The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Each one of you will doubtless be aware that the title of this lecture is taken from Goethe's Faust. You all know that in this poem we are shown how Faust, the representative of the highest human effort, enters into a pact with the evil powers, who on their side are represented in the poem by Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell. You will know, too, that Faust is to strike a bargain with Mephistopheles, the deed of which must be signed with his own blood. Faust, in the first instance, looks upon it as a jest. Mephistopheles, however, at this juncture utters the sentence which Goethe without doubt intended should be taken seriously: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

Now, with reference to this line in Goethe's Faust, we come to a curious trait in the so-called Goethe commentators. You are of course aware how vast is the literature dealing with Goethe's version of the Faust Legend. It is a literature of such stupendous dimensions that whole libraries might be stocked with it, and naturally I cannot make it my business to expatiate on the various comments made by these interpreters of Goethe concerning this particular passage. None of the interpretations throw much more light on the sentence than that given by one of the latest commentators, Professor Minor. He, like others, treats it in the light of an ironical remark made by Mephistopheles, and in this connection he makes the following really very curious observation, and one to which I would ask you to give your best attention; for there is little doubt that you will be surprised to hear what strange conclusions commentators on Goethe are capable of drawing.

Professor Minor remarks that “the devil is a foe to the blood”; and he points out that as the blood is that which sustains and preserves life, the devil, who is the enemy of the human race, must therefore also be the enemy of the blood. He then—and quite rightly—draws attention to the fact that even in the oldest versions of the Faust Legend—and indeed, in legends generally—blood always plays the same part.

In an old book on Faust it is circumstantially described to us how Faust makes a slight incision in his left hand with a small penknife, and how then, as he takes the pen to sign his name to the agreement, the blood flowing from the cut forms the words: “Oh man, escape!” All this is authentic enough; but now comes the remark that the devil is a foe to the blood, and that this is the reason for his demanding that the signature be written in blood. I should like to ask you whether you could imagine any person being desirous of possessing the very thing for which he has an antipathy? The only reasonable explanation that can be given—not only as to Goethe's meaning in this passage, but also as to that attaching to the main legend as well as to all the older Faust poems—is that to the devil blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.

We can here suppose nothing else than that the representative of the powers of evil believes nay, is convinced that he will have Faust more especially in his power if he can only gain possession of at least one drop of his blood. This is self-evident, and no one can really understand the line otherwise. Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because the devil is inimical to it, but rather because he desires to gain power over it.

Now, there is a remarkable perception underlying this passage, namely, that he who gains power over a man's blood gains power over the man, and that blood is “a very special fluid” because it is that about which, so to speak, the real fight must be waged, when it comes to a struggle concerning the man between good and evil.

All those things which have come down to us in the legends and myths of various nations, and which touch upon human life, will in our day undergo a peculiar transformation with regard to the whole conception and interpretation of human nature. The age is past in which legends, fairy-tales, and myths were looked upon merely as expressions of the childlike fancy of a people. Indeed, the time has even gone by when, in a half-learned, half-childlike way, it was the fashion to allude to legends as the poetical expression of a nation's soul.

Now, this so-called “poetic soul” of a nation is nothing but the product of learned red tape; for this kind of red-tape exists just as much as the official variety. Anyone who has ever looked into the soul of a people is quite well aware that he is not dealing with imaginative fiction or anything of the kind, but with something very much more profound, and that as a matter of fact the legends and fairy-tales of the various peoples are expressive of wonderful powers and wonderful events.

If from the new standpoint of spiritual investigation we meditate upon the old legends and myths, allowing those grand and powerful pictures which have come down from primeval times to work upon our minds, we shall find, if we have been equipped for our task by the methods of occult science, that these legends and myths are the expressions of a most profound and ancient wisdom.

It is true we may at first be inclined to ask how it comes about that, in a primitive state of development and with primitive ideas, unsophisticated man was able to present the riddles of the universe to himself pictorially in these legends and fairy-tales; and how it is that, when we meditate on them now, we behold in them in pictorial form what the occult investigation of today is revealing to us with greater clearness.

This is a matter which at first is bound to excite surprise. And yet he who probes deeper and deeper into the ways and means by which these fairy-tales and myths have come into being, will find every trace of surprise vanish, every doubt pass away; indeed, he will find in these legends not only what is termed a naive and unsophisticated view of things, but the wondrously deep and wise expression of a primordial and true conception of the world.

Very much more may be learned by thoroughly examining the foundations of these myths and legends, than by absorbing the intellectual and experimental science of the present day. But for work of this kind the student must of course be familiar with those methods of investigation which belong to spiritual science. Now, all that is contained in these legends and ancient world-conceptions about the blood is wont to be of importance, since in those remote times there was a wisdom by means of which man understood the true and wide significance of blood, this “very special fluid” which is itself the flowing life of human beings.

We cannot today enter into the question as to whence came this wisdom of ancient times, although some indication of this will be given at the close of the lecture; the actual study of this subject must, however, stand over to be dealt with in future lectures. The blood itself, its import for man and the part it plays in the progress of human civilization, will today occupy our attention.

We shall consider it neither from the physiological nor from the purely scientific point of view, but shall rather take it from the standpoint of a spiritual conception of the universe. We shall best approach our subject if, to begin with, we understand the meaning of an ancient maxim, one which is intimately connected with the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of Hermes flourished. It is an axiom which forms the fundamental principle of all spiritual science, and which has become known as the Hermetic Axiom; it runs, “As above, so below.”

You will find that there are many dilettante interpretations of this sentence; the explanation, however, which is to occupy us today is the following:—It is plain to spiritual science that the world to which man has primary access by means of his five senses does not represent the entire world, that it is in fact only the expression of a deeper world hidden behind it, namely the spiritual world. Now, this spiritual world is called—according to the Hermetic Axiom—the higher world, the world “above”; and the world of the senses which is displayed around us, the existence of which we know through the medium of our senses, and which we are able to study by means of our intellect, is the lower one, the world “below,” the expression of that higher and spiritual world. Thus the occultist, looking upon this world of the senses, sees in it nothing final, but rather a kind of physiognomy which he recognizes as the expression of a world of soul and spirit; just as, when you gaze upon a human countenance, you must not stop at the form of the face and the gestures, paying attention only to them, but must pass, as a matter of course, from the physiognomy and the gestures to the spiritual element which is expressed in them.

What every person does instinctively when confronted by any being possessed of a soul, is what the occultist, or spiritual scientist, does in respect of the entire world; and “as above, so below” would, when referring to man, be thus explained: “Every impulse animating his soul is expressed in his face.” A hard and coarse countenance expresses coarseness of soul, a smile tells of inward joy, a tear betrays a suffering soul.

I will here apply the Hermetic Axiom to the question: What actually constitutes wisdom? Spiritual science has always maintained that human wisdom has something to do with experience, and that painful experience. He who is actually in the throes of suffering manifests in this suffering something that is an inward lack of harmony. He, however, who has overcome the pain and suffering and bears their fruits within him, will always tell you that through suffering he has gained some measure of wisdom. He says:—“the joys and pleasures of life, all that life can offer me in the way of satisfaction, all these things do I receive gratefully; yet were I far more loath to part with my pain and suffering than with those pleasant gifts of life, for ‘it is to my pain and suffering that I owe my wisdom.’ ”

And so it is that in wisdom occult science has ever recognized what may be called crystallized pain—pain that has been conquered and thus changed into its opposite.

It is interesting to note that the more materialistic modern research has of late arrived at exactly the same conclusion. Quite recently a book has been published on “The Mimicry of Thought,” a book well worth reading. It is not the work of a theosophist, but of a student of nature and of the human soul. The author endeavors to show how the inner life of man, his way of thinking, as it were, impresses itself upon his physiognomy. This student of human nature draws attention to the fact that there is always something in the expression on the face of a thinker which is suggestive of what one may describe as “absorbed pain.”

Thus you see that this principle comes to light again in the more materialistic view of our own day, a brilliant confirmation of that immemorial axiom of spiritual science. You will become more and more deeply sensible of this, and you will find that gradually, point for point, the ancient wisdom will reappear in the science of modern times.

Occult investigation shows decisively that all the things which surround us in this world—the mineral foundation, the vegetable covering, and the animal world—should be regarded as the physiognomical expression, or the “below,” of an “above” or spirit life lying behind them. From the point of view taken by occultism, the things presented to us in the sense world can only be rightly understood if our knowledge includes cognition of the “above,” the spiritual archetype, the original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded. And for this reason we will today apply our minds to a study of that which lies concealed behind the phenomenon of the blood, that which shaped for itself in the blood its physiognomical expression in the world of sense. When once you understand this “spiritual background” of blood, you will be able to realize how the knowledge of such matters is bound to react upon our whole mental outlook on life.

Questions of great importance are pressing upon us these days; questions dealing with the education, not alone of the young, but of entire nations. And, furthermore, we are confronted by the momentous educational question which humanity will have to face in the future, and which cannot fail to be recognized by all who note the great social upheavals of our time, and the claims which are everywhere being advanced, be they the Labor Question, or the Question of Peace. All these things are pre-occupying our anxious minds.

But all such questions are illuminated as soon as we recognize the nature of the spiritual essence which lies at the back of our blood. Who can deny that this question is closely linked to that of race, which at the present time is once more coming markedly to the front? Yet this question of race is one that we can never understand until we understand the mysteries of the blood and of the results accruing from the mingling of the blood of different races. And finally, there is yet one other question, the importance of which is becoming more and more acute as we endeavor to extricate ourselves from the hitherto aimless methods of dealing with it, and seek to approach it in its more comprehensive bearings. This problem is that of colonization, which crops up wherever civilized races come into contact with the uncivilized: namely—To what extent are uncivilized peoples capable of becoming civilized? How can an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? And in what way ought we to deal with them? And here we have to consider not only the feelings due to a vague morality, but we are also confronted by great, serious, and vital problems of the very fact of existence itself.

Those who are not aware of the conditions governing a people—whether it be on the up- or down-grade of its evolution, and whether the one or the other is a matter conditioned by its blood—such people as these will, indeed, be unlikely to hit on the right mode of introducing civilization to an alien race. These are all matters which arise as soon as the Blood Question is touched upon.

What blood in itself is, you presumably all know from the current teachings of natural science, and you will be aware that, with regard to man and the higher animals, this blood is practically fluid life.

You are aware that it is by way of the blood that the “inner man” comes into contact with that which is exterior, and that in the course of this process man's blood absorbs oxygen, which constitutes the very breath of life. Through the absorption of this oxygen the blood undergoes renewal. The blood which is presented to the in-streaming oxygen is a kind of poison to the organism—a kind of destroyer and demolisher—but through the absorption of the oxygen the blue-red blood becomes transmuted by a process of combustion into red, life-giving fluid. This blood that finds its way to all parts of the body, depositing everywhere its particles of nourishment, has the task of directly assimilating the materials of the outer world, and of applying them, by the shortest method possible, to the nourishment of the body. It is necessary for man and the higher animals first to absorb the oxygen from the air into it, and to build up and maintain the body by means of it.

One gifted with a knowledge of souls has not without truth remarked: “The blood with its circulation is like a second being, and in relation to the man of bone, muscle, and nerve, acts like a kind of exterior world.” For, as a matter of fact, the entire human being is continually drawing his sustenance from the blood, and at the same time he discharges into it that for which he has no use. A man's blood is therefore a true double ever bearing him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that he can no longer use. “Man's liquid life” is therefore a good name to have given the blood; for this constantly changing “special fluid” is assuredly as important to man as is cellulose to the lower organisms.

The distinguished scientist, Ernst Haeckel, who has probed deeply into the workings of nature, in several of his popular works has rightly drawn attention to the fact that blood is in reality the latest factor to originate in an organism. If we follow the development of the human embryo we find that the rudiments of bone and muscle are evolved long before the first tendency toward blood formation becomes apparent. The groundwork for the formation of blood, with all its attendant system of blood-vessels, appears very late in the development of the embryo, and from this natural science has rightly concluded that the formation of blood occurred late in the evolution of the universe; that other powers which were there had to be raised to the height of blood, so to speak, in order to bring about at that height what was to be accomplished inwardly in the human being. Not until the human embryo has repeated in itself all the earlier stages of human growth, thus attaining to the condition in which the world was before the formation of blood, is it ready to perform this crowning act of evolution—the transmuting and uplifting of all that had gone before into the “very special fluid” which we call Blood.

If we would study those mysterious laws of the spiritual universe which exist behind the blood, we must occupy ourselves a little with some of the most elementary concepts of Anthroposophy. These have often been set forth, and you will see that these elementary ideas of Anthroposophy are the “above,” and that this “above” is expressed in the important laws governing the blood—as well as the rest of life—as though in a physiognomy.

Those present who are already well acquainted with the primary laws of Anthroposophy will, I trust, here permit a short repetition of them for the benefit of others who are here for the first time. Indeed, such repetition may serve to render these laws more and more clear to the former, by hearing them thus applied to new and special cases. To those, of course, who know nothing about Anthroposophy, who have not yet familiarized themselves with these conceptions of life and of the universe, that which I am about to say may seem little else than so many words strung together, of which they can make nothing. But the fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: “If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!”

And so it is with our contemporaries when they pass judgment on theosophical truths. If these truths should in the ears of many sound like mere words, words to which they cannot attach any meaning, the fault need not necessarily rest with Anthroposophy; those, however, who have found their way into these matters will know that behind all allusions to higher Beings, such Beings do actually exist, although they are not to be found in the world of the senses.

Our theosophical conception of the universe shows us that man, as far as he is revealed to our senses in the external world as far as his shape and form are concerned, is but a part of the complete Human being, and that, in fact, there are many other parts behind the physical body. Man possesses this physical body in common with all the so-called “lifeless” mineral objects that surround him. Over and above this, however, man possesses the etheric or vital body. (The term “etheric” is not here used in the same sense as when applied by physical science.) This etheric or vital body, as it is sometimes called, far from being any figment of the imagination, is as distinctly visible to the developed spiritual senses of the occultist as are externally perceptible colors to the physical eye. This etheric body can actually be seen by the clairvoyant. It is the principle which calls the inorganic materials into life, which, summoning them from their lifeless condition, weaves them into the thread of life's garment. Do not imagine that this body is to the occultist merely something which he adds in thought to what is lifeless. That is what the natural scientists try to do! They try to complete what they see with the microscope by inventing something which they call the life-principle.

Now, such a standpoint is not taken by theosophical research. This has a fixed principle. It does not say: “Here I stand as a seeker, just as I am. All that there is in the world must conform to my present point of view. What I am unable to perceive has no existence!” This sort of argument is about as sensible as if a blind man were to say that colors are simply matters of fancy. The man who knows nothing about a matter is not in the position to judge of it, but rather he into whose range of experience such matters have entered.

Now man is in a state of evolution, and for this reason Anthroposophy says: “If you remain as you are you will not see the etheric body, and may therefore indeed speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge’ and ‘Ignorabimus’; but if you develop and acquire, the necessary faculties for the cognition of spiritual things, you will no longer speak of the ‘boundaries of knowledge,’ for these only exist as long as man has not developed his inner senses.” It is for this reason that agnosticism constitutes so heavy a drag upon our civilization; for it says: “Man is thus and thus, and being thus and thus he can know only this and that.” To such a doctrine we reply: “Though he be thus and thus today, he has to become different, and when different he will then know something else.”

So the second part of man is the etheric body, which he possesses in common with the vegetable kingdom.

The third part is the so-called astral body—a significant and beautiful name, the reason for which shall be explained later. Theosophists who are desirous of changing this name can have no idea of what is implied therein. To the astral body is assigned the task, both in man and in the animal, of lifting up the life-substance to the plane of feeling, so that in the life-substance may move not only fluids, but also that in it may be expressed all that is known as pain and pleasure, joy and grief. And here you have at once the essential difference between the plant and the animal; although there are certain states of transition between these two.

A recent school of naturalists is of opinion that feeling, in its literal sense, should also be ascribed to plants; this, however, is but playing with words; for, though it is obvious that certain plants are of so sensitive an organization that they “respond” to particular things that may be brought near to them, yet such a condition cannot be described as “feeling.” In order that “feeling” may exist, an image must be formed within the being as the reflex of that which produces the sensation. If, therefore, certain plants respond to external stimulus, this is no proof that the plant answers to the stimulus by a feeling, that is, that it experiences it inwardly. That which has inward experience has its seat in the astral body. And so we come to see that that which has attained to animal conditions consists of the physical body, the etheric or vital body, and the astral body.

Man, however, towers above the animal through the possession of something quite distinct, and thoughtful people have at all times been aware wherein this superiority consists. It is indicated in what Jean Paul says of himself in his autobiography. He relates that he could remember the day when he stood as a child in the courtyard of his parents' house, and the thought suddenly flashed across his mind that he was an ego, a being, capable of inwardly saying “I” to itself; and he tells us that this made a profound impression upon him.

All the so-called external science of the soul overlooks the most important point which is here involved. I will ask you; therefore, to follow me for a few moments in making a survey of what is a very subtle argument, yet one which will show you how the matter stands. In the whole of human speech there is one small word which differs in toto from all the rest. Each one of you can name the things around you; each one can call a table a table, and a chair a chair. But there is one word, one name, which you cannot apply anything save to that which owns it and this is the little word “I.” None can address another as “I.” This “I” has to sound forth from the innermost soul itself; it is the name which only the soul itself can apply to itself. Every other person is a “you” to me, and I am a “you” to him. All religions have recognized this “I” as the expression of that principle in the soul through which its innermost being, its divine nature, is enabled to speak. Here, then, begins that which can never penetrate through the exterior senses, which can never, in its real significance, be named from without, but which must sound forth from the innermost being. Here begins that monologue, that soliloquy of the soul, whereby the divine self makes known its presence when the path lies clear for the coming of the Spirit into the human soul.

In the religions of earlier civilizations, among the ancient Hebrews, for instance, this name was known as “the unutterable name of God,” and whatever interpretation modern philology may choose to place upon it, the ancient Jewish name of God has no other meaning than that which is expressed in our word “I.” A thrill passed through those assembled when the “Name of the Unknown God” was pronounced by the Initiates, when they dimly perceived what was meant by those words reverberating through the temple: “I am that I am.”

In this word is expressed the fourth principle of human nature, the one that man alone possesses while on earth; and this “I” in its turn encloses and develops within itself the germs of higher stages of humanity.

We can only take a passing glance at what in the future will be evolved through this fourth principle. We must point out that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego, or actual inner self; and that within this inner self are the rudiments of three further stages of development which will originate in the blood. These three are Manas, Buddhi, and Atma:

Manas, the Spirit-Self, as distinguished from the bodily self;

Buddhi, the Life-Spirit;

Atma, the actual and true Spirit-Man, a far-off ideal to the man of today; the rudimentary germ now latent within, but destined in future ages to reach perfection.

We have seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones in the (musical) scale, seven series of atomic weights [in the Periodic Table of the chemical elements], and seven grades in the scale of the human being; and these are again divided into four lower and three higher grades.

We will now attempt to get a clear insight into the way in which this upper spiritual triad secures a physiognomical expression in the lower quaternary, and how it appears to us in the world of the senses. Take, in the first place, that which has crystallized into form as man's physical body; this he possesses in common with the whole of what is called “lifeless” nature. When we talk theosophically of the physical body, we do not even mean that which the eye beholds, but rather that combination of forces which has constructed the physical body, that living Force which exists behind the visible form.

Let us now observe a plant. This is a being possessed of an etheric body, which raises physical substance to life; that is, it converts that substance into living sap. What is it that transforms the so-called lifeless forces into the living sap? We call it the etheric body, and the etheric body does precisely the same work in animals and men; it causes that which has a merely material existence to become a living configuration, a living form.

This etheric body is, in its turn, permeated by an astral body. And what does the astral body do? It causes the substance which has been set in motion to experience inwardly the circulation of those outwardly moving fluids, so that the external movement is reflected in inward experience.

We have now arrived at the point where we are able to comprehend man so far as concerns his place in the animal kingdom. All the substances of which man is composed, such as oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc., are to be found outside in inanimate nature also. If that which the etheric body has transformed into living substance is to have inner experiences, if it is to create inner reflections of that which takes place externally, then the etheric body must be permeated by what we have come to know as the astral body, for it is the astral body that gives rise to sensation. But at this stage the astral body calls forth sensation only in one particular way. The etheric body changes the inorganic substances into vital fluids, and the astral body in its turn transforms this vital substance into sentient substance; but—and this I ask you to specially notice—what is it that a being with no more than these three bodies is capable of feeling? It feels only itself, its own life-processes; it leads a life that is confined within itself.

Now, this is a most interesting fact, and one of extraordinary importance for us to bear in mind. If you look at one of the lower animals, what do you find it has accomplished? It has transformed inanimate substance into living substance, and living substance into sensitive substance: and sensitive substance can only be found where there exist, at all events, the rudiments of what at a later stage appears as a developed nervous system.

Thus we have inanimate substance, living substance, and substance permeated by nerves capable of sensation. If you look at a crystal you have to recognize it primarily as the expression of certain natural laws which prevail in the external world in the so-called lifeless kingdom. No crystal could be formed without the assistance of all surrounding nature. No single link can be severed from the chain of the cosmos and set apart by itself. And just as little can you separate from his environment man, who, if he were lifted to an altitude of even a few miles above the earth, must inevitably die. Just as man is only conceivable here in the place where he is, where the necessary forces are combined in him, so it is too with regard to the crystal; and therefore, whoever views a crystal rightly will see in it a picture of the whole of nature, indeed of the whole cosmos. What Cuvier said is actually the case, viz., that a competent anatomist will be able to tell to what sort of animal any given bone has belonged, every animal having its own particular kind of bone-formation.

Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cosmic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcosmically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form. The consciousness of such living creatures is, of course, but dim. Yet this very vagueness of consciousness is counterbalanced by its far greater range, for the whole cosmos is felt in the dim consciousness of an elementary being. Now, in man there is only a more complicated structure of the same three bodies found in the simplest sensitive living creature.

Take man—without considering his blood—take him as being made up of the substance of the surrounding physical world, and containing, like the plant, certain juices which transform it into living substance, and in which a nervous system gradually becomes organized. This first nervous system is the so-called sympathetic system, and in the case of man it extends along the entire length of the spine, to which it is attached by small threads on either side. It has also at each side a series of nodes, from which threads branch off to different parts, such as the lungs, the digestive organs, and so on. This sympathetic nervous system gives rise, in the first place, to the life of sensation just described. But man's consciousness does not extend deep enough to enable him to follow the cosmic processes mirrored by these nerves. They are a medium of expression, and just as human life is formed from the surrounding cosmic world, so is this cosmic world reflected again in the sympathetic nervous system. These nerves live a dim inward life, and if man were but able to dip down into his “sympathetic” system, and to lull his higher nervous system to sleep, he would behold, as in a state of luminous life, the silent workings of the mighty cosmic laws.

In past times people were possessed of a clairvoyant faculty which is now superseded, but which may be experienced when, by special processes, the activity of the higher system of nerves is suspended, thus setting free the lower or subliminal consciousness. At such times man lives in that system of nerves which, in its own particular way, is a reflection of the surrounding world.

Certain lower animals indeed still retain this state of consciousness, and, dim and indistinct though it is, yet it is essentially more far-reaching than the consciousness of the man of the present day. A widely extending world is reflected as a dim inward life, not merely a small section such as is perceived by contemporary man. But in the case of man something else has taken place in addition. When evolution has proceeded so far that the sympathetic nervous system has been developed, so that the cosmos has been reflected in it, the evolving being again at this point opens itself outwards; to the sympathetic system is added the spinal cord. The system of brain and spinal cord then leads to those organs through which connection is set up with the outer world.

Man, having progressed thus far, is no longer called upon to act merely as a mirror for reflecting the primordial laws of cosmic evolution, but a relation is set up between the reflection itself and the external world. The junction of the sympathetic system and the higher nervous system is expressive of the change which has taken place beforehand in the astral body. The latter no longer merely lives the cosmic life in a state of dull consciousness, but it adds thereto its own special inward existence. The sympathetic system enables a being to sense what is taking place outside it; the higher system of nerves enables it to perceive that which happens within, and the highest form of the nervous system, such as is possessed by mankind in general at the present stage of evolution, takes from the more highly developed astral body material for the creation of pictures, or representations, of the outer world. Man has lost the power of perceiving the former dim primitive pictures of the external world, but, on the other hand, he is now conscious of his inner life, and out of this inner life he forms, at a higher stage, a new world of images in which, it is true, only a small portion of the outer world is reflected, but in a clearer and more perfect manner than before.

Hand in hand with this transformation another change takes place in higher stages of development. The transformation thus begun extends from the astral body to the etheric body. As the etheric body in the process of its transformation evolves the astral body, as to the sympathetic nervous system is added the system of the brain and spine, so, too, does that which—after receiving the lower circulation of fluids—has grown out of and become free from the etheric body now transmutes these lower fluids into what we know as blood.

Blood is, therefore, an expression of the individualized etheric body, just as the brain and spinal cord are the expression of the individualized astral body. And it is this individualizing which brings about that which lives as the ego or “I.”

Having followed man thus far in his evolution, we find that we have to do with a chain consisting of five links, affecting:—

1. The Physical Body;
2. The Etheric Body and
3. The Astral Body.

These links are:

1. The inorganic, neutral, physical forces;
2. The vital fluids, which are also found in plants;
3. The lower or sympathetic nervous system;
4. The higher astral body, which has been evolved from the lower one, and which finds its expression in the spinal cord and the brain;
5. The Principle that individualizes the etheric body.

Just as these two latter principles have been individualized, so will the first principle through which lifeless matter enters the human body, serving to build it up, also become individualized; but in our present-day humanity we find only the first rudiments of this transformation.

We have seen how the external formless substances enter the human body, and how the etheric body turns these materials into living forms; how, further, the astral body fashions pictures of the external world, how this reflection of the external world resolves itself into inner experiences, and how this inner life then reproduces from within itself pictures of the outer world.

Now, when this metamorphosis extends to the etheric body, blood is formed. The blood vessels, together with the heart, are the expression of the transformed etheric body, in the same way in which the spinal cord and the brain express the transformed astral body. Just as by means of the brain the external world is experienced inwardly, so also by means of the blood this inner world is transformed into an outer expression in the body of man. I shall have to speak in similes in order to describe to you the complicated processes which have now to be taken into account.

The blood absorbs those pictures of the outside world which the brain has formed within, transforms them into living constructive forces, and with them builds up the present human body. Blood is therefore the material that builds up the human body. We have before us a process in which the blood extracts from its cosmic environment the highest substance it can possibly obtain, viz., oxygen, which renews the blood and supplies it with fresh life. In this manner our blood is caused to open itself to the outer world.

We have thus followed the path from the exterior world to the interior one, and also back again from that inner world to the outer one. Two things are now possible. (1) We see that blood originates when man confronts the external world as an independent being, when out of the perceptions to which the external world has given rise, (2) he in his turn produces different shapes and pictures on his own account, thus himself becoming creative, and making it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come into life. A being in whom this process had not yet taken place would not be able to say “I.” In the blood lies the principle for the development of the ego. The “I” can only be expressed when a being is able to form within itself the pictures which it has obtained from the outer world. An “I-being” must be capable of taking the external world into itself, and of inwardly reproducing it.

Were man merely endowed with a brain, he would only be able to reproduce pictures of the outer world within himself, and to experience them within himself; he would then only be able to say: “The outer world is reflected in me as in a mirror.” If, however, he is able to build up a new form for this reflection of the external world, this form is no longer merely the external world reflected, it is “I” A creature possessed of a spinal cord and a brain perceives the reflection as its inner life. But when a creature possesses blood, it experiences its inner life as its own form. By means of the blood, assisted by the oxygen of the external world, the individual body is formed according to the pictures of the inner life. This formation is expressed as the perception of the “I.”

The ego turns in two directions, and the blood expresses this fact externally. The vision of the ego is directed inwards; its will is turned outwards. The forces of the blood are directed inwards; they build up the inner man, and again they are turned outwards to the oxygen of the external world. This is why, on going to sleep, man sinks into unconsciousness; he sinks into that which his consciousness can experience in the blood. When, however, he again opens his eyes to the outer world, his blood adds to its constructive forces the pictures produced by the brain and the senses. Thus the blood stands midway, as it were, between the inner world of pictures and the exterior living world of form. This role becomes clear to us when we study two phenomena, viz., ancestry—the relationship between conscious beings—and experience in the world of external events. Ancestry, or descent, places us where we stand in accordance with the law of blood relationship. A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what these ancestors have bequeathed to him is in his blood. In the blood is gathered together, as it were, all that the material past has constructed in man; and in the blood is also being formed all that is being prepared for the future.

When, therefore, man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant, he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dreamily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep. At such times the activity of his brain is in abeyance and during states of the deepest somnambulism this applies also to the spinal cord. The man experiences the activities of his sympathetic nervous system; that is to say, in a dim and hazy fashion he senses the life of the entire cosmos. At such times the blood no longer expresses pictures of the inner life which are produced by means of the brain, but it presents those which the outer world has formed in it. Now, however, we must bear in mind that the forces of his ancestors have helped to make him what he is. Just as he inherits the shape of his nose from an ancestor, so does he inherit the form of his whole body. At such times of suppressed consciousness he senses the pictures of the outer world; that is to say, his forebears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their remote life.

Everything in the world is in a state of evolution, human consciousness included. Man has not always had the consciousness he now possesses; when we go back to the times of our earliest ancestors, we find a consciousness of a very different kind. At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external world work in his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipient as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood; his memory is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of today is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his inner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise. There then lived within the blood not only what the senses had received from the external world, but also that which is contained within the bodily form; and as that bodily form was inherited from his ancestors, man sensed their life within himself.

If we think of a heightened form of this consciousness, we shall have some idea of how this was also expressed in a corresponding form of memory. A person experiencing no more than what he perceives by his senses, remembers no more than the events connected with those outward sense-experiences. He can only be aware of such things as he may have experienced in this way since his childhood. But with prehistoric man the case was different. Such a man sensed what was within him, and as this inner experience was the result of heredity, he passed through the experiences of his ancestors by means of his inner faculty. He remembered not only his own childhood, but also the experiences of his ancestors. This life of his ancestors was, in fact, ever present in the pictures which his blood received, for, incredible as it may seem to the materialistic ideas of the present day, there was at one time a form of consciousness by means of which men considered not only their own sense-perceptions as their own experiences, but also the experiences of their forefathers. In those times, when they said, “I have experienced such and such a thing,” they alluded not only to what had happened to themselves personally, but also to the experiences of their ancestors, for they could remember these.

This earlier consciousness was, it is true, of a very dim kind, very hazy as compared to man's waking consciousness at the present day. It partook more of the nature of a vivid dream, but, on the other hand, it embraced far more than does our present consciousness. The son felt himself connected with his father and his grandfather as one “I,” because he felt their experiences as if they were his own. And because man was possessed of this consciousness, because he lived not only in his own personal world, but because within him there dwelt also the consciousness of preceding generations, in naming himself he included in that name all belonging to his ancestral line. Father, son, grandson, etc., designated by one name that which was common to them all, that which passed through them all; in short, a person felt himself to be merely a member of an entire line of descendants. This sensation was a true and actual one.

We must now inquire how it was that his form of consciousness was changed. It came about through a cause well known to occult history. If you go back into the past, you will find that there is one particular moment which stands out in the history of each nation. It is the moment at which a people enters on a new phase of civilization, the moment when it ceases to have old traditions, when it ceases to possess its ancient wisdom, the wisdom which was handed down through generations by means of the blood. The nation possesses, nevertheless, a consciousness of it, and this is expressed in its legends.

In earlier times tribes held aloof from each other, and the individual members of families intermarried. You will find this to have been the case with all races and with all peoples; and it was an important moment for humanity when this principle was broken through, when foreign blood was introduced, and when marriage between relations was replaced by marriage with strangers, when endogamy gave place to exogamy. Endogamy preserves the blood of the generation; it permits of the same blood flowing in the separate members as flows for generations through the entire tribe or the entire nation. Exogamy inoculates man with new blood, and this breaking-down of the tribal principle, this mixing of blood, which sooner or later takes place among all peoples, signifies the birth of the external understanding, the birth of the intellect.

The important thing to bear in mind here is that in olden times there was a hazy clairvoyance, from which the myths and legends originated. This clairvoyance could exist in the nearly related blood, just as our present-day consciousness comes about owing to the mingling of blood. The birth of logical thought, the birth of the intellect, was simultaneous with the advent of exogamy. Surprising, as this may seem, it is nevertheless true. It is a fact which will be substantiated more and more by external investigation; indeed, the initial steps along this line have already been taken.

But this mingling of blood which comes about through exogamy is also that which at the same time obliterates the clairvoyance of earlier days, in order that humanity may evolve to a higher stage of development; and just as the person who has passed through the stages of occult development regains this clairvoyance, and transmutes it into a new form, so has our waking consciousness of the present day been evolved out of that dim and hazy clairvoyance which [was] obtained in times of old.

At the present time everything in a man's environment is impressed upon his blood; hence the environment fashions the inner man in accordance with the outer world. In the case of primitive man it was that which was contained within the body that was more fully expressed in the blood. In those early times the recollection of ancestral experiences was inherited, and, along with this, good or evil tendencies. In the blood of the descendants were to be traced the effects of the ancestors' tendencies. Now, when the blood was mixed through exogamy, this close connection with ancestors was severed, and the man began to live his own personal life. Thus, in an unmixed blood is expressed the power of the ancestral life, and in a mixed blood the power of personal experience.

The myths and legends tell of these things. They say: “That which has power over thy blood, has power over thee.” This traditional power ceased when it could no longer work upon the blood, because the latter's capacity for responding to such power was extinguished by the admixture of foreign blood. This statement holds good to the widest extent. Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: “Sign thy name to the pact with thy blood. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over to myself.” For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.

When two groups of people come into contact, as is in the case of colonization, then those who are acquainted with the conditions of evolution are able to foretell whether or not an alien form of civilization can be assimilated by the others. Take, for example, a people that is the product of its environment, into whose blood this environment has built itself, and try to graft upon such a people a new form of civilization. The thing is impossible. This is why certain aboriginal peoples had to go under, as soon as colonists came to their particular parts of the world.

It is from this point of view that the question will have to be considered, and the idea that changes are capable of being forced upon all and sundry will in time cease to be upheld, for it is useless to demand from blood more than it can endure.

Modern science has discovered that if the blood of one animal is mixed with that of another not akin to it, the blood of the one is fatal to that of the other. This has been known to occultism for ages. If you mingle the blood of human beings with that of the lower apes, the result is destructive to the species, since the one is too far removed from the other. If, again, you mingle the blood of man with that of the higher apes, death does not ensue. Just as this mingling of the blood of different species of animals brings about actual death when the types are too remote, so, too, the ancient clairvoyance of undeveloped man was killed when his blood was mixed with the blood of others who did not belong to the same stock. The entire intellectual life of today is the outcome of the mingling of blood, and the time is not far distant when people will study the influence this had upon human life, and they will be able to trace it back in the history of humanity when investigations are once more conducted from this standpoint.

We have seen that blood united to blood in the case of but remotely connected species of animals, kills; blood united to blood in the case of more closely allied species of animals does not kill. The physical organism of man survives when strange blood comes in contact with strange blood, but clairvoyant power perishes under the influence of this mixing of blood, or exogamy.

Man is so constituted that when blood mingles with blood not too far removed in evolution, the intellect is born. By this means the original clairvoyance which belonged to the lower animal-man was destroyed, and a new form of consciousness took its place.

Thus in the higher stage of human development we find something similar to what happens at a lower stage in the animal kingdom. In the latter, strange blood kills strange blood. In the human kingdom strange blood kills that which is intimately bound up with kindred blood, viz., the dim, dreary clairvoyance. Our everyday objective consciousness is therefore the outcome of a destructive process. In the course of evolution the kind of mental life due to endogamy has been destroyed, but in its stead exogamy has given birth to the intellect, to the wide-awake consciousness of the present day.

That which is able to live in man's blood is that which lives in his ego. Just as the physical body is the expression of the physical principle, as the etheric body is the expression of the vital fluids and their systems, and the astral body of the nervous system, so is the blood the expression of the “I,” or ego. Physical principle, etheric body, and astral body are the “Above”; physical body, vital system, and nervous system are the “below.” Similarly, the ego is the “above,” and the blood is the “below.” Whoever, therefore, would master a man, must first master that man's blood. This must be borne in mind if any advance is to be made in practical life. For example, the individuality of a people may be destroyed if, when colonizing, you demand from its blood more than it can bear, for in the blood the ego is expressed. Beauty and truth possess a man only when they possess his blood.

Mephistopheles obtains possession of Faust's blood because he desires to rule his ego. Hence we may say that the sentence which has formed the theme of the present lecture was drawn from the profound depths of knowledge; for truly—

“Blood is a Very Special Fluid.”

Spiritual Science especially must have something to say about the so-called spiritual illnesses (diseases of the mind), Firstly the name is not chosen correctly—one should not speak of spiritual diseases Further, the greatest errors have spread in the lay-world, especially in this sphere, both in learned and unlearned circles, and their literature. The phenomenal forms are regarded as the things themselves. One speaks of illusions of grandeur, persecution, religious mania, etc. These ideas all designate symptoms. No one can become demented through a religious idea. One can e.g. read the extraordinary sentence—Hölderlin was diseased through the discord between the modern and antique world-view. If Hölderlin had not been a poet, the same dementia would probably have come over him, only it would have expressed itself differently, in different ideas. If one lives in religious ideas, and then becomes ill, his religious ideas are distorted. If he lived in materialistic ideas, then these are confused. The bases for spiritual diseases lie deep in human nature. The medicines of to-day create nothing positive in this sphere. It has only hypotheses, doubts, surmises. Of course, it is difficult indeed impossible, for materialists to get clarity in those questions. Many things which the Doctor no longer regards as mental disease, yet belong to it, e.g. frantic complaining, also religious sectarianism, and fanaticism. The latter live under an idea, as if under a fixed idea (compelling idea), which exercises a great suggestive power on weak natures, so that fashionable (?) diseases and thought-epidemics arise.

How can such things as insanity root itself in the being of man? For this we must keep in mind the four lower members of man; physical body, life body, astral body, and ego. The ego works at the other three members of man's being. Above all it ennobles and purifies the astral body by compelling it to follow its own impulses no longer blindly. But the ego also works into the life body and especially through the great impulses of life, especially through ART. As in the astral body, through the work of the Ego: 2 parts arise, a purified and impurified, so the life body also now becomes two-fold. And gradually that part which has been worked over by the ego becomes ever greater and greater. The ego also works in the physical, but unconsciously. Only a higher pupil of the Initiates can do that consciously. In order to be able to answer our question now we must call to mind re-incarnation. On sleeping, something similar happens to us as is the case of death. The astral body and the ego separate from the physical body in sleep.

All impulses and feelings then sink into an unconscious dark. The physical and etheric bodies remain behind in the bed. The etheric or life body also separates from the physical body at death. In the next hours while man's being remains in the etheric body, the former life passes before the soul in great pictures for such a time, until the etheric body also is released from it and. passes over into the general world-ether. But only the substantial part of the etheric body dissolves. The memory picture remains as an essence for all following times united with the astral body and ego. At first it passes over into the Kamaloka condition with them. Kamaloka, the place of desire is the condition in which everything is stripped off the astral body which still clings to earthly life.

Everything which has not yet been ennobled, dissolves. The rest is taken up into all future time. Parts of the physical body also go thus in quite a small measure, but only with very noble human beings. On re-incarnating, man takes to himself again the unennobled parts, in order to work further at their purification. The more often man appears on earth, the firmer becomes his character; the more refined his conscience, his talents and powers all the greater and more numerous.

We need above all the Hermetic Basic Sentence for the explanation of mental diseases. Everything above is as below, and everything below as above. The cheerfulness of man expresses itself to us in the smiling countenance without anything further. Tears announce inner grief of soul. Cheerfulness and grief in this case we will call “the above.” laughter and tears, which represent the material image cheerfulness and grief, “the below.” A rightly educated man sees the whole world differently. A flower is for him the expression of the grief or joy of the Earth-Spirit. And that is just as little merely a poetical thought. The Earth-Spirit lies at the base of the earth as “the upper.” All material is condensed spirit, just as ice is merely condensed water. As one can melt ice and it becomes water, so one can also transform matter so that it becomes spirit. We distinguish the following physical parts in man, which correspond to his upper members:—

1. Purely physical, which is built according to purely physical laws, above all the sense-organs.
2. Everything connected with growth, digestion and procreation. That which builds crystals could also build the human body, but it would then be a dead organism. The etheric body is the architect, which builds organs of digestion, etc.
3. Nervous system (brain and spinal cord). The astral body is its architect.
4. The blood. The ego dwells in this and is at the same time the architect of the blood-system.

Blood circulation ------------------ Ego.
Nervous System ------------------- Astral Body.
Procreation ------------------------- Etheric Body.
Physical ---------------------------- Physical Body.

Everything physical is subject to the laws of physical heredity; but also, the procreative organs, nerve system and blood circulation. The individuality must unite itself with the physical body. The ego with its ennobled astral and etheric bodies, indeed even parts of the physical body, must harmonise with what is inherited; together they must form a harmony. Almost always a harmony also is really formed, for the physical adapts itself to the spiritual (transforms itself). How, if such an adaptation is not possible? How, if the astral body gets a nervous system which it cannot employ straightway?—as a rule, we do not reckon sense-illusions among mental illnesses. A book of the Vienna criminal anthropologist BENEDICT can here offer us many interesting things although it is not written in an Anthroposophical sense. Benedict there gives us his own experiences. He had a partial cataract in the left eye so that he saw with some irregularity. If he looked in the dark in a quite definite direction, he saw ghosts of a quite special kind. He was once so horrified that he took up arms. This is to be explained thus: a healthy man is not conscious of the inner constituents of his eye. Whoever has irregularities in the eye will become conscious of them in such a way that they appear to him externally in mirror-images. We will now extend that to the entire human being. We are not at all conscious of our own inner being, but only of what is transmitted to us from outside. If harmony prevails between the ABOVE and the BELOW, then man is not at all conscious of inner processes. If one has, e.g. an unwieldy head which the astral body cannot use, then this disturbance which the astral body suffers expresses itself outwards just as the disturbance in the eye does. Then the astral body will become conscious of itself because it is disturbed. It then sees itself projected outwardly, hopes, wishes, desires, meet it in forms from outside. Delusions, manias, hysteria, are connected with this everything where man cannot bring his FEELINGS into harmony with the outer world. But the etheric body too can suffer inner abnormalities. It is the bearer of image-like ideas. If the etheric body is unconscious of itself, then the images of the outer meet him truly. If the disturbances of the etheric body reflect. the images externally, then delusive ideas (paranoia) arise. If the physical body itself is diseased, (which should be in harmony with the physical environment,)—if the physical body becomes conscious of itself, then idiocy appears. If the physical body is too heavy so that the astral body cannot dominate it,—cannot leave it, then what one calls dementia appears. If the physical organs are too moveable so that they cannot clearly express the soul—activity, then paralysis arises. Yet there exists here a multiplicity of oases which can have quite different origins, especially Ideas of delusions:

1. Out of the projection of the astral body.
2. Out of disease of the same.

then the effects become so strong that frenzy, delirium arises. These imprint themselves in the etheric body, and hence arise delusions. These delusive ideas are like scars on the wound in the astral body. They are much more difficult to cure than delirium. Cataract of the pupil is a preparation for mania. Only the fewest doctors know all this.

We will now call to mind that man is born more than once. At first physically but then at the change of teeth, the etheric body is born, then at puberty the astral body. It can how happen that first with the birth of the astral body, the discord is noticeable between the ABOVE and the BELOW. Previously the surrounding astral veil-maintained HARMONY. After the astral birth, the astral body is left to itself and now appears the discord between it and the physical body. This kind of insanity expresses itself by the young person often giving the same answer to quite different questions. He can also suffer with fixed (compelling) ideas. One calls this disease “Youthful imbecility.” Yet this does not appear suddenly, but slowly prepares itself from the age of 11 to 12. Conditions of depression, liability to fatigue, not getting on with one's environment, headaches, disturbances in digestion and sleep are the forerunners. It is sad if one considers that most parents still punish their children for such ills, while they regard these conditions as “peculiarities.” It is just this youthful imbecility that is most difficult of all to cure. But the spirit, as such, cannot be ill; for it is always healthy.

It is only disturbed when the BELOW does not accord with it. If one looks at oneself in a distorting mirror, one sees a caricature of oneself. No one concludes however from the caricature that his true likeness is also distorted, thus it is also with spiritual diseases. The forms of mania are caricatures of the spirit in the physical. Hence a healing is never possible on the path of logic, of abstract thoughts. Such endeavours are utterly worthless. Even our bodily organs are condensed spirit, even if not our spirit. And empty logical forms stand furthest removed from the spirit, condensed to the physical; nearest of all, however, are the imagelike ideas of Imagination, saturated with Passion. These can drive from the field the disease-producing power of other images. One must give counter-ideas through the force and power of another personality. One cannot demonstrate the illogicality to the diseased through propositions, but one can work through living presentation. The power of the personality must prove to the diseased that, e.g. he yet CAN do what he believes he cannot.

In this sphere of the so-called mental diseases (spiritual illnesses) ordinary science will one day have to unite with Spiritual Science. An exhaustive study is necessary to have always ready the necessary counter-ideas. Spiritual Science is not devoid of deeds, it does not creep away to distant worlds. It will co-operate practically. Because spiritual forces lie at the basis of the world, we must learn to know them if we will work in the world. Our material world is a copy of the spiritual. We must get to know this, in order to understand the physical. Heldenbach indeed says: What does all this spirit-stuff concern us? We, however, will say: Yet this human stuff does concern us and since human beings are united with the SPIRITUAL WORLD, we will find the bridge between the two.

In the course of his life man finds himself set between two powers. There is the current of events, the steady flow of facts, around him that make the most varied impression on him. Opposed to this stands man's own power within his inner being. One need consider life but superficially to have it dawn upon one that man must find a necessary balance between the forces and facts that storm in from all sides, and what unfolds in his inner life. When in his everyday life the human being has taken in impression upon impression, then he yearns to be alone, to collect and compose his soul. He feels that only in the right balancing of outer and inner will he find salvation in life.

A penetrating aphorism of Goethe expresses this for the depths and breadth of life, indeed, as the very riddle of being:

For every force sweeps outward into space
To live and work; here, there and everywhere;
While on the other hand the teeming world
From every side confines and takes away!
Between the inner strife and outer conflict
The spirit hears a word slow comprehended:

From powers that fetter every living being
That man is free who overcomes himself.

—The Secrets

In these last two lines of Goethe lies life-wisdom. To the inner being of man that moves forward stormily, to this potentiality in him that is continually developing and unfolding, there stands opposed what approaches us from the outside. When we overcome ourselves, we find a balance. These we can take as themes for the considerations that will occupy us here. Both themes belong together. First, we will devote ourselves to the subject of illusory illness, and, as a necessary complement, then consider the feverish pursuit of health.

Only in the course of our considerations can these words be justified. They lead us into the spiritual streams of the present and into that with which spiritual science confronts them, with which spiritual science has to set itself as a task against them.

In connection with the words, “illusory illness,” men think at first of the fact that someone really feels pain and discomfort based on a more or less self-induced illness. Right, here we have an area into which spiritual science, with its cultural calling, must step. Important things depend on this activity. Before we go into detail about what spiritual science has to say by way of comment on this, let us observe some pictures out of the life of the present. All the illustrative material I shall present is taken from life.

On one of my journeys (it was on the way from Rostock to Berlin) there were two other persons in my compartment, a lady and a gentlemen,, who soon began conversing. The gentleman behaved in a remarkable way. After but a few words he laid himself out on the seat and said that only so positioned could he bear living. The lady recounted how she came from east of where they were and had been to a Baltic spa. The day before she had been struck with home-sickness and had decided to go home. Then she burst into tears. Because of the lady's crying the gentleman hit upon the idea of recounting the story of his health.

“I suffer from many illnesses and journey from sanitarium to sanitarium without finding health.”

Whereupon the lady replied, “I, too, understand much about illness. Many people in my homeland thank me for their health and life.”

The gentleman told of one of his numerous illnesses, whereupon the lady, from her heart's wide knowledge, gave him a prescription that the man wrote down. After a few minutes the second illness was recounted, etc., until, beaming, be had written down thirteen prescriptions. The gentleman had but one sorrow.

“We'll be arriving in Berlin at nine. Will it still be possible to have the prescriptions filled?”

The lady comforted him saying that it Would still be possible. Strangely enough, it never occurred to the gentleman that the lady herself was ill. The lady remarked further that yes, she had much sympathy, and she counted up her own illnesses and told of all the places to which she had gone to be healed. The gentleman recommended a book by Lahmann to her. Thereupon she told of her second illness and the second brochure was recommended, until she had noted the titles of five or six brochures she would buy the next day. Finally, she wrote down Lahmann's address. Meanwhile they had arrived in Berlin. Each had written down the other's recommendations and gone off satisfied.

Whoever observed these people with an eye for the situation under consideration soon saw that there was something not quite right about the lady. As for the man, he only lacked the will to be healthy. Had he summoned the will to be healthy, he would have been in good health. Here we have something symptomatic of what meets us frequently at present, and the scrutinizing glance will be able to pass from this picture to another.

Were we to travel in mountainous country, we would see old fortresses, decaying castles, etc., that remind us of old times when striving for spirit strength existed or where outer power ruled. These fortresses have fallen into ruins, but everywhere in the vicinity of these monuments to power one can see sanitaria, one near the other. This picture presented itself to me recently in an area especially rich in these institutions, when I found it necessary to stop at such a sanitarium for a short time. The “inmates” were just taking their midday meal. The conviction I gained was that of the hundreds there, no one really needed the sanitarium life.

Let us now move on to the more intimate pictures that we find in the accounts of thoughtful present-day physicians. Fortunately, there are some doctors who concern themselves also with the soul in the body. I choose an example by a doctor who would surely look upon everything theosophical as madness. His kind are most surely those who are without doubt not to be influenced by what spiritual science may have to say. Such a prominent physician has recorded many different cases of people such as those in the train I mentioned only as a specially grotesque example. This physician was called to attend a girl who showed all the symptoms of meningitis. But the physician had a good clinical sense. When he was alone with her he questioned her with such questions as were suitable under these circumstances, but all his questions elicited no pertinent answers. Finally, it came out that the young lady was to leave school. In the following year, however, there were to be especially interesting lectures that she wanted to hear. Since all the family opposed her wish to remain in school, she fell ill. The physician said, “I shall intervene that you may still remain in school, but you must get up out of bed immediately and come to the table.” This she did. After a few minutes the young lady appeared at the table and was no longer ill.

Let's take another example. Another physician, a skillful one and well-known, for whom I have always had a certain regard, had to perform a knee operation. The patient's brother was present. During the operation the knee cracked, whereupon the brother suffered excruciating pain. The operation went off well, but the brother became ill. A whole year went by before he was again well.

Thus one can see what power fantasy and perverted imagination can have on the soul, and how, from out of the soul, imitations of disease resembling a truly genuine disease picture can arise. But the physician may not go too far in this. The one just mentioned was very skillful. He did not allow himself to be deceived by accepting that matters forever continue as they first appear. A lady came to him one time who, since her husband's death, was suffering unbearable pain in her knee. She had been treated by many doctors who always came to the conclusion that her sickness was associated with soul aspects, had to do with the impact of her husband's death upon her. Not that the physician of healthy outlook sought for some soul aberration. He found that in this case, a large corn on the heel was the provocation. After the operation he sent the lady to convalesce at Gastein in order not to appear to expose his colleagues too much.

So now we see the situation illumined by a variety of pictures. You see how strongly the illusion, the soul picture, can react on the bodily organism. One could well say that in this instance it is not a question of actual illness, but of illusory illness. Whoever has come to the realization, however, that everything corporeal is the expression of spirit, that everything that meets our senses is an expression of the spirit, will not take the matter so lightly. Even in seemingly quite remote matters we find that it is often a question of soul influences on the body. The illusion, which at the beginning appears trivial and ridiculous, when it then turns into pains, often leads to the beginning of an actual illness, and often to further stages.

Such illusions are more than something to be disposed of with a mere shrug of the shoulders. If we are to penetrate more deeply into these occurrences, we must call up before the soul the oft-presented picture of the nature and being of man. To spiritual science, what the human being presents at first glance is only an outer aspect. The physical body is a member among other members of the human being that he has in common with all other beings around him. Beyond the physical body he has the body of etheric forces that penetrates the physical body, as is true for every living being. This ether body battles against the destruction of the physical body. The third member is the astral body, the bearer of desire and apathy, joy and sorrow, passion and sensual appetites, of the lowest drives as well as of the highest ideals. This body man has in common with the animal world. That whereby man is the crown of creation, whereby he differentiates himself from all other beings, is his “I,” his ego. We must consider these four members as constituting the whole man.

We must, however, be clear that all that makes itself visible to our eyes derives from the spirit. There is no material thing that does not have a spiritual basis.

Now for a more frequently-used analogy. A child shows us some ice. We say, “This is water in another form.”

The child will then say, “You say that it is water but yet it is ice.”

Whereupon we will say, “You do not know how water becomes ice.”

So it is for him who does not know that matter is condensed spirit. For the student of spiritual science, however, everything visible is derived from the same realm as the astral body we carry in us. Etheric and physical body are successive condensation products of the astral body. Here is another picture: We have a mass of water and convert part of it into ice. Thus we have ice in water. So it is that the etheric and physical bodies are condensed out of the astral. The astral body is the part that has retained its original form.

Now, when something or other comes upon us, be it health or illness, we may then say that it is the expression of certain forces that we see in the astral body. Of course, we are speaking now only of illnesses that originate within, not of those that arise through outer influences, such as a fractured bone, an upset stomach, or a cut finger. We are speaking of those diseased conditions that spring from the human being's own nature, and we ask ourselves if there is not only an enduring connection between the astral and physical bodies, but also a more immediate connection between the inner soul events, desire and pain, and the physical condition of our bodies. May we say that in a measure, the outer health of the human being depends upon these or those feelings that he suffers through, these or those thoughts he experiences? We will be able herein to cast light upon important occurrences that should be valuable to people today.

The human being of our time has lost the capacity to rouse himself to the knowledge that the physical body is not his only body. It is not a question of what the human being believes theoretically, but it is a question of what the attitude in his innermost soul is to the higher members of his being. In order to penetrate into what is really involved, let us bring to mind the quarrel between Wagner and Carl Vogt, that is, the Vogt who wrote Blind Faith and Science. Wagner represented the spiritual viewpoint, while Vogt saw in man only a conglomeration of physical things, of atoms. For him, thoughts were but a precipitation of the brain, a blue vapor that arose from brain movements. At death, the substances ceased to develop this blue vapor of thoughts. To this Wagner replied in approximately such a way that one had to believe that if some parents or other had eight children, it followed that the parents' spirit divided itself into eight parts, one part going to each of the children. Thus Wagner pictured the spirit to himself in quite a material way, perhaps as many people do, as a mist formation. But it is a question of swinging oneself up with one's attitudes, impressions and feelings, in order really to grasp the spirit. There may be many today who want none of this materialism, yet they grasp the spirit in a material way. Even many theosophists think of spirit as finely-divided matter. Even in theosophy much timid materialism is hidden.

When it is impossible for someone to lift himself to spirit heights, after awhile there appears for such a person an inner desolation, an emptiness, a disbelief in anything that goes beyond matter. When this takes hold of the feelings, when this eats its way into all beliefs, into all feeling of the soul, when the human being looks out into the world and no longer has the capacity to be impressed by what is back of what he sees, there comes to light what gradually leads him to the crassest physical egoism in which his own body becomes evermore important to him, thus placing him ever further from Goethe's response:

“From powers that fetter every living being
That man is free who overcomes himself!”

At this juncture we come to an important aspect of spiritual science that will not be fully disclosed for some time unless spiritual science succeeds in enabling man to conquer himself. For if the human being continues to grasp with his intellect only what his senses perceive, then, as a result, there would follow for the human being's health something quite different from what would result were the human being to perceive in phenomena nothing but the spirit's sense expression. Materialistic thinking and spiritual scientific thinking have a great effect on the human being's inner life. Thus, the question of the significance of materialistic thinking and of spiritual scientific thinking have more than a theoretical meaning. As for the results of materialistic and spiritual scientific thinking, the one works to desolate, the other to imbue inwardly. Now, for the meaning of these effects on the human being let's take a simple example pertaining to sight. One becomes nearsighted if, during the period of early development, one lends oneself passively to impressions. If, however, one gives oneself actively to the impressions of things, then the eyes remain well. A man must develop productive power from within. Whatever provides him with the possibility of becoming the center of creativity and production is healthy. Unless he becomes creative from within outwards, his capacity for health will dry up and his whole being will be compressed by the outer impressions. To all impressions from the outside man must call up from his inner being a counter-force. This must also be supplemented by the reverse in that the human being must unfold an activity that shuts itself off from the outside, becomes invisible from the outside.

There are two soul experiences in which you need to steep yourselves. They will show you that the human being seeks an inner abundance that streams out, and also a center for his activity in the outer world. One should study these two feeling directions, for they lead us deep into man's illnesses. The one feeling is negative, anxiety; the other, positive, shame, but which also means something negative. Let us assume that you are confronting some event that stirs up anxiety and fear in you. If you consider this not only from the materialistic standpoint, but also include that of the astral body, then becoming pale will appear as an expression of energy-streams in the human being. Why does the soul affect the blood circulation in this way? Because the soul strives to create a will-center within itself in order to be able to function outwardly from it. It is actually a gathering of the blood to the center in order for it to be able to function outwardly from it. This is meant more or less as a picture. In the case of shame, things are reversed. We blush. The blood streams from within to the periphery. The feeling of shame points to circumstances that we would extinguish from visibility, because of which we would extinguish our ego. The human being wants to make his ego weaker and weaker so that it is no longer perceptible from the outside. At this point he needs something in order to lose himself, to dissolve into the All, into the World Soul, or, if you will, into the environment. Thus, what we call shame is loath to, indeed, does not want to, become visible from the outside.

In the expressions of shame and anxiety you have a polarity that indicates significant conditions of the etheric and astral bodies. These are two instances in which forces of the astral body become outwardly visible. Anxiety and shame express themselves in bodily conditions. If you reflect on this, you will realize that all soul happenings can have an effect on the happenings of the organism. This is true as taught by spiritual science. There is a connection, even if the human being is at first not conscious of it.

Let us consider the phenomenon that the abstract thoughts of today have the least imaginable effect on the organism. What we learn in our abstract sciences has the least imaginable effect on our body. Its principle is to perceive what we see, to transform the perception into the intellectual concepts. This science will not admit that the human being has inner creative wisdom, that the soul can produce from out of itself something about the world. While perceiving outwardly, the soul does not confront outer impressions with an inner creative energy. The scientist is not for discovering things out of himself. When we reflect on how deeply rooted is the belief of the human being in his own incapacity to learn out of himself, then we may realize that this is the point of departure for the desolating effect of a knowing that attaches itself only to the outer.

What remedy is there in this situation for humanity if inner investigation for wisdom and truth, the inner creativity of the spirit, is to companion outer science? The remedy is to be found in true spiritual science. Herewith are the springs opened through which the human being, out of himself, has the capacity to develop his perception of what lies behind things. Some people are oppressed by things. But whoever sees what no outer perception can receive, whoever receives this, creates the counterpart to outer perceptions that is necessary for the complete healing of soul and body. This healing of the soul cannot be brought about by abstract theories and thoughts. These are too dull and inadequate. The effect is powerful, however, when concept is transmitted into picture. How is this to be understood? This can best be learned from thinking about what is called evolution. You will hear it said that there were at first the simplest of living beings that became ever more complicated until man came to be. These are again only abstract, dull, inadequate concepts. This thinking is to be found in many theosophical teachings about evolution. They begin with the logos and continue in purely abstract concepts such as evolution, involution, etc. This is too weak in its effect upon the organism. What lies in the soul will become strong if one considers what has developed since the fourteenth century. Here you have a picture, an imagination that is set before the soul. Let me outline this again.

In the past the pupil was told, “Look well at the plant and then place the human being beside it and compare them. The head may not be compared with the blossom, and the feet with the root. (Even Darwin, the reformer of natural science, did not do this.) The root corresponds to the head of the human being; he is an upside-down plant. (Spiritual science has always said this.) What the plant in its innocence allows to be kissed by the sunbeams so that the new plant can be born therefrom, this takes a reversed direction in man in his chastity directed towards the central point of the earth. The animal stands in the middle, between the two. The animal is turned halfway to the plant.”

Plato, in his summing up, says about what lives in plant, animal and human being, “The world soul is crucified on the cross of the world body.” The world soul, which streams through plant, animal and human being, is crucified on the world body. Thus has the cross always been explained by spiritual science.

Now the pupil who was led forward to this significant image was told, “You see how the human being has developed himself from the dull consciousness of the plant, beyond the consciousness of the animal and has found his self-consciousness. In the sleeping human being we have a state of being that has the same existence value as the plant. Because the human being has permeated the pure, innocent plant matter with his body of desires, he has risen higher, but, in a certain sense, has descended lower. Otherwise, he would not have been able to acquire his high ego consciousness. Now he must again transform his astral nature. In the future the human being will have an organ free of passion, like the flower's chalice.”

It was then pointed out to the pupil that a time would come when the human being would bring forth his life free of passion. This was presented in the Grail Schools in the image of the Holy Grail. Here you have evolution presented not in thoughts, but in a picture, in an imagination.

So it would be possible to transmute into pictures what has been given us only in abstract concepts. Thereby we would be accomplishing much. When one allows this pregnant ideal of evolution to rise before one, up into the development of the imagination of the Holy Grail, then one has food and nourishment for more than just one's power of judgment. Then, not only does the rational understanding cling to it, but also the full being of feeling twines around it. You tremble before the great world-secret when you see the development of the world in truth, and receive it in such imaginations. Then these imaginations work lawfully upon the organism, harmonizing it. Abstract thoughts are without effect.

These imaginations, however, work as health-bringing, inner impulses. Imaginations bring about effects, and if these be true world-pictures, imaginations, they work in a health-bringing way. When the human being transforms what he sees outwardly into pictures, then he frees himself from his inner being. Then does the storm resolve itself into a harmony, and he is able to overcome the power that binds all beings. Then will he be able to relate himself to everything that comes his way. He streams out. Through his feelings he grows into union with the world. His inner self is widened to a spiritual universe. In the moment when the human being has no possibility of forming these inner imaginations, then all his forces stream inwards and he clings fast to his ego.

This is the mysterious reason for what meets us in many of our contemporaries. Human beings have forsaken religion's old form and now they are turned back on themselves. They live ever more in themselves, ever more only with themselves. The less possibility the human being has of dissolving into the universal world being, the more he perceives what happens in his organism. This is the cause of false feelings of anxiety and of illusions of illness. The image reacts out of the soul upon the organism; healthy trends in the body are affected by true images. False images, however, also leave their imprint, giving rise to what meets us as soul disturbances, which later become bodily disturbances. Here we have the true basis that finally leads to illusory illness. Whoever closes himself off from the great world relationships will not be able to dismiss what comes toward him. On the other hand, it is impossible for the one who has been impressed by the all-embracing imaginations to let himself be deceived by false images. He would not, for example, as is often the case, think he detected an induction apparatus current pass through his body when no current was present.

Every image that does not find a place in the overall general nexus, that functions as a one-sided, everyday image, is at the same time an illness-inducing image. It is only if the human being always looks up from the single, the lone, to the great secrets of the universe, that he thereby corrects what must be corrected. For what really works upon the soul is a strong force. What emerges in the course of cultural development is a fact not to be overlooked. Today we limit ourselves to our instincts about health. Let us consider tragedy from this point of view. The ancient Greeks knew that what I am about to say is true, that the human being watches tragedy, lives with its suffering, is seized by its impressions, gripped by them, but by the time it is over, he knows that the hero has won out over the suffering and that the human being can overcome the suffering of the world. It is through his living with suffering and overcoming it that he becomes healthy. Turning one's gaze inward makes for sickness. To express what lives within one in an image outside makes for health. Thus it is that Aristotle would have tragedy presented to show how the protagonist goes through suffering and fear so that the human being is healed of pain and fear.

This has far-reaching effects. The spiritual scientist can tell you wherefore the ancient peoples brought fairy tale and legend pictures before the soul of the human being. Pictures were presented to him, pictures from which he should turn away his inward gazing. The blood flowing in fairy tales is a healthy educational means. Whoever can so look at myths will be able to see much. When, for example, the human being outwardly sees revenge in a picture, when he sees in outer picture what he should give up, the result is that he overcomes it. Deep, deep wisdom lies in the most bloodthirsty fairy tales. Our inner harmony is disturbed if we forever stand gaping into our souls. We become healthy in soul when we look into the All, into the Cosmos. But one must know which images are needed. Consider a melancholic person, an hypochondriac, who simply cannot free himself from certain happenings. One would like to bring some gaiety into his soul with gay music, etc., but one brings forth the opposite, gloom, even if it does not appear so at the moment. The deeper ground of his soul finds it flat and dreary, even if he does not admit to this. Serious pictures are necessary, even if they unnerve one at first.

Thus you see that a quite definite way of dealing with the soul can arise. It is not possible to get at illusory illness through a single means. It rests on the materialism of our time, on the lack of creativity. Spurious, baseless anxiety, all the feelings that express the distorted soul-balance in melancholy, etc., are explained by a deeper observation of the connection of things. Through this the means of healing are also found. It would just never be possible for one who continually fathomed the connection of things not to be released from his ego. In cases where the ego is not released there is some kind of provocation, and this is exaggerated. For example, someone bumped his knee on the edge of the table. He lacked the large, asserting ideas and thus he could not rid himself of the pain. The pain grew worse. The doctor was called and he said to do this and that. Then suddenly the person felt the pain in the other knee. Then his elbow became painful, etc., until finally he could no longer move his legs or hands—all because he bumped his knee. There may be reasons that the attention is directed to a particular point, but there are also possibilities present that could bring about a balance. The human being finds the balance in his ever more difficult life only if he allows spiritual science to work upon him. Then he will find himself armed against the cultural influences.

We can, however, also find outer causes for lack of creativity. The facts speak loudly. Observe the animals that in our culture are transplanted into captivity. They become sick, they who in the outside world would never become sick. This arises because of the strong influences upon man and animal that flow from the outer environment. The animal cannot develop a counter-force because his development is terminated. Through civilization the human being also comes to decadence if he is unable to counter outer influences with creative force. He must reshape and transform the influences by inner activity. Then it is even possible that these influences can be used by the human being for higher development. The person who elaborates and creates a radical theory of materialism is healthy because he creates from within outwards. But the followers of the theory waste away because they bring forth no creative force of their own.

If you read books of spiritual science, there is nothing that you gain unless you inwardly recreate them for yourselves. Then your activity becomes an inner cooperative creativity. If this be not the case, then it is not studying of spiritual scientific books as it is meant to be. It depends upon developing the feeling for the forces that surge forward, the forces that would receive the outer world. It depends upon finding the balance between outer impressions and inner creativity. Men must free themselves from the outer strife in the world so that it does not make itself ever more noticeable and oppressive. We must carry out the counter-thrust. The outer impression must inwardly experience the counter-thrust. Then we become free of it; otherwise, it will continue to turn us back upon ourselves over and over again. If we be always watchful only of our inner life, then there arises before our souls a picture of suffering. If we achieve an expression of balance between outer forces and inner forces that indefatigably would go forward, then we amalgamate with the outer world.

So do we acquaint ourselves in a deeper sense with illusory illness as a phenomenon today. Our point of departure was that spiritual science should be a means of healing so that the human being is freed from himself and thus from every binding power. For every binding power makes for illness. Only in this way do we become clear about the deep core of Goethe's verse:

For every force sweeps outward into space
To live and work; here, there and everywhere;
While on the other hand the teeming world
From every side confines and takes away!
Between the inner strife and outer conflict
The spirit hears a word slow comprehended:

From powers that fetter every living being
That man is free who overcomes himself.

Health is something for which every man naturally longs. We may say this longing for health derives indeed not only from egotistic feelings and wishes, but also from the justified longing for work. We owe thanks for our capacity to work, for the possibility of becoming effective in the world, to our health. Hence, it is that we treasure health as a quite special beneficence. Indeed, there lies in this way of thinking about health something of the highest significance for its pursuit. In a certain way there is contained therein the secret of the particular circumstances under which health becomes at all worth pursuing. That the pursuit of health should only under certain circumstances be worthwhile might appear unusual. Our considerations today, however, should disclose that health belongs to those virtues that most readily become a reality in us if we pursue them not for their own sake, but for another's. That this does not always happen today can be taught us if we but look out into our present surrounding world.

However remarkable it may be when speaking of the feverish pursuit of health, the feverish insistence upon health, yet it is possible today for many people to make their own observations about it. With what means, in what countless ways, do most people today press towards health! Everywhere we find a hurried pursuit of health. We may travel through regions in which old castles and ruins tell us of monks and knights who once could call strength of spirit and of body their own. Today they have fallen into decay and replacing them in these same regions we find sanitaria. Was there ever in any time of world evolution such a variety of special efforts to achieve health, to struggle through to health by natural ways of living, by water- or aero-healing methods? People are sent for air and sun baths.

Once an acquaintance of mine who was on his way to a sanitarium came to me during the first half of summer. It had been with much difficulty that he managed to get four weeks' vacation, which he planned to spend there. Of course, it seemed to be the best that could happen to a person, to stay for a time, more or less satisfying, in a sanitarium. Hence I had no wish to explain the futility of his plan and thus deprive him of all hope. On his return journey he came again to me. He brought a little book along in which was written all he was supposed to have accomplished during those four weeks contemplating his organism. Again one could not deprive him of his joy, but, on the tip of one's tongue lay the question, “Do tell me, when have you been more driven? During the whole year at work or during those four weeks during which you were shoved from warmth to cold, from dryness to dampness, and were scrubbed with all those brushes?”

The worst part of it was that after some weeks he said to me, “This cure has helped me as little as all the others in the last thirty years.” He had tried something different each summer. Whoever cared for this person could well look upon his feverish search for health in a somewhat sympathetic way.

How many people today run to mesmerizers and spiritual healers? How many writings there are on “Harmony With the Infinite” and the like! In short, the feverish pursuit of health is something that lives in our time. Now, one might raise another question. “Are these people actually sick?” Well, of course, something is probably wrong with them, but is there a chance that they will attain health through all these things?

Especially among ancient people an age-old saying remains even today. One says so frequently that what the simple person gets from such sayings often may contain something good, but just as often it is something false. So it is with the saying, “There are many illnesses, but only one state of health.” This is foolish. There are as many states of health as there are human beings. For each human being his individual health. What this says is that all general standard prescriptions holding that this or that is healthy for the human being are nonsense. The very part of humanity that is overcome by the feverish pursuit of health suffers most from the general prescriptions for health. Among them are those who believe that there could be something generally tagged as health, that if one does thus and so, that it would be healthy. It is most incredible that there is no realization that a sun bath can be healthy for a person, but that this may not be applied in general. It could be quite harmful for another. Generally, this is admitted but there is no following through in particular instances. We must make it clear to ourselves that health is a quite relative concept, something that is liable to a continuing process of change, especially for the human being, who is the most complicated being on the earth. We need but look into spiritual science. Then shall we penetrate deeply into human nature and recognize how changeable what we call health is. In reality, one forgets almost entirely today that upon which so much value is laid in material aspects. One forgets that the human being is in the throes of development.

What is meant by, “The human being is undergoing development?” Again it is necessary to refer to the being of man. The physical body is only a part of the human entity. This he has in common with all lifeless nature. But he has as second member the etheric or life body, which he has in common only with what is life-imbued. This member wages a continuing battle against everything that would destroy the physical body. Were the etheric body to withdraw from the physical body, in that moment the physical body would become a corpse. The third member is the astral body, which he has in common with animals, the bearer of desires and sorrow, of every feeling and representation, of joy and pain, the so-called consciousness body. The fourth part is his ego, the central point of his being, that makes of him the crown of creation. The ego transforms the three bodies through development out of the central point of the human being.

Let us consider an uneducated savage, an average man, or a highly educated idealist. The savage is still slave to his passions. The average man refines his urges. He denies himself the satisfaction of certain urges and sets in their place legal concepts or high religious ideals, that is, he remodels his astral body from out his ego. As a result the astral body now has two members. The one still has the form that exists in the savage, but the other part has been transformed into spirit self or manas. Through impressions from art or great impressions from founders of religion man works on his ether body and creates buddhi or life spirit. The physical body also can be transformed into Atma, Spirit Self, [In other lectures, Rudolf Steiner refers to "Atma" as "Spirit-man." – e.Ed.] if a person devotes himself to the practice of certain spiritual-scientific exercises. Thus, the human being works unconsciously or consciously on his three bodies.

Were we able to look far, far back into the early development of man, we would find everywhere primitive cultural conditions, simple modes of life. Everything that those early people had in the way of appliances to satisfy their spiritual and bodily needs, their way of life, was simple. Everything, everything evolves, and within evolution the human being develops himself. This is most important. Imagine as vividly as you can a primitive man who grinds his grain to flour between stones, and picture to yourself the other things surrounding this individual. Compare him with a man of more recent cultural times. What surrounds this modern person, what does he see from morning until evening? He takes in the frightful impressions of the noisy big city, of street cars, buses and the like. We must then understand how evolution proceeds. We must carry over the insight we gain concerning simple things into the cultural process.

Goethe made the following statement, “The eye was fashioned by the light, for the light.” If we had no eyes, we could not see colors or light. Whence have we eyes? Goethe also said that out of undifferentiated organs the light drew forth eyes. So also is the ear formed by tone, the sense of warmth by warmth. The human being is formed by that which in the whole world spreads itself around him. Just as the eyes owe their existence to the light, so do other delicate structures owe their existence to what surrounds man. The simple primitive world is the dark chamber that still holds back many organs. What light is for the undifferentiated organs out of which the eye developed itself, the environment is for primitive humanity. Things work quite differently upon man in his present mode of living; he cannot turn back to the primitive conditions of culture. Rather is it so that an ever more intense, stronger spiritual light has been effective around him that has called forth the new.

We are able to realize the meaning of this transforming cultural process if we picture to ourselves how the being fares who is also subject to this influence but cannot go along with the transformation. Here we have the condition of the animals. They are differently structured from men. When we look at the animal as it appears in the physical world, we find that it has its physical body, its etheric body and its astral body in the physical world, but it has no ego in the physical world. Hence, the animals are powerless on the physical plane to undergo transformation of the three bodies, and cannot adapt themselves to a new environment. Two days ago we considered wild animals in captivity, how, out in the wilderness certain animals never have tuberculosis, tooth decay, -etc., but do in captivity. A whole series of decadent appearances show up in captivity or under other circumstances.

During the cultural process, men are continually subject to other conditions. This is the nature of culture. Otherwise, there would be no development, no history of human beings. What we observed as experiments with animals as to the effect on the physical body appears as the opposite in men. Man, because he has an ego, has the capacity of inwardly digesting the impressions that storm in upon him from our culture. He is inwardly active, first adapts his astral body to the changed conditions and then reorganizes it. Thus, as he keeps evolving, he comes to higher cultures and always receives new impressions. At first these express themselves in feelings and perceptions. Were he now to remain passive, inactive, were there no activity stirred up in him, no creativity, then he would become stunted and sick as does the animal. This it is that distinguishes the human being, that he can adapt himself and, from out the astral body, gradually change the etheric and physical bodies. He must be inwardly up to this transformation, however, otherwise there is no adjustment of the balance between what comes to him from the outside and what counters it from within. A man would be crushed by the impressions from outside as the animal in a cage is crushed by them because it has no inner creativity. But man has his inner activity. Against the spiritual lights around him, he must be able to set something, in a sense, to counter with eyes, with seeing.

Whatever turns out as a disharmony between impressions from the outside and the inner life is unhealthy. It is in the big cities that we can see what happens when impressions from the outside grow ever more powerful. When we tear along faster and faster, when we must let rumbling sounds and hurrying people go by us without taking a stance, without countering them—this is unhealthy. As regards this position towards the outside, the intellect is the least important, but what is important depends upon whether our feelings, our soul, indeed, our living bodies, can take a position towards it. This we will understand rightly through the consideration of a definite illness that appears especially in our time, and that did not occur earlier. A person not accustomed to absorb much, one poor in soul, is brought up against all kinds of impressions so that he finds himself standing before a quite incomprehensible outer world. This is the case with many feminine natures. Their inner being is too weak, too little organized to digest it all. But we find this condition also in many masculine persons. The consequences result in the illnesses of hysteria. Everything connected with hysteria is derived from this imbalance.

Another form of illness takes hold when our lives bring us to the position of wanting to understand too much of what is set before us in the outer world. It is mostly the case with men who suffer with causality illness. One accustoms oneself always to ask, “Why? why? why? why?” It is even said that the human being must be the never-resting causality animal. Today, because we are too polite, we may no longer give the idle questioner the answer that a founder of religion gave. When he was asked, “What did God do before the creation of the world” he answered, “He cut rods for those who ask useless questions.” This is exactly the opposite condition of the hysterical one. Here the restless longing for the solving of enigmas is too great. This is only a symptom of an inner attitude. The one who never wearies of always asking, “Why?” has a different constitution from other people. He gives signs of a different inner working of spiritual and bodily functions from the person who asks “Why” only on outer provocation. This leads to all hypochondriacal conditions, from the lightest case to the deepest illusory illness. So it is that the cultural process affects human beings. Man must above all have an open mind in order always to be able to digest what comes towards him. Now we can also make it clear to ourselves why so many people have the urge to shed this culture, to have done with this life. They are no longer up to what presses in upon them. They strive to get out. These are always weak natures who do not know how to counter the outer impressions with a mighty inner response.

Thus it is that we cannot speak today in clichés as regards health just because life itself is so manifold. The one person stands here, the other there. Because what has developed in the human being has developed in a certain sense through the outer world, each has his own health. This is why we must make the human being capable of understanding his environment, even to the very functions of the body. For the man who is born into circumstances in which light muscles and nerves are necessary, it would indeed be foolish to develop heavy muscles. Where does the gauge for the successful developing of the human being lie? It lies within the human being. As with money, so it is with health. When we go after money in order to have it for benevolent purposes, then it is something wholesome, something good. Going after money may not be condemned, for it is something that enables us to forward the cultural process. If we go after money for money's sake, then it is absurd, laughable. It is the same with health. If we go after health for health's sake, then the striving has no significance. If we put ourselves out for health for what we can achieve through our health, then the effort for the sake of health is justified. Whoever would acquire money should first make it clear to himself how much of it he needs. Then he should press forward for it. Whoever yearns for health must look into the easily misunderstood words like comfort, love of life, enjoyment of life, and what could be meant with them. Joy of life, satisfaction in life, love of life are present in savages. In the human being in whom outer and inner life are in harmony, in the harmoniously developed man, conditions must be such that if there is discomfort, if there is this or that hurt of body or of soul, this feeling of discomfort must be seen as some sort of illness, as a disharmony. Hence it is important in all education, in all public work, not to carry on routinely, but rather out of the expanse of a cultural view, so that joy and satisfaction in life are possible.

It is curious that what has just been said has been said by a representative of spiritual science. Yes, so says spiritual science whom people reproach for striving for asceticism. Someone comes along who takes great pleasure in nightly visits to the girlie shows or in downing his eight glasses of beer. Then he encounters people who take joy in something on a higher level. So he remarks that they punish themselves. No, they would punish themselves were they to sit with him in the music hall. Whoever enjoys the girlie shows and such belongs there, and it would be absurd to deprive him of the enjoyment. It is healthy only to take away his taste for it.

One should work to ennoble one's pleasures, one's gratifications in life. It is not so that anthroposophists come together because they suffer when talking about higher worlds, but rather because it is their heart's deepest enjoyment. It would be the most terrible deprivation for them to sit down and play poker. They are completely full of the joy of life in every fiber of their beings.

There is no point in saying, even concerning health, that one should do thus and so. The point is to provide joy and satisfaction in life. Indeed, the spiritual scientist in this case is quite the epicure of life. How is this to be conferred upon health? We must be clear about this, that when we give someone a rule about health, we must aim at what gives joy, bliss and pleasure to his astral body. For by the astral body the other members are affected. This is more easily said than done.

There are, for example, even those among the theosophists who mortify their flesh by no longer eating any meat. Should these be people who still hanker for meat, then must this mortification be seen at best as a preparation for a later condition. There comes, however, a point at which a person may have such a relation with his environment that it becomes impossible for him to eat meat. A physician who was also of those who ate no meat, not because he was a theosophist, but because he considered this way of life healthy, was asked by a friend why he partook of no meat. He countered with the question, “Why don't you eat horse or cat meat?” Of course, the friend had to say that they disgusted him, although he ate meat of pig or cow, etc. To the physician all meat was disgusting.

Only then, when the inner subjective conditions correspond to the objective fact, has the moment come when the outer fact has a healthy effect. We must be inwardly up to the outer facts. This is expressed by the words, “comfortable feeling,” which we may not use lightly, but rather in its dignified meaning of harmonious concordance of our inner forces. Happiness and joy and delight and satisfaction, which are the foundation for a healthy life, always spring from the same foundation, from the feelings of an inner life that attend creativity, inner activity. Happy is the human being when he can be active. Of course, this activity is not to be understood as coarse activity.

Why does love make the human being happy? It is an activity we often do not see as such because it moves from within out, embracing the other one. With it we let our inner being flow out. Hence love's healing and blessing of life. Creativity may be of the most intimate nature; it does not have to become tumultuously visible. When someone is hunched over a book and the impressions from it depress him, overwhelm him, he will gradually become depressed. When, however, the reading of a book brings pictures to mind, then there is a creative activity that makes for happiness. It is something quite similar to becoming pale when one is anxious about coming events. Then the blood flows inwards in order to strengthen us so that what comes at us from the outside can find a counter-balance within. With the feeling of anxiety inner activity is alerted to outer activity. Becoming aware of an inner activity is healing. Had the human being been able to feel the activity of the inner formation in the arising of the eyes out of the undifferentiated basic organ, then he would have perceived a feeling of well-being. He was not conscious, however, of that happening.

Instead of bringing a worn-out human being to a sanitarium, it were far better to bring him into an environment where he would be happy, at first soul-happy, but also physically happy. When you put a human being into an environment of joy, in which with each step he takes an inner feeling of joy awakes, that it is which will make him healthy, when, for example, he sees sunbeams streaming through the trees and perceives the colors and scents of flowers. This, however, a person must himself be able to feel, so that he himself can take the problem of his health in hand. Every step should stir him to inner activity. Paracelsus gave us the beautiful saying, “It is best that everyone should be himself, by himself, and no one else.” It is already a limitation of what makes us healthy if we must first go to another person. Here we are confronted with outer impressions that for a short while appear to help, but finally lead to hysteria.

When one considers the problem so, one comes upon other healthy thoughts. There are people and doctors today, especially “lay doctors,” who battle against doctors. Medicine does, indeed, need to be reformed, but this cannot come about through these battles. Rather must facts of spiritual science themselves reach into science. Spiritual science exists, but not to further dilettantism. There are people today who have the itch to cure others. It is, of course, easy to find this or that illness in a person. So somebody finds this or that organ in a person different from the way it appears in another. Or a person does not breathe as the one possessed with the curing fever thinks all people should breathe. So for this a cure gets invented. Shocking, most shocking! For it is not at all a matter of directing one's efforts at a routine concept of health. It is easy to say that this and that do not make for health. Consider someone who has lost one of his legs. He is sick, certainly sicker than one who breathes irregularly, whose lungs are affected. It is not a question of healing this person. It would be foolish to say, “One must see to it that this person gets a leg again!” Just try to get him to grow another leg! What really matters is that life for his person be made as bearable as possible.

This is so in gross, but also in more subtle conditions. It is a fact that one can find a small flaw in each human being. Also, what often matters here is not to clear up the flaw, but rather, despite the human being's flaw, to make his life as bearable as possible. Think of a plant, the stem of which is wounded. The tissues and the bark grow around the wound. So is it also with human beings. The forces of nature maintain life as they grow around the flaw. Especially lay doctors fall victim to the error of wanting to cure everything. They would like to cultivate one kind of health for all human beings. There is as little of the one kind of health as there is one kind of normal human being. Not only are illnesses individual, but also healths. The best we can give to the human being, be we physician or counselor, is, to give him the firm frame of mind that he feels himself comfortable when he is healthy, uncomfortable when he is sick. Today this is not at all so easy in our circumstances. He who understands the matter of health will mostly fear such sicknesses as do not come to expression through fatigue and pain. It is, therefore, detrimental to sedate oneself with morphium. It is healthy when health brings zest. Illness brings apathy. This healthy way of living we can acquire only when we make ourselves inwardly strong. This we do when we oppose our complicated conditions with strong, inner activity. The feverish search for health will cease only then when human beings no longer strive for health as such. The human being must learn to feel and perceive whether he is healthy and to know that he can easily put up with a flaw in health. This is only possible through a strong world conception that is effective right down into the physical body. This world outlook makes for harmony. This, however, is only possible through a world concept that is not dependent upon outer impressions. The spiritual scientific world concept leads man into regions that he can only reach if he is inwardly active. One cannot read a spiritual scientific book as one reads other books. It must be so written that it evokes one's own activity. The more one must struggle, the more there is between the lines, the healthier it is. This is so only in the theoretical matters, but spiritual science can be effective in all areas.

What we call spiritual science exists in order to become effective as a strong spiritual movement. It calls forth concepts that are provided with the most powerful energies so that human beings can take a stance against what faces one. Spiritual science would like to give an inner life that extends right into the limbs, into the blood circulation. Then will every individual perceive his health in his feeling of joy, in his feeling of zest and satisfaction. Almost every dietary regime is worthless. That the other fellow tells me that this and that are good for me is of no consequence. What matters is that I find satisfaction when taking my food. The human being must have understanding for his relation to this or that food. We should know what the spiritual process is that goes on between nature and us. To spiritualize everything—that's what becoming healthy means.

Perhaps it is currently thought that for the spiritual scientist eating is something to which he is indifferent, that he gorges himself, devoid of understanding for it. To become aware of what it means to partake of a part of the cosmos, a part that has been drenched with sunlight; to know of the complete spiritual relationship in which our environment stands, to savor it not only physically, but also spiritually, frees us from all sickening disgust, from all sickening encumbrances. Thus we see that to direct this striving for health onto the right tracks sets humanity a great challenge. But spiritual science will be strong. It will transform every human being who dedicates himself to it, bringing him to the attainment of what, for himself, is the normal pattern. This is at the same time a noble striving toward freedom that comes out of spiritual science and makes man his own master. Every man is an individual being from the standpoint of his characteristics as well as of his states of health and illness. We are placed in lawful relation to the world and must learn to know our situation therein. No outer power can help us. When we find this strong inner stance, then only are we complete human beings from whom nothing can be taken. But it also holds that nobody can give us anything. Nevertheless, we shall find our way in health and in illness because we have a strong, inner stance within ourselves. This secret, too, of all healthy striving has been expressed by a spirit, an eminently healthy thinking and healthy feeling spirit. He tells us how the harmonized human being unerringly goes his way. It was Goethe who, in his poem, Orphic Primal Words, says:

As on the day that to the world bestowed thee
The sun stood high to greet the planet's sphere,
Thou didst thenceforth thrive ever on and on,
According to the law that brought thee here.
So must thou be, canst not from thee escape
The Sibyls and the Prophets spoke thy fate;
Not time nor power can destroy the mould
When form once cast doth livingly unfold.

In this Lecture, Rudolf Steiner reminds us to look beyond immediately sense-perceptible definitions of man and woman to the levels of polarity which are at work within these outer “garments,” to look behind our male and female physical bodies for the interacting of masculine and feminine elements within the whole human being.

Lecture 11 of 15 from the lecture series: Perception of the Soul and of the Spirit. Published in German as: Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes. Published in The Anthroposophical Review, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1980). GA# 56.

Anthroposophical science does not exist in order that human beings be estranged from life through some kind of mysticism. It should in no way divert people from their tasks in daily life or the present. On the contrary, spiritual science should bring strength, energy and open mindedness to humanity so that people can meet what daily life and our times demand. Hence it follows that spiritual science must not concern itself solely with the great riddles of existence, of the nature of human existence and the meaning of the world, but must also seek to cast light on those questions which confront us directly. Therefore in these lectures we shall deal throughout with what are commonly called questions of our time.

But whoever would speak out of spiritual science on such contemporary issues finds himself in a special position, for he raises the expectation that he will directly enter these current debates. And this expectation arises very easily with the questions of man and woman, or man, woman and child. Yet precisely because the spiritual researcher must consider these questions from a higher vantage point, his observations seem to lead away from the outlook and opinions arising in conventional discussions. Although spiritual science must indeed look at these questions from a higher perspective, it is precisely spiritual science which is able to work most practically on these issues. For while it is of the nature of spiritual scientific observation that such questions are raised into their eternal context, at the same time such observation makes visible practical solutions to concrete problems (unlike party programmes, slogans and the like which prove to be unworkable in practice). This must always be remembered when considering the relationship of man and woman from a higher vantage point. Many of the things to be said will sound quite strange. But if you penetrate deeper into them you will discover that spiritual science can offer a far more thorough answer to questions of practical life than can be found in other quarters.

Spiritual science takes its start from the knowledge that behind all that is sense perceptible stands a soul-spiritual nature. Only when we turn our gaze towards the spiritual lying behind the sense world, will the questions with which we wish to concern ourselves appear in their right light. And so we must ask ourselves: What is the spiritual nature of the two sexes? We shall then see that the truths revealed by spiritual science are already sensed by many today, even by those of a materialistic world outlook. But as these inklings are only based on a materialistic conception they often appear as illusory.

What then does materialism have to say about the nature of the sexes? We may best orientate ourselves towards this question by considering that women have for some time sought to approach the time in human evolution when both sexes shall attain full equality. In so far as women have stepped into the struggle for their rights, it is important for us to learn what materialism has to say about female nature. Then we will find a point of reference on how the modern world thinks about this question. One could quote the most varying ideas on female nature such as they appear in the book A Survey of the Woman Problem (Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit) by Rosa Mayreder. It is indeed very good to seek the opinions of leading personalities of the day on issues of this kind.

A very noteworthy scientist of the nineteenth century described the basic quality of woman to be humility. Another whose comment is equally valid declared it to be an angry disposition. Another scientist who sparked off much controversy came to the conclusion that female nature is basically submissive, while yet another felt it consisted of the desire to dominate. One described women as conservative, still another felt women to be the true revolutionary element in the world. And yet another said that the ability to analyse was well developed in women, as opposed to others who believed that women lack this quality entirely and have only developed the capacity for synthesis.

This quaint collection could be extended indefinitely, though in the end one would only learn that through looking at things on a purely external level, intelligent people are led to opposite conclusions. Those who wish to enter into the thing more deeply must ask whether perhaps these observers are starting from false premises. One cannot merely look at externalities, rather one must consider the whole being of the human being. An inkling of the truth dawned in many researchers through the facts themselves. However this was submerged by materialistic thought. For example a young man, Otto Weininger, wrote a book entitled Sex and Character. Otto Weininger was a man with great potential which, however, he was unable to develop because the full weight of materialism rested heavily on his soul. He was of the opinion that the individual human being can be seen neither as entirely masculine nor feminine but rather that the masculine is mixed together with the feminine and vice versa. This embryo of an idea dawned in the soul of Weininger but was stultified by the prevailing materialism. Thus Weininger imagined there to be a mixing and material interaction of the masculine and feminine principles such that in every man a hidden woman and in every woman a hidden man is to be found. But out of this, some strange conclusions came to him. Weininger said for example that the woman possesses no ego, individuality, character, or personality, no freedom and so on. As his theory was concerned only with a purely material, quantitative mixing of male and female properties, it followed that the man possesses all of these things. These, however came to nothing in him because of his other male qualities. Thus if we enter into this logically we soon discover a theory which destroys itself. Yet as we shall see, there is some truth in it.

I have emphasised again and again that it is not as easy to understand the human being out of spiritual science as it is out of a materialistically orientated science. For that which we perceive as the sense-perceptible human being, is for spiritual science only one member of the whole being, namely the physical body. Beyond that, however, spiritual science distinguishes the etheric body which the human has in common with animals and plants. As a third member of the human being it characterises the astral or soul body as that which lives in our feelings and sensations and is the bearer of our joys and sorrows. This member we have in common with the animal world. And as the fourth member spiritual science recognises that which makes human beings human and conscious of themselves—the ego. Spiritual science thus describes the human being as possessing four members.

At present we will concern ourselves with the physical and etheric bodies. For herein lies the solution to the riddle of the sexes. The etheric body is only to a certain extent a picture of the physical body. In regard to the sexes things are different. In the man the etheric body is female and in the woman it is male. However strange it may seem, a deeper observation will disclose the following: Something of the opposite sex lies hidden in each person. It is no good however to look for all kinds of abnormal phenomena, rather one needs to pay attention to normal experiences. By confronting this fact, it is no longer possible in the strict sense to speak of man and woman, but rather of masculine and feminine qualities. Certain qualities in the woman work more outwardly while others are more inward. The woman has masculine qualities within herself and the man feminine qualities. For example a man becomes a warrior through the outer courage of his bodily nature, a woman possesses an inner courage, the courage of sacrifice and devotion. The man brings his creative activity to bear on external life. The woman works with devoted receptivity into the world. Countless phenomena of life will become clear to us if we think of human nature as the working together of two polar opposites. In the man the masculine pole works outwards and the feminine lives more inwardly, while in the woman the opposite holds true.

Spiritual science however also shows us a deeper reason why a masculine quality is to be found in the woman and a feminine in the man. Spiritual science speaks of how human beings strive after ever greater perfection, through many lives. Our present life is always the result of a previous one. Thus as we proceed through many lives, we experience both male and female incarnations. What arises in this way may be expressed as the effect of those experiences gathered on both sides in earthly life.

Whoever is able in this way to look more deeply into the male and female natures knows that the more intimate experiences of the two sexes are very different, and must be very different. Our entire earth existence is a collection of the most varied experiences. However, these experiences can only become comprehensive through their being acquired from the viewpoint of both sexes. Hence we can see that even if we only consider the human being with regard to the two lower members, we see in reality a being with two sides. So long as one merely looks at the physical body little can be understood. The spiritual lying behind must also be recognised. Through his masculine nature the inner femininity of the man appears, and through the woman's feminine nature her inner masculinity appears. Now one can grasp why it is that so many misjudgments have been made about this question; it depends on whether one looks at the inner, or the outer aspects. In considering only one side of the human being, one is subjected entirely to chance. If, for example, one researcher finds that the main quality of the woman is humility and another that it is an angry disposition, it simply means that both have observed only one side of the same being. Error must occur with this kind of approach. In order to recognise the full truth we must look at the whole human being.

Something else must also be taken into account in order to gain knowledge of the whole truth. We must observe the human being in alternating sleeping and waking states. During sleep the astral body and the ego are raised out of the physical-etheric organism of the human being. On falling asleep one loses one's day consciousness; one enters into a different state of consciousness—a sleep consciousness. The perceptions and experiences which are made by the ego and astral body during sleep in the spiritual world remain hidden to our usual consciousness. In the present evolutionary state the human being is organised in such a way that the ego and astral bodies must make use of the physical sense organs in order to become aware of the physical world. That we see, hear, taste, and so on with our physical organs of sense is an idea widely held today. A thinker like Fichte however, would say: The ear does not hear—I hear. The ego, the human being's true inner being, is therefore the starting point for all our sense perceptions. And each morning when we awaken, the ego and astral body experience new knowledge of the physical world through the sense organs. It is different during sleep, for the ego and astral body spend their time in the spiritual world. The human being has sense organs in the astral body which enable perception in the astral world, but these have normally not been developed. Those who are unable to accept this as a possibility must be more consequent and say that in reality human beings die every evening. But human beings do find themselves in the spiritual world at night.

Further than this, the spiritual and physical worlds have a unique relationship to one another, for everything physical is only a very dense form of the spiritual. In the same way as ice is densified water, so are the physical and etheric bodies a densification of the astral body. Present day materialism will find it very hard to admit that the spirit creates everything material. It is, however, the tragedy of materialism that it understands the nature of matter least of all. One arrives at some very strange conclusions if one denies that matter is a condensed form of the spiritual. Naturally if one stays with popular concepts, most people will not immediately recognise anything less than pure reason in such a sentence as the following: The body is the foundation for our true soul nature; all so called spiritual things can be guided through that which is bodily. It becomes much clearer, however, if one takes it to its logical conclusion, as is done for instance in that pragmatism which comes from America. One single sentence will easily show how this theory speaks pure nonsense to the human mind. Thus it declares that man does not cry because he is sad, but rather is sad because he cries. That a soul mood might have an effect on the physical is not deemed possible, instead one believes that some outside event causes the tears to run which then makes the person sad. This is the consequence of materialism carried to its logical absurdity.

Spiritual science knows that the two higher members of the human being, the ego and the astral body leave during the night while the physical and etheric bodies remain behind. Thus it follows that during sleep the human being leaves behind male and female aspects and lives as a sexually undifferentiated being in the spiritual world. Everyone's life is thus divided between a sexual and an asexual experience.

Do the sexes then have no meaning in the spiritual world? Does the polarity of physical and etheric body which makes the two sexes manifest here on earth, find no echo in the higher worlds? Certainly we do not take our sexual nature with us into higher worlds; however, the origin of the two sexes is to be found in the astral sphere. In the same way as ice is formed from water, that which meets us in the physical world as masculine and feminine is formed out of the polarity of higher principles. We can approach this best if we consider it as the polarity of life and form. This polarity is also expressed in nature. We can see budding life in the tree and at the same time that which builds up hard forms, slows down growth and transforms it into the solid trunk. Life and form must work together in everything that lives. And if we look at the nature of the sexes from this standpoint we can say: That which corresponds to the life principle is the masculine, while that which brings life into a certain form expresses itself in the feminine. That which an artist creates in the way of form in marble, for example, is not to be found in outer nature. Only the artist's inner being, which is rooted in the spiritual world and finds its nourishment there, can be artistically creative. Indeed the reality is that the forces and beings of the spiritual world are continually streaming into the astral body and ego of the human being. And that which the artist creates as an imprint on matter is a memory of something with which he has been stimulated in the spiritual world. Were the human being unable to return to a spiritual homeland during sleep, it would not be possible to carry into physical existence the seeds needed to initiate great and noble deeds. Therefore nothing could be worse for the human being than prolonged loss of sleep.

That which the artist has drawn from the spiritual world and has built unconsciously into his work then appears as life and form. One might ask why it is that the “Juno Ludovisi” appears so wonderful to us. There is the large face, the wide forehead, the unusual nose. If we try and feel our way into this picture we would come to experience how impossible it is to think away the spiritual; soul and spirit are to be found in the very form of this face. This form could stay like this forever. The inner life has become entirely form, is fixed in form; soul and spirit have become form. But then we look up at the head of Zeus. Soul and spirit are present in this rather narrow forehead too, but one has the feeling that this form could change at any moment. Out of a deep inspiration the artist has been able to hold on to life and form in all reality.

But just as the artist is able to mould life and form into his great works, so is our whole being in reality life and form. This in itself shows that human nature is of spiritual origin and is created out of life, out of the continuous process of life and that which gives it permanence. The human being experiences life and death as the expression of this higher polarity of existence. It is in this sense that Goethe could say: “Death is the means by which nature can create more life.” Thus life finds a form not for one-sided life, nor one-sided death, but for a higher harmonious whole which can be created through life and death together. On this basis spiritual and physical can work together through the medium of masculine and feminine; the eternally developing life in the masculine, and life held in form in the feminine principle.

When investigating the nature of the sexes we have not begun with a one-sided observation of physical existence but rather have sought an answer on the spiritual level of existence. The harmony above the sexes can only be found in so far as the two sexes raise themselves to that level. If, therefore, by making use of the knowledge to be gained from spiritual science we could enable the reality beyond the sexes to take effect in practical life, the problem of the sexes would be solved. This does not lead away from life however. For that which meets us in the two phenomena of human nature can best be clarified by consciously striving for this higher harmony. In this way the question of the sexes will be deepened and the polarities will be harmonised. Everything in the nature of the sexes attains a very different form and meaning. We cannot solve this question through dogma, rather we must seek a common ground, and find perceptions and feelings which lead beyond the sexes.

These observations have shown, as is found again and again, that we must distinguish between the reality of the senses and the nature of being itself. If we want to solve the riddles of life, we must observe the whole human being from the world of the senses and from the world of the spirit. It can be seen that beyond the sense-perceptible polarity, man and woman are only garments, sheaths which hide the true nature of the human being. We must search behind the garments, for there is the spirit. We must not merely consider the outer side of the spirit, we must enter into the spirit itself.

We could also express it in this way: Love saturated with wisdom or wisdom penetrated with love is the highest goal. “The eternal feminine draws us forward.”¹ The feminine is that element in the world which strives outward in order to be fructified by the eternal elements of life.

• 1. The closing lines of Goethe's Faust.

Someone who speaks about occult science today, or even of the mission of occult science in our time, may probably prepare himself for meeting the most different attitudes. On one side, we have to admit that the term “occult science” causes the opinion of our contemporaries that it concerns something dark to the highest degree or something mystic in the worst sense that only can originate or excite interest with persons with unclear thinking, at least only with such people who have no idea of the big progress in the field of knowledge. How many people say to you, only such human beings use the term “occult science” who stand apart from the big progress of natural sciences or other knowledge in our time.

If on one side already by pronouncing the term “occult science” some opposition arises, we are not at all allowed to deny that such opposition is justified to a considerable degree. Since, as weird as it may appear, one has to say the following. The real occult scientist who is aware of the progress of the so-called science or knowledge in our time and who only wants to go beyond the scope of certain superficialities must say that such opponents may be for him less dangerous contemporaries, less detrimental ones than others who count themselves among the followers, even among the apostles of the so-called occult science. It is weird that one pronounces such a thing, is it not? However, it is true. The term occult science has something tempting for many people. The opponents reproach the occultist so easily that people come running if one speaks about something mysterious, so that those who are of unclear mind or too lazy to put themselves on the ground of knowledge or too weak to open themselves to knowledge are of full interest if talk is of anything dark, full of secret. Thus, one says, the occultist is very popular, and in certain sense, he counts on this strange instinct in the human nature, on the pursuit of the spiritual in the worst sense of the word.

I do not deny that there are many people in our chaotic time who are only driven by this dark instinct of the human nature to occult science. If then the opponents of occult science see what such ostensible followers cause, what they often assert and how they relate to the knowledge of our time, then one does not need to be surprised if our opponents come to the just characterised judgement. If the occultist were afraid, one could maybe make the absurd, but true assertion that he would have to be much more afraid of a big number of his followers than of his opponents. For these opponents will have to accomplish such turnabout which I characterise maybe already in the course of this talk, however, in particular in the next talk about natural sciences. For today, it is my task to clarify the significance and mission of the so-called occult science in our time. I do that in narrative way.

If you see through the program of the winter talks, you see the term changed. With some talks, you read “occult” science, with other “spiritual” science. This has happened at every single place with full care, although the spiritual science, as I represent it here, is synonymous with occult science. Do not understand the word “occult” in the composition of occult science in such a way, as if with it anything secret and dark is meant. The talk itself shows you why I just use this term occult science for the sum of truth and knowledge about which we want to speak in the course of the winter.

If we want to say what occult science is based on, we must give a quite simple answer at first. We must say, the occult science rests on two convictions: first on the conviction that behind that which our senses show in the outside world which our mind can take up in sense-perception and experiences, behind that which eyes can see and hands can seize, there is a higher world, an invisible supersensible one. This is one conviction. The other conviction is that the human being is able to grasp and behold this supersensible, invisible world developing his own cognitive forces and abilities. If we pronounce these both things, we have said on what any so-called occult science is based.

Straight away, however, our contemporaries raise important objections here. Firstly, our education has a direction which says there, we do not need it at all to speak of any supersensible world, any invisible world; these are yesteryear's prejudices—thank God! Many people say so. And it is not yet long ago—today, indeed, such voices become quite rare—that those who considered themselves to be the most enlightened, the most advanced ones said, the orientation to invisible, to supersensible backgrounds of the things belongs to a childish, naive age of the human development. In those days, one did not yet stand firmly on the ground of scientific knowledge when one still believed to solve the riddles of existence by all kinds of fiction and imagination.

However, the newer time has taught the human beings that the research using the experience of the external senses does not need to fall back on such supersensible forces or beings, but that the world, as we see it by the senses, is explicable of its own terms. If we can explain the world from itself—so the materialists and monists say and many of our contemporaries are such—if we can discover the sensuous causes within the sensuous world, we have no reason to refer to extrasensory beings. This radical direction generally wants to break with all views of the supersensible. One cannot deny that this view has to allege weighty reasons for itself. Who wants to misjudge the enormous progress of the external natural sciences in the course of the last centuries and in particular in the last century? Who does not admire these research results, on one side going up to the phenomena of the starry sky, and on the other side diving down to the secrets of the smallest living beings, into the secrets of the substances and the sensuous existence? Who does not stand admiring even before ambitious speculations, as they go out from such great discoveries of single researchers as those of the radium? Moreover, who will not see that it has something brilliant if now those standing on the ground of such a radical positivism or materialism say, the researcher is still far away from solving all riddles of existence by sensuous investigation. However, have patience; the time will come when natural sciences make clear that which a thick veil still covers today. The time will come when the scientists unravel the past world in the layers of the earth and when they recognise nature in her creating, when the wholly sensuous research will illumine the past.

The time will also come—someone will say rightly who stands on the ground of research—when one adds certain materials to unliving substances in the laboratory, so that one will succeed in producing living substances in the laboratory. Perhaps, this still appears a bold idea today; however, the development goes in this direction, and then you, occult scientist, can pack up and go home because you do no longer have the right to speak of supersensible things when we have shown that even life originates by a combination of materials and forces.

The whole series of the talks has to give the answer to such objections. It would be careless to want to give an answer already today. I want only to say one thing that should show typically how ambiguous the objections are which one makes against the apparently arcane occult science. While the natural sciences assert with a certain right that once the time comes when from only unliving substances life comes into being, and this research thereby believes to state something that brings the occult science completely down, it is true that occult science has always known this! Yes, because it has known this, it could stand so firmly! One misjudges the true character of occult science completely if one makes such allegations against it. The entire answer will arise in the course of the talks.

There are other contemporaries who say, it may be quite good that there is something supersensible behind our sensory world; but the human being can know nothing of such a supersensible world with his talents and capabilities and, hence, he is not allowed to speak about it if should be talk of science.

This is an opinion that is much more widespread. One does not want generally to decide the question of the supersensible, one wants to leave it quite uncertain, to make it the object of a wholly subjective, arbitrary faith whether there are senses to be able to perceive the supersensible. The human being cannot look behind the external nature and he leaves the ground of knowledge, moves into the field of arbitrary faith if he tries to overstep the limits of the external nature.

Occult science faces this view in the following way. It says, you have examined the cognitive faculties of the human being. You have shown that he cannot come—applying his cognitive faculties—behind nature where the supersensible begins. Now you say, because we have proved this, occult science or the science of the supersensible is impossible.—Someone who speaks in such a way assumes that occult science disagrees with him. However, this is not the case. Occult science completely agrees with him, it stands accurately on the same point of view. Occult science says, you have examined your cognitive faculties; you have shown exactly how far one can come with them. You have shown that one cannot come with it in the supersensible realm. You are completely right; but you only make one mistake, the mistake that you do not keep to the positive that you do not claim only what you know, but also what you cannot know, while you state that nobody can know it.

Here we meet a characteristic of our contemporaries standing on the so-called scientific base that does not come from science, from knowledge but from a general feeling, an unspoken instinct of our time. Admittedly, this instinct becomes only obvious if one checks the events of our time a little as an impartial, quiet observer. Look at any journal, any newspaper, and any popular or even academic book that deals from any direction with such questions, as I have put them. You will find nothing more often than the saying that is from a higher spiritual point of view a fateful one: we are only able to know this and that. One cannot judge this or that. Convince yourselves whether you cannot always find this “one” or “we” if talk is of these things! It is rather insignificant, but it comes from a deeply nested instinct. It is the belief that everybody has a certain infallibility of knowledge because not only he himself can understand but also the human beings generally what “we” can know and cannot know. From this instinct, our contemporaries cannot bring themselves to believe that there can be a real development of recognising. Nevertheless, how absurd is this view if the human being considers it in relation to his own life! Imagine only, when does the point of time occur for the single human being when he can decide where the limits of his ability of discriminating are?

Is he able to decide where the limits of the cognitive faculties are at the age of 25, 36, sixty or even already of ten years? Is there not development in any life? Do we not put up other assertions in childhood than in the later life? Are we allowed to think that we cannot learn anything from anybody in the world, that nobody in the world can know more than we do? Nevertheless, this is as an instinct in the nature of our contemporaries that everybody determines the limits of the cognitive faculties of his own accord. This assertion has not only has arisen from this instinct, but numerous works, which deal on thousands of pages with it. They start, if one looks behind the scenery, from nothing but the belief that the human being lives in this instinct.

However, the occultist objects the following. He says, concerning that knowledge from which you think that it is clear to you, you are completely right, you cannot recognise more there. However, there is a development of the cognitive faculties. If you want to penetrate into the supersensible world, you have to develop the extrasensory cognitive faculties. This is possible!—Thus, the viewpoint of occult science does not at all contradict to that which these people say. It agrees with them. It says only, the human being still has another cognitive faculty in himself that is without these limits, and that he can develop. Now, does anybody have the right to say that anything like the development of the cognitive faculty is impossible if we consider it from the viewpoint of clear logical thinking? What can he say? He can only say, I do not know it, it is unknown to me. He can set the limit to himself through which he cannot look into such a development.

If he says, my limit of cognitive faculties is not sufficient to do this, he has to say, I do not know.—Then he is also not allowed to decide anything on such facts. Anybody who knows nothing of the extrasensory world is not allowed to say whether it exists or not, but only somebody who knows something of it. Occult science stands just on the viewpoint of positivism in its whole universality. The occultist says, nobody has to decide on what one can know or on what one cannot know, but everybody has only to decide on what he himself knows.

With it, an aspect of feeling is touched that is not without significance in our occult science. One says, occult science leads to spiritual arrogance because the spiritual scientists claim that they can go beyond the usual knowledge. However, just the reverse is the case. There is no bigger arrogance than that which wants to decide on its own accord on not only what he is allowed to know, but also wants to decide on what the human beings are allowed to know or not to know. This arrogance places itself as a norm for all human beings. Against it, it is spiritual humility if anybody who stands on the ground of occult science wants to decide on nothing else than what he can know. We do not talk about that which lies beyond our limits of knowledge. This is the attitude that leads to true humility. Hence, occult science must always have a personal character. This is no disadvantage. This also does not speak against the validity of the spiritual-scientific truths. We must get clear about the fact that the human being has to find what he wants to find and should find of the highest and supersensible things in his innermost soul by the power that he develops in the spiritual life always on his own accord. However, if this is true, everybody who wants to see the facts of occult science has to turn to his own inside. Many opponents derive their objections from this, while they say that something that is fathomed only in the human inside can be left only to the faith, and is not allowed to claim general validity.

This conclusion appears narrow-minded to the impartial observer. There is something that, admittedly, the least ones can use as comparison that offers, however, a very good example to someone who can do it. It is something that we must experience just as the spiritual-scientific truths in our inside; any external can be nothing but an example, a suggestion to us: the mathematical profundities. These are the most common truths at the same time. Who can use them by way of comparison will find this comparison completely suitable. The mathematical truth is something that the human being can never find by the external senses. You can measure the three angles of a triangle as often as you want, you can never find the steadfast truth that these three angles are together 180 degrees. You must recognise this inside. Thus, it is with all geometrical and all mathematical truths.

One has to consider two things compared with such truths that one recognises inside. The first is something unpopular in the strictest sense today. One says, how is one able to count with something that lives only inside of the human being on the approval of the fellow man? How can we believe that something is true that we recognise only in ourselves?—However, just the reverse is right. The majority decides nothing at all on truth. If you have convinced yourselves of any mathematical theorem, then two things are valid for you. First, if a million human beings contradict you and are not of your opinion, this does not shake you at all. Secondly, you are clear in your mind that everybody who produces the same conditions in himself as you do must have the same opinion as you have, even though you have found the truths inside. As true it is that majority decides nothing on mathematical truths, as true it is that—if the conditions are produced properly, and this can be taught to everybody—majority can decide nothing on the results of occult science.

We can find them in our inside, and nothing external can dissuade us from them if we have recognised them once in our inside. In ancient times, the followers of occult science, the Gnostics, called this occult science mathesis, not because they understood it as mathematics, but because this occult science has the character of mathematical truth. However, it is long ago that one looked at the character of occult science in this purity. It is unfortunate that many things accumulated there which cloud the look, so that those who stand on the viewpoint of science get a horror if they meet something like occult science.

Thus, we come to questions that point us to two concepts, which the human beings cannot apply often enough in the present: knowledge and faith. One says that one can know something of the matters on which science works, of the other things one can only believe something, this is a personal matter. Only because those can say this who do not see how one produces the conditions, so that any faith can become knowledge. Someone who cannot prove mathematically that the three angles of the triangle amount to 180 degrees must believe it. Who is not able to prove the life of the human being between death and new birth has to believe these matters. However, he will also find the possibility to prove for himself as we still see it in the course of the talks.

Many people object that it is sinful to investigate the objects of the supersensible world, they are something that can never come from the human nature, the human being must trust in a higher revelation, and it is presumptuous to fathom this. Then one has to reply that it is a sin to let lie fallow what exists in the world in a seminal state. For the divine primordial ground has sown the seeds in the world, so that they sprout, so that they yield blossoms and fruit. To someone who wants to limit the human power of cognition saying the human being should not be so presumptuous one can answer that it is just a sin to obliterate the power of cognition. We shall not obliterate it, but develop it; that is why we have it. Somebody who can bring to his mind what a sin it is against the human nature to let the forces lie fallow, to cordon off the supersensible world soon recognises this objection as quite impossible. Thus, occult science with its attitude positions itself in the currents of the time.

Today, I do not want to prove but to tell how occult science presents itself in our time. Its object and basis are rather unknown in wide sections of the population. It is unknown that there have always been single persons in the human development who devoted themselves to this occult science most seriously who from own experience knew the experiences which one can have in the supersensible world, to whom personal experience was what I want to show in these talks. It is also unknown that there are persons still today who are able to behold in the spiritual world this way.

You can ask now, why was such a thing hidden from the masses, why is there anything that was not announced in general? We shall see if we speak of the dangers of occult science why the true occultists had the principle to make occult science known only to those who had made themselves ripe by certain qualities of their life. Today, however, one has views about the spreading of knowledge that are quite different from the views, which were always usual in occult science. If anybody knows anything today, he can hardly expect to let it flow out in printed form into the world. However, the occultists had their reasons to hand over their knowledge only to those who had prepared themselves.

Why do single human beings appear today and report about the results of occult science? This has its good reasons. It is connected with the entire spiritual progress of humanity. What everybody can know by popular writings that are based on our quite usual sensory knowledge is, properly applied, a good preparation for occult science. On the other side, one completely misunderstands the facts if one believes that our natural sciences must lead to the denial of the supersensible. Rather these natural sciences, properly understood, lead to the full recognition of the supersensible! He who takes up the scientific facts properly^, which are accessible to everybody, and pursues them comes directly to the sphere of the supersensible and invisible. However, someone who continues this scientific truth wrongly comes to the materialistic world that does not yet unnerve today's humanity maybe so much but the future humanity most certainly.

Therefore, it is necessary today to show how to use the scientific truths, as far as they are accessible. During former centuries, it was not in such a way. Everybody had to go through a long preparation in which he trains his reasoning power, his logic, and his character. Today, the scientific thinking, properly applied, is already a training to understand the publications of occult science. This scientific thinking can become a boon for humanity.

We shall get to know three ways to the supersensible world gradually. If I speak of these three ways, I expose myself to the risk that people regard me as a dreamer and as a fool in particular if I describe the third way, although those who judge in such a way know nothing at all about that matter. Three ways are shown: Imagination or clairvoyance, Inspiration and Intuition (the spiritual-scientific concepts are capitalised to distinguish them from the usual ones). These three ways exist since millennia in the human development and were always pursued. There have always been human beings who could walk on the way to the supersensible world using the methods, which are taught.

Who are such initiates? Imagine that there are human beings who live in a distant area where no railways and no machines exist. Now one comes along on the way to Europe and sees that there are railways and machines. He goes home and tells his experiences, what he himself has seen. Then he is someone who is initiated in these matters. There are also such initiates with regard to supersensible things. They are led in the secret schools to an insight into the supersensible, invisible world and can tell about what they have found out there.

One divides these initiates into two classes: in real initiates and in clairvoyants. What is now an initiate in the narrower sense? There we have to familiarise ourselves with a quality of occult science which will not be recognised in general which still exists. For it is not necessary to be a clairvoyant to understand the spiritual-scientific truths after they have been announced to the human beings.

For clairvoyance is necessary for discovering, but not for understanding the occult truths. Everything that will be said in this winter course as a result of the research in the higher world could not be found without clairvoyance, not without developing the spiritual eyes and ears slumbering in every human being. I give further details here in connection with the initiation. However, if these results have been pronounced once and have been dressed in such forms that they correspond to the today's thinking, then everybody can understand them. The objection can never count that one has to be clairvoyant to understand the things which occult science informs. They are incomprehensible not to the non-clairvoyant one, but to someone who does not want to apply his logical mind completely. One can see everything if it is pronounced once, up to the highest areas.

Somebody who realises everything that occult science says without being clairvoyant is an initiate. However, someone who can enter these invisible worlds is a clairvoyant. In olden times that are not so long ago, a strict separation existed of clairvoyants and initiates in the secret schools. One was able as an initiate to ascend to the knowledge of the higher worlds without being a clairvoyant if one applied the mind only in right way. On the other side, one could be a clairvoyant without being an initiate to an especially high degree. It will become already clear to you how I mean this. Imagine two persons, a much-learnt man who knows everything that physics and physiology have to say about the light and its phenomena, but is so shortsighted that he can hardly see ten centimetres away. He does not see a lot, however, is initiated into the principles of the light. Thus, somebody can be initiated into the supersensible world and sees badly in it. Another can see excellently in the external sensuous world, but knows practically nothing about that what the learnt man knows. Thus, there can also be clairvoyants who behold in the spiritual worlds but have no science, no knowledge of them. Hence, one differentiated clairvoyants and initiates for a long time. In order to comprise the fullness of life, one often needed not one but many human beings. Some were not made clairvoyant to advance further. The others got the spiritual eyes and ears. What existed in occult science has come about by communication and exchange of ideas between initiates and clairvoyants.

In our time, this strict separation of clairvoyants and initiates can no longer be maintained. Today, it is necessary that everybody who has attained a certain degree of initiation at least has the possibility to attain a certain degree of clairvoyance. For the complete trust from human being to human being cannot be brought about in our time. Today, everybody himself wants to know and see. That deep faith full of devotion, as it has prevailed once from human being to human being, made it possible that one heard from a special kind of clairvoyants what they perceived in the higher worlds. Then others ordered systematically what these had perceived. Today, a kind of harmony is created in the development of the initiatory and clairvoyant abilities. Hence, a third kind, the adepts can withdraw very strongly. Our time is hostile to these adepts to the highest degree. You can get an idea of the difference between an adept and an initiate if you imagine the following: imagine a region where are railways and you have seen them. Now I ask you, are you able to construct a railway after you have been convinced by own looking that such a thing exists. Practise and still some other things are necessary in order to construct it.

Someone is an adept in contrast to a clairvoyant who has acquired not only clairvoyant knowledge but also practical handling of spiritual forces by exercises of which the modern human being hardly has any idea. A much longer preparation belongs to it than even to the clairvoyant. In addition, our present cultural development is still much more hostile to the use of spiritual forces than to the aspiration to penetrate by knowledge into the spiritual world.

It is the mission of occult science to generate awareness of the possibility to penetrate on these three ways into the higher worlds, to attain a deeper knowledge than the usual one is and to extend it. If we ask ourselves, is it curiosity, is it mere desire of knowledge which lead us to occult science, then we must answer: no, it completely concerns something else! It concerns something that deeply slumbers in the sensuous science of our time that can never come out, however, about which we can speak in the talk on natural sciences. Many human beings coming to occult science do not know it clearly but they have a dark idea of it. It concerns not recognising but life, the continuation, and the increase of life. Many people are afraid that occult science turns them away from the immediate life. However, just the opposite is right. It makes the human beings competent and puts them in life. They must only have the ability and strength to enter occult science.

Already for many years, I have held talks on manifold objects here. Discussions joined these talks. I do not amplify these discussions. However, if we speak of the mission of occult science in our time, I should mention a phenomenon because it is especially typical. It faced us especially lively when we spoke about Bible and Wisdom. There it was not only one person, but numerous ones who objected something to these matters out of the depth of their hearts. These objections came from deep sensations. Among them, one was just like the following. Occult science tells a lot of the seven-membered human nature, of reincarnation and karma, of the stay of the human beings in the supersensible world between death and new birth, of the development of the human being through the different planetary states et cetera; demands are put on our mind, on our thinking. However, we search not so much satisfaction of the mind but deepening of the soul, of inner life. We want to find the divine in the feeling, in the sensation.

This objection is done out of the depth of sensations, and just the human beings who stand firmly in the occult science can appreciate the significance of such an objection completely which says there: give us soul! We know that the divine that lives in us leads us into our own hearts, but does not bring mental pictures of the human being and the world, of birth and death; we do not search the spiritual.

Those human beings who say this have no idea that they are even the biggest obstacles for the solution of the question that is very dear to their hearts. They have no idea that by that which spiritual science gives their minds just their souls receive what they demand. They have no idea that talking in such a way they reject just what their souls need. Nothing instills the divine in the souls more than the knowledge of the world evolution. If we know that in such a way, as the rainbow has seven colours, the human being has seven members and do not harden us against these ideas, then just these ideas enliven our souls to overcome what opposes the contemplation of the spiritual. You meet objections of this kind, above all, with such people who mean it just as deeply as they want to find the deepening of the soul conveniently and who avoid penetrating into the real depth of their souls.

The occultist cannot get out the sensation from the souls of the human beings, but he has to lead them into the spiritual world by knowledge, has to show them how they can attain the highest deepening by knowledge, which one can aim at. A longing for satisfaction of the soul is the biggest enemy for the striving human being. However, just that discouraged many people from theosophy and spiritual science; they do not want to be immersed in the vigorous mental work that is a refreshment of the soul at the same time. Nothing raises the soul to the divine more than this knowledge, than the deepening in the spiritual world. With it, we are on the point where knowledge intervenes immediately in life where the spiritual-scientific aspects of soul and heart come to the fore. How many people are tormented by doubts, by all possible tortures in relation to questions of existence and world riddles. Then you can read in materialistic writings that a brain cannot come without morbid changes to such views as the spiritual science presents them. From the viewpoint of the psychiatrist, one can exactly indicate the mental illness that leads to such explanations as I give them here. If we wanted to give ourselves the pleasure to work as the psychiatrists do, we could range ourselves also in such a way that the scholar who does this otherwise would be very delighted with us. You can buy a booklet cheap, which reports something that is true. It concerns the following: in a number of newspaper articles arteriosclerosis was treated and the symptoms were given with which you can notice this illness with yourselves.

The author of the writing, a doctor, had to experience that many persons came to him who pretended to have the symptoms of arteriosclerosis. What is derived from that now? The fact that many people are in a condition—because of the chaotic conditions of our civilisation even if they imagine to have nerves like ropes—that they catch fear straight away if they hear about such an illness. They fall ill, even if in a psychic form.—One also says that many people hearing only talks by professor So-and-so or by the naturopath So-and-so get the illness about which one speaks. However, what one does not regard is that already a certain form of mental illness belongs to it to think generally that way! This is a pathological trait that appears as relatively harmless even today which, however, becomes more and more detrimental. We still speak about such questions and facts in the talks on the obsessions with illness and health.

The reasons of certainty on which the human being can be based must always come from the inside. However, the spirit must be stronger there. It must have the ability to find certainty in the inside. Mental weakness is not to believe in oneself, not to believe that one can find the reasons in oneself. Mental weakness is to believe only what eyes see and hands seize and to be able to take truth only with the hand. Materialism is a sign of spiritual decadence, a hollow of the inside. If it were only a theoretical hollow, it would be still relatively harmless. However, this theoretical hollow subverts the mental health first and then the physical one. The truth of this example is that ill, wrong thoughts generate illnesses really. However, we shall hear in the talks on the obsession with illness and health how health and physical welfare depend on our true or wrong thoughts.

We shall hear how theosophy should spread healthy thoughts how theosophy should distribute healthy life and provide useful human beings for the world. Already if we remain within the soul life, we realise that someone is unable to work who is perpetually tormented by doubts who cannot attain knowledge of the questions that concern his deepest soul needs. Finally, such a soul is incapable to keep the body healthy. Occult science transforms that only into action, into reality, which natural sciences have also anticipated. For example, a scientist like Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876, German-Baltic naturalist) says: it is a thought that penetrates the whole world that orders the planets that caused the living beings from matter which appears in its letters and in the manifold forms of life and is life itself. Then one is allowed to add: if this thought that can be only found in the supersensible world is nourished and cherished, if it finds entrance consciously in the human nature, it makes the human beings healthy, strong, and competent. Does it not dissipate the doubts first, calm minds, raise hearts and make the human nature healthy? This is a deeper mission of occult science in our time.—One has to attribute to a science that remains on the surface of the sensuous that the human being is hollowed out internally, and that the age of materialism is the age of nervousness and lacking concentration. These states would still worsen if those kept the upper hands who cling tight on to the outer existence only. Occult science creates certainty of the biggest riddles of existence. That is why one calls it occult science, not because it hides anything, but because its teachings must be found in the core. It is an occult science just as mathematics is an occult science.

I could only explain the attitude and mission of occult science in this preliminary talk. Occult science does not harbour illusions neither about its followers nor about its opponents. It has to brush all illusions aside. Thereby it gives the human being the big harmonious health in all directions. This attitude forms the basis of the single truths. This attitude matters. What does this attitude attain joining real occult science? The winter talks will show this, the today's talk should be only a kind of announcement, a kind of program.

Many things will now be argued against what I have said today maybe just from those who regard themselves as very clever. Perhaps one says, look at your followers! Nevertheless, they are not abreast with modern science! Not before you have people who are abreast with modern science, we believe in a future, believe in a mission of occult science.—Who speaks in such a way does not know the secret and intimate ways, which the spirit of humanity goes. He who stands firmly on the ground that we have characterised as the ground of occult science, who is aware that truth must be found in the soul and that approval does not matter confesses to a sentence that a great friend and researcher of truth pronounced. Such a truth researcher was Leonardo da Vinci who was a great researcher and a great painter and artist and knew the mysterious currents and principles flowing through the world. No thinking head believes that in his heart the real occult-scientific attitude did not prevail.

At a passage, he confesses the lonely found truth that has found its mission in the world. It contains the confession: “The lie is so despicable that if it tells great things about God it robs His grace of its divinity, and truth is so sublime that it makes quite low things precious if it praises them.”—Let us make such a principle the innermost motive of our soul life, and then we understand how someone who stands in the occult science thinks about the mission of occult science in our age.

The occultist faces two pictures. Someone who surveys the great cultural creation of Christianity today who wants to appreciate what Christianity has done in the world puts two pictures before his soul: First, the ancient imperial Rome in the first Christian centuries. He looks there at the ruins of the ancient Rome that tell of the events in the former educated world. He can summon up consolation and certainty from this picture if one says that the scholars and educated people want to know nothing about theosophy or spiritual science. What did those want who lived in these once magnificent, now decayed buildings? They wanted to look at—the performances of the Colosseum! What did they think of Christianity? They made the Christians links and burnt them! Let us recall that thoroughly.

We turn our look to the other picture. However, we have to search it at another place. We have to search it underground in the widespread catacombs of Rome where laborious and laden people lived who were apart from education and the predominant world. There they erected their altars, there they buried their dead and offered their holy sacrifices, and there we turn our look.

After we have evoked these pictures in our soul, we ask ourselves, how did the picture change in the course of the centuries?—Those, who were below, carried in the soul what conquered the world and what happened on top perished. It had to withdraw from that which rose from below, from the concealed sites. The course of the things was that way, and this is consolation and hope for us. We know for sure that we can get nothing but scorn and derision only because of the peculiar conditions of time. We realise that we have to work quiet and simply in similar way just with those whom the so-called enlightened ones maybe despise. However, we also know that the picture will be a similar one as at that time. We know that that which one despised in former times will seize the others or go along with them, or that it passes over them. A right viewpoint concerning occult science transforms our attitude, our feelings, and sensations. Thus, this first consideration gives us something of spiritual health already, which arises from the intention to work in the world, in the sense of the upward trend of humanity. It is the mission of occult science to perform this work in the sense of our present.

In the preliminary talk, I already drew your attention to the both basic conditions of spiritual science or theosophy. I said that spiritual science rests on two pillars: first, on the fact that the human being realises that behind our sensuous world which you can see with eyes and touch with hands a spiritual, supersensible world of the facts, events and beings exists; secondly, that the human being can become able to intervene in this spiritual world recognising and on a higher stage even acting. Briefly, spiritual science expresses its conviction that there is a spiritual world and that it is accessible to the human being.

From the most different sides, spiritual science should be illumined in the course of these winter talks. Today, we look at its relation to natural sciences. Indeed, some among you may see in this talk a kind of aberration from the regular course. They come to these talks especially in order to get to know the results of spiritual science and the experiences in the higher worlds. In the main, real theosophists take the view that they have found their relation to the scientific results. Therefore, they regard the explanation of such matters as the relation of spiritual science to results of the natural sciences as somewhat boring sometimes. However, we come to so specifically spiritual-scientific subjects in the next talks that the today's intermezzo may probably be bearable, in particular with regard to the fact that the sharpest attacks and the strongest misunderstandings concerning spiritual science come just from those who pretend to stand firmly on the ground of natural sciences. Above all, be clear in your mind that in the today's talk I do not speak opposing natural sciences. With the big impact that the scientific prepositions exert on our contemporaries it would be really an awkward undertaking to get into opposition to the natural sciences. For you can hear repeatedly: the natural sciences stand on the ground of facts, of experience, and everything that does not comply with these facts and experiences must be expelled to the field of speculative fiction. You get this information from many sides concerning such things, as I want to explain just in these winter talks on spiritual science.

It is most adequate—in view of the general educational conditions in our time—if the today's talk explains the relation of the natural sciences to spiritual science as objectively as possible without pros and cons. However, from the start I want to note that spiritual science does not dispute with the natural sciences especially where it concerns only scientific facts. This could not be at all its task. Who would attack the building of strict facts anyhow? Who would argue anything against that which is certain by experiment and experience in the scientific field? Spiritual science is completely based on experiences. Admittedly, on experiences, as they have been characterised last time, on experiences in the higher, in the spiritual worlds. However, with regard to the methodical principles it completely complies with scientific demands. It agrees with the natural sciences that experience forms the basis of any knowledge at last. Thus, I do not give my view on certain scientific results of the present in the introduction of a series of spiritual-scientific talks because this is not necessary. Rather I want to show how one must look at the scientist in his scientific thinking. This is important: pursuing the scientific thought process, as it is offered to us.

It may be very good if we look back at the German cultural life for a short time. It offers a picture of the whole spiritual life of the last decades. Above all, the following comes into consideration: the natural sciences have become for many people something that they never were once. Slowly and gradually, for four centuries it has prepared itself. However, in the 19th century, it has come only to the climax of that what prepared there slowly. The natural sciences have become something that one could call a kind of religion, a kind of creed, or better said, single persons have believed to be able to form a kind of creed, a kind of religion from the scientific results of our time. It is much more important for spiritual science than discussions about scientific facts to a look at the way in which a kind of new religion, a kind of new creed has come about based on putative scientific facts. Someone who looks impartially at our cultural life cannot misjudge that people oppose the assumption of the spiritual world, oppose the religious feeling, while they refer to the fact that new scientific results would disprove any reference to a spiritual world. In certain circles, one almost believes to have removed every reference to a spiritual world with the results of the natural sciences. Hundred years ago, nobody was inclined to draw such a conclusion from the scientific facts. Indeed, there have also been earlier quite materialistic confessions of the most radical kind; but they have never put up the assertion, one could explain the world only materialistically according to the “true science.” The term “true science” exerts an ineffable magic power on our contemporaries!

One speaks much of former dark times of the religious fury, religious disputes, and religious persecutions. I do not varnish or defend these things. However, if you compare these processes of former centuries which humiliated the feeling and thinking of humanity, nevertheless, you realise something peculiar with an impartial look at the development of the human soul. Someone who thinks impartially finds that confirmed everywhere that I only assert now. Indeed, many times were dark and intolerant, but intolerance with an immense arrogance of infallibility has remained to our time! This inner intolerance commits no riots and persecutions, although one can already experience that one calls the police and the prosecutor against anybody who reports about the spiritual world. However, these are exceptions; our time is tolerant outwardly. Only in relation to thinking, One considers everybody a fool, a daydreamer, or at least an ignorant man who cannot share the creed of those who say there: from the scientific facts follows that one cannot state anything about the spiritual side of the world.

This attitude has prepared itself slowly. In the 19th century, one came with it on the climax. It is well reasoned that this has come that way. If we look for the reason, we must say, the reason is connected with the big progress of humanity. We realise that in the newer time the human beings have investigated the external physical world with all imaginable instruments and skilfully developed methods, which are more than amazing. We see how it has begun with astronomy and with the view of the astronomical world edifice how then the physical world has been conquered gradually by that what can be investigated with the armed eye and understood with the intellect. In the 19th century, it has appeared that this kind of research not only is able to see into in the lifeless nature, but it has also deeply illumined the living nature.

He who is able to pursue the spiritual life objectively knows that it signified an immense progress when during the thirties of the 19th century Schleiden (Matthias Jacob Sch., 1804–1881, German botanist) discovered the smallest part of plants and animals, the cell (together with Theodor Schwann, 1810–1882). It became obvious that many former conjectures had to disappear because of the facts, which one now discovered by means of the microscope and the new research method. One has thought a lot about what this organism is actually inside which composes our living beings. One had now discovered what corresponded to the thinking and feeling of the 19th century so much: one saw obviously how the organism builds itself up from countless and extremely small living beings. One saw now how they co-operated and yielded the human organism. Now that was accessible to the actual research, which one had assumed and bothered so much.

One had done a look at the world of life that way. Then it was a big progress when Kirchhoff (Gustav Robert K., 1824–1887, German physicist) and Bunsen (Robert Wilhelm B., 1811–1899, German chemist) announced the spectral analysis. The spectroscope, this miraculous instrument, proved that the same materials, which compose our earthly world, also exist in the universe. One recognised this by the facts, which the spectroscope delivered. Then Darwin came with the overabundant wealth of facts that show how the living beings change under the influence of external conditions, dependent on the place where they live. He succeeded in investigating the rests of primeval living beings that are in the layers of our earth. When the paleontological research came along forming a bridge between history and natural sciences, then the significant basics were given for the feeling and thinking of the 19th century. They got their solid, sure support.

In particular in Germany, one felt the blessing of such solid, sure support. Just in Germany, one had a great, idealistic-philosophical spiritual worldview that was connected with names like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. One had a range of daring, superior mental attempts behind himself. Now one was of the opinion that these attempts would have something subjective-arbitrary, something that everybody can experience or not. What Hegel, what Fichte has thought, they have thought it for themselves; another may find different things. With it, we come—one meant—in a tangle of worldviews. However, this happens only if we leave the firm ground of facts if we omit, for example, to realise how the smallest organism is composed of smallest living beings. For we would ascertain that the thousands who look into the microscope see and describe the same things. Everybody who knows the layers of the earth must describe them in the same way. This is the sure, firm ground of facts.

One has not remained to it saying, he who stands on this ground of facts is on the safe side, and we leave all remaining untouched. If one had stopped on the ground of facts, never would have originated creeds, religious problems from it. The true natural sciences that are based on observation with exclusion of the supersensible world will always be on the safe side, even if they confine themselves to the sensory phenomena. They will come to sure facts. However, these facts have worked suggestively, were mesmerising! On these scientific facts, one founded a kind of scientific atheistic or materialistic religion, a kind of creed. Now one could say, with every creed it is possible that the human being is steady and strong in life, the right thing will be found in the course of human evolution, and it does not depend on how the human being stands to the questions of the supersensible world. However, just this idea will appear in the course of these talks that it is not right to think that it is irrelevant how the human being feels and thinks. We shall just prove that feeling and imagining are a real world, and that not only the future of the earth, but of the entire human race depends on the human thinking.

We shall see in the course of the winter talks how deep and true this sentence is. Spiritual science does not deal with theoretical bickering but has to work for the human being usefully and in suitable way. Whether the single material body consists of atoms or not, whether the single material organism is composed of single cells or not, whether in the remaining heavenly bodies the same materials are as on earth or not, all that are wholly factual questions. But by the decision of these factual questions one never states something about the destiny of the human soul or mind. If one keeps to establish and describe the facts, and does not cross this border to the soul area, then there can be no conflict between natural sciences and spiritual science. However, one has not just remained to this. One built up theories; one constructed mental pictures with which generally no soul being, no spiritual existence can be combined.

We only need to have a look back at some decades of development. Today it is already almost forgotten when in the 19th century the so-called theory of energy and matter appeared. However, it would be good just for someone who stands beyond spiritual science to consider the real reason of the theory of energy and matter.

Imagine the picture of the dry theory of energy and matter as it was at that time. It went philosophically out from that which the scientific facts had brought. One had found that the human being consisted of single cells. One had discovered chemical and physical processes and had said, all our bodies would consist of molecules and atoms, and the phenomena would originate from the play and the movement of the atoms round us. Those who are now forty, fifty years old and have the academic education behind themselves remember the time lively when the so-called theory of heat controlled everything. The big discoveries in the field of thermodynamics had assumed such a shape that one imagined any gas consisting of millions smallest parts, molecules and atoms which are in an endless complex movement, knock at each other and rebound and thereby produce the phenomena of heat. What was there heat? Nothing but a result of that which exists outdoors in space as a manifold play of moving and colliding atoms. One said it soberly at that time: what you feel as warmth is nothing but a movement that the smallest parts of the bodies accomplish, and the degree of heat depends on the power of the impacts, on the vehemence of the movements. Thus, nothing was in the outside world for the theory of heat available as the whirling atoms, and what one meant with the word “warmth” was a subjective sensation, an effect on the human organism or on the brain which one also imagined materially. Not only the warmth or heat, everything was imagined as such a movement of the atoms! One must retain this. For: if you come once to the materialistic mental picture, it is like a juggernaut: it devours the spiritual, as well as the molecules and atoms have devoured it.

If you take books of that time about the phenomena of light, you can find soberly said: what you call red or blue is only an effect on your nerves, is only in you. Outdoors in the world is no light and no colour, there is only the ether penetrating the whole world, and the peculiar movement of this ether works on you and causes the sensation of colour. Thus, the light is objectively outdoors in the world as a movement of the cosmic ether, and what you feel is nothing, actually.—Briefly, the empty space became the true reality, filled with moving atoms. One assumed that all phenomena arose from this. Somebody who would have expressed himself radically could have said the following: imagine all human brains as not existing, what remains then? Nothing but the empty space, filled with atoms, if you like, with moving atoms of the ether and of the matter having weight.

However, any perception, any sensation in you like the sensations of smell, taste, warmth etc. do no longer exist; this is subjective and not objective. People like Büchner (Ludwig B., 1824–1899) and Vogt (Carl V,, 1817–1895) only drew the consequence from this premise in the middle of the 19th century. You find the merits of these men emphasised in my writing World Views and Approaches to Life in the 19th Century because they have had the iron consequence to draw the conclusions of such a view. If nothing else existed outdoors for the phenomena of colour and sound than the moving atoms and molecules, it was quite natural that the thinker said, then nothing else exists in the human being than matter, consisting of moving atoms and molecules.—Vogt had only to draw the unequivocal consequence: thoughts are produced by the movements of the cerebral molecules like other things by liver and kidneys et cetera.—This opinion bred much bad blood and was only a consequence of premises, which others had who only did not go so far. With it, it was connected inevitably that one divided this world of atoms and molecules that one regarded as the absolute in materials, which one could discover. One was of the opinion that the whole matter is only movement and can be divided in atoms and molecules. One considered life also only as a complex movement of atoms in the living bodies. One recognised that single bodies could be taken to pieces, water, for example, to hydrogen and oxygen, sulfuric acid to hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen.—However, there comes a border, where the chemical research cannot accomplish any further decomposition. Where from does this come? This is why simple elements form the basis of our materials. There are about seventy elements; all our materials are composed of them.

How does water originate? By the fact that its elements oxygen and hydrogen that, otherwise, are apart side by side, penetrate themselves. The materialists of the 19th century primarily relied on this fact that one assumed a particular number of elements. In every chemical book, you can find them: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, sulfur, phosphorus, fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine and so on. Everything living and lifeless originates from a more or less complex composition of molecules, and one considered the complex of the human soul—all the human feelings, sensations, mental pictures, ideals et cetera in himself—also as nothing else than the result of the cooperation of his compound molecules and atoms. Indeed, single persons like Haeckel said that it is absurd to explain the soul as a mere result of the cooperation of lifeless small atoms. Hence, Haeckel formed the view that the atom already has a soul for itself. He is of the opinion that all these atoms that build up such an organism have a small soul and that many small souls yield the human soul.

It is probably the most daring, the most adventurous superstition to speak of such an atomic soul! Here begins a chapter of scientific superstition that flows then into such concepts as cell soul, soul cell and the like. It would lead us too far to pursue this further. We are concerned to characterise the sense and the spirit of natural sciences as they have presented themselves. Nevertheless, we look back at the time when a kind of materialistic creed joined to the physical-scientific suggestion. This has immense spiritual results. He who does not take the matters seriously can easily pass over them. However, it is true that this scientific creed excludes any independence of soul and mind from that, it excludes to speak of mind and soul. For this view, that what the human soul experiences begins with the first activity of the organism and disappears with the decay of it. The human being is nothing else than a built up machine which, during the sixty to eighty years of its existence, produces phenomena like thoughts, sensations and feelings, and if it disintegrates, it is over, because all these phenomena are nothing but the assemblage of molecules. Thus, Vogt and all those thought who have drawn the daring, radical conclusion from the scientific premises.

Then another party came in natural sciences. One of it is the famous Du Bois-Reymond (Emil Heinrich D., 1818–1896, German physiologist). He held an important talk in a Leipzig meeting of scientists and physicians in which he brought up something that forms the object of many discussions still today. He said: we are in the natural sciences so far that in us the scientific ideal has developed that, for example, all light phenomena, all colour phenomena and sound phenomena can be led back to the work of atoms and molecules. The rest is appearance; however, these are the realities. Everything that originates comes into being and persists because these atoms combine, collide, and oscillate. If it were possible—Du Bois-Reymond meant—to give the suitable movement and position of the atoms for every phenomenon, then the world would be explained scientifically. However, with this scientific explanation something would not and could not be explained. Du Bois-Reymond also pointed to the teachings of the great German philosopher Leibniz (Gottfried Wilhelm L., 1646–1716) in those days.—Imagine once—Du Bois-Reymond said approximately: you could analyse and describe a human brain in all its movements clearly, and now imagine it enlarged, so that you can go for a walk in it like in the machinery of a factory. Look at the whole: you see enormously complex movements in it, you find complexities in it with which one can compare nothing in the world; but you see movements only. Natural sciences will never be able to explain the transition, which causes that one can say: I smell rose scent. Here is an uncrossable limit of knowledge. One cannot explain how the human nature becomes conscious. Hence, he speaks his “ignorabimus:” we shall never know.—He says, one is never able to cross these limits; the human being will never know how consciousness originates from motion.

Du Bois-Reymond did not only put this riddle before the world, but six other. In The Seven World Riddles (1880), you find that he admits not to understand how life originated and how the first distribution of matter came about. He admits that matter must have been distributed from the outset. On the question, where from motion comes, he says: one can never know this!—Du Bois-Reymond counts all that to the seven world riddles, and in Haeckel's book The World Riddles (1895–1899) you can read that this has been written as a kind of reply to DuBois-Reymond's Seven World Riddles. Then he says also, it is true that there are seventy elements that consist of materials, which are quite different in relation to the single elements; but everything originates from the combination of atoms and molecules.—One assumed one thing just as fixed: the immutability of the atoms. What is an atom remains an atom. Büchner emphasised the sentence repeatedly: the motion of the atoms changes, but what is an atom sulfur, an atom oxygen etc. remains an atom sulfur, an atom oxygen. This was announced now as the immutability of the materials in the elements, the eternity of the atoms. In his World Riddles (The Riddles of the Universe), Haeckel emphasises nothing stronger than the eternity of the matter. This was one thing that one fixed. The other what Du Bois-Reymond fixed was that limits are put to the natural sciences: one can never know how consciousness comes into being.

Based on these premises, different groups formed. One said: howsoever the things may be, we remain at our old religious creed. We let the researchers think what they want to believe, we do believe; but in relation to science we keep to the determined facts.—The other, more courageous ones said: Indeed, if the real is the atoms in motion, the seventy elements and in between the ether atoms, everything else is appearance, which exists only as long as a motion exists.—This is no longer science, this is a creed! This is something that spreads to everything that concerns the spiritual world, which is for such a creed nothing else than a manifestation of the wholly material facts.

It was already a courageous venture when on the Lübeck meeting of scientists and physicians, in the end of the eighties, the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) held a talk The Overcoming of the Scientific Materialism. Ostwald showed that for the logical thinking the concept of matter generally disintegrates into nothing. One can unfold this logical thinking very easily: what do you see in the world? You see bodies! What are these bodies? They are something that is a certain colour, a certain shine, a certain temperature, something that you can smell and taste. Attempt to retain everything that you perceive in such bodies. If you take away what you perceive as smell, as taste, as touch, what remains to you? Nothing at all! A body is before the logical thinking nothing but a conglomerate, the sum of its qualities.

What has one taken as a basis of light, of colour? Nothing but movements of the ether! One fulfilled the entire space with ether. He who is known with theoretical physics knows how one calculates ether waves etc. and that everything that one finds there is a result of calculations. The ether can never be an object of immediate observation. If it produces the discernible things, how can one perceive it itself? The ether was the most fantastic idea that one could assume. Thus, the natural sciences are based on something fictional. One had nothing but results of calculations. The absolute and most certain that should be there for the scientific thinking was nothing but something calculated. In my The Philosophy of Freedom, you can read up how this thought cancels out, so that one can compare it to Münchhausen who draws himself out of a swamp with his own shock of hair. This is made clear there. However, on the human beings, and if they believe to be ever so logical, never reasons, never real facts, but suggestions work. There work all possible concepts, which move through thousands and thousands canals into the souls. Thus, the elements and atoms became a natural premise also with those who had no possibility to survey the matters and did not know at all, why one assumes such matters. It was a general suggestion.

At this time, one of the biggest progress of the human investigation of nature occurred, namely the investigation of the living as Darwin made it so popular. The infinite wealth of facts that have become known to the world was in such a way that one had to say: if it had occurred at a spiritual time when one knew that spirit forms the basis of all material phenomena, then one would have found countless reasons just in these facts for the work and being of the spirit. One would have found the spirit working on the change and transformation of the organisms. Darwinism never generated materialism. Materialism, which comes from those mental pictures, as I have just characterised them, made Darwinism materialistic. It made such a high-minded thinker and researcher as Ernst Haeckel also materialistic. While Haeckel could have performed great things for spiritual science with his researches, he was tied up with materialism by the suggestive influence of his time.

If the matter were in such a way even today, one would not be inclined to talk of spiritual science, and it is still temporarily impossible to convince those who are on the ground of the scientific explanations. One has to let them go their own ways, and the spiritual researcher must also go his ways. If it were in such a way even today as it was at that time, one would have to say: the spiritual science can be content in itself.—However, things have changed. Just those who have participated in everything that is regarded as natural sciences have also witnessed—even if only slowly—the biggest reversal taking place just in the field of scientific thinking. Times will come when one will not be able to understand that one could ever think such a thing as it is popular still today. Probably it may seem as if the natural sciences advance in our present triumphantly with this materialistic worldview, as if one succeeded by well-prepared investigations in generating living from the proteins in the laboratory. Then they would say, we could generate living material of which whole living beings consist, and there are for the naturalist virtually delightful facts, which show that one can treat lifeless substance with certain toxic substances by which effects arise like symptoms of an intoxication. The substances resulting from it look like living crystals: by their forms, they create the impression to be alive, although they are not yet. Thus, one can assume that one comes to the point where from molecules and atoms life and, on the other side, spirit comes into being.

On one side, this seems to be the case. On the other side, what is there? Something that works stronger than everything that Ostwald said from the point of view of a scientific logic against materialism. There we see another scientific attitude slowly preparing and becoming necessary. In the middle of the nineties, Becquerel (Henri Antoine B., 1852–1908), the great physicist, discovered certain radiations in certain substances containing uranium. These have particular effects that express themselves making the air electrically conducting or causing a certain change of the photographic plate, as for example the X-rays. You know that one also got around in the last time to finding such rays in connection with the element radium. But as interesting it is that there is something that one has not known once, the entire kind and effect of these rays was so strange, so different from the ideas that one had up to now that many people already became uncertain in their view that the atoms are something everlasting and only combine and separate. We have substances there, which behave quite oddly in the world coherence just like radium and uranium.

They emit, in particular radium, but their radiations are almost inexhaustible. All that would harmonise with the old view; but the most important is that one can let emit such a material like radium that one can separate certain parts and can keep back a part. There are, for example, such radiations which make the air electric, and which one can separate then in such a way that one has their effect on the photographic plate. It is in such a way that one can separate the different qualities, so that one has substances that do no longer have the first qualities. A quality is taken away from one substance and the other gets it. In every bookstore, you can buy treatises about that today. However, this is not yet the significant. It is significant that permanently rays separate and go out into the space. Indeed, certain reasons compel us to suppose that these rays run out once. Today, one can already prove that certain substances are diminished in short time, in a time hardly to be expressed, however, that the substances that can go adrift transform themselves strangely enough into quite different substances, so that for a big number of researchers the fact is that radiations of radium transform themselves into helium.

We see that radium sends its radiations into the space. According to the old theory what would have to happen there? Nevertheless, at most the atoms go adrift, separate if they are something invariable. However, there we see that they send out radiations perpetually, and now we can assume nothing else than that the atoms disintegrate and split to the smallest particles. Others show clearly that for a big number of substances this atomic decay is possible. Thus, we realise that that which one regarded as the most lasting once, as the absolute—whereas everything else counted only as a result of it—today also disintegrates. This scatters today. Reasonable hope exists that that applies to all atoms. What is the atom in future? It is something that originates and forms. Every atom forms, has a certain lifetime, and dissolves after a certain time again. There you have transformed what is the steadiest for materialism into a being that originates and passes. If one sees that radium goes over into the helium element, one sees that there material changes into material. There one gets the idea that the dream of the old alchemists that materials can be transformed into other materials has reality.

In some books, we already find indications that the modern scientific research suggests what the alchemists have dreamt. There are already scientists who have done interesting considerations about certain processes. Once one said, there are copper salts that are joined, for example, of copper and chlorine. If one separates them, one has copper and chlorine again. One sees in it that the atoms lie together, and if one separates them again, it is chlorine and copper. Indeed, something essential occurred to some persons who have started thinking and what the spiritual scientist stresses repeatedly: if you combine the materials that you have separated as copper and chlorine again, then heat must originate. If these two substances combine, heat is spread. The fact that heat appears there is something real and it is as real as copper and chlorine are combined. If one wants to separate both again, one must add heat again. We perceive the warmth. Nobody has ever perceived atoms and molecules. However, do we not recognise what is in the phenomenon? If you bring together copper and chlorine, this is, as if you squeezed out the heat, as it were, like flour from the flour bags. If one wants to have the flour bags full again, one must just put flour again into them. Thus, the heat would be the filling.—With it, we have attributed reality to the heat and have made clear that one has to count not only on molecular effects, but that these materials themselves are possible only because of this heat.

If now we consider that the atoms disintegrate under our hands, we must ask ourselves, do these natural sciences lead on their crossroads—where the atoms scatter, the most certain up to now—to the recognition of that which they once regarded as external expression, as an appearance? The natural sciences lead to this view today!

Today, the entire atomic theory falters that has been the base of the natural sciences long time. Today, the facts are in such a way that the theories that are not based on facts must fall. Atoms and molecules are nothing factual, but something fictional. If this falls because it itself is an effect, we must ask, of what is it an effect? At first, people will attempt to come again to something else that forms the basis. Today, they are just speaking of liquid electricity. Very nice is what Balfour (Arthur James B., 1848–1930, British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary) said: if we imagine atoms, we can only say, something like a fluid flows through the world, and the atoms are in it like ice lumps in the water.—This is a nice picture. However, whereto does it lead? Try once to continue it. It leads to that point where the natural sciences get around to recognising as the actually real what they have denied once what was only an appearance for them. This was a weird belief that colours exists only in my head that outdoors only small particles exist that knock and press each other and thereby produce the sensations of light, colour and sound. These mental pictures will soon have to disappear due to the power of the facts. It will become obvious that what we see and hear is real, and that it was a great speculative fiction to think a material world behind this world. This material world will scatter and disintegrate. On will appreciate what is behind it. Then that will have to move up which one experiences and can experience. Then one will recognise that the atom can be nothing else than frozen electricity, frozen heat, frozen light. Then one has still to advance so that one has to realise that everything consists of compressed spirit. There is no matter! What is matter relates to the spirit as ice relates to the water. If you dissolve the ice, there is water. If you dissolve matter, it disappears as matter and becomes spirit. Everything that is matter is spirit, matter is the external manifestation of the spirit.

It will still last long, until one has to draw the last consequence that not the eye has formed the light, but the light the eye, and the tones that we hear the ear. Then one will realise that any matter is born out of the spirit, and one will lead the true scientific facts, without logical interruption, back to spiritual science. The scientific facts will be the best basis of spiritual science. He who stands on the spiritual-scientific point of view looks admiring at the natural sciences on the crossroads. The suggestions have them tempted to believe that matter is the only one. They have not been content to examine the material world, but they have added a second world. This was the tragedy, the impossible. The spiritual researcher recognises the existent natural world completely. The spiritual scientist can never adopt a fictional and dreamt up world of invariable atoms and oscillations of the fictional ether, this fantastic world of materialism. He rejects them as superstition. Superstition was the belief in material atoms behind our perception. One said, every atom could be perceived if one has the instruments.—Nothing is behind that what we perceive but only the spirit and the spiritual world into which we penetrate! We search this behind the phenomena. We search no world of atoms surging up and down, but the world of the spirit in the world of the sensuous phenomena. On the wrong track is somebody who believes to find another material world behind the external phenomena. Those who build even today on it like on facts have to be corrected. The time will come when this fantastic superstition is recognised as such and when a lot of that which one regards from this side as superstition turns out to be right. The right basic principle of natural sciences, stopping on the ground of the facts, leads them even to the crossroads where it becomes obvious whether the facts agree with the theories. The facts do not agree with them, the theories scatter like nothing! The element and the atoms disintegrate that one had regarded as the steadiest basis from which one wanted to explain the spirit and the consciousness. What we want is certainty, and we can get it only by the fact that we perceive the spirit in ourselves.

Thus, the natural sciences will discharge into the spiritual science. Today, they stand in the crossroads. Some people do not yet recognise it, others can realise it. The time will come when a wonderful harmony exists between the knowledge of scientific facts and the assertions of spiritual science. It will never assert something that contradicts the scientific facts. Spiritual science also admires the works of the spirit in materialism; but it establishes no cloud-cuckoo-land. Spiritual science wants to understand the world to work in it. About hundred years ago, one had natural sciences in Germany, which sailed under full canvas into the materialism of the 19th century, natural sciences that started recognising nothing else than what one can see with eyes and touch with hands. The result was that also that which was thought out became something material, something concrete. The great philosophies that moved in expressions and concepts, which were not everybody's taste, were pushed aside. However, the people who condemn Hegel and Schelling understand as a rule nothing at all of these spirits who looked so deeply into the world, as none of those suggest who believe to be way beyond them. However, they moved in strongly sublimated concepts.

Goethe stood between these two parties right in the middle of them. Hence, he could anticipate how the natural sciences would sail into materialism and, on the other side, he found opportunity to penetrate to the problems and to build the connecting bridge between religion and natural sciences. Therefore, he could say so nicely that once the time would come when philosophy and natural sciences unite. However, he added, for a while they must still go separate ways.—They have gone separate ways, without understanding each other. Today, we also have two currents, materialism that has outlived itself that sees its steadiest, most absolute basis disintegrating by its own methods, that destroys itself, and a philosophy that discharges into theosophy or spiritual science. It is not the abstract-spiritual, but the concrete-spiritual that tries to bring forward facts of the higher world to humanity that will no longer be there as abstract, but as concrete spiritual science.

We shall experience in not too distant time that a nice alliance between the scientific view and the spiritual-scientific one. We shall realise how the scientific facts are useful for the spiritual view and the spiritual view is useful to the natural sciences. Therefore, the bridge is built. The human mind can prosper only if its ways of activity harmonise with each other. The mind would have to become crippled if the natural sciences remained without spiritual science and spiritual science would have to be content with the thought: nevertheless, you cannot take over the natural sciences to the spiritual.—However, the course of the world development will bring peace. It will build the bridge between faith and knowledge. It will bring an infinite progress and harmony between faith and knowledge.

How many people long for external peace, for outer harmony and outer happiness of the human beings! Nevertheless, everything outer is appearance of the inside and the outer human life can be only a result of the inner one. A happy outer human life originates if there are hopeful souls. They will know how to found the right social peace, and from the inner peace, the outer peace will come. Therefore, it seems to be not without meaning to look at these natural sciences in the crossroads and to show how the one reaches a dead end, the other, however, leads quite clearly to the areas, which are also those of spiritual science. Thus, they will co-operate from now on and the world edifice will be enriched from two sides. It will be a great, perfect harmony, and this will be in the human being the inner harmony of the soul that is the last purpose of spiritual science.

The whole cycle of these talks is dedicated to the knowledge of spirit, and if one wants to speak about the knowledge of spirit and soul, this happens, because we can come to an understanding with each other about the concept of the spirit relating it to the concept of the soul. Since for those who deal with spiritual science it is especially annoying that one mixes up the concepts “soul” and “spirit” considering the human being.

You all probably know that we have a so-called psychology or soul science that is today conducted to a relatively high degree just like in school. In the schedules of lectures at the universities, you find lectures on psychology that is literally the doctrine of the soul. One has to note that with all people who talk of psychology or soul science in such a way no distinct consciousness exists of the fact that one has to speak of soul and mind with the human being. One summarises the human inner life—thinking, feeling, and willing—under the concept of the soul. Soul is almost considered as the contrast to the bodily and physical, and one says—if one deigns generally to such a thing, if one is not completely addicted to the materialistic way of thinking—the human being consists of body and soul.

At first, we want to regard those opinions only that have the point of view that the soul is a real being. If one says that the human being consists of body and soul, one is mostly not aware of the fact that one falls a victim to dogmatics that relatively late, in the course of the Christian development originated. Even the older Christianity that has still gone out from the teachings of wisdom distinguished, as all teachings of wisdom of the different times and people did, body, soul and mind of the human being. Only later decisions of Councils have abolished, so to speak, the mind, and only since the (fourth) Council of Constantinople (869/870), one speaks of body and soul. The modern scholarship which deals with such a thing which thinks not materialistically believes to stand on the ground of absolutely free research and has no idea that it has taken up this later Christian concept of the soul, which refrains from the mind, as a prejudice, as a preconceived opinion. This applies to many concepts generally which play a role in our scholarship and are accepted as if they were results of research, while they signify only an ancient prejudice.

We will now have a look at the general psychology in the most different directions. However, I do not criticise here, but only characterise. Psychology has suffered—we are allowed to state this—mostly and most thoroughly from the materialistic attitude and way of thinking. Not only the outer science of the sensory phenomena has lost the concept of mind gradually, but also psychology has even lost the concept of soul, that is its own object. The cultural life went through an interesting development there.

A daring researcher and thinker who performed many quite extraordinary things in some fields had the courage to pronounce what is, so to speak, only a basic attitude and basic sensation within the modern psychology with others. This daring thinker was Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875, German philosopher). You can buy cheap his History of Materialism (1866) from Reclam's Universal Library. It is an excellent book because just someone who studies it thoroughly must come to the conviction—I have explained it in the last talk—that materialism as a worldview is to be compared to a man who draws himself upwards with his own shock of hair. This Friedrich Albert Lange has pronounced in relation to psychology something that can be summarised in three words: “psychology without soul.” This is from Friedrich Albert Lange. Other researchers did not dare to pronounce this consequence; but they act and do psychological research in such a way, as if a concept of the soul did not concern them. Also today, you find all kinds of concepts about the soul in the most famous works of the academic psychology. However, if you want to get to know something about the soul, you ask for advice in vain, because this psychology has lost—this should be no criticism, but only a characteristic—the concept of the soul completely even if this is not always pronounced. Whether you ask advice from Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832–1920, German physiologist, psychologist, philosopher) or another about those questions in which the human beings are interested concerning the soul life, you nowhere get information. You find all kinds of questions answered about the way in which the human being perceives objects in his surroundings. You also find all kinds of speculations about the relation of perception to consciousness.

For example, one asks, how long does it last, until the human being becomes aware of it, after he has received a stimulus? You find questions about attention, questions in which way the human being judges in which way he compares the things with each other, how he remembers and so on. However, who could deny that the impartially feeling soul—in the usual sense—if it asks for its own being has in mind above all: what is the nature of my soul? Does it share the fate of the physical to disintegrate and to end if death occurs? Does it only take share in the life of the sensuous surroundings or does it take share in a far higher one, in an extrasensory life that does not wear out itself in the physical world? You will search these questions in vain, which are vital matters for the human being in the modern psychology even as questions. Everything in the human life points to them; but if the real nature of the soul is considered, one says, this goes beyond the limits of human knowledge.

If you have a little bit patience and have a look at such psychology, you become aware of the fact that it applies quite the same methods of research as the natural sciences. If one applies these methods, just nothing else can result than what faces us in this psychological literature. More than in any other field it concerns in the soul research who does these researches. Where one thinks materialistically, one has come more and more to the conviction that the research results can be only of the kind that they face everybody from the outside. Who does understand the sense of the nice Goethean saying completely and thoroughly still today?

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Nothing faces us in the outside world if we are not related to the concerning thing or being or to the concerning force in the outside world if we do not carry something related in ourselves. Thus, only someone can investigate the soul who searches something beyond his self that he has experienced in himself. Not everybody—this must be stressed in particular in relation to psychology—can be a psychologist; for the human being notices only so much of the secrets of the other souls as he has experienced in himself.

Spiritual science deals with the spirit as such, as we said at the beginning. All the talks are dedicated to the consideration of the spirit. Howsoever the titles are called in detail, the spirit has to be searched everywhere. As it arises already from the talk, which I have held two weeks ago here, spiritual science has to show that behind everything that faces us the spirit lives and works.

What is matter to spiritual science? It is only another form of the spirit. If spiritual science speaks of matter, material, and body, it speaks of it in such a way as it speaks of ice and water. Ice is water in another form. Now, however, somebody could come and say, then spiritual science denies the matter and corporeality if it asserts that everything is spirit—and then there is no matter for spiritual science. Spiritual science stands on this weird point of view by no means. We remain with our comparison of ice and water. What come into consideration for life are not empty words, not empty definitions, but effects that you meet in life. Even if one says, ice is water in another form—and one is right with it completely-, are, nevertheless, the effects of the water different from those of ice as everybody can perceive if he puts a piece of ice on his hand instead of pouring water on it.

Someone who wanted to deny that ice is water in another form would make a fool of himself. Thus, spiritual science does not dream of denying the matter. It exists; it is only spirit in another form. In which form? In the form, that one can observe it from the outside by the senses. These are the essentials of matter. This talk links to the talk eight days ago where we could show how any materialistic view disintegrates into nothing before the progress of the natural sciences as the fantastic concept of the matter dissolves in smoke and fog due to the new researches. Concepts like ether, matter scatter today in light of the other researches. What remains to us of that which approaches us in the outside world? What we see and hear, tone, colour, warmth et cetera: what we perceive. We should soar the view that behind the warmth, behind the tone, behind the light nothing is of this terribly crude whirl of atoms that was the only real during the long time of materialism. Real is in this sense what we see what we hear what we feel as warmth. If we look behind the colour, behind the tone, behind the warmth, as we feel it, what do we find behind them? We find behind them if we take the tone, as long as it remains in the sensuous world, moved air. However, we are not allowed to go behind the sensuous world with our speculations. We have to stop in the sensory world. Someone pronounced something most important whom the scholars did not take seriously, who was not only a poet but also a great thinker: “Never search anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the teachings.”

If we go behind the tone, behind the light, we do not find material atoms that dive into our retina, which impregnate it and create the mental picture of the colour and the light. If we really look behind, what do we find there?—Spirit! Colour relates to the spirit like ice to water. Tone relates to the spirit like ice to water. Instead of that fantastic world of whirling atoms the true thinker and spiritual researcher finds spirit, spiritual reality behind that what he sees and hears, so that the question of the nature of matter loses all sense. For how does the question of the nature of matter answer itself for the spiritual researcher? What surrounds us outdoors in the world and appears to us as matter? It is spirit! We know the spirit! We must visit its nature in ourselves. What we are in our innermost being, these are all things outdoors in the world, only in other forms. They are it in such form that one can look at them from the outside if the spirit gives itself a surface. Let me pronounce something that every scientist regards as madness: if the spirit goes outwardly, he appears as colour, tone. Nothing else is colour and tone than spirit; it is completely the same what we find in ourselves if we properly understand each other. Thus, every mineral is spirit to us in spiritual science. The true being of the lowest member of the human being, the physical body, is spirit for us in the form in which it exists just also in the apparently lifeless nature.

In what way does the human spirit differ from the spirit that faces us outdoors as mineral and plant, as mountain, as thunder and flash, as trees and bodies of water et cetera? By the fact that this spirit in the narrower sense appears as mind in its very own figure, in the figure that is due to itself as mind. What one normally calls nature, indeed, is spirit, but spirit, which turns its outside to the senses, and what one calls spirit or mind in the narrower sense, is exactly the same. According to its form, nature is what turns to the core of our being. If we search the spirit outdoors in nature, we find it lifeless in the minerals, animated in the plants and feeling in the animals. The human being combines this triple figure of the spirit in himself in three members of his being, as we know them from the point of view of spiritual science. Thereby only, you come to a real knowledge of the human being that you look at his complex nature and are not content with the abstract differentiation between body and soul, but ask yourselves, how is the human being built up?

At first spiritual science distinguishes the physical body of the human being that he has in common as materials and forces with the entire so-called lifeless nature. In the physical body of the human being are the same materials and forces that we find outdoors in the mineral world. However, he has a second member, which we call etheric body or life body. If we speak of ether, it has nothing to do with the fantastic ether that has played a role in science so long and that one will dethrone in the next time. In relation to the etheric body, we cannot get involved in the methods of the higher beholding. However, we understand the etheric body best of all saying: if we take a plant, an animal, the human being, the physical body has the same materials and forces, but in an endlessly complex mixture and variety, so that these materials cannot form the physical body by themselves. No plant body can be what it is by the physical forces, no animal body, and no human body. There is the complication, the variety of the mixture that would make the body destroy if it were left to its own physical and chemical forces. At every moment of life, its so-called etheric body or life body works against the decay of the physical body. A permanent struggle takes place in it. At the moment of death when the etheric body or life body separates from the physical body, the materials and forces of the physical body follow their own principles. Hence, spiritual science says, the physical body is physically and chemically an impossible mixture, it cannot survive. The etheric body is that which struggles against the decay of the physical body permanently.

The third member of the human being is that which we have often called the bearer of desire and pain, of joy and grief, of instincts and passions. If the life starts becoming internal, then we start in spiritual science speaking of an astral body. This is the third member of the human being and of the animal.

Today one has such an unclear concept of that what constitutes the single being that certain researchers cannot make a distinction between an animal and a plant. Of course, there are transitions; but they do not interest us here. You can read in the popular works that are otherwise very meritorious that the plant shows the same manifestations as an animal or a human being, and one talks there about a “plant soul” in the usual sense. One confuses the animal soul and the human soul with simple manifestations of life in the plant. When do we speak of an animal or human soul or of an astral body? If to the outer appearance inner life, inner experience is added. It depends on the inside. If you see a plant, if you touch it, and it contracts its leaves, a stimulus is exercised on the plant, and this shows a certain response to this stimulus. Calling this answer a soul manifestation is the most unbelievable dilettantism. One is not allowed to speak already of soul or astral body if any counter-effect takes place; otherwise, you must also attribute a soul to the litmus paper if it turns red in the acid. It does not depend on any outer reaction, but on the fact, whether anything happens inside of such a being.

If you push a being and it shows a change of form or, otherwise, any outer reaction, you may call that a manifestation of life. However, talking of sensation or soul in this case means to turn all concepts upside down. One can speak of soul or astral body only if to that what goes forward outside a new event, a new fact is added inside if because of a push or pressure pain or because of another stimulus joy is experienced. The outer manifestations do not make a being a soul being, but the processes which it experiences in its inside. Only where sensation starts where life itself is transformed internally into joy and sorrow where any object outdoors not only exercises an attraction on any being, but where inside of the being an experience appears in relation to the outer object, only there we can speak of soul or astral body. If a plant twines spirally round a rod, an effect responds to the stimulus, it is a manifestation of life. Even if it seems with some plants that—if you bring a finger in their nearness—it follows the finger and not the rod, you are not concerned with an inner process. It can be talk of such a thing only if a desire inside of the being exists and it follows the stimulus because of this influence. He who does not distinguish these matters strictly is incapable to rise to the concept of the soul, the astral body. The human being has this in common with the animals, however, not with the plants.

Then we have, as often mentioned, the fourth member by which the human being experiences something in himself that makes him the crown of the earth creation, that what we call “I” or ego. It is an exceptionally important matter for any knowledge to recognise this ego in its nature. In former talks, I have drawn your attention to the fact that there is in our entire language only one word, one name that differs from all other names. You can call any other object with its name, the clock, the table, the notebook. You cannot call that in such a way that is the “I” with its name. Try to say “I” to another being! You can say I only to yourselves. Any being is “you” for the other, and for any being is the other “you.” Should the name I be pronounced, this name must sound from the core of the being. The religions that were based on spiritual science felt this too, and, therefore, said correctly: here the divinity speaks the first tone, the first word in the human soul in its very own figure, and thus the expression for the ego was something holy for them. They called it the ineffable name of God. What the Hebrew religious doctrine called with the expression Yahveh is nothing else than for the ego which calls itself. This is the fourth member of the human being.

Considering this four-membered being—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—we have to say: with these four members, which no other being has on earth than the human being, everybody faces us, the uneducated savage and the high developed human being. In what way do the individual human beings differ on earth, if they all have four members? This is because the one has worked more, the other less on his three members from his ego. If we compare the savage who follows any desire, any passion with a high-minded moralist who has pure holy moral concepts and follows these who only accepts that of his desires and passions to which the mind is able to say “yes.” In which way do both differ? By the fact that the high-minded man worked on his astral body from his ego. The uneducated savage has worked less on his astral body; he has it still in such a form as he has received it from nature, from the divine powers. The high-minded moralist and idealist has transformed and purified it.

An astral body consists of two parts; of one part that the human being has got without his co-operation, and the other part that is the work of his ego. Human beings who stand on such a height as for example Francis of Assisi have brought the whole astral body under the control of the ego, so that nothing happens in their astral body that the ego does not control. How does such a human being differ from the savage? In the savage, everything happens without the ego; in the high-minded human being, everything happens by what he has done from his astral body. As much as the ego has transformed the astral body, as much spirit self or manas exists in the human being.

We have five members of the human being now: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego and spirit self. Then we have the possibility to transform, to purify and to improve not only our astral body, not only the sum of our desires and instincts but we have also the bigger ability to transform our etheric body. In the usual life, the human beings work in the spiritual development on improving their astral bodies gradually, already with the usual impulses of life, the moral concepts, the intellectual mental pictures. Everything that we learn transforms the astral body. If we want to imagine the contrast of the transformation of the astral body and the transformation of the etheric body by the ego, we must remember how we were as eight-year-old children. Then we did not know many a thing that we know today. We have learnt a lot. With the sensations which we have taken up in such a way the astral body has transformed itself, it has incorporated the spirit self or manas. However, everything that constituted our temperament, our inclinations etc. when we were eight years old have not transformed themselves in the same way. If you were a hot-tempered contrary child at the age of eight years, you are probably hot-tempered or contrary sometimes even today. The change of the temperament and the inclinations advances much slower. One can compare the progress of the astral body to the advance of the minute hand and the progress of the etheric body to the advance of the hour hand. However, the inclinations change only if the etheric body changes, and stronger impulses are necessary than for the change of the astral body. The human being who stands in spiritual science has such strong impulses and can already have them if he exposes himself to the impression of a piece of art, behind which he realises the infinite sense, we say of Wagner's Parsifal or of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. These impulses not only have effects on the astral body, but they are so strong that the etheric body is purified and transformed. The same applies standing before a picture of Raphael or Michelangelo, and an impulse of the everlasting penetrates us due to the colours. However, the strongest impulses are the religious ones. They have transformed the human being so strongly that they have seized their etheric bodies, so that the human beings bear two parts of their etheric bodies in themselves, the untransformed one, received from nature, and the transformed one. One calls the transformed part life spirit or buddhi.

If that approaches the human being which we get to know in the talk on the initiation, it becomes more prominent what transforms the etheric body. The initiation consists in giving the means to the human being to transform the etheric body more and more. Hence, it also applies to the student of occultism that any intellectual learning, everything that he can take up just like in school is only a preparation. More important than any intellectual taking up is for that who submits himself to a spiritual-scientific training to transform only one single inclination consciously into another, and if it is only a movement of the hand. Transforming such a thing has more value than any acquired theoretical knowledge. The initiation consists in the impulses that purify the human etheric body. Then these impulses go on purifying the physical body, and this is the highest that the human being can attain in this life.

One could say that the physical body is the lowest; if the human being works on the physical body, is this something particular.—Just because the physical body is the lowest member, one has to apply the strongest forces to transform it into its original form, into the form of the pure spirit. The purification of this physical body begins with certain methods to adjust the respiratory process. Therefore, one calls the part that is converted atman or the spirit man; atman means breathing (German atmen). When the body is transformed—which keeps being as before—the spiritual-scientific training takes place on the highest level. Then the human being attains not only the ability to live consciously in his physical body, to know any blood corpuscle, any nerve he also attains the ability to work on the big nature, to become a human being having an effect on the forces of the universe from a human being that was enclosed in his skin before. Thus, the human being changes into that stage by which he becomes one with the universe. Any other talk of becoming one with the universe that does not happen on the way of proper training and development is gossip and phrase. The human being thereby becomes one with the universe transforming his astral body first, then the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. He becomes one with the entire universe, as the small finger is one with the physical body. This is a quite regular course of the human development which many human beings have gone through, which we all experience already to a certain degree, and which all human beings experience in the future.

What happens there, actually? Let us visualise it: what is the astral body? It is nothing else than the sum of desires, drives and passions, of joy, sorrow, and pain. Everything that co-operates there in the human being is a phenomenon of the spirit, spirit in any form, because everything is spirit. In what way is it possible that the ego works on the astral body? It is possible because the spirit discloses itself to the ego in its very own figure. In the passions, drives and desires the spirit is hidden, there it appears in its phenomena. It flows into the ego in its very own figure, and the ego lets flow it again into the astral body, so that the ego mediates between the very own figure of the spirit and its manifestations. The same applies to the etheric body and, finally, also to the physical body, and thus a perpetual spiritualisation takes place during the transformation of the three human bodies or members. As true it is that any mineral is spirit—but spirit in its outer effect-, as true it is that the human being is on the way to spiritualisation by that which his ego pours into the lower being. Only because the ego is between these manifestations of the spirit, his physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the members of the spirit, which illumine the three bodies, this transition of the spirit into the three bodies is possible. The ego has to be in between. Then the upper can work on the lower.

In what way did we get to know the nature of the ego? We got to know it already in its name. The name of the ego can never sound from the outside to our ear if it means us. With it, one says more than with all phrases that you read in the books of the usual psychology. If one understood substantially what the ego is because this name can never come from the outside to us, then one would have performed more than any academic psychology. The philosopher Fichte already said: the human being as an ego is the nicest. However, most people would prefer to regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an ego because they need own energy to look at it.

We shall see in the talk on the animal soul that the animal also has an ego, but not in the physical world. The human being thereby differs from the animal that he has his ego in the physical world. The ego is something that lets the spirit flow from the inside into another form of spirit, into the different matters, even into the soul, into the astral body. Hence, we can call the being of the ego almost an internalisation. This internalisation is only prepared with the animal. Because we will still speak of the animal soul, I only suggest this today. One must not forget that also the animal has an ego, but not the single animal, but the animal species. All lions together, all tigers together have an ego, and this ego is in the supersensible world. It is in such a way, as if from an animal, which belongs to a species, invisible ropes or threads run to the common group soul in the supersensible world. Such a group soul has become the individual human soul. Any individual human being has what an entire animal group has.

Hence, the internalisation only prepares itself with the animal. We realise it if we study the so-called animal soul, the astral body. The real internalisation of this soul, the first irradiating of the spirit is possible in our world where the ego exists as an individual soul. The soul that has the ego in itself is thereby able to let the spirit flow into the matter. Thus, we see how mind and body or also spirit and matter are two beings; however, one being is the same as the other, only in another form. Matter and body are spirit in other form. They are different from each other in the world generally as ice and water. They are different, even though they are the same. In the middle, the soul exists. It connects mind and body. Hence, we understand the human being only if we understand him in this tripartite composition, consisting of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and consisting of nascent spirit: manas, buddhi, and atman or spirit self, life spirit and spirit man. The soul is the being that transforms one into the other that participates in the body and in the mind. We can understand the soul in the right light only if we see it working from the mind on the body. If we study it from this viewpoint, spiritual science answers just those questions that the human being must put to the real soul being. We realise that the human soul is positioned between body and mind at every moment. With the savage, the soul is only able to take up a droplet of the spirit in his body. Hunger and thirst, the manifestations of the etheric body, almost animal instincts, and desires still completely influence him. The soul of the sophisticated idealist, as for example of Schiller or Francis of Assisi, tends to the spirit, attains a higher consciousness, and frees himself from the material existence. Spiritual science shows that there is transformation of forms what we call matter. That often will meet us in the winter talks but nobody can expect that he can absorb all concepts of spiritual science in one talk.

If we look at the world round ourselves from this spiritual-scientific viewpoint, it appears in a continual transformation as also nature appears in a continual transformation. We see the flower arising from the seminal grain in the spring. In autumn, we see it wilting, but the being is preserved in the seminal grain to arise again. Thus, spiritual science also shows how the spirit builds up the body, and how the being of this spirit is preserved as a spiritual seed when the body disintegrates. It appears again and again.

We can transform ice into water and water into ice. Similarly, spirit also changes into body. The body disintegrates, but the spirit remains and appears in always-new forms. There we are led to the principle of transformation in the human life. The human being lives here in the physical, etheric and astral bodies. However, he still has a second life that existed before this life and will be after this life. There he lives, as well as he lives here in these three bodies, in the spiritual world. From there he brings the forces that build up his bodies, which give him that form which he has, even if the life in spirit is different. We get to know this if we understand spiritual science in the right way.

It becomes apparent that the human being leads a life by turns: a life in the body between birth and death and a life in the spiritual between death and a new birth, until he prepares himself for a new incarnation. What lives here in the body and there in spirit and changes between the life in the body and the life in spirit is the soul. However, every time when it has gone through an incarnation, the human being has worked on his body and comes back to the spirit land as a soul enriched with the fruits of the earth-life. The soul keeps on developing higher and higher. Hence, it is also the mediator between spirit and body. Thus, we are led to the border which shows us—considering mind, soul and body correctly—how the relation of the three human parts is to each other. We get to know everything that disintegrates that scatters as a transformation of that which constitutes the innermost being of the soul as we recognise everything temporal as a form of the everlasting. Spiritual science leads to a science, which really the questions of the temporal and of the everlasting answers and of the human destiny after death. The human heart has these questions generally if it wants to know something about such a science. A science that sets limits to itself cannot see the most important. Hence, our academic psychology is limited. In a certain sense, it is important to learn what it offers. Spiritual science does not disdain it, but it finds it insufficient, as long as one does not go into the being of the spirit and the soul. This is the right way to the knowledge of the spirit and the soul: the soul is connected with its bodies in the temporal life, it is involved in these bodies, and that which attracts it to these bodies is that part which is an obstacle for the pure, purified life in spirit between death and a new birth. There we learn to understand gradually where the obstacles of the soul are for the new birth. We also learn to understand that the soul must free itself completely not only from the body—by death—but from the longing for the body. By the right concepts of mind, soul, and body, we also come to the destiny of the soul during its bodily and spiritual pilgrimage.

I have today tried to show how one gets correct concepts of the soul and spirit using the ordinary human mind. I did it without taking into account what one can attain by the methods of clairvoyance and initiation. I speak about them in the next talks. We must hold on this: what faced us in the course of this winter will be results of the spiritual research. One can only discover them with the methods as I gave them in the talks on initiation et cetera. However, one can understand them by the ordinary logic and thorough thinking. Someone who says, what does the spiritual science concern me, because I am no clairvoyant? He turns away from the spiritual science not because of lack of clairvoyance, but, because he does not apply his thinking thoroughly and extensively enough to it. Just psychology has suffered a lot in our time of materialism—which some people regard as finished and is also dismissed in philosophy, but flourishes just in the way of thinking of psychology. Today the concepts of soul and spirit have suffered mostly from this materialism. Spiritual science has the mission to bring pure, purified concepts of the soul and the spirit again to humanity. Thereby it will be the best servant of the high religious traditions that distinguish between the human mind and the world enclosing spirit that the religious traditions call the Holy Spirit. We understand these scriptures as means of understanding only if we comprehend them deeply enough and consider everything in great enclosing pictures which are the expression of facts.

We spiritual scientists still know many things that humanity knows in future and only anticipated due to its most significant spirits in former times. Many strange feelings go through the human soul, if it immerses itself in the spiritual activities. Some people say to the spiritual scientist: you give us something for the mind, but nothing for the soul; we search soul and you give us spiritual achievements. They do not know that they reject just that which gives the soul what they require. They covet the will impulses of the soul. However, the soul can be only happy if it lets the spirit flow in itself and develops the bodies from the spirit.

What faces us from the outside is formed spirit, and what shapes the matter flows from the spiritual world down. What the eye sees in the figure as colour is, so to speak, compressed spirit, and the force that causes the figure in the matter comes from the everlasting. Thus, someone who does not have the clearness of spiritual-scientific concepts but feels and anticipates the surrounding world says. everything appears to me as shaped by the spiritual world. The figure appears to me as the holy that flashes in the mere matter, and if I see the figure, it seems to immerse itself in the matter and to withdraw again from the matter. The poet anticipated this of spiritual science when he put up the contrast between the body, the human soul, and the spirit that both work creatively in the body. Schiller (Friedrich Sch., 1759–1805, German poet) anticipated how the soul lets the spirit flow in the matter in reality whereby the matter disappears to the view. Considering this, he let the sensation flow out in the nice words:

Only the body appertains to those powers that braid the dark destiny. However, far from any temporal power, the playmate of blessed spirits walks aloft in the acres of light, divine among divinities: the shape.

In the course of our winter talks on spiritual science, we have already dealt with some unpopular and only tolerated issues. However, one can say that no issue is less popular and tolerated than the object of our today's consideration: the initiation.

If one speaks of the spiritual, higher worlds, the thought will also appear of course: how does the human being come to the knowledge of these higher worlds? The today's consideration on initiation can only give a preliminary answer—only all talks of this winter can give a complete answer. We must assume two principles of any spiritual science that we have already touched in the first talk. The first principle is the knowledge that there is another or even a number of other supersensible worlds behind the sense-perceptible one. The second knowledge is that to the human being these supersensible worlds can become accessible gradually, so that he can recognise them by his own development.

Of course, with it, spiritual science causes the opposition of all those people who speak about such matters and say, “we” or “one” cannot recognise. With it from the start, the speaker concerned who wants to make himself the standard measure of any human knowledge postulates a kind of knowledge monopoly, of infallibility.

Spiritual science stands exactly on the opposite point of view. It has the point of view that the human being has abilities and cognitive forces that are embryonic in him and can be developed higher and higher. One has to admit that it is quite right if anybody says, he cannot recognise certain higher worlds. However, at the same time, one has to say that these higher worlds are not to be penetrated just only with those cognitive forces that he means, and that logically nobody has a right to say: my cognitive forces are the absolute only ones; what I recognise signifies the limit of any possible knowledge.—For one rejects the human ability of development with it, denies from the start that the human being can ascend to higher and higher stages. However, it is the basic conviction of any human being who looks impartially at the world, and especially within our German education, it is easy to acknowledge this principle.

Goethe repeatedly pronounced and emphasised in the most various, wonderful sentences what founds a way of thinking leading to initiation. I would like to place some words of Goethe's deep-thought fragment The Secrets (The Mysteries) at the head of our considerations today. He points there to the inner human force that strives on and on and higher and higher, indeed, that is hindered by that what surrounds us at every moment what is forced upon us from the outside, from the sensuous as the inhibiting force. However, the inner force has still a means to come to the inner, to the world knowledge.

Goethe says in this poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) in which he speaks of a special initiation of the Rosicrucians and indicates the principle of initiation with the profound words:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It completely complies with Goethe's way of thinking to search this force of the human being that can be developed to higher cognitive forces, to look for means and ways to an objective knowledge and wisdom beholding into the inside, into the spiritual of the things. It complies with his way of thinking if we eavesdrop on him where he expresses his level of knowledge most intimately. There we find many tips, which pronounce this clearly.

At the beginning of his Theory of Colours, Goethe says that the eye is created “by the light for the light.” The time has not yet come to understand this work of Goethe; perhaps, in some time if the perspectives prevail which I have mentioned in my talk The Natural Sciences Facing a Crucial Decision. He says, it was an indifferent, not photosensitive organ. The light caused the organ to see the light, to perceive the illumined objects. One has to think in the sense of Goethe what I have said in the sense of spiritual science: the human being had no eyes in primeval times, which could perceive light; the eyes arose from quite different organs. Which force accomplished this change? The light! It conjured up the eye that had become photosensitive. At the same time, Goethe indicates that there are other, unknown and misjudged abilities in the human being which—if they are developed—just open a new world as the eye opens the world of light and colours if it is elicited. In no other sense, we speak in spiritual science of the higher, extrasensory worlds.

Exactly in the sense of the dictum of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the great thinker, we speak of such extrasensory perception. Fichte says, if a sighted man goes among blind people and tells them about light and colours, they regard him probably as a daydreamer. Also is that what he, Fichte, had to say to his listeners in those days only for an organ which has to originate only, and this—only on a higher stage—can be compared to the organ of the blind-born who has recognised the world only touching before the operation and sees it lighting up in colours and light afterward. Thus, it is also possible to elicit abilities by the development of forces slumbering in the human being to perceive new forces and objects in the surroundings that one can only perceive with spiritual abilities. In this logical sense, one speaks in spiritual science of higher worlds.

He who doubts the higher worlds is on the same level of the power of judgement as someone who is born blind and says, there is no world of light and colours because I do not see them. Nobody can really assess the possibility. However, someone can decide on the reality who knows it. Not anybody has to decide on a matter who knows nothing about it, but only someone who knows something of it. Indeed, only the principle of experience has to decide on initiation.

However, is it unnecessary to talk about these matters? No, it is necessary; for in which sense does anybody talk who informs about such higher worlds? He talks about them because he knows that merely by these communications, merely by this report the abilities and forces slumbering in all human beings can be woken up to penetrate to these worlds. Someone who is reluctant to receive information about these worlds resembles someone who was once reluctant to take part in the development of the eyes with which the human being can see the sun. He could also have said, why shall I develop anything, so that I can recognise the sun and the light? He did not know the sun and the light before. Only by a foreign power approaching us, the inner disposition can develop in the human being. Only if we can open the soul freely to the communications about the higher worlds, we get the first impulse to develop the higher forces which make us sighted, initiated finally.

One spoke of the principle of initiation at all times of the human development. Only the relation to the public working was different from that in our age. If we go back to the ancient Indian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Egyptian, or Greek-Roman culture-epochs, if we go up then to the Middle Ages, to the 16th, 17th centuries and our time, initiates and disciples of the initiates always existed. However, one did not speak about that publicly. What meant to be initiated? One differentiates an initiate, a clairvoyant, and somebody who applies the higher forces in the service of the physical world.

However, we do not want to get involved in these finer differences. Somebody is a clairvoyant who is able to behold into the extrasensory worlds to whom the worlds that are concealed to the usual human being are obvious, discernible worlds. Why was the introduction to such higher worlds pursued, so to speak, secretly? Why did one not speak of it publicly in former times? We speak of the dangers of initiation next time. I would like today to draw your attention only to the fact that on the border between the sensuous-visible world and the invisible-extrasensory world, indeed, a certain danger lies in wait for the human being, and that someone who wants to become an initiate has to overcome this danger at first. It consists in the fact that it is exceptionally difficult to distinguish illusion from reality, dreams from reality, vision from the real view at the border of the physical and the supraphysical worlds. In this area, it is very easy to confuse own fantastic things of the soul with the objective reality. One needs different qualities that are explained in the following: keeping cool, retaining certainty of the soul, courage, perseverance and energy at the border. If the human being lost the clearness about that which is appearance and what is reality at this border, he would have lost his mind, then he would be a fool instead of an initiate.

Nowadays an immense greed, a true fury exists with most people indeed, if they hear of such matters to behold something of the higher worlds. However, with most human beings the perseverance and the will and above all the strength to overcome everything that must remove the indicated dangers do not exist. Hence, at all times it was necessary that one examined the people whom one admitted to initiation concerning their intellect, their spiritual and moral abilities and their feelings. Only those who could stand the test before the pervasive view of the initiate could be admitted to initiation. There were such persons who were able because of their living conditions to submit to that, which enabled them to distinguish appearance and truth, vision and reality on the border between the physical and the spiritual worlds.

The question may now arise: why are those not quiet also today who know something about these matters after one could be quiet so long? Why does one not carry out the principle of the strict seclusion also today concerning the introduction to the higher worlds? Why is it broken? This has good reasons. Humanity advances. It is different in the different epochs of its development. History is also much more different in its organisation and developmental stages than the nonprofessional believes it. Someone who does not know the matters imagines that the human beings are the same today as they were centuries ago. Those who studied history and anthropology also have the same idea tacitly. The human beings of different centuries differ really very much who are apparently the same to the external anatomy and physiology. The differences are not obvious at first sight, and the external anatomy and physiology know nothing at all about them. Humanity progresses, and the human mind and the human soul have advanced so far that one needs the knowledge of the world secrets, the views, concepts, and ideas that lead us into the depth of the things, which were always preserved in the so-called secret schools to the general welfare and progress of humanity.

I present the further details in the following talks. We need only to point to the immense difference that took place in humanity in the course of a few centuries. We need only to mention one thing that deeply intervened in the human development: the art of printing.

Imagine once how the human beings lived concerning their soul, their spiritual education before the invention of the art of printing, how the communication was between those who knew something, and those who wanted to learn something, before there were books. Compare how today the communications of science and scholarship penetrate to any soul by thousands and thousands means, by popular writings and newspaper articles. If you go on imagining, you can get the idea that today it looks different in the souls, and you do not think that the sensations, thoughts, and impulses in the souls have no influence on life as a whole. Someone who believes that everything obvious is an imprint of the spiritual says to himself that the human beings have other physical and social needs today than in past times. Once it was possible that single persons knew something of certain events, of truth and wisdom. Today, however, the principle of initiation must be made accessible to everybody. Because of a duty towards humanity the strict secrecy and seclusion of former times was broken through. That is why today not only about that is spoken which is to be said about the higher worlds from the viewpoint of the spiritual research, but one also speaks in a certain way at least in the elements how the human being ascends even to these worlds, how he can accomplish the first steps of initiation. However, from the start one has to call attention to the fact that nobody should believe that the principle of initiation is to be taken easily and less seriously because the first steps of initiation are accessible to everybody today. Everybody can accomplish these first steps in every situation, as you will hear. Then higher and higher stages begin up to that of an initiate in the true sense of the word.

I have to characterise this concept first. What is an initiate? If I assume that there are higher and higher worlds behind our sensuous world, an initiate would be someone who has an insight into these higher worlds. The training for the initiation gives the human being the means and instructions how he can develop his spiritual eyes and ears to be able to behold into this spiritual world as he looks with his physical organs at the physical world.

Strictly speaking, all that is only a preparation for the real initiation. He who becomes a pupil of initiation receives certain instructions from his teacher how he can develop the abilities slumbering in him. All that aims to a point that leads him into a preliminary depth of the world to the highest degree, to a centre from which the rays of world creation and world principles go out. Such a thing does exist. This secret would be pronounceable even in words and, nevertheless, it is not pronounced. Allow me this indication from the start, because even if it sounds apparently mysterious, someone who thinks a little bit about it will find that even the kind in which such a thing is pronounced is very significant for the sensation that one should appropriate to understand the principle of initiation.

One prepares the pupil for the acceptance of the world secret that would be pronounceable if one is allowed to pronounce it. The initiate is somebody who knows a certain secret that is significant to the highest degree, for the life of the human beings. A secret, because if it were pronounced in the everyday life it would appear mad, brainless, paradoxical. Now, this would still be the less. However, there are other reasons why, nevertheless, someone who could pronounce the secret is not allowed to pronounce it. The reason is so deep that the secret that finishes certain stages of initiation cannot be wrested from anybody who knows it even not if one tormented and tortured him. He can never wrest this secret from himself. For this secret is not informed in words from human being to human being. The essentials consist of the fact that one brings the pupil to the point where he gets around by the imparted development of his own abilities and forces to solving the riddle by himself which is behind the matter, so that, so to speak, the pupil faces the teacher with that luminous eye which announces: I have found it!

Training means leading to finding oneself. A big part of that what the human being has to gain for the penetration into the higher worlds lies just in that big and immense sensation of the soul when it awakes and feels as newborn, after it was led to the higher capabilities and stages of development. One can compare that feeling on a lower level with that of a blind-born who could only touch the things up to now, and to whom after the operation light, colours, and forms appear from the darkness. Only if this relationship exists between teacher and pupil, the relationship is a healthy one. It is built on the highest that there can be between human being and human being: on freedom. That relationship must be there in which nothing at all of an unjustified influence from the teacher is there, because everything that should be developed is got out from the pupil himself.

After we have characterised the mood that should control the principle of initiation, we want to go somewhat more precisely into the development of the abilities slumbering in the human being. We start from the obvious matters and advance to the more distant ones. Three abilities are already there for the usual observation: thinking, feeling and willing, thought, feeling and will. This is the level of the average human being. All three abilities are developable. At first the thinking: it cannot lead the human being beyond the physical world, even if it is developed ever so subtle, ever so intimate. However, the thinking is still the first stage of development if it is a matter of getting beyond the physical world. We shall solve this ostensible contradiction, however, straight away. I have to speak immediately of those principles of initiation which were usual in the course of the last centuries in the secret schools and which are informed initially today to the public by those who know something of them.

First, the pupil has to develop the thinking free from sensuousness. What does one call thinking free from sensuousness? If the human being looks at the world around himself by his senses, he creates mental pictures and ideas of the world. These mental pictures and ideas make the world comprehensible to him. However, all that is no thinking free from sensuousness. The modern science, because of a certain inner weakness, often does not want to accept another thinking. Nevertheless, another thinking has its origin solely in the human inside, in the human soul. The modern human being only knows very little of the big extent of this thinking that is free from sensuousness and if anybody hears anything of it, he rejects it, and does not want to accept it.

The human being cannot only have thoughts referring to the sense-perceptible world; he can also have thoughts that arise from an inner power that the senses can never stimulate. Even philosophers do not see that today. I can produce evidence. Mathematics, geometry, can deliver it. Nobody can outdoors see a real cycle; nobody can outdoors see the principle that two times two are four.

However, one can get out by inner meditation without counting beans that two times two are four, or one can construct the circle by inner view, so that the circle line is always equidistant to the centre. What did the great Plato write above his school? He wrote that nobody could be accepted without knowledge of geometry. That does not mean that he had to know the entire geometry, but that he had a suitable sense for it. If we reproduced the external circle in concepts only, we would never be able to form a true circle. However, we can form a circle and its principles in our mind that way. Thus, we must work out the circle from own mind. This is thinking free from sensuousness. Mathematics is not popular, and, nevertheless, it is the only thinking free from sensuousness that is done in our schools. However, most people laugh at someone if he says that there are still other concepts that one can find wholly spiritually, as those of space and number and figures. One ignores and despises the philosophers and thinkers who asserted that the human being is able to put up a building of ideas that harmonises with the world.

Someone who has put up such ideas free from sensuousness within our German education and culture for other fields than geometry is Goethe again. It is a wonderful great achievement of the spiritual life of humanity what Goethe performed with the type of the plants, with the archetypical plant, and the type of the animal, the archetypical animal. What sort of thoughts are these? Goethe himself tries to make clear them his way. Many people wrote about that. However, the most is nonsense because most people are not able to understand how a spiritually constructed circle whose principles we can see relates to the circle drawn on the board which is nothing but a number of little chalk particles. However, Goethe's archetypical plant relates to the external sense-perceptible plant. Outdoors are the different plants—Goethe thought—, the one looks this way, the other that way. However, an inner spiritual strength lives in us with which we are able to find the concept of the archetypical plant out of inner production. The botanists thought that Goethe meant an imperfect plant. This is nonsense! He meant the spiritually beheld plant! I tried in one of my books to reconstruct this archetypical plant, as one also constructs the circle in mind. Goethe's archetypical plant contains possible plants if one is able to conjure up all possibilities out of it. His archetypical animal contains all possible animals. Goethe created a spiritual biology there. It enables us to create in spirit what cannot appear to our senses. However, there we start from a profound, significant spiritual fact. Goethe started from this fact, from which he got what he found as archetypical plant. This was no mere idea to him, but it was the creating force in all plants. The archetypical animal was the creative in any animal to him.

I have often cited a famous conversation about the plants that immediately at the beginning of their acquaintance Goethe and Schiller had with each other. They came from a talk of the society of naturalists in Jena. Schiller said that it is unsatisfactory to look at the creatures in such a way that one cannot see their coherence. Goethe answered that there could be also another method where one can see the common, the spiritual tie, which holds everything together. Goethe describes the conversation to us, and that he took his pencil then and drew the picture of the archetypical plant with some characteristic lines.

There Schiller, the speculative poet, said, this is no fact; this is an idea, no reality. Goethe answered, if this is an idea I see the ideas outdoors with my eyes. In the plant is the force creating life. Because of the deep view that the Goethean mind had of such a being it was possible that in his mind that was awoken which creates in all animals and plants. A mysterious tie exists between the human inside and that which is spread out in the animal and plant realms. If the human being conjures up the archetypical plant in himself, he conjures up that form after which the plants have been created. We regard ourselves in this way as spiritual participants in the productions of nature. Goethe as it were immerses in the things and conjures up in his mind the spirit living in the things. Goethe presents this to the human being.

One can try the same in higher fields. A German philosopher did it, not sufficiently but fundamentally and profoundly, but one did not understand him. If an anecdote were true, it would prove this fact in its depth. For Hegel (Georg Friedrich Wilhelm H., 1770–1831) should have said: “Only one understood me, and also he misunderstood me.” Hegel tried to create concepts free from sensuousness of the surroundings and history of the human beings. His Philosophy of History has now appeared in Reclam's Universal Library in which he gives a great survey of the whole world history. Many things in it are not right, unfortunately. Many things are as one-sided as just only Hegel could be one-sided, so that the book can serve only as suggestion. However, it may serve to find the principle. Hegel cared about thinking free from sensuousness, so that he lets everything appear in its own spirit, which is the same spirit that led humanity. He, who wants to do this, needs a more intimate knowledge of the human spirit and that of the peoples than Hegel could possess. Hence, everything seems abstract, grey, and logical in the bad sense; however, the things are ingenious and stimulating. One has to say, what is wrong there can be even more useful to humanity than many right but trivial things.

Just as one can think in mathematics free from sensuousness and create as one can do it also in history, my The Philosophy of Freedom should give a picture of the inner development of the human being with his entire cognitive faculties as one can grasp this from the thinking free from sensuousness. This is a book like an organism where a sentence follows the other, a book of a thinking that moves in itself and is self-contained. I wanted to show in it how the human being who wants to go from sensuousness to the extrasensory has to cultivate his thinking.

However, there are easier means, namely those about which spiritual science informs. What we can read in the spiritual-scientific books about the different human members, about reincarnation and karma, the life after death, the development of the human races and cultures and about what we shall still speak you cannot see with senses, but it is something that you can understand if you generally get involved with human understanding. Spiritual science gives the human beings a thinking free from sensuousness as it was given in the secret schools once, and as the human being must have it, before he is able to behold into the spiritual worlds. Clairvoyance and initiation are necessary for that. However, he who has got the possibility to inform in a certain way can form a bridge. Then everybody can convince himself by enclosing logical thinking and a healthy power of judgement that the things are right. Clairvoyance is necessary to find the higher profundities, only a healthy mind and logic to understand them.

Indeed, today many people are possessed by a more or less materialistic thinking or by that arrogance of infallibility that is due to the positivistic science. This is a real pipe dream. If the people only know that they live, strictly speaking, under suggestions, that they do not know what is real and what is not real! Indeed, they do not want to acknowledge the infallibility of the pope; however, they regard themselves as infallible. That who stands on the viewpoint of science is the most intolerable one. He regards the spiritual scientist as a fool and himself as an infallible man! One can inform about the world that is not accessible to the senses only with a thinking free from sensuousness. Hence, the first training is the training of thinking which only makes it possible to develop the thinking and to lead to a real beholding into the spiritual worlds.

The second is the development of feeling. Nobody should train the feeling, before he has not brought the thinking free from sensuousness to a certain level. That who knows how it looks in these higher worlds tells you: if you ascend to the higher worlds, you come to the astral world and then to the spiritual or devachanic one. The impressions are completely different there than the human being can imagine who knows the physical world only. Even if all experiences are different, one thing remains: the logic, the healthy thinking. The human being who appropriates the healthy thinking who is a reasonable person firmly standing on his legs cannot go astray if he ascends to the worlds that offer many surprises. That who develops this self-assured thinking working from the origin of the soul has a sure leader also beyond that border where one can hard distinguish between the physical and the supraphysical.

With healthy thinking one gets over the abyss which opens there. If anyone lives without healthy thinking and says, you give me thoughts only; however, a divine power lives in me, why should I not be able to ascend to the higher worlds?—Then I can only answer: those who speak in such a way have no idea of the conditions of the higher worlds where the outer world does not correct us where we must have the leader in ourselves if we should not go astray.

The development of the feeling happens with the help of Imagination at the school of those to be initiated. The pupil creates a figurative notion of the world at first; then he has to carry out his world consideration rather quietly under the Goethean saying: “All that is transitory is only a symbol.” I would like to give you an example that I have given several times how one leads someone who aims at a spiritual development into the depths of the things, how one teaches the development of the feeling by Imagination (anthroposophic concepts of initiation are capitalised). If you want to understand the development of the beings and stop at the thinking, you never can go fairly beyond this sensory world. You can appropriate the most different concepts how subordinated beings develop higher and higher up to the human being, you can take even the spiritual-scientific evolutionary theory how the logos poured forth and formed more and more complex forms and worlds: plants, animals, human beings, how all differentiations formed, evolutions and involutions and so on. These are teachings that you find in theosophical books, nice and interesting concepts. However, you cannot come into the higher worlds this way. You can thereby form ideas, which are analogies of higher worlds, but you never can come with them into these worlds. You need Imagination. This is not anything that one imagines.

It is something that is produced with a productive power and amounts to nothing more than concepts only, so that these concepts, like Goethe's archetypical plant and archetypical animal, correspond to the outer realities; but pictures are formed corresponding to the spirit that creates behind these things. I would like to explain in the form of a dialog what one said always in such secret schools to the pupils. I say this to you to make clear the principle, the method of initiation. What I speak in a few words takes a long period of training. The dialog that I describe never did take place, but that what it shows has always taken place in any spiritual school. One says to the pupil, look at the plant, which points with its root to the earth, which lets grow its stalk, its leaves, and blossoms upwards, and compare it to the human being. You would compare wrongly if you wanted to compare the head to the blossom and the foot to the root.—I would like to remark that also that who founded the newer natural sciences so greatly gets to this view. He compares the root to the head of the human being and regards the plant as the reverse human being and the human being as the reverse plant.—The root is the head that the plant sticks toward the centre of the earth, just as the human being sticks his head that he holds in the opposite direction toward the sun or the heavenly forces. The plant turns its reproductive organ, the blossom, virginally to the sunbeam that one called the “holy lance of love” in the medieval secret schools. The human being is the exact opposite. He sticks his organs of conceptions toward the centre of the earth, the head toward the space. In between, one says to the pupil, is the animal who does half a turn, so that the spine is horizontal. Look at plant, animal, and human being and you understand the dictum of Plato that the world soul is crucified on the cross of the world. Plato understands plant, animal, and human being by the world. The plant stands vertically, the human being reversely to it so that he looks with the head at the free world ether, and the crossbar is the animal. This is the prototype of the cross, as one knew it in ancient times and in all secret schools.

Then one says the following to the pupil: imagine the plant and its pure, chaste substance. The human being is on a higher level than the plant. The plant resembles the sleeping human being. It has physical body and etheric body as the sleeping human being has physical body and etheric body. The human being is, actually, beyond the physical and etheric body. That what thinks in him and feels desire and pain has been cut off in the sleeping state. The plant has a consciousness that we know as sleep consciousness.

What does the development from the horizontal line up to the entire turn mean? It means that be the human being has attained his present bright day consciousness. With the transition from the animals, the human being has become a being with bright day consciousness. He had to lose something else for it. Look at the plant: a body of desires, an astral body does penetrate it. The plant has physical body and etheric body. The human being must go through the animal and integrate instincts, desires, and passions. He has higher risen integrating the astral body into the plant body.

Now spiritual science puts a great Imagination before him. This spiritual science shows how he can gradually develop the strength that leads him back again to the purification of his desire nature that leads him up to that point where he lives again in the pure, chaste body on higher developmental stages while retaining his current state of consciousness. There he has overcome what he had necessarily to absorb in himself with the transition to the higher stages. What the teacher put before the pupil was a future ideal: you will have the plant nature again! One gave him the means to attain it. One said to him, the entire humanity comes again to this stage once when the human beings have developed the purely spiritual strength. Then he is no longer tied to the desire nature, he no longer sticks his organs of conception toward the spiritual sunbeam. In the initiatory training, one calls this organ the Holy Grail, which then the human being has attained, and which is a spiritual organ.

Imagine the difference between the dry abstractions that one puts in mathematics or in idealistic writings before you and this idea where we go up through the animal state to the human being and again up to other future stages of humanity. If we visualise that, we accompany this Imagination with our sensations and feelings if we are generally able not only to think the spirit but also to feel it. We shall see this development not only in spirit, but we shall feel it. The evolution in the universe appears immense and big to us if we visualise it that way, not in abstractions. The whole universe with all world riddles was presented to the pupils. They claim not only his thinking, but also his feeling and sensing. It was to him, as if his whole soul went out and lived in everything that was round him. As with the Goethean archetype something is created in us that lives in all plants and animals, it is also, if the developed feeling rises from us, as if we felt the world soul which flows as power through all beings.

Thus, everything came to life that was around the pupil, it became Imagination. Where he went through woods and meadows, everywhere the pictures worked in his soul. This loosened the inner power in him and he looked behind the beings and behind the things gradually. If one tells this in such a way, it seems almost unbelievable. If the pupil was introduced under the guidance of the teacher in the Imaginative of the world, he was guided not only to the thinking, but also to the feeling and the impulses that have gushed out from the soul of the world creator. He was introduced in an essential world. Then the development continues from the feeling to the willing.

As well as the feeling develops by pictures, the will develops by the occult letters. This will is the deepest of the concealed power. This will becomes something like a skeleton that the human being squeezes out by the will into the outer world. If you remember the pictures of the Munich congress, of the columns and seals, they are there to train the will. In the portfolio, which we edited as Pictures of Occult Seals and Columns, they are reproduced. I want to discuss the principle of these occult seals and columns once and give their meaning for the initiation. Any seal explains what you can find in the Apocalypse or The Revelation of John. In this portfolio, you find signs. Any sign has an immense, stimulating effect on the human being.

You find a human figure on the first seal. The feet are like from liquid brass, a fiery sword goes out from the mouth. I do not want to describe the remainder. He who becomes engrossed in this seal sees that just this seal gives him something marvellous in particular by this contrast. We shall hear in the last talk of this winter on Sun, Moon and Stars that we are led back by spiritual science also to states of the earth where the earth was in a fiery-liquid state and that—in contrast to the materialistic science—the human being already existed. Spiritual science can make the objection to itself that the human being could not live in a fiery-liquid state. At that time, the human being was formed from fiery liquid mass. This beginning of the earth is shown in the fiery-liquid metal feet. A later future state is shown with the fiery sword that comes out of the mouth, and appears in all myths again. I can only indicate what it concerns here. You will see how spiritual science is connected deeply with the innermost essence of the world.

How does the mediation happen, if I speak to you? What I speak are my thoughts at first. These accept tones that make the air vibrate. The air is thereby set in motion in this hall. The oscillations of the air come to your ear, come to your soul, and impart themselves to your soul. My words live here in the room in certain forms of oscillation. If you could see them, you would see particular oscillations if I pronounce the word “soul.” As well as the human being is able today to form the air and make arise that what lives in his soul in the oscillating air, he will also be able to form organs. There are organs in the human being, which are at the beginning, and other organs are at the end of their development. The larynx and the heart are at the beginning of development. I know that I assert something scandalous for the positive science, because one regards these two organs as mechanical apparatuses, the heart like a pump. However, just the theories of the heart and the blood circulation will experience reorganisations in the not too distant future. One will find that the circulation of the blood is due to something quite different from the heart, and that the heart moves only by the blood circulation. If the human being feels abashed, he blushes. This is an influence of the blood. The heart will be in future a voluntary muscle, and it prepares itself to become one.

Here something is given that will almost coin the future of the human being externally-physically. The heart is a crux to the usual anatomy and physics. It has the configuration of a voluntary muscle, while it is no voluntary muscle today. A voluntary muscle has striated muscle fibers. The heart has such striated fibers, although it is not voluntary even today. However, it is on the way of becoming a voluntary muscle.

The larynx will also have another function. It will be the reproductive organ of the human being. The larynx that produces words of the soul will undertake the reproduction. The fire principle is the speech, and the fire principle of the speech will be a creative principle; hence, the sword in the mouth. This fiery sword is intimately related to the world forces. If the human being becomes engrossed in its picture, this strengthens his willpower. One can say that only that way. He who does it experiences it. Then he anticipates, thinks, and feels not only, but he penetrates with his willpower into the things. This is the way through the occult writing. One can state quite concretely, in which way one should develop thinking, feeling, and willing. If one has woken the forces slumbering in the human being, thinking, feeling, and willing become particular organs, which one calls spiritual eyes. From them the spiritual eyes originate which show the world of the flooding spiritual light and its colours and the spiritual forces behind our physical world. The trained willpower becomes the spiritual ears of which also Goethe speaks who was deeply initiated into these matters:

In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres
the sun still sings its glorious song,
and it completes with tread of thunder
the journey it has been assigned.

Goethe remains in the right picture. If one is introduced in the higher spiritual world, one is introduced by the ear. If one comes in the spiritual realm, it is immediately said: “In these sounds the new day is already born for spiritual ears.” Those who believe to understand Goethe but say, this is nonsense, and need an explanation of it, which one cannot expect the poet to accept, one has to answer: no, one cannot expect that Goethe wrote nonsense: “the sun still sings ...” is nonsense only if one applies it to the physical world.

Thus, we have seen that the principle of initiation is based on the fact that one gets out particular forces slumbering in the human being, so that these forces guide the human beings into the spiritual world surrounding him. What gets out these forces of the human being? We have to explain the matter completely in the sense of Goethe. Once there was a sense organ, an indifferent organ in his sensuous body, which was flooded from light. The light made it the eye, so that the human being could see the colours and forms round himself with the eyes. The eye originated that way. Unknown and unrecognised organs which one does not want to recognise slumber in the human being. In addition, other worlds are round us, except the world of light and colours. As well as with the blind human being the eye was woken for seeing, the spiritual ears and eyes are trained with the clairvoyance and clairaudience, so that the human being can behold into the surrounding spiritual world.

The human being has gained self-consciousness. He has become in such a way that he can relate everything to himself. However, because he develops the spiritual eyes and ears following the principle of initiation he immerses again in the outer world. He finds his higher self in this world. We are not allowed to say that we find the divine and spiritual in ourselves. This is a wrong expression. Recognise yourself! Is an old saying. However, one has to understand it in such a way as Adam recognised his woman. He fertilised her. Thus, that applies also to the organs. Fertilise yourself, be fertilised by the world.—Thus, the human being should develop the forces slumbering in him. It is true what Goethe says:

Unless the eye were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own strength were in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Indeed, the sun force is in us, and the eye does not create the divine being, does not create the sun, but it sees it, after it has been created.

We can develop higher forces and penetrate deeper and deeper into the world this way. Then the outer world does no longer appear to us as something that restrains and restricts us, but as that which brings true and spiritual reality. Harmony is created between the human being and the world. Thereby we overcome the lower self that looks out into the sensuous world. We attain the higher ego of the human being that is spread out in the whole universe. Goethe means this indicating the principle of initiation in his poem The Secrets (The Mysteries) with the words with which we want to close. They show how the human being flows out by self-conquest and into the feeling permeating the world, into the spiritual of the world, into the will of the cosmic spirits pulsating through the world:

For any force rushes forward into the vastness
To live and to work here and there;
However, the stream of the world hinders
And constrains us from any side and tears us off;
In this inner storm and outer quarrel
The mind hears a hardly understood word:
From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It is not the only reproach against occult science that it is dreamy and fantastic, but also many people believe that dangers are connected with it. Downright bizarre views exist in certain circles about these so-called dangers of spiritual science. At first one points in general to such dangers even without trying to qualify the supposed dangers or to say in what they consist. For where one speaks so much of these dangers sometimes, a profound unawareness prevails what the occult science entails. One has only the uncertain idea that it entails something dangerous. One also does not dwell on this on which one should absolutely dwell: whether occult science itself is the dangerous or only the deeper penetration in it while one familiarises with the methods, the exercises that lead the human being into the invisible and indiscernible spiritual world surrounding him. However, he who generally wants to speak of dangers in this field must differentiate this.

Often it does not at all concern a tip to certain dangers only, but one says: oh, this occult science or this theosophy makes the human beings unworldly, it removes them from that what they would have to deal with, actually, in life in which they should be interested.—Some circles regard it as tremendously deplorable that this or that member is apparently wrested from it because he/she starts being interested in theosophy or in occult science underlying it. For that reason the often enough pronounced judgement probably originated that theosophy makes the human being impractical, allures him from the immediate duties of life, betrays him into asceticism and unworldliness.

Although it has already been mentioned here from the one or the other side, I would like to draw your attention again to the fact that it is the most unfair and at the same time the most impossible reproach against occult science and its working that it makes the human being anyhow unworldly or entices him into asceticism. I have emphasised repeatedly that a spiritual world underlies our world of the senses, our world of the physical life. Therefore, someone must be called unworldly who does not mind the true and real forces of existence and confines himself to the outer world only, on that what the senses say and what they can enjoy. There can be no talk that theosophy urges its supporters to an ascetic life, to privations or to unworldliness. However, it is true that someone who becomes interested in occult science has other sympathies and antipathies than many people have.

Nevertheless, in many cases it is not in such a way that those who approach occult science attain this interest only within a spiritual-scientific or theosophical circle. People bring these emotions with them as a rule; the interests carry them into the theosophical circles, and theosophy wants to offer nothing but what they demand. Not because they are expelled from the circles which say: they become strange to us, because theosophy takes them away, but these circles themselves alienate them more and more because they are lifeward and have selfish interests. If such a circle complains that this or that member is taken away from it, it should ask itself: has theosophy taken this member from us or have we expelled it by boredom? If one compares the life, as it should be in the theosophical circle with the life of a worldly circle, which says one must not dedicate himself to asceticism, then I answer that the theosophist does not withdraw because he wants to escape from life, but because he wants to get to the true, real life.

Those who are interested in spiritual science experience no bigger asceticism, no bigger privation than dedicating themselves to the activities that one calls “life” in many circles. If one calls this “life:” getting up in the morning, reading his newspaper, doing this or that which has a practical use, taking part in this or that banal activity in the evening—if one calls this “life,” indeed, it is “asceticism” for the theosophist, an awful privation, namely if one makes him participate this life. If then in spite of all resisting forces, the interest in theosophy becomes bigger and bigger, it is only an evidence that more and more people want to escape from the “ascetic” life of the usual pleasures and give themselves up to the real life. The human beings would have to realise this if they communed with their hearts once, since the life in spiritual science does not mean wailing and whimpering because of sufferings and privations. Life praxis is a chapter that we have also already discussed in the various talks.

Those who are so often vain of their life praxis say, theosophy with its quixotic ideas puts a bug into the ears of the people, and the people who dedicate themselves to such a thing never accomplish a real work in life. However, if they looked only at the world and at the practice on the one hand, at impractical idealism on the other hand, perhaps they would speak different.

The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said: the idealists know as well as the so-called practical people, maybe better, that ideals are not to be applied immediately in life. However, the fact that certain people cannot realise that all life flows out of the life ideal, from that which is not yet there what should become first shows only that one does not count on them in the plan of the improvement of humanity. Hence, God may give them rain and sunshine, food, and clever thoughts at the right time!—The theosophist may console himself out of an objective consideration of life if one points to the danger of the so-called impractical. There one can cite an example of a clever board of practitioners in a southern German country. When one wanted to build the first railway in Germany, one requested whether it is good if this railway were built. The board said—everybody can convince himself that the document exists—, one should build no railway, because the human beings would suffer serious damage of their nervous systems. However, if people wanted to drive with a railway, and it were built, one would have to erect high wooden walls on both sides, so that those whom it goes past do not get concussions.—This is not long ago! It is not still long ago that a man who was no practical person, but an “impractical teacher” advised to introduce the cheaper postcards (?) instead of the expensive postage. The impractical person was Rowland Hill (1795–1879). There was a postmaster who said, I cannot realise that one has an advantage introducing this way of paying postage (pre-payment by the sender with stamps instead of direct payment by the receiver). If the traffic developed in such a way, the post-office buildings would no longer be sufficient to take up and convey all letters and postal items.—Judgements of this sort appear from circles of those people who are hostile to theosophy.

The dangers that are described there resemble those, which the people experience from the railway, after they drive with it now since decades. The future will produce the evidence. As little as the Bavarian Medical Board could prevent the construction of the railway, the postmaster in London could prevent the increase of the post traffic, just as little the necessary expansion of theosophy can be stopped by similar objections in our time.

However, many concerns do not oppose the general; one senses something particular. Hence, one may also speak of that once publicly which gives cause, perhaps, for such concerns and such talking of dangers. At first, we must not forget: something that should work that should have significance and power in the world works different on the different human beings. It works in the way as it can influence and impress human beings. Now theosophy is something like a sort of a purifying thunderstorm in our spiritual atmosphere and will be it more and more. What fulfills this spiritual atmosphere? It is fulfilled with all possible confident and sure of victory judgements, which appear the surer of victory, the less deeply they introduce in the being of the things. In particular, it is the materialistic thinking and feeling, the materialistic disposition that regards itself as infallible with immense arrogance as the only true doctrine and douses everything with scorn that wants to point to the spiritual world, as if it only concerns fantasies.

True, someone who trains his thinking in that logic necessary to control the areas that are beyond the sensuous world is always in danger that the logic of the materialists could sicken him. However, the superficial judgements that are quite usual ones today and appear with an unequalled certainty and an arrogance of infallibility are sometimes very short-winded. Their flimsiness becomes obvious very soon if that logic faces them which goes with inner thinker's patience from concept to concept as it is necessary if one cannot advance on the bridge of the outer sensuous experiences but wants to have a sure support in himself and inner certainty. Already in this respect, the thinking flowing from occult science for the present must often appear to us as a purifying thunderstorm. It appears for the human masses in such a way and for the single human being. There we cannot help stressing that this is, nevertheless, no risk. There is the risk for the great majority at most that it brings uncertainty into the judgements that are worth to be presented that way.

With the single human being, the matter is worse. Something comes into question that works in the innermost soul, a disharmony between feeling and judging. This disharmony is the biggest with those persons who believe to be most certain in any materialistic creed. A materialistic creed namely has the peculiarity that it can satisfy, after all, the reason only, the abstract judgement only. The deeper interests of the soul, all wishes, all feelings, and all sensations are much truer and deeper with all human being than their judgements often are. While everybody sticks with his judgment, with his materialistic concepts and his materialistic disposition to the surface, in the depth of his soul—often quite unconsciously to him—the urging and the longing for something spiritual lives. To someone who observes this more precisely it appears rather clear sometimes if one sees how many disharmonies are in the speeches and remarks of the human beings. There one can realise that they, actually, do not at all feel corresponding to that what they say. To a minor degree that applies to a big percentage of the human beings what a poet expressed absurdly with the words, which he lets one of his figures say: as true a God is in heaven, I am an atheist.—This is the emotional adherence—only radically, absurdly pronounced—to something traditional-conventional and the adherence of the superficial judgement to a radical denial. That appears with few persons in this radical form. However, for someone who can observe more precisely almost every conversation offers examples that the human beings live in their souls in such a way.

In which condition can one live this way? One can live in the condition that one remains superficial in his soul life. For nobody who descends into the depth of his soul can tolerate such a disharmony as it often exists today. That becomes apparent to someone who is used to logic in the entire materialistic or—as one calls it more sophisticatedly—monistic literature. Imagine a person who is embedded in the atmosphere of our time and wants to get out it not with inner freedom, not with inner strong urge: he remains embedded; he lives on dully but contently in general. However, it does no longer depend on the things with which many people want to stop, whether the human being can live so dully. Numerous people can no longer live this way. What the popular literature—magazines, books, even newspapers—offers is not at all something for sophisticated heads and deeper minds that answers the big questions of existence, but it only causes new questions.

Yes, also the modern science itself, as it appears with it adherence to the facts gives answers only to the superficial mind. For the deep-minded human being, for the sophisticated one this science is something quite different. It is a sum of question marks. Where many people believe that they can be ready if they frame a worldview from the scientific facts, the questions only just start for many people. However, people who believe to be ready notice nothing of it. Thus, you see numerous human beings reaching for a book like Haeckel's World Riddles to get the world riddles solved. When they have read this book, they only start putting the big questions. Because no solutions are in it but questions, which are put there. Then such minds and such heads can be once brought to theosophy, on this or that way.

They face theosophy with its strict, in itself logical thinking which has the origin of certainty, like mathematics, in itself, and an immense disharmony between that which they were used up to now from the outside world, and the requirements which are suddenly put to them. They stuck to the surface of the things up to now; they look into abysses now. They have often lost half a life and more. They are anxious whether the rest of life would be still sufficient to pour everything that faces them in the holes of their souls, which the world has cut. On the other hand, however, they come from these or those circles and cannot break away from them; then the most dreadful obstacles originate. The most practical and most certain way would be if they got involved in the spiritual-scientific research, however, thousand threads pull back them. There the disharmonies face them that must appear if the soul longs for deepness compared to the superficial, the exterior. There a peculiar phenomenon appears with some persons that we make clear to ourselves best of all by a comparison. Imagine, in any corner of a room one would not have cleaned for weeks, a lot of dirt is there—you forgive for the comparison. If now in this room no proper lighting exists, those who look into it can believe that everything is clean. However, if one once illuminates it properly, the mess strikes. It depends only on the fact that one illuminates properly.

Something similar applies to the soul. It is used to casualness. It is maybe forced to be superficial among superficial ones. Now, however, it comes to the light which lights up this superficiality that allows this superficiality to appear in its entire inferiority. If this soul is feeling, what happens then? If it is accustomed to superficial judgements, the light that shines on it has to distract it above all. Hence, we see that numerous souls are maybe somewhat distracted by the contact with the spiritual-scientific truth. Does occult science bear the blame for it? Indeed, he who thinks here logically does not put the blame on occult science that is the light, but on the fact that the soul has so much addicted itself to the superficiality of judgement.

The matter still goes further. We see human beings who are not up to our complex civilisation suffering from our complex civilisation. Why? They do no longer find their way with their judgement! Theosophy or occult science is the means to find the way in our civilisation, and it can work recovering for someone whom our civilisation has sickened. However, cannot anything else still happen? We can also realise this using a comparison. A dish can be externally healthy; however, it can bring an upset stomach. Even if the dish is rather healthy for the healthy, the upset stomach cannot stand just this healthy dish. This applies to many cases if the human beings with ill souls come out of our civilisation into the cheerful and beatific air of occult science. Then it may happen that they cannot stand the healthy dish with their ill souls. Nevertheless, these are exceptional cases.

However, about them is mostly written in the world. One says, theosophy is something that makes the people crazy.—I do not deny that it can also annoy this or that soul, as the healthy dish the upset stomach. However, has the healthy dish caused the upset stomach? Many so-called ditched souls approach theosophy; it is virtually remarkable how many ditched souls approach it. Someone who is obliged to work in this movement could tell some sad chapter, could tell that the cry for help comes from here and there: I do no longer find my way rightly in the world; I do no longer know how to satisfy the longing of my heart.—The most wailful cries for help come in numbers every day. Our materialistic civilisation has caused this passing stones instead of bread to the human beings—you forgive the trivial turn of expression. The superficiality of judgment could be sometimes satisfied. The wishes and interests resting in the soul could not be satisfied. For a while, they can be forced back and deadened, then, however, they forge ahead, and the human being come with their cries for help. One cannot deny that some people come then too late.

However, spiritual science cannot be pursued in such a way that it turns to choice ones. One has to bring the things to the public. The elementary basic concepts cannot be denied to anybody, and today the ABC of initiation, as it was indicated in the last talk, cannot be refused to anybody. If today single human beings, ruined by the contemporary civilisation, approach theosophy and when these ditched souls are even more disarranged by the purifying thunderstorm at first, should the remedy be kept, therefore, from all souls, only because single ones were ruined mentally by their wrong way of thinking? Any fanaticism does not talk this way, the experience in the field of the spiritual life of our time talks this way.

Admittedly, on the other side, there is a serious danger for the relationship between our contemporaries and the spiritual-scientific worldview. This danger is caused by the fact that our contemporaries approach the spiritual scientific worldview with their worldview and such characters, which our time has bred. Which prejudices, which superficial judgements they introduce in this spiritual-scientific worldview! How much danger exists that the theosophical worldview is spoilt by the trend of our time here and there! Here a danger does exist. One has there to point to some matters, so that we are able to look deeper and deeper into the so-called and into the real dangers of the spiritual-scientific striving.

Spiritual worlds are round the human being—we have shown this in the preceding talks, and we penetrate deeper and deeper into these profundities. These worlds relate to the usual sensory world like the world of colours and light to the world of touching with the blind human being; and there is a world that is much higher than what the blind person experiences if one operates him and light and colours shine to him from the darkness. These worlds are round us. However, these worlds are not only worlds of paradise and bliss, although paradise and bliss are in them, but they are also worlds that can be dreadful for the human being, dangerous because of their facts and beings. If the human being wants to get knowledge of the great and beatific of these worlds, he cannot help making acquaintance of the dangerous, of the dreadful that they contain. The one is not possible without the other. Now we must realise once to what extent a danger exists. Imagine a human being who is near a powder magazine without knowing it. He knows nothing about it. However, suddenly he comes to know it and he gets immense fear thinking that he could be busted in the air if the powder magazine explodes. Outdoors nothing has changed; nevertheless, his life has changed. The only thing that is different from before is that he knows about the danger now. This knowledge distinguishes him from that who knows nothing. That applies also to the higher worlds. The danger, the dreadful that is included in them is always round the human being. Yes, immense dangers lie in wait for the human soul in the worlds of which the human beings have no idea. The only difference concerning these dangers and dreadful things and beings is for that who has never moved up to spiritual science, and that who has moved up to it that the latter does know about this danger and the former not. Nevertheless, it is not completely in such a way, namely for the following reasons: we enter the spiritual world in which the spiritual is effective. The powder magazine does not become dangerous because you have fear that the powder explodes; but your fear signifies something in the spiritual world!

It is a difference whether you have it or not. Your thoughts are inserted as something real in the spiritual world. A feeling of hatred that you have for a person is more real in the spiritual world and much more efficient than a blow that you give the person concerned, with a stick. Even if the dreadful does not happen immediately before your eyes, it is this way. Indeed, fear and anxiety, such negative feelings are something that puts the human being in a fateful relation to the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world there are beings to whom fear and anxiety emitted by the human beings, are welcome nourishment. If the human being is not afraid and does not fear, these beings are starving! They who have not yet penetrated deeper into the soiritual world, may take this as comparison. However, those who know this matter, know that it concerns something real. If the human being emits fear, anxiety, and panic, these beings indeed find welcome nourishment, and they become mightier and mightier. These beings are hostile to the human beings. Everything that feeds itself from negative feelings, from fear, anxiety and superstition, from hopelessness, from doubt, are powers in the spiritual world that are hostile to the human being, and that make cruel attacks on him if and when they are fed by him. Hence, it is necessary, above all, that the human being who enters the spiritual world, makes himself strong against fear, anxiety, hopelessness, and doubting.

However, these are just rather modern cultural feelings, and materialism is suitable because it cuts off the human beings from the spiritual world to call these hostile powers against him by hopelessness and fear of the unknown. To express myself quite clearly, I have to say, when the human being sees that gate of death, he also sees numerous pernicious forces hampering him. Most human beings attract forces by fear of death. The bigger the fear of death, the stronger is their power. The fear of death is generally a part of the feelings of fear. These powers appear like dried up bags if the human being makes himself strong and knows that he cannot change the event of death by the fear of death.

The human being is only able to overcome the fear of death and to face death courageously if he knows that an immortal everlasting core is in his inside for which death is only a change of the way of life. As soon as the human being finds the immortal core in himself with the help of occult science, he educates himself more and more for overcoming all such feelings, last also the fear of death. However, the more materialistic the human being becomes, the more he is frightened at death. No occult science can protect the human being to see the truthful behind the scenery. It has to show how the everlasting life, how karma entails the big balance in the spiritual life. This spiritual science has to show various things. It cannot show the beatitudes behind the scenery of life without showing the dreadful powers at the same time, the enemies who lie in wait for him. This is true. However, it also shows how he can overcome any fear of these enemies. It shows how he can face all that with free, courageous eye. It teaches him to become objective and impartial if he leaves himself patiently to its education.

However, many human beings come to theosophy with the usual feelings of our time. What they hear here works on them sometimes deeply depressing, as something that attacks their souls frightfully because they have fear of life because of their materialistic thinking. Many people bring this immaturity into theosophy and they overcome it only gradually. Again, theosophy or occult science does not bear the blame for it. It does its bit not to shock the human being too strongly. If it revealed the complete truth of something obvious to the human being, it would say how the cowards separate from the intrepid ones, and some of you would be shocked how big the number is on the one and the other side.

However, the immature human beings bring some immature matters into the theosophical movement, while they translate certain concepts that theosophy and occult science give simply into the usual trivial language. As strange as it sounds, here a big danger exists sometimes in the relations between theosophy and our contemporaries. Thus, immature theosophists and such people who approach theosophy externally say repeatedly that the first demand is to become unselfish, to overcome any egoism. Some people can never assert often enough if they want to say anything rather theosophical to anybody: all that I do and want is quite unselfish. I want to work only for the other human beings.—They mostly do not sense how selfish this belief is. It is true that by the acquaintance with the truth of occult science the human being comes gradually to that which is indicated so nicely in Goethe's words:

From the force that binds all creatures
That man is delivered who masters himself.

It is true, but almost everything is necessary that occult science can offer, its highest and its deepest, to reach this ideal. One reaches it best of all if one speaks of it as little as possible and strives for it very directly.

Those are unselfish least of all who boast mostly of their unselfishness, as those are normally the most false who use the word “truly” after every third sentence. A deep law underlies that in occultism. First, it concerns penetrating deeper and deeper into the truth and knowledge of occult science, and not taking such ideals as, for example: you shall overcome your ego.—With such a phrase nothing at all is done. Nothing is done if, for example, a stove stands here and I say to it: you should be a good stove; you must make the room warm.—You can stroke it and treat it affectionately, but with it, nothing is done. Not before you give wood to the stove, it heats. Thus, it is also useless at all to preach virtue, unselfishness, and freedom to the world. The right thing is to heat, to give the human being heating material; and the heating material is the spiritual-scientific truth. As the wood and the coal make the stove warm, the real spiritual-scientific truth makes the human being unselfish gradually. Why? Because it detracts the interest in many respects from the small point, which one calls the ego. The theosophical or spiritual-scientific truth is so great, so mighty, and significant, and claims us so strongly that we feel very uninteresting as a single personality. One learns only how uninteresting the single personality is. This learning, how uninteresting the single human personality is, if it is caused by the heating material of the spiritual-scientific truth, only frees the human being from egoism.

If you look at the things basically, then egoism is not at all anything that is not included in the divine world order from a higher viewpoint. It is something very healthy from a higher viewpoint. Imagine once if many human beings of our time did not refrain from this or from that if they did not do that or this out of selfishness because they know for selfish reasons what may result. Imagine which pests they would be in the human development! Really, the world wisdom planted egoism into the human being to lead him to a developmental stage to seize his self, so that he makes it as important and valuable as he can only do it.

It is a high truth on the one side and a shocking phrase on the other side if one says to the human being, you have to sacrifice your personality.—At an example I want to make clear to you how it can be that something is elated once and rhetorical another time. Imagine, you ask a person who has a ten-pfennig coin in his pocket to sacrifice it for anything. He makes this sacrifice easily. However, if you ask a person, who has 20,000 mark by chance with him—perhaps his whole property—to sacrifice them, this is another thing. The imposition to somebody who has not yet worked on himself who has not yet raised his personality to renounce his personality is something different from that who has worked on it for a long time to make it as competent as only possible. The one sacrifices a genius on the altar of human development, the other a fool.

It does not depend on the fact that one sacrifices, but what one sacrifices. To be able to present a personality for humanity, one has to develop this personality at first. Thus, it is once a phrase to speak of the sacrifice of personality; on the other side, it is a great significant truth. Hence, it is useless at all; if in theosophical books, the demand of the sacrifice of personality is pronounced and is not demanded at the same time: make your personality as strong as only possible.

We learn this by a real thinking that has its roots in the spiritual world. True theosophy is that logic which does not put one-sided principles but knows that every sentence as every coin has two sides, maybe even more sides, that teaches to look from the appearance at the inside. It does often not at all teach what one calls theosophy superficially today. One calls danger only that which is not a superficial, but a real danger.

I was still very young, when I sat with somebody together who had celebrated his fiftieth birthday recently in another country, who had interests in common with me concerning my studies of Goethe. The man said in those days, he did not want to go among the authors. He was in those days, although still relatively young, already older than many who write today. He bethought, I will not write reviews. I want to write something else, because only someone should write reviews who has big experience of life; actually, only old people should write reviews.—This was, in any case, a very good idea of the man. Most people do not believe that maturity is necessary to work in the cultural field. The further we grow into the times, the younger become in particular the people who write under the line, and because the reader usually does not think and has, actually, no means to investigate how young the writer is, he has no notion by whom he is taken in.

Everybody knows that today it is not difficult to write wittily. Indeed, still some people are surprised that the one or the other writes wittily. A person who has maybe dealt since his fifteenth, sixteenth year with nothing else than reading such stuff who has learnt the craft substantially needs to publish only something, and he can impress by his radical or blurred judgments enormously. It is possible there that a person seriously suffers from dementia. As strange as it sounds: somebody can be crazy today and he can write wittily for the world, so that he is admired as a witty author. This case is possible. Decades ago, it was already a correct judgement if anybody said, it is not difficult in our time to make a good poem; culture and language versify.—Today, this applies even more, so that some pupils can write newspaper articles. Quite different powers judge there, which use the human beings for their purposes. More and more humanity must demand maturity from that who should have true judgements. Real maturity just also belongs to the work in spiritual-scientific field. Hence, it is also necessary, that those who are leaders of secret schools work only in their circles and do not appear before an age of 35 years to the world and proclaim spiritual-scientific truth. Before, they can bring judgements about philosophy in the world. However, one only becomes mature to scoop from the spirit when one does no longer have to use the spiritual power to the construction of the body. As long as the body is growing, the forces from which a logical judgement builds itself up must go into the body. Hence, it can be possible that a poet got real poems before the middle years.

However, the human being misjudges so easily that the biggest maturity of life is necessary to penetrate really into the depth, so that one understands not only anything for his satisfaction and for his advance, but gets around to stepping before humanity and representing spiritual-scientific work with full responsibility. This biggest maturity can only be reached at an advanced age. However, you do not need any maturity to talk in theosophical platitudes.

This is something peculiar that maturity belongs to the highest matters if one shall work on them thoroughly. However, they can be treated also as phrases because many people are unable to realise the deepness but they adhere to the phrase. Everything that can be spread in theosophy can be serious and deep to the highest degree, can be a force of life. If one reverses it into its opposite, it can be the most terrible phrase. Therefore, we experience just on this field so often that phrase by phrase blossoms, and that just immaturity works permanently. Besides, that who represents the immature damages himself more than the world. The world rejects what comes from this side. If you are involved in this direction, you do not make progress. For someone who works outward in the spiritual-scientific field has to make sacrifices. There is a great difference if spiritual science is protected like a secret in the chaste soul or if it is cast out in the world. The word applies there that one says about the treasure seeker: he must be taciturn. If he speaks a word, the treasure cannot be attained. Thus, the depths of the higher world are also attained the better, the more one can be quiet. For that who has understood these matters there is no talking generally if he is not forced to it if the world does not demand it from him. Nobody shall talk without being asked. The demand does not need to come from here or there, this demand can come from invisible, from supersensible powers.

With it, one can say, because our time is so little able to think properly about maturity and immaturity, it forms a sort of theosophy. It can be the highest; but in its reversal, it is a caricature and a risk. It does not bear the blame. It will gradually replace the absurd judgement with the correct one concerning maturity and immaturity. Nobody may be surprised that it is that way. If he were surprised, he should also be surprised about the fact that where strong light is also black shades are. Where less strong light is, even weaker shades are. Theosophy possibly throws black shades; this is only an evidence of the fact that it should be a strong light. Where one speaks of the so-called dangers, one must take stock of the fact that against the big danger simply a bulwark is there that no real teacher in this field exposes the human beings to this serious, big danger, and that everything that looks like a danger does not come from theosophy but from that which opposes it. If one knows this, one will be quiet, even if apparently bad effects appear. These can also appear. One can experience that persons, as long as they have no connection to theosophy, are reasonably decent persons. If they come to theosophy, they become vain, ambitious, and haughty. Why? For very simple reasons. As long as a person towers only a little above the judgements of his surroundings, he cannot be particularly bad, but also not particularly good. However, if he comes to something original, the possibility of the good increases but also the possibility of the bad.

What appears here already with the usual theosophist can appear with the pupil all the more. With him, the mistakes that exist on the bottom of his being if he must gain his free judgment appear with big clearness. However, this is necessary. If anybody wants to develop quicker, a sum of bad qualities may come out with him overnight. These qualities would maybe have spread over sixty years. If one dissolves a drop of colour in a big quantity of water, one sees nothing of the colour. That also applies to the pupil. What should come out in some days becomes noticeable. However, if one acts out anything for sixty years, one notices nothing of it. Yes, in secret science there appear some devils of arrogance. Relatively soon, one had to experience that persons who are not haughty in themselves approach one with wishes. Then they come and say, I want to start being a pupil and becoming an adept as quickly as possible.—One does often hear that. It is experience that the devil of arrogance seizes somebody. Towards the great, they often become the haughtiest, and then they hard understand that this feeling is the biggest obstacle for their further development, and that it is the best for the further development to renounce arrogance.—However, this is connected also with the fact that we are great laughers and great blabbers.

With it, I have spoken about the dangers of occult science. I made no secret that there are such cases, I have also tried in the course of these talks to point where, actually, the more dangerous cases are. Today, I wanted to point only in general to what one finds everywhere in theosophy and occult science. He who searches occult science is not deterred by the dangers of it, but he finds the welfare, the recovery of the soul just in occult science. He knows that it does not cause damage that it does not bring dangers, but that it uncovers damages and points to dangers where they also exist, otherwise, and where they would keep on working if they were not led to recovery. Hence, this so-called danger shall deter nobody from penetrating into the spiritual fields. As we are led by all the other considerations and viewpoints, we are also led here to realise that the human being shall not refrain from developing the forces and abilities slumbering in him to penetrate into nature. For what is material is revelation of the spirit. As around us are dreadful beings if we look into them, they are in nature. Only because the human being closes his eyes he avoids this fact. Those who knew something of occult science also knew this. Already in his youth, Goethe heard some objections against the penetration into the inside of the things. He heard the words of the Swiss naturalist Haller (Albrecht von H., 1708–1777) who said:

No created mind penetrates into the being of nature.
Blissful is that to whom she shows her appearance only.

Goethe who dared to look into her knew that the human being can penetrate into nature everywhere. Hence, he felt repeatedly urged to say:

Considering nature you have to regard
Everything always as the same.
Nothing is inside, nothing is outdoors,
Because what is inside is outdoors ...

In his peculiar kind, Goethe still opposed the quotation that limits the human cognitive faculties. He protested against it with the words, which just are suitable to point a soul to the practical-active of the theosophical worldview, while he reminded of Haller's words in old age:

Indeed

To the Physicist

“No created mind penetrates
into the being of nature.”
O you Philistine!
Do not remind me
And my brothers and sisters
Of such a word.
We think: everywhere we are inside.
“Blissful is that to whom she shows
Her appearance only!”
I hear that repeatedly for sixty years,
I grumble about it, but covertly,
I say to myself thousand and thousand times:
She gives everything plenty and with pleasure;
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She is everything at the same time.
Examine yourself above all,
Whether you are kernel or shell.