The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The last lectures in this series were devoted to a consideration of the human soul. And it will have become clear to those members of the audience who have followed the last three lectures what inner justification there is for not regarding the human soul as an indeterminate being, with its qualities swimming around in confusion, but for actually pursuing it in the most careful way in its individual subdivisions. For those who are here today for the first time, it is enough to point out that, in the sense of spiritual science, this human soul is distinguished into what we call the sentient soul, which is, so to speak, the lowest of the members of the human soul, which is still close to what we call the bodily members of the human being. Then, in this soul, a distinction is to be made between the mind or emotional soul, which already stands out as an independent entity, making itself independent of the sentient soul and the bodily life, and finally, the consciousness soul can still be seen.

We have pointed out that what is generally regarded today in every science as development, in a higher sense as self-development of the human being, comes to us within this soul life. Man is in development and stands at the lowest level so that what we call the sentient soul comes into its own. With further development, the mind or feeling soul comes into its own. Then, to a certain extent, a person can find themselves and examine themselves with the light of thought, understanding and knowledge. We then speak of the consciousness soul. We have not just talked about these soul elements, but emphasized the qualities that take on very special forms when this self-development of the person is taken seriously.

In particular, we pointed out one of the qualities, anger, and showed how self-development lies in overcoming such an affect. Man's sense of truth [as educator of the mind or intellectual soul] was further found, and how then a special impulse for the development of the consciousness soul is what we described yesterday as devotion in the right sense of the word. As we were asking ourselves about that in the human inner being, which actually guides and leads the development, we came across that which we had to say could essentially reveal itself in two ways: We have come across the I that pulsates and interweaves through the whole soul. It is what works on the soul. It must reveal itself in two ways: on the one hand, strongly and powerfully and meaningfully, richer in thoughts, feelings and will impulses, which itself must expand more and more; in this way we have shown how selfhood grows more and more. Furthermore, that on the other hand this ego, by expressing selfhood in a special way, can degenerate into selfishness and egoism. ... Thus, in a certain respect, the ego became the center of the soul's life.

Today it is our task to eavesdrop even further on the work of this ego on the soul. We have seen what it does for the individual members when we look at each of them purely in itself. But it is also called upon to bring about order and harmony in the life of the soul... to work the individual members of the soul, sentient, intellectual and consciousness soul, in the appropriate way, to fertilize one through the other, to let the sentient soul play into the intellectual soul and this again into the consciousness soul, and so on.

If the human ego was unable to relate these individual soul elements to each other, to establish order, harmony, etc., then the individual soul elements fall apart. The ego must prove itself strongly through all the individual soul elements and allow each individual to play into the others in an appropriate way.

You can imagine that, by allowing the individual soul links to interact, the I plays in the same way as a musician plays an instrument – even if we can only see three strings of it at first. But the I plays very special harmonies and melodies on the three strings of the soul life: depending on whether it strikes one or the other string more, strikes it at the same time as the other, and so on, a very special music of the soul arises in the person. This is how the human soul life expresses itself, as this I plays on the three strings of the soul life.

What is this expression of the I playing on the three strings of the soul? —Nothing else emerges from it but the human character. Only someone who does not question how this I plays and works in the harmonious interaction of the various soul elements can understand what is meant by the [phenomenon of human character], which is so often enigmatic and yet confronts us at every turn in life. Yes, when the individual abilities of the human soul, the individual activities, fall apart, when the ego does not exercise joint control, then the human being appears to us as if he is striving in different directions. This is the most trivial thing in the life of the character, so that his soul activities work in one direction on the one hand and in another on the other. In life, the patriot and the private man can thus diverge. In such cases, we are not talking about a unified character, and by this we mean that the ego does not distribute its effect evenly among the various parts [of the soul].

This occasional inability to create harmony between the various activities of the human soul has always been a kind of material for artists to use in poetry or other artistic forms of expression. Consider Shakespeare's Hamlet; there is a spiritual activity that the ego cannot reconcile with action. Goethe has already expressed this dichotomy of the soul life in Hamlet by saying: A great task is placed on a soul that is not up to it.

Thus we see how the I can live fully in the consciousness soul. When it emphasizes this life in the consciousness soul, it is activated in the innermost link of the human soul life, which can hide its impulses from the outside world within itself. When it emphasizes its work in the consciousness soul, what arises is what we call the hidden, closed character. We cannot get at him because the consciousness soul withdraws from the outside world. We can therefore be separated from a person as if by a partition. His I is locked up in the consciousness soul.

The I can continue to be active and live in what we call the mind or feeling soul. This is how the malleable character is formed, which is somewhere between the other two. In this way, the I provides what could be called the balance of the soul forces. People who exercise their I within the mind soul are those who are willing to be stimulated by the outside world, but also willing to process these impressions in the service of their own self, to educate themselves more and more through the impressions of the outside world, through what is heard, seen and known of it.

If you want to educate, you have to know how the I works in the mind or soul. If such an inclination is present in a person, you have to make sure that you do the right thing in one direction or another. Such people are the most malleable, easily influenced by what is around them, and they use it for their own development.

But when the I lives it up in the sentient soul, it tends to turn outward what is in the sentient soul, its drives and so on. As soon as the I begins to be active in the sentient soul, the will arises to work outward. We have before us people who have a preference for an active character, who are always available to do this or that. When taken to an extreme, they become the busy people.

Thus we see how the human being expresses himself when the I strikes one or other chord. We can also say that the human being's I initially acts in such a way that it itself rests as if hidden in the sentient soul, namely in young people or at a low level of culture. There the I is closed in the sentient soul, it does not yet have the possibility to ascend into the mind soul and show its activities, as it expresses itself unconsciously in the sentient soul. In this case, we speak of a character that is at a low level and expresses base urges and desires.

This is different from the character where the I has already ascended into the consciousness soul, but which nevertheless then expresses itself in the sentient soul. Then the I carries what it has learned within the consciousness soul into the sentient soul; then it follows its instincts, desires, but with what it has learned through the consciousness soul. And because he follows them, such a person appears in life in such a way that we say: Oh, he only follows his instincts and desires, but in such a way that he pursues them in a clever, sophisticated way. At the same time, his character is imbued with low-mindedness [and clever reflection. It gives the] character a higher meaning when, with attitude, the person rises as high as with knowledge.

We must grasp this wonderful phenomenon of human character as a kind of inner soul music, a play of the I on the various strings of the human soul life. Now it plays not only in general with the soul members, but in all that is present in these individual soul parts of the human being. For example, we see one such soul quality as an affect of the sentient soul: anger. When the ego is little developed, has not ascended into the higher regions of the soul life, it gives itself over to anger; then we find an outburst of anger that shows us how an ego unconscious of itself storms out into the world. It is not in control of itself because it has remained undeveloped in a certain respect, ... not in control of itself when it is overcome by anger.

[Imagine a] teacher in front of a student [: [the] student [has] noticed something wrong with a fellow student and, in anger, hits the fellow student with a book. The teacher may be a person who has developed the mind soul and the consciousness soul, but in this moment, anger can overwhelm him so much that a young lad can get so angry. Then the teacher hits the boy a few lefts and rights. When the surge of anger comes, only a very controlled person can suppress it.

The stopping of the I in the sentient soul manifests itself as if in a rage. This is the extreme of anger, when the I almost sinks in anger and the soul becomes similar to a state of powerlessness. Then anger arises. The ego cannot conquer anger. If it conquers, then, by being conquered, anger becomes an educator in the right way, indirectly through the ego itself, if the ego does not let itself be overcome by the emotion but exercises self-control. In the sentient soul, the I has to accomplish its own education, which we call education in self-control. On the one hand, there is rage that breaks out blindly, and on the other, there is self-control, which is achieved through noble self-education.

Let us now take the I that is in the soul of reason or feeling. The mission of the sense of truth is revealed in it. It consists in the fact that the human being has something in the truth that he may cultivate – because when he devotes himself to the truth, he cultivates something – that he may cultivate in his own inner being. He can only assimilate truth within himself, in order to unfold the supreme power of the I in inwardness. At the same time, however, it unites us with the whole of humanity and with the world. In the cultivation of truth we see something by which the I can develop into selfhood and self-strength, and thereby at the same time into selflessness.

But one or other of these strings can be struck in the wrong way. It can happen that the I makes a mistake in a certain way, or where it should have a strong effect, it has a weak effect. If it makes a mistake within the soul of the intellect, then what arises is a demonstration of how even the noblest in human life can be distorted, can become a caricature, when the I loses itself in what it has recognized as truth.

When the I is immersed in the truth, the following can occur: Because man is not capable of mastering a comprehensive field of truth on all sides, and can only master part of the truth, when the ego loses itself in it, it can forget itself and blindly rage in its limited circle of truth. Then it becomes a fanatic, and what is called the fanatical character in life comes to meet us.

The opposite is true when the I not only devotes itself to the truth with the right strength, but also looks into itself in the right way and becomes aware that a person can also err. If the I does not lose itself in the truth, but always looks at itself in the intellect and in the mind, then the fanatic cannot arise.

By increasingly practicing this self-examination according to the qualities of the intellect and the soul, the I attains what in characterology is called healthy self-esteem or healthy self-confidence, combined with proper self-criticism, [which] allows one to maintain balance with regard to recognized truth(s) and the possibility of error on the other hand.

Then... to that which contributes most to the soul's upward development into the consciousness soul, to devotion. Here too, the I can strike the right or the wrong chord. It can lose itself in devotion, give itself up in surrender to the Other and the Unknown. Then we are dealing with the self-losing ego, with the false holiness of man, which amounts to a kind of self-sacrifice. But when the I resonates with this quality of the consciousness soul in the right way, when it works strongly into devotion with its self, then we come to what can be called justified self-respect and self-knowledge.

Thus we see how the I expresses itself in the most diverse ways. It is the unifier of the individual members of the human soul. And it is the characterological activity of the I on the individual soul members, as just described, that prevents the human being from falling apart. But if the I does not maintain control over the individual soul-members, then the human being appears to us as fragmented, the I sinks down and can no longer be seen: lack of character, surrender to the demons of one's own soul, torn back and forth by instincts and feelings; thoughts that bring one to despair, surrender on the other hand, etc.

[I have] already pointed out in an example from art the loss of control over the individual parts, where the ego has sunk into self-loss. This work of art is the famous Laocoon: a priest with his two sons standing there and entwined by snakes. Many people have endeavored to understand this work of art. ... All this is expressed in a wonderful way, one must... in the right way understand. /Larger gaps; probably a description of “Laocoon”.] Even those who have devoted themselves to it with devotion have said many erroneous things in their understanding of this work of art. Winckelmann, who became Lessing's and Goethe's teacher in the study of art, looked at Laocoon in such a way that he said that it was particularly beautiful that here

the highest ennoblement of pain takes place. He sees the soul in its sublimity in Laocoon, who in the moment before death musters his full soul power; and in the face, namely in the eyes, one can see how the inner soul powers look up to a supreme being. The father shows in the eyes expressing mercy that compassion for his sons triumphs over pain.

This description fails when confronted with the overall view of the work of art. It can already be seen in a cast. If you want to judge the eye in this way, it fails because the eye is directed upwards and Laocoon does not see any of his sons. [The compassion for the sons is] not visible, because Winckelmann has invented it. But this group is illuminated by the light of understanding when one sees what is there and is clear about it: this Laocoon with the drawn-in abdomen, with the protruding chest, with the upward-looking, surrounding eyes, the hair standing on end – when we see all this, it is clear to us that here the effect of the human being is no longer overcome by the sense of self, but we are confronted with the moment when this sense of self has disappeared. The ego has just emerged, and at this moment it no longer follows the effect of the ego, which would hold the strong reins with regard to the expressions of the soul life. Individual limbs go their own ways. Nature... [the pain] draws in the abdomen, the upper body is protruding, other limbs go their own ways; everything is torn apart. Through the loss of soul that has just occurred, it shows what man is when the ego is truly suppressed and the individual strong limbs go their own ways in a final flurry.

When we have such a work of art before us, it is a negative symbol [for] what the I must be that brings about this interplay of the individual soul members. By looking at human character in this way, we can gain much for our understanding of life, but also many things that the educator needs if he wants to develop human character step by step. We will understand life if we ask ourselves: What is the peculiarity of human character itself?

If we look at animal character, we can say: the animal comes into the world with a ready-made character, which remains throughout the animal's lifetime. What is at the beginning is also at the end: a distinctly pronounced generic or species character. If you characterize a hyena, you have characterized them all. Why is that? It is because the animal, in a sense, has no history and does not incorporate the element of time into its life. The experiences of youth cannot be learned and carried into the later elements of development.

What we call time is incorporated into the human being's soul life. The I gradually develops out of the hidden germ, the peculiarities of the sentient soul and the mind soul, up into the consciousness soul. Thus, the child approaches us in a different way in terms of character than a young animal. From the earliest times, the latter practices the activities that are incumbent on it by virtue of its nature. In a sense, the human being enters the world without character. The individual forms, even those based on his nature, even what he acquires by being worked on by others, all that arises in later life, must be acquired over time.

Initially, a person can be determined in terms of their character. We can work into them, but we cannot use a word that describes a child in terms of character; the child does not yet have character. By showing itself differently from other children in its individual activities, it does not have character, but it does have individuality. The self has not yet taken self-development into its own hands. It is still pressed down under the sentient soul, still contained in the most hidden part. As long as it has not yet developed into activity, into an inner play on the strings of the soul instrument, it is only an individuality, not a character. Only then does the character begin to emerge when the I begins to become aware of itself, at first dimly. Then, in the course of life, this self-education by the I occurs more and more.

But one educates a person in the right way only when one pays attention to whether it is the I that is inclined to rummage around in the sentient soul or one that wants to express the qualities of the mind soul or consciousness soul in particular. Here one has to be careful not to limit one's view and to ensure that the various activities of the I are stimulated in the right way. If one sees that a child is inclined to lose itself in the individual activities, that it tends towards selflessness in the bad sense, then it is good to start teaching this child the concepts of human dignity and human significance as early as possible. You will educate badly if you encourage your selfishness here, appeal to the child's own selfishness. You will educate well if you teach him general concepts of what a human being is and means in the world.

When the sense of life is strongly developed in the soul of the mind, it can indeed bubble over and be lost on unworthy things. In this case, when it wants to lose itself on unworthy things, then one must ensure that such a growing person forms the right concepts of the world, of things and of beings, in order to assess them correctly in relation to each other. We have to ensure that he learns to appreciate things correctly.

Thus, as educators, we have to do the work of transferring the work of the ego to the neglected side. We have to do a balancing and harmonizing job with regard to character, but first we have to gain an understanding for the peculiar way in which the ego plays with the different parts of the soul.

Thus we see how justified it was to form the word character, that is to say, “imprinting”. The whole life of the soul receives a certain imprinting and shaping through this I. How the human being then affects life itself is best shown when we understand how the I is active in the individual members of the soul and how these interact.

Now there is something else to be borne in mind in particular. I have said that the I educates the soul up to the level of the consciousness soul. Is this education complete with this? It is not yet finished. Only then does what is important in terms of character development in human life occur. Only then is the consciousness soul accessible to what can reach into the human soul from a higher world. What can reach into the consciousness soul first of all?

What is most important in terms of character are moral concepts and ideas, which we do not find in our lives outside. There we find drives and instincts in which a self works that is blind. We cannot gain our [rational insights] and ideals and moral judgments from life. We must first carry these into life. The human soul must receive these as an inspiration from another world and try to bring them into life; but not just like that.

In the human soul, the moral imperative [lights up], the great ideals through which we can advance life, what life does not yet have and man must first bring into it. Then the I grasps this light from another world in the moral concepts and ideals. They first flow into the consciousness soul; the I grasps them. Previously, development took place from bottom to top; now, when the I has gained these moral judgments and ideals, it carries them back down into the mind soul, transforming the moral thought into moral feeling. The moral feeling in the soul of feeling is what was in the consciousness soul [moral concept]. When such a moral concept is brought down into the soul of feeling, we glow with a moral deed. Then we have sympathy for what is going on around us. More and more, moral judgments and thoughts push their way down and become feelings. We become inflamed with enthusiasm for what is done out of high moral ideals. Through the “I” bringing moral judgments and ideals down from the consciousness soul, we are moved to glow with enthusiasm for what is good and to feel sympathy for what is noble and great.

But the I must also carry these ideals down into the sentient soul. There the moral ideals also work on our drives, instincts and passions, transforming them into something completely different. Gradually, the moral ideal pours into this drive life, the drive now works as a force, and the moral ideal gains the power to be realized. The drive has abandoned its instinctive nature and what is in it as a force becomes the bearer of moral judgment and ideal. Thus, in life, we become people of action who not only live out drives and passions, but also carry the light of moral ideals, so that there is no contradiction in them between what they carry the passions in and what shines there as moral judgments and ideals. Thus the self carries down into the lower regions of the soul what it has gained above. In this way, it warms the soul with what it has gained in the consciousness soul.

By developing itself up into the consciousness soul, the I becomes a human being in terms of character. By carrying it down again into the lower members, the human being becomes a moral character. This carrying up and down of what has been gained... this is how we understand what character is, what moral character is.

This [the work of the ego on the soul members] gives the human being his character to such an extent that it expresses itself [in the body]. Just as the soul expresses itself in the outer body, so this work of the ego on the soul members expresses itself in the outer body. We can follow this down to the last detail and are amazed at how the I appears in the outer physical body of the human being. There we see how the I works in the consciousness soul. When this work expresses itself outwardly, it is in that which, in the outer world, belongs to the highest human activity. What elevates human beings above animals is the free mobility of their limbs and the subordination of their limbs to the sensations and concepts of their soul life.

One movement that expresses the inner soul life [in particular] is facial expression [and gesture]. We see how the activity of the soul in particular acquires an external expression in mimic [and gestural] expression. The one who is able to interpret the facial expressions and gestures of a person in the right way sees how the whole play of the I on the various soul members is revealed in the outer gestures. If, for example, the I in the consciousness soul is active, but has dragged up what it actually is in the sentient soul and allows it to play up into the consciousness soul, then it expresses itself as if one could say: The person lives in his feelings, brings this to consciousness and expresses it. Outwardly, this is expressed by the person tapping himself on the abdomen with great comfort, for example after a meal.

Suppose that what stirs particularly in the feeling soul and through which the I is stimulated by the feeling soul is particularly developed and expressed outwardly in the gesture: Man then reaches to his heart. Thus he rises up by his own body, by rising with his I and by playing in ever higher limbs. If the 'I' expresses itself in such a way that it only expresses the consciousness soul and is not touched by the other parts, only the consciousness soul, where thoughts and knowledge dominate, where human discernment is expressed – when a person reflects sharply on something and reflects in such a way that he wants to analyze something – then he puts his finger to his nose to, as it were, divide his face into two parts. What is worked in the consciousness soul is expressed. The character is reflected in the outward gesture by scratching behind the ear, or by grasping the head when something does not occur to one.

In the whole play of facial expressions, both the ascent in the soul life and the ascent in the soul life are expressed. When a person makes a judgment and wants to negate something, this can be expressed in the consciousness soul of this person by quietly judging. A negation expressed without emotion is then a movement of the head simply to the left and right. But if he negates with the will, he throws his head back.

It is particularly interesting to study the outward gestures of different nations. Here one could recognize the play of the I if one were to ask: How does one nation or another express negation? — and so on. Here we see how character is expressed and shaped in the play of facial expressions.

When the I allows the other soul members to play into the mind soul, this is expressed in the human physiognomy. What we read in a person's face is the expression of the work of the I on the mind or soul of mind, where the I allows the other soul members to work. Now, we have said that the human being, where the ego plays particularly in the soul of the mind, gets a malleable character; therefore, this malleability will also show externally. This malleability, which belongs to the time, to history, we can read from the physiognomy: a face furrowed with grief. The history of a person is imprinted here, the writing of what the person has experienced in his destiny.

In the animal physiognomy, one can wonderfully observe the animal species or generic character. What a [single] person has suffered, what has become of him, can be seen by observing the human physiognomy. His story is written there. In a deeper sense, the various dispositions of the character are also expressed in a special way in the facial expression. But one must not be pedantic about this, because everything can also be balanced out by other effects.

Thus, in the human being, we can distinguish the mental part in the face, the lower part around the mouth and chin, then the nasal part and the frontal part or forehead. Depending on whether the ego [has an effect] on the rational soul, the sentient soul or the consciousness soul, this is expressed in a variety of ways. A person who acts out his or her individuality only through the sentient soul is often characterized by a pointed chin.

Everything that happens in life is most pronounced in the middle part. When the ego particularly appeals to the emotional soul, allows the consciousness soul to play from above and the sentience soul from below, when there is a balance in the mind soul, then this is expressed in the physiognomic form in such a way that the middle part of the face has a special expression. Those who are able to observe life will find such harmony in the soul life of the Greeks. That is why the famous Greek nose is regarded as the model for the human body in all of sculpture. In the Greek way of life, the entire human countenance is reduced to the human nose.

The character that the I has shaped in the soul is impressed on the human body. When the consciousness soul in particular is pressed down into the mind soul, the forehead takes on a special shape. One must not exaggerate these things, but must be clear that the I works individually in each person. If pedantry intervenes here, such things are distorted. It must repel when approached by pedantic schoolcrafting. Here it is not abstract judgment that distinguishes, but scientific tact. This does not always proceed in the right way, and many a foolish thing comes about when these things are exaggerated.

When the I in the rational soul is active, then the I leaves its mark on the physiognomy, not only in the physical body, but also in the handwriting. The character and style of the handwriting are to a certain extent a reflection of the work of the I in the rational soul. Here, of course, the [urge to] interpret is quite dangerous. If a healthy comprehensiveness is not applied in the assessment, the result is either dilettantism or humbug in the interpretation of handwriting. This does not reject the idea that character can really flow into handwriting, but rather justifies it from a higher point of view.

Thus, one can also understand that because the soul of the mind is the malleable character, the changes in the handwriting can be observed over the course of several years and one can get an idea of the changes in one's character; [this makes more sense] than if one has made this from a single piece of writing. Without knowing the age, nothing proper can come out here either. If one is knowledgeable in these matters, one can even draw conclusions about earlier experiences from certain characteristics of the handwriting rather than being able to read the characteristic itself from the handwriting. But only with the right tact can the right thing come out.

What happens when the ego works primarily on the sentient soul, but as a strong ego that works inwardly on the human soul? Of particular importance is the case that shows us this ego at the stage where it is enlightened by moral judgments and ideals. But when the I has now carried moral ideals and judgments down into the sentient soul and the drives and passions have been purified and give strength to the moral ideals, how is this expressed in the external physical body?

When the I has worked in this way, it cannot be expressed externally at first. What is brought down from the heights of the consciousness soul must remain permeated by the consciousness soul and should express itself in the physical tool of the consciousness soul, the human brain. However, due to the firm cranial box, the skullcap does not offer the possibility of expressing this. The individual bones, which have hardened, can no longer be reshaped appropriately.

This is where we see that we are predisposed to certain dispositions with the most diverse formations of the skullcap. He has formed the skullcap with the most diverse elevations and depressions. As long as the skullcap is firm in life, what character has formed cannot play in it.

Here we are at the point where we receive a reasonable explanation [of] an appearance, if we refer to what is to be discussed later in its context, if we refer to the re-embodiment of the human soul. What the soul cannot do in a particular life comes to light when the soul is reborn. What the soul has taken in of moral judgments and ideals in the sentient soul is imprinted in the soft organism. This appears in the plastic formation of the human skull.

If we look at this human skull, a kind of craniology, we can look back at the person's previous incarnation. What we get is very unlike what has been practiced as phrenology throughout many ages. Here, all kinds of predispositions have been discovered. An overview of this shows us how powerless human knowledge is when it does not go into depth. What we see on the skullcap cannot be broken down into individual forms, but is the result of the work of the ego on the sentient soul in a previous life. This is entirely individual and cannot be explained by any classification. What a person has acquired in a lifetime, that he has not remained closed in himself, but has allowed the moral ideals within him to take effect, will reappear in a later incarnation.

Thus what the spirit and soul are becomes embodied in the outer physicality, and the body becomes a reflection of the spirit, becoming a character in itself. Phrenology, when it does not want to deal with things in this way, can become folly. But if we look at things this way, we see what Goethe calls the creative nature, in contrast to the created. Thus we grasp the spirit of the cosmos that permeates everything and is expressed in external phenomena.

Here we see how character is formed and how the I shapes the soul in character. Only when the I withdraws into the consciousness soul does a closed character arise that shuts itself off from the world. But when it takes hold of the other soul members, something arises that is developed into the formation of the body. It was a deep insight of the poet when he spoke the word: When man develops his abilities and talents, the I works within him; but when he develops his character, it works on the world and the outer life:

A talent develops in silence,
a character in the stream of the world.

When the poet approaches these phenomena, it can become deeply apparent to him that something has flowed through him in all his ways... Thus, he who observes life can see how life is formed from within. It is nature that stands firm in its foundations. But it is that which contains the spirit within itself and allows it to be born out of itself. But the spirit allows nature to emerge from itself again, in mimic play, [in] physiognomy, [in] the shaping of the skullcap. It imprints on matter, through the I, that which the I plays on that wonderful musical instrument in the hidden depths of the soul.

This can occur to someone who stands before such a miracle of such molding. Such a thought once flashed through a man's mind when, after many years, a friend's tomb was opened and the skull was removed. Contemplating this skull, the thought occurred to him how the form expresses what the soul has lived. Goethe wrote, as he looked at Schiller's skull:

What more can man desire in life
than to see how nature reveals the divine,
how it allows the solid to flow into the spiritual,
how it firmly preserves what has been created by the spirit.

Today we are to speak about the subject of asceticism. This subject is one that is judged differently from various sides. In asceticism, a spiritual current is usually already seen that, in what it represents in itself, already shows a kind of illness and that cannot at all proceed from healthy foundations of existence. But asceticism is an effective means of perfecting life, of reaching higher levels of existence. Sometimes asceticism is also seen as a withdrawal of human energies that could be used for existence; thus moderation and asceticism are considered to be more or less synonymous. The word is well suited to asceticism:

Confused by the hatred of the parties,
its image in history fluctuates.

Asceticism was something quite different in ancient Greece than it was in the Middle Ages. The nuance established by the Middle Ages for asceticism is indeed a questionable one. But spiritual science or theosophy has every interest in putting asceticism in its true light.

Asceticism in the sense in which it was meant in ancient Greece and wherever the word was understood in its general meaning has something to do with what underlies Theosophy. Asceticism is something that can lead to the highest heights of existence, but taken to an extreme, it can become idleness or even worse. “Asceticism” means ‘exercising one's powers’ so that one is able to develop and exercise one's highest abilities. ‘Askesis’, the Greek word, is related to ‘athlete’ and means ‘to make oneself strong’. In that the word indicates this in its original meaning, it has to do with the basis of spiritual research in Theosophy. And now we want to go into the distinguishing feature of asceticism in relation to many other scientific currents.

The theosophist has a different concept of knowledge than that which many other people have of knowing the world and what underlies it. With the senses one can know the external world, says the intellect; but one cannot explore everything about it, it exceeds the limits of its knowledge. Speaking in this sense means professing the opposite of what theosophy is; it says: reality is unlimited! It would even be able to give man a new sense, a physical sense, of reality if necessary. There are no limits to being, being is infinite. Man's soul is indeed limited in time to one stage of development, but it is up to man to expand this soul within it.

Man must not presume to want to exceed the limits of his knowledge, as science says against it. But spiritual science says: Try to expand your spiritual knowledge, your spiritual-scientific knowledge, as much as possible. The goal is the development of the soul, of the cognitive abilities of the human being. It must be admitted that there is something in the soul, something germinal in it. A person should not say, “This is how I am,” and be satisfied with it, but should say, “This is how I am now, and I will achieve new forms of existence to practice my powers.” This is asceticism.

Asceticism is something that enriches the human soul and makes a person stronger, opening up true and new realms of reality to them. Usually, asceticism is described as someone who practices it appearing gaunt and hollow-eyed, being idle, hating life and being disgusted by all the joys and demands of life. But an ascetic, properly understood, is akin to an athlete; true asceticism is elevation, expansion, enrichment of the true essence of man. Spiritual science or theosophy makes its knowledge and research accessible to a larger circle of people today. But you need not think that everyone must therefore also do the exercises - meditation and concentration and so on - and that the result will be the same for everyone as for the blind person who would have to be operated on, the opening of the eyes. Not everyone needs to do this, and not everyone will experience it; and not everyone can or needs to become a researcher in the spiritual world. But he, for his work in the spiritual world, needs the clairvoyant consciousness. To understand the messages of the researcher, none of this is necessary, one should just take them in impartially and examine them seriously. Everyone should test them against their own logic and sense of truth, which every person carries within them as a natural thing that they can rely on; this will then teach them to reject what a charlatan says and to agree with what a true spiritual researcher says; it will also teach them to distinguish one from the other.

It often happens that messages from the spiritual world arouse interest among listeners, especially those that deal with the subject of what kind of exercises and so on are necessary to enter the spiritual world. We will now begin with such a description today; how far one can follow it will be best seen from the subject itself.

The asceticism that is concerned with living in the spiritual world – and this is the only thing that matters for spiritual science – endeavors to develop abilities and perceptions in people that are silent in ordinary human life. Consider that you perceive from morning till evening through stimulation from the outside world; so you have a consciousness of yourself and of what is around you. In the evening, when you are tired, your soul can no longer perceive, your consciousness is silent, it falls silent. While you sleep, you are in the spiritual world, but you know nothing of it; why? Because today's man needs those external stimuli to see, which, as it were, entice perception. If he could give himself this push, which the objects give him as an external stimulus, this impetus from within, then man would have within him a stronger inner power than that which drives him from outside to perceive. But then he could also perceive in a world to which he drives himself from within, while he must perceive through external stimuli.

Let us assume that the former would be the case and that man would be blind and deaf to external stimuli, but would be able to receive the impulse to perceive within himself through invisible senses; then man would have awakened inner spiritual abilities in himself. But this can also happen in another way, namely in the sense in which we speak of asceticism in spiritual science. That is, a person commands himself through strong inner strength that he does not want to see or hear the external world; it sinks away for him, but not through fatigue, but through his arbitrariness. It is an inner world that then emerges, the outer one sinks.

Now let us turn to what man must do to achieve this. The preparation for this consists in his devoting himself to certain exercises. True asceticism has nothing to do with external means; what happens is an intimate, albeit energetic, process of the innermost of man's spiritual powers. The first thing he has to acquire is an especially heightened, intensified power of imagination! This occurs when a person stimulates his inner powers in such a way that he awakens within himself what had previously been dormant forces within him. ...

(As an example of this, Dr. Steiner cites the dialogue that one can imagine between the secret teacher and the mystery student when the student is being instructed in the contemplation of plants and humans.

Not to forget, however, that this dialogue never took place in this way.

(Description of the dialogue.)

This is to tell us: Man can stray, but the plant leads a pure chaste existence. The chaste red plant sap and the passionate human red blood. These thoughts must be transformed into an image and tried to visualize as a real ideal of man. Through this exercise, man will then gradually reach a stage of development through his own arbitrariness, as the plant has already reached a lower stage today. Goethe expresses this beautifully:

But if you do not have
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

In order to understand this ascent of man over himself, man must overcome something in himself, so as not to let it gain mastery over himself in self-aggrandizement. The disciple was told: Imagine that which should die as a withered piece of wood in the shape of a cross, and that which should come to life when man has conquered that which is expressed by his red blood, as a symbol of the purified plant-juice, think of it as the red rose. Imagine this vividly before your soul, surround the wood of the cross with living red roses, and you have before you the “Rose Cross”. Feel this mighty symbol deeply in your soul, do not just stare at it rigidly, but put into it all your perceptions and feelings, put them all into it as they fill you with devotion and devotion; when you compare the whole path of development through plants and humans up to the ideal of man in whom the red blood again flows pure and chastened, as in the red plant-juice in the petals of the red rose, feel and see this symbol, so that the Rosicrucian symbol becomes not merely an idea, a symbol, but a living power. Let all your feelings come to life in you as you contemplate and imagine, and let your heart warm as you do so, let this symbol come to life in you!

It is not an object that can be awakened by external perception and stimulation of the senses, nothing that can be seen in external reality, something that cannot awaken an external image in us. Hundreds and hundreds of such symbols could be cited from spiritual science or theosophy. But it is precisely such symbols, which do not come from external reality, that make man strong inwardly, that steel his will so that he can perceive a new world around him. The aim of such asceticism is the inner development of the human being's powers. We have characterized and shown what true asceticism is by the above example, and how through it man can become a citizen of the higher worlds. Asceticism is that which truly opens up a new, spiritual world to man and through which much can be communicated to him from it. At first, man should learn to hear the communications of the secret researcher and not immediately practice them himself. It is better if he first seeks to understand with his logic what the secret researcher says as a message from the spiritual world. So what we call asceticism leads us up into the spiritual worlds; and now let us see how humanity can relate to it. At first there will be those who say that these are fantasists, dreamers; and they will reject these explanations; but they will not always be wrong with us; because those who speak thus should say to themselves, one must first examine before one rejects. And we must say to ourselves that we must first know the reason why they reject, and we must have patience and consider that it is indeed a new world that is being shown to people. Wherever something like this is given, there is something that flows into us; we are to acquire new concepts, new ideas, which is not easy for everyone. For example, someone who initially only has a certain amount of abilities in his or her self cannot absorb this new, spiritual knowledge; for him, absorbing it would be like overeating in a spiritual sense. For him, to reject it is nothing more than his ego showing that he is incapable of absorbing it at first. It is instinct and self-preservation that tempt such people to reject spiritual science. These truths would extinguish their inner being; that is the one extreme where those poor egos of the present reject the truths of the spiritual researchers.

Others have a tendency to absorb everything that comes up and can be heard, but they also lack the will to penetrate it with understanding. Out of laziness, they don't want to make an effort, but they have an inclination to absorb, but they don't have the will to grasp what they hear with their will. But only then can harmony arise between the listener and what is heard; because only through receiving and processing does understanding arise. So one part is organized in such a way that it is unable to expand its spiritual abilities; it must reject the truths of Theosophy out of a sense of self-preservation. Others come from a sense of sensationalism, which is even less good; if one only wants to receive and not understand, that gives rise to blind faith in authority. One then hears them say: He said it, and so it must be true! But the one about whom this is said would rather be considered an authority less often, but in return be better understood.

(Example: What Lessing says about Klopstock).

The same applies to the secret researcher: he does not want to be praised at all and much rather not revered as a master personality, but to be understood and tested! For it is true, as has already been mentioned elsewhere, that if one wants to examine comfortably and not logically, it is then dangerous for the teacher to make the communications from the spiritual world to such people, for they can no longer distinguish truth from humbug and deception. There is only one way for the layman or the disciple to find the truth, and that is to examine everything with the strictest logic.

Now, we want to draw the attention of those who just want to absorb everything and who say, “the master said it,” to the danger of just blindly believing and not checking; you lose the strength and the educational result of the truth itself. For what truth is for man, its immense significance lies precisely in the fact that it is established in the innermost being of man. I know that three times three is nine; and if a million people come and claim that it is ten! This makes truth that great, that powerful educational tool, that the guiding principle for it lies within man, in his own inner being. This is why man makes something else the guiding principle of his inner being when it is not only about what comes from external sense perceptions.

But whoever only wants to hear new things abandons the educational means of truth, whereby truth is that strict means of education. Those who allow themselves to be overfed with truths allow the lack of judgment to take root in their habits; they allow someone else to be their judge of truth, thereby losing their sense of truth and falling into a habitual attachment to and love of untruthfulness. Out of laziness, true people can develop a tendency towards dishonesty, lying, dishonesty. Man must realize that truth research is a duty; but this realization must spur him on to examine logically and rationally everything he is taught from the spiritual world. What people who are too lazy to examine do to themselves can be compared, in a very good sense, to drowning. The person in question loses their self; this kind of reception of spiritual truths is drowning.

Now we want to discuss another thing that is even closer to what we call askesis or spiritual exercise. What does this askesis present itself as? We work on ourselves in order to become stronger for the world. Askesis is the practice of those powers that are not used at the present moment. Askesis can thus be compared to a healthy maneuver. The powers that are to be applied in an emergency are tested, tried and steeled there. Just as a military maneuver is related to war, so is asceticism related to the application of these forces themselves. The purpose of practicing the forces is for the sake of developing the forces; and the development of the forces must be done for the sake of growing the forces, so that they are there when you need them; therefore, you have to train them beforehand. You have to practice them before you need them, otherwise you won't have them when you need them. Example: If you train to be a singer, you have to practice a lot before you can perform and sing. Those who want to practice asceticism must practice and renounce the immediate use of their strength. You have to approach true asceticism as something that you only do to practice.

This kind of asceticism can be compared with something else: with children's play; they also practice their strengths now on objective things, which, so to speak, they are not yet touched by, but they practice them in preparation to have them and to be able to develop them in the time when the seriousness of life approaches them. To make one's powers pliable, flexible and mobile is the meaning of asceticism in relation to higher worlds and levels of knowledge; to develop these powers into abilities is the purpose of true asceticism.

In the development of spiritual abilities, something else comes into consideration. Through certain exercises, through meditation, through the presentation and contemplation of the Rosicrucian, man can strengthen his abilities and can also achieve certain visionary, clairvoyant abilities; powerful images and so on can be awakened in him, visionary clairvoyance is attained. Now the special thing occurs that the development of such powers can become dangerous if they are not directed towards something real, that is why study is such a necessary and important part of the student's task. One should not develop inner abilities without at the same time devoting oneself to an external, logical, rational understanding of the knowledge of the higher worlds. When a person becomes clairvoyant, a strong awareness must arise in him at the same time, and this is where the inner ability must be directed. Otherwise there is danger for the person. If a person has not previously acquired knowledge logically before entering the spiritual world, then the person does not know what to do with the inner ability. It is then a case of illusory images, of filling oneself with clairvoyant abilities; the process is then like an internal burning. For the awakening of such abilities is linked to the fact that the person feels the transition of abilities into passions, instincts, desires and so on. This is the other danger to which those who practice asceticism and who want to develop themselves in this way into the higher worlds, but without study, are exposed.

These are the two dangerous pitfalls – drowning, self-destruction, and burning to death – that await those who do not properly and thoroughly practice the ascent to the spiritual world and do not strictly follow the instructions.

Some will say, yes, meditation and all that stuff, that's fatal, I don't do that; but not eating meat, not drinking wine, I could dare to do that. But doing that is not so easy and not so simple and not successful either. Because only for the one who has already prepared his soul through spiritual work, for him the external measures and means are allowed as a relief for the journey. One must realize that they are only a relief, never anything else. Our body forms a resistance for our soul, and man would be able to do many things if he did not have this cumbersome body. Through external measures and aids, man can make this body more docile; he can prepare it as a better servant of the soul. A meat-free diet makes the body more docile in this respect and also more efficient.

In our time of true health fanaticism, where sunbathing and all kinds of other natural remedies are used, it happens that precisely those who are passionate about sunbathing, when they have to spend a quarter of an hour in the sun or stay in it, sigh and moan: “Oh, it's unbearable!” But anyone who practices true asceticism can also take a good walk in the sun, because it teaches people to endure life. Preparing oneself, making oneself capable of living, that is true asceticism!

Nothing can be achieved by external means alone. This only weakens the body – that is, if one only applies external means one-sidedly and does not regard them as adjuvants – because the body should be attuned to the soul. If the soul is lazy, so is the body. Otherwise the disharmony is too great. Those who apply and want to apply only external means to penetrate the spiritual world are preparing their body for a soul that they should first create. The soul must develop in parallel with the body.

Here we have reached the limits of our consideration, where asceticism can lead to the soul and body becoming unhealthy. You have to take care of your body and soul when you start practicing, because higher cognitive abilities are developed that then become realities in our soul; and every reality affects our body and soul. What can be achieved through true asceticism is a reality. A robust person must have a strong connection with the physical world; because there is a certain connection between the external world and the human being. — Example: What Fichte says about ideals, namely that those who have them know very well that they cannot be applied directly in the world, but are nevertheless their driving force.

A person who is whole within himself is also healthy when there is harmony between him, his inner self and the outer world. Based on this feeling, many people reject what they are not attuned to, for example, Theosophy. When a person takes in something and is not attuned to it and does not process it, then disharmony arises; this then takes hold of the physical body and what was previously only described as untruthfulness and so on, as the drowning of the soul, that is what then also makes the body sick. We must bear in mind that messages from the external world do not affect us so strongly that they cause such physical disharmony in the body; but messages from the spiritual world are realities, and therefore they affect the physical body; for everything physical is, after all, only an expression of the spiritual. This means that we make ourselves physically ill through the wrong reception and application of spiritual truths from the spirit.

This is even worse if the soul has been enriched by clairvoyant abilities without logical study; then the person burns inwardly, and this is transferred all the more as a consuming fire to the outer body, and the body becomes diseased. Therefore, man must strive to remain in balance with soul and body and their inner powers. Study and attainment of inner abilities must go hand in hand. If this is not the case, the consequence is otherwise the soul burning within and a morbid exterior. With correct asceticism, the organism becomes supple and flexible; but if a person digresses in either direction, then through asceticism, misunderstood or misapplied, the person will fall into and pass over into mental and physical illness. This is the great responsibility for those who make communications from spiritual science. And the leaders of the movement must always be aware of the existence of this responsibility in the most serious sense. The greatest caution and care is therefore required when accepting each disciple. But this responsibility must not deter anyone who is called to show the way, to give advice, nor deter anyone from coming. For the saying of Heraclitus applies to every soul, and with this I will conclude:

You cannot fathom the soul's limits,
even if you were to wander through all the streets and squares.

An important question of life will be treated from the point of view of Theosophy, a question that points to the highest heights of life and plays into our daily lives, which must occupy us always and forever.

We must first come to an understanding of Theosophy. It has only recently emerged in our spiritual life and is only now receiving a mission for humanity. And so we first want to discuss its nature and way of thinking. It wants to penetrate the spiritual world in a form that corresponds to today's longing, wants to teach that behind everything perceptible there are spiritual causes, wants to penetrate to these causes through real knowledge, which can be placed alongside the scientific knowledge of the present.

There are many prejudices among those who have only a superficial knowledge of it, and many misunderstandings. First of all, there is the misunderstanding that it could cause someone to doubt the beliefs they hold, as if Theosophy were a new religion. This is a mistake. It will never mislead anyone with regard to their religious creed. It will only lead people who are misled by materialistic science to religion. Thus, it will become clear to those who delve deeper that Theosophy makes one more deeply religious. Another misunderstanding is that Theosophy wants to transplant a Buddhist, Indian worldview into Europe. This is a mistake, something like that cannot be transplanted. Theosophy has the task of deepening European spiritual life, and to do that it must take into account the roots from which it has developed over the centuries.

And now the causes, the sources: where does Theosophy draw from what we want to discuss today? It is based on an honest recognition of what we call “development”. However, it does not say: we only recognize the external and its development – like materialistic science – but we admit that the human being is vividly involved in development. This development progresses, the human being will always develop further, indeed, the human being can not only observe this development, he can also promote it because he is a self-aware being. Just as a seed develops and a plant grows out of it, so too is a soul not only what it appears to be on the outside – you also cannot tell from a seed what forces lie dormant in it, what kind of plant can develop from it – so too does the human soul contain forces that can be developed, and Theosophy shows by the living example that something completely different can become out of the souls.

Today we ask about the hidden sources of life and death, and the answer of materialistic science is: We cannot know anything about it. But the theosophist says: Certainly, as man is now, his knowledge has these limits, and he cannot know about them, but these limits can be expanded through development, and then he can know about them.

If this limit is to be exceeded by development, then new organs must first develop. Theosophy now shows the way in which new forces and new organs can come to life in us; it shows the way in which the soul can become an instrument for higher development. Just as the microscope and telescope have assisted the sense organs in increasing our knowledge of the external world and have become the instruments for this kind of scientific knowledge, so the soul can also become an instrument of spiritual science. A scientist considers this to be fantasy and denies that something like this is possible. Fichte, the great philosopher, once said: Imagine a gathering of many blind people, among whom are a few sighted people who talk to the blind about color and light. Will the blind be able to understand and believe these words? But if one were given the gift of sight, light and color would shine for him where there was darkness before. Our perception of the world around us depends on the organs we possess. New organs can open up new worlds, just as the microscope and the telescope have shown people new worlds.

And so spiritual science speaks of the spiritual world. The fact that man develops the organs contained in him in a germinal form and becomes familiar with higher worlds, the fact that this is possible, is how one can judge the whole of spiritual science. Because only experience counts. The experience in spiritual worlds is there; spiritual research is being done and the results of this research become the content of theosophy.

Of course, only those who have experienced enlightenment can research, just as only those who have done the necessary studies can do microscopic research. But the spiritual researcher's research is comprehensible to people when it is communicated in the usual way. And these communications are valuable to [them], even if not every soul immediately reaches a higher level of development. Every person can listen to these messages and ask themselves whether life provides evidence for what the researcher says, whether it proves to be true in life.

So let us talk about life and death and hear what the researcher says and what life says. The researcher says: To understand this great mystery, we must first understand the nature of man. We are dealing with a four-part entity. The first link is the physical body. Theosophy is completely on scientific ground when considering this. The physical body is one with nature. But only after death does it appear to us on its own, and then it follows its physical laws and forces and dissolves. Now, theosophy says: something else must be sought in order to understand the whole person; this cannot be the whole person. This other thing, which prevents the physical body from disintegrating during our lifetime, is a force, a second body that we call the life body or etheric body. This life body permeates the physical body. The researcher now sees this life body; it is therefore an experience. Man has this life body in common with all of nature, with plants and animals.

Let us imagine a human being. A part of space is filled with the physical body, and within that is the life body. But something else lives in this filled space that is very close to the human being. There lives something that he knows as lust and suffering, as joy and pain and passion. That lives there, and he cannot grasp it, cannot see it, but it is there, and the seer sees it as the astral body. Man has this in common with the animal world.

Now the fourth part, which makes man the crown of creation: every thing has a name given to it from outside. We call these names of things, of persons; these names sound to our ears from the outside. Now there is a name that cannot be used in this way, that only a mouth can pronounce, the mouth of the one person whose essence is to be described: we only say “I” about ourselves - each one for himself. We say “I” about no one else. And this little word describes the very core that we have in common with no other being on earth. No animal has an ego. This ego, which can only be heard in every single soul, has been called the “divine substance” by all deep worldviews. This fourth part of the human being is therefore its divine core. But just as a drop of water is not a sea, such a divine core is not a god.

But in this fourth link there is something that is of the same substance as that which the world lives and weaves through, this fourth link, through which man stands out above everything - every sensible poet has spoken wonderfully about this fourth link, for example Jean Paul, when he recognized as a child: “I am a I.” - If we know this, we can understand much of the riddles of life.

Furthermore, the juxtaposition of waking and sleeping on the one hand and life and death on the other is significant and profound. What does waking and sleeping mean? The waking person stands before us in such a way that his four limbs are interwoven and work together. When a person falls asleep, the outer world, the soul world, sinks into an indeterminate darkness. The I and the astral body detach themselves from the lower limbs and live in a spiritual world during sleep.

Why does man know nothing of this life in the spiritual world? Because he has no organs in his astral body and all his perceptions can only be made through his physical organs. And these cannot be applied in the spiritual world. To acquire such organs of the astral body, intimate soul processes are needed. My writing 'How to Know Higher Worlds' talks about this. But once the astral body has formed organs, it also possesses them during sleep. The eye was created by the light; in the same way, the soul can also create organs for itself through exercises, and we call a person with such higher organs a seer.

During the night, the human being draws the strength to be able to live at all. While awake, the astral body, which is completely immersed in the physical and etheric, gives its own powers to these. Now it has to replenish what it has used up, and it can only do so in the spiritual and astral worlds. The etheric body, which is the creator of the physical body, also needs a replacement for its powers. But it cannot leave the physical body as long as the physical body lives in the physical world. Now there is a law that was formulated many years ago by an Italian, Francesco Redi: “Living things come only from living things.” This seems obvious to us. At that time, however, it was not obvious, because it was believed that earthworms came from mud. Francesco Redi was considered a scientific heretic. Today, Theosophy says: spiritual things only come from spiritual things. Now the same thing happens as when Francesco Redi contradicted the common belief based on his more precise observation. Today's scientists think we are fools and fantasists. But theosophical belief that the soul-spiritual comes only from soul-spiritual will one day be as self-evident as Francesco Redi's view has become today. But for us, strength, confidence and consolation may arise from it. More precise observation proved the superstition, and only inaccurate observation can say that man comes only from his parents. No, the soul-spiritual comes only from soul-spiritual. And with that, the realization of re-embodiment is connected. That which lives in us as soul-spiritual is the repetition of soul-spiritual that was there before, and at the same time is the cause of what is to come. The two higher members thus work their way into the human being, and that gives abilities. But this happens in a very special way because it is of soul and spiritual origin.

While the two higher members leave the etheric body and physical body when falling asleep, at death the separation is extended to the etheric body as well, and only the physical body remains behind. Now accept something with the same faith that you have in scientific researchers. When the physical body is released at death, the memory tableau of the human soul comes to the fore, because the etheric body is the carrier of memory, and this power now works intensely without influencing the coarse physical substance; a similar thing can happen when someone is about to drown or in the event of a nervous shock.

This memory tableau of the whole life lasts only a short time, then the etheric body leaves the astral body, and only a summary of the acquired abilities of the past life joins the astral body and remains for eternity. This is followed by the time of purification, during which the soul relives the life again and gets to know every suffering it has caused to other people as an obstacle to development and feels it as its own suffering, and thereby receives the impulse to make amends. After that, the ego, now connected to the life fruits of the ether body and the impulses for reparation of the astral body, enters devachan, the kingdom of heaven, and dwells there for a long time until the will to enter reality becomes so powerful that a new embodiment occurs. [Gap in the text basis]

The world is interwoven with spirit – only from spirit can we create spirit. Human wisdom can be found out there in nature. Just as wasps make paper, swallows build walls, and bees build – we absorb spirit from the outside, we are fertilized by this spirit, we are always absorbing. Just as the whole life of a plant is concentrated in its blossoms and comes to fruition in its fruit, and just as so many plants die while producing seeds, developing germs for new plants, the same happens throughout life in humans. The soul of the human being unites with the spirit of the world, what has been brought from the past is like a scaffolding. The eternal self begins to connect with the outside world and becomes new. Gradually the scaffolding will lose its significance, the soul-spiritual contracts more and more and now ascends to a higher level. But the new needs the new, the old must fall away. The body, which is the result of the earlier, must fall. Nature in its spirituality has invented death in order to have much life. A necessity for development is the death of man – animal and plant death are something else. And so death becomes something that guarantees us the opportunity for development.

Under this condition, much that was previously dark is understood, including the Old and New Testaments, these supreme books of humanity. — Eating from the tree of life is forbidden to man, because otherwise he would have to stop in his development.

Death is only a transformation of the human form; external science cannot comprehend death because it eludes the external organs as it destroys them. But working on the astral body can create psychic organs, and the experiences of the seer are then the same as those of death:

Tell it to no one, only to the wise,
Because the masses immediately mock,
I will praise the living,
That longs for death by flames.

And so long as you do not have that,
This dying and becoming!
If you are only a gloomy guest
On the dark earth.

Theosophical knowledge, however, transforms human hearts; love revives in them, that love that is not only preached but is lived. Generalized expressions are nothing. We must penetrate step by step, seeking the spirit and understanding what it reveals. Man ascends ever higher—his life is eternal and is subject to the law of karma. This is not exactly translated by the law of cause and effect, when all experience is conditioned by previous ones.

You might ask: if this conditionality exists, why do you help one another? — Because we foresee the effect for the future, that is why human help is so consoling, and because we know that it has an eternal effect, that is why we must provide it wherever we can. We will be able to help a small number of people if we are an ordinary person. But a higher being will be able to help many people, and His love, which was revealed at Calvary, shows us the way we should go to become helpers to the many.

But the secret of death becomes for us the key of life, because the perishable must fall, so that the eternal can grow and develop to ever greater heights.

Dear attendees,

When a person looks beyond the usual work of the day, which is his duty from morning to evening, then those great questions, those great questions with what we can call human destiny, which a person must face when he considers the highest goals, may well come to his soul.

One of these questions is undoubtedly that concerning the nature of knowledge. The question of what distinguishes man from the beings around him is connected with his dignity and his nature. And when man asks himself about the value and significance of knowledge for the knowledge gained from daily experiences, he does not need much reflection. Even where knowledge does not relate to daily life, it is of the utmost value to him. Am I just an idle spectator of these insights into the laws of the world and so on? Do insights then still have value?

These are questions that arise before our soul this evening and should be considered in context. Firstly, the question of the value, meaning and essence of the human being; secondly, the question of mortality or immortality. Will the human being preserve himself beyond mortality? It is not vanity that raises this question, but the urge for higher knowledge. We see life sprouting and budding all around us, everywhere. But we also see death everywhere. In spring we see fresh germs rising, which grow larger and larger in summer. And when we look at autumn, we see a dying that spreads more and more over the winter. Geological excavations are witnesses to the fact that life was there, that death was there, and if we look back to Greek or another culture; where once there was fresh, joyful Greek life, death has poured over this artistic life. On the pictures of Raphael and Michelangelo, which give us such pleasure today, death will spread. Bit by bit, it will disappear. And chemistry and physics speak of the death of entire plant systems; everywhere, death is poured out.

A question arises: Is what has passed away futile? Has it fallen into nothingness? Is everything completely gone? You can use the cheap excuses: There is always something new coming, spring and so on. — Of course, but then you have to think more deeply. According to this interpretation, you can say: the forms change, but not in such a way that the old ones send something over to the new ones. The real question, however, is whether something of what lives and moves in the old passes over to the new. Especially with humans, we are interested in that.

We can assert one thing in the face of death: that the ordinary means of science cannot suffice to comprehend what extends beyond death. We initially comprehend only through our sensory organs. All science is tied to the knowledge of these organs, and these organs are precisely what death puts an end to. It is not surprising that ordinary science comes to a standstill at death; if ordinary science is not sufficient to answer the questions about death, then one must approach what spiritual science is, which is usually called theosophy.

We can only communicate if we take a look at the difference between ordinary science and spiritual science. How far can human knowledge go?, ordinary science asks; man can only go up to a certain limit, and this limit is formed by the organs. Spiritual science says: human knowledge is unlimited, according to the law of development. Development is the magic word. Form has developed out of other forms, and will continue to develop into ever different forms. In the human soul slumber forces and abilities, of them spiritual science speaks.

But what must we do to cross the boundary that is drawn for people today by their organs? Is it contradictory to say that forces and abilities lie dormant in people and that these can be developed? Is it contradictory to say that a blind person could have an operation that would open up colors and light to them? In the same way, organs can be opened in a person that open up spiritual light and spiritual colors for him, which is precisely an awakening. This applies to the person as well as to the blind man who has undergone the operation. There are as many worlds as the person can open up through his organs. Once these organs have been opened up, then the person can understand the nature of death.

Wakefulness and sleep, life and death, are four important words. The human mind easily passes over the first two, because people are too accustomed to them to think about them. The spiritual researcher is aware of the relationship between sleep and death, as it is often felt and has often been felt. What actually happens when a person passes from consciousness to unconsciousness? To answer that, we have to imagine the essence of a human being: firstly, the physical body, which humans have in common with all of nature; the same laws and so on. However, the physical body only follows these physical and chemical laws at the point of death. So there must be something in the physical body, a fighter that prevents the physical body from following these laws during life. Secondly, there is the etheric body.

The etheric body is shared with all living things, for example, the plant world. Thirdly, the astral body is shared with the entire animal world. It is the carrier of desires and passions. Fourthly, there is a small name that can never be used to refer to another being. This little word can only come from within oneself. That little word is 'I'. What lives in the I in man is the same as what lives in the whole universe; it is a part of it; but of course not “God”. From waking up to falling asleep, these members permeate each other. But when falling asleep, the human being, who is endowed with spiritual organs, can observe how the ego and the astral body withdraw into a spiritual world.

Why do the astral body and the ego leave the etheric body and the physical body?

We perceive only what our astral body experiences when we experience it as a reflection in our etheric body. Therefore, the astral body must submerge into the etheric body in the morning so that we can experience the world in the mirror image. The entire life of the soul arises through the interaction of the astral body with the physical and etheric bodies. Why do we get tired in the evening? Because our astral body is well able to interact with the etheric body, but because it tires, because the astral body cannot gain the strength to present all this to us from the physical body, it therefore plunges into the spiritual world every evening to get strength to build up our entire soul life during the day. We truly dive into our true home from evening till morning.

What can the astral body do with the powers it draws from the spiritual world? It can build up our soul life with them. Let us see how it builds up our soul life. What is necessary for the art of writing? We had to make many attempts to achieve this ability. We do not remember all the unsuccessful attempts we may have made, all the love we may have received in the process, with every writing. Abilities develop from such attempts; these are abilities of our own soul life. When the astral body submerges into the etheric body, our organs, both physical and etheric, are uninvolved. Think of the miracle of the heart, the larynx and so on. We could still have such subtle soul abilities as a musical sense, for example; we could not use them if we did not have the corresponding organ.

The work a person does on their astral body is complicated. It happens when a person receives impressions from outside. These are experiences of the soul that take place within the astral body, affects and so on. At a lower level, the ego is like the slave of the astral body, but this ego can work its way out. Let us compare a lower and a developed person. The latter rules over his astral body. The ego rules over, governs him, wresting him from the urges, desires and passions. We call this inner processing of external impressions. The ordinary person sees, tastes, smells what comes to him from outside, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. But another person who processes such impressions in moments of stillness, only such a person can become richer and richer.

But one should not always work inward, for that would be to creep into one's inner being. That would not be the only right thing to do. Now one must go out of oneself again. What we feel inwardly becomes a store of wisdom that can be applied to the outer world, so that concepts and ideas arise within the human being, that is knowledge. First, these impressions must be collected, then processed within, and then applied to the outside world. Only then is a person in a position to let something new flow into them. Something opens up in our knowledge; sensory impressions tell us what is pleasant and what is unpleasant. But the I finds moral values by way of knowledge.

There it is, what martyrs died for. These concepts, these valuable contents, which man thus receives, were more valuable to him, more important than his life. These contents can be found by the ego if it makes itself independent of the organs, of the outside world. If this content is to permeate us completely, then we must be able to express what we have gained in this way. We cannot conjure it into our organs. It could not be absorbed into our flesh and blood. Only through a specific law could this happen.

In the seventeenth century, people still believed that lower animals were created from substances that surrounded these animals. This was scientifically assumed. For example, how bees arise: from rotten oxen, when you beat them, the bees grow out of them; from horses, hornets; from donkeys, wasps. This was written in the seventeenth century. In the seventeenth century, Francesco Redi said: Only from the living can the living arise. Today this is a matter of course, like all views that first have to be accepted. Only from the spiritual-mental can the spiritual-mental arise. “The earthworm arises from river mud.” This sentence represents the same ‘spiritual’ point of view as if one wanted to say: a person has all character traits, talents and so on from their father, mother, grandfather and grandmother.

You have to go back to the spiritual and mental seeds. But that is the past life. We have to look back at the life before the present one, and look forward to the life after the present one. That is the law of re-incarnation or reincarnation. This law will spread just like the one of Francesco Redi, who was almost burned at the stake in those days. Today it is no longer fashionable, at least not everywhere; today such creative minds are called fantasists or dreamers, perhaps even fools. Maybe so, but in a short time it will be accepted that spiritual-soul things can only arise from spiritual-soul things, just as living things can only arise from living things.

We are dealing with souls that have already gone through death once. It is different from sleeping at night. Now, after death, there is a transition through the spiritual world. Experiences that could not be utilized during life are now utilized, they are built up into a spiritual body. Now we build new organs for ourselves, we do not return to the old organs, as we do the morning after sleep. Now we build into the organs what we have conquered through knowledge.

The abilities of a young child become more and more apparent. Every human being is an individual puzzle to us. The result of the knowledge of the previous life is the human being. It comes out bit by bit; what the person has worked on is sent down from one life to the next.

You grow with what you create. This goes with you into the next life. With the insights gained in one life, man builds himself a scaffolding, so to speak. But nothing new would be built if what had been built once did not disintegrate. Thus we see in death a piece of life that life can always show us at a higher level. Passing through death, we can always build something new. And at the center is the self.

Why no memory? The I is the first supersensory faculty in us. Once we have recognized and understood the I, we can look back. This realization of the self brings consciousness of past lives on earth. From the life when the I is not just a word, from then on, one remembers the I. Immortality is of no use if you have no knowledge of immortality; the more you know about your self, about the inner core of your soul, the more, the higher knowledge you have of immortality. Thus, knowledge becomes the source of immortality. This doctrine of reincarnation gives us strength and security in our daily lives.

If yesterday was clear and open to you,
If today you feel free and strong,
You may hope for a tomorrow
That will be no less happy.

Orphic Primal Words: («Demon»)

As on the day you were born into the world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You have thrived and prospered ever since,
According to the law by which you came into being,
That is how you must be, you cannot escape it,
So said the Sibyls, so said the seers,
And no time and no might dismember the form that is shaped, which develops itself alive. (Goethe)

To the discerning eye, everyday things are the greatest mysteries. The deepest science is needed to solve the most mundane things. Natural science provides the basic key to solving many questions. Other questions can only be solved by spiritual science, to which is given the much-abused and much-misunderstood name of Theosophy. The great, gigantic fate that elevates man by crushing him is often called a sum of coincidences. Some grow up without care at their cradle, can only prove little services to their fellow human beings. Others are watched over by a caring love, their abilities are developed, they can lead a satisfying existence and become a useful member of the world. Why? The law of the interlinking of facts, causes and effects, is to be investigated for this.

Let us take a few cases. A person at the age of eighteen chooses a different profession than at the age of twelve. But after eight years, a disharmony arises. He is like an elastic ball that has been compressed and then expands again. This occurs as many years before as after the nodal point. Roughly in the middle of life, at 35 to 37 years of age, there is a kind of turning point. In this way, causes from youth have an effect in old age. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth year, one had youthful ideals that sank into life. This is not the reason for later dallying. Even if they are not fulfilled – for our soul they are not – they become strong forces in our soul. Thus a person grows up who is secure within himself. After mid-life, the fruit of such ideals can be a calm composure.

From seven to fourteen, authority is a vital need. What is true is then not through its reasons, but through a revered authority. There is also a certain emotional life: one takes joy in every flower, for there are divine spiritual beings behind them. From the mid-forties onwards, the opportunity arose to absorb what at that time became a firm character in the freshness of life. These things emerge so deeply as effects because they went so deeply into our soul. Experiences in the seventh year have effects in the evening of a person's life. But if we say: this is beautiful, this is ugly, then practically nothing results for the good of people. We should awaken the soul's need to do this or that. To do this, we delve a little deeper. We draw on this in our old age. We give the child provisions for old age. A great poet says: “What we have recognized with our intellect, we look up to with devotion.” We encounter devotion as an effect at a later age; we later spread an atmosphere of love and bliss.

Such connections are found in spiritual science. They are subject to the law of karma. It is possible to modify the above, for example, by getting married at twenty-three; but that does not overturn the law that governs the change of career at the age of eighteen.

In the seventeenth century, a law applied that has only now been refuted. It was thought that worms, insects and so on grew out of river mud. Today it is taken for granted that an earthworm germ is necessary for this. In the seventeenth century, it was believed that if you beat oxen bodies until they were tender, bees would come out; hornets would come out of horse corpses, and wasps would come out of donkeys. Francesco Redi, who died in Pisa in 1697, said: “Living things can only grow out of living things.” He was considered a formidable heretic.

This is how it is in the spiritual world: spiritual and soul-like qualities are passed on, drawing on the characteristics of the father and mother, thus fulfilling themselves. Now the law of karma is still outlawed; in later times people will not believe that it was ever not believed.

Development takes place between birth and death. Experiences are condensed into an ability, for example the ability to write. The individual experiences are forgotten. Experiences lead to a state of what happens without compulsion.

All sensory impressions, pleasure and pain, sink into unconsciousness during sleep. The soul life is ignited by external stimuli. During sleep there is unconsciousness because external impressions are silent. The spiritual researcher must consciously command silence with his will to the external impressions; but inwardly the soul must be filled with that which is stronger than external impressions. The first act is the emptying of the soul, the second is complete calm, otherwise there is a storm. Then comes the awakening of initiation. At a lower level, it is like someone born blind undergoing an operation. Then come spiritual facts, spiritual beings, then comes hearing and seeing with spiritual ears and eyes. Then comes knowledge of the other members of the human being.

During waking hours, we use up our soul forces; during sleep, we replace them and draw from our home world what replaces the used-up forces. During sleep, experiences are transformed and converted into essence as abilities, for example, of writing. We would never be able to develop if we did not sleep. When we fall asleep, the ego descends into the depths of consciousness. The astral body has its subconscious, the ego rests, the astral body submerges into its own world to transform our experiences. The astral body works in a way that we cannot work, transforming experiences into abilities. The ego cannot take care of its own development, cannot provide relationships with the environment. The ego peels itself out of the entire sphere of the environment. An accident that we do not understand is how the ego, which must renounce, relates to the environment. Accident is everything that can be spatially called sleep.

We step through the gateway of death with the extract.

Human life alternates between waking and sleeping. At night, people sink into a state of unconsciousness or subconsciousness. If they want to consciously experience this, they must first be able to suppress the external sensory impressions. To do this, the soul must be artificially emptied of all external impressions. Then, through the will, powerful, strong thoughts must be evoked in the soul. They must flash through the soul. Without a third element, something like an earthquake would be experienced, a shock. Through the will, a state of complete calm, a state of complete stillness, must now be created in the soul. Then the spiritual researcher experiences something similar to what happens at a lower level to a person born blind, who undergoes an operation and gains sight. Color and light flow in. This is what the spiritual researcher experiences. This is the awakening or initiation for him. Now he can judge about what lies behind the sense impressions. These are not dreams of feverish souls. Thus the spiritual eye is opened, the spiritual ear. This is easily judged wrongly, somewhat like a shell when it is first seen in the limestone. It has not grown out of the rock, but has been created by a water shell animal.

What is sleep and dying for the spiritual researcher? He first considers the nature of man, which consists of four limbs. The lowest limb is the physical body. The etheric or life body continuously prevents the body from falling prey to physical and chemical forces as in death. It paralyzes decay; it is a faithful friend between birth and death. No science prevents the assumption of higher limbs of man. Even if positive research were to show that carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen could be combined to form living protein substance, this result could not refute the higher limbs; it would not be a reason to deny the etheric body. In the space that a person fills with his or her being, not only the physical body and the etheric body are present, but also pleasure and pain, perceptions, ideas, instincts, and so on. They also fill this space. And as a fourth link, the ego, that name that cannot be called from the outside, to whom he belongs, who is also the unspeakable name of God: Jehovah-Yahweh.

We feel tired as soon as the astral body withdraws. Who lifts the hand up? The astral body at the behest of the ego. We see with the astral eye through the instrument of the body. Tiredness sets in where we want to apply the astral body, but where the physical body cannot go with us.

The first organ to fail when we fall asleep is the organ of speech. The inner self can no longer move the outer organ of the tongue. Then the senses of sight, taste and smell fail; finally, hearing, the most spiritual sense, is the last to go. The astral body, which governs everything, gradually slips out. As a person falls asleep, he can feel how external impressions cease. Then a total feeling of one's own being sets in. Mistakes, shortcomings and so on, the spiritual world holds the exterior up to him like a mirror. Then a feeling of bliss; then a twitch as a sign of entering into the spiritual world. Then unconsciousness. Then something can be perceived as a fine rain out of the spiritual world into the physical and etheric body. This is the regeneration, the restoration of that which showed itself as fatigue.

There are certain hypotheses that attribute fatigue to so-called fatigue substances. But this is like two people seeing one person slap another. One says, “I saw how he was boiling inside”; the other describes it like this: “I saw how he raised his hand and slapped him.” The legitimacy of external natural science is admitted, but behind everything external there is nevertheless that which directs and guides it.

In order to rebuild our entire soul life, the astral body draws its strength from the spiritual world at night. Again and again it returns to the spiritual world and carries into it from our daytime consciousness that which can enrich us.

Between 1770 and 1815, events took place that left some people indifferent, but which others processed. However, experiences cannot be processed if they are only simply experienced. They must be sunk into the ground, as it were, as seeds, and then grow like plants. The function of sleep must intervene, as it does between learning something by heart and really knowing it. The experiences must be sunk into the ground in sleep and then picked as experiences in waking, otherwise they remain chaotic like erratic blocks as experiences without wisdom. If you sleep too long, too many of the invisible forces are poured in. Such long sleepers become mentally obese. In spiritual and mental terms, this means that one wants to process too much without having anything. This results in dullness and sluggishness of thought.

Dreams arise when the astral body and the I have connected with the etheric body and not yet with the physical body. This is not to be imagined spatially. The second face also arises as a kind of reflection, as a vision, when the physical and etheric bodies do not merge. The etheric and astral bodies work together. The ego loosens and the astral body submerges into its own world. It is an abnormal intermediate state. If the immersion of the astral body into the visual field is imperfect, then deceptive intuitions arise. If the astral body does not submerge, the connection between the astral body and the etheric body is not in order, then visions arise.

Thus there is an unschooled, disorderly connection of the limbs. In the development between birth and death, almost everything relates to the inner soul abilities. Similar to Francesco Redi's sentence “Living things can only come from living things”, the sentence “Spiritual-soul things can only come from spiritual-soul things” can be formulated. Thus the spiritual soul of man between birth and death comes from a spiritual soul that was already working before birth. Before birth, man worked on the still plastic and malleable physical and etheric body, as he did on the soul body between birth and death. At death, the human being takes an extract of the etheric body with them into the spiritual world as malleable material. There, freed from the physical being, they can accomplish what they were unable to do between birth and death. They can incorporate everything into the spiritual archetype of a new physical body, into spiritual material. The fruit of the previous life can be woven into the etheric body and physical body of the new earthly life.

We must want death to happen. We must be grateful to death. It destroys the scaffolding that would only be a hindrance to our ascent. Goethe said:

Nature invented death in order to have much life.

The spiritual essence has invented death to make a perfection of human life possible. A great poet said:

Man is initially a shadow of a dream.

He has only the shadow of the dream, only the dream of the shadow. That is man of the outer sense world. But if he has a ray of knowledge and light, it becomes as bright as day for him, and joy radiates through all life.

Dear attendees! When I last had the honor of speaking to you here about the “mission of wrath” and “the mission of truth” for the human soul, I was able to refer to the saying of the great Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “You will never find the limits of the soul, and even if you walk through all the streets, so far are its territories.” And even in those days, the validity of this saying about the vastness of the human soul was proved by the fact that we can only penetrate to some extent into the complicated structure of our own soul if we first bring a little order, so to speak, into our consideration of the soul; that is, if we do not simply look at the soul as it presents itself to us — as a sum of surging sensations, feelings, urges, desires, of perceptions, of ideas, of ideals, and so on, but that we realize how this soul into three separate areas: what can be called the sentient soul within the human being, what can be called the mind or emotional soul, and finally the third, highest soul element, which can be called the consciousness soul. For these three different soul members have three completely different types of developmental conditions. And that which can teach us, so to speak, how one of these soul members develops is not at the same time suited to give us insight into the developmental laws and developmental conditions of the other of the soul members mentioned.

Our sentient soul initially presents itself to us as that which responds within us to external stimuli that confront us from both nature and human life, which first receives impressions from the outside world and then, on the basis of these impressions, develops what we can call the passions for something, the urges to do or want this or that. Everything that confronts us in the way of drives, desires, passions, in the form of an unordered soul life, however it unfolds even in the lowest human soul, we describe as the realm of the sentient soul.

When a person progresses in their development, when they become more inwardly focused, as it were, then what might be called the emergence of the intellectual or mind soul in relation to the sentient soul occurs. As long as a person gives way to anger in response to some external stimulus, as long as he is seized by the affect of fear in response to some external impression, we can only speak of the sentient soul.

But when a person independently processes the feelings and impressions of the external world within themselves, when, in addition to being devoted to the external world, they can also immerse themselves in themselves, combining the impressions of the external world, then they gradually rise above the mere surge of the sentient soul and comes to what can be called the rational control of instincts, desires and passions with ideas, which on the other hand can be described as a soothing, purifying of unbridled instincts and passions by the mind. In short, the mind or soul, which actually form a unity, are what elevates man above the mere sentient soul.

That such an elevation takes place, that man can, as it were, turn away from the outside and process the impressions within himself to a certain perfection, is taught us by the outer life when we consider an example such as the following. There were certainly many people who were contemporaries of the events from 1750 to 1815. Enormous upheavals of life occurred during that time. Let us take a closer look at those who experienced these events. They had an effect on their sentient soul. All those who were able to see them were carried away by the sensations and impressions. But only those who processed these impressions within themselves became wiser and richer in worldly wisdom and experience. They then faced the world in 1815 with a different inner soul life, with a clearer inner soul life than in about 1770. That is the elevation of the intellectual or mind soul out of the sentient soul.

If we only had this intellectual or emotional soul at work within us, then we would, so to speak, become more and more introspective. We would become richer in worldly wisdom and experience, but we would not come to know the world, as we call it, to recognize the great laws that lie behind things. We can only approach this by going out of ourselves again, , that we again permeate the impressions with what we have acquired in the way of life experience and worldly wisdom; and that occurs through the soul of consciousness, which leads the human being out of himself and into the world again. He allows the consciousness soul to prevail at the moment when he, so to speak, not only becomes richer and richer within himself in ideas, but also applies these ideas to into order and to penetrate it in such a way that the laws of existence, the laws of the world, gradually appear to him, so that he, as it were, connects with his consciousness soul to the outside world.

And if we ask ourselves – this too has already been mentioned – what is going on within us to bring these three soul elements into corresponding activity, to work one out of the other, to let one have an effect on the other? That which is at work within us is the actual human I, the actual bearer of human self-awareness.

But it is also this human I that is in a state of perpetual development. As it were, it still rests submerged in the sentient soul. As long as only the sentient soul rules, the I appears as a slave to this sentient soul, devoted to all impressions of the external world, overwhelmed by all the impressions of color, light and warmth, tyrannized by its passions, instincts and desires.

But then this I continues to work, even working to make the person more and more mature. By purifying the intellectual soul from the sentient soul, the I becomes more and more independent, it becomes more and more the master of the drives, desires and passions, and it is increasingly led to determine the direction and goal of life itself. Then the I works its way up to the consciousness soul, so to speak, to penetrate through the skin of the soul, as it were, and to reunite with the things, to live in the things and events of the world.

Thus we see that it is the I that reigns in these three soul members, and we emphasized in the last lectures - this is only briefly repeated today - that something like an affect, like anger, works through its own nature within the sentient soul in order to allow the I to develop in the right way. If a person initially surrenders to external impressions in such a way that he directly follows such an impression in the sense of the sentient soul, so that he erupts in anger, then this anger itself has an effect on his soul. We can experience that anger, because it obscures the I, because it takes away the full, clear, bright consciousness of the I, because it does not allow the I to emerge into completely selfish existence, thereby beneficially moderating this still undeveloped I. It is still entirely a slave to the sentient soul; it would abandon itself entirely to the ruling drives, and it dampens it down to a certain powerlessness, not letting it live itself out completely. By damping it, it actually does a good thing. If anger only led to the expression of the ego, then every time the ego was expressed, it would reinforce the ego in its selfishness, in its self-will.

In this sense, we could see the mission of anger as educating the ego. Anger poisons selfishness, as it were, by pushing the ego down. And we can find this in all affects, that they signify a kind of self-regulation of the soul or the ego.

And then we were able to point out how truth works in the human soul to educate the ego. Since truth is something that a person must fully understand within himself if he really wants to experience it in his own ego, he can only experience it by recognizing it within himself. Thus the I must live entirely within itself if it wants to arrive at a real truth. A million people can vote against the truth 3 x 3 = 9; if the I has grasped this truth within itself, then the I knows that 3 x 3 = 9, that it is true. In this way the I is completely within itself when it penetrates the truth.

But at the same time, truth is something that does not allow any selfishness or egoism to arise, but something that leads this ego out of itself at the same time. Truth is the only thing that must be experienced in the ego completely and that at the same time can make the ego completely unselfish. For once we have arrived with our ego at a truth that must be experienced in itself, then this truth does not belong only to the individual ego, but is a common property for each and every ego.

Thus truth is a powerful educator for the intellectual soul, because it leads the I out of selfishness and at the same time highly encourages the powers of selfhood. For truth can only be experienced in an I that wants to seek this truth in itself. Thus, in a certain sense, affects such as anger, when they are overcome and purified, can be seen as educators of the sentient soul, and truth as a powerful educator of the mind or mind soul.

Likewise, there is now an educator for the consciousness soul, for that in us which leads our I and thus our soul in turn completely out of us and allows us to grow together with the outer world, with that which does not rest in us but is outside of us, and with which we must grow together if we do not want to become desolate within ourselves. And today's meditation is to be devoted to the education of this third soul element.

Just as anger has the mission of dampening selfishness in the sentient soul in a certain respect, and as truth has the mission of guiding the I in the rational soul, both to be within itself and to instinct to express itself, then what we call devotion becomes the educator for the consciousness soul, showing the right way to reconnect with the outer world, with that which lies outside of our ego. Only when we recognize its purpose for this third of the human soul's members can devotion truly reveal itself to us. In order to be able to present the whole mission of devotion for the human soul, we must look a little deeper into the workings of our soul.

Devotion is, after all - already according to the use of the word - what allows man to go out of himself and penetrate into the other, which, above all, is first of all an unknown behind the visible, behind the perceptible. But we can only understand this devotion if we first ask ourselves: how must spiritual science, from whose point of view we are speaking here, understand this whole relationship of man or the human ego to the unknown?

It has been emphasized time and again from this point that spiritual science is called precisely to penetrate through the external world of physical reality to that which is initially unknown and hidden for this external physical reality. And it has been pointed out again and again that man can only penetrate into the unknown spiritual world behind the physical world by awakening the spiritual organs, the spiritual faculties of perception, in his soul itself, which lead beyond the sensual-physical.

And so that we can understand each other, I will only hint at a few words of what you will now find in great detail as a description of the path that the human soul can take into the spiritual world, both in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second section of the recently published “Occult Science”. What you will find there in detail is briefly hinted at here.

It will be hinted how man can become a spiritual researcher and make communications from the spiritual world when he cultivates his soul in such a way that the forces and abilities slumbering in it come to external activity. There man must, with his will and consciousness, evoke something that otherwise always occurs in everyday life without his will. The everyday event that takes place with a person without their will is that the surging perceptions, drives, passions, that pleasure and pain, cease to be conscious in the soul when the person finds themselves tired in the evening, and sink into an indeterminate darkness. At this time of falling asleep, external impressions cease. But instead, the human being sinks into the state of unconsciousness, or rather, the subconscious. His soul is empty of external impressions; but he also knows nothing, so to speak, of any world or inner experiences.

The spiritual researcher, the one who wants to live in the spiritual world, must be able to consciously and deliberately evoke that which takes place so spontaneously. He must consciously silence external impressions. He must also command all interests, all sympathies and antipathies with external impressions to stand still and be silent. The spiritual cognizer must voluntarily evoke in himself the same silence and cessation of external stimuli and impressions that occur when he falls asleep at night due to fatigue. But he must be present throughout all of this; he must be able to prevent, through his will and consciousness, that his consciousness passes into unconsciousness when he empties his soul of all external stimuli and impressions. He must, so to speak, be able to be conscious with an empty soul as he is otherwise conscious with a full soul that receives external impressions. So then, the spiritual researcher must have the strength to reject all external impressions, but still be able to consciously remain in the state of the empty soul. That is the first act that the spiritual researcher has to perform.

The second step is to allow a series of images and sensations and volitional impulses, which are described to him, to take effect on his soul. These images and sensations and volitional impulses, which he must now bring to life in his soul through his inner strength, are not there to reflect external impressions, to give an external truth. Anyone who were to look at them from this point of view would be very much mistaken. What must constitute the inner life of spiritual knowledge is an ascent of very definite, or, as I see it, symbolic concepts and ideas, etc., which have such a strong effect in the soul that they might indeed mightily shake up this soul life from within, shake it up more powerfully than all outer impressions and stimuli can shake up the soul life. That is the second act of spiritual knowledge, when the spiritual researcher can stimulate such experiences in himself that powerfully shake up his soul.

But this must not be the end. If the spiritual investigator were to stop at this act, he would not be able to ascend in truth to an insight into the spiritual world; he must add the third act, which consists in his power to would otherwise have an earthquake-like effect on his soul through mere inner contemplation, so that he transforms his entire soul life as if to an inner sea calm, to a complete [inner] calm. Then, when he is able to control and work on his soul inwardly, he will experience that something rises from his inner being, which can only be compared at a higher level to the outer senses at a lower level. Then – this has already been said several times – the spiritual world, which is always around him like color and light around the blind, will flood in as light and color flood into the eye of the blind who has undergone an operation.

In this way, then, can man penetrate into the spiritual world. Then the spiritual unknown, the spiritual facts and spiritual entities that prevail and are active behind the sensual-physical world, open up to him, which are not there for the merely sensual and intellectual perception of reality.

Now the human being is standing in the middle of a world of spiritual life. But at first this spiritual world is closed to the physical gaze and mind. We have to ask ourselves: What are the reasons for this spiritual world being closed to the physical gaze and mind of the human being? There are reasons for this, and these reasons will become clear to us when we ask ourselves: Well, where in ordinary life do we encounter that which stands like a boundary between the physical and the spiritual world?

We encounter it at precisely the moment we described earlier. What does the spiritual researcher actually do when he activates his inner soul powers? He makes the moment that otherwise occurs involuntarily for a person, the moment of falling asleep, into a conscious one, and what otherwise occurs through falling asleep is shaped by the spiritual researcher into a supreme experience. In ordinary consciousness, everything that a person could possibly experience sinks into unconscious darkness when falling asleep. In the world into which the human being plunges every night, and in which he dwells during sleep, he could perceive the spiritual world. For it has been shown here many times that precisely that which we call the 'soul being' lifts itself out of the physical body and out of what is connected with it, out of the etheric or life body, but at the moment when what we call the soul being lifts itself out with sleep, for the person in normal consciousness, consciousness itself ceases, that is to say, the world into which he enters is shrouded in a veil so that he cannot see it. But the person who becomes a spiritual researcher sees into this world!

And how does a person attain consciousness of the external world? He attains consciousness of the external world when he submerges himself in his physical body in the morning and makes use of his physical organs and the physical mind that is connected to the brain. But in doing so, he is bound to the limits of the physical organs. The spiritual researcher, on the other hand, once he has achieved what has just been outlined, when he has acquired these inner abilities, he in turn returns to his physical body, so that he no longer needs to perceive only through the physical senses, but can perceive his environment directly with the inner organs of the soul. In this way he sees behind that which extends in the outer world like a boundary and obscures the actual spiritual world. The spiritual researcher learns to see behind every color into that which the color presents to us; the spiritual researcher hears behind every sound that which stands behind it as a spiritual being. He sees behind every perceptible impression. The world becomes crystal clear to him. And when he sees through the carpet of the external world, spiritual beings and realities are revealed to him.

When the spiritual researcher penetrates into the spiritual world, there is no way for him to avoid – without running the risk of being shipwrecked – but to undergo two important experiences in the course of his initiation or development in spiritual research. These two important experiences are also described in more detail in the two books mentioned earlier. These are the ones who are called the guardians of the threshold.

It is the case that before a person's inner soul abilities awaken in the right way, before he is able to dive down into that darkness in sleep, before he perceives the reality behind it, he must meet with what is called the little guardian of the threshold. This is the perception through which the human being's own being clearly and distinctly comes before the soul in real self-knowledge. Through this, the human being learns to understand what he actually is. Above all, he comes to know what can be called real individual knowledge of karma and reincarnation. The human being learns to recognize how he has gone from life to life before entering this life, and learns to recognize how he has inscribed this or that in his soul in past lives as his karma by living in one way or another, true or laden with error, surrendering to beautiful or ugly impressions, performing good or evil deeds in past lives. Depending on how he has lived, he learns to recognize what his soul has inscribed in itself and what it still has to go through in order to eliminate all error, all that which would prevent the soul from reaching a certain level of perfection. Everything that the soul has of imperfections within itself, the person gets to know there as a kind of second self, as something that he has to overcome, as a kind of doppelganger, of which he knows exactly: you have to overcome that, otherwise you will never reach the goal of the human life path.

This encounter with one's own double would be a harrowing, terrible event for a person if they were not sufficiently prepared. Spiritual science ensures that a person only comes to see this Guardian of the Threshold in his true form when they are sufficiently prepared. And one should not enter into one's own human soul life before one has made this experience, how imperfect one must be through one's whole past life. Through this, that is developed in us which enables us to enter into the own powers of the soul without danger.

What would happen if we were to enter the underworld of the soul without this encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold? Something would happen that would be very destructive for the human being. Let us assume that, through some event, a person enters into the supersensible spiritual abilities of his soul without having met the little guardian of the threshold. In that case, however, this entering would not be able to undergo all that attenuation, all that purification, which is only possible if we have a double of ourselves in our entire imperfection. Then the good qualities of our soul would not emerge to mitigate, so to speak, all that which rules in our ego and is woven from selfish impulses and drives that only take our ego into account. If a person were to descend into his ego without first becoming acquainted with the Guardian of the Threshold, it would mean that all the evil aspects of his nature would be stirred up in him. All the evil impulses of his nature that he is capable of would be awakened in him. All the arrogance, vanity and mendacity rooted in his soul would assert themselves with a mighty force. And man would become, to the highest degree, a being that consumes and burns itself through its own selfishness; man would perish in his own selfishness; he would bring himself into such a conflict with the world that he would first consume himself in his own selfishness. This is what can characterize us, as if man enjoys a certain benefit in his life in that his consciousness is darkened when he falls asleep. If he did not dwell unconsciously in sleep, he would draw from the world, in which he would then be conscious, a continuous increase of his egoism and his untruthfulness.

Now, for all the things that have to occur, so to speak, at a higher level of human development, there are weak imprints in ordinary life, something like preparations. We can say that even if a person in this embodiment has no inclination to go beyond the ordinary life to a higher level of consciousness, he can still always prepare for it, even in this life. And a preparation for this descent into one's own soul, a preparation that works in such a way that it protects the normal outer soul, so to speak, from sinking into complete selfishness and untruthfulness, is everything that we take into our sentient soul in the way of feelings and emotions of humility.

Humility is an effective means of self-education in that, when we let it prevail in our conscious daily life, when we let humility permeate our soul, it imbues our soul life with a soul substance that prevents the soul from drawing all the forces of selfishness out of the ego when it descends into the spiritual world. That is why humility is so highly recommended as a preparatory quality for all those who want to prepare themselves in their ordinary waking lives to gradually enable their soul to become selfless even in places where it might otherwise become selfish.

Through everything that we pour into our soul as humility, we also make our encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold easier for ourselves. We make it easier for ourselves by becoming aware of our imperfection while we are still awake, and so we do not find the Guardian standing before us in such a terribly repulsive form. We, so to speak, strip away his horror.

Thus humility is a good educational tool for descending into our own soul, into its depths, which otherwise remain closed to us for our own good. As long as we are immature, they must remain closed if we do not want to suffer shipwreck in life. This is, as it were, a kind of boundary downwards, towards that 'below' which we have to describe as that which lies in the depths of our soul life, which is hidden from ourselves when we are asleep.

But there is another boundary; and this comes to our mind when we once again familiarize ourselves with what has just been outlined. It was said that the spiritual researcher is not dependent on mere physical perception, on mere thinking with the mind, when he returns to the physical body, but that he is able to bring out soul abilities, inner abilities, through which he can see through to the spiritual foundations, to the spiritual entities and facts of the world. These now also close themselves to the outer gaze of people in the normal state of consciousness. Why is this so? They close themselves for the reason that if man were to stand unprepared before that which exists behind the sense world as its primal foundations, he would be blinded, as if destroyed.

The path that shows us, so to speak, in the mildest form, how man steps out of his ordinary physical abilities, as it were, and faces the outside world spiritually, is the path of what is called ecstasy. This is not really good. It does, however, lead a person to rise in a certain way above his physical seeing and hearing and grasping and understanding to a kind of spiritual vision of the external world, but this ecstasy, as it is so often described, obscures the direct consciousness of the self. The person is then out of himself; he does not carry his self into the world of spiritual experiences. Just as sleep spreads a veil over what we would experience to our detriment, because we would have to become selfish as a result, so the veil of external reality spreads over the spiritual world behind it, and this also occurs as a beneficial effect for the person who wanted to approach this spiritual world unprepared.

But anyone who wants to enter into this spiritual realm as a true spiritual researcher will have a different encounter. It is the encounter with the so-called great or greater guardian of the threshold. This is what shows us, at the moment when we break through, so to speak, the ordinary looking and ordinary understanding, how far we are from a complete understanding of the world. Then we encounter the great guardian of the threshold. And he clearly instructs us that we should no longer ask all those questions about the ultimate reasons so easily, that we should no longer curiously enter behind the veil of existence without first carefully and slowly weaving and working from step to step on the abilities that lead us up, in order to slowly gain insights from world to world. Then we learn through this Great Guardian of the Threshold — he shall be characterized here only from this point of view — what abilities we still lack to penetrate into the spiritual world. At the same time we receive instructions on how to develop what we do not yet have. The self-perfection to which we must submit presents itself to us with all clarity through what is called the greater guardian of the threshold.

Now, however, man can also prepare himself for this degree of higher experience, for this degree of penetration into all the spiritual undercurrents, into the great unknown beings, in his ordinary, so-to-speak normal consciousness. And because everything in humanity is geared towards development, our ordinary life also contains that through which we may approach the secrets of existence, the unknown worlds that lie behind the realities of the senses. This is contained within us like a teacher who can gradually lead us to soften the impression of the greater Dweller of the Threshold. Just as we, when we are led as a humble one to the lesser guardian of the threshold, can soften this encounter, who then does not appear to us in his gruesome form, in which he would otherwise crudely present us with the doppelganger of our imperfections, so we can soften that other encounter with the greater guardian of the threshold, whom every human being must meet in the course of his development. We can also soften the impression of that great, powerful figure, which shows us through its glory, through the way it confronts us when it tells us: “This is how you must become” — which shows us precisely through its majesty what we still have to develop. We will not be repelled with fear and terror as before a cherubim with a fiery sword if we are properly prepared. And unconsciously, people who are on the right path in life, on the path of true inner morality, are always preparing for this great moment.

And what prepares us in our consciousness soul to emerge in the right way in this consciousness soul with the I, not only into physical reality, but into spiritual reality, in order to be allowed to acquire spiritual knowledge, that is what is meant by the word 'devotion'. Devotion is the stirring of inner impulses in the soul for the unknown, for us insofar as we cannot yet understand it. If we had nothing within us that pointed us to what we cannot yet understand, then the urge and the longing could not awaken to come to the unknown. Everything that we want to understand one day and can only understand when we have entered into it must first work in us in a dark way, like a yearning. That which draws us to that which we are not yet equal to, beneath which we still stand, outside of which we find ourselves, that is devotion. We can be truly devoted precisely to that which we know: we do not yet penetrate it with our soul powers, with our knowledge. But then this devotion is something that brings us precisely in the right way to the subject, so that we enter it in a dignified way, so that we can gain true, non-trivial knowledge from it.

It is understandable from the outset that all knowledge must be preceded by something like such a feeling. A person need only consider that, while man must understand everything through logic, that is, one must approach everything through logical thinking, that logic is what can prove everything in existence to us. But what does logic itself prove to us? If we are not to arrive at the self-contradiction that logic proves itself, then we must assume that there is something in the human soul other than mere logic, which in turn is proved by logic. Logic can only be proved by something that itself has nothing to do with logic. And that is in man that which can be called his original, healthy sense of truth. Thus, the logical ultimately leads us back to feeling. All understanding leads us back to feeling.

If we are sincere, we cannot get beyond this. Therefore, it should not surprise us if the first thing that occurs to us when we have the highest knowledge of an unknown behind things is that devotional feeling that we call devotion. And when this devotion, which rules and works in us and moves our soul, before we have recognized something that we reverently worship, when this feeling itself is what leads us up, so to speak, up the mountain to what then yields to our recognition – that is devotion in the highest sense of the word.

But everything that confronts us in the highest style also confronts us in the first outward form. And so devotion in its highest perfection is indeed that which lives in us as a yearning devotion to an unknown, so that it may one day reveal itself to us when we are ready for it, but it is present to a lesser degree in relation to everything that we have not yet recognized, even in the ordinary external world.

When, for example, a younger person looks up to an older, more experienced one, he cannot, of course, see beyond him; for it is vanity, if we believe, sometimes even very much out of today's consciousness of time, to be able to judge everything at any level of existence. For anyone who has a concept of knowledge, it seems strange when someone, for example, believes that they can describe a comprehensive personality like Goethe biographically, because the point is that we can basically only understand someone to whom we have already made ourselves equal. If we were unable to develop a relationship with someone to whom we have not yet made ourselves equal, then we would not be able to understand them at all.

But the human soul is so constituted: if it retains its healthy feelings, then it can long revere a thing, devote itself to it devoutly, before it recognizes the same. And so it is with all maturing of the human soul. And those who look at life in its even most external depths will find this confirmed, which has been emphasized here many times: that in later life one always remembers again and again with such gratitude the hours and moments of childhood in which one could so reverently worship this or that human being, this or that personality.

It will always be a great moment when a person is able to experience in the circle of his family the veneration of this or that personality with whom one is acquainted. The child may not yet have seen this personality, so has not even enjoyed the external impression; it looks up, so to speak, from the stories about what one can see, as if to a complete stranger. Then it experiences the day in such a way that it first gains an impression of the previously revered personality in the external experience. Then it may stand with shy reverence at the door handle that is to give it access to the personality it has learned to revere. When the child has had these feelings, it also approaches the external impression in a completely different way, then something of the wonderful radiance that our soul can radiate is present where it first develops devotion and worship before approaching the object.

Devotion and reverence are something wonderfully luminous that can cast a wonderful radiance [on that] which we encounter only later. One remembers – as I just said – back to the greatest moments of one's childhood, to just such moments when one has truly learned to revere even in the face of what one may encounter in the outside world. And so, in these seeds of devotion, we have a small reflection of what that all-encompassing devotion can give, which builds up to that which must remain more or less unknown to us. Even if it has already opened up to us to a certain extent as knowledge of the spiritual world, something still remains unknown to us; for behind every known thing there is again an unknown. Even the ordinary devotions are a reflection of this comprehensive devotion, with which our soul strives towards the unknown before it can fully penetrate into this unknown.

Thus, in devotion, we have a power that enables us to take the path to the unknown. And since it is true that the spiritual and the unknown give rise to powers and abilities that are known and evident in the outer human senses, it is also the case that our own powers, which flow to us from the spiritual world, can only flow to us if we seek the right path to this spiritual world ourselves, the path through devotion. Even in the ordinary life, as it presents itself to us between birth and death, we can find the healing power of devotion.

If we look at life in this way, we have to say that, alongside all the other moods that can be developed for the world, alongside the moods of joy and pleasure, alongside the moods of exultation and enthusiasm, it is also possible to develop the mood of devotion in the face of the phenomena of existence, whether familiar or unfamiliar. We encounter this, for example, in poetry, in the fact that alongside the song of jubilation, alongside joy and delight, there are also hymns and odes. It confronts us in all the arts, and we may say: just as there are works of art that affirm us, as it were, in how we are the same and akin to the things of existence, so there are also works of art that evoke in us an inkling of how we can strive for the highest, that draw us, as it were, towards a highest.

Thus, we encounter sufficient occasions for devotion throughout life; and we should observe this in life; above all, we should not ignore it in a true life pedagogy, because it is important that we absorb into our life destiny in our childhood that which devotion can give us.

If we observe life between birth and death, we can find what is called karma, the great law of fate, which presents itself to us as a chain of spiritual causes and effects; but it presents itself in a very peculiar way. For example, certain things that are laid down as causes in early youth present themselves in later life as effects. What we may absorb in childhood through this or that only emerges as an effect in old age. And the effects are not the same, but such that we must first understand the connection between cause and effect.

The young person who grows up, educated in the right way and without what is distorted into some dark side of devotion, who grows up in the right devotion, will notice that this is transformed into something else in his soul. We can see this in a more intimate knowledge of life, here or there, that this or that person enters into a group of other people – perhaps he says little or nothing – but his presence already pours out what can be called a beneficent element. The presence of such a person blesses and delights those around him. What radiates from him spiritually has come into him.

But this power of blessing does not come into a person's later life if it is not rooted in what we have developed in our youth as the mood of devotion. Devotion in youth transforms itself throughout life into the power to bless in old age. This is a karmic connection that we encounter between birth and death. We do not need to know this only from spiritual science; anyone who knows life can see it everywhere. We could put it in symbolic words: Those who have not been able to worship devoutly with bowed knees and clasped hands in their youth will never be able to stretch out their hands to bless. The bowed knees and clasped hands of youth are the cause that, in old age, transform into blessing hands. This is one of our wisdoms of life. There we see one of those forces that come to us from the spiritual world, even if we are not yet able to see into it. Devotion first leads us up into the spiritual world, which is still closed to our vision because the greater guardian of the threshold is not allowed to show himself to us. It closes itself to us, but sends us out of itself the forces that, in their all-pervasive effects, emerge from our actions themselves.

In this way we can develop within us a mood of devotion towards an unknown world. Perhaps we will not yet be able to penetrate to an understanding of it, but it pours out forces from itself, which are transformed in our soul and become impulses for our outer life. Just as when we fall asleep tired in the evening and wake up refreshed in the morning, just as the night brings us refreshment, just as what comes out of us makes our tired arms able to work again, so it is in our outer life when we know how to relate to the unknown worlds — which we are not yet able to see into, which stand behind the reality of the senses — when we approach them devoutly. Thus they may, like a gentle sleep, veil their powers from our consciousness; but they give us their powers. And it is through devotion that we can make our way to unknown worlds and that opens up the powers of these unknown worlds to us, thereby bringing us out of ourselves with our ego and making us capable of being effective in the outer world. Thus we approach the unknown worlds with our devout ego. Our I is enriched by them with that which can bring us together with the world again. We become more powerful, stronger, more vigorous through what devotion gives us.

This is the mission of devotion for the soul element that we call the consciousness soul and through which we in turn step out of ourselves and pour our ego into the outside world, as it were. We owe everything that makes us fruitful for the outside world to our devotional moods towards that which is worthy of worship. And the person who cannot be devout will not be able to intervene [in life]. There will be people who will come and say: Yes, I don't succeed at anything, people don't believe in me, people don't want to understand me. Then one falls back on appearances, which prove themselves, but not on the reasons. The reasons lie in the fact that such people, who feel compelled to feel misunderstood, have never been able to find the mood of devotion within themselves. This is the mission of devotion for the education of our ego to grow together with the world.

Thus we first grow unconsciously into the world through the forces that devotion gives us, in order to gradually approach the spiritual world itself, when we have matured through what devotion produces in us. But we must also be clear about the fact that devotion in a certain sense leads the ego out of itself, and that a person who wants to follow the right paths in the world must never divest himself of his ego in the present period of development, because the ego gives him the ability to judge, the right power of deduction, and the possibility to place himself in the world without confusion. Therefore, anyone who has an inclination to indulge in devotional moods must bear in mind that, while they may go as far as possible in the devotional mood, they must never lose themselves in devotion.

We can describe the two elements of devotion that are revealed to us in it as devotion, on the one hand, and love, on the other. When our soul is permeated and warmed by love for a being, that love is the one element that leads us to devotion; the devotion of the will is the other element that leads to devotion. And wherever love and devotion arise, they must also arise [as love and devotion] to the unknown; for there is an intimate connection between all beings, even between the lower beings and ourselves. What is in our soul consists of love and devotion, which can then be lived out as devotion. But we must not lose ourselves in devotion; we must enter into the mood of devotion while preserving our ego. If we do not do this, then we paralyze our will, then a weakening occurs instead of a strengthening of our will. If we approach things with a blind love that is not permeated with the soul, then this love becomes blind, then instead of knowledge we will come to a form of superstition, blind faith. And above all, if our love is not permeated and purified by intellect and mind, we will end up with what we can call unguided, unadvised love. But that is enthusiasm. It is the kind of thing that can ultimately escalate into delusion in the face of the unknown. Just as we are gradually condemned to spiritual powerlessness through a devotion or surrender in which we lose our ego, so we are seduced into erring in the world through our love, which is not illuminated by the deeds of the guide who is there for all our orientation: the soul of mind or soul of feeling.

We must not lose our will or our feelings, advised by reason, if the favorable effects of devotion are to occur, as described.

At the same time, it will be readily apparent that education in devotion, like devotion itself, necessitates something that is far removed from mere intellectualism. When a correct middle course must be found between good and evil, then what one might call the tact and sense of life always comes into play. Therefore, one will not be able to lead someone into devotion in the right way through abstract ideas, but only by pouring out one's whole soul, which in turn comes from a properly guided devotion. That is why, especially in the education of devotion, looking at the other devout person can have such a powerful effect, and why example must play such a great role here.

This is why devotion, where it should be cultivated, relies so heavily on being cultivated in community; this is also why a person walking alone through the world can find little opportunity for devotion. And just as devotion can easily develop in the contemplation of others, so it is also that which leads us out of ourselves and brings us together with other people, for nothing ignites our devotion more powerfully than when we can share it with others who are looking up to the same thing. In this way, devotion also leads our soul upwards to the heights, where it steps out of itself as the consciousness soul, where it enters into communion with the environment. In devotion, man has something that leads man out of himself, that frees him from mere selfish feeling, willing and thinking, that instructs him to have something in common with others in his ego, to which he can look up. This is the mission of devotion in human society. It leads from I to I, and, when it is fostered and cultivated in the right way, it pours a wonderful mood and atmosphere over a community.

Thus devotion plays the greatest conceivable role for man in both his ordinary and elevated life. And devotion also leads him up to the heights of life. This is what all those strive for who want to break through the outer sensual cover and enter the spiritual world. That is what they strive for through the longing and urge of devotion: to penetrate to that which they thus devoutly venerate, to be able to live with that which they first devoutly venerate; to be able to unite with that which one first devoutly venerates, to be able to stand in that which one first strives for from below. This has always been called mystica, spiritual union with the spiritual world, from which man comes, but with which he can consciously unite when he has gradually matured to do so. Mystical union was the lofty ideal of all spiritual aspirants. To all spiritual aspirants, that which lives and works in the human soul appeared as a feminine force that draws up in a devout mood to that which permeates and interweaves the world and can fertilize the soul as a masculine force. This is also what Goethe felt, based on his good knowledge of the mystical mood of human development, when he wrote the “Chorus mysticus” at the end of his life's work. There he wrote the words that, as if from unknown spiritual depths, resonate in our soul and present the riddle of our soul's striving and development to our mind's eye, telling us that everything we encounter in the external world is a parable for something eternal, that what is insufficient for sensual striving can be achieved through spiritual striving. What we cannot describe with words of the physical world is done when we come together with that which inspires us from the spiritual world. And then they fade away, these words, into that wonderful dictum that tells us: The soul is like an eternal feminine that allows itself to be fertilized by what lives as a masculine in the secrets of the world, behind sensual existence. Thus, Goethe's “Chorus mysticus” sounds to our ears like the great riddle of human development:

All that is
transient is but a parable,
the inadequate
here becomes an event,
the indescribable
here is done,
the eternal feminine
draws us on.

But when we learn from the understanding of the mission of devotion to grasp our own soul as it draws us as the eternal feminine towards the eternal masculine, which is to flow into us as world wisdom, then we also gain from this understanding of the mission of devotion this higher understanding of the real union with the eternal masculine in the world. And we feel certain, in the face of what unfolds as a world secret, that we can achieve this unio mystica through our spiritual striving and that we are approaching this unio mystica more and more through the mood of devotion, in order to experience it in the end.

And so, on the one hand, we hear Goethe's words when we contemplate the human soul:

The eternal feminine
Draws us up!

And so another saying rings true to us as the expression of the truth that flows from the unio mystica, which must impose itself on us when we receive the certainty that we can unite with the eternal masculine. As if in amplification of Goethe's saying, “The Eternal Feminine draws us upward,” he who is certain of the former attainment of the unio mystica will say, looking up to the mysteries of existence: The Eternal Masculine leads us upward!

As previously announced, I do not intend to give you a Theosophical lecture this evening, but rather a more or less purely philosophical lecture. And if any of our esteemed Theosophical listeners find that the matter is too philosophical and, shall we say, too difficult, I would ask you to bear in mind that I did not promise anything easy, but rather something philosophical for this afternoon.

The reason why I like to insert such an extraordinary lecture as this one is the following: It is not unfair to realize that in fact within our Theosophical consciousness, within our entire Theosophical worldview and the current zeitgeist, as it is practiced in the world – not as it is in its essence – there is far too little thoroughness, far too little conscientiousness, with regard to what can be called the thinking, the philosophical principle in the human soul.

Now anyone who wants to look more deeply into what Theosophy really is can see – and they will see it with every step they take into Theosophy, where it presents itself in its true form – that in the field of Theosophy nothing, absolutely nothing, is said that does not comply with philosophy, with scientific conscientiousness and intellectual thoroughness. Theosophy can be justified philosophically, scientifically, and logically in every respect. But Theosophy is not always cultivated and advocated with the necessary seriousness. Therefore, this lecture is intended as an admonition to have a sense of responsibility when speaking of the highest things that Theosophy has to say, as an admonition to have a sense of responsibility towards the intellectual, towards that which is called the scientific mind, the scientific spirit.

This is not to say that this scientific sense should be demanded of every follower of Theosophy; that would be going too far. Theosophy wants to be something that can penetrate into the hearts of the broadest masses of humanity, and with an unbiased sense of truth, it can always be received. But he who represents Theosophy under full responsibility must always be aware of the sense of scientific and intellectual conscientiousness envisaged here, in addition to all the other factors that come into play in the field of Theosophy.

From the wide range of material available to a theosophist, I would now like to give you a summarized overview of the inner principle of the development of modern philosophy, from Fichte to Schelling to Hegel. In doing so, we put ourselves in a position similar to that explained yesterday from a theosophical point of view, namely that with the philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, something significant for human spiritual development has been given, but which is not yet understood in our present time.

Those who are able to consider what was at stake in the grandiose intellectual struggle of this triumvirate of thinkers, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, are not in the least surprised. For the intellectual weapons that our present age produces and that are sufficient for the great, admirable achievements of natural science, these intellectual weapons are not sufficient to achieve what was at work in the minds of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. And why should we be surprised at this? It can be fully justified and understood in terms of the history of philosophy.

If we want to understand Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in their position within the spiritual development of humanity, we must consider this development from its starting point with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. For anyone who sees into things, everything in between is of little importance for the spiritual development of humanity. If we look at the matter historically, we see how, in the Middle Ages, Catholicism assimilated philosophy in the spirit of the medieval world view. Aristotle, that great thinker of the pre-Christian era, had to be forgotten first, then remembered again and applied according to the method of medieval philosophy, the medieval world view. The compromise had to be reached: justification of spiritual revelation with the help of Aristotelianism. These two things were brought together in the Middle Ages by trying to do justice to both, by combining them in scholasticism; most decisively in Thomas Aquinas, who was called the Doctor Angelicus because he undertook the task of justifying the revelation of Christianity with the help of Aristotelianism.

The extent to which today's thinking is inadequate to the tasks of that time is best illustrated by the fact that one of the newer thinkers has completely misunderstood the matter. An understanding of Aristotelian thought is the prerequisite for understanding the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. The theosophist need not be surprised. He can say to himself: It was necessary that in Christianity the decisive philosophy should speak differently than it did in the eighteenth century.

In particular, it is difficult to understand that Aristotle, in his psychology, gives a shadowy, because merely philosophical, reflection of what we encounter again in Theosophy. We are speaking, first of all, of the physical body. Aristotle begins only with the etheric body. He speaks of these things as one had to speak three to four centuries before the Christian era. What he calls “treptikon” is nothing other than what we call the etheric body, and what he calls “aestheticon” is nothing other than what we call the sentient body or astral body. Basically, it is quite the same. It is just that for Theosophy it is something grasped from the living intuition, while for Aristotle, it is something held in the realm of the shadowy, out of the logical philosophical tradition. Then he also has the “Erektikon”, what we call the sentient soul. Then the “Kinetikon”, the mind or soul of mind.

But there is one thing that is not found in Aristotelianism: there is no adequate expression for the consciousness soul. But how can you be surprised that you do not find it? In those days, thinking had not yet progressed and developed to such an extent that one could also speak of a consciousness soul. But it is only in the consciousness soul that the I comes to an inner, thinking perception of itself. At that time, one could not yet speak of the I as in more recent philosophy. Therefore, one had to speak of something else, of that which pours into the sentient soul and the mind soul from the outside, from the spiritual outside. What rules in it, what we today call the consciousness soul, can be found in the way that Aristotle looks up to the divine, which works into the human being from the outside and spiritualizes the two soul members, the sentient soul and the mind or feeling soul. Aristotle calls this the “nous”. What Aristotle calls the Nous is what was felt at that time as an external spirit. The Nous is experienced in two ways: in the sentient soul and in the mind or feeling soul, as a stimulator of the sentient soul (Nous poietikos), and as a stimulator of the mind or feeling soul (Nous pathetikos). Here we have something from the ancient traditions of the Greek mysteries that is coming to us again today from spiritual research.

Aristotle's psychology was then used in the Middle Ages to delve into Catholic truths of revelation. However, an actual teaching of the I, as it arises from the perception of the I in the consciousness soul, is not included in Aristotle's psychology. But it would be good for our present time if it were to take up a slightly different concept of Aristotle and incorporate it into its conceptual world. Our entire conceptual world lacks a concept that Aristotle had and which, if it were understood, would be enough to simply sweep away what modern Darwinism asserts with its natural philosophy.

Philosophy has lost this concept. Aristotle is aware that, in the case of humans, we are initially dealing with what we call the animal nature of man, and Aristotle certainly speaks of this animal nature of man and its similarity to the animal nature in the animal kingdom. However, Aristotle speaks differently of the animal nature of man than of the animal nature of animals. Aristotle certainly speaks of the soul in animals, but he is clear about the fact that although this soul of animals is still present in the entire human organization, it undergoes something there that it must undergo through the penetration of the animal soul with the Nous. And this penetration of the animal soul with the Nous is what Aristotle refers to with a term that has been little understood. This is evident from the way in which it has been translated in the usual philosophical histories and translations of Aristotle. . This is a concept that is extremely difficult to convey today because it has not been further developed. If we want to describe it, we can say something like the following would convey the concept: something of the soul is horrified by something higher, so that what happens to the animal soul through the nous of Aristotle is what one could call a horror, a conquest of the violence of the animal soul by the nous. But only through this is the human soul brought forth from the animal soul in a metamorphosis. And once this concept is grasped again, then one will indeed understand the relationship between the human and the animal in a corresponding way in terms of natural philosophy.

I have presented some of the ideas that were passed down philosophically throughout the Middle Ages and preserved into modern times and used to justify the Catholic Church's revelation. I have tried to characterize this with a few terms. These are only a few selected things. I wanted to pick this out because I wanted to give you an idea of the fact that it is not so easy to grasp the meaning of the Aristotelian concepts precisely and succinctly, since today's concepts no longer coincide with Aristotle's concepts. Even in the Middle Ages, the philosophers who understood him had the greatest difficulty in saving him from misunderstandings. While the Greek word nous was correctly translated as intellectus agens, the pantheistic philosophers of Arabism made the wildest leaps with concepts that can only be correctly interpreted if one sees their full significance for human nature and which are terribly distorted if one reads into them a nebulous pantheism.

If we now turn to the second epoch of philosophical development, as indicated, it can of course only be adequately characterized if we show the whole course of philosophical development from the first wrestling of Aristotle, then show how in German philosophy, in Leibniz and Wolff, a remarkable elaboration of this struggle came about, and how, in Kantianism, a skepticism arose out of opposition to Wolffianism. It would be necessary to show this if one wants to characterize the struggle of thought of Western humanity, if one wants to understand the triumvirate of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel from the perspective of German philosophy, if one wants to have an idea of what Fichte, Schelling and Hegel attempted philosophically at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. Fichte attempted to provide his philosophy of the ego out of Kantianism. However, anyone who studies the emergence of Fichteanism out of Kantianism sees that Kantianism was not the actual cause, but that the actual cause lay in Fichte's nature. Thus, I would like to characterize Fichteanism as a separate entity. In line with the now self-aware humanity, Fichte sets out to grasp the self. It is not easy to descend into this abyss. Therefore, do not think that it would ever occur to me to be harsh to those who do not understand Fichte and distort him. I understand every misunderstanding, I understand every objection, however many there may be, I understand Schopenhauer, who called Fichte a windbag and a charlatan. This can be somewhat understandable, because what one needs to understand Fichte is so infinitely deep and abysmal that one can always find it forgivable when misunderstandings arise.

Human thinking does not always behave logically towards the self, and in this regard one can sometimes encounter grandiose illogic in literature, especially in scientific literature. Even today we can see the most fantastic leaps being made where it is a matter of finding the transition from an assertion that the ego makes to the application of this assertion to the ego itself. That is the logical foundation that matters. The transition from an assertion that the ego makes to the application to the ego must be grasped. Take the old school example: a Cretan says: all Cretans are liars. — If all Cretans are liars, then it cannot be true. Therefore, what the speaker asserts can only be taken into consideration if he himself is excepted, if he is left out. The moment you apply an assertion that an ego makes to the ego itself, you can no longer even get by with formal logic. Only, all these things that are repeatedly mentioned are not understood. Where the transition is from an assertion of the ego to the ego itself, people do not realize that this is a leap.

There is a philosopher and psychologist who traces everything a person does out of desire and passion back to ordinary sensual urges, more or less. He has also written about suicides among students. He tries to show that it was not the reasons imagined by the student that drove him to suicide, but that the real reasons lie in sensual and sexual life. This philosopher and psychologist now differentiates between the motive for an action and the pretext for it in countless areas, and he says that the pretext can be something quite different from the motive, that the motive lies in the sensual life. If only this world view could realize how it appears when applied to itself, if one were to say to this psychologist: Your reasons, everything you use to prove your point, are mere pretexts. But if we look at your sensual life, at your sinful desires, we see the real motives for what you write. You have grossly characterized the transition that is not brought to consciousness.

I wanted to give you a rough example to show how people today actually have so little logic in their bodies that they do not understand the Cretan. That was an example of the lack of understanding of this sentence. I wanted to show that one enters into very special areas when one penetrates from the entire remaining sum of our world view to what is the content of our I.

But now Fichte said to himself: Within the consciousness that man has at first, nothing can actually live, there can be nothing of which man is aware without his ego being involved. Whatever objects enter this consciousness must first take hold of this ego, they must touch the ego in some way. Without the things, beings or whatever entering into a relationship with this ego, the ego cannot know anything at all of what appears in the field of vision of our consciousness. Fichte therefore said to himself: the ego must be everywhere present, therefore there is nothing that we can find within our consciousness, within our thinking organism, that can lie outside the ego. Thus, for Fichte, a thing like Kant's “thing in itself” is an un-concept. And it is easy to see that this thing in itself is an un-concept. One would have to try to imagine this thing in itself. So one should imagine that which lies outside of imagination. Can you imagine that which lies outside of your imagination? It is impossible to imagine that.

What I have said in a few words was what Fichte felt as a powerful impulse in his soul. Everything must be grasped by the tentacles of the ego, the ego is the great agent—and there can be nothing else within our experience—that must grasp everything. But then the question arises, and Fichte is aware of it: How is it that the ego constantly has things around it that it is clear it did not create itself? Nothing should enter the field of consciousness in which the ego is not involved. And yet the ego finds that there are a lot of things that it has not made. These are the fundamental points where Fichte has drawn attention to something that only modern theosophy can fully understand. He draws attention to this by saying: There is an activity of the ego that we usually overlook. In somnambulism, we have an activity that originates from the I but is not encompassed by conscious thinking. In somnambulism, we see an activity of the I that is more comprehensive, more all-encompassing than what one can initially grasp with the ordinary waking consciousness of the I. Fichte descends to an activity that is an activity of the ego but does not fall into the realm of thinking, and which can be imagined, while an 'ego in itself' cannot be imagined as it is an absurdity. But that which corresponds to the ego and is of the same nature as the ego activity is that which can also be grasped inwardly by the ego because it is of a nature more akin to the ego. Thus Fichte points to an external world of which the ego is aware that it did not make it, but in which it can still recognize itself as a comprehensive ego, as an absolute ego - in contrast to the relative ego - that it is part of this external world. In this way, Fichte points beyond the ego to the I. This is the great advance in the field of philosophy, and with this advance something has happened that goes beyond Cartesius, beyond the “cogito ergo sum”. The “cogito ergo sum” is something that proves the existence of the ego in thinking, whereas in Fichte's characterization, the existence of the ego arises from the will, and that is the essential thing. Everything that Fichte could muster of cognitive powers is compressed into the point of the ego. And that is why he was the one who could understand that everything in the world can be grasped starting from the ego.

What I have outlined here is what Fichte presented in Jena in 1793/94. If you want to understand his philosophical struggle in statu nascendi, the best way to do so is to take a look at the first version of his “Wissenschaftslehre” (Science of Knowledge), the 1794 edition, which still shows his entire philosophical struggle. Thus the philosophical horizon was established, so to speak, and the mind was raised to a certain height. The starting-point was there, the vanishing-point of the perspective was established.

The next person to stand at this point and attempt to sketch out a picture of the world was Schelling. Schelling did something that is quite understandable for anyone who can see into the essence of this matter, but which cannot be understood for our present time with the usual concepts. Schelling said to himself: Well, our great teacher Fichte — Schelling was his most brilliant student — has led us up to this point, but now the soul must be given content. Schelling had to go beyond the one-sided psychological understanding of the “I am”; he had to expand the “I am” into a world, as it were. He could only do this by showing that in the way one perceives the “I am”, one can perceive even more. He referred to the so-called “intellectual intuition”. What is this intellectual intuition? This so much misunderstood intellectual intuition is nothing more than the awareness that one can stand at the location of the “I am”, but does not have to remain there, but that one can see something that is perceived in the same way as the “I am”, and the content of this perception is present in intellectual intuition. This intellectual intuition has been very much denied.

Thus, in Schelling we have a knowledge of nature and spirit worked out in the manner of the knowledge of the ego. One must indeed have an organ for it if one wants to go into such things as those expounded by Schelling. This applies in particular to his thoughts about light. It is easy to refute everything that can be found in Schelling; it is much easier to refute him than to understand and justify him. It is the same with Hegel. It is easy to refute Hegel, but for those who want to understand Schelling and Hegel, the point is not to refute them, but to understand what they wanted. Hegel was a student of Fichte and a contemporary of Schelling. He tried, in his turn, to continue what emerged on the horizon to which Fichte had raised people, only in a different way than Schelling. Hegel did not allow for an intellectual view. He wanted to present what every person can find without an intellectual view, just by honestly and sincerely taking this point of view. It became clear to Hegel that everything that underlies a thing, a being, is given to us in the way of “I am”. Let us understand correctly what was going through Hegel's mind. He wondered why concepts and ideas should have any significance for the nature of things, correspond to any truth, if what we experience in our minds, what our minds go through in developing concepts, is not what things are originally based on, if that is not the objective way of things? So Hegel's point of view becomes one that must be characterized in such a way that one says: Man can initially approach things in such a way that he forms all kinds of opinions and thoughts about them, and then go from the opinions that he forms about external sensuality to the pure subject.

Hegel set down these thoughts in his monumental work “Phenomenology of Spirit”, published in 1807. This work was completed in 1806, at the moment when the cannon thunder of the Battle of Jena was heard around Jena. There Hegel was in Jena and wrote the last sentence. There Hegel knew how to find the way to such a point of view where everything subjective is no longer considered, where subject and object are no longer considered, but the spirit manifests itself everywhere in the objective course of things. In the ideas and concepts, the spirit has made itself identical with the inner course of things.

Those who cannot bring themselves to understand that these things must be understood in this way will not be able to understand Hegel's philosophy, Hegel's logic. For Hegel, it is a matter of excluding all “subjective reasoning”. You should not add anything to how one concept is linked to another, but rather let the concepts fit together, as they naturally grow out of one another and are linked to one another. It is a surrender to the structure of the conceptual world that Hegel's logic wants to be. How one concept develops from another is the essence of Hegelian dialectics.

To enter into Hegel's logic is to take on one of the most difficult endeavors of human thought. And that is why the usual result occurs when people tackle Hegel's logic: it is too difficult for them. And I can assure you: in the days before the critical edition of Hegel's works was published, when only the old Hegel edition was available, you could tell from the library that this edition had been read very little. The fruit of it could then be found in the lectures; the lecturers knew nothing. It is difficult to study Hegel's logic, but I would like to say a few words about what you get out of it if you study it. I can't give an overview of Hegel's philosophy today, but I can hint at what you get if you engage with it. If you have engaged with it, you have been educated to be rigorous in the application of concepts.

When you follow the steps from the abstract concept of being through the nothing, the becoming, the existence, through unity, number and measure in Hegel's logic, when you let all these concepts, which are strictly and organically structured in Hegel's logic, take effect on you, then you get into your soul that you say to yourself: Oh, how powerless much of what is said within humanity about spiritual things is. One learns to use the concept in the sense in which it really belongs in logic. That is what one gets used to through becoming acquainted with this logic. Consider how all kinds of concepts are used, picked up from our literary and scientific work. In the field of theology, something should be felt of this rigor in thinking. Here, the arbitrariness of “subjective reasoning” prevails the most, the arbitrariness of concepts that have been picked up here or there.

Hegel then moves on from the “Science of Logic” to what he calls natural philosophy. This has been much ridiculed, but little understood. If you look at things spiritually, you come from logic to natural philosophy. You should let the phenomena speak for themselves, no longer speculate, but let the phenomena express themselves as they are mirrored in the concept. Therefore, one cannot help but let nature itself speak. One must unfold the inner activity, just as one has unfolded it for logical dialectics. But this is a book with seven seals, and I can fully understand that Helmholtz – whom I admire as a natural scientist – when he read Hegel's natural philosophy, said: This is pure nonsense.

It is part of the process that one first acquires the conscientious logical-intellectual responsibility towards the spiritual facts, as one can develop it through Hegel's logic. Hegel has achieved many things that modern philosophy has no understanding for. The mechanical concepts into which one brings ordinary earthly events are to be used only for earthly processes in the sense of Hegel's natural philosophy; the finite mechanical concepts lose their meaning when we ascend to the regions of heaven. There Hegel moves from finite to absolute mechanics and shows in a thorough, astute manner how this is something completely different from what must be called Newtonian mechanics.

A great deal could be gained by wanting to understand Hegel. Of course, from the point of view of the time, his views are sometimes highly contestable, but even then one can be clear about how each individual point is meant. However, it must be clear that most of it was published from notes taken by students. I would therefore like to emphasize that from the outset one should bear in mind the principle that much of what is in it has been said differently by Hegel. Regarding what goes out into the world from notes, I can say that I myself have experienced what can come out of transcribed lectures! Nevertheless, anyone who is able to do so will recognize a great achievement in Hegel's natural philosophy.

From this outpouring of the spirit into the individual things of nature, Hegel then moves on to the spirit's return to itself. He distinguishes three areas: the “spirit in itself,” the beginning; the “spirit for itself,” the spirit that is spread out in nature and must be perceived for itself; and the “spirit in and for itself.” This is the actual philosophy of mind, the “philosophy of mind”.

From the field of political philosophy, Hegel particularly developed the philosophy of law. If you consider what has been achieved later, you can say that there is still much to be gained from this Hegelian philosophy of law. Hegel was a personality who had an intense Aristotelian sense and therefore wanted to understand everything in Aristotelian reasonability first. That is why he placed at the forefront of his philosophy of law the proposition that there is a rational starting point for all problems. It is easy to refute Hegel, even by action; someone need only do something stupid, and he has the refutation. But then you can see that Hegel is not interested in clever refutations. Hegel developed philosophy in the strictest, most disciplined thinking, and this discipline of thought can be acquired through Hegelism. It is also understandable that the height of this point of view cannot be grasped so easily. Therefore, it is understandable that the great, in many respects extraordinary poet Grillparzer, when he received Hegel's philosophy, was terribly horrified. He said:

“You may teach us the divine thinking prophetically,
but, my friend, you are surely destroying the human thinking.”

You can see that the spiritual things here are so elevated that great minds who do not understand Hegel can be excused. They need not be thought of as idiots. But it must be retorted that the greatest discipline can be found in Hegel's philosophy. The lack of this intellectual discipline can be found in all subsequent philosophers. It is painful for anyone who has a concept of this difficult thought activity to see the arbitrariness of scientific and especially philosophical literature. It is terrible what impossibilities are experienced by those who have been educated in Hegel. It is terrible what those who have studied the highest thought structures that Hegel has created must go through.

We can be sure that humanity will one day grasp what was presented yesterday in the theosophical lecture. Hegel will be forgotten, as Aristotle was. Hegel is forgotten today. What is presented today as a renewal of Hegelianism is a chapter we prefer not to talk about. Even if the intellectual struggles of the triumvirate of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are forgotten today, the mind will have to be worked through with this intellectual struggle, just as in the Middle Ages Catholic Revelation was worked through with Aristotle. Hegel's philosophy is something that must be grasped from the starting point of our present into the near future. Those who have realized this can withstand all the devastating things that can come from the present, they can see that these devastating things are only the reverse side of what is emerging today as the future and how the seed of what must come is revealed in this reverse side.

It is truly distressing to see how quickly the level of thinking has fallen. It behoves the theosophist to cast his gaze on the fields of pure thinking. I would love to give lectures of this kind everywhere to establish a firm, secure basis for Theosophy, if only there were time and I could justify it to the necessity of Theosophy progressing more quickly.

When we approach the great theosophical truths that speak to the most fundamental human feelings, as given in spiritual science, we should be aware that we must not shirk rigorous thinking. We should be aware that there must be nothing theosophical that cannot stand up to the strictest scrutiny of a philosophical consciousness. We should make it our ideal not to say anything that cannot withstand the strictest necessity of reason.

For many years it has been my duty to give lectures upon Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy.

Those present at the lectures cannot but acknowledge that the foundation of Spiritual Science as presented is not a dreamy, idle pursuit for the few who have withdrawn from the common paths of life; it illumines the deepest problems and mysteries of existence.

Spiritual Science will lead the mind towards spiritual origins. It is destined to give out to man-kind knowledge of the spiritual worlds. At the same time its mission is to make life intelligible, to be a guiding star in work and action, giving us a broader and deeper understanding of what happens in our environment, through a comprehension of the underlying spiritual causes.

The confusion that exists in the average mind and the consequent spirit of dissension, are due to the endless contradictions found in the opinions of famous authorities regarding the problems of human life. Many people have, however, already felt how Anthroposophy widens the vision, and therefore leads to a wise adjustment of opinions.

Two famous modern contemporaries, whose influences are far-reaching, will be brought before us to-day; individualities well suited to present to us the vital contrasts existing in our time. It would be difficult to find two personalities in greater contrast in their thought and feeling and in their standard of right and wrong. On the one hand is the famous, the influential Tolstoy—so strong a personality that no appellation seems adequate to describe his significance for his day and generation. It is difficult to describe him as moralist, prophet, or reformer. But it is evident that in speaking of him something deeply rooted in the innermost depths of human nature is touched; that in his personality something lives which rises from the depths of the human soul—something that cannot be felt in those whose work is merely superficial. The other personality, in so marked a contrast to Tolstoy, is the American millionaire, Carnegie. Why should Carnegie be mentioned in connection with Tolstoy? Just as Tolstoy, out of the depths of his soul, strives to solve the problems of life satisfactorily, even so Carnegie, in his own way, endeavours with a practical and intelligent outlook upon life, to reach guiding principles.

Perhaps it might be said that just as Idealism and Realism are diametrically opposed, so are Tolstoy and Carnegie in relation to each other. As Fichte says, “Your opinion of life depends upon the kind of man you are,” and a man’s point of view is always connected b, finer or coarser threads with his peculiar character and temperament. Between these two personalities we find the greatest possible contrast. There is the wealthy Russian aristocrat, born in the lap of luxury, who through his social position was not only bound to know the external aspect of that life, but obliged to live with and to taste it. He is satiated with the modern way of thinking, which offers only the superficial. He looks up and beyond at the great outspread wings of moral ideals which the majority of mankind, even though admiring and willingly admitting as beautiful, still believe unattainable.

On the other hand we have Carnegie, who was born in simple surroundings, knowing necessity and sacrifice, not equipped with the advantages enjoyed by Tolstoy, but with a will to work with the endless, one may say, ideally-coloured ambition of becoming a man in the broadest sense of the word. Through this attitude towards life Carnegie evolves a kind of realistic idealism, a moral standpoint which reckons from what is seen with physical eyes of the turmoil of experiences in practical life.

Tolstoy, in his radical way, throws down the gauntlet to the modern order of things. His criticism becomes hard as it endeavours to combat modern thought, feeling, and selfish impulses. Carnegie sees life as it has developed historically. The word his soul uses to express his connection with life is “Satisfaction”—satisfaction with the existing order of things. He sees how the differences between rich and poor have arisen and how the differentiation of service has come into being. And everywhere this is his penetrating judgment: It is immaterial whether we find good or evil. Both exist, must exist. They are there and must be reckoned with. Let us work it out. From a realistic conception of things as they are, let us work out an idealism that aims at the great goal of pointing out the right way, within existing conditions, towards such an order of things as will further human progress and development.

This lecture does not “take sides” with either of these lives; but the conditions of their development must be understood in order to explain the contrasts: and if Spiritual Science has any task in regard to these men it must be that of understanding and explaining how these differences are evolved from the underlying principles of existence. It cannot be my task to offer biographical information. Only that will be said which will so illumine the souls of both men that we can enter into a deeper understanding of their personalities.

Tolstoy was from the first a man who did not have to fight for the material necessities of life, but was born in the midst of over-abundant wealth, and could easily have vanished like the many thousands who live within the realm of luxury. For this, however, he possessed too strong an individuality. From childhood only that which touched upon the deepest questions of the soul, and of life, seemed to influence him, though as a boy he did not regard critically the happenings around him but accepted them all as a matter of course. How different his attitude was later in life, when he became a censor of his surroundings.

A long account could be given of how Tolstoy became acquainted with the dark and miserable side of modern social life, especially during his period of army service; how, having learned the misery of war, and the superficiality of the social and literary life of St. Petersburg, he became disgusted with the ethics of the ruling classes. All this is well known. But what interests us more are the great questions which shone out before Tolstoy. Forcing itself more and more into his being, was the question, “What is the centre of life amidst all these conflicting conditions surrounding us? Where is the middle ground to be found?” Religion became for him the great and vital question. He could not at first tear himself from the conventional forms, and though religious considerations grew in importance as he asked himself, over and over again, “What is religion? What does it signify to humanity?” he could not recognize the connecting link between the soul and an unknown spiritual source. It seemed to him that all he had learned of true religion from the men of his own class, had been torn away from its source and had hardened and withered away.

At this time he became interested in the lower classes. As a soldier in the Caucasus he learned to know their inner life and found in them something of the primeval, that had not been torn away from the first cause. His eyes opened to the fact that in the naive existence of these lower, inferior people of the soil, truth and reality must abide more than in the artificialities of the class to which he belonged.

Problem after problem confronted him, none of which he could solve. “Yes; now I have seen those who have departed from the truth, and have become hardened in the periphery. And I have sought a way to religious depths through the souls of primitive people: But the answer to my question founders on the fact that the so-called educated can never be understood nor be in harmony with this primitive state of the soul.” No answer could be found to the burning question. So on and on until the contrasts and contradictions in life become plain. By reading his War and Peace, and Anna Karenina it can be seen how everywhere, even though the artistic form is paramount, the longing to understand life in its contrasts, and most of all the contradictions of the human character, permeate these works.

In later life, after he had become the great moral writer, he said: “The endeavour to portray a character ideally and soulfully created, yet in harmony with reality, has cost me untold misery, and I know that many of my contemporaries have had the same experience.”

It troubled him that such contradictions exist between that which one recognizes as the ideal and that which actually appears; for order and peace should reign in the world. This disturbed him as long as he was artistically active.

Tolstoy was not simply the objective onlooker all this time. He had been in the midst of life. He had experienced all these things, and could feel the intimate pricks of conscience, the inner reproaches that come to all who suddenly realize themselves to have been born into a certain class, and consequently under an obligation to conform to existing customs. It seemed inconsistent to criticize them. Such personalities are often driven to the verge of suicide by the turmoil in their minds.

Infinitely more can be learnt by introspection than by criticism of externalities. As from within outwards the horizon of Tolstoy broadened, until from the keen observation of his nearest surroundings he reached the broad plain where he overlooked the whole evolution of mankind, he saw to how wide and universal an extent the great and pure religious impulses of humanity had degenerated.

Then in all its depth, and in all its strength, the great impulse which was given to the world through Jesus Christ appeared to Tolstoy. But at its side also appeared the great Roman world of the Caesars which made Christianity subservient to power, representing only the outward form which had failed to save humanity and had become a mystery to men. And so his criticisms and his opinions became harsh and warped—and they are surely harsh enough.

It was most difficult for him to understand the contradictions in humanity. On the one side tremendous wealth; on the other dire poverty which resulted in the deplorable stunting of the soul’s life, so that humanity, through restriction of spiritual opportunities, could not find its way to spiritual wisdom specially to that which can be found in the original Christian teaching to which it must eventually penetrate.

Thus this comprehensive problem confronted him, this contrast between the luxury of the ruling classes and the spiritual and mental oppression of the masses. Experience of this problem ripened into a conviction, and he developed into a critic more penetrating perhaps than any before him—a critic who does not tire of describing things as they are, and of doing so in such a way as to impress us with their horror. It is natural to judge his attitude towards life from the trend of his contemplations. He said he would have liked to write a fairy tale with the following contents:

“One woman, having had a very bad encounter with another woman, disliked her intensely and wished to do her the most atrocious wrong. Accordingly she consulted a sorcerer, and acting upon his advice stole a child from her enemy. The sorcerer assured her that if she could take the child, who was born in great poverty, and place it in a home of wealth she could thus fully accomplish her revenge. This she was successful in doing. The child was adopted. It was taken care of according to the manner of the rich—spoiled and pampered. The woman had not expected this development, and was very angry. She went back to the seer to complain that he had given her wrong advice, and had betrayed her. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘you have done the worst one could do to an enemy. When this child develops further and his conscience is awakened to an inner contrast with the outer world, he will know that all he longs for must be in another world: but he will not be able to find it. He will say, “The manner in which I have been brought up has robbed me of the ambition and determination to seek and follow the way which leads to the underlying causes of existence.”’

This results in intense suffering for the developing man. Tolstoy understands the soul torture of such an experience, and appreciates the temptation to suicide created by this inward unrest and uncertainty. This illustration reveals his attitude toward the social order of things.

Now to consider Carnegie, who was the child of a master-weaver. So long as the big factories did not exist the father was able to find work. In the midst of this prosperity Carnegie spent his infancy. Then through the growth of the large factory his father found himself out of work, and was obliged to emigrate from Scotland to America. Only through the most strenuous efforts was he able to provide the absolute necessities of life. The boy was obliged to work in a factory, and as he relates his experiences we recognize in the description the same groundwork, the same depths, that are to be found in the soul experiences of Tolstoy. Carnegie describes what an event it was, his first-earned dollar. He has since become one of the richest men of the day, one who is actually obliged to seek ways and means of using his millions; and he is wont to say, with characteristic frankness: “None of my income has ever given me such a keen satisfaction as those first dollars.”

He worked in the same way for some time to support his family; but something lived within him like a hidden power, shaping his life so that he became a “self-made” man. This brought him supreme satisfaction. Even as a boy of twelve he felt himself fast becoming a man, for he who can earn his own living is a man. This was the thought of his soul. Then he went on to another factory, where he was employed in the office, and later became telegraph boy and earned more. He tells us: “A telegraph boy was obliged to memorise all addresses. I was afraid of losing my position, so I learned every name on the streets.” So once more his position was self-made. Then he stole into the office before hours, with other messenger boys, to practice telegraphy.

There his highest ideal was to become an operator, and he soon achieved it. Then his happiness was increased by finding a friend who lent him a book every Saturday. How eagerly he looked for each new book! Soon followed events of vital importance to him. A high official advised him to take shares in a certain company and thus advance his prospects. By sacrifice and thrift he accumulated the necessary five hundred dollars. Previous to this time had had used all his energy to support those dependent upon him, and he found it possible to make this investment largely through the economies of his mother.

This purchase of ten shares of stock was an event of the greatest importance, for upon the receipt of the first dividends it seemed to come to him, as the solution of a problem, that money makes money. The meaning of capital became clear to him, and this understanding meant the same to him as the working out of any difficult problem to a deep thinker. Before this time money had seemed only the compensation for hard work. Here it is most interesting to observe the result of such an experience upon such a character. From that time he was alert to every opportunity for making money. With the invention of the sleeping-coach Carnegie immediately became interested in it. Thus step by step he seemed to learn to understand and profit by the signs of the times.

The old custom of building bridges of wood was abandoned in favour of iron and steel construction. Of the opportunity offered by this change Carnegie took advantage, becoming richer and richer, until he was known as the “Steel King.” Then moral obligation faced him, and with it the questions, “What is my duty? How shall I distribute this wealth so that it may best fulfil its mission?”

That which Tolstoy experienced does not exist for Carnegie—there is no criticism of life, but instead an acceptance of life’s conditions as they are. What appeared to Tolstoy as utterly in-consistent, Carnegie regarded as natural. Looking back far into ancient times, we find princes living in the most primitive conditions, differing very little from their subjects in their mode of life. No luxury, no poverty, in our acceptance of those terms. Therefore we feel they did not know the things wealth brings, and there was no difference between rich and poor. From this primitive life everything has developed. Stronger and stronger become the contrasts. “It is well,” Carnegie says, “that beside the hut stands the palace, for there is much they should hold in common.”

We must understand his limitations. What struck him forcibly was the personal, brotherly feeling between master and servant under earlier conditions. Our relations have now become impersonal. The employer stands face to face with the employee without recognizing him, without knowing any of his needs. In this way hatred develops. But as it is so, it must be accepted. Carnegie’s view is an absolute endorsement of our outward daily life.

Penetrating more deeply we see that Carnegie is a keen, sharp, practical thinker of his kind, and that he stands in the centre of industrial life knowing all the different channels into which capital flows: therefore he has developed a wise and a sound judgment. It cannot be denied that this man has endeavoured to solve the problem of right living, and there is something in him which persuades us that he experiences a satisfaction with life impossible to Tolstoy.

His practical morality brings up this question: “How must this life be shaped so that that which has arisen of necessity shall have meaning and sense? Old conditions have brought about the custom of inherited wealth. Is this still possible under our present conditions, when capital of necessity produces capital?” he asks himself sharply. He studies life with keen interest and says, “No; it cannot go on in this way.” After considering all sides carefully, he comes to the peculiar and characteristic conclusion that when the rich man regards himself as the distributor of accumulated wealth, for the benefit of humanity, then and then only has his life any significance. He says to himself: “I must not only earn money, not only support my family and relatives, but in so far as I have used my mental powers and forces to bring it together, pouring into my work all my capabilities, this must be turned to the benefit of mankind.” This then is his code, that man, while adapting his powers to the conditions of this age, should earn as much money as possible, but not leave any; he should use it all for the improvement of humanity.

Therefore, “to die rich, dishonours,” is characteristic of Carnegie’s view of life. He says it is honourable at one’s death to leave nothing. Naturally this is not meant pedantically, because the daughter must inherit enough to live upon; but, radically expressed, “to become rich is fate, but to die rich is dishonour.” An honourable man to Carnegie is the one who “makes an end,” completes a life, leaving no uncertainty concerning that which his ability has brought together.

We must recognise the difference between these two characters—Tolstoy and Carnegie. The latter himself feels it and has commented on it in this manner: “Count Tolstoy wishes to carry us back again to Christ; but it is in a way that does not fit in with our present manner of living. Instead of leading us back to Christ, he should demonstrate what Christ would advise man to do under present conditions.’ In the sentence before quoted, “To die rich, dishonours,” Carnegie finds the true stamp of Christian thought. And it is evident that he believes Christ would say that he, not Tolstoy, is right.

We see in all this that Carnegie is a noble man, with a progressive, not an indolent, nature, unlike the many who, with little thought, accept things as they find them. He has sought, in many ways, to solve the problem of the distribution of wealth.

Is it not wonderful that life presents such marked contrasts as those afforded by these two strong personalities who, with the same objective point, pursue such very different courses? To understand this is truly most difficult for some minds. It is not at all marvellous that, on hearing Tolstoy preaching his lofty ideals, some will feel, “Oh, my soul responds to that!” and will sense the uplifting influence. It must be remembered, however, that life has a practical side, and he who is not an abstract dreamer, but in a truly realistic and earnest spirit tries to follow Carnegie’s train of thought, must admit that he is right too.

This shows, too, how impossible it is for the man who gives himself up to the practical side of life to acknowledge the greatest ideal, or to believe in its fulfilment.

Tolstoy succeeds in making what he believes is an absolute defence of the original Christian religion. He criticizes all that has appeared from time to time in the guise of Christianity; he has hoped to find the great impulse, or foundation, of real Christianity. In the simplest way he puts before us this impulse as it appears to him. And when a man understands this impulse, it is clear that he has within himself a spark of the Infinite, the eternal world-illuminating spirit of God. Another conviction is that in this spark is the germ of man’s immortality, and that with this understanding he cannot fail to seek for the higher and deeper nature throughout the whole of humanity. From this comprehension he knows that within himself is the real man, who cannot fail to overcome all that is base and unworthy within his nature. He devotes himself to the cultivation of the spiritual or higher self which lives eternally, the Christ.

How would a man, I will not say Carnegie, but one who considers things from his point of view, regard the philosophy of Tolstoy’s Christianity? He would say: “Oh, it is grand, magnificent, to live in Christ. The Christ within is one’s Self; but under our present conditions such a thing is impossible. How could civic affairs be conducted in accordance with these strict Christian requirements?”

Although the question is not put before the other side in a corresponding way, Tolstoy gives as definite an answer as possible, saying, “What will happen to the outward order of things pertaining to state and historical events is beyond my knowledge; but I am positive that humanity must live in accordance with the true Christian doctrine.” So, for him, the words, “The kingdom of God is within you,” expand into a deep, significant certainty that man may reach the heights, that he may know the Holy of Holies. This certainty, that the soul can know the truth about this or that, is to him a fact. We see in no other character of our time such a strong faith in the inner man, and such a firm belief that through this faith the outward results must eventually be good. For this reason scarcely any one else has professed such a view of the world with such personal, individual sympathy and such conviction as Tolstoy.

Carnegie reasons: “What relations must men sustain one to another?” And: ‘It is not good to give to beggars promiscuously, because it is apt to foster laziness. It is necessary to know the exact needs of those whom one helps. Really, one should help only those who are willing to work.” This is the basis of his philanthropy. He says he knows very well that the man who gives simply to rid himself of the beggar causes more havoc than the miser who gives nothing. We shall not judge in this matter; we are only characterizing.

On the other hand, let us consider Tolstoy. He meets a friend. This man has a great affection for his fellow men, and Tolstoy sees in him a wonderful new birth. Some one robs this friend; sacks of things are stolen, but one sack is left behind. What does the friend do? He does not prosecute the robbers, but carries them the remaining sack, saying, “You certainly would not have taken them had you not needed them.” This Tolstoy understands perfectly, and he be-comes his friend’s admirer. So much for the different ways of looking upon the parasites of society. These men are human brothers. The differences of opinion are the results of the different attitudes of soul. It must be admitted that Tolstoy is not only a hard critic, but having grasped the source of human certainty he has reached a remarkable point in the development of his soul. Herein begins what is foremost in his greatness, shining out for all who can appreciate it.

One result of his strong convictions, that calls forth admiration, is his attitude towards the value of science to the present generation. Because of his ability to look into the souls of men he could see through the vain endeavours and methods of our worldly sciences. Certainly it is easy to understand the teachings of physical and material sciences, and to follow and to realize all that they demonstrate. But what so-called science cannot do is to answer the questions: “How are these different physical and chemical processes united to life?” and “What is life?” So we face the deep scientific problem, the problem of life, and attempt to understand and to solve it.

It is significant to note Tolstoy’s remarks on the attitude of our western science in regard to the riddle of life. “People, who in the name of modern science endeavour to solve this riddle, seem to me like men trying to recognize the different species and habits of trees in this manner. Standing in the midst of the trees they do not even look at them, but taking a glass they gaze at a distant hill, upon which they agree should grow the kind of tree they are endeavouring to understand. So appear to me those who, instead of seeking in their own souls the solution of this problem of life, make instruments, create methods, and try to analyze that which exists in nature around them; more than ever they fail to see what life is.”

Through this comparison Tolstoy reveals what he understands and feels upon these questions. A careful study of his point of view shows that what he has written on the problem of life is of more value than whole libraries of western Europe which treat it from the modern scientific standpoint.

It is good to realize the value of such soul-experiences as Tolstoy’s, and his experience of the certitude of the Spirit is of great importance. We can admire Tolstoy’s way of solving in five lines that which our modern scientific methods fail to solve with long, complicated processes of thought, in whole books. Tolstoy shows great concentration in this power of expressing these great solutions in a few magical strokes, and making great problems intelligible in a few words rather than in the prolix, so-called scientific, philosophical treatises of many modern writers.

Tolstoy stands unique in the depth of his soul-character, and only when this is realised can we comprehend the spiritual reasons for the coming of such a man as he on one side, and on the other such a man as Carnegie—for the latter in his way is as important for his generation. To understand more fully the spiritual sources which lead on the one hand to Tolstoy and on the other to Carnegie, we should regard them from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

The spiritual discoverer sees in the progress of humanity something quite different from that seen by the ordinary man. As the Spiritual Scientist sees in the man standing before him a being of four parts—sees in the physical body the instrument of higher spiritual forces, and behind this the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, or ego—so he sees behind what appears as social order in human life as folk or race or family, the spiritual reality. To-day the “spirit of the people” or the “spirit of the times” has no real meaning. What does he think who speaks of an English, German, French or American “spirit of the people”? Truly, as a rule, only the sum-ming up of so many human beings. To the average mind they are the reality, but the spirit of the people is an abstraction.

There is little realisation that that which appears outwardly as so many human beings is the expression of a spiritual reality, exactly as the human body is the expression of an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego. Humanity has lost what it once possessed—the faculty of being able to see such realities. An old friend of mine, a good apostle of Aristotle, tried to make clear to his class how the spirit can be made manifest in the sense-perceptible. By a simple example Knauer—for it was he—made it clear how spirit exists in matter by saying: “Look at a wolf. He eats, we will say, during his whole life nothing but lambs, and then consists of lamb’s material. However, he does not become a lamb. It is not the nature of the food that is significant, but the fact that in the wolf is living something spiritual which builds and holds together its material form. This is the Real—something which must be recognized or else all study of the outer world is vain.

Examine as man may the outward, material world, if he does not probe to the spiritual he does not come to the source of all life. So it is with the terms “spirit of the people” or “spirit of the times.” For the spiritual discoverer, in the development of Christianity there lives the spiritual reality, not simply an abstract condition. For the spiritual discoverer the sum of humanity is not only that which can be observed in the physical world; behind this lives something spiritual. And for him there is a spirituality, not a bare, unsubstantial abstraction, in the development of Christianity. Beside the Christ is the spirit of Christianity, which is real. This spiritual reality works in a wonderful and subtle way, well illustrated by the following. A peasant once lived who divided his crop. One part he used, and the other he saved as seed, which bore a new crop. This is an illustration which leads us to a law ruling human development; and which proceeds in this way. At certain times are born great impulses which must be sown broadcast. A spiritual impulse, as that of Christianity, given at a certain time, then finds its way to the outer world, taking on this or that form; but perhaps as the outer part of a tree dries up and forms the bark, so the form becomes dry and dies away. These outer forms are bound to die out. And be the impulse ever so strong and fruitful, as surely as it penetrates into the outer world it must disappear like the seed that was used.

Now just as the peasant held something back, so must some part of the spiritual impulse remain, as if flowing along underground channels. Suddenly with primal force this reappears, bringing a fresh impetus to the development of mankind. It is then that a personality appears in whom the impulse, which has been ripening for centuries, is manifested. Such individualities always appear in direct contrast to their surroundings. They must be in great contrast because the surrounding world has become hardened. They are usually inclined to disregard their environment entirely. Seen from a spiritual standpoint, Tolstoy is such a personality; one in whom the Christian impulse is manifest.

These things happen in a forceful way, to break through the shell, and exert a far-reaching influence. Their origin appears wholly radical, and their effects illuminate the world. Such is the law which gives us such seemingly one-sided personalities as Tolstoy. On the other hand, we must expect the contrasting personalities who are not connected with the central stream but wholly absorbed within the peripheral working of the world. Such a person is Carnegie.

Carnegie can look out and over the circle, can think out the best way for humanity; but he does not see that which as spirit pulsates through human life. Tolstoy does, because he seeks so earnestly the inner certainty, the Kingdom of God, in the individual soul. He can do so because in him is personified that true stream which is below the surface bearing itself onwards and unconnected with such material things as may be inherited.

We have physical manifestations but the onlooker does not realize the spiritual within them. We have the spiritual that springs with great strength out of the innermost being of a person, but the onlooker does not understand how this can make itself felt in the world. More and more will humanity find these contrasts and, if another spiritual stream did not appear to reflect again the deep, underlying, spiritual sources making them manifest in the material world, we could not follow Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science leads us into the very depths of spiritual life. It not only traces spiritual life in those powerful impulses which do not unite with deed and fact, it also seeks for it in the concrete, and therefore understands how the spiritual flows into the material. It thus bridges the apparent chasm between the spiritual and material, finding in this way the point of view which brings contrasts into harmony.

Today we wish to learn to understand, from a spiritual point of view, two contrasting personal-ities. Spiritual Science is not only called upon to preach outward tolerance, but also to find that inner light which can penetrate with admiration into the soul of one demonstrating the great Im-pulse that emanates from the spiritual consciousness. This to-day seems improbable if not im-possible and on the whole radical, because it crowds into so small a space that which in the future will be spread far and wide, and which will then present a very different aspect. This Anthroposophy can realize. It can look also with objective eyes upon the present, and the personality of Carnegie, and appreciate him. Life is not a one-sided affair. Life is many sided, and can be appreciated in all its richness only when the great contrasts are fully understood. Bad indeed it would be if the various colours and tones could not be seen as parts of an artistic whole.

Human evolution demands the crystalization of one or the other of these opposites, and so it must be; but with this hope, that mankind may not be lost in the midst of life. There must be a central religion, or Welt-Anschauung, which must solve the many complex problems which now appear so full of contradictions. When Anthroposophy works with this aim in view it will evolve full harmony. Outward harmony can only be the reflection of the inner or soul harmony. And when Anthroposophy shall have accomplished this aim, her true place in modern culture, she will have found that which she is seeking to establish. Anthroposophy desires no theoretical proofs, no speculation; her aim is to prove and demonstrate the truth of her statements in life itself. When she will see the light which she has shed upon life reflected back to her in inner harmony in spite of all contradictions, then she will realize the establishment of her fundamental principles.

{This follows immediately after the lecture.}

TOLSTOY AND THE FUTURE

In Rudolf Steiner’s lectures on the Apocalypse of John, given at Nuremberg in June 1908, he spoke in Lecture 7 of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, which follows our own, and took Tolstoy as an example of a man in whom the culture of the future age can already be seen.

These lectures, which are intended to be objective, are far, far removed from any party spirit. But you may compare objectively what is attained as science and philosophy in the European West with what appeared in the East, let us say in Tolstoy. One does not need to be a follower of Tolstoy, but one thing is true; in a book such as Tolstoy’s On Life you may read one page, if you understand how to read it, and compare it with whole libraries in Western Europe. And you may then say the following: In Western Europe one makes spiritual culture with the intellect; one chisels out certain details and puts them together to form something that is supposed to make the world comprehensible, and the achievements of Western Europe civilization in this respect will never be surpassed. But if you understand such a book as Tolstoy’s On Life, you will often find condensed into ten lines what in these Western European libraries it takes thirty volumes to say. Tolstoy says something with elemental force, and in a few lines of his there is the same amount of energy as is assembled in thirty such volumes. Here one must be able to judge what comes forth from the depths of the spirit, what has a spiritual foundation and what has not. Just as over-ripe cultures contain something that is drying up and withering, so do rising cultures contain within them fresh life and new energy. Tolstoy is a premature flower of such a culture, one that came far too soon to be fully developed. Hence he has all the faults of an untimely birth. His grotesque and unfounded presentations of many Western European things, all that he brings forward in the way of foolish judgment, show that great personalities have the faults of their virtues and that great cleverness has the folly of its wisdom.

Public lecture in Vienna, November 22, 1889

Report in the “Chronik des Wiener Goethe-Vereins” of January 20, 1890.

On Friday, November 22, 1889, Mr. Rudolf Steiner opened the series of Goethe evenings with a highly interesting lecture on the “Goethe Archive in Weimar”.

Mr. Steiner is entrusted with the publication of Goethe's scientific writings and had the opportunity to study the Goethe Archive in detail over the summer. He described in detail the natural history collection exhibited in the Goethe House and emphasized the great value of the scientific legacy. From it it would become clear by what route the poet had climbed to the heights of light, and that the master had been a tireless researcher in every field and was considered the spiritual center of the age.

The lecturer started from the idea that we have a twofold task to fulfill in relation to Goethe. One of these is to grasp and appreciate the poet's magnificent appearance in all its aspects, to understand the origin of his writings from his soul life and to put the relationships of his works to each other in the proper light. But this purely historical side of the matter achieves only the lesser part of what we have to achieve in relation to Goethe. The far more important part is to be found in the fact that we, insofar as it is the task of each and every one of us, participate in the further development of our culture in the sense that has been opened up to us by Goethe. The cultural perspective that he has opened up for the future must be ours. We have to follow the lines of thought that find a magnificent beginning in him; we have to approach the questions of science, art, and the state from his point of view. We have to work our way up to that kind of vision through which he gained such penetrating insights, but through which he also found the blissful calm of the truly wise in the face of all the disharmonies of life. And this is the goal of the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar. Whoever enters this classical place will be overcome by a breath of that mighty ethos that emanates from Goethe and spreads through all his works. Those who enter the workshop of Goethe's poetry and thought, who are able to follow in the footsteps of the spirit that led to the heights of his creativity by the hand of the treasures he left behind, will find their inner selves mightily uplifted by the impact of the ideal seriousness and high morality of Goethe's life and world view. He sees how every idea of this genius goes back to spiritual struggles that he has undergone in his inner being, how every conviction he has expressed is the conclusion of a spiritual process that we can follow in very many cases. We can often see from the notes he has jotted down the exact moment when an idea flashes in his mind, which then had a fruitful effect on his work. In particular, Goethe's scientific significance will be more clearly revealed to us through the Weimar publications than has been the case so far. The sheer shallowness that has so far dared to approach Goethe in a judgmental manner will be contemptuously rejected by all educated people, for whom new insights will arise from Weimar's handwritten treasures.

We also have important things to expect from the diaries. They will not only give us precise insights into the poet's external life, but also into the process of his inner development. They will show how he progresses from stage to stage, up to that “spiritual Montserrat” where he feels misunderstood and lonely, but enlightened by the deepest ideas. Goethe kept records not only of his external life, but above all of his inner life.

But the correspondence is also of particular importance. The intellectual life in Germany from 1790 to 1832 appears as a mighty organism, of which Goethe is the soul. He exerts a direct personal influence on the most important contemporaries, and they in turn have an effect on him. This magnificent network of intellectual interests will only become clear through the correspondence.

Above all, the publication of Goethe's scientific writings, diaries and correspondence will be an immortal monument erected by Weimar's high-minded princess. This is proof that in Weimar they know how to promote the legacy of the great German with just as much understanding as they once understood how to create the basis for the man on which he could build his way up to the heights of humanity.

It is thanks to Professor Suphan, the humane and amiable director of the archive, and to Schiller's noble descendants that, just over a year ago, Schiller's estate was also incorporated into the archive. Schiller belongs to Goethe. Through Schiller, the nation was finally opened up to Goethe. His view of the great friend is the ideal of all Goethe research.