The Rudolf Steiner Archive

For anyone who has a background of Spiritual Science, and has absorbed something of its teaching about the evolution of the world, then goes on to study those tremendous opening words of our Bible, an entirely new world should dawn upon him.

There is probably no account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this record known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world in six or seven days. When the man of today calls to life in his soul, in any language familiar to him, the words In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, they convey to him scarcely a faint reflection of what lived in the soul of an ancient Hebrew who allowed the words to work upon him. It is not in the least a question of being able to replace the old words by modern ones; it is much more important that we should have been prepared by Anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in the heart and mind of the Hebrew pupil of old when he brought to life within himself the words: B'reschit bara elohim et haschamayim v'et ha'aretz.¹ A whole world lived while such words were vibrating through his soul.

What was it like—this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the spiritual world. For what in the last resort is Spiritual Science but the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of sense-perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual worlds? If he wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must never forget belongs to an entirely different world—a world which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with that world.

If we want to portray the origin of this our sense-world, including the origin of man himself, our ideas cannot be confined to that world itself. No science equipped only with ideas borrowed from the world of the senses can reach the origin of sense-existence. For sense-existence is rooted in the supersensible, and although we can go a long way back historically, or geologically, we must realise that, if we are to reach to actual origins, there is a certain point in the far distant past at which we must leave the field of the sense-perceptible and penetrate into regions that can only be grasped super-sensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the description of anything perceptible by the senses, anything which the eye could see in the physical world. In the course of these lectures we shall become thoroughly convinced that it would be quite wrong to take the opening words of Genesis as referring to events which can be seen with the outward eye. So long as one connects the words “heaven and earth” with any residue of the sensuously visible one has not reached the stage to which the first part of the Genesis account points us back. Today there is practically no way of obtaining light upon the world it describes except through Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science we may indeed hope to approach the mystery of the archetypal words with which the Bible opens, and to get some inkling of their content.

Wherein lies their peculiar secret? It lies in the fact that they are written in the Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently from any modern language. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters may not perhaps have the same effect today, at one time it did work in such a way that when a letter was sounded it called up in the soul a picture. Pictures arose in the soul of anyone who entered with lively sympathy into the words, and allowed them to work upon him—pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he rises from the sensible to the supersensible. The Hebrew language, or, better said, the language of the first chapters of the Bible, enabled the soul to call up imaginal pictures which were not wholly unlike those that are presented to the seer when, freed from his body, he is able to look into supersensible regions of existence.

In order to realise in some measure the power of these archetypal words we must disregard the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language makes upon the soul, and try to get some idea of the creative power inherent in sound-sequences in this ancient tongue. It is of immense importance that in the course of these lectures we too should seek to place before our souls the very pictures which arose in the Hebrew pupil of old when these sounds worked creatively in him. In fact we must find a method of penetrating the primeval record entirely different from those used by modern research.

I have now given you an indication of our line of approach. We shall only slowly and gradually learn to comprehend what lived in the ancient Hebrew sage when he allowed those most powerful words to work upon him, words which we do at least still possess. So our next task will be to free ourselves as far as possible from the familiar, and from the ideas and images of “heaven and earth,” of “Gods,” of “creation,” of “in the beginning,” which we have hitherto held. The more thoroughly we can do this the better we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which arose out of psychic conditions quite different from those of today.

First of all we must be quite clear as to the point of time in evolution we are speaking of, when we deal with the opening words of the Bible. You know of course that contemporary clairvoyant investigation makes it possible to describe to some extent the origin and development of our earth and of human existence. In my book Occult Science I tried to describe the gradual growth of our earth as the planetary scene of human existence, through the three preliminary stages of Saturn, Sun and Moon.² Today you will have in mind, at least in broad outline, what I described there. At what point then in the spiritual scientific account should we place what draws near to our souls in the mighty word B'reschit? Where does it belong?

If we look back for a moment to ancient Saturn, we picture it as a cosmic body having as yet nothing of the material existence to which we are accustomed. Of all that we find in our own environment it has nothing but heat. No air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient Saturn; even where it is densest, there is only fire—living, weaving warmth. Then, to this living, weaving warmth, a kind of air or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the Sun existence if we think of it as an interweaving, an interpenetration, of a gaseous, airy element and a warmth element. Then comes the third condition, which we call the Moon evolution. There the watery element is added to the warmth and the air. There is as yet nothing of what in our present earth we call solid. But the old Moon evolution has a peculiar characteristic. It divides into two parts. If we look back upon old Saturn, we see it as a single whole of weaving warmth; and the old Sun we still see as a mingling of gaseous and warmth elements. During the Moon existence there takes place this separation into a part which is Sun and a part which retains the Moon nature. It is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution that the earth element is added to the earlier warmth, gaseous and watery elements. In order that this solid element could come into existence, the division which had taken place previously during the Moon evolution had first to repeat itself. Once again the sun had to withdraw. Thus there is a certain moment in the evolution of our planet when, out of the universal complication of fire and air and water, the denser, more earthy element separates from the finer, gaseous element of the sun; and it is only in this earthy element that what we today call solid is able to form.

Let us concentrate on this moment, when the sun withdraws from its former state of union with the rest of the planet and begins to send its forces to the earth from without. Let us bear in mind that this was what made it possible, within the earth, for the solid element—what we today call matter—to begin to condense. If we fix this moment firmly in our minds we have the point of time at which Genesis, the creation story, begins. This is what it is describing. We should not associate with the opening words of Genesis the abstract, shadowy idea we get when we say “In the beginning,” which is something unspeakably poverty-stricken compared with what the ancient Hebrew sage felt. If we would bring the sound B'reschit before our souls in the right way, there must arise before us—in the only way it can do so, in mental images—all that happened through the severance of sun and earth, all that was to be found at the actual moment when the separation into two had just taken place. Furthermore we must be aware that throughout the whole of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, spiritual Beings were its leaders and its bearers; and that warmth, air, water are only the outer expressions, the outer garments of spiritual Beings who are the reality. Thus when we contemplate the condition which obtained at the moment of separation of sun and earth, and picture it to ourselves in thoughts full of material images, we must also be conscious that the elementary “water,” “air,” “fire,” which we have in our mind's eye, is still only the means of expression for moving, weaving spirit which, during the course of the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon stages has advanced, has progressed, and at the time now being described has reached a certain stage in its evolution.

Let us place before us the picture of an immense cosmic globe, composed of weaving elements of water, air or gas and fire, a globe which splits apart into a solar and a telluric element; but let us conceive too that this elementary substance is only the expression of a spiritual. Let us imagine that from this substantial habitation, woven of the elements of water, air and heat, the countenances of spiritual Beings, weaving within it, look out upon us, spiritual Beings who reveal themselves in this element which we have had to represent to ourselves through material images. Let us imagine that we have before us spiritual Beings, turning their countenances towards us, as it were, using their own soul-spiritual forces to organise cosmic bodies with the help of warmth, air and water. Let us try to imagine this!

There we have a picture of an elementary sheath, which, to give a very rough sensuous image of it, we may perhaps liken to a snail-shell, but a shell woven not of solid matter, like the snail's, but from the forest elements of water, air and fire. Let us think of spirit, in the form of countenances, within this sheath, gazing upon us, using this sheath as a means of manifestation, a force of very revelation which, as it were, pricks outward into manifestation from what lies hidden in the supersensible.

Call up before your souls this picture which I have just tried to paint for you, this image of the living weaving of spirit in a kind of matter; imagine too the inner soul-force which causes it to happen; concentrate for a moment on this to the exclusion of all else, and you will then have something approximating to what lived in an ancient Hebrew sage when the sounds B'reschit penetrated his soul. Bet the first letter, called forth the weaving of the habitation in substance; Resch the second sound, summoned up the countenances of the spiritual Beings who wove within this dwelling, and Schin the third sound, the prickly, stinging force which worked its way out from within to manifestation.

Now the underlying principle behind such a description is dawning upon us. And when we have grasped that, we are able to appreciate something of the spirit of this language; it had a creativeness of which the modern man with his abstract speech has no inkling.

Now let us place ourselves at the moment immediately preceding the physical coagulation, the physical densification of our earth. Let us imagine it as vividly as possible. We shall have to admit that in describing what was taking place at that moment we cannot make use of any of the ideas which we use today to describe processes in the external sense-world. Hence you will see that it is utterly inadequate to associate any external deed with the second word we meet in Genesis—bara—however closely that deed might resemble what we understand today as creation. We do not thus get near to the meaning of that word. Where can we turn for help? The word implies something which lies very near the boundary where the sensible passes over directly into the supersensible, into pure spirit. And anyone who wishes to grasp the meaning of the word bara, which is usually translated “created” (In the beginning God created ...), must in no wise associate it with any productive activity which can be seen with physical eyes.

Take a look into your own inner being! Imagine yourselves as having been asleep for a while, then waking up, and, without opening your eyes to things around you, calling up in your souls by inner activity certain images. Bring home vividly to yourselves this inner activity, this productive meditation, this cogitation, which calls forth a soul-content from the depths of the soul as if by magic. If you like you can use the word “excogitate” for this conjuring up of a soul-content out of the depths into the field of consciousness; think of this activity, which man can only perform with his mental images, but think of it now as a real, cosmic, creative activity. Instead of your own meditation, your own inward experience in thinking, try to imagine cosmic thinking-then you have the content of the second word of Genesis, bara. However spiritually you may think it, you can only liken it to the thought-life you are able to bring before yourselves in your own musing, you cannot get nearer to it than that!

And now imagine that during your musing two kinds of images come before your souls. Suppose there is a man to whom on awakening two different kinds of thought occur, a man who muses about two different kinds of thing. Suppose that one kind of thought is the picture either of some activity, or of some external thing or of some being; it does not come about through external sight, through perception, but through reflection, through the creative activity of his soul in the field of his consciousness. Suppose that the second complex of ideas which arises in this awakening man is a desire, something which the man's whole disposition and constitution of soul can prompt him to will. We have elements both of thought and of desire coming up in our souls through inner reflection. Now imagine, instead of the human soul, the Beings called in Genesis the Elohim, reflecting within themselves. Instead of one human soul, think of a multiplicity of reflecting spiritual Beings, who, however, in a similar way—save that their musing is cosmic—call forth by reflection from within themselves two complexes which might be compared with what I have just been describing—a pure thought-element and an element of desire. Thus instead of thinking of the musing' human soul, we think of a group of cosmic Beings who awaken in themselves two complexes; one of the nature of thought or ideation, that is, one which manifests something, expresses itself outwardly, phenomenally; and another of the nature of desire, which lives in inner movement, inner stimulation, which is permeated with inner activity. Let us think of these cosmic Beings, who are called in Genesis the Elohim, musing in this way. The word bara, “created,” brings their musing home to us. Then let us think that through this creative musing two complexes arise, one tending towards external revelation, external manifestation, and another consisting of an inward stimulus, an inward life; then we have the two complexes which arose in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words haschamayim and ha'aretz—represented for the modern man by “heaven” and “earth”—sounded through his soul. Let us try to forget the modern man's conception of “heaven and earth.” Let us try to bring the two complexes before the soul, the one which tends more to disclose itself, tends to outward manifestation, is disposed to call forth some outside effect; and the other complex, the complex of inner stimulation, of something which would experience itself inwardly, something which quickens itself inwardly; then we have what expresses the meaning of the two words haschamayim and ha'aretz.

As for the Elohim themselves, what kind of Beings are they?

In the course of these lectures we shall learn to know them better, and to describe them in terms of Spiritual Science; but for the present let us try to reach in some measure the meaning of this archetypal word “Elohim.” Whoever wishes to get an idea of what lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word should clearly understand that in those days there was a lively comprehension of the fact that our earth evolution had a definite meaning and a definite goal. What was this meaning and this goal?

Our earth evolution can only have a meaning, if during its course something arises which was not there before. A perpetual repetition of what was already there would be a meaningless existence, and unless the Hebrew sage of old had known that our earth, after having passed through its preliminary stages, had to bring something new into existence, he would have regarded its genesis as meaningless. Through the coming into existence of the earth something new became possible, it became possible for man to become man as we know him. In none of the earlier stages of evolution was man present as the being he is today, the being that he will more and more become in the future; that was not possible in earlier stages. And those spiritual Beings who directed the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were of a different nature from man—for the moment we will not enter into the question whether they were higher or lower. Those Beings who wove in the fiery, gaseous and watery stages of elementary existence, who wove a Saturn, Sun and Moon existence, who at the beginning of earth existence were weaving its fabric—how best do we come to know them? ... How can we draw near to them?

We should have to go into very many things to get anywhere near an understanding of these Beings. To begin with, however, we can come to know one aspect of them, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step nearer to the potent meaning of the ancient Bible words. Let us consider those Beings for a moment—the Beings who stood nearest to man at the time when he was created from what had developed out of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us ask those Beings what they really wanted. Let us ask them what was their will, their purpose. Then we shall be able to get at least some idea of their nature. They had great ability; in the course of their evolution they had acquired capacities in various directions. One of them could do this, another that. But we understand the nature of these Beings best if we realise that at the time we are now considering they were working as a group towards a common goal; they were moved by a common aim. Although at a higher level, it is as if a group of men, each with his own special skill, were to co-operate today. Each of them can do something, and now they say to each other: “You can do this, I can do that, the third among us can do something else. We will unite our activities to produce a work in common in which each of our capacities can be used.” Let us then imagine such p. group of men, a group each of whom practises a different craft, but which is united by a common aim. What they intend to bring into existence is not yet there. The unit at which they are working lives to begin with only as an aim. What is there is a multiplicity. The unit lives, to begin with, only as an ideal. Now think of a group of spiritual Beings who have passed through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, each one of whom has a specific ability, and who all at the moment I have indicated make the decision: “We will combine our activities for a common end, we will all work in the same direction.” And the picture of this goal arose before each of them. What was this goal? It was man, earthly man!

Thus earthly man lived as the ultimate goal in a group of spiritual Beings who had resolved to combine their several skills in order to arrive at something which they themselves did not possess at all, something which did not belong to them, but which they were able to achieve by combined effort. If you accept all that I have described to you—the elementary sheath, the cosmic, meditative spiritual Beings working within it, the two complexes, one of desire quickening inwardly, and another manifesting outwardly—and then ascribe the common purpose I have just mentioned to those spiritual Beings whose countenances gaze out of the elementary sheath, then you have what lived in the heart of the Hebrew sage of old in the word Elohim.

Now we have brought before us in picture form what lives in these all-powerful archetypal words. Then let us forget all that a man of today can think and feel when he utters the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Bearing in mind all that I have told you today, try to put this picture before you. There is the sphere in which fiery, gaseous and watery elements weave. Within this active, weaving elementary sphere a group of pondering spiritual Beings live. They are engaged in productive pondering, their pondering is penetrated through and through by their intention to direct their whole operation towards the form of man. And the first-fruits of their musing is the idea of something manifesting itself outwardly, announcing itself, and something else inwardly active, inwardly animated.

“In the elementary sheath the primeval Spirits pondered the outwardly manifesting and the inwardly mobile.” Try to bring before yourselves in these terms what is said in the first lines of the Bible, then you will have a foundation for all that is to come before our souls in the next few days as the true meaning of those all-powerful archetypal words which contain such a sublime revelation for mankind—the revelation of its own origin.

• 1. See Figure 1, below.
• 2. To avoid any ambiguity, capital letters will be used throughout this book for the words Sun and Moon, when they refer to the planetary evolutions preceding that of our earth.

In a good many places in this course of lectures—as well as elsewhere in our Anthroposophical discussions—it may well sound as if I rather enjoyed having to set myself up in opposition, or apparent opposition, to “modern science.” I am thinking more of people in the outside world unacquainted with the kind of feeling that prevails in our circles, but it is a point on which I am particularly anxious to avoid any misunderstanding. You may take it as definite that it is a very real effort for me to do anything of the sort; and that I only do it precisely at those points where I myself am able to develop or carry further what science has to say. My sense of responsibility is such that it will not permit me to bring forward anything that conflicts with the opinions of modern science, unless I have first placed myself in a position to understand, and if necessary reproduce, its findings on the subject in hand. No one having such an attitude could possibly approach the all-important matters which are to occupy us in the next few days without the deepest sense of awe and of the responsibility that goes with it.

Unfortunately, it just has to be said that, as regards the questions now to come before us, modern science breaks down altogether. The scientists are not even in a position to know why this should be so, or to perceive why their science must necessarily prove so hopelessly amateurish in face of the real and the great problems of existence. So, although in a short course of lectures it is naturally not possible to engage in controversy about every detail, please take it for granted that behind all I say I am fully aware of the modern scientific outlook on these subjects. Only, as far as possible, I must confine myself to what is positive, and trust that in a circle of Anthroposophists this will always be understood.

In the last lecture I tried to show how those tremendous, archetypal words with which the Bible opens—words which are put before us in a language different in its very nature from modern tongues—can only be rightly interpreted if we try to forget the attitude of mind and feeling we have acquired as a result of the usual modern renderings. For the language in which these powerful words of creation were originally given to us has actually the peculiarity that the very character of its sounds directs the heart and mind towards those pictures which arise before the eye of the seer when he contemplates the moment of the welling-forth of the sense-perceptible part of our world out of the supersensible. Every single sound in which the immemorial origin of our earth existence is placed before us is full of active power. In the course of these lectures we shall often have to refer to the character of this language; today, however, let us confine ourselves to one of the first essentials.

You know that in the Bible, after the words which yesterday I at least tried to put before your souls in picture form, there comes a description of one of the complexes which arose out of the divine meditation, out of the divine productive musing. I told you that we have to conceive that, as if out of a cosmic memory, two complexes arose. One was a complex which may be compared with the thoughts which can arise in us; the other is of the nature of desire or will. The one complex contains all that tends towards outer manifestation, tends to proclaim itself, tends, as it were, to force its way out—haschamayim. The other complex—ha'aretz—consists of an inner activity, a permeation with inward craving; it is something which inwardly vivifies, animates. Then we are told of certain qualities of this inner, vivifying, self-stimulating element, and these are indicated in the Bible by appropriate sounds. We are told that this self-stimulating element was in a state which is designated as tohu wabohu¹—without form and void. To understand what is meant by tohu wabohu we must try to recapture a picture of what it expresses; and we only succeed in doing that if out of our spiritual scientific knowledge we call to mind what it was that, after its passage through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, emerged again and surged through space as our planetary earth existence.

I pointed out yesterday that what we call solidity, the state which offers a certain resistance to our senses, did not exist during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; only the elements of fire or warmth, gas or air, and water were to be found there. It was only with the emergence of the earth that the solid element was added. Thus at the moment when there happened what we were describing yesterday, when the tendency began for the sun to split off from the earth, there is a mutual interpenetration of the elements warmth, air and water—they surged through one another. That preliminary surging interpenetration which we have tried to picture to ourselves is thr meaning of the phrase inadequately translated as without form and void, but eloquently and effectively rendered by the succession of sounds tohu wabohu. What then does tohu wabohu signify?

If we try to picture what can be aroused in our souls by these sounds it is something like this. The sound which resembles our own T calls up a picture of forces diverging from a central point in every direction. Thus the moment one utters the T sound one gets the picture of forces diverging from a centre in every direction to illimitable distances. So that we have to imagine the elements warmth, air and water permeating, interpenetrating each other, and within them a tendency to diverge, as from a centre in all directions. The sound tohu alone would suffice to express this tendency to push outwards, to separate. What then does the second part of the phrase signify? It expresses the very opposite of what I have just described. The character of the sound resembling our B, called forth by the letter Bet, expresses what you would get if you imagined an enormous sphere, a hollow sphere, with yourself inside it, and rays proceeding from every point inside this sphere towards its centre. Thus you imagine a point within space whence forces stream out in all directions—that is tohu; these forces are arrested at the extremities of the spherical enclosure, and turned back again on themselves from every direction of space—that is bohu. And if you have formed this idea, and think of all these streams of force as filled with the three elementary substances of warmth, air and water, then you know the character of this inner animation. The combination of these sounds indicates the way in which elementary existence is guided by the Elohim.

How far has this brought us? We shall not understand the sublime process of the seven days of creation unless we bear these details in mind. If we do so, then the whole will seem a wonderful cosmic drama. Let us recall once more that in the word bara—“in the beginning the Gods created”—we are concerned with a soul-spiritual activity. I have likened it to the thoughts which are called up in our own souls. Thus we may think of the Elohim as arrayed in space, and bara as a cosmic soul-activity, a pondering. What the Elohim ponder is expressed by haschamayim and ha'aretz—the outward radiation and the inner, mobile energy.

To make the comparison as close as possible picture yourselves in the moment of awakening; groups of ideas arise in your souls. This is how haschamayim and ha'aretz arise in the souls of the Elohim. Now you know that these Elohim came over to earth evolution at the stage to which they had evolved during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. So that they are in a somewhat similar situation to your own when on awakening you call up thoughts in your souls. You can contemplate those thoughts, you can say what they are. You can say: “When I awake in the morning and recall what has previously been left in my mind, I can describe it.” It was something the same with the Elohim, when they said to themselves: “Let us now reflect upon what arises in our souls when we recall what took place during the ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us see how it looks in recollection.” What it looked like is expressed in the phrase tohu wabohu; it could be expressed by a picture such as I have given you, as streams radiating from a centre outwards into space and back again, in such a way that the elements are interwoven in this streaming of forces. Thus the Elohim could say to themselves: “At the stage to which you have so far brought things this is what they look like. This is how they are resumed.”

Now in order to understand what comes next, usually rendered “darkness was above the fluid substances” or “above the waters”(above the abyss)—or darkness was upon the face of the waters (English A.V.)—we must take into consideration something else. We must once more turn our attention to the course of evolution before the earth came into existence.

First we have the Saturn existence, inweaving in the fiery element. Then comes the Sun existence, with its addition of the airy element. But in my Occult Science you can read how with the addition of the air something else is associated. The fine warmth element of Saturn condenses to a gaseous element. But every such densification is accompanied by a counter-process of refinement. Condensation to the gaseous element is a descending process, but on the other side there is an ascent to the light element. Thus, speaking of the transition from Saturn to Sun, we must say that Saturn still weaves solely in the element of warmth, whereas during the Sun evolution something denser, the gaseous element, is added, but so also is light. The light element makes it possible for the warmth and the air to manifest themselves in outward radiance.

Now let us take one of the two complexes—the one expressed as ha'aretz, usually translated as “earth”—and ask ourselves how the Elohim, turning their attention to this complex after their act of recollection, would have described it. They could not have said that what had already existed in the Sun evolution had now come to life again. For it was without light; light had separated from it. Ha'aretz had thus become one-sided. It had not brought with it the light, but only the coarser elements, the gaseous and the warmth elements. True, there was no lack of light in what is expressed by haschamayim, but haschamayim is the sunlike, issuing from the other complex. In ha'aretz there was no rarefaction, there was no light. We may then say that in one of the complexes warmth, air and water surged through one another in the way which is indicated by tohu wabohu. These elements were denuded, they lacked the light which had entered into evolution on the Sun. They remained dark, had nothing sunlike about them; for that had withdrawn with haschamayim. Thus the progress of earth evolution means that the light, which it still had so long as the sun remained united with it, had now withdrawn; and a dark fabric woven of the elements of warmth, air and water was left.

We now have the content of the meditation of the Elohim before our souls in more detail. But we shall never be able to think of it in the right way unless we are conscious all the time that air, water and even warmth are external expressions of spiritual Beings. It would not be quite correct to call this elemental existence their “garment”; it should rather be regarded as making known their presence externally. Thus what we call air, water, warmth, are maya, illusion; they are only there for the outward aspect, and this is so even for the mind's eye. In reality this elemental existence is something psycho-spiritual, it is the external manifestation of the soul-spiritual of the Elohim. But we must not think of the Elohim as at all like man, for man is actually their goal. To fashion man, to call man, with his own peculiar organisation, into existence, that is the very matter of their cogitation. So we must not think of them as human, but we must certainly envisage that there is already in their nature a certain cleavage. When we speak of man today, we do not understand him at all unless we distinguish between body, soul and spirit. You know what great efforts we Anthroposophists have made to get a closer understanding of the activity and nature of this human trinity. To recognise this unity in trinity first becomes necessary in the case of man; and it would be a great mistake to think of Beings who existed before man, the Beings whom the Bible calls Elohim, as if they resembled man. Nevertheless in their case too we can rightly distinguish between a kind of body and a kind of spirit.

Now when you distinguish between body and spirit in man, you are well aware that even his outer form bears testimony to the fact that his being lives in it in a variety of ways. For instance, we do not try to locate man's mind in his hand or his legs, but we say that his bodily functions are in his trunk and his limbs, and that the organ of his mind is the head, the brain; the brain is the instrument of mind. Thus we distinguish in the external human form certain parts as the expression of the physical, and certain other parts as the expression of the spiritual.

We have to look upon the Elohim in somewhat the same way. All this surging elementary web of which I have spoken can only be correctly understood if it is looked upon as the bodily vehicle of the Elohim's psycho-spiritual. These elements of air, warmth and water are the external embodiment of the Elohim. But we have to make a further distinction; we have to look upon the watery and gaseous elements as more connected with the bodily, denser functions of the Elohim, and what permeates this tohu wabohu as warmth as being the element in which their spiritual part is at work. Just as in the case of man we say that the more bodily part functions in the trunk and the limbs, and the more spiritual part in the head, so if we look upon the entire cosmos as an embodiment of the Elohim, we can say that their more specifically bodily part lived in the air and the water, and their spiritual part moved in the warmth

Now the Bible makes use of a remarkable phrase to express the relationship of this spiritual part of the Elohim to the elements: Ruach Elohim m'rachephet [See Figure 4, below.]—a phrase which we must go into more closely if we would understand how the spirit of the Elohim permeated the other elements. We can only understand the verb racheph by praying in aid, so to speak, all the associations which it would have carried with it in those days. If one simply says “And the spirit of the Gods moved upon the outspread substances—upon the waters” one has said almost nothing. We can only understand the word if we think of a hen sitting upon her eggs, and of her brooding warmth radiating out over the eggs beneath her. (I know it is a crude illustration, but it does help to bring out the meaning.) And if you think of the energy of this brooding warmth which streams from the hen into the eggs in order to bring the eggs to maturity, then you can have a notion of the meaning of the verb used here to convey what the spirit does in the element of warmth. It would of course be quite inaccurate to say that the spirit of the Elohim broods, because what the physical activity of brooding conveys today is not what is meant. What is meant to be conveyed is the activity of the outraying warmth. As warmth radiates from the hen, so the spirit of the Elohim radiates by means of the warmth element into the other elementary states. When you think of this, you have a picture of what is meant by the words: And the spirit of God (the Elohim) moved upon the face of the waters.

Now, up to a point, we have reconstructed the picture which hovered before the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he thought about this primeval condition. We have constructed a complex of spherically interwoven warmth, air, water, such as I have described the tohu wabohu to be, from which all the light had withdrawn with the haschamayim, and this interweaving of the three elementary states was inwardly permeated with darkness. In the one element, the warmth, there weaves or surges the spirituality of the Elohim, which itself expands with the expanding warmth, and brings to maturity what is at first immature in the darker elements.

Thus when we come to the sentence And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, we are dwelling on one characteristic of what in the first verse of the Bible is called ha'aretz—earth. We are expressing what is left after haschamayim has been withdrawn.

Now let us recall once more the earlier conditions. From the earth we can look back to the Moon, Sun and Saturn conditions. Let us go back to the Sun. We know that at that time there was no separation of what we today call earth from the sun. Therefore the earthly part was not illumined by light from without. That its light comes from without is the essential characteristic of life on earth. At that time, however, you have to think of the earth-sphere as enclosed within the Sun, forming part of the Sun, not receiving light, but itself forming part of the Being that is radiating light into space. This condition can be summed up by saying simply that in it the earth element does not receive light, but is itself a source of light.

Mark the difference! In the Sun evolution the earth itself participated in the radiation of light. In the earth evolution that is no longer the case. The earth has surrendered the radiant element, it has to receive light from without; light has to stream into it. That is the essential difference between the earth, as it has become in the course of evolution, and the Sun condition; with the separation of the sun, of the haschamayim, the light went out too. All that is now outside the earth. The elementary existence which surges in ha'aretz as tohu wabohu has no light of its own. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, but that did not make the earth light; it left it in darkness.

Let us take another look at this elementary existence as a whole. You know of course from earlier lectures that we are accustomed to enumerate what we call the elementary states within our earth existence, beginning with the solid, then coming to the watery, next to the gaseous or aeriform and then to the warmth. These four constitute the denser conditions of matter. But we have not yet finished. If we go further upwards we meet with finer conditions, of which we do not get a much better idea by calling them finer substances. The main thing is to recognise them as finer relatively to the denser ones, the gaseous, the warmth and so on. They are usually called etheric states, and we have always distinguished light as the first of these finer states. Thus, when we descend from warmth into the denser, we come to the gaseous condition; if we ascend, we come to light. Ascending still further, beyond the light we come to a yet finer etheric condition, we come to something which is not really recognisable in the ordinary sense-world. We only get a kind of external reflection of it. From the occult point of view one can say that the forces in this finer ether are those which govern the chemical affinities of matter, the chemical combinations, the organisation of substances such as we can observe if, for instance, we place a fine powder on a metal plate, and then draw the bow of a violin across the plate, getting as a result the “Chladni” sound-figures. What the coarse physical tone brings about in the powder also occurs throughout space. Space is differentiated, is permeated, by forces which are more rarefied than the forces of light, by forces which represent in the spiritual what tone is in the sense-world. So that when we ascend from warmth to light, and from light to this finer element, we can speak of a chemical of sound-ether, which has the power to decompose and to combine substances, but is in reality of the nature of sound, sound of which the sense-perceptible tone which the ear hears is only the outward expression, the expression made by its passage through air. That brings us somewhat nearer to this finer element which is above light. Thus when we say that what has the quality of manifesting itself externally withdrew from the ha'aretz with the haschamayim we must not think only of the light, but also of the finer etheric element of sound which permeates light.

Just as we go downward from warmth to air, and thence to water, so we can go upward from warmth to light, and from light to what is of the nature of sound, of chemical combination. And from water we can descend lower to earth. When we mount from the sound-ether we come to a still higher etheric condition, which also withdrew with the haschamayim. We come to the finest etheric state of all, which weaves within the chemical or sound-ether we have just been describing. If you turn your spiritual ear in this direction, you do not of course hear a noise in the external air, but you hear the tone which vibrates through space, the tone which permeates space and organises matter just as the tone produced by the bow of a violin organises the Chladni sound-figures. But into this condition brought about by the sound-ether is poured a still higher etheric mode. And this higher ether permeates the sound-ether just as the meaning of our thought permeates the sound which our mouth utters, thereby transforming tone into word. Try to comprehend what it is that transforms tone into a word full of meaning; then you will have some idea of this finer etheric element permeating the organising sound-ether and giving meaning to it—the Word which vibrates through space. And this Word, which thrills through space and pours itself out into the sound-ether, is at the same time the source of life, it is really vibrant, weaving life! Thus what has withdrawn out of the ha'aretz with the haschamayim, what has gone into the sun, as distinct from the other, the lower, the earth part—as distinct from the tohu wabohu—announces itself externally as light. But behind the light is spiritual tone, and behind that is cosmic speech. Thus we may say that in the brooding warmth lives the lower spiritual part of the Elohim, somewhat as our own desire lives in the lower part of our soul. The higher spirituality of the Elohim, which went out with the haschamayim, lives in the light, in the spiritual sound, in the spiritual word, the cosmic Word. These can only stream into the tohu wabohu again from without.

Let us now try to bring before us in a picture what hovered before the soul of the Hebrew sage as ha'aretz, as haschamayim. When what withdrew as spiritual light, as sound, as the uttering and formative Word-element, streams back again, how does it act? It works from the sun as articulate light, as light giving utterance to cosmic speech. Let us think of what we have called tohu wabohu in its darkness, in its surging interweaving of warmth, air and water; let us think of it in its light-forsaken darkness. And then let us think that out of the activity of the Elohim, through the creative Word, which as the highest etheric entity lies behind their activity, there rays in with the light all that streams out from the Word. How is one to describe what is taking place? One cannot more fittingly express it than by saying that the Beings who had withdrawn their highest into the etheric with haschamayim radiated answering light out of cosmic space into the tohu wabohu. There you have the substance of the memorable verse: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. There you have the picture which hovered before the Hebrew sage.

So we must think of the Beings of the Elohim as spread over the whole cosmos, we must think of this whole cosmos as their body, and the elementary existence in the tohu wabohu as the lowest form of this body; of the warmth as a somewhat higher form; and we must think of the haschamayim, the part which has withdrawn, as the highest spirituality, which now works creatively into the whole structure of the tohu wabohu.

Now you see what I am leading up to—that it was the cosmic Word expressing radiant light which organised the surging of the elementary part, the tohu wabohu, and made it what it later became. Whence comes the power which organises the human form? There can be no human form such as we have, standing upright on two legs, making use of hands, unless it be organised by forces emanating from the brain. Our own form is organised by the highest spiritual forces streaming out from our own spiritual part. The lower is always organised by the higher. In the same way the ha'aretz, the body of the Elohim, their lower part, was organised by their higher bodily part, the haschamayim, and by the spiritual essence of the Elohim working within it. Thus the highest spirituality of the Elohim takes possession of what has been cast out, and organises it, and we can express this by saying that the light manifesting itself through the cosmic Word streams into the darkness. That is how the tohu wabohu was organised, raised out of the disorder of the elements. Thus, if you think of the haschamayim as the head of the Elohim, and the elementary part which is left behind as the trunk and limbs, organised through the power of the head, then you have the actual process. Then you have man expanded to cover the whole cosmos. And out of the spiritual organs in haschamayim he organises himself. When we think of all the streams of energy which pour out from the haschamayim to the ha'aretz we may venture to picture it as a macrocosmic man organising himself.

Now in order to paint the picture more accurately, let us turn our attention to man as he is today. Let us ask ourselves how man has become what he is—I mean, what he is to the spiritual scientist, not to ordinary science. What is it that has given him the special structure which distinguishes him from all the rest of the living creatures around him? What is it which weaves throughout this human form? If one does not blind oneself it is very easy to say what makes him man; it is something he possesses which none of the beings around him has—speech, which expresses itself in its own proper sounds. That is what makes him man. Think of the form of the animal and ask yourselves how it could be raised to the level of the human form. What would have to permeate it for it to become human? Let us put the question in this way. Let us think of an animal form, and imagine that we have to make a breath enter into it—what would this breath have to contain, in order to make this form begin to speak? It would have to feel itself inwardly organised in such a way that it uttered the sounds of speech. It is the sounds of speech which make the animal structure human!

How then can one picture the cosmos? Out of all that I have put before your souls, all that I have built up gradually out of this elementary existence, picture by picture, how can one come to feel the cosmos inwardly, how can one come inwardly to feel the structure of macrocosmic man? By beginning to feel how the sounds of speech flash into form.

When the sound of A soughs through the air, learn to feel not merely its tone, learn to feel the form it makes, just as the tone of the violin bow, passed over the edge of a plate, makes a form in the powder. Learn to feel the A and the B in their transience through space; learn to experience them not merely as sound, but as form-making; then you will feel as the Hebrew sage felt when the sounds of speech stimulated in him the pictures which I have put before your mind's eye. That was the effect of the sounds of speech. That is why I had to say that Bet (B) aroused the idea of something enclosing, like a shell shutting something off and enclosing an inner content. Resch (R) stimulated a feeling such as one has when one feels one's head: and Schin (S) suggested what I might describe as a pricking or penetrating. That is a thoroughly objective language, a language which, if the soul is receptive, crystallises into pictures as the sounds are uttered. In the sounds themselves lies the lofty discipline which led the sage to the pictures which crowd upon the soul of the seer when he enters into the supersensible world. Sound is in this way transmuted into spiritual form, and conjures before the soul pictures which form a connected whole in the way I have described. What is so remarkable about this ancient record is that it has been preserved in a language the sounds of which create form, the sounds of which crystallise in the soul into form. And these forms are the very pictures which one gets when one penetrates to the supersensible out of which our material physical has evolved. When one comes to understand this, one feels a deep awe and reverence for the way in which the world has evolved; and one comes to realise that truly it is by no mere chance that this great document of human existence has been transmitted in this script—a script which by means of its very characters is capable of arousing pictures in the soul, and of guiding us to what in our own time the seer is to discover anew. That is the feeling which the Anthroposophist ought to cultivate when he approaches this ancient document.

• 1. See Figure below.

In a good many places in this course of lectures—as well as elsewhere in our Anthroposophical discussions—it may well sound as if I rather enjoyed having to set myself up in opposition, or apparent opposition, to “modern science.” I am thinking more of people in the outside world unacquainted with the kind of feeling that prevails in our circles, but it is a point on which I am particularly anxious to avoid any misunderstanding. You may take it as definite that it is a very real effort for me to do anything of the sort; and that I only do it precisely at those points where I myself am able to develop or carry further what science has to say. My sense of responsibility is such that it will not permit me to bring forward anything that conflicts with the opinions of modern science, unless I have first placed myself in a position to understand, and if necessary reproduce, its findings on the subject in hand. No one having such an attitude could possibly approach the all-important matters which are to occupy us in the next few days without the deepest sense of awe and of the responsibility that goes with it.

Unfortunately, it just has to be said that, as regards the questions now to come before us, modern science breaks down altogether. The scientists are not even in a position to know why this should be so, or to perceive why their science must necessarily prove so hopelessly amateurish in face of the real and the great problems of existence. So, although in a short course of lectures it is naturally not possible to engage in controversy about every detail, please take it for granted that behind all I say I am fully aware of the modern scientific outlook on these subjects. Only, as far as possible, I must confine myself to what is positive, and trust that in a circle of Anthroposophists this will always be understood.

In the last lecture I tried to show how those tremendous, archetypal words with which the Bible opens—words which are put before us in a language different in its very nature from modern tongues—can only be rightly interpreted if we try to forget the attitude of mind and feeling we have acquired as a result of the usual modern renderings. For the language in which these powerful words of creation were originally given to us has actually the peculiarity that the very character of its sounds directs the heart and mind towards those pictures which arise before the eye of the seer when he contemplates the moment of the welling-forth of the sense-perceptible part of our world out of the super-sensible. Every single sound in which the immemorial origin of our earth existence is placed before us is full of active power. In the course of these lectures we shall often have to refer to the character of this language; today, however, let us confine ourselves to one of the first essentials.

You know that in the Bible, after the words which yesterday I at least tried to put before your souls in picture form, there comes a description of one of the complexes which arose out of the divine meditation, out of the divine productive musing. I told you that we have to conceive that, as if out of a cosmic memory, two complexes arose. One was a complex which may be compared with the thoughts which can arise in us; the other is of the nature of desire or will. The one complex contains all that tends towards outer manifestation, tends to proclaim itself, tends, as it were, to force its way out—haschamayim. The other complex—ha'aretz—consists of an inner activity, a permeation with inward craving; it is something which inwardly vivifies, animates. Then we are told of certain qualities of this inner, vivifying, self-stimulating element, and these are indicated in the Bible by appropriate sounds. We are told that this self-stimulating element was in a state which is designated as tohu wabohu—without form and void. To understand what is meant by tohu wabohu we must try to recapture a picture of what it expresses; and we only succeed in doing that if out of our spiritual scientific knowledge we call to mind what it was that, after its passage through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, emerged again and surged through space as our planetary earth existence.

I pointed out yesterday that what we call solidity, the state which offers a certain resistance to our senses, did not exist during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; only the elements of fire or warmth, gas or air, and water were to be found there. It was only with the emergence of the earth that the solid element was added. Thus at the moment when there happened what we were describing yesterday, when the tendency began for the sun to split off from the earth, there is a mutual interpenetration of the elements warmth, air and water—they surged through one another. That preliminary surging interpenetration which we have tried to picture to ourselves is the meaning of the phrase inadequately translated as without form and void, but eloquently and effectively rendered by the succession of sounds tohu wabohu. What then does tohu wabohu signify?

If we try to picture what can be aroused in our souls by these sounds it is something like this. The sound which resembles our own T calls up a picture of forces diverging from a central point in every direction. Thus the moment one utters the T sound one gets the picture of forces diverging from a centre in every direction to illimitable distances. So that we have to imagine the elements warmth, air and water permeating, interpenetrating each other, and within them a tendency to diverge, as from a centre in all directions. The sound tohu alone would suffice to express this tendency to push outwards, to separate. What then does the second part of the phrase signify? It expresses the very opposite of what I have just described. The character of the sound resembling our B, called forth by the letter Bet, expresses what you would get if you imagined an enormous sphere, a hollow sphere, with yourself inside it, and rays proceeding from every point inside this sphere towards its centre. Thus you imagine a point within space whence forces stream out in all directions—that is tohu; these forces are arrested at the extremities of the spherical enclosure, and turned back again on themselves from every direction of space—that is bohu. And if you have formed this idea, and think of all these streams of force as filled with the three elementary substances of warmth, air and water, then you know the character of this inner animation. The combination of these sounds indicates the way in which elementary existence is guided by the Elohim.

How far has this brought us? We shall not understand the sublime process of the seven days of creation unless we bear these details in mind. If we do so, then the whole will seem a wonderful cosmic drama. Let us recall once more that in the word bara—“in the beginning the Gods created”—we are concerned with a soul-spiritual activity. I have likened it to the thoughts which are called up in our own souls. Thus we may think of the Elohim as arrayed in space, and bara as a cosmic soul-activity, a pondering. What the Elohim ponder is expressed by haschamayim and ha'aretz—the outward radiation and the inner, mobile energy.

To make the comparison as close as possible picture yourselves in the moment of awakening; groups of ideas arise in your souls. This is how haschamayim and ha'aretz arise in the souls of the Elohim. Now you know that these Elohim came over to earth evolution at the stage to which they had evolved during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. So that they are in a somewhat similar situation to your own when on awakening you call up thoughts in your souls. You can contemplate those thoughts, you can say what they are. You can say: “When I awake in the morning and recall what has previously been left in my mind, I can describe it.” It was something the same with the Elohim, when they said to themselves: “Let us now reflect upon what arises in our souls when we recall what took place during the ancient Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us see how it looks in recollection.” What it looked like is expressed in the phrase tohu wabohu; it could be expressed by a picture such as I have given you, as streams radiating from a centre outwards into space and back again, in such a way that the elements are interwoven in this streaming of forces. Thus the Elohim could say to themselves: “At the stage to which you have so far brought things this is what they look like. This is how they are resumed.”

Now in order to understand what comes next, usually rendered “darkness was above the fluid substances” or “above the waters”(above the abyss)—or darkness was upon the face of the waters (English A.V.)—we must take into consideration something else. We must once more turn our attention to the course of evolution before the earth came into existence.

First we have the Saturn existence, inweaving in the fiery element. Then comes the Sun existence, with its addition of the airy element. But in my Occult Science you can read how with the addition of the air something else is associated. The fine warmth element of Saturn condenses to a gaseous element. But every such densification is accompanied by a counter-process of refinement. Condensation to the gaseous element is a descending process, but on the other side there is an ascent to the light element. Thus, speaking of the transition from Saturn to Sun, we must say that Saturn still weaves solely in the element of warmth, whereas during the Sun evolution something denser, the gaseous element, is added, but so also is light. The light element makes it possible for the warmth and the air to manifest themselves in outward radiance.

Now let us take one of the two complexes—the one expressed as ha'aretz, usually translated as “earth”—and ask ourselves how the Elohim, turning their attention to this complex after their act of recollection, would have described it. They could not have said that what had already existed in the Sun evolution had now come to life again. For it was without light; light had separated from it. ha'aretz had thus become one-sided. It had not brought with it the light, but only the coarser elements, the gaseous and the warmth elements. True, there was no lack of light in what is expressed by haschamayim, but haschamayim is the sunlike, issuing from the other complex. In ha'aretz there was no rarefaction, there was no light. We may then say that in one of the complexes warmth, air and water surged through one another in the way which is indicated by tohu wabohu. These elements were denuded, they lacked the light which had entered into evolution on the Sun. They remained dark, had nothing sunlike about them; for that had withdrawn with haschamayim. Thus the progress of earth evolution means that the light, which it still had so long as the sun remained united with it, had now withdrawn; and a dark fabric woven of the elements of warmth, air and water was left.

We now have the content of the meditation of the Elohim before our souls in more detail. But we shall never be able to think of it in the right way unless we are conscious all the time that air, water and even warmth are external expressions of spiritual Beings. It would not be quite correct to call this elemental existence their “garment”; it should rather be regarded as making known their presence externally. Thus what we call air, water, warmth, are maya, illusion; they are only there for the outward aspect, and this is so even for the mind's eye. In reality this elemental existence is something psycho-spiritual, it is the external manifestation of the soul-spiritual of the Elohim. But we must not think of the Elohim as at all like man, for man is actually their goal. To fashion man, to call man, with his own peculiar organisation, into existence, that is the very matter of their cogitation. So we must not think of them as human, but we must certainly envisage that there is already in their nature a certain cleavage. When we speak of man today, we do not understand him at all unless we distinguish between body, soul and spirit. You know what great efforts we Anthroposophists have made to get a closer understanding of the activity and nature of this human trinity. To recognise this unity in trinity first becomes necessary in the case of man; and it would be a great mistake to think of Beings who existed before man, the Beings whom the Bible calls Elohim, as if they resembled man. Nevertheless in their case too we can rightly distinguish between a kind of body and a kind of spirit.

Now when you distinguish between body and spirit in man, you are well aware that even his outer form bears testimony to the fact that his being lives in it in a variety of ways. For instance, we do not try to locate man's mind in his hand or his legs, but we say that his bodily functions are in his trunk and his limbs, and that the organ of his mind is the head, the brain; the brain is the instrument of mind. Thus we distinguish in the external human form certain parts as the expression of the physical, and certain other parts as the expression of the spiritual.

We have to look upon the Elohim in somewhat the same way. All this surging elementary web of which I have spoken can only be correctly understood if it is looked upon as the bodily vehicle of the Elohim's psycho-spiritual. These elements of air, warmth and water are the external embodiment of the Elohim. But we have to make a further distinction; we have to look upon the watery and gaseous elements as more connected with the bodily, denser functions of the Elohim, and what permeates this tohu wabohu as warmth as being the element in which their spiritual part is at work. Just as in the case of man we say that the more bodily part functions in the trunk and the limbs, and the more spiritual part in the head, so if we look upon the entire cosmos as an embodiment of the Elohim, we can say that their more specifically bodily part lived in the air and the water, and their spiritual part moved in the warmth

Now the Bible makes use of a remarkable phrase to express the relationship of this spiritual part of the Elohim to the elements: Ruach Elohim m'rachephet—a phrase which we must go into more closely if we would understand how the spirit of the Elohim permeated the other elements. We can only understand the verb racheph by praying in aid, so to speak, all the associations which it would have carried with it in those days. If one simply says “And the spirit of the Gods moved upon the outspread substances—upon the waters” one has said almost nothing. We can only understand the word if we think of a hen sitting upon her eggs, and of her brooding warmth radiating out over the eggs beneath her. (I know it is a crude illustration, but it does help to bring out the meaning.) And if you think of the energy of this brooding warmth which streams from the hen into the eggs in order to bring the eggs to maturity, then you can have a notion of the meaning of the verb used here to convey what the spirit does in the element of warmth. It would of course be quite inaccurate to say that the spirit of the Elohim broods, because what the physical activity of brooding conveys today is not what is meant. What is meant to be conveyed is the activity of the outraying warmth. As warmth radiates from the hen, so the spirit of the Elohim radiates by means of the warmth element into the other elementary states. When you think of this, you have a picture of what is meant by the words: And the spirit of God (the Elohim) moved upon the face of the waters.

Now, up to a point, we have reconstructed the picture which hovered before the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he thought about this primeval condition. We have constructed a complex of spherically interwoven warmth, air, water, such as I have described the tohu wabohu to be, from which all the light had withdrawn with the haschamayim, and this interweaving of the three elementary states was inwardly permeated with darkness. In the one element, the warmth, there weaves or surges the spirituality of the Elohim, which itself expands with the expanding warmth, and brings to maturity what is at first immature in the darker elements.

Thus when we come to the sentence And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, we are dwelling on one characteristic of what in the first verse of the Bible is called ha'aretz—earth. We are expressing what is left after haschamayim has been withdrawn.

Now let us recall once more the earlier conditions. From the earth we can look back to the Moon, Sun and Saturn conditions. Let us go back to the Sun. We know that at that time there was no separation of what we today call earth from the sun. Therefore the earthly part was not illumined by light from without. That its light comes from without is the essential characteristic of life on earth. At that time, however, you have to think of the earth-sphere as enclosed within the Sun, forming part of the Sun, not receiving light, but itself forming part of the Being that is radiating light into space. This condition can be summed up by saying simply that in it the earth element does not receive light, but is itself a source of light.

Mark the difference! In the Sun evolution the earth itself participated in the radiation of light. In the earth evolution that is no longer the case. The earth has surrendered the radiant element, it has to receive light from without; light has to stream into it. That is the essential difference between the earth, as it has become in the course of evolution, and the Sun condition; with the separation of the sun, of the haschamayim, the light went out too. All that is now outside the earth. The elementary existence which surges in ha'aretz as tohu wabohu has no light of its own. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, but that did not make the earth light; it left it in darkness.

Let us take another look at this elementary existence as a whole. You know of course from earlier lectures that we are accustomed to enumerate what we call the elementary states within our earth existence, beginning with the solid, then coming to the watery, next to the gaseous or aeriform and then to the warmth. These four constitute the denser conditions of matter. But we have not yet finished. If we go further upwards we meet with finer conditions, of which we do not get a much better idea by calling them finer substances. The main thing is to recognise them as finer relatively to the denser ones, the gaseous, the warmth and so on. They are usually called etheric states, and we have always distinguished light as the first of these finer states. Thus, when we descend from warmth into the denser, we come to the gaseous condition; if we ascend, we come to light. Ascending still further, beyond the light we come to a yet finer etheric condition, we come to something which is not really recognisable in the ordinary sense-world. We only get a kind of external reflection of it. From the occult point of view one can say that the forces in this finer ether are those which govern the chemical affinities of matter, the chemical combinations, the organisation of substances such as we can observe if, for instance, we place a fine powder on a metal plate, and then draw the bow of a violin across the plate, getting as a result the “Chladni” sound-figures. What the coarse physical tone brings about in the powder also occurs throughout space. Space is differentiated, is permeated, by forces which are more rarefied than the forces of light, by forces which represent in the spiritual what tone is in the sense-world. So that when we ascend from warmth to light, and from light to this finer element, we can speak of a chemical of sound-ether, which has the power to decompose and to combine substances, but is in reality of the nature of sound, sound of which the sense-perceptible tone which the ear hears is only the outward expression, the expression made by its passage through air. That brings us somewhat nearer to this finer element which is above light. Thus when we say that what has the quality of manifesting itself externally withdrew from the ha'aretz with the haschamayim we must not think only of the light, but also of the finer etheric element of sound which permeates light.

Just as we go downward from warmth to air, and thence to water, so we can go upward from warmth to light, and from light to what is of the nature of sound, of chemical combination. And from water we can descend lower to earth. When we mount from the sound-ether we come to a still higher etheric condition, which also withdrew with the haschamayim. We come to the finest etheric state of all, which weaves within the chemical or sound-ether we have just been describing. If you turn your spiritual ear in this direction, you do not of course hear a noise in the external air, but you hear the tone which vibrates through space, the tone which permeates space and organises matter just as the tone produced by the bow of a violin organises the Chladni sound-figures. But into this condition brought about by the sound-ether is poured a still higher etheric mode. And this higher ether permeates the sound-ether just as the meaning of our thought permeates the sound which our mouth utters, thereby transforming tone into word. Try to comprehend what it is that transforms tone into a word full of meaning; then you will have some idea of this finer etheric element permeating the organising sound-ether and giving meaning to it—the Word which vibrates through space. And this Word, which thrills through space and pours itself out into the sound-ether, is at the same time the source of life, it is really vibrant, weaving life! Thus what has withdrawn out of the ha'aretz with the haschamayim, what has gone into the sun, as distinct from the other, the lower, the earth part—as distinct from the tohu wabohu—announces itself externally as light. But behind the light is spiritual tone, and behind that is cosmic speech. Thus we may say that in the brooding warmth lives the lower spiritual part of the Elohim, somewhat as our own desire lives in the lower part of our soul. The higher spirituality of the Elohim, which went out with the haschamayim, lives in the light, in the spiritual sound, in the spiritual word, the cosmic Word. These can only stream into the tohu wabohu again from without.

Let us now try to bring before us in a picture what hovered before the soul of the Hebrew sage as ha'aretz, as haschamayim. When what withdrew as spiritual light, as sound, as the uttering and formative Word-element, streams back again, how does it act? It works from the sun as articulate light, as light giving utterance to cosmic speech. Let us think of what we have called tohu wabohu in its darkness, in its surging interweaving of warmth, air and water; let us think of it in its light-forsaken darkness. And then let us think that out of the activity of the Elohim, through the creative Word, which as the highest etheric entity lies behind their activity, there rays in with the light all that streams out from the Word. How is one to describe what is taking place? One cannot more fittingly express it than by saying that the Beings who had withdrawn their highest into the etheric with haschamayim radiated answering light out of cosmic space into the tohu wabohu. There you have the substance of the memorable verse: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. There you have the picture which hovered before the Hebrew sage.

So we must think of the Beings of the Elohim as spread over the whole cosmos, we must think of this whole cosmos as their body, and the elementary existence in the tohu wabohu as the lowest form of this body; of the warmth as a somewhat higher form; and we must think of the haschamayim, the part which has withdrawn, as the highest spirituality, which now works creatively into the whole structure of the tohu wabohu.

Now you see what I am leading up to—that it was the cosmic Word expressing radiant light which organised the surging of the elementary part, the tohu wabohu, and made it what it later became. Whence comes the power which organises the human form? There can be no human form such as we have, standing upright on two legs, making use of hands, unless it be organised by forces emanating from the brain. Our own form is organised by the highest spiritual forces streaming out from our own spiritual part. The lower is always organised by the higher. In the same way the ha'aretz, the body of the Elohim, their lower part, was organised by their higher bodily part, the haschamayim, and by the spiritual essence of the Elohim working within it. Thus the highest spirituality of the Elohim takes possession of what has been cast out, and organises it, and we can express this by saying that the light manifesting itself through the cosmic Word streams into the darkness. That is how the tohu wabohu was organised, raised out of the disorder of the elements. Thus, if you think of the haschamayim as the head of the Elohim, and the elementary part which is left behind as the trunk and limbs, organised through the power of the head, then you have the actual process. Then you have man expanded to cover the whole cosmos. And out of the spiritual organs in haschamayim he organises himself. When we think of all the streams of energy which pour out from the haschamayim to the ha'aretz we may venture to picture it as a macrocosmic man organising himself.

Now in order to paint the picture more accurately, let us turn our attention to man as he is today. Let us ask ourselves how man has become what he is—I mean, what he is to the spiritual scientist, not to ordinary science. What is it that has given him the special structure which distinguishes him from all the rest of the living creatures around him? What is it which weaves throughout this human form? If one does not blind oneself it is very easy to say what makes him man; it is something he possesses which none of the beings around him has—speech, which expresses itself in its own proper sounds. That is what makes him man. Think of the form of the animal and ask yourselves how it could be raised to the level of the human form. What would have to permeate it for it to become human? Let us put the question in this way. Let us think of an animal form, and imagine that we have to make a breath enter into it—what would this breath have to contain, in order to make this form begin to speak? It would have to feel itself inwardly organised in such a way that it uttered the sounds of speech. It is the sounds of speech which make the animal structure human!

How then can one picture the cosmos? Out of all that I have put before your souls, all that I have built up gradually out of this elementary existence, picture by picture, how can one come to feel the cosmos inwardly, how can one come inwardly to feel the structure of macrocosmic man? By beginning to feel how the sounds of speech flash into form.

When the sound of A soughs through the air, learn to feel not merely its tone, learn to feel the form it makes, just as the tone of the violin bow, passed over the edge of a plate, makes a form in the powder. Learn to feel the A and the B in their transience through space; learn to experience them not merely as sound, but as form-making; then you will feel as the Hebrew sage felt when the sounds of speech stimulated in him the pictures which I have put before your mind's eye. That was the effect of the sounds of speech. That is why I had to say that Bet (B) aroused the idea of something enclosing, like a shell shutting something off and enclosing an inner content. Resch (R) stimulated a feeling such as one has when one feels one's head: and Schin (S) suggested what I might describe as a pricking or penetrating. That is a thoroughly objective language, a language which, if the soul is receptive, crystallises into pictures as the sounds are uttered. In the sounds themselves lies the lofty discipline which led the sage to the pictures which crowd upon the soul of the seer when he enters into the super-sensible world. Sound is in this way transmuted into spiritual form, and conjures before the soul pictures which form a connected whole in the way I have described. What is so remarkable about this ancient record is that it has been preserved in a language the sounds of which create form, the sounds of which crystallise in the soul into form. And these forms are the very pictures which one gets when one penetrates to the super-sensible out of which our material physical has evolved. When one comes to understand this, one feels a deep awe and reverence for the way in which the world has evolved; and one comes to realise that truly it is by no mere chance that this great document of human existence has been transmitted in this script—a script which by means of its very characters is capable of arousing pictures in the soul, and of guiding us to what in our own time the seer is to discover anew. That is the feeling which the Anthroposophist ought to cultivate when he approaches this ancient document.

If anyone who has a background of Spiritual Science, and has absorbed something of its teaching about the evolution of the world, then goes on to study those tremendous opening words of our Bible, an entirely new world should dawn upon him.

There is probably no account of human evolution so open to misinterpretation as this record known as Genesis, the description of the creation of the world in six or seven days. When the man of today calls to life in his soul, in any language familiar to him, the words In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, they convey to him scarcely a faint reflection of what lived in the soul of an ancient Hebrew who allowed the words to work upon him. It is not in the least a question of being able to replace the old words by modern ones; it is much more important that we should have been prepared by Anthroposophy to feel at least something of the mood which lived in the heart and mind of the Hebrew pupil of old when he brought to life within himself the words: B'reschit bara elohim et haschamayim v'et ha'aretz. A whole world lived while such words were vibrating through his soul.

What was it like—this inner world which lived in the soul of the pupil? We can only compare it with what can take place in the soul of a man to whom a seer has described the pictures he experienced on looking into the spiritual world. For what in the last resort is Spiritual Science but the outcome of seership, of the living intuitions which the seer receives when, having freed himself from the conditions of sense-perception and of the intellect bound up with the physical body, he looks with spiritual organs into the spiritual worlds? If he wishes to translate what he sees there into the language of the physical world, he can only do so in pictures, but if his descriptive powers suffice, he will do it in pictures which are able to awaken in his hearers a mental image corresponding with what he himself sees in the spiritual worlds. Thereby something comes into existence which must not be mistaken for a description of things and events in the physical sense-world; something comes into existence which we must never forget belongs to an entirely different world—a world which does indeed underlie and maintain the ordinary sense-world of our ideas, impressions and perceptions, yet in no way coincides with that world.

If we want to portray the origin of this our sense-world, including the origin of man himself, our ideas cannot be confined to that world itself. No science equipped only with ideas borrowed from the world of the senses can reach the origin of sense-existence. For sense-existence is rooted in the super-sensible, and although we can go a long way back historically, or geologically, we must realise that, if we are to reach to actual origins, there is a certain point in the far distant past at which we must leave the field of the sense-perceptible and penetrate into regions that can only be grasped super-sensibly. What we call Genesis does not begin with the description of anything perceptible by the senses, anything which the eye could see in the physical world. In the course of these lectures we shall become thoroughly convinced that it would be quite wrong to take the opening words of Genesis as referring to events which can be seen with the outward eye. So long as one connects the words “heaven and earth” with any residue of the sensuously visible one has not reached the stage to which the first part of the Genesis account points us back. Today there is practically no way of obtaining light upon the world it describes except through Spiritual Science. Through Spiritual Science we may indeed hope to approach the mystery of the archetypal words with which the Bible opens, and to get some inkling of their content.

Wherein lies their peculiar secret? It lies in the fact that they are written in the Hebrew tongue, a language which works upon the soul quite differently from any modern language. Although the Hebrew of these early chapters may not perhaps have the same effect today, at one time it did work in such a way that when a letter was sounded it called up in the soul a picture. Pictures arose in the soul of anyone who entered with lively sympathy into the words, and allowed them to work upon him—pictures harmoniously arranged, organic pictures, pictures which may be compared with what the seer can still see today when he rises from the sensible to the super-sensible. The Hebrew language, or, better said, the language of the first chapters of the Bible, enabled the soul to call up imaginal pictures which were not wholly unlike those that are presented to the seer when, freed from his body, he is able to look into super-sensible regions of existence.

In order to realise in some measure the power of these archetypal words we must disregard the pale and shadowy impressions which any modern language makes upon the soul, and try to get some idea of the creative power inherent in sound-sequences in this ancient tongue. It is of immense importance that in the course of these lectures we too should seek to place before our souls the very pictures which arose in the Hebrew pupil of old when these sounds worked creatively in him. In fact we must find a method of penetrating the primeval record entirely different from those used by modern research.

I have now given you an indication of our line of approach. We shall only slowly and gradually learn to comprehend what lived in the ancient Hebrew sage when he allowed those most powerful words to work upon him, words which we do at least still possess. So our next task will be to free ourselves as far as possible from the familiar, and from the ideas and images of “heaven and earth,” of “Gods,” of “creation,” of “in the beginning,” which we have hitherto held. The more thoroughly we can do this the better we shall be able to penetrate into the spirit of a document which arose out of psychic conditions quite different from those of today.

First of all we must be quite clear as to the point of time in evolution we are speaking of, when we deal with the opening words of the Bible. You know of course that contemporary clairvoyant investigation makes it possible to describe to some extent the origin and development of our earth and of human existence. In my book Occult Science, I tried to describe the gradual growth of our earth as the planetary scene of human existence, through the three preliminary stages of Saturn, Sun and Moon.¹ Today you will have in mind, at least in broad outline, what I described there. At what point then in the spiritual scientific account should we place what draws near to our souls in the mighty word B'reschit? Where does it belong?

If we look back for a moment to ancient Saturn, we picture it as a cosmic body having as yet nothing of the material existence to which we are accustomed. Of all that we find in our own environment it has nothing but heat. No air or water or solid earth is as yet to be found upon ancient Saturn; even where it is densest, there is only fire—living, weaving warmth. Then, to this living, weaving warmth, a kind of air or gaseous element is added; and we have a true picture of the Sun existence if we think of it as an interweaving, an interpenetration, of a gaseous, airy element and a warmth element. Then comes the third condition, which we call the Moon evolution. There the watery element is added to the warmth and the air. There is as yet nothing of what in our present earth we call solid. But the old Moon evolution has a peculiar characteristic. It divides into two parts. If we look back upon old Saturn, we see it as a single whole of weaving warmth; and the old Sun we still see as a mingling of gaseous and warmth elements. During the Moon existence there takes place this separation into a part which is Sun and a part which retains the Moon nature. It is only when we come to the fourth stage of our planetary evolution that the earth element is added to the earlier warmth, gaseous and watery elements. In order that this solid element could come into existence, the division which had taken place previously during the Moon evolution had first to repeat itself. Once again the sun had to withdraw. Thus there is a certain moment in the evolution of our planet when, out of the universal complication of fire and air and water, the denser, more earthy element separates from the finer, gaseous element of the sun; and it is only in this earthy element that what we today call solid is able to form.

Let us concentrate on this moment, when the sun withdraws from its former state of union with the rest of the planet and begins to send its forces to the earth from without. Let us bear in mind that this was what made it possible, within the earth, for the solid element—what we today call matter—to begin to condense. If we fix this moment firmly in our minds we have the point of time at which Genesis, the creation story, begins. This is what it is describing. We should not associate with the opening words of Genesis the abstract, shadowy idea we get when we say “In the beginning,” which is something unspeakably poverty-stricken compared with what the ancient Hebrew sage felt. If we would bring the sound B'reschit before our souls in the right way, there must arise before us—in the only way it can do so, in mental images—all that happened through the severance of sun and earth, all that was to be found at the actual moment when the separation into two had just taken place. Furthermore we must be aware that throughout the whole of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, spiritual Beings were its leaders and its bearers; and that warmth, air, water are only the outer expressions, the outer garments of spiritual Beings who are the reality. Thus when we contemplate the condition which obtained at the moment of separation of sun and earth, and picture it to ourselves in thoughts full of material images, we must also be conscious that the elementary “water,” “air,” “fire,” which we have in our mind's eye, is still only the means of expression for moving, weaving spirit which, during the course of the preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon stages has advanced, has progressed, and at the time now being described has reached a certain stage in its evolution.

Let us place before us the picture of an immense cosmic globe, composed of weaving elements of water, air or gas and fire, a globe which splits apart into a solar and a telluric element; but let us conceive too that this elementary substance is only the expression of a spiritual. Let us imagine that from this substantial habitation, woven of the elements of water, air and heat, the countenances of spiritual Beings, weaving within it, look out upon us, spiritual Beings who reveal themselves in this element which we have had to represent to ourselves through material images. Let us imagine that we have before us spiritual Beings, turning their countenances towards us, as it were, using their own soul-spiritual forces to organise cosmic bodies with the help of warmth, air and water. Let us try to imagine this!

There we have a picture of an elementary sheath, which, to give a very rough sensuous image of it, we may perhaps liken to a snail-shell, but a shell woven not of solid matter, like the snail's, but from the forest elements of water, air and fire. Let us think of spirit, in the form of countenances, within this sheath, gazing upon us, using this sheath as a means of manifestation, a force of very revelation which, as it were, pricks outward into manifestation from what lies hidden in the super-sensible.

Call up before your souls this picture which I have just tried to paint for you, this image of the living weaving of spirit in a kind of matter; imagine too the inner soul-force which causes it to happen; concentrate for a moment on this to the exclusion of all else, and you will then have something approximating to what lived in an ancient Hebrew sage when the sounds B'reschit penetrated his soul. Bet^*, the first letter, called forth the weaving of the habitation in substance; Resch^†, the second sound, summoned up the countenances of the spiritual Beings who wove within this dwelling, and Schin^‡, the third sound, the prickly, stinging force which worked its way out from within to manifestation.

Now the underlying principle behind such a description is dawning upon us. And when we have grasped that, we are able to appreciate something of the spirit of this language; it had a creativeness of which the modern man with his abstract speech has no inkling.

Now let us place ourselves at the moment immediately preceding the physical coagulation, the physical densification of our earth. Let us imagine it as vividly as possible. We shall have to admit that in describing what was taking place at that moment we cannot make use of any of the ideas which we use today to describe processes in the external sense-world. Hence you will see that it is utterly inadequate to associate any external deed with the second word we meet in Genesis—bara—however closely that deed might resemble what we understand today as creation. We do not thus get near to the meaning of that word. Where can we turn for help? The word implies something which lies very near the boundary where the sensible passes over directly into the super-sensible, into pure spirit. And anyone who wishes to grasp the meaning of the word bara, which is usually translated “created” (In the beginning God created ...), must in no wise associate it with any productive activity which can be seen with physical eyes.

Take a look into your own inner being! Imagine yourselves as having been asleep for a while, then waking up, and, without opening your eyes to things around you, calling up in your souls by inner activity certain images. Bring home vividly to yourselves this inner activity, this productive meditation, this cogitation, which calls forth a soul-content from the depths of the soul as if by magic. If you like you can use the word “excogitate” for this conjuring up of a soul-content out of the depths into the field of consciousness; think of this activity, which man can only perform with his mental images, but think of it now as a real, cosmic, creative activity. Instead of your own meditation, your own inward experience in thinking, try to imagine cosmic thinking-then you have the content of the second word of Genesis, bara. However spiritually you may think it, you can only liken it to the thought-life you are able to bring before yourselves in your own musing, you cannot get nearer to it than that!

And now imagine that during your musing two kinds of images come before your souls. Suppose there is a man to whom on awakening two different kinds of thought occur, a man who muses about two different kinds of thing. Suppose that one kind of thought is the picture either of some activity, or of some external thing or of some being; it does not come about through external sight, through perception, but through reflection, through the creative activity of his soul in the field of his consciousness. Suppose that the second complex of ideas which arises in this awakening man is a desire, something which the man's whole disposition and constitution of soul can prompt him to will. We have elements both of thought and of desire coming up in our souls through inner reflection. Now imagine, instead of the human soul, the Beings called in Genesis the Elohim, reflecting within themselves. Instead of one human soul, think of a multiplicity of reflecting spiritual Beings, who, however, in a similar way—save that their musing is cosmic—call forth by reflection from within themselves two complexes which might be compared with what I have just been describing—a pure thought-element and an element of desire. Thus instead of thinking of the musing' human soul, we think of a group of cosmic Beings who awaken in themselves two complexes; one of the nature of thought or ideation, that is, one which manifests something, expresses itself outwardly, phenomenally; and another of the nature of desire, which lives in inner movement, inner stimulation, which is permeated with inner activity. Let us think of these cosmic Beings, who are called in Genesis the Elohim, musing in this way. The word bara, “created,” brings their musing home to us. Then let us think that through this creative musing two complexes arise, one tending towards external revelation, external manifestation, and another consisting of an inward stimulus, an inward life; then we have the two complexes which arose in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when the words haschamayim and ha'aretz—represented for the modern man by “heaven” and “earth”—sounded through his soul. Let us try to forget the modern man's conception of “heaven and earth.” Let us try to bring the two complexes before the soul, the one which tends more to disclose itself, tends to outward manifestation, is disposed to call forth some outside effect; and the other complex, the complex of inner stimulation, of something which would experience itself inwardly, something which quickens itself inwardly; then we have what expresses the meaning of the two words haschamayim and ha'aretz.

As for the Elohim themselves, what kind of Beings are they? In the course of these lectures we shall learn to know them better, and to describe them in terms of Spiritual Science; but for the present let us try to reach in some measure the meaning of this archetypal word “Elohim.” Whoever wishes to get an idea of what lived in the soul of the ancient Hebrew sage when he used this word should clearly understand that in those days there was a lively comprehension of the fact that our earth evolution had a definite meaning and a definite goal. What was this meaning and this goal?

Our earth evolution can only have a meaning, if during its course something arises which was not there before. A perpetual repetition of what was already there would be a meaningless existence, and unless the Hebrew sage of old had known that our earth, after having passed through its preliminary stages, had to bring something new into existence, he would have regarded its genesis as meaningless. Through the coming into existence of the earth something new became possible, it became possible for man to become man as we know him. In none of the earlier stages of evolution was man present as the being he is today, the being that he will more and more become in the future; that was not possible in earlier stages. And those spiritual Beings who directed the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions were of a different nature from man—for the moment we will not enter into the question whether they were higher or lower. Those Beings who wove in the fiery, gaseous and watery stages of elementary existence, who wove a Saturn, Sun and Moon existence, who at the beginning of earth existence were weaving its fabric—how best do we come to know them? ... How can we draw near to them?

We should have to go into very many things to get anywhere near an understanding of these Beings. To begin with, however, we can come to know one aspect of them, and that will suffice to bring us at least one step nearer to the potent meaning of the ancient Bible words. Let us consider those Beings for a moment—the Beings who stood nearest to man at the time when he was created from what had developed out of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. Let us ask those Beings what they really wanted. Let us ask them what was their will, their purpose. Then we shall be able to get at least some idea of their nature. They had great ability; in the course of their evolution they had acquired capacities in various directions. One of them could do this, another that. But we understand the nature of these Beings best if we realise that at the time we are now considering they were working as a group towards a common goal; they were moved by a common aim. Although at a higher level, it is as if a group of men, each with his own special skill, were to co-operate today. Each of them can do something, and now they say to each other: “You can do this, I can do that, the third among us can do something else. We will unite our activities to produce a work in common in which each of our capacities can be used.” Let us then imagine such a group of men, a group each of whom practises a different craft, but which is united by a common aim. What they intend to bring into existence is not yet there. The unit at which they are working lives to begin with only as an aim. What is there is a multiplicity. The unit lives, to begin with, only as an ideal. Now think of a group of spiritual Beings who have passed through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun and Moon, each one of whom has a specific ability, and who all at the moment I have indicated make the decision: “We will combine our activities for a common end, we will all work in the same direction.” And the picture of this goal arose before each of them. What was this goal? It was man, earthly man!

Thus earthly man lived as the ultimate goal in a group of spiritual Beings who had resolved to combine their several skills in order to arrive at something which they themselves did not possess at all, something which did not belong to them, but which they were able to achieve by combined effort. If you accept all that I have described to you—the elementary sheath, the cosmic, meditative spiritual Beings working within it, the two complexes, one of desire quickening inwardly, and another manifesting outwardly—and then ascribe the common purpose I have just mentioned to those spiritual Beings whose countenances gaze out of the elementary sheath, then you have what lived in the heart of the Hebrew sage of old in the word Elohim.

Now we have brought before us in picture form what lives in these all-powerful archetypal words. Then let us forget all that a man of today can think and feel when he utters the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Bearing in mind all that I have told you today, try to put this picture before you. There is the sphere in which fiery, gaseous and watery elements weave. Within this active, weaving elementary sphere a group of pondering spiritual Beings live. They are engaged in productive pondering, their pondering is penetrated through and through by their intention to direct their whole operation towards the form of man. And the first-fruits of their musing is the idea of something manifesting itself outwardly, announcing itself, and something else inwardly active, inwardly animated.

“In the elementary sheath the primeval Spirits pondered the outwardly manifesting and the inwardly mobile.” Try to bring before yourselves in these terms what is said in the first lines of the Bible, then you will have a foundation for all that is to come before our souls in the next few days as the true meaning of those all-powerful archetypal words which contain such a sublime revelation for mankind—the revelation of its own origin.

• 1. To avoid any ambiguity, capital letters will be used throughout this book for the words Sun and Moon, when they refer to the planetary evolutions preceding that of our earth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today and the day after tomorrow I propose to discuss a few of the more important facts relating to consciousness and to karmic connections.

If you cast even a superficial glance at that which exists in your soul from awaking in the morning to falling asleep at night—in the form of ideas, moods, impulses of will, adding of course all the impressions that approach the soul from without—then you have everything that may be called the objects of ordinary consciousness.

It must be clear to us that all these details of our conscious activity are dependent, under ordinary conditions, upon the instrumentality of the physical body. The immediate, irrefutable proof of this is that one must awake in order to live within these facts of the usual consciousness. For us this means that the human being must submerge himself in the physical body with what is outside it during sleep, and his physical body must be at his disposal with its instruments. He must be able to make use of them if the activities of the ordinary consciousness are to go on.

The following question then arises: In what way does the human being, as a soul and spiritual entity, make use of his physical instruments, his organs of sense, his nervous system? In what way does he use his bodily organs in order to exist in his ordinary consciousness? In the outer, materialistic world there is, first of all, the belief that the human being possesses in his physical instruments that which produces the facts present to consciousness. It has been frequently pointed out that this is not the case; that it is no more sensible for us to imagine that our inner corporeality, our sense organs or brain, bring forth the details of consciousness than to imagine that a candle creates the flame. The relation of what we call consciousness to the bodily mechanism is quite otherwise. We might compare it with the relation of a man to the mirror in which he sees himself. When we sleep our state of consciousness is comparable, let us say, to walking straight ahead in a certain space. If we do this we do not see ourselves, how our nose or forehead looks, and so forth. Only when someone steps forward with a mirror and holds it before us do we behold ourselves. But then we are confronted by what has always belonged to us. It is then there for us. It is the same with the facts of our ordinary consciousness. They exist continually within us, and have, as they exist there, nothing whatsoever to do with the physical body—as little as we ourselves have to do with the mirror mentioned above. The materialistic theory in this field is simply nonsense; it is not even a possible hypothesis. For the materialist in this field affirms nothing less than would be asserted were someone to declare that because he sees himself in a mirror the mirror created him.

If you wish to give yourself up to the illusion that the mirror creates you because you see yourself only when it is held before you, then you may also believe that parts of the brain or the sense organs produce the content of your soul-life. Both statements are equally intelligent and true. That the mirror creates the human being is just as true as that the brain produces thoughts. The facts of our consciousness persist. It is necessary for our ordinary organization that we be able to perceive these existing details of consciousness. To this end we must encounter that which reflects them—our physical body. We have thus in our physical body what we may call the reflecting apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness. These facts exist in our soul and spiritual entity. We cannot perceive them psychically any more than we can perceive ourselves without a mirror. We become aware of that which lives within us and is a part of us by having held before us the mirror of our bodily nature. That is the actual state of things, except that one has not to do with a passive reflector in the case of the body, but with something that contains processes of its own. Thus it may be imagined that instead of the mirror which is silvered to produce reflection, the physical body has behind it all sorts of processes. The comparison suffices to show the relation of our spirit and soul being to the body. We will hold before our minds the fact that for all we experience in normal, everyday consciousness, the physical body is an adequate reflector. Behind or, let us say, below all the details of this usual consciousness lie the things that rise up into our ordinary soul-life, and which we must designate as facts within the hidden depths of the soul.

Some of that which exists in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced by the poet or the artist who knows—if he is a genuine poet or artist—that he does not conceive his works by means of logic or outer observation. He knows instead that they emerge from unknown depths, and are there, really there without having been gathered together by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But from these hidden depths of soul-life other things also emerge which, although in everyday life we are unaware of their origin, play a part in our everyday consciousness.

We saw yesterday that we can go down deeper, into the realm of half-consciousness, the realm of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something up out of the depths of soul-life which we cannot lift up by straining the memory in the simple usual way. When something long buried in memory stands before a human soul in a dream picture—which happens again and again—the individual in most cases could never, through recollection alone, lift these things up from the hidden depths of soul-life because the ordinary consciousness does not extend so far down. But that which is inaccessible to this surface consciousness is quite within reach of the subconsciousness, and in the half conscious dream state much that has remained or been preserved, so to say, is brought up or rises up.

Only those things strike upwards that have failed to produce their effects in the way usual to that emanation of human experience which sinks into the hidden depths of the soul. We become healthy or ill, moody or gay, not due directly to our ordinary course of life, but because a bodily condition results from that which has sunk down from our life experience. It is no longer remembered, but there below in our soul this sunken something works, and makes us what we become in the course of our lives. Many a life would be quite comprehensible to us, if we but knew what hidden elements had descended throughout its course into these subconscious depths. We should be able to understand many a man in his thirties, forties, or fifties, should know why he has this or that tendency, why he feels so deeply dissatisfied in certain connections without being able to say what causes this discomfort. We should understand a great deal if we were to follow the life of such a man back into childhood. We should be able then to see how in his early years his parents and environment had affected him, what was called forth of sorrow and joy, of pleasure or pain, perhaps entirely forgotten, but acting upon his general condition. For that which rolls down, and surges out of our consciousness into the hidden depths of soul life continues its operation there. It is a curious fact that the force, acting in this way, works primarily upon ourselves, does not leave, so to speak, the sphere of our personality. Therefore when the clairvoyant consciousness descends, (and this happens through what is called imaginative cognition), when the clairvoyant consciousness descends to the realm where, in the subconsciousness, things rule which have just been described, the seeker always finds himself. He finds that which exists and surges within him. And that is good; for in true self-knowledge the human being must learn to know himself in order that he may observe and become acquainted with all the driving forces that work within him.

If he gives no heed to these facts; if when he gains clairvoyant consciousness through exercises in imaginative cognition, and forces his way down into the subconscious—if he does not recognize that in everything working within him he finds only himself—then he is exposed to manifold errors. For he cannot become aware of this in any way comparable to the ordinary activities of consciousness. There arises for the human searcher the possibility, at one step or another, of having visions, of seeing shapes which are quite new and do not resemble those with which he has become acquainted in average experience. This may happen, but to believe that such things are part of the outer world would be a serious mistake. These phenomena of the inner life do not present themselves as in the ordinary consciousness. If one has a headache it is a fact of the ordinary consciousness. One knows it to be located in one's own head. If anyone has a stomachache he is aware of it within himself. If we descend into what we call the hidden depths of the soul, we remain absolutely within ourselves, and yet what we encounter may present itself objectively, as if it were in the outside world.

Let us consider a striking example: Let us assume that someone has a longing to be the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. (I have already stated that I have counted during my lifetime twenty-four such Magdalenes!) Let us assume also that this wish is not as yet admitted: we do not need to admit to ourselves our own wishes, that is not necessary. But a woman reads the story of Mary Magdalene, and it pleases her exceedingly. The desire to be Mary Magdalene may arise at once in her subconscious mind while in the surface consciousness nothing is present but the attraction of this character. It pleases the person in question. In the subconsciousness, unknown to its possessor, there is a growing desire to be this Mary Magdalene. This individual goes through the world, and as long as nothing intervenes in her upper consciousness, that is to say, as far as she knows, she is simply pleased with Mary Magdalene. The ardent desire to be Mary Magdalene is in her subconscious mind, but she knows nothing about that, so it does not trouble her. She is guided by the details of the ordinary consciousness, and may go through the world as though she had no such injurious subconscious desire. But let us assume that, as a result of employing this or that occult method of reaching the subconscious, this woman succeeds in descending into herself. She might not become aware of a desire to be Mary Magdalene as she would of a headache. If she did her attitude towards her desire would be the same as towards a pain: she would just try to get rid of it. But in the case of an irregular penetration this desire presents itself as something outside the personality. The vision pretends to say: Thou art Mary Magdalene! It stands before her, projecting itself as a fact, and a human being, as evolution is today, is unable to control such a condition with the ego. With good, correct, and careful schooling this cannot happen, for then the ego goes along into every sphere; but as soon as something enters the consciousness without the accompanying presence of the ego it is produced as an objective fact. This observer believes that she recalls events surrounding Mary Magdalene, and identifies herself with her.

This is a real possibility. I emphasize this today in order that you may gather from it the fact that only careful schooling, and caution in regard to your entrance into the domain of occultism can save you from falling into error. It is to be understood that you must first see a whole world before you, must note objects around you, excluding however that which you relate to yourself, or which is within you, even though it appears as a world tableau—if you know that it is well to regard what you first see only as the projection of your own inner life, then you have a good corrective for the errors along the way. This is the best of all: regard, as a general rule, everything as phenomena emanating from yourself. Most of them arise out of our wishes, vanities, from our ambitions, in short, from characteristics relating to the egotism of humanity. These things project themselves, for the most part, outward, and you may now raise the question: How can we avoid these errors? How can we save ourselves from them?

We cannot save ourselves from these errors by the ordinary facts of consciousness. The deception arises from the fact that, although the human being is confronted in reality by a world-tableau, he cannot escape from himself, is all entangled in himself. From this you may see that it depends upon our coming, in one way or another, out of ourselves that we learn to differentiate: here you have a vision and there another. The visions are both outside ourselves; one is perhaps only the projection of a desire, the other is a fact, but they do not differ as radically as in ordinary life when someone else says he has a headache, and you have it yourself. Our own inner life is projected into space, just as the inner life of another person. How shall we learn to distinguish the one from the other?

We must undertake research within the occult field, and learn to distinguish true from false impressions, although they appear confused and all make the same claim to authenticity, as though we looked into the physical world and saw besides ordinary trees, imaginary ones. The real objective facts and those which arise from our own inner life are mixed together. How are we to learn to separate two realms which are so intermingled?

We do not learn this primarily through our consciousness. If we remain entirely within the confines of our mental life there is then no possibility of differentiation. This possibility lies only in the slow occult training of the soul. As we go on further and further we acquire real discrimination. This means that we learn to do in the occult realm what we would have to do in the physical world if trees born of phantasy and genuine trees stood side by side. If we run against phantasy-trees they let us pass through without resistance, but if we encounter real trees we bruise ourselves against them. Something similar, although of course only as a spiritual fact, must confront us in the occult field.

We can, if we go about it properly, learn in a comparatively simple way to distinguish between the true and false within this field, not however through ideas, but by resolution of will. This resolution may be brought about in the following way: If we look over our life we find in it two distinctly different groups of occurrences. We often find that this or that in which we succeed or fail is related to our abilities. That is to say, we find it comprehensible that in a certain field we do not succeed very well because in it we are not particularly bright. Where we assume on the contrary that we have ability, we find success quite natural.

Perhaps we need not always discern so distinctly the connection between what we carry out and our abilities. There is also a less definite way to realize this connection. If, for example, anyone in his later years is pursued by this or that blow of fate and, thinking back says to himself: “As a man I did little to make myself energetic”—or must say to himself: “I was always a careless fellow”—he may also say: “Well, the connection between my lack of success and my other omissions is not immediately apparent, but I do see that things cannot really succeed for a careless, lazy person to the same degree they are possible for one who is conscientious and industrious.” In short, there are successes and failures which we can comprehend and find natural, but there are others which happen in such a way that we cannot discover any connection, so that we say to ourselves: “Although in accordance with certain abilities this or that should have succeeded, it nevertheless did not succeed.” Thus there is distinctly a type of success or failure whose connection with our capacities we cannot see.

That is one thing. The other is that in regard to some things in the outside world which strike us as blows of fate, we can sometimes say: “Well yes, that appears to be just, for we furnished all the predisposing conditions;” but some other things that happen we cannot discover that we are in any position to explain. We have thus two types of experience; those whose relation to ourselves and our capacities we realize, and the other type just characterized, for which we cannot see that we are responsible. Our external experiences fall likewise into two classes: those of which we cannot say that we have produced the determining conditions, in contrast to others which we know we have brought about.

Now we may look around a little in our lives. That is a useful experiment for everyone. We could gather together all the things whose causes we cannot see, whose success led us to say “a blind chicken has found a kernel of corn”—things whose success we cannot attribute to ourselves. But we can remember and collect also failures in the same way, and those seemingly accidental outer events for which we know of no modifying influence. And now we make the following soul experiment: We imagine that we constructed for ourselves an artificial human being who, through his own abilities, brought about all our successes whose cause we do not understand. If something succeeded for us requiring wisdom just where we ourselves are stupid, then we conceive a person who is particularly clever in this field, and for whom the enterprise simply had to succeed. Or for an outer event we proceed in this way: let us say a brick falls on our head. We can see no reason, but we conceive someone who brought it about by running up to the roof and loosening the brick, so that he needed only to wait a little for it to fall. He runs down quickly, and the brick strikes him. We do this with certain events which we know have not been brought about by us in any ordinary way, and which happen very much against our will. Let us assume that at some time in our life we were struck by someone. In order that we may not find this too difficult we may place this event back in our childhood; we can pretend that then we contrived to be beaten by someone, that is, we had done everything to bring it about. In short, we construct for ourselves a human being who brings down upon himself everything for which we cannot account. You see, if progress in occultism is desired many things must be done which run contrary to ordinary events. If you do only what generally seems reasonable you get no further in occultism, for that which relates to higher worlds may seem to ordinary people quite foolish. It does no harm if the method does seem foolish to the prosaic outer man.

Well, we construct for ourselves this human being. At first it seems to us a merely grotesque performance, something the object of which we perhaps do not understand; but we shall make a discovery about ourselves, in fact everyone will who tries it, namely the astonishing discovery that he no longer wishes to detach himself from this being which he has himself built up, that it is beginning to interest him. If you try it you will see for yourself: you cannot get away from this artificial human being; it lives within you. And in a peculiar way: it not only lives within you but it transforms itself and radically. It changes so that at last it becomes something quite different from what it was originally. It becomes something of which we are forced to say “it really does exist within us.”

This is an experience which is possible to everyone. We admit that what has just been described—which is not the original self-created being of phantasy, but that which this has become—is a part of what is within us. Now this is just what has, so to speak, brought about the apparently causeless things during our lives. We find within ourselves the real cause of what is otherwise incomprehensible. That which I have described to you is, in other words, the way not only to peer into your own soul-life and find something, but it is the way out from the soul-life into the environment. For what we fail to bring off does not remain with us, but belongs to our environment. So we have taken something out of our environment which does not harmonize with the facts of our consciousness, but presents itself as if it were within us. Then we gain the feeling that we really have something to do with what seems so causeless in real life. A person acquires in this way a feeling of his connection with his destiny, with what is called Karma. Through this soul experiment a real way is opened to experience within himself, in a certain manner, his own Karma.

You may say: “Yes, but I do not understand exactly what you have said.” If you say that you do not fail to understand what you imagine, but you lack understanding for something which even a child can grasp, but about which you simply have not thought. It is impossible for anyone who has not carried out the experiment to understand these things. Only he who has done this can understand. These things are to be taken only as the description of an experiment that can be made and experienced by anyone. Each one comes to the realization that something lives within him which is connected with his Karma. If anyone knew this beforehand no rule would need be given him for the attainment of this knowledge.

It is quite in order that no one grasps this who has not yet made the experiment; it is not however a question of understanding in the ordinary sense, but an acceptance of information regarding something that our soul may undertake. If our soul follows such paths it accustoms itself not to live within itself only, in its own wishes and desires, but to relate itself to outer happenings, to consider them. Exactly the things which we ourselves have not desired, we have built into that which is here considered. And when we have come to face our Destiny so that we can calmly take it upon us, and think in regard to what we usually murmur and rebel against: “We accept it willingly, for we ourselves have decreed it,” then there arises a state of mind and heart in which, when we force our way down into the hidden depths of soul, we can distinguish with absolute certainty the true from the false. For then is shown with a wonderful clarity and assurance what is true and what false.

If you behold any sort of vision with the mental eye, and can as it were by a mere look, banish it, drive it away, simply by the use of all the inner forces with which you have become acquainted—then it is just a phantasm. But if you cannot get rid of it in this fashion, if you can banish at most that which reminds you of the outer world; if the really visionary quality, the spiritual thing remains like a solid fact—then it is true. But you cannot make this distinction until you have done what has been described. Therefore without the above-mentioned training there can be no certainty in the differentiation between the true and false upon the super-sensible plane. The essential thing in this soul experiment is that we always remain in full possession of our ordinary consciousness in regard to what we desire, and that by means of this experiment we accustom ourselves to look upon what we in our ordinary consciousness do not at all want, and is repugnant to us, as something willed into existence by us. One may in a certain sense have reached a definite degree of inner development; but unless, through such a soul experiment, we have learned to contrast all the wishes, desires, sympathy and antipathy which live in the soul with our relation to what we have not wished, then we shall make mistake after mistake.

The greatest mistake in the Theosophical Society was first made by H. P. Blavatsky; for although she fixed her spiritual attention upon the realm where Christ may be found, in the contents of her upper consciousness, in her wishes and desires, there was a constant antipathy, even a passion against everything Christian or Hebrew, and a preference for all other spiritual cultures on earth, and because she had never gone through what has been described today she conceived of the Christ in an entirely false way. That was quite natural. It passed over to her nearest students, and has been dragged along, although grotesquely coarsened, to the present day. These things extend to the highest spheres. One may see many things upon the occult plane, but the power of discrimination is something different from mere sight, mere perception. This must be sharply stressed.

Now the problem is this: When we sink down into our hidden soul-depths (and every clairvoyant must do this,) we first come into what is fundamentally ourselves. And we must learn to know ourselves by really making the transition, by having a world before us, of which Lucifer and Ahriman always promise to give us the kingdoms. This means that our own inner self appears before us, and the devil says: “This is the objective world.” That is the temptation that even Christ did not escape. The inner illusions of the inner world were presented, only He, through His inherent power, recognized from the very beginning that it is not a real world, but a world that is within. It is through this inner world alone, which we must separate into two parts in order to get rid of one—our own personal part—and have the other remain, that we pass through the hidden depths of our soul-life out into the objective super-sensible world. And just as our spiritual-soul kernel must make use of our physical body as a mirror for outer perception, for the facts of ordinary consciousness, so must the human being make use of his etheric body as a reflecting apparatus for the super-sensible facts which next confront him. The higher sense organs, if we may so describe them, open within the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected by the etheric body, just as the spiritual and soul activity of which we are aware in ordinary life is reflected by the physical body. We must now learn to manage our ether body, and it is entirely natural since our etheric body is usually unknown to us, although it represents what vitalizes us, that we must become acquainted with it before we can learn to recognize that which enters us from the super-sensible objective world and may be reflected by this ether body.

You now see what we experience when we descend into the hidden depths of our soul life. It is primarily ourselves, and the projection of our wishes is very similar to what we usually call the life in Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or of Cleansing Fire; also Purgatory.] It differs from it only in that when anyone in ordinary life thus pushes forward into imprisonment within himself (which is what it may be called,) he has still his physical body to which he can return. But in Kamaloca the physical body is gone, even part of the etheric body—the part which most immediately reflects for us—but the universal life-ether surrounding us serves as an instrument of reflection, and mirrors everything that is within us. Thus in the Kamaloca period our own inner world is built up about us as an objective world, all our wishes, desires, all that we feel, and to which we are inwardly attuned.

It is important to understand that the primary characteristic of the life in Kamaloca is our imprisonment within ourselves, and this prison is the more securely fastened by the fact that we cannot return to any sort of physical life to which our whole inner activity has been related. Only when we live through this Kamaloca period in such a way as to realize gradually (we do come to this gradually,) that it all may be got rid of by experiencing our-self otherwise than through mere desires and so forth, only then is our Kamaloca prison opened.

How is this meant? In the following way: Let us suppose that someone dies with a definite wish; this wish belongs to that which projects itself outward and is built up around him in some kind of imagery. Now as long as this desire lives within him it is impossible, in regard to it, to open Kamaloca with any sort of key. Only when he realizes that this wish cannot be satisfied except by discarding it, when his attitude towards it becomes the opposite to what it has been, then gradually with the wish everything that imprisons us in Kamaloca will be torn from the soul. Only then do we come into the realm between death and rebirth which has been called the devachanic [Devachan = Heaven.], and which may be entered also through clairvoyance when we have recognized that which belongs to the self alone. In clairvoyance it is reached through a definite degree of development; in Kamaloca through the passage of time, simply because time so torments us through our own desires that at last they are overcome. By this means that which has been dangled before us as if it were the world and its splendor is destroyed.

The world of super-sensible realities is what is usually called Devachan. How does this world of super-sensible facts appear before us? Here upon this earthly globe we can speak of Devachan only because in clairvoyance, when the self has been really conquered, we enter at once into the world of super-sensible facts, which are objectively present, and these facts coincide with those of Devachan.

The most important characteristic of this devachanic world is that in it moral actualities are no longer separable from the physical, that moral and physical laws are one and the same. What does that mean? Well, is it not true that in the ordinary physical world the sun shines upon the just and the unjust? Whoever commits a crime may be put in prison, but the physical sun is not darkened. That is to say: in the physical world there is a realm of moral and physical laws, leading in two very different directions. It is not so in Devachan, not at all; instead of this, everything proceeding from morality, from intelligent wisdom, from the aesthetically beautiful, and so on, leads to growth (is creative,) and that which arises from immorality, intellectual falsity, and aesthetic ugliness leads to withering and destruction. And there the laws of nature are such that the sun does not shine upon the just and the unjust alike but, if we may speak figuratively, it darkens upon the unjust; so that the just, passing through Devachan, have there the spiritual sunshine, that is to say, the influence of the fertilizing forces that bring about their forward progress in life. The spiritual forces draw back from the dishonest or ugly human being. The following is possible there which is impossible here on earth. When two people—just and unjust—walk here side by side, the sun cannot shine upon one and not upon the other; but in the spiritual world the effect of the spiritual forces depends absolutely upon the quality of the individual concerned. That is to say: the laws of nature and the spiritual laws do not follow two separate roads, but one and the same. That is the fundamental, essential truth. In the devachanic world the natural, moral, and intellectual laws act together as one.

As a result the following occurs: If a human being has entered and lives through the devachanic world he has within him what is left over from his last life of justice and injustice, good and evil, aesthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood. All this residue acts however in such a way that it takes immediate possession of the natural laws. We may compare the law there with the following in the physical world: If anyone in the physical world had stolen or lied and, seeking the sunlight, found that the sun did not shine upon him, could not find it anywhere, and thus through lack of sunshine developed a disease ... or let us rather assume as an example that someone in the physical world who was a liar had difficulty in breathing; that would be an exact parallel with what would be the case in the devachanic world. To the person who has burdened himself with this or that, something happens in his spiritual and soul nature so that the natural law at once and absolutely expresses the spiritual law. Hence, if the further development of this personality is brought about in this way, as he progresses gradually and is more fully permeated by these laws, such characteristics develop in him that he becomes an expression of the qualities which he brought over from his past life. Just let us suppose that someone has been two hundred years in Devachan, and has gone through it, having been in his last life a liar: the spirits of Truth withdraw from him. There dies in him that which in a truthful soul would be invigorated.

Or let us assume that someone with a pronounced quality of vanity which he has not given up goes through Devachan. This vanity in Devachan is an extraordinarily evil-smelling emanation, and certain spiritual beings avoid a personality who gives out the offensive evaporation of ambition or vanity. This is not a figurative statement. In Devachan vanity and ambition are extremely evil exhalations, and lead to the withdrawal of the beneficent influence of certain beings who retreat before this atmosphere. This could be compared to the placing in the cellar of a plant which thrives only in sunlight. A vain person cannot thrive. He will grow up with this characteristic. When he reincarnates he lacks the strength to build in the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs in a healthy way, he forms an unhealthy part in his organism. Thus not only our physical limitations, but our moral and intellectual ones as well show us the kind of human beings we become in life. Only when we emerge from the physical plane do natural and spiritual law go side by side. Between death and a new birth they are a single whole. And in our soul are implanted the natural forces which destroy if they are the result of the immoral deeds of past lives, but which fructify if they are the result of noble ones. This is true not only for our inner constitution, but also for that which falls upon us from without as our Karma.

In Devachan the essential fact is that no difference exists there between natural and spiritual law, and it is the same for the clairvoyant who really penetrates to the super-sensible worlds. These laws of the super-sensible worlds are radically different from those which rule upon the physical plane. It is simply impossible for the clairvoyant to differentiate in the manner of the materialistic mind when someone says: “That is only a law of objective nature.” Behind this objective natural law there exists always in reality a spiritual law. A clairvoyant cannot cross a scorched meadow, for example, or a flooded district, cannot perceive a volcanic eruption without thinking that behind the facts of nature are spiritual forces, hidden spiritual beings. For him a volcanic eruption is at the same time a moral deed, even though its morality may lie in an entirely different, undreamed-of realm. Those who always confuse the physical with the higher worlds will say: “Well, when innocent human beings are destroyed by a volcanic outbreak, how can one assume that it is a moral deed?” We do not need to worry about that. Such a judgment would be as cruelly philistine as the opposite idea: namely, to regard it as a punishment from God upon the people who are settled around the volcano. Both judgments are possible only to the narrow-minded standpoint of the physical world. Such is not the question, which may have to do with much more universal things. Those who live on the slope of a volcano, and whose property is destroyed by it, may be for this life entirely innocent. It will be made up to them later. This does not make us hardhearted and unwilling to help them (that again would be a narrow-minded interpretation of the matter). But in the case of volcanic eruptions the fact is that in the course of the earth evolution certain things happen through human deeds which retard human evolution, and just the good gods must work in a certain way for a balance which is sometimes achieved through such natural phenomena.

This application of the law is to be seen only in occult depths: that compensation is created for what is done by men themselves against the genuine development of humanity. Every event, whether a mere activity of nature or not, is at bottom something moral, and spiritual beings in the higher worlds are the bearers of the moral law behind the physical fact. If you simply conceive a world in which no separation of natural and spiritual laws can be considered, a world in which, with other words, justice rules as a natural law, you have then the devachanic world. Therefore one need not think that in this devachanic world through any sort of arbitrary decision an unworthy action has to be punished, because in that realm the immoral destroys itself as inevitably as fire consumes inflammable material, and morality is self-stimulated, and advances itself.

We thus see that the essential characteristic, the innermost nerve of existence, so to speak, is quite different for the different worlds. We gain no idea of the several worlds if we do not consider these peculiarities which differ so radically upon different levels. We may thus correctly characterize physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan: in the physical world natural and spiritual law run side by side as two series of facts; in Kamaloca the human being is confined within himself, as if in a prison of his own being; the devachanic world is the complete opposite of the physical; there natural and spiritual law are one and the same. These are the three characteristics, and if you consider them carefully, striving sensitively to realize how very different from our own a world must be in which the moral, intellectual, even the law of beauty are at the same time natural law, then you will gain an acute impression of conditions in the devachanic world.

In our physical world when we meet an ugly or a beautiful face we have no right to treat the ugly person as if he must be psychically revolting, or the beautiful one as if he must necessarily be worthy of high esteem. In Devachan it is quite otherwise. There we meet no ugliness that is not deserved, and it will be impossible for anyone who, because of his preceding incarnation, is obliged in this one to wear an ugly face, but who strives throughout this life to be true and honorable, to meet us in Devachan with any sort of unpleasant appearance. He will have transformed his ugliness into beauty. But it is equally true that he who is untruthful, vain, or ambitious in this life will wander about in Devachan with some hideous form. And something else is also true: In ordinary physical life we do not see that an ugly face continually robs itself, nor that a beautiful one contributes something to itself, but in Devachan it is like that; ugliness is an element of progressive destruction, and we cannot perceive beauty without assuming that it is the result of an equally continuous furtherance and help.

We must feel quite otherwise towards the devachanic or mental world than towards the physical world. And this is necessary: to differentiate in these sensations, to see the essential which matters, in order that you may appropriate not only the description of these things, but that you may take away feelings, sensitivity towards that which is described in spiritual science. If you try to soar upwards to an appreciation of a world in which morality, beauty, and intellectual truth appear with the inevitability of natural law then you have the feeling of the devachanic world; and this is why we must, so to say, collect so much material and work so much, in order that the things which we work out for ourselves may at last be merged into one feeling.

It is impossible for anyone to come easily or lightly to a real knowledge of what must gradually be made clear and comprehensible to the world through spiritual science. There are many different movements that say, “Oh why must so many things be learned in spiritual science? Are we to become pupils again? Feeling is all that matters.” It does matter, but it must be the right feeling, which must first be developed! This is true of everything. It would be pleasanter, would it not, for the painter if he did not have to learn the technique of his art, if he did not have to bring out upon the canvas, at first slowly, the final result, if he needed only to exhale in order to have his finished work before him! In our world today it is a curious fact that the more the realm of the soul is in question, the harder it is for people to realize that nothing is accomplished by mere exhaling! In music it would not be admitted that one could become a composer without learning anything of composition; there it is quite obvious. This is so also with painting, though people admit it less easily, and in poetry they admit it even less, otherwise there would be in our own time fewer poets. For actually no time is as unpoetic as our own though there are so many poets. If it is not necessary to have studied poetry, but only to be able to write (which naturally has nothing to do with poetic art) and of course to spell correctly—we need only to be able to express our thoughts! And for philosophy still less is required. For today, that anyone may judge straight away anything concerning the conceptions of life and the world is regarded as a matter of course, since everyone has his own point of view. One finds again and again that no value is set by such people upon the carefully worked out personal possession of the means and methods of cognition and of research in the world, gained through every resource of inner work. Instead, it seems to them obvious that the standpoint of one who has labored long before venturing to give out even a little about world secrets has no greater value than that of the one who simply takes it upon himself to have a standpoint. Anyone can count nowadays as a man with a world conception.

This, on the contrary, is what really matters, upon which everything depends; that we labor with all our energy in order that what we work out for ourselves we may at last gather together and carry over into feelings, which through their coloring give the highest, the truest knowledge. Struggle through, by working towards a feeling, an impression of a world in which natural and spiritual law coincide. Then if you work seriously—no matter though people believe you to have learned only theoretically, although you have striven hard in working through this or that theory—you will realize that it makes an impression upon the devachanic world. If you have not simply imagined a feeling, but evolved it by years of careful work, then this feeling, these nuances of sensibility, have a strength which will bring you further than they could reach of themselves; for through earnest, eager study, they have become true. Then you are not far from the point where these nuances burst asunder, and there lies before you the reality of Devachan. For if the nuances of feeling are truly worked out they become a power of perception.

Therefore, if work along these lines is undertaken by student groups upon a basis of truth, honesty, and patient practice, outside of all sensation, their meeting places become what they should be: schools to lead men into spheres of clairvoyance. And only those who cannot wait for this, or who will not co-operate, can have an erroneous view of these matters.

We have spoken recently of many things concerning the existence of hidden soul depths, and it will be well in any case to continue to occupy ourselves with various details of this subject which it may be useful for an anthroposophist to know. Generally speaking, it must be said that a complete clarification of these things is possible only if it can be worked out on the basis of anthroposophical knowledge.

We have considered what may be called the human organization from the most diverse viewpoints. Therefore, when we wish to point out something in hidden soul depths, it will be easy for each one to relate it correctly to what was shown regarding the human structure as we know it from the more or less elementary presentations of the anthroposophical world-conception.

It has been repeated that everything included in our visualizations and percepts, our impulses of will, our feelings, in short, all that goes on in our souls under normal conditions between awaking in the morning and falling asleep at night, may be called the activities, peculiarities, and powers of the ordinary consciousness. Now we shall indicate by a diagram all that falls within this ordinary human consciousness, all that is known and felt and willed between waking and sleeping, within these two parallel lines (a–b).

In this section (a–b) belong, in addition to our visualizations, every sort of percept. Thus, if we put ourselves into correspondence with the outer world through our senses, and procure thereby in every possible sense-impression a picture of this world, remaining in connection, in touch with it, then that belongs also to our ordinary consciousness. But since all our feelings and impulses of will belong to it as well, one might say that in the area indicated by the parallel lines (a–b) everything belongs of which our normal soul activities give us information in everyday life.

The point is for us to know with certainty that to this so-called soul life the physical body is assigned as an instrument, including the senses and the nervous system. If we add two more to these parallel lines we may indicate the physical sense organs and the nervous system, which we may call the tools of this consciousness—the sense organs chiefly, but also to a certain extent the nervous system.

Below the threshold of this ordinary consciousness lies everything which we may describe as the hidden aspects of soul-life, or the subconscious. (See diagram, b–c.) We shall get a good idea of all that is, so to speak, embedded in this subconsciousness if we remember having heard that the human being, through spiritual training, attains to imagination, inspiration, and intuition; [These three terms as used by Rudolf Steiner denote three super-sensible faculties. (Tr.)] so we must substitute for the thoughts, feelings and impulses of will belonging to the surface consciousness, the imagination, inspiration, and intuition of the subconsciousness. We know, however, also that the subconscious activity is not aroused by spiritual training alone, but that it may exist as inheritance of an old, primitive atavistic state of the human mind. Under these conditions there arise what we define as visions, and visions of this naive consciousness would correspond to imaginations gained through training. Premonitions arise; and these might be primitive inspirations. We can show at once the difference between an inspiration and a premonition by a significant example.

We have already mentioned that in the course of the 20th century there will occur in human evolution what may be called a sort of spiritual return of Christ, and that there will be a number of persons who experience this working of Christ from the astral plane into our world in an etheric form. We may acquire knowledge of this event by authentic training, recognizing the trend of evolution, and also that this must come about in the 20th century. It may, however, happen, as it often does at the present time, that individuals here and there are gifted with a natural, primitive, clairvoyance which is, so to speak, a kind of obscure inspiration which we may call a premonition of the approach of Christ. Perhaps such people might not have accurate knowledge of the matter involved, but even such an important inspiration may arise as a premonition, though in the case of a primitive consciousness it may not retain its premonitory or visionary character. The vision constitutes some sort of picture of a spiritual event. Let us say, for example, that someone has lost a friend whose ego has passed through the gate of death. This friend now dwells in the spiritual world, and a kind of bond establishes itself between this person and the one still living in this world. It may be that the person in this world cannot rightly understand what the deceased desires and has a false idea of what is being experienced by the departed. The fact that such a condition exists presents itself in a vision which, as a picture, may be false though founded upon the fact that the dead is really trying to establish a bond with the living, and this gives weight to the presentiment so that the living person who experiences it knows certain things, either about the past or future, which are inaccessible to normal consciousness. If the human soul acquires, however, a definite perception, not a vision which may, under the circumstances, be false, but a factual perception—an occurrence, let us say, of the sense world, but in this case in a sphere invisible to the physical senses, or an incident in the super-sensible world—it is called in occultism deuteroscopy, or second sight. With all this I have described to you only what takes place although subconsciously, within the human soul, whether developed by correct training or appearing as a natural clairvoyance.

The phenomena enumerated when contrasting the subconscious with the ordinary consciousness, differ considerably from those confined to the conscious mind. The relation of this ordinary consciousness to the underlying causes of its activities has already been described in one aspect by this phrase: the impotence of ordinary consciousness. The eye sees a rose, but this eye, which is so constituted that in our consciousness the image of the rose arises has, like the consciousness itself, no power over the blooming, growth and fading of the rose in spite of its perception and the resultant image. The rose blooms and fades through the activity of the forces of nature and neither the eye nor the consciousness has any control beyond the sphere which is accessible to their perception.

This is not the case regarding subconscious happenings. We must hold fast to this fact, for it is extraordinarily important. When we perceive something through the use of our eyes in normal sight, pictures in color or anything else, we can alter nothing in the objective facts by mere perception. If nothing happens to harm our eyes they remain unchanged by the mere act of seeing; only by crossing the boundary between normal and blinding light do we injure our eyes. Thus it may be said that if we confine ourselves to the facts of the normal consciousness, we do not react upon ourselves. Our organism is so constituted that changes are not ordinarily induced in us by this consciousness.

It is quite otherwise with that which appears in the subconscious. Let us assume that we are forming an imagination, or that we have a vision which may be the response of a good being. This good being is not in the physical, but in the super-sensible world, and let us imagine this world where such beings exist and which we perceive, perchance, through an imagination or a vision, to be between these lines (b–c). In that world we have to seek all objects of subconscious perception. But if we identify anything in that other world as an evil or demonic being, either through an imaginary image or a vision, we are not, in regard to this being as powerless as we are with the eye in regard to the rose. If in a super-sensible imagination or vision of an evil being we develop a strong feeling that it must depart, it is bound to feel as if it were powerfully thrust from us. It is the same when we form an imagination or vision of a good being. If in this case we develop a sympathetic feeling, the being feels impelled to approach and to connect itself with us. All beings who in one way or another inhabit that world feel, when we form visions of them, our attracting or repelling forces. With our subconsciousness we are in a position resembling somewhat that of the eye if with it we were able not only to see a rose, but by means of simple sight could arouse a desire that the rose approach and could draw it toward us or, if the eye, seeing something disgusting, could not only form such a judgment but could remove this object by mere antipathy. The subconscious is in touch with a world in which the sympathy and antipathy which are present in the human soul can take effect. It is necessary for us to impress this upon our minds.

Sympathy and antipathy, and in general all subconscious impulses, act in the manner described not only upon their own world, but above all upon what is within ourselves; and not only upon a part of the etheric body, but upon certain forces of the physical body. We must consider here as enclosed between these lines (b–c) that living force within the human being which, pulsing in his blood, can be called the blood warming power and, also, the force residing in our healthy or unhealthy breathing power, conditioned more or less by our whole organism. (See diagram b–c.) To all this, upon which the subconscious works within us, there belongs in addition a large part of what is called the human etheric body. The subconscious or hidden soul powers work within us so as to affect our blood heat upon which depend the pulsation, the liveliness or sluggishness of our circulation. It may thus be comprehended that our subconsciousness is directly connected with the circulation of our blood. A slower or a more rapid circulation depends primarily upon the subconscious powers of the individual.

An influence upon the demonic or beneficent beings inhabiting the outer world can only be exerted if the human being has visions, imaginations, or some other sort of subconscious perception of a certain clarity. That is to say, if they really stand before him; only then can his sympathy or antipathy set in motion subconscious powers that act like magic in this outer world. This distinct standing-before-the-soul in the subconsciousness is not necessary for the effect upon our own inner organism as described above. (See diagram b–c). Whether the person in question knows or does not know which imaginations correspond to a certain sympathy, this sympathy nevertheless affects the circulation of his blood, his breathing system, and his etheric body.

Let us assume that during a certain period of his life someone has a tendency to have feelings of nausea. If he were subject to visions or had imaginative sight, he would recognize these visions and imaginations as perceptions of his own being; they would appear projected into space, but would, nevertheless, belong to his own inner world. They would represent the sort of inner forces that produced the feelings of nausea. But even if he could not practice this kind of self-knowledge and were simply nauseated, these inner forces would act upon him nevertheless. They would influence the warmth of his blood and his forces of breathing. It is actually the case that a human being possesses more or less healthy breathing and circulation, according to the character of his subconscious feelings. The activity of his etheric body and, indeed, all his functions, are dependent upon the world of feelings existing within him.

When, however, the facts of the subconscious mind are really experienced by the soul, it is shown not only that this connection exists, but that because of it a continuous effect is produced upon the general human organism. There are certain feelings, certain states of mind, that work down into the subconscious and, because they call forth definite conditions of blood, of the breathing power, and of the etheric body, affect the organism beneficially, or obstruct the entire life. Thus, as a result of what works down into the subconscious, something is always arising or subsiding. The human being either deprives himself of his life forces, or adds to them through what he sends over from his state of consciousness into the subconscious conditions. If he takes pleasure in a lie he has told, if he is not horrified at it—this being the normal feeling about lies—if instead he feels indulgence, or even satisfaction, then what he feels about it is sent down into his subconscious. This injures the circulation, breathing, and the forces of the etheric body. The result is that when this human being goes through the gate of death he will have become stunted, poorer in forces, something will have died in him which would have lived had he felt the normal horror and disgust at his lie. In the latter case, his disgust would have worked against the lie, transformed itself into the forces here indicated (see diagram), and he would have succeeded in sending something enlivening, creative, into his organism.

We see from the fact that forces are continually transferred from the conscious to the subconscious, that the human being contributes from this subconscious to his own invigoration or deterioration. True, he is not yet strong enough in his present state to spoil out of his soul, so to speak, any other parts of his organism except the circulation of his blood, his breathing system, and etheric body. He cannot injure the coarser and more solid portions, but is able to affect detrimentally one part only of his organism. What he has injured is most distinctly visible when what remains of the etheric body has been influenced in this way; for the etheric body is in constant connection with the warmth of the blood and the constitution of the breath. It is impaired by evil feelings. Through good, normal, and sincere feelings it gains, however, fertilizing, strengthening and maturing powers. We may say, therefore, that a human being, through his subconscious activities works directly, creating or depleting, upon the factual reality of his organism by descending from the level of his powerless surface-consciousness, into the region where something arises or perishes within his own soul, and thereby in his entire organism.

We have seen because the subconscious may be experienced more or less consciously by the soul and something may be known about it, that it achieves an influence in a sphere which we may describe by an expression used throughout the Middle Ages as the elemental world. A human being cannot enter directly into any kind of connection with this elemental world; he can do so only indirectly through those experiences within himself which are effects of the subconsciousness upon the organism. But when he has for a time learned to know himself so as to be able to say: if you feel this, and send down this or that emanation from your conduct into your subconsciousness, you destroy certain things or cripple them; if you have other experiences and send down a different sort of reaction you improve yourself,—if a human being for a time observes within himself this ebb and flow of destructive and beneficent forces, he will become ever riper in self-knowledge. This is the genuine form of self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge gained in this manner is as definite in its effect as would be a scorpion's sting on our toe every time we felt in the physical world the impulse to lie or were tolerant of lying. We may be sure that one observing such an immediate result would cease to lie. If the direct physical effect upon us should be a more or less serious mutilation it would resemble what actually happens, although unperceived, through what is sent down into the subconscious mind from these daily experiences. What is sent down because of our tolerant attitude toward a lie is such that it does bite off and take away from us something the loss of which injures us and which through our future karma we must regain. If we send down a right feeling into the subconscious mind—there is naturally an almost endless scale of feeling which may descend—we grow within ourselves, create new life forces in our organism. Such an observation of our own up-building or deterioration is an immediate result of true self-knowledge.

It has been recently reported that many do not understand how to distinguish a genuine vision or imagination [This term as used by Rudolf Steiner, denotes a super-sensible faculty (Tr.)] belonging to something objective from that which appears in space but is the creation of our own subjective nature. Well, it cannot be said: write down this or that and you will then be able to make the distinction. There are no such rules. One learns gradually through development; and the ability rightly to distinguish that which belongs to ourselves alone from that which, as outer vision, belongs to a genuine entity can be attained only when we have endured the continual gnawing of deadly subconscious activities. We are then equipped with a certain assurance. Then also the condition arises in which a human being, confronting a vision or imagination may ask himself: Can you penetrate it through the power of your spiritual sight? If the vision persists when this active force is turned upon it then it is an objective fact, but if this concentrated gaze extinguishes the vision it is proved to be only his own creation. Anyone who, in this respect, does not take precautions may have before him thousands of pictures from the Akashic Record; if he does not test them to see whether or not they can be extinguished by a resolutely active gaze, the akashic pictures which may give so much information, count only as images developed by his own inner nature. It could happen, for example, that such a person sees nothing beyond himself, externalizing himself in quite dramatic images which he believes to extend throughout the entire Atlantean world, throughout generations of human evolution—but which may be, in spite of such apparent objectivity, nothing but the projection of his own inner self.

When the human being has passed through the gate of death the obstructions no longer exist by which something within himself becomes an objective vision. In ordinary life of the present day what is subconsciously experienced, sent down by the individual human being into his subconscious mind, does not always become vision and imagination. It becomes imagination through correct training, and vision in the case of atavistic clairvoyance. When the human being has passed through the gate of death his collective inner self becomes at once an objective world. It is there confronting him, Kamaloca [Region of Burning Desire, or of Cleansing Fire; also Purgatory.] being in essence nothing but a world built up around us out of that which is experienced within our own soul. This condition is reversed only in Devachan. [Devachan = Heaven]

Thus we can easily comprehend what has been said regarding the effect of sympathy or antipathy present in visions, imaginations, inspirations and premonitions: that these act in all cases upon the objective elemental world. Upon this point it has been stated that in the physically incarnate personality only that which he has developed into vision and imagination acts upon this elemental world. In the case of the dead the forces affect the elemental world which were present in the subconscious mind, and which are always taken along when a human being passes through the gate of death, so that everything experienced after death influences in reality the elemental world. As surely as waves are aroused in a stream by whipping it do the subconscious experiences transmit themselves after death to the elemental world; as certainly as waves that are whipped extend in flattening circles, or a current of air passes undeterred on its way, do these forces spread over the elemental world. Therefore this world is constantly filled with that which is aroused by the content of the subconscious mind which mortals take with them through the gate of death. The point concerning us here is that we gain the ability to bring about the conditions necessary for sight in the elemental world. One need not wonder at the clairvoyant when he recognizes quite correctly that occurrences in that world are activities of the dead. It is even possible, as you will see, to follow the effects of these after-death experiences into the physical world—of course under certain conditions. When the clairvoyant has gone through all that has been described, and acquired the ability to perceive the elemental world, he reaches then after a time a point where he may have strange experiences.

Let us suppose that a clairvoyant looks at a rose with his physical eyes, and receives a sense impression. Let us further suppose that he has trained himself so that the color red gives him a definite shade of feeling. This is necessary, for without it the process goes no further. Unless colors and tones produce definite nuances of feeling when clairvoyance is directed at an outside object, the sight progresses no further. Suppose that he gives the rose away. Then, if he is not clairvoyant, what he felt would have sunk into his subconscious mind, and would be working, either beneficially or detrimentally, upon his health, and so on. But if he is clairvoyant, he would perceive just how the image of the rose acts in his subconscious mind. That is to say, he would have a visionary picture, an imagination of the rose. He would perceive at the same time—as has been explained—how his feeling about the rose affected, either beneficially or detrimentally, his etheric or his physical body. He would observe the action of all this upon his own organism. When he has this image before himself he will be able by its means to exert an attractive force upon the being which we may call the group-soul of the rose and which underlies its existence. He will be looking into the elemental world, seeing the rose's group-soul in so far as it dwells there.

If the clairvoyant goes still further, has emerged from perception of the rose, has given it away, has followed his own inner procedure in concentrating upon the rose and its results, and has reached the point of seeing something of it in the elemental world—then there appears in place of the rose a wonderful shining image belonging to the elemental world. Then, if the procedure has been followed up to this point, something special happens. The clairvoyant can now disregard what is before him. He can then give the command to himself: Do not look with your inner sight at what seems to be a living etheric being going out into the world. Do not regard it! Then, strangely, the clairvoyant sees something which, passing through his eye, shows him how the forces act which form it, how they issue from the human etheric body and build up the eye. He sees the formative forces belonging to his own physical body. He sees his own physical eye as he ordinarily sees an external object. That is in fact something which may occur. A way may be followed from the outer object up to the point where, in absolute inner darkness—no other sense impressions being admitted—what the eye looks like is seen in a spiritual picture. The human being sees his own inner organ. He has entered the region (see diagram), which is really formative in the physical world: the creative physical world. It is first perceived by the clairvoyant in observing his own physical organization. Thus he follows the way back to himself. What sent such forces into our eye that we see it giving out rays of light which really express the essential nature of sight? Then we see the eye surrounded by a sort of yellow glow; we see it enclosed within us. This was brought fourth by the entire process that brought the human being finally up to this point.

The forces that may issue from a dead person follow the same course. The human being takes with him the contents of his subconscious mind into the world that he inhabits after he passes through the gate of death. Just as we enter our own physical eye, do the forces sent out by the dead from the elemental world reenter the physical world. The deceased has perhaps an especial longing for someone whom he has left behind. This longing, at the time lying in the subconscious, becomes at once a living vision and in this way affects the elemental world. What was only a vision in the physical world becomes a power in the elemental world. This power follows the way indicated through the longing for the one who is living and, if the conditions permit, it may create some disturbance in the physical world near the living, who may notice rapping sounds or something of the kind. These are heard just like any physical sounds. Occurrences of this kind, originating in this way, would be noticed more frequently than is usually the case were people more observant of the times favorable to such activities. The times of gradual going to sleep and of similar awaking are the most favorable, but no attention is paid to them; yet there are few, if any, who have never received during such moments of transition what were really manifestations of the super-sensible world, ranging all the way from disturbing noises to audible words.

All this has been pointed out today in order to show both the reality and the nature of the connection between human beings and the world. Impressions of an objective sense-world, received by the ordinary consciousness, are powerless and without any real relation—even to that world; but as soon as the human experience descends into the subconscious the relation with realities is established. The helplessness of the former consciousness passes over into a delicate magic, and when the human being has passed through the gate of death and is released from the physical body, his experiences are such that they are effective both in the elemental world and, under favorable circumstances, even upon the physical plane where they may be observed by the ordinary consciousness.

In describing what may take place, only the simplest example has been used, because it is best to begin with the simplest case. Of course we shall—since we have left ourselves time for it—work out also what we need to know in order to proceed to more complicated matters which may lead us into the more intimate relations between the world and humanity.

The Revelations of John seek to tell us what will happen in the course of time. The Apocalypse is written in pictures that express the appearance of the eternal spirit of the world. John, who beholds them, is to record these highest mysteries.

We are, to begin with, concerned with seven communities, represented symbolically by seven lamp stands and seven stars. The stars are the communities' geniuses watching over them.

In the second vision John sees the four apocalyptic living beings, the lion, the bull, the eagle, and Man, surrounding a throne where sits the spirit of God. Twenty-four elders are sitting around the throne of the spirit of God. “And I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” (Rev. 5:1) A lamb opens the book. The book contains, with the opening of the first four seals, what is expressed symbolically in the four apocalyptic riders; with the opening of the fifth seal the martyrs appear. These are those who have lifted themselves up to knowledge and life in the spirit. The opening of the sixth seal is followed by a horrible earthquake. With the seventh the revelation becomes audible: the seven trumpets sound forth. Mysterious pictures are then revealed; for example, a being whose legs are like two pillars, one foot stands in the sea, the other on the earth. “Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand.” (Rev. 10:1,2) John must eat the secret of this book. Then a woman appears dressed with the sun, and the moon at her feet.

We read further: “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads.” (Rev. 13:1) The sound of trumpets accompanies this vision. The victory of good over evil is shown us in a picture. A beast is shown which, in a certain sense, is supposed to represent to us the principle of evil. It is the beast with seven heads and ten horns.

Then a beast appeared with two horns like a lamb, a beast that will appear in the future. “Then I saw another beast which rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast ... And it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast, or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom; let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” (Rev. 13: 11, 16–18)

It is further related how all enemies are eliminated: Michael conquers the dragon, the evil elements; then a new world arises. In the first Christian centuries this was prophesied and always understood as a reference to the future. Admittedly, the exegetes soon knew little more than that; but again and again, also in the Middle Ages, there were those who came forward to explain it. The year 1000 A.D. was often thought to be the time for the beast's appearance. The later the era the more senseless the explanations became, especially in the nineteenth century—when the ancient commentators were seen as children still able to believe in prophecy. The Apocalypse was seen as a historical document, as if everything described therein had already taken place when John wrote it. There were wars after the appearance of Christianity. John could have meant to express them with the red horse. The white horse would then symbolize the martyrs. Earthquakes such as John described with the opening of the sixth seal were also to be found at that time in Asia Minor. And neither was it difficult to prove the existence of locust plagues. But the passage concerning the two-horned beast was a real cross for the commentators. They had heard a rumor concerning the way numbers are to be read but it was dripping with occultism. How does one read in numbers? Every letter also signifies a number; the esotericists wrote in numbers when they wanted to hide something. One had to replace each number with the correct letter; one had to be able to read the letters and then also know what the resulting word meant. Who then, is the beast whose number is 666? The commentators thought it must be something in the past. One wrote the letters in Hebrew—wrongly—in the place of the numbers. That resulted in “Nero.” The horns were then related to the generals or the enemies of the Romans, for example, the Parthians. If one had written correctly with Hebrew letters (right to left) and then read correctly (also from right to left), the following would have resulted: 60, Samech, 6 Waw; 600 was written by esotericists as 200 + 400: 200 Resch + 400 Taw. Hence, we get 666, which in Hebrew letters spells “Sorat.” Sorat is also the corresponding word in Greek. Sorat has meant “Demon of the Sun” since ancient times. Every star has its good spirit—its intelligence—and its evil spirit—its demon. The adversary of the good powers of the sun is called Sorat. Christ was always the representative of the sun, namely, the intelligence of the Sun. Sorat is, then, the adversary of Christ Jesus. The sign for Sorat looks like this:

The sign of the intelligence of the Sun is the following:

This is, at the same time, the occult sign of the lamb. The lamb receives the book with the seven seals. “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” (Rev. 5:6) The seven corners of the sign are called “horns.” But what do the “eyes” mean?

In occult schools the signs of the seven planets are written next to the seven eyes. The seven eyes signify nothing other than the seven planets, while the names of the planets designate the spirits incarnated in them as their intelligence. “Saturn” is the name of the soul of Saturn. The names of the planets come from the spirits of the seven planets found around the earth. These have an influence on human life. The lamb, Christ, contains all seven. Christ is the alpha and the omega; the seven planets are related to him like members to an entire body. The entwining of the lines of the sign portray in a wonderful way the interaction between the seven planets. From Saturn one rises to the Sun, from there down to the Moon, then on to Mars, Mercury, and so forth. The same thing is expressed in the names of the seven days of the week: Saturday, Saturn; Sunday, the Sun; Monday, the Moon; Tuesday, Mardi, Mars; Wednesday, Mercredi, Mercury; Thursday, Jeudi, Jupiter; Friday, Vendredi, Venus. Christ is the regent of all these world spheres; their actions constitute only part of his being; he unites them all. In Rosicrucian schools a lamb is often drawn as a sign for the intelligence of the Sun.

We determine time according to the movement of the heavenly bodies. Was the method for calculating time always the same as today's? Important things have changed. If we look into the past a little we see the Atlantean culture before the great flood on earth. The Lemurian age preceded it. If we go even further back into the past the earth, sun, and moon are still united in a single body. Back then time had to he determined differently than today. Day and night were entirely different. In Lemuria, conditions for the whole earth were the same as it is today at the north pole, half a year day and half a year night. When sun, moon, and earth were still one this unified mass moved through space. Already back then this movement was calculated by occult wisdom, just as today one calculates time according to the sun which moves across the sky through the signs of the zodiac. Eight hundred years before Christ the sun stood in the sign of Aries. Christ was originally worshiped under the sign of the cross, with a lamb lying at the foot of the cross. The cross with Christ upon it appeared only in the sixth century. Before that the Bull, Taurus, was worshiped when the sun stood in its sign. Earlier, it was the Twin, Gemini, that was worshiped in Persia. The team of goats that pulled Thor's chariot had the same significance. Before that the Crab, Cancer, was worshiped, and so forth.

Before the Lemurian age the sun, moon, and earth, united in one body, moved forward in terms of the zodiac. Time was measured following this movement. For this reason, the twelve signs of the zodiac are characterized as the heavenly clock and drawn as such.

A planet alternates between pralaya, a cosmic night, and manvantara, a cosmic day, just as we alternately pass through day and night. The planet passes through the signs of the zodiac during both pralaya and manvantara; for that reason the twelve signs of the zodiac are counted twice, just as we also count two times twelve to equal twenty-four hours. The hours symbolize the signs of the zodiac. The united sun, moon, and earth also moved through the cosmic days and nights according to the heavenly clock. Then their separation occurred. But at that time human beings were not the same as we are now. The soul only gradually descended, and only gradually did the human being develop from the generic into a specific individual being. If one had taken together the generic souls of human beings during the Lemurian and Atlantean times, then one would have perceived something very strange. The aura of the human being is constantly changing; like all astral beings it is in constant motion. The generic souls were reflected in the forms of animals, for example, in sphinxes and so forth. The ancient Atlantean and Lemurian generic souls were constantly changing but they expressed themselves again and again in a fourfold way. The fourfold nature of human generic souls is characterized by the four living creatures of the Apocalypse: lion, bull, eagle, and Man. The lower human being is portrayed through these four living creatures, and the lamb symbolized the perfected human being—that is, the fifth living creature.

Twice twelve heavenly constellations and four living creatures were once the regents of the world. Mighty cosmic powers ensouled the signs of the zodiac and the four living creatures. The twenty-four elders in the Apocalypse are the two times twelve stars on the world clock who were once rulers. The evolution of the human being can be portrayed in this drawing:

The lowest point designates clear day-consciousness. In pre-Lemurian times the human being had a dull clairvoyance. At that time human beings were closer to God than today. Then they acquired day consciousness. Human beings will take that consciousness with them in the course of their further evolution when they again approach God and become clairvoyant. Every point on the descending line corresponds to a point on the ascending line. If we could live backward we would see all the things that we will see in the future in a different, clairvoyant way. In the future we will again see the twelve spirits of the planets, and the sun, moon, and earth will once again be united, “... and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood ...” and so forth. (Rev. 6:12)

When the soul first descended from the womb of God it found a human animal on earth. These human animals looked grotesque; they needed to be transformed, overcome. In the future, there will also be such an animal to overcome. That is what the beast with the two horns would say to us.

Only someone who explains the Apocalypse within its entire context can understand it properly. The Apocalypse is a cosmic explanation of the world. The author was an initiate. He spoke of universal laws that apply to the world from the beginning to the decline, from the alpha to the omega.

We should allow the holy symbols given in the Apocalypse to work upon us. The sign of the Sun intelligence, for example, should not remain a mere sign for us; we should immerse ourselves in this sign until we feel it is no longer dead but flowing with life. The signs should be for us doors connecting the physical to the spiritual world. Then we have fulfilled our duty: to connect the physical and the spiritual worlds.

Eight days ago began with a presentation to help us understand the language of John. We considered how the Apocalypse is to be read and what is hidden behind some of the mysterious expressions, for example, behind the lamb as the beast with seven eyes and seven horns. We also sought to explain the beast with two horns and considered the number 666 as an example of how we must live into this mysterious book. Today, we again seek to find the meaning of this book.

The record of the New Testament is a record of initiation. Using individual images as examples we have seen how deep their meaning really is. All the images have shown us that the Gospels express, in pictorial form, the deepest imaginable meaning of the evolution of the world. It could occur to someone to ask why there are contradictions in the individual Gospels, why they do not correspond to each other. What needs to be said concerning this is already laid out in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact.¹ The Gospels are not records of the biography of Christ Jesus, but rather records concerning initiation. And the Apocalypse is the profoundest record. Augustine said: What is now called the “Christian religion” is the ancient true religion. What was the true religion, now is called the Christian religion.²

We understand what is meant by this statement when we consider the fundamental assertion of Christianity: “Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” John 20:29) In this way something entirely new has come into the world. The teachings are already contained in other religious systems. Among those who understood who “Christ” is the main emphasis was never placed on the content of this teaching. One can also find this content in records from earlier times. What is important with Christ is what this individual means for humankind. We can acquire an understanding for this most readily if we take a look at the ancient mystery centers.

Until the time of Christ only a few specially chosen people were initiated. After severe testing they were permitted to learn the teachings that can now be found in my book Theosophy.³ One had to wait a long time until the higher degrees of vision were permitted. Only the most initiated knew the tradition of how to carry out an initiation. If someone wanted to become a pupil, as a first step they had to do this, as a second step, that, and so forth. The initiation concluded when the pupil had gone through the preparatory stages and was led by the wise ones into the mysteries themselves. That took place in a state of consciousness called “ecstasy,” a state of existence outside the physical body. It was connected with a diminution of consciousness, but at the same time with a vision of the spiritual world. An inner schooling consisting of certain will impulses, meditations, and a purification of the desires brought the pupil to a point where the last step was possible. Then the pupil was put by the initiator into a state that lasted three and a half days, a state like the one we enter when we fall asleep at night. External sense impressions disappeared. When we are asleep, nothing enters into the place where the sense impressions of sight and sound have disappeared, but with those being initiated a new world appeared. They were surrounded by a new world, a world of astral light, not the darkness, nothing of what today's human being experiences in the night appeared to them. The darkness was permeated by spiritual light and beings that are incarnated within the spiritual light. These beings became visible in the astral light. Then, after awhile, the astral world full of flowing light began to resound with the music of the spheres. What had merely been seen earlier began to be heard; it was a pure, spiritual music. External music is only a shadow-like reflection of the sounds of the spheres the seer hears, the seer who also perceives the inside of spiritual beings. Suppose we enter a large room filled with people; only when they begin to speak do they reveal their inner life to us. That is how it is in the spiritual world. First the beings become visible, then the inner life of the beings speaks to us. That is the harmony of the spheres.

Then, when the initiates were led back to vision of the physical world, they experienced themselves fully transformed into new human beings. Everyone who returned in this way then typically expressed: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” (Compare Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34)⁴

And so they returned, knowledgeable concerning the spiritual world out of their own experience. They were then seen as messengers from the spiritual world. What they had experienced up to the point of entering the spiritual world was prescribed precisely, stage by stage.

Although the rites of initiation were not recorded exactly, still there were canons of initiation containing prescriptions for all the steps. Everywhere, whether in the Egyptian schooling of Hermes, or in the Persian school, or in the Greek mysteries, or with the Druidic or Drotten mysteries, there were typical, traditional rules concerning what was to be experienced by anyone wanting to become an initiate.

Typical, similar characteristics appear wherever the lives of the great apostles of religions or world-views are described. The lives of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Hermes, and Buddha have many features in common, features that are important for all religious heroes. Why is this? Superficial researchers have believed that one borrowed from the other. But that is not true. Nevertheless, all of these typical religious heroes passed through these steps up to the highest stage of initiation. There were no biographies in ancient times that took into consideration the external conditions of a person's life. The further back we go before the turning point of time, the less value we find ascribed to the externals of life. Absolutely nothing was said concerning what the very greatest heroes of humankind experienced externally on the physical plane. Their lives were entirely dedicated to initiation. Telling the story of their initiation meant telling the story of their life. The main thing about a Hermes or a Buddha was what he had experienced until the initiation. Since the stages of initiation were similar everywhere, one heard a spiritual description of the life of the great initiates.

What in the past had been experienced only in secret became historical fact in Christianity. What could be described of Herme' experience took place in inner mysteries, at locations far removed from profane eyes.

In Christianity, for the first time, something was experienced as an external physical event that otherwise only took place in the mystery centers. The course Christ's life followed is the same as that experienced by all initiates when, to begin with, they had their etheric bodies lifted out of their physical. Everything that Christ Jesus experienced physically, on the physical plane, they had experienced in the etheric realm. Their last words were also, “My God, my God, how you have glorified me!” They had experienced earlier in the etheric body what Christ experienced in a physical body. In this way the prophecies of the prophets were fulfilled. This one time only experience of Christ represents the greatest decisive turning point in our world history and separates it into two parts.

The evangelists did not write ordinary biographies, but took rather the existing canonical initiation books. All four Gospels are to be seen as initiation writings, each presented from a different perspective. Since, however, initiation is described everywhere in the same way, the Gospels are in agreement on the most important things. We can describe the life of an initiate if we consider it as a life dedicated wholly to initiation. It would have seemed unholy to the evangelists to give an ordinary, external, historical biography of Christ Jesus. They had to take the building blocks for their writings from books derived from the mysteries. Hence, to a certain extent, what the prophets had said was fulfilled.

In a certain sense the Apocalypse represents a new kind of initiation; it shows how the old mysteries were transformed into Christian mysteries. When we look back at the old mysteries we find in them a more or less unified feature. It consisted of the following: Whether we go to Egypt, or to Persia, or to India, whether we are deepened in the Orphic or the Eleusinian mysteries, we find there complete agreement in one feature: a prophecy concerning the One who is to come.⁵ This trait is also found in the Northern European mysteries. There was an initiate in the most ancient times who was signified by the name “Sig.” The Drotten mysteries, which were in Russia and Scandinavia, the Druidic mysteries in Germany all derived from an initiate with the name Sig, who was the founder of the northern mysteries. What happened in the mysteries has been preserved in the various myths and legends of the German nation and other Germanic peoples. The myths and legends are pictorial representations of what was experienced. In the Siegfried legend⁶ we see most clearly that feature that seeks for an end. This feature is expressed in mythological terms in the “Gotterdammerung,” the twilight of the gods.⁷ This is characteristic of all the northern mysteries.

In all mysticism the image of the feminine is used for the soul; this image is also used by Goethe in his “chorus mysticus,” in the concluding scene of the second part of Faust. It is the eternal in the human being, the divine soul that draws the human being forward. Just as initiation was described in ancient Egypt and Persia as the union of the soul with the spiritual, so was it also described here in the north. Here in the north it was understood best that a man proved his worth on the field of battle. Those who counted for something in the north were honored as fighters who fell in the field of battle; those were the ones who entered into eternal life; the others died in their sleep. The fallen fighters were received by the Valkyries,⁸ their own soul; union with the Valkyries was union with the eternal. It was said of Siegfried that he had already united with the Valkyries here on earth; that shows he was an initiate. The meaning of the story, that Siegfried had already experienced union with the Valkyries here on earth, is that he was an initiate. This legend tells us something with the death of Siegfried. When experiencing initiation in the ancient mysteries the initiate is told: We can only bring you to a certain point ... further than this only another can bring you—this other one is Christ Jesus—all that we can give you will be darkened when he comes, the One who will bring the new initiation. Siegfried is vulnerable to Hagen⁹ on his back because the cross has not yet been placed on the back of the one who will take over from the ancient initiation. This part of the body will one day be made invulnerable when the cross has been laid across it. In this way the northern mysteries alluded to Christ Jesus.

All the ancient mysteries looked toward him who was to come, who will live on the physical plane so as to found a new world order. The new initiation is what will occur through the impulses he gave. We find a portrayal of this in the Apocalypse. It tells us how initiation will proceed until Christ Jesus comes again in a new form. The Apocalypse refers to the time when an organ for receiving Christ will be developed. The time until Christ Jesus again will approach is described in the Apocalypse. We will understand the individual words if we adopt the way of thinking of one who has experienced such an initiation. We remember here the words of Christ—if we understand them we will also understand the Apocalypse—“Before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58) Christ directs his view from the past over to the present because for him there is an eternal present.

If we wish to understand what is meant by this we need only remember the fourfold human being who consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. When the I lights up in the course of evolution then the astral and etheric bodies are changed; and then finally the physical body too. The I is here for eternity; it is born out of the womb of a higher spirituality. Whether we look into the past or into the future, this I is what is eternal. If we observe an individual we can ask the question: What transformation has this person's I gone through? If we look back to the great Atlantean flood and then further back we do not find the I in a body such as exists today. At that time we were in a state wherein we could not think as well as we can now. When we look into the future we find the I in bodies ever more perfect, bodies having a perfection that we today with our thinking cannot even imagine. We cannot now imagine the perfection of thinking, the purity of feeling, and so forth in the future bodies of humankind. Initiates must make use of the form the human body has at any given time. Christ, too, had to use the ordinary form of the human body in his time. Still, when we look deeper we see in him a stage of evolution that humankind will only achieve in the distant future. Christ Jesus was the first born among those who could overcome death.

Let us compare the two ways of developing. The human being is born, goes through a life on earth, dies, goes through an astral condition, through devachan, and is then born again. When we go back to the beings who were present before the Lemurian age we have beings who do not die and are not reborn. They are constantly exchanging sheaths, as we do between physical birth and death. Then a certain revolution enters in. Today, human beings alternate between spiritual and physical life. With the group souls of animals it happens this way: Individual animals discard their bodies but the group souls themselves never die.

If we try to imagine the very highest being, the one who was as highly developed at the beginning as others will be at the end of evolution, then we have the image of Christ. He was the I that was as highly developed at the beginning as the human being will be at the end. “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come ...” (Rev. 1:4) He is the first and the last.

The one who gives the Revelation to John is thus described. It is a Christian book; that is proven by the passage that reads: “... and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Rev. 1:5,6)

Christianity represents the greatest possible individualization of the human being, the freedom of the human being as an individual. At the beginning of the human race we see small communities held together by blood ties. Love was limited to those of the same blood. Now Christ Jesus comes and expands all ethnic groups and communities to include all of humanity. All ethnic religions are overcome through him. Christianity is the religion of the world. Within it there are only human beings; Christianity knows only human beings. Christianity would never be able to speak of the community of religions, but only of community of human beings. An age began when the secret mysteries became accessible to everyone through the mystery of Golgotha, which was placed in the center of the world. The chosen priests and kings gradually cease to exist. A final state is pointed to wherein everyone is a priest and a king, a state wherein all distinctions are swept away and all human beings are made equal. Therefore, the Apocalypse speaks of: “... a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father.” (Rev. 1:6)

The book portrays a real initiation, an ascent, to begin with, through learning on the physical plane. This step is portrayed in the words concerning the seven letters to the seven communities. The seven letters present what must first be learned. Then a number of pictures lead us to the astral plane. We see groups of beings undergoing transformation in the astral light: “... and he who sat there appeared like jasper and carnelian, and, round the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald.” (Rev. 4:3) “And before the throne there is as it were a sea of glass, like crystal.” (Rev. 4:6) The quality and being of the astral light is indicated by the transparency. In the astral light we can see through objects; they appear like glass. The entire astral world is like a glass sea.

The four living creatures then follow; they are to represent the human group souls. They were full of eyes within and without and had no peace day or night. There is constant movement in the astral world—astral eyes are everywhere and everything is transparent to them, both within and all around.

We see how, at first, the mysteries of the physical plane are described and then, out of the sealed book, the astral imaginations. They approach us in pictures.

After the seer has perceived the spiritual beings in the astral light for awhile, they begin to sound forth. This is described in the resounding of the trumpets when the sixth seal is opened. That is the condition of devachan. The seer becomes “clairaudient,” able to hear spiritual sounds—the spiritual ear is opened.

The stage then follows when the seer expands his consciousness over the entire earth. This is indicated in the swallowing of the book. It expresses the ascent into the higher regions of the spiritual worlds.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact (Hudson, N.Y.:Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 2. Actual words: “For what is now called the Christian religion existed even among the ancients and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race until ‘Christ came in the flesh.’ From that time, true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian.” Augustine, The Retractions Book I, chapter 12, section 3, trans. Mary Inez Bogan in The Fathers of the Church (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968).
• 3. Steiner, Theosophy (GA 9) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1993).
• 4. ompare lecture of September 12, 1910 in The Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 123) (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press. 1965).
• 5. Compare the lecture cycle Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, and Revelations of the Spirit (GA 129) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963); Mystery Centers (GA 232) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1973); and World History in the Light of Anthroposophy (GA 233) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1977).
• 6. Compare the lecture of October 21, 1904: “Die Siegfriedsage” in Esoterik und Weltgeschichte in der grieschischen und germanischen Mythologie [“The Legend of Siegfried” in Esoteric and World History in Greek and German Mythology] (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1955).
• 7. Compare the lecture of August 14. 1908 in the lecture cycle Universe, Earth and Man (GA 105) (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1987).
• 8. he virgin heroines of Germanic mythology.
• 9. One of the main heroes of the Nibelungen saga: he treacherously suffocates Siegfried after a hunt while Siegfried is drinking at a fountain.