The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In this talk, I have connected two significant riddles of the human soul life with each other not by chance, but I hope to show that the enclosing questions of free will and immortality belong intimately together from the spiritual-scientific viewpoint and are considered together best of all. However, it especially strikes just in case of this consideration that a spiritual-scientific discussion must take ways that are somewhat different from those of a usual scientific consideration, simply because another scientific consideration can point mostly to the results that are there immediately. A spiritual-scientific consideration needs to show more exactly on which way the researcher gets to his results; and how it has to be considered as proof of the matter.

You know that one has also dealt and deals with the questions of free will and immortality from the oldest times of human reflection up to now. In the second half of the nineteenth century, one regarded these two questions almost as arisen from a childish viewpoint of human thinking. One has abandoned from doing this in the last time. One has become more careful, but the central issue has not changed. One can say, the philosophical beholders of these questions do not advance further even if they are careful than to a kind of confession that the human methods of thinking are not sufficient to recognise something certain about these questions. I do not want to go further into it, but I would like to consider my topic from that viewpoint which has been asserted in all these talks here. However, I would like to say in advance that, nevertheless, it strikes that not more results with serious application of all human means of thinking, of any astuteness for the usual philosophy than a kind of doubt mania concerning these questions. This does not surprise you especially if you think that the highest revelations of the human being have to emerge from the innermost core of the human being, and that this innermost core has to be searched in the supersensible. Hence, it is not surprising that, before one enters into the spiritual-scientific consideration, just about these questions little explanation can be given. The researchers always experience that they work with inadequate cognitive means. They feel, without realising it clearly, that in the human being a supersensible life is contained that, however, everything that this human being can consider with the help of the usual organism is directed either upon the sensory world or is abstracted from it. Hence, considering the innermost human core you find yourself in a situation that you can compare with that in which the human eye is.

The eye can perceive the things round itself but not itself. Because the eye is an outer sensory apparatus, an outer object, the eye can observe another human being of course, as far as it is a sensory object. However, one thing is clear: you can observe the human eye if you can take this point of view beyond this eye. In a similar position is the beholder of the human self, of the human core. He would have to be beyond the human soul being if he wanted to observe it. There one cannot say that another human being can observe this human soul life because to the other human being the human corporeality appears. It is not sufficient that another directs his attention upon the soul being; it is necessary that the beholder of his own being could really manage to get out of his own being to observe it.

Maybe another comparison can illustrate that which should be in the object of the today's consideration. There is still a possibility to see the human eye: looking at it in the mirror. Then you have the picture of this eye only before yourself. This comparison matches what I want to explain while you have to put yourself in a position by the spiritual-scientific methods which shows that what you experience as a human being in yourself and at yourself first in a picture, and that you put yourself with your real human nature in a position which changes that into a picture what you have, otherwise, as a living reality before yourself.

To observe the own human being, it is necessary to leave the own being. Since even if you want to have the own being as a picture before yourself, you have to stand beyond the picture. You can do this only with those research methods about which I have spoken with all considerations in this winter as of a fundamental tone: while you apply those inner performances to the soul—one calls them “exercises” or as you want—which cause the soul to be brought out of itself, so that it faces itself objectively. In the last talk, I have explained some of these things that the human soul has to do with itself to get to this life in cognition beyond the body. I have shown all that in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?, in the second part of Occult Science. An Outline and in The Riddle of Man.

It concerns that the everyday soul life is strengthened, is “awoken,” that is to a state which relates to the everyday consciousness as this relates to the vague dream consciousness. As you wake from the dream to the full day life, it is possible to wake to a higher consciousness that I have called the “beholding consciousness.”

If you succeed in strengthening the soul life by concentration of thinking, feeling and willing in such a way that you can enter into this beholding consciousness, then you can refrain from everything that, otherwise, the human being perceives with the senses. You have advanced beyond this sense perception. You live in another inner soul being, in the Imaginative consciousness at first. I call it Imaginative consciousness, not because something unreal should be expressed, but because the soul is fulfilled in this consciousness with pictures that are, however, pictures of a reality. The soul knows that the pictures are not real, but are pictures of a reality, and it knows that it is in the real world context that it does not weave these pictures from nothing, from any inspirations, but from inner necessity. Since the soul has put itself in the real world context and does not create pictures from this in such a way, as for example the mere imagination, but so that the pictures have the character of reality.

It is particularly important to consider this first level of spiritual experience exactly, because an error can arise in two directions. On the one hand, one can confuse this Imaginative world with those pictures that arise from a pathological consciousness. However, from my former explanations you have seen how already the spiritual researcher takes every precaution on his way to the spiritual that strictly reject the uncertain life in all kinds of visionary. The vision enters into the soul so that you do not feel involved in its realisation. It appears as a picture, but you cannot take part in the realisation of the picture. Hence, you do not know its origin. The visionary picture comes always only from the organism, and what emerges from the organism is not anything mental-spiritual, maybe it is a cover of anything spiritual-mental. You have exactly to distinguish the whole unaware life in all kinds of visions from that which the spiritual researcher considers as Imaginative consciousness. This consists in the fact that you are completely involved with your thinking going from thought to thought in everything that appears there as pictures. You can only penetrate into the spiritual world if the activity with which you enter it is as conscious as the most conscious life of thought. There is only the difference that the thoughts are shadowy as those and that they are acquired with outer things or emerge from memory anyhow, while the soul weaves the Imagination when it appears.

You have only to cherish that you must not confuse this Imagination with imagination on the other side. What it weaves is also woven from the subconscious; however, this binds itself often to inner laws of the real life. However, the human being is not in that which he weaves in his imagination in such a way that he is aware of his weaving. While forming the figment of the imagination he is left to an inner real necessity. In the Imaginative experience, however, he is left to an objective world necessity. It is very important to know that that which forms the basis of the work of a spiritual researcher appears as an objective factuality in his consciousness that is neither visionary nor is imagination, but that it has to be distinguished as something midway of these two—I would like to say polar—contrasts. In the Imaginative life you are in a similar position, as if you face your sensory being in a mirror. You know: that who stands there is a reality of flesh and blood, but from this reality, nothing transitions into the mirror. In the mirror is only a picture; but this picture is a likeness, and you know its relation to reality.

Now, however, you are in the spiritual-mental world. But you know at the same time that the first thing that faces you is an imagery, an Imaginative world, and you also know that this Imaginative world has a relation to reality, as well as the reflection is related to the human being of flesh and blood.

This Imaginative knowledge is the first level to enter in the spiritual world. That which the soul experiences in the Imaginative knowledge is a certain increase of the usual soul life, because you know at every moment, because you live in the Imaginative consciousness: if you refrain from own activity if you interrupt the consciousness anyhow, the view of the Imaginative also stops at the same time. This gives a special nuance of the consciousness life that the consciousness feels internally strengthened and feels in an activity perpetually going out from itself from which it must not refrain and towards which the consciousness must not flag at no moment. The imagination of the usual everyday consciousness is supported by the outer impressions, can be left to them, and, hence, does not demand from the soul to work as intensely as it must work in the Imaginative consciousness. The Imaginative consciousness is not found in the usual consciousness. This is the first level that the spiritual researcher reaches if he wants to penetrate into the spiritual world.

On the second level, he must attain the ability to become aware not only of the pictures but also of the just described activity that must be never refrained, while one does research Imaginatively. He must develop an increased self-consciousness. However, something particular thereby appears. You succeed, actually, only in grasping the complete significance of the Imaginative knowledge.

Since you can know if you have prepared your soul sufficiently you attain pictures only with the Imaginative consciousness; you face an imagery, not reality. While you advance somewhat further in your spiritual development, while you divert the attention of the soul somewhat from the pictures and turn it more to the own activity, to the increased self-consciousness, you get to something with which the usual day consciousness is less familiarised than with the Imaginative world. You realise that the pictures disappear gradually. What you have evoked at first disappears gradually. However, reality does not disappear. Instead of the pictures, which you have beheld spiritual-mentally at first something appears that manifests itself from the pictures, that “speaks” from them. The pictures are ensouled as it were; they say such a thing as the colours and tones of the outer objects say. While you have only had pictures first, a spiritual-mental reality appears from the pictures and a second level of supersensible consciousness comes into being, the Inspirative consciousness.

This happens if the activity of Imagination is so maintained that by the forces of maintaining the pictures disappear as it were and that which can speak as reality from them really speaks to the human being. There you notice something exceptionally significant, and it matters with all these things that you accomplish every level of spiritual research completely consciously. You realise that the whole imagery was, actually, only the means to penetrate to reality. The visionary describes his pictures. The Imaginatively recognising human being also has pictures; but he describes them only in such a way that they are the means to penetrate to reality. He will not state, in the pictures reality is given, but at most: something is given in the pictures like senses. The senses are also something that leads to reality, but one does not look at it while one looks at reality. One does not look at reality this way, while one looks at the pictures or describes them, but the pictures have to disappear first. As the eye if it were not completely transparent if it were clouded and were itself perceptible could not see any outer reality, spiritual-mental realities can also not appear to the Imaginative pictures, before these pictures have disappeared, have become spiritual eyes and ears. That of which the pictures are only the means is that which is already behind the pictures. What expresses itself by the pictures is spiritual reality.

It is a particular experience again which the consciousness has on this level of knowledge. In the pictures, the consciousness is tensed up; it has to maintain its activity. Now the consciousness has got to an enclosing loneliness in a way just because it concentrates its attention on this maintaining. With its own activity, it gets gradually to an enclosing loneliness. The pictures disappear, Imagination stops. However, to that which speaks by Imagination, the consciousness relates more passively. It recognises that which it adsorbs now as originating from reality. It is put into a position, as if from all sides effects of reality come, but one does not reach reality itself. One is not in reality; one does not face it.

It is important again that you are aware that you have to deal now with experiences not with effects of reality, with reality. The Intuitive consciousness is necessary to get to reality. This level of Intuitive consciousness is different from the usual intuition. Since the Intuition meant here is an inner process, is not a mere feeling or sensation. There it concerns that you still ascend to the third level of consciousness where you are neither as active as with Imagination, nor are in such a way that from all sides the impressions of Inspiration flow in. After already the liveliness of the pictures is erased, that has to be eliminated from the consciousness which is there as impressions from Inspiration. The consciousness must defend itself with a certain increased inner force against Inspiration. It has to get as it were temporarily—but just temporarily—to a state where it loses itself in that by which it was inspired. It has to put itself in the position to eradicate itself as it were, to submerge in the Inspirative to emerge again in such a way that now it only knows that that which has appeared by Inspiration is spiritual reality. You have to grasp that which you bring up as inner experience different from that which you have brought down when you have submerged in Inspiration. Only that which one has brought up from Inspiration gives the full consciousness of the reality of the Inspirative, and nothing can be considered as spiritual reality that has not entered into the Intuitive consciousness through those three levels. Then only this Intuitive consciousness works after the soul has lost itself in Inspiration. As the human being becomes lost in sleep in the evening to appear again in the morning from sleep, the consciousness becomes lost in the Inspirative, but it keeps the force to ascend again, and brings that with it, which it has experienced, in the Intuition.

In the interaction of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition everything is contained that is experience or knowledge of the spiritual world. Everything that I have developed in these talks here has originated, while I have really applied the methods, which are totally unknown to most people today. Since most people generally know nothing about these methods, by which one really recognises the spiritual that lives in the surroundings of our mind, as the sensory lives in the surroundings of our senses. However, if you can penetrate into this spiritual world with Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, you find the spiritual being of the human being in it, too. Only then, you find the innermost core, which lives in the human being, which the human being is, and which only manifests itself with the outer physical organisation, if you face yourself if you have left your body. Then you can really recognise your innermost being in such a way that it manifests itself only in pictures, in Imaginations. Now the outer body in which you have been becomes an Imagination of the supersensible. You get to know the human being as we consider him today, while he gives cause to the important questions of free will and immortality.

In 1894, I tried to cope with the riddle of free will in my book The Philosophy of Freedom. At that time, I tried to speak wholly philosophically, so that all those can read this book who regard spiritual science as folly. I tried to answer the question of free will starting from most obvious observations, and I was urged to do what mostly is not done if the free will is considered philosophically: I dedicated the complete first part of the book to an immediate, unbiased consideration of the human thinking itself, not of the thoughts. I intended to ask once, how does it appear if the human being realises, what is active in my soul, while I am thinking? I asked, how does the activity of thinking appear to the human being?

Although I did not take appropriate action in this book, because the matter should be shown truthfully, I was already urged at that time to point to the fact that this experienced thinking is strictly speaking something that is experienced internally and shifts for itself so that it cannot be compared with the remaining soul life that is bound to the human organisation. Since the spiritual scientist is aware absolutely that he completely stands on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. Someone who investigates the human soul life as it is in the usual consciousness between birth and death realises that this soul life is dependent on the human organisation. However, someone who goes to his work conscientiously and unprejudiced finds that, indeed, everything is dependent on the human organisation but not the real thinking. In the thinking, the human being can lift himself out of his organisation. This is based on the fact that the human being does not have that only in his organisation which is progressive evolution. I have explained during the last months that the whole matter is considered unilaterally by such a view and that one has brought in with it all wrong viewpoints to the scientific thinking. One has to look also at a retrograde evolution, at a devolution. The human organism is really a miraculous construction; it is not only in a certain ascending development; rather the human nature takes up a retrograde development in itself, and the strongest retrograde development is in the senses, in the head.

It would be very tempting to point to everything that could be stated by the today's science for the fact that the human organisation shows a progressive development that, however, this development abstains, and that in the head a retrograde development exists. This expresses itself approximately by the fact that the head is the most ossified part of the human being that shows the biggest involution of the sprouting life. The head thereby is just the organ of the usual consciousness because in it the development does not progress but is withdrawn. The nervous activity of the head, generally the whole activity of the head and the senses is based on the fact that the human being is mineralised in this area; he deteriorates, it is a slow dying. Look once at the human being, how he faces you in abounding, progressive life and how he takes up that descending life in his organisation; thus this destruction creates space, and while it creates space, his mental-spiritual can take place. The human being does not think because the forces of growth are active in the head and in the whole mental organisation generally, no, he thinks because these forces disappear and make way for that which replaces that now which causes unconsciousness of the remaining organism in the flowing, surging blood. One realises once that the human being develops his free thinking because he does not straight continue the development in the head, but that the development must become retrograde to unfold thinking. Then one will understand the connection of the human organisation and thinking. One will understand how thinking intervenes in the organisation, that, however, the human organisation must be decomposed first, so that it can intervene.

I know that I have to be contradictory to that what the naturalists say today; but I know that somebody who considers that properly which the naturalists have discovered will find confirmation of that in physiology and biology what I can only indicate now. Because it is in such a way, the human being is in that peculiar relation to his thinking that, indeed, it is observed, but cannot be seen according to its own inner being if one does not consider what I have explained now.

If the human being abandons himself to his mental pictures, you can pursue exactly how a mental picture associates with the another. One can pursue how this is dependent on the organism. The psychologists call it association of mental pictures. One can let this association of mental pictures to the naturalists to investigate them, because it really turns out as that where the organism has a say. However, the human being also knows that often in life moments have to take place where he does not let the association take its course. Since there would never be a logical control of thinking if one had to follow the association blindly. One knows, it is something different how the mental pictures emerge and associate with each other and something different to control them logically, so that they become “right.” You only need to read one of the most popular manuals about this field, then you realise that the human beings are already aware how something intervenes in the natural course of the mental pictures that does not belong to the organism. What intervenes there is that what can only be there in the human being if the organism withdraws with its functions first if it adds the retrograde evolution to the progressive evolution.

I refer there to a chapter that is also taboo today; but it will not last very long, until an inner necessity leads the human beings to this. You need only to remember the important speech that during the seventies of the last century the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond held about the “borders of the knowledge of nature” in which he spoke about the “world riddles.” Du Bois-Reymond was inclined in a certain respect to consider carefully not to be completely immersed in materialism. He put up two such limits of knowledge: consciousness and matter. He said rightly, in the material life the same happens which happens in the brain. Atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon move according to certain principles; however, the soul becomes aware of this, and one cannot derive the simplest sensations that appear in the consciousness from the movements of the atoms, one also cannot derive any coherence of the movements of the atoms and the sensations. Then he says, and this is important: if one knew what is there where matter haunts in space, one would also know maybe how matter thinks. Indeed, he does not know what it is about which he thinks that it “haunts” there in space. In a certain respect, he is right, but he also is right with that what he means for his science as “limits.” Since one develops mental pictures, sensations, thoughts with the usual consciousness. However, all that is, actually, rather far from the processes in the material life. That is why Du Bois-Reymond could just point to the following: one does not know what haunts as matter in space; if one knew this, one could also find out what as spiritual life is associated with a material process. In some sense, he is right, although his way of thinking is quite materialistic: the fact that one is far away with the usual thinking from the processes of the spiritual life. One does not figure them out, these are more shadowy things, and one does not penetrate into the processes.

When you descend into the Imaginative consciousness, you get also closer to the material processes—namely at first to those of the own body. Then you are no longer far from them as, otherwise, with the usual shadowy mental pictures. The usual consciousness has no means to say how mental pictures and thoughts relate to the processes in the brain. Hypotheses about hypotheses have been put up; but nowhere anything appeared that would have really satisfied, apart from certain anatomical-physiological investigations, which, however, are also far away from the true being of the things. However, while you move into another consciousness, you have to get closer to the usual imagining.

There you get to that which sounds paradoxical to many people today, which is only experienced with the Imaginative consciousness. Someone who can experience thinking who can look with the beholding consciousness at that which proceeds, actually, in the thinking gets closer also to the material processes He is forced, actually, to a kind of materialism, but it is only a kind of materialism that finds the spirit in the matter. He learns to recognise that that which underlies the material process in the brain is a sensation of hunger living in the brain, which is not spread out, however, about the whole body. Thereby he discovers the destruction, the retrograde development. This appears as hunger, and the counter-image of hunger in the soul is thinking and imagining.

It concerns that a quite normal process of our organism causes this devolution so that we are always in a partial hunger during our whole awake life, and we owe our consciousness to this hunger. As we become aware of our hunger if the stomach rumbles, we are aware of our thinking by the fact that the head starves.

Something appears there that can be a kind of historic evidence of that which I have just said. You know that certain ascetics who follow no spiritual-scientific path but a wrong one also starve to get to the spiritual life. This abnormal starving induces the people to be more aware of that which goes forward in them. This evokes a stronger self-consciousness and a stronger spiritual experience in abnormal way. This instinct of having spiritual experiences by hunger experiences is based on the exaggeration of the facts that the normal consciousness and its imagining and thinking are based on a sensation of hunger of the head. As said, if one discovers this, one gets on that this retrograde process exists that really destruction forms the basis, and the thinking is not based on a progressive development, but forces back the organic life and replaces it. If one figures this out once if one really penetrates to the self-knowledge and grasps the human being in such a way that one can say: what appears in it, you have to owe to the sensation of hunger in the human organism,—if you penetrate to the concrete this way, you notice—strange to say—that thinking is an unaware Inspiration in the human being.

This thinking with its effects approaches the human being while he can control the mere associations of mental pictures as something outer because an unaware inspiration approaches him. The spiritual researcher penetrates into the activity of thinking that appears when the organism regresses, and he recognises, you are concerned with an Inspiration. If one investigates what forms the basis of this Inspiration, that is one submerges in the Inspiration and emerges again, then this is the way to discover the spiritual-mental being of the human being before birth or conception to discover what has combined with that what descends in the line of heredity from the ancestors. You get to that which embodies itself at conception; which is the spiritual-mental past of the human being compared with his presence in the body. One gets to an immediate view of the everlasting in the human being.

If you penetrate up to Intuition in this area, you even get to the view of that which as a former life on earth forms the basis of the present one. Talking about repeated lives on earth is based not on speculative fiction but on careful research that prepares the soul first to behold what goes forward in the soul phenomena.

If we try to grasp the thinking free of sensuousness in Imaginative knowledge, which disappears, however, because this thinking itself is an Inspiration, we get to know: the human being was, before he has taken the earthly body, in a spiritual world into which he entered from the previous life on earth. One gets to know what is beyond conception and is everlasting. While one is able to behold the thinking as that which destructs what comes just from father and mother what requires just devolution, one gets to know how the life in the body is the result of the everlasting in the human being. Another view is to be added to that view, which was usual even if only in religious ideas, and it will not only ask: what happens with the human being after death? However, it will add the other question: from which state of the spiritual-mental life does the human being come, while he lives here on earth? The question of immortality will be much more important in future because one recognises that life is to be understood here as a continuation of something spiritual-mental. The first that one discovers as an unaware Inspiration is thinking which is based on the retrograde development.

Something else confronts the retrograde evolution in the human organisation. As everything that I have characterised now is based on devolution which withdraws the evolution, everything that is connected with the development of the human limbs—hands and feet and everything that is a continuation of the extremities inwards, it is a lot—, is another extreme in the human being and his organism. Since that which forms the basis of the human extremities suffers no devolution; but it shows the peculiarity that it exceeds the measure of the evolution of the organism—with the exception of the head. The extremities are overdeveloped; they exceed the point up to which the head and the rest of the organism go. As the remaining organism degrades, the extremities develop a kind of inertia; they overshoot the usual measure.

That which is connected physiologically with the evolution of the human extremities represents an over-development. This knowledge results concerning the human organisation that is connected with the wonderful construction of the extremities that one can only cope with it if one ascends to the Imaginative knowledge. Not until one does no longer consider the extremities in such a way as the outer physiology can consider them, but if one gets to the spiritual subsoil of the extremities, one discovers that also there something spiritual is contained. However, as that which is in the thinking already announces itself as a rudimentary Inspiration, it is with the extremities. But here that which causes over-development can be grasped only pictorially; it can be viewed only this way. Of course, one does not need to stop with this knowledge at the picture, but one takes the picture and tries to figure it out. There is the true reality only. One penetrates from the picture to the corresponding Inspiration and Intuition. What do you discover there? You discover what exists as an unaware Imagination in every human soul what, however, represents the essential if you grasp its being with Inspiration and Intuition what goes into the spiritual world if the human being passes the gate of death. There is the spiritual part of our future. These seeds are the breeding ground of that what we need after death. That is why over-development is there because, otherwise, the development would stop at death. This is the reason of over-development that one needs to have a spiritual-mental organisation after death.

The human being is removed, actually, from Imagination. Hence, that appears what I have now described for the human organisation in the usual consciousness in such a way that the Inspirative thinking—and every true thinking is Inspirative—remains a riddle. One can explain it only as I have explained it today. One does not at all investigate that in philosophy but one accepts it. One writes books on logic, which arrange the ascending, not-binding thinking. However, one does not find out where from the soul has it that it unfolds logic. One gets to that only if one recognises that the soul was in the spiritual world and has brought the guideline of thinking from there, and that our logic is not at all developed in the present. All these contents originate from the existence before birth or conception; they have not passed. We live the everlasting life; we have not come off the everlasting life. This inspires us if we soar the thinking exceeding the mere imagining. This is a proof, but one does not figure the facts out. Hence, one gets to riddles in this area but not to answers.

In the Inspiration, the human being gets already somewhat closer to the matter because he approaches it with feeling. Subconsciously he has the Imagination that is shown in relation to the extremities. Hence, the philosophers also talk a little about the antenatal life because it can only recognised in a higher area, which less enters into the usual consciousness. The thinking that is closest to the Imaginative emerges vaguely. Hence, one talks much easier and much more usually about that which remains as immortality, but avoids the forces that inspire in the soul, and also the forces that we find Imaginatively, so that the pictures transition into the spiritual world and from the pictures the preparation of the next life on earth is accomplished. We go into the spiritual world with the pictures. That which we bring in there shows our future in a way.

The kind of knowledge about which I have spoken which ascends through Imagination and Inspiration to Intuition makes it possible to survey the human life vividly, to penetrate thereby, however, into the reality of this life. However, something strange appears if you experience everything that belongs to the antenatal and the postmortal life: while you come off the own corporeality, while the own corporeality becomes pictorial, the self-experience of the ego scatters. It is a dangerous moment for the knowledge where the usual ego scatters. You are scattered to the four winds as it were, you feel being without consciousness.

This feeling is a significant knowledge. One notices that that which one has left behind was the basis of the usual ego. The physical organisation is the basis of the ego, which the human being calls his “ego” in the usual life. This ego begins with conception, with birth; later the consciousness of it begins. This ego is bound to the organism; one cannot find it if one leaves the organism. However, one experiences this ego as self-contained. It would be dreadful if the human being experienced that as his ego, which the spiritual researcher experiences as the scattering ego when he has left his body. How does one experience this ego? One experiences that it just has submerged; since if it has not submerged in the physical body, the human being sleeps; then the ego has left the body and he does not experience it. One experiences it in the body, namely in that part of the human organisation which is not the deteriorating head organisation and not the organisation of limbs exceeding the normal development; but it is stimulated in the remaining part of the human organisation by the activities of lungs and heart. It is stimulated by the fact that the human being is in his organism.

What is this ego that scatters, otherwise? This ego becomes conscious because it submerges in the organism. The spiritual researcher recognises it as an unaware Intuition. This is the Intuition which is attained, while the true ego which does not at all appear submerges in the organisation, namely in the middle organisation of the human being. The consciousness of the ego is based on unaware Intuition. Hence, you can often hear speaking of “intuition,” but much less of Imagination and Inspiration. However, just of this highest which appears as a process of spiritual research taking place except the body a vague consciousness exists. This self-consciousness ascends from the organisation. Unconscious Imaginations go from the thinking that is free of sensuousness to that part of the human being, which is embedded in the part of extremities, and go from there to the future. That which lives in the present self-consciousness scatters. It gets free from scattering in future. One realises this just if one pursues the matter further. Since now one has something threefold in the human nature, namely the three members of the human everlasting nature: the past, being before the earth embodiment, which settles in the unaware Inspiration of the organism; then that which is experienced during the life on earth in the unaware Intuition; and thirdly that which is anticipated as nature of the human being in the Imagination after death. These are three members of the human being, and they always co-operate in him. In truth, the human being is not the simple monad-like being, but three egos co-operate in the human being: the Inspirative one that lives in our thinking that is carried over from the spiritual world and from the preceding life on earth; the Intuitive ego that lives in the present corporeality; and the Imaginative one that is carried over to the spiritual world after death.

Now that action, the act of volition, can appear which is connected internally with the organisation of the limbs. It can appear in such a way that it follows from the organisation. Ascribing free will to the trivial life, to the instinctual life would be nonsense. Hence, I made a point asking in the Philosophy of Freedom: which actions are free? Since one discovers that those actions originating from the associations of mental pictures are not yet free. The human being is free concerning some actions, but not concerning other actions. The free element of the action develops only from the human being, that is only those actions are free which originate from the thinking, which is free of sensuousness, from the Intuitive thinking. There the human being has to develop something to launch such actions, which lead him out of himself. Since the thinking that is free of sensuousness does not originate from the organisation of the organism, but it is based on destruction. What originates from the desires and instincts comes from the organisation. The human being has to leave himself, even if unconsciously.

However, in what way does he leave himself already in the usual consciousness? If he does actions, in which he is less involved with his desires and instincts while he has the free thought: “it must happen,” and, nevertheless, only feels as tool of the events. Someone who can really check the human life finds that such actions position themselves in life as we face a person whom we love. If we love him really, we take him as he is, we look at him, exceed ourselves. Actions that have love as the innermost impulse are free actions if this love is carried by the insight that is based on the Intuitive thinking. Twenty-five years ago, I have shown this in the Philosophy of Freedom from observations, today I show it from the spiritual-scientific standpoint. Therefore, we have the triad of a free action: free Intuitive thinking, love, and action. However, it must emerge in the usual consciousness. That which I have described now has to form its basis as it were.

However, the human being who acts freely is not yet a clairvoyant; he has not yet attained the beholding consciousness. As the spiritual life enters in poets and artists, it enters in him by the moral imagination as I have called it in my book. If you beheld the spiritual counter-image of the moral imagination in the spiritual world, you would have Imaginations. Since the moral impulses do not live in us. You feel the reflection of it in your conscience; the reflection of it in the consciousness is the moral imagination that has the moral impulses. Spiritual-scientifically, one says, the moral impulses not only are in us, but they are taken from the spiritual world; but they come into our consciousness as moral imagination. That forms the basis of the free will.

We look once again at that which is expressed in the higher organisation of the limbs. This is not for the life, which leads to death; it contains the impulses that become significant after death. They exist, live in the human being, do something that is significant after the usual life; they are not founded in the organism. Since the organism must exceed its measure of organisation, while it wants to produce this. There it causes something in the human being that has nothing to do with an only scientific necessity, because this scientific necessity looks at the human being only between birth and death. However, if that appears which works, indeed, here, but receives its full reality only after death, and then it is the “future ego” if I may so express myself. What does this future ego grasp? I said: the free thinking. The past ego that the human being brings in at his incarnation, which inspires his soul life, accomplishes that we have free thinking which is free from mere imagining which also provides the impulses of moral actions.

However, this would remain passive. Nevertheless, this must be seized by lively impulses. They are from the future ego. In every free action, the immortal nature of the human being acts out. Since into the present ego, which lives by the body, which receives its significance in future, only by that which prepares itself by the spiritual-mental the future ego works with all impulses, all active forces which seize the free thinking of the past ego. In the present human being, the immortal human being works in harmony with the future human being. That is why the human being is a free being.

One has only to find out that the immortal nature of the human being is in the free action to realise that natural sciences are completely right if they do not speak about free actions; since they do not consider—it is not their task—the immortal nature of the human being. However, before one does not realise this immortal being, one cannot penetrate to that which emerges from the subconscious depths and manifests itself in moral actions.

The human will is not free in its desires, but the development of freedom is contained in it. The human being is a being that gets free more and more. The more that unfolds in him which lives as an everlasting essence in him, the more he gains freedom. We are free with that part of our being with which we are immortal.

This is the way how this can be found what concerns free will and immortality and what natural sciences can never find; they will remain the more good natural sciences, the less they arrogate to intervene in these areas. However, that remains science, which intervenes in the spirit and in the spiritual life this way.

The humanity of former centuries and millennia that had another soul life did not yet need this science. However, today we approach the time more and more where full awareness of that must arise what forms the basis of the human life. The human being needs that more and more what the science of the supersensible life can give him. I have often explained: only the spiritual researcher is able to penetrate into the supersensible life; but check what he says with your usual consciousness, and you can accept it even if you yourself are no spiritual researcher, although everybody can become one today. If the spiritual researcher presents his results to the usual consciousness, you can understand them with the usual consciousness. Indeed, many things lead away from spiritual research, and someone who possibly believes that the spiritual researcher is allowed to have the slightest predisposition of speculative fiction is very wrong. Someone who thinks there that it is easy to penetrate into the spiritual world and that against it the usual research is difficult in medical centres and laboratories has no idea of the real relations. Strictly speaking, all efforts of the outer science are minor compared to that which forms the basis of the research in the areas described today.

However, it is also necessary that you notice that that people often believe to be unbiased, and, nevertheless, are biased. I have to remember if I see repeatedly that philosophers treat the questions discussed today in such a way that they say, the human being consists of body and soul. You know that one does not manage with the consideration of the human being if one does not divide him in body, soul, and mind. Only spiritual science does this today. Where from does it result that the philosophers do not speak of body, soul, and mind today? They believe to do research without presuppositions, but they follow the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869 (Fourth Council of Constantinople). They do not know that it corresponds to the dogma put up at that time that the human being must be considered not as tripartite, but that one is allowed only to talk of body and soul while the latter may have some spiritual qualities. What was through the whole Middle Ages a true horror has continued into modern times; and if today Wundt speaks about body and soul, he believes to be unbiased, in truth he obeys the guideline of the Eighth Ecumenical Council only. Thus, the human beings are under the impressions of the unconscious. However, the today's humanity is not “trusting in authority,” and, therefore, it does not mind whether these authorities attain their assertions from such subsoil, or do unbiased science. That is one point that the observer realises.

The other point is that inner power is necessary to ascend to Imagination to keep the reinforced consciousness in such a way that it does not get perpetually lost. You must not believe that you come to speculative fiction straight away if you do not progress in the apron strings of the outer reality with your experience if one dares from an inner necessity to stand in the new experience. People lack this inner courage, but spiritual research could easier penetrate. Faintheartedness and the fear of loneliness are in the subconsciousness. Those who have this faintheartedness and this fear call spiritual research a pipe dream and believe that they could disprove spiritual research with their reasons.

If you check their reasons, you find unaware faintheartedness, unaware fear, and timidity, which are blind to themselves and want to daze themselves about the reasons they bring forward against spiritual research. However, every spiritual researcher knows that that who settles in spiritual science can get to an understanding of the things. Truth finds its way—as a spirited German thinker said—through the human development even through the narrowest scratches and rock crevices; it finds the way to humanity. Humanity will recognise that it is a supersensible being and needs supersensible knowledge more and more to the true self-knowledge, but also to the real practical life. That is why one is allowed to call attention to that prevailing power of truth and to this always-living impulse if one brings forward such paradoxical ideas of spiritual science if one does not regard the misunderstandings. This induces me to say, not as a phrase, but as a deadly serious conviction: May details be still imperfect, as they are investigated today; the impulse of truth lives in that which should flow from spiritual-scientific research. Someone who is in it feels that. Therefore, he says it, not as a phrase, but as an expression of a life connected with the spirit: in spite of it all—truth will also be victorious in this field.

This is the 7th of 10 lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin between 24 January and 20 April, 1918. (No. 67 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961). The title of this series of lectures is: The Eternal in the Human Soul, Immortality and Freedom. They were published in German as: Das Ewig in der Menschenseele. Unsterblichkeit und Freheit.

Everyone who is to some extent eager for knowledge and has realised how useful a true understanding of reality can be to human life desires to familiarise himself with the content of Spiritual Science as presented here. On the other hand, its methods for the attainment of knowledge are often irksome, because Spiritual Science is bound to show that the ordinary faculties of cognition—including those applied in orthodox science—cannot lead deeply into the spiritual life; and to be obliged to turn to different sources of knowledge is not an easy matter. True, if the study of Spiritual Science is free from preconceived notions and ideas, it will become more and more evident that ordinary, healthy human reason—provided it really gets to grips with life—is capable of grasping what Spiritual Science has to offer. But people are not willing, above all in the case of Spiritual Science, to apply this healthy human reason and ordinary knowledge of life, because they do not want to turn to something that can be achieved only through actual development of the soul. Although the facts presented by Spiritual Science can be investigated only by the methods to be described here, once the facts have been investigated they can be grasped by healthy human reason and ordinary experience. But because a certain mental laziness makes people hesitate to penetrate into Spiritual Science, even those who at the present time have an urge to know something about it prefer to turn to sources more in line with the methods applied in the laboratories, dissection-rooms and other institutions of modern science. And so in order to acquire a certain insight into the spiritual life, people who cannot bring themselves to approach Spiritual Science itself often prefer to concern themselves with abnormal phenomena of human life to be observed in the outer world of the senses. These people believe that the study of certain abnormal phenomena will elucidate certain riddles of existence. That is why Spiritual Science is so repeatedly and so mistakenly associated with endeavours to gain knowledge of spiritual reality by investigating all kinds of abnormal, borderline regions of human life.¹

For this reason I must also speak of borderline regions which through their very abnormality point to certain secrets of existence but can only really be understood through Spiritual Science and without it are bound to lead to countless fallacies about the true nature of spiritual life. The vast range, the interest and enigmatic character of the borderline region of which I shall speak is to some extent known to everyone, for it points to certain connections between external life and its hidden foundations. I am referring to man's life of dream. Starting from this life of dream it will be necessary also to consider other borderline regions of existence whose phenomena, if experienced in an abnormal way, might induce the belief that they lead a man to the foundations of life. I shall therefore also speak of the phenomena of hallucination, of visionary life and of somnambulism and mediumship, as far as this is possible in the framework of a single lecture.

Anyone who would have these borderline regions of human life explained in the light of Spiritual Science must bear in mind those essentials of genuine spiritual investigation through which they can be elucidated. From the range of what has been described in previous lectures I want therefore to select certain matters which will provide a basis for study of the phenomena in question. Spiritual Science must depend upon development of forces of the human soul which lie hidden in the everyday consciousness and also in the consciousness with which ordinary science works. As I have indicated, through certain exercises, certain procedures carried out purely in the life of soul and having nothing whatever to do with anything of a bodily nature, the human soul is able to evoke powers otherwise slumbering within it and so to gain insight into the true spiritual life. I must now briefly describe the essential preliminaries which enable the soul to make itself independent of the bodily element in acts of super-sensible cognition.

I have said in previous lectures that the attitude to be adopted to spiritual reality must differ from that adopted to external physical reality. Above all it must be remembered that what is experienced in the spiritual world by the soul when free from the body, cannot, like an ordinary mental picture, pass over into the memory in the actual form in which it is experienced. Whatever is experienced in the spiritual world must be experienced each time anew, just as an outer, physical reality must be confronted anew when it is actually in front of us and not merely remembered. Anyone who believes he can have genuine spiritual experience in the form of mental pictures which he can remember just as he remembers those arising in everyday life, does not know the spiritual in its reality. When, as is possible, a man subsequently recollects spiritual experiences, this is due to the capacity to bring such experiences into his ordinary consciousness, just as in,the case of perceptions of some outer, physical reality. Then the pictures can be recollected. But he must learn to distinguish between this recollection of mental pictures formed by himself and a direct experience of a spiritual happening, a direct encounter with a spiritual being. A special characteristic of body-free experience, therefore, is that it does not immediately penetrate into the memory.

Another characteristic is that when, in other circumstances, a man practises in order to be able to achieve something, the exercises enable him to do this more easily and with greater skill. In the domain of spiritual knowledge, strangely enough, the opposite is the case. The oftener a man has a certain spiritual experience, the more difficult it is for the soul to induce in itself the condition where this same spiritual experience is again possible. It is therefore also necessary to know the methods by which a spiritual experience can again become accessible, because it does not allow itself to be repeated in the same way.

The third characteristic is that genuine spiritual experiences pass so rapidly before the soul that alert presence of mind is required to capture them. Otherwise a happening passes so quickly that it has already gone by the time attention is directed to it. A man must learn to be master of situations in life where it is impossible to procrastinate and reflect upon what decision to take, but where decision must be rapid and sure. This alert presence of mind is essential if spiritual experiences are to be held in the field of attention. I mention these characteristics of spiritual experience because they at once show the great difference between an experience in the spiritual world and an experience in the outer, physical world of the senses and how little justification there is for people who know nothing to insist that the spiritual investigator simply brings ideas and concepts acquired from the outer world of the senses as reminiscences into some kind of imaginary spiritual world. Anyone who really knows something about the characteristics of the spiritual world, knows too that it differs so entirely from the world of the senses that nothing can be imported into it from the latter, but that the development of special faculties is essential before the spirit can confront spiritual reality.

Certain other conditions must also be fulfilled by one who wishes to be capable of genuine spiritual investigation. The first condition is that the soul must be immune as far as possible from inner passivity. A man who likes to give himself up dreamily to life, to make himself ‘passive’, as the saying goes, in order that in a dreamlike, mystical state the revelations of spiritual reality may flow into him—such a man is ill-adapted to penetrate into the spiritual world. For it must be emphasised that in the realm of true spiritual life the Lord does not give to his own in sleep! On the contrary, what makes a man fit to penetrate into the spiritual world is vigour and activity of mind, zeal in following trains of thoughts, in establishing connections between thoughts seemingly remote from each other, quickness in grasping chains of ideas, a certain love of inner, spiritual activity. This quality is indispensable for genuine spiritual investigation. Mediumistic tendencies and a talent for genuine spiritual knowledge are as different as night from day.

Another condition is that in his life of soul a genuine spiritual investigator must to the greatest possible extent be proof against suggestion, against allowing himself to be influenced by suggestion; he must confront the things of external life too with a discriminating, sceptical attitude of mind. A person who prefers to be told by others what he ought to do, who is glad not to have to arrange his life according to his own independent judgment and decisions, is not very suitable for spiritual investigation. Anyone who knows how great a role is played by suggestion in normal everyday life, also realises how difficult it is to combat the general tendency to succumb to it. Think only to what extent, in public life particularly, people allow things to be suggested to them, how few efforts they make to create in their own souls the conditions for independence of judgment and for governing their affairs by their own will. Those who study the findings of spiritual research because their healthy intelligence makes them desire relationship with the spiritual world are very often accused of blind belief in the investigator. But the fact is that blindly credulous adherents are anything but welcome to an investigator who tries to penetrate with conscious vision into the spiritual world. A society composed of credulous followers would be the caricature of a society suitable for the cultivation of spiritual knowledge. The genuine spiritual investigator will find, to his joy, that sooner or later those who come close to him develop independence of judgment and a certain inner freedom also in regard to himself, that they do not adhere to him blindly, under the influence of suggestion, but because of common interest in the spiritual world.

I shall speak now of yet another characteristic which can elucidate the relation of spiritual reality to physical reality and the attitude to be adopted by the human soul to the spiritual world. It is very often said that the spiritual investigator takes with him from the physical world of sense preconceived ideas which he then uses to describe some imagined spiritual world. But as I have already said, genuine experience of the spiritual world takes a different form each time. We may be quite sure that what we experience in the spiritual world always proves to be different from anything we previously believed. For this reason it is clear that the spiritual world can be reached only when the soul has been made fit for the experience of it. There is no question of carrying reminiscences of the physical world into an imaginary world. But there is something else which—paradoxical as it seems—will be confirmed by decades of experience of the things of the spiritual world. It is that however highly trained a person may be in body-free cognition, however well practised in seeing into the spiritual world, when he contemplates a particular being or happening—especially a happening which indicates a relationship between the spiritual world and outer, physical reality—he will very often find that his first experience is false. Hence the spiritual investigator acquires the caution which leads him to anticipate that the first experience will be misleading. Then, as he perseveres, it becomes evident to him why he was on the false track, and by comparing what is subsequently correct with what was formerly fallacy, he finally recognises the truth of the matter in question. As a rule, therefore, a genuine spiritual investigator will not communicate his findings to his fellow-men until a long time has elapsed since particular researches were made, because he knows that above all in the realm of the spiritual life, delusion and error have to be encountered and overcome in order finally to recognise the truth. This delusion and error are due to the fact that in investigating the spiritual life we take our start from the material world; we bring our powers of judgment, our mode of perception, from the material world into the spiritual world. At first we are always inclined to apply what we have thus carried into the spiritual world—hence the erroneous conclusions. But the very fact of having to realise each time anew how different the attitude adopted to spiritual things must be from that adopted to physical things, enables us for the first time to perceive the intimate characteristics of spiritual experience. It certainly seems paradoxical as compared with ordinary, everyday experience. But one who is able to look into the spiritual world knows, firstly, that the eternal, immortal essence of the human soul cannot come to conscious expression in the ordinary experiences connected with the body; the immortal essence of the soul is concealed, because here, in physical life, through his bodily constitution, a man can acquire knowledge of the physical only. That is why it is so necessary for the spiritual investigator to emphasise unambiguously that knowledge of the spiritual is acquired outside the body. The moment the body is in any way involved in the acquisition of such knowledge, this knowledge is falsified, even when remembrance—which is preserved in the body—plays a part.

Another outcome of a real grasp of the spiritual life is the knowledge that a man expels himself from the spiritual world to which the eternal core of the human soul belongs, when he surrenders his free will in any way and under the sway of coercion or suggestion allows what is in his soul to come to expression through his body in actions or even only through speech—that is to say, when anything that comes to expression through his body has not been mediated through the will. One fundamental condition for experiencing the spiritual world, therefore, is to recognise that the bodily functions must play no part in this knowledge. The other fundamental condition is that a man must make every effort to ensure that whatever he accomplishes through his body is the outcome of his own power of judgment, of the free resolve of his own will.

I was obliged to speak first of these conditions because they provide the basis for studying the abnormal provinces of the life of soul which we shall be considering. In true spirit-knowledge, what otherwise remains unconscious is revealed and this revelation sheds light upon the eternal, essentially free, core of being in the human soul. It is therefore possible to compare what is thus revealed with abnormal manifestations of the life of soul. The upsurging and ebbing world of dream which beats against human consciousness rather than actually passing into it, cannot really be counted among these abnormal manifestations. The world of dream has become the subject of much scientific and philosophical research, although it cannot be said that the methods applied with such brilliance in natural science are particularly suited to penetrate into the real nature of this borderline province of human life. The same may be said of the contention that thinking must be in strict keeping with that of natural science and surrender completely to the conceptions arising from it. Although, understandably enough, modern people claim to be free from any tendency to believe in authority, they are very inclined, under certain conditions, to do so. Whenever somebody who is publicly reputed to be a great thinker produces a bulky volume dealing with the investigation of abnormal psychic phenomena, numbers of people who really do not understand much about the subject, praise the book to the skies, and then, as a matter of course, our contemporaries, while disclaiming belief in authority, accept it as a reliable basis.

Among philosophical treatises on the life of dream, I want to refer particularly to a book on dream-phantasy by Johannes Volkelt, a German scholar of brilliant intelligence and at present Professor of Philosophy and Education at Leipzig University. He wrote the book in 1875, before he had reached professorial status. Even today this really valuable book is still held against him and is doubtless responsible for the fact that he is still only an Assistant Professor. Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the very significant Swabian aestheticist, wrote a fine treatise about Volkelt's book. But academic prejudices, which during recent decades have led to a definite view of what is or is not ‘scientific’, are to blame for the fact that what might have been inaugurated, even if only meagrely, by that book, lies fallow and is obscured by current prejudices which prevent any real penetration into the life of dream.

In the framework of one short lecture I can give little more than a sketch, but I want for all that to speak of particular points in such a way that they can be illumined by Spiritual Science.

Everyone is familiar with the external characteristics of the upsurging and ebbing life of pictures arising in dreams. I shall speak of a few of these characteristics only. The dream arises as the result of some definite instigation. Firstly, there are dreams which have been instigated by the senses. A dream may arise because a clock is ticking away beside us. In certain circumstances the pendulum-beats become the trampling of horses, or perhaps something else. Certain sense-images, therefore, are found in the dream. I lay particular stress on this, for dream-experience bases itself upon numerous impressions received by the outer senses. But what works upon the outer senses never works in the dream in the same form as in the ordinary waking life of day. The sense-impression is always transformed into symbolism—a transformation that is actually brought about by the life of soul.

Such dreams occur very frequently. Johannes Volkelt narrates the following in his book. A schoolmaster dreams that he is giving a lesson; he expects a pupil to answer ‘ja’ to a question. But instead of answering ‘ja.’ the pupil answers, ‘jo’—which may well be a source of irritation to the teacher. He repeats the question and now the pupil does not answer ‘jo’, but ‘j-o’, whereupon the whole class begins to shout ‘fire-jo!’ The teacher wakes up as the fire-engine is racing past and the people are shouting, ‘fire-jo!’ The impression made upon the senses has been symbolised into the complicated action of the dream.

Here is another example given by Volkelt—wherever possible I shall only quote examples actually recorded in literature. A Swabian woman dreams that she is visiting her sister in a large town. The sister is the wife of a clergyman. The two sisters are in church listening to the sermon. The clergyman starts in a perfectly decorous way but suddenly seems to get wings and begins to crow like a cock. One sister says to the other: ‘What a very peculiar way to preach!’ And the sister replies: ‘The Consistory Court has decreed that this is how sermons are to be preached.’ Then the woman wakes up and hears a cock crowing outside. The crowing of the cock which would otherwise have been heard simply as such, has been transformed in this way in the soul; everything else has grouped itself around the crowing. These are examples of dreams instigated by the senses.

But dreams can also be due to inner stimuli, and again it is not the stimuli as such which appear, but the sense-image which has been transformed, cast into symbolism, by the soul. For example, someone dreams of a very hot stove; he wakes up with his heart thumping. Dreams of flying which occur very frequently, are due, as a rule, to some kind of abnormal process taking place in the lungs during sleep. Hundreds of such examples could be quoted and the different categories of dreams enumerated at great length. Although we cannot enter exhaustively into the deeper aspects of sleep, I want still to speak of certain points.

Literature offers no evidence of particular success in discovering elements in the human soul capable of showing what is actually going on in the soul when bringing about such transformations of the outer stimuli of dreams. But the question of paramount interest is this. What, in reality, is it in the soul that causes such different imagery to be connected with an outer stimulus, or also with a memory-picture emerging from the darkness of sleep? Here it must be said that what is actually working in the dream is not the faculty which in ordinary waking life enables man to link one mental picture to another. I could give you hundreds of examples which would prove what I can illustrate now only by one, for the sake of comparison. Think of the following. A woman dreams that she has to cook for her husband—sometimes an arduous duty for a housewife. She dreams that she has made one suggestion after another to him. To the first suggestion he answers: ‘I don't want that!’ To the second suggestion ‘I don't want that either!’ To the third suggestion: ‘Don't for heaven's sake inflict that upon me!’ And so it goes on. In the dream the woman is very miserable about all this and then an idea occurs to her. ‘There is a pickled grandmother on the floor; she is rather tough, but what about cooking her for you tomorrow?’ That too is a dream actually recorded in literature! Nobody who knows anything about the subject will doubt that the dream took such a form. You will at once say to yourselves : Anxiety is at the bottom of it. Something has happened to make the woman anxious. The mood of anxiety—which need not have anything whatever to do with the idea of the cooking and the rest—is transformed into a dream-picture of this kind. The picture is merely a clothing for the mood of anxiety. But during sleep the soul needs this picture in order to throw off the mood of anxiety. Just as you laughed about the pickled grandmother, so does the soul devise this grotesquely comic image as an adjunct to the other content of the dream, in order to overcome the anxiety and to induce an ironic, humorous mood. An oscillation, an alternation of moods can always be perceived in dreams and—like the pendulum of a clock—a swing between tension and relaxation, between anxiety and cheerfulness, and so on. What is of paramount importance in man's life of feeling is always the decisive factor in the structure assumed by the pictures of dream. From this point of view, therefore, the dream takes shape in order that certain tensions in the soul may be overcome. The picture which, as such, has no special significance, is born from this need to lead tension over to relaxation, relaxation over to tension. The soul conjures before itself something that can be an imaginative indication of the real gist of the matter.

Examination of the whole range of the life of dream brings to light two peculiar features which must be particularly borne in mind. The one is that what is usually called logic plays no part in dreams. The dream has a rule entirely different from that of ordinary logic for the way in which it passes from one object to the other. Naturally you will be able to insist that many dreams take a perfectly logical course. But this is only apparently the case, as everyone who can observe these things intimately, knows. If dream-pictures present themselves in logical sequence, the reason is not that you yourself produce this sequence during the dream but that you are placing side by side, mental images which you have already connected together logically at some time or which have been so connected by some agency in life. In such a case, logic in the dream is reminiscence; the logic has been imported into the dream; the action of the dream does not in itself proceed according to the rules of ordinary logic.

It can always be perceived that a deeper, more intimate element of soul underlies the action of the dream. For example—I am quoting something that actually happened. Someone dreams that he must go to see a friend and he knows that this friend will scold him for some reason. He dreams that he gets to the door of the friend's house, but at that moment the whole situation changes. On entering the house he comes into a cellar in which there are savage beasts intent upon devouring him. Then it occurs to him that he has a lot of pins at home and that they spurt fluids which will be able to kill these beasts. He finds then that he has the pins with him and he spurts the fluids at the savage animals. They suddenly change into little puppies which he feels he want to pat.—This is a typical course taken by a dream and you can see that here again it is a matter of the tension caused by the anxiety as to what the friend is going to say—the anxiety takes expression as the savage beasts—being relaxed as a result of the soul having brought about the transformation of the wild beasts into lovable puppies. Obviously, something quite other than logic is in evidence here.—And anyone who is familiar with examples of dreams knows that the following has often happened. Before going to bed, someone has made efforts to solve a problem, but has failed. Then, in a dream, as he says, he discovers the solution and can write it down in the morning when he wakes up. His story is quite correct but those who cannot rightly investigate such things will always misunderstand them. It must not be thought that the actual solution was found in the dream. What was found in the dream and is then thought to have been remembered, is something quite different. It is something that need have very little logic about it, but produces in the soul the beneficial effect of tension being led over to relaxation. Before going to sleep the man was in a state of tension because he could not solve the problem. He brooded and brooded; something was amiss with him. He was healed by the form taken by his dream and was therefore able to solve the problem when he woke up.

Moral judgment is also silent in dreams. It is well known that in dream a man may commit all kinds of misdeeds of which he would be ashamed in waking life. It can be argued that conscience begins to stir in dream, that it often makes itself felt in a very remarkable way. Think only of the dreams contained in Shakespeare's plays—poets generally have a good reason for such things—and you will find that they might appear to suggest that moral reproaches make themselves particularly conspicuous through dreams. Again this is an inexact observation. What is true is that in the dream we are snatched away from the faculty of ordinary moral judgment which in connection with human beings in outer life we must and can exercise. If the dream seems to present moral ideas and moral reproaches in concrete pictures, this is not due to the fact that as dreamers we form moral judgments, but that when we act morally the soul feels a certain inner satisfaction; we are inwardly gratified about something to which we can give moral assent. It is this state of satisfaction, not the moral judgment, that presents itself to the soul in the dream. Neither logic or moral judgment play any part at all in dreams. If the search for truth is sincere it is essential to set to work with far greater exactitude and depth than is usual in life and in science too. Such matters elude the crude methods usually applied. It is extremely significant that neither logic or moral judgment gain admittance into the world of dream.

I want to speak of still another characteristic of the dream which even when considered from the external point of view, indicates how the soul, when it dreams, is related to the world. This relation can, it is true, be fully clarified only by Spiritual Science. Anyone who studies the sleeping human being will be able to say, even from the external standpoint, that in sleep the human being is shut off alike from the experiences arising from his own life and also from the environment. Spiritual Science does of course make it clear that when man falls asleep he passes as a being of soul and spirit into the spiritual world and on waking is again united with his body. It is not necessary to take this into consideration at the moment, but simply to keep clearly in mind what can also be apparent to ordinary consciousness. The human being is shut off from his environment, and what rises out of his body into his ordinary consciousness is also stilled during sleep. Pictures do indeed surge up and fade away in dreams but their actual relation to the external world is not changed; the form assumed by the pictures is such that this relation remains as it was. The relation to the external world, that which as bald environment giving contour to the outer impressions, approaches man as he opens his senses during waking life—this does not penetrate into the dream. Impressions can indeed be made upon a man, but the characteristics of what the senses make out of those impressions are absent. The soul puts an emblem, a symbol, in the place of the ordinary, bald impression. Therefore the actual relation to the outer world does not change. This could be corroborated in countless cases. In the normal dream the human being is as shut off from the external world as he is in normal sleep; he is also shut off from his own body. What rises up from his bodily nature does not come to direct expression as is the case when he is united in the normal way with his body. If, for example, someone's feet get overheated because of a too warm covering, he would be aware in the ordinary waking state that his feet are too hot. In the dream he is not aware of it in this form, but he thinks he is walking on burning coal or something of the kind. Again it is a matter of transformation brought about by the soul.

Attempts to explain the nature of dream simply by using methods and sources available to external science will always be in vain, because there is nothing with which the dream can truly be compared. It occurs in the ordinary world as a kind of miraculous happening. That is the essential point. The spiritual investigator alone is in the position of being able to compare the dream with something else. And why? It is because he himself knows what is revealed to him when he is able to penetrate into the spiritual world. He realises that the ordinary logic holding good for explanations of the outer life of sense, no longer avails. Those who rise into the spiritual world must be capable of expressing in images what is experienced in that world. That is why I have called the first stage of knowledge of the spiritual world, ‘Imaginative Cognition’. At that stage it is realised that the images themselves are not the reality but that through the images the reality is brought to expression. These images must, of course, be shaped in accordance with the true laws revealed by the spiritual world and not be the outcome of arbitrary phantasy. The spiritual investigator learns to know—quite apart from the physical world of sense—how one idea or mental picture is related to another, how images are given shape. This first stage of knowledge of the spiritual world is then capable of being compared with the unconscious activity at work in dreams. There a comparison is possible, and moreover something else comes to light as well.

A man who makes real progress in knowledge of the spiritual world gradually begins to experience that his dreams themselves are changing. They become more and more rational, and crazy images such as that of the pickled grandmother and the like gradually turn into pictures which have real meaning; the whole life of dream becomes charged with meaning. In this way the spiritual investigator comes to know the peculiar nature of the relation between the life of dream and the kind of life he must adopt in the interests of spiritual investigation. This puts him in the position of being able to say what it is in the soul that is actually doing the dreaming. For he comes to know something besides, namely, the condition of soul in which he finds himself while experiencing the pictures and ideas of genuine Imagination. He knows that with his soul he is then within the spiritual world. When this particular condition of the life of soul is experienced, it can be compared with the condition of the soul in dreams. This scrupulous comparison reveals that what is actually dreaming in the soul, what is active in the soul while the chaotic actions of dreams are in play, is the spiritual, eternal core of man's being. When he dreams, man is in the world to which he belongs as a being of spirit-and-soul.

That is what emerges as the one result of spiritual investigation. I will characterise the other by telling you about a personal experience. Not long ago, after a lecture I had given in Zürich on the subject of the life of dream and cognate matters, I was told that several listeners who, on the basis of training in what is called Analytical Psychology or Psycho-Analysis, wanted to be considered particularly clever, were saying after my lecture: ‘That man is still labouring under mistaken notions which those of us who are schooled in Psycho-Analysis have long since outgrown. He believes that dream-life should be taken as something real, whereas we know that it is merely a symbolic form of the life of the psyche.’—I shall not go further into the subject of Psycho-Analysis today but simply remark that this ‘cleverness’ is based upon gross misunderstanding. For under no circumstances will a genuine spiritual investigator take what presents itself in dreams as reality in the actual form in which it is there presented. Unlike the psycho-analysts, he does not take even the course of the dream as being directly symbolic; he knows that the gist of the matter is something entirely different. Anyone who is familiar with dreams knows that ten or even more people may tell of dreams with utterly different contents, yet the underlying state of affairs is the same in all of them. One man will say that in his dream he was climbing a mountain and on reaching the top had a delightful surprise; another says that he was walking through a dark passage and came to a door which opened quite unexpectedly; a third will speak of something else. In the course they take the dreams have no outer resemblance whatever, yet they originate from an identical experience, namely tension and relaxation which are symbolised in different pictures at different times. What is of essential importance, therefore, is not the factual reality of the dream, not even its symbolism as the psycho-analysts maintain, but its inner dramatic action. From the sequence of the meaningless pictures we must be able to recognise this dramatic action, for that is the reality in which the soul with its spiritual core of being is living while it dreams. This is an entirely different reality from what is expressed in the pictures presented in the dream. There you have the gist of the matter. The dream therefore points to deep subconscious and unconscious grounds of the life of soul. But the pictures unfolded by the dream are only a clothing of what is actually being experienced in the course of it.

Again and again I must emphasise that as far as I am concerned there is no question whatever of wishing to revive ancient notions in any domain. The antecedents of what is said here are not derived from any medieval or so-called oriental occult science, as was the case with Blavatsky and with others who draw upon all kinds of obscure sources. Whatever is said here is based on the consciousness that it can hold its own in the face of modern scientific judgment. If an opportunity for proving this were to occur, it could certainly be used. Spiritual Science is presented with full consciousness of the fact that we are living in the scientific age, with full cognisance of what natural science is able to say about the riddles of existence, but with full cognisance, too, of what it is not able to say about the regions of the spiritual life.

Where do the pictures which form the course of the dream, originate? It is like this. A man who is really free from his body in spiritual experience has the spiritual world before him with its happenings and its beings, whereas the dreamer has not yet awakened his consciousness to the degree where this is possible for him. His soul resorts to the reminiscences of ordinary life and the dream arises when the soul impacts the body. The dream is not experienced in the body but it is caused by the impact of the soul with the body. Hence the things which constitute the course of his life present themselves to the dreamer, but grouped in such a way that they bring to expression the inner tendencies of which I have spoken. In reality, therefore, the dream is experienced by a man's own essential being of soul-and-spirit. But it is not the Eternal that is experienced; what is experienced is the Temporal. It is the Eternal that is consciously active in the dream; but this activity is mediated by the Transitory, the Transient. The essential point is that in the dream the Eternal is experiencing the Temporal, the Transitory—the content of life.

I have now briefly explained the nature of dream as viewed in the light of Spiritual Science and why it is that the content of the dream is not an expression of what is actually going on in the soul when relaxation follows tension and tension follows relaxation. In the life of dream the soul is in the world of the Eternal, free from the body. But what enters into the consciousness as the clothing of this experience arises from the connection with the ordinary circumstances of life.

I pass now to the second borderline region of the life of soul where manifestations of the unconscious may occur in the form of hallucinations, visions and the like.² Even philosophers capable of sound judgment, such as Eduard von Hartmann for example, whose powers of discrimination and discernment I rate exceedingly highly, have been led to the mistaken belief—because they could not grasp the nature of the dream from the standpoint of Spiritual Science—that what comes as a picture before the soul in dream is really identical with a picture arising as an hallucination or vision. But these phenomena are essentially different from each other. Because the genuine spiritual investigator knows what condition of soul is present when he stands within the spiritual world and can compare this with the condition of the soul prevailing in dream, he is able to assess the meaning of certain peculiarities of the life of dream, for example, the absence of logic. The spiritual investigator knows that sensory experience is not without significance but that equally with body-free experience between death and a new birth it has its meaning and purpose in the life of man. It is precisely in our intercourse with the outer, material world that we can assimilate the logic streaming into the soul from that world. The spiritual investigator knows too that moral judgment comes to direct expression in physical life, in the experiences arising from civilisation. Genuine Spiritual Science will never lead to escapism or false asceticism but rather to a full appreciation of physical life, because logic, the capacity for moral judgment and moral impulses, are inculcated into the soul through its contact with the outer world during physical life.

In point of fact the dream passes only slightly into the abnormal life of soul. Spiritual Science shows that the soul is free from the body in dream, that the experiences of dream are independent of bodily experiences; they are separated from the link with the outer world that is present in waking life. In the dream, man is actually free from his body. Is this also the case in hallucinations, in visionary experiences? No, it is not! Hallucinations and visions are due precisely to abnormalities of the physical body. Visionary, hallucinatory activity in the life of soul can never occur independently of bodily experiences. Something in the body must always be disturbed or diseased, must be functioning improperly or too feebly, thus preventing a man from entering into the full connection that is present when he is using his nerves and senses in such a way that in experiencing himself, he is also experiencing the outer world. If an organ connected in any way with the faculty of cognition is diseased or too weak, a phenomenon such as an hallucination or a vision may arise: it resembles spiritual experience but is fundamentally different from it. Whereas in spiritual experience a man must be free from the body, this hallucinatory, visionary life sets in because something is either diseased or functioning too feebly in the body. Now what really lies at the bottom of hallucinations and visions? The ordinary process of ideation (Vorstellen) taking place normally in sensory life succeeds in being independent of those forces in the human organism which cause growth in childhood, bring about the inner functions of the body—metabolism, digestion, and so forth. I cannot speak in greater detail today of how that which as a bodily function underlies the normal life of ideation arises through part of the organism being lifted out of the sphere of purely animal life, of the processes of growth, digestion, metabolism and so forth. The basis of the normal life connected with the nerves is that a kind of soul-organism develops like a parasite out of the process of digestion, metabolism, etc. Now when, owing to particularly abnormal conditions, some organ of cognition is so affected that this soul-organism does not work through itself alone but that the bodily organ with its animal functions is working as well—this is due to disease or weakness of the organ concerned—the result is that the man does not devote himself to mental life independently of the forces of growth, digestion and metabolism, but that hallucinations and visions arise. What is organic activity in the vision ought really to be promoting growth, bringing about digestion and the distribution of the more delicate processes of metabolism. What happens in this condition is that animal functions are surging upwards into the soul-organism.

Life is not by any means sublimated in hallucinations and visions; on the contrary it is far rather permeated by the animal functions which do not, in other circumstances, extend into the soul-organism. What ought to be serving quite different processes is carried up into those of cognition, of mental perception. Hence hallucinations and visions are always an expression of the fact that something is not in order in the human being. True, what makes its appearance is a manifestation of the spiritual, but one of which Spiritual Science cannot make use; for Spiritual Science can make use only of what is experienced independently of the body.

You now see what an utter lack of foundation there is for the very general misconception that Spiritual Science acquires its knowledge through visions, hallucinations and the like. On the contrary, Spiritual Science shows that these states are always connected in some way with abnormalities in the body and that they must play no part whatever in its findings. Neither are hallucinations and visions ever identical in character with the pictures of dreams. The pictures of dreams arise outside the body and are only mirrored in it; hallucinations and visions arise because some bodily organ so to speak leaves a space free. If it were functioning normally the man would stand firmly in the physical world with healthy senses. But because a space is left free, the spiritual-eternal element which ought to remain invisible in the bodily organism comes to light through it. This condition is not merely a physical illness, it is a psychical abnormality, something that can only cloud and falsify the pictures from the spiritual world. Hence the fact that pictures arise when some bodily function is weakened, need cause no surprise. For how do sense-pictures come into being? They come into being because the forces which promote metabolism, digestion and the like in the normal way, are toned down and assert themselves in the soul-organism in a different form. If, then, these forces are toned down in the human being to a greater extent than is proper, abnormal consciousness is the result. The sense-pictures we have in normal consciousness are conditioned by bodily life that has been toned down to the normal extent. If the weakening is excessive, something that originates entirely from this improper condition makes its appearance. It can therefore be said that hallucinations and visions represent a striving that has been obstructed. As the human being develops from childhood to mature age, he is really striving to penetrate into his bodily organism. He endeavours so to develop his nature of spirit-and-soul that the body becomes the instrument for soul-activity. This is obstructed when something in the body is unhealthy. When the human being develops in such a way that his body becomes his servant, he grows into physical independence, into his egoity in the world of the senses, into the amount of egoism that is necessary to make him a self-based being, able to fulfil his destination as man. This egoism must of course be mingled with the necessary selflessness. The important thing is that a man shall permeate his life with the forces of his Ego. If certain obstructions make him incapable of doing so, his search for the requisite amount of egoism takes an abnormal path. This comes to expression in hallucinations and visions which are always due to the fact that through his bodily constitution a man cannot acquire the due amount of egoism necessary to his life.

To the borderline regions of the life of soul also belong the conditions produced when catalepsy or coma have led to somnambulism—which is akin to mediumship. Just as man's organism of thinking—I say expressly ‘organism of thinking’, not ‘mechanism of thinking’—must be constituted in a certain way to prevent the disorder I have just characterised as hallucination and vision from taking effect, so too the mechanism of the will—here I say ‘mechanism’—must be constituted in a certain way for normal life in the world of the senses. Just as the organism of thinking can bring about hallucinations and visions as manifestations of abnormal soul-life, so the will can be undermined when its mechanism is disturbed, quashed or paralysed in catalepsy, coma, or mediumship. True, if the spirit is not working upon it, the body is not able directly to evoke the will, but it is able, when certain organs are put out of action, when the mechanism of the will is brought to a standstill, to enfeeble the will, whereas the spiritual investigator, as I said at the beginning, can stand firmly in the spiritual world because his will works in full consciousness upon his body. If the body is paralysed in respect of the will, it quashes, suppresses, this will; man is then lifted away from the world to which he belongs as a being of spirit-and-soul, as a being of eternity, and is cast into the physical environment which is, of course, also permeated with spiritual forces and entities. He is then thrust out of his real world into the element of spirit which unceasingly pervades and weaves through the physical. This is the case in somnambulism, this is the case in mediumship.

Those who in the sense indicated at the beginning of this lecture adopt an easy-going attitude where Spiritual Science is concerned, would like to investigate the spiritual world in the same way. But such people cannot reach the true spiritual world which guarantees eternal life for the soul; they can work only with what permeates and pervades the physical environment. What is working in the somnambulist, in the medium, works in the normal human being too, but differently. This may indeed sound strange, but it is nevertheless a finding of Spiritual Science. What is really working in the medium, in the somnambulist? In ordinary life we have a certain moral link with other human beings; we act out of moral impulses. I said that these moral impulses are generated by way of the physical body. We perform acts in the field of external civilisation, we learn to write, to read, we learn what the human will inculcates as a spiritual element into the outer physical world. With the forces employed by our soul in the activity of learning to read, of assimilating other cultural endowments, of entering into moral relationships with the world—with all these forces the soul of the somnambulist or the medium is connected in an abnormal way. This activity which is otherwise exercised only in the moral domain, in the domain of the cultural life, is transferred directly into the bodily constitution of the medium or the somnambulist; this is possible because the consciousness has been lowered and the soul disconnected. Whereas in normal life the human being is in contact with the surrounding world solely through his senses, in the case of the somnambulist and the medium, the whole man comes into connection, through his will-mechanism, with the surrounding world. This makes it possible for influences from a distance to take effect; a thought can also work into the distance and distant vistas—both spatial and temporal—can arise. But in most of these cases, what penetrates into the human organism is the spiritual element which pervades the physical world to which we belong as physical men, it is the spiritual element belonging to the cultural and moral life. But it penetrates in such a way that the soul is disconnected from the organism. Hence what is made manifest through the medium or the somnambulist does not lead to the being of spirit-and-soul in man but is simply a caricature of the workings of the spiritual upon man's bodily nature. Whereas in normal life the soul itself must be the intermediary between the truly spiritual and the body, in these abnormal states the spiritual is working directly on the body—but only in the sense I have described. The result is that with his consciousness disconnected, such a man becomes a kind of automaton; only those elements which belong externally to cultural or moral life are expressing themselves in him. From this it will be clear to you that, although it is disguised and masked in the most diverse way, what is to all appearances the spiritual does come to expression through mediumship and somnambulism, but only provided certain combinatory factors and associations are present; these cannot be discussed here because it would lead us too far afield. The essentials which come to expression in this way originate from the physical environment. Men who stand firmly on the ground of natural science but do not outgrow its established notions, would like to penetrate into the spiritual world to which the eternal core of man's being belongs, by taking to their aid the phenomena of somnambulism and mediumship. But this leads to countless fallacies and errors.

I shall now speak of one recent example. It is of great interest because it is characteristic of this whole domain. Here we have a scientist very highly esteemed in his own country, a scientist well versed in all the niceties of scientific methods and who therefore does not by any means go carelessly to work when he approaches these matters. I am referring to Sir Oliver Lodge, the celebrated English scientist. It is a very remarkable case, one that is connected with the present catastrophic events. Lodge was always attracted to the question of how a link could be established between the outer, physical world and the world to which man belongs when he has passed through the gate of death. But he wanted to remain firmly on a scientific foundation.—This attitude is of course characteristic of people who are not willing to have anything to do with the methods of Spiritual Science.—Lodge had a son who was serving on the French Front during the war, and one day the father received a strange letter from America. This letter informed Lodge that his son was facing great danger, but that the spirit of Myers—who had died ten years previously—would hold a protecting hand over the young man while the danger threatened. Frederick Myers had been President of the Society for Psychical Research; he had been occupied deeply with the study of super-sensible matters and Lodge and his family knew him well. It could therefore be presumed—if it is in any way accepted that a connection is possible between some happening in the super-sensible world and human life—that Myers would certainly hold a protecting hand over young Lodge when danger was looming before him. But the letter was extremely ambiguous—as letters of such a kind are always wont to be. Obviously young Lodge might be in danger, but he might also be saved from it, and then the writer of the letter would be able to say: ‘Did I not receive through a medium a message to the effect that Myers is protecting Lodge's son? Through the help of Myers the boy has been saved from the danger of death.’ But if the boy had been killed, the writer of the letter would equally well be able to say: ‘Myers is protecting him in the other world.’ If a third eventuality were possible, the letter could have been interpreted in that sense too.—It does not do to be unsceptical if we wish to get at the real truth of these matters.—Naturally, Lodge did not attach particular weight to the communication, for he was well aware that such things are capable of many interpretations.—The son was killed. Then his father received a second message to the effect that Myers was indeed protecting his son in the other world, and that there were people in England who would provide proof of it.—Certain ways of organising such matters do exist.—There were several mediums who were received into the circle of Sir Oliver Lodge's family—most of whom were sceptics. Manifestations of all kinds took place and Lodge has described them in detail in a bulky volume which is extremely interesting for many reasons. The phenomena there described do not, for the most part, differ greatly from others that have been put on record and there was no need for any particular excitement about them—nor indeed was any shown. Lodge would not have thought it worth while to describe these manifestations if something else had not happened. Because he was familiar with all the devices used in the scientific mode of research, in this instance too he set to work like a chemist making investigations in a laboratory and used every conceivable precautionary measure in order to establish the facts without possibility of dispute. People feel therefore that this book makes it possible to form a real judgment about the case in point, for Lodge describes it as a scientist would do.

Among all kinds of other cases he describes the one that may be regarded as a veritable experimentum crucis, and it caused a tremendous stir. Even the most incredulous journalists—and journalists are usually sceptical, whether or not always from well-founded judgment I could not say—were impressed by this crucial test case. The circumstances were as follows : A medium who claimed to be in communication with the soul of Myers as well as with the soul of Lodge's son, said that a fortnight before the latter was killed at the French Front, he had been photographed together with a number of his companions, and the photograph was minutely described—the placing of the officers, how young Lodge was sitting in the front row, how he was holding his hands, and so forth. It was then said that several photographs had been taken and that the grouping had altered slightly while this was being done. The different grouping was also indicated with the same precision—the position of young Lodge's hands and arms had changed, he was inclining towards the man next him, and so forth. An exact description was given of this photograph too. Now the photographs were not in England; nobody—neither the medium, nor any of the family, nor Sir Oliver Lodge himself—had seen them. It could only be assumed that the medium was rambling in imagination when describing the photographs. But lo and behold, after fourteen days these photographs arrived and tallied exactly with what the medium had said. That this was an experimentum crucis for Lodge and those intimately concerned, cannot be wondered at; and it is here that the real interest of the book lies. A genuine spiritual investigator will not, of course, be taken in—as in a certain respect Lodge himself was taken in—because the scrupulously exact presentation enables him to form an independent, objective judgment.

How comes it that a man who is not willing to penetrate into the spiritual world by means of true spiritual investigation does nevertheless find on such a path something that convinces him of the influx of a spiritual world? The genuine spiritual investigator would not be brought to a like conviction, because he knows what has actually happened in this case. Moreover he will be astonished that such a man as Lodge, in spite of his experience in scientific research, is an out and out amateur in these matters.

Anyone who has only a superficial acquaintance with these phenomena, perhaps by no means through independent vision but simply from literature, knows that in somnambulists and mediums there is a connection with the environment in the sense I have described, that the whole man is as it were transformed into sense-organs—with the result that automatic pre-visions in time arise. These pre-visions are always due to a sick or enfeebled life of soul. They have nothing to do with the world to which man belongs with the immortal part of his being; they have to do with what is spiritual in the physical sense-environment, especially with what the will of man brings to pass there. Just because Lodge describes conscientiously it becomes quite evident that the medium simply had a pre-vision, that he ‘saw’ the photographs a fortnight before they arrived in England. This may seem miraculous enough but these are quite ordinary phenomena. At all events this is not, as Lodge thinks, a proof that Myers was protecting his son. It may have been so, of course, but it would have to be investigated in research carried out in a body-free condition.

When there is unwillingness to take the path of Spiritual Science the temptations and allurements even for those who are conscientious researchers and confront such phenomena cautiously and critically, are very great. What can be learnt through these abnormal manifestations, whereby man is made into an automaton, must never become the content of a true science of the super-sensible world to which the eternal part of man's being belongs.

A great deal that might still be added would show in the same way how these borderline regions of man's life of soul point to something which, although it too rests in the realm of the Unconscious, can never reveal to man that which, in that same realm, is of the greatest significance of all—namely the spiritual world to which man belongs with the free, immortal part of his being. Among all these manifestations the life of dream alone remains within the sphere of the normal, because in dream the human being is not experiencing through the bodily constitution but through the spirit-and-soul; as a being of spirit-and-soul he strikes up against the body and the physical experiences. Hence in respect of the life of dream too, man is able to exercise correctives and to give it its right place in the rest of life; whereas in the case of what he experiences through his body in the way of hallucinations, visions, manifestations of somnambulism and mediumship he is not able to do this with his normal powers of discrimination.

In the next lecture we will go more deeply into something which in the course of cultural development brings constant blessing and upliftment to human life, namely ART. In dream, man experiences the spiritual world in such a way that as the result of impact with the bodily constitution, sense-images take shape. The experiences which arise in a true artist and in one who finds delight and inspiration in Art, also lie in regions beyond those of merely physical experience. True Art is brought from the super-sensible into the sense-regions of life, but in this case the process of clothing the experiences in pictures is not an unconscious one. Just as in the dreamer the soul's actual experience remains in the unconscious but reveals itself through what the soul—again unconsciously—adds as clothing to the experience itself, so the super-sensible experience of the artist and of the one who finds delight in a work of art, is brought into the sense-world. But in this case the clothing with the picture, with the Imagination which, arising from external life, gives the super-sensible experience a place in the sense-world, is consciously achieved. The gist of the next lecture will be that Art is in very truth a messenger from a super-sensible world, that delight in Art is a power which lifts the soul to the super-sensible world by way of sensory form, through sense-imagery.

And now to sum up what has been said today. It is true that man is led towards the region of spirit when he confronts these abnormal manifestations; for it is the spiritual world that shines into the life of man even if he is experiencing it in an abnormal way. But these abnormal manifestations may never be induced artificially, any more than pathological states may be induced for the purpose of acquiring knowledge.

What is it that remains from all these manifestations and phenomena as a vital admonition? It is that man shall find the way to true experience of the spiritual. We have heard that in the light of Spiritual Science the realm of dream is saved from the suspicion of being one of pathological experience—although naturally there may now and again be slight tendencies towards it. But when it is realised that through the seemingly chaotic life of dream man is admonished to find the path into the true spiritual world, the significance of such study becomes evident. A great world-riddle is knocking here at the door of human life. This world-riddle is the dream with its strange pictures in which logic and moral judgment are lacking but which are a definite signpost to the spiritual world itself. Hence we can find ourselves in agreement with what is said by the clear-sighted aestheticist and philosopher Vischer in his critique of Volkelt's book:

‘When the dream with all its rich meagreness, its meagre richness, with its ingenious stupidity and stupid ingeniousness, is contemplated in its unconscious creative activity, it will be recognised that it does nevertheless point to what is spiritual in the human being and can be sought after.’
And Vischer is also right when he says:

‘A man who believes that this spirit-realm of dream is not worthy to be a matter for genuine investigation, merely shows that he has not much spirit in him.’

The realm of dream is an admonition to man to seek for the spiritual world, and the aim of Spiritual Science is to fulfil this admonition. Whereas in the life of dream there can be pictures of the transitory only, for all that the soul's eternal core of being is active there, through spiritual-scientific knowledge it is possible for the soul also to be filled with pictures that give expression to the spiritual reality corresponding to its own inherent nature, thereby pointing to its allotted place in the world of spiritual reality as the senses point to its allotted place in the physical world.

REFERENCES (among many others):

Lecture-Courses by Rudolf Steiner.

True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigations. New edition, 1969.

Cosmic and Human Metamorphoses. Lecture One.

The Occult Movement in the 19th Century (typescript).

History of Spiritism, Hypnotism and Somnambulism.

• 1. See True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigations. Eleven lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Torquay, August, 1924. See also references below.

• 2. See references below.

I. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung” of April 19, 1903

Second lecture by the Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, on: “The Main Theosophical Teachings”. Even more attentive listeners than at the first lecture gathered yesterday evening in the “Erholung” hall to listen to the excellent, convincing and fiery presentation. The following is a brief summary of the interesting topic:

The origin of the theosophical movement lies, as we all know and as the oldest traditions prove, in the earliest ages, as the theosophical activity of the Essenes and Pythagoreans amply confirms. In the so-called mystery schools (secret schools), which already existed in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries of our era, the secrets of human existence were taught at that time. An example of the interest with which the study and development of the wisdom of God was pursued in earlier times is given by Redner, who recounts the event of how an Indian scholar, who gave a theosophical lecture from the point of view of the natural science of the time, was asked by a member of the audience what would remain when all the ethereal, physical components of the human being had dissolved. The speaker suggested that the public was not the place to answer this question, and therefore invited the questioner to join him in solitude, in order to introduce him to the secrets of his own soul life and to explain to him the existence of the divine being in his ego. The explanation of reincarnation and karma is based on the firm conviction that everything in the world is based on karma, on activity. As even Goethe once said so aptly: “Function is existence conceived in activity.” Both our highly developed and our still imperfect organs of animals have never been what they are now from the very beginning. Even today, there are living creatures that lack eyes altogether, for example, that have only the most primitive skin openings connected to the optic nerves, and that have only the very slightest insight into the outside world around them. And yet the time will come for these imperfect creatures, too, when their visual organs have developed to the same extent as in other, more perfect animals. The necessity and the need to gain further insights into the light will, through the continuous interaction and the incessant activity, also make the visual organs of these undeveloped animals the same as those of other animals, when the soul of the animals has lived through and perfected itself through countless generations. Further proof of perpetual activity and development is that there is, for example, a species of fish in America, the newt fish, in which, during the time of their existence, breathing organs in the form of lungs have , which later, due to a lack of water, has become an unavoidable necessity for them, as they originally only spent their lives in the water. The activity of the organs came to their aid, and today these fish can spend part of the waterless summer on land, while as soon as water is available, they live only in it. And just as the natural scientist did not observe and research this development of forces inherent in the body, so too our inherent spirit has come about through the never-ceasing soul activity in our own ego. And if there are still people today who are as spiritually immature as some primitive peoples, who even today devour their fellow human beings, it is precisely because their soul activity has been a slow one that has not developed the spirit to the extent that they would be aware of their actions. And the presence of the soul even in plants was also recognized and discussed by Goethe in conversation with Schiller, in which he confessed that even the most perfectly developed plant had emerged from the primal plant and that, when he looked at every flower and plant, the soul of the same seemed to him to be present, as it were. But the most significant, the most sublime, the immeasurable difference in the soul life of bodies is the individuality of the human being. Every human being, even the most imperfect and insignificant, has his biography, which another being, however perfect, lacks. And in this individuality we find the essence of reincarnation, of re-embodiment, to the explanation of which we may add: That which you think today you will be in later time; what we grasp intellectually today was first seen in an earlier life, to which we now look back. And since a cause also belongs to the spiritual effect, we see the earlier lives in us as the cause of the spiritual effect. The constant perfection of our soul wisdom, the study of the human soul, will give us insight into the astonished questions [of the Belgian Maeterlinck]: How are we to do justice to our tremendous needs? Within our ego lie the spiritual powers; in our causal body we find the cause of individuality, the eternal activity that produces cause and effect. With the principle: the soul was present, it is present and will remain present, we characterize the eternal existence of life. And in this sense, we must agree with the former remarks of the scholar Fichte, who explained to his Jena students: “Break over me, world; fall upon me, rocks; devour me, earth and sea; I stand fearless and undaunted, for I feel the divine immortal power in my ego, in my soul, which lifts me above all the terrors of physical mortality.

Undivided applause from the silently enthralled audience rewarded the speaker, who finally announced that in the last lecture on Monday, any of the attendees who had appeared could ask questions related to the topic, which the speakers intended to answer in all respects, so that part of the evening would might be held within the framework of a discussion.

II. Report in “Germany”, second page, dated April 19, 1903

On Friday evening, Dr. Steiner gave his second lecture on Theosophy in the recreation room, again to a large audience. This time, it was about the main theosophical teachings (reincarnation and karma). The speaker began his lecture with a story about the Indian sage Jaina Walkia, who was firmly convinced of the doctrine of reincarnation and already shared it with others. Man is an organic being with developed limbs and organs, but the latter did not suddenly appear as we see them today, but rather, through their own activity, they have reached this perfection over a long period of development. All this activity can be summarized in the word karma. Just as completely different beings have developed from imperfect animals over the centuries, adapting to their needs, so has the soul life of man been in constant activity and development. It is absolutely correct to assume that the human spirit always experiences re-embodiment and remains still after the organic limbs have died off until a being for it can be found again. Thus, every single human spirit has already lived an infinite number of times, constantly developing and perfecting itself. For example, the spirit of Goethe and Mozart was already present in the boys of youthful age, and it will also return, because it is unthinkable that after the death of the organic body these highly developed individualities should not continue to live; nor can it be assumed that, for example, Goethe's spirit emerged from nothing. Nor should one believe in a different inheritance from generation to generation, because often siblings are fundamentally different in their individuality and even twin brothers, who were under the same organic influence, would be endowed with the most divergent character traits. The spirit or individuality in man has emerged from the primal soul and in the words “from God to God” lies the content of all wisdom. The origin and purpose of all existence is the core that underlies all religious knowledge. Everything that exists has emerged from the primal power and carries the divine essence within itself; from this view arises the individual continuation of the soul, which today is called immortality. Everything that emerges from the primal power and returns to it must continue to exist until the cycle is complete. The aim of all development is, of course, perfection and completion during the journey back to the primal power. The highly developed animal also has a certain knowledge, as does the completely undeveloped human being, only the animals lack the individual essence, the feeling of personal “I”; this is highly peculiar to humans. One can always speak of an animal species as a whole, whereas the concept of a human being always applies only to one individual, since a second person has a different individual disposition. We can indeed form a perception through our transient organs, but knowledge arises from the source of the spirit. Matter does not produce the spirit, but the spirit emerges from the Primordial Spirit — God — in order to return to Him one day. Every human being contains an individual spirit, and when the organic body dies, it leaves behind the further developed spirit, just as a plant decays and leaves behind a viable seed for new development. The Theosophical movement seeks to awaken the consciousness of the divine essence in each individual, and this then allows for the conscious realization and rational comprehension of the individual path of development, the resulting inner spiritual view. From this arises the striving for the complete development of the spirit. Karma, however, means the active development of the individual soul life to perfection. From this arises the proof that the soul cannot perish, but goes through and completes its process of development long before us and long after us. At the end of his lively lecture, the speaker recalled a saying of the Jena philosopher Fichte, who exclaimed: “You mountains fall upon me, you waters engulf me, I am not afraid, for I know that my spirit lives on and is not lost!” Dr. Steiner also said that next Monday, after the lecture, he would be happy to provide any answers to questions addressed to him and to clarify any ambiguities.

I. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung” of April 22, 1903

Third lecture by Dr. Rudolf Steiner – Berlin on “Theosophy and the scientific spirit of the present day”. Following on from the two lectures already given, the lecturer undertook to sketch out a comparative and concordant picture of theosophy and natural science for the numerous listeners who had again turned up, and the following is reproduced from this topic:

In my previous lectures I have already tried to show that the great mystery surrounding us is nothing more than the lawfulness, the logical consequence of all research that has been and is being undertaken to fathom the mystery. In the near future, research in the natural sciences will have reached the point where theosophy begins, thus ensuring a future for it as its representatives strive for. The longing for enlightenment of the highest riddles on the one hand and the discouragement, the doubts regarding the highest questions on the other are still facing each other undefeated. But the struggle will make it necessary even for the most brilliant minds of the present day to press on to the points which Theosophy regards as its fundamental questions. Not only a scholar, in his book on the origin of man, shows by means of research how the physical man came into being, how the first imperfect creatures were formed from carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. In the tenth stage, he shows how the original fish formed from the aforementioned primeval substances, which possessed an indication or hint of a backbone but no complete nervous system. He further shows how the brain, teeth and limbs developed in these primitive animals, albeit only to an imperfect and informal degree. In the further stages, we find how these primitive animals, otherwise living only in the water, become accustomed to life on land and the limbs necessary for this develop. The animals become more perfect and, after a long transformation, come into the world as kangaroos and later as monkeys, the animal most similar to humans in physical terms. In the 21st link of the development, we see the great ape, from which the 22nd link is the human being itself. But in the chain of investigations, one forgets to add the soul, the spiritual power of the human being, as the 23rd link, because it is in the biography, in the individuality of our ego, that which elevates us above all other living beings. With the 22nd link, the species may well come to an end, but now our soul life begins, the development of which we can observe in exactly the same way as physical development, if we go from stage to stage. The course of science shows in the 1860s (Haeckel) that Western natural science is nothing more than elementary theosophy, and we may assume that this elementary theosophy will develop into a higher one over time. When the greatest naturalists seek to draw the consequences, they find in them the theosophy.

[Huxley], the most important anatomist, who rendered the greatest service to the doctrine of Darwinism, says in his last great manifestation that it cannot be just nature in the degrees of development up to the most complicated human brain, but that one must ascend to a higher intelligence, which stands exalted above the most perfect living being. In 1866, Haeckel pointed out the biogenetic law, which states that every animal species undergoes the entire new development again during germ development. And just as the animal acquired the possessing properties through its perpetual development, so man also received the organs that now adorn him from what his ancestors acquired and what he acquired himself. This is the law of karma in the physical realm. Only in this way did the perfect living beings come into being, because they have an unconscious memory that connects them to their ancestors. And in the sense of Ostwald: Matter does not exist, as was also stated in 1895 at the Lübeck Natural Science Assembly. Matter is perpetual activity. From physics and chemistry we enter the spiritual world and the natural scientist is forced, in order to continue his research, to borrow from the spiritual realm. Goethe also characterizes this spiritual essence of our ego in his well-known saying: “When I have been restlessly active in all of life and developed to full activity, the power of nature cannot possibly dissolve me into the vile elements, but must seek a new place for further activity.” Bunge teaches that the basis of all theosophical knowledge is to be found in self-observation: If you want to know the activity, you must not only look at the outside world. That our living soul life cannot have developed from dead matter is also taught by [Darwin] and Preyer, who consider it impossible for something alive to develop from the dead. - And to recognize the divine unity, to thankfully profess that “God cannot do the slightest thing without me” is to reach the first stage in the belief that we individual human beings are members of the body of God.

After a short break in his remarks, the lecturer dealt with a few written questions, and also answered a personal question. His remarks were met with general applause.

II. Report in “Germany,” First Page, April 23, 1903

The third and final lecture by Dr. Steiner, Berlin, held on Monday evening at 8 p.m., was about theosophy and the scientific spirit of the present day. The speaker began with a brief reference to the two lectures he had given previously and explained that the main tenet of the theosophical doctrine is, above all, self-knowledge. Today, he said, we would explore the extent to which the spirit of contemporary science was suited to absorbing the teachings of Theosophy. He said that once the leading minds of science in our time had embraced the Theosophical knowledge, we could be sure that Theosophy had a future and would indeed conquer the world. We are dealing here with a Janus face, on the one hand a yearning of the minds for a magnificent new world view, on the other hand a discouragement and despondency to penetrate the deep wisdom of karma. It is the spirit of the present that must first be penetrated in order to characterize the position of modern science in relation to the theosophical teaching. A large part of modern science is virtually pushing towards the theosophical science. The speaker pointed out the significant lecture by the Leipzig chemist Ostwald, which was held at the naturalists' congress in Lübeck. Dr. Steiner explained that this lecture would have been impossible about 10 years ago, because Ostwald took the view that there is no matter at all, only activities. Using drastic examples, Ostwald explained how he justified this point of view. For example, Ostwald said: “When we are struck with a stick, it is not matter that strikes us, but the activity that moves the stick and inflicts the blow.” Here, the law of karma is emphasized again, and the human spirit is also formed by this activity in the course of a long period of development. Exactly the same developments that the physical body of man has undergone over a long period of time, exactly the same further developments the human spirit undergoes. It is a perfect process that takes place from personality to personality. It must be emphasized again and again that the spiritual development corresponds exactly to the physical development. Ernst Haeckel was the first to present this science in a rather radical way in the 1860s. It is clear that Theosophy also has to develop to a higher level, and if all signs are not deceptive, this circumstance will soon occur. It is well known that natural science is in a state of continuous change, and already today a great deal of theosophical thinking can be found among natural scientists. Ernst Haeckel, in particular, is one of the leading minds who are pushing hard towards the theosophical movement, even if he himself might not want to admit it. Other leading minds also admit the circumstance that runs like a red thread through all living beings, and which we call the causal body. Another researcher says, “All my organs I have acquired in the course of long development, always from my ancestors. Today my physical organs remember everything that has been acquired over time.” This, Dr. Steiner continued, is not said by a theosophist, but by a radical naturalist. Just as natural scientists are always surprising humanity with new scientific problems for which there is just as little clear evidence, so it cannot be prevented that the spiritual world of humanity is penetrated from another side. Just as Ostwald established the principle “not matter but activity”, it can be claimed that only materialism can assume that spirit lies buried in matter. This is the level from which Goethe also arrived at his spiritual world view. Goethe expressed his view of the destiny of the human spirit in the following sentence: “If I have been restlessly active throughout my life, nature has the obligation not to dissolve me into the base elements, but to assign me a new arena for my activity!” The researcher Bunge also cites a number of examples to show that only activity has caused the further development of the human soul. However, for all those who want to understand human life, deep self-observation is essential. From this arises the realization that everything that happens around us in the universe is activity (karma) and not matter. Of course, the actual activity cannot be seen either, but only the result of it. Thus one arrives at the main tenet of Theosophy, which can be summarized in a single word: self-observation. We have explored the fact that we have a causal body that continues to propagate itself. But we are not a single special being in the universe, but a link in the whole cosmos. The three parts of the human individuality are called Manas, Budhi and Atma in the wisdom of the East, and in these three words they summarize the levels of intellect. If a modern scholar such as Professor Baumann of Göttingen, Germany, speaks of what Theosophy calls reincarnation, then it can be seen that modern science is leading everywhere to the main tenets of Theosophy. However, in order for this high science to become clear to every thinking person, a continued self-knowledge must work in man, the spirit must itself feel and notice that individuality is properly evaluated in the theosophical teaching. When this principle of self-knowledge is established, a saying of Goethe comes to our aid: “If the eye were not sun-like, the sun could not behold it; if there were not in us the power of God, how could we be delighted by the divine?” It is the task of the Theosophical Society to instill this very truth into Western culture. In the future, the same will also be actively developed in Germany, and specifically here in Weimar, a “Theosophical Society” has been founded in which everyone who has absorbed even a spark of theosophical wisdom can continue to work on their further development in a spiritual sense. Finally, Dr. Steiner pointed out that he would be happy to answer any questions that may be put to him, and that some questions had already been received. One question, which had appeared in the Weimarer Zeitung, was as follows: “Can't the spirit of Goethe, just for a change, enter a female individual?” Dr. Steiner, who described this question as very facetious and naive, explained that this could very well be the case, but of course one could not say in which time period Goethe's spirit took possession of another body. Nevertheless, this time could be about 38 generations in the past. Another question dealt with whether a soul community could not also exist between a highly developed animal, such as a dog, and a human being; a noble dog has intellect, loyalty, a sense of shame, even imagination, all of which are qualities that cannot be observed in “lower human races”, as Dr. Steiner himself noted in the previous lectures. In response to this, Dr. Steiner explained that there is a great difference between the abilities of the dog's soul and the human soul. In the animal, there is no biography of the individual, but only a concept of the race. Above all, however, animals lack the ability to count, which every human being possesses. This is probably the most significant difference between human and animal souls. Another question, whether Theosophy was a science or a religion, was answered by the lecturer to the effect that in Theosophy, science, religion, philosophy and ethics were combined into a whole. An objection to this answer, that religion and science should not be mixed up, otherwise one would lose one's footing, was rejected by Dr. Steiner when he explained that the theosophist must indeed disregard this outdated view, as had already been explained in the previous lectures. With enthusiasm and gripping rhetoric, the speaker once again advocated his Theosophical teachings, pointing out that the first point of the Theosophical principles is to form a brotherly spiritual community that extends to all of humanity, regardless of race, religion, class, nationality or gender. — The lecture was met with enthusiastic applause.

I. Report in “Germany”, Zweites Blatt, November 22, 1903

Theosophical Lecture. On Friday evening at 8 o'clock in the large hall of the “Erholung”, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave his announced lecture on the “Pilgrimage of the Soul”. He began by saying that this time, unlike the three lectures he gave here last spring, which were based on knowledge of nature, he would speak directly in the language of Theosophy and present the facts as they appear to someone whose spiritual eye is open to supersensible realities. Man has three sources from which he originates. That which is eternal and everlasting in him, that which reappears in ever new embodiments, comes directly from the source of life, from that which the great sage and martyr Giordano Bruno called the world soul. Just as human thought is an emanation of the human soul, so the eternal human spirit is an emanation of the divine primal soul. And just as man, as he now lives, draws his perceptions through his senses from the external world, from sensual nature, and allows his will to be inspired by his feelings and passions, by the considerations of his mind, trained in the laws of nature, the eternal human spirit, before it embodied itself, drew all its thoughts and wills from the fountain of the eternal, from the divine primal soul. It waited in this form for its earthly embodiment. This became possible because on a world body that preceded our earth, the physicality was preparing, which provided the ground for external development. On this other world body, which is not known to any external science but is known to spiritual research, the sensual ancestors of man developed. These were beings that had sensation and feeling, drives and passions, but were still completely without the power of the mind, of rational reflection. They were very different from both present-day humans and present-day animals. These beings became germ-like when the task of the aforementioned world body was fulfilled. Just as the germ of a plant is in a state of slumber, awakening to new life when it is sunk into the ground, so these germs of being slumbered until they were taken up by our planet at the dawn of our earth development and called to new existence. Now a new state of preparation came for them. The ability developed in them to place the sensual drives, the sensations, feelings and passions at the service of a higher power. This power was the beginning of what later became the intellect, which enables the present human being to find his way in the outer world and to be a ruler over the lower natural forces. For long periods of time, the human dwellings that were later to become the dwellings of the human spirits lived in this preparatory stage. Then the time comes when they are ready to receive the young human spirit that has been described. This spirit embodies itself in such human bodies for the first time. It gradually learns to control the physical body, which is, as it were, wrapped around it. But it can learn only little in the first life. Again and again it must pass through the “gate of death” and attain a new embodiment. Then, between two embodiments, the human spirit passes through the higher worlds, where it brings the experiences of earthly development to maturity. It passes through the “Land of Desire” (Kamaloka), in order to bring its desires into right harmony with the whole world; it passes further through a purer spiritual world, in which it can bring to maturity the thinking ability it has developed in itself in the struggle with the world. Then it returns for a new incarnation, to undergo earthly change again for some time and to gather new experiences for its higher development. Thus the spiritual soul makes its pilgrimage through many embodiments until the earthly destiny is fulfilled and all human spirits are led over to a new, even higher existence in a world whose sublimity the present human being cannot imagine. II. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung” of November 22, 1903

“The pilgrimage of the soul,” as it takes place according to the theosophical view and assertion, was illustrated yesterday evening by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, in the “Erholung” to his audience, which consisted mostly of ladies. He took it as a given that an eternal soul dwells in the human body and explained that this eternal part of us has its origin in the “world soul”, the existence of which Giordano Bruno had already assumed. But according to Dr. Steiner's assertion, the human being does not consist only of soul and body; there is a third element, the spirit. This “young human spirit”, as the lecturer called it, has its source in God and is truly immortal. This trinity was not, however, present in one person from all eternity, but the “physical human being” developed out of another purely physical, instinctively acting human being, whose existence took place on an earlier existing world body, which has only now given birth to our Earth. Only when it came over to our planet, a mysterious process, did the soul, which also has a history of development behind it, descend into it. It took a long time before man was ready to receive the young human spirit. The spirit first had to get used to it, only gradually did it learn to perceive with human senses. But all this did not happen in one person. By embodying itself, the spirit became entwined with human desires and passions. It is difficult for it to detach itself from them, even when the “physical human being” has already died. Rather, it must purify itself at various stations in the beyond, after it has absorbed what it has learned in earthly life. For a short time, this spirit then submerges into a region where it can unfold and expand, then it descends again into a new body. This wandering continues until it reaches its predetermined goal, the theosophical “Nirvana”. But this is not the “nothing” as the ancient Indian sages (and Schopenhauer) called it, but a state of which we have no idea as yet. This is how the “pilgrimage of the soul” unfolds, as Dr. Steiner teaches it. He emphasized that these are truths, just as certain as the truth that electric arc lamps were lit in the recreation room. The nature of the lecture was also in line with this conviction. Dr. Steiner always used the phrase “this is so and so” to support his assertions. From this, one gained the conviction that he believed with certainty that he had the truth. (Not one or his truth.

In the next lecture, he will explain the “world soul and human destiny”.

I. Report in “Germany”, Third Sheet, dated December 13, 1903

On Friday evening, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave the third of six announced theosophical lectures in the recreation room. The title of the lecture was: “World Law and Human Destiny – a Christmas Meditation”. He explained the following:

From time immemorial, man has been regarded as a “world in miniature” (microcosm) in relation to the “world at large” (macrocosm). This view is not only arrived at by the intellect but also by the feelings, which rise up to the lofty starry heavens and to the ideals of the human spirit with equal reverence and enthusiasm. Two things, says Kant, fill the mind with ever-increasing admiration and awe: “the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.” But one can just as easily say: How unequal the “great” and the “small world” are. The starry sky with its eternally unchanging laws and the moral and spiritual nature of man, which follows its laws only gropingly and uncertainly, straying every moment. In the face of the starry sky, even the greatest admirers arise in those who know and study its laws. Keppler literally shouted in admiration when he had researched the secrets of planetary orbits. The human heart, on the other hand, with its fickleness and confusion, evokes the most reservations in those who know it best. Goethe, one of the greatest experts on human nature, repeatedly fled from its labyrinths to the unerring laws of external nature. Goethe himself pointed the way to finding his way around such feelings. He said: “Noble, helpful and good, let man be.” That is a commandment that no one imposes on nature. Man can be blamed for leaving the paths of justice and virtue, but not the volcano that wreaks untold havoc. You have to find harmony with nature, even if it seems destructive. We know that its laws are immutable. Have they always been? No, the laws of planetary motion, at the discovery of which Kepler rejoiced, were only given to the solar system after a long cosmic struggle. Harmony is born out of the chaotic primeval nebula. The research that is able to penetrate to supersensible facts shows that external nature is born out of spirit, out of the thought of the world, just as human actions are born out of human thoughts. Here, Theosophy explains the difference between human beings and external nature. Man is not just the physical being that can be perceived with the external senses. Within his physical body, he still has the soul organism (astral body) and within the latter, only the eternal spirit (mental body), in which thoughts, in which moral feeling, the voice of conscience, have their origin. Between these three components of his being, the struggle that has come to a preliminary conclusion in the outer nature still exists in man. This outer nature, too, was once a world of thought; it passed through the stage of the soul (astral) existence before it became what it is today. But the struggles in this field are over. In inanimate nature, there are no longer any unsatisfied desires and passions that have their seat in the soul (astral) body. This is not yet the case in man. His development, his perfection, is only to lead him to the point where his eternal laws, which lie in the world of thought, find their harmonious expression in outer physical existence, in action. This lack of harmony is also evident in the relationship between destiny and character, between attitude and action. The good often have to suffer, while the wicked are happy; an act of cruelty often bears the same fruit in the outer, sensual existence as a noble deed. Only by placing oneself in the position of the great law of spiritual causes and effects, which brings about a balance in the many lives of the human spirit that can never be understood in one life, can one arrive at a solution to this apparent injustice in the world. Not only the theosophists of the present day know that the human spirit does not embody itself only once, but many times, but deeper spirits of all times have professed this view. Giordano Bruno and Lessing need only be cited as examples. Much in a person's life seems incomprehensible because it has its cause in previous lives. Someone who is particularly clever has the disposition to be clever because he has had experiences in a previous life that led him to be clever. All the painful experiences we have had in the past life as a result of merely indulging in pleasure and pain in our actions have brought about the voice of conscience in the present life. And actions and thoughts that do not bear the fruits corresponding to them in the present life will do so in subsequent embodiments. This is the great law of karma, of spiritual causes and effects in the human world. For everyone there will come a time when they are so perfect that their memory will shine for all their previous incarnations. Then they will recognize karma as the just law of harmonious balance and perfect justice. And they will then be able to shape their lives in such a way that they no longer grope in error, but move within immutable laws, just as the sun, in the course of a year, shows us only regular positions. Therefore, nations have always taken the (apparent) course of the sun in the sky as a symbol for the great role models, for the sons of the gods, for the saviors of the world, who already prematurely carry within them the divine soul, towards which human beings develop. The Christians, too, in the fourth century fixed the birth of their savior of the world on December 25, the time of the winter solstice. Just as this solstice brings light again, so the Son of God brought spiritual light by showing that man progresses towards perfection and by exemplifying this perfection himself. From the sounds of Christmas, if we understand the true meaning, we hear the goal of human development resound: the former harmony between world law and human destiny.

II. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung”, Second Supplement, December 13, 1903

Weimar, December 12.

World Law and Human Destiny. Dr. Steiner's lecture yesterday, which was poorly attended, was intended as a Theosophical Christmas meditation. Apparently, as was explained in it, there is an unbridgeable contradiction between world law and human destiny. However, this is not the case in reality. The fact that the spiritual substance, the bearer of eternal law in man, can only work through the medium of the astral body and therefore loses much of its power and purity, creates disharmony in human destiny. In the great nature, this dispute has apparently been resolved. The Kant-Laplace theory of the formation of this planetary system out of the primeval nebula is correct, but this world was preceded by an astral world and a spiritual world. External nature is therefore, as it were, a model for human beings, an invitation to hurry towards the goal, towards perfection. Dr. Steiner answered the question as to why good people are often unhappy in this life, while villains are happy, by saying that people are what they have made themselves in previous lives. The justice of the law of karma is based on its effectiveness over all the lives of the individual. The wisdom of men is also the experience of countless embodiments, and the only reason why there are different kinds of wisdom is that people have had different experiences in the past. This is known by those who are alive today and have acquired the ability to look back on their past lives, explained Dr. Steiner. Everyone will be able to look back in the same way once they have reached a certain level, and then their path of development will appear completely harmonious. During his lecture, Dr. Steiner felt compelled to explain that he had been misunderstood in connection with his lecture “The Pilgrimage of the Soul”. This misunderstanding had found expression in a critical note in the “Weimarische Zeitung”. No polemic with Dr. Steiner is intended here, but the speaker cannot be spared the reproach that in his lecture yesterday he again allowed Theosophy to be in possession of universally valid truth. When he took the precaution of always using the expressions, “We (the Theosophists) know,” or “The Theosophists know,” or “Those who have become sufficiently wise know,” this only means that the rest of humanity is not yet as wise as the small group of Theosophists. But since, according to Dr. Steiner's own words, what he proclaims is actually the truth for those who have been theosophically trained, it is difficult to see how the critical note in question in the “Weimarische Zeitung” could have been inspired by a misunderstanding. Every founder of a religion, every leader of a sect, every architect of a philosophical system believed himself to be in possession of the one universally valid truth. Not only the speculative minds believed it, but every human being, no matter how little developed, every animal, every manifestation of nature believes it. Only that truth then bears the name “right”. From the fact that, as Schopenhauer says, every phenomenon is felt behind it by the whole of nature, the bellum omnium contra omnes arose. If now, once again, the only truth is to be found, it is certainly justified to put an ironic question mark behind this message!

I. Report in “Germany”, Zweites Blatt, February 28, 1904

On Friday 26 February, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave the fifth of his Theosophical lectures on “Theosophy, Buddhism, Spiritism” in the large recreation room. The speaker pointed out how Theosophy encounters a twofold prejudice in our time. The sciences see in it something akin to spiritualism; and since they turn away from this, as a product of “blindest superstition”, they also want to know nothing of Theosophy. The devout followers of Western religious systems see the theosophical movement as Buddhist propaganda; they do not want their religion taken away or replaced by another. Both views of the theosophical spiritual movement are based on misunderstandings. There have always been Theosophists within European intellectual life, because Theosophy seeks knowledge of the higher, spiritual world. It seeks the divine powers behind the transient phenomena observed by the senses. It is therefore the deeper foundation of every religion, philosophy, morality and all scientific endeavor. In the nineteenth century, it was only pushed aside by a materialistic view of life that wants to build on nothing but what the senses can perceive. This view is connected with the great advances in science and technology. The tremendous successes in this field could only be achieved by cultivating sensory observation and the examination of purely external facts. But even the great and admirable things have their dark sides. And so, as a countermove, so to speak, the scientific movement also produced a materialistic view of the human spirit and soul. Mental processes were to be regarded only as the outcome of physical processes, like the advance of the hands of a clock as the effect of the mechanical clockwork. The slogan arose: “Psychology without soul.” Those who believe in the eternal destiny of man could not be satisfied with such a psychology. And so spiritualism arose. Its followers want to use abnormal states of mind, the so-called trance states, to prove that there is not only a sensual reality in our world, but also a spiritual one. When the waking consciousness that dominates our everyday life is extinguished, a subconsciousness emerges that has an intimate connection with the forces of nature that are hidden from ordinary perception. Those persons in whom such trance states are particularly easy to induce are called mediums. They were by all means noble natures who wanted to restore faith in the spirit to mankind through such paths. And H. P. Blavatsky and Olcott, the founders of the Theosophical Society, also first sought to achieve their goal within spiritualism. Thus, to a certain extent, the modern theosophical movement developed out of the spiritualist one. But the path of theosophy into the spiritual world differs significantly from that of the spiritualist movement. The theosophist does not want to switch off the bright, clear consciousness in order to perceive spiritual reality, but rather develops this consciousness to a higher level; he develops it in such a way that he sees the spiritual around him with full clarity and brightness. There are highly developed people who can see purely spiritually, independently of senses and body. Yes, every person can reach such a higher level of development if he walks the path of knowledge outlined by theosophy. But first, the few highly developed in present humanity must be the teachers of the rest. Like the theosophist, the spiritualist seeks the spiritual life; but the path he takes is dangerous; and because the mediums and their believers do not enter the spiritual field with full consciousness, clarity and orientation, they easily stumble there. Those who know the spiritual world know that there are tremendous dangers there for the unprepared. The Theosophists therefore follow those who move in the spiritual world with full consciousness. They alone can interpret its phenomena in the right way and bring knowledge from the world; while the person in a trance is like a child in this world. It is therefore completely dependent on chance whether error or truth, evil or good is brought out of it.

H. P. Blavatsky first received the theosophical wisdom from the advanced great teachers of the oriental Buddhist schools through a series of circumstances. And only because of this does the modern Theosophical movement, founded by Blavatsky's wife, bear a Buddhist character. But one can just as easily come to Theosophy by truly grasping the deep wisdom of Christianity. It is only that life in the Orient has made it possible for more of this actual wisdom core to flow into the popular, mass religion than of the exalted theosophical teachings of Christianity into the popular folk religions. The speaker then developed a picture of the religious movement founded by Buddha. He showed how this sublime religion and philosophy has nothing of what Europeans wanted to make of it.

II. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung”, February 28, 1904

Theosophical lecture. Theosophy – Buddhism – Spiritism was the subject of a talk given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner to a large audience yesterday evening. Theosophy, the speaker explained, is a cultural movement that has developed from a millennia-old wisdom and that seeks to incorporate itself into our culture. The aim is to resolve misunderstandings on both sides. Firstly, Theosophy had to counter the accusation of unscientificity, according to which it wanted to explain spiritual phenomena in a supernatural way, which led to superstition and spiritism. Secondly, the fear of those who believe that Theosophy is Buddhist propaganda at the expense of Christianity had to be addressed. Theosophy did not want to take away anyone's Christianity, but rather to deepen it. Theosophy first appeared in the nineteenth century, but it had been present in Europe for much longer, as a secret science to protect it from the dullness of trivial life. The fact that the nation's best belonged to it is proven by the writings of Lessing, Jean Paul, Herder, Schelling and also the Goethes; as proof, the speaker cited the fairy tale of the green snake. The ideas that the nineteenth century brought with it are irreconcilable with Theosophy. The great discoveries of natural science are based on sensory perceptions; only proof is valid for them. And since the spiritual and soul-like in man could not be established in a way that was obvious to the senses, faith in it was lost; rather, natural science explains the soul-spiritual essence of man as emanations of the physical organism. Soul teaching without soul became a catchword. In the face of these materialistic views, people sought a divine wisdom, information about the nature of the soul and the destiny of man. Many found it in religion. In the nineteenth century, the spiritualist movement came over from America as a reaction to natural science. It wanted to provide the public with information about phenomena of psychic life and spiritual forces, because hypnosis and suggestion proved that these exist. As materialism spread widely, so did spiritualism, but while the former carried the danger of brutalizing the heart, the experimental doctrine of spirits led to confusion and even greater danger. Mediums provide proof of a spiritual world in a dream state, which is thoroughly abnormal, and lead to false and dangerous conclusions.

Theosophy therefore rejects spiritism as an end in itself. Some Theosophists were indeed spiritualists themselves, but they were able to find higher paths to the knowledge of spiritual essence due to their higher spiritual development; anyone who is grounded in the theory of evolution must also admit this in spiritual matters. For Theosophists, the seer sees into a spiritual world in their waking consciousness, whereas for the spiritualist medium it happens in the subconscious. Devotion for mediumistic purposes leads to moral decline, while the seer of theosophy believes that spiritual powers can be developed independently of the physical organization. The seer looks back on pre-existences and looks into the Kamaloka of theosophy. According to the speaker, today's theosophy is a knowledge that has emerged from the theosophical basis of Indian religions, hence its Buddhist coloration. The ancient theosophy is as much the basis of Buddhism as it is of the innermost core of Christianity: Gnosis is Budhi. The European term Gnosis is synonymous with Budhi, the innermost core of spiritual insight in Indian religion. Buddha taught that the spiritual essence of man is more powerful than the sensual. In clinging to the sensual, man forgets his higher essence. Consciousness of the soul is activity, a life in and for matter is passivity. The latter term should, according to the speaker, coincide with the “suffering” of Buddha with regard to his teaching. Suffering is thus a descent into matter. The innermost power of the soul, developed to voluntarily suppress the lower nature, is the goal of the Buddhist teaching. Nirvana is conscious liberation from the limitations of matter. The wisdom of God, the highest ideal of man, that is the meaning of theosophy; it brings nothing foreign, but seeks to awaken and deepen the consciousness of God that lives in all people. In our opinion, Dr. Steiner was able to give his audience a better understanding of the Buddhist point of view, without, however, refuting too sharply the accusation made against the theosophical movement of engaging in Buddhist propaganda.

Report in “Germany, Weimarische Landeszeitung”, Second Sheet, March 27, 1904

Theosophical lecture. On Friday evening, Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave the sixth of his theosophical lectures in the large recreation room on the subject of “Theosophy in the Gospels. An Easter Meditation”.

The speaker showed what deep meaning can be found in the legends and myths of different peoples when one seeks to get to the bottom of them from the point of view of an allegorical view of nature. At all times, the deep harmony between the striving human soul and the phenomena of nature was felt. When, with each new spring, the sun increases its power and coaxes the dormant germination forces of plants out of the womb of the earth, it was felt that a similar process of a spiritual nature takes place within man. The sun became a parable of the eternal spirit of the world, which is able to awaken the slumbering soul-germ in man when the time has come for him, to lure the spiritual man out of the physical. Of the many legends whose meaning can be found in this direction, the speaker highlighted the Argonaut saga. Jason is the symbol of the dying man. He obtains the fleece of the ram, which is the symbol of the power by which man ascends to the heights of spiritual life. Just as the sun is in the sign of Aries or the ram in spring and receives new strength through its union with this constellation, so man achieves his highest goal through union with the higher spiritual power, with the “lamb”, as a sign of divine power. Thus the course of the sun became the parable of human life, and the appearance of the spring sun the symbol of the resurrection of the human spirit from the bonds of sense life. Christ Himself therefore calls Himself the “Lamb of God” (John 1:29). What the old pagan myths expressed in their imagery – that man must celebrate an Easter of his inner being – is expressed in a sublime way in the greatest event of world history, in the appearance of the “Passover Lamb”, the Son of God. And what was previously only made accessible to a few in secret temple sites, in the so-called “consecrations” or mysteries, was brought by Jesus of Nazareth to all of humanity. For in his infinite compassion, he wanted that “blessed” should also become those who believed, even if they did not see. (John 20:29) By “seeing” is meant “initiation” into the mysteries, which only made it possible for the chosen ones to receive the truth in a pure form, while the others had to be satisfied only with the symbol, with the myth. Through Christ's sacrificial death, all were granted in the period that followed what previously had only borne fruit for a few. That is why Peter said in reference to the gospel in relation to the earlier mythical popular religions: “We have proclaimed to you the power and the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following carefully thought-out myths, but as eyewitnesses of his glory.” (2 Peter 1:16)

The speaker then gave a full explanation of the “miracle of Lazarus” to show how Jesus himself first underwent an initiation in the sense of the old mysteries. Only those who understand this account of the resurrection of Lazarus recognize that it is an Easter of the spirit, not an ordinary death, but the death of the sensual man in whom the spiritual man is awakened. Jesus says this Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, even though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) The illness of Lazarus is a birth, namely that of the higher spiritual man from the earthly, sensual man. Again, this is witnessed by Jesus' word: “The sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be honored thereby.” (John 11:4) Christ thus showed before all people what He had explained as a theosophical teaching in the glorious conversation with Nicodemus (cf. John 3): “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3,5) The speaker showed at various points in the Gospel how it is a proclamation of the “inner Easter of the human soul”, the message of the resurrection of the spiritual man. He argues that the most sublime truth of Christianity is found precisely when the Gospels are taken “literally”. One must only have prepared oneself through theosophy to really understand the deep “spirit” of the words of the scriptures. What the ancient myths have hinted at in pictures, the story of the suffering and resurrection of the Son of God has presented as an historical fact to all of humanity. From this point of view, the great intentions of the Sermon on the Mount are also revealed, which (in the correct translation) begins with the “theosophical” words (Matt. 5,3): “Blessed are those who long for the Spirit, for they will find the Kingdom of Heaven within themselves.”

The courses have covered a long road of historical development. I have tried to present the course of human development from an historical phenomenon that we follow to the point that is called the Middle Ages; series of nations with state institutions have passed by, and we will pick up where things are in completely different circumstances.

The transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages is one of the most significant transitions in the world. Therefore, we want to review the highlights of this development again. We have discussed the magnificent Indian culture, which can be proven to have been historically advanced through writing and documents that amaze Europeans. Once we have realized that it is a people of contemplation, of deep inner life, other interesting points are revealed to us in other peoples. In Egypt, we see a civilization of a different character, and we stand in awe of its culture, which has achieved incredible things in mathematics and technology – engineering of great sophistication and based on different principles. We see the buildings of Lake Moeris, which held back Egypt's water to irrigate the land at certain points to make it fertile. Today, everything must be calculated in detail; in those days it was based on intuition, direct insight. We need only think of the beaver dam, which builds at an angle that the engineer had to recognize as the best. This instinct was developed to the point where it became what we call intuition. So human development does not mean that we have developed from the primitive, but if some of us have achieved something new, much of what was previously higher has been lost.

Let us move on to Babylonia and Assyria. Much of what these people also knew has been lost, despite our geometry. We can no longer hold on to the concept of a straight line of development. Then we came to the Persian people with their remarkable culture; if we remember how a young Persian was educated, we will assess the different picture that the world could have. Speaking the truth. Symptomatically, the innermost part of his being emerged from this people. That a person was inwardly stable was for the Persian when he was unified with his flowing words. What later became law: Yes, yes – no, no (Matthew 5:37), was education here.

A belt begins in Persia, and spreading across Europe, it encompasses the peoples from whom the Roman-Greek culture was replaced. — While art and powerful ideas were developing in Greece and what we call the Roman citizen existed on the Italian peninsula, various peoples lived in the north of Europe. For Rome, this means that the Nordic specter, the Cimbrian terror, in Italy something is emerging in the development of humanity that has never been seen before: to call the difference between [Romans and Greeks] — to simply call the bourgeoisie, which brings personal prowess to its highest peak. This is a new development that we did not have before. We never had any reason to look into the family in Greece – we were only interested in the polis – and so what we call law today, which is essentially based on the family context, is poorly developed. We have seen how this penetrated into the most isolated conditions of the people in ancient Rome; often a boy could not read or write, but he knew the twelve table laws. A Roman sense of dogmatism emerged from this, the direct living force that connected the Romans with their legal principles was lost and became abstract. This Roman legal form had spread throughout the world, but had lost its life. —Officials, the heads of individual districts, dioceses, were the shadow, the shell of the former life and Caesar the abstract, intellectual summary of what used to live in Roman hearts. We saw how Christian life poured into this shell, into this skin, how the vast Roman Empire ultimately had none of the things that had originally made up its greatness. All the cults, Greek, Phoenician, Egyptian, could be experienced there, and this whole chaos of peoples was held together by externally grafted Roman laws. Only one thing united, was equally widespread... /gap] a proletariat suffering terribly under the pressure, and the fact that at the bottom was what was united only by the bond of common pressure, of suffering, made that this Christianity spread with tremendous rapidity. Because it does not care about differences, but about the unity of suffering... /gap] and that is why this living life that came from the East poured into this skin.

And so the Roman emperors used this to save... /gap] but could not save because this people were at the gates.

Let us look at these peoples, who had the strength – the living life of the Christians at that time.

In ancient times, there lived... /gap] peoples whose culture can hardly be imagined today. Only a few remnants have survived by pouring their blood into later components, partly into those like [in] the Balkans. — These ancient peoples — their culture emerges from various finds, trumpet-like instruments that produce a strange harmony. The art of metalworking and an understanding of the sound of the instruments. Something of this was in the peoples on whom the external culture of the Roman Empire was built; there was something of this in the old Etruscan culture – and then in northern regions, in Danube regions. Celtic people – from this center, the entire cultural situation of Europe was dominated; they had a high spiritual maturity, an Illyrian and musical disposition, energy and an entrepreneurial spirit – actually a moving element in European culture. – A cultural ferment that clings to the limbs but does not become historical. He had to be there when he wasn't there, it didn't stay, spread across Spain, France. In the north of Italy there were always those in whom Celtic blood flowed. What made the Romans great was their sense of personality, their legal system based on agriculture – not present in others, and poets like Man... come from the north, like Horace from the south, where Greeks [were] –- everything that is great, if not from the law, is from outside...

The culture of the land the Romans conquered in Spain and Gaul was influenced by Celticism... /gap] A culture that disappeared again because he had to be there in person, this people of the Celts, who had a powerful influence, was attached to blood... /gap] It did not die out, but it does not work through tradition, but still today through its blood. For it can be proven that wherever important cultural influences occurred, they came from those who had Celtic blood in their veins, Shakespeare, demonstrably Robespierre... /gap>

This was a source of conflict for the country, which was always stirring and liberating and had an important mission at this point in time.

A people moved into this country that must have gone through difficult fates – we do not meet them... /gap] with such an intellectual culture, but with one that shows that this people had developed character traits that distinguish them significantly from others. Europe has undergone many glaciations. Once there were hot, tropical times there, then the great ice ages. Undoubtedly the ancestors of the Germanic peoples went through the last great glaciation, and under this influence something developed that is different in skull structure... /gap]

A primitive people more than the other European peoples. The Celt was active and energetic, where he personally applied, agitator in the finest style and therefore somewhat outgrown by nature, - the Romans loved what nourishes them, was intertwined with their agriculture. - The ancient Teuton loved nature, where he found it, was a wanderer who, as such, could enjoy nature. He loved nature, not a certain ancestral territory, had grown together with nature and therefore had a way of life that corresponded to it. Life in village communities in communism, which can be broken open again in the same way. The ancient Germans were engaged in cattle breeding and hunting. These people pushed into the areas formerly inhabited by the Celts, settled in areas as far as Russia, and broke up into a myriad of tribes. Freedom was innate in a sense, but depended on defending it with weapons. Somewhere in the north, there was an island where a festival was celebrated every year and a goddess appeared who was shown off in front of everyone. The connection with nature is evident. And we see how nature services are established everywhere. There is much talk of sacred oaks. But this was a misinterpretation of a word. However, the Celts gave their religion to the Germanic tribes, who were in league with nature. Druids were called oaks. The priest was revered. This shows what a driving element the Celtic people were. — When the Romans extended their rule in Spain, they had to deal with a mixed population that was attached to the Celts... / gap. The Germans had settled in the middle of Europe. At first the Romans met them in the areas of present-day Carinthia, Marius the Cimmerian. Then in France, then they broke into Italy, Cimbri terror. They were joined by Teutons and constant clashes since then. We see how they are beaten back by the Cheruscan Armin.

The Roman form of government had been imbued with Christianity, but the Roman Empire was unable to spread Christianity throughout the world as a people. Something else had to be introduced into that which had absorbed the shell of Roman culture: the strength of a people with an organizing effect.

The task of truly living in Europe, what the Romans had absorbed, was given to the northern peoples, and at first it was the Celts again. So we see the old cultures now replaced by their own rule. The Roman form of government remains only in the church's rule, in the pontificate. Into this body of state the moral-ethical life of Christianity is poured, the power of the northern peoples – Rome gave the form. Celtic agitation brought life forward. The messengers came from England and Ireland. Thus new peoples enter into the old. The inheritance of what has emerged from the most diverse currents is still contained, and if we understand how we have become, we understand how we have to look into the future. Only when we understand what we live in can we continue to build. Thus we will understand how we come to the views, to the material goods under which we live today, which make up our joys and sufferings. Goethe said, the power... /gap>

Law and rights are inherited in eternal illness.

When we consider what, as it were, is the shadow... [gap]

What you have inherited from your fathers, Acquire it to possess it.

Transform yourself, and history will be our teacher.

We must infuse our reflections on the present with what we have learned from the past. Thus we become masters of our history and learn from history how we should work to ennoble our race. Man is the only being that must forge his own destiny, and therefore he must understand it.

When we have acquired our ideals, we will...

[Gap]

Only those who learn to conquer it every day deserve freedom and life.

The representatives of the theosophical worldview have a hard time. This worldview is criticized for claiming the impossible when it says that it claims to deepen religion, science, philosophy and ethics. This raises the question: Does the theosophical worldview also deepen our understanding of Christianity?

The Theosophical worldview is completely and utterly serious about finding the essence of all religions, the crucial point that nourishes every heart in which the unified truth of all religions is present. How could it be possible that the religion through which a revolution in the whole cultural trend has taken place – Christianity – would be diminished by Theosophy? On the contrary, Theosophy opens our insight into the deeper truths of Christianity. Theosophy is accused of being Buddhism. It is true that it was the first to find the essence of this religion, but the deeper the researchers into comparative religion have penetrated, the deeper they have also grasped the truths of Christianity. The books 'Esoteric Christianity' by Annie Besant and 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' by Rudolf Steiner bear witness to this. Christianity has a hard fight on its hands. Materialism, whose high tide was in the 1870s, drove people away from the church. On the other hand, Theosophy leads back to Christianity. In a peculiar way, the scientific spirit, which did not feel satisfied in popular Christianity and was therefore repelled, is calmed by the theosophical explanations, returns to it and begins to understand it.

It is useful to first study the foundations of religion in the ancient Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish religions and only then to come to the Christian one. There one will find that the symbolism was the same at all times, that the spirit has always given answers to the questions of humanity living at the time. Theology in recent times has been unable to unlock the true spirit of Christianity because it has become too immersed in materialism. The insights it provides are unsatisfactory for both the religious and the scientific mind. Others say: the doctrine it brings says nothing new, exactly the same thing has been taught at all times. From another side, however, it is emphasized that in Christianity it depends mainly on the person of the founder of this religion. That is correct. Let us compare the other founders of religions with Him. Take Buddha and so on, Moses, Mohammed. Their teachings were in part equally sublime, but they did not want their person to be revered: they regarded themselves only as messengers called to proclaim unearthly truths to the world. Christ should be regarded somewhat differently. It is not what he taught that matters. He himself did not write down any of his teachings, and the teachings that have been handed down to us by his disciples contain nothing really new – and yet something quite different: he himself is the center of religious beliefs.

The scientific explanation of the difference between Christianity and other great religions is only possible through theosophical-scientific studies. In early Christian times, there were secret Christian schools where the deeper mysteries of the Kingdom of God were taught. These esoteric schools existed alongside the exoteric proclamation of Christianity, which was intended for the uninitiated. The writings of the first church teachers and fathers testify that there were men in those days who were endowed with higher knowledge.

Today it is often emphasized that Jesus of Nazareth was a simple man who knew how to speak to the people in a popular way. With regard to Paul, theologians also emphasize that he spoke from an elementary primal force. Simplicity and simplicity are two different things. One person speaks simply because he is a simple person who has nothing more to give. Another kind of simplicity is that of a wise man who has regained it after penetrating into all the depths of wisdom and thereby retaining simplicity. In the end, at the goal, all wisdom is transformed into simplicity; in the end, one speaks simply. This second way of speaking has a magical power. See for yourself. Read Clemens of Alexandria or Origenes – only someone who knows things that are not of this world speaks like that. And they have the higher knowledge they learned in the secret schools to thank for that; there you learn to speak plainly. Now man is filled with the magic power that fills head and heart with spiritual life, with the fire of the spirit.

And these enlightened ones, who are known to us under various names – especially under the name of the Gnostics – applied all the wisdom they had acquired, all their knowledge, to answering the one question: to solve the riddle of Christianity. In these secret schools, all sciences were taught, natural sciences as well as mathematics and so on. And at the pinnacle of study, the entire arsenal was used to answer the question: What is the significance of the appearance of Jesus Christ? — Everything was summoned to explain this. And today, nothing is considered too simple and straightforward to explain this. Back then, when they were so much closer to the source, they found nothing too lofty to grasp the depths of the mystery. And the enigma to be solved culminates in the question: Who, after all, was this Jesus Christ? — At the time, it was felt that one had to be mature to understand; one had to wait with the final, conclusive judgment so as not to make it without wisdom. First, one must have the wisdom in one's mind and heart that enlightens reason and enables it to reach a clear understanding.

The materialistic worldview is incapable of penetrating the essence of Christianity. It is impossible to get through to Christ by mere belief in the written word, which is subject to historical-critical research, these documents of Christianity. The first three Gospels, which tell us the story of Jesus of Nazareth, were written long, long after his sacrificial death. Centuries had passed since then. Nothing has been preserved to us from the time when Jesus lived. Why not? Because the individual facts are not important in themselves; they are not of such outstanding significance. If it is not possible for us to solve the question in this way, by investigating the facts, how can we solve the mystery at all?

There is another way to reach Jesus of Nazareth. There are documents that the soul finds when it gets to know the secrets of nature. All mystics testify to this. We are told, for example, that someone responded mockingly to Johann Ruysbroek, a famous mystic of the fourteenth century, when he proclaimed: “Well, master, you talk as if you were with Adam in paradise.” To which Ruysbroek replied: “Yes, I was there.” Angelus Silesius says in his “Cherubinischer Wandersmann”:

If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you will remain lost forever.

The cross of Golgotha cannot redeem you from evil if it is not also erected within you.

It does not help us to provide proof of Christ's existence, as one would provide proof of the existence of a cow. All mystics agree on this: you have to experience Christ within you.

For materialism, nothing counts but what it can perceive with its five senses; therefore, what Theosophy brings seems fantastic to it. We humans are too accustomed to relying only on our senses. With these external senses, we will never grasp and learn to understand Christ. But there are forces slumbering in man that enable him to develop [more refined] sensory organs within himself, which enable him to cognize higher things. The ancient Gnostics, the first church fathers, possessed such ability, such [higher] sense organs, and they testify with the mystics of the 13th and 14th centuries from their own experience of the higher human being that they have experienced Christ in themselves as a mystical fact. That means something. The first condition for understanding what happened at Golgotha is to experience Christ in one's own soul. And that is the significance of the theosophical movement: there are people, men and women, who, from their own experience, are informed about the truth of Christianity; they have had the practical experience of inner experience and can therefore speak about it in this way.

The center of Christianity is the personality of Jesus Christ. That is the positive core of truth. Not his teachings, but his person; not the good news that his disciples preached, but that they heard his voice, that they were in personal contact with him – that is what made them speak in such an inspiring way. All other explanations are insufficient to explain the unique phenomenon that the world has been renewed through the appearance of Jesus Christ. The theological teachings do not provide sufficient information about this. Theosophy brings us closer to understanding by deepening the theological view. Those who delve into its teachings will find that they have always been there, but they were not taught publicly, but in secret temples, where the disciples of priests and sages were taught and initiated.

What was taught there? It was proclaimed how the divinity poured out into the world, how evolution took place through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms until man could arise in whom God lives. How this gradually comes about was taught. And to truly experience this within oneself was the goal, the purpose of the teaching. Those who had experienced the God within themselves were ready for initiation, and were initiated into the profound secrets of divine wisdom; they received a new name and could be “sealed in”, that is, they received citizenship in heaven, citizenship in the spiritual world. They received a new name “known only to the one who receives it”.

The Apostle Paul was such an initiate, otherwise he would not have been able to speak as he did. To know how the world came into being requires great wisdom. And this wisdom can only be attained from the One in whom the Word, the Logos, is alive. When He speaks, His Word is light and life. To describe the origin of the world, the symbol of emanation is used. Through the outflow of the Godhead and its inflow into matter, vibrations are generated through which the world comes into being. Through the outflow of the Logos, the world has come into appearance; indeed, it is the Logos that has come into appearance. The wisdom of the Logos rules and animates the world.

There are three who bear witness in heaven: the Father, the

Son (the Word) and the Holy Spirit;

And there are three that bear record in heaven: the Spirit (

wisdom), water and blood, and these three are together. (1 John 5:7-8)

The knowledge of wisdom should flow into the human breast, into its essence, and the preparatory schools served this purpose. In the act of initiation, the disciple was “immersed in wisdom”. If he had previously lived in the light of the flames, he was now immersed in the “fire”; he received the “Word” that lives in wisdom. He who has had a vision of this transformation is filled with a different spirit than before he beheld the mysteries. He can now proclaim the living word that he has seen in the mysteries.

Here we must guard against a certain prejudice. In ancient times, as in the present, one could be wise in all kinds of ways; the philosophical schools in Alexandria, for example, offered a wealth of wisdom material, but it was not possible to have an experience there that filled this wisdom with life. This life could only be attained through the way of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. After the appearance of Jesus Christ, it was possible to attain this life outside the mysteries of antiquity.

The appearance of Jesus Christ is an historical fact. In the mysteries, “death” was now carried out through a deep sleep, different from ordinary sleep. The disciple really experienced a kind of dying and rising. The great tragedy then took place publicly as a real fact through the death and resurrection of Christ. The proceedings in the mystery temples were only a reflection of this great event. The prophets, who were students of the mysteries, were hopeful about the possibility of the real fulfillment of what they had seen in the temples as models. And what they imparted to the world in the way of Messianic hopes was a part of what had been filtered down to them from the secret schools. The new element that Jesus brings is the saying, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29) – namely, to see what was shown in the mysteries. Now those who only believed could be blessed. Anyone who understands something of the essence of Christianity knows what it means to experience Christ within oneself. Before Christ's death on the cross, this experience was only possible within the mysteries; after it, anyone who believes can experience it. Such an experience, as Paul had before Damascus, was not possible before the appearance of Christ in the flesh. The spiritual Christ appeared to him; now he could bear witness to the Life.

Buddha, Zoroaster and so on were the founders of their religions, and those who professed their teachings were their followers. Christ was not the founder of his religion, he was its object. He filled humanity with himself. Paul experienced this in a special way. He is proof of the existence of the living Christ. Christianity is a mystical fact. The novelty it brings is the fact that human nature is transformed. That is why the Son of Man is at the center of Christianity. That is the core of the message. We also find the message of wisdom in other religions. The story of the Buddha concludes with the transfiguration. With Jesus Christ, the tragedy of the crucifixion and resurrection is added. This must be linked to the Buddha's life in order to understand the whole. Christ said of himself:

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

The other great religious founders could only say of themselves: I am the way and the truth. They stood on a high mountain where they saw the truth, from where they then proclaimed this truth to people. Jesus descended from the mountain into life, he descended to preach.

The divine creative word walked the earth, which was something other than the mere proclamation of the descent of the Logos.

[And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.] (John 1:14)

He is the Word made flesh. We learn to understand it by comparing it with the teachings of other religions. The deeper we penetrate into the understanding of all religions, the more we find the same teachings in them. But the tremendous difference between Christianity and all other religions is that Christ's self-sacrifice has made it possible for us to have direct contact with the incarnate Logos.

If what happened in the mysteries had been applied to the life of Jesus, one would have come to a correct understanding of his person and thus of Christianity much sooner. Now it was made possible for people to “believe without seeing” (John 20:29), namely without having seen what was shown in the mystery schools.

Theosophy now has the task of creating personalities for Christianity who can bear witness from their own experience to what they have seen and experienced. Only those who have experienced Christ within themselves can attain true knowledge. It is not easy for modern Christians to find their way into these new perspectives. They are in the same position as the scholars of the Middle Ages were in relation to world wisdom, where Aristotle was regarded as the only authority. When Galileo came to quite different conclusions about the nature and the activity of the heart and blood circulation through his own observations of life than Aristotle, he shared his discoveries with a friend. He had the matter explained to him, found it plausible, but then he rejected this innovation, saying that it could not be true because Aristotle presents the matter quite differently and that only Aristotle is right. The situation is quite similar with today's literal belief in religion, which is based on one's own direct insight. The truths of religion can be verified by one's own insight, just as today the whole of natural science is based on one's own direct research and not on a literal belief in the written traditions of earlier researchers. Only the facts observed in nature are accepted, and the facts themselves are allowed to speak. What Theosophy teaches about the soul is based on direct knowledge of spiritual processes through one's own contemplation. In this way, Theosophy bears witness to the essence of Christianity. Its purpose is to create such witnesses who can recognize through direct contemplation.