The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Of course today we can remember that it is a favorable karmic situation that we are together again on the day when the first act of consecration of man could be performed here two years ago. We have a rather strange order in the main points in the development of the spiritual life here, as it were. The act of consecration of man two years ago, the burning of the Goetheanum, the laying of the foundation stone of the Anthroposophical society a year later and now after the second year we have gathered together here in order to look at the Apocalypse in accordance with your needs.

As I mentioned at the, beginning, a study of the Apocalypse is very closely connected with what is contained in the act of consecration of man; and therefore every day that we spend on the Apocalypse is really a memorial festival for what we permitted to live amongst us two years ago in order to bring what wanted to reveal itself from the spiritual world into this life as the present, modern cultic ritual.

With respect to the coincidence of events, it will perhaps be appropriate today that we will have a point in the Apocalypse before us which is very difficult to understand, but which really leads into the whole heart of the Apocalypse and which is connected most closely with the mystery of the act of consecration of man, because it is objectively connected with the being of Christ. It is really only possible to speak about this point in connection with the Apocalypse. For the Apocalypse bears the fundamental Christian character on its forehead to such an extent that there is no doubt that we cannot get anything out of what is connected with this Apocalypse in a natural way which deviates from the Christian viewpoint. And you may be assured that what I will have to say about this point which we want to discuss today arises in a very striking way from the views of the Apocalypticer.

We look around us at the turning point of our era and we find ourselves in the fifth post Atlantean period since the beginning of the 15th century, and in this period we have the beginning of a renewed battle which Michael will have to fight in connection with everything which has to happen in the near future, and we look back from there to the fourth post Atlantean period which immediately preceded our present one.

We know that this fourth post Atlantean age began about the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, that the Mystery of Golgotha fell in this fourth post Atlantean age and that it can be placed approximately in the center of this age, if we take the slight displacements which always occur in world evolution into account. Thus we can make a schematic sketch of what is connected with our spiritual development as follows (drawing). So that we can say, the 5th post Atlantean age is here, and it was preceded by the fourth, third, second, first back to the Atlantean catastrophe, which as we know essentially transformed the shape of the earth's surface, and which gave a new face to our earth, as it were.

Now let's take a look at what this fourth Atlantean epoch is. It was preceded by what I have often called the Lemurian epoch in earth evolution, and then by what we can call the second and the first epochs in earth evolution. These first three epochs up to the Atlantean one are repetitions of the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods of evolution, respectively, whereas the fourth, Atlantean epoch is something new. The first three are definitely repetitions; it's true that they are repetitions on a higher level, but they are repetitions nevertheless.

The fourth or Atlantean epoch is something new. What happened during the Atlantean epoch occurred while the earth had forms which were quite different from the later ones. The earth's crust wasn't nearly as solid in the middle of the Atlantean epoch as it is today. The long geological periods of time which were presumably necessary for these events are illusions. The earth solidified from a relatively fluidic condition during the Atlantean epoch. The human race was quite different during the Atlantean period. It didn't have the present solid skeleton yet in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. As far as their material makeup is concerned men were more or less similar to lower animals. This doesn't apply to their form, for their forms were magnificent, but the substances were soft and cartilaginous and similar to those in jelly fish. Thus we can say that all physical conditions on earth have changed since that time and that the radical transformations which were still possible on the physical plane in the middle of the Atlantean epoch no longer occur.

It was even possible for men to make rapid metamorphoses, since the materials in their physical bodies were soft; so that depending on their inner soul life they became larger or smaller with various shapes; for every emotion immediately became imprinted in the physical body. In the middle of the Atlantean epoch, if someone wanted to grab something that was a little distance away, his will worked into his gelatinous organs so that they became quite long; so the way that shorter and longer range physical events and processes occurred was different then than it is today. There was an image of the real spiritual events in all physical processes, transformations and metamorphoses. This is not the case today. When we look outside today we don't perceive the working of the spirit in the course of the seasons or in other events anymore. When these rapid transformations occurred in the ancient Atlantean period men did not doubt that this world contained divine, spiritual things. Although the Atlantean continent was still quite mobile, it was beginning to get a fairly constant shape. It was enclosed by a kind of woven, dense fluid, and yet one can't call it semi-fluidic. It consisted of a viscous material which could support soft bodies and soft, mobile plants which floated or glided in this substance and were not yet attached to the ground. So the physical conditions were quite different.

One can say that sea and land were not as distinct then as they were later, that is, one passed over into the other. The people who saw the conditions at that time could say that the gods were working harder in the bordering ocean, where what was being transformed became more manifest than in the solid, fluidic land. One saw the gods at work all around Atlantis; no one doubted that these gods were at work; one perceived the spiritual and psychical everywhere, even in a physical way. One saw psychical and spiritual things in the physical world.

The peculiar thing about the earlier, Greek part of the fourth post Atlantean epoch was that one could clearly see the gods working in everything which goes on in the air; this became more indistinct in the centuries just before the fifth post Atlantean period. In ancient Atlantis one saw the gods at work in fluidic solids, and in the fourth post Atlantean age one saw them at work in the aeriform fluids in cloud formations, in the formation of twilight conditions, etc.

We don't find any descriptions of these things that are like definitions, for people's consciousness wasn't as clear yet, but they were there, because I'd like to know how an open-minded person can understand those wonderful paintings of clouds up to the early Renaissance where something spiritual is born out of the clouds in any other way than that one feels that there is a divine, spiritual activity in the aery cloud beings or in the aery, watery beings. You see, at that time men were constituted in such a way that they didn't look at the physical part of cloud formation, but they felt that something was being revealed through the clouds. This is a very beautiful feeling but it is very difficult to reconstruct for modern consciousness. When someone from even as late as the 8th and 9th centuries looked at the morning sky and saw how the twilight or the glimmering cloud formations at twilight stood before his soul, he really felt that the aurora or red dawn was alive; and he had the same feeling at dusk. The same applied to other things.

So that we can say that people saw the spirit in a physical way in ancient Atlantis. After Atlantis came the post Atlantean epoch with its seven ages. A repetition of the physical happenings in Atlantis at a soul level really occurred in the fourth post Atlantean age. The mighty upheavals of which I spoke: 333, 666, which are soul shocks in the evolution of mankind, definitely correspond to physical upheavals in the Atlantean epoch. And the seers in the Græco-Roman period definitely felt that when they saw something like soul revelations in fluidic, aeriform things, there was something in their souls which was a repetition of earlier earth conditions that occurred in the physical world. Only a dim awareness of this was present, for all consciousness was dimmer at that time.

As I recently mentioned in Anthroposophical lectures, the teachers at the school of Chartres and in other schools showed that the soul experiences of this Græco-Latin age were a psychical repetition of more condensed physical experiences and events in the Atlantean epoch.

And now we are in the consciousness age. The direct soul experiences in aeriform fluids have disappeared. One could say that the fifth post Atlantean age began through a kind of a catastrophe, and that this was a preparation for the further development of the consciousness soul of humanity. We're still in the chaos of this development of the consciousness soul to some extent with respect to our outer civilization. But the dawn of the Michael age will bring perception into this chaos.

This perception will consist of something like memories or Fata-Morgana mental formations which will arise in men in an entirely spiritual way—no longer in a physical way as in the Atlantean epoch, or in a psychical way as in the Græco-Roman age, but in a completely spiritual way—and this will begin after the appearance of the etheric Christ. Human thoughts will have a visionary character and will be like inner mirages, but they will be completely conscious in the age of the consciousness soul. Just as one sees a mirage in the desert which is brought about by the warm air, so men's thoughts will be carried by warmth and they will help men to understand aeriform-fiery and aeriform-warm things.

We can say that man perceives divine things in solids and fluids during the Atlantean epoch (of course this is more in outer, physical matter), that in the fourth post Atlantean or Græco-Roman age man perceives spiritual things in wonderful aeriform, fluidic formations, and that now in the fifth post Atlantean age men's consciousness souls will become aware of aeriform, fiery things and aeriform, warm things which will appear more and more. This will permit something to arise before men in mighty pictures which the Greeks experienced in a soul way and the inhabitants of Atlantis experienced in a physical way.

Thus a time is approaching in human evolution when visions which have the clarity of thought will arise concerning past times on earth and thereby concerning the origin of man and everything which is connected with this. The appearance of the Darwinistic view which gave man a lowly origin on the basis of mere inferences precedes the inner perception of evolution, the wonderful Imaginations which will arise from the inner warmth which is connected with man's breathing process; they will arise like concrete, significant, colored visionary thoughts. Man will know what he was when he looks into a kind of a reflection of the Græco-Roman age and then behind this into what existed in Atlantis. This perception that is of considerable interest for us because it will begin soon is something where we look right into the Apocalypticer's heart, because it is so close to us. For this kind of perception which is almost upon us is what he indicates in a picture: a woman clothed with the sun, a dragon under her feet, giving birth to a baby boy.

And in fact the eyes of many human beings will be opened by this Imagination during the course of this century. Much understanding will radiate from this picture, and it is one which shines back into the Græco-Roman age where it was prepared at the soul level and brought into the shape in which it will appear in the near future, and where it took on a great variety of forms. There was Isis with the Horus child, and metamorphoses of this as the Christ-bearer with the Christ child, that lived in a wonderfully profound way precisely in the Græco-Roman age. They have been handed down through traditions.

In the near future men will look back at the way in which people saw such things in the clouds, that is, in aeriform-fluidic things during the fourth post Atlantean age. And they will also look back even further to what lived in physical, Atlantean events. It will be as if this picture of a sun-clad woman who gives birth to a little boy and who has a dragon under her feet was like the eyepiece of a spiritual telescope which points to something physical lying far back in the past which occurred between the earth and the planets and the sun sphere; earthly, physical things were connected much more closely with cosmic things at that time.

For you see, we know that when the ancient Saturn period was repeated, many of the events which were peculiar to ancient Saturn evolution occurred again during earth evolution, albeit in a condensed form. During the repetition of ancient Sun evolution in the second period, the sun separated from the earth with all the beings who belong to the sun, whereas it was still connected with the earth during the repetition of Saturn evolution. During the third, Lemurian period of earth evolution the moon separated also, so that the next earthly-reality is a trinity of earth, sun and moon. You will find a description of the way the planets were added to this in Occult Science. You can also find all the events which I described there which are connected with the return of human souls during the Atlantean period. These are earthly events which are seen from an earthly perspective.

Now let's add something else to this. Someone who grasps the world's secrets since the Mystery of Golgotha with initiation science will look upon the Christ as the sun being who was united with the sun before the Mystery of Golgotha. When the priests in the mysteries wanted to connect themselves with the Christ in pre-Christian times they looked up to the sun. Christ has become an earth spirit since the Mystery of Golgotha. We must look for Christ the sun spirit in earthly life and in earthly activities. Those who wanted to see him and commune with him before the Mystery of Golgotha had to raise themselves up to the sun.

However, this sun spirit which we must look upon as a male being when it came down to earth, is described in a brilliant way in the Apocalypticer s vision, through a vision that stands before us in an almost material form; similar events in earlier ages can also be described in this way, and I have often done so. It stands there as a splendid physical vision in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. After this point in time the wise men in the mysteries looked up to the sun, and they saw the Christ developing and becoming mature in the sun until he could go through the Mystery of Golgotha. However, when they looked back to this point in Atlantean evolution they saw a birth taking place outside in the cosmos in the sun.

For the priests who saw the Christ as a male being in the sun after his birth in the middle of the Atlantean period saw a female being in the sun before that. This is the important change that occurred in the middle of the Atlantean period. Before the middle of the Atlantean epoch one saw a cosmic woman in the sun's spiritual aura, the woman who was clothed with the sun. This woman who was clothed with the sun corresponded to what was happening in the heavens above the earth at that time, and as the Apocalypticer rightly describes it, she gives birth to a little boy, who is the same being that went through the Mystery, although it went through other forms beforehand. A kind of a birth which was really just a complicated metamorphosis took place at that time in the Atlantean period. One could see how the female sun gave birth to something that was male—to her son. Now what does this mean for the earth? Of course in the middle of the Atlantean period one felt much differently about something like the sun existence than one did later.

Today one looks upon the sun as if it were a collection of craters and burning masses; the present-day descriptions of this by physicists are really horrible. But at that time one saw something like what I just described: a real sun-woman with a dragon at her feet, giving birth to a little boy. The ones who saw something like this and understood it said: For the heavens this is the birth of Christ, and for us it is the birth of our ego.

Even though this ego only entered man's inner nature much later; since this point in the middle of Atlantis evolution occurred in such a way that although men were not as conscious of their ego in an elemental way as they are today, they became ever more conscious of it because the mysteries drew their attention to it. The sun enkindled the ego in man. And the sun's action continually enkindled the ego from outside through the birth which had happened along the lines of this Imagination, until the fourth post Atlantean age, when the ego entered into man. People felt this and they felt that man really belongs to the sun; this was a feeling which made a deep impression upon the human soul.

Now that we have become such delicate souls with respect to our inner experiences, we have no idea how stormy and wild soul experiences, were in earlier times. The fact that man's ego was given to him from the cosmos made him feel that his nature had changed completely. Before that he had mainly been dependent upon what was in his astral body. What was in his astrality worked into his soul and spirit, so that during this ancient time man had the idea: He's standing here (drawing), the sun is up there, the ego is not there yet, but the astral works down from the sun. Man has his astral body from the sun, the astral body which is not controlled by the ego and which has somewhat refined emotions but nevertheless animalized ones in it. The man who had become an ego and who had previously had nothing but an astral body bubbling through him had become an entirely different human being. However, all of this came from the sun.

Let's place the picture of the sun as it was at the beginning of the Atlantean period before us in a somewhat schematic way. It was permeated by a lively luster, which bubbled through the lower half of the sun being. Something was born out of this above, and one felt that there was an indistinct face here. Man felt that the emotions that seethed in his own astral body and everything that gave him his spiritual and soul nature originated in the lower part of the sun being. In the next stage men saw the sun like this (drawing). Things develop more clearly here, the face becomes more distinct, the figure begins to look something like a woman, who is to bring man control through the ego. The space down here where the animal elements are wriggling becomes ever smaller. Finally, the time comes when the woman is present in the sun and gives birth to a little boy and now has what was previously further up here under her feet, where the ego-bearing woman in the picture on the sun demonstrates how one controls the dragon—the astral world of the previous epoch—which is now under her feet. The battle of Michael and the dragon began in the sun at that time, and in fact this brought it about—one saw this as a physical phenomenon—that everything which was in the sun slowly moved towards the earth and became an ingredient of the earth. It became an earth content which thereby controlled man in his sub-consciousness, whereas the ego entered ever more into his consciousness.

These cosmic, meteorological things that took place during the Atlantean epoch had their counter image in the Græco-Roman age when Isis with the Horus child became the Virgin with her Jesus boy. This will appear in a vision to those who look back in the next age which is almost upon us.

Man will see the sun-clad woman in this picture, who has the dragon under her feet that was thrown down to the earth by Michael, so that it cannot be found in the heavens anymore. This Imagination will appear in the age which will be followed by the one where the dragon is turned loose and where what I described to you yesterday will begin. It's a fact that deepened and extensive perception of past times on earth, man's origins and of the Christ being will soon arise in this Michael age. For Michael will concern himself with what the Apocalypticer points to and which will begin again in the Michaelic age, he will concern himself again with that draconic beast in human nature and in human evolution which he threw down.

Let's imagine what happens here in a vivid way. One will look back into the Atlantean epoch—the Apocalypticer does it in advance: he has the vision of the sun-clad woman who gives birth to the little Jesus boy and who has the dragon at her feet—, but this becomes fainter and fainter the closer we get to the end of Atlantean evolution. New continents rise out of the ocean at the end of Atlantean evolution the continents which now contain the forces through which the post Atlantean epoch entered into its various aberrations. The beast with the seven heads rises up from the sea. Sevenfold land rises up from the sea and pulls men down through the spiritual elements which evaporate from the earth into their emotions.

The Atlantean catastrophe appears to the Apocalypticer in the form of this seven headed beast which rises from the sea, and it will appear in the future when what the Apocalypticer is pointing to will begin again in the Michaelic age. The Apocalypticer is speaking of very real events which concern us a great deal, in connection with the spiritual life of humanity. And the content of this Imagination is connected with the being of Christ.

An age will soon come when men's souls will again see how the spirit lives in earthly things and therefore the spiritual processes in transubstantiation will also be visible to them. Then the earthly reflection of what has happened in heavenly regions will appear in transubstantiation so that what has occurred since the middle of the Atlantean epoch is a small section of everything which is connected with the being of Christ. One will understand how the kind of metamorphosis which takes place in transubstantiation is possible when one will see that the transubstantiation in what is physical and chemical at the moment—which is only a passing episode—is connected with something that is quite different than things which are apparently material.

Thus we can deepen our remembrance of the first act of consecration of man two years ago, this remembrance of the Christ who shone down from the heavens and really descended from the heavens during the Atlantean epoch, who appeared in the clouds in the Græco-Roman age and walked on earth, and who was understood by men in their visions, who is now walking on earth in an etheric form in our age, and is understood by men through visions and Imaginations. The Christ is present in transubstantiation and will be present for human beings more and more. The ways in which the Christ will gradually live in events during earth evolution are connected with the events that I described today. Let's take this in as a kind of festive idea today in memory of the first act of consecration of man which was celebrated in the Goetheanum two years ago.

Yesterday I told you the story of Gerhard the Good—which most of you probably know—so that today we can illustrate various points in our endeavour to increase our understanding of the matters we are discussing. But before I interpret parts of this story for you, in so far as this is necessary, we must also recall a number of other things we have touched on at various times during these lectures. From what has been said over the past few weeks you will have seen that the painful events of today are connected with impulses living in the more recent karma of mankind, namely, the karma of the whole fifth post-Atlantean period. For those who want to go more deeply into these matters it is necessary to link external events with what is happening more inwardly, which can only be understood against the background of human evolution as seen by spiritual science.

To begin with, take at face value certain facts which I have pointed out a number of times. I have frequently said that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, an endeavour was made to draw the attention of modern mankind to the fact that there exist in the universe not only those forces and powers recognized by natural science but also others of a spiritual kind. The endeavour was to show that just as we take in with our eyes—or, indeed, with all our senses—what is visible around us, so are there also spiritual impulses around us, which people who know about such things can bring to bear on social life—impulses which cannot be seen with the eye but are known to a more spiritual science.

We know what path this more spiritual science took, so I need not go over it again. Around the middle of the nineteenth century, then, it was the concern of a certain centre to draw people's attention to the existence, as it were, of a spiritual environment. This had been forgotten during the age of materialism. You also know that such things have to be tackled with caution because a certain degree of maturity is necessary in people who take in such knowledge. Of course, not all those can be mature who come across, or are affected by, this knowledge in accordance with the laws of our time, which underlie public life. But part of what must be done at such a time can be the requirement to test whether the knowledge may yet be revealed publicly.

Now in the middle of the nineteenth century two paths were possible. One, even then, would have been what we could describe by mentioning our anthroposophical spiritual science, namely, to make comprehensible to human thinking what spiritual knowledge reveals about our spiritual environment. It is a fact that this could have been attempted at that time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, but this path was not chosen. The reason was, in part, that those who possessed this esoteric knowledge were prejudiced, because of traditions that have come down from ancient times, against making such things public. They felt that certain knowledge guarded by the secret brotherhoods—for it was still guarded at that time—should be kept within the circle of these brotherhoods. We have since seen that, so long as matters are conducted in the proper way, it is perfectly acceptable today to reveal certain things. Of course it is unavoidable that some malicious opponents should appear, and always will appear, in circles in which such knowledge is made known—people who are adherents for a time because it suits their passions and their egoism, but who then become opponents under all sorts of guises and make trouble. Also when spiritual knowledge is made known in a community, this can easily lead to arguments, quarrelling and disputes, of which, however, not too much notice can be taken, since otherwise no spiritual knowledge would ever be made known. But, apart from these things, no harm is done if the matter is handled in the right way.

But at that time this was not believed. So ancient prejudice won the day and it was agreed to take another path. But, as I have often said, this failed. It was decided to use the path of mediumistic revelation to make people recognize the spiritual world in the same way as they recognize the physical world. Suitable individuals were trained to be mediums. What they then revealed through their lowered consciousness was supposed to make people recognize the existence of certain spiritual impulses in their environment. This was a materialistic way of revealing the spiritual world to people. It corresponded to some extent to the conditions of the fifth post-Atlantean period, in so far as this is materialistic in character.

This way of handling things began, as you know, in America in the middle of the nineteenth century. But it soon became obvious that the whole thing was a mistake. It had been expected that the mediums would reveal the existence of certain elemental and nature spirits in the environment. Instead, they all started to refer to revelations from the kingdom of the dead. So the goal which had been set was not reached. I have often explained that the living can only reach the dead with an attitude which does not depend on lowering the consciousness. You all know these things. At that time this was also known and that is why, when the mediums began to speak of revelations of the dead, it was realized that the whole thing was a mistake. This had not been expected. It had been hoped that the mediums would reveal how the nature spirits work, how one human being affects another, what forces are at play in the social organism, and so on. It had been hoped that people would start to recognize what forces might be used by those who understand such things, so that people would no longer be dependent solely on one another in the way they are when only their sense perceptions come into play, but would be able to work through the total human personality. This was one thing that went wrong.

The other was that, in keeping with man's materialistic inclinations, it soon became obvious what would have begun to happen if the mediumistic movement had spread in the way it threatened to do. Use would have been made of the mediums to accomplish aims which ought only to be accomplished under the influence of natural, sense-bound reasoning. For some individuals it would have been highly desirable to employ a medium who could impart the means of discovering the knowledge which such people covet. I have told you how many letters I get from people who write: I have a lottery ticket; or, I want to buy a lottery ticket; I need the money for an entirely selfless purpose; could you not tell me which number will be drawn? Obviously, if mediums had been fully trained in the techniques of mediumship, the resulting mischief with this kind of thing would have been infinite, quite apart from everything else. People would have started to go to mediums to find a suitable bride or bridegroom, and so on.

Thus it came about that, in the very quarter that had launched the movement in order to test whether people were ready to take in spiritual knowledge, efforts were now made to suppress the whole affair. What had been feared in bygone times, when the abilities of the fourth post-Atlantean period still worked in people, had indeed now come to pass. In those days witches were burnt, simply because those people called witches were really no more than mediums, and because their connections with the spiritual world—though of a materialistic nature—might cause knowledge to be revealed which would have been very awkward for certain people. Thus, for instance it might have been very awkward for certain brotherhoods if, before being burnt at the stake, a witch had revealed what lay behind them. For it is true that when consciousness is lowered there can be a kind of telephone connection with the spiritual world, and that by this route all sorts of secrets can come out. Those who burnt the witches did so for a very good reason: It could have been very awkward for them if the witches had revealed anything to the world, whether in a good or a bad sense, but especially in a bad sense.

So the attempt to test the cultural maturity of mankind by means of mediums had gone awry. This was realized even by those who, led astray by the old rules of silence and by the materialistic tendencies of the nineteenth century, had set this attempt in train. You know, of course, that the activities of mediums have not been entirely curtailed, and that they still exist, even today. But the art of training mediums to a level at which their revelations could become significant has, so to speak, been withdrawn. By this withdrawal the capabilities of mediums have been made more or less harmless. In recent decades, as you know, the pronouncements of mediums have come to amount to not much more than sentimental twaddle. The only surprising thing is that people set so much store by them. But the door to the spiritual world had been opened to some degree and, moreover, this had been done in a manner which was untimely and a mistake.

In this period came the birth and work of Blavatsky. You might think that the birth of a person is insignificant, but this would be a judgement based on maya. Now the important thing is that this whole undertaking had to be discussed among the brotherhoods, so that much was said and brought into the open within the brotherhoods. But the nineteenth century was no longer like earlier centuries in which many methods had existed for keeping secret those things which had to be kept secret. Thus it happened that, at a certain moment, a member of one of the secret brotherhoods, who intended to make use in a one-sided way of what he learnt within these brotherhoods, approached Blavatsky. Apart from her other capacities Blavatsky was an extremely gifted medium, and this person induced her to act as a connecting link for machinations which were no longer as honest as the earlier ones. The first, as we have seen, were honest but mistaken. Up to this point the attempt to test people's receptivity had been perfectly honest, though mistaken. Now, however, came the treachery of a member of an American secret brotherhood. His purpose was to make one-sided use of what he knew, with the help of someone with psychic gifts, such as Blavatsky. Let us first look at what actually took place. When Blavatsky heard what the member of the brotherhood had to say, she, of course, reacted inwardly to his words because she was psychic. She understood a great deal more about the matter than the one who was giving her the information. The ancient knowledge formulated in the traditional way lit up in her soul a significant understanding which she could hardly have achieved solely with her own resources. Inner experiences were stimulated in her soul by the ancient formulations which stemmed from the days of atavistic clairvoyance and which were preserved in the secret brotherhoods, often without much understanding for their meaning on the part of the members. These inner experiences led in her to the birth of a large body of knowledge. She knew, of course, that this knowledge must be significant for the present evolution of mankind, and also that by taking the appropriate path this knowledge could be utilized in a particular way.

But Blavatsky, being the person she was, could not be expected to make use of such lofty spiritual knowledge solely for the good of mankind as a whole. She hit upon the idea of pursuing certain aims which were within her understanding, having come to this point in the manner I have described. So now she demanded to be admitted to a certain occult brotherhood in Paris. Through this brotherhood she would start to work. Ordinarily she would have been accepted in the normal way, apart from the fact that it was not normal to admit a woman; but this rule would have been waived in this case because it was known that she was an important individuality. However, it would not have served her purpose to be admitted merely as an ordinary member, and so she laid down certain conditions. If these conditions had been accepted, many subsequent events would have been very different but, at the same time, this secret brotherhood would have pronounced its own death sentence—that is, it would have condemned itself to total ineffectiveness. So it refused to admit Blavatsky. She then turned to America, where she was indeed admitted to a secret brotherhood. In consequence, she of course acquired extremely significant insights into the intentions of such secret brotherhoods; not those which strive for the good of mankind as a whole, disregarding any conflicting wishes, but those whose purposes are one-sided and serve certain groups only. But it was not in Blavatsky's nature to work in the way these brotherhoods wished. So it came about that, under the influence of what was termed an attack on the Constitution of North America, she was excluded from this brotherhood.

So now she was excluded. But of course she was not a person who would be likely to take this lying down. Instead, she began to threaten the American brotherhood with the consequences of excluding her in this way, now that she knew so much. The American brotherhood now found itself sitting under the sword of Damocles, for if, as a result of having been a member, Blavatsky had told the world what she knew, this would have spelt its death sentence. The consequence was that American and European occultists joined forces in order to inflict on Blavatsky a condition known as occult imprisonment. Through certain machinations a sphere of Imaginations is called forth in a soul which brings about a dimming of what that soul previously knew, thus making it virtually ineffective. It is a procedure which honest occultists never apply, and even dishonest ones only very rarely, but it was applied on that occasion in order to save the life—that is the effectiveness, of that secret brotherhood.

For years Blavatsky existed in this occult imprisonment, until certain Indian occultists started to take an interest in her because they wanted to work against that American brotherhood. As you see, we keep coming up against occult streams which want to work one-sidedly. Thus Blavatsky entered this Indian current, with which you are familiar. The Indian brotherhood was very interested indeed in proceeding against the American brotherhood, not because they saw that they were not serving mankind as a whole, but because they in turn had their own one-sided patriotically Indian viewpoint. By means of various machinations the Indian and the American occultists reached a kind of agreement. The Americans promised not to interfere in what the Indians wanted to do with Blavatsky, and the Indians engaged to remain silent on what had gone before.

You can see just how complicated these things really are when you add to all this the fact, which I have also told you about, that a hidden individual, a mahatma behind a mask, had been instituted in place of Blavatsky's original teacher and guide. This figure stood in the service of a European power and had the task of utilizing whatever Blavatsky could do in the service of this particular European power. One way of discovering what all this is really about might be to ask what would have happened if one or other of these projects had been realized.

Time is too short to tell you everything today, but let us pick out a few aspects. We can always come back to these things again soon.

Supposing Blavatsky had succeeded in gaining admission to the occult lodge in Paris. If this had happened, she would not have come under the influence of that individual who was honoured as a mahatma in the Theosophical Society—although he was no such thing—and the life of the occult lodge in Paris would have been extinguished. A great deal behind which this same Paris lodge may be seen to stand would not have happened, or perhaps it would have happened in the service of a different, one-sided influence. Many things would have taken a different course. For there was also the intention of exterminating this Paris lodge with the help of the psychic personality of Blavatsky. If it had been exterminated, there would have been nothing behind all those people who have contributed to history, more or less like marionettes. People like Silvagni, Durante, Sergi, Cecconi, Lombroso and all his relations, and many others would have had no occult backers behind them. Many a door, many a kind of sliding door, would have remained locked.

You will understand that this is meant symbolically. In certain countries editorial offices—I mean this as a picture!—have a respectable door and a sliding door. Through the respectable door you enter the office and through the sliding door you enter some secret brotherhood or other working, as I have variously indicated over the last few days, to achieve results of the kind about which we have spoken. So the intention was to abolish something from the world which would have done away with, at least, one stream which we have seen working in our present time. Signor d'Annunzio would not have given the speech we quoted.

Perhaps another would have been given instead, pushing things in a different direction. But you see that the moment things are not fully under control, the moment people are pushed about through a dimming of their consciousness, and when occultism is being used, not for the general good of mankind—and above all, in our time, not with true knowledge—but for the purpose of achieving one-sided aims, then matters can come to look very grave indeed.

Anyway, the members of this lodge were, from the standpoint of the lodge, astute enough not to enter into a discussion of these things. Later on, certain matters were hushed up, obscured, by the fact that Blavatsky was prevented by her occult imprisonment from publicizing the impulses of that American lodge and giving them her own slant, which she would doubtless otherwise have done. Once all these things had run their course, the only one to benefit from Blavatsky was the Indian brotherhood. There is considerable significance for the present time in the fact that a certain sum of occult knowledge has entered the world one-sidedly, with an Indian colouring. This knowledge has entered the world; it now exists. But the world has remained more or less unconscious of it because of the paralysis I have described.

Those who reckon with such things always count on long stretches of time. They prepare things and leave them to develop. These are not individuals, but brotherhoods in which the successor takes over from the predecessor and carries on in a similar direction with what has been started.

On the basis of the two examples I have given you, of occult lodges, you can see that much depended on the actual impulses not being made public. I do not wish to be misunderstood and I therefore stated expressly that the first attempt I described to you was founded on a certain degree of honesty. But it is extremely difficult for people to be entirely objective as regards mankind as a whole. There is little inclination for this nowadays. People are so easily led astray by the group instinct that they are not objective as regards mankind as a whole but pay homage to one group or another, enjoying the feeling of ‘belonging.’ But this is something that is no longer really relevant to the point we have reached in human evolution. The requirement of the present moment is that we should, at least to some degree, feel ourselves to be individuals and extricate ourselves, at least inwardly, from group things, so that we belong to mankind as human individuals. Even though, at present, we are shown so grotesquely how impossible this is for some people, it is nevertheless a requirement of our time.

For example, let me refer to what I said here a few days ago. A nation as a whole is an individuality of a kind which cannot be compared with human individualities, who live here on the physical plane and then go through their development between death and a new birth. Nations are individualities of quite a different kind. As you can see from everything we find in our anthroposophical spiritual science, a folk spirit, a folk soul, is something different from the soul of an individual human being. It is nonsense to speak in a materialistic sense, as is done today, of the soul of a nation while at the back of one's mind thinking of something resembling the soul of an individual—even though one, of course, does not admit this to oneself. Thus you hear people speak of ‘the French soul’; this has been repeatedly said in recent years. It is nonsense, plain nonsense, because it is an analogy taken from the individual human soul and applied to the folk soul. You can only speak of the folk soul if you take into account the complex totality described in the lecture cycle on the different folk spirits. But to speak in any other sense about the folk soul is utter nonsense, even though many, including journalists, do so—and they may be forgiven, for they do not know what they are talking about. It is mere verbosity to speak—as has been done—for instance of the ‘Celtic soul and the Latin spirit’. Maybe such a thing is just about acceptable as an analogy, but there is no reality in. We must be clear about the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. So often have we said that the Mystery of Golgotha was accomplished in such a way that what has been united with earth evolution ever since is there for all mankind, but that if an individual speaks of a mystical Christ within him, this is no more than idle talk. The Mystery of Golgotha is an objective reality, as you know from much that has been said here. It took place for mankind as a whole, which means for every individual human being. Christ died for all human beings, as a human being for human beings, not for any other kind of being. It is possible to speak about a Christian, about one whose attitude of mind is Christian, but it is complete nonsense to talk of a Christian nation. There is no reality in this. Christ did not die for nations, nations are not the individualities for whom He died. An individual who is close to the Being of the Mystery of Golgotha can be a Christian, but it is not possible to speak of a Christian nation. The true soul of a nation, its folk soul, belongs to planes on which the Mystery of Golgotha did not take place. So any dealings and actions between nations can never be interpreted or commented upon in a Christian sense.

I am pointing out these things simply because it is necessary that you in particular, my dear friends, should understand just how important it is today to arrive at clear-cut concepts. This can only be done by applying spiritual science, and yet mankind as a whole strives to fish in muddy waters with concepts that are utterly nonsensical and obscure. So the important thing is, above all, to arrive at clear-cut concepts, to see everything in relation to clear-cut concepts, and also to understand that in our time certain occult, spiritual impulses have been working, chiefly through human beings. This is fitting for the fifth post-Atlantean period.

Now if Blavatsky had been able to speak out at that time, certain secrets would have been revealed, secrets I have mentioned as belonging to certain secret brotherhoods and connected with the striving of a widespread network of groups. I said to you earlier that definite laws underlie the rise and evolution of peoples, of nations. These laws are usually unknown in the external, physical world. This is right and proper, for in the first place they ought to be recognized solely by those who desire to receive them with clean hands. What now underlies the terrible trials mankind is undergoing at present and will undergo in the future is the interference in a one-sided way, by certain modern brotherhoods, with the spiritual forces that pulse through human evolution in the region in which, for instance, nations, peoples, come into being. Evolution progresses in accordance with definite laws; it is regular and comes about through certain forces. But human beings interfere, in some part unconsciously, though if they are members of secret brotherhoods, then they do so consciously.

To be able to judge these things you need what yesterday I called a wider horizon; you need the acquisition of a wider horizon. I showed you the forces of which Blavatsky became the plaything, in order to point out how such a plaything can be tossed about, from West to East, from America to India. This is because forces are at work which are being managed by human beings for certain ends, by means of utilizing the passions and feelings of nationality, which have, however, in their turn first been manufactured. This is most important. It is important to develop an eye for the way in which a person who, because of the type of passions in her—in her blood—can be put in a certain position and be brought under the sway of certain influences. Equally, those who do this must know that certain things can be achieved, depending on the position in which the person is placed. Many attempts fail. But account is taken of long periods of time and of many possibilities. Above all, account is taken of how little inclination people have to pay attention to the wider—the widest, contexts.

Let us stop here and turn to yesterday's story. It tells us about the time around the tenth century, when the constitution of souls was still that of the fourth post-Atlantean period. We saw how the spiritual world intervened in the life of Emperor Otto of the Red Beard. His whole life is transformed because the spiritual world makes him aware of Gerhard the Good. From Gerhard the Good he is to learn the fear of God, true piety, and that one must not expect—for largely egoistic reasons—a blessing from heaven for one's earthly deeds. So he is told by the spiritual world to seek out Gerhard the Good. This is the one side: what plays in from the spiritual world.

Those who know that age—not as it is described by external history, but as it really was—are aware that the spiritual world did indeed play in through real visions such as that described in connection with Emperor Otto the Red, and that spiritual impulses definitely played a meaningful part. The one who wrote down this story says expressly that in his youth he had also written many other stories, as had other contemporaries of his. The man who wrote down the story of Gerhard the Good was Rudolf von Ems, an approximate contemporary of Wolfram von Eschenbach. He said he had written other stories as well but that he had destroyed them because they had been fairy tales. Yet he does not consider this story to be a fairy tale but strictly historical, even though externally it is not historical—that is it would not be included in today's history books which only take physical maya into account. In the way he tells it, it cannot be compared with external, purely physical history; and yet his telling is more true than purely physical history can be for, on the whole, that is only maya. He tells the story for the fourth post-Atlantean period.

You know, for I have repeatedly said this, that I am not taking sides in any way but simply reporting facts which are to provide a basis on which judgements may be formed. Only those who do not wish to be objective will maintain that what I shall attempt to say is not objective. Someone who does not wish to be objective cannot, of course, be expected to find objectivity in what is, in fact, objective. The fact that the spiritual world plays into human affairs is not the only important aspect of the story of Gerhard the Good. It is also significant that a leading personality receives from the spiritual world the impulse to turn to a member of the commercial world, the world of the merchant. It is indeed a historical fact that, in Central Europe, at that time the members of the ruling dynasty to which Otto the Red belonged did start to patronize the merchant classes in the towns. In Europe this was the time of the growth of commerce.

We should further take into account that at that time there were as yet no ocean routes between Orient and Occident. Trade routes were definitely still overland routes. Merchants such as Gerhard the Good who, as you know, lived in Cologne, carried their trade overland from Cologne to the Orient and back again. Any use of ships was quite insignificant. The trade routes were land routes. Shipping connections were not much more than attempts to achieve with the primitive ships of those days what was being done much more efficiently by land. So in the main the trade routes were overland, while shipping was only just beginning. That is what is characteristic of this time, for comprehensive shipping operations only came much later.

We have here a contrast arising out of the very nature of things. So long as Orient and Occident were connected by land routes, it was perfectly natural that the countries of Central Europe should take the lead. Life in these Central European countries was shaped accordingly. Much spiritual culture also travelled along these routes. It was quite different from what came later. As the centuries proceeded, the land routes were supplanted by ocean routes. As you know, England gradually took control of all the ocean connections which others had opened up. Spain, Holland and France were all conquered as far as their sea-faring capacities were concerned, so that in the end everything was held under the mighty dominance which encompassed a quarter of the earth's dry land, and gradually also all the earth's oceans.

You can see how systematic is this conquering, this almost exterminating, of other seafaring powers when you remember how I told you some time ago that in the secret brotherhoods, especially those which grew so powerful from the time of James I onwards, it was taught as an obvious truth that the Anglo-Saxon race—as they put it—will have to be given dominance over the world in the fifth post-Atlantean period. You will see how systematic the historical process has been when you consider what I have also mentioned and what was also taught: that this fifth post-Atlantean race of the English-speaking peoples will have to overcome the peoples of the Latin race.

To start with, the main thing is the interrelation between the English-speaking peoples and those whose languages are Latin in origin. Recent history cannot be understood without the realization that the important aim—which is also what is being striven for—is for world affairs to be arranged in such a way that the English-speaking peoples are favoured, while the influence of any peoples whose language is based on Latin fades out. Under certain circumstances something can be made to fade out by treating it favourably for a while, thus gaining power over it. This can then make it easy to engulf it.

In those secret brotherhoods, about which I have spoken so often, little significance is attached to Central Europe, for they are clever enough to realize that Germany, for instance, owns only one thirty-third of the earth's land surface. This is very little indeed, compared with a whole quarter of the land surface plus dominance over the high seas. So not much importance is attached to Central Europe. A great deal of importance was attached, however—especially during the period when present events were being prepared—to the overcoming of all those impulses connected with the Latin races.

It is remarkable how short-sighted the modern historical view is and how little inclination there is to go more deeply into matters which are quite characteristic of situations. I have already pointed out that what has so long been practised as a pragmatic view of history is not important, reporting as it does on one event, followed by another, and another, and yet another. What is important is to recognize the facts characterized by the many interrelationships in the events which follow one another. What matters is to point out what is characteristic about the facts, namely, what reveals the forces lying behind maya. Pragmatic history must today give way to a history of symptoms.

Those who see through things in this way will be in a position to form judgements about certain events which differ considerably from those of people who reel off the events of world history—this fable convenue—one after the other, as is done in historical science today. Consider some of the things you know well in connection with some others about which I shall tell you. First of all, a simple fact: In 1618 the Thirty Years War began because certain ideas of a reformative kind developed within the Czech Slav element. Then certain aristocrats belonging to these Slav circles took up the movement and rebelled against what might be called the Counter-Reformation, namely, the Catholicism from Spain which was favoured by the Habsburgs. The first thing usually told about the Thirty Years War is the story of the rebels going to the town hall in Prague and throwing the councillors Martinitz and Slavata and the secretary Fabrizius out of the window. Yet this is quite insignificant. The only interesting point is perhaps that the three gentlemen did not hurt themselves because they fell onto a dunghill. These are not things which can bring the Thirty Years' War to life for us or show us its real causes.

The reformative party elected Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, as counter-King of Bohemia in 1619. Then followed, as you know, the battle of the White Mountain. Up to the election of the Elector Palatine, all the events were caused by the passionate feelings of these people for a reform movement, by a rebellion against arbitrary acts of power such as the closure or destruction of Protestant churches at Braunau and Kloster Grab. There is not enough time for me to tell you the whole story. But now think: Frederick, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is elected King. Up to this point the events are based on human passions, human enthusiasm, it is even justified to say human idealism—I am quite happy to concede this.

But why, of all people, was the Elector Palatine of the Rhine chosen as King of Bohemia? It was because he was the son-in-law of James I, who stands at the beginning of the renewal of the brotherhoods! Here, then, we may discern an important finger in the pie if we are trying to look at history symptomatically. Attempts were being made to steer events in a particular direction. They failed. But you see that there is a finger in the pie. The most significant sign of what kind of impulses were to be brought to bear in this situation is that the son-in-law of one of the most important occultists, James I, was thrown into this position.

You see, the fact is that the whole of recent history has to do with the contrast between the ancient Roman-Latin element and that element, not of the English people—for they would get on perfectly happily with the world—but that element which, as I have described sufficiently, is to be made out of the English people if they fail to put up any resistance. It is the conflict between these two elements that is at work.

Meanwhile something else is manipulated, for a great deal can be achieved in one place by bringing about events in another.

Let us look at a later date. You might pick up a history book and read the history of the Seven Years War. Of course the history of this war is read just as thoughtlessly as any other. For to understand what is really going on and investigate what forces of history are playing a part, you have to look properly at the various links between the different circumstances. You have to consider, for instance, that at that time the southern part of Central Europe, namely Austria, was linked with every aspect of the Latin element and even had a proper alliance with France, whereas the northern part of Middle Europe—not at first, but later on—was drawn to what was to be made, by certain quarters, into the English-speaking, fifth post-Atlantean race.

When you look closely at the alliances and everything else that went on at that time—those things which were not maya, of course—you discover a war that is in reality being waged about North America and India between England and France. What went on in Europe was really only a weak mirror image of this. For if you compare everything that took place on the larger scale—do extend your horizons!—then you will see that the conflict was between England and France and that North America and India were already starting to have their effect. It was a matter of which of these two powers was cleverer and more able to direct events in such a way that dominion over North America or India could be snatched away from the other. At work in this were long-term future plans and the control of important impulses. It is true: The influence snatched by England from France in North America was won on the battle fields of Silesia during the Seven Years' War!

Watch how the alliances shift when the situation becomes a little awkward and difficult; watch the alliances from this point of view!

Now, another story. It is necessary to look at these things, and once one is not misunderstood, once it is assumed that one's genuine purpose is to gain a clear picture of what is going on in the world, once one strives to be objective, it will not be taken amiss when such stories are told; instead it will be understood that our concern is for comprehension and not for taking sides. In fact, it is precisely those people who feel they are affected by a particular matter who ought to be particularly glad to learn more about it. For then they are lifted above their blindness and given sight, and nothing is better for a person than real insight into how things work in the world. So let us now take an example which can show you a different side of how things work.

Through circumstances which you can look up in a history book, the kingdoms of Hanover and England were once linked. The laws of succession in the two countries were different—we need not go into this in detail—and as a result of this, when Victoria came to the throne of England, Hanover had to become separate. Another member of the English royal house had to take the throne of Hanover. The person elected, or rather the person jostled onto the throne of Hanover was Ernst August, Duke of Cumberland, who had previously been connected with the throne of England. So this Ernst August came to the throne of Hanover at the age of sixty-six. His character was such that, after his departure to become the king of Hanover, the English newspapers said: Thank goodness he's gone; let's hope he doesn't come back! He was considered a dreadful person because of the whole way he behaved. When you look at the impression he made on his contemporaries and those who had dealings with him, a certain type of character emerges which is striking for one who understands characters of this kind. The Hanoverians could not understand him. They found him coarse. He was indeed coarse, so coarse that the poet Thomas Moore said: He surely belonged to the dynasty of Beelzebub. But you know the saying: The German lies if he is polite. So they had a certain understanding for coarseness, but they did presuppose that someone who is coarse is at least honest. Ernst August, however, was always a liar as well as being coarse, and this the Hanoverians could not understand. He had other similar traits as well.

First, Ernst August repealed the Hanoverian constitution. Then he dismissed the famous ‘seven professors’ of Göttingen University. He had them sent straight out of the country, so that it was not until they reached Witzenhausen, which lay beyond his majesty's borders, that their students were permitted to take leave of them. I need not tell you the whole story. But what is the explanation? Those who seek no further for an explanation of this extraordinary mask merely find Ernst August coarse and dishonest. He even cheated Metternich, which is saying much indeed, and so on. But there is something remarkably systematic in all this. And the systematic aspect is not changed by the fact that he lived most of his life up to the age of sixty-six in England, where he was an officer of the Dragoons.

An explanation may be found in the fact that in his whole manner he was manifesting the impulses one has when one is a member of the so-called ‘Orange Lodge’. His whole manner was an expression of the impulses of the Orange Lodge, of which he was a member.

What we must do is learn to understand history symptomatically and widen our horizons. We need to develop a sense for what is important and what really gives insight. So I told you the tale of Gerhard the Good in order to demonstrate how, through such phenomena as the Orange Lodge, and so on, what had been Central Europe was quite systematically drawn over to the West. I am not uttering any reproach, for it was a historical necessity. But one ought to know it and not apply moral judgements to such things. What is essential is to develop the will to see things, to see how human beings are manipulated, to see where there might be impulses by which people are manipulated. This is the same as striving for the sense for truth. I have often stressed that this is not something that enables one to say: But I really believed it, it was my honest and sincere opinion! No indeed. One who possesses the sense for truth is one who unremittingly strives to find the truth of the matter, one who never ceases to seek the truth and who takes responsibility for himself even when he says something untrue out of ignorance. For, objectively, it is irrelevant whether something wrong is said knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly it is irrelevant whether you hold your finger in the candle flame through ignorance or on purpose; either way you burn it.

At this point we must understand what happened at the transition from the fourth post-Atlantean period-when commerce was still just under the influence of the spiritual world, as is indicated in the story of Gerhard the Good—to the fifth period, when everything commercial was drawn over into the occult sphere which is guided by the so-called ‘Brothers of the Shadow’. These brotherhoods guard certain principles. From their point of view it would be extremely dangerous if these principles should be betrayed. That is why they were so careful to prevent Blavatsky from making them public or causing them to pass over into other hands. They were, in fact, to be passed over from the West to the East; not to India but to the East of Russia.

Someone with a sense for what lies behind maya can understand that external institutions and external measures can have differing values, differing degrees of importance in the total context. Consider an incident in recent history. I have told you so many occult, spiritual things that I have, in a way, ‘done my time’ and am now free to go on and give you some indications out of more recent history. No one should say that I am taking this time away from that devoted to occult matters; these things are also important.

So let us take an example from more recent history. In 1909 a meeting was arranged between the King of Italy and the Tsar of Russia. So far there had not been much love lost between these two representatives, but from then on it was considered a good thing to manoeuvre them into each other's company. So the meeting at Racconigi took place. It was not easy to arrange. In the description of all the measures he had to take to prevent ‘incidents of an assassinatory nature’ you can read how difficult it was for poor Giolitti, who was Prime Minister at the time.

Then there was the question of finding a suitable personage who would pay Rome's homage to the Tsar. This had to be a personage of a particular kind. Such things have to be prepared well in advance so that when the right moment arrives they can be set in train on the spot. For a really ‘juicy’ effect to be achieved, not just any personage would do for the purpose of paying Rome's homage to the Tsar—the homage of the Latin West to the self-styled Slav East. It would have to be a special personage, even one who might not easily be persuaded to undertake this task. Now ‘by chance’, as the materialists would say, but ‘not by chance’, as those who are not materialists would say, a certain Signor Nathan—what a very Italian name!—was at that time the mayor of Rome. For many reasons his attitude was rather democratic and not at all one that would make him inclined to pay homage to the Tsar, of all people. He had only taken Italian citizenship shortly before becoming mayor of Rome. Before that he had been an English citizen. The fact that he was of mixed blood should be taken into account; he was the son of a German mother and had assumed the name of Nathan because his father was the famous Italian revolutionary Mazzini. This is a fact.

So persuading him to pay homage to the Tsar made it possible to say: See how thoroughly democracy has been converted. Here was someone who was not an ordinary person but one who had been anointed with all the oils of democracy, but—also someone who had been well prepared. From that moment onwards certain things start to become embarrassing. Today it is known, for example, that from that moment onwards all the correspondence within the Triple Alliance was promptly reported to St Petersburg! Human passions also played some part in the matter, since a special role was carried out in this reporting by a lady who had found a ‘sisterly’ route between Rome and St Petersburg. Such things can obviously be ascribed to coincidence. But those who want to see beyond maya will not ascribe them to coincidence but will seek the deeper connections between them. Then, when one seeks these deeper connections, one is no longer capable of lying as much, is no longer capable of deceiving people in order to distract them from the truth, which is what matters.

For instance—I am saying this in order to describe the truth—it would obviously have been most embarrassing for the widest circles if people's attention had been drawn to the fact that the whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place if that sentence I have already mentioned, which could have been spoken by Lord Grey—Sir Edward Grey has now become a lord—if that sentence had really been spoken. The whole invasion of Belgium would not have taken place. It would have been a non-event, it would not have happened. But instead of speaking about the real cause, in so far as this is the cause because it could have prevented the invasion, it was obviously more comfortable to waste people's time by telling them about the ‘Belgian atrocities’. Yet these, too, would not have happened if Sir Edward Grey had taken this one, brief measure. In order to hide the simple truth something different is needed, something that arouses justified human passions and moral indignation. I am not saying anything against this. Something different is needed. It is a characteristic of our time, even today when it is particularly painful, to make every effort to obscure the truth, to blind people to the truth.

This, too, had to be prepared carefully. Any gap in the calculation would have made it impossible. The whole of the periphery, which had prudently been created for this very purpose, was needed.

But these things were very carefully prepared, both politically and culturally. Every possibility was reckoned with; and this was certainly necessary, since the most unbelievable carelessness sometimes prevailed, even in places where such a thing would be least expected. Let me give you an example, an objective fact, which will allow us to study this carelessness.

At one time Bismarck had a connection with a certain Usedom in Florence and Turin. I have told you before: Modern Italy came into being by roundabout means and actually owes her existence to Germany; but this is connected with all sorts of other things. What I am saying has profound foundations, and in politics all sorts of threads interweave. Thus at one time threads were woven which were to win over the Italian republicans. In short, at a certain time one such link existed between Bismarck and Usedom in Florence and Turin. Usedom was a friend of Mazzini and of others who enjoyed a certain prominence in nationalistic circles. Usedom was a man who posed very much as a wise person. He employed as his personal secretary somebody who was supposed to be a follower of Mazzini. Later it turned out that this personal secretary, of whom it had been said that he was initiated into Mazzini's secret societies, was nothing but an ordinary spy. Bismarck tells this tale quite naively and then adds, as an excuse for having been so mistaken: But Usedom was a high-grade Freemason. Many things could be told in this way and often it would turn out that those involved are totally innocent because the ones who pull the strings remain in the background.

You cannot maintain that there is no point in asking why such things are permitted to happen by the wise guides of world evolution—why human beings are, to a large degree, abandoned to such machinations, by making the excuse that there is no way of getting to the bottom of these things. For, indeed, if one only seeks them honestly, there are many ways of finding out what is going on. But we see, even in our own Society, how much resistance is put up by individuals when there is a question of following the simple path of truth. We see how many things which should be taken objectively in pursuit of knowledge, when they would best serve the good of mankind, are instead taken subjectively and personally. There are—are there not?—within our Society groups who have studied very attentively an essay of, I believe, 287 pages which they have taken utterly seriously and about which they are still puzzling, as to whether the writer—who is well enough known to us—might be right. In short, within our own circles we may sometimes discover why it is so difficult to see through things. Yet it is, in fact, not at all difficult to see through things if only one strives honestly for the truth. For years so much has been said within our Society. If you were to bring together all that has been said since 1902 you would see that it contains much that could help us to see through a great deal that is going on in the world. Yet our anthroposophical spiritual science has never been presented as belonging to a secret society. Indeed the most important things have always been dealt with in public lectures open to anybody. This is a contrast which should be noted.

I might as well say now: If certain streams within our Anthroposophical Society continue to exist and if, for the sake of human vanity, they continue to interpret to their own advantage certain things which have been said behind closed doors—for no more reason than one would exclude first-year students in a university from what is told to those in their second year—then, eventually there will be nothing esoteric left. If things are not taken perfectly naturally, if people continue to stand up and say: This is secret, that is very esoteric, this is occult, and I am not allowed to speak about this!—if this policy continues to be followed by certain streams in our Society, if they continually fail to understand that any degree of vanity must stop, then everything mankind must be told about today will have to be discussed in public. Whether it is possible to make known certain things, the needs of the moment will tell. But the Anthroposophical Society is only meaningful if it is a ‘society’, that is, if each individual is concerned to make a stand against vanity, against folly and vanity and everything else which clothes things in false veils of mysticism, serving only to puzzle other people and make them spiteful. The mysteriousness of certain secret brotherhoods has nothing to do with our Society, for we must be concerned solely with bringing about what is needed for the good of mankind. As I have often said, our enemies will become more and more numerous. Perhaps we shall discover what our enemies are made of by the manner in which they quarrel with us. So far we have had no honest opponents worth mentioning. They would, in effect, only be to our advantage! The kind of opposition we have met hitherto is perfectly obvious through their ways and means of operation. We might as well wait patiently to discover whether further opponents will be from within our circle, as is frequently the case, or from elsewhere! I have just had news of opposition from one quarter which will empty itself over us like a cold shower. A forthcoming book has been announced during some lectures. The author, a conceited fellow, has never belonged to our Society but has been entertaining the world with all sorts of double egos and such like. He has now used the opportunity of the various national hatreds and passions to mount an attack on our Anthroposophy of a kind which shows that his hands are not clean.

So we must not lose sight of these things and we must realize that it is up to us to hold fast to the direction which will lead to truth and knowledge. Even when we speak about current issues it must only be in pursuit of knowledge and truth. We must look things straight in the eye and then each individual may take up his own position in accordance with his feelings. Every position will be understandable, but it must be based on a foundation of truth.

This is a word which must occupy a special place in our soul today. So much has taken place in our time which has puzzled people and which should have shown them that it is necessary to strive for a healthy judgement based on the truth. We have experienced how the yearning for peace only had to make itself felt in the world for it to be shouted down. And we still see how people actually get angry if peace is mentioned in one quarter or another. They are angry, not only if one of the combatants mentions peace, but even if it is mentioned in a neutral quarter.

It remains to be seen whether the world will be capable of sufficient astonishment about these things. Experience so far has been telling, to say the least. In April and May 1915 a large territory was to have been voluntarily ceded, but the offer was rejected so that war could be waged. Since world opinion failed to form an even partially adequate judgement about this event, there seems to be really nothing for it but to expect the worst. We might as well expect the worst, because people seem bent on telling, not the truth, but what suits their purposes. Their thinking is strange and peculiar to a degree. Yet to tackle things properly the right points have to be found.

Let me read you a short passage written by an Italian before the outbreak of the present war, at a time when the Italians were jubilant about the Tripoli conflict—which I am not criticizing. I shall never say anything against the annexation of Tripoli by Italy, for these things are judged differently by those who know what is necessary and possible in the relationships between states and nations. They do not form judgements based on lies and express opinions steeped in all kinds of moralistic virtues. But here we have a man, Prezzolini, who writes about an Italy which pleases him, which has evolved out of an Italy which did not please him. He starts by describing what this Italy had come to, how it had gone down in the world, and he then continues—directly under the impression of the Tripoli conflict:

‘And yet, totally unaware of this economic risorgimento, Italy underwent at the same time the period of depression described above. Foreigners were the first to notice the reawakening. Some Italians had also expressed it, but they were windbags carrying on about the famous and infamous “primacy of Italy”. The book by Fischer, a German, was written in 1899, and that by Bolton-King, an Englishman, in 1901. To date no Italian has published a work comparable to these, even to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of “unification”. The exceptional good sense of these foreigners is notable for, truly, outsiders have neither wanted, nor do they now want, to know anything about modern Italy. Then, as now, people's judgement, or rather prejudgement of Italy amounted to saying: Italy is a land of the past, not the present; she should “rest on her past glory” and not enter into the present. They long for an Italy of archives, museums, hotels for honeymooners and for the amusement of spleen and lung patients—an Italy of organ-grinders, serenades, gondolas—full of ciceroni, shoe-shiners, polyglots and pulcinelli. Though they are delighted to travel nowadays in sleeping cars instead of diligences, they nevertheless regret a little the absence of Calabrese highwaymen with pistol and pointed velvet hat. Oh, the glorious Italian sky, defaced by factory chimneys. Oh, la bella Napoli, defamed by steamships and the unloading thereof; Rome filled with Italian soldiers; such regret for the wonderful days of Papal, Bourbon and Leopoldine Rome! These philanthropic feelings still provide the basis for every Anglo-Saxon and German opinion about us. To show how deeply they run, remember that they are expressed by people of high standing in other directions, such as Gregorovius and Bourget. The Italy who reformed herself and grew fat, the Italy who is seen to carry large banknotes in her purse—this is the Italy who has at last gained a proper self-confidence. We should forgive and understand her if she now reacts by going a little further than she ought in her enthusiasm. Ten years have hardly sufficed for the idea of the future and strength of Italy to pass from those who first saw it, to the populace at large who are now filled and convinced by it. It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’

This is the attitude, my dear friends! ‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art.’ All this would be worthless, he thinks, to raise up a people. This modern man has no faith in the worth and working of culture and spiritual values!

‘It would have been in vain had our great thinkers piled up volumes of journals, statistical papers, philosophical works and books of modern art; neither the people nor the foreigners would ever have been convinced, at least not before the passage of very many years.’

So this man has no confidence in creating spiritual culture in this way.

‘A great and brutal force was needed to smash the illusion and give every last and miserable village square a sense of national solidarity and upward progress.’

To what does he attribute the capacity to achieve what no spiritual culture could produce? He says:

‘It is the war which has served to do this.’

There you have it! This is what people believed. Tripoli was there and it had to be there. Moreover, they also said: War is needed to bring the nation to a point which it was not found necessary to reach by means of spiritual culture.

Indeed, my dear friends, such things speak to us when we place them side by side with another voice which says: We did not want this war; we are innocent lambs who have been taken by surprise. Even from this side comes the cry: To save freedom, to save the small nations, we are forced to go to war. This man continues:

‘We young people born around the year 1880 entered life in the world with the new century. Our land had lost courage. Its intellectual life was at a low ebb.’

These were the people born around the year 1880.

‘Philosophy: positivism. History: sociology. Criticism: historical method, if not even psychiatry.’

This may indeed be said in the land of Lombroso!

‘Hot on the heels of Italy's deliverers came Italy's parasites; not only their sons, our fathers, but also their grandsons, our elder brothers. The heroic tradition of risorgimento was lost; there was no idea to fire the new generation. Among the best, religion had sunk in estimation but had left a vacuum. For the rest it was a habit. Art was reeling in a sensuous and aesthetic frenzy and lacked any basis or faith. From Carducci, whom papa read to the accompaniment of a glass of Tuscan wine and a cheap cigar, they turned to d'Annunzio, the bible of our elder brothers, dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart.’

Yet this marionette—of whom it is said here that he was ‘dressed according to the latest fashion, his pockets full of sweets, a ladies' man and vain braggart’—this marionette had made clear to the people at Whitsuntide in 1915 that they needed what no work of the spirit could give them!

When times are grave it is most necessary to make the effort to look straight at the truth, to join forces with the truth. If we do not want to recognize the truth we deviate from what may be good for mankind. Therefore it is necessary to understand that precisely in these times serious words need to be spoken. For we are in a position today in which even one who is seven-eighths blind should see what is happening when the call for peace is shouted down. Someone who believes that you can fight for permanent peace while shouting down the call for peace might, conceivably, hold worthwhile opinions in some other fields; but he cannot be taken seriously with regard to what is going on. If, now that we are faced with this, we cannot commit ourselves to truth, then the prospects for the world are very, very bad indeed.

It is for me truly not a pleasant task to draw attention to much that is going on at present. But when you hear what is said on all sides, you realize the necessity. We must not lose courage, so long as the worst has not yet happened. But the spark of hope is tiny. Much will depend on this tiny spark of hope over the next few days. Much also depends on whether there are still people willing to cry out to the world the utter absurdity of such goings on—as has been done just now, even in the great cities of the world.

The world needs peace and will suffer great privation if peace is not achieved. And it will suffer great privation if credence continues to be given to those who say: We are forced to fight for permanent peace; and if these same people continue to meet every possibility for peace with scorn, however disguised in clever words. But we have reached a point, my dear friends, when even a Lloyd George can be taken for a great man by the widest circles! We may well say: Things have come a very long way indeed!

Yet these things are also only trials to test mankind. They would even be trials if what I permitted myself to express at the end of the Christmas lecture were to happen, namely, if it were to be recorded for all time that, in the Christmas season of the nineteen hundred and sixteenth year after the Mystery of Golgotha, the call for ‘peace on earth among men and women who are of good will’ was shouted down on the most empty pretexts. If the pretexts are not entirely empty, then they are indeed more sinister still. If this is the case, then it will be necessary to recognize what is really at work in this shouting down of every thought of peace: that it is not even a question of what is said in the periphery, but of quite other things. Then it will be understood that it is justified to say that what happens now is crucial for the fortune or misfortune of Europe.

I cannot go further tonight because of the lateness of the hour. But I did want to impress these words on your heart!

Address by Rudolf Steiner at the General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Berlin, December 15, 1911 (morning)

Foreword by Marie Steiner to the private reproduction published by her in 1947 and entitled “A Future Impulse Given by Rudolf Steiner and What Came of It Initially”:

In view of the gravity of the times and the little that remains of our lives, it seems an urgent duty to salvage what can still be saved from Dr. Steiner's impulses and words. This includes some of the things he only spoke about in intimate circles in serious conversation at certain turning points in events about the further tasks and work goals of the movement he inaugurated. Transcripts are available, but not complete and comprehensive. Even if they contain gaps and perhaps some finer nuances are not captured in them, one can still well feel how varied the language is, corresponding to the assigned task, in each case vividly contoured and firm, or dissolving, letting a light shine through the language, which still has to be half-veiled because words are not enough. It covers it like a soft shroud, but through which the impulses can work that point to the future. He repeatedly placed in our souls the guiding forces for later action, seeds of the future that could unfold after surviving the sleep of the soul; all too often they were buried by the hustle and bustle of everyday life or swept away by the whirlwind of events. Among the souls that had been blessed with such seeds of the future, there were certainly some from which they would one day arise to new life and struggle; but there were also some that would be like the stony ground of the gospel parable, offering no nourishment to them at first. Not only nature, but also souls are subject to organic laws. Some of the spiritual influences that fall on them harden or corrupt them, while others prove to be full of germinating power and transform themselves into new forms of existence. The passage through death and the submergence into chaos, with its whirling, churning forces, guarantees the later resurrection of the spiritual impact through metamorphoses to higher levels of existence. In microcosm as in macrocosm, in earthly as in planetary existence, the law of transformation to new forms of existence prevails. By following this path and, depending on race and nationality, picturing and explaining it, religions have always climbed higher levels of knowledge, spanning the globe and, in keeping with the times, shining a light into the hidden depths. When a certain high point of this development had been reached and at the same time the danger of philosophical abstraction had arisen, when the old images and signs were no longer sufficient to capture the newly pulsating life, the Christian impact occurred, bringing the great turning point. But when it emerged from the darkness of the catacombs into the outer world, the danger of its consolidation into dogmas also began, and the driving living forces sought new paths. They found them in the secret societies that did not want to bow to the authority of the princes of the church and the decisions of the councils; now they were persecuted as heretics themselves. Their content, veiled from the outside world, was expressed in signs and symbols. They gave art a new slant, which first appeared in Gothic architecture; organic growth of the plant - to which stones were added. The new life also flowed into the names; these contained what the soul was to absorb as guiding forces in order to develop healthily before it achieved independence. But the education of humanity to independence, into which the newly awakened ego power had to pour, first demanded the passage through abstract intellectualism, which separated the souls from their spiritual source for a time, so that, passing through the cold of isolation, grasping the higher ego, they would be able to find themselves in the spirit. Knowledge of nature, divorced from spirit, no longer gives the soul the power to rise up. In order for this to be experienced and recognized, spirits had to break worlds. We now stand in the midst of shattered worlds; a new search for the solution to the riddle of fate has begun. Rudolf Steiner's life's work can provide answers to this searching and questioning. He mastered the scope of today's exact science; he can also reveal to us the spirit that is hidden behind it and was once shrouded in the old names. Through him we are able to divine the impelling forces that lie behind the names. Lifelines had been handed to us for the inevitably approaching shipwreck, but we were not mature enough to grasp and use them. The souls were not awake enough, were still caught up in the old ideas. The attempts made in social terms met with the strongest resistance from the outside world. We can be seized by a tremendous pain when we see how little we were able to make the teaching fruitful and be suitable instruments for the fire spirit of the helper sent in times of need. Standing on the ruins of shattered worlds, we must now try to bring the preserved and insufficiently fiery word to consciousness through the remaining traces of writing; by individual work, raising it to the human ego. Rudolf Steiner tried to lead us to freedom not only through the paths of philosophy and science, but also through education within the esoteric life, which would gradually transform the old relationship of dependency on the teacher into the impulse of freedom and responsibility before the spirit. Souls that feel anchored in the spirit must be tested. Such a self-sought test always precipitates karma; what would still prefer to remain hidden from itself must also come to light. Such tests often caused the failure of experiments by spiritual powers, brought about for profound cosmic reasons, which aimed to raise human development to a higher level. This was the case with the French Revolution, and also before the world wars of our century.

Rudolf Steiner first spoke of such future tasks to a very small circle of his students and tried to direct their souls to the significance of those distant tasks that must arise from human will freed from selfishness. He repeated these words before a larger circle at the General Assembly on December 15, 1911. This did not take place during the proceedings of the General Assembly itself; he declared that it was happening outside of its program. He began this address in a particularly solemn and impressive manner. This is perhaps the reason why the first part of the address is only noted down and not reproduced in his words. He emphasized that the content of this lecture was completely independent of everything that had been given before. It was, so to speak, a direct communication from the spiritual world. It is like a call that is brought to humanity, and then they wait to see what echo comes back to them. As a rule, such a call is made three times. If the call goes unheard the third time, it is taken back to the spiritual world for a long time. This call has already been made to humanity once, but unfortunately it found no echo. This is the second time. These are purely spiritual matters. With each unsuccessful time, the conditions and circumstances become more difficult. Continuing with what is preserved as a set of keywords in the postscript, he said:

My dear friends!

It is my duty at this moment to carry an intention from the inner circle of those who already know about it out into your wider circle. And before that happens, let me say a few words in advance. It should be emphasized, however, that what is said now has no connection with what has preceded in this General Assembly, or what otherwise somehow relates to the previous negotiations - which does not preclude, if there is a tendency to do so, to take it into account in later negotiations.

If we look around the world today, we will have to say: The present world is actually full of ideals. And if we ask ourselves, “Is the representation of these ideals on the part of those who believe in them and place themselves at the service of these ideals sincere and honest?” we will have to answer “Yes, that is the case!” in very many cases. It is the case precisely with that faith and devotion of which individuals are capable. If we now ask: “How much is usually demanded when such a representation of ideals is brought into being by someone or something, be it an individual or a society?” then, based on our observations of life, we will have to answer: “In most cases, everything is demanded, so to speak; but above all, it is demanded that the ideal that has been set up receive absolute, unconditional recognition.” And it is almost always the case that the very basis for the creation of such an ideal is the demand for the most absolute assent. And usually the failure of such assent is expressed in some disparaging criticism of the non-assenter.

These words are intended to characterize how the principle of the integration of people has emerged in a completely natural way in the course of human development, and no doubt is to be cast on the justification of such a principle at this moment. But here an opportunity is to be presented to you to add something to all that has been striven for in the world within the framework of the organization of people, societies, associations and so on, something that actually cannot be expressed in words, since what can be said can never be decisive for the correctness of such a thing. According to what a person is able to think, he can, at the moment when he expresses what he has thought, be forced by the very act of expression to fall into contradiction with reality. At this very moment, many things must be said that do not agree with much of what is valid in the world. So it must be said: It is possible that the confession of a thing can no longer be true when this confession is uttered. I would like to give a simple example from which you can see that there may be a danger of simply becoming untrue by uttering a thing. And I would like the simple, straightforward example I give to be understood in accordance with the Rosicrucian principles since the 13th century.

Let us assume that someone expresses their state of the immediate present by saying, “I am silent.” This is something that absolutely cannot be true, that they are not speaking the truth. But then, my dear friends, I ask you to realize that there is the possibility of negating this thing itself by literally confessing it. For from what is expressed here by the simple example of “I am silent”, you can conclude that it is applicable to countless things in the world and can happen again and again.

But what follows from such a fact? It follows that when people want to join together in any way to represent this or that, they are in an extraordinarily difficult position, that people cannot join together with the most precious thing they have, except when the reasons why they join together are such that they do not belong to the world of the senses but to the supersensible world. And when we understand what we have been able to assimilate over time from all that has been brought forth from modern occultism, we will realize that it is an absolute necessity for the near future to advocate certain things of this occultism, to carry them before the world. Therefore, in contrast to all the principles of societies and all the organizations that have been possible up to now, an attempt must be made with something completely new, with something that is born entirely out of the spirit of the occultism that is so often spoken of in our circle. But this can only be done by turning our attention for a change to something positive, something that already exists in the world as a reality and can be cultivated as such. But in our sense, realities are only those things that primarily belong to the supersensible world. For the whole sensual world presents itself to us as an image of the supersensible world. Therefore, an attempt will be made that is such as it must be made from the supersensible world: the attempt not to found a community of people, but to endow it.

I have emphasized the difference between founding and establishing on another occasion; it was many years ago. It was not understood at the time and since then hardly anyone has thought about this difference. Therefore, those spiritual powers that are represented by the symbol of the Rose Cross have so far ignored the fact that this difference has been carried out into the world.

But recently, and this time in an energetic way, an attempt must be made to see if it is possible to achieve success even with a community that is not founded but established. If this success is not achieved, well, then it has failed again for a while. Therefore, it shall be proclaimed to you at this moment that among those people who will find each other in the appropriate way, a way of working is to be founded that, through the manner of the foundation, has as its direct starting point the individuality that we have been designating as Christian Rosenkreutz since ancient times in the West. What can be said about this foundation today remains preliminary. For what has been founded so far relates only to one part of this foundation, which is to enter the world in a comprehensive sense when the opportunities arise. What has been founded so far relates to one department, to one branch of this foundation, namely to the artistic representation of Rosicrucian occultism.

The first point I have to communicate to you is that under the direct patronage of that individuality, whom we refer to by the name he gave to the outer world during his two incarnations, that under the patronage of this individuality, a working method is to be brought into being as a foundation. This method will initially be characterized by the fact that for some time, for the time being, it will bear the provisional name: “Society for Theosophical Art and Art”. This name is not the final one; a definitive name will take its place when the first preparations for launching this foundation into the world can be made in an appropriate manner. However, that which is to comprise the “theosophical art” is still completely in its infancy, because it is only now that the preparations for it are being made that could lead to an understanding of what is meant by it. But what can be grasped by the concept of the theosophical art has already begun in many ways through our attempts at the performances in Munich, and above all has made a significant start through the attempt at our site in Stuttgart and a further significant start in relation to the understanding of such a thing precisely through the establishment of the Johannes-Bauverein. All this is something that has been started. In this respect there is something that, having been tried out to a certain extent, may be sanctioned.

It is a matter of awakening a purely spiritual task within the working group, a task that will be exhausted in a spiritual way of working and in what results from such a spiritual way of working. And it is a matter of no one being able to become a member of this working group from any other point of view than solely through the fact that he has any will to use his powers for the positive side of the matter. You may say: I am speaking in many words that may not be fully understood. That must be the case with something like what it is about here, because the matter must be grasped in its direct life.

Now, what has already been achieved within this foundation is actually the fact that, according to purely occult principles, an initially very small, tiny circle has been created, which should see its obligation as being to contribute to what this is all about. This tiny group is initially designed to make a start on this foundation, in order to, in a sense, separate what our spiritual movement is from myself and give it its own, self-established existence, a self-established existence!

So that initially this small group comes before you with the sanction that it has received its task as such, by virtue of its own recognition of our spiritual current, and that it sees in a certain sense the principle of the sovereignty of spiritual striving, the principle of federalism and the independence of all spiritual striving as an absolute necessity for the spiritual future, and to carry it into humanity in the way he considers appropriate. Therefore, within the foundation itself, I will only be considered the interpreter, first of all, of the principles that, as such, only exist in the spiritual world, and of what is to be said in this way about the intentions that underlie the matter.

In contrast, a curator is initially appointed for the external care of this foundation. And since the offices that will be created first are associated with nothing more than duties, no honors, no dignities, it is impossible that any rivalries or other misunderstandings can arise immediately with the correct understanding of the matter. It will therefore be a matter of the foundation itself initially recognizing Fräulein von Sivers as curator. This recognition is no

different from that which is interpreted from within the foundation itself; there are no appointments, only interpretations: Fräulein von Sivers is interpreted as curator of the foundation. And it will be her task in the near future to do whatever can be done in the spirit of this foundation to recruit a corresponding circle of members for it - not in an external sense, but only in such a way that she will attract to herself those who have the sincere will to participate in this way of working.

In a broader sense, a number of side branches will be created within this one branch of our foundation. And individual personalities who have proven themselves within our spiritual movement will be appointed as leading personalities of these side branches, insofar as they already exist. This too is an interpretation for the time being, in the sense that the office of leadership of such an individual side branch is transferred to a personality. It is interpreted that there will be an archdeacon for each of these individual sub-branches. We will have a sub-branch for general art. It has been publicly announced that Fräulein von Eckardtstein has been appointed archdeacon for general art in a small circle – and this was done in express recognition of what this personality has done for this general theosophical art over the last few years. Furthermore, it was provisionally announced that the curator Fräulein von Sivers would be archdeacon for literature. It was also announced that our friend Dr. Felix Peipers would be archdeacon for architectural art; our friend Mr. Adolf Arenson would be archdeacon for musical art; and our friend Mr. Hermann Linde would be archdeacon for painting.

The work in question is essentially inward-looking, and for the first time what is to be presented to the world is work done in absolute freedom, particularly by these individual personalities. It will be necessary for those who belong to this way of working to come together in a certain way; this coming together will have to take place in a very different way than has been the case so far with any kind of organization. And we will need a supervisor of this union. To supervise this union, the position of conservator is created, which is initially given to Miss Sophie Stinde. The way in which the union is to take place will be linked to this union itself. All this still requires work in the near future; it will still have to be done. But in order for the type of union, in other words the principle of the organization, to take place, to be able to enter the world, we necessarily have a seal curator. Miss Sprengel has been appointed as the seal curator, while Dr. Carl Unger will be the secretary.

This is, for the time being, the small, tiny circle involved. Do not regard it as something that immodestly wants to step into the world and say, “There I am,” but regard it as something that wants to be nothing more than a germ around which the matter itself can organize itself. It will initially organize itself in such a way that by the coming Epiphany a number of members of this community will have been identified; that is, by then a number of members will have received the message that they are initially being asked to get their connection ready. So that for the very beginning the greatest possible freedom in this respect is to be secured by the fact that the will to become a member can come from no one other than the person concerned who wants to become a member. And the fact that he is a member is brought about by the fact that he is first recognized as such a member. This only applies to the very near future, only for the time until the next Epiphany, January 6, 1912.

So in this matter we have something before us that, through its very nature, betrays itself as something that flows out of the spiritual world. It will continue to present itself as flowing out of the spiritual world in that membership will always be based solely on the representation and recognition of spiritual interests and on the exclusion of everything, absolutely everything personal.

There is a deviation here from older occult principles, which is made in this proclamation, and this deviation consists precisely in the fact of this proclamation. Therefore, no use will be made of that claim, which might exist with a person if he were to say, by referring this to the present: “I am silent.” The matter is indeed proclaimed; and in full awareness that it is proclaimed, this should happen. But the moment someone shows that they do not understand today's proclamation in any way, it goes without saying that it cannot be suggested to them in any way to belong to such a way of working - I am not saying to a society or the like. Because there can be nothing other than the absolutely free will to belong to such a circle, to such a way of working. But you will see that if such a thing should come about - if, that is, our time, with its peculiarities, should allow such a thing to come about - then work can really be done in the sense of recognizing the spiritual principle; the principle that not only all nature and all history, but also all human activity entering the world, is based on the spiritual, supersensible world. And you will see that it will be impossible for any decent person to belong to such a community if he does not agree with this community as such. If you think that what has been said is rather strange, then please accept it as having been said with full

is that everything that belongs to the laws, to the eternal laws of existence, is observed. And it is also part of the eternal laws of existence that the principles of becoming are taken into account. My dear friends, you can sin against the spirit of what is supposed to happen here if you now go out into the

go out into the outside world and say, “This or that has been established.” Not only has nothing been established at all, but the fact is that it will not be possible to give a definition of what is to be done at any given hour, because everything is supposed to be in a state of continuous becoming. And what is actually to happen as a result of what has been said today cannot be described now, no definition or description can be given now, and anything that would be said about it would be untrue at this moment. For what is to happen is based not on words, but on people, and not even on people, but on what these people will do. It will be in a living river, a living becoming. And so today, too, nothing more is established as a principle than the one principle that consists of: recognition of the spiritual world as the fundamental reality.

All further principles are to be created in the process of development. Just as a tree in the next moment is no longer what it was before, but has begun to grow anew, so this matter is to be like a living tree. Never should that which this matter is to become be in any way compromised by that which it is. If someone were to define what has been designated as a beginning, as this or that reason, this or that thing out there in the world, then he would immediately succumb to the same untruth that lies in the expression “I am silent” when it refers to the state in which he is and uses the words “I am silent”. So anyone who uses these or those words in any way to characterize the matter is saying something that is not right in all circumstances. So first of all it is only important - because everything will be in the process of becoming - that the personalities who want something like this come together. It is only important that those personalities who want something like this come together. Then the matter will continue! From all that has been said, you can see that the matter will then continue. It will differ in its deepest principle from that of the Theosophical Society. For not a single one of the characteristics that have been expressed today can apply to the Theosophical Society.

I had to speak about this matter for the simple reason that those things which are organically connected with this foundation have already come before the public of our Theosophical Society, and because through this foundation – in the sense of intentions which truly do not lie in the physical world and which truly have nothing to do with Ahriman - an ideal-spiritual counterweight must be created against everything that is connected with a foundation in the outer world. Only in this respect can a relationship be seen with what is already there, so that this branch of our foundation, the branch for theosophical art, should achieve something that is a counterweight to what is linked to Ahriman on the physical plane.

It is hoped that an excellent example will be set by the existence of this branch of our foundation - and the other branch will serve in a corresponding way - because what is to figure as art within the theosophical movement, if we use that expression today, must actually flow into our culture from spiritual worlds. It must be the case that spiritual life is the basis of everything we do. It will be impossible to confuse this spiritual movement with any movements that come from the outside world and also call themselves a “theosophical movement” and want to participate. It is essential that the spiritual is the basis of everything we do. This was indeed attempted at the festival in Munich, in the building of the Lodge in Stuttgart – within the limits of what is possible under present conditions – but everywhere it was attempted in such a way that the spiritual moment was the determining factor. That is the conditio sine qua non, the condition without which nothing should happen (gap in the transcripts).

Those who have already gained some insight into what is at stake will understand me in this regard. These words are said less because of the content than because of the guidelines that were to be given.

Postscript by Marie Steiner to the reproduction she edited:

When no further nominations were announced after the end of the year and the next Epiphany, a member of the audience asked Rudolf Steiner when this would happen. He replied: “The fact that this has not happened would also be an answer.

The year 1912/13 was overburdened by the disputes with Annie Besant, her proclamation of the new Messiah and her “Star of the East” now also active in Germany.

The followers of the Western spiritual movement inaugurated by Rudolf Steiner demanded that the president make a precise statement in the disputes that were taking place, in accordance with the agreements reached in Munich and Budapest, instead of her evasion, her hiding and acting behind her back. This demand was taken up by the “Bund”, which was founded around 1912 with members from many countries, and in 1913 the Anthroposophical Society was founded after the expulsion of the German section by the president of the Theosophical Society.

Meanwhile, the nomination of the intimate circle had led to further work in some areas: in the Johannesbau Association, in the completion of the Stuttgart Society House, and in the so-called Art and People's Rooms in Munich and Berlin, an initiative started by Miss Sophie Stinde. The most outstanding spiritual publication was the Soul Calendar, the result of a collaboration between Dr. Steiner and Fräulein von Eckardtstein; the wonderfully transparent nuances of the language here really do allow spirit and soul to flow into each other and become one with nature. Many other things sought a quiet unfolding into the future. But the world war came, and with it the associated upheavals, which deeply affected the external circumstances of life and the mutual relationships of the members belonging to the most diverse nations in Dornach.

They tried to overcome the surging of the blood as best they could, but every now and then there were shocks and derailments.

The most exciting crisis for Dornach was that of the summer of 1915. Dr. Gösch, a typical pathologist and representative of psychoanalysis, came to the fore. He persuaded himself that the Seal-keeper had opened his eyes to promises that Dr. Steiner made and did not keep. He set this out in a brochure using psychoanalytical methods. At the same time, he wrote a letter to Dr. Steiner in which he developed his theories on the basis of the “revelations” made to him by the Keeper of the Seal. The Keeper of the Seal could not have understood the task assigned to her by this name other than in a very personal sense. She felt that she was the inspirer of the spiritual teaching given by Dr. Steiner to humanity. Since she had also played the role of Theodora in Rudolf Steiner's mystery dramas in Munich, she drew from this the conclusion that the marriage vows given to her were symbolically given and that she had been waiting for their fulfillment for “seven years”. Her many accusatory letters, revolving around this point, gave Dr. Gösch the opportunity to compile a psychoanalytical treatise in the Freudian sense to elucidate her case. He himself had been given Freudian treatment for a long time due to his morbid nervous condition, which had deeply infected his being. His open letter of accusation has now given rise to numerous, strictly and precisely conducted negotiations within the Society, through which the membership should gain clarity about this case. Transcripts of these are available and also provided the basis for the book published as a special edition of the journal “Anthroposophie” in Stuttgart: “Anthroposophie und Psychoanalyse”.

We shall mention here only what relates to the case of Sprengel – alias Proserpina – alias Theodora – alias Siegelbewahrer (Keeper of the Seals), and which in her case took on such a mystically personal form as megalomania. Of course, even before the war she had already shown symptoms of self-arrogance. This unfortunate megalomania put paid to the possibility of further nominations to the circle of eight personalities. One stone had been lost through egoistic arrogance and a descent into mysticism.

The Keeper of the Seal broke the seal in the most ordinary human sense. The necessity of involving women as active collaborators in the cultural tasks of the future is undeniable and will have to be achieved despite the failure of these efforts in individual cases. This is what happened to us with the Keeper of the Seal.

Dr. Steiner expressed himself about this case in a speech during the so-called crisis of 1915 in the following way:

The circle of nominees, as an inner esoteric matter, was shattered; outside the world war raged; in Dornach, despite the external circumstances, the practical work continued no less intensively. With the conscription of so many artists and helpers, the burden of the work fell heavily on the women. Only a few men had been able to stay behind, including Hermann Linde. But the women stood their ground. From early morning, the hammering and chiseling could be heard in the construction of the precious wood, which grew out of the concrete substructure, up to the vaulting domes. The organically moving forms grew out of the outer and inner walls, warmed and undulated by the human hand that furrowed them. In the interior, the columns rose with their bases and capitals, their architraves, at the end of which the two domes joined together, thus separating and connecting the symbolism of the soul's experience from that of the cosmos at the same time.

The painters and their helpers were grouped around Hermann Linde. Dr. Steiner had designed the motifs for the painting of the domes, and we have these images in the reproductions by Alinari. With diligence and zeal, new grounding possibilities were tried out, through which the effect of the plant colors could unfold into radiant luminosity; a group of helpers eagerly ground the plants from which the new colors for the dome painting were to be created. The programs designed for the weekly eurythmy performances provided an opportunity to develop personal imagination and to train in the templates designed by Dr. Steiner for this purpose.

In Germany, the field of work assigned to the circle-bursting seal keeper had very soon found a more than adequate replacement in the person of Miss Bertha Meyer. During the months we spent in Germany during the war, she was often able to come from Bremen to Berlin to perfect her knowledge of the art of jewelry, in which she had a technical command, through the advice of Dr. Steiner. The extensive gem collection of a member who had returned from the Orient provided a happy opportunity for new inspiration. Stones were selected from it whose luminosity and inner substance were to be particularly emphasized by a setting corresponding to their nature and material. It was a strange experience to let your hand glide through their abundance and to feel the penetration of their powers into your own etheric body through the cool trickling of the stones. This grasp into the coolness of the stone kingdom and the almost exciting glow of the metal melting in the fire, especially of gold, brought the elementary nature of the forces of nature forcefully to consciousness.

The seals sketched by Dr. Steiner for the mystery plays provided the basis for the spiritual study of this predestined keeper of the seals, who left us so many exemplary works of art. Death snatched her from us at the moment when a place for her work, a 'Kleinodienschule', could have been established in Dornach. The formative forces of eurythmy, which is carried and moved by the etheric impulses, and of the musical art that seeks new paths in connection with it, also tested themselves through these seals. They now wanted to go beyond the inner experience of major and minor, beyond the fifth, to catch a glimpse of the original forces in the tone to which they owe their existence, thus feeling their way towards the lost word.

The new architectural style created by Dr. Steiner, which had absorbed the movement of the plant kingdom and did not close itself off from the outside world but opened itself wide to it, had to remain true to this principle in the treatment of his glass windows as well. A flood of colors had to stream into the room; their basic tone, differentiated according to the rainbow but each kept uniform, brought the floating and weaving of the intersecting light colors into the room. The delicacy of the nuances was intensified by the different densities of the glass that resulted from the grinding and etching of the motifs into the glass material; their spiritual content related to the path of initiation of the human being into the future. While the motifs of the large and small dome traced the macrocosmic and microcosmic path of human development to its self-fulfillment.

The art of black and white in a newly defined line by Dr. Steiner developed alongside that of penetrating into the world of creative colors. And all these artistic possibilities, arising from the most diverse elements, came to life in the art of the spoken word, of speech formation, which allowed the original forces of the lost “word” to be sensed and grasped to a certain extent. Through the little that has been achieved in this way, through rigorous work, something of what Dr. Steiner had described as the task of the spiritual movement he had inaugurated could be realized: to allow the forgotten spiritual current surrounding Goethe and Schiller to flow again into culture in a new and living way.

We have lived in the abundance of the impulses we have received. He himself was snatched from us by death in 1925. With death, he had to pay for the immeasurable wealth of his gifts. We have been invigorated and sustained by his inspiring spiritual power. Through suffering and trial, through stupefaction and moral obscurity, we must now seek the paths to inner freedom and independence, for which he wanted to awaken an understanding in us. May we be granted to find it.

Meeting you today with New Year Greetings, I should like to express the wish that each one of you may realize in the depth of his soul how great and insistent are the demands of the present moment as regards the evolution of mankind, and that, as a result of this realization, each one in his own place may co-operate as far as he can, in bringing to fulfilment that of which mankind stands in such need. At this time of year, expressing as it does symbolically the meeting of past and future, I should like, by way of introduction to our New Year contemplation, which rightly is also a contemplation of the whole course of time, to recall some passages from essays which I wrote more than thirty years ago and which are shortly to be published. Although connected with personal experiences, these essays have a definite significance if we want to look into the whole spiritual condition of the present day. My purpose in writing them was, as you will notice, to rouse the conscience of the German people, to give expression to that which could be perceived even then, as fundamentally lacking in the spiritual life of the German nation. I will read to you some passages from one of these essays entitled “The Spiritual Mark of the Present Day”. These passages refer to what was taking place more than thirty years ago, to a past which was then the present. I wrote in the very midst of the spiritual life prevailing at that time, amid symptoms which showed themselves most markedly in the life of thought of the German nation. I wrote: “It is with a shrug of the shoulders that our generation recalls the period when a philosophic current ran through the whole spiritual life of the German people. The mighty impulse of the times, seizing men's minds at the end of last century (i.e., the eighteenth century) and the beginning of this one, and boldly facing the highest imaginable tasks, is now looked upon as a regrettable aberration. If anyone dares to raise an objection when the conversation turns upon Fichte's fantasies, or Hegel's insubstantial play of thoughts and words, he is regarded by his listeners as a mere amateur, who has as slight an idea of the spirit of modern scientific investigation, as he has of the thoroughness and seriousness of philosophic methods. Kant and Schopenhauer at best are tolerated by our contemporaries. It is apparently possible to trace back to Kant the somewhat scanty philosophic crumbs used by modern science as foundational; and Schopenhauer, besides his strictly scientific works, also wrote a few things in a light style, on subjects accessible to people with a limited spiritual horizon. An open mind for that striving towards the loftiest heights of the world of thought, an understanding for that soaring of the spirit which in the realms of science went parallel with our classic period of culture—this is lacking now. The serious side of this phenomenon only appears when we take into consideration that a persistent turning away from that spiritual goal implies for the German people the loss of their own Self, a breaking away from the Spirit of the Nation. For that striving sprang from a deep need in the German nature. It does not enter our mind to wish to deny the manifold mistakes and one-sided fallacies which Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, Oken, and others, committed in their bold inroads into the kingdom of idealism. But the impulse which in all its grandeur inspired them should not be misunderstood. It is the impulse most fitting for a nation of thinkers. The German nation is not characterized by that living sense for immediate reality, or the outward aspect of Nature, which enabled the Greeks to create their wonderful and imperishable works of art. Among the Germans there is instead, an unceasing urge of the spirit toward the cause of things, toward the apparently hidden, deeper origins of the Nature which surrounds us. Just as the Greek spirit found expression in its wonderful world of plastic forms, so the German, more concentrated within himself, less open to Nature but on that account more with his own heart, cherishing intercourse with his own inner world, sought his conquests in the world of pure thought. The way, therefore, in which Fichte and his successors looked upon the world and life was truly German. This is why their teachings were so enthusiastically received; this is why, for a time, they held the whole life of the nation enthralled. This is why we must not break with their spiritual leading. Our solution of the difficulty should be to overcome mistakes, while continuing the natural course of development on the lines laid down at that time. Not what these spirits found or thought to find, is of lasting value, but how they faced the problems.”

At the time when this essay was written the German nation had to be shown these truths, which were threatening to disappear from their field of vision. We were living then in another age than the present, an age in which, had we willed it, it might still have been possible for certain circles to unite with the spirit, then at the beginning of its decline, and thus to prepare the way for an all-pervading and lasting development of the human impulse. Indeed, at that time it ought to have been possible to find such people, amongst those who called themselves leaders of the nation, amongst those who prepared the younger generation for later life. There were no experiments, then, of the kind now coming to the fore in Russia. At that time (in Germany) those who educated the young, still had the chance of turning back to the aims and intentions of the old spiritual life, causing it to rise again in the new form. But no one was willing to listen in the least to any voice urging that a real, spiritual striving should rise to life again amongst men. Every opinion that had taken firm hold amongst the lower or higher ranks of the nation's teachers during the preceding thirty years, was an attack directed against the aims and intentions of a spiritual world-conception.

I should recall that when I wrote this essay, I had already published my views on Goethe's World Conception, on Goethe's scientific ideas. I had pointed out two great dangers in the domain of thought, in the field of active scientific investigation. I coined at that time two expressions defining the two great foes of human spiritual progress. On the one hand I spoke of the “Dogma of Revelation”, and on the other hand of the “Dogma of mere Experience”. I wished to show that the one-sided cultivation of the dogma of revelation, as it had developed in the religious confessions, was just as pernicious as the continual hammering upon the so-called dogmas of experience, i.e., continually insisting only upon all that the external sense-world, the world of material facts, offers to scientists and sociologists. In the course of time the task arose of rendering these thoughts more concrete, of pointing out the real forces behind this or that phenomenon.

What, then, lies behind in everything brought to our notice when the dogma of revelation is mentioned? Today, in an all-embracing sense, all that lies behind what we term Luciferic influences in the course of mankind's evolution. And behind the dogma of experience, lies everything that we term, again in an all-embracing sense, the Ahrimanic influences in human evolution. In the present age, he who wishes to lead men only under the influence of the dogma of revelation, leads them in the Luciferic direction; he who wishes instead to lead men, as scientists would do, only according to the dogma of external sense-experience, leads them in the Ahrimanic direction. Is it not a fitting New Year's contemplation in these serious times of ours, to review the last thirty or forty years, and to point out how necessary it still is today to repeat the call of that time, to raise it anew, but far more strongly? The outward course of events during these last thirty or forty years has shown clearly the justification of that call; for he who without prejudice looks at what has happened, must say to himself: “There would not be today's misery and want, had that call become a reality in the hearts of the people of Central Europe at that time.” At that time it sounded in vain. Today the Holy Roman Congregation meets it with the Decree of the 18th July, 1919, and the chief clergy announce from their pulpits that Anthroposophy is not to be read in my books because the Pope forbids it. Information concerning it can be obtained from the writings of my opponents. This pronouncement takes place simultaneously with negotiations for the establishment of a Roman Catholic Nuntiate in Berlin under the auspices of a Berlin Government with socialistic leanings! Here, again, is something that shows the spiritual mark of the age. Would that today one could really appeal to the innermost heart-forces of those who are still capable of feeling something of the spiritual impulses in human evolution, so that they may wake up, so that they may see how things really stand. The all-important thing today is that man should be able to find himself. But to find our own Self requires confidence in our own strength of soul. Little is attained amongst men today, by appealing to this confidence in their own strength of soul. People want, on the one hand, the support of something which constrains them from within to think and to will what is right, or, on the other hand, the support of something which constrains them from without to think and to will what is right. In some way we always find these two extremes in men; they never wish to pull themselves together, to strive with active forces towards the balance between these two extremes.

Let us reconsider this spiritual mark of the present day, about to become the social and material mark. Let us reconsider it to some extent. We hear the old Marxist call rising in the East of Europe: “A social order must be established among men, where everyone can live according to his individual capacities and needs; a social order must be evolved where the individual capacities of each man can be taken into full consideration and where the justifiable needs of every single person can be satisfied.” Taken in the abstract, no objection whatever can be raised against this saying. But on the other hand, we hear a personality like Lenin saying: “Among people of today such a social order cannot be founded; it is only possible to establish a transitory social order; it is only possible to establish something which is injustice”—of course in the widest sense of the word. Injustice is indeed present to an absurd extent in everything that Lenin and his followers establish. For Lenin and his followers believe that only by passing through a transitory social order, can a new human race be produced, a race not yet in existence; only when the race is there, will it be possible to introduce the social order where everyone will be able to employ his capacities, where everyone will be able to live according to his needs. This, then, is what they are aiming at: the formation of a race of men not yet in existence, in order to realize an ideal which, as I have said, can be justified in the abstract.

Ought not enough people, when they hear of such a thing as this, be able to find themselves, and to grasp the whole seriousness of the present world-situation? Is it not time for this drowsiness to cease, when something of this kind appears before us pointing most significantly to the mark of the present day—this drowsiness which causes us to close our eyes a little, so that we do not grasp the whole significance of such a matter? Nothing will help us to reach a concrete insight into these things, except to abandon the paths of abstraction in the Spiritual life. And for this we must first really acquire the feeling that where there is only a flow of words and phrases about spirit and soul, there the talk is mere abstraction. We must be able to feel when spirit and soul are spoken of as reality. For example, speaking of human capacities: These arise as manifestations from out of man's inner being as the individual grows up. Through some of its leaders, mankind feels itself induced to develop accordingly these capacities and forces, which come to light in the growing human being. But in this domain our feelings are to be trusted only if we definitely perceive in the manifestation of these forces and capacities, a manifestation of the Divine; if we can say to ourselves: Man has come into this World of sense-realities out of a spirit-soul World of Being, and that which externalizes as human forces and capacities, and which we develop in ourselves and in others, comes from a spiritual world and is now placed in a physical human body. Now, consider the spiritual meaning of that which has been explained in this place for decades; it will show you that with the incorporation of human capacities and forces in the physical human body, Luciferic beings were given the possibility of approaching these human capacities and forces. No work whatsoever can be done in the sphere of human capacities and forces, be it in the form of self-activity or in the teaching of others, or in the furtherance of general culture, without coming into contact with the Luciferic forces. In that region which man has to go through before he enters physical existence through birth or conception, the Luciferic Power cannot directly approach the human capacities and forces. Embodiment in a physical human frame, is the means by which the Luciferic Powers are able to reach human capacities and forces. It is only if, without prejudice we look this fact in the face, that we assume a right attitude in life towards everything that surges up from human nature as individual capacities and forces. If we close our eyes to what is Luciferic, if we deny that it exists, then we succumb to it. Then the soul falls into that mood which desires above all to deliver itself up to some coercion from within, so that through all kinds of mystic or religious forces it can unburden itself of the necessity of calling upon its own free Self, or of seeking for the Divine in the world, within the development of its own free Self. Men do not want to think for themselves, they want some indefinite force from within to manifest itself, according to which they can argue logically. They do not want to experience truth; they only want to experience that inner force compelling them from within, manifesting itself in proof which does not appeal to experience, but appeals instead to a Spiritual Power which over-rules man, which compels him to think in this or in that way about Nature or about mankind himself. Men deliver themselves over to the Luciferic Powers, by calling up within themselves this inner compulsion, this inner power.

The means which can be used so that man shall appeal to this inner compulsion, so that he shall not rise to the free, upright position in the spiritual world, is to force him to think that there are no such three members of human nature as Body, Soul and Spirit; to forbid him, as actually happened in the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, to think that man consists of Body, Soul and Spirit, and bid him to put away all thoughts concerning the Spirit. These are inner connections which may not be overlooked any longer. We must face them today clearly and without prejudice. In the year 869 A.D., it was decided to forbid the belief in the Spirit in man. It was in that year that the downward slope towards Lucifer began in European civilization. And today we have the full result. Long enough has mankind yielded to the inclination not to experience truth, but to allow the compulsion of argument, of impersonal argument, to work upon him. As a result, mankind has fallen into the other extreme. There has been no real comprehension of human capacities and forces, no one wanted to own that, as I have just explained, Luciferic forces live in human capacities and forces, when these are embodied in a physical human frame. That false point of view—the ruling one in humanity today, concerning individual capacities and forces in human nature—has been the outcome.

Human needs, needs arising first out of his purely physical nature, constitute the other pole of man. In his Letters on aesthetics, Schiller has characterized these needs very finely, contrasting them with man's abstract logical power. He calls them the basic needs (“Notdurft”), whereas he characterizes logical compulsion as the other power, a power straying into spiritual regions. During that great period of German evolution, a personality such as Schiller, was on the point of grasping rightly the polaric contrasts in man. The time was not yet ripe for saying more than what Schiller, Goethe, and others like-minded had said. The necessity of building further upon this beginning has been laid upon our present age. If we continue to build, Anthroposophical Spiritual Science will arise. He who is only acquainted with the one-sided power of proof in the spiritual sphere, only learns to know in life the one-sided power of natural instincts in human needs. It is easy to imagine that when man with his capacities and powers enters the physical sense-world through conception or birth, and Lucifer hovers over him and from that which man himself ought to possess takes something on one side, the head-side of the man's being, there remains in man an inferior kind of power for the exercise of his independence in the sphere of his needs. Through that which Lucifer on the one hand takes for his own, Ahriman on the other hand attains the possibility of making his own that which works in the needs of human nature. The dogma of mere external sense-experience has paved the way for the complete Ahrimanization of mankind's sense-life of instinct during the last third of the nineteenth century. Modern man stands before a terrible fact today because he does not recognize that salvation lies in the state of balance between the two extremes, between capacities on the one side, and needs on the other side. The materialistic spirit in man makes him look on the body alone as that which produces capacities i.e., man looks merely on the Luciferic primal force of capacities. The capacities become Luciferic owing to their entrance into a human body. If man believes that capacities spring from the body, then man believes in Lucifer, and if man believes that needs spring from the human body, then man believes only in the Ahrimanic side of such needs.

And what experiment is being made in the East of Europe today under the guidance of the West? (This guidance is not only evident through the fact that Lenin and Trotsky are the spiritual disciples of the West, but also through the fact that Lenin was dispatched into Russia in a sealed railway carriage by Dr. Helphand, the German official who accompanied him. So that what is termed Bolshevism, is an article transported into Russia by a German Administration and the German military command.) What are they trying to attain in the civilization of Eastern Europe? An attempt is being made to do away with everything human, with everything embodied in a human body as human, and to harness together Lucifer and Ahriman, with the civilization they represent. Were this to be realized in the East, then the Manufacturing Company of Lucifer and Ahriman would create a world excluding everything beneficial to the individual human being, and man himself would be dovetailed into this Luciferic-Ahrimanic civilization as part of a machine in the complete working of the machine. But the parts of a machine are lifeless and allow themselves to be fitted in, whereas human nature is inwardly alive, permeated by soul, permeated by spirit. It cannot fit into a merely Luciferic-Ahrimanic organization, but will perish in it. Only an understanding of Spiritual Science can grasp what is really taking place today in this materialistic world which has but the haziest notions of spirit. It is only the insight of Spiritual Science and its living earnestness which can explain what the fact implies that, during the last thirty to forty years, the essential nature of the German people would not turn back to that German spirituality pointed out in my essay, but that in this German world of culture, we have at last come to this, that men of authority have felt it to be the right thing to send to Russia (in a sealed railway carriage), through a man who stood in their service, the inaugurators of Lucifer and Ahriman. In our days, it will not do simply to look around and then go to sleep peacefully, in the presence of what is actually taking place in the depths of the spirit of the present time. We ought to feel that we must say: “We have forsaken and trodden under foot that which in the age of Schiller and of Goethe was created within the Spiritual life of Germany. And we have the task of beginning where they left off and of building on further.” No better New Year's thought can enter our souls than the resolution to make this our starting point.

I told you the following some years ago: In the sixties and seventies of last century an educationist, Heinrich Deinhardt, lived in Vienna, the place where my essays were put together. This man's spirit led him from the standpoint of Schiller's Letters on Aesthetics to take an active part in pedagogics, a science that was then under full sail, following the materialistic lead of his day. In some fine letters, printed at the time, explanatory of Schiller's Letters on Aesthetics, Deinhardt wrote that man should be educated to recognize the compelling necessity of logic, and of the basic needs (“Notdurft”), which only live in instinct. Deinhardt was one of those who raised the warning cry: “We must prevent by means of education what is bound to happen otherwise.” He could not yet speak with the concepts of Spiritual Science, but he did point out in his own words the inevitable coming of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic culture if the Science of Education, the Art of Education were not determined by this balance. Heinrich Deinhardt had the misfortune to be knocked down in the street and to break his leg. Quite a simple operation might have put it right again, but the doctors found he was so undernourished that the injured parts would not heal. So this man, who could look so deeply into the events of his day, died owing to a slight accident. Yes, in Central Europe, men whose will was directed to bring forth something out of the spiritual, were left to starve! This example could be multiplied many times. Those who write like the Jesuit, Father Zimmermann, whom I mentioned yesterday, will probably not die of hunger. Those will not die of hunger who wrote the following: “In No. 6 of the weekly paper, Dreigliederung des Sozialen Orgaeismus (The Threefold Social Organism) it is boasted that the ‘new impulse’ (a pet phrase of the Anthroposophists and of the Dreigliederung people) rests upon the fullness of Steiner's spiritual knowledge. The head of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart founded the ‘Free Waldorf School’ for the children of employees and managers, a school founded on the impulses of all the thoughts that had come from Dr. Steiner's Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In that school ‘Anthroposophy is to be the artistic method of education’.” Those who mock and tread into the dust what is being willed out of the spirit will surely not die of hunger, even in these hard days.

But it is indeed necessary to receive into our souls New Year impulses that prevent us from passing by sleepily and heedlessly, what is actually going on, impulses that make us accept sternly the stern intention of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In our own ranks, too, I see many who would like to doze over things that reveal themselves out of full compassion, out of compassion for that which is happening in our times and which, left to itself, must lead to downfall! There are persons lacking courage who join the Anthroposophical Society and then say: “Yes, Spiritual Science is something I like, but I do not want to have anything to do with social activity; it has no place in it.” Such members might take an example from our adversaries. The Jesuit, Father Zimmermann, follows everything we do. He concludes the article mentioned above, with the sentence, “The weekly paper, The Threefold Social Organism—e.g., No. 8, of course holds the opinion that the ‘Church is conspiring’ against the historical task of the self-determination of the individual.” In other articles, too, the Jesuit, Father Zimmermann, shows how seriously he takes all we do.

It would be well if those who are in our Society would also take things seriously, in the right way. The spies who are on the outlook for any weak spot which they can expose in Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, and in all that proceeds from it, are not few in number. I think you know that I am not so foolish as to tell you what follows, out of mere vanity, and so I venture to refer to it. On the side of our adversaries the wish naturally arises to find a point of attack here or there. It is well, therefore, to read the following passage in Dr. Rittelmeyer's essay: ‘Steiner, War and Revolution’: “I happened to have a talk recently with a young Swedish scientist in economics, who had had the strict schooling of the economists of Cassel. He told me that he had read Steiner's book very carefully, from end to end, with the expectation of unmasking him as an amateur; but he had been unable to find any mistake.” In our circles we ought to consider such matters more seriously. The foundation on which we ought to build is the knowledge: Here something is willed, something that has nothing to do with the rambling talk of Theosophy, current elsewhere. Here we build upon the same strict insight into things as is demanded from any other accepted science. Were this really felt, then we should understand why the event took place which Father Zimmermann terms a defection. You know that it was no defection, but that we were thrown out because it was impossible to bring any earnestness into that society of mystic wishy-washy talk, no real earnestness was wanted there. They only wished to go on chattering in the same way they had chattered for years, particularly in connection with subjects about which all possible things can be said with no knowledge of the spiritual world. What our age most sorely needs is the greatest earnestness in the sphere of Spiritual life.

Today, New Year's day, with my visit drawing to an end, I wished to speak to you again of this deep earnestness. My most heartfelt desire is that into our ranks may come the New Year wish—it is a wish each one can shape for himself—that through the souls and hearts of our friends, eyes may in some degree be opened to that which is needed so sorely, to that which, out of the Spirit alone, is able to help humanity. No salvation is to be found in any external organization. Something new must be stamped upon human evolution. These facts must become known, and to feel that these facts must become known is indeed the most worthy New Year's thought that could rise in your hearts. This year, 1920, will hold in store many an important decision, if enough people can be found who are able to recognize the needs of mankind, as I have pointed them out today. 1920 will bring misery and suffering if such men cannot be found, if those only take the lead who wish to work on in the old way.

My dear friends,

In part of yesterday's lecture I took my start from an essay by Berdiayeff, an essay based on the prejudice which we might describe as an unqualified belief in modern science and learning. This essay, however, also records a remarkable fact, intelligible only through the contrast between the logic of the intellect (which is of course the logic of modern science) and the logic of realities. Berdiayeff points out that Bolshevism has appointed Avenarius, Mach and other noted positivists, so to speak, as its official philosophers. I may add explicitly that this essay was written as long ago as 1908. It is a remarkable thing—intelligible only on our spiritual-scientific basis—to find in the work of this Russian author a judgment (no matter what our attitude to these things may be), most in agreement with the present time, or perhaps I should rather say, a judgment still applicable to the present time. And it may be worthwhile for you to know that Mach and Avenarius were already spoken of as official philosophers of the Bolsheviks at a time when—I hope I am making no undue presumptions—when a considerable number possibly even of this audience had not the remotest idea what Bolshevism is. For a large part of mankind in Western and Middle Europe have only been aware of the existence of Bolshevism for a very short time, whereas in fact it is a very old phenomenon.

I now want to add something more to the studies we have recently pursued. I was anxious above all to show you how the social impulses of the present time are to be judged and considered in the light of Spiritual Science. One thing we emphasized especially:—We must not give ourselves up to the simple belief that the social impulses are to be conceived in a uniform way over the whole world. It will cloud and mislead all our thoughts and judgments about the social question if we do not take into account that human communities throughout the civilized world are differentiated. We must avoid the error into which men fall when they say, of the social question, “This or that holds good; human society must be ordered thus and thus!” Rather must we put this question thus:—What is the nature of the forces in Eastern Humanity; what is the nature of the forces in Western Humanity; and what is the nature in the Humanity living the midst between the two? What is the nature in each case of the forces leading to the social demands of the age? We have already characterized in manifold ways, both from the external symptoms and from the inner occult standpoint, the nature of this differentiation between Western Humanity, Middle Humanity, and Eastern Humanity; and observe that in the latter we include the European East, namely Russia. We have already characterized how these differentiations are to be conceived. Without a knowledge of them it is altogether impossible to think fruitfully about the social question.

Now let us ask ourselves (we have often touched upon this question, but today we will bring out certain other details),—let us ask ourselves what is the fundamental quality of soul, the fundamental and decisive quality which is brought out in the age that began in the fifteenth century and that will last, as I told you, on into the third millennium? This fundamental quality which has scarcely yet shown itself in its true form, but only in its first beginning—the fundamental quality which is evolving and will evolve ever more and more—is that of human Intelligence—Intelligence as a property of the soul. Thus in the course of this epoch man will more and more be called upon to judge about all things out of his own Intelligence and notably about social, scientific and religious matters, for indeed, the religious, the scientific, and the social impulses do in a certain sense exhaustively describe the range of human life.

Now perhaps this conception of the Intelligent being of Man, which we must necessarily awaken in ourselves, will come to you more easily if you realize the following. Of the fourth Post-Atlantean Age it cannot be said in the same sense as of the present time, that man as a personality wished to establish himself purely on the ground of the intelligence. I brought this out very clearly in my book The Riddles of Philosophy in regard to philosophic thought. In the fourth Post-Atlantean Age, ending in the fifteenth century A.D., it was not necessary for man to make use of the intelligence in a personal way. With their perceptions of the environment, with their other relationships in life to the world, the concepts, the ideas, that is to say the intelligent element, also flowed into the human being just as colors and sounds enter the human being in perception. Notably for the Greeks, the intelligent-content was a Perception; and it was so also for the Romans.

For the man of modern time, since the fifteenth century, the outcome of intellectual activity can no longer be a perception. The intellectual element is left out of the world of perceptions. Man no longer receives the concepts and ideas at one and the same time with the perceptions. It is an entire error to imagine that this great change did not take place at the turn of the fifteenth century. This kind of error, this inability to distinguish, has indeed been perceived by some people even in the ordinary outer life. Thus a European, as we can easily realize, is apt to see all Japanese exactly alike. Although they are just as different from one another as Europeans are, yet he does not distinguish them. So too, modern learning does not distinguish between the several epochs, but imagines them all alike. But that is not the case. On the contrary, a mighty change took place, for instance at the turn of the fifteenth century when men ceased to perceive the concepts at one and the same time with the perception;—when they began really to have to work for their concepts. For the man of the present day has to bring forth, elaborate, the concepts out of his own personality. We are only in the initial states of it. It will become more and more so.

Now the man of the West, the Middle and the East are in the highest degree differentiated, especially in regard to this development of the intelligence. And since the theoretic demands of the Proletariat today, as is natural in the fifth Post-Atlantean Age, the Age of the Spiritual Soul,—since these demands are brought forward as intelligent demands, it is necessary to consider the relationships and differentiations of the intelligent being of the human soul over the face of the earth. It is necessary to consider it also in relation to the social impulses.

The significance of these things is underestimated because they still work today so largely in the subconscious. Man with his easy-going thought is not anxious to make clear distinctions in clear consciousness. But every man has an inner man within him, raying forth into his consciousness only to a certain extent. And this inner man makes very clear and sharp distinctions, distinctions for example as between the Western Man, the Middle Man, and the Eastern Man, according to his point of view, according as to whether he himself is a Western, a Middle, or an Eastern Man.

I am not now referring to the single individuality as such, I mean that in man which belongs to his nationality. I beg you always to observe this distinction. Of course the single individual rises out of the national element. Of course there are men today in whom the national element works scarcely at all. There are those who systematically try to be pure human beings without letting the national quality determine them. But insofar as it does work in them, it comes to expression in the varied ways which we have already characterized in these lectures. Today we will consider it once more from certain points of view and in relation to the social question.

In effect, whenever the social question emerges, when anything emerges which depends not only on the individual human being but on the community, the qualities of the Nation, Folk or People will always come into account. The member, let us say, of the British Nation or the member of the German People or the inhabitant of the Russian Earth (I purposely distinguish them just in this way), these three as individuals may, if you will, have just the same judgments. But the English, the German and the Russian political or social structure cannot be the same. They must be differentiated. For here the community comes into account. We are, therefore, calling into question not so much the individual relationship of man to man, but that which works from people to people, or differentiates the one nation from another. Again and again I must sharply emphasize this fact, for partly with good intentions and partly out of malice these things which I bring forward are again and again misunderstood.

Take one thing for example. I beg you to take these things “sine ira” quite objectively. They are not meant as criticizing but only as an indication of the facts. I beg you therefore to take them without any sympathies or antipathies. Let us consider a man of Mid-Europe, who observe[s] the life of the English-speaking people and on the other side the life of the Russian-speaking people; he observes them as they come to expression in the characteristic ways of thinking of these peoples—once more then, not of the individual human beings but of the peoples as such. Consciously, the Middle European may pass all kinds of judgments. Needless to say, nowadays a man will say this or that according to public opinion, which is always equivalent to private indolence.

That may be so, but the inner man, the inner Mid-European man, looking to the West, to the English-speaking people, and contemplating the nation as it expressed itself politically and socially—though he need not bring it to his consciousness at all—will always pass the judgment, “Philistines!” And when he looks across to Russia, he will say “Bohemians!” Of course that is somewhat radically spoken. And he himself will hear from left and right the answer:—“You may call us Philistines, you may call us Bohemians, but you—you are a Pedant!” Certainly that may be so, that again is judging from another point of view. But these things are more of a reality than one imagines, and they must be derived from the very depths of human evolution.

Now the peculiar thing is this. Within the English-speaking population the Intelligence is instinctive. It works instinctively. It is a new instinct that has arisen in the evolution of mankind; the instinct to think intelligently. The very thing the spiritual soul will have to educate, the Intelligence, is practiced instinctively by the English-speaking people. The English people has a native talent for the instinctive exercise of the intelligence.

The Russian people differs from the English as the North Pole from the South (or I might even say as the North Pole from the Equator), with respect to this impulse of the intelligent being in man. In Middle Europe, as I have said before now, men do not have the intelligence instinctively; they must be brought up to it. The intelligence must be trained and developed in them. That is the tremendous difference. In England and America the intelligence is instinctive. It has all the qualities of an instinct. In Mid-Europe nothing of intelligence is born in one. One must be trained brought up to it. It must be grasped in the becoming, in the development of man. In Russia it is so, that men even argue with one another as to what the intelligence really is (I could refer to many manifestations of this in literature; you must not think that I construct these things myself).

According to many statements by Russians with real insight, what they call the intelligence is something quite different from what is called so in Mid-Europe, let alone in England. In Russia an intelligent man is not one who has studied this and that. Whom do we call here the Intellectuals (for this will surely have some relation to the intelligence)? We call the “Intellectuals” those who have studied, who have made this or that subject their own, and have thus trained themselves in thought. As I said, in Western Europe and America the Intelligence is even a native quality, born in them. But we shall not permit ourselves to exclude from the Intelligentsia the businessman, the civil servant, or a member of any one of the liberal professions. But the Russian will do so most decidedly. He will not so easily reckon as a “man of intelligence” a businessman, a civil servant, or a member of one of the liberal professions. No, among the Russians a man of Intelligence must be a man who is awake, who has attained a certain self-consciousness. The civil servant who has studied much, who even has a judgment on many things, need not be an enlightened man. But the workman who thinks about his connection with the social order, who is awake as to his relation to Society, he is a man of Intelligence. In Russia it is very significant; one is even obliged to apply the word intelligence in quite a different sense. For, you see, whereas in the West the intelligence is instinctive, born in one, and in the Middle one is trained to it, or at any rate it is evolved in one, in the East it is treated as something that is certainly not born in one—nor can one merely be trained to it. It is not to be evolved quite as easily as that. It is something that awakens from out of a certain depth within the human soul. Man awakens to intelligence. This fact has been observed especially by certain members of the “Cadet Party,” who say that this faith in enlightenment of “awakening” is the very reason why a certain arrogance and conceit is to be found in the intelligentsia of Russia, despite all their other qualities of humility.

The fact is that this intelligence in Russia has a very special part to play in the evolution of mankind. If you do not let yourselves be deceived, if you do not give yourselves up to illusions of external symptoms, but go to the heart of the matter, then—however insignificant the Russians' intelligence may appear to you in this or that Russian according to your Western of Mid-European ideas, you will recognize the following. You will say:—“This intelligence is being preserved and guarded from all instinctive qualities.” Such indeed is the idea of the Russian; the intelligence must not be corrupted by any kind of human instinct, nor must we imagine that anything worth mentioning has been attained with all the intellectuality to which we train and educate ourselves. The Russian—unconsciously, needless to say—wants to preserve and keep the intelligence until the coming of the sixth Post-Atlantean Age, which is his age. So that when that time comes, he shall not reach down with his intelligence into human instincts, but carry it upward into the region where the Spirit-Self will blossom forth. Whereas the English-speaking people let the intelligence sink down into the instincts, the Russian desires above all to preserve and protect it. At all costs he will not let it go down into the instincts. He wants to nurse and cherish it, little as it may be today, so as to keep it for the coming Age, when the Spirit-Self—the purely spiritual—shall become permeated with it.

When we regard the matter thus in its foundations, my dear friends, then even such a thing as with unbiased judgment we must criticize root and branch, will appear as arising out of a certain necessity in human evolution.

As I said, Russians themselves—Russians with insight who characterize these things—discover quite rightly that the Russian intelligence has a two-fold basis which lies inherent in its evolution. Namely it has received the configuration, the character it has today, through the fact that the Russian who has evolved intelligence and who claims to be a wide-awake and enlightened man, has been suppressed by the power of the police. He has had to defend himself, to the point of martyrdom, against the violence of the police. As I said, we may well condemn this; but we must also reach a clear and unclouded judgment. The specific character of this Russian Intelligence, seeking to preserve itself for future spiritual impulses of mankind, is absolutely conditioned on the one hand by the police suppression by which it has been tortured and persecuted. And on the other hand, in a perfectly natural way—as Russian authors themselves bring out again and again—this Russian intelligence (just because it wants to preserve itself for future ages), is today a thing remote from the world. It does not easily come to grips with life. It is directed to quite other things than are immediately pulsating through the world. We may say therefore that in this respect too the Russian life of Soul is the very opposite of what we find in the English-speaking population. In the West, we may say, the intelligence is police-protected; in the East it is challenged and persecuted by the police. One man may prefer the one, another may prefer the other alternative. The point here is simply to characterize the facts. In the West, as I said, the intelligence is protected, its peculiar character is meant to flow into the outer life; it has to be inherent everywhere in the social structure. In the West it is the proper thing for men to take part through their intelligence in the social structure and the like. In Russia, no matter whether it be by the Czar or Lenin, the intelligence is suppressed by the police, and will continue so for a long time to come. Indeed, perhaps the very nerve and strength of it lies in the fact that it is suppressed by the police. We can put these things together, my dear friends, in a pretty epigrammatic way, and yet correctly. One can say, for instance—In Russia the intelligence is persecuted; in Mid-Europe it is tamed; and in the West it is born tame.

If we make this division, this differentiating, then—strange as the words may sound—we are hitting the nail on the head. In England and America, with respect to the Constitution, with respect to external politics, nay even with respect to the social structure, the intelligence is “born” tame. In Mid-Europe it is tamed. In the East where it would like to run about at random, it is persecuted.

These are the things that must be seen if we would see realities instead of entering into them in a merely chaotic way which can never lead to any real insight.

Now the point is this: On the one hand human beings are differentiated in this way, notably with regard to the intelligence, inasmuch as the Nation or Folk is working in them. They are differentiated as I have indicated often and in different directions, and am indicating again from a certain point of view today. On the other hand while, in the age of the Spiritual Soul this differentiation must be clearly seen, we must find at the same time the possibility to transcend it. There are two ways to transcend these things in real life. In the first place by learning to know them. So long as we only declaim from general abstract points of view that this or that is the true social standpoint, so long as we have no knowledge of the differentiations of mankind, all our talk is valueless. Insight into these things, that is the one thing of importance. The other is that we should still be able in a certain way to rise out of these things with human consciousness and experience. In practice we must reckon with the differentiations. We must not imagine that men are the same over the whole earth, or that the social question can be solved in the same way over the whole Earth. We must know that the social question has to be solved in different ways. Out of the impulses in the different peoples it is seeking to solve itself in different ways.

But this, my dear friends, is only possible on a foundation such as is provided here, by Spiritual Science. For if you have some more or less chaotic—or even harmonious and consistent—social idea, how can you apply it, my dear friends? You can only apply it one-sidedly. You may have the most beautiful ideas, capable of absolute proof, so that you cannot but believe that all men, all the Earth over are to be made happy and prosperous by their means. Indeed it is the very misfortune of our times that it generally has such an idea in mind. Who is there that thinks differently in our time when he confronts his audience and speaks of his political or social ideas? It is always in this style: “Social conditions are to be ordered thus and thus throughout the Earth, and with the ideas I am thinking out the whole of mankind will prosper.” This is the way men think today and indeed, on the foundations of our present habits of thought, it is scarcely possible for them to think in any other way.

But if you take the social impulse derived from Spiritual Science, which I explained to you a short while ago, you will see it has quite a different character. In fact it breaks with this habit of thought of our time. I said, the point is not to have some uniform social ideal, but to investigate what is seeking to realize itself. Then I drew your attention to a three-fold membering of social life, which has hitherto been gathered up chaotically into the one-fold State. Today you will always see one Cabinet, one Parliament. Indeed, it seems an ideal for the people of today to gather everything together chaotically into a single Parliament. But as I said, the reality of things is tending to hold apart what is here being concentrated into one. The spiritual life (including judicial—I do not mean general administration, but the administration of civil and criminal law) constitutes one member by itself. The economic life a second member; and the life that regulates the two, constitutes the third—general administration, public security, and the like. These three should confront one another just as independent States do today. They should deal with one another through their representatives, ordering their mutual relationships, but in themselves they should enjoy independent sovereignty.

Let what I am saying be reviewed and criticized and utterly condemned. One will be criticizing not a theory but something that will be actualized in the next forty or fifty years. And this three-folding alone will make it possible for you to reckon once more with the differentiations of mankind. For if you only have a one-fold State you must force it upon all humanity, as though you would put the same coat on a small, a medium, and a very tall man (take the magnitude only for the sake of illustration, I do not mean to describe the nations as great or small). But in this three-foldness there is an inherent universality. For the social structure of the West will take shape in such a way that the life of administration, the constitution, the general regulation of public life, public security in the widest sense, will preponderate. The other two will be to some extent subordinate, dependent on this one. In other regions of the Earth, it will be again different. Once more, one of the three will predominate and the other two will be more or less subordinate. With a threefold conception you have the possibility to find, in your own view of things, the differentiation of realities. A unitary idea you must extend over the whole Earth, but of a thing inherently threefold you can say: “In the West the one is predominant; in the Middle the second is predominant; and in the East the third is predominant.” Thus what you find as the ideal of the social structure will be differentiated over the face of the Earth. This is the fundamental difference of the view, here presented out of Spiritual Science, from other views. This view is applicable to realities from the very outset, because it can be differentiated within itself and applied in a differentiated way to the realities of life. Such is the difference between an abstract and a concrete view of things. An abstract theory consists of so many concepts of which one believes that happiness will come. A concrete view is one of which one knows: It in itself is such that the one can grow and develop in the one case, the second in another, the third in a third. The first or second or third will be applicable to the corresponding outer conditions. This is what distinguishes a view of realities from all dogmatism. Dogmatism swears by dogmas, and dogmas can only maintain their sway by tyrannizing over realities. A conception of reality is like the reality itself; it is inherently a living thing. Like the human or any other organism it is mobile and alive, not fixed and rigid.

So is a real conception inherently living, growing or developing, now in one direction, now in another. This difference of a conception of reality from dogmatism—this you must understand, my dear friends, for it will help you most of all to change the habits of thought within you, which change is so badly needed by the men of today and from which they are yet so far removed—far more than they know.

Moreover what I am now telling you is connected in its deepest being with Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. You see, for the ordinary science of today man himself is a unity. The anatomist, the physiologist studies the brain, the sense organs, nerves, liver, spleen and heart. For him they are organs placed in a single unitary organism. We do not do so. We distinguish the head man, or nerves-and-senses man, from the chest man, or man of breathing and blood circulation, and lastly from the metabolic man, or man of the extremities, or as we might also say muscular man. We distinguish, as you know, a threefold man who lives in the world. Just because it does not hold fast abstractly to the one-fold man, Anthroposophical Spiritual Science discovers that social organism in which man as a three-fold being is contained. For, my dear friends, the guiding thread is always the Anthroposophical membering of man. After all, these three members themselves are, more or less, the outer symbols of his being which man carries with him. For he himself is rooted in all the worlds. We shall find in this three-folding of man once more a guiding thread to envisage the differentiation of humanity over the Earth.

Now that I shall speak plainly about these things I beg you once more to take them sine ire, for I am merely describing. I am not criticizing nor am I saying anything to detract from the one side or to find favor with the other side in any way. Let us begin with the Russian man, the Eastern European man. We simply cannot study him if we only have in mind the present-day anatomy, physiology or psychology. We can only study him if we bear in mind the threefold man, whose nature I have indicated in broad outlines in my book The Riddles of the Soul. For if we consider the peculiar characteristics of the Russian Soul, and generally of the Russian people of today—I beg you to observe once more, the Russian people of today—then we shall have to say: In Russia (may our Russian friends forgive me, but it is true) in Russia the head man is at home. Let our Russian friends forgive me, for they themselves do not believe it, but they are making a mistake. They no doubt will say: In Russia the heart-man is at home, and the head, of all things, is not so prominent. But you can only make such a statement if you do not study Spiritual Science properly. For the Russian head-culture appears predominantly as a culture of the heart, just because—if I may put it tritely—the Russian has his heart in his head. That is to say, his heart works so strongly that it works up towards his head, crosses his whole Intelligence, permeates everything. It is the working of the heart upon the head, upon the concepts and ideas, which configures the heart upon the head, upon the concepts and ideas, which configures the whole of the East-European culture.

And once more, I pray that the mid-European will not take offence, but it simply is so: Their essential characteristic—and this describes the whole of the mid-European culture—is that their head is perpetually falling into their chest, while on the other hand the abdomen or the extremities are perpetually being drawn up into the heart. That is the essential thing in mid-European man. Hence it is so frightfully hard for him to find his bearings, for he is neither at the one end nor at the other. I described this when I said recently that at the Guardian of the Threshold the mid-European man experiences above all a wavering, a tottering uncertainty and doubt.

Once again, may our West European friends not be offended with me (for I see you are already guessing what is left for them) their culture is paramountly an abdominal, a muscular culture. That is their peculiarity—in the nation, not in the single man as such. All that proceeds from the culture of the muscles works strongly even into the head. Hence the instinctive quality of their intelligence. Hence too it is there that we find the origin of muscular culture in the modern sense—games, sports, athletics and so forth. Indeed, all that I am saying—you will find its evidence everywhere in external life if only you are willing, if only you are prepared to look at the facts objectively. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science will only give you the guiding thread to observe the facts of life. In the Russian it is so that his heart fumes up into his head. In the English-speaking people the abdomen fumes up into the head—but not only so, the head reacts in turn upon the power body and directs it. It is very important to consider these things. We need not always express them so radically as we do in our own circle, my dear friends. After all, here we understand one another; we have after all a certain measure of good will one to another. We know how to take these things objectively, not with sympathies and antipathies.

Thus you see, we must envisage the threefold man; we must really know that man is a threefold being, a being after the pattern of the Trinity even when we are studying his physiological and psychological differentiations. And this is the essential thing; men must have an interest in one another not merely as the parson preaches it, but a real interest holding sway between man and man, which can after all only be founded on a real insight. It remains as empty abstraction if you say: “I love all men.” To enter into the other human beings with understanding, that is the thing needful, likewise it is necessary to enter into the different communities of men with understanding, to have a true judgment about them and about their social structure. And this can only be the case when one knows the threefold nature of man. Unless you know what is the predominant bodily feature in a community of men, you cannot really know them. To gain a real insight you must have some guiding thread, otherwise you will confuse and muddle things together. That is the point. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is a thing that reckons with reality. Hence it is a thing that men often find unpleasant, for as a result of certain prejudice men do not want to be seen through, not even in private life. They find it dreadfully unpleasant to be seen through. We may almost say that of any ten men, at least nine will be your enemies if you really see through them. In one way or another they will become your enemies. Men do not like being seen through, even when it happens in the light that is communicated here, my dear friends, so that it may serve to enhance the love of humanity. For the abstract love of humanity (I have often used this comparison), is like the warmth that the stove ought to develop. You talk to it so: “You are a stove. It is your duty as a stove to warm the room.” But if you do not stoke it, all your moral talk is useless. So it is with all the Sunday afternoon addresses. However much you preach at men “love and love again,” if you do not provide the fuel whereby men and communities of men are known and understood, all your preaching is worthless. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is fuel to kindle the right interest of man in man—the real development of human love. Even the historic facts, symptomatically as I unfolded them here a short while ago, the important historic facts underlying the social impulses of today—even these, my dear friends, can only be brought home to human insight from the standpoint of a conception of realities.

Bear in mind all that we have already said of the differentiations of the Western, the Middle, and the Eastern World. It will flow into your souls still more abundantly if with its help you now observe these worlds with understanding. And then perhaps we may ask: How is it—apart from what we have already said—how is it that the Russian intelligence can preserve itself for future time? It needs, as it were, a greater strength to protect the intelligence from the encroaching instincts and the like than it requires to exercise the native instinctive intelligence. It needs a greater strength. And this too has been attained by certain arrangements, if I may call them so, in the evolution of Occidental Humanity. Take only this one circumstance.

Russia has in many respects been held aloof from the currents and movements of civilized life that have taken their course in the West. I once described to you from another point of view this damming up, this congestion of a civilization of former ages towards the East. See for instance how the division of the Church took place in the ninth century and was completed in the tenth. An earlier form of Christianity was driven back towards the East, there to remain stationary and conservative. Thus we may say: A certain condition, which was spread over the whole of Christendom in early centuries, has been driven Eastward and has there remained stationary. Meanwhile the West has continued to evolve its Christianity. Thus something was pushed back towards the East. That on the one side, while on the other side, into the same East, something was pushed forward—namely the Tartar element and all that came from Asia, from Eastward of the Russian East. All this is only an expression of the fact that on the Russian earth earlier forces of humanity have been congested and have received into themselves the human element that came from Asia—in a more youthful condition than the West European humanity.

Or again, consider the mid-European civilization in its dependence on Protestantism—a dependence far greater than is generally thought. At bottom the whole civilization of mid-Europe is configured out of the impulse of Protestantism. I do not mean this or that religious creed, I mean the impulse of Protestantism. Protestantism itself, for one who regards things from a higher vantage point is but a symptom. The essential thing is the spiritual impulse that is working in it. Take all the science and scholarship that is carried on in Middle Europe, the whole form of its development is influenced by Protestantism. Without Protestantism the mid-European culture is utterly unthinkable.

Now what appears so predominant at one place is present differently, in a different relationship to life, at another. It is as I showed you just now when I spoke of the social tasks of Anthroposophy which must be applied in differentiated ways. What has Protestantism been in Middle Europe? One might say that Protestantism gave the first impetus to man's supporting himself on his own Intelligent Being. The mid-European intelligence, of which I said that it has to be trained and educated, is very closely connected with Protestantism. Even the Catholic action which has arisen against Protestantism is, rightly considered, Protestant in character, except when it happens to proceed from the Jesuits, who have consciously, deliberately held back the impulse that came through Protestantism. This inner impulse working through Protestantism works, if I may put it so, in its purest essence in mid-Europe. For how did it work in Western Europe? Study the historic facts in the proper symptomatic way and you will find:—the working of Protestantism in Western Europe and in America corresponds as a matter of course to the inborn Intelligent Instinct. Indeed it comes to expression more in the political than in the religious life. It works itself out as a perfect matter of course. It permeates everything. It does not need a special statement or constitution. Albeit here and there reformist hearts were kindled into flame, it does not need to bring forth so shattering a Reformation as took place in Middle Europe. In the West it is there as a matter of course. At this point we might even say: The modern Western man is born as a Protestant. The Mid-European discusses and argues as a Protestant. In Middle Europe, Protestantism above all calls forth all the discussions about the things of intelligence. Here it is not inborn. And the Russian—as a Russian—absolutely rejects Protestantism; he will have nothing to do with it. Indeed, as a Russian he simply cannot do with it. Russianism and Protestantism are incompatibles.

What I am now saying comes to expression not only in the religious confessions—no, not by any means. It comes to expression in the receiving of every kind of cultural impulse. Take Marxism for example. You can trace its course in the Western countries. There it is received from the very outset as a straightforward protest against the old conditions of property and the like. In the Middle Countries there has to be much discussion on those things, and much argument and bickering and doubt, much useless talk. All this arises out of the character of the Middle Countries. And in Eastern Europe Marxism takes on the strangest forms. There it must first be completely transformed. Take the Marxism of Eastern Europe, you will find it permeated, tinged through and through by the spirit of Russian Orthodoxy. Not in its ideas, but in the way the Russian relates himself to it, Marxism in Russia bears the stamp of Orthodox Faith.

All this, my dear friends, is only to draw your attention to the need of looking beyond the externals and seeing the true inwardness of things. Much will be gained if you accustom yourselves to see in relation to many things of life—the words as they are used today are to a great extent “disused coinage.”

What people think according to the customary usage of words is never really in accordance with reality: we must everywhere look deeper. Protestantism, for instance, defined in the usual way according to present-day habits of thought, no longer expresses a reality. We must conceive it in such a way as to recognize how it appears in Marxism, or in politics generally, or even in science. Then we shall have something that accords with the reality. So radically is it necessary for us to strive to get beyond the mere semblance of words and concepts, and to take hold of real life. Everything depends on this, my dear friends; and on this, above all, depends the right conception of the most important impulse of the present time, which is the social impulse. On this depends a true judgment of the facts of our time. Just because men are so unaccustomed to look at the realities, they judge of the conditions of our time in such distorted ways. Because they are so far removed from real conceptions, they keep on asking about guilt and innocence in relation to the recent war-catastrophe; whereas this question about guilt and innocence as such has not the slightest meaning. I told you here some considerable time ago how these things lay inherent in world-impulses. Just as the map which I sketched before you here is being realized in fact today, so are the other things too on the point of realization. They will indeed be realized, precisely as they were here described, my dear friends. We must have a sense for the reality and not adhere to the empty husks of words. True, the latter must often be used for purposes of description, but we must not adhere to them, must not stop short at them. Thus we must also see from a standpoint of reality the judgment, formed by the Entente and the Americans, which is now being passed upon the Middle Countries. I have already said: When this catastrophe of War began, I heard from many quarters criticisms “root and branch” of what the Middle Countries were then doing. Today the people who were criticizing them then are heard far less in criticism of what in truth is a policy of violence, and all the rest of it. Truth to tell, there would be sufficient cause for a similarly harsh judgment in this case. I think I have never spoken to protect any personalities; I have simply characterized the facts and conditions. Hence it is absolutely not my task, in any way to defend personalities whose characters have been unveiled in the most recent time. But, my dear friends, whether the unqualified deification of Wilsonism for example, and of all that is connected with it, lies less inherent in the tendency to some form of idolatry than the Ludendorff-worship which they evolved in the Middle Countries (and which I described as a special chapter in social psychiatry)—that is a question, after all, which would have to be decided with great care. We cannot pass it over quite so lightly.

Considering the matter, however, from another point of view I once said to you here, my dear friends, that when one person rails at another, and says hard things, the cause is not always—indeed in the rarest cases—to be found in the other person. He may of course be a bad sort; but this badness of his is, for anyone who observes reality objectively, the thing that least of all calls forth the abuse. No, for the most part the cause of the abuse is a need to abuse. And this need of abuse seeks an object, it wants to let itself go. And it seeks to bring its thoughts into such a form that they appear to be justified in the soul of the abusing party. So it is often in the individual intercourse of men with one another. But in the large affairs of the world it is no different; only here we must bear in mind that there are also deeper reasons. You see, it is perfectly intelligible and natural for people in the Entente and American countries now to criticize and condemn root and branch not only individual potentates but the whole population of the Middle Countries, and to say all manner of things in this direction. We can well understand it for, my dear friends, what would the policy of the Entente countries in these weeks look like, if the people [in] those countries were to say: “The people in the Middle Countries are not so bad after all, at bottom they are only human beings, they need only develop the better aspects of their nature, then they are quite alright.” Yes, if they were to say that, it would agree very badly with the policy they are now pursuing. In the world, my dear friends, one must say the things that justify one's action.

We must know how things proceed out of realities. That is a deeper way of seeing things. It goes without saying that the entire public opinion of the Entente Countries is as it is, not because it is true but in order to justify their own attitude; just as it often happens when one man rails against another, he does so, not because the man he rails against is such or such, but because he has a need to rail against something and wants to let it out. Yes it really is necessary to see things differently than men are wont to see them. And this is the whole point: to take hold of Spiritual Science in the inmost foundations of one's soul is in many respects a very different thing from what is conceived, even by many who call themselves adherents of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Outwardly, abstractly considered—and we come now to a different chapter—one might believe that the socialism, the social demands of the present day proceed from social impulses. I described the other day how man oscillates between social and anti-social impulses or instincts. An abstract thinker would take it as a matter of course that the socialist proletarian of the present time is a product of social impulses. For it is proper, is it not, to define the social by the social. But it is not true, my dear friends. One who considers the proletarian socialism of the present day in its reality knows well that socialism as it appears in the Marxism of today is an anti-social phenomenon, a product of anti-social impulses. Such is the difference between abstract definition, abstract thinking, and realistic thinking. Ask yourselves: What is the driving force in those who are seeking to realize socialism in the direction to which I am referring? Are they being driven by social instincts? No, by anti-social instincts. I showed it yesterday even by external indications, by the inner structure of their formula: Proletarians of all lands, unite! That is to say: Feel hatred against other classes in order that you may feel the bond that shall unite you! There you have one of the anti-social impulses. And we might adduce very many anti-social impulses if we studied the social psychology of the present day. Such is the difference between the way of thought that is arising and evolving—that must arise and evolve and that is to be helped on by Spiritual Science—and all that lies in the current habits of thought of today.

Hence, too, the Anthroposophical standpoint which must be put forward in relation to the social question meets as yet with so much opposition. For people cannot think in accordance with realities. Above all, they cannot think in a differentiated way; and if any one does think in this way, they frequently believe that he is contradicting himself.

Important questions of the present day will only be solved by realistic thinking. I will tell you one such question, relating to what we have already spoken of. I said: the thing that is rumbling especially in proletarian minds and that constitutes a motive force in them is this: the ancient slavery has been replaced by the modern enslavement of labor, inasmuch as in the present social structure, labor is a commodity from the labor power. Indeed the threefold social structure of which I have told you already contains the impulse to free the commodity from human labor. For this threefold ordering will entail, not logical conclusions, but conclusions in reality, in the reality of things seen.

Now this question, my dear friends, is followed by another, an absolutely burning question at the present moment. You know, one of the fundamental demands of proletarian materialism with its Marxist coloring, is the socialization or nationalization of the means of production. The means of production are to be made communal property, and this would only be the beginning of communal property in general: in the land, for instance, and so forth. It is a part of the programme of the Russian Soviet Republic, which I explained to you, to socialize, or nationalize the means of production and the land. Now at this point we come to the most important subsidiary social question. Today the tendency of proletarian thinking is to make things communal property. But, my dear friends, for the most important social impulses, it makes no difference at all whether an individual or an association or the community as such is the owner. To anyone who is able to study the realities, this is clearly revealed. In relation to the individual worker, the community will be an employer or captain of industry, not a whit less bad than the individual employer. This lies in the nature of the case, it is like a law of Nature. People only fail to see it, and hence they are misled. For the real question is this: Shall all men become owners of property. That would happen, if, instead of having communal property (I cannot here explain the technique, but it is perfectly feasible), the individuals—every one of them—owned property in a just way, according to the given opportunities in any territory. Shall all become property owners? Or shall all become proletarians? That is the alternative. The proletarian thinking of the present day wants to make all men proletarians, so that the community alone would be the employer. But if we can see the reality, the very opposite will be the outcome. The three-foldness of the social structure can never be attained by making all men proletarians. The tendency of the threefold structure must really be to attain the freedom of the individual in respect of body, soul and spirit. That is not to be attained by all men becoming proletarians, but is to be attained—for every individual—if all men possess a certain basis of property.

The second thing that must be attained is a regulation of social conditions, such that before the law or constitution, before the government in fact, all men are equal: Liberty in spiritual matters; Equality in the State (for if you will, one third may continue to be called so); and Fraternity in relation to the economic life. I know well-written books which rightly emphasize that the three ideals, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity contradict one another; it is true, Equality decidedly contradicts Liberty. Very clever writers said this even in 1848 or even earlier. If we muddle everything together these things contradict one another. There must be Liberty in the spiritual and judicial domain, the domain of religion, education and jurisprudence. There must be Equality in the administration, in the government, the services of public security. There must be Fraternity in the economic domain. In the economic domain we have property, which must however be correspondingly developed in the future. In the domain of public security and administration we must have Equity or Right. In the domain of spiritual life and jurisprudence we must have Liberty. When divided into a trinity, these things are not in contradiction with one another. For here the things that contradict one another in thought are still in accordance with reality, because in the reality they are distributed to the different domains. The mere thought burrows for contradictions; but the reality lives in contradictions. We cannot grasp the reality if we cannot grasp the contradictions, follow them and deal with them in our thoughts.

So you see, Spiritual Science as here intended certainly has something to say to the most important questions of the time. Perhaps, my dear friends, a few of you will yet realize this fact, and realize moreover that the whole way we think about this Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy should be influenced by the consciousness of its relation to the more important requirements of our time.

This indeed is closely connected with the way in which, as I personally for instance must conceive, this Anthroposophical Spiritual Science movement should take its stand in the spiritual life of our time. Of course it cannot be attained all at once that our contemporaries should see these things rightly. Do not believe, my dear friends (anyone who knows me will certainly not believe), that I say these things out of any personal foolishness or vanity; but I am compelled again and again by the necessity of the facts to characterize what happens in one direction or another. It is really so—and I have shown it you on many an occasion—I myself am not at all inclined to overestimate what I can do and claim to do. I know the limitations. I am well aware of many things of which one person or another may have no inkling that I am aware. But for those who to some extent can judge me rightly in this direction, I may perhaps say how earnestly I would desire one thing (the word “desire” is not quite right, but I have no other). It is this, my dear friends, that there should be a certain sense of discrimination between what is intended here, and other things with which it is so frequently confused. How many there are still today, who seeing here or there this or that occult society—or society that calls itself occult—will not discriminate it as healthy human understanding can discriminate it, from what is here to be found. For, imperfect as it may be, here there is at least the real striving to reckon with the consciousness of the age. Look on the other hand at all the other things that are frequently considered as occult or similar movements. How do they reckon with the consciousness of the time? Look at all the Masons of low and high degree, look at all the different religious communities, this is just the antiquated thing about them, they are unable really to reckon with the consciousness of our time. Where else do we find people speaking out of the real foundations? Where do we find them speaking on the burning questions of the time in a way that really enters into modern life, that is adapted to the realities? From all the rituals and instructions of the one or the other Masonic or religious community, you will not be able to discover these things. This is what I would desire: a real sense of discrimination.

I admit, my dear friends, it is made more difficult, because owing to the historical circumstances which I once described to you, this Society was confused in the beginning with the Theosophical or with all manner of other Societies. Outwardly considered, it may have been a mistake; karmically it was justified. It would have been more worldly-wise if this Anthroposophical Society, standing entirely upon its own ground, had been founded without any relation to other societies. Outwardly conceived, it would certainly have been more wise. For all this philistinism, the bourgeoisdom of the Theosophical Society and all the antiquated stuff would not have flowed into it. Not that it has flowed into Anthroposophy; it has not. But it has entered into the life and habits of the Society. If only Anthroposophy lived rightly in our Society—which it does not do—this Society could, in a certain sense at least, be a perfect example to characterize one-third of the social structure which flows from Anthroposophy itself. I mean the spiritual third, even including the juridical sphere. For, my dear friends, the principle of human rights which should hold sway from individual to individual—this should really go without saying among Anthroposophists. I always feel it as the sharpest and bitterest breach with the spirit which should develop amongst us, when one member speaks of another in such a way that he goes outside to complain or to accuse. Here too the consciousness of right, insofar as it is included in the one third of the social structure, should develop. But we have a long way to go yet to gain an Anthroposophical Society such as is really intended, containing what it might contain out of the impulses of Anthroposophy. First of all, my dear friends, we must evolve the ear for inner truth which so few people have today. Because this sense of discrimination which should really come from without fails so to come, it is necessary for me now and then to point to the distinctive features from one point of view or another. And today, especially with regard to certain things, I would say this; What lives through me myself in this Anthroposophical Movement is distinguished from other things in one essential respect. I have always worked according to the principle which I stated in the preface to the first edition of my Theosophy, namely that I communicate nothing else than what I can communicate from my own personal experience. I communicate nothing else than what I from my own personal experience can stand for. Here at this place there is no appealing to authorities such as is cultivated so much in other quarters.

This, my dear friends, entails a certain consequence. I may truly say that the spiritual stream which is guided through the Anthroposophical Movement depends upon no other stream. It depends alone on the spirituality that is flowing through the time. Hence I am under no obligation—I beg you to take this in all earnestness—I am under obligation to no one to keep silence about anything of which I myself consider that it ought to be spoken about in our time. For one who is obliged to no man for his spiritual treasure, there is no rule of silence.

That will already give you a basis for distinguishing this movement from others. For if anyone should ever say that that which is proclaimed in Anthroposophical Spiritual Science is proclaimed in any other way than in the sense of what was said in my Theosophy, namely that I myself am answering for it purely out of my own experience—if anyone should ever say this, then, if you will, he may not know the facts, or he has frequently been absent, or he has only seen them from outside. But whether it be from malice or otherwise, he is proclaiming the untruth. He, on the other hand, who says something else, let us say he alleges some “past” or a connection of this spiritual movement with another, knowing all the time the facts and circumstances here among us—he is telling lies. That is the point, my dear friends. He will either be telling the untruth through ignorance of the facts, or, knowing well the facts he will be lying. And in effect, these alternatives include all the opponents of this movement.

Hence I must emphasize again and again; I have only to keep silence concerning those things of which I knew that they cannot yet be communicated to mankind owing to its immaturity. But there is nothing on which I must keep silence in connection with anyone to whom any vow has been made, or for any such reason. Never has anything flowed into this movement that came from another side. Spiritually, this movement was never dependent on any other. The connections were always only of an external character. Perhaps, my dear friends, the time will come that you will see that it is well to remember that I sometimes say things in advance, which only afterwards become apparent in their right connection. If you have the good-will, the time may come when it will serve you well to remember the sense in which the spiritual treasure that must flow through the Anthroposophical Movement is being cultivated here.

Nevertheless there is a touchstone for anyone who is willing to distinguish this Anthroposophical Movement from other movements. There is a touchstone available today for such a movement and it is threefold. First: such a movement must show itself equal to the scientific and intellectual requirements of the time. Go through all the literature that I have produced; however imperfect in this or that detail, you will see everywhere the earnest effort to create a movement drawing not on old antiquated sources, but thoroughly at home in the scientific methods of the present time and working in full harmony with the present scientific consciousness. That is the one thing. The second is this: that such a movement has something really vital to say on the life-questions of the present time, for instance on the social question. What other movements have to say in this direction—try to compare it in its antiquatedness, in its remoteness from reality, with what this movement has to say. The third part of the touchstone is this: that such a movement can consciously explain the different religious needs of mankind to themselves—can explain them and clarify them. That is to say, it combines enlightenment concerning the religious needs of mankind with a full and actual acquaintance with realities.

Herein already, my dear friends, you can distinguish this movement from all those which provide after all no more than Sunday afternoon addresses, which can well achieve the feat of giving moral sermons and the like, but in face of the real ideas working in the present social structure, are remote from the world. A science of realities in our time must be able to speak on labor and capital and credit and the land, and all these things of the present day—in a word, on the shaping of social life—even as it can speak on the relation of man to the Divine Being, on the love of his neighbor and so forth. This is what mankind has left undone so long; to find the real connections, from the highest realms down to the immediate and concrete tasks and processes of life. This is what Theology and Theosophy in their various forms in our time have left undone and what a certain occult movement too has left undone. They talk from above downwards till they reach the point where they can say to men: Be good!—and so on in like fashion. But they are unfruitful, they are sterile, when it comes to really taking hold of the burning questions of the time. External science and scholarship can speak of these immediate things of life, but they speak in a way that is remote from realities. I showed you yesterday how estranged they are from actual life. After all, how many people are there today who know what capital is, what it is in reality? True, they know: When they have so much money in a safe that it is so much capital. But that is not to know what capital is. To know what capital is, is to know how the regulation of the social structure works with respect to certain things and persons. Just as for the single human being we must learn to know, anthroposophically, the relationships that obtain in the cycle of the blood that rhythmically regulates man's life, so must we know what is pulsating in the most varied ways in social life. But, my dear friends, present-day physiology is not even able materialistically to solve the most important questions, for they can only be solved by anthroposophical insight into the threefold man.

What, for instance, does present-day science know on one immensely important question, namely this: Purely materialistically speaking—what does thought or ideation depend on? What does the will depend on? In a certain direction? I can speak of these things today because, as I said before on another point, I have investigated them for thirty to thirty-five years. Ideation depends upon the fact that man has within him, in the course of the circulation of his blood, carbonic acid which is not yet breathed out. When carbonic acid not yet breathed out is circulating inside him, there you have the material counterpart, the material correlate of Thought. And when there is oxygen in man—oxygen not yet converted into carbonic acid, oxygen that is still on the way to transformation into carbonic acid; there, in a certain direction, you have the material correlate of the Will. Where oxygen pulsates in man—oxygen not yet entirely transformed, but fulfilling certain functions—there is the Will materially at work. And where inside the human body there is carbonic acid, not quite elaborated to the point of expulsion or out-breathing, there you have the material foundation for a Thought-form. But as to how these two poles, the Thought-pole, which we may also call the carbonic acid pole, and the Will-pole which we may also call the oxygen pole—as to how they are regulated, only a science of realities can tell. Nowhere in the books of today will you find such a truth as I have just expressed.

Because men do not train their thinking with respect to a reality like this, therefore they also fail to train it with respect to what is necessary for the man of today in the social structure. But this will have to come, my dear friends, it is necessary for our time. The social question must be made to include the question of how man, as a soul and spirit being, stands within the social structure.

All these things have been left undone. Think how different it would be if in this or that establishment the individual worker were placed, even in soul and spirit, into the whole process which the commodity he makes undergoes in the world; if he understood how he stands within the social structure through the fact that he produces just this commodity. But this can only be realized if there holds sway a real interest from man to man, so much so that in course of time there will be no true adult man or woman unable to master the most important social concepts in a real way. The time must come—it is a social need—when a man will know what capital and credit, what ready-money and checks are in their real economic effects—and these things can be known; they are not difficult, they need only be rightly attacked by those who have to teach them. The time will come when every man must know these things, just as one knows today that soup is eaten not with a fork but with a spoon. Anyone who ate his soup with a fork would be behaving ridiculously, would he not? That the man or woman who is ignorant of these other things is behaving ridiculously too—this must become the public opinion.

Then, my dear friends, the most important impulse of the present time—the social impulse—will be placed on a very different foundation.

You must remind yourselves that as well as living through his life here between birth and death, man passes again and again through the life between death and a new birth. Just as here on earth we have experiences through the instrumentality of our body, we also have experiences between death and a new birth, and these experiences are by no means without significance for what we do during our earthly existence in the physical body. But neither are they without significance for what happens on earth as a whole. For only part—and indeed the rather lesser part—of what happens on the earth originates from those who are living in the physical body. The dead are perpetually working into our physical world. The forces of which man is unwilling to speak to-day in the age of materialism are nevertheless at work in the physical world. Our physical environment is fashioned and permeated not only by the forces emanating from the spiritual world, from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, but forces proceeding from the dead also penetrate into what surrounds and overtakes us here. So that a full and complete survey of man's life is possible only if we look beyond what can be told us by knowledge obtained through the senses and through history, here on earth.

The existence of such forces is in the end the one and only thing that can explain man in his whole being and the whole course of human evolution on the earth. A time will come in the physical evolution of the earth—it will be after the year 5,700—when, if he fulfils his rightful evolution, man will no longer tread the earth by incarnating in bodies derived from physical parents. In that epoch, women will be barren; children will no longer be born in the manner of to-day, if evolution on the earth takes its normal course.

There must be no misunderstanding about such a fact as this. Something else, for example, might come about. The Ahrimanic Powers, which under the influence of the impulses working in men to-day are becoming extremely strong, might succeed in preventing earth-evolution in a certain respect. It would then become possible for men—by no means for their good—to be held in the same form of physical life beyond this time in the sixth or seventh millennium. They would become much more like animals, while continuing to be held in the grip of physical incarnation. One of the endeavours of the Ahrimanic Powers is to keep humanity fettered too long to the earth in order to divert it from its normal evolution.

However, if men really take hold of the best possibilities for their evolution, then in the sixth millennium they will enter for a further 2,500 years into a connection with the earthly world of such a kind that they will, it is true, still have a relationship with the earth, but a relationship no longer coming to expression in the birth of physical children. In order to make the picture graphic, I will put it like this: In clouds, in rain, in lightning and thunder, man will be astir as a being of spirit-and-soul in the affairs of the earth. He will pulsate, as it were, through the manifestations of nature; and in a still later epoch his relationship to the earthly will become even more spiritual.

To speak of any such matters to-day is possible only when men have some conception of what happens between death and a new birth. Although there is not complete conformity between the way in which, between death and a new birth to-day, man is related to earthly conditions and the way in which he will be related to them when he no longer incarnates physically, there is nevertheless a similarity. If we understand how to imbue earth-evolution with its true meaning and purpose, we shall enter permanently into the same kind of relationship with earthly affairs that we now have only between death and a new birth. Only our life between death and a new birth in the present age is, shall I say, rather more essentially spiritual than it will be when this relationship is permanent.

Without the science of Initiation, understanding of these things lies leagues away. Most people to-day still persist in believing that the essential way to acquire knowledge of the science of Initiation is to amass all kinds of spiritual experiences, but not by the path that is proper for us in the physical body. Even the experiences gained by spiritualistic methods are apt to be valued more highly to-day than those which can be understood by the healthy human reason. Everything that is discovered by an Initiate, and can be communicated, is intelligible by the normal, rightly applied, human reason if only the necessary efforts are made. It is a primary task for the Initiate, also, to translate what he is able to proclaim out of the spiritual world into a language intelligible to human reason. Much more depends upon such translation being correct than upon the fact of having experiences in the spiritual world.

Naturally, if one has no such experiences, there is nothing to communicate. But crude experiences which arise without healthy reason being applied to their interpretation are really worthless, and have not the right significance for human life. Even if people were able to have many super-sensible experiences, but disdained to apply healthy reason to them, these experiences would be of no use whatever to humanity in the future. On the contrary, they would do serious harm, for a super-sensible experience is of use only when it is translated into the language that human reason can understand. The real evil of our time is not that men have no super-sensible experiences; they could have plenty if they so wished. Such experiences are accessible, but healthy reason is not applied in order to reach them. What is lacking to-day is the application of this healthy human reason.

It is of course unpleasant to have to say this to a generation that prides itself particularly on the exercise of this very reason. But at the present time it is not super-sensible experience that is in the worst plight; it is healthy logic, really sound thinking, and above all, too, the force of truthfulness that are worst off. The moment untruthfulness asserts itself, the super-sensible experiences fade away without being understood. People are never willing to believe this, but it is a fact.

The first requirement for understanding the super-sensible world is the most scrupulous veracity in regard to the experiences of the senses. Those who are not strictly accurate about these experiences can have no true understanding of the super-sensible world. However much may be heard about the super-sensible world, it remains so much empty verbiage if the strictest conscientiousness is not present in formulating what happens here in the physical world.

Anyone who observes how humanity is handling palpable truth today will have a sorrowful picture! For most people are not in the least concerned to formulate something they have experienced in such a way that the experience is presented faithfully; their concern is to formulate things as they want them to be, in the way that suits themselves. They know nothing about the impulses that are at work to beguile them in one direction or another away from a faithful presentation of the physical experience.

Leaving aside trifling matters, we need only observe the impulses which arise from ordinary human connections in life and prompt men to ‘varnish’ the truth in one respect or another. Further, we need only realise that the majority of people to-day are not speaking the truth at all about certain things, because of national interests or the like. Anyone who has national interests of some kind at heart can neither think nor say anything that is true in the sense in which truth must be conceived to-day. Hence the truth is virtually never uttered about the events of the last four or five years, because people everywhere speak out of one or other national interest.

What must be realised is that when a man desires to approach the super-sensible world, infinitely much depends upon such things. In times when procedures such as I characterised at the end of the lecture yesterday are possible—can you believe that many avenues to the truth lie open?¹ They certainly do not. For those who wallow in such swamps of untruthfulness as were disclosed yester-day, spread fog which completely shuts off what should be grasped as super-sensible truth by the healthy human reason. There is equal unwillingness to perceive that straightforward, candid relations between man and man must prevail if super-sensible truths are to penetrate in the right way into the social life. One cannot ‘varnish’ truth on the one hand and, on the other, wish to understand matters of a super-sensible nature.

When they are put into words, these things seem almost matters of course, but actually they are so little matters of course that everybody to-day ought constantly to repeat them to himself. Only so can there gradually be achieved what is necessary in this domain. As I said here recently, the essential principle of social community is that it must be founded upon confidence, in the sense indicated. This must be taken in all earnestness. In very many respects this confidence will also be necessary in the future with regard to paths of knowledge. The attitude adopted towards those who are in a position to say something about the science of Initiation should be to examine their utterances with the healthy reason only, not with sympathy, antipathy or the like, nor in the mirror of personal feeling. It must at all times be realised that the Anthroposophical Society should become in the real sense a bearer of super-sensible truths into the world. Thereby it could achieve something extraordinarily necessary and significant for the evolution of mankind.

But it must be remembered that to have experiences in sensible spheres is obviously a matter to be taken in earnest. I told you some time ago how a friend of our Movement, shortly before he died from the effects of war-wounds, wrote lines in which, in the very face of death, he speaks of the air becoming hard, granite-like.

I said at the time that this is an absolutely true experience.² Think only of the most elementary experiences connected with crossing the Threshold of the spiritual world and you will be able to gauge the importances of these things. In our life by day—or also by night, for then there is electric light—the sun, the light of the sun, illumines the objects around us; the sunlight makes them visible. In a similar way the other senses become aware of surrounding objects. If I limit myself at the moment to the example of the sunlight, directly the Threshold is crossed man must become one with the light in his inmost being. The light cannot enable him to see objects because he has to pass into the very light itself. Objects can be seen with the help of the light only as long as the light is outside. When man is himself moving together with the light, the objects illumined by it can no longer be seen. But when, in his being of soul, he is moving in the light itself, then for the first time he becomes aware that thinking is, in reality, one with the light weaving in the world.

Thinking that is bound up with the body is proper to physical life only. Directly we leave this body, our thinking loses definition; it weaves into the light, lives in the light, is one with the light. But the moment our thinking is received into the light, it is no longer possible to have an ego as easily as man has one between birth and death, without doing anything towards it. His body is organised in such a way that his being reflects itself through the body, and he calls this mirror-image his ego. It is a faithful mirror-image of the real ego, but it is a mirror-image, a picture only, a picture-thought, a thought-picture. And the moment the Threshold is crossed, it streams out into the light.

If another anchorage were not now available, man would have no ego at all. For this ego, this ‘I’, that he has between birth and death, is furnished for him by his body. He loses it the moment he leaves the body, and then he can be conscious of an ego only by becoming one with what may be called the forces of the planet especially the variations of the planet's force of gravity. He must become so entirely one with the planet, with the earth, that he feels himself to be a part of the earth, as the finger feels itself to be a member of the human organism. Then, in union with the earth, it is possible for him again to have an ego. And he perceives that just as here in earthly life he makes use of thinking in the physical body, after earthly life he can make use of the light.

From the standpoint of Initiation, therefore, one would have to say: Man is united with the earth's force of gravity and through radiating light concerns himself with the things of the world. Applied to the experience beyond the Threshold, this would express the same fact as when one says here on earth: Man lives in his body and thinks about the things of the world. Of the life between birth and death we say: Man lives in the body and concerns himself with things through thinking.

As soon as he leaves the body, we must say: He is united with the earth's force of gravity or with its variations, with electricity or magnetism, and through radiating light, inasmuch as he is now living in the light, concerns himself with the things of the world.

When things that have been illumined in this way—instead of being merely thought about, as is generally the case—are put into words, they are entirely comprehensible to the healthy human reason. And even the Initiate, if he has not developed his reason in the right way, gains nothing whatever from his super-sensible experiences. When someone to-day—please take what I am now saying as a really serious matter—has learnt to think in a way perfectly adapted to meeting the demands of school examinations, when he acquires habits of thought that enable him to pass academic tests with flying colours—then his reasoning faculty will be so vitiated that even if millions of experiences of the super-sensible world were handed to him on a platter, he would see them as little as you could physically see the objects in a dark room; for that which makes men fit to cope with the demands of this materialistic age darkens the space in which the super-sensible worlds come towards them.

Men have become accustomed to think in the one and only way that is possible when thinking is based on the bodily functions. This kind of thinking is ingrained in them from their youth onwards. But healthy human reason does not unfold on bodily foundations; it unfolds in free spiritual activity. And even in our Elementary Schools to-day children are educated away from free spiritual activity. The very methods of teaching hinder the development of free spiritual activity. Dare one incur the responsibility of concealing from the world these vital truths of the age? People may not realise why it was thought necessary to set into active operation an institution such as the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. But through this Waldorf School some at least of the children of men will be given a real chance to discard the bigotry of the times and to learn how to move in the element of thinking that is truly free. As long as such things are not regarded in this serious light, we shall make no progress.

Now I would like to call your attention to another tendency which is still far too common. Because people are tired of the old in its ordinary form, they like to get hold of something new; but for all that they want the new to be somehow veiled, whenever possible, in all the old, habitual conceptions. I have known many people—and it is well to be under no delusion about these things—who have realised that anthroposophical Spiritual Science is endeavouring to promulgate something true and right about Christianity, about the Mystery of Golgotha. But among them were some for whom this was right only because it exposed them to less disapproval in Church circles; hence they found Anthroposophy more opportune than some other form of spiritual science holding a different view of Christianity. In anthroposophical Spiritual Science the one and only question is that of truth; but with some people it has not always been a question only of truth, but often only of opportunism. Naturally it is unpleasant nowadays to have to witness the attitude to truth adopted by the representatives of the religious confessions and ultimately by their congregations who are also influenced by it. This is a trend of the times that must be kept clearly in view.

If it is desired to approach the super-sensible world in the right way, we must have interest in all things—but never mere curiosity. People are so ready to confound curiosity with interest. They must learn not only to think differently but to feel differently about all things. If anthroposophical Spiritual Science were ever to be given a mantle suitable for the atmosphere of coffee-parties or what corresponds to them nowadays, this would by no means conduce to the fulfilment of its task—for this task is of grave moment.

The reason for the hostility that is asserting itself at the present time in such ugly forms is simply this: People realise that here it is not a matter of a sect, or of a happier “family circle” such as many desire, but that something is truly striving to activate the impulses needed by the times. But what interest have the majority of people to-day in these impulses? If only they can bask in happiness or have something in the nature of a new religion! This egoism of soul, which impels very many people to anthroposophical Spiritual Science, must be overcome. Interest in the great affairs of humanity is necessary for any true understanding of Anthroposophy.

These great concerns of the life of humanity are clearly to be discerned in the most seemingly trivial facts of life. But in one respect our whole life of perception and feeling must change if we want so to orientate healthy human reason that it functions in the right stream of Spiritual Science. Let me repeat: The whole of our life of soul must change in one particular respect if our healthy human reason is to function within the stream of spiritual life that is to be brought to mankind through Anthroposophy. What is the orientation given us here on earth by the culture that is smothered in materialism? Our orientation is such that we feel ourselves as bodily men—with bones, muscles, nerves. And our body acts as a mirror, reflecting the image of our ego to us—schematically, like this:

Your true being is somewhere in spiritual regions. Here, in the physical world, is your body. It becomes a mirror, reflecting back to you the image of the ego. The ego itself is here (= = =), but the image of the ego is reflected back to you by the body. You know of this ego-image when you look at the body with that centre of your being of which most people at present know nothing, but in which they nevertheless live. So the ego, together with the thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, is mirrored by the body. Behind this ego-image is the body, and man calls these mirrored images his soul; behind the soul he perceives the body and uses it as his support.

But this picture: There, down below, is the body; there the ego emerges ... this picture must be entirely changed. It is a picture perceived in complete passivity, and is indeed perceived only because the body is behind it. We must learn to perceive quite differently. We must learn to perceive: You are there in your spiritual world, a world in which there are no plants, minerals and animals, but Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and the other Beings of the Hierarchies; in them you live. And because these Beings permeate us through and through, we ray forth the ego:

We ray forth this ego from the spiritual world. We must learn to feel this ego, to feel that we have within us the ego behind which stand the Hierarchies, just as the body, composed of elements of the three kingdoms of nature, is behind the ego that is an image only. We must pass out of the passive experience into activity in the fullest sense. We must learn to feel that our real ego is brought into being out of the spiritual world. And then we also learn to feel that the mirror-image of our ego is brought into being for us out of the body that belongs to physical existence.

This is a reversal of the usual feeling, and to this reversal we must habituate ourselves. That is the important thing—not the amassing of facts and data. They will be there in abundance once this reversal of feeling has been experienced. Then, when thinking is active in the real sense, those thoughts are born which can fertilise social thinking. When the ego is allowed to remain a mirror-image, thinking can take account only of those social matters which are (as I said yesterday) merely the outcome of changes in phraseology. Only when man is active in his ego can his thoughts be truly free.

In past centuries, not so very long ago, this freedom in thinking was still present in men, although springing, it is true, from atavistic qualities of soul. Instinctively, they regarded it as an ideal to achieve this freedom in their thinking, whereas we have to achieve it in the future by conscious effort. There is an outer illustration of this. Just look at the diplomas conferring the Doctor's degree at universities in Middle Europe. As a rule, people are made not only Doctors, but Doctors and Masters of the Seven Liberal Arts—Arithmetic, Dialectic, Rhetoric, and so on. This no longer means anything, for the Seven Liberal Arts are nowhere included in the curriculum of modern universities. It is a relic, a heritage from an earlier period when through university life men strove to liberate their thinking, to develop a life of soul able to rise to truly free thinking.

At the universities to-day the degrees of Master of the Liberal Arts and Doctor of Philosophy are still conferred. But this is no more than a relic, for nobody understands what the Liberal Arts really are. They are justly named ‘Arts’ because they were pursued in a sphere lying above that of sensory experience, just as the artist's imagination unfolds freely and independently of material existence. The degrees inscribed in university diplomas once represented a reality, just as many other things still surviving in the formula current at universities were once realities. The title, Magister Artium Liberalium, is a very characteristic example.

This living grasp of the self (Sicherfassen) must again be achieved. But it goes against the grain, because people to-day prefer to move about on crutches instead of using their legs. Their ideal is to have what they are to think conveyed to them by the outer, material facts. It is unpleasant for them to realise that thinking in the true sense must be experienced in free spiritual activity, because it means tearing themselves away from the convenient things of life, from all props, all crutches in the life of soul. Whenever things are said from the standpoint of a kind of thinking that has nothing whatever to do with the sense-world, but in complete freedom creates out of intuitions, people do not understand it. My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was not understood because it can be grasped only by one who is intent upon unfolding really free thoughts, one who is truly and in a new sense a ‘Master of the Liberal Arts’.

These are the things that must be understood today with the right feeling and with the earnestness that is their due. Especially to the English friends who are here for a short time only, I want to say this: The Building we have erected on this hill must be regarded as an outer beacon for the signs of the times. This Building stands here in order that through it the world may be told: If you go on thinking in the old way, as for four centuries you have become accustomed to think in your sciences, you will condemn humanity to destruction. With the help of crutches you may seek in the easy way to establish principles of social life, but in so doing you will only be preserving what already has death within it.

For the life of soul to-day it is essential to unfold thinking that is as free as are those forms out of which, in architecture, sculpture or painting, the attempt has been made to create this Building. Its purpose is that at one spot on the earth these things shall be said not through words alone, but also through forms. Men should feel that here, through these forms, something different from what can be heard elsewhere in the world to-day is intended to be said, and also that what is said is urgently necessary for the further progress of mankind in respect of knowledge and social principles, in respect of all the sciences and of all branches of social life.

• 1. Steiner was quoting scurrilous statements based on deliberate falsification published in newspapers in Germany about the alleged political aims, methods and activities of the Threefold Commonwealth Movement at the time it was founded. He also referred to articles in a Roman Catholic periodical, and to a book by a Professor of Psychology containing false information about Anthroposophy.
• 2. See lecture given at Dornach, 15th November, 1919: “An impression of this nature must be understood. ... For in wrestling to acquire the wisdom needed for the future, one of the most frequent experiences is this: the surrounding world presses in upon one, as if the air had suddenly hardened to granite. The reason for these things can be known, for it need only be remembered that it is the striving of the Ahrimanic Powers to cause the earth to become completely rigidified.”

From the views which have been presented here for some time, and more particularly from the considerations which have come before us these last few days, we see how essential it is for the further cultural evolution of mankind that what we may call the knowledge of Initiation should stream into it. We must say, absolutely without reserve: The deliverance of mankind from a downward evolutionary course depends entirely upon its turning to a revelation which can only come through Spiritual knowledge.

Although it might be said, with a certain amount of feeling or logic, that it would be difficult in our time for wider circles of people to accept such knowledge, which at first can only be given out by few who have reached the height of being able to see into the Spiritual World, all such objections, even when apparently justified, will not contradict the clamorous fact that without accepting that which is here called Anthroposophical Spiritual Science, civilization must sink into the abyss. The work of the Heavenly Powers upon the earth must cease if their further cosmic evolution is not united with mankind. The healing of mankind can only be brought about if a sufficiently large number of people permeate themselves with what we are trying to say here. For only he who will not, who absolutely will not look into what has happened in the whole world as the result of the last catastrophic years, only he can close his eyes to the fact that we are at the beginning of a process of destruction, and that nothing can bring us out of this process of destruction except something new. For what we seek within the destructive force itself can never be anything but a force of destruction. A power for building afresh can only be obtained from a source not belonging to earthly evolution up to the present time.

Now the results of the inflow from such sources are fraught with most significant difficulties. You have often been told that the Science of Initiation cannot be given to mankind haphazard, without preparation, because a certain receptivity is necessary. You have heard this continually; but it is exactly against this attitude of mind that man continually transgresses. Let us take a simple example. One of the first, most primitive demands relative to the acceptance of the Science of Initiation, is that every one should seek to strip off what we call Ambition, particularly when it expresses itself as a judging of others by one's self. Now, it is easy to see that this is exactly what takes place in the Anthroposophical Society. What would be the use of keeping silence about such matters? It is readily admitted that such is the case, but nevertheless the most fatal things in this direction exist within the Anthroposophical Movement, and mutual envy is on the increase. I shall merely indicate this aspect. Today I must speak of other great difficulties in the entrance of the Science of Initiation into our earthly civilization.

In the first place, that which belongs to the Mystery of the Will of Man must be pointed out to humanity in a comprehensive way. This Mystery of Man's Will has been veiled from modern culture especially since the middle of the fifteenth century, since the rise of the fifth post-Atlantean age. The modern theory of the universe knows the very least possible of the Will. We have often characterized this. A man when awake never experiences consciously the real nature of his Will. When awake he experiences consciously the nature of his Conceptions, when in a dreaming state he experiences the nature of his Feelings, but he is sleeping, even when he is awake, partially, with reference to his Will. We go through the world as so-called waking beings, but are only awake with regard to conceptions and ideas, we are only half awake in our life of feeling, and completely asleep in our Will. Let us not delude ourselves about this matter. We have ideas about what we will, but only when the Will becomes idea, when the Will is reflected by the intellect, can we experience it in our waking consciousness. What goes on in the depths of man's being, even if he only raises his hand, which means bringing his Will into operation, of this the ordinary man knows absolutely nothing. This means that the Mystery of Will is to the modern man entirely unknown, and with this is to be connected the fact that our entire modern civilization—especially that which has come about since the fifteenth century—is absolutely intellectual, a culture of the understanding; for the culture of Natural Science is an intellectual culture. The Will plays the least possible part in everything that we grasp with our intellect, our understanding. When we think, when we form ideas, the Will of course plays a certain part in the formation of the ideas, but only in a very fine state. Man does not notice how the Will pulsates in his perceptions and how in other ways the Will is working within him.

For man in this new age the Mystery of the Will is completely veiled by our exclusively intellectual culture. Only when we seek, through those means given by Spiritual Science of which I have often spoken to you, to investigate the Will, that is, when we try with the help of Imagination and inspiration to make those forces active which enable man to see into the workings, the machinery which is set going by Man's Will, then we notice that in our physical life between birth and death, the Will as a living entity is not bound up with constructive processes but only with destructive processes. I have often explained this. If constructive processes alone took place in our brain, if for instance, only that took place which results from the action of the life-forces upon our food, we should be unable to evolve a soul- and spirit-life by means of the apparatus of the nerves and the brain; only on account of the destructive process which is continually going on in our brain do the soul and spirit take root in what is being destroyed. It is just here that the Will works. Man's Will is essentially something which during our physical life works to a certain extent for the death of man. With reference to our head organization, we are continually dying; in every moment we die. We only live because the rest of our organization works against this continual dying in our heads, for which our Will is mainly responsible. Independently of us, there is continually taking place in our head, that which takes place objectively in the outer world when we pass through physical death.

Our corpse, in so far as we are human individuals and enter the world of soul and spirit through the gate of death, ceases to be a matter of importance to us, but it is of great importance to the Cosmos. This corpse in some way or other, it does not matter whether by cremation or burial, is given over to the elements of the Earth; there, in its own way it carries on what our human Will does partially to our nervous system, to our sense-organization in our life between birth and death. We have perception and thought because our Will destroys something in us. We give our corpse over to the Earth, and by the help of the disintegrating corpse, which only continues the same process which we partially carry on in life, the whole Earth thinks and has perception. I characterized this from another point of view a few months ago. That which continually takes place in the Earth through the interchange between the primal earth-substances, through the union (of these substances) with the dead human bodies, is an activity in all respects comparable with the activity of the Will which between birth and death is practised by us continually, unconsciously, while the working, the destroying like a corpse, goes on in our nerve and sense system. Between birth and death the Will, because it is united with our Ego, works through the destructive forces within the bounds of our skin. This same Will works cosmically through our corpse, in the thinking and forming of ideas by the whole Earth, after our death, when we have given our corpse over to the Earth. Thus, we are cosmically united with what we may call the Soul-spiritual process of the whole Earth existence. This conception is a very difficult one, for it places man concretely into that which is Cosmic in our Earth existence. It shows the relationship of man's Will to the manner of working of the universal Cosmic Will within the Earth existence, in the destruction, in the bringing about of death conditions.

But just as our further evolution in the Spiritual World after we have passed through the gates of death, is dependent upon our having left the corpse behind, upon the fact that we no longer work with these forces, but with others, so the healthy further evolution of the whole Earth depends on whether humanity on this Earth unites itself not now with forces of death, but with forces of life, forces which evolve in another direction than do the forces of death. To speak of this today when men are filled with personal ideas and feelings is indeed something fraught with bitterness, for the seriousness of such a truth is only experienced in the most limited degree. Man is unaccustomed to taking in these great truths with the deep earnestness with which they must be taken. Nevertheless, the further question must be asked: “How is that which lies in the Will of man as I have described it, related to the processes of destruction in outer nature? How is that in man's Will which I have described as its own particular characteristic, connected with these destructive forces in outer nature?” Here is something which stands before the man of today as the greatest illusion. What does the man of the present day really do when he looks at Nature? He says, “Here a natural process is taking place. It has arisen from another process which produced it and this again from another which caused it.” And so man finds a chain of causes and effects in the working of Nature and he is very proud when in this way he can grasp what he calls leading threads of casualty to be found in the outer world.

What is the result? If we ask some geologist, physicist, chemist or any right-thinking scientific investigator, his honest opinion, he will often be reluctant to give you the last consequence of his own World-Conception. But ask him if he does not think that the earth as we know it—stones, plants and many animals, too—would have evolved just in the way it has done, had Man not been present, he will reply: “Certainly. No houses would have been built, no machines, no flying machines would have been made by cows or buffaloes, and so on, but everything else which we can see is not the work of man, would be present from beginning to end just the same as if man had not been there, for a chain of causes and effects is found within external nature.” That which takes place later is the result of that which went before. According to present-day thought man has nothing to do with the formation of the chain. This view contains exactly the same mistake as the following. I write a word on the board. Every letter arises only because I have written it, and not because the previous letter has given birth to the next one. It would be utter nonsense to say: From the preceding letter there arises the following one. A thoroughly unprejudiced investigation of that which is essential in the processes of Nature convinces us of the mistake we make when we give ourselves up to the great illusion of modern science: Effects are the result of their causes. It is not so. We must look elsewhere for the true causes, just as we must seek in our intellect the reason of the letters following each other. Taken in the wide sense where do the primal causes for external happenings in Nature lie? That can only be determined by spiritual perception; these causes lie in Mankind. Do you know where you must look if you wish to gain an insight into the actual primal causes of the course of Nature on the Earth? You must investigate how the human Will, quite unknown to present-day consciousness, is to be found in the centre of gravity in man, that is, in the lower part of his body. Only a part of the Will is active in the human head; the chief part of the Will is centred in the rest of his organism. That which comes into existence in the course of external nature is dependent upon man's relation to his unconscious Will. So far we have only been able to cite one significant example as to the course of Nature, but it serves for the course of Nature as a whole. I have often pointed out that during the Atlantean epoch man gave himself up to a form of black magic. The consequence of this was the Glaciation of the civilized world. In a comprehensive sense, the whole course of Nature really is the result of the activity of Will, not in single individuals, but of the various forces of Will working together in humanity as a whole; forces which arise from—the human centre of gravity. If a being adequately developed, a being, let us say, from Mars or Mercury, wished to study the course of the Earth, i.e., wished to understand how the course of Nature went on there, this being would not describe Nature as one of our learned men would describe it, but looking down upon the world he would say: The Earth is there below me; I see there many points; in these points are centred the forces from which the course of Nature proceeds. But these points would not lie for him in outer Nature, but always within man. He, looking from without, would find that he must look upon the centre of man if he wished to find the cause of what takes place in the course of Nature. This insight into the connection of the human Will with the course of Nature as a whole must become an integral part of the Natural Science of the future, for Mankind. With such a Natural Science man will feel his responsibility in quite a different way from what he does at the present day. Man will rise from being a citizen of the Earth to being a citizen of the Cosmos. He will learn to look upon the Cosmos as a part of himself.

Directly our attention is called to such things, knowledge of them takes possession of us. This knowledge does not work in such a shadowy way as our intellectual knowledge does. It is taken far more from realities, and therefore it works in a much more living way. And because the way in which it works is so much more real than the shadowy knowledge of modern man, it is all the more necessary that man should take seriously what is revealed to him through this knowledge. One cannot be a citizen of the Cosmos on one side in the sense described above, and on the other side remain the old Philistine whom the last few hundred years, i.e., the period since the middle of the fifteenth century, has produced in the man of today. We cannot on the one hand consciously want to take a part in the processes of the Cosmos, and on the other hand wish to gossip with our fellow beings as is done so much in restaurants and clubs in this bourgeois age since the fifteenth century. At the same time another Ethics, another moral impulse must surge through mankind if the Science of Initiation is to enter in real earnest. For all that prepares in the wrong way, for the appearance of Ahriman on our earth, as I have told you, works especially strongly as a force hindering the entrance of the Science of Initiation. I have spoken recently about these facts, in order to give some indication of the spirit which should pervade our Christmas Festival this year. I will now only briefly recapitulate.

Looking back over the evolution of our earth we find, preceding our modern materialistic civilization, the Greco-Latin, which goes back to the eighth pre-Christian century. We see, about two hundred years after the beginning of this Greco-Latin time, something rising up, which we might describe as the old Life of Wisdom of earlier times percolating through the land of Greece. Nietzsche felt this to a remarkable degree, even if pathologically. From the beginning of his spiritual activity he felt himself an opponent of Socrates, and he was never tired of speaking of the greater value of pre-Socratic Greek culture than of the post-Socratic. It is certainly true that with Socrates a great age came in for Mankind, an age which reached its climax in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But this age of Socrates has now run its course, has rightly come to an end. The Socratic age is that in which pure logic and pure dialectic arose from the earlier instinctive Wisdom. The rising of pure logic, of pure dialectic, out of the ancient clairvoyant Wisdom is the chief characteristic of our Western culture. This logic, this dialectic, has also impressed its stamp upon Christianity, for the theology of the West is a dialectic theology. But what rises in Greece as dialectics, as thought reduced to abstraction, goes back to the Mysteries of the East. Among these Mysteries were those which founded that civilization which later became the Chinese. Within the early Chinese civilization Lucifer was incarnated in human form. We must not conceal the fact from ourselves that Lucifer once lived in a physical body, as Christ during the time of the Mystery of Golgotha walked on earth in a physical body. But it is only a narrow-minded misunderstanding of the Luciferic incarnation if we look upon everything that has come through Lucifer as “Touch-me-not”. From Lucifer, for instance, has arisen the greatness of Greek culture itself, that unique ancient art, the artistic impulse of mankind, as we ourselves still look upon it. But in Europe all this has hardened into mere words, empty of content. It was through Luciferic wisdom that Christianity was first grasped in Europe. The important point is that in the Greek wisdom which developed as Gnosis in order to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha, the old Luciferic Wisdom had cooperated, had given the old Gnosis its form. The fact that the Mystery of Golgotha had clothed itself in what Lucifer had given to the evolution of the earth, was the greatest victory for Christianity at that time. But when this Luciferic culture, to which, through the incarnation of Lucifer man was given over, was ebbing away, there flowed in gradually, that which was preparing for the coming incarnation of Ahriman in the Western World. When the time is ripe—and it is preparing itself—Ahriman will incarnate in a human body in the Western World. This fact must take place just as the others have taken place—viz. that Lucifer has incarnated and that Christ has incarnated. This fact is predetermined in the evolution of the earth. The all-important fact is simply this: to keep the fact in mind, that we shall rightly prepare ourselves for it, for Ahriman will not begin to work only when he has incarnated in a human body; he is now preparing his appearance from the super-sensible world. He is already working from thence into the evolution of mankind. From that side he is seeking his tools through which he prepares for what must come.

Now, it is essential for the favourable working of that which Ahriman will bring to humanity—he will bring advantageous gifts just as Lucifer did—that man shall take the right attitude. The all-important thing is that man shall not through sleeping miss the coming of Ahriman. When the incarnation of Ahriman takes place in the Western World we shall simply see inscribed in the local Register, the birth of John William Smith (of course, this will not be the name) and people will look upon the child as a citizen in comfortable circumstances like any other, and they will sleep through what has in reality taken place. Our University professors will certainly not trouble whether man sleeps through it or not. For them what has taken place will be merely the birth of J. W. Smith. But in the Ahrimanic age it is all-important that men should knower that they have here to do only externally with J. W. Smith, that inwardly Ahriman is present, and that they must not deceive themselves through sleepy illusion about what has happened. Even now we may not yield to any deception. These things are in preparation. Among the most important means which Ahriman has to work with from the other side, is the furthering of abstract thinking in Man. And because men cling so firmly today to this abstract thinking, they are working in the way most favourable for the coming of Ahriman. You must realize that there is no better way to prepare for the fact that Ahriman is endeavouring cunningly to capture the whole Earth for his evolution, than that man should continue to live an abstract life, steeping himself in abstractions, as he does in the social life of today. This is one of the ruses, one of the clever tricks, by which Ahriman prepares in his own way for his lordship over the earth. Instead of showing men today out of conclusive experience, what has to happen, leaders offer them theories on every subject, including the social question. To those who give out these theories, knowledge gained by means of experience is abstract, because they have no inkling of what real Life is. All this is preparation from the Ahrimanic point of view.

But there is also another form of preparation for Ahriman which can happen through an erroneous view of the Gospels. This, too, is something that must be made known at the present day. You know quite well that today there are very many men, especially among the official representatives of this or that form of religious confession, who are fighting to the uttermost against that new Christ knowledge which is arising among us out of the Science of Initiation. Such men, if they do not swear allegiance to mere Rationalism, accept the Gospels; but what do these men really know of the true nature of the Gospels? These are the men who, during the nineteenth century, have applied to the Gospels the historical-scientific method of the outer world. What has come from the Gospels through the scientific method of last century? Nothing else, except that the conception of the Gospels has gradually become completely materialized. Our attention was first drawn to the contradictions in the four Gospels. Then from the recognition of these contradictions came the slide downwards. Finally, what is the outcome of this Gospel investigation? What else is it but, I might say, lifting the Gospels off their hinges? What does such an investigator as the theologian, Professor Schmiedel of Basle, seek in the Gospels? He seeks to prove that they are not simply products of fantasy brought forward only to glorify Christ Jesus. And so there follow a limited number of now-famous points unfavourable to the Christ. These, he maintains, would have been omitted if the Gospels had only been written for the glorification of Jesus. We are, therefore, left with the feeling that he admits all the objections that are brought against Christ Jesus, so as finally to save for the Gospels a little label of this world's Science. Even this little label will give way. Man will gain nothing from this worldly Science. He will gain nothing as regards the genuineness of the Gospels from the way these people point it out. To have the right relation towards these Gospels we must know why they came into being, that is, we must know their real purpose. This knowledge can only be obtained through an understanding fructified by Spiritual Science.

If we sink ourselves in the Gospels, if we absorb their content and force, then we gain from them a soul-content. No outer historical science will explain the riddle of the Gospels; but we can sink ourselves in the Gospels, and then we receive a soul-content. This soul-content, however, is a great hallucination—certainly a most spiritualized hallucination, the hallucination of the Mystery of Golgotha. The highest that is to be gained from the Gospels is the hallucination of the Mystery of Golgotha, neither more nor less. Now, it is just this secret which is known to the more modern Catholic Church. For this reason the Gospels are not allowed to be studied by the laity, for it is feared that men will discover that they cannot have through the Gospels historical knowledge of the Christ Mystery, but only a hallucination of this Mystery of Golgotha. I might also say, an Imagination; for the hallucination is so spiritualized that it is an actual Imagination. But more than an Imagination is not to be gained from the content of the Gospels in themselves.

What is the path from Imagination to Reality? The path will be opened up through Spiritual Science, not through that which is outside Spiritual Science, but through Spiritual Science alone. That means that the Imagination of the Gospels shall be raised to Reality through Spiritual Science. It is of the most extreme importance to Ahriman so to prepare his incarnation that through Spiritual Science man shall not follow this path of Imagination in the Gospels on to the Reality of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just as it is in the greatest interest of Ahriman that man should keep up the love of abstraction, so it is in his greatest interest that man should cherish more and more a form of piety built upon the mere Gospels. When you think over this, you will realize that a great part of the creeds existing today is the preparatory work of Ahriman for his purposes in this earth existence. In what way could one serve Ahriman better than by resolving to make use of an external power commanding those who believe in, and submit themselves to this power, not to read any anthroposophical literature? No greater service could be done to Ahriman than to make sure that a great number of people do not read anthroposophical literature. I have already mentioned in these lectures who the people are that have resolved upon this course. The only way to present certain facts today is to place them unreservedly in the light of truth. It must be realized today that the progress of the World has a certain relationship to cosmic periods, limited through the Luciferic incarnation, which in time and space, lies before the Mystery of Golgotha. But in the way of this progress the incarnation of Ahriman in the West places itself, so that the forces in opposition are strengthened. The incarnation of Ahriman, in a future not very far distant, can be helped on its way just as well by an obscured worship of the Gospels as by abstract thinking.

Many people today experience an inner sense of comfort in shutting themselves off from these serious facts. Anthroposophists should not feel in this way; on the contrary, they should develop a definite impetus to do as much as possible to spread Spiritual Science among mankind. It is quite wrong to think as is so often done that we should come to an understanding with such people as those of whom I have spoken. It is foolish to believe we can come to an understanding with such people for they do not desire it. The point is to make clear to the rest of humanity what sort of people these are. We must speak out about such people. All that is possible has been done so that they can come to an understanding with us. They only need to read without prejudice what is there, to give it their serious attention. We must strictly discriminate between those persons who do harm to the progress of human evolution and other people to whom we must go and tell how such harm is brought about. The attempt to come to an understanding with the former has absolutely no sense and no meaning; for these men would outwardly incline to an agreement if they no longer had followers to support them. Then they would be ready of themselves to come to an understanding. The urgent need before us is exactly this, to open people's eyes. Only, unfortunately, too often within our own circle, the endeavour is made to come to a compromise in this respect, and the courage needed for unconditional acknowledgment of the truth is lacking. We must not ever be under the illusion that we can come to an understanding with this one or that one, who does not wish in any way to come to an understanding with us. What is required of us is courageously to stand up for the truth as far as we are able. This seems to me especially the outcome of an understanding of what is bound up with the evolution of Mankind.

[Before the lecture Rudolf Steiner spoke to the audience regarding the Founding of the Dutch National Society. See GA 259]

We will use the time that is available for lectures at the Goetheanum between now and Christmas in such a way that those who are here in anticipation of the Christmas Meeting may absorb as much as possible of what the Anthroposophical Movement can convey to the hearts of men. Those who will be here until Christmas will therefore be able to bring their thoughts to bear upon what can still be given. I shall not deal with matters concerning the international Anthroposophical Society—that will be done at the meeting to be held shortly—but I shall try to formulate our studies in a way that will help to prepare the right mood of soul for the forthcoming Christmas Gathering. I shall therefore speak from a different point of view of a subject with which I have been dealing in recent weeks and I will begin by saying something about man’s life of soul, leading on from there to a survey of cosmic secrets.

Let us start from something quite straightforward and consider what happens in man’s life of soul if he practises self-mindfulness beyond the point I actually had in mind when I was writing the articles in the Goetheanum Weekly. These four articles can serve as an introduction to what we are now to study.

If we practise self-mindfulness thoroughly and comprehensively we shall realise how the life of soul can be enhanced and intensified. What happens in the first place is that we let the external world work upon us—as we have done from childhood onwards—and then we have thoughts which are the product of our inner world. Indeed, what makes us human beings in the real sense is that we allow the effects produced in us by the external world to live on further in our thoughts and are able to experience ourselves inwardly in these thoughts. We create a world of mental pictures which in a certain way reflects the impressions made upon us from outside. It is probably not very helpful to our inner life to ponder a great deal upon how the external world is reflected in our soul. By doing that we simply acquire a shadowy picture of the world of ideas within us. A better form of self-mindfulness is to concentrate on the activity itself, endeavouring to experience ourselves in tire actual element of thought without regard to the external world, pursuing in thought what came to us as impressions of the external world.

It will depend on a man’s particular nature whether he is then led more in the direction of abstract thoughts; he may or may not devise philosophical world-systems or make schedules of everything in existence. Another man who has reflected about things that have made an impression upon him and then goes on spinning thoughts, may be following certain fantasies. We will not go further into how this inner thinking without any external impressions takes its course according to a man’s temperament, character or other traits. We will rather make ourselves conscious of the fact that it is important, as far as our senses are concerned, to withdraw from the external world and live in our thoughts and mental pictures, developing them to further stages, often perhaps merely as possibilities.

Some people, of course, consider this unnecessary. Even in difficult times like the present you will often find people who are occupied with their business the whole day in order to provide all kinds of things required by the world, afterwards getting together in little groups to play cards, dominoes or similar games, in order—as is frequently said—to ‘pass the time away’. But it will not often happen that people come together in groups in order to exchange thoughts, for example, about what might have happened in connection with the day’s business if things had gone differently in one way or another. They would not find that as entertaining as playing cards, but they would at least have been carrying their thoughts to further stages. And if on such an occasion they also retained a healthy feeling for reality there is no reason why such thinking should end in fantasy.

This living in thoughts leads finally to what you will experience if you read The Philosophy of Freedom properly. If you read that book as it is meant to be read you will understand what it means to live in thoughts. The Philosophy of Freedom is based upon experience of reality; but at the same time it was entirely the product of thinking. Hence you will find a fundamental tone in the book. I conceived it in the 1880’s and wrote it in the early 1890’s; but from men who at that time ought at least to have taken notice of the book, I was faced with misunderstanding everywhere. There is a particular reason for this: even those who are called thinkers today are unable to experience their thinking otherwise than as a picture of the outer physical world.

And then they say: perhaps something belonging to a superphysical world might arise in a man’s thinking but then this thinking which is acknowledged to be within him would have to be able to experience something supersensible outside him, in the sense that a table or chair are outside him. This was approximately Eduard von Hartmann’s conception of the function of thinking.

Then he comes across The Philosophy of Freedom. In that book the argument is that to experience thinking in the real sense means that a man can come to no other realisation than this: If you live in thinking in the real sense, you are living in the Cosmos even if, to begin with, somewhat diffusely. This connection in the most intimate experience of thinking with the secrets of the world-process is the root-nerve of The Philosophy of Freedom. Hence the statement is made in the book that in thinking we grasp one corner of the whole world-mystery.¹

This may be putting it simply, but what is meant is that when a man experiences thinking in the real sense he no longer feels outside the mystery of world-existence but within it; he no longer feels outside the Divine but within the Divine. If he comprehends the reality of thinking within himself, he comprehends the Divine within himself.

This was the point that people could not grasp. For if a man really comprehends it, if he has made efforts to achieve this kind of thinking, he finds himself no longer within the world that was previously his, but he is now within the etheric world. It is a world of which he knows that it is not conditioned by any part of the physical Earth but by the whole cosmic sphere. He is within the etheric Cosmos, and he can no longer have any doubts about the law and order of this cosmic sphere if he has grasped thinking as it is understood in The Philosophy of Freedom. Etheric experience, as it may be called, has now been achieved and a notable step forward in life has been taken.

Let me characterise this step as follows.—Our thinking in ordinary consciousness is concerned with tables, chairs, human beings, of course, and so forth; we may think of other things too in the outside world. With our thinking we comprehend these things from the centre of our being. Everyone is aware that with his thinking he wants to comprehend the things of the world. But once you achieve the experience of thinking I described just now, you are not grasping the world; nor are you riveted in your ego. Something quite different happens. You get the feeling—and quite rightly—that with your thinking which is not localised in any particular place, you grasp everything inwardly. You feel you are making contact with the inner man. Just as in ordinary thinking you stretch your spiritual ‘feelers’ outwards, so with this thinking which experiences itself in itself, you are continually stretching inwards, into your own being. You become object, object to yourself.

It is a very significant experience to realise that whereas hitherto it was always the world that you grasped, now, having this experience of thinking it is your own self you have to grasp. In the course of this firm grasp of your own self you come to realise that you have broken through your skin. You grasp yourself inwardly and in the same way you begin to grasp the whole world-ether from within, not of course in all its details but you know with certainty that this ether spreads over the whole cosmic sphere with which you are living together with stars, sun, moon, and so forth.

There is a second way in which a man can develop his life of soul. Instead of being wholly occupied with thoughts that are prompted from outside, he gives himself up to his memories. If he does this and makes the process an inner reality he will again have a quite definite experience. The experience of thinking I have just described to you does actually lead a man to his own self; he grasps his own self and this process gives him a certain satisfaction. But when he passes on to the experiencing of memories he will find, if he is inwardly active in the real sense, that the most striking feeling is not that of approaching his own self. That is what happens in the experience of thinking; and for that reason man will find freedom in the course of this thinking, a freedom which depends entirely upon the personal element in him. That is why a ‘philosophy of freedom’ must take its start from the experience of thinking, for it is through this experience that a man finds his own self, finds his bearings as a free personality. This does not happen in the case of the memory experience. If a man proceeds with real earnestness, and is able to immerse himself entirely in the experience, he will have the feeling of being liberated from himself, of getting away from himself. That is why memories which enable the present to be forgotten are the most satisfying—I do not say they are always the best, but in many cases they are the most satisfying.

You can certainly get an idea of the value of memory if your memories can carry you out into the world, no matter how utterly dissatisfied you may be with the present and wish you could get right away from it. If you can waken memories which, as you give yourselves up to them, give you an enhanced feeling of life, this will be a preparation for what memory can ultimately become.

Memory can become more real if you recall with the greatest possible intensity something you actually experienced years or even decades ago. Suppose, for instance, you turn to a collection of old papers and take out letters you wrote on some particular occasion. You put these letters in front of you and let them carry you back into the past. Or it would be preferable not to take letters which you wrote yourself or which others wrote to you, because the subjective element would be too strong there. Try, rather, to get hold of your old schoolbooks, and peep into them as you did when you first went to school. In this way you can actually call back the past into your life. The effect is remarkable. If you do what I suggest you will entirely transform your present state of mind. You must exercise a little ingenuity here although almost anything will serve. For instance, a lady might come across a dress she has not worn for twenty years; she puts it on and is transported back into the conditions prevailing at that time. You must choose something that will bring the past with the greatest possible reality into the present. In this way you can separate yourself radically from your present experience.

With ordinary-level consciousness we are too close to ourselves in our actual experience to be able to make it into anything valuable. We must be able to stand at a distance from ourselves. Now a man is farther away from himself when he is asleep than when he is awake, for during sleep his astral body and ego are outside his physical and etheric bodies. You will be able to approach this astral body, which as I have said, is outside the physical body during sleep, if you summon up some past experience as vividly as possible into the present. You will probably not believe what I am telling you because you will be reluctant to attribute such significance to something as comparatively trivial as the awakening of past experiences by looking at an old dress. But just put it to the test, and if you succeed in conjuring up some past experience into the present so vividly that you are wholly engrossed in it and can be entirely oblivious of the present, you will find that you are drawing near to your astral body as it is in sleep.

But you will be mistaken if you think that all you have to do is to look right or left, and that you will see a shadowy form that is your astral body; that is not how things work. You must pay attention to what actually happens, which may for instance be that after such experiences you see the dawn and the sunrise very differently from hitherto. On this path you will gradually begin to feel the warmth of the dawn as something prophetic, having a kind of natural prophetic power. You will begin to feel the dawn as something spiritually forceful and that there is some connection between that power and an inner sense within yourself; and although at first you may regard it as an illusion, you will eventually feel that there is some relationship between the dawn and your own being. Through the experience I have described you will gradually come to feel, as you look at the dawn: this dawn does not leave me alone. There is an inner connection between my own being and the dawn. The dawn is a quality of my own soul. At this moment I am myself the dawn—If you have been able to unite yourself with the dawn in such a way that you experience its coloured radiance out of which the sun rises, in your very heart as a living feeling—then you will also feel that you are actually travelling across the heavens with the sun, that as I put it just now, the sun will not leave you alone, that it is not a case of you being here and the sun there, but that in a sense your existence stretches right up to that of the sun—in fact that you journey through the day in company with the fight.

If you develop this feeling, not out of thinking but out of memory in the way I described, if you can develop these experiences out of the power of memory, then you will find that things which you have perceived with your physical senses begin to look different, enabling spirit-and-soul to become manifest; when you have acquired the feeling of travelling with the sun, all the flowers in the field will look different to you. The flowers do not merely display the red or yellow colours on their surface; they begin to speak spiritually to your soul. The flower becomes transparent; a spiritual element in the flower begins to stir and the blossoming becomes a sort of speaking. In this way you are actually uniting your soul with external Nature. In this way you get the impression that there is something behind this Nature, that the light with which you are connected is borne by spiritual Beings. And in those spiritual Beings you gradually recognise the characteristics described by Anthroposophy.

Let us look at the two stages of feelings which I have just been describing. The first feeling which can be brought by thinking inwardly experienced, is one of expansion. The feeling of being in a confined space ceases altogether. Your experience widens and you have a definite feeling that within your inner being there is a kernel which extends into the Cosmos and is of the same substance as the Cosmos. You feel at one with the etheric substance of the Cosmos. But when you are standing on the Earth you feel that your feet and legs are drawn down by the Earth’s force of gravity; you feel that your whole being is bound firmly to the Earth. At the moment when you have the experience of thinking you no longer feel bound to the Earth; you feel dependent upon the wide expanse of the cosmic sphere. You feel that everything comes inwards, not from below, as it were from the centre of the Earth upwards but from the cosmic expanse, the Universe. And you feel that to understand Man, this sense that something is streaming in from the cosmic expanse must be present.

This applies even to a true understanding of the human form. If I want to give expression to the human form in sculpture or in painting, I must picture to myself that only the lower part of the head proceeds from the inner bodily and spatial nature of man. I shall not be able to get the right spirit into the work unless I am able to convey the impression that the upper part of the head has been brought from outside. The lower part of the head must seem to have come from within outwards, but the upper from outside inwards.

If you looked with artistic understanding at the paintings in the small cupola of the now destroyed Goetheanum, you will have seen that this principle was everywhere observed: the lower part of the face was always represented as having grown from within the human being and the upper part of the head as something given him from the Cosmos. This was particularly evident in times when these things were known. You will never understand the form of the head in a genuine Greek sculpture unless you associate this feeling with it, for it was out of similar feelings that the Greeks created their works of art.

And so in the Thinking experience you will feel yourself united with the surrounding Universe.

Now it might be imagined that this process would simply continue further outwards as you pass from the Thinking experience to the Memory experience. But it is not so. If you succeed in developing within yourself the Thinking experience you will finally have the impression of the Third Hierarchy: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. Just as you can picture man’s bodily experience here on Earth in the working of gravity or in the process of the digestion of foodstuffs, you can picture the conditions under which the Beings of the Third Hierarchy live if, through this Thinking experience, instead of trudging around the confines of Earth you feel yourself borne by forces coming to you from the ultimate boundary of the Cosmos.

Thinking Experience: Third Hierarchy

Now if you pass from the Thinking experience to the Memory experience it is not a matter of being able to reach this ultimate boundary of the cosmic spheres. You can, it is true, reach this boundary if you know the reality of the Thinking experience. But the Memory experience leads to a different result. Suppose, for example, you have here some object—a crystal or a flower or an animal. What happens when you pass from the Thinking experience to all that the Memory experience can offer, is that you can see right into the object.

The gaze which had extended to the ultimate boundary of the cosmic expanse, supplemented by the Memory experience, penetrates into the essence of things. You do not in that case press on into indefinite abstractions but this extended gaze perceives the spiritual quality in all things. For instance, it perceives the spiritual Beings who are active in the light, or the spiritual Beings who are active in the darkness. So we can say: the Memory experience leads us to the Second Hierarchy.

Memory Experience: Second Hierarchy

Now there is something in man’s life of soul which is not subject to the limitations of memory. Let us be clear about what it is. Memory gives our soul its special colouring. Suppose we come across a man who criticises everything adversely, who diffuses his own bitterness over everything we talk about, who whenever we tell him about something really beautiful, at once speaks of something unpleasant. In such a case we may know with certainty that this characteristic is connected with his memory. Memory gives the soul its colouring.

But there is still something else. We may meet a man who faces us with an ironic sneer particularly when we say something to him, or he wrinkles his forehead or puts on a tragic expression. Or he may give us a friendly look so that we are cheered not only by what he says but by his look. When something important is said during a lecture it is interesting to give a momentary glance at the faces of the audience and see the ironic expressions on some lips, the foreheads with or without wrinkles, the blank or lively expressions on the faces. What is being expressed there is not merely memory that has persisted in the soul and gives the soul its colouring but something that has gone over from memory into a man’s physiognomy, into his different gestures, into his whole bearing. If a man takes in nothing, if his countenance betrays the fact that all the sufferings, sorrow and joy in his life have left him unimpressed, that too is characteristic. A face that has remained smooth and unlined, or one that is deeply furrowed by the tragedy or seriousness of life is as characteristic as one that expresses much happiness. In such cases, what otherwise remains part of the life of soul-and-spirit as the outcome of the power of memory has passed over into actual physical form. The effect is so strong that it is expressed outwardly in later life in a man’s gestures and physiognomy independently of his temperament which remains inward. For in old age we have not always the same temperament as we had in childhood. Our temperament in old age is often a result of what we have undergone in life and has become memory in the inner life of soul.

What enters into a man inwardly in this way, may again—though this is more difficult—become reality. It is comparatively easy to bring before the eyes of our soul something we experienced in childhood or perhaps many years ago, and so make the memory of it a fact. It is more difficult to transpose oneself into the temperament we had in childhood or in our earlier years. But the practice of such an exercise can bring results of immense significance. And even more is achieved if we can deepen this experience inwardly than if it is merely an external act.

Something can certainly be achieved in a man if, say at the age of forty or fifty—naturally within the obvious limits in such circumstances—he plays the games he played in childhood, if he jumps as he did then, or even if he tries to make the same kind of face he made when, as an eight-year-old, his aunt gave him a sweet! If he can transpose himself back into the actual gesture or posture of that moment, again he will find that something is brought into his life whereby he is led to the conviction that the outer world is the inner world and the inner world is the outer world.

We can then penetrate with our whole being into a flower, for instance, and then, in addition to the Thinking experience and the Memory experience we have what I will call, in the truest sense, a Gesture experience. In this way we acquire an idea of how the spiritual is directly at work within the physical.

You cannot, with full consciousness, inwardly apprehend the gesture you made, perhaps twenty years ago in response to some outer provocation, without realising the union of the physical and the spiritual in all things. But then you will have arrived at the experience of the First Hierarchy.

Gesture Experience: First Hierarchy

The Memory experience enables us to identify ourselves with the dawn when we confront it, and to feel and inwardly experience its glowing warmth. But with the Gesture experience, what confronts us in the dawn will unite with everything that can be experienced as colour or tone in the objective world.

When we simply look at the objects around us that are illumined by the sun, we see them as they can reveal themselves to the light. But the dawn changes when we pass gradually from the Memory experience to the Gesture experience.

The colour experience detaches itself entirely from materiality in any form; it becomes a living reality of soul-and-spirit, abandons the space in which the outer, physical dawn appears to us and the dawn begins to speak to us of the mystery of the connection of the Sun with the Earth. We experience how the Beings of the First Hierarchy work. If we still direct our gaze to the dawn and it still appears almost as it did during the Memory experience, we learn to recognise the Thrones. Then the dawn dissolves away; the colour becomes living being, becomes soul, becomes spirit, speaks to us of the relation of the Sun to the Earth as it was in the ancient Sun period, speaks to us in such a way that we experience the Cherubim. Finally, if with the enthusiasm and reverence aroused in us by this twofold revelation of the dawn, by the revelation of Thrones and Cherubim, we live onwards, there penetrates into us from the dawn, transformed now into living being, experience of the nature of the Seraphim.

Thinking Experience: Third Hierarchy
Memory Experience: Second Hierarchy
Gesture Experience: First Hierarchy

In all that I have been describing to you today, my aim has been to indicate how, by simply passing in the life of soul from Thinking to Gesture man can develop feelings in himself—to begin with no more than feelings—of the spiritual foundations of the Cosmos right up to the sphere of the Seraphim.

• 1. See Chapter III, entitled Thinking in the service of Knowledge.

During the past weeks we have been seeking to understand more and more what it means to say that the present age stands in the sign of the dominion of Michael. Thus we were led last time to show how the karma of a human being may work itself out in reality. We showed how difficulties of karma may even go so far that a human being cannot find the way between death and a new birth to live through all that is necessary for the weaving of karma by partaking in the events of the starry world.

So long as our conception is really limited to what happens here in the physical life on earth it is of course difficult for us to receive what we must receive if we are to take the idea of karma in real earnest. But we are living in the age of great decisions and great decisions must take place to begin with in the spiritual field. And in the spiritual field they will be rightly prepared, if out of the deeper anthroposophical spirit, single human beings have the courage to take their study of the spiritual world in real earnest—so much so that they can receive what is brought from the spiritual world and make use of it to understand the phenomena of the outer, physical life.

Hence for a number of months past I have not recoiled from bringing to you detailed facts out of the spiritual life, facts well fitted to enable you to understand the spiritual configuration of the present time.

To-day I will bring forward a few more things as it were to illustrate what I shall then have to say next Sunday, probably in conclusion, showing the whole karma of the spiritual life of the present time in its connection with the tasks and aims of the Anthroposophical Movement.

To begin with, however, I shall bring forward to-day certain facts whose connection with our main subject you will not at once perceive. Nevertheless you will recognise at once how deeply they characterise the spiritual life of the past. Many of these things will seem strange and far-fetched, but life in its totality bears many a paradox, seen from an earthly point of view.

The examples I shall choose to-day are not ordinary ones. For as a rule, a succession of earthly lives is not a continuous succession of historic personalities. It is not generally such that the continuous chain would be visible at all to superficial observation. Nevertheless there are certain successive earthly lives such that if we describe them one after another, we are at the same time giving descriptions of history.

It is seldom the case in such a high degree. But if we do find individualities for whom it is the case, if we can point to the several incarnations as to historic personalities, such an individuality enables us to learn a very great deal about karma. I have already given isolated cases of this kind as you know.

To-day I will tell you about a personality who lived at the end of the first Christian century. Already at that time he was a philosopher. As a philosopher he was most evidently one of the Sceptics, that is to say, he was one of those who really think nothing in the world is certain.

He belonged to that sceptical School which though it already saw the dawn of Christianity, stood altogether on the ground that it is impossible to gain certain knowledge, and above all that it is quite impossible to say with certainty whether a Divine Being could assume a human form or the like.

This individuality—his name in that incarnation is of no great importance, he was a certain “Agrippa”—this individuality in his incarnation in that time, gathered up into himself as it were, the whole of Greek Scepticism. Indeed if we use the word not in a contemptuous sense, but as a technical term, he was one whom we should even call a Cynic. I mean a Cynic not in his conception of life, for in that he was a Sceptic, but a Cynic in his way of taking things. For he was really very fond of making light and joking about most important things that met him in the world. In that life Christianity passed him by, leaving no trace. But a certain mood remained with him as he passed through the gate of death. This mood was not so much a result of his scepticism, for that was his philosophic conviction, a thing that one does not carry very far after one's death. But it lay in the deeper habits of his soul and spirit as an easy-going way of taking important events of life, a certain mischievous delight when things in the world which look important turn out to be not quite so important. This fundamental mood he carried with him into the life after death. Now as I told you yesterday, having passed through the gate of death, man first enters a sphere which leads him by and by into the region of the Moon, where there is the colony of the primeval wise Teachers of mankind. They had once lived on Earth though not in a physical body, nor had they taught in the way we conceive the teaching of later times. They had wandered over the Earth in an etheric body only. And their teaching was such that one man or another who was to receive instruction from them in the Mysteries felt it like an indwelling of these wise Beings of primeval times. He had the feeling: the wise Being has been with me just now. And as an outcome of this indwelling he then felt an inner inspiration. Such was the manner of the teaching given to a human being in those times.

We are referring to the most ancient time of earthly evolution, when the great primeval Teachers wandered upon Earth in their etheric bodies. Then, if we may put it so, they followed the Moon which had already separated as a heavenly body from the Earth. And it is their region which the human being passes, like the first station in his cosmic path of evolution after death. It is they who explain the laws of karma to him, for they have to do with all the wisdom of the past.

Now when the above-mentioned personality, the philosopher“Agrippa,” came into that region, it happened that there dawned upon him most intensely, the meaning of a former incarnation. The characteristic of that former incarnation which now made so great an impression on him as he looked back after death, was this, that in it he had still been able to see a very great deal of how the cults of Asia Minor and Africa proceeded out of the ancient Mysteries.

Now in this Christian time in his super-sensible life, this individuality went once more, with great intensity, through all that he had once undergone on earth in connection with many a decadent system of the Mysteries in Asia Minor. And so it came about that he now saw supersensibly, how in the ancient Mysteries the Christ had been expected (you must remember what I said, that in his life on earth he had not been touched by Christianity).

Now the Mysteries which he had witnessed—I mean the cults that proceeded from the Mysteries—had already grown external. He had in fact received the impressions of cults and religious institutions which were transmitted in the first centuries A.D., in a Christianised metamorphosis of course, to Roman Christianity. Please observe very carefully what I now mean. The point is that in this region after his death, there was prepared in this individuality an understanding for the external features of the cults and clerical institutions which had formerly been Pagan but were arising again in the first Christian centuries and passing over into the clearly defined Roman cult and ceremony with all the ecclesiastical conceptions that were connected with it.

Now this brought about in him a very peculiar spiritual configuration. In the further course of the life between death and a new birth we see him again, elaborating his karma most especially in the region of Mercury, so that he is able to see many things, not in an inward sense but in the sense of being gifted with outward intelligence. He gains a wide sweep of vision for many facts and relationships.

As we follow this individuality further, we find him again on earth. We find him as the Cardinal who carried on the Government of Louis XIV when Louis XIV was still a child, Cardinal Mazarini. We may study the Cardinal in all his greatness and splendour and with the external conception of Christianity into which he finds his way so readily, so naturally, under the woman who was Louis XIV's guardian.

He absorbs of Christianity all the external institutions, the Christian cult, the Christian pomp and grandeur. For him all these things are surrounded, as it were, with an Eastern glamour as of Asia Minor. Indeed we may say he rules Europe like one who in a former incarnation had strongly absorbed the character of Asia Minor.

But in this life Cardinal Mazarini did indeed have occasion to be more powerfully touched by the facts and circumstances. You need only remember that it was the time of the Thirty Years' War. Remember all the things that took place proceeding from Louis XIV. There was indeed a peculiar quality in this Cardinal Mazarini. He was a great statesman with a wide sweep of vision, yet on the other hand in the midst of a certain noise and confusion. We might say that he was intoxicated by his own deeds so that they seemed deeds of magnificent skill, but not coming out of the depths of the heart.

Now this life took a peculiar course in passing through the time between death and a new birth. We can actually see how in passing again through the region of Mercury, all that this personality had done was dissolved as in a cloud of mist. But there remained with him the ideas he had absorbed about Christianity and all he had undergone by way of scepticism in relation to knowledge. These things were transformed in his life between death and a new birth.“Science can never lead us to the final truths.” An intense feeling for knowledge of which there was a suggestion already in his former passage through Mercury, came and passed away again. And there was karmically developed in his life a peculiar mentality. It was a mentality which held fast with great tenacity to penetrating ideas which he had passed through before. But while he held fast to them, he could evolve for his next life on earth very few concepts with which to master and express them. As this personality passes through the life between death and a new birth one has the feeling: Whatever will he try to do in his next incarnation? Is there anything with which he is really united? One has the feeling: he may be more or less intensely united with all kinds of things and yet again with nothing. All the antecedents are there: the preceding life of scepticism, followed by his intense life in a Christianity with all its external details along the paths by which one becomes a Cardinal. All these things are deeply embedded in him. He will become a man rich in knowledge, yet able to come forward with concepts by no means profound. Moreover the map of Europe which he once ruled over is as though blotted out. One does not know how he will find his way to it again. What will he do with it? He will be altogether at a loss with it.

Yes, my dear friends, we have to enter into such things as these; we have to study what was undergone in passing through the life between death and a new birth in order that we may not err; in order that at length exact and true knowledge may be the outcome.

This personality is re-born in the approaching age of Michael, showing, if I may put it so, a strangely double countenance. He cannot be quite a statesman, nor quite a cleric, but is drawn strongly in both directions. I am referring to Hertling, who became Chancellor of the German Reich at a great age. In karmic sequence he had to use up in this way the remnants of his Mazarini nature. All the peculiar qualities with which he came to Christianity, and entered into it, came forth again in his Christian professorship at the present time.

By this example you may see in what strange ways the men of the present time built up their present individualities in past existences.

Anyone who did not research, but merely thought things out, would of course come to absolutely different conclusions. But we only understand karma when we can take these most extreme cases and connections, seeming almost paradoxical in the world of sense. They are there none the less in the spiritual world, even as that other fact is there, which I have often mentioned—I mean that Ernst Haeckel, who so violently fought against the Church, is the re-incarnation of Abbot Hildebrand, who became Pope Gregory the Great. Here we see how indifferent a matter is the external content of a man's belief or theory in earthly life, for all these things are his thoughts. But if you study Haeckel, especially in connection with what he was as Abbot Hildebrand, as Gregory—(I believe he too is included among these pictures from Chartres)—you will see that there is in fact a real dynamic sequence.

I chose the above example in order that you might see how present individualities carry the past into this present time.

If you will afterwards observe the features of the Monk Hildebrand, who became Gregory the Great and whom you know from history, you will see how wonderfully the soul-configuration of Haeckel is contained in this countenance of Hildebrand, of Gregory the Great.

I will now take another example, which will probably be of great and deep value to you all. Though I almost shudder to speak of it in any easy way, yet I cannot but choose it, for it leads so infinitely deeply into the whole spiritual texture of the present time.

I will now mention another personality, of whom as I said, I almost shudder to speak in this way. And yet he is infinitely characteristic of all that is carried from the past into the present and of the way in which this happens. I have often referred—and it will be known to you from external history—to the Council of Nicæa, which was held in the 4th century, where the decision was made for Western Europe as between Aryanism and Athanasianism, and Aryanism was condemned.

It was a Council in which the important personalities were imbued with all the high scholarship of the first Christian centuries, and brought it forth. They did indeed dispute with deep and far-reaching ideas. For in that time the human soul still had quite a different mood and constitution. It was as a matter of course for the human soul to live directly within the spiritual world. And they were well able to dispute with real content and meaning as to whether Christ was the Son, of the same essence with the Father, or only of like essence with the Father. The latter was the standpoint of Aryanism. To-day we will not go into the dogmatic differences of the question. We will only bear in mind that it was a question of immensely deep and sharp-witted controversies, which were, however, fought out with the peculiar intellectualism of that time. When we to-day are clever and sharp-witted we are so as human beings. Indeed to-day, as I have often said, almost all men are clever. They are really dreadfully clever—that is to say, they can think. Is it not so? It is not saying much, but it is a fact that they can think: I may indeed be very stupid and still be able to think ... but the fact is the men of to-day can think. In those times it was not so. It was not that men could simply think, but they felt their thoughts as inspiration. He who was sharp-witted felt himself gifted by the grace of God, and his thinking was a kind of clairvoyance. It was still so even in the 4th century A.D., and those who listened to a thinker still had some feeling of the living evolution of his thought. Now there was present at the Council of Nicæa a certain personality who took an active part in these discussions, but at the end of the Council he was in a high degree disappointed and depressed. His main effort had been to bring forward the arguments for both sides. He brought forward weighty reasons both for Aryanism and for Athanasianism. And if things had gone as he wished, undoubtedly the result would have been quite different. Not a wretched compromise, but a kind of synthesis of Aryanism and Athanasianism would have been the outcome.—One should not construct history in thought, but this may be said by way of explanation.—It would probably have been a very much more intimate way of relating the divine in the inner being of man to the divine in the universe. For, in the way in which Athanasianism afterwards evolved these things, the human soul was very largely separated from its divine origin. Indeed, it was thought heretical to speak of the god in the inner being of man.

If, on the other hand, Aryanism alone had won the day, there would of course have been much talk of this god in the inner being of man. But it would not have been spoken of with the necessary depth of reverence, and above all, not with the necessary inward dignity. Aryanism alone would indeed have come to regard man at every stage as an incarnation of the god who dwells within him. But the same may be said of any animal, indeed of the whole world, of every plant, of every stone. This conception only has real value if it contains at the same time the active impulse to rise ever higher and higher in spiritual development, for then only do we find the god within. The statement that there is a divine within us at any and every stage of life can have a meaning only if we take hold of this divine in a perpetual upward striving of the self, by whom it is not yet attained.

But a synthesis of the two conceptions would undoubtedly have been the outcome if the personality to whom I now refer had been able to gain any decisive influence at the Council of Nicæa. He failed. Deeply dissatisfied, he withdrew into a kind of Egyptian hermitage, lived a most ascetic life, and was deeply imbued at that time in the 5th century with all that was the real spiritual substance of Christianity during that age. Indeed he was probably one of the best informed of Christians in his time, but he was not a wrangler. This is evident from the very way in which he came forward at the Council. He spoke as a man who quietly weighs and judges all aspects of the question, and is yet deeply enthusiastic for his cause, though not for this or that one-sided detail. He spoke as a man who—I cannot say was disgusted, that would not be the true expression—but as a man who felt his failure with extraordinary bitterness, for he was deeply convinced that good would only come for Christianity if the view for which he stood won its way through.

Thus he withdrew into a kind of hermitage. For the rest of his life he became a hermit, following however, in response to the inner impulses of his soul, a quite definite course of the inner life. It was that of investigating the origin of the inspiration of thought. His mystic penetration was in the effort to perceive whence thinking receives its inspiration. It became one great longing in him to find the source of thinking in the spiritual world, until at length he was filled through and through with this longing. And with this longing he died, without having reached any real conclusion, any concrete answer during that earthly life. No answer was forthcoming. The time was after all unfavourable.

Then, passing through the gate of death, he underwent a peculiar experience. For several decades after his death he could still look back upon his earthly life, and he saw it forever coloured by that element to which he had come at last. He saw it forever in the atmosphere of that which, looking backwards, came immediately next his death. He saw the human being thinking.

Still this was no fulfilment of the question. And this is most important. There was as yet no thought in answer to the question. But though there was no answer, he was able, after his death, to look, in marvellously clear imaginations, into the cosmic intelligence of the universe. The thoughts of the universe he did not see. He would have seen them if his longing had reached fulfilment. He did not see the thoughts of the universe, but he saw in pictures the Thinking of the universe.

Thus there lived through the journey between death and a new birth an individuality who was as in a state of equilibrium between mystic imaginative vision and his former sharp-witted thinking—a thinking, however, in perpetual flow, that had not reached its conclusion.

In the elaboration of the karma, his mystic tendency won the day to begin with. He was born again in the Middle Ages as a visionary, a woman, who unfolded truly wonderful insight into the spiritual world. For a time, the tendency of the thinker fell entirely into the background; the quality of spiritual vision was in the foreground. For this woman had wonderful visions, while at the same time she gave herself up mystically to the Christ. Her soul was penetrated, with infinite depth, by a visionary Christianity. They were visions in which the Christ appeared as the leader of peaceful hosts, not quarrelsome or contentious, but like the hosts of peace, who would spread Christianity abroad by their very gentleness—a thing which had never yet been realised on earth. It was there in the visions of this nun. It was a deep, intensive Christianity, but it found no place at all in what afterwards evolved as Christianity in its more modern form. Nevertheless during her life this nun, the seeress, came into no conflict with positive dogmatic Christianity. She herself grew out of it and grew into a deeply personal Christianity, which was afterwards simply non-existent on the earth. And thus, if I might put it so, the whole universe then faced her with the question: how should this Christianity be realised in a physical body in a new incarnation? And at the same time, long after the seeress had passed through the gate of death, there came over her again the echoes of the old intellectualism, the inspired intellectualism. The after-echoes of her visions were now, if I might put it so, idealised through and through, filled with ideas.

Then, seeking for a new human body, this individual became the individuality of Solovioff, Vladimir Solovioff.

Read the writings of Solovioff!—I have frequently described the impression they make upon a modern man and have said it again in my introduction to the German edition of his works. You may well try to feel it in his writing. You will feel how much there lies between the lines, how much of a mysticism which we may often feel even sultry and oppressive. It is a Christianity quite individual in its forms of expression. It shows quite clearly how it had to seek for a pliable, in all directions supple body, such as can be obtained only out of the Russian people.

Looking at these examples, I think one may indeed preserve the holy awe and reverence before the truths of karma, which should indeed be held sacred and virginal in the inmost depths of life. For one who has a true feeling for the contemplation of the spiritual world, these deep truths are, verily, not unworthily unveiled. I mean this in the sense of what is so often said about the sacred veils of truth, of which people say that they should never be drawn aside.

Anthroposophy has been reproached again and again, notably in theological circles, for drawing aside the veil of sacred mystery from secret and mysterious truths, and thus making them profane. But the more deeply we enter into the esoteric portions of the anthroposophical conception, the more do we feel that there can truly be no talk of profanation. On the contrary the world itself will fill us with a holy awe when we behold the lives of man one after another in the marvellous working of former into later lives. We must only not be profane in our inner life or in our way of thinking and then we shall not make such objections.

Read the writings of Solovioff against the background of the previous nun, with her wonderful visions and infinite devotion to the Being of Christ. See that ancient personality going forth with deep and bitter feelings from the Council where he had brought forward such great and important things. Discover in the soul and in the heart of this individual what I may call the twofold background of Christianity, now in its rationalistic, but inspired rationalistic form, and now again in its visionary form of seership. See all this in the background, and of a truth the lifting of the veil will not profane the secret.

A German romanticist once had the courage to think differently from all others about the famous saying of Isis:“I am that which was, that which is, and that which is to come, and my veil has no mortal yet lifted.”—To which the German romanticist replied: Then we must become immortal, that we may lift the veil!—While others all took the saying as it stood.

When we discover the truly immortal within us, the divine and spiritual, then may we draw near to many a secret without profaning it, to many a secret to which, with a lesser faith in the divine in our own being, we might indeed not draw near.

And this indicates the spirit which should go abroad ever more and more under the influence of such studies as our last and as this present one. For these spiritual studies are meant to work upon the life and action of those who bear their karma, in the way I have described, into the Anthroposophical Society.

If you will think back to the dramatic scenes we have had before us these last few days, you will find that they lead into what we will consider in this lecture cycle. First of all, I would like to call to mind Scenes Nine, Ten and Thirteen of The Souls' Awakening. These are scenes whose effect one could call simple and straightforward. After the happenings in the Spirit Realm (Scenes Five and Six) and the Egyptian initiation (Scenes Seven and Eight), some people might have expected a much more forceful sequel coming before their eyes of soul, more tragic, perhaps, or more emphatic in speech, not just a subsiding into inner quietness. However, anything formed differently in Scenes Nine, Ten, and Thirteen would appear untruthful to the occult eye.

We see on stage various developments of soul. It should be said immediately that we have also given theoretical descriptions of the development into higher worlds, and these contain points of reference for every person on his or her path towards the spiritual world. Nevertheless, soul development is necessarily different for each one, according to his own special nature, character, temperament and circumstances. We can therefore gain a deeper understanding of an esoteric soul development only when we observe its diversity: how differently it takes place in Maria, how differently in Johannes Thomasius, how differently in the other characters of the drama.

Scene Nine is first of all directed to that psychological moment when the consciousness breaks into Maria's soul of the experiences that had penetrated to her very core but not altogether consciously during the devachanic¹ time before birth and in the ancient Egyptian initiation. In what was presented to us as “Spirit Realm,” we are concerned with soul experiences between death at the end of a medieval incarnation and birth into our present time. The events of all four Mystery Dramas, with the exception of the episode in The Souls' Probation that represents the spiritual review of his previous life by Capesius, take place at the present time, a time linked to the spiritual past spent in Devachan, between the death of the various characters after their incarnation in the Middle Ages (this being the content of the episode mentioned) and their present life.

The experiences of the devachanic period differ according to the preparation our souls have made on earth. It must be understood that it is a significant experience when a soul can go through what is called the Cosmic Midnight with consciousness. Souls that are not prepared for it will sleep through that part of the time called the Saturn period of Devachan (one can designate the successive periods a soul undergoes between death and a new birth as connected with the various planets: Sun, Mars, Mercury periods, and so on). Many souls sleep through the whole Cosmic Midnight. Souls that have been prepared are awake in this period of their spiritual life, but there is no guarantee that souls so prepared will also bring a clear memory of this experience into their life on earth when they come back into physical existence.

Maria and Johannes were well prepared for the experience of the Cosmic Midnight during their time in the spirit between death and new birth. Nevertheless a kind of soul darkness prevailed at the beginning of their earth lives, continuing over long periods of time and shrouding the experience of the Cosmic Midnight; then at a later stage of their present life, this rose to the surface. It reappeared only when a certain inner calmness and resolution of soul was reached. Significant and profound are the experiences of the Cosmic Midnight when the soul is awake to them. The earthly memory of all this must come as a calm inner experience, a luminous inner experience, for the effect of such a perception of the Cosmic Midnight is this: what formerly was only subjective, working inwardly as soul force, now appears as a living being or beings before the soul. As shown in Scene Nine of The Souls' Awakening it presents itself before Maria in the forms of Astrid and Luna as real beings. To Johannes Thomasius the Other Philia becomes a living being of the spiritual world, and to Capesius, Philia, in Scene Thirteen. These characters had to learn to feel perceptively that what before this were only abstract forces within themselves now could appear to them in a spiritually tangible form.

What comes to souls spiritually tangible as genuine self-knowledge has to appear in complete soul quietness, the result of meditation: this is essential if such happenings are to be experienced in the true sense of the word for genuine strengthening of the soul. If a person wanted to experience the Cosmic Midnight as retrospective memory or to experience what is shown as the Egyptian initiation not in the clear light of meditation but as intense tragedy, he would not be able to experience them at all. For the spiritual happening that is taking place in the soul would place itself like a dark veil before it, so that any impressions recede from observation. A soul that has experienced the Cosmic Midnight and in its deepest core received a momentous impression of the kind shown in Scenes Seven and Eight of The Souls' Awakening can remember the past happening only when the soul in completely lucid calmness can perceive thoughts approaching, thoughts about earlier experiences in the spiritual life or in the former earth life. This is what is expressed in the words at the beginning of Scene Nine:

A star of soul ... there ... at the spirit shore ...
it draws near ... nears in spirit brightness ...
my Self it brings... and nearing,
its light gains strength ... gains calmness too.
You star within the circuit of my spirit ... what,
approaching, shines on my beholding soul?²

Only when the soul is in this calm mood, so that the experience does not whirl in upon it with tragic vehemence, can one feel the arising memory of the Cosmic Midnight and the experiences of the previous incarnation as occultly true. When it is experienced and lived through, the Cosmic Midnight has a profound significance for a person's emotional life. There one lives through what can only be expressed as follows: In the Cosmic Midnight things are experienced that he hidden deep, deep down under the surface, not only of the sense world but also under the surface of the various worlds to which a dawning clairvoyance can lead. The sense world recedes, and also there recedes from clairvoyant vision in some of those who have already been able to discern various layers below the sense world, what we may call (and we will speak of it at length later on)—the Necessities in cosmic events. The Necessities are rooted in the foundations of things, where also the deepest part of the human soul rests. This, however, evades the physical gaze and also the dawning clairvoyant gaze, revealing itself to the latter only when something is experienced like the Saturn period scenes. One may therefore say that to such a clairvoyant gaze, which indeed must first appear between death and a new birth, it is as if lightning flashes were crossing the soul's whole field of vision, lightning whose terrifying brilliance was illumining the Cosmic Necessities, which at the same time were themselves so blindingly bright that the cognitive gaze dies away in the radiant light. Then from this expiring glance of cognition there come forth picture forms that enweave themselves into the cosmic web like the forms from which grow the destinies of the cosmic beings. One discovers in the foundations of the Necessities the fundamental causes of human destinies and those of other beings, but only when one gazes with glances of cognition that die away in the knowing, destroyed by the lightning flashes; they then remodel themselves as if into forms that have died but that live on as the impulses of destiny in life.

All that a true self-knowledge can discover in itself—not the self-knowledge so bandied about in Theosophical ranks but the highly serious self-knowledge that comes to pass in the course of esoteric life³—all that a soul can perceive within itself, with all the imperfections it has to ascribe to itself, all this is heard at the cosmic midnight as if enwoven into rolling cosmic thunder, rumbling in the underground of existence.

All these experiences may take place with great anguish and solemn resolve between death and a new birth as an awakening at the Cosmic Midnight. If the soul is mature enough to allow the consciousness of this to enter the physical sense world, it must happen in the quiet clarity of the meditative mood hinted at by Maria at the beginning of Scene Nine. What, however, the soul has perceived within its spiritual life must have preceded this, as if something of itself, something belonging intimately to itself but not always dwelling in what one can call the Self, had approached from world distances. The mood in which something in the spirit world approaches one like a part of oneself, yet as though coming from far away: this was attempted in the words Maria speaks in the Spirit Realm (Scene Six):

The flames are nearing—nearing with my thinking
from distant cosmic soul-shores of my being.—
A heated battle nears—and my own thinking
must battle with the thoughts of Lucifer;
within another soul my thinking fights.—
Hot light is wafted—out of fierce dark coldness.—
It flashes lightnings, this hot light of soul—
the light of soul—in cosmic fields of ice—

The memory of the experience that can be expressed in such words as this can be rendered again in the words of Maria mentioned above at the beginning of Scene Nine (“A star of soul ...”). What, however, the soul has to feel in order to have such a memory of the Cosmic Midnight must also lie in one's earth life, for here the human soul goes through events which bring to it the moods of inner anguish, inner resolve, inner dread, that one can only express in such words given to Maria to speak at the end of Scene Four. Indeed, one has to have felt that the individual self tears itself away from what one generally calls the inner life; that the power of thinking, with which one feels so confidently connected in life, tears itself out of the inner being and seems to go off towards the far, far limits of one's field of vision; and one must have found alive in oneself as soul presence what is expressed in such words—though naturally these will seem complete nonsense, overflowing with contradictions, to the sort of comprehension limited to the external senses and tied to the brain. One must first have experienced the feeling of one's own self moving away, of one' s thinking moving away, if one is to live through again in complete calm the memory of the Cosmic Midnight. The memory during earth life must be preceded by the experience of the Cosmic Midnight in the spiritual life, if what is in Scene Nine should take place.

To make this possible, however, there must again have been the soul mood expressed at the end of Scene Four. The flames do in truth take flight; they do not come earlier into earthly consciousness; they do not approach the calm of meditation, before they have first fled away, until this soul mood has become a truth:

The flames are fleeing ... fleeing with my thinking;
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And there at distant cosmic shores of soul
a furious battle ... my own thinking fights ...
at flowing nothingness—cold spirit light ...
my thinking wavers, reels ... cold light ...
it strikes out of my thinking flaming waves of darkness ...
what now emerges from the fierce, dark heat?
in red flames storms my Self ... into the light ...
into cold light ... of cosmic fields of ice.

These things are linked together; their being connected in this way strengthens the inner soul faculties. What at first was only an abstract soul force now steps before the soul in a spiritual body, so that in one sense it is a special entity, on the other hand it belongs to one's self, as Astrid and Luna appear to Maria. These beings, who are real and at the same time perceived as soul forces, appear in such a way that they can stand on stage with the Guardian of the Threshold and with Benedictus as they do in Scene Nine. The most important thing is to sense the mood of this scene so that in a quite different, individual manner, when the inner soul force corresponding to the Other Philia takes on bodily form, an awakening takes place, that is, the memory of the Cosmic Midnight and of the ancient Egyptian time in Johannes Thomasius. To such a finely attuned soul as Johannes Thomasius the words of the Other Philia: “Enchanted weaving of your own being...” have a special meaning, as well as what is connected with them during the rest of the Mystery Drama. Because of this, the Spirit of Johannes' Youth, Benedictus and Lucifer appear as they do at the end of Scene Ten. It is important to bring before the mind's eye in just this scene how Lucifer approaches Johannes Thomasius and the same words are spoken that were heard at the end of Scene Three in The Guardian of the Threshold. In these words one discovers how the battle Lucifer wages moves through all the worlds and through every human life, and one also discovers the mood that resounds out of the words of Benedictus in answer to Lucifer. Try to feel what lies in these words which sound from Lucifer both in The Guardian of the Threshold at the end of Scene Three and in The Souls' Awakening at the end of Scene Ten:

Lucifer: I mean to fight.
Benedictus: And fighting serve the gods.

Let us note very carefully something else at this point, that although the same words are spoken in these two places, they can be spoken so that in each place they mean something quite different. What they mean at the end of Scene Ten of The Souls' Awakening is determined by the fact that the preceding words of Maria are transformed from words spoken in The Guardian of the Threshold, while in Maria's soul there lives what she had spoken:

Maria, as you have desired to see her,
does not exist in worlds of radiant truth.
My holy, solemn vow rays forth new strength
to hold for you what you have gained.

She says now:

You'll find me in bright fields of light ...

She no longer says:

And you will find me in cold fields of ice ...

but

You'll find me in bright fields of light
where glowing beauty brings forth powers of life.
Seek me in grounds of worlds where souls
must struggle to achieve their feeling for the gods
through love, which in the All beholds the Self.

The words are turned around from what they are in Scene Two of The Souls' Awakening. It is through this that the dialogue between Lucifer and Benedictus at the end of Scene Ten: “I mean to fight”—“And fighting serve the gods,” becomes entirely different from what it was at the end of Scene Three in The Guardian of the Threshold. In understanding this, light is shed on something of an ahrimanic thrust, one can say, that prevails in all intellectual thinking, in the whole intellectual culture of today.

It is one of the most difficult things for people with this superficial faculty of intellect in our modern culture to realize that the same words in a different context mean something different. Modern civilization is such that people think that the words they use—in so far as they have been coined on the physical plane—must always mean the same thing. Here we have precisely the place where Ahriman has people most firmly by the throat, and where he hinders them from understanding that words only become living in their deepest sense when one looks at them in the connection in which they are uttered. Nothing that reaches out beyond the physical plane can be understood if one does not keep this occult fact in mind. It is especially important today that an occult fact of this kind should work upon our hearts and souls as a counterbalance to the external intellectual life that has taken firm hold of every human being.

Among the many things that have to be considered in these Mystery Dramas, notice how indeed in The Souls' Awakening the remarkable figure of Ahriman steals in quietly at first,⁴ how it seems to insinuate itself among the other characters and how it continually gains in significance towards the end of the drama. I shall endeavor to bring out for you a special piece of writing about Lucifer and Ahriman, and other things as well, entitled The Threshold of the Spiritual World;⁵ it will be on hand during this lecture course, for these seem to me the subjects particularly necessary to illumine for our friends at this time. It is not easy to get a clear understanding of such figures as Ahriman and Lucifer. Perhaps it may be useful for some of you to observe how precisely in The Souls' Awakening he who is not quite in a fog about the ahrimanic element in the world may be able to think of things which someone else through unconscious ahrimanic impulses may be thinking, too, but in a different frame of mind. There will be many among you, dear friends, who can enter into all the circumstances which stream into such words as those expressed by Ahriman while he is insinuating himself among the various persons:

Do not permit him to confuse you quite.
He guards the threshold faithfully indeed,
although he shows himself in borrowed clothes
which you have patched together in your mind
from odds and ends that look like melodrama.
You as an artist could, of course, avoid
producing him in such a wretched style,
though later you will surely do it better.
But even his distorted image serves.
It does not need too much of emphasis
to show you what his present stature is.
You should take notes of how the Guardian speaks:
too mournful is his tone, too much of pathos.—
Forbid him this, and he will show to you
from whom today he borrows to excess.⁶

I can imagine that many people—from some aesthetic point of view or other—will shake their heads at the way these Mystery Dramas are put before us. My dear friends, these objections as well as others raised against anthroposophy can be set aside by those who put themselves in the mood of Ahriman. The hypercritical people of our time who denounce anthroposophy certainly belong to those described by the poet: “The devil's never noticed by some folk, even when he has them by the neck!” We can judge these opponents of anthroposophy a bit by what Ahriman is saying here while he prowls around. He meets us in his more serious form when the death of Strader gradually plays into the events presented in the drama; it comes about then that the forces flowing out of this death must be sought by soul vision in the effect they have on everything else that happens in The Souls' Awakening.

It must be said again and again that this awakening takes place in different ways. For Maria it happens that, through special circumstances, the soul forces that find their bodily-spiritual expression in Luna and Astrid appear before her soul. For Johannes Thomasius it takes place when he experiences in himself the enchanted weaving of his inner being, on the Other Philia's appearance in a spiritually palpable form, if one may use such an absurd expression. For Capesius it happens through Philia in a still different way. In many other forms this awakening can gradually dawn upon souls, for instance, as we see it dawn upon Strader in Scene Eleven. Here we do not meet what we have just described as the spiritually tangible forms of Luna, Philia, Astrid and the Other Philia; we have the still imaginative pictures that radiate spiritual experiences into the physical consciousness. This stage of the awakening of the soul that takes place in Strader can be represented only by such an imaginative perception as the image of the ship in Scene Eleven.

In yet another form can the awakening of the soul gradually prepare itself. You will find this, carefully planned, after Ahriman has been shown in his deeper significance in Scene Twelve: it is hinted at in Scene Thirteen in the conversation between Hilary and Romanus. Let your mind's eye rest on what has been happening in Hilary's soul between the events in The Guardian of the Threshold and those of The Souls' Awakening, expressed in these words of Hilary:

My friend, I thank you for these occult words.
I've heard them often; for the first time now
I feel the secret meaning they contain.
The cosmic ways are hard to penetrate.
And I, dear friend, am called upon to wait
until the spirit shows me the direction
which is in keeping with my spirit sight.

What are the words Romanus had spoken?⁷ They are words that Hilary has heard again and again from the place where Romanus stands in the Temple, words that Romanus has so often spoken at this place, yet until this experience, they had passed before the inner vision of Hilary without the deeper understanding one can call understanding of life. It is also a bit of soul awakening for someone to wrestle his way to an understanding of what he has taken in as thought-forms, grasping them pretty well and even lecturing about them but still without having a living, vital understanding. He may have absorbed everything of anthroposophy contained in books, lectures and cycles, may have even imparted it to others, perhaps to their great benefit, and yet discover this: to understand as now Hilary understands the words of Romanus is only possible after a certain experience for which he must calmly wait. This is a definite stage of the awakening of the soul.

O if only a good number of our friends could put themselves into this mood of waiting! If only they could adopt this frame of mind, of awaiting the approach of something whose description in advance both as theories and explanations has apparently been clear enough and yet misunderstood—then something would take place in their souls that is expressed by Strader's words in Scene Three of The Souls' Awakening. Strader stands there between Felix Balde and Capesius, stands there in a remarkable way—he stands there so that literally he hears every word they say and could repeat it, and yet he cannot understand it. He knows what it is, can even consider it to be wisdom, but now he notices that there is something that can be expressed in the words:

Capesius and Felix, both ... to me ...
conceal dark meaning in transparent words ...

Our supremely clever people today will perhaps concede that by chance this or that person can hide meaning—clear meaning—in obscure words. However, it will not easily be granted by these clever people that an obscure meaning can be hidden in clear words. Nevertheless for human nature to concede that in clear words an obscure meaning may be hidden is of the two the higher acknowledgment. Many sciences are clear, as are many philosophies, but something important would happen for the further evolution of mankind if philosophers would finally confess that—although in all philosophical systems they had certainly produced stuff that was clear and ever clearer, so that anyone could say, “These things are clear!”—yet there may be in clear words an obscure meaning. Something important would take place if the many people who think themselves supremely clever, reckoning what they know to be wisdom (and to some degree rightly so), if they could only place themselves before the world as Strader places himself between Felix Balde and Capesius and learn to say:

I often understood—what you are saying;—
I took it then for wisdom;—but no word
of what you say has meaning for me now.
Capesius and Felix, both—to me—
conceal dark meaning in transparent words.

Just imagine some modern philosopher or one from the past, who has brought together in his own way a plausible clear system of philosophy, and who will take a stand by the side of his philosophy (which is of course in its own way the result of all human thought), saying, “I've usually found this comprehensible. Everything I've written I've taken for wisdom—and yet not a single word in all these phrases can I understand. Even in those I wrote myself, much of it is incomprehensible: these pronouncements seem to hide a dark meaning in clear words.”

Well, one cannot easily imagine such a confession coming from one of our recent or slightly older philosophers, nor from one of the highly clever men of our materialistic, or as it's called in more grandiose style, our monistic age either. And yet it would be a blessing for our present life if people could assume the attitude towards the thoughts and other cultural achievements that Strader assumed towards Felix Balde and Capesius. If only such people might become more and more numerous, and if only anthroposophy could in very truth contribute something directly to this self-knowledge!

• 1. Devachan, devachanic (Sanscrit, deva-divine being) The spirit world. In An Outline of Occult Science Steiner describes it as “The manifestation of the Spirit World in its fullness.”
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, The Souls' Awakening, contained in Four Mystery Dramas, (Vancouver, Steiner Book Centre, 1978).
• 3. Theosophical Society: The German section of the Theosophical Society, headed by Rudolf Steiner until 1912, diverged from the beginning from the rest of the Theosophical Society which was headed by Annie Besant. In 1912, the German section broke away and the Anthroposophical Society was founded.
• 4. The Souls' Awakening, Scene 3.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner, A Road to Self-Knowledge and The Threshold Of The Spiritual World (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1975).
• 6. The Souls' Awakening, Scene 13.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, The Probation of the Soul, contained in Four Mystery Dramas.