The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been considering the human being in relation to the cosmos. To people who do not know anything beyond the present-day way of looking at things it must seem rather absurd to hear of a link being made between the essential nature of the human being and the essential nature of the cosmos, and I am certain that the majority of people will consider this to be quite unscientific. Yet when we think of the spiritual streams of today there is an urgent need to draw attention to exactly the kind of thing we have been considering and to do so quite energetically. For these things may fairly be said to be entirely in line with modern thinking. The problem is, modern thinkers are rejecting them with great vehemence, which is doing untold harm to the life of mind and spirit.

To begin with, we’ll sum up what I have been presenting in recent lectures. We have been considering the human form as the outcome of something the causes of which must be looked for among the fixed stars, and particularly the constellations of the zodiac as their representatives. We found that to understand the human form we must first of all look to the zodiac; its twelve constellations make it possible for us to understand the human form in every detail.

To understand the levels of human life we must look to the planetary system for the elements which will enable us to do so.

We then moved on from understanding the levels of life to understanding the soul principle. There we had to go to the human being himself, to the form he has been given and to that which lives in him. We also looked at the thinking, feeling and will aspects of the inner life in relation to the human form and the levels of life. Yesterday we attempted to look for the element of mind and spirit in the inner life. With the soul principle we move from the cosmic periphery to life on earth as such—that is, if we consider the soul principle during life between birth and death. We are able to approach it by considering its true relationship to the human form and to human life.

Yesterday we found that the spirit, which human beings only experience in images, has to be looked for in the sphere of the soul. If I may put it like this, we are coming down to earth from heaven. To consider the human form we have to go as far as the fixed stars; to consider human life, we need to go to the sphere of the planets; to consider the human soul in its relationships between birth and death, we must first of all descend to earth. Thus the human being becomes a whole for us in his relationship to the cosmos.

Now if we really appreciate all this, we shall be able on the basis of it to draw the borderline between animal and human nature. The way it may be done is as follows. If we consider the principle which can be understood in relation to the zodiac and how it is in humans and in animals, a difference emerges. But to see the whole of it we need to consider how the zodiac, the planetary sphere and the earth, with everything presented in yesterday’s lecture, act on human beings and on animals. Outside the human being the physical world does not take the form it does in the human body. We find it in the forms of the mineral world, a world very different from the human physical body. This is because in the human being the physical principle is clothed in an etheric and an astral principle and in I nature, all of which change the physical principle, adapting it to suit their needs. In the physical world outside the human being we see the physical principle as it presents itself when not imbued with etheric, astral and I nature.

The inherent form principle of the mineral is the crystal, a polyhedral form.

To grasp this form we must first of all consider the physical matter which has developed out of the forces which are active in the mineral sphere. We have to visualize that in an elongated mineral specific forces act in this direction to elongate the mineral (see crystal on the right). The forces acting in this direction (horizontal line in the centre) are perhaps less powerful, or we may say they act to make the mineral more slender in this direction, and so on. In short, in order to talk about minerals at all, we have to visualize these forces being at specific angles to each other, acting in specific directions, irrespective of whether they come from inside or outside. And above all we have to visualize these forces as existing in the universe, at least to the point where they take effect in the sphere of the earth.

Being effective, they must also have an effect on the human physical body, which means it, too, must have the inherent tendency to become polyhedral. It does not actually become polyhedral because it still has its ether body and astral body which do not allow the human being to turn into a cube, octahedron, tetrahedron, icosahedron, and so on. The tendency is there, however, and it would be fair to say: In so far as human beings are physical beings, they tend towards becoming polyhedral. So if you are glad that you do not have to walk around as a cube, a tetrahedron or octahedron, the reason is that the powers of the astral and ether bodies act against the forces—octahedral, cubic, or whatever—inside you.

Now we are not only a physical body but also have an ether body. Through it we are in essence at one with the plant world. Through the physical body we represent the mineral, or physical, world around us, through the ether body the plant world around us.

Plants are also part of the physical world and therefore have the tendency to be polyhedral, but they add to it a tendency to be spherical. Circumstances may occasionally cause minerals to occur in spherical form, but this is not their true form. There has to be scree, or something of that kind, if a mineral is to be spherical.

In plants, every single cell seeks to achieve spherical form; in humans only the head goes a little in that direction. We owe this spherical form essentially to plant nature. The fact that not all plants are spherical is in the first place due to their having to fight against polyhedral form, which has its own outcome, and secondly to the plant form having also to fight against a cosmic, astral principle. You will remember from earlier lectures that a cosmic, astral principle presses down on the plant from above. All this modifies the spherical form. You also get spheres imposed on spheres. But the essential plant form is a sphere.

Seeking to achieve spherical form the plant assumes the form of the earth itself. As you know, the earth is a sphere in the cosmos, and so is every drop of water. Only the mineral parts of the earth are polyhedral. As a whole, the earth is spherical. The plant, or the life principle, therefore seeks to attain to the spherical form and in doing so is really trying to recreate the form of the earth.

Let us now go higher and consider what the human being is because of the astral body. Here the human being is something representing the animal nature found in the animal world. In the physical, mineral nature of man we look for the polyhedral form, in human plant nature for the spherical form which reflects the planet earth (Fig. 28). Animal nature can be understood if we do not stop at the spherical form but add something to this form. We have to add pockets, or sacs, to the spherical form, like this:

It is in the nature of the animal form that a pocket element breaks up the sphere, with pocket-like inroads made everywhere. Consider your eye sockets—two pockets coming in from the outside. Consider your nostrils—two pockets. And finally consider the whole of your digestive tract from mouth to stomach. It is possible to arrive at this if you let a pocket develop, starting at the mouth, which goes all the way down.

You always get the pocket form added to the spherical form when the transition has to be made from plant to animal form.

We can come to understand the pocket form if we lift our eyes from the earth to the planetary system. You will find it easy to see that the earth seeks to give its own form to everything that lives on it. But a planet acting from outside counteracts the earth forces and makes pockets in the spherical form given by the earth. The different creatures of the animal kingdom are provided with such sacs, or pockets, in a wide variety of ways. Consider the planets and the different ways in which they act. Saturn makes a different kind of inroad than Jupiter or Mars. The lion is equipped with a different kind of inner sac-nature for the simple reason that the planetary influences on it are different from those on the camel, for instance. So in this case we have sacs being formed.

But in animals—and this means above all in higher animals, for the situation is different with the lower animals—and also in human beings something arises which does not merely come from the planetary realm, so that we are able to say: The essence of both animal and human nature is to have more than just the pocket form. This would be the case if there were only the planets and if the firmament of fixed stars had no influence. Something is added to the pocket form. In many situations people are satisfied when they have not just a pocket but something in it. And it is indeed the case that it is the essence of the animal aspect of human nature to have a pocket with something to fill it. So we have a spherical form with a pocket and the pocket is filled.

You only need to look at the sense organs, the eye. You have first of all a pocket, which is the eye socket, and then something to fill it. And this fulfilment,²⁵ which occurs particularly in the sense organs, relates to the zodiac just as the pocket form relates to the planetary sphere. Human beings have the most complete animal organization in this respect, which is also why they have twelve pockets with their fillings, though this is disguised in all kinds of ways. This is why I had to list twelve sense organs in my Anthroposophy.²⁶

We can now go back and ask: Which cosmic principle relates to the polyhedral quality? You see, if we consider the earth, it has the life form if seen as a whole, and if it consisted entirely of water it would only show this form. But all kinds of disruptions enter into the water. You can observe these disruptions in the tides, for instance. There the water is given configuration. Next, let us look back to earlier stages of configuration for the liquid earth, when it first began to develop solid elements. It is still possible to see today that the tides are connected with the moon, and everything polyhedral which becomes part of the configuration of the earth relates to the moon.

Thus we are able to say: The polyhedral or physical nature of human beings is connected with the moon, their vegetable or etheric nature with the earth, their astral nature, which would produce the pocket form, with the planetary sphere, and the filling of the pocket with the zodiac.

What I have written on the board applies in a different way to humans than it does to animals. You see, with animals it is truly the case that the heavens only have significance as far as the sphere of the zodiac, meaning everything which lies within it. Anything which lies outside it holds no significance for the animal. Ancient wisdom was therefore quite right in calling it the “zodiac”,²⁷ for it was also able to say: Everything outside the zodiac in the universe might just as well not exist, for the animals on earth would still be exactly as they are. Only what lies below the zodiac, together with the earth and the moon, has significance for animals. What lies beyond the zodiac has, however, significance for human beings, for it influences the filling of the pockets.

For the animal we have to say: Everything which lies inside the zodiac influences the filling of the pockets. We therefore have to go into the zodiac itself and then we are able to explain how the filling of the pockets presents itself. With humans, we have to go beyond the zodiac (Fig. 34, brown) if we want to explain what goes on in the sphere of the senses, for example. In this respect, human beings go beyond the zodiac, animals do not.

It is also the case that in animals, the planetary sphere as such has a direct influence on the pockets. As the pockets continue inwards, to form the organs, animal organs are perfect reflections of the principles relating to the planetary sphere. Human beings again go a little further and we are able to say that in human beings, the region closer to the zodiac influences the pockets.

In animals, the earth has a direct effect on everything tending to assume spherical form. This is not possible in human beings, who otherwise would be animals, with a tendency to be spherical. In a sense, animals tend towards the spherical form. Here (Fig. 35) we have the backbone, then the legs. Animals are however prevented from becoming a complete sphere.

The back bone forms part of the sphere. Human beings tend to move away from the earth principle, just as they have moved away from the zodiac, and from the planetary sphere, towards the zodiac. We are able to say that the human spherical form is created by moving towards the planetary sphere. Human beings walk upright, however, and seek to go beyond mere adaptation to earthly principles.

With reference to the polyhedral element we have to say that the moon gives it directly to the animal. Human beings also seek to move out of the influences of the moon, “away from the moon”, as we might say, to receive their polyhedral element from a region between earth and moon. This means, however, that the moon still has an influence. In the fifth place, therefore, we must look to see what the moon, which in animals brings about the polyhedral element, is doing in human beings. It brings about a polyhedral element in humans, but as an image. Animals have the polyhedral element in their configuration; humans lift it out of the organism. Mathematical and geometrical ideas become image, taken out of the living physical body. Today, people primarily visualize and want to understand things in mathematical terms because they are able, under the moon’s influence, to lift their own polyhedral element out of the body, so that it enters into the conscious mind. We are thus able to say that thanks to the moon, we are able to understand the polyhedral element in images.

So you see how by considering the human being’s relationship to the cosmos we not only arrive at the outer form we have been considering in recent years but also understand how human beings gain inner form and structure. We see how they create their nasal cavities, or the stomach, as sacs or pockets. If we were to take this further we would understand the organs altogether and how they take internal form out of the whole cosmos. If we want to understand the human being we must always draw on the cosmos. We have to do so when we ask why we have an organ such as the lung, for instance. Essentially the lung can only be understood if we grasp that initially, in the embryo, a kind of sac forms, going inwards, with physical matter forming a lining. The sac-like form then tears itself free on the outside, and the organ closes itself off as an internal organ. We come to see why there is a lung, or any other organ, inside the human being if we perceive this organ to have originated from a sac, with the inner end of the sac thickening and due to other circumstances taking on a particular configuration. An organ such as the stomach can be seen as a sac extending inwards. An organ such as the lung, the heart or the kidney also starts as a sac, but it thickens here (Fig. 36), tears off here, and you have a closed-off internal organ.

Yet even with these closed-off organs—if we ask ourselves why they are in a particular place in the human organism, or why they have a particular shape or internal structure, we always have to consider the human being in relationship to the whole universe.

If a modern scientist were to hear of anthroposophists wanting to explain the lung, heart, liver, and so on out of the cosmos, he'd say we were quite mad. Members of the medical profession in particular would call this madness. They should not do so, however. It is up to them to realize that anthroposophy is actually trying to meet them half-way as they pursue their course clinging firmly to their accustomed blinkers. Let me give you a small example to prove this.

I have here before me a booklet written by the physician, medical scientist and biologist Moriz Benedikt in 1894.²⁸ I tend to quote this gentleman quite often, though I actually do not much like doing so, for apart from anything else, he shows himself to be terribly conceited, practically on every page he writes. He is also quite inflexible as a Kantian. There is, of course, the mitigating circumstance that he has made up his own Kantian ideas to suit himself, presenting them with some inflexibility. The man is extraordinarily gifted, however. He is not interested in anthroposophical ideas or anything of the kind, but it is fair to say that simply by being involved in medicine and science he has arrived at a reasonably unbiased view as to the value of his scientific outlook. He cannot get out of it; yet in a strange way he peers out. The others are also caught up in their science as if in a prison, but they do not even look at anything outside. He keeps looking at the outside world, and this allows him to arrive at extraordinarily interesting conclusions. His vanity has made him a great many enemies, and he will therefore sometimes say things about enemies who show themselves with their masks off—generally these people are “friends”, maintaining closed ranks. His colleagues have tended to put him down, and he therefore says things about them that are highly typical. He knows nothing about anthroposophy, of course, but still, if we consider anthroposophy in terms of its qualities it would be fair to say that, qualitatively speaking, he is an anti-anthroposophist. However, in the booklet I have before me he says:

The self-righteous ignore or deny anything that does not fit in with their point of view, persecuting not only the teaching, but even more bitterly the teachers. Self-righteousness is a peculiar kettle of fish. It smells sweet to the self-righteous but gives off a sharp, biting odour for others. Self-righteousness is by its very nature closely bound up with the scholars’ trade, so much so that although I hate the self-righteous I often ask myself: How often and in how many instances have you yourself been self-righteous? I’d be most grateful to anyone who would give me an exact answer to the question.

For my part, I am convinced that far from being grateful he would complain like anything if we were to make him aware of his own self-righteousness. Yet in his own peculiar way he has a particularly good eye for self-righteousness in others.

He goes on to speak of his own history, wanting to show that he has become a different kind of medical man from his colleagues. He writes:

Two severe strokes of destiny spelled disaster for my own development and also for the scientific position relative to the subject under discussion.

You’ll immediately be aware of a nice touch of vanity in what follows:

In the first place, I studied mathematics and mechanics before joining the medical profession. In those days we had an eminent mathematician at Vienna University, Professor von Ettingshausen,²⁹ who presented the most difficult problems in the mathematics of physics and caught our interest. I heard him develop the theories of Cauchy³⁰ and Poisson.³¹ Petzval³² taught us to express the problems of mechanics in mathematical formulas. It will be easy to show, however, how disastrous mathematical thinking is for a member of the medical profession, and above all a clinician.

Well, we shall see why it is disastrous, especially if such a person knows something about medicine. Professor Benedikt goes on with his story. You would have thought it to be a good stroke of destiny to be a mathematician, but he calls it a bad one, because it taught him to think. Other clinicians were apparently unable to think, and they hated him for having studied mathematics, for it meant he knew more than they did.

The second stroke of destiny to come in the days of my youth was that I became a student of Skoda.³³ I am still attached to his teachings today. He was the Kant of medical philosophy, and his mind rose to sublime heights not in books but in the discussion of diagnoses, indications for treatment, and particularly in postmortem reviews. Skoda had been a mathematician when young

—clearly another stroke of destiny!—

and had brought the most important and fundamental scientific thinking to medicine, though unfortunately only in isolated instances; the important insight I received from Skoda, having already been firmly convinced of it through my mathematical studies, is that in establishing scientific proof, we must be aware not only of what we know but also of what we do not know.

Benedikt had thus also studied under Skoda. The idea was that when using modern scientific methods—for this was the subject under discussion—we should be aware not only of what we know but also of what we do not yet know. Benedikt really did represent this principle with some degree of fanaticism in numerous treatises. He goes on to say:

This basic rule of medicine is not known to the majority of biologists, and indeed is incomprehensible to them. Some years ago, for example, I sent a manuscript in a foreign language to an anatomist, asking him to correct the language. When it came to the above statement, he wrote in the margin that he did not understand the meaning of it.

Benedikt says here that we should also consider what we do not know, and he wanted the other individual to translate the statement into proper French. The anatomist had written, however, to say he did not understand it.

When I showed the comment written in the margin to a professor at the technical university he smiled. The statement is perfectly clear to anyone involved in the exact sciences.

The man smiled because he understood mathematical thinking; it amused him that members of the medical profession thought they could ignore the things they did not know. An engineer must know what he does not know, for he has studied mathematics.

When I told a famous medical expert in Vienna of the odd reaction from my medical colleague, he said rather naively: Well, how are we to know the unknown?—This historical anecdote casts a sharp light on the method of thinking still prevalent in modern medicine and on the colossal errors made day by day and hour by hour in the medical literature.

These are the words of a medical man! But we now come to a most important point. Moriz Benedikt tells us what happens in medical science, where no account is taken of the unknown:

The problems generally arise with reference to the biology of an organ, its function, for instance. The conditions on which the function is based are partly unknown and still have to be found.

He goes on to give an example:

The liver, for instance, secretes bile. The reason for this secretory process lies mainly in the specific biochemical properties of the cells.

Let us ignore the fact that he is referring to the biochemical properties of cells, which does not really make sense. We are taking the point of view he takes in speaking of the liver.

The reason must be found as to how these differentiated properties evolve;...

He wants to find the reason why the liver is different from other organs; he intends to consider the unknown. It is known that the liver secretes bile. But now we come to the unknown, and mark you well, he produces a considerable list:

The reason must be found as to how these differential properties evolve; how the organ develops from its elements; how it comes to be in its particular place; why it relates to surrounding organs in a specific way; how with the aid of specific haemodynamic forces and haemostatic conditions it maintains the specificity of its cells; how with the aid of the central and centrifugal nervous system it is stimulated to function at the right time and with the necessary intensity; what the conditions are for nutrition in general, to maintain function and timing; which conditions impair function, causing short-term or permanent disorders, etc.

All this is not known and has to be considered. Moriz Benedikt then continues:

In science, these questions come up one after the other over long periods of time.

Just the questions come up, therefore!

The literature, on the other hand, considers only what is known at any time, without enquiring into the unknown, and behaves as if the basic problem had already been fully solved.

That is, makes no mention of the unknown. People like Moriz Benedikt are at least able to list all these unknown elements.

This is why only a small part of the theories which prevail at any given time is true, and they contain a colossal percentage of new and inherited errors which will continue on through generations as original sin.

What is this medical man really saying? He says: We have a medical literature but it only deals with the known. Yet the unknown keeps coming up after long intervals of time. What does Benedikt want? He wants people to be aware of what they do not know. What would happen in the case of the liver, for instance? A member of the medical profession taking the opposite view of Benedikt who gave a description of the liver would try to discover the biochemical properties of liver cells and present the fact that the liver secretes bile. He would be satisfied with this, for he does not talk about anything that is not known. Benedikt would say: Alright, the liver secretes bile; this is due to the biochemical constitution of the liver cells. But as a conscientious scientist I must also say everything I do not know about the liver and the bile. He would therefore write in his book:

This we know, but we do not know how the liver comes to be in that particular place; how the statics and dynamics of the blood, or rather the circulation, affect the liver; how the nervous system relates to the liver, both the system as a whole and the individual nerves; and how the liver contributes to nutrition. Benedikt’s books would therefore be different from those of other authors. As a scientist he would in this respect be extremely modest.

But he says this question as to the unknown comes up in the course of centuries; yet because of the way the questions are put, if we go down to fundamentals, then even taking Benedikt’s point of view, we could go on till Judgement Day, always putting down what is known and then what is unknown and the many questions that arise. Benedikt’s books would only differ from those of other authors in that they also list what is not known. Yet he would never accept that something we do not know has to be taken out into the cosmos, that it will continue to be unknown until we explain it out of the cosmos.

You see, a rational medical practitioner here says, speaking in the terms of his discipline, that we cannot explain the human being with the means at our disposal; all we can do is to list the things we do not know. Unfortunately he persists in his refusal to consider something which does provide answers to these questions, questions he says concern the unknown, and of course the answers can only be provided slowly and gradually.

Thus the questions are there in ordinary science. Anthroposophy offers the answers to these questions. This is the truth. It is something we should stress over and over again, quite emphatically.

Moriz Benedikt believes that the bad habits to be found in his particular science are due to the fact that people know nothing of the unknown, offering to humanity what they know on the basis of facts established in the sense-perceptible world only. He gets quite sarcastic as he goes on to say: This scientific ineptitude flourishes today ... not his ineptitude, but that of his colleagues! as much as it did a thousand years ago; indeed it is worse than ever, since production has become so much faster.

He means to say that in earlier times it was not possible to publish one’s misdemeanours so quickly.

Every short-lived notion or undertaking is published so quickly nowadays that medical journalism only needs a “Hot Wire column”, and perhaps we may see the day when telephone booths are set up just to make sure that scientific “ideas" do not lie fallow even for nine minutes.

Publication took more years in the past than it takes hours today.

Oh, and Moriz Benedikt also knows what he thinks of the public, who listen to the medical profession and swear by them! He puts it simply in the following rhyme:

Miller, Brown, Smith and Read join in every heinous deed.

He then starts to reproach his colleagues again—the heinous deeds are theirs, of course—saying:

These unsatisfactory conditions in biology will not improve until a major reform in education starts with the teachers. Anyone unable to show that he has made a serious study of mathematics and mechanics is not fit to be a thinker or a scientist, let alone a teacher. Individual genius has always achieved much; it limps, however, and will go on limping until it has learned to walk first in the school of mathematics.

Not everyone who wants to listen to something sensible will need mathematics, of course. But to work with genuine science one does need to be trained in mathematical thinking. This is why Plato—Moriz Benedikt is very rude about him, by the way—wrote on the doors to his academy: Admittance only for those trained in mathematics. This does not prevent present-day philosophers, who have not been trained in mathematics, to write about Plato, of course. And we may truly say: Most of the people who write about Plato today would not have gained admittance to his academy if it still existed. You will see, from what I have read to you from Moriz Benedikt’s booklet, how modern scientific minds view something they themselves really ought to desire, and how someone who, whilst not an anthroposophist but a rather vain individual who has got into some conflict with his colleagues, has nevertheless had some faint notion of the harm that is done—how such a person judges the situation. Let us be very clear about this: The situation we have today is exactly as an unbiased observer with insight gained in anthroposophy is compelled to describe it. The proofs are to be found everywhere in the world of modern exoteric science, you must merely want to look for them.

What we must do, however, is to learn how to consider the human being in a way which physicists would consider perfectly sensible. I have already given you the analogy: If you study a compass needle and insist on saying it assumes a particular direction out of its own inherent powers, you will never understand why there are north-and south-pointing forces in the compass needle. We must understand that the whole earth has two forces, that the poles of the two forces are determined from outside. In the same way it is utterly wrong to put a human being on the dissecting table and decide to explain the whole of the human being’s nature on the basis of what lies inside the skin. We need the whole world to understand the outer and inner aspects of the human being.

• 25. Steiner is using a slightly unusual term here, which usually translated as “fulfilment”. For the translation I have largely used terms like “filling”, “that which fills them” or “which are filled”, but I felt the note should be sounded just once in this passage.
• 26. Steiner R. Anthroposophy (A Fragment) (GA 45). Tr. C. E. Creeger. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1996.
• 27. From the Greek “ho ton [long “o”] zodion [long “o”s] kyklos” = the circle of the sculptured figures of animals.
• 28. Benedikt, Moriz (1835–1920), Hypnotismus und Suggestion, Leipzig & Wien 1894.
• 29. Ettingshausen, Andreas, Freiherr von (1796–1857), mathematician and physicist.
• 30. Cauchy, August Louis (1789–1857), French mathematician.
• 31. Poisson, Siméon Denis (1781–1840), French mathematician and physicist.
• 32. Petzval, Joseph (1807–1891), Austrian mathematician and physicist.
• 33. Skoda, Joseph (1805–1881), physician; together with Rokitansky established the high reputation of the Viennese School in its heyday.

We have been considering the human form, human life, the inner life and the human spirit in relation to the cosmos. Looking back on the different aspects considered, we are able to produce a kind of extractof it all and say: Deep down in the to produce a kind of extract of it all and say: Deep down in the depths of human nature lies the will (Fig. 37).

In a number of ways it is the most “mysterious” element in human nature, if I may put it like this. When we think of the moral sphere, it inevitably strikes us that our aberrations, tendencies in us which are often entirely hostile to the world, arise from the moral sphere as if from unfathomable depths, and that all pricks of conscience and self-reproaches we may feel stream up from the depths of the will.

We also know that this sphere of the will is mysterious by nature because in many respects there is something indefinite about it, something over which we have little control. It is an element which pushes us hither and thither on the billows of life, and we are not always able to say that we relate to it with our conscious impulses. In another respect, relating to our understanding, I have always stressed that the true nature of the will impulse lies outside our conscious awareness, being at the same level as experiences made in deep, dreamless sleep. In this respect, too, will intent is an indefinite, mysterious element which has been poured into human nature.

Considering the human mind and spirit, we are not able to say that human beings have it only when awake, say, or consciously forming ideas; we also have it in sleep and in the part of us into which will intent have been poured and where we are in the equivalent of deep sleep. We can imagine, therefore, that mind and spirit are also present when we sleep.

With reference to our will intent, two things can be distinguished. In the first place there is the will intent which induces us to be active from the time we wake up until we go to sleep—unless, of course, we are real lay-abouts. We are unable to perceive the nature of this will intent, but its effects come to awareness because we are able to form ideas of them. We do not know how our will impulse works when we take a step, but we can see that we have taken a step forward. We form an idea about the effects of our will intent and in our waking life we thus have an idea and awareness of those effects. This is one aspect of our will intent.

Another aspect is that the will is active in us even while we sleep. Internal processes occurring while we sleep are also effected by the will. We merely do not perceive them. Just as the sun also shines at night—on the other half of the earth, where we do not live—so will intent streams through our inner nature while we sleep, though we are not aware of this. It does, however, show itself afterwards, when we look back on the state of sleep.

We may thus distinguish between two kinds of will intent, an inner and an outer one.

Our will intent may be said to be down in the ocean depths of soul, rising up in waves. Since we had to agree that it is active also during sleep, when our living body is merely involved in organic activity, with no soul element streaming through it nor the light of mind and spirit illumining it, we also have to say: Our sleeping will intent has to do with organic activity, for organic, or vital, processes occur in us that are essentially connected with the will. They continue when we are awake and our will intent is in full flow. Will intent is revealed in internal metabolic processes, another area where we can speak of organic activity.

Out of the depth of this will ocean in human nature rise the waves of what comes to expression in our feelings. We know that in feeling, human nature works at a dimmed-down level (Fig. 37), with the intensity of conscious awareness reduced to the level of dreams. It is, however, less dim than our will intent. Something from the depths of human nature rises up into the light. Human beings bring light into their inner nature through feeling. In the process, the two aspects of will intent rise up into the more intensive level of conscious awareness; both inner and outer will extent can rise up and come to conscious awareness.

We therefore distinguish two kinds of feeling. One is the feeling which rises up from the sphere of the will and is related to the sleeping state in us. It comes to expression mainly in the antipathies of which we have so many. The kind of will intent which makes us active in the outside world when it rises up into our feeling, bringing us together with the world in sympathy, comes to expression in all the sympathies we feel for the world. In this region of the soul, therefore, we have dreamlike feeling experience coming to expression in sympathy and antipathy, sympathies and antipathies which go all the way up to our feeling for beauty, sympathies and antipathies relating to forms in life, both man-made and natural forms, and also the sympathies and antipathies which we have thanks to our organs of smell or taste, as we perceive odours and tastes, finding them good or repellent. All this rich and varied activity is the actual activity of the soul. Will intent is therefore revealed in organic activity, feeling in soul activity (Fig. 37).

If we study soul life from this point of view we can learn a great deal. We perceive that the waking state rouses us to be in sympathy with the world around us. Our antipathies essentially come from more unconscious levels. They rise from the sleep level of our will. It is as if our sympathies were more on the surface and as if our antipathies entered into them from unknown depths. Antipathies reject. With them, we put the world around us at a distance, isolating and shutting ourselves off. Egotism is mainly based on antipathies rising up inside us. The more egotistical a person, the more is the element of antipathy active inside. Egotists want to isolate themselves and be as far as possible by themselves.

In ordinary life we are not aware of the interplay of sympathies and antipathies in the inner life. We do become aware of it when our relationship to the outside world becomes abnormal and our defensive reactions, using our antipathies which come from the realm of sleep, also become abnormal. This happens, for instance, when our breathing is out of balance during sleep and we have nightmares. Inwardly we experience this as antipathy used to defend us against something that wants to invade us, reducing the experience of our egoity.

We get a glimpse of deep secrets in human life. When someone develops very powerful antipathies which then also enter into waking life, antipathy may enter into everything, even the astral body. The astral body then lets antipathetic nature stream out in front, rather like an abnormal aura. It may happen that the individual feels even people with whom he normally has a neutral relationship to be antipathetic and indeed people he normally loves. All the different kinds of persecution mania arise from this kind of situation. When we experience antipathetic feelings that cannot be explained by external circumstances, they come from overflowing antipathies in the soul. The pole arising from the realm of sleep in the life of the soul has undergone abnormal development in this case.

If this antipathetic element gains the upper hand, we get someone who hates all the world. And this can go to extremes. All education and all work done together in the social sphere should be designed to prevent people from developing this hatred. But just consider, if the element which rises up from the depths of human nature can make people into such egotists when it becomes too powerful, what must the inner will intent be like which is at the sleep level and which is mercifully hidden from us! We never come to realize the all-pervading presence of this sleeping will intent in the whole of our organism and our limbs. At most, highly unusual dreams may make some people a little aware of what lives in the will intent which restores the organism when we are sleeping. This element—I have shown it from another point of view in earlier lectures³⁴—is rightly beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. When you come to know it, you come to know everything in human beings which can take them to an extreme degree of badness. It is a profound mystery of life that our organic activity is balanced out by powers which would make a person a criminal, a bad character, if they were to gain the upper hand in conscious life.

Nothing in the world is in itself evil or good. Something which is thoroughly evil when it comes up into conscious life, also regulates our organic functions and restores our used up powers of vitality during sleep, which is the right place for it to be used. If you enquire into the nature of the powers which restore used-up vitality, you have to say: It is evil. Evil has its function. When human beings gain spiritual insight and see this element it is an element about which spiritual scientists of earlier times also said: Its true nature must not be described, for sinful are the lips which utter it, sinful the ears which hear it. People must know, however, that life is a dangerous process and that evil is very much present down in the depths, a much-needed power.

The waves also rise higher than this, into the forming of ideas. When the sleeping inner will intent which brings light in the sphere of feeling rises into the forming of ideas, light is shed, but at the same time the quality of our ideas is reduced through abstraction. Feelings of antipathy still have living intensity in human experience. When they rise up into the sphere of ideas, they live in all the negative, dismissive attitudes people have (Fig. 37). Everything we dismiss in this way, every “negative judgement”, as logicians call it, is due to antipathetic feeling, or sleeping will intent, rising up into the life of ideas.

When the sympathetic feelings which have their origin in wide awake, outside-related will intent, rise into the sphere of ideas we get positive attitudes. As you can see, we now have merely abstract images. In our feelings of sympathy and antipathy we still have something very much alive. In the opinion-based attitudes formed in the sphere of ideas we are standing still, as it were, and observing the world. We take a positive or negative stance. We are not as intensely involved as in antipathy, we merely say no. This is an abstract process. Instead of developing the heat of antipathy we simply say no. Instead of developing the warmth of sympathy we say yes. In contemplative calm we are above any relationship to the outside world to the point of forming an abstract judgement. Activity is merely at image level, therefore, and we are able to say, especially in the light of what was said yesterday: Here (Fig. 37) is the activity of mind and spirit, but will intent, feeling and judgement, or the forming of ideas, rise even further, into the sphere of the senses. What becomes of a negative opinion when it enters into the sphere of the senses? It becomes a situation where we perceive nothing. In terms of the most notable form of sensory perception, vision, we may call it a situation in which we see nothing and experience darkness: Experience of darkness. A positive judgement on the other hand means experience of light. We might of course just as well speak of experience of dumbness, experience of sound, etc. We could put this into words for every one of the twelve senses.

We may now ask ourselves what kind of activity we have in the sphere of the senses. We have considered organic activity, activity of the soul, and activity of mind and spirit. The last of these is entirely image-based, but still our own activity. The processes which occur between our senses and the outside world, on the other hand, really are no longer our own activity, for the world is influencing us. It is perfectly possible to draw the eye schematically, making it an independent entity, as it were. What happens in the eye is that the outside world penetrates into the organism as if through a bay. Here we are not engaged in our own activity in the world, but our position in the world is such that we may say: It is the activity of the gods. This is active throughout the whole world around us which in darkness inclines towards negative judgement and in light inclines towards positive judgement. Wise minds of the second post-Atlantean age had a particularly strong feeling for this activity of the gods influencing human beings in their relationship to the world. They had a powerful feeling for God in the light and God in the dark. God in the light is the divine principle with luciferic bias, God in the dark with ahrimanic bias. This is how people of the ancient Persian civilization experienced the world around them. To them, the sun represented that outside world—Sun as source of divine Light: second post-Atlantean age.

The sphere which lies between judgement and feeling was the main sphere of experience for the third post-Atlantean civilization, which is the Egyptian and Chaldean civilization. People then experienced the divine principle not so much in light and darkness outside but in the area where ideas come together with feelings. The influence of the gods on Egyptians and Chaldeans caused people to pour something of their antipathies into their negative judgements and something of their sympathies into their positive attitudes. We need to be able to read the images and other documents which have survived from that period to see how everything arose from positive sympathies and negative antipathies. Looking at figures from Egyptian tombs and elsewhere you can sense something in them that was artistically created out of positive sympathies and negative antipathies. You cannot create a sphinx without bringing in ideas alive with sympathy and antipathy. People then experienced not only light and darkness but the living quality inherent in feelings of sympathy and antipathy. The Sun was experienced as the source of divine Life.

During Greco-Latin times people had largely lost the direct connection with the outside world. In my Riddles of Philosophy³⁵ I have shown how people still experienced thoughts the way we experience sensory perceptions today but were gradually progressing to the state in which we are today. Due to I development, we essentially no longer have a real relationship to the outside world in which our I is in effect asleep in the body, and we tend towards the sleeping state. This was not so highly developed in ancient Greece, though it had already become quite powerful. The ancient Persians had not entered deeply into their physical nature. They did not really see themselves living fully in their bodies, particularly if they were sages. It was their belief that they moved and were active throughout the whole universe on the waves of light. The ancient Greeks had already reached a stage where they were asleep inside their bodies where this cosmic aspect was concerned. When we are actually asleep, our I and astral body are outside us; but compared to the wakefulness of the ancient Persians, even our waking state is one of sleep. The wakefulness, or let us say the “waking up”, of the ancient Persians which I have characterized in my Occult Science was like entering into the human senses, with light itself coming in at the same time.

We are no longer aware of the fact that on awakening we bring light into our eyes. Light is a shadowy element outside us. This meant that the Greeks were no longer able to perceive the sun as the true source of life but as something which penetrated them inwardly. To them, the element in which the sun lives inwardly in human beings was the element of Eros, love. Eros, the sun-element in man, was the true inner experience of the Greeks. Thus the sun was seen as the source of divine love.

Then, from about the 4th century onwards—I have spoken of various aspects of its specific nature on other occasions—came the age when the sun was experienced as no more than a physical body, a sphere of vapour, out there in space. The sun had, in fact, become obscured for humanity. Persians truly felt the sun to be the reflector of the light which billowed and lived in space with tremendous vigour. The Egyptians and Chaldeans saw it as life billowing and pulsing through the universe. The Greeks experienced it as something which instilled love into organic nature, as Eros guiding them through the waves of the emotions. Entering more and more into the human being, experience of the sun vanished into the deep down depths of soul. Today we carry the sun element down in those depths. We are not meant to reach it, because the Guardian of the Threshold stands before it, and because it is in the depths of which it was said in the ancient mysteries that no utterance should be given, for sinful were the lips which uttered it, and sinful the ear which heard it. Schools existed in the 4th century who essentially taught, to allow Christianity to spread: The Sun Mystery must not be revealed; a civilization has to come where the Sun Mystery is not known.

Behind everything which happens in the physical world are the inner powers which, I’d say, are teaching out of the universe. The Roman emperor Constantine (306–337) was one of the instruments of those powers. Under him, Christianity took the form in which the sun is denied.

Another emperor, Julian the Apostate,³⁶ took less account of developments in his day but let himself be guided by his enthusiasm for the last remnants of the old instinctive wisdom learned from his mystery teachers. He was murdered because he sought to restore the old tradition of the threefold Sun Mystery. The world did not want to take that road.

Today we have to realize that the old, instinctive wisdom needs to be revived in conscious wisdom. Wisdom which has gone down to subconscious levels, into mere organic, and even sub-organic, activity needs to be brought back to consciousness. The Sun Mystery must be found again.

When the Sun Mystery was in the process of being lost, Julian, who still wanted the world to be aware of it, made the most terrible enemies who finally killed him. Today we have enemies who are against the new Sun Mystery which anthroposophy must give to the world. Historical evolution now follows the opposite trend. The 4th century brought the decline; today we need the rise.

In this respect Constantine and Julian are symbols of historical evolution. Julian may be said to have stood on the shattered ruins of the past, wanting to rebuild the forms of the old wisdom out of those ruins. The old forms had been destroyed by Christianity, which initially, under Constantine, had taken materialistic form. Countless works of art, works of ancient wisdom and written works were destroyed, anything that might give people even a hint of the old Sun Mystery.

It is true that in order to achieve freedom, humanity had to come to believe that a sphere of gases moved through the universe out there, though physicists who would be able to go there would be really surprised, for instead of a sphere of gases they would find an empty space, indeed less than space. They would discover that the sun out there is not a sphere of luminous gases—which is a nonsense—but in the first place just a reflector (Fig. 39), unable to radiate light and at most merely reflecting it. In the spirit, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus and the moon radiate light. Physically the sun appears to be shining on them, but in reality they radiate light towards the sun, which acts as a reflector. This is the physical reality. The ancient Persians were still able to perceive the sun as the source of light for the earth, but not an actual source but a reflector. Later it became the reflector of life and the reflector of love.

Julian the Apostate wanted people to understand this and was got rid off because of this. To achieve freedom, humanity had to go through superstitious belief in a sphere of gases radiating light—something we see represented as the absolute truth in modern physics textbooks. Now we must penetrate to the truth of the matter again.

In this respect, therefore, Constantine and Julian are very much like two symbols. Julian wanted to preserve the old traditions so that the true Sun Mystery might still reach people. During the early centuries, the Christ was still an Apollo or Sun figure.

The Sun Mystery was seen as the most precious jewel humanity possessed. It was symbolized in the Palladium,³⁷ which was said to have been kept in Troy, where the mystery priests used it to reveal the true nature of the sun to people in ritual, sacramental form. It was then taken to Rome, and part of the secret knowledge held by Roman initiates was that the Palladium was in safe keeping in Rome. Essentially the initiate priests of ancient Rome, and also the early emperors of Rome, above all Augustus,³⁸ based their actions on the knowledge that the greatest jewel the world possessed, or at least its physical symbol, was in Rome. The Palladium had been placed beneath the foundations of the most highly esteemed temple in Rome, a fact only known to those who knew the deepest secrets of Roman life. Through the spirit, it had, however, also become known to those whose role it was to bring Christianity to the world. The early Christians went to Rome because of this. So there was a definite spiritual element.

When Christianity was secularized under Constantine, the Palladium was removed from Rome. Constantine founded Constantinople and had the Palladium put in the ground under the column he erected to himself. The further development of Roman Christianity was that the Sun mystery was taken away by the very emperor who established the rigid forms, rigid mechanisms, of Christianity in Rome. With this, Christendom has lost the wisdom of the world, the outward sign of this being the transfer of the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople.

In some parts of the Slavonic world—people always put their own interpretation on this—it was believed until the beginning of the 20th century that in the not too far distant future the Palladium would be taken from Constantinople to another city, in their belief a Slav city.

Whichever way this may be, the Palladium—you may take the whole as an outer symbol, but it is the inner aspect which matters—is waiting to go forth from Constantinople, which is casting darkness on it, to a place where it will be totally obscured. The Palladium is thus taken to the East, where the old wisdom lives in decadence and growing obscurity. Just as the Sun is a reflector of light given to it from the universe, everything depends on it in the further evolution of the world that the Palladium be illumined by a wisdom arising from the treasury of insight gained in the West. The Palladium, heirloom of the past taken from Troy to Rome and then to Constantinople, and to be taken even further into the darkness of the East, the Palladium, jewel of the Sun, must wait until in the West grows in mind and spirit and is able to release it from the dark, obscured treasury of insight limited to the natural world. Our mission for the future is thus linked to the most sacred tradition of European development.

To this day, then, legends are still alive for those initiated into these mysteries, some of them very plain, simple people who walk about on this earth. Legends are still alive of the Trojan Palladium being taken to Rome, of the Palladium jewel of wisdom, being taken to Constantinople when Roman Christianity became worldly and superficial, and that it shall be taken to the East one day when all the old wisdom will have been stripped away in the East, having fallen into utter decadence, and legends that speak of the need to bring new light from the West to this Sun jewel.

The Sun has vanished into the depths of human nature. We have to find it again by developing the science of the spirit. Humanity must find this Sun again, or the Palladium will vanish into the obscurity of the East. Today it is sinful to utter words that are wrong: “Ex oriente lux”. The light can no longer come from the East, which has fallen into decadence. Yet the East, which will have the Sun jewel, however obscured, is waiting for the light of the West. Today, people walk in the darkness, arrange to meet in the dark, their eyes turned to—Washington.³⁹ Salvation, however, will only come from Washingtons able to speak out of the mood of the spiritual world in such a way that they not only open economic gates for China, looking for the darkness which surrounds the Palladium. Salvation will only come when conferences held in the West decide to take light to the East, letting the Palladium shine out again. Like a fluorescent body, the Palladium in itself is dark; it shines out when light streams into it. The same holds true for the wisdom of the East. Dark in itself, it will be illumined and fluoresce when the wisdom of the West, the light of the spirit from the West, enters into it.

The people of the West are as yet unable to see this. The legend of the Palladium needs to be placed in the bright light of consciousness. We must feel the right kind of compassion for Julian the Apostate who wanted to close his eyes to the age when the light of freedom would be able to germinate in the darkness, who wanted to preserve the instinctive wisdom of old and therefore had to perish. We have to realize that Constantine took the light of wisdom from the Romans by giving them a worldly Christianity, sending Christianity into the darkness. We have to realize that the light which will let the Palladium shine out again must be sought in modern science. Only then will an important step in world history come to fulfilment. Only then will the Palladium, which became Western the moment the Greeks burned down Troy and which still holds the light that shone from Troy, become Western and Eastern. It is now in the dark and must be brought out of the dark. Light must be brought to the Palladium.

We can win enthusiasm from historical evolution if our hearts are in the right place. If they are, in the sense of what I have been presenting today, we shall also be able to find the right response to the impulses which are the true impulses of the science of the spirit.

I’ll continue with this on Friday.

• 34. See the lectures given on 23 and 24 September 1921—Cosmosophy Vol. 1. (GA 207)
• 35. Steiner R. Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18), tr. by F. C. A. Koelln. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 36. Flavius Claudius Julianus (c. 331–363), half-brother of Constantine, Roman emperor (361–363).
• 37. In Greek mythology, the Palladium was an image of the goddess Pallas Athene which had come from heaven and was “the luck of Troy”. Stolen by Odysseus and Diomedes, it was thought to be in Argos, Athens or Sparta. According to the Romans, Anaeas had taken it to Rome.
• 38. Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (63 BC–AD 14), first Roman emperor.
• 39. Washington Conference (21 November 1921 - 6 February 1922) to discuss naval disarmament and the Far East. Led among other things to American-British-French-Japanese agreement to guarantee each other’s territories and a collective guarantee of China’s independence.

In recent weeks we have been considering the human being from all kinds of different points of view, with the aim of getting a better idea of complex human nature and the relationship of the human being to the world.

Let us begin by recalling something very simple, something we know about the elemental aspects: the fact that in the present world cycle, the human being has four effective aspects—physical body, ether body, astral body and I. Let us also consider how these four essentially manifest. We have to say that the I mainly comes to revelation in all expressions of the human will. When we sleep, the will is essentially at rest. In other words: the will principle does not then come to expression through the physical organization. The I is outside the physical body when we sleep. The fact that the will principle does not come to expression reveals to us that the I is then not present in the physical body.

The activity of the astral body essentially can be observed in the whole sphere of feelings. The astral body is also outside the human being in sleep, when the sphere of feelings moves to the dim, dark part of the conscious mind. Consciousness is altogether silent in sleep, and we may thus be in some doubt as to what really comes to revelation through the physical body and the ether body. Let us leave this aside for the moment. The physical body is the most obvious part of the human being. Even someone not able to have imaginative vision can perceive the reality of the ether body in a number of ways. For the moment, however, let us leave aside the physical and the etheric from the point of view we have just taken of the I as the will aspect and the astral as the feeling aspect.

If we follow a person’s life from morning to evening, in the waking state, the I and astral body are at work in the physical and ether bodies with regard to will and feelings. Taking all the inner experiences arising in the waking state, we have first of all the world of sensory perceptions, which are bound to the physical body. We also have the world of thoughts and ideas as the consequence of sensory perception. We know very well that our world of ideas in the waking state has elements of will and feeling in it.

We have often stressed that in the sphere of the soul it is easy to make the abstract distinction between ideas, feelings and will elements. But in reality these three inner activities blend into each other. We can sense the will element in the linking or separating of ideas. We can also perceive that the idea is imbued with feeling. We can feel ourselves in sympathy with one idea and perhaps in antipathy with another. Let us now turn to the I and the astral body as they leave the living body on going to sleep. They leave something behind in the physical world which, while it does not appear at first sight to be the same as plant life, essentially is nevertheless like it, for it has a physical and an ether body just like a plant. In our astral principle we have something which comes to outward revelation in the animal world, and in our I we have something which emerges in the specifically human form, thus also coming to outward revelation. Since, however, I and astral body are outside the physical and ether bodies from when we go to sleep until we wake up again, we cannot say that this human form or animal nature is part of the inner nature of I and astral body. We have to realize that I and astral body do not come to revelation in that case; when I and astral body are on their own, during sleep, they cannot reveal themselves to the physical world in a way perceptible to the senses or to the rational mind.

I and astral body are therefore entirely beyond sensory perception. Now we also know that when we look at something in the plant world, we are not at all inclined to see it the way we see a human being. Looking at a human being we are interested in the moral element, for instance, whether the individual is good or bad. This means that there is no point in thinking in terms of good or evil with reference to the physical and ether body, the principles which remain in the physical world when we have gone to sleep. The whole human moral element is brought back when we wake up and I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies.

Even people who do not have higher vision may take this as a sign that I and astral body have to do with what we call “the moral world order”. Our physical and ether bodies soak this up, as it were, as we wake up. And it is in no way absurd for those who do not have higher vision to say: Essentially, I and astral body belong to a completely different world, for the physical and ether bodies are neutral when it comes to being good or evil, just as plants are. I and astral body take moral responsibility into them.

Even those who do not achieve higher vision through the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy, but whose thinking relates to everyday life, will be able to realize that we are dealing with polar opposites here: physical body and ether body inclined to nature-given form, and I and astral body inclined to moral form. To take this further, however, we will need to draw on observations made through higher vision. When we use this to study the I and the astral body in the world to which they belong between going to sleep and waking up, they are seen to have the world of the spirit as their environment just as the natural world is the environment of the physical body. I and astral body bring the inner mortality to human beings from the world of the spirit. As the physical and ether bodies are morally neutral, they cannot possibly draw on them for moral impulses. They do in truth gain the moral impulses from the world in which they are between going to sleep and waking up.

In the science of the spirit, the following is said with regard to this: When human beings leave their physical and ether bodies on going to sleep, they meet, without being aware of it, the spiritual entities of the world, presenting to them all the inner morality they developed when conscious in their physical and ether bodies. They are compelled to let the world of soul and spirit work on the moral elements they have brought. This brings us to a different aspect of something we have often considered in our efforts to build a bridge between etheric and physical worlds on one hand and moral and spiritual worlds on the other.

The I has will quality. It develops its whole structure and constitution between waking up and falling asleep in the physical and ether bodies. When we go to sleep, the I meets the entities of the spiritual world. Here, as people walking around in the physical world, we perceive solid bodies with our organs of touch; we see colours, we use sensory perception. We relate to the physical forces of the world in a specific way The I also enters into a specific relationship to the powers of the world where it lives between going to sleep and waking up. Let me present this in graphic form It can only be schematic, of course. Let us say this is the physical man being in the process of going to sleep (Fig. 40, yellow).

This, which I am drawing here, is the ether body which fills the human being. If I were to draw the human being in the waking state, I’d have to draw in the astral body and the I. I am not going to do so, because I want to characterize the condition of going to sleep. The will element, that is, the I, meets the entities of the spiritual world.

It relates to them in the way we relate to physical entities with our physical body when awake. The relationship between the will-related I and the entities of the spiritual world is, however, much more real than the maya-like relationship which the physical body has with its environment. The relationship in sleep comes to expression above all in the following way, more or less, I can only put these things into images for you): When the I is in touch with the powers of the spiritual entities between going to sleep and waking up, everything evil in our state of soul makes the I waste away; everything good allows the will-related I to develop in freedom.

Showing this in graphic form we arrive at a specific form of the spiritual, will-related I form as it leaves the body (remember, these are only images). With regard to the human being of limbs, the I is quite intensely inside the human being even during sleep. Let me show it like this: These furrowed lines (light-coloured) have evolved from counter activities of the spiritual entities, their form depending entirely on the moral constitution. We may indeed say that the 1 assumes a spiritual form based on its moral constitution as it enters the world of the spirit.

When we go to sleep, the astral body also goes into the world outside us which is a world of soul quality. The will-related I meets the entities of the spiritual world, the feeling-related astral body enters into the soul sphere outside us.

The constitution of our will, with reference to good and evil, also has elements, or powers, of feeling in it. We merely have to recall the different feeling mood we have after doing a good deed compared to after doing something bad. 1 need only mention the whole sphere of self-reproach and inner satisfaction and you can see how our moral constitution is imbued with feeling. The feeling element as a whole enters the soul sphere when we fall asleep, and this enters into a relationship with the soul world outside. When we are awake we relate to the physical world around us through our ideas and in doing so develop the inner life of feelings—though the life of feeling merely connects with the life of ideas inside us. When we are asleep, our feeling-related astral principle makes direct contact with the astral world.

It is not given form, however. The will-related I is given form (I have shown this by drawing furrowed lines). Interaction between the astral body and the soul environment results in something I cannot draw as furrowing. I have to call it colouring, imbuing the astral body. To draw it I would, according to whether we are full of self-reproach or inner satisfaction, feelings of sympathy and antipathy, show the astral coloured by something with schematically may be shown as a particular colour (Fig. 41, reddish, blue).

Through the I, therefore, our higher nature is given form, and the astral is coloured through and through. This is of course a schematic way of putting it. It is perfectly justifiable to express these processes in colour images, but it has to be said that only part of the process can be expressed in this way. Instead of colouring the image I might just as well have all kinds of musical instruments at hand, for instance, and give expression to the above in combinations of sounds. One might even bring in qualities of taste. All this whirls and swirls together in the astral body when it is outside the physical body between going to sleep and waking up.

The situation is such, however, that the direction of the effective powers which bring about everything I have drawn, really derive, seen in schematic form, from the human being of limbs and metabolism. The spiritual entities and the soul world giving form and colour are working from below upwards, as it were.

If we try to discover the true nature of that which is given form and colour outside the human being between going to sleep and waking up, we finally arrive at the following. Between waking up and going to sleep the human form is complete, with I, astral body, ether body and physical body forming an interrelated whole. This goes hand in hand with a specific intensity of conscious awareness which is intellectual and has qualities of feeling and will. Compared to it, the element which is outside during sleep has an infantile quality. We think of a child’s dimmed-down state of consciousness, something we can only come close to when our consciousness is filled with dreams. Now imagine the child’s dimmed-down consciousness becoming even less developed—this would be closer to the nature of what is outside us during sleep. We might say: The element which is outside the human being during sleep is more infantile than the mind and spirit of a child.

What is the real nature of the element of human soul and spirit which lives outside during sleep? In the light of spiritual science, the determining factor is characteristically seen to come from the human being of limbs and metabolism. Studying what can be observed through higher vision one has the feeling—which gradually grows into the definite realization—that by taking this whole aspect here to be a photographic negative and visualizing the positive, we actually get the structure of the human brain. The scale is not the same, but if you see it as a negative and visualize the positive you get the human brain.

Think back to the various aspects I have presented. I have said that the structure of the human head in one particular life inwardly, in the structure of its powers, represents the individual from the previous life on earth, minus the head. What you are today contains the powers your head will have in your next life on earth. We see the same thing in what a human being puts into the outside world between going to sleep and waking up, except that it is infantile, childlike in form and, of course, converted into a negative.

Between going to sleep and waking up human beings in fact put an image into the world of what will incarnate into a physical form in their next life on earth. This is extraordinarily significant. If we now recall that it is the moral constitution of the soul which determines this form and coloration (Fig. 41), we must consider the powers inherent in the human head in the next life on earth to be the embodiment of the moral constitution of the soul in the present life. Since the powers of the human being come to expression in our ability to think and form ideas, this ability will therefore be the outcome of our moral constitution of soul in the present life. All of this exists as an image in what human beings put into the outside world on going to sleep.

In the light of the science of the spirit it would thus be fair to say: During the night, when we are asleep, we put a quite specific question to another world, the world of the spirit. We do not do this consciously but with a part of us that moves out of the physical and ether bodies at that time. The question we put is: How does my moral constitution of soul appear to the entities in the world of the spirit?

And we are given an answer which consists in the shaping of the furrows and the colouring we are given, both in accord with our moral constitution of soul. Every morning we enter into our physical and etheric bodies on waking up with an answer gained in the world of soul and spirit. Going to sleep, we always unconsciously ask a question; waking up, the answer is given at the unconscious level from the world of the spirit. At that level, we are all the time in dialogue with the world of the spirit, gathering there the answers which tell us the true state of our inner nature.

This allows you to see something which otherwise is always extraordinarily abstract. You see, when we speak of our conscience, this is something very real to us; yet when we are asked to speak of the specific nature of our conscience we immediately become rather vague. With reference to our moral impulses, conscience is something of which we have a real inner experience. Yet if we use the methods of ordinary science to reflect on conscience, we fall into chaos and are unable to arrive at anything definite. Here you are given something definite, which is, that your moral constitution of soul wins a continuous response from the world of the spirit. You bring the forms developed by the world of the spirit into your physical and etheric reality, and with this you bring the voice of conscience to it. In waking life, the answer given in form and colour is transformed into the voice of conscience. In fact we depend on the sleep state for everything we have by way of inner moral attitude.

Many examples have been given of the greater wisdom inherent in the instinctive perception of earlier times and the instinctive perception, which are not intellectual; it is greater than our modern science, though it takes the form of images. The moral principles of instinctive perception contain much of what comes back to us again through the true science of the spirit, though it is now clearer, more transparent and defined. One of the principles which is part of popular belief is that if someone has offended you, do not take your inner reaction to this through sleep but if at all possible settle the matter before you go to sleep. Do not take your anger through sleep, therefore, but try to calm it before you go to sleep.

When you know that going to sleep means you are putting a question to the world of the spirit and that waking up is the answer to your question, you will be able to say to yourself: The answer you receive from the world of the spirit and take into your physical body as you wake up will be different if you moderated your anger the night before, or reduced the offence you felt, than if you take the feelings of offence into sleep and put your question out of injured feelings or in such anger that the fire of your anger fills the whole question. If you take an angry mood into the world of the spirit it is as if a stream of volcanic fire were to pour into that world. The soul world outside then has to colour this stream of volcanic fire (Fig. 41, reddish). This is very different from the situation where you have let your anger go down before going to sleep.

The effects of much of what I have said here can be seen not only in the human heart and mind but also in the way physical life and the life of the internal organs, is tuned. The causes of many diseases lie in the questions we receive to the answers we unconsciously put to the spiritual world as we go to sleep. In the waking state, our physical and etheric organs have to deal fully with everything the will-related I and the feeling-related astral body bring with them from the world of the spirit as we wake up.

It is quite wrong to think we have lots of experiences when awake but none in our sleep. When awake we experience processes that mostly take place between ourselves and the physical outside world. Satisfaction feit about these processes accompanies our clear perception of our relationship to the world rather like an inner dream in heart and mind—you will remember that the feeling element only has dream-level intensity of consciousness. When we are between going to sleep and waking up, however, considerable inner activity goes an in the I and astral body: The will-related I is given form, the feeling-imbued astral body is imbued with the powers of the outside world of soul and spirit. These real, factual processes penetrate and stream through the physical and ether bodies, and the way we behave in the physical world is determined by this. We do more for our inner life during sleep than we do in our waking hours. 011 the other hand, what we do when asleep depends an those waking hours. I'd say that the whole significance of sleep essentially lies not only in physical experience but in the moral structure of our inner nature.

I have shown on a number of occasions that superficial ideas about the way in which the human physical and ether bodies relate to the process of going to sleep are wrong. It is usually said that human beings grow tired because they use their limbs, because they work, and they need to sleep to make up for this. Merely to remember that we do not always go to sleep because we are tired will put us on the right track. Think of the well-rested retired gentleman who may go to a lecture, for instance, because it is the done thing; he’ll usually be fast asleep after the first five minutes, which is hardly due to his being tired.

Considering the superficial experiences to be gained in this field, we come to realize that people generally confuse cause and effect in this instance. We are in fact tired because we want to go to sleep. The impulse to go to sleep is a much more inward one than the physical tiredness which is its counterpart. When the outside world offers nothing of interest, the longing arises to withdraw from it. Soul and spirit then leave the living physical body, which grows tired. We grow tired because we want to go to sleep, not the other way round. Anyone can see this, if they have the will to do so. It is of course extraordinarily difficult to accept the truth of things that are so closely bound up with people’s self-satisfied life interest. But if we are prepared to accept truth, we will reach the point where we do not merely see going to sleep as a physical and physiological process, but consider it in relation to the whole cosmos which, as I have shown from many different points of view, also contains the moral impulses as real impulses, not just mere words. The alternation between sleeping and waking thus shows us how a bridge can be built between the physical and the moral elements in our world order.

Du Bois-Reymond,⁴⁰ the physiologist who gave that famous lecture on the limits of natural science, once said: “It is utterly beyond us to grasp the human being as he is in waking life.” Well, we know what to think of such a statement. Du Bois-Reymond believes, however, that it is possible for us to grasp the sleeping human being. According to him, the laws and relationship of the physical world outside, which we are able to grasp, also pertain to the sleeping human being, only in a more complex fashion. We know this to be incorrect, but let us merely consider the statement, which is, that we can have scientific understanding of the sleeping human being, but not of the waking human being.

So here a scientist is admitting that we cannot use the tools of science to discover what pervades the whole human being in the waking sate, and that the sleeping individual as a physical entity looks very different from an individual who is awake even in the eyes of scientists.

Scientists know nothing, of course, of the will-related I and feeling-related astral body which leave the human being for the non-physical world. But this “nothing”, what is it in the light of our present study? It is something which belongs to the moral world order. The activity of the moral principle is a real world which begins at the very point where people taking the scientific approach cease their observations. After waking up, the real effects of the moral principle show themselves only in the inner constitution of the human being. To enter into the sphere where moral reality is to be found we must therefore consider the world in which human beings live between waking up and going to sleep. It is not surprising, therefore, that people who take the scientific view and do not enter into this world only know a real world which does not contain the moral impulses and therefore relegate moral impulses to the realm of pure belief.

Such belief, however, becomes insight as real as that achieved by the followers of the scientific approach once we turn our attention to the other sphere. Our discussion will, of course, have to be based on completely different premises if we want to consider this sphere of spirit and soul imbued with moral principles.

If my drawing represented something from the physical world, I would have to base myself on the physical. My drawing would be an image of this, and we would progress from external reality to something which is merely image. We have to take the opposite route if we want to represent the non-physical. We have to experience it inwardly and then go outside and represent inward experience in an image. This kind of inward experience is extremely mobile and I should really show this colouring as glittering and gleaming, shifting and changing, growing luminous and fading away again, which is exactly what the spiritual scientist observes when considering the human being as a whole.

If one gains a vision of the astral body and I during sleep—I am trying to be extremely accurate here—the form given to the I and the colouring given to the astral body is bright and distinct. When I and astral body return to the physical and ether bodies, this bright, glittering and gleaming principle grows dark and dull. Outside the body the I aspect has definite contours; inside the body it grows indefinite. You get quite a specific feeling when you watch the I and astral body becoming submerged in the physical and ether bodies on waking. To use abstract words to describe this, means expressing oneself rather clumsily as a rule. It is however possible to define it relatively clearly. Observing the process you have a feeling which is rather like being aware of the coming of autumn and winter and letting this influence your soul. To consider the waking-up process in terms of the whole human being is to enter into a mood like that experienced with the coming of winter. Going to sleep, with the spirit and soul principles going outside the human being, you experience an inner mood similar to the one experienced with the coming of spring and summer. It is indeed the case that you enter into something very special here.

Dear friends, for several weeks I have tried to show how by taking the approach of spiritual science we come to see the human in relationship to the whole cosmos. I have shown you the human form in its relationship to the world of the fixed stars, and the levels of human life in relation to the world of the planets. Considering the human being in the light of spiritual science, we are always taken outside the human being. Today we have considered the alternating states of waking and sleeping; entering into them with inner feeling, we are again taken outside the human being, this time not into the world of the stars but into the world of time. So we said to ourselves: We understand the waking-up process if we understand the coming of autumn and winter; we understand the process of going to sleep if we understand the coming of spring and summer. From the progress of time in the human being we are taken into the progress of time in the cosmos, into the changing seasons. The human being is seen to be an image also of what happens in time. In the preceding weeks we endeavoured to see the human being as an image of the macrocosm more in terms of space.

We thus relate the human being to the world, and understand him in terms of the world. And then the moral world order also becomes reality for us and not a world of empty words. If we enter into everything we are able to feel in considering our relationship to the world, religious impulses enter into our ethical and moral world. The ethical will then comes to express the divine will which reigns in the human being, and the ethical and moral sphere is lifted up into the ethical and religious sphere. This is how anthroposophy as science of the spirit seeks to find the way to the ethical and religious. We shall continue with this tomorrow.

• 40. Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–96), German physiologist born in Berlin of French parentage, professor of physics at Berlin. The lecture referred to was published in Leipzig in 1916.

Yesterday we concentrated on the condition of the human astral body and I between going to sleep and waking up. Let us pick up the thread again. I said that if we consider the human physical and ether body during sleep and compare this to the I and astral body we have to say: The will-endowed or will-related I is given form out of the relationship it develops to the spirits of the other world during sleep. Using a diagram to show the I being given form, I said that if we see the furrowing given to the I (Fig. 42, light colour - white in diagram) as a kind of photographic negative—ignoring aspects of scale—the structure of the human brain would be like the Positive. The astral body would have to be envisaged as coloured by the soul element in its environment; I have shown this schematically by using a number of different colours (Fig. 43).

As I said yesterday, this does not cover the behaviour of the physical and ether bodies during sleep. Let us add this today. The human physical body is seemingly known in modern science, but it really and truly is only seemingly. Scientists take little account of the great difference between the human being in limbs and metabolism and the human being in the head. The constitution of the head person is a reflection of what the individual has been between death and rebirth. Again all aspects of scale are left aside.

Modern scientists take the structure of the physical brain to derive from the paternal and maternal organizations. Considering the matter from a number of different points of view, we have already realized that this is not the case. Put somewhat crudely and in radical terms, human beings develop in the physical world because initially substance is thrown into chaos in the maternal body. Into this chaotic matter, which is now outside the laws of both chemistry and physics, the powers to make the embryo what it will be are implanted out of the universe. The powers the individual has gained in the time between death and rebirth are inoculated, if I may put it like this, into these powers. The way I’d really like to put it is: With regard to form, the human being is implanted in the maternal body. Only the bed for the new human being is created in the maternal body, and the universe is constituted in such a way that if the opportunity is created for something specific to evolve, then this specific something will evolve.

The inner structure of the human head is such that in the first place it reflects what has been furrowed and coloured here during the previous life on earth, but in addition the whole universe may also be said to be re-created in this head. Modern science really does not have a very good grasp of the process by which insight and perception is gained. It is better to say: The complexity of the human brain really is a recreation of the universe. The form principles existing in the head cannot be penetrated by the 1 and astral body. They live an independent life in the human head, as I have shown before. Human beings know themselves to be I and astral body exactly because these two have an independent life. I and astral body can really only connect with the human being in limbs and metabolism. There they flourish, making us essentially into will-endowed creatures. This means that the human being of limbs and metabolism is essentially the dwelling place of the principle which on death returns to the world of the spirit. That world receives the individual human I and astral body and takes them onwards to new stages of existence. The human head, on the other hand, holds everything that comes from earlier lives, and from lives between death and rebirth, elements which have taken form in the head organization, as it were, and made themselves at home in it. The human head relates to the past, the human limbs and metabolism to the future. The rhythmical human being moves to and fro between past and future.

We need to see the physical human being in this light if we are to understand the form and structure of the limbs and their inner life. We then understand why the organization of the head is actually always breaking down, paralysing itself, whilst the organization of limbs and metabolism is always building itself up. We shall also understand why the organization of limbs and metabolism has to be connected with the chemical and physical nature of the earth, a connection which comes to expression in nutrition.

The human being of limbs and metabolism takes in elements which have a real need to develop further. In waking life, however, this human being needs to reckon with the forces that come from the earth itself. In this aspect we are subject to the earth’s gravity and to other earth forces. We are subject to the forces which enter into us with the food we eat. In this regard, therefore, we may be said to be entirely creatures of the earth. The evolution of form in limbs and metabolism had no part in what the individual lived through between death and rebirth, before entering into the present life on earth. This is the reason why the human being of limbs and metabolism also is not able to adapt to the spiritual universe outside when we are awake in life. In the waking state this aspect of the human being is given up to the physical earth.

This is not the case during sleep, however, for the human head contains the form principles of everything connected with the individual’s past, including life between death and rebirth. The forms of the organs in the human head contain subtle, fleeting images of the whole cosmos.

In waking life, the head, being all these images of the universe, is not able to influence the human being of limbs and metabolism. As the seat of the major sense organs, the head is continuously communicating with the earth world outside. In waking life, everything we see or hear influences us via the head. During sleep, the human head is not merely provided with physical nourishment. Physical nutrition, which essentially also happens in waking life, is not what matters most; something else is most essential for the human physical body during sleep.

The eye, for example, is not only the organization which provides for vision but at the same time it is also an image of the spiritual powers of the cosmos. Between death and rebirth the individual lives in the cosmos of soul and spirit. Like all organs in the head, the eye has a double function. The first is to enable communication with the outside world through vision, which happens during waking life. In the life of sleep, the eye and its surrounding parts, above all the surrounding nerves and blood, influence the physical organism in its metabolic and limb aspects. The powers of the eye closed in sleep influence the kidney system, for example, imbuing it with the cosmic image. Other organs in the head imprint other aspects of the cosmos on the human system of metabolism and limbs. For the physical body, therefore, the time we spend in sleep serves mainly to let the powers of the head structure the human being of metabolism and limbs (Fig. 42, reddish arrows). It is particularly during sleep that structuring powers radiate continually from the head to the lower human being, so that in sleep the soul and spirit aspect of the head is indeed the structurer of the human being of metabolism and limbs.

We have quite the wrong idea of creation if we see it as being limited to particular moments. We are in fact being created all the time. We are created out of the spirit every night; our system of metabolism and limbs is given structure and life out of the spirit night after night.

As you know, in modern materialistic science only the opposite of this is known, i.e. that the powers of the metabolism influence the used-up brain. That is only half the story, however, for as this effect is brought to bear from below upwards, the human being is enlivened out of soul and spirit in a process that takes the opposite direction. It is important to realize that these marvellous processes working from above downwards are governed by a high level of consciousness as we sleep, a level we human beings will not achieve until evolution on the planet Vulcan. It is the level of consciousness of the spirit human being. This level of consciousness is truly present in the human being today. It takes effect during sleep in the way I have just described. At our present level of consciousness we are not able to know our true nature well enough to be aware, under normal conditions, of the reality and activity of a level of consciousness which is infinitely higher than the conscious awareness we have of our daytime activities.

Real appreciation of such things is certainly dependent on human beings becoming more deeply religious through the science of the spirit. If people pursue activities in life that allow their true nature to be neglected so that it withers away, if they do not seek to implant in their physical bodies what can be implanted in them during life on earth, they bring destruction to something in themselves which, unknown to them in ordinary conscious awareness, is a much higher form of consciousness than they themselves are able to have.

Looking out into the universe we perceive a world which, if we gain real understanding, makes us go down on our knees in admiration. We must have the same attitude as we look, with real understanding, into the working of powers in our own inner nature that are greater than human powers. This, then, gives you an approximate indication of the situation in which the human physical body finds itself during sleep.

Apart from the physical body we also have an ether body (Fig. 42, hatched area). In the waking state this is continuously exposed to influences coming from the I, which is active in the world, and the astral body, which is connected with the I. In the waking state we always see the colours arising and fading away again and the other colouring effects which take place in the astral body and go across into the ether body. In fact, we see the ether body adapt itself to the astral body. We also see something enter into the ether body which is the I in its structuring. In short, in the waking state we see I and astral body play into the ether body. When asleep, the human being as I and astral body is outside the ether body, and the colouring of the astral body and structuring of the I do not enter into it. The ether body is then left to its own structuring principles. The way this comes to expression is that in sleep, the ether body assumes a structure that is an image of the universe and does so in a truly magnificent way.

The main substance of the etheric body is taken up by human beings as they move from pre-birth life to physical life on earth. Its composition depends on how the individual lived between death and rebirth. Everything the human being receives into himself from the universe—shown in symbolic form, as it were, in spiritual science as something the human being has taken in of the heavens from North, South, East, West—all this the etheric body bears within it. For the reasons given above, the ether body is unable to make this apparent in the waking state, but it does so in sleep. The human being is all memory then, to begin with memory of life on earth.

Occasionally people are aware that on entering into their etheric body they enter into a sea of images; they consider it part of their dreams. Anyone who has made the effort, however, to observe the sea of images which a person passes through, as it were, in the process of waking up, and observe the experiences made at that time, discovers that this ether body really contains the whole of our life on earth when we are asleep. In our sleep we are really alive and active in everything we have gone through in the ether body from the time we were born. It has however been structured for the ether body by cosmic powers. As astral body and I are not playing into it at this time, the ether body radiates what has been inculcated, inoculated into it at birth. The human ether body grows radiant (Fig. 43, yellow arrows).

This radiance of the human being in sleep is something truly significant. When the sun has gone down and the earth world is immersed in darkness of night, it represents the soul radiance of humanity, quite distinct from the physical radiance of the sun. Unfortunately, however, this soul radiance also contains everything the human being implants into the ether body via the astral body and I during life because he is bad, elements which are destructive and cause the ether body to wither. The evolution of the earth could not progress, however, without this radiance coming from human beings.

Someone equipped with the necessary organs who was out there in the cosmos, observing the earth from out there, would say: During the day you see the sunlight reflected from the part of the earth where the sun is shining; but when night covers part of the earth, the earth phosphoresces. The phosphorescence comes from the human ether bodies. The earth needs all this to progress in its evolution. If no human beings were asleep on earth, the vegetative powers of the earth would die down much more rapidly than they actually do. Human beings certainly do not exist on earth just for their own sake; they are not without significance for the way the earth as a whole is structured. For the whole of their life on earth, sleeping human beings radiate from their ether bodies into earth evolution what they have taken up in the world of the spirit between death and rebirth.

Thus we are able to say: For the physical body, radiation is from above downwards; for the ether body it is from the inside outwards. Human sleep definitely also has cosmic significance.

This is why I had to tell you yesterday that when an I and astral body return to the ether body it feels like autumn, and when they are free of the body in sleep it feels like spring or summer. It is indeed true that human beings become more sun-like or wintry in soul and spirit as the astral body goes in and out.

We may say, therefore, that during sleep the nature of the human ether body is such that the powers human beings gather between death and rebirth in the cosmos have a structuring effect on the earth. Again the level of consciousness is higher than that normally available for people’s waking activities. The consciousness of the life spirit is at work in the ether body’s activity during sleep. This is a level of consciousness human beings will only develop when our planet earth has reached its Venus metamorphosis.

We can see, therefore, that the relationship of I and astral body on the one hand, and physical body and ether body on the other, is such that they do not work together during sleep, but only from the time we wake up until we fall asleep. The relationship changes, with the swing of the pendulum moving between collaboration and non-collaboration. It is also the case that at the moment when I and astral body approach the physical and ether bodies on waking, and at the moment when they withdraw again on going to sleep, the interaction which occurs is governed by yet another level of consciousness which is above that used in human waking activity. We are able to influence our waking up and going to sleep in a certain, indirect way. But the subtle processes between I and astral body on the one hand and physical and ether bodies on the other as we go to sleep and wake up again are something our conscious human mind is not able to perceive.

I’d like to show this interaction with these arrows going in opposite directions (Fig. 43, blue). In this direction, in this interaction, as it comes to expression especially on waking up and going to sleep, though in a certain way it also continues in waking life and even during sleep, a principle comes into its own which we can say applies mainly to the astral body. We are able to say that the situation is such that the astral body is stimulated in a cosmic sense. Remember that from going to sleep to waking up the astral body is coloured in accord with its moral reactions, as I have shown yesterday. On waking up it enters into an ether body structured by the cosmos. It has to follow it and adapt to it. And we are able to say that cosmic astral powers influence human astral powers. This can be observed quite clearly in a specific case.

Imagine someone who has not gone through life between death and rebirth—which is true in the case of animals—and was newly created at birth, which is what Aristotelian philosophy postulates. This individual would not bring the effects of earlier lives on earth and between death and rebirth into the new life. His eyes, his senses would roam over experiences in the outside world, but he would have no concepts based on geometry and mathematics to make connections between them. This is just one instance, one of those where geometry, which holds true for the cosmos, enters into interaction with principles that apply only in the earth environment. Rational concepts of mathematics and geometry enter into empirical experience gained on earth. This interaction is continuous, and it takes place in such a way that the spirit self is the consciousness active in it. Observing the world from a mathematical point of view, people have no idea, of course, that as they do so, the spirit self has them by the scruff of the neck. They fail to take note of this because they limit themselves to the reflection of it which exists in ordinary human consciousness.

When the human being is finally neither sleeping nor in the process of waking up or going to sleep, when I and astral body have entered fully into ether body and physical body, we have the ordinary level of present-day conscious awareness, when we are given up to everything that is outside of spirit human being, life spirit and spirit self. When humanity will have reached the level of existence which it will have when the earth has gone through its metamorphosis into Jupiter existence, as described in my Occult Science, it will no longer be the case that people use geometry to create a cube in an external way, and then discover that this ideal cube form fits a salt crystal. Human beings will be given up to the outside world to such an extent that they will be in the salt themselves, as it were. There won’t be any salt of this kind on Jupiter, of course, but analogies like this help us to get a clearer picture of human life as it will be in the future.

Using the method we used yesterday to consider astral body and I, we can therefore also gain an idea of how physical and etheric body are during sleep. The physical body is actually self-structuring in limbs and metabolism during sleep, the ether body world-structuring.

Thinking back to what we were considering yesterday, we have to say: The human astral body moves out of the physical and ether bodies during sleep. The powers of soul in the universe stream into it, and the way they enter into it depends on the inner life of mind and soul. If someone is in sympathy with all that is good, the most beautiful powers of the universe will be able to enter. If people develop their inclinations towards evil, their astral bodies will wither away. During sleep, the astral body assumes different nuances of colour for different levels of feeling and inner responsiveness (Fig. 43, reddish, yellow, pink, mauve). We may say that individual people sparkle up in their astral bodies during sleep depending on the way they are. The astral body represents our inner state of heart and soul during waking hours. This, as it were, pours into the soul universe, and human beings experience themselves in this pouring-out process in so far as their inner state has changed, but in a situation where they encounter the world of the spirit in that inner state.

If human beings were able to enter into the consciousness of the life spirit when their astral bodies are active and alive out there, they would be able to speak to that which happens with their astral bodies. This actually happens, but at an unconscious level. Who would be speaking, if humans beings suddenly achieved the level of consciousness of the life spirit in their sleep? The only way of putting this is to say: The human astral body would be speaking, as judge over good and evil in the human being. So that we really have to say: In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul. Rightly understood, this statement is important for human life. It is a truth that shines out as if from beyond the threshold of the world of the spirit, a truth human beings should call to mind as often as possible.

Take the corresponding situation for the I. The I moves out of the physical and ether bodies, structuring itself in accord with the powers of the universal entities in the sphere of the spirit. It becomes what it can become in the light of how it lives in the physical body. If it were to come awake to the spirit human being level of consciousness, it would not merely speak to itself, as the astral body would if suddenly given the life spirit level of consciousness; the I would be given the level of consciousness which is active in the physical body it has left behind, sending powers from above downwards. If, then, human ‘I’s had this level of consciousness when out of the body during sleep, human beings would know not only the totality of judgements passed on them but they would see that which they are in the process of becoming, now as images, which will be the seed for future lives on earth.

I cannot think of any other way of putting this in a sentence than this: The I becomes its own sacrifice, a sacrifice brought by the spirit which is active in the body. A sacrifice may be such that it is accepted with pleasure, which may also be the case for the I when it is given structure out there. A sacrifice may also be such that it is rejected. These are the extremes. Mostly, of course, human beings experience something which lies more in the middle. But a sacrifice may be rejected, having been found unworthy. If human beings present themselves to the spirits of the universe in such a way that they have to wither away greatly because of experiences they had in their physical and etheric bodies during waking hours, they become rejects.

You see, therefore, that the idea of sacrifice is certainly applicable in this case. And it seems to me that these two statements: In sleep, the astral human being becomes the judge of the soul, and: The I becomes its own sacrifice, are extraordinarily important if we are to understand human nature fully.

If we consider what the instinctive judgements of humanity have achieved in the past, judgements made not with the clarity of mind we must use today to search for anthroposophical knowledge of the spirit, but from instinct, we become aware of images representing significant original wisdom possessed by humanity. I have spoken of this before. They come to expression in ancient myths and sayings and also in the rites which have survived in different religious systems.

This is why we feel profound reverence for traditional religious paintings and images of ancient rites if we understand them rightly. Essentially it is true to say that religious feeling can only come alive again in human hearts if insight into the world gained through the science of the spirit—insight that is more than mere words, but perceived in its deepest meaning—takes hold not only of the head, but of the whole human being. The science of the spirit must not only provide us with insight into the world but make us feel reverence for the spirit which is at work in the world. This has been particularly evident to us today.

This science of the spirit will be able to quicken religious feeling in human hearts. Humanity has however also gone through a time when people lived only for intellectualism, rationalism and the materialism connected with this—we know this had to be, for the sake of achieving independence. Today the greater part of humanity is still caught up in these things. There has to be a return, however, to perception of the spiritual in the world, to living beyond mere intellectual understanding of the world, beyond experience limited to the purely head aspect of the human being.

If we go back beyond the age of the intellect to the days when the religious images of old were still alive—also serving as images to convey insight well into the Medieval period of modern humanity—if we consider the images created in the performance of religious rites, we find something in all of these which is enormously similar, except that it was gained through instinct, to the insights we are now able to gain in the worlds of the spirit, though now in the light of clear conscious awareness.

I really have to say that if the idea expressed in the words: “In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul” comes from Inspiration, we find this well represented in Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement on the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Here we have something that comes from time immemorial. It has merely assumed Christian form and with this become more traditional. Pictures like these were painted out of tradition. There were times in human evolution, however, when they were seen in a living way, when instinct made people see the inspired Imagination of human souls pass judgement on themselves in sleep.

Again, if we consider the image of the Lamb of God, which touches us so deeply, the image of the Christ uniting himself with the human I, entering into it, the thought of the I becoming the sacrifice as it enters into sleep arises in heart and mind—particularly when we contemplate the Lamb sacrificing itself—we discover how fittingly the image of the Lamb expresses the sacrificial nature of the human being in sleep. We discover that an instinctive, wisdom-filled consciousness gave rise to this image, which the I needs in its life on earth, because during sleep it becomes the sacrifice of its own selfhood.

We can do no other but again and again point out that the anthroposophical science of the spirit, as it evolves, seeks to develop completely clear concepts, the kind of clear concepts which otherwise exist only in mathematics, or geometry. But because the concepts gained in the science of the spirit have their roots in the living life of the cosmic spirits they are always such that they do not leave us cold, the way mathematical concepts do, but also fill us with the warmth of inner feeling and with will impulses to fire us. Here we see the close relationship between clear thinking, warmth of feeling and energy-laden will impulses. This, then, is a point of view which allows us to perceive human nature in its fullness.

Many aspects of history, too, only find their explanation if we are able to base ourselves on such a perception of the human being. Well into the Middle Ages, as I said, many people still understood the ancient images, in which the world is seen sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of eternity, a kind of understanding that still existed in the old instinctive life of wisdom and which has to be regained in clarity of mind, seeking to achieve it through the anthroposophical science of the spirit.

We sometimes see strange individuals come up in history, people who seem rather out of place in the present-day situation. Travelling in Italy, I once talked to a priest belonging to the Benedictine order in Monte Cassino. He told me that the list of saints in his breviary included the Saxon German emperor Henry II,⁴¹ also called “the Saint”—I do not know how far this is still mentioned in the history books. What Henry II was after was an Ecclesia catholica non Romana, that was his true aim, though he is called a saint. In his day, that is, in the 10th, 11th century, it was certainly still possible to speak out of real experience of old traditional wisdom and say that what had come into the world through Christianity should be an Ecclesia catholica, meaning a church for the whole of humanity in which the spirit reigns which was intended to come into the world through Christianity. But he wanted an Ecclesia catholica non Romana, for the Roman Catholic Church had become a worldly kingdom. Truth is that everywhere where kingdoms of the spirit become worldly kingdoms the ahrimanic principle takes hold of what lives as a holy of holies and has lived as such in the ancient wisdom possessed by humanity. In the days of Henry II, people were still strongly aware that it was possible to separate Ecclesia catholica and Ecclesia catholica Romana and that the desirable aim was an Ecclesia catholica non Romana.

As I said, Henry II is out of place as a saint in the breviary. The Ecclesia catholica Romana has not the least cause to include him among the saints, for he was one of the people who in a fiery, holy enthusiasm for a catholic church actually wanted to vanquish the Roman Catholic Church.

Historical facts like these ought to be brought to mind especially when reference is made to the tremendously important truths which can be brought back again to the surface of human awareness through anthroposophical science of the spirit. It is very necessary to point this out today, for individual instances which may disgust us as they come up from the Ecclesia catholica Romana right here on our doorstep⁴² allow us to see how the ahrimanic spirit was able to enter into it. On the one hand we must not let this ahrimanic spirit deceive us into thinking that the Ecclesia catholica Romana does not hold the light-filled wisdom of eternity. When I was able to give a course here for theologians, it was evident that with the longing felt by Protestants to deepen Protestantism in its spiritual aspects, to get out of rationalism, out of intellectualism, it came as a real liberation for some of those present to hear the words: Ecclesia catholica non Romana. For today we have definitely reached a point where rationalism must be overcome just as much as the worldly nature of the Catholic Church has to be overcome; humanity must come together again in a life of the spirit that is for all, a life of the spirit to which none may lay claim who have any kind of desire to rule the world.

The ahrimanic spirit is a lying spirit. It may happen that lying minds fall so low in this lying spirit as to declare falsehood to be truth. It is necessary, therefore, that out of the depths of what is happening in the world we come to abhor lies utterly. We truly come to abhor lies if we are able to say, in full awareness: In sleep, the astral body becomes the judge of the soul. The I in sleep becomes the sacrifice of its selfhood.

Darkness is thrown on these profound truths by the ahrimanic spirit, which has also entered into the religious creeds of recent times. It will be up to people who in all honesty, and with some energy, profess themselves to be followers of anthroposophy not just to develop a superficial, intellectual liking for the wisdom anthroposophy is able to offer, but to develop real inner energy of feelings and will, and to let this energy unite with what mind and spirit are able to perceive of the world of the spirit through the science of the spirit which takes its orientation from anthroposophy.

This, my friends, is also intended to teach you how important it is to distinguish between the element to be found even in the traditional continuation of religious images and images created in religious rites and the way in which these are sometimes used today.

Surely all of us must feel the deepest reverence for something which is contained in the ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church, something which as it were shines out to us from the spiritually grey-haired ancient Orient. Our approach to these ritual acts can always be such that we penetrate through what is happening there to the tremendous depth which comes to revelation. Millennia and millennia of wisdom evolved from instinct come to expression in these ritual acts.

Years ago I attended such a ritual in Helsingfors.⁴³ It was at Easter and it is fair to say this was one of the saddest events in my life to remember, to see how the popes, the most terrible inner liars, acted out their comedy based on eternal truth. That is how it is in the world today. Under the influence of ahrimanic materialism, lies are presented on the outside, and the deepest truth lies within, and the two are brought together in a truly dreadful way. You have to have a real feeling for this, or you will not develop the right energy in your understanding of the nature of the human being.

That was an extreme case, but the same happens everywhere today, with differing degrees of intensity. Anthroposophical awareness should be such that we see these things, and are able to distinguish clearly between truth and falsehood, a falsehood which under the pressures of external circumstances is very much hidden. We must always gain something from entering deeply into anthroposophy—for the human being as a whole and above all for the conscious awareness belonging to our age. This is what I wanted to say to you in connection with what we have been considering here.

• 41. Henry the Saint (973–1024).
• 42. Diatribe entitled “The Secrets of the Dornach Temple” published by M. Kully in Basle, 1920-21.
• 43. Helsingfors, Easter 1912. See letter Marie Steiner wrote on 13 April 1912 to Mieta Waller: “There was an Easter celebration in the church ...”. Nachrichten der Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung Easter 1967, No. 7, p. 12.

These lectures are volume two of the Cosmosophy lecture course and the 8th volume in a series of lecture courses Rudolf Steiner gave under the general title “Man and his relationship to the cosmos” for members of the Anthroposophical Society in 1920 and 1921, published in nine volumes in GA (German Gesamtausgabe or collected works) 201-209.

The first 11 lectures (Cosmosophy vol. 1, GA 207) have been translated by A. Wulsin and M. Kirkcaldy and published by Anthroposophic Press, New York 1985.

This volume will easily stand on its own, but readers will need to have some knowledge of Rudolf Steiner’s science of the spirit and are advised to read the basic works first, e.g. Occult Science and Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. The Cosmosophy lectures are not easy, with very close reasoning at times, and would be hard to understand without such basic knowledge.

Over the years these lectures have come to be very dear to my heart. They really demand us to become active and mobile in both heart and mind, which is something Rudolf Steiner often asked of the members of the Society. The first lecture immediately turns one inside out and upside down, as it were. I have sometimes found it useful to enter almost physically into the movements described, something that may also be helpful on other occasions when studying the works of Rudolf Steiner.

The drawings in the text have been taken from the German edition, with only the labelling put into English. They were produced for that edition by Assia Turgenieff and Hedwig Frey.

I have numbered them through, as this makes it easier to refer to them. Readers may find it helpful, if they do not have a copy of the original drawings, to remember that the images would have remained on the board for the rest of the lecture. In some text passages one gets an indication that Rudolf Steiner would point again to a drawing made earlier. It may be a good idea to make copies if one does not want to keep turning back the pages. If one did them oneself, perhaps also colouring them up, this may also contribute to better understanding. It has to be remembered that these were blackboard drawings, with white chalk also used.

The original blackboard drawings of the figures in this volume are now available in volume VIII of Rudolf Steiner, Wandtafelzeichnungen zum Vortragswerk, published by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland. They are in colour and add something to one’s reading, though not essential. Study groups may be able to buy them together or borrow them from a library.

These lectures were given 76 years ago and readers may find it helpful to have a little background information. Rudolf Steiner always spoke out of the situation that existed at the time.

In 1921, three years after World War I, with democracy and social ideals trying to win through in the Weimar Republic, and financial collapse just round the corner, Rudolf Steiner mainly concentrated his efforts on cultural renewal in Europe, especially in economics, education, medicine, theology, the sciences and the arts. Two publications that continue to this day first appeared in 1921, the monthly journal Die Drei in February, and the weekly paper Das Goetheanum in August. Two clinics opened that year, the Institute of Clinical Medicine in Arlesheim and another in Stuttgart. Within the Society, local groups had often slid into comfortable complacency, and Rudolf Steiner sought to shake them out of this. With anthroposophy gaining a higher profile with all this activity, opposition also grew stronger and more organized, not only in Germany but also in other countries. Apart from Germany and Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner also lectured in Amsterdam and The Hague that year, and in November and December in Oslo. More than 380 of the lectures he gave that year have been published from shorthand records in German. He would often give two, sometimes three, and occasionally even four lectures a day!

Anna R. Meuss
Surbiton, July 1997

Let us consider a few facts connected with man and his relation to the universe in respect of body, soul and spirit. We have seen that in a certain way man’s experiences between death and a new birth, which were connected with the whole universe, enter his inner life during his earthly existence. We have seen that what we experience before birth or conception in the form of outer experiences, is afterwards contained within us, in our inner life. Let us now consider man’s relation to the universe from another aspect, namely that his experiences between birth and death go with him through the portal of death and become experiences of the new existence through which he passes between death and a new birth. In man we must distinguish what he has (I mean, during his earthly life), to begin with, as his inner life, and what separates from this as a kind of external life.

Inner Life: We may first indicate man’s feelings, the inner content of his feelings between birth and death. This constitutes his real inner life. What he feels in regard to the impressions left upon him by the external world, or in regard to his own inner experiences, his feelings of approval or reproach towards his actions, which are the expressions of his will, all this is something which man more or less settles with his own self during his earthly life. He may allow others to look into it, but the essential thing is the way in which man settles all this with his own self. His experiences in connection with perception are, as we already know from our preceding lectures, not real experiences, but they form a world of semblance which surrounds him. In reality, this world is neither inside nor outside; man participates in it and it becomes his inner world only because he develops thoughts and feelings connected with it and because it stimulates him to this or that action. His attitude towards it is essentially the result of capacities he brings along with him through birth. This attitude towards the external world, also his place in the world, the nation he belongs to by birth, etc., all this depends on his preceding earthly and spiritual life. Consequently it points backwards rather than forwards. But something else must be considered that connects us with the external world. What is rooted in our will and passes over into our actions becomes part of the external world. Everything taking place through our actions brings about a change in the external world. The least thing we do transforms the external world.

We may now say: The external world which we ourselves prepare through our actions is rooted in our will. It is related to us in the same way in which the events during sleep are related to us. With our consciousness, with our ordinary consciousness, we are just as unable to look into the depths of our volitional world, as into the conditions which exist during sleep.

All that really takes place in the sphere of the will thus remains inaccessible to our consciousness. I have often explained this as follows: The whole volitional process which takes place when we move an arm or a hand, the forces which develop in these movements, are not accessible to our consciousness. Yet we see the movement of the hand. We see the changes which we bring about; when we simply move something to another place we see this change through our forces of perception. We may therefore say: Our perceptions enable us to know something about the expressions of our will. The human will and the effects which it produces flow, as it were, into man’s sphere of perceptions.

Let us bear in mind our recent lectures. In these we explained that we have, to begin with, man’s physical body, (see drawing) and then his etheric body. In between lies the weaving world of thought, in so far as it is incorporated in the human organism. Between the etheric and the astral bodies lies the world of feeling, and between the astral body and the sheath of the Ego lies the world of the human will.

Our ordinary consciousness is really unable to distinguish the volitional world from the Ego. For the will is united with the Ego. Everything that takes place in the Ego when it wills or does something, does not enter our ordinary consciousness in a direct way. This lives below the surface of our ordinary consciousness, like the events which take place during sleep.

In our physical body we have sense-organs and these are endowed with perception. This also enables us to perceive the manifestations of our will. The physical body has eyes and ears and through these sense-organs we perceive what comes from the Ego and from the sphere of the will. Man’s perceptions, which constitute his most external part, thus become united with what he experiences through his will and his Ego. (See arrow in drawing.)

Consider the following: The will-processes in the depths of the human organism, which arise whenever we walk a few steps, the forces which induce us to move our legs—all this is not accessible to our ordinary consciousness. After a few steps we see a different environment, or at least we see it from a different standpoint. In this changed aspect, sense-perception gives us something which thought transmits during our ordinary state of consciousness; it gives us a picture of what ordinarily lives in the depths of a waking state of sleep. So that whenever our Ego is filled by will-impulses and these become actions, no matter whether brought about by walking or by taking hold of something, or by any kind of activity, this is experienced through perception. Through our will, we really belong to the external world of our perception. By developing what may thus be observed in connection with the manifestations of our will, we do not reach our real inner being. Although our will streams out of the innermost depths of our being, we grow conscious of it by passing through an external process, or rather a sum of external processes connected with the body. But let us now consider man’s inner life. There is, to begin with, his weaving world of thoughts. The way in which thoughts are active outside in the work does not touch the present subject.

Outwardly, the world of thoughts exists in such a way that it brings certain logical, lawful connections into our perceptions. We classify Nature. We see plants which resemble each other and classify them; we see animals which resemble each other and classify them. We also try to discover the laws of Nature. What we thus unfold, does not really belong to our inner life. All this is science, which we share with every other person. It does not form part of our inner life. Yet we cannot simply assert that everything connected with thought does not form part of our inner life. It suffices to bear in mind that when we see a beautiful landscape (through external perception) and develop thoughts about it, we may recall this picture at any time, even if this memory grows pale. The things connected with the external world therefore become part of our inner world. The same may be said of other experiences connected with the external world, which become thoughts forming part of our inner world. To begin with, these thoughts pervade our etheric body, yet they also unite with feeling, which reaches as far as the astral body.

All this takes place inwardly. The inner side of thought-life, and the life of feeling, really constitute man’s inner world. What we experience in connection with the inner aspect of our thoughts and with our feelings cannot really be sought in an outer world. Whenever we want to know something about the outer world, we must look into us, into our inner life. I have already told you that we may speak with other people and indirectly allow them to look into us, but our inner life is the essential thing. It is possible to distinguish clearly what constitutes external life, through the fact that we constantly bring our inner world into the outer world.

When a train brings us at night from the West to the East of Switzerland, we are in an entirely different environment in the morning and it is our perception which makes us aware of this change. We have brought our inner life with us. It was the same in one place and in the other, perhaps modified by what induced us to turn towards our inner being, by the thoughts which induced us to do so; in fact, by what has become our inner life.

If we want to, we may therefore distinguish quite clearly between that which constitutes man’s real inner life, psychically woven out of thought and feeling and based on reciprocal, rhythmical processes of the etheric and astral bodies, and that which constitutes in a certain sense our external world, psychically woven out of the content of our will and the content of our perception, and bodily woven out of the Ego and the physical body. For we take along with us our physical body, we observe it and see that it enters into different relations with the world. As explained just now, we may distinguish inner and outer life.

This distinction is very important if we want to observe the life which man carries through the portal of death. In a compendious way we may describe how the inner and outer life characterised just now, will behave after death, for we may say that the outside becomes inside, and the inside becomes outside.

In fact, this is the great change which takes place when we die. Outer life becomes inner life. Even as we are now able to feel our soul’s inner being—for we can see that our inner soul-life is woven out of thoughts and feelings and we address this inner being with "I"—so after death all our perceptions connected with our actions become our inner life. But what we now experience as our inner being, the contemplation of everything we did here on earth, is concentrated, as it were, in a point, or rather in a sphere. Everything we did, we carry through death as an inner memory, as pictures of our whole earthly existence. Here we therefore have a complete reversal. For what was outside, what could only be perceived by looking upon our actions, becomes our inner life. Even as now we live in our feelings, in the impressions gained from outside, so after death we live in our actions. Our actions then become our inner life.

After death, we ourselves become what we have done to a person, in the form of good or evil deeds. Such things should not be imagined abstractly, we should not think that a vague kind of Ego slips through death and then changes, or undergoes a slight change, but we ourselves become what we have done, right into the very details. After death, we are each one of our actions. We are each one of our experiences and we address them all with "I".

On the other hand, our inner life becomes an outer life. All our thoughts, the whole life of our feelings, become an external world. Even as we are now surrounded either by the shining sun and the clouds, or at night by the starry sky and its movements, so after death we are surrounded by the external world of our thoughts and feelings; that is, everything that now constitutes our innermost being, becomes part of the external world after death, and we see it outside in mighty pictures. The sky which shines down upon us after death, is our present inner life, our inner human essence. If I were to describe this in detail I would have to say: I have explained to you just now that our actions become a sphere, that we experience them as our inner being. We experience again and again all our activities here on earth; we again walk as we have walked. After death we change, as it were, into something that experiences its own actions in an ever growing sphere. We always look back upon the earth. Even as now we look out into the world’s spaces and behold the sun and the stars, so then we look back upon the earth. And we see the earth surrounded by the pictures of our preceding inner world.

We do not only experience the semblance of our inner world, but from the site we abandoned, and sending a reflexion after our own self, we experience all that once constituted our inner world; we experience it in the form of clouds, stars, and so forth, streaming out of this site. We feel ourselves within the former peripheric world, and we experience the earth upon which we once stood, as a centre, but outside. And we always look towards it. We ourselves live in what surrounds it; the earth at the centre is then the object towards which we look, and mighty pictures are unrolled before us, as our whole inner life unrolls. Outer life becomes inner life. Inner life becomes outer life. This takes place right into the very details.

And when we look down towards the earth, from this sphere spreading out more and more, we then behold, streaming back to us from the earth, all the feelings and sensations we had for other people. And all the other feelings we had, besides those in connection with human beings, appear more in form of clouds. But our feelings for others appear like stars. The human beings themselves, whose forms we see during our life between birth and death, these human beings with whom we now come into contact through experiences caused by our deeds, now constitute a world. All the people with whom we were connected, become part of our inner world.

This is of course reciprocal. Even as every person now bears within him his feelings, or his heart and stomach, so between death and a new birth everyone bears within him all that took place outside in space, and also all that occurred between himself and other people. Of two men who were closely connected, A bears within him the picture of B as his inner content, and B the picture of A. What was outside is now inside; our inner life, our feelings, become an external world, they become the content of a cosmos; what we felt for others, what we obtained from others, all this rays out towards us from the earth.

Man thus really becomes almost the creator of the world which surrounds him after death. During our earthly life, matters stand as follows: We always live in a certain place, and by this I do not only mean trivially that we live in Basle, or Dornach, etc., but any point, any standpoint we have in the world, physically as well as morally. We view the world from this standpoint. We may therefore say that we stand at a certain point and see the world perspectively from this point. But this is a subjective view, for every other person has another standpoint.

Things change after death. There, all men already have something in common. This common element is the sphere. Yet each person has had a different inner life, consequently the earth appears to each surrounded by different clouds, by different stars. It is as if we were all standing upon the same point of the earth, yet each one sees another picture. When we die, we discard the physical body. In the lectures I gave during the past weeks, I have already explained that the physical body is dissolved by the earthly kingdom as such. What remains, is the web spun out of our deeds, by what we see when we follow up our deeds, or the manifestations of our will, through perception. Think of all the ways you have gone on earth: As an infant you first crept about, then you began to walk, you made a long journey, and so forth. All this becomes your inner life. Yet this is only its outermost structure.

Every single thing you did is spun together and forms a web. This stretches out and becomes a sphere. This is your inner life and the fact that it becomes inner life is a guarantee for your Ego during your earthly existence. For man obtains his Ego from the earth, or through the earth. Because after death everything is spun together in this picture of perception and memory, we may take our Ego with us through death. But our real inner experiences are lived through again immediately after death, when the etheric body dissolves shortly after we have died.

The etheric body dissolves into the cosmic spaces and this brings about the fact that all the thoughts and feelings woven out of the etheric body, but with an astral influence as well, change into forms of clouds, or—as I have pointed out—into forms of stars which surround the earth. What falls away from us in two directions—towards the earth, and out into the cosmic spaces, into the air, as it were,—constitutes our inner and our outer world, when we pass through the life between death and a new birth.

Imagine quite vividly the world which surrounds you between death and a new birth. There are your actions, in so far as they come from the will, and these constitute your inner life. There is your feeling and thinking life in the form of a cosmos, as an external world. You do not look out into the world’s spaces, but from the cosmic spaces you look towards the earth, and the earth rays back to you your inner thought-aspects.

When we live here on earth, between birth and death, we have on the one hand, the life of the sun. The sun is outside and we stand upon the earth and see the sun. When we die, the sun immediately vanishes. For then we ourselves are the sun and we cannot see what we are. We simply pass over into the life of the sun. And what I have described to you above, is our passage through the life of the sun.

That we ourselves become our actions, is connected with the fact that we pass over into the life of the sun. When we have left the earth, our earthly experiences become something we behold. Here we stand upon the earth and look at the sun and we see the earth below our feet. This is due to the peculiar material structure of the earth. But the sun has no material structure. What physicists say in regard to this, is pure invention. I have often spoken of this. When we ourselves exist, as it were, within the sun and look back, we have the whole spiritual world behind us, the world of the Hierarchies. Even as here on earth we see solid matter when we look down, so between death and a new birth we have behind us the world of the Hierarchies. Thus we ourselves are sun and we behold the real sun, which is spiritual. We may say that the earth is then the sky. But it is a sky which we ourselves prepare through our inner experiences.

This will be the ease in future, this is how the future existence of Jupiter will arise. I have already explained this in detail. Everything we weave around the earth through our feelings and thoughts, will remain. The now existing material earth will vanish, for it will decay. Between death and a new birth, we are able to behold our inner experiences. This will change into reality, when the earth decays, and it will form the new earth, for the old earth will dissolve and all our inner experiences will constitute the future earth.

This is the real process of metamorphosis. When we simply say, the earth will become Jupiter, this is an abstract statement. We can only understand this process by knowing that all earthly, external substance will melt away into the cosmic spaces, it will become dust, whereas the web spun out of our feelings will form the future earth; it will condense more and more and become the planet of Jupiter.

Geologists now dig into the sub-soil of the earth and sometimes discover strata which have arisen in very remote ages; similarly, during the Jupiter existence, it will be possible to investigate the different strata which have thus formed themselves. All kinds of strata formed out of human feelings and thoughts will be discovered, lying one on top of the other. A Jupiter geologist may, for example, discover various strata, and in the same way in which a geologist upon the earth may say, here are the lower strata, the tertiary strata, so a geologist upon Jupiter will one day ascertain: Here is a stratum pointing back to an age which was called upon the earth the 20th century, the early 20th century; this is a stratum formed by the materialists and profiteers, who spread their thoughts and feelings over nearly the whole world. Even as we now speak of a Silurian stratum, so it will in future be possible to speak of a "Profiteer-stratum". Of course, one will also speak of other strata. But these things are realities.

It is not allowed to man to let his inner experiences vanish. They are a developing world; they will one day be a real world. And between death and a new birth, human consciousness may already look upon that which will in future become a world; indeed, this is the only thing man beholds after death.

Among the many different things in our environment, we also observe the Moon when we stand here upon the Earth. But the Moon is there in a very special way. It sends back to us the reflected sunlight. We can only see its surface, as it were, in so far as its garment is woven by the sunlight. So that when the Moon is shining, it is really the Sun that is shining for us; the sun’s rays come to us indirectly. The Moon, the earth’s satellite, is connected with us in a special way.

During the life between death and a new birth we thus have, to begin with, our inner world, the effect of all our actions in so far as these are rooted in the will, and this inner world, this sphere or central kernel, is surrounded by our feelings and thoughts, which ray out into the cosmic spaces. Yet after death there also exists something resembling the Moon. I might say: After death we see the Moon from the other side. Our existence within a sphere is subjected to laws of perspective which differ from those which exist here on Earth and it is, of course, difficult to explain certain things connected with the laws of perspective which exist after death. This is very difficult, because between death and a new birth we are, in a certain sense, inside, not outside the Moon. In a certain way, we are always connected with the Moon’s inner being. We live, as it were, within the Moon. Even as here upon the earth we continually see the reflected sunlight, so between death and a new birth we always see the inside of the Moon.

But as stated, there the perspective changes. Let us assume that here we have the Earth with the Moon circling round it. We must take into consideration the whole sphere, the whole orbit of the Moon if we take the after-death aspect and the conditions which apply to it. We must consider the whole sphere in which the Moon revolves, and this sphere is really perceived from within. To begin with, we go further and further away from the Earth by moving within this sphere. There, we cannot look at the Sun from within. But at the same time we do not see it from outside, because it becomes invisible; we cannot perceive it. The Sun remains as a memory. What we first behold as we move away from the Earth, what becomes, as it were, visible upon the inner wall of the Moon, or the Moon’s sphere, and is retained as a memory, are the effects of a former earthly life in a subsequent one. It is, in fact, the Moon that preserves the events of one earthly life, and these appear in a subsequent earthly life as effects of the former life. For the whole mystery of the Moon in the cosmos is connected with the fact that the content of one earthly life continues and is taken along into the next earthly life.

This is the aspect presenting itself when we stand upon the Earth and look out into the cosmic spaces—the aspect between birth and death. But there is another aspect, the one between death and a new birth, when we live within a sphere and look back upon the central kernel. We then exist in a world which is, in a certain sense, opposed to the one we now live in. Yet we carry through both these worlds that part of our being which has been concentrated, etc. upon the Moon, preserved by the Moon. The Moon is, in a certain sense, highly important to us as a celestial body. The Moon connects our different earthly lives; it is not, of course, that slag shining down upon the Earth; in its whole mysterious cosmic essence it forms a connecting link.

You see, the individual life of men is thus connected with the life of the whole universe. Here, between birth and death, we can see what has been left to us by former worlds, what has remained from the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and from the past existence of the Earth. We perceive all this when we live here upon the Earth, surrounded by the radiant phenomena above us. This more or less points back to the past.

Everything we bear within us and what we ourselves do upon this Earth points to the future. And we already behold this future during our life between death and a new birth, sending, as it were, a reflexion into the present—we see it, when our inner life becomes outer life and our outer life inner life. If you consider the whole meaning of the descriptions which have just been given to you, if you consider that man carries his after-death life into his earthly life, you will find that this resembles his experiences in connection with the outer world, reaching as far as the stars, the planets; this reappears in his organisation, it rises up again in his inner being. And man’s inner being becomes his outer world. After death, something similar takes place. The external world which man formed for himself, all the actions that went out from him, become his inner world. All his inner experiences, derived either from his surroundings or from his actions, giving rise to feelings of satisfaction or of self-reproach, all this inner world becomes his outer world and it looks towards him like a firmament, but this firmament is now at the centre and it looks towards him, i.e. out into the cosmic spaces.

If we do not misunderstand this, we might also say: Man’s outer life becomes his inner life, his Sun-life, for he becomes an inhabitant of the Sun. Man’s inner being, in so far as he experienced it upon the Earth, becomes his firmament. But he now inhabits the firmament. The Earth becomes sky, the Sun becomes Earth, during the life between death and a new birth.

When true vision adds this other aspect of the world to the intellectual world-conception which modern man gains here on Earth, the only conception which he accepts, only then will a complete picture of the world stand before us. We shall then have entirely different feelings in regard to the world. This other picture of the world is, in reality, the one described in Anthroposophy, it is the picture I have always described to you, in contrast to the world-conception formed through external observation; the picture I have always described to you is the active picture, for we must participate in it actively. Your thoughts must become mobile when you read anthroposophical books. And your thoughts must become mobile whenever you listen to an anthroposophical lecture. But people who are only accustomed to the things offered to them by modern life do not want to be active in their thought, they prefer to obtain everything passively, so that also their thoughts are merely passive pictures of what they obtain, and in doing this they always sleep a little, as it were.

These things arise in this form because during his life between birth and death man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an Ego. In regard to earthly life, the Ego is man’s highest part. After death, when he passes over into the Sun-existence, his Ego is the lowest member, and the next one from below is the Spirit-Self, then the Life-Spirit, and then Spirit-Man. Physically, they will exist only in future epochs of evolution, but between death and a new birth they develop spiritually.

The Spirit-Self, in fact, rays out into the cosmic spaces as the image of the Earth. The Ego lives in the Sun, in the life of the Sun, and the Spirit-Self rays back from the earth, as described above. The other members are higher forms, which afterwards come to man from the cosmos, but at first they have nothing to do with his inner being. What rays out towards him appears to him in a new life; through this it becomes "Life Spirit". And man’s deeds are pervaded by a high spiritual substantiality throbbing through them. This will be given to him by the cosmos, he receives it, as it were, outside, in the cosmos. When he comes down to birth, he obtains a physical body and an etheric body, and similarly when he has passed through the portal of death, he obtains a Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, which are his garments. From man himself comes what constitutes his Ego. And between death and a new birth, all that rays out from the Earth becomes a finely woven planetary existence, something which can only be felt as a trans-formed earth; we look back upon it and we go on weaving it from life to life.

When the Earth will have reached the end of its evolution, man will therefore proceed with the Earth to the Jupiter-stage of existence, and what he has thus woven, will enable him to unfold his Spirit-Self physically upon Jupiter. The foundation for this has been laid during his earthly life, through his inner being.

These are the real processes. This is the true course of development. You see, it is not necessary to combine outer words—Earth-existence, Jupiter-existence, etc.—nor to describe things abstractly from outside, for when we grasp man in his totality it is quite possible to describe the transition from one stage to the other. Our thoughts must only be formed in such a way as to take hold of concepts such as the following: The thoughts and feelings extending within us, ray out from the Earth into the cosmic spaces like planets, like stars, and we ourselves then live with the cosmos; we bear within us the other human beings with whom we were associated.

Human life is complicated. But people who wish to build up a world-conception by setting up a few concepts do not have any real feeling for what is right. We can only build up a world-conception by viewing the totality of life. Life is very complicated even in the smallest bug, and we should not imagine that in the whole universe—and man is connected with it, as a microcosm—life is formed in such a way that we may grasp it by setting up a few thoughts.

In the course of lectures on the life between death and a new birth which I gave in 1914, you will find many indications that may be regarded as a complement to what I have explained to you during the past days and weeks. To-day I want to speak in particular of the change which takes place in the conditions of life between death and a new birth, which greatly resembles the alternating states of waking and sleeping during the life between birth and death.

When we are awake we have our normal consciousness, and it is this which really gives us our human character between birth and death; and when we are asleep our consciousness is, as it were, dulled. Our consciousness then lies below the threshold of our waking life and we experience the processes in which we live from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up, only in a blunt state of consciousness, either quite bluntly, quite asleep, or so that certain life-reminiscences or inner organic processes rise out of our sleep in form of pictures. A similar alternation may also be found in the life between death and a new birth, except that there, as you have seen, everything is, as it were, reversed in comparison with the conditions of our earthly life. I have described to you how radically different are man’s experiences between death and a new birth to his experiences on earth. This also applies to the alternating states of consciousness. As described in my last lecture, between death and a new birth our experiences show us the deeds, the will-impulses of our Ego. This state of consciousness in which our Ego then lives, is, as it were, the normal one, even as here, the waking state of consciousness is the normal one. We have seen that here we are built up, as it were, of our physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, and there, of the Ego, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, which exist, to begin with, as a preliminary foundation. Between death and a new birth, the Ego is therefore the lowest member. But even as here we are inward1y conscious of our Ego through our waking consciousness, so there, through the corresponding state of consciousness, we grow aware of our Ego as an outer experience; we are conscious of our Ego by looking back upon our past deeds and volitional impulses, which, as already described, we experience as if they were reflected to us from the earth. This condition alternates with another; here on earth we may speak of a waking and of a sleeping consciousness, to which we may add a sub-conscious state, whereas between death and a new birth we must speak of the state of consciousness described above and of a kind of super-consciousness, where higher Beings grow conscious within us, that is to say, where higher Beings are the vehicles of our consciousness.

During our earthly condition of sleep we sink down to a kind of plant existence, but in the super-conscious state between death and a new birth we rise up to a kind of Archangel-consciousness, to one which lies above our own. I said that when we are in a normal condition we have behind us, as it were, the Hierarchies of the higher Spiritual Beings. In this super-conscious condition we positively move back towards them. And then we live within them. From them we learn more than we could know as human beings. If between death and a new birth we only experienced what we can experience through our Ego, that sends its rays after us and yet belongs to us, if we were limited to this, we could not experience, as already described, all the processes through which we must pass in order to build up our organism anew, for a new earthly life. We can do this only because our normal states of consciousness alternate with states of existence in which the knowledge (Wissens-zustände) of the Archangeloi and even of the Archai penetrate into our human being, also into our normal consciousness, where they rise up like memories, in the same way in which here on earth dreams enter our consciousness from the sub-conscious spheres. Between death and a new birth we thus live in such a way as to have the consciousness described above, but in between there are always super-conscious conditions, in which we also acquire a super-human knowledge which enables us to build up our existence exactly as required for our next earthly life. Consequently there are analogies between the earthly life from birth to death and the other life from death to a new birth. But we should bear in mind the strong, radical difference between these two conditions of life.

It is possible to see still more clearly into such things by perceiving also the uniting element between the two, by becoming acquainted with what penetrates as an essence of a higher kind into both states of existence—into our earthly life, and into the life between death and a new birth. As we pass through our earthly life, we have, to begin with, the external sensory impressions. We have seen that volitional impulses and actions interweave with these external sensory impressions. But let us now envisage first of all the external sensory impressions.

Try for a moment to set before your soul the fact that throughout your earthly life all the human senses give you a whole complex of sensory impressions, out of which is woven the web of sensory impressions. Generally these sensory impressions are viewed in such a way as to say that they form part of the objects, that the single objects or beings appear, for example, in colours which leave an impression upon the eye, whereas other beings emit sounds and leave an impression upon the organ of hearing. But let us now consider the whole world of sensory impressions and ask what they really are.

I have often drawn your attention to the following: It is out of the question that behind the sensory impressions there should be that fantastic world of atoms dreamed of by the physicists; behind the sensory world there is instead a spiritual world. The spiritual thus exists also in the physical world, but, to begin with, it cannot be perceived by our ordinary consciousness. The ordinary consciousness has before it this web of sensory impressions. But what does it contain? In reality, it contains Beings described in my “Occult Science” as the Spirits of Form. Everything that appears to us in space has a certain form, an object even obtains form through the colour-surface. The Spirits of Form live in everything which we experience through the senses in space. In it live the same Beings named “Elohim” in the Old Testament. For the Elohim are the Spirits of Form. We rightly call this world of physical manifestations a world which manifests itself, a world of phenomena. But this is correct only because with our ordinary consciousness we human beings at first perceive in this world nothing but phenomena, manifestations, the external appearance and semblance, or—as Orientals say—Maya. But when our consciousness awakens and becomes imaginative this whole world of semblance becomes filled with images, or rather transforms itself into a world of weaving images.

This world of weaving images immediately reveals that the world of the Angeloi or Angels is woven into it. And when we reach the stage of inspiration, we obtain inspirations which come to us from everywhere in this world, for it has changed into a world of inspiration. Into this inspiration are interwoven the Beings of the Archangeloi or Archangels.

The world which we experience afterwards is that of intuitions. There we advance to the world of the Archai, whereas ordinarily we only have before us the physical world.

To be sure, when in the world around us we have advanced to the world of the Archai, it is the world of the Archai which also enables us to look back upon what we have already experienced through the higher Hierarchies in former lives between death and a new birth. In the intuitive world we perceive that the Beings whom the Bible calls Elohim, the Beings that are described in my “Occult Science” as Spirits of Form, lie behind the Archai.

We may therefore say: By looking out into the world through our senses we really look into the world of the Spirits of Form, into the physical world.

When we have thus set the physical world before our soul by saying that there we move in the world of the Spirits of Form, we may return to our inner self, but to that inner being that is still very intimately connected with the external world and has to depict for us inwardly the external world in such a way that we can bear it within us in the form of memories. In other words: We may advance from the sensory world to our inner being, to our world of thought.

The thought-world is, to begin with, given to us as a world of picture-thoughts. You will not be tempted to consider as a reality the thoughts that ordinarily live in you, the thoughts that arise in your ordinary consciousness. But in the same way in which realities conceal themselves in the physical world, namely the realities of the Spirits of Form, so there are also realities in the thought-world. Thoughts first appear to our ordinary consciousness as the fleeting inner forms we know; but even as spiritual beings may be discovered in the web of the physical world when we ascend, in the manner described, to higher knowledge through imagination and inspiration, so it is also possible to perceive the activity of spiritual beings in the world of thought. These spiritual beings live in the accompanying phenomena of thought which take place when we think.

From former lectures you know what happens when we think. Processes are then continually taking place within us which may be described by using a comparison, namely as if salt were to dissolve completely in a glass of water leaving it transparent. But if the water cools off a little it gets dim; for the salt crystallizes. Similar processes, which are processes of densification, take place within us when we think. A kind of mineralization process really takes place within us when we think. This mineralization process within us is connected with spiritual Beings that weave through the element of thought. They are the Beings we have always called Archai. We are thus able to know that when we live in our thoughts the Archai live in our life of thought, even as the Elohim, or Spirits of Form, live in our sensory perceptions. In the external world, these Spirits of Form can only be perceived through imaginative knowledge.

When we study the external world with the consciousness which is the normal one to-day, we come to the so-called laws of Nature. These laws of Nature are abstractions. As soon as we proceed to imaginative knowledge we do not have abstract laws of Nature formulated in sentences, but we have pictures, imaginative life. These pictures are not the same as those I have mentioned before, but images which penetrate in a condensed form into the pictures which we obtain when beholding the Elohim, and they penetrate into them as a dimming, tinging element, as it were. This is the influence of the Archai in the external world. We may trace it in the outer and in the inner world.

Perhaps it is now good to turn our gaze away from man’s inner being and to envisage one of life’s manifestations. Thought first lives within us, although thought connects us with the external world; the secrets of the external world are revealed to us through thought, yet, to begin with, thought lives within us. But thought comes to expression when we communicate it to other people. In human life speech is the element through which we give expression to our thoughts, through which thought can manifest itself outwardly.

After having considered the world of thought, let us now consider the world of speech. I have often drawn attention to the fact that the human being of course has more experiences in connection with his world of speech than with his world of thought. Although the will also streams into the element of thought, man’s ordinary consciousness only notices this very slightly. But into speech the human will flows in a way which is quite noticeable to the ordinary consciousness. Yet ordinary consciousness only grasps very little of what really lives in speech. What lives in sound is perceived in the present intellectual age at the most as a sign denoting something. For modern man the inner life of sound is something which has to a great extent withdrawn to the background of consciousness. In regard to modern man we can only point out that sound, the resounding of speech, contains something which can be grasped as a life-element of its own.

Take, for example, a word containing two E (pronounced A in German), the word “gehen”, to walk. If we have a feeling for such things, we may well experience in these two sounds of “gehen” a tranquil way of walking that does not excite us. But when the A-sound (German E) is replaced by an OW-sound (German AU), as in “laufen”, to run, you will feel in it something which you do not experience when you are not walking calmly, but when greater claims are made on your breathing. You feel what takes place when you breathe more quickly, and this is expressed in the OW-sound (German AU). You could not experience the calm way of walking, “gehen”, better than by the two A-sounds (German E), which convey the experience of calm and tranquillity, whereas the running movement, “laufen” is expressend in the OW-sound (German AU) which it contains. There is a spiritual essence in language and many examples which I have given you draw attention to the inner genius undoubtedly contained in speech. Modern men hardly know of its existence, but in past times, when the inner essence of sound could still be experienced, men felt in speech, more consciously than through sensory observation and thought, something which may indeed be felt as a spiritual weaving, a spiritual life.

In this element of speech, in this world of speech, live the Archangeloi, the Archangels, even as the Archai live in the world of thoughts. And because the Archangeloi live in the genius of speech, they are at the same time the Folk-Spirits, the leading spirits of the nations, a fact which I have often described in connection with the Archangels. They live in the element of speech. More than we suppose, man himself is the product of speech, in the same way in which he is, on the other hand, the product of his thought-world. We derive our form completely from the external world, and through our will we again pour form into the external world. What constitutes our life comes from the same region as our thoughts. The Archai live in it. What comes to expression in our language, through which we belong to a nation, brings to expression physical qualities which limit us far more as human beings than that which comes from the thought-element. People have the same thoughts, yet different languages. In regard to language they differ, yet it is nevertheless something which they have in common with others, for man belongs to a small or large nation.

Let us now descend to the sphere of the Angeloi. As often explained, also in this lecture, man has an individual connection with his Angel. This comes to expression in two ways. It expresses itself inwardly. Man may submit to his inner life in such a way as to transcend his inner self. In ordinary life, a Luciferic element will immediately enter because this is an intimate experience; nevertheless man may transcend himself inwardly and experience, as it were, an objective element in phantasy. In many respects, his phantasy is a creative force, but individually creative, like speech. And in reality, the force of phantasy lies at the foundation of speech. Through speech, man only experiences something abstract, he cannot always feel the Archangel, who is the genius of speech, unfolding his wings in speech; similarly man cannot perceive in his phantasy—which becomes a play of fancy when pervaded by Luciferic elements—that an Angel is slipping through his individual life; whenever he lives in his phantasy, an Angel passes through him. A genuine poet, a genuine artist, who has not become cynical, frivolous or superficial, knows that a higher spirituality pervades him whenever he is artistically creative. It is the same higher spirituality that carries him from life to life, as our individual guardian spirit, as his Angelos, his Angel. It is the Angel that enters sound human phantasy. In some of Goethe’s mottoes we can recognise that Goethe was aware of an unconscious element working in him, the one that is really active in phantasy.

When the human being does not inwardly transcend himself, but is outside himself during sleep, and in sleep enters the sphere which is the source of phantasy during his waking life, then the same forces which openly manifest themselves in his phantasy come to expression more sub-consciously in the form of dreams. Phantasy may degenerate into an empty play of fancy when it is pervaded by Luciferic forces, and in the same way dreams may degenerate, become abnormal, and man may take them for realities when they are pervaded by Ahrimanic influences. Dreams as such enter the Luciferic sphere, but they may be pervaded by Ahrimanic influences. When, however, our dreams are innocent and purely human, they also contain the Being whom we call our Angelos, the same that lives in our phantasy when we transcend ourselves inwardly, as it were.

The world of speech, ruled by the Archangel, is shaded off inwardly to a world which exists between feeling and thought, to a world of representations—we might also say, to a world of feeling representations. Phantasy and dreaming are shaded off to a world of feeling and to the element of feeling contained in the will—we might also say, to volitional feeling. But when we descend still further, below the Angeloi, what sphere do we reach? We reach our own sphere, we come to the human Ego. There we must transcend ourselves more intensively than when the Angel lives in us. This occurs when we transform impulses of the will into external actions, as explained yesterday.

Elohim—Spirits of Form World of the Senses.
Archai—World of Thought.
Archangeloi—World of Speech – Feeling Representation.
Angeloi—Phantasy—Dreaming—Volitional Feeling.
Human Ego—Volitional Action—Will.

When we dream, we are completely outside ourselves, but we go out of ourselves only spiritually. When we do something through our will, we do not of course go out of ourselves physically, but we move our physical body, and these impulses of the will are really the foundation of our Ego. We may therefore say: The will lives in our volitional actions, the will digs itself, as it were, into the external world.

We have descended as far as the physical world. In the physical world we develop ourselves in an independent way only through our will-actions, only in what remains to us as the sum-total of our actions when we pass through death. Our Ego, upon which we look back after death, lives in our actions. In everything else, in our phantasy and dreams, in world of speech, in our world of thought and in what we obtain through the senses, live higher spiritual Beings that constantly pervade us.

We have now been able to conclude from ordinary life how we are connected with the spiritual cosmos. But the following consideration will lead us to the results which spiritual science can reach through these concepts. Let us take human life in the physical-sensory world. You pass through this world, you derive certain impressions from it. Perhaps you may still remember these impressions on the following day. I do not say that tomorrow all the people who are now sitting in this hall will have an inner experience of the lecture they are now hearing. But as a rule we may say that the things which we perceive in our surroundings continue to live within us.

I will now make a schematic drawing, in order that we may continue along this line of thought. Here is the surrounding world and at this point let us imagine man. What constitutes the surrounding world continues to live in him, for what you experience in connection with your environment continues to live within you physically. The external world, which we can only perceive through the senses, continues to live in the soul in the form of abstract experiences, in thoughts and feelings which stimulate our will impu1ses. You may now say: What lives within me, what I thus carry about with me (let us envisage this very exactly!), is the result of my ex-periences between birth and death, or between birth and the present moment.

But let us now turn our gaze to something which we do not carry within our soul in such an abstract, picture-like form, but which lives within us—I might say—in a concretely material way: the organs that lie under our skin, the lungs, the heart, the liver, and so forth. This too is something which we carry within us. A true mystic will say: This does not interest me in the least! I am only interested in the spiritual, in the soul. I am content to have within me soul-impressions which come from the surrounding world. Material things are far too low for me. But the mystic shows by this how deeply materialistic he really is, because he does not yet know that what apparently reveals itself materially is in reality spiritual. Spiritual is not only what we bear within us abstractly, the soul-experiences which are echoes of external experiences between birth and death, but spiritual are also our lungs, our liver, etc. Only to our ordinary consciousness do they appear in a material form, but they are altogether products of the spirit. When you are sitting in your study you may have the thought that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. This thought is your inner property. But once it lived outside. It may first have approached you through a book or a lecture; that is to say, from the outside world. But you also bear within you materially the lungs, the heart, the liver, the brain, etc. Also these are the result of experiences. These inner organs that live in you were of course not produced by the physical substance which only comes through conception and birth, but their inner form, their inner structure is the result of experiences between death and birth. You now hear what I am saying and my words will become a soul-experience; similarly your heart, your lungs, your liver, are the result of experiences made between death and a new birth. We may therefore say:

“What I carry with me psychically within my inner being is the result of my experiences between birth and death.”

“What I carry within me as my bodily organisation is the result of my life between death and birth.”

Materialists will of course object that all the organs which live in man were inherited physically from the forefathers. But this is quite mistaken; it is not so. Certainly, the physical substance is transmitted by the ancestors, but the germ is generally viewed quite wrongly. It must be viewed wrongly if it is only considered from the material aspect. Conception does not consist therein that the human being is drawn down materially through the generations, but there arises, as it were, a vacuum, substance is destroyed in man, and in this vacuum the whole universe begins to work, to build up man. Physical structure penetrates into the spiritual structure, for the lungs, the heart, the liver, etc. are altogether spiritual in their structure. But all the organising forces come from the whole universe, and they are formed by our experiences between death and a new birth. This is what we experience through a super wakeful consciousness when we rise up into the sphere of the Archangeloi and of the Archai. Between death and new birth we experience consciously, indeed we must say super-consciously, our organic structure, the way in which we build up our organs.

Our organs are built up in a way which is entirely in keeping with our Karma; they correspond with what we bring with us from a former earthly life. The merely physical processes which apparently take place in the line of the generations are therefore not only physical processes, but they are brought about by the whole cosmos.

When ordinary, superficial materialists come along and say: “Do not explain man’s origin and development in his mother’s womb by drawing in the whole cosmos, do not lead us out into the whole cosmos, for we can explain all this by describing the continuity of the germ’s plasma throughout the generations”—when these materialists come along, the following picture I have used has often been of help: You have a magnetic needle pointing north and south. Now a person may say: Certain mad physicists declare that the whole earth is a magnet and that the needle’s south-pole is attracted by the earth’s soul-pole. But the reason why the needle points to the south must be sought in the needle itself. What does the magnetic needle matter to the earth?—Our biologists talk more or less in the same way when they speak of the human germ. They see nothing but this germ. But even as the whole earth is active in the magnetic needle, so the whole universe is active in the development of the germ. Except that man’s share in it lies further back, in the unconscious sphere.

You see, if things are considered in this light, man and his whole existence are linked up with a material and with a spiritual universe. We say to ourselves: Whenever we think or cognise something through our ordinary consciousness we change the outer world into an inner world. Yesterday I explained to you from a certain aspect that when the human being passes through the portal of death his inner world becomes his outer world, and his outer world his inner. To-day I explained to you from another aspect that everything which lies before birth, i.e. before conception, should be regarded in such a way that the processes which prepare our inner bodily structure should be sought in the life between death and a new birth. Outer life becomes inner life. Our experiences which lie spread out, as it were, in the whole cosmos, quietly and unconsciously change into inner experiences and become our organs.

The organs within us indeed contain a whole universe. If we only bear in mind the ordinary descriptions of our organs in anatomy and physiology we have before as an illusion, a Maya, which is far stronger than the one which faces us in the external world.

I have told you that when we look out into the sensory world we look as far as the sphere of the Elohim. But when we look down into our inner bodily structure we must rise still higher in regard to that which lives within us and forms our organs. From my “Occult Science” you also know that there are Beings above the Spirits of Form. They do not only live outside man, but work within him. We learn something about them between death and a new birth, when we rise to the sphere of the Archai, but with our own consciousness. Through the Archai we learn to know these higher Beings. In this super-conscious state they show us what we pour into our organism. Throughout our life we really carry the world of the Hierarchies within our organic structure.

Now it is again possible to investigate such things. In past epochs they were known through a certain instinctive clairvoyant consciousness. People still spoke of the fact that the human organism is a temple of the gods, and knowledge of the whole cosmos was sought within man’s being, the microcosm; it was sought by interpreting the microcosm.

Do we not remember everything by drawing it out of our memory, in connection with the world which we have experienced since we gained consciousness in our earthly existence? We look into our inner self, and there we find the world which we experienced outside; it lives within us and we can, as it were, look upon the pictures which we carry within our soul in such a way that the life outside has entered these pictures. We understand our earthly life anew by looking back upon these pictures of memory. And when we consider our bodily organisation and understand it, then we understand cosmic processes. Our inner memories enable us to understand our experiences. And if we know how to consider our whole human organisation, we grasp the cosmic processes. To understand man through and through is Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy is therefore also a cosmosophy. Our life rises up before us when we remember; similarly Anthroposophy is a cosmic memory that sets before us the whole world-process: Cosmosophy. It is impossible to think of these two things apart. Cosmosophy and Anthroposophy are one. Man is to be found in the cosmos and the cosmos in man. Consequently my “Occult Science” is still anthropomorphic when it describes the evolution through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, etc., for it is at the same time the evolution of mankind. It gives the evolution of the cosmos and that of man. The further we penetrate into the mysteries of life, the more cosmos and man flow together, and the more evident it becomes that the separation between man and cosmos which exists in earthly life is only an illusion, for man belongs to the cosmos and the cosmos to man; man is to be found in the cosmos and the cosmos in man.

Today we shall study the human being in regard to his form, and from this standpoint widen and deepen what we have recently considered. If we envisage, to begin with, the fact that the human form, of course, depends in the widest sense on the whole life of man, we should then consider first of all man's life as a whole, in order to grasp the human form from within, in a concrete way. To begin with, the human being forms part of the whole universe, of the whole cosmos. And if you bear in mind that in regard to the formation of the head, the human being is in reality an image of the sphere, of the cosmic universe, you will find, as it were, that as regards the head, he is placed into the whole universe. But we can only understand the way in which he is placed into it, and is at the same time a self-contained being, by bearing in mind man's connection with the whole environing world.

Let us first consider the human form by saying: With his whole thinking, insofar as it is connected with the head, man turns towards the whole cosmos, and by bringing his head through birth, from the spiritual world into physical existence, the human being, enclosed within his body, may in a certain way look back upon his real, inner soul-spiritual being, as it existed during the time when he was not enclosed within a body. Perhaps we obtain the best picture of what I mean by this, when we consider how the human being attains knowledge by looking back, as it were, into his own self. For when we occupy ourselves with arithmetic and geometry, we look back into ourselves. We recognize the laws of geometry simply because we are human beings able to draw the spatial laws out of our own being. But on the other hand, we know that these laws fill out the whole universe. Consequently, when we look out into the world, we have something which we necessarily perceive through the eyes; but everything is arranged geometrically, also the eyes, which are focused geometrically. We may therefore say: insofar as man faces the world with his thinking that is connected with his head, he takes back, as it were, into himself, what is spread out in the universe. Let us therefore imagine this first stage of fitting himself into the cosmos by saying: man takes in the universe, he looks back upon the universe, as it were. By looking back upon ourselves, we discover the universe. (See Table).

This is man's most external connection with the universe out of which he is built.

We proceed further by envisaging in the second place how the human being activates within him what he takes in from outside. Consider that when the child is born, everything which it experienced from death to a new birth lives within its being; if the child could develop a consciousness in this direction, it would be able to look back on the experiences which it had before birth. But these prenatal experiences then begin to be active in the child. The human being does not only look back into his own self in order to discover the universe anew within himself, but he also looks out into the environing world. He sees the world that surrounds him. We may therefore say: He does not only take in the universe, but he looks out into the universe around him (see Table) and takes in the mobility of the universe. He grows inwardly mobile.

You only need to clasp your left hand consciously with your right one; you only need to touch yourself—in order to remain completely within yourself. You do something with your right hand, but you are taking hold of something which is your own self. You now touch yourself in the same way in which you feel about and touch an external object. Every perception of the Ego, of one's inner being, is really based upon this: To take hold of one's own self. We also do it indirectly with the eyes. When we envisage any point outside, the axis of the right eye crosses that of the left eye, in the same way in which our hands cross, when the right hand clasps the left one. Animals have less inner life, because they touch themselves much less. We may therefore say that the third thing is: To experience or touch ourselves (see Table). In reality, we are still in the external world, when we thus grasp ourselves. We are not yet within our skin.

But let us now envisage the boundary between the outer and inner life. Let us indicate this process by moving the right hand, clasping the left one, up and down, so as to describe a surface. This surface is everywhere on ourselves. With our body's covering sheath we enclose our inner being. We may therefore say that the fourth thing is to encompass ourselves. (See Table).

If you penetrate in a living way through feeling into your form, insofar as it is enclosed by the skin, you will obtain this process of encompassing yourself.

First:	We take in the universe and look back.
Second:	We look out into the universe. We take in its mobility.
Third:	We grasp ourselves. (Touch ourselves.)
Fourth:	We encompass ourselves.

These four things place before us the gradual process of man's formation from outside towards inside. We have, to begin with, the whole universe; but we are still outside. Then the imitation of the universe; but we have not yet reached our own being, for we imitate the universe. If we touch ourselves, we reach ourselves from outside. Only in the fourth stage we encompass ourselves.

In the fifth stage, we must seek something which is inside, which fills us out, surging and weaving through us. We may therefore say: Five: That which fills us out, surging and weaving through us.

Then comes the sixth stage: Through the fact that we do not only have a skin, but that it is filled out, and through the fact that we were thus able to penetrate into our own being, a process begins which dissolves the form, devolving it into something which does not only fill out the human being inwardly, but makes him like a fruit that has ripened. Let us follow the fruit's development to the point where it is just ripening; if it surpasses this point, it dries up. We may therefore say: Six: Ripening.

Imagine this ripening process. By growing mature, we begin, as it were, to decay inwardly. In a very small measure, we cease to become human beings. Although we are human beings, we become inwardly dust, so to speak. We grow mineralized. With this we again fit ourselves into the external world. We are completely within our being, with that body which fills us out. Then, when we become dust inwardly, we again fit ourselves into the mineral world. We become, as it were, a body which has weight. We may therefore say: Seven: We fit ourselves into the inorganic world.

I have once described to you that when we weigh a human being, he stands there like a mineral. This led us to the point of being able to say that he fits himself into the inorganic world. We might also say: He fits himself into the external forces of nature.

Eight: At this stage, we do not only fit ourselves into the external world, but we take in the external world. We breathe, we eat, we absorb the external world. In a preceding stage, we merely developed within us forces which already existed within us; this stage of development consisted essentially of this. Then comes our inner life, but there we take into ourselves the external world. When we reach this moment, we should, above all, realize quite clearly that everything a human being takes in from outside, is like something which should not really form part of him. There are many erroneous conceptions in the world regarding this process of absorbing substances and forces from outside. In reality, everything we eat, is a tiny bit poisonous. For life consists in taking in nourishment and our not allowing it to become completely one with us: we offer resistance, and life really consists in this resistance, this defense. But of course, the substances which we take in as nourishment are so slightly poisonous that we are able to offer resistance. For if we take a real poison, it destroys us, because we are unable to defend ourselves against it.

We may therefore say: When the external world penetrates into us, a kind of poisonous sting enters into us. (See Table.) We must use strong expressions which do not exist in ordinary speech and ordinary knowledge. When I explain these things to you, you must therefore try to grasp what I really mean.

Five:	That which fills us out.
Six:	Ripening.
Seven:	Fitting ourselves into the inorganic world and seeking the balance.
Eight:	Poisonous sting.

This brings us to the point of absorbing what is outside. Consequently we began with the forming of man out of the universe, proceeded to the forming of man from within, and arrived at the point where his inner life develops by offering resistance to the external world. (See Table.)

But the human being forms himself (at least, his life and to some extent also his real form) in accordance with his external attitude, his external activities. But in the present time, our activities no longer have a real connection with the human being; we must go back into earlier times if we wish to grasp man in his real connection with his environment, in which he participates in the world's processes. At this point we may say: The ninth stage represents one of man's activities. He participates in the external world, by taking his place culturally in the external life on earth. He is, to begin with, a hunter. Nine: Hunter.

He then progresses in his activities. He becomes a breeder of animals. This is the next stage. Ten: A breeder of animals. Eleven: He becomes a farmer; that is the next stage of perfection. And finally, Twelve: He becomes a trader. Later on you will see that I do not include the activities which followed. They are of secondary nature. Man's primary occupations are: Hunter, breeder of animals, farmer and trader. This characterizes man in regard to his form and the way he lives upon the earth as a hunter, breeder of animals, farmer, or trader. These are forms of human activities, of human occupations upon the earth.

Nine:	Hunter.
Ten:	Breeder of animals.
Eleven:	Farmer.
Twelve:	Trader.

The following drawing [The drawing, showing the earth in the universe, cannot be reproduced.] might be made, as an illustration for the schematic table. Let us say, to begin with, that here we have the earth. Let us suppose that we have the human being upon the earth. In regard to these four form principles, he would be dependent on the earth's circumference; that is to say, he would be formed from out the earth's circumference. Here (above), man is formed from within. Let us leave this aside for the moment, and consider how the human being is formed by the earth, as a hunter, or breeder of animals; the result would be the very opposite. For example, if here, at this point, we have the influence of the constellations; that is to say, an influence coming from the circumference, then the constellations below the horizon (for the earth covers them) would be able to influence man only by sending their influence through the earth. Here the human being would have to adapt himself to the earth in regard to his stars. And what lies in the middle, would offer him the possibility to develop himself inwardly.

We may therefore say: The four upper members of man's formation lead him out into the universe; the last four members lead him to the earth, and the stars come into consideration insofar as they are covered by the earth. In the four central members the stars and the earth maintain a balance.

Man dwells in his inner being.

You see, even in ancient times these things were felt and people said that a certain portion of the starry sky influenced man so as to form him from outside, from the universe. Of course, one had to accept different stars according to the seasons. The constellations change. But let us take, on a large scale, the epoch in which we are living. If we adopt the standpoint of a Greek reflecting over such things, we might say: The stars in the proximity of Aries send their influence from outside, also those in the proximity of Taurus, and similarly the stars near Gemini and near Cancer. These constellations, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and Cancer enable man to look back, to be inwardly mobile, to take hold of himself and to encompass himself. (See Table.)

The other stars, on the opposite side below, which are covered by the earth, enable man to be a hunter through the influence of Sagittarius. He is able to live as a breeder of animals by taming the goat: Capricorn. He is able to live as a farmer, by—well, let us first take the simplest farming existence—by pouring out water, by walking over the fields with urns and pouring out water: Aquarius. And he becomes a trader through the influence of a star region holding that which carries him over the sea. For in ancient times every ship had the form of a fish. And two ships sailing side by side, traveling as trading vessels over the sea, are really the symbol of trade. So that by designating a ship as a “fish,” we would obtain here, as a twelfth sign: Pisces.

In the middle we have what lies in between, filling out man; that is to say, the influence of the blood, which fills the human being. How may this blood, contained in man, best be symbolized? Perhaps by taking the animal with the most intensive heart activity, the lion, Leo.

The maturing process—ripening: it suffices to look at the fields, at the ripening wheat or corn: the ear of corn represents the condition in which the fruit reaches the stage of maturity:

It is the Virgin with the sheaf: Virgo. The chief thing here is the sheaf.

And if we consider the moment when man once more fits himself into the external world, or in other words, seeks to establish the balance, we have Libra. And where he feels the poisonous sting, where he feels that everything is slightly poisonous, Scorpio.

During past epochs, people really experienced man's connection with the universe and with the earth; but modern people are no longer able to interpret such things. They say: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and draw the corresponding signs**, but in reality they do not have the slightest idea of what these things really mean. For it is necessary to consider them in the right way. If you look at an old picture of Aries, you will see that this is not a materialistic or naturalistic reproduction; its characteristic trait is that Aries is always looking back; this gesture of Aries looking back is the essential thing in the picture. We have this gesture of Aries in the human being who is looking back on himself, on the universe that lives in him. Aries should therefore not be viewed merely in a naturalistic-materialistic way. The picture reproducing Aries, the sign for Aries, is not materialistic or naturalistic, but its essential characteristic lies in the gesture of looking back.

If you look at old pictures of Taurus, you will find that he is always looking sideways and jumping. Also in this case the gesture is the essential thing, the gesture of looking around and activating the universal principle that lives within. Here, too, the gesture is the chief thing.

And if you look at Gemini, you will be confronted by one man on the right and another on the left, yet they are always depicted in such a way that the right hand of the man on the right is clasping the left hand of the man on the left. Again, it is the gesture which should be considered. It expresses the fact that man is touching himself, feeling himself. The right and left side of man are set forth as independent beings, because in a certain way man is still outside and takes in his prenatal being by touching or feeling himself.

Cancer is the self-encompassed being, closed to the external world. Modern people also view the sign of Cancer materialistically, naturalistically. But to the people who took Cancer as the symbol for encompassing oneself, the chief thing was that Cancer, the crab, can put its claws round its victim, thus encompassing it. This is contained in the word Cancer, which encompasses man. Cancer is the encompassing element. It is really the symbol of the human being who closes himself within his own self, who does not only touch or feel himself, but who closes himself from outside within his inner being.

Leo, with the strongly developed heart system, is the true “heart animal.” The lion may be considered as the “heart animal.” The lion's qualities set forth the fifth member which should be borne in mind.

On the stage of maturity, we find Virgo, the virgin with the sheaf, and the essential thing is the sheaf, in which the fruit is on the verge of drying up. And Libra, the scales, expresses that we seek to establish the balance. Scorpio is, of course, the poisonous sting. And Sagittarius is in reality an animal form ending in a human being armed with bow and arrow. The Zodiac sign for Sagittarius is a human being sitting like a centaur upon an animal's body. It symbolizes the hunter.

Capricorn is really a goat ending in a fish tail—something which we do not find in nature. For a goat with a fish tail does not exist. But man, the breeder of animals, makes wild beasts as tame as fishes. This is consequently an artificial symbol. Aquarius stands for agriculture. In this sign people, of course, see water and so forth, and this is spiritually justified. But in this Zodiac sign you will always find a striding character: A man striding along with two urns and pouring water out of them. He is watering the earth and is therefore a gardener, a farmer. Pisces, the fishes, is a sign which I have already explained; it symbolizes trade, for in the past, the ships were adorned with the heads of fishes, for example of dolphins—even though dolphins are not fishes—but the ancients thought that they were fishes. This symbol therefore indicates the character of trading.

We should not consider things schematically or superficially, as is so frequently the case today, but we should set out from this development of the human form, and from there endeavor to grasp man's connection with the universe and with the earth. This will gradually reveal the human being, from the aspect of his form, as a member, a part of the whole cosmos.

Let us now consider the question from the following aspect. If, to begin with, we take everything from the standpoint of the ancient Greeks—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Aquarius, Pisces—we may say, when looking upon the human form: In regard to the shape of the head (consider everything I have already explained to you) the human being is formed from outside, from the cosmos. Then forces begin to work inside. They give man the possibility to become symmetrical. But in regard to the influence of the last groups of stars, we must reverse everything. The human being is also subjected to the influence of the earth. He is influenced by forces. If this is indicated more thickly on the drawing*, we may draw the other forces more thinly on the other side and say: If a human being particularly unfolds all that corresponds to Sagittarius, shown here (you know that this is the Zodiac sign of the upper thighs), he will have especially strong upper thighs and be a hunter. If he is a breeder of animals he must often bend his knees. If he is a farmer he must walk and is therefore depicted as a striding man, etc. And in regard to trading: If we look for a symbol connected with the human being himself, we come across the feet. These, in any case, are formed from outside.

In the middle we find the region where man forms himself. If I draw this form, it results spontaneously from the twelve Zodiac signs. We may therefore say: Here (in the middle), the universe or the stars send their influences more into man's inner being. Here (above), they influence him from outside, and here (below), they compress him. But you will recognize in this drawing the shape of the human embryo. When you draw the human embryo, you must draw it in this way, if you include the Zodiac; it can only be drawn in this way, in accordance with its own laws. When you draw a figure encompassing an angle of 180 degrees, you obtain a triangle. When you draw the Zodiac, transforming it so that it reveals its laws in regard to the earth, you obtain through inner laws the shape of the human embryo. This would constitute a direct proof that the human embryo is formed out of the whole universe, that it is the product of the cosmos.

I told you just now that we should adopt the standpoint of the Greeks, but today we can no longer set out from Aires; we must set out from the sign of Pisces. We now live for many centuries under the sign of Pisces. It is the sign which marks man's transition to intellectualism. But if you go back to the point where it was still justified to set out from Aries and it was possible to speak of the Zodiac in the old meaning, you will not obtain more than the callings represented by Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces; namely, hunter, breeder of animals, farmer, and trader. Everything connected with industrialism, etc., already pertains to the epoch of Pisces, and it is a repetition.

Consider the following: We now live in the age of Pisces. During this age developed everything which constitutes the present civilization of machines. But if we go back to the epoch of Aries, we still find the four honest callings, and although they had already become more complicated and modified, they placed man into nature. And by going back still farther, to the epoch of Taurus, to the third, second, first post-Atlantean ages, to the last Atlantean epoch and to the last but one Atlantean epoch, etc., we would finally come to Pisces. There we would find that man was a completely etheric being and that he had not yet come down to the physical world. In the age of Pisces we find that he was an etheric being and in the present time he is really repeating what he already passed through at that time, when he developed into a human being. Since the middle of the Fifteenth Century, he is repeating this stage, but in an abstract way. In the past, he grew concretely into his human development. Since the middle of the Fifteenth Century, he is growing into his abstractions, for a machine is also an abstraction. Since the return of the age of Pisces, man has really sailed into the forces which dissolve him. And when he will reach Aquarius this dissolution will have progressed in an essential way; he will then above all be unable to have the slightest connection with the universe unless he clings to the spiritual world. Just because of this repetition, man must penetrate into the spiritual world.

This also shows you that in reality man is a threefold being; he is formed out of the cosmos insofar as he has a head; he develops within his own self and is only in correspondence with the external world insofar as he has a thorax; he develops his extremities and his metabolic processes by inserting himself into the earthly sphere.

Also from another aspect we have before us a threefold being. Consider that when the human being reaches birth, the first four force impulses lie within him; he unfolds them, but even then he is in a certain sense a complete human being, except that the other eight members are still in a rudimentary stage. The head is a complete human being; the other members attached to it, are rudimentary. The thorax, too, is a complete human being, but the first four force impulses and the last four are rudimentary. Also the limbs form a complete human being, but the thorax and the head attached to it are rudimentary. Three human beings are thus contained in man. The first one, the head, is in reality the transformation of the preceding incarnation. The thorax man is in reality the present incarnation as such. And what the human being does, the way in which he is active in the external world, particularly what comes to expression in his limbs and in his metabolic processes, carry him across into the next incarnation. Man is therefore a threefold being also in this connection. The human form may thus be studied as a complete whole.

We should really say: If we wish to make a drawing of the human being we should have to draw his head. We then have before us a complete human being. You will gather this from the following fact: In the lower jaw you really have the legs, except that there they are turned backwards and the head is sitting on its legs. The head is a complete human being, but its legs are reversed; they form the lower jaw and man is sitting on it, so that here I can draw a complete human being in a sitting posture.

Also the thorax is a complete human being. The arms are, as it were, the external representatives of etheric eyes. And again, the limbs are a complete human being. There, for example, the kidneys would be the eyes. Also in regard to the human form we thus have three human beings which are linked together. They interpenetrate in such a way that the human being that has hidden itself into the head which has become a sphere, reveals to us what penetrated into the present life from the preceding incarnation; the human being in the thorax is really the human being of the present incarnation, and the human being running about is the one that penetrates into the next incarnation.

But in a certain sense we may say: Also man's whole attitude in the present reveals this threefold character. Take the limbs and the metabolic processes. In regard to these, man is able to produce a complete human being. You only need to consider the human germ, the human embryo in the mother's body, in order to obtain metabolic man with his limbs, seeking to become a complete human being. Take thoracic man and observe how the head and the thorax still form a whole in the child, during its infancy. This threefold aspect thus appears also in the growing human being.

When man outgrows infancy he must be educated. The human being living in the head is the educator and educates the other human being—the childish head teaches the child (“Kindskopf den Kindskopf”)—for in reality the human being always remains a child in regard to his head. He only grows old, that is to say, middle-aged, in regard to the middle part, the thoracic man, and quite old in regard to the metabolic-limb man. People notice this, as they grow old. Even in accordance with the old riddle, “When young, it walks on four legs; in middle age on two, and in old age on three,” people notice that they grow old in this connection. Also in regard to his head, man always remains, as it were, the result of his past incarnation. The head really remains a child throughout life. Indeed, we may say: The science of education should try to solve the problem of how the childish head, which is the teacher, should treat the childish pupil in the right way.

These things are apparently humoristic, but they conceal a deep truth which should be borne in mind, in order to obtain a correct view concerning man.

Consider that in reality man's head is the passenger conveyed by the remaining human being—a passenger who is a spy. The head's legs are always in a sitting posture, the head does not even attempt to walk independently. It is always being carried, like a man traveling by coach. In reality, the head is the passenger in man.

Thoracic man is instead the human being's nurse. And limb-man is the worker, who is employed as a slave, for it is really he who is passing through life. We are head, as far as Cancer. We have this from heaven, without any cooperation on our part. Here (in the center) we must breathe and eat; this is our nurse. And the real worker belongs to the sphere of Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

You see, this enables us to obtain man's form in its connection with the whole universe. It is only necessary to take things quite earnestly, even if they are set before you more lightly and not pedantically. They will show you that everything I have explained to you today contains, on the one hand, the possibility to grasp the human form out of the whole cosmos, but on the other hand lies what may fill us, I might say, with great reverence for the primeval wisdom of men who were able to place into their Zodiac symbols such a tremendously significant science of Man, drawn out of their instinctive clairvoyance. Today, we have instead a science in which people stare at Aries without knowing that its characteristic lies in the fact that it turns backwards; that the characteristic of Gemini lies in the fact that they touch each other, clasp hands, and so forth. Everything in the Zodiac symbols is immensely profound, deeply significant—each gesture, every single sign. And when the gesture itself is not the essential thing, as in Leo, then the symbol is chosen in such a way that the sign itself, I might say, expresses the gesture; the Lion is chosen, because he has the strongest heart pulsation. The Lion is the representative of the forces which fill out the human being.

In this way it is possible to draw to the surface again the primeval wisdom of the ages, by finding it within ourselves.

We have been studying how the living form of man, his soul and his spirit, are related to the cosmos. The various aspects of this subject presented in recent lectures may be summarized in somewhat the following way:—

In the deep foundations of man's being lies the will. In many respects the will is the most mysterious and secret element in human nature. It is obvious that aberrations, inclinations that often run counter to the world's well-being surge up from fathomless depths of the moral life; everything experienced by the soul in the form of pricks of conscience or self-reproach streams up from the deep ground of the will.

The reason why the will is so mysterious and secret is that in many respects it is a highly indeterminate force; there is in it an instinctive element over which we have little control and which drives us hither and thither on the turbulent waves of life often without our being able to claim that any conscious impulses are racing effect. In another respect too, namely in respect of our knowledge of the operations of the will, it has again and again been emphasized that these operations of the will are as withdrawn from human consciousness as the experiences of deep, dreamless sleep; so that in this respect too, the will is an indeterminate, mysterious element.

But when we think of man's spiritual nature we cannot conceive that this spirituality is active in him only during his waking hours or in his conscious mental life; the fact is that this spirituality is at work in him during sleep too, within that part of his being where his will lies and which, like the experiences of deep sleep, is wrapt in unconsciousness.

Spirit is therefore also present and at work in the sleeping human being. Two aspects of the will can be distinguished.—There is first of all the will which—unless we are out-and-out idlers—spurs us to activity from the time of waking until that of falling asleep. True, we cannot perceive the will in actual operation, but the effects rise into our consciousness inasmuch as we can form mental concepts and images of them. We do not know how the will-impulse works in us when we are walking; but we can see ourselves stepping forward. We form mental images of the workings of our will and in this sense are conscious of its effects. That is one aspect of the will.

The other aspect is that the will is also active in us while we sleep; for then inner processes are taking place, processes that are also operations of the will, only we are not aware of them—precisely because we are asleep. But just as the sun also shines during the night on the other side of the earth where we are not living, so does will stream through our being while we are asleep, although we have no consciousness of it.

Thus two kinds of will can be distinguished: an inner will and an outer will. The workings of the outer will are made manifest to us while we are awake; those of the inner will take effect while we are asleep. Strictly speaking, the inner will is not revealed to us; nevertheless when we look back, its effects can be apprehended afterwards, as having been part of the condition of sleep.

The will is present as it were in ocean depths of the soul. It surges upwards in waves. But just because we must admit that the will is at work during sleep, when the bodily part of our being is engaged in purely organic activity, neither pervaded with soul nor illumined by spirit, it follows that the will as such has to do with this organic activity. The will that is working while we are asleep has to do with organic activity, inasmuch as organic processes, life-processes take place in us. These processes are essentially connected with the will.

But during waking activity too, that is to say when our will is in flow, life-processes are taking place. The will takes effect in the processes of internal metabolism. So that here again we can point to organic activity.

Out of the ocean-depths of will in the human being, waves which come to expression in the form of feeling, surge upwards. We know that feeling is a dimly apprehended experience, that so far as actual consciousness is concerned it has really only the intensity of a dream. But at any rate it is clearer than the workings of will. It raises into greater clarity what lies in the ocean-depths of man's being. Feeling brings a certain light into, intensifies, consciousness; the two poles of the will rise into this intensified consciousness and in it both the inner will and the outer will are made manifest.

Thus we distinguish two kinds of feeling, as we did in the case of the will: an inner will in the sleeping state, an outer will in the waking state. One kind of feeling surges upwards from the will that is connected with man's sleeping condition. This kind of feeling lives itself out in the antipathies—taking the word in the widest sense—unfolded by the human being. This is feeling which tends towards antipathy. Whereas the will that is involved in outer activity and therefore leads man into the external world, manifests in all those experiences of feeling which have in them the quality of sympathy. The dreamlike experience of feeling which comes to expression in sympathies and antipathies aroused by different forms of life, by forms of art or of nature, or in sympathies and antipathies connected more with the organs and arising in us through smell or taste or through a sense of well-being or comfort—all this weaving activity belongs to the soul. Will therefore reveals itself in organic activity, feeling in activity of the soul.

If the life of soul is studied from this point of view, great illumination will be shed upon it. Waking life arouses in us sympathy with the surrounding world. Our antipathies really come from more unconscious realms. They press upwards from the sleeping will. It is as though our sympathies lie more on the surface, whereas antipathies rise up through them from unplumbed depths. Antipathies repel; antipathies draw us away from the surrounding world; we isolate ourselves, shut ourselves within our own being. Inwardly up-streaming antipathies are the antecedents of human egotism. The greater a man's egotism, the more strongly is the element of antipathy working in him. He wants to isolate himself, to feel enclosed within his own being.

In normal life we do not notice the constant interplay of sympathies and antipathies in the life of soul. But we become aware of it when our connection with the outer world becomes abnormal, and when the antipathetic element that derives from sleep also works in an abnormal way. This happens when our breathing, for example, functions irregularly during sleep and we have nightmares. In a nightmare, the soul is putting up an antipathetic defence against something that is trying to penetrate into us, preventing us from full experience of our egohood.

We are gazing here into deep secrets of human experience. If a man unfolds the element of antipathy in his life of feeling so strongly that it plays into his waking life, his whole being is permeated with antipathy which then lays hold of his astral body; his astral body is steeped in the element of antipathy; antipathy streams out from him like an abnormal aura. It may then happen that he begins to feel antipathy to people to whom his attitude was otherwise neutral, or indeed even to those he loved or knew intimately. These conditions can give rise to persecution mania in all its forms. When feelings of antipathy not to be explained by outer circumstances are experienced, this is due to the overflowing antipathies in the soul, that is to say, to an abnormal intensification of the one pole in the life of soul which forces its way upwards out of sleep. If this antipathy gets the upper hand in a human being, he becomes a world-hater, and such hatred can assume incredible proportions. The aim of all education and all social endeavor should be to prevent human beings from becoming world-haters.

But think of it.—If what surges up from the ocean-depths of man's being can promote overweening egotism when it gets the upper hand—and persecution mania in all forms is nothing but superabundant, excessive egotism—if all this is possible, what is there to be said of the inner will itself, which a beneficent creation conceals by means of sleep? We have no knowledge at all of how this inner will permeates our limbs, our entire organism. The most that can be said is that now and then, through strange dreams, something comes up into the consciousness of what lies in the will that works in our organism during sleep. What lives in this will lies—and rightly so for the ordinary consciousness—on yonder side of the Threshold. He who comes to know it, learns to know the force by which the human being can be led to uttermost evil. The deepest secret of human life is that we have the counterbalance of our organic activity in the very forces which, were they to gain control in the conscious life of a man, would make him into a criminal.

Let it be remembered that nothing in the world is in itself evil or good. What is radically evil when it breaks into our conscious life, is the counterbalance for our spent life-forces when it take effect in its right place, namely as the regulator of organic activity during the sleeping state.

If you ask: What is the nature of the forces which make compensation for the spent life-forces?—the answer is: They are the forces of evil. Evil has its mission—and it is here. If this becomes known to anyone through spiritual training, it is for him as it was for earlier seers, something of which they said: Of its essential nature it is not lawful to speak, for sinful is the mouth that speaks of it, and sinful the ear that hears of it.—Nevertheless man must realize that life is a process fraught with danger and that evil lies in its deep foundations as a necessary force.

Now these waves of the will surge even higher—into the conceptual life, the mental life. The sleeping will lights up in feeling, and when it surge upwards into mental life, it becomes still clearer but at the same time denuded qualitatively—it becomes abstract. In feeling fraught with antipathy there is still a certain lively intensity. When this element of antipathetic feeling surges into the conceptual life, it comes to expression in the form of negative judgments, judgments of rejection or denial. Everything we negate in life, everything the logician calls “negation”, negative judgment, is the uprush of antipathetic feeling, or of the inner will, into the conceptual life.

And when sympathetic feeling—which has its origin in the will of waking life, in the outer will—rises up into the conceptual life, our judgments are affirmative. We have arrived at something which, as you see, lives in us as abstraction only. In feeling, inasmuch as we unfold sympathies and antipathies, there is still intensity of life. Whereas in acts of judgment—which are a mental, conceptual activity—we are, as it were, immobile, contemplative observers of the world. We affirm and negate. We do not come to the point of actual antipathy; we merely negate. It is an abstract process. We do not rouse ourselves to antipathy: we merely say, no. In the same way we do not rouse ourselves to sympathy: we merely say, yes. We are raised above our relation to the outer world—to the level of abstract judgment.

This, then, is a purely mental, concept-forming activity, which can be called spiritual activity. But will, feeling and conceptual activity can surge even higher—into the domain of the senses. When negative judgment surges into the domain of the senses, what is the result? The condition wherein we perceive nothing. If we think of it in relation to the most obvious process of perception, we can say: It is the experience of darkness—where we see nothing. On the other hand, affirmative judgment becomes experience of light. The same could be said with regard to the experience of silence, or of tone and sound. To all the twelve senses it would be correct to apply what has here been said in connection with the experiences of light and of darkness.

And now let us ask: What, in reality, is this activity in the domain of the senses? I We have spoken of organic activity, activity of the life of soul, spiritual activity. Spiritual activity is merely a concept-forming activity but it is still our own. What takes place between the senses and the outer world is in truth no longer our own activity, for there the world is playing into us. It would be quite correct to depict the eye as an independent entity; what takes place in the eye is that the outer world penetrates into the organism as it were through a gulf. We are no longer standing in the world with our own activity, but this is divine activity. This divine activity weaves through the world surrounding us. Darkness inclines in the direction of negation, light in the direction of affirmation.

The influence of this divine activity upon man in his relationship to the world was an especially vivid experience in the wisdom of the second Post-Atlantean epoch.—God in the Light—that is to say, the Divine with a Luciferic quality; God in the Darkness—the Divine with an Ahrimanic quality.—Thus did the ancient Persians experience the world. And to them the sun was the representative of the outer world. The sun as the divine source of Light—so it was experienced in the second Post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand in the third Post-Atlantean epoch (Egypto-Chaldean) men experienced more strongly the sphere lying between judgment and feeling. At that time they did not feel so intensely that the Divine in the outer world is experienced in light or darkness, but rather in the impact between conceptual activity and feeling. Experience of divine activity among the Egyptians and Chaldeans caused men to bring an element of antipathy into negative judgments and sympathy into affirmative judgments. And only when we are able to decipher and understand the pictorial or other records of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch shall we realize that all were created and shaped out of sympathetic affirmation or antipathetic negation. When you look at Egyptian statues, figures on tombs, and so forth, you can still feel that their forms give expression to sympathetic affirmation or antipathetic negation. It is simply not possible to create a sphinx without bringing into it sympathies and antipathies inhering in the conceptual life. Men did not experience merely light and darkness but something of the element of life that is present in sympathies and antipathies. In that epoch the sun was experienced as the divine source of Life.

And now we come to the Greco-Latin epoch when man's experience of direct communion with the outer world was largely lost. In my book Riddles of Philosophy, I have shown that although in that age man still felt his thoughts as we today feel sense-impressions, he was already approaching the condition in which we live at the present time, when owing to the development of the ego we no longer feel any really living connection with the external world, when with our ego we are practically asleep within the body, are in a state of slumber. This condition was not so pronounced in the Greeks, but to some extent it was certainly present. To understand the Greek nature we must realize that the Greek had already begun to live very intensely in his body—not as intensely as we do, but nevertheless intensely.—Not so the ancient Persians. The wise men among them did not believe that they were living enclosed within their skins but rather that they were borne on the waves of the light through the whole universe. In the Greek, this experience of cosmic life was already losing intensity, falling into slumber within the body. When we ourselves are asleep, the ego and astral body are outside the physical body; but our waking, in comparison with that of the ancient Persians, really amounts to sleep. When the Persians woke from sleep—I am speaking of course of the ancient Persians as described in my An Outline of Occult Science, it was as though the light actually penetrated into them, into their senses.

We no longer feel that at the moment of waking from sleep we summon the light into our eyes. For us the light is outside, phantomlike. Nor could the Greeks any longer see in the sun the actual source of Life; they felt that the sun was something that pervaded them inwardly. They felt the element in which the sun lives within the human being as the element of Eros—the element of Love. Thus: the sun as the divine source of Love. Eros—the sun-nature within the human being—this was what the Greek experienced. Then, from about the fourth century A.D. onwards, came the time when, fundamentally speaking, the sun was no longer regarded as anything but a physical orb in space, when the sun was darkened for man. To the ancient Persians the sun was the actual reflector of the Light weaving through space. To the Egyptians and Chaldeans the sun was the Life surging and pulsating through the universe. The Greeks felt the sun as that which infused Love into the living organism, guiding Eros through the waves of sentient existence.

This experience of the sun sank more and more deeply into man's being and gradually vanished into the ocean-depths of the soul. And it is in the ocean-depths of the soul that man bears the sun-nature today. It is beyond his reach, because the Guardian of the Threshold stands before it; it lies in the depths of being as a mystery of which the ancient teachings said: Let it not be uttered—for sinful is the mouth that speaks of it and sinful the ear that hears of it.

In the fourth century A.D. there were schools which taught that the sun-mystery must remain untold, that a civilization knowing nothing of the sun-mystery must now arise. Behind everything that takes place in the external world lie forces and powers which give guidance from the universe. One of the instruments of these guiding powers was the Roman Emperor Constantine. It was under him that Christianity assumed the form which denies the sun.

Living in that same century was one whose ardor for what he had learnt in the Mysteries as the last remnants of the ancient, instinctive wisdom, caused him to attach little importance to the development of contemporary civilization. This was Julian the Apostate. He fell by the hand of a murderer because he was intent upon passing on this ancient tradition of the threefold Mystery of the Sun. And the world would have none of it.

Today, of course, it must be realized that the old instinctive wisdom must become conscious wisdom, that what has sunk into the subconsciousness, into purely organic activity and even into sub-organic activity, must once again be lifted into the light of consciousness. We must re-discover the Sun-Mystery.

But just as when the Sun-Mystery had been lost, bitter enemies rose up against the one who wished this mystery to be proclaimed to the world, and brought about his death, so again enemies are working against the new Sun-Mysteries which must be brought to the world by spiritual science. We are living now at the other pole of historical evolution. In the fourth century A.D. there was sunset; now there must be sunrise.

In this sense Constantine and Julian the Apostate are two symbols of historical evolution. Julian the Apostate stands as it were upon the ruins of olden times, intent upon building again out of these ruins the forms of the ancient wisdom, upon preserving for humanity those ancient memorials which Christianity, assuming a material form for the first time in the days of Constantine, had destroyed. Countless treasures were destroyed, countless works of art, countless scripts and records of the ancient wisdom. Everything that could in any possible way have given men an inkling of the ancient Sun-Mystery was destroyed.

It is true that in order to reach inner freedom, it was necessary for men to pass through the stage of believing that a globe of gas is moving through universal space—but the fact is that physicists would be very astonished if they could take a journey in space; they would discover that the sun is not a globe of gas giving out light—that is nonsense—but that it is a mere reflector which cannot itself radiate light but at most throw it back. The truth is that in the spiritual sense, light streams out from Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and the Moon.

Physically it appears as though the sun gives the planets light, but in reality it is the planets that radiate light to the sun and the sun is the reflector. As such it was recognized by the wise men of ancient Persia with their instinctive wisdom, and in this sense the sun was regarded as the earthly source of Light—not indeed as the source itself, but as the reflector of the Light. Then, among the Egyptians and Chaldeans, the sun became the reflector of Life and among the Greeks, the reflector of Love.

This was the conception that Julian the Apostate wanted to preserve—and he was done away with. In order to reach freedom it was indeed necessary that men should hold for a time to the superstition of the sun as a globe of gas in space, giving out light—a superstition enunciated as a categorical truth in every book of physics today. But our task must be to penetrate to the reality.

In truth, Julian the Apostate and Constantine stand before us as two symbols ... Julian the Apostate was bent upon preserving those ancient memorials of the world which could, in a certain way, have made it possible for the true Sun-Mystery to find its way to men. Indeed during the first centuries of Christendom, Christ was still a Sun-Figure—an Apollo.

This Sun-Mystery was felt to be the greatest spiritual treasure possessed by mankind. And it was symbolized by what was known as the Palladium. It was said that the Palladium had once been in Troy and that the priests of the Mysteries there saw in it the means whereby, in sacred ritual and cult, they revealed to the people the true nature of the sun. Then the Palladium was taken to Rome, and its presence there was a secret known to the initiate in Rome. The initiated priests of the Romans, and even the first Emperors—Augustus, for example—worked in the world out of a direct consciousness that the greatest of all treasures was represented in Rome, at all events in an outer symbol, inasmuch as beneath the foundations of the most venerated Roman temple, lay the Palladium, its existence known only to those who were initiated into the deepest secrets of Roman existence and destiny. But in a spiritual sense it had become known to those whose task it was to bring Christianity to the world. And out of the knowledge that the Palladium was guarded in Rome, the early Christians made their way thither. A spiritual reality lay behind these journeys.

But when, under Constantine, Christianity was secularized, the Palladium was taken away from Rome. Constantine founded Constantinople, and he caused the Palladium to be buried in the earth under a pillar erected there by his orders. Thus it transpired that in its further development Roman Christianity was deprived of the knowledge of the Sun-Mystery by the very Emperor who established Christianity in Rome in its rigid, mechanical forms. In the secularization of Christianity brought about by Constantine, the cosmic wisdom was lost to Christianity—and this comes to expression in the removal of the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople.

In certain Slavonic regions—people always interpret things according to their own conditions—a belief reigned for centuries, lasting indeed until the beginning of the twentieth century, that in a none too distant future the Palladium will be removed from Constantinople to another place—to a Slavonic town, as the people believed. At all events the Palladium is waiting, expecting to be removed from the darkening influence shed upon it by Constantinople to that locality which, by its very nature, will bring it into complete darkness. Yes, the Palladium goes to the East, where the decadence of the ancient wisdom still survives but is passing into darkness. And in the further evolution of the world, everything depends upon whether—just as the sun is the reflector of the light bestowed upon it from the universe—the Palladium-treasure is illumined by a wisdom born from the riches of the knowledge living in the West. The Palladium, the ancient heritage brought from Troy to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople, and which, as it is said, will be carried still farther into the darkness of the East—this Sun-treasure must wait until it is redeemed spiritually in the West, released from the dark shadows of a purely external knowledge of nature. Thus the task of the future is bound up with the holiest traditions of European development.

Legends are still extant, even today, among; those who are initiated into these things—often they are quite simple people going about here and there in the world. These legends tell of the removal of the Palladium, the treasure of wisdom, from Troy to Rome, from Rome to Constantinople when Roman Christianity was secularized; they tell of its future removal to the East when the East, denuded of the ancient wisdom, will have fallen into utter decadence; and they tell of the necessity for this sun-treasure to receive new light from the West.

The Sun-Mystery has disappeared into the nether regions of human existence. Through spiritual-scientific development we must find it again. The Sun-Mystery must be found again—otherwise the Palladium will vanish into the darkness of the East. It is wrongful today to utter a saying as untrue as Ex Oriente Lux. The light can no longer come from the East, for the East is in decadence. Nevertheless the East waits—for it will possess the sun-treasure, even though it be in darkness—it waits for the light of the West. But today men are groping in darkness, arranging conferences in the darkness, are looking expectantly towards—Washington! Only those “Washingtons” that speak with the tones of the spiritual world—not conferences looking for the darkness that surrounds the Palladium, for an open door for trade in China—only those conferences will bring salvation which are conducted in the West in such a way that the Palladium can be kindled once again to light. For like a fluorescent body, the Palladium, in itself, is dark; if it is suffused with light, then it becomes radiant. And so it will be with the wisdom of the East: dark in itself, it will light up, will become fluorescent when it is permeated by the wisdom of the West, by the spiritual light of the West.

But this the West does not understand. Only when the Palladium legend is brought into the clear light of consciousness, only when men can again feel true compassion for one like Julian the Apostate who felt constrained to ignore the age in which the light of freedom could germinate in the darkness, who longed to preserve the old instinctive wisdom and therefore met with his death—only when men realize that Constantine, in giving an externalized form of Christianity to the Romans, took from them the light, the wisdom, and sent Christianity into the darkness—only when men realize that the light whereby the Palladium can again be made to shine must be born out of modern nature-knowledge in the best sense—only then will an important chapter of world-history be brought to fulfillment. For only then will that which became Western when the Greeks see Troy on fire, become Western-Eastern. The light that flamed from Troy is present even to-day; it is present but it is shrouded in darkness. It must drawn forth from the darkness; the Palladium must again be illumined.

If our hearts are in the right place, knowledge of the course of history can fire us with enthusiasm; and this same enthusiasm will give us the right feeling for the impulses which spiritual science would fain impart.

Only if it is regarded as a time of trial and testing can anything propitious emerge from the period of grave difficulty through which humanity has been passing. I cannot help thinking to-day of the lectures given in this very town many years ago, before the war, and those of you who have studied what was then said, will have realised that certain definite indications were given of the terrible times ahead. The lectures dealt with the Folk-Souls of the European peoples (The Mission of Folk-Souls. Eleven lectures, Christiania 7th—17th June, 1910), and as a reminder of them—in order, too, that you may realise their purport more clearly—I would like, by way of introduction, to speak of a certain interesting episode.

In the year 1918 I had a conversation in Middle Europe with someone who in the autumn of that year played a brief but significant part in the catastrophic events which were then assuming a particularly menacing form. Those who were able to follow the course of events, however, realised already in the early months of that year that this particular man would be in a key position when matters came to a point of decision. As I say, I had a talk with him in the month of January, 1918, and in the course of our conversation he spoke of the need for a psychology, for teaching on the subject of the Folk-Souls of the European peoples. The chaos into which humanity was falling would make it essential—so he said—for those who desired to take the lead in public affairs to understand the forces at work in the souls of the peoples of Europe. And he expressed deep regret that there was really no possibility of basing the management of public affairs upon any knowledge of this kind. I answered that I had given lectures on this very subject and I afterwards sent the volume to him, having added a foreword dealing with the situation as it then was—in January, 1918. I tell you this merely in order to indicate the real purport of the lectures. Their aim was to give true guiding lines for counteracting the forces which were leading straight into confusion and chaos. And it was for the same reason that I again made use of them in the year 1918, in the way I have indicated. But it was all quite useless, in spite of the preface dealing with the necessities of the situation that had later arisen, because ripeness of insight was required to understand the strength of the forces leading to decay, and although this ripeness of insight would have been within the reach of many leading men, they were not willing to strive for it.

And it is the same to-day. People are still terribly afraid to envisage, in their true form, the forces that are leading straight into chaos. Instead of facing these forces of decay, they prefer to spin all kinds of fantastic notions, believing that if they take refuge in them, life will go on quite peacefully. But those who will have nothing to do with this kind of thinking and who face the realities of the situation, hold no such belief. Far from it.

Precisely here in Norway destiny made it necessary to speak of the relations between the European Folk-Souls, and indeed I have been speaking of the same theme, with its different ramifications, more or less in detail for many years. I have said more than once that a time will come in European affairs when much will depend upon whether Norway can count among its people, men who will range themselves on the side of true progress and devote their powers to furthering it. The geographical position of Norway renders this imperative and indeed possible. Up here there is a certain detachment from European conditions and this can help many things to ripen. But this ripeness must unfold, gradually, into fruit—into a true and quickened spiritual life.

In the years that have passed since we were last together, you yourselves have had many experiences in connection with the great European War, but only those who lived in the very midst of things were able to realise their full significance. It is difficult to find words of human language that can give any adequate idea of the awful catastrophes. One is tempted to use the word ‘senseless’ about it all, because nearly everything, in the domain of the public affairs of Europe up to the beginning of the twentieth century resulted in some form of senselessness. What went on between the years 1914 and 1918 was a kind of madness, and since then matters have not greatly improved although it may perhaps be said that the senseless actions of the materialistic world are not so outwardly patent as they were during the actual years of the war.

To-day it ought to be realised much more fully than it is, that Europe is bound to come to grief if attention is not turned to the spiritual foundations of human life, if merely for purposes of convenience men brush aside all that is said with the intention of helping humanity to emerge from the chaos of anti-spirituality. The fact that my lectures on Folk-Psychology were ignored by one who held a leading position during this period of senseless action, seemed to me to be deeply symptomatic. And it is still the same to-day. Everything is brushed aside by those who have any influence in public life.

It is a pity that the significance of certain words spoken by an Anglo-South African statesman has not been grasped in Europe. The words were not spoken from any great depth, but none the less they indicated a certain feeling for the way in which affairs are shaping at the present time. This statesman said that the focus of world-history has shifted from the North Sea to the Pacific Ocean—that is to say from Europe in general, to the Pacific Ocean. And this too may be added:—That for which, up till now, Europe was a kind of centre, has ceased to exist. We are living in its remains. It has been superseded by great world-affairs as between the East and the West. What is going on now, all unsuspectingly in Washington, is nothing but a feeble stammering, surging up from depths where mighty, unobserved impulses are stirring.

There will be no peace on the Earth until a certain harmony is established between the affairs of East and West, and it must be realised that this harmony has first to be achieved in the realm of the Spirit. However glibly people may talk in these difficult times about disarmament and other ‘luxuries’ of the kind—for luxuries they are, and nothing more—it will amount to no more than conversation, as long as the Western world fails to discover and bring to light the spirituality that is indeed contained, but allowed to lie fallow in the culture which has been developing since the middle of the fifteenth century. There is a store of spiritual treasure in this culture, but it lies fallow.

Science has acquired a magnificent knowledge of the world and we are surrounded on all hands by really marvellous technical achievements. It is all splendid in its way, but it is dead—dead as compared with the great currents of human evolution. And yet in this very death there lies a living spirituality which can shine into the world even more brilliantly than all that was given to man by oriental wisdom—although that must never be belittled. Such a feeling does in truth exist in all unprejudiced observers of life.

We do right to turn to the great wisdom-treasures of the East—of which the Vedas, the wonderful Vedanta philosophy and the like are but mere reflections; and we are rightly filled with wonder by all that was there revealed from heavenly heights. It has gradually fallen into a certain decadence, but even in the form in which it still lives in the East, it arouses the wonder and admiration of anyone who has a feeling for such things.

In vivid contrast to this there is the purely materialistic culture of the West, of Europe and America. This materialistic culture and its equally materialistic mode of thinking must not be disparaged, yet it is, after all, rather like a hard nutshell—a dying nutshell. But the kernel is still alive and if it can be discovered its radiance will outshine all the glory of oriental wisdom that once poured down to man. Let there be no mistake about it—as long as the dealings of Europeans and Americans with Asia are confined to purely economic and industrial interests, so long will there be distrust in the hearts of Asiatics. People may talk as much as they like about disarmament, about the desirability of ending wars... a great war will break out between the East and the West, in spite of all disarmament conferences, if the people of Asia cannot perceive something that flows over to them from the Spirit of the West. Western spirituality can shine over to Asia and if it does, Asia will be able to trust it, because with their own inherent, though somewhat decadent spirituality, the Asiatic peoples will be able to understand what it means. The peace of the world depends upon this, not upon the conversations and discussions now going on among the leaders of outer civilisation.

Everything depends upon insight into the Spirit that is lying hidden in European and American culture—the Spirit from which men flee, which for the sake of ease they would fain avoid, but which alone can set the feet of humanity on the path of ascent. People like to put their heads in the sand, saying that things will improve of themselves. No, they will not. The hour of a great decision has struck. Either men will resolve to bring forth the spirituality of which I have spoken, or the decline of the West is inevitable. Hopes and fatalistic longings for things to right themselves are of no avail. Once and forever, man has passed into the epoch when he must manipulate his powers out of his own freewill. In other words: it is for men themselves to decide for or against spirituality. If the decision is positive, progress will be possible; if not, the doom of the West is sealed and in the wake of dire catastrophes the further evolution of humanity will take a course undreamed of to-day. Those who would strive for true insight into these matters should not, nay dare not, neglect the study of the life of soul in mankind at large and in the different peoples, especially of East and West.

In these preliminary remarks I have tried to convey that if in this particular corner of Europe, qualities to which the Scandinavian Spirit is peculiarly adapted, can be unfolded, insight can ripen and work fruitfully upon the rest of the Western world. Indeed it will only be possible for a spiritual Movement to be taken seriously when with inner understanding men are prepared to ascribe to it a mission of the kind here indicated.

Modern thought studies everything in the universe beyond the Earth in terms of mathematics and mechanics. We look at the stars through telescopes, examine their substance by means of the spectroscope and the like, reducing these observations to rules of calculation, and we have finally arrived at a great system of ‘world-machinery’ in which our Earth is placed like a wheel. Fantastic notions are evolved about the habitableness of other planets, but no great significance is attached to them because we fall back upon mathematical formulae when it is a question of speaking of extra-terrestrial space. Man has gradually come to feel himself living on Earth just as a mole might feel in his mound during the winter. There is an idea that the Earth is rather like a tiny mole-hill in the universe. There is also a tendency to look back with a certain superciliousness to ‘primitive’ periods of culture, for instance to the culture of ancient Egypt, when men did not speak of the great mechanical processes in the Universe but of divine Beings outside, in space and beyond space—Beings to whom man was known to be related just as he is related to the beings of the three kingdoms of Nature on Earth.

The ancient Egyptian traced the origin of the spirit and soul of man to the higher Hierarchies, to super-sensible worlds, just as he traced the origin of his material, bodily nature to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. In our age, people speak of what is beyond the Earth out of a kind of weak and ever-weakening faith that much prefers to avoid scientific scrutiny. Science speaks only of a great system of world-machinery which can be expressed in terms of mathematics. Earthly existence has finally come to be regarded as confined within the walls of a little mole-hill in the universe.

Yet there is a profound truth, namely this: When man loses the heavens, he loses himself. By far the most important elements of man's being belong to the universe beyond the Earth and if he loses sight of this universe he loses sight of his own true being. He wanders over the Earth without knowing what kind of being he really is. He knows, but even then only from tradition, that the word ‘man’ applies to him, that this name was once given to him as a being who stands upright in contrast to the quadruped animals. But his scientific view of the world and technical culture no longer help him to discover the true content of his name, for that must be sought in the universe beyond the Earth, and this universe is considered to be nothing but a great system of machinery. Man has lost himself; he has no longer any insight into his true nature.

A feeling of sadness cannot but overtake us when we realise that the heights of culture to which the West has risen since the middle of the fifteenth century have led man to wrench himself from his true nature and to live on the Earth divested of soul and spirit.

In the lecture to educationists yesterday, I said that we are prone to speak of only one aspect—and even that merely from tradition—of the eternal being of man. We speak of eternity beyond death but not of the eternity stretching beyond birth, nor of how the human being has descended from spiritual worlds into material, physical existence on the Earth. And so we really have no word which corresponds, at the other pole, to ‘deathlessness’ or immortality. We do not speak of ‘unborn-ness’ (Ungeborenheit) but until it becomes a natural matter of course to speak of deathlessness and unborn-ness, the true being of man will never be understood.

The meaning attaching to the word ‘deathlessness’ nowadays is very far from what it was in times when men also spoke of ‘unborn-ness.’ Innumerable sermons are preached to-day, and with a certain subjective honesty, on the eternal nature of the human soul. But get to the root of these sermons and see if you can discover their fundamental trend. They speculate strongly upon the egotism of human beings, upon the fact that man longs for immortality because his egotism makes the idea of annihilation at death distasteful to him. Think about all that is said along these lines and you will realise that the sermons are directed to the egotism in the members of orthodox congregations. When it comes to the question of pre-existence, of the life before birth, it is not possible to reckon with human egotism. Nothing in the egotistical souls of men arises in response to teaching about the life before birth, because no interest is taken in it. The attitude is more or less this: If indeed there was a life before birth, we are experiencing a continuation of it. One thing is certain! we are in existence now. What, then, is the object of speaking of what went before? It is, in short, only egotism that makes man hold fast to the teaching that death does not bring annihilation. And so, in speaking of the life before birth, one has to appeal to selflessness, to the quality that is the very reverse of egotism. It is, of course, quite right to speak also of the life after death, although the appeal there is to the egotism of the soul. That is the great difference.

It is clear from this that egotism has laid hold of the very depths of the human soul. The anathema placed upon the doctrine of pre-existence is a consequence of the egotism in the soul. It behoves all who are earnest in their striving for spiritual insight to understand these things. Man must find himself again and be true to the laws of his innermost being. Interest must be awakened in the whole nature of man, instead of being confined to his outer, physical sheaths. But this end cannot be achieved until man is regarded as belonging not only to the Earth—which is conceived as a little mole-hill—but to the whole Cosmos, until it is realised that between death and a new birth he passes through the world of stars to which here on Earth he can only gaze upwards from below. And the living essence, the soul and the spirit of the world of stars must be known once again.

The first thing we observe about a human being is his outer, physical structure, but the essential principle, namely its form, is generally disregarded. Form, after all, is the most fundamental principle so far as physical man is concerned. Now when we embark upon a theme like this—which has been dealt with from so many angles in other lectures—it will be obvious at once that only brief indications can be given. Knowing something of the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy, however, you will realise that what I shall now say is drawn from a deeper knowledge of the world and is something more than a series of unsubstantiated statements.

The human form is a most marvellous structure. Think, to begin with, of the head. In all its parts, the head is a copy of the universe. Its form is spherical, the spherical form being modified at the base in order to provide for the articulation of other organs and systems. The essential form of the head, however, is a copy of the spherical form of the universe, as you can discover if you study the basic formation of the embryo.

Linked to the head-structure is another formation which still retains something of the spherical form, although this is not so immediately apparent—I mean the chest-structure. Try to conceive this chest-structure imaginatively; it is as if a spherical form had been compressed and then released again, as if a sphere had undergone an organic metamorphosis.

Finally, in the limb-structures, we can discover hardly anything of the primal, embryonic form of man. Spiritual Science alone will make us alive to the fact that the limb-structures too, still reveal certain final traces of a spherical form although this is not very obvious in their outer shape.

When we study the threefold human form in its relation to the Cosmos, we can say that man is shaped and moulded by cosmic forces but these forces work upon him in many different ways. The changing position of the Sun in the zodiacal constellations through the various epochs has been taken as an indication of the different forces which pour down to man from the world of the fixed stars. Even our mechanistic astronomy to-day speaks of the fact that the Sun rises in a particular constellation at the vernal equinox, that in the course of the coming centuries it will pass through others, that during the day it passes through certain constellations and during the night through others. These and many other things are said, but there is no conscious knowledge of man's relationship to the universe beyond the Earth. It is little known, for example, that when the Sun is shining upon the Earth at the vernal equinox from the constellation of Aries, the solar forces streaming down into human beings in a particular part of the Earth are modified by the influences proceeding from the region in the heaven of fixed stars represented by the constellation of Aries. Neither is there any knowledge of the fact that these forces are peculiarly adapted to work upon the human head in such a way indeed, that during earthly life man can unfold a certain faculty of self-observation, self-knowledge and consciousness of his own Ego.

During the Greek epoch, as you know, the Sun stood in the constellation of Aries at the vernal equinox. In the Greek epoch, therefore, Western peoples were particularly subject to the Aries forces. The fact of being subject to the Aries forces makes it possible for the head of man to develop in such a way that Ego-conscious-ness, a faculty for self-contemplation, unfolds.

Even when the history of the zodiacal symbols is discussed to-day, there is not always knowledge of the essentials. Historical traditions speak of the zodiacal symbols—Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so forth. In old calendars we frequently find the symbol of Aries, but very few people indeed realise the point of greatest significance, which is that the Ram is depicted with his head looking backwards. This image was intended to indicate that the Aries forces influence man in the direction of inwardness—for the Ram does not look forward, nor out into the wide world—he looks backwards, upon himself; he contemplates his own being. This is full of meaning. Once again, and this time in full consciousness not with the instinctive—clairvoyance of olden times—once again we must press forward to this cosmic wisdom, to the knowledge that the forces of the human head are developed essentially through the forces of Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer, whereas the forces of the chest-structure are subject to those of the four middle constellations—Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio. The human head receives its form from the in-working forces of Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer—forces which must be conceived as radiating from above downwards, whereas the zodiacal forces to which the chest-organisation of man is essentially subject (Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio), work laterally.

The other four constellations lie beneath the Earth; their forces work through the Earth, not directly down upon it as those of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, nor laterally as those of Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, but from below upwards. They work upon the limb-structures, and in such a way that the spherical form cannot remain intact. These are the constellations which in the instinctive consciousness of olden times, man envisaged as working up from beneath the Earth. When the constellations lie beneath the Earth, they work upon the limb-structures. And in days of yore there was consciousness of the fact that the forces by which the limbs are given shape are connected with these particular constellations.

The spherical form of the head—this was known to be connected with Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer; the forces working in the limbs were also conceived of as fourfold. Now it must be remembered that this knowledge was the outcome of ancient clairvoyance, hence the terms employed are concerned with conditions of life prevailing in those days. Thus, according to the wisdom of the stars, a man might be a hunter—one who shoots; the constellation which stimulated the corresponding activity in his limbs, making him a hunter, received the name of Sagittarius, the archer. Or again, a man might be a shepherd, concerned with the care of animals in general. This is implied in Capricorn, as it is called nowadays. In the true symbol, however, there is a fish-tail form. The Capricorn man is one who has charge of animals, in contrast to the hunter, the Sagittarius man.

The third constellation of this group is Aquarius, the water-carrier. But think of the ancient symbol. The true picture of this constellation is a man walking over hard soil, fertilising or watering it from a water-vessel. He represents those who are concerned with agriculture—husbandmen. This was the third calling in ancient times when there was instinctive knowledge of these things: huntsman, shepherd, husbandman.

The fourth calling was that of a mariner, In very early times, ships were built in the form of a fish, and later on we often find a dolphin's head at the prow of vessels. This is what underlies the symbol of Pisces—two fish forms intertwined—representing ships trading together. This is symbolical of the fourth calling which is bound up with activities of the limbs—the merchant or trader.

We have thus heard how the human form and figure originate from the Cosmos. The head is spherical; here man is directly exposed to the forces of the heavens of the fixed stars or their representatives the zodiacal circle. Then, working laterally, there are the forces present in the chest-organisation which only contains the human figure in an eclipsed and hidden form—Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio. And lastly there are the forces which do not work directly but by a roundabout way, via the earthly activities, through the influence upon man's calling. (For example, the archer—Sagittarius—is also portrayed as a kind of centaur, half horse, half man, and so forth).

Again in our time we must strive for a fully conscious realisation of man's place in the Cosmos. The form and shape of his physical body are given by the Cosmos. The upper part of his structure is a product of the Cosmos; the lower part a product of the Earth. The Earth covers those constellations which have a definite connection with his activities in life. Not until man's connection with the whole Cosmos is thus recognised and acknowledged will it be possible to understand the mysteries of the human form and its relation to earthly activities. And at the very outset the human form leads us to the zodiacal constellations.

This teaches us that to work as a husbandman, for instance, is by no means without significance in life. In the following lectures we shall hear how these things apply in modern times, but we shall not understand them until we realise that just as in earthly life between birth and death, man belongs to the powers of the Earth, so between death and a new birth he belongs to the Heavens; the powers of Heaven shape his head and it is left to the forces of Earth to shape and mould his limbs.

In the same way too, we may study man's stages or forms of life. For think of it—in the life of man there are also the same two poles. There is the head-life and the life that expresses itself in his activities, through the limbs more particularly. Between these two poles lies that part of his being which manifests in the rhythms of breathing and the circulation of the blood. At the one extreme we find the head-organisation; at the other, the limb-organisation.

The head represents the dying part of man's being, for the head is perpetually involved in death. Life is only possible because through the whole of earthly life, forces are continually pouring from the metabolic process to the head. If the head were to unfold merely its own natural forces, they would be the forces of death. But to this dying we owe the fact that we can think and be conscious beings. The moment the pure life-forces flow in excess to the head, consciousness is prone to be lost. Basically speaking, then, life makes for a dimming of consciousness; death pouring into life makes for a lighting-up of consciousness. (See Fundamentals of Therapy, by Rudolf Steiner and Dr. Ita Wegman, Chapter I, pages 14—15.) If only very little of what is rightly located in the stomach, for example, were to pass up to the head, the head would be without consciousness—like the stomach. Man owes the consciousness of his head merely to the circumstance that the head is not permeated with life in the same way as the stomach. Lowered consciousness means that the forces of nourishment and of growth are acting with excessive strength in the head. On the one side, man is a dying being; on the other, a being who is continually coming to birth. The dying part—which, however, determines the existence of consciousness—is subject, in the main, to the forces working down upon the Earth from the outer planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. That man is an integral part of the universe is not only due to the working of the fixed stars, but also to the working of the planetary spheres.

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars—the so-called outer planets—contain the forces which work chiefly towards the pole of consciousness in man. The forces of the inner planets—Venus, Mercury, Moon—work into his metabolic system and limb-structures. The Sun itself stands in the middle and is mainly associated with the rhythmic system.

Moreover the three first-mentioned are the three stages of life which rather represent the damping-down and suppression of life which is necessary for the sake of consciousness. Through this, we, in our earthly life, are liken to heaven, related to more distant planetary realms beyond. On the other hand, through the essentially thriving principle of life itself in us—that is through the forces of metabolism, the motor forces of the limbs—we are related to the nearer planets: Mercury, Venus and Moon. The Moon, after all, is directly connected with the most thriving, with the most rampant life of all in man, namely the forces of reproduction.

When we study the human form, we are led to the spheres of the fixed stars, that is to say, to their representatives, the zodiacal constellations. When we study the life of man, to discover where it is a more thriving and where a more declining life, we are led to the planetary spheres.

In the same way we can study man's being of soul and of spirit. This shall be done in the following lectures. To-day I only wanted to indicate very briefly that it must become possible for man once again to regard himself not merely as an earthly being, connecting his form and his life simply and solely with earthly forces of heredity, digestion, the influences of autumn, spring, wind, weather and the like. He must learn to relate both his life and his form to the universe beyond the Earth. He must find what lies beyond the earthly realm—and then he will discover his true being, he will find himself.

It would augur dire misfortune for the progress of Western humanity if the conception of the Cosmos as a great system of machinery to which the scientific view of the world since the middle of last century has led, were to remain, and if man were to wander on Earth knowing nothing of his true being. His true being has its origin and home in the Universe beyond the Earth, therefore he can know nothing of himself if he sees only what is earthly and thinks that what is beyond the Earth can be explained in terms of mathematics and mechanics. In deed and truth, man can only find himself when he realises his connection with the universe beyond the Earth and incorporates its forces into his moral and social life—indeed this must be, if moral and social life are to thrive. No real wisdom can arise in moral and social life unless a link is forged with cosmic wisdom. And that is why it has been imperative to infuse something of Anthroposophy into the domain of moral and social life too, for we believe that these impulses can lead away from the forces of decline to the forces of upward progress.