The Rudolf Steiner Archive

TODAY I am simply going to add to what we talked about yesterday, and if possible, I would like to take up a new topic tomorrow.

In the fourth lecture in this series, I stressed that finding the right perspective is essential to understanding any subject, whether it is the world in general, an individual human being, social interactions, or any series of interrelated facts. The belief that the truth can be arrived at by proceeding to draw logical conclusions from some arbitrary point of departure is the source of a great many errors. If we really want to understand something, the first thing we have to do is to work out the right point of view from which to approach it. We must realize that finding the right perspective is essential to any studying we do; attempting to understand a subject by approaching it from an arbitrary starting point actually causes a lot of mistakes.

However, if people who are aware of the principle of first discovering the right perspective became acquainted with the psychoanalytic theory's point of departure and proceeded from there, the results would be quite different. They might incorporate certain materialistic affectations into psychoanalytic theory to begin with, but they would soon be forced to adopt purer and nobler means of understanding simply through having made the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious mind. They would realize that dragging in points of view of the sort we mentioned before is not objective but a sign of arbitrary emotions belonging to subjective human nature.

The most significant aspect of any true study is that it tends to lead us far beyond our original point of departure. Rather than incorporating our own subjective impulses into the subject, we are guided and spurred on by the subject itself. Eventually, every true student becomes aware of how truly necessary this principle is. It is indispensable in making any spiritual scientific world view into a reality and equally indispensable to the structure of a society in which such a world view is to be fostered. We must finally realize that we have to take anthroposophy seriously and give it the respect it deserves. That is, we must not incorporate previous subjective habits into things belonging to our spiritual scientific philosophy, but must rather let ourselves be guided by what that philosophy requires. For example, in everyday life someone may be in the habit of always arriving late instead of at the specified time. In ordinary bourgeois life, that habit may be merely unpleasant or less than advantageous for that person's advancement, but in our anthroposophical movement, the whole way we deal with spiritual scientific truths ought to make that kind of behavior an inner impossibility except in cases of dire necessity.

In the past few days, we have talked a lot about dignity—not only the essential dignity of spiritual science itself, but also the dignity of our own interactions within the Society. We saw how important it is for us to spend time together as members among ourselves, with no one else present. Of course, making sure we arrive on time is a superficial thing, but in the past few days people have still been coming late, even though the lectures started at twenty past six. If we carry on like that, my friends, we will never even be able to begin to realize the ideal of our Society. In the somewhat attenuated circumstances that come about when we cannot be sure that members will not continue to arrive once we have begun, we will never be able to rule out the possibility of having uninvited guests in our midst. It is simply inconsiderate to come late to a Society function when the Society needs to make sure that everyone present is actually a member; that is, when some of us have to go to the extra effort of keeping an eye on the people entering until all members are present. When the people standing at the door have come in, we need to be able to shut the doors and know that everyone is here.

It should certainly not be necessary to make a special point of talking about things like this, but in spiritual science we have to be guided by the concept of symptomatology, which simply means that any being tends to act the same way in important instances as it does in less significant ones. People who don't even manage to arrive on time for meetings will also not be able to act out of the requisite sense of responsibility when it comes to something important. A great deal of the damage that has become so blatantly evident lately has come about because people were not particular enough about certain things. It is really important for us to conduct the practical affairs of anthroposophy with the conscientious exactitude I just mentioned. We have seen an example of how we as members of a spiritual scientific society interact on an ordinary everyday basis; this example, although very mundane, is nonetheless indicative of what spiritual science requires of us.

In our efforts to find the right perspective on what we have spoken about aphoristically so many times in the past few days, the main thing we have to keep in mind is that the structure and organization of the world as a whole consists of expressions and revelations of real spiritual entities. They are present behind the revealed world, which conceals them from our perception. As you know from many previous lectures, these beings are constantly in movement, constantly inwardly active. At the moment, I am not talking about any particular movement, but about their inner activity as a whole. We have to imagine a certain degree of complexity in this movement if we want to understand how the beings that stand behind certain phenomena relate to the phenomena themselves. The following example will be familiar to you from previous anthroposophical lectures.

We know that our physical evolution began during the ancient Saturn period and that it continued during the Sun period, when etheric development set in, and so on. But what does our physical development on ancient Saturn mean in relation to the structure of the cosmos as a whole? It would be totally inaccurate to take our physical nature as it is now and assume that if we imagine it in a much more primitive and simplified form, that's what the physical human being would have looked like during the Saturn stage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps it will help you understand this if I tell you that there is absolutely nothing in the present-day physical world, nothing on the physical plane as it exists now, that bears the slightest resemblance to human physical existence during the Saturn stage of evolution. In none of the forms and facts of the physical world as we know it now is there any trace of what human physical development was like during that evolutionary period. So if we want to understand this ancient form of our physical existence, we must make the effort to do so with a soul and spirit freed from the physical and etheric bodies.

I will call the world in which we understand the makeup of our earliest potential for physical existence during the Saturn stage [writes on the chalkboard] the world of the perception of physical human nature on Saturn. For the time being, let me just say that we must leave the physical body and undergo a higher form of development in order to achieve an understanding of structures corresponding to physical human nature during the Saturn stage.

Next, let us consider human physical existence during the Sun period, which represents a progression of physical evolution from the Saturn stage. It is impossible to understand our physical Sun nature with our present-day physical organs of perception. Once again, we must ascend into the spiritual world, but not as high as the level required for comprehending human physical nature during the Saturn period. In other words, we are able to investigate our physical Sun nature at a somewhat lower level. We can call this [writes on the board] the world of the perception of physical human nature on the Sun.

For investigating physical human nature as it evolved during the Moon period, a still less elevated level of perception is required. As soon as we become capable of body-free perception, we are able to comprehend everything that corresponds to our physical Moon nature. Let us call this third stage in the relationship of the human being to objective fact [writes on the board] the world of the perception of physical human nature on the Moon.

Continuing in the same vein, we come to our physical nature during the Earth stage of evolution. In order to understand this, we do not even need to leave the physical body; we can grasp it with our physical organs of perception. This level of cognition is the natural one for human beings during life on Earth, and we can call it [writes on the board] the world of the perception of physical human nature on Earth.

So, my friends, we have looked at four different levels of the worlds of perception, levels that can also be called [writes on the board] physical plane, soul world or astral plane, spirit world or Devachan plane, and higher spirit world or higher Devachan plane.

If you follow what I have been describing, you will know that we have to place the physical human being of the Saturn stage here, the physical Sun-human here, the Moon-human here, and the earthly physical human being here [small circles]. This in no way contradicts our usual concepts, but is indicated quite clearly in my book An Outline Of Occult Science, where I described at length how what we recognize as human physical nature at the Moon stage is not to be observed on the physical plane, but at a higher level, and so forth. [ Note 1 ] It's all explained there very clearly.

Today we know that human beings have descended during the course of their physical evolution [line connecting the small circles]. The human being, to the extent that we are speaking of our present-day physical nature, is a descending spiritual being. This is one of the basic ancient principles of any spiritual science. Thus, when considering our physical body, we must realize that everything we can see of it at this Earth stage in evolution is that aspect of ourselves that has descended the furthest.

However, there is also something concealed in the physical body. It conceals something that is actually Moon-like in nature, something more hidden that is Sun-like in nature, and something still more deeply hidden that is Saturn-like in nature. Thus, within the revealed physical body, inner character and inner essentiality are concealed. In a sense, we can actually perceive only a quarter of our physical body. The other three quarters are concealed behind the perceptible body and are nobler and more spiritual in nature than the aspect visible on the physical plane.

Looking at any part of our physical body as it exists now on the physical plane, we have to realize that all our physical organs are in constant inner movement; they are constantly descending and evolving from the spiritual toward the physical. We must understand that as they are growing and developing into their proper form on the physical plane, all our organs are involved in a descending course of evolution. They are in the process of evolving downward from a more spiritual form of existence to a more material one.

In assessing the nature and character of anything belonging to a human being, we must be guided by the rule of always finding the right point of view. We are led to the right perspective when we realize that from a certain point of view—the one I have been discussing today—physical human nature is in a process of descent. Therefore, when we look at human development from childhood to maturity, the childhood stage of evolution must be regarded as more spiritual and the mature stage as more material, since a descent from the spiritual to the material has taken place in between. We will not understand human physical development if we look at it from any other point of view. It is only possible to understand it if we are aware that a descent of the physical human being takes place during growth and development, that a growing human being allows something spiritual to descend deeper into matter.

The same principle applies to the world as a whole. Thus, we also speak of cultural evolution. For instance, once upon a time there was an ancient Indian cultural epoch that evolved into the ancient Persian epoch, then into the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian epoch, then into the Greco-Latin epoch, and finally into our own cultural epoch. However, we also know that former cultural epochs continue to exist alongside more recent ones. I have showed you how this manifests in language.

Applied to the human being, this can show us how physical organs that have proceeded further along the course of descent can exist side-by-side with others that are still at earlier stages. We will gradually come to see that according to this principle, we can distinguish two systems of organs within the human being, although for today, I will only point this out aphoristically.

Let us first consider our senses and all the organs that allow us to have sensory perceptions. In terms of their physical structure, these sense organs are all at a certain level; the spiritual has streamed downward to a certain level in these organs. I'll make you a diagram of that [sketches on the board]. Now, we said that human nature in its entirety consists of a downward flow; it is moving in this direction [arrow]. The upper horizontal mark indicates the position of the senses within this downward flow, so we must think of all the organs of sensory perception as being at level A.

Next, let's look at a different system of organs, for instance the respiratory system. In order to consider this, too, from the right point of view, we must find the level to which it has descended. Eventually, we will find that the respiratory system stopped at level B. While our sensory system descended to level A, our respiratory system continued to descend until it reached level B.

As you might imagine, this process of descent can go on still further, so there could even be a system of organs that has descended still further, to level C. And in fact, our sexual organs have done just that.

Eventually, our physical evolution reached its lowest point and a gradual re-ascent began. However, we will not be able to talk about that today. I will indicate the lowest point of descent with this curved shape at the bottom of the diagram. This is where the earthly process of descent stopped. You can tell from all this that our sensory organs are much more spiritualized than our respiratory organs and everything else. And, as we will come to understand ever more clearly, our sexual organs represent the lowest level of descent. Therefore, all other components of our physical human nature are more spiritual than that particular system of organs.

That was easy enough to understand, wasn't it? However, the point I want to make is that psychoanalytic theory, that disgusting philosophy, has been incapable of becoming aware of this simple fact. Psychoanalysts claim that all of people's actions, including mystical experiences, are nothing more than transformed sexual energies. Psychoanalysts, or we might even say materialists in general, take sexuality as their starting point and explain all other human phenomena as metamorphoses of sexuality. I have already pointed out how in Freud's theory everything that happens in a person's life is explained in terms of transformed sexuality. For example, that babies suck on pacifiers is explained as an expression of infantile sexuality, and so forth.

But what is the truth of the matter? In reality, my friends, any other human daily activity is more spiritual than sexual activity, and to arrive at the right perspective on this subject, we have to look at things the other way around. Any attempt to explain what people do by dragging in sexuality and eroticism is completely wrong. The right way of looking at things is to explain sexuality as the transformation of higher human activities into their lowest earthly form.

Since I have been forced to mention the ghastly claims of the psychoanalysts because they are an unavoidable phenomenon of our times, let us take a look at one of the worst of them, namely their contention that the loving childhood relationship of a boy to his mother or a girl to her father is actually a sexual relationship. Psychoanalysts claim that a girl's feelings for her father and a boy's for his mother are sexual feelings, and that boys always view their father as a rival and are unconsciously jealous of him; girls, so they say, are similarly jealous of their mother. This is one of the most terrible of the distortions psychoanalysts have perpetrated. In their writings, as you know, they have even used this assumption as the basis for explaining certain literary works such as the story of Oedipus. [ Note 2 ]

In looking for the right perspective on this subject, we need to ask how adult sexuality develops. As we have seen, it comes about through something spiritual sinking down into matter. Our adult sexuality comes about through the descent of something that was spiritual when we were children. The correct approach is to avoid getting anything not specifically sexual mixed up with sexuality, either consciously or unconsciously, and to realize that sexuality is not yet present in children. Only when we are fully aware of all the ramifications of this can we find the right perspective on the matter. This is an extremely important point with regard to the education of children, because all kinds of things can go wrong if childish mischief is automatically interpreted as premature sexuality. All kinds of things other than sexuality can be the reason for children misbehaving. Claiming that there is already a sexual side to a child's character is just about the same as insisting that tomorrow's rainy weather is already inherent in today.

By now you will have realized what we are dealing with here—the perspective that has been applied is totally upside down and backward. Coming to such a distorted perspective does not happen naturally, but only by forcing the issue and arbitrarily dragging in our instincts. The whole psychoanalytic approach is tinged with the lowest human instincts; it turns the world upside down. Such an interpretation of the mother-daughter or father-son relationship can only come about if the researcher's subjective instincts get mixed up with the objective course of the investigation. Consequently, in this instance (providing we go about it with all due exactitude), it is perfectly all right to apply expressions usually reserved for subjective human actions. While it would be foolish to apply subjective expressions to a legitimate and objective science, it is possible to do so in this case without relinquishing the objectivity of our point of view.

Just imagine someone believes that the hands of a clock are turned by little demons sitting inside—we would call that foolish, of course. Clocks are mechanical devices; there are no little devils inside. Reacting to it objectively, however, we would never say that the person who attributes the clock's functioning to demons is insulting the clock. But when psychoanalysts attribute this sort of sexuality to children, instinctual subjectivity invades their theory. Then it is justified to use subjective expressions and say that the psychoanalytic theory insults human nature. We must make an effort to be truthful and call a spade a spade. In our materialistic world, a number of people have made it their task to cultivate a theory that demeans not only individuals, but human nature in general, to the extent that their whole scientific theory is nothing more than a compilation of insults. When a sufficient number of people realize that this is happening, we will start to see psychoanalytic theory for exactly what it's worth. Then we won't be merely peddling with words any more, but will be able to see things as they are. That's how we can come to clarity on this issue.

Only after we have completely understood everything we have discussed today can our understanding be allowed to lead to name-calling. When we call psychoanalysis a smutty theory, that obviously really is name-calling; however, our insight into the objective fact of the matter is what compels us to call it by this name. After all, it would not be right for the criticism to come from the same kind of subjective instincts as the theory itself.

The unique thing about spiritual science, however, is that an apparently abstract theory is transformed into justified feelings and reactions. Those who have gone through a real struggle to understand what psychoanalysis actually is can freely call it a smutty theory without losing their objectivity. It is as objective to call psychoanalysis a smutty theory as it is to say that canvas is white and charcoal black. It is objective terminology derived from true insight into human nature in its totality.

The purpose of our spiritual scientific philosophy is to deepen our concepts, and not only our concepts but our whole character, my friends. If we say that a Society intended as the vehicle for this philosophy must be a living organism, then we must also be able to see how the emotions expressed within the context of the Society also develop out of this spiritual scientific philosophy, so that even a radical expression such as “smutty theory” can only be applied when it is firmly rooted in spiritual science and when no personal instincts play a part in its use.

I am sure we will soon find an opportunity for further discussion of related matters.

The ability to perceive karmic connections in human life demands a clear understanding of laws and conditions of existence with which, generally speaking, the man of modern times is entirely unfamiliar. For into the karmic connections extending from one earthly life into another, spiritual laws are working, spiritual laws which will be totally misconstrued if they are associated in the very slightest degree with causation similar to what is meant when we speak in the ordinary way of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ in the world.

In order to understand the real nature of karmic connections we must, in the first place, have a clear and exact perception of what is happening within man behind the sphere of his ordinary consciousness. And it is only by observing the being of man as revealed to super-sensible cognition, to Initiation-knowledge, that such understanding can be attained.

Let us therefore consider to-day how the attainment of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition makes it increasingly possible for man to recognise how he lives, as man, within the whole cosmos. This will enable us to continue the study of certain matters that were touched upon in recent lectures and will eventually lead to an understanding of karma.

It has often been said, even in public lectures, that at the stage of Imaginative Cognition a tableau of the present earthly life spreads out before man. A vista of his life lies before him in mighty pictures and he is able to behold things that cannot be yielded by memory in the ordinary sense.

In this vista which opens out as a result of the striving for Imaginative Knowledge, man is, to begin with, entirely within his physical and etheric bodies, but through the appropriate exercises he makes himself completely independent of everything by which impressions are transmitted to him from his physical body. In the activity of Imaginative Cognition man is therefore independent of his sense-impressions, and also of his intellectual knowledge. He lives entirely in the etheric body and the memory-tableau lies outspread before him.

We can therefore say: man is now living in the super-sensible, inwardly detached from his physical body. And in point of fact it would not be so difficult as it actually is for the majority of people to acquire this faculty of Imaginative Knowledge, if only there were a stronger inclination to break through the inner link between the life of soul and the physical body.

It is, of course, comparatively easy to break through the link with direct sense-perception. But remember that a man is also connected with his physical body through the attitude and tenor of soul he acquires in his earthly life. After all, our moods of soul are also dependent upon the physical body, are essentially influenced by the physical body. When a man ascribes one thing or another to his capacities, his talents or other qualities of soul, this is all connected with his experiences in the physical body. If he is to acquire the faculty of genuine Imaginative Knowledge he must free himself from all this; and if he succeeds, even if only for a moment, he knows what Imaginative Knowledge is and the life-tableau begins gradually to unfold.

It is necessary to bear in mind the difference between the condition of being bound up with the physical body and thus living within it, and the condition of being independent of the physical body but for all that remaining within it. There is a real difference, and it is the latter condition that obtains in the activity of Imaginative Knowledge. We remain within the physical body, we do not leave it, but we are nevertheless independent of it.

When you remain with your soul and spirit within the physical body, then you fill the physical body, even if you are not bound up with it. I will illustrate this diagrammatically.—

Let us think, first, of man's ordinary, everyday condition. Take this (a) to represent the physical body (inner curves), this the etheric body (outer curves) and this the soul and spirit (short branching lines).

The etheric body is connected everywhere with the physical body through the muscles, bones and nerves. These connections are everywhere, proceeding from the etheric body to the physical body. Now picture to yourselves that you have a porous clay vessel and you pour liquid into it. The liquid fills the pores and runs out into the porous clay. But it may also happen that your vessel is not porous and in that case none of the liquid is absorbed; the liquid will then be in the vessel but there will be no channels into the clay walls. In the activity of Imaginative Knowledge man is in this sense within his body but the etheric body does not enter into the muscles, the bones and so forth. This condition can be indicated by (b) in the diagram. Physical body; then etheric body which is now on its own; and within, the soul and spirit. All that has happened is that the etheric body is now inwardly detached. The result of this detachment will of course be perceptible when returning to the previous condition. It is therefore only natural that when a man really tries to make himself free of his physical body but remains within it, as is the case in the activity of Imaginative Cognition, he is aware not only of exhaustion but of actual heaviness. He becomes intensely aware of his physical body because he has now to make his way into it again.

This is the condition obtaining in the activity of Imaginative Cognition but not in that of Inspiration, Inspired Knowledge. In the activity of Inspired Cognition—which begins, as I have described to you, with consciousness that has been emptied of images—man is outside his physical body with the soul and spirit. Thus (c) in the diagram represents the soul and spirit outside the physical and etheric bodies.

The outer configuration must therefore be the same as in sleep. Knowledge through Inspiration is possible only when with his ego and astral body a man can be outside the etheric body.

And now, when he returns into his physical and etheric bodies, he notices the presence there of something else; the physical and etheric bodies are not at all as he is accustomed to know them; something is there within them. This is very important, because knowledge of it gives an indication of the whole process of Initiation.

At first, a certain difficulty is experienced in coming back into the physical and etheric bodies after the state of Inspiration, because there is the feeling of diving down into something quite different.

Remember what I told you yesterday about the backward survey of the memory-tableau. If this memory-tableau is blotted out in the activity of Inspired Knowledge, we perceive what it is that is present there within the physical body. And when the memory-picture of the phase between birth and the 7th year, until the time of the change of teeth, is blotted out, we perceive that within this physical body there was an Angelos, an Angel! We actually behold there a Being of the Third Hierarchy. So that what happens is this. We succeed in getting outside the physical body and then return into it as into our house and home ... and lo! we meet our Angel there when we look back upon the phase of life from birth until the 7th year.

Knowledge of such truths existed in the days of the ancient, instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge which took different forms in the various epochs of evolution; and these truths were taken into account in establishing certain customs and usages.

In olden times men were fully conscious that the giving of names should conform with spiritual realities. Generally speaking, people to-day are indifferent about the kind of names their children receive. For some the only consideration is whether the name has a pretty sound. There is often an element of coquetry in giving a name to a child; people ‘fancy’ the name. But in olden times men were mindful of the child's relation to the spiritual world and chose the name accordingly. In an epoch, for example, when a prophetic being was venerated under the name of ‘Elisha’, girls were sometimes named ‘Elisa-beth’, that is to say, the ‘house of Elisha’. In this way expression was given to the hope that by placing a child in the world with this name, the grace of the prophet would be ensured. And so the names were given with this aim in view.

What were the grounds for this? It was known that when man has been outside his body and then returns into it, he sees himself as the bearer of spiritual Beings. And the whole conception that little children, especially, are guarded by their Angel originates in the fact that when with Initiation-knowledge we look back upon the phase of life from birth to the 7th year, we experience what I described yesterday by saying that when this phase in the memory-tableau is blotted out, the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, that is to say, the deeds and activities of the Moon-sphere shine through.

Again, when we look back upon the phase from the 7th to the 14th years and then return into the body, we find an Archangelos. This Archangel is of course also present within the human being from birth until the 7th year, but we do not find the Archangel when we are looking back only at the phase between birth and the 7th year.

And so when we return into the body after having been outside it, we become aware that there, within the body, are Beings of all the higher Hierarchies. But this form of self-knowledge, the knowledge that the body is the bearer of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, cannot be acquired in any other way than by having first been outside the body and then returning into it again.

This can be understood only when it is connected with another fact. I have told you that the many stars in the heavens are but the outer signs of colonies of gods. Where the stars sparkle in the heavens there are, in reality, colonies of spiritual Beings. But you must not imagine that these gods have their consciousness only in Venus, or only in the Sun, or in Mercury, or in Sirius. They have their main habitation, the focal point of their existence in these several spheres, and this is true of all spiritual Beings of the cosmos who have anything to do with the earth. But it is impossible to say of their existence in the cosmos that they have their dwelling-place only in Mars, only in Venus, and so forth. Paradoxical as it will seem, I am nevertheless obliged to say that the Divine Beings who belong to the earth and who people Mars, Venus, Jupiter or another of the planets—also the Sun—would be blind if they inhabited only one of these spheres. They would live, they would be active—just as we can walk about and take hold of things even if we have no eyes; but they would not see—I mean, of course, in the way in which Divine Beings ‘see’—they would lack a certain faculty for perceiving what is happening in the cosmos. But this, my dear friends, will lead you to ask: Where, then, is the eye of the gods, where is their organ of perception? This organ of perception is provided by the Moon, our neighbour in the cosmos—in addition to all its other functions. All the Divine Beings belonging to the Sun, to Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, have their eye in the Moon and are at the same time in the Moon.

And now think of some of the things of which we have spoken here from time to time. Take only one fact. The Moon was once part of the earth, and separated from the earth only in the course of time. Before the separation of the Moon, therefore, the eye of the gods was bound up with the earth; the gods beheld the cosmos from the earth. Hence at that time the great primeval Teachers too were able to impart their wisdom to mankind. For in that they were living on the earth, and the Moon was still within the earth, they could gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. When the Moon departed, remembrance of this vision of the gods remained with them for a time; thus they could behold, in remembrance, what was now seen with the eye of man, and could communicate this to the gods. But the primeval Teachers themselves had then to make their way to the Moon, where they are to this day, and to found a colony there in order to be able to see with the eye of the gods.

And now turn your minds to something else. From the Moon, Jahve reigned over the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and those of the primeval Teachers who were still associated with the cult and the teaching of Jahve united with him in the Moon, in order to look out into the cosmos through his eyes. In time to come the Moon will again be united with the earth and then it will be possible for man on the earth to gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. Vision of the cosmos will then be a natural human faculty.

It is only by understanding these things that we can come to know the nature of the universe. For only when man views the universe in this way can he have any true conception of the function of the Moon.

And now we have the reason why freedom, free spiritual activity, can be unfolded in earthly life. As long as the Moon was connected with the earth, as long as the primeval Teachers taught men out of their store of remembrance, and as long as this teaching was preserved in the Mysteries—actually until the 14th century A.D.—all wisdom consisted in what had been seen with the eye of the gods. Only since the period I indicated to you, only since the year 1413, has it become utterly impossible for the earth to see with the eye of the gods. So that with the development of the Consciousness Soul, freedom begins to be within the reach of men.

But in point of fact man is on the earth only in the activity of sense-perception and intellectual knowledge, for the latter is also bound up with the physical body. The truth of the matter is as follows. Let us picture the human being. It is only in his sense and intellectual knowledge that he extends beyond the Hierarchies who are within him. In respect of all that lies behind his intellect, he is filled with the Third Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his feeling, he is filled with the Second Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his willing, he is filled with the First Hierarchy.

We are therefore in very truth within the Hierarchies and it is only in respect of our sensory organs and intellect that we extend beyond their realm. It is actually as though we were swimming, with the head rising a little out of the water. With our senses and our intellect we rise out of the ocean of the activities of the Hierarchies.

All this we find when, having experienced the reality of perception outside the body, we return again into the body. And then we find that in very truth man is the House of the Gods.

Something else will now be clear to you. When the gods desire cosmic vision, they gaze through the eye of the Moon. But when they desire to behold the cosmos from the earth—whereby an entirely different aspect is revealed—then they must look from out of man. The human race is the other eye of the gods!

In very ancient times it was natural for man to be able to see with the eye of the gods because the Moon was within the earth. And he will be able to do so again when in future time the Moon and the earth are re-united. Through Initiation, however, through becoming aware on returning into the body that the gods are present there, and through coming to know these gods, man learns to behold the world through the “eye of man.” Thus Initiation reveals to man what in earlier times was revealed to the gods through the eye of the Moon.

What we do with our everyday consciousness, the intentions we form, and so forth—all this depends upon ourselves; but our karma is shaped and fashioned by the Hierarchies within us. They are the architects and shapers of an entirely different World-Order, a World-Order belonging to the soul, to the moral sphere of life. This is the other aspect of man, the aspect of the Hierarchies who are within him.

As long as we remain at the stage of Imaginative Knowledge we are convinced, as we look back over our own earthly life, that we are a unity; we are also convinced that certain actions in life are free, because they proceed from this unity. With Imaginative Knowledge we perceive little of our karma. When we reach the stage of Inspired Knowledge, however, and then return into the body, we feel ourselves divided into a world of countless Hierarchies. We return into the body and at first do not know our identity. Are we the Angel, are we a Being of one of the Hierarchies, one of the Dynamis, or Exusiai? We are divided into a world of Beings, dazed by the multiplicity of our nature, for we are one with all these Beings.

At this point the appropriate exercises must make a man so inwardly strong that he can assert his unity over against this multiplicity. And then—it is of course all an after-effect of the life between death and rebirth—he perceives how karma is shaped by the interweaving activities of the many Beings within him. Countless Divine Beings take part in the shaping of human karma. It is therefore true to say that man leads an earthly life in the real sense only in respect of his intellectual and sensory activity. In the activity of his life of feeling and of will—yes, and even in a more remote and hidden activity of thought—man shares in the life of the gods. In a hidden thought-activity he shares in the life of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; in respect of what is hidden in his life of feeling he shares in the life of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; and in respect of his will he shares in the life of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

What we call human destiny is therefore an affair of the gods and as such it must be regarded.

But what does this mean for earthly life? If a man cannot accept his destiny with inner composure, if he rebels against his destiny, if—from his personal point of view of course—he is discontented with it, if he brings his destiny into confusion by subjective decisions, then it is as though he were continually disturbing the gods in the shaping of his destiny. Destiny can of a truth only be lived through in the right way when life is accepted with inner composure and tranquillity. To feel and perceive how destiny works is something that brings with it hard and heavy tests for human nature. If a man can succeed in taking his destiny earnestly, this experience will give him a strong and deep impulse to live in communion with the spiritual world. And life itself will unfold in him a feeling for connections of destiny, of karma.

Men of the modern age have to a great extent lost this sensitivity, this delicacy of perception; their perceptions have become crude. But suppose there is someone who looks back with more delicate perception upon the relationship he had with a human being who was an example to him in his youth—a teacher, perhaps. People do not always feel contemptuous about those who were their teachers; many look back with inner happiness to those who educated them. When this is so, the recollection can deepen into a very intimate experience. It may come to us that between our 7th and 14th years, for example, we always felt obliged to do whatever this revered teacher did; or we may realise that when this teacher told us something we felt as though we had already heard it, as though it were just being repeated. It is actually one of the most beautiful experiences in life when we remember something of this kind, feeling that it was repetition. And then it strikes us that something must underlie this experience. Healthy human reason will tell us that there is nothing to account for it in the present earthly life, and then the same reasoning faculty points us to previous lives. There are indeed many whose attention is directed in this way to earlier lives on earth.

Now what does it mean when we can look back to a teacher with feelings like these? It means that in our present life destiny has led this teacher to us. It is our karma to have such a teacher and it points to a previous earthly life.

As a rule—and this is shown by occult observation—as a rule it is not the case that in the previous earthly life the teacher was also our teacher; the relationship then was quite different. From a teacher we receive thoughts, ideas, even if they are clothed in the form of pictures; in true education we receive thoughts and ideas. When this is the case it points back, as a rule, to a relationship where feelings, not thoughts, were communicated by the person in question; there was less opportunity for receiving thoughts from him, but feelings were communicated—feelings which can be transmitted in so many different ways. And the same may apply to the present and a future earthly life.

Let us suppose that in this present life a man feels drawn by warm, inner sympathy to some other person with whom life does not bring him into specially close contact, whom he merely meets but to whom he is strongly drawn. In such a case it may happen that these feelings of sympathy lead to the other becoming his teacher in a later-life.

What, then, has actually happened? When feelings of sympathy and attraction towards another person unfold in a man, this is the result of what the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai—unfold in and around the human being.

Then, in the next life, when the influence does not work by way of the feelings but by way of thoughts and ideas, this means that the Beings of the Second Hierarchy have given over what they wrought in a preceding life, to the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; and it is they who are now working within the human being.

When, therefore, our karma unfolds from one earthly life to another, this means that actual deeds are passed on from one Hierarchy to another and that in the cosmos, in the spiritual cosmos, something of immense significance is taking place.

In looking at a man's destiny we gaze, as it were through a veil, into a wide vista of cosmic happenings. If we can become conscious of this, the impression will be one of tremendous power. You have only to picture it to yourselves, entering into it with the right feeling and understanding.

Imagine now that you are observing the manifestations of destiny in the life of a human being. This should never be done in a spirit of indifference, for in observing the destiny of a human being we are in truth beholding deeds which have poured from the highest Hierarchy into the lowest Hierarchy, and again from the lowest into the highest Hierarchy. We are gazing upon a weaving activity of life in the ranks of the Hierarchies when we study the destiny of a human being. It is something that must be contemplated with deep piety and veneration, because as we behold this destiny the world of the gods lies manifest before us.

This was the feeling I tried in some measure to convey when I was writing the Mystery Plays. Throughout the Plays you will find scenes that have their setting in earthly life and others that have their setting in the spiritual world. And I have also made it evident how not only the higher Hierarchies but elemental beings, also the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers, mingle in the living, weaving deeds that flow from above downwards and from below upwards when the destiny of man is being fulfilled.

Think of the scenes when Strader and Capesius are within the super-sensible world in quite different forms of existence but for all that the same individuals. This is only the other side of man's life which is just as truly part of him—the side that belongs to the world of the gods and not to the world of the minerals, the animals, the plants, the mountains, the clouds, the trees and so forth. To learn to contemplate the destinies of human beings with reverence and awe—that too is something that the times demand of us. It is a dreadful experience to read biographies from the pens of materialistically-minded authors to-day, for they write without an iota of reverence for the destiny of the one whose life they are narrating. Of a truth it would be well for biographers to realise that when they intrude into the life of a human being, even if only for the purpose of describing it, they are coming into invisible contact with all the Hierarchies.

Deliberations of this kind lead us to the ‘feeling’ side of Anthroposophy. We realise that everything offered to us in Anthroposophy must also move our feelings. For in Anthroposophy it is not merely a question of acquiring knowledge; feelings about the world are quickened within us, feelings which alone can enable us to find our rightful place in life. And without such feelings we cannot truly understand or perceive the laws by which the karma of man is pervaded.

The constitution, the entire life, of the human soul we conceive much too simply as we human beings of the present time, of the nineteenth, twentieth century experience this. What we learn from external history is in great measure only outside occurrence, far less the history of the human soul itself. The changes which occur with the soul life of the human being are considered very little. Now, it must be borne in mind that earlier periods did not have the same occasion for giving attention to this history of the human soul life as does the present time. For the present time, which, when we consider it as a long historical epoch, began in the first third of the fifteenth century,—this present epoch presents man with very special responsibilities, such as he can discharge only by means of his consciousness, whereas earlier responsibilities could be discharged by means of certain instinct, even though an instinct humanly formed. We have heard in various ways and perhaps read in cycles, how in ancient times man possessed a kind of instinctive clairvoyance, but how the evolution of humanity has consisted in the loss of this instinctive clairvoyance, and that in its place has appeared the contemporary constitution of soul, which is intellectual in character and has developed primarily the human understanding. I do not say that for this reason the capacities of feeling and volition have not been active in the human being, but what constitutes the greatest thing in our contemporary civilization, what we experience at the present time more than anything else, this calls upon the understanding, upon the capacity for conception. But the present day human being has good reason for asking the question what significance an intellectual civilization possesses for the human soul. This question can be completely answered only if one gives a little attention to that reference to the pre-earthly human life to which attention was directed yesterday in a different connection.

As human beings of the present time, we experience concepts as something very abstract, as something that we do not experience in the same degree as that in which concepts were experienced in the time of the ancient instinctive clairvoyance by human beings. And if, from these abstract, intellectualistic concepts, we look at pre-earthly human existence, we find that something entirely different existed in place of what is today abstract thinking. Moreover, since we possessed no body, no organism, in the pre-earthly life, as we still possessed only the soul-spiritual nature, thoughts were something entirely different. Thoughts then still possessed a soul life. We then experienced a thought in such a way that we knew that thoughts are spread everywhere in the entire world, and we draw these out of the world into our own life of soul.

Today the view of the human being is that thoughts are something which he creates with his brain. This is just as clever as if a person taking a glass of water to himself should believe that the water comes out of his tongue, is not taken in from without. In reality, thoughts are something active, living, the working forces in the whole world, and we simply draw them out of the world. Our organic system is only the vessel into which we draw the thoughts by means of our ego. But the erroneous idea that we of ourselves create the thoughts, to this error one can surrender oneself only during the earthly life between birth and death. As long as we live in the pre-earthly existence, it is clear that the realm of thought completely fills everything in our surroundings just as air does during our existence between birth and death. We know that, so to speak, we breathe in thoughts and again breathe them out, that they are something active, productive. It is of the utmost importance that we become aware that the forces of thought are something quite different in the pre-earthly life and in the earthly existence. When we come upon a corpse somewhere in the world, we do not say to ourselves that this corpse could have been brought into its present form by any kind of forces which we call forces of nature. We know it is the residue of a living human being. The living human being must necessarily have been in existence there; a force of nature can never give to a corpse the form in which it exists. The corpse can be nothing else than the residue of a living human being.

What we are able to observe in regard to the life of thinking in the human being as we possess this in the earthly existence gives us a basis upon which to understand that the forces of thought we develop during the earthly life do not come into existence of themselves in our physical organism, but that they are the residue of living forces we possessed in the pre-earthly existence. With the same certainty with which one says that the corpse is the dead residue of a living person he can say also that abstract thinking such as we have at the present time is the dead residue of what we possessed during the pre-earthly existence in living thought.

The living thought dies as we are born—or as we are conceived—and what becomes effective in us as forces of thinking is the corpse of that living thinking which we possessed during the pre-earthly existence. We do not quite rightly understand the earthly thinking until we look upon it as the residue of the pre-earthly thinking, just as we look upon the corpse as the residue of a living person. This awareness of human thinking, which is the residue of a living thinking, must gradually more and more permeate humanity; only then will one look upon oneself in the right way as a human being; then will one look back in the right way to the pre-earthly existence as one looks back from the corpse, in which only the forces of nature are existent, to the living human being, in whom loftier forces are alive. But one considers this entire thing in the right light only when one knows that this thinking, as we possess it at the present time, tending only toward abstraction, we developed first since the fifteenth century. Naturally, it evolved in various ways in the various individual races and groups of human beings, but in general the situation has been such for civilized humanity that humanity has evolved to this dead thinking in the first third of the fifteenth century; that this thinking became ever more and more completely dead until a certain culmination of this condition of deadness came about exactly in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Indeed, if we look further back in the course of evolution, we find that in these ancient times the human souls, as they passed through conception and birth, brought over into the earthly existence something out of the pre-earthly life. The living nature of ancient myths, ancient popular legends, the ancient formative forces of the soul which are by no means the same as our present activity in phantasy, could not have developed if something had not streamed in from the living pre-earthly existence, if earthly thinking had already become entirely abstract. Indeed, it can be said in a certain sense that even at present there remains a final residue of pre-earthly thinking in the period of childhood, although this is lost in the course of life. But those human beings of a more ancient time were entirely different from contemporary human beings in their entire life of soul. Just imagine quite truly that we could experience at the present time this living thinking, could experience still such clairvoyance as the human soul possessed in ancient times, that you experienced imaginations, that these imaginations could affect you so powerfully that they would appear to you as revelations of divine-spiritual forces. You would never arrive at a consciousness of freedom. The true feeling of freedom developed for the first time in civilized humanity. The fact that man has been able to become free he owes to the circumstance that living thinking is not active at least in his waking state, but a dead thinking into which he injects whatever he wishes out of his free will. Man does not think as he thought at an earlier time; he himself begins to think. But beginning oneself to think means to inject human will into this thinking, and when man finds a dead thinking he can pour his free will into this thinking. Thus man had to advance to dead thinking in order to become a free being in the course of earthly evolution.

You see that, if we consider in the same way the evolution of the human soul life, it becomes clear to us that there is meaning in the formation of the whole human evolution on earth.

But we will now once more return to somewhat earlier times. That which occurred as a deadening, an abstracting, an intellectualizing of thinking in the first third of the fifteenth century had been in the course of preparation for a long time very gradually beforehand. Such things do not occur all at once but pass through a preparation, pass through a certain beginning finally to reach the highest point. Now it is clearly to be seen that the first beginning toward this abstract thinking occurred in the fourth Christian century. I mean that in the fourth Post-Christian century there began the first trace becoming dominant in human consciousness that man believed he creates his thoughts. This could not have been thought by a Greek. The Greek was altogether conscious still of a certain living quality of this thinking and was conscious that thoughts exist everywhere within things; that he simply draws them himself out of things. The opinion that man creates his thoughts came about through the fact that thoughts became ever more and more lifeless. And these lifeless thoughts, with which one can, so to speak, do whatever one will, made their appearance for the first time in the fourth Christian century. This proceeded gradually still further until, in the fifteenth century, the consciousness (which we still possess today) clearly took on its form.

But what resulted from this in the evolution of humanity? In the fourth Post-Christian century occurred the beginning of an intellectual, abstract thinking. This means, however, nothing else than that the Mystery of Golgotha, the appearance of Christ upon the earth, occurred during a time when the human soul was still filled with living thoughts. In this respect much has been lost to humanity in the matter of its consciousness. It is true that humanity has in this way achieved freedom, but very much, nevertheless, has been lost. When Christ appeared upon the earth he was received by a certain number of human beings who still possessed an inwardly living, active thinking, who still possessed in their thinking a residue of the pre-earthly existence. And these persons related themselves to the Mystery of Golgotha in a manner entirely different from that of the human beings of a later time. Just think for a moment, that till this period, human beings said to themselves—they did not clearly express this; everything was then enveloped in pictures, but the consciousness was there—I am now upon the earth; I have as an earthly human being my thinking; but this directs me backward through birth and conception into the pre-earthly existence, into a different world; it is out of this that I have descended. Man felt himself here as a projection of what he was in the pre-earthly existence. Human beings of that time knew quite clearly that with the earthly existence they were continuing an earlier, pre-earthly existence, even though in that time human beings saw into the pre-earthly existence as if through a glass, darkly. This consciousness, that man is a being descended from the heavens to the earth, disappeared in its essence during the fourth Post-Christian century.

From this point of view also was conceived the event of Golgotha. If mention was made to these persons by initiates—who were at that time still in existence, not possessed of such wisdom as were the initiates of the ancient mysteries, but still having at least a residue of the ancient mystery wisdom,—if mention was made by them of the Christ, their answer was that Jesus Christ had been at home previously in the same world in which we also were present before we descended to the earth; there He was also. That was His world; only He had never previously left that world. It is indeed a characteristic of earthly human beings that they had to descend to the earth since very early times; there they went away from the Christ in order to come down to the earth. If, then, mention was made in the ancient mysteries of the Christ—indeed, mention was constantly made of the Christ in the ancient mysteries, although He was not called by the name “Christ”—then thought had to be directed to the pre-earthly existence; it had to be said to human beings: If you wish to know something of the Christ, you must not hold fast to your earthly consciousness, but must look upward to the pre-earthly existence.

Indeed, we must introduce something from this pre-earthly existence in order to understand what I wish to bring out today. Standing here upon the earth as earthly human beings, we look up to the sun, we form conceptions of the sun, we even develop hypotheses regarding it: that this sun is a ball of gas or something similar. Indeed, from the earthly point of view it is inevitable that one forms such conceptions; but people believe that this could be the same from all possible points of view. Before we descended to the earth, then also we saw the sun, but out of cosmic spaces, from the other side, as it were. The sun was not then a physical object but a gathering of spiritual Beings, and the most significant among these Beings for humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha was the Christ. Thus one may also make the following statement: when in the pre-Christian time people were initiated into what later was transformed into the Mystery of Golgotha, it became clear to them that human beings beheld the sun in the pre-earthly existence and became aware of the Christ; that, when man then descended to the earth, he saw the sun from the other side, but the Christ was concealed from him: only through mystery wisdom could he be guided to the Christ. This was experienced in the first period of Christian evolution as the nature of Christianity: that the great Sun Spirit now no longer remained the Sun Spirit, but had left through the Mystery of Golgotha those regions through which the human being can pass only outside the physical body, and had come into the earthly existence; that He was the only divine-spiritual Being who had ever entered upon earthly existence. We meet—although only by means of spiritual research—with persons even in the first period of Christian evolution who felt very deeply in their inner being that Christ, came out of the sphere of spirits who did not need to pass through birth and death, for whom birth and death are only a metamorphosis, had descended and passed through birth and death. This descent of Christ to the earth was the entire essential feeling experienced during the first period in Christian evolution. This descent was far more important for human beings of that time than what followed after the descent. The fact that Christ wished to be in a community with human beings, that He desired to share in the two most significant experiences—birth and death—this was felt in circles of the initiates as the genuine religious impulse. This was possible only because man still possessed some degree of inner, living thinking; because until the fourth Christian century thinking had not yet been entirely paralysed, had not become entirely abstract, because it still filled the human being as does breathing at the present time in a physical relation. For this reason it was felt that Christ had carried out the human destiny of the descent, which the other spiritual-divine beings had not done for the reason that being born and dying are not characteristic of the gods, but only of human beings. This is the magnificent element in the belief of initiates in the first Christian centuries: that they felt Christ had really become a human being, had really taken upon himself human destiny; that He is the only one of the divine-spiritual beings who had shared this destiny with man.

Now, however, it is necessary that the truth become clear to the human soul that this soul of man, in the degree that it belongs to the world of pre-earthly existence, cannot really die. For this reason has come about what we associate with the resurrection of Christ: the victory of Christ over death, symbolizing the victory of every human soul over death. And the ancient idea, I should like to say, of the state of being unborn has blended with the new idea of resurrection which had previously existed but not with the same intensity. Since the Event of Golgotha has come about, this became in a way the expression for what is most important of all in the earthly evolution of man.

While thinking was still living, man felt not the least fear of death; this was not for him an extraordinary occurrence. This is something of the utmost importance in the history of human evolution, that death was viewed by man as something entirely different, something obvious, whereas, as man suffered the loss more and more of the consciousness of a pre-earthly existence, abstract thinking, with the physical body as its instrumentality, brought about more and more fear of death and the belief that death is something final. Ancient humanity had little need for the idea of resurrection, but rather that of the descent to the earth in common with the Christ. As, however, human beings have advanced further and further into abstract thinking, they needed more and more a view out of the earthly existence, a view in the direction of immortality. This outlook is bestowed upon humanity through viewing in the right way the fact of Christ's resurrection. This fact I have set forth in books, lectures, and cycles of lectures many times over. Both facts—the descent of Christ to birth and death and the fact of His resurrection, the fact of victory over death—until the fourth Christian century, this could be clear to humanity in its feeling nature, since living thinking was then still in existence. After the fourth Post-Christian century, as abstract thinking developed further and further, humanity became less and less capable of connecting thoughts with the content of the Mystery of Golgotha. It has actually been the destiny of humanity in its evolution that, during the period in which man achieved through abstract thinking his own freedom, the understanding of Christ Jesus, which had existed during the earliest Christian centuries, had to disappear. That is, because of the fact that those writings designated as the Gnostic, a term which has become almost contemptuous, have been almost utterly eliminated except for a few residues with which very little can be accomplished. What had been thought by those persons in the first centuries who still possessed some knowledge of living thinking was destroyed. This we know only through writings of their opponents. Just imagine what the situation would be if, through some kind of accident, all anthroposophical books and other writings should disappear, and that the nature of anthroposophy would have to be adjudged only on the basis of writings by its opponents. Just so much is known today by people who depend upon external documents regarding Gnosis. That most extraordinary understanding of Christ by Gnosis, enclosed within itself, was lost to humanity. Most of all did that awareness completely disappear that the Christ had something to do with the sun, and that He had descended to the earth and passed on Golgotha through a destiny common with that of humanity. All of these relationships, especially the feelings associated with such things, were lost to humanity. More and more there came about the abstract interpretations, the abstract thoughts.

One of those who struggled out of the character of that period toward an understanding of Christianity is to be seen in Augustine. In this Augustine we see a spirit who could no longer understand the ancient form of the conception of nature. You know that Augustine is said to have been a Manichean. Augustine narrates this himself. But all that lies back of these things can no longer be rightly seen through by means of external thinking. What Augustine called Manicheanism, what is called at present the teaching of Mani, is only the degenerate outcome of an ancient teaching which conceived the Spirit only as creative and knew no difference between matter and spirit. No spirit was existent that did not create and what it created was seen by the human being as matter. Just as little conception did these ancient times have of mere matter; on the contrary, spirit existed in everything. This was something that Augustine could not understand. What Gnosis understood, and what was no longer understood later; what our own period does not at all understand,—this is true: no matter exists of itself; this was known by the Manicheans and they beheld the descent of Christ in the light of this view. Augustine could no longer make anything out of this; the time had passed, the possibility of making anything out of it, because the documents had been destroyed and the ancient clairvoyance had been blotted out. Thus Augustine, after long intense superhuman struggle arrived at the decision that he could not of himself attain to truth, but must adjust himself to what the Catholic church prescribed as truth: to submit himself to the authority of the Catholic church. And this mood—consider it at first as a mood—remained, contained alive especially for the reason that thinking became ever more abstract. In reality it was only slowly and gradually that thinking was disabled.

And the Scholastics in their greatness—they really are great—still lived within a trace of knowledge that thinking on the earth was derived from a super-earthly thinking, that man lived within a heavenly thinking. Within this evolution however the possibility was gradually more and more completely lost to conceive the Event of Golgotha as something alive. It is actually true that the advanced theology of the nineteenth century, because it desired to be scientific in the modern sense, lost the Christ; that theology was happy to have at last instead “the simple man of Nazareth”. Christ was now “the loftiest human being on earth.” Of the Christ indwelling within Jesus no conception could any longer be formed.

Thus the evolution since the fourth Post-Christian century has consisted of a gradual loss of the connection of man with the Christ in that living form as it was conceived by many persons during the first centuries of Christianity. Thus it came about, moreover, that the content of the gospels was less and less understood. You see, the human beings who lived during the first centuries of Christianity would have considered it utterly astonishing to speak of contradictions in the gospels. It is as if some one was familiar with the picture of a human being taken from the front and that a photograph was brought to him taken in profile, and if he should say: “This cannot be a picture of the same person”—thus would it have appeared to persons of the first Christian centuries if one had spoken to them of contradictions in the Gospels. They knew very well that the four Gospels simply present a picture taken from four different points of view. The human being of the present time would say that these are exceptional presentations, that they are from all different sides. In the spiritual world everything is far richer; in the spiritual world photographs would have to be taken from various sides as one has four Gospels. More and more arrived the time in which nothing was known any longer in the ancient sense of the Event of Golgotha. But this Event of Golgotha is of such a nature as can be conceived only from a spiritual point of view. It is indeed interesting that the historians generally slip around the Event of Golgotha. We have now the historian Ranke, considered a distinguished writer of history, who declares actually that one does not mention this, just omits it. If one omits from history the most important thing of all, no history can come into existence. Even if a person has no connection with the spiritual world and thus cannot understand the Mystery of Golgotha, he would still have to admit its tremendous influence. But history is written at the present time without mention of the enormous influence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The capacity has ever more and more disappeared to view the Mystery of Golgotha in the right manner.

We can view the matter, however, from entirely different points of view; we can say to ourselves: in the course of evolution humanity arrived at the necessity of having Christ in its midst. Gradually more and more human beings lost the consciousness of their belonging to the pre-earthly existence. This was no longer in their view; finally human beings knew only that they existed after their birth on the earth. Then the Christ came to them, in order to make manifest to them through His descent that there is a pre-earthly existence; in order to bestow upon them an understanding of what no longer lived within their own consciousness. Since human beings no longer possessed this relation in their own consciousness they were to achieve a new connection through their relation to Christ, who had passed through the Event of Golgotha. The Christ had, in a sense, bestowed Himself upon humanity in that period during which the epoch was gradually to arise for humanity to ascend to freedom. As thinking now became more and more abstract there was no longer any possibility to view in thinking the Mystery of Golgotha. But the content of the New Testament history was so enrapturing, so appealing to the human heart, that even by reason of the purely external traditions that which could no longer be grasped by thought still continued to exist for a certain time.

If we survey the first period during which Christianity was spreading out, we see that traditions existed which, in the final analysis, were derived from the Gospels, that the child-like heart took possession more and more of the picture of the Palestine events; but we see at the same time how a cognitional experience of the Mystery of Golgotha was being lost. In the same degree in which dead thinking came about, there was overshadowed also the child-like memory of the Palestine time; human beings lost their connection with Christ Jesus and people were happy when the connection with the human being Jesus could still be maintained. And now we are within our own present time; here, in reality—although it is not yet observed—the consciousness of the connection with Christ Jesus has already disappeared. In tradition human beings still hold fast to the doctrines and have no living inner connection with Christ Jesus. One need only observe how external the festivals of the year have become. How external the Easter festival has become for human beings of the present time, whereas this Easter festival was such for human beings of an earlier time that men experienced in deepest inwardness what can be called memory of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ had given Himself to human beings in a time when humanity had to develop its consciousness of freedom. This had in a certain sense been developed. But this would become merely external if the relation with the Christ could not be found again. This cannot be found unless we begin to seek for a spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge, as this is sought by anthroposophy, will find again the relation with the Christ. This relation can be found only spiritually. What occurred on Golgotha is not merely an event that has laid hold upon the physical, earthly history of humanity, but also a spiritual event. No one can understand the Event of Golgotha who does not understand it in the spirit. Anthroposophical spiritual science, therefore, is at the same time preparation for a new understanding of the Christ and of the Mystery of Golgotha. Indeed, when we consider this fact, we are reminded of the deeply significant Gospel statement: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world”. And there certainly shines out from this expression that He was not there only when the Event of Golgotha occurred; that he remains with human beings as a spiritual being, who can be found in the spirit. We need not consider as spiritual, therefore, only what radiates out of the Gospels, but we know that Christ is with us, that when at present, provided with spiritual knowledge, we listen to what is manifest concerning Him out of the spiritual world, this is a manifestation of Christ. This is the manifestation of Christ just as much as what we gain when we look into the Gospels.

“I have many things still to say unto you but you could not bear them now”,—this is a reference to the time when Christ is again to be seen. And now this time approaches; it is already here. Humanity would lose the Christ if it were not possible again in a new way, in spiritual knowledge, to gain the Christ. In this way must much more become understandable to us which in an earlier time was connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, but has been lost because the spiritual understanding of it has been lost. How people struggle with the present intellectualism with the statement said to have been spoken by Christ that the Kingdom of God had come down to the earth, that an entirely new life was to begin. It is so immensely clever to say at the present time that everything on the earth has remained, after all, such as it was before. This is obviously clever, but the other question must be put in the spirit of this statement of Christ: is one really speaking in a truly Christian, spiritual understanding in supposing that any kind of external spiritual kingdom was to be set up? An external spiritual kingdom would be, of course, physical. This contradiction, you see, is not observed. But it is extremely conspicuous that people have become extraordinarily clever at the present time and still this cleverness cannot be justified even in its own realm.

I should like to call your attention to something very interesting, even though this really separates us from our actual theme. The Vienna geologist, Eduard Suess, a distinguished research scientist, says in his book The Countenance of the Earth that this countenance of the earth must have been entirely different, stones much more living than at present, that man is walking at the present time really upon a dead earth. The clods over which we walk belong to a dying world. Geology assumes that the earth was once far more living and has gradually passed over into the dead state. Suess says in regard to an entirely different area what Christ said concerning the spiritual life of the earth. If only this were true, that the earth will fall to pieces in a far distant future time when it will be reduced to dust in the cosmos, if what occurs to the human being did not occur to the earth—that the body becomes dust, but the spirit lives further—then all of us would be included in this turning into dust. With this earth we are beholding what leads over into the Jupiter existence; we look already toward a new earth.

With regard to the physical, this view of the turning of the earth into dust is true; with regard to the spirit-soul something different is valid. For the ancient initiates of the time of the Mystery of Golgotha it was quite clear that with the ancient civilization, the ancient mysteries, things had come to an end. The manner in which the ancient human beings had lived with their gods had come to an end; the manner in which they had lived with manifestations of nature had come to an end. But the gods bestow upon human beings the possibility of approaching a future in the spirit. What was acquired in ancient times as knowledge out of the earth belongs to the path; a new time must arrive in which the human being must bring about a kingdom by means of his own will, in which man shall give life again to a dead thinking by means of his own forces. This was a prophecy at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. This kingdom came about also in an external way, it is to be understood, to be accepted, only by human beings of the present time. At the present time we must feel that the Kingdom of Heaven of which Christ speaks must by seen by us upon the earth as the Christ works upon the earth. This must be the fulfilment upon the earth, and the fulfilment of this Kingdom of Heaven must be earnestly conceived precisely in our present time. We experience in all areas that the human being is beginning to confront the peril of being cut off from the spiritual world and from his own being if he does not find access to the spiritual world.

The scene from “Faust” just presented, which comes at the end of the second act of Part II, forms the bridge for Faust's entrance into ancient Greece. Those who have gone most deeply into Goethe's world-conception will see how, through it he has penetrated deeply into the spiritual, in both universe and the mystery of man, in so far as the latter is connected with what is spiritual in the universe. It should first be emphasised, on the one hand, that what Goethe meant by saying he had put a great deal in a veiled way into Part II of “Faust”, applies especially to this profound, most significant scene. In this second part of “Faust” there is much wisdom. On the other hand, when represented on the stage, this wisdom is able through its imagery to make a great appeal to the senses.

If we are to understand Goethe's Faust, particularly the second part, we must always keep these two aspects in mind. As Goethe says, the simple minded spectator of Faust will experience pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction in its series of pictures; the Initiate, however, is meant to find there profound secrets of life. If we start with what the pictures give us, this scene represents a festival of the seas to which Homunculus has been taken by Thales. This festival, however, contains a great deal that is veiled, and is meant actually to introduce the demonic powers dwelling in the sea,—that is, the spiritual powers.

Why does Goethe have recourse to the demonic powers of ancient Greece when wishing to lead Faust to the highest point of self-knowledge and self-understanding in human evolution? It may be stated that Goethe was perfectly clear that it is impossible for man ever to arrive at a true conception of his own nature by merely acquiring knowledge received through the senses and the understanding associated with them. True knowledge of man can only be imparted through true spiritual perception. So that all the knowledge and perception of man sought simply through the external physical world, to which the senses and the physical understanding are directed, is no real knowledge of man at all. Goethe indicates this by introducing Homunculus into his poem.

Now Homunculus is the result of the knowledge of man to which Wagner is capable of aspiring with ideally conceived physical means, such ideally conceived means as would. naturally be considered by ordinary science to be its goal, from which, however, no result can be expected either today or in the future. Goethe advances the hypothesis that it might be possible to produce a Homunculus in a retort, that is, to gain such complete knowledge of combining the forces of nature that a human being could be intellectually put together out of various ingredients. But it is no man who arises thus, even when all that can be attained in the physical world is thought out to the highest point of perfection—no man arises, no homo, but only a homunculus. Considered dramatically, this homunculus is simply the image of himself that a man can form with the help of his reason, of his ordinary earthly knowledge. How can this man-made image that is a homunculus provide a true conception of man? How can it be brought about that in this conception man does not stop short at the simple homunculus but pushes on to the homo? It is clear to Goethe that this goal can only be reached through knowledge acquired by the human soul and spirit when free of the body.

Now, by most various ways Goethe endeavours to reach the realm to which a human being must come if he wishes to acquire complete knowledge of man, that is, the knowledge acquired when free of the body. Goethe really wishes to show that it is possible too out of the body to gain knowledge, decisive knowledge, concerning the nature of man. He was by no means one of those who plunges lightheartedly into such matters. His whole life through he was striving to to make his soul more profound. For it was clear to him that when a man grows old, he does not live in vain, but that the forces of knowledge are always increasing, so that in old age it is possible for us to know more than in our youth. But he realised, also the problematic nature of the sojourn of soul and spirit outside the body. Hence he sought in the most varied ways to bring man, to his Faust, knowledge in the form of pictures, that we call Imagination. And he does this first in the Romantic Walpurgis-Night of Part I, and then again in the Classical Walpurgis-Night where he takes the Imaginations from ancient Greece, whither he would transport Faust. We might perhaps say that Goethe thinks that, when a man leaves the body in order to change Homunculus into Homo, into man, he has Imaginations appearing to different people in different forms. And, in the perception of the ancient Greeks, these Imaginations in some degree still approached spiritual reality. Setting before the soul the demonic world of ancient Greece, we can see how, in this traditional realm of myths, when outside the body with his soul and spirit, in highly developed atavistic clairvoyance, man contemplated nature from whose womb he sprang. I might therefore say that Goethe, not wanting to invent an imaginative world himself, calls in the Greek world in order to tell us that, whatever a man may contrive out of his ordinary knowledge, he still remains a Homunculus; if, however, he wishes to become a real man, he must first advance to the world of Imagination, Inspiration, and so on. That is how the nature of man should first be conceived.

Why does Goethe choose a sea-festival, or rather the dream of a sea-festival? To understand his feelings, we must take ourselves back into the conceptions of the old Greeks, to which Goethe himself went back in his representation of this gay feast. We must realise that, to the Greeks, there was a special significance in foresaking the land and sailing out to the open sea. The Greeks, like all ancient peoples, still lived in the outside world. Just as a change took place in these people when they forsook the level ground, the plain, and went up into the mountains—a change experienced by modern man in an abstract prosaic way—so the was some tremendous change in their soul on leaving dry land for the open sea. This feeling that the open sea has special power to release the soul and spirit from the body was universally experienced in olden times, and much is connected with the feeling.

I must ask you, my dear friends, to remember what an important part in the various symbols, on the path of knowledge, was played by the Pillars of Hercules in ancient myths. It was constantly said that when a man has gone through various stages of knowledge he sails, through the Pillars of Hercules. This meant that he sails out into the limitless, open sea, where he no longer feels himself within reach of any coast. For man today that has ceased to mean very much, but for the Greek it meant entering a completely different world. Once past the Pillars of Hercules, he became free of all that bound him to earth, above all through his bodily forces. In olden days, when everyday matters were still experienced by soul and spirit, sailing over the open sea wan felt as freeing one from the body.

Goethe's poetical works were not like those of lesser poets; he wrote out of his feeling for the cosmos, and when he speaks of all that he transposed into the Greek world, he transposes himself there with his whole soul. It is of this that we must constantly remind those who read Goethe as if he were any other poet—those who, whey they are reading Goethe, have no consciousness of having been carried into another world.

Now as the scene begins, we see the ‘alluring Sirens.’ Goethe presents a scene that, though externally in picture-form, might equally be one of everyday life. For the Sirens are collecting wreckage for the Nereids and Tritons. Considered from the other side, however, these alluring creatures, these voices, are not only within man but also outside him. They are the voices of different stages in the world, and on these stages, as I have often shown, inner and outer flow together. The Siren-sounds are those that entice the souls of men out of their bodies, and set them in the spiritual cosmos.

Let us sum up all this. First, Goethe shows a festival of the sea, or rather, dreams evoked during this festival. Secondly, this festival took place during the night, under the influence of the Moon. Goethe arranges everything to show that here it is a question of having to gain a conception independently of the body, a conception of the kind that would be attained consciously, outside the body, is then experienced in pictures. And now we see that, while on the one hand, Goethe wishes to satisfy those who keep to the superficial—this is not said in any belittling sense—by making the Sirens collect wreckage for the Nereids and Tritons who covet it, yet these Nereids and Tritons are on the way to Samothrace to seek the Kabiri and bring them to the festival of the sea. By introducing the Gods of the primeval Samothracian sanctuary into this scene, Goethe shows that he is touching upon the highest human and cosmic secrets. What, then, must take place when Homunculus is to become Homo, when the outlook of Homunculus is to become the outlook of Homo? What must then actually happen?

Now the idea of Homunculus, as understood within the world of the senses, must be taken out of that world and transposed into the world of soul and spirit where, between falling asleep and waking, man has his being. Homunculus must be taken into the world man experiences when, free of his body, he is united with the existence of soul and spirit. It is in this picture-world that we must now find Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture of Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture into that other world, the world of Imagination, Inspiration, and so forth. There alone can the abstract idea of Homunculus be grasped by the real forces of being, those forces that never enter human knowledge when we stop short at the understanding through the senses. When Homunculus, the idea of Homunculus, is separated from the body and transferred to the world of so and spirit, then in all earnestness everything becomes real. Then we have to come upon those forces that are the real ones behind the origin and evolution of man.

In all this Goethe is showing that he had a profound and significant comprehension of the Samothracian Kabiri, that he had a feeling how, in primeval times, these Kabiri were worshipped as guardians of the forces connected with the origin and evolution of mankind. Thus, by evoking from the age if atavistic clairvoyance, pictures of the divine forces associated with human evolution, Goethe was touching upon what is highest.

When dealing with the Samothracian Mysteries, the conception of the Greeks referred back to what was very ancient. And it may be said that the ideas about these Samothracian Mysteries about the Kabiri divinities, permeated all the various ideas the Greeks held about the Gods, all their ideas concerning the connection between these Gods and mankind. And the old Greek was convinced that his idea of human immortality was a legacy bequeathed to the Greek consciousness by the Samothracian Mysteries. It was to the influence of these Mysteries he felt he owed the idea of man's immortality, the idea of man's membership of the world of soul and spirit.

Goethe therefore wishes at the same time to suggest that, were the impulses of the Greeks, that are associated with the Kabiri of Samothrace, grasped in a state free of the body, perhaps the abstract human idea of Homunculus might be united with the true evolutionary forces of man. In the Greek consciousness there was definitely something that could live again, vividly, in Goethe when he touched on this profound mystery. To take an example, this may be seen in what the Greeks used to say of Philip of Macedonia how, by watching the Mysteries of Samothrace, he found Olympia. And the Greeks had in their consciousness how, at that time, the great Alexander decided to descend to these parents when coming to earth, when soul to soul before the divinities of Kabiri Philip of Macedon and Olympia found each other. Those things must be touched upon for the awe to be felt which the Greeks actually experienced when the Kabiri were in question, an awe shared later by Goethe.

From an external point of view they are simply ocean-deities. The Greeks knew that, in an age relatively not very ancient, Samothrace had been inundated, rent asunder, and reduced to confusion by most fearful volcanic storms. The nature-demons had shown their power here in such a terrific way that it still remained in historic memory among the Greeks. And in the woods, in the forests of Samothrace, at that time very dense, the Kabiren Mysteries were concealed. Among the many different names they bore is one Axieros; a second, Axiokersos; a third, Axiokersa; the fourth was Kadmyllos. And a vague feeling existed that there were also a fifth, sixth and seventh. But man's spiritual gaze was mainly fixed on the first three. The old ideas of the Kabiri centered round the secret of men's becoming; and the initiate it in to the holy Mysteries of Samothrace was supposed to come to the perception that what is seen spiritually in the spiritual world corresponds to what happens on earth when, for an incarnating soul a man arises, a man comes to birth. In the spiritual world the spiritual correlate of the human birth was supposed to be watched.

Through such vision, Goethe believed he could change the idea of a homunculus to that of homo. And it was to this vision the Samothracian Initiates were led. We cannot see a man in his true nature when we regard him as a being enclosed within his skin and when we are under the delusion that all we are concerned with in man stands before us in external, physical human form, visible to the external eye. Whoever wishes really to know man must go beyond what is enclosed within the skin and look upon the human being as extending over the entire universe. He must have in mind, what extends spiritually outside the skin.

Now many of the ideas about the Gods depend on this impulse of the Greeks to see the human being outside his skin. And connected with these ideas there was an exoteric and an esoteric side. The exoteric side of man's becoming related, however, to the whole of nature's becoming; the connection of man's becoming with the becoming of nature was involved when, later, the Greeks spoke of Demeter, of Ceres. The esoteric side of Ceres, of Demeter, of the world in its becoming, was the Kabiri. We must know how to look at him, if in any way we are to be able to penetrate the secret of man.

You see, to look at man simply as a figure standing on the physical earth is, really, to deceive yourself about him. For the human being has been united from a threefold stream, a trinity. And as three lights cast their beams on a point—a circle—and we see the fusion of the lights and then refuse to recognise how one, perhaps yellow, another blue, and the third of reddish colour flow together into one, refuse to see this harmony, preferring to believe that what has arisen from a mingling of lights is a unity and so deceive ourselves in believing this mixed product we see before us as man in his skin to be a unity. He is not a unity and if we take him for one we shall never read the secret of mankind. At the present time man is unconscious of not being a unity. But he was conscious of it while atavistic clairvoyance glowed warmly through human knowledge. Thus, the Initiates of Samothrace put men together out of Axieros standing in the middle, and the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, whose forces were united with those of Axieros. We might say than that there are three—Axieros, Axiokersos, and Axiokersa. These three forces flowed together to form a unity. The higher reality is the trinity; the unity springs from the trinity. This is what comes before the eye of man.

It might also be said that the Samothracian Initiate learned to know man who stood, physically perceptible, before him. He was told: You must take away from this man the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, that only ray into him. Then you can retain Axieros. So the matter stands thus: Of the three, Axieros represents the centre condition of the human being, and the others the two invisible ones, merely shine upon him.

Thus, in the Mysteries of Samothrace, man is shown to be a trinity. Goethe asks himself: Can the idea of the abstract Homunculus perhaps be changed into that of the complete Homo by turning to what, in the Samothracian Mysteries, was regarded as the secret of man—the human trinity? And he said: This trinity can only be arrived at as a conception when man, with his soul and spirit, leaves the body. This is what he told himself.

We must, however, always emphasise that, as regards spiritual perception, Goethe was only a beginner. What is so wonderful about all that Goethe stands for will, as I said recently, only be rightly understood when we think of it as being continually developed, being necessarily developed in order to lend to ever greater heights. In Goethe himself we have the theory of metamorphosis, from leaf to leaf, from the green leaf of the foliage to the coloured petal of the flower, or from the spinal vertebrae, perhaps, to the bones of the head—this secret, if rightly understood, leading from one incarnation to another, from one earth-life to another, as I have often shown you. Hence, from the standpoint of Goethe's own conception of the world, we may ask: How then should the Mystery of Samothrace be pictured today? The Samothracian Mystery, as such, with its Kabiri-symbolism of the secret of humanity, corresponds entirely with the atavistic clairvoyant world-conception; but the living content of knowledge at any one human period, cannot be continued on in the right way, and must be re-moulded. It is not suitable for a return to old conceptions adapted to a quite different state of human evolution; the conceptions must be transformed. The Samothracian Mystery has naturally only historical value. Today we should say: We represent how in the centre of the Representative of Man there stands Axieros, how he is encircled by Axiokersa, and how Axiokersos must be placed in connection with all that is earthly—thus giving us the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. And here we have the re-moulding suited to the present age, and on into the future, of the holy Mystery of Samothrace.

It might be said: Were Goethe to appear among us today, wishing, in conformity with all that man has since won for himself, to tell us what is able to change Homunculus to Homo, he would point to the Representative of Man, surrounded by, and in combat with, Lucifer and Ahriman. I beg of you, however, not to make an abstraction of these things, not to apply the favorite modern method of settling these matters by a few abstract concepts, and taking them for symbols. the more you feel that a whole world, containing the secret of man, lies hidden in the figure of the Representative of Man in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman; the more you repudiate the pride, the unjustified, childish pride, of modern man in his abstract scientific concepts; the more you open your soul to a world giving you a view of this image of the mystery of man—then the nearer you come to this secret.

Spiritual Science meets with all kinds of opposition today. But one of its strongest opponents is man's desire for abstraction, his desire to label everything with a few concepts. Goethe's teaching is, in feeling, the exact opposite of this mischievous modern habit of pasting concepts everywhere. One has peculiar experiences in this regard. Men come to a movement like Spiritual Science from very different motives. There are many who wish to reduce everything to abstractions. For instance, man consists of seven principles—I once had the experience, a horrible experience, of someone explaining Hamlet by attributing to him the principle of Buddhi on one place, in another, Manes, and so on. That, my dear friends, is something much worse than all materialism. These quite abstract explanations, all this symbolising of an abstract nature is, regarded inwardly, much worse than any external materialism. Anyhow, we see that, in showing his Nereids and Tritons on the way to Samothrace to fetch the holy Kabiri, Goethe wished, above all, to raise the idea of Homunculus to a very high human plane.

And so, with regard to the Kabiri, we must experience what the ancient peoples did with regard to their deities. These deities of primeval peoples appear primitive to man today—mere idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for all that flows out of elemental forces. Not even in art does man rise today to anything really creative. He keeps to a model, or judges what is represented for him in art by the question: Is it like?—Often indeed one hears the objection that it is not natural, because, among men today, there is very little real artistic feeling. In any case, whoever wishes to understand the sometimes grotesque looking figures of the ancient Gods, must try to form an idea of the beings belonging to the third elemental world, from which our world springs, on the one hand in its mineral, on the other, in its organic products.

You know how the scene begins. The Nereids and Tritons are on their way to Samothrace to fetch the Kabiri, amongst whom Homunculus is to be transformed into Home. In the meantime, while they are on their journey, Thales, who is to be the guide of Homunculus in becoming man, betakes himself to the old sea God, Nereus. It was Thales, the old philosopher of nature, whom first Homunculus had sought out. Now, Goethe is neither a mystic in the bad sense of the word, not a mere natural philosopher, when it is a question of finding reality. Hence Thales himself cannot be made to help Homunculus to become Home. Goethe had a deep respect for Thales conception of the world, but did not attribute to him the ability, the force, to advise Homunculus how to become man, complete man. For this, one should betake oneself outside the body to a demonic power—to old Nereus. Goethe brings the most various demonic powers to Homunculus. What kind of power is this Nereus? Now we can see this by the way the old sea-God speaks in Goethe's poem. It might be said that Nereus is the wise, prophetic, but somewhat philistine inhabitant of the spiritual world nearest man, the world man first enters on leaving the body. And, we ask, does he know at all how Homunculus is to become man? Nereus has indeed understanding, even to the point of prophetic clairvoyance; and he makes noble use of this understanding, but even so does not really succeed in reaching what is innermost in the human being. Because of this he feels men do not listen to him, do not heed his counsel. He has, as it were, no access to the human soul. On many occasions he has advised men, warned men; once he warned Paris against bringing so much misery on Troy, but to no effect. Now Nereus, since he is not hampered by a physical body, has developed on the physical plane to a very high degree human understanding that is possessed in a much less degree by man. But even with this understanding he cannot help Homunculus very far on the road to becoming Homo. What Nereus is able to say does not entirely meet the case. So by that nothing is actually gained for Homunculus' task.

Nereus says, however, that although he will not concern himself in giving Homunculus advice about becoming Homo, he is expecting his daughters, the Dorides (or Nereides). In particular, he expects Galatea, the most outstanding of them; for they are to attend the ocean-festival. Galatea! and Imagination of a mighty kind.

What the question is here, is to see how things are connected in the world. It is not very easy to speak on this point, because of the soul's desire today to reduce everything to abstractions. But anyone who looks into these matters may experience a great deal. There are, no doubt, well-intentioned people who say they believe in the spirit. Certainly, it is not a bad thing at least to believe in the spirit; but how do they answer the weighty question: What do you mean exactly by the ‘spirit’ in which you believe? What is the spirit? Spiritualists generally renounce all claim to learning anything of the spirit by doing much that is quite unspiritual. Spiritualism is the most materialistic doctrine that can exist. Certain souls more finely tuned speak indeed of the spirit, but what is it exactly that they have i mind when so speaking? That is why very modern and sceptical minds prefer to forgo the spirit—I mean, of course, only in thought—prefer to give up the spirit as against what can be known today through the senses. Read the article called “Spirit” in Fritz Mauthner's Dictionary of Philosophy; there you will probably be able to get bodily conditions but not those of the head.

Now, you see, in Spiritual Science one should rise above all this abstract talking, even if it is about the spirit. Follow what is said in Spiritual Science, and you will see how it rises progressively as we work. Everything is drawn upon that, step by step, can lead into the actual spiritual world. What is said is not merely the spoken word but derives its force from a method of comparison. Only think how, by the very way Spiritual Science is presented here, it becomes comprehensible that man is pursuing a certain path in life, in the physical body. Read, for instance, what is given comprehensively in the October number of Das Reich (1918). It is shown there how, and by means of what forces, a human being while quite a child has the closest affinity to the material world; how in middle life his soul gains in importance; how in later life he becomes spiritual. This, however, he often does not recognise because he is not prepared for it. He becomes spiritual as the body falls into decay, as the body becomes dry and sclerotic the spirit becomes free, even during the waking condition. Only, a man is very seldom conscious of what he is able to experience if he grows old with a certain gift. I mean here with a gift of the spiritual; that is to say if, not simply growing decrepit in body, he experiences the soul becoming young, becoming spirit.

This makes us realise, my dear friends, that the spirit cannot be seen in an old man or old woman; naturally it is invisible. The decrepit body can be seen but not the spirit growing young and fresh. Wrinkles may be perceived in the flesh of the cheeks, but not the growing fullness of the spirit; that is supersensible. We can, however, indicate where the spirit may be found here in the world where we are leading our everyday existence. And if we then say: The whole of nature is permeated by spirit, we reach the point when we realise that outside in nature where the minerals and plants make manifest the external world, there dwells something of the same force into which we men and women grow as we become old. There you have the visible expression of it. To say, in a pantheistic way, that outside lives the spirit, means nothing at all, because spirit then remains a mere word. But if we say, not in a direct abstract way, but with the necessary and various details: To find the force that as you grow old is always becoming stronger in you, look to the innermost and most active of the forces of nature—then we are speaking of a reality. The essential thing is to set the one force by the side of the other, and to notice the place of each. These things can be livingly realised by turning one's gaze to the force-impulses in the whole connection of a physical human being's descent to earth—from conception, throughout the embryonic life till birth. The dull, dry-as-dust scientist stops short at this force; it is true, he examines it punctiliously but only in his own way, and then comes to a standstill. When a man is able to survey the world from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, he knows, however, that this force is also present in other places. Acting more quickly, the very same force makes itself felt when you wake in the morning, when you wake out of sleep. Exactly the same force, though in a more tenuous form, is present, as the one leading from conception through the embryonic life to birth; it is the identical force. This force is not only in you, in your innermost being; it is diffused outside, throughout everything and every process in the whole wide cosmos.

This force is the daughter of cosmic intelligence. You see, if we wish to describe these things, we must touch on many matters that, today, are quite out of the ordinary. What then does the modern scientist do, when wishing to come upon the secret of physical germination? He uses the microscope; he examines the germ-cell under the microscope, before it is fertilised, after it is fertilised, and so on. He has no feeling that what he thus examines in the smallest object under the microscope is constantly before his eyes in the macrocosm. The very same process that goes on, for example, in the womb of the mother, before and during conception, and during the whole embryonic life, this same process, this very same process, goes on macrocosmically when, after the seed has sunk down into the earth, the earth sends forth the little plant. The warmth of the womb, the warmth of the pregnant mother, is exactly the same as is the sun outside for the whole vegetation of the world. It is important to be able to realise that what can be seen in the smallest object under the microscope, can be looked upon macrocosmically all around in the external world. When we wander about among he growing plants, we are actually in the womb of the world. In short, the force underlying the becoming of man is outside in the whole macrocosmic world, seething and weaving there. Imagine this force personified, imagine this same force of human becoming grasped spiritually in its spiritual counterpart outside the human body, and you have Galatea, with those akin to her, her sisters, the Dorides. In these Imaginations we are led into a mysterious but quite real world. This is one of the most profound scenes written by Goethe, who was conscious that, at the most advanced age, man may have a premonition of these secrets of nature.

There is something overwhelmingly significant in Goethe beginning Faust in his youth and then, shortly before the end of his life, writing such scenes as are now being shown. For sixty years he was striving to find the way of putting into outward form what, at the beginning of that time, he had conceived. He draws upon everything he considers relevant to raise the idea of Homunculus to the idea of Homo, and to present man's becoming outside the body, in all its mystery. He draws upon the Kabiri Mystery, and the mystery of becoming man as it appeared in the figure of Galatea. And he knows that reality is so all-embracing, so profound, that the Imaginations awakened by the Kabiri impulses, by the Galatea-impulse, can do no more than hover on its surface. The mystery is far greater than what can be contained even in such impulses.

Goethe himself tried every means of approaching the secret of life in a true and living way. Thus he evolved his theory of metamorphosis, in which he follows up the different forms in nature—how one form develops out of another. Now Goethe's theory of metamorphosis must not be regarded in and abstract way. He shows us this himself. It is perhaps because it can only be conceived and brought to man's soul in a world-outlook free of the body that, with his theory of metamorphosis Goethe approaches what was atavistically experienced in the old Proteus-myth. Perhaps Proteus, who in his own becoming takes on such different forms, perhaps through his experiences it would be possible to find how Homunculus can become Homo. (You know how, in this scene, Goethe introduces him, and we present him, as tortoise, man, dolphin, three forms appearing one after another.)

But Goethe felt that there were still limitations to his theory of metamorphosis. Surely, you may say, a man with such profound, such fundamental knowledge, as Goethe could see what follows from this theory; with it one can watch one leaf of a plant changing into another, up to the petal of the flower, the spinal vertebrae transforming themselves into the bones of the head, the skull-bones? But Goethe—anyone who has worked on Goethe's world-conception knows how he wrestled in this sphere—Goethe knew he could go no farther. Yet he felt: There is something beyond all this.—We know what that something is—the head of the present man is the metamorphosis of the body of the previous man, the man of an earlier life on earth; the rest of his body in this earth-life will, in the next life, become the head. There, for man's life, we have metamorphosis—the crown of metamorphosis. He draws on what he feels about Proteus, but that can lead only to raising the idea of Homunculus to that of Homo. Goethe felt he had made a great beginning with the Protean idea of metamorphosis, but that this had to be developed were Homunculus to become Homo. Goethe in all honesty represents poetically both what he can and what he cannot do, and we see deep into his soul. It is no doubt, easier to picture an abstract, perfect Goethe and to assure ourselves he knew everything. But No! Goethe becomes all the greater by our recognising the limitations he himself so honestly admits, as may be seen, for instance, in his not allowing Proteus—that is, the way he conceives his theory of metamorphosis—to give counsel regarding Homunculus becoming Homo.

Goethe strove, indeed, form the most varied directions to approach this becoming—this growing to true man. For him, artistic conception was not, as it is for so many, fundamentally abstract. He considered that everything expressed in works of art was part of all that is creative in the world. Into this scene he puts all that was to have led him to his heart's desire—to fathoming the mystery of becoming man. As he stood before the Greek works of art, or rather, the Italian work which made Greek art real for him, he said to himself: I am an the track of what the Greeks were doing in the creation of their works of art; they acted in accordance with the same forces as does nature, in her creations. And he had the experience that, if the artist is a true artist, he unites himself in marriage, as it were, with the forces creating in nature; he creates his forms, and all that can be created artistically, out of what is working in the arising, the growing, of plants of animals, of man. But in all this there is still no inner knowledge. That is what Goethe had to admit to himself. The creative forces present themselves to our vision, allow us to feel them, but in metamorphosis we do not go right within them.

There next appear the Telchines of Rhodes. They are such great artists that, naturally. all external human art seems small in comparison. They forged Neptune's trident. They were the first who tried to represent Gods in human form, that is, to create man out of the actual cosmic forces. This art of the Telchines comes nearer reproducing man's becoming, but does not quite reach it. This is what Goethe is wishing to tell us. He expresses it through Proteus who says finally: Even this does not lead to the real mystery of man.

Thus does Goethe wish to evoke a true feeling that there are two worlds—the waking world of day, and the world that is entered when man is free of the body, the world he would see if, during sleep he became awake to this body-free condition. Everything of the kind that he would say, is indicated by Goethe in this scene most delicately and sublimely. Take, for example, the passage where the Dorides bring in the sailor-lads; read the works in which the world is described, how the physical world is set beside the world entered when man is free of the body—how this is pictured in the Dorides set beside the physical sailor boys. They have found each other and yet not found each other. Human beings and spirits meet one another, yet do not meet; they approach each other and remain strangers. In this passage, the relation of the two worlds is wonderfully indicated. Everywhere Goethe endeavours to show how essential it is to place oneself into the spiritual world to find what makes Homunculus into Homo. At the same time he delicately indicates how physical world and spiritual world are together yet apart.

One might say that in his artistic representation, Goethe sees—or rather, makes us see—how Homunculus can become Homo if the soul approaches the intimate mystery of the Kabiri, if it approach what Nereus evoked in his daughter Galatea. All that is active in the true art that works out of the cosmos. But, alas, it is as if one were grasping after reality in a dream, and the dream immediately fades away. It is as though one wished to hold fast what welds together the physical and the spiritual worlds. The Gods will not suffer it; the worlds fall apart.

This difficulty of knowing the spirit is the fundamental experience, the fundamental impulse in the soul of one who watches this scene with true understanding. It is this that leads Goethe to his mighty finale—the shattering of Homunculus against the shell-chariot of Galatea, the shattering that is at the same time an arising, a coming into being, the ascent into the elements, which is a finding of the self in reality.

We will speak again tomorrow of this conclusion of the scene, in connection with its representation.

In today's lecture, my task will be to contribute something to the understanding of what lies in the artistic impulses that carry the building idea of Dornach, in order to then develop this building idea in more detail in the next of these lectures. It will be necessary for me to say something about these artistic impulses, so to speak, because strong misunderstandings have spread about them.

The point is, and this is clear from what I said here eight days ago about the development of the Dornach building from our entire anthroposophical movement, that the Dornach building should in no way create something that could be called the carrying of abstract spirituality into what is actually artistic. The Dornach building should be created entirely by artistic forces. And this building should mark the beginning of a development towards this goal, so that what works in spiritual science as a spiritual being can also flow out, stream out into artistic forms, into artistic designs and so on. This is something that had to be fought for against certain tendencies that very easily run in the opposite direction, especially in such a movement as anthroposophy.

It is very easy for all kinds of mystifying elements to enter into such a movement. These elements push towards the abstract through a false mystification, and which actually – because the artistic element must express itself in the shaping and forming of the external – bypass this artistic element and strive towards the symbolic, towards the allegorical. They want to keep the spirit in its abstract form, so to speak, and see in the outwardly shaped and formed only a symbolic illustration of the spiritual.

This leads to a killing, a paralysis of everything truly artistic. In this direction, due to the penetration of false mysticism from the theosophical into the anthroposophical movement, one has had to experience all sorts of things. For example, a play like “Hamlet”, which is an artistic creation, was interpreted allegorically and mystically, so that one figure was understood as the spiritual self, the other as the astral body, and so on. There is endless allegorizing among those who would like to profess such a spiritual movement, and I once had to experience the following, for example: When I tried to discuss the well-known painting 'Melancholy' by Dürer in such a way that I traced everything that lives in this painting back to the chiaroscuro and showed how Dürer wanted to penetrate the secrets of the chiaroscuro, of the chiaroscuro, to contrast the light with the dark, the darkness with the light, in the most varied of ways, a voice was heard from the audience saying, “Yes, but can't we understand this picture on an even deeper level?” The deep interpretation was obviously sought in the fact that one wanted to extract from the artistically captured chiaroscuro an abstract-allegorical interpretation of what is depicted in the picture, which Dürer has already forbidden by placing the polyhedron in the picture to suggest how important it was to him to express the chiaroscuro variety that becomes visible when you compare differently directed surfaces, differently positioned surfaces of a polyhedron or the different surface layers of a sphere with any spreading light. That it is infinitely deeper to look into this working and weaving of light and darkness and to spread one's own spirit over this weaving of light and darkness, that for the one who feels artistically, it can be infinitely deeper than the abstract-intellectual allegorical interpretation of such images, such an interrupter had no understanding.

And so what is present in this building had to be seen as an initial, weak attempt, in many respects fought for in the face of those aspirations that strive towards allegory and symbolism. These can be seen sufficiently when one enters some particularly solemnly decorated rooms where Anthroposophical spiritual science is practised and sees that attempts are being made to begin with colours and all kinds of paintings and drawings, but that these attempts ultimately leads to nothing other than offending every artistic feeling by painting a hideous rose cross, when what matters is only the allegory of showing some symbolism in seven roses painted in a certain way on a cross. I must mention this so that, if anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is also to show its artistic fertility to the world, it is known that what is attempted artistically must not be confused with all the abominations that easily arise from symbolizing and allegorizing, especially on such mystical ground as I have indicated.

It is absolutely essential that the true spiritual scientist should realize through direct insight what the essence of the ideal consists in, so that he can find the transition from the ideal to what must be expressed in prose words, even though these prose words are only an inadequate means of revelation for the rich revelation of the spiritual world itself, and that this necessary prose presentation, which must also take on certain forms if it is to do justice to the spiritual world, is sharply contrasted with the actual artistic presentation, including that of the supersensible vision, which has nothing of symbolizing or allegorizing in it.

That is why I had to point out in the lecture I gave to you on declamation and recitation that it is nonsense to fantasize and allegorize all sorts of things into my mystery dramas that are actually anthroposophical theory. The point of the dramas is to be understood artistically; and I myself, if I may make this personal comment, suffer the most unspeakable pain when someone presents me with abstract concepts that are supposed to “explain” these mystery dramas. These mystery dramas have been seen and experienced down to the last word, down to the tone of voice, as they stand, and the one who introduces allegorization does not understand them. He cannot really bring out the measure of super-sensibility that lies in them, for he only imprints the intellectual concepts into what should actually be experienced in the artistic sense. And so it is with everything else that is to arise artistically from those impulses from which spiritual science itself arises.

I would like to say it clearly, although it may sound a little pedantic: no art can of course arise from spiritual science itself, as it is communicated in words; only allegory and symbolization can arise from it. But from those spiritual impulses that stand behind spiritual science, that drive spiritual science itself out of themselves like a branch, from those, as another branch from the same origin, artistic creation also arises. Therefore, those who understand spiritual science in the abstract and then want to translate it into art will never be able to create anything other than straw-like allegories or lifeless symbols.

It has been said many times that symbols and allegories can be found in this building. If you look at the building properly, you won't be able to find a single symbol or allegory in it. Everything is meant to be – although some things have been left in initial attempts – in such a way that it has flowed into the form, the design, the color. And because misunderstandings can easily arise in this regard, I would like to discuss a few artistic matters with you today, so that, as I said, I can get to the actual building idea next time and characterize it in very specific terms.

I would like to assume that, when we once had to perform that scene from the second part of Goethe's “Faust” in the carpentry workshop, in which the Kabirs appear, I tried to create the three Kabirs plastically from the supersensible vision that arises when one tries to penetrate the mysteries of Samothrace. So I tried to visualize these Kabirs in order to be able to bring them on stage. Now these three Kabirs were there in three dimensions. Then a personage who was very close to our movement wanted to give some other people an idea of these Kabirs, who could not see them here, or who wanted to have a souvenir of the way in which the Kabirs were vividly reconstructed here, and the question arose as to whether these Kabir sculptures should be photographed.

For someone who has a feeling for sculpture, however, every photograph of a sculpture is a killing of the actual sculptural work of art. And so I decided to simply reproduce these Kabir statues in a drawing, in chiaroscuro, that is, using a different technique. So from the outset they were conceived two-dimensionally on the surface, and so it was possible to photograph them and disseminate them through photography. So you see: if you really stand on the soil of those life forces that pulsate in spiritual science, then above all you acquire a truly artistic feeling for the artistic means you use, and you acquire emotionally, not intellectually, what lives in existence.

Let me mention the following example, which leads us more into the intimacies of the artistic empathy of the world process, which we then try to shape. Let us assume that one wanted to create a kind of sculptural representation of humanity, as I attempted in my sculptural group, which includes a figure similar to Christ (Figs. 94-98). If you want to create a sculpture of this representative of humanity, you would be led to feel quite differently about what is present in the formation of the head than about what is present in the rest of the human being's form, which lives outside the head.

In sculpting, you feel what appears as a huge difference in the human being. In sculpting, where one is dealing with the shaping of surfaces, one feels that a formative impulse must be at work in the head, which, as it were, pushes inwards, draws away from the outside, but which shapes from within; and one feels that in the rest of the human being, one encounters that which is shaped in precisely the opposite sense. It is not so important to say that one thing happens from within and the other from without – that would lead to an abstract, intellectual description again – but rather it is important to have the opposite feelings when developing any form out of the depths of the world process develops some form that can only be shaped from the inside out, or when one takes out a form that can only be shaped from the outside in, in which one can see, as it were, how the external world forces concentrate and shape from the outside in.

If one continues in this feeling and sensing, then one comes to understand how, through having different feelings for the head than for the rest of the organism, one experiences something as a sculptor that is neither gravity nor vertically acting buoyancy nor even spreading force. Pure spreading force is what we feel in the light. Gravity alone is what we feel in our own weight and experience in particular in the aging of the human being, if one can take a look at this aging in true introspection. Of these two forces, gravity and buoyancy, one senses a kind of interaction in such a way that, I would say, the buoyancy forces, those forces that tear the plastic away from the earthly, can be felt more in the head, and the forces that work upwards from the earth's gravity and, as it were, drive the body upwards, these are felt more in the shaping, in the plastic formation of the rest of the body.

But, my dear attendees, when one has really felt this, and – especially when one has metamorphosed this feeling into artistic creation – when one really lives not in an abstract idea, but in this feeling and endeavors to bring into the material that which one feels there, then one feels a strong difference... [gap in the shorthand]. For example, in sculpture there is something to be sensed, such as the balance of two forces, of which the sculptor himself need know nothing. Even someone who knows about such forces as spreading force, gravity and buoyancy force, completely forgets it in sculpting; it is none of his business there, he lives purely in feeling the spreading of the forces of the surface, in feeling how the surface expands in space, or in shaping the surface itself. If you have not appropriated anything abstractly conceptual – that is, if you can completely shed the cloak of the ideal when you immerse yourself in artistic creation – then, in a sense, you become a different person emotionally when you immerse yourself in artistic creation; then you also acquire a feeling for the diversity of artistic means of expression.

And when one moves from working with sculpture to working with painting, one comes to say to oneself: All that one has to say about sculpture in terms of the way in which forces acting vertically and in the direction of propagation interact, of heavy elements and light elements, all that one has to have put aside when dealing with color and its nuances in painting. Because there it is about creating not out of the line, not out of the form, but out of the color, so that one completely stops feeling differently towards the head than towards the rest of the organism, as the sculptor does. In painting, one feels that difference disappear that arose for the sculptor between the head and what is not the head in a human being. This completely balances out and becomes something completely different, an inner intensity that cannot be represented by a contrast of lines, but can only be represented by penetrating into the intensity of the color nuances, so that it is not possible to go into detail, for example, on what still stands out very strongly in sculpture.

And if you want to overcome it, you can only do so if you push the sculpture to a certain degree of consciousness, as I did with my central group for this building. But if you move on to painting, it is a matter of thoroughly rejecting any thinking in lines and moving on to the feeling that creates purely from color. And however strange it may seem to someone who speaks of a spiritualization of art in a falsely abstract sense, it must still be said: for someone who thinks in terms of painting, the most important thing is that there is a certain color nuance at a certain point on a certain surface and that, when one moves from this color nuance to another point on the surface, other color nuances are there. It is about creating from color.

In this creative process, however, the artist is supported by what I would call the experience of color, the experience of blue, the experience of yellow, the experience of red. What the artist has, in experiencing yellow and red as if they were attacking him, and experiencing blue as if he had to chase after it with his soul, as if he had to expand himself, is what transforms into creativity within him and what then gives him the opportunity to transform the sensation into what is to become a work of art. If, for example, one is faced with the task of painting any surface, then it is a matter of nuancing between so-called light, warm colors and dark, cold colors. If one has the color experience, one can create out of this color experience, just as the musician creates out of the sound experience. Then it is a matter of the form arising out of the color itself, so that one does not draw and then smear color into the spaces created by the drawing spaces that arise through drawing, smearing the color in, but rather it is a matter of starting from the color experience and allowing the line experience, the form, to arise from the color experience. That is why I said at one point in the first of my mystery dramas - that is, I had a character say it, to whom I put it in the mouth - that the form must be “the color's work”.

Fundamentally, we must be aware that all drawing and all thinking in drawing is actually a lie compared to painting. For example, when I see the blue sky, with the sea-green of the surface of the sea below, I have the blue of the sky above, the green of the sea below, and the line of the horizon simply arises from seeing, from the experience of color. And I am actually lying when I draw a horizon line that is not actually there (Fig. 114). This must now be thoroughly examined, otherwise one will not be able to enter into that world, which can be experienced through all the means of artistic expression, through the colors and their nuances, as well as through the concepts and ideas, if these concepts and ideas are really rooted in the spiritual and are not abstracted from ordinary human consciousness.

You see, here it is not so much a matter of expressing spiritual science in all kinds of forms, but rather of gaining impulses for artistic observation, which are just as necessary in the course of human development as spiritual science itself. But they are required as something special. It is the case that on the one hand there is the spiritual-scientific stream and on the other hand there is the artistic stream, which in a certain way must now also take on new forms. Therefore, I say to everyone who stands before this group, which is to become the central group here: One can feel something in the central figure like the Christ-figure, but it must be felt, it must not be thought that the name Christ is there. It will certainly not be written on the outside, but it does not even have to be thought, rather, the intuitive experience must take place within us, which draws our attention to how we must look at the matter, so that we develop reverence, develop high regard, develop the intuitive perception of the depths of the human being. So there should be nothing but feeling, nothing but experiencing in feeling, the same feelings that we experience, for example, when we immerse ourselves spiritually in the figure of Christ. But everything we experience spiritually when we immerse ourselves in the figure of Christ through spiritual science must not be carried over into what is formed plastically or pictorially. What is formed plastically or pictorially must be born out of form, out of line, out of surface. And this life in form, in line, in surface, in color, in word itself, is what later develops such forms, such painting, as it is to appear here in this building before you.

What I have said now has little to do with the building itself, but only with the artistic attitude and artistic feeling that underlies the entire building idea of Dornach. It should always be borne in mind that it is at the beginning of the development of that architectural style, that artistic language of form, which can be expected to flourish in a special way in the future. Because I would not rebuild this building in the same way a second time. Not because I consider the artistic attitude on which it is based to be misguided – that is not the case – but because everything that is alive is also constantly evolving, so that a second time all those mistakes would be avoided and everything that could be said in terms of impulses for perfection could be taken into account. But I see all this myself and take it much more seriously than those who often call themselves critics of the building. I know the mistakes very well today and know what could be avoided if the building were to be rebuilt, and what could be brought into it if it were to be rebuilt. And it is necessary that all the details of the building idea from Dornach be taken up in this way.

To take one detail, I would like to mention the small dome (Fig. 57). Later, at the end of this hour, we will raise the curtain and you can then take a look at the small dome. Above all, I would like this small dome to be understood in such a way that nothing abstract is fantasized into it. For in this small dome, in which I myself am essentially involved – this is of course not to say anything special about the also in turn initial and in many respects perhaps amateurish in the painting of this small dome – an attempt has been made to paint really out of color, out of the color experience. In fact, this color experience should be understood in such a way that one sees, above all, the color nuance at a particular point. It could not be a matter of, for example, at a certain point where, let us say, the blue was to be emphasized, where the blue was experienced according to its position near the opening, further away from the center, contrasting with the color effects in the center, of thinking of a fist (Fig. 70) and paint it there because one feels a kinship of the nature of the fist with the blue color, but it could only be a matter of developing the color experience of the blue at this point and then letting the form, the shape, the essence arise out of the color. It had to become what it is there out of necessity.

From this you can see that it is not important to the person who originally gave rise to the idea of forming a figure out of the color experience of blue at this point, which then leads the feeling back to the sixteenth century, reminiscent of the Faust figure, but rather that it is important to him to give birth to form and essence out of the living color. And if, in the end, interpretations are attributed to the works, then one must be aware that these are interpretations from the outside, that they may help one or another subjectivity to experience this or that; but I myself prefer it if you completely forget, when facing this small dome, that there is something Faustian, something Apollonian ( Fig. 76) or of any doppelgänger (Fig. 84) and the like, and that you first surrender to the pure color experience from which the whole is born, and that you are initially just as indifferent to whether there is a Faust crouching there or some other figure, just as the person who wanted to create from the color was indifferent to whether this figure emerged. It just came out because the world lives in color.

But one must not take the starting point from the linear or symbolic boundaries of the being; rather, one must take the starting point from painting from the color experience, from moving in color, so that the color and especially the color harmonization and disharmonization come to life as such. One will then see that one narrows one's view of the world if one tries to translate the intellectually abstract world view — even one that arises as spiritual science — simply symbolically, allegorically into color or into form. Rather, one will see that when one immerses oneself in color, the whole richness of the life of color overflows one and that in this immersion in the world of color one has, that one still discovers a new world. While with every allegory you only bring the world you already have into the colorful world, if you start from the colored experience itself, you discover a new world that is as creative in itself as the world you have in mind when you summarize the external natural fact in abstractions or in natural laws.

In this description – because everything artistic, when it is discussed, must be described – I had to show you how an attempt has been made here in this building, not to secretly incorporate anything into the plastic forms, into the color nuances, but to experience the secrets of these worlds ourselves, which give us the means to express them artistically. And when one experiences the secrets of these worlds, then one gradually frees oneself from all straw-like allegorizing and straw-like symbolizing. In painting, for example, one learns to overcome the line, even in the representation of the copperplate engraving or the woodcut, and to allow form to arise purely out of the contrast between light and dark. It is out of such experiences, not out of abstract thought, that the building idea of Dornach has come into being, out of what can be experienced in colour, in form, in surface, what can be felt as that which strives upwards, freeing itself from burdens, as that which works downwards, bearing burdens, bringing them to life within itself.

All this is here in architecture, sculpture, painting, even in the window panes - the nature of which I will also discuss next time - felt, experienced, not thought; because all abstract thinking is the death of art. The life of art is born only out of form, out of color, out of the burdened, out of the carrying, out of the rounded, out of the angular – I now mean “rounded” and “angular” as a verb. And when one can live in the round, in the angular, in the burden, in the carrying, in the arching, in the covering and opening, in the plastically rounding, in the surface giving, in the expressing the interior in the exterior through the special surface treatment, when one can experience what arises like beings in the waves from the surface of the sea, when one experiences from the living colors, then the forms are formed in such a way that they are a creation of the color. Then there is truly no allegorization, no symbolization; then, alongside that world of abstraction or the merely non-sensuous spiritual, a completely new world arises, a world that Goethe called the sensuous-suprasensible world. This world is not, however, killed by the merely intellectual, and it is brought to life when one knows how to set the spirit within oneself in motion, not by going so far in the contemplation of the external that the sensual contemplation leads to the linking of thoughts, but in such a way that one sees the supersensible directly in the external, in the sensual. When the inner life, which in Expressionism always seeks to give rise to thought, is restrained to such an extent that it does not reach thought, but remains in the mere experience of the formative, of that which permeates the surface with the intensity of color and when the world is experienced in this way, as it can only be experienced in the element of sensation, not in the element of thought, then this experience can truly provide the stimulus for a new art.

In recent years, anthroposophical spiritual science has found an external center for its work in Dornach, near Basel. The creation of this center, called the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, was the result of the expansion of anthroposophical spiritual science. After many years of me and others spreading this spiritual science in the most diverse states and places, initially in an ideal form through lectures or similar, around 1909 or 1910 the inner necessity arose to bring to the souls of our fellow human beings what is meant by this spiritual science by means of other means of revelation and communication than those of mere thoughts and words. And so it came about that a series of mystery dramas were performed, initially in Munich. These were written by me and were intended to present in pictorial, scenic form the subject matter that anthroposophical spiritual science must speak of in its entirety.

We have been accustomed throughout the entire course of education in the civilized world over the last three to four centuries to seek knowledge primarily through external sensory observation and by applying the human intellect to this external sensory observation. And basically, all our newer sciences, insofar as they are still viable today, have come about through the effects of the results of sensory observation with intellectual work. After all, the historical sciences do not come about in any other way today either. Intellectualism is the one thing the modern world has confidence in when it comes to knowledge. Intellectualism is the one thing that people have become more and more accustomed to.

And so, of course, people have increasingly come to believe that all the results of knowledge that come before the world can be completely revealed through intellectual communication. Indeed, there are epistemological and other scientific disputes in which it is apparently proven that something can only be valid before the cognitive conscience of contemporary people if it can be justified intellectually. That which cannot be clothed in logical-ideational intellectual forms is not accepted as knowledge. Spiritual science, which really did not want to stop at what is rightly asserted in science as the limits of scientific knowledge, and which wants to penetrate beyond these limits of knowledge, had to become more and more aware that the intellectual way of communicating could not be the only way. For one can prove for a long time with all possible sham reasons that one must imprint all knowledge in intellectual form if it is to satisfy people; one can prove this for a long time

prove it and back it up with spurious reasons – if the world is such that it cannot be expressed in mere concepts or ideas, that it must be expressed through images, for example, if you want to know the laws of human development, then you have to get at something other than the presentation through the word in the theoretical lecture; you have to move on to other forms of presentation than the presentation in intellectual forms.

And so I felt the necessity to express that which is fully alive, namely in the development of humanity, not only in theory through the word, but also through the scenic image. And so my four mystery dramas came into being, which were initially performed in ordinary theaters. This was, so to speak, the first step towards a broader presentation of that which actually wants to reveal itself through this anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is meant here, through the cause of spiritual science itself.

Not in my own case – I may say that without hesitation – but in the case of friends of our cause, the idea arose in the course of this development, which made an external, theatrical presentation necessary, to prepare a place of our own for the work of this spiritual science. And after many attempts to found such a place here and there, we finally ended up on the Dornach hill near Basel, where we received a piece of land for this purpose from our friend Dr. Emil Grosheintz, and we were able to build this ach Hill, we were able to establish this School of Spiritual Science, which is also intended to be a house for presenting the other types of revelation of what is to come to light through this spiritual science; this School of Spiritual Science, which we call the “Goetheanum” today.

Now, if some association or other had set about creating such a framework, such a house, such an architecture, prompted by the circumstances, what would have happened? They would have turned to this or that architect, who might then, without feeling or sensing anything very intensely and without recognizing the content of our spiritual science, have erected a building in the antique or Gothic or Renaissance style or in some other style, and they would have handed down in such a building, which would have been built out of quite different cultural presuppositions, the content of spiritual science in the most diverse fields. This could well have happened with many other endeavors of the present time and would undoubtedly have happened. However, this could not happen with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

When we opened our first series of courses on a wide range of subjects at the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach last year, I was able to speak of how, through this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, not only what is science in the narrower sense is to come before humanity, how this spiritual not only draws from the achievements of human sensory observation and the human intellect, but draws from the whole, from the fullness of humanity, and draws from the sources from which religion on the one hand and art on the other also emerge.

This spiritual science does not want to create an abstract, symbolic or a straw-like allegorical art, which merely forces the didactic into external forms. No, that is absolutely not the case. Rather, what is expressed through this spiritual science can work through the word, can shape itself through the word. Spiritual processes and spiritual beings in the supersensible world can be spoken of by resorting to ideas and the means of expressing ideas, to words. But that which stands behind it, which wants to reveal itself in this way, is much richer than what can enter into the word, into the idea, pushes into the form, into the image, becomes art by itself, real art, not an allegorical or symbolic expression. This is not what is meant when we speak of Dornach art.

When Dornach art is mentioned, it is first of all a reference to the original source from which human existence and world existence bubble forth. What one experiences in this original source, when one gains access to it in the way often described here, can be clothed in words, shaped into ideas, but it can also be allowed to flow directly into artistic expression, without expressing these ideas allegorically or symbolically. That which can live in art or, as I could expand on but need not today, in religion, is an entirely identical expression of that which can be given in an idealized representation. This anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is thus predisposed from the outset to flow as a stream from a source from which art and religion can also flow in their original form. What we mean in Dornach when we speak of religious feeling is not just a science made into a religion, but the source of elementary religious power, and what we mean by art is, in turn, also an elementary artistic creation.

Therefore, when some visitors to the Goetheanum or especially those who only hear about it defame our Dornach building and say that one finds this or that allegorical, symbolic representation there, it is simply defamation. There is not a single symbol in the entire Dornach building. Everything that is depicted has been incorporated into the artistic form, is directly sensed. And basically, I always feel somewhat as if I am merely presenting a surrogate when I am expected to explain the Dornach building in words. Of course, if one speaks outside of Dornach, one can make statements about it as one might speak about chapters of art history, for example. But when one sees the building in Dornach itself, I always feel that it is something surrogate-like, if one is also supposed to explain it. This explanation is actually only necessary to convey to people the special kind of language of world view, but the Dornach building has flowed out of it just as, let us say, the Sistine Madonna has flowed out of the Christian world view, without anything being symbolized, but only in such a way that the artist has truly lived in accordance with his feelings, his ideas.

Hamerling, the Austrian poet, was also reproached for using symbolism after he wrote his “Ahasver”. He then rightly replied to his critics: What else can one do when one portrays Nero quite vividly, as a fully-fledged human being, rather than as the symbol of cruelty! For history itself has portrayed Nero as a symbol of cruelty, and there is no mistake in giving the impression of the true, real symbol of cruelty when Nero is portrayed as a living being. At most, there could be an artistic defect in presenting some straw allegory instead of a living entity. Even if the world depicted in Dornach is the supersensible world, it is the supersensible reality that is portrayed. It is not something that seeks to symbolically or allegorically implement concepts. This is the underlying reality, and at the same time it indicates why a house could not be placed here in any old way for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Any architectural style would have been something external to it, because it is not mere theory, it is life in all fields and was able to create its own architectural style.

Of course, one can perhaps draw a historical line retrospectively by characterizing the essence of ancient architecture in terms of its load-bearing and supporting function, then moving on to the Gothic period and showing how architecture there moves beyond mere load-bearing and supporting, and how the buttress is freed from mere load-bearing and supporting by the pointed arch and the cross-ribbed vault, how a kind of transition to the living is found. In Dornach, however, an attempt has been made to develop this life to such an extent that the pure dynamic, metric and symmetrical of earlier forms of building have been truly transferred into the organic.

I am well aware of how much can be written from the point of view of ancient architecture against this allowing of the geometric, metric, symmetrical forms to be transformed into organic forms, into forms that are otherwise found in organic beings. But nothing is naturalistically modeled on any organisms; rather, it is only an attempt to immerse oneself in the organically creative principle of nature. Just as one can become familiarized with the bearing and supporting when the columns are covered by the crossbeams, and with the entire configuration of the Gothic style in the buttresses, in the ribbed vaulting and so on, so one can also familiarize oneself with the inner forms, the forming of nature that is present in the creation of the organic. If one can find one's way into this, then one does not arrive at a naturalistic reproduction of this or that surface form found in the organic, but one arrives at finding surfaces from what one has directly represented architecturally, which are integrated into the whole structure in the same way that, say, the individual surface on a finger is integrated into the whole human organism.

This is therefore the basic feeling that can be gained from the Dornach building, to the extent that this has been achieved in the first attempt at this new architectural style. What has been striven for is perhaps best expressed as follows: In relation to the smallest detail, the greatest formal context is conceived in such a way that each thing is, at the place where it is situated, as it must be. You need only think, for example, of the earlobe on your own body. This earlobe is a very small organ. If you understand the whole organism, you will say to yourself: the earlobe could not be any different than it is; the earlobe cannot be a little toe, it cannot be a right thumb, but in the organism, everything is in its place, and everything in its place is as it emerges from this organism.

This has been attempted in Dornach. The entire structure, the entire architecture, is conceived as part of a whole, and each individual part is formed in its own place in such a way that it is exactly what is needed at that place. Although there are many objections that could be raised, the attempt has been made, as I said, to make the transition from mere geometric-mechanical construction to building in organic forms. As I said, this architectural style could be incorporated into other architectural styles, but that doesn't really get you anywhere. In particular, the creator doesn't get anywhere with it. Something like this simply has to arise from the naive, from the elementary. Therefore, when I am asked how the individual form is conceived from the whole, I can only give the following answer. I can only say: look at a nut, for example. The nut has a shell. This nut shell is formed according to the same laws around the nut, around the nut kernel, according to which the nut itself, the nut kernel has come into being, and you cannot imagine the shell differently than it is, once the nut kernel is as it is.

Now one knows spiritual science. One presents spiritual science out of its inner impulse. One forms it into ideas, one brings them together in ideas. So you live in the whole inner being of this spiritual science. Forgive me, it is a trivial comparison, but it is a comparison that illustrates how you have to create out of naivety if you want to create something like the building in Dornach: you stand inside it as if in the nut kernel and have within you the laws by which you have to execute the shell, the building.

I often used to make another comparison. You see, in Austria we have a special kind of cake called 'Gugelhupf'. I don't know if that expression is also used here. And I said that one should imagine that anthroposophical spiritual science is the Gugelhupf and the Dornach building is the Gugelhupf pan in which it is baked. The cake and the pan must harmonize with each other. It is right when both harmonize, that is, when they are according to the same laws as nut and nut shell.

Because Anthroposophical spiritual science creates out of the whole, out of the fullness of humanity, it could not have the discrepancy within itself of taking an arbitrary architectural style for its construction and speaking into it. It is more than mere theory; it is life. Therefore, it had to provide not only the core but also the shell in the individual forms. It had to be built according to the same innermost laws by which one speaks, by which mysteries are presented, by which eurythmy is now presented. Everything that is presented in words, that is seen performed in eurythmy, that is seen performed in mystery plays, that is otherwise presented, must resound and be seen throughout the hall in such a way that the walls with their forms, that the paintings that are there, say yes to it as a matter of course; that the eyes, so to speak, absorb them like something in which they directly participate. Each column should speak in the same way as the mouth speaks, proclaiming anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Precisely because it is science, art and religion at the same time, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science had to establish its own architectural style, disregarding all conventional architectural styles. Of course, one can criticize this to no end; but everything that appears for the first time is imperfect at first, and I can perhaps assure you that I know all the mistakes best and that I am the one who says: if I were to rebuild the building a second time, it would be based on the same spirit, on the same laws, but it would be completely different in most details and perhaps even as a whole. But if anything is to be tackled, it must be tackled once, as well as one can at that particular moment. It is only by carrying out such a work that one really learns to know the actual laws of one's being. These are the laws of destiny of spiritual life and spiritual progress, and these have not been violated in the erection of the building at Dornach.

Now the building rises up on the Dornach hill (Fig. 1). Its basic forms had to be sensed first, emerging from the Dornach hill. That is why the lower part is a concrete structure (Fig. 4). I tried to create artistic forms out of this brittle material, and yet some have felt how these forms connect to the rock formations, how nature merges with the building forms with a certain matter-of-factness. Then, on the horizontal terrace, up to which the concrete structure extends, the wooden structure rises. This wooden structure consists of two interlocking cylinders, which are closed off by two incomplete hemispheres that are, as it were, interlocked in a circle, so that two hemispheres, two consecutive hemispheres, enclose the two cylindrical spaces as if they were placed one inside the other. A larger room, the auditorium, a smaller room, the one from which eurythmy is performed, mysteries are played and so on. Between the two rooms is the speaker's podium. This is initially the main building.

Of course, I must not fail to mention that in recent years numerous friends, particularly from this or that scientific field, have now found each other from almost all scientific fields, who have seen through and recognized how natural science, mathematics, history, medicine, jurisprudence, sociology, and the most diverse fields can be fertilized by anthroposophical spiritual science. So that a real Universitas must attach itself to Dornach, and for this the building, for which we have been able to provide for the time being, is nothing more than a large lecture hall, with the possibility of working in this lecture hall, which is intended for about a thousand people, in other ways than through the mere word.

That the building has this dualistic form, I would say, consisting of two cylinders crowned by hemispheres, can be sensed from the whole task that spiritual science, as we understand it in Dornach, must set itself. After all, this is based on what is called inner human development. One does not arrive at this anthroposophical spiritual science by merely using one's ordinary everyday power of judgment - although, of course, full reliance is placed on this - or by using the ordinary rules of research; but rather by

you must bring to the surface the powers slumbering in the soul, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, and really ascend to that region where the supersensible powers and entities of existence reveal themselves to you. This revealing of the supersensible world to the sensory world, which expresses itself in the fact that the thousand listeners or spectators sit there and on the other side exactly that which gives knowledge of supersensible worlds is communicated, this whole thing, transformed into feeling, expresses itself in the double-dome building in Dornach. It is not meant to be symbolic in any way. That is why I can also say: Of course one could also express this thought differently, but that is how the artistic expression of this basic thought presented itself to me at the time when it was needed.

In a sense, by approaching it from the environment, in the external form of the wooden structure growing out of the concrete, which is a double dome, one sees in the configuration, in the design of the surfaces, what is actually meant by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The fact that they really tried not to calculate with abstract concepts, but with artistic perception, may become clear to you from the fact that - in the time when it was still possible before the war - Norwegian slate was obtained with all possible efforts to cover the two domes. Once, when I was on a lecture tour in 1913 between Christiania and Bergen, I saw the wonderful Voss slate. And this Voss slate now shines in the sunshine from the double domes, so that one actually has the feeling: this greenish-greyish shine of the sun, which reflects itself there, actually belongs in this whole landscape. It seemed to me that the care that had been taken to bring out the shine of the sun in the right way in such a landscape was something that showed that account had been taken to present something worthy in this place, which, as a place, as a locality, has something extraordinary about it.

I will now take the liberty of showing you a series of slides of what has been created as this Goetheanum in Dornach. They are intended to show in detail how what I have just explained, how the Dornach building idea has actually been realized. The Dornach building idea should present the same thing to the beholder in the outer spatial form in the picture, as it unfolds to the listener through the word, so that what one hears in Dornach is the same as what one sees in Dornach. But because it should really present a renewal out of spiritual life, a renewal of everything scientific, it also needed, in a sense, a new art.

Now the first picture (Fig. 4): You see here the building, the dome is somewhat covered here, here the concrete substructure. When one approaches via a path that leads from the northwest towards the west gate, one has this view. This is therefore the concrete substructure with the entrance; here one goes in first. Further back in this concrete building are the storage rooms. After you have taken your things off, you go up the stairs that lead through this room, to the left and right, and first come to a vestibule – which you can also enter from the terrace through the main gate – and from there to the auditorium. Here you see, starting from this terrace and going up, the wooden structure covered with Nordic slate (Fig. 10). You can see from the shape above the main entrance in the west that an attempt has been made to incorporate something here that really does look like an organic form growing out of the whole of the building. It is not some random thing found in the organic world, copied from nature, but an attempt to explore organic creation itself. The aim is to devote oneself to organic creation in nature in order to have the possibility of forming such organic forms oneself and to shape the whole into an organic form without violating the dynamic laws. I would like to emphasize: without violating the dynamic or mechanical laws.

Anyone who studies interior architecture with us in Dornach will see everywhere that, despite the fact that columns, pillars and so on are organically designed, it is precisely in this organic design that what is properly supported and properly weighted is expressed, without it being expressed in the thickness of the columns or in the heaviness of any load. The correct distribution of load and support is achieved without the aid of organic forms, so that one has the feeling, as it were, that The building feels both the load and the support at the same time. It is this transition to the appearance of consciousness, as it is in the organic, that had to be striven for in this building, out of the anthroposophical-spiritual-scientific will. So without in any way violating the mechanical, geometric, symmetrical laws of architecture, the form should be transformed into the organic.

The next picture (Fig. 5): Here you see the concrete structure from a slightly further point and more from the west front; here the terrace, then the main entrance. The same motif appears here. The second dome, the smaller one, which is for the stage, is covered here; on the other hand, you can see, as it were, what is adjacent to it. Where the two domed structures connect, there are transverse structures on the left and right with dressing rooms for the actors in mystery plays or eurythmy performances, or offices and the like. These are therefore ancillary buildings here. We will see in a moment in the floor plan how these ancillary buildings fit into the overall building concept.

The next picture (Fig. 7): Here you see the building from the southwest side: again the West Gate, the great dome, another tiny bit of the small dome, to the south the southern porch; here the whole front between west and south.

The next picture (Fig. 3): Here you see the two domed rooms, the auditorium, from the other side, from the northeast, one of the transverse buildings from the front, here the small domed room and here the storage rooms that adjoin the small domed room to the east; furthermore, the terrace, and below the concrete building. This is the porch that leads to the west gate, which you have just seen.

The next picture (Fig. 2): This is the strange building that is particularly heavily contested. This is what you see when you look at the building from the northeast side: you then see this heating and lighting house. It is also the case that one was obliged to form something out of the brittle concrete material, and that one said to oneself, out of artistic laws, out of artistic feelings: There I am given everything that is necessary as a lighting machinery, as a heating machinery: that is the nut kernel to me, around which I have to form the nutshell, to form the necessary for the smoke outlet. It is, if I may express myself in such a trivial way, this principle of the formation of the nutshell is fully implemented. And anyone who complains about something like that should consider what would be there if this experiment had not been carried out, which may still have been imperfectly successful today. There would be a red chimney here! A utilitarian building should be created in such a way that one first acquires the necessary sense of material and then finds the framing from the determination.

The next picture (Fig. 20): Here I take the liberty of showing the layout of the whole. The main entrance from the west: you enter the auditorium through a few vestibules. This auditorium holds chairs for nine hundred to a thousand listeners or spectators. Here you can see a gallery that is closed inwards by seven columns on each side. Only one thing is symmetrical here: namely, in relation to the west-east axis. This is the only axis of symmetry. The building's motifs are only designed symmetrically in relation to this axis of symmetry, the east-west axis; otherwise there is no repetition. Therefore, the columns are decorated with capital and base motifs that are not the same, but are in progressive development. I will show this in detail later. So if you have a first column on the left and right, a second column on the left and right, the capital and base are always the same as those of the right column when viewed from the left, but the following columns always have different capitals, different bases and different architrave motifs above them (Figs. 33-54).

This is absolutely the case, and it has emerged as a necessity from organic building. And this is based on an artistic interpretation of Goethe's principle of metamorphosis. Goethe has indeed developed this metamorphosis theory - which, in my firm conviction, will still play a major role in the science of the living - in an ingenious way. Anyone who still reads his simply written booklet “Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of the Plant” from 1790 has before them a grandiose scientific treatise that, according to today's prejudices, simply cannot be sufficiently appreciated. If one wants to express it simply, one must say: Goethe sees the plant as a complicated leaf. He now begins with the lowest leaf, which is closest to the ground, follows the leaves upwards to the heart leaves, which are shaped quite differently than the foliage leaves, then the petals, which are even colored quite differently, then the stamens and pistils, which are shaped quite differently. Goethe says: “Everything that appears in such seemingly different metamorphoses in the leaves of the plant is such that it can be traced back to an ideal similarity and only appears in different metamorphoses for the external sense impression. Basically, the plant leaf always repeats the same basic form; only in the external sensual perception is the ideal similarity differently formed, metamorphosed.

Now, of course, people come and see seven columns – deep mysticism! Yes, there are definitely members of the Anthroposophical Society who, in all sorts of dark, mysterious allusions, talk about the deep mysticism of these seven columns and so on. But there is nothing in it but artistic feeling. When you arrive at the seventh column, this motif of the seventh column is exactly the same as that of the first column – if you really create as nature has created – as the seventh is to the first. And just as the first motif is repeated in the octave, the seventh, you would have to repeat the first motif if you were to move on to the eighth.

Here you can see the boundary between the large and small domes; there is the lectern, which can be retracted because it has to be removed when the theater is in use. Here again there are twelve columns in the perimeter, here the boundary of the small domed room, here the two transverse buildings for dressing rooms and so on.

The next picture (Fig. 21): Here I have made a section through the middle. One enters from the west through the vestibules. Here is the stage area, and rising up from here is the auditorium, the rows of seats, again the seven columns, and here the great dome is connected to the small one by a particularly complicated mechanical structure. Here are the storerooms, the concrete substructure, the dressing rooms for taking off clothes. Here you go in, and then there are the stairs; here you come up and there is the main gate through which you enter.

The next picture (Fig. 22): Here I have taken the liberty of presenting my original model in cross-section. The whole building was originally modeled by me in 1913. Here you see the auditorium with its seven columns, the vestibules, here only hinted at the interior of the great dome, which was then painted; here in the small dome room, the capitals everywhere – I will show them in detail in a moment – here the architrave motifs above them; here the plinth motifs, always emerging metamorphically from one another. So, as I said, it is 'only' a line of symmetry, the central axis of the building. Otherwise, no repetitions can be found, except for what is located on the left and right.

The next picture (Fig. 10): seen from the terrace, the view of the West Gate, the main entrance gate, with two wings, which are necessary [gap in shorthand].

The next picture (Fig. 12): there is such a wing structure, the northern one [seen from the northeast]. Dr. Großheintz's house is also located here, an entire concrete building with about 15 rooms, a family house where I tried to create a residential house out of the concrete material by integrating it into this concrete material. It is near the Goetheanum and was built for the person who donated the land. You can see here how I tried to metamorphose the motif. Everything about this building emerges from the other, like a plant leaf, so to speak, in its form from the other form: it is entirely in the artistic sense the work of metamorphosis.

Next image (Fig. 14): This is one of the side wings, the south wing. Here you can see how the motif above the west entrance appears in a completely different form. It is the same idea, but completely different in form. It is just as, say, the dyed flower petal is the same idea as the lowest green leaf of the plant, and yet in external metamorphosis it is something completely different. In this way, one can indeed sense this organic building-thought by living and finding one's way into the metamorphic by giving oneself up to it, but understanding it in a feeling-based way, not in an abstract, intellectual way. This should not actually be explained, but everything should be given by the sight itself.

Once the building is finished, those who are familiar with the anthroposophical attitude and feeling will not perceive the building as symbolic at all, but as something that flows from this overall attitude. Of course one would say that it should flow out of the “generally human”; but this generally human is only a foggy and fanciful construct, a fantasy. The human is always the concrete. Someone who has never heard of Christianity naturally does not understand the Sistine Madonna either. And someone who has no sense of Christianity would never understand the Last Supper in Milan in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. It is certainly possible to use language to imagine what was given, but apart from that, there is nothing symbolic about the entire structure; all the forms are metamorphosed variations of one another.

Next picture (Fig. 11): Here you see such a lateral transverse structure, viewed from the front, that is, here from the south side. Up here in a substantially modified metamorphosis is the motif that is also above the west entrance. All these motifs are in various metamorphoses, so that the whole architectural idea is carried out organically. Likewise, if you were to study the columns, you would find a basic form, and this is always metamorphosed, just as, in the end, the skull bones of humans are a metamorphosed transformation of the bones of the spinal cord, as everything in the organism is a metamorphosed transformation right down to the last detail.

The upper part (Fig. 14) of the southern transverse structure seen on its own; this motif, which was just a little smaller there, is now a little larger.

Next picture (Fig. 23): Here you can see part of the staircase. You would enter through the main entrance below, into the concrete building, and go up these stairs. Here you can see the banister and here a pillar. On this pillar you can see how the attempt is made to shape the supporting pillar in an organic form, how the attempt is made to give the pillar the form that it must have after the opposite exit, because there is little to carry; the form that it must have where it is braced, where the entire weight of the staircase lies. Of course, something like this can only be formed geometrically. But here, for once, an attempt should be made to shape the whole thing as if it were alive, so that, as it were, the glow of consciousness of bearing and burdening lies within; with every curve, everything is precisely and intuitively measured for the place in the building where it is located.

Especially if you look at this motif here (Fig. 24): there are three half-circular channels on top of each other. Believe it or not, but it is true: when someone goes up there and enters the auditorium, they must have a certain feeling. I said to myself, the one who goes up there must have the feeling: in there, I will be sheltered with my soul, there is peace of mind to absorb the highest truths that man can aspire to next. That is why, based on my intuitive perception, I designed these three semicircular channels in the three perpendicular spatial directions. If you now go up these stairs, you can experience this feeling of calm. It is not modeled on it – it is not that at all – but only later did I remember that the three semicircular channels in the ear also stand in these three directions perpendicular to each other. If they are violated, a person will faint: they are therefore connected with the laws of equilibrium. It was not created out of a naturalistic desire for imitation, but out of the same desire, which is modeled on the way the channels are arranged in the ear.

You enter from the west side, go up the stairs, here are the three perpendicular semicircular canals, and here again these pillars. Of course, it often happens in life – I have experienced it many times – that when people in a city have seen an actor or actress in certain roles, and later another actor or actress has come along who could be good, better, more interesting or different, they judge them based on the earlier ones. If they did everything exactly like the earlier ones, they were good; if they did it differently, they were bad, no matter how good they might be in themselves. And so, of course, people judge such a thing according to what they are accustomed to, and do not know that when something like this is erected, every effort is made to make it look as if it were supported in different ways on different sides, and that this is derived from the overall organic structure of the building. Some found it thin and called it rachitic, others thought it resembled an elephant foot, but could not call it an elephant foot either, and so someone came up with the name “rachitic elephant foot” based on their own intuitive feeling. This is what happens so often today when some attempt is made to bring something new out of the elementary.

Next image (Fig. 27): If you go up the stairs, you will come to the vestibule before entering the large domed room. Here you can already see the beginning of the timber construction. At this height, there would be a concrete terrace, with the concrete structure below. You can see from this column how the capital, with all its curves, is precisely adapted to the location, not just schematically in space, but dynamically. The curves at the exit have to express a different form of support than those on the opposite side of the building, where the columns have to brace against them. That is why all these wooden forms, column capitals, architraves and so on had to be made by our friends from the Anthroposophical Society over many years of work. All this is handcrafted, including, for example, the ceiling, which does not have just any schematic form, but is individually designed on all sides in its curves and surfaces, hollowed out differently in one spatial direction than in the other spatial direction. And all this according to the law, just as the ear is hollowed out differently at the front than at the back, and so on.

Next picture (Fig. 30): Now we have entered and are standing in the room that is the auditorium. If we turn around and look backwards, we see the organ room here, which you can see in more detail in other pictures. But here you only have the model, not as it can be seen now in the building, where a lot has been added. I have tried to integrate this organ in such a way that one does not have the feeling that something has been built into the rest of the space, but rather that at this point what is presented here as the organ case and the organ itself has literally grown out of the whole. That is why the architecture and sculpture are adapted to the lines created by the rest, i.e. the organ pipes and so on.

Next image (Fig. 28): You are now, so to speak, in the auditorium, looking from the auditorium at the columns. Here is the organ motif, here are the first two columns with their capitals. We then come to the altered, metamorphosed capitals of the second, third, fourth columns and so on – I will show this in detail in a moment – above them always the architrave motif and below the base motif. Next image (Fig. 29): The pictures were taken at different times. The construction has been going on since 1913, when the foundation stone was laid, and the pictures show it in various stages. Here again, if you turn around in the auditorium and look to the west, the upper part, the organ motif; the first and second columns with capitals on the left and right, the capitals and the architraves above them are quite simply designed. In the following, I will show one column and the one that follows, and then each column with the column capital on its own, so that you can see how the following column capital always emerges metamorphosically from the preceding one. This particularly emphasizes the fact that, basically, the individual column cannot be judged on its own, but only the entire sequence of columns in their successive form can be judged.

Next image (Fig. 34): Here you see the first column by itself, simply from bottom to top in the forms, simply from top to bottom. You see a very simple motif.

Next image (Fig. 35): Here you see the first motif, the first capital with the architrave above it; here the second, emerging organically from the first. The motif, which goes from top to bottom, grows; in growing, it metamorphoses, and so does the motif from bottom to top. To a certain extent, one has to feel one's way into the forces that are at work when an upper plant leaf is created in its form, metamorphosed compared to the lower one; in the same way, this first simple plant motif develops into a more complicated one. What matters is that you take the whole sequence of motifs, because each one always belongs with the other; in fact, all seven belong together and form a whole.

Next image (Fig. 36): Here you see the second column by itself. The next motif always emerges metamorphically from the previous one. I will now show the second and third columns.

Next picture (Fig. 37): the second and third columns, again the third capital motif with the architrave motif above it is more complicated, so that you really get this complicated form in your feeling if you do not want to explain it symbolically or approach it with some intellectual things, but with feeling. Then you will see the emergence of one from the other.

Next image (Fig. 38): The third column by itself.

Next image (Fig. 39): The third and fourth columns, that is, the capitals of these with the architrave motif. Here one could believe that the search was for this architrave motif to form a kind of caduceus. But it was not sought, it is simply sensed, as these meeting forms, when they continue to grow, continue to complicate, as they become there, and then the sensation of this motif, which resembles the caduceus, arises by itself. Likewise, as if this continues to grow: from bottom to top, things simplify, from top to bottom they complicate; then this form arises, which I will now show again in isolation.

Next image (Fig. 40): The fourth column.

Next image (Fig. 41): The fourth and fifth column. As can be seen from this, if you imagine it growing downwards, this form emerges, and it becomes simpler from the bottom up, and I would say that it grows in a more complex form upwards. That is the strange thing! When you think of development, you believe, from a certain false idea of development that has gradually formed, that development proceeds in such a way that you first have a simple thing, then a more complicated one, and then an increasingly complicated one, and that the most perfect thing is the most complicated. If you now put yourself in the right place in the developmental impulses with artistic perception, you see that this is not the case at all; that you must indeed advance from the simple to the more complicated; but then you arrive at the most complicated in the middle of the development, and then it becomes simpler as it approaches the more perfect.

That was, my dear attendees, while I was working on the models for these things, an extraordinary surprise for me. I had to go from the simple to the complicated - you see, we are here at the fourth and fifth pillars, so roughly in the middle of the seven pillar forms - and I had to have the most complicated thing in the middle and then go back to the simpler. And if I go back, as nature itself creates, I also find the human eye, but the human eye, although it is the most perfect, is not the most complicated. In the eye of certain lower animal forms, for example, we have the fan, the xiphoid process. The eye of certain lower animal forms is more complicated in some respects than the perfect human eye. In nature, too, it does not happen that one goes from the simpler to the more complicated and then further to the most complicated, but by observing things further, one comes back to the simpler. The more perfect is simpler again. And that turns out to be an artistic necessity in such a creative process.

Next image (Fig. 42): The fifth column in itself.

Next image (Fig. 43): Now the fifth and sixth columns. You can see that here the capital of the fifth column is still relatively complicated; if it continues to grow, it becomes simpler again: so that this sixth column, although more perfect in its design, is nobler, is simpler again. The same applies to the architrave motif.

Next image (Fig. 44): This sixth column stands alone.

Next image (Fig. 45): Sixth and seventh column, considerably simplified again. Next image (Fig. 46): The seventh column on its own, again simplified.

Next image (Fig. 47): This is the seventh column, the architrave motif; here is the gap between the large and small domed rooms; here is the curtain. Then the first column of the small domed room, and here we enter the small domed room.

Now that we have gone through the orders of the columns in the large domed room, I will show you the figures on the pedestals, which have also grown out of each other in a metamorphosing organic way. I will show them in quick succession.

Next image (Fig. 48): Here I show the figures on the pedestals in succession. First pedestal.

Next image (Fig. 49): Each one always emerges metamorphically from the other: Second plinth.

Next image (Fig. 50): If you now imagine the changes, this is what happens: Third base.

Next image (Fig. 51): Fourth pedestal, again more complicated. And now the simplifications begin with the pedestal figures, in order to arrive at perfection.

Next image (Fig. 52): Fifth pedestal. Next image (Fig. 53): Sixth pedestal. Next image (Fig. 54): This seventh pedestal figure is relatively simple again.

Next image (Fig. 55): Now, here you can see into the small dome room from the auditorium. You can still see the last column of the auditorium, then the columns and architraves of the small dome room. That is the end of the large dome room, here the center of the small dome room. Here, a kind of architrave is formed between the two central columns of the small dome, but [above it] is not some kind of symbolic figure. If you want to see a pentagram in it, you can see it in every five-petalled flower. We have [below] synthetically summarized all the lines and curves that are distributed on the individual columns. Above, the small dome is then painted. I will have more to say about this coloring.

The next picture (Fig. 56): individual columns of the small domed room. Here the gap [for the curtain]. It is seen here on the left when entering from west to east. Here is the architrave of the small domed room. Here, as you can see, the capitals of the large domed room are not repeated, they correspond to the overall architectural concept. Since the small dome room is smaller and every organ that is smaller in the organic context also has different forms, this is also clearly evident here in the formation of the whole.

The next picture (Fig. 64): Here again is the view into the small domed room, the last two columns of the large domed room; the same motif that you have just seen in a different aspect, and here the small dome. Of course, nothing of the paintings can be seen here, only the situation could be hinted at. The bases of the small columns have been converted into seats.

The next picture (Fig. 67): Here the orders of columns continue to the left and right; this is in the middle in the east, directly under the small domed room, where all the lines and curves found elsewhere are synthetically summarized in the most diverse forms. This is a kind of architrave, a central architrave; below it is the group I will talk about, a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, the central figure of which represents a kind of human being. Above it is the small domed room.

The next picture (Fig. 69): We now come to the painting of the small domed room. Now, by speaking to you about the painting of the small domed room, I can only show you the pictures of this small domed room. In the painting of the large domed room, I have not yet fully succeeded in doing this, but in the painting of the small domed room, I have tried to realize to a certain extent what I had a character in my mystery dramas express about the new painting: that the forms of color should be the work, that is, that one should really pull oneself together to fully perceive the world of color as such.

Dear attendees! If you look at the world of colors, it is indeed a kind of totality, a world of its own. And if you feel very vividly into the colorful, then I would say red and blue and yellow speak to each other. You get a completely lively feeling within the world of colors and you get to know, so to speak, a world of colors as an essential one at the same time. Then drawing stops, because in the end you perceive drawing as something insincere. What then is the horizon line? If I draw it with a pencil, I am actually drawing an untruth. Below is the green surface of the sea, above is the blue surface of the vault of heaven, and when I put these down as color, the form arises, the line arises as the boundary of the color.

And so you can create everything out of the colored that you essentially want to bring onto the wall as painting – be it the wall of the spheres as here or the other wall. Do not be deceived because there are motifs, because there are all kinds of figures on it, even figures of cultural history. When I painted this small dome, it was not important to me to draw these or those motifs, to put them on the wall; what was important to me was that, for example, there is an orange spot here in different shades of orange: the figure of the child emerged from these color nuances. And here it was important to me that the blue was adjacent: the figure emerged, which you will see in a moment. It is definitely the figure, the essence, drawn entirely from the color. So here we have a flying child in orange tones, here would be the gap between the large and small domed rooms, and the child is, so to speak, the first thing painted on the surface of the small dome. But by seeing these motifs, you will best understand the matter if you say to yourself: I can't actually see anything in it, I have to see it in color. Because it is felt and thought and painted entirely out of color.

The next picture (Fig. 70): Here you see the only word that appears in the whole structure. There is no other inscription to be found anywhere; everything is meant to be developed into art, into form. But here you will find the “I”. Out of the blue, a kind of fist figure has emerged, that is, the 16th-century human being. The whole cognitive problem of modern man has really emerged from the perception of color before the soul. This cognitive problem of modern man can only be perceived in the abstract, if one perceives as it is often portrayed today; it is different from what we can grasp of natural laws today.

It [the problem of knowledge] intrudes into our soul when we do not merely view things scholastically as abstractions, but when we strive with our whole being to immerse ourselves in the riddles and secrets of the world, as we must in order to be fully human, in order to become aware of our human dignity. Then it places itself beside the striving human being, the one striving for knowledge, who in Faust really, I would say, strives out of the mysterious, mystical blue, strives for the fully conscious I that speaks. The older languages have the I in the verb; for this epoch one is justified in letting a word appear; otherwise there is no word, no inscription or the like in the whole structure, everything is expressed in artistic forms. But the child and birth, and the other end of life, death, are placed alongside the person striving for knowledge. Above it would be the Faust figure you have just seen, below it Death, and further over towards us this flying child. This skeleton here (Fig. 71) in brownish black, in the Faust book in blue, the child (Fig. 72) in various shades of orange and yellow.

The next picture (Fig. 73): Here you see a compilation: below the skeleton, here Faust, here this child, whom you saw individually, above it a kind of inspirer, an angel-like figure, which I will show as an individual, then other figures join here. As I said, the necessity arose for me to depict the striving of the people of the last centuries from the color surfaces that I wanted to place in just that position. Here then is the striving of the Greeks. You will see it in detail.

The next picture (Fig. 74): the genius in blue-yellow, who is above the fist-shape, as if inspiring the fist-shape from above. We would then come across the striving child. The next picture (Fig. 75): then a kind of Athena figure, taken out of a brownish-orange with light yellow. It is the way in which Greek thinking has become part of the whole world of knowledge and feeling. This figure that we have here is inspired by a kind of Apollo figure, just as Faust was previously inspired by his angel (Fig. 76); this brings us back to Greek thinking.

The next picture (Fig. 76): The inspiring Apollon. Particular care has been taken here with the bright yellow, through which this Apollo figure has been created out of color. I tried to give this bright yellow a certain radiance through the type of technical treatment.

The next picture (Fig. 77): Here you see two figures, which now inspire the Egyptian initiate, who recognizes the tables and feels the world. The man on the right is depicted in a somewhat darker color, I would say a reddish brown, and the Egyptian initiate, who is below him, is also depicted in this way.

The next picture (Fig. 78): The Egyptian knower, that is, the counter-image for those ancient times, which in our case is Faust, who strives for knowledge.

The next picture (Fig. 79): Here you see two figures that I am obliged to always assign certain names to in spiritual science because they keep recurring. One should not think of nebulous mysticism here, but only of the necessity of having a terminology; just as one speaks of north and south magnetism, so I speak of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. When we stand face to face with a human being, we cannot grasp his whole being at once, nor with all the powers of knowledge. He has within him two opposing polarities: that which in him constantly strives towards the rapturously false mysticism, false theosophy, that which always seeks to rise above itself towards the unreal , the unfounded, the nebulous - the Luciferic - and that which makes him a Philistine, that which predisposes him to the spirit of heaviness - the Ahrimanic, which is painted here with its shadow. The Luciferic is painted in the yellow-reddish color, the Ahrimanic in the yellow-brownish. It is the dualism of human nature. We can have it physically, physiologically: Then the Ahrimanic in man is everything that ages him, that brings him to sclerosis, to calcification, that makes him ossify; the Luciferic is everything that, when it develops pathologically, brings one to fever, to pleurisy, that thus develops one towards warmth. Man is always the balance between these two. We do not understand the human being if we do not see in him the balance between these two, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.

In particular, however, the Germanic-Central European culture that came over Persia is confronted with this duality in its knowledge. Hence the recognizing Central European, who has the child here (Fig. 82) – we will see him in more detail – is inspired by this duality of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic, with which he must come to terms through his inner tragic destiny of knowledge. Here this kind of dualism is seen again in the smaller figure, shaped like a centaur. I painted this during the war, and one sometimes has one's private ideas; the ill-fated fabric of Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points grew out of the abstract transformation of dualism. Here in Switzerland, too, I have repeatedly spoken of the world-destroying nature of these fourteen points: Therefore, I took the private pleasure of immortalizing Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in these figures. But, as I said, this is of little importance.

The next picture (Fig. 81): Here you see the Ahrimanic figure brought out and the shadow above it. In spiritual terms, this is everything that drives man to materialism, to philistinism, to pedantry, what he becomes when – be it expressed in the extreme – he has only intellect and no heart, when all his powers, his soul powers, are directed by the intellect. And if man did not have the good fortune that his outer body is more in balance, his outer body would actually be determined by the soul, he would be an exact expression of the soul: All those people who feel materialistically, feel pedantically, who are almost completely absorbed in the intellect, would look like that on the outside. Of course, they are protected from this by the fact that their body does not always follow the soul, but the soul then looks like this when you see it, when you feel it physically.

Next image (Fig. 80): The Luciferic, worked out of the yellow, worked out of the yellow into the bright. This is what a person develops when he shapes himself one-sidedly according to the visionary, one-sidedly according to the theosophical, when he grows beyond his head; one often finds it developed in some members of other movements who always grow half a meter with their astral head above their physical head so that they can look down on all people. This is the other extreme, the other pole of man.

Here at the bottom, so to speak, is the Germanic initiate (Fig. 82), the Germanic knower in his tragedy, which lies in the fact that duality has a particularly strong effect on him: the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic; as an addition, again, the naivety of the child. This is what emerged for the artistic sensibility. It was worked out of the brown-yellow; the child is kept in the light yellow.

Next picture (Fig. 83): Here we are already approaching the center of the domed room. This man would stand here with the child, and further towards the center are these two figures, which are one. Of course, this does not refer to the current Russian culture or lack of culture, which is corrupting people and the world, but rather the Russian culture actually contains the seed for something future. At present it is overshadowed by what has been imported from the West, by what should indeed disappear from the earth as soon as possible if it does not want to drag the whole of Europe with it into the abyss. But at the bottom of Russian nationality lies something that is guaranteed a future. It should be expressed through this figure, which has its double only here. That which lives in Russian nationality always has something of a double about it. Every Russian carries his shadow around with him. When you see a Russian, you are actually seeing two people: the Russian, who dreams and who is always flying a meter above the ground, and his shadow. All of this holds future possibilities. Hence this characteristic angel figure, painted out of the blue, out of the various shades of blue. Above it, a kind of centaur, a kind of aerial centaur. Here this figure, everything in the indefinite, even the starry sky above this Russian man, who carries his doppelganger with him.

Next image (Fig. 85): We have now passed the center here. This is the same centaur figure – when facing east, located on the left – as the earlier one on the right of the center. This angel figure is the symmetrical one to the one you have just seen. This one, however, is painted in a yellowish orange, and below it would now be the Russian with his doppelganger, but symmetrical to what was shown before.

Next image (Fig. 86): Now we are standing in the middle of the small domed room. Once again, on the other side, the Russian motif. Here, you can see the figure of Ahriman lying in a cave; and here, at the top, the representative of humanity. One can imagine him as the Christ. I have formed him out of my own vision as a Christ-figure. Lightning flashes come out of his right hand and surround Ahriman like the coils of a snake. His arm and hand go up to Lucifer, who is painted emerging from the reddish-yellow.

Next image (Fig. 87): Here you can see the figure of Lucifer a little more clearly. Below would be the figure of Christ, reaching up with his arm; this is the face, painted in yellow-red. So it is the Luciferic in man that strives beyond his head, the enthusiastic, that which alienates us from our actual humanity by making us alien to the world, bottomless.

Next image (Fig. 88): Ahriman in the cave. His head is surrounded by lightning serpents that emanate from the hand of Christ, who is standing above them. Here the wing, the brownish yellow, is painted more in the brownish direction, in places descending into the blackish blue.

Next picture (Fig. 89): Here I am now showing you my first sketch for the plastic figure of Christ. You see, I tried to make Christ beardless, but Christ pictures have only had a beard since the end of the fifth or sixth century. Of course, no one has to believe me. It is the Christ as he presented himself to me in spiritual vision, and there he must be depicted beardless.

Next image (Fig. 90): The painted head of Christ between Ahriman and Lucifer, the images that I have just shown. Painted in the dome room above is Christ between Ahriman and Lucifer, and below it will later be – it is still far from finished – the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group (Fig. 93), in the middle of which is the representative of humanity, the Christ, with his right arm lowered and his left arm raised, in such a way that this position, like embodied love, is placed between Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces.

Next picture (Fig. 92): This is the first model, made in plasticine, for the Christ, en face, that is, for the representative of humanity, who is to stand in the middle of the wooden group (Fig. 93). But I would like to explicitly note that it will not be somehow obvious that this is the Christ; rather, one will have to feel it from the forms, from the artistic aspect. Nothing, absolutely no inscription, except for the “I” that I mentioned earlier, can be found in the entire structure.

Next image (Fig. 98): This is from the left side of this group of woodcuts [taken from the execution model]: Here is Lucifer striving upwards, and above him a rock creature emerging from the rock, so to speak, the rock transformed into an organ. Here is Lucifer; here Christ would stand; here is the other Lucifer, and that is such a rock creature. It is a risk to make it completely asymmetrical, as asymmetries in general play a certain role in these figures, because here the composition is not conceived in such a way that one takes figures, puts them together and makes a whole – no, the whole is conceived first and the individual is extracted. Therefore, a face at the top left must have a different asymmetry than one at the top right. It is a daring thing to work with such asymmetries, but I hope that it will be felt to be artistically justified if one ever fully comprehends the overall architectural idea.

Next image (Fig. 99): Here you can see the model of the Ahriman head. It is the original wax model that I made in 1915. It is an attempt to shape the human face as if the only things present in the human being were the aging, sclerotizing, calcifying forces, or, in the soul, that which makes the human being a philistine, pedant, materialist, which lies in him by being an intellectualizing being. If he had no heart at all for his soul life, but only reason, then he would present this physiognomy. We do not get to know the nature of a human being by merely describing it in the way that ordinary physiology and anatomy do. This one-sided approach provides only a limited insight into the human being. We must move on to an artistic appreciation of form, and only then do we get to know what lives and breathes in a person, what is truly there. You can never get to know the human being, as is attempted in the academies, anatomically or physiologically; you have to ascend to the artistic – that is part of artistic recognition – and must recognize, as Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to him who is open to them, he feels the deepest yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art.” Not only the abstract word, not only the abstract idea and the abstract thought, but also the image gives something of what the forces of nature are, what is really contained in the secrets of nature. One must ascend to the artistic, otherwise one cannot recognize nature. The building may rightly call itself the “Goetheanum” for the reason that precisely such a Goethean understanding of nature also strives for an understanding of the world. Goethe says: Art is a special way of revealing the secrets of nature, which could never be revealed without art.

Next image (Fig. 101): The figure of Lucifer above, here the chest, wing-like. It is the case that one really has to immerse oneself in all of nature's creativity if one wants to give plastic form to something like this figure of Lucifer. Nothing can be symbolized, nothing can be allegorized, nothing can be thought and the thought put into earlier forms, but one must really delve into how nature creates, one must know the nature of the human rib cage, the lungs, one must know the organ of hearing, then the atrophied flight tools that the human being has in his two shoulder blades. All of this must be brought into context, because a person would look quite different if they were not intellectually developed, if the heart did not hypertrophy and overgrow everything: The heart, the hearing organs, wing-like organs, everything would be one. Those who do not merely accept the naturalistic, but also what is ideal, spiritual in the beings, will see in such art only that which reveals the secrets of the world and of existence in the Goethean sense. Up there you can see the hands of this asymmetrical rock creature.

Next image (Fig. 103): Here you can see a building in the vicinity of the Goetheanum. It was originally built to carry out a kind of glass etching. Now it serves as a kind of office space, and eurythmy rehearsals and eurythmy lessons are also given there. In the wooden wall of the large domed room, there are glass windows between every two columns, and these glass windows are not made in the old glass window art, but in a special art, which I would call glass etching. Panes of glass of the same color are engraved with a diamond-tipped stylus that is clamped into an electric machine, and the artist actually works here as an etcher on glass, as he otherwise works as an etcher on a plate, only on a larger scale. So that you scratch out in the monochrome glass plate, thus working the motif in question into the light. This is how we got these glass windows, which have different glass colors, so that there is a harmonious effect. When you enter the building, you first come to one glass color, then to the other, to certain color harmonies. These glass windows had to be ground here; accordingly, this house was built, which, except for the gate and the staircase, is individually designed in every detail. Here we do not have the earlier castles that are otherwise present, but a special form of castle has been used (Fig. 105). So it is individually designed down to the last detail. Next picture (Fig. 104): The gate to this house just shown; below the concrete staircase.

Next image (Fig. 110): Here you see one of these glass windows, which is executed in green. The motifs here are created out of green panes of the same color. The etching is actually only, I would say, a kind of score. This is then a work of art when it is in its place and the sun shines through. So the artist does not finish the work of art, but only a kind of score: when the sun shines through, this etching achieves what, together with the sunbeam shining through, actually creates the work of art. This again marks something that emerges from the whole building idea of Dornach and is physically expressed here.

The Dornach building is built on a fundamentally different architectural idea from other buildings. The walls of the previous buildings are closing walls, artistically also conceived as closing walls. No wall in Dornach is conceived in this way; the walls in Dornach are designed in such a way that they are artistically transparent, so that one does not feel closed in when one is inside the building. All the walls, so to speak, open up through the artistic motifs to the whole great world, and one enters this building with the awareness that one is not in a building but in the world: the walls are transparent. And this is carried out in these glass windows right down to the physical: they are only a work of art when the sun shines through them. Only together with the sunbeam does what the artist has created become artistic.

Next picture (Fig. 113): Another window sample, taken from the same-colored glass pane. The fact that these windows are there means that the room is again illuminated with the harmoniously interwoven rays, and one can, especially when one enters the room in the morning hours, when it is full of sunshine, really feel something through the light effects in the interior, which cannot be called nebulous, but in the best sense inwardness, an impression, an image of the inwardness of the existence of the world and of human beings. For just as, for example, in Greek temple architecture there stands a house that can only be conceived as the house that no human being actually enters, at most the forecourt as a hall of sacrifice, but which is the dwelling place of the god, just as the Gothic building, regardless of whether it is a secular or a church building, is conceived as that which is not complete in itself, but which is complete when it has become a hall for assembly and the community is within it, the whole building idea of Dornach, as I have developed it here in its details, should work so that when a person enters this space, they are just as tempted to be in the space with other people who will look at what is presented and listen to what is sung, played or recited.

Man will be tempted, on the one hand, to feel sympathy with those who are gathered, but the question or the challenge that is as old as Western culture will also arise: know thyself! And he will sense something like an answer to this in the building around him: know thyself. The attempt has been made to express in the building forms, in an artistic and non-symbolic way, that which the human being can inwardly experience.

We have already experienced it: when, for example, an attempt was made to recite - to eurythmy or to recite to oneself - the space that I showed you as the organ room, when an attempt was made to recite into it, or when an attempt was made to speak of the intermediate space between the two dome spaces, the whole room took these things in as a matter of course. Every form is adapted to the word, which wants to unfold recitatively or in discussion and explanation. And music in particular spreads out in these plastic-musical formal elements, which the building idea of Dornach is meant to represent.

In conclusion, I would just like to say, my dear attendees: With these details, which I have tried to make clear to some extent through the pictures, I wanted to present to your souls what the building idea of Dornach should be: a thought that dissolves the mechanical, the geometric, into the organic, into that which itself presents the appearance of consciousness, so that this consciously appearing element willingly accepts that which arises from the depths of human consciousness.

However, this means that something has been created that differs from previous building practices and customs, but in the same way that spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy also wants to place itself in the civilization of the present day: as something that feels related to the emerging forces of the rising sun, and at the same time wants to strongly oppose the terribly devastating forces of decline of our time. Thus, that which wants to live in the teaching of anthroposophy, the whole world view of anthroposophy, also wants to express itself through the building forms. What is to be heard in Dornach through the spoken word should also be seen in the forms. Therefore, no arbitrary architectural style was to be used, no arbitrary building constructed: it had to grow out of the same spiritual and intellectual background from which the words spoken in Dornach arise. The whole idea behind the building, the whole of the Dornach building, is not to be a temple building, but a building in which people come together to receive supersensible knowledge.

People say that just because one is too poor to find words for the new, one often says: that is a temple building. But the whole character contradicts the old temple character. It is entirely that which is adapted in every detail to what, as spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense, wants to step out into the world. And basically, every explanation is a kind of introduction to the language, to the world view, from which the artistic concept has emerged. I believe that artistically, the building expresses its own essence and content, even if it is still often perceived today as something that is not justified in terms of what is considered acceptable in terms of architectural style, forms and artistic language. Only someone who has already absorbed the impulse, the entire civilizing character of spiritual science, will understand that a new architectural idea had to emerge from this new world view. And as badly as contemporaries sometimes take it, something like this had to be presented, just as anthroposophical spiritual science had to be talked about.

And so, in the manner of a confession, today's discussion, which sought to point to the building of Dornach and to these thoughts, may simply conclude with the words: something was ventured that had not been done before as a building idea, but it had to be ventured. If something like this had not been ventured, had not been ventured at various points in time, there would be no progress in the development of humanity. For the sake of human progress, something must be ventured first. Even if the first attempt is perhaps beset with numerous errors – that is the very first thing that the person speaking here will admit – it must nevertheless be said: something like this must always be ventured again in the service of humanity. Therefore, my dear attendees, it has been ventured out there in Dornach, near Basel.

A great deal of course could still be added to all that I have touched upon in these lectures, but we shall endeavour today to conclude them with a summary of the whole subject.

The approach we have taken throughout these lectures raises an important issue: What is the attitude to Anthroposophy, to spiritual investigation as presented by Anthroposophy? What is the position in regard to the understanding of anthroposophical teachings seeing that few today can have immediate access to spiritual exercises and practices which enable them to perceive and test thoroughly for themselves the anthroposophical descriptions of other worlds? This is a question that lies close to the hearts of those who feel an urge and even a longing to take up Anthroposophy. But this question is always seen in a false light, and is the more likely to be misinterpreted precisely because they are unable to grasp the right procedures such as I have advocated in these lectures.

People may ask: what is the use of all these descriptions of the spiritual world if I cannot look into that world myself? I should like, therefore, to touch upon this question in my cursory analysis today.

It is not true to say that one cannot acquire an insight into anthroposophical teachings and an understanding of them unless one can investigate the spiritual world oneself. I t is essential to distinguish, especially at the present time, between the actual discovery of facts relating to the different worlds and the comprehension of those facts. This distinction will be clear to you when you recall that man, as we know him today, belongs in fact to different worlds and that his experiences are derived from different worlds. Man as he is constituted today acquires his stock of knowledge and his consciousness of everyday existence in the course of his day to day experiences. During his waking life this consciousness which was the starting-point of our enquiry gives him a certain perspective over a limited field, over that aspect of the world that is accessible to sense-observation, and which can be grasped and interpreted by means of the intellect which he has developed in the course of evolution.

With his understanding man penetrates in his dreams into this world concealed behind the phenomenal world, in a vague, indefinite way as I have already pointed out. In his psychic life man contacts the world through which he passes between death and rebirth only in dreamless sleep, where he is surrounded by spiritual darkness and where he lives out a life which normally he cannot recall.

Man knows three states of consciousness—waking, dreaming and deep sleep. But he does not live only in the worlds to which this threefold consciousness gives access, for he is a being whose kingdom has many mansions. His physical body lives in a different world from his etheric body, his etheric body again in a different world from his astral body and both live in different worlds from the Ego.

And this threefold consciousness—clear waking consciousness, dream consciousness and sleep consciousness (one would like to say absence of consciousness but one can only describe it as diminished consciousness)—belong to the Ego as it is today. And this Ego when it looks inwards has also three states of consciousness. When it looks outwards, it knows waking (day) consciousness, dream consciousness and sleep consciousness. When it looks inwards, it knows clear intellectual consciousness; a sentient consciousness, a sentient life, though this is far more opaque and dreamlike than one usually imagines; it knows als1˃ a sentient life and finally the dim, twilight will-consciousness that resembles the state of deep sleep. Normal consciousness can no more explain the origin of willing than it can explain the origin of sleep. When a man performs an act of will it is accompanied by a thought which is clear and lucid. He then shrouds this thought in feeling which is more indefinite. The thought that is imbued with feeling passes down into the limbs; the process cannot be experienced by normal consciousness. To the kind of investigation of which I spoke yesterday and the day before, willing presents the following picture: whilst a thought wills something in the head and is then transmitted to the whole body through feeling, so that a man wills in the whole of his body, something akin to a delicate, subtle and intimate process of combustion sets in meanwhile.

When man develops Initiate-consciousness he is able to experience this life of will which is subject to the influence of warmth, but it remains wholly subliminal to ordinary consciousness. This is merely one instance which shows how what lies in the subliminal consciousness can be raised to the level of Initiate-consciousness.

When the information in the book I mentioned yesterday is made progressively more accessible to the public, people will realize that when we contemplate with Initiate-consciousness an act of will performed by man, we have the impression that we are watching the lighting of a candle or even the kindling of a warmth-giving light. Just as we have in this instance a clear picture of the external phenomenon, so we shall be able to see the thought as it is precipitated into the will. We then say: the thought develops feeling and from feeling—it follows a downward direction in man—proceeds a sensation of warmth, a flame in man. And this flame wills; it is kindled by degrees. We can represent schematical1y this normal consciousness in the following way:

Now although, in order to investigate the spiritual world, we must of necessity direct our consciousness to that world which we seek to apprehend cognitively, none the less, if the fruits of our investigations are to be communicated honestly, the ideas communicated verbally must be expressed in the language of other forms of consciousness.

You can now understand, perhaps, that this is a twofold process. In the first place, for example, we investigate the world of the human organs as I explained yesterday. We investigate the phenomena in question by utilizing the emergent forces in man as he draws near to the spiritual world during the course of his life. We then discover the relevant facts as they are revealed to the understanding. And there are men in the world who are aware of these facts and who communicate them to the world. When they are imparted to the world by such men they can be comprehended by normal consciousness if we look at them with the necessary objectivity. In the course of human evolution there has always been a minority who devoted themselves to investigation of the facts relating to the spiritual world and who then communicated to others the fruits of their investigations.

Now one factor today militates against the acceptance of such knowledge, namely, that as a rule people grow up in a social environment and under an educational system that conditions their habitual responses to such an extent that they can believe only in the world of fact, in the sensory world, and the rational information derived from the world of the senses. This habit is so strongly ingrained that people are inclined to say: At the university there are graduate members of the teaching faculty who, in addition to teaching, investigate certain factual aspects of the phenomenal world or confirm the findings of other research workers in this field. Everyone accepts their findings. Even though one does not investigate the facts oneself, one still believes in them. This boundless credulity is reserved especially for modern science. People believe things which, to those who have insight, are not only problematical, but definitely untrue. This situation stems from centuries of education. I would like to point out that this form of education was unknown to men of earlier centuries. They were far more inclined to believe those who made researches into spiritual facts since they still preserved something of the old insight into, and participation in the spiritual world that was consistent with their will and feeling. Today people are strangers to such knowledge. They are accustomed to an outlook which on the Continent is more theoretical and in England and America more practical, and which has now become firmly established.

On the Continent there exist detailed theories about these matters whilst in England and America there is an instinctive feeling for them which is by no means easy to overcome. During the course of centuries mankind has become inured to a scientific outlook that is related to the phenomenal world and has come to accept the findings of astronomy, botany, zoology and medicine, for example, in the form in which they are presented in recognized schools or centres of learning. A chemist, for example, undertakes a piece of research in his laboratory. People have not the slightest understanding of the technique involved. The work is acclaimed and they unhesitatingly declare: “Here is truth, here is knowledge that makes no appeal to faith.” But what they call knowledge is, in effect, an act of faith.

And amongst the methods adopted for investigating the phenomenal world, for ascertaining the laws of the phenomenal world through the instrument of reason, not a single one gives the slightest information about the spiritual world. But there are few who can afford to dispense wholly with the spiritual world. Those who do so, are not honest with themselves, they persuade themselves into it. Mankind feels an imperious need to know something about the spiritual world. As yet men ignore those who can tell them something about the spiritual world as it is known today, but they are prepared to listen to historical traditions, to the teachings of the Bible and sacred scriptures of the East. They are interested in these traditional writings, because otherwise they cannot satisfy their need for some sort of relationship to a spiritual world. And in spite of the fact that both the Bible and the Eastern scriptures have been investigated only by individual Initiates, people claim that they reflect a different kind of outlook, which bears no relationship to the knowledge of the phenomenal world, scientific knowledge, and depends upon faith and appeals to faith. And so a rigid line of demarcation is set up between science and belief. Men refer science to the phenomenal world and belief to the spiritual world.

Amongst the theologians of the Evangelical Church on the Continent—not amongst the theologians of the Roman Catholic Church who have retained the old traditions, and who do not accept the dichotomy of the Evangelicals or the natural scientists—there exist innumerable theories showing that there are definite boundaries to knowledge and thereafter faith steps in. They are convinced there can be no other possibility.

England is less hag-ridden because theorizing is unpopular. Here the traditional attitude is, on the one hand, to listen to what science has to say, and, on the other hand, to live reverently—I will not go so far as to say sanctimoniously—in faith and to keep the two spheres rigidly apart.

For some time past, laymen and scholars have adopted this point of view. Newton laid the foundations of a theory of gravitation, i.e. of a conception of space which, by its very nature, excludes any possibility of a spiritual outlook. If the world were as Newton depicted it, it would be devoid of spirit. But no-one has the courage to admit it. One cannot imagine a divine-spiritual Presence that lives and moves and has its being in the Newtonian world.

But not only the devotees of these ideas ultimately accept a conception of space and time that excludes the spiritual, but also those who undertake independent research work. Newton offers an excellent example of the latter, for he not only laid the foundation of a world-outlook which excluded the spiritual, but at the same time in his interpretation of the Apocalypse he fully accepted the spiritual.

The links between knowledge of the phenomenal world and knowledge of the spiritual world have been severed. Today the theorists set out to give solid proof of this dichotomy and every effort is made to inoculate the thoughts and feelings of those who distrust theory with this idea, so that ultimately they become conditioned.

On the other hand, man's intelligence, power of comprehension and ideation, his capacity for ideas, have today reached a point where, if he keeps them under conscious control, he can grasp by reason, though he cannot investigate by reason, the teachings of Initiation Science.

It is essential that the following point of view should find wider acceptance: that investigations into the spiritual world must be undertaken by those who, in their present life on Earth are able to call upon forces from earlier incarnations, for it is these forces which release the necessary powers for spiritual investigation; and further, that the results of these investigations shall be accepted by increasing numbers of men and incorporated into ideas which are comprehensible; and that, when the results of spiritual research are accepted by healthy understanding, a way is prepared for these other men, by virtue of this understanding, to have real experience of the spiritual world. For I have often said that the healthiest way to enter the spiritual world is first of all to read about it or to assimilate what we are told about it.

If we accept these ideas, they become inwardly quickened and we attain not only to understanding, but also to clairvoyant vision in accordance with our karmic development. In this respect we must give serious thought to the idea of karma. Today man is not concerned with karma; he believes that just as we analyse sulphur in the laboratory, so we can analyse by laboratory techniques the origin of so-called trans-normal phenomena; and that, as with sulphur, we must subject the individual who manifests abnormal forms of knowledge to experimental tests.

But mineral sulphur has no karma. Only the sulphur associated with the human body has karma, for only human beings are subject to karma. We cannot assume that it is part of man's karma to be experimented upon in a laboratory which would be a necessary prerequisite if the investigations were to have any value.

For this reason we have need of Spiritual Science. It would first of all be necessary to enquire into the karmic conditions which enable us to gain knowledge of the spiritual world through the agency of another. I have explained this clearly at the end of the later editions of my book Theosophy. But mankind today is not yet ready to accept this idea, not from incapacity, but from conservatism; but it is of immense significance.

It is essential to realize that we must not immediately undertake investigations into the spiritual world; but on the other hand if we do not adopt undesirable practices, such as experimenting with karma when there is no karmic necessity, or with mediums whose procedure we do not understand; and if we rely upon the everyday consciousness, which is the right condition of consciousness for this world, then we will attain to a perfect understanding of the communications of Initiation Science. We are greatly mistaken if we imagine that we cannot have such an understanding without first being able to experience the spiritual world for ourselves. To say, “what avails the spiritual world, if I cannot experience it for myself?” is to encourage yet another of the errors commonly committed today. This is to commit one of the greatest, most dangerous and most obvious of errors and must be clearly recognized by those who are associated with a Movement such as the Anthroposophical Society.

Man's existence here on the physical plane is bound up with existence in other worlds. To the unprejudiced mind this can be explained by the fact that man's experiences, as seen in the light of total human experience, are such that, in relation to the most vital questions in life they meet with incomprehension on the part of the ordinary daily consciousness because they appear unrelated, whereas in certain instances they are in effect closely associated.

In this brief account, therefore, I should like first to speak of man's entrance into the physical world and his exit, of birth and death.

Birth and death, the two most momentous events of our life on Earth, appear to ordinary consciousness to be isolated phenomena. We associate all that precedes birth, all that is related to human incarnation, with the beginning of our life on Earth, and death with its end. They appear to be dissociated. But the spiritual investigator sees them drawing ever more closely together. For if we take the path leading to the Moon mysteries and woo the night into the day in the manner described yesterday, then we perceive how, during the processes of birth, the physical body and etheric body progressively grow and flourish: how they develop out of the germ, gradually assume human form, and how during earthly life their vitality progressively increases up to the age of thirty-five, when it gradually decreases and a decline sets in. This process, of course, can be observed externally. But he who follows the lunar path, which I described yesterday, perceives that whilst the cellular life of the physical and etheric bodies grows, develops and assumes embryonic form, another form of life, which in Anthroposophy we call the astral body and Ego, is subject to the forces of decay and death.

When we uncover the hidden recesses of life—I gave a concrete description of this yesterday—we become aware of the birth of the physical and etheric and the death of the astral and Ego. We perceive death interwoven with life, the winter of life allied to its springtime.

And again, when we observe man with Initiate-consciousness, we are aware that, as his body declines, there is a burgeoning of the Ego and the astral from the thirty-fifth year onwards. This burgeoning life is retarded by the presence of dying forces in the physical and etheric being. Nevertheless a definite renewal does take place. And so by means of spiritual investigation we come to recognize the presence of death in life and life in death. Thus we prepare ourselves to trace back that which is seen to be dying at the time of birth to its pre-earthly life where it is revealed in its full significance and greatness.

And because we perceive the gradual burgeoning of the astral and Ego within the declining etheric and physical (for they are imprisoned within the etheric and physical), we prepare ourselves to follow them into the spiritual world after their release from the physical and etheric bodies at the moment of death. Thus we see that birth and death are interrelated, whilst to ordinary consciousness they appear to be isolated events.

All this information which is revealed by spiritual investigation can be grasped by ordinary consciousness as I indicated in the first part of today's lecture. At the same time one must be prepared to abandon the demands of ordinary consciousness for factual or scientific proof.

I once knew a man who maintained that, just as a stone falls to the ground, so if I pick up a chair and let go, it also falls to the ground since everything is subject to gravitation. Wherefore if the Earth is not supported, as it is claimed, it must of necessity fall. But he failed to realize that objects must fall to the ground because they are subject to the gravitational pull of the Earth, that the Earth itself however moves freely in space like the stars which mutually support and attract one another.

Those who, like the modern scientist, demand that proof must be supported by the evidence of the senses resemble this man who believed that the Earth must fall unless it is firmly underpinned. Anthroposophical truths are like the stars which mutually support each other. People must be prepared to see the whole picture. And if they can do this by means of their normal understanding they will begin really to grasp anthroposophical ideas such as the interrelationship of birth and death.

Let us go a little further and take the case of the man who is well grounded in the principles of modern science, but whilst alert and receptive to anthroposophical ideas has not yet learned to take the whole man into consideration, but only the separate organs in the manner described yesterday.

Through this knowledge of the organs acquired in the course of Initiation we are not only aware of birth and death, but of something quite different. In the light of this knowledge of the organs, birth and death have lost their usual significance, for it is only the whole human being who dies, not his separate organs. The lungs, for example, cannot die. Science today dimly realizes that when the whole human being has died, his single organs can be animated to a certain extent. Irrespective of whether a man is buried or cremated, his separate organs do not die. The individual organs take their path into that sphere of the Cosmos to which each is related. Even if man is buried beneath the earth, every organ finds its way into the Cosmos through water, air or warmth, as the case may be. In reality they are dissolved, but they do not perish; only the whole human being perishes.

Death, then, can only have meaning in relation to the whole human being. In the animal the organs die, whereas in man they are dissolved into the Cosmos. They dissolve rapidly. Burial is the slower process, cremation the faster. We can follow the individual organs as they take their path towards the infinite, each towards its own sphere. They are not lost in infinity, but return in the form of the mighty cosmic being whom I described to you yesterday. Thus, as we observe the organs with Initiate-consciousness, we see what really befalls the organs at death, namely, this streaming out of the organs into those regions of the Cosmos to which they are severally related. The heart takes a different path from the lungs; the liver from lungs and heart. They are dispersed throughout the Cosmos. Then the Cosmic Man appears; we see him as he really is, integrated in the Cosmos. And in the vision of this Cosmic Man we become aware of what is the source of successive incarnations, for example. We need this vision which has its origin, not in the whole man, but in the perception of the several organs, in order to be able to recognize once more, clearly and distinctly, the karmic return of former Earth lives in the present life.

It is for this reason that those who approached the spiritual world through the Moon path, mystics, theosophists, and so on, perceived the strangest phenomena—human souls as they had lived on Earth, gods and spirits—but could neither recognize nor decide what they were, nor give any definite assurance whether they were in the presence of Alanus ab Insulis, Dante or Brunetto Latini. Sometimes the entities were given the most grotesque appellations. And they were unable to determine whether the incarnations they contacted were their own or other people's, or what they were.

Thus the spiritual world is associated with the realm of Moon consciousness that has been wooed into the day; then, under the influx of the Venus impulses, this vision is lost and we now behold the spiritual world in its totality, but without that clear definition which it should possess. It is in this realm that we first begin to realize man's situation in the world as a whole and his position as a cosmic being.

In this connection, however, we cannot escape a tragic realization. For if man were simply the complete physical man he appears to be here on Earth, what a virtuous, docile and noble being he would be! Just as little as we can investigate death with normal consciousness—we can always understand death in the sense already suggested—just as little can we discover by means of the ordinary consciousness why human beings, with their candid faces—and there is no denying they have candid faces—have a capacity for evil. It is not the whole man who can become evil. His outer tegument, the skin, as such is noble and good; but man becomes evil through his individual organs; in his organs lies the potentiality for evil.

And thus we come to recognize the relationship of the organs to their respective cosmic spheres and also from what spheres obsession with evil originates; for fundamentally, obsession is inherent in the slightest manifestation of evil.

Thus our knowledge of the total man reveals first, birth and death; secondly, a knowledge of his organization reveals his relationship to the Cosmos in health and disease, namely, evil.

And so we can only perceive spiritually that Figure who experienced the Mystery of Golgotha when we are able to behold Cosmic Man through human organology. For it was as Cosmic Man that Christ came from the Sun. Until that moment He was not earthly man. He approached the Earth in cosmic form. How can we expect to recognize Cosmic Man if we have not first prepared ourselves to understand Cosmic Man as he really is! It is precisely out of this understanding of the Cosmic Man that Christology can grow.

Thus you see how true paths lead into the spiritual world, to a knowledge of birth and death and of the relationship of the human organism to the Cosmos, to the recognition of evil and to knowledge of Christ, the Cosmic Man. All this can be understood, when it is presented in such a way that the various aspects are shown to support each other. And the best means of finding one's own way into the spiritual world is through understanding and by meditating upon what is understood. Other rules for meditation then serve as additional supports. This is the right path into the spiritual worlds for human beings today. On the other hand, all experimenting with other paths which fail to use and maintain the normal channels of consciousness, all experimenting with trance conditions such as mediumism, somnambulism, hypnotism and so on, all investigation into world-events that cannot be apprehended by a consciousness that is a travesty of modern natural science—all these are false paths, for they do not lead into the true spiritual world.

When man is sensitively aware of the findings of spiritual investigation, namely, that through knowledge of the organs the Cosmic Man returns, that this “return” can to some extent lead to an understanding of Christ when all that is disclosed to occult investigation and insight is admitted into the Initiate-consciousness and becomes an integral part of his sentient life, then, through feeling, the Divine manifests in the terrestrial. And this is the province of art.

Through feeling, art embodies half consciously that which man receives from the spiritual world along those paths of return of which I have spoken. In all ages, therefore, it was those who were predestined to do so by their karma, who clothed the spiritual in material form.

Our naturalistic art has abandoned the spiritual approach. Every high point in the history of art depicts the spiritual in sensuous form, or rather raises the material into the realm of the spiritual. Raphael is valued so highly because, to a greater degree than any other painter, he was able to clothe the spiritual in sensuous representation.

Now in the course of the history of art there existed a general movement which tended more to the plastic or graphic arts. Today we must once again inject new life into the plastic arts, for the immediacy of the original impulse was lost years ago.

For centuries the impulse towards music has been growing and expanding. Therefore the plastic arts have assumed a musical character to a greater or lesser extent. Music, which includes also the musical element in the arts of speech, is destined to be the art of the future.

The first Goetheanum at Dornach was conceived musically and for this reason its architecture, sculpture and painting met with so little understanding. And for the same reason, the second Goetheanum will also meet with little understanding because the element of music must be introduced into painting, sculpture and architecture, in accordance with man's future evolution.

The coming of the figure of Christ, the spiritually-living figure, which I referred to as the culminating point in human evolution, has been magnificently portrayed in Renaissance and pre-Renaissance painting, but in future will have to be expressed through music.

The urge to give a musical expression of the Christ Impulse already existed. It was anticipated in Richard Wagner and was ultimately responsible for the creation of Parsifal. But in Parsifal the introduction of the Christ Impulse into the phenomenal world where it seeks to give expression to the purest Christian spirit, has been given a mere symbolic indication, such as the appearance of the Dove and so on. The Communion has also been portrayed symbolically. The music of Parsifal fails to portray the real significance of the Christ Impulse in the Cosmos and the Earth.

Music is able to portray this Christ Impulse musically, in tones that are inwardly permeated with spirit. If music allows itself to be inspired by Spiritual Science, it will find ways of expressing the Christ Impulse, for it will reveal purely artistically and intuitively how the Christ Impulse in the Cosmos and the Earth can be awakened symphonically in tones.

To this end we only need to be able to deepen our experience of the sphere of the major third by an inner enrichment of musical experience that penetrates into the hidden depths of feeling. If we experience the sphere of the major third as something wholly enclosed within the inner being of man and if we then feel the sphere of the major fifth to have the characteristic of “enveloping,” so that, as we grow into the configuration of the fifth, we reach the boundary of the human and the cosmic, where the cosmic resounds into the sphere of the human and the human, consumed with longing, yearns to rush forth into the Cosmos, then, in the mystery enacted between the spheres of the major third and major fifth, we can experience musically something of the inner being of man that reaches out into the Cosmos.

And if we then succeed in setting free the dissonances of the seventh to echo cosmic life, where the dissonances express man's sentient experiences in the Cosmos as he journeys towards the various spiritual realms; and if we succeed in allowing the dissonances of the seventh to die away, so that through their dying fall they acquire a certain definition, then in their dying strains they are ultimately resolved in something which, to the musical ear, resembles a musical firmament.

If, then, having already given a subtle indication of the experience of the ‘minor’ with the ‘major,’ if, in the dying strains of the dissonances of the seventh, in this spontaneous re-creation of the dissonances into a totality, we find here a means of passing in an intensely minor mood from the dissonances of the seventh, from the near consonance of these diminishing dissonances to the sphere of the fifth in a minor mood, and from that point blend the sphere of the fifth with that of the minor third, then we shall have evoked in this way the musical experience of the Incarnation, and what is more, of the Incarnation of the Christ.

In feeling our way outwards into the sphere of the seventh, which to cosmic feeling is only apparently dissonant and that we fashion into a ‘firmament,’ in that it is seemingly supported by the octave, if we have grasped this with our feelings and retrace our steps in the manner already indicated and find how, in the embryonic form of the consonances of the minor third, there is a possibility of giving a musical representation of the Incarnation, then, when we retrace our steps to the major third in this sphere, the “Hallelujah” of the Christ can ring out from this musical configuration as pure music.

Then, within the configuration of the tones man will be able to conjure forth an immediate realization of the super-sensible and express it musically.

The Christ Impulse can be found in music. And the dissolution of the symphonic into near dissonance, as in Beethoven, can be redeemed by a return to the dominion of the cosmic in music. Bruckner attempted this within the narrow limits of a traditional framework. But his posthumous Symphony shows that he could not escape these limitations. On one hand we admire its greatness, but on the other hand we find a hesitant approach to the true elements of music, and a failure to achieve a full realization of these elements which can only be experienced in the way I have described, i.e. when we have made strides in the realm of pure music and discover therein the essence, the fundamental spirit which can conjure forth a world through tones.

Without doubt the musical development I have described will one day be achieved through anthroposophical inspiration if mankind does not sink into decadence; and ultimately—and this will depend entirely upon mankind—the true nature of the Christ Impulse will be revealed externally.

I wish to draw your attention to this because you will then realize that Anthroposophy seeks to permeate all aspects of life. This can be accomplished if man, for his part, finds the true path to anthroposophical experience and investigation. It will even come to ~ass that one day the realm of music shall echo the teachings of Anthroposophy and the Christian enigma shall be solved through music.

With these words I hope to have concluded what I could only indicate in these lectures, to indicate the purposes I had in view.

I should like to add, however, that I hope to have succeeded in awakening in your souls some recognition of anthroposophical truths; and that these truths will grow and multiply and fertilize ever wider fields of human life.

May this cycle of lectures be a small contribution to the far-reaching aim which Anthroposophy sets out to achieve.

Address by Rudolf Steiner at the General Assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society

You have heard some very beautiful thoughts and ideas from the circle of those gathered here and have been made aware of certain difficulties of the Theosophical movement. Indeed, we have even had to hear that there are numerous people who, in the existence of the society, see an obstacle for themselves in joining this society, but also find that the movement as such is perhaps being hindered rather than promoted by the existence of the present society. These are important considerations, especially for those who are truly concerned about theosophical satisfaction in the right way.

The question may arise: Yes, Theosophy, as we understand it, is something real, which has to some extent flowed into the development of humanity in our modern times, and which has created a vessel in this Theosophical Society, as we have created a vessel; and what about the fact that this vessel has emerged from Theosophy after all, and that it does not really fit in with this movement at the present moment? This is a question that, I believe, many of you are entitled to ask myself, so to speak. For some might say: Why do you represent what you call the Theosophical movement within this society?

I cannot, because I don't want to take up much time, go into detail about what anyone can easily see when they examine the facts, namely that the way in which Theosophy is disseminated, as I do and as Baron Walleen meant, actually has very little to do with what we call the Theosophical Society. Anyone could easily see this for themselves from the facts of recent years. For what of all that has happened and of which Baron Walleen has spoken depends on the, well, let's say central points of what is called the Theosophical Society?

'Even the most rigorous scrutiny would find very little that has flowed out of the Theosophical Society for the movement that is meant here. In a sense, this question can only be answered historically. I have already done so for individuals and would like to point out a few purely factual aspects here. From these facts, everyone can then draw their own conclusions as to what they need to assess the issues at hand.

Firstly, I have already given the theosophical lectures here in Berlin, which were then published in a brief outline in my Mysticism in the Awakening of Modern Spiritual Life. I have also given theosophical lectures of a different nature in these or also given other kinds of theosophical lectures in these or those circles, and also – at the request of theosophists and non-theosophists – a part of those lectures that led to the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', without my even being registered in the Theosophical Society at that time. That means that for me, nothing depended on being enrolled in the Theosophical Society or not in order to practice Theosophy as I practiced it.

Then people became aware of this fact [that I was not a member of the Theosophical Society]. And at that time I got to know a person, Fräulein von Sivers, who has remained connected to this kind of theosophical movement [as advocated by me] ever since, but who had joined the Theosophical Society much earlier than me. And at the time when Miss von Sivers was already a member, but I was not yet, we had a conversation in which she asked why I did not join the Society. And I answered in a long discussion, the content of which was: It will always be impossible for me to belong to a society in which such a theosophy is practised, which is permeated to such an extent by misunderstood oriental mysticism as the case of the Theosophical Society; for it would be my profession to recognize that there are more significant occult impulses for our present time, and that it would be impossible, with this knowledge, to admit that the Occident has something to learn from this orientalizing mysticism. What I have to represent would expose itself to a false judgment if I were to say: I want to be a member of a society that has orientalizing mysticism as its shibboleth. That was the content of that conversation.

Then another fact arose - and I only relate facts and leave the judgment of them to you. I gave those lectures on “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life,” which soon appeared in a considerably abridged form in book form. This book was in turn published in extract form in the then-published journal The Theosophical Review, which was edited by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Mead. The extract, or actually the review of this book, which Mr. Keightley gave at the time, is somewhat different from the translation he has now [1911] provided. I define this fact, and I defined it at the time, as meaning that the Theosophical Society did not demand anything from me, did not demand that I should have anything in common with any tenets, principles or dogmas that were to be advocated, but rather accepted something that was given from outside, from me. So it was the most kindly invited that could be given.

Then further facts emerged. The prospect of founding a German section had arisen. Now, due to what had happened, there was simply a kind of connection between the Theosophical Society and me, in that the movement expressed itself in the Society. This led to the fact that while on the one hand the tendency existed to establish a German section, on the other hand the then leader of the “German Theosophical Society” [in Berlin], which was a branch in the [European section] of the general Theosophical Society, made me the proposal to accept me into the society and at the same time to become the chairman of the “German Theosophical Society”. This meant that I was not joining a society, but that I was entering it to give what was not previously in it, what it did not have before. I never made any request to become a member of the Society, but said to myself: if the Society wants me, it can have me. I also took the precaution - and this also has an external aspect - of freeing myself from all payments. I paid nothing. I was then sent the free diploma from England, and at the same time I was president of the German Theosophical Society. If I could speak in more detail, I would show that it was a necessary consequence to continuously acknowledge this fact, that I never wanted anything from the society and had no need to take on any of its principles and dogmas, but that it was agreed that they wanted something from me.

Then the establishment of the German Section took place, with much hesitation and fear, with terrible discussions, I will spare you the details. At that time, a personage who has since left the Society was also a mediator of karma. Much could be said about this in an occult context. It so happened that Mr. Richard Bresch, the then chairman of the Leipzig branch, after conferring with various personalities, came to Count Brockdorff one day and said: Now that Dr. Steiner is already chairman of the Berlin lodge, he can also be general secretary of the German Section. Now all kinds of necessities arose for this application to become chairman of the German Section to be accepted, and I will summarize all these necessities for you in a few words so that you can recognize them as such:

First: the necessity to represent Theosophy in the way it is meant here and to bring it into the world.

Second: the other necessity, not to make things too difficult for those who should work, because we started in very small circles.

Now, in line with much of what has happened on occult ground at all times, I had to say to myself: This society, with all that has developed in it, is actually only an obstacle to the theosophical movement. And I believe that Miss von Sivers still remembers how I took this view in a conversation about Schur and his relationship to H. P. Blavatsky. In this conversation, I thoroughly discussed with the person closest to me how much of an obstacle this society is for the movement. The other thing I had to say to myself is what had to happen in many periods on occult ground in order to cope with resistance: you absorb it, you take it into your own body, and in that way it is in a sense eliminated. Those who were in the movement in Germany at the time will be able to confirm that we would have faced the most incredible obstacles from society in those years if we had not become that society ourselves. We would not have had time enough to carry out everything that was necessary at the time to clear the obstacles piling up on all sides and to fill the movement with positive content. It would have been impossible not to go with society. Because you must not forget that the concentration of obstacles, as they are now occurring at first at one point – there will be others, but that does not matter – which were represented within society by two people in particular, that these obstacles and then the much chatter of brotherhood were spread in the widest circles; it shot up everywhere. And you see, the same thing happened to me methodically with one person [Hugo Vollrath], but at that time it happened to an entire society; namely, that exactly the opposite of what I told them was put forward and spread in the form of brochures. That was the method within the various societies that had developed through the principle of society itself.

In the same year that I had been admitted to the Theosophical Society, where I had been made chairman without a vote – there was no such thing at the time – there was a congress in London of the European sections, to which the German section was just about to be added. There I had a conversation with Mr. Mead in the presence of Mr. Keightley, which mainly revolved around my “mysticism,” which he had learned from Keightley's presentation. At that time, Mr. Mead's words came up - I have to mention them as a fact, because it is enlightening: “Your book contains the whole of Theosophy.” Of course, in such a thin book, not all of Theosophy is contained. In such a case, it means: it contains that from which the whole of Theosophy can arise as a consequence. Basically, everything that has since been secreted away is contained in my “Mysticism”. I would like to tie the question to this: does it not lie in this saying that one might assume that this particular current of theosophical intellectual life will be met with longing? Because if one says, “the whole of theosophy lies in it,” then a surprising amount is said.

After this pronouncement, it was reasonable to assume that the Theosophical Society might gradually develop into a framework that could be used for what was said in London: “That is where the whole of Theosophy is to be found.” For nothing that is currently said “No” to in the Theosophical Society is even remotely in this book.

So you can see that there was a necessity to act as we did at the time. From the most occult point of view, this can be justified; for the Theosophical movement, which we mean, has indeed succeeded in preparing the Theosophical ground that we were able to prepare for it. Without this having happened at the beginning, none of the following could have happened.

Actually, it is nonsense for me to say this, because I could say the opposite: in order for everything that happened to happen, it had to be done the way it was done.

Over the years, I have tried hard to create an understanding for everything that arises as a kind of consequence of feelings and emotions. No one, if they analyze conscientiously, will be able to say that I have treated society differently than in terms of the consequences of the facts at the time. And something else has emerged. This emerged clearly and distinctly in the beautiful words of our friend Baron Walleen, that since that time, not within our movement, but outside of it, circumstances have changed. Nothing has changed within our movement at all, but everything has been carried out step by step. I will cite facts here again.

Take the situation of the Theosophical Society as it was at the time I became General Secretary of the German Section. At that meeting in London I also met Mrs. Besant, and at the second congress, a year later, I met Colonel Olcott. I mention this because it is necessary to emphasize that nothing emerged from any of the facts that took place at that time other than a confirmation of the view that we represent Theosophy in our way. Olcott said at the time that he was quite surprised to see me – that was a fact that made me think a little for a moment – he said that, having known about me for a year and a half, he had expected me to be at least as old as he was.

The facts that had taken place up to that point were such that every time obstacles arose, they always existed in the most diverse things, but they often took on those forms that this or that person said: “We cannot join the Society because everything is dictated to it from Adyar, it has an autocratic principle.” I always said to people – and this is one of the consequences that arise from the conditions: I find it unfounded that people in the German Section talk like this, because I treat the “Ukases” of Adyar in such a way that I put one down and leave it one by one, and otherwise do what seems right to me. And I told Colonel Olcott during our first conversation, even at the risk that he would have preferred to hear it from a man of the same age, that I would proceed in this way so that he would not be left in the dark. I have always spoken warmly of Olcott, because he truly was the ideal founder of such a society. He immediately understood every impulse of freedom and never opposed such a thing; it did not even occur to him. He did not talk much about such things, but when someone wrote to him, the General Secretary of the German Section put the ukases of Adyar down one after the other and ignored them, he also put down such a letter of complaint and ignored it. You see, it was excellent to work at that time. Then, little by little, different times came. And you see, I am not really talking about what is somehow represented as a doctrine; nor am I talking about the fact that it should have seemed important that the program of my mysticism should have been taken into account to a greater extent, but I am talking about the fact that it happened. Then, little by little, other things happened. It would be going too far to relate all the other things that happened. I would have to start with the fact that Olcott died, and that something happened even then, which can certainly be interpreted as being in line with the spirit of the Theosophical Society, but which is extremely difficult to subject to such an interpretation. Briefly, I can say that it was spread from Adyar that at the time of Olcott's death, the Masters had appeared and determined who should be Olcott's successor.

Now there are two ways of looking at such things; I am not talking about the substantive view. One possibility would be to say that it is absolutely necessary in all circumstances, regardless of how one views the content, to keep this fact to the very inner circle and not to talk about it in society. The other possibility is to talk about this fact. In that case, such a fact naturally gets passed from mouth to mouth and cannot be contained. That is how it happened.

Even if no personality has done anything against the spirit of the Society, even if no personality can be reproached – for Mrs. Besant had the right to think as she liked and to act accordingly, thus to use this manifestation and in this sense to lead the Society – it is still a fact that since that time we in the Society have no longer stood on healthy ground. That is also a fact.

What our friend Walleen said refers to the judgment of outsiders who may wonder whether they want to join or not. What I am saying now refers to the internal, to the ground on which we ourselves stand. It was no longer healthy soil, and from then on the question was no longer resolved as to whether one can be within society at all, or whether one should not leave. You know that many people around the world have left, for example, one of the most outstanding of them being Mr. Mead. Since that time, we have no longer stood on solid ground – for a variety of reasons – and it is certainly only since that time that the outside world's judgment of society has become as negative as

it is now. For since that time, the strangest things have happened, which do not in fact belong to the administration of the Society, but which bear the signature of the Society. Various things happened: first there was the Leadbeater case, but not the case as such. Those who know my position will know that I have taken the view that As a personality, Leadbeater must be defended to the greatest extent. The only bad thing about the Leadbeater case is that it was also attributed to the Society. That was the second time that I emphasized: One can no longer work with this Society. It is also known, through indiscretions, that Mrs. Besant first personally condemned Leadbeater and then, after a short time, converted to him. This is a fact that has also been publicly included in the Society's signature. Now comes something that, strictly speaking, does not belong in the administrative affairs of the Theosophical Society either, but which, if I were to remain silent or fail to mention it today, could be interpreted as a kind of dishonesty.

Furthermore, to mention just one of many things that would lead us too far afield, Annie Besant said in Munich in 1907, in front of a witness [Marie von Sivers] who is prepared to testify to this at any time, that she was not competent in matters concerning Christianity. And so, at that time, she effectively handed the movement over to me, in as far as Christianity was to be incorporated into it. After Annie Besant had told me this, various things were done which, from this point of view, could have brought order into the Society. But at the time one could hear from many sides: Now Dr. Steiner has separated from Annie Besant; now there are two currents; this brings discord into the Society. - That made people wonder. And now a peculiar method began to be put into practice, which consisted of actually reversing the matter. And since that time, reversing the facts has been rampant in a strange way. It is difficult to make it understood what this reversal means. At the time, people said: Yes, many people will leave because of the disunity! The truth was that many people would have left if this so-called disunity had not occurred. They only remained because that current left in a completely socially legal way after Annie Besant had made that agreement. Another fact is this, which suddenly emerged two years later, in 1909. Please do not misunderstand, but accept this as a fact without any criticism, which should of course be presented as a fact in such a way that it is absolutely justified - in 1909 Annie Besant announced a lecture on the nature of Christ for various places. At that time it slowly emerged that the idea of a Christ coming in the flesh was also heard, and this idea became more and more powerful and finally developed into the one you know. And if recently the judgment of outsiders has become even less favorable, the story of the Christ coming in the flesh undoubtedly contributed to this judgment to a great extent.

Now a fact has been created – also in the wake of that fact [at Olcott's death] – which makes it seem impossible today to separate the purely administrative and the doctrinal. It is a fact that has brought about the impossibility of such a separation, and that is the fatal situation in which we now find ourselves in society as a whole. This is only a symptom, of course. You will have gathered from what I have said that I do not dispute that Mrs. Besant has the right to appoint whomever she wishes as her representative in matters concerning the “Star of the East.” Not only do I not dispute her right to do so, but I do not for a moment resent the fact that she has appointed Vollrath to this position. She is well within her rights to do so, because she is entitled to have a different opinion of Vollrath than I do. But that was not the point at issue, although I know for a fact that it will be mentioned in the near future, as if that were the case. Of course I don't see why someone who tells me I stole silver spoons can't represent something else; but the fact is that this has created the impossibility of representing the president, of standing by her side when she is doing so at this very moment when such a pamphlet is appearing. Because by doing so, one will have the right – if the President continues to be represented, even if one only says what is a fact, that one loves her – one will have the right to say to me: So, you are standing by Mrs. Besant, so you agree with her; you are a fine fellow! That is the fact of the matter; or one would have to say on the other side: Mrs. Besant does not know that. – But that is not true, because she knows the case very well. In a detailed letter, I had to inform Mrs. Besant of these facts in response to a letter she received from the other side [from Vollrath]. Besides, everyone would say: What about the judgment of this president you represent, if she does not realize that she cannot do that? – In other words, you are faced with an impossible situation. And we are faced with such situations all the time. This is now the signature of society.

I don't even want to talk about the Genoa Congress, which also means an impossible situation. But you see, when two people hold opposing views from a podium, as was the case in Budapest in 1909, this is possible in a society built on the equal right of opinions. But you cannot do otherwise within a society of people. I would like to ask you first: Imagine you are invited somewhere and you bring along someone who is extremely valuable to you. You attach great importance to bringing this person with you. You then arrive at the place where you are invited and the host says: I don't want to know anything about that person, it's none of my business. Yes, how should we understand such a thing? As a kind of insult to your personality. There is hardly any other way. If you introduce someone to someone else who is valuable to you, and the other person rejects them, it is not possible. Suppose it had come to the Genoese Congress: Then we would have been in this case. No matter what the others represented, we would not have had to reject out of hand, that is, ignore, a person that Mrs. Besant brought with her, and only because she saw something very special in him, and it was sufficiently ensured that we learned about this special thing. Any other possibility was excluded. We would have been forced to insult the president in this way. When you mix the things of society with the personal, the personal comes out. You can teach the opposite; but when you put people who are intertwined with it, you have the fact that society is radically driven into the personal. How does that fit with what Olcott once said: It is not about H. P. Blavatsky, not about me, but about the cause, personalities are not allowed to play a role there? - Is it right then, when personalities are presented as belonging to the teaching? Isn't that a breach of the principle of the society in the most unequivocal way? Yes - even if unconsciously. Likewise, when one represents the brotherhood in the way that has been criticized today. Where in the three points originally set out by H. P. Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott is it written that such fraternity should be practised, as people say in the Vollrath case, it would be in the first sentence? But it says that a “core” is to be formed, not a general mishmash, but the core of individually fraternally connected people who have the task of carrying Theosophy into the world. This is different from saying that one is primarily obliged to practice brotherhood. Brotherhood is something that can arise by itself, about which one remains chaste and silent; then it is most present. When one speaks of it loudly, then it is least present. But it is connected with all other things, so that this general stir-fry has gradually come about as a matter of our statutes.

You see, I have presented you with a few facts. But it was perhaps necessary to talk about these things in order to establish the opinion, to evoke the reasoned judgment, that we are now, after all, facing an extraordinarily important situation within society, without having done anything about it. And the only thing that is decisive for me, up to this moment, is that I know – not that you consider it justified for me to speak in this way, but I say it because it is decisive for me – that the individuals who are the leaders of our Theosophical Society are of the opinion that the Society should be maintained as long as possible! And that is what makes it difficult for me to recommend any immediate initiative to destroy society. One could say: Of course, the things that were there then are no longer there today – that would not be entirely correct – but on the other hand, it is true that we have something with this society that has arisen – not through us, because we did not come into it, but joined it – from the founding of the Theosophical movement of modern times. So that the destruction of the society as such is certainly not the right thing to do at this moment; but the right thing is the positive. And as far as this is concerned, it is more difficult to do than the negative, that is soon done, it only requires a resolution. But a positive requires actions that are not only at the starting point, but must continue to happen. That is the essential point that must be clear to us; and so it will be a matter of our coming to such things that are really positive, that is, that in a certain way gradually result in what is a realization of the fine word of Baron von Walleen: that content always creates the framework when the content is there. But it is always necessary to take the first step. It just seems to me that this is an extraordinarily important and significant matter, and that it should not be taken as lightly as it sometimes is. Therefore, I take the liberty of saying one thing already today: that tomorrow at eleven o'clock from this place I will be obliged to speak to you about a matter that already exists as such, that has already been established on particularly solemn occasions in recent times, but in such a way that it is intended to become a kind of common property in a very peculiar way. What can be announced in this direction will happen tomorrow. We will then see how the matter is intended.

It might seem unusual to speak about practical questions in education from the standpoint of a particular philosophy—that is, anthroposophy. In this case, however, the reason for speaking about education arises from the practice of teaching itself.

As you know, I will speak tonight of the way of teaching being practiced at the Waldorf school in Stuttgart. The pedagogical ideas and goals proposed through anthroposophy have been, for the most part, established at the Waldorf school. A few years ago everyone was talking about problems in education, and industrialist Emil Molt decided to create a school for the children of the workers in his factory. He turned to me to provide the pedagogical content and direction for that school.

At first, we dealt only with a particular group of children who came from a particular class—proletarian children connected with the Waldorf Company and with some children whose parents were members of the Anthroposophical Society. However, we soon extended the task of the school. We began originally with about 150 children in eight classes, but we now have eleven classes and over 700 children. Before that, a group of friends within the circle of anthroposophy made a trip to Dornach, Switzerland to attend a conference on education at the Goetheanum at Christmas. As a result, I was invited to lecture at Oxford this past August. Following the Oxford lectures, the Educational Union formed in order to bring the educational principles I will discuss today to a greater application in England.

I need to mention these circumstances so you will not think our discussion this evening is to be theoretical. You should realize that I want to speak about a genuinely practical manner of educating. I need to emphasize this also because this evening we will, of course, be able to mention only a few things. Those things I can bring up will also be rather incomplete compared to the reality of those principles of education, since they are not about “programs” but about practice. When we speak of practice, we can only speak in terms of examples taken from that practice. It is much easier to talk about a program, since you can speak in generalities and about general principles. We cannot do that when speaking of the Waldorf school education due to its own distinctive characteristics. As I mentioned before, our concern is to begin pedagogy and education derived from a spiritual-scientific perspective, a perspective that can lead us to a true comprehension of the human being, and thus to a true comprehension of the nature of a child.

Painters or other artists must learn two things in order to practice their art. In the case of painters, they must first learn a particular skill for observing form and color. The artist must be able to create from the nature of form and color and cannot begin with some theoretical comprehension of them. The artist can begin only by living within the nature of form and color. Only then can the artist learn the second thing, namely, technique. Spiritual science does not comprehend education as an academic or theoretical field. Spiritual science sees it as a genuine art, as an art that uses the most noble material found in the world—human beings. Education is concerned with children who reveal so marvelously to us the deepest riddles of the cosmos. Children allow us to observe from year to year, even from week to week, how physiognomy, gestures, and everything else they express reveal spirit and soul as a divine gift of the spiritual worlds hidden deep within them. The perspective I am speaking of assumes that, just as the painter must learn to properly observe how form and color—the activity arising through the hands, soul, and spirit—result from that understanding, so the artist in teaching must be able to follow the essence of the human being revealed in the child. However, this is not possible if you do not elevate your capacity to observe above the level of common consciousness—that is, if you cannot gain a true observation of soul and spiritual activities in life. That is precisely the objective of anthroposophy. What contemporary people typically call “cognition” addresses only the corporeal—that is, what speaks to the senses. If people have not risen to a genuine comprehension of the spirit, how can they learn to understand the soul? They can gain understanding of the soul only by understanding the expressions and activities of their own soul. Through self-observation, they learn about their own thinking, about their own feeling and willing. Those are aspects of the soul. They comprehend the soul only through reasoning. The senses perceive the sense perceptible. However, such people can understand the soul only by forming a judgment about those characteristics within themselves and then concluding that they have something like a soul.

Anthroposophy does not begin with that ordinary way of thinking. Instead, it seeks to systematically develop those forces sleeping within the human soul so that (don’t be surprised by my expression) a kind of precise clairvoyance results. With precise clairvoyance, you can penetrate the characteristics of the soul to see what is truly the soul. You can perceive the soul through that spiritual vision just as you can recognize colors through the eyes or tones through the ears. Through normal consciousness we can comprehend the spirit active in the world only as a conclusion. If we insist on remaining within normal consciousness, then we can say that we see only the phenomena of nature or of the soul. From that, we conclude that a spiritual foundation exists. Our thinking concludes that spirit and soul are at the foundation of what exists physically. Anthroposophy develops forces sleeping in the soul, organs of spiritual perception through which we can experience the spirit through living thinking, not merely as a conclusion.

You can have a genuine understanding of the human being only when you have seen the soul, and when you can experience the spirit in living thought. A living understanding of the human being arises that can permeate you through spiritual science, so that you can see in every moment of the developing child’s life how the spirit and soul act in the child. You do not see the child only from outside through the senses; you see also the sense perceptible expression of the soul. You do not work with just a revelation of the soul, but with the actual substance of the soul that you can see, just as your eyes see colors. You can begin with how spirit works within the child because, through anthroposophy, you can understand how to comprehend spirit with living thought.

Thus, the art of teaching I am speaking of here begins with a living comprehension of the human being, along with a comprehension of the development taking place in the child at every moment of life. When you understand in that way how the material we work with in teaching is the most noble, when you recognize how your teaching can affect the human being, then you can see many things differently than possible through ordinary consciousness. You can then teach and give educational guidance based on that knowledge. You can, through direct practical interaction with the child, develop what you can see in the soul and experience in the spirit.

Observation that is truly alive shows that spirit exists within the child no less than in the adult. However, that spirit lies hidden deep within the child and must first conquer the body. If we can see that spirit before it speaks to us through language or reveals itself through intellectual thought, we can receive an impression of the marvelous way spirit’s divine gift affects the child’s organism. You will then get an impression of why we certainly cannot say that the physical nature of the human being is one thing, and spirit another. In children you can see how spirit, much more so than with adults, works directly on the physical—that is, how spirit completely permeates the physical. As adults, we have spirit to the extent that we need to think about the world. Children, on the other hand, have spirit to the extent that they need to form their organism through spiritual sculpting. Much more than people believe, the human physical organism throughout all of earthly life is the result of how that spirit hidden within the child develops the physical organism. To avoid speaking abstractly, I would like to present some concrete examples.

If you look at a child only as conventional science does, so that you only perceive what ordinary physiology presents through dissection—that is, if you do not have a spiritual view of the child—you will not see the effect of all the different events on the child’s physical organism. For instance, the child does something and is shouted at by an adult. That makes a very different impression on the child than it would on an adult, if one were to shout at the adult. We must remember that a child functions very differently than an adult. The adult’s sense organs exist on the surface of the body. Adults can control with their intellect what comes through the sense organs. Adults can form fully developed will from within when confronted with sense impressions. However, the child is completely surrendered to the external world. If I may express it pictorially (but I mean this to a certain degree in a literal sense), the child is entirely a sense organ. Allow me to be very clear about this. Look at an infant. If we look with an external understanding at an infant, it appears that the baby feels and sees the world just as an adult does, except that the infant’s intellect and will are not as well developed as in adults. That is, however, not the case at all. Adults feel taste only on their tongue and gums. What takes place only at the surface in adults permeates the child’s organism right into the innermost depths. In a way, children perceive taste throughout their bodies when they eat. They perceive light throughout themselves when light and colors enter their eyes. That is not simply pictorial; this is actually how it is. When light shines on children, the light vibrates not only in their nervous system, it also vibrates in their breathing and throughout their circulatory system. Light vibrates throughout the entirety of the child’s organism in just the same way light acts within the adult’s eye only. The child is, throughout the entire body, a sensing organ. Just as the eye is completely occupied with the world and lives entirely in light, children live entirely in their surroundings. Children carry spirit within themselves in order to absorb everything that lives in their physical surroundings into their entire organism. Because of this, when we yell at a child, our yelling places the entire body into a particular kind of activity. When we yell at a child, a certain inner vibration occurs that is much stronger than that in an adult, who can make certain inner counteractions. What happens then is a kind of stopping short of the spiritual and soul life, which affects the child’s physical body directly. Thus, when we often yell at and frighten a child, we affect not only the child’s soul, but the child’s entire physical body. Depending on how we act around children, we can affect the health of human beings all the way into the final years of old age.

The most important means of teaching a very young child is through the way we, as adults, act when in the child’s presence. If children experience a continuous hustle and bustle, a continuous hastiness in their environment, then they will take up an inner tendency toward haste within their physical body. If you truly understand human beings so that you can observe their spirit and soul, you can see in children of eleven or twelve whether they were brought up in a restless or hurried environment, in a more appropriate environment, or in one where everything moved too slowly. We can see it in the way they walk. If the child was brought up in a hurried environment, one where everything proceeded with extreme restlessness, one where impressions continually changed, then the child will walk with a light step. The kind of environment the child had makes an impression on the child, even in the way of walking, in the step. If a child had insufficient stimulus in the surroundings so that continuous boredom was experienced, we see the reverse in how the child walks in later life with a heavy step. I mention these examples because they are particularly visible, and because they show how we can observe people better. Through this example, you can see what we are able to give to children when we see them properly in early childhood. During early childhood, children imitate their surroundings. They are particularly imitative in learning what they should do in their souls—that is, what is moral. I would like to give an example of this as well.

Those who have had to deal with such things can also experience them. For example, a father once came to me and said that his son had always been a good boy and had always done what the parents had found morally pleasing. But, now he had stolen money. Well, in such a case, anyone who truly understands human nature would ask where the child had taken the money. The father replied, “from the cupboard.” I then asked further whether someone removed money from the cupboard every day. “The child’s mother,” was the reply; thus, the child had seen the mother remove money from the cupboard every day. Young children are imitative beings who dedicate the entire soul to their surroundings, and, therefore, they do what they see happening in the surroundings. The young child does not respond to reprimands, does not respond to “do” and “don’t.” Such things are not strongly connected with a child’s soul. Children do only what they see happening in their surroundings. However, children see things much more exactly than adults do, even though they are unconscious of what it is they see. What children see in their surroundings leaves an imprint on their organism. The entire organism of the child is an imprint of what occurs in the surroundings.

Contemporary understanding overvalues way too much what is called “heredity.” When people see the characteristics of some adult, they often say such traits are inherited by purely physical transfer from one generation to another. Those who truly understand human beings, however, see that children’s muscles develop according to the impressions from their surroundings. They can see that, depending on whether or not we treat a child with tenderness and care, with love or in some other manner, the child’s breathing and circulation develop according to the feelings experienced. If a child often experiences someone approaching with love, who instinctively falls into step with the child and moves at the tempo required by the child’s inner nature, then the child will, in subtle ways, develop healthy lungs. If you want to know where the traits for a healthy adult physical body arise from, you must look back to when the child was affected as one great sense organ. You must look at the words, the gestures, and the entire relationship of the child to the surroundings, and how these things affected the child’s muscles, circulation, and breathing. You will see that a child imitates not just in learning to speak—which depends entirely on imitation, even into the bodily organization that makes speech possible—but you will see that the child’s whole body, particularly in the more subtle aspects of the physical body, reflects what we do in the child’s presence.

To the extent that a person’s physical body is strong or weak, that the physical body can be depended upon, gratitude or blame for the way one walks through life, even in old age, is due to the impressions made on a person as a small child.

What I just said about growing children being imitative beings applies throughout the first period of childhood, that is, from birth until the change of teeth at approximately age seven. At that time, the child goes through many more changes than is generally thought. In order to build a secure foundation for a genuine art of education and teaching, we need to fully penetrate what occurs in the child’s development; that is what I want to discuss in the second part of the lecture after this first part has been translated.

(Rudolf Steiner paused at this point while George Adams delivered the first part of this lecture in English.)

At around age seven, the change of teeth is not just a physical symptom of transformation in human physical nature, but also indicates the complete transformation of the child’s soul. The child is primarily an imitative being until the change of teeth. It is in the child’s nature to depend on the forces that arise from imitation for the physical body’s development. After approximately age seven and the change of teeth, children no longer need to be physically devoted to their environment, but instead need to be able to be devoted with the soul. Everything that occurs in the child’s presence before the change of teeth penetrates the depths of that child’s being. What penetrates the child during the second period of life is due to an acceptance of the authority of the child’s teachers. The child’s desire to learn such adult arts as reading and writing does not arise out of the child’s own nature, but expresses the acceptance of that natural authority. It is a tragic pedagogical error if you believe children have any desire to learn those things, things that serve as communication for adults! What actually acts developmentally on a child are the things that arise from the child’s loving devotion toward an accepted authority. Children do not learn what they learn for any reason found in the instruction itself. Children learn because they see what an adult knows and is able to do, and because an adult who is the child’s accepted educational authority says this or that is something appropriate to be learned. That goes right to the child’s moral foundation.

I would remind you that the child learns morality through imitation until the change of teeth. From the age of seven until about fourteen—that is, from the change of teeth until puberty—the child learns everything through loving acceptance of authority. We cannot achieve anything with children through the intellect, that is, with commandments such as “this is good” or “that is evil.” Instead, a feeling must grow within the child to discover what is good based on what the accepted authority indicates as good. The child must also learn to feel displeasure with what that accepted authority presents as evil. Children may not have any reason for finding pleasure or displeasure in good or evil things other than those revealed by the authority standing beside them. It is not important that things appear good or evil to the child’s intellect, but that they are so for the teacher. This is necessary for true education.

It is important during that period for all morality, including religion, to be presented to the child by other human beings; the human relationship with the teachers is important. Whenever we think we teach children by approaching them through intellectual reasoning, we really teach in a way that merely brings inner death to much within them. Although children at that age are no longer entirely a sense organ, and their sense organs have now risen to the surface of the body, they still have their entire soul within. Children gain nothing through intellectualization, which brings a kind of systemization to the senses, but they can accept what the recognized authority of the teacher brings to them as an ensouled picture.

From the change of teeth until puberty, we must form all our teaching artistically; we must begin everywhere from an artistic perspective. If we teach children letters, from which they are to learn to read and write as is now commonly done, then they will have absolutely no relationship to those characters. We know, of course, that the letters of the alphabet arose in earlier civilizations from a pictorial imitation of external processes in things. Writing began with pictograms. When we teach the letters of the alphabet to the child, we must also begin with pictures. Thus, in our Waldorf school in Stuttgart, we do not begin with letters; we begin with instruction in painting and drawing. That is difficult for a child of six or seven years, just entering school, but we soon overcome the difficulties. We can overcome those difficulties by standing alongside the child with a proper attitude, carried within our authority in such a way that the child does indeed want to imitate what the teacher creates with form and color. The child wants to do the same as the teacher does. Children must learn everything along that indirect path. That is possible only, however, when both an external and an internal relationship exists between the teacher and pupil, which occurs when we fill all our teaching with artistic content. An unfathomable, impenetrable relationship exists between the teacher and child. Mere educational techniques and the sort of things teachers learn are not effective; the teacher’s attitude, along with its effect on the feelings of the child, is most effective; the attitude carried within the teacher’s soul is effective. You will have the proper attitude in your soul when you as a teacher can perceive the spiritual in the world.

I would like to give you another example to illustrate what I mean. This is an example I particularly like to use. Suppose we want to stimulate the child in a moral-religious way. This would be the proper way to do so for the nine- or ten-year-old. In the kind of education I am describing, you can read from the child’s development what you need to teach each year, even each month. Suppose I want to give a child of about nine an idea of the immortality of the human soul. I could tiptoe around it intellectually, but that would not leave a lasting impression on the child. It might even harm the child’s soul, because when I give an intellectual presentation about moralreligious issues nothing enters the child’s soul. What remains in the child’s soul results from intangible things between the teacher and child. However, I can give the child an experience of the immortality of the soul through artistically formed pictures. I could say, “Look at a butterfly’s cocoon and how the butterfly breaks through the cocoon. It flies away and moves about in the sunlight. The human soul in the human body is the same as the butterfly in the cocoon. When a human being passes through the gates of death, the soul leaves the body and then moves about in the spiritual world.”

Now, you can teach that to children in two ways. You can feel yourself to be above children and think that you are wise and children are dumb. You might feel that children cannot understand what you, in your wisdom, can understand about the immortality of the soul, so you will create a picture for them.

If I make up such a picture for the children while feeling myself to be superior to them, that will make an impression on the children that soon passes, but it leaves a withered place within them. However, I can also approach the child differently, with the attitude that I believe in this picture myself. I can see that I do not simply fabricate the picture, but that divine spiritual powers have placed the butterfly and cocoon into nature. The fluttering of the butterfly out of the cocoon is a real picture within nature and the world of what I should understand as the immortality of the soul. The emergence of the butterfly confronts me with the idea of immortality in a simple and primitive way. It was God Himself who wanted to show me something through that emerging butterfly. Only when I can develop such a belief in my pictures is the invisible and supersensible relationship between the child and myself effective. If I develop my own comprehension with that depth of soul and then give it to the child, that picture takes root in the child and develops further throughout life. If we transform everything into a pictorial form between the change of teeth and puberty, we do not teach the child static concepts that the child will retain unchanged. If we teach children static concepts, it would be the same as if we were to clamp their hands in machines so that they could no longer freely grow. It is important that we teach children inwardly flexible concepts. Such concepts can grow just as our limbs do, so that what we develop within the child can become something very different when the child matures.

Such things can be judged only by those who do not merely look at children and ask what their needs are or what their developmental capacities are. Only those who can survey all of human life can judge these things, which then become a rather intuitive way of teaching. I could give you an example of this. Suppose we have a school-age child that has inner devotion toward the teacher. I would like to illustrate the strength that could develop through an example. Those with insight into such things know how fortunate it is for later life when, during childhood, they heard about a respected relative they had not yet seen. Then, one day, they had the opportunity to visit that person. They went to visit that relative with a shyness and with everything that was contained in the picture developed within them. They stood there shyly as the door was opened. That first encounter with a highly respected person is certainly memorable. To have had the opportunity to respect someone in that way is something that takes deep root in the human soul, and it can still bear fruit in later life.

It is the same with all truly living concepts taught to children and not simply stuffed into them. If you can get a child to look up with true respect to you as a teacher, as an accepted authority, you then create something for the child’s later life. We could describe it as follows. We know that there are people who, when they have reached a certain age, spread goodness in their environment. They do not need to say much, but their words act as a kind of blessing; it is contained in their voice, not in the content of their words. It is certainly a blessing for people when, during their childhood, they met such people. If we look back on the life of such a person of fifty or sixty and see what occurred during childhood between the change of teeth and puberty, if we look at what that person learned, we realize that person learned respect, a respect for morality. We realize that such a person learned to look up to things properly, to look up to the higher forces in the world. We might say that such a person learned how to pray properly. When someone learns to pray in the right way, the respect they learn is transformed into powers of blessing in old age, powers that act like a good deed for others in their presence. To express it pictorially, someone who never learned to fold their hands in prayer as a child will never develop the strength later in life to spread their hands in blessing.

It is important that we do not simply stuff abstract ideas into children, but that we know how to proceed with children when we want to create within their souls something fruitful for all of life. Therefore, we do not abstractly teach children to read and write, but begin artistically with writing and allow all the abstraction within letters to arise from pictures. In that way, we teach children to write in a way appropriate to the child’s needs. We do not simply appeal to the child’s capacity to observe, to the head alone, but to the entire human being. First, we teach children to write. When the child has learned to write in this way—so that the child’s entire being, and not simply the head, participates in the picture—then what we give the child is appropriate. After children learn to write, they can learn to read. Anyone caught up in today’s school system might say that such children would learn to read and write more slowly than otherwise. However, it is important that the tempo of learning is proper. Basically, children should learn to read only after the age of eight, so that we can develop reading and writing pictorially and artistically.

Those who have genuine knowledge of human beings through true vision of soul and spirit can observe subtle details and then bring those observations into teaching. Suppose we have a child who walks too heavily. That comes about because the child’s soul was improperly affected before the change of teeth. We can improve the situation by enlivening what previously formed the child by teaching through artistically presented pictures. Thus, someone who truly understands the human being will teach a child who walks too heavily about painting and drawing. By contrast, a child whose step is too light, too dancing, should be guided more toward music. That has a tremendous moral effect on the child’s later character development. Thus, in each case, if we can truly see the human being, we will understand what we need to bring into our pictures.

Until the change of teeth the child’s closest and most appropriate place is within the circle of the family and the parents. Nursery school and play groups follow. We can appropriately develop games and activities when we understand how they affect the child’s physical organism. We need only imagine what happens when a child receives a store-bought doll, a “beautiful” doll with a beautifully painted face. We can see that such a child develops thick blood (these things are not visible in the normal anatomy) and that this disturbs the child’s physical body. We simply do not realize how much we sin in that way, how it affects the child. If we make for the child a doll from a few rags, and if this is done with the child—simply painting the eyes on the rags so that the child sees this and sees how we create the doll—then the child will take that activity into its body. It enters into the child’s blood and respiratory system.

Suppose we have a melancholic girl. Anyone who looks at such a child externally, without any view of the soul, would simply say, “Oh, a melancholic child; inwardly dark. We need to put very bright colors around her and make toys red and yellow for her wherever possible. We must dress the child brightly, so that she awakens in bright colors, so that she will be awakened.” No, she won’t! That would only be an inner shock for the child, and it would force all her life forces in the opposite direction. We should give a melancholic and withdrawn child blue or blue violet colors and toys. Otherwise, the bright colors would overstimulate such an inwardly active child. We can thus bring the child’s organism into harmony with her surroundings and cure what is perhaps too flighty and nervous because of being surrounded by bright colors. From a genuine understanding of the human being, we can gain an idea of what we should teach and do with children, right down to the finest details, and thus gain direct help for our work. You can see that this way of teaching might seem to support current ideas about what children should learn at a particular age—that we should stuff such things into them and about how we should occupy them. However, if you realize that children can take from their environment only what already exists within their bodies, then you might say the following. Suppose we have a child who does not tend to be robustly active, but always works in details—that is, tends to work rather artistically. If you insist that the child be very active outwardly, then just those tendencies within the child that are for detailed work will wither. The tendencies toward activity that you want to develop because you have deluded yourself into thinking that they are common to all humanity, that everyone should develop them, will also certainly wither. The child has no interest in that; the work assigned between the change of teeth and puberty is done, and nothing sticks, nothing grows within the child through forcing things. Throughout the kind of education we are discussing, it is always important that the teacher have a good sense of what lives within the child and can, from what is observed within the child’s body, soul, and spirit, practice every moment what is right through the teacher’s own instinct for teaching.

In this way, the teacher can see the pedagogy needed for the children. In the Waldorf school, we discover the curriculum in each child. We read from the children everything we are to do from year to year and month to month and week to week so that we can bring them what is appropriate and what their inner natures require. The teaching profession demands a tremendous amount of selflessness, and because of this it cannot in any way accept a preconceived program. We need to direct our teaching entirely toward working with the children so that the teacher, through the relationship to the children developed by standing alongside them, provides nothing but an opportunity for the children to develop themselves.

You can best accomplish this between the ages of seven and fourteen—that is, during elementary school—by refraining completely from appealing to the intellect, focusing instead on the artistic. Then, you can develop through pictures what the body, soul, and spirit need. Therefore, we should present morality as pictures when the child is about nine or ten years old. We should not provide moral commandments; we should not say that this or that is good or evil. Instead, we should present good people to the children so that they can acquire sympathy for what is good, or perhaps, present the children with evil people so that they can acquire antipathy toward what is evil. Through pictures we can awaken a feeling for the nature of morality. All of those things are, of course, only suggestions that I wanted to present concerning the second stage of childhood. In the third part of my lecture today, I want to show how we can bring it all together as a foundation for education—not merely education for a particular time in childhood, but for all of human life. We will continue with that after the second part has been translated.

(George Adams delivered the second part of the lecture.)

We can best see how this way of educating can achieve the proper effects for all of human life if we look specifically at eurythmy in education. The eurythmy we have performed publicly in London during the past days has a pedagogical side, also.

Eurythmy is an art in which people or groups of people express the movements in the depths of human nature. Everything expressed in those movements arises systematically from the activity within the human organism, just as human speech or song does. In eurythmy, no gesture or movement is haphazard. What we have is a kind of visible speech. We can express anything we can sing or speak just as well through the visible movements of eurythmy. The capacity of the entire human being for movement is repressed in speech, it undergoes a metamorphosis in the audible tones and is formed as visible speech in eurythmy.

We have brought eurythmy into the Waldorf school for the lowest grades all the way to the highest. The children, in fact, enter into this visible speech just as the soul makes a corresponding expression for the sounds of audible speech. Every movement of the fingers or hands, every movement of the entire body is thus a sound of speech made visible. We have seen that children between the change of teeth and puberty live just as naturally into this form of speech as a young child lives into normal audible speech. We have seen that the children’s entire organism—that is, body, soul, and spirit (since eurythmy is also a spirit and soul exercise) find their way just as naturally into eurythmy speech as they do into oral speech. Children feel they have been given something consistent with their whole organism. Thus, along with gymnastics derived from an observation of the physical body, we have eurythmy arising from an observation of the child’s spirit and soul. Children feel fulfilled in eurythmy movements, not only in their physical body or in an ensouled body, but in a spiritually permeated soul within a body formed by that soul. To say it differently, what people experience through eurythmy acts in a tremendously living manner on everything living within them as tendencies and, on the other side, has just as fruitful an effect on all of life.

Regardless of how well children do in gymnastics, if they perform these exercises only according to the laws of the physical body, these exercises will not protect the children from all kinds of metabolic illnesses later in life. For instance, you cannot protect them from illnesses such as rheumatism, which may cause metabolic illnesses later. What you gain through gymnastics results in a kind of thickening of the physical body. However, what you can effect by developing movements that arise from the spirit and soul makes the spirit and soul ruler of the bodies of the soul and physical for all of life. You cannot keep a sixty-year-old body from becoming fragile through gymnastics. If you educate a child properly, however, so that the child’s movements in gymnastics arise from the soul, you can keep the child’s body from becoming fragile in later life. You can inhibit such things if you teach pictorially during elementary school so that the picture that would otherwise occupy the soul can move into the body.

Thus, this pictorial language, eurythmy, is nothing but gymnastics permeated with soul and spirit. You can see that gymnastics permeated by soul and spirit is directed only toward a balanced development of the child’s body, soul, and spirit; and you can see that what can be ingrained during childhood can be fruitful throughout life. We can do that only when we feel like gardeners tending plants. The gardener will not, for example, artificially affect the plant’s sap flow, but will provide from outside only opportunities for the plant to develop itself. A gardener has a kind of natural reluctance to artificially alter plant growth. We must also have a respectfulness about what children need to develop within their own lives. We will, therefore, always be careful not to teach children in an unbalanced way. The principle of authority I discussed before must live deeply within the child’s soul. Children must have the possibility of learning things they cannot yet intellectually comprehend, but learn anyway because they love the teacher. Thus, we do not take away from children the possibility of experiencing things later in life.

If I have already comprehended everything as a child, then I could never have the following kind of experience. Suppose something happens to me around age thirty-five that reminds me of something I learned from a beloved teacher or a loved authority, something I had learned from that authority through my desire to believe. However, now I am more mature and slowly a new understanding arises within me. Returning in maturity to things we learned earlier, but did not fully comprehend, has an enlivening effect. It gives an inner satisfaction and strengthens the will. We cannot take that away from children if we respect their freedom and if we want to educate them as free human beings. The foundation of the educational principle I am referring to is the desire to educate people as free beings. That is why we should not develop the child’s will through intellectual moral reasoning. We need to be clear that when we develop moral views in the child’s feeling between the ages of seven and fourteen, the child can, after maturing and moving into life, then comprehend intellectual and moral feelings and the will. What permeates the will, and what arises out of the will from the esthetic feeling developed earlier, enlivens morality and, insofar as it arises from freedom, gives people strength and inner certitude.

You see, if you want to use the kind of education we are discussing properly, you will not simply look at childhood, but will also look at people later in life. You will want what you give to children to act just as the natural growth and development of the plant acts to produce a flower that blooms. If we want a blossoming, we do not dare to want the plant to develop too quickly. Instead, we await the slow development from the root to the stem to the leaf to the flower and, finally, to the fruit, unfolding and developing freely in the sunlight. That is the picture we need to keep before us as the goal of education. Our desire is to nurture the root of life in children. However, we want to develop this root so that life slowly and flexibly forms physically, soulfully, and spiritually from our care during childhood. We can be certain that, if we respect human freedom, our teaching will place people in the world as free beings. We can be certain that the root of education can develop freely if we do not enslave children to a dogmatic curriculum. Later in life, under the most varied circumstances, children can develop appropriately as free human beings.

Of course, this kind of education puts tremendous demands on the teacher. However, do we dare presume that the most complete being here on Earth—the human being—can be taught at all if we do not penetrate fully the characteristics of that being? Shouldn’t we believe—concerning human beings and what we do with them—that they hold a place of honor, and that much of what we do is a kind of religious service? We must believe that. We must be aware that education demands of us the greatest level of selflessness. We must be able to forget ourselves completely and plunge into the nature of the child in order to see what will blossom in the world as an adult human being. Selflessness and a true desire to deepen your understanding of human nature, and gaining a true understanding of humanity—these are the basic elements of genuine teaching.

Why shouldn’t we recognize the necessity of devotion to such teaching, since we must certainly admit that teaching is the most noble activity of human life? Teaching is the most noble thing in all human life on the Earth.

That is progress. The progress we achieve through teaching is this: the younger generations, given to us from the divine worlds, develop through what we, the older generations, have developed in ourselves; and these younger generations move a step beyond us in human progress. Isn’t it obvious to every right-thinking person that, in bringing such service to humanity—that is, in bringing the best and most beautiful things of previous generations as an offering to the younger generations—we teach in the most beautiful and humane way?

(George Adams concluded the English translation.)

What I would like to say about certain things would not appear to me as a whole if I did not add today's lecture, which I have given here on the social question, to the one I gave today and the one I will give next Friday, because what has been developed here on the social question, although with seemingly quite different aims and from a seemingly quite different world, ultimately stems from the same human spiritual striving that I will be speaking to you about in these two lectures.

Those of you who have followed my book on the social question in the necessities of life, present and future, will have seen immediately in the first pages how the social question is approached from a point of view that decidedly considers the spiritual and cultural concerns of humanity.

As one of the phenomena that have brought humanity into its present situation, and without whose proper understanding this humanity cannot emerge from chaos and confusion, this book focuses on the relationship between humanity, cultural humanity, and the spiritual world in the last three to four centuries. It is emphasized how humanity's, I might say, negative relationship to the spiritual world is expressed in what has come to be the most widespread designation for this spiritual world: the expression, 'This spiritual world is mere ideology'. That is to say, the spiritual world is something that arises only as a superstructure on a substructure, like a kind of smoke rising from a material or economic reality. It is certainly true that in the last three to four centuries humanity has been repeatedly drawn into this view, as if all spiritual life were only a smoke rising from material life, only a superstructure on a substructure. But it is also clear to anyone who is able to follow the cultural development of the last three to four centuries and up to the present day that the whole state of mind of modern man, which is influenced by this relationship to the spiritual world, has led to the confusion and chaos in which we currently find ourselves. On the one hand, we have the terrible events of the world war catastrophe behind us, and on the other hand, the emerging revolutionary movement. We see, when we look back, how it became clear that people were no longer able to manage the external social life through their practical ideas. The facts have escaped these ideas, they have broken free, and they went their own way. They ran away without being held back by strong human ideas. And they ran into that which led them to ad absurdum, and through which the social life of the last three to four centuries was led ad absurdum. They ran into disaster. Various causes of this catastrophe have been investigated. Clarity on this point will not be achieved until it is realized that, as a result of the view of the spirit that one believed one had rightly arrived at, one has lost control over the facts of the external world and that one can only regain this control by acquiring a different relationship to the spiritual world. That is why all those who, from the standpoint of today's revolutionary movement, believe that the spiritual world is nothing more than an ideology, and base their reforms or revolutions on this view, will not bring humanity to salvation, but on the contrary will push it deeper and deeper into the abyss. Therefore, it is not just some subjective inclination of mine to speak in connection with the social question of what I have spoken of again and again every year here in Stuttgart as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. This spiritual science movement is intended to bear witness to the fact that the spiritual in man and outside of man is not an ideology. It is to bear witness to the fact that man can only gain the necessary strength for his actions, for his life practice, if he draws it from those insights that initially seem far removed from practical paths, but that train the human soul in such a way that they bring this soul into a state in which it is then also strengthened for the management of practical life. And if many today believe that the events that lie ahead of us will only take place in economic struggles, they are mistaken. We just do not realize it yet, but we are in the midst of intense spiritual struggles and that which shakes and stirs humanity up in an elemental way, which expresses itself outwardly through material and armed struggles — it is nothing other than the wave that is thrown to the surface from the stirred human souls that are struggling for new truths, for new insights. Anyone who is able to examine their own inner being to a certain extent today will be aware that the education that all of civilization has undergone over the last three to four centuries no longer allows people to educate themselves about their highest, soul and spiritual matters in the way that was necessarily possible in the past. Over the past three to four centuries and up to the present day, man has undergone a scientific education, in general. This has led him to demand a path to the supersensible worlds, of which only religious denominations have spoken to him so far, a path that is on a par with the scientific path, that does not want to present itself merely as the path of religious feeling, but as the path of knowledge of the supersensible world, of the spiritual world, alongside the path of research into the physical world through natural science. Even if few people today admit this fact, it lives unconsciously in the majority of present-day cultural humanity, and what people often bring to consciousness today is only a veiling of the facts, which can be expressed with the words: We do strive in our inmost being for a knowledge of the spiritual world, and we carry within us numerous dissatisfactions and unfulfillments of life because this longing for knowledge of the supersensible rules in our soul, instinctively rules and is not yet satisfied by anything in the cultural endeavors of our immediate environment, of our entire spiritual life.

And so today, starting from such points of view, I will speak about the paths to supersensible knowledge and observation, and the day after tomorrow about the actual supersensible being of man, that is, the true being of man that outlasts his life between birth and death. And I would like to show how this knowledge must become a real social factor, having a say in the new construction of our human society. It is certainly undeniable today for many people that a certain insight into human striving in general, that which one could call self-knowledge in the broadest sense, is more difficult for people today than it was for people in previous centuries. If we look back at earlier centuries, we cannot but admit that man then came more easily to a certain understanding of his own nature from the elementary demands of human nature than he does today. But there is another fact that stands in meaningful juxtaposition to the one just described, and that is this: today more than in earlier times, man needs this self-knowledge, which is more difficult for him than for earlier man. This is expressed in the striving for such self-knowledge, which is there after all, even if it is hidden behind this or that mask by our difficult life circumstances. But today, in terms of his upbringing, his feelings and his living conditions, people want to ask the authorities they know as scientific authorities about the state of their soul and spiritual life. This is because they have been accustomed to making the scientific the guiding principle of their lives. And so they also want to turn to the scientific forum for self-knowledge and knowledge of human nature. But it must be said that precisely by addressing this forum, he can initially only receive unsatisfactory information. And so, little by little, something has crept into the public consciousness about the questions of the soul and the spirit, which basically can only lead to doubt and uncertainty.

From what usually emerges, so to speak, from the various scientific disciplines, from the rest of life, it is clear that today's human beings have no real idea of how much goes on within their inner selves without being aware of it in their ordinary consciousness. What does the modern man believe about himself? He believes that on the one hand he is a body; and many, if they are at all concerned about it, then say that on the other hand there is the soul. But when the big question arises about the relationship of the body to the soul, of the soul to the body, then doubts arise, then uncertainties arise. On the one hand, we believe that the body is exhausted in what we survey through the sensory observation of the human being, what we dissect and recognize through anatomy, physiology, in short, through everything that the scientific knowledge of the human being provides. This provides us today with a certain idea of what the human body is. Then the human being knows that he develops ideas, that he has emotions, that he has a will that drives him to action – in short, the human being knows that something lives in his consciousness, underlying the will, underlying the emotions or feelings, underlying the ideas. But when he then reflects, “What is the relationship between what I think, feel and will, between the content of my inner soul life and my outer life?” he gets no answer. For what science, the view of the human body through the senses, shows him, is so fundamentally different from what lives in the will, in feeling and in thinking, that a bridge cannot be built from the body to the soul. And it is not only the case for ordinary consciousness that one is faced with the impossibility of building such a bridge, but if one goes through the various scientific, scholarly views of today, they generally conclude with this: something certain about this relationship between body and soul cannot be said.

Anyone who speaks about this question from the standpoint of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, is compelled to look very seriously at the doubts and uncertainties that beset humanity and science in this way to a high degree. And he must say, based on his knowledge: Yes, for scientific knowledge, for the kind of knowledge that has brought us to the great triumphs in natural science, for this knowledge, it must be fundamentally the case that one is driven only into doubt and contradictions when asking the relevant questions. Scientific knowledge is unsuitable for illuminating those depths of human nature from which alone answers to the burning questions can come. Now, however, the same humanities scholar is in a very special position with regard to the thought habits of the present. Since he has to present his findings from a completely different point of view than that of these thought habits, it is only natural that he is attacked in a hostile manner and judged from all sides. For he must not only open up a different field of knowledge from the everyday and the ordinary scientific one; he must also draw attention to a completely different way of knowing. He must point out that the questions raised cannot be answered at all with the way of knowing of ordinary life and ordinary science, and that if man were to remain with this ordinary scientific knowledge, he would never arrive at an answer to these questions. The spiritual scientist must assert that through a development that he himself takes care of, man comes out of this ordinary way of knowing to a completely different knowledge, to a knowledge that initially appears to be a kind of fantasy to the ordinary. Nevertheless, anyone who speaks of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science on the basis of the assumptions being spoken of to you today knows that he stands on the same scientific rigor and the same scientific discipline as the strictest scientific method of the present day. Only what the natural scientist strives for, for example, certain proofs of these facts and these laws, forms the prerequisite for the spiritual researcher, as he is meant here, that is what he has been trained in. He has gone through this before coming to his spiritual science. And in this day and age, no spiritual science should present itself to the public that does not stand on this ground, that does not assert and that has really come to know through research in the spiritual world the very thing by which natural science has come to its 'triumphs'. The spiritual researcher must have put himself in a position to be a natural scientist in the strictest sense of the word. Only the spiritual researcher begins where the natural scientist ends. While the natural scientist searches for certain results for his life of ideas, for his thinking, the spiritual scientist strives to let that which one undergoes with natural science as a strictly methodical, as a conscientious scientific experience, be his education, and only from there to go out and ascend to those higher cognitions of which I will have to speak to you today and the day after tomorrow. Therefore, it is the case for the spiritual researcher that he cannot communicate in the usual sense: I observed this or that external fact; this or that law emerged for me from this or that external fact. Rather, the spiritual researcher must have gone through everything that the natural scientist speaks of as preparation; and he must have arrived, through this preparation, at a state of soul such that he rises to new facts, to new observations, of which he can only tell, and which alone can form the content of the truly spiritual world. Therefore, the spiritual researcher, as he is meant here, will have to speak of his paths of knowledge in a completely different way than the one who, for example, has only gone through a scientific path of knowledge, who has only gone through what is often called a path of knowledge, a path to science, within today's cultural life, today's spiritual life.

Ask those who have gone through a path to science today how they went through this path to science, I would say, with a certain inner calm. They can tell how they worked here or there in the laboratory, how they heard this or that about the processes of human, historical development, how they incorporated it into their concepts, how they compiled these or those statistical facts in order to gain these or those social insights. But we will hear from all of them how they went through it all in a certain state of inner calmness of soul and then, as it were, came into possession of the scientific concepts they had been striving for. The spiritual researcher, especially the anthroposophically oriented spiritual researcher, is not in such a situation. If he is serious about this, he will not be able to speak of such inner calm and indifference in which his path of knowledge was traversed as can be spoken of the paths of knowledge of external science today. The spiritual researcher, if he speaks the truth about his path of knowledge, will tell you about inner struggles and conquests. He will tell you of the abysses of the soul he had to go through before the true supersensible insights presented themselves to him. He will have to tell you how much his own human nature, that which is dear and valuable to man in his outer life, has often become an inner opponent of his striving for knowledge. He will have to tell you about the courage he often had to summon against the inner opposing and hostile forces that lie in human nature and are averse to the true path of knowledge. And so it will be that what the spiritual researcher has to say about soul and spirit is the result of those moods of the soul that have not taken place in inner calm, that have taken place in inner turmoil, that have taken place amid the most serious inner struggles. And this spiritual researcher will have to say that nothing other than inner suffering, inner pain and the overcoming of it, has brought about what he may justifiably call, as he believes, insight into the supersensible worlds.

The spiritual researcher will have to speak of the struggles he had to undergo in two directions. For many people today, these struggles are in an abstract world, but only for the faith of these many people. By consciously going through these struggles, the spiritual researcher learns to recognize that he is truly not alone in the world in going through these struggles. As a rule, the spiritual researcher is not so presumptuous as to say to himself that something is taking place in his soul in which other people have no part. He comes to say to himself that he is only raising to consciousness what unconsciously takes place as an inner struggle at the bottom of every human soul. And the spiritual researcher knows how these struggles, I would say, between the consciousness that lives in thinking, feeling and willing, and the body that external sensory perception and physiology and anatomical science show, how these struggles take place in between, and that they rise up into human consciousness like something that many people in the present time cannot cope with. What is expressed in their instincts and often in physical and mental illnesses, in their dissatisfaction and unfulfilled longings, what is expressed in their nervousness, without their knowing what the actual causes of this state of mind in the depths of the human being are.

The spiritual researcher has to struggle on two fronts: firstly, with the external world and, secondly, with his own inner being. For people today, natural science and its popularization in the way people think is often merely a reason to be happy about the great progress of humanity, and rightly so. For the spiritual researcher, however, the experience of natural science is a particularly intense life struggle. By delving into what today's natural science is, by not only penetrating intellectually to the usual scientific knowledge, but by wanting to experience what is contained in natural science, the spiritual researcher can only experience life with natural science as a struggle. Indeed, through sense perception, through the combinations of sense perceptions that the human intellect produces in the laws of natural science, one does learn many things about nature. But you know, and in earlier years I have often dealt with this fact in my lectures in other contexts, you know that precisely the most conscientious natural scientists and natural researchers come to the conclusion that there are limits to this knowledge of nature. The most conscientious natural researchers, they speak their “ignorabimus” precisely out of a certain deepening, that is, we will not penetrate the essence of things through nature. And now it is once in human nature, that when such a limit piles up, as it rightly piles up before the knowledge of nature, man then says to himself: Well, that is just a limit of knowledge, you have to stop there. He then speaks of insurmountable limits of human knowledge.

The one who lets himself be completely absorbed by the fact that he already feels the spiritual research profession within him, that which is in the soul as a full force, cannot simply stand still when science establishes such limits. Such limits become for him the cause to fight out a life-long struggle of knowledge with that which presents itself to science as power and matter, for example, or as something else. What science itself is unwilling to penetrate, the spiritual researcher must fight his way through with. Only then does the beginning of his path of knowledge and his observations begin; the observations that he cannot go through with as calmly as one goes through a laboratory observation, the observations that he must go through with continually calling upon new spiritual-soul powers of knowledge. And then, when man comes up against these limits and fights his fight, then he becomes acquainted with the reciprocal action between his own inner being of knowledge and the outer world. There he experiences a spiritual fact of observation that presents itself to him as a fundamental characteristic of all human life. As the spiritual researcher struggles with the outer limits of knowledge of nature, he realizes that he has to draw on something from his inner soul in this struggle that otherwise plays a very small role in the knowledge of nature. He has to draw on those powers of his soul that otherwise only come into play in the interaction between human and human or, in an attenuated sense, in the interaction with natural beings, with living beings. He must draw from his inner being the power of life, that power which we unfold when we stand face to face with another person and inner sympathy passes from our soul to the soul of the other person. And it forces itself upon him, not as something subjective, but as an objective fact, the very sober knowledge of nature, and the struggle with the limits of knowledge of nature and that which plays a great role in human nature and human life: sympathy, love, the fundamental tone of all human social intercourse. And man now learns through experience to recognize the relationship between the limits of nature, which stand in the way of his knowledge, and the power of love. Through direct observation, which he has brought about by strongly invoking his inner soul powers, he learns to recognize that at the moment he becomes more deeply involved in the struggle with the limits of nature, he must expend his power of love. It is as if his power of love were released from his soul and flowed over into those areas of nature that lie beyond the boundary. And now the spiritual researcher comes to the significant and deeply moving fact that human nature is adapted to its world environment in such a way that it is denied to penetrate into the inner being with ordinary knowledge. The inner being lies beyond the boundaries of nature. If we did not have such boundaries, we would not be able to be endowed with the power of self-sacrificing love in ordinary life.

A deep meaning comes into this human life through the realization of the connection between knowledge and love. One learns that one can only love in ordinary life by this love-power separating itself from our cognitive activity exercised through the intellect. This fact, this observation, must not only be considered intellectually, it must make the deepest impression on a person once he has grasped it, for in this way he comes to know the very special way in which he is placed in the world. And he knows what he has to do if he is a true spiritual researcher. He knows that he cannot continue to penetrate into what lies beyond the boundary if he has not first strengthened himself in the power of human love and love for all other things to a degree greater than he has in the ordinary life. One must be equipped with such a strong love for all things. This equipment must be the preparation of the innermost being of the soul if one wants to go further in the struggle with the outer world, as I have indicated to you. This path, which the soul must go through so that it does not lose the power of love, so that it is not, as it were, sucked dry of this power, but can enter unreservedly into the supersensible worlds, I have tried to describe in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. And I would here expressly note that such descriptions of the right path to knowledge essentially serve to prepare the human soul so that it can safely follow the higher path to knowledge. From the present time and into the near future, humanity will demand this higher path of knowledge precisely through scientific education. Humanity will — it is in a process of development, I will speak more about this the day after tomorrow — arrive at a point where it can no longer do without such insight into the spiritual worlds as I have indicated. Humanity will arrive at a point where it would feel mentally unhappy and lost if the path into the spiritual, the supersensible worlds were not opened to it. This path will be taken by an irresistible inner impulse.

But it will be necessary to show more and more precisely and in detail how human nature has to prepare itself so that it can walk this path safely, so that the human forces that are important for practical and social life, such as love, are not taken away from it. When a person engages in such inner thought exercises, whereby he makes his thinking, which otherwise stops at the boundaries of natural phenomena, stronger and stronger, you will find in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” such thought exercises, such meditations and thought concentration, through which thinking becomes ever stronger and stronger. When a person does such exercises, he comes to a point in his development where he sees inner experiences and observations placed before his soul that do not appear before his soul in ordinary life. Then he clarifies above all the one question, the fundamental question of the life of the soul: What is it actually that I perceive of the world through my senses, that I develop within me as a world of ideas? What is it actually? And he comes upon a most remarkable fact. When stated in the abstract, it does not seem so remarkable, but in its effect on the whole human being it is highly significant and has a shattering influence on the human soul. Man comes, precisely by intensifying his thinking in such a way that he has the feeling, “I am not only passively surrendering my thoughts to the world, but I am thinking in such a way that a will, directed not by me but by the beings of the world themselves, lives in my thinking.” man comes to realize, especially when he intensifies this thinking, when he makes this thinking stronger than it is in ordinary life — that all thinking and all sensory imagining of ordinary life is nevertheless nothing more than an image, that it has an imagistic character.

It is a great impression that one gets when one comes to this through the intensification of thinking: this ordinary thinking, which one develops by looking at the outer world, which one develops when one reflects on what one has experienced in the outer world, this ordinary thinking is basically only something that runs entirely in images. It is something that has no reality in itself, as it arises. There comes a moment when, if one has followed the spiritual development of modern civilized humanity, something is awakened in the soul that has a shattering effect. It is remarkable for someone who has really had the experiences I have just described to hear that one of the greatest minds of humanity, one of the greatest thinkers of this humanity, the first representative of the newer historical development of world-views, Cartesius, Descartes, uttered the remarkable sentence: “I think, therefore I am. Cogito ergo sum.” That Descartes uttered this sentence is proof for the true spiritual researcher that he did not really look into the spiritual world, that Descartes did not come to that intensified thinking of which I have just spoken, as being based on such exercises as I describe in my book ”How to Know Higher Worlds.” Because when you get to that, then you say the word that Descartes wanted to say differently, then you say: I think, therefore I am not. Because as long as you remain with your soul in ordinary thinking, you are not. Thinking is an image, and one only becomes aware of what is reflected in it when one intensifies this thinking so that one does not experience it as shadowy as one experiences ordinary thinking, but as if permeated by the will; one experiences it as I presented it as pure thinking as early as 1892 in my Philosophy of Freedom.

When one experiences this thinking as an active, self-active process, then one knows that ordinary thinking is a shadow image of a reality, that one is not in the movement of thinking that one accomplishes. Therefore, it also follows from real spirit communication, from the real spiritual researcher, that by repeatedly reinforcing this thinking through the calm experience of thoughts with which he himself meditatively fills his consciousness, it is as if he grows into a reality with this thinking. Whereas he used to feel free in shadowy thinking, he now feels something like a spiritual drowning. And precisely for this reason he must make his whole being strong and vigorous in soul and spirit, so that he is armed against what opposes the intensified thinking, which inwardly, in the soul, is like drowning, like an extinguishing of consciousness. One must live one's way into this intensified thinking with a strong consciousness. In this way, by intensifying one's thinking, one actually experiences the shadowiness of ordinary thinking through direct spiritual perception. And then there comes a point in life that, more than anything I have been able to mention earlier, strikes this human life with a sudden shock. That is the point at which one learns to recognize what ordinary thinking and imagining actually is in its shadowiness, in its pictorial nature. One learns to recognize that it is the shadow of what one has experienced in a purely spiritual world before birth or, let us say, before conception, the shadow of reality, which is called prenatal reality. The life of a human being in the spirit, before birth, before conception, one experiences this, one feels it in the intensified thinking. And then one learns to recognize how one actually has the power of thought, of ordinary thought. One has the power of ordinary thought because one has led a different kind of life in the spiritual world before birth or before conception. And this different kind of life fades away according to this reality, it becomes a mere shadow, and we experience the shadow in our imagination, in our thinking. Time becomes like space. One looks back into the prenatal time, into the time before conception. One looks back into the spiritual world, and one sees the reality that one has experienced there. And just as a spatial phenomenon acts on another spatial phenomenon that is distant from it, so time acts like space. In this view, which I have indicated, prenatal life is still there. And it shows: by thinking, this prenatal life has an effect on my present life. I am, by thinking, dependent on this prenatal life. That shines into my soul being and through it I can think.

In short, what is called the human spirit, independent of bodily life, becomes a perception, but a perception that one must first struggle to attain through inner soul struggles. And now, now light comes into the ordinary view of the soul. Now one knows when one believes in ordinary life: there one has thinking, feeling, willing, which has no connection with the body — this must be so because in this ordinary life of the soul, in this imagining, one has only a reflection of a reality that has become paralyzed at our birth. Now we know that the soul is actually something else than what has been living with us since our birth. And now, when we step out into the world again with this intensified thinking, we see something else besides the ordinary sense world. One can also support oneself in the sense world, but that is not usually advised, and I am not advising it here either, I am just mentioning it for the sake of explanation: At the moment when you make an effort to develop an inner power of imagination of the soul, through which you are able, for example, to imagine a green meadow purely through your inner soul power quite differently than green, namely in the color of peach blossoms – it takes a strong inner effort to do so – then this inner effort that you make to not see the green, to see the soul's counter-color, not the physical counter-color, then this effort works in such a way that it supports you in generating that powerful, that strengthened thinking of which I have just spoken. But then you can also judge other external experiences differently than through ordinary thinking.

Then you meet another person, you enter into some kind of relationship with them, and you say to yourself – not with everyone, but in certain contexts with the other person, and also in certain contexts with other beings of nature, with the world in general. You say to yourself: Oh, I have not in vain reached to strengthen my thinking, I have become capable in this strengthened thinking to leap over the boundaries of nature, to look beyond the boundaries of nature. But then I see what happens to me in life differently than when I stood at these boundaries as at the boundaries of knowledge. Then I see what enters my life as fate, as fateful events, as an effect of past lives on earth that I went through before I progressed to the life in the spiritual world between death and a new birth, which I have just said is reflected in ordinary thinking and imagining. In short, what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has to say about the life of the human soul in the spiritual world, about repeated earthly lives, is not a gray theory, is not a hypothesis, and is not spoken of as something that has been conceived, but is stated as the result of those cognitions and observations which one only penetrates to when one has prepared oneself for them in the way I have just indicated and as you will find it further explained in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”.

Today I have indicated the path to the supersensible worlds from this one side. I will speak about the whole context of the supersensible man the day after tomorrow. Today I still have to discuss the other boundary that the spiritual man comes to, the other boundary at which he has to fight a hard inner battle just as at the boundary of natural phenomena. That other boundary is the one which I would like to call the boundary towards one's own human inner being. It is the boundary that man often wants to deceive himself about by becoming a mystic in the ordinary sense. Just as the spiritual researcher has to live much more intensely with natural science than the natural scientist himself, because the natural scientist only comes to his usual results and insights, but the spiritual researcher has to have experiences, struggles with natural science, so the spiritual researcher must also really go through everything that the mystic builds on, in which the mystic often delights inwardly. But at the same time he must undergo an inner struggle with this very joy, with this edification. While the ordinary mystic believes that he can arrive at questions of eternity by a certain kind of immersion in his own inner being, the real spiritual researcher, in penetrating to this inner being of man after the manner of the ordinary mystic, is beset by the most bitter doubt and the most terrible uncertainty. Just as with natural science, the spiritual researcher has to struggle with mysticism, but now inwards. Just as the spiritual researcher must not stop at ordinary natural science and its limits, he must not stop at ordinary mysticism either. For precisely because he immerses himself conscientiously and without illusions in the human interior, doubts and uncertainties arise for him in the face of ordinary mysticism. Precisely because he develops what I have just characterized: the intensified thinking; because he clearly sees into what occurs through mysticism, in which many people feel so at home that they believe themselves to be resting in the divine substance when they inwardly mystically deepen, therefore the spiritual researcher cannot stop at this mysticism, because he has learned not to indulge in illusions when observing it. He has learned to really fight all forms of fantasy. He has trained himself in strictly disciplined, scientific thinking. And so he soon sees through what the mystic calls a life with his divine inner being, with his higher self, as nothing more than the experience of all kinds of unconscious reminiscences, which are only misinterpreted because they have incorporated themselves badly into the soul or because they are overshadowed by the memory.

You see, I would like to give you an idea of this, that the spiritual researcher does not allow himself to be blinded by any illusions; that the true essence of spiritual research, through an inner discipline, through a strict inner schooling, leads to all fantasy. Therefore, the spiritual researcher is not able to calm himself down in the way that the ordinary mystic does. He regards these as subjective reminiscences; he regards them as something to which the ordinary person, in his mystical contemplation, gives himself over to all kinds of illusions. But one thing becomes clear to the spiritual researcher: that one cannot penetrate at all in the way of this ordinary inner contemplation to anything that is really the human soul. One arrives at a true reality just as little as one arrives at a true reality through ordinary, unintensified thinking. One arrives only at the elevation of a certain refined soul egoism. One feels inwardly so well and comfortably when one can say that the soul is absorbed in the divine human being, and the like. Many of those who are revered as mystics live in this comfort, in this refined egoism. The spiritual researcher must see through the true facts here, because, precisely because of his strengthened thinking, it is clear to him what the actual facts are regarding this inner mysticism. It becomes clear to him that if one could penetrate in the ordinary way into the human interior down to the divine-soul core of the human being, one would then not have a power of the soul that is so extremely necessary for ordinary practical and social life: one would not have the power of remembrance, the power of memory. We only have the power of recollection, the power of memory, because we cannot, through inner experience in the ordinary sense, descend into the full human being. The spiritual researcher then acquires an inner insight into how one can truly descend into the inner being of a person through a kind of strengthening of the ordinary soul life.

You see, this ordinary life of the soul takes place to a very great extent quite unconsciously. For are we not, in fact, a different person every day? Anyone who engages in even the most superficial self-observation will notice that they are deeply affected by their experiences each day. Just think how the soul changes from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, by experiencing this or that. Think how we change from time to time, as we go through our lives between birth and death. But man undergoes this process very unconsciously, he does not observe himself in the process, and above all he does not develop the will to make himself different. In ordinary life he develops only a small degree of self-discipline, of self-education. By increasing this self-discipline, this self-education, by consciously taking himself in hand, man comes to recognize himself in life as truly becoming. If we do not just abandon ourselves to life as it presents itself to us, allowing ourselves to be passively trained by life, but if we actively set out to shape ourselves, to educate ourselves, so that we often say to ourselves: Today you cannot do this, you will do that do this or that, so that you can enter into this or that - in short, when you take what self-education is into your own will and become more and more aware of it and make it an exercise; when you do this systematically, then another power is added to the strengthened thinking. Details of this, of which there are many, can be found in the book mentioned. If one carries this out, then the will becomes something different than what it is. Then the will becomes so that it is permeated by thoughts, that it reveals itself as interwoven with light. While the will otherwise remains something very dark for us, which is only stimulated by the thoughts of the head, a thought shines out to us from those efforts of the will, when we have trained ourselves as I have indicated. The world in which we move at will becomes completely permeated with thoughts. The world does not become a mere symbol, but a great fabric of world thoughts, through our will having become active in this way. And then, from these world thoughts, knowledge comes to us that can be added to the others I have mentioned.

Once you have passed this other test of mysticism, once you have recognized that your will is imbued with world thought, then life expands in another direction, but in such a way that something occurs for which you must be prepared, so that no harm comes to the life of the soul. You will find more details about this in the book mentioned. Damage could be caused to the soul because in the moments when one looks into the spiritual world through this other willpower, which is illuminated by thoughts about the world, one must renounce memory, the ability to remember. One cannot remember what one has seen spiritually. If today, on the paths of training that I have just mentioned to you as the training of the will, I have done some spiritual research and want to tell you about it tomorrow, I cannot get it out of my memory. I can only tell you about it if I go through all the events that led to the experience again, so that it arises anew in my soul. One must renounce the actual memory. But instead, the human soul presents itself to the soul, that human soul that cannot be experienced through ordinary mysticism. One experiences it after one has passed the test of ordinary mysticism, after one has overcome that which adapts one to the ability to remember in life. Just as the ordinary world of thoughts and ideas is a shadow of prenatal life, so one beholds that which lives in the will, which otherwise remains so dark – that which lives below memory, that which is spiritually hidden in the human is spiritually hidden in the human body, but cannot be seen, because otherwise we would have no memory in ordinary life —, one then sees it as what remains as a germ when the human being has passed through the gate of death. Then one learns to recognize through direct observation, through perception, that which hovers before man as the immortality of the soul. Then one learns to recognize the spiritual connection between what lives in man before birth and what lives in him after death. Then one learns to recognize the eternal in human nature.

Today I have described to you the paths that lead to supersensible knowledge and observations, to that which gives man a consciousness of the immortality of his soul. I have shown you that it must become a modern path for the development of humanity to ascend to real knowledge of the supersensible world on the basis of everything that humanity has acquired in religious and scientific development. The day after tomorrow I will talk about how this human being presents himself as a supersensible being before our soul.

Today, to conclude, I would just like to summarize in a few sentences what appears to me to be the bridge between the lectures I have given here this year on a seemingly completely different subject and the lectures I am now giving.

You see, I have often had to ask myself in the times that have emerged from the terrible social experiences even before the world war catastrophe, then from the horror experiences during the world war catastrophe and now afterwards: What about the ideas and concepts, with the impulses that people need to really shape social life of their own accord? For man is compelled to shape this social life with the future in mind. And I have conscientiously, truly conscientiously, inquired in the literature and everywhere else I could think of about what ideas about social will are held by the economists of current opinion, by people who think about economics and have to do with economics, and on what basis they form such ideas.

I have just had a strange experience in this search. I have not made it easy for myself, this search, and I have not started from the immodesty of wanting to practice a frivolous criticism everywhere. The one who becomes a spiritual researcher is far from this frivolity. He is very inclined, precisely for reasons that you can gather from today's lecture, to lovingly respond to the ideas and will impulses that people produce. But still, I could not close my mind to the fact that especially the social and ethical sciences everywhere today suffer from a certain imperfection, from a certain lack of clarity of concepts. You can see this in practice when you look at the economists of the various schools of thought and see what one says about goods, about labor, about capital, what the other says about it, and so on. But what people say lives in the terrible struggles of the present, it lives itself out, it wants to be shaped. People fight, fight out of instincts. They make demands and do not know what they are talking about. This is something that weighs on the soul. And then it became clear to me, and I will say this quite openly, where the real harm lies. It became clear to me that in those conceptions which one wants to gain from what lives in human activity, in human production, what lives in what one person does for another in the social order, that which the mere scientific habits of thought give cannot live.

This, for example, is the terrible thing about Karl Marx's political economy, that it starts from the model of the habits of thought in the natural sciences, and that as a result it does not arrive at a true understanding of the external social situation of humanity, but only at a killing criticism and at the suggestion of fruitless revolutionary movements. This is the tragedy of present thinking. And so, when one has the opportunity to have spiritual science, the paths of which I have characterized to you today, on the one hand, and to have the great social questions on the other, one comes to the conclusion that this way of thinking, which people have developed over the last three to four centuries under the influence of ideological thinking and the unreality of spiritual life, is not sufficient to grasp social life. In order to grasp this social life, a training of the spirit is needed that can only be acquired through the spiritual world itself. What is contained in the circulation of goods on the market, what is given to them by human labor, cannot be understood unless it is related to the spiritual worlds to which the human soul belongs. And what lies in the work of one person for another in social life cannot be grasped if one cannot train one's thinking through thoughts that reach into the spiritual world. And one will not grasp what capital is in the right sense if one cannot measure its mode of operation in its purely material nature against what man is as a spiritual being.

In short, we cannot arrive at a knowledge of the social organism without first having spiritual science. This is a fact that has become clear to me, and it is from this fact that I have tried to build a bridge between spiritual science and the impulses for the threefold social organism. How this bridge looks in terms of the development of humanity into the future is something I will also have to talk about the day after tomorrow. I will have to speak about what arises from the basis of such a soul life, which is capable of understanding from common sense that what I have said today is based on truth, about necessities for the social development of the present and the near future.

For decades we have been hearing again and again from the present consciousness with a certain justification the call: the enslaved part of humanity must redeem itself, must free itself. For, whatever may happen in the struggle for this redemption, this liberation, this enslaved part of humanity has nothing to lose but its chains. Now, as true as that is on the one hand, it is nevertheless one-sided for the one who is able to see the whole world, the world that is before man, to see in the light of the spirit. For as hard as it is to bear chains in the material world, as those meant in the saying quoted, so justified it is to strive to shake off these chains, which one can only lose through a struggle – there is still something that must be said to be more terrible to lose than all material chains of humanity: that is the fulfillment of the soul with the realization of the true spiritual man. If we continue to develop under the relationship to the spirit that has emerged over the last three to four centuries, and which can be rightly regarded as an ideology, we could lose something that must not be lost: the awareness of the spiritual nature of man, of the eternal significance of this man. And it will be the task of modern spiritual science to ensure that this awareness is not lost, that man once again fights for a spiritual life in which he appears to himself in his true form. If it undertakes this task, it will make the most important contribution to the social reorganization of human life. But then, when one realizes this, one will also say: it is not only economic struggles that we must boldly sail into, but in the future there will also be spiritual struggles. May humanity prove strong and courageous in standing these spiritual battles, then it will not lose what it must not lose if it is not to sink into the abyss: the consciousness of spirituality, of the eternity of man.