The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Michael period into which the world has entered ever since the last third of the 19th century, and into which human beings will have to enter with increasing consciousness, is very different from former periods of Michael. For in the earthly evolution of mankind different ones among the seven great Archangel Spirits enter from time to time into the life of man. Thus, after given periods of time a certain guidance of the world—such as the guidance of Gabriel or Uriel, Raphael or Michael,—is repeated. Our own period is, however, essentially different from the preceding period of Michael. This is due to the fact that man stands in quite another relation to the spiritual world since the first third of the 15th century than he ever did before. This new relation to the spiritual world also determines a peculiar relation to the Spirit guiding the destinies of mankind, whom we may call by the ancient name of Michael.

Recently I have been speaking to you again of the Rosicrucian movement. Rosicrucianism, I remarked, has indeed led to charlatanry in many quarters. Most of the so-called “Rosicrucianism” that has been transmitted to mankind is charlatanry. Nevertheless, as I have explained on former occasions, there did exist an individuality whom we may describe by the name of Christian Rosenkreutz. This individuality is, in a sense, the type and standard: he reveals the way in which an enlightened spirit—a man of spiritual knowledge—could enter into relation with the spiritual world at the dawn of the new phase of humanity.

To Christian Rosenkreutz it was vouchsafed to ask many questions, deeply significant riddles of existence, and in quite a new way when compared to the earlier experiences of mankind. You see, my dear friends, while Rosicrucianism was arising, directing the mind of man with “Faustian” striving—as it was afterwards described—towards the spiritual world, an abstract naturalistic Science was arising on the other hand. The bearers of this modern stream of spiritual life—men like Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Copernicus or Kepler, worthy as they are of fullest recognition—were quite differently situated from the Rosicrucians, who wanted to foster, not a merely formal or abstract, but a true knowledge of things. The Rosicrucians perceived in their own human life and being how utterly the time had changed, and with it the whole relation of the Gods to mankind.

We may describe it as follows. Quite distinctly until the 4th century A.D., and in a rudimentary way even until the 12th and 13th century, man was able to draw forth from himself real knowledge about the spiritual world. In doing the exercises which belonged to the old Mysteries, he could draw forth from himself the secrets of existence. For the humanity of olden times it really was so: the Initiates drew forth what they had to say to mankind, from the depths of their souls to the surface of their thought—their world of ideas. They had the consciousness that they were drawing forth their knowledge from the inner being of the human soul. The exercises they underwent were intended, as you know, to stir the human heart to its depths,—so to inform the human heart and mind with experiences which man does not undergo in the ordinary round of life. There-by the secrets of the world of the Gods were, so to speak, drawn forth from the depths, from the inner being of man.

Man, however, cannot see the secrets he draws out of himself while in the very act of doing so. True, in the old instinctive clairvoyance man did behold the secrets of the world; he saw them in Imagination; he heard and perceived them in Inspiration; he united himself with them in Intuition. These things, however, are impossible so long as man merely stands there alone,—just as little as it is possible for me to draw a triangle without a board. The triangle I draw on the board portrays to me what I bear in a purely spiritual way within me. The triangle as a whole,—all the laws of the triangle are in me; but I draw the triangle on the board, thereby bringing home to myself what is really there within me. So it is when we make external diagrams. But when it is a question of deriving real knowledge out of the being of man, after the manner of the ancient Mysteries, this knowledge too must, in a certain sense, be written somewhere. Every such knowledge, in effect, to be seen in the spirit, must be inscribed in that which has been called from time immemorial “the astral light,”—i.e., in the fine substantiality of the Akasha. Everything must be written there, and man must be able to develop this faculty of writing in the astral light.

This faculty has depended on many and varied things in the course of human evolution. Not to speak, for the moment, of pristine ages, I will leave on one side the first Post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient Indian. At that time it was somewhat different. Let me begin with the ancient Persian epoch, as described in my Outline of Occult Science. There was an instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge of the divine-spiritual world. This knowledge could be written in the astral light so that man himself could behold it, inasmuch as the earth, the solid earth, afforded resistance. The writing itself is done, needless to say, with the spiritual organs, but these organs also require a basis of resistance. The things that are thus seen in the spirit are not inscribed, of course, on the earth itself; they are written in the astral light. But the earth acts as a ground of resistance. In the old Persian epoch the seers could feel the resistance of the earth; and hence the perceptions they drew forth from their inner being grew into actual visions.

In the next, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, all the knowledge that the Initiates drew forth from their souls was able to be written in the astral light by virtue of the fluid element. You must conceive it rightly. The Initiate of the old Persian epoch looked to the solid earth. Wherever there were plants or stones, the astral light reflected back to him his inner vision. The Initiate of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch looked into the sea, into the river, or into the falling rain, the rising mist. When he looked into the river or the sea, he saw the lasting secrets. Those secrets, on the other hand, which relate to the transient—to the creation of the Gods in transient things—he beheld in the downpouring rain or the ascending mist. You must familiarise yourself with the idea. The ancients had not the prosaic, matter-of-fact way of seeing the mist and rain which is ours to-day. Rain and mist said very much to them—revealed to them the secrets of the Gods.

Then in the Graeco-Latin period, the visions were there like a Fata Morgana in the air. The Greek saw his Zeus, his gods, in the astral light; but he had the feeling that the astral light only reflected the gods to him under the proper conditions. Hence he assigned his gods to special places,—places where the air could offer the proper resistance to the inscriptions in the astral light. And so it remained until the 4th century A.D. Even among the first Fathers of the Christian Church, and notably the old Greek Fathers, there were many (as you may even prove from their writings) who saw this Fata Morgana of their own spiritual visions through the resistance of the air in the astral light. Thus they had clear knowledge of the fact that out of Man the Logos, the Divine Word, revealed Himself through Nature. But in the course of time this knowledge faded and grew feeble. Echoes of it still continued in a few specially gifted persons, even until the 12th or 13th century. But when the age of abstract knowledge came—when men were only dependent on the logical sequence of ideas and the results of sense-observation—then neither earth nor water nor air afforded resistance to the astral light, but only the element of the warmth-ether. It is unknown, of course, to those who are completely wrapped up in their abstract thoughts that these abstract thoughts are also written in the astral light. They are written there indeed; but in this process the element of the warmth-ether is the sole resistance.

The following is now the case. Remember once more that in the ancient Persian epoch men had the solid earth as a resistance so as to behold their entries in the astral light. What is thus contained in the astral light—all that, for which the solid earth is the resistance—rays on and out, but only as far as the sphere of the Moon. Farther it cannot go. Thence it rays back again. Thus it remains, so to speak, with the Earth. We behold the secrets reflected by virtue of the earth; they remain because of the pressure of the lunar sphere.

Now let us consider the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. The water on the Earth reflects. What is thus reflected goes as far as the Saturn-sphere, which presses once again. Thereby the possibility is given for man to remain with his visions on the Earth. And if we go on into the Graeco-Latin period—even into the 12th or 13th century—we find the visions inscribed in the astral light by virtue of the air. This time it goes to the very end of the cosmic sphere and thence returns. It is the most fleeting of all; yet still it is such that man remains united with his visions. The Initiates of all these epochs could say to themselves every time: Such spiritual vision as we have had—through earth or water or air—it is there. But when the most modern time arrived, only the element of the warmth-ether was left to offer resistance. And the element of the warmth-ether carries all that is written in it out into the cosmic realms, right out of space into the spiritual worlds. It is no longer there.

It is so indeed. Take the most pedantic of modern professors with his ideas. (He must at least have ideas. You would first have to make sure of it in the individual case; modern professors seldom have ideas!) But if he has ideas, then they are entered through the warmth-ether in the astral light. Now the warmth-ether is transient and fleeting; all things become merged and fused in it at once, and go out into cosmic distances.

Such a man as Christian Rosenkreutz knew that the Initiates of olden times had lived with their visions. They had confirmed what they beheld through knowing that it was there, reflected somewhere in the heavens—be it in the moon-sphere or in the planetary sphere, or at the end of the Universe—it was reflected. But now, nothing at all was reflected. For the immediate, wide-awake vision of man, nothing at all was reflected. Now men could find ideas about Nature; the Copernican cosmology could arise, all manner of ideas could be formed, but they were scattered in the warmth-ether, out into cosmic space.

So then it came about that Christian Rosenkreutz, by inspiration of a higher Spirit, found a way to perceive the reflected radiation after all, in spite of the fact that it was only a reflection by the warmth-ether. It was brought about as follows. Other conditions of consciousness—dim, subconscious and sleep-like—were called into play; conditions in which man is even normally outside his body. Then it became perceptible that that which is discovered with modern abstract ideas is after all inscribed, although not in space, but in the spiritual world. This, therefore, was the peculiar outcome for the Rosicrucian Movement: the Rosicrucians, as it were in a transition stage, made themselves acquainted with all that could be discovered about Nature in this epoch. They received it into themselves and assimilated it as only man can assimilate it. They enhanced into true Wisdom what for the others was only Science. Holding it in their souls, they tried to pass over into sleep in highest purity and after intimate meditations. Then the divine spiritual worlds—no longer the spatial end of the universe, but the divine spiritual worlds—brought back to them in a spiritually real language what had been conceived at first in abstract ideas.

In Rosicrucian schools not only was the Copernican cosmology taught, but in special states of consciousness its ideas came back in the form I explained here during the last few days. It was the Rosicrucians, above all, who realised that that which man receives in modern knowledge must first be carried forth, so to speak, and offered to the Gods, that the Gods may translate it into their language and give it back again to men.

The possibility has remained until this present. It is so indeed, my dear friends. If you are touched by the Rosicrucian principle as here intended, study the system of Haeckel, with all its materialism; study it, and at the same time permeate yourselves with the methods of cognition indicated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Take what you learn in Haeckel's Anthropogenesis: on the Ancestors of Man. In that form it may very likely repel you. Learn it nevertheless; learn all that can be learned about it by outer Natural Science, and carry it towards the Gods; then you will get what is related about evolution in my Occult Science.

Such is the connection between the feeble, shadowy knowledge which man can acquire here with his physical body, and that which the Gods can give him, if with the proper spirit he duly prepares himself by the learning of this knowledge. But man must first bring towards them what he can learn here on the Earth, for in truth the times have changed.

Moreover, another thing has happened. Let a man strive as he will to-day; he can no longer draw anything forth from himself as the old Initiates did. The soul no longer gives anything forth in the way it did for the old Initiates. It all becomes impure—filled with instincts, as is evident in the case of spiritualist mediums, and in other morbid or pathological conditions. All that arises merely from within, becomes impure. The time of such creation from within is past; it was past already in the 12th or 13th century. What happened can be expressed approximately as follows: The Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote very much in the astral light with the help of the resistance of the earth. When the first Initiate of the old Persian epoch appeared, the whole of the astral light, destined for man, was like an unwritten slate. I shall speak later of the old Indian epoch. To-day I shall only go back to the ancient Persian epoch. All Nature: all the elements—solid, liquid, airy and warmth-like—were an unwritten slate.

Now the Initiates of the old Persian epoch wrote on this slate as much as could be written by virtue of the resistance of the earth. There, to begin with, the secrets destined to come to man from the Gods were written in the astral light. To a certain degree the tablet was inscribed; yet judged by another standard it was empty. So the Initiates of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch were able to continue the writing in their way; for they gained their visions by the resistance of the water. Another part of the tablet was inscribed.

Then came the Greek Initiates; they inscribed the third portion of the tablet. Now the tablet of Nature is fully inscribed; it was quite fully inscribed by the 13th or 14th century. Then human beings began to write in the warmth-ether; that, however, scatters and dissolves away in the vast expanse. For a time—until the 19th century—men wrote in the warmth-ether; they had no inkling that their experiences also stood written in the astral light. But now, my dear friends, the time has come when men must see that not out of themselves, in the old sense, can they find the secrets of the world, but only by so preparing themselves in heart and mind that they can read what is written on the tablet which is now full of writing. This we must prepare to do to-day. We must make ourselves ripe for this—no longer to draw forth from ourselves like the old Initiates, but to be able to read in the astral light all that is written there. If we do so, precisely what we gain from the warmth-ether will work as an inspiration. The Gods come to meet us, and bring to us in its reality what we have acquired by our own efforts here on Earth. And what we thus receive from the warmth-ether reacts in turn on all that stands written on the tablet by virtue of the air and water and earth.

Thus the Natural Science of to-day is actually the true basis for spiritual seership. Learn first by Natural Science to know the properties of air, water and earth. Attain the corresponding inner faculties. Then, as you gaze into the airy, into the watery, into the earthy element, the astral light will stream forth. It does not stream forth like a vague mist or cloud; but so that we can read in it the secrets of world-existence and of human life.

What, then, do we read? We—the humanity of to-day—read what we ourselves have written in it. For what does it mean to say that the ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians wrote in the astral light? It was we ourselves who wrote it in our former lives on Earth.

You see, my dear friends: just as our inner memory of the common things that we experience in earthly life preserves them for us, so too the astral light preserves for us what we have written in it. It is the astral light which spreads around us, as a fully written tablet with respect to the secrets which we ourselves have inscribed. There we must read, if we wish to find the secrets once more. It is a kind of evolution-memory which must arise in mankind. A consciousness must gradually arise that there is such an evolution-memory, and that in relation to former epochs of culture the humanity of to-day must read in the astral light, just as we, at a later age, read in our own youth through ordinary memory. This must come into the consciousness of men. In this sense I have held the lectures this Christmas-time, so that you could see that the point is to draw forth from the astral light the secrets that we need to-day. The old initiation was directed mainly to the subjective life; the new initiation concentrates on the objective,—that is the great difference. For all that was subjective is written in the outer world. All that the Gods have secreted into man, . . . what they secreted in his sentient body, came out into the old Persian epoch; what they secreted in his sentient soul, came out in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch; what they secreted in his intellectual or mind-soul came out during the Grecian epoch. The spiritual soul which we are now to evolve is independent, brings forth nothing more out of itself; it stands over against what is already there. As human beings we must find our humanity again in the astral light.

That is the peculiarity of the Rosicrucian movement: in a time of transition it had to content itself with entering into certain dream-like conditions, and, as it were, dreaming the higher truth of that which Science discovers here—in a dry, matter-of-fact way—out of the Nature around us.

And this is the peculiarity since the beginning of the Michael epoch, since the end of the 1870's, the last third of the 19th century:—The same thing that was attained in the way above-described in the time of the old Rosicrucians, can now be attained in a conscious way. To-day, therefore, we can say: We no longer need that other condition which was half-conscious. What we need is a state of enhanced consciousness. Then, with the knowledge of Nature which we acquire, we can press into the higher world; and the Nature-knowledge we have acquired emerges and comes towards us from that higher world. We read again what has been written in the astral light; and as we do so, it emerges and comes to meet us in spiritual reality. We carry up into a spiritual world the knowledge of Nature here attained, or again, the creations of naturalistic art, or the religious sentiments working naturalistically in the soul. (Even religion has become naturalistic nowadays). And as we carry all this upward—if we develop the necessary faculties—we do indeed encounter Michael.

So we may say: the old Rosicrucian movement is characterised by the fact that its most illumined spirits had an intense longing to meet Michael; but they could only do so as in dream. Since the end of the last third of the nineteenth century, men can meet Michael in the spirit, in a fully conscious way.

Michael, however, is a peculiar being: Michael is a being who reveals nothing if we do not bring him something from our diligent spiritual work on Earth. Michael is a silent Spirit—silent and taciturn. The other ruling Archangels are talkative Spirits—in a spiritual sense, of course; but Michael is taciturn. He is a Spirit who speaks very little. At most he will give sparing indications, for what we learn from Michael is not really the word, but—if I may so express it—the look, the power, the direction of his gaze.

This is because Michael concerns himself most of all with that which men create out of the Spirit. He lives with the consequences of all that men have created. The other Spirits live more with the causes; Michael lives with the consequences. The other Spirits kindle in man the impulses for that which he shall do. Michael will be the true spiritual hero of Freedom; he lets men do, and he then takes what becomes of human deeds, receives it and carries it on and out into the cosmos, to continue in the cosmos what men themselves cannot yet do with it.

Other beings of the Hierarchy of Archangeloi give us the feeling that from them come the impulses to do this or that. In a greater or lesser degree, the impulses come from them. Michael is the Spirit from whom no impulses come, to begin with; for his characteristic period of rulership is that which is now coming, when things are to arise out of human freedom. But when man does things out of spiritual activity or inner freedom, consciously or unconsciously kindled by the reading of the astral light, then Michael carries the human earthly deed out into the cosmos; so that it becomes cosmic deed. Michael cares for the results; the other Spirits care more for the causes.

However, Michael is not only a silent, taciturn Spirit. Michael meets man with a very clear gesture of repulsion for many things in which the human being of to-day still lives on Earth. For example, all knowledge that arises in the life of men or animals or plants, tending to lay stress on the inherited characteristics—on all that is inherited in physical nature—is such that we feel Michael constantly repelling it, driving it away with deprecation. He means to show that such knowledge cannot help man at all for the Spiritual World. Only what man discovers in the human and animal and plant kingdoms independently of the purely hereditary nature, can be carried up before Michael. Then we receive, not the eloquent gesture of deprecation, but the look of approval which tells us that it is a thought righteously conceived in face of the cosmic guidance. For this is what we learn increasingly to strive for: as it were to meditate, so as to strike through to the astral light, to see the secrets of existence, and then to come before Michael and receive his approving look which tells us: That is just, that is right before the cosmic guidance.

So it is with Michael. He also sternly rejects all separating elements, such as the human languages. So long as we only clothe our knowledge in these languages, and do not carry it right up into the thoughts, we cannot come near Michael. Therefore, to-day in the spiritual world there is much significant battle. For on the one hand the Michael impulse has entered the evolution of humanity. The Michael impulse is there. But on the other hand, in the evolution of humanity there is much that will not receive this impulse of Michael but wants to reject it. Among the things that would fain reject the impulse of Michael to-day are the feelings of nationality. They flared up in the nineteenth century and became strong in the twentieth—stronger and stronger. By the principle of nationality many things have been ordered, or rather, disordered in the most recent times. For they have in fact been disordered.

All this is in terrible opposition to the Michael principle; all this contains Ahrimanic forces which strive against the in-pouring and throbbing of the Michael-force into the earthly life of man. So then we see this battle of the up-ward-attacking Ahrimanic spirits who would like to carry upward what comes through the inherited impulses of nationality—which Michael sternly rejects and repels.

Truly to-day there is the most vivid spiritual conflict in this direction. For this is the state of affairs over a great portion of mankind. Thoughts are not there at all; men only think in words, and to think in words is no way to Michael. We only come to Michael when we get through the words to real inner experiences of the spirit—when we do not hang on the words, but arrive at real inner experiences of the spirit.

This is the very essence, the secret of modern Initiation: to get beyond the words to a living experience of the spiritual. It is nothing contrary to a feeling for the beauty of language. Precisely when we no longer think in language, we begin to feel it; we begin to have it streaming in us and out from us as an element of feeling. That, however, is a thing to which the man of to-day must first aspire. Perhaps, to begin with, he cannot attain it in his actual speech, but through his writing. For in respect of writing, too, it must be said: To-day men do not have the writing but the writing has them. What does it mean, ‘the writing has them’? It means that in our wrist, in our hand, we have a certain train of writing. We write mechanically, out of the hand. This is a thing that fetters man. He only becomes unfettered when he writes as he paints or draws—when every letter beside the next becomes a thing that is painted or drawn ... Then there is no longer what is ordinarily called ‘a handwriting.’ Man draws the form of the letter. His relation to the letter is objective; he sees it before him—that is the essential thing.

For this reason, strange as it may sound, in certain Rosicrucian schools learning-to-write was prohibited until the fourteenth or fifteenth year of age; so that the form, the mechanism which comes to expression in writing, did not enter the human organism. Man only approached the form of the letter when his spiritual vision was developed. Then it was so arranged that simultaneously with his learning of the conventional letters, needed for human intercourse, he had to learn others—specifically Rosicrucian letters—which are regarded nowadays as a secret script. They were not intended as such; the idea was that for an A one should learn at the same time another sign: O. For then one did not hold fast to the one sign but got free of it. Then one felt the real A as something higher than the mere sign of A or O. Otherwise, the mere letter A would be identified with that which comes forth from the human being, soaring and hovering as the living sound of A.

With Rosicrucianism many things found their way into the people. For it was one of their fundamental principles: from the small circles in which they were united, the Rosicrucians went out into the world, as I have already told you, generally working as doctors. But at the same time, while they were doctors, they spread knowledge of many things in the wide circles into which they came. Moreover, with such knowledge, certain moods and feelings were spread. We find them everywhere, wherever the Rosicrucian stream has left its traces. Sometimes they even assume grotesque forms. For instance, out of such moods and feelings of soul, men came to regard the whole of this modern relationship to writing—and, a fortiori, to printing—a black art. For in truth, nothing hinders one more from reading in the astral light than ordinary writing. This artificial fixing hinders one very much from reading in the astral light. One must always first overcome this writing when one wants to read in the astral light.

At this point two things come together, one of which I mentioned a short while ago. In the production of spiritual knowledge man must always be present with full inner activity. I confessed that I have many note-books in which I write or put down the results I come to. I generally do not look at them again. Only, by calling into activity not only the head but the whole man, these perceptions which do indeed take hold of the entire man come forth. He who does so, gradually accustoms himself not to care so much for what he sees physically, what is already fixed; but to remain in the activity, in order not to spoil his faculty of seeing in the astral light. It is good to practise this reticence. As far as possible, when fixing things in ordinary writing, one should adhere not to the writing as such, but draw in the letters after one's pleasure (for then it is really as though you were painting, it is an art). Or again, one does not reflect upon what one writes down. Thereby one acquires the faculty not to spoil the impressions in the astral light.

If we are obliged to relate ourselves to writing in the modern way, we mar our spiritual progress. For this reason, in our Waldorf School educational method, great care is taken that the human being does not go so far in writing as in the ordinary educational methods of to-day. Care is taken to enable him to remain within the spiritual, for that is necessary.

Thus the world must come to receive the principle of Initiation as such, once more, among the principles of civilisation. Only in this way will it come about: man, here on the Earth, will gather in his soul something with which he can go before Michael, so as to meet with Michael's approving gaze, which says: “That is just before the Universe.” Then the will is strengthened and made firm, and the human being is incorporated in the spiritual progress of the Universe. Hence man himself becomes a co-operator in that which is about to be instilled into the evolution of mankind on Earth by Michael—beginning now in this present epoch of Michael.

Many, many things must be taken into account if man wishes rightly to cross that abyss of which I spoke yesterday, where in truth a Guardian is standing. We shall show in the next lectures how this abyss was opened out in the 1840's, and how, under the influence of such knowledge as I have set forth once more to-day, man, looking back to this abyss, can relate himself to this same Guardian.

I should still like to add something to what we have been studying, and afterwards to consider the more general theme to which certain of your questions relate.

I want to speak now of something that it is well to consider only after we have listened to what has been given here in the last few days. It is not well to give the general truths first but only to pass on to them when certain things have already been learned. Only so can general truths receive their proper coloring.

We will now picture to ourselves that each of the four members of man's being—physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego has its own special structure. The structure of physical body and etheric body is one of space and time. The structure of astral body and ego is purely spiritual. A purely spiritual structure is not governed by space and time. It is possible, nonetheless, to make a picture of the spiritual structure so that we can have a conception of it. This can be done in imaginative consciousness. Hold it firmly in your minds, my dear friends, that on the one side we have to do with a physical etheric structure which in the sleeping human being is separated from the structure of spirit and soul, and, on the other side, with the structure of spirit and soul.

In the sleeping human being we have a physical etheric structure which has sent out the ego and astral body, and again we have the structure of spirit and soul that is separated from physical body and etheric body. These two structures are very different from each other. The physical-etheric structure is differentiated into the single organs, as an organism that has, so to speak, driven out the single organs from the center of life. The astral body and ego structure have, however, been driven inwards from outside—it is as though space and time had been left free by this process. The essential thing is that the physical-etheric structure and the structure of spirit and soul are fundamentally different from one another. In the human being as he stands in the physical world in waking consciousness, the spirit and soul (astral body and ego) are inserted into the physical-etheric organization—to use a form of expression that is not absolutely accurate but enables us to visualize the state of things. To a certain degree they permeate each other. So that every physical organ that is warmed through and irradiated by the etheric body is also filled with life, inasmuch as the cosmos works through the etheric body, and in every physical organ ego organization and astral organization are working, when the human being is in waking consciousness.

And now think of the following: Suppose that astral organization and ego organization impress their own structure upon some organ or system of organs. In other words, something that ought to maintain its physical and etheric structure receives a spiritual structure, becomes an image of the astral and ego organization. This, speaking quite generally, is the cause of physical illnesses. Speaking generally, the cause of physical illnesses is that the body of the human being is becoming too spiritual, in some parts or as a whole. Hence, as was well-known in olden times, real and devoted study of the sick human being throws tremendous light upon knowledge of man as a being of spirit.

In ancient times quite a different idea prevailed of man's nature. Therefore I do not say the following in any sense for the purpose of suggesting that this conception should be re-adopted or made the basis for modern methods. In olden times, when conceptions of the human being were more robust, a man who held heretical views was burned, if such a fate was deemed necessary for the salvation of his soul. These heretics were burned for the salvation of their souls—so at least it was alleged. They were burned in order that they might be freed from what, after their death, would cause them the most terrible sufferings. This procedure was, in earlier times, the outcome of a form of vision; later on, of course, it assumed a really brutal form. Views about the human being were more robust and so it might happen that a certain preparation of melissa (balm mint) would be given to someone who might be regarded as healthy. When he took melissa that had been prepared in a certain way, his consciousness would become slightly dreamy. He became more dreamy than he was before taking the melissa preparation. In this condition, faint imaginations entered into his consciousness. If, for instance, a man was treated in a certain way with henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) he became very susceptible to inspirations. Such investigations revealed that if the solar plexus was stimulated by means of henbane, it was permeated with spirit; in such a case, astral body and ego organization take firm hold of the solar plexus. Or it was noticed that the whole blood supply of the cerebrum became stronger—to a slight extent, but the effect was very significant—by the administration of melissa juice, because the ego organization takes a firm hold by way of the cerebrum. And so the whole human being was tested for the purpose of finding out how he could become spiritual and of perceiving how the single organs could become more spiritual.

It is a preconceived notion to imagine that we think with the head. This is simply not true. We think with legs and with arms and the head beholds what is going on in the arms and legs and receives it into the pictures of thought. I said at Christmas that man would never have learned the law of angles if he had never walked. He would never have learned the mechanical laws of equilibrium if he had had no experience of them through his own center of gravity which lies in his subconsciousness. When we come to the astral body which unfolds these things in the subconsciousness, the human being appears to us to be extraordinarily wise, even if he is often a fool in the physical world, because the geometry that comes to expression in walking, for instance, is all known—if I may put it so—in the subconsciousness, and then perceived by the brain.

Now when the organization of spirit and soul takes too strong a hold of the physical-etheric organization, physical illness ensues. In former times, therefore, the spirit in the physical organs was investigated because everything that can be spoken of as a gift from above is spiritual, of the nature of spirit and soul. But a distinction has to be made here. What the human being received, in a purely spiritual way, as a gift from above, was called a gift and retained this name. But now take a substance like belladonna for example.

Whereas in ordinary plants the physical and etheric principles are at work, there are others where the cosmic astrality works very strongly from outside, where the spiritual element—either the astral or what corresponds in the cosmos to the ego organization—works upon plants or animals. Poisons are then produced instead of the gifts bestowed by the spirit. But the poisons are a true correlate of the spiritual because, in plants and animals, they are the element of cosmic astrality which transcends the plant nature proper. By administering henbane we lead over the astral contained in the warmth mantle of the earth (which marks the boundary of the atmosphere) into the solar plexus and thereby into the diaphragm of the human being. Melissa, which is not a poison in the real sense, produces a gentle working of the spiritual which shows itself only in a form of slight stupor. In melissa, the poisoning process is in statu nascendi. This leads to the principle: physical illness arises when the physical organism or its parts are becoming too strongly spiritual.

But a different condition may set in. It may happen that when a human being is in waking consciousness, the soul-spiritual structure of his astral body or ego organization is transferred with too much strength into some physical organ. But instead of impressing itself upon the physical organism the physical organism forces physical structure upon the structure of spirit and soul, so that when he is asleep the human being becomes, in his astral body and ego, an image of his physical and etheric body. He takes the physical structure into his astral body and ego.

Here we have the difference in the two forms of irregularities which may appear. Even to observation they differ quite essentially. When a human being is ill, the sick organ is, strange to say, spiritualized. It becomes clearer. As though from outside, from its surface inwards, it is laid hold of by spirituality. Long before any definite traces are noticeable in the color of the skin and the like, a sick man appears transparent—shall I say—to occult sight and the spirit and soul is pressing into the transparency.

We notice the opposite condition, where the organization of spirit and soul is taking on the structure of the physical and etheric, when a man in his life of soul and spirit is really asleep. Then he becomes a ghost, a fleeting, wavering ghost of his physical body. He remains like his physical body. He truly becomes a specter of his physical body, and all the crude experiments that are made by spiritualists in connection with manifestations, as they are called, are due to the fact that the spirit and soul in the medium is weakened. That is indeed obvious. In some hidden way, this is what happens. In a dark room the weakened astral body and ego can take on the forms of the organs to the point of visibility. The manifestations are real, but illicit.

Now all so-called mental diseases are due to the spirit and soul—astral body and ego organization—assuming the physical and etheric structure. All so-called mental illnesses are due to this. We may therefore say: Physical illnesses are due to the physical organism or its parts becoming spiritual. Mental illnesses are due to the astral body or ego organization, or one of their parts, taking form in the physical or etheric sense. This universal truth is a very good guiding principle.

These things have a bearing, too, upon questions put by individuals about the connection between medicine and pedagogy, for in the child's organism we have before us every grade between these two extremes. The astral and ego organization in one child will tend to make the physical and etheric body spiritual. In another child the tendency of the astral and ego organization will be to allow the physical and etheric to give them form. Between these two extremes there are all kinds of intermediate stages. This fundamental principle also comes to expression in the temperament. When the astral body and ego organization have a vehement tendency (not as in insanity but of a kind that is controllable) to assume forms belonging to the physical and etheric body, we have the melancholic temperament. When the astral body and ego organization have the tendency to impress their structure on the physical and etheric body, we have to do with the choleric temperament. The phlegmatic and sanguine temperaments lie in between. In the phlegmatic temperament the astral body and ego organization have a tendency, but only in a certain sense, to assume the structure of the physical and especially of the etheric body In the sanguine temperament, the vital principle in the etheric body is strongly influenced by the astral body. So this principle also comes to expression in the temperaments.

What, in radical cases, is the guiding principle for the physician, namely, knowledge of how the spirit and soul and physical-etheric are interlinked in the waking consciousness of a human being, is also a guiding principle for educators, although they have to deal with latent conditions. Pedagogy and medicine are mutual continuations, the one of the other.

Now what you have to do, my dear friends, is to strive with might and main to attain imagination in your conception of man's being. I should therefore like, in this connection, to give you a few fundamental indications.

The form of the human being in the embryonic state is familiar to you as a picture—or at any rate can become so. We know today what the embryo looks like in its earliest stages and the form it takes later on, and from this you can make a connected picture of the human being in the embryonic state. You can also form a connected picture of the human being during childhood. You must try to make both the first and second pictures as intense as possible, as though your thinking were actually touching them, so that it seems as if the embryo were tangible to your thinking and you were inwardly following its forms. Then, in your thoughts, expand the embryo to the size of the child in an equally intense mental picture which you can look at and observe. Then, inwardly metamorphosing the mental picture of the embryo, let it pass into the picture of the child. If you really carry this out, you will be aware of certain difficulties. You will feel: If I enlarge the head of the embryo to the size of a child's head, it becomes very big. I must compress it. I must also inwardly crystallize, as it were, all that in the embryo is still watery and fluid, being part of the fluid man so that it becomes the embryonic brain. Then you will have to stretch and give shape to the limbs in the embryonic state. Inwardly you will have to carry out an act of plastic activity by letting the unplastic limbs of the embryo pass over to become the limbs of the child. It is an extraordinarily interesting inner occupation to let the embryo pass over into childhood in inner contemplation.

Then, going further, you can make the same experiment with the child and the grown-up person. Here there will be greater difficulty. The differences between embryo and child are very considerable and you will have to be extremely active inwardly if you are to succeed. But when you compare childhood with the prime of life, the differences will not be so great. The difficulty will be to fit the one into the other. But if you succeed in this, the imagination of the human etheric body will actually come to birth within you, and comparatively soon.

Shove man's earliest time
[- the embryonic life -]
On into childhood,
And carry childhood on
Into the days of youth.
There will appear to you, condensed, Human ether being
Behind the body's structure.
[- physical body in its structure -]

Schiebe die Frühzeit
[ - Embryonalzeit -]
In des Kindes Alter,
Und des Kindes Alter In die Jugend Zeit.
Dir erscheint verdichtet Menschenäthersein
Hinter Körperwesen.
[ -physischer Leib in seiner Struktur-]

Here you have a guiding principle which you can use just as well as the others I have given during these lectures. But you must fully realize that the acquisition of imaginative consciousness demands effort. It is not to be attained by mere beckoning but only by strenuous work.

Now you can go still further. You can try to picture an old, sclerotic man—old men are, to a certain extent, sclerotic—feeling that you are touching him and in this act of spiritual touching you get the impression that he is really hollow. The impression you get when you touch an old, sclerotic man spiritually is not as if he were more solid, harder, but, on the contrary, as if he were sucking at you. In this spiritual touching the feeling is as if, in the physical world, you were to run a moistened finger along the foam of a breaking wave or along the surface of clay. This, as you know, gives the impression of suction. So it is, spiritually, with a sclerotic old man. You must develop this experience of touch in your visual picture of the old man. This applies not only to the visual act but to any one of the twelve senses, also to the sense of life (Lebenssinn). So you have a picture of age, with its density, which seems to exercise suction. And now just as in the first instance you let the picture of the embryonic period pass on into the picture of childhood and then into that of the prime of life, maturity—now let the picture of old age pass backwards. Picture the mature human being and let your touch experience of the aged man pass back into the picture of man in the prime of life, who does not seem to suck but stands in the world full of vigor. When you let the picture of the embryonic structure pass over into the structure of childhood, you carried out a spatial metamorphosis—what happens now is that with old age you have the impression of a being who has been hollowed out, who sucks all the time, and this hollow being seems to be filled with force and energy when you let the picture pass back into the age of maturity. Whereas the first picture of abounding strength is connected with an experience of being very slightly paralyzed, when the picture of the old man is let pass backwards, vigor seems again to come into his bones and into the whole structure of his solid organism. More care must be taken when this inner process is being carried out. And then the picture of the prime of life must be carried back to that of youth. This is an easier thing to do. We picture a man who already has one or two wrinkles and then let him be merged into the picture of a young, chubby-faced person. When we succeed in doing this, we get the impression of the etheric body being animated, beginning to ring and sound. This gives us an impression of the astral nature of the human being. And so you have a guiding principle for the ascent to inspiration.

Shove old age's density
Back into the prime of life,
And the prime of life
Back into the life of youth.
There will ring forth in cosmic tones The working of man's soul
[—astral body—]
Out of the Ether life.

Schiebe die Altersdichte In die Menschenreifezeit,
Und das reife Alter
In das Jugendleben.
Dir ertönt in Weltenklängen Menschenseelenwirken
[ - der Astralleib also -]
Aus dem Ätherleben.

You will realize from what I have told you that guiding lines for meditation are not given out as a commandment but are based upon things that can be understood. When a human being is guided to meditation in the proper way, conditions are not as they once were in the ancient East, when both the upbringing of children and the development of old age rested upon quite different foundations. When somebody is given meditations today, they are of such a form that he realizes and understands what he is doing with himself. In the East the child was under the guidance of his Dada. This meant that the child was taught and brought up according to the Dada's mode of life. The child learned no more than he was able to learn by watching the Dada. When a grown-up man wished to make progress, he had his Guru. And the Guru taught in no other way than: thus it is and thus it shall be done. The difference in our Western civilization is that an appeal is always made to the free spiritual activity of the human being, so that he is fully aware of what he is doing. He also has insight into how inspiration arises.

If with the powers of healthy human intelligence we have grasped how physical illness and spiritual illness work—and the things I have told you today can be understood by healthy human intelligence—if we go on to realize what we should achieve in meditation, we have reached, with the powers of healthy human intelligence, the boundary of what can be attained. Healthy human intelligence can acquire everything that proceeds from Anthroposophy. When things begin that are not to be understood by healthy human intelligence, then it is right for this intelligence to work only so far as that boundary, and no farther. It is like standing by an lake—a boundary is there, too. We look towards it from the shore. Truly, the healthy human intelligence leads right up to this boundary. No criticism ought to be leveled at you for spreading an obscure, mystical view of the world, for it should be one that is attainable by all healthy human intelligence. When I once said the same thing in Berlin, an article that was written about the lecture, said: Healthy human intelligence can comprehend nothing whatever about the spiritual world and a form of intelligence which does grasp something about the spiritual world is ill; it is not healthy. This was what was held up against me.

I want still to say something else. Your medical studies oblige you to look very intimately into the whole nature and being of man and as young men and women you are in a special position. In all seriousness we must take the fact that the Kali Yuga has passed, that we have entered a new Age of Light although for the reason that the old continues through inertia, humanity is still living in the darkness. From the spiritual universe, light is shining in; as human beings, we are entering an Age of Light; only we must make ourselves fit to realize the intentions of this Age of Light. Young people are especially predestined for this and if with the necessary earnestness they unfold a definite consciousness of why they have been born precisely at the beginning of the Age of Light, it will be possible for them to adjust themselves to what is really demanded in the sense of the true evolution of humanity. And what is demanded now is that we shall look into the human being if we want to explain the world, just as formerly men looked at nature in order to see how the human being is built up out of the forces and processes of nature. Man and his being will have to be understood and the single nature processes as specializations, one-sided processes of what is going on within the human being. When this point is reached a certain inward quality in all the activities of human feeling and the human mind will arise—a quality that has been sought for, although in a rather tumultuous fashion.

Think only of how youth began to deify nature when the Youth Movement of the Age of Light began. It was all abstract, however vitally the impulse may have been felt. The true path of spiritual development for the young man or woman today must lead to the unfolding of intimate feelings for his connection, as a human being, with the world—there must be intimate, tender feelings and what the young absorb spiritually must no longer be a science for the intellect. In that he remains cold—it has always been so. Science must take a form in which every stage that is reached means that one becomes a different human being in feeling and in mind, and acquainted with something that has been forgotten. We also learned to know nature before we came down into the physical world. But then, nature had a different appearance. When a young human being today is led to a coarse, robust, external way of looking at things, the deathblow is struck at what he experienced in pre-earthly existence. If we could succeed in feeling that an old acquaintance of pre-earthly life had entered into our external, material way of looking at things, then feeling would flow into knowledge and understanding. And like a bloodstream, a spiritual bloodstream, this must go through the whole of scientific life, above all through the whole education and teaching of the human being. It is this intimacy with reality that must be acquired in science. Truly the modern age was lacking in understanding in this respect.

Comparatively early in my life I tried to show how the human being, when he confronts the outer world of sense, really has only the half reality, and how he only reaches the whole reality when he unites what arises within him with the outer, material reality. And to begin with, because the times were quite different then—things have always to be prepared—I had to present it in terms of a theory of knowledge. When you read my little book Truth and Science (Mercury Press, 1993), try to let the spiritual rise up into the mind and heart, the spiritual that wells forth from within. Thereby the first step is taken towards this “making inward” of science, especially towards a heart-filled receptivity to world reality. The physician has particular opportunities for this intimate experiencing of reality and therefore the physician, just because he is a physician, can be the person who can make the abstractness prevalent in the other Youth Movement composed of those who are not destined to be physicians, more concrete, more full of heart. A young person today who has some real knowledge of medicine has the advantage when he comes together with someone else who knows nothing but jurisprudence and is, consequently, to be pitied. Medicine can be deepened as we are deepening it here, but with law this is quite impossible. Even up to the beginning of the eighteenth century, something of the spirit still remained in medicine; in jurisprudence spirituality ceased far away in the Middle Ages, when men no longer even dreamed of the spirit and had nothing but recorded statutes. The physician who from the very beginning comes to grips with the most concrete facts of life can have an extraordinarily good effect upon the rest of the youth.

It would be good if you, as physicians, would interest yourselves, too, when opportunity arises, in the educational work that is being done in the Anthroposophical movement. There would be nothing to prevent this if you are in real earnest. The information contained in the Waldorf School Seminary courses cannot be given to everyone, but when somebody shows genuine interest there is nothing against your getting these courses if you really study them from the medical point of view, remembering the close relationship that existed in ancient times between healing and education.

In these days we have quite got away from the conception of man as a being who comes into earthly life burdened with sin, because the modern mind simply does not know what sin really is. What is it that took form as the notion of sin? It is what I have spoken of here as the law of heredity—this is the inherited sin. Individual sin, too, is something that the human being has to overcome in the second half of his life. He has to overcome the sinful model, which comes from heredity. We can also say the sick model, according to ancient conceptions. If the human being were to retain, as his body, what works in his model up to the change of teeth, he would carry it within him his whole life long and at nine years of age he would be a man—how shall I put it?—the whole of his skin would be covered with a kind of moist eczema and if the condition continued he would get little cavities all over his body, would look like a leper, and if he lived on at all the flesh would fall away from his bones. Man is born as a sick being into the world and to educate him, that is to say, to understand and guide what is working according to the model, is the same thing as a mild healing process. Within the Youth Movement and when speaking of education, you should consider yourselves as healers. You can indicate the remedies—which in the first place, of course, remain a spiritual matter—but can certainly be applied physically when a child's condition becomes pathological. In pedagogy, too, there is an art of healing, only it is on another level, another plane. On the other hand, when a patient gives no help at all by working with any guiding principle we may give him for his own subjective consciousness, for the understanding of his illness, for pessimism or optimism in his conception of life—when we simply cannot work educationally—it is exceedingly difficult to help him medically. If the patient—I do not say that he must have blind faith in the remedy for that would be an exaggeration—but if the patient, simply through the individuality of the physician, is brought to a point where he feels the physician's will-to-heal, the reflex action in him is that he will be filled with the will to become healthy. This interplay of the will-to-heal and the will to be healthy plays a tremendous part in the therapeutic process. We can therefore say that there is a reflection of education in healing, and in education a reflection of healing.

Very much depends today upon human beings in the world coming together in the right consciousness. If, therefore, medical youth comes together with the other youth in the right consciousness, the result will certainly be that the medical youth can work very fruitfully on the others. But what is so necessary is to sharpen the consciousness in both directions.

These are the things that I would fain have laid into your souls and hearts, now that you have come here again. I hope they have helped to strengthen still more the bonds between your souls and the Goetheanum and that even in such a concrete domain as that of medicine, the Goetheanum will find human beings who carry out into the world those things that can be found here. You will think rightly about this if you will also feel yourselves as part of the Goetheanum and will often turn your thoughts to what the Goetheanum desires for the world and the growth of civilization. And so the ties of heart that you can form with the Goetheanum may be a very great help to you in the tasks before you. This is what I have had in mind in giving these more intimate addresses and I believe that we shall be able to achieve much if, after what must be the last lecture now, you will carry this feeling out into the world. Thereby we shall also remain together and the Goetheanum will feel itself a center with a definite task. Then the Goetheanum will be a real Goetheanum and you, true Goetheanists. And at the same time, out yonder in the world you will be the supporting pillars which the Goetheanum needs. If things go on in this way, everything will be well.

I pointed out yesterday how the spiritual components of man's being have their points of contact in his physical organism. Awareness of this will have to enter into the consciousness of mankind as a whole, for it is this knowledge that in truth must lead man to the light out of the darkness of today's materialism, which will last for a very, very long time. Never, though, must the thread of spiritual knowledge be lost entirely. At least a small group of human beings must always ensure that this does not happen. I have already shown how the true discoveries of material science—which anthroposophical spiritual science must certainly not fail to recognize—are put in the correct light when things are seen spiritually, especially the human being. The examples I started with yesterday can show you how the physical processes in the human being are fully recognized by spiritual science—only spiritual science recognizes what is spiritual and investigates how the spiritual element is anchored in the physical element, especially, in the first instance, in the human being.

Thus we avoided the pitfall of seeking the spiritual element solely in abstract concepts which are unable to deal with something that has been created by it, namely, the material world. What is spiritual must not live only in a Cloud-cuckoo-land floating above the material world. It must be so strong and intense that it can permeate the material element and show how spiritual it is and how it has been created by the spirit. Thus true spiritual knowledge must come to the possibility of understanding the material world and existence on the physical plane. It is important now, of all times, to pay attention to the interaction of spiritual and material elements in the human being, because now it is necessary properly to understand the intervention of something not material, namely, the folk soul, in the human being.

I said: Those things in everyday life which we think, feel and will—not as members of one group of people or another but as citizens of the earth—are bound to the solid, earthly element. Even though only five per cent of our body is made of this earthly element, I said that that in us which gives us in the world between birth and death our purely personal knowledge, will impulses and degrees of feeling, is bound to the mineral, solid element of the brain; that is where it has its point of contact. As soon as we progress to what leads us into super-personal or sub-personal realms, we can no longer count on conceptions which are brought to us by the solid element, for conceptions here are brought by the fluid element. And conceptions which take us so far into the super-personal or sub-personal realm that we come to the intervention of the archangeloi in our being are brought to us by the airy element. The airy element is the mediator between these archangel beings and their sphere and everything which the human being experiences in that very subconscious way I described yesterday.

Well over ninety per cent of our physical being is a pillar of water, a pillar of liquid, but this liquid element in the human being, of which very little account has so far been taken by natural science, is the main bearer of life in the human being. I have pointed out how the aeriform element works through the liquid element into the solid element which is anchored in the brain. We breathe in; because we breathe in a stream of air and fill our body with it, the organ we call the diaphragm is pushed down. In this sucking-in of the stream of air and everything that goes with it, down to the lowering of the diaphragm, is to be found that sphere in which the impulses emanating from the kingdom of the archangeloi work. Just as all this remains in the subconscious, so does the real manner of the folk soul's working remain in the subconscious. As I said by way of comparison yesterday, it surges up like waves, in a form that differs utterly from the way it lives down there in the depths. When the diaphragm is pushed downwards it, in a way, dams up the blood in the veins of the abdomen. This pushes the stream of cerebral fluid upwards through the spinal cord so that it pours into the brain, or rather round the solidified mass of the brain. So now, as a result of breathing in, the cerebral fluid is in the brain, has been pushed up. In the way these pulsations of the cerebral fluid work lie all the impulses that come into man from the sphere of the archangeloi, everything man can have in the way of conceptions and feelings which lift him into the realm of the super-personal or sub-personal, everything that connects him with the forces that reach beyond birth and death. And in the brain itself the cerebral fluid comes up against the solid element.

Parallel with this runs the process by which all our ideas and conceptions ebb and flow in the liquid element. These ideas and conceptions are spiritual entities which ebb and flow in the liquid element, and they appear as our everyday conceptions relating to the external world because they come up against the solid element and are mirrored back by this solid element into consciousness.

When we breathe out, a damming-up takes place in the blood vessels of the brain, and the cerebral fluid is pushed down through the spinal cord into the abdomen. There is room for it there because breathing out has raised the diaphragm. So thinking and having ideas and so on is not the mere brain process of which the sciences of anatomy and physiology dream today. What takes place in the brain is a mirroring-back by something solid, and this is connected with what is not mirrored but remains in the fluid element whence, via the detour of breathing, it regulates the influence of the aeriform element. This is also the detour via which everything is mediated to us which belongs to a particular climate, the local soil conditions of a particular terrain and all the other influences connected with breathing. That part of breathing which never enters our consciousness but remains lika an ocean swell, is where spiritual realities surge. Via the detour through the cerebral fluid the breathing process is connected with the brain.

Here you have a physical process belonging to the whole human being, described in such a way that you can recognize it as a revelation of the spirit which surrounds us everywhere, just as does air or humidity. This gives you, through a true understanding of physical processes, an insight into how his earthly surroundings, together with the spirit contained in them, work on man, and into how, as a being both spiritual and physical, man is embedded in his earthly environment, which is also spiritual and physical. The air, water and warmth which surround us are nothing other than bodies for the spirit, just as our muscles and nerves are bodies for the spirit.

I am presenting you with these things now because they show how human life is founded on processes which are not at all obvious to present-day science. It will be the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to raise these processes to the level of true knowledge. During the course of the fifth post-Atlantean period this realization must enter into everything we do—in teaching, in education generally and in the whole of external life. It must, in due course, be recognized that what is seen as science in materialistic circles today will gradually have to disappear from the life of the earth, together with all the consequences it has for life. All the battles still to be won in the fifth post-Atlantean period will be no more than an external expression of a spiritual battle, just as, in the final analysis, the present battle is an external expression of the confrontation between materialism and spiritual life. Hidden though these things are, behind today's infinitely sad events lies the battle of materialism against spiritual life. This battle will have to be fought to the end. It will take various forms, but it must be fought to the end because human beings must learn to bear everything they need to bear in order to achieve the spiritual view necessary for the sixth post-Atlantean period. It may be said that there must be much suffering, but only out of pain and suffering can arise what truly binds knowledge to our self. For the other side of the coin is that connected with the materialistic view of the world, is the materialistic way of life, which is only beginning today but which will take on infinitely more terrible forms.

The materialistic way of life began when science became willing to recognize only what is material. It has already led to a stage at which people are prepared, in life, too, to accept only what is material. This will be taken much, much further and will become far more intense. For the fifth post-Atlantean period must be lived to the end. In all areas it must reach a kind of climax. For spirituality needs its opposite pole if it is to recognize itself with the intensity that will be needed if mankind is to step with maturity into the sixth post-Atlantean period.

So do not shy away from following the spiritual guidelines offered as a possibility for comprehending the external facts of the world. For it is the prime task and duty of all those who strive spiritually to comprehend the course of human evolution up to the present and also to understand the likely evolution of the future in spiritual directions. We have often spoken of our inheritance from the fourth post-Atlantean period which ended in the fifteenth century, and of the fact that it is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean period to develop to the full the consciousness soul.

Now it is precisely the consciousness soul which will unite man intimately with all material events and everything belonging to materialism. We have seen how, in the fourth post-Atlantean period, from the eighth century BC right up to the fifteenth century AD, the Greco-Latin element gradually came to dominate the world, first in what is usually called the Roman Empire and later in the Roman Papacy which reached the climax of its dominance during the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. This is at the same time the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. It coincided with the first breaking of Roman Papal dominance. It is also the beginning of those impulses whose influence has brought about the present sad events. In the end no one can understand what is going on today without taking a wider view. For really all the peoples of Europe have contributed their share to the sad events of today's Europe. Those who want to understand things must necessarily turn their attention to impulses which have been in preparation for a long time and which today are being given a kind of first chance to show themselves.

So today we shall bring together what can be seen far in the future with things that are close at hand. First let us remember the description I gave of how the southern peoples, the Italian and Spanish peoples and the various kingdoms they have brought forth, represent a kind of after-effect of the third post-Atlantean period—of course, with the inclusion of the overall heritage of the fourth period. You need only follow the whole structure of Italian-Spanish development as it took place at the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean period, in order to see that it still included what was directly justified in the third, the Egypto-Chaldean period. You can see this especially in the way in which, emanating from Rome and Spain, a religion spread which was borrowed from the cults of Egypt and Chaldea. In this you have the continued existence of what had been left behind in Egypt and Chaldea, and this reached its climax in the thirteenth century.

Papal supremacy emanated from the South and reached its climax in the thirteenth century. In order to describe it in a way which is meaningful today and which fits the facts, we should have to say that this papal supremacy, which covered and dominated the whole of European culture, was essentially the ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy. This ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy, which was a transformation of ancient Rome into the Roman Catholicism which streamed into Europe, is one of the impulses which continue to work like retarded impulses throughout the whole fifth post-Atlantean period, but especially in its first third. You could, I might add, work out how long this is going to last. You know that one post-Atlantean period lasts approximately 2,160 years. One third of this is 720 years. So starting with the year 1415, this takes the main period to the year 2135. Therefore the last waves of hierarchical Romanism will last into the beginning of the third millennium. These are echoes in which the impulses of the fourth post-Atlantean period assert themselves in the forms of the third post-Atlantean period. But many things work side by side at the same time, so there are other impulses working together with these. Roman Catholicism had its actual climax in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Let us now see how it continues. We have to distinguish the way it worked up to the thirteenth century—when it was, you might say, justified, because that was still the fourth post-Atlantean period—and what then followed, when it began to assume the character of a retarded impulse. It seeks to spread. But how? For it certainly spreads significantly. We see that the form of the state, which gradually matures in the new age, is more or less saturated with this Roman Catholicism. We see that the English state as it begins to grow at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period is at first entirely in the hands of this Roman Catholicism. We see how France and the rest of Europe are entirely in the grip of this Roman element of hierarchy and cultus in so far as their ideas and cultural life are concerned. To characterize this impetus we would have to say that there is an impulse on the part of Rome to permeate, to saturate the culture of Europe with this hierarchical ecclesiastical element right up to the bulwark it has itself created in eastern Europe. But it is noteworthy that an impulse like this, if it is a retarded impulse, takes on an external character. It no longer has the strength to develop any inner intensity, but becomes external in character. It spreads out widely on the surface but has no strength to go into its own depths. So we see the strange phenomenon of Roman hierarchism spreading further and further afield yet, in the countries at its core, being unable to give any inward strength, thus depriving its own population of inwardness.

See how such things start. Everywhere Romanism spreads in all shapes and forms, whereas in Italy itself, in Spain, the population is hollowed out. Just think what an extraordinary Christianity lived in Italy when the Papacy was at the height of its glory. It was the Christianity against which the thunderous words of Savonarola were directed. For in isolated individuals, such as Savonarola, the Christ impulse was alive; but these individuals felt impelled to grind official Christianity into the dust. A history telling of what happened at the point from which Christianity rayed forth would have to say: The power of the Roman church element rayed forth, but the Christian souls at the point from which this happened were hollowed out. This could be proved in detail. It is an important truth: Something raying out destroys its own inner core. This is how life goes. Like a human being growing old and using up his forces, so do cultural phenomena, when they spread, use up their own being and hollow themselves out.

On earlier occasions I have shown how the French state was in a certain way a recapitulation of the fourth post-Atlantean period in the fifth. Here we now have a second case of raying forth. For the southern element we used the expression ‘ecclesiastical element of cultus and hierarchy’ to describe something that strove to found a universal monarchy of the church, a theocracy of Europe. Now we shall endeavour to find an expression to describe that cultural element which bears the culture of the intellectual- or mind-soul from the fourth post-Atlantean period up into the fifth. An expression encompassing all the historical elements, an expression which fits the facts and describes the reality of what is brought into the fifth post-Atlantean period, if we have the good will to find it, would have to be: the universal diplomatic element. Everything connected with this universal diplomatic element is also connected with what grew out of the French state element. It is not for nothing that the French language is the language of diplomacy, even today. Every historical trend is illuminated in detail when you discover that just as the universal theocratic element rays out from Rome and Spain, so the universal diplomatic element rays out from Paris.

And it is remarkable that just as with the Spanish-Italian element—though to a lesser degree because the element being brought forward is less ancient—so also, in the case of the French element, the raying forth is accompanied at its source by a hollowing out. It is particularly interesting to view history in the light of this. Take the way in which great French statesmen, such as Richelieu or Mazarin, inaugurate and carry on world diplomacy by translating old impulses into the diplomatic, political element. The servants of Louis XIV think on a European, not a French, scale and see themselves as the obvious leaders of Europe as regards the diplomatic, the universal, diplomatic element. One element, one impulse, always absorbs the other. It is not for nothing that cardinals practised in politics and diplomacy surround the King of France when the French state is at its zenith.

Studying that time particularly in the history of France, we find that the very concern which sends diplomacy all over Europe withdraws from its own country infinitely great forces in the realm of economics, finance, and also culture in general, hollowing it out down to the fine details. To see things this way, they must, of course, not be viewed in the light of national prejudices, but in all truth, objectively and impartially. This hollowing out is also the source of that uprising of the people into the element of revolution which leads to the exact opposite of what would be the most suitable for the French state: monarchy. In the Spanish-Italian realm there is no parallel to this Revolution, for the reasons I have already given. Yet it is precisely this Revolution which shows how strangely this contrast works in the French element, this contrast between concern for European diplomacy and the lesser concern for one's own country.

For we must not forget that the fifth post-Atlantean period was accompanied by the spread of civilization and culture across the whole earth, which went with the discovery of hitherto unknown regions. We see how, as a matter of course, those states which border the ocean build up their navies. French diplomacy spreads its concern over the whole earth, and at the same time—you can follow this in the various trends of history—the French navy begins to blossom; but this has its opposite in what rages uncared-for within and then comes to expression in the Revolution. It is notable that the more the Revolution proceeds, the more the French navy is neglected. You can observe how, during the build-up to the French Revolution, France's sea power grows ever smaller as her navy is totally neglected.

This has a significant consequence. When the French element withdraws once again from the revolutionary age and returns to what is more suited to it—the emperorship of Napoleon—there develops in the person of Napoleon that significant opposition to the third element, that element which is now suitable for the fifth post-Atlantean period, the opposition of France against England. This had been in preparation for a long time but in the person of Napoleon it took on quite a new character that differed greatly from the character it had had before.

What is most remarkable in all the waves created by Napoleonism? If you investigate what lived in Europe with regard to Napoleon, you find the important opposition between Napoleon and England. But Napoleon lacked something which was missing in the heritage of the Revolution, something which had to be lacking—I speak of a historical necessity—but which he would have needed so that the second element could have asserted itself against the third, the French against the English, namely: a navy! Hypotheses are only justified in connection with history as tools for understanding, but they can indeed make a great contribution. So let us make a hypothesis: If Napoleon had had a navy which he could have joined to those of other countries with which he was allied, he would not have been defeated at sea by England and the whole of history would have taken a different course. But the Revolution had not given him a navy. Here we see the mutual limitation of the two elements, those of the third and the fourth post-Atlantean periods, as they rise up into the fifth.

Now we come to the third element, the one which corresponds to the fifth post-Atlantean period and has the task of bringing into being the culture of the consciousness soul: the English, the British element. The sentient soul element, brought into culture by the Italian-Spanish sphere, expresses itself in the theocratic element of the cultus—the sentient soul does not live in consciousness. Similarly the political and diplomatic element corresponds to the French sphere. And now in the British sphere we have the commercial and industrial element, in which the human soul lives fully and entirely in the material world of the physical plane. But we must make clear an important difference. The Papacy could only pretend to world dominance for one particular reason.

Here [the lecturer drew] is the fourth post-Atlantean period. Now comes the first element, A, of the fifth post-Atlantean period, the papal, hierarchical element. It strives for a kind of universal monarchy because in a certain way it is the continuation of the universal Roman Empire.

Here, B, is the culture of the intellectual or mind soul. It also strives for something universal, but it is something universal that is very much in the realm of ideas. The most important consequence of the spread of the French element are not the conquests, which are merely side-effects, but the saturation of the world with the political spirit, with political, diplomatic thinking and feeling—that diplomatic, political thinking found not only in French diplomacy and politics, but also in literature and even the other aspects of French artistic life. A universal monarchy in connection with this could only be described as a kind of universal dream. And the way in which France marched in the forefront of civilization is a very exact expression of this dream.

In contrast, we now come to the third element, C. This, in harmony with the whole of the fifth post-Atlantean period, which has the task of bringing to expression the consciousness soul, is what corresponds to the British element, the special bearer of the consciousness soul in the age which is to develop especially the consciousness soul. Hence the pretension of the British element to universal commercial and industrial world dominance.

My dear friends, things which have their foundation in the spiritual world will run their course. They will, with all certainty, run their course. Do not imagine that you can moralize or theorize about this. They will run their course and become fact. Nobody need believe, therefore, that the mission of the British people will not—out of inner necessity—become fact: namely, the mission to found a universal commercial and industrial monarchy over the whole earth. The pretensions emerge as realities. These things have to be recognized as lying in world karma. And what people express and what they think is only a revelation of spiritual forces behind the scenes. So nobody should believe that British politics will ever be morally reformed and withdraw, out of consideration for the world, from the pretension to dominate the world industrially and commercially. Therefore we need not be surprised either that those who understand these things have founded societies whose sole aim is to realize such aims by the use of means which are also spiritual means.

This is where the forbidden interplay begins. For obviously occult principles, occult means and occult impulses are not permissible as promoters, as driving forces, especially in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which ought to be a purely materialistic civilization. The moment occult impulses work behind the spread of this purely materialistic culture, things become questionable. Yet, as I have shown you, this is what is happening. There are those who want to foster world dominance not only with the forces available on the physical plane, but also with the impulses of occultism, the impulses which lie in the world of the invisible. But these occult means are not used to work for the good of mankind in general but only for the good of a group. If you see the connection between such encompassing viewpoints, given to you from deeper knowledge, and everyday events, you will thoroughly understand a great deal.

There are still plenty of praiseworthy idealists—this is not meant as any kind of mockery, for idealism is always praiseworthy, even when it errs—who believe that the network of commercial and industrial measures, which has been spread by the British Empire over various countries, can only last as long as the war, and that after that people will once more be free to go about their own commercial business. Apart from a few illusions which will be raised by creating some interregnum or other, or by some other means to prevent people from becoming suspicious, all the measures that have been set up during this war to control commercial traffic throughout the world are not intended as something that will disappear once the war is over, but as something which is only beginning with the help of the war and will then continue. The war merely provides the opportunity for noses to be poked into business records. But do not imagine that this poking of noses into business records will cease after the war. I am speaking symbolically to describe something that will take place on the widest scale. What I mean is that commercial world dominance will become more and more thorough.

I am not saying all this in order to be inflammatory, but simply in order to show you what, out of the impulses of world history, really is the case. Only by recognizing what is really the case can people learn to conduct themselves appropriately. That is no doubt why that map of the European world turned out in the way I showed you on the blackboard yesterday. Let me repeat: I have traced this map back to the eighties of the nineteenth century. How far back it goes beyond that I do not know. I state only what I know, only what I can assert with certainty. That is why I have said nothing about the Scandinavian countries, since I do not know whether any plans have been made for them too. I limit myself strictly to what I know, and wish to stress this particularly on this occasion, though it is a principle which I follow on every occasion.

Further, this map—that is, this rearrangement of European affairs—has the tendency to serve the formation of a universal commercial monarchy. Europe is to be arranged in such a way that a universal commercial monarchy can be founded. I am not saying that this is to happen by tomorrow. But you can see that part payments are already being demanded. Only compare the most recent note to Wilson with the map of Europe, and there you have it. Nothing is said as yet about Switzerland. This payment on account will be demanded later. But as the demands appear one by one they will correspond to the map I drew yesterday.

The division of Europe shown there is suited to the founding of commercial world dominance. Study the details of this map and you will see that it is well conceived as a basis for founding what I have just said. I said: commercial world dominance. There is no need actually to possess all the territories, for it is quite sufficient to arrange them in such a way that they fall into one's sphere of influence. It is also very cleverly arranged so that at first those very regions will be drawn into the sphere of influence which I yesterday coloured yellow, as being the ones to be claimed as British: the peripheral territories. Indeed, in order to leave the others a little longer in the warm glow of a certain idealism, it is possible to arrange things in such a way that one practises the commercial domination oneself while leaving the others to play about with territories for a little longer. But the spheres of influence will be established as the drawing shows. It is quite irrelevant whether in the year 1950 there will be a Belgium, or a France extending right up to the border. The important thing is what power Belgians have in Belgium, or the French in France, and what power the British have in Belgium or France. In order to found commercial world dominance it is not necessary to actually possess the territories. What we must be clear about is that this world dominance is to be commercial and industrial. This is the basis for something extremely important.

I should, though, have to give a whole series of lectures if I needed to prove these things to you in detail. This would be perfectly possible, for the things I am saying can be proved very profoundly. Today, however, I can only draw an outline. In order to found a commercial and industrial world dominance, the first thing to do is to divide the main region into two parts. This has to do with the nature of commercial and industrial affairs. I can only explain this by using an analogy: Whatever takes place on the physical plane always requires a splitting into two parts.

Imagine a teacher without any pupils; there is no such thing. In the same way there cannot be a commercial empire without another region which is its counterpart. Therefore if a British commercial empire is founded, then a Russian opposite pole must be founded too. So that a differentiation can arise between buying and selling, so that the necessary circulation can come about, two regions are needed. If the whole world were to be made into a unified realm, it would be impossible to found a universal commercial realm. It is not quite the same, but similar to saying that if you produce something you need a buyer, otherwise you cannot produce. So this twofold split is necessary. And the fact that this has been initiated as a major trend is a great—indeed, a gigantic—conception on the part of those secret brotherhoods of which I have spoken. To create this contrast is a conception of universal proportions, against which everything else pales into insignificance: this contrast, between the British commercial empire on the one hand and, on the other, all that emanates from the Russian sphere involving, through their spiritual capacities, preparations for the sixth post-Atlantean period, together with everything I have described to you. It is a great, gigantic, admirable conception of these secret brotherhoods about whom we have spoken. Put simply, it is hardly possible to imagine a better opposite pole for what has developed in the West—namely, the supreme flowering of commercial and industrial thought—than the future Russian Slav who in times to come is sure to be even less inclined than he is today to occupy himself professionally with commercial matters, and who, just because of this, will be an excellent polar opposite.

A commercial empire of this kind will, of course, have to state its own terms. Profound thought on the part of Spencer, and even his predecessor, led them to stress repeatedly: The industrial and commercial element which suffuses a nation does not want to have anything to do with war; it is for peace, it needs peace and loves peace. It is absolutely true: There will indeed be a deep love between the element striving towards commerce and industry and the element striving towards peace in the world. Only this love for peace can sometimes adopt bizarre forms, as witness the present note to Wilson, which certainly contains something peculiar.

Look at what happens to Austria in this map, which is drawn exactly in accordance with the note. Yet this note dares to express something else as well: The common political unity living in the nations of Central Europe is not to be touched in any way. Well, this too is ‘gigantic’, a gigantically frivolous game with the truth. Usually untruths are not actually put down on paper, but here we have one note which says two different things: We shall dismember the middle realm, but we shall, of course, do it no harm. There is an accompanying chorus from the newspapers too. They write: Let us see whether the Central Powers will agree to these acceptable terms. Everywhere we read: The Entente Powers have stated their terms; now we shall see whether these terms, which ought to be eminently acceptable to the Central Powers, are bluntly rejected or not. Things have come a long way, have they not! For such things are there for all to read.

Now let us see where the thought leads us. We are dealing here with a splitting of the world into two parts, and those concerned are interested in achieving this in such a way that they can say to the world: We want peace, we stand only for peace. The recipe they are following is one which is behind much that is written today. It is like saying: I shall not touch you, I shall not harm a hair of your head, but I shall lock you in a deep dungeon and not give you anything to eat! Have I done anything to you? Could anyone maintain that I have harmed even a single hair of your head?

Many things are shaped in accordance with this recipe. Even the love for peace, despite the fact that it is a reality, is shaped in accordance with it. But if this love for peace is paired with a pretension to commercial world dominance it becomes unacceptable for the other side and it is utterly impossible to apply it. And so the peace-loving commercial empire is sure to find itself in future somewhat disturbed in its love for peace. This is, of course, known to those who divide the world into two parts, and so they need a rampart in between. This rampart is to take the form of the great southern European confederation which also comprises Hungary and everything else I mentioned yesterday. This is supposed to make for peace. Through the sphere of influence I have hinted at, the manner in which the British Empire is behaving towards the Mediterranean shows that it can quite easily give the southern European confederation Constantinople, as well as all kinds of other things. For they cannot go further than the Mediterranean, since the West, if it so wishes, can blockade the Mediterranean at any time.

In short, you can follow in every detail the gigantic, splendid thought on which this map is based. We have not enough time today to go through everything in detail. But it is a gigantic, splendid thought to leave only the southern ports which lead to the Mediterranean open for France, whilst keeping the others under one's own sphere of influence. This means, basically, that the French Empire, which France was anyway only able to found under the protection of the others, becomes an illusion, and can also be included in one's sphere of influence. If you follow all this, you will see in how gigantic a manner is to be realized—out of what belongs to the culture of the consciousness soul—what these occult schools are striving to achieve.

Those things which correspond to certain impulses do come to pass. For necessity governs world history and world evolution. These things do come to pass. But they come to pass in such a way that forces really do mutually affect one another. Just as there can never be positive without negative electricity; where opposites work on one another with varying intentions—so is it also in the events of human history. Therefore we must be careful, when we turn our attention to such things, to apply judgement that is free of moralizing. This also saves us from asking: Why must such a thing happen? For in the mission of one element or another is included the fact that things develop which must develop. And the adversary, the opposite pole must also exist: namely, something that resists whatever it is that wants to come about. This also must exist. So if we now once again take a wide view of all these things, we shall see something working in from the periphery which we have characterized as these three elements.

First let us return to the centre. Our concern here is that the adversary, the opposite pole should be there, so that a kind of brake can always be applied. This brake is just as necessary as the other element. And I blame one as little as I praise the other. I am simply describing the impulses and the facts. I have not the least inclination to pronounce a morally disparaging judgement on something I am describing as a necessity arising out of the whole character of the fifth post-Atlantean period. There is nothing bad about giving the world a materialistic, industrial, commercial culture, for this is a necessity. But the opposite pole must exist, too, for human evolution cannot proceed in a straight line. Opposing forces must clash with one another, and in this clash reality evolves. In Central Europe a collection of impulses has always of necessity existed, some of which worked with those streaming to the periphery in the way I have already described, while others had what was in many ways the tragic destiny of working in opposition to these.

These forces certainly stream outwards from Central Europe and make themselves felt elsewhere in many ways. But if you look closely you will find also in Central Europe the forces that oppose those I have described. Consider, for instance, that the first opposition to the theocratic, cultic element of the Spanish and Italian South came from Central Europe. It reached a certain climax in Luther and its greatest profundity in the mysticism of Central Europe. Not only German elements worked here, for mingled in the Central European stream were also Slav elements. Here there was a desire not for the Christianity of the Papal hierarchy, but for precisely that inwardness that had been hollowed out in the South. Savonarola was, after all, simply executed. This inwardness lived in the Czech, John Huss, and in Wyclif who stemmed from the Germanic element in England, and in Zwingli, and in Luther. Its more profound element is to be found in the mysticism of Central Europe, which, by the way, is very close to the Slav element. Precisely these relationships show how things fulfil themselves in a remarkable way. For Central Europe backed up by the Slav element is, in this, certainly an opponent of the periphery. So although they are in many aspects still disunited politically, Central European influences and Slav influences work together. In an occult sense, too, they work together fundamentally in a wonderful way.

We see how a certain materialistic element develops more and more in the South, reaching a peak in such people as Lombroso. We see this materialistic element setting the tone elsewhere in the periphery, as well. Right up to Oliver Lodge, about whom we spoke recently, we see materialism projecting itself into spiritual life. But on the other hand we also see how this is opposed by something which emancipates itself—to start with, from the Roman, hierarchical element. In this, Copernicus, the Pole, stands behind Kepler, the archetypal German; in this, Slav spirits, in particular, stand behind those who are German spirits. Indeed I could say: On the physical plane we see links between what is Central European and what is Slav; Huss, the Czech, Copernicus, the Pole—others might just as easily be named—these form a link stretching across the physical plane. We see, too, how in Central Europe the Slav element joins with the German element—we see the eastern European Slav element growing together with Europe. This, though, we only see when we consider the occult situation.

Let me give only one example: The soul of Galileo lives again in the Russian Lomonosov, and the Russian Lomonosov is in many ways the founder of Slav culture in the East. In between these two lies the spiritual world, so that we might say: The Central European Slavs are still linked with the people of the West on the physical plane; what lies behind this is linked with the people of the West via the higher plane.

This fits entirely with the fact that the Russian element follows the Slav element; but it also fits with the situation in which the western Slav element must be thought of as having a relationship to Western Europe differing from that of the eastern Slav element. Therefore, only those who do not think in accordance with human evolution as a whole, but solely in accordance with the English-speaking Empire, will want to assimilate Poland in the Russian Empire.

This point in particular gives an example of the difference between the kind of thinking which is concerned only with a particular group and that other kind of thinking which is concerned with the good of mankind as a whole. The thinking which is concerned with the good of mankind as a whole could never include the territory of Poland in the Russian Empire. For in a remarkable way it is precisely the western Slavs with their profoundest characteristics who belong to Central Europe. I cannot speak today about the checkered destiny of the Polish people. But I just want to say that the spiritual culture of the Polish people found one of its culminations in the Polish messianic movement—let everybody think what they like about this reality—which, out of the substance of the Polish people contains spiritual feelings and spiritual ideas belonging to mankind as a whole. We are speaking here, in a way, about that Gnostic element which corresponds to one of the three soul components which are to flow from the western Slavs to Central Europe.

The second element lies in the Czech people to whom—not for nothing—John Huss belongs. Here is the second soul component inserted into Central Europe out of the Slav element. And the third component is from the southern Slavs. These three soul components push westwards like three cultural peninsulas and most certainly do not belong to the eastern European Slav element. Externally, on the physical plane, by means of political marriages, but inwardly by means of what I have just been explaining, this Austria has come about whose purpose it is to amalgamate German and western Slav peoples precisely so that the western Slavs can unfold in accordance with their own impulses. This has nothing to do with any principle of dominance! Anyone who has known Austria in the second half of the nineteenth century will regard as utterly ridiculous what is said in the present note to Wilson about Austria and a certain principle of dominance. Of course the situation is difficult. But anyone familiar with the history of Austria in the nineteenth century knows how possibilities were sought which would enable any Slav people, indeed any nationality whatever, to develop absolutely freely in Austria.

However, all kinds of things are contained in this note. You need only glance at an elementary history textbook to see that the territories Italy is now demanding from Austria have never been under Italian rule. Yet the note says: The Italians are demanding the return of territories which once belonged to them.

But truth is not the concern of this note, for its aim is to say what it wants to say while counting on it that the magical power of modern journalism has persuaded people to believe everything. And you can certainly often count on this. The power of journalism is indeed one of the means on which certain societies count. Just because Austria has been preparing—as it were, beneath the surface—for the mission about which I have spoken, she has always been an opponent, an opposite pole, to any Freemasonry of the kind which has developed in the West in the way I have been describing over the last few weeks. Freemasonry has never been allowed to enter Austria. Its presence begins to be felt to some extent—but merely in the way I have described—only beyond the river Leitha.

Of course there are also other impulses which, as you have seen, are the cause for some degree of leniency, so that the peoples of Central Europe will not be utterly destroyed politically. The war aims, and also the peace initiatives which are at present being made, are in accord with this. But the fact that Austria herself is being attacked so viciously is in part explained by the enmity that has always existed between Austria and western European Freemasonry, right from the days of Maximilan I. It is disguised in various ways, of course, and what I am now saying is easily proved wrong, just because on the physical plane things are disguised, are masked.

So we see how Central Europe has to put up a fight on behalf of mankind, for it is the pole which opposes the impulses coming from the West. This brings it about that the evolution of Central Europe does not proceed in a straight line. It fluctuates, for Central Europe always has to take up and bring to a certain climax, a certain intensity, whatever there is by way of opposition to any of the impulses coming from the West. Take the hierarchical, theocratic impulse. While a kind of Christianity is carried into Europe on the waves of the hierarchical, theocratic impulse, opposition begins to build up as early as the twelfth century. Read Walther von der Vogelweide, that great Central European poet, and you will find he opposes the Roman Papacy and indeed everything Roman. What later reaches a climax in Huss, in Luther, in Zwingli and so on, is already hinted at by Walther von der Vogelweide. Then you also find what is developing as a more inward Christianity, parallel with that of the periphery but inwardly intimate, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival epic.

There, at the very beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, you have opposition against the theocratic, hierarchical, Roman element emanating from Spain and Italy. This opposing pole works in such an extraordinary way that intimate inwardness is never denied. It remains. It is confiscated from the principle of power and fashioned into the opposing pole.

I am neither praising the one nor blaming the other, for I am simply quoting facts. After the hierarchical, theocratic principle came the diplomatic, political principle. It is carried over in all its forms and in all its side manifestations. Here, some historical details are interesting. Something that is often said in historical textbooks is not actually correct: namely, that the invention of gunpowder was the origin of modern military forces, in contrast to the armies of the age of chivalry in the Middle Ages. A much more important factor came into play when, at the beginning of modern times in Europe, the barter economy of the Middle Ages was replaced by a currency economy, so that those in power came to be administrators of money, which had formerly not been the case. Until then, barter had been much more to the fore, with money playing only a minor role. The currency economy led to the development of mercenary armies that were no longer compatible with the armies of the age of chivalry which had been adapted to the barter economy of the Middle Ages.

This modern military organization started in Switzerland. The Swiss were the first soldiers in the modern sense of the fifth post-Atlantean period. You can follow this in history: It was just because the Swiss became such efficient soldiers that they were able to win all those battles they had to win in order to create a Switzerland which would later be able to withstand the assaults of chivalry. I am speaking to the Swiss amongst us. Basically the Swiss with their armies are the primary, the real, conquerors of chivalry. Chivalry was overcome in Switzerland. It was from Switzerland alone that the rest of Europe learnt how to use their armies of infantry to overcome the armies of chivalry. Study history, and you will find that this is true.

Now let us proceed in history to Napoleon. Why were Napoleon's soldiers and armies superior to those of Central Europe? It was because Central Europe was still working, at the time of Napoleon, not with Swiss soldiers of course, but with the Swiss military principle, whereas Napoleon had under his command a real national army born out of the French nation itself. You will appreciate this if you follow the battles between the Central Europeans and Napoleon in the right way. How the generals of the Central European armies had to keep a hold on their mercenaries—for that is what they really were—even inside their barracks! Thus they never had the possibility of a strategy of long battle lines. Napoleon is the first to be able to use long battle lines because the French army at his disposal is a national army born of the people. When strategy necessitated a wide distribution of his forces, he did not need to worry that the men might desert. The Prussian general, on the other hand—for instance during the famous campaigns of Frederick the Great—was constantly concerned that a troop dispatched to a distant spot would desert, for his was not a national army but a crowd collected and sometimes coerced from all quarters; they came from all over the place, including quite foreign parts. The national army was invented in France, and this meant that Central Europe, starting with Prussia, also established national armies modelled on that of France. The Central European national armies came into their own when they assumed a French character.

So we see how even in this field things work parallel with the periphery. When it is a matter of armies, obviously the opposition takes the form of waging war. This is not the point I want to make, however, for I want to lead on to a similar contrast in another field.

So far we have seen that the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman character met its opposition in Central Europe in everything that culminated in the Reformation. The diplomatic, French character made its way into Central Europe up to the time of Frederick the Great, right into the eighteenth century. Lessing was still in a position to debate whether he might, indeed, write Laokoon in French. Read the published correspondence of the eighteenth century. In Central Europe people wrote excellent French and poor German. The French element flooded the whole of Central Europe. We can say that what the Reformation had done to what came up from the South, Lessing, Herder, Goethe and those who came after them did in relation to the French, diplomatic element. Here, in Central European literature, Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Lessing emancipate themselves from the West, just as, in the Reformation, Central European Christianity emancipated itself from the South. But this process of separation goes hand in hand with one of combination. In his youth, Lessing still wrote a great deal in French. Leibniz wrote the whole of his philosophy, apart from what he wrote in Latin, in French, not German. In both these fields there was at the same time a working together and a standing in opposition. It is quite correct to summarize as follows: The South and Central Europe—opposition; the West and Central Europe—opposition.

With the third element, the British, it is the same. At first there is some kind of a parallel course. This is expressed especially in the fact that, from the eighteenth century and during the course of the nineteenth century, the great Shakespeare becomes a thoroughly German poet, for he is totally absorbed into German culture. He is not merely translated, he is totally assimilated and lives in the spiritual life of the German nation. For obvious reasons, I do not want to say that he still lives more in the spiritual life of the German nation than in that of the British nation. But look at the whole development, starting with Elias Schlegel, who first translated Shakespeare into German, and on to Lessing's subtly spiritual penetration into the spirit of Shakespeare; the enthusiasm for Shakespeare felt by the German Naturalists of the eighteenth century, and also by Goethe; the absolutely outstanding—not translations—assimilations into German of Shakespeare by Schlegel and Tieck, and so on, right up to the present. Shakespeare lives in the German nation. When I went to Vienna and sat in on the literary history lectures in addition to my scientific studies, the first I heard were by Schröer, who announced he would be speaking about the three greatest German poets, Schiller, Goethe and Shakespeare! Of course Shakespeare has not been captured in the sense that it is claimed that he is actually German. But this one example shows how standing in opposition can at the same time take the form of an absolute working together.

Thus it was with regard to the diplomatic, political, French element. And so it happened also with regard to the British element. At the same time the opposite pole must be present as well. The third element has not yet found a form in Central Europe. The first was all that led to the Reformation; this was in opposition to the southern, hierarchical element. The West is opposed by what culminated in Goethe's Faust. And what we now hope for in Central Europe is the development of the element of spiritual science. In consequence there will arise the sharpest opposition between Central Europe and the British realm, an opposition even sharper than that of Lessing, Goethe and their successors, with regard to the diplomatic, French element. Thus, what took place between us and the followers of Mrs Besant and so on, was no more than a prelude. These things must be seen from wide points of view.

I hope you know me well enough not to think that I speak out of any petty vanity when I say certain things. But I do believe that the great opposition is to be found between what works with experiments on the physical plane—even to proving the existence of the spirit—on the one hand, and on the other hand what in the human soul longs to rise up to the spiritual world. There is no need for anything as coarse as the declaration of an Alcyone as the actual physical Christ, for the more subtle descriptions by Sir Oliver Lodge would be quite sufficient. One senses what is intended. Well, I suppose there is no harm in saying these things. There is indeed a kind of opposition between two things that came into being more or less simultaneously when, on the one hand, Sir Oliver Lodge pointed to the spiritual world in a materialistic way, while at the same time I was writing my book Vom Menschenrätsel, in which I endeavour, in a totally Central European manner, to point to the paths which are being taken in Central Europe by the human soul to the world of the spirit. There is no greater contrast than that between the book by Oliver Lodge and the book Vom Menschenrätsel. They are absolute opposites; it is impossible to conceive of any greater contrast.

This very clear differentiation only began more or less at the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean period. Before that, things were still rather different. At first the universal Roman realm exercised its power, even as far as England, and the sharp differentiation between England and France only really came to the fore with the appearance of the Maid of Orleans. But then everything began, everything which was to happen within the context of these differentiations. The remarkable thing is that, even within this context, the impulse appears which says that a link ought to be created with the opposite pole. Thus, as I have often shown, we see the utterly British philosopher Francis Bacon of Verulam, the founder of modern materialistic thinking, inspired from the same source as Shakespeare, working across so strongly into Central Europe, in the way I have described. Jakob Böhme, too, was inspired from the same source. He transforms the whole inspiration into the soul substance of Central Europe. And again from the same source comes the southern German Jesuit Jakobus Baldus.

You see, beneath the surface of what takes place on the physical plane there works what is to bring about harmony. But one must see things as clearly differentiated and not let it all disappear into a nebulous jumble. One of the greatest, most gigantic spirits of the British realm stands quite close to the opposition against what is merely commercial within the British commercial empire, and that is James I. James I brings in a new element by continuously inoculating into the substance of the British people something that they will have forever, something that they must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism. What it is that he inoculates into them is something that is linked by underground channels to the whole of the rest of European culture. Here we are confronted by a significant mystery.

You will agree—neither one thing nor the other can be called either justified or unjustified; things simply have to be comprehended as necessary facts. But we must be clear that we surely ought to understand these things properly. It is easy to ask the question: What can I myself do in these painful times? The first thing one can do is to endeavour to understand things, to really see through things. This brings up thoughts which are real forces and these will have an effect. What about the question: Have the good forces no power against the evil forces we see all around us? To answer this we have to remember how difficult human freedom makes it for the spiritual world to assert itself amid the surging waves of materialistic life. This is what it is all about. Is it to be made so very easy for human beings to enter fully into the life of the spirit?

Future ages will look back to today and say: How careless these people were with regard to adopting the life of spirit! The spiritual world is sending it down to us, but human beings resist it with all their might. Apart from all the sadness and suffering holding sway at present, the very fact that all this does hold sway is in itself a destiny signifying a trial. Above all it should be accepted and recognized as a trial. Later it will become apparent to what extent it is necessary for those who—so it is said—are guilty, to suffer together with those who are blameless. For after all, during the course of karma all these things are balanced out. You cannot say: Are not the good spirits going to intervene? They do intervene to the extent that we open ourselves to them, if we have the courage to do so. But first of all we must be serious about understanding things; we must be deeply serious about trying to understand.

As a contribution to this understanding it is necessary that a number of people muster the strength to oppose the surging waves of materialism with their deepest personal being. For something else is going to unite with the materialism that works in the industrial, commercial impulse; something coming from other, retarded impulses from the Chinese and Japanese element, particularly the Japanese element, will become increasingly caught up in materialism.

Yesterday somebody asked whether the societies working from the West for a particular group did not take into account that the Japanese might follow suit from the East. Indeed, the people who belong to these societies do not regard this as something terrible, for they see it as a support for materialism. For what follows suit from Asia will simply be a particular form of materialism. What we must be clear about, at all costs, is that we have to oppose the waves of materialism with all our strength. Every human being is capable of doing this. And the fruits of such efforts will be sure to follow. There is no need to give a name to whatever it is that must work against materialism. Don't call it ‘Central European’, don't call it ‘German’; that is not necessary. But do consider how a counteraction of forces can come about and how this can be objectively proved.

You can summarize in two sentences what is needed to work against materialism—which, after all, has some justification. In the fifth post-Atlantean period the world will become even more pervaded by the industrial and commercial element; but the opposite pole must also exist: There must be people who work on the opposite side because of their understanding of the situation. For what is the aim of these secret brotherhoods? They do not work out of any particular British patriotism, but out of the desire to bring the whole world under the yoke of pure materialism. And because, in accordance with the laws of the fifth post-Atlantean period, certain elements of the British people as the bearer of the consciousness soul are most suitable for this, they want, by means of grey magic, to use these elements as promoters of this materialism.

This is the important point. Those who know what impulses are at work in world events can also steer them. No other national ele¬ment, no other people, has ever before been so usable as material for transforming the whole world into a materialistic realm. Therefore, those who know want to set their foot on the neck of this national element and strip it of all spiritual endeavour—which, of course, lives equally in all human beings. Just because karma has ordained that the consciousness soul should work here particularly strongly, the secret brotherhoods have sought out elements in the British national character. Their aim is to send a wave of materialism over the earth and make the physical plane the only valid one. A spiritual world is only to be recognized in terms of what the physical plane has to offer.

This must be opposed by the endeavours of those who understand the necessity of a spiritual life on earth. Looked at from this point of view, you can express this counter-force in two sentences. One of these is well-known to you, but it does not yet come fully out of the hearts and souls of human beings: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ The sentence ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ must sound forth against that kingdom which is to be spread over the physical plane, that kingdom which is only of this world, that kingdom of commercial and industrial materialism.

There is not enough time today to explain to you how the words ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ link up with the cultivation of what belongs to mankind as a whole—not to what is German, but to what belongs to mankind as a whole. In ancient India there were four castes, in ancient Greece four estates. They came into being one after the other during the course of the second, third and fourth post-Atlantean periods. In the fifth post-Atlantean period the fourth estate, social life, that which belongs to mankind as a whole, must come into being. Not everyone can be a priest, but the priestly element can strive to become the powerful, the dominant estate. We see it doing this in the third post-Atlantean period; there we see it coming to life again in the hierarchical, theocratic, Roman force. And we can see the second caste, the kingly estate in ancient Greece and Rome, coming to life again in the second post-Atlantean element, where the diplomatic, political element is particularly active; for the republican element in France is only the opposite pole of this, just as everything generates its own counterpart. The actual character of the French state corresponds solely to the monarchic principle, so that even now France is a Republic in name only. In reality she is ruled by a king, who happens to be a lawyer who used to conduct cases in Romania. It is not a question of terminology but of facts. What is so terrible today is the way people allow themselves to be so easily intoxicated by words. If somebody is called a president it does not necessarily mean that he is a president, for what matters is the actual situation.

The third estate, as we know, is the industrial element, what was commerce in ancient Egypt and Greece. This is striving to come to the fore again in the British Empire and for the moment must still be dominant over the fourth element, which will eventually be the general, human element. It is interesting to observe this in one particular phenomenon. You do have to gain some insight into what is really going on if you want to understand the world. Ask the question: Where has the theory of Socialism been worked out with the greatest discernment? You will receive a curious answer: Among German Socialists. For in accordance with the principle I explained to you, the Germans always have the mission to work concepts out in their purest form. So even for Socialism the Germans have worked out pure concepts, but the German concept of Socialism does not fit in at all with the state of affairs in Germany.

Social conditions in Germany do not correspond in any way to the German theory of Socialism! For instance, it is quite comprehensible that, after teaching in a Socialist school for a while, I should have been banned from teaching there, after I said that it ought to be in keeping with Socialism to develop a theory of freedom. On behalf of the leader of the Social Democrats I was told: It is not freedom that matters, but reasoned persuasion! Socialist theory does not fit in with social conditions. In other words, social theory ought to be developed on the basis of the evolution of mankind. On this basis its three great principles are developed: Firstly the principle of the materialistic view of history, secondly the principle of added value, and thirdly the principle of class war.

The three principles are minutely worked out, but they do not fit in with social conditions in Germany. However, they correspond exactly to social conditions in England. That, after all, is where they were worked out. That is where Marx worked on them first of all, and then also Engels, and Bernstein. This is their source. Here they fit in because—to take the third principle—they are founded on the class war. And this class war is waged, basically, in the British soul. Think of Cromwell. If you study all the impulses that have reigned in the British soul since Cromwell, you will wind up with material for the third principle, the principle of class war. Furthermore, since the invention of the spinning-jenny and the commencement of the social life which came into being as a result, everything that has flowed into the theory of added value has been uppermost in the British Empire. And the materialistic view of history is, when you look at it, nothing but Buckle's view of history translated into a pedantic German way of thinking. Look at Buckle's History of Civilisation. It is written in accordance with the way such things are written within the framework of British culture: namely, according to the principle of never entering into consequences. Darwin, too, did not enter into the consequences. He limited himself in a certain way. But in Karl Marx's materialistic view of history the matter is transformed with severity—regardless of consequences—in, if you like, a pedantic, German way.

It is interesting that no theory has been worked out for the general human element, the fourth caste or class. In this element there can be no question of dominance, for there is nothing below it over which dominance might be exercised; it is solely a matter of laying the foundation for human beings to relate with one another. A theory for this will only come about when the general human element given in anthroposophical spiritual science is made the foundation.

This, if it is not misunderstood, will lead to that other, second sentence which is to be added to the first: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ The second sentence is: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.’ This means that a proper attitude to life, a real cultivation of life, can only come about when one realizes that the spiritual element must be cultivated, because the spiritual world must penetrate down into the physical world. But there is no point in making any statements at all unless they can be comprehended wholeheartedly in the soul. These statements must be comprehended: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's’ and ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ Then the atmosphere of the spiritual world will come, an atmosphere that has nothing to do with those materialistic things which have especially to develop in the fifth post-Atlantean period. But for this to happen, things must be seen in their true guise.

To summarize what we have been considering, let me say: May your hearts strive to see things in their true guise. Only if hearts exist which see things in their true guise and penetrate that terrible fog of untruth which shrouds everything in the world today, can we progress in an appropriate way. As I said: Since the bow-string is stretched to its limit, it will break. In this sense this document that people have had the temerity to present to the world at this late stage, and whatever is said in response to this document, does in the first instance hold out a prospect of improvement. Whatever horrors still lie ahead of us, this document represents a challenge to the Spirit of Truth himself, and he will certainly intervene in these matters in an appropriate manner! You need only remember—let me say this in conclusion—the exemplary, or should I say non-exemplary, manner in which we ourselves have been treated.

We have endeavoured to be as cosmopolitan as possible over the years. We have tried in the most conscientious way to preserve this archetypal German trait of cosmopolitanism. And what is the consequence? Read the slanderous things said about us in Britain; the theosophists there have slanted everything to make it appear that we have some kind of Germanic aspirations. We have no such aspirations; they have been foisted on us by others.

Edouard Schuré,—one on whom we relied so heavily in France, and towards whom we have never been tempted to display any kind of Germanic quality, since he is fundamentally himself the bearer of German cultural life to France—even he has interpreted things containing no trace of nationalism as being ‘pan-Germanic’. How curious that only the other day we should have found under ‘Edouard Schuré’ in an encyclopaedia: ‘The mediator of German culture to France.’ This is entirely apt, for truly the only French thing about Schuré is the language he speaks. Of course, if language is taken to be paramount, then naturally the whole man can be considered French. So one is a pan-Germanist if one does not speak about the Germans in the manner preferred by the French chauvinist Schuré . And one is a German agent if one does not speak about the Germans in the way required by Mrs Besant. Similar things are beginning to appear in Italy, too, among our former friends.

So it became necessary to defend ourselves. And the present time is proving most opportune for those who want to point fingers at us and say: See what attacks they are making; that shows who is the aggressor! There is the Vollrath method, and there is the Gösch method. We see it everywhere and we know it from within our own circles. First you force the other fellow to defend himself and then you treat him as the aggressor. It is a very effective method and one that plays an enormously strong role in the world today. The attacker hides behind the clamour he raises after he has forced the other to defend himself by labelling him the aggressor.

Yet we have no other purpose than to serve the mission of furthering spiritual life and gaining recognition for spiritual life. This is linked on the one hand with the principle: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and on the other with the principle: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.’ Both are also, as you know, good Christianity. But it will be a long time before such things are understood in every detail.

Nowadays strange things are once again being said. Let me just mention this as my very last point. It is said: The Entente has stated its aims with regard to the war; now let the Central Powers state their aims, so that like can be compared with like. Indeed, this clamour for the war aims of the Central Powers has been heard for some time. Well, we have discussed some of the war aims of the Entente. But why should Central Europe name its war aims? It never had any! It has none! So quite naturally it took the stand: We will gladly negotiate, for then it will become clear what it is you want and then we shall have something on which to base our talks; but as far as we are concerned, we have nothing in particular to say; we merely want to live. Of course this does make it possible for the others to say: They are not willing to tell us what their war aims are; that means there must be something suspicious going on. There is nothing suspicious going on. Central Europe wants nothing now that it did not want in 1913 and 1912. It had no war aims then and it has none now.

It is not what is said that is important but whether what is said conforms with reality. On every side we now hear the loud cry that a particularly cunning, wily trick lies at the bottom of the Central Powers' Christmas call for peace. So this Christmas call for peace is supposed to contain some trick, some wish to dupe everybody else. On many sides it is said that the Central Powers never wanted peace but were only seeking for some clever way of carrying on the war. The answer to that is: If only they had reacted to this call for peace! All they needed to do was accept it and they would soon have known whether it was some kind of trick. Along this path lies genuine thinking rather than an inclination to believe in empty phrases. We must, my dear friends, overcome the empty phrase with all the forces of our soul. This is the most intimate task we have to accomplish in our own soul.

I am very happy to be speaking to you today—among these peaceful mountains and within view of the wonderful lake about matters appealing to our deepest interests, that is, revelations, realities of the life of the spirit. And the most obvious fact that strikes those of us who have gathered here today to visit our Alpine friends, is this: that a number of our friends have withdrawn up here, not necessarily for the sake of solitude, but at least for the peace and charm of the mountains. And if we then ask ourselves what our hearts are looking for, we might find that it is something very similar to man's present-day longing for the spirit. And perhaps it is no illusion to assume that in the world outside the same impulse is at work as the one that spurred you on to come up here into the solitude of the mountains.

Man knows, or senses dimly, that there is spirituality in all that surrounds us in nature, in forest and crag, wind and storm; the kind of spirituality which, according to a well-known figure in the West, is more ‘Consistent than man's activities’, and his feeling and thinking. We cannot help sensing that in everything that surrounds us as forest and crag, mountain and lake, the spirit is coming to expression. And in Spiritual Science we become more and more aware that there is spirit in everything that expresses itself in nature round about us and in the firm earth beneath us. Looking back into the ancient past we can tell ourselves that we descend from a spiritual past and are the children of ancient times. Just as we create our works of art, exploring what we can make of the material to hand, in just such a way did our ancestors create their implements and tools. And the phenomena of nature are the product of the work of the ancient gods in times long past. And if we permeate ourselves with such a feeling, the whole of nature will gradually become for us what it has always been for Spiritual Science. Even though it will seem a maya, it will become the kind of maya that is beautiful and great, for the very reason that it is the creation of the divine-spiritual. So when we go out into nature we are among memorials reminding us of the spiritual activity that took place in ancient pre-earthly times. Then we are filled with that tremendous enthusiasm that deepens our feeling for nature and can fill us with warmth.

When we can enhance our feeling for nature through Spiritual Science we should also feel that it is in a certain respect a privilege to have the good fortune to be within the spirit of nature. And it is a privilege. For we can and ought to bear in mind how many people there are who are unable to get close to the creations of nature in their present incarnation. How many people there are today, especially in cities, who no longer have the chance of feeling the uplifting quality of the divine in nature! And when we look at nature with a power of observation that has been enhanced by spiritual science, then we know the intimate connection that exists between what we feel for nature and what we call morality—moral life being the highest thing we can strive for in this life.

It is a paradox perhaps, but it is true to say that those people who live in towns and have to forget what oats, wheat and barley look like, unfortunately get separated in their hearts, too, from the deepest moral sources of their existence.

If we bear this in mind, then we will certainly regard it as a privilege to be able to be close to the sources of nature's spirit, for a feeling like this of itself leads to another which, supported by Spiritual Science, must become known in the world: that is, the truth of reincarnation. To begin with we take it on trust, this truth concerning man's repeated earth lives. But how can a soul stand firm at the present time, when it sees what very different paths of life people tread, and experiences all the glaring but inevitable inequalities in the world. Then the human being who is privileged to be near the well-springs of nature, not only feels that he has every reason to be happy in knowing the truths of Spiritual Science, but he also feels a great responsibility, a great obligation towards this knowledge of the spiritual life. For what is the greatest thing that these souls will be able to bring to the gate of death, these souls who today have the privilege of enjoying peace and health in nature? What will be their finest contribution?

If we look for a moment at what is taught us by the spiritual powers that are closer to us now than they were in the nineteenth century, what can we learn? We can learn, without any doubt, that we can take something different with us into our following incarnations, in our deepest soul, in our deepest feeling, if we imbue ourselves with Spiritual Science, than we could if we kept aloof from it. Nowadays we are certainly not expected to take in as an abstract theory what Spiritual Science can give us. What your souls receive, what enters into you like a theory, is there so that it can come alive in you. And this happens with some people in this incarnation and with others in the next. It will become real, immediate life, the life we cannot conceive of unless we devote ourselves to that prophetic vision which prompts us to ask: where does this development lead? With all its fruits it leads straight into outer life. And what we can only express in the form of words today, will become vision, vision in the young, vision in the old, vision that brings blessing.

All those people who have not yet been able to approach the warmth and light of Spiritual Science and to acquire the fruits of Spiritual Science for themselves, will feel the blessing of such vision! Everything that can exist in the way of outer personality will in the future have that fire in it for which our present-day theories are the fuel. It is just a handful of people who have the will to be the real bearers of what, in the future, will have to reach all those who are in need of it, that is the real, genuine fruits of human love and human compassion. We do not study Spiritual Science for the sake of our own satisfaction but so that we can acquire gentle hands that have the power to bless, and gentle eyes from which power can shine forth, so that we can give out all that springs forth from the eyes, all that we call spiritual vision. Those people in particular who have this attitude, and who have the good fortune to live so close to nature should pay heed right now to the way everything is changing at the present time! It is changing, in fact it is changing throughout the cosmos.

It is wrong to say nature makes no leaps. Nature is perpetually making leaps, from leaf to blossom, from blossom to fruit. When the chick develops out of the egg, that is a leap. To say that nature makes no leaps could not be further from the truth. There are leaps everywhere, sudden transitions. And we are living in such a time of transition. During our lifetime there has been a year of great importance:¹¹ the year 1899. The turn of the twentieth century is significant for the whole of cultural development because it is the time when the stream that came from the East and mingled with Western culture ceased in order to make way for what can be drawn from the life of nature to enliven the deepest levels of our life of soul.

Those men whose spirit is awakened will be able to see beings of a new order in the processes of nature. Whilst the human being who has not yet become clairvoyant will increasingly be able to experience that despite all his melancholy feelings concerning the continual death process, there is something of a rejuvenating quality in nature, the human being whose clairvoyant faculties have awakened will see new elemental beings issuing out of dying nature. Whilst in outer physical nature relatively little will be seen of the great change at the turn of the twentieth century, the spiritually awakened soul will feel: times are changing, and we human beings have the task of preparing spirit knowledge. It will become more and more important to observe such things and carry them in our consciousness. For men are free either to take up such things for the salvation of humanity or to let them pass them by, which will lead to disaster.

That is to say, at the turn of the century a relatively new kingdom of nature-beings will come into being, arising from nature like a spiritual spring, and human beings will be able to see and experience this. And further: though it would show great apathy of soul if a person were unable to perceive the sprouting forth of springtime, there is more to come. Those people who will grow able to experience as a fact of nature what has just been described, will preserve these impressions in quite a different way than through ordinary memory. They will carry beyond the threshold the new elemental spirits that stream towards them, as the seeds carry their life through the winter into spring. What was experienced in spring and what was experienced in autumn, this bursting forth of nature in the spring and this melancholy in autumn, had no connection one with the other in the past. What the cosmos gives out from its memory enables us to carry over something of what we have experienced in the autumn into the spring. If we let the elemental forces of autumn work in us, then we can feel in a new way what will be given us in the future. Everything will acquire something new in the future, and it is our duty to prepare ourselves through our knowledge of the spiritual to understand it. For Spiritual Science has not come into the world through the personal whims of men, but because new things are happening in the heavens, that can only be perceived when men take up the results of spiritual research. This is why the theosophical movement has come into being.

In the life of morality it is the same as it is in nature: the life of the soul will experience a transformation. Certain things will happen of which men have as yet no idea. I would just like to mention one example. There will be more and more people, especially children, who will have the experience that when they intend doing something or other in the future, a voice will speak in their souls urging them to refrain from action and listen to what is to be told them from the spiritual world. Something will come to meet them, appearing before their eyes like a vision. First of all they will be strangely touched by these visions. When they have made a greater contact with Spiritual Science they will then realise that they are seeing the karmic counterpart of the deeds they have just done. The soul is being shown: you must strive to take yourself in hand so that you can take part in the evolution of the future. And it is also being shown that there is no such thing as a deed without an after-effect. And this will be a driving force bringing order into our moral life. Moral impulses will be put into our souls like a karma, in the course of time, if we prepare ourselves to open our spiritual eyes and our spiritual ears to what can speak to us from the spiritual world.

We know that it will take a long time before men learn to see in the spirit. But it will begin in the twentieth century, and a greater and greater number of people will acquire this capacity in the course of three thousand years. Humanity will devote itself to such things during the next three millennia. In order that these things can happen, however, the main streams of development—again under the direction of the spiritual guidance of humanity—will take their course in such a way that human beings will be able to come to an understanding of occult life as I have described it today.

There are two main streams. The first is known through the fact that there is a so-called Western philosophy, and that the most elementary concepts of the spiritual world arise out of the purest depths of philosophy. And it is remarkable what we see when we make a survey of what has gradually taken place within the science of Western culture. We see how some people become purely intellectual, whilst others are rooted in the religious life, yet at the same time are filled with what can only be given by the vision of the spiritual world that is behind all existence. On all sides we see spiritual life flowing out of Western philosophy. I will only mention Vladimir Soloviev,¹² the Russian philosopher and thinker, a real clairvoyant, though he only saw into the spiritual world three times in his life: once when he was a boy of nine, the second time in the British Museum, and the third time in the Egyptian desert under the starry heavens of Egypt. On these occasions there was revealed to him what can only be seen by clairvoyant vision. He had a prevision of the evolution of humanity.—there welled up in him what Schelling¹³ and Hegel¹⁴ also achieved through sheer spiritual effort. As they stood alone on the heights of thinking, we may now place them on the summit which all educated people will eventually reach. All this was said in the course of previous centuries, particularly the last four centuries. When we survey this and work on it with the methods of practical occultism, as has been done recently, in order to make a special investigation into what the purely intellectual thinkers from Hegel to Haeckel¹⁵ have worked out, we can see occult forces at work here too. And a very remarkable thing comes to light: we can speak of pure inspiration in the case of just those people who appear to have least of it. Who inspired all the thinkers who are rooted in pure intellectualism? Who gave the stimulus for this life of thought that speaks out of every book to be found even in the lowliest cottage? Where does all this abstract thought life in Europe come from, that has had such a curious outcome?

We all know, of course, how the great event took place. It happened that an important individuality in the evolution of mankind, one of the individualities that we call a Bodhisattva, incarnated in the royal house of Suddhodana. We all know that this individuality was destined to ascend to the next rank that follows after that of Bodhisattva. Each human being who progresses and reaches the rank of Bodhisattva must become a Buddha in his final incarnation. What does this rank of Buddha signify? What does it signify in the case of the particular Bodhisattva who attained the rank of Buddha as Gautama Buddha? It signifies that Buddha—as with every other Buddha—does not need to incarnate on earth any more in a body of flesh. And therefore Gautama Buddha was destined, like every Buddha, to work henceforth from the spiritual world. He must not appear again on the earth in physical form, but his achievements in the course of incarnations enabled him henceforth to send his influence into our civilisation.

The first great deed that the Buddha had to accomplish as a purely spiritual being was, as I indicated in Basle,¹⁶ to send his forces down into the astral body of the Jesus boy described in the Luke Gospel, which came to significant expression in the Christmas message: Divine beings are revealing themselves in the heights, and peace shall come to men on earth who have goodwill.

If our souls are stirred by this message that angel beings hovered in the aureole above the angelic child, we should know that in this aura around Jesus the forces of the Nirmanakaya¹⁷ of the Buddha were active. Since then, the spiritual forces of the Buddha have been incorporated in the events connected with the highest individualities concerned with the Mystery of Golgotha. His forces work also in the world conception stream of the philosophers of the West. He himself is the driving force working out of the spiritual world into that life that has penetrated as far as intelligence and has then gone astray.

If we read Leibniz,¹⁸ Schelling and Soloviev today, and ask ourselves how they have been inspired, we find that it was by the individuality who was born in the place of Suddhodana, ascended from Bodhisattva to Buddha and then continued to work selflessly. In fact he continued to work in such a selfless way that we can go back in time today to a point when not even the name of Buddha was mentioned in the West. You do not find the name of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha, not even in Goethe! You know, though, that he lives in everything. He has met with so much understanding that he works on unnamed in Western literature. The Middle Ages knew about this, too, but they did not speak about it in this way then. They tell us something different.

In the eighth century there lived a man called John of Damascus¹⁹ who wrote a book in the form of a narrative. What was it about? He relates that there once lived a great teacher who became the teacher of Josaphat, instructing Josaphat in the secret doctrine and the great Christian truths. And if you investigate all this you find truths concerning those things. You also find narratives from Buddhist literature. When we follow up our theme we come upon a legend, the one that relates that Buddha went on living, not in an earthly human form but in an animal form, that of a hare. And when a Brahman once happened to find a hare—which was the disguised Buddha—the Brahman complained to him about the misery of mankind outside in the world, and Buddha made a fire and roasted himself, in order to help mankind. The Brahman took him and transported him to the moon. When you know that the moon is the symbol of the wisdom that lasts forever, which lives in the human breast, then you see there is a consciousness of Buddha's sacrifice, which has been developed and presented in these old legends.

What is Buddha's task out there in the spiritual world? It is his task now and for ever-more to kindle those forces in our hearts that can give birth to great wisdom. This is how we must understand one force streaming through our world; it is the Buddha force. It is also represented in the form it has taken in our century, even though here it has been reduced to abstraction. We have to try however, to understand the occult significance of every spiritual form. To this force is added the other one whose source was the Mystery of Golgotha, and which combined with the Buddha force to make a necessary whole, in which we must also now partake in earthly life. This force, emanating from Golgotha, with which all men have to connect themselves, not only affects man's inner life but involves our whole earthly existence.

Whilst the Buddha stream, like any other stream, concerns all of us as human beings, in the case of the Christ Being we have a cosmic intervention. All Bodhisattvas are individualities who go through life here on earth, who belong to the earth. The Christ Individuality comes from the sun, and walked the earth for the first time at the baptism in the Jordan, dwelling in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth for only three years. The uniqueness of the Christ Individuality was that it was destined to work for only three years in the earthly world. He is the same Being to Whom Zarathustra referred when he called Him Ahura Mazdao, He Who is behind the visible sun, the same Whom the Holy Rishis announced, and Whom the Greeks spoke of as the Being behind the pleroma. It is the Being Who has gradually become the spirit of our earth, the aura of our earth, since His blood flowed on Golgotha. The first person permitted to see Him without witnessing the physical event, was Paul.

Thus through the Mystery of Golgotha something took place that has brought a completely new course of events into our earthly evolution. Before that time, the greatest variety of concepts could be assimilated through the many different religions. What crossed over from the Buddha religion, when the being of Buddha streamed into the astral aura of Jesus, and what I told you concerning the soul seeing and feeling new things in nature, means nothing short of this: that just as the Christ Being descended through the baptism into the physical body, dwelt within it until the Mystery of Golgotha, and was therefore here physically on the physical plane, He will now, in the same way, begin working in the etheric world. So we can speak of a physical incarnation from the event of the baptism by John until Golgotha, and now of an etheric reappearance.

The etheric Christ will be perceived through the development of the etheric body, and also through impressions of autumn which the human being weaves into himself. Why was Christ here in a physical body? It was so that man could develop higher in order to acquire the capacity to perceive the Christ more and more in the etheric.

To sum up: we began this lecture with the elemental spirits manifesting themselves in nature. We continued with those particular visions that impel us to pause in our actions and listen to the inner word. And in all these occurrences grouping themselves round a central point we see that those human beings who find the right path to the spiritual world—and this does not mean trained clairvoyants, who have always been able to find the Christ, but human beings through their natural development—will be able to see the Christ as an etheric vision: see Him Who will only take part in world events from out of the etheric. We see that all these occurrences group themselves around the future Christ event. And if we look at the whole of spiritual development in its progressive stages, we see that the Buddha who sacrificed himself in the fire of love is the inspirer of our Spiritual Science.

Those people who give careful thought to the reading of, for instance, The Soul's Probation,²⁰ which I was able to have performed in Munich, and who become aware of where all the mysterious forces are to be found that point to what is in surrounding nature, and who also pay heed to the wisdom of the future—even if the wisdom of the future is often the folly of the present, as the wisdom of the present is often the folly of the future—these people will become aware that there will be a kind of chemistry pervaded by the Christ Impulse, and a kind of botany pervaded by the Christ Impulse, and so on. The world does not consist of lifeless molecules. All that is spread out in nature comes from the spirit. Even a flower is an etheric being, and on the other hand the spirit has come into the earth from outside through this flower. In all the forms that spring forth out of the earth we can see meaning of the highest order. Then we shall not only know by faith, but we shall understand.

This has brought us to the second stream which has to unite with the first. The coming years will bring many surprises to the earth. In everything that will occur in this way we shall be able to see the Christ Principle, whilst we shall become aware of the Buddha impulse in a more inward way. This is why unless we have an understanding of these sublime measures taken by the spiritual guidance of the world we shall not see clearly how to seek the Christ Impulse, nor perceive that it is He Who, in the course of history, leads one individuality over into the other. What is there to offer the thinking man's thirst for knowledge in the sort of phenomenon that is to be found in the West, where all the thinking is expressed more in the style of—let us say Galileo, to name an example—or again, in the East, where it is expressed in the manner of Vladimir Soloviev? When we see this, we acknowledge how objectively the Christ works. Similarly, we can see the Christ Impulse in everything that happens outside in the world.

Great things will happen in the next epochs of culture. What only arose as a dream²¹ of the great martyr Socrates in the fourth epoch, will become reality. What was this mighty impulse of Socrates? He wanted it to come about that whoever experiences a moral precept and understands it so thoroughly that it becomes one with his feeling, should also be a moral person, carrying his morality into his actions. Consider what a long way from this we still are, what a lot of people can say: such and such must happen—but how few have the inner power, the moral strength to do it! Moral principles will have to be so clearly understood and moral feelings so positively developed that we cannot inwardly know something without having the impulse to carry it out with enthusiasm. For this really to mature in the human soul, so that a moral impulse does not stop at the stage of understanding, but has inevitably to become a deed, men will have to live their way into these two particular streams. Then, under the influence of the two streams, human beings will develop in increasing numbers who are capable of carrying the feeling for the acknowledgment of morality, through into action.

How does it come about that these two streams unite in humanity so that the Christ can be taken up from within through the Buddha? It is because the position of Bodhisattva has never been unfilled. As soon as the Bodhisattva became Buddha, another attained to the rank of Bodhisattva. And it was attained by the particular individuality who is known to have lived as an Essene about a hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth. This personality has been sadly slandered and misunderstood, by the writer Celsus,²² for example, and particularly by Haeckel in his Riddles of the World. He was the personality who carried out his task a full hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, and he is known as Jeshu ben Pandira, one of the incarnations of the Bodhisattva who succeeded Gautama, the Bodhisattva who became Buddha. He will continue to work as a Bodhisattva until three thousand years have gone by, and then, when about five thousand years will have taken their course after the Buddha became enlightened under the bodhi tree, he will become a Buddha also. Every serious occultist knows that five thousand years after the enlightenment of Gautama Buddha under the bodhi tree that individuality who lives on as Bodhisattva will have become Maitreya Buddha. He will have incarnated frequently before that time comes. And then, when the five thousand years are over, a teaching will arise that will be the teaching of Maitreya Buddha, Buddha of the Good, where the spoken word works at the same time morally. Words are not powerful enough at the present time to describe the reality of this. It can only be perceived in the spiritual world, and human beings will first of all have to be mature enough to receive it. What will be special about the Maitreya Buddha is that he will have to repeat in a certain way what took place at the event of Golgotha.

We know that the Buddha individuality entered into Jesus of Nazareth and now only works into earth evolution from outside. All those individuals who live as Bodhisattvas and will later on become Buddhas have the particular destiny on earth, as every serious occultist can see, of being in a certain respect unknown in their youth. Those who do know something of them may see them as gifted people, but do not see that the being of the Bodhisattva is working in them. It has always been like this, and it will be like this in the twentieth century, too. It will only become recognisable during the time that lies between the thirtieth and the thirty-third year—the same span of time as there was between the baptism in Jordan and Golgotha. Then a change takes place in the human being, and to a certain degree he sacrifices his individuality and becomes the vehicle for another, as the Jesus individuality made way for the Christ.

The Bodhisattva incarnations, which are those of the future Maitreya Buddha, occur in unknown people. They work as individuals relying on their own inner strength. The Maitreya Buddha will also work out of his own inner strength, and against the stream of general opinion. He will remain unknown in his youth. And when in his thirtieth year he has sacrificed his individuality, he will appear in such a way that morality will work through his words. Five thousand years after the Buddha was enlightened beneath the bodhi tree his successor will ascend to the rank of Buddha, and will be the bringer of the word that works morally. We now say: ‘In the beginning was the Word’. We shall then be able to say: ‘In the Maitreya Buddha the greatest teacher has been given us, and he has appeared in order to make apparent to men the full extent of the Christ Event. His unique quality will be that he, the greatest of teachers, will be the bringer of the most exalted Word.’

As it happens so often that great things that should be brought into the world in the right way are so badly misunderstood, we must try to prepare ourselves for what should come. And if we want to approach the spirit at the point where the spirit of nature also speaks to us morally, then we may say to ourselves: all Spiritual Science is in a certain respect a preparation to help us understand what has been said about past events when we discussed the changes that take place in the course of time.

New times were dawning when John proclaimed the Christ. In a certain sense we can also speak today of new times, in preparation for which it is necessary for our hearts to change. Despite all the machinery of civilisation that will appear in the outside world, men's hearts must change in such a way that souls care about the spiritual world that will make itself known in a new way, just at this time in which we live. Whether a glimpse of it will become visible here in this life, or at the gate of death, or at a new birth—we shall not only see this new world but work from out of this new world. And the best that is often in us will come to realisation because, from beyond the gates of death, beings send these forces into us from the other world. And we shall also be able to send these forces, if we go through the gate of death having acquired what we recognise to be the necessary change for our time, about which I have permitted myself to speak to you today.

• 11. a year of great importance: the year 1899: 1899 marks the end of a period lasting from 3112 BC. to 1899 AD., which in Indian is called Kali Yuga, meaning ‘The Dark Age’.
• 12. mentioned
• 13. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling: 1775 – 1854.
• 14. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: 1770 – 1831.
• 15. Ernst Haeckel: 1834 – 1919.
  
  For above three notes, see Rudolf Steiner ‘The Riddles of Philosophy’, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1973.
• 16. as I indicated in Basle: Rudolf Steiner ‘The Gospel of St. Luke’, ten lectures, Basle, September, 1909; Rudolf Steiner Press 1975.
• 17. Nirmanakaya: terminology in Eastern science for the body of a Buddha after he has passed through perfection. See the Gospel of St. Luke lecture cycle, p. 73, where definition is given: ‘The body which such a Being assumes after he has passed through the stage of perfection’: ‘the Body of Transformation’.
• 18. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: 1646 – 1716. See Rudolf Steiner ‘The Riddles of Philosophy’; Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1973.
• 19. John of Damascus who wrote a book in the form of a narrative: the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat.
• 20. ‘The Soul's Probation’, which I was able to have performed in Munich: the second of Rudolf Steiner's four mystery plays, first performed in Munich in the summer of 1911. See ‘Four Mystery Plays’ (1910 – 13); Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1983.
• 21. dream of ... Socrates: in the platonic dialogues ‘Menon’ and ‘Protagoras’.
• 22. Celsus: Roman philosopher. In the middle of the second century AD. he wrote ‘The True Word’, the first polemic against Christianity.

To obviate any possible misunderstanding, I want to emphasise that the aim of yesterday's lecture was not that of proving anything in particular but merely to point out that certain observations led spiritual investigators of bygone times to designate by similar names certain processes and objects in space and certain processes and happenings in our own daily and nightly experiences. The main purpose of the lecture was to introduce concepts that will be required in our further studies. The lectures given in this Course must be regarded as a whole, and the early lectures are in the widest sense intended to assemble the ideas and conceptions needed for the knowledge of the spiritual worlds that is to be communicated in those that come later. Today, too, we shall take our start from familiar experiences and pass on gradually to more remote realms of spirit.

We have heard in previous lectures that in respect of his inner being, in respect, that is to say, of his astral body and Ego, man lives during the sleeping state in a spiritual world and on waking returns into his physical and etheric bodies. It will be evident to anyone who observes life that when this transition from the sleeping to the waking state takes place, there is a complete change of experience. What we experience in the waking state denotes no actual perception or knowledge of the two members of our being into which we descend on waking. We come down into our etheric and physical bodies but have no experience of them from within.

What does a man know in ordinary life about the aspects presented by his physical and etheric bodies when seen from within? The essential fact of experience in the waking state is that we view our own being in the physical world from without, not from within. We view our physical body from outside with the same eyes with which we look at the rest of the world. During waking life we never contemplate our own being from within, but always from without. We really learn to know ourselves as men only from outside, regarding ourselves as beings of the sense-world.

There is, of course, an actual state of transition from sleeping to waking life. How, then, would it be if we were really able, on descending into our etheric and physical bodies, to contemplate ourselves from within? We should see something quite different from what we see in the ordinary way: we should know the intimate experiences sought by the mystic. The mystic endeavours to divert his attention entirely from the outer world, to shut out the impressions invading his eyes and other senses and to penetrate into his inmost being. But leaving aside experiences of this kind, we can say that in daily life we are protected from the sight of our inner being, for at the moment of waking our gaze is diverted to the external world around us, to the tapestry presented by the senses—the tapestry of which our physical body, when observed during waking life, is a part. Thus in the waking state the possibility of observing ourselves from within, eludes us. It is as though we had been led unknowingly across a stream: while we sleep we are on this side of the stream, when we are awake, on yonder side. If we were capable of perceiving anything from “this side”, we should be able to perceive our Ego and our astral body as we perceive outer objects in waking life; but again we are protected from perceiving our own inner being in sleep, for at the moment of going to sleep the possibility of perceiving ceases and consciousness is extinguished.

Thus between our inner and our outer world a definite boundary is drawn, a boundary which we can cross only at the moments of going to sleep and waking. But we can never cross this boundary without being deprived of something.

When we cross the boundary on going to sleep, consciousness ceases and we cannot see the spiritual world. On waking, our consciousness is at once diverted to the outer world and we are unable to perceive the spiritual reality underlying our own being. The boundary that we cross, the boundary that causes the spiritual world to be darkened at the moment of waking is something that interpolates itself between our Sentient Soul and our etheric and physical bodies. The veil that covers these two members on waking, the veil that prevents us from beholding the spiritual reality underlying them, is the Sentient Body, which enables us to see the tapestry presented by the outer world. At the moment of waking the Sentient Body is wholly concerned with the outer world of the senses and we cannot look within our own being. This body, therefore, constitutes a frontier between our life of inner experience and what spiritually underlies the world of the senses.

We shall realise that this is necessary, for what a man would see if he were to cross this stream consciously is something that must be hidden from him in the course of his normal life, because he could not endure it; he needs to be prepared for the experience. Mystical development does not really consist in penetrating by force into the inner world of the physical and etheric bodies, but in first making oneself fit for the experience and passing through it consciously.

What would happen to a man who were to descend unprepared into his own inner being? On waking, instead of seeing an external world, he would enter into his own inner world, into that which spiritually underlies his physical and etheric bodies. In his soul he would experience a feeling of tremendous intensity, known to him in ordinary life in a very faint and weakened form only. That is what would come over a man if he were able, on waking from sleep, to descend into his own inner being. An analogy—without attempting to prove anything—will help you to have an idea of this feeling.

There is in man what is called the sense of Shame, the essence of which is that in his soul he wants to divert the attention of others from the thing or quality of which he is ashamed. This sense of shame in connection with something he does not want to be revealed is a faint indication of the feeling which would be intensified to overpowering strength if he were to look consciously into his own inner being. This feeling would take possession of the soul with such power that it would seem to be diffused over everything encountered in the external world; the man would undergo an experience comparable with that of being consumed by fire. Such would be the effect produced by this feeling of shame.

Why should it have this effect? Because at that moment a man would become aware of the perfection of his physical and etheric bodies compared with what he is as a being of soul. It is also possible to form an idea of this by ordinary reasoning. Anyone who with the help of physical science makes a purely external study of the marvelous structure of the human heart or brain, or of each single part of the human skeleton, will be able to feel how infinitely wise and perfect is the arrangement and organisation of the physical body. By taking one single bone, for example the hip bone, which combines the utmost carrying capacity with the least expenditure of effort, or by contemplating the marvelous structure of the heart or brain, it is possible to have an inkling of what would be experienced if one were to behold the wisdom by which this structure was produced and were then to compare with this what man is as a being of soul in respect of passions or desires! All through his life he is engaged in ruining this wonderful physical organism by yielding to his desires, urges, passions and various forms of enjoyment. Activity destructive to the wonderful structure of the physical heart or brain can be observed everywhere in life. All this would come vividly before a man's soul if he were to descend consciously into his etheric and physical bodies. And the soul's imperfection compared with the perfect structure of the sheaths would have an overwhelmingly paralysing effect upon him if he were able to compare what is in his soul with what the wise guidance of the universe has made of his physical and etheric bodies. He is therefore protected from descending into them consciously and is deflected, on waking, by the tapestry of the sense-world outspread around him; he cannot look into his inmost being.

It is the comparison of the soul with what it would perceive if it had sight of what spiritually underlies the physical and etheric bodies that would evoke the intense feeling of shame; preparation for this is made in advance through all the experiences undergone by the mystic before he becomes capable of penetrating into his inmost being. To realise for himself the imperfection of his soul, to realise that his soul is weak, insignificant, and has still an infinitely long path to travel, is bound to arouse a feeling of humility and a yearning for perfection, and these qualities prepare him to endure the comparison with the infinitely wise structure into which he penetrates on waking. Otherwise he would be consumed by shame as if by fire.

The mystic prepares himself by concentrating on the following thoughts: “When I behold what I am and compare it with what the wise guidance of the universe has made of me, the shame I feel is like a consuming fire.” This feeling gives rise outwardly to the flush of shame. This feeling would intensify to such an extent as to become a scorching fire in the soul if the mystic has not the strength to say to himself: “Yes, I feel utterly paltry in comparison with what I may become, but I shall try to develop the strength that will make me capable of understanding what the wisdom of the universe has built into my bodily nature and to make myself spiritually worthy of it.” The mystic is made to realise by his spiritual teacher that he must have boundless humility. It may be said to him: Look at a plant. A plant is rooted in the soil. The soil makes available to the plant a kingdom lower than itself but without which it cannot exist. The plant can bow to the mineral kingdom, saying: I owe my existence to this lower kingdom out of which I have grown. The animal too owes its existence to the plant kingdom and if it were conscious of its place in the world would in humility acknowledge its indebtedness to the lower kingdom. And man, having reached a certain height, should say: I could not have attained this stage had not everything below me evolved correspondingly.

When a man cultivates such feelings in his soul, the realisation comes to him that he has reason not only to look upwards but to look downwards with thankfulness to the kingdoms below him. The soul is then filled with this feeling of humility and realises how infinitely long is the path that leads towards perfection. Such is the training for true humility.

What has been described above cannot of course be exhausted by concepts and ideas; if that were the case the mystic would soon have mastered it. It must be experienced, and only one who experiences such feelings over and over again can imbue his soul with the attitude and mood necessary for the mystic.

Then, secondly, the would-be mystic must develop another feeling which makes him capable of enduring whatever obstacles may lie in his path as he strives towards perfection. He must develop a feeling of resignation in respect of whatever ordeals he will have to endure in order to reach a certain stage of development. Only by proving himself victorious over pain and suffering for a long, long time can he develop the strong powers needed by his soul to overcome the inevitable sense of inferiority in face of what a wise World-Order has incorporated in the etheric and physical bodies. The soul must say to itself over and over again: ‘Whatever pain and suffering still await me, I will not waver; for if I were willing to experience only what brings joy, I should never develop the strength of which my soul is actually capable.’ Strength is developed only by overcoming obstacles, not by simply submitting to conditions as they are. Forces of soul can be steeled only when a man is ready to bear pain and suffering with resignation. This strength must be developed in the soul of the mystic if he is to become fit to descend into his inner being.

Let nobody imagine that Spiritual Science demands that a man living an ordinary, everyday life shall undergo such exercises for they are beyond his power. What is being described here is simply a narration of what those who voluntarily embark upon such experiences can make of the soul, that is to say, they can make the soul capable of penetrating into their own inmost being. In the course of normal life, however, the Sentient Body intervenes between what it is possible for the mystic to experience inwardly and what is actually experienced in the external world. That is what protects a man from descending into his own inner self without preparation and being consumed by a feeling of shame. In the normal course of life a man cannot experience what is thus screened from him by the Sentient Body, for there he has already reached the frontier of the spiritual world. A spiritual investigator seeking to explore the inner nature of man must cross this frontier; he must cross the stream which diverts normal human consciousness from the inner to the outer world. This normal consciousness, while insufficiently mature, is protected from penetrating into man's inner self, protected from being consumed in the fire of shame. Man cannot see the Power which protects him from this experience every morning on waking. This Power is the first spiritual Being encountered by one who is about to pass into the spiritual world. He must pass this Being who protects him from being consumed by the inner sense of shame; he must pass this Being who deflects his inward-turned gaze to the external word, to the tapestry of sense-phenomena. Normal consciousness becomes aware of the effect of this Being, but man cannot see him. He is the first Being who must be passed by one who desires to penetrate into the spiritual world. This spiritual Being who every morning stands before man and protects him while he is still immature from sight of his own inner self, is called in Spiritual Science, the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. The path into the spiritual world leads past this Being.

Our consciousness has thus been directed to the frontier where we can dimly divine the existence of the Being known to the spiritual investigator as the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. Here already is an indication that in waking life we do not see our true being at all. And if we call our own being the Microcosm, we must add that we never see the Microcosm in its pure, spiritual form, but only the part that our own being reveals in the normal state. Just as when a man looks in a mirror he sees an image, a picture, and not himself, so in waking consciousness we do not see the Microcosm itself but a reflected image of it. We see the Microcosm in its mirror image.

Do we ever see the Macrocosm in its reality? Again we can take our start from familiar experiences, leaving aside for the moment what a man undergoes in the course of the twenty-four hours of the day. We will think of the very simplest experiences that come to a man in the outer world of the senses. In that world he perceives an alternation between day and night-how the Sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening; he perceives how the sunlight illumines all the objects around him. What is it, then, that man sees from sunrise until sunset? Fundamentally speaking he does not see the objects themselves at all, but the sunlight which they reflect. In the dark we cannot see an object without illumination. Let us take the eye as representative of the other senses. What we see during the day are, in reality, the reflected rays of the Sun. This is how things are from morning until evening. But man has only a very imperfect perception of the cause which enables him to see objects in the outer world at all. If we look at the Sun directly, our eyes are dazzled. The very cause to which we owe the faculty of perceiving the outer sense-world, dazzles us. Thus during the day it is the same with the Sun outside as it is on waking with our own inner self. The forces within ourselves enable us to live and to perceive the outer world, but our attention is diverted from our own inner being to the outer world. It is the same with the Sun; it enables us to perceive objects but dazzles us when we attempt to look at it. Nor during the day can we perceive everything that is connected with the Sun. We see what the Earth reveals to us in the reflected sunlight.

Our solar system is composed not only of the Sun but also of the planets. By day the sight of them is denied us; the Sun dazzles our vision not only of itself but also of the planets. We look out into space knowing that although the planets are there, they evade our observation. Just as by day we are prevented from seeing our own inner self and by night the sight of the spiritual world is denied us in ordinary sleep, so, by day, when our gaze is directed outwards, the causes of our sense-perceptions are hidden from us. What lies behind the Sun and connects it with the other bodies belonging to the solar system, with the Beings whose outer manifestations we call Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and so on—whatever living co-operation there is between the Sun and these heavenly bodies is hidden from us by day. What we perceive is the effect of the sunlight. When we compare this state with the state in which the world around us exists by night, from sunset to dawn, we can perceive in a certain way what belongs to our solar system. We can look up to the starry heavens and among other stars behold the planets at times when they are visible; but while we can see them in the night sky, the Sun itself is invisible. We must therefore say what by day makes the sense-world visible to us, by night takes from us the possibility of seeing it. At night the whole of the sense-world is invisible.

Is it possible to discover, in connection with the nocturnal state, something analogous to the State of the mystic when he descends into his own inner world? In the modern age there is little consciousness of this analogous state, but there is something of the kind. It consists in the fact that, like the mystic, a man develops certain qualities of humility and resignation and other feelings too, the nature of which we can grasp by picturing the simplest of them. Man has these feelings in normal life-in a weak form, like the sense of shame, but nevertheless he has them. By enormously enhancing these feelings he prepares himself to have experiences by night which differ entirely from those of normal consciousness.

We all know that our feelings in spring are different from those we have in the autumn. When buds are bursting in spring and giving promise of the beauty and splendour of summer, the feelings of a healthy soul will not be the same as they are in autumn; with the approach of spring we feel the awakening of hope. The feeling is only slightly developed in an ordinary, normal man, but it is present, nevertheless. Towards autumn, the mood of hope and awakening connected with spring will be transformed into one of sadness, of melancholy; when we see the leaves falling, when we see bare, skeleton-like branches instead of the bright flowering shrubs of summer, our souls are steeped in melancholy; there is sadness in our hearts. In the course of the year, if we move in step with the phenomena of outer Nature, we can experience a cycle in our life of soul. But as these feelings are faint and feeble in normal life, man's sensibility to the transformations that take place from spring to summer and autumn and from autumn to winter is only slight.

Once upon a time—and it is still so today—a pupil of spiritual knowledge who was to take the opposite path to that of the mystic was trained in such feelings; in contrast to the mystic's descent into his own inner being, he was taught to live with the cycle of outer Nature. He learnt to feel with great intensity, no longer faintly as in ordinary life, the awakening of Nature and the sprouting of vegetation in spring; then, when he was able to surrender himself wholly to this experience, the feeling of dawning hope in spring became one of joyful exultation in summer. He was trained to have this experience of exultation. And again, when a man was so far advanced as to experience in complete self-forgetfulness the melancholy of autumn, he could pass on to experience a feeling of winter, intensified into a feeling of the death of all Nature at midwinter.

Such were the feelings awakened in the pupils who had undergone training in the old Northern Mysteries, of which only the external side is still known and that merely as tradition. The pupils were trained by special methods to accompany in their own life of feeling the cycle of Nature throughout the year. All the experiences which came to these pupils, for example on Midsummer Night, were indications of the crescendo of hope to exultation shared with Nature. The festival of Midsummer Night was intended to portray the enhancement of the feeling of awakening in spring to that of joyous exultation in the superabundant life of summer. And at the winter solstice the pupil learnt to experience—as an infinitely enhanced feeling of autumn—the decline and death of Nature.

Such feelings can hardly be felt with equal strength by a man today. As a result of the progress of his intellectual life during recent centuries, present-day man has become incapable of undergoing the intense, overpowering experiences which the best representatives of the original peoples of Middle, Northern and Western Europe were able to endure.

Having undergone such training, the pupils who had thus intensified their inner experiences found themselves possessed of a particular faculty—however strange this may sound—the faculty of seeing through matter, just as the mystic is able to penetrate into his own inner self. They were able to see not merely surfaces of objects but they were able to gee through the objects, and above all, through the Earth.

This experience was called in the ancient Mysteries: seeing the Sun at Midnight. The Sun could be seen in its greatest splendour and glory only at the time of the winter solstice, when the whole external sense-world had so to speak died away. The pupils of the Mysteries had developed the faculty of seeing the Sun no longer as the dazzling power it is by day, but with all its dazzling brilliance eliminated. They saw the Sun, not as a physical but as a spiritual reality, and they beheld the Sun Spirit. The physical effect of dazzling was extinguished by the Earth's substance, for this had become transparent and allowed only the Sun's spiritual forces to pass through. But something else of great significance was connected with this beholding of the Sun. The fact of which only an abstract indication was given yesterday, was then revealed in all its truth, namely, that there is a living interplay between the planets and the Sun inasmuch as streams flow continually to and fro—from the planets to the Sun and from the Sun to the planets. Something was revealed spiritually that may be compared with the circulation of the blood in the human body. As the blood flows in living circulation from the heart to the organs and from the organs back again to the heart, so did the Sun reveal itself as the centre of living spiritual streams flowing to and fro between the Sun and the planets. The solar system revealed itself as a spiritual system of living realities, the external manifestation of which is no more than a symbol. Everything manifested by the individual planets pointed to the great spiritual experience just described, as a clock points to the time of occurrences in external life.

All that man learns to experience by enhancing his sensibility withdraws, as the spiritual aspect of space, from the ordinary sight of day. It is also concealed by the spectacle presented at night. For what does man see at night with his ordinary Faculties when he looks up to the heavens? He sees only the external side, just as he sees only the external side of his own inner being. The starry sky we behold is the body of spiritual reality lying behind it. Wonderful as is the spectacle of the starry sky at night, it is nothing but the physical body of the cosmic spirit, manifesting through this body in its movements and in its outward effects. Once again for ordinary human consciousness a veil is drawn over everything that man would behold were he able spiritually to see through the spectacle presented to him in space. Just as we are protected in ordinary life from beholding our own inner being, we are also protected from beholding the spirit underlying the outer, material world; the veil of the sense-world is spread over the underlying spiritual reality. Why should this be so?

If a man were to have direct vision of the spiritual Macrocosm without the preparation that has been described—it is the opposite process to that undergone by the mystic—a feeling of the most terrifying bewilderment would come over him, for the phenomena are so mighty and awe-inspiring that the concepts evolved in ordinary life would be quite incapable of enabling him to endure this utterly bewildering spectacle. He would be overcome by a tremendous enhancement of the fear he otherwise knows only in a weak form. Just as a man would be consumed by shame if, without preparation, he were to penetrate into his own inner being, he would be suffocated by fear if, while still unprepared, he were to confront the phenomena of the outer world; he would feel as though he were being led into a labyrinth. Only when the soul has prepared itself through ideas and thoughts which lead beyond the realm of ordinary experience can it prepare itself to endure the bewildering spectacle.

Man's intellectual life today makes it impossible for him to undergo what could at one time be undergone by individuals belonging to an original population of Northern and Western Europe through an intensification of the feeling of spring and autumn. Intellectuality was by no means as general in those times as it is today. Men's thinking is utterly different from what it was in those olden days, when it was far less developed. But with the gradual evolution of intellectuality, the capacity for this experience of Nature was lost. It is, however, possible for man to have it indirectly, as if in reflection, when these feelings can be kindled, not by actual experience of the happenings in external Nature but by accounts and descriptions of the spiritual aspects of the Macrocosm.

At the present time, therefore, it is necessary for descriptions to be provided such as those contained, for example, in the book, Occult Science—an Outline, which has just been published. I say this without boasting, simply because circumstances make it necessary. Such descriptions are of realities which cannot be outwardly perceived, which underlie the world spiritually and can be seen by one who has undergone the requisite preparation. Let us suppose that such a book is not read in the way that books of another kind are read today, but that it is read—as it should be—in such a way that the concepts and ideas it presents in an unpretentious form induce in the reader feelings which are experienced in the very greatest intensity. Such experiences are then similar to those that were induced in the old Northern Mysteries.

The book gives, for example, an account of the earlier embodiments of the Earth, and if read with inner participation, a difference of style will be recognised in the descriptions of the Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon conditions. By letting what is there said about Old Saturn work upon us, we shall induce a feeling consonant with the mood of spring, and in the description of the Old Sun-evolution there is something analogous to the emotion of exultation once experienced on Midsummer Night. The description of the Old Moon-evolution may evoke the mood of autumn and the whole style of the description of Earth-evolution proper will induce a mood similar to that prevailing when the time of the winter solstice is approaching. At the right place in the description of Earth-evolution an indication is given of the central experience connected with the mood of Christmas. [* See pp. 216-18 in the 1962-3 edition ofOccult Science—an Outline.]

This knowledge can be given today in the place of experiences which man is no longer capable of undergoing because he has now risen from an earlier life in feeling to intellectuality, to thinking; hence it is through the mirror of thinking that feelings originally kindled by Nature herself must be influenced. This is how writings should be composed if they are to convey what it is the aim of Spiritual Science to convey, and the moods they generate must be consonant with the course of the year. Theoretical descriptions are quite senseless for they simply lead to spiritual matters being regarded just as if they were recipes in a cookery book!

The difference between books on Spiritual Science and other kinds of literature lies not so much in the fact that unusual things are described but mainly in how things are presented. From this you will realise that the contents of Spiritual Science are drawn from deep sources and that in accordance with the mission of our time, feelings must be quickened through thoughts. You will realise then that it is also possible today to find something that can lead again out of the prevailing confusion.

Now when guided by such principles, a man sets out along the path leading into the labyrinth of happenings in the spiritual Macrocosm, this is something that was prophetically foreshadowed among the original peoples of Northern Europe. The faculties enabling them to read the great script of Nature were still active in these peoples at a time when the Greeks had already reached a high stage of intellectuality. It was the mission of the Greeks to prepare what we today must bring to an even more advanced degree of development. A book such as Occult Science could not have been written in the days of ancient Greece, but Greek culture made it possible, in a different way, for one who ventured into the labyrinth of the spiritual Cosmos to find a thread that would guide him back again. This is indicated in the legend of Theseus who took the Thread of Ariadne with him into the labyrinth. Now what is the Thread of Ariadne today? The concepts and mental pictures of the super-sensible world we form in the soul! It is the spiritual knowledge that is made available to us in order that we may penetrate safely into the Macrocosm. And so Spiritual Science which, to begin with, speaks purely to the intellect, can be a Thread of Ariadne, helping us to overcome the bewilderment that might come if we were to enter unprepared into the spiritual world of the Macrocosm.

So we see that if a man wishes to find the spirit behind and pervading the outer world, he must traverse with full awareness a region of which in normal life he is unconscious; he must traverse consciously the very stream which in everyday life takes consciousness from him. If then he allows himself to be affected by feelings kindled by the cyclic course of Nature herself or by concepts and ideas such as those referred to, if, in short, he achieves real self-development, he gradually becomes capable of fearlessly approaching that spiritual Power who is at first invisible. Just as the Inner Guardian of the Threshold is imperceptible to ordinary consciousness, so too is this second Guardian, the greater guardian of the Threshold, who stands before the spiritual Macrocosm. He becomes more and more perceptible to one who has undergone due preparation and is making his way along the other path into the spiritual Macrocosm. He must fearlessly and without falling into bewilderment pass this spiritual Being who also shows us how insignificant we are and that we must develop new organs if we aspire to penetrate into the Macrocosm. If a man were to approach this Greater Guardian of the Threshold consciously, but still unprepared, he would be filled with fear and despair.

We have now heard how with his normal consciousness man is enclosed within the frontiers marked by two portals. At the one stands the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, at the other, the Greater Guardian of the Threshold. The one portal leads into man's inner being, into the spirit of the Microcosm; the other portal leads into the spirit of the Macrocosm. But now we must realise that from this same Macrocosm come the spiritual forces which build up our own being. Whence comes the material for our physical and etheric bodies? All the forces which there converge and are so full of wisdom, are arrayed before us in the Great World when we have passed the Greater Guardian of the Threshold. We are confronted there not by knowledge only. And that is another point of importance. Until now I have been speaking only of knowledge that can be acquired by man but it does not yet become insight into the actual workings and forces of the Macrocosm. The body cannot be built out of data of knowledge; it must be built out of forces. Once past the mysterious Being who is the Greater Guardian of the Threshold, we come into a world of unknown workings and forces. To begin with, man knows nothing of this realm because the veil of the sense-world spreads in front. But these forces stream into us, have built up our physical and etheric bodies. This whole interplay, the interactions between the Great World and the Little World, between what is within and what is without, concealed by the veil of the sense-world—all this is embraced within the bewildering labyrinth. It is life itself, in full reality, into which we enter and have then to describe.

To-morrow we shall begin by taking a first glimpse into that which man cannot, it is true, perceive in its essence, but which is revealed to him as active workings when he passes through the one or the other portal, when he passes the Lesser and the Greater Guardians of the Threshold.

Spiritual science must become an instrument of mutual understanding, whereby we learn to understand each other, as it were, across all of humanity and into the soul. And this learning to understand each other, even into the soul, must permeate us as an anthroposophical attitude, so to speak, and live in us, otherwise the occult truths that flow into humanity through spiritual science will not be easily understood by us either. In this respect, spiritual science can, because it is, so to speak, the key to understanding the innermost, bring about peace and harmony across the earth. How can it do that?

Let us illustrate this with a concrete example. Take, for example, the relationship between two people who have different religious beliefs across the earth, let us say Christianity and Buddhism. What we can say with reference to Christians and Buddhists, who provide us only with classical examples, we could of course also say for the world views of two people living side by side in Europe; for what applies on a large scale will also apply on a small scale through spiritual knowledge. If we take the Christian and the Buddhist as they are in the traditional orthodox creeds, how do they relate to each other? Well, in such a way that the Christian actually believes that the Buddhist can only be saved if he accepts Christianity in the form that he has. And so we see the missionary activities of Christians among Buddhists; they take their particular confession there. And the orthodox Buddhist behaves in a very similar way. Suppose both became anthroposophists. How would a Christian, as an anthroposophical Christian, relate to a Buddhist? Well, let us say that he hears what is one of the most important things in Buddhism and what, basically, is only properly understood by someone who lives within Buddhism itself. Today, there are two ways of learning about the content of the various religious beliefs: from people who study comparative religion and from those who learn about the content of the various religious beliefs in a spiritual-scientific way. If we consider those who practice comparative religion, we must say that they are extraordinarily hardworking and active people who endeavor to cultivate the scholarly comparison of different religious beliefs. But when they compare these religious beliefs, something very special comes to light; then what they are looking for, even if they do not admit it, is actually only the untruthfulness of the various religious beliefs. These people are looking for what is not true, what was accepted by the various religious beliefs in childlike times; that is, they are looking for untruth. The person who studies this as a spiritual scientist seeks the main core in the individual religious beliefs; he seeks what is contained in a single nuance, but still as a perceptional nuance, in this or that religious belief. He seeks, therefore, what is true in the individual religious beliefs, not what is false.

In this respect, things can go strangely. Isn't it true that no one who knows the facts will have anything but the greatest respect for Max Müller, perhaps the greatest scholar of comparative religion or the greatest authority on religious studies. He, too, did not give much more than what one might call: the untruth of the oriental creeds. But he believed that he was giving everything with it. And then H. P. Blavatsky appeared and spoke quite differently. She spoke in such a way that one saw in her: she knows the main core of the oriental creeds.

What did Max Müller say? His judgment is somewhat grotesque and shows that a scholar does not necessarily need to be well-versed in logic. He thought that people follow Blavatsky, who only gives them a completely false representation of oriental religions, while she does not take into account the true representation of them, which, for example, he, Max Müller, gives. And he used the following comparison: Yes, when people are walking down the street and see a real pig grunting, they are not particularly surprised, but when they see a person grunting like a pig, it causes a stir. He wanted to compare what is naturally given in the oriental religious systems, namely his kind of religious comparison, with the pig that grunts naturally – I am not making the comparison! - and wanted to compare what H. P. Blavatsky has given with a person who grunts like that. Well, I won't even talk about the tastelessness of the comparison; because it doesn't seem very logical to me: I would be a little surprised if I met a person who could grunt deceptively. But I would not, really not, use the other comparison of comparative religious studies with the said animal, and it is strange that Max Müller himself used it.

Spiritual science introduces us to the truth of different religions. Take a key point in Buddhism: the Buddhist knows, when he has understood the basic tenet of his faith, that there are bodhisattvas, and he knows that these bodhisattvas, once beginning as an individuality, undergo a more rapid development than the other human individualities and then ascend to the Buddha. Buddha is a general name for all those who, in a human, carnal incarnation, ascend from the bodhisattva to the Buddha. And one of those who are especially honored with the name Buddha is precisely the son of Shuddhodana: Gautama Buddha. And with regard to him, it must be recognized, as with every Buddha, that when he attained the dignity of Buddha at the age of twenty-nine, the incarnation in which this occurred was his last incarnation, and that he would not need to descend again to a carnal incarnation on earth. This is regarded as a truth by Buddhists. A comparative religion scholar would regard it as a childish notion. But the anthroposophist, who familiarizes himself with the secrets of religions in all fields, does not approach the Buddha in this way, but he knows that such a thing is a truth. And so, just like any devout Buddhist, the anthroposophist faces Buddhism and says: Yes, I know that there are such things as bodhisattvas who ascend to the Buddha, who do not need to reincarnate again. That is one of the sentences of your religious community that I recognize, just as you do, and by acknowledging it, I can look up to your Buddha with reverence, just as you do. That is to say, the anthroposophical Christian begins to fully understand what the Buddhist says, and he has the same feelings and perceptions with him, he shares them with him, and they understand each other from the one side at first.

Now let us take the opposite case, where the Buddhist has also become an anthroposophist and is learning to recognize what the Christian, who has raised himself above the narrow-mindedness of the confessional orthodox point of view, knows about Christianity. Let us assume that the Buddhist Buddhist hears what a Christian can say about the Christ Impulse itself. He hears that within Christianity, within Christian esotericism, it has been recognized that at one point in the course of evolution, a being called Lucifer approached man in his development; he then hears that as a result, this human being descended lower than would have been the case had there been no Luciferic influence. And he then hears that it is actually something that we look up to as if it were a matter for the gods when we consider the rebellion and revolt of Lucifer against the progressive powers of the gods. So we are looking into a matter for the gods. And then we hear from the Christian who really understands his Christianity that the settlement of this matter between the advancing gods and Lucifer had to become what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. And why?

Well, in its present form, death and everything associated with death has really come about through the influence of Lucifer. But death is something that can only be found in the physical world. There is no death in a supersensible world, insofar as supersensible worlds are accessible to man with his clairvoyant consciousness. Not even the group souls of animals die; they only transform. There is metamorphosis, but not what is called death. The disintegration, the falling apart of a part of a particular entity, death, only exists in the physical world. Now, as a compensation, it had to be chosen - this can only be hinted at - by supernatural beings to suffer death in order to have a common cause with men, something that could be a compensation for the Luciferian rebellion. To conquer Lucifer, the Divine had to go through death; to do so, it had to descend to earth.

So what happened through the Mystery of Golgotha is a divine matter through which a compensation was created for the Lucifer matter. It is the only divine matter that has taken place before the eyes of men. This unique impulse, which cannot be imagined as anything other than the passing through of the Divine through death on the physical plane and the emanation of the Christ impulse into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth from that point on. This is now regarded by anyone who knows Christianity as the primary essence of that Christianity. In this way, Christianity, understood in a deeper sense, differs from all other religions in that the other religions see the main thing about their origin in some religious founder, in a personality; but that Christianity does not see the essential in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but sees in this personal founder only the bearer of the Christ impulse, that Christianity sees the essential in a fact. This must be grasped with all possible intensity: in a fact that had to take place as such at some point in the evolution of the earth: in the passing through of the divine through death. That is the special truth of Christianity: that it is not an individuality but a fact, an event, an experience that is placed at the starting point. Of course, it does not matter if someone says to us, “Yes, look, Jesus of Nazareth still has all kinds of passions, all kinds of qualities that a, let us say, according to oriental views, somehow advanced man should no longer have.” That does not matter at all. That is not the point at all. Anyone who allows themselves to be misled by this has no understanding of Christianity, because Christianity is not about Jesus of Nazareth at all, but about the event of Golgotha, about that fact. Let other founders of religions have personal qualities that other peoples like better than those of Jesus of Nazareth! But those who become Buddhists or anthroposophists will realize that in Christianity it is the event of Golgotha that matters, and they will give the Christian back what he has given them. They will say: Just as you yourself admit that there are bodhisattvas who develop as individualities, ascend to the Buddha and then do not need to incarnate again, so we admit that once in the development of man such a passing through of the divine through death has occurred. You admit that there is a shade of truth in our religion, and we admit that there is a shade of truth in yours. — Thus both sides understand each other. They would not understand each other, for example, and discord would be created if Christians came who thought they had become Anthroposophists and said: I don't believe you that a Buddha can no longer appear in a physical body, but I assume that in a certain time the Buddha will appear again in a physical body. - That would be an impossibility for someone who recognizes the essence of Buddhism. It would be impossible to expect the Buddhist to believe that his Buddha could appear in the flesh again. The Buddhist would say: “You do not understand Buddhism.” And it is quite natural and should not be a matter for discussion that just as the person who claims that a Buddha will come again in the flesh does not know Buddhism, so the person who claims that a Christ can come flesh again, who therefore does not realize that it concerns here a unique life of a divine entity on Earth, precisely for the purpose of passing through death on the physical plane, and not something else. So it concerns mutual understanding across the whole Earth, to really grasp each other and thereby establish peace. Discord would be caused if one were to claim to a Buddhist that Buddha would reappear in the flesh; and discord would be caused if one were to claim that the Christ could come again in the flesh. Such things would have to take a deep revenge, for they are impossibilities in view of what really lives in the evolution of mankind. It would be grotesque if anyone were to claim that the Christ had to come again and that people should understand him better now than they did then and should prepare themselves better for him and not kill him: such a person would not know that the killing was crucial and that without it there would be no Christianity at all! The good will to understand really does lead to mutual understanding, and we see how spiritual science can be an instrument for seeking the main core in the individual religious denominations everywhere. If you really want to, you will find it. That is why it is the message of peace for the world. Spiritual science will have to create a cultural soul for the whole world, just as it has given rise to the material cultural body that now extends across the whole earth in industry and commerce. It is precisely by recognizing the diversity that has been given to humanity in the various religious beliefs, and then in turn relating to that which appears to us as the core of truth through spiritual science, that we achieve a kind of synthesis, a unification of the various world views in our time. This should be emphasized with regard to one point.

The aim of the anthroposophically oriented movement that we are pursuing here has never been to present the differences between religious denominations in such a way as to ascribe advantages to one religious denomination and disadvantages to the other. How often has it been said: The spiritual height that was there immediately after the Atlantic catastrophe in the culture of the ancient Indian Rishis has not been reached at all today. It has therefore not been reached by Christianity as it exists today either. We do not indicate advantages and disadvantages, but present the individual religions in their essence. So we also only present when we draw attention to other differences. If we follow the more oriental way of thinking, namely the one that has the most followers, the Buddhist one, you will see one thing: there the main interest of the people is taken up by what is called the passage through the various incarnations. They speak there of a bodhisattva; but a bodhisattva is not one who lives only from the year of birth to the year of death, but one who comes back again and again and then becomes a Buddha; and one speaks of bodhisattvas as if they appeared in various numbers within the development of humanity. One generalizes more, one grasps more the individualities that remain. But how has it been done so far in the Western view? The exact opposite was the case. When people spoke of Socrates, Plato, Raphael, Michelangelo, they were referring to personalities, and here the Western view presents the limited entities as the essential being. This had its good side, because thereby a special education was achieved to chisel out and work out the individual human personalities. This was essentially the case with those views that H. P. Blavatsky, for example, did not understand: the ancient Hebrew and the New Testament views.

One looked, for example, to Elijah. The occult researches about him have something surprising. I need only say that we notice the uniqueness of which makes him a forerunner of what should have happened through the Christ Impulse. He still understands the matter in such a way that the Divine Being is expressed in the National Ego; but he already points out that the most worthy means of recognition lies in the Ego itself. In this respect, Elijah can be seen as a kind of herald of Christianity, and none of the other prophets seems to me to be a herald in the same way as Elijah. There is still a hint of Jehovah in his words, but with him we find Jehovah as close to the human ego as possible. Then we turn our attention to another figure, again as an individual personality, to John the Baptist. We find how he precedes the Christ Impulse, how John the Baptist really presents himself as the one who characterizes the Christ Impulse in words. He says: Change your mind, no longer look to the times of ancient clairvoyance, but seek the Kingdoms of Heaven within your own humanity! — That which the Christ Impulse is in reality: John the Baptist characterizes it. He is a herald of Christianity in a most wonderful way. What lives in the heart of John the Baptist appears to us as a kind of further development, an inner spiritual further development, compared to what lived in Elijah.

We then turn to Raphael and look at him as seemingly a very different figure from John the Baptist; but by looking at Raphael - yes, we just need to immerse ourselves in him a little in a truly human way, and we find in him a herald of Christianity.

Take the following. We turn to a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, the passage where it says: “And Paul came to Athens, and the Athenians gathered around him, and Paul stood before them and said: You women and men of Athens, you have so far worshiped your gods in all kinds of signs; but the Godhead does not live in external signs in reality. You also have an altar, however, on which it says: “To the unknown God!” But I say to you that the unknown God is the one who cannot be indicated by external signs in his true form, but who underlies all that is alive and all that exists. He is the one who lived on earth and was resurrected, the one who, through resurrection, will lead man himself to resurrection.” And further on, the Acts of the Apostles tell us – and we can almost see Paul standing before the Athenians – how some Athenians believed and others did not. Among the former was Dionysius, the Areopagite. Then we look at the painting that hangs in the Camera della Signatura in Rome and was painted by Raphael, and which is called “The School of Athens”. Now let us assume – as was quite natural at the time – Raphael had before him the passage from the Acts of the Apostles that we have just been discussing. It came to life in him. And now we look at the various Athenians, to whom he gave the faces, and except for the hand movement, we see stepping forward – stepping forward among the Athenians – a figure whom we recognize if we just consider Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.

And so we could go through the most diverse things with Raphael. If we focus on his various Madonnas, we must ask ourselves, however: Isn't one thing strange about Raphael, he is great when he paints the scenes that show the becoming, the growing in the emergence of Christianity, the little Jesus as something that contains the whole of Christianity becoming in the germ. But we do not find Raphael's painting of Judas betraying Christ, nor does he actually paint Christ carrying the cross, because his Christ carrying the cross seems to us to be forced, not at all like Raphael's other works. Instead, we find the Annunciation, the Ascension, that is, the things that point precisely to the emergence of Christianity.

And how did these things speak to people? Yes, they spoke most peculiarly. You know that one of Raphael's most magnificent works is in Dresden: the Sistine Madonna. People who think superficially might think that this is a work of art that was paraded through Germany like a victor. It made no impression on Goethe at all because he had heard how people generally thought about this work. As a young man, Goethe was not yet as sure in his judgment as he was in his old age and was still receptive to what people said. What did the museum officials in Dresden tell him? Well, that the child was ugly in its entirety, that the Madonna had been painted over by an amateur, that the little putti below had been added by some kind of handyman. That was still the attitude towards the Sistine Madonna when Goethe came to Dresden as a young man. But let us see how it is now. Let us consider what Raphael actually has become for people! Raphael worked in Rome at a time when there was much dispute about religious dogmas. The way in which Raphael paints the Christian mysteries is interdenominational. If we take the later great Italian painters, we see the religious mysteries painted in such a way that we recognize: this is the Christianity of the Latin race. Raphael paints in such a way that we are dealing with universal renderings of Christian mysteries that transcend nations. That is why we see how, in a short time, the Sistine Madonna finds its way into the souls even in Protestant areas. And if anthroposophy is to work for the understanding of the Christian mysteries, it will find its way best into those souls in which the feelings live that are won by images like the Sistine Madonna, into those souls that are prepared in this way. And when we say today that Christianity is only at the beginning of its development, that it will only receive its true form through the spiritual key that anthroposophy is able to give, then we know that Raphael stands as a herald for this Christianity.

And again we turn our gaze to yet another figure, taking only what is Western in outlook: we turn to the figure of the German poet Novalis. If we turn to Novalis, we find traces of the purest anthroposophical teaching in every detail; one need only unravel them, so to speak. Thus we see how Novalis is imbued with an anthroposophical Christianity.

We have thus presented four figures as personalities. That was the Western view. Now comes the spiritual-scientific deepening. Through this, people will already experience why, for example, Raphael feels that magnetic attraction to be incarnated into the earth on a Good Friday, in order to outwardly suggest through the birth on Good Friday that he has something to do with the Easter mystery. These things can only be hinted at today; in a few decades people will understand the things that are being asserted in this way, just as they understand scientific facts today: that it is the same individuality that lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis. First they will recognize the personalities, then the individuality as it has passed through them. And now we understand the fourfold heraldry and the ascent in this fourfold heraldry. Now we stand by such a thing quite differently than we used to. Today we already know that the original form of the Stanze in Rome can no longer be seen; they have been spoiled, are no longer as they were painted by Raphael's hand, and only centuries need pass for these things to disappear. Even if the replicas will have a longer life, what created the individuality is dissolved into its atoms. But even if Raphael's physical works are pulverized by the passage of time, we know that the same individuality that created those works was present again in Novalis and brought about, in a different way, what was in him.

Thus we see how today, in addition to what the Western way of looking at things has achieved, the limited vision of personalities is added to individuality; how, in other words, the best that the Western world view has achieved is combined with the best that the Eastern way of looking at things has. This is how time progresses. As humanity progresses and realizes these things, the spiritual world will not remain silent, but will speak to humanity in even the most mundane of phenomena. And so, people will not only have to rise to the spiritual world through a kind of knowledge, but more and more this knowledge will be transformed into a kind of, one might say, experience. But for this to happen, a real spiritual movement is needed today. That such a movement is necessary is evident simply from the fact that people no longer judge even the simplest things in the right way.

Let us single out one detail today. A person who leads a healthy life goes through waking and sleeping in the course of twenty-four hours. We know that when he falls asleep, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed and the astral and I go out. What then happens to what remains in bed? When the clairvoyant looks back from his astral body at what is happening in the etheric and physical bodies, he sees how a more vegetative life begins, a life that has actually been destroyed by daytime consciousness. Fatigue is compensated for; that is, the etheric body and the physical body now flourish and sprout, and the astral body and the I have been withdrawn. When they submerge again into the physical body and etheric body in the morning, they have to make them tired again; they graze, let wither what has sprouted during the night.

Everything that is in the microcosm is also present in the macrocosm. When we see in spring how the earth lets its greenery shoot out in the plants, how flowers and leaves sprout and how the plants prepare to bear fruit, what do we have there? The one who compares externally will say that the waking up in the morning can be compared to the waking up of nature in spring. But the opposite is true! We have to compare the blossoming in spring with falling asleep. We have to compare the emergence and growth of plants in spring with what happens in the etheric and physical body of a person when they fall asleep. Then, as summer approaches, it becomes more and more alive, as in the human physical and etheric bodies in the middle of the sleep period. And in autumn it becomes as if the human being descends into the physical and etheric body in the morning, in autumn, which causes withering of what has sprouted during spring and summer. One must correctly put together what happens outside and inside; one must not seek external allegories and compare spring with waking up and autumn with falling asleep, but the other way around.

So that we can say: That which is the spirit of the earth goes to sleep in spring and wakes up as earth spirits in autumn and winter. In winter, they are connected to the earth as earth spirits, in order to rise again in spring and summer to the heights of heaven, to the astral heights and to the other side of the earth. When spring comes again, they go back to sleep.

It does not contradict that the earth sleeps once on one half and the other time on the other half. Something similar is also the case with man in a certain respect. The person who follows the processes clairvoyantly sees that in spring it is the same as when a person falls asleep, where the individual spirit withdraws into the astral world; he sees that in spring what we call the earth spirits withdraw into the astral world, and vice versa. Yes, today's humanity – except for those sitting here, who would probably burst out laughing if one were to speak of the falling asleep and waking up of the earth spirits. One believes this humanity; it does everything to prove that it has no idea of the real processes of the world. But it was not always so, not at all, but it was different in the past! There was an old human clairvoyance, and that saw these facts correctly. It was seen that the earth spirits withdraw in spring to go up, so to speak, into cosmic heights. In autumn these spirits descend again. This was recognized in ancient times. It was natural to point out that in the middle of summer there is something like an absence of the actual earth spirit from the earth. Instead, there is an upsurge of the elemental nature spirits, as in a paroxysm, and a lagging behind of what is earthly-bodily on the earth, which thus emerges through the senses. If one wanted to make this clear, one could not do better than to move the Feast of St. John to this time, in order to point out how the sprouting nature spirits and the actual spirits of the earth, which are the I and the astral body of the earth, work.

But what about when winter approaches? Then the earth wakes up, and the astral body and the ego are connected with the earth. That is when we have to move the festivals that primarily relate to the spiritual part of the human being. That is where Christmas has been moved to. And then, when the spirit of the earth moves upwards, which is indicated by Easter, this movement away from the earth, this movement into the astral, was related to the relationship between the sun and the moon.

All these things that we are looking into connect us in a wonderful way with ancient clairvoyance, showing us how, in what has been handed down from ancient times, we have to see something that has to do with ancient human clairvoyance. It is quite natural for the materialistic world view to say that it has only the body to educate, that it says: It is inconvenient for us, especially with regard to cheque transactions and similar things, to have Easter early one year and late the next, and this must be remedied so that trade and industry can get away with it as comfortably as possible. Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday in April! — This is only appropriate for the materialistic age, which has no connection with the spiritual world. Just as it is appropriate for materialism to entertain such ideas, it is equally true that a spiritual movement must maintain the connection with humanity's ancient festivals. And we will not hold back in doing what is appropriate for a spiritual worldview, especially with regard to practical activity.

And this should be expressed in what is presented to you in our calendar, which of course appears ridiculous to the outside world, but we do not want to withhold it from them, even if they think we are fools because of it. It is expressed through this calendar that we must maintain the connection with ancient times. In the illustrations for the calendar, which were created by a dear and beloved member of our group, you have a renewal of that which has already become dry and barren: the imaginations that relate to the constellations of the sun and moon and the signs of the zodiac, renewed for the soul of today, given in such a way that you really benefit from it when you look at the sequence of weeks and days. If you ask how you can gain access to such things yourself, then take a look at the Soul Calendar: these meditations are the result of many years of occult research and experience. If you make them effective in the soul, you will see that what is forming in the soul is the connection between the effectiveness of spiritual

worlds in the succession of time. And what we call the Mystery of Golgotha, we have made outwardly, exoterically, so that it does not shock at first glance. We have drawn a circle around it, on which 1912/13 is written, but inwardly the calendar is calculated in such a way that the beginning is marked by the birth of human ego-consciousness, that is, with the Mystery of Golgotha. And besides, the years are counted from Easter to Easter, which is bound to prove rather inconvenient for commercial life, but is necessary for spiritual life.

Thus something is provided that has grown out of our way of thinking and that can be used by everyone, so that by using it they can take a step closer to the spiritual path than can be achieved by any other means.

It will become more and more apparent how the things we undertake within our anthroposophical movement are actually conceived from a unified basic principle and impulse, and how the individual does not owe his existence to a whim, but is placed in such a way that he really fits into our work as a whole as a single building block. For this, of course, it is necessary that more and more individual members also develop an understanding of this collaboration and that we move beyond special interests and special aspirations and focus more on what unites us. Of course, it is understandable that many individual members have special aspirations and special requests, that some would like to bring this or that into the anthroposophical movement. But especially here in this place, where truly selfless cooperation will be necessary if we really want to achieve what we have planned, it must be deeply, deeply rooted in our hearts that we will only have a beneficial effect if we do not assert our special aspirations, but rather what can be integrated into the whole, what is being striven for, as a building block. Otherwise it cannot become a whole. This is so extraordinarily important, and in this respect I believe that the realization of what should have happened there is the basis for studying how the anthroposophical movement should develop.

So today I have tried to present to you some of our anthroposophically oriented views, and we have thus created a kind of substitute for what should have been this time, but could not be because not all the official approvals have been obtained: namely, the laying of the foundation stone of our Johannesbau. But we hope that in the not too distant future we will be able to make up for this. For perhaps in doing so we will also lay the foundation stone for a revival of the anthroposophical movement as we understand it in the West. And if we succeed in doing the right thing in this field, then we will already have provided the proof that we, in all loyalty to the truth, without any inclination towards sensationalism, are making those occult efforts our own which present-day humanity needs for its further development.

Translator Unknown

Let us once more briefly set before our eyes what we tried to make clear to ourselves yesterday. We said present-day mankind, insofar as it comes into consideration as modern mankind, is passing as a whole body through something which is similar to what, in the development of individual men, can be designated as the crossing of the Threshold to the supersensible world. If, now, one discusses the development of individual men as I have done in the book How Does One Attain to Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and the booklet The Threshold of the Spiritual World, one is normally referring to the conscious ascent into supersensible life. When one speaks of the crossing of the Threshold, one also implies a quite conscious event, as we have often described it. I have already made you aware of this yesterday, that one should not strain the concepts if one is compelled to carry them over from one sphere into the other. Therefore I can only say to you mankind as a whole is now passing through something similar to a crossing of the Threshold. For I already intimated that it could come to pass, it would be altogether possible for mankind to refuse Spiritual Science. Then they would have no means of knowing anything about the fact that a process is being undergone by the whole of mankind of such a kind as is the crossing of the Threshold. After all, events take place in what has to assert itself as the crossing of the Threshold by the whole of mankind quite other than those which take place in the individual man when he enters in a conscious way on the path into the supersensible world. And I have already indicated yesterday that the essential thing for the whole of mankind in the crossing of the Threshold as it must come about in the course of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch, the time of the development of the consciousness-soul, consists in the separation of the three soul-capacities so that they attain a kind of independence, as has been known to you in essence for a long time. For the whole of mankind, thinking, feeling and willing are not remaining as they now are, chaotically mixed together—as I said, I am speaking of mankind in its entirety. The life of the soul is membering itself in such a way that the whole of mankind are experiencing their thinking, their feeling and their willing more independently than hitherto. In the future, therefore, it needs the membering of the Social Organism into three spheres, which it did not hitherto require in the same way. If, then, one speaks about this threefolding of the Social Organism today, one does so from the consciousness of a necessity which is taking place in the whole of mankind according to the spiritual laws of the universe.

Now the mistake ought not to be made to wish at once to find the all-embracing, the great process in single events which are occurring here or there. Since the middle of the 15th century we have only lived through a small part of the epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul. Such an epoch extends over 2,000 years. This epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul will thus still last for a long time, and the event which one must, nevertheless, already comprehend as this passing over the Threshold of the supersensible will bring itself to being in various stages by means of various events. But I ask you not to make the mistake of, perhaps, immediately identifying only the world-catastrophe of the present-day with the "all-embracing event" of which I spoke yesterday. It would be a mistake if you were to do this. But it is no mistake if one seeks, out of great processes which embrace long periods of time, to understand the events in which one is living. For only when one understands them in this way does one find one's way in relation to single events. Therefore let us speak of something today which in a certain way belongs to the symptomatology of this development of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch after the crossing of the Threshold. The rise of the development of the consciousness soul is, you see, to be read with quite special clearness just from the culture of Middle-Europe. It has already been clearly preparing itself here since the 10th, 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, and then led to certain events which we shall presently discuss, and certainly formed itself in Middle-Europe in such a way that it has quite particularly led, from then on, to the middle-European catastrophe in the present moment of human development, and must lead further into this catastrophe.

It is certainly the case that this Middle-Europe is really condemned to experience certain things, in the first place more quickly and in the second more violently, more characteristically than is the rest of Europe. One can clearly see how, since the beginning of the 15th century, something arises in Middle-Europe which introduces the period of the development of the consciousness-soul. And now one can further see, from the catastrophic events of Middle-Europe in particular, how difficult a path mankind has to pass over just in this period of the development of the consciousness-soul, what difficult struggles, what terrific blows are being endured, so that the period of the consciousness-soul can push impulses which lie in it to the surface of human development.

In this matter it can be of special importance to fix one's attention on the meaning for Middle-Europe of the point of time about the year 1200. It is assumed that about the year 1200—of course, only approximately—the Nibelung-epic was brought to completion, i.e., that poem which, in relation to the population of Middle-Europe, is very frequently compared with what the Homeric poems were for the Greek world. The Nibelung-epic manifestly important folk-destinies of a period which proceeds by a long time the age in which the poem was brought to completion, came to expression in pictorial, imaginative form. And anyone who looks into the Nibelung-epic today with an honest inner disposition, and even into what Jordan, Wagner, and others have made out of it much later, must say to himself: the sort of humanity, the being of Man which shines out of the Nibelung-epic is, basically, only barely understandable for the men of today. The Nibelung-epic points back to a time in which things were, quite clearly, altogether different in Middle-Europe, even as regards the landscape, and in which human characteristics have developed, out of the nature of the landscape, quite different from those which developed later.

If one has a clear power of perception, one cannot but get the feeling from the Nibelung-epic how the human beings spoken of in it have lived in barren regions which were covered by thick forests over wide areas. What may be called a forest-character is expressing itself in the Nibelung-epic, all that impresses itself on people who are accustomed to live in forest-covered lands. We cannot imagine that the Nibelung-epic had the same outlook as had, for example, the men of the later Germany after the year 1200, although the actual forms in the Nibelungenlied are already very much "humanized". We must imagine that these men were inwardly endowed with a soul-life quite different from that of later men. We must imagine that they had a much more instinctive, more elementary kind of feeling than had the men of later times. The light of Christianity, you see, had not yet really penetrated into the Nibelung-men. But we wish to look less at the content of this soul-life than into the formation, the fashioning of the soul-life of these men. It is clearly something more instinctive (if one does not misunderstand this word), something fiercer, more elementary, which issues from the human soul with a more primal force than happened later.

Nearly at the end of the period into which the Nibelung-epic still points, the period begins which one can call the middle-European civic period, the period of middle-European civic life. How did this develop? It came about in such a way that gradually the forests were rooted up in wide areas, that over wide districts of Middle-Europe meadows and cornfields made their appearance in places which were formerly covered by almost impenetrable forests. This brought into being middle-European city-life, in the first period of the development of the consciousness-soul. And the qualities of this European city-life certainly appeared nowhere in so characteristic a way as in this Middle-Europe, because the destinies of this city-life have already rounded themselves out in a tragic way in Middle-Europe, because in our days they are already bringing themselves to a certain conclusion, because this city-life in Middle-Europe is fundamentally at the end of its development today. It has gone through the world-catastrophe in accordance with its own characteristic disposition, and will go on in accordance with its disposition through this into the world-catastrophe to follow, and will have to undergo experiences different from those of the rest of the European bourgeoisie. The rest of the European bourgeoisie will at a later date experience certain phases of development which, in the case of the middle-European bourgeoisie, are already clearly pointing today to the final catastrophe. Thus, in the middle-European bourgeoisie, we already have a sort of destiny rounded-out in itself—the ascent in the period when wide regions which later became Germany were being transformed from forests into meadows and fields, the development from the 13th to the 20th century, and the terrible, tragic precipice in the 20th century.

This phenomenon, which has a kind of compactness here in Middle-Europe, can nowhere be studied according to its symptomatology in the same way as in this Middle-Europe. And he who wishes really to fix his attention, quite seriously, on the great impulses of human development should not be too cowardly to keep in view the characteristic, important symptoms which are expressing themselves in this. For everything else in Europe is only to be understood if one just fixes one's attention, in an unprejudiced way from the higher point of view of Spiritual Science, on this destiny which is rounded-out in itself.

But it is one-sided to speak of one culture-stream and to say: with the 13th century the later middle-European bourgeoisie arises from the Nibelung-men and becomes the bearer of this middle-European culture. It is of course true and, within these limits, right, but it is one-sided because it is only right within these limits; it is true that that disposition of soul which is here referred to as that of the middle-European bourgeoisie spread itself particularly over the middle-European states, and that middle-European civilization developed out of this bourgeoisie. This is completely true on the one side. But it is not the whole truth; it is only part of it, a part of the phenomena which have developed in that Middle-Europe which is in its death-throes today, together with many other things which have developed at the same time. The other part is that something has remained from the old forest—and Nibelung-men, that something has remained over of characteristics which have continued to live in their souls beyond the old epoch of which the Nibelung-epic tells us. The men who, if I may say so, have developed into the middle-European bourgeoisie under the sunshine of the cornfields and meadows were not the only ones who lived in Middle-Europe after the year 1200 and then on into the 20th century, but there were also other men who had retained something of the old inner wildness and primitive soul-nature of the Nibelung-men.

But if one fixes one's attention on a phenomenon like this, one should not forget that the passing of time is not without significance in the development of mankind, that the passing of time represents a reality. If anyone retains something which really belongs to an earlier age of soul-culture, he does not remain in the same disposition and corresponds to this old soul-culture, but he comes into decadence, into a decline, and loses touch with the demands of the age. He develops into a later age qualities which should have been developed as it would have come to pass in an earlier age, but in a morbid way, with the characteristic marks of decay and decadence.

As a result we saw, in the one line of development, the middle-European bourgeoisie of the new age develop itself, which I should like to call the highest of the cornfields and meadows into which the forests had been transformed: on the other line we see among this bourgeoisie in Middle-Europe men who have retained the old soul-life of the Nibelung-time, who have only adopted the new age and Christianity in an external way, and who therefore display this old Nibelung-soul-character in a decaying form. The men who now displayed this old Nibelung-character in a decaying form are the middle-European territorial princes and their dependents, the territorial princes who have now been cast from their thrones by the dozen. To this middle-European Nibelung-aftergrowth belongs the first place all that formed the human content of the House of Habsburg, but the rest of the territorial princes of Middle-Europe as well. No one understands what is now being tragically consummated who does not also know how to fix his attention on this sub-stratum below the events, on the fact that the more progressive part of the population of Middle-Europe has been ruled and administered through the centuries by that part which has retained the soul-character of the old Nibelung-men in a decadent form.

There was actually a huge contrast between the whole inner soul-structure of those whom one could call the followers of the middle-European bourgeois-system and those who sat on the kingly or princely thrones and their dependents. The soul of some King of Bavaria or Duke of Brunswick and that of a middle-German man who has received an average education are two spiritual powers altogether different from each other. These lived side by side in past centuries like two alien races, perhaps with even stronger points of difference than between two alien races.

One must have the courage to take a good look at an underlying historical fact like this. For it is just in catastrophic times that events in human development do not depend on the external events which conventional history records. What for the most part touches on human destiny and human development depends on underlying facts such as this. Only reflect that the rest of the European bourgeoisie was not concerned with this destiny, to stand in this kind of way in relation to a number of men who had retained an earlier age in their soul-life, but that this was the case only with the middle-European bourgeoisie. Take, for example, but only to make it clearer, the man who, streaming from this Middle-Europe but migrating from it, later turned into the English-speaking peoples. These had not—if I may say so—entered into the development which has been gone through in Middle-Europe. They have taken with them what was present in old times within the European, middle-European bourgeoisie, have carried it elsewhere, and have not had to fret it away in the struggle with backward Nibelung-men.

It thus comes about—I have said this to you on another occasion—that there are, in the English-speaking peoples for example, certain instincts for the development of the consciousness-soul which are completely lacking in Middle-Europe, certain instincts for political life in particular, while the mankind of Middle-Europe had to remain non-political, without politics, had no disposition at all to take part in any way in political life for they were ruled, you see, by men who had retained an earlier age.

Yet how strikingly clear does it appear to one who turns his glance to the second half of the 18th century. We there look on the spiritual blossoms of the middle-European bourgeoisie; we need only name Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, and many another to indicate the blossoms of what had been germinally developing upwards since the time of the Nibelungen. And, in the same age as the men who represent these blossoms, with their culmination in Goethe and Goetheanism, there stands, by contrast, in Frederick the Great, the most complete retention of the Nibelung-wildness in its fullest decay! Seek for a human contrast where you will, there is no other which works so tragically, when considered i n perspective, as Goethe by the side of Frederick the Great.

As for the development which followed, it remains, indeed, only to be said that the utmost absence-of-thought, the most dreadful indifference to spiritual interests, arose in the 19th century and had to continue in the 20th until Goetheanism, the greatest spiritual impulse which struck into mankind during its century, has come to be hardly noticed at all. For Goetheanism is hardly regarded at all by civilization in general. In this is expressing itself that complete absence-of-thought, that complete lack of interest and lack of attention towards human development which began in the 19th century and continued in the 20th. And the whole of the inner untruthfulness of this culture of the 19th and of beginning of the 20th century is required in order to represent the period of Frederick the Great and its impulses as characteristic of modern times. Once could really say nothing more inappropriate about Frederick the Great than what has been said about him in current historical representations.

One must also see more recent events on this substratum, not merely events of a local nature but also those which encroach deeply into international life, certainly events which, until today, have been entirely missed by mankind, who slept through them. For can there be anything more tragi-comic than when men, who are separated by cosmic distances from all that has developed in Weimar, now come together in Weimar in the farce of the present-day National Assembly? Anything more nonsensical than the gathering of this present-day assembly in Weimar is impossible to devise.

I had this in mind when I spoke a short time ago of a more rapid and also more vigorous development. today I must often think about various conversations which I had in the eighties of the last century with people who were enthusiastic for what is German, among them, for example, the man who later wrote the History of Modern Austria—Heinrich Friedjung (1854-1920), whom I recently mentioned in another connection in the lecture in the "Bernoulli" and whose strange action you find mentioned, as you may remember, in one of my printed lectures. (R.S. The Christmas Mood, Novalis as proclaimer of a Christianity to be understood spiritually).

At that time it was said that Middle-Europe in the age of Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the others who were of like mind with them had reached a high-point of the spiritual development of mankind. Friedjung and some who were in my company at that time spoke somewhat like this now it must really go on, it must ascend further. I remember very well how I said: no, that was the high-point; from then on it descends again. With our present-day age the middle-European world has brought to the surface just what it had in it in the way of subjectivity.This, then, was the characteristic appearance of Middle-Europe; after that, it went downwards, not upwards any more.

Naturally, this was at that time taken very amiss of me; it was perhaps even considered to be nonsense. I can understand quite well that much of what I had to say in my, and of what I have to say, is regarded by my contemporaries as nonsense. But this, nevertheless, is a quite characteristic phenomenon. What began about the year 1200 and had its mighty culmination in Lessing, Herder, Goethe and Schiller, is certainly present, but it cannot be understood in the framework of the national middle-European life. But the specifically middle-European culture wills no longer to be national but to be above nationality, international, an outlook which has also got to be honestly cultivated in our Spiritual Science, in contrast with all the national chauvinism of the present-day. This is going to be the characteristic phenomenon, that the true substance of what came to light about the turn of the 18th-19th centuries can be perceived and lived only by this spiritual-scientific cultural life.

Let us look back a little, and fix our attention on a certain nuance of this middle-European cultural life. For one who knows how to take history symptomatologically it still remains a very remarkable fact, pointing deeply into historical mysteries, that in 1077—thus comparatively speaking, a long time before the now Age of Consciousness—a representative of the old wildness of the Nibelung-souls (as the Salic and also the Saxon Emperors also were, Henry IV, had to do his terrible penance at Canossa before the monk of Cluny (or at least the follower of the monastic system pf Cluny), who had become a great Pope. For the great Pope Gregory, who had put Henry IV under the ban of the Church and forced him to come to Canossa, stood entirely under the influence of the Cluniac stream, that ecclesiastical current which aimed to raise up the Church to be the preponderant power in Europe. And the whole of the wildness of the old Nibelung-character expressed itself in this Henry IV, the Salic, in his relations with Pope Gregory.

And still another thing which has found its continuation in later times was already expressing itself at that time, the fact that Middle-Europe could simply do nothing except come into conflict with what had, in a round-about way, become pseudo-Christianity through Romanism, what had developed from the original Christian impulse into a Christian empire. The old Nibelung-wildness was in a certain way made subject to the Roman Empire. It was then replaced by that stream which rose over the forests of Middle-Europe which had been turned into cornfields and meadows. Basically speaking, this transformed stream which replaced the old Nibelung-outlook was in no way fitted to take in the impulses of the Roman Empire. It was really continually struggling against the type of Christianity which had become political. And while, on the one side, it brought its own nature to extension and unfolded what was in its own being, it saw itself on the other side humbled, ruled and administered by those who had retained the old Nibelung-wildness in the manner already described.

I repeat that in order to understand things like this one must be clear with oneself in a spiritual-scientific way that if something which was great in an earlier time is retained in a later time it becomes unhealthy in the later time and falls into decay. This is the characteristic thing about the contrast which exists in Middle-Europe. There is all that arose with the beginning of the 13th century after the uprooting of the old forests, all that began to sound from earth to heaven with the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide and what has run into Goetheanism. This is the one, unpolitical side, which is undergoing a completion in itself of the circle of its development but which always has beside it, without realizing the whole consequences of this fact, the old Nibelung-character on the thrones with the princely diadems—but in a state of decadence.

Middle-Europe came into the second half of the 19th century under this kind of circumstances and conditions, and went on into the 20th century, and thus entered into the phase which must now be so frequently described as characteristic of present-day Europe, as distinct from Russia. One must speak, just in these connections, about modern industrial development, of the machine-age, the rise of capitalism. These are international phenomena. If one speaks of the rise of the age of technical development, of the industrial age, of the capitalist age, one is speaking of international impulse. But these international impulses acted in a different way in every place. I should so much like to see a really unprejudiced description of what has developed in Middle-Europe from the time when Walther von der Vogelweide sang until the day when Goethe spoke the loftiest words about humanity—a humanity which no longer understands Goethe's words at all, without the dreadful scholastic judgments which have been mixed into conventional history in all spheres. I should like to see what lies in these years of development described in an unprejudiced way, to see it described quite in accordance with reality. Then it would really be possible for the untruthfulness to be removed, where it has penetrated into the hearts and souls of men in so tremendously elementary a way that even the most truthful man has to become untruthful. Then the untruthfulness will be removed, to which even a man like Goethe was impelled when he spoke about Frederick the Great, simply because the power of what held sway as a universal opinion was so strong that the most truthful man could do nothing except say the same as the others did.

Truthfulness demands something else, quite different from any blind acceptance-of-authority or the like. Therefore truthfulness is an individuality, a being which is so avoided in human development. Therefore untruthfulness calls forth as much that is tragic in human development. One would have to speak of a quite special revelation of the new age if one wished to describe, faithfully to reality and in an unprejudiced way, what lies in the development from the time in which Walther von der Vogelweide sang his songs to the time in which Goethe gave a hitherto unrevealed treasure of spiritual life to his contemporaries and to a posterity which did not understand him. But one would be impelled to call attention to the fact that something was, as it were, secretly developing for the whole of mankind on earth and that what was not secret, what one observes as world-history, was the Luciferic shaping of the old Nibelung-wildness.

Thus, from the year 1200 until the 20th century, the natural development of the Middle-Europe stood facing something Luciferic which the retained Nibelung-wildness was unfolding as soul-life in an age which had meanwhile become different. Let us consider these two streams. Let us consider the stream of which we may look for the starting-point about the year 1200, and let us set opposite to it the Luciferic element of the territorial princes. Then we shall understand the terrible Luciferic-Ahrimanic combination which was brought about, in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, in the last phase of a Middle-Europe which is moving towards its end. I mean the combination between the Ahrimanic element of modern industrialism, with its technical development and capitalism, and that of the old territorial princely system, Junkerdom, the dependents of the old Nibelung-wildness which had fallen into decay.

It is this which has brought Middle-Europe to its ruin. This Ahrimanic-Luciferic marriage between rising industrialism (other regions of the world were gripped by this in a way different from what happened in Middle-Europe, where the old Nibelung-wildness held sway in the territorial princely system) and the political administrators of Middle-Europe, the territorial princely system, was what would not permit the unfolding of a really middle-European or German mission to come about, as was called for in my Manifesto (Manifesto to the German people and to the civilized world: Vol. 1, lecture 1). And if one is quite frankly and freely to describe what terrible symptoms of a world-historically tragic decline were present from 1914 to 1919 and will, as a result, continue to be present just in Middle-Europe, one will have to describe the co-operation—cruelly terrible for this region of Middle-Europe—of the old, decadent, Nibelung-nobility with the newly-arisen industrialists of Middle-Europe, who justified their world-historical position by no inner pretensions of the soul.

The types which have appeared in Middle-Europe in these years out of these two different circles have become the most terrible destroyers of Middle-Europe. These were the men who, in boundless haughtiness and out of what they imagined to be a practical outlook, have for years been trampling down everything which was trying in any way to foster the further consideration of what began to sing with Walther von der Vogelweide and found its finality with Goetheanism. It is no longer to be wondered at that the external world has coined the term "militarism" in order to indicate these much deeper phenomena in an inappropriately-appropriate, appropriately-inappropriate way, for the world outside Middle-Europe is not even very much more thoughtful than is the middle-European world. Understanding for the middle-European nature has nowhere been found, but it must also be said that what has developed into Goetheanism in this Middle-Europe has gone backward with giant strides since the age of Goethe.

If one speaks of the crossing of the Threshold into the supersensible world, one must always call to mind something which was always said in the old days, when men knew much from atavistic clairvoyance, about the experiences of the human soul which crosses this Threshold to the supersensible, namely "passage through the gate of death". Many a thing is going on in the whole of humanity which is announcing itself in a soul-spiritual way as a passing through the gate of soul-spiritual death. And, as I wish to say once again, all sorts of things ought to be considered not in such a way that one just immediately identifies single phenomena with the great, revolutionary impulses of world-historical development. But one must be able to drag what happens in individual instances into the light of what can come to us, spiritual-scientifically, as illumination of the great, incisive impulses of our time.

It is, to be sure, just now that something remarkable has happened just in Middle-Europe. Characteristic phenomena can be perceived. What I have often described to you as expressing the reality of the soul-life through speech is letting itself continue in this middle-European spiritual life just about the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The industrial-technical-capitalist coloring which the fashionable culture of Middle-Europe has gradually taken on is bringing it about that people are quite forgetting the earlier age up to the 12th century. Really, the Germans of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th do not know how they are Germans, or as the result of what. The events of the early age were received in a real sleep of the soul, for this had not penetrated into the consciousness of the so-called educated classes, who gradually broke with what had found its finality in Goetheanism. Nothing of the true spiritual substance which was coming up had penetrated into the consciousness of the so-called educated classes. And thus it could come about—and many similar examples could be brought forward—that serious people were inclined to take as serious drama or serious poetry the glorification of the German heroic past by a brawling fellow such as Ernst von Wildenbruch.

Ernst von Wildenbruch has dramatized much about certain emperors, kings and princes of the early days, but he has always represented only the least important family events of all, and never world-historical impulses. One therefore has the feeling in his dramas: words are sounding here like a tinny noise, nothing but beaten tins! But we have already come so far in the age of industrialism, which must work destructively just on peoples, such as the German people, with an innate talent for spirituality, that people feel the tintinnabulations of Ernst von Wildenbruch to be real poetry. Yes, we have come so far that men like Herman Grimm, who have attained to a really fine comprehension of the recent development of Art, who have brought to it a fine spiritual comprehension of a phase of human development, are filled with deep admiration as they stand before the soulless bawling of Ernst von Wildenbruch and liken this to the songs of the great poets of world-history. So far has modern mankind departed from what is an inner comprehension of true reality! And yet you know what Herman Grimm is one of the personages of the new age whom I honor most.

This, my dear friends, must be recorded if one is to describe in what an age we live. This must be stressed and described in order to understand what it is to mean that our time is, in a certain way, passing through a spiritual death in order to come to a higher stage in the development of mankind.

The exercises I have described for attaining inspiration are actually only preliminary exercises for further supersensible cognition. Through them a person is indeed able to view the course of his life in the way I have characterized it; he is able to see the etheric world of facts unfolding in the expanse of earth existence behind man's thinking, feeling and willing. By discarding the picture images achieved in meditation, or in the consciousness following meditation, he also becomes acquainted through this empty consciousness with the etheric substance of the cosmos and the manifestations of the spiritual beings who rule there. When, however, a person becomes familiar in this way with human soul life, the astral organization of man, he realizes first of all how much the physical organism of man owes to hereditary development, that is to say what are the persistent factors in his physical body that have been inherited from his ancestors. Man also gains a glimpse of how the cosmos is active within the etheric organism, and he sees as a consequence what is not subject to heredity but breaks away from it and is responsible for man's individuality. He sees what it is that within his etheric and astral organizations sets him free from his inheritance and ancestors who gave him his physical body.

It is extremely important to distinguish clearly in this way between what is passed on in the continuing stream of physical inheritance from ancestors to descendants, and what, by contrast, is given to individual man by the etheric, cosmic world, for it is this whereby he becomes personalized and individualized and frees himself from his inherited characteristics. It is especially important in education, in pedagogy, to see clearly into these distinctions. Precisely such knowledge as is indicated here can provide teachers with some fundamental principles. I may perhaps refer here to the booklet, which contains a summary by Albert Steffen of the Pedagogical Course that I gave here in Dornach at Christmas a year ago, also to what is contained in the last issue of the English magazine Anthroposophy, (July/August), which contains interesting educational material.

The inspired knowledge developed by means of the exercises I have described only acquaints man with the astral organism within the framework of earth life. He learns to know what he is as a soul-spiritual being developing from birth to the present time. But this insight does not yet enable him to say that his soul-spiritual being begins with earthly life and ends with it. He arrives at the soul-spiritual element in his earth life but does not come so far as to perceive this soul-spiritual element as something eternal, as the eternal core of man's being. For that it is necessary to continue and broaden the exercises for eliminating the meditative pictures from consciousness so much that in doing so the soul becomes ever stronger and more energetic. Progress here really consists in nothing else but continued energetic training. One must struggle again and again with all the strength one can muster to remove from consciousness the pictures produced or created by imagination, so that it becomes empty. Gradually then, through practicing the elimination of the images, the soul's strength increases so much that finally it is powerful enough so that one is able to obliterate the overall picture of the course of one's life since birth, as it has been brought before the soul through imagination.

Mark well, it is possible to continue the exercises for eliminating a content of soul and producing empty consciousness, carrying them so far that the soul becomes strong enough to leave out the course of its own life. At the moment, when one is strong enough to do this, one lives in a consciousness that no longer has before it the physical organism, nor the etheric organism; moreover, one no longer confronts anything of the world absorbed through the physical and etheric organisms. For this consciousness, the sense world with all its sense impressions is no longer present, neither is the sum of all the etheric happenings in the cosmos that one had first gained through imaginative cognition. Everything of this kind has been removed. Thereby a higher degree of inspiration is brought about within the human soul.

What appears then by means of this higher level of inspiration is the condition of soul as it existed in a soul-spiritual world before it descended into a human physical organism through conception, embryonic life and birth. In this way one attains a perception of the soul's pre-earthly existence. One looks into those worlds where the soul existed before it received on earth, I may say, the first atom of physical substance transmitted to it with conception. One looks back into the development of the soul in the soul-spiritual world and learns to know its pre-existent life. Through this experience, a person has grasped one side of the eternal nature of the human soul's essence. When he has done that, he has, in fact, recognized for the first time the true nature of the human ego, of spirit man. This latter is accessible only to this form of inspiration that is capable of disregarding not only its own physical body and its impressions, but also its own etheric body and the latter's impressions as manifested in the course of life.

When one has advanced to this knowledge of the human soul as it existed before birth in its pure soul-spiritual existence, then one can also gain a conception of what thinking, what the forming of concepts really is, as we human beings experience it in the ordinary consciousness of our earth life. Even with the most careful self-examination of which the soul is capable we cannot, by using only the capacities and powers of our ordinary consciousness, grasp the real nature of thinking and the formation of ideas.

If now I am to make clear how the real nature of man's earthly concepts appears to inspired consciousness, I must make use of a picture, but this picture expresses complete reality. Bring to mind a human corpse; it still has the form that the man had in life. All the organs are still shaped the way they were when the person was alive. Even so, in looking at the corpse, we must admit that it is only the remains of what the living man was. When we now make a study of its essential nature, we must conclude that the corpse as it now lies before us can have no original, independent reality. It cannot be thought of as something that comes into being in the same condition as it is as a corpse; it can exist only as the remains of a living organism. The living organism must have been there first. The forms of the corpse, its members, point not only to the corpse itself but to what brought it into being. Anyone who rightly views a corpse in the context of life is directed by it to the living man who produced it. Nature, to which we surrender the corpse, can only destroy it; it cannot build it up as such. If we wish to see the upbuilding forces in the corpse, we must look upon the living man.

On another level, in a similar way, there is revealed to inspired consciousness the essential nature of the thinking or mental picturing that we have in ordinary consciousness. It is actually a corpse; at least, it is something which during earthly life is continually passing over into the corpse-like element of soul. Living thought was present before man came into earth-existence, but instead was a soul-spiritual being in the soul-spiritual world. There, this thinking and conceiving were something quite different; they were living elements within spiritual activities. What we have as our ordinary power of thinking is a remnant of that living spiritual entity that we were before we descended to the earth. It has remained just as a corpse remains of the living physical man. As we are referred back to the living man when we see a corpse, so, if we now look through inspired knowledge at the dying or already dead thoughts or concepts of the soul, we realize that we must treat this thinking as a corpse of the true “thought being,” we see how we must trace this earthly thinking back to a supersensible, life-filled thinking.

It is this that also reveals qualitatively the relationship of a part of our soul life to our purely soul-spiritual existence before birth. Through this, we really learn to know what our ordinary concepts and thinking signify, if we trace them back to their living nature, which is to be found nowhere within earth existence. On earth, it is only expressed in a reflection. This reflection is our ordinary thinking and forming of ideas. Therefore, the abstract character of this ordinary thinking is fundamentally remote from reality, as a corpse is remote from the true human reality. When we speak of the abstractness, of the merely intellectual aspect of thinking, we vaguely feel that the way it appears in ordinary consciousness is not what it should be, that it has its source in something else, which is its true nature. This is what is so very important, namely, that a true knowledge is able, not only in general phrases but in concrete pictures, to relate what man experiences here in his physical body to the eternal core of his being, as it was just done with the thinking and conceiving of ordinary consciousness. Then only will the significance of imagination and inspiration be seen in the right light. For then we comprehend that the dead or dying thinking is basically brought to life again through the exercises undertaken to achieve inspiration; brought to life within physical earth-existence. To acquire inspired knowledge is fundamentally to bring dying thoughts to life again.

Thereby we are not completely transposed into prenatal existence, but rather, through the soul's perception, we gain a true picture of this prenatal existence, of which we know that it did not originate here on earth but that it radiates out of a pre-earthly human existence into man's existence here on earth. We recognize through the picture's nature that it is cognitive evidence of the state of the human soul in pre-earthly existence.

What significance this has for philosophical knowledge will be discussed next.

Just as we are in a position in this way to investigate the true nature of our ordinary thinking, we can also, by means of the supersensible cognition referred to here, bring into view the essential being concealed behind the will. But for this, not only is the higher cognition of inspiration required, but also that of intuition which I described yesterday, when I said that in order to develop it, certain exercises of the will are necessary. If man carries these out, he becomes capable of releasing his own soul-spiritual nature from his physical as well as his etheric organism. He carries it out into the spiritual world itself. It is the ego and the astral organization, his own being, that he carries into the spiritual world. In this way, he learns to know what it signifies to live outside his physical and etheric organisms. He comes to perceive the state the human soul finds itself in when it has cast these aside. But that means nothing less than gaining a preview of what happens to man when he goes through death.

Through death, the physical and etheric organisms are cast off. Thus, laid aside, they can no longer form the covering for man as they have done during earth life. What happens then to the actual core of man's being is something one learns through a preview in intuitive knowledge, when, with one's spirit being, one is outside in the world of spiritual beings instead of within one's physical body. Man actually finds himself in such a condition. Through intuitive knowledge he is in a position to be within other spiritual beings, as otherwise here in earth life he is within his physical and etheric bodies. What he receives through intuition is an experience in a picture of what he has to go through when he passes through the event of death. Only in this way is it possible to gain actual insight into what underlies the idea of the immortal human soul. This human soul—inspired knowledge already teaches this—is on the one side unborn. On the other side, it is undying. Intuition teaches this.

Having thus come to know the true nature of the eternal core of man's being—insofar as it is to lead a life after physical death—one also learns to perceive what lies behind human will. We have just characterized what lies behind human thinking; that is discernible through inspiration. What is concealed behind human willing becomes perceptible, if, through exercises of the will, one brings about intuition. Then the will reveals itself so as to show that behind it something quite different is concealed, of which the will of ordinary consciousness is merely the reflection. It becomes evident that behind willing there is something that in a certain sense is a younger member of the human soul. If we speak of the thinking and forming of ideas as of something that is dying, indeed as something that is already dead, and we view it as the older part of the human soul, then, by contrast, we must speak of willing as the younger part. We can say that willing, that is, the actual soul element behind the will, is related to thinking as a young child is to an old man, except that in man's constitution old age comes after childhood, while in the soul the two exist side by side. The soul bears continually in itself both its old age and its youth—in fact, both its death and its birth.

In contrast to such a knowledge of the soul based on inspiration and intuition, which is quite definite, what one calls philosophy today is something extremely abstract, for this simply describes thinking and willing. Actual knowledge of the soul, on the other hand, reveals that when willing turns old it becomes thinking, and thinking that has become old—indeed that has died—has developed out of will. Thus, one truly becomes acquainted with this life of the soul; one learns to perceive the fact that what is revealed in this earth life as thinking was willing in an earlier earth life, and what is now willing, something still young in the soul, will become thinking in the following earth life.

So, in this way one learns to see into the soul and for the first time to know it as it really is. The will part of the human soul is revealed as something that leads an embryonic life. When we pass over into the spiritual world with what we harbor within ourselves as willing, we have a young soul, which by its own character teaches us that it is actually a child. Even as little as we can assume that a child does not grow on into old age unless it is sick, so little can we assume that what we perceive as a young soul—initiation reveals this to us—dissolves at death, for it has only just reached its embryonic life. Through intuition we learn to know how, in the moment of death, it goes forth into the spiritual world.

That means actually perceiving the eternal core of man's being according to its unbornness and its immortality. By contrast, modern philosophy works only with ideas taken from ordinary consciousness. But what does that mean? As we can see from what has been said, it means that these ideas are dead soul entities.

When philosophy, working with the ideas of ordinary consciousness, wants to consider the thinking part of the soul correctly in order to reach results, it will say, if it is sufficiently free of prejudice to investigate what is actually present in the thinking of ordinary consciousness, that thought cannot of itself explain its own existence, just as it must be said of a corpse that it cannot come from a corpse but must have come from something else. Physiology indicates this through observation. Philosophy, from what comes to light here out of intuition, should draw the conclusion that just because ordinary thinking and the forming of ideas have a dying character it is permitted to deduce from this fact that something else existed earlier. What inspiration discovers through contemplation, philosophy can find through logical conclusions, through dialectics, that is, through an indirect kind of proof.

What would philosophy have to do then if it were to choose to remain within ordinary consciousness? It would have to say, “If I will not lift myself up to some kind of supersensible knowledge I must at least analyze the facts of my ordinary consciousness.” If it does so without prejudice it fords that the thinking and ideas of ordinary consciousness are corpse-like in character. It would have to say, “Because that is something that does not explain its own nature out of itself, I may conclude that its real nature comes earlier.” Of course, this requires an unbiased attitude in analyzing the soul so that thinking may be recognized as possessing something corpse-like. But this impartial attitude is possible. For only a biased attitude discerns something alive in the thinking of ordinary consciousness. Freedom from bias reveals this thinking as something that in its very nature has withered away. This is why I said in the previous lecture that it is quite feasible to grasp the content of natural science with this deadened thinking. That is one side of the matter.

Intellectualized philosophy therefore can only come indirectly to a knowledge of man's eternal essence and indeed, only through recognizing what, in regard to earth life, must be viewed as preceding it. If then such a philosophy not only inquires into thinking, if it desires not only to be intellectual but also includes in its research the inner experience of the will and the other soul forces, which, in the cosmic scheme of things, are younger than thinking, then it can succeed in picturing to itself the kind of interplay through which thinking is linked to willing. Then it can come on one hand to the logical deduction: dying thinking is connected to pre-earthly soul existence. Even though philosophy cannot look upon such an existence and cannot perceive its nature, it can infer that something, although inaccessible and unknown, does exist.

When, on the other hand, philosophy centers its attention on willing or the feelings, and experiences the interplay between thinking and feeling, it will eventually discover not only something dying but incipient in willing. This you can find even in Bergson's philosophy, if you put what he says impartially into the appropriate words. You notice the impulse he himself feels in the way he speaks, the way he philosophizes, and sensing this impulse he attains an awareness of the eternal core of the human soul. But since Bergson refuses to take supersensible knowledge into consideration, he reaches only a knowledge of the soul's essence insofar as it reveals itself in earthly life. Out of his philosophy he cannot derive convincing indications of unbornness and immortality. Yet, on one side, he does characterize thinking—although he gives it a different name—as something old which superimposes itself over sense perceptions as a corpse-like element. On the other side he feels—because of the living way in which he characterizes it—the incipient, “embryonic” quality of the will. He can vividly enter into this and he senses that something eternal is contained within. Nevertheless, in this manner he arrives only at the characteristic of the soul-spiritual core of man in earth life, not at anything beyond.

Thus, we can say that, if they are unbiased, all philosophies using ideas based merely on ordinary consciousness can, through analyzing thought and will, come indirectly to the conclusion that the soul is a being unborn and immortal, but they cannot come to a direct perception of it. This direct perception, which would bring the philosophies of ideas to fulfillment, this perception of the real, eternal being of the soul, can be achieved only through imagination, inspiration and intuition as has been described here. As a consequence, although the subject is still discussed as part of philosophy, it remains true that anything really substantial concerning the soul's eternal nature must rely only on tradition that rests upon the dreamlike knowledge of the past. Philosophers often do not know this and believe that they produce it out of themselves. This content can be permeated by logic and dialectic. But a true renewal of philosophical life depends on the acknowledgment by our present spiritual culture of the existence of a fully conscious imagination, a fully conscious inspiration and a fully conscious intuition, and not only acknowledging the methods for attaining these capacities but putting their results to use in philosophical life. I will try to explain in the next two parts of my lecture how this relates to cosmology and religion.

When you consider that only through a higher form of inspiration can one arrive at the perception of the eternal core of man's being and how it lives in extra-terrestrial existence, then you will say that only through this higher inspiration and through initiation (as I have described it) can the human being really know himself. What plays into his own being out of the cosmos, he can know only through higher inspiration and intuition. Since this is the case, a genuine cosmology, that is, a picture of the cosmos that includes man's total being, can arise only on the level of inspired and intuitive perception. Only then does man gain insight into what is also working in his physical and etheric bodies during earth life.

In these organisms, the soul-spiritual nature of man is not merely hidden; during earth existence, it is actually transformed, metamorphosed in regard to waking, everyday life. As little as a root can reflect the exact form of the plant, so little can an observation of man's physical and etheric organisms reveal the eternal part of him. This is attained only when we look into what lives in man before birth and after death. Only then are we able to relate man's true being, which must be observed outside of earth existence, to the cosmos. This is why modern culture had no way of arriving at a cosmology that includes man during the period when it rejected any kind of clairvoyance. This I have indicated before, but it becomes especially clear from what I have described today. Nevertheless, in earlier times, even as late as the beginning of the last century, but chiefly at the end of the eighteenth century, a “rational cosmology,” as it was called, was developed from the philosophical direction as a part of philosophy.

This rational cosmology, which was supposed to be a part of philosophy, was also formed by philosophers with the aid of nothing but ordinary consciousness. But, if, with ordinary philosophy, one already had the above described difficulties in penetrating to the true nature of the soul, you will understand that it is quite impossible to gain a real content for a cosmology that includes man if one merely wants to stay within the ideas of ordinary consciousness. The contents of rational cosmology that the philosophers have developed even up to recent times, lived therefore in fact on the traditional cosmological ideas attained by humanity when a dreamlike clairvoyance still existed. These ideas can be renewed only by means of what has been described here as exact clairvoyance. In this sphere also, philosophers have not known that they actually borrowed from the old cosmology. Certain ideas occurred to them. They absorbed them from the history of cosmology and believed they had produced them out of themselves. But what they brought forth were merely logical connections, by means of which they assembled the old ideas and produced a new system. In such a way cosmologies arose in earlier times as a part of philosophy. But since one no longer had a living relationship to what one thus absorbed as ideas taken over from ancient clairvoyance, the ideas of the cosmologies became more and more abstract.

Just take a look at the chapters on cosmology in the philosophical books of earlier times and you will find how abstract and basically empty those ideas are that were developed on the subjects of the origin and end of the world, and so on. It is correct to say that they were all brought across from ancient times when they were alive, because man had a living relationship to what these ideas expressed. Gradually they had become unsubstantial and abstract, and people outlined only superficially what a cosmology should contain, a cosmology which extends not only to outer nature but can encompass the whole being of man, reaching to the soul-spiritual nature of the cosmos. In this connection, the extraordinary brilliant Emile Boutroux¹ gave significant indications of how to arrive at a cosmology.

But since he also wanted to build only upon what ordinary consciousness could encompass, he too only arrived at an abstract cosmology.

Thus, cosmologies became more and more devoid of real content, becoming merely a sum of abstract ideas and characteristics. No wonder then that gradually this rational cosmology was discredited. The natural scientists appeared who could investigate nature in the manner that led in recent times to so many scientific triumphs. They could formulate natural laws, postulating an inner ordering of nature from observation and experiment, and from this they put together a naturalistic cosmology. What was thus assembled from the ideas concerning outer nature as a naturalistic cosmology, had, to be sure, a content, the external sensory content. In the face of this, the empty, rational cosmology constructed by the philosophers could not maintain itself. It fell into disrepute and was gradually abandoned. One therefore no longer speaks of a rational cosmology, arrived at merely by logic; one is satisfied now with naturalistic cosmology, which, however, does not encompass man. One can say, then, that it is cosmology in particular that teaches, more than ordinary philosophy, how one must have recourse again to imagination, inspiration and intuition.

Philosophy can at least observe the human soul, and, through unbiased observation of thinking whose dying nature refers to something other than its present state, it discovers that something lies outside all human existence on earth that includes man inwardly; in the same way, philosophy can point beyond death. Therefore, out of conclusions drawn from the soul's rich life of thinking, feeling and will, philosophy can at least make its abstractions rich and varied. This is still possible. But cosmology as a spiritual science can only be established if it is given its content also from spiritual perception. Here one can no longer arrive at a content by deduction. To attain a content, one must borrow it from the old clairvoyant perceptions, as was the case in the ideas adopted from tradition, or one must attain it again by a new method such as has now been presented.

If, therefore, philosophy is still in a position to carry on in accordance with logic, cosmology can no longer do so. As a rational cosmology based only on ordinary consciousness, it has therefore lost its content and with it its standing. If we wish to advance beyond a naturalistic cosmology to a new one that embraces man's totality, we must learn to perceive with the aid of inspiration and intuition that element in man in which the spiritual cosmos is reflected. In other words, cosmology even more than philosophy is dependent upon the acknowledgement by modern culture of the methods employed by spiritual science for attaining fully conscious imagination, inspiration and intuition—and not only acknowledging them but making use of their results to construct with their aid a genuinely real cosmology. What can be said concerning religion from this standpoint will be described in conclusion.

If our religious life is to be founded on knowledge the experience of the spiritual human being among other spirit beings must be brought back to earth and described. In these experiences we are dealing with something that is entirely unlike life on earth; it is utterly different. In them man stands wholly outside this life; therefore, these experiences can only be undergone by those human powers that are entirely independent of his physical and etheric organisms and for this reason certainly cannot lie within ordinary consciousness. Only when this ordinary consciousness advances and develops clairvoyant capacities can it give descriptions of those experiences that a human being has in the purely spiritual world. Therefore, a “rational theology,” a theology that wants to rely upon ordinary consciousness, is in an even worse position than a “rational cosmology.”

Rational cosmology still possesses something, after all, that at least sheds a certain amount of light on man's earthly existence. The reason for this is that in a round-about way, to be sure, the form and life of physical and etheric man are to an extent brought about by spiritual beings. But the experiences that the human being has in the purely spiritual worlds and which exact intuition gets to know, can in no way be discovered with the ordinary consciousness, as is the case of philosophy. They cannot even be guessed at. Today, when people want to arrive at all human knowledge by means of ordinary consciousness, these experiences can only be adopted—this is even more true than in the case of cosmological ideas—from ancient traditions dating from those times when men found their way in dreamlike clairvoyance into the spiritual worlds and carried across into the earthly world what they experienced.

If someone fancies that he could state something about man's experiences in the divine world in the form of ideas based only on ordinary consciousness, he is very much mistaken. Therefore, theology has come increasingly to a point of forming a kind of historic theology, adopting, even more than does cosmology, merely the old ideas of the kingdom of God acquired in earlier clairvoyant vision. These ideas then are made into a system by logic and dialectic. Men believe that here they have something fundamental and original, whereas it is only a subjective system of those who worked on this theology. It is a product of history, poured at times into new forms. But everything that is of real content is borrowed—by those who want only to draw from ordinary consciousness—from tradition, or from history. But for this reason, the formulations of various philosophers—who in earlier times created a rational cosmology and wanted to create a rational theology as well—were through this procedure discredited more than ever. On the one hand, rational cosmology as against naturalistic cosmology fell into discredit. On the other, in the field of religion, rational theology as against purely historic theology was discredited—the historic theology that renounced pure reality—both the direct formulation of ideas about the spiritual world and the experience of it.

This direct relationship, these living connections with experience in the spiritual world, vanished for more recent humanity when, in the Middle Ages, the question arose of proof for the existence of God. As long as a direct relation to experience of the kingdom of God existed, one did not speak of dialectic or logical proofs for divinity. Such proofs, when they were put forward, were in themselves proof that the living relationship to the kingdom of God had died away. Fundamentally, what Scholastic theology said was correct: ordinary reason is not in a position to make pronouncements about the kingdom of God. It can only elucidate the ideas already there, systematize them. It can contribute only something toward making doctrine readily acceptable.

We can observe how in recent times this incapacity of ordinary consciousness to determine anything about the kingdom of God has given rise to two errors. On the one side are the scientists who want to talk about religion, about God, but feel the incapacity of their ordinary consciousness and so formulate merely a history of religion. A religious content cannot at the present time be obtained in this way. Therefore, the existing, or once existing religions are considered historically. What is in fact considered? It is the religious content once provided by the old dreamlike, intuitive clairvoyance. Or, people consider that aspect of the religious life of the present time that has survived as a residue of the old clairvoyant state. This is then called “History of Religion,” and people do completely without producing any genuinely religious life of their own.

Still other people realize that man's clear day consciousness is powerless to determine anything about experiences in the purely spiritual kingdom of God. Therefore, they turn to the more subconscious regions of the human soul, to the world of feeling, to certain mystical faculties, and speak of an immediate, elemental experience of God. This is quite widespread today. It is just the advocates of this kind of experience who are especially characteristic of the spiritual state of mind at the present time. With all their might they shun the possibility of bringing their awareness of God into clear ideas that are logically formed. They give long explanations as to why this instinctive experience of God which, according to their interpretation, is the true religious experience, cannot be logically proved. They conclude therefore that the idea of expressing any religious content in intellectual form must be abandoned. But it must be said that these proponents of a direct awareness of God are the victims of illusions, because what is experienced in any region of the soul can in fact also be expressed in clear ideas. If we were to follow their example and put forward the theory that the religious content is weakened when it is expressed in clear ideas, this would prove nothing but that we should have abandoned all our truly substantial ideas in favor of a series of dreamed-up notions. It is a characteristic feature of present-day religious life that people rely on something which, as soon as it has to be made clear, at once falls into error.

From this it is quite evident that we can succeed in renewing religious life on a basis of knowledge only if we do not reject a method of cognition that can guide us into having a living experience of the spiritual human being and other spiritual beings. We have special need of this method of cognition precisely so that religious knowledge can be placed on a firm foundation. In the realm of religion, ordinary consciousness can at most systematize perceptions, clarify them, or formulate them into a doctrine, but it cannot find them. Without these perceptions, religion is limited to the traditional acceptance of what is derived from quite different soul conditions of humanity in earlier times. It is therefore limited to what would never satisfy a mind trained in modern science.

Therefore, if we are to base our religion upon knowledge, I must repeat for the third time something that I have already expressed today in regard to other areas of culture, but that must be expressed specifically for each separate area. If, out of the spiritual needs of the present time, religious life is to be renewed and undergo vital stimulation, the spiritual life of our age must acknowledge fully conscious imaginative, inspired, and intuitive cognition. Especially for the religious area must this not only be acknowledged but, for a living religious content, our modern spiritual life must also apply these spiritual-scientific results in appropriate ways.

• 1. Emile Boutroux, 1845-1921; especially in his De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature (Concerning the Contingency of Natural Laws).

MY DEAR FRIENDS! Movements such as our spiritual scientific movement have always been fostered in such a way that something that was to be impressed upon the spiritual culture of the times, or on culture in general, was first cultivated on the level of some formal social organization or society. And since the conditions of human interaction are the same today as they have been throughout history, it is also necessary for us, to a certain extent, to cultivate our spiritual scientific strivings within the framework of a formal organization.

Now, it has been the experience of almost all such organizations that it is difficult, at least in actual practice, to understand the concept of the society needed to foster a particular spiritual current like this. Time and again we're presented with evidence that there are very many people who actually do not like having to join a society. They admit that they feel uncomfortable about joining such a society; they would prefer to absorb its spiritual wealth through reading or listening to lectures not bound to any organized society, or through still other means. Only this morning, for example, I received a letter to that effect.

The kinds of reasons people give for taking this position have to be taken seriously. But let me emphasize again that a spiritual movement like this one is of necessity very different in its impulses and its whole way of thinking, feeling, and doing from the thinking, feeling, and doing of the other people around it. Therefore, to introduce such a movement to humanity with no help from a formal organization would be much more difficult than to do this by means of a society whose members are preparing, through their interactions and their ongoing absorption of spiritual scientific thoughts and concepts, to be a kind of tool or instrument for disseminating our spiritual science. As a consequence, however, the concept of a society of this kind has to be taken extremely seriously, because in quite practical terms this society has to become a vehicle for the spiritual current in question.

You need only look at our own Society as an example and examine how different it is from other societies, associations, or organizations that people have called into existence. This difference will be particularly noticeable if you keep one thing in mind. Just suppose that recent events confronting us had made us entertain the thought of disbanding the Anthroposophical Society as such. Let's assume hypothetically that we wanted to dissolve the Society because of problems within it. Now, if the Anthroposophical Society were simply an organization like many others, of course it would be possible to simply dissolve it, set something else up in its place, and eliminate the disgraceful circumstances in the process.

However, our Anthroposophical Society is different in a very significant respect from other organizations or societies founded on the basis of some program with a certain number of points and statutes. That kind of society can be dissolved at any moment. If we were to dissolve the Anthroposophical Society, however, it would not be dissolved in actual fact. As the Anthroposophical Society, as a society existing on behalf of a spiritual scientific movement, we are different from other societies in that our Society is founded, not on a program of abstract and therefore unreal points, but on something very real. Our basis is a real one.

Just look at the fact that each member of the Anthroposophical Society is entitled to have access to our lecture cycles, while other people are not.¹ That's a very real basis, because dissolving the Anthroposophical Society would do so in name only; it would not do away with the fact that a certain number of people are in possession of these cycles. And it is an equally real fact that a certain number of people are carrying a specific wealth of wisdom in their heads. I cannot tell exactly how great the percentage is of people who have the things we talk about in their heads—in contrast to those who only have them in “visions”—but that's not the important thing as far as the Society is concerned. It remains a reality that a certain wealth of wisdom, a sum total of things that really exist, are present in the hearts and minds of people who have belonged to the Anthroposophical Society until now. That cannot be taken away from them even by dissolving the Society.

So the Anthroposophical Society is different from other societies in that it will not tolerate any figments of the imagination in its organization, but is constructed on the basis of reality. Thus, dissolving it would have absolutely no immediate effect on its continued existence as far as reality is concerned. Our Society compares to other societies and organizations as something real compares to things that are merely thought out. We must keep this weighty difference in mind in order to understand the concept of our Society in the right way. And it is only because a large number of members have counted, more or less consciously, on our Society's solid grounding in reality, on its basis in something more than programmatic points, that we see an institute of higher learning for spiritual science being built on this hill, a building that will further enhance our connection to something real.

It would be possible for some group of dreamers to get together and decide not to wear collars and ties, to wear only sandals on their feet, and perhaps to simplify life in other ways by disregarding certain other social conventions or “prejudices,” as they might call them. (I have chosen a hypothetical example so that no one present needs to feel put on the spot.) Disbanding a group like that would not change anything significant. But we are not simply a group of dreamers; we are different in that we are fully aware of the weight and importance of our grounding in reality.

Without getting into splitting hairs, we also need to distinguish between the concept of a society such as the one in which we develop a specific spiritual teaching, and that of a club or similar organization. We have to admit that the appropriate concept of a such a society eludes many of us when we think about the conditions of our life in this Society, and we are left contemplating the concept of a club or similar organization. In that kind of organization, statutes and conditions are set up that have to be met. In a Society like ours, however, that is not enough. It is different from a club in much more than name only.

In our Society, the important thing, as I have explained several times in the last few weeks, is that the concept of the society really be taken seriously.² This means that all members must be aware that belonging to the Society involves more than simply receiving membership cards and being entitled to call themselves members of the Society. In fact, they are all organs of the Society. Because of that, something subtle and yet very specific has to live among the members, something for which each member should feel a certain responsibility. As individuals, they must be aware of both the obvious and subtler needs and well-being of other members of the Society, and experienced members must be ready and willing to use their experience in supporting those who have joined more recently. These more experienced members do not necessarily have to reveal their experience; after all, what matters is how they apply their experience in daily life.

The word “trust” often comes up in this connection. In the course of a lecture I gave a few weeks ago, I explained that we do not need to have trust in our teachings, because these teachings will try to justify our confidence in them through every single practical measure they give rise to.³ However, we do need to try to have trust in each other and to make sure that trust is justified. We must try to bring about real connections between members. It goes a long way toward developing the kind of “ideal aura” necessary in a Society such as ours if each experienced member, without snooping around like a spy or a detective—that is, without violating anyone's privacy—can really keep an eye on the ups and downs of only ten other members, and do it without having to tell them they are considered less experienced. Of course, it's impossible to legislate trust; it has to be earned. Our more experienced members need to make a concerted effort to win the trust of those who have been in the Society for only a short time.

Such things have been mentioned often in the course of our Society's years of activity, but it has never been as necessary to speak about them as it is here and now. When members of the Anthroposophical Society were scattered among the rest of the population in various cities, that was a very different state of affairs from so many of us living here on top of each other, on display for everyone else, so to speak. This situation makes it imperative that we take a long and serious look at the basic premises of how we live together in the Society.

Of course, a society such as ours will never be able to please all the people living outside it. It will never be able to prevent some of these people from indulging in all kinds of slander, ridicule, unjustified attacks, and so on. But that's not the point; what I am going to say now is independent of all that. The important thing is that the members of the Society really do everything possible in each single instance to show up the attacks as unjustified and lacking any basis in fact. To do this, we have to look at details, my friends. It's not enough to just pay attention to the major issues in our outer life. We have to be equally aware of the little things.

For instance, if some of our members are sitting among other people on the trolley on the way back to Basel at night, and they talk loudly about every little twinge in their ether body, that is not exactly a crime. If someone criticizes them for it, we might well reply, “So what? Is it all that important?” In fact, however, it is really very important because it puts the dignity and seriousness of our movement in question. Thus, even though such incidents are only trifling matters, they ought to be avoided. We ought to start reforming ourselves wherever that change can have a real effect. Above all, we have to realize that when we talk in front of other people about things only we can understand, those people will not be able to avoid getting wrong impressions.

We can assume that we know what we are talking about when we speak about the ether body, but the people who may be listening do not. They may be in the same situation as a maid whom some of my closer acquaintances know well. This woman worked for anthroposophists, and because she was interested in finding out what anthroposophy was all about, she attended an introductory course given by one of our members, and came home saying, “Well, I learned that I have four bodies, not just one. But I have this tiny little room and a very narrow bed, and now I don't know how all those bodies are going to fit in!” This is a true story. It took place in the house of people I know quite well. So you see, people who hear you talking about all the little twinges of your ether body will naturally think that you're talking about the ether body as if it were a physical body; thus, you are actually leading them astray and keeping them from developing any closer connection to our movement.

That's why it is important for us to learn to take the things we talk about seriously and precisely. Even if they are only minor matters in themselves, they can raise a virtual wall of prejudices around us, and that can and should be avoided. In a society like this, it is important for us to learn to speak really precisely, or else it may gradually become impossible to foster what should be fostered within this Society.

Today I feel compelled to mention a number of things that will probably seem totally superfluous to most of you, simply because the natural response is, “Well, what is that supposed to mean—we need to be precise in our way of speaking? Of course we do.” But just keep your eyes and ears open next time something happens somewhere or other, when something has been said and one person passes it on to the next. If you really pay close attention to whether or not things are being presented accurately, in many instances you will easily notice the deviation from what is strictly accurate. When something someone has heard or seen gets passed on to the next person and then to the next, and so on, what comes out can be a monstrous caricature of what actually happened or was actually said. This experience is all too common in our Society.

We have to take into account that, in a spiritual scientific movement, we can work constructively only if we get used to being exact, to really understanding things precisely. Spiritual science forces us to focus spiritually on things that have nothing to do with the outer physical world, and in order to develop the right relationship to them, we need a counterbalance of some kind. The only suitable counterbalance is to approach things on the physical plane as realistically as possible. After all, accuracy belongs to reality.

Some time ago I gave a public lecture in Munich that really startled a number of people.⁴ Its subject was the nature of evil. In that lecture, I explained that the forces at work in evil on the physical plane are in a sense nothing else but forces that have been transferred from higher planes of existence to the physical plane. Certain forces that can lead us to recognize and master the spiritual if applied up there in the spiritual world can turn to evil down here in the physical world.

The force that enables us to understand the spiritual world belongs only in the spiritual world; this same force causes all kinds of harm if it is directly and thoughtlessly transferred to the physical plane. For what is the nature of this force? It consists in making one's thinking independent of the physical plane. When this capacity is applied to the physical plane itself, it turns into deceit and dishonesty. Thus, people who were called upon to disseminate spiritual science have always seen great danger in doing so, because what is needed for understanding higher planes of existence is harmful when applied directly to the physical world.

That is why a counterbalance is needed: in order to keep our ability to understand the spiritual world suitably pure and beautiful, we must develop our feeling for truth and exactitude in the physical world as thoroughly as possible. If we do not count on exactitude on the physical plane, then in a so-called occult society certain tendencies developed through spiritual scientific practices immediately mingle inappropriately with the very lowest aspects of the physical plane.

Let's look at ordinary materialistic society in a broader sense of the word. As you know—or you may have heard about it even if you have no firsthand knowledge of it—there are certain social circles where gossip prevails. At least from hearsay, you will be aware that this gossip or tittle-tattle is going on, that it prevails in ordinary materialistic bourgeois society. The quality of this gossip is usually not very high and much can be said against it, but at least for the most part no esoteric contents get mixed up with it. But when gossip is the general rule in an occult society, esoteric ideas are the first to get drawn into it.

I hope it is possible to really talk about things like this in our circle, because it should be possible to say something within our Society without having it immediately spread abroad in places where it is then misunderstood. Our experiences in this regard, however, are also not the best, and if they continue, we will indeed have to organize our Society differently. Things that are said within the Society have to remain in the Society in the strictest sense of the word, because it really must be possible from time to time to say things that could not simply be said casually outside our Society.

Of course, in our Society we often have to talk about the karmic relationships between people. It may well be that such relationships exist—in fact, of course they exist—but if we continually get our views on karma mixed up with our ordinary everyday relationships, we are not taking the concept of truthfulness literally enough, and the result is not only nonsensical but also harmful. Truthfulness is a concept that has to be applied extremely strictly.

I can think of any number of cases in esoteric circles, both inside and outside our Society, where subjective matters that take place as a matter of course on the physical plane have been studded and embellished with esoteric truths. Let me mention one extreme example that may not happen very frequently in our Society, but it is one of the things that can be experienced. Indeed, it has happened numerous times.

Many people have learned about reincarnation, and they have also learned that Christ was alive on Earth at a certain point in time. I have experienced more than once that women who have become aware of these two spiritual facts—reincarnation and Christ's incarnation—have in all seriousness imagined that they have been chosen to give birth to the Christ and have attempted to arrange their lives to make this possible. It is unpleasant to have to mention these things and call a spade a spade, but we must do it to protect the Society, which we can do only if we don't close our eyes to the harm people can cause by applying occult truths on the physical plane.

Granted, the case I just mentioned is extreme, but it has happened not only once, but over and over again. I have described it drastically because things like this happen very frequently on a smaller scale, and it is important to notice the minor instances as well as the more blatant ones. Of course, it is a major issue if someone thinks she is going to give birth to the Christ, because the consequences can be extremely unfortunate. On a smaller scale, however, things like this are happening again and again.

Now, in ordinary bourgeois life, it happens that people fall in love, that a man falls in love with a woman. People simply call it “falling in love,” and that's the plain and simple truth. In esoteric societies men and women also fall in love; the possibility cannot be ruled out, as some of you know from experience. But in that case, what you hear about it is not as simple as, “X has fallen in love with Y.” Ordinary people just say that they're going together, which is usually a very accurate description as outward observation goes. But in esoteric societies, what you hear about it often goes something like this: “Having thoroughly examined my karma, I find that another personality has entered it, and we have realized that karma has destined us to be with each other and to intervene in the destiny of the world in a particular way.”

People fail to notice how much deception has crept in between this assertion and the simple matter of falling in love. This deception has developed in the following way: In bourgeois materialistic society, it's considered quite normal for two people to fall in love. But in an esoteric society, this is often not considered normal; instead, it is something people feel slightly ashamed of. But people do not like to feel ashamed. We don't need to go into why that is the case; there can be any number of reasons. People simply do not like to feel ashamed, so instead, they say that karma has spoken and has to be obeyed. Of course they are not acting out of pure selfishness or pure emotion—far from it; karma has to be obeyed! But if they were truthful, they would just admit that they have fallen in love, and having admitted it, they would find their way through life much more readily than by getting the truth mixed up with all kinds of karmic nonsense. The basic mischief of embellishing personal matters with esoteric truths leads to ever greater harm because it makes people lose their inner sense of limits, the limits we have to accept when we adopt a spiritual scientific philosophy.

This is not to say that we should introduce the worst principles of uncultured circles into our Society. In certain social circles, it is said that being human begins with being a baron. We must not establish our own version of this by saying that being human begins with being either a spiritual scientist or an anthroposophist—with being an “anthropop,” as others are starting to call it. We must not do that. We have to admit that even before we became spiritual scientists, we were people with certain ways of looking at things, people who would have done certain things and abstained from others.

In the very early days of our movement, I pointed out how important it is that we do not use our spiritual scientific views to sink down below our earlier level of moral standards, but that we must rise above it in all respects. That is why I said many years ago that when we entered the Society, each of us was equipped with a certain stock of moral standards and habitual ways of doing things, and that we should allow these habits to remain as they are until some clear and incontrovertible inner necessity compels us to change them. Generally, this happens only much later on. It can be extremely detrimental if, after having learned a little bit from spiritual science, we take what we have learned and use it to excuse or embellish what we do in life. You have to be perfectly clear on one point, my friends, namely that the outer circumstances of our life also come about through karma of a certain kind. And how people out in the world think and act is also a matter of karma.

Now, as you know, I prefer to talk about concrete cases because they are the most telling. For example, the following once happened to me: Not long ago, I was sitting in a barber shop—excuse me for talking about things like this, but what I'm going to tell you is not all that indiscreet or intimate. I was sitting in front of the mirror, so I could see the people as they came and went. The door opened, and in came a man who had on some kind of shoes that were nothing more than pieces of soft leather tied together; above that, he was wearing leggings and some kind of cape-like garment draped at a coquettish angle. In addition, his hair was swept back with some kind of a headband. Coincidentally, as it were, I knew the man very well.⁵

The barber let go of the razor he had just started to apply to my face and bought something from the man for five pennies. He showed it to me once the man had gone out—it was a poem he had composed himself. It was a simply terrible poem, but that man was going around the streets and stores in that get-up, selling the thing and imagining himself to be infinitely superior to all the people around him. He thought he was following some great ideal, but in reality he was only following an exaggerated and hysterical form of vanity. The basic impulse behind his conduct, his whole way of being, was nothing more than a gross exaggeration of the principle at work among the vainest and most superficial ladies.

But just consider how many among us might once have been tempted—for courtesy's sake, I will not suggest that they might still be tempted today—to say that in his own way, that man was only trying to do the right thing. True enough, but it was still absolute and total nonsense, and bound to make a mess of a person's life if he made it the principle of a lifetime. We have to realize to what extent vanity can be a motivating factor in what people do, and how difficult it is to notice it. If we take seriously what we can gain from spiritual science and accept it with respect, we have to admit that vanity is a very strong force in that man. If we do something or other out of vanity, not to mention other drives and impulses, other people are offended, though not necessarily for the reasons we might suspect. Nonetheless, there is a connection between ourselves and what other people say about us, a connection that is very easy to find if we look carefully. And we can only get beyond things like that if we develop a strict sense of exactitude as a counterbalance, an attitude we also need for understanding esoteric truths.

Although it's only a detail and no major issue, in esotericism it is extremely important to know and to observe, when people are recounting things, whether they are recounting their own observations and thus have a right to be talking about them as facts, or whether they are passing on things they heard from someone else. We must be able to tell the difference. But in hundreds of cases, people say things to others who in turn tell someone else, but in such a way that the person third in line gets the impression that they are not simply passing on something they've heard, but are talking about their own direct experience and have a right to be talking about it as if it were actual fact. This lack of precision is less important in ordinary materialistic society than it is among us. In materialistic circles, it may be pedantic to be so precise in how one speaks, but in our Society, more so than anywhere else, we need to observe such things strictly and exactly. And above all, we need to make a practice of being precise about ourselves.

If any of you need to be convinced of the implications of what I am saying, you are welcome to make the following experiment: Choose some topic—vegetarianism, for example—and observe how certain adherents of spiritual science talk about this topic in the outside world. Make a chart, and each time you hear spiritual scientists telling other people that they are vegetarians, jot down the reasons they give. It will soon become clear that on the subject of vegetarianism, adherents of spiritual science often say absolutely scandalous things to people in the outside world. When the outside world then comes to the conclusion that we are a society of fools, it should come as no great surprise.

In anthroposophical circles, I have frequently mentioned a very simple way of responding to the question of why you are a vegetarian without antagonizing people around you. If someone asks why you are a vegetarian, and you know that person would never eat horsemeat, you simply respond with the question, “Well, why don't you eat horsemeat?” Now the two of you are on the same footing, and the person who has to give a reason for not eating horsemeat will probably not come up with any highly theoretical reasons, but will say something like “The thought of it makes me sick.” Then you can say, “That's just how any meat makes me feel.” And as long as you say this in an appropriately conciliatory way, people will understand your point of view. The main thing is not to let the other person get the impression that you feel superior because of not eating meat. You might still want to add, although only if you can honestly admit it to yourself, that you are too weak to eat meat; you're handicapped when it comes to eating meat. When this question has come up, I myself have often said that a lot of things are simply easier to get through if you don't eat meat. Meat weighs people down, and if you need to use your brain in a precise way, it is simply easier to do if you don't eat meat. In the end, it all comes down to the question of what is easier and more convenient.

I have often emphasized that it is impossible to eat your way into the higher worlds, either through what you eat or through what you abstain from eating. Achieving access to spiritual worlds is a spiritual matter, and both eating and abstaining from food are physical matters. If this were not the case, people might get grotesque ideas about what would happen if they did or did not eat certain foods. It might occur to them to eat salt one week and no salt at all the next week in order to descend to the depths of the elemental world during the week when they were eating salt and come back up again in the course of the week when they were doing without. It's quite possible for people to get stupid ideas like that. In our Society, of course, people will not get ideas that are as stupid as that, but similar things might still occur to them.

But to get back to the subject of vegetarianism, if we are as modest as possible in how we discuss it in the presence of outsiders, we will find that eventually no one will hold the fact that we are vegetarians against us. On the other hand, if we consider vegetarianism to be something to our credit, the outside world will never forgive us for it. And in fact, being vegetarian is not a credit to anyone; it is simply an easy way out.

There are many other similar examples, and we really have to talk about things like this, not to preach morality, but to establish certain basic principles for our life in an esoteric society vis-à-vis the outside world. What it all comes down to is that we need to seriously consider how we relate to the outside world, and the result of our deliberations must be both a bridge and a protective wall between us and the outside, especially in the case of a society like ours. It happens again and again, for instance, that members say to people on the outside, “Dr. Steiner said this and such.” Just put yourself in the place of the person you're talking to, and imagine what it feels like!

For example, if someone says that Dr. Steiner is taking so-and-so's spiritual development in hand, how are outsiders supposed to understand that? What can they possibly imagine except a society of fools who all subordinate themselves to a single individual? That kind of thing really does happen. I cannot even pretend that it does not occur. And just imagine what it means to the outside world. We really must talk about these things from the point of view of how a society should be set up if a spiritual scientific movement like ours is to inhabit it. First and foremost, we must take this spiritual scientific movement seriously, and we must not do anything that could be detrimental to it in the eyes of the outside world.

I will go into this subject more deeply tomorrow, and you will see how intimately this all relates to certain specific impulses of spiritual science. I do not want to simply lecture you sternly; I want to explain how these things relate to the central impulses of spiritual science.

• 1. In Stuttgart on September 4, 1921, at the first Members' Assembly after World War I, Rudolf Steiner addressed the question of the lecture cycles as follows: “Actually, every member has taken on the responsibility of seeing that the cycles stay within the Society. I am not so concerned about the cycles being read outside the Society; what matters to me is that these cycles in the form in which they were printed stay among people who understand the circumstances, because lack of time kept me from correcting the proofs.” (Mitteilungen des Zentralvorstandes der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft, Stuttgart, November 1921, No. 1, p. 27). And in The Course of My Life, GA 28, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986): “I would have preferred it if the spoken word could have been left in that form, the members wanted to have the lectures printed privately, and that is why the talks now exist in print. If I had had time to make corrections, there would have been no need for the 'for members only' restriction right from the beginning.” (Chapter XXXV, Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
  
  However, since the members did not feel bound by this responsibility and Steiner's opponents in their writings often showed themselves to be better informed about the lecture cycles than the members themselves, Rudolf Steiner was obliged to lift all restrictions and declare the printed lecture cycles available to the general public at the Christmas Foundation Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in 1923.
• 2. See the explanations Steiner gave on August 21 and 22, 1915, printed in Part Two of this volume.
• 3. August 22, 1915, in Part Two of this volume, p. 144.
• 4. “The Origin of Evil in the Light of Spiritual Science,” Munich, March 29, 1914. Only incomplete notes of this lecture are extant.
• 5. Gustav Gräser, 1879–1958, who became well known as an apostle of nature in the 1920s. Cf. Ulrich Linse, Barfüssige Propheten. Erlöser der zwanziger Jahre, Berlin, 1983. (“Barefoot Prophets: Redeemers of the Twenties”) Rudolf Steiner mentioned Gräser in a letter to Marie von Sivers on January 6, 1906 (in Rudolf Steiner/Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925, GA 262, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1988), saying that Gräser had attended a lecture of Rudolf Steiner's and taken part in the discussion afterward.

Automated Translation

My dear friends, this evening I would like to tell you something about the journey, and then give another talk tomorrow — since the next week has to be spent in Stuttgart and I will be dealing with some things that are perhaps more closely related in content to the things that I will also have to deal with today, as part of the description of the journey.

The journey began with Ilkley, in the north of England, where an educational course was to be held, a course dealing with Waldorf school methodology and didactics in relation to contemporary civilization. Ilkley is a town in the north of England with a population of about 8,000. At present there is a tendency in England to hold so-called summer schools at such places during the summer months, and this course was initially also in the form of such a summer school.

The course was to be accompanied by what we have developed in the anthroposophical movement in the way of eurythmy, and it was also to be accompanied by what six of our Waldorf school teachers could offer based on what has just been said in the individual lectures.

Ilkley is a place that is probably considered a kind of summer resort, but it is located in the immediate vicinity of those cities that really put you so deeply into what industrial-commercial culture is in our time. Leeds and other places are very close by, for example Bradford, and Manchester is not far away either. These are cities that truly reflect the life that has arisen from the present. One really has a feeling there that says very clearly how much the present needs a spiritual impact; a spiritual impact that is not limited to giving individual people something for their immediate individual-personal soul needs. It is certainly as justified as possible to see the anthroposophical movement in this light, but I am now speaking of the impressions that are really imposed on one by today's outside world.

You see, my dear friends, it is indeed the case that one would consider it an extraordinary, I would even say cultural paradox, if someone were to recommend adding indigestible mineral products - let's say any minerals, stones and so on - to human food, in other words, to regard it as something possible to add sand or the like to human food. One is compelled, on the basis of one's ideas about the human organism, to regard this as impossible. But anyone who is able to look more deeply into the structure and interrelationships of the world — and this may be said out of genuine anthroposophical feeling and perception — will have a special sense of a collection of houses and factories in such a style, which, so to speak, gives nothing to the aesthetic needs of human beings — as for example, in Leeds, where incredible-looking black houses are lined up in an abstract manner, where everything actually looks as if it were a condensation of the blackest coal dust, which has formed into houses in which people now live. If we consider this in connection with the development of culture and civilization of all mankind, and really do so with the same attitude as I have just applied to the sand in the stomach, we feel that we must say: It is just as impossible for human civilization for such a thing to become established in the long run in the whole course of human development and for human civilization to somehow progress inwardly.

Now it is really not the case that one could ever be a reactionary on anthroposophical ground. Of course, one must not speak of these things in a negative sense. These things have simply arisen out of the life of the whole evolution of the earth. But they are only possible within the development of humanity if they are imbued, permeated with a real spiritual life, if the spiritual life actually penetrates into these things and is gradually able to elevate them to a kind of aesthetics, so that people do not completely stray from the inner human through these things being placed in the unfolding of culture.

And I would like to say: it is precisely from such an experience that the most absolute necessity of a penetration of spiritual impulses into contemporary civilization arises. These things cannot be grasped merely in the sense of general ideas that one forms, but they must be grasped in connection with what is in the world. But one must have a heart for what is in the world!

Ilkley itself is a place that, on the one hand, has the atmosphere of its proximity to these other, purely industrial cities, but on the other hand, there are traces everywhere in the surrounding remains of the dolmens, the old Druid altars, that are reminiscent of an ancient spirituality that has no direct successor there. It is, I would say touching, to perceive when on the one hand one has the impression that I have just described, and when on the other hand, in this region, which I would say is thoroughly permeated by the effluents of those impressions, one climbs a hill and then finds the remains of the old sacrificial altars with the corresponding signs in the extraordinarily characteristic places where they are always found - there is something extraordinarily touching about it. There is such a hill near Ilkley, with such a stone at the top. And on this stone, essentially – it is a little more complicated – but essentially what is known as a swastika, which was imprinted on the stones that were placed at certain sites at that time and what was imprinted on something very specific: it points to how at these sites the Druid priest was imbued with the same thoughts that, let's say, two to three millennia ago, were culturally creative in these areas. For when one enters such a place, stands before such a rock with the engraved signs, then one can still see from the whole situation today that one is standing in the same place where the Druid priest once stood and where he felt so strongly about the engraving of this sign that he expressed his consciousness, which he had from his dignity, in this sign.

For what does one read in this sign when standing before such a stone? One reads the words that were in the heart of the Druid priest: Lo, the eye of sensuality beholds the mountains, beholds the places of men; the eye of the spirit, the lotus flower, the turning lotus flower – for its sign is the swastika – beholds the hearts of men, beholds the interior of the soul. And it is through this seeing that I want to be connected with those who are entrusted to me as a community. Just as one would otherwise read a text from a book, one reads this, so to speak, by standing in front of such a stone.

This is roughly the setting in which the Ilkley Conference was held. It consisted of my always giving the lectures in the morning, which this time, above all, tried to extract the Waldorf school pedagogy and didactics from the whole historical development of the art of education. This time I started from the way in which the art of education in Greek culture grew out of general Greek life, from which one can see that actually no special methods or special practices should be invented for school, but that school should impart what is contained in general culture.

It is certainly not right, for example, to invent special practices in Froebelian kindergartens – and I am not criticizing Froebel at all! – for doing this or that with the children, practices that are not connected to and have not grown out of general cultural life. Rather, it is right for the person practising the art of education to be directly involved in general cultural life, to have a heart and mind for it, and then to incorporate into the educational methods from direct life that into which the person to be educated is to grow later.

And so I wanted to show how pedagogy and didactics must grow out of our life, but now permeated by the spirit. This gave us the opportunity to shed light on the Waldorf school method from a different point of view. What I just mentioned was only the starting point; the subject at hand was an examination of Waldorf school pedagogy, which you are familiar with.

After that, there was a eurythmy performance by the children of the Kings Langley School and eurythmy performances by those eurythmy artists who had come with us at the Ilkleyer Theatre there. It would probably have been better if the latter had taken place first, so that it could have been seen in the order itself how what is cultivated as eurythmy in the school also grows out of eurythmy as an art that is part of cultural life. Well, these things will settle down in the future, so that in terms of external arrangements, too, a picture will be given of what is actually intended.

The third aspect, so to speak, was the achievements of those who had been involved as teachers at the Waldorf School. And here it must truly be said that the greatest possible interest was shown in the matter. I must say, for example, that the way in which Dr. von Baravalle presented his ideas was extraordinarily moving for anyone who cares about the development of the Waldorf School. When one saw how Dr. von Baravalle simply explained his geometrical views in the way they apply to children, using the method that you should know well from his book on physical and mathematical methods, and how then, from an artistic-mathematical development of surface transformation and surface metamorphosis, one might say, suddenly with an inner drama, the Pythagorean theorem emerged. When they saw how, after the audience had been led step by step and did not really know where it was all going, a number of surfaces were shifted until, at the end, the Pythagorean theorem was visualized on the blackboard by shifting the surfaces. There was an inner amazement among the audience, which consisted of teachers, an inner dramatic unfolding of thoughts and feelings, and I would like to say such an honest, sincere enthusiasm for what is coming into the school as a method that it was really moving – just as what our teachers presented in general aroused the most extraordinary interest. We had brought examples of our students' work, which consists of sculptural pieces, making toys, paintings, and so on. The greatest interest was aroused when it was described how the children work on these projects and how they fit into the school's overall curriculum.

The way in which music lessons are taught, as interpreted by Miss Lämmert, attracted the greatest attention, as did the discussions by Dr. Schwebsch. The insistent, loving way of Dr. von Heydebrand, then the forceful way of our Dr. Karl Schubert; all these are things that really showed that it is possible to bring the essence of the Waldorf school system to the soul of a teaching staff in a vivid way. Miss Röhrle then gave a eurythmy lesson for different people, which was also a good addition, so that the whole thing was quite well summarized from an educational point of view. I can say that because I had no part in putting the program together. All of this was put together by our English friends in such a way that it really was a very nice summary of the educational subject.

During the whole conference, a committee was formed which set itself the task of founding an independent school in England based on the model of the Waldorf School. The prospects are actually very good for such a school to be established as a day school, alongside the Kings Langley School, which had already agreed last year, after my Oxford lectures, to adopt the Waldorf school methodology. As I said, it was the children of the Kings Langley School who had presented what they had learned in eurythmy at the theater in Ilkley. The interest and the way in which these things have been received, and also how sympathetically the eurythmy performances have been received, is something that can already be very satisfying. This was the first half of August, until August 18. Then we hiked over to Penmaenmawr.

Penmaenmawr is a place in North Wales, on the western English coast, where the island of Anglesey is located, and this Penmaenmawr is a place that could not have been better chosen for this anthroposophical undertaking this year. For this Penmaenmawr is filled with the directly tangible astral atmosphere, into which the young man shaped himself, who had emerged from the Druid service, traces of which can be found everywhere. It is right on the seashore, as I said, where the island of Anglesey is located; a bridge, which, by the way, is ingeniously built, leads over to it. On one side, hills and mountains rise everywhere near Penmaenmawr, and on these mountains you can find the remains of the old so-called sacrificial altars, cromlechs and so on scattered all over the place; there are traces of this ancient Druidic service everywhere.

These individual scattered cult devices, if I may call them that, are apparently arranged in the simplest way. If you look at them from the side, they are stones arranged in a square or rectangle, with a stone lying on top. If you look at them from above, these stones would stand like this [see drawing], and then a stone lies on top, enclosing the whole thing like a small chamber.

Of course, such things were also grave monuments. But I would like to say that in older times the function of a grave monument is always connected with the function of a much more extensive cult. And so I do not want to hold back here from expressing what such a cult site can teach us.

You see, these stones enclose a kind of chamber; a capstone lies on top of it. This chamber is dark in a certain way. So when the sun's rays fall on it, the outer physical light remains. But sunlight is filled with spiritual currents everywhere. This spiritual current continues into this dark space. And the Druid priest, as a result of his initiation, had the ability to see through the Druid stones and see the downward flow - not of physical sunlight, because that was blocked - but of what lives spiritually and soulfully in physical sunlight. And that inspired him with what then flowed into his wisdom about the spiritual cosmos, about the universe. They were therefore not only burial places, they were places of knowledge.

But even more. If at certain times of the day this was the case, what I have just described, then one can say: at other times of the day the opposite was the case, that currents went back from the earth [upwards], which could then be observed when the sun was not shining on them, and in which lived that which were the moral qualities of the community of the priest, so that the priest could see at certain times what the moral qualities of his community children were in the surrounding area. So the descending spiritual substance as well as the ascending spiritual substance showed him that which allowed him to stand in a truly spiritual way in his entire sphere of influence.

These things are, of course, not recorded in what today's science tells us about these places of worship. But it is indeed what can be seen here directly, because the power of the impulses – the impulses from the work of the Druid priests in the time when it was their good time – was so strong that even today these things are absolutely alive in the astral atmosphere there.

I was then able to visit another type of place of worship with Dr. Wachsmuth: from Penmaenmawr, you have to walk about an hour and a half up a mountain. At the top, there is something like a hollow. From this hollow, you have an unobstructed, wonderful view of the surrounding mountains and also of the hollow boundary of your own mountain. Up there in this hollow, one found what can be described as the actual sun cult site of the ancient Druids. It is arranged in such a way that the corresponding stones are arranged with their cover leaves; the traces are present everywhere.

Think of it this way: these places of worship have no inner space. Up here, in close proximity to each other, you have two such Druidic circles. When the sun makes its daily path, the shadows of these stones fall in a variety of ways, and you can now distinguish, let's say, when the sun passes through the constellation of Aries, the Aries shadow, then the Taurus shadow, the Gemini shadow and so on. Even today, when deciphering these things, one still gets a good impression of how the Druid priest was able to read the secrets of the universe from the various, qualitatively different sun shadows that this Druid circle revealed, from that which lives on in the sun shadow when the physical sunlight is held back, so that in fact it contains a world clock that speaks of the secrets of the world. But these were definitely signs that emerged from the shadows that were cast, signs that spoke of the secrets of the world and the cosmos.

The second circle was then a kind of control to check what the first circle had revealed. If you had gone up in an airplane and gone so far away that this distance in between might have disappeared, you would have had, looking down, the ground plan of what the ground plan of our Goetheanum was, directly from these two druid circles.

All this is located where the island of Anglesey is also close by, where much of what has been preserved in the accounts of King Arthur took place. The center of King Arthur was a little further south, but some of the events that took place there were also part of King Arthur's work. All this gives the astral atmosphere of Penmaenmawr something that makes this place in particular a special one, one of which one can say: when speaking about spiritual things, one is compelled to speak in imaginations. It is the case with imaginations that when they are formed in the course of the representations, these imaginations in the astral atmosphere within today's civilization very soon disappear. When one tries to depict the spiritual, one is constantly fighting against the disappearance of the imaginations. One has to create these imaginations, but they quickly fade away, so that one is constantly faced with the necessity of creating these imaginations in order to have them in front of oneself. The astral atmosphere that results from these things is such that it is a little more difficult to form the imaginations there in Penmaenmawr, but that this difficulty in turn leads to a great relief of the spiritual life on the other hand, that now these imaginations, after they are formed, simply look like they have been written into the astral atmosphere, so that they are inside. Every time one forms imaginations that express the spiritual world, one has the feeling that they remain in the astral atmosphere there. And it is precisely this circumstance that so vividly reminds us of how these Druid priests chose their special places, where they could, I would say, effectively engrave in the astral atmosphere what was incumbent upon them to shape in imaginations from the secrets of the world. Coming from Ilkley, which is very close to industrialism and shows only very slight traces of the ancient Druidic period, one feels a kind of real transcendence, almost like crossing a threshold, and now entering into something that is simply spiritual in the immediate present. Everything here is spiritual. You could say that this part of Wales is a very special place on Earth. Today, this Wales is the custodian of an incredibly strong spiritual life, which admittedly consists of memories, but real memories that stand there. So that it may actually be said: the opportunity to talk about Anthroposophy at this place – not in reference to the branches of Anthroposophy, but about Anthroposophy itself, about the inner core of Anthroposophy – I count that as one of the most significant stages in the development of our Anthroposophical life.

The credit for having made this institution, for having placed something like this in the development of anthroposophical life, goes to Mr. Dunlop, who is extraordinarily insightful and energetic in this direction. He explained the plan to me when I was in England last year and then stuck to it and has now brought it to fruition. From the outset, it was planned to bring something purely anthroposophical in connection with eurythmy to this place this August.

Mr. Dunlop then had a third impulse, but it was impossible to carry out, and it may be said that what has become possible has only become possible through the truly spiritually insightful way of choosing this place. I think it is of some importance to bear in mind that there are such outstanding places on the earth's surface where, in such a vivid memory, there is an immediate awareness of what was once a living sun cult in preparation for the later adoption of Christianity in Northern and Western Europe.

The lectures were in the morning; the afternoon was partly devoted to allowing the participants to see this astral atmosphere and its connection to the memories of decaying sacrificial sites, dolmens and so on, on the spot; the evening was filled with discussions on anthroposophical topics or with eurythmy performances. There were five of them in. Penmaenmawr, which were received with great sincerity on the one hand and with the greatest interest on the other. The audience consisted partly of anthroposophists, but also of a non-anthroposophical audience. It was certainly the case that — which is, of course, understandable for a mountainous area bordering the sea — from one hour to the next there was always a nice change from half-downpours to bright sunshine and so on. For example, one evening — the external furnishings were almost the same as in this carpentry workshop — we really did go from a downpour to a eurythmy performance; at the beginning, people were still sitting in the hall with their umbrellas, but they did not let themselves be deterred in their enthusiasm. So it was definitely something, as I said in Penmaenmawr itself, that can truly be recorded as a very significant chapter in the history of our anthroposophical movement.

One event was dedicated to discussing educational questions in Penmaenmawr as well. And on this occasion, I would also like to mention the following, which you have already been able to read in the brief presentation I gave of it in the “Goetheanum”. When I came to England, to Ilkley, I found a book called 'Education Through Imagination', which I was able to skim through at first and which immediately captivated me; a book that one of our friends in particular describes as one of the most important books in England. Its author is Miss MacMillan. The same person was then chairman on the first evening and the following evenings in Ilkley. Miss MacMillan gave the opening speech. It was uplifting to see the beautiful enthusiasm and the inner honest fire for the art of education in this woman. And at the same time, it was extraordinarily satisfying for us that this woman in particular is fully committed to what can be achieved in a truly serious art of education through the Waldorf school methodology.

During the following days, I read more of the book and summarized my impressions in the article in the last issue of the Goetheanum. Then, last Monday, Frau Doctor and I were also able to visit the place of work of this excellent woman in Deptford, near London and Greenwich. There we found the Miss MacMillan Care and Education Institute. She takes children from the lowest and poorest social classes into this care and education institute; she also aims to take children at an older age. Today she has 300 children at the school; she started with six children many years ago, today there are 300. These children are taken in at the age of two, coming from circles where they are very dirty, impoverished, sick, malnourished or very poorly nourished – if I may say so, rickety, typhoid, afflicted with worse. Today you can see a kind of school barracks in the immediate vicinity, like those of the Waldorf School – the barracks, not our current opulently built house, the provisional barracks – but there they are very beautiful, nicely furnished. The things are in a garden, but you only have to take a few steps from any of the Iore and then you can compare the population from which these children come, living on the streets in the most terrible squalor and filth, with what is being done with these children.

First of all, the bathing facilities are exemplary. That is the main thing. The children arrive at 8 o'clock, are released in the evening, and thus return to their home every evening. The care begins in the morning with a bath. Then a kind of teaching begins, all done with tremendous devotion, with a touching, poignant sense of sacrifice, all arranged in a touching, practical way. Miss MacMillan is also of the opinion that the education of the Waldorf School must penetrate everything, so one must say: one can see that from this point of view with complete satisfaction – while today one might want to do some things differently in terms of methodology; but that is not considered at all in the face of this sense of sacrifice. Things are always in a state of becoming. It is truly significant how well-mannered these children become, which is particularly evident during mealtimes, when they are led to the table and serve themselves, or when the food is passed by one of the children. What practical sense can achieve is shown, for example, by the fact that this, I would like to say extraordinarily homely, “feeding” of the children, during which one would like to eat along, costs 2 shillings 4 pence for the child during the week. Everything is extremely well organized. It was wonderful, for example, to see how the older children, who have been at the center for years, were called together and then presented us with a long scene from Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream,” the Midsummer Night's Dream, with real feeling and even a certain mastery of dramatic technique. There was something touchingly magnificent about the way these children performed it, expressively and impressively, with real inner control of the drama.

And this performance of Shakespeare's “Midsummer Night's Dream” was almost in the same place where Shakespeare himself once performed his plays for the court with his troupe. Because near Greenwich was the court of Queen Elizabeth. There, in the rooms where today's classrooms are located and other rooms, as I will explain in a moment, even the royal household of Queen Elizabeth lived, and Shakespeare, coming from London, had to perform his plays for the courtiers there. The children performed these Shakespeare plays for us at the same location.

And in the same area, connected to this educational mental hospital, is a children's clinic, again for the poorest of the poor. Every year, 6,000 children go through this clinic, not 6,000 at the same time, but every year. The head of this clinic is now also Miss MacMillan. So that in a very impoverished and polluted area, in a terrible area, a personality is working with full energy and actually great in the conception of what she is doing.

It was therefore a very deep satisfaction for me when Miss MacMillan expressed the intention, if at all possible, to visit our Waldorf School in Stuttgart with some of her colleagues at Christmas. This teaching staff is extraordinarily devoted. You can imagine that caring for such children, with the characteristics I have just described, is not exactly easy. It therefore filled me with great satisfaction that this particular person was the chairman for the Ilkley lectures, and then in Penmaenmawr – where she came again in the few days that she could bring herself to do so – she introduced a discussion on education in which Dr. von Baravalle and Dr. von Heydebrand spoke. So it was precisely what took place at Penmaenmawr and what was connected with it that was really quite satisfying.

The last part, so to speak, was the third part, which was the days in London. Dr. Wegman had come over for what was to be my first task in London. We were to present the method and essence of our anthroposophic medical efforts to a number of English doctors. Forty doctors were invited, and most of them appeared at Dr. Larkin's house. I was able to speak in two lectures, first about the special nature of our remedies in their connection with the symptoms and with the nature of the human being. And then in the second lecture I was able to give a physiological-pathological basis for the functions of the human being; then something about the mode of action of individual remedies, again in connection with this basis, the effects of the antimony remedy, the effects of mistletoe and so on – and I believe we can truly say that perhaps a fairly good understanding of the matter has been brought to bear, even in a wider circle, as evidenced by the fact that Dr. Wegman was consulted quite frequently. So this aspect of anthroposophical work has also come into its own.

The finale was a performance at the Royal Academy of Art, which was an extraordinary success. The room is not particularly large, but not only was it sold out, people also had to be turned away. The eurythmy was received with extraordinary enthusiasm. One could say of eurythmy that wherever it goes, it makes its way. If only it were not for the enormous obstacles that exist in the present time! On the one hand, when one sees all that is going on, for example, the tendency of the Ilkley enterprises to now have a kind of Waldorf School emerge in England, then one looks again with a great concern, which cannot leave one today, at what one, I would like to say, encounters as an indefinite, painful response when one asks oneself: What will become of the Waldorf school in the terribly endangered Germany, from which, for example, the school efforts have emerged? I say this not so much because of the pecuniary side of the matter, but because of the extremely endangered circumstances within Germany. There are some things that make you say: If things continue as they are now, it is hard to imagine where the efforts of the Waldorf School in particular will lead.

After all, if things continue as they are now, as they have arisen from what is currently happening, there will hardly be any possibility of bringing such things through the current turmoil without danger. Then one has a heavy heart when one sees how these things are happening after all, and how in fact today all things in the world happen out of shortsightedness and without any inkling that spiritual currents must play a part in the development of culture, and how in fact in the widest circles people have lost all direct interest, all hearty engagement with things. Basically, we are all asleep when it comes to things that go so terribly to the root of human and earthly becoming. Humanity is asleep. At most, one complains about the matter when it is of immediate concern. But things do not happen without the development of great ideas! And there is such a dullness in the world towards the impulses that are to strike: Either one does not want to hear about it, or one feels uncomfortable in the world when something like the endangered situation in Central Europe is pointed out. One feels uncomfortable, one does not like to talk about it, or one colors it in a certain way and speaks of insubstantial things, of guilt and the like. In this way one gets rid of these things. The way humanity relates to general world events today is something that can be terribly painful for the soul. This general cultural sleep, which is becoming more and more widespread, is basically something quite terribly lamentable. There is actually no awareness of how the earth today, in its civilization, forms a unity, even in the face of such elementary events – I do not want to talk about them here, but they have happened – such as the poignant Japanese tragedy brought about by nature. Yes, when one compares how people looked at these things relatively recently and how they look at them today, there is something that really does bring home to one again and again the necessity of pointing out how urgently humanity needs to wake up.

Of course, this is always in front of you, especially when you see what could become of it if people would take an interest, if people would come to take things as they are, if they would not take them in terms of national divisions, in terms of state divisions, but in a general human sense! When one sees on the one hand what could become of it, and when on the other hand one sees how it is almost impossible because of general lethargy, then this actually characterizes, I would say, our present age most of all. That is the way things are. One cannot speak of the one without the other also arising in the context.

I wanted to give you a kind of travelogue today, my dear friends. I will speak about questions of intellectual life, which are, of course, more distantly related and which are actually also anthroposophical in content, tomorrow, after this.

My lecture will take place tomorrow at 8 a.m.; on Tuesday at 8 a.m. there will be a eurythmy performance here.