The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] In selecting such a theme as the one I propose for to-day, “Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe, and Theosophy,” I am aware that to a student of spiritual life it is fraught with difficulties, and that the statements I am about to make may possibly give offence to so-called materialists and theosophists alike. And yet there seems to me a necessity that this matter should, once in a while, be approached from the theosophical point of view, since from one standpoint the “gospel” derived from Haeckel's researches has been made accessible to thousands upon thousands of mankind by means of his book, The Riddle of the Universe. Ten thousand copies of this work were sold within a very short time of its appearance, and it has been translated into many languages. Seldom, indeed, has a book of serious purpose found so wide a circulation.

[ 2 ] Now, if theosophy is to make clear its aims, it is but right that it should take into account so important a publication—one that concerns itself with the most profound questions of existence. Theosophy should deal with it comprehensively, and seek to express its attitude with regard to it. For after all, the theosophical conception of life is not combative but rather conciliatory, desirous of harmonising opposing views.

Furthermore, I myself am in a very peculiar position with respect to Ernst Haeckel's conception of the universe, for I know well those feelings and perceptions which, partly by reason of a scientific consciousness, and partly from the general conditions of the world and the usual conceptions thereof, draw men as though by the power of some fascination towards such great and simple paths of thought as those from which Haeckel has constructed his conception of the universe. And here I may say that I should hardly have dared to speak my mind thus openly were I in any sense an opponent of Haeckel, or were it not that I am intimately acquainted with all that can be experienced in the process of adapting oneself to the wonderful edifice of his ideas.

[ 3 ] The very first thing that anyone bringing his attention frankly to bear upon the development of spiritual life is bound to recognise, is the moral power displayed in Haeckel's labours. For years past this man, imbued with an enormous amount of courage, has fought for the acceptance and the recognition of his conception of the universe—fought strenuously, having again and again to defend himself against the manifold obstacles that impeded his progress. On the other hand, we must not be unmindful of the fact that Haeckel's great powers of comprehensive expression are balanced by equally comprehensive powers of thought: the very qualities in which many scientists are deficient happen to be those with which he is very highly endowed.

In gathering together the results of his researches and investigations under the one comprehensive title of a conception of the universe, he has boldly departed from those tendencies of scientific thought which have for several decades opposed any such undertaking; and this very departure must be recognised as an act of special significance.

Another fact to be noted is, that I am placed in a singular position with regard to the theosophical conception of the universe when I speak about Haeckel; for anyone acquainted with the process of development through which the theosophical movement has passed will be aware of what sharp words and what opposition, not only on the part of theosophists in general, but on the part of the founder of the theosophical movement, Madame H. P. Blavatsky, were directed against the deductions which Ernst Haeckel draws from his work of investigation. Few publications touching cosmogony have been so violently opposed in the Secret Doctrine as that of Haeckel.

You will understand that I speak here without prejudice, for I think that in parts of my book, Haeckel and his Opponents, as well as in my other work on Cosmogonies of the Nineteenth Century, I have to the fullest extent done justice to what I take to be the real truths contained in Haeckel's conception of the universe. I believe that I have sifted from his labours that which is fruitful, and that which is enduring. [ 4 ] Consider the general attitude towards the conception of the world in so far as it is based upon scientific reasons. During the first half of the nineteenth century a totally different spiritual attitude prevailed from that known in the second half. Haeckel's appearance on the scene coincided with a time in which it was an easy thing for the new growth of so-called Darwinism to be subjected to materialistic interpretations. If, therefore, we realise how insistent was this tendency, at the very time when Haeckel was a young and enthusiastic student entering upon the pursuit of natural science, to reduce all discoveries in that domain of learning to a materialistic issue, the consequent bent towards materialism may well be understood, and may therefore lead us into a path of peace rather than of conflict.

If you will consider those men who, about the middle of the nineteenth century, set themselves to confront the great riddle of humanity with calm, unprejudiced eyes, you will find two things: on the one hand, a state of absolute resignation in relation to the highest questions concerning a divine ordering of the world, such as immortality, freedom of will, origin of life—a resignation, in short, with regard to all the actual riddles of the universe. On the other hand you will discover, co-existing with this attitude of resignation, remnants of an ancient religious tradition, and this even among students of natural science. Bold adventuring towards investigation of such questions from the scientific point of view was, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be met with only among German philosophers, such as Schelling and Fichte, as well as Oken, who, by the way, was a pioneer of freedom without equal, not alone upon this subject, but in many paths of life.

All attempts made by men in the present day towards the fundamentalising of world-theories are to be found in still bolder outline among the works of Oken. And yet all this was animated by a certain subtleness—a breath, as it were, of that old spiritualism which is clearly conscious that, behind and beyond all that our senses can perceive, all that can be investigated by means of instruments, there still lurks something spiritual to be sought for. [ 5 ] Haeckel has again and again told us how distinctly the mind of his great teacher—that deep student of natural science, Johannes Müller, of imperishable memory—was tinged with this subtle breath. You can read in Haeckel's own writings how he had been struck (it was at the time when he was busy at the Berlin University and studying the anatomy of men and animals under Johannes Müller) by the great resemblance apparent not alone in outward form, but also by that similarity which compels attention in the evolution of form. He tells us how he had remarked to his master that such resemblance as this must hint at some mysterious kinship between man and beast, and that the answer made by Johannes Müller, who had searched so deeply into Nature, had been: “Ah! he who lays bare the secret of species will indeed have reached the highest summit.”

What we have to do is to attune ourselves to the spirit, the motive, of such a seeker; of one who assuredly would never have halted had he beheld a prospect of entering into possession of that secret. On one other occasion, when teacher and pupil were travelling together on some journey of investigation, Haeckel again referred to the close relationship existing between animals; and Johannes Müller once more replied very much to the same effect. In alluding to this I only wish to draw your attention to a certain attitude of mind.

If you will look back among the writings of any well-known naturalist belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century—for instance, to those of Burdach—you will find that, in spite of all the careful and elaborate minutiae appertaining to natural science, whenever the kingdom of life comes to be considered, the suggestion is ever present that here no mere physical and chemical powers are in operation, but that something higher has to be taken into account.

[ 6 ] When, however, improvements in microscopes made it possible for man to observe, to a far greater extent than heretofore, all those curious formations which serve to distinguish living creatures, showing that we have to do with a fine web of the minutest animalcules, and that this actually composes the physical body—when, as I have said, so much was made visible, the attitude of the scientific mind underwent a change. This physical body, which serves plants and animals as their garment, now resolved itself, so far as the scientist was concerned, into a tissue of cells. This discovery as to the life of these cells was made by naturalists about the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, and, seeing that it was possible to ascertain so much about the lives of such animalcules by the exercise of the senses, assisted by the aid of the microscope, it required but a step further for that which acts as the organising principle in these living creatures to be lost sight of, because no physical sense, nothing external, proclaimed its presence.

[ 7 ] At that time there was no Darwinism, yet it was owing to the impression made by this great advance in the domain of practical research that we find a natural science grounded in materialism coming into vogue during the 'forties and 'fifties. It was then thought that what could be perceived by the senses, and thus explained, could be understood by the whole world. Things that now seem puerile created then the most intense sensation, and became, so to speak, a gospel for humanity. Such words as “energy” and “matter” became popular by-words, while men like Büchner and Moleschott were recognised authorities. It was considered an evidence of childish fancy, belonging to earlier epochs of the human race, to suppose that anything that could be minutely examined with the eye was possessed of aught beyond what was actually visible.

[ 8 ] Now, you must bear in mind that, side by side with all discovery, feelings and sensations play a great part in the development of mental life. Anyone who may be inclined to think that cosmogonies are the result of bold calculations of reason makes a mistake: in all such matters the heart is active, and the secret sources of education also contribute their share. Humanity has, during its latest phase of development, been passing through a materialistic stage of education. The actual beginning of this stage is traceable far back, it is true; nevertheless, it reached its apex in the time of which we are speaking. We call this epoch of materialistic education the age of enlightenment.

Man had now—and this was the final result of the Christian conception of the universe—to find his foothold upon the firm ground of reality: the God whom he had so long sought beyond the clouds he was now bidden to seek within his inner consciousness. This had a far-reaching effect upon the entire development of the nineteenth century, and anyone interested in psychological changes and caring to study the development of humanity at that time will be enabled to understand how all the events and occurrences which then followed upon each other, such as the struggle for freedom in the 'thirties and 'forties, can but be classed as separate storms and convulsions of the feelings which were the result of that newly developed sense of physical reality, and which were bound to run their appointed course. We have to deal with a tendency in human education that sought in the first place forcibly to eradicate from the human heart every aspiration towards a spiritual life.

It is not from natural science that those deductions, pronouncing the world to consist of naught but what can be perceived by the senses, have been drawn; they are a consequence of the educational teaching obtaining at that time. Materialism had become interwoven with explanations relating to the facts of natural science. Anyone who will take the trouble to study these things as they really are, bringing to bear upon the subject a mind free from prejudice, will be in a position to see for himself that the case is as I am about to set forth, but it is impossible for me in the space of one short hour to deal with the matter exhaustively.

[ 9 ] The whole of the stupendous advance made in the realms of natural science, of astronomy, of physics and chemistry, due to spectrum analysis, to a greater theoretical knowledge of heat, and to that teaching concerning the development of living organisms known to us as the Darwinian theory—all these come within this period of materialism. Had these discoveries been made at a time when people still thought as they did about the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, a time when a greater spiritual sensitiveness prevailed, then these discoveries would have been so construed as to furnish proofs positive of the working of the spirit in Nature—indeed, by very reason of the wonderful discoveries in natural science the supremacy of spirit would have been deemed incontestably established.

[ 10 ] It is clear, then, that scientific investigations with regard to Nature need not necessarily and under all circumstances lead to materialism. It was merely because so many leaders of civilisation at that time were materialistically inclined that these discoveries became interpreted in a materialistic way. Materialism was imported into natural science, and naturalists, such as Ernst Haeckel, accepted it unconsciously. Darwin's discovery per se need not have tended to materialism.

Materialism points to Darwin's book, The Origin of Species, as its chief support. Now, it is clear that if a thinker inclining to materialism approached these discoveries, he would be sure to invest Darwinism with a materialistic colouring, and it was due to Haeckel's boldly materialistic attitude of thought that Darwinism has received its present materialistic interpretation. It was an event of great moment when Haeckel, in the year 1864, announced the connection between man and the higher animals (apes). At that time this could but mean that man was descended from the higher animals. But since that day scientific thought has undergone a curious process of development. Haeckel has adhered to his opinion that man is the descendant of those higher animals, they being in their turn the developments of still lower types, reaching back finally to the very simplest forms of life. It is thus that Haeckel constructs man's entire genealogical tree—in fact, the lineal descent of all humanity. By this means everything of a spiritual nature became for him excluded from the world, except as a reflection of already-existing material things.

And yet Haeckel, having in the depths of his being a peculiar spiritual consciousness working side by side with his materialistic “thinking mind,” casts about for some means of help, since these two parts of his being have never been able to “come into line;” he has not succeeded in bringing about a working partnership between them. For this reason he comes to the conclusion that even the smallest living creature may be accredited with a sort of consciousness, but he does not explain to us how the complex human consciousness is developed out of that which is latent in the smallest living creature.

In the course of a conversation Haeckel once said: “People are always objecting to my materialism, but I don't deny the Spirit, nor do I deny Life: I only want people to observe that when you place matter in a retort everything in it soon begins to work and effervesce—to ferment.” That remark shows plainly enough that Haeckel possesses a spiritual as well as a scientific mind.

[ 11 ] Among those who, at the time of Darwin's supremacy, proclaimed their adherence to the theory of man's descent from the higher animals was the English scientist Huxley. He asserted the close similarity in external structure between man and the higher animals to be even greater than that existing between the higher and lower species of apes, and that we could but come to the conclusion that a line of descent existed leading from the higher animals to man. In more recent times scientists have discovered new facts, but even then those feelings which for centuries past have educated the human heart and soul were undergoing a change, a transformation. Hence it was that Huxley in the 'nineties, not long before his death, gave utterance to the following view—a strange one, coming from him:

“We see therefore,” he observed, “that in Nature life is conditioned by a series of steps, proceeding from the simplest and most incomplete up to the complicated and perfected. We cannot follow this continuity, yet why should not this continuous line proceed onwards in a region which we are unable to survey?”

In these words the way is indicated by which man may, by the pursuit of natural science, rise to the idea of a Divine being, standing high above man—a being farther removed from man than man himself is from the one-celled organism. Huxley had once said:

“I would rather have descended from such ancestors, ancestors similar to the brute, than from such as deny the human intelligence.”¹

[ 12 ] Thus do precepts and concepts, all the soul thinks and feels, alter in the course of time. Haeckel has continued his work of research along the lines he first adopted. In the year 1867 he had already published his popular work, The Natural History of Creation, and from this book much may be learnt. It teaches the laws by which the living kingdoms in Nature are linked one to the other. We can see through the veil shrouding the grey past and bring what is existent into relation with what is extinct, of which only the last remains may now be found upon the earth.

Haeckel has recognised this accurately. That world-history, here in a wider sense playing its part, I can only elucidate by making use of an illustration. You may find it no more accurate than are most comparative illustrations, yet it fairly bears out my meaning.

Let us suppose that a writer on art appeared upon the scene and produced a book in which he treated with consummate skill the whole period stretching from the days of Leonardo da Vinci to modern times. He presents to our minds all that has been achieved in the pursuit of art during that period, and we believe ourselves enabled to look within at the development of man's creative powers. Let us, then, go further, and imagine that another person came along and criticised the descriptive work, saying: “But, look here! Everything this art historian has put on record never happened at all! These are all descriptions of pictures that don't exist! What use have I for such imaginings? One has to investigate reality in order to arrive at the true method of adequately presenting art in its historical bearings. I will therefore investigate the remains of Leonardo da Vinci himself, and try to reconstruct the body, and then judge by the contours of his skull what brain he is likely to have had and how it may probably have functioned.” In the same way the events described by the art historian are depicted by the professor of anatomy. There may have been no mistake. All may have been correct. Well, then, in that case, says the anatomist, we must “fight to a finish” against this idealisation of our art historian; we must combat his phantasy, his imagination, for it amounts to credulity and superstition to allow anyone to attempt to make us believe that besides the form of Leonardo da Vinci there was some “gaseous vortex” to be apprehended as a soul.

[ 13 ] Now, this illustration, in spite of its manifest absurdity, really hits the mark. This is the position in which everyone finds himself who chooses to assert his belief in the Natural History of Creation as the only accurate one. Nor can this illustration be negatived by merely indicating its weak points. They are there, perhaps, but that is beside the point. What is of importance is that the obvious should for once be presented according to its inner relationship; and that is what Haeckel has done in a full and exhaustive way. It has been done in such a manner that anyone wishing to see, can see, how active is the Spirit in the moulding of the form, where, to all appearances, matter alone reigns supreme. Much may be learnt from that; we may learn how to acquire spiritually knowledge as to the world's material combination, how to acquire it with earnestness, dignity, and perseverance. Anyone going through Haeckel's Anthropogenesis sees how form builds itself up, as it were, from the simplest living creature to the most complicated, from the simplest organism to man. He who understands how to add the Spirit to what is already granted by the materialist may in this example of “Haeckelism” have the opportunity of studying the best elementary theosophy.

[ 14 ] The results of Haeckel's research constitute, so to speak, the first chapter of theosophy. Far better than by any other method, we can arrive at a comprehension of the growth and transformation of organic forms by a study of his works. We have every reason to call attention to the great things which have been achieved through the progress of this profound study of Nature.

[ 15 ] At the time when Haeckel had constructed this wonderful edifice, the world was facing the deeper riddles of humanity as problems without solution. In the year 1872 Du Bois-Reymond, in a speech memorable for its brilliant rhetoric, alluded to the limits placed to natural science and to our knowledge of Nature. During the past decade the utterances of few men have been so much discussed as has this lecture with the celebrated “Ignorabimus.” It was a momentous event, and offered a complete contrast to Haeckel's own development and to his theory of the descent of man. In another lecture Du Bois-Reymond has tabulated seven great questions as to existence, questions which the naturalist can only answer in part, if at all. These seven “riddles of the universe” are:

1. The origin of energy and matter
2. How did the first movement arise in this quiescent matter?
3. How did life originate within this “matter set in motion?”
4. How is it that so many things in Nature bear the stamp of utility to a degree only met with in such human achievements as are the result of intelligent reasoning?
5. Assuming we were able to examine our brain, we should find it to be nothing but a jumble of little whirling spheres; how is it, then, that these same little balls, or spheres, enable me, let us say, to “see red,” to hear the tones of the organ, to feel pain, etc.? Think of a mass of whirling atoms, and it will be plain to you that it is not from them that you derive the sensations expressing themselves in such words as “I see red,” “I smell the scent of the rose,” etc.
6. How do understanding, reason, and speech develop in the living being?
7. How can “free will” originate in a being so circumscribed that his every act is the product of the whirling of these atoms?

[ 16 ] It was in connection with these riddles of the universe put forward by Du Bois-Reymond that Haeckel gave his book the title of The Riddle of the Universe. His desire was to give the answer to the questions raised by Du Bois-Reymond. There is a specially important passage in the lecture Du Bois-Reymond delivered on the “Limits of Inquiry into Nature,” which will enable us to step across into the field of theosophy.

[ 17 ] At the time when Du Bois-Reymond was lecturing at Leipsic before an assembly of natural scientists and medical men, the spirit of natural science was seeking after a purer, higher, and freer atmosphere—such an atmosphere as might lead to the theosophical cosmogony. On that occasion Du Bois-Reymond spoke as follows:—

“If we study man from the point of view of natural science, he presents himself to us as a working compound of unconscious atoms. To explain man in accordance with natural science means to ‘understand’ this atomic motion to its uttermost degree.”

He considered that if one were in a position to indicate the precise way in which the atoms moved at any given place in the brain, while saying, for instance, “I think,” or “Give me an apple”—if this could be done, then the problem would, according to natural science, have been solved. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the “astronomic” understanding of man. Even as a miniature firmament of stars would be the appearance of these active groups of human atoms. But what has not here been taken into consideration is the question as to how sensations, feelings, and thoughts arise in the consciousness of the man of whom, let us say, I perfectly well know that his atoms move in such and such a manner. That natural science can as little determine as it can the manner in which consciousness arises. Du Bois-Reymond concluded with the following words:—

“In the sleeping man, who is not conscious of the sensation expressed in the words ‘I see red,’ we have before us the physical group of the active members of the body. With regard to this sleeping body, we need not say, ‘We cannot know’—‘Ignorabimus!’ We are able to comprehend the sleeping man. Man awake, on the contrary, is incomprehensible to the scientist. In the sleeping man something is absent which is nevertheless present in the man awake: I allude to the consciousness through which he appears before us as a spiritual being.” [ 18 ] At that time, owing to a lack of courage in matters concerning natural science, further progress was impossible; there was no question as yet of theosophy, because natural science had, in concise terms, defined the boundary, had set a barrier at the precise spot up to which it wished to proceed in its own fashion. It was owing to this self-limitation of science that theosophical cosmogony had, about this time, its beginning. No one is going to maintain that man, when he goes to sleep “ceases to be,” and on re-awaking in the morning “resumes existence.” And yet Du Bois-Reymond says that something which is present in him by day is absent during the night. It is here that the theosophical conception of the universe is enabled to assert itself. Sense-consciousness is in abeyance in the sleeping man. As, however, the man of science uses as a prop for his argument that which brings about this sense-consciousness, he is unable to say anything concerning the spirituality that transcends it, because he lacks precisely the knowledge of that which makes of man a spiritual being.

By the use of such means as serve for natural science we are unable to investigate matters spiritual. Natural science depends upon what may be demonstrated to the senses. What can no longer be sensed when man falls asleep, cannot be the object of scientific investigation. It is in this something, no longer perceptible in the sleeping man, that we must seek for that entity by which man becomes a spiritual being. No mental representation can be made of what transcends the purely material and passes beyond the knowledge of the senses, until organs, of which the scientist can know nothing if he only depends on his sense-perceptions—spiritual eyes—are developed; eyes which are able to see beyond the confines of the senses.

For this reason we have no right to say, “Here are the limits of cognition;” but merely, “Here are the limits of sense-perception.”

The scientist perceives by means of his senses, but he is no spiritual observer; he must become one. become a “seer.” in order that he may see what is spiritual in man. This is the bourne towards which tends all profound wisdom in the world; not seeking the mere widening of its radius where actual material knowledge is concerned, but striving towards the raising of human faculty.

This also is the great difference between what is taught by present-day natural science and what is taught by theosophy. Natural science says: “Man has senses with which he perceives, and a mind whereby he is enabled to connect the evidences of his senses. What does not come within the scope of these lies beyond the ken of natural science.”

[ 19 ] Theosophy takes a different view of the case. It says: “You scientists are perfectly right, so long as you judge from your point of view, just as right as the blind man would be from his in saying that the world is devoid of light and colour. We make no objection to the standpoint of natural science, we would only place it in juxtaposition to the view taken by theosophy, which asserts that it is possible—nay, that it is certain—that man is not obliged to remain stationary at the point of view he occupies to-day; that it is possible for organs—spiritual eyes—to develop after a similar fashion to that in which those physical sense-organs of the body, the eyes and ears, have been developed; and once these new organs are developed, higher faculties will make themselves apparent.”

This must be taken on faith at first—nay, it need not even be believed; it may just be accepted as an assertion in an unprejudiced manner. Nevertheless, as true as it is that all believers in the Natural History of Creation have not beheld all that is therein presented to them as fact (how many of them have actually investigated these facts?), so true is it that these facts concerning a knowledge of the super-sensual can be explained to everyone.

The ordinary man, held in bondage by his senses, cannot possibly gain admittance to this realm. It is only by the aid of certain methods of investigation that the spiritual world opens to the seeker. Thus, man must transform himself into an instrument for those higher powers, one able to penetrate into worlds hidden from those still enthralled by their physical senses. To such as can accomplish this, visions of a quite distinctive nature will appear. The ordinary human being is not capable of seeing for himself, or of consciously recognising things about him, when his senses are wrapped in slumber; but when he applies occult methods of investigation this incapacity ceases, and he begins to receive quite consciously impressions of the astral world.

[ 20 ] There is at first a state of transition, familiar to all, between that exterior life of sense cognisance and that life which even in the most profound state of slumber is not quite extinguished. This state of transition is the chaos of dreams. To most people these will appear as mere reflections of what they have been experiencing during the previous day. Indeed, you will ask, how should a man be able to receive any new experiences during sleep, since the inner self has as yet no organs of cognition? But still, something is there—life is there. That which left the body when sleep wrapped it round has memory, and this remembrance rises before the sleeper in pictures more or less fantastic and confused. (Should anyone desire more information on this subject, it will be found in my books entitled The Way of Initiation and Initiation and its Results, Theosophical Publishing Society, 161, New Bond Street, W.)

[ 21 ] Now, in place of this chaos, order and harmony will, in the course of time, be brought about; an order and a harmony governing this region of dreams, and this will be a sign that the person in question is beginning to develop spiritually. Then he will cease to see the mere aftermath of reality, grotesquely portrayed; he will see things which have in ordinary life no existence.

Those who desire to remain within the boundary of the senses will, of course, say, “But they are only dreams!” Yet, if they, by such means, obtain an insight into the loftiest secrets of creation, it may surely be a matter of indifference to them whether they gain this through the medium of a dream or by means of the senses. Let us, for instance, suppose that Graham Bell had invented the telephone in a state of dream-consciousness. That would have been of no moment whatever to-day, for the telephone itself in any case is an important and useful invention. Clear and regular dreaming is therefore the beginning, and if in the stillness of the night hours you have come to “live in your dreams,” if, after a time, you have habituated yourself to a cognisance of worlds quite other than this, then will soon come a time when you will learn, by these new experiences, to step forth into actuality.

Then the whole world will assume a new aspect, and you will be as sensible of this change as you would be of threading your way through a row of solid chairs, through anything your senses may at this moment be aware of in their vicinity. Such is the condition of anyone who has acquired a new state of consciousness. Something new, a new kind of personality, has awakened within him. In the course of his further development a stage will at length be reached where not only the curious apparitions of the higher worlds pass before the spiritual eye as visions of light, but the tones also of those higher worlds become audible, telling their spiritual names, and able to convey to the seer a new meaning. In the language of the mysteries, this is expressed in the words, “Man sees the sun at midnight;” which is to say, that for him there are no longer any obstacles in space to prevent him from seeing the sun when on the other side of the world. Then, too, is the work of the sun, acting within the universe, made plain to him, and he becomes aware of that harmony of the spheres, that truth to which the Pythagoreans bore witness.

Tones and sounds, this music of the spheres, now become, for him, actual. Poets who were also seers have known of the existence of something approaching this music, and only those who can grasp Goethe's meaning from this point of view will be able to understand those passages, for instance, occurring in the “Prologue in Heaven” (see Faust, pt. I), which may be taken either as poetic phraseology or as a lofty truth. Where Faust is a second time introduced into the world of spirits, he speaks of these sounds: “Sounding loud to spirit-hearing, See the new-born Day appearing!” Faust, Part II.

[ 22 ] Here we have the connection between natural science and theosophy. Du Bois-Reymond has pointed to the fact that the sleeper only can be an object for the experiments of natural science. But if man should begin to open his inner senses, if he should come to see and hear that there is such a thing as spiritual actuality, then indeed will the whole edifice of elementary theosophy, so wonderfully, constructed by Haeckel—a structure none can admire more profoundly than I—then will this great work glow with a new glory, revealing, as it must, an entirely new meaning. According to this marvellous structure we see a simple living creature as the archetype, yet we may trace back that creature spiritually to an earlier condition of consciousness.

[ 23 ] I will now explain what theosophy holds as the doctrine of the descent of man. It is obvious that in a single lecture like the present no “proofs” can be advanced, and it is also natural that to all who are only acquainted with the theories commonly advanced on this subject everything I say will appear fantastic and highly improbable. All theories thus advanced originated, however, in the leading circles of materialistic thought, and many who would probably resent the suggestion of materialism as utterly foreign to their nature, are nevertheless (and indeed quite comprehensibly so) caught in a net of self-delusion.

The true theosophical teaching concerning evolution is, in our day, hardly known; and when our opponents speak of it, he who does know is at once able to recognise by the objections raised that he is dealing with a caricature of this doctrine of evolution.

For all such as merely acknowledge a soul, or spirit, to which expression is given within the human, or animal organism, the theosophical mode of representation must be utterly incomprehensible, and every discussion touching that subject is, with such persons, quite fruitless. They must first free themselves from the state of materialistic suggestion in which they live, and must make themselves acquainted with the fundamental attitude of theosophical thought.

[ 24 ] Just as the methods of research employed by physical science trace back the organism of the physical body into the dim distance of primeval times, so it is the mode of theosophical thought to delve into the past with regard to the soul and the spirit. Now, the latter method does not lead to any conclusions antagonistic or contradictory to the facts advanced by natural science; only with the materialistic interpretations of these facts it can have nothing to do.

Natural science traces the descent of the physical living being backwards, arriving by this course at organisms of a less and less complicated kind. Natural science declares: “The perfect living being is a development of these simpler and less complicated ones;” and, as far as physical structure is concerned, this is true, although the hypothetical forms of primeval ages of which materialistic science speaks do not entirely conform with those known to theosophical research. This, however, need not concern us at the present moment.

[ 25 ] From the physical standpoint theosophy also acknowledges the relationship of man with the higher mammals, with the man-like apes. But there can be no question of the descent of our humanity from a creature of the mind and soul calibre of the ape, as we know it. The facts are quite otherwise, and everything that materialism puts forward of this nature rests upon an error of thought. This error may be cleared up by means of a simple comparison sufficient for our purpose, though trite.

We will imagine two persons, one morally deficient and intellectually insignificant; the other endowed with a high standard of morality and of considerable intellectuality. We will assume that some fact or other confirms the relationship of these two. Now, I ask you, will the inference be drawn that the one in every way more highly endowed is descended from one who was of the standard described? Never! We may think it a surprising fact that they are brothers. We may find, however, that they had a father who was not of exactly the same standard as either of the brothers, and in that case one will be found to have worked his way up, the other to have degenerated.

[ 26 ] Materialistic science makes a similar mistake to that here indicated. Facts known to it induce the acceptance of a connection between ape and man, yet from this it should not draw the conclusion that man is descended from the ape-like animals. What should be accepted is a primeval creature, a common physical ancestor, from the stock of which the ape has degenerated, while man has been the ascending “brother.”

[ 27 ] Now, what was there in that primeval creature to cause this ascendance to the human on the one hand, the sinking into the ape kingdom on the other? Theosophy answers, “The soul of man himself did this.” Even then the soul of man was present, at a time when, on the face of this physical earth, the creatures possessing the highest sense of development were these common ancestors of man and ape. From amid the multitude of these ancestors the best types were capable of subjecting themselves to the soul's progress, the rest were not. Thus it happens that the present-day human soul has a “soul-ancestor” just as the body has its physical forebear.

It is true that, so far as the senses are concerned, those “soul-ancestors” could not, according to our present-day observations, have been perceptible within our bodies. They still belonged in a sense to “higher worlds,” and they were also possessed of other capabilities and powers than those of the present human soul. They lacked the mental activity and the moral sense now evident. Such souls could conceive no way of fashioning instruments from the things in the outer world; they could create no political states. The soul's activity still consisted to a great extent in transforming the archetype of those ancestral bodies themselves. It laboured at improving the incomplete brain, enabling it at a later period to become the seat of thought activities. As the soul of to-day, directed towards external things, constructs machines, etc., so did that ancestral soul labour at constructing the body of the human ancestor. The following objection can, of course, be raised: “Why, then, does not the soul at the present day work at its body to the same extent?” The reason for its not doing so is that the energy used at a former time for the transforming of the organs has since been directing its whole effort upon external things in the mastery and regulation of the forces of Nature.

[ 28 ] We may therefore ascribe a twofold descent to man in primeval times. His spiritual birth is not coeval with the perfecting of his organs of sense. On the contrary, the “soul” of man was already present at a time when those physical “ancestors” inhabited the earth. Figuratively speaking, we may say that the soul “selected” a certain number of such “ancestors” as seemed best fitted for receiving the external corporeal expression distinguishing the present-day man. Another branch of these ancestors deteriorated, and in its degenerate condition is now represented by the anthropoid apes. These, then, form, in the true sense of the word, branch lines of the human ancestry. Those ancestors are the physical forebears of man, but this is due only to the capacity for reconstruction which they had primarily received from the human soul within. Thus is man physically descended from the “archetype,” while spiritually he is the descendant of the “ancestral soul.”

But we can go even further back with regard to the genealogical tree of living creatures, and we shall then arrive at a physically still more imperfect ancestor. Yet, at the time of this physical ancestor, too, the “soul-ancestor” of man was existent. It was this latter which raised the physical ancestor to the level of the ape, again outstripping its less adaptable brother in the race for development, and leaving him behind on a lower stage of creation. To such as these belong those present-day mammals of a lower grade than that of the apes. Thus we may go further and further back into primeval times, even to a time when upon this earth, then bearing so different an aspect, existed those most elementary of creatures from which Haeckel claims the development of all higher beings. The soul-ancestor of man was also a contemporary of these primitive creatures; it was already living when the “archetype” transformed the serviceable types, leaving behind at different stages those incapable of further development.

In actual truth, therefore, the entire sum of earth's living creatures are the descendants of man, within whom that which in this day “thinks and acts” as soul originally brought about the development of living beings. When our earth came into existence, man was a purely spiritual being; he began his career by building for himself the simplest of bodies. The whole ladder of living creatures represents nothing but the outgrown stages through which he has developed his bodily structure to its present degree of perfection.

The creatures of the present day differ widely in appearance from that of their ancestors at those particular stages where they branched off from the human tree. Not that they have remained stationary, for they have deteriorated in accordance with an inevitable law, which, owing to the lengthy explanation it would involve, cannot be entered into here. But the greatest interest attaches to the fact that through theosophy we arrive, so far as man's outward form is concerned, at a genealogical tree not altogether unlike Haeckel's. Haeckel, however, presupposes as the physical ancestor of man nothing but a hypothetical animal. Yet the truth is that at all those points where Haeckel uses the names of animals, the still undeveloped forebears of man should be installed; for those animals, down to the meanest living creatures, are but deteriorated and degenerate forms occupying those lower stages through which the human soul has passed on its upward journey.

Externally, therefore, the resemblance between Haeckel's genealogical tree and that of theosophy is sufficiently striking, though internal evidences show them to be as wide apart as the poles.

[ 29 ] Hence the reasons why Haeckel's deductions are so eminently suited for the learning of sound elementary theosophy. One need do no more than master, from the theosophical point of view, the facts he has elucidated in so masterly a manner, and then raise his philosophy to a higher and nobler plane. If Haeckel seeks to criticise and belittle any such “higher” philosophy, he shows himself to be simply puerile—after the fashion, for instance, of a person who, not having got beyond the multiplication table, yet presumed to assert: “What I know is true, and all higher mathematics are only imaginary nonsense.” No theosophist desires to deny or contradict the elementary facts of natural science; but the crux of the matter is that the scientist, deluded by materialistic suggestions, does not even know what theosophy is talking about.

[ 30 ] It depends upon a man himself what kind of philosophy he adopts. Fichte has put this in so many words: “The unperceiving eye cannot detect colours; The non-perceptive Soul cannot perceive Spirit.” The same thought has been voiced by Goethe in a well-known phrase: “Were the eye not sun-like—how could we see the sun? Were God's own power not within us, the God-like vision—could it enrapture us?” and an expression of Feuerbach, if rightly conceived, proclaims that each one sees God's image after his own likeness. The slave to his senses sees God in accordance with those senses; the spiritual observer sees the Spirit deified. “Were lions, bulls, and oxen able to set up gods, their gods would resemble lions, bulls, and oxen,” was the remark of a Greek philosopher long ages ago.

The fetish-worshipper, too, has as his highest principle something we may call spiritual, but he has as yet not come to seek for this within himself, and this is why he has not got beyond beholding his god as anything more than a block of wood. The fetish-worshipper cannot raise his prayer above what he can inwardly feel, for he still regards himself as on the same level as the block of wood. And those who can see no more than a whirl of atoms, those to whom the highest resolves itself into tiny dots of matter, such as these, too, have missed recognition of the highest principle within themselves.

[ 31 ] It is true that Haeckel places before us in all his works the information he has honestly acquired, so that to him must be accorded “les defauts de ses qualites.” The sterling worth of his teaching will live, its negative qualities will vanish. Taken from the higher point of view, one might say that the fetish-worshipper worships in his fetish a lifeless object, while the materialistic adherent of the theory of atoms worships not alone one “little god” but a whole host of them, which he calls atoms!² The superstition of the one is about as great as that of the other; for the materialistic atom is no more than a fetish, and the wooden block is made up of atoms too. Haeckel says in one passage: “We see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, in man—God is everywhere,” yet he only sees God as he can comprehend Him. How enlightening here are Goethe's words, when he says: “Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest, Not me!”) —Bayard Taylor's translation.

Thus does the materialist mark the whirling atoms in stone, in plant, in animal, and in man, possibly, too, in every work of art, and claim for himself a knowledge of a monistic cosmogony that has overcome the ancient superstitions. Yet theosophists have a monistic cosmogony too; and we can say, in the same words as Haeckel uses, that we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the brute, and in the man; but what we see are no whirling atoms, but the living God, the spiritual God, whom we seek outside in Nature, because we can also seek Him within ourselves.

• 1. Readers who are unacquainted with Huxley's famous reply may be glad to have it in extenso, as given by Edward Clodd in Thomas Henry Huxley, published by William Blackwood and Sons:
  
  “At the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, on 28th June, 1860, Owen emphasised the statement that ‘the brain of the gorilla presented more differences, as compared with the brain of man, than it did when compared with the brains of the very lowest and most problematical of the Quadrumana.’ To this Huxley, in polite English, gave the lie direct, and pledged himself to ‘justify that unusual procedure elsewhere.’ Two days after, by mere chance, he was present at the reading of a paper by Dr. Draper ‘On the Intellectual Development of Europe considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin.’ In the discussion which followed, Bishop Wilberforce, throwing a glance at Huxley, ended a suave and superficial speech by asking him ‘as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?’ Huxley did not rise till the meeting called for him. Then he let himself go. ‘The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands,’ he said in an undertone to Sir Benjamin Brodie. After showing how ill-equipped was the Bishop for controversy upon the general question of organic evolution, although it was an open secret that Owen had primed him for the contest, Huxley said: ‘You say that development drives out the Creator, but you assert that God made you; and yet you know that you yourself were originally a piece of matter no bigger than the end of this gold pencil-case?’ Then followed the famous retort:
  
  “‘I asserted, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.’”
• 2. The word “worship” is, of course, not to be taken literally, for the materialistic thinker, though he has not yet been weaned from “fetishism,” has lost the habit of prayer.

Distinguished attendees! To the untrained eye, the circumstances of public life in the civilized world over the past 50 years have become unmistakable; their interrelationships have become difficult to grasp and confusing. The present misery has emerged from what might be called the great economic boom before 1914; the most complicated circumstances, caused by the most diverse facts, loom into our decline – facts that are in turn difficult to grasp. It is no wonder that the human being who must live in this decline, must work, must strive, feels from the depths of his soul the yearning for an ascent. But as understandable as this is, anyone who takes a deeper look at today's conditions must recognize that, in the present and in the near future, there is no way out of the decline to a recovery other than an understanding of the great tasks of the time, the great tasks of the time from certain sources, which cannot really be found within small areas. As well as I can in one evening, I will endeavor to try to offer some modest observations on some of these great tasks of our time – I would say that one can only do so in the face of these tasks.

It seems that if anything quite obviously indicates how we have to approach the great tasks, it is the great mistakes that have been made in this time. Two stages today characterize our entire public life in its immediate present development, and it seems to me that these stages point not only to external, economic conditions, but also to legal, moral and especially spiritual conditions within contemporary civilization. But when one names these two stages, Versailles, Spa and all that follows in their train, when one remembers all that they have brought us, then it becomes somewhat difficult to characterize them, because today one is suspected of striving for a certain objectivity. People's opinions are sharply opposed to each other: anyone who wants to judge the West as a member of Central European civilization can be quite sure that his objectivity will be very, very strongly doubted by Westerners. Therefore, I would prefer not to give my own opinion on what happened in Versailles, which is still a painful part of our present, but rather to follow the opinion of the Englishman John Maynard Keynes, who wrote the significant book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace”, which I have already referred to in my Stuttgart lectures from a different point of view than today.

Keynes was a person who, until a certain point in time, was present in an outstanding position at the negotiations in Versailles, and he judged [in his book] what happened and also what, in his opinion, should have happened. One might say that in three sentences he roughly summarizes the striking facts of Versailles that are so symptomatic of our present time. He, the Englishman, whom Lenin only recently called the “English philistine”, says quite simply: nothing, absolutely nothing of any magnitude has been achieved at Versailles by those who could claim to be the victors. What did Clemenceau do? He ruined Europe's economic resources and did nothing to rebuild the economy in France itself. What did Lloyd George do? He made a few deals that allowed him to shine in London for a short time. What did Wilson do? Wilson had good intentions regarding what was right and just – according to Keynes – but no way presented itself to him to somehow implement what he may have had in mind in a well-meaning way. The three most important men made the big mistakes of the time.

And now let us take a look at what has actually emerged for Germany from the terrible events that have taken place since 1914. I do not need to describe it to you. To the southeast of Germany, Czechoslovakia has become a relatively large empire. Born out of national aspirations, everything that rules there proves to be economically powerless in the face of the tasks that the economy in particular faces for these areas. To the north of it, Poland. Well, you only need to recall the last few weeks to see, on the one hand, how what has been formed there has only contributed to the unrest in Europe; and on the other hand, you only need to recall the perplexity of the leading European personalities in the face of what is seething and boiling there. One need only think of the “tragicomedy in the transformation of the view of the Polish ‘defeats’ to the Polish ‘victories’, how one was confronted without opinion, without great guidelines, today with this, tomorrow with the opposite. And if you go further east, it may seem today that Leninism and Trotskyism, especially when you add to that the devastating conditions in Italy, have no other guidelines than to develop, out of a phenomenal megalomania, all those forces that can serve to destroy what has been achieved by more recent civilization. The Germans of Austria are crushed, not to mention Hungary, where the sad spectacle is taking place that when members of the party that was at the helm until recently are led through the streets, bound and captured, they are then stabbed in the eyes with umbrellas by ladies in elegant, magnificent attire. This description could be continued for a long time, and one could see what has emerged for humanity from the circumstances since 1914.

And if we look at the ideas of those who are somehow active within this terrible decline – at the ideas of personalities who are often even capable of entertaining tragicomic illusions about an ascent that could be brought about by their intentions – we might be tempted to say: In the short-sighted, in the uncomprehending, that speech that Lenin delivered at the Second Congress of the Third International was monumental, where he once again, entirely in the old Marxist style, proved Western capitalism with all the banalities that have been heard so often. If one approaches what was said in this grandiose speech from a certain world-historical point of view, namely that capitalism, having developed into imperialism, tyrannizes over five-sevenths of humanity, then today, on the other hand, the question must be raised: What would have become of all of modern civilization if it had not been for the accumulation of capital? And should we not ask: Is it not self-evident, after all the forces that our modern times have brought forth, that such capital accumulation has also taken place for the sake of human progress? Can we still get by in today's collapsing world with such abstraction, which only proclaims the struggle in a very abstract form, or should we not ask: Is there not also something moral underlying our decline, especially when this note is struck? Do not perhaps precisely such fighters as Lenin confuse the harmfulness of capitalism in general with the kind of morality or, rather, immorality with which capitalism has operated? Can we not also trace this spiritual note in the effects of capitalism? And might we not arrive at deeper impulses than those which are constantly being declaimed today, and whose declamation has brought so little practical success for the better?

Now, one could say that the opposite view, which also comes from the Englishman Keynes, the harsh critic of the Western powers, is more indicative of today's intellectual, legal and economic situation. But that sounds somewhat different than Lenin's words. Keynes says, for example: Yes, terrible things happened in Versailles. Instead of doing something to build Europe, everything has been done to turn Europe into a heap of ruins of civilization; something terrible has happened, something worse will happen in the coming years. — I am quoting the sense, not the wording. And in an even stranger way, Keynes addresses some of the underlying mental states that have brought us into this present situation. It is interesting to see how this man, who sat through the negotiations led by Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George for weeks on end, realizes what actually caused Wilson, who beguiled so many people with his abstract Fourteen Points, to fail so utterly. This becomes a significant problem for the Englishman Keynes, and something very strange comes to light.

Keynes constructs – as I said, from the way Wilson was sitting – how the others did everything to deceive him, to keep him from finding out what they actually want. It is a remarkable psychological event that Keynes describes and dissects, which, I would like to say, shines a deep and significant light on the whole cultural state of the present. Keynes obviously means: If one had told Wilson that France wanted the Germans of Austria to be prevented from uniting with the Germans of Germany, if one had said this clearly and distinctly, so that Wilson would have heard these words, his sense of justice would have risen up against it. Now, if you are going to visualize the struggle of such a dull mentality - if I may use this Entente word - you have to realize how Wilson feels - as Keynes does - if you now bring the following to mind as a spectator. Keynes says: Yes, the people around Clemenceau and Lloyd George did not say: “The Germans of Austria will not be allowed to unite with the Germans of Germany,” because Wilson would have rebelled against that; that is why they said: “The independence of German-Austria is to be guaranteed by a treaty with the Entente powers until the League of Nations pronounces otherwise.” Wilson understood that the independence and freedom of the Germans of Austria had to be guaranteed. If he had been told that they were forbidden to unite with the Germans of Germany, Wilson would have understood the same thing that he had otherwise understood as freedom and independence as the highest compulsion. If one had told him – as Keynes continues –: “Danzig shall become a Polish city”, he would have revolted against it; that quite obviously contradicts the Fourteen Points. So one told him: “Danzig shall become a free city, but all customs matters shall be handled from Poland, as shall the supervision of all transport matters, and the Poles shall become the protectors of the nationals living abroad. Oh, that sounded different from saying that Danzig should become a Polish city. And one can almost say: Yes, when it is said like that: 'Danzig should become a free city', then Wilson's dull mentality is inspired. But if he had been told that Danzig should become a Polish city, that would have contradicted Wilson's view that every nation should be led to freedom. And if one had told Wilson that the Entente was to supervise the German rivers, he would not have been able to agree to that; but instead one said: 'Navigation, where it passes through several states, is an international matter.' Wilson was satisfied with that again.

If you want to see what the great forces are that are moving the world today, you have to look at what is developing between the – I will speak in German now and translate the Entente word – “state of mind” of the leading personalities who have grown out of the previous circumstances. Is there still any honesty and sincerity there? Is there still any healthy sense and openness? The opposite is true, and what is more, it lives in such a way that one is still convinced of being an honest, open person, because what actually works has become an unconscious habit. How could Wilson actually be so deceived as he has been in this way, as I have just described it after Keynes? People who still cannot bring themselves to believe that an abstract, theorizing mind like Wilson's is a disaster for Europe sometimes say benevolent words like, “He, this Wilson, knew European conditions far too little.” Hypothetically admitted, although I do not admit it, Wilson knew European conditions far too little. But Wilson wrote a work on the state comprising almost 500 pages, in which he describes the conditions of the European states in great detail, the state and legal conditions and so on. So we are faced with the fact that either it is not true that Wilson did not know the European situation, or an influential contemporary figure writes a work on European conditions that is influential in America precisely because he is ignorant of those European conditions. The latter would cast a bright light on the superficiality of our time, on everything that draws only from the superficial spirit and does not delve into what lives in the deeper foundations of things as the real cause of the present events, the present developments and the whole evolution of humanity. But there is something much more significant behind what I have presented.

Many years ago, during a lecture series in Helsingfors – at a time when Wilson was revered everywhere because two significant literary works had been published by him – I drew attention to something that characterizes the whole nature of Wilson's state of mind. Wilson says, for example, that if you look at the time in which, for example, Newton, the great physicist, lived, you find that, as in the theory of constitutional law or in the thinking of those who reflect on economic and financial conditions, the same forms of thought and the same mental images are found for the economic and political conditions that Newton, the physicist, created for physicists. And now Wilson says: We must free ourselves from such a dependence of thought in relation to public, political or economic conditions; we must think today in terms of the organic about politics, about the world economy and so on. And now he develops a kind of political idea, of which one must say: Just as those whom he criticizes for being dependent on Newton in their time, so he is entirely a copycat of Darwinism and thinks Darwinian as a politician, as an economist, and as a legal expert, just as those whom he criticizes thought in a Newtonian way. Darwin is fashionable – so Wilson, the world reformer, thinks Darwinian. But I said at the time: We are now in such a time that we must no longer allow ourselves to be blinded to the real conditions of public life by what comes to us from the natural sciences. What comes to us from the natural sciences – I have often said it here – is quite excellently suited to precisely explore the surface of things; but what ideas want to form about human action, about human coexistence, must go into deeper world reasons than natural science even needs. And that is why – I said – the dangerous thing in our time is precisely a way of thinking like that of Woodrow Wilson.

That was long before the war, at a time when Wilson was still being glorified as a world hero for a long time to come. What matters today, namely, is to avert one's gaze from everything that only holds people to the superficial. It is necessary to be able to sharpen one's gaze into the deeper reasons for becoming and happening. But, esteemed attendees, that is what the school of thought that, like science, approaches the spiritual and soul life in man from a scientific spirit is trying to do. It is the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that I have been representing here in my lectures in Stuttgart for almost two decades now, and more and more every year.

What must be striven for in our spiritual life in terms of the spiritual science that is meant here? I will only briefly indicate that this spiritual science does not arrive at its results in an external way, but rather through the fact that the human being first performs certain exercises, which are intellectual in nature. Time and again, the human being must say to himself what I characterized as a comparison in one of my last lectures here. I said: If a five-year-old child picks up a volume of Goethe's poetry, he will not be able to do anything with it, he will in any case do something completely different with it than what the volume of poetry by Goethe is intended for. But if he is ten years older, he will have gone through a development and reached a level of maturity by which time he will know what to do with this volume of poetry. The spiritual researcher referred to here says: With the form of consciousness that we use in ordinary life and that we also apply in conventional science, we face the higher world forces as a five-year-old child faces a volume of Goethe's poetry. Thus, forces slumber in every human being that he can develop within himself and that then show him a different, a spiritual, understanding of the world. Above all, they show him that although scientific thinking is a magnificent way to explore the surface of things, and that in this respect science has justly achieved the greatest triumphs, They show him that we cannot, however, understand natural things that play a role in human activity with the scientific way of thinking, if we do not resort to methods and ways of thinking that are permeated by the spirit and with which we can also grasp the human being and the forces within him in a thoroughly scientific way. But then we come from such a grasp of the human being to a completely different grasp of the world than through the conventional spiritual life in which we are immersed today. In the face of this conventional spiritual life, one would like to recall a word spoken by Hölderlin that cuts deep into the heart, when his mind was still bright, not yet clouded, but was finely sensitive to what was present in his cultural environment. Hölderlin, who had immersed himself in the harmonious humanity of ancient Greece and had grown fond of it, looked at the people around him, exaggerating to some extent, as a mind of his calibre would do in his time, and characterized them as follows, comparing them to the Greeks. He said: “Do people live among us ordinary Germans? I see no human beings around me, as the Greeks were; I see officials, teachers, professors, but no human beings; I see lawyers, artists and scholars, but no human beings; I see young and mature people around me, but no human beings; what I miss in my environment is the whole, full, developed humanity that can also gain a harmonious relationship with the universe. Such humanity also lived consciously and unconsciously, sensually and supernaturally in Goethe, and what Goethe himself valued even higher than his poetry — although it was then so little understood after Goethe: his scientific creations. In these lines of scientific thought, Goethe's physicist does not live one-sidedly when he presents a theory of colors, nor does his botanist live one-sidedly when he describes plants, nor does his anatomist live one-sidedly when he characterizes human bones. but in this way of thinking the whole human being lives always and in everything; and the whole human being grasps in the individual parts of nature that which can only be revealed when one experiences it in its effect on all of humanity within oneself.

Over time, this thinking was increasingly confronted with something that has been praised so much, but also occasionally criticized: specialization in all areas of life, the kind of specialization that has found its way into our higher knowledge in particular and has had an impact on it, for example, all the way down to primary school education. This specialization made man a physicist, a botanist, a lawyer, a professor, a teacher, and so on, but it drove out the human being. And we must ask ourselves: Is it really a furthering of knowledge itself, when this knowledge has developed in such a way in modern times that the knowledge that led to a world view has split into those small portions, from which one has lost the human element and can no longer keep an eye on the world? Again and again, a few influential personalities were portrayed as if they were knowledge itself. But anyone who can see into the development of modern times will find that this is not the case. He sees that knowledge and the striving for the abstract unified state, as it has developed over the last three to four centuries throughout the civilized world. He sees that the unitary state, which absorbed everything that we today want to re-organize through the impulse of the threefold social organism, that this unitary state, with its mixing of spiritual, legal and economic life into one fabric, made physicists and chemists, professors and teachers, in short, specialized people, and it was with these that it had to fill its positions if it followed its principles. It was this unified state that sucked the fullness of humanity out of people. This fullness of humanity lived so powerfully in Goethe and was so longed for by Hölderlin for his Germans. It is spiritual science that wants to give this fullness of humanity back to today's humanity, because only from this fullness of humanity can come what is at the same time knowledge, what is feeling with all humanity, what is real right and at the same time reasonable economic life.

If one proceeds according to the methods of spiritual research, one does not get a superficial view of something concocted from the individual disciplines, but one gets fully living spiritual knowledge. But this is like a light that can be cast on the individual areas. And with it one gets the possibility again to place the human being above the specialists; one gets the possibility to put the human being first and the social structure afterwards - and not the other way around, to put the social structure first and only then the human being, and thereby let him wither away into a system template. Because spiritual science is something that really comes from the fullness of the human being, but that must first be gained through spiritual research, that is why it can also have a fertilizing effect on what is fragmented in the world. Fragmented in the world, for example, is our present-day jurisprudence, the individual branches of our present-day economic life - everything is fragmented.

Those who have heard me speak at length and are able to grasp the actual meaning of what I have said know that I do not say such things out of immodesty or silliness. But I may well point out that in February, in Dornach, before an audience of more than thirty medical specialists, I attempted to present the therapeutic element of medicine from a spiritual-scientific understanding of the nature of the human being in such a way that one could really arrive at a genuine therapy that goes straight to the human core. In this single case I have tried to show how a central view of the nature of the natural, soul and spiritual can have a fruitful effect on a single science. And anyone who now considers the social effect of the striving of personalities imbued with our knowledge will reflect on the significance of what I have said.

ar A It is one thing for a physician to be educated in a closed circle and unable to see beyond the boundaries of his science, and quite another for him to grasp his science in such a way that it becomes a light for everything physical, mental and spiritual in the human being and that he thereby also acquires a true sense for all social interaction and coexistence of people and thus, from his art of healing, gains a living, fruitful judgment on the treatment of major social issues.

This fall, beginning on September 26, more than twenty individuals who have immersed themselves in the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here will give a course of nine lectures at the School for Spiritual Science in Dornach. We have, of course, established our School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, which we cannot open because it is not yet ready, but we will hold these School of Spiritual Science courses at the unopened Dornach School from September 26 to October 16. Personalities from the fields of physics, chemistry, political science, economics and history, practitioners who are involved in life, in the factory or otherwise in life, artistic personalities from all fields, they will first show in this trial course how what specializes [in individual fields] is illuminated by the living spiritual , such a light is shed on these sciences that they are no longer something theoretical - not something one acquires and then has to peel off again for the most part in order to stand in one corner of life and see nothing but one's own specialization. No, it is shown how, through this enlivening of knowledge, which can arise from spiritual science, specialization is overcome, and how, through the new spirit, through a spirit that is just as strictly scientific as the one cultivated at universities today, yes, 'strictly strict science', how this spirit brings together specialists so that they will not go their lonely but humanity-damaging ways in mutual misunderstanding, but will work together socially and be able to help our ailing time to rise again.

These School of Spiritual Science lectures are held at our Goetheanum in Dornach, where every detail seeks to express the style, the architectural, sculptural and pictorial style, that arises out of the artistic aspect of our spiritual science, out of the whole of our intuitive perception. Everything, down to this framing, should act as a symbol, as it were, for what is to happen, what must happen, from the spiritual side. For it must be the spirit that, following its true threads, comes back to the truth, to a truth from which goodness, morality and healthy, strong will follow. This does not arise from superficial knowledge; it arises from deep spiritual knowledge. And I hope that our Dornach lectures will show much more than mere characterizations can express, how the forces to build up our languishing civilization should be sought from the spirit. We do not want to refute such arguments [about the decline of the West] logically, as I characterized them here last time, but through action we want to create that which can be set against the forces of decline. And I am convinced that we would truly not be able to accommodate all the listeners who would come to Dornach and its wider surroundings today - who will hopefully come in large numbers despite the drowsiness of souls today - if the communication difficulties arising from our decline were not so insurmountable.

If I may refer to something closer to home, I would like to return to what our Waldorf School is meant to achieve here. This Waldorf School, which we opened today for the second school year, we described here some time ago with reference to its successes in the first school year. It is exactly what it has become – it could not have become more in its first year – having become what it is because our teachers were inspired and imbued with those feelings towards the developing human being, the child – emotions that come from the research of spiritual science, that spiritual science that must indeed, with regard to certain spiritual things, behave in a completely different way than many people assume with regard to these same things.

We have, of course, confessions in our time that speak about the eternal in man. What have all these confessions come to? If one can really look at the world impartially and listen to everything that is said in sermons or theologies today about the eternal in the human soul, then it is not an appeal to the urge for knowledge, but basically it is an appeal to the finer instincts of the soul. Those who have often heard my lectures will know the foundations on which the spiritual science referred to here speaks of the immortality of man, how it makes certain statements about what man becomes when he has passed through the gate of death and shed his physical body. But the basis of this discussion is different from what has been customary in Western civilization for centuries. What is it that this Western civilization appeals to again and again? The finer instincts of the soul; people do not want their entire being to cease to be when their body decays into dust. This is the human desire for eternity. And I ask you to go through everything that is offered in this direction in traditional confessions, sermons and theologies: it is the appeal to this human egoism, not wanting to die. And because it is only this appeal to egoism, it is even conveniently separated for life: knowledge for the world of sense, and faith for the supersensible world. Naturally one can only speak of the instincts under discussion here if, with regard to the eternal in man, one arrives only at a belief and not at knowledge. But when we investigate the human being by means of spiritual science methods, which are not easier than chemical or astronomical methods, but essentially more difficult (for more details see my books “How to Know Higher Worlds” or “Occult Science: An Outline” and others), then we come not only to speak of immortality, that is, of the forms that the human soul and spirit takes after death, but one then comes to look at what the human being was before birth or conception, before he descended as a spiritual being from the spiritual world into the physical world through birth and assumed a physical body through descent from father and mother. This can become knowledge, but it is knowledge of such inner power that it flashes through our entire being.

If we approach the child as educators with such knowledge, we look at the child quite differently. Then we know something of how the soul and spirit form the human body from the deepest human depths, how the physiognomy and skills that arise from year to year are formed in the body out of the soul and spirit. As a teacher and educator, you develop a feeling without which there can be no fruitful education: the feeling that everything you come into contact with through the human body comes from spiritual worlds. It has been entrusted to you; the gods have sent it down to you. You stand before it with holy reverence.

Dear attendees, just as there are forces that can only be explored through their effects in the external, physical world, for example electricity or magnetism, so does what one acquires as a teacher or educator, as reverence, act as an imponderable force, as something that one only

a en learn to believe when one beholds its effects, when one sees how that which radiates from such sacred reverence for the teacher is something that surrounds the child's spiritual and soul growth just as sunlight surrounds the plant to make it flourish and thrive. A pedagogy that is based on the full human being, that is carried by feelings and perceptions, but by a perception that sees through world and human conditions, a pedagogy that naturally becomes art, that does not talk abstractly about education, it is a pedagogy of this kind that may aspire to make of the generation that will be decisive for the coming decades that which can lead out of our decline towards an ascent. And we can say: What anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has been able to achieve through our teachers has, after all, borne fruit in the first school year.

Only one thing stands ghostly before the mind's eye of the one whose whole heart and mind is with this Waldorf school, especially today, when we have opened the second school year. Out of the spirit we could bring Waldorf education to life through Waldorf education; in this way, one of the great tasks of our time would be solved step by step in practice, not in theory. But we need understanding, understanding in the broadest sense. We may hope that the spirit will continue to support us in our endeavors, because in a certain way it depends on us. But we need understanding, because the buildings in which the school is held are to be built; the teachers are to live in homes, and they are also to eat. All this is necessary. And already the spectre of destitution for such things and for what is behind it, of the lack of understanding of the broadest circles for what belongs to the great tasks of our time, stands before our soul and impairs what we would like to do for the second school year, especially in these days. So what is needed today for the great tasks of the time is understanding in the broadest sense. Many people have idealism, which says: ideals are lofty, it is not dignified to associate them with the material circumstances of the day, because the material world is something base; ideals are lofty, they must find their own way. Therefore, we keep our hands on our wallets and no longer spend anything on our ideals, because why should we give up dirty money, which is not worthy of serving ideals, for our ideals? That may sound trivial, but if you want to do something necessary for the Waldorf school in our days, then it may be said in this case. Today, idealism often expresses itself more through enthusiasm to hold together the material world and to cultivate the ideal in it.

I could now describe something to you that is related to something very new in our spiritual life. For a long time now, we have lost precisely that direction and current of our spiritual life that looks at what I want to characterize, at the prenatal human being. Even the language testifies to it: when we speak of the eternal in man, what do we say? Immortality. - We thus point only to the one end of life, which human egoism also looks at. We have no word for the other: one would have to say “unbornness,” for just as little as we lose our eternal being when we discard the body, we did not receive it with birth either. And when we speak of the eternal in man, we must speak of unbornness as well as of immortality. We do not even suspect what we lack in this direction. What we hope for after death inspires us little for action. But when we know what lives in us, what lives in us as having descended from the spiritual worlds, even if only in a reflection of the spiritual world, then we can say that we feel ourselves to be - I would like to use the word - missionaries of the spiritual world. Our feelings are stirred and our actions inspired by our earthly work, and this is what our task as human beings in earthly existence is. We have to draw strength from the spirit in order to truly penetrate into something like this, which is our task as human beings in earthly existence; for this it is not enough to stick only to the nearest districts of what surrounds us in life. We must look at what surrounds us in the spiritual life, what lives in us inwardly as the spiritual and permeates all life down to the economic. In this respect, people indulge in the strangest illusions.

Anyone with a sense of reality who follows the historical course of humanity will see that they must look for the actual sources of the somewhat more distant spiritual impulses in human life over in the Orient - although not in today's Orient, because today's Orient is in a state of decadence in this regard. What the source of this very special spiritual life is, as I described in that lecture, which I gave on the historical development of mankind, lived in the Orient thousands of years ago. There lived a race of men who understood nothing of what we call 'deductive' or 'logical thinking' — a race of men who, from the same sources that the spiritual science meant here, but in a different way, in a Western way, once knew that something could live in the soul of man that reveals to him the spirit that permeates the world. But it is not in the East that we find a knowledge of the spirit that is not based on proof or reasoning. Today, if we do not want to become antiquated, we can no longer penetrate this oriental spiritual life, but something of it still lives in our ordinary intellectual education. There is a direct line from the spirit that shone in the Vedas, in the Vedanta philosophy, in the ancient Indian yoga system, which itself lived in the Chaldean teachings and in ancient China. It is a direct line that moved in many currents through many channels to the Occident. And in our everyday thinking, we still have traces of that oriental spiritual life before us. Even when the Mystery of Golgotha entered into the development of mankind, when it became necessary to understand Christ Jesus, it was Oriental wisdom that sought to comprehend this event, which could only be grasped through supersensible knowledge. It was Oriental wisdom that was then transformed into the teaching of Christianity and spread with Christianity throughout the Occident. In this Oriental wisdom lives something that today's man can no longer feel and sense in the right way, for which he needs a support. What was present in the original soul life of the Oriental had to be anchored in the West - for centuries already - in dogmatically cohesive religious communities; because the inner source of spiritual life no longer flows in the same way, that is why man needed such religious communities. This is what initially extends into our public life like a first branch - a branch that still has the Orient as its “lifeblood”. And if one were to look at our spiritual life with an open mind, one would still discover effects of what originated in the Orient in what modern man thinks, feels and senses and what lives even in the sciences, right down to physics, but above all in religious beliefs.

In addition to this peculiar oriental spirit, which is little understood today in its entirety and which permeates the West in its own unique way, there was another school of thought that came more from the south and poured into Central Europe, but also fertilized the west. It came from what I would like to call, in a comprehensive sense, legal, state and political thinking. In the wonderful Greek civilization we see a remarkable mixture of what came from the East and still lived in the Greek people, as it had come from the Egyptians, and the now already legal thinking that was not yet fully revealed in Greece, which brought the peculiar evidential way into the imagination of man. In Greece, we see life only sparsely permeated by logical, legal, and state thinking, which was not present at all in the Orient. If, for example, there were commandments in the Orient, they were something quite different there from the commandments in the Occident. We then see the legal spirit essentially absorbed in ancient Rome. We see how there the process of proving, of reasoning, of combining and separating concepts is developed into a special art. We see how a second element is mixed into what flows from the Orient, how the legal and political current pours into the spiritual current, the “state machine”. And we see even the spiritual-religious, the spiritual-scholastic, permeated by this legal element. It would have been quite impossible for the Oriental to think of something like “guilt and atonement” or “redemption” in the original thought of his world view instead of the concept of “karma”. What lived in the Orient in “karma”, in the fate of the world, was something quite different. But then the legal element began to make itself felt in the world view, and it even found its way into the religious conception of the world. At the turn of the ages, man was thought of differently from the way he was in the Orient. Now he was thought of in such a way that he was “judged” by the world judges because he had incurred “guilt”. In the Orient, people spoke only of “guilt” and “judgment”. In the Occident, even the religious element has been infiltrated by the legal-evidential, the divisive-judgmental. And when we go, for example, to the Sistine Chapel in Rome and see the painting by Michelangelo, 'Christ as Judge of the World', where he judges the good and the bad, we see even there the legal, world-political spirit carried into the religious world view. This is the second branch of our civilization, which still has an effect in Fichte and Hegel and which imbues everything that is still emerging in German intellectual life at the turn of the 18th to 19th century. It is not without reason that Fichte and Hegel started their thinking precisely from the roots of right, from the political and state conditions, and the way in which these minds conceive the development of humanity is to be understood in an “emphatic of the state” sense, in contrast to earlier times.

Only in more recent times did a third current join this second one, which developed in the West out of the Western peoples' dispositions and instincts. In the East, in the times when the East was great, nature provided what man needed in such a way that he undertook the distribution of natural products as well as the distribution of what man produced out of his spiritual life. There was no economic thinking, there was not even any legal thinking. If we go back to the 18th century, we find little economic thinking in Central Europe. But we find everything dominated by an increasingly intense legal thinking, by a state-oriented, political thinking. In the West, economic thinking had developed long ago, and it developed more and more out of people's natural instincts and abilities. Circumstances developed in such a way that where people think in a truly “western” way, economic thinking is now also applied to what was previously grasped from the point of view of logic - to science, to truth. It came from America. There they have the doctrine of pragmatism, which roughly says: “True” and “false” is something that is only an illusion; we have taken that from the legal world view. Our view is this: if something proves useful in practical life, then it is right, it is true, and everything that does not prove useful is harmful, is false. According to this view of life, everything is judged only by whether it is “useful” or “harmful”. These ideas have become part of human thought and are also alive in philosophers. Yes, if, for example, one wants to understand Herbert Spencer and other philosophers correctly, one understands them only if one says to oneself: This Herbert Spencer devises philosophical systems, but he has ideas that, as such, are only in the wrong place; instead of devising philosophical systems, he should build factories with his way of thinking, set up trade unions and help the economy on its feet; his ideas are useful for this, but not in the philosophical field.

If we follow the path our humanity has taken in its historical development, we see that first a spiritual life develops, which points back to a heritage from earlier millennia in later times. Then, little by little, a state and political life, a legal way of thinking, develops. Later, the economic life develops alongside this, and this life develops in a differentiated way across the earth. But as we approach the modern age, we see how the spiritual life that came from the East has died out. The dry, pedantic and philistine nature of today's education and upbringing stems in particular from the withering away of that ancient spiritual heritage. But this also points with all vividness to the fact that we should not migrate back to the Orient, but must develop a free and original spiritual life through ourselves again, by opening the sources of this spiritual life for ourselves. The old inheritance is at an end. Our time demands a new spiritual life, and spiritual science now wants to proclaim this from Dornach. With this new spiritual life, it will permeate education, and through something like the Waldorf School, it wants to make it fruitful for modern life.

But there is also little left today for the old legal spirit. I advise you to read characteristic, symptomatic phenomena of the present day, such as the little booklet on jurisprudence by the Mannheim teacher Rumpf, and you will see that Just as religious worldviews today have to rely on outward appearances because the inner life no longer bubbles up, so jurisprudence and political science borrow from economic conditions because they no longer have anything that bubbles up from the inner life. Thus we see that today a mixture of economic thinking and legal thinking is coming about, which spreads chaos over our lives. And anyone who sees through things knows how much of this chaotic confusion has penetrated into the sphere of our public life, and how this is then expressed in deeds, causing social upheaval, social confusion and turmoil. We can only move forward if we seek a new spiritual life in the way I have described. The old spiritual life has passed away as an inheritance. But we will only find the new spiritual life if we do not hand over the school to the state, if we set up the whole spiritual life on its own, because then alone we can lift the spiritual life out of what it is now. When a human being steps down from spiritual heights into the physical world, he brings with him a new, real spiritual element for each generation from his human individuality and personality. We do not want to dictate to people that they must develop according to these or those rules, but we want to let this real spiritual element develop powerfully through love from the teacher to the child. This spiritual life can only be administered by those who are active in it. A new spiritual life will reintroduce the living spirit, which our social life so urgently needs, into the present; it will make fruitful for human coexistence the deep source that man brings with him when he enters physical existence through birth. This is one of the great tasks of our time.

A second task is how we can once again develop a living sense of duty in the social community, through the living interaction between individuals in the democratic structure of the state – not by regurgitating old Roman or old concepts in general, but by original thought. No law dictated from above will ever develop a sense of duty. Only that right which arises between equals, between one mature human and another mature human in lively intercourse, only this right will also make people keen to work, and this right will have to incorporate the [regulation of] labor.

The spiritual life, as I understand it, is described in my “Key Points of the Social Question” in such a way that it must become the regulator of capital. Then the accumulation of capital or means of production, which is necessary for more recent development, will, through the spirit – which will illuminate it when the spirit is formed anew in its freedom, in its fertility, in its progress from generation to generation – then capital will also carry within itself, through the spirit, what, for example, Keynes and others miss: morality. And then, economic life will not be characterized by a capitalism based on egoism and mere self-acquisition; instead, it will be imbued with spirituality, arising from an understanding of the necessities of the world and of humanity and of existence, and it will work in the spirit of the people educated in the new spiritual life. Then labor will no longer be a commodity, but will be incorporated into the independent, self-developing constitutional state; then, in the social fabric in which the mature human being works with every other mature human being on the basis of equal rights, labor will come into its own. And only from the feeling for our duty to work in freedom can arise the upswing in our lives, not from the demand for barracking and duty, which must stifle every sense of justice in man. From an independent spiritual life, from an independent legal life, one must grasp the great tasks of our time.

If we look at economic life, we see that if we separate out everything that is in it today and needs to be separated out – the right to land, because that belongs in the constitutional state, labor, which is paid for like a commodity today, because it belongs in the legal state, and means of production, insofar as they can be capitalized, because they belong in the spiritual link of the social organism. If we take all this out of economic life, what remains is the production and consumption of goods. A product of human labor, a commodity is not only concerned with one person; a commodity passes from one person to another. Not only does the person who produces the commodity and has experience in its production have something to say about it, but so does the person who creates the conditions of exchange for the thing or who has to decide on the needs. Thus, many different kinds of people are involved in economic life, and everything in economic life is a commodity. If we have, on the one hand, the administration of capital in the spiritual element and the administration of labor in the legal element, then what remains for the administration of economic life is the only thing that is justified: the price level, the mutual price value of the goods. But if it is to be carried up from chance to reason, it can only be determined through associations. The various groups of people who, from the point of view that I have characterized, have to do with a product, must be summarized in associations; because people have to do with the product from different starting points in order to determine the price of one product in relation to the other, so that money can only be the external indicator of the value of the product. It is only through associations of economic life that it is possible to arrive at the true price of a product for economic life - that is what matters. And this cannot be determined by dictates and so on, but only by the experiences that are made from association to association.

If, for example, a person is employed in a particular branch of industry and works in it, the price of his product of labor must be set so that it is not too expensive and not too cheap. So if I make a pair of boots, when I have finished them I must get so much in the way of sundry goods for what I get for them that I can satisfy my needs and those of my family with them until I have finished another pair of boots. This cannot be calculated, it can only be experienced in the living interaction of associations. In order to understand that the price problem is at the center of the whole economic life, a more precise study of the “key points” and those writings that point to them will be necessary, especially for example my essays in the Dreigliederungs-Zeitung, which will soon be published in a collection by the publishing house of Kommenden Tages. There you can see what we need to get the spirit back that we need for our ascent.

To solve this one great task of the present, we must have a new spiritual life to cultivate individuality; we must bring out human self-importance and human abilities, which can only be properly placed in a human context through a proper understanding of human personality and human individuality. In order to bring intellectual life into effect in the right way, we need the self-contained – not the intellectual life encompassing, but letting it out of itself – state or legal life or political life in its parliamentary structure; this can never be in intellectual life or in economic life. Morality and mutual assistance can then be produced from this again, in other words, everything that must take place between all people in order for a dignified existence to be possible. And in economic life, we need to solve the price problems as a major task of the present. We can only solve them if we first base economic life on itself, on the basis of association.

And we can only move forward if we allow these three independent links to interact in a certain free way and do not fear any possible “division” or “cutting up” of these three links. One need only reflect a little on the human organism to lose this fear. In my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Soul Mysteries) I indicated how the human organism also consists of three independent members: the nervous-sensory activity, the rhythmic activity and the metabolic activity. The entire function of human life is structured from these three activities as activities. Just as one cannot breathe with one's eyes or see with one's lungs, so the state should not determine spiritual life, nor should spiritual life interfere with legal life. And just as one cannot think with one's stomach, so one should not dictate politics or determine rights from the economic point of view. And just as the lungs breathe, the head sees and thinks, and the stomach digests, so the three independent limbs of the human organism work together in unity; this unity does not exist in the abstract, but arises as a living unity from the three independent limbs.

In the same way the true unity of the social organism will come into being when we grasp the three great tasks of the present time in the life of the spirit, in the life of the right and in the life of the economy. These three great tasks are certainly utopian for many people. But even for the people of the 1830s, what developed in Central Europe from 1870 to 1913 would have been utopian in purely economic terms. If we just think that in 1870, 30 million tons of coal were mined and processed in Germany, whereas in 1913, 190 million tons were mined and processed — truly, for a person in the 1930s, that would have been a utopia if one had spoken of such a surge in coal mining and processing at the time. We should not be afraid of being accused of utopianism or fantasy. Even if what is presented as a threefold order cannot be realized immediately, we should remember a saying of Fichte's, spoken to his audience when he was talking about the nature and destiny of the scholar. He said something like this: We know that ideals cannot be immediately realized in practical life, but we also know that great impulses and great powers lie in such ideals, which can advance humanity. If the so-called practitioners do not recognize this, then they are merely testifying that they were not reckoned with in the evolution of the world. And so may a benevolent Deity grant them light and sunshine, good digestion and, if it can be, a little sense as well! Those who are true practitioners count on the real practical forces of life and do not let themselves be annoyed by those objections that are so characteristic of the way Fichte characterizes them, and which say: What is downcast Germany, what is humanity, reduced to misery in Central Europe, to do alone if all the others do not want to go along with the threefold social order?

Dear attendees, if we work with all our strength – even today, when it is almost too late – on this threefold social order, so that it enters as many minds as possible, and really present it to the world in a living way, then the others, even if they are the victors, will accept it as something fruitful and beneficial for the world and for humanity. When the “key points” were translated into English, one could see how almost every discussion of this book began with the words: “One can hardly read this book with any other frame of mind,” but even then one approached the content with a certain objectivity. We lack only people to help us make these ideas fruitful for life. We need people who have a spirit of progress, but not a spirit of empty phrases. And the more we can win such people, the less we need to fear the accusation that we in Central Europe can achieve nothing against the others.

Another objection that is often made is: What can the individual do, even if he sees something like the fertility of the impulse for threefolding? Oh, let no one grieve because the “others” do not see through it, let him alone see it himself as an individual, then he sets an example for others and enters the path where individuals become many. And let us not be annoyed by the other reproach either, when people say again and again: If you seek ascent by such a path, it will take a long time. We do not want to waste time wondering how long it will take, but we do want to be clear about one thing: the more we want it, the sooner it will come! We do not want to engage in idle speculation, but we want to think and act in such a way that our actions, our will and our thoughts make it happen as quickly as possible.

When a person brings to life in his soul the right ways for the right social coexistence, when he ignites his soul and lives through it with these impulses, which show us how spiritual, legal, state or political life and from economic life, then he can work from a single earthly territory, even against the prejudices of the whole world, in such a way that many individual territories arise that take up the impulses and carry them forward for the progress and welfare of humanity. In this way, a long period of pain can become a short one; in this way, one can overcome space and time and manifold [obstacles] if one really wants to find the true good of humanity for a new ascent, based on independent legal consciousness and on the correct economic consciousness of the present.

It is of the greatest interest to delve into the way in which this remarkable document, the Bible, has been received by people of all times, and what reflection this book of books has evoked in the minds and souls of people. You can learn so much about the developmental history of human souls from the impressions that this book has evoked.

The impression that the writing makes on the human individualities of different periods of time is quite different. Of course, these different stages can only be touched on very briefly, because the material is too vast, and it is done because it is important to recall it to the soul. For example, how the Jewish people at that time had something of the Scriptures from which they learned about their own origin and ancestry, astronomy, the justification of the social order, the legislation, regulations for everyday life. The whole life of the soul and its wisdom were in it. The scholars of late Judaism applied all their ingenuity and all their mental power to understanding this book. And so it was in those times that the highest knowledge was applied to achieve understanding. And with the utmost respect, the Kabbalists can even be mentioned, who sought to interpret it down to the letter. And then later, the New Testament in connection with the Old Testament: In the first Christian century, we again find this deep, sacred earnestness in the search for understanding. In mystical and other communities, everything is geared towards understanding the Bible. The Gnostics and others of that time immersed themselves with the greatest effort in what is given in the Bible in the person of Christ Jesus. We find profound thought in this Bible study. Let's say the 9th century, John, the great Scot — Scotus Erigena. There is no doubt in this man's mind about the truth of the Bible, about the truth of the written word, that it is inspired; man has no choice but to seek to understand. From Thomas Aquinas and John Tauler to Jakob Böhme, a bold philosophy was applied to understanding what is written in the Bible.

Now, however, something very remarkable is happening with regard to the Bible. Whereas everything before – even in the eighteenth century – was explanation, a feeling of the deepest reverence for the Bible, in the nineteenth century what is called Bible criticism emerged. One could almost call the nineteenth century the century of Bible criticism. This sentiment would not have been understood at all in the past. In the past, it was always a case of looking up to the Bible and feeling down about oneself. It was only now that a feeling arose that man felt towards the Bible as he would towards any other book and that he could look down on the Bible. Critics dare to question the Bible, its individual documents and writings, doubt later appearances and so on, and finally even dare to question the person of Christ Jesus.

David Friedrich Strauß is one of those; he resolves everything in the Bible into legends and myths. He says that the facts of Jesus' life are not important; these feelings and ideas were simply in the people and so it was gradually put together. Other criticism and all that today's science has to say about it should be mentioned. Specifically, the seven-day work of creation is widely criticized, as is the narrative of the creation of man in it, how man emerged from the great cosmos. And then his creation is retold a second time. From this, it is concluded that there are two accounts of creation. All the many and incalculable things that have been achieved in it could be mentioned.

The Bible is the book of life for mankind, but all this has changed people's attitude towards it, and those in authority felt compelled to take their present position. And much, much more than one suspects and can know, people's attitude towards the Bible has changed. Only the soul researcher can gauge that. Even the most religious person of today has no idea of the deep fervor and inner bliss that one once had towards the Bible. Anyone who tries to observe the times and the psychology of the soul knows that since materialism has permeated all popular thinking, this is no longer possible. Since then, a change, a fundamental metamorphosis of intimate feelings can be observed. Many noble people among us look back on the days of their youth with a certain wistfulness, conflict or satisfaction, thinking of how they absorbed the stories from the Bible back then. The inner conflict between then and now is in many a soul.

But what violence, what significance this book of books has, emerges from the fact that scholars and scientists are constantly trying to bring the seven-day work into line with it. One must come to terms with the way the creation of the world is presented in the Bible. The power that the content of the Bible has repeatedly had over people is proven by the fact that, for example, in the early days of the Christian era, people turned to Plato for answers to such questions, and gave him the certainly strange name of the Attic-speaking Moses. So Plato's teachings are related to the Old Testament.

The same is said of Pythagoras and other great philosophers. Even Apollo has a very beautiful oracle that proves this: “Steep is the path to the / gap]” — “Steep is the path / gap]”

But there were mortals who did climb this path. The most significant of these were those who lived in Chaldea and those who were called Judean men.

Paracelsus, the great medieval physician, also made a very strange statement about the Bible: “All medicine, all healing can be learned from the Bible.” Of course, this must be thought of in the right way in Paracelsus' sense. He meant how he thought of the relationship of man and his position to the Bible. You must not just open it, read it and retell it, no, the words that are in the Bible are not only to be taken literally, but there are magical powers in them. If you let the words live in your soul, they will fertilize it; the soul will become wise and knowledgeable by letting not the content but the power of the Bible word live in you. No science can or should dissuade you from the Bible.

Take Darwinism, for example. Charles Darwin says: “So we would have fathomed” and so on, - “those whom the Creator once breathed life into.” And a second saying of his, that language is something higher than the animal inarticulate sound: “Language can never have come about through mere natural causes and could never develop in this way. One must assume an intelligent creator who has wisely ordered everything.”

Many sayings of great scholars who, in this respect, do recognize the Creator, could still be cited. Jean Baptiste Biot, who rendered outstanding services to the science of light, said: Moses either knew as much as we do or he was inspired! — All that has been said is not meant as any criticism on our part, but only as an explanation that it had to come in the materialistically thinking present. Even in our time, many great men have honestly endeavored to understand the Bible by interpreting it, but who knows about it? Example: Fabre d'Olivet: “The Mystery of the First Books of Moses”.

In the face of biblical criticism, spiritual research or theosophy yields a different point of view. Theosophy never criticizes, never tears down, but only seeks to understand. One thing is characteristic of theosophy: it is not a thought, not a concept, but an attitude. Everything in theosophy must be imbued with this attitude. We have this attitude towards all of nature. We see regularities and monstrosities in nature, we know that it would be nonsense to criticize nature, we do not do that, we seek to understand it. Understanding is the basic attitude we must have; we must pursue everything in the spiritual life with understanding, pursue everything with love, not with the yardstick of sympathy and antipathy. Understanding everything and everyone – you cannot define it intellectually, it has to be an attitude. If you have this attitude, you will have an experience: that the Bible is a book in the face of which criticism begins to fall silent. What you may have criticized in the past is now seen in a completely different light, it becomes clear.

One must rediscover the key to the Bible through spiritual research, and then biblical criticism will be replaced by an ever deeper interpretation of the Bible. The development of humanity is not considered if one considers only the external aspects of it. What science has brought, theosophy does not question; but it does not only pursue the external material phenomena, which are only the expression of a spiritual phenomenon of the underlying spiritual development. The task of theosophy is to explore the nature of today's man and his position in the universe. It must therefore say something about the creation report. Theosophy regards the whole human being, not just his physical body. Where natural science has to stop, theosophy begins. When it comes to the words “I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ”, the natural scientist sees only the movement of atoms in the brain; but he cannot explain what must take place to produce the idea “I smell the scent of roses” and so on. The task of Theosophy is now a completely different one. Du Bois-Reymond ties in with Leibniz's saying: the idea of the soul, why it is that the scent of roses is smelled, you – [the] natural scientists – would not be able to explore.

Du Bois-Reymond ties in with the word: natural science is actually only capable of observing and fathoming the sleeping human being because the soul experience has been extinguished. Precisely that which the natural scientist cannot explain is there in waking. But can we then recognize what is not there in sleep and what is there in waking? Yes, I will give you a comparison that will make it clear to you how spiritual science relates to the other sciences. An example: Imagine a piano being played, with a deaf person sitting next to it. He cannot hear the notes, but there is a way to make them understandable to him if he is otherwise of sound mind. Open the piano and scatter so-called paper riders on the strings. By the jumping of the paper riders, the deaf person can see that something is going on; he can get an idea of the strings and their trembling. But there is a difference between his idea and the real objective, the sense is missing, the open ear.

This is how Theosophy relates to the so-called science of facts. The latter conducts research in the way we have described here the perception of the deaf. To perceive what is going on in the soul, one must have the sense for it. What Haeckel and others, in fact modern science in general, has brought is all true for Theosophy, but there is an awakening of the higher senses to follow the material processes, and to look back with one's higher spiritual organs and follow the spiritual facts of the higher spiritual organs that Theosophy teaches to develop. Thus Theosophy perceives what is present in the sleeping and waking human being. To do this, one must have spiritual eyes and spiritual ears.

What does the sleeping person do at night, what does he work on? He repairs the physical body to remove the fatigue substances from the outside. The other type of activity of the astral body is present in the so-called initiate or initiate.

What is an initiate? We must first realize that we can perceive as much as we have organs. There are as many worlds around man as he has organs, and each time he acquires new organs, he perceives a new world. And there are methods in the secret schools where this is taught, whereby such new organs are formed. An initiate is someone who has developed abilities within himself through which the higher worlds can be perceived.

We divide the human being into four parts: physical body, etheric body, astral body or soul, and I. Now, in the initiate, the astral body is equipped with organs of perception. The initiate sees into other worlds. He feels the need to express himself in a different way. For ordinary language is created only for our physical life, and even the words that have been used for the supersensible are taken from the world of sense perception. The initiates must therefore follow Goethe's dictum:

All that is transitory Is but a parable.

What the initiates see in the higher worlds, they can only express in images from the sensual world in order to be understood by people. Every student of the Rosicrucian school of thought, which has existed in Germany since the 14th century and is the most suitable for modern man, must therefore also learn to express himself in such images. What you find in books about the Rosicrucians is unclear and incorrect; for their secrets were not entrusted to books. He must acquire the so-called imaginative knowledge, that is, the knowledge of how to express in a parable what one beholds in the spiritual world. The initiate feels quite differently about a parable. He sees the immortality of the soul in the parable — doll and butterfly — the permanent in the transitory, which is always behind it. The initiate sees the great connection between all facts, the highest spiritual and the lowest physical facts, he sees the high in all this. And if he tells such a parable to a child, for example, he tries to make it clear to him, then he himself firmly believes in this parable, and feeling flows from him to the child. So he also looks at these little ones with the same fervor of heart.

It is the task of theosophy to make it clear that everything spiritual finds its expression in a material way. Not those who deny matter will penetrate to the spirit, but those who learn to grasp the truth that all matter is condensed spirit. If we recognize this, then we will also understand why the Bible gives instructions about the simplest things in life. With heartfelt love we must then enter into these simplest of processes, into something that goes with the phenomena of everyday life. Such knowledge should spiritualize life, not remove people from it. He is not a true theosophist who claims: Oh, what do I care about the brain molecules and their movements, the spirit is in him, that's enough for me! No, he must learn to understand that the brain is the expression of the spirit. Our goal is not to rise above the appearance to the so-called being, but to understand what lives in the appearance of being. This must be brought home to people again in images, in parables.

The spiritual was there earlier than the physical. The astral body has built up the physical body, structured it out of itself. All material substance has been structured out of the spiritual, and the spirit is the older, the earlier. Before the physical there was the astral; it formed, it created this body — in the likeness of water and ice. The naturalist sees only the time when the ice had already formed in the stream, the theosophist the time when there was no ice yet in the stream, and the one with the ice. The material — the ice — separates from the water, which still comes from something higher. The Bible expresses this process very beautifully: “The Spirit of God moved over the waters.” (Genesis 1:2) Water is the image of all secret schools.

The wisdom in the Bible is given in images and parables, in comparisons. The seven-day work is no different. We are not dealing with external facts here, but with long, long periods of time. There is no document in the world that contains theosophical truths in a more magnificent way than the Bible. Theosophy will offer an explanation of the Bible, an understanding of it again. Even something like the splitting of the creation account will bring it closer to human understanding again. The spiritual man is already contained in the stream of water, when the spirit of God still hovered over the waters. “Male and female” is the literal translation, not ‘a little man and a little woman’ (Gen. 1,27); this is the spiritual man. And then a condensation of the spiritual, asexual man to the physical man - to the egg - takes place, and thus a second creation, a sexual-physical.

“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6); we must understand this saying as Goethe means it when he says, “And as long as you do not have this dying and becoming, you are only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.” That is, the becoming of a higher soul that slumbers in man, but which can be awakened and developed through schooling. You must give birth to a higher human being out of the physical body, so that this physical body becomes a tool for the spiritual human being, but the physical body should not be the one that rules us. When man is free from the physical, the physical body becomes such a tool. Thus one should explore the spirit from the letter. Theosophy wants to build up from what is there; because even the smallest, the most material, is condensed spirit. Therefore, a theosophical attitude also understands that, as in the Bible, there may be rules that relate to simple daily life.

Those who fight the Bible do not understand it; they are fighting their own delusion, which they have created for themselves. It is only in the last four hundred years that this materialistic view of the seven-day cycle, an apparent reproduction of it, has developed. Even today, believers often interpret the Bible too materialistically. The Bible is to be taken literally; but one must learn to understand the letter and grasp the spirit through the letter. Theosophy does not want to found a confession, but to understand what is there; and that, what wisdom has poured into the souls through the millennia. The truths change; but a common original truth runs through all of them, for past, present and future. We find it in the Bible and its effect; it contains words that come from the divine wisdom of the world. Thus the readers found themselves imbued with the magical powers of the Bible, which live in the words. Religious documents and especially ones like the Bible, which in its two parts even points to our division of time, cannot be taken deeply enough. Only by delving deeply into them will people be led to spiritualization again.

Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be with you and the hard duties you have to perform!

Last week we gave some detailed consideration to souls who, if we want to look for them now, have to be looked for in the spiritual worlds. And we considered souls who are close to us, letting them tell us one thing or another that can illumine for us the time a soul entity spends in the spiritual world. Today I want to consider more the path the human soul may take to enter into the spiritual worlds While dwelling in a body here on earth, there to find the spiritual realms we spoke of last week, where what are called ‘dead’ souls may be found. It has to be stressed over and over again that the path into the spiritual worlds appropriate to the soul of modern man in the light of the whole evolution of mankind is a path with many preparatory stages, some of them difficult indeed, stages that have to be won through. Today I intend to speak of some aspects of the path to insight and I shall do so from a point of view that may be called imaginative perception.

Dear friends, you know very well already that in the spiritual world the human soul is really and truly able to learn and observe only in a Way that does not make use of the body as an instrument. Everything We are able to gain by using the body as our instrument can only provide knowledge and experience relating to the physical world. To experience the spiritual worlds we must find a way of doing so outside the physical body. That way is indeed open to modern man, though it is not easy to achieve observation of the spiritual world by going outside the body. Another point is that anyone not able to make such observations himself will be able to evaluate observations achieved in the spiritual world, once they have been achieved, on the basis of a genuinely sound common sense, that is not just the common sense generally called sound, but a genuinely sound common sense. Today, however, our subject will be the path as such, the way the human soul on the one hand comes out of the physical body, as we might put it, and on the other enters into the spiritual world. As I said, I want to use the approach of imaginative perception today. Last week we took another approach. Many things will have to be presented in the form of images and it will be up to you to pursue these further In meditation. In doing so you will find that this path is one of very special significance.

It is possible to enter into the spiritual world through three doors, as it were. The first may be called the Door of Death, the second the Door of the Elements and the third the Door of the Sun. Anyone Wishing to follow the path to knowledge in its entirety will have to take the road to knowledge through all three doors.

The Door of Death has always been very fully considered wherever the mysteries were taught. This Door of Death cannot be reached unless we seek to reach it through meditation, a term by now thoroughly familiar, which means by giving ourselves up to certain thoughts or feelings that are exactly the right ones at the time for our individual personality. We make them the absolute centre of our conscious minds, identifying with them completely. It is very easy for human effort to flag when this path is taken, for lack of ease and the overcoming of obstacles are part of this and are essential. So it will be necessary again and again to make those quiet, deeply personal efforts, endeavouring to give ourselves up to those thought contents, those feelings, in such a way that we forget the whole world and live only in those thoughts, those feelings. When we learn to achieve this over and over again we shall finally be in a position where we perceive something that is like a kind of independent life within the thought on which our conscious mind is focused. We shall get the feeling that until then we had merely been thinking that thought, making it the focus of our conscious mind; now, however, this thought will be felt to be developing a life of its own, an inner activity of its own. It is as though we found ourselves in a position where we are truly able to produce a distinct entity within us. The thought begins to take shape as an inner structure. That is an important moment, for we realize that this thought, this feeling, has a life of its own and we feel ourselves to be the enveloping form holding this thought, this feeling. We are then able to say to ourselves that our efforts have made us the arena where something has been able to develop that is now achieving a life of its own through us.

It is an important moment in the life of a person practising meditation when he awakens to himself and the thought held in meditation comes to life. He will then realize that spiritual objectivity has come to him, that the spiritual world is paying attention to him, that it has drawn close. Of course, it is not easy to reach this level of experience, for before it is reached we have to live through feelings and sensations for which the human being has a natural aversion. A certain feeling of isolation has to be experienced for example; a feeling of loneliness, an experience of being abandoned by the physical world as it were, the feeling that this physical world does many things that wear us down, threatening to crush us. It is through this feeling of isolation that we finally reach the point where we are able to bear the strong inner life to which our thought awakens, into which it is born, as I should like to put it. There is much indeed that goes against the grain. There is much in man that goes against him and this can lead to a real experience of thought coming to life within him. There is One particular feeling that comes up, an inner experience that comes up, which is one we really do not want to have. At the same time we will not admit to ourselves that we do not want to have it, saying instead: ‘Oh, I'll never do it! I'll go to sleep in the process. My ability to think will go, for this goes beyond my inner strength.’ In short, We will automatically come up with all kinds of excuses, for the experience to be gone through is that thought, in thus becoming enlivened, really becomes a distinct entity. It assumes reality, taking on a form of identity. Then the vision arises, and not merely the feeling, that the thought is like a small seed to begin with, a round seed one might say, and that it then grows and develops into something that has definite form, extending into the head from outside. Then a challenge is presented: ‘You have identified with the thought and now you are inside the thought and growing into your own head with the thought. Essentially, however, you are still outside.’ The thought assumes the form of a winged human head that continues into indefiniteness and then extends into one's own body through the head. The thought thus develops into something like a winged angel's head. That is what we must actually achieve. It is difficult to have this experience, and you will really believe you are losing all ability to think at the moment when the thought grows to assume that form. One feels one will be taken from oneself at that moment. And what so far has been the body we have known, into which the thought is now reaching, will feel like an automaton that has been left behind.

There are also a great many obstacles in the objective spiritual world to prevent this becoming visible to us. The winged angel's head truly becomes an inner vision but there are all kinds of obstacles against it becoming visible. Above all, the point reached is the actual threshold of the spiritual world. If we succeed in standing firm within ourselves the way I have described, we are then on the threshold of the spiritual world, truly on the threshold of the spiritual world. There, however,

stands the potentate we have always been calling Ahriman, though at first he will be quite invisible to man. We do not see him. And it is Ahriman who makes sure we do not see the thought entity taking the form I have described to you. He does not want us to see it. He wants to prevent that. The best way of reaching that point is by the path of meditation, of course, and this always makes it easy for Ahriman to bring to nought, as it were, what we want to achieve, so long as we cling to the prejudices of the physical world. And I really has to be said that people have no idea how much they cling to prejudice with regard to the physical world. They cannot imagine that there is another world with different laws from those of the physical world. It is not possible for me today to discuss all the prejudices we carry with us when we come to the threshold of the spiritual world, but let me present one very major prejudice, one of a fairly subtle nature.

You see, speaking of the physical world people speak of monist philosophy, of there being only one ultimate substance or principle, frequently saying to themselves: ‘I can only understand the world if I see the whole of it as a unity.’ We have had some strange experiences particularly in this respect. When we started our spiritual movement here in Berlin with just a few members—that is quite a few years ago now—people found their way to us who then discovered that after all they could not feel they belonged to us in every fibre of their being. There was a lady, for instance, who after a few months came and told us that what spiritual science had to offer was not really the right thing for her, for it meant one had to do a great deal of thinking and thinking wiped out exactly the things that were important to her. She said she always sort of went to sleep when thinking. She also felt that really there was only thing that counted, and that was unity! It became evident that in her case the unity of the world which monists look for in all kinds of spheres—and not only the materialists among monists—had become a fixed idea: Unity, unity, unity! She wanted to look only for unity. In the intellectual life of Germany, one particular philosopher, Leibniz, was very much a monadologist. He sought not unity, but the many monads⁴⁵ which for him were ensouled entities. He therefore knew quite clearly that as soon as one enters into the spiritual world it can be a matter only of plurality, not of unity. And so there are monists and pluralists. These views are considered philosophies. The monists fight the pluralists who are speaking in terms of plurality; they themselves only speak of unity.

For you see, it is like this: Unity and plurality are concepts that only apply to the physical world. And now people are thinking these things must also apply to the spiritual world. But there they do not apply. There we have to be prepared to see a unity at one moment and then having to overcome this unity the next moment, and that it will show itself to to be a plurality. It is unity and plurality at one and the same time. Nor is it possible to transfer ordinary arithmetic, physical mathematics, to the spiritual world. It is one of the most powerful, and at the same time also most profound, Ahrimanic Prejudices—wanting to apply concepts we have acquired in the physical world just as they are to the spiritual world. We really must arrive on its threshold without bag and baggage, unencumbered with all we have learned in the physical world. We have to be prepared to leave things behind on the threshold. All concepts and ideas, and, indeed, especially the concepts we have made great effort to achieve, have to be left behind. We have to be prepared to accept that in the spiritual world something quite new is given. Man has an enormous tendency to cling to what is given in the physical world. He wants to take his achievements from the physical world into the spiritual world. Yet it must be possible for him to face a clean slate, face utter emptiness, where his only guide will be the thought that is beginning to assume life. This entry into the spiritual world has been called the Door of Death because it is really much more of a death even than Physical death. In physical death people are convinced they put aside their physical body. On entry into the spiritual world we must resolve really to put aside our concepts and ideas and to allow our essential nature to be rebuilt.

Now we come to stand before the winged thought entity that I have spoken of. We shall come to stand before it if we really make every effort to live within a thought. All we need to know then is that when the moment that lies ahead makes-different demands on us from those we have envisaged we must truly stand fast, we must not turn back as it were. The turning back tends to be an unconscious reaction. We flag, but our flagging merely indicates that we are not willing to leave behind bag and baggage. We are not prepared to do this because it means that the soul has to die in a way, with all it has acquired on the physical plane, before it can enter into the spiritual world. This door therefore has to be called the Door of Death, such being its nature. Then we shall be able to use the winged thought as a spiritual eye we have acquired, or also a spiritual ear, for it is exactly through this thought entity that we hear, sense, perceive what is there in the spiritual world.

Dear friends, it is possible to speak of specific experiences we may gain that allow us the enter into the spiritual world. Nothing else is required if we wish to gain these experiences but to persist in meditation using the prescribed method. Above all, it must be clearly understood that certain feelings with which we approach the threshold of the spiritual world will have to be put aside beforehand. These feelings arise because we usually want the spiritual world to be different from the way it presents itself to us.

This, then, is the first door, the Door of Death.

The second door is the Door of the Elements. It is the second door to be gone through by all who practise meditation with true devotion. It is, of course, also possible for people to have the benefit of a constitution that lets them reach the second door without having gone through the first. This is not a good thing from the point of view of true insight, but it is possible to get to that point without having gone through the first door. Full and proper insight will be gained only by going through the first door and then approaching the second in conscious awareness. This second door comes about in the following way. You see, having gone through the Door of Death one first of all finds oneself in specific conditions which one can see are really similar to sleep if looked at externally, considering their effect en man and the way they are apparent in the life of man. Inwardly, however, they are quite different. Externally, man is as though in a sleep state when in these conditions. It is exactly at the point when his thought has begun to live, when it begins to stir, to grow, that external man is in a sleep-like state. He need not be lying down—he may be sitting on a chair—but he is in a kind of sleep state. Outwardly this state cannot really be distinguished from the ordinary sleep state; inwardly, however, it is very different. Returning to the normal state we have in life we then realize that we were not asleep but within the life of thought, just as we are now in a condition where we have woken to the physical world, as usual, and are looking through our own eyes at things which are luminous. Yet we also know that now when we are awake we are thinking, producing thoughts, putting them together. Just before, however, when we were in that other state, the thoughts were producing themselves out of themselves. One thought approached another; they illumined one another; one thought moved away from another—and what we usually do ourselves when thinking has there been doing itself. We know that whilst we are normally an ego that attaches one thought to another, we float first to the one thought and then to another, when in this other state we are united with them; then we are off and within a third thought and afterwards Come floating back again. We get the feeling that space has ceased to exist.

I think you will agree that in physical space the position is that if we feel drawn to a point and look back on it, then move away from it and finally want to approach it again, we would first have to make our way back again; we would have to make our way there and back. This does not apply in the other state. Space is not like the space we know then, and we jump through space, as it were. One moment we are at one point, the next we have gone. We do not pass through space. The laws of space have ceased to exist. Here we are alive and active within thought itself. We know that the ego has not died. It is active within the life of thought, but we are not immediately masters of the thoughts within which we now live. The thoughts produce themselves—we are drawn along. We are not actively swimming in the currents of thoughts; instead the thoughts are taking us on their shoulders as it were, carrying us along. This state has to come to an end. It does so when we go through the Door of the Elements. Then We gain control of it all and are able to create a particular line of thought quite deliberately. Then our will is alive within the whole of thought life. This again is a tremendously important moment. I have even spoken of it exoterically in my public lectures.⁴⁶ The second goal is reached by identifying with our own destiny. This will enable us to bring the will into the world of living thought.

When we have first gone through the Door of Death we come to a point where various things are done with us in the spiritual world. We come to do things ourselves in the spiritual world by identifYing with our destiny. This is only achieved gradually. Then our thoughts assume a character identical with our own essential character- The deeds of our essential nature enter into the spiritual world. To do this properly it will be necessary to go through the second door. when we begin to use the power we derive from identifying with our destiny to take active control in our thoughts—not merely going along With a thought as though it were a dream picture but able to erase one thought or another as occasion arises and call up another—when we come to a point where we begin to be able to use our will in handling things, then we shall indeed have to go through an experience that may be referred to as going through the second door. It will be found that the will-power we shall now require presents itself to us as a fearsome beast. In the mystical tradition this has for many thousands of years been known as 'meeting the lion' . This encounter with the lion has to be gone through. It consists in a feeling of abject terror concerning what has to be done in the thought world, great fear of entering into a living union with the thought world. This terror must be overcome, just as the sense of isolation has to be overcome at the gate of death. We feel terror. This terror may present itself in all kinds i of ways, as a sensation that is not at all like fear or terror, yet it s essentially fear of what one is getting into there. It is important that we genuinely find a way of controlling the lion. The Imagination paints a very vivid picture of the beast opening its huge jaws ready to devour us. The will-power we want to use in the spiritual world is threatening to devour us. All the time the overriding sensation is that we must use our will, we must do something, we need to take hold of one thing or another, and at the same time another feeling arises in connection with all these elements of will activity into which we are entering. It is the feeling that they will devour us if we take hold of them, extinguish us in the world. That is the lion devouring us. What we literally must do—if we are to stay with the metaphor—is not to give in to fears that the will elements may take hold of us there in the spiritual world, devour us and strangle us; no, we must mount the lion and take hold of those will elements, using them to effect our deeds. That is the crux of the matter.

Your can see, of course, what this is all about. Having first of all gone through the gate of death we are then outside the body, and out there we can only use the forces of the wilt. We must fit into the cosmic harmonies. The forces to be used out there are also within us, it is only that they function at an unconscious level—the forces that make the blood move, make our hearts beat, derive from spiritual entities. And we become immersed in these when we immerse ourselves in the element of will. These forces are within us. If someone is taken hold of by the element of will without having followed the regular esoteric path, without having gone through the gate of death, he is taken hold of by the forces that normally circulate in his blood, beat to his heart. He is then not using the forces that exist outside his body but the forces present within his body. This would be ‘grey magic’. It would induce a person to intervene in the spiritual world of his Own accord with forces we should not use to intervene in the spiritual world. So it is important that we see the lion at this point, that we truly have this beast before us and know: That is what it looks like, that is how the forces of will want to take hold of us, and we must lay hold of it out there outside the body. If we do not go up to the second door we shall not see the lion and shall then be in permanent danger of wanting to rule the world out of human egotism. The right Path to knowledge is the one that leads first of all out of the physical body and existence as a human being, after which we approach the relationship we will need to form with the entities of the spiritual world.

Now, of course, most people are inclined to look for an easier way to the spiritual world than through genuine meditation. It is possible, for instance, to avoid the Door of Death and approach the second door if one's inner constitution permits this. This is achieved by giving oneself up to specific mental pictures, particularly of the fervent type, that are supposed to suggest general surrender to the whole universe. Mental pictures suggested by some mystic or other with only partial knowledge, suggested in good faith. But they mean we pass over thought effort as though in a dream, with feelings being stimulated directly. Feeling are whipped up, the emotions are enthusiastified. It will indeed be possible to reach the second door by this method, and one will also be given over to the will forces, but instead of controlling the lion the person is devoured by it and the lion will do as it likes with him. This means that things will occur that fundamentally speaking are occult, but in the main are egotistical. Despite a certain inherent risk it is therefore necessary from the point of view of the true esoteric teaching of today again and again not to draw attention to any kind of mysticism that merely whips up feelings and emotions. Such an appeal to elements that whip up the inner life of man, cracking the whip to drive him out of his physical body whilst keeping him in the context of his blood and heart forces, the physical forces active in the blood and the heart, will lead him to perceive the spiritual world iii a way; this cannot be denied and may indeed have much to be said for it that is good. But it makes man feel his way about in uncertainty in the spiritual world, so that he is not the least able to differentiate between egotism and altruism.

One finds oneself in a difficult situation having to stress this, for present-day minds are still very apt to got to sleep during proper meditation and anything relating to it. They prefer not to tighten uP their thinking to the point where it is possible to identify oneself with the thinking process. They much prefer to be told: Give yourself up to all-loving devotion, to the universal spirit, or something like that. The result is that thinking is avoided and the emotions are whipped up. People are indeed guided to spiritual perception in that way; but they are not in full conscious awareness and are unable to tell if the things they experience there, things they experience for themselves, arise from egotism or do not arise from egotism. Yes, parallel to selfless meditation there has to be enthusiasm brought into all our feelings, but the point is that this must run parallel to thought. Thought must not be excluded. Certain mystics are, however, seeking to achieve something exactly by the method of suppressing thought and giving themselves up entirely to the glow of whipped-up emotions.

This is a difficult point, for it does work and people who whip UP their feelings like that do progress much faster. They do enter the spiritual world and they have all kinds of experiences there, and that is what most people want. For most people it is not a question of entering the spiritual world in the right way but rather of getting there altogether. The uncertainty arises because if we do not first go through the Door of Death and instead approach the Door of the Elements directly, Lucifer will prevent us from actually perceiving the lion. We are then devoured by it before we see it, as it were. The problem is that we are no longer able to tell what relates to us and what is Part of the world out there. We come to know spiritual entities, elemental spirits. It is possible to get to know quite an extensive spiritual world without going through the Door of Death, but on the whole these are spiritual entities whose function it is to maintain the human circulation and human heart action. Such entities are of course always present in the spiritual, the elemental, world around us. These are spirits whose sphere of life is the air, the warmth flowing around us, and also light.

Their sphere of life also lies in the music of the spheres our physical organs are unable to hear. They are spiritual entities active and present in all that lives. That is the world we would then enter. It all gets very seductive because it really is possible to make the most marvellous spiritual discoveries in this world. You know, when someone who has not gone through the Door of Death but has marched straight up to the lion gate, failing to see the lion, perceives an elemental spirit whose function it is to maintain heart activity, such an elemental spirit—which also has to maintain the hearts of other people—may on occasion give news of other people, even of people from the past; or it may offer prophetic tidings relating to the future. So the business may bring great successes but it still is not the right path, for it does not give us free mobility in the spiritual world.

The third door to be passed is the Door of Sun. Again there will be a specific experience as we approach this door. At the Door of Death we must perceive a winged angel's head, at the Door of the Elements a lion. At the Door of the Sun we must perceive a dragon, a wild dragon. And we must take a proper look at this wild dragon. But now Lucifer and Ahriman will together make every effort to make the dragon invisible, to hide it from our spiritual vision. If we do perceive it we shall find that, fundamentally speaking, this wild dragon has above all to do with ourselves. It is the tissue of the instincts and feelings fundamentally relating to what in ordinary life we call our lowest nature. The dragon has within it all the forces we need for the process of digestion and many other things—if you'll forgive my reference to such base functions. The principle within us that enables us to digest food and perform a number of other functions linked to what strictly speaking is our lowest nature appears to us in the t-07. of a dragon. We must look at it as it emerges from us coil upon coil. It is far from beautiful, that dragon, and this makes it easy for Lucifer and Ahriman to influence our unconscious soul life and get us to a point where unconsciously we do not want to know about seeing the dragon. It is a tissue also of all our idiocies, all our vanities, our pride and self-seeking and also of our basest instincts.

The Door of the Sun is given that name because it is the forces dwelling in the sun that also weave the very tissue of which the dragon is composed. Sun forces make it possible for us to digest our food and perform those other organic functions. This truly comes about through living with the sun. If we do not perceive the dragon at the Door of the Sun the dragon will devour us and we shall become one with it in the spiritual world. We shall then no longer be different from the dragon; we shall actually be the dragon going through experiences in the spiritual world. And the dragon can experience things of great significance, it can learn magnificent things as it were. Those are experiences more enticing, I'd say, then those made at the Door of Death or after passing the Door of Death. The experiences made at the Door of Death are colourless to begin with, shadowy and subtle, so slight and subtle that they easily escape us and we are not much inclined to develop the degree of attention needed to take hold of them. And again a certain pitch must be reached in order that something so delicately coming to life in our thought may be able to expand. In the end it will expand into a world. But it calls for long term active effort and endeavour to reach the point where it shows itself as a reality full of colour, sound and life. We must let those forms that are without sound or colour take on life from all corners of infinity, as it were.

If for example we want to use what may be called ‘head clairvoyance’—meaning the type of clairvoyance that arises when thought is enlivened—to detect the simplest spirit of the air or of water, this spirit of the air or the water will initially be something so slight and shadowy as it flits across the horizon that it will not catch our interest. If it is to assume colour or to sound forth, colour has to come to it from the whole periphery of the cosmos. That however will only happen after a long period of inner effort. It will only happen if we watt for this to be given to us. Just think, if you have such a small spirit of the air, metaphorically speaking. and it is to come out in colour, to appear in colour, then the colour has to radiate in from a mighty part of the cosmos. It will be necessary to have the strength to make it radiate in. Such strength however can only be achieved through devotion. The radiant forces have to come in from out there through devotion. If we are all of a kind with the dragon, if we are One with it, and we see a spirit of the air or the water, the inclination will be to let the powers radiate out that are within us, specifically in the organs which in ordinary life are called lower organs. That Is much more easily done. The head is in itself a perfect organ, but the astral body and the ether body of the head do not have much colour to them. The colours have been used to form the brain, for instance, and particularly the cranium, the bony skull cap. If therefore you used head clairvoyance on the threshold of the spiritual world to lift your astral body and ether body out of the physical body, there would not be much colour to it. Colours are used to form the perfect organ, the brain. If on the other hand you use, shall we say belly clairvoyance, to lift the astral body and ether body out of the stomach. the liver, the gallbladder and other organs, the colours have not been used in the same way to form perfect organs. These organs are only on the way to perfection. What comes from the astral body and ether body of the belly is beautifully coloured; it glitters and glistens in all kinds of sun colours. Lifting your astral body and ether body out of that region you will bestow the most marvellous colours and hues upon the forms you are seeing. It is therefore possible for someone to see marvellous colours and paint pictures in gorgeous colours.

It is of course interesting to study the spleen, the liver and the gut. Anatomists find this interesting and for science it is indeed necessary. Yet if someone with knowledge goes into this, the beautiful and colourful pictures which appear represent what lies at the back of the digestive process two hours after a meal. There can be no objection to this being investigated. Today anatomists find it necessary to study these organs; one day science will gain a great deal from investigating them and knowing what the ether body is doing when the stomach is digesting food. One thing has to be clearly understood however—if we do not have conscious awareness as we go through the Door of the Sun, we will not know that we are offloading everything mere is in the ether and astral bodies of our bellies onto the dragon, separating it out. Letting this radiate out into the forms seen clairvoyantly we do indeed perceive a marvellous world. The beautiful result is also the one most easily achieved, but it does not in the first place arise through higher powers, out of head clairvoyance' but through belly clairvoyance. It is very important that we know this. For the cosmos nothing is low in the absolute sense, only relatively speaking. The cosmos needs to work with tremendously significant forces to bring about what is needed for the digestive system. The point, however, is that we must not fall into error, not deceive ourselves, but know things as they are. To know that something presenting itself from a truly marvellous aspect is nothing but the digestive process, that is something really important. If on the other hand we believe, say, that a special angelic sphere is revealing itself to us in such a picture, then we are indeed in error. A reasonable man will therefore not be against a science being nurtured on the basis of such knowledge but merely against such things being put in a false light. That is the real point. It may happen, for instance, that some process in the course of digestion results in someone always lifting out a specific part of his ether body at a specific stage in the digestive process; he may then be a natural clairvoyant. It is however important to know what is going on there.

Man will find it difficult therefore to use head clairvoyance—i.e. a sphere where all colour present in the ether and astral bodies has been used to bring about the marvellous structure of the brain—and make forms that are without colour or sound assume full colour and to resound. With ‘belly clairvoyance’ on the other hand he will find it relatively easy to see the most marvellous things in the world. This belly clairvoyance does of course also involve powers which man must learn to use. The powers used there for the digestive process are after all merely transformed power. We will experience them in their right form if we get better and better at identifying with our destiny. In this field, too, it will teach us to draw up not just the winged angel s head that came up first but the other part that follows, and it is important to draw up not just the powers that serve digestion but also those of a higher kind. Those are the powers that lie in our karma, in our destiny. Identifying ourselves with these we shall be able to send forth the spiritual entities we see around us, entities whose tendency is such that sounds and colours flow inward from the universe. Then, of course, the spiritual world will have its full content, it will be concrete, so real and concrete that we find ourselves within it the same way we find ourselves in the physical world.

A particular problem arises at the Door of Death. We really have the feeling—and this, too, has to be overcome—that we will lose ourselves there. Having made a real effort, however, to identify with the thought element we can also be aware that we may have lost ourselves but will find ourselves again. That is an experience one has there. We lose ourselves on entering into the spiritual world, but we also know that we shall find ourselves again. The step has to taken of reaching the abyss, losing ourselves in the abyss, but trust that we shall find ourselves again over there. That is an experience to be gone through. Everything I have described refers to inner experiences that have to be gone through. It is important to know what really happens to the soul there. It is just the same when we are supposed to see something; it is easier if a friend points it out than if we try and work it out for ourselves. But everything I have described can be achieved if you practise true devotion in giving yourself up again and again to your inner work and to inner overcoming through meditation. This has been described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in the second part of Occult Science.

This is especially important—that such different kinds of experience are met with beyond the threshold of the spiritual world. If we desire—and this is only natural—to see a continuation of the physical world in the spiritual world, a duplicate of it; if we think everything is bound to look the same in the spiritual world as it does here in the physical world, we cannot enter that world. It will indeed be necessary to go through something that feels like a reversal of everything we have known here in the physical world. Here in the Physical world we are used to open our eyes, for example, and see light, to gain the impression of light. If we expect to be able to open a spiritual eye in the spiritual world and gain an impression of light, we cannot enter that world for we will have the wrong expectations. Something like a mist will be woven which veils the spiritual senses, hiding the spiritual world from us the way a sea of mist hides the mountains from view. It is not possible, for instance, to see objects illumined by light in the spiritual world. It must be understood that in the spiritual world we ourselves shine forth with the light. When light falls on an object in the physical world the object becomes visible to us. In the spiritual world we ourselves are inside the ray of light, touching the object with the light. One therefore knows one is swimming with the ray of light in the spiritual world; one knows oneself to be within the radiant light. This serves to indicate how we can acquire ideas that can help us get on in the spiritual world. It is extremely useful, for instance, to visualize the following: What would it be like if you were inside the sun now? Not being inside the sun you are seeing objects when they are illumined by the sun s rays, because they reflect the light. Imagine now you are inside the sun's rays and touching the objects with them. This contact is an experience we have in the spiritual world; in fact, experience in the spiritual world consists of our knowing ourselves to be alive within it. We know ourselves to be alive within the weaving of thoughts. It is just when this state begins, where we consciously know ourselves to be within the weaving of the thoughts, that there is an immediate transition to the state of knowing oneself to be within the bright radiance of light. For thought arises from light. Thought weaves in the light. But it will only be at that point that we experience ourselves as becoming immersed in light when we are within the weaving of thoughts.

Mankind is now at a stage where such concepts have to be acquired. Otherwise men will find themselves in completely unfamiliar worlds when they go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world. The capital resources men were given by the gods at the very beginning of earth evolution have gradually been used up. Men now no longer take with them through the gate of death the remnants of past inheritance. They now need to acquire ideas bit by bit here in the physical world that will enable them to pass through the gate of death and see the entities that come to meet them there offering the dangers of temptation and seduction. It is because of these great cosmic schemes that spiritual science has to be made known to man now, that spiritual science must come among men. And today in particular, in these fateful days, we can observe transitions really being made. People are presently going through the gate of death at a young age, as the great destiny of the age demands. They may be said to have consciously allowed death to approach them whilst still young. I am not so much speaking of the moment just before death occurs, say on the battlefield. In that situation many elements of enthusiasm and so on may be present and these make the moment of death far less elevated or far less a moment of utter concentration than we are Inclined to think. But when death has occurred it leaves an ether body that has not yet been used up, leaves an unspent ether body in our time. The dead individual can look at this and he will perceive this Phenomenon, this fact of death, with much greater clarity than he would see it when death has ensued due to illness or old age.

Death on the field of battle is an event of much greater intensity and has much powerful effects than death occurring in another way. It therefore has an effect on the soul that has gone through the gate of death, for it is instructive. Death is terrible—or at least can be terrible—to man whilst he is within his body! However, once he has gone through the gate of death and looks back to his death, death will be the most wonderful experience ever possible in the human cosmos. Looking back to his entry into the spiritual world through death is the most marvellous, the most glorious, magnificent and beautiful event on which the dead individual can ever look back during the time between death and rebirth. Birth has left little real trace in our physical awareness, for no one equipped with ordinary, undeveloped faculties will recall his physical birth. But death is certainly always there for a soul which has gone through the gate of death, from the moment consciousness develops. Death will always be present and present as the most beautiful, the one who brings resurrection into the spiritual world.⁴⁷ And death is the most marvellous kind of teacher, a teacher truly able to prove to a receptive soul that there is a spiritual world, because by its very own nature death destroys the physical and only lets the spiritual come forth. This resurrection of the spiritual element, with the physical completely cast aside, is an event that is always present between death and new birth. It lends strength, a marvellous, great event, and the soul gradually grows into understanding of this. It grows into this in a completely unique way if the event is to some degree one we have chosen, one might say; not a death we lave sought, of course, but nevertheless found of one's own free will by joining the ranks of one's own free will. This again brings greater clarity to that moment. Someone who otherwise has not thought much about death, who has concerned himself little or only to some extent with the spiritual world, can now find death a marvellous teacher once he has died, particularly in our time. This particular war can reveal something of tremendous significance for the relationship between the physical and the spiritual world. I have already drawn attention to this in a number of lectures given in these difficult times: what we are able to do by teaching merely by the word is not enough; but in future people will receive tremendous instructions because so many deaths have occurred. These deaths have an effect on the dead, and the dead in turn intervene in the process of the future civilization of mankind.

I am able to give you the words of one who has gone through the gate of death as a young man now in the present time. His words have come through to me and they really come as a surprise, one might say, because they show how this dead individual who is experiencing death with great clarity as something he went through on the field of battle is now finding his way into the different kind of experience one has after death. They show him working his way out of earthly ideas and into spiritual ideas. Let me communicate these words to you. They were picked up, if I may call it this, when one of those who died on the field of battle tried to let them reach those he left behind.

Here all is light
And I feel
Power of life.
Death has woken
Me from sleep,
From spirit slumber.
I shall abide,
And power of light
Arising in me
Will become deed.

That, as it were, is what the dead individual learned by looking on the death he went through, as if his essential nature was taking In all it must learn to live after death; and it also wants to make this known, wants to reveal it.

Here all is light and I feel power of life.

He feels that he is more alive now where his comprehension of the spiritual world is concerned than he was before his death. He experiences death as one who awakens us, as a teacher:

Death has woken me from sleep,
From spirit slumber.

And he feels that he will be one who does things in the spiritual world. But he feels the it is the radiant powers within him that do the doing, he feels light coming to life within him:

I shall abide,
And power of light
Arising in me
Will become deed.

It really is possible to see everywhere, and to see rightly, that anything perceived in the spiritual world will again and again provide absolute confirmation of the things that can also become generally known out of the spiritual world through what is called imaginative perception. And it is this one so much wants to see come to life through our spiritual movement: that we do not merely have knowledge of the spiritual world but that this knowledge really comes to life in us so strongly that we learn new ways of feeling with the world, share In the experience of the world as the ideas of spiritual science come to life within us. As I have said so often, fundamentally we are asked to bring inward life into the thoughts of spiritual science; this is the contribution we are asked to make to the further development of the world, that the spiritual thoughts born out of spiritual science may stream together and soar up into the spiritual world as powers of Illumination that are given back to the radiant universe; that the universe may unite with the element which those who have gone through the gate of death in these fateful times are making part of the movement of spiritual culture for mankind. Then the words will come true which again shall conclude our talk today:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 45. According to Leibniz, monads are the ultimate substantial constituents of the world and these must be unextended and therefore mental or spiritual by nature. God and human souls are considered monads in this philosophy. (Translator).
• 46. Rudolf Steiner, Geist-Erkenntnis in gliicklichen und ernsten Stunden des Lebens. Berlin, 15 January 1915. In Aus schicksaltragender Zeit (GA 64). In English, extract in Anthroposophical News Sheet 14:37-8.
• 47. In the second of the available records (very detailed notes), this passage reads:
  

During their beautiful friendship, so significant for the newer intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works on which they were working, and when Schiller received parts of “Wilhelm Meister” from Goethe, he wrote to Goethe, overwhelmed by the impression of the chapter he had just received: “So much, however, is certain, the poet is the only true man, and the best philosopher is but a caricature compared to him.”

At the time, this might have sounded strange, but for us today it does not. We enter into Schiller's soul and gain insight into the truth of his words when we measure them against the significant letter that Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after the beginning of their friendship. Both had discussed their views on nature and the world in their conversations. In the letter in question, Schiller expresses how Goethe does not gain his view through speculation, but seeks a necessary truth in the totality of the world's phenomena. Everything is contained in Goethe's intuition, and he has little cause to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from him.

In Goethe's way of looking at the world, in his inner attitude, from which he created his works, Schiller sees something that introduces man particularly deeply into the secrets of existence. When one examines the thoughts and opinions that play between Goethe and Schiller, one sees Schiller absorbed in Goethe's imagination, in the inner truth of Goethe's imagination. At that time, Schiller was writing his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, in which he explains how man can develop into a fully human being through evolution, which is inherent in every human being as the higher human being. In Goethe's way of radiating his imagination, Schiller found something that makes a human being a complete human being; he saw in it a way to live into that which can bring a person into true harmony with the origins of things.

When you hear great minds talk about imagination like this, it seems very different from the way imagination is talked about today. Now that it is contrasted with objective observation, it is as if imagination were something arbitrary, something that leads people to put things together in any old way. (Gap in the stenography.

If we consider that Goethe was a naturalist, so to speak, a specialist, his following statements have a double value: Man strives to fathom the secrets of nature and longs for its worthy interpreter, art. Art and beauty are manifestations of the secret laws of nature, which could never be fathomed without them. When imagination, which only plays out of feelings and impulses, mixes with other achievements of the human soul, we have to admit that it sometimes leads away from the truth. It is not for science and research. But as a forerunner of higher cognitive abilities, it shows the way to hidden connections between things that would not be seen without it. But for certain areas of life, it is absolutely necessary that what the imagination combines be substantiated by research in strict external evidence.

Accordingly, Goethe's words or Schiller's position seem to make it necessary for us to determine in Goethe how he sees something in his imagination that offers truth, in contrast to an arbitrary, disorderly game that we can call the fantastic play of ideas. When we seek to scientifically explore the laws of nature, our observations force us to our judgment. This is not the case with fantasy. Certain ideas or thoughts must be connected by inner necessity if they are to be justified. There must be something that leads them from thought to thought in a certain direction.

When we hear great minds speak of such truths, it is certainly permissible to apply to their insights the standards of the methods used in spiritual research, which lead to the truths that are often discussed. The methods are the so-called clairvoyant ones that enable messages about the facts and beings of the spiritual world. In their presentation, we will also touch on the lower forms of clairvoyance, but only briefly, because they can never lead to real goals. In contrast, we will make the method and scope of the higher clairvoyance, achieved through proper training, the subject of our consideration.

Some who only know the lower form of clairvoyance, which occurs as somnambulism, for example, consider it to be an illness. There are conditions in which the soul life of a person is filled with images from other worlds. It is a kind of sleep, perhaps of such a light degree that the layman mistakes it for complete wakefulness. When such a “clairvoyant” perceives images in this sleep-like state, they sometimes offer something strange and amazing. They can be prophetic in nature. Such a person can make statements about illnesses before they occur, or, what seems even more astonishing to the layman, they can state exactly what will help against them and so on. In such states, the person in question has another world before them. Anyone who denies this has not done any research. What is gained through such a lower form of clairvoyance is not the subject of our consideration today, but rather what is acquired on the path of trained clairvoyance.

The aspiring clairvoyant consciously takes each step, with strict self-control. The only question is this: how should we imagine the development of such a clairvoyant? If we want to define the essential, we can certainly compare it to the means of external research. In science, the researcher seeks to fathom the secrets of nature with the help of instruments. The trained clairvoyant also works with an instrument, and indeed with a very complicated instrument, without which he can investigate nothing. His instrument is precisely himself — not in his everyday state, but only when, through spiritual-scientific methods, he has transformed his cognitive faculty into a different soul constellation and created new spiritual organs for himself, when he can therefore testify from his own experiences. It cannot be that the external senses exhaust the insights. With every new organ, a new content of the environment is formed. There may be hidden worlds around us. For the trained clairvoyant, the otherwise hidden world becomes just as real as the external one. Just as after an operation for the blind, so a whole world flows towards the clairvoyant, which is his experience.

It should not be thought that this can be achieved by external means. I can, of course, only hint at how it happens. Later on I hope to be able to tell you more about how research is carried out. A person will observe most faithfully when he receives what the world of the senses has to tell him, uninfluenced by subjective effects. It is essential that man should only give nature the opportunity to express itself. The less subjective combination there is involved, the better it is. Man cannot help reflecting on the external world from which he gains his perceptions, but it is by no means the case that all his concepts, ideas and images flow into him from the external world. He draws the essential from his own inner being. This can be seen, for example, from the way in which modern thinking has come to understand the structure of the solar system. Copernicus and Galileo may well have seen the same thing that had been presented to the outer eye since time immemorial. But it was they who first established the laws. Copernicus added new combinations to the old observational material and thereby did the essential work. The same applies to orthodox Darwinism. Similar observations had been made before Darwin and Haeckel, but they approached the subject with a new state of mind. We must realize that concepts and ideas are not something that flows into us from the outside, but something that man himself must produce. When you sail out to sea, where you cannot see land, the vault of heaven seems to rest on the surface of the sea in the form of a circle. You will only understand why this is so if you are able to construct the circle around the point in the middle in your thoughts. In this way you can understand all the laws, and then reality must conform to them. Kepler would never have been able to find the path of the planets if elliptical orbits had not previously appeared in his mind.

Thus we carry our ideas to external things, which tell us: We accomplish what you have thought. - And so you come to understand that the same thing that lives in your soul underlies this external sense world as a law. Now imagine that a person tries to hold on to a thought that is constructed in his own soul. If a person succeeds in detaching himself from all external observation and directing his entire inner attention to the thought, a soul process takes place that is called concentration. The human soul must first take hold of something that lives only in the soul and hold on to it with all inner rigor. Now, of course, that is not enough, but it must be repeated over and over again. However, it is not effective to hold on to mental images that come from outside.

Now there is experience in this field, there is advice available on how to best develop the powers of the soul through concentration. There are certain core principles. It is not necessary to be convinced of their reality from the outset. The greater the lack of prejudice, the better it is. One instruction, for example, says: Fill your soul with a certain content, devote yourself solely to this soul content. You need not believe in it, but you must let it work in you, concentrate on it, and you will find that you achieve an effect in your soul through the content. It may be that external truth does not apply to the sentence; that does not matter, what matters is the working power in the soul. You will see that inner experiences arise with constant repetition.

Symbolic pictures are particularly effective. I would like to remind you of one in particular: the deeply significant symbol of the black cross with roses. Let us recall the abstract meaning of the rose cross: Goethe's “Stirb und Werde” (Die and Grow), namely, the demand that we, in developing our soul, must rise above the things of the sensual world so that it disappears around us, dies away. He whose soul remains empty is but a “gloomy guest on the dark earth”. If you succeed and are quite certain that something higher is growing out of the hidden depths of your soul, then you have become new in higher worlds. Dying in the cross, rising in the roses — that is the meaning of the symbol of the Rose Cross. In the mineral and vegetable worlds, spiritual life is everywhere to be found, and a presentiment suggests that the underlying spiritual is of physical origin. The outer world is ultimately only the physiognomy of a spiritual world. The human soul is like steel or flint; it conjures up divine-spiritual content from within the human soul's life. The important thing is to find the right symbol. Someone may say: You may well speculate as to what the Rose Cross means. The researcher is indifferent to that. When we establish a natural law in physics, science tells us something, explains it. The Rose Cross tells us nothing. — But that is not the point. It is most effective when symbols are ambiguous. One enters into a pure, inner soul activity, and by leaning on the symbol as a starting point, one concentrates in the soul on this symbol.

Let us consider what the soul consciously does; that is what matters. What works in the human being are forces that are capable of awakening what is dormant, experiences that are the only guarantee that it is an inner reality when the person comes to the feeling: Actually, the cross was only a kind of bridge. Now I have received something in my soul life, something quite different, which arises in my soul, an experience that I cannot receive through external things. At first the disciple does not know whether he has a mirage or reality before him. It depends on developing further abilities, because even what has just been described is still a detour for the clairvoyant, they are pictures. In the course of further practice, a feeling develops: it depends on what is expressed in the images. — If you press on your eye or apply an electric current to it, a glow of light may appear, determined by the inner constellation of the eye. This is roughly how it is when the images appear; they flash through the soul like spiritual lightning. When you are confronted with an object, you know that it is not produced by your eye, but that it communicates with your eye. The same thing happens in the spiritual realm. The seer now knows just as surely that he did not make the object, that the object expresses itself to him through his inner organs. In fact, the way the pictures are experienced now expresses objective facts. Just as imagination and perception are distinguished externally, so it is necessary that the seer be preserved in his healthy senses, for in hardly any other field is confusion as easily possible as in that of inner experience. Therefore, other things must go hand in hand with it.

If the observer were to practise only what has just been described, he could become a madman who believes that he can magically transform appearance into reality through his personality. It is necessary that the human being learns to renounce everything in the experience of the higher spiritual world that is connected with his desires and inclinations. Psychologically, the present human being behaves differently. He may correct the external sensory impressions, but feeling and subjective inclination are all too easily involved. An experience of spiritual reality must be preceded by the renunciation of every wish that something could be one way or another. Only when all sympathy has been eliminated can one experience objective spiritual reality.

Something else is essential. For those who are led on the way to clairvoyance in a professional, not amateurish way, who learn to see in a way that corresponds to the truth, it is of great value that they do not start the way without certain prerequisites. It is a difficult path. Therefore, one must have absorbed truths beforehand, messages from those who have already researched. It is also possible to start out with less knowledge, but then the soul world remains poor, its contents crowd together like fixed ideas. This is how those clairvoyants come about who then believe, for example, that they have united with God, describe him and so on. When such clairvoyants describe the higher worlds, their descriptions appear trivial. But to anyone who approaches the higher worlds with the tried and tested experiences of the spiritual researcher, a manifold world content appears, and everything outside appears only as a small part of the great world. The person who makes this experience his own knows that what he is experiencing is not deceiving him. He can perceive spiritually with the same certainty as in the external sense world. This is trained clairvoyance.

What must happen for these higher senses to be developed? For spiritual science, the human being is not only an external physical body, but for higher vision he also has the otherwise invisible etheric body and the astral body, the carrier of desire and suffering. You know what sleep represents for spiritual research. The physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the I act on the physical body from the outside. On awakening, the astral body returns to the physical and etheric bodies, and the sense world reappears. Thus, during sleep, the astral body and I step out of the physical body. How can a person hear and see the sense world? With eyes and ears, otherwise the world would be colorless, lightless, and soundless. When the astral body leaves the physical body, it is in the spiritual world, but it has no organs. If it had such organs, it could perceive the spiritual environment as it perceives its surroundings in the physical. So if a person is to perceive the spiritual world, spiritual senses must develop in him. This happens through the methodical schooling of the soul life. When the astral body of a person who has been trained in this way, using spiritual methods, leaves the body, it is in a completely different situation than under ordinary circumstances. It is as if what was previously a chaotic mass in the astral body is now structured and forms organs. What used to be a misty, smoky mass is beautifully formed. This takes a long time. Since ancient times, this process has been called catharsis, purification or cleansing. The inner being of the human being is then cleansed of drives, desires and passions. This is the first stage.

The second stage follows on from the first. When a person returns to their physical and etheric bodies in the morning, the external organs have the stronger powers; they drown out the subtle new sounds in the internal organs. These are always present, but they are weak as long as they are drowned out by the powers of the etheric body in the sense organs. Later, the human being learns to handle the internal organs so that he can also see the spiritual perceptions alongside the sensory perceptions. This process is called enlightenment, photismos. These are very real processes that have been experienced.

Step by step, in every detail, the person applies the given method to train himself to become an instrument of perception. The schooling should thus cause him to provide his inner man with organs. Just as nature has perfected the outer man, so the path of development is continued, and what nature has begun is carried forward by the person himself. When man in this way gains insight into the spiritual, he owes this to the fact that his inner man has become ruler over the physical and etheric bodies. Man has become his own master. In the beginning he attains control over his etheric body. In the trained clairvoyant this happens in such a way that the etheric body adapts its powers to those of the astral body, it becomes elastic. If clairvoyance occurs of its own accord in pathological conditions, it is due to other causes. It falls under the same laws, but it is uncontrollable. When a person is affected in a certain way, or when he is ill, the etheric body can become partially or completely free from the physical body; it can be loosened. This is not normal. Then the person has an etheric body that is not as attached to their physical body as it is in the normal state of being, and is therefore easy to handle. In contrast, the spiritual student strengthens the astral body and thereby helps it to gain control over the etheric body. In case of illness, a part of the etheric body can be released and then handled by the astral body. Such people can sometimes gain real insights into the spiritual world because the condition is based on the same principles, but they are not reliable. The strict results of spiritual research are not achieved in this way.

The question is sometimes asked: How can a disease process produce extrasensory perception? — Health and knowledge do not have to go the same way, there is no contradiction in this, but also no recommendation. In any case, we see what is based on what leads facts of the higher world into the field of vision of man. Just as we enjoy the surrounding world, so we find in the spiritual world that which first makes the sensual world understandable to us. The communications of the spiritual researcher are based on processes that he has experienced. By telling this, he conveys facts of a world that can also be understood by the ordinary mind, while our soul world is otherwise determined by what is happening in the physical. That, for example, the image of the rose can affect me is possible because the rose lets its forces flow into me. It is the same in the spiritual realm. The trained clairvoyant experiences the spiritual outer world in his soul life. He says to himself: The sense world is determined by law through entities, whose working and rule is opening up to me. I see that a blossom is approaching me in this way, worked out of the spiritual, out of spiritual foundations. I must make sacrifices in my soul life in order to let the world of higher spiritual entities flow into me. Imagine that this world is there and at work, that man could enter into it. This world, which the clairvoyant sees, is all around him. It acts on man as a determining power, which he does not see, but which flows in on him in a subconscious way. The clairvoyant is not satisfied with just seeing the person as he is shaped on the outside.

The soul-power of imagination can also be stimulated by the spiritual worlds. There we have the real basis of imagination and an understanding of Schiller's saying, which characterizes what is created in this way. Thus we can understand Goethe's statement: “There is imagination that has an inner certainty. There is a fantastic quality that combines, and there is a fertile imagination that is inspired by the forces that the clairvoyant beholds. Schiller, in view of his circumstances, could have had no inkling of spiritual science, but he sensed and felt that Goethe was justified in ascribing to imagination the ability to fathom certain secrets. |

No matter how much external fact the intellect can supply, genuine imagination can be much truer. Man is predisposed to ascend into the worlds of the spiritual, for the corresponding abilities slumber in every human being. Every human being will achieve it, even if it takes many lives. Until then, he can be stimulated by art, in which not only the world of the senses is expressed, but the creative spirit itself, which has gone through the medium of imagination. It is the outer image of the same. Thus we may say that imagination and clairvoyance are set for man as a share in spiritual life, as a great goal, as something that some have already achieved and that is superior to all other existence. When trained, clairvoyance leads the human being into the higher worlds. Imagination is its representative in the world of the senses. That is why it has an outstanding significance among the human soul forces. Imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the world of the senses.

A week ago, I tried to explain the manner of thinking, so strange to western minds, through which the theosophist attains his insights and knowledge of the cosmos. The sketchy character these lectures necessarily have prevents me from delving more profoundly into theosophical cosmology. Nevertheless, I will attempt today to give you at least a picture in descriptive form of the origin of the world based on Theosophy. I beg those who have scientific bents to bear in mind that in the course of three short lectures it isn't possible to go into scientific explanations of what I will say today. These scientific explanations will be included in a subsequent lecture cycle, in which I will speak in more detail about this subject. Also, in the second volume of my Theosophy, which will soon be published, cosmology will be discussed.¹

Allow me first of all to mention an important thought, which is basically very simple, but which must be clear to whoever wishes to understand evolution in the theosophical sense. When we speak of development, or evolution in a broad sense, we don't only mean the development of animal or plant life from a previous form, but we also mean the great transformations within the universe, and we include the origin of matter, the matter we can today perceive with our physical senses.

We said last time that in the history of the evolution of our planet there are seven consecutive stages, and I also briefly described these to you. You must therefore think of how our earthly planet goes through seven stages, which we call Rounds, in rhythmical sequence. Everything that exists and lives on our Earth was also existent before our present Earth come into being; it was existent in a kind of seed state, just as a whole plant is present in a seed, sleeps in the seed, so to speak, before it takes on form in the outer world. Such a slumber stage is called a “Pralaya”. On the other hand, the state in which everything awakens, gradually emerges and progresses from a beginning to a high point of perfection, we call “Manvantara”. When the state of perfection is reached, a Pralaya, a sleeping state, occurs once more, and this is followed again by a state of waking and growth. Thus the planet goes through this sequence seven times, reawakening seven times to a new Round.

The time between one Manvantara and the next passes in a state in which everything living on the earth sleeps, so to speak. But it isn't comparable to normal human sleep. In normal sleep only the activities of understanding and sense are interrupted, but you can see the physical body. The sleeping state of the Earth must be thought of differently. No earthly being is visible during this sleeping state. This state would be perceptible only to the opened eye of the so-called Dangma, the highest developed seer. This state is indescribable in words, for our words are inadequate for this kind of existence. I find no words in any language for this state. Therefore the developed seer says something quite different in order to give an idea of this state. He says: imagine a plant. You see this plant. Now imagine a kind of plaster impression of the plant, but in such a way that the plant itself is empty space and a Round is the plaster. Consider that the plaster is spiritual and only perceptible for certain senses. Whoever can see the plant cannot see the plaster impression at the same time, that is, the negative of the plant. Something similar is what the developed seer would perceive of the Earth during the Pralaya sleep. The Earth is not there. It is the hollow form, swimming in a great, mighty sea of the highest spiritual beings that is gradually disappearing and out of which the Being of the Earth itself flows.

Then something begins to originate within this hollow space, something not yet perceptible to the physical senses; it is only perceptible to the highly developed seer who can consciously move in the spiritual plane. At the beginning of the Earth's existence he would see a sphere in space, a purely spiritual sphere in which only the spiritual is present. Every time before a new Round begins, our Earth exists in such a spiritual state. When it awakens from the Pralaya sleep, it does so as such a sphere. The spiritual seer perceives it in a wonderful reddish glimmer. But that Earth contains everything that later becomes Earth. The densest bodies are also contained in this sphere.

How can we imagine this? It can be made clear by means of a simple process. Imagine a glass full of water. The water is fluid. When you cool the temperature sufficiently, the water becomes ice. You have the same thing in front of you as previously—ice is nothing other than water, only in another form. Raise the temperature and the ice reverts to water, with higher temperatures even to steam. By this example you can imagine how all matter derives from the spirit through densification. The spiritual sphere—seen only by the seer's developed eye—densifies gradually after it passes through a small Pralaya. It can then be seen by a less developed seer's eye. Then follows a kind of short sleeping state, and now the sphere is visible to the astral eye, that is, for whoever has developed this sense on the astral plane. Again a Pralaya state follows, and the sphere appears again as physical solid matter. Only now can physical eyes see it, physical ears hear it, physical hands grasp it. That is the fourth stage. Then a short Pralaya comes again. This stage disappears and again an astral sphere presents itself, but with much more highly developed beings. An analogous state appears in the sixth Round, also only visible to the spiritual seer. Thereafter another Pralaya and then a state only visible to the highest developed seer. Then follows what is invisible even to the Dangma. A long Pralaya follows and then the whole process begins again. This happens seven times. In this way the Earth is transformed from the lowest to the highest level.

Let us now follow the first Round. We can study it best by observing what exists on our Earth where it is most solid. In the first Round there were no mineral forms yet, no physical nature energy and no chemical energy. The Earth had carried out the previous evolution only to create a foundation for physical existence; it created this foundation in order to prepare a physical existence in the fourth Round. Our Earth looked like a fiery mass, with such tremendous temperatures that none of our present substances could have the form they now have. All substances were jumbled up in that fiery primal porridge—allow me to use that trivial word—in homogeneous, undifferentiated matter. Theosophy says: the Earth was in the fiery stage. Common fire is not meant, however, but fire of a higher, spiritual nature. There were no chemical elements involved. But what was in the interior of this matter was active. Two kinds of spiritual beings were active: those we call “Dhyani Chohans”,² and those beings who had not yet descended to physical materiality, who had a partially spiritual body, and who flowed through the fiery matter with tremendous rapidity. We see here a continuous emergence and disappearance of irregular forms, also of forms that remind us of those that will exist on Earth at a much later time.

The emerging and disappearing seems to follow a pattern. Forms arise which are reminiscent of later crystals and plants—even something that takes on human form, and then disperses. The humans who would later incarnate lived in that fire, modeling and preparing their bodies. That is how the Earth's first Round appears to us. Then followed the transition from this fiery, flowing Earth to the sleep-state.

The second Round began in the same spiritual way. “Ether” is finer than our present-day gas, but denser than the Earth was in the previous stage. In this very fine matter what we call chemical elements formed. You can find this second stage wonderfully described in religious books, where it is written that the divine beings ordered everything according to mass, number and weight. What had earlier been irregular was now organized in chemical elements according to number. The chemist will understand me, for he knows the regular periodic system of the elements. The individual substances were not yet related to each other. Now, however, as matter became differentiated, we see the most wonderful forms coming into existence which remind us of later forms, only they are not yet solid: star-like forms, angular forms, tetrahedrons, polyhedrons, round forms and so on. The forms that will later constitute nature are intimated. As in the first Round crystal forms were prearranged, the plant forms were constituted in the second Round. Then all flowed away; the astral and spiritual natures went through a Pralaya stage again and re-appeared in the third Round.

When we consider the physical state of the third Round, we find matter in a quite different state. It is not yet differentiated as air and water, but forms a kind of mist, or steam. It is no longer an ether form, but rather somewhat as cloud formations are today. And within these mist formations, which we find described in old sagas—the sagas of Nebelheim (home of mist) and Niflheim describe this state—we see matter in another form, no longer organized according to number, but equipped with energy. The esoteric researcher speaks here of the Law of Selected Relationships. The chemical substances organize themselves according to the Law of Selected Relationships. Now, however, in the third Round, energy emerged, which allowed the small to become larger and expand. The substances could organize themselves from within, energize themselves. Not only the first plant forms, which we met in the second Round, appeared, but growth was also possible. The first animal forms appeared, which we would consider to be extremely grotesque today. Gigantically large, colossal shapes formed themselves out of the mass of mist. For the occultist there is something of truth when he looks at the clouds and sees that one cloud looks like a camel, another like a horse. In the third Round the beings were mist-like forms, which reproduced by one transforming itself into the other, one deriving from the other, like the lower cell organisms, which are reminiscent of this process. These animal bodies, which formed out of the mist, could now provide the basis for those individualities who came from previous worlds to find bodies. The human being could now incarnate. He found a body which allowed him to appear, at first in an imperfect, primitive, groping way. Failed incarnations were also possible. We could say that during the third Round beings existed on the Earth who were intermediate beings between man and animal, in which the human being did not feel completely right, but could nevertheless incarnate.

Then another Pralaya occurred, and then the fourth Round. That is the Round to which we belong today. The Earth passed through the spiritual state, went through the astral and etheric states and finally arrived at the physical state which we have now reached. During the first Round the foundation for the mineral kingdom was formed, during the second Round the foundation for the vegetable kingdom was formed, during the third Round the possibility for animal forms was established. And now, during the fourth Round, the human being acquired the ability to take on the form he has today.

Let us consider the state of our physical Earth somewhat more closely. The state of the Earth in this fourth Round must be described as being much denser than the states of the previous Rounds. First there was a fiery state, then a misty one, then one between air and water. Still during the beginning of the fourth Round we had a kind of gushing matter, similar to protein. Gradually it all condensed, and what we have today as matter is nothing other than the condensed, originally gushing matter, exactly as ice is condensed water. At the beginning of the fourth Round all beings were created so they could live in this gushing matter. Man had a form similar to the one he has now, but his consciousness was extremely dim, comparable to that of a dreaming person. He dreamed his being in a kind of sleeping consciousness; the spirit was still lacking. Let us consider this state more closely. The human being was possible in that flowing, gushing state. We call these people of the first race³ dream-men. It is difficult to describe them. Another stage followed this one, in which matter became denser and separated into a more spiritual and a more physical materiality, comparable to the North and South Poles.

Now I ask you to consider the difference between the esoteric and the usual understanding of Darwinism. We have the human being present in the indicated stage of the earth, as well as the vegetable kingdom. The animal kingdom was also present, but without sexual reproduction capability, without warm blood and not yet capable of bringing forth sounds. The human being was also mute. He could not yet think, not even dim thoughts. The spirit had not yet entered the bodies. In the following, second race, matter separated into two poles. The human beings withdrew the matter that was useful to them and separated out the less useful matter, from which a kind of lateral branch of the higher animals formed. The lower animals were similar to today's mollusks, even fish-like forms developed.

The human being developed further and at the third stage discarded the matter that would not enable him to become the bearer of a higher consciousness. He gave it up as material for the animals, which now looked like amphibians with gigantic forms. They are described in fables and myths as flying dragons and so on. Until then, no being possessed sexual reproductive capacities. Not until the middle of the third race, the Lemurian epoch, does this appear, albeit primitively. The scene of this development, Lemuria, was in Asia in the Indian Ocean.

During the middle of the Lemurian age the great event occurred which allowed man to become a human being. The human beings who came over from previous planetary states were not all at the same level of development. Those who had reached a normal evolution during the previous misty earth cycle were able to incarnate during the third epoch. Among them, however, there were some who had already reached a higher stage; they could not incorporate during the third race at all. During every Round there are humans who develop to a normal stage and others who are more advanced. These are the masters. They are more highly developed individuals. In Theosophy they are called solar pitris or sun pitris. They had reached a higher spirituality, but could no more incarnate in the bodies of the men of those times than a contemporary person could incarnate in a plant. They waited for further evolution until the appropriate time had come, during the fourth race, when their incarnation could take place. Thus a spiritually highly developed humanity arose. The sagas and myths relate how at that time personalities existed who rose far above their fellow men. Individuals such as Prometheus, the Indian Rishis, Fire-Rishis, who were the leaders of humanity, including Manus, who gave later humanity laws. Only these solar Pitris could incarnate as adepts.

I already mentioned that at the start of the fourth Round sexuality did not yet exist. The separation of the sexes occurred only during the Lemurian time. Therewith the first incarnations were possible, the taking over of a body which hadn't already existed. Previously one being derived from another. With the separation of the sexes during the middle of the Lemurian age, birth and death arose and therefore the possibility of the effects of karma. The human being could burden himself with guilt. Everything we know as “human” arose at that time.

The Lemurian continent was destroyed by a fire-like catastrophe, and the Atlantean continent arose on the floor of what is now the Atlantic Ocean. During the Atlantean time another important event occurred to which I drew your attention when I spoke of the Whitsun holiday. I said that, with the exception of the solar Pitris, all beings lived in a lower spiritual condition. The solar Pitris could only take on selected bodies. Other bodies would only have allowed them to live with a dim consciousness. Dull-minded individuals would have resulted had they used the existent bodies. The Pitris therefore waited until certain animal-like forms evolved further. On the one hand they sank deeper into instinctual desires, but on the other hand, by this means the prerequisites for the later development of the brain were given. Matter was differentiated into nervous matter and sexual matter. The Pitris who had waited for that later time incarnated in this inferior matter. Religion indicates this as the biblical fall from paradise: the incarnation in worsened matter. If that hadn't happened, they would have remained in a much less conscious state. They would not have attained the clear thinking we now posses, but would have remained in a much duller state. They paid for this by allowing their bodies to be inferior, which however was compensated for by refined brain matter, thereby allowing them to achieve a higher level of consciousness and spirituality. A particular result of the evolution of the Atlantean race was the development of a phenomenal memory.

After Atlantis was destroyed by water, continued evolution resulted in our contemporary fifth race, during which deductive reasoning was a special achievement. This enabled the human race to bring art and science to a high level of development, which previously had not been possible. During the fifth sub-race of the fourth Round humanity reached a high-point: control by the spirit, which had incarnated in matter, so that humanity could ascend to higher and higher stages of evolution.

We have seen how the cosmos evolved in rhythmic stages to the point where we now stand. In previous Rounds the following developed:

1. the mineral kingdom

2. the vegetable kingdom

3. the animal kingdom

and then—

4. the human being

Theosophical cosmology is a self-contained whole, derived from the wisdom of the most developed seers. If I had a little more time I would be able to indicate to you how certain natural scientific facts are conducive to testifying to the accuracy of this image of the world. Look at Haeckel's famous phylogenic trees, for example, in which evolution is materialistically explained. If instead of matter you consider the spiritual stages, as Theosophy describes them, then you can make the phylogenic trees as Haeckel did—only the explanation is different.

In order that you do not confuse what I have said with what is described in many theosophical books as the various astral or physical states, I would like to bring the following to your attention. Evolution is often described as if they were concurrent stages. You find spheres placed next to each other, so that it appears as though life went from one sphere to another. In reality only one sphere exists, and only its conditions change. It is always the same sphere which goes through the various metamorphoses: spiritual, astral, physical, and so on.

We have seen that the introduction to these lectures, which we took from Goethe's words, is completely justified—that it is after all the human being who is the goal, the task of the earthly planet. The esotericist knows that every planet has its specific task. Nothing in the cosmos is coincidental.

The task of physical evolution is that what is created for us humans achieve its objective. You will not find a human being as he is today on Earth on any other planet. Beings, yes—but not human beings. The Earth exists in order that “I”-conscious human beings could be created. Through the first four Rounds the kingdoms of nature evolved in order that in the fourth man could be made a self-conscious being, who could reflect himself in his body. He will rise to higher levels of evolution, something that few can understand correctly. In the next, the fifth Round, the mineral kingdom will disappear. All mineral matter will be transformed to vegetable matter. Then the vegetable kingdom will reach its culmination and in the next Round the animal kingdom will form the lowest kingdom. During the seventh Round the human being will achieve his highest level of evolution. He will have become what planetary evolution intends.

Whoever understands this can have a profounder insight into the religious documents. There was a time when people believed like children in the religious documents. Then the Enlightenment came, and nothing is believed any more. But a time will come when people will learn to understand the images preserved for us in religious documents, fairy tales and fables. Thus we have the seven Rounds as the seven days of creation in the Bible. The first three days of creation have gone by, we are now in the fourth day of creation and the last three days of creation are yet to come. The first three days of creation in Genesis represent the past Rounds, and the last three indicate what is to come in the future. Rightly understood, Moses wanted to say with the description of the first three days, that we live in the fourth Round; he describes the fourth day of creation in a quite special way. That is why you find a double creation in Genesis.⁴ Those who judge the Bible with their intellect only will never understand it. The human being of the seventh day of creation has not been created. That man was made of clay is a symbol of our fourth Round. The double creation tells us in images of what has been created, the stage in which we now find ourselves, and of the stage at the end of the seventh Round. When we see the Bible's message in this way, a meaning of these documents suddenly arises which we could not have previously understood. Humanity will finally see that there is such a profound meaning there that one would almost have to become a different person in order to understand it.

It is necessary that in our times the high, spiritual meaning of these old documents be revealed, and that is the task of the theosophical movement. It doesn't criticize the materialism of our times because it considers it to be necessary. But it strives to enable people to again recognize the spiritual meaning of these documents. We will work on this during the coming winter. Today's lecture is the last of this cycle. We will, however, still meet here every Monday at eight o'clock.

• 1. The second volume of Theosophy never appeared. Instead, Steiner's An Outline of Esoteric Science, which includes a detailed description of cosmological evolution, was published in 1909.
• 2. Dhyani Chohans: in Christian terminology these are archangels.
• 3. “Race” in this sense is a theosophical term. Steiner later used the expression “cultural epoch” and similar ones.
• 4. Double creation: This may refer to Genesis 1, 26, where God creates humankind. In Genesis 2, 7, this creation is described again, albeit differently.

Today it is my task to speak about a topic that has millions of enthusiastic followers in the world, on one side, that has found the most violent adversaries, on the other side, not only adversaries who combat this field of the so-called spiritism the sharpest, but also those who ridicule it who lump together it with the darkest superstition or what they call dark superstition; adversaries who want to ignore it only with empty words of joke and scorn.

It may be not easy to speak just in our present about such a topic where as a rule with the “pros and cons” the most violent passions are aroused straight away. I would like to ask those listeners among you who may be enthusiastic followers of spiritism not to roundly condemn me immediately, if to you any of my explanations seems to correspond not completely to your views, because we representatives of theosophy, nevertheless, are combined with the spiritists in one matter in any case: we have the intention to investigate the higher spiritual worlds, those worlds which are beyond the everyday sense-perception. We are in agreement on that. However, on the other side, I would like to ask the scientists also to realise that that movement in whose name I myself speak has not chosen the slogan only like a signboard, as a phrase, but in the most serious sense of the word: no human opinion is higher than truth.—I would also like to ask the scientist to keep in mind that he may take into consideration that the views of science were subjected to change in the course of times, and that is why the scientific views of today cannot be regarded as being fixed.

Let me now outline the development of the spiritistic movement without taking sides, because no human opinion is higher than truth.

I would like to emphasise above all that the founders of the theosophical movement, Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky, and the great organiser, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, went out from the spiritistic movement. They were experts of the spiritistic movement and turned to the theosophical movement only, after they had vigorously searched for truth before within the spiritistic movement, but had not found it.

Theosophy does not want to combat spiritism, but to search for truth where it is to be found.

I would like to emphasise something else that will surprise some of you, however, that will not at all surprise others who are in the know. Allow me to express it: you can never hear the last word about spiritism and similar matters from people like me who are forced to speak about that. You know that there is in any science a rule which is simply justified by the scientific methods, and the rule is that one shows the results of science before a bigger audience in popular way. If one wants to do more intimate acquaintance with these results, if one wants to get to know the more intimate truth, then a longer way is necessary: a way using the different methods in any detail. As a rule the researchers are not able to report in popular talks what takes place inside of the laboratories, of the observatories. That applies to the physical science. On the other side, in the great spiritual movements of the world somebody who is reasonable and allowed to express the words with regard to the spiritual views has to withhold the last word because the last words are still of quite different kind. They are of such a kind that they can hardly be discussed publicly. That is why you can never hear the very last word of this matter from an occultist—unless you are able and want to go his ways most intimately. But to those who are in the know of the matter something becomes clear from the way how a matter is said, what is said not only between the lines, but perhaps also between the words.

After this introduction I would like to move on the topic which certainly has a tremendous cultural-historical significance even for somebody who wants to make it ridiculous. I would like to speak about the matter in a sense which really throws light from this point of view: what does spiritism search for today? Does it search for something new, or is it something ancient that it searches? Are the ways on which it looks absolutely novel, or has humankind gone on them since centuries or even since millennia?—If anybody puts these questions to himself, he reaches his goal concerning the history of spiritism the fastest. What the spiritists search for is at first the knowledge of those worlds which are beyond our sensory world, and secondly the significance of these worlds for the goal, for the determination of our human race.

If we ask ourselves: were these problems not the tasks of humankind, since it strives on our earth and wants anything?—Then we must say to ourselves: yes. And because they are certainly the highest tasks, it would already appear as something absurd from the beginning if in the world history something absolutely new had appeared with regard to these questions. It seems if we look around in the old and new spiritistic movements, as if we deal with something absolutely new. The strongest adversaries refer to the fact that it has brought something absolutely new into the world, and other adversaries say that the human beings had never needed to combat this movement like nowadays. There a change must have happened in humankind with regard to the way to look at the case. This is illuminated to us like lightning if we get clear in our mind that humankind has behaved in three different ways to the questions which we call spiritistic today.

There we have one way which we can find in the whole antiquity, a way which changes only in the Christian times. Then we have the second way to position ourselves to these questions, the whole Middle Ages through, till the 17th century. Only in the 17th century spiritism basically starts taking on a certain form that one can rightly call spiritism today.

The questions that the spiritist wants to answer today were the object of the so-called mysteries the whole antiquity through. I try only to characterise with few lines what one has to understand by mysteries. It was not the custom in antiquity to announce wisdom publicly. One had another view of wisdom and truth. One believed the whole antiquity through that it is necessary to train super-sensible organs to the knowledge of the super-sensible truth at first. One realised the fact that in every human being spiritual forces slumber which are not developed with the average human being, that spiritual forces slumber in the human nature which one can wake and develop by means of long exercises, through steps of development, which the disciples of the mysteries describe as very difficult. If the neophyte had developed such forces in him and had become a researcher of truth, one was of the opinion that he is to the average human being in such a way as a sighted is to a blind-born. This was also the goal within the holy mysteries. One aimed to achieve something similar in the spiritual field as today the doctor aims to achieve with the blind-born if he operates him that he becomes sighted. One was clear about the fact that—like with a blind-born who is operated the colours of the light and the forms of the things appear—a new world appears to somebody whose internal senses are woken, a world which the everyday reason cannot perceive. Thus the follower of the mysteries tried to develop a human being of lower level to one of higher level, to an initiate. Only the initiate should be able to recognise something of the super-sensible truth by immediate beholding, by spiritual intuition. The big mass of human beings could get the truth by means of pictures. The myths of antiquity, the legends about gods and world origin, which simply appear today—indeed, in certain sense rightly—as childish views of humankind, they are nothing but disguises of the super-sensible truth. The initiate informed people in pictures of that which he could behold within the temple mysteries. The whole Eastern mythology, the Greek and Roman mythologies, the Germanic mythology and the mythologies of the savage peoples are nothing but metaphorical, symbolic representations of the super-sensible truth. Of course, only somebody can completely understand this who occupies himself not in such a way as anthropology and ethnology do it but also with their spirit. He sees that a myth like the Hercules legend shows a deep inner truth; he sees that the conquest of the Golden Fleece by Jason shows a deep and true knowledge.

Then another way came with our calendar. I can indicate only roughly what I have to say. A certain basis of higher, spiritual truth was determined and made the object of the confessions, in particular of the Christian. And now this basis of spiritual truth was removed from any human research, from the immediate human striving. Those who studied the history of the Council of Nicaea know what I mean, and also those who understand the words of St. Augustine who says there: I would not believe in the truth of the divine revelation unless the authority of the church forces me.—Faith that determines a certain basis of the truth replaces the old mystery truth which retains it in pictures. Then follows the epoch when the big mass is no longer informed about the truth of the super-sensible world in pictures, but simply by authority. This is the second way how the big mass and those who had to lead them behaved to the highest truth. The mysteries provided it to the big mass on account of experience; it was provided by faith and fixed by authority in the Middle Ages.

But beside those who had the task to retain the big mass by faith and authority were also those in the 12th and 13th centuries—they existed at all times, but they did not appear publicly—who wanted to develop by immediate own beholding to the highest truth. These searched for it on the same ways on which it had been searched for within the mysteries. That is why we find in mediaeval times beside those who are only priests, also the mystics, theosophists and occultists, those who talk in an almost incomprehensible language hard to be understood by modern materialists and rationalists. We find people who had reached the secrets on the ways which avoid the senses. In an even more incomprehensible language those people spoke who had the guidance of the spirit as mystery priests. So we hear from one that he had the ability to send his thoughts miles away; another boasted that he could transform the whole sea into gold if it was permitted. Another says that he could construct a vehicle with which he would be able to move through the air.

There were times when people did not know how to do with such sayings, because they had no notion of how they were to be understood. Moreover, prejudices flourished against such a kind of investigation since the oldest times. That becomes clear to us at once where these prejudices came from. When in the first centuries of our calendar the Christian culture spread over the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, it appeared that the cult actions and the ceremonies of Christianity and also most of Christian dogmas agreed with ancient pagan traditions, and were not so different—even if in a watered way—from that which had took place in the old pagan Mithras temples. There said those who had the task to defend the reputation of the church: bad spirits gave the pagans these views; they aped within the pagan world what God revealed to the Christian church.—However, it is an odd imitation which leads the way of the original! The whole Christianity was aped in the pagan mysteries—if we apply the word of the accusers, what the church has later found! It is comprehensible that every other way than that of the authoritative Christian faith, as Augustine characterised it, was wrong and in the course of time it was regarded as such which was not given by good powers; since the church had to provide the good powers.

Thus these traditions continued through the whole Middle Ages. Those who wanted to come on their own ways, independently to the highest super-sensible truth were regarded as magicians, as allies of the bad or of the bad spirits. The mark stone is the Faust legend. Faust is the representative of those who want to get by own knowledge to the secrets. Hence, the bad powers must have captivated him. One should only do research in the writings handed down from earlier times, only the trust in authority should lead to the super-sensible powers. In spite of that, initiated minds realised—even if they were defamed as magicians and were prosecuted—that the time must come again when one has to progress to truth on own, human ways.

Thus we see occult brotherhoods originating in Europe from the middle of the Middle Ages on which led their members on the same ways as the old mysteries had done this to the development of higher intuitive forces. So that within such occult brotherhoods the way to the highest truth was taken like in the mysteries—I mention only that of the Rosicrucians, the deepest and most significant one, founded by Christian Rosenkreutz. This way can be investigated strictly historically till the 18th century. I cannot explain in detail how this happened; I can only give one example, the great representative of the occult science of the 16th and 17th centuries, Robert Fludd. He shows for those who have insight into these fields in all his writings that he knows the ways how to get to truth that he knows how to develop such forces that are of quite different kind than the forces in us which see any body of light before themselves. He shows that there are mysterious ways to get to the highest truth. He also speaks of the Rosicrucian Society in such a way that the relationship is clear to any initiate.

I would like to present three questions only to you to show you how these questions were discussed in veiled form at that time. He says of them that everybody who has arrived at the lowest level must be able to answer them with understanding. These questions and also their answers may appear quite futile to the rationalists and materialists. The first question which anybody must answer who wants to rise in worthy way to higher spiritual spheres is: where do you live?—The answer is: I live in the temple of wisdom, on the mountain of reason.—Understanding this sentence really, experiencing it internally means already to have opened certain inner senses.

The second sentence was: where truth comes from to you?—The answer is: it comes to me from the creative , and now there comes a word which cannot be translated at all into German: from the highest ..., mighty all-embracing spirit who has spoken through Solomon and wants to inform me about alchemy, magic and the kabala ...—This was the second question.

The third question is: what do you want to build?—The answer is: I want to build a temple like the tabernacle, like Solomon's temple, like the body of Christ and ... like something else that one does not pronounce.

You see—I cannot go into these questions further—that one veiled the super-sensible truth in a mysterious darkness for all non-initiates in such brotherhoods, and that the non-initiate should make himself worthy at first and had to get to a moral and intellectual summit. Somebody who had not stood the trials who did not have the force in himself to find the experiences inside was not judged as worthy, was not admitted to the initiation. One considered it as dangerous to know this truth. One knew that knowledge is connected with a tremendous power, with a power as the average human being does not suspect at all. Only somebody is able to possess this truth and power without any danger for humankind who has got to that moral and intellectual height. Otherwise one said: without having reached this height he behaves with this truth and power like a child that is sent with matches into a powder magazine.

Now one was of the opinion in these times that only somebody who is in the possession of the highest super-sensible truth can explain the phenomena as they are told everywhere and since millennia in a popular way—phenomena which the modern spiritism shows again. The matters were nothing new but something ancient that spiritism recognises today. In ancient times one spoke about the fact that the human being can have such an effect on the human beings as it is not the case, otherwise: certain human beings cause that knocking sounds are to be heard in their surroundings that objects move, contrary to the laws of gravitation, with or without touch that objects fly through the air without applying any physical force et cetera. Since the oldest times one knew that there are human beings who can be transported into certain states, today we call these states trance states, in which they speak about things about which they can never speak in the waking consciousness that they also tell about other worlds not belonging to our sense-perceptible world. One knew that there are human beings who communicate by signs about that which they see in such super-sensible worlds. One also knew that there are human beings who are able to see events which are far away from them and also to report about that; human beings who could foresee and forecast future events with the help of their prophetic gift. All that—we do not verify it today—is an ancient tradition. Those who believe to be able to accept it as truth consider it as something natural. Such not physical, not sense-perceptible phenomena were regarded as true through the whole Middle Ages. Indeed, they were considered by the church of the Middle Ages in such a way, as if they were caused by means of bad skills, but this should not touch us. In any case, the way to the super-sensible world was not searched for on the way of these phenomena in the time of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nobody claimed till those times that a dancing table, an anyhow appearing ghost which is seen with eyes or in any way in trance could reveal anything of a super-sensible world. Even if anybody told that he saw a blaze in Hanover from here, one believed it; but nobody saw anything in it that could seriously give information about the super-sensible world. Reasonable people considered it as a matter of course that one could not look for the super-sensible world that way. Those who wanted to get to super-sensible perception searched for it by developing inner forces in the occult brotherhoods.

Then another time came in the development of the West, in which one started looking for truth scientifically. There came the Copernican world view and the researches of physiology; technology, the discoveries of the blood circulation, of the ovum et cetera. One attained insights into nature with the senses. Somebody who does not approach the Middle Ages with prejudices but wants to get to know the world view of the Middle Ages in its true form, convinces himself soon that this medieval thinking did not imagine heaven and hell as localities in space, but that they were something spiritual to it. In mediaeval times no reasonable human being thought to advocate that world view which one attributes to the medieval scholars today. Copernicanism is nothing new in this sense. It is new in another sense; in the sense that since the 16th century sense-perception became decisive for truth; what one can see what one can perceive with the senses. The world view of the Middle Ages was not wrong as one often shows it today, but it was only a view which was not got with bodily eyes. The bodily sensualisation was a symbol of something spiritual. Also Dante did not imagine his hell and his heaven in the earthly sense; they were to be understood spiritually.

One broke with this point of view. The real psychologist of the human development finds out this. The sensuous was raised, and now sensuality conquered the world gradually. However, the human being got used to it without noticing it. Only the searching psychologist rushing behind the development is able to make a picture of it. The human being gets used to such changes. With his feeling, with his senses he looks at everything, and accepts the sensuous only as true. Without knowing it, people considered as a principle of the human nature to accept only what they can see in any way of what they can convince themselves by sensory inspection. People did not think much of such circles that spoke of an initiation and led to super-sensible truth on occult ways; everything had to be sensually shown.

What about the super-sensible view of the world? How could one find the super-sensible in the world in which one wanted to seek for truth only in the sensory effects? There were rare, so-called abnormal phenomena which were not explicable by means of natural forces known till then; phenomena that the physicist, the naturalist could not explain, and which one simply denied because one wanted to accept the sensually explicable only. There were these phenomena which were handed down through millennia to which the human being sought refuge now: now one went to them. Simultaneously with the urge to keep only to the sense-perceptible appearance the urge for the super-sensible resorted to such phenomena. One wanted to know what scientific criticism could not explain; one wanted to know how it is. When one started searching for evidences of another world in these matters, the birth of modern spiritism took place. We can give the hour of birth and the place where it happened. It was in 1716; there a book was published by a member of the Royal Society, a description of the western islands of Scotland. Everything was collected in it that was to be found out about the “second sight.” This is that which one cannot perceive with the usual eyes, but what one could find out only by super-sensible research. Here you have the precursor of everything that was later done by the so-called scientific side to the investigation of the spiritistic phenomena.

Now we also stand already at the gate of the whole spiritistic movement of the newer time. That person from whom the whole spiritistic movement started is one of the strangest of the world: Swedenborg. He influenced the whole 18th century. Even Kant argued with him. A person who could bring to life the modern spiritistic movement had to be disposed like Swedenborg. He was born in 1688 and died in 1772. In the first half of his life he was a naturalist who stood at the head of the natural sciences of his time. He encompassed them. Nobody has a right to attack Swedenborg as an illiterate man. We know that he was not only a perfect expert of his time, but he also anticipated a lot of scientific truths that one discovered on the universities only later. So he stood in the first half of his life not only completely on the scientific point of view which wanted to investigate everything by the appearance to the senses and by mathematical calculations, but he also was far ahead of his time in this regard. Then he completely turned to that which one calls visionariness. What Swedenborg experienced—you may call him a seer or visionary—was a particular class of phenomena. Somebody who is only somewhat initiated in these fields knows that Swedenborg could only experience this class of phenomena.

I only give a few examples. Swedenborg saw a conflagration in Stockholm from a place which was removed sixty miles from Stockholm. He informed the guests, with who he was in a soirée, about this event, and after some time one heard that the fire had happened in such a way as Swedenborg had told it. Another example: a high-ranking person asked for a secret which a brother had not completely told before his death because he died before. The person turned to Swedenborg with the strange demand whether he could not discover him and ask what he wanted to say. Swedenborg ridded himself of the order in such a way that the person in question could have no doubt that Swedenborg had penetrated into this secret.

Still the third example to show how Swedenborg moved within the super-sensible world. A scholar and friend visited Swedenborg. The servant said to him: you have to wait for some time, please. The scholar sat down and heard a discussion in the next room. However, he heard always only Swedenborg speaking; he did not hear answering. The case became even more noticeable to him when he heard the discussion taking place in wonderful classical Latin, and particularly when he heard him intimately talking about states of the emperor Augustus. Then Swedenborg went to the door, bowed before somebody and spoke with him but the friend could not see the visitor at all. Then Swedenborg came back and said to the friend: excuse that I let you wait. I had lofty visit—Virgil visited me.

People may think about such matters as they want. However, one thing is certain: Swedenborg believed in them, regarded them as reality. I said: only a person like Swedenborg could get to such a kind of research. Just the fact that he was expert naturalist of his time led him to this view of the super-sensible nature. He was a man who got used to accepting nothing but the sensuous, the sense-perceptible in the time of the dawning natural sciences. Everybody knows it who knows him; the reasons become clear in the talk which I hold next time here about the topic “Hypnotism and Somnambulism”—and that is why he also depended on it as such a man who sees the spiritual in the world. As well as he insisted to recognise only as right what he could calculate and perceive with senses, the super-sensible was brought by him into the shape which it had to have for him; the super-sensible world was pulled down to a deeper sphere under the influence of the ways of thinking of natural sciences. Because it approaches us in such way like the views of the sensory world, I cited the reasons. We hear next time how such a thing comes about. However, the preconditions are given by the own spiritual development of the human beings who got used to the sense-perceptible.

I do not want to speak now about the significance and core of truth of Swedenborg’s visions, but about the fact that somebody sees—as soon as he enters this field which forms the basis of Swedenborg's views—his dispositions in this area, what he has developed in himself. A proof of it may be a simple example.

When the wave of spiritism spread in the second half of the 19th century, one also made experiments in Bavaria. It became apparent there that with the experiments at which also scholars were present and took place at different places quite different spiritual manifestations happened. In such an event one asked whether the human soul is received via heredity from the parents, so that also the soul is hereditary, or whether it is made new with every human being. In this spiritistic séance it was answered: the souls are made new. Almost at the same time the same question was put in another séance. The answer was: the soul is not created, but is passed on from the parents to the children.—One thought that at one séance followers of the so-called creation theory were, and at the other séance some scholars were present who were followers of the other theory. In the sense of the thoughts which lived in them the answers were given. Whichever facts may be there, whichever reasons of these facts may be there, it became clear that the human being receives as a manifestation what corresponds to his view. It is irrelevant whether it faces him only as an intellectual manifestation or as a vision; what the human being sees is founded in his own dispositions.

This search for sensuous-extrasensory proofs became just a child of the natural sciences of the materialistic time. The principle was actually drawn up that one had to seek for the extrasensory world as one had to seek for the sensuous one. Just as somebody convinces himself in the laboratory of the reality of forces of magnetism or light, one wanted to convince oneself of the super-sensible world by the appearance to the senses. People had forgotten how to behold the spiritual in purely spiritual way. They had forgotten how to develop the belief in super-sensible forces and how to learn to recognise what is neither sensuous nor analogous to the sensuous, but what can be seized only by spiritual intuition. They had got to be used to get everything on the sensory way, and that is why they also wanted to get these matters on the sensory way. Research moved on this way. Thus we see Swedenborg’s direction going on. What appears offers nothing new to us; spiritism offers nothing new! We take an overview of this later and understand it then also better.

All the phenomena which spiritism knows were explained that way. There we see the South German Oetinger who elaborated the theory that there is a super-sensible substance which can be seen as a physical phenomenon. Only, he says, the super-sensible matter does not have the raw qualities of the physical matter, not the impenetrable resistance and the row mixture. Here we have the substance from which the materialisations are taken.

Another researcher of this field is Johann Heinrich Jung called Stilling who published a detailed report on spirits and apparitions of spirits and described all these matters. He tried there to understand everything in such a way that he did justice to these phenomena as a religious Christian. Because he had tendencies to be a religious Christian, the whole world seemed to him to manifest nothing but the truth of the Christian teaching. Because at the same time natural sciences made claims, we see a mixture of the purely Christian standpoint with the standpoint of natural sciences in his representation. Esotericism explains the phenomena by the intrusion of a spiritual world into our world.

You see all these phenomena registered in the works of those who wrote about spiritism, demonology, magic et cetera in which you can also find something that goes beyond spiritism, like with Ennemoser, for instance. We see even carefully registered how a person can enable himself to perceive the thoughts of others who are in distant rooms. You find such instructions with Ennemoser, also with others. Already in the 19th century you find with a certain Meyer who wrote a book about the Hades from spiritistic standpoint as a manifestation of spiritistic manipulations and stood up for the so-called reincarnation theory. You find a theory there to which theosophy has led us again, and which shows us that the old fairy tales are expressions of the higher truth prepared for the people. Meyer got this view on account of sensuous demonstrations.

We find all the spiritistic phenomena with Justinus Kerner. They are significant because of the moral weight of the author. There we find, for example, that near the seeress of Prevorst things—spoons et cetera—are repelled by her; it is also told that this seeress communicated with beings of other worlds. Justinus Kerner registered all the communications which he got from her. She informed him that she saw beings of other worlds which went through her, indeed, but which she could perceive and that she could even behold such beings which came in along with other people. Some people may say about these matters: Kerner fantasised and was fooled a lot by his seeress. However, I would like to say one thing: you know David Friedrich Strauss who was friendly with Justinus Kerner. He knew how it stood with the seeress of Prevorst. You also know that that which he performed goes in a direction which runs against the spiritistic current. He says that the facts of which the seeress of Prevorst reports are true as facts—about that cannot be discussed with those who know something about it, he considered the matters as being beyond any doubt.

Even if a bigger number of human beings existed who were still interested somewhat in such things, the interest decreased, nevertheless, more and more. This could be led back to the influence of science. It refused to look at such phenomena as true manifestations in the time of the forties when the law of energy conservation was discovered forming the basis of our physics when the cell theory was drawn up when Darwinism prepared. What came up in this time could not be favourable to the pneumatologists. Hence, they were strictly rejected. That is why one forgot everything that these had to say.

Then an event took place which meant a victory for spiritism. The event did not happen in Europe, but in the country where materialism celebrated the biggest triumphs in that time where one had made oneself used to consider only as true what hands can seize. This happened in America, in the country where the materialistic way of thinking intimated by me had strongly developed. It went out from the phenomena which belong in the broadest sense to those which one has to call abnormal but sensual. The well-known knocking sounds, the phenomena of moving tables and the knocking through them, the audibility of certain voices which sounded through the air accompanied by intelligent manifestations for which no sensuous reason existed—they pointed to the super-sensible so clearly in America, in the country where one attaches much value to the outer appearance. Like by storm the view gained recognition that there is a super-sensible world that beings which do not belong to our world manifest themselves in our sensory world. Like a storm this went through the world.

A man, Andrew Jackson Davis, who concerned himself with these phenomena, was called upon for explaining these matters. He was, in similar way as Swedenborg, a seer; he only did not have the deepness of Swedenborg. He was an unlearned American grown up as a farmer boy and Swedenborg was a learnt Swede. He wrote a book in 1848 (?): The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse. This work arose from the most modern needs which had originated within the modern battle in which one wanted to accept the sensuous only in which everybody wanted to put his personal egoism forward, in which everybody wanted to grab so much to himself, wanted to become as happy as he only was able to. In this world one was no longer able to have sense for a faith which leads beyond the sensuous world, according to the ways of thinking which were tied to the material only. One wanted to see and one wanted to have such a faith which satisfies the needs and desires of modern humankind. Above all Davis says plainly that modern people cannot believe that a quantity of human beings is blessed, another quantity condemned. It was this what the modern could not stand; there an idea of development had to intervene. Davis was informed of a truth which shows an exact image of the sensuous world. It may be characterised by an example. When his first wife had died, he had the idea to marry a second wife. However, he had doubt, but a super-sensible manifestation caused that he gave himself the permission. In this manifestation his first wife said to him that she had married in the sun-land again; that is why he felt to have the right also to marry a second time. In the beginning of the first part of his book he informs us that he was educated as a farmer boy like a Christian, but he realised soon that the Christian faith can deliver no conviction, because the modern human being must understand the what, the why and the where to of the way.

I was sent out—he tells—to the field by my parents. There came a snake. I attacked it with the hayfork. But the tooth broke off. I took the tooth and prayed. I was convinced that the prayer must help. But ... [gap in the transcript]. How can I believe in a God who allows that I experience such a thing? He said to himself. He became an unbeliever. By the spiritistic séances in which he took part he got the ability of trance and became one of the most fertile spiritistic writers. He emphasises that the appearance of that world is approximately the same as that of the sensory world. It would be an unbelief that a good father does not care for his children, because the father makes long journeys for this purpose et cetera.

You see that the earthly world is transferred to the other world. Therefore, this way of thinking spread like a wildfire all over the world. In short time one could count millions of followers of spiritism. Already in 1850 one could find thousands of media in Boston, and one could also pay 400,000 $ in short time to construct a spiritistic temple. You will not deny that that has a great cultural-historical significance. However, with regard to the modern way of thinking this movement had only prospects of success if science took hold of it, that means if science believed in it.

If I held a lecture about theosophy, I could speak in detail of the fact that still quite different powers stand behind the staging of the spiritistic phenomena. Behind the scenery deep occult powers are at work. But this cannot be my task today. I tell another time who is, actually, the true director of these phenomena. But this is certain: if this occult director wanted to presuppose that these phenomena convinced the materialistically minded humankind of the existence of a super-sensible world thoroughly if it should believe in it in the long run, the scientific circles had to be conquered. These scientific circles were not so hard to conquer. Just among the most reasonable, among those who could think thoroughly and logically were many who turned to the spiritistic movement. These were in America Lincoln, Edison, in England Gladstone, the naturalist Wallace, the mathematician Morgan. Also in Germany was a big number of excellent scholars, they were experts in their fields, and were convinced of the spiritistic phenomena by media, like Weber and Gustav Theodor Fechner, the founder of psychophysics. Friedrich Zöllner also belongs to them about whom only those who understand nothing of the matter can say that he became mad when he did the famous experiments with Slade. Then, however, also a personality who is yet underestimated: this is the Baron Hellenbach, deceased in 1887. He presented his experiences in spiritistic fields in his numerous books in such a brilliant way. For example, in his book about biological magnetism and in the book about the magic of figures, so that these books are true treasure troves to study which way this movement has taken—in particular in more inspired heads—in the second half of the 19th century.

A European impulse came to the American movement and this went out from a man who stood in the European culture, from a disciple of Pestalozzi, and it originated at a time which is already significant because of its other discoveries. This spirit is Allan Kardec who wrote his Spirits’ Book in 1858, in the same year in which many other works appeared epoch-making for the western education in different fields. We only have to call some of the works to indicate the significance of the mental life in this time. One is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; the other is a basic work about the psycho-physical field by Fechner. The third one is a work of Bunsen which familiarises us with spectral analysis and which gives the possibility to discover something of the material composition of the stars for the first time. The fourth one was the work of Karl Marx: The Capital. The fifth one was a work of Kardec, a spiritistic work, but of quite different kind as the American works. He represented the idea of reincarnation, the re-embodiment of the human soul. This French spiritism had as numerous supporters as the American one in short time. It spread over France, Spain and especially also over Austria. It was completely in accord with the ancient teachings of wisdom of theosophy. Also spirits like Hellenbach, an Austrian politician, could accept it. He represented the scientific form of spiritism Kardec had founded. Hellenbach played a prominent role in important political matters of Austria in the sixties and seventies of the last century and proved to be a clear and keen thinker at every step. Spiritism got a scientific form in Germany that way. Also such spirits founded the scientific spiritism in Germany who did not want to speak like Hellenbach or Gladstone, Wallace, Crookes who assumed angelic spirits of the old Christendom but who wanted only to speak about the reincarnation of the human being and the intrusion of beings unknown to us whose forms Hellenbach leaves open. But also those who generally do not want to know anything about a yonder world were no longer able to not accept the facts as such. Even people like Eduard von Hartmann who wanted to know nothing about the theories of the spiritists, however, said that the facts could not be denied. They let themselves not be swayed during the period of the exposures. The most famous one was that of the medium Bastian by the Crown Prince Rudolf and the archduke Johann of Austria. The media, which had convinced our scientific circles, were exposed with the medium Bastian. Everybody who simply has some insight in this field knows that Hellenbach is right when he says: nobody will claim that there are no wigs. Should one also believe that there is no real hair because one has discovered wigs?—To somebody who works in occult fields the sentence applies that one can prove to many a bank that it is a corrupt bank; yes, but did not this bank do also honest banking business once? The assessment of the spiritistic truth hides behind such comparisons.

We have seen that the scientific and materialistic ways of thinking since the 18th century—we can call 1716 the natal year of spiritism—have completely adapted themselves to the modern thinking, also to the materialistic views. A new form was sought for to be able to approach the higher, super-sensible truth, and everybody who faced these facts tried to understand them in his way. The Christian faith found a confirmation of its ancient church faith; also some orthodox have accepted it to find favourable proofs of their case. Others also found confirmation from the standpoints of the material thinking which assesses everything only according to the material relations.

Also those who were thorough scientific researchers like Zöllner, Weber, Fechner and also several famous mathematicians like Simony et cetera tried to get closer to the case, while they moved from the three-dimensional on the four-dimensional. The philosophical individualists who could not believe that in the spiritual world also an individualistic development exists like in the physical one were led by means of thorough investigation to understand that the human way, this sensory way to be—to see with bodily eyes to hear with bodily ears—is only one way of many possible ways. The representatives of a super-sensible spiritism like Hellenbach found their ideas confirmed on account of the spiritistic facts. If you imagine a person who knew to deal with the peculiarities of every single medium who knew how to adapt himself to the most difficult circumstances, so that it was a relief to meet him, Hellenbach was such a man. Also those who spoke only about a psychic force of which one does not and needs not think a lot also these followers of a psychic force, like Eduard von Hartmann or also spirits like du Prel of whom I will speak next time, they all explained the facts in their ways. There were many theories, from the popular interpretations for the people who looked after the manifesting spirits, after writing media, after communications by knocking sounds et cetera, from these religious seekers in old way up to the most enlightened spirits: everybody explained these phenomena in his way. This was in the time when this lack of clarity prevailed in every field, in the time when the phenomena could no longer be denied—but the minds of the human beings proved to be absolutely incapable to do justice to the super-sensible world.

In this time the ground was prepared to a renewal of the mystic way, to a renewal of that way which was taken in former times in the occult science and in the mysteries, but in such way that it is accessible to everybody who wants to go it. The Theosophical Society was founded by Mrs. Helena Petrowna Blavatsky to open an understanding of the ways. The theosophical movement revived the investigation of wisdom as it was nurtured in the mysteries and by the Rosicrucians in mediaeval times. It wants to spread what one has searched for in recent time on other ways. It is based on the old movements, however, also on the newest researches.

Somebody who gets a better understanding of the theosophical movement will find that the way of theosophy or spiritual science which leads to the super-sensible truth is on one side really spiritual, on the other side, that it answers the questions: where does the human being come from, where does he go to, what is his vocation?

We know that one had to speak in certain way to the human beings of antiquity, in more different way to those of the Middle Ages, and again in another way to the modern human beings. The facts of theosophy are ancient. But you convince yourselves if you seek on the way of theosophy or spiritual science that it satisfies any demand of modern scientific nature if it is understood in its very own figure. He would be a bad theosophist who wanted to give up any of the scientific truths for theosophy. Knowledge on the bright, clear way of true scientific nature—yes, but no knowledge which limits itself to sensory things which limits itself to that which takes place in the human being between birth and death, but also knowledge of that which is beyond birth and death. Spiritual science cannot do this without having the authorisation of it—just within a materialistic age. It is aware that all the spiritual movements must converge at a great goal at last which the spiritists will find in spiritual science in the end. However, it searches the spiritual on other, more comprehensive ways; it knows that the spiritual is not found in the sensory world and also not by arrangements of sensory nature only, maybe by means of a beholding which is analogous to the sensory looking. It knows that there is a world of which one receives an insight only if one goes through a kind of spiritual operation which is similar to the operation of a blind-born that is made sighted. It knows that it is not right if the modern human being says: show me the super-sensible like something sensory.—It knows that the answer is: human being, rise up to the higher spheres of the spiritual world, while you yourself become more and more spiritual, so that the connection with the spiritual world is in such a way as the connection is with the sensuous world by means of your sensory eyes and ears.

Theosophy or spiritual science has that viewpoint which a believer of the Middle Ages, a deep mystic, Master Eckhart, expressed, while he characterised that the really spiritual cannot be searched for in the same way as the sensuous. In the 13th, 14th centuries, he expressed meaningfully that one cannot receive the spiritual by sensuous performances, by anything that is analogous to the sensuous. Therefore, he says the great truth leading to the super-sensible: people want to look at God with the eyes, as if they looked at a cow and loved it. They want to look at God as if He stood there and here. It is not that way. God and I are one in recognition.

We do not want to behold a higher world by means of events like knocking sounds or other sensuous arrangements. It is called a super-sensible world, indeed, but it is similar to the sensuous world round us.—Eckhart characterises such apparently super-sensible events saying: such people want to behold God as they look at a cow. However, we want to behold the spiritual developing our spiritual eyes like nature developed our bodily eyes to let us see the physical. Nature has dismissed us with outer senses to make the sensuous perceptible to us. The way, however, to develop further in the sensuous to the spiritual to be able to behold the spiritual with spiritual eyes—we ourselves have to go this spiritual way in free development, also in the sense of modern development.

Notes:

In the title of the talk, the term spiritism is used instead of the more common term spiritualism. Allan Kardec used it for the first time in his book The Spirits’ Book. Since then it is used outside the English speaking world to distinguish spiritism and spiritualism (Spiritualismus). The latter term is applied to the opposite of (philosophical, religious) materialism.

St. Augustine (354–430): Evangelio non crederem, nisi me ecclesia commoveret auctoritas (Contr. Epist. Manich., 5)

Christian Rosenkreutz (1378–1484), cf. CW 130

Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse: Being an Explanation of Modern Mysteries (1853). Davis dictated his first and most significant book in trance in 1845: The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind.

Robert Fludd (1574–1637), English philosopher and physician, Rosicrucian
Apologia Compendaria, Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce … (1616)
Microcosmi Historia (1619)
Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae (1633)

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) in his Divine Comedy

It was in 1716: M. Martin Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, London 1703
Martin Martin (?–1719), Scottish writer

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), Swedish scientist and philosopher

Stockholm: the place from which Swedenborg saw the conflagration was Goteborg, 400 km away from Stockholm.

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702 -1782), Swabian theologian and theosopher

Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), German pietistic-mystic author

Joseph Ennemoser (1787–1854), physician and mesmerist

Johann Friedrich von Meyer (1772–1849), Protestant theologian, politician
Hades, a Contribution to the Theory of Spirits (1810) (link to German page as the article in the English wikipedia is insufficient)

Justinus Kerner (1786–1862), German physician, poet, author
History of Two Somnambulists (1824), The Seeress of Prevorst. Revelations of the Human Inner Life and about the Penetrations of the Spirit World into ours (1828), Leaves from Prevorst (1831–1839), The Somnambulistic Tables (1853)

Seeress of Prevorst: Friederike Hauffe (1801–1829), somnambulist, born in a little village, named Prevorst

David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874), German theologian and writer of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846)

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), 16th President of the United States

Thomas Edison (1847–1931), American inventor and businessman

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898), British politician, Prime Minister

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), British naturalist

Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), British mathematician and logician

Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878), German physician, founder of experimental psychology

Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), German philosopher and experimental psychologist, the founder of psychophysics

Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (1834–1882),German astrophysicist. He explains that the spiritistic phenomena are caused in a four-dimensional space and appear as shadows in the three-dimensional space: Transcendental Physics (1878)

Henry Slade (1835–1905), fraudulent medium

Baron Lazar von Hellenbach (1827–1887), Austrian politician, philosophical and socio-political writer, famous spiritist. On the Magic of Figures (Vienna, 1882).

Allan Kardec (pen name of Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail, 1804–1869), French spiritist, systematiser of spiritism

Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858–1889)

Archduke Johann Nepomuk Salvator of Austria (1852–1890?) Einblicke in den Spiritismus (Insights into Spiritism) (1885)

Oskar Simony (1852–1915), Austrian mathematician and physicist: On Spiritistic Manifestations from the Scientific Standpoint (1884), cf. R. Steiner mentions him in CW 169 Toward Imagination (Anthroposophic Press, 1990), lecture 6

Master Eckhart (~1260–1327), German Dominican monk and mystic, c f. R. Steiner CW 7 Mystics after Modernism

The Mystery of Golgotha is one of the profoundest secrets of the evolution of the world. In order to understand it, we must shed light upon the occult wisdom of thousands of years ago, on the remote past of the world's development. It is not a plausible argument against a more penetrating knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha to say that the life and work of Christ Jesus should be accessible to the simplest mind. This is indeed the case. But a full, encompassing comprehension of this greatest event on earth must be drawn out of the depths of Mystery-wisdom.

In this lecture we shall penetrate into the depths of Mystery-wisdom in order to understand how an event such as the Mystery of Golgotha could take place. In this connection we should bear in mind that with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts. We can grasp this best of all by seeking an answer to the question: Who was Christ Jesus?

For the occultist this question is a double one: For we must distinguish between the personality who lived at that time in Palestine and reached the age of thirty, and what became of him afterwards. In the 30th year of his life Jesus became Christ.

In the case of ordinary people, only insignificant portions of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body are transformed into Manas, Buddhi and Atma, or into Spirit Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. Jesus of Nazareth was a Chela of the third degree, and his bodies were therefore in a state of high purification.

When a Chela has absolved the purification of his three bodies, then he acquires at a certain moment of his life the capacity to sacrifice himself. In his 30th year, the Ego of Jesus left his three bodies and passed over into the astral world, so that the three sanctified bodies remained behind on earth, emptied as it were of their Ego, so that room was made for a higher individuality. In the 30th year of his life, the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth made the great sacrifice of placing his purified bodies at the disposal of the individuality of Christ. Christ filled out these bodies. And from that time onwards we speak of Christ-Jesus who lived upon the earth for three years and fulfilled all his great deeds within the body of Jesus.

In order to understand the true being of Christ, we must go far back into the history of the development of the earth and of mankind. Before the earth became Earth, it was the old Moon, and the present moon is only a fragment of the old Moon. Before the Earth was Moon, it was Sun, and at a still earlier stage it was Saturn. We should bear in mind that milliards of years ago there existed in the cosmic spaces a heavenly body, Saturn. Also planets develop through different incarnations: Before the Earth was EARTH, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon.

Let us now transfer ourselves upon the Sun. There, the so-called Fire-Spirits had the same rank which human beings now have upon the earth. Of course, they did not have the same appearance, they did not look like men of to-day; these high individualities passed through the human stage upon the Sun under conditions which were quite different from the present human conditions. Also upon the Moon a host of Beings passed through the stage of humanity, and they came down to the Earth as higher Beings, as Lunar Pitris or Moon-Spirits, that had reached a higher stage than that of man upon the Earth. In Christian esotericism they are called Angeloi = Angels. Only upon the Earth the human being became MAN. The Lunar Pitris are Beings one degree higher than man, and above them stand the Fire-Spirits, who are one degree higher than the Lunar Pitris. The Fire-Spirits have reached a very high stage of development.

Now we come to the Earth, to the Lemurian race which lived upon a continent situated between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. There, man took on his present form through the fact that below, upon the physical earth, there lived highly developed beings, but physical beings, higher than the present animals and less developed than present-day man. These physical beings formed a kind of shell, a dwelling-place and they would have been condemned to decadence had they not been fructified by higher Beings. Only at that time the human souls entered the physical human bodies, and then began to shape the Subsequent form of the human body. In the past, the human soul was an integral part of higher Spiritual Beings. The physical shells of human bodies were upon the earth, and into these streamed the souls of higher Beings coming from above, from the spiritual worlds. In the spiritual worlds the souls were connected like drops of water in a sea, which were then poured into a number of vessels.

The beings who poured out the souls from above were those who had passed through their human stage upon the Moon, the Moon-Spirits, whose stage of development was one degree higher than that of Man so that they could pour one part of their being into mankind, thus enabling it to develop further, Man could then transform his organism more and more. He could lift himself up from the earth and stand upright, he learned to walk, to speak and to become independent.

There was a certain relationship between all these souls, for they came from a common spiritual chorus. All those who had received a drop from the same being, greatly resembled each other. Members, of the same tribe first had such related souls, then the members of a race or nation, for example, the whole Egyptian or the whole Jewish nation. They had souls that had come from a common source. From the Moon-Spirits man had received the Spirit-Self and this enabled him to become an independent being, an Ego.

But something which man could not obtain from the Moon Spirits, could only be given to him by a still higher Being, common to all men, who had already completed its humanity upon the Sun: a Fire-Spirit. Many Fire-spirits had developed upon the Sun and exercised their influence upon the Earth, for they were high spirits. One of these Fire-Spirits was called upon to pour out his being upon the whole of mankind. A Spirit who belonged to the whole Earth was able to pour out over the whole of mankind, into each one of its parts, the element of the Sun or Fire-Spirits, the Buddhi, or the Spirit of Life. But in the Lemurian and in the Atlantean age the human beings were not ripe enough to receive this from the Sun-Spirit.

When we read the Akasha Chronicle (See Rudolf Steiner's bookThe Akasha Chronicle) we find that something very strange took place at that time: The human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Spirit Self, but this only lived in them in a very weak form. The Buddhi or Life-Spirit soared above every human being—it could be perceived in the Akasha spaces. In the astral space every human being was surrounded by Buddhi, but it remained outside and was not strong enough to enter man. This Buddhi was a part of the great Fire Spirit who had poured out his drops on the human beings, but these drops could not enter the human beings.

Christ's deeds on earth gave man the capacity to absorb into his Manas what we designate as Buddhi.

What Christ fulfilled upon the earth, was prepared by other great teachers who had preceded him, by Buddha, by the last Zarathustra, by Pythagoras, who all lived about 600 years before Christ, and who were men who had already absorbed a great deal of what lived in the surroundings of man. They had absorbed the spark of Christ. Also Moses belongs to them. But the Ego of the other people had not yet absorbed this spark.

Into the physical, etheric and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth had entered the whole Fire-Spirit, the one source of all the different sparks that lived in the human beings. This Fire-Spirit is the Christ, the only divine Being who lived on earth in this form. He entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and as a result, all those who feel united with Christ Jesus are able to absorb Buddhi. The possibility to absorb and take in the Buddhi begins with the appearance of Christ Jesus. St. John the Evangelist designates it as the Divine Creative Word. The Fire-Spirit that poured his sparks into men is this Divine Creative Word.

As a result, the following took place: Whereas the Moon-Spirits could create differentiated tribes among men by sending down their drops, Christ was a uniting Spirit for the whole earth, and the human beings were thus united into a family all over the world. Whereas the differentiations among men were brought about by the drops poured out by the different Moon-Spirits, the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.

When speaking of the last Judgement, Christ says in his prophecy: “When the Son of Man shall Come in his glory” (he means by this: when the drops of Christ shall all have entered into the human beings, when all shall have become brothers) “he shall say unto them on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungred and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink.” (St. Matthew 25, 35) Then the only difference among men will be that between good and evil.

Christ says to His disciples: “What ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.” This signifies: Christ Jesus indicates the time when the drops poured out by Him will all be absorbed, so that when one man faces another, this drop of Christ within him will face the drop of Christ in the other. The power whereby the Buddhi could be called into life in man, this power went out from the life of Christ upon the earth. We should therefore look upon Christ as the uniting Spirit of the Earth.

If we could look down upon the earth from a distant star, through an epoch of many thousands of years, we would find a moment when Christ was active on the earth, so that the whole astral substance of the earth was permeated by Christ. Christ is the Spirit of the Earth, and the Earth is His Body. Everything that grows upon the earth is Christ. He lives in every seed, in every tree, all that grows upon the earth. That is why Christ indicated the bread and said: “This is my Body.” And of the juice of the grapes (at the LAST SUPPER the juice of grapes was passed round, not fermented wine) he had to say: “This is my Blood,” for the juice of the fruits of the earth is his blood. Consequently mankind must appear to him like beings who walk about upon his body. That is why he told his disciples after having washed their feet: “He that eateth bread with me, lifts up his heel against me.” (Treads on me). This must be taken literally, in the meaning that the earth is the body of Christ Jesus. Because he took upon himself the evolution of the earth, a distant spiritual being might see that more and more of Christ's spirit flows into the human beings; the single drops of Christ Jesus penetrate into the individual human beings. Finally the whole earth will be peopled by transformed, Christianised men, by men who have become divine through Christ. Only those who do not participate in this, will be put aside as evil; they must wait for a later time in order to follow a course of development leading to goodness.

All the different nations had Mysteries, before Christ appeared on earth. The Mysteries revealed what was to take place in the future. After a long training, the pupils had to undergo a preparation which consisted in a sepulchre. The hierophant was thus able to transfer the pupil into a higher state of consciousness which made his body lie inert in a kind of deep slumber. In ancient times, the consciousness always had to be abated in order that the divine essence might enter man. In this lowered state of consciousness, the soul was led through the spheres of the spiritual world and after three days the hierophant called the pupil back into life. Through this experience he felt that he had become a new man and he obtained a new name. He was called Son of God. The whole process took place upon the physical plane, when Christ appeared and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the ancient initiations the life-drops of Christ's spirit first called the pupils back into life and they were told: “He who will Christianize all men, will appear one day. And He will truly be the Incarnated Word. You can only experience this for three days, when you travel through the kingdoms of heaven; but One will come, Who will bring the Kingdoms of Heaven down to the physical world.”

The Initiate experienced upon the astral plane what Christ lived through upon the physical plane, namely that from the very beginning there existed a Divine Word that poured out its drops over the human beings; but the Ego-men could not absorb these drops. St. John, the herald of the Christianized Ego-man who has taken in the Christ, or the Word, reveals this. St. John speaks of the Word that existed upon the earth from the very beginning:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.

He was not the light-, but a witness of the Light.

For the true Light that lighteth every man was to come into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

He came to each man (to the individual Ego-man) but the individual men (the Ego-men) received him not.

But as many as received him, to them he gave power to manifest themselves as children of God.

Those who believe in his name, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching, the teaching of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.

The word “grace” in verse 14 has for St. John the same meaning as Buddhi; “truth” is Manas, the Spirit-Self.

John bare witness of him and cried saying: This was he of whom I spoke. After me cometh one who existed before me. For he is my predecessor.

And of his fullness have we all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

No man hath at any time seen God with eyes. The only begotten Son who lived in the bosom of the Cosmic Father hath become our guide in this vision.

[Dr.Rudolf Steiner's rendering of the text.]

All initiations into the Mystery of the Spirit pointed to the coming of Christ Jesus. This initiation was attained in the Yoga sleep, in the Orphic sleep, in the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke up again and returned into his body, so that he could again hear and speak with his physical senses, he uttered the words which are rendered as follows in the Hebrew language: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani.” The pupil of the Mysteries woke up with the words: “My God, My God, how thou hast raised me!”

This was the initiation during the ancient Jewish epoch. During his three days' sojourn in the higher worlds, the initiate experienced the whole course of mankind's future development, all that awaited him in the future development of humanity. As a rule, these future stages of human development were not perceived abstractly in his vision.. Each stage was represented by a personality. The seer saw twelve individualities. They represented twelve stages of soul-development. The soul-forces thus appeared in the external form of twelve persons. At a certain moment, the initiate saw a certain scene: His own individuality became transfigured—the stage which the whole of humanity will reach when it shall be filled by Buddhi, when it shall be Christianized. He identified himself with God and behind him he saw the twelve soul-forces. John was immediately behind, he was the last of the twelve who announced his fulfilment. And he saw himself transfigured, he saw the stage which he would reach when perfection will be attained; he saw his soul-forces in the external form of persons, and perceived St. John, the herald of the Christ-stage of development. During the Yoga-sleep, these twelve figures grouped themselves around him, and the scene arose which was designated as the Mystical Supper. This image had the following meaning: When the initiate sits there surrounded by his soul-forces, he says to himself: These are one with me; they have led me through the development of the earth; the feet of this apostle enabled me to walk on along my path, the hands of that apostle gave me the power to work. ... The Holy Supper is the expression of man's fellowship with the twelve soul-forces.

Human perfection consists in the falling away of the lower soul-forces, so that only the higher forces remain behind; in future, man will no longer have the lower forces; he will, for example, no longer have the forces of procreation. John's soul-power above all will raise those lower forces to the loving heart. It will send out streams of spiritual love. The heart is the most powerful organ, when Christ lives in man. The lower soul-forces are then raised from the abdominal regions to the heart.

Every initiate experienced this in the Mysteries of the heart. It re-echoed in the words: “My God, my God, how thou hast raised me!” With the appearance of Christ Jesus, the whole Mystery, the whole experience, became reality upon the physical plane. At that time there were brotherhoods in Palestine which had developed out of the old order of the Essenes. Among their institutions, they also had a meal symbolizing the mystical Holy Supper. “To eat the Easter Lamb” is a general expression for something which took place at Easter. Jesus sat down with the Twelve and inaugurated the Holy Supper with the words: “At the end of the evolution of the earth, all men will have absorbed what I brought down to the earth, and the words, ‘This is my Body, This is my Blood,’ will then be true.” Afterwards he said: “There is one among you who will betray me.” This is brought about by the power of egoism. But as surely as this power of egoism is the source of treason, so surely will this lower soul-force be raised to a higher stage. One of the disciples rested upon Jesus' bosom, he rested upon Jesus' heart. This means that all the lower forces, every form of egoism, will be raised to the heart. At this point Jesus repeated to his Disciples the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani”—“Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him!”

The same event which took place upon Golgotha took place in the ancient Mysteries. Under the Cross stood the Disciple “whom the Lord loved,” the Disciple who had rested upon his bosom and had been raised to his heart. Also the women are there under the Cross: the mother of Jesus, his mother's sister Mary, and Mary Magdalene. John does not say that the mother of Jesus was called “Mary,” but that this was the name of his mother's sister. His mother's name was “Sophia.”

John baptises Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove descends from heaven. At this moment a spiritual act of conception takes place. But who is the mother of Jesus who conceives at this moment.

The Chela, Jesus of Nazareth, at this moment divests himself of his Ego, his highly developed Manas is fructified and the Buddhi enters into it. The highly developed Manas that received the Buddhi is Wisdom—Sophia, the Mother who is fructified by the Father of Jesus. Maria, which is the same as Maya, has the general meaning of “Mother name.” The Gospel records: “The Angel came in unto her and said: Hail thou that art highly favoured,—behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son—the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” The Holy Ghost is Jesus' father: the descending dove fructifies the Sophia that lives in Jesus.

The Gospel should therefore be read as follows: “Under the Cross stood the mother of Jesus, Sophia.” To this mother Jesus says: “Woman, behold thy son.” He himself had transferred the Sophia that lived within him to the Disciple John; he transformed him into a son of Sophia and said: “Behold, thy mother.” “Henceforth you should recognise the divine wisdom as your mother and dedicate yourself to her alone.” John had recorded this divine wisdom; Sophia is embodied in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus had given him this wisdom, and he was authorized by Christ to transmit it to the world.

The highest Spirit of the Earth had to incarnate in a physical body; this body had to die, it had to be killed and its blood had to flow. A special meaning is attached to this. Wherever there is blood, there is Self. The Self rooted in the blood had to be sacrificed in order that the old communities based on Self might come to an end. All individual forms of egoism flow away with the blued of the Crucified Christ. The blood of racial communities changes into a blood which is common to the whole of mankind, because the blood of Christ was sacrificed at the moment when he hung upon the Cross.

Here too something took place which might have been observed by an astral observer in the astral atmosphere. When Christ died upon the Cross, the whole astral atmosphere changed, so that events could take place which could never have taken place before. This has become possible because by shedding His blood, Christ gave the whole of mankind a Self that is common to all. The blood that streamed out of the wounds of Christ Jesus gave to the whole of humanity a Self which is shared by all. His three bodies remained hanging upon the Cross and were then revived by the Risen Christ. When Christ abandoned his physical frame, the three bodies were so strong that they could utter the words of initiation which follow the transfiguration: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!”

To all who know something of the Mystery-truths, these words must have revealed that a Mystery had been enacted. A small correction in the Hebrew text therefore gave rise to the words contained in the Gospel: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”

There exist within the sphere of Esoteric Science different principal ideas, which then run as leading-threads, leit-motifs through the entire Esoteric Movement. Such an idea, is that of Rhythm in Numbers; and another is that of the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. The secret of Number expresses itself in the fact that certain phenomena follow each other in such a way that the 7th in a series of events reveals itself as a kind of conclusion, whereas the 8th may be designated as the beginning of quite another series of events. One finds this fact reflected in the physical world, in the relation of the octave to the Key-note.

For those who endeavour to penetrate in occult spheres, this principle becomes the basis of a very comprehensive view of the cosmos. Not only are tones, sounds, arranged according to the Law of Number, but also events in the course of time; events in the spiritual world are also so arranged that one finds in them a relationship, just as one finds in the Rhythm of Sound.

Still more important is the relationship between the Macrocosm and the Microcosm. We find a physical image of this at every touch and turn. Let us consider the relationship of the whole plant to the seed. In the entire plant we see a Macrocosm, in the seed a Microcosm. In a certain sense we find compressed in the seed, as in a point, the forces which are divided later over the entire plant. In a similar way we can look upon the development of each individual human being from childhood to old age as a Microcosm, whereas the evolution of a race, a people, is to be conceived as a Macrocosm. Every nation has its childhood in which it absorbs important elements of civilisation,. An instance of this is to be seen in the Romans, who absorbed into themselves the Greek civilization. As a people grows, it draws out of itself the necessary forces for its own further evolution. Therefore it is so important that each member of a nation should experience what his whole race undergoes, because each single member of a race relates himself to the whole nation as the seed to the whole plant. In the highest degree we find the relationship between Macrocosm and Microcosm existing in man as he meets us in the world of sense and the cosmos surrounding him. As man stands before us in the world of sense, he has concentrated into his being the forces of the Universe, just as the forces of the plant are concentrated in the seed or germ.

Now we must ask ourselves:—Are these forces distributed in some way over the Macrocosm, just as the plant-forces of the seed are distributed over the entire plant? Esoteric Science alone can give us an answer to this question, for in his earthly life man only learns to know himself as a Microcosm; but he lives not only in the Microcosm, but also has a life within the entire Universe. To state, that in his experience from waking to sleeping man oscillates between a life in the Macrocosm and a life in the Microcosm, at first appears to be merely an assertion. When he sinks into slumber, his consciousness ceases to work, his feelings and emotions cease to exist for him, and external science will bestir itself in vain if it endeavours to find within the sleeping human being that which constitutes his soul life in the waking condition. Even logically it is impossible to conceive that man's soul-life is destroyed when he goes to sleep and that when he awakes it arises again as if out of nothingness. External science in no very distant future will have to admit that one can just as little recognise the soul-life by external, material facts, as one can recognise the lungs by studying the laws of oxygen. In addition to studying the laws of oxygen, we have to learn to know the lungs in their organic functioning. In the same way we learn that in our external laws there is nothing of the physical life which we draw in with our breath on waking in the morning, and which we expire when we go to sleep. To the occultist going to sleep and waking up is nothing but a kind of breathing:—Every morning man draws into himself with his waking breath his spiritual, psychic nature, and he breathes that out again on going to sleep. Where is the spiritual, psychic part of man when he is asleep,—that part which corresponds as it were to the air in space which he has breathed out of his body? Occult science shows us that it is surrounded by the atmosphere of the spiritual world, just as we are surrounded by the atmosphere of the air; the only difference being that our atmosphere extends only for a few miles, whereas the spiritual atmosphere fills the entire cosmos.

Consider the quantity of air which man inspires in his body, in comparison with the entire atmosphere. The same quantity which, after inspiration exists inside the human body, is added, after expiration, to the atmosphere around one. Thus in the sense of occultism, we can say that after an inspiration the same amount of air is in the Microcosm which after expiration is in the Macrocosm. It is just the same with that psychic spiritual life which is actually present within our body; from waking to going to sleep that is in the Microcosm, but from sleeping until waking in the morning that is in the Macrocosm.

Just as an external physical science teaches us concerning the existence of a physical atmosphere, so Occult Science speaks of a spiritual Cosmos, which takes up into itself our souls when we sleep. Spiritual Science can only be attained through spiritual methods, the methods of initiation. Daily experience reveals to us the life of the soul in the Macrocosm, but life within the spiritual, psychic Macrocosm we only learn to know through initiation.

So we must speak first of the Science of Initiation whenever that transition from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm is to be discussed, and this science of Initiation is of special significance, because we enter that spiritual world after death. That crossing of the Threshold of Death signifies a definite forsaking of the body by the soul.

The methods of Initiation give an intimate exercise for the soul; just as in everyday life we work on our bodily environment, so we must train our souls to work in a spiritual psychic way on the Macrocosm and receive impressions from it. We must endeavour to release those spiritual, psychic forces which are bound up with our physical life, to set them free from the body. Three Soul-Forces are bound up with the body in ordinary life, which can be made free through Initiation. The first of the Soul-Forces is the power of thought. In ourordinary life we use it for shaping our thoughts, for forming ideas about the things around us. Let us attempt to enter into the nature of this Thought-Force. What happens when we think and form concepts? Even physical science will admit that every time we grasp a thought which relates to anything sensible, a process of destruction takes place in our brain. We have to destroy the finer structures of the brain, and this destruction is very evident in the signs of fatigue.

What the everyday-thinking destroys in this way is replaced in sleep; but through the methods of initiation we attain a condition in which our thinking-power is set free from the physical brain, and then nothing is destroyed. This we attain by Meditation, Concentration and Contemplation. These are certain processes in our souls which are to be distinguished from the ordinary life of the soul. In order to speak quite concretely, an example shall be given. Those ideas and soul processes which fill our ordinary life are but little adapted to kindle meditation in our souls. We must choose quite different ones. Suppose you have two glasses of water before you; one empty, the other half full. Now suppose we pour water out of the half-full glass into the empty one, and imagine that the half-full glass becomes fuller and fuller be cause of what we are doing. The materialist would consider this kind of thing foolish; but, my dear friends, with a concept suitable for meditation it is not a question of its reality but of whether it is one which will form ideas in the soul. Just because it relates to nothing real, it can direct our senses away from reality. It may be a symbol especially for that soul-process which we describe as the mystery of love. The process of love is something like that half-full glass from which man pours into the empty one, and which thereby becomes fuller and fuller. The soul does not become more empty, it becomes fuller in the same measure in which it gives; and in this way that symbol may have great significance.

Now, my dear friends, if we treat such an idea in this way, so that we apply all our soul-powers to it, then it is a meditation. We must forget everything else in the presence of that idea, we must even forget ourselves; our entire soul life must be directed to that one idea for a long period, say for a quarter of an hour. It is not sufficient to perform such an exercise once, or even a few times. It must be repeated again and again and then according to the endowment of the individual there will gradually be revealed a change in our soul-life. We notice that through this we gradually develop a power of thinking which no longer destroys the brain. Anyone who goes through such an evolution will find that this meditation evokes no fatigue, and that the brain is not destroyed. That appears to contradict the fact that beginners in meditation so often fall asleep, but that is because when we first begin to meditate we are still connected with the external world, and have not yet learned to free our thoughts from the brain. When after repeated efforts, we are able to meditate without fatigue, then we have freed our thought from the physical brain, and then a transformation appears in the whole of our human life.

As formerly, when asleep we were outside our body, without consciousness so we are now outside it and are at the same time conscious. And, just as in ordinary everyday life we think of our ego as being within our skin, so after meditation we experience ourselves outside our body. The body becomes an
object on which we look down. Now, however, we learn to know it differently than in sleep we learn to know it as the sum of magnetic forces which chain us to our body. It is something into which we wish to dive down. And we recognise that these are the same forces which draw us each morning to our physical body, and which before birth we drew fur ourselves from the spiritual world when we sought a stream of heredity in which tofind a new physical body. We then learn why we felt drawn to our parents and ancestors.

Let us take one idea, one soul-experience, which is different from that we have, on passing from the Microcosm into the Macrocosm. When we look from the Macrocosm to our body, we say on confronting each of our experiences: “This is outside us.” But if we have developed the Pauline experience, we have already developed an element of soul which is something within us, yet external to us; and when we are outside our bodies we feel the Christ-experience as an inner experience. This may be called the first meeting with the Christ-Impulse in the Macrocosm.

But now we must discuss a second kind of Initiation-Force. Just as we had to release the power of thought, so we have to release that force of which we make use of in our speech. Materialistic science says that our organs of speech come from our brain centres. But my dear friends, it was not the Brocha-organ in the brain which developed speech, but the contrary; speech built up the Brocha-organ in the brain.

The power of Thinking works destructively, but speech, which comes from our social environment, works constructively. Now we can also take the force which built up this Brocha-organ in the brain, and release it. We do this when we permeate our meditation with feeling. When I meditate on this sentence: “In the Light radiates Wisdom”, that reflects no external truth; but it has a deep meaning, a deep significance. If we permeate our feeling with the following; “we will seek to live with Light that radiates Wisdom”, then we feel that we gradually grasp that power which generally comes to expression in words but which now lives in our soul. You have heard of ‘golden silence’, that refers to the fact that we have in our soul a force which creates the word. We can grasp this force, just as we can grasp the power of thought; and in so doing, we overcome Time, just as through grasping of the power of thought we overcome space. The memory, which in ordinary everyday life extends back to one's childhood, then extends into the pre-natal life. That is the way to get experiences of our life from the last death until the present birth, and is also the way to perceive the evolution of humanity; because we then perceive those forces which guide the development of the history of man. Then we learn to know life from birth right up to death. If we but develop the force of the Silent Word, we learn to know the spiritual basis of our life on earth. And here again it is the case that we come to an historic point, to the Mystery of Golgotha; because this is the path along which we come to the ascending and descending development of man, the point when Christ incarnated. We then recognise Christ as He is, in His very own forces. A special light then falls on the first lines of the Gospel according to St. John.

As through the freeing of our thought we unite ourselves with the Christ as He was on earth, so through the freeing of the Word we unite ourselves with the Mystery of Golgotha.

And then a third force can become independent through meditation. Meditation can not only affect the brain and the larynx, but the blood-circulation in the heart. We feel this working in a weak form in such processes as blushing and turning pale. There a psychic element affects the pulsing of the blood and reachel to the heart. Now this soul-power can be drawn away from the pulsation of the blood and be made an independent power of the soul. This happens through Meditation, when the will unites itself with one's meditations. Again we meditate: “In the Light radiates Wisdom”; but now we form for ourselves the resolve of uniting our Will with it, so that we will to accompany this radiating wisdom right through the evolution of humanity. Now if we carry out such a Meditation, we reach the point when the forces of the all stream into the soul.

My dear friends, these forces can be grasped, one can draw them out of the blood, though not entirely; but they build a clairvoyant force through which we can transcend our Earth. We then learn to know the Earth as a reincarnating planet, which will incarnate anew and we human beings with it. In this way we grow through the spiritual, psychic world, right out into the Macrocosm.

In a certain way we experience how life between death and birth must be opposed to the life of the one incarnation; for what man experiences after death when free from his body, is experienced here by the Initiate. Let us take the chief characteristic of what offers itself in a condition free of the body, for that is the same as the life after death.

Living in the Microcosm we perceive through the physical organs of the senses; after death we look down on to the body as do the Initiates, but we cannot then perceive what the sense organs perceive. The Initiate can learn about the life between death and rebirth, because he has found here the transition from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm. We cannot converse, with the dead in our ordinary human speech, but if we have learnt to set the power of speech free from the body, then we learn to recognise in what way we can be together with the dead; and if we set free our power of thought, we can speak with those who are living between death and rebirth. In this way a seer could speak with the soul of one who had gone before. He had been an excellent man, but in a material sense had only concerned himself about his own people. He had lived without religious or Anthroposophical ideas. And so the Seer could experience from that man who had died: “I know that I lived with my family, with my own people, and they were the sunshine of my life. They are still living. I know it, but I can only see them up to that point of time when I left the earth. I can establish no connection with them now”. My dear friends, conditions are indeed complicated after death. The seer could see the following: The wife still showed in her being, something like the results of the influence of her husband. The husband could see these results, not as one person sees another, but as if reflected in a mirror. There certainly was a power of seeing but only as if one looked into a mirror and saw an image. That affects one in a terrible way, because one cannot see people as they really are; but just as we can see the physical body in existence, in the same way after death we must learn to see the soul.

A connection however, is still possible between the dead and the living on earth, if only the latter will permeate themselves with spiritual life, on this rests the benefits which we can show to the dead. If anyone has gone through the Gate of Death with whom our interests were bound up,—we can read to him;—we can imagine him standing before us. We read to him in a low voice, or we can send him thoughts, but he will only receive an impression if we send him ideas and concepts containing spiritual life.

Now the task of Anthroposophy will be understood when we realise that in this way we can wipe away the abyss which separates us from the dead. Even a soul which was at emnity with Anthroposophy can feel a benefit through such reading; for there are two sides to be distinguished in the life of our souls. There is what we have experienced there consciously, and the sub-conscious depths, which make their way up, like the dpeths of the sea, it only expresses itself in waves. For instance, there may be two brothers—one an Anthroposophist and the other an enemy. This can only be a fact in the outer world, because the inner process is, that a deep longing for what is religious exists in the soul of the second and he only seeks to deaden it by opposing Spiritual Science.

His conscious idea is a kind of opiate, the object of which is to help him to forget what is going on, in the depths of his soul. Death does away with all that, and we hunger especially after those sub-conscious longings of ours; so these readings of Anthroposophical writings is especially beneficial, because gradually there will come from that the consciousness of union with the dead. But even before we have that feeling the only risk we run is that the dead may not listen to us when we read eo them.

So we see that through the living grasp of Anthroposophical teaching the dead and the living in Microcosm and Macrocosm come into relationship. This occurs in yet another sphere; when the seer observes sleeping souls he sees that some souls go through the portal of sleep who have no spiritual interests; others souls go through the portal of sleep who during the day have taken in spiritual thoughts. A distinction can be seen between them, for sleeping souls are like seeds in a field; and the dead nourish themselves on that which is brought by the sleeping souls in the way of spiritual ideas. If when we go to sleep, we do not carry up into the spiritual world spiritual ideas and concepts we deprive the dead souls of their nourishment. With our reading we can give them spiritual stimulation; with the spiritual ideas we carry through with us on going to sleep we give the dead their nourishment.

And so, through what man creates in his own soul in this way, he throws a bridge across from the Microcosm to the Macrocosm. What we take into ourselves is as a grain of corn; the living mission, not merely the theoretic mission of Anthroposophy. I might represent as theory transformed into the elixir of life. Because immortality then becomes an experience; just as the seed is a guarantee for another seed, so do we develop spiritual, psychic powers which are the guarantee for our coming again. Not only do we understend but we experience immortality in ourselves. Thus from the time we grow grey-headed we experience that part of us which goes through the Gate of Death. In this sense Anthroposophy can become the elixir of life, can permeate us, as the blood permeates our physical body. Only then are Theosophy and Anthroposophy what they ought to be.

If we seek to recognise this and to gather it into the basic feeling that the human soul is just as much connected with the spiritual world as our physical bodies are connected with the physical world, then we may experience the feeling:

The Beings in the worlds of Space
Who alter in the course of Time,
Speak to the minds of Men.
The Soul of Man experiencing,
Presses beyond the boundaries of Space,
And, undisturbed by Time,
Enters the Realm of the Eternities.

Dear attendees! When a person, after a day's work and toils, takes a little time to reflect and tries to find his way in the life of the soul, the question arises as to how the individual facts of life, how the individual experiences are connected with the whole human destiny, with the great goal of human life in general. One of the questions that then arises for the soul is undoubtedly that of the meaning of human knowledge.

When we talk about knowledge, we can initially mean that knowledge which relates to the direct services of practical life, to everything that enables us to get to know the outside world in such a way that we can put it at the service of our practical interests. The question becomes somewhat different when we consider knowledge that attempts to penetrate the deeper foundations of life, the riddles of existence – knowledge that does not lead us to an immediately practical work and activity. It is said that man has an immediate urge to know and that knowledge is valuable in itself. Those who look deeper will hardly be satisfied with such an answer. What value would knowledge have if it were only an inner image, only a repetition of what is outside in the world? Why should that which is weaving in the world be effective in the outer world and be repeated in one's own soul only as in a mirror? Is it really only the satisfaction of a soul urge that pushes for knowledge that reaches beyond the everyday? This question will occupy us today: the goal and destiny, essence and significance of human knowledge.

If we mean the concept of knowledge that many people have today, which consists in saying that knowledge should provide us with a true reflection of what the world is experiencing, then it will not be easy to relate knowledge to the great goals and tasks of human existence. We will have to ask ourselves: Is knowledge really only the repetition of something external? Or is it one of the forces that must work in our soul in order to advance it on the paths it must traverse in its existence in the world?

This question cannot be answered by external science; it can only be answered if we consider the whole human being. External science only provides us with information about what our senses perceive and our minds grasp. But beyond this ordinary science, there is something that is trying to become part of our entire spiritual life today, which can be called spiritual science or anthroposophy.

What does theosophical spiritual science seek to comprehend? It seeks to comprehend the whole human being. Let us first agree on what that means, the whole human being. When we look at a person, we see two strictly separate states within the normal human existence of today. These two states, which life presents to us, are so familiar to the human being that he does not even notice that the greatest riddles of existence are hidden in them. We express these states in the words “waking and sleeping”. We recall that from time immemorial many philosophies have called sleep the little brother of death. We can combine these words with two others, namely with the words “life and death”. In these words we have a large part of what we can count among the riddles of existence.

Let us try, starting from what presents itself to us in the most ordinary way, to understand the changing states of waking and sleeping. In the waking state, we try to comprehend all the impressions that constantly flow into our soul - impressions that our senses transmit to us, everything that fills us with joy, desire and pain, in short, what constitutes what we call our mental life. We see this ebb and flow of drives, desires, passions, and so on, plunging into an indeterminate darkness in the evening. During sleep, it transitions into another state, that of unconsciousness. It would be absurd to say that the human being as a being of soul disappears in the evening and is reborn anew in the morning. We must ask ourselves: where is that which works in us throughout the day, where is it when we let our soul life sink into an indeterminate darkness in the evening? We are immediately pointed to answers that cannot be given from an ordinary, sensory perspective, because that perspective escapes precisely that which hides behind the nocturnal state in the evening. The question of where the soul is at night can only be answered by theosophical spiritual science, because it rises from the knowledge of the sensual to the knowledge of the supersensible, from the visible to the invisible.

We need to come to an understanding about how theosophical spiritual science can arrive at such supersensible insights by once again taking a brief look at what really fulfills our entire life during the day. We can say that we live with our soul during the day through external stimulation, through external impressions. In the evening, the external stimuli fade away, creating the emptiness of the sleeping state. But because a person in the normal life of today's existence can lead a soul life only when external perceptions evoke from his soul that which we are currently experiencing, we can imagine that the inner work of the soul dies, withers away when the external stimuli are not there. Must it be so?

That it need not be so can be seen if one accepts the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. What knowledge of the sensory world is comes about through the stimulus of the sensory world. Supersensible knowledge can only come about through the soul's willingness to unfold work within itself, in order to develop powers and abilities even when there are no stimuli from the external sensory world. The possibility of developing such inner powers is given to us by the method of spiritual schooling. This method is there for those who want to penetrate into the knowledge of the supersensible world. This method can only be briefly hinted at here. Those who want to get to know it thoroughly can find it in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. We shall only briefly indicate here how man can find within himself the abilities to ascend to knowledge of the higher worlds.

The first thing is that man learns to artificially evoke, through a strong willpower, what otherwise only comes in the state of unconsciousness, namely, what man experiences when the sensory impressions cease. He must be able to command all outer impressions to stop; all outer impressions around him must fall silent, just as they do in the evening when we fall asleep. But this moment must take place through his will, in full consciousness. He would be like a sleeper if he could awaken nothing in his own soul. But although all outer impressions fall silent, he learns to unfold strong powers; he draws out of the deep recesses of his soul what slumbers there. No outer efforts are needed; they are intimate soul processes. There is a sinking into strong, vigorous thoughts, which are not given from without, but which the soul forms for itself.

This is meditation or concentration, as it is called – a drawing together of thoughts. Without external impressions we must feel joy and sorrow. The spiritual researcher lets powerful, strong thoughts arise in his own soul, thoughts that have nothing to do with the external world, and these are ideals as well as impulses of the will. These must have a stronger effect than external impressions; the soul must be seized by them intensely and powerfully. If a third element were not added, these perceptions would have the effect of volcanoes. This is that through a strong effort of will an inner calm and quiet can be brought about despite these impulses. Then the spiritual researcher experiences - even if only after a long time - the great moment that can be compared to the moment when a blind person suddenly regains his sight after an operation. Just as the impressions of the external world flood into the soul of the blind man after an operation, so too does everything that was previously unavailable to him.

This fact makes it clear to us that there can only be a supersensible world for us if the organ of perception for it is present. When this organ is awakened, a new world opens up. We must not decide about what we do not know, but only about what we know. These organs, which are necessary for recognizing the supersensible world, are developed through meditation or concentration in the calm of our soul. Then “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears” arise - to use an expression of Goethe. It could now be objected: Yes, it may be that the spiritual researcher experiences a higher world, but what do the spiritual worlds have to do with the others who cannot ascend to them? — That is not correct. The spiritual eye is necessary for recognition [of the supersensible worlds], but to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say, unbiased reason is sufficient, and therefore it concerns all people.

Someone in whom the higher organs are awakened can observe such a phenomenon as sleep. It is a very different state from that of waking. Only part of the human being remains in the physical world during sleep, the other part, the soul-spiritual, withdraws from the physical body when falling asleep and returns to its home, the spiritual world. The spiritual world need not be imagined as a different place; it is all around us. We have human nature, divided into two parts; during waking these are together, but during sleeping they are separated. But human nature is not yet fully explained. We can get a rough idea of the two parts that go out at night by comparing man with the animals that are closest to him of all visible creatures. We also find instincts, desires, and feelings in animals. Even if they are not present in the same perfection, they are still more or less present in animals, and only those who cannot rise to a higher [contemplation] will consider them to be the same as in humans. We need only think of something that is usually not emphasized in external science; we need only remember that, for example, in the German language there is a word that cannot be called to anyone from the outside, [the word “I”]. This name cannot sound [from the outside] to our ear when it means our own self; it must arise from one's own soul life. All true religions have recognized this. This is an announcement of what is essentially the same in man as in the divine. Correctly understood, “I” means the ineffable name of God, because Yahweh, correctly translated, means “I am,” no matter what philology may otherwise interpret. This does not mean that man is to be made a god. Just as a drop of water is not the sea, so man is not God.

That which withdraws itself in the evening divides again into two parts: that which is the carrier of desires, passions, etc., and that which lets all these perceptions flow together in us and works through them - the I. Through the I, man becomes the crown of all creatures on this earth. But that which goes out at night is composed of the I and the astral body. What does a human being leave behind? The physical body, and we have that in common with every mineral. It consists of the same forces. The inanimate mineral, the crystal, takes its form from the forces within it; this is not the case with a living being. In the case of humans, we see that their physical body is subject to chemical laws only in one instance, and only at death. In death, we see what the forces imprinted on the mineral do to the body. In life, it never follows these forces. What remains in bed at night is imbued and permeated by another body, and we call this the etheric or life body. This prevents the body from following the chemical and physical laws; it is a faithful fighter against them.

Now we can ask ourselves: Why does this happen every evening, that a person must return to their spiritual home, so to speak? Why must they withdraw into a spiritual world every evening? In the evening, external impressions fade; we are overcome by fatigue. When the astral body and the ego withdraw into the spiritual world, the person falls into unconsciousness. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and pain, urges, passions and so on. Why does all this disappear from our soul life? How can it be that all this dies away at night? We shall soon understand why this is so. The astral body and the I are the bearers of pleasure and pain, of perceptions and concepts. But in order for this to become conscious to the human being, it is necessary that they are mirrored by the physical body and the etheric body. We perceive nothing but what lives in ourselves. It is like a kind of echo that is produced in us by the physical and etheric bodies. Man does not perceive directly what he feels, but what he experiences is mirrored to him through the astral body and the I, through the etheric and physical bodies. But the work of the astral body involves conjuring up what we call the soul life. The real work is done by the astral body and not by the mirror – just as it is necessary for a person to be active at a mirror in order to create this or that image. The astral body has to work from morning till evening to extract from the physical what we can call the content of our soul. The forces that the astral body needs to work during the day, it must draw from the spiritual world. When these forces are exhausted, fatigue sets in, and it must draw new forces again.

Sleep has a profound significance. In the spiritual world is the source of everything we conjure up during our daily lives. If we look at our daily life in this way, we ask: What is the significance of our daily life if the soul has to draw its strength from the spiritual world? The soul and the ego do not enter the astral world empty, but take something with them from our outer world every evening. Life during the day is not without fruit for the soul's life. We need only look at what is characteristic of our soul in its deepest meaning and what is taken from our daytime life into our nighttime life. This can be seen indirectly when we look at our soul during our youth and in old age. This gives us an idea of development. In youth, we see germinal tendencies, but undeveloped, and later we see our soul transformed, with richer content. How can we transform ourselves? By the soul forming a kind of essence every evening from the external impressions we have received. We carry our daytime experiences into the night, and in the morning that which was the soul's spiritual experience has entered the soul; it joins what is already there, and in this way the soul develops.

You only have to look at people who cannot sleep, and if you are an attentive observer, you will notice how the soul's progress suffers when it cannot get the right amount of sleep. We can only imprint something on our memory if we have had a proper amount of sleep. Only in this way can we develop the forces that lead us ever higher. We imprint in our soul what the world reveals to us during our waking life, and in this way our soul becomes wiser. Knowledge is an important means of developing our soul between birth and death. But let us now ask ourselves how much transformation we can actually achieve. How narrow are the limits within which we find ourselves? We can increase our soul development. We can see this in individual abilities, for example in learning to write. Writing encompasses a whole group of abilities. When we look back, we see what a wide range of abilities were involved, how much work and effort and so on went into learning the art of writing. Or think of the first attempt we made to draw the first letter, of everything that then flowed together into the one skill of writing. From what we experienced then, we extracted an essence, and through such weaving together a soul skill arises.

Whatever has a deeper impact on our lives can only develop within very narrow limits in the time between birth and death. If someone pursues the riddles of the world or has gone through this or that life experience in deep pain, you can even see that reflected in their physiognomy and in their movements. From decade to decade, this is expressed more and more, even in the body. But we can develop in this direction only to a limited extent. Why? Because we have our souls before us like a malleable material, but we cannot work with what our inclinations have created between birth and death into the body, no matter how many experiences we have gathered. Let us take the example of music. If we do not have a finer ear, if we are not musical, we are unable to develop the ability during our lifetime that could change our physicality in this respect between birth and death. We are powerful in the face of the soul, but powerless in the face of the facts of our physicality. But we know that when we face the external world and conjure up all these images, they are born out of our soul - not only, but through its activity, because it could never conjure up such reflections if something were not given from outside. And this outside includes the same forces that make up our physical body. It seems so mysterious to us because we cannot penetrate there. We would have to conjure up a fine musical ear and so on from the same world. It is something like a veil, like a shell. But behind it is something that, if we could master it, would give us the ability to transform our physical body just as much as the astral.

We can gain knowledge, but we cannot utilize it; we cannot transform our body with the knowledge. But there is a possibility to transform our physical body in the same way as the astral one. Even if we recognize the forces, we could not apply them directly, because our physical and etheric bodies are given to us as dense material. Here we want to refer to a law that will be incorporated into modern spiritual life through Theosophy.

In the 17th century, not only laymen but also naturalists believed that worms and fish could arise from mud. If we go back to the 17th century, we find scholarly works that describe how wild animals grew out of other animals – for example, hornets out of a dead ox that had been beaten until it was brittle, bees out of a horse carcass, and wasps out of a donkey carcass. It was [the naturalist] Francesco Redi who first uttered the sentence: Living things can only arise from living things. There must be a germ of something living in order for something living to arise. Redi was almost burned [as a heretic] for saying this. Today, anyone who claims otherwise would be considered backward. Spiritual science says: Spiritual-soul things can only arise from spiritual-soul things. Just as an earthworm does not come from mud, so the spiritual does not come from the inheritance of the father and mother.

We have to distinguish between the environment of the spiritual and the spiritual itself. In spiritual science, this leads us to the law of reincarnation [of what lives spiritually in man]. Today those who have recognized this law are perhaps not exactly called heretics – fashions change. Today the [true] enlightened are declared to be fantasists, dreamers. But in the not too distant future, people will no longer be able to understand how anyone could have believed otherwise. Thus, we see in what comes into existence through birth the repetition of an earlier earthly existence. And what lies between death and birth is a purely spiritual existence. When we look at a child with undeveloped features, we see what it has brought with it from previous lives on earth, and we can understand something that is very important.

Why can we only develop mental abilities during our lifetime? When we wake up, we find the same body with the same organs. But when a person passes through the gate of death, the great moment arrives when he discards his physical body and only what is spiritual and mental remains. Now he is no longer bound to the body. The conditions are quite different than during sleep. In the morning, when we wake up, we find the same physical body; we cannot destroy it and rebuild it. But when the physical falls away at death, what we have taken in knowledge during our life is united with our soul. In accordance with the knowledge and experiences we have had, we can now reshape them and incorporate them into a new body.

Thus, in each life, we build our body according to what we have gained in the last life; we make it the product of our experiences in the last life. Life experience in the present life is our existence in a next life. This is how knowledge works in us; it is one of the most important forces of existence, shaping itself. We are grateful for the knowledge of the last life; it has produced a body in the present life and preserves that with which we have enriched ourselves in the present life, and that will bring us higher in the next life. Now we also understand why there can be a huge difference between different people when we consider the strength and weakness of their cognitive abilities.

Now you will ask: why does man not remember his previous lives? That is also a matter of development. A four-year-old child cannot count. But it would be a false conclusion to say that this is not a human being, because humans can count. Wait until he is ten years old. There comes a time for every person when he begins to remember. One can only remember that which is present. Fichte was right to say that most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than a self. The realization of what the self is is still missing. Just as the flowers can only be recognized through sensory impressions, so can the spiritual only be recognized through spiritual research. From the intimate study of the self, it follows that the self must be there as a conscious idea before one can remember. Only when we have generated the idea of self can we reflect back on ourselves. Thus, knowledge as self-knowledge leads us to build up our memory in such a way that we consciously expand life beyond the life that is enclosed between birth and death. If we can continue to work from life to life, if through knowledge we succeed in shaping ourselves and thus awaken the eternal in us, then the knowledge of development helps us in the shaping of all that is eternal in us. Now we give the work of knowledge and its meaning for our whole life. It brings us immortality and gives us knowledge of our immortality.

Immortality and knowledge belong together. In a particular life, our body appears to be something that has been worked into it from the previous life. We often cannot use the knowledge in this life, but we need it to build a new body. This certainty gives spiritual science a practical meaning in life. It must not remain mere theory, but we must permeate ourselves with it completely. We then see death in a new light. Knowledge has built up our present body. Through the disintegration of our body, we become free from it and gain the opportunity to build a new one. Thus, even if we look at death in pain when it touches others, or with fear when it approaches us, it appears to us in a completely different form. If we can rise to a higher point of view, we can say that we are grateful for death, because it gives us the opportunity to build a new body for ourselves - for a higher life. The old spiritual researchers have always recognized this and also said so. Goethe puts it so beautifully in front of our soul, how we bring in from fresh life what we have worked for in the previous life:

As on the day when you were given to the world
The sun stood in greeting of the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you entered.
So you must be, you cannot escape yourself,
So the Sibyls said, so the prophets said;
And no time and no power can dismember the form that has been stamped, which develops itself alive.