The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Let me add a few supplementary explanations to the problem of reincarnation and karma, and then pass on to the discussion of the development of our earth, for only the consideration of these facts enables us to understand man's true nature as it appears to us in relation to the cosmic conditions. I shall conclude this course of lectures by leading you on to the contemplation of man's development, when he endeavours to attain vision and knowledge of the higher worlds.

In order to penetrate into the spiritual worlds we must first consider the pre-Christian training, secondly the Christian training, and thirdly the Rosicrucian training.

Further explanations connected with the problem of reincarnation should really be reserved for a separate chapter, because for beginners they are difficult to understand. What we shall discuss now refers to the time which lies between two incarnations. In itself it is a problem which shocks modern materialistic thought.

Immediate spiritual experience, which is one of the sources of knowledge at the disposal of the spiritual investigator, cannot be attained by those who lack spiritual vision. But those who apply the training which will be spoken of later on, will be well able to find out in what epoch the majority of men now living on earth passed through their last earthly incarnation. I shall then discuss what means were used in the Chaldean and Pythagorean schools and in every other occult school of pre-Christian times, to enable man to enter the spiritual world.

All those who have insight into the conditions which exist in the spiritual world, all those who are able to trace human development back into the preceding incarnations, will discover that the majority of souls now living had their preceding incarnation in the first centuries after Christ's birth, up to the 8th and 9th century. But these are average conditions, for the time between two incarnations may also be of shorter or of longer duration.

Another fact is connected with the one mentioned, a fact which must now be strongly emphasized: Namely, there are certain uncommonly radical thinkers of the present, who claim equality for all men. This is nothing but the materialistic aspect of a claim for equality which was advanced during the first Christian centuries—equality in the face of God, and equality in the face of the temporal powers.

Many of the people who advanced this claim for equality during the early centuries of Christianity and who then passed through the portal of death with unfulfilled claims, many of these people whose souls took with them into the spiritual world this longing for equality in the face of God and of the temporal powers, are born again at the present time, and they of course bring with them a particular attitude in regard to these claims, but in a transformed shape which is in keeping with the modern materialistic world-conception. But these men who return to the earth overlook the materialistic influence which the modern age exercises upon their claims. It is not right to believe or to declare that the modern idea of freedom comes from Christianity.

The transformation of the old claim of equality in the face of God and of the temporal powers into the modern claim for equality under all earthly conditions, can only be viewed in the right way if we survey the true connections revealed by the spiritual-scientific world-conception. Those who survey these true connections and at the same time consider the modern materialistic world-conception; realise without further ado that the claim for equality advanced by modern radical thinkers is something which necessarily had to arise independently and of its own accord. On the other hand, however, it is a fact that the human beings must from now onwards rise again from materialism to spiritualism. This alone can heal social conditions. There is no other remedy than spiritual science itself.

This problem is discussed more fully in numbers 30, 32 and 34 of the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis” ¹ all the other remedies, even those advanced from high quarters, suffer from the blemish of amateurishness, for modern men know nothing whatever of the higher worlds. If modern social thinkers were to submit to some extent to the inspirations of spiritual science, they would really discover ways and means of approaching these problems.

Even as it is true that humanity had to descend from a spiritual past, into materialism, so it is also true that it must rise again to spirituality. A spiritual world-conception alone can produce something that gives rise to harmony, peace and love. Even in this sphere, spiritual science can be of practical help in the highest possible way.

Now I will show you how a conception of the human course of development gained through spiritual-scientific observations can lead us back to the events that lie between death and re-birth.

I have already explained to you that it is not in vain that the human being returns to the earth many times and we have seen that the reason for this lies in the fact that with every new incarnation the human being finds, entirely new conditions upon the earth. With every new incarnation he gathers new fruits for the future, for the earth has each time undergone a complete transformation, both in regard to human civilisation and the external aspect of Nature. Every time the human being enters the earthly sphere through a new incarnation, he finds the face of the earth completely changed.

According to the Chaldean conception, the transformation of the earth depends upon the sun's relationship to the other stars. You may find more detailed explanations on this in many of my lectures; now I can only refer to it quite briefly.

If you observe the astronomical aspect when the sun rises the vernal point, if you observe this vernal point and the other conditions in the world of the stars, you will find that the sun's position in regard to the other stars changes every spring. The vernal point advances year by year, so that in about 26,000 years (25,920) this point returns to where it was 26,000 years ago. This closes a cycle. But the circle thus described is only an apparent one, for in reality the sun describes a spiral. The vernal point was fixed in accordance with the constellation with which it coincided and the sun accordingly describes a circle in the sky and this circle is designated as the Zodiac with its twelve signs. Every year the sun advances a little, and within 26,000 years tho sun has passed through all the signs of the Zodiac.

About 747 B.C. the sun rose in the sign of Aries; and since the sun's passage through all the Zodiac signs takes up about 25,920 years, one twelfth of the time, i. e., 2160 years is needed in order to pass from one sign to the other. The change in the face of our earth is really dependent upon the fact that the vernal point advances. After an epoch of about 2,200 years the face of the earth has therefore changed to such extent that entirely new conditions have arisen; and on the average, the human being advances to a new incarnation within this space of time.

The observations of occult science show that this is indeed the case. Ancient peoples always connected a definite feeling with the rising of the sun in the vernal point of Aries, and this feeling may be described as follows: “From the sign of Aries the sun again sends down to us for the first time this year the rays which conjure up the plants from the earth.” They thought that the sign of Aries sent them these rays and and so they particularly venerated this sign. Sacred feelings of a definite kind were connected with the naming of the Zodiac signs. Aries sends down the forces of the vernal sun, and in the Lamb the peoples of those times therefore saw a symbol for the regenerating forces in Nature and in the human being. Many legends are connected with it; for instance, the legend of Jason going in quest of the Golden Fleece, which symbolizes something immensely prized by men. This veneration for the Ram or the Lamb held sway for many centuries and it was taken over by Christianity. That is why a lamb could originally be seen on the Cross, instead of Christ. And that is why Christ was called the Lamb of God.

If that is so, and if the sun rose in the sign of Aries from the 8th century B.C. onwards; another form of worship must have existed before that time; when the sun's vernal point lay in the sign of Taurus. In fact before the 8th century B.C. the bull was venerated instead of the lamb. This veneration lies at the foundation of the temple-cult of Apis in ancient Egypt, and of the Persian Mithras-cult. 2,200 years earlier, the sun rose in the sign of Gemini, and this sign too played a part in the ancient cultures of those times. The ancient Persian religion, with its Ormuzd and Ahriman cult may be traced back to this.

Thus we see that the ancient peoples had very significant conceptions in connection with the sun's passage through the single signs of the Zodiac. This again is connected with the fact that man reincarnates after a definite space of time; on the average, when 2,200 years have gone by since his last incarnation. Within this epoch, it makes a great difference whether he incarnates upon the earth as a man or as a woman, and so the calculation of the time during which the single. incarnations take place is very complicated. A human being's experiences during an incarnation as a man or as a woman differ so much, that he must incarnate twice during this epoch of 2,200 years, once as a man, and once as a woman, so that two incarnations succeed one another during the average period of one thousand years. Therefore 1,100 to 1,200 years only lie between two incarnations. Generally speaking, it is therefore right that a male and a female incarnation should alternate, but in exceptional cases there may be several succeeding incarnations of the same sex (the greatest number which could be observed was seven), but then the sex changes. These are exceptions, for as a rule the sexes alternate in the successive incarnations.

This can be said of the time which lies between two incarnations. But its duration depends upon many other things besides. For instance, a certain individuality may be particularly suited to a definite epoch, in order to fulfil a certain task. In such a case, the higher powers may draw this individuality into an incarnation before the expiration of the normal period. They draw him down, because his whole constitution enables him to fulfil a definite mission. This is particularly the case with the great leaders of humanity. But in the whole of human life the balance is re-established late on, for such an individuality will have to live through a correspondingly longer time in Devachan.

Another thing which must be said is that there is a kind of counterpart to the experience already described to you, which takes place immediately after death, when man looks back upon his past life as on a picture. This counterpart consists in a kind of prophetic vision of the following life on earth.

Let us bear in mind once more how the retrospective vision arises at the moment of death. You know that the etheric body has the two principal tasks of stimulating the vital functions of the physical body, that is to say, of constantly protecting the physical substance against decay and of regulating the structure of this substance; but the etheric body is also the seat of memory. When the etheric body abandons the physical body at the moment of death, it is relieved of its first task, and then its second quality comes to the foreground, that is to say, the memory of everything which the human being experienced during his past life. This forms the retrospective picture of human life. At the moment man's being only consists of the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego.

When man enters a new incarnation the following arises: the Ego descends from the spiritual world with all the imperishable extracts which it has acquired, both those pertaining to the etheric and to the astral body. For the building-up of a new astral body, the Ego must attract all those astral qualities corresponding to the development, through which it has passed so far, and afterwards it must similarly attract the etheric qualities. All this, takes place during the first days after conception, and the new etheric body begins to work independently and to develop the physical germ of the human being only after the 18th or 20th day, whereas before that time the mother's etheric body fulfilled that which must then be done by the new etheric body. From the 18-20-th day after conception, the individuality about to incarnate, which has enveloped its Ego with a new astral and etheric body, begins to take possession of the physical body, which has up to that time been formed by the mother.

When the human being thus takes possessionof the physical body, he consists of exactly the same members as during the moment of death; in the latter case he had just discarded the physical body, and in the former, he has not yet taken it up. This will easily enable you to understand that when the human being enters his new physical body, something arises which is analogous to his experience on discarding this body at the moment of death. When he enters his new physical body, the human being has a kind of fore-vision of his coming life, even as at the moment of death he has a retrospection of his past life. But he forgets this fore-vision, because the constitution of his physical body does net yet allow him to retain it in his memory.

At this moment the human being realises: “These are the family-conditions into which I am born, these are the geographical and local conditions and my destiny ...” And at that moment it may sometimes occur that when the human being thus foresees a sad or a terrible experience which lies in store for him, he receives a shock and is afraid of the life which awaits him, so that his etheric body does not properly unite with the physical body, it does not wish to enter it. Idiocy is the result of such a fright of the etheric body's reluctance to enter properly into the physical body. A clairvoyant may perceive the etheric body of such people protruding above the physical head and because the etheric body is not properly structured into the physical head, the brain remains behind in its development, for the etheric body does not work upon it as it should. Many cases of idiocy to-day are dependent upon this.

If we bear in mind that the majority of men who are reincarnated to-day passed through their preceding incarnation dating the 9th to the 11th century A.D., we can easily understand that the modern age in particular produces such cases of idiocy. By applying a kind of physical treatment the etheric body may be influenced so that it gradually penetrates into the physical body, and this may improve the condition. Such a treatment, however, can only be applied by a person who is able to see the spiritual cause of the existing facts, so that he can deal with the case properly.

We know from the preceding explanations that man's whole being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. These members do not simply fit together, but they interpenetrate and they all influence one another. Thus they all influence tho physical body and cooperate in, working upon it in such a way that it can develop properly. When you face a human being and your higher organs of perception are undeveloped, you can only, see his physical body. But the physical body appears to you as it does, only because the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego permeate it, and because they all cooperated in developing this physical body. The physical organs of the human body were not built up chaotically by the three higher members, for we can clearly perceive how the higher members worked upon the structure of the physical body. Let us try to form a picture of this.

In the physical body we have first of all that which constitutes in a certain connection the purely physical organs. These organs are based upon purely physical laws—namely, the eyes, the ears, the larynx, etc. The eye is, to be sure, a living organ and it obtains its life from the etheric body which permeates and nourishes it, but seen from a purely physical standpoint it is a complicated apparatus, ruled by the same forces which are also active in inorganic Nature, for instance, in the crystal. We may therefore look upon the activity of the eye in accordance with purely physical laws.

These sensory apparatuses must first extricate themselves from the physical body. They are organs which we first learn to know more strictly as organs which are built up by the physical forces and according to physical laws.

We then have a second group of organs; the organs of nutrition, growth and procreation, culminating in the activity of the glands. The etheric body is chiefly involved in the development of these organs.

As a third group we have the nervous system, which is built up essentially by the astral body. And in the fourth place we have that which constitutes the red blood in animals and in man: the red blood, the warm blood, is built up by the Ego.

We thus have firstly the purely physical parts, the sensory organs—later on, also the purely mineral osseous system which is built up by the physical body itself.

Secondly, the glandular system, the organs of procreation and so forth, which are built up by the etheric body.

Thirdly, the nervous system, which is built up by the astral body.

Fourthly, the blood system which is, built up by the Ego.

When we consider the development of the earth, we shall understand this better.

You should realise that the law of reincarnation must be applied to the whole world, not only to the human being. I now live upon the earth, I am the reincarnation of my preceding state, but this is not only the case with me, as human being, but in a certain way with everything which fills the world's spaces,—among other things, with the planets. Even as- we are the reincarnation of former individualities, so the earth is, among other things, the reincarnation of an earlier planetary condition.

The reincarnations of our earth are not unlimited in number, either in regard to the past or to the future; even the best clairvoyant cannot look back further than a definite state of being in regard to our earth, for even his knowledge is subjected to limitations. The clairvoyant can look back as far as three incarnations of our earth, and similarly he can survey three incarnations which will follow the present one. Including, the present state of the earth he thus surveys seven incarnations.

It may perhaps sound superstitious to people who hear this for the first time that the clairvoyant sets the earth so to speak in the centre of this course of development, and one might say: This is a very strange coincidence! But only a superficial judgment induces one to speak like that, for it is not more strange than the fact that when I stand in an open field, I can look out everywhere at an equal distance, for I stand in the middle of the horizon. And through the Ego, I also stand in the centre of the sevenfold human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, Spirit-Self, Life Spirit, Spirit-Man. This is based upon the same standpoint.

Even my explanations regarding the planetary development of our earth may surprise many people and seem strange to them.

Our earth developed out of a former planet. This planet from which our earth arose can no longer be seen in the sky. But a fragment of that which once existed may be seen in the present Moon; the Moon is a fragment of the earth's predecessor. If you were to mix the present earth and the present moon and all the spiritual beings living upon them, you would more or less obtain an image of the earth's preceding incarnation, which the occultist designates as Moon. But you should bear in mind that this hypothesis is only advanced in order to make the process more comprehensible to you, yet like all hypotheses it is of course not quite correct. If we were to mix the present earth and the present moon, in the same way in which we mix two substances in a chemical laboratory, we would not by a long way obtain the ancient Moon . For we must consider that when earth and moon separated, these two celestial bodies each continued, their own development. The solid substance, for instance, which we call the mineral kingdom has only been formed since the present development of the earth. Before this development of the earth, there were no minerals in the present meaning.

From this imaginary mixture of earth and moon we must therefore eliminate everything which developed afterwards. The mass of the ancient Moon did not consist of anything resembling the present mineral. Its consistency had not gone beyond a liquid or viscous condition. As stated, the above hypothesis has only been advanced in order to render things more comprehensible to people who have never heard anything of the planetary development of our earth and of the whole cosmos. For a deeper understanding of this course of development, far more is needed, but this cannot be explained in an introductory course such as the present one for such things can only be unfolded little by little. This course of development will then repeatedly be completed and illumined from ever new standpoints.²

Before the earth passed through this ancient Moon condition, it lived in a state of existence which occultists designate as the Sun. The earth passed through conditions resembling those which still exist upon the present sun. But if we now wish to apply the same hypothesis as before things become, more complicated. If you wish to have an idea of this condition, you must mix the earth the moon and the sun, thus obtaining one celestial body, the former Sun. (Here again, the same restrictions must be borne in mind as in the case of the ancient Moon). In the further course of its development, the ancient Sun put out, cast out from itself all the essential parts, forces and substances of the present earth, and moon, and thus it changed from a planet into a fixed star. Also our earth will one day become a sun, when it shall have transformed all its beings into Beings of Light ...

Before its present condition, the earth was therefore the ancient Moon-planet, and this was preceded by the ancient Sun. We may then look back upon a still earlier state of development, which occultists designate as Saturn. We can therefore distinguish the following states of development, which preceded our earth: Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, and these will be followed by the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan states.

Someone might say: You tell us that the earth was once Saturn, but Saturn still shines in the sky even to-day. But the Saturn which once constituted our earth has nothing in common with the star now shining down as Saturn. I do not mean to say that the beings who live upon the earth, once lived upon the Saturn which now shines in the sky. The present Saturn is connected with the former Saturn condition only as explained in the case of the present Moon and the ancient moon condition. Since those remote times, the Saturn which we now see, has passed through its own development, and the ancient Saturn is related to the present one in the same way in which a baby is related to an old man. The present Saturn was once in a condition resembling the ancient Saturn, even as an old man was once an infant.

When the spiritual investigator looks up to Jupiter, he finds upon Jupiter conditions and beings which the earth will one day have, when it shall have become Jupiter.

This teaching has been handed down by the most ancient initiates, and initiates have explained this course of development over and over again to their pupils.

Certain parts of our language which may be traced back to the remotest past, were formed by initiates. In an introductory course I cannot explain this fully, because this would lead us to far away from our main subject. But in ancient times, when the formation of speech was still still dependent upon initiates, language was quite different from what it is now. To-day, for instance, when naming something, we choose a name because it is uncommon, but it has no deeper significance. In olden times, however, there was a deep significance in names, and the choice of a name depended upon inner conditions. Thus one wished to erect a kind of monument, as a remembrance of the earth's course of development through the ages, and through its planetary conditions. A kind of time-table was formed, so that man might always remember these phases. But if we wish to understand this table,we must first consider certain other things.

The above outline shows you that before its present earth-condition the earth passed through a Saturn, Sun and Moon condition. Before the earth became the present earth, that is to say, during the transition from the moon state of existence
to the present earth existence; the earth stood under the strong influence of another celestial body, namely under the influence of Mars.

The important influence of Mars, which is of tremendous significance for the further development of our earth, was exercised just at the beginning of the development of our earth. Parenthetically let it be said that the earth then obtained from Mars the iron subatances which were not contained in the earthly substance.

During the first stage of its development, the earth was therefore influenced by Mars, and during the second half, that is to say, now, it became subjected to the stronger influence of Mercury. This explains why occultism drops the designation “earth” and subdivides the conditions of the earth into two halves, the Mars part and the Mercury part. This changes the above diagram as follows: Saturn condition, Sun condition, Moon condition, Mars and Mercury condition, Jupiter condition Venus condition and Vulcan condition.

The Vulcan condition would therefore be the eighth in the series; within this course of development it plays the same part as the octave in music. Even as the octave repeats, as it were, the first tone, but on a higher scale, so the Vulcan condition is a repetition of the Saturn condition, but upon a higher stage of development. The whole cosmos developed out of the spirit, and in the Vulcan stage everything will once more return to the spirit, but upon a higher and more manifold stage of development. Innumerable spirit-men developed out of a uniform spirituality, even as out of the seed which the sower planted in the earth, grains resembling this seed reach a manifold development in the ear of corn which ripens in the autumn. Everything perishable is but a symbol.

The ancient initiates made these seven names flow into that monumental table mentioned above, in memory of the earth's course of development, and this is given to us in the names of the seven days of the week:

The day of Saturn = Saturday
The day of the Sun = Sunday
The day of the Moon = Monday
The day of Mars = Mardi (Mars = Ziu, Dius = Tuesday)
The day of Mercury = Mercredi (Mercury = Wodan = Wednesday)
The day of Jupiter = Giovedì (Thor = Thursday)
The day of Venus = Vedredi (Venus = Freya = Friday)

A monument has indeed been preserved in the names of the days of the week, a monument which reminds us of the seven stages of development of our earth. Apparently common things in life may thus show us deep spiritual connections.

You must now bear in mind that even the whole development of humanity is intimately connected with this planetary evolution. Indeed the whole human development can only be understood in the light of the planetary evolution.

Each member of the human being is intimately connected with one of these planetary stages of evolution of the earth, in so far as the foundation of each of the members of the human being was laid during one of these phases.

The physical body was thus prepared during the Saturn age, the etheric body during the Sun epoch, the astral body during the Moon phase, and the Ego entered the human being only during the Earth phase. The physical body is consequently the most perfectly developed member, whereas the etheric body is only in the third stage of its development, for it was prepared upon the ancient. Sun; the astral body in the second stage, for it was prepared upon the ancient Moon, and the Ego is the baby among the members of the human being, for its development only began with the present earth condition.

An indication for what has just been said may be found by considering the four members of man from the aspect of their development.

During the infancy of the Theosophical Society the expressions “higher” and “lower” members were much in use; the physical body was designated as the lowest member and this was frequently connected with ideas of value. All too frequently people were inclined to look upon the physical body as the least valuable of all and they even despised it. But this is, quite wrong.

If you look more closely upon the wonderful structure of the physical body, you will find without further ado that it stands upon a tremendously high stage of perfection, whereas this is, for instance, not the case at all with the etheric body. If you look upon the physical body through the eyes of wisdom, you will find a wonderful structure in every one of its organs—in the heart, in the bones, etc. Observe the wise structure of the heart and consider the work done daily and hourly by this comparatively small organ. Compare this with the present comparatively still deficient development of the astral body: the unpurified passions which live in it every day, man's longing for pleasures which literally ill-treat the structure of the heart—nevertheless the heart is able to paralyze these harmful astral influences without breaking; and frequently without undergoing any damage.

To-day the astral body is not so developed as the physical body; at present the physical body is the most perfect member. But in the future the astral body will reach a stage in which it will surpass the physical body. Also the etheric body is less developed than the physical body and the astral body stands in the third place. The Ego is the youngest of the members, constituting the human being, and it will consequently be the last to reach perfection.

Everything in the physical body constituting its essentially physical part is therefore oldest of all. Our physical body passed through a development before the etheric body was incorporated with it. And this development through which the physical body passed purely as physical body is the Saturn phase. There, the first foundation of the physical body was merely a physical apparatus.

The course of development proceeded and upon the Sun the etheric body was incorporated with the physical body, The etheric body filled, as it were, the physical body, in a certain way transforming it. During the Moon state of existence the astral body was added, and the Ego was only added during our present Earth condition. To-day man is a fourfold being. During the Moon epoch he consisted of physical, etheric and astral body; during the Sun epoch he consisted of physical and etheric body, and during the Saturn epoch only of the physical body, The physical body therefore has four,the etheric body three, the astral body two and the Ego one phase of development. The physical body is the most perfect member, because it has been elaborated more than the others.

Thus you see how the single members of the human being are connected with the development of the whole planetary system. In occult books you will therefore find the following designations:

Saturn body for the physical body,
Sun body for the etheric body,
Moon body for the astral body,
and Earth body for the Ego, which is the real earthly member of man

To-morrow we shall study the development and the whole life upon Saturn, and then we shall pass on to the Sun and to the Moon. This will show you how the human beings perfected themselves more and more until they reached the present state.

• 1. See Geisteswissenschaft über die soziale Frage; published by Phil. Anthrop. Verlag. Dornach, Switzerland
• 2. Compare the Akasha Chronicle. Also Microcosm and Macrocosm. The Great and the Small World, Soul Problems, Life Problems and Spiritual Problems.

In continuation of yesterday's sketch on the planetary evolution, let us now add some further explanations. We have already explained that our earth once passed through a Saturn, a Sun and a Moon condition. Let me now describe to you these successive states of existence, as they are usually described in occultism. When speaking of the soul's development along the path of knowledge, we shall be able to understand many things which can now only be advanced hypothetically.

If we consider the Saturn state of existence, that condition of our earth lying millions and millions of years before the present time, we find that it presented an aspect greatly differing from the one which is taken for granted through our present physical conditions. Above all, we should bear in mind that man, the most perfect being we know, has passed through the longest course of development. You will therefore hear the description of a course of development which greatly deviates from the Haeckel-Darwin theory of evolution, but the advantages of this purely materialistic theory may be gathered from my book, “Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy”.

The first thing to be grasped is that the most perfect beings are those who passed through the longest course of development, and the most perfect being of all is man, especially the physical body of man. All other beings in our environment have not attained to the perfection of man's physical body, which has taken longer than all others for its development. If we look back through spiritual vision, we therefore find that the first foundation of man's physical body was laid upon Saturn. The whole universe, with all the beings and objects which it contained, influenced the first state of the earth's existence. The present human beings on our planet still possess all the organs which were formed upon Saturn and they are the most perfect parts of man's physical body, namely, the sense-organs. These apparatuses can be grasped from a purely physical aspect and their first foundation was then laid. Of course, you must not think that the eye existed on Saturn in the same form in which it exists to-day. But the first foundation of the eye, the ear, of every sense-organ and of all the other purely physical apparatuses of the human being appeared upon Saturn. The only activities existing upon Saturn which may still be found to-day, are those which pertain to the mineral kingdom. (Crystallizations, etc.)

Upon Saturn, the human being existed in the form which was the first foundation of his physical body; everything, else, the blood, the tissues, etc. did not then exist. Physical apparatuses constituted the first basis of man's physical body. Even as the emerald, the mica, etc, arise through physical laws and develop in the form of cubes, hexahedrons, etc, so at that time forms developed which resembled apparatuses and which existed upon Saturn in the same way in which crystals now exist upon the earth. The activity of Saturn's surface essentially consisted in a kind of reflection which went out into the universal space. The Beings in Saturn's environment who were scattered in the universal spaces sent down their influences. Something which we may call the “cosmic aroma” was also then strongly developed. Only a few phenomena of the present day may give you a feeling for what took place upon Saturn: for example, when you hear an echo in Nature, the sound of this echo can convey to you something which went streaming out of Saturn as the result of the impressions which it received. These conglomerations of forces resembling apparatuses which threw back pictures in the universal space, formed the first foundation of that which developed later on as the eye. In a similar way we might follow the development of everything else. What you now have within your body, was once upon Saturn a physical kingdom, which sent out into the world's spaces the reflection of the whole cosmos in a manifold manner.

Myths and legends preserved this knowledge far more clearly than one generally supposes. The Greek myth of Chronos and Rhea, proceeding from the Eleusinian Mysteries preserved, for example such a truth; it contains however, a great displacement of facts due to the way in which the Greeks viewed the great cosmic connections. This myth tells us that Chronos sent down his rays and that these rays then returned to him in many forms: this explains the picture of Chronos devouring his children.

Now you must not think that the Saturn mass was as firm and solid as the physical bodies of to-day; even water and air do not give you an idea of Saturn's fundamental substance. When speaking of bodies in occultism, we speak of solid, liquid and gaseous bodies. And if we speak of the elements in the old manner, they correspond to that which modern chemistry designates as the “aggregate conditions” of matter, for you must not think that the men of olden times, when speaking of the “elements” meant the same thing as we do. Then there is a higher “aggregate state”, designated in ancient occultism as “fire”; a better meaning is however conveyed by calling it “heat”. Even physics will be obliged to recognise that what is designated as heat, may be compared with a kind of fourth aggregate state, with another kind of substance differing from air and water. The Saturn mass was not even condensed to the state of air it consisted of purified heat, and its activity resembled that of the heat your blood, for it was connected with inner life-processes. The physical processes upon Saturn were real life-processes. Saturn consisted of heat-substance, of an immensely fine volume which may be designated as neutral, if compared with our present substances.

If we wish to study the Beings who inhabited Saturn, we must realise that the Beings whom we now see moving about upon the earth, then possessed only the first beginning of a physical body; they were embodied in heat-substance, and their activity consisted in a current of heat which moved about. These currents constituted the deeds of the Beings who filled Saturn with life. Even as to-day you are able to make a table, so these Saturn-beings did their work by producing currents of heat. Nothing else could be observed of these Beings. A greeting exchanged upon Saturn was as if two currents of heat moved to and fro, exchanging their forces.

The Beings who passed through the human stage upon Saturn did not possess a physical body as their lowest member, for they did not descend into matter so deeply as to require a physical body. Their lowest member was the Ego, even as to-day our lowest member is the physical body; then came their Sprit-Self or Manas, their Life-Spirit or Buddhi, then Spirit-Man or Atma. In addition they developed an eighth, ninth and tenth members, which must be included.

Theosophical literature calls these members which the human being has not yet developed, the “Three Logoi”; in Christianity they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the Father. We may therefore say: Even as the human beings now consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, so these Beings living upon Saturn, who in regard to their connection with the earth may be compared with the present human beings, consisted of Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man; of the Holy Ghost, the Son or Word, and the Father. The theosophical terminology designates them as “asuras”. They are the Beings who from the very beginning implanted into the physical foundation of man's body the feeling of independence, of Ego-consciousness, and of Ego-feeling. You could not use your eye in the service of the Ego had your eye's foundation not been prepared at that time, so that now you are enabled to place your eye at the service of the Ego. These members were therefore prepared by the Spirits of the Ego, also
named the Spirits of Egoism. They gave us the wisest thing of all, when developed in the right way. But everything of the highest nature becomes perverted into its opposite if it is not developed in the right way, because then it exercises the most harmful and destructive influence. Man could never reach that high stage which we designate as human dignity, had not these Spirits of Egoism implanted in him the Ego-feeling. There have always been Beings who followed an evil Course, and consequently we must say: The Beings who implanted the Ego into man and who are now upon a stage of development greatly surpassing the human one, those Beings to whom we may look up as the highest of all, gave their Ego as an offering of self-renunciation and sacrifice; but the others followed the development of their Ego in a selfish manner.

In striving after freedom and human dignity we bear within us the influences of the Spirits of the Ego who followed the good path, and we bear within us the seed of evil, because the influence of the Beings who fell away continued to be active. This contrast has always been felt. Christianity itself makes a distinction between God the Father, whom it considers as the most highly developed Spirit of Saturn, and his opponent, the Spirit of all the evil Egos and of everything which is radically immoral, the Spirit who fell away upon the ancient Saturn. These are the two representatives of Saturn.

Even as after death we encounter other forms of existence, so a cosmic body, such as Saturn, passes through a kind of intermediate state, a kind of sleep-condition, before it enters into a new condition; it passes through a “pralaya” in contrast to a “manvantara”, so that we have a kind of resting, passive condition of the planet, between the Saturn and the Sun state of existence. The whole planet then emerges in a new form from its sleeping state, which is, however, a spiritual one.

Saturn thus emerged as the Sun, and a considerable transformation had taken place. Upon the Sun a great number of the germs which had already developed upon Saturn and which are still developing within us to-day, were permeated by an etheric body. During such a planetary transition something evolves which may be compared with the fruit of a plant which we lay in the earth; it decays, but it forms the foundation of a new plant Thus everything which developed upon Saturn arose again upon the Sun with a new foundation and it became permeated with an etheric body.

There were also other beings who had remained behind upon the mineral-physical stage, and they can be compared with the present mineral kingdom. The Sun absorbed them as a kind of subordinate kingdom of Nature, but at the same time another kingdom was raised to the stage of plant-man.

You obtain a right conception of the Sun-atmosphere if you imagine a thick, chemical gas, no longer representing a merely reflecting body, but one which absorbed everything which, came raying towards it, and after having transformed it, reverberated it in the same way in which plants now reverberate colours. The plant forms its green colour and other substances and returns them to the cosmic spaces. That which lived upon the ancient Sun cannot be compared with an echo, nor with a reflected image, as in the case of Saturn, in regard to the beings embodied upon the Sun, we come across a phenomena which can only be compared with a kind of Fata Morgana, with atmospheric phenomena resembling coloured pictures. Such phenomena which can only be perceived to-day in certain regions of our globe, can give you an idea of how these plant-bodies could be perceived. You must imagine that your bodies revealed certain Fata Morgana-like processes, through which your present bodies could pass as if through air. You were then as transparent as a Fata Morgana—but this phenomenon did not only consist of light, but also of tones and smells whirring through the gas- sphere of the Sun.

Whereas the beings living upon the Sun could shine like the fixed stars of to-day, the ancient Saturn kingdom of the beings who had remained behind, could be observed like a dark mass, like dark forms against the light, like obtuse. caverns in the body of the Sun, which disturbed its harmony. Particularly in regard to the “cosmic aroma” these retarded beings mixed into it sensations which provoked all kinds of evil smells. Myths have retained a recollection of this, for they relate that the Devil leaves behind an evil smell. As it progressed, the Sun really left behind a dark part, and the sun-spots which are visible now, are the remnants of the ancient Saturn kingdom which once existed upon the Sun. Hypothetically these spots should be explained exactly as we explain them now; for all these explanations are valid.

In a short sketch you thus have the earth's sun-existence painted, as it were, from its material aspect. Let us now see who were the Beings who attained the human stage upon the Sun. They would have to be described as follows: Their lowest body is the astral body, then comes the Ego, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man or Atma, then the Holy Ghost in the Christian meaning, and finally the Son or the Word. They did not have the Father, for this member was only developed during the Saturn era. These Saturn Spirits meanwhile rose to a still higher stage, and now they stand far above the human being.

The Leader of the Sun Spirits, in so far as He exercised the highest, influence upon the earth, the representative of the Spirits whose highest member was the Son or the Word, is the Christ, in the esoteric meaning of Christianity. He is the real regent of the earth, in so far as the earth is based upon the Sun state of existence. Upon the Sun, Christ would not yet have been called by that name. The old form of Christianity always taught this truth, and the difference between genuine Christianity and, the exoteric form of Christianity, which is in so many cases based upon misunderstandings, is that the older form of Christianity exerted all its thinking power and applied every conception in order to understand that high Being Who took on human shape in Jesus of Nazareth. The ancient form of Christianity wished to gain a conception of what lay at the foundation of this mystery, and no wisdom was too high for it, or too complicated: It explained the Being of Christ within Jesus of Nazareth in accordance with this truth. Many a passage in the Gospel of St. John can only be understood if you grasp it from this aspect. It suffices to draw attention to one point: If you take the words, “I am the Light of the World” literally, these imply that the Christ is the great Sun Hero, and that the Light which belongs to the Sun constitutes His being. We designate the whole hosts of Spirits whose Leader is the Christ as the “Fire Spirits” and we say: The Asuras or the Ego Spirits reached the human stage during the Saturn era. During the Sun existence the Fire Spirits or the Logoi, whose highest representative is named the Logos or the Word, reached this stage. For this very reason, Christ is named the “Word” that existed in “the beginning”, and the “beginning” designates in the Bible a definite point of departure in the cosmic evolution.

Again we have an intermediate condition, a kind of sleeping condition for the whole cosmic body, and then it begins to shine forth again as the ancient Moon.

You must imagine that in the beginning the present Earth and the present Moon formed one body with the Sun. Only when the Sun began to shine forth again, one part of the Beings separated from it with their own environment, so that two celestial bodies arose. One of these bodies, the Sun, begins to develop into a fixed star, and the body which separates from it begins to circle around it. The ancient Sun thus divided itself into two parts; the more highly developed substance remained behind upon the Sun, and the less perfect substance was eliminated. Consequently, that which once pursued the same course, because there was only one body, now followed two separate course: the Sun path and the Moon path. The Sun path was the one which developed upon the Sun-body, whereas the Moon developed its own world. You could reconstruct the ancient Moon by mixing together the present earth and the present Moon; this would enable you to form a conception of the way in which the ancient Moon was constituted. Both physically and spiritually the present Moon is far below the Earth in regard to its quality, and the Earth separated from the Moon just because it needed better conditions of life for Beings who lived upon it. The Earth developed beyond the stage it had reached during the Moon existence; but its best part remained behind upon the Sun.

What was the aspect of things upon the ancient Moon? The Beings who had passed through a preparatory stage upon Saturn by developing the physical foundation of the sense-organs, transformed these organs upon the Sun by permeating them with a etheric body; the sense organs thus became centralised, and the first basis of the organs of growth reaching as far as the glands could unfold upon the ancient Sun under the influence of the etheric body; this was a final product of the Sun existence.

Upon the Moon, the astral body was added in a similar manner. Everything astral first existed in the surroundings; the Fire Spirits had an astral body as their lowest member. The Beings upon the Sun resembled plants; for instance, they could not move from their fixed places. Although the whole body of the Sun was gaseous, you must imagine air-strata of greater density which were the bodies of these human plants. But now the astral body of man was added; this gave rise to the first foundation of a nervous system. The kingdom which had reached the plant stage of development upon the Sun, passed over to the animal stage, to a stage resembling that of animals. The physical ancestors of man upon the Moon thus possessed three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body, yet they greatly surpassed the most highly developed apes of our planet; they were human animals which no biology can describe, an intermediate kingdom between man and animal. Our present vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms only developed later, but even as there were human animals; so we must admit the existence of an intermediate kingdom between plant and animal; plants with a kind of sentient capacity, plants which literally squeaked if one touched them. These plant-animals could never have grown upon a mineral soil, such as the present soil of the Earth; in fact, this mineral soil did not exist upon the Moon. Its mass did not consist of the present rocky substances, not even of loose soil. Comparatively speaking, the Moon's foundation consisted of a mass resembling a mash of cooked spinach or salad, and in it a kind of mineral plant, The whole foundation of the Moon was therefore of vegetable nature. A peat bed of to-day would resemble the kingdom which existed at that time as an intermediate kingdom between our plants and minerals. There were no rocks, and anyone walking over the ground would have walked over such a peaty ground or vegetable foundation, and analogously you may think of rocks in the form of woodened portions within this mass.

The plant-animals grew out of this whole foundation, and above them, in the Moon's environment which may be designated as “fire-air”, moved those beings who were man-animals. Imagine the whole atmosphere filled with saltpeter, carbon and sulphur gases; the Moon-men lived in this fiery air which you would thus obtain. Occultists always knew of the existence of this fire-air, and under older conditions of the Earth it was even possible to produce this fire-air artificially. This is only possible to-day in a very restricted circle, but this knowledge has been preserved in genuine alchemy. Consequently, if you read in Goethe's “Faust”, “Let me produce a little fire-air”, this touches the depths of occultism. Fire-air enwrapped; the Moon; this was its atmosphere.

We can understand this Moon-existence even better if we add another fact. Upon the Moon there was a kingdom of plant-minerals, of animal-plants growing out of this vegetable-mineral soil, and then there were the animal-men moving about upon it. But upon each stage there are beings who remain behind—you may, if you like, say that they did not “pass”. This is the case not only at school, but also in the great course of development, where a pupil may have to repeat a class. These beings who did not “pass”, appear in future stages of development in very peculiar conditions. Such stragglers of the plant-minerals who did not “pass” still exist in parasites, for instance in the mistle-toe. It cannot grow upon mineral soil, because it was accustomed to grow upon a vegetable-mineral soil. It proves a fact resembling that of a pupil who did not move on to a higher form; except that the case of the beings who remain behind in the cosmic development is far worse. Particularly in the North we come across a myth which describes this; you are all acquainted with the northern myth of Baldur and his death through Loki.

The Gods were frolicking about in the Aesir's home and in there games they hurled about all kinds of objects. Baldur had just before had dreams foreboding his early death, and the Gods were therefore afraid to lose him. The Mother of the Gods had taken an oath from all the living and inanimate beings and they all had all promised that they would never hurt Baldur, and so the Gods enjoyed the game of throwing all manner of weapons against Baldur. Loki, the opponent of the Gods, had discovered that one being, who was considered to be harmless, had not made any promise, and this was the mistle-toe, which lay in hiding somewhere in the distance. Loki obtained the mistle-toe, gave it to the blind god Hodur, who threw it at Baldur: the mistle-toe wounded Baldur, for it had not sworn the oath, and Baldur died.

This myth indicates that that which is invulnerable upon the Earth can only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from another existence as something evil. In the mistle-toe people saw something which had entered the present state of existence from an earlier one. All the beings now living upon the earth can only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from an earlier one. All the beings now living upon the Earth are connected with Baldur. But it was otherwise upon the Moon; consequently that being which had remained behind from the Moon was able to kill Baldur. All the various customs connected with the mistle-toe arise out of this foundation.

We should also consider the Moon existence from another aspect, from the Spiritual one. The Moon Beings who had reached the human stage must be described as beings whose lowest member was the etheric body, their second one the astral body, then the Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man or Atma, and then they also had the Holy Ghost. They no longer had the ninth member pertaining to the Fire Spirits upon the Sun. The highest of the Moon Spirits who had reached the human stage is called the “Holy Ghost” in Christian esotericism. In the early original form of Christianity, the threefold Godhead was therefore intimately connected with the evolution of the earth. The Holy Ghost is a Spirit who is above man and Who is able to inspire him in a direct way.

Thus you may see that the Moon Spirits now stand above the human being. They are also called “Lunar Pitris”, “Moon Fathers” and “Spirits of Twilight”. The whole host belonging to the Holy Ghost is called in Christian esotericism the Host of Angels. The Angels are the Spirits immediately above man, who passed through their human stage upon the ancient Moon.

The life of the animal-men and of the plant-animals upon the Moon, differed from that of the beings who developed out of them upon the Earth. The movement of the Moon, which had already severed itself from the Sun, was quite different from the movement of the present earth around the sun. The ancient Moon circled around the Sun in such a way that it always turned the same face towards it, even as the Moon to-day always shows the same side to the earth. The Moon thus turned only once around its own axis, while circling around the Sun. The Moon Beings were therefore dependent upon the Sun in quite a different way than is the case with the present earthly inhabitants. During the Moon's whole epoch of revolution around the Sun, it was always daytime on one of its sides, and a kind of night upon the other. The Moon Beings, who were already able to move about, wandered in a kind of circle around the Moon, so that they passed through one epoch in which they stood under the influence of the Moon. The time in which they stood under the Sun's influence was their time of procreation. For there was already a kind of procreation. The Moon-men could not as yet express joy and pleasure through sounds; their expressions had a more cosmic significance. The sun-epoch was the time of ardour and passion, and it was connected with a great screaming on the part of the Moon Beings, This exists to-day in the animal kingdom.

Many other things have remained from that time. You know how one tries to investigate the true reason for the birds migration, why they circle around the globe in a certain manner. Many things which are mysteriously concealed to-day, can be understood if the whole course of earthly evolution is borne in mind. There was a time when the lunar beings could only procreate when they wandered towards the Sun; this may be called their epoch of sexual life. General processes of lunar life expressed themselves in sounds at certain seasons of the and at other times, the beings upon the Moon were dumb.

We have thus learned to know time earth' s passage through the three preceding conditions of its existence: that of Saturn, of the Moon and of the Sun.

Let us consider to-day the transformation of the ancient Moon into the present Earth. But first of all we must draw attention to an important phenomenon of the Moon development. When this development drew towards its close, when. everything, which I have already described to you had more or less taken, place, the ancient Moon and the Sun were reunited. The ancient Moon found its way back, as it were, to the Sun, and as a result a uniform body arose. These two celestial bodies which were reunited then passed over into a kind of latent planetary existence. Out of this came forth the fourth metamorphosis, which did not immediately resemble our present Earth, for the present condition of our Earth was prepared gradually and slowly. A study of the Earth in particular can give us a clear conception of the cosmic law that later conditions of development must in a certain way repeat conditions which have already existed. Before the Earth became our present planet—after awaking from its latent planetary condition—it had to repeat briefly the Saturn, Sun and Moon conditions. Of course, this development took a somewhat different course than in the case of the three planets themselves.

Upon Saturn we found the first foundation of the sensory apparatus which we now possess; During the first repetition of the Saturn Condition these sensory forms had progressed so far that a kind of human shape could develop; but during this metamorphosis the automatic sense-apparatus did not as yet possess an etheric body. The etheric body was embodied during the repetition of the Sun condition, and the astral body was added during the third transformation, the repetition of the moon condition. During the third phase we once more have Sun and Moon as separate bodies in the cosmic space. But the beings who lived upon them had in the meantime developed further; they had gradually prepared themselves for the experiences which awaited them upon the Earth. There, a fourth member was added to the three bodies which the animal-like human race possessed upon the ancient Moon, and this fourth member was the Ego.

But this course of development did not take place so quickly. While the earth was passing through its Saturn epoch, the automatic sense-apparatus of man had to mould a form enabling it to absorb the Ego. During the Sun repetition the etheric body also transformed itself, so as to be able to become the bearer of an Ego, and during the Moon repetition the astral body underwent a change enabling it to take in the Ego. These members waited, as it were, for the moment when they could take in the Ego.

What we were able to pursue thus far, was the separation of the Sun from the Moon. Then comes a stage which more closely approaches our present development, namely the separation of the Moon from the Earth. Two bodies emerge from the ancient Moon: one which consisted of the worst material in regard to its beings and substances, was thrown out into the cosmic space, and the other formed the present Earth. It was necessary to eliminate that which would have hindered the beings from their further development and this part which was cast out became the present Moon. After the elimination the Earth existed as an independent cosmic body. This entailed powerful cosmic events: first the separation of the Earth plus Moon from the Sun, and then the separation of the Earth from the Moon. These two events prepared our present development.

I have led you as far as the point where our Earth became an independent sphere. Let me now lead you to this point by following another direction, so that you may have a clear idea as to the exact position of this point in regard to our Earth. Let us go back from the immediate present into the past; let us go back from the present form of the Earth which you all know, to a past condition. Even natural science draws attention to the great differences between the present and the past aspect of our Earth. All this, to be sure, is based on hypotheses, but in this field natural science meets spiritual science to some extent. Natural science says: Huge virgin forests once existed in the regions which we now inhabit, their climate was one which we now encounter in Equatorial zones and gigantic animals lived in those forests.

According to the statements of modern natural science the face of our Earth once presented quite a different aspect from the present one. The ice-age followed the tropical climate and preceded the present temperate one. Every book on geology contains these facts. I am only telling you this in order to show you that the face of our Earth underwent great transformations in the course of certain epochs of time and that now it presents an entirely different aspect from that of the past.

As far as the external aspect of the Earth is concerned, natural science, which only disposes of the combining intellectual power, of apparatuses, etc., can only look back upon a few thousands of years. The descriptions of a clairvoyant looking back upon the past development of our Earth must, however, differ from those of natural science though a kind of harmony ,will one day be established between natural science and spiritual science. Natural science draws attention to a fact which a clairvoyant can ascertain without any doubt namely that the face of our Earth has not only changed in regard to plants, but that continents and oceans once existed in regions of our Earth where they no longer exist. Huxley, for instance, pointed out that a whole part of Great Britain has already been submerged by the ocean four times. Thus the face of our Earth constantly undergoes a transformation. In volume 12 of “Kosmos” you may, for instance, find an article on the so-called old continent of Atlantis, where a scientist who completely adopts the standpoint of natural science proves, through the configuration of the flora and fauna in Europe and in America, that the present Atlantic Ocean must once have been a continent, and that great parts of Africa must in those times have been covered by the ocean. On the other hand, the continent of Atlantis existed, in the West, stretching between the present Europe and America. This scientist only speaks of the fauna and of the flora of Atlantis, which is of course natural. But even if remnants of the ancient human beings, who were our ancestors could be found (they must exist at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean), it is not possible to-day to investigate to such an extent the bottom of the ocean. The clairvoyant, however, can look back as far as the time of Atlantis, and he knows that this ancient Atlantean continent, which Plato describes, really existed. Essentially speaking, the whole surface now covered by the Atlantic Ocean was once Atlantis, and this continent was inhabited by the physical predecessors of the present human race. Of course they had a rather different aspect from the one imagined by modern natural science.

We should not in any way compare them with the present apes; though psychically and physically the Atlanteans greatly differed from modern men, they were not apes. Apes did not exist at that time, for this animal species, only arose much later; simply through the fact that certain human shapes of that time remained behind at the stage of development which had then been reached, and afterwards degenerated, sinking down to a lower stage. Darwinism consequently makes a great mistake, which is, however, easy to detect. If we have before us two men, one upon an imperfect stage of development and the other a man who applied his faculties in order to perfect himself, and if we are told that these two men are relatives, we shall not say: They are relatives, and consequently the more perfect man descends from the less perfect one. Yet Darwinism comes to such a conclusion: The perfect and imperfect specimens stand side by side; one developed upwards by applying his faculties in the right way, while the other led them down and thus became decadent. That is how apes the descendants of human beings, confront man. An ape is a caricature of man, but he is not like a human being.

At the time of Atlantis there existed an entirely different human race, which gradually developed towards a higher stage. But certain men remained behind in there development, and because the Earth itself underwent changes, these beings also changed; they degenerated and became a caricature of man—they became apes. These lower beings, the apes, are consequently degenerated specimens of higher beings who had become decadent.

If we study the Atlantean man, an observation of his psychic qualities will give us the best idea of his way of living.

All that modern men are able to do—to think logically, to calculate, etc.—all this arose much later. Logic, power of judgment, etc. were unknown to the Atlanteans. But on the other hand, they had a soul-quality which has now become decadent; they had an almost inconceivable power of memory. They could not calculate twice two is four, nor make this calculation over and over again through intellectual power, but they could bear in mind the result obtained by multiplying two by two, and they were always able to remember this result. This is connected with an entirely different constitution which existed on that ancient continent. If you wish to have an idea of the physical aspect of that continent, imagine a mountain valley filled with thick fogs and mists: The Atlanteans never saw an atmosphere which was free from moisture. The air was always filled with water. When the ancient Atlanteans came over into Europe,they preserved the memory of this condition and they called the land of their ancestors.“Niflheim”, which mans the land of fogs.

When the last third of the Atlantean epoch drew towards its close, the Atlanteans began to notice that they were Egos. The Ego foundation had indeed existed for some time, and the Atlantean even had a certain feeling for the Ego, but only during the last third of the Atlantean epoch he learned to say clearly: “I am an Ego.” This is connected with the relationship of the etheric body with the physical body.

If you observe these two bodies, you will notice that they more or less coincide, but the etheric body slightly protrudes above the physical body. Between the eyebrows there is a point which constitutes a centre for certain forces and streams of the etheric body, and this corresponds to a definite point in the physical brain. These two points must coincide; on this depends the capacity of being able to experience oneself as an Ego, to calculate, combine, etc. In the case of idiots, f0r instance, these points in the head do not coincide, and when this is the case, man's power of judgment no longer functions properly. In the case of the Atlanteans these points did not coincide, and this is still the case to-day with animals. If you observe the head of a horse you will find that these two points are far apart. In the Atlantean, the etheric head protruded and his physical head had a retreating brow.

But the Atlantean had something which man lost when the etheric body and the physical body began to coincide. The Atlantean still possessed dull clairvoyance, but he was, for instance, unable to count up to five. All his judgments were based on his capacity of remembering incredibly distant times. And that old clairvoyance appeared as the enhancement of our present dream-life. Imagine the highest enhancement of this dream-life: this would lead you to the conceptual capacity, to the ancient, dull, dream-like clairvoyance of the Atlantean. When the Atlantean walked over the earth; he could indeed see the human beings in their physical involucres more or less as we see them to-day, but this perception had in a certain way a misty and foggy outline. The Atlantean could, however, perceive something which we cannot perceive. When we meet someone today, we do not see anything special of his inner being, we can only see what his features reveal to us; a gloomy expression will tell us that he is sad and will enable us to guess something of his state of mind. But when an Atlantean encountered someone who had evil intentions towards him, a brown-red vision rose up before him, and if that person loved him he saw a blue-red vision. A kind of colour vision harmonized with the psychological state of the other person; the Atlantean could still perceive something of what took place in the inner being of other men. An Atlantean walking along, who saw a terrible red-brown fog rising up before him, ran away, for he knew that a dangerous animal was approaching (perhaps it was still far away), one that would surely devour him.

The ancient Atlantean clairvoyance even had a physical foundation. For the Atlantean considered that only his close relatives belonged to him (to a far greater extent than was the case later on). Small communities existed which did not extend beyond the family circle. It was of greatest importance to marry only within this restricted family circle. These marriages between closely connected relatives produced a blood mixture which preserved the etheric body's capacity to receive spiritual influences. Had the Atlantean attempted to marry outside his family circle, he would have suppressed his clairvoyant faculty and, astrally speaking, would have become an idiot. It was a moral, ethical law to remain within the blood-ties of one s family. Before the Atlantean was able, to have a definite experience of his Ego,he said “that am I” to his whole blood-brotherhood. He considered himself as a part of the whole blood-brotherhood, even as the finger is a part of the hand.

But something else is based on this fact. The Atlantean could not only remember his own experiences, but also the experiences of his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., reaching far down the line of the generations, as far as the founder of his family. Everything which came from there, everything which streamed through the line of the generations was experienced as a unity. This can show you how greatly developed was the memory of the Atlanteans! Everything was based upon memory. Later on we shall see how man lost this powerful memory because he broke through the circle of close marriages.

An Atlantean soul necessarily required quite a different physical nature and environment than is the case to-day. He needed an environment described, for instance, in the legendary “Niflheim” of the ancient Germans. Legends and myths are not in any way based upon so-called popular fancy or poetic invention. The origin of such legends can be clearly traced. The Atlanteans still possessed an ancient, dull clairvoyance, and the events which were later on related and preserved (though frequently in a distorted form) in the legends and myths of various nations really occurred.

The transmigration of the Atlanteans to the East has been preserved wonderfully in a cycle of European legends. Man could not say “I” to his individual personality, when he still lived on the ancient Atlantean continent. Consequently egoism, which later on constituted the foundation of social life, did not exist among the Atlanteans. The inhabitant of Atlantis considered as his possession everything which belonged to all his blood-relatives and he felt that he was a member of this blood relationship. Then came the transmigration to the East. Man's Ego-consciousness emerged more and more, and with it, human egoism. Man once lived far more in the external world than within his own being; Nature still formed part of his being. He felt as if he were embedded in Nature, as if he were a part of Nature. With the acquisition of his Ego-consciousness, the world around him became narrower and narrower; he separated himself from his environment little by little and the Ego emerged more and more.

This was at the same time connected with a process of Nature. When the old Atlantean looked up to the sky, he could not see the sun as we see it to-day; thick masses of fog filled the air, and when he looked at the sun and at the moon he saw an immense circle of rainbow colours. Then came the time when the Atlantean could perceive the sun and the moon as such. But there was one phenomenon which was unknown to the Atlantean—the rainbow. When the waters of Atlantis began to leave the atmosphere, when rain alternated with sunshine as is the case to-day, then the Atlantean learned to know the rainbow, for there no rainbows in the moisture-filled atmosphere of ancient Atlantis. Now bear in mind that great stretches of land were laid bear by the great Atlantean flood, and this has been wonderfully preserved in many legends, particularly in the Bible. Consider the deep truth contained in the Bible words: “And when the waters had departed, Noah saw the rainbow”. Only when the atmosphere became freed from the fogs and mists of Atlantis, could the sun appear to man in its present form. This process accompanied the narrowing of man' s being, so that he became confined within his own self, within his Ego.

For reasons which have a profound meaning, spiritual wisdom defines the light flooding through space as the etheric gold, and gold is looked upon as the condensed light of the sun. The ancient Atlanteans were taught by their teachers that there is a connection between the light of the sun and gold, and they took in the following image: “The light of the Sun, the gold of the sun, shines forth! It envelops us with a ring which frees the Ego, bringing about the fact that we no longer experience ourselves selflessly as a part of Nature”. Among the Atlanteans the Ego was still dispersed within clouds of mist, but now it began to enfold him like a ring.

The mists of Atlantis left the atmosphere, they were pressed down and appeared in the West as rivers. For the descendants of the Atlanteans, the Rhine was nothing but mist which descended from the air and then flew along as a river. In the Rhine they perceived the masses of water still permeated by light; in the Rhine they felt the presence of the sun's gold, which exercised such a pure and selfless influence upon the inhabitants of ancient Atlantis. They saw this gold in the Nibelung treasure of the Rhine, and anyone who strove to gain possession of this treasure, was their enemy.

Richard Wagner, who describes this in music, was not clearly conscious of this truth, but nevertheless he was inspired by this powerful, encompassing fact. Remember the Prologue to “Rhine Gold”: Is the wonderful organ-theme in E sharp not the point where the Ego enters humanity? But even as the plant does not know the laws according to which it grows, so the poet does not require the full knowledge of what he writes. We must think of the creative artist as one who is inspired by forces which stand behind him. In this case, a conspicuous artist has felt something which must again enter mankind. We can therefore see that even in art the same spirit which lies at the foundation of spiritual science streams into human culture. We can see it flowing into it from two directions. This is how we should consider life as a whole.

We have traced human evolution as far back as Atlantis. Let us now consider a few more details. At that time men did not build houses such as they exist to-day, for they could utilize to a far greater extent the forces which existed in Nature. Masses of rock were moulded together with that which existed in the environment, and constituted dwelling places which resembled natural houses. The further back we go, the more we come across men endowed with clairvoyance and possessing an image-consciousness. In a visionary form, in pictures which rose up before their souls, they could see the feelings of those who lived round about them. In the early Atlantean epoch, even the human will presented quite a different aspect. To-day you can stretch out the finger of your hand through your will, and this action is connected with your thinking. But in the early Atlantean age the body was a far more supple mass. The Atlantean could not only stretch out his finger, but he could even make it longer or shorter; he could easily make his hand grow when he saw a small plant, he could make it grow through an effort of his will. He disposed of a kind of magic. He also had a strange connection with the animal world; he still perceived something which later on could no longer be perceived and he exercised a fascinating power over animals through his gaze.

If we go back still further, we reach an age in which even Atlantis did not exists; people then lived upon a continent designated as “Lemuria”. It stretched south of our present Asia, as far as Africa and Australia; this was the continent inhabited by our ancestors when they were Lemurians. Their body was far softer than that of the Atlanteans and their will, far more powerful. But the ground under their feet was most unsteady; fire eruptions, volcanic powers continually upheaved it; ancient Lemuria was a kind of fire-country.

If we go back still further, we reach a time in which the osseous system began to develop out of a boneless mass, and then comes a time in which the earth had not yet developed the present mineral kingdom; everything was in a constant state of flux and reflux.

The further back we go into the evolution of the earth, the greater is the degree of heat which we encounter. We reach an age in which the forms now constituting our solid earth were in a liquid state, like mercury or molten lead. The solid state only developed in Lemuria. Thicker and thicker grow the messes of mist. This was not a sea of fog, but a thick ocean of hot steam, containing, all kinds of molten substances whirling within it. Man's predecessor could already live in certain parts of this steam, but he of course possessed quite a different constitution from the present human being. We thus reach a time in which man lived in a kind of primordial ocean, in a warm, fiery-watery element. The earth's kernel was enveloped by a kind of primordial ocean, containing the germs of everything which developed later on.

This was the aspect of the Earth immediately after the Moon's exit from it as a separate body.

We have now gained insight into a course of development reaching to the time in which the Sun first severed itself from the Earth and from the Moon; and when the Moon severed itself from the Earth, leaving it in the condition described above.

To-morrow we shall once more consider this process which I have set forth just now from two aspects, and then we shall consider the further development of man and of the earth, reaching as far as the present time.

Yesterday, in the description of the development of the various cycles of earthly development, we reached a point which made us realise how the three celestial bodies, the Sun. the Moon and the Earth, gradually separated from one another. We began by considering this separation and stopped at the point where the Moon separated itself from the Earth, but we also tried to reach this same point by setting out from the present time and going back to the Atlantean epoch. Let us now consider the condition of the Earth at the time of Atlantis. Long, long epochs of time must be borne in mind, taking up millions of years, so that the great changes which took place, not only in the universe, but also upon the earth, need no longer surprise us.

Let:us consider once more the Earth, after its separation from the Moon. It was still enveloped by a volume of air, which presented, however, quite a different aspect from the present air. You must not think that this air inwardly resembled a glowing stove—although its temperature was far higher than is the case now. At that time many substances which are now solid existed within the Earth in a liquid state. An air thickly permeated with gases of the most varied substances, enveloped the Earth, an atmosphere which we might designate as fire-air, a repetition of the former Moon-condition,

When the Earth became independent after its separation from the present Moon, it was surrounded by a strange atmosphere which may be designated as fire-air, Through the fact that the Earth freed itself from the atmosphere which went away with the Moon, the beings who lived upon the Earth were able to attain certain higher stages of development. Within the atmosphere of the Earth the most advanced animal-men had reached a higher stage than the one which they had attained upon the Moon, and these were the beings who later developed into men. A great number of these animal-men remained behind upon the Moon-stage. As a result, they not only remained behind, but owing to the entirely new conditions which now arose, they sank half a degree below the level which they had previously attained, (animal-men could, only live upon the Moon) and thus they became animals. Animals did not as yet exist upon the Moon. We therefore have two kingdoms: Human beings—and the kingdom of animal-men, beings who had remained behind and had gradually sunk to the level of animals.

The same applies to the plant-animals. A certain number of these had developed to a higher stage, to that of animals; others had remained behind and changed into plants. A The kingdom of plant-minerals also followed this line of development: some became heavy minerals, while others ascended in their development to the level of plants.

Not everything arose in accordance with one standard of measure, for the animals which we know to-day arose, for instance, partly through the descending development of men-animals and partly through the ascending development of plant-animals. In the vegetable kingdom also we have side by side the plant-minerals in an ascending course of development and the plant-animals in a descending course. The plants now chiefly constituting the pleasant plant-carpet of our earth, arose through the ascending development of the Moon's plant-minerals; this is, for instance, the case with the violet. On the other hand, everything that gives us a decaying impression is in a descending development, whereas our green, leafy, plants will in future attain to higher stages.

Our minerals developed entirely upon the Earth; there were no minerals upon the Moon, such as exist to-day. The mineral kingdom is the former plant-mineral kingdom which sank down to a lower stage and which was embedded into the earth as a firm crust. When the Earth cast off the Moon, the substances which remained behind and which later on became
minerals, solid metals,. etc., were still an altogether liquid mass. The substances which at that time had already reached a solid state, were hurled out into the cosmic spaces, because, had it kept these substances, the Earth could not have developed, further. Then the first metals which reached a solid state were added. Sometimes they had most peculiar forms! What you now encounter in the mountains as granite or gneiss, at that time revealed quite clearly that it had arisen through the descending development of vegetable beings, of plants which had become stones.

You may gather from this that upon the Sun and upon the Moon the mineral kingdom was a vegetable kingdom. The vegetable kingdom has not developed out of the mineral kingdom, but minerals have developed out of the vegetable kingdom! The coal which is now dug out of the earth is nothing but a complex of petrified plant—plants which decayed and became stones, so that now they can be dug out of the earth as petrified plants. If you were to go back still further, you would see that once even the hardest stones were plants; and that they have arisen out of plants through the descending development of plants to the mineral kingdom.

A clairvoyant sees this in the following way: If you investigate gneiss, the mineralogist will tell you that it consists of feldspath, hornblende and mica—but he cannot go further. The clairvoyant says: Feldspath in gneiss appears to spiritual vision quite clearly as the petrified stalk and the green leaves of plants, the petrification of those parts which built them up; whereas the mica foundation is related to that part of the plants which still develops to-day as the plants sepals and corollae. When a modern occultist observes a piece of gneiss he will say: This is a petrified plant, and even as plants now possess leaves and flowers, etc., so the mica foundation of gneiss has developed out of the sepals and petals of ancient epochs.

Thus it can be explained how every mineral developed out of former plants. For the substances which came over from the ancient Moon were plants, which then became densified in the liquid mass of the Earth. Even as one can see the water in a receptacle freezing into solid ice, so it is possible to observe in the early stages of the Earth's development the gradual forming of solid masses. Thus the solid crust of the Earth slowly developed out of the liquid Earth. The further we proceed, the higher and purer become the beings who live upon the Earth, and those that were unable to ascend became petrified. It was the same both with animals and men. Man reached the stage of being able to transform his body in a still higher measure.

The Moon-men floated and swam about in a primordial ocean; they were predisposed to this swimming movement. This may sound strange to modern men, nevertheless it is true; and let it be said without reserve, that I do not wish to mitigate some of these apparently grotesque descriptions;, for generally people laugh at truths when they are revealed for the first time.

The human. being who swam about in this primordial ocean had as yet no eyes and endowed with sight such as we have to-day: man, indeed, received the foundation of sight upon Saturn, but in this primordial ocean he did not need to see; he had to orientate himself in other ways. The ocean contained all the food which he required for his life and also animals, some benevolently disposed towards him; and some not. At that time man still possessed an organ which now exists in the head, it is the size of a cherry and is called the pineal gland (in reality it is not a gland). Once upon a time, this organ was of immense size; it enabled man to orientate himself in the ocean and it protruded from his head like a lantern. Man moved about, by using this lantern-like organ in front; it was a sensitive organ, not an organ of sight. He used it when swimming about. Later on, he no longer needed it and so it shriveled.

At that time it was not possible to speak of an Ego foundation. In regard to everything which man did, he was still under the guidance of higher spiritual powers: We may compare him with the animals of to-day. From a spiritual-scientific aspect, we now look upon animals by saying that man differs from the animal through the fact that he has an individual soul; every man has his own soul, his individual Ego.

This is not the case with animals; for whole groups of animals have one soul in common. For instance, all the animals pertaining to the lion species have one soul, which lives in the astral world. Similarly all the animals of tiger-nature have a soul in common. In the case of animals we therefore speak of group souls. All the horses together have one group soul; these horses belong together. Even as the single fingers belong to the hand, so the animals belong to their group soul. Consequently we cannot speak of individual responsibility in the case of animals. Only of an individual soul can we say that it is either good or evil.

At that time, the human beings possessed a kind of group-soul embedded in the bosom of the Godhead. We must however realise that that which now lives in us as our Ego already existed in those early epochs, but it did not live within the human body.

Man's origin must be sought in two currents: that which came over from the Moon and continued to develop, constituted the animal-man who lived upon the Moon; but that which now lives in us as our individual soul, existed in those times in the higher realm, in the care of the Godhead,—only man's body lived below in the primordial ocean. Later on body and soul united; the soul descended and spititualised the body, so that man became an individual soul.

Imagine a receptacle containing water; in it are many many drops of water, but it is impossible to distinguish them. If you were to take many hundreds of small sponges dipping them into the water, the drops first contained in the volume of water would be individualised. Similarly imagine your spirituality soaring above the primordial ocean and compare your soul reposing in the bosom of the Godhead with the drops of water; the bodies absorb the souls, even as the small sponges absorb the drops of water; the souls thus became independent, in the same way in which the water becomes individualised into drops through the sponges. Below we have the primordial ocean with the floating-swimming bodies, and above there are the souls. We cannot describe this better than by saying: “And the Spirit of God moved (literally: brooded) over the face of the waters,” which means that he elaborated that which was below until it was able to take in the soul-drops.

The bodies themselves had to soar and float, and for this purpose the beings within them needed a special organ. At that time man had no lungs, but a kind of air-bladder; this kept him afloat in the ocean.

The fish which have remained behind upon that stage, have even to-day an air-bladder and no lungs. The lungs developed little by little, as the air freed itself from the moisture and man could raise himself above the water, so that he began to breathe in air. A long process, lasting millions of years, finally enabled man to breathe in the air through his lungs. This gave rise to the physical form capable of absorbing the soul. The more man became a being who breathed through lungs, the more he became capable of taking in the soul. You cannot express this better than with the words: “And God breathed His own breath into man's nostrils and he became an individual soul.”

At the same time this enabled man to develop something which he did not possess before; he became capable of forming red blood. Before that time all human beings had a constitution which gave them the same temperature as their environment; if they were surrounded by a higher temperature, they were adapted to it. Red blood did not exist at that time and the animals above the stage of amphibians are human bodies which have remained behind at a much later stage of development. After the epoch in which man began to develop red blood, the animals also began to develop into warm-blooded beings.

Even as a plant cannot develop out of a stone, but stones developed out of plants, so the animal developed out of man. Every being upon a lower stage developed out of beings who once stood upon higher stages, this is the theory of evolution. Man first had to transform himself into a being with red blood, and then he could leave behind the animals. You may literally see in animals the stages left behind in man's development. In every animal man perceives more or less a piece of himself which he has left behind. Paracelsus expressed this so wonderfully in the words: When we look about in the world, we see, as it were, the letters of an alphabet; in the human being alone these letters unite and form a word. Consequently the meaning of that which lies spread out in man's environment is to be seen in man himself.

You must then bear in mind the following: An apparently insignificant process (but in the light of spiritual science it is an extraordinarily important process) took place at that time: it already began in the early stages of the Earth's separation from the Moon, when the Earth was still connected with the Moon, and it consisted in a certain cooperation between Mars and the Earth. During the whole first half of the Earth's development, the forces of Mars streamed into the Earth, so that this first half is actually designated as the Mars condition of the Earth. Iron is connected with this passage through Mars and iron then began to play an entirely new role in the earthly process of evolution.

Iron plays a far more superficial part in plants, but you can see how things are connected: cosmically, the Earth passed through Mars and Mars gave it iron; iron was then stimulated to exercise the functions which it now possesses and iron appeared in the blood. The aggressive side of human nature, that which turns man into a warrior here on earth, is connected with the iron in the blood. The Greek myth knew this, for it designated Mars as the God of War.

The human body thus became capable of taking in the Ego; for without red, warm blood a body cannot be the bearer of an Ego. This is very important. Pulmonary breathing is the first condition for the formation of warm, red blood. The required processes then arose upon the earth and became embodied with the blood. Little by little, man developed so as to become a red-blooded being breathing through lungs, and then he left behind the other creatures, the lower warm-blooded animals.

In occultism, animals are not only differentiated in the ordinary way, but another differentiation is pointed out. We distinguish the “inwardly sounding animals”, those which can express their own pain and pleasure in sounds from the “non-sounding animals”. If you descend to the lower animals, you may still hear sounds, but these are purely external, produced by rubbing together certain parts of the body,or by climatic influences; these are sounds produced by external causes. Only the animals which branched off when man had developed into a warm-blooded being were able to express pain or pleasure through sounds coming from within.

This was the time when man's larynx was transformed into an organ of sound. The fact that outside the liquid earth substance became crust, produced an inner process in the human being; parallel with the external process of hardening, an osseous and cartilaginous skeleton developed within the human being out of the soft parts of his body. Beings with a skeleton did not exist before that time.

The minerals outside are the counterpart of the bones. The Earth perpetuated this epoch in the masses of rock and man in his skeleton. Man then gradually became an upright walking being, thus changing over from his former horizontal position into a vertical one. He turned round, so that his front extremities became organs of work, and his other extremities were used for walking. There is a connection in all this, for no being without a sound-producing larynx and an upright walk can be an Ego-being.

Animals were predisposed for this, but they degenerated. Consequently they could not transform themselves into beings endowed with speech, for speech is connected with a larynx located in a in a body having an upright position. We may gather this through a primitive fact. Many dogs are undoubtedly cleverer than parrots, yet a parrot learns more, because its larynx is in a more vertical position. Parrots and starlings learn to speak a little, because their larynx is located vertically.

This shows you that the Earth and man advance to ever new stages of development. The atmosphere also changed: a condition developed in which the Earth was surrounded by a misty, foggy air. This took place at the time, when the Lemurians saw their continent crumbling away, so that they wandered out to Atlantis and became Atlanteans.

During this, phase of evolution; in which man acquired the first elements of speech, which were, to be sure, sounds expressing mere feelings, the soul emerged more and more. Essentially speaking, the Atlantean had a dull kind of clairvoyance. As he came out of the sub-earthly ocean, his eyes developed to the extent of enabling him to participate in the light raying out from the sun through the masses of mist. Physically, his power of sight and perception developed more and more, but he gradually lost his old clairvoyance. The most advanced race of the Atlanteans developed in a certain region of the Earth's surface during the last third of the Atlantean era, which was a significant close of phase of evolution.

In view of the existing conditions, the Atlantean who traveled more to the West, became inwardly neutral natures, cold and indifferent, and developed later on into the copper coloured population of America. The others who traveled further South, became the black Negro population, and those who turned to the East became later on the yellow Malayan population. These populations concentrated themselves in the most unfavourable places which prohibited a further development. But the peoples who lived in a region now occupied by Ireland, and further West, in a country now covered by the ocean, reached the highest stage of development. The mixtures of not and cold streams which existed there, permitted the human body to develop in the best and speediest manner. A pronounced Ego-feeling, a first foundation of such a feeling, developed from the still magical will power of those epochs. It was then that man first learned to say “I”. The human beings then also learned the first foundations of counting and of arithmetic, and they developed the first capacity of forming judgments and of combining thoughts.

There were always Beings among them who had progressed further, who were the leaders of humanity and their relationship to man was that of Beings who belonged to a higher realm. These Beings became the teachers and guides of men and it was they who induced them to migrate towards the East. From the site which lay in the neighbourhood of present-day Ireland certain peoples had already migrated to the East, settling as far as Asia. Now the most highly developed masses of peoples began to migrate to the East, and everywhere along their journey they formed colonies, the most powerful of these colonies, with the most highly developed culture, existed in the neighbourhood of the present Gobi desert. Later on, a certain number of peoples travelled from there to many parts of the world: one group went to the present India; where they encountered an indigenous yellow-brown race, with whom they became partly united.

It was after the Atlantean flood, that this colony travelled South and founded the first culture of the post-Atlantean epoch, the first culture of our own age. The most advanced teachers who went with this colony, the first great teachers of ancient India, are called the ancient Indian Rishis. The Hindoos of to-day are the descendants of that ancient population, but if we wish to discover traces of this culture we must go far back into times which are not known to history; the Vedas, for example, already belong to a later epoch, for nothing was recorded in those early days.

The ancient Hindoo nation represents the first cultural group after the Atlantean age and consequently they resembled the Atlanteans most of all. The Atlantean was a kind of dreamer; his consciousness was dull, he did not have any power of judgment and self-consciousness and like a dreamer he wandered about half consciously. The ancient Hindoos were the first to overcome this condition, but they were still partly rooted in it. The ancient Hindoo longed to experience the spirit realm of past times and yearned for the clairvoyance which the Atlanteans still possessed. In ancient India the early Yoga training still consisted of a kind of dulling of human consciousness, which transferred the human being back to the times when he could still perceive in his environment spiritual beings. The Hindoo longed for this clairvoyance of ancient Atlantis and in the Yoga training the Rishis taught him the methods of producing clairvoyance, though these methods followed another line of development.

The Atlantean did not possess any power of judgment, whereas in India the power of judgment had already awakened; but men loved, so to speak, that which they had already overcome and they knew how to conjure it up again, by dulling their consciousness and by recalling that which they had seen in earlier epochs. The culture of ancient India preserved this through its highest representatives. The Hindoo did not seek to enhance his consciousness, but he dimmed it down to a dreamy state, and this explains the passivity of the Hindoo character. It would be a great disadvantage, indeed harmful, if modern culture were to take hold in a greater measure of life in India.

During the first epochs, the human beings did not perceive minerals; and what the Atlantean saw least clearly of all ,was the mineral kingdom. Through his visions, the spirit-world was the one which existed for him, and this world lived in everything. He perceived the human being surrounded by colours—by sympathetic colours if he liked him. This was the world which the Hindoo tried to conjure up again. But human progress requires that man shall enter more and more into a relationship with that which exists upon the earth in the world of matter, The Atlanteans did not need any instruments; they orientated themselves through their clairvoyance and they attributed no importance whatever to physical instruments. The Hindoo followed the Atlantean in this, and consequently he looked upon the physical world as Maya, as a kind of illusion and lie. He had no interest in the world which is accessible to the ordinary senses. He asked the dream-like world of the Spirit to rise up before him.

The progress from this Indian culture to the next cultural epoch, i.e. the Persian one preceding the time of Zarathustra, consisted in the fact of humanity learning to appreciate external reality. A second colony went out from the Gobi desert and founded a kingdom in Asia minor which existed in remote times and which gave birth to the kingdom of Zarathustra. The Persian began to perceive the existence of a world in which he had to be active. The Divine essence appeared to him as something which he had to overcome, against which he had to measure his strength. From the spiritual world he drew the forces which he needed in order to work in this world. The world appeared to him as something dark, which had to be transformed with the aid of the good forces. The Hindoo established a science pertaining exclusively to the spiritual world, which told him nothing about the external reality. But to the Persian this external reality presented another aspect, it was something which had to be constantly transformed through his own work.

The third colony which went out from the Gobi desert went further West into Asia Minor and founded the Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian cycle of culture. In addition to the earlier science of the Spirit, these nations also possessed a science of the physical world. An astrology and geometry arose in Egypt which taught the Egyptians how to treat and cultivate the earth. Science extended to spheres which the Hindoo still looked upon as a world of illusion. Now this world of illusion had become a world calling for the keenest thought, for a manner of thinking connected with physical things. When the Hindoo immersed himself in the starry world, this world was to him only the expression of the Godhead. But the Chaldean loved the physical World; to him it was a part of the Godhead into which he penetrated and immersed himself. This activity leading him from the divine into the physical world appears to us in the Babylonian-Assyrian culture.

We have now reached a point leading us to the fourth cultural cycle, which we designate as the Graeco-Latin culture. The human being is now included in the external perception, The Egyptian knew that the world was not a chaos, but that it was fraught with meaning and that it had been constructed throughout immeasurable aeons of time. The sphinx and the pyramid expressed great cosmic thoughts. The ancient Egyptian concealed his knowledge of these truths in images: he created the sphinx, which faces us like a riddle of evolution itself: the development of man's higher essence from earlier animal-like conditions. This was the wisdom which the Egyptian spoke out into the world in his own way. In ancient Egypt you may find calculations and measurements,which were drawn directly from heaven. The cities were built in such a way that the Egyptian expressed in these constructions a sacred order of laws and they sought to express in images the cosmic laws which governed the universe. This did not as yet include the individual human essence, which only begins to unfold in Greek art, and which shows us that man now takes hold of his own being as an immediate reality and seeks to create it as an image in space.

Man became more and more familiar with the world which the Hindoo designated as Maya. He began to face his own self. Within the world which in ancient India was considered as an illusion, the Greek created a world of realities and realised that he had to create it without the help of the Gods; more and more he united himself with the external reality and out of his own strength he permeated the external reality with a divine essence. If you study the Greek “polis” you do not find in it any trace of jurisprudence. Man had to establish this during the Roman epoch as “Roman right” which governed the private social intercourse of men, as Roman citizens.

The human being thus acquired an ever greater knowledge of that which takes place in the world of external reality.

The fifth cycle of culture is the one in which we now live, with our materialistic civilisation. It is the time in which man has descended most profoundly into the external world. Compare, our age with preceding ones: We know, to be sure, how to apply the forces of the spiritual world to our physical environment—we carry the spiritual world into it. But in the light of spiritual science this presents strange aspects. Think of the time when the human being still produced his flour by grinding corn between two stones—he did not apply much spiritual power to do this. In ancient Egypt and Chaldea he still immersed himself in the wisdom of the heaven; he still learned a great deal concerning the spiritual significance of the earth itself and of the starry sky. The Greek still placed into the world of physical reality the idealised human form. What is the aspect of our own time? A great amount of spiritual power is used to produce modern natural science with its technical appliances. How great is the difference between obtaining food by primitive means, and obtaining it from America with the aid of telephone, engines, etc.! Yet these complicated technical means are after all used to satisfy the same needs also felt by animals and which animals are able to satisfy by primitive means! Try to investigate how many of the modern inventions really serve spiritual life, and how much spiritual power is used for the sake of furthering material life! What an enormous amount of spiritual power must human beings develop at the present time for the satisfaction of material requirements! There is no great difference whether an animal satisfies its hunger by grazing, or whether man obtains his food from America or Australia through all kinds of means.

This is hot an adverse criticism, for this had to come. Man had to submerge himself in the physical world. The Hindoo still looked, upon it as an illusion, but modern man considers the physical world as the only reality. We have reached the deepest point in our descent and this rendered possible the greatest progress upon the physical plane: This descent, however, must not be in vain, even from a spiritual aspect!

A new element has now arisen, an element that was implanted into the world during the first third of the post-Atlantean epoch: it is the rise of Christianity, the most significant influence in the whole development of the earth. In the light of occultism, everything which proceeded is only the preparation for Christianity. Buddha, Hermes, and so forth, prophetically pointed towards Christianity, for Christianity must lift man out of his deepest entanglement with matter. And it will raise man out of this entanglement. Man's ascent from matter begins again. The task of spiritual science is to help in this ascent into the spiritual world.

The next epoch of our Post-Atlantean culture will bring still more inventions and discoveries; but man will more and more perceive mere letters in the physical world. A genuine Christianity will speak of the external world as condensed Spirit, and the Spirit will once more arise out of matter. We shall then no longer say that the external world is an illusion, for we shall recognise it fully and lose nothing, and yet rise up to a higher spiritual world.

Christianity will contribute most of all towards this course of development. During the sixth epoch, great masses of men will be deeply moved and seized by truths which are now revealed to few, and this will give mankind an insight into the spiritual world. What now exists as thought will in future be a real force. Many people will have this power of thought during the sixth epoch of culture. The theosophical Christianity of to-day will spread among great masses of men. These thoughts will grow stronger and stronger and they will have a creative influence upon the human form.

Once upon a time the human body had quite a different aspect from that which it has to-day; indeed, if I were to describe to you this human body of ancient times, you would be greatly surprised. Because it was still soft, the Ego could exercise a far greater influence upon it. Modern man has only retained an insignificant rest of the psychic influence of will upon his body, for instance, when you are seized by sudden fright you grow pale, because the inner soul-condition penetrates as far as the blood and your complexion changes. But other bodily conditions can show you how little we are now able to control our body. With the gradual ascent into the spiritual world this will change; man's body will become softer and softer and he will once more be able to influence the thoughts which now still exist so sparsely, will gradually grow stronger; these thoughts will then be able to transform even the body. Man will be able to mould his own body—but this will only be the case in a very distant future.

Sex arose in the human being only during the Lemurian age; before that time he was bi-sexual, both male-and female. With the incorporation of the Ego, the human being was split into two sexes. We shall learn to know this better, when we shall consider more closely the development of the human blood. This will lead us to the problem of the division into sexes and also to the fact that the now existing division of the sexes will again disappear.

Thus we look into a future in which the human being will exercise quite a different influence upon his body.

What is, for example, that which sends the blush of shame into our face? What is it? A last remnant of the influence which man once exercised over his body. Man will more and more be able to work consciously into his body, and then will come the time when he will be able to transform the muscle of his heart into one which obeys' him.

Science describes the heart as a mere physical apparatus: as a pump. But the blood does not only stream through the body because the heart pumps the blood through it; everything which constitutes the blood depends upon the soul; the blood pulses more or less quickly according to our feelings, and it is the blood which produces the movement of the heart. But in future the human being will have a conscious influence upon the heart; therefore the heart is an organ which is now at the beginning of its development. The heart is a muscle with a spiritual development, an organ through which the human being will be able to express himself as he develops towards a higher stage, thus exercising a creative influence upon his whole body.

The heart is only at the beginning of its development, and for this reason it is a cross to materialistic science. Materialistic science tells you: all the muscles through which you move, are formed of transversal strips, but all those muscles which move automatically consist of longitudinal strips. The heart however is a peculiar organ upsetting every calculation! It is an automatic muscle, nevertheless it has, even to-day, transversal fibres.

To-morrow I will show you how certain things can be explained in the light of spiritual science.

Spiritual science thus throws light upon that which surrounds us. We shall redeem everything which has become matter from its present rigid condition. This is how the thought of redemption, may be grasped in its deepest essence! Man has developed to an ever higher stage, leaving behind him certain kingdoms in the course of this development. He will become powerful and redeem that which he has left behind; he will help to redeem the earth! But if he is to redeem the earth he must not despise it, but unite himself with it.

Yesterday we tried to follow the evolution of humanity in the universe and also upon the earth. Today I shall only add a few explanations to this, in order to pass over to that which spiritual science is able to say concerning the significance of Christianity and also concerning the Christian initiation. But to begin with please turn your gaze once more to the point of issue of human development.

We have said that when the earth separated from the present Moon, it was enclosed by a kind of primordial ocean, and we explained how the human being then united himself with his soul-spiritual part. We then pursued this course of development as far as the present time, which we characterised as the time of man's deepest descent into matter through the spirit. We recognised that an ascent must once more come, a spiritualisation, and we also spoke of the mission of Theosophy,or Spiritual Science in regard to this course of development.

We already pointed out that the division into two sexes took place in ancient Lemuria. The lower beings upon the Moon were already divided into two sexes, but the human being who lives in each one of you was only at that time divided into two sexes upon entering his bodily form. We must think of these antediluvian times of human evolution; before the separation of mankind into two sexes, male and female, in such a way that what we designate as sex did not exist as yet, or at least, it existed in quite a different form. Now a great deal depends upon our grasping the great significance of the fact explained just now for the whole course of human evolution.

If this division into two sexes had not occurred, if humanity were not to complete its course of development through this cooperation of the male and female principle, the human being would have an entirely different form. The individual element in man comes from the influence of the male principle. Yesterday I explained to you the difference between a group soul and an individual soul. This is quite different among animals. The animal has two sexes even on the astral plane. But the human beings did not have these two sexes on the astral plane before descending like drops into the individualised human bodies, or they had not yet passed, as one might. say, through “the fall into sex”. Had the sexlessness of man continued in the physical world, replacing the two sexes, man could not have become an individual being. The true meaning of human development is that man should become more and more individualised.

If we once more survey the epochs which I described to you yesterday you would see how greatly the human beings resembled one another in regard to their external form. The cooperation of the two sexes gave rise to individual differentiations; these became more and more pronounced the further man advanced into the future. Without the division into sexes the generations would always look alike. We must really say that the fact that man becomes an independent being depends upon the division into two sexes.

In that remote time, and far back in the Atlantean epoch, but even in the post-Atlantean epoch, you find that the law of “marriage among close relatives” prevails, and: that this is only gradually replaced by the law of “marriage among non-relatives” In remote epochs people married within closely related groups, within small tribes. In every nation you will find that it was once considered unusual and wrong to marry someone who belonged to another tribe one's own, and this was everywhere considered an exceptional event.

The further back we go, the more we find that it was looked upon as an ethical law for people to marry within their own tribe; so that blood only mixed with the blood of relatives. We can explain this process best of all by setting out from a comparison which hits the nail on the head, whereas all other comparisons are weak. Let me tell you a little story in this connection.

You know Anzengruber and Rosegger. Rosegger is a writer who described his village characters with great devotion. Also Anzengruber has a good knowledge of his subject. In his drama “Der Meineidbauer,” (The Perjured Farmer) the farmer and peasants whom he portrays really live. We know how plastic these characters are in the “Meineidbauer” and in his, “Parson Of Kirchfeld” and in other plays. Rosegger and Anzengruber one day went for a walk together and Rosegger said: “I know you really never look at farmers; perhaps you could describe them better if you went to see them in the village.” Anzengruber replied: “If I did this, I would probably be quite at a loss. I never learned to know peasants more closely, but I can describe them because my father, my grandfather and all my ancestors were farmers, and I still have this farmer's blood in my veins. I form my characters through the farmer's blood in me, and I do not bother about the rest!”

This is an interesting fact and it indicates what we should bear in mind. Where blood does not mix, as in the case of old tribal communities, or in the case of the Anzengruber family, we find such a marked character as the writer Anzengruber, in his last incarnation. He had inherited the plastic force and he knew how to appreciate it; this plastic force ran through the blood of the generations. This really occurs where the blood only mixes with the blood of relatives. If the blood mixed with alien blood it quenched the soul's plastic forces. Had Anzengruber married, had he married a someone belonging to a different social class his children would no longer have had this plastic force.

In the case of almost every nation still existing to-day we can observe this phenomenon at the beginning; marriages within small circles of blood-relatives were always connected with an extraordinary power of memory. They were connected with a dull, vague clairvoyance people could remember what they had experienced since their birth and they looked upon these experiences as something connected with their personality. Before these marriages between close relatives were replaced by marriages with non-relatives, people could literally remember the experiences of their grandfather and even of distant ancestors; they said “I”, and passed through the experiences of their grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and forefathers. The further back we go the more we find a power of memory reaching far back into the line of the generations.

it is interesting to see that these people: did not feel that they were individual egos when they said “I”, their grandfather was included in in this, and they bore his name, a name which encompassed all. Even as you now adopt a name connecting it with an individual person; so these nations adopted a name reaching far back into the centuries, because birth did not break off the thread of memory. The individual human being had no name, for birth was no special event. All men had one name, as long as the thread of memory remained unbroken.

In the Bible you have a document relating this giving of names: all the discussions about the names of the patriarchs are merely theological discussions! Adam was Adam and became so old because the power of memory was preserved for centuries, and the individual who descended from Adam felt that his Ego was one with that of his ancestor. The blood which thus flowed through the centuries producing such a memory was named “Adam”. So long as memory lasted in the line of the generations and the experiences of the forefathers could be remembered as if they were one's own, one said: “Adam still lives. People did no at all experience themselves as individual physical personalities, but they identified themselves with that which existed spiritually and which united them.

Then the marriages between non-relatives became more and more frequent. The mixing of the blood gradually killed the power of memory which once reached beyond the individual human being. The limitation of memory is a result of these marriages between non-relatives. In the course of human evolution the individual human being gradually grew out of his tribe.The blood in common which flowed through the tribes also contained the common expression for this blood: love. Those who were blood-relatives loved each other. But this love, which we may designate as a primordial love connected with the blood and leading to the development of families gradually died out in the course of time. The love of the past greatly differed from the love which shines towards us as the love of future times. During the Atlantean epoch, this love ruling through the blood prevailed; people who had the same blood in their veins loved one another. But this gradually disappeared; individually, the human beings gradually emancipated themselves from the closer family ties.

This primordial love, which arose when the souls began to descend into physical bodies, thus faces us in a descending,course of development; this love streamed into the human beings at the moment which the Bible describes in the words: “And God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul.”

But something else arose at that time. Man became a living soul, and consequently a being who breathed through his lungs. The air which he thus breathed in, produced his red blood. The Ego-nature expressed itself in the red blood. As long as the blood was a common element shared by many, the Ego too was a common Ego. We see this in the Jews, where a whole nation was ruled by a group-soul. But the human beings gradually developed and emancipated themselves from the blood of their relatives. When the first breath of air entered the human being it formed the first foundation of his blood. But long epochs of time passed by before mankind reached the degree of maturity enabling it to influence the blood so that the primordial love could be replaced by a love for mankind as a whole.

Imagine the course of human development as described just now: The primordial love would gradually die out; love among relatives, the love of a mother for her child, and so forth, would have to decrease; the blood has not the power of encompassing the whole of humanity with a tie of love, so that the power of the Ego, the power of selfishness would grow ever more ... An event had therefore to occur which replaced the primordial love with another kind of love, calling into life a spiritual love, and this event is Christianity.

The appearance of Christianity prevented that which would otherwise have taken place: the disintegration of the whole of humanity into single human atoms. The human beings must indeed become more and more independent, for this lies in the development of their blood, but that which was driven apart naturally, must once more be led together spiritually, through a new power which is able to exercise its influence without the love connected with the blood: This new power is Christianity.

The Mystery of Golgotha thus acquires a fundamental significance for the whole evolution of humanity. If we understand this, we also understand the meaning of the words: the Blood of Christ. This is not something which can be experienced or investigated externally, but something which must be considered as a mystical fact. I have therefore entitled my book purposely, “Christianity as Mystical Fact” and not “The Mysticism of Christianity”!

In order to understand the nature of Christ Jesus upon the earth, in order to understand this fundamental significance of Christianity, we must study the preparatory stages which led to Christianity. For they already existed in ancient times. You may really see how an early Christian regarded this by taking a passage of St. Augustine's writings: “What we now call religion has always been the true religion, except, that that which once constituted the true religion is now called the Christian religion.” St. Augustine still knew that Christianity has a foundation: that which once lived in the ancient Mysteries. These very Mysteries are now to be revealed through the theosophical movement. Let me characterize it in a few words.

There were schools which were at the same time churches and centres of art; at the head of these schools stood the leaders of humanity, those who had advanced most in human development. Into these schools were admitted people who were considered to be adapted for a training enabling them to gain an independent conception of the spiritual world which surrounded them. They were carefully prepared; first of all they had to learn the facts of the spiritual world theoretically, more or less in the same way in which we now learn these facts through spiritual science. Then they reached ever higher stages. Theory changed into practice, exoteric into esoteric truths. They received a living instruction in every subject. Strict rules governed the pupil's life, so that he might gradually ascend to the contemplation of the spiritual world. The pupil first learned to know the facts and laws of the spiritual world, and then he had to develop through exercises the organs which enabled him to look into the spiritual world.

Let me now describe to you the final act. You must bear in mind that man's sleep consists in the fact that his astral body goes out of his etheric and physical bodies, whereas death consists in the fact that the physical body remains alone, because the etheric and astral body have left it. Now the leader of the Mysteries, the hierophant, through methods which he applied, prepared the human being in such a way that his physical body lay for three and a half days as if dead, while the etheric body and the other members were outside. This was not sleep, nor death, but a third condition. Everything was prepared in such a way that during these three and a half days the human being could journey into the higher worlds, through the guidance of the hierophant who initiated him, he now learned to know the things which have been described in my preceding lectures. He learned to know this in a direct way, through his own vision; after these three and a half days he was newly born. When he returned, he could remember everything which he had experienced in the spiritual worlds; now he was a living witness to the existence of these worlds. His words acquired a different sound from that which they had before, he had become “Blessed”, and the words could be applied to him: “Blessed are those who see”.

When he returned, he was given new name; he laid aside his old name and as an initiate he continued to use his new name. A strange phenomenon arose when he descended from the spiritual worlds and again took possession of his physical body, when he again began to live in the physical worlds. In the case of every initiate—this was a law—words rose to his lips which can be translated with: “My God, my God, how Thou hast glorified me!”

This could be felt by a human being who had reached this stage. He could say of himself: “Everything which still existed in the form of primordial love, everything which is to be implanted in man through the blood, must be replaced within me by a love which knows no difference between mother, brother, sister and other human beings”. Spiritually, he had abandoned his parents, wife, children, brother and sister, and had become a follower of the Spirit. And people said of him that Christ had come to life within him.

All this had taken place in the concealment of the Mysteries. These men were the witnesses of the spiritual world, and they were also prophets, for they pointed towards a coming event. This event is none other than the Mystery Of Golgotha. What took place with the individual human beings in the Mystery schools, occurred upon the physical plane in Palestine once only, for the whole world.

If you were now able to study the instructions which were given, to the old initiates, you would find that they closed with this experience lasting three and a half days; but never before had this experience been enacted upon the physical plane! A new epoch began with the Mystery of Golgotha. You may therefore say: All initiations were prophetic announcements of that which took place in the Mystery of Golgotha; this event could only take place because an individuality as encompassing as the Ruler of the Sun Spirits was incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What took place upon Mount Golgotha, could not have been fulfilled by any human Ego; such as we have it. Such a deed called for an Ego which had already advanced t0 a high stage of development upon the Sun.

In this way we are able to grasp the Divine humanity of Christ Jesus, which modern men so easily reject, because they cannot penetrate into the depths of the spiritual world. If we consider things in the true light, we may therefore perceive that upon Golgotha an event took place which has a significance greatly surpassing that of any other event.

Among modern men, Richard Wagner alone had an inkling of the significance of the blood, I have already explained to you that man's glandular processes are an expression of the etheric body; his nervous processes an expression of the astral body, and the blood an expression of the Ego. I have shown you that if Christ had not appeared, the development of the blood would have led to a greater form of egoism; the Ego would more and more have increased man's selfishness and egoism. The unnecessary blood, man's excess of blood, had to flow out, had to be sacrificed, so that humanity might not completely lose itself in selfishness. The true mystic sees in the blood which flowed out of the Savior's wounds the surplus blood which had to flow out in order that a soul-spiritual brother love might take hold of the whole of mankind.

This is how the spiritual scientist looks upon the blood which streamed down from the Cross; the blood which had to be taken away from humanity in, order that man might rise above material things. The love which was linked by blood ties was therefore replaced by a love which will fully develop in the future; by a love going from one human being to the other. Only in this light is it possible to understand the words of Christ Jesus:—“He that forsaketh not father, mother, brother, sister, wife and child, cannot become my disciple.” These words can only be grasped if we bear in mind that the event upon Golgotha has overcome everything which had once to be strengthened through the kindred blood, through the love of relatives. He who replaced this love by the new, soul-spiritual love, could say that the old form of love had to be relinquished. This is how things are connected.

The appearance of Christ Jesus Himself is a deep mystical fact; and can only be understood if we do not apply to it the standard of natural science. Those who apply natural-scientific standards to the appearance of Christ Jesus, resemble people who see a tear and judge it according to the law of gravity, refusing to see in it an expression of the soul.

Such things can only be understood with the aid of spiritual science. The appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth differs from that of all other founders of religions. What the others gave was a teaching. In the case of Christ Jesus we can really say: Almost every word which He uttered, has already, been said in the past in one or the other connection. The essential thing in the case of Hermes or of Buddha is the words which they spoke: in Christ Jesus the essential thing is the fact that He existed, that He lived upon the earth, and that the Mystery of Golgotha was enacted.

Those who wish to be Christians in a truly spiritual-scientific meaning, become so through the fact that they believe in the Divinity of Christ-Jesus. The first disciples did not only proclaim: “we are sent out into the world in order to announce His words”, but they were to bear witness to His existence: “We have heard the words themselves and, have placed our hands into His wounds!”

The essential thing is the fact that Christ-Jesus existed. In other religions you may eliminate the founders of these religions and you would not lose much. But if you were to eliminate Christ-Jesus, then Christianity would not be there! This is the difference. People like Darwin, Strauss, Drews, etc. may proclaim as much as they like that all other religions can be rediscovered in Christianity—this is not essential, for the essential point to be borne in mind is the fact that He existed and that He set forth as a fact what the Prophets had foretold. Christianity is therefore no theory, but a working power.

If you were to rise from the earth to another planet, you would not only see the earth, but also the earth's etheric and astral body; you would see the spiritual earth besides the physical one; and if you could dwell on that planet for thousands of years, if you could have dwelt on it even before the appearance of Christ-Jesus, you would have seen how in the spiritual part of the earth the colour of the astral body underwent a change through the fact that Christ-Jesus was there. The earth really underwent a change, and the men who lived after Christ-Jesus, lived upon a transformed earth. For this reason they can overcome the deepest descent of the spirit. Before that time, it was necessary to be raised to the spiritual worlds if one wished to know something about it; but in Christianity the Mystery Itself has descended to the earth. It was there, as a historical event, visible to physical eyes. The Godhead had to descend in order to lead humanity up once more, from the physical world into the spiritual.

This is the description of Christianity which you will find in the purest of Gospels, in the Gospel of St. John. It is not only a poetical work, but a book of life. Only one who has experienced it, knows what the Gospel of St. John really is: and if its reality has been experienced, then everything which I have explained to you to-day can be proclaimed as a self--discovered truth.

Let me now show you briefly how we may attain knowledge of the truths of Christianity.

Among many books, the Gospel of St. John is the one which indicates the methods by which it is possible to fathom the depths of Christianity. Even when Christianity did not as yet exist in its present form, it was already taught in the Mystery-schools; for instance, in the school of Dionysius the Areopagite, a disciple of the Apostle Paul. In ancient times it was usual to designate throughout centuries the nearer of the Mysteries with the same name, so that this person who took over the Mysteries and wrote them down, was given the same name as his predecessor.

Those who immerse themselves into the first words of the Gospel of St. John from the standpoint of esotericism, experience that they become within them a quickening force. But the Gospel of St. John must be applied as it was originally intended to be applied; and we must have the patience to take the first sentences of the Gospel of St. John again and again as a subject of meditation, and to let them pass every morning before our soul. They. will in that case have the power to draw out of our soul deeply hidden forces. But we must of course have a correct translation of these words expressed in German word-characters, they must more or less express what the original text contained. In a translation which is as faithful as possible, let me now show you that the real life of the spirit is indicated in the words of the Gospel of St. John.

“Im Urbeginne war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, and ein Gott war das Wort. Dieses war im Urbeginne bei Gott.

Alles ist durch dasselbe geworden, and ausser durch dieses ist nichts von dem Entstandenen geworden. In diesem war das Leben, and das Leben war das Licht der Menschen. Und das Licht schien in die Finsternis, aber die Finsternis hat es nicht begriffen.

Es ward ein Mensch gesandt von Gott, mit seinem Namen Johannes. Dieser kam zum Zeugnis, auf dass er Zeugnis ablege von dem Licht, auf dass durch ihn alle glauben sollten. Er war nicht das Licht, sondern ein Zeuge des Lichtes; denn das wahre Licht, das alle Menschen erleuchtet, sollte in die Welt kommen.

Es war in der Welt, und die Welt ist durch es geworden, aber die Welt hat es nicht erkannt.

Zu den einzelnen Menschan kam es, bis zu den Ich-Menschen kam es, aber die einzelnen Menschen—die Ich-Menschen—nahmen es nicht auf.

Die es aber aufnahmen, die konnten sich durch es als Gotteskinder offenbaren.—Die seinem Namen vertrauten, sind nicht aus Blut, nicht aus dem Willen des Fleisches and nicht aus menschlichen Willen,—sondern aus Gott geworden. Und das Wort is Fleisch geworden und hat unter uns gewohnen, and wir haben seine Lehre gehöret,—die Lehre von dem einigen Sohne des Vaters, erfüllt von Hingabe und Wahrheit!”

(Translation into English)

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a God. This was from the very beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and except through Him, was not anything made that was made.

In Him was the life, and the life became the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not the Light, but a witness for the Light; for the true Light which lighteth every man had to come into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, but the world did not comprehend Him.
To each man He came, even to the Ego-men, but these individual men, these Ego-men, received Him not.

As many as received Him could manifest themselves through Him as children of God. Those who confided in His name are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only Son of the Father, filled with devotion and truth.”

I could now tell you many things of how you would have to immerse yourselves in each chapter of St. John's Gospel. Let me only give you one example—how you would have to use the chapters from the thirteenth chapter onward, if you were a true disciple of Christian Initiation. What I am telling you in words, has occurred in fact to render it more comprehensible, I will clothe it in the form of a dialogue, giving you an idea of what took place between teacher and pupil.

The teacher said to his pupil:—You must develop within you a feeling, you must think the following: Transfer yourself into the plant. If it had consciousness such as you have, and if this consciousness enabled it to look down to the stones, it would say: Thou lifeless stone; thou art a lower being than I in rank among the beings of this world; I am higher than thou. But could I exist as a plant, if thou were not there as stone? I draw my nourishment from thee. I could not exist without that which is lower than me.

And if the plant were endowed with feeling it would say: I am indeed higher than the stone, but I bow down humbly towards it, for the stone made it possible for me to live.

Similarly the animal would have to bow down to the plant and say: If thou; O plant, were not there, I could not exist, although I am higher than thee. To thee, a lower being, I owe my existence. Humbly I bow before thee.

Now rise up to the kingdom of man, survey the different human beings, the lowest and the highest,—what would each one have to say, who stands upon a higher rank of development than the others? Even as the plant bends down to the mineral and the animal to the plant; so each human being who stands upon a higher stage must bend down to those upon a lower stage and say; Thou standest upon a lower rank, yet to thee I owe the fact that I can be there!

Now imagine this carried out to the highest stages, reaching as far as Christ-Jesus, and you will have Christ's attitude towards the Apostles with whom He lived. He bent down towards them, even as the plant bends down to the mineral and washed their feet “I owe my life to you, and I bend down to you!”

For a long time the pupil had to pass through a scale of all these feelings. This feeling had to become more and more alive and then he awoke to the first stage of Christian Initiation. This can be felt through an outer and inner symptom: The outer symptom consists therein that the pupil really feels for a time as if the watery element were washing around his feet, and the inner symptom consists in the fact that he himself experiences the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John as an inner vision upon the astral plane.

The teacher then proceeded by telling the pupil: You must experience something else: you must now imagine that bodily and psychical pair and suffering rush towards you from every side; but you must arm yourself against everything so that you can say: However great the pain and suffering which come towards me, I remain upright, I do not allow myself to overthrown! This is called the Scourging. Its outer symptom is that one experiences on the skin's surface pains which are an indication that the soul has reached this stage. And the inner symptom is that one sees oneself upon the astral plane undergoing scourging. But the essential thing is that the soul gains in the form of inner experience.

The third thing which the pupil heard from his teacher was the following: Now you must develop a feeling that you do not only withstand every form of pain coming towards you, but that you remain upright and steady, even when the holiest
within you is cast down into the dust. You must remain so strong, that everyone can tell you, This is worth nothing. But even though people trample on you, you must know its worth, and you must be able to withstand a whole world.—If the pupil reached this stage, he was said to have reached the “Crowning with Thorns”. The outer symptom is to feel a certain pain in the head and the inner one, to see oneself in the situation of the Redeemer with the crown of thorns.

The fourth thing was the following: The teacher told his pupil: You must gain a new connection with your body. You dwell in your body, but you must look upon it as something quite strange, even as the table outside is a strange object for you. You must even learn to say: I am carrying my body through the world. The body must become for you, as alien as other external objects.—This was said to be the experience of the Crucifixion. Even as the Redeemer carried the Cross, so one carried one's body about, as if it were a piece of wood. The outer symptom for the Crucifixion consists in the stigmata. During the meditation the pupil could produce on his hands, feet and on the right side of his breast the signs of Christ's bleeding wounds; red spots on these places reminded him of the Crucifixion wounds. This “blood trial” is an outer symptom showing that one has learned t0 know the inner essence of Christianity. And the inner experience is to see oneself on astral vision hanging upon the Cross.

The fifth stage is what one calls the “Mystical Death”. This can only be described approximately, The Mystical death consists for the pupil in the fact that the whole world appears to him as if it were enveloped in black darkness, as if a black wall stood before him. The whole physical world appears to him as if it were blotted out, as if it had disappeared. This can be experienced. It is a moment revealing everything bad and evil which can exist in the world (in reality, it can only be known through this experience). In order to know life one must also pass through this experience. It is called the “Descent into Hell”, and it is followed by a strange event appearing before one's eyes; that black wall is rent asunder. This is the “Rending Of the Veil of the Temple”. After this one cam look into the spiritual world. This is designated as the “Mystical Death and the Rending of the Veil of the Temple”.

The sixth stage is the “Burial and the Resurrection”, where the pupil learns to experience that in addition to the other feelings, all external objects appear as if they belonged to his body, that the whole world belongs to him. Even as the finger might say: I an only a finger through the fact that I belong to the organism of the hand, so the human being only lives upon the earth through the fact that he belongs to the earth. People can walk about upon the earth, and consequently they think that they are independent. But if we permeate ourselves with the feeling that everything belongs to us, we have the experience designated as the “Burial”. Soul-spiritually we rest in the earth and only after this experience we rise again, spiritually. Only then can we have an understanding of the deed of Christ-Jesus who united death with his own soul; and even as He has once been the Ruler of the Sun, He has now become the Spirit of the Earth. We should take the words of St. John's Gospel literally: “Whoso eateth my bread, treadeth me underfoot.” If you look upon Christ-Jesus as the highest planetary Spirit of the Earth, and the earth as His body, you will understand that you literally tread the body of Christ-Jesus with your feet. And you become united with Him when you experience this sixth stage, of the Burial.

Then comes the seventh stage, the “Ascension”, which cannot be described, for it can only be understood by those who can think without using their brain.

Now I have described to you the process of the Christian Initiation. The pupil acquired thereby what was called the “Eye of Christ”. Everything, around you would be dark if you had no eyes; even as you cannot see the sun without eyes, so you cannot perceive Christ without the Christ-organ. The eye is born through the light for the light. Light is the source of vision. The sun must exist outside as real sun, and you experience this real sun within your eye. It is the same with the spiritual eye. We use empty words when speaking only of the “Christ within”; it is the same thing as speaking of the eye without taking into account the existence of the sun! The capacity to look upon the Christ may be acquired through the exercises indicated above; but the power enabling him to do this, again conies from the historical Christ. Even as the sun is related to the eye, so the Christ is related to the Christ-organ which develops in the human being.

This is not meant as, a. guidance, but as an explanation of facts. We must learn to know what exists in the world. These, lectures aim at showing the deep sources of the truly Christian spirit, and how the Gospel of St. John itself contains the methods of a Christian Initiation, giving in man the eye which enables him to see Christ Himself. But those who wish to announce Him, must in a certain way have lived with Him, not only through faith, but in reality.

My task of to-day and of tomorrow will be to show you the path into the spiritual worlds which has been followed ever since the 14th and 15th century, particularly in the so-called Occult Training, and which is the most suitable path for modern people. But it will be easier for us to understand the essential points if we first cast a glance over the future development of humanity.

We have already spoken of the course of human development through the Stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Those who are only accustomed to think in accordance with present-day conceptions will find it difficult to understand that it is possible to know something about the future course of evolution: But you must bear in mind that certain great laws which are now active, will also exercise their activity in the future, and those who know these laws can therefore cast a glance into the future.

In the sphere of physical reality no one doubts that things can be foretold,—for example, lunar and solar eclipses and other astronomical phenomena can be calculated in advance, far into the future. In the sphere of physical reality there is no doubt as to this. And everybody knows that when certain substances are mixed in a retort, scientists can foretell the result. This is a prophecy relating to external sensory facts, and these things can be foretold because the laws which influence the substances are known.

Similarly we learn to know through spiritual science the laws which govern the course of human life, so that it is possible to foretell what will take place in the future.

An objection might now be raised which has been advanced by the thinkers of every epoch: “It is impossible to speak of human freedom if future events can be foreseen!” But here people confuse the capacity of looking into the future with predestination. In every philosophy you will therefore come across the strangest observations, for all philosophers were unable to make this distinction. Jacob Böhme was the only exception!

Let me now give you an example to make things clearer to you. Let me compare time with space. Imagine yourself standing here, and two people in the street, outside. You can see what these two people are doing, for you are watching them from a distance. But are you able to influence their actions, in view of this fact? No, you are simply looking at them, and these two people act in perfect freedom. You can determine nothing in their actions through the fact that you are looking at them. Now imagine a clairvoyant who observes what will take place in the future. He merely sees this, and he does not in any way influence the events. If these events could be influenced, if they were, so to speak, predestined in the present, there would be no pre-vision. But we can only grasp the difference between predestination and prevision if we ponder over this problem for a long tune.

I do not intend to describe to you what the Earth will be like when it shall have reached the Venus and the Jupiter stages; instead, I wish to tell you something which will give you an idea of man's future development; I wish to explain to you something which comes from the oldest Christian Mysteries, which originates from the Christian School of the true Dionysius; it was a teaching which was always taught in the Christian esoteric schools.

The following comparison was taken as a starting point:—I am now speaking to you. Yell can hear my words; you hear the thoughts which were, to begin with, in the depths of my soul; you hear thoughts which would remain concealed to you were I not to express them in sounds. But you could not hear my words, if the air did not exist between us. Whenever I utter a word, the air in the space around us is set into motion; whenever I speak, I cause the whole volume of air around me to vibrate, it vibrates in accordance with the words which I pronounce. Let us now proceed further: Imagine that you were able liquefy the air, and then to render it solid. Air can be liquefied; you know that water can exist in the form of steam and that this air becomes liquid when it cools; and then the liquid can become a solid block of ice. Imagine now that I pronounce the word.“God” into the air; a form would fall down, for instance, the form of a shell; if the sound-vibrations could render the air solid. And another wave of sound would fall down as a solid form if I pronounce the word “World”. A crystallized form of air would correspond to every word I utter, and you would be able to perceive these crystallized forms.

This example was in fact advanced in the Christian schools. First of all we have the spoken word, and then this word becomes a solid form, but before it became solid, it existed as an inner thought. Now the early Christian imagined the following: The creative process in the universe resembles the creative process which takes place in space, when we speak. The creative proceeded from the idea of things and then the Godhead expressed these ideas in the form of words uttered out into space. Everything which appears to us outside in the form of plants, minerals, etc. is the crystallization of God's utterances. It is possible to imagine everything dissolved into tone-vibrations of the Divine Cosmic Word. “Whatever I see before me, is the crystallization Word of God!” said the Christian. And on a certain wy he made a distinction between the “Father in Concealment”, Who had not yet expressed Himself, the “Word” or the Son, Who resounds through space, and the crystallized Word, the “Revelation”.

This enables us to understand in a deeper sense the beginning of the Gospel of St. John:—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the very beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, and except through Him was nothing made that was made.” Everything that was made, was made by the Word! We should take things as literally a possible, then we can easily recognise the creative element of the Word, or the Logos. In the Christian meaning, the Word or the Logos stands in the second place. “Logos” should only be translated with “Word”, for this means that at the foundation of everything which exists in the created world lies the unuttered creative Word; it then resounded as spoken Word, and this is the origin of every existing thing. If we go far back into times we could hear animals, plants, minerals, and men, resound through the cosmic spaces as “Word”—even as you now hear my own words—for in those remote, times, the air had not yet cooled down to such extent as to enable words to take on solid form.

Let us bear this in mind, for then we can say to ourselves: Once upon a time, the Word was ,creative. Men are now beginners in an activity which was once carried out by their ancestors, the Gods, who stood above them. Once upon a time, the Gods created the world by uttering their words into the cosmic spaces, and this creative activity gave rise to the created world round about us. The forces of procreation in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms are but, a metamorphosis of the former creative Word of God. We still bear within us a higher and a lower nature. The greatest perfection has been reached by that part within us which is endowed with sex, whereas our larynx contains the first stage of a new procreative power. Whenever we pronounce words, we are at the beginning of an activity which will one day become procreative. At present we are only beginners in an activity which was once carried out by the Gods. A new form of procreation will replace the old one. The larynx is now able to form words but in the future it will become an organ of procreation, a generative organ, which will produce more and more condensed and higher forms. The larynx can now mould forms of air, but in future it will give rise to real beings. When the earth shall have reached the Jupiter stager the Word will have creative power in the mineral kingdom, and during the Venus stage it will be able to produce plants. Thus the course of development will proceed, until man will be able to procreate himself through the Word.

The present form arose, when man first sent the air streaming through his lungs through sounds. But in future stages of the earth's development, the words, the mere words which we now tell each other, will have a lasting form. And finally, the larynx will become man's generative organ, through which he will procreate himself in purity without the intromission of sex.

This shows us the future aspects of human development, and the predisposition of the human larynx. Indeed, an enigmatic phenomenon can show you how intimately the larynx is connected with certain stages of development: When a boy reaches puberty, his voi0e breaks, it undergoes mutation. The human larynx is at the beginning of its development, whereas sexual life is at the end of its development. This shows us the intimate connection of certain things in Nature. In sexual life we are confronted by something which is dying off; the larynx, the word, on the other hand, will in the future become man's generative organ.

We might indicate many other examples showing how the human being will gradually develop organs which now exist in a rudimentary form—for instance, the organs which now constitute his breathing system, but which really form part of the heart system.

The training which was introduced into Europe since the 14th century in fact anticipates future conditions of human evolution and it enables us to follow a speedier course of inner development than the ordinary one. The training which is called the Rosicrucian training is the one most suited to modern men. In a certain sense, Rosicrucianism has not a good reputation among men who have only heard of it now and then. If we could rely on the statements made in books, and on what scientists know about Rosicrucianism, then it would indeed be the swindle which it is reputed to be! But those who judge Rosicrucianism by these sources do not know real Rosicrucianism, but a mere swindle!

But let us now consider Rosicrucianism in it s true form; it arose through an individuality concealed under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz, who gave rise to the Rosicrucian Movement in the year 1459.¹

I expressly remark that what I an telling you now is only to be taken as an example, in the same way in which I spoke to you yesterday of the Christian. training. Let me therefore indicate right away the seven chief points of Rosicrucian training. The sequence of these stages is not the same for all, but let me point them out to you, for they come into consideration for everyone who passes through the Rosicrucian training.

The first thing is what we call Study; the second is what we call the Appropriation of Imaginative Knowledge; the third, the Appropriation of the Occult Writing; the fourth, the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise; the fifth stage is called Conformity of the Small World, the Microcosm, with the Large World, the Macrocosm. ² The sixth stage is the Penetration into the Life of the Macrocosm and the seventh is what we the Divine Blissfulness.

The Rosicrucian path leads in the surest and profoundest way to a knowledge of Christianity. The Christian path of training is more suited for those who can abide in faith and who can awaken their feeling life within them, in the manner described to you yesterday. But the Rosicrucian path is for these people who can connect the truths of Christianity with the truths relating to the external world This above all, will enable them to protect Christianity against every attack from outside. Christianity is a world-conception of such profundity that our wisdom will never suffice to grasp it fully. The path of Rosicrucian training is the most suitable one for modern men.³

If we follow a train of thought which has nothing in common with the sensory world, we pursue study in the Rosicrucian meaning. What is designated as “thinking in free thoughts” is only known to the civilisation of the west, through geometry, the Christian-Gnostic schools therefore used the name “mathesis” for the designation of things connected with the higher truths, with God and the higher world, for such truths had to be grasped independently of everything pertaining to the sensory world, even as mathematics must be grasped independently of all sensory impressions. A circle drawn with chalk is most imperfect, a real circle can only be conceived in thoughts; thought alone is able to grasp everything that can be learned in connection with the circle. Through mathematics we learn to think of the circle independently of the senses; we construct it in thought, with the aid of the triangle built up spiritually, whose angles equal to 180 degrees.

It is somewhat uncomfortable to have to think without the support of external sensory objects, and for the majority of men there is no other field of study in this direction than spiritual science. In my first lecture I told you that the knowledge contained in spiritual science can absolutely be grasped through logic. But clairvoyance is needed if anyone wishes to investigate these truths. Logic suffices, however, for the understanding of the truths contained in spiritual science.

Our materialistic age could only invent the calculating machine, which teaches us to form thoughts which are not independent of the senses: A child, above all, should learn to grasp things independently of sensory impressions. Thee influence of spiritual science will therefore be of greatest value in education: Spiritual science is an excellent training for the development of a thought activity independent of the senses. Everything which I have told you in connection with Saturn, the Sun, and the various members of the human beings relates to things which cannot be, seen; they must be grasped through thought, independently of the senses. No one should, however, believe that he can train himself unless he first grasps these truths theoretically. The advantage of such truths is that they do not exist for the senses, so that they can transmit us a way of thinking which goes beyond sensory life. For many people it is sufficient at first, to penetrate into the truths which theosophy describes in connection with facts which cannot be grasped through the senses. These truths constitute, the kind of thoughts which were always explained to the pupils of the Rosicrucian Schools, and the truths were well impressed upon them.

If we now wish to proceed, we can find a good means of a Training in Thought in my books “Truth and Science” and “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. These books are merely a gymnastic in a form of thinking which is independent of the senses. Generally speaking, you will find that in other books it does not make much difference if the thought- contained in one sentence is transferred to another one. But in the above-mentioned books no thought can be transferred to another place. These books have arisen in such a way that my own person merely, gave this thought-structure the opportunity to take on a sensory form. It was necessary to yield to these thoughts, so that they could arise of their own accord, continue of their own accord. Those who are willing to penetrate more deeply into these thoughts, devoting themselves to this study for, say, half a year (this is not easy, but the effort entailed is the very best way of tackling ) those who can read these books to the very end, have drawn out of their inner being a dormant force.

The second stage is Imagination, or the Imaginative Knowledge, which is entirely under the influence of Goethe's beautiful words: “All transient things are but a symbol”. Only those who have acquired a firm, sure thinking, should enter this second stage. For they might easily fall into delusive fancies without a firm foundation of thought. Consequently, the first condition is to have a clear head; nothing can protect us more against mistakes than a clear way of thinking.

In the widest meaning, imagination might be characterized by observing everything which surrounds us in the following Manner:—Observe the face of a human being; you see upon it creases and wrinkles,which come and go; you do not only describe these lines, but you designate them as smiles or sorrow. A man's smile reveals to you his happy disposition of mind. You do not only deduce an inner truth from something which you see outside, but this outer perception is for you a real symbol of that man's inner life or else you see a tear falling; you are not only a physicist who observes that tear in accordance with the law of gravity, but you know that that falling tear is the expression of the soul's inner sadness. Thus everything which you see outside on a person's countenance becomes for you the expression of the soul's inner mood. The Rosicrucian pupil learns to feel that everything which he sees outside is similarly the expression, let us say, of the Earth-Spirit, a certain plant, for, example the meadow-saffron, really appears to him as the expression of the mourning life of the earth. Even as a smiling countenance reveals to him the soul's happy mood, so the flowers become an expression for the earth's happy or sorrowful mood.

Goethe did not only wish to convey an external image when the Earth-Spirit in “Faust” speaks:

“In Lebensfluten Tatensturm,
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit,
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.”

In the floods of life,
in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and the Grave;
An eternal ocean,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
Thus I work on the whirring loom of Time
And weave the Godhead's living garment.

For Goethe, the Spirit of the Earth gradually becomes something that lives in the earth; he acquires a soul-spiritual connection with the whole surrounding Nature.

Let me now explain to you more in detail one of the moods which can be found in Nature.

We have a Rosicrucian pupil walking across the fields. He sees the tiny pearls of dew upon each plant. This reminds him of the ancient “Neflheim, the “Land of Mists”, where the air was filled with a dewy mist and where the human beings had quite a different connection with Nature than they have now. The Rosicrucian pupil who is thus walking over the meadows and who perceives the pearls of dew upon the plants says to himself: In the ancient Land of Mists this was once dissolved in the atmosphere. And within his soul rose up a deeply concealed memory of the Atlantean age.

Imagination was specially cultivated among the pupils of the medieval Rosicrucian Schools, and als0 among the pupils of the Holy-Grail. Since I cannot express myself in any other way, let me now convey to you in the form of a dialogue some of the truths which were taught in these Schools.

The teacher said to his pupil:—“Behold the plant: see how it springs out of the ground, opening its calyx with the organs of fructification; see how the sun's rays come down upon it and open the blossom, so that the fruit can ripen”. The Rosicrucian pupil, and also the pupil of the Holy Grail, had to conjure up before their soul this image, this idea.

Now there is something very significant, even in materialistic science, whenever a plant is being compared with the human being. You must, in that case, take the plant's root as corresponding to the human head, whereas the flower corresponds to man's generative organs, to the which he shame-facedly conceals. In the plant the root corresponds to the human head. Man is a reversed plant, the animal is a half reversed pant. Rosicrucianism therefore says: Behold the plant: Its root is in the ground and its organs of fructification are chastely turned towards the sun's ray. Behold the animal: Its spine is horizontal ... and then behold man: There you have a complete reverse, a complete transformation. In the cosmic process of evolution the plant, the animal and man are symbolized by the Cross! The Cross is the plant, the animal and man.—Now you will be able to understand Plato's words: The soul of the universe hangs upon the Cross of the universe.—the soul of the universe, the cosmic soul which permeates everything, is stretched out upon the plant, the animal, and man.

Now it was impressed upon the Rosicrucian student: “Behold the plant: In its kind, it is lower than you, for it is not endowed with consciousness and with the power of thinking; but its substance is pure and chaste; it turns its calyx towards the sun; its organ of reproduction is turned without any passion towards the sun's ray, the holy spear of love. But physical substance has become permeated with passion. Now think of the future ideal—a purified substance, producing itself in purest chastity,” And his attention, was drawn towards the larynx, where man shall one day have attained the purity and chastity of the flower's calyx. “Think of the plant's calyx, which is devoid of passion. It develops through passion, but it will become pure again and reproduce itself chastely, by allowing itself to be fructified by the spiritual ray of the sun, by the Holy Spear of Love.” A prototype of this “holy spear of Love” is the spear which pierced the heart of Christ-Jesus upon the Cross.

Yesterday we have seen that this blood which streamed out of the Redeemer's wound banished egoism from the earth. The spear which pierced him is therefore a foreboding of that higher spear, the sun's ray in a spiritual form. And the Holy Grail indicates the chalice of humanity which develops out of the larynx, and which will be the purified generative organ of the future, as is the case to-day in the plant.

This is the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail, which was brought to the knowledge of the Rosicrucian students and of the disciples of the Holy Grail when they had reached the imaginative stage. Now compare the vision which you obtain through these images—the plant's calyx, sex filled with passion, the Holy Grail. the passionless chalice—compare this with the dry, intellectual concept supplied by modern science; this will show you the difference between imagination and mere intellectual thought: the whole cosmic process must be grasped in images! This is important, for the more intellectual concepts which we have to-day are not creative; but if these concepts are added to an image, then the images will become creative. This was felt in past times, and it should be considered in the education of the child.

Let me now discuss an actual problem. To-day people say so easily: What nonsense our elders taught us children, by telling us the story of the stork! Children should be told the truth.

If our descendants will treat us as we treat our forefathers, they will also laugh at us and say: Our forefathers thought that that the human being arises through a physical act!—And they will look back upon the time when this was explained to children in a spiritual way. In ancient times, when the story of the stork arose, also adults believed in it, for they knew that when a human being is born, his soul descend a from the spiritual world; and so they always connected birth with the descent of a winged being. You may even find this again in nursery-rhymes, for instance in the following one:

Flieg, Käfer, flieg!
Dein Vater ist im Krieg!
Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland
Pommerland ist abgebrannt;
Flieg, Käfer, flieg!

Fly, Beetle, fly!
Your father is in the war.
Your mother is in Pommerland,
Pommerland is burnt to ashes!
Fly, Beetle, fly!

This “fly, beetle” is meant as an image for the human soul, because a faint knowledge still existed of the astral world, from where the souls fly down into the physical world. And what is “Pommerland”? “Pommer” is the sane word as “Pommerle” which means a small child, so that “Pommerland”, or “Pommerleland”, is the Land of babies, where the mother goes to-fetch her baby. Such things must simply be explained in the light of the spiritual world. If you bear in mind that the image of the stork bringing babies is really an image for a spiritual process—reincarnation—you will realise how immensely important it is that certain things should first be grasped in the form of pictures; if the child is first taught to look upon the image of the spiritual process, he will develop an entirely different frame of mind enabling him to listen reverently even to the description of the physical process.

If you know that the stork is an image for the descending soul, you, yourself will once more believe in the stork! Your words can wing a child's fancy, if you understand the truth underlying an image; in that case a mysterious fluid will stream out of it and pass over to the child. This applies to every image. Children can thus be taught everything.

How can you deal with the problem of life after death? Lead the child to a butterfly's cocoon and tell him: Even as the butterfly flies out of its cocoon, so the soul flies out of the body when we die, but we cannot see this. If you really believe in this, you will be able to convince the child that when the butterfly leaves its cocoon, this is, upon a lower stage, the same as when the soul leaves the body. If spiritual science enables us to dive down again into the spiritual world, so that living images rise up in human hearts, education will change altogether; then the child will no longer be taught dry intellectual facts which coarsen his soul. We should not pull things down to a grotesque or comic sphere but we should realise instead what important things lie at their foundation.

The third thing which must be acquired for the paving of the “path” is the Learning of the Occult Writing. This does not consist in learning a writing, as is the case in ordinary life. The letters of the alphabet may indeed ba traced back to occult images but they are not by a long way an occult writing. In occult writing we must penetrate into the real great cosmic forces which are active in the universe. And all that we write down, must be so that one process of development passes over into the next. Take a plant: It bears seeds; in the seed you have the starting point for a new plant. But if you could really investigate the process, you would find that nothing of the old plant passes over into the new plant. In reality, the old plant perishes completely in regard to its substance; while the new plant builds up its form from entirely new substances—all that passes over into the new plant is a kind of movement. Here you have some sealing wax and there a seal: you press the seal into the wax. Of the seal itself nothing has gone over into the wax, only the form remains.—This is the case in every process of development. When it perishes the old substance merely supplies the opportunity for a new form to arise in accordance with the old form. This is designated

with two inter-twining spirals which do not meet. Such a transition existed after the Atlantean epoch of culture; this epoch disappears and a new one arises in the Indian epoch of culture; also this must be designated with two spirals. I have already told you that in the year 800 A.D. the sun rose in the sign of Aries; before that in the sign of Taurus; further back in the sign of Gemini and still further back in the sign of Cancer. The Greco-Latin age, containing the seeds of our present epoch, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Aries; the preceding civilisation; the Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian one, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Taurus; before that we have the Persien culture; when the sun rose in the sign of Gemini; and the ancient Indian culture developed itself when the sun stood in the sign of Cancer. It was then that the sign of Cancer; two inter-twining spirals was first written down.

Thus I might explain to you each sign of the Zodiac according to its true meaning. These signs were formed out of Nature, they are an expression for the forces and laws which are active outside, in Nature. If we learn to know the occult signs we begin to go outside ourselves; we penetrate into the mysterious foundations of Nature.

Thus I have given you some indications 0n the first three stages of the Rosicrucian path: Study, Imaginative Knowledge, and the Acquisition of the Occult Writing.

To-morrow we shall discuss the other stages, beginning with the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.

• 1. See lecture 5 of Life Between Death and a New Birth.
• 2. See Macrocosm and Microcosm. Soul Problems, Life Problems, Spiritual Problems.
• 3. See The Path of Knowledge and its Stages

Yesterday I described to you the Rosicrucian Initiation up to the third stage the Knowledge of Occult Writing. We therefore learned to know what is designated in the Rosicrucian meaning as Study, then the Acquisition of Imaginative Knowledge, and then what is termed as the Penetration into the Occult Writing into that writing which is taken out of the laws of Nature themselves.¹ Now it behooves us to proceed to the fourth stage of Rosicrucian Initiation, to the one which is called The Preparation of the Stone and the Wise. We should realise that only in the present time has it become possible to say something about that which the Rosicrucians really meant by the Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.

By that name were known certain rules for the entrance into the higher worlds, and these rules have existed ever since the founder of Rosicrucianism inaugurated this movement in 1459. You must bear in mind that this spiritual current has always been handled with the greatest precaution and has always been kept secret.

Towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, certain secrets of Rosicrucianism leaked out in an unjustified manner, owing, to a kind of treason; at that time several things connected with these secrets were printed, but from these publications one could gather that the, people in question had an inkling of these secrets, but did not understand them; never the less they at least heard the right words or picked them up so to speak, also in regard to the “Stone of the Wise”. At that time a series of communications appeared even in the “Reichsanzeiger” on a society whose task it was to prepare the Stone of the Wise; among these communications there is also one which can only be understood by those who know what it is about. It states: “Yes, the Stone of the Wise exists; it is known to almost everyone; indeed, most people have even held it in their hand; it is not at all difficult to find it,—but most people do not know this!”

The idea of the Stone of Wise was connected with the meaning that little by little it enabled one to know man's immortal part, which cannot decay after death, for it leads one up into the higher worlds. If a human being realizes that this immortal part cannot fall a prey tOo death, he acquires an immortal life through the possession of the Stone of the Wise, and thus he overcomes death. This had been interpreted as meaning that one would never die. But it means instead that thereby one learns to know the world where man lives after death. Moreover one saw in the Stone of the Wise an elixir of life. All this rendered the Stone of the Wise extremely desirable. Those who knew the true meaning of these things must have found these words strangely correct; for they are true—but those who do not know the secret cannot do much with them.

Let me now show you quite briefly what these words really mean. If you wish to understand them, please follow me in the contemplation of a plain, natural-scientific fact:—You must be clear as to the relation existing between the human being and the vegetable kingdom. It is a fact that all those who breathe as man breathes, could never exist if there were no plants. Now try to become acquainted with the process which takes place between you and the plants.

You breath in the air and use the oxygen of the air. You could not live, if there were no oxygen. When you take in the air and work upon the oxygen in your organism, you breathe out carbonic acid, a combination of carbon and oxygen. You must therefore say: Man continually takes in oxygen which maintains his body, and he breathes out carbonic acid; consequently he continually creates a poison which could kill him. You continually fill your environment with a poison.—What does the plant do? In a certain way it does exactly the contrary! It takes in carbonic acid, keeps the carbon, and sends out the oxygen which it does not need. Thus you give the plant what it needs and the plant gives you oxygen in return. What does the plant do with the carbon which it retains? To a certain extent it uses the carbon to build up its own body. You therefore give the plant, so to speak, the opportunity to build up its body out of carbon.—And after thousands of years, when you dig the plant out of the earth in the form of coal,you have it in the same substance.

The plant gives you oxygen, You breathe it in. You give the plant carbonic acid, it retains the carbon, uses it to build up its body and returns you oxygen. This is a wonderful alternating process, which thus takes place. This is what happens to-day. But man is developing, and in the future, the human body itself will have the organ which transforms carbonic acid into oxygen, retaining the carbon.

Here I am indicating a future state of development of man, a different condition from that which I pointed out to you yesterday, when speaking bf the Rosicrucian path of training. In the future man will have a passionless body of a higher order, a body which you may find to-day upon a lower stage in the plant; man will be able to build up a body which will be plant-Like upon a higher stage. In the organ which now constitutes his heart he will have an apparatus which will be able to do that which the plant does to-day. Now. the human being and the plant belong together; one could not live without the other. If there were no plants, all the beings who breathe in oxygen would have to die in a very short time, because it is the plant which supplies us with oxygen. We cannot imagine life without plants. But what the plant now does outside, will in the future be done by that organ into which our heart will develop when the heart shall have become a muscle which we ourselves control. We spread out our consciousness over the plants; we grow together with the vegetable world, so that in the future that which the plant now does outside our being will take place within our being. Then we shall also retain the carbon which we now discard, and build up our body with it. We shall be like the plants upon a higher stage of consciousness.

From primeval ages, occultism weaves all this into a wonderful legend. It is the Golden Legend. And what I have explained to you to-day was imparted to the pupil of occultism in the form of an image. The legend was more or less as follows:—

When Seth, the son whom God gave Adam and Eve in place of the murdered Abel, once entered Paradise„ he found the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life inter-grown; their branches intertwined. From this tree Seth took three seeds, following the command of the Angel who guided him. He kept the three seeds and when Adam died, he placed them into Adam's mouth. And a tree grew out of Adam's grave; to those who knew how to look upon it in the right way, this tree revealed a writing in flaming letters—the words: “Ejeh Asher Ejeh. I am He that was. He that is, He that shall be.” Now Seth took some wood from this tree and many things were made out of it: among them the rod which became the magic rod of Moses. And this tree multiplied; from its wood the portal of Solomon's temple was made, and later on, when it had passed through many other destinies, it became the Cross upon which the Savior hung.

The legend thus connects the wood of the Cross of Golgotha with the tree which grew out of Adam' s grave from the seeds of the Tree of Paradise.²

This legend conceals the same mystery which I indicated to you to-day. It meant to say: In primeval ages the human race had not yet sunk down to the flesh with passion; it was pure and chaste like the plant which stretches out its calyx to the sun. The human beings then descended through the “fall into sin”; their flesh was filled with passion. But everything which the human being once possessed in the state of innocence will be regained if he succeeds in forming through knowledge a body devoid of passion, the body which he once had before acquiring knowledge. Bear in mind the origin of the Ego. That the human being no longer possesses that innocent body, is connected with the fact that he began to breathe through the lungs and was able to form his red blood. Man's present form, and the fact that this form is the bearer of knowledge in the present meaning, is therefore connected with his breathing and the circulation of the blood.

Now transfer yourselves into the human body of to-day. You can imagine the oxygen streaming into it and stimulating the red blood, you can look upon the blood as a tree with many branches reaching into every part of the body, and you can see the blue blood streaming back filled with carbonic acid.

You have two trees within you: the tree of the red blood, and the tree of the blue blood. Man, as the bearer of an Ego, could not exist without these two trees. He had to take in the blood in order to have an Ego, and that is how our modern knowledge arises; this forms its foundation. But death was connected with this development, for you constantly transform the red blood into blue blood filled with carbonic acid! The occult teacher of the Old Testament therefore said: “Look upon your own being: you have within you the red tree of blood; without this tree you would never have become a cognitive human being. You have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge; but this gave you at the same time the possibility to give life.”

That which was once a Tree of Life became a death-bringing tree; the blue blood-tree within-us is therefore the Tree of Death. This is the present state of things. But the initiate sees a future state, when the human being shall have the plant-nature within him, when the heart-organ shall transform the blue blood into red blood in a direct way, within the human being. Then the Tree of Death shall have become the Tree of Life and man shall have become an immortal being. What man once was upon a lower stage, he shall once more become upon a higher stage, and he will have within him the apparatus which now exists in the plant.

Paradise thus shows us a final state of humanity. Seth' s mission, so the occult teachers explained, was that he saw that which comes at the end of the times: the balancing of the two principles within the human being. Thus the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge intertwine in Paradise; but in man they can only exist if he seeks aid from the plant. But how can he acquire the faculty through which the two trees intertwine within his being? By developing within him the three higher members of human nature.

We have learned that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and Ego, and we have seen that when the Ego works upon the astral body it produces the first higher member; when it works upon the etheric body, the second higher member; and when it works upon the physical body, the third one. The future human being will therefore consist of seven parts, for he will also have the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man.

When the human being thus transforms his lower nature, he will have the Tree of Life within him. At the beginning of his development man has therefore been predisposed through his Ego for the unfolding of his three higher members.

Seth took three seeds and the first Ego-man, Adam, let these seeds grow into a tree. This tree contains that which passes through every incarnation. During your first incarnation your Ego was upon a very low stage, but from incarnation to incarnation it reaches ever higher stages. What grows out of it is the symbol for the eternal part in man. which will reach its greatest perfection at the end of the Earth. But we shall only attain to this if we connect ourselves with everything that is highest along the path of the Spirit. Everything which leads humanity upwards along this path—the rod of Moses, Solomon' s Temple, and finally the Cross upon Golgotha—helps us to unfold fully the higher trinity within us. The Cross of Golgotha indicates the path leading to the highest fulfillment of man. At the beginning the seed from which that Tree grew was laid in Adam's mouth (this cannot be expressed more beautifully than in this Legend!), it was the seed which Seth had gained in the manner described. Here you have the path of humanity throughout the ages, the path of humanity through Time. And in future, man will have to attain that which the plant can do to-day: the transformation of his being, the capacity to produce carbon within himself, through his own power. Man will in the future master the alchemy of the plant.

The alchemistic preparation of what I have just now described to you was reached by giving the Rosicrucian pupil certain indications on the way in which he had to regulate his breathing process. This can only be grasped if we bear in mind the proverb: The steadily falling drop hollows out the stone. But the Rosicrucian pupil works towards this future goal. Even as the drop, small as it is, after a long time achieves hollow in the stone, so the progress of the human bodies is brought about by this regulation of the breathing process. The indications given to the Rosicrucian pupil enable him to prepare, even to-day, a condition in which the Ego acquires the faculty to contemplate the future state of being in the higher worlds. The Rosicrucian pupil therefore does two things: In the first place he helps to prepare the future of humanity, and secondly he himself acquires the power of looking into the spiritual worlds; he sees that which will later on come down into physical reality.

Now you will be able to understand the indications which were published by that strange man, though he did not understand them. The Stone of the Wise is the ordinary black coal; but you must learn the process enabling you to elaborate the carbon through your inner forces: this constitutes the future of mankind. The present coal is a prototype of that which will one day constitute the most important substance of the human being. Bear in mind the clear diamond: also the diamond is nothing but carbon! This was called, the “Preparation of the Stone of the Wise” in the Rosicrucian world-conception. It conceals a process of transformation in the human being and the call to work upon future conditions of humanity,. All who work in this way help to prepare the human bodies of the future, the bodies which will in future be needed by the human souls.

There is a saying which expresses very beautifully this work upon future states of being, and we shall be able to understand it after having made a clean distinction between the development of souls and of races.

In the past, all of you were Atlanteans, but these Atlantean bodies presented an entirely different aspect,—as I have already explained to you. Within your present body lives the same soul which once lived somewhere in an Atlantean body. But not every body has been prepared, as yours are being prepared, today, by a few colonists, who at that time migrated from the West to the East. Those who remained behind, those who connected themselves, aS one says, with the race, decayed, whereas those who had progressed, founded new cultures. The last stragglers along the path leading eastwards, the Mongolians, have preserved something of the Atlantean culture. They have not progressed; they remained within the race. In the same way, when a new age dawns, the bodies of those who do not progress, will become the Chinese of the future. Also in the future there will be decadent races. In Chinese bodies live souls who had to incarnate again within the Chinese race, because during the Atlantean time they were attracted too strongly by their race. The souls that dwell within you to-day will in the future incarnate in bodies proceeding from those who are now working in the manner described, producing the bodies of the future, in the same way in which the first colonists of the Atlanteans prepared the bodies of coming ages. And those who cling to everyday things, who do not wish to connect themselves with that which the future holds in store, will melt together within the race.

There are people who wish to remain within traditional things, who do not wish to know anything of progress and who do not listen to those who can lead them beyond the race to ever new forms of humanity. The myth has preserved this tendency in a wonderful way; for it can not be described more appropriately Than by pointing to one of the greatest, who spoke the words: “Those who do not forsake father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, cannot be my disciples”, and by setting forth the tragic aspect of a man who says: “I do not wish to have anything to de with such a guide!, and who rejects Him. How can this be expressed more clearly than by the image of him who rejects the guide and who cannot progress! This is the legend of Ahasver, the Wandering Jew, who sat at the feet of Christ Jesus and rejected the greatest of all Guides, who did not wish to know anything of the course of evolution and must therefore remain with his race and always return within his race.³ These are myths which are given to humanity as a perpetual reminder, so that it may know the gist of things.

This fourth stage of Rosicrucian training must therefore be looked upon as something of immense depth, and humanity thus gradually develops the “Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.”

The fifth stage is the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm. The whole complicated human body, such as it exists now, has arisen in a special way. My lectures have led you through the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth conditions; Upon Saturn, only the first foundations of your sensory system existed; only this existed of everything which now constitutes your physical body, and it was embedded in the Saturn-substance, even as crystals are now embedded in the earth-substance. Your eye was like a crystal of quartz. Upon the Sun, the glands which were your highest organs were constituted in such a way that they covered the surface of the Sun. And upon the Moon the organs which form your nervous system were spread over the Moon's surface. The Moon had a nervous system in which the men-animals who lived upon the Moon had a share. Upon the Earth, man acquired his osseous system; this was not possible upon the Moon, for it had no mineral kingdom.

This shows you hew wonderful is the structure of the human body. The organ of sight, the eye such we have it now, was once spread over the whole of Saturn; and what was once spread out in the great cosmos outside, entered our being in regard to each organ, occult science can tell you how it is connected with the macrocosm, with the great world outside, for something in the external world corresponds to the liver, the spleen, the heart, etc. Spiritual science can also tell you what had to take place in the external world so that these organs might arise. The Rosicrucian schooling enables us to immerse ourselves in our sense-organs, to penetrate from within into our eyes and ears, and to gain a clairvoyant knowledge of the development of these organs.

I have led you back to an epoch in the Atlantean evolution when the etheric body still emerged so far above the physical body that it could not coincide with a point in our head which is just above the root of the nose. We have seen that the etheric body then gradually penetrated into the physical body and that tile physical body took on its present form. Now there is one method of immersion, connected with a certain formula which can only be communicated by word of mouth. When you thus concentrate yourself upon that point where the physical part of the head coincides with the above-mentioned point of the etheric head, then you learn to know what the earth was like at that time, when the etheric head began to enter the physical head. In a similar way you may enter every part of your body, of your microcosm, and thus gain knowledge of the forces which hold sway in the macrocosm. Man is the most complicated of all beings, and even as the message contained in a telegram enables you to identify the sender, so the immersion in this or in that organ of your body enables you to gain knowledge of the creative powers which gave rise to it.

This leads us on to the sixth stage, which is called the Immersion in the Cosmos. Those who have learned to know, in the manner described above, the relationship between microcosm and macroc0sm, have gained a knowledge which embraces the whole world. This fact is concealed behind the ancient motto: “Know thyself!” But a very harmful influence has been exercised by theosophists who say: Within you lies the whole godhead; the highest principle is contained within your being. Thus all you need to do is look into your being , to look within yourself, and this will enable you to know the whole world.

Yet this inner brooding is the most foolish thing we can do, for it only leads to the knowledge of our lower self, which we have in any case. Self-immersion never shows us more than we have already have. Real self-knowledge only arises in the complicated manner described above, and then it is at the same time world-knowledge.

A genuine theosophical teaching does not make things easy for us, but it must say: Calm, earnest meditation should lead you to the knowledge even of the most complicated Beings. You cannot recognise the Godhead otherwise than by learning to know it piece by piece in the world outside. Patience and perseverance are needed for this. Calm, slow progress leads you to a knowledge of the world. Theosophy cannot give you a universal formula supplying knowledge all at once; it can only indicate the path long which you can gain self-knowledge and world-knowledge. This will lead you to a knowledge of God.

On the sixth stage of Rosicrucian schooling we do not attain to a dry, intellectual form of knowledge, but to one which is intimately connected with the world, with the universe. Those who have this knowledge, are intimately connected with everything in the universe; it is a connection which a modern men can only understand by bearing in mind the mysterious love-relationship between man and woman, which is based upon a secret knowledge of the other's being. The contemplation of the macrocosm leads not only to an understanding of the world, but to an intimate connection with every being, resembling that of lovers. In that case you will have an intimate relationship, a kind of love relationship with the plant, with the stone, with every creature in the universe. You will develop a specialized love for every being; to each one you will say something which you would not have said had you not reached this deeper understanding.

Animals eat the substances which suit its constitution and do not touch those that might harm it. This is based on a sympathetic relation towards certain things and an antipathetic one towards others. Man had to lose this direct connection with things in order to reach his present form of knowledge, but he will regain this connection upon a higher stage. What enables a modern occultist to know that the plant's blossom has another influence upon the human body than the root? And how does he know that the influence of an ordinary root differs from that of a carrot? Because these things speak to him, as they do to animals upon a lower stage. Animals do not have a conscious understanding of such things, but man will regain this direct connection with the substances and beings of the universe, upon the highest stages of consciousness.

The seventh stage of Rosicrucian schooling naturally follows the sixth one. Everything which I have told you so far will have shown you that the knowledge involved is chiefly connected with soul-impressions and feelings. No knowledge which we attain along this path does not at the same time move the heart in the most living way, so that a clear distinction should be made between an idea logical, intellectual and a spiritual knowledge.

The occultist does not mean to touch your feelings, and to tell you all manner of beautiful things. He simply relates the facts of the spiritual world and he would consider it as shameless to appeal to your feelings in a direct way. But he knows that when he tells you the truths of the spiritual world, these truths themselves speak; these spiritual facts should stir your feelings. A Rosicrucian therefore never takes into consideration the person of a teacher, for the teaching is in no way connected with the person. The teacher is the instrument through which the truths themselves speak to men. Those who still believe or have “views of their own” are not fit to be occult teachers. For if we judge through feeling, instead of judging objectively, we might even say that twice two is five!

This shows you how the Rosicrucian gradually penetrates into the knowledge of the higher worlds by developing various things within him. He needs guidance in this, but all those who earnestly seek this guidance will find it at the right moment.

We cannot say, however, that the Rosicrucian successively passes through these seven stages of training under the personal guidance of a teacher. The occult teacher chooses what is more suited to the one or to the other. I have already given you a description of the preparatory stages. Let me now emphasize two things in in this preparation, in order to show you that other things must be developed before proceeding to the stricter exercises.

There is one thing which must be practiced from the very outset, and that is concentration, concentration of thought. Consider how your thoughts ramble about from morning to night! They came from this or from that direction and draw you along with them, A Rosicrucian pupil must choose a time in which he is master of his thoughts; he should take an object as uninteresting as possible and reflect over it. The length of time employed for this does not matter, essential are energy, patience, and perseverance.

The other thing is what we call “positivity”, which consists in going in search of things in life which are characterised best of all by a Persian legend relating to Christ Jesus.

One day, when Christ Jesus was walking along with his disciples, they found on the road's edge the carcass of a dog, in advance stage of decomposition. The disciples who were not so highly developed as Christ Jesus, turned away from this horrid sight, but Christ Jesus thoughtfully looked upon the animal and said: “What beautiful teeth it has!”

No matter how ugly a thing may be, there is always some beauty concealed in it; in every lie there is a grain of truth, in everything evil a grain of goodness. This does not mean, of course, that you should abstain from criticism! You misunderstand positivity if you think that you should no longer find anything bad, ugly, etc., but positivity means that you should see the grain of beauty in everything evil. This develops the higher forces of your soul. All this forms part of the preparation.

To begin with, I wished to give you some idea of the Christian-Gnostic path of training. In the Rosicrucian schooling you will find the deepest and most genuine Christianity. If you are a Rosicrucian, you can be a Christian in the deepest meaning of the word, in spite of the demands of modern life. In the past, one could be a good Christian by withdrawing from the world; this was possible so long as man was not influenced by those forms of thinking which now render it so difficult for him to be a Christian. For the thoughts which have developed out of the natural-scientific way of thinking render it difficult for us to take in Christianity in its original form. The noblest men are those who honestly say: “To-day I cannot connect anything real with Christianity”.

The spiritual world indeed lives round about us, but within us live the thoughts produced by our materialistic age. We are incessantly surrounded by these thought-forms of materialistic life. A conscientious person must therefore say: In the present time we need a remedy which can cope with the ideas that continually stream into us, a remedy which enables us to hold our own and to remain upright in the face of everything which streams into us from the world outside.

Spiritual science offers us this remedy. We are egoists if we reject it, if we refuse to take it. Spiritual science feels that it is the executor of that which also constituted the will of medieval theosophy. Everyone can understand spiritual science; even-those who are acquainted with the justified objections raised against it by natural science. The Rosicrucian direction of theosophy enables everyone to find that which leads to a knowledge of the universe, and to peace within the soul, to be sure, a steady attitude in life. The theosophy of Rosicrucianism is not a merely theoretical knowledge which can give rise to polemical discussions, but a living knowledge which must flow into our whole modern civilisation. Theosophists who have passed through the Rosicrucian schooling know every objection which can be raised against spiritual science and are well acquainted with every counter-argument.

A polemical treatment of theosophy would produce the same result as, for instance, the polemical treatment of Eduard von Hartmann's. “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Eduard von Hartmann published this book and made certain statements in it which appeared like a higher standpoint in the face of the materialistic views of natural-scientific research. All the scientists rose up in arms against hin and a flood of criticism was poured over the “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Eduard von Hartmann was called “the greatest amateur”. Among the many writings which appeared against this book, there was an anonymous pamphlet which brilliantly opposed the “Philosophy of the Unconscious”, drawing in every possible argument available to a scientist who has a thorough knowledge of the natural sciences of his time. This writing was greatly admired and applauded. Oscar Schmidt, the famous zoologist, said for instance: “What a pity that we do not know the author of this excellent pamphlet, for he stands at the very summit of modern science.” And Ernst Haeckel wrote: “Let him come out of his anonymity, and we shall welcome him as one of us.” In fact, this pamphlet created quite a sensation! Then a second edition appeared, with the name of the author: Eduard von Hartmann! Now the scientists did not say a word and the matter was hushed up. This really took place.

You see those who adopt a higher standpoint, are themselves able to advance counter-arguments, for they only need to descend to another standpoint. We might also bring forward a few counter-arguments; if we had sufficient time at our disposal.⁴ But in the brief time available it was essential above all to communicate some of the facts which spiritual science can proclaim to-day concerning the higher worlds.

The chief point to bear in mind is that spiritual scientific truths should exercise a healing influence upon men. Occult science can show that these truths are able to permeate every sphere of human life and to fructify it. And when spiritual science will have exercised this healing, fructifying influence it will have justified its existence in the best possible way. This, is the proof which spiritual science seeks. Theosophists therefore do not grow alarmed when people come and say: “This is pure fantasy!” Everything which has become a blessing in human civilisation has at first been regarded as pure fantasy. In the history of the last forties of the 19th century; we could cite many examples in support of this statement.

If spiritual science is to become a reality in life, it must penetrate into that which constitutes our ordinary environment. When spiritual science has become a force which gives wings to our whole life, permeating our daily actions, it will have stood the test. This is the standpoint adopted by the Theosophy of Rosicrucianism, and from this standpoint you should view the lectures which I have delivered to you. Spiritual science will one day develop into something which will influence humanity and bring new impulses in art and science, in medicine and education. Its forces will stream into every sphere of life, animating it.

This is the standpoint of these lectures, which should be accepted in this light.

• 1. See: “The Path of Knowledge and its Stages. The Rosicrucian Path” “Imaginative Knowledge and Artistic Imagination”
• 2. See: The Xmas Thought and the Mystery of the Ego. The Tree of the Cross and the Golden Legend. Also: The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Mysteries of Art (Paths of Spiritual Knowledge and the Renewal of an World-Conception).
• 3. See: Rudolf Steiner's Five Easters by Anasthasius Grün.
• 4. See: Wie widerlegt man Geistesforschung (How does one oppose Spiritual Research) and Wie begrandet man Goistesforschung (What is the Foundation of Spiritual Research), double volume no. 1/2 of the series Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung (Results of Spiritual Research), Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, publd. by Phil. Anthropl. Verlag in Dornach, Switzerland.

Gentlemen, the question that has been asked is:

Is the iris in the eye the mirror of the soul in a healthy and diseased state?

I think the second question can be added, they are probably meant together:

What causes albinism or leukopathy in black people?

If we want to answer this question, we must first take a closer look at the workings of the human eye. The question relates to the fact that certain people can tell whether a person's entire body is healthy or sick by looking at the color of the iris, the colored ring-shaped body in the eye that surrounds the black of the so-called pupil. Not only, as you know, is a person's iris colored blue or black or brown or gray or even greenish brown, but the iris also has lines drawn in one way or another, which are created by fine vessels. So that, just as the general facial expression of one person is different from that of another, the finer structure of this iris or rainbow skin is quite different in different people, and much more different from each other than the actual physiognomy of people is different from each other.

Now we have to go into the structure of the eye a little if we want to talk about such a thing. This is connected with the other question you have asked. Namely, that especially in Negroes, but also otherwise, in non-black people, an abnormal, not quite ordinary skin coloration occurs, which is connected with the special coloration of the iris. This is connected in a certain way. Now this skin color is particularly noticeable in naturally black people, because they are just black, and then they have all kinds of white spots, and are then mottled like a tiger. They are very rarely completely pale and completely white; this occurs very rarely among Negroes, extremely rarely. But such so-called albinos also occur in other races that are not completely black. But this albinism also occurs in white people, in the so-called cockroaches – that's what they're called – they have a very pale skin color, almost milk-white skin color. Then they usually have a light reddish iris, and the pupil, which is otherwise black in humans, is then dark red. I once saw a female cockroach like this who even exhibited herself in all kinds of sideshows and let herself be seen. She had milky-white skin, a red iris or rainbow-shaped pupil, dark red pupils instead of black eye stars, and would then say in an extremely weak voice: “I am all white, have red eyes and see very weakly.” That was true, she saw very weakly.

If we want to get into this matter, we must, above all, study the structure of the eye itself. Over time, I have told you many things about the eye. Therefore, today you will perhaps understand what I have to say. You see, the eye is located inside the very firm bony body of the head. The bone structure of the head bulges inside, and in this bone cavity, which is open towards the brain at the back (see drawing), the eye sits inside. The eye is now first limited from the outside by a hard skin, which is opaque here. The so-called eyeball is limited by the cornea. This skin becomes transparent towards the front, here, where it bulges out a little. Otherwise, one could not approach the light with the inside of the eye if this outer cornea were not transparent. It is called the cornea because it is horny. Inwards from this is a skin, which consists of fine veins. The blood network of the body extends into the eye and also sends very small, fine veins into the eye. So here we have the hard cornea, which becomes transparent towards the front, and then the so-called choroid, which is adjacent to it. The third skin inside is formed from nerves; this is the so-called retina. So I still have to draw a third membrane, the retina. And the retina goes backwards into the brain, as does the choroid, of course. And this is called the optic nerve because it is a nerve substance, it goes to the eye. You know that people say: you feel through the nerves. — So with the optic nerve you see.

Now, the strange thing is that everyone has to admit that, as people say, you can see with the optic nerve everywhere here, except precisely where it enters; there it is blind, you see nothing there! So if someone looks just enough to somehow see out there, or if the nerves around it are diseased and only the spot where the optic nerve enters is healthy, then you still see nothing where the optic nerve enters. Now people say: with the optic nerve you see, it is there for that, that you see. Have you now heard the following? Just imagine: there is a group of workers, let us say thirty workers. Twenty-five of them have to work very hard; they are standing everywhere. And there is a group of five – they won't do it, but I'll assume they do it – these five are allowed to laze around while the others work hard. So we can say: there are the 25 hard-working laborers, and there are five who laze around all the time, sitting on padded chairs and lazing around. If someone were to tell you that the work is being done just as well by the five idlers – or perhaps he can't say that because he doesn't see it, but the work is accomplished by idling – you won't believe it, will you? That is nonsense. But now science teaches us that the optic nerve sees. But precisely at the point where it is most, it sees nothing! It is just as if you were to say: the work is done by what the five loafers are doing. You see, one knows such things—that is precisely the strange thing—one knows such things, but one nevertheless continues to assert quite ordinary nonsense. Isn't it, from the fact that here is the so-called blind spot—that's what it's called—and that you see nothing at all at the point where the optic nerve attaches the most, it is quite clear from this that the optic nerve cannot be what you see with.

The thing is this: there is something in the human body that is very similar to this thing in the optic nerve; namely, your two arms and hands. Imagine picking up a chair. You strain your arms all the way down to your hands. But what connects them stays up there, doesn't it. It's the same with the optic nerve. They are aiming at something that is affected by light, and in the middle it is as it is between the two arm approaches here. But it is not the optic nerve that is affected - because if it were the optic nerve, it would have to see the most of all - but what is affected is something of the very invisible that I have described to you. That is precisely the I, the ego organization. It is not the physical body, not the etheric body, it is not even the astral body; it is the I. And so I have to draw something else in there besides what is already there: there is the invisible I that is spreading out. Only it is not as if there were two such arms, but rather as if the arms were closing and becoming a sphere. We already begin to make a sphere with our hands when we touch something. So there is the supersensible I; it is reaching out there. And what is the nerve for? Yes, gentlemen, the nerve is for this purpose - because it is the work of the invisible human being - that something is secreted. Substance is secreted everywhere, and it remains there everywhere. With the supersensible self, one sees. But the nerve is there to secrete something.

Think of the nonsense that science says, just as if one were to examine the large intestine and what is inside it, and then immediately say, from what is now being excreted from the large intestine, that this is how humans nourish themselves! Just as what is excreted is inside the large intestine, so the nerve substance is excreted here. And this (the blind spot) is then the place where it is excreted the most. What is not needed in the eye is excreted into the brain, then goes further and is excreted at all. You see, this is something that you can easily understand, but about which the most fantastic stories are told to you today. It's just that people don't realize what it means when it is said that the nerve substance is seen or felt or something is perceived. That would be just as if one were nourishing oneself with the contents of the rectum. So you see that this business of the blind spot has no significance for vision, because the optic nerve does not see around it either, only here, where the blind spot is, is where the most secretion occurs. And just as nutrition ends in the rectum, where it is only for excretion, so here too vision ends, because that is where most is excreted, and because it makes no sense for vision to be in the middle.

Imagine you have a stick lying there and want to pick it up with your head! You can't. You have to pick it up with your arm, with your hand, with what is attached at the side. You can't see with your nerve either. You have to see with what is attached.

Now, gentlemen, everything that is there (pointing to the drawing) ends here in a kind of muscle. This muscle carries the lens. This is a completely transparent body. Why transparent? So that you can get to the light. And behind this body here is a thick liquid. In front of it is an even thicker liquid, and in this thicker liquid at the front floats the iris or rainbow skin, which is located here near the veins. It really floats in the liquid and leaves a hole open for the light. This hole appears black when you look into it, because you look through the entire eye to the background, which is black.

This iris is fairly transparent at the front, but at the back it is black. This black skin at the back is quite thin in some people. Because if it is thin, when you look through the transparent part into the black, certain people have blue eyes. And in those with thicker skin here, where you look at the thick back skin at the iris, they have black eyes or dark eyes. We will talk about brown eyes in a moment.

Now, gentlemen, we need to educate ourselves about what it is that causes the skin here, which actually determines the blue or brown or black, to be thicker or thinner in some people. I have already told you: what is called the I, the noblest, supersensible part of the human being, goes into the eye. The I goes into it. The I is more or less strong in different people. Now suppose a person has a very strong ego. You see, such a person is capable of completely dissolving the iron that is in the blood and that he also gets into the eye through this choroid. So someone with a very strong ego completely dissolves the iron, and the result of this is that little iron enters this skin, which is at the very outermost edge of the body, because it is completely dissolved. So little iron enters, and the result of this is that this skin becomes thin. Because it becomes thin, you get blue eyes. Now imagine that a person has a weak ego; then he does not dissolve the iron as much, and the result of this will be that a lot of undissolved iron gets into this skin. The skin becomes thicker because of this undissolved iron and the person gets dark, black eyes. So it depends on the ego whether the person has black or blue eyes.

Now, gentlemen, there is also another substance in the blood: sulfur. And even if the ego can process the iron, it is sometimes still unable to process the sulfur. If the ego lets the sulfur into the skin without processing it, then a yellowish-brown color develops in the iris, and that is how brown eyes come about. And if a lot of sulfur gets into the eyes, then a reddish iris develops. Because of the sulfur shimmering behind it, even the pupil does not turn black. You do not see the black, but the emitted, sprayed sulfur itself makes the pupil dark red. This is the case with cockroaches and humans who otherwise cannot supply their skin with the right color. So you can say: there are people who can inject sulfur into their eyes. The ego can inject it, and this is how the iris gets its special color.

But what goes into the eye in the way of sulfur or iron goes into the whole body, because it comes from the blood. There are only small blood vessels here in the eye. So if someone injects sulfur into the eye, he injects sulfur into his entire skin everywhere. And the consequence of injecting sulfur into his entire skin everywhere is that he does not have his natural skin color at the points where the sulfur has been injected; because the natural skin color comes from the processing of iron. So when a person processes their iron only slightly, but instead spews sulfur, then they get such mottled spots in their skin, and at the same time you can see it in the color of their eyes.

So you see: when you look at this invisible human being that is in every human being, you can understand the human being right down to the material level, right down to the substance. Anthroposophy is not so stupid that it does not understand the material. Materialism does not understand the material. Read somewhere about albinism, what can you read? The one of you who asked me the question will probably have read somewhere: the cause of albinism is unknown! — Materialism always comes to this strange conclusion: the cause is unknown! — because it does not trouble itself at all with those cases where the causes can be found. Of course it is easy to say: There is a red pupil. Yes, but one must know what is actually working inside and what history injects, because the red coloration and the pale coloration of the body comes from sulfur.

Now you can understand what real science is. Imagine you come to a place on earth where something has been worked on; someone looks at it and says: The work is already there, the cause is unknown. He does not care what happened before; that is why he states: the cause is unknown. He does not care that, for example, thirty people have been working there for many days. That is how science does it when it says: the cause of the red coloration of the pupil and the pale coloration of the skin is unknown. — But the cause lies precisely in the I that works in the matter, in the substance.

But from this you can also see that the iris really does contain a true reflection of how the whole body works with iron and sulfur. But take such an albino, such a cockroach; that is actually a kind of disease. There is too much sulfuric work in the body, but the body gets used to it, and it is organized. But now it can happen that this enters the eyes to a much lesser extent. You see, apart from the cockroaches I told you about, apart from the lady who exhibited herself in the show, I have seen many cockroaches. You can always tell that there is something very special about such cockroaches. You can say: There is a cockroach, an albino like this, and it has this peculiar reddish coloration of the iris, pale red, has the dark red coloration of the pupil, has the pale body. If you examine it further, you get from the nature of its body the view that in its case the connection between heart and kidney is particularly weak. He is not only weak in the eyes, he is weak in the connection between heart and kidneys. The kidneys of such a person are supplied with blood with great difficulty, so they work very hard. If he were to deposit the sulfur that he carries throughout his body in his kidneys, he would die as a child. Therefore, he releases the sulfur through the surface of the body – the skin turns white, the eyes turn red – so that the kidneys can work gently. Such albinos have kidneys that work very gently, for example. This can also occur in other people. But if, in people who are not cockroaches (most of them are not cockroaches), some kind of defect occurs in the kidneys, then doesn't it have to show up in the iris as well? What the sulfur and iron do together there is also expressed here. From the nature of the human iris, one can therefore conclude whether there is any damage in the human body. Therefore, if there is a spot here or there in the fine appearance of the iris, which is not actually normal, one can see: there is damage in the body. But, gentlemen, you have to bear this in mind: the human body is a unified whole, and what you see in the iris you would also see, if you were clever enough, if you cut out a small piece of skin and took it out – something would also appear in the skin that would not be normal – or even if you cut the nail of your big toe. There is also a very fine structure that could show if the liver, kidneys or lungs were not working properly, although it is a little different again. So if someone were particularly clever and, instead of examining the iris, were to examine the cut fingernails, for example – it would be much more difficult because it is not as pronounced – they would also be able to recognize the healthy or diseased condition there. It is only noticeable in the eye because the eye is an especially delicate structure, and the delicate is easy to grasp. It is most pronounced in the eye. But you can see that things are most pronounced on the surface of the body. For example, I have rarely seen someone put something on their shoulders when they want to feel a particularly fine material or something like that. If it were the case that it would be more advantageous, we would do something about it, so that when we have to feel something fine, we could free ourselves up there on the shoulder and feel it. But that doesn't help us. We feel it with the fingertips. And at the fingertips we are particularly sensitive to feeling things. There you have the same thing again. If the nervous system were what actually makes up feeling, then we should feel the most where we are close to the brain. But we don't feel the most close to the brain; instead, we feel the most where we are furthest from the brain, in the outermost fingertips, because the I sits most on the surface of the body. What a person is in their inner self can best be recognized on the outermost surface. Therefore, because the eyes are closest to the surface, they can also recognize the most, because the eyes are delicate and far away from the brain.

You may say: The eyes are in the skull and close to the brain. But there are quite a few bones in the way, and where the eye is connected to the brain, where there is no bone, nothing can be seen. So at the fingertips, it is due to the vastness of space that they are particularly sensitive; in the case of the eyes, it is because they are most protected from the brain.

There is something else that is strange. When any lower animal develops its brain, it develops the brain in such a way that the brain leaves the cavity free for the eye, and the eye does not grow out of the brain in that way, but rather it starts from the side and grows into it (it is drawn). The eye grows from the outside, not from the brain; the eye grows into the brain. So it is formed from the outside.

From all this you can see that what is formed on the surface, whether in the skin or in the eye, is connected with the way in which a person is actually most in touch with the outside world. In a person who is always in bed, who cannot use his will for his body, one cannot say that he is developing his ego strongly. In a person who is very mobile, one can say that he expresses his ego strongly. And that which otherwise brings us into contact with the outside world, that is precisely in smelling, seeing and so on, these are the senses. And the eye is just the most delicate sense that brings us into contact with the outside world. So you can say: because the I is particularly strong in these fine veins – there are terribly fine veins in this iris – you can see a lot from this, how the whole I works inwards, whether a person is healthy or sick.

That is the original truth and knowledge that can be gained about this matter. But the fact that I have just described to you is also one of the most difficult, because one must be very thoroughly informed about what such a small irregularity in the iris means if one wants to draw conclusions about a healthy or sick person. I will give you an example. You see, it may be, for example, that in some irises there are dots, dark dots, here or there. These dark dots naturally mean that the person has something that is not there otherwise, if these dark dots are not in the iris. But suppose the person in whom these dark dots appear were a terribly stupid fellow. Then he will have some kind of illness that these dark spots indicate. But in the case of the person with these dark spots, it may also be that in his youth he was overstrained with some kind of learning, had to learn beyond his physical strength. Then, as a result of having used certain organs too much in his youth, he may have developed a certain weaker activity in the eyes, and then these small iron deposits, these very fine iron deposits, can occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. So they can occur as a result of an illness in later life, but they can also occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. Most people think: if I see black spots in the iris, then there must be this or that in the body. But it depends on knowing not only the present life of the person concerned, but especially if you want to recognize something like this in terms of the causes of the disease, you have to go through the whole life of the person with him; you have to let him remember what he has already done here or there in childhood. Thus, what one sees in the iris can point to many things. And to draw conclusions from something like this to something in particular is one of the most complicated forms of knowledge.

That is why it is so outrageous that all kinds of little books are being written today; the things that are written there are usually very short and are called: On Eye Diagnosis. There you get a fifty-page instruction on how to examine the iris. Like this, right? There is the iris classification, there is the pupil, drawn quite schematically, then the disease is indicated; spleen disease is then indicated; lung disease, syphilis and so on. Now the eye diagnostician in question, who is familiar with what is recorded in this way, when he looks at the iris with a moderate magnifying glass, need only refer to his little book; and when he notices what is written where lung disease is written, he states: lung disease! And that is how numerous eye diagnosticians do it today after a study of an hour. They then leave the rest to the little book they have; they just make the diagnosis. Yes, gentlemen, but that is outrageous. Because what is most difficult is to be learned in the easiest way. This does not lead to the acquisition of something valuable, but on the contrary, it damages the whole medical system. And one must distinguish whether someone seriously wants to achieve something in the medical field, or whether someone just wants to make money.

Of course, people are upset about science today; and rightly so, because, according to the example of the optic nerve that I told you about, science actually does not pay attention to what a person really is, but most appreciates the filth of a person, the filth in the eye, for example, which is the optic nerve. Of course, people don't know that, but they feel it and become disgusted by science. This outrage can be understood. But what the eye diagnostician usually does is not better than science, but usually much worse. Science, unsuspecting because of materialism, considers dirt to be the noblest components of the human being. Of course, the dirt is also very necessary, because if it were to remain in the body, it would kill the body very soon; so it is necessary. But science thinks that dirt is the most valuable thing about a person! But that means it is on the path of good and does not just want to make money. It is just blinded. It just has a very large blind spot in its knowledge; but with all that, one must acknowledge the good will. But with these little eye diagnostic devices, one can no longer speak of good will, only of the desire to make money. That is why you always have to ask yourself about all these things: a good truth can underlie any endeavor, but it is precisely the best truths, gentlemen, that are most often misused by the world. You see, it is truly wonderful that in this little iris the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected. But on the other hand, because the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected, the iris is also most difficult to recognize in its entirety, and it must be said that anyone who practices eye diagnosis without recognizing the whole person, without really knowing something about the whole person, is practicing nonsense.

And what does it mean to recognize the whole person? You see, we have learned that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and the I. So not only do we need to know something about the physical person, but, especially if we are doing eye diagnosis, we also need to know something about the spiritual person. The usual anatomy, which only deals with the corpse, can, under certain circumstances, suffice with what it offers; it can actually offer relatively good things. Even if it does not know that the eye nerve is the dirt of the eye, at least it finds the eye nerve. But the eye diagnostician usually has no idea how the nerve runs, but has his little book of fifty pages and the classification of the iris and diagnoses away, without examining the person. Now, of course, he needs some other little book, again of fifty pages. There is the rubric “lung disease” and the remedy for it. But lung disease is something that can come from many causes. Knowing that the lungs are affected is not enough. The lungs can be affected by digestion. You have to know where it comes from. Many people suffer from lung disease. For many, the lung disease has a wide variety of causes. This is precisely where you have to be extremely careful, because where the most beautiful things are present, there is the most nonsense. How much have I told you in these lessons about the fact that man does not depend only on the earth, but on the whole starry sky. But that is precisely what requires the most complicated insight. You must not do any nonsense with it. After all, the various astrologers in the world today are doing a great deal of fraud and nonsense. It is similar with eye diagnostics as with astrology. There is also something very noble and magnificent underlying astrology; but for those who practice astrology today, there is nothing very noble underlying it. For them, speculation about the wallets of their fellow human beings is usually the underlying basis.

And so you can understand the connection, gentlemen: on the one hand, there are the phenomena that change the entire surface of the human being externally. The person gets pale spots where the skin is otherwise darker; his eyes change color, he is an albino. A certain activity is driven to the surface, diverted from the internal organs. But if the person is not a cockroach, not an albino, then the same things, the outer appearance of the eye, are present in the iris; but the finer structure, the finer arrangement then points to the inside. An albino is not a completely sick person just because he is an albino, but he is only afflicted with a predisposition to disease because he has it from an early age and his physical makeup becomes accustomed to it later.

You see, it is not at all good to call the albino a leukopath. This already indicates, because leukocytes, for example, are certain bodies in the blood, that the blood of such people is different. We do not know the cause. But if the blood becomes paler on the surface, then the general pallor does not occur, but the skin becomes paler on the surface. That is the difference between the disease of anemia, where the blood simply becomes paler on the inside, and leukopathy or albinism, where the blood is pushed more to the surface. So it is the case that in the case of people with anemia, an activity in the interior is not in order. The ego is more active on the surface, the astral body more in the interior. Therefore, all the bodies with which one sees and hears are more pushed to the surface. You need them for the ego. You need your liver in the inner being. And if you felt everything as strongly as your liver does, then you would constantly observe only your inner being and say: Aha, now I have just received a little cabbage soup in my stomach, the stomach walls are beginning to absorb it. It is like a radiance, very interesting. Now it goes through the pylorus into the small intestine; now it goes into the villi that are on the intestinal walls. You would observe all this, and all this, that would be very interesting; but you would not have time to observe the outside world! It is very interesting and there is plenty to observe and in some things much more beautiful than the outside world, but the human being is just quite distracted by it. So in general, what is inside does not come to consciousness; what lies on the surface comes to consciousness. So if someone does not process the iron properly in his inner being, where the astral person is more active, he will become an anemic person. If he does not process the iron properly on the outside, but dissolves it as I have described to you, then he will become an albino - which is very rare - or he will get leukopathy.

So you see, the question I was asked is related to this: albinism comes from an irregular processing of sulfur or iron by the ego. Anemia comes from an irregular processing of iron by your astral body and has more of an effect on the inside of the blood. Thus, if one only understands the human being correctly in what is going on inside him, one can also see which supersensible part of the human being is actually involved. He who properly understands the physical human being also understands the superphysical, the supersensible human being. But with materialism it is just the opposite: he does not understand the supersensible human being at all, and therefore he does not understand the physical human being either.

I will let you know whether I will be back next Wednesday. Perhaps someone will have another question by the next lesson, so that a similar discussion can take place as a result of this question.

Good morning, gentlemen! Have you thought about what you would like today?

Mr. Burle: If one might ask the doctor about human clothing, about the clothing that people wear. In some countries people have just one rag and throw it around them; others are buttoned up. One has dazzling colors, the other has simple colors. Then again, we could ask about the national costumes, what the peoples or the people in question wear. Then also what the waving flags are and - this is perhaps also connected with that - what ecstasy they exert?

Dr. Steiner: Much thought has been given to the question of human clothing because, as you can imagine, there are few external documents and little historical evidence about these things.

You see the clothing of the simpler peoples and tribes, and you also see the clothing of the people in the city to which you yourself belong. And finally, one sees what one puts on oneself, but actually pays the least attention to what one puts on oneself. In this matter, one simply goes along with what has become the custom. Yes, after all, one must do it to a certain extent simply for the reason that otherwise one is considered at least half a fool, if not a complete fool.

Now, the first question is that which is perhaps the most difficult for an external science to answer, because, as I said, external written records are only available in very few cases, about the reasons why people originally clothed themselves. If we really take into account everything that can be seen in this direction, we have to say to ourselves: Certainly, much of what is in clothing has already emerged from the human need for protection, from the need to protect oneself as a human being against the influences of the environment. You must remember that animals have their own protection. To a large extent, animals have protection against external influences that cannot penetrate their hair, skin and so on into the more delicate, softer parts of the organism.

Now you may ask yourself: Why doesn't man have this protection by nature? — I don't want to emphasize this question, which always asks why, because in nature it is actually not entirely justified to ask why. Nature simply puts the beings in place, and one must simply examine how they are placed. The why is never entirely justified. But we shall understand each other if I nevertheless say: How is it that man, unclothed by nature, must go through the world like this?

We must then ask ourselves the other question, whether this covering that the animal has from nature is not clearly connected with the less highly developed spiritual organization that the animal has? And it is. You see, gentlemen, it is really the case that sometimes those parts of a living being, that is, of an animal and also of a human being, that are most important, do not appear to be the most important in external life. We can cite some very small organs in the human organism. If these are not as they should be, then the whole human organism breaks down. For example, here in the thyroid glands on both sides, there are very small organs – I have mentioned them to you before in a different context – that are hardly the size of a pinhead. One might think that these are not so important. But if it should happen that a person needs an operation on the thyroid gland, and the surgeon is inept and removes these tiny, pinhead-sized organs as well, then the whole organism becomes ill. The person becomes dull and gradually perishes from exhaustion. So small, tiny, pinhead-sized organs are of the greatest possible importance for the whole human being! They have them because these organs secrete a very fine substance that must flow into the blood. And the blood is useless if these organs are not there and their secretions do not flow into the blood. So you can see that even organs that we do not pay much attention to have the greatest possible significance for the being in which these organs are found.

Take, for example, those animals in the animal kingdom that have hairy skin. Well, you can imagine that the hairy skin is good for keeping the animals from freezing in winter and so on. Certainly, that is one of its uses. But if these hairs are to arise in the skin, the animal must be accessible to a particularly strong effect of the sun. The hairs arise only when the animal is accessible to a strong effect of the sun.

You might say: Yes, but hair does not develop everywhere only where the sun's rays have access! - And yet it is so. It even goes so far that the human germ, in the first periods, while it is carried in the mother's womb, is hairy. You may say: It is not exposed to the sun. It loses these hairs later. And every human being who is born was actually quite hairy during the first weeks of the mother's pregnancy. He loses this hair. Why is that? It is because the mother absorbs the power of the sun, which works internally. The hair is very closely related to the effect of the sun.

Take the lion, for example. The lion, whose male has this mighty mane, is an animal that is extraordinarily exposed to the effects of the sun. As a result, the lion also has well-developed chest organs, which become particularly strong under the influence of the sun, a short intestine and powerfully developed lungs. This distinguishes him from our ruminants, which have more developed organs of the abdomen, intestines, stomach and so on. The way an animal is hairy, feathered and so on is therefore mainly related to the effect of the sun.

But again, when the effect of the sun on a being is very great, then it is the case that this being lets the sun think within itself, lets the sun will within itself: it does not become independent. Man has his independence from the fact that he does not have this outer protection, but that he is more or less exposed to the influences of the earthly environment. It is even interesting to note how the animal is less dependent on the earth than man. The animal is largely formed from outside the earth. I have, of course, provided you with evidence for these things everywhere. But man is emancipating himself from these external natural influences. And that comes from the fact that he has, so to speak, an unprotected skin on all sides and therefore has to seek his own protection.

You can see from our ordinary clothing that it is actually composed of two parts. One part is revealed to us when we put on a winter coat in winter and protect ourselves from the cold. That is the part of clothing through which we seek protection. But that is not the only one. You can see, for example, especially with women, that they don't just seek protection through clothing, but they arrange it so that it should be beautiful; sometimes it is indeed horrible, but it should be beautiful. It depends on taste or bad taste, but in any case it should be beautiful, it should adorn. These are the two functions of clothing: to provide protection against the outside world and to adorn.

One part of this task for clothing originated more in the north, where protection was needed. Therefore, there the clothing has more the character of protection. In terms of protection, people do not go to extraordinary lengths. But in warmer areas, in areas where entire nations actually walk quite naked, decoration forms the little that you see, or, when they put on more, the main part of the clothing.

But you will now know that it was precisely from the warmer regions that higher civilization came, that more of the spiritual life came from the warmer regions. Therefore, when we look at clothing, we can always see that, in a sense, the type of clothing designed to protect the human being from external influences has remained incomplete. On the other hand, clothing that is intended to adorn has undergone all possible development. Of course, what a person's taste is comes into play here, doesn't it? The whole spiritual direction of people comes into play. So let us assume more primitive peoples, simpler, more original ones. Such peoples have a strong sense of color. We in our regions, who are so far advanced in terms of reason – or at least we believe we are – do not have the sense of color that the more original peoples have.

But these more primitive peoples have a completely different sense. They have the sense that there are spiritual-supernatural parts to the human being. In the so-called civilized areas, people no longer believe that there are people who are not as clever as civilized people want to be, but who have a sense that the human being has a supernatural side. And they perceive this supernatural side as colored. This is the case with primitive peoples: they perceive the supersensible part that they carry within them – what I have called the astral body – as colored, and they want to make visible that which is invisible to us. So they adorn themselves in red or blue, or the like, depending on how they see themselves in the astral realm. This comes from the view that these people have of the spiritual world.

The Greeks, for example, saw how the etheric head of the human being is much larger than the physical head, how it protrudes, and so they endowed Pallas Athena, this goddess, with a kind of helmet. But you can see for yourself if you take this Pallas Athena and examine the helmet she is wearing, the helmet has something like eyes at the top. You can see that everywhere; just look at Pallas Athena, even in a bad statue, there are eyes at the top of the helmet. This proves to you that it was meant to be part of the body. That is something else you can see; they put it on Athena.

And the type of clothing that people made in those areas where they had a sense of the supersensible human being was adapted to how they imagined this astral body of the human being.

Now, in our regions — as you gentlemen know — only the ritual clothing in the truest sense is still made in colors. If you look at what the ritual clothing is, you will see that it is modeled entirely on how the astral body is imagined. So the colors and also the shape and form of the clothing are basically derived from the supersensible. And only when one understands this, does one understand how clothing is designed as an adornment. This is also very important. If you look at pictures painted by the old masters, you will see: Mary, for example, always has a very specific dress and a very specific wrap, because this is intended to suggest how she is in her astral body, in her heart, in her mind. This is to be indicated by the clothing. Compare pictures where Mary is with Magdalene at the same time, and you will always find that the old painters looked at Mary and Magdalene differently, just as differently as they are portrayed, because it is said to be based on their astral body and the clothing is made in the way the astral body is now supposed to be in terms of color.

We civilized people have simply moved into materialism, so we no longer have any sense of this transcendental side of man. We think with the mind of the earth and think that the mind of the earth is master of everything. Yes, gentlemen, that is why we no longer have any sense of dressing in such a way that what we wear looks halfway human! We put our legs, if we are men, into tubes. That is probably the most unadorned of all the clothes that have appeared in the world, the trouser tube! But we do a lot more; if we want to be particularly noble, we also put a so-called angstrom tube on our heads. Just imagine what an ancient Greek would make of a face if he could stand up and meet a person who has his two legs in tubes inside and also has a tall Angström tube up there, and what's more, it's black! The Greek would not think that this is a human, but that he would have an incredible ghost in front of him! You just have to imagine that. And it even comes to such things that, in a completely abstract way, people still cut off such rags from the coat, which is already ugly enough; then they call it a tailcoat. Yes, that is something that shows much more than anything how thoughtless humanity has actually become. Just because one is accustomed to it and because, as I said, one is regarded as a half-fool or a complete fool if one does not go along with things, one goes along with them. But one must be aware that the whole way men dress today is actually somewhat reminiscent of an insane asylum, especially when it is supposed to be quite normal. This just goes to show that little by little one has become completely divorced from any reality,

Women, of whom many men believed that they are less civilized than men, have remained somewhat closer to the original way of dressing. Today, however, there is also a tendency to make women's clothing more like men's, but it has not yet been fully successful.

What does decorating actually mean? To shape oneself outwardly in such a way that one thereby gives expression to what man is spiritually! In this respect, in order to understand how everything related to clothing comes about in more primitive peoples, one must realize that in primitive peoples people do not consider themselves to be as independent as people today consider themselves to be independent. Today, every person considers himself, and with a certain right, to be an independent personality. Well, he says to himself: I have my own mind, through which I think out everything I can do. - If he is particularly conceited, he considers himself a reformer, and so today we have almost as many reformers as people in the world. So today, people consider themselves to be something absolutely independent. Now, that was not the case at all with earlier people and tribes. These tribes considered themselves a unit in their group and regarded a spiritual being as their group soul; they regarded themselves as belonging together like the members of a body and regarded the group soul as that which held them together. In this group-like way, they imagined themselves to have a very specific form. Then they expressed this in their clothing. So, for example, if they thought of the group soul in Greece as having a kind of helmet-like extension on its head, they would put on a helmet. And the helmet was not created out of a need for protection, but because they believed that it would make them more similar to the group soul.

Likewise, some group souls have been thought of as eagles, vultures, other animals, owls, and so on. They then arranged their clothing accordingly, so that it was adorned in some way with feathers and the like, in order to become similar to the group soul. And so clothing has mostly arisen out of spiritual needs.

In the case of primitive peoples and tribes, something emerges through clothing about how they have imagined their group soul. And if you find an original tribe and ask: How did they dress, especially how did they adorn themselves? Did they adorn themselves with feathers or with fur? then you can say: If you find a tribe that adorns itself mainly with feathers, then you know that the common group soul, which was in a sense their protective spirit, was imagined to be bird-like. If you find that a people adorns itself mainly with animal skins, then you can be sure that the group soul, which was in a sense their protective spirit, was imagined by them as either a lion-like or a tiger-like creature. So you can also see something in this for the design of the original clothing, if you ask yourself: How did these people imagine their group soul? And Mr. Burle was quite right when he said: One loves flowing clothing, the other tight-fitting. — Flowing clothing developed from the fact that they wanted to make themselves some kind of bird's dress, wanted to make dresses with wings; they liked it when the thing was wing-like. And it even had a great influence on people's skill when they acquired such flowing clothes. And when they turned, they also made pleasing movements with their arms. This made them skillful and so on. One can say: Adorning is the will to express the spiritual in temporal garments. And mere protection, which of course is not to be criticized, is the expression of the philistine in man. The more one wants to arrange clothing merely to protect oneself, the more one is a philistine. The more one wants to adorn oneself, the less one is a philistine and actually wants to express in clothing the spiritual that lies in human dignity.

It is natural that later in civilization these things have shifted completely. For example, one must be clear about the following. Imagine that such earlier peoples come to the conclusion that the sun has a special influence on the human heart, on the human breast in general, and they say to themselves: I am only a hearty person if the sun has the right influence. Not externally on the skin, where I would become quite hairy, but internally processed, the sun's rays act on the heart. The heart is rightly associated with the effect of the sun. What do people do who still know something about this connection with the sun? Yes, you see, they tie a kind of medallion around their necks, a medal that represents the sun. And so they have something hanging down around their necks that represents the sun (see drawing). These peoples go around with it, saying, as it were: I acknowledge that the sun has an influence on my heart.

Later, of course, this was forgotten. The civilized people have forgotten that originally it was a sign that the sun had an influence on the heart. But what once made sense has become habit, really become habit. And out of habit, people then adopt something like that, no longer have any concept of why it was originally created. These habits develop first; later, the states or governments take possession of such habits, they occupy them. Most of the so-called progress of states and governments consists in taking possession of what has become a habit. Someone finds — it can only ever be one person — let us say a cure. That comes from his mind. The government sets about claiming this remedy for itself and says: Only if I allow it, may it be sold here and there. — So in the end it comes from the government.

The same thing happened with the sun medallion. People originally made it out of their own knowledge, and later they made and wore it out of old habit; and then the governments said: No, you are not allowed to do that voluntarily, but we must first give permission for you to make and wear it. - And so the medals were created! And so the governments decorated their relatives with the medals. Of course, the order no longer has the slightest meaning. But those who scold the medals should also know that they originally had their good sense and that they emerged from something that made sense.

You see, that's what happened to many original garments. The ancient Romans and Greeks still knew that when they go around showing their naked bodies, it is not the whole human being, but there is a supersensible body. They imitated this supersensible body in their toga, and so they formed the toga. In this way, the Romans wanted to recreate the supersensible body. The toga is nothing other than the astral body. And in the artful folds of the toga, the powers of the astral body came to light. And in more recent times, because they no longer knew anything about the real spiritual human being, they knew of nothing better to do than to take the old garments and, in order to make them new, to cut off some piece here, there, or everywhere cut, first making the one that went down close to the ground shorter, and then making it so that it could be slipped on, and gradually transforming it into the modern man's skirt. The modern man's skirt is nothing more than the redesigned toga, only it is no longer recognizable.

Take the belt, for example. Yes, the belt came about because man knows: I am divided in the middle, unlike any animal. No animal has a diaphragm like the one humans have. For no animal does this division in the middle have such significance as it does for humans. Just compare the two. Today, people forget this in the most incredible ways. For example, the length of a human being is often compared with the length of an animal in order to find out something, such as how much food an animal needs and how much a human being needs. But just think about it: there is an animal, and there is a human being. Now someone measures the length of the animal and measures the length of the human being. Yes, gentlemen, can you compare the two things? That is nonsense. What you measure in the animal is only that in humans; so you can only compare it with the animal world if you measure the length of the human being from the crown of the head to here, the loin measurement. Or if you want to compare the human being with the animal, you can compare it with what the two hind limbs are in the animal. It is really the case that thoughtlessness sometimes goes terribly far.

Now, when primitive peoples realized the significance of the fact that man has a division in the middle, they indicated this with the belt. So that a human characteristic has also been indicated by the belt.

And you see, when a person is properly recognized, it is known, for example, that a special power even for thinking lies in the knee bend. And that is why the knee-bend - which we can no longer particularly adorn today because we have our trouser tubes over it - was adorned. From this something like the English Order of the Garter arose, in the way I have described. All these things have developed out of a real observation, not out of such terribly abstract, theoretical thinking as we have today.

And, you see, modern clothing has lost all its colors too. Yes, why has it lost its colors? Because the sense of the supersensible is expressed best through color. And the more a person enjoys color, the more inclined they are to somehow grasp the supersensible. But our time loves gray on gray, preferably undyed colors. The reason for this can be hinted at by the saying: 'All cats are gray at night' — because modern man no longer sees into the light at all, I mean into the spiritual light. Everything has become gray for him. He expresses this best in his clothing. He no longer knows which color to adorn himself with, so he adorns himself with no color at all. It has been completely forgotten that everything to do with clothing is connected with what was still known in ancient times, what was known by supersensible man. Now the general civilization has become grey. But for certain purposes in life the original colorfulness has remained, without anyone knowing where it actually came from.

The uniforms worn by our military in the modern state originated at a time when people had to rely more and more on defense. And all the individual parts of military clothing can be examined to see if they are somehow related to means of defense or attack; and basically, it can be said that all military clothing is actually outdated today and cannot be understood anymore. You see, the modern private's tunic is understood because it developed from the Roman toga. The military tunic is only understood if it is explained not from the Roman toga, from this drapery, which has been distorted into caricature, but if it is explained from the knighthood of the Middle Ages, where the whole was a kind of armor. There the armor was redesigned.

The flag was also mentioned (in the question). You see, the flag has the following background: originally, the so-called heraldic animal was on the flag – it didn't have to be an animal – but what was the heraldic animal? It was precisely the group soul, this soul that held the people together. And when they were together in groups, they wanted to have this soul before them in the picture. That is why they made the flag out of it. The flag is proof that the common thoughts that people have are summarized in this flag.

So it is particularly important to be clear about this: ancient painters were actually much more real in their painting than today's painters. Today, one usually paints so-called easel pictures, that is, one paints pictures that are then put into frames and hung somewhere, because one has been accustomed to it. Basically, there is no sense in this. For why should one hang a picture on a wall? One must ask. In ancient times it was like this: there were altars; there one painted the picture on the altars that one should remember when standing before the altar. There were churches where one walked around. One painted on the wall that which should come to mind in succession when one walked around. There it had a meaning, a relationship to what was going on inside in people.

And, let's say, in old knight castles --- well, what was knighthood based on? Chivalry was based on the fact that the people who belonged to it always looked up to their so-called ancestors. The ancestors were much more important than one was. If you had a large number of ancestors, you were worth more. Well, that's where the ancestor pictures were hung. So that made sense again.

But when that meaning was lost, that was when landscape painting first came about. And landscape painting – having a landscape on the wall, yes, you can have a thing for that. I don't want to be horrible about this and criticize all landscape painting, but after all, a painted landscape can never be the same as going out into the countryside! And so, basically, landscape painting only came about at a time when people no longer had a real sense of nature.

If you look at pictures from a few centuries ago – yes, even at those by Raphael or Leonardo – you will see that what is painted are the people, and the landscape, only hinted at, is actually done childishly, because people agreed that the landscape should be viewed outside in nature. But in the human being, one can express different things; the human being is not just nature, one can express different things there! And so Raphael was able to express a lot in Mary. You may know the picture that hangs in Dresden: Mary with the child Jesus on her left arm, clouds above; then below are two figures: Saint Sixtus and Saint Barbara, this picture that is called the “Sistine Madonna”. Yes, gentlemen, Raphael did not paint this picture to be hung on a wall, but he painted Mary with the baby Jesus so that a banner could be made to carry in processions. Now there are these processions where you go out into the field to the altar. They always had a banner that was carried in front. They stopped at the altar, where the people then knelt. Then someone later added those who knelt, St. Sixtus and St. Barbara. They don't even belong in the picture, and they are terrible in comparison to what Raphael himself painted at the time. But people don't notice that. Many admire the rather repulsive figure of Barbara in this picture just as much as they admire what Mary and the Christ Child themselves are!

All these are things that show you: one has also strayed from what still had meaning in painting. Why was this picture painted by Raphael for a church banner? The reason was so that people should have this common thought when they were in their procession, which corresponded to the purpose for which flags were made in the first place.

Well, then the desire arises to still associate a certain meaning with that which has been preserved from the old days, when things really had a meaning. Today you can go to areas, for example to Finland, where you will again encounter people in traditional clothing. Those who particularly want to be national wear the old clothing that was forgotten and is being rediscovered.

But all these people no longer live in the time when ancient instincts were present, when clothing was associated with meaning. Today, we would have to find clothing from what is in the spiritual life today, just as these ancient peoples found clothing from their meaning, from what they considered to be right in the world and humanity. But today, people no longer have this ability because they know nothing of the real, that is, of the spiritual human being. And so it has come about that today we have garments that are actually quite meaningless and that are based only on the fact that one drives meaninglessness to excess.

Originally, people wore belts. The belt emphasized that there was something special here in the human body. The belt was there to express this. Later, people saw the belt and saw that the human body was divided up; now they themselves made this division with the belt. Instead of the belt expressing something, in women's clothing it often led to women's clothing being made in such a way that it expresses nothing, but here only the liver and stomach and all sorts of things are squeezed together. You can say that a large part of what has emerged in the materialistic age has actually emerged out of senselessness, out of real senselessness. Even things that we today must consider nonsense had a certain significance for primitive peoples. Take, for example, the peculiarity of wild peoples not to clothe themselves by putting on garments, but to clothe themselves in a different way. No, the garment is actually that which adorns, which adds something to what the person is. The significance of clothing is actually suggestion, revelation. Thus, the invisible is to be revealed through clothing. So, you don't need fabric to dress, the wild tribes thought – they still think so today, and others think so too – but you can also dress by making all kinds of drawings on the body itself. They adorn themselves with so-called tattoos. People make all kinds of marks on their bodies.

Yes, gentlemen, these signs that people make on their bodies originally had a very great significance. Suppose, for example, a person carves a heart on his body. Now, if he walks around during the day, it has no great significance in the waking state. But when he sleeps, then what he has carved into his skin makes a very meaningful impression on his sleeping soul, and then it becomes a thought in his sleeping soul, which he naturally forgets again in the morning when he comes to consciousness. But this tattooing originally arose from the intention of having an effect on the person even in their sleep. Later on, however, it lost its significance even among savage tribes, at least to the extent that people only do it out of habit, continue it out of habit, but it has just lost its significance.

Now, you have to take all these things into consideration. Then you will see that clothing arose partly out of the need for protection, but for the most part, the greater part, it arose out of the need to adorn oneself. And adorning oneself is connected with making the supersensible visible on the outside. And then, precisely with regard to clothing, people came to know nothing else but that the human being wears it. And so the national costumes came into being. Of course, a tribe that is more obliged to protect itself will have close-fitting clothes, thick clothes, the whole body more or less laden with clothes, or at least those parts that are more exposed to the cold. A person in a milder climate will develop the adornment much more, will have thinner clothes, flowing clothes and so on. So it will depend somewhat on the whole environment, on the climate, how man protects himself in part, adorns himself in part. Then people forget this. When the migrations of nations then come about, it can happen that a nation from the area where the clothing was suitable for the area moves into another area where it is no longer understood why the clothing should be suitable for these nations; but they have just kept it out of habit. And in this way it is often very difficult today to find out from the immediate surroundings why these people have precisely this clothing. You can see then, can't you, people just stop thinking. They are like the polar bear that gets its white coat because it stands out a little against the northern snow and it then means protection for him against all kinds of persecution and so on – yes, if he were to wear it in a warm climate, it just wouldn't be protective, would it!

So it is in general: Man retains what he is used to without being fully aware of the reason for it. That is why it is not so easy today to answer the question of why one or the other tribe dresses in a certain way, just by looking at how people dress. As I said, you have to go back to earlier times.

For example, you will find that the Magyar costume of the Hungarians is quite special. The Hungarians wear somewhat high boots with tight tubes, tight-fitting leggings that are tucked into the tubes, and a tight-fitting skirt. It is all modernized, has lost its original meaning, but it points to what the Hungarian language also points to; namely, it mostly has hunting expressions in what is original! It is very strange: if you come to Pest and go, for example, across a street, you will find something like an inscription like: Kave Häz. That is nothing more than coffee house! Of course, this is not Hungarian or Magyar, but a bit changed from German. Kave Häz is what they say; so you do not realize that it is actually a German word. But if you ignore the numerous words that come from Latin or German in the Magyar, then you come to the conclusion that these are mostly hunter expressions, and you come to the conclusion that the Magyars are originally a hunting people. And if you look at their clothing, it is the one that was originally the most comfortable for hunters. But then it was modernized and changed. You can still understand that at least. But when you look at today's clothing, you can't understand much anymore.

Well, Mr. Burle, did some of what I said

Mr. Burle: Pretty much!

Well, then we will continue the lectures next Saturday. Perhaps one or the other of you will think of something else you would like to ask.

Good morning, gentlemen! Do you have anything special in mind today?

Mr. Müller: Yes, a small request. The other day, the doctor talked about arsenic and about fat children. Years ago, I always saw fat children at the fair. I noticed afterwards that the children shown at the fair were no older than eight, twelve or sixteen years old. The children who were artificially raised for this purpose sometimes came from Hungary. And after what the doctor said about how easily arsenic can be found in the rocks there, I would like to ask how old such children can become, who were artificially raised with arsenic to make them fat? Would it not be possible to take legal action against

people who raise children with arsenic, and to have the law forbid it? Or is it only used in secret as a commercial source?

The doctor mentioned that people who stopped at a certain stage came down again with arsenic. This was not the case with these children; they were children who weighed almost two hundred kilograms, even though they were only about sixteen years old. Are these children not heading for a bad period after all?

Then the doctor talked about alcohol, how we also produce alcohol in our bodies, and about the different effects of alcohol. One person is terribly upset, making a fuss and so on, and the other is completely calm. It affects the next person's eyes, as it does mine. After one, two, three drinks, I have hard grains in my eyes the next morning that you can hardly crush with your fingers, as the effect of alcohol.

Then the doctor said that you could, to a certain extent, tell all of a person's illnesses by looking at their eyes. Now there are also various people who, if they only see the urine, think that they want to recognize all illnesses. They have one like that in Basel too; I wonder if that's right? I can't believe it.

Then I would like to ask whether there is anything to it when people somewhere get a medicine and they have a firm belief in it, whether that contributes to the healing?

Then I would like to talk about the penultimate statement by Dr. Steiner about fresh water. There is a pond near Darmstadt where the chemical industry is constantly discharging hot water – it even steams – and there are thousands and thousands of goldfish in this pond, and they are all completely dark red. How come? They are completely dark red.

Dr. Steiner: So the first concerns the obese children. The matter is as you rightly suspected, that these children, who are simply shown in all sorts of fairground booths as special curiosities, are artificially fattened by arsenic or similar substances (not true, many substances are similar to arsenic). They are, after all, as one could easily check, not particularly strong, but they are actually just fat, thick.

Now you see, this is something much more complicated than what I told you the other day about the consumption of arsenic by adults. What I said then applies only to adults. The adult comes into the conditions I spoke of then through the influence of arsenic. In the case of these children, however, in whom a kind of crime is actually being committed – that cannot be denied – the effect of arsenic or similar substances is based on something else. These children have to be treated in this criminal way at roughly the age that I have always indicated to you as an important stage in life: the age between changing teeth, that is, the seventh or eighth year, and sexual maturity, that is, the fourteenth or fifteenth year. And, isn't it true, at this age the child is not just sent to school, to the ordinary elementary school, because that is where he can best learn through human development, but at this age something completely different is taking place.

Do you remember, gentlemen, I told you that man does not only consist of this physical body that you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands, but that man also consists of supersensible, soul and spiritual elements. Now there is a fine body of man, which I have called the etheric body of man. In human development, one must look at this etheric body just as one looks at the physical body. If I am to draw it schematically for you, we have the human being (see drawing) according to his physical body; but around this physical body and also within it is this fine body, the etheric body. And further, in addition to this physical body and etheric body (of which the etheric body cannot be seen with the naked eye), we have the astral body in humans, which is able to feel. Plants also have an etheric body, which enables them to grow; this comes from the etheric body. Humans and animals have an astral body; they can sense and feel. Plants cannot do this. I told you that some people believe that plants can feel; they just can't!

You see, gentlemen, for every substance that has an effect on a person, you have to ask yourself: on which of these limbs does the substance in question act? Now arsenic has a particularly strong effect on the astral body and on breathing. Breathing is precisely dependent on the astral body. So when you give someone arsenic, all the consequences that arise from arsenic come about indirectly through the astral body.

When a person goes through the first years of their life, from birth, let's say until the change of teeth in the seventh or eighth year of life, the physical human body develops primarily. You can see how this physical human body develops. Look at a very young child who has just been born; you won't be able to tell whether it looks like the father or the mother. When a child is born, the aunts and uncles come, don't they? One says: Oh, it looks just like its mother — especially the feet! — the other comes and says: But it looks just like its father! — It is just like that: the little child is still undecidedly developed in relation to its physical body, and only later can you see who it will resemble. Just consider a child's nose, for example, which is such an expressive organ. A small child's nose can look quite different from what it will become later. For some children, it comes later, of course, but as a rule, by the time the teeth change, the nose, which is the last to develop into its proper shape and form, is already in its proper shape and form.

Later, after the seventh or eighth year, the physical body only grows larger and stronger in the muscles, but its actual form and shape is already established by the age of seven. So it is that between the ages of one and seven, the physical body in particular expresses itself. And between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, between the ages of seven or eight and fourteen or fifteen, the etheric body, in which the forces of nutrition and growth are found, develops primarily. And the astral body only develops between the fourteenth, fifteenth and twentieth, twenty-first years. Only then does the astral body really develop. Not that it was not there before – the human being has it from birth – but the actual formation of the astral body only occurs after the fourteenth, fifteenth year.

If an adult who has passed the fourteenth or fifteenth year is given arsenic, then they have developed their astral body. Arsenic still works in him, but the organism can still defend itself against it to some extent. However, if a child between the ages of seven and fifteen takes arsenic, the astral body is not yet formed, and arsenic takes full effect on the child. There is no counteraction at all in the human organism. And the consequence of this is that the effect of arsenic, which mainly causes the fat masses to accumulate in the human body, causing everything to become fat, causes everything to become spherical, to become wider between the seventh and fourteenth, fifteenth year.

You must bear in mind that the things I am telling you are of tremendous importance for life! Isn't it true that each of you can say: Well, you are telling us that arsenic, when given to a child between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen, has a great significance, makes the child fat, round; but I know people who, even without being given extra arsenic, became terribly fat from childhood on! Yes, gentlemen, you must only consider that the substances that exist in nature are present everywhere, at least in small quantities. And it can be said that a person cannot nourish himself at all, or a child cannot nourish himself either, without taking something that contains arsenic. Arsenic is also found in food.

Now you know that children have different tastes, different appetites; one child likes this, the other that. And now there are children who particularly love those foods that contain arsenic. In later life, it also happens that you get fat from what you like. If you eat stuff that you don't like, you'll get spindly. If you eat stuff that you like and also have time to indulge in, you will become stout and fat. However, this is especially the case with children; and it is especially the case with children between the ages of seven and fourteen or fifteen. So if children have such a taste for food that contains arsenic, they will become stout and fat. But in the case of those children who are exhibited in fairground booths, at trade fairs and the like – as the questioner has mentioned – the arsenic is artificially introduced, just as it is in the Alpine countries, and in Hungary, where arsenic is found in the rocks of the mountains. So these children are taught about arsenic, and the main thing is that the child acquires a taste for arsenic at precisely this age. It is horrible, but it is true: the child gradually begins to crave this arsenic as if it were sugar, and consumes it, and as a result, before the astral body is properly formed, the child becomes fat and plump. Such children can be shown because they are abnormal and gain an awful lot of weight. And then people think it is something strange. People always want to see something unusual, and what is not done to please people! There are many other things that are intended to please people. For example, there is something else that can be done with boys at the same age!

You know, at this age of sexual maturity, around the age of fourteen or fifteen, the human voice also changes. This shows that sexual maturity is connected to the human voice. In boys, it changes; in girls, it transitions more to the development of the breasts and so on. But in boys, the voice changes. Now there is the nonsense – and it was practiced in Rome with great skill – that in order to keep the voice boyish, to get a really high voice, they castrate the boys, that is, they cut out their sexual organs. This is how you get the famous choirboys with their incredibly high voices. Now, you see, that is even greater nonsense. But it is done under the guise of holiness. I don't know if you know him or not? Isn't it true that these things also exist, and one must be quite clear about the fact that there has been something like this in the world, and that people will do anything to exploit even human nature for show.

If we now consider the consequences of something like this, it is indeed the case that if a person has been taught this arsenic at a young age and then, after he has grown thick and fat, he is supposed to develop his astral body, it is now much too small for the thick body! It is much too small and weak. And the consequence of this is that when the astral body is supposed to begin to develop with sexual maturity, this astral body is indeed much too small and weak for the thick, fat body. And such children, who have been fed with arsenic in this way and dragged around to sideshows, then have an astral body that is too small. And the consequence of this is that certain organs cannot develop at all. The organs then become flabby, quite flabby. And in particular the lungs become flabby in such children. This is sometimes a terrible pity, because these children reach a state where they are actually no longer able to breathe by the age of twenty, or even earlier. This is not only because the lungs become clogged with fat, but also because the lungs become flabby and lose their strength. And then the time comes when something very special happens to the lungs. You see, gentlemen, the lungs are not just a respiratory organ, the lungs are also an important organ for nutrition, and the lungs must be properly nourished if a person is to live in the right way. Most lung diseases are not even based on the fact that breathing is not healthy, but rather they are based on the fact that the lungs are not properly nourished.

Now, in these children, from the age of seventeen or eighteen onwards, the lungs are no longer properly nourished at all, because the fatty degeneration of all organs prevents the nutrients from reaching the lungs at all. They reach the lungs last, so to speak, even though it is the lungs that need nourishing. As I have already explained, the nutrients undergo all kinds of transformations in the human body. They undergo six to seven transformations. And the lungs need these seven times transformed nutrients, the noblest things. But with these children it no longer comes to this transformation. Therefore, such children die at least in their early twenties. And one can definitely say that such children, who are exhibited in this way, must die at an age in their early twenties. They either die of exhaustion or they get lung disease. They usually die of lung disease. This is related to what you said about the fact that you no longer see such people later because they die earlier.

Of course, it is difficult to take legal action against such things. People should ensure that it stops, and in general they should do more to contribute to a proper social life than just shout for the law. It is not right to just shout for the law. But I am also convinced that very few people know what I have just told you, for example. Very few people know how much more harmful arsenic is at the age at which it is administered to these children than, for example, at a later age. And I still believe that if people are educated about these things, things will improve even without laws, without coercion, without the threat of a truncheon. But how can things get better if you can't educate people!

You say: Well, we have learned little, we cannot know that; the university professors will know. Yes, but they don't know either. They just don't know. And that is why such things are not spread. And it is important that such things are really understood in the widest circles. Such things must be known at all costs.

Now, something similar, but yet again quite different, is the case with alcohol. We have already spoken about alcohol. But, in the case of arsenic poisoning, which consists of fatty degeneration, it is of course the case that children are taught it by others, and when an adult teaches themselves arsenic, they actually do so consciously. And it has to be said: education would have an enormous effect here. For example, one could say that someone who simply teaches himself about arsenic out of vanity, as I have told you, could be educated; he would probably refrain from doing so if he knew the consequences very well. With alcohol, on the other hand, the problem is that education is not particularly useful if it does not lead to a person not drinking alcohol at all. Because when he starts drinking one or two glasses, he reaches a state where education loses its effectiveness, and then he continues drinking. That is why it is so extraordinarily difficult with alcohol to achieve much through education. It should also be effective through education, and the fact that so much is resorted to by law is actually a sad fact for the strength of humanity. There are already countries today – just think of North America – where bans on alcohol imports are being enacted so that people will remain reasonable. Yes, if it comes to that with humanity, that humanity will only remain reasonable, will remain useful at all, if every single thing is prescribed by law, then humanity on earth is actually no longer worth much.

It is like this with alcohol: I have already told you that man produces alcohol in his body. This is because man needs alcohol for his preservation. And you can be sure, gentlemen, that you will never get drunk on the alcohol you produce in yourselves! It has just the right amount that you need to preserve the food in you, to permanently maintain everything that man needs permanently. You can imagine, can't you, what you need alcohol for that you produce yourself. You will also have seen here or there that if you want to preserve a dead animal or some human limb, you cannot put it in the air, but you put it in spirit, in alcohol. So alcohol preserves the dead living thing in its form. This is a very important law of nature. If you leave the dead living thing to ordinary nature, what happens to it? The human body perishes the moment it is left to the earth, it is dissolved. And so it is with all living things. The moment the etheric body is out of the living being, the living being is destroyed; only not if a substance like alcohol is used. Alcohol therefore has the power to hold together the other forces that hold a living limb together.

From this you can see that alcohol is not of this earth. Yes, but you can also see from something else that alcohol is not really of this earth at all. The human body and the animal body and the plant body are destroyed by what is of this earth; but alcohol, as they say, preserves them, keeps them, protects them from destruction.

But how is alcohol produced? Well, you just have to look at the vine. Alcohol is produced precisely where the sun can best shine on the vine. And you know that no wines thrive in northern Germany because it is already too cold there, because the sun no longer has the appropriate strength there. If you draw a line parallel to the equator at Grünberg in Silesia, very few people get drunk on the Grünberger, because it is as dry as it can possibly be! Only where the sun's power reaches the plants can wine be created. So wine is produced not by the earthly, but precisely by the extraterrestrial, the solar, by that which is outside the earth. Man must be very careful indeed when he takes into himself that which is outside the earth.

How does it come about when a person produces alcohol in himself? This comes about in the following way, and I will tell you something that will probably be of particular interest to you, but you have to pay a little attention to understand it. Do you see where there is solar power, gentlemen? Yes, solar power is everywhere where the sun shines. But solar power is not only where the sun shines; it can also be there in another way. Let's make it quite clear: on a really hot summer's day, I put the chair out there in the burning sun, leave it out there for a few hours, and then I invite you to sit on the chair. You sit on it. Gosh, you think, it's gotten warm! Well, it's not that the sun is shining on the relevant organ and warming you. If you had stood in the corresponding position for so long, it would have become as warm for you at the corresponding organ as it has become for the chair; then you would have experienced it on your own body. But that is not the case; the chair has become warm. So you see, there is a very ordinary inanimate body that has absorbed the warmth of the sun and then gives it off to you.

With coal, it is much more complicated. Thousands and thousands of years ago, the coal was a palm tree or some other tree. How did it become that? Well, there was the earth (see drawing), there was the palm tree or a palm-like tree, which was illuminated by the sun. Afterwards it perished and went into the earth. But just as the warmth of the sun remains in the chair, so the warmth of the sun remains in the palm tree, going down into the earth.

The palm tree carbonizes; the heat of the sun remains inside. And after millennia, you dig the coal out of the earth, put it in your oven, and the heat of the sun comes back to you. Today you heat with the heat of the sun that shone on the earth thousands of years ago. You often don't think about that. When you sit on a chair and it warms your backside, you are still aware of the fact that the sun has left behind some of its energy. With coal, you no longer notice it. So you have to say: wherever there is coal in the earth, there is very old solar energy. Very old solar energy is present everywhere in the coal deposits.

Yes, gentlemen, you eat plants. You take the plants into yourself. Your own organism works faster than the earth; there, coal endowed with life is transformed very quickly from the plants, and you actually get carbonic acid with a high carbon content in your own body. This carbonic acid that you have inside you, it just doesn't carbonize like the hard coal in the earth, but remains carbonic acid. Now, in carbonic acid, you have carbon, which you carry within you, and oxygen, which comes from the air and also from food. It is called carbon and oxygen. But in the human body you also have hydrogen in it, for example, when you drink water. This hydrogen combines with the carbon and the oxygen. And you only have to think of what is in the human body and what, under certain conditions, starts to get smelly. You only need to think of what is in the animal body as eggs - we talked about it recently - that gets smelly. That is the nitrogen. Only it does not stink in the air because it is connected with other substances in the appropriate way.

Now, you see, gentlemen, you go around, need oxygen, carbon, nitrogen for your life, and form alcohol inside your organism. Alcohol is formed in the human organism so that we do not always disintegrate internally. The body would dissolve, as it does as a corpse, if alcohol and alcohol-like substances were not developed. That is natural. But now we must ask: on which of these bodies does alcohol actually have an effect? You see, alcohol has an extremely beneficial effect on the physical body at first, if it is drunk in moderation, because then, if a person produces too little alcohol himself, he can take a good preservative with him in the alcohol, and alcohol does not actually harm the physical body at all. Alcohol does not have a particularly bad effect on the physical body. If alcohol were to harm the physical body – people do not consider this enough – then the vine would be in a bad way, because the vine also has a physical body. The vine is now completely drunk – it is, because it has nothing but alcohol in it – but its physical body does not suffer at all. Well, but the etheric body does not suffer from alcohol either. It is only the astral body that suffers from alcohol in adults. In the case of children, it is so harmful, as I will mention in a moment, because something else happens. But in adults, alcohol in turn affects the astral body, just like arsenic, and in particular the I itself. And the I lives in the blood circulation. So that alcohol has an extremely strong effect on the blood circulation.

It is especially bad for children because alcohol already contains an astral body. Plants have only an etheric body, but the alcohol in the grapevine already has an astral body. It has the same effect as what is seething in the blood. Can't you understand that? Yes, you can understand that: it has the same effect as what is seething in the blood. And that is why a child who drinks alcohol early on actually acquires an astral body, which it is not supposed to have fully developed until the age of fourteen or fifteen; and it does not have it under its control. This is why alcohol is particularly harmful for a child, because the child immediately acquires an astral body under the influence of alcohol.

From this you can see that alcohol actually has a real effect on the soul and spirit of a person. That is where it works. There it destroys breathing and blood circulation, which of course emanate from the soul and spirit. That is where alcohol has an effect.

Now you don't have to imagine it as if the head were an organ in itself and the chest were an organ in itself, but although the human being is tripartite, everything goes into each other again. Not only the lower part of the human body needs to be nourished, but the head of the human being needs to be nourished in a very special way. And if a person drinks alcohol and has such an abdomen that the alcohol is processed particularly well in the abdomen, let's say a person is one who can tolerate two or three glasses of alcohol quite well. I don't know if Mr. Müller wanted to say that about himself? But you can probably tolerate a small amount of alcohol quite well?

Mr. Müller denies this by saying that the first glass of beer made his eyes water the next morning.

So then it is actually the opposite for you; you can't actually tolerate any alcohol at all?

Confirmed by Mr. Müller.

Well, then you are an example of those who do not tolerate alcohol very well. Now, if someone does not tolerate alcohol well, does not actually digest alcohol very well, then the alcohol comes undigested into the head, then also affects the eyes and causes the mucus masses to push up into the head. In the same way that a good alcohol drinker's blood starts to boil, the mucous masses start to boil in the person who can't tolerate it well, and they solidify on the outside, becoming grainy. These are mucous masses that have become dense. This is how it can be for someone who can't really tolerate alcohol, even with the first glass. But let us assume that someone can tolerate it well. Then it also happens that the matter goes into the head, but then it goes into the blood; and then not these granules come, but then the whole blood circulation of the head is stimulated, and the whole blood circulation of the head secretes substances that are harmful. Then comes the general daze, the general hangover, and the person just comes to the state where he just keeps drinking. So that's the one where you can distinguish the effect of alcohol on one person or another.

One might be tempted to say that these distinctions should not be necessary, because in all circumstances, when an especially abnormal effect of alcohol occurs, one should actually drink less alcohol. It is not good to have any effect of alcohol at all and then continue drinking.

But as I said, alcohol affects the astral body and the ego today. The ego feels stimulated. People like the taste of alcohol, and that is why they feel that alcohol gives them something that elevates them above the earthly. This feeling is actually very interesting, because I had to tell you: alcohol does not come from the earthly, but from the non-earthly. That is why a person feels elevated above the earthly. Alcohol breaks down worry, doesn't it. So a person actually comes out of himself a little through alcohol, and it does the person an extraordinary amount of good when he comes out of himself a little. And that is what now also leads to alcohol-related mischief in the broadest sense.

Now there is still one question that we have to deal with. It is this: Mr. Müller said that near Darmstadt, if I understood you correctly, there is a pond and that warm industrial wastewater runs through it? From what I have already said, you can see what it is about. The time before last I already tried to make it clear to you that when I say that the fish in the sea do not have the direct sun, you must of course not believe that these fish have no solar effect at all; but just as the coal still has the solar effect in the earth after thousands and thousands of years, so the water still has the solar effect in it. And there, it must be said, the fish must be organized differently than the animals that live on land. Now, you can see that the fish are organized differently. If the fish had lungs like the other animals and humans, they could not live in the water, of course. You know that the higher animals and humans, if they live in water all the time, will simply drown. So they cannot live in it. Fish can live in it because they have gills instead of lungs; this enables them to absorb the air that is in the water and which still contains the solar forces.

Now you know how to breed goldfish. You can't breed goldfish in ordinary water, you simply won't get any goldfish. In the shade, you can at most reproduce goldfish, but not breed them. In the shade, you can only reproduce the offspring of the old goldfish, but not raise them. The children of the old goldfish take on their vivid color if you want to raise them without sun; but you will notice that if you keep the goldfish in sunless water, they will turn completely pale after three to four months. The goldfish get their vibrant color when they get direct sun in the water. That makes a difference. It is not the same if I have a pond or even just a small basin here, and the sun shines into it (see drawing), as it is for the fish in the same place as in a different place: in this case, it has to use old solar forces that have been in the water for longer; here it gets new solar forces that have been in the water for a shorter time.

Now, at the Darmstadt factory, where the warm water flows into the pond, there is something very special. You will admit that something that has lived under a certain constraint for a long time struggles and develops particularly strongly when it comes to a free life. Just think what it would be like if you had tied a person up for a long time. They cannot move a limb when they are locked up. When they are free again, they enjoy their life and savor it all the more. And now think of the water that flows from the Darmstadt factory into the pond. This water has received its solar effect in a very special way. This Darmstadt factory is initially also powered by coal, it all goes back to the coal. The warmth that is there comes from the coal. The coal has stored solar forces that are thousands and thousands of years old. These solar forces now flow into the pond as warm water. And it is indeed the case that these solar forces, which are released again from the coal after they have been imprisoned in the coal for thousands of years, are particularly effective. So you can't do better than to let these effective solar forces flow into the pond with the warm water. Yes, you could even develop this artificially. You could develop it artificially by pouring warmed water into the basins in which you raise the goldfish. And especially when you let it flow, when the solar forces are set in motion, they have a particularly stimulating effect on the goldfish, giving them the most vibrant color.

You can do the following experiment. Imagine taking a large basin; first, let warm water flow in slowly at the bottom, standing still, and then the usual water over it; and then put goldfish in it. Then take a second basin, let warm water into it, but let a stream of water flow into it all the time, and then see which fish have a more vibrant golden color: not those in the still water, but those that have the constantly flowing warm water, because that keeps the powers alive.

All this works independently in the industrial enterprise, because new warm water is always flowing in. So it is not at all surprising that the goldfish thrive there particularly well. Such are the natural effects. Only if one really understands these things correctly can one discover these natural effects.

You will now ask yourselves: Yes, but what is it actually that works in the sun's rays? — Yes, gentlemen, that is precisely the aether that also works in our own etheric body! What works in the sun's rays is the aether. And just as the aether first stimulates the astral in us, so it is also out there in nature.

The vine itself has an etheric body within it; but through its contact with the warmth of the sun, something astral, something actually extraterrestrial, is formed in the vine, and this works as alcohol. And so one can only come to an understanding of things by taking into account both the human being within and the human being without, in nature.

And now I come to a completely different matter, a small addition that I want to give you at the last moment in relation to Mr. Burle's question about clothing. You see, I have already told you a great deal about clothing, but it is interesting that clothing really did come about through human instinct in such a way that it corresponds to the whole being of the human being, to the whole nature of the human being. The human being already has three parts as a physical human being. He has his head, his chest organs, where breathing and blood circulation are primarily, and thus inner movement, and he has outer movement in the limbs. So, even in his physical body, the human being consists of three parts: the head, the chest system – I always call it the rhythmic system because everything moves in rhythm – and the outer movement of the organs, the outer movement organization.

Now, you see, the etheric body is particularly effective in the head, in the chest, in the blood circulation and in the breathing of the astral body and in the arbitrary movements of the I. If you look at all the clothes, with the exception of the somewhat too simple clothes of wild people - not true, of the very wild ones - you can always see what kind of frippery is made on it, essentially all clothing consists of three pieces, somehow of three pieces. Of course, it is somewhat different everywhere; you just have to bear in mind that in the course of the historical development of mankind it has changed tremendously, frippery has been added, wischiwaschi has been added, but actually every piece of clothing consists of three parts. One part is what originally developed from the apron skin – and the men of ancient Egypt essentially only wore apron skins. What is this clothing for in humans? For the limbs. By covering the feet, man expressed that he can walk with his feet. The power of the feet, the way they move, was to be expressed with the apron skin.

It is interesting that such things are inherited and that Freemasons wear the apron as a special distinction at their meetings. This is an old Egyptian inheritance. Just as people today know why they pin medals on, they know just as little why they put on the apron. The apron is put on as a sign that one is supposed to make a particularly strong impression with one's limbs. And the apron gave rise to everything that in any way concerns the limbs, for example our trousers, although they have been so greatly modified that they tend to hinder rather than promote our gait. So this relates to the limbs. The Egyptians developed the apron fur particularly artificially, making it fit particularly snugly around the limbs; they then stuck their arms into it, and so the apron fur was created, which goes up, gets a bib, sleeves, so that the upper limbs are also enclosed in it.

The second thing, gentlemen, is that man expresses the chest system in clothing. And this chest system is best expressed in everything that is shirt-like and pulled over the head. This was particularly developed by the ancient Assyrians. They developed the shirt-like garment that you slip through at the top and which then goes down smoothly. This is the expression for the chest system, for the inner movement. That is why the folds are made that way. The Greeks then adopted this from Asia and added this artificial fold that was supposed to even imitate the blood vessels in their most important course. It was designed to imitate the most important blood circulation and the flow inside.

The third is the cloak, the cloak that is thrown over. Now, the cloak that is thrown over was originally not only thrown over the shoulders, but also over the head. You can see that in certain parts of the country, where it is still done in the same way. The cloak is thrown over the head so that it also covers the head. In the throwing of the cloak, the idea of everything that comes from the head is expressed; in the throwing of the skin, more the will that lives in the limbs; in the shirt-like garment that we have – not true, there is only a little left in our vest, but in the priestly garment, in the garment of Catholic priests, you can still find it very well developed – that is still present in female clothing, there is the chest garment. And the head clothing is the mantle. Only of course it has undergone changes. Imagine the mantle that is thrown over the shoulders and also over the head, thrown over there (see drawing), it originally covered the head. If it is a red mantle, it is very beautiful. The red color is such that one does not even try to disfigure it. Then the time has come, of which I spoke the last time, when people are no longer attentive to colors. So they also made a black coat or a blue one, and what did they do? They cut off the coat here and made the headgear separately! That's what the hat became. Of course, you can't tell that from it anymore. But I still have to say: when I see a person wearing a tailcoat and a top hat, I always say to myself: Gosh, how you've changed! – because originally the tailcoat and top hat were a coat. Then the coat was cut down, took on its terrible shape from the tailcoat, and the top remained as a top hat to cover the head. You can still see it originally. Just see a top hat with a tailcoat together, and then try to cut the top hat apart at the front so that you can throw the whole thing over your head. So you have to go back to the old clothes to find out what the clothes are made of, although I don't think that Mr. Burle wears so many tailcoats and top hats that he asked why they are worn. (Laughter.) But it does look as if the heads of the people have been cut off when they walk around in tails and top hats. Next Wednesday at nine o'clock in the morning, the continuation.