The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This evening's public lecture will discuss re-embodiment and karma, and it may be appropriate for us to choose a topic for our branch lecture that delves deeper into some questions of the law of karma and, in some respects, provides a more intimate supplement to what can only be given in general terms in the public lecture.

Karma, the great law of existence, the law of fate, can be discussed, so to speak, in the very first rudiments of spiritual science, because it is something that belongs to the most elementary things in the world view. But the more intimate questions are such that, in order to understand them, a familiarity with spiritual science is needed that can only be found if one has worked for a while in a study group and has not acquired empty theories, but what flows quite unnoticed from the spiritual teachings into the human soul: a certain kind of sensations and feelings. This is something that every spiritual aspirant soon notices: that spiritual science is something other than just another worldview, because it gives us concepts and ideas that are transformed into feelings and sensations in our hearts, and that we become different people through it, people with a completely different way of relating to our fellow human beings.

This kind of preparation is meant when we speak of a relative inner maturity, which one acquires in this way through spiritual science. We know that karma initially means the spiritual causation of a later event, a later quality or ability in a person, through a previous one. It does not matter whether this spiritual causation occurs in a life between birth and death, or whether it extends through the various earthly lives as the great law of fate for humanity, so that the causes for something happening in one life lie in a previous life or one that lies far in the past – this law, this all-encompassing law of fate, is what we call karma. If one wants to consider the details of karma, one can talk for many months and even longer, and only slowly and gradually can one grasp the things associated with it. Therefore, in a lecture one can only state the facts of the law of karma in a narrative way, and then the maturity of the spiritual seeker shows itself in that he can accept these things as facts, as results, and then reflect on them further and seek them out in life. The individual life shows the effects of karma in the most diverse ways; only the human view of life usually does not go very far. People usually observe themselves or their fellow human beings with attention for only a short period of life, because their view is not sharpened by the spiritual eye.

I would first like to discuss how little this is the case, so that you can get an idea of how the spiritual view can be developed in ordinary life. This will be done by means of a kind of personal experience. Some of you may already know that I have spent fifteen years of my life as an educator, with a wide range of educational responsibilities, including perhaps difficult ones, where problems arose that could only be solved through prolonged observation and study. It is obvious that in the course of such activities I had the opportunity to make observations, not only of the children directly under my charge, but also of their relatives, their cousins, who were always around. One sees how they grow up, and one can observe a large circle of people entering the world. Now, anyone who has followed life a little, sharpened with spiritual vision, can perceive many things in such details. For example, during the time when I was engaged in that activity, a widespread but then extremely respected medical bad habit was in vogue, which consisted of wanting to keep the children “in good shape” by giving them a small glass of red wine every day. It was fashionable at the time for doctors to have the little tykes take a glass of red wine with each meal. This prescription was conscientiously followed by the parents. Now I had the opportunity to observe such children, those who had been treated this way and those who had not. When you are in the prime of life, you can observe people who were still children when you met them in a variety of ways. The children who were treated to this wine back then are now people between the ages of twenty-six and twenty-eight.

So I have had the opportunity, in the most diverse ways, not only to look at a few years, but also to survey larger periods of time. The people who were one to three years old when I met them and are now twenty-eight years old can be divided into exactly two groups: those who were given their glass of red wine to “strengthen them for life,” and those who were not given it. The former have become people who today, in the physical sense, have to struggle terribly with their nervous system - in spiritual terms, with their astral body. They have become people who lack what is called: holding firmly to a goal in life, having backbone; while those who went without wine in their youth have become people who have backbone, who are firmly grounded, who know what they want, who don't need to go here and there for recreation when their business allows them the least, and who, because they have become fidgety people, don't get that recreation after all. The others, on the other hand, have become firmer individuals. I do not just want to point out how it is when you approach such a person again after years, but rather that life looks a little different when you look at it in terms of the connection between cause and effect, not just as far as the person's nose reaches, but also the larger and deeper connections of causes and effects.

This, too, is the highest form of observation of life when we try to observe people with regard to the qualities that are of an inner, karmic nature. Unfortunately, it is a fact that people do not usually connect the beginning of a person's life with its end. People do observe children, but who has the patience, where they have the opportunity to do so, to observe what follows the way a person's soul life was in the first childhood years and then again what life is like when the course of life is coming to an end? And yet there is a very definite karmic connection between the beginning and the end of life. Certain things that occur at the end of life or in the second half of life are based on very specific causes in the early years or youth of life.

Let us take a specific case, for example a person who, in early youth, is angry, hot-tempered, and easily inclined to become angry about something that happens in his or her environment. This anger, and especially the sudden anger that occurs in children, can take on two forms. It can be, so to speak, merely what is called a bad habit, which in a sense is merely an outburst, a rage-like outburst of excessive selfishness. But it can also be something else. One must learn, especially as an educator, to distinguish these two types from each other. A child's outburst of anger can also be what we encounter when a child sees an injustice happening around him. A child does not yet have the power of judgment, cannot yet say to himself with his mind what is happening. If one were to try to explain that what is happening is not wrong, one would soon become convinced that the child cannot yet understand this. Therefore, it is grounded in the world order, in the spiritual guidance of the world, that what later appears as the power of judgment comes to light in childhood in the form of affects, emotions. The child cannot yet understand what is happening, but it becomes angry. This anger, this affect is a preceding soul proclamation of what later is the power of judgment. These two types of anger and irascibility must be clearly distinguished from each other. Anger in the first case must be treated in such a way that the child lives out this anger as much as possible by really feeling the effects of this anger in the right way and also the wrong of the anger. For if, for instance, out of love, one always does for the child the things by which it gets the fulfillment of its will, then anger misses its effect. Anger always has an effect in the soul. Where anger arises in the soul and is not resolved by achieving what it strives for, it strikes back into the inner being. And that is good. That is why popular language, which often has a keen sense for such things, calls anger “poison” in various places where the German language is spoken. To be angry is to poison oneself. This word is truly taken from the facts of mental life. Anger enters the soul, and through the effect of anger within, when it strikes back, the excess egoism is pushed out. So even anger has its good. It is an educator of the human being, it works like a poison that dampens excessive selfishness.

Something quite different is the anger that arises when a child sees an injustice. This anger is a judgment in advance. It is justified. In this case, one must not merely try to punish – by punishing one would merely drive the anger back inside – but one must try to use this emotion in the child to gradually teach him understanding, to teach him the power of judgment. This anger can be overcome by developing the power of judgment. If a child becomes angry when witnessing an injustice, then the following would happen: The child would be introduced to a kind of understanding that the injustice is done by human nature; depending on his maturity, he would be given an explanation of what happened. Then such anger will also have its right effect. It will prepare the child to judge the world, because it is a harbinger of the power of judgment. This is said to draw attention to the fact that man is not always unjustifiably angry. Anger has its value for the development of man. Man must purify himself, he must overcome anger. Anger is something that has a beneficial effect when it is overcome. Man could never ascend to perfection without overcoming anger.

Now one might ask: Why is there anger in the world government? There is anger because one becomes strong by overcoming it; one becomes more powerful over oneself by overcoming it. If you observe someone who had that noble anger in their youth, in the years when idealism arises, when something filled them with anger because they were not yet able to see the deeper connections, then in their later years, you can see that in old age the good effect of this arises. On the other hand, anyone who in youth was unable to overcome anger, to purify himself, to become master of his passions, will not easily attain in later years that mild activity which touches so pleasantly. For mildness is precisely the effect of anger overcome. Mildness in old age is the effect of anger overcome in youth.

A quite different effect is produced by the soul quality of devotion, which likewise makes its appearance in youth. It consists in man's acquiring a feeling for what he is not yet able to comprehend. Wrath is a rejection of what we cannot yet understand; devotion is a looking up to what we cannot yet comprehend, an attitude of respect for what we are not yet equal to. No one can come to knowledge who cannot worship that which is above him in devotion. Devotion is the best path to knowledge. Men would never come to knowledge if they had not first worshipped from the dark background those spiritual powers that stand above them. Devotion is a force that leads up to what one wants to achieve. Therefore it is basically necessary that devotion be developed. The person who, in later life, can look back on many moments of devotion will look back on them with bliss. If it has occurred to you that in your early childhood you have heard your family talk about a family member who is said to be very revered, and if as a child you have also taken this feeling in, and the day approaches when you can see this personality for the first time – if you then have a holy awe to press the latch of the door behind which the revered person is to appear, that too is a very devout feeling, and we will have much of it in later life if we have had several such moods in our youth.

Devotion is the reason, the karmic cause of the power of blessing in later life, in the second half of life. That power, which flows out and enables us to be a comforter to others, is gained through nothing other than a devotional mood in youth. Look around you, wherever there is a person who comes to others who are sad, who then only needs to be there to comfort the sad with his mere presence, to be their comforter, to spread active love - you will find: the karmic cause for this active power lies in those devotional moods of youth. The power that is poured into the soul of the growing person as devotion is something permanent in him; it runs like a current through the soul and comes to light as a blessing power at a later age. We could consider many cases where the law of karma is already working distinctly between birth and death.

Let us now take a closer look at the law of karma in a specific case in a particular life. Suppose a young person had been studying. At the age of eighteen, the father would have gone bankrupt. The young person would therefore have to stop studying, he would be torn out of the profession for which he had been prepared; he would have to take a different career path. Now, of course, all professions are equal; we are only interested in the facts of the change of profession. So the young man had to become a merchant. Now, if you are not a student of life, you will say: Well, the event happened, and you will observe what happened before and what happened after. But only someone who really observes life with a keen eye will discover a connection between what came before and what came after. If the young man is now in the other profession and everything goes normally – I will not say that it always goes normally, but it can go normally – we will be able to see something different in the later years of life. At first, the profession is new to him. He grasps what is relevant to him. But already in the twenty-first year it will become apparent that something is different about this man compared to a man who has been prepared for the commercial profession from the very beginning: in the twenty-first year it already becomes apparent that he has less interest in what is incumbent upon him in his profession. Certain feelings arise in his soul and separate him from what he should be doing, so that he cannot do what is demanded of him with true satisfaction. If one now investigates the cause of this, one will perceive the following: When a particular point is reached where the course of life is changed, a life knot, for example when a change of occupation occurs, then according to the law of karma little is noticeable in the first few years. But then it comes, so that in the twenty-first year feelings, sensations, moods assert themselves, which can be explained from what comes from the preparations for the other profession in the eighteenth year, feelings that he has taken up but not led to realization. At first he suppressed them, but then they asserted themselves to such an extent that he no longer felt satisfied with his new profession. What was placed in him three years before the change of career will emerge three years after that change in such a way that the person concerned can no longer find the right satisfaction. And from there, things can happen in such a way that in the twenty-second year, the fourteenth year of life is repeated, and in the twenty-third year, the thirteenth. It can also turn out differently because everything in life intersects. In the twenty-third year, for example, he can start a household; interests arise that intersect with the past ones and make them run differently. But the law is still valid. Even when a new interest arises, the earlier interests are still there, having been deflected. From such an example you can see the course of the life process as it presents itself to spiritual science. It is the least that one can gain all kinds of insights through spiritual science; but the most important thing is that through it one can penetrate into the life process. Let us suppose – I never relate cases that have not occurred; one must acquire the habit of never inventing anything, but always choosing cases that have actually occurred – so a mother comes to me who has to lead her only son into another profession because his father has been taken from him. In today's world, the right thing is hardly likely to happen, because true observation of life can hardly be reconciled with today's view of life. If such a mother becomes acquainted with spiritual science, she learns to reckon with the law of karma and can become a good friend of the young man who is to be guided through the years of such a career change. This was the case some time ago. A mother came to me and said, “What is my best life's work?” I said she should use the next few years to gain her son's trust. Then she could use spiritual science to educate his mind so that she could help him when certain events occur. The feelings of piety that had been implanted in his soul would assert themselves strongly in all later years, and she would be able to see correctly what would certainly happen. If one day the son comes home and says, “I don't know what to do with my life, my job gives me no satisfaction,” then she will be able to trace it back to what happened earlier. She will recognize the cause and will instinctively find out how to help her son overcome his difficulty. She will certainly be better able to do so than if she had no idea how karma works and only believed that mood swings and depression arise out of something trivial. Nothing comes into being without a cause; but often the causes lie much closer than one might think. We just have to observe such a node, trace life back from there and see what takes a different course. It is like this: Imagine you have a violin string. You have stretched it and stroke it with a suitable object. The string produces a certain sound. If you now hold it in the middle, something happens on both sides: the string vibrates on both sides. There are events in life of which one can observe how what happens before is reflected afterwards.

The middle of life is also such a crossroads. What is prepared in youth comes out in old age. It is necessary to pay attention to these things so that one can gradually really get a feeling that spiritual science is not impractical, but that one's whole life can be shaped practically from a spiritual point of view. A mere life of love is of no use if wisdom is not combined with love. Love must combine with wisdom, with the realization of what is right. Love alone is not enough to live by.

We can mention another case that occurred in the first half of the eighteenth century and has been carefully examined. A mother raised her little daughter. She had seen how this little daughter started to take things, to steal. But she could not bring herself to punish her in her love, which is, after all, an excellent quality. The little daughter stole once or twice, a third time and did other things; and if you follow the course of her life, you will see that the child became a famous poisoner. Here you have love that is not united with wisdom. Love must be imbued with the light of wisdom. Love can only truly unfold when it is imbued with wisdom. How else can a friend help a young person to develop, to guide them through important moments in their lives, if one knows that there is a law that sometimes shows the causes of an event quite clearly, causes that would not be understood without knowledge of the law? It would be right not just to know in general terms that there is a law of karma, but to follow karma in detail by acquiring a correct worldview. The student of spiritual science must seriously endeavor to familiarize himself with the concrete working of these laws and know how they manifest in life. This is the most important thing: not to bandy phrases about Karma, but to get involved in observing the laws in life. This is necessary!

Now I would like to tell you something else. One can also single out a few cases that relate to karma that passes from one life to another. Of course, here too one can only limit oneself to individual cases. So let us consider a question regarding a person's inner karma, which comes about because basically a person must always be a dual entity in life. If you observe life, you will have to say to yourself: when a person comes into existence through birth, two things have to be distinguished. One is what he has inherited from his ancestors. For example, Schiller inherited the shape of his nose from his grandfather; but what is specifically Schiller's, he has not inherited, but that comes from his previous incarnations, his previous embodiments. On the one hand, there is the hereditary stream of that which is passed on through generations; on the other hand, there is that which the person takes from one life to the next. Those who have acquired an eye for the spiritual will always ask themselves how much a person has from their parents and how much comes from their previous incarnation.

In a rational sense, one cannot teach differently unless one can make this distinction. The art of education will only receive the right form when people have learned to distinguish between these two currents. Only at the end of the evolution of the earth will these two currents flow together so that the human being will be able to find the body into which he fits. At the present time this is not yet possible. If a complete fitting together of outer physicality and inner individual organization were to take place in our present time, it would be impossible for a person to die before normal age due to inner causes; because dying is not something accidental, but a disharmony, then premature dying could not occur, since harmony would prevail in man. But as it is, this disharmony between what has been inherited and what has been brought from a previous incarnation can become so strong that it causes death to occur earlier.

If people would only pay a little attention to spiritual teachings, they could grasp reincarnation with their own hands today – this is not to be taken figuratively, but literally – if only materialistic theories would interpret the corresponding facts correctly instead of incorrectly. This can be demonstrated in certain cases. There are people who have not progressed very far in their development, so that their feelings are still completely rooted in their sentient soul. Their whole consciousness is connected with the sentient soul. And this can be seen from people's outward gestures: they betray certain causes that lie in the astral body. When a person is still completely immersed in the sentient soul, when he feels really good inside, it happens, for example, when he has had a good meal, that he slaps his body with pleasure. This is a sign that he still has a too strong sentient soul. When a person is deeply immersed in the mind soul, this also manifests itself. Because the sense of truth is located in the mind, a person who is immersed in the mind soul or mind will pat himself on the chest when affirming a truth. A person who is deeply immersed in the consciousness soul will touch his nose when he is deeply pondering something. What relates to the sentient soul is expressed in the lower body; what relates to the mind or emotional soul is expressed in the chest, and what relates to the consciousness soul is expressed in the head: one also scratches behind the ears. I only mention this to show how what is in the astral body is expressed in the physical body.

Now the following can occur. Man can take into his consciousness the highest feelings and ideas and ideals that he can have at all in this cycle of time; for example, our ethical ideals, which alone should be proof enough for man of the existence of a spiritual world. If we are inspired by an inner voice for these ethical ideals, and devote ourselves to these high ideals, the stimulus for this cannot come from outside. Now this can go so far that a person elevates something that he feels without ideals to the level of these ideals, so that he does not live according to a particular idea out of a sense of duty, but because he can no longer do otherwise. For the one who allows himself to be permeated by a moral idea, it will come about that he becomes so immersed in this idea that he commands himself what is right in its sense. Thus the ideals must light up in the consciousness soul, then they flow down and become instincts.

When this happens, when man has so imbued his feelings with his ideals, then something special asserts itself. These instincts strive to express themselves all the way to the physical body. But between birth and death, man can no longer work on his physical body. So certain currents go through the chest to the head. If someone is enthusiastic about an ideal, is glowing for it and full of fire, so that he feels with love: that should happen - he will devote himself to it in this life, will do anything for it. But that is not all. Through this activity, currents go up to the upper part of the human head. These are forces that seek to work up to the physical body; but they can no longer change the head in this life, because even if one ennobles oneself in such a way, one's physical body is no longer capable of being shaped. But these forces still flow upwards. These currents remain with the person in his soul, and when the person passes through death and a new birth, he brings them with him into a new existence. This is where phrenology finds its individual justification: these acquired forces emerge in the bumps on the skull. You cannot say that this bump expresses this in general, but rather that which the individuality has often associated with it in this way during the previous life and which could no longer reshape the body, that is expressed here.

So these predispositions go through life between death and new birth, and we really grasp what the person has so often let flow into himself in the previous life. You really grasp reincarnation and karma when you feel the different bumps and humps on the head. But we must be aware that each person has their own laws; these humps must not be judged in general, but on an entirely individual basis. So, for example, we take a hump and know: it is the work that the person did on their soul in their previous life. So you can grasp karma and reincarnation, grasp them with your hands! In this way, you can learn from spiritual science right down to the shape of the body.

Just as the physical form lives on from a previous life into a later one, so do other things carry over. However, one must not look at all these things in a fussy way. One must not believe that the law of karma is as cut as a civil code; it can only be understood through extensive studies.

Let us consider a great misfortune that causes deep pain. We often look at it wrongly because we only ever look at the effect. We then see that an event has occurred that has made us unhappy and thrown us off course. We only see the effect. However, we should look for the cause. We might find the following: Yes, in a previous life there was the possibility of acquiring this or that ability. But we did not do it, we neglected it. So we passed through the gate of death without having acquired this ability. Now, in the following life, those forces, which are already karmic forces, drive us to misfortune. If we had acquired that ability in the previous life, the power would not have driven us to misfortune. It is through this misfortune that we now acquire this ability. Suppose this misfortune befalls us in the twentieth year, and in the thirtieth year we look back on it and ask ourselves: What made us acquire these or those abilities? Thus we recognize the purpose of this misfortune. We gain infinitely if we look at things not as an effect but as a cause for what they make of us. That is also an achievement of the doctrine of karma, to look at things as a cause. All these things are details of the law of karma. So you see that one should participate in anthroposophical life because one can learn a lot that otherwise remains only a general concept.

Something quite significant, which is connected with the law of karma, should still be pointed out. A person who comes into spiritual science and hears that there is the possibility of acquiring spiritual abilities, of growing up to the gift of clairvoyance, might ask: Why is it always so difficult to learn what spiritual science says? This question may be justified, but it really does arise mostly from a misunderstanding on the part of many people who become acquainted with spiritual science only superficially, a misunderstanding they have about the connection between physical and spiritual life. They know that physical life is by no means inserted into human life unnecessarily. It has its mission, just like the life between death and a new birth in the spiritual world.

Let us ask ourselves the question: What about two people, one of whom, due to his karma from a previous life, is unable to develop his clairvoyant gift in this incarnation, but has to content himself with diligently acquiring anthroposophical knowledge through study, so that he can see how these things are to be understood – so he could only progress through study – and another to whom the opportunity was given to develop his clairvoyant gifts and to penetrate into the spiritual world? The latter could have the following attitude. He says to himself: I see into the spiritual world, I can see spiritual beings, why should I then still study books? I know there is a spiritual world, so why should I study anthroposophy? It is unfounded and boring. It is a recurring fact that people who are karmically fortunate enough to be clairvoyant say to themselves: We don't want to learn anything more now; why should we study now what is only given in dry terms? One person is able to study all the harder, but he cannot acquire the gift of clairvoyance; the other despises study, but his karma is so favorable that he can become a clairvoyant. What about these people after death, what is the overall picture? A person who has attained the gift of clairvoyance between birth and death, who could see into the spiritual world and see different things, but did not want to learn the theoretical concepts, who did not want to grasp the spiritual scientific information with logical thinking, who despised all of this, has nothing of it after death. He is no better informed than he was without the gift of clairvoyance that he had during his lifetime. That person is even better off who has not yet been able to see clairvoyantly in his physical life, but who was not prevented from forming a logical concept of the spiritual world by reading.

However, this is not meant as an instruction to be lazy and do nothing to develop the spiritual senses. No one can know whether he will not yet acquire the gift of clairvoyance before his death. For those who have studied the spiritual-scientific world view, these concepts now transform into real insights. What one acquires here through concepts will not be lost, it remains. There is an obligation: No matter how highly initiated one is, if one could see so highly but could not penetrate what one has seen with concepts, one would still gain nothing from it. Man should not stop at mere looking, but should invest everything with concepts drawn from physical life. Human beings are called upon to really absorb within themselves all that they can experience on earth. That which is lacking in the spiritual world must be acquired in the physical world and must be carried up.

The above is connected with something much more significant. There is something that people could never have learned in the spiritual world. No event could ever have been learned in the spiritual world if man had not been led down to the physical earth and gone through the incarnations. All spiritual beings that do not incarnate cannot learn about one event: that is death. There is no death in the astral world and even higher; one cannot experience it there. Hence there is the old principle in esoteric philosophy: If gods want to learn how to die, they have to go to Earth to learn it. This is a very profound truth. And there is something else connected with death: Man would never have attained self-awareness. Only by repeatedly passing through the gate of death and shedding his covers at the end of each incarnation does he come to true awareness of the self. Man must learn to overcome death. Without death entering the world, man would not have come to know self-awareness. Thus death had to become the great teacher of the physical world. This is connected with a great event. If it had never descended to physical earth, if it had always remained up in the spiritual spheres, man would never have been able to experience what is the greatest event in the evolution of the earth: the Mystery of Golgotha.

The Christ event can only be experienced between birth and death. And precisely therein consists the greatness of this event, that a God descended from the heights of heaven and shared the fate of men. Only on earth could He fulfill this mystery. Never could the Mystery of Golgotha have been established anywhere in the spiritual world. To teach people the victory over death, a God had to descend from spiritual heights to die on earth. And this event, understood by man on earth, is the greatest thing that can flow into the earthly incarnation of man. This is the greatest thing that man can take with him when he leaves the physical earth through the gate of death. Man could never comprehend the magnitude of the Christ if he had not learned on earth what the Christ is. When he has learned this on earth, he can retain it and take it with him into the spiritual world.

Humanity could never have come to know the Christ if He had not descended, developed the physical body and had the opportunity on earth to understand the death of a God. This event had to take place, for it is of significance for all future times. Humanity will in turn develop backwards in the spiritual world. Before, it knew nothing of the Christ Impulse; on earth it had to learn it, and now it will be carried up, taken along by all those who on earth have acquired an understanding for it. With this understanding, which is gradually acquired on earth, with that event in the soul, man lives on in the following incarnations and also in those lives that elapse between death and birth. People will understand more and more what Golgotha is. The Christ will live more and more. And when the earth is physically destroyed, when only the souls, the spirits of people remain, they will look back on the evolution of the earth and say: We had to go through a development in a world where we prepared ourselves for the Christ. Then this mystery came, the development continued, we understood the event of Palestine better and better, we digested it in our lives between birth and death, and when this great mystery was understood, the earth was ripe to disappear again, because we incorporated what was the most important thing in the whole earth evolution. We had to be on earth, we had to go through it to experience what cannot be experienced anywhere else. Now it has been carried up into the spiritual world, but the origin of what is now in the spiritual world was down there.

This is how your souls will feel when they have gone through many incarnations, when the earth as a physical planet has died and people will have ascended to a new existence. What is the most important heirloom of earth's evolution? What is the most important thing that we have taken with us, and that can only be experienced and lived on earth? The Mystery of Golgotha. Now we have the Christ in us. That is the significance of the sacrifice, that the Christ descended and underwent that event which people experience as death: to become ever more self-aware, to gain ever more strength, in order to take on the karma of the power of the Christ to an ever greater extent.

Thus we see how karma works in this significant instance, and how the understanding of the Christ is connected with the entire earthly karma of humanity. And humanity is to receive the Christ within itself. Man cannot fulfill earthly karma without having attained this understanding of the Christ. And the achievement of the goal on earth will be a karmic effect of the acquisition of the understanding of Christ. Thus we can say: We will understand the smallest as well as the greatest event when we consider the law of karma.

Some poetry will be recited now and a corresponding mood in profound sense can only be created because the largest part of the friends present here have lately been deeply concerned with material concerning the spiritual world in relation to the entire historical development of humankind. What will be presented here in this lecture will bring to our awareness how spiritual science or Theosophy is not only something merely announced to the world through the Theosophical Society but that Theosophy as a teaching is based on the greater occult truth and wisdom which has already flowed through ancient times through the best minds searching for the Higher Worlds. We can find personalities in olden and recent times who can in actual fact show that in their imagination, ideas, feelings and experience, in their life mood they were totally permeated with a world view we could call theosophical and from which they worked, and that their entire life's activity unfolded in harmony with this. One such extraordinary personality lived in Novalis during the last three decades of the eighteenth century.

Not even reaching thirty years of age was Novalis, and we hope that through the lecture of his “Hymns to the Night” an awareness will be able to develop, which speaks out of these Hymns—so complete, as it was only possible in the last three decades of the eighteenth century—in an all encompassing manner, the precise knowledge of these spiritual scientific truths.

Out of a highly respected aristocratic family, Friedrich von Hardenberg, called Novalis, was born on 2 May 1772. Whoever has the opportunity to visit Weimar must not hesitate to view the impressive Novalis bust. It belongs to the classic records of Weimar, and clearly expresses how closely the spiritual high culture was connected to this time, the end of the eighteenth century. Whoever views this extraordinary bust will, if he or she has any sensitivity for it, get the impression that, one could say, out of this sphere of humble humanity the physiognomy of his soul expresses that he was totally established in the occult, in the spiritual worlds. To add to this, Novalis is one of those personalities who is a living proof of the possibility to connect this spirituality, this self-elevation in the highest sense of human beings reaching the spiritual worlds, to connect this to a solid practical `standing on the ground' physical reality. Basically Novalis never entered an angry conflict with the still conservative traditions in which his family circle lived, but we can take into consideration, that this family always had an open receptivity for everything noble and good, also when coming into contact with unknown people.

When we study Novalis' biography—it is in itself a work of art—and we allow it to work on us, his father is shown as having a practical, applied nature. Novalis was actually in his civil life educated for a totally practical career, for which knowledge of law and mathematics was necessary. He became a mountain engineer. Here is not the place to explore how he actually became a delight in this career for those whom he worked. It is also not the moment now to show how the mathematical-materialistic sciences, which lay at the foundation of this career, not only in full theory and practice came to be controlled by him completely, but that he was a diligent mathematician. What is most important is that Novalis as a spiritual being allowed mathematics to penetrate into his inner development.

When mathematics showed him how it is suitable for the elevation of pure sense-free thought, then we have where relevant, to refer to a classic example as here with Novalis, where outer observation doesn't have a say. For him life in the mathematical imagination became a great poem which filled him with delights, allowing his soul to experience an elevation when he dived into numbers and sizes. For him mathematics became the expression of divine creation, divine thought as it flashes through space in powerful directions and in measures of power and crystallize out there. Mathematics became for his mindset the warmest way to the spiritual life, while for many people, who only know mathematics from outside, it remains cold. It is so much more meaningful that we meet this spirituality in Novalis in a gentleness and refinement, as we would not meet in one or other of the most important intellects.

Novalis was a contemporary of Goethe. One should not place the kind of spirituality within Novalis, on the same level as what Goethe had. Goethe came to it through a regulated, out of a Higher World directed course towards an initiation, up to a particular stage. Novalis, by contrast, lived a life which one can best describe by saying: This young man, who left the physical plane at the age of twenty nine and who gave the German intellectuals more than a hundred thousand others could give, he lived a life which was actually a memory of a previous one. Through a quite specific event the spiritual experiences of earlier incarnations appeared, presented themselves to his soul and flowed in gentle, rhythmically woven poems from his soul.

Thus we can see that Novalis understood how the human being's soul can be lifted up into a higher world. For Novalis it gave the possibility to see that waking everyday awareness is only a fragment in a current human life, and how the soul who in the evening leaves the daily awareness and sinks into unconsciousness, in actual fact sinks into the spiritual world. He was able to experience deeply and to know, that in these spiritual worlds which are entered by the soul at night, lived a higher spiritual reality, that the day with all its impressions, even the impression of sun and light, only formed a fragment of the entire spiritual worlds. The stars, surreptitiously sending away the light of day during the night, appeared to him only in a weak glow, while in him spiritual truths rose up in his consciousness, which for the clairvoyant appears illuminated in a dazzling bright astral light when during the night he shifts himself spiritually into this state. During the night the actual spiritual worlds appeared to Novalis and thus the night from this perspective became valuable.

What enabled his memories of an earlier incarnation to appear? How did it happen that the experiences of the occult world, which we can reveal today in occult knowledge, rose so uniquely in him? His life unloosened him from the soul in whose knowledge slumbered earlier incarnations. One must take the result, which these spiritual experiences lifted out of this soul, back into the light of a spiritual observation, if one wants to understand it. Only childlike folly could place these experiences on the same footing as Goethe's meeting and Friederikes zu Sesenheim. This would be a coarsely unrefined comparison.

During his stay in Grüningen he became acquainted with a thirteen year old girl. Soul secrets played here which one could never, without abandoning the gentleness of a soul, call this a love relationship. Basically there was in Sophie von Kühn—that was her name—something like the lives of various beings. She became ill and soon died. The moment her spirit loosened from Sophie von Kühn, it wrestled with Novalis' inner life, awakening inner spiritual abilities.

Perhaps you could, when you allow yourself to admit it, obviously see the inability of a way of thought bound by outer experience coming to the fore here in what we must experience in judging these relationships, which can only be understood if we want to understand it in its spirituality, in our present materialistic time. People say science must be based on documentation; it must absolutely lead from everything concrete on the physical plane. Such natural scientists, who surely present a distorted side, the farcical side of natural science, have allowed us to experience what they believe in, that by presenting documents, Novalis basically had fallen prey to an illusion. The poetry is nice—they say—but show us the documents, let us look at who Herr von Rockenthien was where Sophie von Kühn lived. Look at—so the “Novalis adherents” said—various letters Sophie von Kühn wrote to Novalis. Sopie von Kühn made not only in every line but nearly in every word, a writing or spelling error! - concluding Novalis had fallen victim to a big deception.

In Jena, where she spent the last years, she also encountered Goethe—and made a deep impression on Goethe! Whoever can't comprehend that these unique words of Goethe are more valuable than documents which can be dug up—because all documents can lie—whoever wants to come with proof to show something, will not consider producing counter evidence, it will not help him, despite all his science.

What was the result for Novalis? Sophie von Kühn passed away and Novalis lived within a mood of: “I will emulate her in death” (Ich sterbe ihr nach!). Nevermore was he separated from her soul. Pouring out of the deceased soul of Sophie von Kühn came a force which he had in his own soul experienced as a mediator in the night, and within him rose enormous experiences which he depicted in his poetry.

Once again another feminine individual crossed his path: Julie von Charpentier. To him however, she was only the earthly symbol of Sophie von Kühn's deceased soul. Dissolved out of his soul were the elements of wisdom which he poured into the “Hymns to the Night”, through this first soul bond.

(Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) read the first two Hymns at this point.)

So far does this poem transport us into the worlds in which Novalis lived as a spirit, when he experienced from within the everlasting elements of wisdom.

You might often have heard that such reaching into the higher worlds is linked to a penetration of other secrets of existence. Out of this, a backward glance into the prehistoric times is necessary, where that, which now lives in the world, only existed as a sprig in the Divine and had not yet come down into an earthly form. When the soul of the natural kingdoms still existed in pure spirit, only perceptible in the astral world, all this contributed to the impressive images unfolding to Novalis the seer, when he glanced back. He saw the time when the souls of plants, animals and people were still companions of divine beings, when an interruption in awareness had not yet happened as it did later to human beings in the exchange between night and day—while nothing was influenced by any interruption, as is expressed in the words: birth and death. Everything living flowed in the spiritual-soul where there was no sense of death in this prehistoric past.

Then the thought of death struck into the life of these gods and divine earthly beings, and down into the earthly world the spirits moved. The godly beings were concealed in earthly bodies, the godly beings were enchanted into the mineral, plant and animal realms. Those who were able to return to the spiritual worlds found the gods within all phenomena, they recognised the earlier gods as linked to the human beings before an earthly existence began. They learnt what the life of a soul was, learnt to recognise that the day with its impressions creates a weaker fragment out of the great world of the beings whose existence was endurance, eternity. They learnt to become disenchanted by the world of nature.

This happened to Novalis' soul when he united his eternity to Sophie's soul by emulating her in death. In this emulation his spirit flourished. He experienced “die to live” and in him rose what he called his “magical idealism”.

(Now followed the recitation of the fourth hymn, from part 20, and the start of Hymn 5.)

In this way Novalis could glance back to a time in which gods moved among men, when everything took place spiritually because spirits and souls had not yet descended into earthly bodies. He perceived a point of transition: how death hit the world and how the human beings during this time placed death as their earthly shadowing and how he tried to brighten it up through fantasy and art. But death remained a riddle.

Then something of universal significance happened. Novalis could perceive the universal meaning of what had happened at that time on earth. Souls from the kingdoms of nature descended to the earth. Forgotten were the memories of their spiritual original existence, yet a unique spiritual Being remained in this universal womb of creation from which everything descended. One Being provisionally held back; it had held itself above and only provisionally sent its gift of grace downward, and then, when human beings needed it the most, it also descend into the earthly sphere. It remained in the spiritual spheres above the being of the spiritual light, this Being was hidden behind the physical sun. It held itself in heavenly spheres and descended when human beings needed to once again be able to rise up to spiritual worlds. It descended with the Mystery of Golgotha when Christ appeared in a physical body.

Humanity understands Christ in His universal unfolding when the life of Jesus of Nazareth is followed back to His spiritual origins, to the unsolvable riddle of death. The Greek spirit of death appears as a pondering muse, as an enigma which cannot be solved. Even the Greeks sensed that the riddle which is hidden in the youth's soul, found its solution with the Event of Golgotha, that here victory overcomes death and as a result a new impulse is given to humanity.

This Novalis could see and as a result there appeared to him, from the mystery of faith and the mystery wisdom, the Star which the old Magi had followed. As a result he understood the actual essence of what the Christ death implied. In the night of the soul the riddle of death revealed itself to him, the riddle of the Christ. This was it, which this extraordinary individual wanted to learn—through the memory of earlier lives—what the Christ, what the event of Golgotha signified for the world.

Hymns to the Night
I

Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light—with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its blue flood—the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it—but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance.—Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.

Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world—sunk in a deep grave—waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes.—The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence?

What springs up all at once so sweetly boding in my heart, and stills the soft air of sadness? Dost thou also take a pleasure in us, dark Night? What holdest thou under thy mantle, that with hidden power affects my soul? Precious balm drips from thy hand out of its bundle of poppies. Thou upliftest the heavy-laden wings of the soul. Darkly and inexpressibly are we moved—joy-startled, I see a grave face that, tender and worshipful, inclines toward me, and, amid manifold entangled locks, reveals the youthful loveliness of the Mother. How poor and childish a thing seems to me now the Light—how joyous and welcome the departure of the day—because the Night turns away from thee thy servants, you now strew in the gulfs of space those flashing globes, to proclaim thy omnipotence—thy return—in seasons of thy absence. More heavenly than those glittering stars we hold the eternal eyes which the Night hath opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those countless hosts—needing no aid from the light, they penetrate the depths of a loving soul—that fills a loftier region with bliss ineffable. Glory to the queen of the world, to the great prophet of the holier worlds, to the guardian of blissful love—she sends thee to me—thou tenderly beloved—the gracious sun of the Night,—now am I awake—for now am I thine and mine—thou hast made me know the Night—made of me a man—consume with spirit-fire my body, that I, turned to finer air, may mingle more closely with thee, and then our bridal night endure forever.

II

Must the morning always return? Will the despotism of the earthly never cease? Unholy activity consumes the angel-visit of the Night. Will the time never come when Love's hidden sacrifice shall burn eternally? To the Light a season was set; but everlasting and boundless is the dominion of the Night.—Endless is the duration of sleep. Holy Sleep—gladden not too seldom in this earthly day-labor, the devoted servant of the Night. Fools alone mistake thee, knowing nought of sleep but the shadow which, in the twilight of the real Night, thou pitifully castest over us. They feel thee not in the golden flood of the grapes—in the magic oil of the almond tree—and the brown juice of the poppy. They know not that it is thou who hauntest the bosom of the tender maiden, and makest a heaven of her lap—never suspect it is thou, opening the doors to Heaven, that steppest to meet them out of ancient stories, bearing the key to the dwellings of the blessed, silent messenger of secrets infinite.

III

Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren mound which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my life—lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anxiety unspeakable—powerless, and no longer anything but a conscious misery.—As there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing:—then, out of the blue distances—from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight—and at once snapt the bond of birth—the chains of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning—the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world—Thou, Night-inspiration, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me—the region gently upheaved itself; over it hovered my unbound, newborn spirit. The mound became a cloud of dust—and through the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved. In her eyes eternity reposed—I laid hold of her hands, and the tears became a sparkling bond that could not be broken. Into the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years. On her neck I welcomed the new life with ecstatic tears. It was the first, the only dream—and just since then I have held fast an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night, and its Light, the Beloved.

IV

Now I know when will come the last morning—when the Light no more scares away Night and Love—when sleep shall be without waking, and but one continuous dream. I feel in me a celestial exhaustion. Long and weariful was my pilgrimage to the holy grave, and crushing was the cross. The crystal wave, which, imperceptible to the ordinary sense, springs in the dark bosom of the mound against whose foot breaks the flood of the world, he who has tasted it, he who has stood on the mountain frontier of the world, and looked across into the new land, into the abode of the Night—truly he turns not again into the tumult of the world, into the land where dwells the Light in ceaseless unrest.

On those heights he builds for himself tabernacles—tabernacles of peace, there longs and loves and gazes across, until the welcomest of all hours draws him down into the waters of the spring—afloat above remains what is earthly, and is swept back in storms, but what became holy by the touch of love, runs free through hidden ways to the region beyond, where, like fragrances, it mingles with love asleep.

Still wakest thou, cheerful Light, that weary man to his labor—and into me pourest joyous life—but thou wilest me not away from Memory's moss-grown monument. Gladly will I stir busy hands, everywhere behold where thou hast need of me—praise the lustre of thy splendor—pursue unwearied the lovely harmonies of thy skilled handicraft—gladly contemplate the clever pace of thy mighty, luminous clock—explore the balance of the forces and the laws of the wondrous play of countless worlds and their seasons. But true to the Night remains my secret heart, and to creative Love, her daughter. Canst thou show me a heart eternally true? has thy sun friendly eyes that know me? do thy stars lay hold of my longing hand? and return me the tender pressure and the caressing word? was it thou did adorn them with colors and a flickering outline—or was it she who gave to thy jewels a higher, a dearer weight? What delight, what pleasure offers thy life, to outweigh the transports of Death? Wears not everything that inspires us the color of the Night? She sustains thee mother-like, and to her thou owest all thy glory. Thou wouldst vanish into thyself—in boundless space thou wouldst dissolve, if she did not hold thee fast, if she swaddled thee not, so that thou grewest warm, and flaming, begot the universe. Truly I was, before thou wast—the mother sent me with my brothers and sisters to inhabit thy world, to hallow it with love that it might be an ever-present memorial—to plant it with flowers unfading. As yet they have not ripened, these thoughts divine—as yet is there small trace of our coming revelation—One day thy clock will point to the end of time, and then thou shalt be as one of us, and shalt, full of ardent longing, be extinguished and die. I feel in me the close of thy activity—heavenly freedom, and blessed return. With wild pangs I recognize thy distance from our home, thy resistance against the ancient, glorious heaven. Thy rage and thy raving are in vain. Unscorchable stands the cross—victory-banner of our breed.

Over I journey
And for each pain
A pleasant sting only
Shall one day remain.
Yet in a few moments
Then free am I,
And intoxicated
In Love's lap lie.
Life everlasting
Lifts, wave-like, at me,
I gaze from its summit
Down after thee.
Your lustre must vanish
Yon mound underneath—
A shadow will bring thee
Thy cooling wreath.
Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I'm gone,
That, fallen asleep, I
Still may love on.
I feel the flow of
Death's youth-giving flood
To balsam and ether
Transform my blood—
I live all the daytime
In faith and in might
And in holy fire
I die every night.

V

In ancient times, over the widespread families of men an iron Fate ruled with dumb force. A gloomy oppression swathed their heavy souls—the earth was boundless—the abode of the gods and their home. From eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-enkindling, living Light. An aged giant upbore the blissful world. Fast beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth. Helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods, and their kindred, glad-hearted men. The ocean's dark green abyss was the lap of a goddess. In crystal grottos revelled a luxuriant folk. Rivers, trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine—poured out by Youth-abundance—a god in the grape-clusters—a loving, motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves—love's sacred inebriation was a sweet worship of the fairest of the god-ladies—Life rustled through the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of heaven-children and earth-dwellers. All races childlike adored the ethereal, thousand-fold flame as the one sublimest thing in the world. There was but one notion, a horrible dream-shape—

That fearsome to the merry tables strode,
A wrapt the spirit there in wild fright.
The gods themselves no counsel knew nor showed
To fill the anxious hearts with comfort light.
Mysterious was the monster's pathless road,
Whose rage no prayer nor tribute could requite;
'Twas Death who broke the banquet up with fears,
With anguish, dire pain, and bitter tears.

Eternally from all things here disparted
That sway the heart with pleasure's joyous flow,
Divided from the loved ones who've departed,
Tossed by longing vain, unceasing woe—
In a dull dream to struggle, faint and thwarted,
Seemed all was granted to the dead below.
Broke lay the merry wave of human bliss
On Death's inevitable, rocky cliff.

With daring spirit and a passion deep,
Did man ameliorate the horrid blight,
A gentle youth puts out his torch, to sleep—
The end, just like a harp's sigh, comes light.
Cool shadow-floods o'er melting memory creep,
So sang the song, into its sorry need.
Still undeciphered lay the endless Night—
The solemn symbol of a far-off might.

The old world began to decline. The pleasure-garden of the young race withered away—up into more open, desolate regions, forsaking his childhood, struggled the growing man. The gods vanished with their retinue—Nature stood alone and lifeless. Dry Number and rigid Measure bound it with iron chains. Into dust and air the priceless blossoms of life fell away in words obscure. Gone was wonder-working Faith, and its all-transforming, all-uniting angel-comrade, the Imagination. A cold north wind blew unkindly over the rigid plain, and the rigid wonderland first froze, then evaporated into ether. The far depths of heaven filled with glowing worlds. Into the deeper sanctuary, into the more exalted region of feeling, the soul of the world retired with all its earthly powers, there to rule until the dawn should break of universal Glory. No longer was the Light the abode of the gods, and the heavenly token of their presence—they drew over themselves the veil of the Night. The Night became the mighty womb of revelations—into it the gods went back—and fell asleep, to go abroad in new and more glorious shapes over the transfigured world. Among the people who too early were become of all the most scornful and insolently estranged from the blessed innocence of youth, appeared the New World with a face never seen before—in the poverty of a poetic shelter—a son of the first virgin and mother—the eternal fruit of mysterious embrace. The foreboding, rich-blossoming wisdom of the East at once recognized the beginning of the new age—A star showed the way to the humble cradle of the king. In the name of the distant future, they did him homage with lustre and fragrance, the highest wonders of Nature. In solitude the heavenly heart unfolded to a flower-chalice of almighty love—upturned toward the supreme face of the father, and resting on the bliss-foreboding bosom of the sweetly solemn mother. With deifying fervor the prophetic eye of the blooming child beheld the years to come, foresaw, untroubled over the earthly lot of his own days, the beloved offspring of his divine stem. Ere long the most childlike souls, by true love marvellously possessed, gathered about him. Like flowers sprang up a strange new life in his presence. Words inexhaustible and the most joyful tidings fell like sparks of a divine spirit from his friendly lips. From a far shore, born under the clear sky of Hellas, came a singer to Palestine, and gave up his whole heart to the wonder-child:

The youth thou art who ages long hast stood
Upon our graves, so deeply lost in thought;
A sign of comfort in the dusky gloom
For high humanity, a joyful start.
What dropped us all into abyssmal woe,
Pulls us forward with sweet yearning now.
In everlasting life death found its goal,
For thou art Death who at last makes us whole.

Filled with joy, the singer went on to Hindustan—his heart intoxicated with the sweetest love; and poured it out in fiery songs under the balmy sky, so that a thousand hearts bowed to him, and the good news sprang up with a thousand branches. Soon after the singer's departure, his precious life was made a sacrifice for the deep fall of man—He died in his youth, torn away from his beloved world, from his weeping mother, and his trembling friends. His lovely mouth emptied the dark cup of unspeakable woes—in ghastly fear the birth of the new world drew near. Hard he wrestled with the terrors of old Death—Heavy lay the weight of the old world upon him. Yet once more he looked fondly at his mother—then came the releasing hand of eternal love, and he fell asleep. Only a few days hung a deep veil over the roaring sea, over the quaking land—countless tears wept his loved ones—the mystery was unsealed—heavenly spirits heaved the ancient stone from the gloomy grave. Angels sat by the Sleeper—delicately shaped from his dreams—awoken in new Godlike glory; he clomb the limits of the new-born world—buried with his own hand the old corpse in the abandoned hollow, and with a hand almighty laid upon it a stone which no power shall ever again upheave.

Yet weep thy loved ones tears of joy, tears of feeling and endless thanksgiving over your grave—joyously startled, they see thee rise again, and themselves with thee—behold thee weep with sweet fervor on the blessed bosom of thy mother, solemnly walking with thy friends, uttering words plucked as from the Tree of Life; see thee hasten, full of longing, into thy father's arms, bearing with thee youthful humanity, and the inexhaustible cup of the golden future. Soon the mother hastened after thee—in heavenly triumph—she was the first with thee in the new home. Since then, long ages have flowed past, and in ever-increasing splendor have stirred your new creation—and thousands have, away from pangs and tortures, followed thee, filled with faith and longing and fidelity—walking about with thee and the heavenly virgin in the kingdom of love, serving in the temple of heavenly Death, and forever thine.

Uplifted is the stone—
And all mankind is risen—
We all remain thine own.
And vanished is our prison.
All troubles flee away
Thy golden bowl before,
For Earth and Life give way
At the last and final supper.

To the marriage Death doth call—
The virgins standeth back—
The lamps burn lustrous all—
Of oil there is no lack—
If the distance would only fill
With the sound of you walking alone
And that the stars would call
Us all with human tongues and tone.

Unto thee, O Mary
A thousand hearts aspire.
In this life of shadows
Thee only they desire.
In thee they hope for delivery
With visionary expectation—
If only thou, O holy being
Could clasp them to thy breast.

With bitter torment burning,
So many who are consumed
At last from this world turning
To thee have looked and fled,
Helpful thou hast appeared
To so many in pain.
Now to them we come,
To never go out again.

At no grave can weep
Any who love and pray.
The gift of Love they keep,
From none can it be taken away.
To soothe and quiet his longing,
Night comes and inspires—
Heaven's children round him thronging
Watch and guard his heart.

Have courage, for life is striding
To endless life along;
Stretched by inner fire,
Our sense becomes transfigured.
One day the stars above
Shall flow in golden wine,
We will enjoy it all,
And as stars we will shine.

The love is given freely,
And Separation is no more.
The whole life heaves and surges
Like a sea without a shore.
Just one night of bliss—
One everlasting poem—
And the sun we all share
Is the face of God.

6
Longing for Death

Into the bosom of the earth,
Out of the Light's dominion,
Death's pains are but a bursting forth,
Sign of glad departure.
Swift in the narrow little boat,
Swift to the heavenly shore we float.

Blessed be the everlasting Night,
And blessed the endless slumber.
We are heated by the day too bright,
And withered up with care.
We're weary of a life abroad,
And we now want our Father's home.

What in this world should we all
Do with love and with faith?
That which is old is set aside,
And the new may perish also.
Alone he stands and sore downcast
Who loves with pious warmth the Past.

The Past where the light of the senses
In lofty flames did rise;
Where the Father's face and hand
All men did recognize;
And, with high sense, in simplicity
Many still fit the original pattern.

The Past wherein, still rich in bloom,
Man's strain did burgeon glorious,
And children, for the world to come,
Sought pain and death victorious,
And, through both life and pleasure spake,
Yet many a heart for love did break.

The Past, where to the flow of youth
God still showed himself,
And truly to an early death
Did commit his sweet life.
Fear and torture patiently he bore
So that he would be loved forever.

With anxious yearning now we see
That Past in darkness drenched,
With this world's water never we
Shall find our hot thirst quenched.
To our old home we have to go
That blessed time again to know.

What yet doth hinder our return
To loved ones long reposed?
Their grave limits our lives.
We are all sad and afraid.
We can search for nothing more—
The heart is full, the world is void.

Infinite and mysterious,
Thrills through us a sweet trembling—
As if from far there echoed thus
A sigh, our grief resembling.
Our loved ones yearn as well as we,
And sent to us this longing breeze.

Down to the sweet bride, and away
To the beloved Jesus.
Have courage, evening shades grow gray
To those who love and grieve.
A dream will dash our chains apart,
And lay us in the Father's lap.

This lecture is from the lecture series entitled, Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy. It is lecture 5 of 19 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities throught Austria and Germany in the years 1908–1909.

The word “mission” is perhaps not quite the correct term for our examination of this extraordinary phenomenon at the end of the fifteenth century. Perhaps regarding connections to Savonarola's personality could urge us to say these links would be far more important than defining the mission of Savonarola. This other aspect could come to the fore as soon as members of our Anthroposophic world-view and world movement make themselves familiar with the being of Savonarola because out of his actions and characteristics various things can be learnt. In a being such as Savonarola's we may see the dawn of a new time and up to what point the development of Christianity had reached by the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. It is exactly clear what kind of activity was not effective. We can see what kind of activity was introduced into the development of mankind.

It is necessary to show how certain one-sided influences regarding the empowering and the presentation of Christianity became unsuitable. It didn't take long—with some single thorough strokes we would like to regard Savonarola's actions. Beside Savonarola we can place another figure, quite different in nature, of a Dominican monk. This monk of the monastery from which Savonarola's serious speeches were published, had painted the most wonderful, delicate paintings: Fra Angelico da Fiesole During this dawn of a new age it indicated how Christianity revealed itself in two gestures. This is the proof of how Christianity could be expressed through the soul at this time. This is one way, but the other way—and this is Savonarola's way—is how Christianity could be lived through during this time. One could, if one was such a person as Savonarola, with certain confidence, a strong will and a definite clear understanding, act as he did. Still comparatively young he believed that within such an Order, where the real rules of the Order should be fulfilled, a true life in Christianity could be experienced. If one still had what Savonarola had, the deepest moral courage of conviction, one could direct one's focus to everything happening in the world. One could compare Christianity with events happening in Rome, with the actual worldly life of the Pope, the Cardinals, or how it expressed itself in the wonderful creations of Michelangelo! One could observe how in all the catholic churches Mass was read according to the strictest Cult, giving people the feeling that they couldn't live without the Cult. One could also see that whoever came under the robe, the stole and chasuble, could in their civil lives honour a liberality but that this liberality which was striven for, seen in today's eyes, is by contrast mere children's games. One can take that which from a certain aspect had been striven for as a tendency, and see it become a reality up to the highest steps of the altar.

One could at that time connect the higher worlds in a glowing belief that was absolutely democratic: domination of the gods without any human rulers! This was the pull of Savonarola's heart. The Medici could be admired for all they had done for Italy and for all they had brought to Italy, but one could also, like Savonarola, see the great De Medici, of Lorenzo de Medici, as tyrants. Imagine being Lorenzo de Medici and considering allowing such a quarrelsome Dominican to preach as he wished. Lorenzo de Medici was a distinguished thinker. He could grasp various things, because things should be considered from both sides. He had drawn Savonarola to Florence but Savonarola went against the grain from the start in considering Lorenzo as his patron. When Savonarola became Prior of the monastery, he didn't even consider making the expected visit of thanks. When it was explained to him that Lorenzo had called him to Florence, he said: Do you believe that Lorenzo de Medici was the one who called Savonarola to Florence? No, it was God who called Savonarola to this monastery in Florence!

As a distinguished man Lorenzo donated something to the monastery and one can imagine Savonarola being calmed by what had been given to the monastery. However he gave all these gifts away and announced that the Dominicans were capable of regarding their vow of poverty and to gather no treasures.

Who were actually the enemies of Savonarola? All those who created the configuration and the reign on the physical plane. Nothing disconcerted Savonarola. He went straight ahead. He said: There is a Christendom. Its actual form is in fact unknown to people. The church disfigures it. It must disappear and be replaced by a new form which would reveal the true Christian spirit.—He continued preaching these proclamations. Initially his preaching was with great difficulty because he could only utter the words from his throat with great effort. However he became an orator whose following grew continuously, whose oratory talents increased ever more.

The ruling powers were initially liberal; they didn't want to oppose him. It was an Augustinian monk who felt obliged to deliver a speech which would annihilate Savonarola's power. His speech was delivered under the theme: “It doesn't befit us to know the day and hour when the divine Creator got involved with the world.” This Augustinian monk spoke in fiery words and one could say, being cognisant of the steams flooding Christian life, the entire declaration of belief of the Dominicans domain now opposed that of the Augustinians.—Savonarola prepared for battle and spoke about the same theme: “It befits us well to know things are not as they seem. It befits us to change them and know when the day and hour arrives.” The Florentine crowds cheered like they had cheered the Augustinian monk. He wasn't only considered a danger in Florence but also in Rome and in the whole of Italy. After the unbelievable agony of torture and falsified evidence he was condemned to be burnt at the stake.

Thus Savonarola lived while at the same time another Dominican monk painted a Christianity which hardly exists in the physical world. When we search for a specific word in our thoughts which was spoken by an extraordinary man regarding Savonarola, namely Jacob Burkhardt, the famous Renaissance historian, we can develop the opinion that life was so extensive in Italy that you stood directly before secularisation of the church, which meant the church turning into a worldly organisation, then we may conclude that Savonarola was the everlasting conscience of Christianity.

What caused the ineffectiveness of Savonarola despite his fiery entrance into Christianity? He is a historical figure. This was the cause: In this dawning of a new age and in this dusk of the church where Savonarola instilled his Christianity, something was introduced which worked against the external organisation of Christianity. This test proves it, not even such a figure as Savonarola could be produced again in Christianity. The spiritual-scientifically striving person should learn from this that there is something else necessary, something objective, which makes it possible for the deep springs of esoteric Christianity to be exhausted. Such an instrument can only be Anthroposophy. The figure of Savonarola is like a distant sign lit up in the future of what Anthroposophists should be learning, not through the means which one believed at the time, to re-discover Christianity, but with the means of anthroposophical spiritual science. As Anthroposophist one can learn much from this figure.

This lecture is the eighth of nineteen lectures in the volume Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy. This lecture is also known as The Categories of Hegel.¹

The lecture today will be put into such a form, that through particular remarks connected with the elucidations you will be able to see where the bridge is to be made between Anthroposophy and Philosophy, and how certain philosophical concepts and knowledge can be of importance in the practice of spiritual science. Something is to be stated at the outset that will be useful to us in bringing the philosophical edifice altogether into a right relation to spiritual science. As a preparation, you have heard the logic lectures during the General Meeting (22 Oct. 1908, on the 4^th Dimension; 25 Oct. 1908, on Fichte, Schelling, Hegel). There we recognized thinking as the capacity, to place oneself over against the world in a technique of concepts. We characterized it in a certain way, when we wanted to obtain a concept from pure formal logic. We can only really speak of thinking, when it takes its course in concepts, and we strictly distinguished between perception, representation and concept. If such distinctions are said to be difficult, it must be borne in mind, that in spiritual science it is obligatory that one engage in strict soul exercises, which will increase to sharp and energetic conceptual contours.

We have learnt to know the concept itself as something, which is constructed wholly within our spirit, and this construction is a true one. All psychological disquisitions, which see in the concept only a shadow, arising through abstraction, of that which we have in the representation, remain stationary half way. The concept has not arisen thus, but in inward construction.

In order to get a picture of the place of the concept and the conceptual system, let us just represent to ourselves, what relation this world of concepts takes on the one side to sensible perception, and on the other side to the higher reality, which comes to us through super-sensible observation. The whole network of concepts that a man possess, beginning from the concept of number etc. to the concepts that Goethe constructed, but which in our western culture remain wholly in inception, you may represent as a tablet (Tafel), forming the boundary between the super-sensible and sensible worlds. Between these two spheres the world of concepts forms the boundary. If the observer of sense things were to direct only his eye or other perceptive organs to the outer world, he would merely experience representations. That was shown in the representation of the circle, which remains to us from the perception of the horizon on the ocean. If the human being on the other hand constructs the picture merely in the spirit, the pictures of all the points which are equal in distance from a point within, then in antithesis to the representation of the circle he possess the concept of the circle. Thus we could construct other concepts than mathematical ones, and could finally rise to real knowledge of the Goethean morphology, whose concepts have come into existence just as inwardly as the concept of the circle and so on. When we accordingly imagine the network of all the concepts which man can form, then one can approach the sensible reality with these concepts, and then one finds, that the sensible world agrees with one's concepts. What one has constructed as circles coincides with the circle that is given to him in the perception, through journeying out on the ocean. In this way in all true conceptual thinking we relate ourselves to the reality. The concept is decidedly not gained through observation—that is a conception which is very wide-spread today—the concept is plainly something wherein a man takes no account of the external reality. Now through this we established the place of the network of concepts in regard to the external sensible reality.

Now we must ask: how is it with the position of the network of concepts in regard to super-sensible reality? When he, who through the methods of clairvoyance discloses the super-sensible reality, now approaches this reality with his concepts, he will thus find the network of concepts coincides just as much with the super-sensible world. From the other side the super-sensible reality throws its rays as it were on the network of concepts, as on the one side does the sensible reality.

Now whence comes this network of concepts itself? Here that can only be asserted as fact, for the answer to this question can only result as the consequence of the logical path which we shall yet be able to take together. Today I will only give you a picture of this network of concepts, in order to show whence the network, which a man weaves within him, takes it origin. That is best made clear by a shadow picture. The shadow-picture of the hand would never arise if the hand were not there. The shadow-picture resembles its prototype, but it has one peculiarity! it is nothing! Through the fact that in the place of light the non-light comes, through the obliteration (obscuring??) of the light the shadow-picture comes into being.² The concepts arise in exactly the same way, through the fact that behind our thinking soul there stands the super-sensible reality.

The concepts also are really only an obliteration of the super-sensible reality, and because they resemble the spiritual world, as the shadow-pictures do the prototypes, for this reason the human being can form an inkling of the super-sensible worlds. When the perception of the super-sensible makes concept with the sensible, then these shadow-pictures arise. In the conceptual shadow-pictures you have the super-sensible reality just as little as in the shadow-picture of the hand you have the hand itself. Accordingly we have recognized here that the concepts are the boundary between the two realities, but originate from the super-sensible reality.

Now we ask ourselves: how can a man arrive at concepts, when he has no experience in super-sensible worlds? If he had only the sense-reality, he could only have representations. But it is not requisite to ascend into super-sensible reality in order to form concepts. The seer can perhaps arrive more easily at a complete conceptual world, because he has of course learnt to know the forces, which form the concepts. You will find the spiritual-scientific explanation of what is here said in my Theosophy. A man arrives at his concepts because he causes them to stream down upon him in that form (formlich). Now how is it possible for a man to arrive at a network of concepts filled with content? The majority of people have only arrived at pure concepts in mathematics. Most men, of course, believe that concepts arrive through abstractions. Naturally that is not at all the origin of concepts. Even thinking men are in general quite unclear as to this. When I tried to make clear the self-constructiveness of the concept in The Philosophy of Freedom I had the opportunity of experiencing something very curious. You find elucidated there, in adverse connection with Herbert Spencer, that to start from outer experience is a thoroughly unsatisfactory mode of forming the concept. (p. 55, 1932 ed.)

The concept cannot be gained from observation. That arises from the fact, that the growing human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts conforming to the objects which surround him. The concepts are added to the observation.

A much read philosopher of the present day (Herbert Spencer) describes the spiritual process, which we carry out in connection with the observation as follows: when in walking through the fields on a September day, we hear a rustling a few steps in front of us, and at the side of the ditch from which it seems to come, we see the grass in movement, we shall probably go straight to the spot in order to learn what has produced the noise and the movement. At our approach a partridge flutters into the ditch, and therewith our curiosity is satisfied: we have what we call an explanation of the phenomenon. This explanation, be it remarked, amounts to the following: since in life we have so often experienced, that a disturbance of the quiet situation of small bodies accompanies the movement of other bodies situated between them, and as we have for this reason generalized the connections between such disturbances and such movements, we regard this special disturbance as explained as soon as we find that it is an example of this very connection! On closer inspection, the matter shows itself to be wholly different from the description given here. When I hear a noise, I first seek the concept for this observation. This concept only points one to something beyond the noise. One who does not reflect further, hears just the noise and is satisfied with that. But my reflection makes it clear to me, that I have to regard the noise as an effect. Thus it is only when I combine the concept of the effect with the perception of the noise, that I am led to go beyond the single observation and to seek for its cause. The concept of the effect calls up that of the cause, and then I seek for the object which causes it, and which I find in the form of the partridge. But these concepts, cause and effect, can never be gained through mere observation, however many cases it should embrace. The observation calls forth the thinking, and it is only this that shows me the way to link the single experience to another.

If one demands of a ‘strictly objective science’ that it should take its content from observation alone, one must demand at the same time that it should renounce all thinking. For thinking, according to its nature, transcends what is observed ...

If one would follow Spencer's line of thought, one would arrive at this, that concepts only arise through the crystallizing of the special observations out of the general.³ So long as I relate myself in regard to the noise, as Spencer describes it, I can never come to cognition at all.

Something is still requisite. A prominent philosopher of the present day, to whom I dedicated a copy of my book, wrote in the margin at the place just quoted: “the hare certainly does not do that”, and sent me the book back. But here we are of course not intending to write a philosophy of the hare. Our soul must be in a condition in which it is able to gain the network of the concepts when it is not in the position to get it from perception. The methods, even when they are the scientific methods, which one employs to form representations about the world through outer experience, all these methods cannot aid us to construct the real network of concepts in the human soul. But there must be a method, which is independent of external experience as well as clairvoyant experience, for the human soul ought in truth, as we presuppose, to be able to form concepts before it mounts up to the super-sensible. Accordingly a man has to proceed from one concept to another then he remains within the network of the concepts itself. That that takes place in the soul, makes it requisite that we presuppose a method having nothing to do with external observation or with clairvoyant experience. This movement in pure concepts one now calls, in the sense of the great philosopher Hegel, the “dialectic method”. That is the true dialectic method, where the human being lives only in concepts, and is as it were in a condition to cause one concept to germinate out of another. The man then lives in a sphere, where he takes no account of the sensible world and of that which stands behind it the super-sensible world.

We have pointed out what the soul does inasmuch as it continues mobile in the network of concepts. It begins to spin concept to concept in the sense of the dialectic method. It leads man from concept to concept. Granted that we have to begin somewhere, then we pass on from concept to concept. This must give as a result the sum of all concepts. They would constitute the sum of all concepts, which in the world-all are adapted below to the sense world and upwards to the super-sensible world as well. In the widest sense of the word one terms all these self-mobile concepts, adapted to the two worlds, “the Categories”. Whence it follows that at bottom of the whole human network of concepts is composed of the categories alone. With the same justice one might say: all concepts are categories, as one might say: all categories are concepts. One has, in truth, habitually called the weightiest, the radical concepts, the nodal points of the concepts, Categories. These more important concepts, following Aristotle, are called categories. But in the strict sense one can use the words ‘concept’ and ‘category’ interchangeably, so that we are justified in calling the sum of our self-mobile, self-producing concepts ‘theory of categories’. And Hegel's work—is really a system of categories.⁴ Hegel himself, of course, says this very thing: if one establishes the network of concepts in the whole ambit, one then has in it the ideas of the divine being before the creation of the world. Since we find the concepts in the world, they must have been originally established there. If we trace the concepts back, we discover the divine ideas, the categorical content of the world.

Today I cannot go into the historical development of the system of categories, but only show how in the main Hegel, the great master of categorical theory, has developed the system of concepts. Hegel is today perhaps the least understood philosopher. And when anything is ever said about him, it is worth but little. Wherefore people are still apt to say today, as they always said in his lifetime: he wants to develop the whole world in concepts. Even the Leipzig philosopher Krug understood him as though he wanted to construct the rose out of spiritual perceptions, as though one ought to develop it from concepts. Whereupon he received the answer, that it is not quite evident why the writing pen itself of the Leipzig philosopher should (not) be constructed of pure concepts.⁵

It is of extraordinary importance for Anthroposophists to make their way into these pure concepts. It is at the same time an important and strongly effective means of training the soul, and a means of overcoming a certain indolence and slovenliness of soul. These are effectively banished by Hegel's ‘Dialectic’. One has, you know, this unequivocal feeling of the slovenliness of the concepts in the perusal of modern books, when one has trained oneself in Hegel's system of concepts. True enough, one must have a starting point, one must begin with something; naturally, this must be the simplest concept, it must have the most diffused (geringsten) content, and the greatest ambit; that is the concept of “SEIN” (being: in existence, entity, mere subsistence). This is the concept that is applicable in the whole circumference of the world. Nothing is expressed about the kind of existence, when we speak of existence in the absolute sense. Hegel starts from the concept of SEIN. But how does one get out beyond this concept? However, in order not to remain at a standstill we must of course have a possibility of causing concept to germinate out of concept. This essential clue which we have not got we find in the very dialectical method itself, when it becomes clear that every concept contains in itself something still more than the concept itself, as, to be sure, the root contains the whole plant in itself which will yet grow out of it. It is so with the concept as well. If we look at the root with outer eyes we certainly do not see what impels the plant out of the root. In the same way there is something incorporated in the concept SEIN, which can cause the germination of a concept, and this, in truth, is the concept NICHT-SEIN (non-being, non-existence), the contrary of the first concept. The NICHTS is incorporated in the SEIN, so that here we have one concept germinate out of the other. If we would form a representation of the concept of NICHTS, that is quite as difficult as it is important. Many people, even philosophers, will say it is altogether impossible to form a concept of the NICHTS. But that is just the important thing for Anthroposophists. A time is coming when much will depend upon the fact that the concept of the NICHTS is grasped in the appropriate way. Spiritual science suffers from the fact that the concept of the NICHTS can not be grasped purely. From the Theosophy has become a theory of emanations.

Imagine yourself confronting the external reality and contemplating the world from a point of view which depends only on yourself. You contemplate, for example two men, one large and one small. You imagine something about them, a concept, which would never be conceived [about them] then unless you had met them both, the small and the large man. It is all one what you think about them, but the concept would never have been formed unless you had encountered them. You can find nothing in the primary causes, which could lead to the concept. It has emerged through the pure constellation, through the reference of things to each other. But now this concept, which has come out of the NICHTS, becomes a factor that continues active in you. The NICHTS becomes accordingly a positively real factor in the phenomena of the world, and you can never lay hold of this world phenomenon unless you have seized the NICHTS in this real significance. You would even understand the concept of Nirvana better if you had a clear concept of the NICHTS.

Now connect the two concepts “SEIN and “NICHTS” with one another; then you come to the WERDEN (becoming); a fuller concept, which prospectively contains the other two. WERDEN is a continuous transition from NICHT SEIN to SEIN. In the concept WERDEN you have [a] play [between] the two concepts SEIN & NICHTS. Starting then from the concept of WERDEN you arrive at the concept of DASEIN (existent there); it is that which next (das nachste) unites itself to the WERDEN; the stiffening of the WERDEN is the DASEIN (existential state), a condensed WERDEN. A WERDEN must precede DASEIN.

Now what [do] we get when we have developed four such concepts within us and gained them in this way? We get much from them. In the concept of WERDEN then, we are thinking of nothing else than of what we have learned as content of the concept. We must forthwith exclude everything that does not belong to the concepts. Only SEIN AND NICHTSEIN belong thereto. Wherefore a strictly trained thinker is so hard to understand. When a concept is spoken of, one ought really just as little to think in connection with [it] of something diverse from it as in the case of the concept ‘triangle’. Dialectic is a splendid schooling for thinking.

Already we have four sequent categories: SEIN, NICHTSEIN, WERDEN, DASEIN. We could then go on and cause every possible thing to germinate out of DASEIN, and we would obtain a rich DASEIN from this one line. But we can also go otherwise to work. SEIN can also be developed on the other side; this is very fruitful. The pure idea (Gedanke) of the SEIN (existence) is projected into reality in thinking.⁶ At the moment when we grasp the concept SEIN we must designate it as WESEN (Nature, essence, being, i.e. existent but not outwardly. Tr.)

The WESEN is SEIN retained within itself, the through and through self-penetrating SEIN. That will become evident upon reflection on the essential (wesentliche) and the inessential (unwesentliche) element in a thing. The WESEN is the SEIN at work within, the SEIN wholly devoting itself to the work, it is the WESEN-being. We speak of the WESEN of man when we associate his higher members with the lower and contemplate the concept of the WESEN as the concept attaching itself directly to the SEIN. From the concept of WESEN we gain the concept of ERSCHEINUNG (appearance or phenomenon), the self-manifestation outwardly, the contrary of WESEN, which has the WESEN within it; it is, namely, that which emerges. WESEN and ERSCHEINUNG are in a lie relation as SEIN to NICHTS. If we again connect WESEN and ERSCHEINUNG with each other, we get the ERSCHEINUNG that once more itself contains the WESEN. We distinguish between the outer appearance and the inner essence. But when inner WESEN overflows into ERSCHEINUNG, so that the appearance itself contains the WESEN, then we are speaking of WIRKLICHKEIT (Reality). No man trained in dialectics will express the concept REALITY otherwise than by thinking therein of APPEARANCE penetrated by WESEN. Reality is the fusion of the two concepts.

All speaking about the world must be permeated by those concepts which receive their contours through the inner texture (Gefuge), the organic edifice (Bau) of the whole world of concepts. We can still go on, ascend of even richer concepts. We could say: Wesen is the Sein which is in itself, which in itself has come to itself, which can manifest itself. If now this Sein not only manifests itself, but furthermore still extends its lines (Linien) to the environment, and is thus capable of expressing something yet different we arrive at the concept of BEGRIFF (concept) itself. We have our Wesen in us; it works (arbeitet) in us. But when we cause the concept to work in us then we have something in us that points outwards which embraces the outer world.⁷ Accordingly we can ascend from Wesen, Erscheinung, and Wirklichleit to BEGRIFF. We now have the concept in us, and we have seen in formal logic how the concept works in the conclusion. There the concept remains within itself. But now the concept can go out. Then we are speaking of a concept which gives back the nature (Natur) of the things. We there come to true OBJECTIVITY. In the contrast to the subjectively working concept, we come here to objectivity. As appearance (ERSCHEINUNG) relates itself to the WESEN, so objectivity to the concept. And one has only rightly apprehended the concept of objectivity when it has taken place in this way. If we now connect BEGRIFF—concept—and OBJECTIVITY, we come to the IDEE, the idea, which is at one and the same time objective appearance and contains the subjective within itself.

In this way the concepts grow on all sides out of the primary stem-concept, out of the SEIN. Thus there arises the transparent diamond-crystal world of concepts, with which only we should again approach the sense world. Then is exhibited how the sensible and super-sensible world coincide with the concept-dialectic, and the human being comes to that concordance of the concepts with the reality, in which really rightful cognition consists.

• 1. At the beginning the source document the following is written: “Aristotle's Categories or Classes or Conditions or States: 1. Substance,2. Quality,3. Quantity,4. Relation,5. Action,6. Passion,7. Time,8. Place,9. Situation,10. Habit”
• 2. In the source document ‘obscuring’ is placed above ‘obliteration’ as it indicate a correction, but the latter is not crossed out.
• 3. In the source document the sentence reads “…crystallising out of the special…”, ‘out’ appears to be crossed out, but this is not absolutely clear.
• 4. In the source document ‘theory’ is placed over ‘system’ so as to suggest ‘system of categories’ could also be ‘theory of categories’, also above “Hegel's work”, and under “sum of our self-mobile” is the sentence (hand-written): “the logic derived from Logos, which of course is also a concept”.
• 5. In the source document ‘not’ is inserted as a hand-written correction, but with a ‘?’ after it, so as to indicate that the corrector is not sure about this correction.
• 6. In the source document ‘projected’ (hard to read) is an alteration from ‘protracted’.
• 7. In the source document “… it works (arbeitet) in us. But when we cause the concept to work in us …” is inserted (hand-written) as a correction.

This lecture is from the lecture series entitled, Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy. It is lecture 9 of 19 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities throughout Austria and Germany in the years 1908–1909.

As a result of a wish from your chairperson we shall speak today about a theme which sets certain presuppositions to the audience, and is, in a certain sense, aimed at advanced Anthroposophists. We will have the opportunity in the following open lectures to work from the basics of the anthroposophical world view with something which formerly has not been taken into account much, something which perhaps in internal lectures had dared give a solution, and which will at least be partly experienced in an open lecture like this. When we speak about advanced Anthroposophists, don't suppose, my dear friends, it means to have advanced in the spiritual scientific fields, that you have become learned in theory. It doesn't really come to that. What it involves is less of a theoretic world created in the soul, but rather a certain development of our world of impressions, our feeling-world, a certain inclination, we could say, which we gradually acquire when we repeatedly work within anthroposophic circles.

Whoever has worked for many years within these circles, or are inwardly active in such circles, will think back to a time when they had, for the first time, heard something about the anthroposophic occult science of man, and they will remember that some of the first communications not only appeared improbable, but perhaps confused and fantastic—perhaps even worse could be said about them. However, with the passing time you may get used to certain impressions as the anthroposophic world view comes ever closer, and the world of feeling makes it possible to share things which are revealed from Higher Worlds. These revelations become absorbed just like facts on the physical place, taking place in the physical world, they too are taken in. Whatever one can call proof of spiritual statements is not to be sought in the same fields as are the proofs for scientific certainties. With such a line of argument one can't do much. The line of argument which is available for experiences in the anthroposophic world view lies in the complete intimate transformation as experienced within the soul life. Long before we can happily penetrate to perceiving the spiritual worlds through the application of spiritual scientific or occult methods, we can build in ourselves a presentiment, a premonition out of the correctness, from deep legitimacy, that which is shared regarding Higher Worlds. Much of what we can, from an imagination regarding the way we can penetrate the Higher Worlds, how we can with our own spiritual sense organs perceive the Higher Worlds will be brought out in our next lecture: “What is self knowledge?” Today we want to reveal single observations about these Higher Worlds and cultivate the connection between these worlds and our physical world.

You all know by now through anthroposophical work that two other worlds exist beside our own; the so-called astral and devachanic worlds, called, as far as they are known in religion, as the heavenly world, the actual spiritual world. You are familiar with these worlds as areas through which we journey between death and a new birth. You know that after the astral world has been passed through during Kamaloka, you enter the pure spiritual world, Devachan, where you are called again to a new birth, in order to descend again after a certain time into a new earthly life, a life in the physical world.

It's not enough to only imagine the astral and devachanic worlds as distinct areas through which we move between death and a new birth, because these worlds continuously surround us. We live continuously not only in the physical world but also in the astral or soul-world, surrounding us with their beings and truth. We can describe this astral or soul-world as penetrating our physical world just like a sponge is penetrated by water. The only difference between both these worlds as opposed to our physical world is this: our physical world is perceived through the tools of our body, and for us this perception of the Higher Worlds is withdrawn because we haven't developed the organs needed for their perception. As real as they are within our world, just so real their activities play continuously into our world. Much taking place in the physical world can be more easily explained if the spiritual astral and devachanic worlds, behind it all, are made aware regarding beings and realities existing in our surroundings, beings which can't be grasped and understood by our senses. The astral world contains not only realities which play supersensibly into our environment; it contains beings who, if we dare say so, are incorporated in the substance of their world just as we, humans, self conscious beings, are here in the physical world bound to flesh and blood. The distinction of these described beings is namely that they don't possess solid physical bodies which may be seen by our physical eyes. Their major mass is the astral body.

Now we need to immediately make a note when we speak about these beings who have as their lowest member of their organism the astral body, that they are perceptible to whoever has opened their clairvoyant awareness and can also see these beings. They are differentiated substantially from those existing beings on our physical plane which belong to the various kingdoms of nature. We are surrounded by minerals, plants, animals and people. When we determine a single characteristic of all these different kingdoms we conclude that their form is firm, established. When you see a person today, you may well recognize them tomorrow, or even after a year, because their outer form has remained constant. Similarly with the animal, the plant or mineral. This is not at all the situation with the beings which are incorporated on the astral plane. These possess a continuously changing form, a shape which in many of them, from one moment to the next become another, because the form which can be observed in the astral plane is the exact expression of the inner soul experiences and soul activity of these beings.

Just think about yourself, how you may observe your soul in the morning just after you have received a cheerful letter and how the joyful message filled your soul with delight and pleasure and how this feeling lived in the soul. Then think how your soul will express itself in the direct contrary situation, how different the image will be when you receive news of a death in the afternoon, or you are shaken in rage and fear. Consider how your outer expression changes each time as a result of what took place in the soul, then you have an image of what happens on the astral plane. Hence the bewildering scurrying and continuously changing forms of the astral beings. Thus you have to imagine that the clairvoyant awareness, when it is turned away from perceiving the physical plane, is surrounded by the astral image world. Naturally everything that enfolds there can't be depicted; only single sketches can be given.

Life on the astral plane is far richer than on the physical plane. You can imagine light images in the astral world which don't cling to outer objects but flash with a definite form, one moment either light or less luminous, less radiant or misty, changing in every blink of the eye. They are nothing other than expressions for souls, we may call them, which live there on the astral plane. However these light bodies show not mere light and different colour images but also all other physically similar sense impressions, only these are not perceived with outer but with inner spiritual organs of the soul.

There exists a differentiation between the observation of a bright body on the astral plane and a colour or a bright body on the physical plane. In contrast, what meets light there, has an awareness—not a feeling, as if it is beyond that- yet has a sense: “You live in this”.—This is really quite difficult to imagine, because you have to think, that the very moment this clairvoyant awareness rises up in you, you feel something different, as if not only is the space filled with astral truths and beings, but it feels as if it is all growing larger and larger. It stretches your awareness with “This is me”—right over your skin. That is the essential part of clairvoyant consciousness. It senses, as when it spreads itself out into that which is perceived, creeping in, so that it lives within these light bodies and experiences warmth and cold, sensing taste as well.

All these experiences which you know firstly from the sense world and which are integrated in the outer limited body, stream and flash through the realm—and then something else appears. Here in the physical world we have naturally the feeling that all that belongs to a physical being is actually spatially linked to that being. It comes as an extraordinary surprise when some physical being walks into a space and behind him follows another and someone insists the two belong together although no link exists between them. You would insist they are separate beings, because we never consider spatially separate beings as a single being. We would take them as separate beings; because we will never consider separate bodies in the physical world as one being. In the astral world it is throughout applicable that things which in no way connect spatially, comprise one being, and so you have no tool which can help you pin-point a single being when you are within, and has the consciousness, that two quite outstanding members belong to a single being. Confusing it is also, that clairvoyant consciousness is not always the same and that which belong together, can't always be glimpsed again. Yes, it can go further: you could see a single being, which appears to you as a row of separate spheres, here a shining sphere, and far from this a second, then a third, fourth and so on. In conclusion, the astral place basically looks different from here.

Yet there is something which is linked to us and this connection expresses simultaneously all the similarities of the astral world working in us; this is our own astral body. This is the third member of our being, which you experience as having a definite self-contained shape. During our life between birth and death we can definitely see the essential astral body resembling a kind of oval cloud, within which the physical and astral bodies are embedded. A kind of egg shape is this body, the outer boundary existing in a constant surging movement, so that some kind of regularity of form is out of the question. The astral body only appears in a kind of firm, steady form as long as it is contained within the physical body. As long as this is the case, it retains this form. Already at night, when the astral body withdraws, it begins to adapt itself to the soul body. Then you can see how a human being, who lives with evil feelings during the day, appear in quite another form compared with someone who has lived with noble feelings during the day. In general the form of the astral body is steady at night, while the forces of the physical and etheric bodies work very strongly through the night, and the astral body retains its form essentially, but only essentially.

However, when we die, after the end of our physical life, we relinquish our physical body, as well as push away that part of our etheric body which is to be given up, then the astral body takes on a variable form right through the Kamaloka time. This body completely matches its form and image to the soul life, hence a person who has lost a body which had been filled with hateful feelings shows a withered form while a person who died with beautiful feelings, show a sympathetic form as an astral body. It can go so far that people who are totally taken with sensory desires and who can't lift themselves into an exchange towards noble feelings and impulses, after their death for a while really take on the forms of all kinds of grotesque animals—not those living on the physical plane but those who only remind us of animals.

Whoever has had experiences on the astral plane and is able to follow which forms are offered to the clairvoyant consciousness, knows which image speaks nobly and which doesn't contain noble content; they can experience and observe everything from these images. I have already mentioned that these human astral bodies cannot appear in absolute definite inner and outer shape, only within certain boundaries is this the case. Also already in physical life, actually in every part of the body which appear after falling asleep, the astral body matches that which the soul experiences. From here certain images and forms taken up by the astral body can be seen according to what is happening to a person and what he or she is living through.

With regard to some things which the soul may experience, I would like to indicate something to you, namely, how the astral body may be observed. Take for example a person who is a gossip, inquisitive or tend towards temper outbursts or, let's say, similar bad habits. These bad habits will express themselves in a distinct manner through the astral body. If someone is for instance plagued by fury, annoyance and especially if the person is irascible, then we see tuberous formations, thickenings expressed in the astral body. The person becomes polluted. From these thickenings exude evil looking snakelike protuberances, distinguishable in colouring and other substances. Particularly with irascible people this can easily be seen. When a person is talkative, tend to gossip, it appears in the astral body as all kinds of thickenings, which can be characterized by saying the thickenings will exercise pressure in all directions in the astral body. When a person is inquisitive then it shows in the astral body in such a way that folds are created, sections become slack and hang as it were against one another in parts; it shows a general slackness, it seems as if these astral bodies in a certain way participate in the general characteristics of the astral world, matching in form its inner soul experiences.

We discover, on researching the astral world in general, certain beings of which we, who only know the physical, actually can have no inkling. In the physical world these beings appear in quite a different way, than what we have perceived about them before. For example, we find quite extraordinary beings in the group souls of animals. The human being, as he approaches us here, has an individual soul which comes to meet us—a soul for each person, an Ego-Being. The animals don't have the same kind of I or Ego-Being. They have similarly shaped forms, all lions, tigers, all tortoises, which we call a mutual group soul. Just imagine that on the astral plane there is a single I-Being, simultaneously living in the physical animal. All the animals are imbedded in the I-Being, who has a definite personality on the astral plane, and there we can meet this personality, this group soul, just like meeting a person.

An example: take a migration of birds when they all start to move from the northern hemisphere towards the equator. Whoever doesn't consider this extraordinary wise migration superficially, will be amazed how many have what we note as intelligence in such a flight of birds. Various birds come from different regions, one from this, one from another: the danger exists that they land where they need to land. Ordinary physical awareness only sees the massive swarms. The clairvoyant consciousness however, sees the group soul, the action of the personalities who lead and link what is happening. Actually these are such astral personalities who direct and lead. These group souls are the ones we meet as inhabitants of the astral world. The diversity which rules in the group souls of the astral plane, this variegation is endlessly larger. Just to mention aside, the astral plane has space for everything, because there beings interpenetrate; because the law of the impenetrable is only valid on the physical plane. However, there we feel influences, good or bad, when we are penetrated and experience this in our inner life. They could thus go through one another; they can exist in one and the same place. There the law of interpenetration rules.

However, this is only a part of the astral inhabitants, surely one in which we can only fully, in the right sense, understand when we come to grips with it completely. Don't believe that someone already has a concept of a group soul with some or other animal form, how, shall we say, it is observable already in the way it is embedded in the astral world and how this group soul is led into his consciousness. This is not enough. Right here we are reproached vividly by that which is spatially separated but belongs together, so that we, for every animal group soul filled with wisdom and leading the whole, arrive at a counter image, a terrible counter image. Within this exists the animality to which we refer in the astral world, and find, on descending into that part of the astral world where ugliness and adversity rule, where every animal group has a light-form and an ugly form, that which had at one time been separated from the light-form of evil and ugliness, which had been at one time within them, part of them. From this you can see how the old pictures and artworks sprung from a higher knowledge. Today we recognise only that which lives as an individuality. Hence if we want to invoke something higher today, we can only grasp at fantasy. This was not always the case. In the past, most of mankind who worked artistically, had a clairvoyant consciousness or still a remnant of clairvoyance, and they depicted what they actually found in Higher Worlds. Thus they depicted what was known to them in Michael and the Dragon or Saint Georg with the Dragon in a wonderful representation of relationships which the clairvoyant finds as animal forms on the astral plane. The wise lifted them to a higher form, to tower far above the wisdom of people. However the wisdom is acquired through what has been thrown out of the astrality of such beings' ugly side. The ugly side you find in the adverse dragon. When the clairvoyant looks on the living form he sees everything as lively form organised by higher beings who are wise but do not know love. However these expressions of the light soul form can only be acquired through treading the evil qualities underfoot which are in the being's form. Human beings have acquired their current nature through good and bad still being mixed in their karma, while in the animal the moral distinctions of good and bad can't be applied. The concept of light filled being is with an upwards reach while connecting and lifting that which had fallen and had been conquered. Ancient art was mostly produced with meaningful symbols and created through nothing less than with a clairvoyant conscious consideration. They will only be comprehended once we have understood the astral archetypal images.

The plant world also presents something curious on the astral plane. When a clairvoyant considers a plant and how its roots worm their way in the earth and leaves and flower appear, he perceives the plant possessing a physical and ether body. The animal has the astral body in addition. Now the question may surface: do the plants not have any form of an astral body? It would be wrong to hope for this; there is nothing within the plant as there is within the animal. When the plant is looked at with clairvoyant consciousness, the upper part, where the flowers develop, appear as if dipped in an astral cloud, a bright cloud surrounding and wrapping this part of the plant where it blossoms and bears fruit. Thus astrality gradually sinks down over the plant and wraps part of it. The astral body of the plant is embedded in this astrality. What is peculiar is that when the spread of plants cover the earth, it is found that the astral bodies of the plants merge their boundaries and envelop the earth as if by a physical air of plant-astrality. If the plants only had an ether body they would only develop leaves and no flowers because the principle of the ether body is repetition. When a repetition is completed and a conclusion needs to be created, then an astral body must join in.

Likewise the human body may be considered—how the etheric and the astral co-operate. Contemplate how the vertebrae of the spine follow successively. Vertebra upon vertebra they are divided. As long as this happens it is mainly the etheric principle working. At the top, where the bony skull capsule appears, here the astral has the upper hand. The principle of repetition is the principle of the etheric, and the principle of conclusion is that of the astral. The plant would not come to a conclusion in its flower if it's etheric isn't sunk into the astral nature of the plant.

On researching the plant, how it grows through summer and bears fruit in autumn to eventually start wilting, or when the flower starts dying away, the astral withdraws upward from the plant. This is particularly beautiful to observe. While our physical consciousness may experience joy in the blossoms during spring, covering meadow after meadow, yet another joy can be experienced by the clairvoyant. In comparison, when the annual plants die down in autumn, it glows and flashes above it beings, the astral beings withdrawing from the plants, beings which had cared for the plants during summer. Here lies another fact which we discover in poetic images, which are incomprehensible when we can't research this with clairvoyant consciousness. Here we connect to the intimate fields of the astral consciousness. With folk in past times, where clairvoyants with such intimate knowledge were around, these insights existed in autumn. We find in the clairvoyant Indian folk art representations of wonderful phenomena, of a butterfly or a bird flying out of the flower's calyx. Against such an example we see how something of it arises in their art, from a basis of the clairvoyant consciousness since way back; either clairvoyant consciousness of the artist works into it, or inspiration from tradition.

An astral body thus also exists in the plant. An animal has a physical, ether and astral body. The Ego of the animal we find in the group soul. The astral body of the plant we noticed in the beings withdrawing from the wilting plant. Has the plant an Ego? Yes, the same exists for the plants as we called a Group Soul in the animal, only here the extraordinary exists, that the Plant-Ego directs itself towards a single place on earth, namely the centre of the earth. It is as if the earth is being radiated from all sides by the Group Ego of the plant, and therefore the plants grow towards the earth. This Ego however we can't see on the astral plane—here we find the animal group soul. Here we also find every double-being, as we see in the symbol of Michael and the Dragon. We also find what has been depicted, but the plant-Ego will be sought in vain on the astral plane. The actual plant soul, the plant-Ego is only found in the higher, the actual spiritual world, in the greatest, under layers of Devachan, in Rupa-Devachan. Here the plant soul and plant-Ego mingle, their actual centres so intermingled, that they unite in the centre of the earth. Now the question may arise: Surely the physical plane, the astral plane and devachanic plane are within one another, so while the clairvoyant is situated where physical man finds himself, how is one distinguishable from the other? The physical plane is there as long as we can see, hear and taste it and when we develop an inner capability, we can distinguish between the physical and astral worlds. There were such beings entering into our awareness who may not be observable through physical organs, here the astral plane starts. Where then begins the devachanic plane? Now there is the possibility to provide boundaries between the astral and devachanic plane, although they blur into one another; through this is created an outer and inner possibility to recognise the astral from the devachanic plane. The outer possibility is as follows: when you develop a clairvoyant consciousness, you should experience moments in life when you leave the physical worlds to a certain extent. This is already a higher degree of human development when you can so to say simultaneously glance at the physical, then penetrate the astral world, as for example the physical of the animal and the astral body of the animal. This can only be accomplished through specific levels of development, after we have gone through something else, namely that you don't see the physical world when you see the astral world.

This participation of the human being in the development of the astral world from the beginning shows in the following. The human being exists in a certain place. He hears all kinds of things, looks at objects, touches and tastes them. When the human being gradually lives into the astral world, these sensory perceptions start to withdraw further and further away, similar to a sound which moves ever further away until it disappears. Just so it is with sensory perceptions: the human being gradually becomes that which is being touched, not through direct experience but, he or she has a distinct feeling of their body being penetrated as the sensory object senses, stirs into the human body. The same is valid for the world of colour, the world of light: the human being expands, he or she lives into this light world. In this manner the sensory world withdraws from the human being and is replaced by appearances, as mentioned earlier. Next, what has to be observed is what the human being really must go through in the astral world, so to speak the entire perception of tone, of hearing, the world of sound which dissolves tone. This is not available in the astral world for quite a while. The human being must so to speak go through this abyss and live in a soundless world. However it is excellent that through this is found an abundance of impressions in him- or herself, namely a differentiated world of images. When the human being ascends in his development, he or she will meet something which appears as quite new, a spiritual counter-image linked to the world of tone. What is first learnt within the astral world as something new and appears as spiritual hearing. This is of course difficult to describe.

Take for example the following: you see a shining form. Another one approaches, comes closer and merges with it. A third comes, crosses the way and so on. Now, what is appearing before you is not merely seen clairvoyantly, but it evokes in your soul the most diverse feelings. Thus it can happen that these inner feelings tend towards an inclination, then towards reluctance, the most varied feelings appear when you penetrate the being, when you approach or withdraw from them. Thus the acquiring-clairvoyance soul lives into the astral plane cooperation and hence becomes glowing and penetrated by existing or contradictory feelings of a pure spiritual nature. Here spiritual music can be perceived. The moment this happens, you are already in the region of Devachan. Thus Devachan begins its presence from outside, where soundlessness begins to cease, partly a horrific toneless experience on the astral plane. The human being has no idea what it means to live in an endless toneless place where no sound exists but also shows that there is none to be found within. The feeling of hardship in the physical world is trivial compared to feelings in the soul when this impossibility is experienced, that something could sound out of this endless spread out realm. The possibility arises that through cooperation with the Beings and observing their harmony and disharmony, a world of tone is begun. That is Devachan, seen externally through its forms.

The transition from the astral world to Devachan as experienced through the soul can be illustrated in another way. In the physical world we are accompanied in our soul by our character type. One person may pass a picture and experience nothing while another will feel a world filled with bliss as he stands before the image. People pass one another, the one says of the other he could be the right one and sees soul peculiarities that they belong to one another, and experience an enlightening joy. Very soon no more of this will exist in the Higher Worlds. Here the human being demands with inner urgency the experiences of the world of feeling thus not enabling the passing by to have a somewhat cold or sober experience of the astral and devachanic planes, but rather particular experiences demanding dedication, a full penetration, while other experiences are repelled.

Thus if you are not thoroughly prepared it can become dangerous because you experience continuous changes under inwardly disturbing circumstances, inward tearing and as a result undermining your health. Step by step you will realize in which world you find yourself. While you are in the astral world, you will recognise principally two nuances of feeling expressed in a varied manner. The one, which appears most strongly when you enter the astral world directly after death, is the one we call Kamaloka. Here you have, so to speak, not yet freed your feelings from life in the physical and you desire and long for it. Take for example a gourmet, who longs for delicious food. After death and his transition to the astral world he still has desires but no longer the physical organs to satisfy them. Thus he greedily craves for that which only the tongue and palate can provide. As a result he experiences in his soul the most painful sensation, the feeling of deprivation. Deprivation is one of the principal sensations we have when we are in the astral world. Here you become aware, when you have developed your consciousness, not only particular painful feelings of deprivation like in those who have died, but also the feeling of a search for something. The feeling of deprivation will also overtake the clairvoyant when there is no other to balance out the weight. If you enter unprepared or not prepared in the right way for the astral plane, then this applies. Neither rest nor peace will the soul have; anxiety and restlessness shoves the soul from one side to another. To avoid this there is only one possibility: the formation of the opposing nuance of feeling, and in all secret schools this nuance is unanimous: it is renunciation. To prepare yourself for the right existence in the astral world, you need to know that everything, in some way or another, refers to renunciation. When you abstain from the slightest insignificance here, it is totally valid that you are, so to speak, laying a stepping stone in the astral world. The calm observation of the astral world is achieved through your own preparation regarding the feeling world of abstinence. While the feeling of the desire turns the astral world into one of pain and reluctance, the opposite happens through working with renunciation, because the images and beings of the astral world become ever clearer and more distinct to observation and thus you no longer sway between desire and denial. These are the nuances of feelings in the astral plane as long as the foregoing is active in the soul, while you are in the astral plane.

Now new experiences of feeling enter the soul. First of all, at the boundary where the soul crosses into the devachanic world, feelings of bliss and happiness ensue. Even when you enter Devachan in an unworthy manner, through some or other spell or through black magic before death allows this entry, you will soon swim in a sea of happiness in some higher or lower degree. Now you may say it is peculiar that even an unworthy entry of Devachan spoils you with blessedness. Indeed this is the case, but it has certain disadvantages, is the answer. This feeling of outer and inner blissfulness is in the devachanic planes inseparable from something else, namely the loss of self, the power of self consciousness, the inner Ego-force. We will dissolve into it if no other feeling nuance comes to the fore. This feeling is called, in occult science, the feeling of self sacrificing dedication, called the ability to sacrifice.

In the astral plane we find deprivation and renunciation; on the devachanic plane, blessedness and self-sacrifice. It is strange, yet true, that when someone on the devachanic plane doesn't have the feeling:—‘you must dedicate yourself to what surrounds you’—but only wants to enjoy the bliss with the Ego, then he or she will be dissolved by devachanic beings. When he or she however allows the penetrating feeling: ‘I want to offer myself, I will not dissolve into what I've acquired,’—then he or she will be shielded in Devachan from dissolving, passing away. The noblest feeling of love, creative love, must be the second feeling nuance in Devachan. This is something which can be understood in the manner it works in Devachan between death and a new birth. Through the fact that a person coming out of Kamaloka, who lived with deprivation and thus shortened the duration of his sojourn through learning renunciation, upon arrival in Devachan, must immediately begin to work towards his next incarnation. Slowly he builds up the archetypes of his next earthly life. How much better would he create these while experiencing a feeling of blessedness, really entering this bliss, having learnt to add the self sacrificing dedication of his own being to that which surrounds him. In the degree to which he offers himself through his soul, to this degree is the archetype created for his future personality. Should he be unable to do this, then he would either totally pass away or need an enormous length of time until he returns again to an earthly existence. So we see, so to speak, how the soul is formed externally—through transitions from the dumb, radiant astral world into the sounding devachanic world—by finding the boundary; more importantly though is how one lives in this other world within one's soul. Thus we have some indications of the relationships in the Higher Worlds, which one enters through the observation of the ancient Greek words of wisdom: “Know thyself!” Much can still be added, however only a portion of it can be given which is characteristically valid of the Higher Worlds. So we gradually live into that and through the experience, we also start to recognise the working of it into the physical world and hence this world becomes ever more transparent.

The day before yesterday we considered one the most important occult themes namely getting a glimpse into the Higher Worlds. Yesterday we had an open lecture in which we occupied ourselves with which method and tasks are needed to reach the stage when the slumbering soul's capabilities and powers can be awakened in order to make knowledge of the Higher Worlds possible. The theme to which we will apply ourselves today relates in a particular way to both of these, and stand in a certain relationship to all anthroposophical striving. What is so often expressed theoretically is that anthroposophic occult science can be nothing other than an all-encompassing, universal self-knowledge of mankind, a self-knowledge which leads to the deepest origins, the deepest existence of the individual “I” and how it is enclosed in World Knowledge. Not only, I can say, do you find this expressed often in theosophical literature and elsewhere, but is adhered to; genuine self-knowledge is an accompanying phenomenon which needs to run parallel with all real research into the areas of the Higher Worlds, running parallel with development of all our inner soul forces. The “Know Thyself” ancient human expression means a great deal, even much more so for the Anthroposophist. Today we want to explore that which we call in the occult scientific sense self-knowledge in relation to the most varied stages of human development. We will commence with the most ordinary, everyday self-knowledge and rise up to this self-knowledge which can be called World Knowledge in the anthroposophic sense; and to above all, relate each single element we discuss to what could be called “occult scientific” with constant consideration to the occult side.

Self-knowledge is considered so much more important within the anthroposophic world view because it, when understood correctly, can include the most High within anthroposophic striving, but falsely understood, can become extremely dangerous. Incorrectly understood self-knowledge tends to appear particularly at the beginning of the path of spiritual scientific striving which is pointed out in Anthroposophy, earlier rather than leading towards it. Goethe, with many references to this familiar field, once said that he has a particular distrust in the expression “self-knowledge,” as it means something which the human being represents basically as some kind of false melancholy, self-anaesthesia, caught up in an incorrect channel. This is correct throughout. We always have an opportunity in the occult scientific field to gaze at the complexity of human nature when we remember what we all know: with anthroposophic insight we have human members in the physical body, which comprises the ether and astral body, and what we call the actual Ego- or “I”-carrier (Ich-Träger). When we look at that which we basically call the Self, with all these members linked to human nature, we easily come to the conclusion that self-knowledge is something extraordinarily complex.

To anticipate the simplest, humblest type of self-knowledge, we must remember to differentiate between these four members of human nature—according to the present relationships between these members—the wakeful and dreamless sleeping human being of which we can now say: the sleeping human being's physical and ether bodies are loosened from the astral and I-bearer and the latter two are outside the body. We know at the same time that it is normal in the present human cycle, that the human “I” can only become self aware when using physical organs, and make observations on the physical plane. Thus we speak as it were in a spiritual scientific sense if an I-bearer existing through those conditions called unconscious sleep. We have to say that this I-bearer only develops consciousness and self-consciousness while entering directly into the field of observation and use physical organs, thus taken up into the physical and ether bodies. There we have today's normal human self consciousness before us and need ask: what is the being of this self-consciousness at the lowest level? Better even is to describe the question thus: How does the human being, how do we, come to understand that which lives in the physical body from morning to night, using physical organs—how do we arrive at knowledge of this being, or even of the self? We can easily believe that we need to look within and thus investigate ourselves. Here we discover all possible kinds of self-knowledge which could be cultivated and recommended. For example a person is advised to observe what he or she does, what their characteristics and faults are, they should brood within and search for their worth, how efficient they appear in one or the other activity—that kind of thing. Here already dangers arise in false understanding of self-knowledge and for this reason we must speak about these dangers. We always have it in mind that we should strive to rise towards the Higher Worlds. We also know that this rising up is something which makes a person quite different from what he or she was before, and therefore it is natural that various hindrances are encountered on the way. Through false self-knowledge the ascent becomes just as dangerous as it becomes firstly possible through genuine self-knowledge. This kind of self-knowledge which could rather be called the brooding of the everyday “I,” an awareness of faults, is false and a danger which works backward in fact, because a comprehensive measure for judgement is missing.

When a person, through ordinary consideration of his merits and faults says: “This you have done well, that you have not done well, you must improve,” it appears that he has developed a measure with which to orientate himself. This measure becomes so to speak the yard stick for all which the person will portray in future. In this way a person will never rise above himself and this is exactly what the Anthroposophist always recites to himself: “Don't remain stuck, on the contrary, again and again, step by step, move out of this fixed point”—a saying which should be taken to heart: Everything undertaken with reference to soul development as an advancement on your life path, is good; everything which holds you back at this point is basically a loss for the soul.—No self-knowledge which draws you into being overcome with remorse or drives one to self satisfaction, brings you forward. Only if we want to reach the possibility to have insight into what really matters, must we ask the following question: On what does the human being usually depend?—You can easily consider the following: How would it have been in my imagination, my experiences and feelings if this individuality which has gone from one incarnation to the next and which will repeat future incarnations, how would it have been if this individuality had not, for instance, been born at such and such a date in Vienna, but rather about fifty years earlier in Moscow? What kind of experiences, feelings, imaginations, thoughts and ideas would this individuality develop to create the characteristic keynote of his life? Something quite different! You easily realise with precise imagination when you reflect about it, how you, from morning to evening, going through your ideas and experiences, how much of this depends upon when and where you are situated in the world. Make an attempt to formulate a precise reckoning, drawing from your inner soul everything which is caused from the when-and-where of your birth.

Now throw out all these images from your soul life. Try to ponder what is left over and try to meditate primarily on how many of these images, which from morning to night permeate the soul, have validity and value other than being linked to the place and time in your life between birth and death. As a result you will see how important it is for the “I” to carefully consider the extent of the influences of the where-and-when. This is not realised in what broods within, but realised through proper consideration of the poetic saying: If you want to examine yourself, learn to know about yourself through others—through your surroundings. Thus we are oddly enough directed away from the brooding soul to say: we should, in order to get to know our “I,” encourage a watchful eye, an open sense for the unusual in the world content of the when-and-where into which we were born. The more we endeavour to develop this open perceptive sense towards the outer world surrounding us, so much more closely do we approach, in the spiritually scientific sense, that which at this basic level could be called self-knowledge.

Through taking a clear view and getting to know the entire tenor of our own time, let's try to clarify what, in the most manifold ways at our disposal, is the most unusual in our epoch and in the location in which we live. Highly individualistic is this self-knowledge, which directs us from ourselves towards our surroundings. Learning to know this outer world, we try to enter into the spirit of it and researching what has crystallized in ourselves as a result, we will recognise a mirror image of our Ego or “I.” This is an objective way. Looking into oneself is a danger. The causes why one is like this, or like that, need to be recognised. This can be found in the surroundings, through this we are deflected from ourselves. As a result we acquire the capability to recognise ourselves, as far as we are an “I,” through use of the physical organs and living amongst contemporaries.

The “I” is served by the organs of the ether-body, the life-body—the composition of this fine organism with which the anthroposophic occult scientist is familiar—penetrate the physical body and continuously fight against the physical body's disintegration. Similarly, when it dives down into the physical and etheric bodies in the morning, it works in the present human cycle in both bodies, including the etheric body. Nothing is added into our examination according to place and time, to when-and-where, but something else is added to the consideration. The ether body links to something quite different, which in a certain sense is tied even deeper to our self, something which surpasses birth and death. Here we discover a certain relationship the self brings along, something which had originated earlier and reaches into the future, something it already had, before it had been incorporated into a physical body. Seen from outside in a superficial manner, the ether body presents something extraordinary which we call talents, aptitudes, particular abilities and here we come to a certain connection which is an even more difficult area of self-knowledge. Although this which on a elevated level of higher development is called self-knowledge, even though still at a relatively low level, the human being here also doesn't come far when he or she broods in order to reach clarity: which are my talents and abilities?

Today it would go too far, to take as a basis the being of the human, regarding what I would like to say now. In self-knowledge lurk the worst enemies when we begin to search for clarity regarding talents and abilities through self-centred brooding. Right here we must shift our examination of the environment from the personal to the impersonal. Next we need to link the examination, with reference to the area of the ether body, to our common bond with this or that race. We need ask ourselves to which member of mankind we actually belong. We will occupy ourselves with researching particularities of this group to which we belong through family, race and folk, in comparison with the universal qualities of the whole human race. We get to know what continues through the hereditary stream, what develops from great-grandfather to grandfather and so on, and even what the self has as colouring in this hereditary line, which does not link directly with the when-and-where, but links to deeper basic laws of human existence. We learn to recognise these particularities within the laws and through this we find the right basis to which we can see how we rose from this background. However, everything brooded upon in examining this background is bad (Ubel). Anthroposophy demands an uncomfortable kind of self-knowledge from us compared with cliché filled alternatives, but in any other way we don't reach genuine self-knowledge, because a comparative measure is missing, because brooding on a single aspect fails to provide a measure with which to make a comparison.

Now I want to immediately link up to occult facts. We all know that our human body is surrounded by an aura, embedded in this astral aura, which is visible to the clairvoyant like an oval cloud. As a result of being born at a certain time and a particular place, makes the mass of our aura distinctly particular. Should we have a very limited outlook and actually only experience and will only judge and be led by our own will impulses not visible from our surroundings, being a product of where-and-when, then the clairvoyant will see our aura appearing as if squeezed, pressed together. The aura in this case is not large and not wide around the physical body. The moment we widen our outlook, the very moment we develop our receptive sense, an “open eye” for the observation of our environment, others can actually see how our aura enlarges all around us, how it becomes inclusive in relation to the physical body. We become spiritually larger within, through spreading our horizons in relation to our world of understanding and feelings. For the clairvoyant awareness it becomes gradually more obvious how people, as an echo of their environment, have a small aura. When we start to refine our judgement, making it independent, in order to reach that which distinguishes us from the mere common, then clairvoyant consciousness is able to see the aura spreading, enlarging, as we become refined and more extensive.

Grotesque as it may sound—knowledge of the environment is the first step towards self-knowledge. Knowledge of the family and race is the second step. With someone who tries to become liberated in their feeling and will impulses from aspects instilled by folk, race, family and so on, the clairvoyant will see not only an expanding aura but the aura becoming mobile, displaying vibration in contrast to its earlier immobility. It was mentioned already—not directly but in a certain sense—that what we call these particular colourings and talents inter-relate with the hereditary line.

How can we lift ourselves beyond all that which stems from the defining base, the causes of inner structures of the self? Mankind has not accomplished much by getting to know itself this way. With reference to our talents and abilities as a rule, not much can be done when we build an imagination upon descent and inheritance, we will not get any further. Here only spiritual scientific experience is valid. It involves the following: out of spiritual scientific experience mankind can become independent from his talents and abilities. This healing remedy hardly seems applicable, not at all similar, yet still it is a healing remedy: when we try to develop a warm, heartfelt feeling for something which hardly interests us, for something too bothersome to attempt involving our interested and especially if we make this interest many-sided, then we will lift our individuality out of our inherited abilities.

The first step, knowledge of the environment, will relatively soon be accomplished; the second—this self-education—only slowly transforms talents. Yes, attention must be drawn to the fact that now and then this incarnation must be renounced in order for the transformation of talents to be carried out, yet the way is introduced and it is extraordinarily important that we really try to do this. Clairvoyant vision will soon perceive how the aura becomes agile and vibrates. We will at least see the beginnings of transformation in our own nature. In this gradual resulting self-education there arises quite by itself what can be called impersonal self-knowledge.

Now we come to the third important area. We reach, through self-contemplation, what we express in our astral body—the bearer of desire and pain, of suffering and so on. The astral body is lifted during dreamless sleep out of the physical and etheric bodies. Ordinarily we are not aware of the astral body being separated from the physical and ether bodies. Clairvoyant consciousness can, but not common consciousness. What kind of rule in human nature will now express its characteristics in the astral body? Something is expressed from the self which we call karma, that which is particular to the self or the individuality, not only developed out of the hereditary stream but which continues from one incarnation to another, connected to individual deeds, with personal experiences of the soul, through incarnations. Our experiences through our bodies, and thus results from the law of cause and effect experienced in a purely spiritual way, bring us to the third step in examining self-knowledge.

We can ask: can a person do something in order to attain self-knowledge in this sphere? I could respond by explaining how difficult it is in the present human cycle to actually understand the working of karma. Take an example of how karma pre-determined an individual to undertake a journey, say in 14 days” time. He may take a decision that he has to do something three weeks later, ignoring karma because he knows nothing about his karma. Planning for the three weeks ahead, he organises everything, until he gets news that he needs to take the journey. Now the two directional lines collide. His planning comes in direct opposition with the direction of his karma. We see through this, how karma always attaches something new. This way karma's aim is strengthened and interlinked. It has to be added that a person in his normal development can only with difficulty measure the way to his Self, his “I,” while taking into consideration the karmic links; because he lacks clairvoyant consciousness through higher development and is unable to know what lies within his karma.

Now the question arises: can we reach this point of self-knowledge in a normal life? I must straight away indicate the means which spiritual scientific experience gives us, which makes it possible for us not to overlook what is karmically correct and at a precise moment perform the right thing. It is a totally false conception which one meets from time to time, namely that we are un-free due to karma. Karma does not make us un-free. Exactly by dint of our freedom can we do what karma gives rise to within us, at any given moment. Karma excludes nothing which allows the karmic line to weave and form links this way and that. Can we do something in order to orientate ourselves towards our karma in such a way that our karma isn't counter-acted and as a result create more karmic causes, thus instead of bringing us forwards, only pushes us backwards? There is one thing which helps us align ourselves ever more in the direction of our karmic stream, and this is something we nurture through our world view within anthroposophical circles, something often practiced and discussed. It is actually a mood of soul under the influence of the anthroposophic world view. It is that which we bring ever more into our karma. We must really orientate ourselves within the anthroposophic way: compliant individuals who only talk about it, that a person should become more profound, seek God within, will hardly direct a person any further on his or her path, rather it could bring them further by directing them away from themselves and offering a world view which makes the super-sensible world view possible. Everything that is offered in anthroposophy allows us to see into supersensible events. First of all if we aren't clairvoyant we need to absorb what is presented by clairvoyant research. It is frankly not necessary to be a clairvoyant just as little as if one takes a telescope or microscope in hand. That which the researcher shares in these fields is always understood through unquestionable logic. The human being, we, must so to say make an instrument of ourselves, if we want to research the supersensible regions ourselves; however, insight can become everything without having to make ourselves into an instrument.

When an anthroposophist builds an image for himself of what the Higher Worlds look like, how it approaches behind the sense perceptible realities, it influences his or her entire mood and life of feeling. Once and for all we must speak right into the soul and not allow a comfortable reasoning: it doesn't depend on learning a great deal but rather that one has this or that moral principal. It is actually like this, with anthroposophic spiritual science learning can't be spared and whoever is on the wrong track, say: why bother with theory of Higher Worlds and so on? Decidedly it depends on the anthroposophic way of thinking, a self-evident requirement: just like an oven warms a room when tinder is lit—so it is with people. If you stand and preach to the stove and say: “Lovely stove, your duty is to warm the room”—the room won't become warm. Merely preaching to people regarding their duty to love one another and so on, will come to nothing much. Setting ourselves up as moral preachers has little worth because moral preaching leaves human beings just as they are. When you heat the oven, the room warms up. Giving it heating offers the chance to heat the room. Giving the human being a world view which offers him or her Anthroposophy regarding supersensible facts, what follows is the first ground rule of the Theosophical Society—a general avowal of friendship and brotherhood—which is utterly necessary. The fundamental anthroposophic attitude must be there, but to merely repeat it doesn't help. Your step is sure when you enter into that expression which works for you in the world by including knowledge of the higher worlds and supersensible-world knowledge. Like plants tap into the sun, just so everyone strives for world knowledge, towards a central sun, and all other consequences capitulate by themselves. Thus it is with the anthroposophic way of thinking, revealed out of the spiritual scientific knowledge.

This is what makes it possible for us, in relation to our karma, to live out of ourselves. It deals more with the fact that we arrive at a moment when anthroposophic teaching can transform facts. It is necessary, that if karma is not to remain an abstract concept, that we attempt to bring in these karmic ideas on a trial basis at least, because we can't remain continuously in a state of self-contemplation in our everyday life of complexity and restlessness. It is necessary to consider the question: what is karmic thinking?

Take a radical example: someone has given another—me for instance—a slap in the face. What can be called in this case, “karmic thinking?” I was here in a previous life, and so was he. I had, perhaps in that previous life, given him a reason to justify his present actions; forced him to do it, simultaneously directed him towards it. I don't wish to theorize, I wish to make a hypothesis which should become a life-hypothesis. Will he give me a slap if I think about it? No, he will not do it. I, myself, delivered this slap because I have put him in this place, I have lifted the very hand myself which was raised against me.

Further to this experience the following can be added: when you earnestly focus on examining this karmic idea, pose such a question now and then, in full earnestness and full honesty and you will really see the results. This no other person can prove for you. You must prove it for yourself by doing it. As a result you will notice your inner-life becoming quite different. You experience quite different feelings, will-impulses regarding life and a totally different life shows its consequences: life will reveal itself in quite a transformed way. Whereas you had experienced great pain and disappointment before, now you accept this calmly, having been equilibrated as a result of how you acted and thought about it. Now the following happens, your soul life is flooded by a remarkable peace, a kind of legitimate comprehension of events which is in no way fatalistic.

This is also the direction in which to focus, by gradually exploring the karma-idea and its inherent truth, if you want to bring it to a certain stage of development. The Karma-idea is open to argument. Whoever wants to present reasons may do so. Theoretically nothing can be proven except through a test and here experience needs to be added. Experience provides, when applied intensively, the tool with which to understand karma. As a result you notice a grouping of things—that indeed it is inherent in things—just like you notice, when you have a fantasy image, whether it actually has the reality of a steel bow when grasped. Experience itself must create each combination of life's facts, through which we gradually, according to our own will forces, include these inner will-impulses into our lives. This complex work of our lives is one of the best remedies to achieve the third step which belongs to genuine self-knowledge. Through this you gradually learn to feel how present setbacks originate from an earlier life.

This experience is not as easy as brooding within, because it has to originate and approach from the surroundings. Most importantly we need to move beyond ourselves, even in the highest self-knowledge, which is world-knowledge. Fichte said: “Most people will rather be a piece of lava in the moon than be their ‘I.’”—Thus we learn to know the “I,” in its selective existence, as more than just a point. This “I” we recognise as a selective copy of the whole world. In this sense self-knowledge is, if you will, God-knowledge, not in the pantheistic sense but like a drop of similar substance and wisdom is to an entire sea. How you as a result search for knowledge regarding the essential similarity between the Being and the nature of the entire sea, you are equal in being to the Godhead, who is recognised; yet it will not occur to anyone to explain the drop as the sea. We could recognise substance and the ocean's godly Being from the drop, but no one will be presumptuous and say knowledge of the drop is sufficient; surely everyone will say, for me relevance is in knowledge of the sea and what happens if I sail on it. You particularly learn to recognise the godly when you allow the drop of godliness to enter within, understand it within, but you comprehend that within you is only a drop or spark, nothing more, then you deepen yourself selflessly in the greater supersensible worlds in the highest way possible. Should we want to learn to know ourselves we must totally go out of ourselves and need to research the supersensible worlds in the most profound way.

For the third step, what's been said suffices, regarding reincarnation and karma. For the highest self-knowledge we must reach knowledge of the great cosmic relationships of our earth; because we are part of our earth like a finger is part of the whole organism. The finger doesn't create the illusion that it has an independent existence; cut it off and it is no longer a finger. If it could walk around our organism then it could give, like us, the illusion that it is an independent organism. The human being doesn't think that when he lifts himself for a couple of kilometres above the earth, he is no longer a human being. The human being is a member of the earth organism, the earth is again a member of the cosmos. This we can only see when we understand the basis of cosmic relationships. All thinking about the self without all-embracing world-knowledge, without grasping how the “I” need all aforementioned events, is in vain, without glancing over it we can't reach knowledge, also none of the “I”-Self. We reach knowledge about the daily-“I,” when we search in the area of the when-and-where.

Knowledge, as expressed in the ether body, we find when we consider the inheritance line. Knowledge of the “I” living through the astral body, we find when we experience karma, and the last kind of knowledge, when we acquire world-knowledge; because there it is spread out but is condensed in a few points of the human “I.” World-knowledge is self-knowledge.

When you present to your soul exactly what is described in the essays “out of the Akashic Records,” how the development of the earth is described, which can appear quite strange to the soul, how it finally leads to the present configuration out of necessity, then you have self-knowledge through world-knowledge! Thus self-knowledge goes ever further and further out of us, always towards the impersonal. As with the application of karma in life resulting in the aura turning ever lighter, so through actual knowledge of cosmic relationships the aura becomes stronger and capable of shaping itself out of the original free impulses. Here you discover the answer to the question about freedom and bondage. Because freedom is the product of development, people are able to obtain this increasingly, the more they attain self-knowledge. Then you arrive, through such a practice of self-knowledge as described, at various things in the spiritual scientific fields and through genuine understanding, you can feel yourself enter the anthroposophic spiritual stream. Various things haunt like children's disease in the anthroposophic movement, which needs to fall away once such things are grasped, as they were given as directions to self-knowledge. The impersonal kind of anthroposophic knowledge will become ever more known. It is indeed achieved through that which has been gained from those researchers who not only transformed their souls into instruments of self-knowledge, but have also developed themselves—as had been related even today—and have come to impersonally reveal what the Higher Worlds offer. One of the first basic sayings which has to be conquered is the old, beautiful saying of the wise Greeks: “Whoever wants to attain wisdom dare not take notice of his own opinion.” You will find that whoever has really experienced the spiritual scientific route, will say: Yes, my opinion doesn't provide much; I can give descriptions of experiences, but not regularization principles, not claims of action, and these descriptions should be taken as instructions flowing into the theory of occult science. Opinions and points of view need be given up by the spiritual researcher. He has no point of view because all observations are like images originating from different points of view, which are as varied as people looking at the world from the most diverse angles. On the one side is the image of the materialistic standpoint, then from the other side that of a spiritual or a mechanistic or the easy-life observation. These are all observation angles. To not only recognise them theoretically but to live with every world view in order to create images as to how each observation creates a different side, that is the inner tolerance which is important here. One opinion shouldn't fight another. As a result an inner and from this an outer tolerance develops which we need if we, mankind, want to meet our healing in future.

Particular value must be awarded to insight, that resulting ideas flowing through the anthroposophic world stream come as products of the impersonal. As a result we will arrive at eliminating from the anthroposophic movement that which was there in earlier times and is still there today: authority in the worst sense. Do we call the microscope an authority? It is a necessity, a gateway. So we too, should become gateways, but we must lift ourselves to the impersonal, because only through people can there come into the world, what must come. Belief in authority must be struck from the anthroposophic dictionary and for this very reason mankind attain, while living into this knowledge, an attitude of impartiality, so that they, through the personal can enter into the impersonal way of the world.

This lecture is from the lecture series entitled, Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy. It is lecture 12 of 19 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner at various cities throught Austria and Germany in the years 1908—1909.

Through our various embodiments we have different experiences. We discover different relationships with each incarnation and our own relationships develop accordingly between birth and death. Now the question can arise: are the experiences between death and a new birth always the same, even though the experiences in the physical are so varied? In other words, does life in Devachan at all times during physical development always remained the same? That there is also a possible history for the life on the Other Side, will be solved through the following.

Let's remind ourselves of the state of consciousness of the old Atlanteans who still saw physical objects indistinctly, with misty outlines, in their clairvoyant condition during the day—like a lantern in fog—and during the night were comrades of the Gods; for night and day were not strictly separated as today.

The most progressive Atlanteans who had largely lost their clairvoyant awareness and already saw physical things in sharp outlines, lived in the region of today's Ireland, under the high spiritual being called Manu. They moved about in separate troops, one of these under the direction of Manu, from west to east. Then the great Flood came and after that colonies were established from Central Asia. The first was the creation of the Indian culture.

For the old Indians who still carried memories of Atlantean times, who were still comrades of the Gods, experienced everything confronting them in the earthly realm, even the starts, as illusion, Maya. Links with the spiritual world which the Indians longed for was held up by the holy Rishis. They proclaimed the existence of the spiritual worlds. There were seven Rishis; they were disciples of Manu. They could only learn during certain times when they found themselves in a particular condition. They were the entire comfort, the whole force of the then Indian world; they narrated about the wonders and laws of the spiritual worlds. When people died, they went through as the Rishis had described, but only up to a certain height of Devachan, because only the initiated, the Rishi, could experience the whole of Devachan. Yet these people were sent at that time to work in life on the Other Side.

The initiates lived alternately in the physical and in the spiritual. Soon they taught the living, soon the dead, of the everlasting truth. People hadn't however grown fond of the physical plane: they saw the spiritual world as their real homeland and the holy Rishis hadn't told them much in yonder realms about life on earth. People on this side had no interest in the earthly.

During the second post Atlantic culture, the Persian, the first to start with agriculture, grew fonder of the physical plane. To the same measure a darkening awareness of the Other Side grew. Devachan became darker. People chose to claim the earth more. As a result some Zarathustra scholars pointed out the spiritual world using stronger words; but from this side of the world they couldn't say anything about the Other Side.

The third culture, the Egyptian, indicated an ever larger love for the physical plane. In the stars they studied the spiritual laws. Ever more they tried to impress things with spirit. The more skilled they became on earth, the more unskilled they were to cooperate spiritually on the Other Side.

A culmination point in cultivation on the physical plane is found in the Greek-Latin culture. Here the marriage between spiritual and physical was achieved. The Greek temple is the expression of spiritual laws. The Greek loved life. This means the Greek culture, but there is also something else. When a clairvoyant looks at a Greek temple today, for example that of Paestum, he experiences something extraordinary during his observation in the temple: he feels the wonderful harmonies through which the spiritual world is revealed. Now shift the clairvoyant occupied with this physical observation during this very moment of the wonderful experience of harmony within the artworks, into the spiritual world, and nothing is left over, nothing, even while the Greek temple is a complete expression of the spiritual world. This is what the Greek souls experience in death: they long for the pure harmonious expressions and constructions of the physical plane. The Romans, who experienced themselves strongly in life at the summit of their I-consciousness, were as if lamed, when they reached the Other Side. “Rather a beggar this side, than a king in the realm of shadows.” So the awareness of the opposite world was darkened. When the lovely things of this world were spoken about in the Realm of Shadows, it made them even unhappier. In life on this side more experiences could be had of the spiritual world, than in the Realm of Shades.

This fourth Cultural epoch was the time in which the upward striving impulse could be given towards the appearance of Christ. The meaning of the events of Golgotha we considered in August; now, for this “Other Side” we want to consider it today. In the very moment in which physical death took place on the Cross something happened in the Shadow World: Christ appeared before them. For the first time something could be reported over there, which was meaningful for the Other Side, that life in the spirit can defeat death. Like lightening the shadowed life was lit up in the other world. An enormous event took place on the Other Side: over here in life on earth something happened which also had meaning for the Other Side.

What now—in contrast to the first four cultural epochs—was being experienced, for example in St John's Gospel, had not been solved, how a human being [is] resurrect[ed] in spirit. However, from then on human beings take everything they have experienced and acquired on the physical plane as spiritual experiences, to the Other Side. The more people deepen themselves with occult knowledge of the Bible, the more will be taken to the Other Side. Before the Fourth Epoch, light shone decreasingly from the Other Side into life on this side. Now it is the reverse:

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On yonder side is an ascending development which is becoming ever brighter.

The spiritual forces which are used today for inventions and discoveries, are used to generate external cultural means (Kulturmittel). It was different before: these forces used for research of the spiritual worlds had their laws. Today the spirit serves as a slave for material needs. All intelligence which has flowed into the steam engine and other inventions are building a hindrance for the spiritual world—an adverse balance! The opposite is the case with Anthroposophic work. That which is won here on earth serves to lighten up the world on the Other Side.

Christ appeared during the fourth Cultural Epoch, hence the Greek name Christos. In order for the appearance of Christ not to go unprepared, Moses and the prophets appeared. The announcement of the I-God, Jahve, was necessary in order for mankind to have a goal on which to hold fast. The event of Golgotha could only be understood through the proclamation of image-free gods. More about this tomorrow.

This lecture is the thirteenth of nineteen lectures in the lecture series entitled, Answers to Universal Questions and Life Questions through Anthroposophy.

Today we will occupy ourselves with an important document of mankind, although it appears far removed from the realm of our present line of study, yet nevertheless stands in an inner relationship to it. It is the Ten Commandments, which we will strive to illuminate from the basis of spiritual science because perhaps through spiritual science the right light may help clarify our understanding of this document.

From the side of learned theology it is often maintained that these Ten Commandments concur with various laws and commandments of other ancient folk and don't really depict anything extraordinary. They are considered at most only noteworthy as part of a collection in which laws and orders are to be found among various ancient peoples, as for example with Lycurgus of Sparta or the law tablets of Hammurabi.

What we have examined in the developmental route of mankind in the post Atlantic time and having allowed this to work on our souls, can become a specific connecting thread allowing an understanding of the revelation regarding the greatness, the enormity, which struck mankind, in the Ten Commandments given in Sinai. Let's remind ourselves about our contemplation of the evolution of mankind during the post-Atlantic time. We saw how the five cultural epochs - the Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Egyptian-Judaic, the Greek-Roman and Germanic cultural epochs - are a gradual conquering of the physical plane by mankind. Now we stand at the end of the third and at the beginning of the fourth epoch which we could call the “Mission of Moses.” Out of what did this Mission exist?

We will strive to direct our souls more precisely to how inspiration of the Initiates actually occurred in the successive time intervals. Yesterday we spoke about the Rishis, the inspirational ones in the ancient Indian time. The Rishis announced that they were mere common people in ordinary life who became however at specific times an instrument, a mouth piece for the inspirations of higher, spiritual beings. This fact was particularly prevalent in the ancient Indian times and these ancient Rishis, these great teachers of the post-Atlantean time could speak of lofty spiritual truths. We can ask ourselves in which spiritual regions these Rishis moved when they wanted to be permeated and surged through inwardly by higher Beings, who spoke through them? The Rishis were raised up while higher forces lived within them, not only to the astral or lower Devachan planes but above, right to the upper Devachan, so their learning originated in upper Devachan. In these ancient times, shortly after the Atlantic catastrophe, the old Indian bodies still gave mankind possibilities to go out of their bodies, and thus step into a relationship with Beings of Higher Worlds.

Now the cultural epochs continued. In the cultural epoch of Zarathustra, the ancient Persian, the highest initiates certainly knew how to speak about the highest spiritual Beings but their rise could not without further ado reach to the upper parts of Devachan. They could only rise to lower Devachan. Despite that however they could be taught about the higher planes because these elevated beings of the lower Devachanic planes knew about the higher planes.

In the world in which the Egyptian initiates were mainly indigenous, they could usually rise to the astral plane and it was not only a small circle which could still rise up to the astral plane in the old Egyptian time. A relatively large number of people, through their own observation, still knew what was happening on the astral plane. At least in certain in-between conditions of life, between waking and sleeping for instance, many experienced community with these Beings who did not descend to the physical plane but were at home on the astral plane. Thus the ancient Egyptian initiates who could enter and exit the astral plane found it easy to reveal things happening in the Higher Worlds.

The more we approach the later cultural epochs, the more the veil in front of the spiritual worlds drew to a close. The number of people who were capable of making observations in the spiritual worlds diminished ever more, and as a result, from the fourth cultural epoch onwards, a particular form of proclamation was required from the Initiates. One of these Initiates, familiar with all the occult arts of the Egyptian Initiates, was Moses; he moved freely throughout the astral plane. Even his people were chosen to behold certain revelations, and were capable of being something to the people even if they could no longer see into the higher worlds. It required Initiates, although diminished in their numbers, who knew directly or indirectly about the higher worlds, because they could consciously live out of their bodies. The largest part of the people however had to restrict their lives to the physical plane. The task which mankind had to fulfil in this time when the mission of Moses began, was this: those people who were completely dependent on the physical plane were to be given a revelation out of the spirit, which stands behind the physical, according to which they could regulate their lives. How could this Mission of Moses be formulated then? Just consider the necessity to clarify to the people that what is around them, what they can see and touch, is the physical plane - here is nothing spiritual. This was not to be looked at as something representative of the spiritual, but there had to be a clear understanding that the spiritual was to be sought in the spiritual, and only a few could do this spiritual research.

In ancient Indian times, when the holy Rishis spoke out of the upper parts of Devachan, images were given which could be seen as outer symbolic pictures in comparisons and indications coming from Upper Devachan. Images and portraits could be given and it was relatively easy for people to understand: we give you as it were images but because you see the outer world as an illusion, as Maya, these images are nothing more to you than images, reflections of the supersensible world.—In no way was there a danger leading to worship of these images. How could it have been with a people where everything sense perceptible was seen as Maya, illusion? These people could never practice worship. That only came much later. Certainly later in the oriental culture symbols and images of God appeared in some places. It was easy however for the holy Rishis to make it clear to the entire Indian people: that which we revealed, originated out of the higher planes of Devachan, while the visible or physical is a symbol for something so high and serene that it can only be taken in as a symbol.

During the Persian cultural epoch however, the students of Zarathustra couldn't proceed in the same way. They could only establish a kind of relationship between the people and the lower parts of the Devachanic planes. They were only capable of talking of images, spiritual images, of the supersensible. They referred to no sensory image. Above all they spoke amongst their people of an actual, spiritual, good being, who they called Ahura Mazdao, the being who had his outer corporeality in the sun and who connected himself with mankind and against the dark spirit: Ahriman. This was presented in a sensory-supersensory image so to speak, to the people. They had to imagine him for themselves as a spiritual light Being. However, not a finished image, not a portrait should they fashion. At most they could imagine this godly Ahura Mazdao as precursor within fire, for example, and not as a stiff, outer, sensory image. Everything which appeared as sensory pictures or idols came at a much later time. The ancient Persian culture had pictorial precursors which had to reveal the super-sensory. That was the progress.

Now we come to the third cultural epoch which we encounter mainly in the Egyptian time. Here stands the form of Osiris, as we know, at the central point of all religious thought and feeling. We can easily understand what now has to be said. What kind of being is Osiris, mainly in his godly form? Consider what the Egyptian cultural leaders said to the people: when you really fulfil your tasks in the physical world, when you have done everything related to your soul striving towards becoming a worthy person, then you will be united with Osiris after death. - On the other hand they are told: Osiris had only a short life on earth, because he was conquered by his brother Typhon - Seth—and has been living for a time in the worlds which are celestial, above the ground. His lower regions are no longer the physical but the astral plane, he will not descend lower. It is no longer possible for Osiris to step on the physical plane. Therefore people can't meet Osiris in life. After death however, when they have become sufficiently worthy, they will be united with Osiris because then they are within the world in which Osiris stays. A person can therefore meet Osiris, either after they have died or if they enter as an Initiate into the astral plane. Through this the disciples of the Osiris religion were prepared: the supersensible to which you are related, should place before your soul nothing other than pictures which your own soul imagines, ‘soul’ as is imagined under the concept of the astral body. Osiris became considered the ideal human form, possessing all possible virtues, and while desires as well as virtues exist in the astral body, so the human astral being was thus represented as the Being of Osiris.

For the Semites who gradually went through the Egyptian schools and who had to prepare the great event through which the spiritual, the Christ, descended into the physical world - not like Osiris to the astral plane, but like Christ, who came right down to the physical plane - they dared to live with God as a parable, a symbol, just like in the ancient Indian epoch they dared worship a god in a sensory-supersensory image, just like in the Persian culture in images of an astral presence, and in the Egyptian culture, now single and alone beneath the non-sensory imagination of the “I” (Ich). All images, originally given in ancient Indian times with which to imagine the spiritual, were of the physical world, borrowed from the mineral kingdom; they were images in distinct physical-mineral forms. The form through which the Initiates of the Persian culture made the supersensible clear to their people was removed from that which also lives in the human astral body, the lively etheric, because Ahura Mazdao also became visible to them as a result of his etheric form, the sun aura, becoming known to them. Osiris was represented by the Egyptians in an astral form. That divinity however, which the Jewish people proclaimed, had to have no other qualities than the “I,” the fourth member of the human being. Under the “I” we grasp something which only we can call “I.”

This is connected to something else. At this point people had to allow the Mission of Moses to flow into them; he had to be the representative of the image of the “I” of God. From that moment onwards people had to be told: Just as an “I” lives in every person and is the ruler of the members of human nature, so you must imagine the Being who weaves in the world as creative Being, who lives, rules and prevails over everything that's been and is created. Nothing sensory, neither etheric nor an astral image can represent this. Merely under the form of the “I,” only under the name “I am the I-am” should you imagine this highest Being. - In the “I am” itself every person should experience a reflection of the godhead. It was the Mission, the proclamation of Moses to say: Look within ourselves, only there will you find the real image of the pure godhead. - As a result all activity amongst people should from this moment onward only be from one “I” to another “I.” This had to be prepared through the Mission of Moses.

Let's place ourselves once more in the Egyptian culture. Much activity took place but it didn't move from one “I” to another “I” but from one astral to another astral body. What is this called? Just think how one of the gigantic pyramids were built. A great army of people was needed to bring such a pyramid into existence. The construction workers of such pyramids followed the order of the master builder and those were the temple priests, the spiritual guides of culture. Don't believe that these orders were given as they are today, from one “I” to another “I.” That was not the case. You will most easily understand what was happening when the word “suggestion” is implied. Physical powers of nature were employed to guide the masses. The Egyptian priests controlled such powers to a high degree. They didn't work on the “I” by saying: Do this or that - but they controlled the masses by managing their physical powers, so that the people meekly followed the priests who bypassed the “I.” These priests stood as Initiates in lofty service. They were incapable of abusing these powers; they placed themselves in service of the Good. Thus it was inspired, physically inspired, through them working; the freedom of the “I” in opposition to the priests of the temple was not in question. If you understand that, then you will also understand how in ancient India the Holy Rishis applied even higher spiritual powers. With them it was as follows: when they appeared and gave meaningful proclamations from the spiritual worlds, it was self-evident that the entire folk would follow meekly. Just as the hand follows the head, so the masses followed their leaders, the Initiates. This diminished ever more, the further humanity sunk into the physical plane, but in ancient Egypt there was still great effectiveness of these physical forces. To withdraw people from this kind of involvement and the predictive manifestation in the ego-opposition, was the Mission of Moses. For each human being to search for the godly fountainhead, the great World-I, that the realm of the surging, wafting “I” can be perceived as the archetypal image of the individual “I,” that was the great call which is linked to the Mission of Moses.

From these viewpoints we will understand how this great World-”I” had to be proclaimed through Moses. In this way we must translate the announcement of the “I”-Laws into everyday language, in order to really go through what was felt, experienced and thought when for instance the First Commandment was heard at that time. All lexicographic translations give the most inconceivable inaccuracies. Now I want to present the first commandment to you as it really needs to be translated, to bring it to such an expression as people then imagined they had heard.

First Commandment: I am the everlasting Divine, which you experience within yourself. I have led you out of the land of Egypt where you couldn't follow me within yourself. Henceforth you will not place other gods above me. You will not acknowledge gods as higher, who show you an image of something which appears above in the heaven, which works out of the earth or between heaven and earth. You shall not worship what is beneath the divine which is within you. I am the everlasting in you and a continual divinity. If you don't recognise Me within you, I will disappear as the divine in your children, parents and grandparents and their bodies will become stultified. If you acknowledge Me within you, I will live forth in you for up to thousands of generations and the bodies of your people would prosper.

This gives us the indication how the single “I” is within the archetypal “I,” how to recognise the after-image of the archetypal divine “I” and also, the indication of how, through acknowledgement of one's own “I” as divine, the way is given to become free from the opposition experienced between people and their leaders in ancient Egypt. “I have led you out of the lands of Egypt, where you can follow Me within you. The will of the Initiate followed you there, and there you were not free.” These Initiates applied their psychic powers which the people followed. The first dawning of this human freedom, which rose as the freedom of mercy in Christianity, shows itself in this reference: “I led you out of the Egyptian lands where you couldn't follow Me within you.” “Henceforth you shall not place other gods above Me.” Therefore, in order for the Jewish people to become the most prepared people for the proclamation in Christendom, it had to be made clear that all other representatives of the divine, the archetypal images of the “I,” had to fall away. Outer representations of the divine, even the signs of the Zodiac or something else, had to fall away. Nothing was to illustrate the divine, because people had to, in order to become free, find the source of everything within them: everything which was to be experienced regarding the divine had to be after-images of the great World-I and experienced in their “I.” “You should not acknowledge anything higher than the Divine, who appears as an image of something which shines above in the heaven, which originates from the earth or is active between the heaven and the earth.” An image-free divine! The only legitimate expression for this is the human “I,” the image of the “I am the I-Am.” “You shall not worship anything which is beneath the godly which is within you.”

We have emphasized: out of the physical body the image was taken in ancient India, out of the ether body in the Persian culture, out of the astral body with the Egyptians. Those all stand below the “I.” From out of this no image should be taken and called divine. We know that the physical body was formed from mineral nature, the ether body from the etheric in nature, and the astral body from that realm where the animal astral body is also formed. From all which exits in the members of human nature, having originated from the rest of nature, from all that which is below the “I,” nothing should be worshipped. “I am the everlasting in you and a continual divinity.” Here we have an important sentence. This was given to the Jews as a commandment, which was previously a fact. We have already remarked that when common blood flows in any people, a particular awareness runs through the generation, how the son feels bound through the blood with his father and grand-father. Common blood felt like a common “I.” This “I” lived through generations. The god who announced himself primarily as an “I” to the Jews, had to announce Himself by saying the He was this, which worked as God through the generations. “When you really understand Me, then you will understand what continues to work from generation to generation.” This has been translated with: “I am a striving God,” or even “I am an angry God,” while the actual meaning is: “I am the god working continually from generation to generation.”

“Don't seek to find an incorrect imagination of Me, protect the truth within you, as an imagination of Me, then you plant within the blood enduring health from gender to gender.” A real medicinal imagination is linked to that which this commandment gave, linked to the imagination that when the human being has a pure imagination of his relationship to the divine, then a healthy “I”-image will flow through the blood and people will remain healthy from one generation to the next. We don't come to a real understanding of the lively form in which Moses presented this to his people when he announced the laws, if we only think abstractly about what he said. No, it was said under the presupposition that correct thoughts are an active reality. “When you create a false imagination of the Divine, then you will, from gender to gender, bequeath it into an expression of disease and infirmity.” Correct thoughts activate health, false ones, illness. This is in the genuine sense an anthroposophic or occult image. This has to be thought about or otherwise no real understanding can be reached, no real picture formed regarding this First Commandment. The Jewish people were instructed: Don't place your God under false images. When they knelt in front of the golden calf, a false image flowed from the gods into them and this false image of god produced, because it works through the blood and goes down the generations, the effectively continuous sin which translates into illness. “If you don't recognise Me within you, I will disappear as the divine in your children, parents and grandparents and their bodies will become stultified.” You produce children, parents, grandparents capable of surviving, when you take up the correct imagination of the Divine, otherwise that which depends on the blood will die out. By truly acknowledging Me within you, the source of the “I,” the power transmits from one generation to the next because I am a continually effective Divinity. I will disappear from the bodies if I live in you as a false image. This is again quite an occult and medicinal indication. “If you acknowledge Me within you, I will live forth in you for up to thousands of generations and the bodies of your people would be purified and therefore would prosper.” Thus the physical will prosper, in the genuine occult sense, when the human being forms the true spiritual imagination. Through this a simultaneous breath of human freedom is drawn in human development: right at the peak, so to speak, of the continual “I” the human being is placed and then formed with the divine “I.” One can't allow comparisons with any other legislation; it is real dilettantism to place the Ten Commandments beside other legislation and compare it one-sidedly, just because they are outwardly similar in words, they can be seen as the same. The legislation of the Ten Commandments from Sinai is unique and only allows illumination through the unique Mission of Moses. As with this First Commandment, so it is with all the other Commandments when they are correctly translated. It becomes clear to us from the spirit of Moses' Mission, with reference to the “I”-impulse, how this now had to be poured into humanity.

Second Commandment: You will not speak in error of Me in you, because every error about the “I”-in-you will corrupt your body. - Thus the necessity for the correct thought process is established, the actual creator of the real healthy body. Errors about the ruler of the highest divine in you produce sickliness in the body to the fullest degree. It is extraordinarily important to have insight into the content of the Second Commandment: “The error about the “I” in you will be spoilt.” There is a further saying: In a beautiful body lives a beautiful soul. - Modern materialistic humanity now and then interprets it as: if I take good care of my body, then I will have a beautiful soul. - It actually means that a soul is inwardly strong because it has brought something from previous incarnations which has inspirationally worked through the soul and is now the correct creator for the sheath of a healthy, vigorous body. The body does not create the soul, exactly the opposite. So we see that sometimes it doesn't at all come down to stating a precise wording. Every time it is according to impulses in your life to find a different interpretations of the same wording. Depending on how you feel or are disposed, so it is interpreted. Accordingly one doesn't always have the correct proof that you are indicating an equivalent wording, but only through penetrating into the soul of the time and thoroughly seeking understanding for this or that word.

Third Commandment: You shall separate the workday from the festive day, so that the image of Your Being becomes the image of My Being. Because, what lives in you as My “I,” has built the world in seven days and lives within it on the seventh day. Thus your actions and your son's activities and your daughter's actions and your servant's activity and your cattle's actions and everything that is with you, is within the outer boundary of the six days, but on the seventh day your gaze should seek My gaze within you. - This is the kind of absolute translation corresponding to the Third Commandment. Not in outer images should the Divine within people be portrayed as the archetypal-”I,” but through what the “I” does, the archetypal-”I” must be portrayed and how this archetypal-”I” had created the world in six world days and on the seventh day found rest, so mankind must separate workdays and festive days, six days for creation and the seventh day to seek the Divine with the help of the “I.” So we see in what a wonderful way This Third Commandment is the portrayal of the archetypal-”I” in us and is placed there as guiding God.

In these three first Commandments we have indications of how the human being related to divinity, during the time of the Mission of Moses, which was revealing itself in a new way. In the fourth Commandment we go out on to the physical plane. The first three Commandments sets out how the human being can relate in the right way towards the higher Worlds through the activities of his “I.”

The Fourth Commandment says: Work forth with your fathers and mothers in mind, so that you retain possession of the property you acquired through the power which I have built in you.

Here you have the meaningless: “Honour father and mother, that you may fare well and live long on earth.” It is about actual outward action which really sprouts from what had been planted spiritually in the “I” within man, as we have understood, how the divine works medicinally, like a drop. This Fourth Commandment is a practical commandment. It says: Observe your descendants as your ancestors; then you as a descendent stand in contrast to them—a peaceful, beneficial, continual development will never take place. Just as you inwardly convey the “I” through the blood, so also must that, which you posses after your “I” has worked through it, be maintained. The strong “I” that was created, flowed from the one side through the blood in the generations; on the other side however had to, in order for the human being to strengthen the “I,” work in the outer world. What had been founded as a strong “I” had to be preserved and evolve continuously, without interruption. Work forth with the fathers in mind in order to maintain coherence in the work your father and mother did in creating your “I.” - This shows you how also the outer rules of conduct are given in order not to destroy from outside the creation of a new culture, given as an inner impulse.

Now we come to the Commandments where your independent “I” is confronted by the “I” of others, and how this should in fact rule in the social world. This is actually a repeat of what Paul said, which the Bible gives as: Love they neighbour as thyself (Gal.5,14).—See in other people the same “I” as in yourself. - In an extraordinary way this old Hebraic folk received the impulse to pursue the godly right into the weaving of the “I” within the human soul. Therefore this people had to preserve the Commandments, which do not only prescribes the protection of their own “I” but also prescribes respect and protection of the “I” in the other.

Fifth Commandment: Murder not.

Sixth Commandment: Don't break the marriage.

Seventh Commandment: Don't steal.

All three expand on the one commandment: Recognise in your fellow men the “I” which you have in yourself!

In this deed the Jewish people were led from the lands of Egypt, enabling them to also recognise the “I” in others through the evaluation of the other's “I,” for in Egyptian lands one didn't work through the respect of others but through the suppression of the “I” through suggestion. Now further:

The Eighth Commandment: Do not undermine the worth of your fellow men by telling untruths about them. - Not only through deeds could one damage and impair the rights of the “I” within the other, but one should not once in a spoken word diminish the worth of his “I.” One should not state untruths about the “I” of another. Whoever states an untruth about the “I” of another, does not realize that the “I” of the other is the same as your own “I.” So it proceeds systematically with the Ten Commandments. Reference is made [to] what you express damagingly in community of life from one “I” to another “I.” A deed penetrates directly, damagingly into the sphere of the “I” of the other, but a word more secretively. However, if you want to earnestly acknowledge the “I” of the other, then you also do not dare intervene from the basis of your wants and desires into the sphere of your fellow man. [It is] Not only through this that you rob him, but already through also desiring something of his, do you penetrate into his “I”-sphere. You acknowledge the full equal evaluation of the other's “I” through not allowing yourself to desire what he has. Now the two last Commandments:

Ninth Commandment: Do not look grudgingly at what your fellow man possesses as property.

Tenth Commandment: Do not begrudge your fellow man his wife nor the helpers and others through whom he gains his earnings.

The only way to find healthy relationships between one person and another is by not resenting what the other person owns. So a person is placed beside others in order for him or her to notice and venerate the divine image in every “I.” Thus the existence of the single “I” amongst others is regulated. This was one of the biggest spiritual impacts which entered into mankind. Yet, what had to come through Christ was not pronounced, yet lay within the words here, that each one can find the interrelation with the Father-God. “No one comes to the Father but through Me.” At this time the legislation was given in relationship to the communal “I” which flowed through the generations. Yet at the same time the earlier proclamation was given, that the “I” is not only an image of the Divine, but that God Himself is a living Being within this “I.” The “I” is substance and Being identical to the Father. “I and the Father are one.”

So we see how the impulse, conveyed through the world's development, follows one after the other. It is easy to say: In the world's development all causes and effects are connected by a wisdom-filled world guidance and world command but nothing is visible. - When we however look back in world evolution, as we have done in this examination, we arrive at the notion that at the right time the right thing always happens to direct human development further, then, I may say, nothing else is left over than to acknowledge the wisdom-filled directing and guidance in world development.

When one sees through occult research how at the exit of the third cultural epoch into the fourth time period the proclamation of the Ten Commandments took place in order for people to have time to prepare for the greatest event, the Mystery of Golgotha, then one sees exactly what a great expression of wisdom this is within world guidance.

In the entire tone of the Ten Commandments, when we really understand them, we see how the Divine reveals itself in an archetypal way in images in preparation for the moment when the Divine Spirit will really be embodied in an individual. In order for people to be steered towards an understanding of God in the flesh, an incarnated God, they must first learn to grasp God's substance and Being within their deepest, innermost soul. Considering this document of mankind, the Ten Commandments, we notice from the entire tone, that God speaks through it to mankind and that this address throughout is in line with the ever further emergence of people on the physical plane and that this can only really happen when the Divine is grasped in the right way. Repeatedly it is pointed out that bodies prosper when the Divine is properly grasped. Indications are given that to venerate the Divine also brings prosperity to outer things on the physical plane. In the correct way it is pointed out that a gradual, healthy development must ensue, in order for the outer social relationships to prosper.

Through the Mission of Moses it is regulated that the Divine remains protected within the Being of man, while man's conquering of the physical plane can be carried out in the right way in the sense of the post-Atlantic development remaining in harmony with the Divine.

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Today we shall be concerned with a chapter of Anthroposophy which links on to many things we were able to study in the last Lecture-Course here but in a certain respect is quite independent.¹ Again today we shall be considering matters for those who are more advanced—I do not mean advanced in respect of intellect or knowledge, but in respect of the attitude of soul, the feelings, that are necessary for the assimilation of higher truths which so often seem paradoxical, weird and fantastic to the materialistic mind—truths which must be accepted, not as if they were everyday matters, but as something that is not only possible, but reality.

We shall turn our attention to a certain chapter of occult history. Everybody knows what external history means; everybody knows that history presents the successive happenings and facts of the outer physical world as far as they can be followed with the help of documents, original manuscripts and records, traditions, and so forth. But in Anthroposophy, by means of those spiritual records that are accessible to us, we go still farther back, even in this external history, to the time of the great Atlantean Flood. We observe the successive culture-epochs following it, but we go even farther back into the distant past, to times preceding this great Flood which has been preserved as tradition in the legends of different peoples. All this is history, investigated, it is true, by occult means, but in a certain sense it is still an external, physical—more or less physical—history of facts and events. But there is also an occult history, and you will understand what this means if you think of the following.

Before entering into the bodies of our present civilisation, all your souls lived in bodies of the old Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Roman epochs, and so forth—leaving aside still earlier times. When, through birth, these souls entered into existence on the physical plane they saw and experienced what can be experienced on this plane. These souls beheld the creations of the old Indian culture, the great pyramids built by the Egyptians, the Greek temples, and so on. From this we can picture the flow of events through which man passes in the course of history on the outer physical plane during life between birth and death. The question may now be asked : What, then, is happening when, through the Gate of Death, the soul passes into its life between death and a new birth? The souls now incarnated passed through death in ancient India, ancient Persia, and so on. Have conditions in the life between death and rebirth always been the same through the ages? Is there anything comparable with ‘history’ in that life? Were the experiences different when souls passed through the Gate of Death in the times of ancient India or ancient Persia, and are they again different in our present age? Is there in that life anything like a successive course of happenings? When we speak of the experiences of the periods spent in Kama-Loca and in Devachan until the time of a new incarnation, we describe them as they are today. Many people may imagine that these experiences are similar in all epochs, but this is not so. For just as when souls have passed through the Gate of Birth they have different experiences in the different epochs, so there is also a ‘history’ of what happens between death and rebirth. These happenings in our present age are rightly described as we describe them, but they have not been the same in all the ages. Today we shall consider, briefly, something of the history of that other side of existence, particularly during Post-Atlantean epochs.

For this purpose we do well to think, to begin with, of the old Atlantean epoch. In this Atlantean epoch, life was very different from what it came to be later on. When in the night the soul of the old Atlantean had gone out of the physical and etheric bodies and was living in the spiritual worlds, it was not enveloped in darkness as is the case today. During the night-consciousness the soul was in divine-spiritual worlds—divine-Spiritual Beings were its companions. The alternation between day and night was quite different in the old Atlantean epoch. When the Atlantean awoke in the morning, that is to say, when his astral body and Ego came down again into the physical and etheric bodies, then, in the earlier periods of Atlantis, man did not see external objects with sharp outlines as he does today, but the objects were hazy—as when we go out at night in a thick November fog the lamps seem to be surrounded by an aura instead of emitting clear light. To the early Atlantean, every object on the physical plane was indistinct and indefinite, and only gradually assumed sharp contours in the day-consciousness. When, at night, he rose in his astral body and Ego out of the physical and etheric bodies, he was not in a realm of unconsciousness, but he had definite, even if hazy, experiences of the divine-spiritual worlds. And the figures preserved as the Gods, the names and ideas of Gods such as Wotan, Baldur, Zeus, Apollo, Thor—are not figures of fantasy but Beings who were actually experienced by man in the times of old Atlantis.

Then came the great Flood. The less advanced Atlanteans went from West to East, settling in the lands of Europe. The most advanced of all went towards Asia and founded in Central Asia the great colony of the Manu. The Manu was the lofty Being who was the leader of this handful of the most advanced Atlanteans who went with him to Central Asia and from there called the different cultures to life. It must here be borne in mind that in Asia and Africa, as the result of earlier and later migrations, and through other peoples who were descendants of still earlier epochs, the countries were inhabited, and these pupils of the Manu went out in various directions in order to spread new streams of culture. The first mission went from Central Asia to India. The Manu sent his first pupils to India; he himself, for certain reasons, withdrew into the background. The first pupils of the Manu became the teachers and leaders of the first Post-Atlantean culture—that of the ancient Indian peoples. The first form of Post-Atlantean culture therefore arose under the influence of these Teachers—the holy Rishis. We already know the basic character of this culture. The pupils of the Rishis had a kind of memory of ancient times, of how in Atlantis they themselves had been companions of the Gods. Their real homeland then had been in the spiritual world. Now they were in the physical world. And so in ancient India men had an intense longing for their primeval, spiritual homeland. They felt that they were strangers in the physical world. For them this world was illusion, maya, merely an external expression of the Spiritual. Hence their longing for the Spiritual and their view that the physical world was illusion, deception, maya. They had as yet no love for the physical world; they still longed for the spiritual world. They saw the stars, the rivers, the mountains, but felt no interest in any of these things. What happened between birth and death was regarded as illusion, as maya, for men knew that they lived in their real homeland between death and rebirth. Such was the fundamental mood of the old Indians. But ever and again they received information and tidings of the spiritual worlds through the holy Rishis, who were the pupils of the great Manu.

It is a good thing to try to form definite ideas of the nature of these great Indian Teachers. A feeling of reverent awe arises in those who can envisage in some small measure what took place spiritually between the Rishis and their pupils in Northern India at this starting-point of Post-Atlantean humanity. Without Spiritual Science it is hardly possible for anyone today, when humanity has descended so deeply into the physical plane and has adopted such a materialistic way of thinking, to form a true idea of the kind of knowledge that was brought by the Manu from the West to the East as a heritage of the Atlantean age. For if the Book with the Twelve Chapters, the Book in which the Manu had preserved the ancient traditions of the earth, in which was written down what could be made known of the laws and conditions prevailing in ancient times when humanity lived in the bosom of the Gods—if that Book could be laid before men today it would be utterly incomprehensible to them. Nevertheless it contained the instructions that were given by the Manu to his most intimate pupils and through which the seven holy Rishis prepared themselves for their mission. Some idea of what the holy Rishis were like can be formed in the following way.—Anyone who saw them in life would have seen utterly simple men. And such indeed they were, for a great part of their life. But there were times when the Rishis were anything but ordinary men. They were not learned in the modern sense, but at such times they were the mouthpiece and instrument of higher spiritual Beings. Higher spiritual Beings ensouled the Rishis and then, when they spoke, they were not giving utterance to what they knew, but to the speech of the Spirit who had entered into them, right down into the physical body. Thus the Seven Planetary Regents themselves were present during this first epoch of Post-Atlantean civilisation. The Seven Planetary Spirits of the universe spoke through the mouths of the holy Rishis, who were merely their instruments. And the words spoken had stupendous power; they were magical words, not merely teachings but commands for what men were to do. Revelations from the cosmos itself were spoken forth by the seven holy Rishis. The later Vedic literature is no more than a faint echo of the wisdom that streamed to humanity out of the cosmos itself through the holy Rishis. This was the first Post-Atlantean manifestation and revelation of the Divine. It was only at certain times that the Rishis were inspired by the Planetary Spirits and then they could impart great and mighty things to men. Far greater things were spoken through them to humanity between birth and death in this first Post-Atlantean epoch than in the other world, for all the secrets to which men could no longer look up from the physical world could be made known to them by the Rishis.

Initiates are able to work and teach not only in the physical world, but in alternating states of consciousness they are able, while still maintaining connection with the physical body, to pass over into the spiritual world and to become the teachers of the souls living between death and rebirth. The great teachers give instruction here, in physical life, and also in the life between death and rebirth. The Rishis too were teachers of man in the world beyond death. There they could, it is true, proclaim the same great spiritual truths of which they spoke in the physical world, but they could say nothing of particular value to the Dead about the other side of existence, i.e. about the physical world. There was nothing in this physical world that could be of value for the life after death. The ancient Indian yearned for the life between death and rebirth; he was happy there, and had no inclination whatever for physical life. And so when the ancient Indian passed into the other world, he was not merely a knower in some degree, he was not only able to see, up to a certain level, what was happen ing there, but he was also able to act with skill—for man has to act in the other world too. The souls of the ancient Indians were far better fitted to work in that world than in the physical world. The instruments available in the physical world at that time were simple and primitive, and men were not skilled on the physical plane. But as souls in that other world they were able to work with skill that was a heritage from an earlier epoch. Men's life between death and rebirth was more intense, more active, than it was in the physical world. The spiritual world afforded them deep happiness; everything was light and clear after death.

World-history continued its course and the epoch of ancient Persian culture approached. Man had progressed, inasmuch as he now began to love the physical plane; he wanted to work on the physical plane and felt that his spiritual forces should be applied to the cultivation of the earth. The culture inspired by the Manu had grown dearer to the ancient Persians. Zarathustra now became their great Teacher. The teachings that had flowed from the inspirations of the Rishis were now, in the second Post-Atlantean epoch, transmitted through Zarathustra. The task of this great Teacher was to create a counterweight to existing conditions. Man must come to love the physical plane, the physical earth, to become more conscious of it, to discover the means of promoting culture, to live more and more intensely on the physical plane, not merely regarding it as illusion, maya, but as a revelation of the Divine Powers. Zarathustra said to the people : In the material world there is something that is opposed to the Spiritual; the power of Evil is mingled with matter. But if you unite yourselves with the beings who are servants of the good Spirit, then, in union with them, you will overcome the Evil that is mingled with matter.—There was inevitably the danger, the first glimmering of the danger, that connection with the Spiritual might be lost. Hence as well as narrating the truths of the spiritual world, it was the special task of the teachers to emphasise to the people that the Spiritual reveals itself in the material; and those who had fallen prey to matter owing to an exaggerated belief in it, had to be brought back again to belief in the Spiritual, to the belief that God reveals himself in matter.—That was what Zarathustra had to proclaim, and he spoke with mighty power. In terms of modern language it is no longer possible to convey any adequate idea of the words of fire with which he proclaimed what he himself was still able to behold, because he was the successor of the pupils of the Manu. For example, he still saw in the Sun not merely the external, physical phenomenon, but the spiritual: Beings whose abode is the Sun, for whom the physical Sun is merely their bodily vehicle, and he called these spiritual Beings in their totality: Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun-, Aura-, Ahura Mazdao, or Ormtizd. From this source came the inspiration for all the teachings he was to inculcate into the second Post-Atlantean culture-epoch which was already in danger of falling prey to the attacks of Ahriman. In mighty words Zarathustra spoke to humanity somewhat as follows. I will speak ‘Give heed and hear me, ye who from near and far long for this. Mark well my words! For no longer may the false teacher corrupt the world, he, the Evil One, whose mouth has proclaimed wrong beliefs. I speak of what is greatest in the world, of what He, the Mighty One, has revealed to me. Whoever does not follow my words, as I mean them, woe will befall him at the end of days.’ In words of power such as these, it was proclaimed that He, the all-pervading Spirit, is revealed in what is external, and that the one who believed he could mislead humanity by making men believe that the material alone has reality, must not conquer. And Zarathustra announced that when the time was fulfilled, One would come in human form as the embodiment of all the Powers working and weaving through the world, One Whose coming could at that time be only a prophecy.—Zarathustra called Him by the name of Saoschra. He, the Power Who resides in the Sun, Who could be seen at that time only through external veils—He would come one day in human form. Zarathustra proclaimed the Christ Who was to come in the future.

Zarathustra had two pupils whom he did not instruct for the purpose of sending them out to teach the Persians. They were pupils such as are always to be found with the great Initiates and who prepare in quietude for their missions, refraining, to begin with, from going out into the world to teach.

These two pupils, in later incarnations, were : Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptians, and Moses.

The wisdom outpoured in the second Post-Atlantean epoch had necessarily to take the form it did, because humanity had advanced a stage and men had a greater love for the physical plane. But because this was so, experiences between death and rebirth were darkened. Men could still see in the spiritual world, but no longer with the clarity of vision that prevailed in the old Indian epoch. When the souls from Persian bodies passed into Devachan, their experiences were less vivid, less intense, and the more skilful they became in their work on the physical plane, the less skilful were they in their actions in the spiritual world. In the outer world there is an ascending line of progress; in the world after death, however, there is a decline. When the Initiates passed into that other world—it was, of course, a spiritual journey and the Initiates remained united with the physical body—when they passed into that world to be with human souls living between death and rebirth, they could say much about the momentous things which men had formerly seen there but which now were darkened. They could give teachings concerning the higher spiritual realities that had gradually faded from man's vision between death and rebirth, but they could impart nothing as yet about happenings in the physical world. Nor would this have been of any great significance for the other world. If the Initiates had related the doings of men (in the physical world) this would have had no inspiring effect in the life between death and rebirth. To tell of any happenings on the physical plane would have had no value for that other world.

Then came the Egyptian epoch. Men now had an even greater love for the physical plane and had become still more skilful there. They no longer regarded it as maya or illusion. They looked up to the stars and saw in their constellations and movements a script of the Gods. They saw revelations of divine-spiritual Beings in physical manifestation. And they worked upon the earth with knowledge acquired through their human forces.—We need think only of how the Egyptians cultivated the soil.—Man had now brought his spiritual forces from the spiritual into the physical, and the link between these spiritual forces and the physical world became steadily firmer. The first great Teacher of the Egyptians was Hermes, in his new incarnation. We will try to form some idea of the kind of teachings he gave.

For this purpose it will be especially helpful to think about that aspect of the figure of Osiris which can be of interest to us today.—Osiris was the central God of Egypt, the God who was honoured above all other Gods. The Egyptian Gods were worshipped under many names by the people, priests and initiates. The legend of Osiris is known to you. Osiris ruled over mankind. Then his brother Typhon laid him, by cunning, in a casket which he threw into the sea. Isis, the sorrowing spouse, sought for and found the corpse but could not bring Osiris back again into this world. From the other world a ray from Osiris fell upon Isis who then gave birth to Horus, the successor of Osiris on the earth. Osiris remained in the other world. The Egyptians were told: Osiris is a Being who stands close to man. He is one of the last Beings with whom men were in communion when they lived consciously in the spiritual world. Men have descended into the physical world in order that they may develop further here, and then they ascend again, enriched by the experiences gained in the physical world. Osiris is one of those Beings who no longer needed to descend to the physical world, because they had already reached such a height that this was not necessary for them. They had moved to a higher level and were not created to dwell in a physical body—the casket. Such Beings can have only a fleeting contact with the physical world. Osiris can be found only when man passes over into the other life. He is the last Figure you can still experience—so said the Initiates to the Egyptians—if you make yourselves worthy, if you follow the commandments. Then, after death, when you are judged, you will be together with Osiris; you will feel yourselves to be members of Osiris.

Those who aspired to be united with Osiris had therefore to be referred to the life after death. But as the experiences accessible after death had now become still less intense, even when men were united with Osiris they were only able to experience faintly and weakly that which constituted their highest bliss—the union with Osiris. But through the belief implanted in them by the priests, they knew and firmly hoped that they would indeed be united with Osiris, and in solemn moments after death they felt themselves as members of the Osiris-soul. This consciousness of belonging to Osiris gradually faded away. While culture was progressing to higher stages on the physical plane, a decline was taking place in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Man's vision of the world of Devachan became steadily fainter. And when the Initiates came over into that world, they still could not tell of happenings in the physical world that would have had any special significance for that other world. What happened in the spiritual world was entirely the result of its own prevailing conditions. Happenings in the physical world could be of little interest to the souls of the Dead. What man could do in the physical world was a preparation for the Osiris-experience, but it was a preparation for something that could be experienced only in the deepest spiritual depths of yonder world.

Then came the Greco-Roman age, the fourth Post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The marriage between the human spirit and external matter became closer, more intimate still, and the splendour of Greek culture stems from this marriage between the spiritual capacities of men and external physical life. When we have before us a Greek temple with its wonderful forms—even in aftermath as at Paestum in Southern Italy—we Can see what the human spirit has achieved in the conquest of external matter. In the lines and distribution of forces in the Greek temple, architecture has reached its zenith. The reason why a Greek temple is such a wonder-work of architecture and of art is because everything in it is the expression of the Spiritual. That is why it is so inspiring to contemplate the harmony presented in a Greek temple.

One peculiarity that is discovered by clairvoyant consciousness in connection with a Greek temple must here be made known.—Let us suppose that clairvoyant consciousness has before it the last echoes of a Greek temple built in the Doric style as are the temples at Paestum, and is able to feel the aftermath of what the Greeks felt on the physical plane; let us assume that clairvoyant consciousness, while beholding the physical form of such a creation, experiences all the rapture and enchantment that it is still possible to experience at the sight. Then clairvoyant consciousness will make a certain discovery. When it frees itself from the body and, without using the physical organs, sees in the spiritual world, then the Greek temple, with all its splendour, has vanished. What was so perfect, so great and glorious in the physical world, cannot be carried over into the spiritual world—not even for modern clairvoyant consciousness. At the place in space where the glorious temple stood, there is nothing corresponding with it in the spiritual world. It was so in the case of all the great masterpieces of that wonderful Greco-Latin epoch, and in another connection too.

This was the same epoch when, in Rome, man's consciousness of personality came to its strongest expression in the physical world. The Roman felt himself first and foremost as a personal citizen of the earth, firmly rooted on, this earth. To the same degree to which man felt himself standing firmly on the earth, he felt weak between death and rebirth, feeble and ineffectual in that other world. Life between death and rebirth had faded in intensity even more than before. Above all, what was experienced in its splendour in the physical world could not be carried into yonder world. It is no mere legend passed on from the Greek epoch, that one of the great Heroes, when visited in the nether world of the Shades by an Initiate, said: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades’—because man felt shadowy and empty between death and rebirth, and longed for the life between birth and death with its beauty and its grandeur. Life had surrendered itself to the most perfect and complete marriage between the human spirit and external form, and at the cost of this marriage, life between death and rebirth had fallen into decline.

In this epoch fell the Event for which preparation had been made by that other Initiate who had been Zarathustra's pupil—namely, Moses. Moses was chosen to proclaim—to begin with in the only form in which this was possible—a God Who could also reveal Himself in the physical world, Who would be actually present in the physical world. Naturally, this revelation was to the effect that the one and only true image of God Who weaves through the world could not, at the time the revelation was given, be apprehended by the senses. And when, at the starting-point of his mission, the ‘EJE ASCHER EJE’ (I am the I am) was proclaimed through Moses, this was the first announcement of the God Who henceforward would not be found only in the other world but Who had passed into this world and was to be experienced here. The Jahve-Being was proclaimed through this second pupil of Zarathustra, and thereby preparation was made for the coming of Christ, for the Mystery of Golgotha.

You know, to some extent, what the Mystery of Golgotha signifies for the physical plane: it is actual proof that life in the spirit is victorious over death. This victory was achieved through the fact that the One Who had been proclaimed by the prophets, the One Who was there at the creation of all the kingdoms of Nature, walked upon the earth. This Archetypal Being of the world, Who is the Spirit of the Sun, is rightly given a Greek name, for He could, and indeed had to, appear in the Greek age, when mankind needed the impulse for re-ascent. And in eternal memory of this, the Being Who incarnated in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth was called by the name of CHRIST. This name derives from the epoch when it was necessary that Christ should appear. At the moment when the Jesus of Nazareth-sheath died on Golgotha, something happened that is not a mere legend but can still be confirmed today on the path of spiritual science by one who is adequately prepared. At the moment of the Death on the Cross, at that same moment Christ appeared in the other world among the Dead, among those who were living between death and rebirth. And this appearance of Christ was like a lightning-flash in that other world. It was as though the life in that world which had faded into shadow, was lit up by lightning. Now, for the first time, something could be made known in the world after death that was different from anything of which the earlier Initiates had been able to tell when they passed into that world. Even an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries would at most have been able to tell of the beauties of the physical world which the Dead could no longer behold; at most he could have awakened a longing for the physical, but nothing of real importance would have been brought to the Dead by making known to them what was taking place in the world of flesh. The first tidings brought by Christ to the Dead were that in the world between birth and death something had come to pass that has meaning not for this physical world only, but also for the life in the other world. This Event in the physical world was one that works on into the spiritual world itself. Actual examples of this can be found.

When in the physical world we contemplate the most beautiful temple or any one of the loveliest creations of the age of ancient Greece and are enchanted by the sight of it, in that other world it has faded away, is not to be found. If, however, we steep ourselves in the Gospel of St. John or in the Apocalypse, where the happenings connected with the Mystery of Golgotha are made known, we can have wonderful experiences if, with clairvoyant consciousness, we then pass over into the spiritual world. These feelings and experiences do not fade, but they live on, becoming still more glorious, still more comprehensible, in the spiritual world. Everything that is connected with the Event of Golgotha becomes even more sublime in the spiritual world. This is by no means the case with everything. However deep your wonder may be at the sight of the Pyramids, only a faint echo of them can be experienced in yonder world. A Greek temple or a Greek tragedy may enthrall one but nothing goes over into the other world, either for an Initiate or for those who are not initiated. But if you contemplate a picture by Raphael in which the Christian truths are expressed, you carry much of the picture with you into the spiritual world, and things which in the physical world you cannot even glimpse, will dawn upon you there. In yonder world they become a light which lightens the spiritual world anew. And so it was when Christ appeared in the world of the Shades. For the first time, that world was flooded with light. And more and more, through everything that Christianity has brought into the world, the spiritual world will be illuminated.

So culture descends, as it were, from the heights of the Atlantean world to the Greco-Latin world, when in the spiritual world it was in decadence and had sunk most deeply into the material world. That was when the greatest desolation prevailed in the spiritual world. And now, with the appearance of Christ in the underworld, comes the great impulse of Light. Existence between death and rebirth becomes ever brighter, ever clearer. The ascent begins in the history of life in that other world. Christianity is only at its beginning today. More and more it will become evident that man grows in spirituality through what he can experience in this world; and he takes with him into the other world what he experiences here in connection with the Event of Golgotha. Thus in the spiritual world, too, there is an ascent.

And so we may also speak of history in the life between death and rebirth, and when we study this history of the hidden side of the world, we realise the infinite significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, not for the physical world alone but also for all three worlds in which man lives. The Being Who is united with our evolution, Who has created everything that is around us, Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, once said: ‘Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?’ (John, V, 46.)—clearly indicating thereby that it was He of whom Moses was speaking when he proclaimed the Divine Being Who was announcing Himself as the ‘I am the I am.’ The Being Who was in Jesus of Nazareth accomplished something in our world that has significance not only for the physical plane but, as the most momentous of all events, spread through the three worlds, from the physical right up into the spiritual world. Such is the mighty vista of the Event of Golgotha brought before our souls by occult history.

• 1. The Apocalypse of St. John. 12 lectures. 17–30 June, 1908.

This lecture is known under the following titles: The Christmas Mystery, Novalis as Seer, The Christ Being, Past, Present, and Future. This lecture first appeared in English in The Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 12, 1980, No. 4.

Individuals appear in the world from time to time who are able to see in direct vision what has been realised through Feeling by thousands upon thousands of souls and hearts in the course of the centuries. But in the modern age only those who are familiar with the findings of spiritual ‘clear-seeing’ know that the effects of the event of Mystery of Golgotha on evolution are always perceptible to the true seer.

The entire spiritual sphere of the Earth was changed through what took place at Golgotha. And ever since then, if the eye of the soul has been opened through contemplation of this Event, the seer beholds the presence of the everlasting power of the Christ in the spiritual sphere of the Earth. Other men are impressed by the power of the impulse proceeding from the Mystery of Golgotha and the great truths connected with that Event; they realise, too, that since then the human heart has been able to experience something that could never previously have been experienced or felt on the Earth. But to a seer this is perceptible reality.

The young German poet Novalis became a seer—we might almost say ‘miraculously’—by the grace of divine-spiritual Powers. Through a deeply shattering event which made him aware, as if by a stroke of magic, of the connection between life and death, his eyes of spirit were opened and as well as a great vista of past ages of the Earth and Cosmos, the Christ Being Himself appeared before him. He was able to say of himself that he was one who with the eyes of spirit has actually seen what is revealed when ‘the stone is lifted’ and the Being who has furnished earthly existence with the proof that life in the spirit will forever overcome death, becomes visible.

In the case of Novalis we cannot really speak of a self-contained life in the ordinary sense, for his was like a remembrance of an earlier incarnation. The Initiation conferred upon him as it were through Grace, brought to life within him his achievements and experiences in earlier incarnations; there was a kind of consolidation of intuitions and insights that had been his in a previous life. And because he looked back through the ages with his own awakened eyes of spirit, he was able to affirm that nothing in his life was comparable in importance with the experience of having discovered Christ as a living reality. Such an experience is like a repetition of the happening at Damascus, when Paul, who had hitherto persecuted the followers of Christ Jesus and rejected their proclamation, received in higher vision the direct proof that Christ lives, that He is present, and that the Event of Golgotha is unique in the whole process of the evolution of humanity. Those whose eyes of spirit are open can themselves behold this Event, for in truth Christ was not only present in the Body that was once His dwelling-place. He has remained with the Earth; through Him the Sun-Power has united with the Earth.

Novalis speaks of the revelation that came to him as ‘unique’ and he maintains that only those who with their whole soul are willing to relate themselves with this Event are men in the true sense. He rightly says that the ancient Indian, with his sublime spirituality, would have allied himself with Christ had he but known Him. Not out of any dim inkling or blind faith, but out of actual knowledge, Novalis says that the Christ whom he has seen with eyes of spirit is a Power pervading all beings. This Power can be recognised by the eye in which it is working. The eye that beholds the Christ has itself been formed by the Christ-Power. The Christ-Power within the eye beholds the Christ outside the eye.

These are truly wonderful words! Novalis is also aware of the stupendous truth that since the Event of Golgotha the Being we call Christ has been the planetary Spirit of the Earth, the Spirit by whom the Earth's body will gradually be transformed. A wonderful vista of the future opens out before Novalis. He sees the Earth transfigured; he sees the present Earth in which the residue of ancient times is still contained, transformed into the Body of Christ; he sees the waters of the Earth permeated with Christ's Blood, and he sees the solid rocks as Christ's Flesh. He sees the body of the Earth gradually becoming the Body of Christ; he sees the Earth and Christ miraculously made one; he sees the Earth in future time as a great organism enshrining man, an organism whose soul is Christ.

In this sense, and out of his deep insight into occult truths, Novalis speaks of Christ as the Son of Man. Just as in a certain sense men are the ‘Sons of the Gods’, that is to say of the ancient Gods who through untold millions of years have moulded and shaped our planet, who have built the bodies in which we live and the ground upon which we move, so, by overcoming earthly things, man's task is to build, through his own powers, an Earth that will be the body of the new God, the God of the future. And whereas the men of old looked back to the primeval Gods, yearning to be united with them in death, Novalis recognises the God who in time to come will have as his body all that is best in us and that we can offer to Him. In Christ he sees the Being to whom humanity offers itself in order that this Being may have a body. He recognises Christ as the ‘Son of Man’ in this higher, cosmological sense. He speaks of Christ as the ‘God of the future’.

All these experiences and perceptions are so pregnant with meaning that they are well able to kindle the true mood of Christmas in our souls. And so we will let one who lived a brief life at the end of the eighteenth century, dying at the age of 29, describe the experiences associated with the greatest event in his life—the sublime vision of the Christ Being.

(Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) here recited a poem from the Spiritual Songs of Novalis.)

The Christmas Tree has not been the symbol of the Christmas Festival for any length of time. We shall find no poem on the Christmas Tree among, let us say, the works of a poet such as Schiller, although had such a custom existed in his day he would certainly have recognised its poetic possibilities and would not have found it difficult to write a poem on the subject. But in Schiller's time the Christmas Tree in its now familiar form was unknown. It is a young and quite recent institution. In earlier times men celebrated this festival in a different way. However far we look back into past ages, as long as one can speak of human beings in their present form or having the rudiments of that form, we shall everywhere find an institution that is akin to our Christmas Festival; we shall find it in constantly new forms among the widespread masses of the peoples and as an enactment in the highest Mysteries.

The very fact that the festival itself is so ancient and our present symbol of it so recent, is indicative of an element of eternity, of an eternal reality from which new forms ever and again spring forth. This Christ-Festival and all the feelings and experiences it symbolises, are as ancient as humanity on Earth. But man will always be able to find new symbols, symbols that are in keeping with the times, as outward forms of expression for this festival. Just as Nature herself is rejuvenated every year and her eternal forces bud forth in forms that are forever new, so it is with the symbols of Christmas piety; in their constant rejuvenation they betoken the eternal reality of this festival. And so in the solemnity of this Christmas hour we will bring a picture before our souls of what men on Earth have experienced at the time when we now celebrate Christmas.

As pupils of Spiritual Science we can send our thoughts back to ages in the far, far past, to begin with to the times when our souls were incarnated in Atlantean bodies, bodies very unlike those of today. In that epoch there were great Teachers who were also the Leaders of humanity. Men looked out upon a different world, where there was no bright sunlight to reveal to them in clear outlines the forms of objects in the kingdoms of Nature. Everything around them was as though swathed in mist—not only because much of Atlantis was actually covered with mist and fog through which the sunlight could not penetrate to the same extent as later on, but also because man's faculty of perception had not yet developed to the stage where external objects appeared in clear outline. When men woke in the morning they saw everything around them in divine Nature swathed in mist and surrounded by auric colours, and when they went to sleep at night they passed into a spiritual world without falling into the oblivion and unconsciousness of sleep today.

When men went to sleep in the days of Atlantis, they beheld the divine-spiritual Beings who were their companions; they beheld those divine Beings who were once experienced as realities and who in later times were preserved as memories in different regions of the Earth, bearing different names: Wotan, Thor, Baldur, in Middle Europe; the names of Zeus, Pallas Athene, Ares, and so forth, were given to those divine figures who had once been visible to man's eyes of soul in old Atlantis. But in Atlantean times the divine worlds were no longer the highest, creative worlds whence man had come forth in the age of Lemuria. Our souls were once born from the womb of divine Beings of whose sublimity and majesty there can be only a dim inkling today. These same divine Beings sent forth the cosmic orbs and all the forces surrounding us. Man was within the womb of divine Beings whose outward expressions we behold in the celestial bodies; they were the Beings who flash through the air in lightning and thunder, whose expressions are the plants and animals and whose sense-organs are the crystals. All the warmth that streams to us, all the forces in play around us—all this constitutes the body of divine-spiritual Beings from whom man has come forth.

The more deeply man descended to the Earth, the more closely he united with material substances, the more he membered into himself the substances of the Earth, the less capable he became of beholding the great Gods.

In primeval times man had as yet no faculty for cognising the material world; he could neither see with eyes nor hear with ears; pictures that were not pictures of minerals, animals or plants but of divine-spiritual Beings above him, surged through his soul. In later ages he lived more and more on the physical plane, learning through the outer sense-organs to know the physical world. In the days of Atlantis, sight on the physical plane alternated with a form of clairvoyance that had remained as a relic of the ancient state of sublime spirituality in which man once had lived. But the Gods he was still able to behold on the astral plane when by night he enjoyed the bliss of living as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings, were lower in rank than the highest Gods.

As the physical plane grew clearer, man's vision on the spiritual planes grew dim. But in ancient Atlantis there were Initiates who as well as imparting the deeper teachings concerning the Gods of old whence men had come forth, proclaimed a truth which they presented in somewhat the following way.

‘Look at the seed of a plant; see how this seed develops into a plant. It grows, sends forth leaves, sepals, blossom and fruit. One who observes the plant in this way can say to himself: I look back to the seed; the seed is the creator of the leaves and the blossom I see before me, and this blossom holds within it the seed of a new plant; the blossom forms itself into a new seed. And one can also look into the future.’—Thus did the great Atlantean Initiates speak to their pupils and through their pupils to the whole people. They said: ‘You can look back to the seeds of the Gods whence men have come forth. The spiritual and physical realities you see around you are all leaves that have sprung from the seeds of the primeval Gods. See in them the forces of those divine seeds even as the forces of the seed from which the plant has come forth can be seen in its leaves. But we are able to point to something more: in future times there will spread around man something that will be akin to the blossom of a plant, something that has, it is true, issued from the ancient Gods but—as the blossom ripens a seed—contains a seed in which the new God unfolds!’

The world is born of Gods—such was the ancient teaching. That the world will give birth to a God, to the great God of the future—such was the prophecy made by the Initiates of Atlantis to their pupils and through them to the people. For like all Initiates, those of Atlantis saw into the future, foresaw the great events of the future. Their vision reached beyond the time of the great Atlantean flood, beyond that stupendous happening whereby the face of the Earth was changed. They foresaw the civilisations that would arise in the future, in the land of the holy Rishis, in the land of Zarathustra; they foresaw the ancient Egyptian culture founded by Hermes, the conditions heralded and inaugurated by Moses, the happiness prevailing in Greece, the might and strength of Rome. All this the Atlantean Initiates saw in advance, and their vision extended to our own time and even beyond it. And to their intimate pupils they imparted hope, saying to them: ‘True, you must leave the spirit-lands where now you dwell, you must be ensnared in matter, you must clothe yourselves in sheaths woven from physical substances. There will come a time when you must labour on the physical plane, when it will seem as though the ancient Gods have vanished from your ken. But your eyes will be able to turn to where the new star can appear to you, to where the new seed comes to life, where there will spring forth the new God of the future, the God who has waited through the ages in order to appear in humanity at the right and proper time!’

When the Atlantean Initiates wanted to explain to their pupils and to all the people why man was destined to descend into the vale of Earth, they said to them that all souls would at some future time see and experience the One who was to come, who was still hidden from their sight, dwelling in a realm invisible to physical eyes as well as to the eyes of spirit which while man was still resting in the womb of the Gods, had gazed upon Him.

Then came the Atlantean flood. In a comparatively short time the face of the Earth was changed, and after the migrations of the peoples from West to East, the great post-Atlantean civilisations arose, beginning with that of ancient India.

The great Teachers in that epoch, the seven holy Rishis, taught their pupils, and indeed all the Indian people, of the reality of a spiritual world, for their life was now lived on the physical plane and they needed so to be taught. Their eyes could now see only the outer form of the physical world as the expression of the Spiritual, but the Spiritual itself they could not see. Yet there lived in the soul of every Indian something that can be called a dim remembrance of what the soul had once experienced among Gods in the age of old Atlantis. This remembrance aroused a yearning of such intensity for what had been lost, that the soul could establish no close relationship with the physical plane, could only regard it as maya, illusion, unreality. Nor could souls have endured such conditions on the physical plane had not the Rishis, filled with the fire of spiritual inspiration, been able to teach them of the glories of the ancient world that had departed from them. The teachings given by the Rishis concerning the Cosmos are still very little understood today; they were teachings based on a primeval wisdom, because the Rishis were initiated into what man had experienced when he was still within the womb of the Gods.

For man was present when the Gods separated the Sun from the Earth and ordained the paths of the celestial orbs—but during his later earthly pilgrimage he had forgotten it!

This wisdom was taught by the Rishis. And something else too was taught to those who were the most advanced and able to feel its significance. To them it was said: ‘From the world in which man is now placed, the world he now sees as maya, there will spring the Being who cannot yet be visible in this world because the human soul has not reached the stage where it can unfold the power to know this Being. But He who is still beyond your world will appear!’ Vicva karman was the name of the Being proclaimed by the ancient Teachers of India as the great Spirit of the future. To the Indian people it was said: ‘You cannot see Him yet, any more than you can see in the blossom the seed of the new plant. But as truly as the blossom contains the seed, as truly does maya unfold the germinating power that will make life in the physical world a worthy existence. The Being known in later times as the Christ was proclaimed in advance by the Teachers of ancient India; they, in true humility, were his prophets. Their spiritual gaze could turn in two directions—back to that primeval wisdom according to which the world was fashioned, and forward into the future. And to men engaged in the daily tasks of life they proclaimed the coming of One whose power would penetrate into the depths of human hearts and stir human hands to activity.

There was no age when He was not proclaimed, whenever one can speak of human culture and human understanding. If in later times men have forgotten the proclamations, this is not the fault of the great Teachers of an earlier humanity.

Then came the ancient Persian civilisation of which Zarathustra was the Leader. To his intimate pupils, and again to all the people, Zarathustra proclaimed that in everything by which man is surrounded, in the forces streaming from the Sun and from the other celestial bodies to the Earth, in all that fills the airy expanse, lives a Being now revealed to man in veiled form only.—And to his Initiates, Zarathustra was able to speak of the great Sun-Aura, of Ahura Mazdao, of the God of Good. What he said to his pupils may be rendered in somewhat the following way.—‘Look at the plant. It grows from the seed, develops leaves and blossom. But the plant is pervaded by a mysterious force which arises in the heart of the blossom as the new seed. What surrounds the seed will fall away; but the innermost force that can be perceived in the heart of the blossom enables you to feel that a new plant will arise from the old. If you ponder on the power and the force of the Sun's light, Feeling that in it you are beholding merely the physical expression of a spiritual reality and letting yourselves be inspired by the spiritual power of the Sun, then you will begin to understand the prophetic announcement of the Divine Fruit that is to be born from the Earth!’

When these intimate pupils had reached a very advanced stage, they were permitted, at certain times, to listen to teachings even more secret. And in consecrated hours Zarathustra spoke to them of One who would come when men were ready to receive Him into their midst with understanding. Mighty pictures of the One who would come were presented by Zarathustra to his pupils. To one pupil he could reveal the picture itself, to a second a kind of reflection only; to the others it was only possible to give a general picture of what would come to pass in the future.—Thus He who was called Christ was also proclaimed in the civilisation of Zarathustra in ancient Persia.

So also it was in Egyptian civilisation. Hermes too had his Egyptian Initiates and through them had proclaimed the Christ in a certain way to all the people of ancient Egypt. In the legend of Osiris may be seen a reflection of the proclamation of Christ.

What was it that the legend of Osiris conveyed to men? The legend is that in olden times the people were blessed in that Osiris ruled in the Land of Egypt in true union with Isis, his spouse. His evil brother, Set, or Typhon, resolved to destroy Osiris. To this end he built a chest in which Osiris was imprisoned, and cast it into the sea. Isis eventually found the chest but could not bring Osiris to life again on the Earth. He had been transported into higher realms and since then could be seen by men only after they had passed through the gate of death. To every Egyptian it was said: After death you can be united with Osiris as truly as your hand is united with you here on Earth. After death you can be part of Osiris and call him your own higher Self, but only provided you have merited this on the physical plane. After death you can be united with the God known to you as the Most High.

To one who was an Initiate, something more could be revealed. When he had undergone all the ordeals and testings, when he had received all the teachings that must precede vision of the higher worlds, then even during physical life between birth and death the picture of Osiris was revealed to him—the picture that came before other men only after death. The Being with whom the pupil of the Egyptian Initiates must feel himself united came before him when he was outside his body, when his ether-body, astral body and ego had been raised out of the physical body; and then, one who even in his lifetime had gazed upon Osiris could proclaim to the others:- Osiris lives! But never could it have been proclaimed in ancient Egypt: Osiris dwells among us! This was expressed in the legend by saying: Osiris is a king who has never been seen on the Earth! The ‘chest’ is nothing else than the physical body. The moment Osiris is laid in the physical body, the inimical forces of the physical world, forces that are not yet ready to receive the God, assert themselves with such strength that they bring the God to destruction. The physical world is not ready yet to receive the God with whom man must be united. ‘But’—so spake those who could bear personal witness that Osiris lives—‘although we say to you that the God lives in very truth, it is only the Initiate who can behold him, when he (the Initiate) is away from the physical world. The God with whom man must become one in his inmost being, lives, but he lives in the spiritual world. He alone who leaves the physical world can be united with the God!’

At the same time men were beginning more and more to love the physical world; for it was their task and mission to work in the physical world, to establish one culture after another in the physical world. To the same extent to which the eyes looked out with clearer vision, and intelligence was better able to fathom the happenings of the physical world, to the same extent to which man's knowledge increased, enabling him to make discoveries and inventions useful for the purposes of physical life—to that same extent it became constantly more difficult for him during life between birth and death to gaze into the spiritual world. He could hear from the Initiates that the God with whom he must be united, lives in very truth; but from the physical world he could bring little that would make definite communion with Osiris possible for him in yonder world. Greater and greater darkness spread over life in the world surmised by man to be the home of the God with whom he must become one.

Then came the age of Greece when with all their delight in the physical world, men achieved that marriage between spirit and matter which bore such glorious fruit on the physical plane. In the wonderful masterpieces of ancient Greece we have a picture of how, in the epoch when the Event of Golgotha was to take place, men were related to the spiritual world. It is difficult to conceive but it is true nevertheless, that the supreme achievement of architecture—the Greek temple—corresponds with the lowest point in man's relationship with the spiritual world.

Let us picture a Greek temple towering before us. In its forms, in its perfection and wholeness, it is the very purest, noblest expression of the Spiritual—so that it could once be said, and said with truth: the God himself dwells in the Greek temple. The God was present in the temple, for the lines woven by the material were everywhere in harmony with the spiritual order of the Cosmos and with the lines pervading the physical plane as the directions of space. There is no more beautiful, no nobler example of the interpenetration of the spirit of man and physical matter than a Greek temple. It is the unparalleled example of union between the higher worlds and physical matter.

Through their works of art and the principles expressed in their creation, the Greeks were able to make the ancient Gods come down among them. And even if the Greeks did not actually behold Zeus or Pallas Athene when they had so descended, nevertheless the Gods were there, drawn and enchanted into these works of art—the Gods who had once been visible to men and among whom they had lived in the times of Atlantis. Men were able to provide a glorious dwelling-place for the ancient Gods.

And now let us see what the Greek temple represents in another respect. Suppose clairvoyant consciousness has before it a Greek temple. What will now be said holds good even of the sparse remains still surviving of the Greek temple architecture.—Think of what happens when clairvoyant consciousness has before it a relic such as one of the temples at Paestum. The harmony of the lines presented by the columns and roof coverings can literally fill one with rapture. Such perfection is there that one can picture and feel the very presence of divinity in the physical structure itself. The same feeling can arise when Greek architecture is seen through the eyes of the physical body.

And now think of clairvoyant consciousness transported into the spiritual world. There it is as if a black screen were drawn across what is to be seen in the physical world; what is to be seen there is as though obliterated. Nothing of all these splendours of the physical plane can be carried over into the spiritual world. Supreme beauty—when such indeed it is—achieved on the physical plane, is obliterated in the spiritual world. And then we realise that it is no myth when, on meeting an Initiate, one who was a leading figure in Greece uttered the words: Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades! (Homer: Odyssey, Song XI, verse 488-491)—In Greece, where man could find such bliss in the physical world, souls entered a shadowy existence when they passed into the world of the dead. Splendour in the physical world—equivalent barrenness in the spiritual world.

Let us now make two other comparisons with the experience aroused by a Greek temple.—Think of Raphael's Sistine Madonna, or Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper—works created after the Event of Golgotha and influenced by its mysteries. The sight of these pictures can fill the soul with rapture, and this is also true of clairvoyant consciousness.

When the eyes of clairvoyant consciousness rest upon these pictures on the physical plane and this consciousness then rises into the spiritual world, a man realises, although the physical is no longer seen: What I take into the spiritual world from the experience aroused by these pictures is not simply an echo of the physical; here there is not only the rapture I experienced at the sight of them, but now for the first time I realise all their glory; in the physical world I merely laid the seed of what I now experience in infinitely greater majesty and splendour!—When a man contemplates such pictures in which the mysteries connected with Golgotha are contained, he is laying the seed—but only the seed—for a greater knowledge in the spiritual world. What has made this possible? It has been made possible because the spiritual Power proclaimed so long in advance, actually appeared on the Earth. Mankind had succeeded in unfolding a blossom in which the seed of the God of the future could ripen. Through the Event of Golgotha something was communicated to Earth existence that man can not only take with him into the spiritual world but that in the spiritual worlds appears in higher glory and sublimity.

At the moment when the physical body of Christ Jesus died on Golgotha, Christ appeared among those who were living between death and a new birth. He could proclaim to them what none of the earlier Initiates, when they passed into the spiritual world, could have proclaimed. When the earlier Initiates—let us say of the Eleusinian Mysteries—passed from this physical world into the world of those living between death and a new birth, what would the Eleusinian Initiates have been able to say to those souls? They could have told them of happenings on the physical plane, but this would have caused them nothing but longing and grief. For their life had taken root entirely on the physical plane and in yonder world, where nothing physical could be found and darkness prevailed, souls could not share the Feeling which made a man of importance on the physical plane exclaim: Better it is to be a beggar on the physical plane than a king in the realm of the Shades! The Initiates who could bring such treasures to those living on the physical plane could have brought nothing to the souls then living in yonder world. Then came the Event of Golgotha. Christ appeared among the dead—and for the first time there could be proclaimed in the spiritual world an event of the physical world which forms the beginning of a bridge leading over from the physical into the spiritual world. When Christ appeared in the nether world it was as though light flashed through the spiritual worlds. For in the physical world itself incontrovertible proof had been furnished that the spiritual can forever conquer death! And thus it came to pass that man can also carry over with him into the spiritual world, experiences that come to him in the physical world.

This holds good of St. John's Gospel in an even higher degree and also of the other Gospels which tell of the Event of Golgotha. A man who studies the Gospel of St. John on the physical plane, experiences intellectual joy from the reading of this great record; but when he passes into the spiritual world he knows that what he was able to experience in the physical world was but a foretaste of what he can now perceive and behold. The fact of supreme importance is that man can now take his treasures with him from the physical plane into the spiritual world.

Since the Event of Golgotha the spiritual world has been illumined with an ever brighter, ever clearer light. Everything existing in the physical world has issued from the spiritual world. When he passed from the physical into the spiritual world, pre-Christian man could say: Here is the wellspring and origin of everything the physical world contains. What has come forth from the spiritual world are but the effects. But since the Event of Golgotha, man can say when he passes from the physical into the spiritual world: In the physical world too there is causality and what is experienced on the physical plane works over into the spiritual world.

And so it will continue—in ever-increasing measure. Everything proceeding from the work of the old Gods will die away and what will blossom forth will grow on into the future, as the workings of the God of the future. This is what will pass over into the spiritual world. It is just as when a man, looking at the seed of a new plant, says to himself: True, it has come forth from an old plant, from an earlier seed, but now the old has fallen away, has vanished, and now the new seed is there, the seed that will unfold into the new plant, the new blossom.—We too live in a world where leaves and blossom have issued from the seeds born of the ancient Gods. But more and more the new fruit, the Christ-fruit, is unfolding and everything else will fall away. What is wrought out here in the physical world will be of value for the future in so far as it is carried over into the spiritual world. Before the eyes of Spirit a world arises in the future, a world which has its roots in the physical as our world once had its roots in the spiritual. Just as men are the sons of the Gods, so, out of what men in the physical world experience by rising to an understanding of the Event of Golgotha, the body will be formed for those new Gods of the future, of whom Christ is the Leader. So do the old worlds live on into the new; the old dies utterly away, and the new springs into bud out of the old. But this could come about only because humanity was able to unfold a blossom for that spiritual Being Who was to become the God of the future.

This blossom that could unfold within it the seed of the God of the future could only be a threefold human sheath consisting of physical body, ether body and astral body, a sheath cleansed and purified by all that could be attained by man on Earth. And this sheath of Jesus of Nazareth who sacrificed himself in order that the Christ-Seed might be received, this blossom of manhood, represents the very purest essence that the spiritual endeavours of evolving mankind have been able to produce. Not until the earth was ready to bring forth her fairest blossom could the seed for the new God appear. And the birth of this blossom is commemorated in our Christmas Festival. In our Christmas Festival we celebrate the birth of the blossom which was to receive the Christ-Seed.

Christmas is a festival wherein men can gaze into the past and also into the future. For from the past has issued the blossom out of which unfolds the seed for the future. The threefold sheath of Christ was a product of the old Earth—woven and born out of the highest that it was in men's power to achieve. And no outer presentation of a mystery can make a more powerful impression upon us than the presentation of the mystery of how the fairest flower of humankind could spring from the purest calyx.

That mankind once issued from the womb of the Godhead, that man was once a spiritual being and descended into material existence—how can this be more beautifully presented than by indicating how the Spiritual gradually densifies, how man himself has densified out of the formless haze of the Spiritual? As a prophetic foreshadowing, the ancient Egyptian depicted the lion-headed Goddess, still wholly spiritual, belonging to the age when man was still hardly material, still resting as an etheric-spiritual being in the womb of the Godhead. Then, anticipating the later ‘Sistine Madonna’, we have the Egyptian portrayal of another female form: Isis with the child Horus. There we see how what is born from the clouds, that is to say from the Spirit, has densified into the calyx, into that which represents the human being developing an into the future. This conception, already foreshadowed by men of ancient time, we see in the Christian Madonna with the Child Jesus.

With supreme purity and delicacy, Raphael has breathed this mystery into form in his portrayal of the Madonna. A human being crystallises out of angels' heads and in turn brings forth Jesus of Nazareth, the blossom into which the Christ-Seed is to be received. The whole story of the evolution of humanity is contained in a most wonderful way in this picture of the Madonna. No wonder that as he stood before the Madonna, there arose in the one to whose words we have listened today, the glorious remembrance from the incarnation of which his last incarnation was again a remembrance, and who brought to life within himself all the sublime insight which this pictured mystery of mankind could awaken; no wonder that these feelings streamed to the being from whom Christ was born, to the figure who brought forth the calyx from which sprang the blossom that could allow the seed of the new God to ripen!

And so we see how in the supremely gifted Novalis, feelings free of all denominational bias quicken to life at the portrayal of this holy Mystery which was enacted at the first Christmas and is repeated at every Christmastide. It is the Mystery of the ancient Initiates, represented by the Magi, bringing their offerings to the new Mystery. The Wise Men, who are bearers of the wisdom of times past, make their offerings to that which is to go forward into the future, that which, in a human being, will one day harbour the power by which all worlds connected with the Earth are pervaded.

Novalis experienced the Christ Mystery, the Mary Mystery, in relation to the Cosmic Mystery, the light of which shone before his eyes of soul as it had shone at the first Christmas, when Beings who had not descended to the physical plane proclaimed the union between a cosmic and an earthly Power, which can become a reality in human hearts and in the Cosmos itself when the human heart unites with Christ. The Egyptian proclamation: ‘The God with whom you must be united dwells in the world that can be reached only after death’, holds good no longer. For now the God with whom man must be united lives among us here, between birth and death; and men can find Him when they unite their hearts and souls with Him in this world. Thus in the first Holy Night of Christendom the strain resounded:

Offenbarung durch die Höhen dem Gotte,
Ruhe und Stille durch die Erdenräume,
Seligkeit in den Menschen.

Revelation in the Heights to God,
Quiet and peace through all the Earth,
Blessed joy in Men.¹

Poems by Novalis (‘Marienlieder’) were recited by Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) at the end of this lecture.

• 1. This should be regarded as an approximate translation of the rather unusual rendering of the Christmas message.