The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Man was born out of the Light into darkness, and the longing lies in him like a seed to seek the Light again. This ideal has shone before mankind, now brightly, now dimly, through all the ages of human culture on Earth. We glimpse it in the most direct form in the apparent preoccupation of earlier cultures with the Sun, whether this was seen as a divinity or observed in its outer reflection in the Earth's seasonal relationships to it.

On the one hand we have the Zarathustrians' Ahura-Mazdao and the Egyptians' Ra, on the other hand, holy places such as the laboriously constructed Stonehenge or the Mayan monument at Chichen Itza, both of which were apparently used in seasonal ceremonies reminding the people through the wonder of the solstice or the equinox of humanity's age-old connection with the creating God or gods, who fashioned both Earth and man and established the rhythms of Sun, Moon and stars on which all life depends.

Modern times find us in this respect in a darkened period. Walls of dogma enclose us, as the dogmas of science are added to the dogmas of religion. Many people, for example, embrace either evolutionism on the one hand or creationism on the other, on blind faith, without knowing very much about either. Yet dissatisfaction, a never fully suppressed longing really to know, stirs many others.

Readers who pick up yet another book by Rudolf Steiner are likely to do so because they have come to feel that here was a man who really knew, through a remarkable development of powers of cognition (which he claimed are accessible to everyone), the answers to many of the riddles that perplex every thinking person. Those who are familiar with Steiner's view of the world, of man and his evolution, through previous study of his teachings, known as Anthroposophy, should have little trouble with this volume.

But anyone who picks up The Cycle of the Year lacking prior acquaintance with Steiner may feel as if he had been dropped into a foreign country without map or dictionary. For this book is one of the many volumes which are not self-explaining written works, but rather a series of lectures given to a particular audience, in this case members of the Anthroposophical Society, who had been following and even diligently studying Steiner's unique work, many of them for as much as a decade or two.

Such a new reader needs to be told first of all that there are books both by Steiner himself and by other authors whose aim is to serve as an introduction to Anthroposophy. An Occult Science by Steiner is one such book. In Occult Science Steiner pictured in a great tableau the interweaving evolution of man and cosmos, from the first condition of spiritual primal warmth to “the turning point of time” when the Christ/Logos accomplished the Resurrection and laid into the Earth the seed for future human redemption. This mighty tableau of occult history had never been set forth in this way until Steiner described it here. The Philosophy of Freedom is an introductory work of a different character. In it, even more than in his other books, it was not Rudolf Steiner's primary intention to provide the reader with a fresh store of information. Rather, the intention was to set forth a systematic path by which the reader can develop and activate forces of thinking which he can begin to use livingly, creatively, imaginatively, warmly, freely, rather than in the passive, stereotyped, dry manner which present-day education so generally fosters.

From these few words the reader will already expect to find that Anthroposophy is connected with Christianity. It is not in itself a religion, much less a sect, but may be described, rather, as a Western Christian esoteric path. The Christianity Steiner set forth will be seen to be universal, rather than exclusive. We might picture it as a great life-giving river into which have flowed in their time the contributions of all the earlier great religions. These include not only the familiar ones, such as Buddhism and Judaism, but religions minimally known to history, such as that of the Druids, the Mithra cult and so on. Steiner, who could reconstruct also these through his clairvoyant vision, often referred to them together as “the ancient Mysteries.” He speaks of them here, especially in the final two lectures of this volume.

This latter aspect of the book might seem to be of merely academic interest unless we know of Rudolf Steiner's elaboration of the concept of reincarnation, with which those who heard the lectures were of course familiar. These listeners would have seen Steiner's revelations, for instance of the experiences of the festivals of the seasons as conducted by representatives of the Mysteries, as revelations of their own roots, as events in which they themselves might very well have participated in earlier incarnations. For in Steiner's view, we all take part in turn in each succeeding stage of human history.

In ancient times among those cultures that carried the torch of civilization, as described by Steiner, spiritual authority rested in the Mysteries. The science, the art, and the religion of those cultures were wholly consonant with one another and flowed as a unity out of each individual Mystery. There was no split between evolutionists creationists! It is known that Egyptian pharaohs, for example, were at the same time priests and initiates in the Mystery temple. Certain men—and until later only men—were chosen as candidates and were then trained to become initiates. The spiritual world was opened to them and they became witnesses of this world. They then passed on appropriate parts of the wisdom teaching to the rest of the populace in the form of myths, as well as giving guidance for the affairs of outer life, while keeping the deeper secrets strictly for themselves. Plato and Pythagoras among the ancient Greeks had knowledge of these Mysteries. The later Christian Mysteries, including those of the Holy Grail, cherished remnants of the ancient wisdom, but the great Spirit of the Sun, who had been variously known as Vishva, Karman, Ahura-Mazdao, Osiris and so on was now recognized to be none other than the Christ/Logos Who had come to Earth.

These aspects of history Steiner was able to set forth out of his own spiritual research. (This in no way implies that he stood alone in having knowledge of these things). But what did he say of our own times?

Now that mankind has come of age and man is able to think for himself, Rudolf Steiner asserted that the divine powers have turned over the responsibility for Earth's further evolution to man himself, as was always their intention. The “gods” have set “man” free—and woman now stand beside man and are of course included in the general term “man.” To go into the future, we who are “man” need to reconcile once more science, art, and religion, which are now pulling in conflicting directions. To make this possible, Mystery wisdom will have to be brought into the open, made accessible to all men, no longer reserved for the privileged few. Mozart had a sense for this. In his opera “The Magic Flute,” he revealed, although still in allegorical form, some aspects of the temple Mysteries, notably the trials undergone by a candidate for initiation. Indeed Mozart is said to have seriously offended thereby those who still zealously guarded the Mysteries in his day.

The same was of course said of Steiner in his time. In Rudolf Steiner (1861 – 1925) we see a fully modern Western initiate. First having become educated as a natural scientist, he took upon himself the dual task of revealing as much of the Mystery wisdom as he could find individuals capable of receiving, and also of pointing to a modern path of spiritual development which can further open up the sources of wisdom. One of his written books in particular addresses itself to this task, setting forth a path of self-development which can lead to initiation, a path which anyone by his own free choice may follow. This is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.

It was Rudolf Steiner's destiny to become active as initiate and teacher just at the time when a new page was being turned in spiritual history in the relation of man to those heavenly beings whose impulses come to light in the progression of time. In the last third of the nineteenth century, the archangel Michael became the ruling Time Spirit, just before the Dark Age, or Kali Yuga as it was known to the ancients, was to come to an end, in 1899. From the beginning it had been Michael's task to hold in check the Powers of Darkness, whose leader Steiner designates as Ahriman (Persian: Angri-Manyu). We often see Michael depicted in medieval art as the courageous slayer of the Dragon. It was Steiner's teaching that now that mankind is of age and free, man must overthrow the “Dragon” himself, first of all by recognizing him where he works, but that Michael will lend man power. Working out of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner served as a human representative of Michael, who is mentioned without introduction already in the first lecture in this volume.

Sixty years after Steiner's passing, Anthroposophy is increasingly showing how this modern Mystery impulse can fructify not only the inner but also the outer life, just as did the Mysteries of old. Most readers will have heard of the worldwide Waldorf School movement which arises out of Anthroposophy. Many will have heard of the organic but functional style of architecture Steiner inaugurated with his Goetheanum buildings in Dornach, Switzerland or of the eurythmy or drama performances which take place there; of Bio-Dynamic agriculture, anthroposophical medicine, or another of the many offspring of this science of the spirit. All this is of course only a beginning. The threefold social order, for example, referred to in the volume in hand, has yet to be implemented, with all that it promises for the welfare of mankind. But a beginning has been made which finds the sciences, the arts, and religion starting to flow once more from a single source.

That a spiritual science must develop out of today's natural science, and that the threefold nature of man as a being of spirit, soul, and body must be grasped as a starting point, these are overall concerns of this volume, as of many others of Steiner's works. Its specific approach, however, is unique to this work. Only here, in this cycle of lectures, do we find so fully revealed the deeper relationships of man to the Earth's seasons, to the time of the solstices and the equinoxes, to the festivals of the seasons, and through them to the Christ Being and His right-hand spirit, Michael.

Here we can begin to sense again, surely with awe, the oneness of man with the universe that stirred the hearts of the ancients, our ancestors, of our earlier selves if you will. Here we find a foundation laid for celebrating the Christian festivals, especially Easter and Michaelmas, in a newly conscious way in which through man's emerging capacities, the lost communion with the divine world of man's origin can be re-established in ways suitable to the new Age of light. We are indeed reminded of Mozart's hope-filled declaration at the end of his opera: “The Powers of Darkness give way to the Light.”

Barbara Betteridge
Santa Paula, 1984

To round out the contents of this volume, reference may be made to some further important references Rudolf Steiner made to the cosmic alphabet with the help of which it is possible to read the cosmos, the great book of nature.

In a lecture given in Dornach on 1 August 1924^a he looked back on how for him there had been a kind of shibboleth (test word, motto) for the anthroposophical movement from its beginning to enable people to read the great ‘book of nature’ again in the spirit, to find the spiritual background to the world of nature again. For this, he said, was one of the most important impulses for the new Michael age which had started in 1879. He showed how one can read the book of nature by comparing it with printed books. These involve a specific number of letters, and so does the writing in the book of nature, except that there the letters are categories, archetypes, cosmic thoughts. These make up the alphabet of cosmic alphabet. Just as someone who sees only the individual letters—a, b, c, etc.—and does not know how to combine them properly, is unable to appreciate the greatness of Goethe’s Faust, for instance, so, Steiner said, all that is active and moving in the cosmos, and the way the human being is connected with this, can only be read by someone who knows how to combine the letters of the cosmic alphabet.

In the same sense, he once said with reference to Occult Science: ‘What does it actually say in this Occult Science? [...] Thoughts are written in it, but these are not ordinary thoughts. They are the thoughts which do creative work in the world out there. [...] I may call the powers I have described in it the world-creative powers or cosmic thoughts.’ (Dornach, 24 March 1922, [in German] in GA 211.)

We can understand that the letters of the cosmic alphabet cannot be found with logical or philosophical conclusions but are gained from vision in the spirit. In the course of human evolution, people have again and again sought to read the great book of nature. This is why there are different alphabets, or rather different names given to individual letters in the cosmic alphabet. Rudolf Steiner emphatically referred to Aristotle’s ten categories and the ten sephiroth of the Jewish cabbala as such alphabets. (Dornach, 10 May 1924).^b The same applies to the book of ten pages to which the French philosopher Saint-Martin referred as late as the 18th century.

The Rosicrucians also know of a ten-letter cosmic alphabet. (See German text on the ten metamorphoses of the Sun Logos according to the Rosicrucian chronicle in GA 88; also the discussion of the Rosicrucian words ‘One who is able to understand well the work of numbers, will see how his world is made ...’, [in German] in esoterische Stunden, Berlin, 12 February 1908, GA 266/1.) In his report on the theosophical congress in Munich in 1907 Rudolf Steiner referred, clearly not without purpose, to the fact that the letters E. D. N.—1. C. M.—P. S. S. R. in the programme were ‘the ten initial letters of the words expressing the goal of true Rosicrucianism: ex deo nascimur, in Christo morimur, per spirituatn sanctum reviviscimus.'

A number of statements Rudolf Steiner made show that the results of his spiritual scientific investigations were also due to the ability to read the cosmic alphabet. He said this most clearly in a lecture given in Dornach on 22 April 1924 (in GA 233a).^c Considering Aristotle’s categories, he said: ‘Basically everything anthroposophy has given us and will ever be able to give, is experienced the way anything read in Faust is experienced from the letters [in the book]. For all the secrets of the physical and the spiritual world are contained in these simple ideas which make up the cosmic alphabet. [...] So you see how in ten concepts, the inner power of light and influence needs to be unveiled again, one had what for millennia had been a tremendous, instinctive revelation of wisdom.’

20 years earlier, in the lecture on the Cabbala (Berlin, 18 March 1904, in this volume) he was quite specific about this: ‘You will find it said in my Theosophy that the occult teaching [in the Cabbala] agrees with the things taught in theosophy.’

He put it even more definitely in a lecture given in Dornach on 19 September 1922 ([in German] in GA 344): ‘If we consider the whole human being as I have presented the subject in my Theosophy, in his nine parts, we find that from above down they are spirit human being, life spirit, Spirit Self, spiritual soul, rational soul, sentient soul, sentient body, ether body and physical body. These are nine. They would not connect with earthly life in the right way if there were not also a synthesis, which is the tenth. This gives us ten, and these also appear in the sephiroth of pre-Christian times, though in a form that was right for that time, when I-awareness did not yet wholly exist.’ See also the two undated sketches by Rudolf Steiner (archive Nos. 685 and 712) which follow below.

As the nine becomes the seven which determines all evolution, and as ultimately everything goes back to the three, which in turn must be seen as the two and the one—since everything can only manifest in polarities, with the one as the oneness behind them—all this can be seen from the notes made for J. Peelen and E. Schuré (in this volume).

A look at his cosmological investigations connected with the secret of numbers permitted the following to be said in a lecture given in Stuttgart on 29 August 1906:^d ‘There are thus seven planets with seven times seven states each, which is written as \(777\) in occult writing. In occult writing, the seven in the unit position indicates the globes, the \(7\) in the tens the rounds, and the one in the hundreds the planets. These numbers have to be multiplied with one another. Our planetary system thus has to go through \(7 \times 7 \times 7 = 343\) transformations.’ He then referred to a ‘strange passage’ in Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, the content of which Steiner said was largely inspired by one of the most sublime spiritual figures: ‘But the great initiates always expressed themselves with great caution; they only gave pointers. Above all they always let people do some work for themselves. The passage is therefore full of riddles. H. P. B knew this. The teacher did not speak of consecutive incarnations, he merely said: Learn to solve the riddle of \(777\) incarnations. He wanted that one should learn that these are \(343\) [states of transformation]. The task is given in The Secret Doctrine, not the solution. This has only been found quite recently.’

The solution was evidently found by Rudolf Steiner himself. It may be found in the fragment written in 1903/04, where he used completely original German terms for the 7 metamorphoses gone through in states of conscious awareness, life and form. In the lectures on planetary evolution (in this volume), he also pointed out that the sum of the digits in these 343 states in the whole of evolution is 10. What does the number 10 signify?

Ten was the number given as the basis of cosmic order even in the occult knowledge of antiquity. The Pythagoreans considered it to be the all-encompassing, all-limiting mother, for it is the sum of the first four numbers: \(1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10\). And the four is the sign of the cosmos or of creation, since Earth is in its fourth embodiment—everything we find on our Earth, including the fourth principle in the human being, depends on the fact that this creation is in the fourth state of its planetary evolution (Stuttgart, 15 September 1907, in GA 101).^e As the sum of the four is ten, we speak of ten creative or cosmic thoughts.^*

It is evident from the material presented in this volume that Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual scientific alphabet is differentiated into three and seven letters, the three main letters conscious awareness - life - form, in theosophical terms first, second and third Logos, in Christian terms Father, Son and Spirit, and their possible relationships, of which there are only seven. In the 12^th lecture on planetary evolution in this volume, Rudolf Steiner added the terms used in the sankhya philosophy founded by the Indian sage Kapil: sattwa, rajas, tamas, the three gunas, also with seven possible ways of combining them. These are the foundation of the sankhya system (shankya = number). Here it is enlightening to read what Rudolf Steiner said in the lectures he gave at the end of 1912, when the Anthroposophical Society was founded (GA 142).^f

In 1924, the last year of his lecturing work, Rudolf Steiner had been asked by the Christian Community priests to talk to them about Revelation. Once more the fundamental significance of the principle of number in occult investigation emerged on a grand scale. This completed a great sequence which had begun with Christianity as Mystical Fact in 1902.^g In the chapter on Revelation, he showed the route, as it were, which he had to follow to reveal ‘the cosmic thoughts which are the basis of all things, the ‘fundamental ideas of creation’. Immediately after this—in 1903—he began to work on the unveiling of those cosmic thoughts in writing Theosophy, and the spiritual scientific cosmology which remained a fragment, progressively developing the theme more and more strongly.

H. W.

• a. Steiner R. Karmic Relationships vol. 3. Tr. G. Adams. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977.
• b. Steiner R. From Beetroot to Buddhism. Answers to Questions GA 353. Tr. A. R. Meuss. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1999.
• c. Steiner R. The Easter Festival. Tr. G. Adams. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1968.
• d. In At the Gates of Spiritual Science GA 95. Tr. E. H. Goddard, C. Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1976.
• e. Steiner R. Occult Signs and Symbols from GA 101. Tr. S. Kurland. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1972.
• *. Why it is ten and not twelve, seeing that the number of the macrocosm is really twelve, may be seen from the lecture on the Cabbala. It ‘distinguishes twelve principles in the world, the first and last of which remain secret because they cannot be put into words at all. Only the other ten are put in words.’
• f. Steiner R. The Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of Paul GA 142. Tr. L. D. Monges, D. M. Bugbey. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1971.
• g. Steiner R. Christianity as Mystical Fact GA 8. Tr. A. Welbum. Hudson: Anthroposophic Press 1997.

[ 1 ] As the new Age of Consciousness proceeds, it grows less and less possible for Michael to connect himself with the existence of mankind in general. Intellectuality has become human and is now entering humanity. From it the Imaginative conceptions, which could reveal to man the Divine Being and Intelligence in the Cosmos, are vanishing. The possibility for Michael himself to approach man begins only with the last third of the nineteenth century. Before that time it was only possible by those paths which were sought for in the true Rosicrucian sense.

[ 2 ] With his own budding intellectuality, man looks out into Nature. He sees there a physical and etheric world, in which he himself is not contained. Through the great ideas of men such as Copernicus and Galileo, he attains a picture of the world external to man. But he loses the picture of himself. When he gazes on himself he has no possibility of reaching any insight as to what he truly is.

[ 3 ] In the depths of his being, that which is destined to bear and sustain his intelligence is being awakened in him. With this, his Ego becomes united. Thus man now bears a threefold nature within him: first, in his spirit-and-soul being, manifesting as physical-etheric, that which originated once upon a time, in the old Saturn and Sun epochs, and then ever and again placed him within the kingdom of the Divine-Spiritual. It is here that the Human Being and the Michael Being go together. Secondly, man bears within him his later physical and etheric nature, that which evolved in him during the Moon and Earth epochs. All this is the work and active working of the Divine-Spiritual. But the Divine-Spiritual itself is no longer living and present within it. [ 4 ] It only becomes fully living and present once more when Christ passes through the Mystery of Golgotha. In that which is at work spiritually in the physical and etheric body of man, Christ can indeed be found.

Thirdly, man has within him that part of his soul and spirit which received new being in the Moon and Earth epochs. Here Michael has remained active (whereas in the part of man that is inclined towards the Moon and Earth, he has become more and more inactive.) In the former Michael has preserved, for man, his picture of Man and the Gods together.

[ 5 ] He was able to do this until the dawn of the new age of Consciousness—the age of the Spiritual Soul. Then the spirit and soul of man sank down, as it were, entirely in the physical-etheric nature, in order to draw forth from there the Spiritual Soul.

[ 6 ] Radiantly there arose in the consciousness of man what his physical and his etheric body could tell him about the physical and etheric in the world of Nature. And what his astral body and Ego had been able to tell him about himself vanished away from his vision.

[ 7 ] In the age which now began, there arose in man the feeling that with his own insight he could no longer reach himself. Thus there began a search for knowledge of the human being. Man could no longer find satisfaction for this quest in what the present was able to provide. He went back to earlier ages of history. Humanism arose in the evolution of the spiritual life. Humanism became the object of men's striving, not because they had grasped Man in his essential nature, but because they had lost him. As long as they possessed this knowledge, Erasmus of Rotterdam and others would have worked from a trend of soul quite different from anything that Humanism could give them.

[ 8 ] In Faust, Goethe discovered at a later time a figure representative of the man who had completely lost hold of his essential being.

[ 9 ] This quest of the human being grows more and more intense as time goes on. For man has now no other alternative: he must either make himself blunt and insensitive as regards his own being, or else the longing for it must come forth as an essential element in his soul's life.

[ 10 ] Right into the nineteenth century, the best minds in the spiritual life of Europe evolve ideas in the most varied fields and in the most different ways—ideas historical, scientific, philosophical, mystical, all of which represent the striving to find, in what has now become an intellectualistic world-conception, the human being himself.

[ 11 ] Renaissance, spiritual re-birth, humanism, are striving restlessly—even tempestuously—for a spiritual element in a direction in which it is not to be found. And, in the direction in which it should be sought, there is impotence, illusion, bewilderment of consciousness. And yet everywhere—in Art, in Knowledge—the Michael-forces are breaking through into the human being, though not as yet into the newly-growing forces of the Spiritual Soul. It is a critical time for the spiritual life. Michael turns all his forces towards the past in cosmic evolution so that he may gain the power to hold the ‘Dragon’ balanced and constrained beneath his feet. It is under these mighty exertions of Michael that the great creations of the Renaissance are born. Yet they still only represent a renewal by Michael of Intellectual or Mind-Soul forces. They are not yet a working of the new soul-forces.

[ 12 ] We can behold Michael filled with anxiety. Will he really be able to master the ‘Dragon’ in the long run? He perceives human beings in one region trying to gain a picture of Man out of the newly-acquired picture of Nature. He sees how they observe Nature and then seek to form a picture of Man from what they call the ‘Laws of Nature.’ He sees them forming their conceptions:—‘This animal quality becomes more perfect, that system of organs more harmonious, and man “arises”!’ But before the spirit-gaze of Michael man does not arise. For in effect, what is thus thought of as being harmonised, perfected, is there only in thought. No one can see it evolving in reality, for nowhere does this happen in actual fact.

[ 13 ] And so, with these their conceptions about Man, men live in empty pictures, in illusions. They are forever running after a picture of Man which they only imagine that they have, while in real truth there is nothing in their field of vision. ‘The power of the spiritual Sun shines upon their souls. Christ Himself is working; but they are not yet able to perceive His presence. The power of the Spiritual Soul holds sway in the body; but it still will not enter into their souls.’ That is approximately the inspiration one can hear of what Michael says in great anxiety. Is it possible that the forces of illusion in man will give the ‘Dragon’ so much power that it will be impossible for Michael to maintain the balance?

[ 14 ] Other persons try with more inward artistic power to feel Nature at one with man. Mighty are the words in which Goethe described Winkelmann's work in a beautiful book: ‘When the healthy nature of man acts as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole, when harmonious case gives him pure, free delight; then would the Universe, if it were conscious of itself, shout aloud for joy, as having reached its goal, and marvel at the climax of its own development and being.’ That which stimulated Lessing with fiery spirit and ensouled Herder's wide outlook on the world, rings out in these words of Goethe. And the whole of Goethe's own work is like a many-sided revelation of these his own words. In his ‘Aesthetic Letters’, Schiller has described an ideal human being who, in the sense described in the above words, bears the Universe within himself and realises it in social intercourse with other human beings. But whence comes this picture of Man? It shines like the morning sun over the Earth in spring. But it has entered into human feeling from study of the ancient Greeks. It arose in men with a strong inward Michael-impulse; but they could give form to this impulse only by turning the mind's eye to days of yore. When Goethe wished to experience ‘Man,’ he felt himself in the greatest conflict with the Spiritual Soul. He sought for Man in Spinoza's philosophy; but only during his tour in Italy, when he studied the nature of Greek art, did he feel that he had a glimpse of him. He went away finally from the Spiritual Soul, which is striving upwards in Spinoza, to the Intellectual Soul or Mind-Soul which was gradually dying out. However, with his far-reaching conception of Nature he was able to carry over an infinite amount from the Intellectual Soul into the Spiritual Soul.

[ 15 ] Michael also looks with earnestness upon this search for Man. What is in accordance with his idea is indeed entering here into the spiritual evolution of man:—it is that human being who once beheld the Divine Being and Intelligence when Michael still ruled it from the Cosmos. But if this were not laid hold of by the spiritualised force of the Spiritual Soul it would in the end inevitably slip away from Michael's control and come under the sway of Lucifer. The other great anxiety in Michael's life is, lest in the oscillation of the cosmic spiritual state of balance Lucifer might gain the upper hand.

[ 16 ] Michael's preparation of his Mission for the end of the nineteenth century flows on in cosmic tragedy. Below, on the Earth, there is often the greatest satisfaction in the working out of the new picture of Nature; whereas in the region where Michael works there is a tragic feeling regarding the hindrances to the coming of the picture of Man.

[ 17 ] Formerly Michael's austere, spiritualised love lived in the sun's rays, in the shimmering dawn, in the sparkling of the stars; this love had now acquired most strongly the note of looking down at humanity with awakening sorrow.

[ 18 ] Michael's situation in the Cosmos became tragically difficult, but it also pressed for a solution just at the period of time which preceded his earthly mission. Men were able to keep intellectuality only in the sphere of the body and there only in the sphere of the senses. On one hand, therefore, they received into their views nothing that the senses did not tell them; Nature became the field of the revelations of the senses, considered quite materially. The forms of Nature were no longer perceived as the work of the Divine-Spiritual but as something devoid of spirit, and yet something of which it is affirmed that it brings forth that spiritual element in which man lives. On the other hand, as regards a Spirit-world, men would now accept only what the historical accounts narrated. Direct vision of the Spirit working in the past was discredited, as was the vision of the Spirit in the present.

[ 19 ] In the soul of man there now lived only that which came from the sphere of the present, which Michael does not enter. Man was glad to stand on ‘sure’ ground. He believed he possessed this because in ‘Nature’ he sought no thoughts, in which he might have had to fear the presence of arbitrary fancies. But Michael was not glad. In his own sphere, beyond man, he had to wage war with Lucifer and Ahriman. This resulted in tragic difficulty, because Lucifer is able to approach man the more easily, the more Michael—who indeed also preserves the past—is obliged to keep himself away from man. And thus a severe battle for man took place between Michael and Ahriman and Lucifer in the spiritual world immediately bordering upon the Earth, while on the Earth itself man kept his soul in action against what was beneficial to his evolution.

[ 20 ] All this applies of course to the spiritual life of Europe and America. We should have to speak differently with respect to that of Asia.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the above Third Study: Michael's suffering over Human Evolution before the Time of his earthly Activity)

[ 21 ] 134. In the very earliest time of the evolution of the Spiritual Soul, man began to feel that he had lost the picture of Humanity—the picture of his own Being—which had formerly been given to him in Imagination. Powerless as yet to find it in the Spiritual Soul, he sought for it by way of Natural Science or of History. He wanted the ancient picture of Humanity to arise in him again.

[ 22 ] 135. Man reaches no fulfilment in this way. Far from becoming filled with the true being of Humanity, he is only led into illusions. But he is unaware that they are so; he thinks they have real power to sustain Humanity.

[ 23 ] 136. Thus, in the time that went before his working upon Earth, Michael had to witness with anxiety and suffering the evolution of mankind. For in this time men eschewed any real contemplation of the Spirit, and thus they severed all the links that connected them with Michael.

The musical element

When speaking of the arts, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) emphasizes that the musical element increasingly belongs to the future of humanity.¹ In the following words he points to the mission of music:

Fundamentally speaking, music is the human being, and indeed it is from music that we rightly learn how to free ourselves from matter. For if music were to become materialistic, it would actually be false: it is not ‘there’! Every other form of matter is present in the world and is insistent. But musical sounds are not to be found in the material world in their original form. We have to devise a means of producing them; they must first be made. The soul element that lives in the human being lies between the notes. But today, because the world has become so unmusical, people are scarcely aware of it.²

This passage also witnesses to Steiner's own particular mission at the beginning of the twentieth century: to sow seeds in the cultural life which could enable humanity to find its way from estrangement to cooperation with the world of spirit. This concept is of immense practical importance in a century which has allowed the forces of technology and finance to encroach into the realm rightly belonging to the free human spirit. About the time of these lectures, Steiner was responding to requests from many professional quarters for advice which would provide creative stimuli. Lecture courses were given to experts seeking renewal in their particular fields: science, medicine, agriculture, religion, the arts, education and therapeutic education. ‘The development of anthroposophical activity into the realm of art resulted out of the nature of anthroposophy.’ The art of eurythmy, however, occupies a unique position as the newly-born daughter of anthroposophy itself.³

For Steiner, it is not only music; all the arts are to become more musical. Steiner is concerned with living, creative activity. He communicated this vision most succinctly in a far-reaching lecture in Torquay. (See Note 1) Like J. M. Hauer (1883–1959), whose theoretical writings were known to him, Steiner uses the Greek Melos (‘tune’) for pure pitch (Melodie—‘melody’, of course, includes rhythm and beat. See also Steiner's own lecture notes, p. 10). Both Hauer and Steiner use Melos to indicate the actual creative principle in music. ‘Melos is the musical element,’ Steiner claims (Lecture 4). In this translation I have retained Melos where it is employed.

In speech, Melos only ‘peeps through’. But it ‘poured into’ oriental architecture, which ‘really did transpose music into movement’. ‘Oriental architecture has within it a great deal of eurythmy,’ we read in Lecture 5. The word ‘rhythm’ comes from the Greek rhuthmos (measured motion, time rhythm), from rhe-ein (to flow). The word ‘eurhythmy’ is an architectural term: ‘beautiful proportion, hence beautiful, harmonious movement’ (Oxford English Dictionary). Laurens van der Post mentions the ‘eurhythmic grace’ of certain beautiful animal movements in his African writings. ‘Eurythmy’ and Melos, accordingly, have existed and do still exist both in nature and in human culture. Both worlds unite in the art of eurythmy, which cultivates Melos, and was brought to birth through Rudolf Steiner. (Otto Fränkl-Lundborg claims the spelling of ‘eurythmy’ without the ‘h’ is philologically correct; rho as suffix loses its aspirate. See Das Goetheanum, 49. Jg., Nr. 30, 26.7.70, p. 246).

Steiner, like Hauer, uses the expression das Musikalische (‘the musical’) more often than die Musik (‘music’), and in this way emphasizes the inner activity before the technicalities of the craft come into consideration. This is a supremely important detail. In English we have to extend this to phrases like ‘the musical element’, or ‘the realm of music’, which may be clumsy, but they are accurate. What Steiner has in mind and continuously refers to is the musical essence. This is not only the concern of musicians but it is the underlying creative, transforming force of life itself, present in all vital human expression. Moreover, it bears a direct relationship to the path of mankind's inner development. This development can be prepared and assisted by the inner activity of individuals on the path of initiation, which is described by Steiner as a process of development through God's grace, involving Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition (spiritual vision, inner hearing and a higher life).⁴

Long, long before the human being enters consciously into the stages of initiation, he is able to express these individual experiences in images, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a developing drama of life taking its course in musical sounds, which are an external picture of what the soul consciously experiences in the life of initiation.⁵

We may sense that Steiner channelled his own musicality into his work as a teacher of humanity, and this he confirmed more than once:

It gave me particular pleasure to be told one day by one of our artistically-gifted friends that some of the lecture cycles I have given could be transcribed into symphonies purely on the basis of their inner structure. Some of the courses are indeed based in their structure on something very like this. Take for instance the lecture course given in Vienna on life between death and a new birth: you will see that you could make a symphony of it.⁶

The art of eurythmy has been given to us as a gift from the future. Its evolution depends upon each individual eurythmist, musician and speaker developing an inner listening with his or her artistic feeling. This must be developed, not in an ecstatic way, but as a spiritual path the individual undertakes while within the body. This inner activity, Steiner insists (in answer to Hauer), can be revealed in art by raising sensory experience.⁷ The present lecture course may prove to be the best companion on such a path, which is akin to the practising of a musician. This is a demanding exercise, but however small the progress, it forms the substance of true art, and can be offered as nourishment to a world in need.⁸

One of the questions today concerns recorded sound (see Appendix 6). After following the arguments concerning recordings, it can be refreshing to return to the present course of lectures. Though modestly described as ‘only a beginning’, Steiner begins where many of the great musicians of his time, and the ensuing decades, leave off.⁹

Music's turning point

Steiner characterizes music as the art which ‘contains the laws of our ego’.¹⁰ If we could consciously dive down into our astral body, the musician in us, we could perceive the cosmic music that has formed us: ‘... with the help of the astral body, the cosmos is playing our own being ... The ancients felt that earthly music could only be a mirroring of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind.’ Modern humanity has been led into the muddy, materialistic swamp of darkness and desire, which obscures this music. But there is a path of purification leading to perception of the music of the spheres once again. When we hear a symphony we dive with soul and spirit into the will, which is usually asleep in daytime consciousness. Art—‘even the nature of major and minor melodies’ - can bring life to the connection between man and cosmos (in other words, anthroposophy); to what might appear as dead form. Steiner warns ‘that these things are not a skeleton of ideas!’ hinting that his Theosophy was written musically, not schematically.

The present lectures on eurythmy represent Steiner's greatest contribution to musical studies. When he gave them in 1924, he advised the eurythmists to study Hauer's theoretical writings. Hauer was a musician who discovered atonal melody, or twelve-note music, at the same time (or even just before) as Schönberg did by a different route. Both composers endeavoured to get beyond the materialistic swamp through spiritual striving.¹¹ By 1924 Hauer had published his own attempt at a Goethean theory of music,¹² and his Deutung des Melos (Interpretation of Melos, questions to the artists and thinkers of our time) includes an appreciation of Goethe's Theory of Colour.¹³ In these eurythmy lectures, Steiner appears to agree with Hauer's diagnosis of the modern situation as ‘noise’; Wagner's music, for example, is ‘unmusical music’, though it has its justification. Steiner seems to agree with Hauer's spiritual principle of Melos, ‘the actual musical element’ (to Hauer ‘movement itself’, or the ‘TAO’, the interpretation of which is ‘the only true spiritual science’). He reproduces Hauer's correspondence of vowels and intervals, writing in his notebook Hauer's list of examples (Notebook, p. 10), and he retells the story of the Arab listening to a contrapuntal piece, who asks for it to be played ‘one tune at a time’. But Steiner certainly does not agree with Hauer's answer to the challenge of materialism. ‘Those who deride materialism are bad artists, bad scientists,’ Steiner declares.¹⁴ Instead of criticism, he offers help.

In his profound study on Bach, Erich Schwebsch suggests that eurythmy arrived just at the right time in the evolution of mankind.¹⁵ His justification of music eurythmy is unlikely to be supplanted. With the founding of music eurythmy, a new beginning opens up for the art of music too. This thought was also expressed by the musician and eurythmist Ralph Kux.¹⁶ It remains for me to draw attention to the counter-phenomenon accompanying this new beginning.

The counter-tendency, so strongly marked in Hauer's thought and life, artificially separates itself from the human roots of music. Steiner's answer to Hauer's dissatisfaction with western culture was to give a further impetus to music eurythmy (already born but still in its infancy) by tracing the origin of music back to the human being. Through a conscious ‘turning inside out’ within the organism, at the point of departure in the collar-bone, the cosmic music that formed us (flowing in between the shoulder-blades) is released and made available for artistic ends.¹⁷ Music today, he implies, is not a purely spiritual, meditative affair, leading (as later in Hauer's career) a reclusive life. The music of the spheres sought along the old paths ‘out there’ in the cosmos leads to an abstract caricature today. The living connection is to be found on earth, in the human being.¹⁸ Steiner was in all things concerned with living, creative activity. The arts are the means whereby inner activity and experience become outer expression: ‘to present the soul and spirit in fullest concentration ... is basically the highest ideal of all art.’¹⁹ The arts remind us of the meaning in our earthly destiny. Steiner's meditative verse, written for Marie Steiner at Christmas 1922, begins: ‘The stars once spake to man’—but what leads to the future is ‘what man speaks to the stars’.²⁰

Albert Steffen expresses it clearly: there is a splitting of the way ‘concerning the life or death of music as such ... The whole of humanity stands before this alternative. There is no way back. Every individual has to go through it or come to grief.’²¹ In one of his most inspired articles, H. Pfrogner (a musicologist and authority on twentieth-century developments) characterizes the one path of experience as the way of ‘universal concord’, and the other as ‘ego concord’.²² The former path leads to universal spirituality, to a dissolving of the self. The latter path leads to a maturing of the self. Pfrogner accociates the former spirituality with the impulse emanating from the conspiracy of Gondishapur (seventh century AD - further details can be found in Ruland).²³ which echoes on in Islamic culture; the maturing spirituality he associates with the Christian west. All inclination to ‘dissolve the ego’, whose new richness of content was brought by Christ, spiritually subscribes to Arabism, whereas all steps toward strengthened responsibility follow the latter path. But this latter path leads to an extension of the diatonic system, ‘that resounding image of the human being pure and simple’ (Pfrogner).

The path to overcome materialism, further elucidated by Pfrogner,²⁴ will not be reached by avoiding the swamp of man's egotism and hastily ‘reaching for the stars’ (the arrangement of twelve) to the exclusion of the diatonic system (based on the number seven). Lurking in such a counter-reaction to romanticism (which, like Viennese classicism, arose in the age of materialism as a protest) is an implied denial of the Christ-event. ‘Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolution in human nature, based on the retention of the ego's full consciousness. He inaugurated the initiation of the ego,’ Steiner explains.²⁵ ‘With Christ,’ F. Rittelmeyer reminds us in his last book, ‘the whole orientation of humanity is changed. And from now on we no longer look back with longing to the past, to a "golden age" of the primal beginning, but look forward toward fulfilment, creating the future ...’²⁶ There is a path through the swamp which has been trodden by composers such as Bartok, Hindemith, Messiaen, Martinu, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Shostakovich, Britten, Tippett, Hartmann, Henze, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Pärt and many others (following in their own ways the example of the modern ‘Prometheus’, Beethoven).²⁷

Musical art of the future

On more than one occasion, Steiner, speaking of the future of music, pointed to ‘finding a melody in the single note’.²⁸ In the eurythmy lectures he points out that this does not mean listening to the acoustic ‘chord of overtones’ in a single note—on which Hauer and Hindemith base their theoretical work. It is a supersensible experience. One of the climaxes of the investigations of Pfrogner and H. Ruland (one of the former's successors), is the working out of Steiner's hints of a development of our tonal system.²⁹

Here mention should be made of two other pioneers in musical studies whose work is acknowledged by Ruland in his Expanding Tonal Awareness. Ernst Bindel developed the relationship between mathematics and music.³⁰ (Without some mathematics there can be no responsible step towards a musical future.) The other pioneer is H. E. Lauer,³¹ whose account of the evolution of tonal systems has subsequently been considerably developed by Ruland.

We conclude with a suggestion regarding ‘artistic longing’, made by Steiner some months before the lectures translated here:

‘If someone feels that here on earth he does not fulfil what lies in his archetype, with its abode in the heavens, there arises in him an artistic longing for some outer image of that archetype. Whereupon he can gain the power to become an instrument for expressing the true relation of man to the world by becoming a eurythmist. The eurythmist says: All the movements which I ordinarily carry out here on earth do less than justice to the mobile archetype of man. To present the ideal human archetype I must begin by finding a way to unite with its movements.’ These movements, through which the human being endeavours to imitate in space the movements of his heavenly archetype, constitute eurythmy.³²

Steiner wrote in his Notebook (see p. 131 below) for the present eurythmy course:

In the musical element the spatial human being is transformed into the non-spatial human being—the spiritual human being is the inner origin of the musical element.

Artistic people often think more naturally in evocative images, rather than with philosophical or technical concepts about ‘the spiritual human being’ or ‘the heavenly archetype’. And ultimately the inner life cannot express itself other than in images. Artistic readers looking for direction to surmount materialism may be able to grasp the necessity for decisive action more directly in the form of a picture. It may be appropriate to recall a passage from one of Selma Lagerlöf's novels to show the precision of Steiner's statement. An image of the Christ-child is kept in a basilica run by Franciscan monks. An Englishwoman plans to steal this image and replace it with a cheap imitation.

When the copy was ready she took a needle and scratched into the crown: ‘My kingdom is only of this world.’ It was as if she was afraid that she herself would not be able to distinguish one image from the other. And it was as if she wished to appease her own conscience. ‘I have not wished to make a false Christ-image. I have written in his crown: “My kingdom is only of this world”.’³³

Stourbridge, Michaelmas 1993
Alan Stott

• 1. R. Steiner, True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation, GA243, (RSP 1975). An accurate translation of the section on music (last part of the final lecture of 24.8.22) appears in Lea van der Pals, op. cit., p. 71ff. Compare: ‘The basic mood of the new world-conception [since the Mystery of Golgotha] is musical, whereas the basic mood of the old world was sculptural. The basic mood of the new age is really musical, and the world will become ever more musical. In order to continue rightly on the path of human evolution, we must know the importance of striving towards a musical element and not repeating the old sculptural one’ (R. Steiner, Der Baum des Lebens and der Baum der Erkenntnis des Guten and Bosen [‘The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil’], lecture Dornach 31.7.15, GA162 [translation A. S.]; see also Appendix 4, ‘R. Steiner, Torquay, 22.8.24’, in Vol. 2).
• 2. R. Steiner, Eurythmy as Visible Singing, GA278, Lecture 3.
• 3. The name ‘anthroposophy’ (‘wisdom of the human being’) is not used in any of Steiner's basic books. It appeared before the world for the first time one year after the founding of the Anthroposophical Society (1913), in the final chapter of R. Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy [original edition 1914, English translation AP 1973], ‘A brief outline of an approach to anthroposophy’. In this chapter, reference is made to the author's Truth and Science (1882), The Philosphy of Freedom (1894), and the lecture ‘The psychological foundations and epistemological position of spiritual science’, delivered before the Philosophical Congress, Bologna, 18.4.11.
  
  ‘Eurythmy has grown out of the soil of the anthroposophical movement, [originating] like a gift of destiny’ (R. Steiner, ‘Eurythmy, what it is and how it originated’, lecture Penmaenmawr 26.8.23 in Eurythmy as Visible Song [London and New York 1932], p. 1). ‘The artistic element will be an elixir of life of the anthroposophical movement’ (R. Steiner, introduction to a eurythmy performance on the occasion of the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society, Dornach 5.1.24, in GA277, p. 423). See also R. Steiner, Das Goetheanum in seinen zehn Jahren’ (‘The Goetheanum, ten years in retrospect’), essay of 14.1.24 in GA36, and Tb635 p. 131. For a detailed account, see R. Steiner, Die Entstehung and Entwicklung der Eurythmie (‘The origin and development of eurythmy’, translation in progress) GA277a (Dornach 1965), and R. Steiner, Eurythmie—die Offenbarung der Sprechende Seele (‘Eurythmy—revelation of the speaking soul’) GA277 (Dornach 1972), a collection of introductions to performances, and so on; a paperback mainly consisting of selections is published: Eurythmie, Tb642 (Dornach 1986). Some introductions are translated in R. Steiner, Eurythmy, an Introduction (AP 1984); the lecture 14.2.20 is translated in The Inner Nature of Music, op. cit.
• 4. Rational thinking is not jettisoned in favour of ‘mysticism’ or something else. The spiritual activity within thinking itself can be strengthened for investigating and creating within the realm of the spirit. The spiritual activity of pure thinking, the higher union of science and religion demonstrated by Steiner, was prophesied, for example, by Emerson: ‘No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation’ (R. W. Emerson, tract on ‘Nature’, Chapter VIII, [1836]. See also a recent study on Emerson, Richard G. Geldard, The Esoteric Emerson [The Lindisfarne Press, West Stockbridge, Mass., 1993]).
• 5. R. Steiner, Art as seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, GA275, Lecture 30.12.14 (RSP 1984).
• 6. R. Steiner, Practical Advice to Teachers (RSP 1976), GA294. The lecture course referred to is R. Steiner, The Inner Nature of Man and the Life Between Death and a New Birth, Vienna 9-14.4.14, GA153 (RSP 1959). Steiner aimed at a marriage of form and content in his work, which is the lofty artistic ideal. After the Christmas Foundation of 1923/4, he reached a new level in this respect. In connection with the subject matter of GA153, compare: ‘Contrary to the works of architects, sculptors and painters, musical works must be repeatedly generated anew; they flow onwards in the surge and swell of their melodies, a picture of the soul, which in its incarnations always has to experience itself afresh in the progressive stream of time. The soul flows down from its spiritual homeland and returns thither—likewise its shadow-images: notes and harmonies. Hence the intimate effect of music on the soul’ (R. Steiner, lecture Berlin 12.11.06, The Inner Nature of Music [AP 1983]).
  
  Steiner confirmed that: ‘For anyone who would read my Occult Science as today one would read a novel or any other book, passively giving oneself to it, it is really only a thicket of words—and so are my other books. It is only someone who knows in every moment of reading that he must create out of his own soul's depths, and through his most intimate will—which the books should stimulate—only this person is able to regard these books as musical scores from which he can experience the true music. This active experience of the individual soul, moreover, is what we need’ (R. Steiner, Heilfaktoren fir den sozialen Organismus, lecture Dornach 2.7.20, GA198). See also R. Steiner, The Gospel of St John, Lecture XI, Hamburg 30.5.08, GA103 (RSP 1978); GA278, Lecture 6, Endnote 39 in Vol. 2.
  
  The implications for the musician are discussed by Erich Schwebsch in his pioneer study on anthroposophy and music. He concludes: ‘The cosmology of Occult Science contains in its thoughts the best exercises for a meditative musician who is searching for new forms today’ (E. Schwebsch, J. S. Bach and Die Kunst der Fuge [Stuttgart 1988], Chapter 4 ‘Musik als Offenbarung des Geistes. Aphoristische Betrachtungen’, p. 193 [J. S. Bach and ‘The Art of Fugue’; translation of Chapter 4 in manuscript, ‘Music as revelation of the spirit. Aphoristic observations’]).
• 7. In his first lecture, before the Goethe Society, Vienna 1888, Steiner said: ‘Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine’ (R. Steiner, Goethe as Founder ofa new Science of Aesthetics [Rudolf Steiner Pub., Co., London c.1927]). Steiner claims that this lecture, already in 1888, contains ‘a sound foundation for anthroposophy and the anthroposophical way of thinking’ (Preface to the second edition, 1919). The lecture suggests an acid test for what is truly new. Movements exist today which bear the adjective ‘spiritual’ but do not attempt any transformation. Indeed, it is often stated that ‘no musical knowledge is necessary’! Is not the call for courage against despondency and inadequacy met right here with every individual?
• 8. See Schwebsch, Endnote 6. Pfrogner, in the chapter ‘und was nun? (‘and what now?’) in his extensive study on The living world of music’, presents a clear vision of tasks for the future: ‘No longer l'art pour l'art, but simply and solely: l’art pour l’homme will be the saying of the hour. This “art for human beings”, however, will have to be an art totally “from human beings”, an art in the above-mentioned sense “raised” from the human being, if it should be true “nourishment for life” ’ (H. Pfrogner, Lebendige Tonwelt [Langen Müller, München/Wien 1981], p. 474, trans. A.S.).
• 9. For example: Bruno Walter, Theme and Variations (Hamish Hamilton, London 1947), and On Music and Music-Making (Faber, London 1957); W. Furtwängler, Concerning Music (Boosey and Hawkes, London 1953); Artur Schnabel, My Life and Music (C. Smythe, New York and Gerrards Cross 1988), and Music and the Line of Most Resistance (Princeton 1942); Edwin Fischer, Reflections on Music (Williams & Norgate, London 1951); R. Vaughan Williams, National Music and other Essays (OUP 1987); J. Ma. Corredor, Conversations with Casals (Duddon, New York 1956).
• 10. R. Steiner, Art as seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, lecture 29.12.24, GA275 (RSP 1984).
• 11. For the best introduction to this perspective, see H. Pfrogner Zwölfordnung der Töne (Zürich/Leipzig/Wien 1953), reprinted in H. Pfrogner, Zeitwende der Musik (Langen Müller, München/Wien 1986), translation in manuscript, ‘Music's turning point of time’.
• 12. J. M. Hauer, Vom Wesen des Musikalischen (1920, later editions Robert Lienau, Berlin-Lichterfelde), translation in progress, ‘The essence of music’.
• 13. J. M. Hauer, Deutung des Melos (Tal & Co. Verlag, Leipzig/Wien/Zürich 1923), translation in manuscript ‘The interpretation of Melds’.
• 14. R. Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission, lecture Oslo, 18.5.23, GA276 (AP 1964), p. 111.
• 15. Schwebsch presented his eloquent conclusion already in 1930: ‘But all inner experience of the soul when it is ripe to that end, wishes to become visible, perceptible. The soul world desires to become objective. The first beginning for this becoming visible of vitally filled musical movement, from the All rising up behind the Nothing [an echo from Goethe's Faust, Part 2, 6256. Translator's note.] of the vanishing past, at the exact nadir of time, is the art of music eurythmy: visible singing, newly created by Rudolf Steiner’ (E. Schwebsch, op. cit., p. 211). Chapter 4 is more than the title suggests. It is an anthroposophical musician's ‘credo’, which applies to Steffen's essay (see Endnote 21 below), too.
• 16. R. Kux and W. Kux, Erinnerungen an Rudolf Steiner and R. Kux, Eurythmie and Musik (Mellinger Verlag, Stuttgart 1976), translation in manuscript ‘Recollections of R. Steiner, and eurythmy and music’.
• 17. See R. Steiner, The Essentials of Education, lecture 10.4.24 a.m. (RSP 1982), p. 58. The physiology is explained in A. Husemann, The Harmony of the Human Body (Floris Books, Edinburgh 1994; German edition, Der musikalische Bau des Menschen [Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1989]). Note, for example, with what careful scholarship Dr Husemann explores what ‘beim Aufireten’ (‘by stepping’, or ‘with the first step’) from Lecture 7 must mean (Section 31, p. 189ff.). See also Endnote 43 on Ansatz, in Vol. 2.
• 18. Compare Steiner: ‘Since the Mystery of Golgotha we cannot speak of the music of the spheres as did Pythagoras, but we can speak of it in another way. An initiate might even today speak as Pythagoras did, but the ordinary inhabitant of the earth in his physical body can speak of the music of the spheres and of the cosmic life only when he experiences in his soul, "Not I, but Christ in me", for the Christ within him has lived in the music of the spheres and in the cosmic life. But we must go through this experience in ourselves; we really must receive Christ into our souls’ (R. Steiner, lecture Norrköping, 16.7.14, in Christ and the Human Soul GA155 [RSP 1984], pp. 69-70). The harmony of the spheres is heard ‘in deep sleep’ by the initiate ‘as if they were the notes of trumpets and the rolling of thunder’ (R. Steiner, An Esoteric Cosmology GA93a [St George Publications, Spring Valley, New York 1978], lecture Paris 30.5.1906, reported by E. Schure, p. 45. Steiner's proclamation of Christ rests on knowledge. By the turn of the century, he could say: ‘The unfolding of my soul rested upon the fact that I had stood in spirit before the Mystery of Golgotha in most inward, most earnest solemnity of knowledge’ (R. Steiner, The Course of my Life [New York, 1951], closing sentence of Chapter XXVI, p. 276). ‘Spiritual science is concerned not merely to talk about the Christ, but to declare what the Christ wishes to say to people in our time, through the medium of human thoughts.’ R. Steiner, lecture Zürich 4.2.19., in The Inner Aspect of the Social Question GA193, (RSP 1950), p. 16.
  
  Steiner indicates what amounts to 84 (= 7 x 12) meditations for musicians: ‘You have in the fixed stars a wonderful cosmic instrument, and the players of this instrument of the zodiac and fixed stars are the gods of the planets beyond’ (lecture Dornach, 2.12.22, in The Inner Nature of Music GA283 [AP 1983], pp. 42-3); see also R. Steiner, The Gospel of St Matthew (especially lectures Berne, 3,4, 10 and 12.10.10), GAl23 (RSP 1965); R. Steiner, Universe, Earth and Man, lecture Stuttgart 12.8.08 [RSP 1987], p. 118ff. See also Appendices 3 and 5 in Vol. 2.
• 19. R. Steiner, GA277, op. cit., p. 320.
• 20. R. Steiner, Verses and Meditations (RSP 1961), pp. 96-97 In this connection, compare Beckh's definition of ‘cosmic’: ‘the revelation of the spirit within the earthly realm’ (H. Beckh, Die Sprache der Tonart [Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1977], p. 20, English translation ‘The language of tonality’, in manuscript).
• 21. Albert Steffen, ‘Musik’ in Der Künstler and die Erfiillung der Mysterien (Dornach 1964), translation in the British Newsletter, forthcoming. An artist could base his life on this astonishing essay. 21
• 22. H. Pfrogner, Chapter 17 in Zeitwende..., op. cit.
• 23. Compare: ‘Absolute objectivity ultimately demands the sacrifice of the personality’ (Hauer, Vom Wesen des Musikalischen [Leipzig/Wien 1922], p. 40), with: ‘When the human being became a personality, God also had to become a personality in order to save him, to give him the possibility of rising again’ (R. Steiner, Egyptian Myths and Mysteries [AP 1971], p. 139). Another twentieth- century scientist, comparing his life to that of Goethe's, declared that his goal was ‘to penetrate into the secret of the personality’; the ‘central concept’ of his psychology is ‘the principle of individuation’ (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections [Fontana, London 1967], pp. 232 and 235, italics original). Sir Julian Huxley summarizes Teilhard de Chardin, the scientist-seer: ‘persons are individuals who transcend their merely organic individuality in conscious participation’ (Introduction to Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man [Collins 1959/Fontana 1965], p. 20/21). A vague pantheism is avoided: ‘Union differentiates’, and ‘the more "other" [grains of consciousness] become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as "self" as they make for the ‘Omega point’ of evolution (op. cit., p. 261/288). See Endnote 20 in Vol. 2.
• 24. See H. Pfrogner, Zeitwende..., op. cit., and Lebendige Tonwelt, op. cit., for informed views on musical development right up to the twentieth century.
• 25. R. Steiner, The Gospel of St Matthew, lecture Berne 9.10.10 (RSP 1965). Steiner explains the meaning of the atonement: ‘The One sufferred for all, so that through the world-historic initiation a substitute has been created for the old form of initiation ... Through inner vision, through true mysticism, community with Christ is possible’ (R. Steiner, Foundations of Esotericism, lecture Berlin, 27.9.05 [RSP 1983], p. 14)
• 26. F. Rittelmeyer, Christus (Urachhaus, Stuttgart 1936), p. 38 (translation in MS). Rittelmeyer's mature relationship to John's Gospel, with its hidden music, informs his major works. For Rittelmeyer on music, see A. Stott: ‘Friedrich Rittelmeyer and the "Song of the earth's perfecting"’ in The Threshing Floor, May/June 1988 (Floris Books, Edinburgh). Another study on the Christ- Impulse is C. E. Raven, Jesus and the Gospel of Love (Hodder & Stoughton, London 1931/49), see especially Chapter XV, ‘Christ in the Twentieth Century’.
• 27. The following reference to Beethoven's entelechy is the only one that has come to my notice: ‘I was deeply impressed when a while ago I heard from a famous musician that in a personal conversation Rudolf Steiner said "Beethoven is Prometheus"’ (E. Kolisko, ‘Beethoven’, from a series of articles under the title ‘Reincarnation’ in The Modern Mystic, September 1938).
• 28. See Endnote 17 in Vol. 2.
• 29. See H. Ruland, Expanding Tonal Awareness (RSP 1992).
• 30. Ernst Bindel, Die Zahlgrundlagen der Musik im Wandel der Zeiten (Stuttgart 1985); translation in progress ‘The numerical basis of music in its development’.
• 31. H. E. Lauer, ‘The Evolution of Music through Changes in Tone-Systems’ in Cosmic Music, edited by J. Godwin (Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont 1989). Lauer also wrote Musik and Musiker (Selbstverlag, undated).
• 32. R. Steiner, The Arts and Their Mission, lecture Dornach 27.5.23, GA276 (AP 1964).
• 33. Selma Lagerlöf, The Miracles of Antichrist (Gay & Bird, London 1899), p. 14.

To-day we shall begin to consider the inner activities of the soul which can gradually lead man to acquire conceptions, to acquire thoughts, about karma. These thoughts and conceptions are such that they can ultimately enable a man to perceive, in the light of karma, experiences which have a karmic cause.

Looking around our human environment, we really see in the physical world only what is caused by physical force in a physical way. And if we do see in the physical world something that is not caused by physical forces, we still become aware of it through external physical substances, through external physical objects of perception. Of course, when a man does something out of his own will, this is not caused by physical forces, by physical causes, for in many respects it comes out of the free will. But all that we perceive outwardly is exhausted in the physical phenomena of the world we thus observe. In the entire sphere of what we can thus observe, the karmic connection of an experience we ourselves pass through cannot reveal itself to us. For the whole picture of this karmic connection lies in the spiritual world, is really inscribed in what is the etheric world, in what underlies the etheric world as the astral world, or as the world of spiritual beings who inhabit this astral outer world. Nothing of all this is seen, as long as we merely direct our senses to the physical world.

All that we perceive in the physical world is perceived through our senses. These senses work without our having much to do with it. Our eyes receive impressions of light, of colour, of their own accord. We can at most—and even that is half involuntary—adjust our gaze to a certain direction; we can gaze at something or we can look away from it. Even in this there is still much of the unconscious, but at all events a fragment of consciousness. And, above all, that which the eye must do inwardly in order to see colour, the wonderfully wise, inner activity which is exercised whenever we see anything—this we could never achieve as human beings if we were supposed to achieve it consciously. That would be out of the question. All this must, to begin with, happen unconsciously, because it is much too wise for man to be able in any way to help in it.

To attain a correct point of view as regards the knowledge possessed by the human being, we must really fill our thoughts with all the wisdom-filled arrangements which exist in the world, and which are quite beyond the capacity of man. If a man thinks only of what he can achieve himself, then he really blocks all paths to knowledge. The path to knowledge really begins at the point where we realise, in all humility, all that we are incapable of doing, but which must nevertheless come to pass in cosmic existence. The eye, the ear—yes, and the other sense-organs—are, in reality, such profoundly wise instruments that men will have to study for a long time before they will be able even to have an inkling of understanding of them during earthly existence. This must be fully realised. Observation of the spiritual, however, cannot be unconscious in this sense. In earlier times of human evolution this was possible even for observation of the spiritual. There was an instinctive clairvoyance which has faded away in the course of the evolution of humanity.

From now onwards, man must consciously attain an attitude to the cosmos through which he will be able to see through into the spiritual. And we must see through into the spiritual if we are to recognise the karmic connections of any experience we may have.

Now it is necessary for the observation of karma that we at least begin by paying attention to what can happen within us to develop the faculty of observing karmic connections. We, on our part, must help a little in order to make these observations conscious. We must do more, for example, than we do for our eye in order to become conscious of colour.

My dear friends, what we must learn first of all is summed up in one word: to wait. We must be able to wait for the inner experiences.

About this “being able to wait”, I have already spoken. It was in the year 1889—I tell about this in the Story of my Life—that the inner spiritual construction of Goethe's “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” first came before my mind's eye. And it was then, for the first time, that the perception as it were of a greater, wider connection than appears in the Fairy Tale itself presented itself to me. But I also knew at that time: I cannot yet make of this connection what I shall some day be able to make of it. And so what the Fairy Tale revealed to me at that time simply remained lying in the soul.

Then, seven years later, in the year 1896, it welled up again, but still not in such a way that it could be properly shaped; and again, about 1903, seven years later. Even then, although it came with great definition and many connections it could not yet receive its right form. Seven years later again, when I conceived my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation—then only did the Fairy Tale reappear, transformed in such a way that it could be shaped and moulded plastically.

Such things, therefore, demand a real waiting, a time for ripening. We must bring our own experiences into relation with that which exists out there in the world. At a moment when only the seed of a plant is present, we obviously cannot have the plant. The seed must be brought into the right conditions for growth, and we must wait until the blossom, and finally the fruit, come out of the seed. And so it must be with the experiences through which we pass. We cannot take the line of being thrilled by an experience, simply because it happens to be there, and then forgetting it. The person who only wants his experiences when they are actually present will be doing little towards ultimate observation of the spiritual world. We must be able to wait. We must be able to let the experiences ripen within the soul.

Now the possibility exists for a comparatively quick ripening of insight into karmic connections if, for a considerable time, we endeavour patiently, and with inner activity, to picture in our consciousness, more and more clearly, an experience which would otherwise simply take its course externally, without being properly grasped, so that it fades away in the course of life. After all, this fading away is what really happens with the events of life. For what does a man do with events and experiences, as they approach him in the course of the day? He experiences them, but in reality only half observes them. You can realise how experiences are only half observed if you sit down one day in the afternoon or in the evening—and I advise you to do it—and ask yourself: ‘What did I actually experience this morning at half-past nine?’ And now try to call up such an experience in all details before your soul, recall it as if it were actually there, say at half-past seven in the evening—as if you were creating it spiritually before you. You will see how much you will find lacking, how much you failed to observe, and how difficult it is. If you take a pen or pencil to write it all down, you will soon begin to bite at the pen or the pencil, because you cannot hit upon the details—and, in time, you want to bite them out of the pencil!

Yes, but that is just the point, to take upon oneself the task of placing before the mind, in all precision, an experience one has had,—not at the moment when it is actually there, but afterwards. It must be placed before the soul as if one were going to paint it spiritually. If the experience were one in which somebody spoke, this must be made quite objectively real: the ring of the voice, the way in which the words were used, clumsily or cleverly—the picture must be made with strength and vigour. In short, we try to make a picture of what we have experienced. If we make a picture of such an experience of the day, then in the following night, the astral body, when it is outside the physical body and the etheric body, occupies itself with this picture. The astral body itself is, in reality, the bearer of the picture, and gives shape to it outside the body. The astral body takes the picture with it when it goes out on the first night. It shapes it there, outside the physical and etheric bodies.

That is the first stage (we will take these stages quite exactly): the sleeping astral body, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, shapes the picture of the experience. Where does it do this? In the external ether. It is now in the external etheric world; it does this in the external ether.

Now picture to yourself the human being: his physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and the astral body is outside. We will leave aside the ego. There outside is the astral body, reshaping this picture that has been made. But the astral body does this in the external ether. In consequence of this the following happens—think of it: the astral body is there outside, shaping this picture. All this happens in the external ether which encrusts, as it were, with its own substance that which is formed as a picture within the astral body. So the external ether makes the etheric form (dotted (dark) outline) into a picture which is clearly and precisely visualised by the eye of spirit.

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In the morning you return into the physical and etheric bodies and bear into them what has been made substantial by the external ether. That is to say: the sleeping astral body shapes the picture of the experience outside the physical and etheric bodies. The external ether then impregnates the picture with its own substance. You can imagine that the picture becomes stronger thereby, and that now, when the astral body returns in the morning with this stronger substantiality, it can make an impression upon the etheric body in the human being. With forces that are derived from the external ether, the astral body now stamps an impression into the etheric body.

The second stage is therefore: The picture is impressed into the etheric body by the astral body.

There we have the events of the first day and the first night. Now we come to the second day. On the second day, while you are busying yourself with all the little things of life in full waking consciousness, there, underneath the consciousness, in the unconscious, the picture is descending into the etheric body. And in the next night, when the etheric body is undisturbed, when the astral body has gone out again, the etheric body elaborates this picture.

Thus in the second night the picture is elaborated by the man's own etheric body. There we have the second stage:—The picture is impressed into the etheric body by the astral body; and in the next night the etheric body elaborates the picture. Thus we have: the second day and the second night.

Now if you do this, if you actually do not give up occupying yourself with the picture you formed on the preceding day—and you can continue to occupy yourself with it, for a reason which I shall immediately mention—if you do not disdain to do this, then you will find that you are living on further with the picture. What does this mean—to continue occupying yourself with it? If you really take pains to shape such a picture, vigorously, elaborating it plastically in characteristic, strong lines on the first day after you had the experience, then you have really exerted yourself spiritually. Such things cost spiritual exertion. I don't mean what I am going to say as a hint—present company is, of course, always excepted in these matters!—but after all, it must be said that the majority of men simply do not know what spiritual exertion is. Spiritual exertion, true spiritual exertion, comes about only by means of activity of soul. When you allow the world to work upon you, and let thoughts run their course without taking them in hand, then there is no spiritual exertion. We should not imagine, when something tires us, that we have exerted ourselves spiritually. Getting tired does not imply that there has been spiritual exertion. We can get tired, for instance, from reading. But if we have not ourselves been productive in some way during the reading, if we merely let the thoughts contained in the book act on us, then we are not exerting ourselves. On the contrary, a person who has really exerted himself spiritually, who has exerted himself out of the inner activity of his soul, may then take up a book, a very interesting one, and just “sleep off” his spiritual exertion in the best possible way, in the reading of it. Naturally, we can fall asleep over a book if we are tired. This getting tired is no sign at all of spiritual exertion.

A sign of spiritual exertion, however, is this: that one feels—the brain is used up. It is just as we may feel that a demand has been made on the muscle of the arm when lifting things. Ordinary thought makes no such strong claims upon the brain. The process continues, and you will even notice that when you try it for the first time, the second, the third, the tenth, you get a slight headache. It is not that you get tired or fall asleep; on the contrary, you cannot fall asleep; you get a slight headache from it. Only you must not regard this headache as something baleful; on the contrary, you must take it as actual proof of the fact that you have exerted your head.

Well, the process goes on ... it stays with you until you go to sleep. If you have really done this on the preceding day, then you will awake in the morning with the feeling: “There actually is something in me! I don't quite know what it is, but there is something in me, and it wants something from me. Yes, after all it is not a matter of indifference that I made this picture for myself yesterday. It really means something. This picture has changed. To-day it is giving me quite different feelings from those I had previously. The picture is making me have quite definite feelings.”

All this stays with you through the next day as the remaining inner experience of the picture which you made for yourself. And what you feel, and cannot get rid of through the whole of the day—this is a witness to the fact that the picture is now descending into the etheric body, as I have described to you, and that the etheric body is receiving it.

Now you will probably experience on waking after the next night—when you slip into your body after these two days—that you find this picture slightly changed, slightly transformed. You find it again ... precisely on waking the third day you find it again within you. It appears to you like a very real dream. But it has undergone a transformation. It will clothe itself in manifold pictures until it is other than it was. It will assume an appearance as if spiritual beings were now bringing you this experience. And you actually receive the impression: Yes, this experience which I had and which I subsequently formed into a picture, has actually been brought to me. If the experience happened to be with another human being, then we have the feeling after this has all happened, that actually we did not only experience it through that human being, but that it was really brought to us. Other forces, spiritual forces, have been at play. It was they who brought it to us.

The next day comes. This next day the picture is carried down from the etheric body into the physical body. The etheric body impresses this picture into the physical body, into the nerve-processes, into the blood-processes. On the third day the picture is impressed into the physical body. So the third stage is: The picture is stamped into the physical body by the etheric body.

And now comes the next night. You have been attending throughout the day to the ordinary little trifles of life, and underneath it all this important process is going on: the picture is being carried down into the physical body. All this goes on in the subconscious. When the following night comes, the picture is elaborated in the physical body. It is spiritualised in the physical body. First of all, throughout the day, the picture is brought down into the processes of the blood and nerves, but in the night it is spiritualised. Those who have vision see how this picture is now elaborated by the physical body, but it appears spiritually as an altogether changed picture. We can say: the physical body elaborates the picture during the next night.

1st Day and 1st Night:

When outside the physical and etheric bodies, the astral body shapes the picture of the experience. The outer ether impregnates the picture with its own substance.

2nd Day and 2nd Night:

The picture is stamped by the astral body into the etheric body. And the etheric body elaborates the picture during the next day.

3rd Day and 3rd Night:

The picture is stamped by the etheric body into the physical body. And the physical body elaborates the picture during the next night.

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Now this is something of which you must make an absolutely correct mental picture. The physical body actually works up this picture spiritually. It spiritualises the picture. So that when all this has really been gone through, it does happen—when the human being is asleep—that his physical body works up the whole picture, but not in such a way that it remains within the physical body. Out of the physical body there arises a transformation, a greatly magnified transformation of the picture. And when you get up in the morning, this picture stands there, and in truth you hover in it; it is like a kind of cloud in which you yourself are. With this picture you get up in the morning.

So this is the third day and the third night. With this picture, which is entirely transformed, you get out of bed on the fourth day. You rise from sleep, enveloped by this cloud. And if you have actually shaped the picture with the necessary strength on the first day, and if you have paid attention to what your feeling conveyed to you on the second day, you will notice now that your will is contained in the picture as it now is. The will is contained in it! But this will is unable to express itself; it is as though fettered. Put into somewhat radical terms, it is actually as if one had planned after the manner of an incredibly daring sprinter, who might resolve to make a display of a bravado race: I will run, now I am running to Ober-Dornach, I make a picture of it already, I've got it within me. It is my will ... But in the very moment when I want to start, when the will is strongest, somebody fetters me, so that I stand there quite rigidly. The whole will has unfolded, but I cannot carry out the will. Such, approximately, is the process.

When this experience of feeling yourself in a pillory develops—for it is a feeling of being in a pillory after the third night—when you again awake in it, feeling in a pillory as it were, with the will fettered through and through, then, if you can pay attention to it, you will find that the will begins to transform itself. This will becomes sight. In itself it can do nothing, but it leads to our seeing something. It becomes an eye of the soul. And the picture, with which one rose from sleep, becomes objective. What it shows is the event of the previous earth-life, or of some previous earth-life, which had been the cause of the experience that we shaped into a picture on the first day. By means of this transformation through feeling and through will, one gets the picture of the causal event of a preceding incarnation.

When we describe these things, they appear somewhat overpowering. This is not to be wondered at, for they are utterly unfamiliar to the human being of the present time. They were not so unknown to the men of earlier culture-epochs. Only, according to the opinion of modern men who are clever, those other men—in their whole way of living—were stupid! Nevertheless, those ‘stupid’ men of the earlier culture-epochs really had these experiences, only modern man darkens everything by his intellect, which makes him clever, but not exactly wise.

As I said, the thing seems somewhat tumultuous, when one relates it. But after all, one is obliged to use such words; for since the things are utterly unknown to-day, they would not appear so striking if they were worded more mildly. They must appear striking. But the whole experience, from beginning to end, throughout the three days, as I have described it to you, must take its course in inner intimacy, in rest and peace of mind. For so-called occult experiences—and these are such—do not take their course in such a way that they can be bragged about. When one begins to brag about them, they immediately stop. They must take their course in inner repose and quietude. And it is best when, for the time being, nobody at all notices anything of the consecutive experiences except the person who is having them.

Now you must not think that the thing succeeds immediately, from the outset. One always finds, of course, that people are pleased when such things are related. This is quite comprehensible ... and it is good. How much there is that one can learn to know! And then, with a tremendous diligence people start on it. They begin ... and it doesn't succeed. Then they become disheartened. Then, perhaps, they try it again, several times. Again it does not succeed. But, in effect, if one has tried it about 49 times, or, let us say, somebody else has tried it about 69 times, then the 50th or the 70th time it does succeed. For what really matters in all these things is the acquisition of a kind of habit of soul concerning them. To begin with, one must find one's way into these things, one must acquire habits of the soul. This is something that certainly ought to be carefully observed by the Anthroposophical Society which, since the Christmas Foundation, is intended to be a complete expression of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Really a very great deal has been given within the Anthroposophical Society. It is enough to make one giddy to see standing in a row all the Lecture-Courses that have been printed. But in spite of it, people come again and again, asking one thing or the other. In the majority of cases this is not at all necessary, for if everything that is contained in the Lecture-Courses is really worked upon, then most of the questions find their own answer in a much surer way. One must have patience, really have patience. Truly, there is a great deal in anthroposophical literature that can work in the soul. We must take to heart all that has to be accomplished, and the time will be well filled with all that has to be done. But, on the other hand, in regard to many of the things which people want to know, it must be pointed out that the Lecture-Courses exist, that they have been left lying there, and after they have been given many people trouble about them only inasmuch as they want a “new” Course; they just lay the old ones aside. These things are closely connected with what I have to say to-day.

One does not reach inner continuity in following up all that germinates and ripens in the soul, if there is a desire to hurry in this way, from the new to the new; the essential point is that things must mature within the soul. We must accustom ourselves to inner, active work of the soul, work in the spirit. This is what helps us to achieve such things as I have explained to you to-day; this alone will help us to have, after the third day, the inner attitude of soul in connection with some experience we may wish to see through in the light of karma.

This must always be the mode of procedure if we are to learn to know the spiritual. To begin with, we must say to ourselves: the first moment when we approach the spiritual in thought in some way, was the first beginning; it is quite impossible to have any kind of result immediately; we must be able to wait. Suppose I have an experience to-day that is karmically caused in a preceding incarnation. I will make a diagrammatic sketch. Here I am, here is my experience, the experience of to-day (right). This is caused by the quite differently-constituted personality in the same ego in a previous earth-life (left). There it is. It has long ceased to belong to my personality, but it is stamped into the etheric world, or into the astral world, which lies behind the etheric world. Now I have to go back, to retrace the way backwards.

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I told you that at first the thing appears as if some being were really bearing the experience towards me. This is so, on the second day. But after the third day it appears as if those who have brought it to me, those spiritual beings, withdraw, and I become aware of it as something of my own, which I myself, in a previous incarnation, laid down as cause. Because this is no longer within the present, because this is something I must behold in the past earth-life, I seem to be fettered. This state of being fettered ceases only when I have perceived the thing, when I have a picture of what was in the previous incarnation, and when I then look back to the event which I have not lost sight of through the three days. Then I become free, as I return, for now I can move about freely with the effect. As long as I am only within the cause, I cannot move about with the cause. Thus I go back into a previous incarnation, there become fettered as it were by the cause, and only when I now enter right into this present earth-life, is the thing resolved.

Now let us take an example: suppose somebody experiences at a certain time on a certain day that a friend says something to him that is not altogether pleasant—perhaps he had not expected it. This friend says to him something not altogether pleasant. He now ponders what he experiences in listening to what his friend says. He makes a vivid picture of what he has experienced, how he got a slight shock, and how he got vexed, perhaps he was also hurt, or the like. This is an inner working, and as such it must be brought into the picture. Now he lets the three days elapse. The second day he goes about and says to himself: ‘This picture which I made yesterday has had a strange effect upon me. The whole day long I have had within me something like an acid, as it were, something that comes from the picture and makes me feel inwardly out of sorts ...’ At the end of the whole process, after the third day, he says to himself: ‘I get up in the morning and now I have the definite feeling that the picture is fettering me.’ Then this event of the previous incarnation is made known to me. I see it before me. Then I pass over to the experience which is still quite fresh, which is still quite present. The fettering ceases, and I say to myself: ‘So this is how it was in the previous earth-life! This is what caused it; now there is the effect. With this effect I can live again ... now the thing is present again.’

This must be practised over and over again, for generally the thread is broken on the very first day, when we make the first effort. And then nothing comes.

It is particularly favourable to let things run parallel, so that we do not stop at one event, but bring a number of. events of the day into picture-form in this way. You will say: ‘Then I must live through the next day with the greatest variety of feelings.’ But this is quite possible. It is not at all harmful. Only try it; the things go quite well together. ‘And must I then be fettered so and so often after the third day?’ This does not matter either. Nothing of this matters. The things will adjust themselves in time. What belongs, from an earlier incarnation, to a later one, will find its way to it. But it will not succeed at once; it will not succeed at the first attempt; the thread breaks. We must have patience to try the thing over and over again. Then we feel something growing stronger within the soul. Then we feel that something awakens in the soul, and we say to ourselves: ‘Until now you were filled with blood. You have felt within you the pulsation of the blood and the breath. Now there is something within you besides the blood. You are filled with something.’

You can even have the feeling that you are filled with something of which you can say quite definitely that it is like a metal that has become aeriform. You actually feel something like metal, you feel it in you. It cannot be described differently; it really is so. You feel yourself permeated with metal, in your whole body. Just as one can say of certain waters, that they ‘taste metallic’, the whole body seems to ‘taste’ as if it were inwardly permeated by some delicate substance, which, in reality, is something spiritual.

You feel this when you come upon something which was, of course, always in you, but to which you only now begin to pay attention. Then, when you begin to feel this, you again take courage. For if the thread is always breaking and everything is as it was before—if you want to get hold of a karmic connection, but the thread is always breaking—you may easily lose courage. But when you detect within yourself this sense of being inwardly filled, then you get courage again. And you say to yourself: it will come right in time.

But, my dear friends, these things must be experienced in all quietude and calmness. Those who cannot experience them quietly but get excited and emotional, spread an inner mist over what really ought to happen, and nothing comes of it.

There are people to-day in the outside world who know of Anthroposophy only by hearsay. Perhaps they have read nothing at all of it, or only what opponents have written. It is really very funny now.—Many of the antagonistic writings spring out of the earth like mushrooms—they quote literature, but among the literature they quote there are none of my books at all, only the books of opponents! The authors admit that they have not really approached the original sources, that they know only the antagonistic literature. Such things exist to-day. And so there are people outside who say: “The Anthroposophists are mad.” As a matter of fact, what one can least of all afford to be in order to reach anything at all in the spiritual world is to be mad. One must not be mad in the very slightest degree if one hopes to come to anything in the spiritual world. Even the tiniest fragment of madness is a hindrance to reaching anything. This simply must be avoided. Even a slight fancifulness, slight capriciousness, must be avoided. For all this giving way to the moods of the day, the caprices of the day, forms obstacles and handicaps on the way to progress in the spiritual world. If one desires to progress in the field of Anthroposophy, there is nothing for it but to have an absolutely sane head and an absolutely sane heart. With doting sentimentality (Schwärmerei) which is already the beginning of madness, one can achieve nothing.

Things such as I have told you to-day, strange as they sound, must be experienced in the light of absolute clarity of mind, of absolute soundness of head and heart. Truly, there is nothing that can more surely save one from very slight daily madness, than Anthroposophy. All madness would [disappear] by means of Anthroposophy if people would only devote themselves to it with real intensity. If somebody were to set himself to go mad through Anthroposophy, this would certainly be an experiment with inadequate means!

I do not say this in order to make a joke, but because it must be an integral part of the mood and tenor of anthroposophical endeavour. This is the attitude that must be adopted towards the matter, as I have just explained to you, half in joke, if we want to approach it in the right way, with the right orientation. We must set out to be as sane as possible; then we approach it in the right spirit. This is the least we can strive for, and above all, strive for in respect to the little madnesses of life.

Once I was friends with a very clever professor of philosophy, now long since dead, who used to say on every occasion: “We all have some point or other on which we are a little mad!” He meant, all people are a little mad ... but he was a very clever man. I always believed there was something behind his words, that his assertion was not altogether without foundation! He did not become an Anthroposophist.

Protocol Record Stuttgart

After various speakers have expressed themselves in the general debate, Rudolf Steiner takes the floor:

Rudolf Steiner: It seems necessary to me that we now move on to the special debate. Mr. Leinhas has already made some comments not to derive things from gray generalities and to bring them into the realm of the necessary. And Mr. Molt has also made certain suggestions. But it seems necessary to me that the following be said in order to give a truly practical side to our endeavors.

First of all, it is necessary for this cultural council to address the task of propagating the whole idea of the threefold social order so that it penetrates into broader sections of the public and is understood there. Without propagandizing for the idea of the threefold social order, one naturally does not get ahead in a single specific area.

But then it would be necessary for this Cultural Council to do a second thing, through which it could actually carry out practical work as quickly as possible. So far, we have tried - just recapitulate what has happened - to create understanding for the idea of the threefold social order. Of course we were told: That is utopian, that is ideology, that has nothing to do with reality! But we did not let ourselves be deterred from continuing to work for this understanding and at the same time to bring it to a certain result: to the propagation of the works council idea.

And now that the idea of works councils has actually been presented to the world as a real thing to be worked out, people are beginning to see the idea of the threefold social order not so much as a utopia. Now they are beginning to take it seriously. The industrialists are up in arms about the works councils, the trade unions are up in arms about the works councils, in short, there is a lot of agitation against them from all sides. I don't know whether they would agitate so strongly against something they found to be completely harmless. This shows the transition from the original germinal idea, which already contains the fact, to real life practice. But the practice of life must then also be maintained with the appropriate strength. The question of works councils also originated in Russia, only it ended in failure there because all sorts of other things poured over it and fought against it. With regard to economic life, it is therefore a matter of the works councils providing the basis for economic life and its members to emerge from the current conditions themselves. I just want to show you that we are moving on to real practical work. First, there must be an understanding of the basic idea, then you can move on to the practical work.

The cultural council should first of all be aware that its first task is, of course, in the field of education in the broadest sense and of those suggestions that must come from the rest of the intellectual life for the education system. Today, it cannot be a matter of taking socialization in the abstract again. Entertainments which have gradually become distinctly capitalist entertainments in modern times – such as the theater and, to the highest degree, the cinema, which is, after all, only a concomitant of the very extreme capitalist-bureaucratic age – will only be able to achieve their socialized form when the foundations of intellectual life are first socialized. I really fear that we will soon also be hearing about the “socialization of purebred dog breeding, the distribution of Christmas trees to families” and the like. If socialization were to be understood in this way, we would not get anywhere.

What we have to deal with first of all, if the Cultural Council is to develop its activities, is, firstly, the elementary school question. Look at the elementary school question from a practical point of view. The Anthroposophical Society itself is a spiritual movement that has emerged from contemporary spiritual life and placed itself on an independent footing – at least in terms of its intentions. It could achieve a great deal if people had the courage to do so and did not rely too much on the forces that stand in the way of such courage. But the important thing is to grasp the right approach from the point of view of threefolding. The School of Spiritual Science has been founded in Dornach. It is certainly not located on any state property; it works independently in one branch of spiritual life. A number of our members have now expressed the wish to educate their children from the bottom up, in accordance with the principles and impulses of true spiritual life. I do not need to emphasize the fact that anthroposophists also have children; so we already had the children. In Dornach we might even have had the teachers. And the parents were highly motivated. We had everything, really. So what did we lack? Why did we not found such a school? Because the state, free Switzerland, does not give us the right to do so, because it does not recognize a school that is not established by the state itself.

My dear friends, the main thing is to fight for recognition of what is achieved in such a school on the basis of purely spiritual and educational principles. It is a matter of abolishing any kind of state school supervision and any kind of law that only allows teaching to be given by this or that teacher appointed by the state, and the like. That is the first thing. And here we have to struggle with the objections that are always raised today, especially by the Socialists, under the banner of the unified school, when it comes to a healthy basis for the elementary school system.

Let us take the example of Dornach again. Dornach is in the Canton of Solothurn. When I first spoke there about the threefold social order, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Arlesheim soon came to me and said: It will be very easy to see in the canton of Solothurn how difficult it is to accommodate such an endeavor, because it took a great effort to wrest the school from the school “brothers” and school “sisters” of the canton of Solothurn, and it took a great effort to secularize the school. If the right to found schools were granted to any kind of endeavor, then clerical schools would probably arise, perhaps even schools for the nobility. In short, people were terribly afraid that these things might take hold.

These are things that must be dealt with first. The discussion must be entered into with the public: How does the Cultural Council, with its idea of the threefold social order, relate to the so-called state-run comprehensive school with compulsory education? This is the issue that must be clarified in public. So the first task is: How does the Federation for Threefolding relate to what a member of the majority socialist party and member of the state parliament in Reutlingen recently said: What do you want then? We have now created a school law that is absolutely in line with the most ideal views! – Then the Federation for Threefolding has to show through its cultural council: Even if you were angel-like beings, we would never accept a school law from the hands of the state! – because the point is to wrest the school from the state. It must be shown that people will not become illiterate again if schools are freed from state control, that new classes of students will not emerge, and so on. That is the first positive question, the elementary school question. And until it is shown [in the cultural council] that there is an understanding of such a question in the face of today's political currents, the cultural council will only be a wild beating around the bush.

The second thing is to show that we can only get rid of the higher schools if we get rid of the awful system of qualifications. Everything that stands between elementary school and university can only be determined by the fact that it is preparation for university. The universities have to say: We want to get these or those people into our ranks, for this we make the demand that the secondary modern schools and the secondary schools – which must also become something completely different according to these or those principles – are managed. Consider that the secondary modern school has long since existed only to prepare students for the one-year voluntary military service by granting them the right to do so, to become future civil servants. So here, too, it is important: Get the schools out of the state!

Then we must fight for the autonomy of the university. It already had that in the old days. We have only just destroyed the last remnants of the university's autonomy in recent times. The university must be an autonomous corporation. It must regain what has particularly ventured in recent times. What the universities used to consider as self-evident was what they awarded when they granted a doctorate in any faculty. That was the expression for it: the university here and there, which is regarded as an autonomous body, gives XY the right to call himself a doctor in a certain field; it therefore awards him the diploma. This meant that the autonomous body had established the right for people, which it could guarantee as an autonomous body. And the state has conquered this whole thing, because today the awards of the faculties are only decorative pieces, titles without any rights, and the states have introduced their state examinations for this, that is, they have extended their tentacles to the universities. They are no longer autonomous. You can't find anything like in the past, where someone could be said to be a doctor who studied at the University of Montpellier; that's a good school! Today everything is abstracted. So the demand is: autonomous universities, abolition of all state exams. If the state needs people, it should test them. If it needs someone for a position, it can test them according to its own criteria. Such a test is only meaningful for the state, not for what must be free from the state in the areas of teaching and education.

The following positive questions arise:

Firstly, a free comprehensive school without state supervision, justified by the demands of the time;

secondly, the abolition of the so-called system of qualification for secondary schools,

thirdly, the reduction of state examinations and the autonomy of universities.

These things must be presented to the world as a clear program. If we start with this, we begin at a similar point as in business life with the question of works councils. If we start with this, the others, who of course need this or that, will follow. The point is to start by tackling things where they are universally human: in lower and higher education, which is generally also universally human.

That is what I wanted to say first about the transition to the special debate, so that this comes out. Certainly a committee should be elected. But it should deal with the most current issues and I wanted to point out to you that the most current issues and positive ones are important. Initially, no value should be placed on the content of the individual worldviews. What matters is not whether Catholics, Protestants and so on want to found their schools, but [that] we achieve the very next practical thing in a positive way – initially in the field of intellectual life, which concerns all people: the position of the school on its own feet.

These are the issues that must be vigorously discussed in the coming days and must crystallize into very specific individual points. And with these individual points, those who are truly able and have the will to do so must then go before humanity to implement these things. For this upheaval in spiritual life is more important than anything else. Because without this upheaval in spiritual life, none of the rest will come about.

by Hella Wiesberger

The information contained in the section 'Notes on the Temple Legend' about the re-embodiments of Hiram Abiff as Lazarus-Johannes and as Christian Rosenkreutz needs to be supplemented, since it only forms part of what can be called Rudolf Steiner's research on Hiram and Johannes in the field of reincarnation. For it is not only concerned with the individuality of Lazarus-Johannes, the evangelist and apocalypticist, but also with that of John the Baptist, as well as the mysterious connection between the two.

These reincarnation research findings, which encompass both John figures equally, occupy a prominent position in the biography of his work because they stand at the beginning and end of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific lecturing activity and also run like a “red thread” through his entire work (Marie Steiner).

The first of these research results can be found at the beginning of Steiner's spiritual scientific lectures (1901/02) in connection with the threefold approach to justifying Christianity as a mystical fact and as the central event of human history: the lecture cycle “From Buddha to Christ” in the Berlin literary avant-garde circle “Die Kommenden”; the lecture series on Egyptian and Greek mystery religions and Christianity in the circle of Berlin theosophists; and the essay “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. All three presentations culminated in the interpretation of the Gospel of John, beginning with the raising of Lazarus as an initiation performed by Christ Jesus and in the conclusion that the raised Lazarus was the author of the Gospel of John. The cycle 'From Buddha to Christ', of which there are no transcripts, ended, according to Rudolf Steiner's statement in his lecture Dornach, June 11, 1923, with this motif; in the transcripts of the lecture series to the Theosophists, it is found under the date of March 15, 1902. In the writing 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact' does not state directly that Lazarus is the author of the Gospel of John, but it follows from the whole presentation.¹

Immediately after the attempt to justify Christianity, Rudolf Steiner also began to introduce the teachings of reincarnation and karma into European intellectual life, since all spiritual scientific research is based on them. ² This applies particularly to those on history; after all, history is brought about by the re-embodied human souls, in that they carry over the results of their lives in one epoch into their lives in other epochs. And because this also applies to the spiritual guides of humanity, an essential chapter is devoted to their impulses in the various ages in the wide-ranging subject of history and reincarnation. The two John figures are given a great deal of space in it.

The first communications from earlier lives on earth of these two Christian leaders were made by Rudolf Steiner in 1904, beginning with John the Baptist. In the public lecture on Christianity and Reincarnation held in Berlin on January 4, 1904, it is stated that reincarnation was taught in the mysteries at all times, including by Christ, who, as it is already stated in the Gospel, pointed out to his trusted disciples that John the Baptist was the reincarnated prophet Elijah. Further messages followed at the turn of the year 1908/09. The background to this is described by Marie Steiner in an essay written after Rudolf Steiner's death:

"It was at the time when Rudolf Steiner encouraged me to come forward more and more with the recitation. At the time, I was trying to work my way through to Novalis. I told him that it was not easy for me, that I had not yet found the key to Novalis. He advised me to put myself in the place of the holy nuns. The nuns did not help me. On the contrary. I didn't really know what to do with them. Then suddenly it brightened up: Raphael's figures surrounded me. The child, with his deep, profound eyes, shone in his mother's arms. “I see you in a thousand images, Maria, sweetly expressed...” A resounding ocean all around, harmonies of color. I said to Rudolf Steiner: The nuns did not do it. But someone else helped: Raphael. Now Novalis is completely transparent to me. A glow passed over Rudolf Steiner's mild countenance. A few days later, he revealed the secret of Novalis, Raphael and John Elias to us for the first time.3 From “On the Eve of Michaelmas Day” in “What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for its members”, 2nd year 1925.

This “a few days later” cannot be dated exactly.⁴ The first fixed date is handed down through the recollections of a Novalis event that took place in Munich on January 6, 1909, and which is described as follows: “I saw and heard Marie von Sivers for the first time under the Christmas tree in the Munich branch's room, when she, surrounded by colorful afterimages of Raphael's paintings, recited verses by Novalis. It was around New Year 1908/09. The whole room was lined with rose-red satin, a rose cross – at that time still with twelve red roses – hung in the middle above the lectern, from where we have just heard through Rudolf Steiner about the being that was incarnated as Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis.” ⁵

It must therefore have been a very solemn event. The same applies to a half-year later event, when, in the middle of the lecture cycle on the Gospel of John in relation to the three other Gospels, a Novalis matinee took place again in Kassel (Kassel, July 4, 1909). Again, we have only the later written memory of a participant: “After a musical introduction, Rudolf Steiner announced that Marie von Sivers would recite some poems by Novalis. With deep empathy, Marie von Sivers spoke in the speech formation that was already her own. After that, Rudolf Steiner began his lecture, in which he presented the incarnations of Elijah-John the Baptist-Raphael-Novalis as a sequence of lives of the same individuality. ... Rudolf Steiner spoke in accordance with the mood of this recitation, in an extremely warm, insistent, even solemn manner. The lecture had an almost sacred character. ... And so at the end of the lecture - the only subject of which was this series of re-embodiments - there was a deep sense of emotion among the audience and many a eye shimmered with restrained tears among the men and welling tears among the women.6From Rudolf Toepel's memoirs for the Rudolf Steiner estate administration archive.

The fact that the process of re-embodiment is not as simple as one might imagine has already been pointed out:

"People, even theosophists, usually have far too simple a mental image of the secrets of reincarnation. One must not imagine that any soul that is embodied today in its three bodies simply embodied itself in a previous incarnation and then again in a previous incarnation, which was then preceded by another one, always according to the same pattern. The secrets are much more complicated. (...) We often cannot fit a historical figure into such a scheme if we want to understand them correctly. We have to approach it in a much more complicated way.” (Leipzig, September 12, 1908)

This was, so to speak, the announcement of what was then begun at the end of 1908 as a higher chapter of the doctrine of re-embodiment. Using concrete examples of historical figures, it was shown how, due to the law of spiritual economy for the preservation of what is valuable in spiritual terms, not only the human ego but also other aspects of the being can be re-embodied, and in other individualities. The descriptions of such interpenetrating embodiments in great spiritual teachers, the highest of whom are the so-called bodhisattvas, were one of the main themes of the years 1909 to 1914.⁷

Among the figures presented in this way, John the Baptist appears again and again. In particular, in the lecture cycle “The Gospel of Mark” (September 1912), not only is he given a great deal of space, but there is also a reference to an incarnation that predates the time of Elijah. Since then, five incarnations in spiritual history have been recognized: Phinehas (in the time of Moses), Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis. It is therefore all the more surprising that in the lectures on the “Fifth Gospel” (1913/14), delivered a year later, the following remark is made with reference to John the Baptist: “I am not saying this now from the Fifth Gospel” - by which he meant the results of the Akasha research on the figures of the Gospels - ‘because, with regard to the Fifth Gospel, it has not yet reached the figure of John the Baptist; but I am saying it from what might otherwise arise.’ (Berlin, January 13, 1914). In view of the amount of research that had already been done on John the Baptist, this remark can only refer to the research into the interpenetration of the embodied beings, as it had already been researched and presented for other figures in the Gospels. The reason why this research on John the Baptist could only be carried out years later is explained by the tradition that Rudolf Steiner was once asked during the war of 1914-1918 whether the reflections on the Fifth Gospel could not be continued and that he replied that the spiritual atmosphere was much too unsettled for such research as a result of the war; and when the question was repeated after the war, the answer was that other tasks were now more urgent.⁸The fact that a possibility must have arisen later is shown by Rudolf Steiner's last address, given on September 28, 1924.

Five incarnations of spiritual-historical significance had also been communicated over the years, also starting in 1904, by the other John figure, Lazarus John: Hiram Abiff, Lazarus John, Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the Count of St. Germain in the 18th century. ⁹ In the Berlin lecture of November 4, 1904, it was stated that the Count of St. Germain was a re-embodiment of Christian Rosenkreutz, and the connection of this incarnation with Hiram Abiff is evident from the general tenor of the entire lecture, even if it is not explicitly stated. The reincarnation of Hiram as Lazarus-Johannes was probably first mentioned in the context of the work of the Erkenntnis cult in the time of Austria in 1908; in the two lectures of September 27 and 28, 1911, in Neuchâtel, the two incarnations of Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries were described. It is not possible to say exactly when the connection between the incarnations of Lazarus and Johannes and Christian Rosenkreutz was first mentioned, because it was passed on orally without a precise date.¹⁰

Even before Lazarus was spoken of as the reincarnation of Hiram Abiff in the Erkenntniskultischer working group at Easter 1908, the Lazarus-Johannes research had been documented in a special way by the initiation experiences of Lazarus-Johannes from his apocalypse being designed into images of occult seals and columns for the Munich Whitsun Congress in 1907, which at the same time formed the basic elements of the new building idea. Furthermore, it was manifested in word and picture that the path of schooling that is decisive for the West is the Christian-Rosicrucian one founded by Christian Rosenkreutz.¹¹

The extent to which the individuality of John the Baptist can also be seen in connection with the building idea can be seen from the following events. When the laying of the foundation stone for the building originally planned in Munich was scheduled for May 16, 1912, Rudolf Steiner spoke again and repeatedly on his journey there about the already known four incarnations: Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis; last in Munich, on the same day that the laying of the foundation stone should have taken place there. Due to difficulties caused by the authorities, the laying of the foundation stone did not take place. However, in the summer, the artistic-dramatic realization of the idea behind the building - to create a modern, and that means public, mystery center - was embodied in the first great scene of the new mystery drama “The Guardian of the Threshold”. This scene takes place in the anteroom to the rooms of a mystery society, where several people have been summoned to be informed that a major scientific work that has just been published has created the necessary condition for people who were previously not allowed to do so because they had not been initiated to now be able to appear at the place of initiation. The Grand Master of the Mystical Union explains this in a speech about the continuity of the spiritual leadership of humanity, which is given according to a stage direction by Rudolf Steiner in front of the four portraits of Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis, and begins with the words:

In the name of that spirit which

---

in our place of worship, we appear at this moment before people who have not yet been allowed to hear the word that sounds here mysteriously...

And when, eight years later, in the fall of 1920, the building that had since been erected on the Dornach hill near Basel was put into operation, Rudolf Steiner reworked this same speech for the first building event in the first person, which appears extremely rarely in his poetry, and had Marie Steiner read it into the two domed rooms from the organ gallery at the festive opening ceremony:

In the name of that spirit which

---

in our striving proclaims itself,

---

I appear at this moment

---

before people who from now on want to hear

---

the word that sounds so earnestly here for the souls...

Through texts taken from the “Chymischen Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreutz anno 145% the other Johannes individuality, Lazarus-Johannes, was also included in this first building event.

Then, with the end of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific lectures in September 1924, exactly four years after the first building event (in September 1920), the importance of the research on John was once again forcefully expressed. For when, on Sunday, September 28, 1924, on the eve of Michaelmas, he struggled to his feet, already seriously ill, to speak once more to the members present, what was his concern? The two Johannes individualities! In a deeply moving way, he spoke about the four incarnations of Elias, Johannes, Raffael, Novalis, in order to then actually lead up to the new result of the Johannes research: the mysterious connection between the two in the resurrection of Lazarus. However, his strength was no longer sufficient to present this new research result. It was only hinted at by not always mentioning John the Baptist, but Lazarus-John as the re-embodied Elijah. However, because it could not be further explained, an understanding difficulty arose for the audience. Some friends who were still able to ask him about it have handed down what he replied as follows:

In answer to the further question of how this connection between two individualities is to be understood in terms of further incarnations, Marie Steiner pointed out:

Thus Rudolf Steiner's Hiram-Johannes research, with the mystery of the connection between the two Johannes individualities, as hinted at in the last address, has become a spiritual legacy that calls for constant efforts to understand it, not least because the question of the two Johanneses is one whose solution is of particular importance for the future. This is a statement by Rudolf Steiner from the very last period of his life.¹⁵

Now, a fully valid answer to the question raised by Marie Steiner regarding the distinction between the secrets of incarnation and incorporation will have to be left to future spiritual research. However, the available research results can shed some light on the question of what meaning must be associated with the secret of the interpenetration of the two John individualities. Thus, if one brings together the descriptions that Rudolf Steiner gave in different contexts, it can be seen that a decisive part of this meaning must lie in the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha as “the conquest of earthly death through the life of the spirit” (Berlin, October 23, 1908). What this means can be seen from the following fundamental clarification of the relationship between individuality and personality:

"Today, it is easy to confuse the concepts of individuality and personality. Individuality is the eternal element that runs through life on earth from one incarnation to the next. Personality is what a person acquires in the course of one lifetime. If we wish to study individuality, we must look into the depths of the human soul; if we wish to study personality, we must see how the essential core lives. The essential core is born into the people, into the occupation. All this determines the inner being, depersonalizes it. In a person who is still at a lower level of development, little will be seen of the work on his inner being. The way he speaks, the way he gestures, and so on, is simply as his people have it. But those are the advanced people who give themselves the way of speaking and gesturing from their inner being. The more a person's inner being can work on his outer being, the more he develops as a human being. One could now say that this is how individuality is expressed in personality. The one who has his own gestures, his own physiognomy, even in his actions and in relation to his surroundings, has a distinct personality. Does all this get lost at death for later? No, it is not. Christianity knows very well that this is not the case. What is meant by the resurrection of the flesh or of the personality is nothing other than the preservation of the personal into all subsequent incarnations. What a person has achieved as a personality remains with him, because it is incorporated into the individuality and this carries it forward into the following incarnations. If we have done something with our body that has a unique character, then this body, this power that has worked, rises again. As much as we have worked on ourselves, as much as we have made of ourselves, is not lost on us.” (Berlin, March 15, 1906)

The real consciousness of immortality is thus connected with the depersonalization of the individuality, the higher spiritual faculties of man. And the fact that this process also means the permeation of man with Christ is indicated by the following brief commentary on a passage from the so-called Gospel of the Egyptians:

“There is an old writing in which the greatest ideal for the development of the ego, Christ Jesus, is characterized in such a way that it says: When the two become one, when the outer becomes like the inner, then man has attained Christ-likeness within himself. That is the meaning of a certain passage in the Egyptian Gospel.” (Munich, December 4, 1909)

The interpretation that Rudolf Steiner gives of the Provençal saga of Flor and Blancheflor in his lecture Berlin, May 6, 1909, shows even more clearly what is meant by the union of the inner and the outer, of individuality and personality. This saga - which is closely related to the Hiram Johannes research because it is said that the soul celebrated in Flor reappeared in the 13th and 14th centuries in the founder of Rosicrucianism, for the founding of a new mystery school, which has to cultivate the Christ secret in a new way that corresponds to modern times. It tells of a couple who were born on the same day, at the same hour, in the same house, and were raised together and were devoted to each other from the beginning in great love. Separated from each other due to a lack of understanding on the part of others, Flor sets out to find Blancheflor. After severe, life-threatening dangers, they were finally reunited until they also died on the same day.

Rudolf Steiner interprets these images as follows: Flor means something like the flower with the red leaves or the rose, Blancheflor means the flower with the white leaves or the lily. Flor or Rose is “the symbol of the human soul that has taken up the personality, the I-impulse within itself, that lets the spiritual work out of its individuality, that has brought the I-impulse into the red blood. But in the lily, one saw the symbol of the soul that can only remain spiritual by keeping the ego outside of it, only reaching to the boundary. Thus rose and lily are two opposites. The rose has self-awareness entirely within itself, the lily entirely without itself. But the union of the soul within and the soul without, as the world spirit animating the world, has existed. Flor and Blancheflor express the finding of the world soul, of the world I, by the human soul, the human I. (...) In the union of the lily soul and the rose soul, that was seen which can find connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. (Berlin, May 6, 1909)

When it is said that the union of the soul within and the soul without, which as the world spirit animates the world, has taken place, it is certainly meant that the Christ principle, as the highest spiritual, has united with the personality, the earthly body, of Jesus of Nazareth. For only by these two becoming completely one, right down to the physical, could earthly death truly be conquered.

The extent to which the contrast between Rose Soul and Lily Soul also applies to the two individualities of John can be seen from the fact that Hiram Lazarus is always characterized as a representative of the forces of personality, while the Elijah Soul is often described as such a highly spiritual being that it is only loosely connected from the outside with its earthly vehicles, including John the Baptist. was only loosely connected from the outside.¹⁶ If the union of Rose Soul and Lily Soul can lead to a connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then, with regard to the union of the two John souls in the resurrection of Lazarus by Christ Jesus, it may be concluded that the disciple whom the Lord loved has become that being to whom the Christ-secret of the conquest of death has been transmitted and is carried forth by it, as is expressed in the saying about Christian Rosenkreutz: “With this individuality and its work since the 13th century” - in which it was allowed to experience a new initiation - ‘we connect everything that includes us, the continuation of the impulse that was given through the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth and through the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha.’ (Berlin, December 22, 1912)

A further aspect arises when the words from the Gospel according to Egypt are added to the words: “When the two become one and the outside becomes like the inside” and the subsequent words: “and the male becomes like the female, so that there is neither male nor female”. This latter word indicates that there will be no more death if there is no more sexuality, since death and sexuality are mutually dependent. Hiram Abiff was already promised in the temple legend that a son would be born to him who, even if he could not see him himself, would bring forth a new race that, according to Rudolf Steiner, would no longer know death because reproduction would no longer take place through sexuality, which conditions death, but through the word connected with the heart, through speech (Berlin, October 23, 1905). Therefore, as stated in the lecture Cologne, December 2, 1906, the perfection of man will consist in the fact that the powers of reproduction will be raised from the heart to the heart and that “precisely the soul power of John” will cause the loving heart to send out “streams of spiritual love”. This is indicated in the Gospel by the fact that, in the description of the Last Supper, it is said that the disciple whom the Lord loved and who knew about this secret of development rose from the Lord's lap to his breast.

Seen in this light, all the documents the various incarnations of the Hiram-Lazarus-John individuality (the legend of the Temple, the Gospel of John, the saga of Flor and Blancheflor, the “Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the year 1459”; also the cosmic deed of Christian Rosenkreutz at the beginning of the 17th century, was to make possible the overcoming of the Cain and Abel conflict both in the individual human being and in humanity as a whole.¹⁷ on the central Christian mystery of the overcoming of death.

Rudolf Steiner also saw the goal of his work in this line. This is evident from a statement he made when founding the Erkenntniskultischer (Cult of Knowledge) working group, when he spoke of the fact that the significance of the theorespekte or anthroposophical movement lies in the fact that, through its wisdom, which is neither purely male nor purely female, but transsexual, it is to prepare in the spiritual realm what will later happen on the physical plane: the reunion of the sexes (Berlin, October 23, 1905). This not only gives the full-fledged collaboration of men and women, which he practiced everywhere, including in the context of cultic work, but also the word spoken in the same lecture: “I have reserved for myself to achieve a unification between those of Abel's and those of Cain's sex” a very special biographical significance. And this in turn can help to explain why the Hiram-Johannes research is at the beginning and end of his spiritual scientific lecturing activities and runs like a “red thread” through his entire work.

• 1. This is indicated by Rudolf Steiner himself in his last address on September 28, 1924. In the lecture of July 25, 1904, it was stated that according to the Akasha Chronicle, the resurrected Lazarus was the writer of the Gospel of John, the same disciple whom the Lord loved and who stood beneath the cross.
• 2. See “Reincarnation and Karma”, GA 135.
• 4. The songs of Mary by Novalis were recited for the first time by Marie von Sivers at the Christmas celebration of the Berlin branch on December 22, 1908. Therefore, the “a few days later” could have been at the lecture on December 28, 1908, with which the theme was introduced, which was described as a higher chapter of spiritual science, but in which Rudolf Steiner had not allowed notes to be taken. The fact that it is unlikely that it was not spoken about in Berlin, the main place of activity at the time, also speaks for this date. For in Berlin lectures this series of incarnations is mentioned only much later and as already known. 4
• 5. Max Gümbel-Seiling in “Memorial Sheet for Marie Steiner-von Sivers”, Stuttgart 1949.
• 7. See “The Principle of Spiritual Economy in Connection with Questions of Re-embodiment” (1909), GA 109; “The Gospel of Luke” (1909), GA 114; “Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity” (1911/12), GA 130; “The Gospel of Mark” (1912), GA 139; “The Fifth Gospel” (1913/14), GA 148.
• 8. Friedrich Rittelmeyer in “Meine Lebensbegegnung mit Rudolf Steiner”, Stuttgart (1st edition 1928).
• 9. This name was also given to other people, “so that not everything that is said here or there about the Count of St. Germain in the outer world can also apply to the real Christian Rosenkreutz.” (Neuchâtel, September 27, 1911).
• 10. Marie Steiner told Günther Schubert personally, and he in turn told the editor of this volume. Later, in 1923, Rudolf Steiner spoke of it again in a small circle, cf. M. Kirchner-Bockholt in 'What is happening in the Anthroposophical Society. News for its members' 1963, nos. 48 and 49.
• 11. See “Images of Occult Seals and Columns. The Munich Congress Whitsun 1907 and its Effects», GA 284.

  In the lectures given at the congress and in the following lectures of 1907, there is repeated mention of this path of training and its founder, Christian Rosenkreutz, as the great spiritual leader of the West. It is said: «... he has always lived among us and is still with us today as a leader in spiritual life.” (Munich, June 1, 1907, esoteric lecture, in CW 264)

  The spiritual connection between this individuality and the new building idea, as manifested at the Munich Congress, shone forth again a few years later when Rudolf Steiner, also out of the building project,

  to found a mode of working that he said had as its direct starting point the individuality whom, “since Western times, we have known as Christian Rosenkreutz.” (Berlin, December 15, 1911, in GA 264). This founding attempt had already been solemnly proclaimed at a Knowledge Cult event in Stuttgart on November 27, 1911. Since nothing more is known about this event, we can only assume that the incarnation connection between Lazarus-Johannes and Christian Rosenkreutz was first communicated at that time - shortly after the two lectures on the life and work of Christian Rosenkreutz in the 13th and 14th centuries (September 1911).

• 12. A certain justification for this supposition could be seen in the triptych “Gral” by the painter Anna May, which, according to a statement by Marie Steiner, was created after the lectures in Neuchâtel. The central section shows the events of Golgotha and Joseph of Arimathea collecting the blood of Christ; on the left wing are the figures from the Temple Legend of King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and Hiram Abiff; on the right wing is the 13th-century initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz, as first described by Rudolf Steiner in Neuchâtel. Rudolf Steiner is said to have given Anna May some information about this. See Margarete Hauschka in “Das Goetheanum” 1975, No. 24 with a black and white illustration of the painting.
• 13. See the last address of September 28, 1924 with the associated additions in “Esoteric Reflections on Karmic Connections” IV. See also the study by Adolf Arenson, “Elias-Johannes-Lazarus” in “Ergebnisse aus dem Studium der Geisteswissenschaft Rudolf Steiners”, Freiburg i.Br. 1980, as well as the article by M. Kirchner-Bockholt in “Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht. News for its Members, 1963, No. 48 and 49.
• 14. Cf. footnote 1 on page 425.
• 15. Related by Ludwig Polzer-Hoditz from his conversation with Rudolf Steiner on March 3, 1925.
• 16. See lecture Berlin, December 14, 1911, and “The Gospel of Mark,” GA 139.
• 17. See “Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity”, GA 130.

My intention is to give a series of lectures which will enable you to understand the present time and the immediate future in some aspects at least. It should be a coherent whole, but it may sometimes be necessary to go a long way back. There will be a continuous thread through it all, but I would ask you to see the parts always in the context of the whole. I will sometimes go far and wide to collect the material we need to understand the present time, and some of it may seem remote.

When I say ‘the present time’ I mean quite a long period of time, going back several decades and also looking decades ahead. It is important to realize that it will be necessary to present truths based on the science of the Spirit that in many respects go utterly against current and generally accepted beliefs. The world holds opinions that not only differ but often are the direct opposite of the truths that have to be spoken out of anthroposophy. It is only to be expected, therefore, that people will consider these truths to be incredible, warped and downright foolish.

When truths which differed from generally accepted views had to be said in the past, in order to open up a road to the future, the difference between those truths and common opinion was probably never as marked as it inevitably is today. This may not be absolutely the case, but, relatively speaking, it is so, for people are tremendously intolerant in their hearts today and less able to accept views which differ from their own.

In the immediate future, people will feel more strongly than ever before that the new and different views presented to them are fanciful and absurd. Nevertheless, truths that until now were closely guarded by small groups of people, with strict silence demanded of anyone to whom they were made known, must increasingly be made public. It does not matter how public opinion and those who hold it react to these truths; nor do the prejudices and counter-currents matter that are provoked by them.

The reason for this will be discussed later on in these lectures. To begin with, I must speak of some of the ways in which people will react to truths today and in the immediate future. People believe they have long since outgrown the illusions and superstitions of the past, yet in some respects they are entirely given up to illusion. There is a growing tendency to live in illusion concerning some important and essential aspects of the great scheme of things, and this to such an extent that these illusions become powers that rule the world, nations and, indeed, the whole earth. It is important to realize this, for illusory ideas are a major element in the chaos in which we find ourselves today; in fact, they make it a chaos.

Let me tell you of one common illusion which exists today and is closely bound up with the materialistic trends of the age. It is the growing tendency to form utterly wrong opinions about what in the science of the spirit is called the physical plane. And the New Testament words that are fundamental in this respect: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’,¹ are increasingly less understood today. They are misunderstood in so far as the leading personalities of the outer world are caught up in the illusion that their kingdom should be very much of this physical world.

What do I mean to say? Anyone who is able to see the reality, and to see through it, knows that this world on the physical plane can never reach perfection. Yet people who think materialistically have the illusion that perfection can be achieved on the physical plane. This is the source of many other illusions, and particularly and characteristically the socialist illusion of the present age.

People's illusions come in all shades of meaning; they are coloured by party politics and so on. People who take a liberal view of the world and of life have constructed their own ideal of the physical world and believe that if they realize this we shall have paradise on earth. All that the socialists are able to think of is how to arrange things on this physical plane so that everybody can live what they consider to be the good life, the same for everybody, and so on. Their vision of the future on this physical plane is of a wonderful paradise. Do examine the programmes put forward by people who see themselves as belonging to the many different socialist parties and you will see for yourselves.

They are not the only people, of course, who have such views and opinions. Teachers also do, for instance. Today, every educational agitator and writer is absolutely convinced that it is up to him to establish the best possible educational system, the best principles of education one can think of. And in an absolute sense they really are the best, one cannot imagine anything better.

To go against such endeavours must seem sheer madness to people. The way things are today, people simply must consider anyone who does not want things to be the best possible in the world to be evil-minded. One can understand people feeling this way. Yet it is not evil-mindedness that stops us from thinking their way but a clear vision of the truth. It tells us that it is illusory to think such levels of perfection can be achieved in the physical world. And if it is a law that there never can be perfection in the physical world, just as it is a law that the three angles in a triangle add up to 180°, then people will simply have to face such a truth boldly and not shrink from it.

So there you have the kind of illusion which arises from entirely materialistic premises. Many say they believe in the world of the spirit, but with many of them this is mere words, nothing but hot air. In their innermost hearts, in their feelings and unconscious impulses, lives something different—the inclination to think materialistically. However much people may pretend to themselves that they believe in something else, in reality they believe only in the physical world. And since they do not believe in anything more than just the physical world around them, the only ideal they can possibly have is to arrange things in the physical world in such a way that it becomes a paradise; otherwise the whole world would make no sense to them. Until materialists are prepared to say that the world makes no sense at all, they can only live in the illusion that, however imperfect this physical world may be, it will be possible to create conditions that will put an end to imperfection and let perfection take its place.

Everything coming to the fore today in this respect—in general terms, with all kinds of political, social and other agitators making great words about it, or in specific instances, such as in education—is based on illusion because people are unable to see the connections between the physical world and the other spheres of the world. In no way can they gain an idea of what Jesus Christ meant when he said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and why Jesus Christ did not want to bring a kingdom of perfection to realization here in the physical world. There is nothing in the gospels to show that Christ intended to reform this outer kingdom of the physical world and make it into one of perfection. He certainly did not cherish that illusion. But he made up for this lack of desire to establish paradise in the physical world by giving people something which is not of this world: to let impulses enter into their souls which are always alive in the world but are not of this physical world.

Illusions of this kind dominate the human race today in the widest possible sense, and this creates an unhealthy climate. People are free individuals and therefore free to live in illusion. In more down-to-earth contexts their illusions would immediately be seen to be illusions. When we are dealing with physical objects, fools who invent things which merely work in theory are instantly seen to be under an illusion. It is not immediately obvious, however, in the vast field of social and political life.

The following story is one I have told before. When I was a young fellow of 22 or 23, one of my fellow students came to me one day, his head aglow, absolutely fired with enthusiasm, and told me he had just made an important, epoch-making invention. Oh, I said, that is nice; what are you going to do with it? Well, he said, I'll have to go and see Ratinger—our professor of mechanical engineering at the university—and tell him about it. No sooner said than done, and off he went. Ratinger was not free at the moment and so the student came back; he had been given an appointment for later on. So I said to him: Why don't you tell me about it in the meantime? We have some time to spare. Tell me about your invention. It was a very clever thing. He had invented a steam engine that needed just a very small amount of coal to heat it up; after that no more coal would be needed, for a special mechanism kept it going of its own accord. One merely had to start it up. This was certainly epoch-making! You will be wondering why we do not have it today. I got him to explain it all to me and then told him: You know, that is really clever; but if one looks at the whole thing it is no different from wanting to get a railway truck going by getting into it and pushing as hard as you can from inside. Someone standing outside can, of course, get it to move, but anyone inside will not get it to move a millimetre, even if they apply the same amount of energy. This is what it all came down to.

Things can be extremely logical and clever, developed by applying all kinds of technical principles, and they may still be nonsense, having been thought up without taking account of reality. What matters is not to be merely clever, or logical, but to relate to reality. In the end the student never went to see the professor.

When one is dealing with physical matter and mechanics, such a thing will soon be obvious. But in social and political affairs, and with reference to what in its widest sense may be defined as making everyone happy, it will not be immediately obvious. You can easily put forward ideas of exactly this kind; people will be impressed and believe you. Yet it is all a matter of being inside the truck and pushing from there. A time will come when a certain basic characteristic of the present time may actually be labelled with a particular name, a name that will typify a way of thinking which at heart is utterly illusory and unreal. I am very sure that in future people will speak of early twentieth century ‘Wilsonianism’. For Wilson's ideas are typical of those of someone who wants to push a railway truck from inside.

All the basic ideas of ‘Wilsonianism’ which make such an impression today are utterly unreal, though they also have a major influence on people for other reasons. They are powerful for the very reason that they cannot be realized. Any attempt to implement them it would soon show them to be meaningless. But people are able to imagine they could be implemented. If we were able to implement Wilsonian ideas, world philistinism would be realized throughout the world. Woodrow Wilson² really deserves to be made the universal saviour of general philistinism. Of course, philistines would not actually do all that well in a world organized by Wilson, which anyway cannot be realized, but at least they imagine that if Wilson's ideas were to conquer the world we would be able to live according to our ideals.

A time will come when people say: At the beginning of the twentieth century a peculiar ideal arose, which was to make the world into a perfect image of philistine, or bourgeois, ideals. Wilson's ideas will be analysed one day and presented as typical of the early twentieth century.

You see, we have not only small but also big examples of illusory ideas in our time. These illusions and unreal ideas are held not by otherworldly sects, but by groups whose beliefs spread far and wide.

Important and vital genuine truths must now be proclaimed to the world. For the reasons and because of the kind of conditions we have been discussing, they will show little relationship to the general opinions of today. Different conditions have to be created to enable people to grasp the truth. The truths which must inevitably come up are repulsive to many people today; they are thoroughly uncomfortable. The truths people like and ask for are convenient truths, for that is the way people are today.

Some of these uncomfortable truths will have to be presented in the course of these lectures. They need to be made known out of a feeling of responsibility, and above all they must relate not only to the physical plane. They must cut across the illusions people have of the physical plane and offer reality rather than fantasy. The most unrealistic and fantasy-ridden people today are those who consider themselves to be more or less entirely realistic. One makes the strangest discoveries in this respect.

I was recently sent a kind of lexicon listing the names of writers.³ It purports to list the names of all writers who have a connection with Judaism and anything which seeks to bring Judaism to realization in this world. I am one of the writers listed in the book, the reason being that, according to the author of the lexicon, I have many similarities with Ignatius de Loyola who is stated to have founded the Jesuits precisely because of his Judaism. Furthermore, I come from a border region between Germans and Slavs—which is where I happen to have been born, though my family certainly do not come from there—and apparently the fact that I come from there indicates that I am Jewish in origin—I have no idea why. This does not really surprise me, for I think you will agree that even odder things are published today. But the lexicon also includes Hermann Bahr as someone who is promoting Judaism—I was merely leafing through the book. Yet he is an out-and-out Upper Austrian. It is really and truly impossible to think of any way in which he can be connected with Jewish blood or the like. Nevertheless, this literary lexicon quotes a well-known literary historian as saying that Hermann Bahr definitely had Jewish traits.

Well, when I was said to be Jewish on one occasion—these things are not new—I had a photograph of my certificate of baptism made. Hermann Bahr also had to jump through those hoops, because a literary historian had said he was Jewish.⁴ Bahr wanted to establish the truth. The literary historian then said: Well, his grandfather may have been a Jew. But it simply is not possible to find anything in Bahr's family which is not absolutely Upper Austrian German. This was of course an embarrassment for the literary historian, but he would stick to is opinion. He went so far as to say that if Hermann Bahr were actually to present the certificates of baptism for the last twelve generations to show that he did not have a drop of Jewish blood rom anywhere, then he, the historian, would believe in reincarnation if forced to do so. So you see, the reason for believing in reincarnation is a highly peculiar one in the case of this renowned and widely-read literary historian.

There are times today when it is really difficult to take what is said by famous people at all seriously. It is a pity, of course, that it is so difficult to convince the wider public of this. People are rather in the habit of believing in authority, despite the fact that modern people do not believe in authority at all, of course! Such, at least, is their opinion. Yesterday we were able to learn something about the opinions people have of themselves.

Today, when people's basic instincts sometimes take them so far from the truth, it is extremly difficult to accept the truths relating to the region which borders immediately on the physical world. To characterize anything relating to this region one has to appeal to healthy, incorrupt minds, and this presents the greatest difficulties one can imagine. For when it comes to the truths which must now be made known, the whole constitution of the human soul will be affected even if people merely get to know them, let alone gain direct perception of them.

External knowledge about the physical world has a certain effect—let us say on the human head. But truths which go deep, even if only to the depth where they relate to the world immediately next to the physical world, touch the whole human being and not only the head. To proclaim such truths one must be able to depend on a sound, incorrupt mind.

In many spheres of life today a sound, incorrupt mind is almost a rarity, whilst unsound, corrupt minds are far from uncommon. And the way individuals accept truths today strongly reveals the particular nature of their life of instincts and drives, the whole constitution of their souls, and their state of mind. People with corrupt instincts who are unwilling to apply some degree of discipline to their life-styles quickly tend to take an attitude which is completely determined by the base mind, particularly when the truths to be accepted relate to the world bordering on the physical world. This happens only too easily. If people do not take a healthy objective interest in what goes on in the world, if they are essentially only interested in anything that relates to themselves, this will often corrupt their mind and attitudes to such an extent that they do not have the right instincts for occult truths and particularly for truths relating to the world bordering on the physical world.

With respect to the physical world and anything relating to it, and to all the great advances humanity has made, I think I can say that physical nature makes sure this corruption does not go too far in human minds. People are confined within the Limits imposed by physical nature; they cannot get very far with their instincts and have to obey the laws of nature. When we move from the physical world into the one bordering on it, we are no longer on those leading reins; guidance has to take another form and a different, inner certainty is needed. This is only possible, however, if the mind is incorrupt as we go beyond the physical level; otherwise we lose all control in that other region where we are no longer controlled by physical nature, nor by social and traditional prejudices. We are suddenly quite free and cannot bear such freedom. For instance, the physical world has many ways of preventing people from lying: If someone were to say at 6 o'clock in the evening that the sun had just come up, nature would soon demonstrate this to be wrong. It is like this with many things relating to the physical world. If people insist on talking nonsense about things relating to the higher worlds, even if it is only the one immediately next to our own, the physical world will not immediately show them to be wrong. This, then, is the reason why people may lose all control if they rush to escape the discipline which is imposed in the physical world.

Here we have one of the great problems which may arise when truths relating to the non-physical world are presented. Yet the answer always has to be that it is simply necessary to present these truths today. We must not forget that truths relating to the non-physical world cannot be received in the same frame of mind as truths relating to the physical world. To take them in we must slightly loosen the etheric and astral bodies; otherwise we shall only hear words. The state of mind has to be such—and with reference to the phenomena of the subjective inner life it merely is a state of mind—that for any real understanding of the things of the spirit one has to loosen the etheric and astral bodies a little. This loosening should only be a means of gaining understanding of the world of the spirit. It must not become an end in itself; this would be a very serious matter.

Imagine—to take an extreme case—someone comes to an anthroposophical lecture, not in order to gain insight into the realms of the spirit, which would be the right thing, but because he thinks this is truly mystical. As he listened he would let the words flow through him, as it were, because this would slightly loosen the ether body and the astral body. People certainly do come to lectures of this kind, sometimes also to those on pseudospiritual science, and listen in a kind of sleepy ecstasy; they are not really interested in the content, but more in the feeling of voluptuous pleasure which comes when the ether body and the astral body go partly outside the physical body. There may be other situations in life when to be thus ‘given up’, or ‘warm’, is a good thing; it is no good at all when it comes to revealing the truths relating to things of the spirit.

This must be properly understood. If spiritual truths are rightly understood, and if people are in all seriousness following the lines of thought used to develop concepts which may make the world of the spirit accessible to our understanding, their humanity will be enhanced and they will learn the things which have to be known at the present time for the salvation and further development of humanity. People who take these truths into themselves in the right way will also find their drives and instincts ennobled and raised to a higher level. By merely listening to spiritual truths they go through a development that is for the good.

Anyone who is not willing to accept anthroposophical truths in this sense but is perhaps doing so from some kind of purely personal interest—let us say he wants to belong to a society and has not found another one which suits him as well as the Anthroposophical Society does—anyone who comes to this Society with personal interests may indeed find that spiritual truths will first of all activate low instincts, and perhaps even the lowest of the low. It therefore does not come as a surprise that people who really should not be members but nevertheless do come and hear such things, find their lowest instincts brought to life. It is something that cannot be avoided at this time, for these things have to be made public and it is difficult to draw the line. The right way will only be found if those who have the inner justification to be part of such a movement use their wide-awake judgement and take themselves to task. People who in any way bring personal interests to bear, before or after leaving the Society, merely show that they never should have been members. And I think it is not really difficult to distinguish between personal interests and interest in objective understanding.

But it is not surprising that in the situation which has arisen because it is now necessary to make things generally known, it happens again and again that some of the instincts of the lower human nature come to the fore. The potential dangers must be consciously and clearly considered and ways must be found to correct them. If we take the right attitude to these dangers we shall certainly be able to meet them. This is very much a time—it is part of the chaotic situation we are in—when aberrations of this kind are far from uncommon. The tragic situation of today makes tremendous demands on the powers of many people. It is true to say that people who were not in the habit of working hard in the general rather than merely personal interest really have learned to work hard in the last three years. Many people have learned to work and to acquire general interests.

People who rightly belong to our movement will have come to it out of more than personal interest. Nevertheless, the present age does offer enormous opportunities for a kind of lazy outsider attitude. The specific constellation created by the war means that some people have really nothing to occupy them. If they are part of our movement they will also be aware of it. Before the war we had many lecture tours; a whole raft of people would get together and travel from one lecture to the next. Outer interest may have been lacking, but excitement could be found, and if this did not come from outside, people created their own excitements. This has now become difficult. It cannot be done. However, some people have not found a way of occupying themselves usefully. And that is why a lazy outsider attitude is to be found in our ranks exactly at this time, with people whiling away the time by creating all kinds of opposition. Being unable to get the excitement of travelling from lecture cycle to lecture cycle they find other ways of entertaining themselves. This merely shows the true nature of the interest that formerly made them travel from lecture cycle to lecture cycle.

When there is an inner obligation to represent anthroposophical truths before the world, in all seriousness and with dignity, you also know that more than fifty out of an audience of a hundred may well become opponents. That is a law; it is the way it is. If these fifty per cent of such people do not actually become opponents, there will be a reason for this, but it will not be because they are consistent. For reasons which have already been given and others that will be given, this is how matters are. Someone who represents anthroposophical truths is therefore not in the least surprised if there is opposition. We might take up the points that these opponents keep coming up with all the time, things they generally know better than anyone else to be untrue—for they do of course know that they are not true—but it would be much more useful to consider the sources from which such Opposition has Sprung.

All kinds of peculiar things will happen when we do so, and we shall then no longer feel inclined to take up the points that our opponents want us to take up. Instead, we are going to discover their true reasons. This can sometimes be more of an effort than to take up the points the opposition is making. Think of all the years in which lectures have been given here and how it has been necessary over and over again to say the same things I am also saying today, though this is always pointed out. But it is necessary to consider them with profound seriousness and dignity, and to consider them in a way which is fitting for an anthroposophical movement.

Believe me, I have more important things to do, if I am to lead this movement and be fully responsible for it, than to take account of the fact that three or four people, or even more if you will, get together and invent all kinds of gossip. I have more important things to do and never feel the inclination to go into such matters. But unfortunately this is so little understood! Even within this Society, there is more interest in excitement and sensation than genuine scientific interest. From the scientific point of view it is, for instance, interesting to study not only useful but also poisonous plants, but one has to find the right point of view. Very few of those who profess to follow anthroposophical spiritual science have even the least notion of the immense seriousness and importance of what it really should be. Forgive me for saying this. If there were the right seriousness and if the importance of this were really understood, people's attitudes would in many respects be very different from what they are. Of course I am not saying that people should turn their attention elsewhere. Rather the opposite: We should not turn our attention away from the phenomena which go hand in hand with the will to destroy this anthroposophical movement. But we have to find the right approach.

People may, for instance, write volumes in the way in which I have contradicted myself in my written works and with reference to all kinds of other things. One way of countering this would be to say that Luther was shown to have contradicted himself in hundreds of ways, not just a few dozen. His answer was: These asses are talking of contradictions in my works. I wish they would make the effort to try and understand just one of the things that appears to be in contradiction to other things!⁵ So one way would be to point out something like this. But there is no need for this. For when people speak in opposition today it is not because they are interested in finding and revealing contradictions but for quite a different reason.

Someone⁶ offered a manuscript to Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag,⁷ for instance. The publishing house was unable to use it and therefore returned it to the author. From this moment the author, who until then had been running after me wherever I went, became an opponent. The real reason was not that he had found contradictions. If that were the real reason we might use Luther's words. But we cannot do that, for the individual concerned can only be seen in his true colours if we know he is giving vent to his spleen because the publishing house was not able to publish his book. This was the real reason. So if we simply listen to the things people say, we shall have little opportunity for getting at the truth—just as little, perhaps, as the literary historian who would convert to reincarnation if this allowed him to continue in the belief that Hermann Bahr had Jewish connections. Conversion would be necessary if he were to be shown certificates of Christian baptism for Hermann Bahr's ancestors down to the twelfth generation.

Much is said about the courage which people are showing today. To assert the truths humanity needs today, in the sense I have spoken of, will need quite a different kind of courage—inner courage. But the place where this courage should be in the soul is occupied by cowardice, reluctance to take action, and this is tremendously widespread. In many respects it is due to this cowardice that anthroposophical spiritual science finds it so difficult to make its way today. It will make its way. But one should not sit back and accept; one should not think that things will go the right way without human involvement. One thing you will have to get used to—and it will be different from what you have been used to so far—is that I myself will have to be a lot less lenient in some respects than I have been until now. Do not think this is because I have changed my will and intention; you must look for the reasons in the existing situation.

You will have to understand that I cannot let the movement which I have to represent before the world go to the dogs in any old way. Forgive the expression. Higher duties are involved than people may dream of. I cannot be involved in whatever excitements or sensations some group or set may be desiring. Consideration must be given to many general and more important interests and impulses than to the purely personal ambitions which rule one set of people or another. To find the right way of presenting anthroposophy we simply must be able to set aside the purely personal element which for many is about the only thing that interests them today.

And so I must conclude here today with something which I have also been saying in all the other places where I have been speaking these days. There are many members of our anthroposophical science of the spirit who are truly dedicated and who have a clear idea of the seriousness of our work. But again and again there are others who do not belong and who behave in a way that simply would not happen if membership of the Society were limited to those who rightfully belong to it. Things keep coming up among members which are far removed from what is really intended; some of these can only be said to relate to what is really intended if one takes a totally distorted view.

Things are said by groups of people who have to be ignored—for our real interests go far beyond giving one's attention to the ambitions which are alive in those groups—things are said there, and people are beginning to believe them, which have no more to do with our true intentions than a dung beetle has to do with a pendulum clock. It is quite impossible to see how they go together. Yet fantastic stories created out of base instincts that are left to run riot are set in circulation. And this despite the fact that the people who generate them know full well that not a word is true. Such things can be explained in natural science, but we must also draw the logical conclusion and take the necessary actions. In the first place I am going to impose two rules an myself. Anyone who is going to speak of the one rule without the other, will be saying something which is not true. I have made these two rules known in all the places where I have been giving lectures in recent months.

In principle, I shall no longer continue to give private interviews to members of the Anthroposophical Society. For all those private interviews have led to reports which are full of lies. I have better things to do than refute the tales told by people who let their imaginations run riot, and so there is no other way but to discontinue these private interviews. Some individuals have a true esoteric impulse, and I will find other ways of making sure they are able to progress; it will just take while. The measure should not prevent anyone from progressing in esoteric development. But, generally speaking, all private interviews must now stop. This, then, is the first rule. Do not come to me, as people have done in some local groups, and say it is a harsh rule. No, do not come to me, go to those who are responsible.

The second thing is that I release everyone who has ever had a private interview with me from the promise not to talk about it, if they wish to do so. Anyone can tell anything they like about what has happened or been said in those private interviews—that is, in so far as they wish to do so. I am not going to prevent anyone from telling the whole truth about anything ever discussed with me in a private interview.

These two rules go together. The one does not apply without the other. And, as I said, if you think they are harsh, go to those who are responsible. Unless I am less lenient in these matters than I have been until now, the problems I am speaking of will not stop. As I said, I shall find other ways to make sure this does not harm anyone's esoteric development. Ways and means will be found. But, people being as they are today, it is not possible to establish such a science without things going badly astray on occasion, with people always jumping to the wrong conclusions. This is why there will have to be these rules.

People who take a serious and dignified approach to our spiritual-scientific development may find it difficult to understand how such things could come about, but they will accept the two rules as inevitable. From now on, everything will be entirely in the open. For there is nothing there which needs to shun the light! This is what is so shameful about it all: The truth and the whole truth could be told by everybody without leaving the least stain on our movement. But people have grown attached to something which has survived in our work as a continuation of earlier practices: to have individual interviews. 1f talking to individuals had not resulted in lies, the rule would not have been necessary. But everything ever said to any member can be truthfully told. Our movement can only gain from the truth—go and tell as much as you like. The truth will not be affected by the lies which are told; but it must not even appear to be affected, for it is important for humanity that anything presented out of a background of spiritual science is presented in a serious and dignified way.

So let me repeat once more: Without causing any loss to those who are seriously seeking esoteric development, I will generally no longer give private interviews for members. Everyone is free to tell everything they want about the interviews which have been given, but it must be the truth. I release everyone from whatever vow of silence there may be. But it should only be because individuals want to tell others for their own sake; they do not have to do it for my sake. And I have no objection to people spreading it about far and wide that these rules exist and are characteristic of our movement. Then the world will realize the infamous nature of the things that are so often said, especially about our Society.

• 1. John 18:36. The German for ‘kingdom’ in this sense is Reich (Trans.).
• 2. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), President of the United States 1913–1921. (Wilson propagated ‘open’ diplomacy but refused to permit publication of his discussions at the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris. His Fourteen Points were to be the basis for the armistice in November 1918. Trans.)
• 3. Semi-Kuerschner oder Literarisches Lexikon der Schriftsteller, Dichter, Bankiers, Geldleute, Schauspieler, Kunstler, Musiker, Offiziere, Rechtsanwlte, Revolutionre, Frauenrechtlerinnen, Sozialdemokraten usw. jdischer Rasse und Versippung, die von 1813–1913 in Deutschland ttig oder bekannt waren (Semi-Kuerschner or literary lexicon of authors, poets, bankers, financiers, physicians, actors, artists, musicians, officers, lawyers, revolutionaries, women's rights activists, social democrats, etc., who were Jewish by birth or marriage and were active or known in Germany from 1813–1913), published by Philipp Stayff, Berlin 1913. The passage about Hermann Bahr reads as follows: ‘It is said, and people have assured me over and over again, that Hermann Bahr is not a Jew, but I believe in the adage: ‘Tell me who your friends are’ (Bahr's first wife was Jewish), and would maintain that Bahr is of Jewish origin even if he were to show me the certificates of baptism of his forebears for the last ten generations, and indeed if really pushed into a corner I would rather subscribe to belief in the transmigration of souls.’
• 4. Adolf Barthels in his Kritiker und Kritikaster, Leipzig 1903.
• 5. Martin Luther (1483–1546) religious reformer who led the German Reformation. He translated the Bible into the vernacular to make it accessible to everyone and wrote many works, their vigour still much appreciated today. The actual quote is: ‘How can these asses form an opinion on contradictory elements in our doctrine if they don't understand any aspect of those contradictory elements?’ From Ricarda Huch, Luthers Glaube, 10. Brief (translates as ‘10th letter’).
• 6. Max Seiling (1852–1928), Austrian poet and writer.
• 7. Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is the publishing house established by Marie von Sivers in 1913 in Berlin for the publication of Rudolf Steiner's works. It moved to Dornach in November 1923.

We stand today, as it were, at the starting-point of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society in the narrower sense, and we should take this opportunity of once more reminding ourselves of the importance and significance of our cause. It is true that what the Anthroposophical Society wishes to be for the newer culture should not in principle differentiate it from that which we have always carried on in our circle under the name of theosophy. But perhaps this giving of a new name may nevertheless remind us of the earnestness and dignity with which we intend to work in our spiritual movement, and it is with this point in view that I have chosen the title of this course of lectures. At the very outset of our anthroposophical cause we shall speak on a subject which is capable of indicating in manifold ways the remarkable importance of our spiritual movement for the civilisation of the present day.

Many people might be surprised to find two such apparently widely different spiritual streams brought together, as the great Eastern poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of one who was so closely connected with the founding of Christianity, the Apostle Paul. We can best recognise the nearness of these two spiritual streams to one another if, by way of introduction, we indicate how at the present day, is to be found, on the one hand, that which appertains to the great Bhagavad Gita poem, and on the other the Paulinism which originated with the beginning of Christianity.

Certainly much in the spiritual life of our present time differs from what it was even a comparatively short time ago, but it is just that very difference that makes a spiritual movement such as Anthroposophy so necessary.

Let us reflect how a comparatively short time ago if a man concerned himself with the spiritual life of his own times he had in reality, as I have shown in my Basle and Munich courses, to study three periods of a thousand years each; one pre-Christian period of a thousand years, and two other millennia, the sum of which is not yet quite completed; two thousand years permeated and saturated with the spiritual stream of Christianity. What might such a man have said only a short time ago when contemplating the spiritual life of mankind when, as we have said, there was no question of a theosophical, or anthroposophical movement as we now understand it? He might have said: “At the present time something is making itself prominently felt which can only be sought for in the thousand years preceding the Christian era.” For only during the last thousand years before the Christian era does one find individual men of personal importance in spiritual life. However great and powerful and mighty much in the spiritual streams of earlier times may appear to us, yet persons and individuals do not stand out from that which underlies those streams. Let us just glance back at what we reckon in not too restricted a sense, as the last thousand years before the Christian era. Let us glance back at the old Egyptian or the Chaldean-Babylonian spiritual stream; there we survey a continuity so to speak, a connected spiritual life. Only in the Greek spiritual life do we find individuals as such standing out as entirely spiritual and living. Great, mighty teachings, a mighty outlook into the space of the Cosmos; all this we find in the old Egyptian and Chaldean-Babylonian times, but only in Greece do we begin to look to separate personalities, to a Socrates or Pericles, a Phidias, a Plato, an Aristotle. Personality, as such, begins to be marked. That is the peculiarity of the spiritual life of the last three thousand years; and I do not only mean the remarkable personalities themselves, but rather the impression made by the spiritual life upon each separate individuality, upon each personality. In these last three thousand years it has become a question of personality, if we may say so; and the fact that separate individuals now feel the need of taking part in the spiritual life, find inner comfort, hope, peace, inward bliss and security, in the various spiritual movements, gives these their significance. And since, until a comparatively short time ago, we were only interested in history inasmuch as it proceeded from one personality to another, we got no really clear understanding of what occurred before the last three thousand years. The history, for which alone we had, till recently, any understanding, began with Greece, and during the transition from the first to the second thousand years, occurred what is connected with the great Being, Christ Jesus. During the first thousand years that which we owe to Greece is predominant, and those Grecian times tower forth in a particular way. At the beginning of them stand the Mysteries. That which flowed forth from these, as we have often described, passed over into the Greek poets, philosophers and artists in every domain. For if we wish rightly to understand AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides we must seek the source for such understanding in that which flowed out of the Mysteries. If we wish to understand Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we must seek the source of their philosophies in the Mysteries, not to speak of such a towering figure as that of Heraclitus. You may read of him in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, how entirely he depended upon the Mysteries.

Then in the second thousand years we see the Christian impulse pouring into spiritual development, gradually absorbing the Greek and uniting itself with it. The whole of the second thousand years passed in such a way that the powerful Christ-impulse united itself with all that came over from Greece as living tradition and life. So we see Greek wisdom, Greek feeling, and Greek art slowly and gradually uniting organically with the Christ-impulse. Thus the second thousand years ran its course. Then in the third thousand years begins the cultivation of the personality. We may say that we can see in the third thousand years how differently the Greek influence is felt. We see it when we consider such artists as Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. No longer does the Greek influence work on together with Christianity in the third thousand years, as it did in the culture of the second; not as something historically great, not as something contemplated externally was Greek influence felt during the second thousand years. But in the third thousand we have to turn of set purpose to the Greek. We see how Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael allowed themselves to be influenced by the great works of art then being discovered; we see the Greek influence being more and more consciously absorbed. It was absorbed unconsciously during the second thousand years, but in the third millennium it was taken up more and more consciously. An example of how consciously this Greek influence was being recognised in the eyes of the world is to be found in the figure of the philosopher, Thomas Aquinas; and how he was compelled to unite what flowed out from Christian philosophy with the philosophy of Aristotle. Here the Greek influence was absorbed consciously and united with Christianity in a philosophic form; as in the case of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, in the form of art. This whole train of thought rises higher through spiritual life, and even takes the form of a certain religious opposition in the cases of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Notwithstanding all this, we find everywhere Greek ideas and conceptions, especially about nature, cropping up again; there is a conscious absorption of the Greek influence, but this does not go back beyond the Greek age. In every soul, not only in the more learned or more highly educated, but in every soul down to the simplest, a spiritual life is spread abroad and lives in them, in which the Greek and Christian influences are consciously united. From the University down to the peasant's cottage Greek ideas are to be found united with Christianity.

Now in the nineteenth century something peculiar appeared, something which requires Anthroposophy to explain it. There we see in one single example what mighty forces are at play. When the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita first became known in Europe, certain important thinkers were enraptured by the greatness of the poem, by its profound contents; and it should never be forgotten that such a thoughtful spirit as William von Humboldt, when he became acquainted with it, said that it was the most profoundly philosophical poem that had ever come under his notice; and he made the beautiful remark, that it was worth while to have been allowed to grow as old as he to be enabled to become acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita, the great spiritual song that sounds forth from the primeval holy times of Eastern antiquity. What a wonderful thing it is that slowly, although perhaps not attractive as yet to large circles, so much of Eastern antiquity was poured out into the nineteenth century by means of the Bhagavad Gita. For this is not like other writings that came over from the ancient East which ever proclaim Eastern thoughts and feelings from this or that standpoint. In the Bhagavad Gita we are confronted with something of which we may say that it is the united flow of all the different points of view of Eastern thought, feeling and perception. That is what makes it of such significance.

Now let us turn back to old India. Apart from other less important things, we find there, in the first place, three shades, if we may so call them, of spiritual streams flowing forth from the old Indian pre-historic times. That spiritual stream which we meet with in the earliest Vedas and which developed further in the later Vedantic poems, is one quite definite one—we will describe it presently—it is, if we may say so, a one-sided yet quite distinct spiritual stream. We then meet with a second spiritual stream in the Sankhya philosophy, which again goes in a definite spiritual direction; and, lastly, we meet a third shade of the Eastern spiritual stream in Yoga. Here we have the three most remarkable oriental spiritual streams placed before our souls. The Vedas, Sankhya, and Yoga.

The Sankhya system of Kapila, the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali and the Vedas are spiritual streams of definite colouring, which, because of this definite colouring, are to a certain extent one-sided, and which are great because of their one-sidedness. In the Bhagavad Gita we have the harmonious inter-penetration of all three spiritual streams. What the Veda philosophy has to give is to be found shining forth in the Bhagavad Gita; what the Yoga of Patanjali has to give mankind we find again in the Bhagavad Gita; and what the Sankhya of Kapila has to give we find there too. Moreover, we do not find these as a conglomeration, but as three parts flowing harmoniously into one organism, as if they originally belonged together. The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita lies in the comprehensiveness of its description of how this oriental spiritual life receives its tributaries from the Vedas on the one side, on another from the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and again on a third side from the Yoga of Patanjali.

We shall now briefly characterise what each of these spiritual streams has to give us.

The Veda stream is most emphatically a philosophy of unity, it is the most spiritual monism that could be thought of; the Veda philosophy which is consolidated in the Vedanta is a spiritual monism. If we wish to understand the Veda philosophy, we must, in the first place, keep clearly before our souls the fact that this philosophy is based upon the thought that man can find something deeper within his own self, and that what he first realises in ordinary life is a kind of expression or imprint of this self of his; that man can develop, and that his development will draw up the depths of the actual self more and more from the foundations of his soul. A higher self rests as though asleep in man, and this higher self is not that of which the present-day man is directly aware, but that which works within him, and to which he must develop himself. When man some day attains to that which lives within him as “self,” he will then realise, according to the Veda-philosophy, that this “self” is one with the all-embracing self of the world, that he does not only rest with his self within the all-embracing World-Self, but that he himself is one with it. So much is he one with this World-Self that he is in two-fold manner related to it. In some way similar to our physical in-breathing and out-breathing does the Vedantist picture the relationship of the human self to the World-Self Just as one draws in a breath and breathes it out again, while outside there is the universal air and within us only the small portion of it that we have drawn in so outside us we have the universal, all-embracing, all-pervading Self that lives and moves in all things, and this we breathe in when we yield ourselves to the contemplation of the spiritual Self of the World. Spiritually one breathes it in with every perception that one gets of this Self, one breathes it in with all that one draws into one's soul. All knowledge, all thinking, all perception is spiritual breathing; and that which we, as a portion of the world-Self, draw into our souls (which portion remains organically united to the whole), that is Atman, the Breath, which, as regards ourselves, is as the portion of air that we breathe in, which cannot be distinguished from the general atmosphere. So is Atman in us, which cannot be distinguished from that which is the all-ruling Self of the World. Just as we breathe out physically, so there is a devotion of the soul through which the best that is in it goes forth in the form of prayer and sacrifice to this Self. Brahman is like the spiritual out-breathing. Atman and Brahman, like in-breathing and out-breathing, make us sharers in the all-ruling World-Self. What we find in the Vedantas is a monistic spiritual philosophy, which is at the same time a religion; and the blossom and fruit of Vedantism lie in that which so blesses man, that most complete and in the highest degree satisfying feeling of unity with the universal Self powerfully weaving through the world. Vedantism treats of this connection of mankind with the unity of the world, of the fact of man's being within a part of the whole great spiritual cosmos. We cannot say the Veda-Word, because Veda means Word, but the Word-Veda as given is itself breathed forth, according to the Vedantic conception, from the all-ruling unitary Being, and the human soul can take it into itself as the highest expression of knowledge. In accepting the Veda-Word the best part of the all-mighty “Self” is taken in, the consciousness of the connection between the individual human self and this all-mighty World-Self is attained. What the Veda speaks is the God-Word which is creative, and this is born again in human knowledge, and so leads it side by side with the creative principle which lives and weaves throughout the world. Therefore, that which was written in the Vedas was valued as the Divine Word, and he who succeeded in mastering them was considered as being a possessor of the Divine Word. The Divine Word had come spiritually into the world and was to be found in the Veda-Books; those who mastered these books took part in the creative principle of the World.

Sankhya philosophy is different. When one first meets with this, as it has come down to us through tradition, we find in it exactly the opposite of the teaching of the Unity. If we wish to compare the Sankhya philosophy to anything, we may compare it to the philosophy of Leibnitz. It is a pluralistic philosophy. The several souls mentioned therein—human souls and the souls of Gods—are not traced back by the Sankhya philosophy to unitary source, but are taken as single souls existing, so to speak, from Eternity; or, at any rate, their origin is not traced back to Unity. The plurality of souls is what we find in the Sankhya philosophy. The independence of each individual soul carrying on its development in the world enclosed within its own being, is sharply accentuated; and in contrast to the plurality of souls is that which in the Sankhya philosophy is called the Prakriti element. We cannot well describe this by the modern word “matter,” for that has a materialistic meaning. But in Sankhya philosophy we do not mean to convey this with the “substantial” which is in contrast to the multiplicity of souls, and which again is not derived from a common source. In the first place, we have multiplicity of souls, and then that which we may call the material basis, which, like a primeval flood, streams through the world, through space and time, and out of which souls take the elements for their outer existence. Souls must clothe themselves in this material element, which, again, is not to be traced back to unity with the souls themselves. And so it is in the Sankhya philosophy that we principally find this material element, carefully studied. Attention is not so much directed to the individual soul; this is taken as something real that is there, confined in and united with this material basis, and which takes the most varied forms within it, and thus shows itself outwardly in many different forms. A soul clothes itself with this original material element, that may be thought of like the individual soul itself as coming from Eternity. The soul nature expresses itself through this material basic element, and in so doing it takes on many different forms, and it is in particular the study of these material forms that we find in the Sankhya philosophy. Here we have, in the first place, so to speak, the original form of this material element as a sort of spiritual primeval stream, into which the soul is first immersed. Thus if we were to glance back at the first stages of evolution, we should find there the undifferentiated material elements and immersed therein, the plurality of the souls which are to evolve further. What, therefore, we first find as Form, as yet undifferentiated from the unity of the primal stream, is the spiritual substance itself that lies at the starting-point of evolution. The first thing that then emerges, with which the soul can as yet clothe itself individually, is Budhi. So that when we picture to ourselves a soul clothed with the primal flood-substance, externally this soul is not to be distinguished from the universal moving and weaving element of the primeval flood. Inasmuch as the soul does not only enwrap itself in this first being of the universal billowing primal flood but also in that which first proceeds from this, in so far does it clothe itself in Budhi. The third element that forms itself out of the whole and through which the soul can then become more and more individual, is Ahamkara. This consists of lower and lower forms of the primeval substance. So that we have the primeval substance, the first form of which is Budhi, and its second form which is Ahamkara. The next form to that is Manas, then comes the form which consists of the organs of the senses; this is followed by the form of the finer elements, and the last form consists of the elements of the substances which we have in our physical surroundings. This is the line of evolution according to Sankhya philosophy. Above is the most super-sensible element, a primeval spiritual flow, which, growing ever denser and denser, descends to that which surrounds us in the coarser elements out of which the coarse human body is also constructed. Between these are the substances of which, for instance, our sense organs are woven, and the finer elements of which is woven our etheric or life-body. It must be carefully noticed that according to the Sankhya philosophy, all these are sheaths of the soul. Even that which springs from the first primeval flood is a sheath for the soul; the soul is at first within that; and when the Sankhya philosopher studies Budhi, Ahamkara, Manas, the senses, the finer and the coarser elements, he understands thereby the increasingly dense sheaths within which the soul expresses itself.

We must clearly understand that the manner in which the philosophy of the Vedas and the Sankhya philosophy are presented to us is only possible because they were composed in that ancient time when an old clairvoyance still existed, at any rate, to a certain extent. The Vedas and the contents of the Sankhya philosophy came into existence in different ways. The Vedas depend throughout on a primeval inspiration which was still a natural possession of primeval man; they were given to man, so to speak, without his having done anything to deserve them, except that with his whole being he prepared himself to receive into his inner depths that divine inspiration that came of itself to him, and to receive it quietly and calmly. Sankhya philosophy was formed in a different way. That process was something like the learning of our present day, only that this is not permeated by clairvoyance as the former then was. The Veda philosophy consisted of clairvoyant knowledge, inspiration given as by grace from above. Sankhya philosophy consisted of knowledge sought for as we seek it now, but sought for by people to whom clairvoyance was still accessible. This is why the Sankhya philosophy leaves the actual soul-element undisturbed, so to say. It admits that souls can impress themselves in that which one can study as the super-sensible outer forms, but it particularly studies the outer forms, which appear as the clothing of those souls. Hence we find a complete system of the forms we meet with in the world, just as in our own science we find a number of facts about nature; only that in Sankhya philosophy observation extends to a clairvoyant observation of facts. Sankhya philosophy is a science, which although obtained by clairvoyance, is nevertheless a science of outer forms that does not extend into the sphere of the soul: the soul-nature remains in a sense undisturbed by these studies. He who devotes himself to the Vedas feels absolutely that his religious life is one with the life of wisdom; but Sankhya philosophy is a science, it is a perception of the forms into which the soul impresses itself. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for the disciples of the Sankhya philosophy to feel a religious devotion of the soul for their philosophy. The way in which the soul element is organised into forms-not the soul element itself, but the form it takes-is followed up in the Sankhya philosophy. It defines the way in which the soul, more or less, preserves its individuality or else is more immersed in the material. It has to do with the soul element which is, it is true, beneath the surface, but which, within the material forms, still preserves itself as soul. A soul element thus disguised in outer form, but which reveals itself as soul, dwells in the Sattva element. A soul element immersed in form, but which is, so to say, entangled in it and cannot emerge from it, dwells in the Tamas-element; and that in which, more or less, the soul element and its outer expression in form, are, to a certain extent, balanced, dwells in the Rajas-element. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, the three Gunas, pertain to the essential characteristics of what we know as Sankhya philosophy.

Quite different, again, is that spiritual stream which comes down to us as Yoga. That appeals directly to the soul-element itself and seeks ways and means of grasping the human soul in direct spiritual life, so that it rises from the point which it has attained in the world to higher and higher stages of soul-being. Thus Sankhya is a contemplation of the sheaths of the soul, and Yoga the guidance of the soul to higher and ever higher stages of inner experience. To devote oneself to Yoga means a gradual awakening of the higher forces of the soul so that it experiences something not to be found in everyday life, which opens the door to higher and higher stages of existence.

Yoga is therefore the path to the spiritual worlds, the path to the liberation of the soul from outer forms, the path to an independent life of the soul within itself. Yoga is the other side of the Sankhya philosophy. Yoga acquired its great importance when that inspiration, which was given as a blessing from above and which inspired the Vedas, was no longer able to come down. Yoga had to be made use of by those souls who, belonging to a later epoch of mankind, could no longer receive anything by direct revelation, but were obliged to work their way up to the heights of spiritual existence from the lower stages. Thus in the old primal Indian times we have three sharply-defined streams, the Vedas, the Sankhaya, and the Yoga, and today we are called upon once more to unite these spiritual streams, so to say, by bringing them to the surface in the way proper for our own age, from the foundations of the soul and from the depths of the Cosmos.

You may find all three streams again in our Spiritual Science. If you read what I have tried to place before you in the first chapters of my Occult Science about the human constitution, about sleeping and waking, life and death, you will find there what in our present-day sense we may call Sankhya philosophy. Then read what is there said about the evolution of the world from Saturn down to our own time, and you have the Veda-philosophy expressed for our own age; while, if you read the last chapters, which deal with human evolution, you have Yoga expressed for our own age. Our age must in an organised way unite that which radiates across to us in three so sharply-defined spiritual streams from old India in the Veda-philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy, and Yoga. For that reason our age must study the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita, which, in a deeply poetical manner, represents, as it were, a union of these three streams; our own age must be deeply moved by the Bhagavad Gita. We should seek something akin to our own spiritual strivings in the deeper contents of the Bhagavad Gita. Our spiritual streams do not only concern themselves with the older ones as a whole, but also in detail. You will have recognised that in my Occult Science an attempt has been made to produce the things out of themselves. Nowhere do we depend on history. Nowhere can one who really understands what is said find in any assertion about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, that things are related from historical sources; they are simply drawn forth from the matter itself. Yet, strange to say, that which bears the stamp of our own time corresponds in striking places with what resounds down to us out of the old ages. Only one little proof shall be given. We read in the Vedas in a particular place, about cosmic development, which can be expressed in words somewhat like the following: “Darkness was enwrapt in darkness in the primal beginning, all was indistinguishable flood-essence. Then arose a mighty void, that was everywhere permeated with warmth.” I now ask you to remember the result of our study of the evolution of Saturn, in which the substance of Saturn is spoken of as a warmth-substance, and you will feel the harmony between the so-called “Newest thing in Occult Science,” and what is said in the Vedas. The next passage runs: “Then first arose the Will, the first seed of Thought, the connection between the Existent and the Non-existent, ... and this connection was found in the Will ...” And remember what was said in the new mode of expression about the Spirits of Will. In all we have to say at the present time, we are not seeking to prove a concord with the old; the harmony comes of itself, because truth was sought for there and is again being sought for on our own ground

Now in the Bhagavad Gita we find, as it were, the poetical glorification of the three spiritual streams just described. The great teachings that Krishna himself communicated to Arjuna are brought to our notice at an important moment of the world's history—of importance for that far-distant age. The moment is significant, because it is the time when the old blood-ties were loosening. In all that is to be said in these lectures about the Bhagavad Gita you must remember what has again and again been emphasised: that ties of blood, racial attachment and kinship, were of quite special significance in primeval times, and only grew less strong by degrees. Remember all that is said in my pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood. When these blood-ties begin to loosen, on account of that loosening, the great struggle began which is described in the Mahabharata, and of which the Bhagavad Gita is an episode. We see there how the descendants of two brothers, and hence, blood relations, separate on account of their spiritual tendencies how that which, through the blood, would formerly have given them the same points of view, now takes different paths; and how, therefore, the conflict then arises, for conflict must arise when the ties of blood also lose their significance as a help for clairvoyant perception; and with this separation begins the later spiritual development.. For those to whom the old blood-ties no longer were of significance, Krishna came as a great teacher. He was to be the teacher of the new age lifted out of the old blood-ties. How he became the teacher we shall describe tomorrow; but it may now be said, as the whole Bhagavad Gita shows us, that Krishna absorbed the three spiritual streams into his teaching and communicated them to his pupil as an organised unity.

How must this pupil appear to us? He looks up on the one side to his father, and on the other side to his father's brother the children of the two brothers are now no longer to be together, they are to separate now a different spiritual stream is to take possession of the one line and the other. Arjuna's soul is filled with the question: how will it be when that which was held together by the ties of blood is no longer there? How can the soul take part in spiritual life if that life no longer flows as it formerly did under the influence of the old blood-tie? It seems to Arjuna as if everything must come to an end. The purport of the great teachings of Krishna, however, is to show that this will not be the case, that it all will be different. Krishna now shows his pupil—who is to live through the time of transition from one epoch to another, that the soul, if it is to become harmonious, must take in something of all these three spiritual streams. We find the Vedistic unity interpreted in the right way in the teachings of Krishna, as well as the principles of the Sankhya teaching and the principles of Yoga. For what is it that actually lies behind all that we are about to learn from the Bhagavad Gita? The revelations of Krishna are somewhat to this effect: There is a creative Cosmic Word, itself containing the creative principle. As the sound produced by man when he speaks undulates and moves and lives through the air, so does the Word surge and weave and live in all things, and create and order all existence. Thus the Veda principle breathes through all things. This can be taken up by human perception into the human soul-life. There is a supreme, weaving Creative-Word, and there is an echo of this supreme, weaving Creative-Word in the Vedistic documents. The Word is the creative principle of the World; in the Vedas it is revealed. That is one part of the Krishna teaching. The human soul is capable of understanding how the Word lives on, in the different forms of existence. Human knowledge learns the laws of existence by grasping how the separate forms of being express, with the regularity of a fixed law, that which is soul and spirit. The teachings about the forms in the world, of the laws which shape existence, of cosmic laws and their manner of working, is the Sankhya philosophy, the other side of the Krishna teaching. Just as Krishna made clear to his pupil that behind all existence is the creative cosmic Word, so also he made clear to him that human knowledge can recognise the separate forms, and therefore can grasp the cosmic laws. The cosmic Word, the cosmic laws as echoed in the Vedas, and in Sankhya, were revealed by Krishna to his pupil. And he also spoke to him about the path that leads the individual pupil to the heights where he can once again share in the knowledge of the cosmic Word. Thus Krishna also spoke of Yoga. Threefold is the teaching of Krishna: it teaches of the Word, of the Law and of reverent devotion to the Spirit.

The Word, the Law, and Devotion are the three streams by means of which the soul can carry out its development.

These three streams will for ever work upon the human soul in some way or another. Have we not just seen that modern Spiritual Science must seek for new expression of these three streams? But the ages differ one from the other, and in many different ways will that which is the threefold comprehension of the World be brought to human souls. Krishna speaks of the Cosmic Word, of the Creative Word, of the fashioning of existence, of the devotional deepening of the soul,—of Yoga. The same trinity meets us again in another form, only in a more concrete, more living way—in a Being who is Himself to be thought of as walking the Earth—the Incarnation of the Divine Creative Word! The Vedas came to mankind in an abstract form. The Divine Logos, of whom the Gospel of St. John speaks is the Living and Creative Word Itself! That which we find in the Sankhya philosophy, as the law to which the cosmic forms are subject, that, historically transposed into the old Hebrew revelation, is what St. Paul calls the Law. The third stream we find in St. Paul as Faith in the risen Christ. That which was Yoga in Krishna, in St. Paul was Faith, only in a more concrete form—Faith, that was to replace the Law. So the trinity, Veda, Sankhya and Yoga were as the redness of the dawn of that which later rose as sun. Veda appears again in the actual Being of Christ Himself now entering in a concrete, living way into historical evolution, not pouring Himself out abstractly into space and the distances of time, but living as a single Individual, as the Living Word. The Law meets us in the Sankhya philosophy, in that which shows us how the material basis, Prakriti, is developed even down to coarse substance. The Law reveals how the world came into existence, and how individual man develops within it. That is expressed in the old Hebrew revelation of the Law, in the dispensation of Moses. Inasmuch as St. Paul, on the one hand, refers to this Law of the old Hebrews, he is referring to the Sankhya philosophy; inasmuch as he refers to faith in the Risen One, he refers to the Sun of which the rosy dawn appeared in Yoga. Thus arises in a, special way that of which we find the first elements in Veda, Sankhya and Yoga. What we find in the Vedas appears in a new but now concrete form as the Living Word by Whom all things were made and without Whom nothing is made that was made, and Who, nevertheless, in the course of time, has become Flesh. Sankhya appears as the historical representation based on Law of how out of the world of the Elohim, emerged the world of phenomena, the world of coarse substances. Yoga transformed itself into that which, according to St. Paul, is expressed in the words; “Not I, but Christ in me,” that is to say when the Christ-force penetrates the soul and absorbs it, man rises to the heights of the divine.

Thus we see how, in a preparatory form, the coherent plan is present in world-history, how the Eastern teaching was a preparation, how it gives in more abstract form, as it were, that which, in a concrete form, we find so marvelously contained in the Pauline Christianity. We shall see that precisely by grasping the connection between the great poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, the very deepest mysteries will reveal themselves concerning what we may call the ruling of the spiritual in the collective education of the human race. As something so new must also be felt in the new age, this newer age must extend beyond the time of Greece and must develop understanding for that which lies behind the thousand years immediately before Christ—for that which we find in the Vedas, Sankhya and Yoga. Just as Raphael in his art and Thomas Aquinas in his philosophy had to turn back to Greece, so shall we see how in our time, a conscious balance must be established between that which the present time is trying to acquire and that which lies further back than the Greek age, and stretches back to the depths of oriental antiquity. We can allow these depths of oriental antiquity to flow into our souls if we ponder over these different spiritual streams which are to be found within that wonderfully harmonious unity which Humboldt calls the greatest philosophical poem the Bhagavad Gita.

[ 1 ] In the spatial Cosmos we have the contrast of the Universal spaces and the Earthly centre. In the Universal spaces the stars, as it were, are scattered wide, while from the Earthly centre forces are streaming out in all directions into the far spread Universe.

[ 2 ] To man as he stands in the world in the present cosmic epoch, it is only as a great totality that the glory of the stars and the working of the earthly forces can represent the finished work of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom he in his inner being is connected.

[ 3 ] But there was once a cosmic epoch when the glory of the stars and the forces of the Earth were still a direct spiritual revelation of the Divine-Spiritual Beings. At that time, man in his dim consciousness felt the Divine-Spiritual Beings actively working in his own nature.

[ 4 ] Another epoch of time ensued. The starry heavens became severed, as a corporeal existence, from the Divine-Spiritual working. There originated what we may call the ‘World-spirit’ and the ‘World-body.’ The World-spirit is a multitude of Divine-Spiritual Beings. In the former epoch these Beings had worked from the starry places inward to the Earth. All that had shone forth from universal space, all that had radiated by way of forces from the earthly centre, was in reality Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings, who were working creatively upon the Earth and Earth humanity.

[ 5 ] In the later cosmic epochs—after the Saturn and Sun evolutions—the working of the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings became more and more spiritually inward. That in which They had been actively present in the beginning became the ‘World-body’: the harmonious arrangement of stars in universal space. Looking back on these matters with a spiritual world-conception, we may express it thus: From the original spirit-body of the World-creative Beings, the World-spirit and the World-body were evolved. And in the ordering and movement of the stars, the World-body now shows what the Intelligent and Will-imbued working of the Gods once upon a time was like. For the cosmic present however, what was once the Divine Intelligence and Will living and moving freely in the stars, has become fastened in the fixed Laws of the starry universe.

[ 6 ] Today, therefore, that which shines inward from the starry worlds to man on Earth is no longer an immediate expression of Divine Will and Divine Intelligence, but it is a sign that has come to stand:—a sign of what the Divine Will and Intelligence was, once upon a time, even in the very stars. Potent as it is to call forth wonder in the human soul, we must recognise in the sublime formation of the starry heavens a revelation of the Gods which is of the past; we cannot perceive in it their present revelation.

[ 7 ] That, however, which in the shining of the stars is ‘of the past,’ is ‘present’ in the Spirit-world. And in this ‘present’ Spirit-world, man with his own true being dwells.

[ 8 ] Studying the formation of the world, we must look back to an ancient cosmic epoch when the World-spirit and the World-body still worked as an undivided unity. Then we must envisage the middle epoch, in which they unfold as a duality. And at length we must think into the future—into the third epoch when the World-spirit will once again take up the World-body into its active working.

[ 9 ] For the old epoch, it would have been impossible to ‘calculate’ the constellations and the courses of the stars; for these were then the expression of the free Intelligence and free Will of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Moreover, in the future they will once again become ‘incalculable.’

[ 10 ] ‘Calculation’ has a meaning only for the middle cosmic epoch.

[ 11 ] And this holds good, not only of the constellations and the movements of the stars, but of the working of the forces which radiate from the earthly centre to the far-spread Universe. That which works ‘out of the depths’ also becomes ‘calculable.’

[ 12 ] Everything strives from the older cosmic epoch towards the middle epoch, when the Spatial and Temporal becomes ‘calculable,’ and the Divine-Spiritual as manifestation of Intelligence and Will must be sought for ‘behind’ this ‘calculable’ world.

[ 13 ] Only in this middle epoch are the conditions given for man to progress from a dim state of consciousness to one of free and bright self-conscious being, with a free Intelligence and a free Will of his own.

[ 14 ] Thus there had to come the time when Copernicus and Kepler could ‘calculate’ the body of the world. For it was through the cosmic forces with which this moment was connected, that the self-consciousness of man had to take shape. The seed of man's self-consciousness had been laid in an older time; and now the time was come when it was far enough advanced to ‘calculate’ the far-spread Universe.

[ 15 ] On the Earth, ‘History’ takes place. What we call ‘History’ would never have come about if the far spaces of the Universe had not evolved into the ‘hard and fast’ constellations and starry courses. In ‘historic evolution’ on the Earth we have an image—albeit thoroughly transformed—of what was once upon a time ‘heavenly History.’ [ 16 ] Earlier peoples still had this ‘heavenly History’ in their consciousness, and were indeed far more aware of it than of the Earthly.

[ 17 ] In earthly History there lives the intelligence and will of men—in connection, to begin with, with the cosmic Will and Intelligence of the Gods; then, independent of them.

[ 18 ] In heavenly History, on the other hand, there lived the Intelligence and Will of the Divine-Spiritual Beings who are connected with mankind.

[ 19 ] When we look back into the spiritual life of nations, we come to an age of far-distant antiquity when there was present in man a consciousness of being and willing in communion with the Divine-Spiritual Beings—so much so that ,the History of men was heavenly History. The man of that age, when he came to speak of ‘origins,’ did not relate earthly events but cosmic. And even in relation to his own present time, that which was going on in his earthly environment seemed to him so insignificant beside the cosmic processes that he gave his attention to the latter only, not to the former.

[ 20 ] There was an epoch when humanity was conscious of beholding the history of the heavens in mighty and impressive revelations, wherein the Divine-Spiritual Beings themselves stood before the soul of man. They spoke, and man in Dream Inspiration hearkened to their speech; they revealed their forms, and in Dream-Imagination man saw them.

[ 21 ] This heavenly History, which for a long time filled the souls of men, was followed by the mythical History, generally regarded in our time as a poetic creation of the ancients. Mythical History combines heavenly events with earthly. ‘Heroes,’ for instance,—super-human beings—appear on the scene. They are beings at a higher stage in evolution than the human being. In a given epoch, for example, man had developed the members of human nature only so far as to the Sentient Soul, but the ‘Hero’ had already evolved what will one day appear in man as Spirit-Self. In the existing conditions of the Earth, the ‘Hero’ could not incarnate directly, but he could do so indirectly by diving down into the body of a human being, and thus becoming able to work as a man among men. Such beings are to be seen in the ‘Initiates’ of an earlier time.

[ 22 ] To understand the true position of the facts in this world process, we must not imagine that in the successive epochs mankind ‘conceived’ of the processes and events in just this way. But that which actually took place, as between the more spiritual, ‘incalculable’ and the corporeal, ‘calculable’ world, underwent a change. Long after the world-relationships had actually changed, human consciousness in this or that nation still held fast to a world-conception corresponding to a far earlier reality. To begin with, this was due to the fact that the consciousness of men, which does not keep pace exactly with the cosmic process, really continued to behold the old condition. Afterwards there came a time in which the vision faded, but men still held fast to the old by tradition. Thus in the Middle Ages an in-playing of the heavenly world into the earthly was still conceived out of tradition, but it was no longer seen, for the force of Imaginative picture-seeing was no longer present.

[ 23 ] In the earthly realm, the different peoples evolved in such a way as to hold fast to the content of one or other world conception for varying periods of time. Thus, world conceptions which by their nature follow one upon the other are found living side by side. Albeit, the variety of world conceptions is due not to this alone, but also to the fact that the different nations, according to their inner talents, did really see different spiritual things. Thus the Egyptians beheld the world in which beings dwell who have come to a premature standstill on the path of human evolution and have not become earthly Man. The Egyptians too saw man himself, after his earthly life, in the midst of all that he had to do with beings such as these. The Chaldaean peoples, on the other hand, saw more the way in which extra-earthly spiritual Beings, both good and evil, entered into the earthly life to work there.

[ 24 ] The ancient ‘Heavenly History’ properly speaking, which belonged to a very long epoch of time, was followed by the epoch of Mythological History, shorter, but, in comparison to the subsequent period of ‘History’ in the accepted sense, none the less very long.

[ 25 ] It is, as I explained above, only with difficulty that man in his consciousness takes leave of the old conceptions wherein the Gods and men are thought of in living interplay and co-operation. Thus the period of Earthly History in the proper sense has long been present; it has in fact been present since the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-soul. Nevertheless for a long time men continued to ‘think’ in the sense of what had been before. It was only when the first germs of the Spiritual Soul evolved, that they began therewith to pay attention to what is now called ‘History in the proper sense.’ And in this Human-Spiritual element, which, loosed from the Divine-Spiritual, becomes ‘History,’ the free Intelligence and the free Will can be experienced consciously by men.

[ 26 ] Thus the World-process in which man is interwoven, runs its course between the fully calculable and the working of the free Intelligence and the free Will. This World-process manifests itself in all conceivable intermediate shades of co-operation between these two.

[ 27 ] Man lives his life between birth and death in such a manner that in the ‘calculable’ the bodily foundation is created for the unfolding of his inner soul-and-spirit nature, which is free and incalculable. He goes through his life between death and new birth in the incalculable, but in such a way that the calculable there unfolds, in thought, ‘within’ his existence of soul and spirit. Out of this calculable element he thereby becomes the builder of his coming life on Earth.

[ 28 ] That which cannot be calculated is manifested forth on Earth in ‘History,’ but into it the calculable is incorporated, though only to a slight extent.

[ 29 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings oppose themselves to the order which is established between the incalculable and the calculable by the Divine-Spiritual Beings who have been united with man from the very beginning; they oppose the harmonising of the Cosmos by the Divine-Spiritual Beings through ‘measure, number and weight.’ Lucifer cannot unite anything calculable with the nature that he has given to his being. His ideal is a cosmic and unconditioned activity of Intelligence and Will.

[ 30 ] This Luciferic tendency is in keeping with the cosmic order in the realms in which there should be happenings that are free. And Lucifer is there the competent spiritual helper of the unfolding of humanity. Without his assistance freedom could not enter into the human life of spirit and soul which is built on the foundation of the calculable bodily nature. But Lucifer would like to extend this tendency to the whole Cosmos. And in this, his activity becomes a conflict against the Divine-Spiritual order to which man originally belongs.

[ 31 ] At this point Michael steps in. With his own being he stands within the incalculable; but he balances the incalculable with the calculable, which he bears within him as the cosmic Thought that he has received from his Gods.

[ 32 ] The position of the Ahrimanic Powers in the world is different. They are the exact opposite of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united. At the present time these latter are purely spiritual Powers who possess absolutely free Intelligence and absolutely free Will, but in this Intelligence and Will they create the wise insight of the necessity of the calculable and the unfree—the cosmic Thought out of whose lap man is to unfold as a free being. And in the Cosmos they are united in love with all that is calculable—with the cosmic Thought. This love streams from them through the Universe.

[ 33 ] In complete contrast with this, there lives, in the greedy desire of the Ahrimanic powers, cold hatred against all that unfolds in freedom. Ahriman's efforts are directed towards making a cosmic machine out of that which he allows to stream forth from the Earth into universal space. His ideal is ‘measure, number and weight’ and nothing else than these. He was called into the Cosmos that serves the evolution of humanity, because ‘measure, number and weight,’ which is his sphere, had to be unfolded.

[ 34 ] The world is truly understood only by one who comprehends it everywhere with respect to spirit and body. This must be carried right into Nature, with respect to such Powers as the Divine-Spiritual who work in love and the Ahrimanic who work in hatred. In Nature's cosmic warmth which comes in spring and works more strongly towards summer, we must perceive the love of the Divine-Spiritual Beings working through Nature; in the icy blast of winter we must become aware of Ahriman's working.

[ 35 ] At midsummer, Lucifer's power weaves itself into the love that works in Nature:—into the warmth. At Christmas the power of the Divine-Spiritual Beings with whom man is originally united is directed against the frost-hatred of Ahriman. And towards spring the Divine Love working in Nature continually softens down the Ahriman-hatred there.

[ 36 ] The appearance of this Divine Love which comes each year is a time of remembrance, for with Christ the free element of God entered into the calculable element of Earth. Christ works in absolute freedom in the calculable element, and in this way He renders innocuous the Ahrimanic which craves for the calculable alone.

[ 37 ] The Event of Golgotha is the free cosmic deed of love within Earthly History, and it can only be grasped by the love which man develops for its comprehension.

(About Christmas, 1924)

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (in connection with the foregoing on the subject of Heavenly History, Mythological History, Earthly History, the Mystery of Golgotha)

[ 38 ] 140. The cosmic process in which the evolution of mankind is interwoven—reflected, in the consciousness of man, as ‘History’ in the widest sense—reveals the following successive epochs: a long epoch of ‘Heavenly History’; a shorter epoch of ‘Mythological History’; and the epoch, relatively very short, of ‘Earthly History.’

[ 39 ] 141. Today, this cosmic process is divided, into the working of Divine-Spiritual Beings in free Intelligence and Will which none can calculate, and the ‘calculable’ process of the World-body.

[ 40 ] 142. Against the calculable order of the World-body the Luciferian Powers stand opposed; against all that creates in free Intelligence and Will, the Ahrimanic.

[ 41 ] 143. The Event of Golgotha is a cosmic deed, and free. Springing from the Universal love, it is intelligible only by the love in Man.