The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It must be emphasized again and again that the most essential point of our spiritual scientific endeavor is that which shows us how mere knowledge, mere knowledge living in ideas and conceptions, must increasingly and how we must seek a knowledge, a sum of ideas and perceptions, of feelings and will impulses, that becomes real life for us, that makes us alive in the most eminent sense of the word. It is necessary that we occasionally direct our contemplation, our meditation, to this cardinal point of our striving. For the light that can radiate from this point can only fully illuminate our souls if we return to it again and again in faithful contemplation. It must be a matter of heartfelt need for us, who want to profess spiritual scientific striving with our soul and heart in these serious times, to translate into real life, into the direct life of the soul, that which we can become through knowledge. We must do something to ensure that everything that is mere theoretical insight, that is, mere scientific endeavor, is gradually transformed into experience, so that it is enriched from the spiritual world by that through which it can become experience. Otherwise we are heading for a time of spiritual aridity; for theories, mere scientific convictions, are apt to dry up the human soul and human life in general. But deeply, deeply rooted in our time is the belief that one must get along in life with a conviction organized according to the pattern of scientific knowledge.

The great events that are taking place in our time should be a particular challenge to those souls inclined towards spiritual science to really come to terms with the difference between life and mere knowledge, between life and mere conviction formed according to a scientific pattern. We must try to arrive at a kind of self-knowledge, at purely human self-knowledge; we must try to consult ourselves about how much the demon of theoretical conviction lives in human hearts. We must clearly focus our soul's eye on how this demon of theoretical conviction wants to take root. And we will not make our innermost experience of what anthroposophy is meant to be for us if we do not try to do so, if we do not turn our eyes to facts that can also surprise the anthroposophist, so to speak, in his own soul life, that point out how far one stands from the direct experience of the spiritual when one is so devoted to modern soul life, and how close one stands to the search for a theoretical conviction. One must face such facts quite impartially.

I have been able – and what I am about to say is only meant as an example – to speak in various places in the German-speaking world about experiences related to our difficult times since serious events befell Europe and the world. I was also able to do so here in Stuttgart. I have spoken about such experiences here and there. What were some of the consequences of discussing such experiences? One of the consequences was that members of other spiritual realms came with the request that what had been spoken within our language area should also be brought to them. This was often demanded under the well-intentioned premise that the truth is the same for all people, of course, and that such a carrying over of what is spoken in one place to another place could readily serve to clarify the truth in our difficult time. It has become fashionable within our school of thought to write down everything that is said, including what is said out of the immediate impulse not only of the time, but also of the place and the people to whom it is spoken, and to have the belief that this must serve everyone in the same way because one makes the theoretical assumption that truth can only be formulated in one single way. Now, my dear friends, this nonsense, which consists of writing down the spoken word in a precise way and believing that it still has the content when it is now read out or spoken again as a written word, would become monstrous if one could believe what has just been suggested.

If the things that people in Europe and the world are currently facing could be defined by words, then the immense rivers of blood that must flow today from the eternal necessities of earthly development would not have to flow. If it were possible for souls to understand each other through national aspirations, then they would not have to confront each other with cannons. We must prove ourselves with the character of the experience that has been given, we must prove ourselves with spiritual-scientific knowledge, especially where it is important to face the great seriousness. Using occult truths in a playful way for everyday soul needs cannot be the task of our spiritual-scientific endeavor. As long as we are not able to understand that spiritual powers are really active in the world phenomena that confront us on the physical plane, and that we need spiritual science to assess and see through the value and inner truth of these spiritual powers, as long as we are not able to do this, we do not yet have the right relationship to our spiritual science.

We must be clear about this: when we are working on purely anthroposophical ground, when we are developing the high truths for our soul that touch on the highest essence of man, then we are on ground that is beyond nationality, even beyond racial differences. When we are standing firmly on the ground of what we can gain about the human being from spiritual knowledge, then the same truths apply throughout the world, and even within certain horizons for other planets in our solar system. As soon as we stand on this ground, as soon as the highest thoughts concerning the human being come into consideration for us. It is different when things come into consideration that speak and must speak of something other than this highest human essence: When nations face each other, we are not dealing with that which in the nature of man reaches beyond all the differentiations of humanity. When nations face each other, it is not just people who face each other, but spiritual worlds; it is such entities in spiritual worlds that are active through people and live in people. And to believe that what must apply to people must also apply to that complicated world of demons and spirits that works through people when nations fight with each other, to believe that one could determine something through simple human logic about what drives the demons against each other, that is to say, not yet to have found faith in a concrete spiritual world.

What do I mean by that? — It is true that when we look at what is happening in the outside world, we find — I will now completely disregard the actual painful events of the war — that people of different nationalities are facing each other. We find that one nationality sometimes overwhelms the other with its hatred in the most terrible way. Then people try to cope with it, that is, they ask themselves which nation has more right to hate, this nation or that nation, or which one should hate more than another. One also thinks about which nation is particularly to blame for this war. One reflects on these matters in much the same way as one would reflect during a court case, where one weighs up the various circumstances. But what are you really doing when you do what has just been characterized and what dominates the current literature? One thereby denies all spiritual life, even if one did not want to admit it, because one professes the dogma that those demons, for example, which have come over from the East and have brought discord into European life, are to be judged according to the pattern of the intellect, let us say, of understanding, that man has. For one does not believe that there is another mind, another power of judgment, than that which man has. All that is judged from the merely human point of view in the face of such events that stir up evolution is a denial of spiritual-scientific life. We profess a genuine spiritual-scientific life only when we realize that spiritual causes are being realized in physical events, causes that necessitate a different power of judgment than that of the physical plane. When people with different views fight each other on the physical plane, then one can perhaps decide according to human judgment. But this is not possible when nations fight each other, because invisible powers express themselves through the life of nations. Invisible powers also express themselves in man, but in such a way that they fit into human judgment. But they do not do that in the life of nations. There it is precisely a matter of our proving ourselves in the recognition of the concrete spiritual life and realizing that there are many other impulses speaking in the human soul than those that can be mastered with the earthly mind when such great events take place.

If one reads this or that today, which is said and which is also repeated abundantly by those who have received an impulse from spiritual science, then one finds that much of it is written or spoken as if the world's development had only begun on July 20, 1914. Even when seeking the causes of the present complications, people speak as if they had begun last year. One of the practical results of spiritual science, in addition to many others, must be that people will want to learn something, that they will want to form an opinion not from the immediate day, but from the larger context. That will be the most elementary thing; the further development will consist in examining the judgment against what spiritual science is able to give. Let us look at an example to see how this spiritual science must be applied when it comes to contrasting our understanding with our experience and then making our experience our own.

We have always emphasized that the development of the world, the evolution of the earth, proceeds in distinctly different cultural periods in the post-Atlantic era. We have enumerated these cultural periods: the ancient Indian cultural period, the Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greek-Latin, then the one that is our own in the present; then we pointed out that a sixth, a seventh epoch will have to follow ours. But we were not satisfied with simply schematically presenting the succession of these cultural periods; we tried to characterize what is peculiar to the individual cultural periods. And in doing so, we tried to gain an understanding of our own time, of the transitional impulses that live in our time, in our fifth post-Atlantic epoch. And we have also realized that by no means can anything schematic be meant by such characterizations, for example, that one cannot say that the peculiarity of this cultural epoch extends over the whole earth. It occurs in certain places, other places on earth, other territories, lag behind. They need not necessarily lag behind, but they do lag behind with old forces, in order that these old forces may later be appropriately related to another cultural epoch in a different cultural epoch, as evolution progresses. We need not even think in terms of values, but only in terms of character peculiarities. How could it fail to strike people as profoundly different when it comes to the spiritual culture, say, of the European and Asian peoples? How could one not notice the difference in the skin coloration! If we look at the European-American being and the Asian being – leaving aside any value judgments for the moment – we have to face the fact that the Asian peoples have retained certain cultural impulses from past eras, while the European-American peoples have moved beyond these cultural impulses. Only if one is caught in an unhealthy soul life can one be particularly impressed by what oriental mysticism has preserved for oriental humanity from ancient times, when people necessarily had to live with lower powers of vision. Europe has indeed been seized by such an unhealthy spiritual life in many ways; people believed that they had to learn the way to the spiritual worlds through Asian yogism and the like. However, this tendency proves nothing more than an unhealthy soul life. A healthy soul life must be built upon the assimilation of the experiences of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch into spiritual life and spiritual knowledge, and not upon the practice of bringing up something in humanity that is quite interesting to study scientifically, so to speak, but which must not be renewed for European humanity without its falling back into times that are not appropriate for it. But other times will come about the development of the earth, following times. In these following times, outdated forces will have to join with advanced forces again. Therefore, they must remain in some place in order to be there, in order to be able to connect with the advanced forces. A sixth will follow the fifth cultural epoch. Abstract thinking, that terrible abstract thinking, which is a daughter of purely theoretical-scientific conviction, cannot but esteem the sixth age higher than the fifth, because the sixth is a later development. But we should realize that there are periods of decline as well as periods of rise. We should be fully aware that the sixth age, which follows the fifth in the post-Atlantean period, must of necessity belong to the decline and that what has developed in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch must be the germ for the following earth time of the seventh cultural epoch. One must look at things so vividly, not abstractly or theoretically, so that one lets the sixth age follow the fifth as a more perfect one.

In Atlantean times, the fourth epoch was the one in which the seeds for our present time lay. In our time, it is the fifth cultural epoch that contains the seeds for what must follow the post-Atlantean period. And what is the characteristic that must develop in this fifth cultural epoch in particular? This is the characteristic that has been particularly fanned by the Mystery of Golgotha: that the spiritual impulses have been led down into the immediate physical-human, that, as it were, the flesh must be seized by the spirit.

"It has not yet happened. It will only have happened when spiritual science has a firmer earthly footing and many more people express it in their immediate lives, when the spirit is in every hand movement, in every finger movement, one might say, when it is expressed in the most everyday actions. But it was for the sake of this carrying down of spiritual impulses that the Christ became incarnate in a human body. And this carrying down, this permeation of the flesh with the spirit, that is the characteristic of the mission, the mission of white humanity in general. People have their white skin color because the spirit works in the skin when it wants to descend to the physical plane. The task of our fifth cultural epoch, which has been prepared by the other four cultural epochs, is to make that which is the outer physical body a housing for the spirit. And our task must be to familiarize ourselves with those cultural impulses that show the tendency to introduce the spirit into the flesh, to introduce the spirit into everyday life. When we fully recognize this, then we will also be clear about the fact that where the spirit is still to work as spirit, where it is to remain in a certain way in its development — because in our time it has the task of descending into the flesh —, that where it lags behind, where it takes on a demonic character, the spirit does not completely penetrate the flesh, that the white skin coloration does not occur because atavistic forces are present that do not allow the spirit to fully harmonize with the flesh.

In the sixth cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, the task will be to recognize the spirit more in the elemental world than directly in itself, to recognize the spirit more in the elemental world, because this sixth cultural epoch has the task of preparing the recognition of the spirit in the physical environment. This cannot be achieved without difficulty if ancient atavistic forces are not preserved that recognize the spirit in its purely elementary life. But these things do not happen in the world without the most fierce struggles. White humanity is still on the path of absorbing the spirit deeper and deeper into its own being. The yellow race is on the way to preserving those ages in which the spirit is kept far from the body, in which the spirit is sought outside of the human physical organization, only there. But this must lead to the fact that the transition from the fifth cultural epoch into the sixth cultural epoch cannot take place otherwise than as a fierce struggle between the white race and the colored race in the most diverse fields. And what precedes these struggles, which will take place between the white and the colored humanity, will occupy world history until the great struggles between the white and the colored humanity are fought out. Future events are reflected in multiple ways in previous events. When we look at what we have acquired through the most diverse considerations in a spiritual-scientific sense, we are faced with something colossal that we can see as necessarily taking place in the future.

On the one hand, we have a part of humanity with the mission of introducing the spirit into physical life in such a way that the spirit permeates everything in physical life. And on the other hand, we have a part of humanity with the necessity of now, so to speak, taking over the descending development. This cannot happen otherwise than through that which truly professes to permeate the physical with the spiritual, to bring forth cultural impulses, to bring forth living impulses that are lasting for the earth, that cannot disappear from the earth again. For what follows as the sixth, as the seventh cultural epoch, must live spiritually from the creations of the fifth, must absorb the creations of the fifth cultural epoch. The fifth cultural epoch has the task of deepening the external idealistic life into a spiritual life. But that which is thus conquered as a spiritual life by idealism must be accepted later, must live on. For in the East there will not be the strength to productively create one's own spiritual life, but only to absorb what has been created. Thus, history must unfold in such a way that a spiritual culture is created by present-day humanity, which carries the actual cultural impulses within itself. This spiritual culture is the actual historical successor to the fifth culture, and it will be assimilated by what follows.

Let us try to understand objectively and without prejudice the difference between these two currents of humanity. Try to realize how, since the entry of that part of humanity called the Germanic peoples, there has been a struggle to permeate the external physical with the spiritual, and how the depths of Christianity have been embraced. One started from the external physical, from that which, as it were, contained the germ of a physical-spiritual. We may look back to the summer sacrifice, to the sacrifice at the summer solstice of the god Baldur. The true and deeper meaning of this was lost in early times, but what is the true and deeper meaning? It can only be grasped by directing our attention to the fact that, as the spring sun rises, in the light and warmth, spiritual powers also rise, as the god Lenz rises, and that, by lighting of the St. John's fire, man tends to connect with the spring forces that prevail in the forces of nature, and he lights a fire to symbolize that he connects his understanding with the death of the god of spring at the summer solstice. This is the Baldur saga: the god Lenz is burnt in the summer solstice fire because people sensed the fertility and germination in nature, in the outer physical world, because they loved the god Lenz and followed him into his death. But because in the outer physical world they had the model of the Christ, who does not die at the summer solstice but is born at the winter solstice — note this contrast between the physical and the spiritual —, because they had the summer solstice god as an example for the winter solstice god, because they had the reverse of the physical for the spiritual, and so they penetrated each other with what was related and yet opposite. If the god Baldur is the god of spring who dies during the summer solstice, then the Christian god is the one who is born during the winter solstice. The one and the other interpenetrate each other as it happens in the outer physical body, interpenetrating with the spiritual, which is veiled by the darkness of the body, by the winter darkness. The winter spirit permeates the summer body. And how do these things interpenetrate? In the immediate personal struggle of the cultural impulses. What is the history of Central Europe if not a continuous struggle for the awakening of the divine spark in the personal soul, for the spiritual to arise in the physical? One can disregard everything else, but one must see through the truth, recognize the characteristic of this Central European nature.

And take the other part of humanity. How far removed it is, fundamentally, from this personal impulse of the spiritual striving upward in the physical! One would like to say: “From the point of view of natural history” it is extremely interesting to observe how Chinese culture has preserved its Tao and Confucian religions, and how Asian religions in general have preserved the most ancient forms, the most abstract forms, those forms in which the theoretical mind feels so at home, but which are rigidity in the face of personal experience, which do not allow personal experience to come into play, because this personal experience is to be preserved until the time when the achievements of human culture are incorporated in such a way that they can be assimilated. In the fifth cultural epoch, something spiritual must be attained by one's own efforts; in the sixth cultural epoch, people will come and accept what has been worked out and achieved as their outlook, as their experience, but as something that they have not achieved themselves. It will be preserved in the forces that do not struggle, but accept the spiritual as something external and self-evident. And the prelude to that much more far-reaching struggle is the one that must gradually develop as the struggle between the Germanic and the Slavic world. One should only consider that the Slavic world is in a sense an outpost for that which is the sixth cultural epoch, indeed that in it lies the actual germ of the sixth cultural epoch. Consider this in a true, genuine, spiritual-scientific sense. Then you will realize that in this Slavic element there must be something receptive, something that has nothing to do with this struggle, that almost rejects one's own struggle. You can feel it with your hands. While in Central Europe the souls have fought, have fought with their inner selves, in order to grasp God through personal striving, the Slavonic element preserves religion, the grasp of God, the cultus, which is just there; it preserves, it does not make the spirit inwardly alive, but lets the spirit pass over it like a cloud and lives in this cloud, remaining alien to the spirit with the personality.

Central Europe could not stop at some old form of external Christianity because it had to struggle. The East has stopped, and even its cult forms have become rigid and abstract because it is to prepare itself to receive externally, to accept what the West acquires through personal struggle, because it is not prepared to receive things through personal struggle, this East. And how can we bring about mutual understanding between two such different spiritual impulses, when the model is purely theoretical? How can we possibly arbitrate between two different spiritual currents that behave as differentiated currents must behave? Do not misunderstand the comparison: How can one, I might say, distinguish the lion's custom from the elephant's custom? But events develop out of eternal necessities and proceed as the eternal necessities flow. The East had to struggle against what was and is becoming more and more necessary for it: the connection with the West and its culture. For basically, before its maturation, it could not be given the right understanding. And an outward expression is the conflict between what is called Germanic and what is called Slavic, that which is basically only just being prepared and will hover as a long concern over European life: the conflict between the Germanic and the Slavic. One could say that just as a child resists learning the achievements of the ancients, so the East resists the achievements of the West, resists them, resists them to such an extent that it hates them, even if it feels compelled to accept their achievements from time to time. To shine the light of truth on these things requires something different from what one loves today; although one sometimes senses this other thing, one is reluctant to turn one's eyes to these things and really understand them from their innermost impulses. Because if one is only slightly touched by these innermost impulses, much of the chatter will soon cease, and much of what is done must cease, which arises from confusion, the confusion that wants to remain in the external Maja.

What will be understood by the sixth cultural epoch? It will be understood as a cultural epoch in which a large part of the Eastern people will have sacrificed their humanity to that which has been achieved in popular culture, in that, like the feminine, the Eastern will have allowed itself to be fertilized by the masculine Western. That which will live in the souls of the sixth cultural epoch will be the same as that which has been achieved by the souls of the fifth cultural epoch. This means that from the East, immaturity and that which has not yet matured will surge forward and resist what must happen anyway. Just as the Greek-Roman once had to defend itself against the Germanic, so the Slavic must defend itself against the Germanic; but just as in the transition from the Greek-Roman to the Germanic in the ascending development, so in the transition from the Germanic to the Slavic in the descending one. By the Germanic element having taken over the actual mission of the fifth cultural epoch, it was this Germanic element that had to and will continue to have to insert the actual understanding of Christianity into the inner struggle of earthly evolution for this fifth cultural epoch. And the greatest misfortune would have occurred if the Germanic element had been defeated by the Roman element in the long run, because then what has happened through the fifth cultural epoch could not have happened: this Germanic element had to live through the personal struggle. And it would be the greatest misfortune if the Slavic element ever defeated the Germanic element. Note the difference. It would be the most dismal, most abstract schematism if one were to describe it as an misfortune in the transition from the fifth to the sixth cultural epoch, which one would have to describe as an misfortune in the transition from the fourth to the fifth cultural epoch. The victory of the Romans would have meant the impossibility of the mission of the fifth cultural epoch; the victory of the Slavic element would have meant the same impossibility for the sixth cultural epoch. For only in passively accepting what the fifth cultural epoch produces can the meaning of the sixth exist.

One must feel what follows quite independently of ambitions, of national aspirations, from these realizations, when these realizations become life. But one must also be clear about how difficult it becomes for people to understand when the truth contradicts their passions, when the truth contradicts their aspirations. If someone tries to convince a Western European or an Englishman from Central Europe, for example, using human reason, then one is doing something that should be recognized as unsuccessful, especially when it comes to national antagonisms. On purely humanistic ground, we understand each other as human beings. But if we leave this ground and enter into the struggles of nations, we should be clear about the difficulties standing in the way of mutual understanding. There is only one way to gain understanding, for example, in the French West of Europe, for what one is actually doing. It is the path that will one day arise from the realization of what unnaturalness it actually is to let oneself be pushed forward in the French west by the hand of the European east. Only the realization of what one has done oneself will bring some understanding of the matter, but not the word that comes from others, that comes from those who stand on a different national soil. Such things are sometimes sensed and sensed for, but then forgotten again. Because the most characteristic things that happen are usually forgotten. If only it had been possible, over the last forty years, to repeatedly print that meaningful correspondence that once took place between Ernest Renan, the Frenchman, and David Friedrich Strauß, the Württemberg German! It would have been useful if the decisive letters that were exchanged had been brought to people's attention once every four weeks, so to speak: then they would have sensed something of what was to come. One need only point out the one passage in Renan's letter where he expresses the desire to work together with Central Europe for Western European culture: this was an impulse flowing from the eternal forces. But then Renan immediately adds: “But that contradicts my patriotism.” Because if Alsace-Lorraine is taken from the French, then as a Frenchman I can only be in favor of Western culture being protected against the East. Everything that came later is already in the making in such a statement; that is the seed of what will happen later. It shows that even an enlightened spirit basically admitted: Yes, I can see where the path lies that is predetermined by eternal necessity, but I do not want to follow it because I want to be more French than human. I say one has felt, sensed, how things lie in the sense of eternal necessity; but one must gradually learn through spiritual science to follow one's intuitions, one's feelings with one's judgment. One must learn to arrive at the real facts by means of judgment. And one cannot grasp the real facts without understanding the spiritual world. It is impossible to do so without resorting to that which gives the facts their evolutionary impulses from the spiritual world.

We see how fruitful for us can be what comes out of spiritual science, how we can illuminate life in its most serious events when we unite with our minds what follows from real spiritual-scientific knowledge, for example, about the post-Atlantic cultural epochs. There we gain an objective standard, there we gain the possibility of rising above personal aspirations, even on the delicate ground of national experience. And that is the peculiar thing about the Central European experience, that this Central European experience really gives people the opportunity to rise above what is merely national. Just try to realize how, in the successive cultural epochs, Central Europe in particular — in that struggle of the human soul in Central Europe — overcomes the personal at the same time, where it is not based on passions and immediate instinctual impulses.

What beauty is, other peoples have surely felt as well. Only in Central Europe, however, has beauty and its place in human experience been so deeply reflected upon as in Schiller's “Aesthetic Letters”. Other nations have also fought battles, and will do so: but only in Central Europe have they intervened in a battle in such a way that it has invoked the deepest philosophical impulses in order to inspire the battle with these impulses, as Fichte did in his “Speeches to the German Nation”. Religious struggles were also fought elsewhere: nowhere in the world were they as closely connected with all branches of human experience as they were in Central Europe.

And take our Anthroposophical Society itself, take it as we have developed it among ourselves, how we have struggled, fought and also suffered in it, at least a number of us, in recent years. We were connected for a time with the Theosophical Society of English coloration. What then was the deep impulse that did not allow this connection with that theosophical movement to continue? Let us be clear about this, my dear friends, what was the deep impulse? Just look at the movement. What could lead to the absurdity of Krishnamurti and similar follies? It led to the conviction of spiritual life being attached to the rest of the culture as an external element. There are two things: the external and philosophical view of life in England, and then, attached to it, without the two having much to do with each other, a spiritual conviction. There is no need to interweave the two. Here we feel that we can only arrive at a spiritual conviction when it grows out of our body, as it were, out of everything that was driven by Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius iles in the mysticism of the Middle Ages, what has gone through German philosophy, through German poetry in spiritual preparation, when what we want and must want necessarily grows out of it like a new organic limb. We cannot attach the spiritual life to the rest; we need a living organism, not a living mechanism. One can realize such things without falling into arrogance, because one needs clarity about how the spiritual must be in life, and how one can grasp the rest of life through the spiritual. We, as confessors of the spiritual-scientific world view, must be able to become souls that want what must be in the sense of the just given characteristic in Central European spiritual life. Of course, this is also a struggle; the real issue is that one might say: the truth must first be achieved by pushing the errors to both sides of the road. - How difficult it is sometimes to recognize that one must push the errors to both sides of the road! One could have tragic experiences in the last decades.

I would like to paint a vivid picture for you. It has a certain significance, especially now, to show how the natural connection between the two Central European countries has come about in our time. — In Austria, in the second half of the 19th century, lived one of the most German poets, Robert Hamerling. He was also German in that he truly sought to give birth to the whole world in his own soul. In his novel “Ahasver in Rome” he traces the wandering human soul back to Cain, and in the confrontation between Ahasver and Nero he attempts to solve the profound riddle of the human soul. In his Aspasia he tried to bring Greek cultural life back to life from the German soul. He tried to solve the riddle of life for himself by delving into the religious life, which had been sought at a certain time, in his Anabaptist epic, The King of Sion. In his drama “Danton and Robespierre” he tried to understand the driving impulses of the French Revolution. And finally, in his “Homunculus” he tried to explain the impulses that reach into the future and overwhelm the spiritual. But I could cite many more examples to show how truly Central European, how truly German Robert Hamerling's spirit was. This Robert Hamerling spent a large part of his life in bed; for the last three decades he was almost always ill. He wrote his greatest works in bed, in pain. But no one would guess from these works that they were written by a seriously ill man. Everything is sound; one can judge it as one likes, but everything is sound. Certainly, the works have been reprinted in larger numbers; but in the eighties — I could say that it became vividly clear to me, as if in a symbol, what such a spirit could have become for a part of humanity in Central Europe if its impulses had flowed into the souls. Once, when such things as those brought about by Robert Hamerling in the development of the spirit were being discussed in a society, a man came in who was accustomed to hearing mainly himself and not paying much attention to what others say - there are such people who like to hear themselves. As if he had been hit by a bombshell, he declared that the greatest thing to happen to humanity was Dostoyevsky's “Raskolnikov”! Of course, one does not need to ignore the unique greatness of Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, but the attachment to the material, to the soul that is stuck in the material and leaves the spiritual outside, contrasts tremendously with the interpenetration of the spiritual and the material that Hamerling sought. It may certainly be more interesting and sensational to look at the soul that does not want to emerge from the material and which Dostoyevsky describes so magnificently, but for the Central European human being, the recognition of the interpenetration of the spiritual and the physical means a recognition of his entire being and his entire task. There too, there is a struggle.

The inner struggle will be added to the outer struggle, that inner struggle against the opposing forces that rebel against recognizing the spiritual. We are already experiencing the strangest facts: from one side we are warned not to pay too much attention to how the spiritual powers in Europe are now juxtaposed; because if the purely German element were to prevail – we have been warned from the German side! then one would indeed have to fear a revival of the kind of ideas that a Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Goethe produced: one would have to fear a metaphysical dreaming. It is a peculiar fear that is being talked about; but this fear could grow ever greater, and those who have this fear will indeed not be able to accept the spiritual. But in truth it must be realized that the idealism of Central Europe, just as the child does to the man, must develop into spiritualism; for this idealism of Central Europe is the child of spiritualism, the child that should become spiritualism. When Fichte spoke, he still spoke only of idealism, but of such an idealism that strives towards spiritualism. This impulse of spiritualism must not be allowed to disappear from the evolution of the earth.

Much of the meaning of the time can be expressed in these simple words. Individual human beings have indeed sensed and felt such things. But these intuitions pass by without being taken in their depth, without the main emphasis being seen in them. One fails to link the unimportant to the important. And that is why it is important not to lose sight of the big picture, to really see what is essential in the currents that flow over the development of the earth. And we come to the most essential when we allow ourselves to be taught by what this development of the earth shows us in spiritual light. In the particular case, if we really take seriously the teaching of the successive post-Atlantean cultural epochs - it must be said again and again - people should rise above that narrow point of view that cannot see the main thing.

Let me give you an example. Among ourselves, it is necessary to point out such things. Suppose someone were to say the following today, and then let us try to consider the idea that someone would say this today: As far as I am concerned, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in the same on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spitting fire and flame against Germany. The German press is already sounding its warning cry. A long time has passed since Russia gathered after the Crimean War, and it seems that it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again.

If the Mediterranean Sea is to become, according to the more pompous than true expression, “a French lake”, then Russia has the even more positive intention of turning the Black Sea into a “Russian lake” and the Sea of Marmara into a “Russian pond”. That Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia is a fixed goal of Russian policy, which finds its lever of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism. The Danube would then be closed at the Iron Gate by the Russian turnpike. —

Let us assume that someone would speak in this way. One could then say: Well, now he has been taught a lesson by what has happened – and those who emphatically preach that the war was only wanted by Central Europe and did not necessarily develop from the East could be right after all. But this was written in 1870! And in any case, not a year went by without something like this being written. How foolish it is to believe that the cause of what is happening today is not to be found in the forces that have been building up and playing out over long periods of time! These words were written in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. To believe that the events need not have occurred and to believe that all impulses did not come from the East is, to put it mildly, inconsistent and a failure to recognize the true effective forces. It must not be allowed to happen, and must be prevented by spiritual science, that people, including journalists, repeatedly judge as if the beginnings of the events that are now unfolding only formed five or six months ago! When people are trained through spiritual science to know that the great is prepared in the small, and that only from the great can the small be judged, then something will be gained for ordinary life from spiritual science, then in this ordinary life that which spiritual science makes us experience will be prepared.

I wanted to speak, indeed I could say I had to speak to you in this introductory lecture today again from a certain point of view, which is prompted by the experiences of the time. I had to speak of what spiritual science is to become for us in judging the world and our position in the world. I have had to speak of it. Basically, we must allow ourselves to be admonished again and again to take seriously, very seriously, what spiritual science wants to give us, and not to want to live two lives, so to speak: one life in which we explain things of the world in a spiritual-scientific sense, and the other life in which we are absorbed in everyday matters and do as other people do. But it is not so much through words as through the way I have dealt with things here in this narrower circle that I would like to evoke in you the feeling and the sensation that these words really do not want to be anything other than eternal truths in the sense that eternal truths are also the most individual. These words are spoken to you, my dear friends, with your feelings here in southern Germany, with the emotional nuance that these words deserve here. And if it were enough to simply write down these words and read them aloud everywhere to people with different life contexts, then it might also be enough if I just wrote down my words and did not travel around. That the words must be spoken out of the context of feelings and sensations, because wherever people come together there is a common human aura out of which one must speak, we must finally recognize this in spiritual life. What matters is that we bring things into life, not that we make the phrase that we have to bring things into life, but that we really bring them into life. And to do that, we have to take them individually. Things happen individually because they have to happen individually. And it is an abstract belief to assume, for example, that what I will say the day after tomorrow in the public lecture in that house, which is located across from the house with the Hegel memorial plaque, that what is contained in the living, individual, and immediate, that which is abstractly spoken for all nuances of feeling, as it were, for the conversion of the whole world. One must also realize that what one person can grasp, another cannot grasp. And if the anthroposophical lectures must bear a certain individual character here and there, then this is even more the case when one is confronted with such serious matters as we are now. But only if one takes the truth seriously and does not believe that that which is alive can be grasped with words that are lifeless and motionless and can therefore be applied anywhere, only then will one understand that which is universally valid in the most individual way. I would like you to reflect on this side of life as well. It will be a way to bring to life in your own soul and in your own way what I have to bring from the spiritual world in my own way, so that it is not just a repetition of what has to come through me in my own way. Just as sunlight is reflected differently in each little stone and yet is always the same sunlight because it is imbued with life, so spiritual science must become something that lives differently in each individual and yet is always and forever the same. Spiritual science cannot live in the Englishman, Frenchman, Russian, German in one way when national matters are concerned, and the other cannot be converted by that by which the feeling of the one is most fruitfully enlivened. Such a proselytizing urge arises from the theoretical bent of our time. What external, purely material science can do, namely, to categorize everything, cannot be the case with spiritual science, because it is a living thing, and because I must speak to you not as an abstract scientific spirit demands of me, but as it comes to life in me as I stand here before you. For it is not from my heart, but from your heart, that I do it as well as I can. And I would like to serve the spiritual scientific impulse, which instructs the one who can look up to the spiritual world to tune out and express what lies in the depths of the souls of those who are listening. In a sense, it may be said that What is expressed in this or that meditation arises from the depths of the souls of the listeners. Think about that too! We have to take spiritual science as something that is experienced and not as something abstract. What is abstract appeals to our pride, appeals to our stubbornness, which likes to indulge in persuasion. What is spiritual simply wants to be communicated. And what I have to communicate wants to be communicated, even if there is not a single person here who believes a single word I say. If we go to the other person with the intention of wanting to persuade him, with the opinion that he should accept our opinion, then we are not really experiencing the spiritual. And this experience, this direct grasp of the spiritual world, will produce the aura that humanity must have in the future.

It must be said again and again: What we are now experiencing under rivers of blood will only mean for humanity what it is meant to mean when something completely new also shows itself in culture, in humanity. But this new thing will sprout when there are people from whose souls spiritual thoughts arise; these thoughts are powers. And into the atmosphere that will be created when the twilight of war has passed and the sun of peace shines again, the thoughts that pour into the spiritual horizon must flow. Then those whose souls look down, those who had to leave their bodies prematurely on the battlefields, will know what they actually fell for on the battlefields. And the anthroposophist must say to himself that he is only living through this time in the right way if he takes in the living spirit of spiritual scientific striving. When certain souls in the consciousness of the spirit send their meaning into the spiritual realm, then a horizon of light will truly arise from our blood horizon for the future development of humanity.

We will continue this discussion tomorrow, when we will also discuss a specific topic. But today we want to bring to mind the thoughts that bring us together with the serious events of the time:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

I can easily imagine that someone draws the conclusion from yesterday's deliberations that those personalities who belong to the groups of people, the peoples, who are only in the sixth cultural period receive their special mission because, as yesterday's expression put it, they belong to the time when development already took place in a descending line, are valued less than those who belong to groups of people of ascending development. I say I can easily imagine someone drawing this conclusion. In other words, I can easily imagine that especially in view of everything that was said yesterday, in connection with other remarks, someone is all the more likely to make a value judgment under the influence of all kinds of emotions and feelings. And so it may come about, as I pointed out, that what is said in particular in relation to these things in one place must be misunderstood in other places. Not because it is colored according to the needs of a place or certain people, but because it is not understood with the necessary objectivity, but with passion and all kinds of national aspirations. Someone might then say: So you only used words to flatter Central European culture, so to speak, and we, who belong to Eastern European culture, feel deeply offended by what has been said. Yes, when such a judgment is passed, it only proves that what I tried to show yesterday is happening, namely that it must be detached from the spiritual-scientific feeling, so detached that purely theoretical, purely abstract thinking is transformed into direct experience, that what otherwise belonged only to our knowledge is now closer to our feelings and experiences.

Anyone who would judge as just indicated would judge only theoretically and abstractly. For how would the concrete judgment that transgresses into experience be formulated in such a case? It would be formulated as follows: if what has been set apart is true, then we are heading towards a time when those who want to follow the progress of the cultural mission will no longer be allowed to be absorbed in mere national experience. The peculiarity of the fifth cultural epoch was such that the personalities belonging to it were able to merge in a certain way into the national feeling and in turn extract themselves personally from it. The sixth and seventh cultural epochs will be such that those who merely want to be national will be left behind in relation to the tasks of humanity. But this is, of course, the reason why we are pursuing a spiritual-scientific worldview: that humanity may free itself from mere national sentiment, from that sentiment which is not general human sentiment. So, what must be concluded from what was said yesterday is something quite, quite different. It is this: that the Central European national cultures are the ones that, as national cultures, have impulses within them that coincide with the great mission of post-Atlantic culture. But then there will come cultures that make it necessary for people to outgrow national impulses, and that it will not work if those who are the “excellents” today — one says “laggards”, so why not say “excellents”? — of the later cultures become completely absorbed in their national experience, and indeed with emphasis, as is happening with the population of Eastern Europe. In other words, since they have not yet received their mission in this national feeling, they are dependent on absorbing what is produced as spiritual science in order to rise above the national. Living understanding is also necessary there.

However, in today's world, where passions and prejudices are so opposed, it will be difficult to find what is necessary for people to be able to place themselves fully on the ground of spiritual science that truly strives for objectivity, to be able to place themselves fully on the ground of the purely human. We are pursuing spiritual science so that something may spread across the whole earth that goes beyond all differentiations. Therefore, those who turn to spiritual science from all nations should be able to gain objective understanding for something like what has been dealt with in that lecture cycle entitled 'The Mission of Individual National Souls', which should be studied wherever there are anthroposophists. Its significance lies precisely in the fact that it was given years before this war, so that no one can accuse it of having been produced out of the mood of this war. What matters is not that what is said here or there does not contain universal truths, but that it must be recognized how these truths are not tolerated everywhere. When I spoke here months ago, I pointed out that we in Central Europe have it easy to be objective, easier than the rest. Why we have it easier is also clear from that lecture cycle. All the deeper teachings of our serious events point out to us that something must develop out of the most diverse foundations of our present world culture that coincides with our spiritual-scientific striving. In a certain respect, one can say that these serious events are something like a powerful indication of the necessity of spiritual-scientific experience in the world. They prove that this spiritual-scientific experience must come. Therefore, what we experience here at this place can only be of secondary importance for us. Our real task is to assimilate into our soul life that which can already be understood everywhere without causing inner offence, although there are so many prejudices in so many areas.

The insights that spiritual science provides into the universal human in the human being also prepare us to be able to objectively survey everything into which we are placed by the evolution of the earth and the evolution of the world. For this, into which we are placed, is, so to speak, the soil from which we grow, and that through which we are to grow is the impulses that we take up through spiritual science. Basically, we are only with one half of our being in all the differentiations that are spread over the earth, with our physical body and our etheric body, which we also leave behind on the earth when we enter the other state of consciousness, which we can call sleep. But with the I and the astral body, we then go out of our physical body and etheric body and are then with our I and astral body in the world that man otherwise enters when he passes through the gate of death, in the world where all earthly differentiations cease, in the world into which the insights of spiritual science are supposed to introduce us. Those who can make initiation knowledge their own are truly protected by this initiation knowledge from giving any of the folk spirits special preference in a one-sided way. For how do we come into contact with the particular folk spirit to which we belong?

When we are in the spiritual world from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, with our ego and astral body, we are not in touch with our folk spirit, with the folk spirit that, so to speak, presides over our nationality, but we are only in touch with this folk spirit during our waking day life, from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. Among the forces in which we are immersed when we enter our physical and etheric bodies, are also the forces in which the spirit of the people to which we belong is at work. We enter the field of this national spirit, so to speak, when we awaken; we leave it again when we fall asleep. But the one who acquires initiatory knowledge must, precisely during this acquisition, dwell in the world in which his national spirit is not, for he must enter the world in which we live between falling asleep and waking up. And then something special comes to light. Let us assume that a person belongs to a very specific nation. Everyone belongs to one, in that they must count themselves as belonging to a particular nationality. When a person leaves the sphere of their folk spirit when falling asleep, they no longer have contact with this folk spirit until they wake up again. Even those who acquire initiatory knowledge enter this realm, and during the time between falling asleep and waking up, they come together with the other spirits of the nations that otherwise live on earth, except for their own folk spirit. So one lives through a being together with the other folk spirits in the time between falling asleep and waking up, and with one's own folk spirit in the time between waking up and falling asleep. Only, one does not live with each individual folk spirit, but with their collective, with their association, so to speak, with what they accomplish in relation to each other, with the totality of the other folk spirits.

So you see, human life alternates – as the knowledge of initiation tells us – between an experience with the folk spirit in the waking state and an experience with the totality of the other folk spirits in the sleeping state. Only there is a means, as it were, whereby we have an abnormal coexistence with the other folk spirits, whereby we do not come together with their totality in our sleep, but come together with a particular folk spirit. This is when we hate a nation with particular passion. That is the abnormal thing: we cannot escape it when we hate a nation with particular passion, that during sleep we enter the sphere of its folk spirit. And anyone who acquires initiatory knowledge would, if they hated a people particularly for purely personal national reasons, enter the sphere of their national spirit when they enter the field of initiation, and it would soon become impossible for them to remain within it. To put it in trivial terms, I could say: anyone who hates another people because of their national passions is doomed to sleep with their national spirit. That is a trivial way of putting it, but it is to be taken quite literally.

The facts of the spiritual world ensure that the whole human race is one and that it is not possible to separate oneself from it. But if we face such facts, we can learn a lot from them. We are talking about the fact that the world in which we live externally with our senses and with our mind, which is bound to the brain, is a great deception, a Maja; but we also take this truth, that the world is a Maja, all too abstractly, we take it only theoretically. I would like to say that we still allow ourselves to grasp this truth intellectually. To grasp it full of life, not only our intellect, but often even our will, resists that. Because what is behind the world of deception, it looks like we don't want it to look that way. We shy away from it, we fear it, because the truth is uncomfortable for us. Knowing that all of humanity is, in a very real sense, one unit is not comfortable, because it does not allow us to view feelings and enthusiasm in the one-sided way that they are often viewed today, but rather it teaches us what they mean in the world of reality. But that is uncomfortable. The will often shrinks from the truth even more than the intellect does. Therefore, it is not surprising that in our time the truths of spiritual science are still widely regarded as folly, because the folly of the time fears the wisdom of the world. But only by looking beyond appearances is it possible to understand what is actually happening. I already pointed this out yesterday and now I will explain it in a specific case.

When we follow a person as he passes through the portal of death into the spiritual world, where he lives through the time between death and a new birth in order to prepare for a new life on earth, then we must realize become clear to what extent he is influenced in his life between death and a new birth by his last life on earth, and to what extent he brings with him through the gate of death into the spiritual life the echoes of his last life on earth. We know, of course, that when a person passes through the gate of death, he carries with him, after he has given up his physical body to the earthly elements, his etheric body, his astral body and

We also know that this etheric body soon separates from the ego and the astral body, with the exception of an extract that remains, and that the etheric body connects with the general workings of the cosmos. We have often considered all this. But now it is the case that after death, through his knowledge, the knowledge that remains with him after death, the human being nevertheless looks back at the fate of the ether body, and that this fate means something to him. It means something for the person after death when he looks at the fate of his etheric body, which proceeds in such a way that this progression is a kind of result of earthly life. And this result, this outcome of earthly life turns out differently for the most diverse conditions on earth, including, among other things, the different experiences within nationalities. The remains on earth that have a meaning for a person after death are quite different, let us say, for a soul that leaves a French body and passes into the spiritual world, and quite different for a soul that leaves a Russian body today and passes into the spiritual world. Souls that leave a French body today belong to a culture that has become, so to speak, mature and overripe, which allows much of this etheric body to be experienced on earth. The peculiarity of French folk culture — not the culture of the individual — is that the etheric body itself is worked through, imbued with forces and power effects, and therefore passes through the gate of death in a very sharply defined way, and then is in the spiritual world. Such etheric bodies do not dissolve for a long time; they remain present as spectra for a long time. In his imagination, the Frenchman, insofar as he belongs to it, has a very definite opinion of himself, of what he is worth in the world. But this is nothing more than the reflection of the firmly working forces in the etheric body. The etheric body is plastically formed and thus passes into the spiritual world.

It is quite different with the etheric body of a Russian person. It is not so firmly formed, it is more elastic, so to speak, it dissolves more easily into the spiritual world; therefore the souls are less tied to it. While the soul of the Frenchman is connected to the etheric body of the Frenchman for a longer period of time, the soul of the Russian is only connected to the etheric body for a short time. What the etheric body undergoes after death means less for the soul of the East. But this has a very definite, profound, significant effect on what happens behind the scenes of our existence in the present, so to speak. The destinies of the Russian soul are quite different from those of the French soul in the time between death and a new birth.

Now we know from the most diverse considerations that we are heading towards the etheric working of the Christ-Spirit in the twentieth century. This is already indicated in the exoteric sense at the appropriate point in the mystery drama 'The Portal of Initiation' by the reappearance of the Christ as an etheric physical body. And it has also already been pointed out in various reflections that this appearance of the Christ is being prepared for those people who will be able to see him since the last third of the 19th century, in that the active spirit of the time since that time is different from what it was before. For centuries before that, Gabriel was the active spirit of the time; since the last third of the 19th century, Michael has been the active spirit of the time. It is Michael who, in a sense, has to prepare for the appearance of the Christ as an ethereal being. But all this must be prepared, all this must be 'promoted in a certain way in the development, and it is promoted. It is promoted in such a way that Michael, as it were, fights for the appearance of the Christ, that he prepares the souls in the experience between death and new birth for what is to happen in the earth aura. Now sharply defined etheric bodies, which are in the elementary world around us, would always be disturbing in the time that must approach when this etheric form, which the Christ must take, is to be seen purely. Those souls who, after death, are less affected by their etheric bodies are closer to a pure conception of this etheric form. Hence the following emerges.

We see how part of Michael's work is to help dissolve the highly cultivated etheric bodies of Western Europe, which have a fixed form, and we see how Michael uses the souls of Eastern Europe in this struggle. And so we see Michael, followed by the hosts of Eastern European souls, fighting against the Western European etheric bodies and the impressions that the souls have after 'death'. So there is a living struggle behind the scenes of today's existence. This struggle exists, this struggle in the spiritual world. This fight in heaven, as it were, takes place between Russia and France in the spiritual world, a living fight between East and West. And this fight is the truth, and that which takes place in the physical world, that is the outer maya, that is the distortion of the truth. And here, as so often, when one contemplates spiritual facts, one is often given the harrowing impression that what is taking place here in the field of deception is the very opposite of what is taking place in the spiritual world as truth.

Imagine the tremendous shock for the one who acquires initiation knowledge that there is an alliance between peoples who fight each other fiercely in the spiritual world! Of course, such things must not be generalized, nor must the conclusion be drawn that everything in the spiritual world is the opposite of the physical world. Each individual case must be examined. But in this case we also get this harrowing impression, this impression that, one might say, initially crushes our knowledge. Behind the scenes of existence, things often look very different from how they appear in the outer world. But we can only understand things in their true context if we can shine a light behind the scenes of existence from the point of view of spiritual science. But then our whole conception will also be imbued with those feelings which, as it were, allow our hearts to plunge into the truth in the face of the prejudices we must be subject to when we surrender to the currents of the external physical world. Today, Central Europe is really wedged between two fighting powers and, to a certain extent, has to keep them apart. But from this arises the connection between what I called yesterday the struggle of Central European culture and what is besieging this Central European culture on both sides, as if it were in a stranglehold. That is the karma of Central European culture: to see its development taking place between two forces that must fight each other due to an earth-historical necessity. A true sense of the tragic conflict of circumstances, as they now affect Central Europe, can only emerge from such a consideration. Only when we base our view on such a consideration do we realize that, basically, non-involvement in the struggles that are actually to be fought out is what is really characteristic of Central Europe, an innocent attitude towards these struggles and being entangled in karma. And now we have also seen what the exact harmony of what is contained in evolution is: we have seen how involved the East and West of Europe are in the coming Christ event. If we consider the struggle of Central European culture with its unification, as I characterized it yesterday, of the spiritual and the physical, then we also have the special development of the Christ impulse, which is, after all, the bearer of this unification of the spiritual and the physical. So in the middle of Europe, the phenomenon of transferring Christianity into earthly events. Here, on the physical plane, something of tremendous significance is taking place, and to the right and left, something that has to be fought for on the higher planes. The physical and spiritual planes join together when we look at them in this way.

This is the supplement to what we discussed yesterday. And so it is basically with all evolution, insofar as it develops gradually under the influence of the Christ impulse. For what is happening now in the twentieth century has gradually developed. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse has entered into the earthly development of mankind, and has worked therein. But if the Christ Impulse had been limited to the way in which people have understood it, it would have been able to accomplish little so far. We are only just beginning to understand; we are only just beginning to grasp something of what the Mystery of Golgotha is through spiritual science. The Christ Impulse has worked. But it has truly worked least of all in the bickering and shouting of theologians. It would have been bad if only as much of the Christ Impulse could have entered into the evolution of the earth as people have grasped with their minds in the various epochs. But I have pointed out how the Christ impulse has worked through the centuries into the unconscious powers of the soul. I have described to you how on October 28, 312 Constantine stood against Maxentius, and how a battle was fought there that decided the fate of Europe. This battle was not fought by the skill of the generals, but by what took place in the subconscious of men. Maxentius consulted the Sibylline books. They seduced him, instead of leaving his armies in safety in Rome, to lead them out of the gates of Rome, to meet the armies of Constantine. But Constantine had the dream: to let the monogram of Christ go in front of his army. Thus it was not the sagacity of the generals that was followed, but dreams, that is to say, the impulses of the subconscious. Europe has been shaped by what emerged from this. The real shaping of the Christ impulse, over which theologians quarrelled, did not come from what the theologians argued about, but from what the living Christ was in the fields where he can work. Not the human concepts of Christ are important, but the living Christ, who works through the impulses that are His. When people did not understand Him, He entered into a realm where there is no need to understand, where one absorbs in dreams what is to pass into the sphere of the will.

And once again it was in Europe that the Christ impulse penetrated and gave Europe a certain shape: in the 15th century, when Europe took on a completely different shape through the simple country girl, the Maid of Orleans. Had England triumphed over France at that time – which the Maid of Orleans prevented – all subsequent historical developments would have been different. But truly, the shepherdess of Orleans did not have human wisdom, but in her the Christ Impulse worked through its Michaelic forerunner, outwardly in favor of France, but in reality in favor of England; for otherwise England would not have been able to undergo the development that it has undergone. But the Christ impulse worked with tremendous clarity for those who want to see through the world spiritually, for what was to come.

I have often pointed out how those old legends, those old sagas and myths contain truths that indicate that in the thirteen nights between Christmas and the Feast of Epiphany, that in these nights of deepest winter darkness is the time when the powers of clairvoyance are particularly favorable to the powers of clairvoyance. Where, so to speak, the physical forces withdraw most into inactivity, there the spiritual forces are particularly active. These thirteen nights, from Christmas to January 6th - so an old Norwegian legend tells us - Olaf Ästeson slept. And in this sleep he went through all that in imaginations, which we now recognize anthroposophically as Kamaloka, as the soul world, as the spiritual world. That is a truth. And many a person who, I might say, is at the gateway of initiation, can give this initiation its final perfection if they can achieve a very special, concentrated inner experience during this time, into which the birth of the Christ, the spiritual sunlight, has rightly been placed. One might say: If someone is to experience an unconscious initiation, when would they best experience it? Then he would experience it best if he is prepared during these nights, when he is in a state of sleep, a kind of state of being removed from the world, until January 6. Could we not assume that the shepherdess, Joan of Arc, who was certainly not educated or trained in the humanities but was inwardly spiritualized, could have been best initiated if she had gone through these nights in a kind of sleep state, a state where she would not have comprehended the outer world through the senses and the mind? She did! In the time before physical birth, one is certainly not predisposed to perceive the surrounding world through the external senses, because these senses only awaken at birth in physical existence. One is also not capable of reflecting through the mind before birth, but the spiritual part is then in contact with the cosmic spiritual environment.

Now, the Virgin of Orleans spent the thirteen days before January 6 in her mother's womb, because she was born on January 6. This is a fact that speaks profoundly of the interrelationships between worlds. The World Spirit guiding evolution needed a human soul in the body of the Virgin of Orleans, who spent the last thirteen days of pregnancy in her mother's womb until January 6, when she was born. There we see deep into those connections that are behind the scenes of existence. There we see how the world is led in spiritual terms. A soul was born that was initiated, so to speak, by the spirit of the world itself up until its birth. It is therefore a matter of acquiring a sense of how the carpet of external Mayan existence is spread out before us: if we tear it in different places, we can begin to glimpse the secrets of existence. And this must become feeling and intuition for the transforming power of spiritual science for the culture of humanity. It must become an intuitive perception that in order to look into the secrets of the world, one must radically break with the mere observation of the external maya, which of course had to occur since the splendor and fame of scientific research. But in the future this splendor and fame must be replaced by spiritual science. Above all, what humanity needs for the real assimilation of spiritual science in the soul will be a truly good will for the connection of one's own soul with the spiritual worlds. But all this must proceed from a certain self-knowledge. Yet self-knowledge is not at all easy, and it is one of the greatest illusions to which one can succumb in ordinary life to think that self-knowledge, which must be the beginning of all true knowledge, is easy.

Even with regard to the most external things, it is not even particularly easy. I have a book here that has coincidentally – in what one calls a coincidence – karmically come into my hands again these days: the book of a contemporary philosopher who was a professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna: “Analysis of Sensations.” The person who wrote the book makes very interesting self-revelations. On page 3, he says: As a young man, I once saw my face in profile in a mirror while walking across the street, but I did not recognize it as my own face. I thought: What a repulsive, unappealing face! — So you see, even to this extent, self-knowledge of the purely external form is not even that widespread. The good man openly admits: he encounters a highly unappealing face with a repulsive character, and then he discovers that it is his own. He knew himself so little in terms of his external appearance. You see, it is not easy to acquire even external self-knowledge. You can be a university professor and still not know yourself, as this example testifies. Ernst Mach, that is the professor's name, makes a similar confession. He is completely honest. He says: “I once came back from a journey quite tired and got into an omnibus. At the same time, someone else got into the omnibus. I thought: what a run-down schoolmaster is getting in there!” — And lo and behold, it was me. — He had seen himself in the mirror. The good man knew what a rundown schoolmaster looks like, so he saw one getting on, but he couldn't identify with it, he didn't know that he looked like that. He adds to his story: So I knew the class habitus better than my own!

Much more difficult than knowing our outer appearance is knowing our soul, knowing what we actually are in our spiritual being. But without this, it is not possible if one really wants to make progress in the field of initiation. Delusion about oneself is one of the most widespread human peculiarities, and what takes place in the depths of the human soul is generally not known. It is very easy to think: Yes, I know myself, I know what I want! One forms certain ideas about oneself; but these are mostly

not really suited to express what we truly are. Down there in the soul, it often looks quite different from the region where we form ideas about ourselves. Some examples are given that not only can happen, but often do happen in human coexistence: Two people live together. One of them has something against the other, so that he actually likes to torment and torture the other sometimes, sometimes more intensely, sometimes less. Whatever the cause of this torment may be, it can be an original urge to be cruel. A person can go around seemingly quite harmlessly in the world and yet actually be a very cruel fellow who feels the need to torture a fellow human being. If you talk to this person, he will not forgive you if you think of him as a cruel fellow, as a disgusting guy who only feels satisfied when he can torture his fellow human beings. but he will say: Oh, I love this person so much, so terribly, but he just does this and that and that, and precisely because I love him so much, I can't stand it when he does that! This is in the person's conscious mind, but in the subconscious is the cruelty. And the ideas of the conscious mind are only there to conceal, to excuse us from ourselves. The way we form ideas in the conscious mind is only there to excuse us properly from ourselves. I knew a gentleman who emphasized at every opportunity that he only adopted a certain intellectual direction out of pure unselfishness, that he was not particularly sympathetic to this direction, but out of a sense of duty and unselfishness he had to adopt this direction. I said to him: What you think about the things you do and why you do them is not important, but what is important is why you really do them. And you do it because it gives you lust to do just that, because it particularly flatters your vanity to do this. — It is unpleasant to admit: I am actually quite vain, that's why I do this or that. — That's why we love our Maja, she does it differently. The Maja that we carry in our consciousness about ourselves is often even more unlike reality than the Maja that we have about spiritual science. Love is certainly a wonderful thing, and rightly so in the eyes of humanity. But all too often it is wrongly spoken of! When we were still connected with the other Theosophical Society, we often heard how it depends on people loving each other deeply and truly! Often this love was only the veil that was cast over the dogmatic quarrels. For love can often be a mask for the strongest selfishness. When someone takes particular pleasure in doing this or that, they often disguise what they do and what actually gives them pleasure as love; and they excuse themselves for what they would never actually confess, leaving it in the depths of their subconscious. Yes, when we descend into this human being, then we really soon descend into an abyss. Man can really only recognize himself by delving into the secrets of spiritual existence, by familiarizing himself with the great laws of this spiritual existence. For the human being is complicated, and it is the greatest error to believe that this human being is somehow simple. I would like to say: All the secrets of the world are combined to bring the human being together. But things must be properly understood.

Playing with self-knowledge stops very quickly when you realize something of the spiritual secrets of human existence. Let us assume that a person, through some training or other, begins to have a certain clairvoyance and even manages to see quite wonderful images that he can fix, so that people come and are completely enchanted by the meaningful connection between this person and the spiritual world. The connection undoubtedly exists, but one must see through this spiritual connection in its truth, one must see through what it can really be. You see, the human being, with its physical body, is based on the etheric body as its creator, then the astral body, then that which we call the ego carrier. All of this works on the physical body, and each higher body in turn works on the lower. If you take the etheric body and examine it directly with clairvoyance, it is a wonderful structure of shimmering colors that flow into each other. What are these colors that flow in the etheric body? Yes, these are the forces that build the physical body, the forces that not only build organs for it but also work in what is carried out by the organs of the physical body during life. But the human organs are of different importance. Take two such organs as the intestines and the brain. External anatomy examines the tissues and everything that comes into consideration as being of equal value. But these are not things, they are quite different. When we look at the human brain, as a physical organ it is complete; this is because the brain processes those floods of color. If we look at the etheric body of the human brain, we see it in relatively pale colors, because the colors were used to create the structure of the brain. When we look at the intestines, we find the flowing colors shimmering brightly and wonderfully intertwined, because the intestines are really coarser organs; not so much of the spiritual has to be used there, the forces remain in the etheric body, and only a smaller part is used for development. Therefore, the etheric body of the brain is pale, but the etheric body of the intestines is of wonderful, vibrant colors, beautiful.

Now, imagine that someone comes to have clairvoyance as I have described it. Two things can happen: clairvoyance can occur as a result of loosening the etheric body of the brain, but it can also occur as a result of loosening the etheric body of the intestines. In clairvoyance, a person often becomes aware of his or her own interior. The one who gets the etheric body of the brain out will initially see a rather pale world; but the one who gets the etheric body of his or her intestines out can reflect wonderfully flooding colors into the etheric world. In order to bring the pale colors of the etheric body of the brain into contact with the flowing colors of the cosmos, it is necessary that we first draw the flowing colors from the entire sphere of the cosmos. To develop the flowing colors of the etheric body of the intestines, we can radiate them out of ourselves, and in this way a quite marvelous formation can be seen by means of clairvoyance. It is certainly a genuine clairvoyant form, but when it is examined, what is it? It is nothing other than one's own digestive process; it is what the etheric body does during the digestive process of a person; it projects itself into the etheric space. From the anatomical point of view, this is most interesting. But we must realize that we only begin to get an inkling of what is actually present in the spiritual world when we approach the secrets of the spiritual world. We only then get an inkling that out of the wonderfully flowing sea of colors of the etheric body, there also arises that which must take place in the etheric body so that the intestines function in the right way. If one then sees this clairvoyantly, it is certainly a clairvoyant process; but it is nothing that is connected with heavenly secrets, it is nothing that brings the great cosmic facts of the world to us in any way, but it is something that brings us to our most ordinary lower self.

And just when we ascend to self-knowledge with clairvoyance, we find that the first thing we experience in terms of wonderful images is a reflection of our basest self. And only then, when we make a greater effort to get rid of those parts of the etheric body that have remained behind in us as lesser ones because the majority have been used to the heart and brain, only then do we manage to radiate out what is within us and make an impression through the more strongly applied forces on the outer ether. And then the following happens: When we project the etheric body of the physical organs, we push it out into space. When we develop higher clairvoyance, we also work outwards, but we work out what we build up between birth and death, so that it prepares what develops in us between death and a new birth. We inscribe this in space, and thus we produce an effect in the etheric world. And there we encounter that which is formed through these effects, the cosmic effects, the cosmic facts.

We are constantly working towards this. The book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' aims to express this in the most eminent sense, that the right ways are found, not to find the lower being of man through an enchanting clairvoyance, but to fathom the secrets of the world. It is pointed out again and again that this clairvoyance is difficult, that it appears pale, that one first develops through great efforts of those forces, which are the forces of the human being between birth and death, to true clairvoyance, that then the secrets of the world can be unraveled. Where these forces lie can be imagined by delving into what was said in the Vienna Cycle of 1914. There is talk of the forces that a person develops between death and a new birth, of the forces for which it is only possible to use stammering words, because words are coined for the physical world, and one can only express what is quite different in the spiritual world than in the physical-sensual world through word compositions. But people find it more convenient to imagine the spiritual world as nothing more than a kind of continuation of the physical world, only somewhat thinner, somewhat more fleeting. People would find it convenient to see figures walking around in the spiritual world, as they do in the physical world; but they find it inconvenient that one must develop a new way of thinking when one wants to enter the spiritual world. All of this should prove to you that not only human understanding, but above all human will, resists what spiritual science must bring into the world in our time. We can truly say: Not only because large sections of people today do not understand spiritual science do they reject it, but because they do not want it, because fundamentally they are horrified that the world is as spiritual science wants and must depict it.

An especially important concept must be understood in order to comprehend the experience between death and a new birth. Basically, one cannot say that a person who has passed through the gate of death has no consciousness and that his consciousness must first awaken. That is not even correct, but it is correct that he has too strong an awareness when he has gone through the gate of death, that he is completely surrounded by awareness, that he is quite dazed by the spiritual sunlight of consciousness and must first begin to orient himself, as I have explained in more detail in the cycle just mentioned. Here on earth we have to acquire wisdom in a makeshift way; but over there we are surrounded by wisdom on all sides, so we have to dim it so that we can behold it. The parts that we have subdued to human weakness are the ones we can see. So first we have to familiarize ourselves with the subjugation of our consciousness until we can find our way around. This is something that becomes particularly apparent when one really looks at the phenomena. You see, one then gradually tries to shape the words so that they properly express these phenomena. Not long ago a dear member of our society in Zurich died. Karma had it that although I had wanted to see the member in the physical life, I came too late and did not see him. But then, after a few days, we had the cremation in Zurich. I was asked to speak at this cremation, and I tried to put into words what presented itself to me inwardly as the essence of this dear member of our society. I tried to capture this essence in a few words. Then the cremation was carried out. And it was now noticeable that the first orienting emergence from the engulfing consciousness occurred at the moment when the body passed into the flames, when seemingly the flame, in reality the heat, seized this body. At that moment, the scene we had had before was before the soul of the deceased. Before, during the funeral oration, she had not taken part in it, but afterwards, when the cremation began, she looked back. And just as in physical life one has space in front of oneself, so the dead person sees things in time. What has passed is beside the dead person. He sees the scenes standing in front of him. Time really becomes space. The past is not past, it remains there, it is looked at. Then the dead descended again into a general stupor, and it then takes a long time for orientation to take place. But such moments prepare themselves, one might say, bright moments, which are then further processed. Then there is another submerging into the general flooding of consciousness, until later a complete orientation occurs.

And so it must be said that it is an important concept that reflects the wisdom that consciousness thinks in a different way after death than before death. It is not that a degree of consciousness must first mature after death, but that the immeasurable consciousness must be attenuated to a certain degree. We must bear this in mind. And then we must take the realization very seriously that the truth is often exactly the opposite of what appears on the surface. I have already illustrated this with an example. A person is walking along the edge of a stream, falls into the stream and drowns. We go after him and find him drowned, and at the point where he fell into the stream we find a stone. We can then justifiably conclude that the person fell into the stream over the stone and thereby drowned. If we do nothing further, we come to no other conclusion. But here, with regard to the physical facts, the logic of the facts may be wrong. At the autopsy, we may discover that the man had a stroke and that he consequently fell into the water, so that cause and effect are reversed. We thought the man was dead because he fell into the water; in reality he fell into the water because he was dead. In relation to the external facts, the logic was wrong. Thus we often cannot come to terms with logic for the external Maja.

Take the case we experienced in the fall regarding our pain in Dornach. The seven-year-old son of a member of the local branch who had settled in Dornach was missing one evening. And after it became clear that the child could be under a fallen furniture truck, the truck had to be lifted in the middle of the night, and little Theo Faiß was pulled out from under it, dead. What had happened? No furniture truck drives in that area, no truck drives at all. It is an extremely exceptional case for a truck to drive there. There were no trucks driving there long before or after. And little Theo always fetched what he had to fetch a quarter of an hour earlier. That evening he had been asked to wait a quarter of an hour. He could have walked on the right side while walking on the left side of the car, but he was made to go to a different exit than usual. Everything has come together so that it happened down to the second, so that the boy just happened to come under that car. If you examine the case spiritually in its karmic context, then the soul of the boy had ordered this car to find death at this time; it was all arranged that way, the physical event is a consequence of the spiritual connections. Then you understand things in a completely different way, then you also understand the connection between what happened and the further course after death. Little Theo had an etheric body that he could have had for another seventy, eighty years or more in normal life. None of this is lost, it remains there. An etheric body of a child who died at seven still has the forces within it that would have been used in life; they are present in the spiritual world. And those who have to do with the etheric aura of our building are well aware of this; for the etheric body of the little boy has been there since his death, there are the forces, the strong spiritual forces of this clever, loving, well-disposed boy. These are the forces of help and assistance for everything connected with the aura of the Dornach building.

In this way, spiritual and physical effects are connected. The times when one had to look to the spiritual world for what happens in the physical world are no longer; but they still exist. We are beginning to understand some things through our spiritual science. However, there is much in it for which we need help from those who leave the physical life with unspent etheric forces. Think of the thousands and thousands who are passing through the portals of death in the great fields of serious contemporary events, all of them people with unconsumed etheric bodies. These are all spiritual forces that could have been effective for a long time if the people in question had remained in the physical world. In physics, it is already recognized that no force is lost. In the most eminent sense, however, this law of the conservation of energy is present in the spiritual world. The forces that an etheric body has to sustain a life between birth and death until the age of eighty or ninety are not lost when someone passes through the gate of death early. The forces are there. In addition to what enters the spiritual world through the ego and the astral body and has value for the individuality, the etheric body has a general value for that which passes into the general aura of human evolution on earth. So we can look up to the fresh, vigorous, unspent etheric bodies that work down from the spiritual worlds into the times to come.

Just as we often see today that 'the dead fight with the living', so on the other side we see the etheric field, the elemental world, permeated with forces, with strong human forces, which are acquired in high confidence in the belief in ideal human goals, which are left behind by people who have gone through the gateway of death with this belief. But those who will live later will have to look up to these unspent etheric forces, which will continue to be effective. These etheric forces of those who died young will most certainly demand that they have not in vain found the transition into the spiritual world and look down from there. They will demand that they can really contribute their part to the reorganization of the spiritual world, which is demanded of humanity. These ethereal bodies are there as admonishers, admonishers that say: We have gone into the spiritual world so that forces that can go into your hearts and souls can flow to you from here, with which you can work even more strongly for the progress of the development of the earth in the spiritual-scientific sense. We must understand the interaction between the physical and the spiritual, not in a nebulous, hazy way, but as a concrete spiritual connection between people who live here on earth in physical bodies and the souls that have gone up into the spiritual world. There will be a common ground if we understand the facts and properly imbibe what spiritual science can give us. Yes, truly, an insight into the connection between the spiritual and the physical can also put us in the right way to the great seriousness of our time, and make us feel completely how what is happening can only be justified by us before the future if it is taken as the cause of a great, significant human struggle and human work on the physical plane as well. What we emphasized yesterday must be fulfilled: the right understanding between the spiritual and physical worlds. What is contained in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

Many of the souls who have joined their striving to ours have already passed through the gate of death as a result of the great events of the time. As I was already able to hint to you here in the course of these warlike times: it has been confirmed that the souls that have gone through the gate of death out of the struggle continue to live with what the great time demands of them, precisely because of what has been experienced with these souls. They live united with the spirit of their people, they continue to fight with spiritual weapons. But that, my dear friends, is our particular duty towards these souls: to unite our loving thoughts, our most heartfelt impulses connecting us in love with them. When the storm of events has passed – in which these souls in particular are entwined, even when they have already passed through the gate of death, albeit in the best sense – or when the time is right, the opportunity will come, precisely with those thoughts and images that must inspire us for these dear dead, to celebrate their funeral.

Even otherwise, especially in these stormy times, the power of death has spread its warnings within our ranks. Just today, we have committed the earthly shell of our dear friend Sophie Stinde to the elements of the earth. Numerous souls, including those from this city, will feel deeply connected to her, one of the most loyal members of our ranks. If I am able to speak in Munich in the next few days, it will be one of my duties – but one that will be performed with the deepest love – to also remember the dear Sophie Stinde within our spiritual movement.

In many ways, my dear friends, we have been reminded of that which, like a summary of all the other riddles of life, stands at the center of many of the riddles of existence: death. Death, which is often so painful, but always so mysterious, especially for those who feel the riddles of life, enters into earthly existence, and within earthly existence itself is something that can never find its explanation through this earthly existence itself. It is certainly justified in the deepest sense when the two thoughts are brought together, which were once brought in the topic of the public lecture 'The Mystery of Death and the Riddle of Life'. For a contemplation that delves into death does not, as many in the materialistic camp believe, only refer to something that is far removed from earthly life, that is of no concern to earthly man. On the contrary, a world-view consideration of death brings forth such insights from the depths of existence that, precisely from the 'secret of death', make life here on earth a strong and meaningful one. And that is why, from the point of view of the world view, one must not be deterred from approaching the riddle, the secret of death, precisely in order to explain and illuminate life.

And so, in this time, when death has been so close to us in our ranks, especially in the last year, and when it also confronts us a hundredfold through the historical events in which we are immersed, the mystery of death is interwoven into the reflections of these days in many ways of looking at the world. As we approach the mystery of death, we can contemplate death where it still, so to speak, fully enters into our immediate life. The dead person himself bids farewell to this life of the senses and enters a new sphere. But he remains present in the sorrow of those whom he has left behind; he remains present in the thoughts of those in whom he was able to awaken thoughts, perceptions and feelings while he was still among the living. And it was not only a beautiful custom, arising from the deepest human needs, everywhere where the human heart is not cold and barren, to also generally schedule festivals for the dead, death festivals. They also extend into our time, the death festivals, in the All Souls' Day of the Catholics, in the death festivals of the Protestant confession, and many other death festivals extend more or less individually into our time as well. Who would not have the feeling that in the intrusion of these death festivals, even a materialistic time takes its toll on the spiritual life? Even if materialism has already so corroded the souls that they only do it unconsciously: even materialistic souls will shrink from approaching what is associated with the usual death festivals with anything other than a deepened soul, with a deepened heart. The dead remain in life in the feelings, the perceptions and the thoughts of those who are still living. And so, when we consider death in the most intimate sense, we can begin this contemplation while we are still fully alive.

We know from the general considerations that have been cultivated over many years that we must never say: Here stands the physical-sensual world, and separate from it stands the spiritual world. — The physical-sensual world extends into the spiritual world, and the spiritual world extends into the physical-sensual world. And even if the outer senses of man see the physical-sensual world only in the sense being, then, as the air in the rough sense spreads out directly, the spirit is spread out everywhere and permeates and surges through everything that man in the physical life with normal senses sees only sensually. And those who have passed through the gate of death, who are in the spiritual world, reach into our sensual world with their impulses and forces. So that we can say: Even if behind the threshold of normal consciousness lies the bond that connects the living in the physical body with the dead living in the spirit, this bond is nevertheless a real one. And for the one who immerses himself in spiritual science, many a riddle must be solved in order to understand life, not from a theoretical point of view, but from a life point of view, from the life point of view that not only occupies thinking, but the soul in its entirety and in its entirety.

Let us try to imagine what we can understand from ordinary life in relation to death. The dead person leaves us. What changes externally is that our eyes no longer see them, that we can no longer exchange a handshake with them, that our words no longer go from us to them, from them to us. That which has poured out of his emotional currents into our hearts as warmth no longer flows to us in the sensual world. During the time we were able to live with him, with the help of his sensual body, the one with which he clothed himself in the physical world, he has repeatedly conjured up the image we could have of him. The change that has occurred is that now, when the soul of someone close to us has passed through the gate of death, we no longer have the help for our connection with that soul that is brought about by the image of that person is generated in us with the help of the sensory impulses that emanate from him, with all the sensations, feelings, will impulses, capacity for love, sympathy and antipathy that it evokes. What lives on in us from the moment when our soul has passed through the gate of death is the image that must now be within us, penetrating us inwardly. If we want to raise this image from the imagination, in which it lives on in our etheric body, but especially in the astral body and in the I – which, however, remains unconscious to us in our normal consciousness – to the consciousness of our physical existence, we must let it arise from within. What we have preserved in us from our relationship to the dead we must pour out of the innermost depths of our soul, that is, from the I and the astral body, into those parts of our human being that consciousness and imagination create: into the etheric body and the physical body.

When the soul that had passed through the gate of death was still with us, it still generated the image; the image radiated to us from outside, we only had to go to meet the image with what our soul had to give. When the dead person has passed away from us, we then have to rely on ourselves to pour what we have preserved of him

This memory of unconscious forces within us can never be extinguished in our deep soul members, in the I and astral body. And when we go to sleep at night, when the impressions of the physical world sink out of our ordinary daytime consciousness, when all the thoughts that we can have from waking to falling asleep sink away, then in that which we carry out of our body in our ego and astral body, the imaginations, the luminous images of those personalities with whom we were connected and who have passed away through the gate of death. In the part of our being that lives in us from falling asleep to waking up, the dead live with us, just as the living of the earth live with us from waking up to falling asleep. We owe our waking daytime consciousness to the fact that we have gone through four stages of our earthly development with our physical body, which, together with our etheric body, mediates our daytime consciousness. And we are deprived of nocturnal consciousness because our ego only moved into us during our earthly development and our astral body only during our lunar development. What we can experience when we raise our dead into the I and the astral body, we will only experience in later epochs of our development on earth in the same way as we now experience the life of the living on earth, that is, in normal, waking day consciousness. The I is the youngest link, which must first struggle to achieve a consciousness that can be as alert as the present day consciousness, which is achieved and caused by our I and astral body being connected to the physical and ether body. The physical body has gone through four stages of earthly development, the etheric body has gone through three stages, but the astral body only through two stages, and the I has only gone through one stage.

Thus those who have become spirits, who have become disembodied souls, rest in the element that we ourselves go through during our sleep. But we can only bring them into our daytime consciousness from our memories. It is indeed a different power that causes a spiritual impulse to live in us, and another power that causes such a spiritual impulse to come to consciousness in us. The impressions on our senses arise from the fact that they can also flow from outside into the physical body and the etheric body. But for that which can only be in the ego and the astral body, our present normal development does not yet have sufficient power to push and press it into the etheric body and physical body in such a way that it becomes an idea for us. Nevertheless, a connection of a deeply spiritual nature exists. For it is in the most delicate parts of our being that we are inseparably connected with the so-called dead. For this connection, outer death forms no break, hardly a transformation. In these delicate parts, in the I and astral body, the dead live as do the living, those who have become spiritual beings from our ranks live there.

Let us look at them with the means of knowledge that we have been able to gain in the course of our lives. It has been emphasized here often enough how completely different the relationship of a being in general, and thus also of a human being, is to its surroundings if this being, unlike us, does not have a physical body or an etheric body in the physical world. When the one who has passed through the gate of initiation leaves the physical and etheric bodies for his realization, then he lives in his spiritual environment; he lives in it as the dead man also lives in it. And I have often had to emphasize how completely different the relationship to the spiritual world is, to which the perceiving person then belongs, whether he is a disembodied human being, a being of the hierarchies or a being of the elemental world. We have had to emphasize that we ourselves have to choose different words to indicate how the relationship between the spiritual being and its surroundings is compared to the relationship between a being embodied in a physical body and its surroundings.

Here in the physical world, the things and entities of the external world make an impression on us. We stand there, the entities stand outside us. That which they radiate draws through our senses into our soul. And we say, while being aware of it: we stand here enclosed within the boundaries of the body. We perceive the other beings; we perceive them. When we enter the spiritual world, we have to choose different words: we are perceived by other spiritual beings. We perceive animals insofar as they are sensual embodiments, we perceive plants, we perceive human beings. Now, as we ourselves enter the spiritual world, we are perceived by the beings of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai and so on. And while we say here: we see the plants, the animals, the people -, we have to say when we enter the spiritual world: we experience something within us, and this experience means that the spiritual eyes of another being rest on us. We are perceived. - This being perceived, this knowledge that we are being looked at, that distinguishes our life in the spiritual world from life in the physical world.

The words themselves have to be transformed when one speaks in the actual sense, because everything is completely different in the spiritual world. And to express it figuratively and yet again more than figuratively: When a being from the spiritual world comes into sensual embodiment, then it must be prepared for the fact that it must gradually learn – even a child must learn this – to look outwards through the physical senses, to receive a world from outside, to become an ego that receives the world from outside. When a being enters the spiritual world through the gate of death or in some other way, it must get used to saying to itself: You are an I, but an I that does not live in isolation in the world, that inwardly always experiences something again, just as it experienced memory images emerging from the depths of the soul. But now you know: what emerges are the ideas, thoughts and feelings of the other beings that live with you in the spiritual world. — Just as impressions enter us from the outside that we receive from the sense world and sense beings, so ideas and feelings of beings in the spiritual world arise within us. But we know that these images and feelings that arise in us from our inner being, which is then essential for us, come from spiritual beings that are with us. There we are in the spiritual world, an image arises in us, the image of a being that we must love, a being that gives us the inspiration to accomplish this or that in the spiritual world. Where does this image come from, how is it that it arises in us, like memories here? It comes from the fact that another being, a being of the spiritual world, has approached us. We do not look at it from the outside; we know that it is there because that which lives in it sends into us. We are being introduced, we are being perceived, and that is how we would have to speak about what lives in the spiritual world. This does not make the experience in the spiritual world more abstract or nebulous; it only makes it all the more vivid. What we experience in the spiritual world becomes as vivid as what we have in our immediate surroundings in the physical world. Thus we have to familiarize ourselves with the very different way of living together with the beings that are in the spiritual world.

And now, from this point of view, let us look at those who have passed through the gate of death. They enter the world of which they must say: I am getting to know more and more how I am perceived, how the disembodied people, the elemental beings, the beings from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, the Archangeloi, send their ideas, sensations and feelings into me. All these beings live in me. And we look up to such a dead person, and we sense: just as we encounter a person here in the world of the senses and we sense the blood through his skin, we sense the work of his nerves in his features, so we sense, by beholding the spiritual, disembodied human being, how the thoughts and feelings of the Angels, the Archangels and the Archai are at work through what is experienced of us in them.

Here in the physical world, we encounter the physical human being. Through his soul and his development, he has ennobled the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. And yet, these animal, plant and mineral kingdoms are also present in him. When we meet a person here in physical existence, his soul and spiritual nature is deeply hidden within him and shines through the physical shell. But what radiates from his impulses into our eyes, what affects us in the world of the senses, is permeated with the animal nature that has been refined to the point of humanity; in the human being, we encounter ennobled animal nature, but animal nature nonetheless. The plant and mineral kingdoms also come to us in the human being. We know that the kingdoms of nature live on a higher level in the human being. And if the mineral kingdom did not live in the human being, we would never be able to truly encounter a human being at the point where the human being comes to us in the physical, because it is only through what is mineral in him that he can evoke an impression in us. When we stand as a spirit in the presence of a spiritual being, we see — as we see animality in the physical human being — in the spiritual world, in the spiritual human being, that which streams into this spiritual human being in the form of feelings and thoughts, the soul-like angels. What the angels experience is organized down to the human body. Just as the animal nature is organized in man, so is that which flashes through the angels in the soul life of man organized in the spiritual world. And just as the plant kingdom is organized in man, so is that which the archangels pour into him organized in the spiritual form of man. And just as the mineral kingdom shines forth in the sensual man in us and thereby the sensual man in us becomes perceptible, so is that which confronts us as a spiritual man in the spiritual world a self-contained imagination in that the archai pour into man that which they have of formative power, of creating, shaping power. Just as the three kingdoms of nature permeate the physical human being here, so the angels, archangels and archai permeate the human being's spirit in the spiritual world.

When a person has passed through the gate of death, they are connected to their astral body and their ego for a long time, with the exception of the very first period. But now that the human being is in the spiritual world and retains the I and the astral body from the earth, the spirits of form and those spirits that we get to know as the members of the hierarchy of the archai can initially have an effect on him, making him actually perceptible. Just as the mineral kingdom makes the human being visible and tangible here, so the realm of the archai and the spirits of form makes the human being a unified being in the spiritual world. And just as the plant element is no longer seen, but only sensed in the human being here in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, what the hierarchies let flow into the human being is sensed in the unified form of the human being. Just as the animal in man no longer appears to us here in an animalistic way, and only spiritual science draws attention to the extent to which animality has a part in man, so in the spiritual world one does not at first recognize the still strong hidden part of the angels, which remains hidden as long as the human being has not discarded the etheric body. The hidden part of the angels remains, but it is less expressed when one sees the spiritual form of the human being in the spiritual world. Thus, when we enter into a relationship with the dead person after some time, we actually meet him, so that we can say: It is he; but what the firmly closed being gives him is the way the spirits of form work into him. And what can still be strongly sensed in him are the spirits of personality. — Thus organized, as it were from above, from the hierarchies, the dead man then comes to meet us, as the physical, organized by the mineral world, comes to meet us here.

When we have been abandoned by a human soul because it has passed through the gate of death, then we retain the memory of it here within the framework of our physical consciousness. We keep within us everything that is dear to us about the 'dead person'. This is a different memory from the memories we otherwise have in our external lives. Just think what our other memories are like. What are they? They are thoughts about something that is no longer there, for that is precisely what makes them memories. That which we remember is not there; it does not happen at the moment when we remember it. The content of our memory images is not there, does not have an effect now. When we remember the essence of a soul that was connected to us and has gone through the gate of death, then we have the thought of this dead person; but he himself, the dead, is there, is in the immediate presence, is a real being of the spiritual world. We do not merely have a memory; we have an image in our soul, which is also a memory, but which corresponds to a real spiritual being. The image lives in us, and the dead person lives outside in the spiritual world. The being is there, and the image is there. So when we look at the dead person with reverence, when we make present in our consciousness what the dead person was to us, then in our waking consciousness the imagination arises, the image of the dead person arises. There it is. What does that mean? It means that it is there in a living, active process in our physical and etheric bodies.

In our physical and etheric bodies, we represent for the other life, which is not dedicated to the memory of dear dead ones, that which is in the physical world in our thoughts. When we evoke the image, the thought-image or feeling-image or emotional image of the dead person in us, then for this image there lives in the immediate presence a being through which, by connecting their perceptions in him, angels and archangels look. Consider, when we direct our thoughts and feelings to our dear departed, there is more, much more present than in ordinary, normal life, in terms of the relationship between the spiritual and the sensual world. There is something present that, I would even say, could not be present. And a question arises before the spiritual researcher: What does the fact that we live in the world that they left, in the realm whose cover they have taken off, mean for the dead? What does the fact that we evoke in our waking consciousness, that is, in the physical and etheric bodies, that which connects us to them, mean for these dead who live there? For the spiritual researcher this question arises, a question that seems to be of a very intimate nature, but which, when the spiritual researcher solves it, I believe, sheds much light on the mysteries of life.

For we can also ask this question differently, from the point of view of the immediate life, the life that is not always present, but which people nevertheless seek in the way I have indicated before. Let us put the question this way: What does it actually mean for the whole of reality when, on a day of remembrance of the dead, on All Souls' Day or another festival of the dead, the souls of people who live here on earth in their bodily shells go to the graves or unite in thought with their dead? What does it mean when we make our own days or hours of remembrance for the dead? When we read to them in our own interest? When we do something to unite with them and especially to make vivid what connects us with them permanently? In other words: What does it mean when we recall in our waking consciousness what connects us with the dead? - So this question can also be brought to the consciousness of the spiritual researcher.

Then he must express it through something else that arises from spiritual research. Basically, the most important facts of the spiritual world can only be expressed figuratively. We have to look for comparisons when we want to express the things of the spiritual world. Because our words are coined for ordinary life, for the physical world, and so we cannot speak directly with the words of the physical world about the spiritual world when we want to express its facts. We must try to evoke such ideas in our souls by means of a detour of comparison, which ideas make present to us what we want to imagine about the spiritual world. And here in the physical world the spiritual researcher has something with which he can evoke an idea of what has just emerged as a question. We find something here in the physical world that could not be there without disturbing the outer, natural process of the sensual world, but that those people who strive to live life to the full would not want to do without. What is it that we find here in the physical-sensuous world that does not belong to the continuous process of nature, but that we would not want to do without? Now, when we form images of what is there and what relates to the natural, whether they are artistic images or those that have been evoked in more recent times by external photography, what what we encounter in images of the physical-sensual world of beings that belong to this world is something that is added to the natural process; the natural process would be possible without them.

Try to imagine how life is enriched by the fact that we make images of what is otherwise there in the natural process. How we long to have art in our world in addition to natural processes! How we long to have a picture of something that has been experienced! The course of the world could continue without it. A being remains what it is even if we have no picture of it, but in a sense we need a picture. And this is what the spiritual researcher is reminded of when he has to imagine what the dead have in that the living bring them to life in their soul.

What the spiritual process corresponding to the natural process is, to which the dead, that is, the spiritual beings, look, would be there even if the dear memories did not come to life in the souls of men. But then the ongoing mental process would be bleak and empty for the dead, for these spiritual beings, just as we would feel emptiness if we only had the natural process around us and nothing figurative was included in human life, in the natural process.

Indeed, one can draw the following comparison: If an expensive friend has been absent from you for a long time, you remember them lovingly and cannot see them, and now they send you a picture, this picture is dear to you. It is something that fills your heart with warmth, something you need. Just as the picture must be dear to you, so are the thoughts of the dearly departed, who live in people's waking consciousness, for these dead, when they look down on the world, which they otherwise perceive only as a continuous mental process, but which they now perceive as interspersed with that which could not be there and yet must be there - in one sense or another the words are to be taken - when they feel that what is a continuous spiritual process is interspersed with what is radiated up to them from the souls that have remained here, somewhat like an image of a loved one. Therefore one can say: When one goes to a cemetery on the Sunday of the Dead or on All Souls' Day, and sees many people there who are filled with the image of their dear dead, and one then looks up into the souls of those who are being remembered, then these are the cathedrals, the works of art for these dead. Then what shines up to them from earth illuminates the world for these dead people like a magnificent cathedral that reveals secrets to us, illuminates the world for us, or like a picture that is dear and precious to us, bringing a loved one to mind. The world would be empty and meaningless to the dead, into which they must always look; from their point of view, this world would be empty and meaningless to the earth if they were to look down, and in the souls of those living here on earth, there would be nothing that looked up to them, which cannot be the case, but must be: the thoughts that connect those living on earth with the spiritually living, the dead.

A deeply moving contrast presents itself to us here, between life on earth and life in the spirit. In order to enhance life on earth, we have to add to our earthly life that which is not in the image of earthly life for those living on earth. An earth stripped of all imagery, a mere natural earth, how bleak and empty it would be! And now we rise to the point of view of the dead. They would perceive the continuous spiritual process, but it would be barren and empty for them, as barren and empty as the imageless existence of nature is for the children of the earth, if the memories of the dead were not alive, if the faithful remembrance were not awake in the waking consciousness , when within the continuous spiritual process there are not thoughts that are like works of art for the spiritual world, insofar as they are beautiful thoughts, and are not interwoven with the earthly process, but are carried out for those who are no longer living in the earthly process. And what makes a work of art a work of art here on earth, what enhances its beauty, is something that is much less closely connected with the human innermost being than our thoughts to the dead are for the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world too there is a beauty in this sense, a real, genuine beauty. But it does not arise to the same extent through externality as it does in many cases here in the physical world through externality in the picture. That the paintings of Raphael, Leonardo, Dürer are more beautiful than others is because these masters were simply more able than other masters. That a dead person feels a more beautiful work of art — analogously speaking — radiating up from the earth towards him, comes from the depth of his inwardness, from the sacred spiritual feeling of the memory that we continually cherish for him. The strength of our feeling for the dead encroaches upon our soul life and deepens it in the sight of the dead themselves. This makes our soul more and more beautiful.

Follow these thoughts in your own soul, my dear friends, and through this deepening you will discover much that can give you insight into the connection between the spiritual and the sensual world and into the special chapter of the spiritual world in which the dead live and the sensual world in which people on earth live. We will build other considerations that can introduce us to further circles of the spiritual world, after this first chapter that we have worked through today.

When approaching the mystery of death, one must always bear in mind, as was emphasized again yesterday, that in order to characterize the spiritual worlds, it is necessary to change the meaning of our ordinary words, which are tailored for the physical world. For the dead, the so-called dead, enter the spiritual world, and as we have already repeatedly indicated, it is fundamentally different in the spiritual world than in the physical world.

Not only according to spiritual scientific insights, but also in accordance with ordinary physical reason, it can be thought that when entering the spiritual world through the gate of death, the first thing for the dead person is: the loosening of the physical body from what is within this physical body his other human existence. This is, of course, a very trivial truth. Today, we want to look at the processes that come into play when describing the gate of death and the further pursuit of the path between death and a new birth, in terms of the inner experiences of the dead person, in the sense in which this can be explored in spiritual science.

For the person who remains behind here in physical life, it is indeed the case that he has the sensation that what is enclosed in the physical body shell leaves the one or ones remaining behind, that the dead person goes away into another world. The first perception that the dead person has – as I said, according to what can be researched for spiritual science – is that he, in turn, is abandoned by the inhabitants of the earth and also by his physical body, by that which was the tool for his perception, for his thinking and feeling and his ability to will between birth and death. So these, who were around him, who were connected with him, go away from him: that is his first perception. This perception is initially linked to the processes that we have often described: that the earth itself, in a sense, moves away, so that it takes away the physical shell of the body of the one passing through the gateway of death. It is absolutely as if the dead person, so to speak, were to feel that he is lagging behind a movement that he did not actually perceive here on earth, that he is lagging behind the earth's own movement; the earth is leaving him and with the earth everything that surrounded him on earth. And now he is incorporated into a completely different world, but one through which he now perceives something that was previously completely hidden from him, through which he perceives that what was given to him as a physical shell is bound to the earth, and also to the movements of the earth. He has a feeling, although that is a rather inaccurate expression, that he can no longer follow the path that the earth and its spirits take; so they leave him. He remains in a certain greater state of rest, he integrates himself, as it were, into a quieter world.

For the dead person, many things are now based on this perception of being abandoned, namely also by the physical shell of the body, by everything that one has experienced with people between birth and death, everything that one has learned from people. During his life on earth, the possession of his physical body was something he took for granted. Therefore, what he now perceives is something completely new, and we will see how different these perceptions are depending on whether one dies a so-called natural death from illness or old age or a violent death, for example, the kind of 'death that many thousands now have to die.'

This realization that one is being abandoned by that which was naturally one's own, gives rise to something completely new in the life of the soul. It means that something arises in the life of the soul that one could not have become acquainted with while dwelling in the body. The first thing that arises in the life of the soul is, I would say, the opposite feeling towards life. Here on earth one has the feeling that life is given from outside, that one lives through the life forces that are given to one from the outside of the earth. Now, so to speak, the earth leaves with what it has given one, and immediately, through this leaving, the feeling arises that the power of enlivenment is now bubbling up from within. So the first thing is the perception of being enlivened. It is the transition to a certain activity, whereas before you remained in passivity: You are invigorating that which you now are. You are within yourself. What you previously called the world has gone away from you. That in which you now live, but by completely filling it, that generates in itself the power of invigoration, that is invigorated. And in concrete terms, this results in what I have often called the panorama of life, the flooding life in all that one has experienced between birth and death. The images of this life arise before the soul. It rises, as it were, from the point where one is, like a powerful, self-generating “dream, the whole of one's past life between birth and death. But this image needs strength so that it is not a dream. It would be like a dream flowing by if one had not gained the power of animation by having attained this consciousness: one's own physical shell detaches itself from the spiritual-soul. The dream comes to life. What would otherwise be only a world of dark, floating dream images is animated from the same point; it becomes a living world, a living panorama of life. One is oneself the source of the animation of what thus emerges as a dream. This is the direct experience after death.

All this happens while the person is hardly aware that he has emerged from his previous consciousness, but only feels that something has stirred within him, as if from the center of his being, spreading out and escaping that life to which he has so far passively surrendered. What one did not know between birth and death: that thoughts, which otherwise merely undulated like a dream of the ego, are alive, one now knows that. And one now lives one's self out of the formerly alien life into this inner life. One experiences what it means that what was previously more externally connected to one, now seizes the innermost. What was previously not life, but an image of life, seizes the imagination, the thinking. And while one is finding one's way into this conception, gradually a further one arises. This is this, which one could call: a living into a sounding through of the panorama of life with the universe. I have already described these things more generally. But one must always look at them more closely in order to penetrate the secrets of the world.

At first, one's innermost life dream comes to life, so to speak, and becomes a living universe, a living cosmos. Then, as it were, it is filled with what one can call: the music of the spheres of the universe resonates through this life dream. One experiences how what one was oneself between birth and death as a part of the cosmos is now absorbed by the cosmos, how this integrates with that which is now not earthly. For one has gone through the earthly between birth and death. And then the next thing is that one feels how intimately the cosmos permeates what one was as a part. One has the feeling of an inner light coming on and illuminating what one was. But all this streams and resounds, so to speak, into the panorama of life. Then the etheric body detaches itself – because these processes all happen while the person is connected to the etheric body – and what is called the detachment of the etheric body occurs.

Now this experience, this perception of the panorama of life, this clothing of the panorama of life with the sounding and luminous substances of the cosmos, is similar to the way the physical body integrates into the human being when one enters into existence through birth. Just as the human substance given to one by the earth, so to speak, integrates into the human soul, so the cosmic, the universal, integrates after passing through the gate of death. This experience, which has been described, is necessary. And when one really follows the spiritual side of life between death and a new birth, then one notices the significance for this whole life between death and a new birth of this first experience after passing through the gate of death. Here in physical life on earth — we must be quite clear about this, I have emphasized it often — we have our sense of self-consciousness because we live in the physical body. I emphasize: the sense of self, not the self. Our self is assigned to us by the Spirits of Form, that is something else. But we have our sense of self because we are immersed in the physical body. We only have to be quite clear about the nature of this sense of self in the waking state. The best way to understand it is to imagine you are moving through a room. At first you feel nothing; now you are touching something. The outside world touches you, but you become aware of yourself. You become aware of the impact that the outside world has on you, you become aware of the outside world, you feel yourself touching the outside world.

In fact, we have our sense of self in the physical world by bumping into the outside world everywhere. Of course, not only with the sense of touch, but when we open our eyes, we also bump into the outside world; when sounds reach our ears, we become aware of it when our hearing bumps into the sounds.

But we also become aware of ourselves by emerging from the spiritual world every morning and immersing ourselves in the physical world. This immersion in our physical body, that is, this collision of our ego and astral body with the etheric body and physical body, that is what creates our sense of self. This is why there is usually a lack of self-awareness in the dream world: because we need this collision with the physical body and the etheric body to have self-awareness.

For a clear, distinct, waking self-awareness, we need this collision. Now, the outer physical body has been taken from the one who has passed through the gate of death. In the same way as between birth and death, he cannot produce self-awareness. Without consciousness of self, he would have to tread the path between death and a new birth if this consciousness of self were not now generated by another path. This other path is that everything we now experience directly in the etheric body after we have passed through the gate of death remains in existence all the time between death and a new birth.

In this respect, too, the experience in the spiritual world between death and a new birth is the opposite of the physical experience here between birth and death. Here in the physical world, no one can consciously remember the moment of their birth; remembrance only sets in later. Man does not remember his birth, it is, so to speak, too far in the past for the memory process to go backwards. But what the person experiences inwardly from the other side of death remains throughout life between 'death and a new birth for the soul. The experience of death remains just as surely as the experience of birth disappears when the person enters the physical world. The physical person does not look back on his birth in the physical world, but he looks back on death in the whole time between death and a new birth. This looking back, this encounter with the experience of death, is what creates the sense of self between death and a new birth, and we owe it to that.

The sight of death is only from the side of physical experience, if at all, something terrible. Only there it has horror and terror, if one sees it from this side. But the dead see it from the other side. And seen from this side, there is really nothing terrible about the fact that the moment of death remains, so to speak, for the whole of life between death and a new birth. For even if it is annihilation, seen from this physical side of life, it is the most glorious, the greatest, the most beautiful, the most sublime, which can be seen continually from the other side of life. There he constantly testifies to the victory of spirit over matter, to the self-creative power of spirit. In this intuitive perception of the self-creative power of spirit, the consciousness of self exists in the spiritual worlds.

In the spiritual worlds, one has this self-awareness precisely because one is constantly creating oneself inwardly, never appealing to an existing being, but always creating oneself, and in this self-creation, one touches back to the moment of death. So we can also indicate how the sense of self-awareness is generated in the time between death and rebirth. The birth of self-awareness is of great significance in this experience in the first period after death. And of course, this first experience is also different depending on whether the person, let us say, reaches an advanced age, then passes through the gate of death in a natural way, or is perhaps carried off in the tenderest childhood or in the prime of life. And of quite particular significance in relation to the difference in this area is approximately — not pedantically exact, of course — the age of thirty-five. What now takes place in a thousand different ways, that young people in the prime of their lives pass through the portal of death: tomorrow it will show us how this is further modified by death approaching them from outside. But if a person does pass through the portal of death young, then the view of this described tableau of life with its invigorating events is already different than if one passes through the portal of death after the age of thirty-five.

You can say, although it is of course difficult to find the right words for these circumstances, that someone who dies at a young age has the feeling that the dream image of their life appears and they bring it to life from the center of their life. But as you pour your own vitalizing powers over this tableau of life, something still stands behind this tableau of life like a remnant from the world from which you have stepped out by going through birth.

When a child dies, the tableau of life is extremely short. If, for example, a six-year-old child dies, the tableau of life is still not very substantial. But behind this tableau, so to speak, entering from behind and casting a shadow over it, there is still much of what was lived through in the spiritual world before birth, or, as one also said in the German language in the past – Goethe used the expression – before one “came into the world”. A beautiful expression that has now been lost. And when a child dies who has not yet any memory of the past, for whom the time has not yet come when one remembers back, then such a tableau of life does not actually exist for him, in which he feels himself in it so directly as a human being feels himself in it when he dies later; but what he had around him before birth emerges through the whole tableau of life, only a little modified. One could say that this glimpse of certain remnants of the spiritual world that one has experienced before birth is only lost after death, when one has passed the age of thirty-five.

One should never – and this is said in parenthesis – be tempted, I emphasize this expressly, to indulge in the not-at-all-harmless thought of what might be better for a person: to die before the age of thirty-five, or to die after the age of thirty-five and to live through what we will describe. These thoughts should not be pursued, they should not be entertained, but they should be considered: when one passes through the gate of death, one should, in the strictest sense of the word, leave it solely and entirely to karma.

But it is important to understand these things. If one dies after the age of thirty-five, there is no possibility of seeing anything of the remainder of the spiritual life preceding birth. That is obscured. But the tableau of life still appears. One has a strong feeling that one is creating it from within, that one is weaving it oneself, as it were; but this web is brought to life. In this way, dying before the age of thirty-five and dying after the age of thirty-five differ quite significantly in terms of the tableau of life. The life tableau before the age of thirty-five has much more the character of something that comes to you from outside, as if from a spiritual world, and you only push towards it what you yourself have experienced. The tableau of life after thirty-five years is such that at first more of an emptiness, a darkness, comes towards you from the outside, and you bring what you have acquired in life towards this darkness. But it is no less vividly ignited by this. Our inner experience is modified by the fact that one moment it is like the approach of a mirage that we approach, while the other moment we carry our world into the world of the cosmos. All this has great significance for life, as we shall see tomorrow. This karmic process, whereby our physical body is snatched from us at a certain age of physical life, has a great significance for the nature of life after death. But this is intimately connected with our entire karma.

Then comes the time when we feel: Now you are actually out of the earthly. If you want to be very rough, you could say that as soon as you pass through the gate of death, you have the feeling that the earthly body is leaving you. The friends, the people you were with, are leaving you. The experiences you had with them are leaving you. You are alone with yourself for a while, alone with what you have experienced. Of course, everything you have experienced with people is included in the dream of your life; you look at it as what people have engraved in you, but in such a way that you live within yourself during the day and bring the dream of your life to life within yourself. You get the impression that the earth is also leaving you, but that you are still living in the same sphere as the earth, in the sphere that still belongs to the earth. And the laying down of the etheric body is actually also experienced in such a way that one has the feeling: now you are not only out of the earth and its substance, but also out of what is the most immediate environment of the earth, out of the light; you are also out of what, on earth, as dense substantiality, makes the music of the spheres inaudible. You are – this is perhaps the last impression, which is very significant, which is then something lasting – you are no longer in the habit of having external light illuminate you and your surroundings, so to speak. I note, as if to interject, that the most foolish idea is held by those who believe that if one were to fly away from the Earth toward the Sun, one would fly continually through light. This fantastic notion is currently held by materialistic physicists. The belief that the sun spreads light in the way it is described in physics, that light passes through space and falls on the earth, is one of the worst superstitions. After death, one realizes this by realizing, when one is free of the etheric body, that only in the area that belongs to the earth, that is what we have as sunlight here in physical life. One has the perception: Now this light no longer disturbs you. Now it is the inner generation of the light that spreads out in the first sounding through. The inner light can now become effective because the outer light no longer disturbs the inner.

And now, with the shedding of the etheric body, the entry into that world begins, which is so often called the world of kamala. We will call it the soul world, because after the inner life-giving power has first emerged, one then experiences something like an inner resounding of what one is, since one is now alone with oneself. And after the inner illumination, what appears to be an inner warming occurs. Here on earth, one is warmed by receiving warmth from outside and feels dependent on it in the physical body. And now the inner warming occurs, and this warming is such that one now feels again: You are now able, in the element in which you live, to evoke in yourself the sensation that you also had earlier, but in the form: warmth affects you. — This permeates the tableau of life with warmth. As a result, one enters a completely new element. One has the feeling that the etheric body is now leaving one. And that is precisely the entrance into the world that in my book “Theosophy” was called the world of the blaze of desire, because the warmth that arises from within is at the same time desire, generating, flowing desire, feeling of the element of will. And into this, there already mingles that which remains with us for a certain length of time: the experience of the soul world, which I have often described. We can only describe these things more precisely bit by bit, as a reliving of life. One proceeds from the experience of death back towards birth. And now one relives from the other side everything that one has gone through in physical life. But you do not experience it in the same way as you experienced it here in the physical world, but you experience it in a moral way. If, let us say, at some point between birth and death you have harmed someone, you felt at the time what you did, but not the suffering that the other person felt. Now you experience the same thing again, but not what you yourself experienced in terms of anger or antipathy, but rather how the other person experienced it. You extend your own experience, if I may put it this way, to the effects of his actions that occurred between birth and death. You live yourself into all the effects of the actions.

This is, in a sense, the basis of life between death and a new birth: that one gradually immerses oneself in what one has done between birth and death during the experience in the soul world, that one gradually submerges oneself in it. Just as one gradually lived into nature here from childhood, learning to perceive nature and understand nature, so in the time after death one lives into the effects of one's own deeds, into the effect of one's own thoughts and words, in short, into the entire world of effects; one pours oneself into the world of effects. Of course, spiritual beings gradually emerge from this background: the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the elemental world. Just as we do not merely experience nature here, but animals, plants and minerals emerge from the soil of nature, so within this reliving, where we live into the effects of our deeds - for that is actually the basic soil of our world - the spiritual beings in the spiritual world emerge. And there, as in the physical world, physical beings come to meet us among the spiritual beings of the elemental realms and the higher hierarchies, the souls that have been connected to us, the souls that have already died and are in the spiritual world, or the souls that are still embodied in the physical body, with whom we have had contact here. With all this, this basic ground of the after-mortal being, this dissolving into the world of one's own deeds, comes to life.

And in a certain way, it can be perceived that there is a difference between perceiving a soul that is still on earth and a soul that has already passed through the gate of death. The dead person naturally knows whether he is dealing with one soul or the other. When he is dealing with a soul that still dwells in the earthly body, then the dead person has the feeling that this soul is approaching him more from the outside, that the image, the imagination, forms itself. With a soul that already belongs to the disembodied, there is a much more active experience. You have the feeling that the soul is approaching you, but that you have to form the image for this soul. The dead person comes to you with his being, you have to form his image yourself; the person who is still alive brings you his image when you look down on him.

And so now, in a certain way, one experiences with moral emphasis what one can call one's deeds, that is, the effects of what one has done, thought, wanted. There one plunges in, there one lives oneself into it. And one plunges in in a very specific way, namely in such a way that one experiences, for example, that one has hurt someone, and now one experiences what the other has experienced through the injury! This is really your own experience of what the other person experienced here in the physical world. You go through it. And by going through it, the strength arises in you, as if by inner, elementary necessity: You have to make up for that, you have to make amends for that! It is really the case that you can use the comparison: A mosquito flies towards you, you close your eyes. You carry out an activity under an impression. After death you experience the effect of something you have done; then you respond by generating the strength to make amends, that is, to compensate for what you have done to the other person. This means that by reliving this experience in your soul, you take upon yourself the strength to make amends for what you have done to this person. This creates the desire to be with him in earthly life in order to balance out what was done to him. During this reliving, all the forces for karma are created, for balancing karma. One takes them on.

So already in these first years or decades after passing through the gate of death, one creates the living out of karma. And as true as there is a growing power in the germ, which only later realizes itself in the blossom, it is as true that already now, in the time after passing through the gate of death, the power exists in the dead as root power, which then remains for the whole life between death and a new birth, and which realizes itself in the new earth life or in later earth lives as karmic compensation for what one has done. Thus the will is generated, which then becomes unconscious will for karma.

And now we can take a closer look at something that is important for the understanding of this picture of life between death and a new birth. We can see this if we cast our eyes once more on the reciprocal action between the conditions of earthly life here, which are well known to us in their outer appearance and on which we have reflected many a time, and their inner secrets, when we look at the reciprocal action between the waking life of the day and the sleeping life of the night.

Today, we want to look at this waking and sleeping again from a certain point of view. From an external point of view, sleep consists of our I and astral body being outside the physical and etheric bodies. The life of sleep initially remains unconscious if it is not interspersed with a certain type of dream life. However, this does not mean inactivity. On the contrary, this life in sleep is a soul life that is much more active within than the waking soul life, even though it remains unconscious during normal life on earth. The waking life of the soul is only so intense because the activity of the ego and the astral body experiences resistance from the aetheric body and the physical body. In this mutual pushing and shoving between the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other, something develops that resembles continuous pushes and counter-pushes. This is what appears to us as an alert day-life, while in normal life on earth we are not yet able to bring the continuous but intense activity of the night-life to consciousness. This does not push against the physical and etheric bodies, so it does not become conscious. But in itself the day-life is weaker; it only becomes conscious through the fact that it continually beats against the etheric body and physical body. This beating is perceived, while the more intense activity of the life during sleep goes into the indefinite, cannot beat against anything and thus remains unconscious.

But what is a person actually doing during this 'dream life'? When dreams occur in normal life, these dreams are not the actual activity during sleep, but are actually a visualization of the activity through the memories of ordinary life. The images of dream life arise because life spreads its tapestry over the actual inner activity; and in this way many things are perceived in 'dream life'. There the I and the astral body are in a living activity; when this touches the etheric body and the human being touches the etheric body, the dream arises. But the dream uses the physical life memories from the etheric body to make visible the invisible activity of the ego and the astral body. Therefore, one can only understand the dream if one takes these images in terms of their character sequence, that is, if one learns to understand these images. “Dreams must first be read in the right way, the right art of interpretation must first be added. Then, however, they point to this most significant reality, which is carried out by the ego and the astral body during sleep. This activity, then, which the human being carries out, is revealed to serious and dignified spiritual research.

What exactly is this activity that takes place from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up? It consists of reliving the experiences of the day in a much more intense way, so that one becomes, as it were, one's own judge of the day's experiences. It is a trite expression, but deeply true: during the day, one lives into the normal consciousness, letting the events that take place around one wash over one. But at night, in the astral body, one takes the events of the day much more seriously, much more meaningfully, both intellectually and emotionally. One weighs them, examines them in terms of their cosmic value. One concerns oneself with what they mean in the context of the whole world. An immense inner thoroughness in the contemplation of life is poured out upon the activity from falling asleep to waking up; only in normal life it remains unconscious. All this, what man goes through every night like a reliving of the day's life, has a great significance as preparation for life after passing through the gate of death.

Consider, then, with the means of ordinary physical consideration, this continuous life between birth and death. Of course, one only says that one remembers back to a certain point in time in this life. In truth, one does not remember the whole life back, but one remembers in the evening what goes on until the morning. Then the memory breaks off. Then comes the previous 'day', and then the night, which one does not remember. So one remembers back, but it is, as it were, chain link on chain link, a white and a black link. One does not remember the night in the life between birth and death. The strange thing is that in this time when you are in the realm of the soul, you remember the way you relived your daytime experiences night after night during the nights. Here in physical life you remember your days; in the realm of the soul you remember the same, but you remember how you worked through and lived through the days in the nights. You retrace your nights. In this way you can see the whole nature of the experiences in the soul realm.

If you realize this in detail, it is like this: you met a person on a certain day of your life, you experienced something with him. You relive it not only with him during the day, but also at night, and in the following nights; then it is a kind of reminiscence. You experience it inwardly in the ego and astral body. Everything you have experienced here in your waking consciousness, you experience again in your night consciousness. And the way you have experienced it in your night consciousness gives you the handle for how you need it in the soul world. You relive your nights. This is a very significant truth of spiritual research, and one can always remember through such a thing the fact that spiritual research is not as many believe. Many believe that once one has entered the spiritual world, then the spiritual researcher suddenly knows the whole spiritual world and is informed about everything. This belief is just as naive as it is naive to believe that someone who has walked across one part of the earth knows the whole earth. He knows parts of the earth quite well, but he knows nothing about other parts of the earth. Equally, someone who knows the spiritual world at some point does not need to know everything about the spiritual world. That is the subject of a slow research. That is why it is so difficult to talk about spiritual science, because you keep running into this prejudice. When lectures on spiritual science are given, people demand in the question and answer session that information be given about all things. Such questions are to be judged in the same way as if, for example, someone had become acquainted with a certain number of minerals or plants and one would then ask him about the secrets of the animal world and say: He knows one thing, so he must know the other too!

It is quite the case that all the details of the spiritual world must first be worked out. And above all, one must be able to wait until one thing or another arises. Now you have been able to see that in my “Occult Science” and “Theosophy” I have spoken about the approximate length of the so-called Kamalokalebens, the life in the soul world. From a certain point of view, one can say that, as it has happened. But now the spiritual researcher comes to a certain context that can really be compared to traveling from country to country. One comes from one place to another, and so one comes here from one area to another. Thus, the spiritual researcher can come to a different point of view; and this point of view answers the question: What does the activity of the ego and the astral body during the night involve? The experiences of the night can be seen as a reprocessing of the day's experiences. The question may arise: How does life turn out in the soul world when we know that the nights are lived through in the soul world? I have stated that life in the soul world makes up about a third of the last life on earth. If you live through the nights, how long will life in the soul world last? Well, you sleep through about a third of your life here on earth; some people sleep more, others less, but you sleep through about a third of your life on earth.

So are the tremendously significant impressions one can have regarding the truth of spiritual science. Because that is how it is in spiritual science: something is given to you from a certain point of view, from which you look into the spiritual world. A truth arises. One could doubt this truth. Now one starts from a different point of view and comes to the same truth, as is the case now with the experience of the Nights. This is the result of the truth. This is an important criterion, this inner agreement. And you will find this everywhere in spiritual science, where it is seriously and worthily pursued: that the same thing is sought from different points of view, and that the same truth emerges from these different points of view. Once people develop a feeling for the truth value inherent in this way of approaching spiritual truth and then finding this spiritual truth, they will also sense how much more true it is than anything that can be investigated in the physical world. The important thing is that we have a memory here in physical life for what we have experienced in our waking consciousness, and that we have a memory in the time when we pass through the soul world for what is further worked on during the nights on the basis of what the waking consciousness experiences.

In order to approach the meaningful truths that we will discuss tomorrow with the right attitude, let us recall something that I have already mentioned here in a different context with reference to the great events of our time: When a person passes through the portal of death in such a way that their life is, as it were, torn away from the outside, especially if they die at a young age, then after they have passed through the portal of death, after a short time, the separation of the etheric body also occurs. But this etheric body would have the power to supply the rest of life with external life forces. Normally, the person receives the powers of the etheric body that can supply them with life forces into old age. If life is suddenly interrupted, then these powers remain. These powers are also present in the discarded etheric body. And just as nothing of the forces is lost in the physical world, but only transformed, so these forces are not lost either, but remain present. Apply this specifically, then you will say to yourself: When a person dies in his youth, in his prime, he leaves the world what he still has of vital forces in his ether body, which he could have used up himself. Imagine it even more concretely. Suppose a person, let us say in the twenty-fifth year of life, is struck by a bullet: he leaves to the world in terms of etheric forces of life that which he would have been able to use up from the twenty-sixth year of life onwards for the rest of a long life. That remains, that is a gift that the dead leave to the spiritual atmosphere of life in which we find ourselves. We remain surrounded by these forces. And in these forces lie the sacrificial attitudes with which the departed person permeated his etheric forces. That remains. And future generations have no idea how they actually live in the forces left by their ancestors in this way, how they are surrounded by them, and how our spiritual life air is imbued with them. They pay no attention to what is left behind by the departed in such a time, when so many etheric bodies that can still be used in life are given back to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth in a relatively short period of time. We will continue from there tomorrow.

We will now direct our attention to what can be revealed to us from such profound connections, through which we can see into the spiritual world, and no longer see the spirit in a merely abstract, trivial way, even hazily in the world of the senses, but see the spiritual essence in a concrete way. In addition to the fates of those who have passed through the gate of death, we see beings of the higher hierarchies and of the elemental world. But we also see what remains inwardly connected to the earth: that which is left in the etheric bodies. What the souls who meet their death in the great fields of battle leave behind in the way of unused etheric forces will have a definite effect. These will combine with the understanding that the children of the earth will show for the future. And looking at this, we say what we have often said at the end of our meditation:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

This evening we want to use to reflect on the interaction between the spiritual and physical worlds. This has already been the subject of other reflections in recent days. It will be the main point on which we will depend to further develop the topic that we have raised. But I would like to start from a more general consideration, which will show us how, in the more abstract, in the more general, the interaction of the spiritual and the physical, the unearthly and the earthly, can be thought of, can be encompassed by a simple thought. And from this more general consideration, we will then move on to what is important: the relationship of the disembodied human being, who has passed through the gate of death, to those people who are embodied in this earthly life.

Let us look at our Earth as the scene of what is expressed to our senses first. I will begin quite hypothetically, will propose thoughts and ideas that are initially just thoughts, or at least appear to be just thoughts. Let us assume that all the forces of our Earth, from a certain point of view, are concentrated and compressed into a small image of the Earth, in some way shaped. So let us assume that we have a small Earth, a small, tiny body, but one that contains in miniature the same forces as the Earth in the large. Let us visualize this schematically. Let us imagine that we have a small Earth, that is, a small, tiny body that contains within itself the same power relationships that are otherwise distributed throughout the large volume of the Earth's body. Let us imagine that this small Earth body is somehow connected to the Earth.

Now, if we imagine the earth correctly, we do not have to think of it as just any inanimate being, as it presents itself to the geologist, the mineralogist, who only imagines this earth as an inanimate being. Because if the earth were only mineral, as the geologist imagines it, it would never be able to harbor plants, animals, human beings on it. Of course the geologist is right to isolate what is dead, but he should be aware that this is only one aspect of the earth's existence. If, however, we imagine the earth as a living being, then we must also imagine that its life undergoes changes over time. So that this earth in winter — we have discussed this often — is in a very different state than in summer, just as a person is in a different state when asleep than when awake. We must not imagine that winter and summer simply brush over the earth, but that they are something that takes hold of the state of the earth, that is, the living being, just as the states of waking and sleeping take hold of us. This temporal sequence is therefore part of our earthly existence if we regard this earthly existence as a living one. But with this we also say that every being that is connected with this earth – and that includes this small earth we are talking about here – is in this changing state with the whole earth, that it shares in it.

What does this change of conditions mean for our earth? Let us say, for example, that spring is coming. When spring comes, it means that the sun's effect on the earth is quite different from that during the winter. We could also say: When spring arrives, the earth is seized by the effects of the sun. During the winter, when our little earth with the great earth was, so to speak, dependent on itself, when the sun did not care about our little earth, now our little earth is also seized by the effects of the sun, by what is outside of our earth. The sum of forces in the little earth is snatched from the earth. Our little earth is, so to speak, no longer dependent on the earth alone; it is claimed by the sun, it is snatched from the earth. Yes, when our little earth is snatched from the earth in this way, then other forces than mere earthly forces play into our little earth, then the external forces communicate with our little earth.

Now we have to imagine this small earth lined with substances. What a substance is is not considered here. From autumn to spring, this small earth is alone with itself, and so it can develop its forces within itself. But then comes the sun, which draws out the forces, so that under the influence of the sun's effect, what was first enclosed in our little earth now comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. It is torn out and comes into extra-terrestrial spheres of activity. That which was compressed can expand and also acquires a relationship to the surrounding cosmic space under the influence of the sun.

Now, after a certain time, towards autumn, the effects of the sun cease again. Then this development cannot take place, and the forces of the sun's effect withdraw from the forces of the earth's effect, that is to say, this combination of forces is restored. It gathers the substance together: the earth takes back, as it were, what it had to leave to the sun for a certain period of time. The effects of the sun now cease for a while, winter comes. If this were left to the earth, the sun would completely take possession of the small earth within the great earth. During the whole of the winter the system of earth forces must be active within. Otherwise the sun would take possession of this small earth entirely for itself. It must be ensured that when the sun reappears it can take hold of this small earth; otherwise it will simply become a tiny ball that is consumed by the great earth. A force must assert itself so that the sun, when it comes, can reach this small earth again. But precautions must be taken for this.

If the earth has its own power only in this one inside it (it is drawn), then that is just a small earth. The sun has retreated, now this small earth is alone with the large earth. When the sun comes again, what should it do now with what has become mere earth? In reality, the sun must be able to reach in again – there is no difference here, whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth around the sun – the sun, when it is in a new relationship to the earth, must be able to reach in. You can imagine it in the following way: Imagine a person standing firmly in one place and using all his strength to remain standing. You approach from the side and try to push him over. If he has enough strength within him to stand, you will not be able to move him. But when it begins to move, you will be able to intervene in its direction of movement. Suppose there were a force inside it that would cause the orbiting movement of the sun, or of the earth itself, like an inner momentum; let us assume that the sun would communicate this momentum to the small earth: then the sun could in turn intervene in this movement that it has imparted. In this way, it could snatch this small Earth from the Earth, and the process could take place as described. In other words, towards spring we would have a small Earth in which the Sun intervenes through impulses of motion that it had already imparted the previous fall. The Sun intervenes, snatches the small Earth from the mere forces of the Earth, and, in accordance with the effect of the Sun, unfolds on a larger scale that which is limited only to the small Earth. The forces must contract, and the small globe of the earth must be given the momentum of the sun. You already suspect what it is: I have described in sketchy terms what happens during the growth of plants, the unfolding of plants into leaves, flowers and fruits. I have described to you here the participation of the sun's momentum: that is fertilization; the seed is fertilized and remains so until the following year, when it is again seized by the sun. The little grain that carries out the fertilization in the plant is the being in which, through the sun's maturation, the possibility is laid to convey this momentum to the earthly part.

You see, we have here a living interaction between the earthly and the extra-terrestrial. We cannot imagine that the plant's growth continues to flourish without the sun leaving it a replica of its momentum, in which it can engage again the following year. In other words, when we look at the plant, we are really not just looking at something that is connected with the workings of the earth; rather, we see in the whole cycle of the plant process an interaction between the sun and the earth. There are other planetary conditions to be considered, but we will disregard these for now in order to grasp the meaning of the whole process. We want to visualize how what we see on earth is not just an earthly product, but also a product of the sun. The fact that human knowledge is usually limited to what goes on inside and outside on earth prevents us from gaining a real insight, from truly understanding things. For with mere earthly forces, only our minerals are formed. The moment we go beyond the merely mineral into the vegetable, we must say that in the earthly itself there are no longer any forces that shape things.

The materialists always hope that one day they will be able to produce a plant seed in the laboratory, just like any other chemical composition. The point of the opposition to materialism is not this production, but rather that, by advancing from the mineral to the plant, from the chemical product to the living, the production can only take place through a supernatural process. And before they will succeed in realizing this ideal of materialism, in producing plant seeds just as they do mineral products, chemical substances, the materialists will have to learn – if I may express myself grotesquely – to believe in astrology, to believe that they must place a process that they want to bring about under the influence of the stars. Laboratories will have to be set up that work with the changing seasons and that take into account the constellation of the stars in the same way that the constellation of the stars is taken into account in nature. One must rise from the earth when one rises from the dead to the living. For the etheric-physical must also be involved in the creation of the living. This, however, is never dependent on the merely earthly, but on that which is spread throughout the whole world. When we survey our earthly surroundings, we survey what is merely physical; from the earthly point of view, we survey the physical by surveying the earthly. That which is ethereal to our earth is still exposed to the entire universe.

If we now go further to the astral, we come to an element that is no longer exposed to the visible at all. And if I were to develop this for the animal kingdom in the way I developed it for the plant kingdom, it would turn out to be more complicated; but you would see that not only the extra-terrestrial and the still visible in the starry world come into consideration, but that the supersensible comes into consideration at all, which is not even concluded in the starry world. One must go out of the realm of the visible.

I wanted to make such a consideration before you, so that you gain insight into the really deep inner mystery of what is going on in the everyday, in the daily growth of plants, so that you gain insight into how it is in the fertilizing grains of the plant , which are distributed in a circle or in some other pattern around the ovary, it is essential that they contain extraterrestrial effects, and that the seed itself is essentially a reflection of the whole earth effect, that it is a small earth. The interaction that takes place in the plant blossom through fertilization is a reflection of the process that takes place between the earth and the entire starry world of the surrounding cosmic space.

We are fundamentally surrounded by secrets everywhere, and knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge always inspire the deepest humility. Just imagine how far it is from the general view of such a thing to the concrete view of the details of all that covers the

4419 earth. The field of knowledge thus truly opens up as an infinite one. We are confronted with infinity at every point of our existence, so to speak. And it is part of the right attitude that a person should develop towards the world to have a sense that one is actually looking into an infinite existence everywhere. But through this one also feels a certain bond between the individual finite human existence and the infinite, the whole world. And this mood should actually be poured out over everything that spiritual science can bring us, because without this reverent mood towards the infinite, nothing can actually be grasped with the right feeling in spiritual science. From time to time, one must renew such a mood within oneself, so that one ceases to regard knowledge as something that is sought after on the side, as it were, in the course of life, while in fact it must belong to the most sacred spiritual that intervenes in our lives.

If we give ourselves up to such moods, then we will also receive with the right attitude that which will increasingly have to be proclaimed in our time from the sources of spiritual science for the progress that must necessarily come into the world from our present time into the future. And when we have developed such an attitude, then this attitude is something effective in our soul. It is really not just something abstract, but it takes hold of our soul, it warms and illuminates our soul. And only when this happens can the right thing emerge from spiritual science, when our soul becomes, as it were, a different one, when what can be explored through spiritual science is felt through. When we bring such an attitude into our soul, then we can approach the riddles of life in the right way, which otherwise flow past us in life without us being able to relate to them in the right way.

There is really an inner connection between the soul and these general considerations, which I have now made, and what I now want to say with regard to human life. If you look at the plant, if you see it sprouting from the earth, you can tune your soul so that you feel: What is sprouting as greenery comes from such a complicated little creature, the seed, that this little being – from certain points of view – is a reflection of the whole earth, that in what I see sprouting from leaf to flower, from flower to fruit, the whole universe is involved. When I look at a green plant leaf on its stem, I realize that in this leaf, the way it is positioned, the way it greens, what was first enclosed in the small earth is enveloped by the effects of the sun, what has been wrested from the earth until the effects of the sun have taken hold of it. Then the effects of the sun, however, leave behind their vibrational impulses, after they have made it impossible for that which was in the small earth to spread when it must contract again. We see, as it were, in the sprouting, unfolding plant an image of certain effects of the whole great cosmos. We must regard what presents itself to our senses in this way as something that reveals to us in every point secrets that permeate and interweave the whole cosmos.

In this way, human life itself is also connected with the whole cosmos and now also with what is there in relation to us of the extraterrestrially visible bodies and processes. But what appears in earthly processes is particularly significant to us when we consider, I would say, the deviations from what we see as normal earthly life, normal human life. It is true that we constantly see many more deviations than what is actually normal in life, but ordinary cognition, which is limited to the sense world, does not engage with these deviations; one might say that it does not engage with the meaning of these deviations. We live in a time in which, crowded together, many deviations present themselves to us, which at the same time are real riddle questions. Do we not see in this time of severe trial for humanity numerous of our human brothers going prematurely through the gate of death? We see them going through the gate of death not through some kind of illness, something that is in their own organism, but we see them forcibly going

go through this gate of death. Because it is something else whether a human soul goes through the gate of death so that she dies of an illness in her youth or because her organism is hit by a bullet or is forcibly taken away from the soul-spiritual in any other way. But I already spoke about it yesterday: What takes place here between birth and death is all significant in the context of life as a whole; we have to accept it as karmic connections, we have to fit into the karma as it is given. But what happens is significant.

Now let us consider the case of the physical organism being taken away from the soul-spiritual by a bullet at a relatively young age. Compared to what we have become accustomed to — that the human being consumes his own organism — this is an abnormality. It is therefore a twofold mystery. If death alone is a mystery for direct contemplation, which is revealed through spiritual science, a twofold mystery arises when the course of life is not such that the organism is taken away from the spiritual soul through inner organic processes, but when this happens through a bullet.

Facing the universe, the cosmos, an inner mood arises in the soul that is created by such simple considerations, but which, grasped in all its depth, seizes us with an inner mood in relation to the secrets of the universe. And then, when the soul is so moved, we also approach the event that I have just hinted at with the necessary reverent mood and dignity and with the necessary seriousness: that the physical-bodily is forcibly taken away from the human spiritual-soul. And then this question arises before our soul like a riddle. Because how such a question arises determines whether or not one can contribute something to its solution. If a person has just had a banquet and then rested and now sits down to his spiritual work, then he will not solve the deep riddle, then he will not find the mood that matters. But when he faces the riddle and his soul is imbued with the right attitude towards the universe, then the riddles can be solved.

When the spiritual researcher, with such a mood of the soul, faces the riddle of death, which approaches us in such a way that the physical body is violently snatched from the soul-spiritual, then all kinds of things arise in the soul that can contribute to solving the riddle. Then the right impressions come, which are needed to clarify such a matter. These impressions cannot arise from every frame of mind, but only from the right one. In order to make this vividly clear to you, I have chosen this particular path today, by showing you, as it were, how such a task presents itself to the spiritual researcher. When the spiritual researcher is in the right frame of mind, the enigmatic question arises before him. But then something quite different arises: just as thoughts usually follow each other in a lawless manner, so now an impression arises before the soul in a law-governed manner, alongside the question. And then, if one has sensed this riddle, the riddle of death, one can sense the other question as something that belongs to it: Yes, how do people actually – depending on their particular nature – accept life? And all kinds of thoughts arise, thoughts that I now want to spread out before your soul itself.

Especially in our present time cycle, people only really accept something as reality if it is not a “mere thought”. For them, thought is not really something real. And they may be right from their point of view, but it is just a certain mood of the soul. That which is real must approach man much more strongly than a mere thought. A mere thought is just that — a mere thought! But for modern man, that which is designated as being must on no account be a mere thought. What presents itself as a mere thought, that is what man today calls non-existent. That which exists must place itself firmly in the world, must not speak merely to the thought. Out of this mood, people only believe that they are standing in reality when they can speak of this reality as an existing being, when they are forced to recognize this reality through being.

Now, when we ascend from this world in which we live to the spiritual world that man inhabits when he has passed through the gate of death, the most uncomfortable thought is, one might say, the thought of the being that formed here in the physical world. A being that is like the being in the physical world disturbs the disembodied person in the spiritual world. Precisely what is here in reality called the unreal in contrast to the existing is the real in the spiritual world. If something were to approach you there as it does here in the material world, you would reject it. It would startle you and be something that does not belong in the spiritual world. This is an extremely significant thought. If one were to talk as trivially in the spiritual world as one does here, a spirit might say, when something approaches it as it does here: What am I supposed to do with it? That's not it at all! — Because in the spiritual world I must have the opportunity to experience everything that comes to me as an imagination — it is at the lowest level of knowledge in the spiritual world — that is, to be able to translate it into intuition through my own activity. While in our time people only recognize as reality what they have done nothing for, one cannot

'recognize this in the spiritual world. Rather, in the spiritual world, one must do something to help bring about what is to appear there as reality. One must always work together.

It is the case that a disembodied person in the spiritual world sees the spiritual world around them to the extent that they are active in it. And what they see when they are not active is the world beyond, the world that is our world here. When the disembodied person looks at the earth, they see what is there without them being involved. Just as we on earth call our visible world, our real world, our existing world the here and now and what cannot be seen the hereafter, it is exactly the other way round from the point of view of the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there is absolutely nothing except what we create out of nothing into the present by participating: That is then the here and now. Otherwise, this world in the spiritual world is dark and silent and desolate if we do not act spiritually and mentally in it. But the hereafter is there without us working. While we look up here to the unknown, we look from the spiritual world at what is familiar to us here, but that is precisely the hereafter, which has no reality because it is, without one doing anything to it. — One must familiarize oneself with such ideas.

Now there is something within our physical world, our physical reality, that not everyone, but certain people, accept as something meaningful, despite the fact that it is not real. It is something that individual people bring into this reality, and in contrast to this, those who have an understanding of it behave in such a way that they accept it, despite the fact that it has no real existence: These are the ideals that people have. Idealists bring something valuable into our sensual reality: the ideals by which people live, which have no material reality, and which only the coarse materialist does not accept. But at the same time, these ideals are something of immense value in this life. They are the ideals that give us the impetus for our lives, they are what we desire so that we can hold to them. In a certain respect, these ideals make life valuable in that man lives up to them. Something unreal in the materialistic sense must be carried into our sensual reality with the ideals, so that what we must characterize in the sense does not arise: mere existence would be bleak if ideals were not there, if man did not find them in them. Among those who have no ideals, there must be idealists who, as it were, develop something in our reality that is an image of the reality beyond, that is not an existing thing, that does not claim the existing and yet is a valuable thing, indeed, has an absolute value.

After the spiritual researcher has developed this impression, which is natural to him, his research leads him back to the riddle of the human being hit by a bullet in his youth. And he must now ask: Is there something for the world beyond, in which the disembodied human beings and spiritual beings live, that corresponds to idealism here on earth? Is there something similar for the beings in the hereafter as the ideals here on earth? And lo and behold, the following emerges. Take a person who was shot at a young age: his etheric body separates from the physical body, the physical body has gone in a violent way. Of course, the violence must come from outside. What I have said can never apply when it is a matter of one's own decision. The process must come from outside. The etheric body, as I have already emphasized, has forces within it that could have continued to supply life for decades, perhaps even for decades, here on earth. These forces do not disappear, they remain. The person who now discards his etheric body in this way hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general world. But he has entered the spiritual world in the manner indicated, or rather, his body has been taken from him. So he now ascends into the spiritual world as a disembodied soul. Something of him remains in the physical world that he could have used up himself but did not use up. Consider what is at hand here! The human being in question ascends into the spiritual world without having used up anything that he could have used up.

We now turn our attention to the individuality of the human being itself. The human being ascends into the spiritual world without having consumed something that he could have consumed. Thus he ascends into the spiritual world with something that could have been real down here in the physical world, but did not become real in the external sense. Those people who entered the physical world with the potential for prolonged use of the etheric body here, but did not experience this use, come up to the spiritual world differently than those who have used up this etheric body by the end of their existence. They come up having incorporated into this earth something that could have been, but did not become. But this causes a mood in them, through which they become something similar for the spiritual world as the idealists here are for the physical world. So the one who passes through the gate of death in this way enters the spiritual world by bringing in something that is idealism there for the spiritual world, which is similar to the ideals that are brought into the physical world here by the idealists. A meaningful context of life!

So in such martyrdom times as the present one, souls enter the spiritual world that have passed through a shorter existence. They have lived here on earth in such a way that something that could have come into existence did not come into being for them, and they enter the spiritual world in such a way that they represent the connection with the earthly world there in the same way that idealists here represent the connection between the earthly world and the spiritual world in their ideals. In other words, these human beings who have passed through the gate of death in this way have the task of proclaiming in the spiritual world that not everything on earth is as coarse as that which is called reality here under ordinary circumstances, that the earth also harbors something that is indeed predisposed to being, but does not live out this being in a coarse way. The fact that such an inner attitude of the soul is also carried up into the spiritual world gives rise, in the time between death and a new birth, to something similar to the idealism that exists here on earth. And if we look at such an age as ours from the standpoint of the wisdom of the world, then we look into the world in such a way that we say to ourselves: Within the whole, wisdom-filled course of the world, we also accept this in such a way that we work our way up to its understanding with reverence. We then recognize that in such ages of martyrdom the spiritual worlds are given in a great, all-embracing sense that which must live with them, just as our idealism must live on earth, so that those who, as such, go up into the spiritual world at all and live through the life between death and a new birth may find something similar in this world to what we find here in idealism. Therefore, these ages must come into being. Whether they must always arise in the future is not a matter for discussion today, because that depends on the way in which the life of knowledge of mankind on earth is spiritualized, not only whether but in what way. No one should draw from what has been said that such ages should necessarily be defended forever; but if one examines their meaning, it becomes clear what has been said for the present time of mankind.

Then we look into the wisdom-filled context of the world and say to ourselves: How does fear and terror, suffering and pain, and what those who pass through the gate of death must necessarily find in the spiritual world fit together? — We see how suffering, pain, blood and martyrdom, which present themselves to us here from one side, look from the other side. One can well imagine that there are people who want to be wiser than the gods and who therefore raise the question: Would the gods not have brought about something in the spiritual world that corresponds to idealism on earth, without having imposed on earth what is imposed on earth in such a martyr age? — Such questions are raised only by those who want to be wiser than the gods. Those who look into the human age in the right way want to understand the world because they are convinced that it must be as it is, and that anything man dreams up about something that would be better for this world could only be worse for it.

We look at the idealists, perhaps at a truly idealistic person in this world; we are perhaps tempted, if we have a sense for ideals, to say: See this man, he brings heaven into the earth, because what is not in the material sense, he brings as something valuable for the existing, as a guiding principle to people! The souls that have normally passed through the gate of death and are going through the life between death and a new birth also see in this life souls that have in some way undergone a sacrificial death, from whom the physical body has been taken from the outside by earthly necessity. They look to these souls as to those who have to proclaim to them that down there on earth there is not only coarse existence, but that, connected with the earth, there are also human tendencies that could be existence and yet do not come to full existence, but instead of consuming this full existence, pass over at an earlier point in their lives between birth and death into the spiritual world.

A significant question arises here, namely, what is the difference between such a violent death and a death caused by an early illness? For what I have said now is nothing but a statement of facts. Precisely those who have ended their physical lives in this way, as described, are, as it were, the idealists of the spiritual world, and they are idealists for the reason that, as can be seen from further observation, the physical body has been taken from them by earthly events, by events that merely belong to earthly life.

When a person undergoes an illness, the body is taken from him by forces other than earthly ones. For consider, even in the growth of plants, not only earthly forces are at work, but extraterrestrial forces also collaborate. This is of course also the case with animals and even more so with human beings. Our illnesses do not come from the earth alone. Death comes to us only from the earth in no other way than when we die a violent death. However death may come, it is never a mere earthly event, unless it be a violent death in the sense indicated. Whether death comes to us through an illness – and suicide is not an earthly event either, since it comes about through a decision of the soul – there is no death that is merely brought about by earthly forces, except that which, through sacrificial deaths, through forces that play on earth, frees the body from the soul-spiritual. So that here earthly forces and relationships enter into reciprocal relationships with that which is spiritual. Otherwise, death is always something that completely transcends the earth; it is never a mere interaction between the earth and what is in the spiritual world. The etheric body, which was early deprived of its activity, is given over to purely earthly conditions, to something that is merely earthly, that is merely earthly events. For death is such — hold what I am about to say together with some of my thoughts these days — that when viewed from the physical side, it appears quite different than when viewed from the spiritual side. I have hinted at this in various ways. But always, when death does not occur in the way I have now indicated, it is something that can be understood from the other side. If one enters the other world through a death from illness, from old age, or through suicide, then one has what is needed to understand death there. If death is caused by a bullet on the battlefield, then one must look at purely earthly conditions to understand it. It is the same with accidents. One must look down from the spiritual world to have been earthly; death is to be explained from earthly conditions. And that makes that one must look down from the here and now of the spiritual world into the hereafter of the physical world in order to understand such a death.

Just as our ideals connect us to heaven, so the heavenly ideals connect these dead to the earth. Therefore, the one who thus passes through the gate of death, in the life between death and new birth, is one who weaves into all that takes place between the human souls that come to be embodied again, that which then results in our earth in spiritual things, which results in our earth in the earth itself also consisting of our thoughts, feelings and not merely of earthly things.

It must be admitted that the characteristics of these things, which I have discussed, are difficult. But it is understandable that this must be difficult, because one speaks with words that are coined for physical conditions about that which extends far, far beyond physical conditions. In any case, it is one thing to look, I would say, dull-witted and uncomprehendingly, at the mysterious nature of such events that emerge from the bosom of history into human life, such as our present difficult time of trial for humanity, and quite another to look at them and say to oneself: What gives meaning to such an event is not only significant for our Earth, but for all life! And in this feeling one is led into the deep meaning and the wisdom of the whole. One gradually learns to sense what must all be involved in order for the human being to be placed in this world in the course of his entire life.

This is what I wanted to suggest in the second mystery drama, from the mouth of Capesius, who speaks of the fact that the thinking of many gods and the cooperation of many gods is necessary to make man appear to all the worlds as their goal. That which in this drama emerges as a world-sentiment from the soul of Capesius, can perhaps become objective if one tries to appropriate such ideas, as we have tried to put them into our souls today. In such personalities as Capesius, such moods arise tragically because they can also arise without one immediately finding the full solution to the riddle. That is one thing to be noted in this connection; the other is that we must always bear in mind how much such study calls upon us to be modest and humble, not proud, not to have human delusions of grandeur.

To appropriate human self-awareness in the right sense means to consciously visualize it inwardly. And when we begin to sense what we can extend our consciousness to, how wide the horizon of the riddles of the world is, we will take care not to fall for the proud thought: O man, how you are actually a summary of the whole cosmos! — I believe that precisely such a thought must be very far from us. On the other hand, the other thought will be close to us: How little we know in our consciousness of what is knowable! — Infinity is necessary to put together the human being; but we have never gone further than knowing a very small piece of it. Modesty and humility are what descends into our soul precisely from knowledge as it expands. One can never learn more about the spiritual world than one already knows without also learning that what can be known is infinite. And the more one knows, the more vividly one senses this infinity. And one learns to understand how a part of life consists in allowing oneself to be seized by the great, mighty riddles and secrets that pulsate through existence.

Much of what humanity must now regain was known by people in ancient times within an ancient wisdom like a heritage. What people possess today has only been gained by this inheritance disappearing from the souls. In order for human souls to acquire this wisdom again, it first had to disappear. It had to disappear so that it could become acquired wisdom. We must work our way up again in order to gain in further earthly lives, in the further existence of the earth, what has disappeared from the souls as inherited wisdom. Thus, we must look into the perspective of the human future; then we will understand the necessity of spiritual science entering the world. It is precisely this living relationship with the infinite, as it has been characterized, that enables us to truly grasp esoteric science as something that is inwardly alive, that is also active and effective in us, and that can make us true co-workers in the shaping of the earth, which we must become if the earth is to develop further.

To reinforce this, I would like to mention one more thing. There are people we should certainly listen to, because they are saying the right thing from the point of view of the present. They say: In earlier times, people did not know what a criminal is, why a person develops as a criminal in the world. Today, however, we know. If you dissect the head of a criminal, you will find that it has a certain characteristic: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum, as it does in normal people. It was a great and significant discovery made by Moritz Benedikt, the famous criminal anthropologist, which shows how a certain simple physiology of the occiput determines whether someone is a criminal. So consider: You are a criminal because the posterior lobe does not cover parts of the brain that should be covered! There is nothing to be said against this truth. It is there, and it would be quite foolish to rebel against it, because it is a truth. But think: If you are a materialist, what do you have to say? Well, some people are born with brain lobes that are too small; they are then predestined to become criminals. Consider – I need not elaborate further – the infinite bleakness of such a view of the world! Consider how all human feeling must be changed when one knows nothing but this, and when one must say to oneself: Why do people become criminals? Because that is how nature has placed them in life, so that they cannot help but become criminals. But if one begins to know that the human being has an etheric body, then one knows something else to say about the matter, one knows something else about it. One knows that this ether body encompasses all parts, and that in the case of a person who has a occipital lobe that is too short in the physical sense, the corresponding ether parts can still attain their full development. Whatever the physical condition may be, the correction can also be achieved with the ether body. If we succeed in having a form of education that draws on spiritual science as well as physical science, we can develop an insight into a child's behaviour that enables us to recognise what is needed for its education and what we need to provide so that the ether body develops in such a way that it counteracts the effect of the underdeveloped occipital lobes. Then a person can, even if their hindbrain is not normally formed in the etheric body, still become a good person, even if they are physically predestined to be a criminal. Here you can see how spiritual science can and must practically intervene in life. Because purely physical science must let the criminal brain be a criminal brain, because it is only a science of the physical. But if you take spiritual science into consideration, you paralyze the physical defects. From this you can see what must develop in the future.

And now imagine: this spiritual science did not exist! Then there would never be the possibility of developing the etheric body in the way I have described. That means that anyone born in the future with an atrophied brain will live out their life in a way that corresponds to this brain. There will be no possibility of pedagogically improving this. The consequence of this will be that people will become what their physical organization is capable of. And this will continue forever. And people will reach the state of Jupiter, and the materialists' current dreams will become true. If spiritual science does not overcome what follows from the merely material organization, then people will gradually develop in such a way that this material organization will be decisive; people would then merely be a result of their material development. Because spiritual science intervenes in life, this will not be the case on Jupiter; the etheric body will again transform the physical body. For if in a life in which the physical brain has atrophied due to the karma of earlier lives, the etheric body is properly developed, then in the next incarnation the physical brain will develop properly. These things are all connected. So that spiritual science really becomes a reality, that it transforms humanity again.

” If you summarize these thoughts, you will be able to say to yourself: What the materialists think of man today is not yet reality, because today man is still so predisposed that the spiritual can intervene. But it could become as the materialists think, if it were up to the materialists, if spiritual science could be eradicated by the materialists. If the materialists had their way, people on Jupiter would live as a result of their material organization alone. What are materialists, then? They have a world view that does not correspond to reality today, but which could correspond to reality for people one day. These materialists are prophets, only false prophets! They dream of a world that, if it were up to them, could be created in their image. The materialists are dreamers, but mari must work against their dreams. When people realize that the materialists are dreamers, that they should be told: You go through the world and do not see reality, you dream of an existence that could at best be brought about by your lack of insight into the world, you are false prophets, you make all kinds of fantasies! At that moment materialism will be correctly assessed. So the opposite judgment of what the materialists, well, let's say, dream of themselves, that's what you'll have to have. Then the time will have come when one can really understand spiritual science. In a certain sense, spiritual science will already transform the world from this point of view.

In the last few days, I have tried to give you a few hints about this or that in the context of the physical and spiritual worlds. I have said it out of impulses that arise from the momentous events of our time. At a time when death is so present before the soul, one might say a thousand times a day, such reflections, when offered as a possibility, are indeed close to the human soul. For how could one refrain from searching for the meaning and purpose of existence in such difficult times of trial as these? The fact that we are able to talk about such questions here gives me great satisfaction and allows me to be among you again even in these difficult times. I would just like to add the comment that in the present situation, some things have to be viewed in the context of this present situation. It is not as easy as in peacetime to travel everywhere. Therefore, our members must be aware, as indeed everyone must be aware, that war times are different from normal times, and that we cannot demand everything as we would in normal times. I say this especially with regard to the fact that this is often overlooked, especially by our members, while our members should have a great deal of understanding for our present situation, and should be aware of its context. It has often been shown that our members cannot understand that one must bear in mind the difficult times in which we live and that not everything can happen with the same regularity as usual. But we must hold on to that, so that we are also loyal to our cause. What each of us can do in this time, through the individual branches of our Society working very hard and very thoroughly on our cause, is really done not only for the good of our cause, but for the good of much more.

It is natural that the community must now be looser; the work in our branches must be all the more intensive, especially with regard to deepening our souls. This is what I would like to place especially in your soul and heart at this time and today. Let us each try to remain holy and true to our ideals, especially in this time, to remain holy and true to what has been able to develop as an attitude through spiritual science in the course of time. Spiritual science must prove itself not only in easy but also in difficult times. What can be stated as a truism, but is nevertheless the keynote of all our striving, must now connect itself particularly deeply with our soul: the attempt at a comprehensive grasp of life. In contrast to so much that is now given in the outer world, in the outer world tending towards materialism – often with such one-sidedness – we want to strive for the versatility of life. We want to know that we must guard against every comfortable one-sidedness in every moment, because we face an infinity in every moment.

Some of you may have heard that in a place where our spiritual science is cultivated, it is necessary to talk about all kinds of shortcomings that have arisen here or there. If certain words have been used to offend certain people, we must not fall into the opposite extreme of one-sidedness. I am not saying this now in order to go into these things in more detail, but only as an example. If, for example, people who spoke of all kinds of occult events and experiences did not speak about these experiences in the right way, it must not be concluded from this that in our Society, for example, occult experiences are not the main thing. Of course they are, for we are striving from the external into the internal. Nor was there any need to object to occult experiences as such. But it is important to realize that within our movement, what counts is the level at which these experiences occur. For it is one thing to speak in a certain light-hearted way about occult experiences, and it is quite another to say that one does not want to hear about them at all. We have been talking about the most intimate occult experiences for three days. What is being created in our circle cannot be a mere science of thought. That is not what our society is for. We must not go from one one-sidedness to another.

I would like to draw particular attention to the intimate, to the way our spiritual science is so closely connected to the innermost part of our soul. What matters is that we do not turn our soul into something other than what it was before when we go through spiritual science. And that must also prove itself in difficult times. That is why I wanted to make such observations, which may be suitable for putting us in that reverent mood towards the spiritual life that is appropriate for the true spiritual scientist. Because basically the greatest and the smallest event in life, everything in life, is something that fills us with deep reverence if we are only able to go deeply enough into the spiritual background of this particular event. And even the painful events of life, the smallest and the greatest, can be placed in such a light through spiritual science that their contemplation helps to bring our soul into the right relationship with the wisdom that flows and weaves through the world.

From the point of view of world wisdom, we wanted to look at events in life that are connected with what is happening today in our environment, which is so great, but also so full of trials. If we feel this way about our time, then we feel right about what we wanted to suggest with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

Today I would like to give a spiritual-scientific historical consideration that can be important to us, especially in view of the momentous events we are facing, the events that the whole of European humanity is facing. Next Wednesday, I will then touch on a more intimate matter of the spiritual life of the human being. If some of us may find what we are to consider today seemingly remote, it is only seemingly so and should not be remote, because spiritual science should fill our souls with the deepest attention for everything that can contribute to the understanding of our time. As I said, on Wednesday we will then return to a purely human spiritual-scientific matter.

Today I would like to start with one question. But do not be alarmed, and do not think that by placing this question at the beginning of our deliberations I am in the slightest degree seeking to revive old disputes in our movement. As you will see, it is a completely different matter, although I will start with a question that could easily be misunderstood at first. The question I would like to raise is: Why, especially during this time of war, does Mrs. Besant continue to defame our German movement in her English magazines? Why did she find it necessary, right in the first months of the war, to say that our German movement had only the intention of being a kind of agency for anti-English political aspirations in Germany? Why did she find it necessary to say that this German movement of ours had the intention of bringing about her own – Mrs. Besant's – dismissal as president of the Theosophical Society in order to establish herself in India and from there organize some kind of anti-English, pan-German movement against England? Why does Mrs. Besant continue to spread these slanderous accusations against our German movement during this war in such an ugly manner, and why will she probably continue to do so?

Within our spiritual movement, we need nothing more than to have a clear, insightful view of what is going on in the world. That which can so easily please those who often believe that they are standing firmly within our movement, a certain - forgive the harsh expression - mental somnolence in the face of world events, is a great disadvantage, especially within such a spiritual movement. We must strive to have the clearest possible view of the affairs of our external existence. For nothing could be easier than for all manner of charlatanry and fraud to attach themselves to such a movement within the development of humanity. And since, within the limits that we have often emphasized, a certain amount of trust is needed even among the small group of those who want to understand certain things here, it is also obvious that, seduced by a certain trustfulness, precisely personalities of our movement are, so to speak, clouded by those who do not want to tell them the truth, but only want to graft all kinds of things into their souls, in order to breed a spiritual bodyguard for all kinds of endeavors, which in the proper sense are not truly spiritual endeavors of humanity, so to speak, by the detour of theosophical or other spiritual beliefs.

We have often pointed out the position of the Russian people within the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch, and since I have often discussed the relevant matters in this regard here in Stuttgart during this war period, I will not go back over them today, although you can read about them in individual cycles. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the fact that there are certain fundamental characteristics of the Russian people that make this Russian people particularly suitable for entering into the development of the fifth post-Atlantic or even sixth post-Atlantic cultural development in the way often characterized.

First of all, we have a characteristic of the Russian people that could be called an especially extensive adaptability of the soul to anything of a spiritual nature that confronts the Russian person in any way, a certain adaptability of the soul. It is the case that the Russian person is less productive, less creative in his own soul than the Central or Western European person, that he is, as it were, dependent on receiving and on living through intensively what he has received, but not on shaping it independently out of his own resources. Thus you can see how the Russian people received the Byzantine religion and left it at the point it was at when they received it. And today one can still see from the ceremonies of the Russian Church how ancient oriental essence shines through these ceremonies. One can, I would like to say, look through the form of the Russian Church at ancient sacred oriental things and feel this ancient sacred oriental essence.

Compare this with what has occurred in the Occident, where, as you know, in a development of dogma and ceremony that has been repeatedly challenged, there has been a continuous reshaping, transformation, and thus a creative intervention in what was once adopted by the community that then became the Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism, and so on. This adaptability, this receptivity, is to some extent the first fundamental characteristic of the Russian people.

A second fundamental characteristic is a certain dislike on the part of the Russian people for what we call the permeation of life with intellectuality. The Russian person does not like to be constrained by many precisely defined laws in social life. He demands, as it were, a kind of arbitrary existence of the ego. That the intellect spans a network of legality and that the individual then strictly adheres to such forms of intellect in social life, that is what the Russian man, at least practically, does not want to understand, even if he sometimes goes into it theoretically. He asks more about what the ego wants at the moment, based on the inspiration of the moment.

A third characteristic of the Russian people is – Herder, in particular, pointed this out in a thorough manner; the Slavophiles then took up this Herderian view, which is a German view, and developed it to the point of a kind of megalomania – that the Russian people have retained what is generally found in the oriental character, a certain peacefulness. However strange it may sound, it is in the nature of the Russian people, because the Russian people did not make this war as such: it was instigated by those in power. He has a certain peaceableness. He has the deep belief that the way in which Western European religion develops leads to conflict and quarrel. It is not in the character of the Oriental man to wage war against his fellow men because of religious dogmas. It is even a little strange – it is indeed true, but it is true – that people now notice it so strongly in the Turks, who also have this oriental trait, that they do not become aggressive with regard to religious life itself.

As I said, it lies in the faith, in the consciousness of the Russian people. These three qualities, on the other hand, are particularly susceptible to abuse by those who seek to exploit them. It is very easy to use the adaptability of the Russian character, as the Slavophiles did and as the Pan-Slavists are now doing to a great extent, to persuade the Russian people that they are called upon to replace the decrepit, senile European culture, which is decaying and dying, with Russian life instead.

On the other hand, if the second quality I mentioned is misused, one can persuade the Russian people that the whole of Western and Central European culture has become decrepit because of its particular penchant for intellectualism, for a certain rationality, that this Western European culture is devoid of any truly true mystical quality.

And thirdly, if you want to abuse the third quality of the Russian people, which has been mentioned, the most peaceful quality can be perverted by organizing the otherwise peaceful masses and calling them to the bloodiest fight. Because really, the contradictions touch each other in the world, and especially such contradictions as are being discussed here. But what the Russian people have to mean in the development of European culture is not related to what Russian rulers are now making of this Russian people, but to the three qualities mentioned.

. And these three characteristics determine the Russian nature to enter into a certain connection with the Central European and Western European nature. Because the Russian national character is adaptable, it is called upon, first of all, to achieve what we have often spoken of, what it has to achieve in the sixth post-Atlantic cultural period, first of all not through creativity, but through existence. To achieve this, it must absorb what comes to it from the West. I have often spoken of it as a kind of spiritual marriage. Years, even decades before the outbreak of this war, I may say, a kind of marriage that is necessary between the Central European being and the Russian being in terms of spiritual development.

The fact that the Russian people have a certain aversion to intellectualism will make it possible to create certain social institutions with the Russian people that will only be possible if the aforementioned marriage really takes place.

And in a similar way, the Russian national character will have to relate to what can be given within Central Europe in general. Tomorrow, in the public lecture, we will again have to speak of such things that follow from the Central European nature and that must be incorporated as something great, powerful, and everlasting into the whole course of human development. But the Russian people will have to accept what is achieved by the Central European nature. It is not initially self-creative within this post-Atlantic period.

But now, in contrast to this, what can be characterized as the essence of Russian nationality, .the Central European nationality and the Western European nationality, that Western European nationality, which after the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England essentially became a British nationality, an Anglo-Saxon nationality. And among the many results of these momentous events, which of course it is not my profession to somehow color, it will most certainly be the case that the other Western European states, no matter how these events turn out, will gradually become vassals, dependent peoples of England. In particular, the French will experience the bitterest disappointments. But these are not the things that really matter. What matters to us today is to emphasize the great contrast that exists between the Central European character and the Western European, especially the British and Anglo-Saxon character.

There has never been – and this may go unnoticed today by those who do not want to think, who do not want to observe – a greater contrast in world-historical development than this contrast between Central European and Anglo-Saxon natures. Not as if the individual personality could not rise above it. That is not the point; the point is nationality. Of course, when such things are being characterized, it is never meant to imply that the individual Englishman cannot, of course, rise above the things being characterized. We should not think that we have somehow fallen into the errors of our belligerent opponents and that we must now thoroughly vilify the English character because it is different. Of course, it would be necessary to try to gather together all the possible building blocks that would actually be needed to fully understand the contrast I have been hinting at. But this contrast can become clear to us from the point of view of: on the one hand, if we look at the Central European nature, at the heart of which stands the German nature, in relation to the Russian nature of the East, and on the other hand, if we look at the British, French nature in its relationship to the Russian East. There we have one of the greatest contrasts in the development of mankind. I must, however, merely point out to you today some of the things that I will be discussing in tomorrow's public lecture. But I would like the small group of those who belong to the spiritual science movement to understand what will be said in more detail tomorrow more deeply than it can be understood at first, if one does not penetrate deeper into spiritual science.

You see, the Central European nature is one that is national in a completely different way than any other nationality in the whole development of mankind. Take all the Western European peoples: they are national, so to speak, out of the blood. The German is national out of the soul. The German is national in that he constantly strives to lift certain contents of the soul life out of the general soul life and to transplant them into his own soul. That is why we experience something so great within the German character, such as Goethe's works of art, Herder's historical reflection or the world-view efforts of Hegel, Schelling and Fichte.

Even if these things are still little known in wider circles today, they will become known. For, contrary to all opinions expressed about them, I must say that they can become popular, they can be presented in such a way that every child can understand them, despite the fact that this is not believed today. That will happen. Everything that is a genuine German world view grows out of the deepest soul essence of the German people. And a spiritual movement could never arise within the German soul that would be similar in character to the spiritual movements of the West, if it is to be fruitful. We must not overlook this difference, we must face it squarely. Within the German national soul, everything that is the content of spiritual science must stand in harmonious relationship to what the people as such produce. That is why I said last time I was here in Stuttgart: If you look at the world view of Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, it is as if the whole nation were meditating. One always feels placed in the folk, but in the soul of the folk when one speaks of the German folk. One cannot speak of German nationality in any other way than by taking into account the spiritual characteristics of this German nationality, that which must be striven for. And it is impossible within Germanness, as it is possible in England, for science to exist on the one hand and for this science to want to completely ignore faith on the other. That is not possible in the long term within the German nation. The German wants unity. He wants to have a spirituality that can stand fully on the ground of science, and he wants to have a science that knows how to justify itself before the spiritual life.

This contrast is most evident in the Goethean and Newtonian theories of colors. For more than thirty years I have been trying to bring out the Goethean theory of colors in contrast to the Newtonian one. While Goethe's theory of colors arises entirely from the deep interweaving of the soul with the world, Newton's theory of colors proceeds from a mechanical view of the world and strives for nothing else. And physics today is so anglicized that it does not even notice what is at stake in this field, that it naturally considers anyone who takes Goethe's theory of colors seriously to be a fool.

There is a striving towards spirituality within German national character. Therefore, within German national character, one is also obliged to reckon with what has been sought in ardent spiritual striving by the best of this nation, by those whom we have already mentioned and by those whom we will mention again tomorrow, precisely as a path to spiritual science. But then this German national character cannot but strive objectively, turned to the matter itself. This is something that the English or the French cannot understand. The Frenchman wants to have a beautiful word, to have everything shaped into a beautiful phrase, and then he is satisfied. The Englishman wants to ask where the use of knowledge or the like lies. But the fact that the knowledge we strive for is something that must grow out of the soul like a flower out of a plant, without which man does not feel like a whole human being, is something that neither the French — as Frenchmen, of course, the individual is not at issue — nor the Anglo-Saxons understand.

The task of the German soul is to accomplish what has been achieved since the time of the ancient Greeks for the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period, namely to shape the experience of the soul into a world of ideas. And one really does not need to be a nationalist in the narrow-minded sense, but rather a completely objective observer of the development of humanity, to emphasize this. And you know that I have not only emphasized this in the context of this war, but these considerations have been part of what I have been saying among us for years, for a decade and a half.

But the fact that this German essence is so, means that it is called upon, for psychological and objective reasons, to enter into the spiritual marriage with the Russian East. And the cultural task of the future will never be able to be fulfilled in any other way than by the Russian adaptability accepting what can come out of German national character. And all future cultural development is a question of this connection between Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

The situation is different for Western Europe. Western Europe has adopted what the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period has brought and developed it independently, but in the way I have often described: only through the three soul forces: sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul. What this fourth post-Atlantic cultural period essentially sends out is not productive. In particular, the British folk soul, the Anglo-Saxon folk soul, has the task of developing the consciousness soul, developing that which is primarily oriented towards usefulness in relation to the physical plane.

Hence all the phenomena that we see occurring within Western Europe, especially within the Anglo-Saxon peoples. But now this Anglo-Saxon people in particular instinctively feel that what is actually fruitful is the Central European, essentially the German influence of Central Europe. And those who lead the so-called occult movements of Western Europe, namely the Anglo-Saxon people, know what is at stake. Those who lead the occult movements in the Anglo-Saxon culture are initially filled with two trains of thought. The first train of thought is that they say to themselves: the Roman Catholic essence is gone; that essentially belongs to the fourth post-Atlantic period. The Anglo-Saxon essence must take the place of what was in the Roman cult. And every occultist of a certain kind, that is, every occultist who is steeped in his own nationality, and with the exception of a few, all of them in Anglo-Saxonism, knows — that is, he imagines that he has real knowledge — that the “Anglo-Saxon race”, as he says, must take the place of the Roman essence. This is taught in all occult schools. It is a fixed dogma.

And in the same way, people instinctively know that, to a certain extent, the recruits for the introduction to life of everything that culture must bring, the recruits who must absorb it passively through their adaptation, are Russian people.

These two things are very well known to the Anglo-Saxon occultists, that is, they see it that way, that is their conviction. Their conviction is, on the one hand, that Anglo-Saxonism has to replace the Roman essence; everything else, Protestantism, Calvinism and so on, are only appendages. Anglo-Saxonism must produce something in the world – as I said, I am now speaking of the occultists – that stands for the fifth post-Atlantic culture in the same way as the Roman Catholic essence stood for the second period of the fourth post-Atlantic culture, even as late as the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries.

And now every occultist on this side is convinced that, above all, the bridge must be created between what Anglo-Saxons ascribe to themselves and the Russian essence. To infuse into the Russian soul that which Anglo-Saxon occultism seeks to teach is the ideal that emerges from the second point I have mentioned for every Anglo-Saxon occultist: to use the Russian soul as a kind of wax into which is imprinted that which Anglo-Saxon occultism wants. This ideal is far more prevalent in the circles I am now talking about than anything that is the main thing for us here.

For us, the main thing is real knowledge, real striving for truth, and our honest fundamental conviction is that when we find the truth, this truth will give people what they need, and that this truth, when we seek it in the right way, will also fructify in the right way the coming cultural epochs, so that what must happen to the peoples of Europe will come to pass, if the truth is honestly sought in the right way. Nothing more is needed than the honest search for truth; that is the true principle of spiritual science.

But this is opposed by a principle such as I have just characterized, which puts a particular race at the helm, a particular race in power, in power above all in relation to the life of the soul. We are not speaking politically now, we are speaking of what is rooted in the depths as occult paths: to make the Anglo-Saxon soul powerful and to use the Eastern European nature, which is adaptable and receptive, and to infuse it with what one wants to infuse into it, so that a marriage can arise between Anglo-Saxon and Russian. The inner impulses of human development speak of a marriage of the German nature with Russian nature. The selfish will of Anglo-Saxon occultism speaks of the fact that Russian nature must be permeated with Anglo-Saxon nature in terms of occult development of the soul.

You must face these things squarely; they are extraordinarily important. I am mentioning them as they are taught more and more in all possible occult directions in the West, especially in the Anglo-Saxon occult schools. But that which basically only the consciousness soul has to cultivate cannot acquire real content. Real occultism, however, which does not unfold desires for power but seeks the truth, is completely in organic, vital connection with the German development and is completely anchored within the German development.

But what has happened, my dear friends? If the development since the Middle Ages had not been disturbed by Ahrimanic forces, if what has happened in Europe for spiritual science had developed organically, without Ahrimanic influences (we will talk about some very late events again tomorrow), then it would be easier to see today that everything the West has achieved in the way of spiritual science has emerged from the Germanic essence. But permeated by Anglo-Saxon influences, German spiritual science was carried in masks into Anglo-Saxon and also into French culture. Only the terminology, the naming of the individual facts, was adapted to the French or English language. But if you get to the bottom of it, all that is contained in French and English occultism is German spiritual scientific research in a masked form, Central European spiritual scientific research.

In a way that I will discuss in a moment, what was called the Theosophical Society contained nothing but facts with Indian or other names that were found within German spiritual science. And the aim of the Theosophical Society was to conceal these facts from the Germans as much as possible. For the Anglo-Saxon world aims to obliterate the truth of the Central European development in relation to spiritual science everywhere and to replace it with itself. Here it is the most eminent lust for power that springs from occultism. And it was a simple necessity that the peeling which has now really taken place since the turn of the century should take place, that what was originally German and what unfortunately our Germans only too gladly received with open arms from Englishness should be returned, that it should be restored in its original purity. A truth has been established. It had to be established. The fact that this truth has been established will never be forgiven by the English Theosophical Society of our German aspirations, as they have been from the beginning. This can only be veiled by slander.

But very systematically, very purposefully, all those who want to develop power within the occultist aspirations are proceeding. Therefore, it is so necessary not to be asleep in the face of these efforts, but to develop some clarity. Clarity is especially necessary in the face of significant phenomena. And clarity is particularly necessary, for example, in the face of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who was of course the decisive personality for the Theosophical Society.

What underlies clarity in this area can be linked to two facts: The first fact is that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian woman who had grown out of her Russian background. The second fact is that she left behind a kind of secret science in English guise, that she gradually grew completely into what Anglo-Saxon occultism strives for, but in a roundabout way that was due to the great talent of this woman. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was, I might say, in a certain sense, a mediumistic personality, who could only develop such adaptability, including occult-spiritual qualities, out of her Russian nationality. What the Russian otherwise has as generally human qualities, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had precisely in terms of occult qualities. And so it came about that in Western Europe she was first attracted by French occultism, then by a certain type of British occultism, which she found to be an appropriate infusion for her soul. She believed she had to give the world something that the Anglo-Saxon occultism, as it were, prefigured, revealing itself out of the Russian soul. Instead of the coming union of the Central European and Russian natures, the penetration of Russian nature — in Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as the representative of Russian nationality — with Anglo-Saxon power occultism was deliberately and consciously placed. Those who, as it were, wanted to hold the threads of life as it develops outwardly in the physical plan were not uninvolved in this. Many tragic things have happened to the poor personality of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, which I cannot go into today. Precisely because of her profound and comprehensive mediumship, into which all kinds of things could be poured, many, many things have happened. And it was a long way from the starting point, where attempts were first made to transmit Central European material directly to Blavatsky, which then appeared in an admittedly kaleidoscopic, almost unusable form in the “Veiled Isis”. But very soon, other personalities took hold of her, under very different influences, and in place of the one who was her leader and who wanted to guide her to Central European beings, later, in the mask of the original leader, the so-called later Koot-Hoomi individuality, which, however, according to the truly knowledgeable occultists, was nothing more than a person in the pay of the Russians who consciously wanted to forge together what could emerge from the psychic ability of Blavatsky and Anglo-Saxon occultism. One is dealing with the clash, I would say, of an original individuality – some call it master, you can call it what you want – and a later impostor, a swindler, who had assumed the mask of the first and had been given the task, on the part of Eastern Europe, which I have just hinted at.

Then the time began when Blavatsky was to join forces with occult France, where she wanted to quickly achieve certain goals and therefore presented an occultist lodge in Paris with such conditions that could not be met, so that she soon had to be expelled again because, under the influence of the individuals behind her, she always combined occult intentions with political power impulses. Then followed the American episode, which again had a political background. All these things were intended to present something to Europe that would convince Europe that a kind of new world religion for Europe could emerge from the union of spiritual Russian and Anglo-Saxon occultist lust for power. That was to be presented to Europe. And what had emerged from the German essence was to be overrun.

Oh my dear friends, I well remember – and it could be unpleasant for some how clearly such things stand before my soul – how Mrs. Besant held her very first meeting in Germany in Hamburg, and how I interpellated her within a small circle at the time, how she thinks about the development of occultism in the 19th century, and how she gave the answer in Hamburg at the time: At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, something like occult striving asserted itself in Germany, but the Germans got stuck in pure abstractions, and it turned out that the great – as she expressed it, she always expressed herself grandly – that the great wave of spiritual life had been granted to the British people. Of course she said that in English, but it was even greater in English!

For Blavatsky, the time came when it became necessary for all those who were serious about spiritual science and who could not get involved in Anglo-Saxon lust for power to do something. And that is what later in occult circles was called Blavatsky's “occult imprisonment”. There was no other way of bringing it about. And the decision to impose this occult imprisonment, as it is called, upon Blavatsky was taken by a gathering of honest occultists, or at least the majority of them, in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Occult imprisonment consists of the fact that, through certain processes, it is possible to imprison a person's aspirations in a sphere from which he cannot see out, so that his aspirations are reflected back and he cannot cause certain damage that he would otherwise cause.

The process I am about to describe, this imposition of occult imprisonment, is not flawless; but, as I said, the people could not help themselves in any other way. Blavatsky was a strong psychic personality and could have a strong effect. That is why her writings have such an overwhelming and, on the other hand, misleading power.

Then there was what can be described as certain Indian occultists, who wanted to take a little revenge in this way because of the English stranglehold, taking possession of Blavatsky's personality, and that's where the Indian influence came in. I have discussed this in more detail elsewhere, but here I will only hint at it.

So the Indian influence came, and that is how that dubious occult science came into being, which was cultivated in the Theosophical Society for a long time and which had to be cleansed of that which was to appear in Central Europe as spiritual science. For that which is to arise in Central Europe as spiritual science must, in the sense I have indicated, be thoroughly honest, that is to say, it must strive for the truth as such and be convinced that the truth, flowing through our souls and through the development of humanity, will bring about the right thing within nations and also within the existence of human beings, the social order of human beings: pure, honest seeking of truth! And this pure, honest seeking of truth is, after all, still our main task.

I wish that this would be understood more precisely within our spiritual scientific movement here, then one would also forgive me certain additional conditions, which I must set, and would see that these conditions must be taken more precisely. How often do I admonish our friends, one should, so that one can remain pure with what is to be brought to the world as spiritual science, so that it cannot be adapted from any side, do not come to me with all kinds of other things that can be so easily combined with spiritual scientific endeavors. Of course, people are quite willing to do anything that human will can demand, and in a friendly way many things can happen, but in any case it must be understood why I repeatedly and repeatedly admonish people not to believe that I am even remotely involved in pharmacology, any more than I am involved in other, non-spiritual fields. It is necessary that our members should get into the habit of taking seriously what I say, namely, that in the main they should not come to me with medical matters. It is essential that these matters should be understood, because it is still necessary, at least for the time being, to keep the spiritual-scientific endeavour, as far as I am concerned, quite separate from other matters. There are enough medical personalities within our movement to whom our members can turn for help. Since I emphasize this again and again, it should be taken seriously, at least in principle, when I say: I do not want to get involved in any kind of healing; because in doing so, the world will only misunderstand what the spiritual scientific movement should do through me in the first instance, and that should not be misunderstood.

How little there actually was in Anglo-Saxonism of a proper understanding of the pure, objective striving for truth could be known by those who had once heard a remarkable lecture by Mrs. Besant on “Theosophy and Imperialism”. From this lecture one could intuitively feel much of what I had to say today based on the facts: Spiritual science should never be mixed with any kind of lust for power, with any kind of direct political aspiration, although it goes without saying that someone who is a good spiritual scientist can be the best politician. But that is not the point. Rather, spiritual science must not become what occultism is in Anglo-Saxon culture, which I have tried to characterize; spiritual science must not become something that has been striven for precisely through Blavatsky, and then in many respects also through Mrs. Besant, only with less talent and less gift than through Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The endeavour was, after all, on the part of Anglo-Saxondom to found a kind of occult religion by means of the spiritual experiences of a personality such as Blavatsky was. This religion would have carried Anglo-Saxondom, by way of conquest over Germanism, directly into Russism. In the schools, where not in Blavatsky's way but in the Anglo-Saxon occult way of teaching the things I have already mentioned are taught, the war in which we are now engaged has been spoken of again and again as a necessary one. And again and again in such schools the outcome of this war is spoken of very suggestively in such a way that one says: This and that must happen because of this war. - It is not said out of a sense of prophecy, but because it is desired, because the aim is to gain as much influence as possible, to prepare people through all channels that can be reached at the time. Because when people are taught all kinds of occultism in masks, the aim is to prepare people for a certain direction. That is why I must ask – I must discuss these things because they are already being discussed publicly, and because someone who represents spiritual science as I do must make it clear how he stands on these things: Why did an occult personality known to occultists in Paris travel to Rome again and again immediately after the war between Germany, Russia, England and France broke out, and as late as October 1914? Why did this person play a role in Rome that later had an influence on the situation in Italy, a role similar to that played by certain people who belonged to the 'Grand Orient de France' or were connected with Anglo-Saxon freemasons, and which had a profound influence on the course of current events, much more than one might think?

But I must ask something else: why does the yearbook, which the same personality, who is used, one could also say abused, by certain currents of occultism, for all sorts of stuff – as I said, because it is already being discussed in the world, so I have to show on which side I stand in these matters? Why does the 1913 yearbook, published by this personality and which actually appeared in 1912, state: 'He who believes he rules Austria will not rule, but another, younger one will rule, who is not yet destined to rule'? Why is this in a yearbook of a medium that is part of a certain occult current? Why is the same thing repeated in the yearbook in 1914 – that is, before the year 1914 came, for 1914, but already published in 1913: The tragedy of the Habsburg house will be fulfilled faster than one might think. Why is this in these yearbooks? And even more: Why does a Parisian paper, which could be called 'Paris Midday' in German, already express the wish in 1913 that the Austrian 'heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand must be murdered? This paper corresponds approximately to what is in Berlin 'B. Z. am Mittag': 'Paris midi' is that, widely read. Why does the almanac state on one page what I have quoted: “He who thinks he rules will not rule, but a younger one will rule,” and on the other page the wish that this archduke be murdered? Why does the same paper, when the debate on the three-year term of office in France took place, cynically write: If mobilization should take place in France, Jaures will be the first to be assassinated'? Do you think that, my dear friends, is prophecy? I would just like to show you that I am not on the side of those who think this is prophecy, but that it all points to deep, dreadful undercurrents in the abuse of charlatanry, but downright dangerous to humanity, in the occult.

Today I wanted to tell you something that may not be uplifting, but it is all the more serious. I wanted to ask your soul whether a person does not really have to acquire a very clear view if they want to be involved in an occult current, and whether it might not be a bad thing if you wanted to oversleep the most important things. My dear friends, anyone who wants to study the connection of the Theosophical Society – as it has gradually become more and more – with such things, need only keep a sharp eye on the activities of such personalities as, for example, Mrs. Catherine Tingley. And it is also instructive that when something was to be introduced into what should be solely Anglo-Saxon, from a more Christian point of view, even through a strong medium, in the little book 'Light on the Path' by Mabel Collins, the slander started. For most of what has been said against the medium through which “Light on the Path” has been given to humanity is slander.

I wanted to speak to you today with some seriousness, so that out of this seriousness many of us may get an idea of how necessary it is to become aware of the Central European mission in relation to spiritual science, and that it is absolutely necessary for this Central European mission to become a world mission. Above all, this Central European mission must be a pure and honest striving for truth. But this pure and honest striving for truth was understood in a strange way, and the distortions of the truth were also understood in a strange way. You know that the relationship between the German spiritual movement, to which we belong, and the Theosophical Society was dissolved long before the war. All that I have hinted at was understood in a strange way. Just consider that Mrs. Besant, for example, managed to say that I had aspired to become president of the Theosophical Society in India in order to oust her from the presidential chair and to use pan-German currents in England-hostile fashion in favor of the German Reich by way of a detour through India! You will really believe that this is not true, that this is an objective untruth!

The following is in contrast to this: In 1909, a society was founded against the horrors of Mr. Leadbeater, and later also against the humbug of Alcyone, which was to include all countries of the world and was to be a counterweight to those misled by Mrs. Besant. And at that time I was invited from India to become the chairman, the president of this international society, and I not only refused, but in 1909 in Budapest, in front of witnesses, I told Mrs. Besant that I never want to be anything else within the spiritual movement of modern times than the one who leads this movement within the German national organism. I said this before witnesses in Budapest in 1909 to Mrs. Besant. Now she takes it so seriously with the truth that she writes in her English magazine that I had tried to go to India and so on, in order to displace her from there! One can no longer speak of objective untruthfulness, since it is, of course, a conscious lie. But it is necessary to work with such means when the issue is that one has to fight against the course of truth itself; and that is basically what Anglo-Saxon occultism is. Because the truth is this: what is connected to the essence of Central European beings is what, as spiritual science, has to permeate human culture. But this has to be veiled, covered, masked in some way from England. And more and more in the 20th century, Mrs. Besant has also become an instrument of this veiling.

There is a sufficient need to reflect on what should flow in our movement. The spiritual-earthly task is really there. We have no reason to do so without examining and testing, to give blind allegiance to one or the other. But that is not something that can be very tempting today: to want nothing more than the honest development of the truth. You know how attacks and also ridicule and scorn are raining down from all sides within and outside our society. But in addition to all this, there is something else: More and more of our spiritual-scientific movement is flowing out into this or that soul. Those who have an eye for it already feel what flows from our books or our public lectures into the soul of people. But when these people, who are sometimes quite willing to defend what they have allowed to flow into them, should unreservedly profess what our movement is trying to do in such earnest, namely to enter into the spiritual path of humanity, then peculiar phenomena come to light. Sometimes it is really the case that people are glad to grasp many a truth that has been produced on our soil, but that they take every honest, wholehearted approach to us as if, for example, they would burn their fingers by actually touching me. It is a very common phenomenon, more common than one might think! Among those who are honestly concerned, not with some personality or other, but with my own, honest spiritual scientific striving for truth, one can assume that they will also profess it unconditionally. Because, my dear friends, the seriousness is great, the seriousness is enormous.

The things I have said should not be spoken out of some national sentiment. Basically, I have only told you facts; they should characterize what is present as occult antagonisms in Europe and which, for those who want to see, can already explain much of the antagonisms of the physical plane.

And I would like to emphasize it again and again: we need seriousness in order to find the right direction in a serious time, so that what I have already emphasized here may come true, which lies in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

When we last spoke to each other during my previous visit, we considered some spiritual facts that relate to the life of the human soul after the human being has passed through the gate of death. Today, we will first look at some facts related to this event in the spiritual world that may shed further light on this event, facts that, however, are just as likely to shed light on the event of death as they are to shed light on what happens in the life between the birth and death of a person, what happens in the physical life in which we are immersed. I must again and again emphasize that spiritual science must attempt not to stop at an external schematic conception of the human being, but to penetrate ever deeper and deeper into the various members of the human being.

Let us now turn our attention to what we have often called the human etheric body. In yesterday's public lecture, I already pointed out that this etheric body should not be imagined merely as a rarefied physical body — that would be a materialistic view — but that it should be imagined as it appears through an inner experience. And here we come to the fact that what we call thinking or imagining in the narrower sense, as man lives here on the physical plane, actually takes place in the etheric body. But in order for thoughts to be formed through this thinking, through this imagining, the physical body is necessary, because the physical body must receive its impressions if thoughts are to be retained here in physical life in the form of memories.

The process is as follows: when we think, the thinking naturally starts from the I, passes through the astral body, but then it takes place mainly in the movements of the etheric body. Whatever we think, whatever we imagine, takes place in the movements of the etheric body. These movements of the etheric body are literally impressed upon the physical body. This is a rough way of putting it, because it involves much more subtle processes than a rough imprinting, but it is a rough way of putting it. And because these movements of the etheric body are imprinted in the physical body, thoughts take place for our consciousness, and that is how thoughts are also retained in memory. It is more or less like this: when we have a thought and later recall it from memory, our etheric body is set in motion by the act of wanting to remember, and it adapts its movements to those of the physical body. By entering into the impressions that this etheric body made in the physical body during the corresponding thought, the thought comes to the consciousness again. Thus memory is linked to the fact that the movements of the etheric body can imprint themselves on the physical body. Of course, memory is connected to the ether body, but the ether body must have some kind of recorder of its movements so that memory can come about in physical life. And so we live our lives between birth and death, have our experiences and remember our experiences, that is, our thought life runs within us. When we are awake, we always have more or less of this thought life going on within us.

As a human being in the physical body, we have the feeling that what takes place in our thinking, in our imaginative life, is inner experience, something that takes place within ourselves, that is our property. And for our physical life this is initially correct, because what takes place inwardly as a thought experience is not visible to others. So it is our property. But in relation to the spiritual world, what takes place in our thought life is not our property at all.

Yes, our thought life has a completely different significance than we often assume when we refer to it as our property. And let us inquire a little about this world significance of our thought life. In order for me to make myself quite clearly understood, I must start from a comparison: We physical people work here in the physical world. Let us assume that our work consists of making machines. It could also consist of something else, but let us assume that it consists of making machines. To make the machines that are then used in the service of human life, we need wood or iron or whatever the machines are made of. We need the appropriate materials for this, and we have to work these materials. The materials must be there in nature. We as physical human beings cannot create iron, create wood, these materials must be there. We take these materials, shape them, work them and assemble them into our machines. In this way we humans perform a certain activity. We bring about, as it were, the existence of a realm of machines, but we create this realm of machines on the basis of the materials we take from the earth.

Now imagine that we are not dealing with people who make machines out of earthly materials, out of iron or wood, but with the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the beings to whom we give the names: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. One might ask: What do these beings actually have to do? Do they also have something to do that could perhaps be compared to the activity just mentioned, which leads to the creation of a realm of machines? Yes, these angeloi, archangeloi and archai also have their activity. This activity takes place only in the spiritual world. And just as we humans must take our iron and our wood from the subordinate realms, that is, first from the mineral and then from the vegetable kingdom, in order to construct our machines, so the angels, archangels and archai also need materials to build, let us say, what they are to build, although the expression is of course very crude. And what are their materials? For much of what the angels, archangels and archai have to accomplish in the spiritual world, the materials are precisely the thoughts that people consider their own. And it is true: while we go through the world and harbor our thoughts, look at our thought life from within, as it were, and consider it our own, work on our thoughts without knowing it, the angels, archangels and archai are at work. We are aware of only the very least that lives in our thoughts, for thoughts signify much more than what comes to our consciousness, much more than what lives in our souls. While we think and remember our thoughts, the beings of the higher hierarchy, the next hierarchy, work from the outside in, so to speak, in accordance with the way they can use our thoughts. So you should imagine that only one side of the thought life of every human being takes place in their consciousness. While they are thinking, the beings of the hierarchies mentioned are constantly surrounding them and working with the help of their thoughts. These are their materials. And what they work with in this way is part of what is needed so that Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan can one day emerge from the earth. This is part of what brings about progress in the evolution of the universe. And our whole life until death is spent working on thoughts, insofar as they are, as it were, embraced by our being, from the outside in by the beings of the higher hierarchy.

And when we pass through the gate of death, then, as we have already indicated in my previous presence, some time after we have passed through the gate of death, our etheric body is taken from us and woven into the general world ether. Not only what we see last, when we look at one side of our web of thoughts, is woven into the universal ether, but also what the beings mentioned have worked for. While they are, as it were, working on our individual thought-weave during our lifetime, they then piece together the individual thought-weaves of one person, then another, then a third, in whatever way they can use them, so that something new may come into being in the progressive development of the world. What they can acquire by putting together the individual etheric bodies of the people they have worked with during the time of their physical life must be woven into the general world ether.

From this you can see how serious our inner life actually is. It is quite serious. Depending on how we think, we are found useful for the general process of world development. Someone who has spent their whole life thinking only foolish things, or only endeavoring to think things that are images of the physical world, will not provide very good building materials for what is to be woven out of his ether body into the general world ether. The inner life, the inner life of thought, is a serious matter. It seems to be our own during the time between birth and death. In the way it has been described, it actually belongs to the whole world. And just as we humans could not make machines without wood and iron, so the higher beings could not continue to work on the evolution of the world if they could not find their building materials in the thoughts we can give them during our physical lives. We are the soil from which they take their wood, their iron and so on, that is, our thought fabric. They carry out their exalted work with these materials, guided by their wisdom, which transcends human existence; but the materials must provide them with what lies within us.

What we are able to give to these beings, the angels, archangels, archai, is there for us to contemplate during the time between our death and a new birth. We know, of course, that we will be taken just a few days after we have passed through the gate of death. But as we continue to live between death and a new birth, our soul's gaze is constantly fixed on what we were able to give to the general web of the ether of the world. And just as we ourselves now have to participate in the creation of that which then connects with physical matter to give us a new incarnation, so the sight of what we have thus given to the great world has an effect on our work. In short, whether we have something to look forward to, from which we can draw new impulses for a next incarnation in this thought fabric interwoven with the world ether, or whether we cannot, much will depend on this with regard to the way we will be able to prepare for our new incarnation.

So our thoughts are bound to our physicality before we pass through the gate of death. Then they are taken from us in a sense and woven into the general world ether in what the beings mentioned have made of them, so that they now have an existence outside of us rather than within us. Therefore, in spiritual science, this process can be described as “the inner becomes an outer” in order to always remember it, to always have it in mind, so to speak, for meditation. For just as we see mountains, rivers, clouds and stars with our physical eyes here, so after death we see what our thoughts have woven as the outside, which is taken from us and woven into the general world ether. It is now the outside world, uplifting or saddening us, strengthening or weakening us. The inner world has become an outer world.

Then we know that there is a more distant, very long time in which we have to relive, in a certain way, what we have gone through in our earthly life, but differently than we went through it in earthly life. We relive, as we know, with threefold speed the past life between death and birth in reverse order, so what we have experienced in the last year, first, then that of the year before last and so on. So we live the life after death in imaginations, but differently than we have lived it here in the physical body. After our ether body has been separated from us, we live life again, but in such a way that we do not now experience what we have experienced in our feelings, in our will impulses during our physical existence. If we take the extreme case of having hurt or offended someone during our physical existence, we have felt something by offending them. But they have also felt something. What we felt is what drove us out of our feelings to insult him, and then also what we felt, perhaps even a certain satisfaction with the act. In short, you can imagine what a person feels, in the good or bad sense, when he does something on the physical plane. But the other person, the one at whom we were aimed, feels something different. The one who is offended feels something different than the one who offends. After death, in this regression, which is to be characterized now, we feel the effects that we have caused in other people, but also in other beings, with our actions, with our will impulses, and even with our thoughts. So we do not feel what we already felt while we were in the physical body, but what we have done in other souls, in other beings. What was external, what remained external during our physical life, now becomes internal. Just as the separation of the etheric body turns the inner into the outer, so this reliving turns the outer into the inner. Our soul is filled with the effects of our physical existence. This now becomes our inner life: the external becomes an internal. Thus the internal becomes an external and the external becomes an internal. In this way the human being is, as it were, turned around after passing through the gate of death.

Imagine how you previously had to imagine the angeloi, archangeloi and archai in a certain relationship to the human world of thought, and now imagine the spirits of the higher hierarchies: the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, the spirits of wisdom, even the Spirits of Will, the Thrones, which you should imagine as being in a kind of relationship to what I have now characterized, how the human being acquires a new inner being that is now welded together from the outer being. With their spiritual eye, if I may use the image, the Form Spirits, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Spirits of Will, look down on that remarkable, meaningful spectacle that takes place after the human being, between birth and death, has , through his impulses of will, inwardly experiences this or that between birth and death; what he now experiences after he has passed through the gate of death, where he gathers up the effects, as it were, in order to make them into a new inner being, that inner being which can then live itself further out in karma during the building of the later incarnation. From their spiritual heights, the aforementioned spirits observe how everything that spreads out into the world as our effects becomes inner. And what they observe in this way is now material for them to incorporate something else into the lower spirits of the ongoing world development, in order to provide help above all so that karma can be effected, so that what is pushed from the outside inwards provides the foundation for a slow process that unites between 'death and a new birth that tissue that then descends to the physical hereditary substance in order to connect as a spiritual being with what the person inherits from father and mother. Much is necessary for that to come about, which descends from the spiritual heights and must connect with the hereditary substance that comes from the ancestors. After the human being has passed through the gate of death, discarded his etheric body, and undergone the return journey through the world of the soul, as mentioned earlier, the work that must be done between death and a new birth begins, so that the new birth, the new incarnation, can come about.

What kind of work is done? It is actually infinitely difficult to characterize the way we are worked on in the spiritual cosmos. If I were to characterize it, I could perhaps do so in the following way through a schematic sketch. Let us assume that a person passes through the gate of death. His ether body is then discarded. That which he himself still has control over remains in the vicinity of the earth for a relatively long time. I have characterized such things to you over time. But that which the angels, archangels, and archai have woven extends so far out into the general ether world that it unfolds in a wide sphere whose center is the earth. Thus, like a spiritual atmosphere, the world ether surrounds the earth. And what we have spun out of our thoughts is woven into this world ether. Do not be anxious about where there could be space for all these weavings: the spiritual permeates itself, and all these weavings are within this sphere.

In its further course, man now sees this fabric not from within but from without. And his further life is a kind of enlargement, a merging into the universe. And during the whole time that life takes place between death and a new birth, the human being always sees from the outside in, sees: That is you - like an even more powerful, more expansive sphere. On this sphere, you imagine something like a mighty map. It is, of course, all figurative and roughly expressed, but it does reflect the facts. There, on this map, on this globe, work is being done by drawing everything in, by incorporating it spiritually: First, what has been worked out by the person himself in his etheric body, which the person can look at, but then also what has now become human inside in the way I have described. All this is incorporated by the spirits of form, spirits of movement, spirits of wisdom and willpower working on the person between death and new birth. And when the time has come for the new incarnation to take place, this web is ready. Then there is a mighty sphere. Again, there is no need to worry that there would be no space for all these spheres; they can all be inside one another. It is, of course, a picture for a spiritual thing. Then this sphere begins to become smaller and smaller, and it turns, just as you turn a glove inside out, so that the inside becomes the outside and the outside becomes the inside. That which is, as it were, on the outside, all goes inside, turns completely and becomes so small that it can unite with the human germ as it develops in the mother's body. That is also a picture.

Of course, these things can also be presented in a different way. This has already been done here. But today we want to imagine the matter in such a way that, in proportion to what a person has given to the beings of the higher hierarchies during his life between birth and death, these spirits of the higher hierarchies work both on the world and on the establishment of the spiritual foundations for the new incarnation of the human being. I think that is a tremendous thought when it settles in our soul in an emotional way, when we become aware of what our life actually means for the entire universe when we are in it. And it is necessary that, from this moment on, more and more people imbibe this awareness of being connected to the spiritual world throughout their lives.

The very clever people of today, who are opponents of spiritual science, will say: Human life goes on even if one does not spread such knowledge among people, but knowledge of a much simpler kind. For these would only be things that are there for thinking, with which one could weigh down one's thinking; but one does not need to burden life with such thoughts. — That is what the very clever people say. And they might even add: People in the past did not have such unnecessary wisdom and were able to make progress. The people who say this have no idea how stupid what they say is, because such an assertion is made on the assumption that it is really true that people were always as ignorant of the spiritual secrets of existence as they are now. But it is not so long ago that people were not so ignorant. This can be shown even by outward appearances everywhere.

I will give you one such outward appearance. I have never had the opportunity to visit a picture gallery here to see if there are similar pieces here in Stuttgart. But recently we visited a picture gallery in Hamburg, and the following emerged. You see, when today's painters are supposed to paint what we know as a great, powerful picture, but a picture of a truth, such as we know, the Fall of Man at the beginning of the Old Testament, when painters are supposed to paint this Fall of Man based on what they consider to be right today, well, they paint a tree, with Eve on one side and Adam on the other. Depending on whether they are expressionists, impressionists or some other “ists,” they paint these human figures more or less vividly, I mean, on the tree, they paint a snake. That's naturalistic, isn't it, that's realistic. But if you look more closely, for those who can really think, it's not realistic at all. Because I would like to know the woman, even if she were an Eve, who would let herself be tempted by such an ordinary snake with a real naked snake's head to do what Eve let herself be tempted to do. I mean, that's not possible. An Eve will not let herself be tempted by such a snake. We know, of course, that it is a matter of seduction by Lucifer. But can Lucifer be represented by an ordinary snake? At most, this can only be the image. But we know of Lucifer that he actually received his existence by remaining behind on the lunar level. There were no such snakes there as have formed during the time on earth. So it is quite unnatural to paint a pure snake with a huge snake's head. How should Lucifer actually be painted if one wanted to paint him realistically in the sense of our spiritual science? One would have to paint him in such a way that one expresses how Lucifer was for one who still expresses the imaginative during the moon period, as I have described in the Akasha Chronicle. That is to say, if one goes into it in more detail, one will find that what has now become physical in man as the head on Earth, with the thick, sometimes very thick, bony skull, was still thin in those days. It could be seen imaginatively. But what is attached to it – you can see it in the skeleton, how the human being actually consists of the two parts, the brain and the spine – that is attached to it only like a very thin strip. The rest is actually earthly work. And what is actually the skull of the human being has come from the moon, and the spinal cord has come across as an appendage. Everything else was added through what we have developed as earthly existence. So what would Lucifer have to look like for an imaginative insight? He would have had a human skull, and attached to it something like a snake's body, developed as a movable part at that time, the backbone. That is how he would have looked. If you wanted to paint realistically, you would have to paint the tree, and on the tree the human head with the snake body hanging from it, hinting at the backbone. Then you would paint truthfully. But then you would have to know something about the mystery of existence, about the spiritual worlds with which man is connected.

In the Hamburg Museum of Pictures, you will find a painting from the 13th or 14th century by the so-called Master Bertram. The Fall of Man is painted exactly as I have described it to you. It is not a mere snake that is depicted, but everything about the tree is painted as I have just described it to you. What does that mean? It means that at most it has only been a few centuries since people no longer know how they are connected to the spiritual world and that there is a spiritual world in the sense described. So people have become so foolish that they believe that the way people now look at the world with their mere physical senses and with the mere mind that is bound to the brain is the way they have always looked at it; they would only have been a little more childish and would have come up with all sorts of myths. This is how university science thinks today. But it is all nonsense, because it is only a few centuries since mankind lost its living connection with the spiritual world. And in the face of the great tasks of knowledge, materialistic science of the present day is nothing but a walking stupor in relation to the spiritual world. And this stupor is what walks around as the authoritative among men today, what is marveled at as great progress. It had to come sometime. We know why it had to come: so that people are protected by their mere physical development and can become free. And that must be seen through. And even from such external documents as I have quoted to you, people could see, if they had just a little, forgive me, sense in their heads, how short a time it is since spiritual insight has been lost to man. But it does not occur to people today to really look at these things in thought. They prefer to choose external means of power because it is convenient, because they do not need to learn anything special, but only need to stand at some laboratory table and let certain methods be drummed into them; and then they declare by external fiat that everything that speaks of the spiritual world is error and nonsense and fantasy. This is what is to be given to people at the present time instead of a real inclination towards the spiritual world.

But, my dear friends, at present it is still the case that everything that involves inventiveness remains as a legacy from those ancient times when people looked into the spiritual world. If that were to disappear, then people would no longer make any inventions. And if spiritual science did not rekindle human thinking, it would not last fifty years. Within that time everything that works in mere materialism, a way of talking about external matter, and no one would come up with anything that could enrich art or ideology or somehow enrich the outer life. Therefore it is the strictest demand of the time, not a mere preference for any spiritual reverie, that a consciousness of the connection of humanity with the spiritual world should take hold, that people should be able to look up again. And they can do so, now that the old atavistic clairvoyance has passed away, by going through spiritual science.

And in this sense it is indeed necessary that people learn how a study of spiritual science can not only enrich their knowledge of the spiritual world, but also lead to correct thinking about life as a whole. Time and again, one experiences how people in the present time are actually quite reluctant to engage in that somewhat complicated inner life of the soul, which must be developed if one is to approach the spiritual world. Just imagine: a real average professor of today – of course there may be exceptions, no one is to be offended, and all the more must it be praised if one should be there in this circle – a real average professor of today, he will not want to listen to these things at all, it is much too boring for him. If you talk about spiritual things today, you have to use general, vague phrases that mean as little as possible, but that also mean as little as possible for real life.

When I recently gave the same lecture in Leipzig that I gave here the day before yesterday about a faded tone in German intellectual life, two gentlemen approached me after the lecture, two gentlemen of the clever type of the people mentioned, of course, and one said that he was actually surprised that I had spoken in this way, because he would have expected that when talking from a theosophical point of view, one would be more in line with his way of thinking; he is a pacifist and, as a pacifist, must view the current war in particular.

Pacifism is the view that has been cultivated for some time under the auspices of various people, including Bertha von Suttner, but also that being in St. Petersburg that is considered Caesar and Pope at the same time. Many years ago, in lectures in Berlin, I already said that it is characteristic of the peace efforts that, since we have them, the largest and bloodiest wars in world history have been waged. But this movement is precisely one of those that thrive on spreading vague phrases that insinuate themselves into the human emotional life because all they have to do is spread love and kindness. I took the liberty of saying to the gentleman: You see, we are now living in the most terrible war the world has ever seen. We have seen more ammunition used in one day, in June or July 1915, than in the entire Franco-Prussian War! We have already reached the point that as much ammunition has been fired in this war as in all the wars that have been fought with this ammunition in the world, in the development of humanity, to date. I said: Is it not clear then that what has now taken place over centuries as culture has led itself ad absurdum, that it has shown what it leads to? - Now he objected: I see this war as an illness, and that must be cured; after all, it is only an illness, it can occur.

A sentence like this is especially illuminating because it is so self-evident and because it is quite naturally correct from any point of view. But what matters is not whether things are right, but whether they are more or less superficial. The sentence is right, of course: it is a disease. But I said to him: If you would look at the disease more deeply, why does it occur in people? Because something is not right beforehand! The disease is only the reaction against something that was not right before. So if you would just think a little further from your point of view, you would come to the conclusion that this is a disease, but it occurred because things were not right before. Because something was wrong, the illness occurred, that is true. But people mix up all kinds of correct things because they are trivial and self-evident and because they cannot actually get at deeper things. That is the serious thing to realize in the present time.

If you take a fact such as the one I mentioned the day before yesterday about Karl Christian Planck, whose intellectual capacity is clearly shown by the fact that in 1880 he foresaw exactly what is happening today, you will realize from the way he has been esteemed and recognized that this culture, which has developed there, is quite suited to make the rule of the power of the incapable, which suppresses all truthful striving, precisely to world power. One should not indulge in any ambiguity about that. That is what one must understand in the deepest sense.

I will tell you a little story. A man once heard that Goethe had written a “Faust,” and he said he wanted to get to know what this Goethean “Faust” actually contains. So the man he asked found that he had to find the most convenient, easiest method for the other man to learn what this “Faust” actually contains, and he thought deeply: How can I actually teach this person, who has no sense of the simplest idea of Goethe's “Faust,” what it contains? Then a light dawned on him. He realized: a new edition of “Faust” is being printed in a certain printing press right now, so I'll take the guy who wants to know what's in “Faust” there. And so he told him: Just watch, in three weeks' time 'Faust' will be printed here. In all the hundreds of type cases there are the most diverse letters, and now just pay attention, you will see how the typesetter takes out this and that letter and puts the individual letters together to form words. You will see exactly how page after page is put together, and how finally the “Faust” comes together from the individual letters. So the other one sat there for weeks and saw how the whole “Faust” came together through the hands of people through the letters!

Yes, you see, I can also tell it in a slightly different way. The more recent times came up. People wanted to know what actually exists in the spiritual and soul life, and they had a need to understand how perceptions, thoughts, volitional impulses and feelings are woven into the human soul and what they mean for the world as a whole. They asked — the people. Now, the newer science, this merely naturalistic science, came along and said: Well, we will do that! We will see to it that we examine the individual brain pathways, nerve fibres, ganglia and all that, as far as it can be done now, and see how they are interwoven. And there we have the soul life. You get exactly the same from Goethe's 'Faust' when you get to know it in this way as the person who sat at the printing press for three weeks does! Take all the products that are being manufactured today by the so-called psychophysiologists. In terms of spiritual knowledge of the world, you have the same knowledge as you would have of the entire “Faust” if you had watched how “Faust” is manufactured from the typesetter. It is only necessary to realize this, and then the soul will be overwhelmed by the harrowing feeling that is necessary to advance in the process of human development.

You are formidable opponents, the people of naturalism will now say, denigrating our science, the true science, which proceeds strictly according to nature! But it does not occur to us to denigrate it. We are only placing it in the right context, in the right context of life. If Faust is to come into being, then of course the research work must be done for the Faust edition; but it must be recognized in its proper cosmic position.

All that I can hint at here, in the sense in which I meant it yesterday, belongs to the serious and momentous tasks that await Central Europe in the future. All this points to these serious tasks. And to remember these things in our present serious time is an urgent necessity. For it is absolutely necessary that a deeper sense of real truth should permeate the world than can prevail under the influence of the materialistic or naturalistic or strictly scientific world view. One does not need to be opposed to people learning to typeset so that Faust editions can be made. One need not be opposed to people studying the brain and nervous system. All this should be studied, which is really very important to study today. But one must be decidedly opposed to the arrogant arrogance that exists today in materialistic science, that the sense of how seriously and worthily the spiritualization of culture must be achieved, especially from Central Europe, because Western Europe has died out in relation to these things. I am not saying this just to say something paradoxical, something strong, but because of the necessity that works for the expression of such things in our time. There will come a time when one will have to look truthfully at various things; but today there is not much sense for such truthful looking. I could give you thousands and thousands of examples of the inner dishonesty of the current scientific and literary establishment. Let me give you at least one that I would have liked to have mentioned in yesterday's public lecture, but time is always too short, and unfortunately the lectures have to be kept so very short.

For example, in many of Ernst Faeckel's books – you know that I have a high regard for Ernst Haeckel in the areas where he is worthy of respect – you can repeatedly find references to Karl Ernst von Baer, the excellent naturalist whom he calls his teacher. Today, people naturally pick up Haeckel's books, study them, and regard them as a kind of new Bible or at least as a kind of writing by new church fathers. For the difference is not that today people believe in their own judgment, whereas in the time of the church fathers they simply relied on the church fathers; rather, the difference is quite a different one. In the days of Tertullian and Gregory of Nazianzus, these were the Church Fathers, and people swore by them. Today, those who found monistic societies or associations for a eugenic worldview or similar fine things swear by the holy Darwin, the holy Haeckel or the holy Helmholtz. It is the same thing, only in a slightly different area! It is not called sacred, but that does not make any difference. So people read Haeckel and when he cites Karl Ernst von Baer, they have the opinion: Well, you can see that this great naturalist Karl Ernst von Baer was in complete agreement with Haeckel in his rejection of any spiritual world. I would like to advise many a person today, after he has had a little sniff of Haeckel's and Darwin's books, to do many other things before he sets about founding a branch for a monist association: for example, if Haeckel cites Ernst von Baer, to take Karl Ernst von Baer in hand himself and read him. I will read just one passage from Karl Ernst von Baer, where he discusses the relationship between the spiritual and material worlds. Baer says: “The earth is only the seedbed on which the spiritual inheritance of man proliferates, and the history of nature is only the history of the progressive victories of the spiritual over matter. That is the fundamental idea of Creation, to please it, no, to achieve it, it makes individuals and generations disappear and elevates the present on the scaffolding of an immeasurable past.

So what does this bear say? The terrestrial body, the earth is the seedbed, and into it are sunk the spiritual germs, so that they envelop themselves. — This bear spoke the pure truth at the beginning of the 19th century! Ernst Haeckel picks out the sentences from Baer that suit him. Those who do nothing but at most found monistic associations to promote world wisdom know nothing of all this other than what Haeckel says about Baer, and continue to live in the lie without even the slightest inclination to convince themselves of the underlying fact. Our literature today is permeated with such webs of lies everywhere. And everywhere, especially in our popular scientific literature, the striving for the greatest possible vagueness and playfulness, one could even say, of intellectual endeavors and the greatest possible reluctance to express oneself, comes to expression in these things, to look into them and judge them with clear, confident human judgment.

To give you some specific examples, in the West there are various high-ranking Masonic orders among the French, the British and the Italians, some with thirty-three degrees, but there are also some with over ninety degrees. In the course of the last few centuries, much has been fished out in the murky depths of such orders. And if we examine with sober, healthy judgment the influence of all kinds of unhealthy, foolish, but well-thought-out personal and political intentions, if we study the influences and currents of Freemasonry that exist in Western Europe on the part Italy played in this war, then we will get an inkling of the many ambiguities and obfuscation in our so-called culture! What has taken place, especially in such Masonic orders since the outbreak of the war, will one day become a curious chapter. The German Freemasons will come off relatively best in this, because of them one thing can be said: that they were the fool in the whole game. They did not notice anything, that is, insofar as they lived in brotherhood with the others. And that is something that can still be said in their favor. But one should not believe that what is asserted from such sides is without influence on what lives and works around us in so-called culture, and what can only work and live as long as other people do not want their judgment clarified and strengthened by insight into the spiritual world.

In my book Thoughts During the Time of War, I have drawn attention, as far as one can in public literature in order to be understood – and indeed it has been little understood – to certain currents that are everywhere in the East and in the West. These currents, let us say for example the Eastern Slavophile current, to which I have referred in the aforementioned booklet, are rooted much deeper. At the end of the eighteenth century, and especially at the end of the nineteenth century, but also decades earlier, the western Masonic orders in particular had a greater influence on Russian intellectual life, transplanting, infecting, and instilling what was to emerge there. And in many respects Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism are truly the seeds that sprouted from what many had planted from these very Masonic orders. Under the mask, under the cloak of ceremony, people were initially befuddled, so to speak, and all kinds of nonsense was paraded before them so that they might then be inclined to favor certain plans. And what things have taken place in Eastern Europe from this Western side, mankind will then, when other events have taken the place of the warlike ones, be able to see for itself!

If these places where we are together in our branches are the only places where one can speak today, then it must at least be discussed here.

Today I wanted to take up the great, the sublime in the connection of the human being with entire hierarchies, which can arise in our soul when we consider that what we carry within us in our thoughts and feelings is already within our physical shell between birth and death, but then also between death and a new birth in a web, a world work on which entire hierarchies work in the context of the world. What matters is not that we know the individual so much, but that we can imbue ourselves with such a world feeling, and that you, my dear friends, leave such a contemplation with a feeling for what the human being actually is within the world, and what he should know about this connection with the world. That all this flows together in your souls, in your hearts, into a sense of the world, and that in this way something of the power that can be kindled in you can be kindled by what is to be incorporated into our culture, insofar as each of us is able to do so in the place we are placed in the world. Official scholars have not worked on these things today; they will not do so. Therefore, people's eyes must also be opened to the position that official scholars deserve in the world: that they, insofar as they do laboratory work, can be compared to typesetters, or some, who do not do laboratory work, merely to people who describe the typesetting. Today, these are mostly the philosophers who preach at the universities.

That this is so should be known in individual souls. For this is not a criticism of the times, it is a characterization. Only by knowing how things stand in the different ages have the forces been found to further development, only by this.

I wanted to impress this on you, especially in these difficult times, when it is not always possible to say that we will see each other again: a realization that, when we feel it in the right way, can become a sacred inner duty of the human soul towards the world connection. Deaths and more deaths surround us today in the event, which on the one hand is the fruit of the preceding development in the sense indicated, but which must be a signpost for many things that have to happen so that humanity does not advance in the way the designers of the set box want, but advances in a way that corresponds to the necessity of world development.

Of course, yesterday I quoted everything materialism, everything by Lamettrie, that he said – of course, that is also true – Erasmus would only have needed a small cog in his nervous system to change, then perhaps he would not have become Erasmus but a fool. I said that there is no need to refute that. But we, who are perhaps a little prepared, must indeed know a little more about it.

We take everything we have considered today, let it become feeling and sensation in us, and then we say to ourselves how true it is that the numerous sacrificial deaths that are currently being made really do relate to earthly existence in such a way that the etheric bodies, which are taken from people at an early age, remain connected to earthly existence for a long, long time remain connected with earthly existence, and that now there must be people who can become aware of what lives in these unconsumed etheric bodies, which still contain everything that these people could still have used in their earthly life if they had lived for decades, that is in the spiritual-etheric of the earth. But there must be people in the time to come who are conscious of this, so that the fruits of what these ethereal bodies contain may fall to the culture of the earth and not to Ahriman. Let us then, in view of the fact that we have to prepare ourselves in our souls for what is happening, imbue ourselves with the words that have often been spoken here:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit will grow —
Guiding souls, spirit-conscious
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

In my presence today, I intend to speak to you about things that can help the seeking human mind to understand the events of the present a little more deeply. These things should not be discussed in an external way, but rather, some should be pointed out that can help man, so to speak, in a spiritual expansion of understanding of our present time. This intention, which I have had for a long time for this visit to Stuttgart, we also want to carry out. We still have the lecture next Sunday.

In view of the many things that, I would say, like waves of our time — I say this with full deliberation — play into our movement from the outside, it seems necessary to me, however, to begin today with a kind of introduction to present some principles that may be suitable to dispel some misunderstandings which can arise all too easily in our time, which hates the depth of thought and feeling, about anthroposophy, which on the other hand can be suitable for gaining a correct relationship within ourselves to what anthroposophy can be for us.

Let us try to pose the question as follows: What are we seeking when we choose the path into the anthroposophical movement? — In this way, we seek to gain the opportunity to find a relationship to the spiritual world that corresponds to the needs for this spiritual world that arise in us from the forces and living conditions of the present. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by more direct routes than those we have at our disposal. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by the routes that have been fully recognized for centuries and that are only as direct as people have forgotten to reflect on the justification for what has become part of the general necessities of life. On the other hand, there is much discussion about the justification for something that must, as it were, first appear in the world. We cannot often enough bear in mind what, out of the spirit of our time, anthroposophy should be and wants to be, and bring it into connection with what is in us that can push towards anthroposophy, that wants to bring us to anthroposophy.

You see, my dear friends, Anthroposophy would not be there if it were only for the one or other person who finds it appealing to agitate for such ideas, as they live in Anthroposophy, now, we use the unofficial expression. Anthroposophy arises entirely from the realization that there are searching souls in our time who can only find what they are seeking through the path of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not pursued because someone wants it, but because souls long for it. The fact that some may deny this does not count against it, for much that is subconscious and unconscious lives in the soul and, when interpreted correctly, represents nothing other than the longing for Anthroposophy. Above all, if we single out one thing from this anthroposophy, it is the longing to recognize the greatest impulse of earthly development, the Christ impulse, in a way that is appropriate to the needs of the present, to find the path to the Christ impulse in the way that the heart must long for if it really wants to understand itself within the living conditions of the present. Now such general, abstract sentences, as I have just uttered, are certainly plausible to someone who has been grounded in anthroposophy for years. But what it is about is this: to really permeate one's soul with the spirit of these words in such a way that they do not remain merely abstract, merely theoretical in us, but that they become the content of our whole life, above all the content of our way of thinking.

I have already given an example here that is particularly characteristic: I once gave a lecture in a town in southern Germany on the subject of 'Bible and Wisdom', in which I tried to explain how a positive Christian, especially if he understands himself correctly, can find his way to anthroposophy. I described how anthroposophy, through its presuppositions, can penetrate more deeply into the great and inexhaustible secrets of the original book of humanity, the Bible. After the lecture, two Catholic priests who had attended the lecture approached me. And from what they said, it was clear that they could not really object to anything in particular from their Christian doctrine, as they understood it, as they knew it as theologians - perhaps not so much as priests bound by any obligations as theologians. So they went off on a side track and said: Yes, you see, there is nothing special to be said from our point of view against what you have just said today, except this: When we speak, we speak in such a way that everyone can understand what we are saying. They also speak of Christianity, but only for those who have reached a certain level of education or have specially prepared themselves for this kind of thing. “I replied: Yes, you see, Reverend, what you or I think about the question of what should be said to all people is not the point, because that leads the whole topic down the path of personal opinion. It is not particularly remarkable that everyone believes that what they do is universally valid for all people. Why should one be surprised at that; otherwise they would not do it! But what you or I think is right is not the point. Our way of doing research on the spirit begins with rising above personal opinion and facing reality, true reality. In our case, this reality is very close. It lies simply in the answer to the question: Do all the people for whom you believe you speak – you do believe you speak for all people, don't you? – still come to church with you? The question answers a fact – the question of whether you think you speak for all people. That it should apply to all people is only your opinion; the other corresponds only to a fact. Tell me whether all people go to church! — They could not answer me except that a number of people do not go to church. That

185 refutes you, I said, because then you are not speaking for those who do not go to church. And among them are numerous people to whom I have to speak, and who also have the right to find the way to Christ in the present.

This means not judging according to what one personally considers to be true or false, but subordinating one's judgment to the demands and tasks of reality. It is, however, much more comfortable to theorize about what is right or wrong than to study reality in detail, constantly listening attentively to what reality demands of us. Anthroposophy does not want to be something other than an answer to questions that it does not ask itself, but that the hearts and souls ask in the present, when they understand each other properly. And I am aware that the questions that are asked in my writings, which are already very numerous, are not asked by me. The answers are given by me in many cases, but the questions are not asked by me. The questions are posed by what the culture of the time brings forth, by what, for example, natural science in the culture of the time brings forth, by what anyone who is interested in the demands of the time must ask, and who, above all, is serious about the most important needs of the souls of the present.

If we call these conditions to mind, then it becomes clear that a basic intention, a basic view, a basic tendency and a basic attitude prevail throughout the anthroposophical literature. If one goes through all these writings, not with the benevolent attitude that we may have gained within our circle, but with the critical eye that one can gain from the present-day culture, then one will find one thing as the core of all this anthroposophical literature. That is, that everything aims to bring the human soul that which this human soul must long for above all in the present: independence, the power of judgment from one's own inner being. I have often had to resist the urge to write popularly from this or that side. I have always resisted this urge for the simple reason that the point of anthroposophical literature is not to give people articles of faith that they can accept at will in a lightly veiled form, but rather to call on them to use their own powers of judgment and search their own souls. Anyone who wants to can see that this is the case throughout all of this anthroposophical literature.

Nowhere is the aim to evoke blind faith. Of course, there are things told that cannot be verified without further ado, but they are told as facts of the spiritual world that anyone can accept as messages and to which they can apply their critical standard, to ever greater and greater extent, if they wish. And we have seen that in recent times friends who have sympathetically examined the matter have managed to approach even the most subtle things to a high degree with the probe of an unprejudiced criticism. What is contained in the anthroposophical literature referred to here need never shrink from this unprejudiced criticism. This unprejudiced criticism will pass it; it will pass it all the better, the more unprejudiced this criticism is: Never will anyone hear anything different from me when it comes to this question than this: Test, test, test, but do not stop at testing, but seek to test by trying to get deeper and deeper into things with the means of present thinking. Because this is the aim, the writings of this literature can make people independent.

Now, however, one experiences many things when one surveys the way in which anthroposophy is received. I met people again and again who listened to one or the other lecture, read one or the other small writing, and then no longer showed themselves. That is their right, of course, and no one should be reproached for it. And when they were asked by an acquaintance why they no longer appeared - in all friendship, of course, not as if they were being reproached - they replied: “Yes, if we go into the matter in more detail, we fear being convinced.” This is certainly a significant word, but it also points to significant facts. What is being attempted is precisely this: to break away from the hereditary evil of our time, from the positing of personal opinions, from the positing of personal thecri, and to direct souls to that which the spirituality of the world itself says, if we find the possibility to surrender ourselves to this spirituality of the world with all our soul and to speak of the methods, to speak of the means by which the soul can attain to listening to the spirituality of the world itself.

A world view that emerges in this way from the deepest needs of the time, but which so thoroughly contradicts what people of the present believe, will only slowly and gradually find its way into the souls of men. Human souls cling to what is familiar; human souls prefer to hear their own water-clear thinking from the pulpit and to be able to say of what they hear: “I have thought that for a long time.” The anthroposophical teachings that are emerging in the present are certainly not truths that have been “thought for a long time”. But in the eyes of many people this is precisely the main mistake, that they cannot say to themselves: “I have thought that for a long time” — and that they do not want to say to themselves: “If I dig deep enough within myself, I will not express a personal opinion, but something that is connected with the developmental factors of humanity.” — We will come back to such developmental factors of humanity many times during my stay in Stuttgart this time. So it is understandable that many obstacles and hindrances arise when people try to approach anthroposophy, to approach spiritual science.

My book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is widely read over time, not only within those who belong to the various circles of the Anthroposophical Society, but it is also widely read outside the Society at the present time. When reading this book in particular, an experience can be made again and again that is extraordinarily characteristic. Someone reads the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and writes me a letter about it. And of course, I am always pleased when someone writes me an intelligent letter about any book or about anything else, but especially about the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. But the usual thing is that the letter that is written is the clearest proof, the clearest proof that the person concerned has not understood the book at all and has translated the most important things of the book into the most materialistic attitude of the present. Because what people usually go for when they come across this book is the following. But let us send something in advance: a whole host of doubts can arise in the mind of someone reading the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, and there are already many people who can testify that I am always ready to discuss these doubts with people, and so I certainly do not want what I am saying now to appear as if it should deter anyone from writing the letter I just mentioned. No one should be deterred from writing this letter, but the letter is very often written with people getting stuck on one particular thing, where the thing immediately turns into materialism for them. Much is said in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', which, when properly observed, leads people to find their own way into the spiritual world, from within themselves, from their soul. This book is designed to make people as independent as possible, not to impose anything on them in any subjective way, but only to remove the obstacles so that they can find the truth themselves. The best way to begin to take in this book would be to appropriate its content in inner deed. But then people get stuck on the sentence: The one who has attained the necessary maturity will find his spiritual teacher if only he searches for him correctly. — So, there we have it! I write a letter to the one who wrote the book, and he becomes my spiritual teacher; that's the simplest thing! There we have the materialistic explanation. The fact that this passage could be the most sacred incentive for a person seeking independence to continue searching in order to find the path, which might consist of something completely different than writing a letter to someone: You, give me instructions - that is very uncomfortable for many readers of the book. They do not search enough in the book. And so this book, How to Know Higher Worlds, is one of the most widely read books in the German-speaking world today, and has been translated into many foreign languages, despite the fact that it is one of the most misunderstood books. And yet it is child's play to understand if you just let it sink in without prejudice. And don't translate it into materialistic comfort.

To some extent, people today are looking for what they are accustomed to seeking in other areas. How deeply ingrained it has become in people today not to help themselves, that is, not to learn what can help them in one situation or another, but to be helped and not to worry about the principles by which they are helped. Why should we trouble ourselves today about the best way to live in terms of our health? We let ourselves be prescribed for by someone who is there for that purpose, and then we do not need to check the principles according to which he prescribes; we hand over our fate to the one who is set up as an authority. Why should we not be particularly inclined to surrender our destiny to someone else when we are on the spiritual path, the most important human path? But what if the very work that inspires us to do so is dedicated above all to making the human soul independent!

It may be said that scientific research in particular has reached a certain level today, and that this level of scientific research would be accessible to those who are called upon today to represent the natural sciences if most of them did not simply become absorbed in their subject and did not go beyond the boundaries of their subject. If only, I might say, a dozen of the official representatives — and only these are listened to today — would make an honest effort to examine with the most profound honesty what is contained in my 'Occult Science: An Outline of the Fundamental Principles of the Science of Man and Nature', ' and in my 'Theosophy', they would find everything confirmed from the side that can be characterized by saying: Look at life, whether life does not confirm what can be experienced through spiritual science, what is sought here from the spiritual world! — Anyone who really masters natural science today comes to the verification of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives. This is absolutely a truth. But we are faced with the peculiar fact that precisely those who could undertake such an examination are absolutely not concerned about it, have not been concerned about it until now — I am ignoring those who, in our circles, have received the stimulus for it — that no one has set themselves the task of really testing the spiritual-scientific results of anthroposophy against the, fully understood, natural-scientific research of the present! The spiritual-scientific research really has no need to fear this test; it will pass it. It should only be employed, it will be passed. But admittedly, in a time when one is not even inclined to go into the most primitive truths, this test will perhaps take a long time.

The urge not only to be logical, but to be realistic, that is, to form one's judgment not only according to abstract logic, but by immersing oneself in reality, this urge is possessed by few in our present time. Many strive to be logical, but only after going behind logic a certain way is it possible to see the scope of logic itself; otherwise one does not even realize what confusion one can create with such very consistent judgments. You see, it is logical to be always consistent with one's own judgment or consistent with someone else's judgment, but it can lead to rather strange collisions. Charles V, the Austrian, and the French king Francis I came to the same conclusion. They were, so to speak, in complete agreement with regard to a certain idea that they wanted to realize. Francis said: “My dear brother wants exactly the same as I do. We both want exactly the same thing. — They both wanted to conquer Milan! Yes, you see, you notice it — namely when you say the postscript. But that such judgments are swarming around and dominate precisely contemporary thinking, to the detriment of this present, few in the present have the inclination to even think of it.

It is remarkable how – forgive the philistine image – enlightened minds today sometimes approach judgment by going at it from the wrong end, as if someone were to put a horse's bridle on by the tail instead of by the head. But such a bridling is immediately accepted if the person concerned is officially authorized. Anyone with a sense for the living in thinking, feeling and willing could have suffered real torments for many years from the way much thinking is done in the present. I still remember hearing my first lecture in Vienna on elliptic function theory – forgive the word, but it depends on the mind of the person what I want to express, and not on whether one or the other understands what I am using now. So I heard lectures by Professor Leo Königsberger, who was already famous at the time. He was so famous that after being appointed a professor he could write to the government right away to request to be appointed a court councillor, not just a professor. So when I attended his first lecture, he came to the question: What about numbers? People assume positive and negative numbers. Positive numbers correspond to the money I have, negative numbers to the money I don't have, the money I owe. But there are other numbers. Now mathematicians use a line with an O in the middle to denote positive and negative numbers: plus 1, plus 2; minus 1, minus 2. And then the famous Gauss added a new line of numbers so that you can fill the plane with different types of numbers. I don't want to talk about the justification of this number level, but Leo Königsberger began his lecture on elliptic functions by saying, “It could now be that someone would say today that one could just as well take numbers perpendicular to this plane.” When I, as a very young badger of sixteen or seventeen, learned about the story of the plane of numbers, I immediately raised an objection: I said that then one could also think of space as being filled with numbers. The teacher kindly reassured me by saying, “Well, just wait until the next few centuries!” — which, of course, made a great impression on me, the young badger. Now I heard Leo Königsberger in Vienna address the same question. He said, “Let's assume there are these three types of numbers, not just the numbers that lie in the plane of the two lines, but the numbers that lie in the third dimension. We hypothetically assume that such numbers exist, and I would multiply such a number by another number. Now I will show you that when you multiply them, the product can sometimes be zero. But since that can never be the case, there can be no such number. Well, you see, having to listen to this is torture. I don't want to talk about whether the whole story is right or not, but if you accept one thing and don't accept the other, and claim that because the product is zero, there can be no such number, then having to listen to this is torture, because of course the correct thing is that if you have two numbers that equal zero, you have to assume that zero can be created by multiplication, not the opposite; that is the most obvious thing. But whether these judgments live in mathematics, whether these judgments live in political notes, for example in Mr. Wilson's notes, they always lead back to the same forms of thought. But if these forms of judgment live in those judgments that want to be effective for the fate of humanity, then an error in judgment means something quite different from an error in a merely limited scientific speculation, as it is in many respects the teaching of Leo Königsberger.

It must be emphasized, as it is characteristic of our time, that people do not want to adapt their judgment to reality. They do not want to live in reality because they do not want to in the simplest things. They want to assume that the simplest things are what they want, not what reality dictates. It is of the greatest importance that we should learn to think differently in many respects, in order to escape from much of the mischief of the present time. We must learn not merely to think differently, but to think differently. If people with their old habits of thinking could really grasp anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then they would be able to familiarize themselves more quickly with spiritual scientific truths. But these should not be grasped with the old habits of thinking, but rather with the new thinking, and people find that extremely difficult.

Now, these are some of the reasons why it is so difficult at present to get through with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, simply because it has to confront the very, very nearest prejudices. But precisely because this is the case, spiritual science is not really fought against, because, it must be admitted, the fight against spiritual science is on very shaky ground. Go and look for those scientific discussions that seriously and thoroughly try to deal with spiritual science as it stands; go and look for treatises or the like of this caliber! Anyone who has ever looked into it will see how little there is in this direction. But perhaps it is not convenient to proceed in this way. You see, a few years ago a student told me that he was preparing to do his doctorate in philosophy at a very well-known university: he wanted to write a dissertation that had been recommended to him by a famous professor. This dissertation was to be about the great Russian thinker Solowjow. At that time, not much more had been printed by Solowjow than a few things that had been published by Nina Hoffmann; much more came out later. I asked the student: Why does the professor advise you to write your dissertation about this Solowjow? “Yes,” said the student, ‘the professor knows nothing about this philosopher and would like to learn something.’ ‘So that's the best way: you let the student write a doctoral thesis on Solovyov, if the student knows Russian; then you learn something about him.’ So the doctoral thesis on Solovyov was written. But a great many doctoral theses are written out of the same sentiment. In many cases, this is a maxim for how topics for doctoral theses are given. But in this way a certain scientific attitude is cultivated, one might say bred. The professor in question could only have really got to know Solowjow if he had intended not only to be a professor of philosophy but also to get to know contemporary philosophy through one of its most outstanding representatives. He would have had to try to study Solowjow himself as best he could, even though only a small part of Solowjow's work has been translated and he does not know Russian himself. It is an uncomfortable path, but it can be said that for many people who want to come to their own conclusions about spiritual science, the path to getting to know spiritual science is much more uncomfortable today. Because there is still a difference between a professor having a dissertation written about Soloviev or about spiritual science. With Soloviev it is still more or less possible to form an opinion by the time the dissertation is finished, because the student is well trained to give this opinion in the sense in which philosophy is taught. But what should a modern professor do with a dissertation about spiritual science, for example? He would be completely at a loss. And even more uncomfortable, of course, is the way of not getting to know the subject indirectly through a dissertation, but rather by studying the subject itself exhaustively in some way.

But all these things are no obstacle for the honest seeker of truth in the present day; he may be longing for spiritual science. Many of you know this, my dear friends. But for most people in today's world, it is an obstacle to recognize this spiritual science, to do anything other than to drill this spiritual science to the ground. They do not approach it, and since it does not come from them, it must be drilled to the ground. You cannot do that in a matter-of-fact way; today, the facts already show that. For those who have tried to approach spiritual science have not, as a rule, become opponents; they have certainly not become blind followers, but they have not become opponents either. There are those too. But a large part of our contemporaries simply have a personal interest in extinguishing this spiritual science, in making it impossible in the present. If they try to do this through honest literary debate, using whatever arguments they have against it, whatever arguments someone else has, then of course there is nothing to be said against it. But that is just what they do not want, it is too inconvenient. It is much more convenient to play the whole thing over into the personal sphere, not to talk about what is said in spiritual science, but to talk about all kinds of other things. And that, you see, is precisely what is being attempted in our immediate present today and will be attempted more and more in the near future, and to which I would like to draw your attention. Because this will lead to a situation in which numerous dissatisfied people, who become dissatisfied for personal reasons within our society, can easily be turned into tools for those who want to eliminate anthroposophy from the world, but do not strive for it in an honest way – they would not achieve their goal by honest means either – they do not strive for scientific discussion, but avoid the honest path, and instead seek to attach some kind of scandal to the spiritual science movement and to personalize everything.

Since my time for talking about factual matters has expired, so that no one can say that I am taking up your time for matters related to the Society and its interests instead of dealing with the factual questions, I may add the following now: There are more and more people who are suitable to be used by those who are characterized in this way, and if one is honest about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, one has an obligation to point out these things more precisely.

There is a person – many years ago his name first appeared before our eyes – who comes from a small town. One day Dr. Steiner received a letter, as they so often occur: “I feel unhappy in my situation, I would like to improve my situation”. And one of the letters that had this tone asked for advice on how the person concerned should act: whether he would do better to marry into a house or a business, or whether he should seek his way in the world in some other way. Yes, you have to tell the truth, unembellished, if you want to get to the bottom of things, and if you do not want to be blind to what will happen in the near future. Now it was made clear to the man that we cannot deal with the question of whether he should marry into a family or not, but since he did not let up, we willingly provided him with some information that was suitable to meet his need for spiritual instruction, which he claimed to have. By devoting himself to such spiritual things as he imagined them to be, he very soon came to the conclusion that it would be beneath a great mind like his to take care of a business in a small town. He longed for larger circles. He had apparently saved some money and came to Berlin. He found that

"It is quite nice to pursue the humanities alone, but he also felt a special artistic talent in himself, and he now demanded that society promote this. It's nice to help people, isn't it. The samples that the person in question gave of his art spoke against any talent, but some people learn so much even without talent that it sometimes meets strict requirements. And so it came about that the person in question was recommended to various members who could create this or that for him, that he should be supported. But it always turned out that the matter failed precisely because the person in question wanted to practice an art but not learn anything, because he thought he could do more than all the teachers who wanted to take care of him. And the consequence was that, because he ran away from every teacher, in the end nothing could be done at all. One had indulgence after indulgence, but nothing special could be done, nothing pleased the person concerned. For, of course, in his eyes this was again such a blatant case of how the world misunderstands the nascent genius! That no one else could honestly share this view, yes, my dear friends, it was truly not our fault. That is the main thing, all other things are secondary. And so it was with this person as it is with many. They first seek advancement within our society, and when this advancement is not granted to them according to their mind, they become opponents. And then they come forward with all kinds of things. Of course, they never talk about what is behind things. They come up with all kinds of things that are best refuted by first explaining the reasons. Of course, in this case it was pure offended vanity and incompetence. And everything else that was added as a fuss was the most foolish invention, the most foolish fantasy. But today, of course, you find the journals that take up these things. Because the person I mean is called Erich Bamler. And if you really get to the bottom of things in such undertakings, then you don't need to take on such an essay, which mostly doesn't mean anything, because all the individual things don't express what they say, but

41n0 they arise from quite different things. And it is actually foolish to seriously want to refute the non-essential. Because that is not what is important, but what lies behind it.

Let us take another case: a man who is not exactly lacking in vanity found himself years ago, after first objecting to anthroposophy in general, in this anthroposophy. I was the very last person to have sought out this personality. He presented himself. It turned out that there were many things that did not exactly mean that this personality was striving for completely impersonal goals in our society. That cannot be demanded, of course, so it cannot be criticized if sometimes personal goals are also accommodated to some extent. Sometimes such personal aims are accommodated because in this way many people can be led to what is right after all. And so it happened that at first the person concerned was quite satisfied with us. He wrote a pamphlet, in fact. I even condescended to write an epilogue to it, and the pamphlet was also taken up by our publishing house. He was on good terms with us; we were people who could be talked to. Then the person in question had another work printed, and after this work had had various fates, which are now of no concern to us, he offered it to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House again. However, it was impossible to include this work in the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House. On the first pages of this writing, it says that I had only hinted at certain things about the Christ problem, and that the gentleman in question would like to elaborate on them. I am not saying this out of hurt vanity, although in this case I am being accused of it; but the sentence in which it is attributed to me is a blatant untruth, because the matter mentioned did not take place. Without taking into account the fact that I might have had reason not to go further, things are then elaborated in a way that may remind one of another story that took place, of which this story is at least a miniature version. I will have to come back to this other story as well, and I will do so briefly in a moment. In this writing by the gentleman in question, all kinds of things that I had only said in lectures were simply stated. Dr. Steiner was quite right to take umbrage at this and rejected the manuscript for publication. And because his manuscript was rejected, the man became an opponent. Now, of course, if you are writing an article for a journal, you cannot say: The Anthroposophical Society is fundamentally bad because the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House rejected my manuscript. That won't do! But that would have been the truth! So, despite the fact that the person concerned has been informed about the matter countless times, the fairy tale about contradictions is invented. The person concerned knows very well what the situation is regarding these contradictions, but he writes newspaper articles about them! What these newspaper articles say is of no significance, because the person concerned did not become an opponent because of this matter. He could have known about this long before he joined. He became an opponent for the stated reason. Some doubt whether one can so easily make the hypothesis: What is afterwards is also causally conditioned by what went before; but it remains conspicuous, nevertheless, that the antagonism of Mr. Max Seiling followed immediately upon the rejection of his writing by our publishing house. Of course it is easy to deny such a thing, to object to it in all sorts of ways, but it is not a matter of what one or the other objects to, but of what the facts are.

It is indeed reminiscent of a somewhat more ingenious case; this is only a miniature version of it. The more ingenious case is that of a gentleman who had been to America but is a good European. He was summoned here to Germany by a long-standing member and listened to all kinds of lectures. He tried hard to get the lectures that had been given years ago by demanding them from this person or that. After he had faithfully packed up everything he had copied, he went back to America. He said there that he had been here, that he had familiarized himself with my teaching, but that he could not be satisfied with my teaching, but had to go much deeper, so one would find in his work many things that are not yet to be found in my books. For when he had exhausted everything that could be found with me, he was called to a master who dwells somewhere in the Transylvanian Alps; he then told him many things that he is now incorporating into his book. But now everything that he incorporated into his book was what he had overheard here in the lectures and copied down! And then the book was called: “Rosicrucian Worldview”. It was published in America and caused a great stir: the book, that was a combination of what he had heard from me here, and what the master was supposed to have told him in the Transylvanian Alps. People did not need to check what I had said, nor could they, because it had been said in part in our internal lectures. But not only did this appear as a book written in English and American, but a German bookshop was also found that translated the book and published it as “Weltanschauung der Rosenkreuzer” (The Rosicrucians' World View). The editor was Dr. Vollrath.

These are just a few examples of how it is done, my dear friends! These things may well be pointed out. Attention must be paid to them, because they show the means by which, on the one hand, we make use of what is growing on our soil and, on the other, how we fight it. It may well be said that perhaps never before have worse means been used to fight against anything than are now being used to fight against us, especially against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science! You will therefore understand that we have been forced, as it were, to resort to the only means of averting the disaster, although it may not bring about any improvement if everyone joins forces to cause the greatest possible difficulties for the personalities associated with the matter. But one thing must be considered: too much has been said about this matter, but always actually for deaf ears. Therefore, there is no other choice than to submit to a certain iron necessity in order to serve the matter, to which we must all be devoted, in an appropriate way. This iron necessity simply arises. Suppose spiritual science were to appear as literature, were there as literature. It would then be quite impossible – in theory it is possible, but in view of the concrete facts it would be quite impossible – for all these things to attach themselves to spiritual science, as they have done and will continue to do in the most terrible and unworthy manner. What we have to distinguish from the spiritual science movement, which wants to be a pure knowledge movement, a world view movement of the present day, is the Anthroposophical Society. The idea of the Anthroposophical Society is a good one, but in practice, as I see it, it is developing in many ways, not as I see it, but as the facts teach us, in many ways, so that every day we are confronted with things that show, and this is no exaggeration, how within this Anthroposophical Society, cliques develop with a certain ease, especially personal interests for and against, in the most extensive way. It is difficult to separate personal interests from purely factual ones in the context of a society. But think that precisely through the social activities, the floodgates are opened to those people who do not want to confront spiritual science through honest discussion, but who want to bring down spiritual science by the detour of personal defamation, through personal slander. Because one can say this: they want to bring down spiritual science.

Years ago, I decided to accommodate the wishes of various members for personal meetings, to the youngest and oldest members in the broadest way. Only in recent years, when things were already so close, did I sometimes have to deviate sporadically from the old practice; but only sporadically, in exceptional cases. Despite the fact that it has been emphasized time and again that what is available in the literature and what is said here in the lectures contains plenty of material that the individual needs for his or her own development, so that personal consultations could only relate to an expression from person to person to person, it will happen time and again that the most outrageous lies — excuse the expression — are told within the Society in connection with the personal contact of members with me, and outsiders then seek ways to all kinds of defamation and slander. By this I mean that all too often within the Society people are quite inclined to use a nice-sounding little word for their own deep satisfaction when they have one. How good it does some people, for example, when they can say: I have become an esoteric disciple. — And how good it does some people when they can say: Yes, you know, that is something very mysterious, I am not allowed to tell you that; I am not allowed to tell you anything about it. — Putting oneself in the limelight, giving oneself a certain prestige, that is what is behind many an expression that is used and which is then often misused by outsiders in a quite malicious way. All these things, which are now being used with malicious intent, could never have happened if what was being put in a false light were not in line with legitimate desires and perhaps an equally legitimate accommodation of these desires, but which, in view of what the outside world is making of it, cannot be maintained, however difficult it may be for me, my dear friends. Of course, everyone can maintain friendly relations in society, but the iron necessity compels me to stop giving private audiences. I am particularly sorry for this because some will say: Why should the innocent suffer with the guilty? But if you are in a society, that is of course the karma of the society, and the matter cannot be done differently. All those private conversations that were sought out, in view of those malicious slanders, must simply stop. |

Don't think that I am any less sorry for that than you are, but I know that, just as everything I have said about such things was spoken in vain, my speaking today would also be spoken in vain if measures were not taken that simply force people to realize the seriousness of the matter.

It is easy to fabricate slanderous stories about what is said in private conversations with individual members, if these slanderous stories reach the point where, for example, it is said here or there that this or that member has been hypnotized. Now, my dear friends, in the face of these things I shall have to take a different line altogether, from which you will see — and I am really speaking out of a simple sense of duty towards our movement — that I am now and in this matter, in the very bitterest seriousness, for the sake of the sanctity of spiritual science. If a movement like this is based simply on the principle of not encroaching on anyone's sphere of freedom, and if this is strictly observed, if everything that encroaches on a person's sphere of freedom is strictly rejected, and if one then proceeds with these very things, then it is necessary that one day everything that is to grow on our soil will grow in the full light of day. When things grow in full public view, then the ground will be cut from under the slanderers. But there will be no other method in the future. Therefore, I will strive, as far as it depends on me, to ensure that in the future anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will increasingly take place in the full light of the public. It does not have to shy away from the public. And today I declare explicitly: With regard to the private conversations that have taken place with members for years, I release everyone from the promise not to speak about the content of the conversation. Everyone can share, as much as they themselves find appropriate, what has ever occurred in a private conversation with a member. Nothing will be found that should be kept from the light of day. Then one will no longer be able to pussyfoot around with things that are on the following ground. I will give you an example of how these things can be used against the most blatant ignorance and the will to be most blatantly ignorant.

Not only Erich Bamler, but also others who are fighting just as “honestly” as he is, have put forward and basically believe that among all sorts of esoteric principles this one would also have been given to them: “Look at everything around you in the light of necessity, as if it were necessary, as a given necessary fate.” It is comforting for a time, as long as one believes oneself to be supported within society, when one has been given such a rule to say: “I am an esoteric disciple, for I meditate continually: ‘See everything around you in the light of necessity’.” But why has this rule been given to those people, why has this rule been advised to them? For the simple reason that they needed it according to the state of their soul! It was a piece of advice that did not encroach on their freedom at all, but a piece of advice whose scope and esotericism you may judge if I point out the following to you: Schopenhauer says in his essay on the freedom of the will, towards the end of his essay, concerning our attitude towards the course of the world and fate: “Everything that happens, from the greatest to the smallest, happens necessarily”; and he speaks of the calming effect of the realization of the inevitable and necessary. So people have been advised to do nothing other than what Schopenhauer himself considers a proven way of overcoming certain forms of depression.

Now, when speculating on the most blatant ignorance and on the will to the most blatant ignorance, people can, of course, be told all kinds of beautiful fairy tales: that one has turned green and blue, especially in the legs, by following such principles. And for those who want to make something esoteric out of thin air, these things can, of course, be used as slander. But precisely when we know that the things that are being done in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are actually required by necessary needs, then we will be able to understand that such a measure as the one mentioned above must one day be taken, simply for the reason that it must be seen that the things at issue are meant seriously. Do not complain to me, who feels it just as hard as you do; complain to those whom I have clearly pointed out to you, and who make it impossible for such a measure to be avoided. Today it is very difficult for me, for reasons of principle, to have to refuse private conversations, which numerous members desire. Of course I also know that this will in turn be used against me, but I cannot act according to personal reasons, but according to what is necessary for our movement. That means that I must submit to the principle of taking what is said seriously, for whatever reason it may be taken as a pretext for calumny or slander by those who do not honestly want to refute spiritual science but who want to do away with it in some other way.

Examine much of what has occurred; you will find that the causes always come from society. It is very rare for society to be attacked; the point of attack is usually me or my immediate surroundings. Examine the things. But by attacking me, it is the case that they want to attack spiritual science in me. Because one way or another, it is of no importance to them whether a foolish esoteric piece of advice is given here or there; there are enough of those in the world. But what people do care about is that spiritual science in the anthroposophical orientation is a cultural factor of our time, that it wants to have a say. People do care about that. They do not care about esoteric Winkel esoterics, but they do care about someone who, according to his destiny, cannot remain an esoteric Winkel esoteric. You would not want to meet an esoteric Winkel esoteric if he sat in front of fifty people in Berlin and gave them advice. The attacks only began when the number of books exceeded a certain number. It would be a sin against the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to let it perish when it might be possible to prevent it by having to do without certain things, perhaps only for a while, because the morality of people today turns out the way it has now turned out.

We have often seen how things are misrepresented; but how it is done in the case of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how things are invented that are not there at all and something quite different from what has taken place is told, that is one of the greatest rarities, even in the history of mankind.

All this is not said to, as they say in Austria, grumble or gripe, or to some extent to rant, but it is said because the symptoms are now appearing daily that the intention is to put an end to our spiritual movement in the way indicated, and because the tendency must arise to see the snowball at the top, and not just the avalanche when it has reached the bottom. Just a few hours before I came here, among other things, a letter was read to me in which it was once again related that two people had come together; I will not mention any names, so such a case can simply be cited as an example. The one is accused of hypnotizing the other, of even sitting behind the other and meditating into the other's neck so that all kinds of harmful things arise in the soul of the person concerned. And then the matter is pursued further. It is only one case, the last one, no, not the last one, there was another one after that, but it is the one that I read about three hours ago. Today it is a harmless matter, but in a few years it may no longer be so: that one person is supposed to have sat behind another in order to meditate all kinds of harmful things into the neck of the other person and thereby exert influence. There is no doubt that the person concerned is as harmless as possible in this matter. But today, my dear friends, this plays between two members; in a few years it will be made into a “Steiner case”, which in turn provides a very nice case for such “studies”. Perhaps it will happen more quickly and will not take a few years.

So, please understand that I am truly faced with an extremely difficult dilemma if I have to resort to saying, on the one hand, that an attempt must be made to make spiritual science fully public. Nobody will be left wanting as a result, nobody will somehow not find what they need to find because everything is in the public domain. But all the gossip: that is something mysteriously mystical, you must not say that and so on – that should no longer be able to give rise to all kinds of slander. No matter how friendly our dealings may be, they must not be any other than those between friends for the time being, because private conversations must stop as a matter of principle for the time being. Perhaps this will force our dear members, however inconvenient it may be, to pay a little more attention to things and take care of the matters that have been neglected so far.

As I said, please forgive me for bringing up these matters here today; I only did so after the actual lecture was already over, but I had to bring them up because they are related to the vital issues of the Anthroposophical Society and the anthroposophical movement. This, and not any lack of friendliness, is why I very much regret not being able to hold the private conversations with our dear members, which I have always been happy to do, in the near future. Then it will not be possible, really not possible in the concrete, to create what the malicious enemies are so keen to seek. — Because, my dear friends, you could of course make an objection, and everyone does it of their own accord in an understandable way, namely by saying: But he could talk to me. This has been said by each of those who are now launching their attacks in the most abusive manner; and some of those who are now the tools of their protectors were brought into society by very, very respected members of society. In some respects, it must change, but it can only change through the members.

It is certainly understandable that in the soul of the present man, more than is perhaps otherwise the case, the need arises to understand time in its peculiarity. We are living in a time when events are taking place that not only demand the most tremendous sacrifices from many people, but which truly present human thought with difficult riddles, riddles of the most diverse kinds. Why did these things have to reveal themselves in our age in such a terrible catastrophe as it is now going through the development of mankind? This is certainly a question that touches the souls of today. We see the outer events well; we must only try to prepare ourselves more and more, not only to seek the proximate causes for such momentous events, but to turn our eyes to the deeper forces of the time, and to how these deeper forces are grounded in the overall development of humanity. Then we may perhaps also understand much that otherwise remains incomprehensible to us, that we can only stare at, so to speak.

Let us ask ourselves: What is a serious characteristic of our time in the deepest sense? — Well, we certainly cannot deny from discussions that have often been held here that in recent times, in all fields, what we call materialism, materialism in the broadest sense of the word, has emerged. Materialism! — today, let us not understand it in the sense of only directing our feelings, our sympathy and our antipathy to that which we label with the term materialism; rather, let us try to sense that an age had to come when materialism, so to speak, set the tone in the development of humanity. Humanity needed materialism, the passage through materialism. It must not lose itself within materialism; it must not, as it were, surrender to this materialism to such an extent that it loses the connection with the spiritual world not only out of sight but also out of mind. To ensure that this does not happen, to ensure that the connection with the spiritual world is maintained, is precisely the task of spiritual science. Today I would like to try to bring before you some of the developmental laws of the human race, which, if we understand them in the right way, can help us to understand what is happening around us.

That we live in the age of materialism is by no means due merely to the wickedness and depravity of the human soul at large, but to certain laws of development. Admittedly, the face of materialism in our age is not a beautiful one, especially when we can compare this materialistic face with the cultural face of older periods. Nevertheless, no one should fall back into reactionary thinking and believe that the old cultural developments should be brought back. What is quite significant for us about the nature of materialism in our time is that even outstanding, spiritually significant personalities cannot bring their soul impulses to an understanding of the spiritual world. They simply cannot. We must admit this to ourselves without prejudice. Let us take a typical example from the 19th century, a man who was much talked about in the second half of the 19th century in the international intellectual life of Europe: Ernest Renan, who endeavored to understand the Christ Impulse in a way that was possible for his time. Ernest Renan's 'Life of Jesus' caused a great sensation in the widest circles and had a great influence. But Ernest Renan is, on the one hand, a spirit who was serious about spiritual matters, but on the other hand, he could not form any ideas about the fact that man can find a way to an understanding of spiritual worlds. Let us take a saying that Ernest Renan made at a fairly young age; he said: “The man of the present is aware that he will never know anything about the highest causes of the universe and about his own destiny.” This is a leading spirit of the present day who speaks in this way, who actually presents it as an important insight when man becomes aware that he can never know anything about the causes of the universe and about his destiny. And he was not a superficial man, this Ernest Renan. He lived a life of insight. And it is characteristic that the old Renan, the Renan who had become an old man, made another characteristic statement. This man, who throughout his life immersed himself in the belief that man cannot find his way into the spiritual world, indeed, he had to impress this on himself as a higher realization, said at the end of his life: I wish I knew for sure that there was a hell, because better the hypothesis of hell than that of nothingness. There you see something spoken from the compressed heart of the present. Nothingness stares at man when he has the yearning, the desire to gain a spiritual world, a spiritual world into which man could enter when he passes through the gate of death. And a person who believes that he has achieved the state of being above such things, that he can do without such knowledge, who at the end of his life says: It would be better to know that there is a hell than to look at nothingness. — One must empathize with such things if one wants to feel characteristic of our time.

But we must be clear about one thing: humanity needs leading minds in every age. In ancient times it was the mystery priests, and in our age it is certain philosophers who are increasingly taking on a scientific character. A philosopher whom I knew very well said the following in his last work, “The Tragicomedy of Wisdom”: He says: We have no more philosophy than an animal and differ from the animal only in the frantic attempts to want to come to a knowledge, and by the final surrender to the non-knowledge. — The person concerned, who has thus come to the conclusion from his digging in the spiritual life that man cannot have more philosophy than an animal, has become a professor of philosophy and a university professor. Therefore, it is not surprising that, on the other hand, natures of a more profound bent want to seek some way into the spiritual world, and that, because they cannot bring themselves to do so, they throw themselves into the arms of the nearest thing, so to speak, that is offered to them by the impulses of the age, arising out of materialism. We see this from numerous such examples in our own time, such as Maurice Barrès, the Frenchman who has now also attained a certain fame among the crazed haters of the Germans during the war. Before the war, he was the typical leader of those young Frenchmen who, as far as possible, sought a path to spirituality. Maurice Barrès searched for a long time, and after a long search, he threw himself into the arms of popular Catholicism, the Catholic Church, as many young Frenchmen have done. In the end, it is only one particular example of a widespread trend, as it lives in our time and has come to expression in his becoming Catholic. But let us now try to look into the soul of a man like Maurice Barrès and see how he approaches the search for the spiritual life. I must say that the following is a characteristic saying of this Maurice Barrès. So a modern seeker of the spirit let the following words slip: “It is a futile effort to seek the beyond. It may not even exist!” And then he continues: “And however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers. Whatever form mysticism takes, it contradicts reason. But we still give ourselves to the Church, firstly because it is inextricably linked with the tradition of France, and secondly because, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, it formulates the will of that ethic that must be taught to the people and the Church, and finally because, far from delivering us to mysticism, , it directly defends us against it, silencing the voice of the mysterious groves” - by mysterious groves he means everything that has come out of the mysteries - ‘and interpreting the Gospels, sacrificing the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.’

Why should we surrender to the Catholic Church? Because it has understood, he says, to sacrifice the generous worldview of the Savior to the lukewarm needs of modern humanity, that is, to adapt Christianity quite well to those who want the same thing from Christianity that an average Christian experiences with his or her Christianity today. If one did not understand that there is a certain necessity for arriving at such a view, then one would have to call such a view, in the extreme, frivolous, cynical and frivolous. But that deeper minds in particular arrive at such a view, one should feel, and that is necessary to feel. We can only ask ourselves one question: What is the deeper cause? What is the deeper cause that it is so difficult for people today to find their way into the spiritual world? — Here we must once again turn our soul's gaze to the development of humanity, at least in the time that has elapsed since the great Atlantean catastrophe and in the fifth period of which we are living.

We have so far divided this development of humanity into the first period, which we have called the ancient Indian, the second, which we have called the pre-Persian, the third, which we have called the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the fourth, which we have called the Greek-Latin, and finally we have our fifth period; we live in it. In this fifth period, the very things have come about that we have hinted at from a certain point of view. I have tried at various times to characterize the development of humanity in order to place the present in this development of humanity. Today I will do so from a different point of view. This other point of view may again seem quite paradoxical when first considered, but let us at least take it up without prejudice for the time being. Let us try to equip ourselves with the way of looking at things that we can already have after having developed so many years of anthroposophy.

From what we have already absorbed into our souls, we can know that not only does the individual human being undergo a development in the physical world between birth and death, but that humanity itself also undergoes a development. Today, we are considering the fifth period of that development that follows the Atlantic catastrophe, in the manner just characterized. The paradox will arise when we ask ourselves: Can we speak of an evolution in time in a more precise way for humanity, for a part of human development, just as we speak of such a development in time for the individual human being? — We say: A person will first develop in such a way that he lives through the first seven years from the first to the seventh year. Then he lives through the period from the seventh to the fourteenth year – taken approximately, you know what is meant by that – then from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and so on. In a sense, the human being develops in stages, adding one year from birth to death each time a year has passed.

How can we think now, if we want to reflect on the indicated piece of human development? It will be useful if we also ask ourselves: How old is humanity if we want to compare its age with our own individual human age? At what age is today's humanity? It will not be uninteresting to consider this from a spiritual scientific point of view. And it is precisely this spiritual-scientific consideration that will bring us to many things. -— Years ago I have already characterized the same thing. It is the case in spiritual science that one can know many things and only after years can one formulate them properly or can reformulate them. I would like to give you a new formulation of the enigma hinted at today.

Let us first consider schematically how the development was:

First period, the primeval Indian development;
second period, the primeval Persian development;
third period, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian development;
fourth period, the Greek-Latin development;
the fifth period is ours; then comes the sixth.

If we now compare the age of humanity with the individual ages of man, how old was humanity in the first period after the Atlantic catastrophe? How old was it then? You see, if we knew how old all of humanity was, then we could compare how we have to see ourselves, how we place ourselves in the development of humanity with our life ages. It was not at all easy to investigate this question from a spiritual scientific point of view. One had to look first at the purely spiritual scientific fact, had to connect a meaning with this purely spiritual scientific fact of the first period. And when one had gained an insight into the particular spiritual configuration of humanity as it was at that time, then one had to ask: to which individual, personal age would this configuration of that time be comparable? And there you find out that humanity as humanity – not the individual human being, we will talk about that later – that humanity in this first post-Atlantean period has an age that can be compared to today's human age between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year. So you see, if you take the spiritual configuration of what was cultural life at that time, you come to the conclusion that humanity back then had an age that can be compared to today's age of man, and of course woman, from the forty-eighth to the fifty-sixth year. It was not very easy to get this information, but once it was available, it is an actual result of spiritual science.

Now the question is: What about the second, the original Persian period? The same observation had to be made again. It turns out that if you consider the nature of what was culture back then, it can only be compared to the age between forty-two and forty-eight years of age today. And if we now move on to the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian era, which ends around 747 BC, this corresponds to the human age from thirty-five to forty-two years. When we come to the Greco-Latin period, this corresponds to the human age from twenty-eight to thirty-five years. And when we come to our fifth, post-Atlantic age, this corresponds to the individual human age between twenty-one and twenty-eight years. And in the sixth period, we can predict that the sixth age will correspond to the age between the fourteenth and twenty-first year; and in the last period, before a new great catastrophe, the age from the seventh to the fourteenth year.

I may well confess to you, my dear friends, that the result that emerged when it was formulated was truly one of the most surprising things I actually came up with, one of the most surprising things. Because, isn't it true, it is based on a strange fact: while man is ascending in numbers, the development of mankind is descending. Strangely enough, humanity is getting younger and younger! That's right: humanity is getting younger and younger.

Now, of course, one has to ask oneself: what does all this mean on a broader scale? There are many developmental puzzles associated with this matter. I asked myself first: What does it mean for the first cultural period that humanity was between the ages of forty-eight and fifty-six? The following emerges: Of course, the people who were born and lived at that time first became one, two, three years old. That is clear. But then they also reached the age of forty-eight. For each person there came a time when they lived between the forty-eighth and fifty-sixth year of the individual development. And then these people could say to themselves: Now we are personally entering an age where we have the personal characteristics of old age that are contained all around us in the group spirit of all humanity. We grow into what is in our environment. Earlier, before the age of forty-eight, we had, so to speak, completed a development that belonged to us, that was for us; but at the age of forty-eight we grow into what is in our environment. If you then became older than fifty-six, you continued to develop, you just lived on and, in a sense, grew back into what was there before the Atlantic catastrophe. You then went through something that went beyond what was revealed in the group soul of humanity around you. So at the age of forty you found the connection to the group soul of humanity.

In the next, in the second cultural period, this connection was found earlier. Then one became forty-two years old and grew into what was in the environment, grew into what was aurically in all of humanity.

And then, at the age of thirty-five, you grew into it, so that between the ages of thirty-five and forty-two you could say to yourself: Now what is in me is in harmony with what is around me. After the age of forty-two, what was around you could no longer give you anything, so you had to live on out of yourself, so to speak, because the age of humanity had become so much younger. In the period from the age of forty-two onwards, you were no longer in the environment; you grew beyond it, you had to rely on yourself.

Thus the ancient Greeks and Romans were dependent on themselves when they reached the age of thirty-five. Between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, he lived with his environment, and then humanity had nothing more to add to its age, because that was lived out; humanity could no longer become forty-eight years old if it had reached the age of thirty-five and was going backwards.

And we in the fifth period: just think, we live ourselves into the group spirit of humanity, into what our environment is, between the twenty-first and twenty-eighth year. From then on, our environment no longer provides anything. What comes after that, we have to attain through our own development, we have to draw from our inner selves, because nothing more flows to us from the outside. Mankind has covered the years up to the twenty-eighth year, and when we have reached the age of twenty-eight, then, yes, then we must have a fund, then we must have something within us that we can carry forward; otherwise we will never be older than twenty-eight. And now so much of the fifth period has already passed that mankind has just returned to the twenty-seventh year. So that if nothing is done to develop their inner selves energetically and to advance through themselves, people will only live to be twenty-seven years old. That's a lot, my dear friends! That means that if everything is left as it is, today's humanity will not achieve any intellectual or other soul development than that up to the age of twenty-seven. And if something is not poured into their souls to develop them further, then they remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives.

They remain twenty-seven years old for the rest of their lives: that is a great secret of the present development of humanity. In the sixth post-Atlantic period, people do not get older than twenty-one years at all. If nothing is done to expand their inner life, to strengthen their intellect, initiative and will, then a general outbreak of early dementia would result. People would have to remain within a life development that ends at twenty-one years of age: anything later would be merely an insubstantial addition.

Let us consider this in connection with the individuality of the human being. Just think, we all become more and more mature in accordance with our individual, personal inclinations. A child is essentially always a materialist; a young person then becomes an idealist, but their ideals are abstract, they lack substance. Only in later years does one adapt to making such ideals that are immersed in reality, live with reality, that are truly realistic. Suppose a person today is completely a child of his time. What kind of qualities will he be able to show if he was not offered the opportunity in his youth to absorb something spiritual? That alone advances the soul. If he remains subject to the spirit of the age, then such a person's destiny is to make no progress beyond twenty-eight years of development. Whatever comes later stops at twenty-eight. Of course, if one is stimulated, one can progress beyond the twenty-eighth year, but the other is the rule; what I have described is what follows from the law of development. A person who does not advance beyond the age of twenty-eight, who remains twenty-eight years old even though he reaches fifty, fifty-six, or sixty, may under certain circumstances develop great abstract ideals, but he will have gone through only the years of life with their abstract ideals, but not the years of trial, which, in the spiritual sense, turn those who harbor such ideas into practical people, into people who realize how they can be realized, who not only dazzle people with the power of youth but who can realize themselves.

This naturally raises the question: could an example be given of a true child of our time who has grown old but is not beyond the age of twenty-eight? Of course, if one were to give such an example today in the world, which wants nothing to do with spiritual laws that also work in the development of humanity, one would be laughed at as a fool. But here among us, where we have developed so much spiritually, it may perhaps be helpful to speak quite specifically in order to better understand our time. Why should not the spiritual scientist be allowed to speak specifically to those who are his friends and who would like to hear something about the secrets of the time?

After really careful research into our time, I noticed a very characteristic example of a person who, no matter how old they get, is condemned to be no older than twenty-eight years old, and that is the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. Yes, you laugh, my dear friends, but for me this was a very significant realization that solves an enormous number of puzzles of our time. I always had to ask myself: Why do the ideals of this man, which he has expressed in various notes to humanity, blind so much, and why do they turn into the opposite of what is written in them? Because they are the ideals of youth, and remain as such, although the man who expresses them grows older. Because they are abstract ideals of youth, which do not want to be related to reality, which do not want to be saturated by reality, and which therefore cannot be applied to real practical life, in which not only the external material, but also the spiritual is at work, especially when it comes to the order of the social structure of humanity. As much as one can think today without what can only be established internally, so much can he think, Woodrow Wilson, no more!

A Wilson of the sixth period would only be able to live to the age of twenty-one, even if he lived to be a hundred years old. But you see, after all, the fact of the matter is this: when we consider the fourth period, the individual, personal age of man, so to speak, meets the descending age of humanity up to the thirty-fifth year at the center of this thirty-fifth year. There it coincides in the middle. Hence the peculiarly harmonious life of the Greeks, and the harmony between the individual life of the Greek and the life of Greek humanity. But now humanity has regressed and no longer passes through the years from the age of twenty-eight onwards. And the human being must go through them individually, really individually.

You see, this is connected with things that lie beyond the physical, sensual world. You can find out more about some of these things in my book 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and Humanity'. Today I want to present this from a different point of view.

In the first post-Atlantean period, through his individual development, when a person reached the age of forty-eight, he was able to connect with the age of humanity. However, this was connected with the fact that in those days, in this first period, there was still a close contact between certain entities of the higher hierarchies and between humanity here on earth. The entities of the higher hierarchies, which we think of as belonging to the hierarchy of the archai or spirits of personality, still descended to earth at that time, as it were, and united with human development; they inspired, actually intuitized humanity. The fact that humanity was able to develop to the point of only growing into the age of humanity at such a late individual age has resulted in humanity having a special connection with the archai here on earth. In the second post-Atlantic period, there was the same connection with the archangeloi, and in the third with the angeloi. But in the fourth post-Atlantic period, in the Greco-Latin period, people had to rely on themselves. In the third period, it was still the case that the angels, the archangels, descended and inspired people, intuiting them and giving them imaginations. Then came the Greco-Latin period: the spirits of the higher hierarchies no longer descended in the same easy way, so to speak, and people had to start commuting up and down, into the spiritual realm and then back down into the earthly realm. In other words, man had to find himself. But now, in the fifth period, we have entered an epoch in which the opposite must take place. Now we have to strengthen our inner being to such an extent that, during this fifth period, we gradually come close to the angeloi through our own strength, that we encounter them again, but through our own strength, and that the angelos in us sets the impulse for development; that we can find through ourselves what humanity can no longer give us through the higher hierarchies.

There you see why we have materialism in our time. There you see that there have been times when humanity, by being older, by not yet being as young as it is now, reached further up into the spiritual worlds, where it was, so to speak, from the very beginning closer to the spiritual worlds than man is now, when he approaches death, is close to the spiritual worlds. There you see the deeper reason for materialism, but also the necessary impulse to really seek something that can spiritually, individually, stimulate the human being inwardly, that can lead him beyond what he can absorb from his environment.

Even the education that, so to speak, only flows to man by itself cannot possibly give what brings more to man today than a lifespan of twenty-eight years. Therefore, the spiritual conditions must be spiritualized. If things were to continue as they are, if spiritual science were to be thoroughly drilled, if things were to continue as they do naturally, then a general standstill would take hold at the age of twenty-eight. If research were only carried out in natural science laboratories and clinics and only what can be given from the outside were found, if nothing were stimulated in the souls from within, if no science of the spiritual were sunk into the souls, but only what the greatness of modern times, the greatness of materialism, has brought were continued, then progress would finally be such that people would always remain young. But that would only be something if they remained young not only in their inner being but also with their bodies. But with the body they are already growing old. As a result, what lives in them no longer corresponds to the outward physicality.

Today it is still the case that in many respects it is precisely the inadequacy of what we experience with humanity that stimulates certain forces within us. We can only become twenty-eight years old through humanity, but we must live longer in the world in the various incarnations. It is the case that for the time being, when humanity is only twenty-seven years old, there are still forces that are further developed in the time between death and a new birth towards the Angelos. Today it is still like that. But when the sixth period begins, then man on earth will only be able to reach the age of twenty-one through what is around him. What has been developed by the twenty-first year? The physical body by the seventh year, the body of formative forces by the fourteenth year, the sentient body by the twenty-first year: only the bodily nature is developed. The soul, if the person does not develop it from within, the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, the consciousness soul: they are then not developed at all. The physical is developed up to the age of twenty-one. Then the human being would lose too much from his own powers to be able to catch up on what he has missed here, if he has not received any spiritual stimulation, even after death, between death and a new birth.

You can see from this that the point of view that humanity attains does not correspond to chance, but that it is a deep necessity, that it corresponds to a surprising law of human development. We can see this in many individual cases today. Indeed, there has never been a time in the development of humanity when people were so reluctant to recognize experience as something that life gives. Everyone today wants to be clever as early as possible. Why? Because deep down he senses that at twenty-eight he must be a finished product. For many people today, absorbing anything after twenty-eight years is an absurd idea, an absurd fact altogether. Then one lives one's life, but one wants to absorb only up to the twenty-eighth year, or even more precisely — and this is true of the facts — up to the twenty-seventh year.

But when we consider such a secret of human development, we also understand that when we speak of the necessity of spiritual development, it is not seen as an arbitrariness, but it is understood in such a way that this necessity really exists, that, so to speak, a person remains imperfect in our time if he does not take up a spiritual impulse. This is felt everywhere, and wherever life is not viewed in its reality. The strange fact that many people are so incapable of even entering into certain lines of thought is based on the fact that people do not even reach the age of thirty-five, that there are so few who can say something that is connected with the more mature experience of later life.

These things must be faced quite impartially and without prejudice, and from them we must draw the impulse to take in spiritual things. If we do not do this, we join those who actually want to condemn humanity to immature youthfulness.

Yes, certain thoughts and insights that come to us from spiritual science are indeed so profound that they seem deeply, deeply incisive to us when we are fully human, but we really only have to be inclined to feel the incisive at every moment. Because it grows out of the incisive, spiritual science, we need not be surprised if this spiritual science meets with resistance. It meets with resistance not only from the stubbornness of people, but from the nature of human development.

I may have told you a few paradoxes. In any case, it is already paradoxical for today's people that if you go back to the second, third, fourth cultural period, it is as if, in those days, people who had really found their way to humanity were, to put it trivially, on familiar terms with the angels, archangels and archai, had dealings with them. Yes, for someone who does not live to be older than twenty-eight years today, it is of course a crazy thought to claim that people once not only made agreements among themselves, but they communicated with angels, with archangels and with archai, as we communicate with each other today on the physical plane. That this view prevails and the other view seems a madness is only because people have forgotten old knowledge. In Plato you find a remarkable and very important passage, that is, during the period in which humanity offered man twenty-eight to thirty-five years. Plato said: Before the spiritual man sank into sensuality and lost his wings, he lived among the gods in the rational spiritual world, where everything is true and pure. And by this Plato means not only the life before birth, but the life in ancient times, when people still gained their knowledge from their dealings with the gods themselves. — I also hinted at this in the mystery play where an old initiate speaks of the old teachers who draw their knowledge from their dealings with the gods, that is, with the spirits of the higher hierarchies.

But certain things are connected with the development of humanity which, precisely because that is the case, are no longer understood at all. One has strange experiences.

Allow me to cite an experience that is both gratifying and disappointing. A strange word, isn't it, but it is true. It is gratifying because I have to mention the name of a man who was very kind to my writing 'Thoughts During the Time of War', from the northern countries, a person who likes to find his way into the world as far as he can, Kjellén, the state researcher, who is now in Uppsala. I do not want to attack or criticize the man, on the contrary, I have chosen this example because Kjellén is one of our friends. He has recently written an interesting book, 'The State as a Form of Life', in which he attempts to present a deeper understanding of the state. Yes, Kjellén is trying to gain a view of how the state should be an organism. For those who now see through these things and who, from the study of spiritual science, know how political science, if it existed today, should be structured in order to be fruitful in practical state life, reading Kjellén's book, even though one likes the author very much, is almost torture, a real torture. Why? Well, you see, Kjellén does not go any further than to ask: If one now regards the state as a whole organism, then man lives within the state. What then is the human being? It suggests itself: a cell! Thus, for Kjellén, the human being is a cell of the state organism. Kjellén builds much of his book “The State as a Form of Life” on this idea. The human being is a cell, as we have cells within us, and the state is the whole organism, which organizes itself through its various cells.

You see, if you just go out on comparisons – and that's all it is – then you can actually compare everything with everything. You can actually logically support any thought, because if you don't draw any consequences, you can compare an organism with a pocket knife. But it all depends on having a sense of penetrating reality. But if you look at Kjellen's book in particular, you immediately come across some very strange dead ends. In an organism, the cells are next to each other, one adjoins the other, and the fact that they adjoin each other and have the effect that comes from it makes the organism an organism. This can no longer be applied to the interaction of people in the so-called state organism. In short, if you want to remain abstractly logical, you can come up with any number of clever thoughts about it, write a rather thick book about it, and then indulge in the idea that it is also practical. But if you have a sense of reality, then the thought must be developed further. It must really be sunk into reality; that is the first step to understanding. I recommend that you read the book; it is a representative book of the present time. Buy it and read it and feel that agony of which I have spoken. It comes with the fact that the thought pops out: What can be compared to the organism if one wants to apply the thought of the organism to the social life of humanity? - Only the life of humanity on the whole earth. And the individual states can only be compared to cells.

The life of humanity on the whole earth may be called an organism, and the individual states may be called cells, but not a state as an organism and the individual human being as a cell. But in this way the whole thing is only compared to a plant, to the life of the state. Never with anything other than a plant organism. And if one wants to retain the concept of an organism, then one would have to take the organism and the human being would have to stand out. For the human being develops beyond all state life. He cannot be absorbed, like the cell in the individual organism, into this state life, but must stand out. That is to say, there must be spheres in the evolution of mankind that cannot be included in the state. It will be seen that man must reach out into a spiritual realm, that man can only reach into the state life through his lower anchorage, but upwards into the spiritual world. And here it is interesting how some researchers are suddenly confronted with the fact that people in ancient times, when the mysteries still existed, knew something about them. And Kjellen himself points to an interesting book, a book written fifty years ago by Fustel de Coulanges: 'La Cit& antique'. And he comes to the strange, incomprehensible to both the author Fustel de Coulanges and Kjellén: What was the old state? What was that? — Coulanges comes to say to himself: Yes, the old states were all based on worship. Why? The state was a form of worship because it was still felt that man had to reach up into the spiritual world. Someone could only set the tone in the state if he was initiated into the mysteries and received instructions about the social structure from the mysteries. It was still like that in the third and fourth periods. People come to it through external research, but they cannot do anything with it, even though they can even read about it in history.

It is tremendously tragic to read the last page of Kjellén's book “The State as a Form of Life” and see that he now wants to construct something that is political science, but is completely, completely discouraged by the fact that What are we to do with the cell? If one wanted to realize Kjellen's idea, one could actually only decapitate people, because they cannot, with their heads, belong to such a state, which would be constructed as Kjellen's science constructs it, since they must extend beyond the state with their spirituality.

You see, when you look more deeply at life, you come to very strange things. And that is why all that is still called political science today does not yet know what it wants at all. Nowhere is there a real political science by today's standards. All we have is mere talk. For a real political science will only be possible when we are once more oriented towards the way in which man is connected with the spiritual world, when we once more know how much we can organize in our earthly life together and how much must freely transcend the organization. These things must be brought up from certain depths. Here you feel, my dear friends, how things become tragic. Humanity must bear within itself the laws of its development, must have some sense of these laws of development.

In particular – please forgive me for mentioning particulars at the end – one comes up against terrible obstacles when one feels it as a necessity of life to think in a real way. To think in a real way also means to think spiritually, because if one does not think spiritually, one does not think in a real way, but rather one thinks an essence-less abstraction. If you have developed the habit of thinking in real terms, you will often come up against obstacles today. Please forgive me for choosing an obvious example that seems trivial.

For example, I can say that nothing impresses me less than someone coming today within the German-speaking world and writing so-called beautiful verses, perfectly beautiful verses, as most people still like them. Something that has undergone such a development as the German language, and has such developmental possibilities ahead of it as the German language, is where so-called beautiful verses today practically write themselves, especially in the immature youth up to the age of twenty-eight. If one solves artistic verse problems, then one does not arrive at what people today often consider beautiful verses, because these actually belong to what one enjoys when one transports oneself into earlier times. Therefore, many people today are quite successful at making beautiful verses, but the point is to advance in development. It may often happen that someone writes less beautiful verses but tries to create a new art form from an elementary point of view. Naturally many people will think it dreadful when someone attempts to create a new art form that is perhaps still very imperfect in relation to what it should become. You see, I would now like to say something personal. I will not speak of my opinion of the verses in which Mr. von Bernus expounded anthroposophical thoughts in Das Reich. But you can all be quite certain that, however little any one of you may have liked the verses, Mr. von Bernus could have produced verses like them off his cuff if he had wanted to write them. Things are not so simple after all. And today, when there is so much malicious disparaging and defaming of what we want, this magazine, 'Das Reich', emerged with the best of intentions, and it should have been supported precisely because of this very best intention, regardless of one's attitude towards the individual issue. Therefore it was hard for me to hear that Mr. von Bernus Schocke had received letters from our circle of members which slandered what was written in the journal. One would have had much more opportunity to look at what was directly aimed at destroying our movement. And so it happens that someone who has set out to tell untruths about everything in our movement can claim: “The Reich”, which is under the sign of Steiner.” Now, I have no more connection with this journal than I could possibly have with any other; I did not found it, it is the work of Mr. von Bernus, it is not connected with my personality. I write articles for this journal and am not responsible for anything. But anyone who uses the defamatory expression in a hurtful manner in one direction or the other can also know that - in such a case it is a defamatory expression - “this magazine serves Steiner's purposes”. On the contrary, one should be able to be pleased when something comes from a completely outside source. But so far we have often experienced that precisely those who wanted to support our cause were thrown stones in the way by our members, but that it was advised against to support our cause in good will and in a bold way, while one did not care about all the defamation that has happened on the whole.

There would be much more to say. I wanted to mention this because I really want to emphasize that it never occurred to me to talk about this or that in the “Reich” in any other way than to discuss it, that is, to see if perhaps behind the seemingly imperfect there is a striving for development , and I really had no desire to look at what many have looked at, those who have felt called to do so, which would be nonsense anyway, even if it were not distasteful to send their judgment in letters to the poet. That is the most distasteful and harmful way. For one need not approach personally with a defamatory letter the one who has endeavored to write about the matter. Even if the letter were justified, he could not understand it, he lives inside the matter. One may say one's opinion to all the others, only do not send it to the poet's house.

Now, my dear friends, all these things that are said only ever hit one side, the side of a few. But it is the case that, in society, the innocent are imprisoned with the guilty and now have to atone for them. That is what is more painful to me than to those who suffer from today's measures.

But there is one more thing I would like to add: anyone in society who merely communicates the one measure, that I will no longer discuss personal matters in private conversations in the future, would only say one-sided things. The whole thing is part of it: I expressly release everyone from the promise, insofar as they themselves want it, to keep secret something that has been said in private conversations. That is part of it, and that is the important thing. During the defamation campaign, believe it or not, these measures are so necessary that no exceptions can be made. But no one should lose anything. What can be done esoterically will also be possible when it has to be done in full public view. And I shall find ways and means, although I cannot and must not make exceptions in private conversations, so that everyone will be able to satisfy their esoteric needs in the future as well. Please be patient for a short time. Even without private conversations, there will be ways and means to ensure that everything that can legitimately be demanded for esoteric life is satisfied, without the damage that has been caused to our society by the defamation of private conversations.

And now I would like to say that I would like to bring up something that is deeply connected to what can lead us to an understanding of our difficult present, but that I am truly not finished with what I wanted to say to you during this stay. Therefore, for those who want to come, I will speak here again on Tuesday evening.

In today's additional consideration of the discussions that I was able to give here in Stuttgart this time, I will deal with adding a few things to what has already been said, in order to round it off, so to speak.

To begin with, it will be best if I pick up from where I left off in yesterday's public lecture. There we saw how the human soul, in its threefold nature, has relationships with the bodily and the spiritual. And we emphasized in particular that the feeling element of the soul has relationships with the body towards the respiratory life, that, so to speak, what is breathing in the body, and in a comprehensive sense, with all its ramifications and ramifications, is the tool for the emotional life. On the other hand, we have been able to show that the life of feeling has a special relationship to everything that is accessible to inspiration in the spiritual world. But what is accessible to inspiration in the spiritual world is also, at the same time, everything that is contained in the world to which we belong with that part of our being that passes through birth and death, the world that we live through between death and a new birth, the world in which we naturally also live between birth and death. This world is hidden by sense perception and ordinary thinking, that is, by the life of the body. So that what corresponds to breathing and feeling actually points us to the great, all-encompassing world into which we ascend when we pass through the gate of death, the world to which we belong when we no longer use the tool of our bodily life. The tool of our bodily life, so to speak, fetters us to earthly existence. From various lectures given over many years and recorded in the cycles, you know that when the soul has passed through the gate of death, it is not tied to earthly life, but rises into the cosmos to live in the spiritual worlds of that cosmos, in that which can be called the spiritual world. Is it not to be expected that precisely the emotional life, which corresponds bodily to breathing, spiritually to the inspired world, the emotional life with the breathing life, is in a much, much more comprehensive relationship to the cosmos, to the great world, to the macrocosm than our narrowly limited perception and imagination? What do we perceive in the end? We perceive a very small part of the world; a small part of the world plays into our physical existence between birth and death through our eyes and ears. Even if we are people who enjoy looking around and perceiving everything through our senses and then processing it in our imaginations, it is still a small part of the world that plays into our existence.

But what happens when we turn from the life of the nerves, to which the life of thinking belongs, to the life of breathing, to which the life of feeling belongs? A concept that is capable of elevating our feelings can be given to us by what can approach our soul in the following way: You all know that the sun rises at a certain point in spring. At the beginning of spring, on March 21, the sun rises in the morning at a certain point. But this point is not the same at all times, you know that. In ancient times, the sun rose at the beginning of spring in the constellation of Taurus, then in the constellation of Aries; the vernal point thus moves on and has now entered the constellation of Pisces. If you turn to what I mean now, you are therefore looking at the progression of the vernal point through the zodiac. The vernal point itself moves on in the zodiac. When a point in a circle moves on, it must of course arrive at the same point again after a certain time. Now, ordinary astronomy is familiar with this progression of the vernal point and its return to the same point in the zodiac. That is to say, if in a particular year of the past the vernal point was in Aries, the next year it will be a little further along, and so on, and then it will have moved out into Pisces and so on, and after a certain time it will be back in Aries again. The time it takes the vernal point to move through the entire zodiac is approximately 25,900 years, about 26,000 years. This number of 26,000 years expresses a measure of the outer cosmos: the measure by which the vernal point progresses. In this number, we have, so to speak, the means by which the course of the sun is measured in the cosmos. We could say, approximately. If we hold on to this number, we can add another consideration, which we now want to make.

A person breathes in and out, taking a certain number of breaths in one minute. We do not take the same number of breaths at every age between birth and death, but there is a certain average number of breaths per minute that a man of average strength can take. That is eighteen breaths in one minute. Now let's calculate how many breaths a person takes in the course of a twenty-four-hour day. First, we have to multiply the number of breaths taken in one minute by sixty, which gives us one thousand and eighty. Then we multiply that by twenty-four, which gives us the number of breaths a person takes in one day, including night and day: 25,920 breaths. It is remarkable that if we count the breaths of a person over the course of a twenty-four hour day, we get the same number as when we calculate the number of years that result from the advance of the sun in the great cosmos. The number of years that the equinox advances in fits and starts corresponds to the number of times that a person breathes in one day. The same number! Just think how wonderfully true that biblical saying is: that the wisdom of the world has ordered everything according to measure and number. — A number that is inscribed in the cosmos is reflected in our twenty-four-hour breathing. We can therefore also take this number into consideration, and we will find that human breathing is related to the great world in the way that was revealed yesterday by spiritual science.

But now, in a sense, we are again looking at something that is also a breathing, because breathing is nothing more than a special case of the general world rhythm. The essential thing in what was meant by breathing yesterday is the rhythmic movement, the rhythm. Let us look at something that is quite similar to breathing, another rhythmic movement that we know from our spiritual scientific considerations. When we fall asleep, our ego and our astral body leave our physical body and ether body; when we wake up again, our ego and our astral body enter our physical body and ether body. I have often compared the peculiar behavior of the ego and the astral body, this going out and coming in into the physical and ether bodies, with breathing out and breathing in. Just as we breathe in and out the air in an eighteenth of a minute, so, in the course of twenty-four hours, we breathe in our ego and our astral body, as it were, by waking up, by falling asleep; by waking up again, we breathe them in again, and by falling asleep again, we breathe them out. It is only a more comprehensive breathing out and breathing in of our ego and astral body in the course of the twenty-four hours of an ordinary astronomical day. How very remarkable, something is breathing! Let us first disregard what is breathing. There is a definite rhythm, which represents a kind of slow breathing, with each breath lasting twenty-four hours. Now, you know that the Bible speaks of the patriarchal age, of seventy, seventy-one years. Of course, this does not mean that this is something different from the average age. Some people die very young, some live to be a hundred, even over a hundred years old, but the patriarchal age is meant to be something average. So that when we mean something average in terms of human age, we can speak of seventy to one hundred and one years. Let's work out how many days that is. If we calculate that, we would find out how many such great breaths we take in an earthly life, where we exhale and inhale the ego and the astral body over the course of twenty-four hours. Let's calculate that: we take about three hundred and sixty-five such breaths in a year, as many as there are days in a year. So in seventy years it is seventy times as much: that would be 25,550. But let us assume that we are calculating for seventy-one years, and then we come a little closer: that makes 25,915. So a person only needs to live a little over seventy-one years to reach 25,920 such breaths. This means that if a person lives to be a little over seventy-one years old, he has breathed his I and his astral body in and out 25,920 times; that is, as often as a person breathes in and out during the day. Think about it: the same number again!

So you see that we can regard human life as a day, and the individual day that we live through as a breath: then our seventy-one to seventy-two year life is given by the number that is also the number of the advance of the vernal point, which is the number of breaths in one day. Our life is one great day, and the great Being at whose center we can imagine the Earth breathes out and in the I and astral body as often as we go out and in with our single breath. So our single life on Earth would be one day, one day of something. What is it a day of? If you multiply seventy-one by three hundred and sixty-five, you naturally get the year for the day of seventy-one years. If you count seventy-one years as one day and ask: What is one year of this day, it is three hundred and sixty-five times as much. But that is 25,920 years. That means, if we count our single life on earth with its 25,920 breaths, which are waking and sleeping, as one day, count a human life as one day, and see what year corresponds to this one human life with its 25,920 breaths: it is the orbit of the vernal point, 25,920 years! We get a wonderful numerical rhythm.

That is why I said: we get an idea that must be uplifting for our feelings, because we can feel that we are placed in the macrocosm through measure and number. Numbers reveal to us that which is true for us in the realization that what belongs to breathing, and therefore to the emotional life, is the inspiring world, the great world to which we belong not only between birth and death, but also in the time between death and a new birth and in repeated earthly lives. We are, as it were, in the bosom of the rhythm of our entire solar system, breathing in our individual breathing movements the great macrocosmic rhythm of our entire solar system. This is a thought that places us with certainty in the midst of the great life of our solar universe. In the course of time, people will have to make many more similar observations, and then they will be convinced that in this way they will again come to spirit-filled perceptions about the relationship between man and the universe. We need spirit-filled perceptions for our age and for the following ages in the sense that they are stimuli for our inner life, as was explained here the day before yesterday. In ancient times, it was the case that man's enlightenment came, so to speak, from outside. Today, this has been lost through the nature of the declining ages of humanity. We are now in an age in which, if humanity is not to descend into decadence, a development of the human soul from within must begin in an energetic way. And only he understands what our time needs who, as a necessity of earthly development, understands that spiritual life must take hold of the innermost part of the human soul from the fifth post-Atlantic period in which we live, into the time to which we are to develop further. What spiritual science says about this is not said out of some arbitrary idea or out of an agitative sentiment, but it is said out of the realization of the necessity of human development.

Now today we are once again looking at this human development from a slightly different point of view. Let us go back to the first post-Atlantic age, that is, the age immediately following the great Atlantic catastrophe. The day before yesterday, after having done so from a different point of view on several occasions, we emphasized how, in this first post-Atlantean age, man was still related to that series of beings that we call archai or spirits of personality in the hierarchies. Spiritual life was still revealed in these ancient times of humanity because the age of life in those days was such that we can compare it to the present age between the fifty-sixth and forty-eighth year, as I explained the day before yesterday. Man had, so to speak, instruction from spiritual beings. How did these spiritual beings come to man? In those days, man did not look at nature in the same way as he does today. For man today, nature is a kind of mechanical order. Man today regards abstract, almost mathematical laws of nature as his ideal, an abstract order. Take the images that are spread out around you when you go out into nature. Compare what is out there with what is written in botanical and zoological textbooks about plants and animals. Compare these distorted, abstract ideas with life, and you can say: What is written in these books of botany and zoology is what is revealed to the human spirit today. Such botany and zoology, of which today's humanity is so tremendously proud, did not exist in that age. If we compare what modern botany, zoology and biology have to say about nature with the knowledge of nature that arose from the ancient way of knowing, we arrive at a different view. There was no botany or zoology of that kind in those days, but there was something else, something that is still very difficult for modern humanity to understand. It came from nature itself, and I would like to call what came out of nature: the light-filled, formed word. Just as we see nature today through our senses and minds, they did not see it that way, but nature sent them figures of light, and these figures of light also sounded, said something, expressed themselves about what they are. And every person could experience this atavistic clairvoyance in certain states of consciousness, whereby the light-filled, formed word came to meet him from nature; one could also say words, because a wealth of such figures came, speaking out of nature. The human being knew: You too belong to this world from which these words full of light come forth. You too belong there. But now you are here in nature, surrounded by minerals, plants and animals. You are in nature because you have an outer physical body; through this you belong to this nature. But nature lets the light-filled word sprout forth: you belong to it in your soul's nature just as your physical body belongs to the outer mineral, plant, and animal world. You were in this world of the light-filled, light-shaped word before your birth or conception, and you will be in it after your death. You will live in it again.

In the first post-Atlantean period, one could still see and feel an echo of the world in which one lives between death and a new birth by observing nature in certain states of consciousness. In the second post-Atlantean period, things were already somewhat different. The word was lost for these atavistic states. The figures no longer spoke themselves, but they were still there, light-filled figures were still there, only they had become mute. That which lay outwardly before the senses was felt as the darkness in this light-filled formation within, and one's own body was felt as a piece of the darkness. So that one could say: light and darkness! One's own body is ruled by darkness. By coming out of the light and going into darkness, he enters into earthly life through birth or conception; by going through the gate of death, he passes through the dark world back into the light. In the world there is a struggle between light and darkness, between Ormuzd and Ahriman. Thus Zarathustra, who was the teacher of this second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, spoke to his disciples. One does not understand what Zarathustrism means with its Ormuzd and Ahriman teachings if one does not relate it to the way people viewed the world at that time.

The situation had changed again in the third post-Atlantic period. If you look at the outward appearance, the light-filled figures had gradually disappeared in the third post-Atlantic period. But people still had the power to put themselves into an intermediate state between sleeping and waking, just as we put ourselves to sleep today. They only had to make a little effort. When sleeping, one does not need to make an effort, but in this different state, one had to make some effort. But if one made an effort, one could conjure up such a world of light around oneself, which now came from within and was similar to that which used to come from nature, from outside. So what was the actual progression from the second post-Atlantean cultural period to the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian period? What was the transition like? Well, in the second, in the Persian cultural period, people still saw the figures of light when they looked outwards and could say to themselves: Before my soul went through conception, it belonged to this world of light figures. In the third cultural period, this world of light no longer shone from the outside in, but the human being could, as it were, squeeze it out of himself; then he had conjured up out of his soul and in front of his soul what was there in the spiritual world before his birth or conception and what will be there in the spiritual world after his death. So that we can say: the third post-Atlantean period had the world of light as a soul experience. People had the world of light as a soul experience, so to a certain extent man had been pushed back from the external world more to his inner being. It was no longer the natural way for man to look at the outer world and see the world of light, that is, to see the spiritual world around him. Therefore, it had become necessary during this time to initiate a small circle of people in the manner of the Mysteries, so that they would be able to see the outer world of light again and bear witness to the fact that what was brought up from the depths of the soul was truly the same as that which lived in the spiritual realm.

Now came the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin one. In this fourth period, no more light came up when man put himself in a special state, as in the third period. The light no longer came, nor did that come up from the depths of the human being that would have been an echo of the soul's life before conception and after death. But there was still a certainty that the human being's inner being is filled with soul. This certainty came up. One still sensed something of what one had seen earlier when one inwardly brought the soul to see. One no longer saw the light, but one still felt the warmth of the light. That was the case in the Greco-Latin period. There we must say: the world of light was no longer experienced inwardly as a soul experience, but the soul itself was experienced as a soul experience.

But naturally this had to become weaker and weaker in the course of time. And how is the whole relationship expressed at all? It was expressed in the following way. We will have to look particularly at the Greeks if we want to understand the matter: the Greeks had, like the average person today, the consciousness of their body. But through what I have described, they also had the consciousness: the soul pervades the body. They felt the soul as invigorating, the body as it lives through. This feeling, which the Greeks still had, has been lost. The fact that history says nothing about the fact that this feeling has been lost today is only because we live in the age of materialism. No one really understands Homer, no one understands Sophocles or Aeschylus, if they do not read them with the feeling that the Greeks had a different spiritual experience than that of today's people. If one were to read Aeschylus with this feeling, one would provide different translations than those that are provided today and sometimes admired, and which, especially in the most intimate things, truly do not resemble Aeschylus. But the fact that it was so had a very definite consequence for the Greeks, namely that they felt the invigorating soul element in their bodies during the time between birth and death, and thus came to another realization: that body and soul actually belong together very intimately. Never in the development of humanity has this realization been as strong as in the Greek era. For in earlier epochs, which preceded the time of the Greeks, people actually always had the feeling that the soul belongs to the world of light, the world of the word, the world of the Logos, in which the human being lives before birth and after death. Now, in the materialistic age, it is the case that the human being no longer feels the soul at all. In Greek times, and to a lesser extent in Roman times, there was a sense of the intimate connection between body and soul. The Greeks regarded the body as the external form for the soul. Growth and decay of the body appeared to the Greeks as an expression of the growth and decay of the soul. The Greek loved the body as much as he loved the soul. This feeling, as it existed in the Greek, was not present in the same way in the past – as I have just explained – and is not present again today. But the consequence of this was the feeling that is so deeply expressed in the words put into the mouth of Achilles: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows.” The Greeks had to pay for the beautiful harmony they felt between body and soul with the fact that, if they were not members of the mysteries, any notion of how the soul fares in the spiritual world after death had completely disappeared. Now, the remarkable thing is that the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was a great thinker but not initiated into the mysteries, spoke in a grandiose way about the experience of the soul after death, as one could speak in those days if one was able to envision the intimate harmony between body and soul in the way of the Greek age.

And when in the Middle Ages, in the so-called scholastic philosophy, Aristotle was revived, the scholastics said: In philosophy, one must think about the soul as Aristotle thought. If one wants to know more about it, it can only come from faith. With mere human research, one cannot go further than Aristotle. — How far did Aristotle go, he who is so very much the philosophical expression of the Greek way of looking at body and soul? He really did arrive at what can be so beautifully expressed in the words of the recently deceased masterly Aristotle scholar Franz Brentano, who says: If a person has lost a limb, he can no longer make use of that limb; he is, as it were, no longer a whole person. If he has lost two limbs, he is even less of a whole person. If he has now lost his entire body – so says Aristotle and with him Franz Brentano – and is still a soul after death, which Aristotle does not deny, then he is in a state of incompleteness compared to the state in which he is between birth and death. He is not a complete human being. And that is indeed the true doctrine of immortality of Aristotle, the greatest thinker of the Greek world, that man is only here between birth and death a complete, a perfect human being. If he goes through the gate of death, he is only a piece of man; he is indeed immortal, but at the expense of no longer being a whole human being. This is indeed the price that Hellenism had to pay for its beauty and harmony, that it came to the age of man – you know, compared to the human age – where one could indeed sense the soul from within, but where one could not yet see the life of the soul in the spiritual world, where one had to say of the soul: it is no longer a complete human being after death. Only those who were initiated into the mysteries, that is, those who were endowed with powers of knowledge that went beyond the normal, were revealed what the soul experiences between death and a new birth. That is the great difference between Plato and Aristotle, that Plato was initiated into the mysteries and Aristotle was not. Therefore, Plato must be understood in a completely different sense than Aristotle, who came to the “Chimborasso of thought” but could not penetrate to the secrets of the spiritual world.

That is why those who had power in this age strove for something different from what one can achieve in normal human life. Who were the men who had the power, who were able to develop this power? Certainly, there was a great, significant world of initiation, spread by the mysteries here and there, filling the then cultural world; but these mysteries gave people that which Plato said lifted people above the mud of transience. Those who had power in this fourth post-Atlantean period were primarily searching for something in the soul that would enable them to participate in the spiritual world. According to the general karma of humanity, one normally had to wait until one was introduced to the mysteries in the sense of the initiation principle of that time. In Greece this was common practice. The Roman Caesars did not need that. The Roman Caesars, who gradually rose to dominate the world at that time, were able to use their power to be initiated into the mysteries.

And so we see that from the time of Augustus onwards, the Roman Caesars sought initiation simply through their power. They forced one priesthood or another to initiate them into the mysteries. So that in this fourth period a peculiar phenomenon can be observed: on the one hand we have the mystery principle, the mystery knowledge that was still there, but which gradually disappeared, gradually declined I have often described why this had to happen: because the Mystery of Golgotha took its place. On the other hand, the priests were forced to reveal their secrets to the Roman Caesars. Augustus was the first emperor to be initiated in the fourth post-Atlantic period; but his successors were also such initiates. They differed in their nature from the other initiates, who were initiated into the mysteries on the basis of moral qualities, namely, of moral development. The Roman Caesars were initiated on the basis of their power, in that they were able to force the priesthood to reveal their secrets to them. And so we see that even a successor of Augustus like Caligula was an initiate. But that is why a person like Caligula was familiar with the secrets of the spiritual universe. He was familiar with the fact that the impulses of this spiritual universe are revived in the soul, that the human ego is divine within the divine. That which was a sacred truth of humility for the initiated priests became a symbol of external world power for the Caesars. For what did a Caligula know? The others stared at the mythological figures of the gods that had come down to them from ancient times; they worshiped them. An initiate like Caligula knew what these gods meant. Above all, he knew that man belongs to the same world as his innermost being. From experience, Caligula knew that he belonged to the same world as those beings who have their images in these gods: Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury, Apollo, Zeus. Caligula knew the secret of how he could commune with the gods of the lunar world in a sleep-like state. And it is not mere myth, but absolutely true, when it is said of Caligula that he was said to have associated in his sleep – but it is meant in another state of consciousness – with Luna, the moon goddess, and to have drawn from it nourishment for his sense of power. The world lives in me – he said to himself – for I am in it. By looking up at the gods, he saw himself as a god among gods. And the initiated Roman emperors meant it when they said that. The initiated priest knew how to enter the dwelling of the gods, and so the Roman Caesar forced himself into communion with the gods. “My brother Jupiter,” ‘My brother Zeus’: these were terms that Caligula in particular used again and again. And it was Caligula who once asked a tragedian which of them was greater, Jupiter or he, Caligula. And when the tragedian refused to answer that Caligula was greater than Jupiter, he had him flogged. These are not myths, these are historical facts. Hence the processions in which Caligula appeared before the people as Bacchus with 'thyrsus and ephhebe wreath', because he was aware that he could transform himself into those figures he knew as images of the gods. As Hercules he appeared with the club and lion skin, as Mercury with the Hermes wand, as Apollo with the corona and surrounded by choirs. Thus he appeared in order to instill in his people the awareness that he belonged to the gods and not to men. Such was the situation in those times, in which, one might say, the less favorable image of what was great in the Greek world was reflected in the Roman world. Of course, no one saw this better than a Caligula or other uninitiated emperors such as Commodus and others. Caligula once heard that a court case had taken place in which a judge sentenced a defendant to death. And when the matter was reported to him, since it was a special case, he said: “The judge could just as well have been sentenced to death, because he is worth just as much as the other.” This was how he viewed the moral state of his time. In Romanism, the opposite of Greek culture really appears. We no longer have any conception of the inner constitution of the Romans of the time of Caesar. But we must form a conception of it, for it is one of the roots from which our new, our fifth cultural epoch developed in the course of time.

Nero, too, was such an initiate, an initiated emperor. And precisely because of that, Nero was able to see something very special. Those who were initiated into the mysteries at that time knew that evolution had gone downhill to a certain point. It must go up again, but it must also become more spiritualized. That is really what is meant by the “Parousia,” by the new age, of which Christ Jesus also speaks.

If you compare what is alive in all these ancient cultural epochs up to the Greeks with later times, you will find that in these ancient cultural epochs, the soul-spiritual still reveals itself in a certain way through the physical. Then it ceases; it no longer reveals itself, and must now be sought through other means. If man wants to seek the spiritual and soul through what he can see with his eyes and hear with his ears, he can no longer find it. The Kingdoms of Heaven were once revealed through the bodies, but now they must arise in the spirit. The Kingdoms of Heaven must come near. This is the prophecy of John the Baptist. This is also what Christ Jesus meant by the Parousia. Only, in a certain sense, the theologians still stand to this day on the peculiar point of view that they believe that Christ meant by the Parousia that the earth must physically change. Blavatsky also criticizes the saying of Christ Jesus about the Parousia, the coming of the Kingdoms of Heaven, saying: “It was foretold that the Kingdoms of Heaven would come upon the Earth, but the grain has not improved; the grapes are no richer than before; no Heavens have come upon the Earth. All the people who speak in this way do not understand what is meant. What Christ Jesus meant, what John meant, had already come to pass: the Kingdom of Heaven had already descended upon the earth, in that the Christ had embodied Himself in Jesus of Nazareth. The event is to be understood as a spiritual one.

But an initiate like Nero, who knew this also from the mysteries, rebelled against it. He actually came to the delusion that he said to himself: Well, the world is in decline, so it shall perish! — And that is actually the psychological reason why Nero had Rome set on fire — which he really did — because he at least wanted to have the spectacle of the firebrand coming from there to burn the whole world. For he no longer thought much of this world. He did not want to admit the renewal that came through the mystery of Golgotha. He was a madman, but he was also a genius. Through his power, he had forced his initiation, so all his ideas were great, greater than those of others who did not have this prerequisite. In a sense, therefore, Nero was the first psychoanalyst, but a generous one, not a psychoanalyst like those who are called Freud or otherwise. For Nero idolized the physical, in that he, like the psychoanalyst, wanted to bring up what was spiritual and mental from the subconscious. Today's psychoanalyst says: What is down there in the soul? Disappointments, all kinds of wasted lives and so on, and then he says: the animalistic, basic sludge of the soul is down there, there is not much beauty down there. When you hear a psychoanalyst today, it is as if a person is describing a field that has just been fertilized and then cultivated with the seeds for the near future, but the person only sees the fertilizer, the manure. So the psychoanalyst sees only what is really dung in the soul, comparatively speaking, of course. He does not see the eternal in the soul, that which goes from life to life. This is why psychoanalysis is so dangerous: although it goes down to the subconscious, instead of the soul-spiritual essence of the soul, it sees the animalistic mud, as if one does not see the germinating seed but only the dung. Nero was a great psychoanalyst when he said: There is absolutely nothing in man but the animalistic primeval mud; everything else is mere appearance. It used to be different when people were still close to the divine, but now man consists only of this animalistic primeval mud; there is not even the slightest part that is chaste; everything in man is dissolute – so said Nero. One can see from this, one feels especially with those who had forced their way into initiation in this way, the materialization of the world. In these circles, the old, spiritual principle of initiation was generally translated into the material. When Commodus, who had made himself not only an initiate but also an initiator, wanted to give a symbolic blow to someone whom he himself had to initiate, he killed him on the spot. Instead of delivering him to spiritual death, that is to say, to raising him, he killed him! Thus Commodus, the initiator. This is an historical fact.

What occurred during this fourth period is the Mystery of Golgotha. And since the spiritual can no longer come from the external and material, the spiritual must be conquered again. The ascent within has received an impulse through the Mystery of Golgotha. But we live in the fifth period, where this conquest has not yet flourished, where precisely those forces that emerged so grotesquely in Roman times are still strong in people and fight against the impulse of ascent that was brought by the Mystery of Golgotha. And so it is understandable that in this fifth post-Atlantic period, the age of materialism in the way of thinking and feeling has mainly emerged.

The Mystery of Golgotha has already brought an impulse so that the great corruption of the Romans has somewhat diminished, but man has not yet brought it about that the spiritual-soul in his soul also naturally shines forth again. For this, further impulses are needed; for this, a more intensive, a more thorough becoming acquainted with the Christ Impulse is needed. This must become more and more familiar. And so, in the fifth cultural period, the normal human being no longer encounters the soul when they experience themselves. The sense of the soul, the inner experience of the soul, has disappeared for the normal human being. The human being experiences themselves in the experience of the body; they experience themselves as a body, as a natural body.

Self-awareness of the body! And that is why the soul has disappeared from science in particular, and is still disappearing more and more. This soul must be conquered again from within. The fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, which began around 1413-1415, is only just beginning. Humanity will have to develop further in it in such a way that the spiritual is truly conquered more and more within. But this is initially making itself felt in the realm of the soul through a peculiar phenomenon: the phenomenon that something in man himself is appearing materially that was not so material before: namely, thinking itself. Such thinking, as we have it in the fifth period, would have been impossible for the Greeks, and even more so for the Egyptians, Chaldeans or the ancient Persians. Behind the Greeks, imaginative ideas still existed to a certain extent, and even more so in older times; and anyone who can really read Aristotle will notice effective imaginations even in the dry Aristotle, because thinking was still more consciously taking place in the etheric body. Now thinking is completely drawn into the physical body, has become completely brain thinking, and then it takes on the abstract character of which our time is so proud. Thinking that becomes completely abstract is thinking that is really bound to matter, to the matter of the brain. And this thinking, it shows itself precisely in the most epoch-making impulses, which in turn must be deepened, otherwise thinking becomes more and more materialistic and materialistic. And as thinking becomes more and more materialistic, life must also become more and more materialistic. Fundamental ideas - that is the characteristic of our present fifth epoch, which should work as impulses, they only work as abstract ideas.

And there was a time when abstraction as a principle of life had reached its zenith. Everything is necessary – understand me correctly – I do not want to criticize, I am not speaking from the point of view of sympathy and antipathy, I am characterizing as one does scientifically. I do not want to criticize – nobody should think that – the fact that there was an epoch in which abstract world ideas celebrated their greatest triumph. That epoch was when three ideas were expressed in the most extreme abstraction: liberty, equality, fraternity. They were expressed in the most extreme abstraction. This is not said from a conservative or reactionary point of view, but to characterize the development of humanity. At the end of the 18th century, everything calls for freedom, equality, fraternity, not from the soul, but from the thinking brain. And this developed in the 19th century in such a way that we still feel it reverberating everywhere like a habit today. In the course of the nineteenth century, people became terribly accustomed to the abstraction of thinking and are content in the abstractness of thinking because it makes them feel so clever. They believe that in thinking they have truth and feel no need to immerse their thinking in reality. This must be learned again, to immerse oneself in reality; otherwise it remains with the declamation of abstract ideas that have no value for life.

This is the great disease of our time, the declaiming of abstract ideas that have no value for life. If someone says today that a time must come when the world offers the path to success to the hardworking, when the hardworking are given the right place, well, what could be better than this idea! Is it not a wonderful ideal: a free path for the brave! — Sometimes, in today's materialistic times, when one expresses such an ideal, one feels as if one were carrying the whole future in one's breast. But what use is such an abstract ideal if it means that one considers one's son-in-law or one's nephew to be the most capable? What matters is not that we recognize, express and proclaim an abstract ideal, but that we are able to immerse our souls in reality, to see through reality in its essence, to recognize, penetrate, experience and work with reality. Expressing beautiful ideas and enjoying expressing beautiful ideas will increasingly prove harmful. What must enter into our soul is love for reality, knowledge, and adaptation to reality. But this can only come about when people learn to recognize the whole of reality, for the reality of the senses is only the outer shell of reality. If someone who sees a horseshoe-shaped magnet says, “That's the best way to shoe a horse's hoof,” does he have the whole of reality? No, only when he recognizes that there is magnetism in the horseshoe does he have the whole reality. But just as the person who knows nothing else to do with a magnet but to shoe a horse acts, so too is the person who wants to found an external natural science or political science, under the assumption that everything is only the visible world and can be grasped with concepts borrowed from the visible world. This is precisely the extreme abstraction, the harmfulness of abstract ideals. And one does not recognize this harmfulness because the ideals are true, because they are also good, but they are ineffective. They only serve human epistemological egoism, which feels lust in living in such ideals. But no world is ruled by that. At best, it governs a world as it has become in the first half of the 20th century.

One must surrender oneself to such feelings if one wants to understand our time more deeply. The soul life must come alive in the human being, which has emerged so gradually, as I have described, from our environment, from our observed environment. The ideas must become concrete and alive again. Brotherhood is a beautiful idea, but as an abstraction it means nothing. If, firstly, we know that the human soul lives in the body, through the body, on the physical plane here, that is, in a bodily-spiritual, spiritual-bodily way, and secondly, if we know that the human being is not only spiritual-bodily, but is truly a soul, and thirdly, if we that the soul is filled with spirits, and so, if one knows the soul as threefold and the human being as threefold, one knows the human being in his composition of body, soul and spirit: then one has begun to give concrete form to the abstract three ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality. To say of man in general, of this abstract man, that he should live in brotherhood, freedom and equality, is nothing but a torrent of words. What is necessary is to acquire a living realization of the fact that man, inasmuch as he lives in the body in the physical world, needs a social order that is based on the foundation of real brotherhood, but that brotherhood can only be understood if one regards man as a body. That is the beginning of the right idea of brotherhood. Brotherhood has only one meaning if one knows that man is a trinity and that brotherhood is applicable to the bodily. Freedom: To understand this, one must know that man has a soul, because bodies can never become free. There is no institution by which bodies can become free; the development of mankind can only be such that souls become free. Freedom, when expressed as a general human idea, is an abstraction. Free souls in relation to fraternally living bodies is a concrete idea. People are equal in spirit. An old folk saying was even aware of this: after death, everyone is equal. It was based on the spirit. By living as spirits, people are equal here on earth, but speaking of equality only makes sense when speaking of this third part of the human being, the spirit. It must come to life, my dear friends, so that one can say: that which walks around here on earth in any order lives in body, soul and spirit. Evolution must progress in such a way that bodies live in brotherhood, souls in freedom, and spirits in equality. There is not enough time today to develop this further, but you will already notice today the very significant difference between abstract ideas of equality, freedom and fraternity and the concrete ideas permeated by knowledge, which are then applied to the right thing.

But what is the reason for the fact that one has become so abstract? Well, what has been lost to humanity is that which, relatively late, was still a mystery truth: that the human being consists of body, soul and spirit. Among the Greeks, it was still common to regard the human being as body, soul and spirit. With the first Church Fathers it was still a matter of course. That which lay in the decline of human development, which in turn needs an ascent from the Christ principle, was dogmatically established by the Council of Constantinople in the year 869 by abolishing the spirit. Forgive me for expressing it so grotesquely. It is only on the surface that what emerged in human consciousness through the circumstances I have described has been established. Since that time, it was no longer permissible to teach in theology that man consists of body, soul and spirit, but rather that man consists only of body and soul, as philosophy professors still teach today. And if some good Wundt or other professor of philosophy in our own time has no inkling that man is a trinity, but always talks of body and soul, then he does not know that he is only following the decrees of the Council of Constantinople of the year 869. He is completely unaware that his teaching is only a reproduction of this council decision. Yes, this “presupposition-free” science, if one knows its developmental history more precisely, sometimes has very strange presuppositions. The presupposition-free science of our present age in philosophy is in fact inconceivable without the Council of Constantinople, only the gentlemen do not know it.

What has been obscured, namely that man consists of body, soul and spirit, must be regained through spiritual science. Therefore, the first thing I tried to do, with full awareness, was to apply it symptomatically to our Central European, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, namely, to the structure of the human being into body, soul and spirit, as described in the book “Theosophy”. The whole book is built upon this. This had to be presented to humanity radically again and again; humanity had to be made aware of the threefold nature of man through evolution.

You see how, when you are grounded in spiritual science, everything is justified down to the last detail, but also how spiritual science is suited to giving us such ideas, such impulses of feeling and will, that can make us true co-workers in the right progress of the newer development of humanity. And I always wish that I could evoke a feeling that spiritual science must not remain a theory, must not remain a doctrine, that it must not remain something that is cultivated as a science, but that it can become a truly living, inner soul life. This seems to me much more important than the mere enrichment with concepts, which is of course also necessary, because if something is to be enlivened, it must first be grasped. We must have the concepts within us, but the concepts must not remain dead, they must come to life. Then spiritual science works in such a way that when it is grasped in reality, it stimulates the whole person. But then it is also necessary that the whole person tries to understand it perceptively and willfully. But when the whole person understands this spiritual science perceptively and willfully, then he can live accordingly in it. But then he must never run short of love for true knowledge and for humanity as it continues to develop. In our time, this love is still a tender little plant. And it is understandable, even if it is infinitely sad, when in the field of the spiritual-scientific movement, as we understand it, personal interests, sometimes not of a noble kind, still disfigure the tender little plant of love for the knowledge demanded by the times, celebrates its orgies precisely among those who do not approach spiritual science out of a pure longing for knowledge, who approach it in such a way that, if their vanity is not satisfied, their apparent love immediately turns into hatred. For only real love can conquer hatred; apparent love is even a producer of hatred.

If we feel this correctly, then we will also be able to cope with the phenomena to which I have already referred twice, with those phenomena that are looming so sadly over our Anthroposophical Society, in which we see that the strong haters arise precisely from the circles of the Anthroposophical Society. We will not overcome these things as long as we apply a principle of our materialistic time, as we are so fond of doing today: “I want to be left in peace!” — when we close ourselves off to things or do not want to call things by their right name. If numerous defamatory writings are now appearing, nothing is achieved by taking these defamatory writings so seriously that one refutes the individual sentences. For gentlemen such as those who are now writing do not care whether they put this or that as a proposition. To such a gentleman, for example, who had to be rebuffed when he submitted a work that could not be published by us, who felt offended in his ambition as a result, who, while he then became an enemy, to whom one must say: What you write is simply nonsense, you know better yourself; you write all this because your writing has been rejected. That is the truth. If one understands how to serve spiritual science, it is not important to refute all these things in detail as inventions and fabrications, but rather to show in its true light the person who has belonged to the spiritual-scientific movement in appearance and then afterwards does such things as many are now beginning to do, and more will be done.

Or there is someone — as I told you a few days ago — who wanted to become a great painter, but tried it by begging to be allowed to learn; but when every effort was made to help him, he wanted to know everything better. He thought you didn't become a great painter by learning, but by declaring that you were a genius! If you then have the misfortune not to become one, and, despite being given teachers, you can't learn to paint, but only make a mess of things, and if others are not able to recognize the mess as great paintings, then you come and say that it is the fault of the exercises. You cure such a person in the right way by telling the truth. It must not appear as if spiritual science were endangered and things were not being corrected.

Things will fulfill themselves karmically. The right thing should also be done in many other details in our circles, as it has been done on important points of principle. Consider that since 1911 all ties with Mrs. Besant's Theosophical Society have been cut, and that England's war against Germany did not begin until 1914. This is something where it may be said: the Anthroposophical Society has acted prophetically. There is a lot of defamation in general – this is of course not directed against the English people, but against the defamers who today abuse the nationality principle in this way – but defamation against all better judgment, as Mrs. Besant defames our Anthroposophical Society and me, is a rarity. And after we first made the book “The Great Initiates” popular in Germany and staged Schure's plays, we now have to experience being attacked by Schure in the most impossible way. These are things that, to a certain extent, take place in the wide open spaces. But enemies are also gradually emerging in the narrow spaces.

The anthroposophist must acquire a little foresight and a little will to see what is happening and what will come. One acquires this foresight by taking seriously the motto of our Anthroposophical Society, “Wisdom lies only in truth”, even if it is correctly placed as a motto at the beginning. The one who is able to grasp this deeply enough, “Wisdom lies only in truth”, will take the right position.

With this, my dear friends, I must bid you farewell for this time. I hope that our meeting this time can be the starting point for good cooperation in the spirit, even if we cannot be together physically. Let us try to think, feel and will in the spirit of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then we will work together properly.