The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The six lectures collected in this volume were given by Rudolf Steiner to members of the Anthroposophical Society during his visits to England in the year 1922. He came three times, giving altogether about thirty lectures on educational, social and general anthroposophical subjects. Nine years had elapsed since his preceding visit in May 1913 when he had spoken so significantly of the new Michael Age and of Christ-event of the 20th Century. The intervening time was marked by the catastrophes of war and social revolution. Meanwhile the first Goetheanum had been built at Dornach, Switzerland, as a centre for the world-wide movement.

During the years of war, Rudolf Steiner had put forward his epoch-making conception of Threefold Man and of the Threefold Social Order, on which was based the attempt, in the years 1913–21, to give shape to the social events of the time out of a deeper spiritual understanding. It was in the midst of this attempt that many practical activities, notably educational and medical, evolved under Dr. Steiner’s guidance, bringing the truths of Initiation Science to bear on the concrete tasks of daily life. Thus in the year 1913 the Waldorf School had been founded at Stuttgart by Emil Molt, with Rudolf Steiner as its educational director. The quick development of the school attracted the attention of thoughtful men and women in England, many of whom had been impressed by Dr. Steiner's book on the social and international problems of the time, the first English edition of which. The Threefold State, had been published by Messrs. Allen and Unwin in 1920.

he sculptress Edith Maryon, one of Dr. Steiner’s closest and most trusted fellow-workers at the Goetheanum, had in the past been linked by ties of friendship and common spiritual endeavour with the distinguished educationist Professor Millicent Mackenzie. Arising out of their correspondence. Professor Mackenzie arranged for a party of English teachers and educationists to visit Dornach at Christmas and New Year, 1921–22. Here, in the famous Weisse Saal of the Goetheanum, where the fatal outbreak of fire was discovered a year later. Rudolf Steiner gave a course of sixteen lectures for the special benefit of the visitors from England. Among those present were Miss Margaret Cross of The Priory School, King's Langley, and also some of those who were to form, three years later, the College of Teachers of the newly founded school, now known as Michael Hall.

Miss Cross was a member of the ‘New Ideals in Education’ Committee, whose annual conference for 1922 was to be devoted to the subject of Drama and Education, in connection with the Shakespeare Festival. At her suggestion it was decided to invite Dr. Steiner, both as educationist and as a distinguished Goethe scholar, to take an active part. So then in April 1922 he spoke at Stratford-on-Avon, side by side with eminent representatives of English life and letters—John Masefield and John Drinkwater among others, also Professor Cornford and Sir Henry Newbolt. The interest aroused is shewn by the fact that Dr. Steiner was invited to give a third lecture in addition to the two original planned.

It was decided to arrange a more extensive conference at Oxford during the long vacation, where Rudolf Steiner would have the opportunity to speak at greater length, both on the theory and method of the Waldorf School and on the Threefold Order. Through the kind hospitality of Principal L. P. Jacks, who found in The Threefold State ideas akin to his own, the Conference on ‘Spiritual Values in Education and Social Life’ was held at Manchester College during the second half of August. The joint organizers were Professor Millicent Mackenzie and Mr. Arnold Freeman of the Sheffield Educational Settlement. Principal Jacks was present at the beginning and gave the address of welcome. Among other well-known speakers who took part were Mr. A. Clutton Brock, Mr. C. Delisle Burns, Professor J. S. Mackenzie and Dr. Maxwell Garnett. During the morning sessions Dr. Steiner gave the course of nine lectures since published under the title The Spiritual Ground of Education and three further lectures on the social question. A group of Dornach artists gave Eurhythmy performances at Keble and there was also a small demonstration by children, to illustrate the part of Eurhythmy in education.

During his three visits to England in the year 1922 Dr. Steiner gave a number of other public and semi-public lectures—on the anthroposophical path of knowledge, on the knowledge of the Christ-Impulse, and on education. Some of these have since been printed. They include for example the memorable address on The Mystery of Golgotha given in Manchester College Chapel, Oxford, on Sunday evening, 27th August.

In the midst of these many activities, opportunities were also found for the members' lectures here reproduced. The different local groups which had been working side by side throughout the war were joining forces to create what afterwards became the ‘Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain.’ In the autumn of 1921 a small library-office and the use of a lecture-hall had been rented at Grosvenor Street from the Royal Asiatic Society, and it was here then that Dr. Steiner gave the first of these members' lectures. Meanwhile a more permanent headquarters was acquired at 46 (now 116) Gloucester Place. Save for the one at Oxford, the remaining lectures were given here. Dr. Steiner gave every encouragement to the efforts which were being made to enlarge the scope of the spiritual movement in this country, and to the practical activities arising from it.

We have translated freely, believing that a free translation will be most able to call forth an immediate impression of the words as Rudolf Steiner spoke them. It should be remembered that all the lectures to English audiences had to be interpreted as they were given; Dr. Steiner generally divided them into three sections, each of which was followed immediately by the interpretation. The resulting breaks are in most instances apparent. The present written translation is based on the full shorthand reports of the original. Though of outstanding excellence, these reports themselves are not free from occasional uncertainties.

he titles here chosen, for the series as a whole and for the single lectures, are not due to Dr. Steiner himself. All through the later years of his life he was lecturing frequently to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, at Dornach and wherever else he traveled, no special subject being indicated, as a rule, beforehand, except for conferences and other such occasions. We came to the lectures with unbounded expectation, knowing always that some fresh illumination would be given, some further insight awakened, concerning the spiritual world and its relation to human life.

[ 1 ] When leaving thy body behind thee thou soarest up into the ether,
Then thou becomest a god, immortal, beyond the power of death.

In this utterance of Empedocles (cf. p. 46) is epitomized what the ancient Egyptians thought about the eternal clement in man and its connection with the Divine. Proof of this may be found in the so-called Book of the Dead, which has been deciphered by the diligence of nineteenth-century scholars.¹ It is “the greatest coherent literary work that has come down to us from ancient Egypt.” It contains all kinds of instructions and prayers that were put into the tomb of each deceased person to serve as a guide when he was released from his mortal tenement. The most intimate ideas of the Egyptians about the eternal and the origin of the world are contained in this work. These views point to a conception of the gods similar to that of Greek mysticism.

Osiris gradually became the preëminent and most universally recognized of the various deities worshipped in different parts of Egypt. In him were comprized the ideas about the other divinities. Whatever the majority of the Egyptian people may have thought about Osiris, the Book of the Dead indicates that the priestly wisdom saw in him a being that might be found in the human soul herself. Everything said about death and the dead shows this plainly. While the body is given to earth and kept by it, the Eternal in man enters upon the path to the primordial Eternal. It comes before the tribunal of Osiris and the forty-two judges of the dead. The fate of the Eternal in man depends on the verdict of these judges. If the soul has confessed her sins, and has been deemed reconciled to eternal justice, invisible powers approach her and say: “The Osiris N. has been purified in the pool which is south of the field of Hotep. and north of the field of Locusts, where the gods of verdure purify themselves at the fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day with the image of the heart of the gods, passing from night to day.” Thus, within the eternal cosmic order the Eternal in man is itself addressed as an Osiris. After the name Osiris comes the deceased person’s own name; and the one who is uniting with the eternal cosmic order also alls himself “Osiris”. “I am the Osiris N. Growing under the blossoms of the fig-tree is the name of Osiris N.” Thus man becomes an Osiris. Being Osiris is only a perfect stage in human development. It seems obvious that even the Osiris who is a judge within the eternal cosmic order is nothing more than a perfect man, Between being human and being divine there is a difference in degree and number. The mystic view of the mystery of number underlies this. Osiris as a cosmic being is One, yet he exists, nevertheless, undivided in each human soul. Every human being is an Osiris, yet the One Osiris must be represented as a Separate being. Man is in course of development, and at the end of his evolutionary career he becomes divine. In taking this view we must speak of Divine-ness, or becoming divine, rather than of a finished divine being, complete in himself.

[ 2 ] It cannot be doubted that, according to this view, only he can really enter upon the Osiris existence who has reached the portals of the eternal cosmic order as an Osiris. Thus the highest life which man can lead must consist in his changing himself into Osiris. Even during mortal life a true man will live as a perfect Osiris as far as he can. He becomes perfect when he lives as an Osiris, when he passes through the experiences of Osiris. This lends a deeper significance to the Osiris myth. It becomes the ideal of the man who wishes to awaken the Eternal within himself.

Osiris is torn to pieces, killed by Typhon. The fragments of his body are preserved and cared for by his consort, Isis. After his death he let a ray of his own light fall upon her, and she bore him Horus. This Horus takes up the earthly tasks of Osiris. He is the second Osiris, still imperfect, but progressing towards the true Osiris.

The true Osiris is in the human soul, who at the outset is of a transitory nature; but as such she i destined to give birth to the Eternal. Man may there: fore regard himself as the tomb of Osiris. Man's lower nature (Typhon) has killed his higher nature. Love in his soul (Isis) must nurture the dead fragments of his body, and then the higher nature, the eternal soul (Horus) will be born, who can progress to Osiris existence. The man aspiring to the highest kind of existence must repeat in himself microcosmically the macrocosmic universal Osiris process. This is the meaning of Egyptian initiation. What Plato (cf. p. 66) describes as a cosmic process—that the Creator has stretched the soul of the world on the body of the world in the form of a cross, and that the cosmic process is the redemption of this crucified soul,—this process had to be enacted in man on a smaller scale if he was to be qualified for Osiris-existence. The candidate for initiation had to develop himself in such a way that his soul-experience, his becoming an Osiris, blended into one with the cosmic Osiris process.

If we could look into the temples of initiation in which people underwent the transformation into Osiris, we should see that what took place represented microcosmically a cosmic genesis. Man who proceeded from the Father was to give birth to the Son in himself. What he actually bears within him, that is, Divinity under a spell, was to become manifest in him. This divinity is kept down in him by the power of the earthly nature; this lower nature must first be buried in order that the higher nature may arise.

This clarifies what we are told about the incidents of initiation. The candidate was subjected to mysterious procedures by means of which his earthly nature was killed and his higher nature awakened. It is not Necessary to study these procedures in detail if we understand their meaning. This meaning is contained in the confession possible to everyone who went through initiation. He could say: “I envisioned the endless perspective at the end of which lies the perfection of the Divine. I felt that the power of this Divine is within me. I buried what keeps down that bower in me. I died to earthly things. I was dead. I had died as a lower man; I was in the nether-world. I had intercourse with the dead, with those who have already become part of the eternal cosmic order. After my sojourn in the nether-world I arose from the dead. I overcame death, but now I have become a different being. I have nothing more to do with perishable nature. For me this has become saturated with the Logos. I now belong to those who live eternally, and who will sit at the right hand of Osiris. I myself shall be a true Osiris, part of the eternal cosmic order; and the judgment of life and death will be placed in my hands.” The candidate for initiation had to submit to the experience which made such a confession possible for him. It was an experience of the highest kind that the neophite passed through.

[ 3 ] Let us now imagine that a non-initiate hears of such experiences. He cannot know what has really taken place in the initiate’s soul. In his eyes the initiate died physically, lay in the grave, and rose again. What is a spiritual reality at a higher stage of existence appears, when expressed in the form of sense-reality, as an event which breaks through the order of nature. It is a “miracle”. In this sense initiation was a miracle. One who really wished to understand it must have awakened within himself powers to enable him to stand on a higher plane of existence. He must have approached these higher experiences through a course of life specially adapted to that purpose. In whatever way these prepared experiences took place in individual cases, they are always found to be of quite a definite type; so an initiate’s life is a typical one. It may be described quite apart from the single personality. In fact, an individual could only be described as being on the way to the Divine if he had passed through these definite typical experiences.

Such a personality was Buddha, living in the midst of his disciples. Jesus appeared as such a personality to his followers. Nowadays we know of the parallelism that exists between the biographies of Buddha and of Jesus. Rudolf Seydel has convincingly proved this parallelism in his book, Buddha und Christus. We have only to follow out the two lives in detail in order to see that all objections to the parallelism are futile.

[ 4 ] The birth of Buddha is announced by a white elephant that descends from heaven and declares to the queen, Maya, that she will bring forth a divine man who “will attune all beings to love and friendship, and will unite them in a close alliance.” We read in St. Luke’s Gospel: “To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And 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, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.”

The Brahmins, or Indian priests, who know what the birth of a Buddha means, interpret Maya’s dream. They have a definite, typical idea of a Buddha, to which the life of the personality about to be born will have to correspond. Similarly we read in Matthew II, 1, that when Herod “had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.” The Brahmin Asita says of Buddha: “This is the child which will become Buddha, the redeemer, the leader to immortality, freedom, and light.” Compare with this Luke 11, 25: “And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him ... And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”

It is related of Buddha that at the age of twelve he was lost, and found again under a tree, surrounded by poets and sages of the olden time, whom he was teaching. With this incident the following passage in St. Luke corresponds: “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.” (Luke II, 41-47).

After Buddha had lived in solitude and returned, he was received by the benediction of a virgin, “Blessed is thy mother, blessed is thy father, blessed is the wife to whom thou belongest.” But he replied, “Only they are blessed who are in Nirvana,” that is, who have entered the eternal cosmic order. In St. Luke’s Gospel (XI, 27), we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said unto him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” But he said, ‘Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.'”

In the course of Buddha’s life, the tempter comes to him and promises him all the kingdoms of the earth. Buddha refuses everything in the words: “I know well that I am destined to have a kingdom, but I do not desire an earthly one. I shall become Buddha and make all the world exult with joy.” The tempter has to own that his reign is over. Jesus answers the same temptation in the words: “Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him.” (Matthew IV, 10, 11). This description of the parallelism might be extended to many other points with the same result.

The life of Buddha ended sublimely. On a journey, he felt ill; he came to the river Hiranja, near Kuschinagara. There he lay down on a carpet which his favorite disciple, Ananda, spread for him. His body began to be luminous from within. He died transfigured, his body irradiating light, saying: “Nothing endures.”

The death of Buddha corresponds with the trans: figuration of Jesus. “And it came to pass about eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment was white and glistering.”

Buddha’s earthly life ends at this point, but it is here that the most important part of the life of Jesus begins—His suffering, death, and resurrection. What differentiates Buddha from Christ exists in the conditions necessitating the extension of the life of Christ Jesus beyond the scope of the Buddha life. Buddha and Christ will not be understood by merely mixing them. (This will become clear in the course of this book.) Other accounts of Buddha's death need not here be considered, even though they reveal profound aspects.

[ 5 ] The agreement in the lives of the two redeemers leads to the same conclusion. The narratives themselves indicate the nature of this conclusion. When the Priest-sages hear what kind of birth is to take place, they know what is involved. They know that they have to do with a God-Man; they know beforehand what kind of personality it is who is appearing. And therefore his course of life can only correspond with what they know about the life of a God-Man. In the Wisdom of their Mysteries such a life is traced out for all eternity. It can only be as it must be; it comes into manifestation like an eternal law of nature. Just as a chemical substance can only behave in a certain definite way, so a Buddha or a Christ can only live in A certain definite way. His life is not described merely by writing a fortuitous biography, but by giving its typical features that are contained for all time in the Wisdom of the Mysteries. The Buddha legend is no more a biography in the ordinary sense than the Gospels are meant to be a biography of the Christ Jesus in the ordinary sense. In neither is the merely accidental given; both relate the course of life marked out for a world-redeemer. The pattern of the two accounts is to be found in the Mystery traditions, not in outer physical history. Jesus and Buddha are, to those who have recognized their divine nature, initiates in the most eminent sense. (Jesus is the initiate by virtue of the Christ Being dwelling in Him.) Hence their lives are lifted out of things transitory, and what is known about initiates applies to them. The fortuitous incidents in their lives are not narrated, but rather it is said of them:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God... And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (St. John I, 1 and 14).

[ 6 ] But the life of Jesus contains more than does the life of Buddha. Buddha’s life ends with the transfiguration; the most momentous part of the life of Jesus begins after the transfiguration. In the language of initiates this means that Buddha reached the point at which divine light begins to shine in men. He faces mortal death. He becomes the light of the world: Jesus goes farther. He does not physically,die at the moment when the light of the world shines through him. At that moment he is a Buddha. But at that very moment he enters upon a stage which finds expression in a higher degree of initiation. He suffers and dies. What is earthly disappears. But the spiritual element, the light of the world, does not. His resurrection follows. He is revealed to his followers as Christ. Buddha, at the moment of his transfiguration, dissolves into the blissful life of the universal spirit. Christ Jesus once more calls the universal spirit into Present existence in human form. Such an event had formerly taken place at the higher stages of initiation in a symbolical sense. Those initiated in the spirit of the Osiris myth attained in their consciousness to such a resurrection as a symbolical experience. In the life of Jesus, this “great” initiation was added to the Buddha initiation, not as a symbolical experience, but as reality. Buddha demonstrated by his life that man is the Logos, and that he returns to the Logos, to the light, when his earthly part dies. In Jesus, the Logos itself became a person. In Him, the Word was made flesh.

[ 7 ] Therefore, what was enacted in the innermost recesses of the temples by the guardians of the ancient Mysteries has been apprehended through Christianity as a historical fact. The followers of Christ Jesus confessed their belief in Him, the initiate; in Him who was initiated in a manner unique in its magnitude. He proved to them that the world is divine. In the Christian community the wisdom of the Mysteries was indissolubly bound up with the personality of Christ Jesus. That which man previously had sought to attain through the Mysteries was now replaced by the belief that Christ had lived on earth, and that the faithful belonged to him.

Henceforward, part of what was formerly only to be gained through mystic methods could be replaced in the Christian community by the conviction that the Divine had been manifested in the Word present among them. Not that for which each individual soul underwent a long preparation was now alone decisive, but what those had heard and seen who were with Jesus, and what was handed down by them. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which... our hands have handled, of the Word of Life... that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” Thus do we read in the first Epistle of St. John. And this immediate reality is to embrace all future generations in a living bond of union, and as a church is mystically to extend from race to race. It is in this sense that the words of St. Augustine are to be under " stood, “I should not believe the Gospels unless the authority of the Catholic Church induced me to do so.” Thus the Gospels do not contain within themselves testimony to their truth, but they are to be believed because they are founded on the personality of Jesus, and because the Church from that personality mysteriously draws the power to make the truth of the Gospels manifest.

The Mysteries handed down traditionally the means of arriving at truth; the Christian community propaBates truth itself. To the confidence in the mystical forces that spring up in the inmost being of man durIng initiation was to be added the confidence in the One, in the primordial Initiator.

The mystics sought to become divine, they wished to experience divinity. Jesus was divine, we must hold fast to Him, and then we shall become partakers of His divinity in the community founded by Him—this became Christian conviction. What was divine in Jesus became so for all His followers. “Lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.” (St. Matthew, XXVIII 20). The one who was born in Bethlehem has an eternal character. The Christmas anthem rightly sings of the birth of Jesus as if it took place each Christmas “Christ is born to-day, the Saviour has come into the world to-day, today the angels are singing on earth.”

In the Christ-experience we should recognize a definite stage of initiation. When the mystic of pre-Christian times passed through this Christ-experience he was, through his initiation, in a state that enabled him to perceive something spiritually—in higher worlds—to which no fact in the world of sense corresponded. He experienced in the higher world what the Mystery of Golgotha comprises. Now, when the Christian mystic goes through this experience by initiation he at the same time beholds the historical event that took place on Golgotha, and he knows that in that event, enacted within the physical world, there is the same content that existed formerly only in the super sensible facts of the Mysteries. Thus there was poured out on the Christian community, through the Mystery of Golgotha, that which formerly had been poured out on the mystics within the temples. And initiation gives Christian mystics the possibility of discerning what is contained in the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas faith makes man an unconscious partaker of the mystical stream which flowed from the events depicted in the New Testament, and which has ever since pervaded the spiritual life of humanity.

• 1. (Cf. Lepsius, Das Totenbuch der alten Ägypter, (The Book Of the Dead of the Ancient Egyptians.) Berlin, 1842).

[ 1 ] Just at this time my outward life was altogether happy. I was frequently with my old friends. Few as were the opportunities I had to speak of the things I am here discussing, yet the spiritual and mental ties that bound me to these friends were none the less strong. How often must I think over again the conversations, sometimes unending, which occurred at that time in a well-known coffee house on Michaelerplatz in Vienna. I had cause to think of these especially during that period following the World War when old Austria went to pieces. For the causes of this crumbling to pieces were at that time already present everywhere. But no one was willing to recognize this. Everyone had thoughts that would be the means of a cure, always according to his own special national or cultural leanings. And if ideals which manifest themselves at times of the ebbing tide are stimulating, yet they are ideals born out of the decadence itself, out of the desire to prevent this-themselves being no less tragic. Such tragic ideals worked in the hearts of the best Viennese and Austrians.

[ 2 ] I frequently caused misunderstandings with these idealists when I expressed a conviction which had been borne in upon me through my absorption in the period of Goethe. I said that a culmination in Occidental cultural evolution had been reached during that period. This had not been continued. The period of the natural sciences, with its effects upon the lives of men and of peoples, denoted a decadence. For any further advance there was needed an entirely new attack from the side of the spirit. There could be no further progress into the spiritual by those roads which had previously been laid out, except after a previous turning back.

Goethe is a climax, but therefore not a point of departure; on the contrary, an end. He develops the results of an evolution which goes as far as himself and finds in him its most complete embodiment, but which cannot be further advanced without first resorting to far more primal springs of spiritual experience than exist in this evolution. In this mood I wrote the last part of my Goethe exposition.

[ 3 ] It was in this mood that I first became acquainted with Nietzsche's writings. Jenseits von Gut und Böse¹ was the first of his books that I read. I was fascinated by his way of viewing things and yet at the same time repelled. I found it hard to get a right attitude toward Nietzsche. I loved his style; I loved his keenness; but I did not love at all the way in which Nietzsche spoke of the most profound problems without immersing himself in these with fully conscious thought in spiritual experience. Only I then observed that he said many things with which I stood in the closest intimacy in my spiritual experience. And thus I felt myself close to his struggle and felt that I must find an expression for this proximity. Nietzsche seemed to me one of the most tragic figures of that time. And this tragedy, I believed, must be the effect of the spiritual attitude characterizing the natural-scientific age upon human souls of more than ordinary depth. I passed my last years in Vienna with such feelings as these.

[ 4 ] Before the close of the first phase of my life, I had the opportunity of visiting also Budapest and Siebenbürgen (Transylvania). The friend I have previously mentioned whose family belonged to Transylvania, who had remained bound to me with rare loyalty through all these years, had introduced me to a good many of the people from his district who were in Vienna. Thus it happened that, in addition to my other extensive social relationships, I had also this with persons from Transylvania. Among them were Herr and Frau Breitenstein, who became friends of mine at that time and who have remained such in the most heartfelt fashion. For a long time they have taken a leading part in the Anthroposophical Society in Vienna. This human relationship with “Siebenbürgers” led me to make a journey to Budapest. The capital of Hungary, in character so entirely unlike Vienna, made a deep impression upon me. One went there from Vienna through a region brilliant in the beauty of its scenery, its highly temperamental humanity, and the intensity of its musical interest. When one looked from the windows of the train, one had the impression that nature herself had become poetic in a special way, and that human beings, paying little heed to the poetic nature so familiar to them, plunged down within themselves in an often profoundly inward music of the heart. And, when one reached Budapest, there came to expression a world which may be viewed with the greatest interest from the point of view of the relationships to other European peoples, but which can from this point of view never be wholly understood. A dark undertone over which gleams a light playing amid colours. This character seemed to me as if it were forced together into visible unity when I stood before the Franz Drak [Ferenc Deák – e.Ed] monument. In this head of the maker of that Hungary which existed from the year 1867 to 1918 there lived a strong, proud will which laid hold with all its might, which forced itself through without cunning but with elemental mercilessness. I felt how true subjectively for every Hungarian was the proverb I had often heard: “Outside of Hungary there is no life; and, if there is a life, it is by no means such as this.”

[ 5 ] As a child I had seen on the western borders of Hungary how Germans were made to feel this strong, proud will; now I learned in the midst of Hungary how this will brings the Magyar people into an isolation from humanity which clothes them, as they rather naïvely think, in a certain glamour obvious to themselves which values much the showing of itself to the hidden eyes of nature but not to the open eyes of men.

[ 6 ] Half a year after this visit, my Transylvanian friends arranged for me to deliver a lecture at Hermannstadt. It was Christmas time. I traveled over the wide plains in the midst of which lies Arad. The melancholy poetry of Lenau sounded in my heart as I looked out over these plains where all is one expanse to which the eye can find no limit. I had to spend the night in a little border village between Hungary and Transylvania.

I sat in a little guest-room half the night. Besides myself there was only a group of card-players sitting round a table. In this group there were all the nationalities to be found at that time in Hungary and Transylvania. The men were playing with a vehemence which constantly broke loose at half-hour intervals, so that it took the form of soul-clouds which rose above the table, struggled together like demons, and wreathed the men about completely as if in the folds of serpents. What differences in vehement existence were there manifested by these different national types!

[ 7 ] I reached Hermannstadt on Christmas Day. Here I was introduced into “Siebenburger Saxondom.” This existed there in the midst of a Rumanian and Magyar environment. A noble folk which, in the midst of a decline that it could not perceive, desired to prove its gallantry. A Germanism which, like a memory of the transfer of its life centuries ago to the East, wished to show its loyalty to its origins, but which in this temper of soul showed a trait of alienation from the world manifesting itself as an elevated universal joy in life. I passed happy days among the German ministers of the Evangelical Church, among the teachers of the German schools, and among other German Siebenburgers. My heart warmed to these people who, in the concern for their folk life and in their duty to this, evolved a culture of the heart which spoke first of all likewise to the heart. [ 8 ] This vital warmth filled my soul as I sat in a sleigh, wrapped close in heavy furs, and travelled with these old and new friends through icy-cold and crackling snow to the Carpathians (the Transylvanian Alps). A dark, forested mountain country when one moves toward it from the distance; a wild, precipitous, often frightful mountain landscape when one is close at hand.

[ 9 ] The centre in all which I then experienced was my friend of many years. He was always thinking out something new whereby I might learn thoroughly Siebenburger Saxondom. He was still dividing his time between Vienna and Hermannstadt. At that time he owned a weekly paper at Hermannstadt founded for the purpose of fostering Siebenburger Saxondom. An undertaking it was which arose entirely out of idealism, utterly devoid of practical experience, but at which almost all representatives of Saxondom laboured together. After a few weeks it came to grief.

[ 10 ] Such experiences as this journey were brought me by destiny; and through them I was enabled to educate my perception for the outer world, a thing which had not been easy for me, whereas in the element of the spiritual I lived as in something self-evident.

[ 11 ] It was with sad memories that I made the journey back to Vienna. There fell into my hands just then a book of whose “spiritual richness” men of all sorts were speaking: Rembrandt als Erzieher.² In conversations about this book, which were then going on wherever one went, one could hear about the coming of an entirely new spirit. I was forced to become aware, by reason of this very phenomenon, of the great loneliness in which I stood with my temper of mind amid the spiritual life of that period.

[ 12 ] In regard to a book which was prized in the highest degree by all the world my own feeling was as if someone had sat for several months at a table in one of the better hotels and listened to what the “outstanding” personalities in the genealogical tables said by way of “brilliant” remarks, and had then written these down in the form of aphorisms. After this continuous “preliminary work” he could have thrown his slips of paper with these remarks into a vessel, shaken them thoroughly together, and then taken them out again After drawing out the slips, he could have made a series of these and so produced a book. Of course, this criticism is exaggerated. But my inner vital mood forced me into such revulsion from that which the “spirit of the times” then praised as a work of the highest merit. I considered Rembrandt as Teacher a book which dealt wholly with the surface of thoughts that have to do with the realm of the spiritual, and which did not harmonize in a single sentence with the real depths of the human soul. It grieved me to know that my contemporaries considered such a book as coming from a profound personality, whereas I was forced to believe that such dealers in the small change of thought moving in the shallows of the spirit would drive all that is deeply human out of man's soul.

[ 13 ] When I was fourteen years old I had to begin tutoring; for fifteen years, up to the beginning of the second phase of my life, that spent at Weimar, my destiny kept me engaged in this work. The unfolding of the minds of many persons, both in childhood and in youth, was in this way bound up with my own evolution. Through this means I was able to observe how different were the ways in which the two sexes grow into life. For, along with the giving of instruction to boys and young men, it fell to my lot to teach also a number of young girls. Indeed, for a long time the mother of the boy whose instruction I had taken over because of his pathological condition was a pupil of mine in geometry; and at another time I taught this lady and her sister aesthetics.

[ 14 ] In the family of these children I found for a number of years a sort of home, from which I went out to other families as tutor or instructor. Through the intimate friendship between the mother of the children and myself, it came about that I shared fully in the joys and sorrows of this family. In this woman I perceived a uniquely beautiful human soul. She was wholly devoted to the development of her four boys according to their destiny. In her one could study mother love in its larger manifestation. To co-operate with her in problems of education formed a beautiful content of life. For the musical part of the artistic she possessed both talent and enthusiasm. At times she took charge of the musical practice of her boys, as long as they were still young. She discussed intelligently with me the most varied life problems, sharing in everything with the deepest interest. She gave the greatest attention to my scientific and other tasks. There was a time when I had the greatest need to discuss with her everything which intimately concerned me. When I spoke of my spiritual experiences, she listened in a peculiar way. To her intelligence the thing was entirely congenial, but it maintained a certain marked reserve; yet her mind absorbed everything. At the same time she maintained in reference to man's being a certain naturalistic view. She believed the moral temper to be entirely bound up with the health or sickness of the bodily constitution. I mean to say that she thought instinctively about man in a medical fashion, whereby her thinking tended to be somewhat naturalistic. To discuss things in this way with her was in the highest degree stimulating. Besides, her attitude toward all outer life was that of a woman who attended with the strongest sense of duty to everything which fell to her lot, but who looked upon most inner things as not belonging to her sphere. She looked upon her fate in many aspects as something burdensome. But still she made no claims upon life; she accepted this as it took form so far as it did not concern her sons. In relation to these she felt every experience with the deepest emotion of her soul.

[ 15 ] All this I shared vitally – the soul-life of a woman, her beautiful devotion to her sons, the life of the family within a wide circle of kinsmen and acquaintances. But for this reason things did not move without difficulty. The family was Jewish. In their views they were quite free from any sectarian or racial narrowness, but the head of the family, to whom I was deeply attached, felt a certain sensitiveness to any expression by a Gentile in regard to the Jews. The flame of anti-Semitism which had sprung up at that time had caused this feeling.

[ 16 ] Now, I took a keen interest in the struggle which the Germans in Austria were then carrying on in behalf of their national existence. I was also led to occupy myself with the historical and the social position of the Jews. Especially earnest did this activity of mine become after the appearance of Hamerling's Homunculus. This eminent German poet was considered by a great part of the journalists as an anti-Semite on account of this work; indeed, he was claimed by the German national anti-Semites as one of their own. This disturbed me very little; but I wrote a paper on the Homunculus in which, as I thought, I expressed myself quite objectively in regard to the Jews. The man in whose home I lived, and who was my friend, took this to be a special form of anti-Semitism. Not in the least did his friendly feeling for me suffer on that account, but he was affected with a profound distress. When he had read the paper, he faced me, his heart torn by innermost sorrow, and said to me: “What you wrote in this in regard to the Jews cannot be explained in a friendly sense; but this is not what hurts me, but the fact that you could have had the experiences in regard to us which induced you to write thus only through your close relationship with us and our friends.” He was mistaken: for I had formed my opinions altogether from a spiritual and historic survey; nothing personal had entered into my judgment. He could not see the thing in this way. His reply to my explanations was: “No, the man who teaches my children is, after this paper, no ‘friend of the Jews.’” He could not be induced to change. Not for a moment did he think that my relation ship to the family ought to be altered. This he looked upon as something necessary. Still less could I make this matter the occasion for a change; for I looked upon the teaching of his sons as a task which destiny had brought to me. But neither of us could do otherwise than think that a tragic thread had been woven into this relationship. [ 17 ] To all this was added the fact that many of my friends had taken on from their national struggle a tinge of anti-Semitism in their view of the Jews. They did not view sympathetically my holding a post in a Jewish family; and the head of this family saw in my friendly mingling with such persons only a confirmation of the impression which he had received from my paper.

[ 18 ] To the family circle in which I so intimately shared belonged the composer of Das Goldene Kreuz, Ignatius Brüll. A sensitive person he was, of whom I was extraordinarily fond. Ignatius Brüll was something of an alien to the world, buried in himself. His interests were not exclusively musical; they were directed toward many aspects of the spiritual life. These interests he could enter into only as a “darling of destiny” against the background of a family circle which never permitted him to be disturbed by attention to everyday affairs but permitted his creative work to grow out of a certain prosperity. And thus he did not grow in life but only in music. To what degree his musical creations were or were not meritorious is not the question just here. But it was stimulating in the most beautiful sense to meet the man in the street and see him awaken out of his world of tones when one addressed him. Generally he did not have his waistcoat buttons in the right button-holes. His eye spoke in a mild thoughtfulness; his walk was not fast but very expressive. One could talk with him about many things; for these he had a sensitive understanding; but one saw how the content of the conversation slipped, as it were, for him into the sphere of music.

[ 19 ] In the family in which I thus lived I became acquainted also with the distinguished physician, Dr. Breuer, who was associated with Dr. Freud at the birth of psycho-analysis. Only in the beginning, however, did he share in this sort of view, and he was not in agreement with Freud in its later development. Dr. Breuer was to me a very attractive personality. I admired the way in which he was related to his medical profession. Besides, he was a man of many interests in other fields. He spoke of Shakespeare in such a way as to stimulate one very strongly. It was interesting also to hear him in his purely medical way of thinking speak of Ibsen or even of Tolstoi's Kreuzer Sonata. When he spoke with the friend I have here described, the mother of the children whom I had to teach, I was often present and deeply interested. Psycho-analysis was not yet born; but the problems which looked toward this goal were already there. The phenomena of hypnotism had given a special colouring to medical thought. My friend had been a friend of Dr. Breuer from her youth. There I faced a fact which gave me much food for thought. This woman thought in a certain direction more medically than the distinguished physician. They were once discussing a morphine addict. Dr. Breuer was treating him. The woman once said to me: “Think what Breuer has done! He has taken the promise of the morphine addict on his word of honour that he will take no more morphine. He expected to attain something by this, and he was deluded, since the patient did not keep his promise. He even said: ‘How can I treat a man who does not keep his promise?’ Would one have believed,” she said, “that so distinguished a physician could be so naïve? How can one try to cure ‘by a promise’ something so deeply rooted ‘in a man's nature’?” The woman may not, however, have been entirely right; the opinion of the physician regarding the therapy of suggestion may have entered then into his attempt at a cure; but no one can deny that my friend's statement indicated the extraordinary energy with which she spoke in a noteworthy fashion out of the spirit which lived in the Viennese school of medicine up to the time when this new school blossomed forth.

[ 20 ] This woman was in her own way a significant person; and she is a significant phenomenon in my life. She has long been dead; among the things which made it hard for me to leave Vienna was this also, that I had to part from her.

[ 21 ] When I reflect in retrospect upon the content of the first phase of my life, while I seek to characterize it as if from without, the feeling forces itself upon me that destiny so led me that I was not fettered by any external “calling” during my first thirty years. I entered the Goethe and Schiller Institute in Weimar also, not to take a life position, but as a free collaborator in the edition of Goethe which would be published by the Institute under a commission from the Grand-duchess Sophie. In the report which the Director of the Institute published in the twelfth volume of the Goethe Year Book occurs this statement: “The permanent workers have associated with themselves since 1890 Rudolf Steiner from Vienna. To him has been assigned the general field of ‘morphology’ (with the exception of the osteological part): five or probably six volumes of the ‘second division,’ to which important material is added from the manuscript, remains.”

• 1. Beyond Good and Evil.
• 2. Rembrandt as Teacher.

In the series of "University Lectures for Everyone", one has been published that introduces the history of the origins of the German stage. Prof. Dr. Georg Witkowski deals with the topic: "The beginnings of the German theater". With the brevity necessitated by his task, he shows that this important factor in our intellectual life did not take its place in German cultural life until very late. In the Middle Ages there was no real theater in Germany. The content of serious poetry, which appeared in dramatic form, was taken from biblical history, and its presentation followed the church service. Scenes from the Old and New Testaments were performed at Easter and Christmas. They did not have the purpose, which every real dramatic poem must have, of presenting soul struggles for their own sake; they wanted to present sacred history in a vividly vivid way. Nor can the comic performances that were put on by craftsmen and schoolchildren at carnival time really be described as dramatic performances. They mostly dealt with small court scenes, marital disputes and crude jokes, which usually mocked the peasants from the townspeople's point of view.... The actors traveled from house to house, acting out their roles without any scenic means and certainly developed a very low level of acting skill, because where would that come from for the brave craftsmen and students? After the Reformation, conditions in Germany were more favorable for drama. Luther favored student performances because he believed that they had a positive influence on public opinion. "Comedies should not be hindered for the sake of the boys at school, but should be permitted and allowed, firstly, that they practise the Latin language, and secondly, that in comedies such characters are artificially condensed, painted and portrayed in a fine way, so that the people can be instructed, and everyone is reminded and admonished of his office and station, what is proper for a servant, master, young journeyman and old man, and what he should do; indeed, all degrees of dignity, offices and duties are held up and presented to the eyes, as in a mirror, how everyone should conduct himself in his station in his outward behavior. " In the period that followed, the drama of guilt flourished. But it could not achieve much, because the views on the nature of dramatic technique were of the most primitive kind. It did not go beyond a dialog spread over several characters. The impetus for a truly dramatic art in Germany came from the English. This developed with admirable speed at the end of the sixteenth century. The first theater building was erected in London in 1576, and by the end of the century there were more such artistic institutions in the city than there are today. And just as quickly, English drama developed from simple plays with religious and moral-didactic tendencies to the masterpieces of Shakespeare.

The art that developed there was also brought to Germany by traveling troupes of actors. In 1586, one such troupe, led by William Kempe, arrived at the Dresden court. From this time onwards, these companies of comedians appeared in a wide variety of places. They put on English plays, sometimes in an unheard-of corruption. However, plays were also written by Germans and performed by such companies. The leader of such a troupe usually played the leading role, which had to be a comic character. The plays that were performed had to be put into a form that allowed the leader to appear as this typical comic figure. - We have knowledge of these performances almost exclusively through the council minutes and tax tables of the cities, which show us what burdens the authorities imposed on the traveling troupes. There were no theater reviews or anything similar at this time. - The dramatic art in Germany had the character indicated here during the last years of the sixteenth and the first third of the seventeenth century. Witkowski shares a playbill from Nuremberg that gives us a glimpse of what was on offer: "Everyone should know that a whole new company of comedians is arriving here, who have never before been seen here in this country, with a very funny pickelhering, who will perform daily, beautiful comedies, tra; pastorelles (Schäffereyen) and histories, mixed with sweet and funny interludes, and today they will present a very funny comedy called "Die Liebes Süßigkeit verändert sich in Todes Bitterkeit. After the comedy, a beautiful ballet and ridiculous farce will be presented. The lovers of such plays want to gather at the fencing house after noon bell 2, where the praecise is to begin at the appointed time." Regarding the expression Pickelhering, which means kipper, it should be noted that the aforementioned comic figure at the center of the performances gave himself names of popular foods: Hans Wurst, Hans Knapkäse, Stockfisch and so on. - After 1631, the situation changed. The English troops were lost; they were replaced by "High German comedians".

Witkowski's description of the stage at that time is worthy of special mention:

"Long beforehand, the wide space of the courtyard, which can hold a very large number of people, is densely packed. In front of the door, those entering have found a plaque on which it is written that a person's place costs six kreuzer. Normally the English have often asked for more, but this time they are not allowed to. The audience, who had paid the large sum (the German troops only got half a kreuzer), sat in front of and around the stage, which bore little resemblance to the one we see today. It consisted of a small scaffolding that was erected against the back wall of the courtyard and only took up a small part of it. It was open on three sides, only at the back was it covered with carpets, in front of which you could see a smaller raised scaffolding with stairs leading up to it. This served a dual purpose. Firstly, its platform was always used when an elevation, a city wall, a hill or a tower was needed. On the other hand, its interior was used to create a second stage on the stage, on which the scenes that took place in the chambers of the houses were performed. This second stage was equipped with decorations and could be closed off by a curtain so that it could be transformed while the front part of the scene was being played; an extremely practical insight that greatly benefited the structure of the dramas. Later, the width of the stage was extended over the whole back wall of the building in which they played, thus producing the present form of our theater, which is far removed from the former simple and yet so sensible use of the English.

But we already find the important principle of the front and back stage with them; the original cell, so to speak, of the present stage is already there."

In Germany itself, at the time when the theater was under the influence of the English, only dramatic poems were created, which were worthless for the real theater. They were inspired by the Greeks and Romans. It was not until Moliere and the French art developed by him that anything fruitful emerged again in Germany. A complete decline of the theater in the first half of the eighteenth century was followed by a revival thanks to Gottsched, who worked together with the brilliant stage artist Neuber. Even if the French influence has been freed from Germany again, this influence can only be described as extremely favorable at this time.

This week something will be given in the communications addressed to members in these columns, which may serve to bring us to a further understanding of the weekly ‘Leading Thoughts’.

The understanding of anthroposophical truth can be furthered if the relation which exists between man and the world is constantly brought before the human soul.

When man turns his attention to the world into which he is born and out of which he dies, he is surrounded in the first place by the fullness of his sense-impressions. He forms thoughts about these sense-impressions.

In bringing the following to his consciousness: ‘I am forming thoughts about what my senses reveal to me as the world’, he has already come to the point where he can contemplate himself. He can say to himself: In my thoughts ‘I’ live. The world gives me the opportunity of experiencing myself in thought. I find myself in the thoughts in which I contemplate the world.

And continuing to reflect in this way, he ceases to be conscious of the world; he becomes conscious of the ‘I’. He ceases to have the world before him; he begins to experience the self.

If the experience be reversed, and the attention directed to the inner life in which the world is mirrored, then those events emerge into consciousness which belong to our life's destiny, and in which our human self has flowed along from the point of time to which our memory goes back. In following up the events of his destiny, a man experiences his own existence.

In bringing this to his consciousness: ‘I with my own self have experienced something that destiny brought to me’, a man has already come to the point where he will contemplate the world. He can say to himself: I was not alone in my fate; the world played a part in my experience. I willed this or that; the world streamed into my will. I find the world in my will when I experience this will in self-contemplation.

Continuing thus to enter into his own being, man ceases to be conscious of the self, he becomes conscious of the world; he ceases to experience himself, he becomes feelingly aware of the world.

I send my thoughts out into the world, there I find myself; I sink into myself, there I find the world. If a man experiences this strongly enough, he is confronted with the great riddles of the World and Man.

For to have the feeling: I have taken endless pains to understand the world through thinking, and after all there is but myself in this thinking—this gives rise to the first great riddle. And to feel that one's own self is formed through destiny, yet to perceive in this process the onward flow of world-happenings—this presents the second riddle.

In the experience of this problem of Man and the World germinates the frame of mind in which man can so confront Anthroposophy that he receives from it in his inner being an impression which rouses his attention.

For Anthroposophy asserts that there is a spiritual experience which does not lose the world when thinking. One can also live in thought. Anthroposophy tells of an inward experience in which one does not lose the sense-world when thinking, but gains the Spirit-world. Instead of penetrating into the ego in which the sense-world is felt to disappear, one penetrates into the Spirit-world in which the ego feels established.

Anthroposophy shows, further, that there is an experience of destiny in which one does not lose the self. In fate, too, one can still feel oneself to be active. Anthroposophy points out, in the impartial, unegoistic observation of human destiny, an experience in which one learns to love the world and not only one's own existence. Instead of staring into the world which carries the ego on the waves of fortune and misfortune, one finds the ego which shapes its own fate voluntarily. Instead of striking against the world, on which the ego is dashed to pieces, one penetrates into the self, which feels itself united with the course of events in the world.

Man's destiny comes to him from the world that is revealed to him by his senses. If then he finds his own activity in the working of his destiny, his real self rises up before him not only out of his inner being but out of the sense-world too.

If a person is able to feel, however faintly, how the spiritual part of the world appears in the self, and how the self proves to be working in the outer world of sense, he has already learned to understand Anthroposophy correctly. For he will then realise that in Anthroposophy it is possible to describe the Spirit-world which the self can comprehend. And this will enable him to understand that in the sense-world the self can also be found—in a different way than by diving within. Anthroposophy finds the self by showing how the sense-world reveals to man not only sense-perceptions but also the after-effects of his life before birth and his former earthly lives.

Man can now gaze on the world perceptible to his senses and say: It contains not only colour, sound, warmth; in it are active the experiences passed through by souls before their present earthly life. And he can look into himself and say: I find there not only my ego but, in addition, a spiritual world is revealed.

In an understanding of this kind, a person who really feels—who is not unmoved by—the great riddles of Man and the World, can meet on a common ground with the Initiate who in accordance with his insight is obliged to speak of the outer world of the senses as manifesting not only sensible perceptions but also the impressions of what human souls have done in their life before birth and in past earthly lives, and who has to say of the world of the inner self that it reveals spiritual events which produce impressions and are as effective as the perceptions of the sense-world.

The would-be active members should consciously make themselves mediators between what the questioning human soul feels as the problems of Man and the Universe, and what the knowledge of the Initiates has to recount, when it draws forth a past world out of the destiny of human beings, and when by strengthening the soul it opens up the perception of a spiritual world.

In this way, through the work of the would-be active members, the Anthroposophical Society may become a true preparatory school for the school of Initiates. It was the intention of the Christmas Assembly to indicate this very forcibly; and one who truly understands what that Assembly meant will continue to point this out until the sufficient understanding of it can bring the Society fresh tasks and possibilities again.

Presentation by Markus Uppling

After pointing out that man is by no means the simple being that the external, sensual eyes can see, the hand can grasp and the mind can comprehend, the speaker emphasized that the human ego is clothed not only in its physical body but also in an astral and an etheric body, and thus belongs not only to the physical world but also to the astral and etheric worlds.

Now he wonders: can a person know anything specific about these spiritual worlds, and are there really methods for research in these worlds? The speaker answered these questions with an unconditional 'Yes'. What then are these methods? The same ones that our ancestors used for this purpose, and which have always been referred to by the name of “initiation,” although with today's higher development of the human being, the attainment of the various degrees of initiation can only proceed entirely within the human being, without the use of all the external aids that were necessary in the past.

The part of the human being that needs to be strengthened and developed here is the astral body. We know, the speaker said, that during sleep the astral body, together with the ego, leaves the physical body and the etheric body and goes into the astral world to get the forces from which our life is to be built the following day. But for most people, the astral body is still a chaos, without structure and without organs of perception. It is therefore important to develop spiritual eyes and ears in it, so that it is able to store the impressions of the spiritual world, just as the physical body stores the impressions of the sensory world. The means for this are meditation and concentration of the life of feeling, imagination and will.

The first step on the path to initiation is imagination. As an example of the exercises required here, the speaker mentioned the exercise with the image of the black cross wreathed with red roses. The disciple is told to absorb this image within himself and to pay attention to the feelings it awakens in him. He is then told to banish from his consciousness the images of the roses themselves and of the cross itself, and to retain only the memory of how his soul was active in creating these images. Hundreds of other images the disciple must work on in his soul in the same way.

But in this way he gradually acquires new inner sense organs and can, for example, feel the “harmony of the spheres” of which the Pythagoreans spoke; and this sounding is not a fantasy, but a real reality. In this way, the human being has risen to the second degree of initiation, to the stage of inspiration.

To reach the third and final degree of initiation, the degree of intuition, the person must practice forgetting even the aforementioned inner soul work. After that, he must wait. If images now arise within him, these are impressions from the spiritual world, and the person has gained the gift of intuition. If such images do not arise, the student must continue his exercises. Through intuition, the human being will be able to grasp his own eternal soul. He can see his own incarnations and can prophetically say what influence what is happening today will have on future incarnations.

Initiation did not always happen in this way, however. In earlier times, an external apparatus was needed to make the impressions on the soul strong enough to develop the person to the point of inspiration and intuition.

The Greeks thus had two types of mysteries: the Dionysian and the Apollonian. The Dionysian mysteries originated in Egypt and aimed to have the student, blind and deaf to everything outside, delve into his own inner self and experience as powerfully as possible all the affects of the astral life, such as lust and fear, terror, anxiety and superhuman joy. In this way, strong spiritual powers were to be developed in him. The external apparatus used for this purpose consisted of underground passages and the like in the initiation temples. And even today, the plan of these arrangements can be found in the Egyptian pyramids.

The other kind of Greek mystery was the so-called Apollonian mystery. Here, too, external devices were used; but here the goal was to lead man to the spiritual not by feeling and thinking within himself, but by empathizing and thinking with the great nature. The radiance of the sun, the melancholy of autumn, the mysticism of the winter solstice and many other natural phenomena were the means used for this purpose. The everyday was lost for man, and behind the veil of the sensory world he began to recognize the spiritual world as a reality.

It is interesting to study the mysteries that existed in Northern and Central Europe in pre-Christian times and at the same time as the Palestine event. In Central Europe we had the Druid mysteries. These took place in the sacred forests at midnight on Christmas Eve, for example. And by letting his senses merge with the great nature, the Druid could gain a real insight into what man is and can become. And as the content of the world stood alive before his soul, the great “All-Father” and, opposite him, the “All-Mother, the soul, and this not as an abstraction, but as realities.

In Northern Europe, we have the Drotten Mysteries, which are a preparation for receiving the Christian Mysteries. The Drotten Mysteries prepared directly for initiation through intimate soul methods. Their practitioners believed that man had not yet come so far that he could ascend into the spiritual world; therefore, his soul must first be born. For this purpose, thirteen men participated in the mysteries at once, with one acting as a guide and the remaining twelve as helpers. Each of these twelve helpers sought to bring a single soul power to a very special height in order to allow all these powers to unite in the mystery like rays into the soul of the thirteenth. Under the influence of this, he was inspired and was able to reveal his perceptions from the spiritual world in words. There he saw the perfect human being as an image of the divinity itself. But then he saw the archetype of this human being, and as the last thing he saw what unites the image and the archetype - the holy trinity, of which our thinking, feeling and willing are only a weak image. In powerful images, he saw the stars as spiritual beings and saw himself living in this being. Through the Drotten Mysteries, man became a wanderer in the spiritual world.

Today's man can, if he wills, rise up into the spiritual world. Because of the fact that these initiates have lived, we now have bodies that are capable of becoming an instrument for the spiritual.

Here, the four Platonic Virtues (described in The Republic) are developed in the direction of that comprehensive picture of man's threefold being—the head-system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system—of which Steiner gave the first full description in 1917, and which is summed up in the Foundation Stone Meditation in 1923.

Our spiritual science has the task of removing for our consciousness, indeed for our whole inner life, the gulf that exists for our external human consciousness between the physical world, in which man spends the time between birth and death, and the spiritual world in which man spends the other part of the totality of his existence, the time between death and a new birth.

For one who lives in spiritual science with every fibre of his soul, such a saying is familiar, and even self-evident. But one may well say that it becomes particularly holy to us at such a moment as this. Through the grave events of war we have lost within quite a short time a number of our dear friends and members, and are soon to accompany friends upon their last paths on earth. Tomorrow morning at eleven we shall have here in Zürich the cremation of a dear member, Frau Dr Colazza, and we have just heard that our dear friend Fritz Mitscher died this afternoon about five near Davos. With these two members, souls dear to us have left the physical plane; but spiritual science has shown us the way to understand in a much higher sense than we would otherwise be able to achieve that we do not lose such souls, but remain united with them.

There are already a considerable number of souls belonging to us, who have gone through the gate of death since our work in this movement began. And from those sources from which knowledge of the spirit comes to us, it can be said that these souls have become faithful fellow-workers with us in the spiritual world, each according to his powers. With the full responsibility, with which something can be said, which should have a firm foundation in spiritual knowledge, I can say: in them we have won pillars supporting our spiritual movement. Many have passed through the gate of death, working within our spiritual movement, and looking down upon that to which their love is directed. In the period between birth and death they have grown attached to the kind of aspiration which is represented in our circle. They have left behind them in our Society something which is itself upon the path between death and a new birth.

Just as nature around us is a world upon which we look back, we can look back upon our physical life from that moment onwards, which can be compared with man's birth. Immediately after death man passes through a condition which can be compared with the embryonic life, with the life within the maternal body, except that this period in the life after death can be counted in days, and is much shorter than the embryonic life in relation to physical life. Then follows what can be compared to the entry into the physical world, with the drawing of the first breath. This can be called the awakening in the spiritual world; it is a perceiving that the will of the soul which has gone through the gate of death is received by the beings of the higher Hierarchies. Just as a human being physically entering the physical world from his mother's body finds himself able to receive the external air, and as his senses gradually awaken—in the same way there comes the moment after death when the soul feels: that power of will, which during physical life was contained within the limits of the physical body, now flows from me out into the universe. And this soul then feels how this will is really received through the activity of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the hierarchy of the Angels. That is like drawing the first breath in the spiritual world, and the gradual growth into the spiritual environment; spiritual experience shows us this.

I would like to speak of the destiny of those who have gone from us in the course of the years, leaving the physical plane. I would like to look at those who have become attached to our spiritual movement here, and who look down upon it as something of which they know that it informs human souls while still within the physical body about that condition in which they themselves live. To be able to relate oneself in this way in memory of earthly life is something which even here in the physical world belongs already to the spiritual world. For those who have gone through the gate of death this is something infinitely precious and significant. When, like a tributary into a river, they can flow entirely into that stream which flows up to them from the physical world, taking its source from what they have experienced in our movement—the stream in the thoughts of those linked with them in love or by family ties—then the community is a much closer one than it could otherwise be in our materialistic times, because it is based on spiritual relationships.

We may say: with many a one, who has gone early through the gate of death into the spiritual world, it seems as if he had done this from intimate love to our spiritual movement, in order to help with stronger powers from the spiritual world. Among a considerable number of those who have gone from us there lives in their souls the most wonderfully clear feeling about the need for our spiritual movement. For him who can look into the spiritual world all those who have gone through the gate of death, and now gaze down upon the movement with which they were connected, are like spiritual heralds of our movement. They carry their standards before us, and call to us constantly: we were convinced while we were united with you of the necessity of this movement. But now that we have entered the spiritual world we know that we can help and how we must help at a time in which this movement is necessary.

This is something which those who are left behind on the physical plane will feel more and more, when they have lost people dear to them. For them what has been said can be the deepest comfort, for they have here all that can bring about a still deeper connection between souls when we can no longer be connected in the external realm of manifestation, through physical eyes and physical words.

This spiritual movement, of which we are to become part, has to bring a very great deal. Today I would like to choose out one particular chapter. A time like ours, in which external civilisation, in spite of the last echoes of the old religions, builds entirely upon the materialistic consciousness, can only develop the impulses of the moral life in a way that reckons only with life between birth and death. Among the many things which should come about through our spiritual movement will be a fresh development of the whole moral life of humanity. For men will learn to regard the moral life from a point of view which extends beyond birth and death, and which reckons with the fact that the human soul goes through repeated lives on earth, and that this soul, as we bear it within us between birth and death, has passed through many lives, and can hope for other lives in the future. When we have extended our vision from a single life to a series of successive lives, we shall have a more comprehensive understanding for our existence, and a sounder and more comprehensive understanding of what virtue and morality are.

When we speak of human virtues we can distinguish four of these which we can describe in ordinary language. There is one virtue, as we shall indicate later on, which lives in the depths of the human soul, but of which we should speak as little as possible as we shall see, for reasons that are holy. All other virtues which exist in life, and which together make up morality, can be regarded as special examples of the four virtues which we shall consider, four virtues of which antiquity in particular had much to say.

Plato, the great philosopher of ancient Greece, distinguished these four virtues in particular, because he was able to draw his wisdom from the echoes of the ancient Mysteries. Under the influence of the old Mysteries Plato could distinguish the virtues better than later philosophers and much better than our times, in which knowledge of Mystery wisdom has become so remote and so chaotic.

The first virtue which we must consider, if we speak about morality from a comprehensive knowledge of human nature, is the virtue of wisdom. But this wisdom is to be understood in a rather deeper sense, more related to ethics, than is usually done. Wisdom is not something that comes to man of its own accord; still less can it in the ordinary sense be learned. It is not easy to describe what its meaning for us should be. If we pass through life in such a way that events work upon us, and we learn from them how we could have met this or that more adequately, how we could have used our powers more strongly and effectively—if we are attentive towards everything in life, so that when something meets us a second time in a comparable way we can treat it in a way which shows us we have benefited from the first experience—then we grow in wisdom. If we preserve all through life a mood of being able to learn from life, of being able to regard everything brought to us by nature and our experience, in such a way that we learn from it, not simply accumulating knowledge, but growing inwardly better and richer—then we have gathered wisdom, and what we have experienced has not been worthless for the life of our souls.

Life has been worthless for us if we pass through decades and still judge something that we have experienced in just the same way as we thought about it earlier in our lives. If we pass through life in such a way, we are most remote from wisdom. Karma may have brought it about that in youth we grew angry, and condemned this or that human action. If we retain this quality we have made poor use of our lives. We have used them well, supposing we formed harsh judgments in our youth, if at a later stage of life we do not judge harshly, but with understanding and forgiveness; if we make the effort of wishing to understand. If we have the character that from birth some things aroused furious anger in us, and if when we are old we no longer grow angry as in our youth, but our anger has left us and we have grown gentler—then we have used life in accordance with wisdom. If we were materialists in our youth, but then allowed ourselves to experience what our time could bring us as revelations from the spiritual world, then we have used our life in accordance with wisdom. If we close ourselves to the revelations of the spiritual world we have not used our life in accordance with wisdom.

To be enriched in this way, and to achieve a wider horizon, we can call the use of life in accordance with wisdom. What spiritual science seeks to give us is able to help us in opening ourselves towards life, in order to grow wiser. Wisdom is something which strongly opposes human egoism. Wisdom is something which always reckons with the course of universal events. We let ourselves be instructed by the course of universal events because this liberates us from the narrow judgment made by our ego. Fundamentally, a wise man cannot judge egoistically; for if one learns from the world, and grows in understanding for the world, one allows one's judgment to be corrected by the world; thus wisdom detaches us from narrow and limited vision and brings us into harmony with itself. Much else could be described, in order gradually to form a picture of wisdom. We should not attempt a definition of such ideas, but keep our hearts open, in order to grow wiser, even about wisdom.

Here in the physical world everything which man is to experience in waking life has to use the instruments of external physical and ethereal nature. Between birth and death we are only outside our physical and ethereal body with our soul-being, in so far as this is ego and astral body, during our periods of sleep. In our conscious, waking condition we use as instruments our physical and ethereal bodies. When we fill ourselves with wisdom, when we try in action and thought, in feeling and perception to live in accordance with wisdom, we use those organs of our physical and ethereal bodies which are so to speak the most perfect in our earthly life—those organs which have developed over the longest period, which were prepared by Saturn, Sun and Moon and have come into our lives as a heritage, having reached a certain completion.

I would like to give you from another point of view an idea of what can be understood by more or less perfect organs. Take on the one hand our brain. The brain is not the most perfect organ, but we can still call it more perfect than other organs, for it has needed longer for its evolution. We can compare the brain with our torso, upon which we have our hands. When we intend to do something with our hands, we have the thought: I stretch out my hand, I take the vase, I draw back my hand. What have I done ? I have stretched out not only the physical hand, but also the ethereal and the astral hand, and a part of my ego; the physical hand went with them.

If I only think, clairvoyant consciousness can see how something like spiritual arms stretch out from the head, but the physical brain remains within the skull. Just as my ethereal and astral hand belongs to my physical hand, something ethereal and astral belongs to the brain. The brain cannot follow, but the hands can follow. In a later time the hands will one day be fixed, and we shall only be able to move their astral part. Hands are on the way to become what the brain is already. In earlier times, during the old Sun and Moon periods, what today stretches out from the brain as something that is only spiritual was still accompanied by the physical organ. The skull has now covered it, so that the physical brain is held fast within it during the evolution of the Earth. The brain is an organ which has passed through more stages of evolution. The hands are on the way to become similar to the brain, for the whole man is on the way to become a brain. Thus there are organs which are more perfect, and have evolved into something more self-enclosed, and others which are less perfect. The most perfect organs are used for what we achieve in wisdom. Our ordinary brain is really used only as the instrument for the lowest form of wisdom, earthly cleverness. The more we acquire wisdom, the less we depend upon our cerebrum, the more activity is withdrawn (a thing unknown to external anatomy) to our cerebellum, to that smaller brain enclosed within our skull which looks like a tree. When we have become wise, when we have become wisdom, we find ourselves in fact under a ‘tree,’ which is our cerebellum and which then especially begins to unfold its activity.

Section of cerebellum, enlarged, showing tree-like structure

Imagine how a man who has become especially wise stretches out the organs of his wisdom mightily, like the branches of a tree. They originate in the cerebellum which remains within the hard covering of the skull; but the spiritual organs stretch far out, and man is under the tree, the Bodhi tree, in spiritual reality.

And so we see too that what we do in wisdom is the most spiritual thing about us, or at least belongs to the most spiritual, for the organs are already at rest. If we do anything with our hands, we must use part of our strength in the movement of the hand. If we form a wise judgment, or decide something wisely, the organs remain at rest, strength is no longer used upon the physical organ. We are there more spiritual; those organs which we use on the physical plane for the development of wisdom are those on which we need to use the least amount of energy—they are in a sense the most perfect.

Thus wisdom is something in the moral life which allows men to experience themselves in a spiritual way. It is connected with this that what man attains in the way of wisdom enables him to reap the greatest harvest from his earlier incarnations. Because we can live in wisdom within the spirit without any effort by the physical organs, we are most able through the life of wisdom to make fruitful what we have won in earlier incarnations for this life, bringing over this wisdom from earlier incarnations.

We have in German a good expression for a man who refuses to become wise. We call him a Philistine.¹ A Philistine is a man who resists the development of wisdom, who wants to remain as he is his whole life through, without altering his opinions. A man who seeks to become wise makes the effort to carry over the work which he has done and stored up in the course of earlier incarnations. The wiser we become, the more we bring over from earlier incarnations into the present, and if we do not wish to become wise, so that we leave barren the wisdom developed in earlier incarnations, there is then one who comes to saw it off: Ahriman.

No-one likes it better than Ahriman that we fail to grow wiser. We have the power to do it. We have gained far, far more in earlier incarnations than we believe; we won far more during the times in which we passed through the old conditions of clairvoyance. Everyone could become much wiser than he does become. No-one has the excuse that he could not bring much over from the past. To become wise means that one develops what has been won in earlier incarnations in such a way that it fills us in this incarnation.

The Buddha as Tree of Wisdom (sandstone relief from Bharhut, India, c. 2nd. Century B.C.) Indian Museum, Calcutta.

Another virtue can be called—though it is difficult to describe it exactly—the virtue of Courage. It contains the mood which does not remain passive towards life, but is ready to use its strength and activity. It can be said that this virtue comes from the heart. Of one who has this virtue in ordinary life it can be said: he has his heart in the right place. This is a good expression for our condition when we do not withdraw in a timid way from things which life asks from us, but when we are prepared to take ourselves in hand and know how to intervene where it is necessary. When we are inclined to get moving, confidently and bravely, we have this virtue. It is connected with a healthy life of feeling, which develops bravery at the right moment, while its absence brings about cowardice. This virtue can naturally be used in the physical course of life only through specific organs. These organs, to which the physical and ethereal hearts belong, are not so perfect as those which serve wisdom. These organs are on the way to alter, and will indeed become different in the future.

There is a great distinction between the brain and the heart in their relation to cosmic evolution. Suppose that a man goes through the gate of death, and passes through life between death and a new birth. His brain is altogether a work of the Gods. The brain is permeated by forces which leave him altogether when he goes through the gate of death, and for his next life the brain is built up entirely anew, not only materially, but also in its inner forces. That is not the case with the heart. With the heart it is so, that not the physical heart itself, but the forces which are active in the physical heart, remain in existence. These forces withdraw into the astral and into the Ego, and continue in existence between death and a new birth. The same forces, which beat within our hearts, beat again next time in our new incarnation. What works in the brain has gone; that does not appear in the next incarnation. But the forces active in the heart reappear in the next incarnation. If we contemplate the interior of the head we can say: invisible forces are working there, which compose the brain. But when a man has gone through the gate of death these forces are given over to the universe. But if we perceive a human heart-beat, we perceive spiritual forces which are not only present in this incarnation, but will live too in the next incarnation, having passed through death and a new birth.

Popular feeling has had a wonderful inkling of such things. It is because of this that it is so much concerned with the feeling of the heart-beat, not because the physical heart-beat in itself is valued so much, as because we are looking at something much more eternal when we consider a human heart-beat. If we have the virtue of courage, of bravery, we can use for it only a part of certain forces. We must use the other part for the organs which are the instrument for this virtue. They are organs for which we have still to use part of the forces concerned. If we are not courageous, if we let ourselves go and withdraw timidly from life, abandoning ourselves to our own weight, then we cannot bring to life those forces which have to accompany the use of the quality of courage in life.

When we stand in life in a cowardly way, the forces which should fire our hearts remain unused. They are then seed for Lucifer. He takes charge of them, and we lack them in the next life. To be cowardly towards life means to abandon a number of forces to Lucifer; and these are missing for us, when we seek to build up our hearts in our next incarnation. For these hearts should be the organs, the instruments of courage. We come into the world with defective, underdeveloped organs.

The third virtue reckons with the least perfect organs, those which will achieve a form in the future, of which they contain at present only the seed. This virtue can be called Temperance.² One shade of it can be called ‘Moderation.’ We have thus three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance.

Now it is possible to be intemperate in the most varied ways. One can be intemperate in excessive eating and drinking; this is its lowest form. Here the soul is absorbed into bodily desire, and we live entirely through our body. But if we take our desire in hand, if we command the body, what it may not do, we are then temperate or moderate. Through such moderation we keep in the right order those forces which ought to help us, in order that we do not abandon the organs concerned to Lucifer in the next incarnation. For we abandon to Lucifer those forces which are expended through giving ourselves up to a life of passion. We do this in the worst way when our passions intoxicate us, and we are content to live in a dreaming, drowsy state.

When we lose our clear consciousness through intemperance we are always abandoning powers to Lucifer. He takes up these powers, and thereby deprives us of the forces which we need for the organs of breathing and digestion. We return with bad organs of breathing and digestion, if we do not practise the virtue of moderation. Those who like to be carried away by their desires, who give themselves up to the life of their passions, are candidates for decadent human beings in the future, for those future human beings who will suffer from all kinds of faults in their physical body.

It can be said that this virtue of Temperance depends upon the least perfect human organs, those organs that are at the beginning of their development and have to be fundamentally transformed. When we consider our organs of digestion and all that is connected with them, they are put in motion by the use of Ego, astral body, ethereal body and physical body. It is different with those organs which are the instruments for Courage. Here our Ego remains more or less outside, and we move freely; only what is astral and ethereal in us is absorbed into the physical. If we go further to the virtues embraced by Wisdom, we retain Ego and astral body in free detachment. For as we become wiser, we develop the organisation of the astral body and achieve control over it. That is the essential thing, that through becoming wise we transform the astral into the Spirit-Self, and only the ethereal accompanies the physical. In the brain only the ethereal accompanies the physical. While during waking life in relation to the rest of the body we are closely connected, at least with our astral nature, with the physical organ, we retain for the brain the condition, which we have in sleep, in the highest degree. Thus we require physical sleep particularly for the brain. For when we are awake we are also outside the brain with our Ego and our astral body, and these have to make the greatest efforts within themselves, without being supported by the external organ.

Thus we find a connection between our human being and the virtues. We can call Wisdom a virtue, which belongs to man as a spiritual being, where with his Ego and his astral body he is freely active, using his physical and ethereal organs only as a kind of basis. We can name Courage as the virtue active where man is only free with his Ego, which is supported by his astral, ethereal and physical bodies. Finally we can speak of Temperance, where the seed contained in our Ego is becoming free; where our Ego is still bound to the astral, ethereal and physical bodies, and yet with our Ego we are beginning to work ourselves free from these bonds.

There is then a virtue which is perhaps the most spiritual of all. This is connected with the whole human being. There is an exercise of the human being which we lose early, which we possess only in the first years of childhood. I have often mentioned this. When we enter the physical plane we do not yet have the attitude which belongs to our human dignity: we crawl, on all fours. I have pointed out that we only achieve the right attitude, the upright position, through our own forces. We develop too through the forces which enter into speech. In the first years of our life we develop the forces which in the main guide us into the position which we have in the world as true men. We do not enter the world in such a way that we already have the right direction in the world. We crawl. But we are set in it rightly, when we direct the head outwards towards the stars. This corresponds to inner forces.

In later life we lose these forces. They no longer appear. There is nothing which enters human life again so radically as learning to walk and stand upright. In relation to standing upright we grow more and more weary. If we begin in the early morning to live with our brain, then when the day is ended we grow tired and need sleep. What makes us upright in childhood, when we are tired, remains tired all through life and grows feeble, and anything comparable to achieving uprightness as children is no longer done by us in later life.

And how do we direct ourselves into life when we learn to speak? Forces of direction work as well when we learn to speak. But the forces which we use in early childhood are not really lost for us in later life. They remain for us, but they are connected with a virtue; with the virtue which is related to rightness and the right, the virtue of all-comprehending Justice, the fourth virtue. The same impulse, which we use as a child when we raise ourselves up from crawling, lives in us if we have the virtue of justice, the fourth that Plato mentions.

Whoever really exercises the virtue of justice puts every thing and every being in its right place, and goes out of himself and into the others. That is what all-comprehending Justice means. To live in Wisdom means to derive the best fruits from the forces we have stored up during earlier incarnations. If we have there to point towards what was imparted to us during earlier incarnations, where we were still permeated by divine forces, with Justice we have to point out still more: we are sprung from the whole universe. We exercise justice by developing those forces which relate us spiritually to the entire universe. Justice is the measure of a man's connection with the divine. In practice Injustice is equivalent to the godless; equivalent to the one who has lost his divine origin; we blaspheme against God, the God from whom we spring, if we do any man injustice.

Thus we have two virtues, Justice and Wisdom, which guide us back to what we were in earlier times, in earlier incarnations in the times when we ourselves were still in the womb of the godhead. And we have two other virtues, Courage and Temperance, which guide us towards later incarnations. We provide all the more forces for these, the less we give to Lucifer. We have seen how what is of the nature of courage and of temperance goes into the organs, and how the organs are prepared thereby for the next incarnation. In the same way moral life extends into the future, when we fill ourselves with spirituality. Two virtues shine out over the past incarnation: Wisdom and Justice. Courage and Temperance shine out over the incarnations to come.

The time will come when men will see clearly that they are throwing themselves into the jaws of Ahriman, when they shut themselves off against justice and wisdom. What was theirs in earlier incarnations, what belonged to the divine world, they would cast over to Lucifer through intemperate or cowardly actions. All that can be seized by Lucifer is taken away from the powers available to us for building up our body in the coming life.

We cannot practise wisdom and justice without becoming selfless, as has been indicated. Only a self-seeking man can be unjust. Only a self-seeking man can be willing to remain unwise. Wisdom and justice lead us out beyond our own Self and make of us members of the whole organism of humanity. Courage and temperance make us in a sense members of the whole organism of humanity; only through experiencing courage and temperance and expressing them in our lives, do we provide for ourselves for the future with a stronger organism to take its place within humanity. We do not then lose what we would otherwise throw to Lucifer. Egoism is of itself transformed into selflessness when it is rightly extended over the whole horizon of life, and man finds his place in the light of the fourth virtue. That is what will be brought by spiritual wisdom for the future of man, and will extend over ethics and the moral life. This will pour into educational method as well. Through understanding wisdom and justice in the sense that I have indicated, the desire to learn all through life will arise. It will be seen that one has to begin learning in the right way when one has already youth behind one—while people think now that they do not need to learn anything more once their youth is past. In this way even the greatest and noblest works of art of the greatest poets are lost. We would understand them best if we took them up again in old age. If people read Goethe's Iphigenia or Schiller's Tell, they usually think: we read that at school already. That is not right; one should not forget that these writings have their best effect if they are read in later life, for then they develop justice and wisdom.

And again the education of children will bring special fruit if the virtue of courage and the virtue of temperance are seen in the right light. Where children are to be educated, these virtues must be regarded in an individual way, by showing the children again and again that they are to take hold of life courageously, and not be afraid or withdraw themselves from all sorts of things; and that they grasp life temperately and moderately, in order gradually to free themselves from their passions. An immense amount can be done for the education of children in this way. In the later course of our study of spiritual science these things will have to be developed in greater detail.

So we see that while otherwise the ethical life only provides laws concerned with life between birth and death, on the external physical plane, the considerations of spiritual science extend to an unlimited horizon. It is the same as with other things in spiritual science. Humanity has had to experience in relation to the science of nature the extension of its horizons. Giordano Bruno showed men that there is not only the earth, but many other worlds in cosmic space. Spiritual science shows men that there is not only earthly life, but many earthly lives. Before Giordano Bruno men believed that there was a fixed boundary up in the sky. Giordano Bruno showed that there is no boundary, that the blue of the sky is not a limit. Spiritual science shows that birth and death are not there, but that we introduce them into life through the limitation of our understanding.

Thus the gulf between the physical and the spiritual can be bridged over. Things which rest upon a spiritual-scientific foundation are like this for those seeking to found a genuine, truthful Monism. Those who often call themselves Monists today manage their Monism very simply. They take one part of the world and make of it a unity by throwing away the other half. True Monism comes about through allowing both halves to have their significant influence upon one another. This comes about through spiritual science. This should not only arise in a significant way for our consciousness, but for the whole of our life. We have to come more and more to the real knowledge, looking out into the world: in all that lives and works around us something super-sensible is present, not only in what is seen by our eyes, but also in what can be perceived by the understanding which is bound to the brain. There are everywhere spiritual forces, behind every phenomenon, behind the phenomenon of the rainbow, behind the movement of the hand, and so on.

If you read the lecture cycle which I held in Leipzig at the turn of the year last year, [Christ and the Spiritual World. The search for the Holy Grail (six lectures, Leipzig, 28th December 1913 – 2nd January 1914), published by the Rudolf Steiner Press.] you will find how the Christ Impulse worked through the Mystery of Golgotha, and how Christ lives in the most important affairs of humanity, not only in human conscious knowledge. For instance, there were quarrels about dogmas. But while men were quarrelling, the Christ Impulse lived on and brought about the necessary events.

Take the figure of the Maid of Orléans. In European history the simple shepherd girl appears. She appeared in a remarkable way; there lived in her soul not only those forces, which are otherwise to be found in human beings, but the Christ Impulse works in this personality, enlivening and sustaining her through its mighty influence. She became a kind of representative of the Christ Impulse itself for her time. This she was only able to do, because the Christ Impulse could enter and live within her.

You know that we celebrate the Christmas Festival in the time when the sun has least power, in the deepest darkness of winter, because we can be convinced that at this time the inner light, the spiritual light, has its greatest power.

Old legends tell us that over Christmas, up to 6th January, people have had special experiences, because at this time the life of the earth, and the inner forces of the earth, are most concentrated. Those who have the right disposition for it, experience then in fact the spiritual forces within the earthly forces. Countless legends describe this. The best time for this covers thirteen days before 6th January.

The Maid of Orléans passed through these thirteen days in a particular condition, in a condition in which the life of her feeling was not yet affected by the external world. It is remarkable that the time during which the Maid of Orleans was carried in her mother's body ended during the Christmas time of the year 1411. She was born, having been carried for the last thirteen days in her mother's body, on 6th January. Before she drew the first breath, before she saw the physical life with physical eyes, she experienced what is earthly during these thirteen days in that sleep, through which man passes before he enters the physical world.

Here I am indicating something immensely significant, which shows how the world is guided from the spiritual; how what happens externally in the physical world is given its direction by the spiritual world; how, through the physical, the spiritual world is flowing.

Thus in our time we must work ever more consciously to remove through spiritual science the gulf between the physical and the spiritual. We do this for one field of our lives, when we become conscious that within our movement the powers of those are at work, who united their soul and body during their earthly life with our movement, and have passed through the gate of death. If we look across to the other bank of the stream, where they are active, feeling ourselves united with them, directing our thoughts towards them—we do this in full consciousness, the consciousness won through spiritual science. We know that we are in the most living connection with those who have gone through the gate of death, and we know that they provide the best powers among us. When we do this, or can think it, we regard life like a field that is to be sown. Between what we ourselves plant, we see plants everywhere springing up, which we could not have grown ourselves. Then we can know: these plants have been put in by those to whom it is granted to be in the world of the spirit, those with whom we feel ourselves connected, those with whom we become united.

Human brotherhood with those as well who no longer bear a physical body—that will be the characteristic sign of this movement and of those who feel themselves as members of this movement, and reckon themselves as belonging to it in the future. Other societies, founded only upon earthly things, will be able to remove many barriers between human beings. The barriers between the living and the dead will more and more be taken away by the movement which unites those men who wish to be united in the sign of spiritual science. We will carry all this in our souls, and keep as an abiding sense this characteristic quality, uniting us with this spiritual movement, which has become dear to us.

• 1. The German and the English meanings of the word are rather different. (Tr.)
• 2. The German word ‘Besonnenheit’ seems impossible to render adequately in English. ‘Temperance’ is widely used for Plato's word σωϕροσύνη) (Tr.)

In the short lecture before the eurythmy performance this morning, I pointed out how modern man’s relation to the celebration of the festivals has gotten ever deeper into materialism. Of course, in order to see this a much deeper view of materialism must be taken. The most threatening symptom is not that man is infected by materialism but he is infected by the superficiality of our time, and this is far more dangerous.

This superficiality exists not only in relation to the spiritual views of the world, but also in relation to materialism itself. One usually only pays attention to its most superficial phenomena. In this regard I pointed out this afternoon, for example how, in olden times people were still receptive to the moods which could be experienced in the course of the year and which came to be expressed in the festival celebrations. These moods were embodied in the winter solstice festival, the spring festival, the St. John’s festival and the Michael festival—these were embodied in ritual-like celebrations in which these moods were embedded, and they took hold of man as he consciously experienced the course of the year.

Thereby something was given to the soul which today is only given to man’s body. We all still participate in the course of the day. When the sun sends its golden rays announcing the dawn we eat our breakfast. When it is at its highest point and pours out its warmth and light with special love over mankind, we eat lunch, and so on through midday, snack, and supper. In those daily festival events, we accompany the course of the sun through the day by co-experiencing in our souls the fiery trip of the sun around the world. We participate in this fiery ride around the world by overcoming the craving for food with the contentment of feeling satiated. And so the mood for the physical organism exists in a very decided and definite way at different times of the day. We can call breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper, the festivals of the day. The human physical organism accompanies what takes place between earth and cosmos.

In a similar way the course of the year was experienced intensively in the soul in olden times through instinctive clairvoyance. Actually, certain things played from one sphere over into the other. You need but remember what has been left as remnants of these festivals: Easter eggs, stuffed geese, etc. The lower bodily region plays into the soul region which ought also to experience the course of the year. Well, the easiest way to stimulate interest in the course of the year in our materialistic time would be by making available—I do not want to say “Easter eggs”,—but “stuffed turkeys.”

But this is not the way it was meant in olden times with regard to festival moods. They were attuned, rather, to soul-hunger and soul satisfaction. The soul of man needed something different at Christmas, Easter, St. John’s, and Michaelmas time. And one can really compare the content of the celebration to a kind of satisfying the hunger of the soul at different seasons.

So as we look at the daily path of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the body; as we look at the yearly course of the sun, we can say that it is related to what serves the needs of the soul.

If festivals are to become alive again, it would have to happen out of a much more conscious condition, out of an awakening of the soul as it is striven for in anthroposophical endeavors. We cannot just base a renewal of the Festivals on old history; we would have to rediscover them through a new knowledge, a new world-conception, out of our own soul-being. But, besides the body and soul, we also differentiate the human spirit.

However, for modern man it is already difficult enough to have a clear picture when someone speaks of the soul. Everything becomes a sort of indefinite fog. Already in the nineteenth century when they began to speak of psychology, they began to speak of a soul-science without a soul. Fritz Mauthner, the great language critic, found that we really do not know anything about the soul, we only experience something indefinite, certain thoughts and feelings, but really nothing of a soul reality. We ought not, therefore, to use in the future the world “soul” but “dis-soul” (Geseel). Mauthner advises, that in the future, when a poet intends to write a real work he ought not to say: “Sing immortal Soul, the sinful man’s redemption,” but rather, “Sing immortal What-cha-macall-it, the sinful men’s redemption”—if in the future it still would make sense to speak of something like that.

Today we can really say that modern man knows nothing more of the connection of his soul with the sun’s yearly course. He became a materialist in this region, also. He sticks to the festivals of the body which follow the daily course of the sun. The festivals are celebrated out of traditional habits but no longer experienced. Yet we have, besides a body, also a soul, and yes, also a spirit.

Let us now take into consideration the historical epochs. Those epochs, which reach far beyond the course of the year, encompassing centuries, are co-experienced by the human spirit, if it experiences them at all. In olden times they were most certainly experienced. He who knows how to enter, carried by the spirit, into the way the course of time was followed in the past knows how it was said: at this or that time some personality appeared out of the heights of the world and revealed the spirit again. And this spirit entered as the sunlight enters the physical. If such an epoch then entered its twilight phase, something new appeared.

Historical epochs are related to the evolution of the human spirit, as the course of the sun through the year is related to the soul evolution. Of course, wherever such metamorphoses, such changes in spirit evolution occur, it must happen through fully conscious cognition. Today, one would like to ignore such metamorphoses completely. One is outwardly touched by the effects, but one does not wish to consider seriously those changes emanating from the spirit which are nevertheless expressed in the outer events.

It would be helpful to pay attention to a certain direction of thinking and feeling appearing in children and young people, which was unknown to earlier generations, and which, when looked at properly in the course of the development of humanity, can really be compared to the course of the year. Therefore it would be good to listen to what the different ages proclaim as a need, to listen to the way in which a new age arises and how human beings demand something different from what might have been demanded in ages gone by. But just for this contemporary man has a very inadequate organ.

When we approach the festival mood in the right way out of a contemporary consciousness, the great relationships of life can again fill our souls. When we, for example, let something like the St. John’s mood really enter our soul, then we try to gain for our soul what will be met by the cosmos.

Certainly, the great world connections have become a matter of indifference for modern mankind. There is no heart for getting to know the great world relations. It is quite evident how the spirit of littleness, narrowness, I would like to say, the spirit of the microscope, the spirit of atomizing appears, which, when mentioned in the way I do, seems paradoxical.

I would like to point to something definite in relation to the St. John’s mood which, however, seems quite far-fetched. What is more obvious (even if one has not developed an organ for the course of the year) than the impression of growing plants, growing trees: when spring comes, things sprout, grow, everything goes from leaf to blossom. All this growing makes the impression as though the cosmos, with its sun forces, calls upon the earth to open itself to the cosmos, and this happens at St. John’s time.

Then begins a retreat of the sprouting, and we approach the time when the earth collects the growing forces into itself, when the earth withdraws from the cosmos. How obvious it is that from the received impressions one gets the picture that the snow-cover belongs to winter, when the being of the plants crawls, so to speak, into the earth; that it belongs to summer for the plants to grow towards the cosmos. What is more natural than to get this idea—although in a deeper sense the opposite is correct—that the plants sleep in winter and wake in summer.

I do not wish to speak now about the correctness of this sleeping and waking. I wish to speak only of the impression one receives, which leads to the thought that summer belongs to growing vegetation, and winter to the withdrawal of growth. In any case, a kind of world-feeling develops in which one is engaged in relating to the warming, bright force of the sun when seeing this force again in the greening, blossoming plant-cover of earth, and immersing into the feeling of being an earthly hermit with regard to the cosmos when the plant cover is replaced with snow in winter. In short, by so feeling, one tears oneself free with one’s consciousness from earth existence. One places oneself in a larger relation to the universe.

Now comes modern research—and what I am saying now is in no way critical, on the contrary—now comes modern research and shrugs its shoulders whenever great cosmic connections are referred to. Why should one feel elevated to divine radiating warming forces of the sun when the trees are shooting, becoming green, when earth covers itself with a cover of plants? Why should one have to sense a cosmic relation on seeing this plant cover? It is disturbing. One cannot bring such sentiments into harmony with a materialistic consciousness. Plant is plant. It seems like stubborness of the plant to blossom only in spring, or to be ready in summer to bear fruit. How does this actually work? One is supposed to be concerned not only with the plant but with the whole world? If one is to feel, to know, one is supposed to be concerned with the whole world, not only with the plant? That doesn’t sit right. Is one not already making an effort to avoid dealing with substances existing in powder or crystal forms, but rather just to deal with atomic structures, atomic cores, with electromagnetic fields, etc.? One tries to deal with something enclosed, not with something that points in so many directions. In the case of the plant is one supposed to admit that a sensing is needed that reaches to the whole cosmos? It is really awful if one cannot narrow one’s view to a singular object! One is used to, when using the microscope, to have everything limited to a narrow view. Everything takes place in the small enclosure. It must be possible to look at a plant by itself, not in connection to the whole cosmos!

And look, at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century the scientists succeeded to an extraordinary degree in this region. It was known, of course, from some plants in hothouses, greenhouses, that the mere summer and winter aspects of the plant could be overcome. But on the whole, not enough could be discovered about the plant needing a certain winter rest. Discussions about tropical plants occurred. The researcher, who did not want to know about plants being connected with the cosmos, maintained that the tropical plant grows throughout the year. The others, more conservative, said: one thinks this because plants have their winter rest at different times, some only for eight days. This being so, makes it imperceptible when a certain species is dormant. Long detailed discussions concerning tropical plants took place. In short, one became aware of a tremendous discomfort concerning the relation of plants to the cosmos.

But the most interesting and grandiose experiments in this direction were made exactly at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, when one succeeded in driving the stubborness out of the plants in the case of a great number of not only annuals, but also trees, which are much stronger: to drive out the cosmic stubborness from the plant. It was possible to do this in plants known as annuals by creating certain conditions. In the case of most of the trees growing in the temperate zone, conditions could be established which caused them to remain green all year round, to give up their winter sleep. This then provided the basis for certain materialistic explanations. In this way really magnificent accomplishments were achieved.

It was discovered that the cosmic element could be driven out of trees if they were brought into enclosed spaces, given enough nourishing minerals, making it possible that plants in winter-time, when the soil is poor in minerals, can find this nourishment. If enough moisture, warmth, and light is supplied, the trees will grow. However, one tree in Central Europe was defiant: the Blood Beech. It was approached from all sides to give up its independence and subjected to isolation in a prison. It was provided with everything necessary, but remained stubborn, and demanded nevertheless its winter rest. But it was the only one that still resisted.

And now we must record that in the twentieth century, in 1914, the beginning of the war, another great historical event occurred: the immense, mighty accomplishment of the most capable researcher, Klebs, who was able to compel the Blood Beech to give up its independence. He simply was able to bring it into an enclosed space, provide the necessary nutrients, warmth and light, which could be measured, and the Blood Beech submitted to the demands of research.

I am not mentioning this phenomenon in order to criticize it, for who can help but wonder at this most diligent scientific labor. Besides, it would be silly to try to disprove the facts. They exist and are there. It is not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, but something quite different.

Why should it not be possible if somewhere on neutral ground the necessary condition for hair-growing existed, to grow hair outside the human or animal realms? Why not? One need only bring about the conditions. I know many would rather have hair growing on their heads than in some culture, but we can imagine it to be possible. Then it would no longer be necessary to bring anything that happens on earth together with what happens in the cosmos.

With all due respect to research, one must look deeper. Aside from what I said recently about the being of the elements, I would like to say something more today. One must be clear that, for example, the following is the case: we know that once earth and sun were one body. Of course this is long ago, during the Saturn and Sun periods. Then there was also a short repetition of those periods during the Earth period. But something remains behind which still belongs there. And this we bring forth again today. And we bring it forth from the repetitious condition on earth not only by heating our rooms with coal, but we bring it forth by using electricity. For, what remains from those times after Old Saturn and Old Sun, when the sun and earth were one, that provided the basis for what we have today on earth as electricity. We have in electricity a force which is sun-force, long connected with the earth, a hidden sun-force in the earth.

Why should not the stubborn Blood Beech, when approached forcefully enough, be induced to use not the sun that radiates from the cosmos, but to use the sun force retained within the earth, the Old Sun force, electricity?

Looking in this way we become aware of the necessity of deeper knowledge. As long as man could believe that the sun force comes only from the cosmos, man arrived at the perception of the relationship of the plant world to the cosmos. Today, when from a materialistic point of view, one would like to separate from the cosmos what so easily can be seen as cosmic effect, one must, if one looks at the seeming independence of the plant, have a science which recalls that cosmic relation between earth and sun which once existed, but in a different form. By being narrowed on the one hand by the microscope, we simply need a much wider expansion on the other hand, and especially the details show how much we need an expanded view.

The problem is not a dilettantic anthroposophical opposition to progress in research. But since progress in research necessarily leads through one’s own nature, it can bring us to the often mentioned “night-crawler view” and prevent that wide view of the great cosmic historic connections between earth and sun, which enables us to be conscious not only of the present sun, but also of the Sun of long past conditions. Everywhere we need the polarity, the counter-pole: not opposition to research, but the spiritual counterpole is what is needed. This is the position we need to take. And I would like to say it is also the mood of St. John’s time. When we inscribe clearly into our sentiment that we now have to live in a world-historic St. John’s mood, we carry our gaze into cosmic distances. That is what we need in spiritual cognition. Nothing is gained by mere talking about spirit; what is important is real penetration into the concrete phenomena of the spiritual world. What we bring forth by pointing to Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth evolutions, etc., has a tremendous supporting force regarding historic cognition.

When our attention is called to such brilliant results of materialistic science as those discovered by Klebs, that even the stubborn Blood Beech can be compelled to grow with electric light, this will lead us, without spiritual science, to the point where we will shatter everything into pieces and have a very narrow view. The Blood Beech will stand before us, growing in electric light, and we will know nothing except what this very narrow picture tells us.

With spiritual science, however, we can say something else: Klebs took the sunlight from the Blood Beech. He then had to give her electric light, which is actually ancient sun light. Our view is not narrow, but greatly enlarged. So, those who do not want to know of the soul experience will say glibly that one day is just like the next. There is breakfast, snack, dinner, snack, supper,—it is even nice when at Christmas time we get a nice cake—but basically every day is a repetition of the previous day. In fact material man sees only the day. But what about cosmic connections? Let us free ourselves of such a world view. Let us become clear that the stubborn Blood Beech no longer needs the sun. If we imprison her and give her enough electricity, she will grow without the sun. No! She will in fact not grow without the sun. But we need to seek the sun in the right way when we do something like that. And we must be clear that it is different when the Blood Beech grows in the sunlight or when ahrimanic sunlight, originating from long-past, is forced upon her. And we recall what has often been mentioned as the two polarities of Lucifer and Ahriman.

With an adequately wide view of these things we will not admire our brilliance at having overcome the stubbornness of the beech, but go much further. We will progress on to the sap of the beech, and investigate its effect on the human organism, investigate both the beech we permitted to be stubborn and the one which we treated with electric light, and we might discover something very special about the healing forces of one as opposed to the other. But we must do this by considering the spiritual!

But of what concern is this to people today? One has an admirable interest in research. One sits in the classroom, is an experimental psychologist, writes down all kinds of words which must be remembered, examines memory, experiments with children, and arrives at most interesting information. Once the interest is awakened, everything is interesting, depending on the subjective point of view. Why should it not be possible that a stamp collection is more interesting than a botanical collection? Since this is so, why not also in other realms? Why should the tortures to which children are subjected when they are experimented with, be not interesting? But the question everywhere is, whether or not there are higher responsibilities, and whether it is really justified to experiment with children at a certain age. The question arises: what is one ruining? And the greater question: what damage is done to the teachers, when instead of asking of them a living, heartfelt relation, one asks of them an experimental interest out of the results of experimental psychology. So everything depends, in such research, on whether or not one has the right relation to the sense world, and also to the supersensible world.

Now certain people who emphasize the necessary objectivity of research will assert that there are some who find it immoral when Klebs takes the stubbornness out of the Blood Beech. This would not occur to me. I wouldn’t dream of it. Everything that is done ought to be done, but one must have a counterweight for it. In the time when one emancipates oneself with regard to the growing beech tree from the cosmos, one must on the other hand, in a civilization which does such things, also have a sense for how the spiritual progress of man takes place. One must have a sense for the epochs of time, like ours. I do not want to limit research, but one must feel the necessity of a counter measure. There must be an open heart for the fact that at certain times spiritual impulses want to reveal themselves. When on the one hand materialism takes over and great achievements result, then those who are interested in such achievements should also be interested in the achievements of research about the spiritual worlds.

This lies in the inner nature of Christianity. A true view of Christianity sees, after the Mystery of Golgotha, the continuing of the Christ being in the earth, in the Christ force, the Christ impulse. And this means that when autumn comes, when everything dries up, when the growing and sprouting in nature ceases, ceases for the senses, then one can see the growing and sprouting of the spirit which accompanies man during the winter time.

But in the same way one must learn to sense how, although justifiable, the view for detail is narrowed in a certain way, the view for the totality for the great whole is narrowed. With regard to Christianity this is the St. John’s mood. We must sense with understanding that the St. John’s festival mood is the starting point for that occurrence which lies in the words: He must increase, I must decrease.

This means that the impressions upon man of everything that is accomplished by empirical research must decline. As the sense details are ever more enhanced, the impression of the spirit must be more and more intensified. And the sun of the spirit must shine more and more into the human heart, the more the impressions of the sense world decline.

The St. John’s mood must be experienced as the entrance into spirit impulses and as exit from the sense impulses. In the St. John’s mood we must learn to sense wherein something weaves and wafts like a soft wind, wafts the spiritually demonic out of the sensible into the spiritual, and from the spiritual into the sensible. And through the St. John’s mood we must learn to form our spirit light so that it does not stick like tar to the solid contour of ideas, but finds itself in weaving, living ideas. We must learn to notice the lighting up of the sensual, the dimming of the sensual, the lighting up of the spiritual in the dimming sensual. We must learn to experience the symbol of the June bug: the lighting up has its meaning as does the dimming of the light.

The lightning bug lights up, dims down, but by dimming down it leaves behind in us the living life and weaving of the spirit in the twilight evening, in the dusk. And when we see in nature everywhere the little waves as in the symbolic lighting up and dimming of the lightning bug, we will find the right St. John’s mood if it is experienced with clear, bright, full consciousness. And this St. John’s mood is necessary, for we must in this way pass through our time if we do not want to fall into the abyss, pass through in such a way that the spirit becomes glowingly alive and that we learn to follow it.

The St. John’s mood:—towards the future of the earth and mankind! No longer the old mood which understands only the growing and sprouting on the outside, which is pleased when it can imprison this growing and sprouting under electric light what otherwise was thriving in the sunlight. Rather we must learn to recognize the lighting up of the spirit so that the electric light becomes less important than it is today, so that the St. John’s gaze becomes sharpened for that old sunlight which will appear when we open ourselves to the great spiritual horizon, not only to the narrow earthly horizon, but the great horizon from Saturn to Vulcan.

If we allow the light of the great horizon to shine in the right way, then all the trivialities of our time will appear in this light, then we will go forward and upward; but if we cannot make this decision we will go backward and downward.

Today everything revolves around human freedom, human will. Everything revolves around the independent decision of either going forward or backward, upward or downward.

On various occasions it has been emphasised that the spiritual development, as aspired to by Spiritual Science, must bring the human being into a living relationship with the whole environment. Much in our environment that filled our ancestors with veneration has become dead and mundane for man. For example, a large number of people are alienated from and cold towards our annual festivals. The urban population in particular has only a scant memory of what Christmas, Easter and Whitsun (Pentecost) mean.

Today, mankind does no longer possess this enormous emotional content that our ancestors connected with the festive seasons because they were aware of the great facts of the spiritual world. Cold and sober people look at Christmas and Easter today, and especially also at Whitsun. The pouring out of the Spirit has become an abstract event for many people. But this will change—it will only become life and reality when mankind will come to a truly spiritual realisation of the whole world.

Today, there is a lot of talk about the forces of nature, but not a lot is said about the beings behind these nature forces. Modern man regards talk about the “beings of nature” as a rehashing of an old superstitious belief. It is considered an old superstition if someone believes that the words used for gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, as our ancestors called them, are based on reality and mean something real. First, in a certain way it doesn’t matter what kind of theories or ideas people have, but if people are tempted by these theories to ignore certain things and to apply their theories in their daily life in practice, then the issue becomes fully relevant.

Let’s take a grotesque example: Who believes in beings whose existence is bound to the air or who are embodied in water? For example, if someone says, “Our ancestors believed in certain beings like gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders, but this is all imaginary stuff!”, then one would like to respond by saying, “Ask the bees.” And, if the bees could talk, they would answer, “Sylphs are not a superstition for us—we know quite well what they are to us!” Someone who is clairvoyant can trace (with his eyes) which force it is that draws the little bee to the flower. “Instinct, natural drive,” is man’s answer, but these are empty words. It is those beings, that our ancestors called sylphs, that guide the bees to the bloom’s calyx to search for food—and those beings are active in the whole bee swarm in search for nourishment.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, there is an opportunity for certain (elemental) beings to reveal themselves. For example, inside the Earth, where the stone touches on a metal vein, special beings will settle down. At a spring, where moss covers the stone and thus the plant kingdom touches the mineral kingdom such beings will settle in. Where animals and plants touch, in the bloom’s calyx when the bee touches the blossom, particular beings will embody themselves, and likewise where the human being touches onto the animal kingdom. This is not happening in the normal course of contact. For example, not when the butcher slaughters cattle, or when someone eats the flesh of animals—nothing like this will happen in the normal course of life. But where in the extraordinary course of events, as it happens with bees and flowers, the kingdoms touch each other in an exuberance of life, beings will embody themselves. And especially where man’s mind, his intellect, is particularly engaged in interacting with animals, such beings embody themselves. An example would be the emotional relationship a shepherd has with his sheep.

When we go back to the ancient times, we find such close relationships between humans and animals more often. In times of lower cultures, it was common to have relationships such as an Arab has to his horse, but not as the owner of a racing stable has to his horses. There we find those powers of mind that interplay between kingdoms–like between the shepherd and the lambs. Or where the senses of smell and taste will be developed and radiate across, like between bees and flowers, an opportunity is created for certain beings to embody themselves. When a bee sucks at a flower, a clairvoyant can perceive how at the rim of the flower a small aura is created. This is the effect of the taste: The sting of the bee into the bloom’s calyx has produced a certain flavouring agent – the bee perceives the taste and radiates it out like a bloom’s aura – this is the nourishment for sylph-like beings. Likewise, the element of feeling between the shepherd and the sheep is food for salamanders.

The following question is not for one who understands the spiritual world, “Then why are these beings there and not otherwise?” We should not ask about their origin, because their origin lies in the cosmos. But if one creates an opportunity for them to feed then they appear. For example, bad thoughts emanating from a person will attract bad entities to settle into his aura because they find food there. Then certain beings embody themselves in his aura.

Wherever different nature kingdoms touch, the opportunity presents itself for embodiment of certain spiritual beings. When a miner hacks away the soil—where metal nestles against the stone in the interior of the Earth—the clairvoyant can observe at various spots strange beings crouching, huddling together in a very small place. They scatter, they sputter apart when the earth is removed. They are strange beings but, in a way, not at all unlike humans. Although they have no physical body, they have reason. But the difference between them and human beings is that they possess intelligence without responsibility. Therefore, they do not feel anything is wrong about sometimes playing a prank on human beings. They are called gnomes, and numerous species of them are housed in the earth. They are at home where stone and metal touch. In the past they served mankind very well with mining—not with coal mining but with metal mining. The way how mines were constructed in ancient times, the knowledge about how the strata are layered, was learnt from these beings. They knew the most productive seams and how the layers ran inside the earth. Therefore, they were able to provide the best instruction on how to proceed with work. If one doesn’t want to work with spiritual beings and only relies on the senses, then one will end up in a dead-end road. From these spiritual entities one has to learn a certain method to explore the Earth.

Likewise at a spring beings embody themselves. Where the stone touches the spring, beings bound to the element of water embody themselves: the undines. Where animal and plant touch, the sylphs are working. The sylphs are bound to the element of the air, they lead the bees to the blossoms. Therefore, we owe almost all useful knowledge about beekeeping to old traditions. Especially about beekeeping¹ we can learn a lot from them, because the science that exists about this today is completely erroneous. The old wisdom that has spread through tradition will only be confused by this. Science proves to be useless in this context. Useful are only the old beekeeping flicks of hand whose origin is unknown, because man at that time used the spiritual world for guidance. Nowadays people also know about salamanders because if one says, “Something is flowing to me, I do not know where it comes from...”, then this is usually the effect of the salamanders.

When a human being enters into such close contact to animals as a shepherd to his sheep, then the beings who live in his surroundings will whisper insights to him. A shepherd would have received the knowledge he had about his flock from the salamanders in his surroundings. These old insights have dwindled and now must be regained through proven occult knowledge.

If we follow these thoughts further, then we will have to say to ourselves, “We are completely surrounded by spiritual beings! We walk through the air, and it is not only a chemical substance, but every breath of wind, every air movement is the revelation of spiritual entities.” We are surrounded and completely permeated by these spiritual entities. And, in the future man must have knowledge of what lives around him, if he doesn’t want to experience a completely sad and life draining fate. Without this knowledge he will no longer be able to progress. Man must ask himself, “Where do these beings come from? Where do these beings stem from?”

This question will lead us to an important realisation. To form a view about this, we have to become clear about how in the higher worlds certain facts play out, where what is detrimental and evil is transformed through certain things by wise guidance into something good. For example, the waste, the manure—this is what has been chucked out and through wise usage it is later effective in the economy as the foundation for plant germination. Higher powers pick up and transform things that have seemingly dropped off from higher development. This we encounter to a great extent in the beings we have spoken about, when we follow up on their origin. How do these “salamandrian” entities come into being? Let’s look at this in detail. Salamanders depend on the existence of a specific relation between human and animal. Animals do not have an “I/ego” such as human beings have. Such an ego exists only in modern man on Earth. These human egos are so that every human being has an ego enclosed in himself. This is different with animals. The animals have a “group-ego,” a “group-soul”. What does that mean? A group of animals of the same species, animals of similar shape, have a common ego. For example, all separate lions share a common ego, all tigers, all pikes do.

The animals have their ego in the astral world. This is as if a human being would stand behind a wall with ten holes in it and would put his ten fingers through the holes. Then the human being could not be seen, but every rational person would conclude, “there is a central power behind it that belongs to the ten fingers.” This is how it is with the group-ego. The separate animals are merely the limbs. What they belong to is in the astral world. These animal-egos are not similar to humans, although, from a spiritual perspective they could well be compared with each other, because an animal group-ego is a very, very wise being. The human being as an individual soul is not nearly as wise. For example, think of certain bird species: how wise is it that they are migrating at particular heights and in specific directions to escape winter, and return again by different routes in spring. Here we can recognise in the bird migration the truly wise powers of the group-egos. They can be found everywhere in the animal kingdom.

People are very narrow minded when they are listing human progress. Let us remember our school days, where we learnt how in the Middle Ages slowly the stream of the modern times emerged. The Middle Ages surely have something important to put on record, such as the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, the art of book printing and finally also of linen paper. It was probably an important progress to use this product instead of parchment, but thousands of years ago the wasp group-soul had done the same, because wasps’ nests are made from the same material as the paper produced by man; it is made of paper.

Human beings will only slowly find out how certain conjectures of his spirit are connected with what the group-souls have worked into the world.

The group-souls are in constant movement. The clairvoyant perceives a persistent flicker across the backbone of the animals. The spine seems to be enclosed by flickering light. The animals are pervaded by an infinite number of streams that are encircling the Earth in all directions, such as the trade winds, which affect the animals by streaming around the spinal cord. These animal group-souls are perpetually going around the Earth in a circular motion at every height and in every direction. These group-souls are very wise, but they are missing one thing which they do not yet have—they do not know that which on Earth is called “love.” Only in a human being is love connected to wisdom in an individual.

The group-soul is wise, but the individual animal experiences love as sexual love and parental love. In an animal love is individual, but the wise arrangement, the wisdom of the group-ego is still void of love. The human being has united love and wisdom—the animal has love in the physical life, and it has wisdom on the astral plane. Such realisations will be immensely enlightening for people.

The human being arrived at his current “I” only gradually. Previously man also had a group-soul, and the individual soul has crystallised itself only gradually. Let us follow backwards the evolution of mankind up to ancient Atlantis. In former times man lived in the old Atlantis, a continent that is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. At that time the wide Siberian plains were covered with large oceans. The Mediterranean Sea was quite differently distributed then. Also in our European regions were wide expanses of sea. The further we go backwards into the old Atlantean time, the more all circumstances of life are changing, the more the human being’s waking and sleeping state changes.

Now when man sleeps the physical body with the etheric body remains in bed, and the astral body and the ego lift themselves out. The consciousness darkens, everything becomes dark, sombre, silent. In the Atlantean time the difference between sleeping and waking was not yet so pronounced. At that time, during the waking state, the human being did not see such firm boundaries, such sharp contours, such strong colours attached to objects. When he woke up in the morning, he dived into something like a nebulous substance. For example, there was no greater clarity than when we would look through fog at lights with an aura. Instead, his consciousness did not exactly cease when he was asleep—he then saw the spiritual things.

As man progressed, the physical world gained more and more its contours, but in exchange for this the human being lost his clairvoyance. Then the difference became more and more pronounced: in the spiritual world above, it became increasingly darker and in the physical world below increasingly brighter. All myths and sagas originated during the time when the human being still perceived the astral world up there. When he ascended into the spiritual world, he learnt to know Wotan, Baldur, Thor and Loki and beings, who had not yet descended onto the physical plane. This could be experienced in former times, and all myths are memories of living realities.

All mythologies are such memories. These spiritual realities have simply disappeared from human beings. In the past, when man dived into his physical body in the morning, he got the feeling: “You are an individual, a single one.” But when he dived back into the spiritual world at night he felt: “You are not at all an individual, you are just a link in a great whole, you belong to a great community.”

Tacitus² still told that the ancient peoples, the Herules and the Cheruscans, felt themselves to be more like a tribe than as individual human beings. From an individual’s sense of belonging to a tribe—that one would count oneself as belonging to a tribal community—certain customs such as the blood feuds have originated. Everything that belonged to the whole tribal group-soul was one body. All happens gradually in evolution. Only gradually did individual consciousness evolve out of this absolute tribal group consciousness.

Also, in the descriptions from the time period of the Patriarchs, we find traces of the transition from the group-soul to an individual soul. In the time prior to Noah, memory was quite different: it reached back to what the father, the grandfather, the great-grandfather had experienced. The boundary of birth was not a boundary. In the same blood the same memory flowed on into generations far removed. Today authorities are interested in knowing an individual’s name. In the time when the human being still had a memory of what his father and grandfather had done, this was called by a common name. Then what was connected by the same blood and the same memory was given the same name. This was called “Adam” or “Noah”. Names like Adam or Noah do not describe the life between birth and death of an individual, but the stream of memories as far as it reached. The old names cover whole human communities that were alive in those times.

How would it be if we would compare certain beings: the human-like apes with the human being. The immense difference is that the apes have a group-soul and the human being an individual soul, or at least the aptitude to develop one. The ape group-soul exists in a very special situation (see drawing). Imagine the Earth (refers to sketch) as the horizontal line. Above this, the group-souls of the animals are floating in the astral world like in a cloud that extends over our physical world. Let us now focus on the lion group-ego and the ape group-ego. Each lion is a separate limb into which the group-soul pours part of its substance. When a lion dies, its physical part drops away from the group-soul, like a fingernail from a human being. Then the group-soul retracts what it had sent into the lion and gives it to a different lion, which is newly born. The group-soul stays above. It sort of stretches out tentacles that are hardening in the physical world, then drop off and are being replaced again.

Therefore, the animal group-soul does not know birth and death. The individual animal is something that “falls off” and “grows on”—the group-soul remains untouched by life and death. For the lions it applies entirely, that each time a lion dies, all that has been sent from the group-soul returns to it again.

However, this is not so with the apes. There are individual animals that tear off a piece of the group-soul, which then cannot return to it. When the ape dies the essential part returns, but another part of it excises itself from the group-soul. What the group-soul stretches out, the ape makes it too tight, and when the ape dies part of the group-soul is excised, so that, in a sense, a part of it breaks out, rips away from the soul and does not return to it. In this way excisions from the group-soul arise. In all ape species excisions from the group-soul occur.

We find something similar in certain amphibians, in certain bird species, and especially pronounced in the kangaroo. Through these excisions something is kept back from the group-soul. What remains in this way from the warm-blooded animals will become an elemental being, a nature spirit—the salamander. These elemental beings, these nature spirits are, so to speak, waste, waste products of the higher worlds, that will be put into service by higher beings. They would, if left to their own devices, create interferences in the cosmos. Instead, the higher wisdom uses the sylphs to send the bees to the flowers. Thus, the large forces of elemental beings are placed under higher, wise leadership and the harm that they could cause is transformed into something useful.

This is how it is in the realms that lie below the human being. Now, it could also happen that a human being excises himself off from his group-soul, and as an individual does not find a possibility to develop himself further. Because, whilst being a “limb” of his group-soul, he was guided and led by higher beings, but now he is left to his own guidance. If the human being does not acquire appropriate spiritual knowledge, then he is in danger to excise himself. This is the question that arises.

What is it now, that prevents human beings from excision, from wandering around without direction and aim, whilst earlier the spiritual group-soul has provided directions? We have to become clear that man more and more individualises himself and that in the future he has to voluntarily seek to unite with other humans. In the past, a link existed based on blood relations, tribes and races. But this type of “union” comes more and more to an end. Everything in a human being leads more and more to him becoming an individual being. The only avenue possible is a reversal. Imagine there are a number of people on Earth who say to themselves, “We are going our own way. We want to find inside of us the direction and the goal of the path ourselves. We are all on the way to becoming more and more individualised human beings.” There is a danger of fragmentation. Already people are no longer able to endure spiritual unions. Today we are going as far as everyone having their own religion and presenting their own opinion as the highest ideal. But when human beings internalise ideals, then this leads to agreement, to a common opinion. For example, we recognise internally that 3 x 3 = 9, or that the sum of the three angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. This is an inner knowledge. One doesn’t need to cast a vote about such inner knowledge. No misunderstandings will arise about such inner recognitions, they lead to agreement. All spiritual truths are of this kind. What is taught by the Science of the Spirit, the human being finds through his inner forces. These lead him to an absolute unity, to peace and harmony. There are no two different opinions about a truth without one of them being wrong. The ideal is maximum possible internalisation—it leads to unity, to peace.

First there existed a human group-soul. Then mankind was released from this group-soul in the past. But in the future of evolution people must set themselves a sure goal to strive towards. When they unite themselves in a higher wisdom, then from the higher worlds a group-soul will descend again—when free communities arise out of the bound natural communities. What the leaders of the Science of the Spirit movement hope is that we will find in it a community where the hearts stream towards wisdom, as the plants stream towards sunlight. Where a common truth binds together the different egos, there we create an opportunity for a higher group-soul to descend. By turning our hearts together towards a higher wisdom, we embed the group-soul. We are building, so to speak, the bed, the environment, in which the group-soul is able to incarnate. Humans will enrich life on Earth by developing something that allows spiritual beings to descend from the higher worlds. This is the aim of the Science of the Spirit movement.

This was now once presented in a grand, magnificent form to mankind to show that the human being without such living spiritual ideal would transition into a different situation. This is a “symbol” that can illustrate to man with overwhelming power how humanity can find the way through a spiritual union, to provide a site to incarnate for the common spirit. This symbol is put in front of us in the Whitsun community in which a number of people, glowing from a common feeling of fervent love and devotion, had assembled for common action. There were a number of people whose souls were still reverberating after the shattering event, so that in all of them the same was alive. In the convergence of this one same feeling they provided that in which a higher, a common soul could incarnate. This is expressed by the words that say the Holy Spirit—the group-soul—descended and separated itself into fiery tongues. This is the great symbol for the humanity of the future. If the human being would not have found this connection, then man would transition into an elemental being. Now humanity must search for a site for the Beings from the higher worlds that bend downwards. With the Easter festival man was given the power to absorb into themselves such mighty imaginations and to strive towards oneness of the spirit. The Whitsun Festival is the fruit of the unfolding of this power.

Through the souls’ striving together towards the common wisdom, a lively relationship must be established forever with the forces and beings of the higher worlds, and with something that currently has as little meaning for humanity as the Whitsun Festival. Through the Science of the Spirit, it will once again become meaningful to man. Once people understand the significance of the descent of the Holy Spirit for them in the future, then the Whitsun Festival will come to life again. It will then not only be a memory of that event in Jerusalem, but the everlasting Whitsun Festival of the united soul endeavour will manifest for humanity. It will become a symbol for the great future Whitsun community when mankind will unite in a common truth to allow higher beings the possibility to incarnate. It will depend on human beings themselves, how valuable this will make the Earth for the future and how effective such ideals can be for mankind. Once humanity will strive towards wisdom in this right way, then higher spirits will join mankind.

• 1. compare Rudolf Steiner - Cosmic Working in Earth and Man, Beekeeping. GA 351
• 2. Cornelius Tacitus, 55 to about 120 AD, Roman historian, in his work Germania

To-day I would like first to remind you how events which take place behind the veil of appearance, outside the physical, sense-perceptible world, can be described in pictorial terms. One has to speak in this way of these events, but the pictures correspond throughout with reality.

With regard to sense-perceptible events, we are living in a time of hard tests for humanity, and these tests will become harder still. Many old forms of civilisation, to which people still mistakenly cling, will sink into the abyss, and there will be an insistent demand that man must find his way to something new. In speaking of the course that the external life of humanity will take in the early future, we cannot—as I have often said—arouse any kind of optimistic hopes. But a valid judgment as to the significance of external events cannot be formed unless we consider also the determining, directing cosmic events which occur behind the veil of the senses.

When a man looks out attentively with his physical eyes and his other senses at his surroundings, he perceives the physical environment of the earth, and the various kingdoms of nature within it. This is the milieu in which comes to pass all that manifests as wind and weather in the course of the year. When we direct our senses towards the external world, we have all this before us: these are the external facts. But behind the atmosphere, the sun-illumined atmosphere, there lies another world, perceptible by spiritual organs, as we may call them. Compared with the sense-world, this other world is a higher world, a world wherein a kind of light, a kind of spiritual light or astral light, spiritual existence and spiritual deeds shine out and run their course. And they are in truth no less significant for the whole development of the world and of man than the historical events in the external environment of the earth and on its surface.

If anyone to-day is able to penetrate into these astral realms, wandering through them as one may wander among woods and mountains and find signposts at cross roads, he may find “signposts” there in the astral light, inscribed in spiritual script. But these signposts have a quite special characteristic: they are not comprehensible without further explanation, even for someone who can “read” in the astral light. In the spiritual world and in its communications, things are not made as convenient as possible: anything one encounters there presents itself as a riddle to be solved. Only through inner investigation, through experiencing inwardly the riddle and much else, can one discover what the inscription on a spiritual signpost signifies.

And so at this time—indeed for some decades now, but particularly at this time of hard trials for mankind—one can read in the astral light, as one goes about spiritually in these realms, a remarkable saying. It sounds like a prosaic comparison, but in this case, because of its inner significance, the prosaic does not remain prosaic. Just as we find notices to help us find our way—and we find signposts even in poetical landscapes—so we encounter an important spiritual signpost in the astral light. Time and time again, exactly repeated, we find there to-day the following saying, inscribed in highly significant spiritual script:

O Man,
You mould it to your service,
You reveal it according to the value of its substance
In many of your works.
Yet it will bring you healing
Only when it reveals to you
The lofty power of its spirit.

Injunctions of this kind, pointing to facts significant for man, are inscribed, as I have said, in the astral light, presenting themselves first as a kind of riddle to be solved, so that men may bring their soul-forces into activity.

Now, during our days here, we will contribute something to the solving of this saying—really a simple saying, but important for mankind to-day.

Let us recall how in many of our studies here the course of the year has been brought before our souls. A man first observes it quite externally: when spring comes he sees nature sprouting and budding; he sees how the plants grow and come to flower, how life everywhere springs up out of the soil. All this is enhanced as summer draws on; in summer it rises to its highest level. And then, when autumn comes, it withers and fades away; and when winter comes it dies into the lap of the earth.

This cycle of the year—which in earlier times, when a more instinctive consciousness prevailed, was celebrated with festivals—has another side, also mentioned here. During winter the earth is united with the elemental spirits. They withdraw into the interior of the earth and live there among the plant-roots that are preparing for new growth, and among the other nature-beings who spend the winter there. Then, when spring comes, the earth breathes out, as it were, its elemental being. The elemental spirits rise up as though from a tomb and ascend into the atmosphere. During winter they accepted the inner order of the earth, but now, as spring advances and especially when summer comes on, they receive more and more into their being and activity the order which is imposed upon them by the stars and the movements of the stars. When high summer has come, then out there in the periphery of the earth there is a surging of life among the elemental beings who had spent the winter in quiet and silence under the earth's mantle of snow. In the swirling and whirling of their dance they are governed by the reciprocal laws of planetary movement, by the pattern of the fixed stars, and so on. When autumn comes, they turn towards the earth. As they approach the earth, they become subject more and more to the laws of earth, so that in winter they may be breathed in again by the earth, once more to rest there in quietude.

Anyone who can thus experience the cycle of the year feels that his whole human life is wonderfully enriched. To-day—and it has been so for some time past—a man normally experiences, and then but dimly, half-consciously, only the physical-etheric processes of the body which occur within his skin. He experiences his breathing, the circulation of his blood. Everything that takes its course outside, in wind and weather, during the year; all that lives in the sprouting of the seed-forces, the fruiting of the earth-forces—all this is no less significant and decisive for the whole life of man, even though he is not conscious of it, than the breathing and blood-circulation which go on inside his skin.

When the sun rises over any region of the earth, we share in the effects of its warmth and light. But when a man accepts Anthroposophy in the right sense, not reading it like a sensational novel but so that what it imparts becomes the content of his mind, then he gradually educates his heart and soul to experience all that goes on outside in the course of the year. Just as in the course of a day we experience early freshness, readiness for work in the morning, then the onset of hunger and of evening weariness, and just as we can trace the inner life and activity of the forces and substances within our skin, so, by taking to heart anthroposophical ideas—entirely different from the usual descriptions of sense-perceptible events—we can prepare our souls to become receptive to the activities that go on outside in the course of the year. We can deepen more and more this sympathetic participation in the cycle of the year, and we can enrich it so that we do not live sourly—one might say—within our skin, letting the outer world pass us by. On the contrary, we can enrich our experience so that we feel ourselves living in the blossoming of every flower, in the breaking open of the buds, in that wonderful secret of the morning, the glistening of dew-drops in the rays of the sun. In these ways we can get beyond that dull, conventional way of reacting to the outer world merely by putting on our overcoat in winter and lighter clothes in summer and taking an umbrella when it rains. When we go out from ourselves and experience the interweaving activities, the flow and ebb, of nature—only then do we really understand the cycle of the year.

Then, when spring passes over the earth and summer is drawing near, a man will be in the midst of it with his heart and soul; he will discern how the sprouting and budding life of nature unfolds, how the elemental spirits fly and whirl in a pattern laid down for them by planetary movements. And then, in the time of high summer, he will go out of himself to share in the life of the cosmos. Certainly this damps down his own inner life, but at the same time his summer experience leads him out—in a cosmic waking-sleep, one might say—to enter into the doings of the planets.

To-day, generally speaking, people feel they can enter into the life of nature only in the season of growth—of germination and budding, flowering and fruiting. Even if they cannot fully experience all this, they have more sympathy and perception for it than they have for the autumn season of fading and dying away. But in truth we earn the right to enter into the season of spring growth only if we can enter also into the time when summer wanes and autumn draws on; the season of sinking down and dying that comes with winter. And if during high summer we rise inwardly, in a cosmic waking-sleep, with the elemental beings to the region where planetary activity in the outer world can be inwardly experienced, then we ought equally to sink ourselves down under the frost and snow-mantle of winter, so that we enter into the secrets of the womb of the earth during mid-winter; and we ought to participate in the fading and dying-off of nature when autumn begins.

If, however, we are to participate in this waning of nature, just as we do in nature's growing time, we can do so only if in a certain sense we are able to experience the dying away of nature in our own inner being. For if a man becomes more sensitive to the secret workings of nature, and thus participates actively in nature's germinating and fruiting, it follows that he will livingly experience also the effects of autumn in the outer world. But it would be comfortless for man if he could experience this only in the form it takes in nature; if he were to come only to a nature-consciousness concerning the secrets of autumn and winter, as he readily does concerning the secrets of spring and summer. When the events of autumn and winter draw on, when Michaelmas comes, he certainly must enter sensitively into the processes of fading and dying; but he must not, as he does in summer, give himself over to a nature-consciousness. On the contrary, he must then devote himself to self-consciousness. In the time when external nature is dying, he must oppose nature-consciousness with the force of self-consciousness.

And then the form of Michael stands before us again. If, under the impulse of Anthroposophy, a man enters thus into the enjoyment of nature, the consciousness of nature, but then also awakes in himself an autumnal self-consciousness, then the picture of Michael with the dragon will stand majestically before him, revealing in picture-form the overcoming of nature-consciousness by self-consciousness when autumn draws near. This will come about if man can experience not only an inward spring and summer, but also a dying, death-bringing autumn and winter. Then it will be possible for the picture of Michael with the dragon to appear again as a forcible Imagination, summoning man to inner activity.

For a man who out of present-day spiritual knowledge wrestles his way through to an experience of this picture, it expresses something very powerful. For when, after St. John's tide, July, August and September draw on, he will come to realise how he has been living through a waking-sleep of inner planetary experience in company with the earth's elemental beings, and he will become aware of what this really signifies.

It signifies an inner process of combustion, but we must not picture it as being like external combustion. All the processes which take a definite form in the outer world go on also within the human organism, but in a different guise. And so it is a fact that these inner processes reflect the changing course of the year.

The inner process which occurs during high summer is a permeation of the organism by that which is represented crudely in the material world as sulphur. When a man lives with the summer sun and its effects, he experiences a sulphurising process in his physical-etheric being. The sulphur that he carries within him as a useful substance has a special importance for him in high summer, quite different from its importance at other seasons. It becomes a kind of combustion process. It is natural for man that the sulphur within him should thus rise at midsummer to a specially enhanced condition. Material substances in different beings have secrets not dreamt of by materialistic science.

Everything physical-etheric in man is thus glowed through at midsummer with inward sulphur-fire, to use Jacob Boehm's expression. It is a gentle, intimate process, not perceptible by ordinary consciousness, but—as is generally true of other such processes—it has a tremendous, decisive significance for events in the cosmos.

This sulphurising process in human bodies at midsummer, although it is so mild and gentle and imperceptible to man himself, has very great importance for the evolution of the cosmos. A great deal happens out there in the cosmos when in summer human beings shine inwardly with the sulphur-process. It is not only the physically visible glow-worms (Johannis Käferchen) which shine out around St. John's Day. Seen from other planets, the inner being of man then begins to shine, becoming visible as a being of light to the etheric eyes of other planetary beings. That is the sulphurising process. At the height of summer human beings begin to shine out into cosmic space as brightly for other planetary beings as glow-worms shine with their own light in the meadows at St. John's time.

From the standpoint of the cosmos this is a majestically beautiful sight, for it is in glorious astral light that human beings shine out into the cosmos during high summer, but at the same time it gives occasion for the Ahrimanic power to draw near to man. For this power is very closely related to the sulphurising process in the human organism. We can see how, on the one hand, man shines out into the cosmos in the St. John's light, and on the other how the dragon-like serpent-form of Ahriman winds its way among the human beings shining in the astral light and tries to ensnare and embrace them, to draw them down into the realm of half-conscious sleep and dreams. Then, caught in this web of illusion, they would become world-dreamers, and in this condition they would be a prey to the Ahrimanic powers. All this has significance for the cosmos also.

And when in high summer, from a particular constellation, meteors fall in great showers of cosmic iron, then this cosmic iron, which carries an enormously powerful healing force, is the weapon which the gods bring to bear against Ahriman, as dragon-like he tries to coil round the shining forms of men. The force which falls on the earth in the meteoric iron is indeed a cosmic force whereby the higher gods endeavour to gain a victory over the Ahrimanic powers, when autumn comes on. And this majestic display in cosmic space, when the August meteor showers stream down into the human shining in the astral light, has its counterpart—so gentle and apparently so small—in a change that occurs in the human blood. This human blood, which is in truth not such a material thing as present-day science imagines, but is permeated throughout by impulses from soul and spirit, is rayed through by the force which is carried as iron into the blood and wages war there on anxiety, fear and hate. The processes which are set going in every blood-corpuscle when the force of iron shoots into it are the same, on a minute human scale, as those which take place when meteors fall in a shining stream through the air. This permeation of human blood by the anxiety-dispelling force of iron is a meteoric activity. The effect of the raying in of the iron is to drive fear and anxiety out of the blood.

And so, as the gods with their meteors wage war on the spirit who would like to radiate fear over all the earth through his coiling serpent-form, and while they cause iron to stream radiantly into this fear-tainted atmosphere, which reaches its peak when autumn approaches or when summer wanes—so the same process occurs inwardly in man, when his blood is permeated with iron. We can understand these things only if we understand their inner spiritual significance on the one hand, and if on the other we recognise how the sulphur-process and the iron-process in man are connected with corresponding events in the cosmos.

A man who looks out into space and sees a shooting-star should say to himself, with reverence for the gods: “That occurrence in the great expanse of space has its minute counterpart continuously in myself. There are the shooting-stars, while in every one of my blood-corpuscles iron is taking form: my life is full of shooting-stars, miniature shooting-stars.” And this inner fall of shooting-stars, pointing to the life of the blood, is especially important when autumn approaches, when the sulphur-process is at its peak. For when men are shining like glow-worms in the way I have described, then the counter-force is present also, for millions of tiny meteors are scintillating inwardly in their blood.

This is the connection between the inner man and the universe. And then we can see how, especially when autumn is approaching, there is a great raying-out of sulphur from the nerve-system towards the brain. The whole man can then be seen as a sulphur-illuminated phantom, so to speak.

But raying into this bluish-yellow sulphur atmosphere come the meteor swarms from the blood. That is the other phantom. While the sulphur-phantom rises in clouds from the lower part of man towards his head, the iron-forming process rays out from his head and pours itself like a stream of meteors into the life of the blood.

Such is man, when Michaelmas draws near. And he must learn to make conscious use of the meteoric-force in his blood. He must learn to keep the Michael Festival by making it a festival for the conquest of anxiety and fear; a festival of inner strength and initiative; a festival for the commemoration of selfless self-consciousness.

Just as at Christmas we celebrate the birth of the Redeemer, and at Easter the death and resurrection of the Redeemer, and as at St. John's Tide we celebrate the outpouring of human souls into cosmic space, so at Michaelmas—if the Michael Festival is to be rightly understood—we must celebrate that which lives spiritually in the sulphurising and meteorising process in man, and should stand before human consciousness in its whole soul-spiritual significance especially at Michaelmas. Then a man can say to himself: “You will become lord of this process, which otherwise takes its natural course outside your consciousness, if—just as you bow thankfully before the birth of the Redeemer at Christmas and experience Easter with deep inner response—you learn to experience how at this autumn festival of Michael there should grow in you everything that goes against love of ease, against anxiety, and makes for the unfolding of inner initiative and free, strong, courageous will.” The Festival of strong will—that is how we should conceive of the Michael Festival. If that is done, if nature-knowledge is true, spiritual human self-consciousness, then the Michael Festival will shine out in its true colours.

But before mankind can think of celebrating the Michael Festival, there will have to be a renewal in human souls. It is the renewal of the whole soul-disposition of men that should be celebrated at the Michael Festival—not as an outward or conventional ceremony, but as a festival which renews the whole inner man.

Then, out of all I have described, the majestic image of Michael and the Dragon will arise once more. But this picture of Michael and the Dragon paints itself out of the cosmos. The Dragon paints himself for us, forming his body out of bluish-yellow sulphur streams. We see the Dragon shaping himself in shimmering clouds of radiance out of the sulphur-vapours; and over the Dragon rises the figure of Michael, Michael with his sword.

But we shall picture this rightly only if we see the space where Michael displays his power and his lordship over the dragon as filled not with indifferent clouds but with showers of meteoric iron. These showers take form from the power that streams out from Michael's heart; they are welded together into the sword of Michael, who overcomes the Dragon with his sword of meteoric iron.

If we understand what is going on in the universe and in man, then the cosmos itself will paint from out of its own forces. Then one does not lay on this or that colour according to human ideas, but one paints, in harmony with divine powers, the world which expresses their being, the whole being of Michael and the Dragon, as it can hover before one. A renewal of the old pictures comes about if one can paint out of direct contemplation of the cosmos. Then the pictures will show what is really there, and not what fanciful individuals may somehow portray in pictures of Michael and the Dragon.

Then men will come to understand these things, and to reflect on them with understanding, and they will bring mind and feeling and will to meet the autumn in the course of the year. Then at the beginning of autumn, at the Michael Festival, the picture of Michael with the Dragon will stand there to act as a powerful summons, a powerful spur to action, which must work on men in the midst of the events of our times. And then we shall understand how this impulse points symbolically to something in which the whole destiny—perhaps indeed the tragedy—of our epoch is being played out.

During the last three or four centuries we have developed a magnificent natural science and a far-reaching technology, based on the most widely-distributed material to be found on earth. We have learnt to make out of iron nearly all the most essential and important things produced by mankind in a materialistic age. In our locomotives, our factories, on all sides we see how we have built up this whole material civilisation on iron, or on steel, which is only iron transformed. And all the uses to which iron is put are a symbolic indication of how we have built our whole life and outlook out of matter and want to go on doing so. But that is a downward-leading path. Man can rescue himself from its impending dangers only if he starts to spiritualise life in this very domain, if he penetrates through his environment to the spiritual; if he turns from the iron which is used for making engines and looks up again to the meteoric iron which showers down from the cosmos to the earth and is the outer material from which the power of Michael is forged. Men must come to see the great significance of the following words: “Here on earth, in this epoch of materialism, you have made use of iron, in accordance with the insight gained from your observation of matter. Now, just as you must transform your vision of matter through the development of natural science into Spiritual Science, so must you rise from your former idea of iron to a perception of meteoric iron, the iron of Michael's sword. Then healing will come from what you can make of it.” This is the content of the aphorism:

O Man,
You mould it (iron) to your service,
You reveal it (iron) according to the value of its substance
In many of your works.
Yet it will bring you healing
Only when it reveals to you
The lofty power of its spirit.

That is, the lofty power of Michael, with the sword he has welded together in cosmic space out of meteoric iron. Healing will come when our material civilisation proves capable of spiritualising the power of iron into the power of Michael-iron, which gives man self-consciousness in place of mere nature-consciousness.

You have seen that precisely the most important demand of our time, the Michael-demand, is implicit in this aphorism, this script that reveals itself in the astral light.