The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we look back over the historical evolution of mankind and see how event follows event in the course of the ages, we are accustomed to regard these events as though we might find in more recent times the effects and results of earlier ages, as though we could speak of cause and effect in history in the same way as we do in connection with the external physical world.

We are however bound to admit that when we do look at history in this way, nearly all of it remains unexplained. We shall not, for example, succeed in explaining the Great War simply as an effect of the events that took place from the beginning of the century until the year 1914. Neither shall we succeed in explaining the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century out of the events that preceded it. Many theories of history are put forward but they do not carry us very far, and in the last resort we cannot but deem them artificial.

The truth is that the events in human history only become capable of explanation when we look at the personalities who play a decisive part in these events, in respect of their repeated lives on earth. And it is also true that when we have given attention to this study for a considerable time, when we have observed the karma of historical personages as it shows itself in the course of their lives on earth, then and only then shall we acquire the right mood of soul to go into the matter of our own karma. Let us then to-day study karma as it shows itself in history. We will take a few historical personages who have done something or other that is known to us, and see how this deed or course of action may be traced from that which was written into their karma from their earlier incarnations.

It will in this way become clear to us that the things that happen in one epoch of history have really been brought over by human beings from earlier epochs. And as we learn to take quite seriously—it is too often considered as mere theory—all that is said about karma and repeated earth-lives, as we come to place it before us in precise and concrete detail, we shall be able to say: All of us who are sitting here have been on the earth many times before and we have brought with us into this present earth-life the fruits of earlier earth-lives.

It is only when we have learned to be quite earnest about this that we have any right to speak of the perception of karma as something that we know. But the only way to learn to perceive karma is to take the ideas of karma and put them as great questions to the history of man. Then we shall no longer say: What happened in 1914 is the result of what happened in 1910, and what happened in 1910 is the result of what happened in 1900, and so on. Then we shall try instead to understand how the personalities who make their appearance in life themselves bring over from earlier epochs that which shows itself in a later one. It is only on this path that we shall arrive at a true and genuine study of history, beholding the external events against the background of human destinies.

History sets us such a number of riddles! But many a riddle is cleared up if we set about studying it in the way I have described. People appear sometimes quite suddenly in history, shooting in as it were like meteors. You examine their education and upbringing—it affords no explanation whatever. You examine the age to which they belong—again you can find no clue to the problem of their appearance in this particular time. Karmic connections alone will afford the true explanation.

I will speak of one or two such personalities who have lived in times not very far distant from our own, and whose lives readily suggest the double question: What were their circumstances in an earlier earth-life, and what have they brought over from that earlier life that has made them as they are now?

Or again, let us take the case of personalities of an earlier age, who lived a long time ago in the history of evolution. Here we are anxious to know when they came again to earth, and what sort of people they were in a later incarnation. If in an earlier life they attained to fame and renown, we ask ourselves: What did they become when they returned? We would like to be able to add other lives to the one of which we read in history; perhaps they were historical characters a second time, or perhaps renowned in some other way: in any case we would like to know the connections.

Now connections of this kind are exceedingly difficult to investigate. Let me begin by giving you an idea of how, when we want to research into karmic connections, we have to look at the whole human being and not merely at what often strikes us at first sight as being particularly characteristic.

I should like here to give an example which may seem rather personal. I once had a Geometry teacher whom I loved dearly. It was not difficult for me to love him because during my boyhood I was exceedingly fond of Geometry. But this teacher was really quite unusual. He had a peculiar talent for Geometry that fascinated me, although people who are never deeply impressed by other human beings might have thought him dry and uninteresting. Notwithstanding this somewhat prosaic nature, however, he was a man whose influence could have a strongly artistic effect upon one. I always had an intense desire to unravel the secret of this personality and I tried to apply the methods of occult research by which this end can be attained.

I spoke in Torquay, and will only now repeat in brief, of how, if one progresses in the development of the occult forces of the soul in the way I described in the lecture here a year ago [Man as a Picture of the Living Spirit. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972.] and reaches the stage of empty consciousness, and if then this empty consciousness becomes filled with what resounds from the spiritual world, it is possible—if one adds to this experience such things as I spoke of in this morning's lecture—to have impressions, intuitions that are as exact as a mathematical truth and point from certain phenomena in the present life of an individual to an earlier life.

Now the wonderful way in which this teacher of mine worked in Geometry, his whole method of handling the subject, made me deeply interested in him. And this interest remained, even after his death at an advanced age. Destiny never brought me into actual contact with him again after I left the school in which he taught, but his personality stood before me in the spirit as a reality, until the day of his death and after his death; he stood there before me in particular clarity in all the detail of his bearing and actions.

Now what made it possible for me to receive out of his present life an intuition of his previous earth-life, or at any rate the previous earth-life of importance for him, was the fact that he had a club foot! One leg was shorter than the other.

When we remember that in the transition from one earth-life to another, what was head-organisation in the previous life becomes foot- or limb-organisation, and what was foot- or limb-organisation becomes head-organisation, then we shall readily understand that a bodily trait of this kind may have a certain significance, inasmuch as the life of the individual stretches across repeated earthly existences. This club foot enabled me to trace the individuality of my Geometry teacher back into the past. He was not a man of any renown but he was a person who made upon me at any rate and upon others too, a deep and lasting impression; he had an extraordinarily strong influence upon many lives. And I was able to discover, starting from the fact of his club foot, that a study of his personality led one back to the very same place in history where one has to look for Lord Byron.

Now Lord Byron too had a club foot. This is an external physical characteristic, but what is external and bodily in one life is, in another, a quality of soul-and-spirit; and this characteristic led me to recognise that the two personalities who were not now contemporaries (for my Geometry teacher lived later than Byron) had, in an earlier earth-life, been together. In the modern age they had lived as poet and geometrician, each a genius in his own line, the one becoming widely famous, the other making only upon a few individuals an intimate impression which influenced the shaping of their destinies. In an earlier life, however, in medieval times, they had been side by side; together they had listened to the legend of the Palladium, the holy treasure that had once been in Troy, had then come over with Aeneas and was regarded by Rome as the talisman upon which her fortunes depended. The Emperor Constantine afterwards took it across to Constantinople and the success and happiness of Constantinople in its history depended on this Palladium. The legend, looking prophetically into the future, went on to say that whoever acquires the Palladium, his shall be the rulership of the world.

This is not the time for me to enlarge upon the merits and content of the legend. I will only say that these two individuals who were at that time incarnated in what is to-day called Russia, undertook together, with warm enthusiasm, the journey to Constantinople in search of the Palladium. They were not able to obtain possession of it but they kept the enthusiasm alive in their hearts.

And now we can actually see how Lord Byron resolved to go in search of the Palladium in another guise when he took part in the Greek struggle for freedom. If you study carefully the life of Lord Byron, you will find that a great deal in this gifted poet is due to the fact that in an earlier earth-life he had been spurred on by enthusiasm for such an enterprise.

And again, as I look back upon my Geometry teacher with his modest, unassuming character, I can see how he owed his charm and endearing qualities in this life to the enterprise of that earlier time, although his part, then, had been a secondary one. Had he taken an equal share in it with the individuality who became Lord Byron, he would have been a contemporary of his again in the later life.

I bring this example before you in order that you may realise that we have to look at the whole human being if we want to investigate karmic connections; we have even, for example, to note bodily defects or deformities. If we find that a person has some distinguishing talent of a spiritual kind in one earth-life, let us say has been a great painter, we must not draw the abstract conclusion that he was a great painter in his former earth-life. What we see on the surface are only the waves thrown up by karma which flows in deeper waters below and has to do with body, soul and spirit. We must take the whole life into the horizon of our vision.

It will frequently happen that little characteristic actions of a person, such as the way he moves his fingers, will lead the way to karmic connections far sooner than any outstanding activities he may have undertaken and that are from every other aspect of more consequence. I once had the experience of being able to arrive at deep and intimate karmic connections in the case of a certain person by giving attention to quite an incidental peculiarity that made a strong impression upon me. He used to give lessons in a school, and on every occasion, before beginning his lesson, he took out his pocket handkerchief and blew his nose. He never by any chance began to teach without doing this. It was a deeply-rooted characteristic in him. The impression it made upon me was significant and I was able to read in it a pointer to important features of his former earth-life. It is in these signs that we have to find some significant trait in the person that will often take us back to the earlier incarnation.

And now I would like to show you how interesting from a historical point of view the question of karma becomes. Let us take a few concrete cases, for example, the case of Swedenborg, who appears in such a striking way in the 18th century. Last year I spoke of him in Penmaenmawr¹ from quite a different standpoint. I spoke then of his spiritual qualities but I did not touch upon his karma.

Swedenborg is a very remarkable figure. Until he was more than 40 years old he was a great and notable scholar, of such repute that the Swedish Academy of Science is even now still occupied in bringing out the numerous scientific works he left behind—purely scientific works. When we know that Arrhenius, for example, has concerned himself with their publication, we shall conclude that they must be un-spiritual in the very highest degree. Otherwise Arrhenius would scarcely interest himself in them! Nobody could say that up to his fortieth year Swedenborg had anything whatever to do with spiritual matters in his knowledge and learning. Then, all of a sudden, he began—as the scientists put it—to go crazy, to give out imposing and magnificent descriptions of the spiritual world as he had seen it. It was something entirely new in Swedenborg's life, shooting in like a comet.

We ask ourselves: What can there have been in an earlier earth-life to produce such a result?

Or again, take a personality like Voltaire. I am choosing a few great personalities whose lives leave us with unanswered questions. Voltaire is one who may be called an absolutely incommensurable person. We are puzzled to know how this strange character, now scornful and contemptuous, now pious not to say unctuous, could grow up as a product of his age, or again how he could have the tremendous influence he did have upon it.

With what irony does destiny work! Voltaire had a deep influence upon the King of Prussia; and this connection between Voltaire and the King of Prussia was a most significant factor in the destiny of the spiritual life of Europe. One cannot help asking: What really lies behind all this in the deeper background of history?

We may take still a third case, and one not without meaning for our own day, when many things are thrusting themselves upon our notice from the background of existence. Take the case of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, who died in the 16th century. When we follow the remarkable destiny of the Jesuit Order that he founded, we are compelled to ask the question: What kind of life had Ignatius Loyola after he passed through the gate of death? And if he has come again, what part has he played in the more recent history of mankind? There you have questions which, if they can be answered, may well throw a light upon the background of very much that has happened in history.

Intuitive vision led one back, for example, to a soul who lived in the 5th century A.D., not long after St. Augustine, and who was educated in the schools of Northern Africa, as was St. Augustine himself. In these schools, the personality of whom I am speaking became acquainted with all that proceeded from the Manichean wisdom and from the wisdom of the East which had, of course, undergone such great changes in a later age. In subsequent wanderings he came across to Spain and there absorbed what may be called early Kabbalistic doctrine, teachings which open out a vista of great cosmic relationships. Education and experience thus equipped him with an extraordinary wide outlook, and at the same time with knowledge that sprang from two main sources—one already in decadence and the other just beginning to flourish. The result was to give him in one respect a deepened life of soul, but at the same time to leave him in uncertainty and doubt.

After many travels on earth, this personality passed at length through the gate of death; and at a definite point between death and rebirth his karma brought him in touch with a particular Genius, a particular spiritual Being belonging to the world of Mars.

You know that in the period between death and a new birth a human being builds up spiritually the karma he has afterwards to bring into physical embodiment in later earth-lives. Now not only do other human souls with whom he is karmically connected share in this work with him, but the Beings, too, of the various spiritual Hierarchies. These Beings have tasks to fulfil as the result of what a human soul brings over from earlier earth-lives. And so this soul of whom I am speaking was engaged in building up his karma for the next life on earth. Now it happened that through all he had received and done, through all he had thought and felt in earlier lives, especially in the life that was particularly significant and of which I have just given you a brief sketch, he was brought very near to a spiritual Being belonging to the world of Mars. He acquired thereby a strongly aggressive nature, but on the other hand also a wonderful gift of speech; for Mars Beings prepare from out of the cosmos all that belongs to speech and language and place it into the karma of human beings. Wherever artistic skill and fluency in speech show themselves in the karma of a human being, these are to be traced to the fact that his karmic experiences have brought him into the vicinity of Mars Beings.

The individuality of whom I am speaking had been in the company of one particular Mars Being—a Being who now began to interest me intensely when I had recognised him in connection with this soul. The individuality himself appeared again on earth in the 18th century, as Voltaire. Thus Voltaire bore within him from his earlier earth-life the learning of the schools of Northern Africa and of Spain, elaborated and transformed through the fact that the shaping of his karma had taken place with the help of this particular Mars Being.

When you consider Voltaire's great gift of language and on the other hand his instability in many things, when you consider his writings, not so much their content as his manner and habit of working, you will come to understand how it all follows quite naturally from the karmic influences I have described. And when we observe how Voltaire comes over from his earlier earth-life with his aggressiveness, his fluency of language, his power of satire, his only partially concealed lack of integrity, yet at the same time his genuine and ardent enthusiasm for truth—when we study all this in connection, first, with his former incarnation and then with his association with the Mars Being, the personality of Voltaire and still more from an occult point of view this. Mars Being, will begin to be of great interest to us.

It was my task at one time to follow this Mars Being and through this Being certain events on earth received great illumination. We meet in history with the remarkable figure of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius Loyola was, to begin with, a soldier. He was stricken with a severe illness and in the course of it was inwardly impelled to carry out all kinds of soul-exercises which were the means of filling him with such spiritual strength that he became able to set himself the task of rescuing the old Catholic Christianity from the spread of Evangelicalism. And thanks to the forces he had acquired through having a wounded leg—that is the interesting point—he succeeded in founding the Order of the Jesuits, which introduces occult exercises of the will in a most powerful manner into practical religious life. What we may think of this from other points of view is not here our concern. Ignatius Loyola, in establishing the Jesuit Order, sought to represent the cause of Jesus on earth on a grand scale, in a purely material way, through the training of the will.

Anyone who studies the remarkable life of Ignatius Loyola cannot fail to conceive a certain admiration for it. And now if we pursue the matter further with the occult insight of Intuition, we come to something very significant.

Ignatius Loyola was the means of starting the Jesuit Order which has done more than anything else to bring Christianity right down into the earthly, material life, accompanied, however, with a strong spiritual power. The Jesuit Order has one rule which goes altogether against the grain in men of the present age but which, notwithstanding, has contributed more to its effectiveness than any other factor. Besides the usual monastic vows, besides the exercises, besides everything else that a candidate has to undergo before he can become a priest, the Order of the Jesuits has in addition this rule, namely that there shall be unconditional subjection to the command of the Pope of Rome. Whatever the Pope orders to be done, it is never asked in the Jesuit Order what opinions there may be about it. It is simply carried out because the Jesuits are convinced that higher things of the Spirit make themselves known through the Pope and that it behoves them, in unconditional obedience to Rome, to carry out the commands of this higher authority. A doubtful and precarious rule: nevertheless it implies a great selflessness that is present in Jesuitism and again signifies a tremendous increase of strength, for everything a man does with intense energy, putting forth all his force and acting not on his own authority nor out of emotion—everything a man does in this way gives him extraordinary strength. It is a strength that moves, so to speak, in the lower clouds of material existence, but it is none the less a spiritual force. It is in truth a remarkable phenomenon.

And now, if we follow up these extraordinarily strange and imposing facts, we come to discover that the same Mars Genius who plays a part in the life of Voltaire, accompanied the life of Ignatius Loyola from the moment when he passed through the gate of death. The soul of Ignatius Loyola was perpetually under the super-sensible influence of this Mars Genius.

As soon as Ignatius Loyola had passed through death, things were immediately quite different for him than they are for other men. Other men do not at once lay aside the etheric body at death but only a few days later and have a brief retrospective vision of the past earth-life before entering upon the journey through the soul-world. In the case of Ignatius Loyola this retrospective vision lasted for a very long time. And by reason of the special kind of exercises that had been working in his soul, a close and intimate connection was able to be established between the soul of Ignatius Loyola and the Mars Genius. For a strong and active affinity, an elective affinity so to speak, existed between this Mars Genius and all that had gone on in the soul of the sick soldier, who through the injury to his foot had been forced to take to his bed and from being a soldier had become a man who could not use his leg. All these circumstances had had a deep and powerful effect upon Loyola and when we look at the whole man it becomes clear. These circumstances led Ignatius Loyola into connection with the Mars Genius whom I had learned to know on another path of investigation. And what took shape through this connection made it possible for Ignatius Loyola to have this significant retrospect of his life which continued on and on for a long time, whereas in the ordinary way it lasts for only a few days after death. Loyola was able thereby to establish a retrospective connection as it were with those who came after him in the Jesuit Order. He remained united with his Order in the retrospect of his own life.

To this connection with its founder are due the forces that held the Order together, the forces that determined its strange and abnormal destiny and can be seen in its subjection in unquestioning obedience to the Pope—in spite of the repeal of this rule by the Pope himself—and in spite of the persecutions that went on! But on the other hand all the things that the Jesuits themselves accomplished in the world are to be traced to the singular connection of which I have spoken.

Now this example, if we follow it further, can shed a wonderful light over certain historical events and connections. After Ignatius Loyola's death, his soul remained always in the vicinity of the earth—for one is near the earth so long as this retrospect lasts. Even if the retrospect is extended it cannot last many centuries for when it extends at all over any long period it is quite abnormal—but abnormal things do constantly occur in the great world-connections. And comparatively soon after his earth-life was over, Ignatius Loyola appeared again in the soul of Emanuel Swedenborg.

We have here arrived at a very astounding fact, but it is also extremely illuminating. Think of the light it sheds upon history! The Order of the Jesuits continues in existence ... but the one who held it together up to a certain moment of time has become an entirely different person ... he appears in the individuality of Emanuel Swedenborg. He became the spirit of Emanuel Swedenborg, and since that time the Jesuit Order has been guided by altogether different impulses from those of its founder. We may frequently see in history how in the course of karma the founder of some undertaking or movement, or the persons who are deeply united with it, become separated from the movement they have founded and the movement passes over to quite other forces. So we learn how little meaning there is from a historical point of view to trace back the Jesuit Order to Ignatius Loyola. External history does so. Inner knowledge can never do so, for it sees how the individualities separate themselves from their movements.

In its external course, many a phenomenon in history is traced back to this or that founder. If, however, we come to know the later earth-life of the founder of some undertaking we may find that he has long ago separated himself from it. A great deal of what is set down as history simply loses all meaning when we are able and ready to face the occult facts that stand behind the evolution of karma.

That is one thing that emerges. The other is as follows.

The soul of Ignatius Loyola, now the soul of Swedenborg, entered an organism that had acquired its quite unusual soundness of head through the fact of the injury to the leg from which Loyola had suffered in the former life. And this soul that had remained all the time in the vicinity of the earth, was not able, to begin with, to come down fully and completely into the new earthly incarnation. The body remained, up till the fortieth year, a remarkably healthy body with a sound and healthy brain, a healthy etheric body and a healthy astral body. With these sound and healthy organisations Swedenborg grew to be one of the greatest scholars of his time; but it was not until his early forties, when he had been through the period of the Ego-development and was entering on the development of the Spirit-Self, that he came under the influence of the Mars Genius of whom I have spoken. During the first forty years of Swedenborg's life this influence had been somewhat suppressed; but now he came directly under it and from this time on it is the Mars Genius that speaks through Emanuel Swedenborg, in all the spiritual knowledge he has of the universe.

And so in Swedenborg we have a man of genius, who gives us brilliant and magnificent description of the lands of the Spirits, albeit in pictures that are somewhat questionable. Thus has the mighty spiritual will of Ignatius Loyola found transformation.

It is always the case that if we follow up the real and actual karmic connections, we discover, as a rule, something that startles and astounds us. The ingenious speculations one so often hears about repeated earth-lives are ingenious speculations and nothing more. When investigation is really exact, the result is usually very startling, for the evolution of karma that moves forward from earth-life to earth-life is hidden deep, deep down below all that is experienced and lived out by man between birth and death.

I wanted to give you this example in order that you may see how deeply may be hidden that which flows in karma from earth-life to earth-life. You have seen it in a personality who is well known to us all. Only by investigating these hidden factors shall we arrive at the true explanations. And if you now study the life of Emanuel Swedenborg, knowing the connections of which I have told you, you will find how things become clear to you, one after another.

In the early years of this century I was several times in London. On the occasion of one of these visits I was prompted to make myself acquainted with an extraordinarily significant personality—to begin with, simply in his writings. And as in those days there were rather longer intervals between the journeys than there are now, I obtained from the Theosophical Library the books he had written—the books that is to say, of Laurence Oliphant.

Laurence Oliphant is a remarkably interesting and significant personality: he strikes you in this way directly you begin to study his writings. These books deal with the similarities to be found in different religions, with spiritual religions, and so forth; and all of them bear evidence of a deep understanding of how in the various processes of his body and soul, man is connected with the secrets of the universe. When you read Oliphant's writings you have the impression: Here is a picture of man in his earth-life that owes its inspiration to deep cosmic instincts. The processes of the earthly life of man that are connected with birth, embryonic life, descent and so forth, are described in such a way as to show how man, as microcosm, is wondrously rooted in the macrocosm.

Now I was very soon led in this study to a point where the figure of the dead Laurence Oliphant stood before me, but not in a form which suggested that I had here to do with the individuality as he was then living after death; it was rather that what was contained in these writings (which may be described as setting forth a kind of cosmic physiology, a cosmic anatomy) began to come alive, began to spiritualise; and a figure appeared, not all at once entirely clear, but unquestionably there before me on many different occasions. I was able to make occult investigations into the matter and I could never do otherwise than bring the figure into connection with what came to me from reading Oliphant. It was very often there before me. At first I was often unable to satisfy myself as to what this figure wanted, what its manifestations meant. The whole manner of its appearance however, left me in no doubt whatever that it was none other than the individuality of Laurence Oliphant; and it was likewise clear to me that this figure had had a long life in the time between death and a new birth—that is to say, the birth as Laurence Oliphant—probably only broken by one earth-life that was not very significant for the rest of the world. What might not then be hidden in the personality of Laurence Oliphant! In short, this appearance of the figure of Laurence Oliphant suggested significant questions of karma.

When I entered on an investigation of the karma, a spiritual Being became manifest who is engaged in the elaboration of human karma, in the same way as the Mars Being of whom I told you in connection with Voltaire and with Ignatius Loyola.

Now one may get to know such Genii in the most varied ways. They are especially present when it is a question of undertaking spiritual investigation into that which appears, primarily, in physical manifestation among men on earth. I was always drawn to this kind of research. My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity leads, as you know, to a treatment of the life of will from a cosmic standpoint. Such matters always interested me deeply. Then, again, the questions that now arise out of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Movement lead to investigations of karma—I do not say our task is exhausted in the investigation of karma for this can always only be a part of it—and the investigations of karma lead once more to Genii such as the Mars Genius of whom I have told you. These Genii are, however, also to be met with on the path of another kind of research to which I have alluded and the results of which appear in the book that Dr. Ita Wegman and myself have worked out together in the sphere of medicine.² When one seeks in this way for an Initiate-knowledge of nature, one comes in a similar way to Mercury Genii; these Mercury Genii approach one because they play a special part in the karma of human beings. When man is passing through the life between death and a new birth, he is first of all purged in respect of his moral qualities; this takes place under the influence of the Moon Beings. Through the Mercury Beings his illnesses are transformed into spiritual qualities. In the Mercury sphere the illnesses a man undergoes in life are transformed by the Mercury Genii into spiritual energies, spiritual qualities. That is an exceedingly important fact and one which leads further, namely to the investigation of questions of karma in matters that are in any way connected with disease.

Now the investigations which I described in Torquay led me into close contact with the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante. When one penetrates into these spiritual worlds in the manner described, it also becomes possible to stand before individualities in the form in which they lived in a particular epoch. Thus one can stand face to face with Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante in the 13th century. Brunetto Latini still possessed a knowledge whereby nature was seen, not in the abstraction of natural laws, but as under the influence of living spiritual Beings. On the way back to his native town of Florence from his post as Ambassador in Spain, Brunetto Latini heard all kinds of reports that troubled and disturbed him, and in addition he had a slight sunstroke. In this condition and under the influence, too, of the pathological disturbances, glimpses came to him of nature in her creative work, of cosmic creation, and of the connection of man with the planetary world. What he was able to see was wonderful and sublime and no more than a shadow-picture of it subsequently found its way into the great work of Dante—the Divine Comedy.

But now if we follow this Brunetto Latini, we find that in a critical moment, when the knowledge was like to suffocate him, when it seemed to him that he might go astray from true knowledge and fall into error—in this critical moment, Ovid became his guide, Ovid, the Roman author of the Metamorphoses which contain such wonderful visions of the old Greek age, though expressed in the prosaic, characteristically Roman style.

And so we meet the individuality of Ovid together with Brunetto Latini. If we have a true grasp of the connection we can see Brunetto Latini, in the pre-Dante time, actually together with Ovid. Ovid is with him. And now, precisely in connection with the scientific, medical researches of which I was speaking, Ovid revealed himself as Laurence Oliphant. The long life since the Ovid time, passing but once to earth again in the interval and then as a woman in an incarnation that had little significance for the world outside, came at length to this fulfilment. The content of the soul is transplanted into modern times, and Ovid appears again as Laurence Oliphant.

Nor is it Brunetto Latini alone but other personalities too of the Middle Ages who assert that Ovid was their guide. At first it sounds like a tradition that simply gets carried on. In reality, Ovid was the guide in the spiritual world for many Initiates, appearing again as Laurence Oliphant with his sublime treatment of physiology and pathology. This connection between Laurence Oliphant and Ovid is of most far-reaching import and is one of the most illuminating examples one could possibly find.

• 1. See: Lecture 7, The Evolution of Consciousness. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966.
• 2. Fundamentals of Therapy: an Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967.

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.²

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 2. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

I have been asked to speak in these lectures about paths leading to a knowledge of the super-sensible world. This knowledge, and our knowledge of the phenomenal world, the fruit of years of patient and diligent study, to which we owe the magnificent achievements of modern times, are complementary. For reality can be apprehended only by the person who is able to reinforce the remarkable discoveries which the natural and historical sciences have added to our stock of knowledge in recent times with insight derived from the spiritual world.

Wherever the external world confronts us we are in no doubt that it is both spiritual and physical; behind every physical phenomenon will be found in some form or other a spiritual agent which is the real protagonist. The spiritual cannot exist in a vacuum for the spiritual is operative at all times and actively permeates the physical at some undefined time or place.

I propose to discuss in these lectures how the world in which man lives may be known in its totality, on the one hand through a consideration of his physical environment and, on the other hand, through the perception of the spiritual. In this way I hope to indicate the true and false methods of attaining such knowledge.

Before touching upon the actual subject matter of these lectures tomorrow I should like to offer a brief introduction so that you may have some idea of what to expect from them and what purpose I have in view. They are concerned in the first place to bring home to us the question: why do we undertake spiritual investigation at all? Why, as thinking, feeling, practical persons, are we not prepared to accept the phenomenal world as it is and take an active part in it? Why do we strive at all to attain knowledge of a spiritual world? In this context I should like to refer to an ancient conception, an old saying that embraces a truth ever more widely accepted and which, inherited from the earliest days of human thinking and aspiration, is still found today when we inquire into the Ground of the world. Without in any way using these ancient, outmoded conceptions as a basis, I would like, none the less, to call attention to them whenever the occasion arises.

From the East there echoes across thousands of years the saying: the world that we perceive with our senses is Maya, the Great Illusion. And if, as man has always felt during the course of his development, the world is Maya, then he must transcend the ‘Great Illusion’ to find ultimate truth. But why did man look upon this world of sense-impressions as Maya? Why, precisely in the earliest times when men were nearer to the spirit than they are today, did the Mystery Centres arise, Centres that were dedicated to the cultivation of science, religion, art and practical living, whose aim was to point the way to truth and reality, in contradistinction to that which, purely in the external world, was the Great Illusion, the source of man's knowledge and activity? How is one to account for those illustrious sages who trained their neophytes in the ancient, holy Mysteries and sought to lead them from illusion to truth? This question can only be answered if one reviews man more dispassionately, from a more detached angle.

“Know thyself!”—such is another ancient saying that comes down to us from the past. From the fusion of these two sayings—‘the world is Maya,’ from the East, and ‘know thyself!’, from ancient Greece—there first arose the quest for spiritual knowledge amongst later humanity. But in the ancient Mysteries, too, the quest for truth and reality had its origin in this twofold perception that, in the final analysis, the world is illusion and that man must attain to self-knowledge.

It is, however, only through life itself that man can come to terms with this question, not through thinking alone, but through the will, and through full participation in the reality immediately accessible to us as human beings. Neither in full consciousness, nor in clear understanding, but with deep emotion, every man the world over can say to himself: ‘Such as is the outer world that you see and hear, that you cannot be.’

This feeling goes deep. One must reflect upon the implication of these words: ‘Such as is the external world that you perceive with your five senses, that you cannot be.’ When we look at the plants we see the first green shoots emerge in springtime; they blossom in summer and towards autumn they ripen and bear fruit. We see them grow, fade and die: the duration of their life-cycle is a single year. We see, too, how many plants absorb from the soil certain substances which build up the main stem. On the way here yesterday evening by road we saw many extremely old plants which had absorbed quantities of these hardening substances in order that their life-cycle should not be limited to a single year, but should be extended over a longer period of time and thus would bear new growing-points on their stems. And it is given to man to observe how these plants grow, fade and die.

And when he observes the animals, he realizes their impermanence; so too with the mineral kingdom. He observes the mineral deposits in the majestic mountain ranges. And armed with his scientific knowledge, he realizes that they too are impermanent. And finally he turns to some conception such as the Ptolemaic or Copernican system, for example, or some conception borrowed from the ancient or later Mysteries—and he concludes as follows: all that I see in the splendour of the stars, all that irradiates me from sun and moon with their wondrous and complex orbits—all this, too, is impermanent. But apart from impermanence, the kingdom of nature has other attributes. These are of such a kind that man, if he is to know himself, should not assume that he and all that is impermanent—the plants, minerals, sun, moon and stars—are similarly constituted.

Man then comes to the conclusion: I bear within me some quality that is different from anything I see and hear around me. I must arrive at an understanding of my own being, for I cannot find it in anything that I see and hear.

In all the ancient Mysteries men felt this urge to discover the reality of their inner being, whereas all the transient phenomena of space and time were felt to be an expression of the Great Illusion. And so, in order to arrive at an understanding of man's inner being, they looked beyond the findings of sense-perception.

And here they experienced a spiritual world. How to find the right path to the spiritual world will be the subject of these lectures. You can readily imagine that man's first impulse will be to follow the same procedure he adopted in exploring the phenomenal world. He will simply transfer the method of sense-perception to his exploration of the spiritual world. If, however, investigation into the phenomenal world is usually fraught with illusion, then it is probable that the possibilities of illusion will be increased rather than diminished if the methods for investigating the phenomenal world are also applied to the spiritual world. And, in effect, this is what happens. In consequence we merely become the victims of an illusion all the more compelling.

And again, if we harbour vague anticipations, nebulous enthusiasms, unaccountable presentiments from dark corners of the soul, dream-fantasies about the spiritual, it will remain forever unknown to us. We remain in the world of conjecture; we share a belief, but have no real knowledge. If we are content simply to adopt this course, the spiritual will become not better known to us, but progressively more unknown. Thus man may go doubly astray.

On the one hand, he pursues the same line of enquiry in relation to the spiritual and phenomenal world. And the phenomenal world is found to be illusion. If he pursues the same approach to the spiritual world, as the ordinary spiritualists sometimes do, then he is subject to even greater illusions.

On the other hand he can follow the other way of approach. In this case no attempt is made to investigate the spiritual world along clear-cut, intelligible lines, but through self-induced belief and nebulous enthusiasm. Consequently the spiritual world remains a closed book. No matter how urgently we pursue the path of vague conjecture and emotional enthusiasm we shall know progressively less about the spiritual world. In the first instance the illusion is magnified, in the second, our ignorance. As against these two false paths we must find the right path.

We must bear in mind how impossibly difficult it is to substitute a knowledge of the true self for a knowledge of the Great Illusion in the sense I have indicated; and furthermore, if one intends to prepare oneself for a true, authentic approach to spiritual understanding, how impossible it is, in a state of illusion, to overcome all these nebulous feelings about the true self and come to a clear perception of reality. Let us look quite impartially at what is here involved. A materialist can never feel such deep admiration and respect for the recent scientific discoveries of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer and others as the man who has insight into the spiritual world. For these men, and many others since the time of Giordano Bruno, spared no effort in order to gain insight into what the ancient Mysteries considered to be the world of Maya. There is no need to accept the theories advanced by Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Copernicus, Galileo and the rest. Let others theorize about the universe as they will; we have no intention of being drawn into their arguments. But we must recognize the tremendous impetus given by these men to the detailed, factual study of specific organs in man, animals and plants, or of some particular problem relating to the mineral kingdom. Just imagine how much we have learned in recent times about the functions of the glands, nerves, heart, brain, lungs, liver, etc. as a result of their stimulating researches. They deserve our greatest respect and admiration. But in real life this knowledge can take us only to a certain point. Let me give you three examples to illustrate my point.

We can follow in great detail the first human egg-cell; how it gradually develops into a human embryo, how the various organs evolve step by step and how, from the tiny peripheral organs the complex heart and circulatory system are built up. All this can be demonstrated. We can follow the organic growth of the plant from root to blossom and seed and from this factual information we can construct a theory of the universe that embraces the Cosmos.

Our astronomers and astro-physicists have already done this. They set up a theory of the Cosmos showing how the world emerges from a stellar-nebular system which assumed a progressively more definite form and was capable of spontaneous generation. But despite all this theorizing, we come ultimately face to face once again with the essential being of man, the problem of how to respond to the injunction, ‘Know thyself!’ If we know only the self that is limited to a knowledge of the minerals, plants, animals, human glandular and circulatory systems, we know only the world man enters at birth and leaves at death. But, in the final analysis, man feels that he is not limited to the temporal world. Therefore, in face of all that knowledge of the external world yields in such grandeur and perfection, he must answer from the depths of his being: all this you affirm only between birth and death. But do you know your essential self, your true essence? The moment that the knowledge of man and nature has moral and religious implications, the human being whose organs can only apprehend the world of the Great Illusion is reduced to silence. The injunction, “Know thyself, so that thou mayest know in thine innermost being whence thou comest and whither thou art going,” this problem of cognition, the moment religious issues are raised, cannot be answered at this limited level of understanding.

On entering the Mystery Schools the neophyte was left in no doubt that however much he may have learned through sense-observation, this information could offer no answer to the great riddle of human nature when religious issues were involved.

Furthermore, though we may have the most precise knowledge of the structure of the human head, of the characteristic movements of man's arms and hands, of his gait and stance, though we may respond never so sensitively to the forms of animals and plants in so far as we can know them through sense-observation, directly we try to give artistic expression to this information we are again faced with an unanswerable problem.

For how have men hitherto expressed through art their knowledge of the world? They owed their inspiration to the Mystery teachings. Their knowledge of nature and its various aspects was related to the existing level of understanding, but at the same time it was enriched by spiritual insight.

One need only look back to ancient Greece. Today a sculptor or painter works from the model—at least this was the practice until recently. He sets out to copy and imitate. The Greek artist did not work in this way, although he is alleged to have done so; rather did he sense the spiritual human form within himself In sculpture, if he wished to portray an arm in movement, he was aware that the external world was informed by a spiritual content, that every material object has been created out of the spirit and in his work he strove to recreate the spirit.

Even as late as the Renaissance a painter did not use a model; it served only as a stimulus. He knew intuitively what activated hand or arm and expressed this information in his rendering of movement. Merely to portray the external and superficial aspects of the world of Maya, merely to copy the model, does not advance our understanding; we do not see thereby more deeply into man, but are concerned only with externals and so remain a spectator outside him.

From the standpoint of art, if we fail to transcend the world of Maya we are faced with the formidable problem of human nature and no answer is vouchsafed us.

And again, on entering the old Mysteries, it was made clear to the neophyte who was about to be initiated: if you remain within the world of Maya, you will be unable to penetrate the essential being of man or of any other kingdom of Nature. You cannot become an artist. In the sphere of art it was found necessary to remind the neophyte of the clear injunction, “Know thyself,” and then he began to feel the need for spiritual knowledge.

But, you will object, there are thoroughly materialistic sculptors. After all they were no mere amateurs and knew what they were about. They too knew how to draw forth the secrets from their model and invest their figures and motifs with these secrets. That is indeed so, but whence did they derive their knowledge? People fail to realize that this ability did not come from the artists themselves. They owed it to earlier artists who in their turn had it from their predecessors. They worked from a tradition. But they were unwilling to admit this because they claimed they owed everything to themselves. They knew how the old masters worked and imitated them. But the earliest of the old masters learned their secret from the spiritual insights of the Mysteries. Raphae1 and Michelangelo learned it from those who still drew on the Mysteries.

But true art must be created out of the spiritual. There is no other solution. As soon as we touch upon the problem of man, any perception of the Great Illusion has no answer to life's problems, to the problem of man's destiny. If we are to return to the fountain-head of art and artistic creativity we must recover insight into the spiritual world.

Now a third example. The botanist or zoologist can gain wonderfully detailed knowledge of the form of every available plant. The bio-chemist can describe the processes that take place in plant life. He can also tell how foodstuffs are assimilated in the metabolic system, are absorbed by the blood vessels in the walls of the alimentary canal and are carried in the blood to the nervous system. A gifted anatomist, physiologist, botanist or geologist can cover a wide field of the world of Maya, but if he intends to use this knowledge for purposes of healing or medical treatment, if he wishes to press forward from the outer, or even the inner constitution of man to his essential being, he cannot do it.

You will reply: but there are doctors in plenty who are materialists and have no interest in the spiritual world. They treat patients in accordance with the methods of natural science and yet they achieve results.

That is so. But they are able to affect cures because they too have behind them a tradition based upon an old world-conception. Old remedies were derived from the Mysteries, but they all shared a remarkable characteristic. If you look at an old prescription, you will find that it is highly complicated. It makes considerable demands upon those who prepare it and who apply it to the particular purpose laid down by tradition. If you had gone to an old physician and had asked how such a prescription was made up he would never have replied: first I make chemical experiments and ascertain whether the materials behave in such and such a way; then I try it out on the patients and note the results. Such an idea would never have occurred to him. People have no idea of the circumstances prevalent in earlier epochs. He would have replied: I live in a laboratory (if I may call it that) that was equipped on the basis of the Mystery teaching and when I light upon a remedy I owe it to the Gods. He was quite clear on this point, that he was in close communication with the spiritual world through the whole atmosphere engendered in his laboratory. Spiritual beings were as unmistakably present to him as human beings are to us. He was aware that through the influence of spiritual beings he had attained a higher dimension of being and was able to achieve more than would otherwise have been possible. And he proceeded to make up his complicated prescriptions, not from natural knowledge, but as the Gods dictated. It was known within the Mysteries that, in order to understand man, one should not be identified with the world of Maya, but press on to the truth of the divine world.

With all their knowledge of the external world men are further today from the truth of the divine world than were the ancients with their knowledge derived from the Mysteries. But the way back must be found again.

From the third example it is evident that if we seek to heal, even though equipped with the widest possible knowledge of nature (that is, of the world of Maya), then we are faced again with the unsolved problems of human life and destiny. If we wish to understand man from the standpoint of Maya, the “Great Illusion,” from the standpoint of the “Know thyself” which is demanded for the purposes of healing, then we shall be unable to advance a single step further in our understanding.

And so, in the light of these examples, we can say: he who wishes to bridge the gap between the world of Maya and the “Know thyself” will realize, the moment he approaches the human being with religious feeling, as a creative artist, as healer or doctor, that he stands before a void if his sole starting-point is the world of illusion. He is powerless unless he finds a form of knowledge that transcends the knowledge of external nature, which is knowledge of Maya, the Great Illusion.

Let us now draw a comparison between the way in which men sought, out of the spirit of the Mysteries, to reach a comprehensive knowledge of the world and the way in which this is attempted today. We shall then be in a position to find our bearings in relation to the paths leading to this comprehensive knowledge

A few thousand years ago the world and its divine Ground or essence were spoken of very differently from the way in which authorities speak to-day. Let us look back to that epoch a few thousand years ago, when a sublime and majestic knowledge flourished in the Mysteries of the Near East. We will attempt to look more closely into the nature of this knowledge by giving a brief description of its characteristics.

In ancient Chaldea, the following was taught: man's soul forces reach their maximum potentiality when he directs the eye of the spirit to the wonderful contrast between the life of sleep (his consciousness is dimmed, he is oblivious of his environment) and his waking life (he is clear-sighted, he is aware of the world around). These alternating conditions of sleep and waking were experienced differently thousands of years ago. Sleep was less unconscious, waking life not so fully conscious. In sleep man was aware of powerful, ever changing images, of the flux and movement of the life of worlds. He was in touch with the divine Ground, the essence, of the universe.

The dimming of consciousness during sleep is a consequence of human evolution. A few thousand years ago waking life was not so clear and lucid as today. Objects had no clearly defined contours, they were blurred. They radiated spiritual qualities in various forms. There was not the same abrupt transition from sleep to waking life. The men of that epoch were still able to distinguish these two states, and the environment of their waking life was called ‘Apsu.’ This life of flux and movement experienced in sleep, this realm that blurred the clear distinction between the minerals, plants and animals of waking life, was called ‘Tiamat.’ Now the teaching in the Chaldean Mystery Schools was that when man, in a state of sleep, shared the flux and movement of Tiamat, he was closer to truth and reality than when he lived his conscious life amongst minerals, plants and animals. Tiamat was nearer to the Ground of the world, more closely related to the world of man than Apsu. Apsu was more remote. Tiamat represented something that lay nearer to man. But in the course of time Tiamat underwent changes and this was brought to the notice of the neophytes in the Mystery Schools. From the life of flux and movement of Tiamat emerged demoniacal forms, equine shapes with human heads, leonine forms with the heads of angels. They arose out of the warp and woof of Tiamat and these demoniacal forms became hostile to man.

Then there appeared in the world a powerful Being, Ea. Anyone today who has an ear for sounds can feel how the conjunction of these two vowels points to that powerful Being who, according to these old Mystery teachings, stood at man's side to help him when the demons of Tiamat grew strong. Ea or Ia, became later—if one anticipates the particle ‘Soph’—Soph-Ea, Sophia. Ea implies approximately abstract wisdom, wisdom that permeates all things. Soph is a particle that suggests (approximately) a state of being. Sophia, Sophea, Sopheia, the all-pervading, omnipresent wisdom sent to mankind her son, then known as Marduk, later called Micha-el, the Micha-el who is invested with authority from the hierarchy of the Angels. He is the same Being as Marduk, the son of Ea, wisdom—Marduk-Micha-el.

According to the Mystery teachings Marduk-Micha-el was great and powerful and all the demoniacal beings such as horses with human heads and leonine forms with angels' heads—all these surging, mobile, demoniacal forms, conjoined as the mighty Tiamat, were arrayed against him. Marduk-Micha-el was powerful enough to command the storm wind that sweeps through the world. All that Tiamat embodied was seen as a living reality, and rightly so, for that is how they experienced it. All these demons together were envisaged as the adversary, a powerful dragon which embodied all the demoniacal powers born out of Tiamat, the night. And this dragon-being, breathing fire and fury, advanced upon Marduk. Micha-el first smote him with various weapons and then drove the whole force of his storm-wind into the dragon's entrails so that Tiamat burst asunder and was scattered abroad. [>The “Poem of Creation” says: “The North Wind bore (it) to places undisclosed.”] And so Marduk-Micha-el was able to create out of him the Heavens above and the Earth beneath. Thus arose the Above and the Below.

Such was the teaching of the Mysteries. The eldest son of Ea, wisdom, has vanquished Tiamat and has fashioned from one part of him the Heavens above and from the other the Earth below. And if, O man, you lift your eyes to the stars, you will see one part of that which Marduk-Micha-el formed in the Heavens out of the fearful abyss of Tiamat for the benefit of mankind. And if you look below, where the plants grow out of the mineralized Earth, where minerals begin to take form, you will find the other part which the son of Ea, wisdom, has recreated for the benefit of mankind.

Thus the ancient Chaldeans looked back to the formative period of the world, to the forming from the formless; they saw into the workshop of creation and perceived a living reality. These demon forms of the night, all these nocturnal monsters, the weaving, surging beings of Tiamat had been transformed by Marduk-Micha-el into the stars above and the Earth beneath. All the demons transformed by Marduk-Micha-el into shining stars, all that grows out of the Earth, the transformed skin and tissue of Tiamat—this is the form in which the men of ancient times pictured whatsoever came to them through the old attributes of the soul. That information they accounted as knowledge.

Then the priests of the Mysteries anticipated the future by studying the psychic powers of their pupils. And when the neophytes had developed adequate strength of soul they were in a position to understand the first elementary lessons that children are taught in school today—that the Earth revolves round the Sun and that worlds are formed from nebulae. This knowledge was a well-guarded secret in those days. The teaching given openly was concerned, on the other hand, with the deeds of Marduk-Micha-el which I have just described to you. In our schools and universities today—and they lay no claim to secrecy—and even in our primary schools the Copernican system and astro-physics are taught, subjects which, in ancient times, only the sages dared undertake or were permitted to undertake and then only after long preparation. What every schoolboy knows could, in those days, be learned only by Initiates. Today all this is part of the school curriculum.

There was an epoch dating further back still than the epoch of the old Chaldean Mysteries, when people spoke only of such things as I have described—of Ea, of Marduk-Micha-el, of Apsu and Tiamat. They abhorred everything taught by these ‘eccentric’ Mystery teachers about the movements of the stars or of the sun; they wished to study, not the invisible, but solely the visible and tangible, though in the personified or symbolic forms revealed through old clairvoyance. They rejected the knowledge which the old Initiate-teachers and their pupils had acquired. Then came the time when the primeval wisdom was gradually diffused from the East, and both forms of knowledge were treasured. Men set great store on the manifestations of the Beings of the spiritual worlds, the deeds of Marduk-Micha-el, for example; and equally they treasured what could be illustrated diagrammatically—the sun in the centre and the planetary bodies revolving round it in cycles and epicycles. Then, in the course of time, insight into the spiritual worlds, the worlds of demons and gods, was lost and intellectual knowledge was fostered, the knowledge which we prize so highly today and which reached its zenith in the early years of our epoch. We are now living in an epoch that ignores the spiritual, even as the phenomenal world was ignored by those to whom the spiritual was self-evident. We have to anticipate the time when we shall again be in a position to accept side by side with the teachings of astronomers, astrophysicists, zoologists and botanists a knowledge of spiritual realities derived from spiritual insights. This epoch is now imminent and we must be ready to meet it if we are to accomplish our task and rediscover amongst other things the religious source of art and the art of healing.

Just as in ancient times the spiritual dwelt amongst men whilst the material world was contemned, to be followed by an epoch when material knowledge was fostered and the spiritual suppressed, so now the time must come when we must transform our vast, comprehensive knowledge of the external world, so deserving of admiration, into a renewed knowledge of the Mystery teachings. Since the material science of today has torn down the edifice of the old spirituality, so that nothing survives of the ancient structure save, at most, those fragments that we unearth, we must once again recover the spiritual; but there must be a full and clear understanding of everything we bring to light when we delve into the history of past epochs. We must find our way back to the spiritual through a new creative art imbued with religious feeling, through a new art of healing and through a new knowledge of the spirit that permeates the being of man.

These are three examples which I have given you today in the hope that we may strive to renew the Mysteries which shall give us an understanding of the Ground and principle of the world in its entirety and an understanding of man who shall work as a fully integrated person rather than as a narrow materialist to promote the welfare and enlightenment of his fellow men.

If we wish to develop an understanding of spiritual investigation we must first of all have a clear idea about the different states of consciousness which it is possible for the human soul to experience. In his normal life on Earth today man enjoys a well-defined state of consciousness which is characterized by the fact that he experiences a clear distinction between waking and sleeping, which, though not coincident in time, correspond approximately with the imaginary passage of the Sun round the Earth, that is to say, with the duration of a single revolution of the Earth on its axis. At the present time, however, this correspondence has been interrupted to some extent. If we look back into the not very distant past with its ordered system of life we find that men worked approximately from sunrise to sunset and slept from sunset to sunrise.

This ordered existence has partly broken down today. In fact, I have known men who have reversed their habits of life; they slept by day and were awake by night. I have often enquired into the reason for this. The people concerned who, for the most part, were poets and authors told me that it couldn't be helped; that sort of thing was inseparable from literary composition. Yet when I came across them at night I never found them writing poetry!

Now I wish to emphasize that for the consciousness of today it is most important that we are awake during the daytime or for a corresponding period and that we sleep for a period equivalent to the hours of darkness. Many things are bound up with this form of consciousness, amongst them that we attach special value to sense-perceptions; they become for us the prime reality. Yet when we turn from sense-perceptions to thoughts we regard them as a pale reflection without the reality of sense-perceptions.

Nowadays we regard a chair as a reality. You can set it down on the floor; you can hear the noise it makes. You know that you can sit on it. But the thought of the chair is not regarded as real. If you bash a thought on the head, believing it to be located there, you hear nothing. Nor do you believe—and rightly so, given the present constitution of man—that you could sit down on the thought of a chair. You would be far from pleased if only thoughts of chairs were provided in this hall!

And many other things are connected with this experience of consciousness, a consciousness that is related to the orbital period of the Sun. Circumstances were different for those whose life-pattern was ordered and directed by the Mysteries, by the Chaldean Mysteries, for example, of which I spoke yesterday. Those people lived at a level of consciousness quite different from that of today.

Let me illustrate this difference by a somewhat trivial example. According to our calendar we reckon 365 days to the year; this is not quite accurate however. If we continued to reckon 365 days to the year over the centuries we would eventually get out of step with the Sun. We should lag behind the positions of the Sun. We therefore intercalate a day every four years. Thus, over relatively long periods of time we return approximately to congruency.

How did the Chaldeans deal with this problem in the very early days? For long periods they used a reckoning similar to ours, but they arrived at it in a different way. Because they reckoned 360 days to the year they were obliged to intercalate a whole month every six years, whereas we reckon a leap year, with an additional day, every four years. So they had six years of twelve months each, followed by a year of 13 months.

Modern scholars have recorded and confirmed these facts. But they are unaware that this chronological difference is bound up with profound changes in human consciousness. These Chaldeans who intercalated a month every six years instead of an extra day every four years, had a completely different outlook on the world from ourselves. They did not experience the difference between day and night in the same way. As I mentioned yesterday, their daytime experience was not as clear and vivid as ours. If someone with our present-day consciousness comes into this hall and looks around, he will, of course, see the people in the audience here in sharply defined outlines, some closer together, others further apart and so on.

This was not so amongst those who received their inspiration from the Chaldean Mysteries. In those days they saw a person sitting, for example, not as we see him now, for that was rare at that time, but surrounded by an auric cloud which was part of him. And whilst we, in our mundane way, see each individual in sharply defined outlines sitting on his chair and the whole so clear-cut that we can easily count the number present, the old Chaldeans would have seen each block of chairs to the right and left of the gangway surrounded by a kind of auric cloud, drifting like patches of mist—here a cloud, there a cloud and then darker areas and these darker areas would have indicated the human beings.

This kind of visual experience would still have been known in the earliest Chaldean times, though not in later periods. By day the old Chaldeans would have seen only the dark areas of this nebulous image. At night they would have seen something very similar, even in a condition of sleep, for their sleep was not as deep as ours. It was more dreamlike. Today, if someone were asleep and you were all sitting here, he would not see anything of you at all. In olden times this deep sleep was unknown; men would have seen the visionary form of the auric cloud to the right and left with the individuals as points of light within it. Thus the difference in the perception of conditions by day and by night was not so marked in those times as it is today. For this reason they were unaware of the difference between the sunlight during the daytime and its absence at night. They saw the Sun by day as a luminous sphere surrounded by a magnificent aura.

They pictured to themselves the following:—below was the Earth; everywhere above the Earth, water, and higher still the snows considered to be the source of the Euphrates. Over all this, they thought, was the air and in the heights was the Sun, travelling from East to West and surrounded by a most beautiful aura. Then they imagined the existence of something like a funnel, as we should call it today; in the evening the Sun descended into this funnel and emerged again in the morning.

But they actually saw the Sun in this funnel. The evening Sun was seen approximately as follows: a luminous, greenish-blue centre, surrounded by a reddish-yellow halo. This was the image they had of the Sun—in the morning the Sun emerged from the funnel, luminous in the centre and surrounded by a halo. It travelled across the vault of heaven, slipped into the funnel on the Western horizon, took on a deeper hue, displayed a halo projecting beyond the funnel and then was lost to view. People spoke of a funnel or hollow space because to them the Sun was dark or black. They described things exactly as they saw them.

And again a deep impression was made upon them in those early times when they looked back to the first six or seven years of their childhood and perceived how, during those years, they were still unmistakably clothed in that divine element in which they had lived before incarnation, how, between the seventh and fourteenth year they began to emerge from the spiritual egg until the process was finally completed in their twentieth year. It was only at this age that they really felt themselves to be Earth beings. And then they realized the more keenly the difference between day and night.

They observed in themselves periodic changes in development every six or seven years. This was in accordance with the lunar phases. The Moon phases of twenty-eight days corresponded with the pattern of their own life experience of periods of six or seven years. And they felt that a Moon phase of one month was equivalent, in the life of man, to a period of twenty-eight years (4 X 7 years). This they expressed in the calendar by inserting an intercalary month every seventh year. In brief, their calculations were based on the Moon, not the Sun.

Furthermore, they did not see external nature as we do today, sharply defined and devoid of spirit. The nature they observed both by day and by night was permeated by a spiritual aura. Today we have a clear, daylight consciousness; we see nothing by night. This is shown by the importance we attribute to the Sun which causes the alternation of day and night.

In the Mystery-wisdom of the ancient Chaldeans the emphasis was placed not on the Sun, but on the Moon, because its phases were a faithful reflection of their own growth to maturity. They felt themselves to be differently constituted at each stage—as children, as youth and as adults—but we no longer experience this today. On looking back there seemed to be very little difference between the first and second seven years. Nowadays children are so very clever that we cannot hit it off with them at all! Special methods of education will have to be devised in order to cope with them. They are as clever as grown-ups and everyone seems equally clever, whatever his age.

It was not so with the ancient Chaldeans. At that time children were still linked with the spiritual world; when they grew up they had not forgotten this relationship and realized that only later had they become earthly beings, after having emerged from the auric egg. So their calculations were based not on the Sun but on the Moon, on the quarterly phases reckoned in periods of seven which they observed in the heavens. Therefore every seven years they inscribed an intercalary month, a period calculated according to the lunar phases.

This outward sign in the history of civilisations, the fact that we intercalate an additional day every 4 years, whilst the Chaldeans intercalated an additional month every 7 years, indicates that in reality, though their day consciousness was not sharply divided from their night consciousness, they experienced none the less wide differences in their states of consciousness during the successive life-periods.

Today, when we wake in the morning and rub the sleep out of our eyes, we say: “I have slept.” The ancient Chaldeans felt that they awoke in their twenty-first or twenty-second year; then they began to see the world clearly and said: “I have been asleep up to this moment.” They believed that they preserved a waking consciousness up to their fiftieth year and that in old age they did not revert to their former condition but developed a fuller, clearer vision. For this reason the old men were looked upon as the sages, who, with the consciousness acquired since the age of twenty, now entered the realm of sleep, but remained highly clairvoyant.

Thus the old Chaldeans knew three states of consciousness. We experience two, with the addition of a third which we characterize as a dream condition: waking, sleeping, dreaming. A Chaldean did not experience these three conditions from day to day; he experienced a diminished condition of consciousness up to his twentieth year, then a consciously waking condition up to his fiftieth year. And then a condition where it was said of him: he is taking his earthly consciousness into the spiritual world. He has arrived at the stage when he knows much more, is wiser than other people.

Those advanced in years were looked up to as sages; today they are considered to be in their dotage. This tremendous difference strikes at the very roots of human existence. We must be quite clear about this difference for it is enormously important for the being of man. We do not survey the world simply through a single state of consciousness. We learn to know the world only when we understand the form of consciousness which, for example, was common to the children of ancient Chaldea. It resembled our own dream state, though it was more active, capable of stimulating the individual to action. Today it would be considered to be a pathological condition. This condition of waking consciousness that we find so prosaic today and take for granted was unknown in those times. I use the term prosaic advisedly, for to concentrate on the physical aspects of man and depict them in this guise is prosaic. This would not be readily admitted, of course, but it is so. In ancient Chaldea man was perceived both as a physical entity and as endowed with an aura, as I have described. And the sages saw beyond the physical into the souls of men.

This was a third state of consciousness which is extinguished today. It may be compared to a state of dreamless sleep. If we look at the situation historically, we find that we encounter states of consciousness very different from our own, and the further back we go, the wider are the divergences. By comparison, our normal states of consciousness today are nothing much to boast of. We set no store on what a person may experience in dreamless sleep because, as a rule, he has little to relate. There are few, very few, today who can tell us anything of their experiences in dreamless sleep. Dream life, it is said, is fantasy, mere coinage of the brain; the only desirable, the only reliable state is the condition of waking consciousness.

The ancient Chaldeans did not share this attitude. The childlike condition of consciousness with its fresh and vigorous dream life that invited positive action, was held to be the condition when children still lived in a paradisal state, when their utterances proceeded from the Gods. People listened to them because they had brought a wealth of information from the spiritual world.

In the course of time they reached the state of consciousness when they were Earth beings, but in their auras they were still beings of soul, spiritual beings. This was the condition of consciousness enjoyed by the seers or sages. When people listened to them they were convinced that they were receiving communications from the spiritual world.

And of those who rose ever higher in the Mysteries it was said that in their fiftieth year they transcended the purely solar element and entered into the spiritual world; from Sun-heroes they became Fathers who were in communion with the spiritual home of mankind.

Thus, from a historical perspective, I wished to indicate to you how mankind came to share these various states of consciousness.

In exploring the states of consciousness let us set aside for a moment the dreamless sleep of present-day man and examine the ordinary waking state with which you are familiar when you say: I am fully conscious, I see objects around me, hear other people speak to me, converse with them and so on.

And then let us take the second condition, known to all of you when you imagine yourself to be asleep, when dreams arise which are often so terrifying or so marvellously liberating that you are constrained to say if you are in a normally healthy state: these things are not part of ordinary, everyday life; they are a kaleidoscopic effect created by the play of natural fantasy, and force their way into man's consciousness in the most varied ways. The prosaic type will pay little attention to dreams; the superstitious will interpret them in an external way, the poetically endowed who is neither matter of fact nor superstitious, is still aware of this kaleidoscopic life of dreams. For out of the depths of uncorrupted human nature emerges something which does not have the significance attributed to it by superstitious people but which indicates, none the less, that, in sleep, experiences rise up from the instinctual life like mists or clouds—just as mountains rise up and after long ages disappear again. Only the difference is that all this takes place rapidly in dream life, whilst in the Cosmos dream pictures are slowly built up and slowly disappear.

Dreams have another peculiarity. We may dream of snakes all around us, of snakes entwined round our bodies. Cocaine addicts, for example, will have this dream-experience of snakes in an exaggerated form. The victims of this vice feel snakes crawling out of every part of their body even when they are awake.

When we observe our own life we realize that such dreams indicate some internal disturbance. Dreams about snakes point to some digestive disorder. The peristaltic movements of the intestines are symbolized in the dream as the writhing of snakes.

Again, a man may dream he is going for a walk and comes to a place where a white post stands—a white post or stone pillar which is damaged at the top. In his dream he feels uneasy about this damaged top. He wakes up to find he has toothache! Unconsciously he feels the urge to finger one of his teeth. (I am referring to the present-day man; the man of ancient times was above such things). The typical man of today decides to go to the dentist and have the decayed tooth filled.

What is the explanation of this? This whole experience associated with a painful tooth, indicating some organic disturbance, is symbolized in a picture. The tooth becomes a ‘white post’ that shows signs of damage or decay. In the dream picture we become aware of something that is actually situated within our organism.

Or again, we have a vivid dream that we are in a room where we feel suffocated; we feel restless and uneasy. Then suddenly—we had not noticed it before—we catch sight of a stove in the corner which is very hot. The room was overheated. We now know in the dream why we could not breathe—the room was too hot. We wake up with palpitations and a racing pulse. The irregular pulse was symbolized externally in the dream. There is some malfunctioning of the organism; we become aware of it, but not immediately, as we would have done in the daytime. We become aware of it through a symbolic picture. Or we may dream that there is bright sunshine outside. The sunlight disturbs us and we become uneasy, though normally we would welcome the sunshine. We wake up and find a neighbour's house on fire. An external event is not depicted as such, but is clothed in symbolic form.

Thus we see that a natural creative imagination is at work in dreams; external events are reflected in dreams. But we need not insist upon this. The dream can, so to speak, come to life and take on its own inner meaning and essential reality. We may dream of something that cannot be related to anything in the external world. When that point is reached in gradual stages, we say that a totally different world is portrayed in our dreams; we encounter quite other beings, demoniacal or beautiful and elf-like. It is not only the phenomenal world that appears in dream pictures, but a wholly different world invades us. Human beings can dream of the super-sensible world in the form of images perceptible by the senses.

Thus the consciousness of man today has a dream life alongside his ordinary waking life. Indeed, a disposition to dreaming makes us poets. People who are unable to dream will always be inferior poets. For in order to be a poet or artist, one must be able to translate the natural stuff of dreams into the imaginative fantasy of waking life.

Anyone, for example, whose dreams draw their symbolism from external objects, as in the dream where sunshine pouring into a room symbolized a neighbour's house on fire, will feel next day an urge to compose. He is a potential musician. He who experiences the palpitation of the heart as an overheated stove will feel impelled next day to turn to modelling or architectural design. He is the potential architect, sculptor or painter.

There is a connection between these things; in ordinary consciousness they are associated in the way I have described. But we can go further. As I have described in my books Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Occult Science—an Outline, this ordinary consciousness can be developed by undertaking certain spiritual exercises—we will speak of them later—so that by concentrating on certain precise concepts and linguistic relationships, our whole inner life of thinking, feeling and willing is given added life and vigour. Through these exercises thoughts become virtually tangible realities and feelings living entities.

Then begins the first stage of modern Initiation—we carry over our dreams into waking life. But at this point misunderstandings may easily arise. We set little store on the dreams of anyone who quite naturally indulges in daydreams. But he who, in spite of his day-dreaming, retains full awareness and yet can go on dreaming because he has made his feeling and thinking more lively and vigorous than others, such an individual has taken the first steps towards becoming an Initiate. When he has reached this stage, the following takes place. Because he is a sensible person, as sober and sensible as others in his waking life, he sees his fellow men, on the one hand, as they appear to normal consciousness, the shape of their nose, the colour of their eyes, their tidy or untidy hair and so on. On the other hand, he begins to dream of something else around them, something true, namely, he dreams their aura, the inner meaning of their relationships; he begins to see with the eye of the spirit. In full waking consciousness he begins to have dreams that are meaningful and in accordance with reality. His dreaming does not cease when he wakes up in the morning, continues through the day and is transformed in sleep. But it is fraught with meaning. He sees the true character of men's souls and the spiritual source of their actions. He lives in an activity that is otherwise associated with mere reminiscences or ordinary dreams. But these dreams are a spiritual reality.

A second state of consciousness is now added to the first. Waking dreams become a form of perception higher than the normal perception of everyday life. In full waking consciousness a higher reality has been added to the reality of everyday life. In ordinary dreaming something of reality is lost; it gives us only fragments of reality, born of fantasy. But in waking dreams, as I have described them, in which everything stands revealed—the individual human form, animals and plants, in which the deeds of men are seen to be full of meaning, thereby revealing their spiritual content—all this adds something to everyday reality and enriches it.

To the perception of ordinary consciousness is added a second consciousness. One begins to see the world in a different light and this is shown most strikingly when we look at the animal kingdom which now appears so utterly different that we wonder what we really saw before. Hitherto we had seen only a part of the animal kingdom, only its external aspect. Now a whole new world is added. In each animal species, in lions, tigers and all the various genera lies something that is akin to man. This is difficult to illustrate by comparison with a human being. Please try and follow me.

Let us suppose that you add to your body by tying a string to each finger of both hands and that to the end of each string at a fixed distance you attach a ball painted with various coloured patterns. You have now ten strings. Now manipulate the strings with your fingers so that the balls are agitated in all directions. Now do the same with your toes. Now practise leaping in the air and working your toes so skilfully that a wonderful pattern is created. Thus each finger will have become longer with a coloured ball at its tip, and every toe the same.

Imagine that you can see all this as part of your human form and the whole under the control of the soul. Each ball is a separate entity, but the moment you survey it all, you have the impression that it forms a composite whole. All these balls and strings are not a part of yourself like your fingers and toes. It all forms a single whole and you are in command. If you begin to manipulate the balls and strings in the way I have indicated, then you will see the lion-soul above and the individual lions attached to it like the balls, the whole forming a unity. Previously, if you had looked at the twenty balls lying there they would have represented a world unto themselves. Now add the human being as an activating agent and you create a new situation.

The same applies to your mode of perception. You see the individual lions moving about independently; they are the balls lying around as separate units. Then you see the lion-soul endowed with self-consciousness which, in the spiritual world, resembles a human being, and the individual lions seemingly suspended like the moving balls. These individual lions are manifestations of the self-conscious lion-soul.

Thus you perceive the higher forms of every creature in the animal kingdom. Animals have something akin to man in their make-up, a soul quality which belongs to a different sphere from that of the human soul. As you go through life you emphatically bear your psychic life with its self-consciousness wherever you go. You are at liberty to impose your ego on all and sundry. This the individual lion cannot do. But another realm exists, bordering on this realm of conflicting egos. In the spiritual world the lion-souls do precisely the same. To them the individual lions are so many balls dancing at the end of a string. Consequently, when we see the true nature of the animal kingdom with our newly acquired consciousness we get something of a shock.

We enter a new world and we say to ourselves: we too belong to this other world, but we drag it down to Earth. The animal leaves something of itself behind, its group-soul or species-soul; on Earth we see only the quadruped. We drag down to Earth what the animal leaves behind in the spiritual world and acquire in consequence a different bodily form. That which lives within us belongs also to this higher world, but as human beings we drag it down to Earth.

Thus we become acquainted with another world that we are first made aware of through the medium of animals. But we need an additional form of consciousness; we must bring our dream-consciousness into our waking life and then we can gain insight into the inner constitution of the animal kingdom.

This second world may be termed the soul-world, the soul-plane or astral plane, as distinct from the physical world. We become aware of this astral world through a different form of consciousness. We must familiarize ourselves with other states of consciousness so that we gain insight into other worlds which are not the world of our everyday existence.

It is possible to strengthen and vitalize the soul-life still further. We can not only practise concentration and meditation, as described in the books I have mentioned, we can also strive to expel again this reinforced soul-content. After the most strenuous endeavours to fortify the soul-life after strengthening the thinking and feeling, we reach the point when we are able to modify it again and finally to nullify it. We are then restored to the state called the state of “emptied consciousness.”

Now, normally, a state of emptied consciousness induces sleep. This can be demonstrated experimentally. First remove all visual impressions so that the subject is in darkness. Then remove all auditory impressions so that he is enveloped in silence. Then try to eliminate all other sense-impressions, and he will gradually fall asleep.

This cannot happen if we have first strengthened our thinking and feeling. It will then be possible to empty our consciousness by an act of will and still remain awake. Then the phenomenal world will no longer be present. Our ordinary thoughts and memories are forgotten—we are in a condition of emptied consciousness and a real spiritual world at once invades us. Just as our ordinary consciousness is filled with the colours, sounds and warmth of the sense-world, so a spiritual world fills this emptied consciousness. Only when we have consciously emptied our consciousness are we surrounded by a spiritual world.

Once again we owe to something in external nature a particularly vivid apprehension of the new consciousness and its relationship to a spiritual world. Just as we become aware of the next higher level of consciousness through our different perception of the animal kingdom, so we are now able to recognize this new level of consciousness in the plant kingdom which is entirely differently constituted.

How does the plant kingdom appear to normal consciousness? We see the verdant meadows pied with flowers growing out of the mineral Earth. We rejoice in the blue and gold, the red and white of the blossoms and in the living green. We delight in the beauty of the plant world spread out before us like a carpet. We are filled with joy and the heart leaps up as we behold the Earth clothed in this brilliant, multi-coloured garment of flowers and plants.

Then we lift our eyes to the dazzling Sun and the blue vault of heaven and see the familiar clear or cloudy daytime sky. We are not aware of any connection between the Earth and the heavens, between looking down upon the flower-decked fields and up at the sky. Let us assume we have felt intense joy at the sight of this carpet of flowers spread out before us in the daytime and that we wait through a summer's day until the fall of night. We now lift our eyes to the canopy of heaven and see the stars, arrayed in their manifold shining constellations, spread out across the sky. And now a new joyous exultation from on high invests our soul.

By day then, we can look down upon the growing plant-cover of the Earth as something that fills our heart with inward joy and exultation. We can then look up at night and see the canopy of heaven that appeared so blue by day now studded with shining sparkling stars. We rejoice inwardly at the celestial beauty that is revealed to our soul. This is the response of our ordinary consciousness.

If we have perfected the consciousness that is emptied of content and yet remains awake and that is permeated with the spiritual, we can then say to ourselves when by day we survey the plant-cover and by night look up at the glittering stars: Yes, in the daytime the rich hues of the flower-decked Earth delighted and enchanted me. But what did I really see?—Then we look up at the starry hosts of heaven. To the emptied, waking consciousness, the consciousness emptied of all earthly content, the stars do more than merely shine and sparkle, they assume the most varied forms, for there, in the higher spheres, is a wondrous world of quintessential being—everywhere movement and flux, grand, mighty, sublime. Before this spectacle we bow our heads in grateful reverence and reverent gratitude, acknowledging its sublimity. We have reached the mid-stage of Initiation. We know that the real origin of the plants lies in the higher spheres. That which, hitherto, we had taken to be nothing more than the sparkle and glitter of the separate stars, that is the true being of the plants. It seems as if now for the first time we have seen the real plant-beings; as if we were seeing only the dewdrops of the violet bathed in morning dew and not the violet as such. In looking at the single star we see the single sparkling dewdrop; in truth, however, a mighty world in flux and movement lies behind. We now know what the plant-world really is; it is not to be found on Earth, but out in the Cosmos, grand, mighty and sublime. And all that we saw by day in the multi-coloured carpet of flowers is the reflected image of the higher spheres.

And we now know that the Cosmos, with its flux and movement of real forms and beings is reflected on the surface of the Earth. When we look into a mirror, we see ourselves reflected and we know that the reflection is only of our outer form, not of our soul. The heavens are not reflected on Earth so definitely, but in such a way that they are mirrored in the yellow, green, blue, red and white of the plant colours. They are a reflected image, the faint, shadowy reflection of the heavens.

We have now come to know a new world. In the higher spheres are found the “plant-men,” beings endowed with self-consciousness. And so, to the phenomenal world and astral world, we can add a third, the real spiritual world. The stars are the dewdrops of this cosmic world and the plants are its reflected image. Their appearance is not their reality; in their manifestation here on Earth they are not even an entity, but, in relation to the endlessly manifold richness of that world of transcendence from whence shine forth the separate stars like dewdrops, simply a reflected Image.

And now we discover that, as human beings, we bear within us that which is the real being of the plants in the higher spheres. We bring down into this mirrored life what the plants leave behind in the world of spirit, for the plant-beings live in that world and send down to Earth their reflected images and the Earth fills them with earthly substance. We men bring our soul-nature, which also belongs to that higher world, into this world of images. We are not mere images, but we are also spiritual beings of soul here on Earth. On Earth we participate in three worlds. We live in the physical world, where the self-consciousness of animals is not to be found; at the same time we inhabit the astral world where their self-consciousness exists and this astral world we bring down into the physical world. We also inhabit a third world, the spiritual world where dwell the true plant-beings; but the plant-beings send only their reflected images down to Earth, whereas we bring down the realities of our soul-life.

And now we can say: a being who possesses body, soul and spirit here on Earth is a human being. A being with body and soul here on Earth, but whose spirit dwells in a second world bordering on the physical world and which for that reason has less reality, is an animal. A being with only a body in the physical world, the soul in the second world and the spirit in the third world, so that the body is only a reflected image of the spirit and is filled out with terrestrial matter, is a plant.

We now have an understanding of the three worlds in nature and we know that man bears these three worlds within himself. We feel to some extent the plants reaching up to the stars. As we look at the plants we say to ourselves: here is a being which manifests only its reflected image on Earth, an image detached from its true reality. The more we direct our gaze to the stars at night, the more do we see its true being in the higher worlds. When we look from Earth to Heaven and perceive the Cosmos to be one with the Earth, then we see the world of nature as a totality.

Then we look back at ourselves as human beings and say: we have insulated within our earthly being that element which, in the plants, reaches up to the heavens. We bear within ourselves the physical, astral and spiritual worlds.

To develop clear, objective perception, to follow nature through the different realms so that we come to know the spiritual world, to gain insight into man, so that we divine his spiritual essence—this is to undertake the first steps in spiritual investigation.

[* Metallität is a coined word not in usage. The Romanic suffix—ität (Latin:—itatem; French:—ite) is common to abstract nouns. The approximate meaning is metallic quality, metal-ness. (Note by translator.)]

Yesterday I attempted to give some idea of the inner experiences of the soul when, through spiritual training and meditation, man develops higher levels of consciousness. At the same time I indicated that the chaotic, uncoordinated experiences of dream life during sleep, typical of normal consciousness, can be transformed into the fully conscious, concrete experiences of waking life. We can thus attain a level of consciousness which, to some extent, is sequential to normal consciousness. We then perceive, for example, the animal kingdom in its totality which is in touch with a higher world of soul, the astral plane. Then I tried to show how the plant-cover appears in its totality when, in full waking consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions, we attain to the world of stars with this second level of consciousness and there for the first time learn the truth about the plant-cover of the Earth. We then realize that the plants we see growing out of the Earth are a reflected image of that majesty and grandeur which sparkle out amongst the world of stars like the dewdrops upon the plants. Indeed, the firmament and all that therein is, takes on substantial reality, form, colour and even resonance when we apprehend it with this higher consciousness that is divested of sensory impressions. Then we can look back upon the Earth and perceive that the world of plants in reality is a reflected image of cosmic beings, of cosmic deeds.

I should like to draw your attention to a peculiar phenomenon when we observe the world of stars on the one hand and the world of plants on the other. I should like to describe these things entirely from the point of view of inner experience, exactly as they occur, as they are revealed to direct spiritual experience and investigation. My description will not be supported by any tradition, literary or otherwise. But first of all I should like to point out a peculiarity that is familiar to anyone who explores the spiritual in the way I have described.

Let us visualize the following picture: above us is the world of stars, below is the Earth. The point from which we start our enquiry we call our point of observation. At the second level of consciousness, a consciousness that sees the world of the stars and of plants in the manner already described, we are able to confirm that the archetypal forms are present in the Cosmos, that they are mirrored in the Earth, not as reflected images but in the form of living plants. These plants do not appear as lifeless, unreal, nebulous images, but as concrete reflections created by the Earth. One feels that the Earth must be there to act as a mirror, so that the plant-beings in the Cosmos can spring up out of this terrestrial mirror.

Without the solid Earth there could be no plants. And just as a mirror intercepts the light and acts as resistance—for otherwise it could not reflect—so the Earth must act as a reflecting medium in order that the plants may come into being.

We can now pursue the matter further. Having developed this second level of consciousness, a waking consciousness independent of sensory impressions, we can take the next step towards the development of an inner strength of soul, of the spirit of love towards all created things and all living beings. The acquisition of these new powers is seldom recognized as a positive force for knowledge. If, after entering into this realm that is so differently constituted, where the Cosmos no longer appears bright with stars but is the abode of spiritual beings, this power of love fills our heart and soul, if, after embarking, so to speak, on the spiritual ocean of the universe, we can preserve our spiritual, psychic and physical identity and extend the infinite power of love and devotion to all beings, then we progressively perfect our insight and understanding. We then develop the capacity to perceive clairvoyantly not only the animal and plant kingdoms, but also the mineral kingdom and especially that part of the mineral kingdom which is crystalline in structure. For those who wish to investigate the higher worlds, mineral crystals offer an excellent field for observation and study.

When we are fully acquainted with the animal and plant kingdoms we are then in a position to investigate the mineral-crystal world. As on the previous occasion, we feel impelled to turn our attention from the mineral kingdom on Earth to the contemplation of the Cosmos. And again we find there a living reality, the archetypes akin to those of the plant kingdom. But the picture now presented to us is totally different. We become aware of a living reality in the Cosmos; the mineral-crystal world that we see on Earth is the creation of an active, spiritual principle in the Cosmos. In its progressive descent to the Earth, it is not reflected in the Earth or by means of the Earth. That is the crucial point. When we raise our consciousness from contemplation of the mineral-crystal kingdom to the Cosmos and look back to Earth again, the Earth no longer acts as a mirror; one has the impression that the Earth has vanished from our sight. We cannot, however, say, as we said of the plants, that the Earth below us reflects the higher beings. On the contrary, the Earth does not act as a reflecting medium; it has seemingly vanished. When we have meditated upon the spiritual vista evoked by the mineral-crystal kingdom, when we direct our spiritual eye from cosmic space to the Earth, we appear to be suspended over a terrifying abyss, over a void. We must remain in a waiting attitude. We must keep a firm hand on ourselves, we must preserve our presence of mind. The period of waiting should not be too prolonged, otherwise our fear is magnified; we are terrified because there is no ground under our feet. This sensation, which is wholly foreign to us, reduces us to a state of panic if we do not preserve our self-control, the necessary presence of mind which enables us to take active steps to see beyond this void. For this reason we must look beyond the Earth which is no longer present to our spiritual vision. Then we are obliged to contemplate, not only that aspect of the mineral kingdom which is associated with the Cosmos, but also its relationship to the total environment. The Earth ceases to exist for us. We must see the mineral kingdom as a total whole.

We then experience a current of cosmic energy from below, in contrast to the cosmic energy of the plants which streams down from above. We see everywhere currents and counter-currents, converging currents of cosmic energy from all directions. In the case of the plants this stream of cosmic energy flows down from above, the Earth offers resistance and the plants grow up out of the Earth. In the case of the mineral kingdom we are aware that through the free interplay of these currents from the cosmic All, the mineral kingdom is created. In the case of the mineral-crystal kingdom nothing is reflected back from the Earth. Everything is mirrored in its own element.

If you discover a quartz crystal in the mountains, it is usually found in a vertical position. Its base is embedded in the rock. This is accounted for by the intervention of terrestrial, Ahrimanic forces which act as a disruptive factor. In reality, the quartz is formed by the pressure of a spiritual element from all sides; there is an interplay of reflecting facets and you see the crystal free in cosmic space. Each single crystal whose every facet is perfectly fashioned, is a little world unto itself.

Now there are many types of crystal formation—cubes, octahedrons, tetrahedrons, rhomboids, dodekahedrons, monoklinics, triklinics, every conceivable kind of structure in fact. When we examine them, we note how the currents of cosmic energy converge and interact to form the quartz crystal, a hexagonal prism terminating in a hexagonal pyramid, or a salt crystal possibly in the shape of a cube, or a pyrites crystal in the shape of a dodekahedron. Each of these crystals is formed in the way I have described. And there are as many different cosmic forces, indeed, as many worlds in cosmic space as there are crystals in the Earth. We begin to have insight into an infinitude of worlds.

As we look at the salt crystal, we realize that a spiritual principle is active in the universe. The salt crystal is a manifestation of that spiritual reality which permeates the whole universe; it is a world unto itself. Then, from an examination of the dodekahedron, we discover that there exists in the universe something that permeates the world of space; the crystal is the impress, the manifestation of a whole world. We are gazing on countless beings, each of which is a world unto itself. As human beings here on Earth, we conclude that the Earth-sphere is the focal point of the activities of many worlds. In all that we think and do here on Earth are reflected the thoughts and deeds of a wide diversity of beings. The infinite variety of crystal forms reveals the multitude of beings whose activities find consummation in the mathematical-spatial forms of the crystals. In the crystals we recognize the presence of the Gods. As an expression of reverence, of adoration even towards the universe, it is far more important to allow the sublime secrets of this universe to possess our souls than to gather theoretical knowledge on a purely intellectual basis.

Anthroposophy should lead to this feeling of at-one-ment with the universe. Through Anthroposophy man shall be able to perceive in every crystal the weaving and working of a divine Being. Then cosmic knowledge and understanding begins to flood man's whole soul. The task of Anthroposophy is not to appeal to the intellectual faculty alone, but to enlighten the whole man and show his total involvement in the universe and to inspire him with reverence and devotion towards it. Every object and every event in the world shall be invested with a spirit of selfless service proceeding from the heart and soul of man. And this selfless service will be rewarded by knowledge and understanding.

When we are in contact with the cosmic All and see the emergence of the crystals out of the manifestations of the crystal-mineral kingdom, we feel a sense of satisfaction. But very soon that state of anxiety and fear which I have already mentioned, returns again. Before discovering the divinely ordered world of crystals, we had been filled with fear. When we are aware of that divinely inspired world, this feeling of uncertainty vanishes; but after a time a strange sensation overtakes us and the fear returns, the feeling that the whole process of crystal formation is unsubstantial and provides only partial support.

Let us take the example of the two kinds of crystal already mentioned, a salt crystal and a pyrite, a metal crystal. The pyrites gives the impression that it can provide us with solid support, that it is firm and durable. The salt crystal, on the other hand, appears to offer no support; it seems unsubstantial and we feel as if we might fall through it.

In brief then: in relation to certain forms, the fear that once possessed us, the fear that we are suspended over an abyss because the Earth has become a void, has not finally been overcome. This sensation of fear has definite moral implications. When we feel a recurrence of this fear, then, at that moment, we become aware, not only of all our past sins, but of those of which we are potentially capable.

All this acts upon us like a leaden weight that drags us down and threatens to plunge us into the abyss which the mineral crystals open up before us and which is ready to engulf us. At this point we must be prepared for an additional experience. We realize that the sum of our experiences demands of us courage and we confidently proclaim: I am firmly anchored, I cannot drift from my moorings; the centre of gravity of my own being now lies within myself.

Never in the whole course of life do we need more confidence, more moral courage than at the moment when, confronted with the crystal world, the leaden weight of egotism—and egotism is always a sin—weighs upon the soul. That transparent void over which we are suspended now holds a terrible warning for us. If we stand firm and remain self-reliant, we can say: a spark of the divine is within me; I cannot perish, for I partake of the divine essence. If this becomes a concrete experience and not mere theoretical belief, then we have the courage to be self-sufficient, to stand on our own feet. We are now ready and determined to press on further.

We now learn something further about the mineral kingdom. Hitherto we have heard about the crystal being of the minerals. We have already discussed their external form; now we become aware of their composition and structure, their substantiality and metallity. And we discover how certain basic metals in their different ways act as a stabilizing factor. For the first time we begin to understand how man is related to the Cosmos. We learn of the different characteristics of the metals, of the substantiality of the mineral being and we really begin to feel in ourselves that centre of gravity which I have just mentioned.

In what I am about to say I must perforce use a terminology that describes the material world; it should not be accepted in its literal meaning only. When we speak of the heart or head, the commonsense view conjures up a picture of a physical heart or head. But they are, of course, spiritual in origin. And so when we look at man in his totality, as an entity consisting of body, soul and spirit, we have the clear impression that his centre of gravity lies in the heart. This centre guards him against extremes, prevents him from being the plaything of external circumstances and lends him stability. If we retain that courageous spirit which I have just mentioned, we shall ultimately find ourselves firmly anchored in the universe.

When a person loses consciousness he is not firmly anchored. If he suffers a psychic shock—for under these conditions he is more susceptible to pain than normally and after all, pain is an intensification of inner feeling—then he is not in a normal state of consciousness. Under conditions of pain normal consciousness is expelled. Between birth and death man lives in a kind of intermediate state of consciousness. This may well serve for the normal purposes of daily life. But if this consciousness becomes too weak, too tenuous, he loses consciousness. If it becomes too dense, too concentrated, pain ensues. The loss of consciousness in a state of swoon, and the state of tension under the influence of pain, are polarities which illustrate the aberrations of consciousness. This describes exactly our reactions to the world of mineral crystals before we become aware of their substantiality—on the one hand, the feeling that in a state of swoon we might at any moment be dissolved in the universe, and on the other hand that under the influence of pain we might collapse.

Then we feel that everything that provides stability is centred in the cardiac region. And if we have developed our consciousness to the level already indicated, we then perceive that everything that sustains our ordinary waking consciousness, all that keeps it ‘normal,’ if I may use this somewhat crude expression, is gold, aurum, which is finely distributed over the Earth and works with greater immediacy upon the heart than upon any other organ.

Previously we became acquainted with the formation, the crystallization of minerals. We now become aware of their substantiality, of their metallity. We realize in what manner this metallic nature works upon man himself.

Outwardly we see the crystal formations of the metals in the mineral world. But we know inwardly that the forces of gold which are finely distributed over the Earth sustain our heart and maintain the normal consciousness of our daily life. And so we can say, gold works upon the heart centre of man. On the basis of this information we are now in a position to start our investigations. If, taking the metal gold as we know it, we concentrate upon its colour, its hardness and all aspects of its composition and structure and then transform the experience into inner reality, we find that gold is related to the heart. By concentrating on other metals, on iron and its properties, for example, we discover what effect iron has upon us. Gold has a harmonizing influence, it resolves tension and conflict and man is thereby restored to a state of inner equilibrium. If, after becoming familiar with all its aspects, we concentrate intently on iron, forgetting the entire universe and concentrating solely upon the metal itself, so that we become, as it were, inwardly merged with iron, become identified with iron, then we feel as if our consciousness were rising up from the regions of the heart. We are still fully conscious as we follow this consciousness as it ascends from the heart to the larynx. If we have carried out our spiritual exercises adequately, no harm can result; otherwise a slight feeling of faintness overtakes us. As our consciousness ascends we recognize this condition from the fact that we have developed an intense inner activity, a heightened consciousness. Then we gradually transpose ourselves into this ascending consciousness and contact the world where we see the group-soul of the animals. By concentrating on the metallity of iron we have now entered the astral world.

When we become acquainted with the form of the metals we reach the realm of the higher spiritual beings; when we become acquainted with their substantiality and metallity we enter the astral world, the world of souls. We feel our consciousness rising upward to the larynx and we emerge into a new sphere. We owe this shift of consciousness to our concentration upon iron and we feel that we are no longer the same person as before. If we attain this state in full, clear consciousness, we are sensible of having transcended our former self; we have entered into the etheric world. The Earth has vanished, it no longer holds any interest for us. We have ascended into the planetary spheres which, as it were, have become our abode. Thus we gradually withdraw from the body and become integrated into the universe. The path from gold to iron is the path leading into the universe.

After gold and iron we next concentrate upon tin, upon its metallity, its colour and substantiality, with the result that our consciousness becomes wholly identified with tin. We feel that our consciousness is now rising to still higher levels. But if we undertake this step without adequate preparation, we suffer a near total swoon, scarcely any sign of consciousness remains. If we have prepared ourselves in advance, we can hold ourselves in this state of diminished consciousness; but we feel that our consciousness is withdrawing still further from the body and ultimately reaches the region between the eyes. Though the vast expanse of the universe encompasses us, we are still within the realm of stars. The Earth, however, begins to appear as a distant star. And we conclude that we have left our body on Earth, that we have ascended into the Cosmos and share the life of the stars.

All this is by no means as simple as it sounds. What I have described to you, what we experience when we follow the path of Initiation, namely, that consciousness is situated in the larynx, the base of the skull or the forehead, is an indication that all these various states of consciousness are permanently present in man. All of you sitting here have within you these states of consciousness, but you are not aware of it. Why is this so? Now man is a complex being. If, at the moment when you were conscious of the whole laryngeal organization, you could dispense with your brain and sense organs, you would never be free of this slight subconscious feeling of faintness. And in effect this is so; it is simply overlaid by the ordinary heart consciousness, the gold consciousness. It is common to all of you, it is part of your human make-up. A part of you that shares this consciousness is situated in the stars and does not exist on Earth at all.

The tin consciousness lies further out in the Cosmos. It would be untrue to state that the Earth is your sole habitat. It is the heart that anchors your consciousness to the Earth. That which has its centre in the larynx is out in the Cosmos and, situated still further out, is that which has its centre in the forehead (tin). The iron consciousness embraces the Mars sphere, tin the Jupiter sphere. Only in the gold consciousness do you belong to the Earth. You are always interwoven with the universe, but the heart consciousness conceals this from you.

If you meditate on lead or some similar metal and again concentrate on its substantiality and metallity, you relinquish the body completely. You are left in no doubt that your physical body and etheric body are left behind on Earth. They appear strange and remote. They concern you as little as the stone concerns the rock on which it rests. Consciousness has left the body through the crown (the sagittal suture) of the head. Wherever we turn, a minute quantity, a tincture of lead is always to be found in the universe. This form of consciousness reaches far out into space; with the consciousness that is centred in the cranium man always remains in a state of complete insensibility.

Picture to yourselves the state of illusion in which man habitually lives. When he is sitting at his desk making up his accounts or writing articles he fondly imagines that he is thinking with his head. That is not the reality. It is not the head as such, but its physical aspect, that belongs to the Earth. The head consciousness extends from the larynx upwards far out into the universe. The universe reveals itself solely in the head centre. What determines your human condition between birth and death is the heart centre. Whether you write good or bad articles, whether your accounts may or may not be to your neighbour's disadvantage—this is determined by the heart centre. It is pure illusion to imagine that man's head consciousness is confined to the Earth alone, for, in effect, it is in a permanent state of insensibility. And that is why it is also peculiarly subject to pain from which other organs are free. Let me take this point a little further. When, in our present state, we try to find the reasons for this situation we are continually threatened from the spirit with the annihilation of our intellectual consciousness, with a breakdown of the whole consciousness and a collapse into total insensibility.

Our picture of man is then as follows: in the larynx (iron) man develops the consciousness that reaches to the archetypes of the animal kingdom. It is the consciousness that belongs to the stars, but we are unaware of it in ordinary life. Higher still, in the region of the eyes (tin) is the consciousness of the archetypes of the plant kingdom and below are their reflected images. Crowning all is the centre of the lead consciousness which reaches to the Saturn sphere; our head centre is oblivious of the articles we write, they are the product of the heart centre. But the head is fully aware of the happenings in cosmic space. Our description of terrestrial events and activities proceeds from the heart; the head, meanwhile, can concentrate on the manner in which a divine being manifests himself in a pyrites, in a crystal of salt or of quartz.

When Initiate consciousness surveys the audience present here, it is evident that you are listening to what I am saying with your hearts, whilst your three higher levels of consciousness are out in the Cosmos. The Cosmos is the scene of activities of an order wholly different from those known to ordinary earthly consciousness. In the Cosmos, especially in what is enacted there and radiates far and wide, is woven for all of us the web of our destiny, our karma.

Thus we have gradually come to understand man through his relationship with the universe—how fundamentally he is associated with the external world, is continually under the threat of annihilation from without, of reduction to insensibility and is ultimately sustained by the heart.

When we meditate on other kinds of metals our spiritual approach is different. We can follow the same procedure with copper as we have done with iron, tin and lead. When we meditate on the metallic nature of copper, we become, as it were, merged with, one with copper; our whole soul is permeated with copper, with its colour and consistency, its curiously ribbed surface. In brief, we become wholly identified with our psychic response to the metallity of copper. Then we do not experience a gradual transition towards insensibility, but rather the reverse. We have the sensation that something floods our whole inner being; our response grows more sensitive. We have a definite impression that when we meditate on copper it pervades our whole being. It radiates from the centre below the heart and is diffused over the whole body.

It is as though we had a second body, a second man within us. We have a sensation of inner pressure. This sets up a slight pain that gradually increases. Everything seems to be in a state of inner tension.

When we invest this condition with Initiate consciousness we feel the presence of a second man within us. And this experience has important implications, for we can say to ourselves: the normal self, the legacy of birth and education the instrument through which we apprehend the world, accompanies us through life; but, through training and meditation, we awaken m this second man who now takes over his potentiality for perception. This second man is indeed a remarkable being. He does not possess separate eyes and ears, but is at one and the same time eyes and ears together. He resembles a sense organ with delicate powers of perception; he perceives things that we do not normally perceive. Our world becomes suddenly enriched.

Just as a snake can slough its skin, so it is possible for a short time—and much can be experienced in the course of a few seconds—for this second man, the “copper” man, to withdraw from the body and move about freely in the spiritual world. He can be separated from the body, though at the cost of increasing pain. When we are dissociated from the body we have a wider range of experiences. When we have reached the point when we can relinquish the body, we are then able to follow a person who has passed through the gate of death.

In that case all our terrestrial associations with the deceased are now ended. He has been buried or cremated, he has severed his connection with the Earth. When we relinquish the body with the second man, that is with clairvoyant perception, we are able to follow the journey of the soul after death. And then we learn that the soul in the first years or decades after death relives in reverse order its life on Earth. This is a fact that can be observed since we accompany the soul through the gate of death. The time taken to recapitulate our life experiences is a third of our life span. A man who dies at sixty will recapitulate his life experiences over twenty years approximately. We can follow his soul throughout this period. We can now learn much about man's experiences after death. In recapitulating his life the experiences are of a different order. Forgive me if I give a somewhat crude example. Let us assume that three years before your death you gave someone a box on the ear. You were annoyed with him and you exploded with anger; you caused him physical and moral pain. You derived a certain satisfaction from punishing him for having offended you. Now, when you recapitulate your life in reverse order and come upon this episode after a year, you do not experience your original outburst of anger, but the physical and moral pain of your victim. You live right into his feelings and experience psychically the box on the ear; you re-experience the pain you have inflicted. And the same applies to all actions. You experience them exactly as others who were involved experienced them. It is possible to follow man's soul after death through all such experiences.

The ancient Chaldeans who owed their cultural impulses to the Mystery teachings had deeper insight into these matters than the men of today. The remarkable fact is that in those days these ancient Chaldeans actually lived in the larynx consciousness, whereas we today live in the heart consciousness. The consciousness natural to them was a kind of iron consciousness; their experience was associated with the universe; for them the Earth did not have the solid consistency it holds for us. When, under particularly favourable conditions they lived, for example, in communion with the beings of Mars, there came a moment of time when beings came over from the Moon and brought with them other beings such as those we perceive with the consciousness of the second man. And thus indirectly the Chaldeans learned of sublime truths relating to life after death. They received their instruction in these truths from the universe without.

This is no longer necessary for us today when we can follow the dead without intermediary help. We can follow them as they live through their experiences in reverse sequence and each experience in reverse. And the strange thing is that when we are identified with this second man we find ourselves in a world that is infinitely more real than the phenomenal world. This present world and the sum of our experiences there appear unsubstantial in comparison with the solid, exacting world ~of reality which we have now entered.

In accompanying the dead in the way described we experience everything on a magnified scale; everything appears to be more intensely real. By comparison, the phenomenal world leaves a nebulous impression. To anyone who is associated with the world of the dead through Initiate consciousness, the physical world appears like a painted masquerade and an Initiate who, through meditation, has been closely associated with the dead in this way would say: You are all painted masks. There is no reality about you; you are simply painted masks sitting on your chairs.

True reality is only found beyond the realm of physical existence and this reality can be experienced here and now. Perhaps some of you can recall the figure of Strader in my Mystery Plays. This character is drawn from life. Strader is a poetic, non-realistic portrait of a personality who lived in the last third of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth century. In real life he was a man who interested me deeply. He began life as a Capuchin novice, abandoned his vocation in favour of philosophy and stayed for a time in the monastery at Dornach. I recast him as Strader in the Mystery Plays. It was not a faithful portrait, but bore a certain likeness to him. In the fourth Mystery Play, you will remember, Strader dies. I had to let him die as I had exhausted all possibilities of developing his character further. Had I attempted to do so I could not have put pen to paper. He could not possibly have appeared again in the fifth Mystery Play. What is the reason for this?

In the meantime the real person who had changed his rôle from monk to philosopher had died. And because I was deeply interested in him I was able to follow his journey through the spiritual world. There the impression created by his personality was far more real. His life and activities on Earth ceased to evoke the same interest now that one could share his experiences in the life after death.

Then a strange thing happened. A few anthroposophists tumbled to the state of affairs. They discovered—the ingenuity of man knows no bounds—that Strader was to some extent a portrait of the historical person. In the course of their investigations they discovered his unpublished manuscripts and all sorts of interesting documents which he had left behind. They brought them to me expecting that I would be overjoyed at the discovery. I had not the slightest interest in them. What did interest me, on the other hand, was what he was doing after his death. This was far more real. In comparison with this, everything related to the external world which he had left behind, was of no significance.

People were surprised that I showed so little interest after they had been at such pains to gather information. I had no use for it then, nor do I need it now. The fact is that the reality of this world is illusory in comparison with that sublime reality which is revealed to us when we follow a soul beyond the gate of death. There the soul endures in a world that we can experience ourselves when we are identified with the second man who can relinquish the physical body, if only for a short time. But in that short space of time much can be experienced.

The existence of this world whose frontiers border directly on those of the phenomenal world is never in doubt. It is a world in which the deceased are living more abundantly. We apprehend them through this second man who relinquishes the physical body. We have suffered no loss of consciousness, rather is our consciousness more deeply interfused.

If we rise above the heart centre, our consciousness becomes more dimmed, we are near to a state of unconsciousness. If we descend below the heart centre our consciousness is intensified. We enter a world of reality, but we must learn to bear the pain and suffering this entails. But if we breach the walls surrounding this world with courage and determination our entry is assured.

We have now arrived at an understanding of the ordinary day consciousness, of a second consciousness in the larynx, a third in the region of the eyes, a fourth, that reaches out into the universe, at the crown of the head, and a fifth that is unrelated to the worlds of space and leads us back into the world of time. We travel through time; when we attain this fifth level of consciousness we share the same time-scale in reverse as the deceased. We have stepped out of space into time.

Everything therefore depends upon our ability to transpose ourselves into different states of consciousness which open up to us new worlds. On Earth man is the prisoner of a single, insulated world because he knows only one state of consciousness; in all other states of consciousness he is asleep. If we awaken them and develop them, we can experience the other worlds.

The secret of spiritual investigation is that through transmutation of his consciousness man transforms himself. We cannot penetrate into other worlds by adopting the orthodox methods of research and investigation; we must undergo metamorphosis, transform our consciousness into new and different forms.

I have spoken about the form, substantiality and metallity of the mineral kingdom in so far as they are related to the different levels of consciousness in man. Before extending my observations to include certain metallic substances, I must make my position perfectly clear.

From what I have said it might readily be inferred that I was recommending the ingestion of these substances in the form of nutriments as a means of inducing states of consciousness that differ from the normal. When discussing methods of achieving spiritual insight through inner training and discipline, one often hears the remark: I would be only too glad to know something of other worlds and other states of consciousness, but it is too difficult to carry out the exercises which are recommended; they take up so much time.

A little later, perhaps, these people make a start. Then, after a time, the immediate demands of life intervene and they find they are unwilling to sacrifice their ingrained habits. By degrees they lose enthusiasm and the exercises are quietly dropped. Not surprisingly these people achieve nothing; they find the need to practise spiritual exercises excessively irksome.

When they hear, for example, that the qualities of certain metals are associated with other levels of consciousness, they feel more reassured. If a small dosage of copper is all that is required in order to preserve a spiritual link with another after death, then why not take it, they conclude, if it enables one to develop a higher level of consciousness.

The idea becomes all the more attractive when they hear that the practice adopted in the ancient Mysteries was not so very dissimilar, though in those days, of course, it was only carried out under the continuous and closest supervision of the Initiates. And when people are told of this, they wonder why these old practices are not revived. But they overlook the fact that in ancient times the whole physical organization of man was differently constituted. In those days, and even as late as the Chaldean epoch, he lacked our present intellectuality. Thoughts were not self-generated as today, but came to him through inspiration. Just as we realize today that we do not create the red of the rose, but receive the impression of the rose from without, so the men of ancient times were aware that thoughts were transmitted via external objects, they were “in-spired,” breathed into them. The reason for this was to be found in the different constitution of the physical organism, including even the composition of the blood. Therefore it was possible to administer highly potentized doses of those metals I have spoken of—homoeopathic doses as we call them today—in order to assist people in carrying out their spiritual exercises.

A man of the Chaldean epoch, we will suppose, has been prescribed highly potentized doses of copper. Before taking it—this was the general practice of the time—he was directed to perform certain specific spiritual exercises. In such cases, years rather than days of training were demanded of him before the highly potentized copper could be administered. And because his physical constitution was different from ours, he learned, through his training, to retrace the reactions upon the upper part of the body, of this finely distributed, highly potentized copper that was circ41ating in his blood stream. When copper was administered after this careful training, he felt inwardly that his words took on added warmth, because he himself had generated warmth in his larynx and in the nerves leading from the larynx to the brain.

Now because his physical make-up was different, he was able to react with such extreme sensitivity to what was taking place within him. If one were to administer highly potentized copper in similar circumstances today, it would of course take effect, but it would provoke a laryngeal condition and nothing further.

It is important, therefore, to understand the difference between the physical constitution of man in those times and that of today. Then one will no longer be tempted to induce other states of consciousness by administering medicaments, which was the normal practice in ancient times and was still frequently practised in the Middle Ages.

At the present time the only valid method is for man to have an inner perception of the nature, the essential being of copper as I indicated yesterday and thus develop a sensitive response to the colour of burnished copper, to the behaviour of copper in copper sulphate solution. By concentrating and meditating upon this response, he will ensure that he reacts in the right way.

But, you will object, in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, there is no indication of what preparatory steps should be undertaken in order to develop this response to copper. That is so. But in principle the directives are given in my book, though copper is not specifically mentioned. A description is given of how one should enter into the being of crystals, plants, etc. and the preparatory exercises are indicated. But of course no information is given of how to meditate on the nature of copper; a whole library (rather than a book) would be needed for that. Nor was it necessary, since directives have already been given—exercises to promote self-confidence, for example, and exercises in concentration upon some specific theme or object. Such exercises, in effect, are already covered by what I have just said about the nature of copper. There is no specific statement to the effect that one should meditate upon the nature of copper. It is suggested that some simple subject or theme should be selected for purposes of meditation morning and evening. That is tantamount to meditating upon the nature of copper. Only that is given as a subject for meditation which could refer to its metallic nature.

A meditation upon some specific theme such as “wisdom radiates in the light” has a decisive influence upon the inner life, if carried out in earnest. The effect would be the same as if someone were to explore the nature of copper from all angles and to concentrate on its physical aspect. In the first instance, our approach is from the moral standpoint, in the second, from the physical and chemical standpoint. It is far better for the non-chemist to enter the spiritual world from the moral standpoint.

It is necessary, therefore, to see things in their proper relationship, because it would be a mistake for the man of today to follow uncritically the methods of the ancient Mysteries in order to gain insight into the spiritual world. The right course for today is to replace the external, physical approach by a more moral and spiritual approach. With the development of his physical organism man's whole relationship to nature has been transformed. Composition of the blood, tissue fluid and the whole physical constitution are different today from those of the ancient Chaldeans. This cannot be proved by anatomical analysis. In the first place, the anatomist spends most of his time dissecting corpses. Recently a scientific congress raised a cry of alarm and clamoured for more corpses. Anatomists found there was a shortage of corpses for investigating the hidden secrets of life. But it would not be easy to procure Chaldean corpses in order to pursue these investigations! In the second place, with his crude technique, the anatomist would find no answer to the hidden secrets of life; these must be explored by spiritual means.

Since our physical body is differently constituted from that of the ancients, one point must be clearly established. It is still possible today to dispense highly potentized substances, metal potencies, for example. What is the reason for this? The explanation is that we have a deeper insight into the real being of nature. If we really understand the nature of the human body, we know that its functioning is modified by the metals I have mentioned—tin, copper, lead, and so forth. And I have shown how they modify, in the first instance, the conditions of consciousness.

Today, however, we are aware that changes take place in the body, even in normal life, if I may use such a mundane expression. Let us assume, for example, that we experience a change in that region of the body which radiates the activity of copper as I pointed out yesterday. Any such change is reflected in disturbances of the digestive organs, in the metabolic-limb system—in disturbances of the organs predominantly associated with metabolism, digestion and assimilation of nutrients. Every such disturbance in the human organization which we call dis-ease is also associated with the evocation of a different state of consciousness. The full implication of this must be borne in mind.

Now what is the significance of organic disease? I said yesterday that for the man of today his normal condition of waking consciousness lies in the heart centre. Other states of consciousness are associated with other organs, but they always remain in the subconscious. The region of the larynx, including the area extending from the larynx to the brain, lives continuously in a state of consciousness sequential to the normal state which I described yesterday. The region in the neighbourhood of the digestive organs shares the same time-scale as the dead after death. Man always participates in this state of consciousness. Everyone shares the after-death experiences of those he knew personally in life. But he experiences them below the heart, not in the heart. Therefore he knows nothing of this experience; it remains in the subconscious, below the threshold of consciousness. When some disturbance occurs, such as dyspepsia, for example, in that region where man is spiritually in touch with the dead, the consciousness below the heart centre is modified; it begins to operate too actively.

What then is the explanation of a certain kind of gastric disorder? From the physical angle it is simply a label for the practitioner's diagnosis. Now the point of view presented here is in no way directed against a purely physical approach to medicine. I recognize and appreciate its value. As Anthroposophists we do not adopt the attitude of the dilettante, the amateur or the charlatan who disparage or criticize orthodox medicine. We fully accept its findings. When a person suffers from a gastric disorder, the symptoms can be diagnosed physically; but as a result of his gastric condition he is more able to share in the life of the dead immediately after their death. Of course a physical diagnosis is made before therapeutic treatment can begin. From the spiritual standpoint we would say that such a person feels impelled to preserve, after their death, his spiritual link with the souls he has known on Earth. But he is unable to enter into the consciousness that lies below the heart. He is unaware that he is in communion with the dead.

That is the spiritual aspect of such a complaint. Gastric disorders arise because one is too much attached to the dead. Under such conditions one is dominated by the dead. We are strongly influenced by that world which, as I indicated yesterday, is so much more real than the physical world.

Let us imagine we have a balance in front of us. If the pointer is deflected, the zero reading is restored by loading the other scale-pan. The state of disbalance in a person who has developed such abnormal sensitivity in this consciousness below the heart that he is too attached to the dead—and he is quite unconscious of this—is analogous to the scale-pan that is loaded on the one side. Equilibrium is restored by adding an equivalent load to the other side.

Thus, if the consciousness below the heart is too active, the consciousness in the region of the larynx must be diminished; the heart lies between, it acts as a regulator and it is the knife edge on which the beam of the balance oscillates. Equilibrium is restored by administering copper. I have already pointed out that man's body today is constituted in such a way that the larynx reacts to copper.

The metabolic and laryngeal systems are as closely related as the two sides of the balance. One may be adjusted by means of the other. If suitable doses of copper are administered, the patient is inclined to withdraw somewhat from the realm of the dead and thereby benefits in health, whereas otherwise he is increasingly identified with it. That is the spiritual aspect of healing.

Today we know, therefore, that all substances have both a physical and moral aspect. The old Initiates could make use of the physical aspect for the benefit of their pupils but only after their pupils had undergone extensive training. It should no longer be used in the same way today. Today the moral attributes are the province of psychic development, the physical attributes that of the doctor. It is important that the man who is familiar with the physical side of substances and has occasion to make a detailed study of this aspect should also supplement his information by a knowledge of the moral side. This must be strictly adhered to for present day perception and for practical perception in the field of spiritual methods. The human organism has changed radically with the passage of time and the close relationship that used to exist between the knowledge of the moral and physical aspect of substances has been lost and must be restored again. I shall have more to say presently about the loss of this relationship.

The relationship between medical science with its predominantly physical outlook and spiritual science must none the less be different today from that of the remote past. In both cases this relationship must continue, but it will assume a different form today. It is upon the knowledge of such things that our ability to distinguish between the true and false paths in spiritual investigation depends.

A brief review of man's whole attitude to knowledge over the centuries may help to throw further light upon what I have already discussed.

Let us look at the evolution of mankind in retrospect, when the interpretation of knowledge and research was so very different. The enormous advances made in recent times in the knowledge of thermo- and electro-dynamics and of living organisms are c1assffied today under nature, natural history, natural science and, in England, natural philosophy. The way nature is presented in schools today is highly abstract. Nature is seen as a sum of “natural laws”—that is the expression used—which children are expected to memorize. And the abstract character of this study is carried over into life.

Consider how cold and abstract even the most enthusiastic student finds natural science today. In botany he is obliged to learn by heart lists of botanical terms for plants and plant species, in zoology, the names and classifications of animals and animal species. He soon forgets them and has to go over the ground again and again for examination purposes. And after the examination he often forgets them completely; should he need them again, he looks them up in a book of reference. It could hardly be said that a student of today has the same relationship to botany and zoology as he has to some personality to whom he is devoted. That is out of the question.

Nature today has become something vague and nebulous, a catalogue of laws of gravitation, heat, light, electricity, magnetism—the laws of mechanics. Natural science and natural history deal with the study of stones and plants. But natural science includes in addition the life and inner constitution of the organs of plants, animals and man of which we are admittedly ignorant. In brief, natural science and natural philosophy today include much that we claim to know and much of which we are totally ignorant.

Now this is a state of affairs that hardly inspires confidence; everything is so nebulous and confused, the thinking so superficial and abstract. Nowadays we strive manfully to master this abstraction we call “nature” and many, it must be admitted, have grown somewhat indifferent to this abstract approach. And if we do not belong to the younger generation which is in active revolt against what is being taught in our schools as natural science, we adopt an attitude of benevolent neutrality. This was not always the case. I should like now to characterize briefly the attitude to knowledge a few centuries ago.

When we look back to the ninth, tenth, eleventh and even to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we come across men—though they were considerably fewer at that time—whom we should describe today as savants, men adjudged to be the outstanding scholars of their day, who taught in the famous School of Chartres in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Bernardus Silvestris, Bernard of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis. These personalities were still fortunate enough at that time to be associated with Initiates, men who had profound insight into the mysteries of existence, such as the famous medieval Initiate Joachim of Fiore or that other illustrious personality known to the world as John of Hanville. [or Hauteville; in Latin, Altavilla. His work Architrenius (1184) is mentioned in one of Rudolf Steiner's notebooks. The work is a long epic describing the allegorical journey of a young man seeking the help and counsel of the Goddess Natura.]

I mention these names, to which many others could be added, in order to evoke the spirit of the age, in order to characterize the attitude towards knowledge that was prevalent at the time.

When we enter into the spiritual outlook of such personalities, we find that their conception of nature is wholly different from our own. In the case of the typical botanist, pathologist or histologist of today, the expression on his face belies any deep interest in the mysteries of pathology or anatomy; it reflects rather the memories of the dance he had attended the night before. We learn more about the festive occasion than about the mysteries of nature!

It was a very different matter to look into the eyes of a Joachim of Fiore, an Alanus ab Insulis or a Bernardus Silvestris. Tragedy was written on their countenances. They felt they were living in an epoch which had suffered irreparable loss. And the growing realization of this loss filled their hearts with tragic sorrow.

Or again, if we had looked at their fingers, fingers which the modern decadent world would describe as ‘nervous,’ sensitive fingers, which bore living witness to their desire to probe into those ancient mysteries, the loss of which was written on their faces, we should have perceived a yearning to revive the ancient wisdom of the past.

There were brief moments when they were able to conjure up pictures of those ancient times for their pupils; but they were only phantom images.

Now what I am about to depict to you is no poetic fantasy, but a reality. We can visualize Alanus ab Insulis of the School of Chartres, where the magnificent Cathedral still stands today, speaking to his pupils about nature and saying: Nature is a Being who eludes us when we draw near to her. Man now directs his energies to other ends; he no longer shares that intuitive understanding of nature which the sages of former times once possessed. Nature, in their eyes, was a majestic Being endowed with spirit, operating everywhere—where rock formations were created, where plants sprang out of the Earth, and jewelled stars sparkled in the heavens. Everywhere a Being of infinite grandeur was at work, who revealed herself in the wondrous form of a woman weaving nature's web. The ancients experienced this intuitively. From their descriptions we can still picture how nature appeared in their eyes, weaving and working in all around, in the manifestations of warmth, light, colour and life. They realized that the Goddess Natura was a divine-spiritual Being whose real essence could be known only through direct perception.

A personality such as Alanus ab Insulis was still able to present such conceptions to his pupils in the School of Chartres. But because the Initiates saw this old conception of the Goddess Natura gradually fade and die, saw replete with life and vitality the nature that we today regard as dead and abstract because we have lost touch with her, sorrow and tragedy were written on their faces.

Then, again, we hear of such men as Brunetto Latini, Dante's famous teacher. During his travels, through some strange karmic incident, he suffered a heat-stroke which produced a change of consciousness. This event was far more important for his development than the sufferings he endured when the last of the Guelphs were expelled from his native city. Because of this transformation of consciousness he was still able to perceive this Goddess Natura and described her in his book Tesoretto. He gives a graphic description, imaginatively inspired, of how, on his homeward journey to his native Florence, he came upon a hill in the midst of a desolate forest and on this hill he saw the Goddess Natura weaving at her loom. She revealed to him the significance of thinking, feeling and willing for the human soul the intrinsic nature of the four temperaments and the function of the five senses.

And the eyes of his spirit and soul were opened. This experience on his homeward journey from Spain to his native Florence under the influence of a depressed, pathological condition was a spiritual reality. As a result of this inward transformation, he saw the weaving life of the four Elements, fire, earth, water and air, the flux and movement of the planets and the soul emerging from the body into the Cosmos. All this he experienced under the influence of a spiritual teaching at the hands of the Goddess Natura.

These experiences were described by the men of that epoch with a clarity and concreteness that could scarcely be bettered today. At the same time, they felt that the ancients had experienced this knowledge in a different way and that in the course of time it had gradually been lost. In order to revive the knowledge of these mysteries it was necessary to induce a pathological condition. And they felt an irresistible urge to keep alive the real image of Natura.

And when in retrospect we review man's whole attitude to nature knowledge, we feel that our approach to nature is abstract, that nature is a catalogue of laws. We are proud if we can see these laws even to some extent as a related whole. If we look back a few centuries we see that a living relationship existed between man and a divine Being who was living, weaving and working in natural phenomena—in the rising and setting of the Sun, in the transmission of warmth to the stones and plants, a warmth that is actively operating within all this life, growth and proliferation. How different was a science that took into account the activities of the Goddess Natura. The mood in which the students of the School of Chartres—the majority were of the Cistercian Order—came out of their lectures was vastly different from the mood of students leaving their lecture-rooms today! Their response was vitally alive and a deeper expression of their inner being. And the same living reality is reflected in the descriptions of such men as Brunetto Latini, the celebrated teacher of Dante. The vigorous, creative spirit of the time can readily be imagined, for the characters and splendid pictorial descriptions of Dante's Commedia are inspired by the graphic descriptions of his teacher Brunetto Latini who owed his Initiation to a karmic incident. And the School of Chartres and other Schools were indebted to Initiates such as Joachim of Fiore and others for much of the instruction given at the time.

The term Natura was not used in our abstract sense; it implied something operating creatively in external sensible phenomena, but which remained veiled and escaped one's gaze.

Another factor must also be taken into consideration. Let us assume—and again I am describing a fundamental reality, not some poetic fantasy—that, as an elderly student, you had attended a course of lectures given by Alanus ab Insulis and had taken part in the discussions; the students had been dismissed and you were walking alone with Alanus ab Insulis discussing the problems at issue.

The conversation might have turned upon some particular point. You might have spoken of the Goddess Natura who manifests herself in the phenomenal world, but who is veiled from you. Then Alanus ab Insulis who had warmed to the discussion would have said: If we still shared in our life of sleep the condition formerly possessed by the ancients, we would be in touch with the hidden side of nature. Our sleep leads to oblivion; but it was precisely in the unconscious that the ancients were in contact with the hidden side of nature. Could we but experience again the clairvoyant sleep of the ancients, we should know the Goddess Natura.

And if, in a similar situation, you had been engaged in intimate conversation with Joachim of Fiore, he would have replied: our sleep is devoid of content, our consciousness is obliterated. It would be difficult therefore to know the Goddess Natura weaving and working in all created things. The ancients were aware of her hidden and her visible aspects. They never used the term Natura. They never maintained that the Being whose presence we vaguely sense, but do not know, was the Goddess Natura. They gave her another name—Proserpina, or Persephone.

This was common knowledge in those days. What I have just described has been transformed into our abstract conception of nature. And what lived in the souls of such men as Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis, John of Hanville, and above all in Brunetto Latini, was a transformation of the Goddess whom the ancients saw as Proserpina, the daughter of Demeter—the entire universe; Proserpina (the modern term sounds commonplace)—nature, nature who can live only half of her life in the upper world, who reveals only her physical and sensuous aspect to mankind, whilst the other half of her life is spent in those realms where man dwells in sleep, realms which man can no longer inhabit today because his sleep is emptied of true reality.

Our knowledge of nature, though we are unable to realize it owing to our present abstract conception, is an echo of what once lived in the old Greek myth of Persephone.

The fact that the men of sorrowful countenance were aware of this and that it could still be known in their day, shows how much the paths of knowledge have changed with the passage of time. As I said in the earlier part of my lecture, we can only develop the right feeling for, and sense the subtle distinctions in these things, when we review in retrospect the nature of the knowledge that once existed. I have quoted these examples, not with the idea of reviving ancient forms of knowledge, but in order to call attention to the kind of knowledge that was prevalent in former times.

If we can hold fast to the words which might have been spoken perhaps by Joachim of Fiore or John of Hanville: “What we regard as nature today, or whatsoever is veiled from us because we cannot apprehend it spiritually, this was once known as Proserpina,” and if this myth of Proserpina (for it has survived only as a myth) is renewed within us, then the images evoked by this myth awaken images of still earlier relationships. They are images from the time when man knew neither the abstract nor the tragic aspect of the Goddess Natura, when he saw Proserpina-Persephoneia herself, in her aspect of radiant beauty and tragic gloom.

And in what aspect did she appear in those far-off days of her prime? These were not the days of Plato's philosophy, nor of Socrates' dialogues, but much earlier times, when knowledge was far more vitally alive than at the height of Greek culture.

Let us try to envisage the different forms knowledge has taken in the course of human evolution so that we may see in the right perspective what we have already discussed from the standpoint of the present and which will be discussed in further detail in the course of these lectures.

Though of necessity our account will be brief and imperfect, let us try to envisage the nature of the Mysteries into which the Greek philosopher Heraklites was initiated, the ‘dark’ and ‘gloomy’ Heraklites as he was called, because, in later years, a psychic darkness had descended upon all that he had received at the hands of the Mysteries. Let us picture that period in the development of the Mysteries when the Greeks drew upon them for their imaginative vision and the creation of their myths. And let us picture to ourselves the Mysteries of Ephesus into which Heraklites had been initiated.

Knowledge from primeval times was still extant in Ephesus and persisted into Homer's time and even into the time of Heraklites' Initiation, though in an emasculated form. These ancient Mysteries were still actively flourishing. A strong and powerful spiritual atmosphere was present in that temple which was adorned on the Eastern side with the statue of the Goddess Diana, the Goddess of Fertility, who symbolizes the superabundant fertility of nature everywhere. When conversations were held, momentous secrets of existence, profound spiritual secrets were imparted to the pupils through the spoken word immediately after they had taken part in the Mysteries and had received the mighty impulses of the Mysteries from the ceremonies in the Temple of Ephesus. And these profound conversations were continued after the participants in the ceremonies had left the Temple. At the twilight hour, when nature invites to contemplation, they would follow the pathway leading from the Temple doorway into a grove with arboured walks, planted with dark-green trees in which paths fanning out from the Temple of Ephesus were gradually lost to view in the distance. I should like to offer you a somewhat inadequate picture of conversations of this kind.

It was not unknown for someone who had received a partial Initiation into the Mysteries of those times to enter into conversation with a pupil of either sex. Now you must realize that in those days equality of rights between the sexes, though forfeited immediately afterwards, was very much more a living reality than it is today. We can speak, therefore, both of male and female pupils at Ephesus. And in these conversations there was a lively interest in the spiritual aspect of the myth of Persephone. But how was such a conversation conducted? First, there was the teacher, the Priest-Initiate, who, from the spiritual impulses he had received, was empowered to speak of the contingencies in the world of forms, of the inter-relationships of entities in that world. Speaking from his Initiate knowledge he would say something like the following to his pupil.—It is now twilight, and sleep which reveals the spiritual world will soon overtake us. Look upon your human form in its totality. Beneath our feet are the plants and around us are the lengthening shadows of twilight and the dim green light of the temple grove. The first stars are beginning to shine in the heavens. Behold the majesty and grandeur of life's inexhaustible vitality in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath. Then behold yourself and remember that a whole universe lives and stirs within you, that all organic activity, all the changes and chances of your inner life bear witness every moment of the day to a plenitude of facts and to endless transformations of your being. Realize that you are a microcosm which, though spatially delimited, is richer in mystery and wonder than the macrocosm which you apprehend visually and intellectually. Learn then to feel and know this world within you. Realize that you are now looking out from your microcosmic world into the larger world that reaches from the Earth to the stars. Then sleep will overtake you; you will no longer be a prisoner of your own body, of your own world, but will inhabit that other world you now behold, a world that embraces the Earth and the stars. Your soul and spirit will have relinquished the physical body and you will be sharing the radiance of the stars and the exhalations of the Earth. You will ride the winds and think with star-radiance. You will now be living in the spiritual world and will look back upon your microcosmic self.

In ancient times it was possible for the teacher to speak to his pupil after this fashion, because the perception of the external world was not so sharply defined as now, and the life of sleep had not yet become a total blank. It was still crowded with experiences. When referring to this state of sleep, the teacher spoke of realities, saying: You are now in the presence of Proserpina, Persephone or Cora. Cora lives in the stars, in the rays of sunshine, in the moonbeams and the growing plants. Everywhere can be seen the activities of Persephone, for she has woven the garment of the universe. And behind it all is Demeter, her mother, for whom Persephone has woven this garment which you see as the external world.—The teacher did not use the term ‘nature;’ he preferred to speak of Persephone or Cora.

And continuing the dialogue with his pupil, the teacher went on: If someone were to remain awake for a longer period than yourself, then, whilst you were asleep, he would perceive the plants, mountains, clouds and stars—external manifestations of Persephone—exactly as you do now. Illusion lies in the manner of our seeing. It is not Persephone, not her creative activities in mountains, plants, clouds and stars that are illusory, but how you see them. And now the moment has come for sleep. Through your eyes, the organ of life's mysteries, Cora-Persephone will enter into you.—

These things were described so vividly because they had been so vividly experienced; so that, whilst falling asleep, the sleeper not only felt that sight, hearing and perception were being extinguished, but he was aware of Persephone sinking down through the eyes into the physical and etheric bodies from which his soul and spirit had withdrawn whilst he slept.

In waking life we live in the upper world, in sleep we live in the lower world. Persephone entered through the eyes of the sleeper into the physical and etheric bodies. She dwelt with Pluto, the Lord of sleep within the physical and etheric bodies. The sleeping neophyte experienced the activity of Pluto and Persephone. Through the instruction he had received he became aware of the entry of Cora through the gateway of the eyes. This became a living reality to him, and now he experienced the deeds of Pluto and Persephone during sleep. And whilst the neophyte experienced this, his teacher had corresponding experiences that were related to the world of forms.

Then, when teacher and pupil met together again, each had experience of his own particular insights. And when they discussed plants and trees, the teacher would describe how the forms arose, for they had been revealed to him in sleep. Then he would discuss in detail the configuration of the leaves and stems, of the whole nature-kingdom and the formative forces which work down into the Earth from above. And though the pupil had perhaps experienced different insights, he could probably follow his teacher when he spoke of the mysteries of chlorophyll and osmosis. Thus the conversations supplemented each other: in this vivid picture of the Goddess Persephone in the underworld, revealing her other aspect to man whilst he slept, these secrets were revealed to the human soul and entered into it.

Thus, in those far-off times, the pupil learned from the teacher and the teacher from the pupil. On the one hand, the teachings were of the spirit and soul, on the other hand, of soul and spirit. From this interchange of pooled experience they touched the highest flights of knowledge. When they shared these deepest insights, when next they saw the approach of dawn and the morning star shining in the East, sending shafts of light into the dark green grove whose avenues of majestic trees were gradually lost to view in the distant vista, their hearts were gladdened. They had dwelt for a brief hour in that realm we now call the realm of nature. And when they had talked of these things amongst themselves, they knew for certain they had held converse with Persephone. And they knew also that all that was later incorporated into the myth of Persephone was, in reality, the hidden source of man's knowledge of nature.

I can only indicate imperfectly the fascination of these conversations that were related to the Mysteries of Ephesus and were imbued with a vital, living knowledge of Persephone. But in the course of time this knowledge was toned down to the abstraction we know as nature today and men such as Joachim of Fiore were saddened by this tragic loss.

We can only understand the path leading to an understanding of the spiritual nature of man and the Cosmos when we draw attention to, and characterize, not only the separate states of consciousness within man's reach, but also show how these states have been transformed in the course of the evolution of mankind; when we realize how very different from our own was the knowledge ,that informed the conversations of those who had participated in the Mysteries in the Temple of Ephesus, and how different was the nature of the converse held with such personalities as Joachim of Fiore and Alanus ab Insulis; and how different today is the knowledge that we must strive to attain once more, in order through spiritual training to seek forms of knowledge which lead back from the Outer to the Inner, from the Above to the Below and then from the Inner to the Outer and the Below to the Above.

I have attempted to show how man can develop states of consciousness other than those of his everyday life and how the history of evolution provides abundant evidence that in the fields of human knowledge and action, man did not possess the consciousness we have today. Then I tried to call attention to the relationship between the consciousness of the scholars who lived in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries and the manner in which knowledge was fostered in those days, in the School of Chartres, for example. And in this connection I pointed out how there arose forms of perception totally unrelated to our present level of consciousness. Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, is a case in point.

Yesterday I tried to recall man's relationship to the universe at an even earlier epoch, in the Mysteries of Ephesus, for example. We learned how entirely different conditions of consciousness prevailed at that time, though related to some extent to the normal scientific consciousness of today.

After this brief digression into history I should now like to continue our investigations. I have already indicated how the metallity, the basic substantiality of the mineral element, is related to man and his conditions of consciousness. Having shown man's relationship to the metal copper, I described the state of consciousness that enables him to participate in the experiences of the so-called dead after death.

We must realize that it was a form of perception such as this which Brunetto Latini experienced in that semi-pathological condition following upon his heat-stroke.

Indeed all that he describes, all that came to him through the inspiration of the Goddess Natura can be attained in that condition of consciousness—so closely related to our everyday consciousness—which is able to share the experiences of the dead immediately after their death. I said that it was a condition of greater reality. We inhabit a world of more powerful impressions, more luminous, a world that brings everything to fuller consummation than the phenomenal world.

We owe it to these factors alone that we can participate in the experiences of the soul which has recently passed through the gates of death.

At the same time, this world reveals a peculiar characteristic. When we inhabit this world in the state of consciousness I have described, we are no longer able to observe the normal experiences of our daily life; we see only that part of our life immediately preceding incarnation—our experiences when still in the spiritual world before birth. We must therefore realize that in this condition of consciousness we are detached from the world which man normally inhabits.

Let me illustrate my point. A man is born at a certain point in time. If, at the age of forty, he develops the copper condition of consciousness—I have already explained this in my lecture of the day before yesterday—his perception is no longer related to the immediate present, nor to his perception at the age of thirty or thirty-five; he can only look back to his experiences immediately before birth. He can do this for himself and others, but he cannot apprehend the world of everyday existence. This is only feasible for human beings.

In relation to animals, we do not see them in their familiar physical form; we look into the world immediately above and perceive what I have called the group-soul. We see, as it were, the aura of the animal species. And when we look out into the world, we find it transformed and discover something which is of supreme importance for mankind, but which is totally ignored in our present materialistic age.

And if, endowed with the highest academic learning in all faculties, we contact that Being who is ever present as the Goddess Natura, that Being so vividly described by the teachers of the School of Chartres, Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others, we feel abysmally ignorant despite all our modern knowledge. We feel that our present knowledge is relevant only to the world between birth and death and is no longer valid when we enter into the spiritual world with a consciousness that can follow the dead beyond the gates of death.

When we study chemistry, the sum-total of our knowledge holds good only for the life between birth and death. Chemistry, as such, is of no importance in the world we share with the dead. All the knowledge we acquire in the phenomenal world is valueless in this intermediate state between death and rebirth, it survives only as a memory. We have an immediate awareness of this intermediate sphere we now inhabit and we feel that the everyday world in which we learned so much has faded from our consciousness. This other world now lies open before us.

Let us imagine that a mountain looms up before us in our immediate environment. It gives an impression of solidity. When seen from a distance it reflects the light of the Sun and we note its contours and rock formations. Then we gradually draw nearer. When we set foot on it, we feel that it offers resistance, that we are standing on solid ground; there is no doubt of its reality.

Now in the intermediate world everything that I have described as solid and luminous ceases to have any significance; something seems to be issuing from the mountain, growing ever larger, and gives an impression of another kind of reality.

Under the conditions of normal life we see the mountain capped by a cloud. We are in no doubt that it is caused by condensation of water vapour. This phenomenon also loses all reality. Something different emerges from the cloud. What we see emerging merges with the cloud and mountain which are gradually lost to view. Out of this union is born a new reality that is not merely nebulous, but is at the same time endowed with form. And this applies to everything in this intermediate world.

Suppose we are standing in front of a large audience. The moment we enter the spiritual world all sharply defined contours are effaced. We perceive instead the soul and spirit of the audience projected in the form of clairvoyant images. And the mysterious spiritual aura of the environment gradually encompasses us. A new world arises, the world the dead inhabit after death.

We now become aware of something else. If this intermediate world which we have now entered did not exist, if it were not omnipresent, we should be without eyes and ears, without sense organs. The world described by the chemist and physicist cannot provide us with sense organs; we should be blind and deaf. Our sense organs could not be built up within us.

And this was the surprising discovery of Brunetto Latini when he returned from Spain to the neighbourhood of his native Florence and suffered that slight attack of heat-stroke which opened up to him this intermediate world. He realized that his sense organs were a gift from this other world, that his senses would be wholly undeveloped if this intermediate world did not permeate the world of sense experience. Our human status is determined by the fact that we owe our sense organs to our connection with this second world, this intermediate world.

At all times this second world has been called the world of the Elements. Here the terms oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, etc., are meaningless, they are applicable only to the world between birth and death. In the second world it is only meaningful to speak of the elements earth, water, air, fire and light, and so on. For the specific characteristics of hydrogen, oxygen, etc., are wholly unrelated to the senses. What the chemist discovers about the scent of violets or of asafoetida, namely, that the one is pleasant and the other highly unpleasant, everything named after its chemical composition—none of this is of any significance. In the second world all manifestations of scent or smell are spiritualized. From the standpoint of the second world it would be described as aeriform; but it is a rarefied air, an air wholly permeated by spirit. Our senses therefore are rooted in the world of elements where it is still meaningful to speak of earth, water, fire and air.

We can now correct our previous misapprehensions and develop the right understanding. What is the reaction of the modern philosopher who claims to be both logical and objective and to have abandoned the naive outlook of earlier epochs? He maintains that these earlier conceptions were primitive: in those days men only spoke of the crude elements, earth, water, fire and air, whereas today seventy to eighty elements are known, not a mere four or five.

Now if a Greek with the typical outlook of his time were to be born today and were told of this attitude, his answer would be: Of course, you still speak of the elements such as oxygen and hydrogen, but in your own way. You have forgotten what we understood by the four elements. You are unaware of their composition, you no longer know anything about them. Despite the existence of all your seventy-two or seventy-five elements, the sense organs would never come into being, for they are born out of the four elements. We had a better knowledge of man; we knew how man's external vehicle with its sense organs was built up.—

We can only form a true estimate of the impressions received by men of olden time who had undertaken the first steps in Initiation, such as Brunetto Latini, when we recognize the significance of these impressions for the life of the soul and spirit, when we bear in mind their unexpected and striking effects and how the soul was actively stimulated by them.

If someone who has believed hitherto in the reality of his sense-impressions discovers that this reality could not even have created his sense organs and that behind this reality there must exist all that I have described here, then the effect in the first instance must be shattering.

It is important to realize that we cannot develop such knowledge and understanding if we perpetuate the old sterile conceptions of nature that we normally hold. When we enter into this second world, everything begins to vibrate with life. We say to ourselves: the mountain we knew through sensory experience appeared to be inanimate matter; we were wholly unaware that it was permeated with living forces. Now they are revealed to us. And the cloud that formerly appeared static and inert now manifests that indwelling vital life that we had not perceived before. Everything is quickened and in this weaving, pulsating life there is revealed a fundamental reality.

In this second world the laws of nature are not intellectual constructs; we are in touch with a spiritual Being. The Goddess Natura, who speaks to us, beckons and communicates insights from the world of reality. And in this way we learn about the reality of our environment through beings of a super-sensible world. We are translated from our purely abstract world that is determined by natural law into the real world of being, where we no longer arrive at natural laws by means of experiment and analysis, but feel ourselves in the presence of beings of a different world, beings who mediate knowledge and understanding because they know what we, as human beings, have yet to learn.

We thus enter the spiritual world in the right way. We realize that if we had been endowed only with sense organs, with the eye and its optic nerves, the nose and its olfactory nerves and the ear with its acoustic nerves, and that if all these nerves were connected at their point of origin, we should be unaware of the existence of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and so on, and of all we perceive between birth and death. We would be looking into the world of Elements—everywhere around us we would perceive earth, water, air and fire. We would not have the slightest interest in differentiating further between the solid and the gross material, the fluid and the aqueous element. As beings of physical sensibility we are familiar with the world of Elements. But the moment we become aware of what I have already described, we realize also that in man the sensory nerves which run back to the cranial cavity are more differentiated, more specialized and form in that area the first indications of the brain. In consequence we do not enter more deeply into ourselves; we become more extroverted and add to the nature of the four elements, earth, fire, air and water, our experiences between birth and death.

The cerebrum evolves nom a progressive metamorphosis of the sensory nerve fibres that run back to the cranial cavity. This cerebrum that is rolled back upon itself in man is of importance only for the life between birth and death. For our understanding of the spiritual world the intellect is of minimal importance. If we wish to enter even the first of the spiritual spheres that border on our world the intellect must be silenced. It is an organ that interferes with higher perception. Even when the intellect has been silenced, we cannot escape from sensory experiences; we must now spiritualize the senses and so attain to Imagination. In the normal course of events our senses perceive sense-derived images in the external physical world and the intellect transforms them into dead, abstract thoughts. If we silence the intellect and experience the world again through our senses, we then perceive everything in the form of imaginations. We become aware of this and then we realize that our deeper insights into life are ultimately linked with the development of states of consciousness that are higher and more spiritual than those of ordinary life.

Our peripheral organs, such as the eye and the ear, are continuously in touch with the world of the Elements and still perceive the dead years after their death. The perception of this world is lost, because our intellect intervenes. The peripheral senses of man mediate the spiritual world, the world of the dead. But the perception of this world, the world of the Elements earth, water, fire and air, is obliterated by the intellectual consciousness. Man sees only the physical world with its sharply defined contours, the world we inhabit between birth and death. But there is no doubt that a second world of a very different order does in fact exist. This world, however, is obliterated by the intellect and man looks only upon the familiar world of everyday consciousness.

Therefore modern man must practise the meditation which I mentioned yesterday. In the past it was still the practice after such meditation to administer metallic substances. I spoke of these in my last lecture. The attainment of the next higher level of consciousness depends therefore, in the first instance, upon the obliteration of the intellect and the spiritualization of the perceptions mediated by the sense organs. Since their brain is not developed, the animals also share these perceptions. But they have no ego-consciousness; their perceptions cannot be imbued with spirit, but only with primitive psychic forces. They do not perceive in the world around what man perceives when his senses are illuminated by the spirit. Animal perception is of a similar kind, but inferior and non-individualized.

What I now propose to say about the metallity, the real substantiality of the mineral world, should be accepted with the due reserve to which I drew attention yesterday when I said that the inner vitalization of the soul through the qualities of the metallity—in other words, the development of an inner communion with the metallity in a moral sense—is a necessary part of man's spiritual development today. The administration of metallic potentization to the human organism is the function of the medical practitioner. And so I ask you to accept with due reserve what I shall say about the unknown factors of metals, other than those already discussed. The mystery of mercury in particular has a special significance for those who approach the world from a spiritual angle, that is to say, for those who are able to perceive the spiritual operating in physical substances. The metal mercury is only one part of what spiritual science calls in general terms the mercurial. The mercurial includes everything that has the characteristics of liquid metals; in nature as we know it today, there is only one metal that shares these characteristics and can be regarded as mercurial, namely, quicksilver. But this is only one member of the mercurial species. In spiritual science the mercurial includes everything of a mercurial nature; quicksilver is looked upon simply as a typical example of the mercurial.

This quicksilver or mercury holds a profound secret. Its effect upon man is such that he is isolated from all impressions of the physical world and also from the world of the Elements.

As human beings, we recognize that organs such as the brain have been built up out of the physical world. We have also built up many other organs out of this sense world, in particular, a whole series of glandular organs that are essential to physical life.

Furthermore, many organs—I have already spoken of the sense organs—have been built up out of the world which I described as the world of the second level of consciousness. Copper and iron raise man to this second level of consciousness. Mercury has a different effect. It must of necessity be present in the universe; and, in effect, it exists universally in a subtle state of diffusion. We are surrounded, if I may so express it, by an atmosphere of mercury. The moment man absorbs more than the normal quantity of mercury, his organism endeavours to neutralize all those organs which have been built up from the physical and elemental worlds. The astral body of man is stimulated, as it were, to call upon only those organs that have been built up out of the world of stars.

Therefore, directly the consciousness is concentrated on the metallity of mercury, on its metallic and fluid qualities, on the fundamentally impalpable element that is characteristic of mercury and which, none the less, is related to the human being, man becomes inwardly permeated by a “third man.” I said that through his relationship to copper man is permeated by a second man who creates inner tensions and is able to relinquish the physical body and accompany the dead in the years immediately following their death. Quicksilver attracts to itself everything that can contribute to a far more closely-knit psychic organism. Through the effects of quicksilver man seems to apprehend the entire metabolism of his organs. When he experiences the strong metallic influence of quicksilver, the manner in which the fluids circulate through the various vessels suddenly claims his attention. The effect cannot be described as pleasant, for he feels as if he were bereft of mind and senses, as if everything were active, alive and stirring within him, as if he were in a state of inner ferment, turmoil and flux, pulsating with life and movement. And he feels this inner activity united with an activity without.

This situation, as I have described it, follows upon the conscious training of the inner life. Through the active influence of quicksilver man ceases to feel the presence of his brain; it has become a hollow cavity. That is an advantage for the perception of the spiritual world since the brain is quite useless for this purpose. What he does in fact feel is movement and activity permeating his entire organism. But at first all this ferment is as painful as if one suffered from inner exhaustion.

Everywhere this inner activity is united with an outer activity. We feel we have left the Earth and the world of Elements below us; everything exhales steaming vapour. But spiritual beings dwell in these vaporous, steaming exhalations. The divine Natura whom Brunetto Latini so vividly describes has now “turned about.”

As I said yesterday, she is identical with the Greek Persephone. Formerly she turned her countenance more towards the Earth; she disclosed those things that were still connected with the Earth sphere, such as man's experience of the life immediately after death. Now she “turns about” and man has the Earth and the elemental world beneath him and the world of stars above. Just as on Earth he was surrounded by plants and animals, his environment is now the world of stars. He no longer feels his insignificance in face of the mighty world of stars, but, in his new stature, he feels in relation to the world of stars exactly as he felt in relation to his immediate environment on Earth. With his increase of stature he has grown into the world of stars. But the stars are not as the stars we saw when on Earth; they reveal themselves as colonies of spiritual beings. We are once again in the world I have already described to you, a world that is awakened in man through his relationship with the metallity of tin. There is an inner relationship between mercury and tin as I have already indicated. Mercury lays claim to a certain part of our being, isolates it and bears it into that spiritual world whose external physical manifestation is the world of stars.

But we are now in a different world because the condition of our consciousness has been changed; it is no longer determined by the senses or the brain, but by that which the metallity of mercury has now drawn out of our organism. We find ourselves in a totally different world—the world of stars. I could, however, express this differently. The term “world of stars” has spatial implications; but through the attainment of this new level of consciousness we actually leave behind the world in which we exist spatially between birth and death and now enter the intermediate world, the world we inhabit between death and rebirth.

The hidden secret of mercury lies in this: mercury detaches man from the phenomenal world and opens up the intermediate world because quicksilver or mercury has an inner relationship to that part of man's being which is not derived from this Earth, but has been implanted in him by the beings of the intermediate world. The circulation of the fluids that he now experiences is determined by the world through which he passes between death and a new birth.

We now become a ware of something else, again something that Brunetto Latini perceived under the influence of the Goddess Natura, namely, that we live in the circulation of the fluids which is associated with the circulation of the cosmic fluids. We have relinquished the physical vehicle with its sense-derived consciousness and find ourselves in the realm we inhabit between death and rebirth. We become familiar with the nature of the circulation of fluids and begin to understand how this inner activity, this realm we inhabit between death and rebirth, has determined the nature of our temperament, whether sanguinic, choleric, melancholic or phlegmatic. We have a deeper insight into our make-up than we have when dependent on our senses. If we are born a phlegmatic we now realize that our impassivity, our phlegm, is determined by our experiences between the last death and the present birth. But in relation to this temperament that manifests itself physically in the circulation of the fluids, we must reckon with an additional factor. Consider for a moment what is involved in this circulation of fluids. In the field of anatomy or physiology we are concerned primarily with the physical. The physical is only an expression of the spiritual. But the spiritual element that is related to this circulation of fluids is not of the physical world, it is of the world that penetrates into man between death and rebirth.

When we review the different temperaments—and it was an overwhelming experience for Brunetto Latini when the Goddess Natura opened his eyes to the existence and nature of the temperaments—we conclude that the life between death and rebirth has determined the nature of these various temperaments that we associated with the circulation of the fluids. If we now probe deeper, we find that karma, the arbiter of destiny, plays its part in this.

If we contemplate the physical aspect of this remarkable metallic fluid mercury, we only begin to understand it when we are fully aware of its hidden secret: that a minute drop of liquid mercury reveals to the Initiate a profound relationship. This drop is able to infuse the spiritual into those organs that derive their structure and origin from the world between death and rebirth.

Thus all things in the world are interwoven and interrelated after this fashion. The physical is an illusion. And from the standpoint of the physical, the spiritual too is only an illusion, an abstraction. In actual fact the physical is interwoven with the spiritual and the spiritual with the physical.

If a human organism has been damaged because those organs are involved which are derived, in effect, from the intermediate realm, we must activate those forces which will repair the damage.

Let us assume that a doctor is consulted by a patient with a defective circulatory system that has its origin in the life between death and rebirth. He is confronted with a patient whose circulatory system has severed its link with the spiritual world. That is the case history. A spiritual diagnosis is made. The relation between the spiritual element and the physical diagnosis must be understood in the sense which I suggested yesterday. I repeat this again so that there shall be no misunderstanding. The diagnosis is as follows: the circulatory system of this patient has made a radical break with the spiritual world. What is to be done?

The correct treatment is to introduce the metallity into the body that will restore the connection between the circulatory system and the spiritual world. This is how mercury works upon man. Mercury works upon the human organism in such a way that those organs which can only be built up out of the spiritual world can again be brought into contact with that same world when they have severed their connection with it. Thus we see the somewhat dangerous, yet at the same time necessary relationship that exists between the knowledge of the states of consciousness in man and the knowledge of diseases. The one passes over into the other.

These things played a vital part in the ancient Mysteries and they also shed light upon such matters as I mentioned yesterday. Consider the following: in an age that had lost the old spiritual vision that recognized the Goddess Natura through her teachings about the secrets of nature, Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, returns in a state of agitation from his ambassadorial post in Spain. As he approaches his native city his agitation increases because he hears of the fate of his own party, the Guelph party. He experiences all this in such a state of mind that a slight heat-stroke overcame him. The metallity of mercury has simply worked upon him from the environment.

What do we understand by a slight heat-stroke? It means that we feel the effect of the mercury in our environment, the mercury that is finely distributed throughout the Cosmos. Brunetto Latini experienced this effect and in consequence he was able to approach the spiritual world in an epoch when it was normally impossible for man to share this experience. Thus we see that in man there exists something that is related not only to the findings of natural science, not only to the disclosures of the person who is in contact with the dead in the first years after their death, but that our fundamental being is in touch with something far more sublime, a purely spiritual realm that we live through between death and rebirth. If we follow the ordinary scientific procedure we can understand the form of the liver or the lung, for example. With the aid of the next higher level of knowledge (that is known to modern physics only in its cruder aspects) we can understand the structure of the sense organs. But we shall never comprehend the peculiar characteristics of the circulatory system of man with his erect posture nor the mysteries of the metallic nature if we do not approach them through Initiation-knowledge.

This implies that we shall never understand the nature of disease in the sense I have described without Initiation-knowledge, for the physical properties of metals cannot cure disease. With an understanding of the physical attributes of metals it may well be possible to heal cerebral damage, but not disturbances of the circulatory fluids. What I have been saying is, in fact, not strictly accurate, for it is only the coarsest substance of the brain that can be healed. Fluids also circulate in the brain; therefore, in reality, one cannot heal cerebral damage with metals alone, but only with the aid of spiritual knowledge.

That may well be true, you will reply, but how do you account for the positive achievements of medicine today in the art of healing? The answer is that medicine is able to heal because it still preserves a memory of the old traditional knowledge about the spiritual elements in metals. It uses a combination of traditional knowledge and purely physical discoveries, though these are of not much avail. And if materialism were to triumph at the expense of tradition, chemical remedies alone could not effect any healing. We are now at the point in human evolution when we must make a new approach to the spiritual, because the old traditions of primordial clairvoyance have gradually been lost.

The mystery behind the metallity of silver is of a very special kind. If the cosmic impulse behind copper awakens the first higher level of consciousness in the being of man, if a different cosmic force behind mercury awakens a second higher level of consciousness that is related to the world of stars and therefore to the spiritual world which we inhabit between death and rebirth, then the metallity of silver must awaken a consciousness of an entirely different order.

When man intensifies and enhances his relationship to silver by the same process he adopted towards the metallic natures of copper and mercury, he comes into touch with a still deeper organization within him. Mercury relates him to the vascular system which, in turn, relates him to a cosmic circulation, to the spirituality of the Cosmos. The intensification of his relationship to silver brings him into direct contact with all the forces and impulses that survive from earlier incarnations.

If a man concentrates on the peculiar properties of silver—and it is some time before the effects are registered—he concentrates within himself those forces which are responsible not only for the circulation of fluids through the vessels, but also for the circulation of warmth in the bloodstream. He then realizes that he owes his human status to the warmth circulating in his blood, in that he feels a certain inner warmth, a material, yet at the same time a spiritual element within his blood; and that in this warmth forces from former incarnations are actively working. In man's relationship to silver is expressed that which can influence the warmth-activity of the blood and also that which provides a spiritual link with earlier incarnations.

Silver therefore preserves that metallic virtue which reminds man of what survives in his present life from earlier incarnations. For the circulation of the blood with its remarkable warmth-differentiations is not derived from this physical world, nor from the world of Elements which I have described to you, nor even from the world of stars. The world of stars determines the course and direction of the blood circulation. But in the warmth of the blood that circulates within us there works the vitalizing force from previous lives on Earth. It is to this we appeal directly when we refer to forces of silver in their relationship to man. Thus the mystery of silver is related to his previous incarnations. Silver is one of the most astounding examples .of the all-pervasiveness of the spiritual, even in the physical world. He who has a right understanding of silver knows that it is the symbol of the cycles of man's lives on Earth. Hence the mystery of silver is bound up with reproduction and its secrets, because through the process of reproduction the being of man is perpetuated from generation to generation. The spiritual being who existed in former lives on Earth incarnates again through the process of reproduction. This is the same mystery as the mystery of blood. The mystery of the blood, of the warmth of the blood, is the mystery of silver.

We are now familiar with the normal condition of man. Let us proceed to a study of his pathological states. Now the blood should not take its warmth from man's present environment, but from the spheres through which he has passed in previous incarnations. Let us suppose that the warmth of his blood is affected by his present environment and is not activated by that which links us spiritually to previous incarnations. Pathological conditions then ensue. They occur because all that is connected with the warmth of the blood is severed from its natural associations, from earlier lives on Earth. What is fever? From the stand point of spiritual science fever occurs because the human organization has severed its relation with the cycle of incarnations. If, in some cases of illness, the doctor ascertains that the external world has worked upon the patient in such a way that his organization is in danger of being cut off from earlier incarnations, then the doctor administers silver as a remedy. A very interesting case of this nature occurred recently in Dr. Wegman's Clinic in Arlesheim. A condition such as I have described may suddenly occur in the spiritual life. Through external circumstances the human organization, owing to the peculiar characteristics of the blood, threatens to break away from previous incarnations. And this is precisely what happened recently in a particular case in Dr. Wegman's Clinic. A patient who was convalescent suddenly developed an unexpectedly high temperature, a fever of unknown origin as it is described by orthodox medicine. With her intuitive understanding Dr. Wegman immediately administered a silver cure. When she told me about it the case revealed a complete picture of cosmic relationships. We learn from this of the interplay between what is connected with the spiritual evolution of man on the one hand, and on the other hand, with what leads to pathological conditions; and we learn how to treat them.

How is it that the Initiate is able to survey former lives on Earth? So long as we are bound up with earlier incarnations, as is the case in ordinary life, and are still involved in their karma, we cannot look back upon our earthly incarnations with our ordinary consciousness. The effects of these incarnations are felt in our present life. We fulfil our karma under their influence and our life is determined by karma. We cannot look back without ordinary consciousness, but, if we wish to do so, we must throw off its limitations for a time. And when we can see the earlier lives objectively, we are in a position to look back.

We must, of course, be able to restore the status quo in a perfectly normal way, otherwise we become psychopaths, not initiates.

Here we have a phenomenon that arises in the course of spiritual development. We cast off our spiritual moorings that attach us to previous incarnations. In abnormal cases and under pathological conditions disease has this effect. Disease is an abnormal expression of that which we must develop normally in a higher sphere in order to attain spiritual vision and other levels of consciousness. If the blood, isolated from the rest of man's organism, surrenders to the dictates of its consciousness—for blood possesses a consciousness of its own, even as other organs have their own particular states of consciousness—if, then, the blood is freed from the bondage of the rest of the organism, it can look back in this abnormal state into earlier incarnations, but not consciously. In order to look back consciously we must first dispense with normal consciousness; when we look back in a pathological condition the link with normal consciousness will be preserved.

The study, for example, of the metallity of silver which is an excellent remedy for all diseases associated with karma, leads on from the mystery of silver to other profound mysteries. We have thus spoken of virtually all those metallic natures that are related to the various conditions of consciousness in man. We will now extend our investigations into these conditions of consciousness, into the relationship to other worlds which man can establish through these conditions. In other words we propose in the next lectures to study in further detail the right path to spiritual knowledge.

I have already spoken of the different states of consciousness which can be developed out of the forces of the human soul. Initiation-knowledge is dependent upon the fact that our knowledge of the world stems from these different states of consciousness.

Today we propose to ascertain how man's relationship to the world is determined by these different states of consciousness. First of all, let us recall that a single level of consciousness, that of daily waking consciousness, suffices to meet the needs of everyday existence. In our present epoch man has the possibility of developing two further states of consciousness in addition to his normal waking consciousness, but initially they cannot serve as valid criteria for immediate purposes of knowledge.

The one is the state of dream consciousness in which man experiences reminiscences of his daily life or faint intimations of the life of the spirit. But in ordinary dream life these reminiscences and intimations are so distorted, so commingled with uncorrelated, grotesque images and symbols that nothing can be learnt from them.

If, with the aid of Initiation-knowledge, we wish to know what realm man inhabits when he dreams, the answer would be somewhat as follows: in normal life man possesses a physical body, the body which is perceptible .to the senses and which is an object of scientific study. This is the first member of man's constitution, the member which everyone imagines he understands, but which in effect, as we shall see later, he understands least of all today.

The second member is the etheric body which is described in more detail in my publications, especially in my book Theosophy. The etheric body or body of formative forces is a delicate organization, imperceptible to ordinary sight. It can be perceived only when man has developed the first state of consciousness which is able to accompany the dead in the first years after death. This etheric body is more intimately linked with the Cosmos than the physical body whose whole organization is more independent.

The third member of man's constitution—it seems best to adhere to the old terminology—is called the astral body. This is an organization that is imperceptible to the senses; neither can it be perceived in the same way as the etheric body. If we were to try to perceive the astral body with the cognitive faculty by means of which we perceive the external world today or with the insights of the next higher consciousness that is in touch with the dead, we should see nothing but a void, a vacuum, where the astral body is located.

To sum up: man possesses a physical body that is perceptible to the senses; an etheric body perceptible to Imagination by virtue of the forces that can be developed through the practice of concentration and meditation in the manner already indicated. But if we try to perceive the astral body with the aid of these forces, we meet with a void, a spatial vacuum. This void is filled with content only when we attain the emptied consciousness which I have described, when we can confront the world in full waking consciousness in such a way that, though sensory impressions are obliterated and thinking and memories are silenced, we remain none the less aware of its existence. We then know that in this void we have our first spiritual vehicle, the astral body of man.

A further member of the human organization is the Ego itself. We perceive the Ego only when the emptied consciousness is progressively developed.

When we dream, our physical and etheric bodies are detached from the astral body and Ego which are in the spiritual world, but we cannot perceive with the astral body and Ego if we possess only normal consciousness. We perceive external impressions of the world around because the physical body is endowed with eyes and ears. At the present stage of man's evolution we find that in ordinary life his astral body and Ego, unlike the physical body, are not endowed with eyes and ears. Thus, when he withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies in order to enter the dream-state, it is as if he had a physical body in the physical world bereft of eyes and ears, so that all around were dark and silent. But it was never intended that the astral body and the Ego should always remain without organs, without eyes and ears of the soul. Through spiritual training of which I have spoken in my books, it is possible to awaken these spiritual organs in the astral body and Ego and thus to see into the spiritual world through the insight born of Initiation. Then man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies and perceives the spiritual, just as in his physical and etheric bodies he perceives the physical, and in a certain sense, the etheric as well. The man who achieves this insight then achieves Initiation.

Now what is the position of the ordinary dreamer? Try and imagine concretely the process of falling asleep. The physical and etheric bodies are left behind in the bed whilst the astral body and Ego slip out of the physical vehicle. At this moment the astral body is still vibrating in harmony with the physical and etheric bodies. The astral body has participated in all the inner activities of eyes and ears and of the will in the functioning of the physical and etheric bodies throughout the day. The astral body and the Ego have shared in all this. When they quit the body, the vibration continues. But the day experiences, as they continue to vibrate, come in contact with the surrounding spiritual world and there arises a chaotic, confused interplay between the activity of the external spiritual world and the continued vibrations of the astral body. The individual is caught up in all this and is aware of the confusion. All that he has brought with him has left its impact upon him, continues to vibrate and becomes the dream.

It is obvious that this will contribute little to the understanding of reality. What is the position of the Initiate? When he slips out of his physical and etheric bodies, he is able to obliterate the reminiscences and after-vibrations that still persist. He suppresses, therefore, all that proceeds from the physical and etheric bodies. Moreover through concentration, meditation and the development of emptied consciousness, the Initiate has been able to acquire eyes and ears of the soul. He does not now perceive what is happening within himself, but what is happening in the spiritual world outside him. In place of dreams he now begins to perceive the spiritual world. Dream consciousness is a chaotic counterpart of spiritual perception.

When the Initiate has first developed these inner astral organs, clairvoyance and clairaudience, he finds himself in a continual state of conflict and endeavours to suppress these reminiscences, these after-vibrations from the physical and etheric bodies. When he enters into the world of Imaginations, when he has an intuitive perception of the spiritual, he must fight a continual battle to prevent the dreams from asserting themselves. There is a continual interplay between that which seeks to dissolve into dreamlike fantasy and delude him, and that which represents the truth of the spiritual world.

Ultimately every aspirant becomes familiar with this conflict. He comes to realize that, at the moment he strives to enter consciously into the spiritual world, he experiences recurrent after-images of the physical world, disturbing images that intrude upon the true pictures of the spiritual world. Only through patience and persistence can he resolve this intense inner conflict.

Now if we are too easily satisfied when dream images flood our consciousness, we may readily dream ourselves into an illusory world instead of entering into a world of spiritual reality. The aspirant, in effect, must possess an exceedingly strong, intelligent inner control. Imagine what this demands of him. If we are to speak of spiritual investigation, or of methods for attaining to the spiritual world, we must draw attention to these things. If we wish to take the first steps towards an understanding of the spiritual world, we must show real enthusiasm for the task. Inner lethargy, inner indifference or indolence are obstacles in the path of its fulfilment. Our inner life must be active, lively and responsive. But there is a danger of losing ourselves in day-dreams, of spinning a web of illusion. We must be able, on the one hand, to soar into the empyrean on wings of fancy and, on the other hand, we must be able to temper this inner activity and responsiveness with prudence and sober judgment.

The Initiate must possess both these qualities. It is undesirable simply to indulge one's emotions; it is equally undesirable to submit to the dictates of the intellect and to rationalize everything. We must be able to strike a balance between these two extremes. We must be able to dream dreams and yet be able to keep our feet on Earth. As we enter into the spiritual world we must be able to participate in the dynamic world of creative imagination, but at the same time have firm control over ourselves. We must have the capacity to be a poet richly endowed with imagination, yet not succumb to its lures. We must be able, at any moment in our search for spiritual knowledge, to be fired by a creative impulse. We must be able to control the drift towards a world of fantasy and rely upon practical common sense. Then we shall not become victims of illusion, but experience spiritual reality.

This inner disposition of soul is of vital importance in true spiritual investigation. When we reflect upon the nature of dream consciousness and recognize that it conjures up chaotic images out of the spiritual world, we realize at the same time that, in order to acquire spiritual knowledge, the whole force of our personality must now enter into the psychic energy that otherwise persists in a dreamlike state. Then for the first time we begin to understand what ‘entering into the spiritual world’ implies. I said that dream consciousness conjures up the spiritual. This would appear to contradict the statement that the dream consciousness also conjures up pictures derived from the corporeal life. But the body is not only physical, it is wholly permeated with spirituality. When someone dreams that an attractive and tasty meal is set before him and he proceeds to consume it, though he has not a tithe of the cost of the meal in his pocket, then in the symbol of the meal he is presented with a picture of the real spiritual, astral content of the digestive organs. There is always a spiritual element in the dream despite the fact that the spirit has its seat in the corporeal. The dream always contains a spiritual element; but very often it is a spiritual element associated with the body. It is necessary to realize this fact. .

We must understand that when we dream of snakes, their coils are a symbol of the digestive organs or of the blood vessels in the head. We must penetrate into these secrets, for we can only arrive at an understanding of these subtle, intimate elements that must be developed in the soul when we undertake spiritual investigation through the science of Initiation and give the closest attention to these matters.

The third stage through which man passes in ordinary life is that of dreamless sleep. Let us recall this condition: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed; outside these bodies are the astral body and Ego-organization. The after-vibrations and reminiscences from the physical and etheric bodies have ceased. It is only in his Ego and astral body that man inhabits the spiritual world. But, having no organs, he cannot perceive anything. Darkness surrounds him; he is asleep. Dreamless sleep means that we live in the Ego and astral body and are unable to perceive the vast, majestic world around us. Take the case of a blind man. He has no visual perception of colours and forms. So far as these are concerned, he is asleep. Now picture a man living in his astral body and Ego, but without organs of perception. In relation to the spiritual he is asleep. Such is man's condition in dreamless sleep. The purpose of concentration and meditation is to develop spiritual eyes and ears in the astral body and Ego-organization. Then man begins to behold the spiritual plenitude around him. He perceives spiritually with that which in normal consciousness is lost in sleep and which he must rouse from its slumber through meditation and concentration. The otherwise uncoordinated elements must be integrated. Then he gazes into the spiritual world and shares in the life of the spiritual world in the same way as he normally shares in the life of the physical world through his eyes and ears. This is true Initiation knowledge. One cannot prepare a person for spiritual perception by external means; he must first learn to organize effectively his inner life which is normally so chaotic.

Now at all times in the history of humanity it was an accepted practice to prepare selected individuals for Initiation. This practice was interrupted to some extent during the epoch of extreme materialism, i.e. between the fifteenth century and today. During these centuries the real significance of Initiation was forgotten. Men hoped to satisfy their quest for knowledge without Initiation and so they gradually came to believe that only the physical world was their proper field of enquiry. But what is the physical world in reality? We shall not come to terms with it if we consider only its physical aspect. We only understand the physical world when we are able to apprehend the spirit that informs it. Mankind must recover this knowledge once again, for today we stand at the crossroads. The world presents a picture of disruption and increasing chaos. Yet we know that amidst this chaos, this welter of dark, obscuring passions that threaten to destroy everything, the intuitives are aware of the presence of spiritual powers who are actively striving to awaken in man a new spirituality. And preparation for Anthroposophy consists fundamentally in listening to this voice of the spirit that can still be heard amid the clamour of our materialistic age.

I said that in all ages men endeavoured to develop the human organization in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual world. Conditions varied according to the epoch. When we look back to ancient Chaldean times, or to the epoch of Brunetto Latini, we find that men were more loosely linked with their physical and etheric bodies than is the case today when we are firmly anchored in those bodies. And this is to be expected; it is the inevitable consequence of our education today. After all, how can we expect to communicate with spiritual beings when we are compelled in many cases to learn to read and write before the change of teeth? Angels and spiritual beings cannot read or write. Reading and writing have been developed in the course of human evolution in response to physical conditions. And if our whole being is orientated towards purely scientific investigation we shall obviously have difficulty in withdrawing from our physical and etheric bodies.

Our present age finds a certain satisfaction in ordering our entire cultural life in such a way that we cannot have any possibility of spiritual experience when we are separated from our physical and etheric bodies. I have no wish to inveigh against our contemporary culture, nor do I wish to criticize it. It is the inevitable expression of the epoch. I shall discuss the implications later; meanwhile we must accept things as they are.

In ancient times the astral body and Ego, even in waking consciousness, were much more loosely associated with the physical and etheric bodies than they are today. The Initiates, too, were dependent upon this loose association of the bodies that was natural to them. Indeed, in the remote past, nearly everyone could be initiated into the Mysteries. But it was only in the far distant times of the primordial Indian and old Persian cultures that everybody could be raised above his human station.

Then, in later epochs, the selection of candidates for Initiation was limited to those who had little difficulty in withdrawing from their physical and etheric bodies—men whose astral body and Ego enjoyed a relatively high degree of independence. Certain conditions were a prerequisite for Initiation. This in no way prevented every effort being made to bring the aspirant to the highest stage of Initiation commensurate with his potentialities. But beyond a certain point success depended upon whether the aspirant could attain to independence in his astral body and Ego easily or only with difficulty. And this was determined by his makeup and natural disposition. Since man is born into the world, he is inevitably dependent upon the world to a certain extent between birth and death.

The question now arises whether man today is subject to similar limitations when embarking on Initiation. To a certain extent that is so. Since I wish to give a full and clear account in these lectures of the true and false paths leading to the spiritual world, I should like to point out the difficulties in the way of Initiation today.

The man of ancient times was more dependent upon his natural endowments when he became an Initiate. Modern man also can be brought to the threshold of Initiation, in fact, through appropriate psychic training he can so fashion his astral body and Ego-organization that he is able to develop spiritual vision and perceive the spiritual world. But in order to complete and perfect this vision he is still dependent today on something else, something of extreme subtlety and delicacy. I must ask you not to come to any final conclusions about what I shall say today until you are familiar with the content of my next lectures. I can only proceed step by step.

In Initiation today man is dependent to a certain extent on age. Let us take the case of a man who is thirty-seven when he begins his Initiation and has good expectations of life. He begins to practise meditation, concentration or some other spiritual exercises, either under guidance, or independently, in accordance with some instruction manual. As a result of repeated meditation on some theme, he acquires, first of all, the capacity to look back over his life on Earth. His earthly life appears before his inward eye in the form of a uniform tableau. Just as in normal three dimensional vision objects are situated in Space—the front two rows of chairs and their occupants here, over there a table and behind it a wall; we see the whole in perspective in simultaneity—so at a certain level of Initiation we see into Time. One has the impression that the passage of Time is spatial. Now we see ourselves at the age of thirty-seven. We had certain experiences at thirty-six, at thirty-five and so on, back to the time of our birth. In retrospect we see a uniform tableau before us.

Now let us assume that at a certain stage of Initiation a man reviews his life in retrospect. At thirty-seven he will be able to look back into the period from birth to the age of seven approximately, the time of the change of teeth.

Then he will be able to look back into the period between the ages of seven and fourteen, up to the age of puberty. And then he is able to look back into the period between fourteen and twenty-one and the rest of his life up to his thirty-seventh year. He can survey the panorama of his life in spatiotemporal perspective, so to speak. If he can add to this perception the consciousness born of the emptied waking consciousness, a certain power of vision flashes through him. He acquires insight, but his insight assumes widely different forms. The experiences from birth to the age of seven, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and those of later years evoke different responses in him. Each life-period responds in its own way; each period has its own power of vision.

Now let us consider the man of sixty-three or sixty-four. He is able to look back over the later periods of his life. The period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two appears relatively uniform. Then follows further differentiation. There are significant differences in his perceptions between the ages forty-two to forty-nine, forty-nine to fifty-six, fifty-six to sixty-three. All these periods are an integral part of his make-up. They represent the spiritual aspects of his life on Earth. If he develops this inward vision, he sees that his different insights are dependent upon the level of his being at a particular age. The first seven years of childhood awaken in him a different insight from that of the years between seven and fourteen. In the period of adolescence, from fourteen to twenty-one, it is again different; the years between twenty-one and forty-two bring further differentiation, to be followed in its turn by the somewhat differentiated powers of insight that belong to the later periods of life.

Let us assume that we have acquired the capacity to have memory-pictures of our life experiences and, in addition, have attained the insight derived from the emptied consciousness which has obliterated the memory-pictures. The forces of Inspiration now become operative, so that we no longer survey our life-periods through the physical eye, but through the spiritual eye, the new organ of vision. Through Inspiration we have reached a point when we no longer conjure up pictures of our life-periods with their separate happenings, but perceive them through spiritual eyes and ears. At one time we see clairvoyantly the life-period between seven and fourteen, at another clairaudiently the period between forty-nine and fifty-six, just as formerly we heard and perceived in the external world when we used our eyes and ears. In the world of Inspiration we make use of the power derived from the period between the ages of seven and fourteen and from the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. In this world the life periods become differentiated organs of cognition. Thus we are, to a certain extent, dependent upon our age for the range of our vision. At thirty-seven we are perfectly capable of speaking from first-hand experience of Initiation, but at the age of sixty-three we would speak with deeper knowledge, because, at that age, we have developed other organs. The life-periods create organs. Now let us assume that we propose to describe personalities such as Brunetto Latini or Alanus ab Insulis, not from information derived from books, but from clairvoyant knowledge. (These examples will be familiar to you because we have already spoken of them in the last few days.) If we try to describe them when we have reached the age of thirty-seven, we discover that we are in touch with them spiritually in the awakened consciousness of sleep. We can converse with them, metaphorically speaking, as we do with our fellowmen. And the strange thing is that when they discuss spiritual matters with others, they can only speak with them from their present level of wisdom and inner spirituality. Then we realize how very much we can learn from them. We must listen to them and accept in good faith what they have to teach.

Now you will realize that it is no light matter to stand in the presence of a personality such as Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. But if we have made the necessary preparations we shall be able to determine whether we are victims of a dream delusion or in the presence of a spiritual reality. It is possible therefore to evaluate the communications we receive.

Suppose, then, at the age of thirty-seven we were to converse with Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. This should not be taken literally, of course. He would talk to us of many things; then, perhaps, we should like to have more precise, more detailed information. Thereupon he would say: ‘in that case we must retrace our steps from the present, the twentieth century, back through the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, to the century in which I lived when I was Dante's teacher. If you wish to accompany me along this path you must wait until you are a little older, until you have a few more years behind you. Then I can tell you everything and satisfy your thirst for knowledge. You can become a high Initiate, but, in reality, you cannot accompany me along this path into the past by spiritual volition alone.’—For this to be possible you must have grown older. If you wish to make certain of returning without hindrance to the spiritual world with the person in question, you must have passed your forty-second year at least and have reached the age of sixty.

These things will show you the deeper aspects of man's being and the significant part they play in youth and age. Only when we draw attention to these things are we in a position to understand why some die young and others live to a ripe age in their different incarnations. I shall have more to say about this later.

We have seen how man, as he develops, progressively deepens and extends his perception of the spiritual world. I have shown how his relationship with a being existing as a discarnate soul in the spiritual world, such as Brunetto Latini, changes with the conditions of evolution, depending on whether he uses for spiritual perception the organs developed in youth or in age.

The panoramic survey of the world and its evolution that unfolds before the soul of man in this way can be extended to other fields. The question is: in what way can we enlarge human consciousness, human insight, and give it another direction? Today I will indicate one such direction and enter into further details in the following lectures.

In the normal consciousness of our earthly life we know only the Earth environment between birth and death. If there were an end to our chaotic dream life, if we were to have perception in a state of deep, dreamless sleep instead of normal consciousness, we should no longer experience a purely Earth environment around us. But we are, in effect, endowed with other conditions of perception and consciousness than the normal.

Let us now consider the following: our everyday consciousness is related to our immediate environment. Since we cannot see into the interior of the Earth our immediate environment is the sphere of normal consciousness. Everything else in the Cosmos, Sun, Moon and all the other stars shine into this sphere. Sun and Moon send down to Earth clearer indications of their presence in the Cosmos than the other heavenly bodies. Physicists would be astonished if they could experience in their own way—for they refuse to consider our approach—the prevailing conditions in the sphere of the Moon or the Sun. For the descriptions given in the text-books of astronomy, astrophysics and the like are wide of the mark. They offer only the vaguest indications. In ordinary life when we wish to make a person's acquaintance and later have an opportunity of speaking to him, we do not normally say: I have only a vague impression of this person; he must retreat to a distance where he is almost out of sight. Then I shall have a much clearer impression of him and will describe him.

The physicists of course have no choice; it is the result of necessity and they can only describe the stars when they are a long way off. But a transformed and enlarged consciousness lifts us into the world of stars. And the first thing we learn from this is to speak of these worlds of stars quite differently from the way in which we speak of them in ordinary life.

In normal consciousness we see ourselves standing here on Earth, and at night the Moon over against us in the heavens. In order to see differently, we must enter into another kind of consciousness and sometimes that takes a considerable time. When we have attained this consciousness and are able to perceive our experiences, all that we have lived through from birth to the age of seven, to the change of teeth, with the consciousness that is in touch with the dead, with a consciousness that has achieved Inspiration and so become inner power of vision, then we see a totally different world around us. The ordinary world grows dim and indefinite.

This other world is the Moon sphere. When we have attained to this new consciousness, we no longer see the Moon as a separate entity, we are actually living in the Moon sphere. The Moon's orbit traces the furthest limits of the Moon sphere. We know ourselves to be within the Moon sphere.

Now if a child of eight could be initiated and could review the first seven years of its life, it could live in the Moon sphere in this way. Indeed, a child would not have the slightest difficulty in entering into the Moon sphere because it has not yet been corrupted by the influences of later years.

Theoretically this is a possibility; but, of course, a child of eight cannot be initiated.

When we use the power derived from the first life-period, from birth to the age of seven, for spiritual vision, we are able to enter into this Moon sphere which is radically different nom the sphere perceived by ordinary consciousness. An analogy will help to illustrate my point.

In embryology today the biologist studies the development of the embryo from the earliest stages. At a certain stage in the development of the embryo a thickening of the membrane occurs at an eccentrically situated point on the external wall. Then encapsulation takes place and a kind of nucleus is formed. But whilst this is clearly visible under the microscope, we cannot say: this is nothing but the germ, the embryo, for the rest is also an integral part.

The same applies to the Moon and the other stars. What we see as the Moon is simply a kind of nucleus and the whole sphere belongs to the Moon. The Earth is within the Moon sphere. If the germ could rotate, this nucleus would also rotate. The Moon's orbit follows the boundaries of the Moon sphere.

The ancients who still knew something of these matters did not speak therefore of the Moon, but of the Moon sphere. The Moon, as we see it today, was to them only a point at the furthest boundary. Every day this point changes position and in the course of twenty-eight days traces for us the boundaries of the Moon sphere. When our inner experiences between birth and the seventh year become inspirational vision, we acquire the power to enter into the Moon sphere as our perception of the Earth is gradually lost.

When the experiences of the second life-period, between the change of teeth and puberty, are transformed into inspirational vision, we experience the Mercury sphere, the second sphere. We live together with the Earth in the Mercury sphere. The experiences of the Mercury sphere only become visible through the organ of vision that we can create for ourselves when we look back consciously and with clear perception into the experiences of our life on Earth between the ages of seven and fourteen. With the inspirational vision derived from the years between puberty and the age of twenty-one, we experience the Venus sphere. The ancients were not so ignorant as we imagine; with their dreamlike knowledge they knew a great deal about these things and they endowed the planetary system that we experience after the years of puberty with a name associated with sexual awareness which begins at this period.

Then when we look back consciously on our experiences between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, we know that we are within the Sun sphere.

When the separate life-periods are transformed into organs of the inner life, they endow us with the power to enlarge step by step our cosmic consciousness.

It would be untrue to say that we cannot know anything of the Sun sphere before our forty-second year. We can learn about it from the Mercury beings for they are fully acquainted with it. But in that event our experience comes to us indirectly, through super-sensible teaching. Now in order to have direct experience in the Sun sphere in our own consciousness, in order to be able to enter into it, we must not only have lived in the period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, but we must have passed our forty-second year, we must be able to look back over the past, for only in the retrospective survey are the mysteries revealed.

And again, when we are able to look back upon our life up to the forty-ninth year, the mysteries of Mars are revealed. If we can look back upon our life up to the age of fifty-six, the Jupiter mysteries are revealed. And the deeply veiled, but extraordinarily illuminating mysteries of Saturn—mysteries which, as we shall see in the following lectures, veil the profound secrets of the Cosmos—are revealed when we look back upon the events and happenings between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years.

Thus you will realize that man is in fact a microcosm. He is related to those things that he never perceives in normal consciousness. But he would be unable to fashion, or to order his life, if the Moon forces were not active within him from birth to his seventh year. He perceives later on the nature of their influence. He would not be able to re-create his experiences between the ages of seven and fourteen, if the Mercury mysteries were not active within him; nor would he be able to re-create his experiences of the years between fourteen and twenty-one—the period when powerful creative forces pour into him, if he is karmically predisposed to receive them—if he were not inwardly related to the Venus sphere. And if he were not united with the Sun sphere, he would not be able to develop ripe understanding and experience of the world between the ages of twenty and forty-two, the period when we pass from early manhood to maturity. In ancient times the system was not very different: the craftsman served his apprenticeship until he reached the age of twenty-one, then he became “travelling man” and ultimately “master.” Thus, all man's inner development between his twenty-first and forty-second years is related to the Sun sphere. And all his experiences during his declining years between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three can be attributed to the influences of the Saturn sphere.

Together with the Earth we exist within seven interpenetrating spheres, and in the course of our life we grow into them and are related to them. The original pattern of our life between birth and death undergoes a metamorphosis through the influence of the starry spheres which mould us from birth to death. When we have reached the Saturn sphere, we have passed through all that the Beings of the planetary spheres can of their bounty accomplish for us. Then, in the occult sense, we embark upon a free and independent cosmic existence which looks back upon the planetary life from the standpoint of Initiation, an existence that in certain respects is no longer subject to the compulsions of earlier life-periods. However, I shall speak further on these matters in the following lectures.

In the last lecture we saw how man learns to command his different life-periods and to review them with spiritual vision. He thus attains to Inspiration through which he can raise his consciousness step by step to full communion with the world of stars. This world must be understood, of course, as an expression, a revelation, of purely spiritual beings and purely spiritual facts.

In order to open the doors to the spiritual world and to undertake investigations into that world, strenuous efforts must be made to develop the necessary states of consciousness and the necessary psychic condition. We should not harbour the illusion that we can achieve spiritual insight through the instrument of normal consciousness.

A few specific examples will serve to illustrate my point. Before indicating the potential sources of error in spiritual investigations, I should like to make the following introductory remarks.

When a person undertakes serious spiritual training which unlocks the doors to the spiritual world and enables him to perceive—and if I may use the expression—to hold converse with the spiritual world, he realizes that the historical evolution of mankind shows wide differentiations, notable differences of spiritual background.

Our present epoch which we may call the Michael epoch for reasons which I shall indicate later, begins in the last third of the nineteenth century, in the eighteen-seventies approximately. This epoch was preceded by an epoch that lasted for three or four centuries. To those with spiritual knowledge this earlier epoch was totally different in character. This epoch, in its turn, was preceded by another, again of an entirely different nature. When, therefore, with Initiation-knowledge we look back into the past, we find that particular epochs evoke totally different impressions. I have no wish to describe these impressions in the abstract; I should like to illustrate them by concrete examples.

In the course of these lectures I have spoken of personalities who played their various rôles in the evolution of humanity. I have mentioned, for example, Brunetto Latini, the famous teacher of Dante, the teachers of the School of Chartres, Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and Joachim of Fiore. And I could speak of hundreds of other personalities of the ninth to the twelfth centuries and even of the thirteenth century. Each of these personalities was characteristic of his epoch.

When a person who wishes to investigate the history of mankind from the standpoint of Spiritual Science studies, for example, the epoch of Dante or Giotto, i.e. the pre-Renaissance epoch, he feels that it is imperative to consort in the spiritual world with human beings, with discarnate human souls; he must meet face to face, metaphorically speaking, the human souls living between death and rebirth. In Initiation-knowledge we have a definite feeling that our spiritual relationship to an individuality such as Brunetto Latini must be as personal as our relationship to our fellowmen in the physical world. I have tried to suggest this in the descriptions I have already given. Therefore in speaking of Joachim of Fiore and Brunetto Latini I depicted this epoch in such a way that it was evident that I felt the need to give my characterization as far as possible a personal touch.

In the following epoch which extends to the last third of the nineteenth century, the situation is quite different. In this epoch there is much less need for the Initiate to enter personally or individually into relationship with the discarnate souls we wish to contact. We would prefer to see them in their total environment; we do not feel the need to approach them directly, but rather to make contact with them in some way through earthly knowledge, through ordinary consciousness.

You will forgive me if, at this point, I introduce something from direct personal experience. In this case, the personal experience is entirely objective. The epoch preceding our own was the age of Goethe and for decades I was engaged in the study of his works. I particularly wanted to approach Goethe in the first place through his scientific writings and through natural science in general. Only in later years did the need arise to have direct contact with him as a spiritual being in the spiritual world. But it was first necessary to experience him after his death in his total relationship to the Cosmos as a stellar being, so to speak, not as an individual personality. On the other hand, when we wish to make spiritual contact with a personality such as Brunetto Latini, or with those who were concerned with the study of nature in that epoch, we feel an immediate need to exchange ideas and opinions with them personally, in intimate spiritual communion.

This is a very important distinction and is connected with the fact that the inner spiritual character of the two epochs is totally different. Today we are living in an age when man, indeed the whole of humanity, has a unique opportunity of apprehending spiritual truths directly, an age when Initiation Science becomes common property. This epoch which has only just begun must not be permitted to run its course without a spiritual recognition on the part of the cultured classes of the major facts which are accessible to them, not mundane, physico-sensible facts, but spiritual facts. From now on our epoch must energetically pursue a spiritual science that is directly associated with the spiritual world, otherwise mankind will not be able to fulfil its appointed task. We must enter more and more into a spiritual epoch.

In the preceding epoch other forces exercised a predominant influence in human evolution. And when we speak from the standpoint of genuine stellar knowledge we are able to say: in the epoch upon which we entered in the seventies of last century, it is above all the spiritual forces emanating from the Sun which must exercise a major influence in everything in the psychic and physical life, in science, religion and art. In our epoch the influence and activity of the Sun forces must become progressively more widespread.

For those with real knowledge the Sun is not the globe of gas described by modern physics, but an aggregate of spiritual beings. And the most important spiritual beings, who radiate the spiritual, as the sunlight radiates physically and etherically, are grouped round a Being who, in accordance with ancient Christian-Pagan or Christian-Judaic terminology, may be designated as the Michael being. Michael works from the Sun. The spiritual influences from the Sun can also be called the influences of Michael and his hosts.

In the epoch preceding our own it was not the Sun forces, but the Moon forces which were the driving forces behind man's life, activity and search for knowledge. The Moon forces were the driving forces behind the epoch which ended in the eighteen-seventies after lasting for three or four centuries.

In this epoch the leading beings who influenced the evolution of Earth and man were grouped round a Being called Gabriel, to adopt the ancient terminology. We could equally well choose another name—the terminology is of minor importance—but it would be best to keep to the name Gabriel, in accordance with the Christian-Judaic tradition.

Thus, in the way I have indicated, we are made aware of the spiritual activity in man that is derived from the world of stars. If, through Initiation-knowledge, we ascertain what works in man from birth to the change of teeth, we gain insight into the activities of the Moon in the Cosmos, in other words, through the inspired retrospective survey of the first years of childhood, we acquire knowledge of the Gabriel epoch when the Moon influences are particularly active.

On the other hand, in order to perceive the peculiar characteristics of an epoch such as our own, we must be more mature, have reached the forties and be able to look back upon the formative forces within us between our twentieth and fortieth years, or more precisely, between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two. Consequently, in the epoch preceding our own it was the very young children who played a decisive rôle in the cosmic direction of the world. The forces of the Gabriel epoch were already foreshadowed in the impulses operative in early childhood. In our epoch it is the men in their twenties or thirties who are destined to receive the impulses from the Sun forces; it is the adults who have a vitally important part to play in the cosmic guidance of the whole world.

These facts are the practical consequence of direct spiritual perception which I described to you the day before yesterday. They are not empty theories, but fruits of actual perception. You will realize, therefore, that for an understanding of the Gabriel epoch which preceded the present Michael age there was no particular need to encounter personally the discarnate souls of that epoch. One felt like a little child face to face with a grown-up, because one had to confront these souls with the inspired perception of the earliest years of childhood.

It is quite different when we are investigating the preceding epoch, the epoch of Alanus ab Insulis, Bernardus Silvestris, Joachim of Fiore, John of Hanville and Brunetto Latini. This age was dominated by forces which man acquires when he reviews in retrospect what is working within him in the period between the change of teeth and puberty. These are the Mercury forces. He experiences something of extraordinary significance when, starting from this life-period, he develops the corresponding organs for perception of the spiritual. Between the time of the change of teeth and puberty man is a child who is eager to learn, and when he perceives with the organ of this life-period, he experiences once again the child's enthusiasm. Hence he wishes to encounter personally those who belong to this epoch. And he does so with the knowledge born of Initiation. He would like to confront a personality such as Brunetto Latini just as a child of ten or twelve confronts his superior, his teacher or instructor.

When man possesses true Initiation-knowledge he is not unconscious of things of the phenomenal world. He is both an adult and a child eager for knowledge. He confronts Brunetto Latini on a footing of equality, yet with an intense eagerness to learn from him.

The Initiation-knowledge of the age back from the fifteenth to the eleventh century takes its particular colouring from this relationship. It is an age in which the main impulses for the Earth and humanity are given by Mercury.

The Being round whom everything revolved, the Being of special significance in this age, was known under the ancient name of Raphael. Raphael is Mercury in the age that preceded the Renaissance, the age of Dante and Giotto. We feel we would like to know personally precisely those who are little known to history, those whose names are not recorded.

When we are familiar with the teachings of Spiritual Science this epoch evokes in us a strange response. First, we are annoyed that the text-books have so little to say about Brunetto Latini or men such as Alanus ab Insulis; we should like to be given more historical facts. Then, as we extend our horizon, we are glad and thankful that orthodox history is silent. For the documentation of external history is only fragmentary. Imagine how our epoch would appear in the eyes of posterity if newspaper articles on the subsidiary branches of historical knowledge were held to be the sole valid testimony. We can only be thankful that we are not disturbed by the limited information given in encyclopaedias about these personalities. And with all the means at the disposal of the Anthroposophical Society today, we try to make spiritual contact with these men and report all that can be ascertained about them from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

In this context it is most important to be in touch with those personalities who were associated with nature knowledge in the Raphael epoch. A deeper knowledge of nature, a deeper understanding of medicine can be communicated through many a personality who, to clairvoyant perception, emerges out of the spiritual twilight of this age (from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries) and can inform us of the current conceptions of matter and of the current ideas of man's relationship to the whole Cosmos. When we look into this age with spiritual vision, we meet with many personalities who are unknown because their names have not been handed down to posterity, yet these personalities exist in reality. Many of these personalities appear before us and we say: there stands “Paracelsus major,” but we have no record of his name, whilst “Paracelsus minor” lived in a later age, in the Gabriel epoch, and had reminiscences of the nature wisdom of Paracelsus major, though no longer in the pure, sublime and spiritual form of Paracelsus major.

Then “Jacob Boehme minor” appears before us in the later Gabriel epoch. And again we say: This personality proclaimed sublime truths which he learned from various traditional teachings and which gave stimulus to his inspiration. When “Jacob Boehme major” who is not known to posterity and whose name is only mentioned occasionally, like those of Alanus ab Insulis and Brunetto Latini, appears before us, then for the first time we really understand “Jacob Boehme minor.” The Pre-Renaissance epoch, at the close of which the famous figures of Dante and Brunetto Latini, and the School of Chartres, stand out like solitary luminaries, whilst Scotus Erigena appears like some erratic boulder in their midst—this epoch contains something that can provide powerful spiritual stimulus. External, medieval history is shrouded in darkness, but this darkness conceals the presence of powerful personalities who can illumine the epoch of which I have just spoken.

When we enter into the Raphael epoch, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, [See note, below] then the figures of a Dante, a Giotto and especially those whose names are unknown to posterity, as well as the others I have mentioned, appear to stand out in bold relief. They make an immediate human impression upon us. Raphael himself, who was never incarnated in a physical body, remains more in the background, and other spiritual beings who permanently inhabit the spiritual world are less sharply defined in this epoch. It is the human beings, the deceased in particular, who stand out in bold relief.

[In a note book of Rudolf Steiner, under the date of 18th August, 1924 (“Morning lecture, Torquay”) the following entry was made in connection with the Archangel epochs:

1879	-	1510		Gabriel	Moon
1510	-	1190		Samael	Mars
1190	-	850		Raphael	Mercury
850	-	500		Zachariel	Jupiter
500	-	150		Anael	Venus
150	-	200		Oriphiel	Saturn

]

In the following Gabriel epoch we have the impression that even figures such as Goethe, Spencer, Lord Byron and Voltaire are leading a shadowy existence in the spiritual world. Through spiritual perception, on the other hand, we become aware of beings of signal grandeur who leave an impression of the superhuman, rather than the human. They exist today and the Moon sphere is their permanent abode, as the Earth is ours between birth and death. These impressive figures attract our attention, whilst the human souls recede more into the background. We learn from these figures that they were once united to the Earth as we human beings are today. Whilst human beings live in their physical bodies, these Moon beings formerly lived on Earth in subtle, ethereal bodies. And we realize that we are in the presence of beings who, in primordial times, were associated with humanity and were the spiritual Teachers of mankind on Earth. When their tasks on Earth were fulfilled, they withdrew to the Moon sphere and are no longer associated with the Earth today.

You know from my book Occult Science, that the Moon was once a cosmic body united with the Earth and later split off from the Earth. These beings accompanied the Moon after its separation and later became inhabitants of the Moon sphere. At the stage of knowledge, therefore, which enables us to be in touch with the dead immediately after their death, we enter a world where, because we still retain the earlier knowledge of normal consciousness, we are surrounded by the men whom we recognize today in normal waking consciousness to have been physical men on Earth; then, when we enter into this other consciousness, we learn to realize more and more that we are in the presence of spiritual beings who belong to the Moon sphere even as we belong to the Earth. They are omnipresent and take an interest in human affairs, but not from the physical point of view of men today.

Among these beings who were once the great Teachers of mankind and who no longer dwell on Earth, but—if we may use the expression—are inhabitants of the Moon sphere, are to be found beings of surpassing grandeur and of the highest spiritual development, filled with inner, spiritual majesty. Very much can be learnt from them concerning the mysteries of the Cosmos. Their knowledge far transcends the knowledge within reach of ordinary consciousness. But they cannot express this knowledge in abstract thoughts. When we draw near to them, we are met with the full tide of song; they express everything through poetry and artistic images. In their own way they delight and enchant us with sublime harmonies unknown to Homer and the ancient Indian epics. But deep wisdom lies in all that these beings conjure up before us.

There are however less perfect beings amongst them. Just as on Earth there are pleasant or unpleasant characters, so amongst these other beings can be found those who have not attained the majesty and perfection of their companions. None the less, they have reached a certain stage of perfection because they became their pupils and disciples and so were able to leave the Earth sphere to live and continue working in the Moon sphere. When, to use a trivial expression, we contact these beings, we are immediately aware that they have a burning interest in earthly affairs, but their interest is of a wholly different kind.

You must not imagine these beings to be unsympathetic, rather uninviting figures. Although, compared with their companions, they are imperfect, they far transcend the level of distinction, cleverness and insight that contemporary man can attain with normal consciousness. At all times they share the habits of their companions; but they have different habits and tendencies from those of the ordinary man today.

I should now like to enter into the details of a matter of some importance. When we enter into relationship with such beings, we naturally feel the need to exchange opinions, to confer with them about one thing or another—these expressions are, of necessity, somewhat trivial. Let us assume, to take a concrete example, we are conferring with these beings about writing, the written works of men. One man, we will suppose, has simply written down his name, the other has written his signature or monogram.

When we discuss these questions with these beings, they reply: you men are interested in what is of least importance—in the primary meaning of a word, in what “blacksmith” or “coiffeur,” for example, signify. It is far more interesting to observe the particular movements of the writer as these words are written down, how everyone writes differently—rapidly or laboriously, skilfully or clumsily, mechanically or artistically.—These beings pay close attention to man's particular behaviour-pattern when he is writing. This is what interests them.

And in the spiritual world of which I am now speaking, these beings also have their adherents—various kinds of spiritual entities who no longer live on Earth, and who rank sometimes below, sometimes above man. They give us no guidance on terminology or nomenclature, but advise on the pattern and form of writing which mankind has developed since these beings were on Earth. Writing, in our sense of the term, did not exist when these beings were on Earth.

In their intercourse with mankind they observed how writing gradually evolved. They were interested in the dexterous movements of the fingers and noted how the dexterity of the fingers was supplemented later on by the addition of a quill pen and later a fountain pen. They had little interest in what was committed to paper; they were wholly engrossed in the movements entailed.

An additional factor must now be taken into account—existing emanations still surviving from the Earth have been largely overlooked by mankind. They assume many forms: first of all, if I include amongst them what I have just described, the movements emanating from men. It is the movements emanating from the human being which can be discussed with these beings.

Now in the first place, this is something that does not lead to the real sphere of these beings, for at the time they lived on Earth writing did not yet exist. These beings are wildly ironical when they comment on the limited capacity of man today to understand his fluid emanations. These entities were very much aware of them, whilst modern man ignores them. Thus, m the epoch when these beings were on Earth the fluid emanations, the fluid emanations from the skin, were of vital importance. One learned to recognize one's fellow-man through his exhalations; this was later ignored.

The third thing to which these beings are specially receptive, is skin expiration, the aeriform element that emanates from man. All these emanations, as we shall learn later, may assume a semi-spiritual character. These beings are particularly receptive to these emanations that proceed from man—the solid element in writing, the watery element in skin evaporation, the aeriform element in skin expiration. One must remember that man breathes perpetually through his skin.

Fourthly, these beings are receptive to warmth emanations. All these things in so far as they exist on Earth have special significance for these Moon beings. Man is judged by the configuration of his movements in writing and by the particular nature of his emanations.

The next emanation is the ever-present light emanation. In every individual, not only the aura, but also the physical and etheric bodies radiate light. Under ordinary conditions these radiations are so dim as to be invisible, but their existence has recently been demonstrated by Moriz Benedikt in a specially constructed dark room. He showed that the physical body is surrounded by a subtle aura of red, yellow and blue light emanations which vary at different places round the body. Moriz Benedikt tells us how he demonstrated the coloured aura. He showed the left side of the body under normal conditions of light and the other side under conditions that revealed the aura. Everything depends upon establishing the proper experimental conditions.

The sixth emanation is the emanation of the chemical forces and is found only in rare and exceptional cases on Earth today. It is of course always present, but operates only in the rare cases when black magic is practised. When men become conscious of their chemical emanations and exploit them; black magic is being practised on Earth.

The seventh kind of emanation is the direct spiritual life emanation or vital radiation. The use of chemical emanations today invariably degenerates into black magic which is odious and evil. Whilst black magic is a force to be reckoned with, the life emanations are no less important. These Moon beings of whom I am speaking, can, for their part, always rely upon and work with the life emanations and use them for good. They are not black magicians, for black magicians are those who under certain conditions succumb to evil and perpetrate evil on Earth. But the Moon beings can only rely upon the life emanations at Full Moon, when they can dwell in the Sun's reflected light and are subject to its influences. We must learn to make creative use of what we receive from the spiritual world. The task of our age is to find living ideas, to develop living concepts, perceptions and feelings and not to invoke dead theories. And these are directly inspired by the beings who are united with the Being whom we call Michael.

In the previous Gabriel epoch mankind was more attracted to the material world. Men were unwilling to seek contact with the beings who, under certain circumstances, are closely related to man, because these beings were concerned with something rather alien to that epoch, namely, the occult emanations that proceed from human beings.

Adjoining the physical world that we inhabit between birth and death is a spiritual world, where we are in touch with the dead in the manner already described. But this world has many other aspects, amongst them the virtue of those forces that live in the emanations of man. In a certain sense this is a highly dangerous region of the Cosmos, and as I have often mentioned in these lectures, we must have psychic and spiritual balance and control in order to ensure that all that proceeds from these Moon beings may become a force for good and not for evil.

Indeed, all the forces and impulses of the present epoch must hasten to turn to account the life emanations on Earth. But it is so fatally easy to fall victim to that which lies between this life emanation and all the other emanations we should be only too happy to possess—to fall victim to black magic. Men would so much like to make visible what is expressed in movements—I shall speak of this later—what is present in the fluid emanation, in the light emanation. All this is related to a certain extent to the forces for good and can only make for goodness, because the Michael age is dawning amongst men. Between all this lies black magic that must be resisted if we are to pursue the right methods of spiritual investigation.

1. Movements emanating from men.
2. Skin emanations of the fluid element.
3. Skin emanations of the air element.
4. Warmth emanation.
5. Light emanation.
6. Emanation of chemical forces (black magic).
7. Life emanation.

Now when this intercourse takes place in the spiritual world between human beings on Earth and the Moon beings—and it is continually taking place in the realm of the subconscious—then the interest which certain Moon beings develop in the movements of writing and drawing, and which is revealed clairvoyantly, may also find an echo in certain elementary beings of the spiritual world. Elementary beings are of a lower order than Moon beings. They never incarnate on Earth, but live in the adjacent world as spiritual-etheric beings. Their interest in the world of man may have the following consequence.—From observation we are aware that the thoughts which a human being communicates through writing react upon his whole being. They first present in his Ego, are then transmitted to the astral body which executes its movements exactly as the Ego determines. Next they work into the etheric body and down into the physical body. Certain elementary beings observe these effects and long to react in the same way. This is not possible, because the laws obtaining in their world are different from those of the world in which writing is practised. Writing is the prerogative of the physical world of man on Earth.

But the following situation can arise. Certain types of people, when they write or think or even feel, are firmly anchored in their etheric body; the whole etheric body is involved in the process, which then impresses itself strongly in the physical body. In the case of these types of people the Ego is suppressed and their astral, etheric and physical bodies produce a facsimile of writing and drawing. These types are mediums.

Because their Ego is suppressed such mediums take up into themselves these malleable elementary beings of the spiritual world who have learned the movements of writing from the Moon beings. Then these mediums proceed to execute the movements of writing, not in full Ego-consciousness, but under the influence of the elementary beings that control them. Mediumistic writing and drawing and the usual mediumistic phenomena are brought about through the emanations of the medium in a state of diminished consciousness. These emanations are utilized by the control.

The second kind of emanation can be used by certain beings who, under the influence of the Moon beings, readily assimilate the artistic talents of man. These beings also enter into those human beings who have damped down their surface consciousness and who have a certain artistic impetus in their etheric and astral bodies which can be canalized into the emanations. Under certain conditions it is highly interesting to observe how this type of human being can become possessed by elementary-spiritual beings and how these emanations are invaded by seemingly phantom forms that are in part a composite of man's perception of his life experiences which has slipped down into his etheric and astral bodies and which appears in the emanations; and in part, communications from the world inhabited solely by the elementary beings who have entered into him.

Now similar results were obtained from the experiments of Schrenk-Notzing. The subjects of his experiments were certain mediumistic types, negative psychics, who, in a state of diminished consciousness, when the Ego had been suppressed, were ideal material for elementary beings by virtue of their fluid skin emanations. There is an interesting book on the subject by Schrenk-Notzing. Some condemned it as fraudulent, others gave it high praise. It is not surprising that the latter regarded his findings as extraordinary; for it is extraordinary that, when experiments are made with a medium, ectoplasm issues from a certain part of the body, a form that embodies a spiritual element not to be found on Earth. In many cases there is found associated with the form a picture which the medium recently saw in an illustrated paper. Something streams out of the medium. It is the skin emanation. And into this there streams something wholly spiritual; but associated with this was something that the medium recently saw in an illustrated paper or comic journal, for example, a portrait of Poincaré.

It need not surprise us that people are amazed at such things. But we are indeed most surprised that fashionable people, people of good taste, and even ladies, who would be most unwilling to speak about skin exudations or to discuss psychic materialisations, nevertheless feel an inordinate desire to watch the medium who materializes these ectoplasmic forms out of nothing but ordinary sweat.

The phenomena in Schrenk-Notzing's experiments are simply exudations which materialize through the skin emanations an ectoplasmic form that is activated by the elementary beings.

In the same way the skin emanations, i.e. the air formations issuing from the medium, can be stimulated by certain elementary beings. But these skin emanations are so closely associated with the particular human form and man impresses his own human form so strongly upon them, that for the most part these beings cannot do much more than create a phantom of the man himself. We then witness those phenomena where the phantom issues from the medium.

It is not so easy to produce warmth and light emanations from the human being so that the medium manifests something, i.e. the visible phantom, that can be acted upon by these elementary beings under the influence of Moon beings. Certain preliminary steps must first be undertaken.

As I have already indicated, natural science has recently developed a technique which can demonstrate in a dark room certain light radiations and warmth emanations. In this respect the experiments of Moriz Benedikt are most illuminating. But it has always been the case, and it is still true today, that only those can utilize effectively warmth and light emanations who undertake the preliminary steps which not only involve manipulating the physical world through black magic, but also include the production of hallucinogenic effects by means of special incense-burning and aromas, and the preparation of specific concoctions, and so forth. This is the origin of all those magical practices which are fully described in the old books of magic.

The purpose of these magical ceremonies is to evoke the forces inherent in the light and warmth emanations of man. In the writings of Eliphas Levi and also in those of Encausse who wrote under the name of Papus you can find highly questionable and dangerous instructions on this subject but we cannot afford to ignore them since we must speak about the objective aspect, the true nature, of these things.

All these things lead directly to black magic which makes use of the spiritual concealed within the earthly element. What is this spiritual element? You will find in my book Occult Science—an Outline that at one time the Moon was united with the Earth. Many forces belonging to the Moon were left behind on Earth and are now diffused through minerals, plants and animals. And these Moon forces are still to be found there. When therefore, we, as terrestrial beings, make use of Moon forces which do not normally belong to minerals, plants, animals and man, we trespass into the realm where we meet with elementary beings who have learned much from the Moon beings, but in a way that is foreign to our world. The black magician, therefore, employs Moon forces that still exist on Earth. But because he works in this way he contacts elementary beings who, as it were, watch—as one watches a game of halma or chess—the right and proper relationships between human beings and Moon beings and so learn to draw very near to the physical world, to peer into the physical world or even to set foot in it. But the normal human being in whom all this remains in the subconscious has no contact with these beings. The black magician, however, who works with the Moon forces, who has captured them in his retorts and crucibles is caught in a vortex of those elementary beings.

Even an honest and upright man can learn from these black magicians. In Faust, Part I, Goethe portrayed a condition where man is the centre of whirling forces, a condition that is dangerously near to black magic. By exploiting these forces man enters into the region where entities in the service of the Moon beings are ready to associate with human beings. Thus centres of black magic arise where Moon forces cooperate with spirits who have entered directly into their service, a service that makes for evil. And because many activities of this kind have been practised in recent centuries, a dangerous atmosphere has been created in the Earth. This dangerous atmosphere is undeniably there and is transfused with multitudinous forces that are born of a union of human activities with Moon elements and of dynamic Moon forces with elementary beings in the service of illicit Moon forces. It is this region that is actively opposed to all that is destined to proceed from the Sun region in the Michael age. And this must be taken into special consideration in relation to the life emanation in the sphere of the soul and spirit.

From this point we will pursue our enquiries further tomorrow.

1. Emanations from human beings-mediumistic power
2. Skin emanations of the fluid element-materialization
3. Skin emanation-manifestation of the phantom
4. Warmth emanation
5. Light emanation
6. Emanation of chemical forces (black magic)
7. Life emanation
   Michael—Sun
   Gabriel—Moon
   Raphael—Mercury
   

When we develop the levels of consciousness of which I have already spoken, then each particular level opens the door to a specific cosmic sphere. I propose to describe in outline the relationship between the nature of man's perception and the different spheres to which we can attain by developing the appropriate conditions of consciousness. Of course I can only depict these spheres as contiguous, although, in reality, they interpenetrate. (drawing on blackboard). I have already shown how the Moon and Mercury spheres permeate our own sphere.

Let us suppose we develop the level of consciousness which enables us to be in touch with the dead in the years immediately after their death. This world borders on our world.

The next level of consciousness by means of which we penetrate further into the life of the deceased after he has retraced his earthly life (in kamaloka) in reverse order is that which I have called the emptied consciousness, but a waking consciousness in relation to the physical world. We then enter into a wider realm where we are intimately associated with the Mercury beings, with the events and occurrences characteristic of the sphere of Raphael. Here we become aware especially of the healing forces inherent in human nature.

Thus with each state of consciousness we enter into a specific region of the universe and so we learn to know the beings who belong to these regions at any particular time. If we wish to inform ourselves of the conditions under which men live immediately after death, we must develop the appropriate consciousness in order to enter the world in which they dwell. Their true form is only revealed to us in the world to which they belong. If we wish to observe the Mercury beings we must share the consciousness of their world. Thus we can take it for granted that these worlds are, in a certain sense, insulated from each other and that each world has its specific condition of consciousness. Indeed, if we would understand the universe aright, this is a prerequisite, for only in this way can we prepare ourselves to know these beings in their true character. I propose to show you by means of a simple example in what direction such knowledge leads—a knowledge that seeks to develop in the right way the state of consciousness appropriate to a particular cosmic sphere.

Let us assume we have before us a plant with its leaves and flowers. We have already learned that a plant is the reflected image of the archetypal form existing in the spiritual world and which forms the plant-being on Earth. And when we gain knowledge of the plant kingdom by raising our consciousness into this world of archetypal forms something of vital importance is disclosed, namely, that w; must clearly differentiate between the kinds of plants found on Earth. When we examine a particular specimen, the cichorium intybus (chicory), for example, with the appropriate spiritual perception, its appearance is different from that of many others. Let us take as a typical example the common violet and compare it with belladonna, the deadly nightshade. When we study the plant kingdom in the way I have indicated, we shall find, when we participate in the world to which the violet belongs, that is, in the world of the emptied, waking consciousness, that the violet stands revealed in all its innocence to the eye of the spirit.

The deadly nightshade, belladonna, on the other hand, derives its being from other worlds. We understand the being of the common plant when we perceive that it possesses a physical and etheric body and that the flowers and fruit are surrounded by the universal cosmic element. We see the organic life of the plant sprouting everywhere out of the Earth, the etheric body around it and the astral element seemingly enveloped in cloud. Such is the nature of plants like the violet. Plants like the deadly nightshade have a different arrangement. The belladonna develops its bell-shaped flowers inside which the fruit is formed and the astral element penetrates into the fruit. The violet develops its capsule only in the etheric element. The fruit of the deadly nightshade assimilates the astral element and in consequence the plant is poisonous. All plants which in any of their parts assimilate astrality from out of the Cosmos are poisonous. Those forces which enter into the animal, provide it with an astral body and fashion it inwardly into a sentient being, are also the source of the toxic element in plants.

This is most interesting. We find that our astral body is the bearer of forces which prove to be poisonous when assimilated by plants. This is how we must think of poison. We can only acquire an inner understanding of poison when we realize that man's astral body contains in effect the forces of all existing toxins, for they are an integral part of his being.

In this discussion I simply wish to present a clear-cut point of view which will be of service later in helping us to distinguish between true and false paths in spiritual investigation. What do we learn from the examples of the violet and belladonna? When we have developed the consciousness appropriate to the world of each plant we perceive that the violet is a being that remains within the world proper to it and attracts to itself nothing from a world that is alien to it. The deadly nightshade, on the other hand, attracts to itself something from an alien world; it assimilates something that is the prerogative of the animal kingdom and not the plant kingdom. This is true of all poisonous plants. They assimilate something which should not belong to the being of the plant, but which belongs in reality to the animal kingdom.

Now in the Cosmos there are many beings belonging to different regions. In the region where we meet with the dead and can follow them for ten, twenty or thirty years after their death until they leave this region, are to be found a number of beings who are undoubtedly real, but who, unperceived by men, enter into our physical world. Perhaps I can best describe them as a particular kind of elementary being. When, therefore, we follow the dead after they have passed through the gates of death, we enter into a world inhabited by all kinds of elementary beings who are endowed with form and who really belong to that world. We may say therefore that, since these beings appertain to that world, they ought in reality to utilize only the forces pertaining to it. Now amongst these elementary beings will be found some who do not confine their activities to their own world, but who observe men when they write, for example, and who follow all the activities within the world of men between birth and death. We are permanently surrounded by such beings who are spectators of our activities.

Now this spectator rôle is not in itself harmful, for the essence of the entire plan underlying what I am now describing is that all the worlds which border on our own, the world we enter immediately after death, the world where we contact the dead many decades after death, all these worlds lack everything that man acquires through his association with the physical world. In this world of the dead there is, for example, neither writing nor reading; there are no aeroplanes, no motor cars or coaches-and-four as we know them.

We cannot say that here on Earth we construct motor cars, write, read and write books, in all of which Angels do not also participate. We cannot say that all these things have no significance for the Cosmos in general. The fact is that those beings which I have just described are ‘commissioned’ from the world immediately adjacent to our own. They have to keep an eye on the activities of man. From other worlds they are charged with the mission to concern themselves with human nature and to preserve what they learn in that field for future times.

As human beings we are able to carry over our karma from one life to the next and also the effects of external culture upon our karma. We can carry over from one earthly life to another our experiences associated with the motor car, but not the construction of the car itself. We cannot ourselves carry over from one life to the next that which is born of earthly forces alone. In the course of civilization, therefore, mankind has laid the foundations of something that would be lost to it if other beings had not come to its aid. Now the beings of whom I have spoken are ‘detailed’ for the task of preserving for the future that which man cannot carry over from one earthly life to another.

Since in past ages it has been most difficult for many of these beings to fulfil their tasks, much of what had been discovered in ancient times has again been lost to humanity. The salient point I am trying to establish is that we are surrounded by beings who, in accordance with the cosmic plan, have been charged with the mission to carry over into the future that which man himself is unable to transmit from one earthly life to another, especially the abstract content of our libraries, for example. The spiritual beings with whom man is in direct contact cannot do it and therefore we as human beings cannot do it either. These beings must enlist into their service others who had long been alien to them, who had experienced a totally different evolution from the spiritual beings associated with man. These beings with their different evolution I have called in my books, Ahrimanic beings. Despite their different evolution there are occasions when they come in contact with our own, when, for example, we build a motor car. They are beings who are able by virtue of their Ahrimanic cosmic forces to understand modern techniques such as the construction of a motor car. They transmit to future ages the technical achievements of civilization which man himself cannot carry over from one incarnation to the next.

With this information at our disposal we are now in a position to describe what a medium really is. We must of course distinguish between a medium in the widest sense and a medium in the literal sense of the word. Taking the term ‘medium’ in the widest sense, we are all mediums fundamentally. We are all beings of soul and spirit before we incarnate to live out our life between birth and death. Our spiritual essence is incarnated in the physical body. The physical body is an intermediary for the activities of the spirit. Taking the word ‘medium,’ then, in the widest sense, we can say that every being is to some extent a medium. This is not the meaning we attach to the term ‘a mediumistic type’ in the normal sense. In the world between birth and death a mediumistic person is one who has developed certain sectors of the brain in such a way that they can be isolated from his total being. Thus, at certain times, those parts of the brain which sustain the Ego-activity in particular, no longer serve as a basis for this Ego-activity.

When we say “I” to ourselves, when we are fully Ego-conscious, this consciousness is rooted in specific parts of the brain. These parts of the brain are insulated by the medium and, instead of the human Ego, certain entities of the class I have just described feel an urge to slip into these parts of the brain. Such a medium then becomes the vehicle of those beings whose real function is to transmit to the future the achievements of civilization. When these entities take possession of a brain from which, at certain times, the Ego is absent, they feel an overwhelming desire to establish themselves in this brain. And when a medium is in a trance condition, when the brain is insulated, an entity of this kind which is subject to Ahrimanic influences and whose function is to transmit the achievements of civilization to the future, slips into the brain. Instead of being the bearer of the human Ego, such a medium is, temporarily, the vehicle of an elementary being which is neglecting its duty in the Cosmos. I want you to take quite literally the expression: a being which is neglecting its duty in the Cosmos.

The duty of such a being is to observe how men write. Men write with the forces which are rooted in these parts of the brain of which I am speaking. Instead of merely observing, as is the normal practice, these beings are on the lookout at all times for a mediumistic brain that can be insulated. Then they slip into it and introduce into the contemporary world what their observation has taught them of the art of writing. Thus, with the help of mediums they project into the present that which, in accordance with their mission, they ought to communicate to the future. Mediumism depends upon the fact that what is to become future capacities is already developed in the present in a vague and chaotic manner. This is the origin of the prophetic gift of the medium and the fascination he has for others. Indeed its operations are more perfect than those of man today, but it is introduced by beings in the manner already described.

Just as the belladonna mediates the astral world—acts as a medium for certain astral forces that it absorbs into its fruit—so a human being through his particular type of brain is a medium for these elementary beings who at some future time must participate in our civilization, because men cannot carry over everything from one earthly life to another. This is the real secret of mediumship—possession by a certain class of beings.

Now you may conclude that these beings are, on the one hand, actual creations of Ahrimanic beings. Ahrimanic beings exist in the Cosmos and possess an intelligence far superior to that of mankind. When we encounter the Ahrimanic beings in the world immediately adjacent to our own or, having attained insight, encounter them in the physical world as well, we are astonished at their vast, outstanding intelligence. Their intelligence ranges far beyond that of human kind. And we first learn to respect them when we realize how infinitely intelligent they are. Something of this intelligence passes over to their progeny, the elementary beings who slip into mediumistic brains, so that in this way significant information may be revealed by mediums. We may learn much of capital importance, especially if we attend to what they communicate in fully developed consciousness. When we rightly understand the nature and constitution of the spiritual world, we cannot deny that mediums are able to impart much authentic information. Though we may learn much of importance from them, this is not the right path to spiritual knowledge.

You will realize this from the example of plants which are plant mediums, mediums for certain astral forces which are responsible for the toxicity in plants. It is only through a rightly developed consciousness that we realize how this situation arose. I should like to describe this in the following way, for when discussing the spiritual world, it is better to provide a clear, concrete description than to deal in abstract concepts.

Let us assume that with Initiation-knowledge we enter into the world where the dead live in their life after death. When we accompany the dead in this way we first enter into a world totally different from our own. I have already described it to some extent and have pointed out that it gives an impression of far greater reality than the world in which we live between birth and death.

When we enter this world we are astonished at the remarkable beings to be found there, apart from the souls of the dead. The souls of those who have recently died are surrounded by strange demoniac forms. At the entrance to this intermediate world which the dead must enter and in which we can accompany them with a certain clairvoyant vision, we meet with demoniac figures with enormous webbed feet—enormous by earthly standards—like the duck or the wild duck species and other aquatic animals, huge webbed feet that are perpetually changing shape. These beings have a form somewhat similar to that of the kangaroo, but half bird, half mammal. And when we accompany the dead we pass through vast areas where such beings dwell.

If we ask ourselves where these beings are to be found, we must first have a clear idea of the location of such beings, of where we imagine them to exist. They are always around us, for we inhabit the same world as the dead, but you must not look for them in this hall. It is at this point that the path to real and exact investigation begins.

Suppose you are walking through a meadow where many plants of the species colchicum autumnale, the autumn crocus, are to be found. If, as you are standing amongst the autumn crocuses, you try to evoke the state of consciousness that is able to follow the dead, you will see, wherever an autumn crocus is growing, a being of the kind I have just described, with webbed feet and strange kangaroo-like body. Such a being emerges from every autumn crocus.

If you were to move on to another area where the belladonna, the black deadly nightshade, grows by the roadside and if you transpose yourself into the state of consciousness of which I have spoken, you will meet with totally different beings, horrible, demoniac beings who also belong to this world. Colchicum autumnale and belladonna therefore are mediums which permit beings of the next world to enter into them and which in their other aspect really belong to the world of the dead.

If we bear this in mind, we shall realize that everywhere around us is another world. It is essential that we should enter this world consciously, that we should perceive the colchicum autumnale and the belladonna not solely with the normal consciousness, but with the higher consciousness that is in touch with the dead.

Now consider the following. Here is a meadow, we will suppose, where the autumn crocuses are growing. In order to find the plants that bear the belladonna flowers you might have to travel far and climb a mountain-side. On the physical plane, belladonna and autumn crocus are not found together. But in the spiritual world they are found in close proximity. Space is of a different order. Objects that may be situated far apart in the physical world may be in close proximity in the spiritual world. The spiritual world has its own primordial laws; there everything is different.

Now suppose we meet with these plants in the world of the dead. When we are first in touch with the dead, we discover that these plants by no means evoke in them the horrible impression they evoke in us. They, the deceased, know that the presence of these demoniac beings is in accordance with a wise cosmic plan. When therefore we are in touch with the dead, we find that the intermediate world is populated with demoniac forms corresponding to the poisonous plants. If we then progress further towards the realms from which the dead withdraw after ten, twenty or thirty years in order to enter into a higher realm, we find the related forms of the non-poisonous plants. Thus the plant kingdom plays a significant part both in the physical and the next higher world. In the latter, however, it assumes different forms.

That which belongs in its true form to the world of the stars has its counterpart on Earth in the form of a belladonna, an autumn crocus or a violet. It has also its counterpart in the world of the dead where its true form is reflected in the manner already described. Everything in the one world reacts upon the other worlds. But in order to have real knowledge of these things we must enter consciously into the world where they really belong.

The same applies to the beings of these other worlds. We can only know what the elementary beings are, the progeny of the Ahrimanic powers, when we enter into the world immediately bordering on our own. Now these beings manifest through mediums. They take possession of the mediums and in this way temporarily enter our world. If we contact them through a human medium only, we learn to know them in a world that should really be foreign to them; we do not know them in their true form. Therefore those who learn to know them only by their manifestations through mediums cannot possibly arrive at the truth since these beings are manifesting in a world that is foreign to them. Spiritual revelations are undoubtedly transmitted, but it is impossible to understand them when they issue from a world to which they do not belong. The deceptive and highly hallucinative element in everything connected with mediumistic consciousness is explained by the fact that those who contact these beings have no understanding of their real nature.

Now because they enter the world in this way a unique destiny is reserved to these beings. The knowledge of the universe that I have described serves to enlarge our field of knowledge. When we enter the world of the dead and traverse the demoniac forest of colchicum autumn ale, digitalis purpurea (purple foxglove), datura stramonium (thorn-apple) and so on, we realize that violets will undergo a metamorphosis and in future will assume totally different forms. They have a significance for the future of the Cosmos. By its very nature the autumn crocus prepares the death for which it is destined. The poisonous plants are moribund plants, species that are dying out, with no possibility of future development. In future times they will be replaced by other poisonous species. The poisonous species of today are already dying out in our epoch. The epoch of course is of long duration, but these poisonous plants have the seeds of death within them. And this will be the fate of all vegetation. When we survey the world of vegetation with this spiritual vision we perceive forces of growth and development with a dynamic urge towards the future and a world that is dying and doomed to perish.

And so it is with the beings who take possession of the mediums. They detach themselves from their companions whose task is to carry over the present into a distant future. Through the agency of mediums they invade the world of the present, are there caught up in the destiny of the Earth and sacrifice their future mission. In this way they deprive man to a large extent of his future mission. And this is what faces us when we understand the real nature of mediumism, for mediumism implies that the future shall perish in order that the present may be all important. When therefore we attend a séance with insight into the real occult relationships and into the true nature of the Cosmos, we are at first astonished to find that the entire circle participating in a spiritistic manifestation is seemingly surrounded by poisonous plants. Every spiritualistic séance is surrounded in fact by a garden of poisonous plants which no longer bear the same aspect as in the kingdom of the dead, but which grow up around the spiritualist circle, and from their fruits and flowers demoniac beings are seen to emerge.

Such is the experience of the clairvoyant at a spiritualistic séance. For the most part he goes through a kind of cosmic thicket of poisonous plants that are activated from within and are part animal. Only by their forms do we recognize that they are poisonous plants. We learn from this how everything at work within this mediumistic form that ought to advance the course of human evolution and bear fruit in the future is relegated to the present where it does not belong. In the present, it works to the detriment of humanity.

Such is the inner mystery of mediumism, a mystery of which we shall learn more in the course of these lectures.

It is now possible to indicate precisely what aspect of mediumism presents a major problem to the constitution of man. In this context my account must of necessity appear somewhat abstract, but it will help you a little towards some understanding of the nature of mediumism.

Now the human brain lying in the cranial cavity has an average weight of 1500 grammes or a little more. That is really a considerable weight and if the human brain were to press with its own weight on the delicate veins at the base of the brain, they would immediately be crushed. However long we live, the weight of our brain never presses upon the network of veins beneath it. We understand this immediately if we interpret it in the right way. Let us take man as he is at present constituted. The spinal canal passes upwards and terminates in the brain. With the exception of certain portions, the spinal canal is filled with fluid and the brain floats in this fluid.

Now let us consider the law of Archimedes. You will be familiar with it from your study of physics. It is said that he discovered it in a flash of inspiration whilst he was in his bath. He made the following experiment: with his body wholly immersed in the bath he lifted first one leg and then the other out of the water. He noted that his legs had a different weight according to whether they were in the water or out of it. They lost weight when they were immersed in the water. For a man such as Archimedes this experience had wider implications. He discovered that when an object is wholly immersed in a fluid the apparent loss of weight is equal to the weight of water displaced.

A beaker filled with water is placed on a bench and a solid body suspended by a thread from the hook of a spring balance is lowered into the water. We find that the weight of the body is less in water than in air. When a solid body is immersed in a fluid it experiences an up-thrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. This is the law of Archimedes.

And this principle is of great benefit to man for the brain floats in the cerebral fluid; the apparent loss in weight of the brain is equal to the weight of the cerebral fluid displaced. Thus our brain does not weigh 1500 grammes. Its loss in weight is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced, that is, 1480 grammes, so that in accordance with the law of Archimedes its effective weight is only 20 grammes approximately.

In our brain organisation we have something that is much lighter than its real weight. Our brain weighs only 20 grammes, but we must treasure these 20 grammes for they alone can harbour our Ego.

Now our whole body contains all manner of solid constituents which also float in a fluid medium—the blood corpuscles, for example. They all suffer loss of weight and only a fraction of their weight remains. They also harbour the Ego. Thus the Ego is diffused in the blood that is not subject to gravity. In the course of our life we must carefully observe everything within us that has perceptible weight. We must pay the strictest attention to what is situated in the heavy part of the brain and which still possesses weight in the literal sense. For there and nowhere else our Ego may be situated—otherwise astral body, etheric body and so on, take over.

The medium is a human being in whom this solid part of his constitution, the 20 grammes brain, no longer contains the Ego. The Ego is expelled from those parts which still retain weight and then elementary beings can enter immediately.

A materialistic mode of thinking seeks to localize everything and wants to know in which part of the human being the elementary being is situated when it takes possession of the medium. This is the language of the materialistic mind that thinks mechanically and mathematically. Life, however, does not proceed mechanically or mathematically, but dynamically. We must not say, therefore, that the medium is possessed at some place or other that can be localized purely mathematically and geometrically. We must say: the medium is possessed in those parts of his constitution that possess weight or gravity, in the part that is attracted to the Earth. There the Ahrimanic beings can enter; and not only there, but also elsewhere. This description that I have presented to you gives only the crudest aspect of the matter. We have yet to discuss a more subtle aspect.

Now the eye is our organ of vision for the external world. The optic nerve, distributed in the eye, is connected with the brain and provides the basis for colour sensation. The materialist tries to explain how the optic nerve transmits the colour sensations to the brain and releases them there. He compares the whole process to the loading of a ship or a railway truck. Something is ‘loaded into’ the optic nerve from without and is transported by the nerves; it is then unloaded somewhere or other and then passes into the soul. The explanation is not quite as crude as this, but that is what it amounts to. The real explanation, however, is totally different.

The function of the optic nerve is not to convey the colour sensation backwards to the brain, but to insulate it at a certain point. The colour exists only at the periphery. The function of the optic nerve is to insulate the colour sensation the nearer it approaches the brain, so that the brain is virtually without colour sensations; only weak, faint colours reach the brain. And not only is colour sensation insulated, but also every kind of relationship to the external world. Hearing and sight are associated with the sense organs. In the proximate area of the brain the optic and auditory nerves and the nerves that register sensation of warmth reduce everything lying at the periphery to a dim impression. This bears the same relationship to the sensation as the 20 grammes to the 1500 grammes, for the 20 grammes give only a faint impression of the weight of the brain. This is all that remains to us. When we take in the magnificent spectacle of the dawn through our senses, the hind-brain registers only a faint shadow, a dim impression of it. We must pay heed to this dim shadow, for it is only there that our Ego can enter.

The moment our Ego is insulated and we manifest mediumistic powers, an elementary being slips into this faint shadow or into the feeble tones that proceed from the auditory sense. This being slips into the parts vacated by the Ego where the external sense-perception is obliterated, and takes possession of the medium. Then it enters into the ramifications of the nerves, into the will-organisation, that is to say, the nerves that govern the formation of the will. In consequence the medium begins to respond actively because that which should be under the control of the Ego has been taken over by the elementary being. All the subtle, shadowy elements, the residual weight of the brain, the remnants of the colour and auditory sensations, possess us like a phantom—for this 20 grammes weight is only a phantom and these feeble shadows of the colours that penetrate into our inner being are phantom-like. The elementary being enters into this phantom and then the medium grows so lethargic that his body becomes wholly passive and everything in the dim, phantom-like shadows that should really be permeated by the Ego—shadows that are normally tenanted by the Ego—now becomes active within him.

A human being can only be a medium when he permits his faculties which are at the service of the normal man to be inhibited by lethargy, by total inertia, and when the phantom that I have described becomes activated. We can observe this, for example, in the way the medium writes. The medium, of course, could not write unless everything within him were lighter as in the case of the brain, for everything possessed of weight floats in a fluid medium, gives a feeling, a sensation of lightness and so the elementary being writes in those areas which are not subject to gravity and where normally the Ego directs the pen. In the medium, then, it is the elementary being that takes over the direction of the pen in this human phantom.

There is no denying the fact that in all mediumistic phenomena we see the intrusion of another world. Just as the Ahrimanic beings of another world can enter into the movements performed by the medium, so too can they enter into the emanations which I described yesterday. Powerful fluid emanations are present notably in the glandular regions of the human organisation. These elementary beings penetrate not only into the fluid emanations but also into the breath emanations and light emanations. Only in the case of the chemical emanations is there conscious intercourse between the individual who makes use of these chemical emanations and the beings who enter into them. At this point black magic sets in—the conscious cooperation with these beings who enter in after the manner I have described.

Mediums and those who experiment with mediums are unaware of the real processes involved. The black magician, however, is fully conscious that he is invoking for his own purposes these beings of the elementary world into the chemical emanations of human beings, more especially into his own. Hence the black magician is perpetually surrounded by a host of subordinates consisting of these elementary beings, and he makes it possible for them to use the occult-chemical impulses in the phenomenal world, either through his own emanations, or through fumigations, perfumes from the burning of aromatic gums carried out in his laboratory.

Thus we learn that just as the belladonna trespasses into an alien world and so becomes toxic, so too through mediumship the spiritual world trespasses into the world we inhabit between birth and death. And fundamentally this danger is always present whenever the consciousness of man, i.e. his full Ego-consciousness, is suppressed, whenever he is in a stupefied, comatose condition or has actually suffered syncope. Whenever man's consciousness is damped down, not through sleep, but through some other factor, there is the danger that man will be exposed to the world of elementary beings. How far this plays a significant rôle in the life of man we shall discuss in the next lectures.