromises. Human beings should not make compromises, at least not within their souls. It is very important to consider this as a demand of our age, for it belongs among the most significant impulses of the Time Spirit, Michael, to pour clarity, absolute clarity into human souls. If one wishes to follow the Archangel Michael, it is necessary to pour clarity into human souls, to overcome sleepiness. This sleepiness arises in other spheres also, but above all it is an absolute necessity today to gain insight into the consequences of things. In previous ages this was different. During the centuries prior to the Michael age, in which European mankind was governed by the Archangel Gabriel, the compromises which human beings made in their thinking were lessened by the influence of the spiritual world. Michael is the spirit who works, in the most eminent sense, with the freedom of man. Michael will always do what is necessary. You must not believe that Michael fails to do the right thing. In the unconscious regions of the soul of every human being there is today, sharply outlined, every contour and angle of the spiritual life. It is there. Anyone who is at all capable of bringing to the surface what exists in the depths of the soul life as latent visions knows what it is that lives today in the souls as discrepancies and unrelated facts. He knows that in the souls there live side by side the modern materialistic psychiatry which does not shrink from seeing an epileptic in the Christ Jesus, and even the acknowledgment of the Christ Jesus. Anyone who is at all capable of raising these things into consciousness becomes aware of these facts. It would be interesting if a good painter, with a real understanding of our present time, would paint “Christ, seen from the point of view of a modern psychiatrist,” depicting it expressionistically. The result would be very interesting if the painter had a real understanding of what takes place at the present time in the depths of human soul life.

You see, in our time we have to plumb the depths if we wish to grasp what takes place at the surface of existence. But one can understand, on the other hand, that people are seized by a certain cowardice and discouragement if they are to approach the indicated matter.

This is the other quality necessary today: courage, even a certain audacity, in perceiving, in thinking; an audacity that does not dull our concepts but makes them highly acute. Everything that has to be said today may be found in outer events; the spiritual researcher simply describes it more precisely because he sees it against its proper background. And if the spiritual researcher then describes this background, the outer events will corroborate all the more what has, for example, been indicated today.

Many people ask: “What shall I do?” It is so obvious what one should do! One should open one's eyes! One's spiritual eyes, to be sure. If one opens one's eyes, the Will will follow. The Will depends upon our life situation. It is not always possible in one's particular circumstances, according to one's karma, to do the right thing; but one must try to open one's eyes spiritually. Today, however, the following often happens: If one tries to impart to people in words what is necessary for the present age, they quickly close their eyes, they swiftly turn their minds away form it. This is the descending of the scales on the other side.—What I am saying here might be considered a criticism of our age, but this is not my intention. My purpose is to draw attention to the impulses that must enter human souls, human minds out of the spiritual world, if we wish to get beyond the catastrophic times in which we live. As I have stated, it is not possible to enter into concrete details. Each of you can do that for himself.

In this course of lectures I should like to describe the relationship which we, human beings of the present day, may gain to that spiritual power which, as the power of Michael, intervenes in the spiritual and physical events of the earth. It will be necessary to prepare ourselves in today's lecture for this task. We shall need various points of view which will enable human intelligence really to present the various interferences with the just designated power on the background of the symptoms which we may observe in our surroundings. We must keep in mind, if we wish to speak seriously of the spiritual world, that we always may look upon the manifestations of the spiritual powers here in the physical world. We try to penetrate as it were, through the veil of the physical world to that which is active in the spiritual world. What exists in the physical world may be observed by everyone; what is active in the spiritual world serves to solve the riddles posed by the physical world. But we must sense the riddles of physical life in the right way. It is important, in connection with these weighty matters, to comprehend in full seriousness what I have said in recent lectures. {See Rudolf Steiner, Pneumatosophy: The Riddle of the Inner Human Being. Anthroposophic Press, New York.} It is impossible to link personal world views to a real understanding of that which so vitally concerns not only the whole of humanity, but the whole world. We must free ourselves from merely personal interests. Moreover, we will gain an understanding for the purpose and value of personality in the world if we have freed ourselves from the personal element in its narrower sense.

Now you know that our Earth evolution was preceded by another; that we stand within a cosmic evolution. First, you know that this evolution progresses, that it has arrived at a point beyond which it will pass to further, more advanced stages. Secondly, you know that if we consider the world as such, we have to deal not only with the beings which we meet in the earthly sphere, that is, in the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, but that we have to deal with beings belonging to higher realms which we have designated as the beings of the higher hierarchies. If we speak of evolution in its entirety, we have always to consider these beings of the higher hierarchies.

These beings, on their part, also pass through an evolution which we can understand if we find analogies to our own human evolution and to the one which exists in the various kingdoms of the earth. Consider, for example, the following: You know that we human beings have passed through a Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, we may say that we as human beings who experience ourselves in earthly surroundings have arrived at the fourth stage of our evolution.

Let us now consider the beings directly above our human stage whom we call the Angeloi, the Angels. If we merely wish to show an analogy we may say: these beings, although their form is entirely different from the human, and although they are invisible to physical human senses, are at the evolutionary stage of Jupiter.

Let us now turn to the Archangeloi, the Archangels. They are at the evolutionary stage which mankind will have reached upon Venus. And if we turn to the Archai, the time spirits, to the beings who especially influence our earthly evolution, we find that they have already attained the evolution of Vulcan.

Now the significant question arises: If we turn to the beings still higher in rank, to the hierarchy of the so-called Spirits of Form, on what stage do we find them? We must answer: They have already passed beyond the stages which we human beings conceive of as our evolutionary stages of the future. They have already passed beyond the Vulcan evolution. If we consider our own evolution as consisting of seven stages, which suffices for our present considerations, we must say that the Spiritsof Form have reached the eighth stage. We human beings are at the fourth stage of evolution; if we consider the eighth stage we find the Form Spirits.

Now we must not conceive of these successive stages of evolution as existing side by side, but we must conceive of them as interpenetrating one another. Just as the atmosphere surrounds and permeates the earth, so this eighth sphere of evolution to which the Form Spirits belong permeates the sphere in which we human beings live. Let us now carefully consider these two stages of evolution.

Let us repeat: We human beings exist in a sphere which has reached the fourth evolutionary stage. Yet we also exist, if we disregard everything else, in the realm which the Form Spirits, around us and through us, have to regard as theirs. Let us now consider human evolution concretely. We have often distinguished the development of the head from that of the human being. The latter we have again divided into two separate parts, the development of the breast and the development of the limbs. Let us disregard this latter differentiation and consider man as having, on the one hand, that which belongs to the development of the head and, on the other, everything that belongs to the rest of the human being.

Now imagine the following: You have here the surface of the ocean, the human being wading in it, moving forward with only his head rising about the water. In this image—of course it is only an image—you have the position of the present-day human being. Everything in which the head is rooted we would have to consider as belonging to the fourth stage of evolution, and everything in which man moves forward, wading or swimming in it, as it were, we would have to designate as the eighth stage of evolution. For it is a peculiar fact that the human being has, in a certain way, outgrown as far as his head is concerned, the element in which the Spirits of Form unfold their particular being. In regard to his head, man has become emancipated, so to speak, from the sphere which is interpenetrated by the beings of the Spirits of Form.

Only by thoroughly comprehending this can we arrive at a proper conception of the human being; only then can we understand the special position man has in the world; only then will it become clear to us that when the human being senses the Spirits of Form's creative influence upon him, he does not sense this directly through the faculties of his head, but indirectly through the effect of the rest of his body upon the head. You all know that breathing is connected with our blood-circulation, speaking in the sense of external physiology. But the blood is also driven into the head, creating an organic, vital connection of the head with the rest of the organism. The head is nourished and invigorated by the rest of the body.

We must carefully discriminate between two things. The first is the fact that the head is in direct connection with the external world. If you see an object, you perceive it through your eyes; there is a direct connection between the outer world and your head. If you, however, observe the life of your head as it is sustained by the processes of breathing and blood circulation, you will see the blood shooting up from the rest of the organism into the head and you may say there is not a direct, but only an indirect connection between your head and the surrounding world.

Naturally, you must not say, pedantically: well, the breath is inhaled through the mouth, therefore breathing also belongs to the head. I have stated above that we have here only an image. Organically, what is inhaled through the mouth does not actually belong to the head, but to the rest of the organism.

Focus your attention upon these two fundamental concepts which we have just gained; focus your attention upon the idea that we stand within two spheres: the sphere which we entered by passing through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution and being now within the Earth evolution which is the fourth evolutionary stage; then consider the fact that we live within a sphere which belongs to the Form Spirits just as our earth belongs to us, but which, as the eighth sphere, permeates our earth and our organism with the exception of our head and all that is sense activity. If we focus our attention upon these facts we have created a basis for what is to follow.

Yet let me first build a still firmer basis through certain other concepts. If we wish to consider our life under such influences, we must take into account the beings we have often mentioned as cooperating in world events: the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings. Let us, at the outset, fix our attention upon the most external aspect of these beings. They dwell in the same spheres in which we human beings live. Considering their most external aspect, we may think of all Luciferic beings as possessing those forces which we feel when there arises in us the tendency to become fantastic, when we yield one-sidedly to fancy and over-enthusiasm, when we—if I may express it pictorially—tend to go out with our being beyond our head. If we tend to go out beyond our head, we employ forces which play a certain role in our human organism but which are the universal forces of the beings we call Luciferic. Think of beings formed entirely of those forces within us which strive to pass beyond our head and you have the Luciferic beings which have a certain relation to our human world.

Conversely, think of all that presses us down upon the earth, all that makes us sober philistines, makes us bourgeois, which leads us to develop materialistic attitudes, think of all that exists in us as dry intellect, and you have the Ahrimanic powers.

All that I have described here from the aspect of the soul can also be described from the aspect of the body. One can say, man is always in a midway position between the intentions of his blood and the intentions of his bones. The bones constantly tend to ossify us; in other words, to “ahrimanize” our bodies, to harden us. The blood would like to drive us out beyond ourselves. Expressed in pathological terms, the blood may become feverish. Then the human being is organically driven into phantasms. The bones may spread their nature over the rest of the organism. Then the human being becomes ossified, becomes sclerotic, as nearly everyone does to a certain degree in old age. Then he carries the death-dealing element in his organism, namely, the Ahrimanic element. We may say that everything that lives in the blood tends toward the Luciferic, everything that lives in the bones has the tendency toward the Ahrimanic. The human being is the equilibrium between the two, as he, from the aspect of the soul, has to be the equilibrium between over-enthusiastic and sober philistinism.

Now we may characterize these two kinds of beings from a more profound point of view. Let us observe the Luciferic beings and see what interests they have in cosmic existence. We shall find that their chief interest is to make the world, and above all the human world, desert the spiritual beings whom man must regard as his true creators. The Luciferic beings wish nothing more than to make the world desert the divine beings. Do not misunderstand me: it is not the prime intention of the Luciferic beings to appropriate the world to themselves. From various things I have said about them you can gather that this is not their chief intention; their chief aim is to make the human being forsake his own divine creator-beings, to liberate the world from these beings.

The Ahrimanic beings have a different aim. They have the decided intention to make the kingdom of man and the rest of the earth, subject to their sphere of power, to make mankind dependent upon them, to get control over human beings. While it always has been—and is now—the endeavor of the Luciferic beings to make human beings desert what they can feel as the Divine in themselves, the Ahrimanic beings have the tendency gradually to include mankind and everything connected with it in their sphere of power.

Thus, within our cosmos, into which we human beings are interwoven, there exists a battle between the Luciferic beings, constantly striving for freedom, universal freedom, and the Ahrimanic beings, constantly striving for everlasting power and might. This battle permeates everything in which we live. Please hold this fact in mind as the second idea, important to our further considerations. The world in which we live is permeated by Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings, and there exists this tremendous contrast between the liberating tendency of the Luciferic beings and the power tendency of the Ahrimanic beings.

If you consider this whole matter you will have to say to yourselves: I am only able to understand the world if I conceive of it in connection with the number three, the triad. For we have on the one hand the Luciferic, and on the other the Ahrimanic element, and in the middle the human being who, as the third element, in the state of equilibrium between the two, must feel his divine essence. We shall only arrive at an understanding of the world if we base it on this triad and become clear about the fact that human life is the scale-beam. Here the fulcrum; on the one side the scale pan with the Luciferic element, pulling upward; on the other side the scale pan with the Ahrimanic element, pulling downward. To keep the scales in perfect balance signifies the essential being of man. Those who were initiated into such secrets of the spiritual evolution of mankind have always emphasized the fact that it is only possible to understand cosmic existence into which man is placed if it is conceived of in the sense of the triad; that it cannot be understood if it is considered on the basis of any other number. Thus we may say, employing our own terminology: we have to deal with three main factors in cosmic existence, namely: the Luciferic element, representing the one scale of the balance, the Ahrimanic element, representing the other scale of the balance, and the state of equilibrium which represents the Christ Impulse.

Now you may well imagine that it is entirely in the interest of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers to conceal this secret of the triad. For the proper comprehension of this secret enables mankind to bring about the state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers; that means, on the one hand, to use the Luciferic tendency toward freedom for the achievement of a wholesome cosmic aim, and on the other hand, to strive to achieve the same with the Ahrimanic element. The human being's normal spiritual condition consists in relating himself in the proper way to this trinity, this triune structure of the world.

For, the influences upon human spiritual and cultural life do have a strong tendency to confuse man in regard to the significance of the triad. We can observe very clearly in modern culture that the conception of this structure according to the triad is almost completely eclipsed by the conception of a structure according to the duad. If we wish to understand Goethe's Faust, we must realize, as I have often pointed out, that this confusion in regard to the triad influences even this great cosmic poem. If Goethe, in his day, had had a clear view of these matters, he would not have presented the Mephistophelean power as the only opponent of Faust who drags Faust down, but he would have contrasted this Mephistophelean power—of whom we know that it is identical with the Ahrimanic power—with the Luciferic power, and Lucifer and Mephistopheles would appear in Faust as two opposing forces. I have spoken of this here repeatedly. If we study the figure of Goethe's Mephistopheles, we can see clearly that Goethe in his characterization of Mephistopheles constantly confused the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. Goethe's Mephistopheles is a figure mixed as it were, of two elements. There is no uniformity in it. The Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are intermingled at random. I have dealt with this more explicitly in my brochure, Goethe's Standard of the Soul.

This confusion which thus plays even into Goethe's Faust is based upon the misconception which has arisen in the evolution of modern mankind—in former times it was different—of putting the duad in the place of the triad when considering the structure of the world; that is, one sees the good principle on the one side, the bad principle on the other: God and the Devil.

Thus we must emphasize the fact that if a person wishes to conceive of the structure of the world in a factual manner, he must acknowledge the triad, the two opposing elements of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic and the Divine element which holds the balance between the two. This has to be contrasted with the illusion which has arisen in mankind's spiritual evolution through the erroneous concept of the duad, of God and the Devil, of the divine-spiritual forces above and the diabolical forces below. It is as though we were to force man out of his position of equilibrium if we conceal from him the fact that a sound comprehension of the world can only result from the proper conception of the triad and if one makes him believe that the world structure is in some way determined by the duad. Yet, the highest human endeavors have fallen prey to this error.

If we wish to deal with this question, we must do it without prejudice, we must enter an unbiased sphere of thinking. We must carefully distinguish between object and name. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that by giving a certain name to a being we have at any time experienced and felt this being in the right way.

If we think of those beings which man regards as his own divine beings, we must say: we can feel and sense them in the right way only if we conceive of them as effecting the equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles. We can never feel in the right way what we should feel as the Divine if we do not enter upon this threefold order. Consider from this point of view Milton's Paradise Lost, or Klopstock's Messiah which came into existence under the influence of Paradise Lost. Here you have nothing of a real comprehension of a threefold world structure, you have instead a battle between the supposedly good and the supposedly evil, the battle between heaven and hell. You have the mistaken idea of the duad brought into man's spiritual evolution; you have what is rooted in popular consciousness as the illusory contrast between heaven and hell, introduced into two cosmic poems of modern times.

It is of no avail that Milton and Klopstock call the heavenly entities divine beings. They would only be so for man if they were conceived of on the basis of the threefold structure of world existence. Then it would be possible to say that a battle takes place between the good and the evil principles. But as the matter stands, a duad is assumed, the one member of which has the attributes of the good and receives a name derived from the divine, while the other member represents the diabolical, the anti-divine element. What does this really signify? Nothing less than the removal of the divine from consciousness and the usurping of the divine name by the Luciferic principle; so that in reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes.

You see the far-reaching consequences revealed by such a consideration. While human beings believe they are dealing with the divine and the diabolical elements when contemplating the contrasts described in Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah, they are, in reality, dealing with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. There is no consciousness present of the truly divine element; instead, the Luciferic element is endowed with divine names.

Milton's Paradise Lost and Klopstock's Messiah are spiritual creations which rise out of modern man's consciousness. That which manifests in them lives in the general consciousness of mankind; for the delusion of the duad has entered this modern consciousness, and the truth of the triad has been withheld. The most profound productions of the modern age which are, from a certain point of view, considered among the greatest creations of mankind, and rightly so, are a cultural maya and have sprung from the great delusion of modern mankind. Everything that is active in this illusory conception is the creation of the Ahrimanic influence, of that influence which in the future will concentrate in the incarnation of Ahriman of which I have already spoken. For this illusory conception in which we live today is nothing but the result of the false world view which springs up everywhere in modern civilization when human beings contrast heaven and hell. Heaven is considered to be the divine element, and hell the diabolical element, while, in truth, we have to do with the Luciferic element called heavenly and the Ahrimanic element called infernal.

You must realize what interests rule in modern spiritual history. Even the concept of the threefold nature of the human organism or the human being in its entirety has in a certain respect been abolished for occidental civilization by the eighth Œcumenical Council of Constantinople in the year 869. I have often mentioned this. The dogma was then established that the Christian does not have to believe in the threefold human being but only in a twofold human being. The belief in body, soul and spirit was tabooed, and medieval theologians and philosophers who still knew a great deal about the true facts had a hard time to circumvent this truth, for the so-called trichotomy, the “membering” of the human being into body, soul, and spirit had been declared a heresy. They were compelled to teach the duality, namely, that man consists of body and soul, and not of body, soul and spirit. And certain beings, certain men know very well that it is of tremendous significance for human spiritual life if the threefoldness is replaced by twofoldness.

We must consider such profound aspects if we wish to understand correctly why in the August number of Stimmen der Zeit (Voices of the Age) the Jesuit priest Zimmermann draws attention to the fact that one of the recent decrees of the Holy Office in Rome prohibits Roman Catholics from obtaining absolution if they read or possess theosophical writings or participate in anything theosophical. The Jesuit priest Zimmermann interprets this decree in his article in Die Stimmen der Zeit by stating that it applies, above everything else, to my Anthroposophy, and that those who wish to be considered true Roman Catholics must not occupy themselves with anthroposophical literature. He quotes one of the main reasons for this, namely, that Anthroposophy differentiates between body, soul and spirit, and thus teaches a heresy opposed to the orthodox belief that man consists of body and soul.

I have mentioned to you before that modern philosophers have adopted this differentiation of body and soul without being aware of it. They believe that they carry on unbiased, objective science; they believe they practice real observation which leads them to the conviction that man consists of body and soul. In truth, however, they are following in the footsteps of this dogma which has found its way into modern spiritual development. What is considered science today is actually completely dependent on such things as have been put into the world in the course of modern human evolution. Do not believe that you will be able with kind words to convert such people who from these quarters slander Anthroposophy; do not believe that you will prevail upon them and call forth their good will toward Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy must make its way in the world through its own force, and not through the protection of any power, be it ever so Christian in appearance. Through inner strength alone can Anthroposophy achieve what it must achieve in the world.

You must realize that the Christ impulse can only be comprehended if one sees in it the impulse of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic principles, if one gives it the right place within the trinity. We may ask: What must one do if one tries to deceive people in regard to the true Christ impulse? One must divert their attention from the true threefold ordering of the world and direct it toward the delusion of the duad which is justified only when we are concerned with the manifest and not when we are concerned with what lies behind the manifest in the sphere of truth.

In such matters we must go beyond mere names. Calling some being or other Christ does not mean that it is the Christ. If one wishes to prevent another human being from acquiring a true concept of Christ, one need only put the duad in the place of the triad; but if one wishes to point to the Christ impulse in its true meaning, it is necessary that the duad be supplanted by the triad. We need not join the group of people who declare others to be heretics; we need not declare Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah to be damnable works of the devil; we may continue to enjoy their beauty and grandeur. But we must realize that such works, in as much as they are the blossoms of popular modern civilization, do not speak of Christ at all but originate from the delusion that everything that is not part of human evolution may be considered as belonging, on the one hand, to the realm of the devil and, on the other, to the realm of the Divine. But in reality, instead of dealing with the realm of the Divine we are dealing with the realm of Lucifer. Paradise Lost describes the expulsion of man from Lucifer's realm into the realm of Ahriman; it describes the longing of man not for the realm of the Divine, but for the paradise that has been lost, that means, the longing for the realm of Lucifer. You may regard Milton's Paradise Lost and Klopstock's Messiah as beautiful descriptions of human longing for the realm of Lucifer; this is what you should consider them to be, for this is what they are.

You see how necessary it is to revise certain conceptions which prevail today. If we are serious in our anthroposophical thinking and feeling we are faced, not with insignificant, but with important decisions. We are faced with the necessity of taking very seriously an expression which Nietzsche has often employed, namely the expression: “the revaluation of values.” We have to take this very seriously. The achievements of modern man are in great need of revaluation.

This does not mean that we ourselves have to become denouncers of heresy. We constantly perform here scenes from Goethe's Faust, and I have, as you know, devoted decades of my life to the study of Goethe. But from my little book, Goethe's Standard of the Soul, you can see that this has not blinded me to the false characterization drawn by Goethe in his Mephistopheles. It would be a philistine standpoint, were we to say: Goethe's Mephistopheles is a false conception; let's get rid of him. We should then be behaving like inquisitors. As modern men we must not place ourselves in such a position. On the other hand, we must not be indolently satisfied with the ideas that have entered, as it were, into the flesh and bones of the great masses of people today. Mankind will have to learn a great deal. It will have to transvalue many values.

All this is connected with the mission of Michael in relation to those beings of the higher hierarchies with whom he is connected. In the subsequent lectures we shall show how we may arrive at an understanding of those impulses which radiate from the Michael being into our earthly human existence.

I have spoken in the previous lecture of the error which has entered our modern spiritual life and which is very little noticed today. You will have realized from our discussions that by pointing to this error we have arrived at a very important point in our spiritual-scientific considerations. It is imperative for a sound development of the spiritual life of mankind that there be clarity in this matter. I have drawn your attention to such products of culture as Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah, which have sprung from the general popular thinking of the last few centuries. But I have also drawn your attention to the fact that just through such artistically as well as spiritually outstanding products of culture we can see the dangers that are facing man's soul life if he fails to realize that it is impossible to arrive at a true and adequate concept of spirit, a true concept of Christ, as long as he imagines that the structure of the world and the spirit can be grasped through the symbol of the duad. By differentiating only according to the duad—on the one hand the good, on the other the evil—people committed the error of including on the side of evil all that we designate as the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic element. But they did not realize that they had jumbled up two cosmic elements. Thus it has come about that the Luciferic element was shifted to the side of the Good; in other words, people were of the opinion that they revered the Divine, recognized the Divine, spoke by name of the Divine, whereas, in reality, they intermixed the Luciferic with the Divine element. Hence the difficulty in our time of arriving at a pure concept of the Divine and a pure concept of the Christ impulse in human and world evolution. Through the culture of the centuries we have become accustomed, because of the acknowledgment of this duad, to speak, on the one hand, of the soul element, on the other, of the bodily or corporeal element, and we have lost the connection between the thoughts which relate us to the soul-spiritual element and the thoughts which relate us to the bodily element. Thinking, willing, feeling are little more than sounding words to people of the present day; and this is particularly true of modern psychology that is taught in our universities. It does not arrive at real inner conceptions of the soul element, filled with content. On the other hand, people speak of the de-spiritualized material element, devoid of soul, and they hammer, as it were, at this external, rigid, stony-hard, soulless material element and are unable to build a bridge from it to the soul.

The all-pervading spiritual and the corporeal which is at the same time spiritual have fallen apart into two elements. Mere theories will not build a bridge between the bodily and the spiritual. And since this is not possible, all scientific thinking has taken on the character of a schism between the bodily and the spirit or soul element. We might express it thus: on the one hand, the various creeds have resorted to pointing to the spiritual element without being in a position to show how this spiritual element takes hold of the bodily-corporeal element; on the other hand, a soulless knowledge, a soulless observation of the body is unable to look through the bodily processes and perceive the spirit-soul element governing them. Anyone who surveys from this point of view the natural-scientific world conception as it developed in the course of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century will have to say to himself: all that pertains to this world conception is a result of that which has just been characterized. In order to understand fully the illusion which today covers up reality, we must first establish this reality. This we shall be able to do as a result of much that has been discussed here at length. Today the human being is considered a single undivided being, regardless whether we are speaking of soul or of body. From the soul aspect he is considered a uniform being; from the bodily aspect he is considered a uniform being. Yet you will have gathered from our discussions that in man there exists, above everything else, the great contrast between the head formation and the rest of the human organism. This latter part of the human body could be further divided, but for the moment let us consider it as a unity. If we make inquiry into the evolution of man, the inquiry in regard to the head formation must be different from that in regard to the rest of the body.

If we focus our attention upon the head formation, from a purely bodily aspect, in as far as this head formation contains the organism for sense perception or for thinking, we have to look far back into the cosmic evolution of man. What finds its expression today in the human head formation has been gradually developed and transformed. Its development has gone on through ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon and has continued during the Earth evolution. But this is not the case with the rest of the human body. It would be entirely wrong to look for a uniform evolutionary history of the whole human being. We may say (Dr. Steiner draws a diagram): The head formation points back to the previous planetary stages of our Earth: Moon, Sun, Saturn evolution; the development which has found its conclusion in the human head reaches far back. But if we add to this all that belongs to the rest of man, we need not go back as far as the Saturn evolution. The chest formation may be traced back as far the Moon evolution; the limbs have been added to the human being only during the Earth evolution.

We consider the human being in the right way only if we make the following comparative observation. But please, take it only as a comparison.

You can easily imagine, hypothetically, that through some sort of organic conditions in the cosmos, through some conditions of adaptation connected with conditions of inner growth, the human being might put forth new limbs. You would not then trace back the entire human form to a previous evolution, but you would say: Man, as an evolving being, has to be traced back; but this or that limb has only been added at a certain point of time. The reason for our being tempted not to think in this way in regard to the head and the rest of the human organism is that with respect to the outer spatial size of man the rest of the human organism is larger than the head. The truth, however, is that the head formation reaches furthest back in evolution, while the rest of the human form was added later. If we wish to speak of a connection of man with the animal world in regard to evolution, we can only say: The human head can be traced back to an earlier animal formation. The human head is a transformed animal shape, a greatly transformed animal shape.

At a time when animals did not yet exist, the human being, under completely different physical conditions, had an animal form. Animals have developed only later. That part of the human being, however, that had an animal form has become what is today the human head, and that which has been added to the head as the rest of the human organism has been added at a time when the simultaneous development of the animals occurred. Thus it has nothing to do with an actual descent from the animal. We must really state the following: The seemingly most noble part of the human being, his head, points us back to the animal; in regard to the head the human being himself had formerly a kind of animal form. But the rest of our organism we received as an organic addition to the head at a time of cosmic evolution in which the parallel development of the animals took place.

In a certain respect our head has become our organ of thinking. Our organ of thinking is that part of us which, if we may use the expression, has animal descent; a strange animal descent, to be sure. If you look at a human head today, you will not at once discover anatomically the traits that point back to the animal form. Yet upon closer investigation and with the proper interpretation of the forms of the head organs you will recognize them as transformed animal organs.

In considering all this, we must at the same time mention that the transformation of the head from the animal form to the human form came about through the fact that the human head had already entered a retrogressive evolution. That which in earlier states of evolution was full of vitality and life is, in the human head, already in the process of dying. I once stated the following: If we human beings were only head, we could never live, we would be continuously dying, for the organic processes that take place in the head through the forces of the head itself are not life processes but death processes. The human head is continually quickened to life by the rest of the organism. The head owes to the rest of the organism its participation in the general life of the organism. If the head were simply to rely upon those forces for which it is organized, namely the forces of sense perception and thinking, it would be continually dying. Its continuous tendency is to die; it has to be constantly revitalized. If we think, if we perceive with our senses, there takes place in our head, in our nervous system and its connection with the sense organs, a process that is the opposite of an ascending process of life and growth. For if such a life process took place there, we would fall into deep sleep, we would never be able to think clearly. Only through the fact that death constantly pervades our head, that a continuous retrogressive evolution is going on there and the organic processes are constantly cancelled, do thinking and sense perception take place in our head.

Whoever in a materialistic fashion attempts to explain thinking and sense perception by means of the brain processes does not know at all what processes occur in the head; he believes the processes occurring there may be compared with the processes of organic growth. This is not the case. The processes that run parallel to sense perception and thinking are breaking down processes, processes of destruction. The organic, the material, must first be broken down, must first be destroyed; then above the organic process of destruction the thinking process arises.

You see, these matters are conceived of by humanity today in such a way that the attempt is made to explain their nature externally. The human being thinks, he perceives with his senses; but he knows nothing about that which takes place simultaneously in his organism; this remains completely in the unconscious. Only through the processes which I have described in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment {Anthroposophic Press, New York,) is it possible gradually to rise to a knowledge which does not merely live in what today is called, in a mere word-sense, the soul element, namely sense perception and thinking. If a soul undergoes the development described in my book, it can yield on the one hand to thinking, to sense perception, and simultaneously perceive what happens in the brain; it then does not perceive a growth process but a breaking down process which has continually to be compensated by the rest of the organism.

You see, this is the tragic phenomenon accompanying a real knowledge of the activity of the head: there is no unfolding of organic processes in the head to be enjoyed by the clairvoyant when he thinks, when he perceives with his senses; on the contrary, he has to familiarize himself with a process of destruction. He must also familiarize himself with the fact that the materialistically inclined person supposes such processes to take place in the human head which cannot possibly take place when man thinks or perceives with his senses. Materialism must suppose just the opposite of the truth.

Thus, in the human head we are concerned with an evolution out of the animal, but with an evolution already retrogressive; with a breaking down process. The rest of our human organism is in a progressive evolution, and we must not believe that it has no part in the soul-spiritual element and its experience in man. Not only is our blood constantly sent up from the rest of the organism into the head, but also there continually rise into the head those soul-spiritual thought forms from which the world and our organism are woven. These soul-spiritual thought forms are not yet perceived by the human being in his normal state, but the time has come when man has to begin to perceive what arises out of his own being as thought forms. As you know, we do not sleep only from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up; with a part of our being we sleep the whole day through. We are awake only in regard to our thinking and sense perceiving, we dream in regard to our life of feeling; we are sound asleep in regard to our life of willing. For we know only of the thoughts and ideas of our volition; we know nothing of the process of willing. The activity of our will takes place just as unconsciously as our sleep life from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. But if we ask: By what path alone can knowledge of the Divine reach the human being? we cannot point to the path through the head, through sense perception and thinking, but only to the path that leads through the rest of our organism. We have to deal here with the great and mighty mystery that man's head has developed through long stages of evolution and that gradually the rest of his organism was added; that the head has already started on a retrogressive evolution and that man can only experience the Divine through the rest of his organism, not through the head. For you see, it is important to realize that through the head only the Luciferic beings spoke to man.

We may say that man received the rest of his organism in addition to the head in order that the Gods might speak to him. At the beginning of the Bible we do not read: God sent a ray of light to man and he became a living soul, but we read: God breathed the living breath into man and he became a living soul. Here it is recognized that the divine impulse reached the human being through an activity that is not of the head.

From this it will become clear to you that this divine impulse could at first come to man only in a kind of unconscious clairvoyance or, rather, through the comprehension of what was given through unconscious clairvoyance. If you consider the Old Testament you will find that it is the result of unconscious clairvoyance (we know this from former discussion). Those who helped in bringing about the Old Testament were conscious of this fact. I cannot describe to you today how the Old Testament came into existence, but I should like to point out to you that we have repeatedly dealt with these matters, and that the teachers of the ancient Hebrew people were conscious of the fact that their God had spoken to them not through direct sense perceptions, not through ordinary thinking, not through that of which the head is the mediator, but that their God had spoken to them through dreams, not ordinary dreams, but dreams permeated by reality. God spoke to them in moments of clairvoyance, as when he spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. And when the initiates of this ancient time were asked about the way in which they received the divine calls they answered: the Lord whose name is ineffable speaks to us; but he speaks to us through his countenance. And the countenance of their God they called Michael, that spiritual power who belongs to the hierarchy of the Archangeloi. They felt their God as remaining unknown even behind the experiences of the clairvoyant; but when the clairvoyant, through the inner strength of his soul, raised himself to his God, then Michael spoke to him. But this Michael spoke only to men if they were able to transport themselves into a state of consciousness different from the ordinary, if they were able to transport themselves into the state of a certain clairvoyance in which they became conscious of that which works and lives in the human being during the period between going to sleep and awaking, or through the will which remains subconscious and is in the sleep state even during waking day consciousness.

Thus in ancient Hebrew occultism, the Yahve-revelation was called the revelation of the night; the Yahve-revelation, through the Michael-revelation, was felt as the revelation of the night. Thus, on the one hand, man looked into the world and saw what he could receive through sense perception and through human intelligent thinking, and he said to himself: the knowledge that comes to the human being on this path does not contain the Divine. If man, however, develops another state of consciousness, then the countenance of God, Michael, speaks to him and reveals the secrets that relate to the human being; his revelation builds a bridge between the human being and those powers which cannot be perceived in the external sense world, which cannot be thought out by the brain-bound intellect.

Thus we must say: The human beings of the pre-Christian age directed their gaze, on the one hand, toward sense knowledge which was their guide in their earthly undertakings and, on the other hand, toward that knowledge which the human being would only possess in ordinary consciousness—he did not possess it—if this consciousness were to remain awake also during the period of sleep. During these ancient times of the Old Testament people knew that the human being is in the environment of spiritual beings during his waking hours, but that these spiritual beings are not his creator beings, but the Luciferic beings. The beings which mankind felt to be the divine creator beings were active in man from the moment of falling asleep to awakening and also in that part of his nature which sleeps during the day. In the time in which the Old Testament originated Yahve was called the Ruler of the Night, and Michael, the countenance of Yahve, was called the Servant of the Ruler of the Night. And the people of that time referred to Michael when they referred to the prophetic inspirations through which they received knowledge which was greater than that of the sense world.

Which consciousness is concealed behind all this? That consciousness which has grown out of the sphere of existence in which those powers which include Yahve have their being, whereas the human head formation is surrounded by Luciferic beings. The fact that the human being through his head, as it reaches above the organism, has turned to the Luciferic beings was a secret known in all ancient temples and it was a secret with which man came very close to the truth. It was known that, as the head rises above the human organism, Lucifer also rises above it. The power which brought the human head out of the animal form into its present shape is a Luciferic power; and the power which man must feel as Divine must stream up into his head from the night condition of the rest of his organism. This was the situation in regard to man's knowledge in pre-Christian times.

Then the Mystery of Golgotha entered Earth evolution, and we know that it signifies the union of a super-earthly Being with the Earth evolution of man through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Through the Death on Golgotha the Being Whom we call the Christ has united Himself with the human earth being. What did this signify for Earth evolution? Through this event, Earth evolution first received its real meaning. The earth would not have its meaning if man were to develop on this earth with his senses and the intellect bound to the head which are of Luciferic origin, if he were to perceive the world of light streaming down from sun and stars upon the earth, but if he were obliged to remain in the sleep state in order to perceive the Divine. Under these conditions the earth would never have attained its meaning, for the waking human being and the earth belong together. The sleeping human being is not conscious of his connection with earthly existence. Through the fact that the Christ Being has lived in a human body which has passed through death, Earth evolution has taken a forward bound. The whole Earth evolution has acquired a new meaning. The possibility has arisen for the human being gradually to be able to know his divine creator powers also during the day, during ordinary waking life, that is, in his ordinary state of consciousness. That people are still in error today concerning this matter is caused by the fact that the time that has elapsed since the Mystery of Golgotha has not yet sufficed to lead man to a perception, during waking life, of that world which the prophets of the Old Testament were able to behold in those times which they experienced as permeated by revelations of Yahve, their Ruler of the Night, and of his countenance, Michael. A period of transition was needed. But with the close of the nineteenth century—all oriental wisdom points to the importance of this close of the nineteenth century, although from a completely different point of view—with the end of the nineteenth century the time has come when human beings must recognize that within them the latent faculty is ready to be awakened which is able to behold, through day-revelation, that which in earlier times was transmitted in night-revelation through Michael.

A time of great error, however, had to precede this, a night of cognition, as it were. I have often said that I do not agree with those who constantly maintain that our time is a period of transition. I know quite well that every time is a period of transition, but I do not want to stop short at such formal, abstract definitions, for the point is that one should indicate clearly of what the transition of a particular time consists. The transition in our time lies in man's need to recognize that what formerly was obtained in night-knowledge we must now obtain through day-knowledge. In other words: Michael was the revealer through the night and in our age he must become the revealer during the day. From being a spirit of night Michael must become a spirit of day. For him the Mystery of Golgotha signifies the transformation from a spirit of night into a spirit of day.

This knowledge which should make its way among human beings much faster than we believe today had to be preceded by a great error, in fact, by the greatest error imaginable in mankind's evolution, in spite of its being still considered an important and essential truth by many people today. The origin of the human head has become completely hidden from modern mankind; the Luciferic spirituality connected with the human head has become completely veiled. The human being, as I said, was considered a unity, also in a bodily respect. The question of his descent was raised, and the reply was given that man descended from the animal; while, in truth, only that which is Luciferic in man stems from the animal. That part of man, however, through which his divine creators spoke to him in earlier ages during his sleep state only came into existence as an appendage to the human head, while the animal came into existence side by side with it.

Everything was mixed together, as it were, and man was said to have descended from the animal. This is something like a “penalty” of knowledge which arose for mankind. One must give the word “penalty” a somewhat changed interpretation, to be sure.

Whence comes the notion of man's descent from the animals, whereas the truth consists of the facts we have stated in regard to the descent of the head and the rest of the human organism? Who inspired the human being with the fictitious belief that the whole of man descended from the animal?

The theory of man's descent from the animal is an Ahrimanic inspiration; it is of purely Ahrimanic character. To the obscuring of the wisdom which points to the human head as a Luciferic formation, we owe the delusion that man descends from the animal. In failing to comprehend the descent of the human head in the right way man also failed to grasp the other facts in the right manner. Thus the opinion crept into human thinking that man, as a totality, is related to the animal. The world conception of our modern civilization became permeated by the erroneous idea that the human head is the noblest part of man, and it was contrasted by the rest of his organism, just as the good in the world is contrasted by evil—heaven by hell—a duad instead of a triad. The truth is that what man accomplishes in the world by means of his head he owes to the wisdom of the universe, but to the Luciferic wisdom, and that this Luciferic wisdom must gradually be permeated by other elements.

After mankind's evolution had passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon states and the Earth evolution had begun, that spiritual power which we call the Michael power organized the Luciferic nature into the human head formation. “And he cast his opposing spirits down upon the earth,” that is, through this casting down of the Luciferic spirits, opposing Michael, man became permeated by this reason, by that which springs from his head.

Thus it is Michael who sent his opponents to man in order that, by receiving this opposing Luciferic element, man might receive his reason. Then the Mystery of Golgotha entered human evolution. The Christ Being passed through the death of Jesus of Nazareth and united Himself with the evolution of mankind.

The time of preparation has passed. Michael himself, in the super-sensible worlds, has participated in the results of the Mystery of Golgotha. Since the last third of the nineteenth century Michael occupies a unique position in the evolution of humanity. The first thing that must occur through the right understanding of man's relation to Michael is the fathoming of such secrets as the one we have endeavored to present today concerning the human head and the rest of the human organism.

The essential thing is for human beings to see that since they did not recognize the true origin of the head they were certain to fall into delusion about the origin of the whole human being. Because they refused to conceive of the Luciferic formative activity that took place in the human head, they fell a prey to the delusion that the human head had the same origin as the rest of the human being. Mankind must penetrate these mysteries. It must, boldly and courageously, face the knowledge that through taking hold of new divine mysteries it must in its inner life improve all that is given to it through mere insight of the head, through mere human, earthly wisdom or cleverness. And first of all, the great error must be corrected which has preceded the turning point, the error which lies in the materialistic interpretation of the evolutionary theory of the descent of the whole human being from the animal.

This will be the only way of arriving at a perception of man which does not see, on the one hand, merely the spirit-soul element, living in a body, as it were, and a soulless body, on the other hand; but which beholds the concrete-spiritual which works, although in a Luciferic manner, in the human head, the concrete-spiritual which works in the whole human being, opposed, however, by the Ahrimanic nature in the organism apart from the head.

Speaking in imaginations, we may point back to the fact that the Luciferic element was incorporated in man through the Michael impulse. Through that which Michael has become, the Ahrimanic element must now, in turn, be taken from man. Seen from the aspect of outer science, the truth about man appears to consist of anatomical and physiological knowledge, or that which confronts us as outer sense observation. We must become capable of looking at the human being in such a way that we can see in his every fiber the concrete-spiritual being together with the bodily element. We must become aware that the blood which flows in the living human being is not the same as the blood we draw off, but that the blood flowing in the living human being is permeated by spirit in a special way. We must learn to know the spirit that pulses through the blood. We must learn to know the spirit that pulses through the nervous system just when the latter passes through a phase of breaking down, and so forth. We must become able to see the spiritual element in every single expression of life.

Michael is the spirit of strength. As he enters human evolution he must bring it about that we do not consider on the one hand abstract spirituality and on the other materiality which we listen to with the stethoscope, which we cut up, and of which we have not the slightest inkling that it is only an externally manifesting form of the spiritual; Michael must permeate us as the strong power which can look through the material and see the spiritual in matter. The Evangelist pointed to an ancient stage of human consciousness and he said: In this ancient time the Word lived in a spiritual way; but the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word united with the flesh and the Michael revelation preceded this event. It is processes in human consciousness that are indicated here. The reverse process must now begin which consists in adding another word to the word of the evangelist. We must acquire the power in our consciousness to see how the human being receives that which out of the spiritual worlds has united itself with the earth through the Christ impulse and which must unite itself with mankind in order that mankind shall not perish with the earth. We must make sure that man takes the spiritual not only into his head but into his whole being, that he permeates himself with the spiritual. Only the Christ impulse can help us with this, the Christ impulse in the interpretation of the Michael impulse. Then to the Evangelist's words these may be added: “And the time must come when the flesh will again become the Word and learn to dwell in the realm of the Word.”

It is not an invention by a later writer when, added at the conclusion of the Gospel, we read that much has been left unsaid. By this means attention is drawn to that which can only gradually be revealed to mankind. Those who maintain that the Gospels must remain as they are and must not be touched understand them very little. They must be interpreted according to the words of the Christ Jesus—I have mentioned this repeatedly—: “I am with you every day even to the end of the earth cycles.” That means: “I have revealed Myself to you not only during the days in which the Gospels were written, I will speak to you always through My day spirit, Michael, if you seek the way to Me. Through the continuous Christ revelation you may add to the Gospels that which was not known in the Gospel of the first millennium but which can be known in the Gospel of the second; and new things may be added during the millennia to come.” What is written in the Gospel is true: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” It is, however, just as true that we must add the revelation: “And the flesh of man must again become spiritualized that it may be able to dwell in the kingdom of the Word in order to behold the divine mysteries.” The Word becoming flesh is the first Michael revelation; the flesh becoming Spirit must be the second Michael revelation.