The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! I would now like to speak here about what a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass could be, and I would like to show how one can move towards such a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass while at the same time taking into account the modern consciousness of humanity, out of which these reflections, which I am making here before you, should always flow. I would like to convey as much as possible of what is necessary to you. This will probably enable you to build on what you have learned.

Before I approach the ritual of the sacrifice of the mass, I would first like to say a few words, my dear friends, that are not connected with the external, but with the outward appearance of the mass sacrifice, and which we will then expand in a corresponding way to other ceremonies. How the priest himself relates to the mass sacrifice is intimately connected with it. This should already be apparent in the outward appearance in which the priest rode up to the altar. It is indeed the case that, by approaching the altar in his appropriate robes, the priest indicates that the sacrifice of the Mass is something for which I used the term “wholly human” yesterday. In our age, the whole human being can only be exhausted when we speak of the physical human being, the etheric human being or the human being of the formative forces, the astral human being, who already appears in the internalization, but is connected with the astral of the cosmos, and the I-human being. The higher members need not be taken into account here, because in the course of earthly development they are for the time being hidden within man as mere active forces. Now it is a matter of the fact that for a complete human insight, the human being as he stands before us first is the physical human being, and that if the complete human being is to be seen, it must be indicated, at least outwardly, how the other members of human nature relate to the human being. This is indicated for the Mass sacrifice in the vestments. (During the following explanations, the following is written on the board.)

The physical body of the priest is first of all contained in the etheric body, which is essentially represented by a kind of extended white surplice that reaches the floor. I will write “white robe”. It still has various parts that are separate from the actual surplice cut, but these things have also been added over time for various reasons, and I will speak here only of the essential. When we look at the white of the surplice, we must realize that it contains a hint of the part of the human being that is integrated into the cosmos, just as the physical human being is integrated into the forces of the earth. And just as one has to look for man's guilt in the forces of the earth, so one has to see innocence in the white robe that man puts on.

Now, as you know, the human being, as he walks on earth, first has a firm connection with the physical and etheric bodies, and then these have a looser connection with the astral body and the ego – during sleep, these two are detached – and then again has a firm connection with the astral body and the ego. During sleep, the astral body and the ego separate from the physical body and the etheric body. During the whole of life, therefore, on the one hand the physical body and the etheric body, and on the other hand the astral body and the ego, remain connected to a certain extent in the body, but now they can be abstractly separated within consciousness, just as they also appear in an organized way, with the human being having a clear differentiation of the inner being in thinking, feeling and willing. In the will there is a strong impulse of the ego, in the astral body there is a strong impulse of thinking and feeling, coming from the side of the etheric body and from the side of the physical body, so that the human being is already differentiated in terms of the ego and the astral body for his consciousness, while the differentiation of the etheric and physical bodies does not confront him at all. But precisely that which otherwise forms a looser connection between the etheric and the astral body in a natural way in man must be hinted at during the actual central priestly action, during the sacrifice of the Mass and also otherwise during priestly actions, in that for the priest the interweaving of the etheric and the astral is actually always directly present. So the working over of the astral body into the etheric body must be indicated in some way, and this is the case in that the priest wears the stole. By wearing the stole, the connecting link between the astral and etheric bodies is indicated in the stole. We have the astral body (it is drawn). You see, the connection with the etheric of the cosmos is, so to speak, in itself a permanent one in man from birth to death and is only tinged by what the astral body as such sends into the etheric and physical bodies, that is, what emanates from human will emotions, from emotional content. With all these emotions of will and feeling, the human being must now place himself in that which I spoke to you about yesterday as the course of the year. I tried to draw your attention to the different ways in which people relate to the universe within themselves when they understand these festivals in the original way.

He then places himself with his mood in these festivals, if his astral body is placed in them accordingly. The astral body is now expressed accordingly in the robe worn by the priest during the sacrifice of the Mass, in the actual chasuble, which is designed so that the priest can slip through it at the top, and which then hangs down at the front and back in a not quite identical form. It is, I would say, the symbol of the astral body. This symbol of the astral body must actually be adapted to the moods that the human soul must have in relation to the course of the year, and it is adapted by giving this, I say now “astral body”, the color mood that expresses how the soul mood stands in relation to the whole course of time at the turn of the year, in the course of the year. (See drawing, plate 12.)

Let us begin with the preparations for Christmas. I say what I am about to say with full awareness of how it must sound to modern man. You will find the most diverse deviations from what I have to say in the Catholic Church, but these are deviations that have arisen from misunderstandings over time. If the colors of the chasubles were really taken from the spirit of the supersensible world, they would have to be as I am now going to show you. We must therefore have a certain mood, which is the mood of expectation towards Christmas. This mood can only be expressed in color by everything that belongs to the chasuble being blue for this time. So we have blue for the Advent season. This does indeed express that mood of devotion in which man does not feel what is around him, let us say, as if the forces of sunlight were working through him, but so that he feels that what is transformed into the spiritual, what is preserved by the forces of light, is working through him from the earth.

But a mood of hope will have to find expression in the Christmas festival itself. It is the festival of expectation, it is the festival of hope, it is therefore the festival that must brighten, that must have a faint light in what was the earlier blue. We will therefore have the chasuble in the color at Christmas that we have mixed a red with the blue, in a kind of purple. We then have this purple gradually becoming lighter as we approach the time encompassing the first weeks of the year, and we then come to the expectation of Easter, of death, where we now have the chasuble in black to suggest the right mood. For the period before Easter, the chasuble is black.

We now come to the Easter season itself, and there the chasuble turns to the earlier blue-red-purple in a rather abrupt transition – just as there is a sharp transition from purple to black – then reddish-yellow.

We approach the time of Pentecost. At Whitsuntide, the chasuble is essentially white and then, until it returns completely to blue, it is in shades of white with all kinds of colorful embroidery, which indicates that during the summer season, when the soul is united with the cosmos, so to speak, the soul of the earth is subdued and the fertilizing forces of growth are sent from the cosmos. In a true priest's vestment, one should therefore see, as a symbol, that which is sent down from the heavens in the form of plant and animal growth forces. As autumn approaches, these forces find expression in that which corresponds to the fruitfulness of the harvest, until it in turn opens out into the blue of the Advent season.

In fact, the Catholic Church has ritual prescriptions for these changes in chasubles. If they appear in different colors, it is only because of a misunderstanding; but essentially it is true that what appears in the Catholic Church as the color of the chasubles goes back to ancient traditions and ancient visions, to ancient knowledge of the supersensible world and man's relationship to the supersensible world. So that an extraordinary amount can be studied from the chasuble itself, although, if one includes the errors, one can also err a great deal.

First of all, we have to consider the color of the chasuble. We will always see the stole, which is worn under the chasuble and crossed over the chest, in a slightly lighter tone than the chasuble itself, but essentially, since it is the connection between the astral and etheric bodies, in a lighter color than the seasonal color of the chasuble. We must then seek, by going further, that which is the symbol for the human ego. I would just like to add the following about the chasuble: the chasuble is essentially a revelation of the astral body. This is also expressed in the embroidery or the other dyes of the chasuble, let us say, in gold, if one follows either good old traditions or if one brings things directly from the spiritual worlds. so that this figure will always be found in some variation on the front of the chasuble (see plate 12, top right) and on the back of the chasuble (plate 12, bottom right). This is to suggest that, to a certain extent, the currents from the spiritual life extend into the astral life, and that the human being himself — precisely as he crosses the axes of his eyes, as he can fold his hands, as he can touch one hand with the other — comes to perceive the self through the crossing of the curves here on the chasuble representing the astral body.

When we now ascend to the ego, it is the case that what man calls his ego is, in fact, most separate in human consciousness; it is the case that man, through his ego, has, in fact, his particular relationship to the outer world, that he can either consciously establish this relationship to the external world, which is established by the ego, or that he can also withdraw into his ego, that this is something that is only loosely connected to the unconscious being. Therefore, everything that is an outer work, such as the head covering, or everything that the priest only wears, symbolically points to the ego. Everything that can be taken off at the altar, everything that the priest only wears, everything that can really be taken off or put on, actually belongs to the ego area. The power of the ego rests in everything the priest wears; hence the power of command and the power of the law, which is inherent in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, is expressed primarily in the headgear. If you take the ordinary priest's headdress, it is the most inconspicuous; go up to the provost, go up to the bishop, and you will have the headdress becoming more and more complicated, and you will finally have the most complicated headdress at the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, the tiara of the Roman Pope. The triple headdress of the Roman Pontiff expresses the fact that no one is a worthy Pope who has not come to have control over the thinking, feeling and willing of his ego, and to rule the earthly kingdom of Christendom from this organization of thinking, feeling and willing.

These symbols, which are also used in the vestments for the sacrifice of the Mass, are important down to the smallest detail, but that is not important for us. You may also know that the priest does not wear the chasuble, which is specifically intended only for the performance of the Mass, during other ceremonies, such as baptisms or funerals, requiems (I will talk about these later) or afternoon ceremonies. Instead, he wears a mantle over the stole, which now also has to appear with a similar figure to the one shown here, but which is intended to suggest how this astral body is supposed to behave in a different way during the other ceremonies, is in a different mood, above all is in a mood that is less devoted, but more blessing-like and the like. This is expressed in the particular cut of the so-called surplice, which is also worn at other ceremonies.

The point is that for the Catholic priest, not only is the daily breviary prescribed – we will have to talk about that again – but the Catholic priest also has to check the ecclesiastical calendar, especially before celebrating the Mass, in order to determine exactly how he has to wear the chasuble on the relevant days according to the signatures, which are in line with cosmic processes. Of course, in poor churches it is not possible to change the chasuble every day or even every week, but there the change of the chasuble could be based on the respective constellations of the stars; a varied chasuble could certainly be used for each day according to the ecclesiastical calendar, which, according to the Catholic view, essentially gives us the constellations of the stars, the sun and the moon.

Thus clothed, the priest celebrates the sacrifice of the Mass. I have already explained to you the structure of the sacrifice of the Mass in its four main parts. I would like to explicitly mention that these four main parts of the Catholic Mass are surrounded by a wealth of other prayer-like or ceremonial acts, which I will discuss later. Today, I will first talk about the first two main parts of the Mass, the reading of the Gospel, the proclamation of the Good News and the offertory.

So after the preparatory prayers have been said – as I said, we will talk about these later – the priest enters the left side of the altar and then has to read the mass from the left side of the altar.

There are differences here too. The ordinary daily mass is relatively shorter than the solemn mass. The solemn mass has additional elements, but each mass has the four parts that I will now discuss, with a preface, with prayers that lie between these main parts, or with ceremonial acts that lie before or in the middle. But first we must become thoroughly familiar with the nature of these main parts.

So, first of all, I would like to show rituals in the way that is generally possible today directly from the spiritual world. I would like to emphasize that I am not claiming that the rituals I am about to show are perfect. But they are to be given in the way that is possible for me, in that I will first present what can be drawn directly from the spiritual world today.

After the prayers and ceremonies have been performed, the gospel of the day is read on the left side of the altar. How the gospel falls on the day again, according to such a calendar as I have spoken to you about, we will speak briefly about in the next few days. So when the priest prepares to read the Gospel, he would say the following, either silently, at so-called silent masses, which every priest must read every day, or by reciting it aloud, or by accompanying it with singing and music at high solemn masses. I will now only have to communicate what the content should be. The priest will therefore first speak as he prepares to read the Gospel:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.
From my lips, let the word flow, cleansed through Thee.
For when Thy grace does me honor, pure
may my heart and pure my word be.
So may Your Word live worthily on my lips and May your blessing, O Christ, flow livingly through the word.
You may be in my heart.
Your word may flow from my lips.
Thus, from a worthy source and in the right stream,
your gospel is proclaimed.

The priest has the altar servers at the altar, the ministers of the sacrifice of the Mass. What I have just spoken is spoken by the priest alone. What I now have to speak is a dialogue between the priest and the altar boy – usually, if there are two, between him and the one standing on the right side of the altar, while the one standing on the left side has more of a silent role. The priest now speaks:

Christ in you.

This is not the case in Catholic masses, [where it is] Dominus vobiscum – the Lord be with you. This is something that arises from a misunderstanding of the ritual, because it makes the mass not a Christian sacrifice, but a sacrifice for the Father. So the priest would have to say:

Christ in you.

And the altar server:

And fulfill you with your Holy Spirit.

The Priest says:

The Gospel of Mark will now be proclaimed,

Matthew, John, Luke, chapter such-and-such.

The altar server says, after the priest has said this announcement:

May Christ reveal himself through you, O Christ.

Now, what I have just said is spoken in such a way that the first words, “My heart be filled...” to “...proclaim your gospel” are spoken by the priest, looking towards the altar, the word “Christ in you” is spoken looking towards the congregation, and the word “It is now proclaimed the gospel of Mark...” is spoken with the priest always turning around in between. The priest now turns around again and approaches the actual reading of the Gospel. But before that, he turns to the congregation. It is a custom in Catholicism today for the priest to often read the Gospel with his face turned towards the altar – especially at silent masses. However, it corresponds to the actual meaning, as is also done at the most solemn masses, that the priest reads the Gospel at least half turned towards the congregation.

The altar server says after the Gospel is read:

We lift up our soul to Thee, O Christ.

The priest says:

May the word of the Gospel blot out whatever is impure in our words.

Thus the ceremony of reading the Gospel is complete. It is certainly the case that the Gospel should not be read without the things that preceded its reading and those that follow. The Gospel should be read in a dignified manner, with the appropriate mood. This should be done by the priest dignifying the Gospel with the appropriate words.

Now there are some intermediate prayers and ceremonies, which I will discuss later, and then the second main part of the Mass follows: the sacrifice, the offertory.

We have already spoken about the essence of the sacrifice, and it will reveal itself to you in the sacrificial act itself when I communicate it to you now. This sacrifice consists, first of all, of offering wine and water as a sacrifice by mixing them, and that what is spoken into the mixing of wine and water is transferred, thus transferred as a word with the waves of the smoke clouds that stream out of the censer and that are supposed to carry up what is in the words of the sacrifice to the heights, so that grace may descend. Such a correct mass offering, a mass offertory, would then have to proceed in the following way: First the priest will uncover the chalice, which is initially covered with a small rug-like thing, and will have to speak opposite the covered chalice – this is how it should be:

Receive, divine World Ground, weaving in the expanses of space and in the remote times, this sacrifice, brought to you by me, your unworthy creature.

Thus the sacrifice is brought to the World Ground, to the paternal principle: Receive, divine World Ground, you who are weaving in the widths of space and in the remote of time, this sacrifice through me, your unworthy creature, offered to you.

I bring it because my straying from You, my denial of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

With me, all who dwell here bring it.

With me, may all true Christians who have been born bring it.

With me, may all who have died bring it.

So that they do not bury their eternal for the sake of their temporal.

Yes, so be it.

Now, after the acolyte has brought [the vessels] in which there is wine in one and water in the other, and after the priest has poured from one water and from the other wine into the chalice, the following is spoken in the chalice during this mixing of water and wine:

Divine World Ground, which has ordained beings in the supersensible out of its essential members, and which has transformed the ordained, turn my will to You; may the power of this willing arise from a feeling that unites.

– now the mixture is ready; the following will be spoken after it has already been mixed –

with Christ, who lives in Your life and may my thinking live in the Holy Spirit's life through all the following earthly cycles.

This “per omnia saecula saeculorum” [of the Catholic Mass] is actually always to be replaced [by the words] “through all the following earthly realms,” that is, all the following earthly cycles, all the following time cycles.

Now the chalice is raised, which is the actual symbol of the sacrifice. The believing community sees the raising of the chalice, and during the raising of the chalice the words are spoken:

Be thou sacrificed, O foundation of the world, this draught of health. May it quicken what is good, so that what has fallen to earth may also be raised up to the heavens. May the fragrance ascend, as this divinely willed being has descended.

Yes, so be it.

The chalice is placed on the altar. The incense for the chalice is now prepared. In the Catholic Mass, this is done in two acts, but as far as I can see, this is not the intention. First the chalice is incensed and then the altar. But as I said, I cannot see that this is the intention. Before the incense is burned, the following is said:

We all approach You with our soul, O Christ, so that You may offer us with You and Your light may shine upon our day, and You may accept us.

Come to us, Spirit of the vastness of space and the remoteness of time, and sanctify our sacrifice with Your holy being.

May our resurrection in spirit fill the smoke with a blessing spirit, through Christ living in our prayers. Yes, so be it.

Now the altar boy takes the censer and incense is burned. During the burning of incense, the word is spoken that is actually to be taken up by the smoke and carried upwards:

Christ in us. From our thoroughly Christianized soul may the smoke ascend, and may Thy grace descend to us.

Christ in us. Christ in our prayer. Our prayer may be heard by Thee.

The faithful then join the priest in raising their hands.

Christ in our lifting up of hands. The Christ light in our daylight.

After lowering the hands:

Let the threshold guard my mouth; let a wall bar my error, to keep me from going astray.

Let all evil be removed from my words, and let good will flow into them.

During these words incense is continually being smoked. After these words the censer is given to the acolyte and carried away from the altar. Usually the priest then has to descend to turn around and also smoke the faithful congregation. Then the censer is handed over, and the priest has to speak the prayer as an echo:

In the sacrifice, may the fire of love that creates substance arise, and the flame generate timeless being, so that good may endure.

Yes, so be it.

That, more or less, is what I am able to give, my dear friends, what can be given today when the question is how to find it from the spiritual worlds today – that which is to be done as gospel reading and sacrificial act.

But I also want you to become familiar with the traditional, and so I would like to introduce you to what I have attempted at the suggestion of our dear friend, Pastor Schuster, as a translation of the Mass ritual.^{1The translation of the Catholic mass ritual is placed in quotation marks ”} but with spiritual scientific foundations, which is the result of this approach. If one were to translate the traditional ritual of the mass, but not by proceeding in a lexicographic manner, but rather by first ascertaining what the text really means in terms of word-value and soul-content, then the aim would be to express before the Gospel:

"Cleanse my heart and lips, Almighty God, who cleansed the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a burning coal: cleanse me, then, by Your compassionate mercy, that I may worthily proclaim Thy Holy Gospel. Through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

O Lord, pour forth Your blessing. May the Lord be in my heart and on my lips: that I may worthily and rightly proclaim his Gospel. Yes, so be it.

The priest says:

“The Lord fulfill you.”

The altar server says:

“And your Holy Spirit.”

The priest says:

“It follows from the Gospel of St. Mark, Matthew, John, Luke.”

The altar server then says:

“May the Lord reveal himself through you, O Lord.”

The Gospel of the day is read. After the reading, the altar server says:

“Praise be to you, O Christ.”

The priest then says:

“By the words of the Gospel, may our corruptions be blotted out.”

So, my dear friends, what you have just heard would, in today's time consciousness, have to be said in preparation:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.

It cannot be said in the Christian sense, if one takes up today's time consciousness: “Cleanse my heart and lips, Almighty God.” Yesterday afternoon I pointed out the reasons to you clearly. So:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.

From my lips, O let the purified word flow through Thee.

For when I am worthy of Thy grace, my heart can be pure, my word pure.

So may Thy word live worthily on my lips and, carried by Thy spirit, reach those to whom it is to be proclaimed.

Thy blessing, O Christ, flow livingly through the word.

It cannot be “Pour out Thy blessings, O Lord”; nor can it be “The Lord be in my heart and on my lips,” but it must be:

Thou shalt be in my heart.

Thy word shall flow from my lips.

Thus, from a worthy source and in the right stream,

Your Gospel is proclaimed.

Yes, so be it.

In the correct understanding of Christianity, it cannot be “dominus vobiscum”, but [it must be]:

Christ in you.

The altar boy:

And may He fill your spirit.

The priest:

The Gospel will now be proclaimed...

The altar server:

May Christ reveal himself through you.

The Catholic Mass Office still has the ritual: “May Christ reveal himself through you, O Lord”; these are echoes from the old days, which are not really understood in a Christian way.

The Gospel reading follows. After the reading of the Gospel, if we translate the text properly, we have to say:

"Praise be to you, O Christ.

But what these words actually mean is:

We lift up our soul to you, O Christ.

The priest then says:

The word of the gospel erases what is impure in our words.

The Catholic text reads:

“Through the words of the Gospel, may our corruptions be wiped out.”

In the Catholic liturgy, the offertory would have the words:

"Receive, O Holy Father, Almighty, timeless God, this pure offering which I, your unworthy disciple, bring to you, my living and true God, for my innumerable transgressions and offenses and negligences and for all present, but also for all believing Christians, living and deceased: so that it may be to my and their salvation for lasting life. Yes, so be it.

We have the words for this because the words must be so – they also reveal themselves in this way – in the sense that the sacrifice is offered to the Father, the ground of the world:

Receive, divine ground of the world, weaving in the vastness of space and in the distance of time, this sacrifice, brought to you by me, your unworthy creature.

I bring it because my straying from You, my denial of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

When I read the supersensible directly, my dear friends, I must read:

I am bringing it because my deviations from You, my denials of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

If I read the traditional text, I have to read:

“... which I, your unworthy disciple, offer to you, my living and true God, for my innumerable offenses and negligences.”

And it is the same with the following. In the original text:

”... and for all the faithful...

in the text that can be given today:

With me may it be brought by all true Christians who are born.

Then in the old text:

”... but also for all believing Christians who are living and who have died:

and in the new text:

Those who have died may also bring it with me.

In the old text:

”... so that it may benefit them and me for eternal life.

In the new text:

Lest they should bury their eternal for the sake of their temporal.

This verse is closely connected with the full understanding that we must have today, in the sense in which it was expressed yesterday. With regard to the mixing of the wine and water, the old text would read:

"O God, who has composed the essence of man in a wonderful way and transformed it in an even more wonderful way: through the secret nature of water and wine, give us the communion of divine being with him who has made himself a partaker of our human nature, Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in unity with the God of the Holy Spirit through all ages. Yes, so be it.

Today it says:

Divine Ground of the World, who has ordained out of the essential parts of his being the essence of mankind in the supersensible, and who hast transformed what was ordained, to Thee do I turn my volition; may the power of this volition arise out of a feeling that unites with Christ, who lives in Thy life and may my thinking live in the life of the Holy Spirit through all the following circles of the earth.

When the chalice is raised, that is, at the sacrifice, in the old text:

"We sacrifice to you, O Lord, the chalice of healing, beseeching your goodness: that it may rise for your divinely exalted looking down upon us and the whole world with a gentle fragrance of healing. Yes, so be it.

In a spirit of devotion and with a soul aware of its weakness, we approach You, O Lord, and may the sacrifice of our day penetrate Your perception so that it may please You, You divine Lord. O come, Bringer of Healing, Almighty Timeless God: and give Your blessing to this sacrifice, which is prepared for Your holy revelation of Being.

Through the intercession of the blessed archangel Michael, who stands at the right hand of the altar, and of all who are counted by him as followers, may the Lord bless the sacrificial smoke and accept it in a gentle fragrance, through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

Then follows the incense-burning for the chalice. I will first say what is said here when the chalice is raised:

Be sacrificed to you, O foundation of the world, this draught of health. May it quicken that which is good, so that what has fallen to earth may also be raised up to the heavens. May the fragrance ascend, as this divinely willed being has descended. Yes, so be it.

We all draw near to You with our soul, O Christ, that You may offer us with You and let Your light shine upon our day, and that You may accept us. Come to us, Spirit of the expanses of space and the remote times, and sanctify our sacrifice with Your holy nature.

May our resurrection in the Spirit fill the smoke with a blessing, so that Christ may live in our prayers. Yes, so be it.

During the incense-burning of the chalice, the old text is spoken:

“Imbued with your blessing, O Lord, this sacrificial smoke rises up to you, and your gracious mercy descends upon us.”

And then at the following incense of the altar:

“Cause, O Lord, that through my prayer, which like the sacrificial smoke enters into thy sight, the lifting up of my hands may be an offering made perfect by the day. – Set, O Lord, a guard before my mouth and a wall around my lips: that my heart may not pour out in evil words, and fall into excuses for my transgressions.”

And this is what we now say (according to the new text) during the incense-bearing:

Christ in us

or, if a silent Mass is being read:

Christ in me. From a soul permeated with Christ may the smoke rise up and to us – or to me – may your grace descend, Christ in us.

Christ in our prayer. Our prayer be for your ear.

Christ in our raising of hands. The Christ light in our daylight.

Let the threshold be guarded before my mouth; let a wall hinder my error, in order to flow.

All evil be removed from my words and good will pour into them.

The censer is removed and the prayer to be said is in the old text:

“May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of his love and the flame of timeless kindness. Yes, may it be so.”

New text:

In the sacrifice, may the fire of the love that creates and the flame that engenders timeless being arise, so that good may endure.

Yes, so be it.

Actually, the text that I read to you as the old text is part of the Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Christian Mass as the recitation of the Creed. In fact, the passage is absolutely correct; the question is rather that the Credo is inserted at this point, between the Gospel and the Offertory. We will have to talk about the Credo on the following days. Today, I will merely familiarize you with the Credo that goes with the old text I have read. This Credo reads:

"I believe in one God, the Almighty Father, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who was begotten before all ages. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, Of one substance, though not having begotten, with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation descended from heaven. Who also came in the flesh by the Holy Spirit, being born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. Who also was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, who died and was buried. And on the third day He rose again in the sense of the scriptures. And was taken up into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will reveal Himself again, to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom is endless. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeded from the Father and the Son. Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and revealed, who spoke through the prophets. And in the only holy catholic and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And I hope in the resurrection of the dead and in life in the future age. Yes, so be it.

The Priest says, after reciting the Credo:

“Dominus vobiscum – the Lord be with you.”

the acolyte:

“And with you, O Lord.”

The Priest says:

“Oremus – we pray.”

And now follows the prayer.

My dear friends, it is necessary for you to grasp the connection between the entire ancient sacrificial rite and this Credo, so that you will see how necessary it is for the modern consciousness to approach the sacrificial rite in an original way. Tomorrow we will deal with the ritual of consecration and communion.

Emil Bock asks for questions.

Constantin Neuhaus: Yesterday we heard that we must redeem ourselves from personal sin. How does that relate to karma? What place do forgiveness, sacramental penance have according to these premises?

Rudolf Steiner: Yesterday I distinguished the whole process that lies in redemption and in original sin. Now, in the case of forgiveness, it is not a matter of our receiving forgiveness for something. What we receive forgiveness for and what we experience in the forgiveness is, of course, included in karma if one absolutely wants to refer back to karma. I think that the two things, the deed and the forgiveness for it, are karmically connected. Of course, you would hardly assume that it can be a matter of forgiveness for which one does nothing at all. However, as soon as we talk about the church as a serious community, it can certainly be said, even with the inclusion of the karma current, that the church as such takes on certain things that the individual does in his actions, whereby the church would thus assume a kind of collective karma. Of course, in return, one belongs to the church.

It is always a little difficult to take karma as such so abstractly, because karma is something very complicated. For example, you can say that if you draw a line somewhere in life under the positive and negative deeds, that is, under the good and evil deeds, you get a certain life balance. But this life balance can be changed again immediately by one item or another. It is not at all a matter of this being a rigid balance, but rather a matter of the fact that one actually has a life balance at every moment of life. But there can certainly be items on one side or the other that simply exist because one belongs to some community that then takes them on. In the Catholic Church, it should be the case that if it claims to forgive sins, then it should take on this burden of sin collectively as a church. That is also the original meaning of the forgiveness of sins, the taking over of the burden from the individual and its collective assumption; of course, a strong sense of such responsibility is usually lacking, at least within the Roman Catholic Church.

Constantin Neuhaus: So evil is made good again?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is that repentance, when I have been immoderate and then make amends through temperance, through abstinence?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

Constantin Neuhaus: And to do good, I receive the strength from Christ for that?

Rudolf Steiner: I receive the strength from Christ to ensure that the general human original sin does not prevent me from having the strength [to do good]. I have no strength at all to do good in our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if I do not have this strength from Christ in relation to the original sin. I have no strength without the redemption of the original sin.

Constantin Neuhaus: And the mere weaknesses, are they not diminished?

Rudolf Steiner: If the mere weaknesses and the like were diminished, we would be disturbed in our personal development. Perhaps this will be most vividly illustrated by the following. Please do not be shocked by it. It can be examined what impression it makes on the dead - that is, on the human being who has passed through the gate of death - when he, as it then is, bears in his characteristics the consequences of his deeds on earth. This is something that, according to the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine, even extends into eternity, because Catholic clergy do indeed talk about the fact that a person has to look at his sins forever, or rather, has to suffer because of his sins.

Now this does not agree with the observation that can be made. The soul that has passed through death is indeed in this state. But when someone asks: Does the soul suffer from this? — then one is at a certain loss to answer. Suffering is there, but the soul desires the suffering, because strength comes from overcoming suffering. In this case, one is at a loss for words. One cannot say that the soul suffers, but the soul would be unhappy if it did not carry the consequences of its transgressions within it after death, and then as qualities. That which is action in life, or rather the character of action, is transformed into qualities, and these qualities are transformed in the life between death and new birth into powers, abilities, and so on, which are then inherited by the next birth. And these are transformed into unconscious desires, which then condition karma [in the next life] between birth and death. Therefore, it is also the case – and this has been asserted by a great many people who knew nothing at all about any repeated lives on earth – that if one examines one's early life from birth onwards from a certain point in life, one finds that the events [in life] are connected in such a way that one comes to one's unimportant and important acts in life through unconscious desires. One cannot overlook the fact that the power that brings one to experience this or that is identical with the unconscious desires that bring one to this or that.

A participant: I would like to ask whether original sin was necessary for the development of humanity or whether humanity could also develop freedom without original sin. Another question is whether there are beings, primeval men, who did not fall into this original sin?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the question must actually be answered like this: You see, supersensible knowledge can never actually be pure teleology, but it is observational, and therefore the questions of the purpose of anything actually fall away in supersensible knowledge. This is something that was implied in your question: Can human beings [attain freedom without original sin], or did human beings incur original sin in order to attain freedom? — It is simply a fact that we, as the human race, have been living in the development of freedom from the 15th century onwards. This life in freedom is only possible under the influence, the inner influence of mere intellectuality, which actually has no content. Descartes' sentence “Cogito, ergo sum” is actually wrong. The sentence should actually read: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the destruction of reality. Only when one can approach the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition, is there real certainty of the I. When we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our environment, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of taking in something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. Intellectual concepts are actually empty in the face of reality; they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom. You can see how intellectualism gradually emerges. It comes up through such thinkers who were still contemporaries of Nicolaus Cusanus. Then it goes further, but in particular Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton are the real intellectualists.

Now, this state of consciousness, which brings about freedom, could not be there if man were inwardly filled with a content, because this content would have to be a divine one. This divine content, which was to some extent strongest in the beginning, had to decrease first and reach its zero point here (it is being drawn), and now the intellectualistic development occurs here. This gives man freedom and, as we become more aware of it, will in turn give our soul a content. So passing through [the zero point], being thrown down into matter, which certain occultists call the 'fall into procreation', for example, was absolutely necessary for freedom. You can only say it afterwards: because human beings fell into original sin, they gained freedom. It would be quite wrong for me to hold back these things from you, even if they are slightly shocking for a present-day consciousness.

Beings who know nothing of original sin do not partake of freedom either. Such beings are, for example, those who belong to the stages immediately above human beings. These beings have greater wisdom than human beings, and also have greater power, but they do not attain freedom, their will is always actually the divine will. Only under certain conditions, which have not yet occurred in the development of the world, but which may still occur during the development of the earth - they lie in a certain future - will these entities, which Catholicism calls angels and archangels, have the possibility of straying from their inner soul necessity, not in probability, but they would have the possibility of doing so. But nothing can be said about it because it will depend on what the whole world constellation is like. So we have beings that have nothing to do with original sin. Even those entities, which were the actual tempters of men in the course of the development of the earth, which are represented by the snake in paradise, these entities also have nothing to do with original sin, but with a sin freely committed by them. Only in man does it become original sin. It is that which is called original sin and then again freedom, that which is actually specific to man. We find that the establishment of each level of existence in the entire universe has its good meaning, so that nothing is repeated in a vertical direction. So what is in the animals is not in the human beings, and what is in the human beings is not in the angels, and so on.

A participant: I wanted to ask to what extent the Mass can be justified by the Gospel?

Rudolf Steiner: To what extent can the mass be justified by the Golgotha mystery? I have said something about this. The point is that, for anthroposophical knowledge too, the Golgotha mystery is not a single historical fact in a limited time. The beginning of the event of Golgotha lies, of course, in Golgotha, but then, in a sense, the effect is an ongoing one. This continued effectiveness of the Mystery of Golgotha has also been depicted in many different ways, I would even say in mythical ways. I am reminded of the legend of the Holy Grail, in which the blood of Christ was caught and carried on to Europe, and this suggests that the Mystery of Golgotha continues to have an effect. Now, in the sense that I explained yesterday as the development, the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha is such that we actually have the possibility of gaining a real connection to the power that emanates from Golgotha as a counterweight against original sin. This is the continuing power of the Mystery of Golgotha.

As I have explained, the Catholic Church has now established the external act as that through which the efficacy of the Mystery of Golgotha is to pass. So it is simply through the successive sacrificial masses that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha is effective. If now the Mystery of Golgotha is a real power, that is, if a real power emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we must indeed imagine the matter in this way: You see, if we are honest, then, according to the intellectualistic view, we would have to say to ourselves — because the intellectualistic view is the ultimate consequence of original sin —: We are facing the danger of the death of our morality in our earthly existence. For if the earth undergoes such a development as it would actually have to undergo in the scientific sense, if, that is, the earth has emerged from the Kant-Laplacean nebula and ends in heat death, then for anyone who wants to be honest, that is, who wants to accept this scientific view without reservation, the moral world ends with it. And for the person who accepts this, the fear that he will have to go through moral death, through the destruction of what he has acquired as morality, would have to arise with the scientific view. There would then be no further development of morality. That would mean approaching a great cemetery for everything moral. Therefore, we need not only the abstract power, which is often assumed by modern theology today, because it cannot save itself from the power with which science calculates. No one can merely predict that the moral power can take on what is really happening if the scientific view is right. According to the scientific view, the moral force is a force that lies purely in consciousness; that is to say, for the intellectualistic age and for the following ages, we need a force that works as a moral force and at the same time has the ability to take on physical forces. This power, which enters us through our elective affinity, as I said yesterday, with what has gone through Golgotha, with Christ as the spiritual ancestor, this power, which can take on [the physical powers], can be found by the individual human being, as I described yesterday. And it would never be found if the Mystery of Golgotha had not existed. So it is absolutely true what even individual theologians — they are white crows — have said, for example Martensen, a Dane: the Mystery of Golgotha will only be properly understood again when we are in a position to attach a real physical- earthly significance for the development of the earth, and all the dialectical arts that speak of the fact that despite all natural science, what has been attained in faith can assert itself, they are actually not true inwardly, they are only there to delude themselves. The power of the Mystery of Golgotha can only be effective when it works in man in such a way that it can take on the physical and earthly forces in man. And it can do that. And that is what is to be conveyed to Catholicism in the Sacrifice of the Mass. For the one who takes the rituals that I have discussed this morning, it is the case that in his consciousness, which develops through performing the action, in the knowledge of the processes, lies the power to encounter this Christ-power that emanates from Golgotha. That would then be the connection with the sacrifice of the Mass.

A participant: I wanted to ask whether we can find anything in the New Testament to justify the mass sacrifice.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, you see, there is actually no such justification for the sacrifice of the mass in the testament itself. No passage of the New Testament can be used to justify the sacrifice of the mass. But the primeval sacrifice of the mass, of which the Gospels speak, is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha, and so we can only speak of how we correctly understand the words that are spoken in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha: “This do in remembrance of me,” that is, in remembrance of what takes place through the Mystery of Golgotha, and in such a way that first of all the Lord's Supper, which is an important part of the Mass, is already instituted. The Lord's Supper, however, is found in the Gospels; but the other must be sought in the necessity that arises more and more for the developing human being. In order to perform transubstantiation in a worthy manner, knowledge of the Gospel is essential, as are the sacrifice and the subsequent communion, which, by the way, is an integral part of the Lord's Supper if you will.

Hermann Fackler: I would like to ask a theoretical and a practical question. The theoretical question would be: How do we actually conceive of the origin of evil in the anthroposophical sense? We heard yesterday that the term “original sin” is actually blasphemous; the question arises: must not evil actually fall back on divine power in its ultimate origin, since this divine power needs sin to lead human beings to freedom?

Rudolf Steiner: I can only refer you to the question, I would like to say, facts. If we imagine what underlies our intellect in us, so if we imagine that the sphere of sensory perception is here (it is drawn on the board, bottom left), we would then form the concepts that reminiscent concepts radiate back into our consciousness, so that there (see drawing) would be a mirror, so to speak – you will understand the image, we do not look behind our memory down – so there below, under the memory lies the sphere of destruction. Here all natural laws dissolve, all earthly laws of the world dissolve there in the human being. There is indeed a center of destruction here, and this center of destruction must be in us just as a coating must be behind the mirror. We need this, otherwise the memory would not be there. So there must be a center of destruction in us. For something to be in the world, spiritual forces must be there to bring it about. In my anthroposophical view, I call the spiritual forces underlying this focus of destruction ahrimanic forces.

Now look at this matter from two different points of view. First, look at it from the point of view of human beings. Human beings are protected by the threshold that exists in their memory mirror; they do not normally enter this focus of destruction without further ado. But this focus of destruction must be there. The Ahrimanic forces, which are connected with these destructive forces, that is to say with the forces of dissolution for what takes place in the physical world, these Ahrimanic forces are not actually evil when one looks at the world from their aspect. For what they do, the destroying, is not at all evil in the divine plan of the world. But if a person is so abstracted that he lets the destructive forces pass through his mirror of memory, then something happens here in the physical world that has a good meaning in the next higher world, something that is only out of place in the physical world. So that what we call evil in physical life is a necessity in a higher world. It is only possible for man to let that enter his sphere of experience which, if he wants to remain an innocent person, is, as it were, out of place in it. So evil is only evil within the earthly world; and for man only the consequences of this evil remain when he now goes through the gate of death, that is, the consequences of the actions. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, which I believe is correct, that the existence of evil in the physical world can be reconciled with the cosmic scheme of things, if we realize that even the Almighty God can exist only under certain conditions.

Now you can say: evil is also present in another aspect; it is present as imperfection, as badness, as pain. But then the question is: If you study a real physiology – not the university physiology that is official at the universities, but a real physiology – then you learn to recognize that, for example, the eyes are initially built out of pain. Everything that is built into the human organism is actually first built in through pain. The eyes are built in this way, which you can find confirmed in animals. So what is a later perfection must be built up out of pain. And in subjective development, anyone who is just beginning to have a little knowledge of the supersensible will tell you that he has acquired the experiences of life through pain. He will tell you: I thank my Creator for the joys of my life, I accept them, but I would not want to do without my pains, because without pains I could never have become a knowing human being. Just as you cannot demand a triangle with four corners from an almighty God, you cannot demand the creation of any perfect things without the foundation of pains. It would be a completely abstract, external thought, perhaps no more than a mere phrase. And just as little can you demand freedom in the world without building it on the foundation of evil.

Hermann Fackler: How should a practical theologian behave in office who wants to serve the anthroposophical movement and, in the course of time, also implement anthroposophical worship? To what extent does anthroposophy desire the cooperation of the church, and how is such cooperation conceivable in such a way that, on the one hand, the purity of the anthroposophical idea is preserved, but on the other hand, the present form of the Protestant church is not virtually blown up? Finally, is it conceivable and possible for anthroposophical communities to come into contact with independent communities?

Rudolf Steiner: I must say that there is hardly any such practical difficulty on the part of the Anthroposophical movement. For, in view of the present stage of human evolution, the Anthroposophical movement must now stand on the standpoint of gaining the knowledge that can be gained and spreading it among humanity. This is a self-contained activity that can be carried out without anyone other than its opponents bothering about it. It is not something that causes difficulties for anything else. Things will admittedly become somewhat more difficult when, in the future, in about the sixth or seventh millennium of the earth's development, human beings will take on a completely different form. You will be surprised that I say this. But it is actually the case that in the sixth or seventh millennium woman will become infertile, will no longer reach maturity but remain infertile. Man will then be in contact with the earth in a much more spiritual form, then there will be direct practical activity, and then a separation between religion and anthroposophy is no longer conceivable. For as long as there is no practical activity, but only the mere dissemination of impulses and so on – or at most the dissemination of impulses such as threefolding, which of course works entirely through the ordinary channels – as long as anthroposophy must work as it does today, there is no difficulty from this side. From the point of view of the denominations, from the point of view of the old denominations and perhaps also from the point of view of the new communities to be founded, I can indeed imagine that this relationship will develop in such a way that the communities will take up from anthroposophy what they can take up, according to their subjective ability and discretion, and according to what they consider acceptable or unacceptable in principle. I can well imagine that this movement, which is to begin here, will relate to the general anthroposophical movement as a self-contained entity. They are two distinct movements, but each movement can accept from the other what it can only give for itself. Since the anthroposophical movement will have research as its primary goal, the attainment of certain supersensible results will come from the anthroposophical side, and practical religious exercise will come from the other side; and thereby the same relationship, which existed at a naive stage, will be reestablished, only indirectly, as soon as we return to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, where there was no antagonism between religion and science. Their representatives were the same people, at least essentially, and that which one should experience religiously was expressed in forms that resulted from the corresponding research. So I can imagine that absolutely harmonious cooperation is possible. I do not believe, for example, that the splitting of communities, to which you, I believe, have pointed out, could ever come from the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say that the anthroposophical movement will remain neutral on this.

It could, of course, come about through [something like that] that precisely from the ecclesiastical or theological side, there is dissatisfaction with the previous theology and religious development; but then the religious, the theological movement would lead to disruption. The Anthroposophical Movement as such cannot lead to disruption. I cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can only point out that the Anthroposophical Movement only wants to respond to the signs of the times.

Once, I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and on wisdom. Those who were present in Stuttgart will know this. There were two Roman Catholic theologians in the audience. Now, in that lecture - that was many years ago, when the excommunication of the anthroposophical view had not yet been pronounced, which is there today, that is only since 1918, so it was not all that is there today, today it would no longer be able to happen - there were two Catholic theologians in it at the time. Now, if you give a lecture on alcohol, for example, in organic chemistry, you don't immediately give a lecture on all the carbon compounds, and so the two dear Catholic theologians found nothing in this lecture on the Bible and wisdom that they could contradict with their dogmas. They then came to me and said: In terms of content, we have no objections at all, but the way you present it is only for a select few who have acquired a certain education; but we speak for all people. I said, Reverend Sir, I want to hold you to your claim that you believe you speak for all people; that may be true from your subjective point of view. Everyone will have the right to say, from their subjective point of view, that they speak for all people. But it is of no importance to the world what our subjective point of view is. Standpoints – although today people always say, “I have a standpoint,” there are as many standpoints as there are people – standpoints are actually highly irrelevant to humanity, and one should, to put it radically, be fundamentally ashamed of constantly revealing one's subjective standpoint to the world. So it's not really a matter of points of view. But it is a matter of something else, of what the signs of the times objectively demand, and here I ask you: Do all people still go to church with you today? They couldn't say “yes” there, they had to say that some do stay away. I said, “I am speaking for those who stay away from church and who also want to find the way to Christ.” The facts suggest that it is not right for you to say that you speak for all people.

So let us listen to what lies in the facts. That is precisely what must underlie anthroposophical work, and here I can only say to you: there can actually be no collision with anything that develops in dependence on or alongside anthroposophical work. If you follow the whole polemic and the whole fight against anthroposophy, one might almost say that one could become a naughty boy when one looks at all this; one always wants to say: but I didn't start it, never. You can follow it: if someone has been attacked in some way, the attacks always came from outside; just follow it historically and you will see that it is so.

Emil Bock: The question was raised as to how we should think about the state of existing churches in the future.

Rudolf Steiner: The future of the existing churches? Yes, the future of the churches truly does not depend on anthroposophy, and, I am convinced, it does not depend on what is founded here either, but on their own crisis of disintegration. I cannot help it, it seems to me that way. I am absolutely clear about one thing: according to what is active today in the depths of human development, we will have no church at all within the present civilized world within a century, unless something like what is is intended here, because all the present church constitutions and church communities have the seed of their own destruction within them, and that is a continuous, I would say, yes, really, a continuous apologizing of the church. Some give up as much as possible in an intellectualistic way – Harnack, for example, gives up Christ, which means that the essence of Christianity, in the sense of Harnack's book, is actually pure Judaism; in principle it is, despite the recognition of the love of Jesus and so on, but in principle I mean. On the one hand, we have the intellectualist endeavor to reveal as much as possible, until we actually arrive at what Dr. Geyer so aptly called the day before yesterday: It is an X and the X is actually a Nix. But what is still an X today will become a Nix, the other things cannot change that. On the other hand, we have the violent maintenance of the institution and the dogmatic relationships, for example, of the Roman Catholic Church by external power. How can such power be pushed back? You can see that happening now in the Orthodox Church in Russia. Then we have, I would say, the intermediate churches, such as the Old Catholic Church. These are human reactions against the existing processes of disintegration, human reactions which, I believe, already contain within them the germ of transformation, even if this cannot be realized immediately in every single moment. But the existing churches – I can't say much about what they will look like, it's just going downhill on an incline, I don't have any other idea. But I think the main reasons why the majority of you are here or all are here are that the story is going downhill.

A participant: My question is intended to dispel certain concerns. It was said in yesterday afternoon's lecture that we actually only have one way to God, and that is the way of love, and that we actually cannot have the other ways, neither the way of power nor the way of wisdom. Now the question is: How can we walk this way of love? How do we get on this path of love? And here I turn to the Gospels and find there how people are won for God precisely through this pure divine love. We find that it is precisely through the experience of love that people come to God; we see this in the case of the prodigal son: it is simply love that leads him back.

Now I actually have a concern, which is of course perhaps evoked in me by my Protestant past, whether or not through this cult that we are introducing, through this externality, through these many external things, which are of course all essentially justified, we do not turn away from the essential, namely from a proclamation of the gospel, that is, from proclaiming to people the love of Jesus Christ, which has descended from heaven to earth. As far as I can see at present, there is a danger that people will focus on the outward form of this cult and be distracted from the one way of love, which is kindled only by proclaiming the gospel.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the point is not merely to discuss such a question in the sense of theoretical concerns or in the sense of objective belief, but rather, in the way of love, the question is the practical question of the innermost life, of course. The content of the Gospels, made into mere doctrine, runs the risk of having a strong effect on people's selfishness. For man has not only the possibility of leaning towards something in love, but love is at the same time something that also does man subjective good. There is always an elevation of egoism in the experience of love, even of the most spiritual kind, and this devotion in love in a merely abstract, even if soul-abstract, form, is something that very strongly leads to ego and this is lived out in our time in the fact that actually the objective sense of responsibility is no longer strongly present in people, but people tend very strongly to the mere subjective sense of responsibility.

You see, when a representative of a religious confession like Frohnmeyer claims quite strictly, like an absolutely ascertainable truth, that over there [at the Goetheanum] a figure of Christ is being set up, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom, that is an objective untruth. One could hear from a university professor of theology from a neighboring university: Yes, Frohnmeyer said that to the best of his knowledge and belief. One wants to refrain from convincing oneself of the reality of what one claims. Just think how different the path of humanity would be if it had not taken this strong tendency towards subjectivity, which always invokes the best of knowledge and belief and spares itself the test.

We cannot accept what is invoked in the abstract as divine love if it does not have a counterweight in something like cult. But there are other dangers as well. It is not my intention to create a backwards history, but I just want to point this out. You see, if Protestantism, which is the defining consciousness of modern times, had not abolished worship, had not done away with everything cult-like – which it has – then we would not have materialism either. Materialism is the necessary corollary of the removal of all cultic forms. In religious matters, the human being lives in the community, and so this certainly has something to do with the modern Protestantism that has increasingly come to refer people to divine love, as it has been done, for the development of the human being, which is linked to strong egoism. And with something else. Isn't it true that nothing can be done about facts? So anyone who is grounded in anthroposophical spiritual science knows about preexistence as well as postexistence. And now I would like to point out that in our practical religious practice, even for advanced Protestants, only the post-mortal existence is actually present. The other has no practical significance anywhere. It has no significance for the practical religious practice of pastoral care. But now I ask you – perhaps this is sometimes necessary – to also look at how the matter then lies in the sermon in a great many cases. Try to visualize how much of the sermon is devoted to maintaining faith in immortality by counting on that selfishness that simply does not want the soul to perish at death. Of course, you have to take that very seriously, how much the sermons rely on this egoism of not wanting to die with death, on this egoism of people for the preservation of the belief in immortality. In this, there is practically such a one-sided tendency towards the abstract. The moment you go to the other side, you practically come to preexistence. You cannot base preexistence on egoism at all; you can only base it on selflessness. Egoism is absolutely indifferent to what came before birth. That is why, in our modern language, on the one hand we have a word for immortality, but on the other hand we have no word for being unborn, because the concept of immortality is inconceivable without the word immortality, just as the concept of being unborn is inconceivable without the word being unborn.

We have now arrived at such things through what you just called the Protestant past. We must get away from it. Man must again find the way to objectivity; but he can only find it spiritually and soulfully. He can find it spiritually only through cult. I can imagine that what I am saying in this way may offend Protestant minds very much. But I cannot help that. The point is that if there are difficulties, one overcomes them; many people everywhere have gone through these difficulties.

A participant: I wanted to look at the problem from a different angle, namely, you said, Doctor, in the lecture the other day that the proximity of Jesus was a cult for his disciples, and I believe that Protestantism places more emphasis on conveying a religious feeling than on the cult. And the eternal nearness that one feels is something that has the significance of cult for a Protestant, so that the outer form of a cult is the sacrament. And I wanted to ask how that which one might call inner cult, how that relates to each other.

Rudolf Steiner: It is not the case that the mediation between inner and outer cultus is precisely that the apostles had a different relationship to Christ than their successors. The inner cultus was at the same time an outer cultus. I have just tried to prove this in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, where I have endeavored to show that what happened at Golgotha had previously taken place in the form of an image or tragic action in every true mystery, so that those leading the mysteries understood these things. We cannot say that we have only an inner cultus at Golgotha, but at Golgotha there is also an outer cultus. But naturally the distinction must arise just at the time when the Christ Jesus has become invisible; then, of course, the distinction arises. For everything that will arise from the supersensible in the immediate present, which would, so to speak, be the realized mystical fact, is actually comprehended in the outer cultus, that is, only in the sense that one sees the supersensible-living in the sensual. You place the cultus facts only as supersensibly effective facts in the midst of the other conditions of the sensually effective facts. —

But perhaps that is not quite in line with your question.

A participant: I would still like to ask one more thing: I believe that the essential opinion of Protestantism is that one should think more about the life of Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, that one should, I do not want to say imitate him, but emulate him, to shape one's activity in the way that Christ worked on earth. Rudolf Steiner: You think that the essence of Protestantism is that one's activity on earth should be shaped in such a way that it becomes a following of Jesus?

This is a factual error and, in addition, a terrible arrogance. It is not actually Protestant, but rather it has been more like this in a current such as the saints, which found the most beautiful expression - there was already something like this - in a figure like Francis; there we are dealing with emulation. But this emulation does not correspond to the facts. Because first of all, it is impossible to emulate Christ Jesus, because it is just not possible. It is presumptuous, basically. Besides, it has no real content, because, isn't it true, a life that takes place in a physical body is a whole. You cannot imagine one act without the other, it is a whole. Every single act, every single thought has its shading from the whole, and to the Christ Jesus life belongs precisely the death on Golgotha. I cannot grasp how one can come to a concrete concept of following. It is also no longer Christian, because in the Christian sense Christ is not the model, but the helper. I ask that this be clearly distinguished: Christ is the helper. We turn to him for help, we take him in so that he can become our helper. That is humble, that is what can be. The other, basically, includes a terrible arrogance, which is on the same path as the one who said: If there were a God, how could I stand not being a god. It is the same path. I know how tempting it is to see Christ as a role model. But He is the helper that we take within us. But I can never really connect the idea that we should become like Christ Jesus Himself; in any case, it is not Christian.

Gertrud Spörri: The question has been raised many times as to what extent women's activities will develop as independent activities, and whether it will already be possible for a woman today to found and independently lead a free community.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to answer this question in another context as well.

Constantin Neuhaus: One does not think that one could become perfect like Christ, but nevertheless Christ is also our model, and he is also presented to us as an ideal that we should imitate in the “Imitatio Christi”.

Rudolf Steiner: “Imitatio” is not the same as emulating. Imitatio is a concept that is one step lower. Imitatio Christi is certainly a possibility, but it is something else; imitatio is an emotional concept. In the sense of Francis of Assisi, you cannot understand imitatio Christi any differently, except as an emotion. It is not a mere concept. The concept of “imitatio” actually implies that we shape ourselves in our feelings so that our feelings become similar, our inner life becomes similar to the life of Christ. This is not actually the same as regarding him as a model. Of course, in abstract thinking, we do not have these sharp distinctions between becoming similar and emulating. Thus imitation of Christ is not excluded, although I would prefer to speak of imitation of Jesus rather than imitation of Christ. In this sense, one can say that one can naturally become similar to Jesus in one's human qualities. But this similarity comes to an end when the Mystery of Golgotha enters upon its final acts. How this similarity with the Mystery of Golgotha can be achieved is something I cannot understand. The Christian can become similar to Christ in that the Christ in the Pauline sense lives in him. That is the correct Christian concept, and it cannot be understood in any other way than that the Christ comes to life in him through his presence. When a person becomes similar to Christ, it is through the Pauline “Christ in me”. This is certainly the case with anthroposophy. But the anthroposophical idea, which seeks to correspond to the facts, is that we can only become similar to Christ [through] the Christ living in us. Without this idea, becoming similar would be nothing more than an illusion. You cannot form an [abstract] concept of becoming similar. The anthroposophical idea is quite certain; it also seems to me to be the correct Christian idea: if we can become similar to something, it can only be to Christ in ourselves.

One participant points out that in educating children, only the ethical example of Christ is ever shown to them and believes that it would be necessary to bring the religious personality of Christ more vividly to life for children. But the current trend of the times is to only illustrate the ethical side of Jesus' life.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, from my point of view, which is the anthroposophical one, I consider this to be a movement that leads away from real Christianity. I consider this movement to be the most dangerous one in the present day, which actually strays from Christianity, because these lessons have nothing to do with the complete history of Christ Jesus on earth. Weinel's Jesus is indeed the teacher of something, which Weinel regards as a form of Christianity, but Weinel's Jesus is not a Christ, because he has no Christ within him. So you can say, you can of course teach Weinelianism in schools, but you cannot work in the Christian sense if you take something like that as a basis.

A participant: Yes, but the central question is: What is ultimately the heart of religious education? Is it the ethical-ideal side or is it the religious? The clergy say: The heart of religious education is to place Christ at the center as the religious personality, while the teaching staff say that only this Jesus of Weinel is to be placed at the center and only the attitude of Jesus and his pure way of life.

Rudolf Steiner: Formally, there is no question that the clergy are right. The question is whether they are giving the right portrayal of Jesus if one wants to judge the matter as a whole. But that they are formally right in contrast to the materializing un-Christian nature of Weinel's Jesus, in my opinion, and also in my anthroposophical view, there can be absolutely no doubt about that.

A participant: I for one have no doubt about it, but it is a moot point.

Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, however, that I have to go back to what I have already said here. Let us assume that this ethical teaching were actually practised; we would then only address the abilities in man that come to an end with death, that do not pass through death, and as pastors we are not allowed to do that at all. Rather, we must concern ourselves with cultivating the eternal in man before all else, so that the ideal abilities can sprout. I say this as an anthroposophist. What can be given to man in an ethical way from the Weinel views is something that has to do only with man's temporal existence between birth and death; and I see nothing in this movement but an influence of our materialistic age. They wear the most diverse masks, these outgrowths of our materialistic age.

A participant: How should we understand the words: “If anyone loves me, let them take up their cross and follow me.” This passage causes me difficulties.

Rudolf Steiner: What difficulties?

A participant: That we should follow Jesus, emulate him.

Rudolf Steiner: But precisely when this saying causes you difficulties, then this difficulty is relatively not difficult to resolve, because it is pointed out immediately what this succession should consist of: Take up your cross and follow me - then you do what you do in my interest. It does not say: Live so that your life becomes like mine. It is not commanded to emulate, but it is said: Take up your cross – which in this context means everything that one has to bear in life – take up your cross and follow in all patience. That does not mean emulating, but regarding Christ as a guide. A leader is a helper in the right direction. These distinctions must be very delicately handled. The leader in the right direction is the one who helps you to go the right way. But one cannot say that Christ said: “Seek, by following me, the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but rather, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And Paul was right to add: We find the Christ only when he is in us. He is a helper, not a role model in the sense that one could speak of a complete role model.

The difficulty is easily resolved, and the other words you quoted were also to be understood in the ancient age as nothing other than following the leader.

A participant: Perhaps the first question can be answered in the course of the lecture. It concerns ritual and sacrament. Does ritual not actually have a subconscious effect on people? And how can this be reconciled with our present-day aspirations and attitudes, which seek to raise everything more consciously? And the other question: In what way do sacraments differ from other ritual acts? Does something objective happen in the spiritual realm here, so that Paul's words could be understood: Whoever eats [the bread] and drinks [the cup] eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not distinguish the Lord's body from common food. Therefore many are weak and sickly among you (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

The first question is a single question, and the second question is asked from a very intellectual point of view: Doctor, you said that Harnack may be a very honest man, but he is no longer a Christian. There are so many people today who take Harnack's view and yet have a very strong inner religious life and also make a very strong religious impression. Now it is intellectually tempting to say: name is sound and smoke; can't people actually speak from an inner connection with Christ and just can't find the right word for him?

Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary, they use the wrong word. The wrong word in this case is “Christ”. They must, of course, address the real content of the matter. I have expressly said: where Harnack has the word “Christ”, simply put “God” in its place and you will get the right thing. This person has a strong religious life; I will never deny that such people can have a strong religious life and feeling, only they are not Christians. If one wants to be a Christian, one must profess Christ. And it is not true that Harnack says that Easter faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane, but what really happened there is none of our business. That is not acceptable. What Harnack is doing is a misapplication of the word 'Christ'. That is what I said.

A participant: People do not have a differentiated sense.

Rudolf Steiner: They have no differentiated feeling. But one must be clear about that. One can say: Christianity is antiquated, we have no need to distinguish the Christ from the Father, we can go back to a mere monotheism that does not distinguish between Father and Son. Then one can hold the position, but then one must not make the claim in intellectualism to be a Christian.

A participant: We have a strong aversion to the view that says: a person can be whatever they want, as long as they are a believer.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we might just as well let go of Christianity; we don't need Christianity, we'll introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism. Christianity makes it necessary to have the differentiation between the Father and the Son. Go to the Russians in the East and you will have the strong experience that father and son are differentiated. It would never occur to a Russian to fall into Kant's error and speak about God from the point of view of ontology. Up to Scotus Eriugena, one still had this experience of the differentiation between Father and Son, then the whole history of the proofs of God's existence begins. The moment you start proving God's existence, you no longer have him. In the works of Scotus Eriugena, we still find [differentiated] views; there is no question at all – that is, in the period up to the 10th century – of there being any such undifferentiated perception of the Father and the Son. But today, what do people think of all this when they discuss whether or not the Son should be of the same essence as the Father? The real original concepts, the elementary concepts, they no longer seem to be there in Western or Central European civilization today. Read the philosophy...¹ there you have a sphere in which people have stopped at the point of Scotus Eriugena, there is still a differentiation there. But if you take the standpoint that you do not need differentiation, then, I want to say now, you can be a good Protestant, but not a Christian. I would like to discuss this in another context.

A participant: I think father and son are one?

Rudolf Steiner: You can indeed say that quite well about the relationship between yourself and your father, with relationship, let us say, to the whole family. If it is a matter of something being common in relation to the wider circle of your family, then you can say: I and my father are one, and what I do or what I bring to bear, my father also does. Therefore you cannot claim that you can lump together the two individualities, you and your father.

A participant: That is not meant substantially?

Rudolf Steiner: No, no.

A participant: I wanted to ask: What is the difference between a special experience of Christ and an experience of the Father? Because it seems to me that we can only experience Christ in the Mass; but how do we experience God the Father again?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that should be mentioned in connection with sacramentalism. It is already contained in what I have said, but I will deal with it in context, because, as I said, the two, Father and Son, must exist specifically as two non-numerically identical perceptions. The perception of the Father must not be numerically identical to the perception of the Son.

Yes, then there would be the question of the woman's participation, but I would also ask to be allowed to answer that in the next few days, because, as I have already said personally, this question is really connected with a great many other individual questions, above all with the question: How does the woman participate? We must not only ask whether the woman participates, but how the woman participates best. And how do we get beyond the calamity that has occurred in the so-called women's issue when it comes to something as serious as this: the participation of women in male professions?

In the nineties, I had a discussion in Weimar with Gabriele Reuter that was along these lines, but for a completely different area than theology. I had to say that from a certain point of view, the whole approach to the women's issue is wrong, because women have not actually brought that into civilization and culture that they can bring in on their own, but have adopted the culture of men. They have become physicians, as medicine was established by men; they have become philologists, as philology was established by men. So women have not contributed what they can contribute in women's clothing, but they have put on trousers and thus carried out this emancipation. This is something that naturally belongs to a completely different area. We have to answer this in a broader sense; we have to be absolutely clear that women's participation must happen in such a way that women do not simply put on trousers, but that women really — you will of course understand that this is only an image — bring what can be brought in dresses, not in trousers. But I will also address this question; it is again a very profound question.

• 1. The stenographer's transcript has a gap here. In the reproduction of the Christian Community, the name “Solowjew” was inserted.

My dear friends! Yesterday during the afternoon meeting here, a number of things came up that oblige me to say a few words before I move on to the ritual of the consecration and the communion. It seems to me that it is necessary to achieve a very fundamental understanding about certain things, because it would be of no use if this understanding were to remain in the background, so to speak. Here, too, it must be spoken about very clearly. Above all, it is necessary to really understand the essence of a ritual, so that it is not possible to say that what emanates from a ritual can also have a suggestive effect. There is absolute uncertainty today about what has a suggestive effect, and perhaps only the representatives of a religious world view are suited to correct the thoroughly unhealthy conditions that have arisen in this field as a result of our science. Our science has no possibility, if it wants to come to clarity even about the most elementary things of the soul, that through it somehow a correct insight into the facts would arise. It does not have that possibility. One must also have experience in this, my dear friends; these experiences come to one when one participates in something like I did. I was able to observe, I would like to say, the development of psychoanalysis from its very beginning. It was a friend of mine who first wanted to make accessible to science that which is justified in psychoanalysis. Then it came into the hands of Freud. The man who originally had the idea withdrew, and that in itself was proof of how impossible it is to arrive at clarity about these things from the foundations of today's science. Unfortunately, one does indeed experience that these concepts of modern science, which has no discernment at all for what takes place in the soul, are penetrating more and more into religious and theological concepts as well.

Why, my dear friends, is so much care taken in the realization of the rituals from the supersensible? It is done for no other reason than to exclude even the last vestige of suggestion. That is the basic requirement, that even the last vestige of suggestion be excluded. And how is this achieved? You see, all the rituals I have given and will give you are conceived on the principle that they express in words what comes from the supersensible, the normal evolutionary forces, only in their development by man. When one speaks of suggestion here, one applies the term to something to which it is absolutely not applicable, because one would then also have to apply it [for example] to the forces that are involved in the growth of the child — I do not mean those those that come from the parents or the environment, but those forces that work inwardly, from the spiritual-mental, that shape the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen and so on – and one would also have to say of these that they have a suggestive effect on the person. Here it ceases to be possible to associate any meaning with the word 'suggestive'. One can only associate a meaning with this word when it is a matter of an influence being exerted on a person who is separated from the other people by his individuality, which falls outside the straight evolution of natural events, where something flows from one individuality to another. To exclude this is part of the path that must be taken when conceiving rituals. Here, then, we are not dealing with what passes from one person to another, but with a deepening into the divine-spiritual movement of development and the developmental forces of the human being himself, and these are to be brought into the word as they are. So here the possibility of speaking of suggestion ceases, just as in the case of a square the possibility ceases of speaking of the laws of the triangle.

But these are distinctions that can only be made by a more profound science. Today's science is dreadfully dilettantish and dreadfully powerless with regard to the soul, and the things that are said about the soul by psychoanalysts or even by experimental psychologists and other psychologists are maddeningly impotent. One can say that ordinary science somehow does not have the possibility to grasp suggestion.

That is what I have to say in principle first of all. The other thing is that our modern theory of development has led us to limit the content of consciousness so much to the human ego and to develop little interest in how the human ego is connected to the entire universe, so that such things, as I again spoke of yesterday, the necessity of the death of the moral in the downfall of the earth, are no longer felt with the necessary strength at all. It is easy for the modern consciousness to speak of superstition in such cases. But this superstition is based solely on the fact that one has become completely entangled in the selfish conception of the world. And so it happens that one actually does not attach any special importance, my dear friends, to what happens within man himself today. And he who attaches no importance to what happens within man himself will never be able to understand the ritual and never the sacrament in reality.

Look around you, you see the stars, you see the sun and the moon, you see the formations in the air, you see clouds, waves, rivers, you see the beings of the mineral, animal and plant kingdoms – all of this will one day no longer be, all of this will one day have disappeared. Heaven and earth will come to an end. Everything you can see with your eyes, perceive with your senses, grasp with your reasoning mind, all that will perish. Only that which is grounded in the individual human being, which the individual human being has taken in, will not perish when the individual passes through death and will live beyond earthly existence. With Christ we say: My words will not pass away. Only that which is within the human skin will not perish. Today, everything else will perish. And as man passes through the gate of death, all mere intellectual effects and experiences perish with it. All that perishes, and only what is the wholly human comprehension can remain. But you cannot come to the wholly human comprehension without going beyond everything that takes place in your environment in earthly existence. If you only perform actions that are realized in earthly existence, no matter how important they may be, then you are only working for earthly existence, and that has only value for man between birth and death. In that case you do not fertilize man's soul, and man's soul gains nothing through you, however well meant everything may be.

The very thrust of modern development — and that is why the present moment is so infinitely serious — is that everything that is connected with the eternal in man is to be taken away from him. And a human soul to which you make the ritual, the sacrament, accessible, such a human soul simply penetrates more deeply into the eternal through what is experienced in the ritual. He who does not understand this in its full depth will not understand ritual and sacrament. One must look at what is done to the soul of man and to his eternal part. The soul would die with the end of the earth and the soul would sleep after death if nothing were done to this human soul in our time, which lies after the mystery of Golgotha. The idea of resurrection must be taken very seriously, and Paul's conclusion that if Christ had not been resurrected, we would simply have no eternity. This must not be immersed only in the sphere of the intellectual; it must be taken so seriously that we know in fact: we are working to make the soul more and more alive by continuing in ceremony that which took place at Calvary.

But, my dear friends, this is in turn intimately connected with making the word of the gospel come alive. The documentary is not the only thing in the words of the gospel; establish the gospel as you will, you have not yet done everything with it. You have then created the possibility of proclaiming the gospels as they had to be spoken to the contemporaries of the apostles, but you still have no way of making these gospel words as alive as they can and should be in today's living. In what I present to you here as a ritual, nothing lives but the living word of the Gospel. And anyone who believes that the living word of the Gospel does not live in it seems to me like someone who sees a 15-year-old boy and says that he does not know him, that he must first have a picture of him at the age of three and know what he looked like then. We must have the possibility today of having the gospel word within us and of handling it in full freedom, even though Christ lives in it. This must be allowed to flow into the ritual word; only then is the ritual word true in the modern sense. Only then do I truly understand the gospel. Therefore, what is to be achieved today cannot be achieved merely by repeating the gospel. On the contrary, anyone who knows how these things are constituted also knows that if you merely develop the gospel word of this or that soul in the dead, then unfortunately you can contribute to the opposite of what you are striving for. If you do not have a living relationship with the soul to whom you proclaim the gospel word, then the gospel word can be destructive, just as an otherwise healthy area can be destructive for someone who has a weak constitution, because he has not adapted to that area.

We only have to look at these mysteries of existence in the right way. And we must come to something else. We must come to understand, my dear friends, why for all earlier consciousness healing and knowledge were one and the same, or at least belonged to one and the same. In the times when knowledge and religion were one, knowledge was never taken as anything other than an instruction for man to find healing at the same time. Here we come to realize that original sin in reality represents an illness of man. When consciousness is seized with this illness, then healing does not occur, but rather a further illness. We must snatch consciousness, the soul with all its powers, from the sphere of the illness of sin.

We must therefore take into account the possibility that with the end of the earth, everything that is morally grounded could perish if we do not keep it alive through Jesus Christ and lead it beyond the end of the earth to future stages of existence. This awareness must permeate everything that flows into ritual and ceremony. And so you will see that precisely when we approach the mysteries of the sacrifice of the Mass, this beholding, this full human beholding of that which above all works and lives in man himself as the eternal, and of that which must be healed through its connection with Christ Jesus, becomes ever more and more apparent. If someone were to come today and say, “Why should we need the sacraments when we have the Word?” the answer from the anthroposophical standpoint would be, “True, you have the Word, but do you also have the power of the Word?” “Are you sure that your Word will not decay with the death of the earth?” This certainty must be established today! Therefore, he who knows this connection cannot speak about these things as another would who does not know it. It is from this point of view that I ask you to understand what I am now going to say about the continuation of the sacrifice of the Mass in the following. Here too, I must say in advance: some things may still be imperfect, but they are as good as they can be according to my ability today.

So the reading of the Gospel is over, the sacrifice is over. Accordingly, the host is on the altar, the chalice, in which wine and water are mixed, is on the altar, and the host has this form - I am now describing how I think I should describe it (it is drawn on the board) -; it can be broken here, here (see drawing) a piece can be broken off. It is consecrated. We shall have to speak about the consecration later.

During the consecration, it waits for what is to happen to it, so that the words can be true in the direct experience of the sacramental act, which I shall now communicate to you. First, we have to do with the preparation for the sacramental act. Then, at first, there is speaking without the ceremony being performed:

Our prayer penetrates to you, O foundation of the world
Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.
Your blessing shines over the pure sacrifice, the sacrifice done in love
The sacrifice accomplished with good will.
Receive it from our pure thinking, our loving
Heart, our willing devotion.
We unite in sacrifice, that we may be the community of Christ. Feel the blessing, O Christ, the confession of You and hear our prayers, we who are united in Your name;
Receive, O Father God, the Christ sacrifice as it may come to life in us, through us;
It is brought for the redemption of souls,
For the attainment of true salvation,
For walking with Christ.
Our prayers unite with all who have gone before us, living Christ in them; may their protective power shine upon us.

Christ in us.

Hear us, O Father God, as we pray to you for the acceptance of our sacrifice;
This sacrifice is sent to you
the Christian community,
which freely recognizes Christ as its helping leader.

Christ in us.

Father God, in this sacrifice of Christ,
let us have life, body and blood
of Thy loving Son.

Now, during these words, the ceremony is performed:

Before His sorrowful departure,
He took the bread for the revelation of salvation
and He looked up to You, His Father,

— the host is lifted up —

thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.
Then He gave it to the disciples as food.

The Host is broken, the small triangle taken out and mixed with the wine and water in the chalice.

And He said:
Take, eat, of the bread my body.
He took, after the journey's food of bread
the chalice to invigorate salvation
And He looked up to You, His Father,

— the chalice is raised —

thanking You and thereby uniting His soul with Yours.
Then He gave it to the disciples to drink.
And He spoke:
Take, then, with this wine My blood.

The ceremony is complete.

And He continued:
With these words the Divine is given back to
men, for on the cross the body will bear the new
creed; and from the cross will flow in the blood the new faith.
Take this up into your thinking.
And so let live in our thoughts:
The new confession
The new faith –
So think of us Christ's death of suffering; His resurrection;
His revelation through all the following times on earth.

To you, O Father God, be the sacrifice brought,
thinking in purity
hoping for salvation
acting from Christ,

Christ reigns:
in the bread that bears salvation
in the wine that gives strength.

You, O Father God, once received the sacrifices of those who had not yet
received Christ; so receive the sacrifice of those
who do it in Christ's name, essence, power.
Thy Spirit's grace-power work earthward, as this sacrifice, heavenward strives.
Let the bread be Christ's body
Let the wine be Christ's blood
We would sacrifice thus, that

Christ may be in us.

And we would join in prayer with those from whom
You received Your Son's sacrifice before us.
We cannot do works before You;
We would conquer sin before You
through Christ, through whom You, O Father God
create, heal and inspire
through Christ, through whom You, in union with the healing Spirit, perform the
revelation, the ordering of space, the course of time.
So be it.

The old canon, as it is used, already breathes something of this spirit, but it is focused on the Church, on the particular Catholic Church.

"You, most gracious Father, we humbly implore through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, that You may bless these gifts, these pure offerings, these presentations that we send to You , thanking You for giving us Your Holy Catholic Church, to whom You give: peace, protection and concord; which You ordain over the whole circle of the earth through Your servant, the Roman Pontiff.

— which is then deleted for the Old Catholics, [instead of which it says] -:

“together with our most reverend bishop N and all those who live in the true faith and profess the Catholic and Apostolic doctrine.”

Now, of course, masses are read [in the Catholic Church] for people who seek them, for the living or the dead. This is brought about by many externalizations, to which that which is actually the inner life is always exposed. We encounter something here that can hardly concern us, and that does not occur when the ritual is restored today.

"Look with blessing, O Lord, on your servants and servant N.N. and on all those present, whose faith and prayer reaches you, for whom we send you this sacrifice in joy, for the salvation of their souls, so that they may hope for health and well-being; they send their supplication to you, eternal, true, living God.

This plea unites with those of those we remember in clarity: Mary, ever virgin, our Lord's mother, divine; Your holy apostles and martyrs Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon , Thaddeus, Linus, Cletus, Clement, Xystus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John, Paul, Cosmas, Damian, and all the saints, through whose works and prayers you may grant us your protection forever; through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

These things are then accompanied by the appropriate ceremonies, which I will discuss later.

"Hear us, O Lord, as we pray for the acceptance of this sacrifice, which Your entire community sends to You; may Your peace prevail over our days, so that we may not be rejected but may enter into the group that You choose as Your own.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Bless, receive, let be welcome, spiritualize, O Lord, this sacrifice, that it may become in us the body and blood of Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who on the day before He suffered took the bread into His holy and revealing hands, , turning his eyes to You, O God, who art his almighty Father, and thanked You for it, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, “Take, eat, all of you, for this is my body.

And so, after supper, He took the cup into His holy and revelatory hands, thanked You again for it, blessed it and gave it to the disciples, saying: Take and drink from it, for it is the cup of my blood, the newly-made and never-ending communion, the bearer of faith, which will be given for you and for many for the cleansing of sin. And as often as you do the same, take me into your thoughts.

The ceremony is complete.

"Therefore, we also want to include in our thoughts, we who profess ourselves as Your servants and want to count ourselves among Your holy disciples, Your suffering, O Son of the Father, our Lord, and also Your resurrection and the glorious glorious manifestation of Thy ascension; and we will bring to Thee, who art gloriously triumphant on high, a pure sacrifice, a holy sacrifice, a sinless sacrifice, with the holy bread of eternal life and the ever-saving chalice.

Let thine eye look with favor and mercy on our sacrifice, and receive it with goodwill, as thou once receivedst with goodwill the sacrifice of thy righteous servant Abel and that of our patriarch Abraham and that which the high priest Melchizedek brought thee, a sinless host.

In humble supplication we turn to You, Almighty God, send Your holy angel, that his hands may carry to You and lay down the sacrifice upon Your heavenly altar, before Your radiant eye, so that we, who eat the Holy Body and drink the Holy Blood of Your Son at the earthly altar, may be imbued with the breath and grace of heaven.

And this too through Christ our Lord.

And hear, O Lord, Thy servants and Thy handmaid N.N.,

— now the names are mentioned again for whom the Mass is being read, if it is for the dead —

"who have gone before us, bearing well thy cross of confession, and are at rest. To them all, Lord, mayest thou give deliverance, light, and peace.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Yes, so be it.

We implore You to accept us as servants who may be deemed worthy of Your gracious presence in the company of Your holy apostles and martyrs, John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander , Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, Anastasia and all the saints; in whose company you may admit us, not for merit's sake, but for repentance from sins. Through Christ our Lord, through whom you, Lord, create, sanctify, vivify, and give us everything.

Through him,

With him,

In him,

Almighty God the Father, in union with the Holy Spirit,

in all revelation,

in all world orders,

through all ages,

The altar server says:

“Yes, so be it.”

You see what the tradition is, and you see how it seems to me that the sacrament must be endowed with a ritual today. In the Catholic Church, there are some intermediate things that we will talk about, but then we move on to the fourth main part of the Mass, to Communion, which is taken in the two forms, in bread and wine. Before the taking of the bread and wine, the following is spoken:

Thou, O Christ, hast spoken to those who walk with you: Peacefully I stand by the world; this peace with the world can also be with you because I give it to you.

So, O Christ, the strength in me that frees itself from the burden of sin and unites with you in thought and will, so that it may stand peacefully in relation to the world and become one with its becoming, that can happen through you in all subsequent circles of time.

Yes, so be it.

O Christ, who went forth from the Father God without illness, and who, with the healing Spirit, gives human spirits the gift of continued life, quench the power of the disease of sin through Your body bearing the Holy Spirit; and strengthen me in my struggling soul through Your blood that bestows salvation, so that I may live forever with You. You who carry and order the life of the world, as You receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent periods of time.

Yes, so be it.

May I, who is ill, not receive your body, O Christ, unto death; but unto life of soul and of my formative powers as the healing medicine. This be through you, who bear and order the life of the world as you receive it from the Father and make it healthy through the Spirit in all subsequent circles of time.

Yes, so be it. I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but my soul will be healed by your word. (Three times)

Now the bread is taken.

The body of our Lord shall heal my soul, so that it may live. Yes, so be it.

Take me for giving myself to you.

I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling, O Christ, to whom I confess, what has been revealed through You, and You take the power of man's adversary from me. (Three times)

The cup is drunk.

The blood of the Lord gives strength to my soul, so that it may not die in the future. Yes, so be it.

What my mouth has received, let it be in my soul, and what has been sacrificed in time, let it be transformed into eternal medicine. May your body, O Christ, which I have received, and your blood, which gives me life, penetrate me, so that the disease of sin may be healed by the healing medicine, the sacrament. May it be done through You, who bear and order the life of the world as You receive it from the Father and, through the Spirit, make it whole in all the ages to come.

Yes, so be it.

This is what the act of Communion amounts to and what it says in the Catholic Church:

"O Jesus Christ, our Lord, who spoke to Your Apostles: My peace be with you, I give you my peace: do not look at my sin-laden person, but at Your Church, which confesses You and give it, according to Your will: peace and unity, You who live in the world and order it as its divine Creator through all the following ages.

Yes, so be it.

That is the “per omnia saecula saeculorum”. You see, here it is clearly stated how the priest in Catholicism differs from the Church. He stands as a member of the Church before the altar, and according to the dogma, his person is not actually considered at all.

"O Jesus Christ, Son of the God who gives life to the world, who, according to His will, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, hast given the world life through Thyself, take from me the power of the sins of the world through Thy body, which bears our sins, and through Thy blood, which redeems us, and unite me inseparably to Thyself. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.

Yes, so be it.

May the receiving of Your body, O Jesus Christ, our Lord, by me, an unworthy one, not be for my condemnation, but according to Your mercy for the salvation of soul and body as a healing remedy. You who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit in all the ages to come.

Yes, let it be so.

Taking the bread heavenward I call on the Lord's name. © Lord, I am unready for You to enter under my roof; but just say the word and my soul shall be healed. (Three times)

The body of the Lord brings my soul to life.

Yes, so be it. What shall I give to the Lord for all that He has given me? Taking the cup, I call on the name of the Lord. Confessing His revelation, I will call upon the name of the Lord with joy and my adversaries will flee from me. The blood of the Lord strengthen my soul in survival.

Yes, so be it.

What the mouth has received, may the pure soul absorb, and from the temporal sacrifice may come medicine for eternity. May your body, O Lord, that nourished me, and your blood, that strengthened me, penetrate my soul forever, and in me may the disease of sin be wiped out as the pure and healing sacraments. You who live and reign in all the ages to come.

Yes, it shall be so.

So you see, the Sacrifice of the Mass is indeed the sacramental fulfillment of the four main parts of which I have spoken to you. And it is important that the entire meaning of Christianity is fully alive in the ritual of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The Gospel must live in every single word of the ritual, the Gospel must be alive, and without this life of the living Gospel the ritual would be impossible. Of course, it must be assumed that the following is recognized in order to understand something like this: one is dealing with people who live according to the Mystery of Golgotha, with people, that is, for whom there could never be anything that would be a mere external act, that takes place in the world of the senses, or that is performed by the human being in the world of the senses , and with those, therefore, for whom there could also be nothing that could be spoken out of ordinary human consciousness in an intellectualistic way, that could strengthen the moral world in man so that that which must be conquered can be conquered.

For this, an action is needed that goes beyond everything that lies within the bounds of our present-day possibilities for action and speech, if we are not to move on to an awareness of the sacramental. I know, my dear friends, how much is said against the sacramental in the hearts of modern people, but anyone who has experience in these matters may also say something else. One could think that my annoyance at the ceremonial, which is so common among modern people, might even come from a Christian or Protestant consciousness. But I must confess to you – it is a personal comment, but in this case it is very factual – I have actually never seen a person in whom what was angry against the sacramental came from love and from goodness, but always from secret evil that is in human nature. Of course, this is a process that we see occurring in many cases today, but what is primarily angry is actually the resistance, the resistance to salvation, of human nature. It is the incitement by the same forces that say in the Gospel: we recognize you – and then begin to fight Christ Jesus because they recognize him. I would not say this at all if it were not a thoroughly observable fact. Whoever overcomes that which asserts itself as evil in his soul is given the strength to overcome. But whoever cannot overcome this evil is also deprived of what strength he had to overcome before. These things are quite serious, and in the human soul things are constantly happening that cannot be grasped by ordinary external consciousness. One might say that the human soul is actually constantly walking over an abyss. That is indeed the case, it is just not aware of it. But it must become aware of it, and how it is to become aware of it must be guided in the right way. As long as we merely have the belief that we are to moralize the human soul, and as long as we have the belief from our present consciousness that we could do this with the powers that are present in the outer world, so long we have no idea of what the human soul actually is in the whole context of the world.

Therefore, do not take something like an externality when certain sentences are spoken three times in Communion. Why are they spoken three times? The first time is spoken:

I take this bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

The first time the word is spoken so that it may be taken up into one's understanding. The second time the word is spoken:

I take the bread and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, the dwelling into which You enter is sick; but through Your word my soul shall be healed.

so that we experience this in our feeling. And only the third time can the word be spoken in such a way that our volition is sufficiently kindled through our thinking and feeling, so that the word may also live in our volition:

I take this bread and do it in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christ, the dwelling in which you enter is sick; but through your word my soul will be healed.

Likewise with the words of the cup:

I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess myself, what through Thee is revealed, and the power of man's adversary Thou takest from me.

The second time:

I take this cup, and do this in the Lord's name, calling to mind that Thou takest away the power of Thine enemies.

The third time:

I take the cup and do this in the name of the Lord, calling: © Christe, to whom I profess my faith, what has been revealed through you, and you take away from me the power of man's adversary.

All details are important in such a ritual, and if they are incorrect, it is already roughly the same as if, let us say, any limb of the human body is wrongly formed due to a malformed development. We must have the feeling that these things are alive in truth. Of course, what lives in the succession of time changes its body in the succession of time, precisely because it is alive, but this change of body is precisely only a consequence of the living.

With the help of the point of view just mentioned, it is now quite easy to find the differences that exist between what is in the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass and what is in the ritual that I spoke of as possible today. But it is also clear to see how it is almost impossible to truly depict the full concrete experiences through a mere translation, even if it attempts to restore the old words' values. This is because, in fact, for the entire civilization of modern times, the actual meaning of the original words has been lost. We no longer live in the life that the words once had. We live in words, in that they have become mere signs for us. We no longer listen inwardly to the words either. The sensation of the sound of the words has become for us a sensation of a sign of memory. I have already spoken about these things from a different point of view. But such a ritual cannot be performed without coming back to the real listening to the words.

I have told you: When we read in the Gospel of John today, “In the beginning was the Word,” we have to say that according to a literal translation. But what we associate with the word “Word” today is not at all what was once associated with the word “Word.” And when we translate the old word logos as wisdom, then the two are even further apart, for wisdom is something much more abstract than logos was. And by translating logos as wisdom we actually enter the sphere, well, not of Christ, but of the spirit. And while we can still feel the word to some extent in the “verbum” [the Latin translation], if “logos” were translated as “wisdom”, we would actually have to feel spirit, “sapientia”. These things should actually be thoroughly brought to perception in today's theology classes. Many have an enormous fear of this. Because they have learned that one should be a theo-logian, and they fear that if something else comes over their outer perception of “logia,” it is “sophia,” and then they are terribly afraid that they might come to theosophia instead of theologia. This is a terrible fear that is present in theologians today. They consider it an insult to be called “theosophists”. Why? Because they have no belief that the Christ works through the spirit that lives in wisdom, because they would like to deny the spirit; and the denial of the spirit, in many respects, is what causes such a feeling.

We must see these things in their true light, only then can we also feel - and we will come back to this, my dear friends - how different our direct experience can be with regard to the Father-God and to the Christ Himself.

Emil Bock: To show what is desired, it is perhaps better if the questions received in writing are asked personally.

Rudolf Steiner: There remains the question from yesterday about women. Perhaps I will first speak a little about this question, which was asked yesterday in relation to the participation of women in the movement we are dealing with here.

Now, I believe that the time has indeed come when women should participate in all branches of public life on an equal footing. So there should be no doubt that the entry of women into this movement is justified and that women should be treated the same as men. I would just like to say that it would be necessary to make this clear. That has been the great disappointment so far, that the entry of women into the movements in which they have succeeded in entering has not actually been noticed, at most it has been noticed in relation to some externalities, to subordinate things, but not actually in relation to the cultural nuances. You will all have experienced the deep disappointment when a woman even entered the German Reichstag and absolutely no kind of change resulted from a woman's participation.

I already pointed out yesterday that years ago I said to a woman's rights activist, Gabriele Reuter, who was moderate in one sense but very active in another direction, that women must bring their own character into the movements and not find their way into what is already given by the culture of the past, which is above all a male culture. As you know, Bebel once explained that there is a reason why women do not actually intervene in such a way that their intervention is noticed as a shade [in cultural life], which is justified in theory within Darwinism, but is strange in view of reality. He said that it is self-evident that every being, when it enters the world, must first adapt to the circumstances, and since women have not had the opportunity to adapt to the circumstances so far, one must first wait until a certain time has passed. If women then had the opportunity to discard their old inherited traits, then the adaptation would have been better executed. At present, women are still too much influenced by their inherited traits. Well, my dear friends, in the future, inheritance in women will not be any different than it is today, namely that they also descend from a father and a mother, just like their brothers, so that in this respect, there is obviously no inheritance through generations and no [necessary] adaptation. That is self-evident. So in the main it is just a matter of mere words.

On the other hand, it is of course very important to consider that precisely for such an area as religious life, an extraordinary enrichment can occur if women bring their particular nature to it. Although women have not [so far] thrown their share into the movements they have joined, this nature has nevertheless been noticed within the modern emancipation efforts of women. The point is that women have a different way of thinking. It is therefore entirely possible for women to achieve a certain more congenial understanding of things that cannot be expressed in sharply defined concepts because then they would not correspond to reality. So women's ability to grasp things is readily given. It is extremely difficult for a man to grasp things without sharply contoured concepts; this makes it difficult for him to find his way into such areas where female concepts are needed. So it is that women will have to play a major role in the spiritualization of our culture. She will only have to try to assert sharply that which is her own, with less sharply defined concepts, and not simply imitate the conceptual contours of men, for example in their studies. We would have gained something if, for example, in medicine or in other branches, in philology and so on, where women have begun to work, we could have seen that women, with their greater mobility, with their greater adaptability, would really have made a difference. As a rule, female physicians are such that in their thoughts they are really a copy of what they have learned, even more so than men. So it is necessary that these qualities [of women] be brought into the field sharply, but on the other hand, precisely because of these qualities, women need an extraordinary self-criticism. Women are more subjective or at least more inclined to subjectivity than men. A man, for example, has more sense of the fact that one must be convinced of the truth of a matter that one asserts. It will be much easier for a woman to judge according to subjective feeling. This will be important here because a woman, when she participates in this movement, will probably be able to discern the emotional coloring of what is to be given with extraordinary subtlety. But she will have difficulties when it comes to really asserting a will rooted in the objective, and it is precisely this will factor that comes into play strongly. In the case of man, the fact is that he can generally be characterized in such a way that the greater part of his intellect is used to enter into the organism in an organizing way; hence, I might say, he retains for his psychic life an intellect that is indeed sharp but not mobile. His will enters less into his organism, hence he has a strong will. In women, it is the case that the will enters into the organism more, and the intellect less. The female body is less intellectual, less constructed with the intellect in mind than the male body; therefore, in general, despite the greater mobility of the intellect, or perhaps because of it, women are endowed with a greater measure of concepts, with broader concepts, and even with a greater number of concepts than men. It will be found that within this movement woman will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of the spiritual, and that man, in this movement, will present things in such a way that one has more of a feeling of firmness; but when the two really work together, then something extraordinarily harmonious can come out, especially in community life.

Of course, when discussing such things, one speaks in generalities. There is no other way to do it, because the things one discusses must be more directive than something that is already based on observation. On the whole, however, it can be said that it is possible for a woman to develop a strong sense of responsibility through a strong self-education when she enters this movement, because the lack of a sense of responsibility is something that could certainly be observed where women have entered more spiritual movements in recent times. It is, for example, the case that a man is much more likely to be persuaded to keep something secret than a woman, who, if she has a female friend, is extremely quick to consider that friend as being completely trustworthy and then to divulge the matter to just one person, even though there are also numerous old women among men. This is simply a phenomenon that one has to experience and which carries a great, great deal of weight. So the sense of responsibility is something that will have to be particularly developed. It could be observed, for example, in medicine, how particularly the finer operations, eye operations and the like, can be performed much more precisely, better and more skillfully by women than by men. This will also be the case in the spiritual realm, and it will become apparent in the cult that women will truly be able to carry out the cult in a very special way, that they will also be able to empathize much more easily when performing the cult. On the other hand, something else has become apparent. I need only remind you that at the head of the Theosophical Society there stood for many years a woman, Annie Besant, who has a very skilled hand for many things, especially in the treatment of external matters, but who, on the other hand, is inclined to a very particular vanity. This is something that must then be developed: a keen sense of self-discipline to overcome vanity and ambition. In all this, women are much more easily tempted, both externally and internally, than men.

All these things ultimately lead to the fact that woman is in a certain way less constant, that she very easily swings between these two you have seen, Ahriman on the one hand, Lucifer on the other. Man naturally swings in rhythm from one to the other, but woman swings with extraordinary agility and very frequently in such a way that the equilibrium becomes very unstable. This must be taken into account, and I could go on in this matter, but it is not really necessary. The question must practically be answered in such a way that today there can be no doubt that women must be able to participate in such movements, but that they must practice the necessary self-education for such movements. It must be said that women must participate out of the general course of human development. You see, until the 15th century, the development of man was such that he had then reached the so-called intellectual or emotional soul. In relation to the intellectual or emotional soul, man and woman are very different. Therefore, it could not be otherwise than that within this period of time, woman was excluded from certain things, and where these old customs have been retained, for example in Freemasonry, women are still excluded today. This is based on traditions, and this can be seen in the cult of Freemasonry itself. That women as such have absolutely equal rights is not recognized by legitimate Freemasonry. It is the case that the cult of Freemasonry is such that it could not be practised in common [with women].

But since the middle of the 15th century, we have been developing more and more towards the unfolding of the consciousness soul, and in relation to the consciousness soul, such a differentiation no longer exists; the qualities of both sides [of man and woman] flow entirely into a unified configuration. It is, of course, not correct when, within certain movements that also take the position of reincarnation, one repeatedly finds that women – with rare exceptions – when they list their past incarnations – which of course is mostly fantasy – then list only women, while men list only men. These are, of course, things that are based on fantasy. It is of course the case that the successive earthly lives are experienced in different genders.

So that is what I have to say first about such a matter, which is always problematic and must always be unsatisfactory, with regard to the position of women. Do you (to Gertrud Spörri) have anything else in particular in this direction that you would like to discuss?

Gertrud Spörri: I would like to ask whether a woman today has the opportunity to found independent communities herself.

Rudolf Steiner: Whether a woman today has the opportunity to establish independent communities? Yes, you know, I believe that women will not only have the opportunity to found independent communities, but that it will sometimes even be relatively easy for women to found independent communities. They just have to be sustainable, that is, women will have to prove themselves. She will be able to found communities relatively easily, but she will have to reflect on what is a little sensational, a little novel, and so on. But we must not exclude these latter things just because we are afraid of them; we must rise above them. I am rather afraid that at first it could go for the world as it has gone for the anthroposophical movement, where, in newspaper reports, when there is an anthroposophical lecture somewhere, it is usually calculated that there are so many women in it and only very few men. In general, this has also been the case in reality, in that women are much more easily able to found groups, circles and so on. So that does make itself felt. I have always said that when it was emphasized that there were often more women than men, it was not the women's fault. They were quite right to do so, but if the men find it necessary to play cards and therefore stay away, then it is the men's fault. It does not testify to a strongly developed spirit in men, but to a backwardness in men. You have to be clear about that. Now, this sometimes occurs in an extremely disturbing way in the anthroposophical movement, in that women quickly find their way into it, but sometimes the depth of their finding their way in is lacking because the active, the will element, is missing. Therefore, when forming a community, a wise self-education of this element of knowledge and, in the beginning, a certain reserved element will be called for, I think. Perhaps it will be a matter of tact and then has to develop in cooperation with the central leadership, so that in the beginning women do not found ninety percent of the communities and only ten percent the men. Yes, you could experience that under certain circumstances, and it would not be wise if it happened that way. But that we have to fear that women will be less successful than men in founding communities is not something I think will happen. It will certainly not be the case that the women's churches would be attended only by women, that is, more than is now the case with the men's churches, because some churches are indeed attended by a majority of women; so nothing special needs to change there. We must be quite aware that in Central Europe, where it is a matter of attributing to women alone the ability to bring a certain kind of divine revelation from the supersensible world into the sensory world, only a light veil lies over the old conditions with regard to the things at issue here. The WALA principle is something that is absolutely true here and that, when it is resurrected in a dignified way, is not something that needs to be looked at with a jaundiced eye.

But there are a whole bunch of questions here.

Gernot Weißhardt: How can the priest achieve a life together with the dead?

Hubert Sondermann: I would like to ask about meditation or intercession for the benefit of the deceased.

Rudolf Steiner: In what way would you like to know about this question?

Hubert Sondermann: How this intercession can be justified and how it can be practiced. Then about the funeral ritual...

Rudolf Steiner: We will discuss the funeral ritual tomorrow.

Well, for spiritual scientific-anthroposophical research, it turns out that the human being is still connected to the physical-earthly conditions after death and that one can imagine this connection in a very specific way because one can observe it. However, it must be clear that life here on earth in relation to life after death is often something like a cause in relation to an effect. Let us assume that a family man has died, he was a materialist, but he led a life otherwise that he, for example, was very much absorbed in his love for his children. In the beginning there is a certain difficulty for those who are left behind to approach the soul of the dead person with prayers or meditations, because the dead person initially only perceives what he experienced up to his death, so that he perceives, let's say, his wife and children insofar as their life developed up to the moment he died. A wall opens up to the present experiences, to the present being of the bereaved, so that it is extremely difficult for the deceased to experience the connection with his relatives in the immediate present. It seems as if he can only get to this particular point in time, and then it stops; it is like a memory that has been torn away. But this shows, of course, that it has a meaning how the soul's attitude towards the spiritual world [in life] has been. You cannot be materialistic or spiritual without consequences for life after death. In people who are spiritually minded, it is immediately apparent [after death] that they can have an immediate connection with those who have remained behind. Now today, the human being's ability to experience anything supernatural is extremely coarse. People can hardly develop any kind of feeling for the numerous influences from the spiritual world, so that the real connection with the dead, which many seek and which is quite possible – not in the sense of an ordinary trivial interpretation, of course – is made more difficult. One can help oneself to strengthen and increase the sensitivity for these things through meditation, for example in the following direction: Imagine that you have decided to go out on a certain day, let's say at 11 o'clock; now someone comes and delays you by half an hour. Afterwards you discover that if you had left half an hour earlier, you would have found a ride, for example, and then you hear that everyone was killed in the accident – so you would have been killed too. I believe it is absolutely certain that a great many people did not die in the Paris disaster these days because they were prevented from doing so. Don't you read the newspapers? A large number of people have been killed in the Paris subway. When you think about such things, you will see how extraordinarily little man, in judging his life, takes into account the things from which he is protected. We live for the moment and only pay attention to what happens to us. We never perceive what we are protected from. Of course, it is difficult to prove something positively when you live in the spiritual world. I have already pointed out the following: Suppose I advise someone who is ill – let's say he is 40 years old – not to drink wine and not to eat meat. He dies at 48; now people say: He died young, even though he didn't eat meat or drink wine for the last eight years. But who can say whether he wouldn't have died at 44 if he had eaten meat and drunk wine? What people so carelessly call 'proving' is extraordinarily difficult when it comes to things in the supersensible world, but precisely reflecting on such things increases our sensitivity to the intrusion of the supersensible world into the sensual world. I only mention this because there can still be very little understanding of this relationship with the dead today, especially in the West. Of course, this does not prevent us from cultivating this relationship with the dead in such a way, and it is particularly effective if we cultivate this relationship with the dead in such a way that we try to live in such thoughts in which the dead can also easily live, and these are never abstract thoughts. The more abstract a thought is, the less the dead person can have such a thought in common with us.

These things are all very difficult to express when I am trying to make myself understood. For example, there are no nouns for the dead; the dead do not know non-nouns, which are the most abstract words. They still know verbs, but mainly those that are spoken from the heart. That is tangible for them. Then he can experience what is specifically vivid. So if you immerse yourself in something that you experienced with the dead person in all concreteness here on earth, let's say you remember that you were on a walk with him, he picked up an ear of corn, he spoke something —, and you remember it down to the smallest nuance, then the dead person can have the thought [with you]. All these are preparations for developing a relationship with the dead. We can then also read out loud to the dead person everything that relates to the spiritual world, as I always call it. If we simply imagine in a concrete way that the dead person is present and we read something, but as I said, it must relate to the spiritual world, then he can develop a connection with us. I would feel untrue if I did not first communicate these things, which are concrete observations of spiritual science, to you, because then you will know that the assertions of spiritual science with regard to the dead refer to concrete things. One also has the possibility of bringing about the turning to the dead especially by supporting what the dead person takes with him in a spiritual relationship.

I can tell you that it is extremely important to relate to the dead person in the following way: Immediately after death, right away, the person experiences a streaming memory of their life here, which does not proceed like an ordinary memory because, as I said, it is much more fluid, but it contains everything specific in this memory picture. If we then inwardly say something to the dead person that is in this memory picture, then that is an element, a force, which can now also contribute to his particular well-being, which will particularly satisfy him. All this shows you that we as people on earth can do something to come into a special relationship with the dead. From this you can see that anthroposophical spiritual science must definitely speak of the fact that everything we feel inwardly for the dead is something real. A funeral ritual, for example, is something absolutely real. In a similar way to how we initiate something for life here between birth and death through a baptismal ritual. We give something to the dead when we direct our thoughts to them, thoughts that are multiplied a hundredfold in the community, not just added up, but multiplied many times over. What is directed to the dead in this way is something that falls into the dead person's field of vision and enriches the dead inwardly. Just don't say that we are interfering with their karma. If you gave someone 500 marks – I don't know how much that is worth today – so that he could make an Italian journey and visit the art galleries in Italy, that was not at all an unlawful interference with his karma; it was something perfectly permissible, although it has something to do with his karma. And so it is also not an unlawful interference with karma when we do something for the dead. It is indeed an embellishment, an elevation, an enrichment for the life of the 'dead, when thoughts or actions or the like, clothed in ritual, flow from us to the dead, but it must remain the intercourse with the dead in the inner life of the soul.

A great deal of nonsense has been done with spiritualism, also in other respects. In recent times, in particular, communication with the dead through spiritualism has been brought into a terrible situation. You know that spiritist séances are mainly used to communicate with the dead. Now, of course, most of what comes to light in spiritist séances is false, but despite all the falsity, there remains a certain residue that should not be cultivated, because it is something that always brings a person down, not up. If a person does not develop in a higher world, but allows the ordinary world to enter deeper into himself, a kind of pathological relationship with the spiritual world can arise. This is, as a rule, also the case with mediums, who very often succeed in approaching the dead through suggestion. You will understand that all kinds of illusions must arise. It is, of course, absolute nonsense to believe that the dead are able to use speech and writing in the way that is manifested in spoken or even written communications. That is, of course, complete nonsense. What comes to light is only transformed by the medium. Imagine that we were all sitting here together in peace, when the floor opened up and a menagerie of lions came up into this room. Imagine that vividly! Just as it would look here if a menagerie of lions came up through a floor opening, so it is for the dead when we enter their realm in a spiritualistic way with all that we are as human beings here. It is an entirely accurate image. The dead suffer as a result if the contact is real. It is irresponsible what can be achieved through spiritualism.

Communication with the dead must remain entirely within the soul realm. In this context, it is only ever appropriate to address prayers to the dead when there is a tendency to find a bridge to the dead, and that meditation, ritual acts and so on are also directed towards the dead, so that one can relate to the dead on a spiritual level. In this way, both the world in which the dead find themselves and the world in which the living find themselves are served; that is, those who are living on earth; for much of what people, without having a real idea of its origin, summarize in the word “genius” is in reality an inspiration from the dead, who find their way into the thoughts of men. So what we develop in relation to the dead in cult, in prayer, in meditation, these are absolutely justified things.

A participant: This raises the question of whether the grave is a particularly favorable place to get in touch with the dead. Or is it not the case that shortly after the dead person is buried, there is no longer a special place here to get in touch with the dead person?

Rudolf Steiner: In general, I can say that when thinking of the dead, when praying for the dead, the place plays an extraordinarily small role. It can indeed happen that the dead person has a strong longing for earthly life, then he would develop a certain longing for the place and also have a point of reference for being met there, if I may say so, where he was last thought of in community. It could be that way roundabout, but apart from that, one cannot say that the place, or even the place where someone is buried, has a great influence on what we can do for the dead. It is indeed the case, is it not, that in the festivals of the dead, especially in the All Souls' festivals, in a certain way the dead are almost brought to their graves, but that is actually something more for the living than for the dead. Here I must again take up the thought I expressed earlier. The dead man does indeed reach out to the living in his effectiveness, and we can certainly say: the dead man takes part in the world, as we take part in the most eminent sense in the spiritual world, and it can have a certain significance for the living when they develop their memories and their thoughts at the grave, in connection with the grave. This was naturally the case with the martyrs, the so-called saints. In the early centuries of Christianity, worship was performed at the graves primarily not for the sake of the dead, but for the sake of those who had been left behind. The altar still has the form of a grave, and this is a relic of the time when the service of the supersensible was already a kind of cult of the ancestors; and this is how it must be judged in the early times of Christianity. It is more for the living than for the dead.

A participant: Does time play a role here? And what about the requiem?

Rudolf Steiner: The funeral service is essentially one of the things that can be done ritually for the dead. Now it is the case that the funeral service should of course be read soon after the “death, and that is also good because the etheric body and the astral body still interact then. The etheric body is discarded very soon after death, so that the requiem, if it falls into the time when the person still has his etheric body or at least has not discarded it for long, still has a very strong subjective meaning for him.

Regarding the other question, I would like to ask you to take into consideration that a person, on the one hand, has to consider the objective facts and, on the other hand, his or her ability to perceive. Certainly, if someone died thirty years ago, he or she is no longer as intimately connected to the earth as if he or she died three days ago, that is certain. But there is a connection, and it is only a question of the fact that after thirty years it is difficult for a person here to establish the connection. I cannot find that it does not coincide a little with earthly development, because I have met a great many people in whom the first intense pain, which may have been stormy in expression, after they lost someone, was very subdued after thirty years, but I have never met anyone in whom the pain would have increased. Circumstances arise in the lives of those who have been left behind that are quite contrary to the fact that in later years the connecting bridge can still be as lively as in previous years. But if someone asks me whether the dead person comes out of the earthly sphere completely after thirty years or after an even longer time, then I must always say no; there can be no question of that. The world is such that everything is together in it; it is quite the case that we could just as easily perform rituals or ceremonies for the dead after thirty or fifty years as we could earlier. This is to be firmly held.

A participant: In this context, I would like to ask for an explanation of the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 29.

Rudolf Steiner: “What do those who are baptized for the dead do? If the dead do not rise, why are they baptized for the dead?” — What kind of question is that?

A participant: Whether baptism is thought to influence the state of the dead.

Rudolf Steiner: What kind of influence do you mean?

A participant: Whether there is any influence at all and if so, what kind. This passage is completely unclear to me.

Rudolf Steiner: What do those who get baptized for the dead do if the dead do not rise at all? – Is it not the question of resurrection for you? Well, it is not, because here it is a matter of the idea of resurrection being the underlying assumption, and then of our taking it very seriously that the dead person has a relationship with the living, with those living here on earth. If the dead person has an ongoing life, then this life is modified in the most diverse ways, and if his life was such in Christ, then the connection that remains with the dead person is indeed a strengthening element for us. We can therefore say the following: Let us assume that we have known someone who was particularly significant in some way. I do not want to talk about spiritual or psychological qualities, but only about a significant person who has died and with whom we ourselves have a living connection in the way we can, emotionally, in thought.

I will start from something else first. You will gain extraordinary strength if you develop a living pedagogy, namely strength that can be used to make children receptive to certain admonitions when you educate, as it were, in the name of a dead person. If you just have the strength to do that, for example, to walk around the classroom and bring this connection with the dead person to life within you, it will give you the strength to make the children receptive to admonitions. In this way, you will also gain a special strength for the rite for that which is to be attained through baptism – baptism is emphasized here because it aims to lead the person into the Christian community – if you gain strength through the dead. It is natural that this is cited by the founder of Christianity, for the reason that all of Christianity, including dead Christianity, should work in the continuation of Christianity, so that all those who have gone out of the world through death should be co-helpers in properly guiding those who are born into the Christian community. That is what I would like to summarize.

A participant: [On what do the relations between the living and the dead depend?]

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, according to the experiences one can have, it is the case that the most real relationships emerge when they are built on real relationships in life before death. In general, if I may express it this way, dying is as follows: when the individual dies, he steps out of his physical shell, and what he has experienced in the physical shell is often the cause of what he then experiences [as an effect after death]. That is just the way it is: after death, he is dependent on what he has experienced in the physical shell. What he can experience through the physical shell falls away, he acquires other perceptual abilities, but he slips out of the shell, so to speak. It is the same with the relationships that a person has entered into with other people in life; these relationships have developed, they are mediated through our physical existence here, but when we slip out of the shell, the relationships continue. If one can have experiences in this area, one really has to say: the more concrete the relationships were in life, the more concrete the relationships are with the dead person.

But there is something else to consider. Above all, it must be considered that relationships are formed between the dead person and a new birth itself. So the person then develops new perceptions, but he forms emotional relationships, so that when the person comes down from the pre-existent life with human relationships – and in fact our real human relationships are much greater than we actually believe – one cannot say that the general relationship that is developed through such things as you have in mind would be completely fruitless. It is true that, for example, the members of a church community also establish relationships for their afterlife, but the other things are by no means fruitless, that much can be said. Such things can really only be determined from experience, but the concrete aspect plays a much greater role.

Johannes Perthel: Can we expect in the present or in the immediate future that a religious movement, including ritual, as mentioned, is possible in the proletariat?

A participant: What about the difference between city and country?

Rudolf Steiner: In this respect, we have indeed had a certain experience. Was it not necessary for me to follow a call to Stuttgart in April 1919 and to advocate there in Germany for the threefold social order movement, just as the view of the threefold structure of the social organism arose for me from the foundations of experience to be cultivated through spiritual science? I had to regard it absolutely as something that was a task for precisely this point in time. Before I left Switzerland, a man came to me who wanted to sign the appeal I had written and said that I must tell him more than was in the appeal. The Kernpunkte had not yet appeared at that time. He thought that something must arise that could be counted on, something like the second German revolution. I asked him: Do you therefore count on the second German revolution? — He counted the one of November 1918 as the first. And just as one revolution followed another in Russia, so he counted on a second revolution and thought that I held the view that threefolding should fall into it. I told him at the time: Yes, a large number of people believe that threefolding will indeed have a rapid effect after all the events of the times. It simply has to be tried. Because if I were to say that it cannot have a rapid effect, it would not be done, and then it will not be possible to prove to anyone that if it had been done, it would have had a very good effect for the benefit of all humanity. I told him: Just as one can overlook something in an ordinary context, so can some things also escape one in a spiritual field. There may be factors that make a second German revolution promising, but I do not believe at all in an acute second revolution, but in a continuity that would make it impossible to count on a second revolution as a serious factor. I do not believe that there is any real basis for such things.

Well, the development of the years has also proved this view right, and the result was that, at first, the threefold order progressed relatively quickly. Then it faltered, and obstacles arose from various sides, which I do not want to discuss with you now. On the other hand, a certain connection with the proletariat has been created precisely through the threefolding movement, and this connection has brought anthroposophy into the proletariat in a way that would not otherwise have been possible. I would like to say that anthroposophy has remained, and that threefolding has passed by the proletariat. It has been shown that there is a very strong interest among the urban proletariat in getting to know these things.

I have already mentioned another thing to you. If we had not been able to give anthroposophical religious education in the Waldorf school, always in harmony with the parents' views, never against them, the vast majority [of children] would have been left without religious education. With anthroposophical religious education, it is the case that the teachers say: We can't keep up, we are not able to have a sufficient number of teachers [for religious education]. It might even look a bit malicious if I were to say that the other RE teachers sometimes express their displeasure: Yes, if they keep it up like this, all the children will run away from us. But we can't help it, the blame must lie with someone, I won't say who, but I think it lies with someone else. So you see again that there is actually a strong pull in the direction that can come into the world through anthroposophy.

So I am not at all worried about the urban population. I believe that the communities you will be able to found will indeed attract a large influx of people from the proletariat in particular. Experience shows this quite clearly, and the whole constitution of the proletarian soul today shows it, as one has experienced in the last time. It is really the case that the proletariat today is something different than it was in 1914. If you grasp it in the right way, it is very accessible to a religious deepening, it is really longing for it.

The situation is more difficult, however, with the rural population, but with the rural population it is more difficult in all areas. The rural population is very stubborn, very conservative and will in fact hardly be won over to a reasonable further development in any other way than by the fact that those who are their leaders gradually become reasonable, which of course causes terrible difficulties with certain sides. Today, one must actually say that it would be relatively easy to make progress with the led — I mean, as a general phenomenon — if only the leaders would bite, but they are so terribly comfortable. With regard to the rural population, the leaders would just have to bite, we would have to overcome the leaders' complacency. Then the question of the rural population would also be solved, because it will quickly be solved if the question is resolved there as a pastor. In the cities, pastors will be forced to be progressive because the churches will gradually remain empty. In the countryside, it is a matter of winning over the leaders.

Now, my dear friends, I cannot interfere in this matter given our situation here, because it is a question of how quickly it will be possible for those who are actually, I do not want to say for a hasty, but for an energetic approach, in the real sense, that is, future pastors, to be able to shape the leadership in their own way. That is what one has to say about it. Is your question going in a different direction?

A participant: I would like to ask whether it is to be expected that these new cult forms will find immediate appeal among the proletariat?

Rudolf Steiner: That is quite certain. It is only important to know how to treat the proletariat. Of course — as can also be seen from the first chapter of my 'Key Points' — the qualities that have developed in the souls of the proletariat today are essentially the heirlooms of bourgeois qualities from the last centuries. The proletarian today shows no other characteristics than those he has inherited from the bourgeois. If the bourgeois has become pedantic, the proletarian has become even more pedantic; if the bourgeois has become philistine, the proletarian has become even more philistine; if the bourgeois has become materialistic, the proletarian has become even more materialistic, and so on. The dislike of ritual and ceremony that you find among the proletariat today is nothing more than the continuation of that dislike that has gradually developed in the bourgeoisie. It is also a matter of our really being able to appeal from the external to the internal, and here it must be said: anyone who looks a little deeper into the course of human development knows that, as the social question stands today, it cannot be overcome by anything other than a serious religious renewal, and that can only be found through the ceremonial. You do not even get around to developing what you need to get into the proletarian soul without the ceremonial. But the ceremonial must be honest. Here imponderables play a great role. If the ceremonial is not honest, it is impossible to bring it to bear. If it is honest, it takes the lead. I would like to say that it is not necessary to be blunt, but the ceremonial must be honest.

You see, in this respect one must say: the ceremonial acts have gradually become so externalized that of course the proletarian today has only a smile for everything ceremonial. But let something come along that is honest, that is what it should be, then you will get through to people, even to the proletarian soul, perhaps even to this first of all.

Hubert Sondermann: May I ask from which side we could approach the soul of the countryman with what we want and where, so to speak, the key can be found, where we can unlock it.

Rudolf Steiner: This cannot be done theoretically, but must be taken as I have said it. We must be clear about the fact that the countryman, the farmer, is conservative, and that what is rigid in him is extremely difficult to get out of him, and this is much more common today than it used to be. I think that can be seen in a relatively short time. In the 1980s, it was still relatively easy to bring people over from the Roman Catholic Church to the Old Catholic Church. Today, it is almost unthinkable.

Constantin Neuhaus: The good elements no longer come at all.

Rudolf Steiner: The general effect is that receptivity has actually been lost in a relatively short time, especially in the countryside to an eminent degree. In the countryside, things can only improve if we work indirectly through the priesthood. If we are able to found a community in the countryside, even if it is still small, and if this community is there and the priest really works in a priestly way, then he can gradually have this community, but of course he must be prepared for the fact that the real issue is to overcome the leaders. Of course, they cannot do anything with the people of Arlesheim as long as Pastor Kully is there. It is clear that we are talking here about the leaders. The path that can be taken at all will be to first found communities in larger towns and then to simply try to have a convincing effect on people, so that a kind of further development takes place through the pastor himself. The moment you succeed in conquering any district as a leader, it will happen. You always have to see that it does not depend on individual souls, especially not in the compact rural communities. But attempts must be made everywhere, and it will be a matter of overcoming the leaders there.

A participant: I think we will have difficulties because in the countryside religious life is lived much less consciously. I don't think that many people in the countryside are really searching, but religiosity is more traditional, it is a movement that happens by itself. We can expect much more of a person who is searching hard than of people who are only in the religious life because of tradition. Is there any hope of success here, of raising religious life in the countryside out of the sphere of tradition and into the sphere of consciousness, or is that expecting too much?

Rudolf Steiner: Please bear in mind that what you describe is only a contemporary phenomenon. Just think of the time of the peasant revolts, which were entirely religious in character. The phenomenon you describe is actually much more connected with other things in the present than merely with religious things. If you want to present anthroposophy in Regensburg and there are farmers in the audience, they will naturally come and stamp on the ground: You have nothing to say to us here, our pastor has to say that to us, and you have to shut up! —- But this is connected with the fact that today, as a result of liberalism, of man's development towards freedom, there is an enormous belief in authority, not only in the religious field, but everywhere. We have acquired this belief in authority particularly by becoming more and more liberal people. It is because liberalism has spread that we have forfeited our freedom. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is already proving true in the most diverse areas. This has much more to do with the things that are otherwise present in life than with religious matters. Just try to imagine what would happen if a truly free spiritual life were to take hold. A free spiritual life, where, for example, the school is completely autonomous and self-sufficient, where what is done in the school is, I might say, direct revelation from the spirit, then, of course, you come to the point where, through the free spiritual life, you overcome the leading personalities with their authorities. This is something that comes to the fore most strongly in things that develop in other areas than in the religious sphere, especially in the countryside, because in the countryside the principle of authority cannot be overcome as easily in all areas as it can in cities. But I do not wish to say that religious life is unconscious in the countryside for that very reason. It is simply that everything is more rigid and submerged in what the modern age has brought forth.

A participant: [Isn't the rural population particularly receptive to cults?]

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, certainly for the introduction of cults. The moment you appear with the cult, you will win the heart of the countryman much more easily than with a teaching; that is quite certain. The Catholic Church spread Christianity initially not so much through teaching as through cult, even if the teaching has flowed into external forms.

A participant: Wherever the remains of cults still exist, the position of the priest is different – a position of authority – and this makes it easier for the priest to gain access to the lives of the rural population. My only fear is whether the priest has the necessary expert knowledge to intervene and take the lead in all these areas.

Rudolf Steiner: Which priest?

A participant: The pastor in the countryside. If all the threads come together there, can he really do it?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, why do you think it can't be done?

A participant: Because we have become too unworldly as a result of our education.

Rudolf Steiner: This is indeed essentially overcome by a free spiritual life, as I think it is in the sense of the threefold social organism - that is, in the educational sphere according to the model of the Waldorf School through education in the free spiritual life. Don't we see the worst consequences actually coming from the lack of freedom in the spiritual life, that is, I mean now from the lack of social freedom. Just think, it was not so very long ago that there was a real and serious debate about whether or not to tolerate the Jesuits in the German Reich. Now, it is outrageous to even discuss the spiritual life from a political point of view. You will not expect me to have even a single hair left to praise the Jesuits, of course, but politically speaking, no kind of spiritual movement should be oppressed in any way if we want to advance in the general spiritual life. What have they achieved by politically fighting Jesuitism in Germany? To the same extent that they fought Jesuitism politically, to that same extent did its capacities increase from another side. Jesuitism is very astute; it has extraordinarily significant people working within it. If you want to fight it, you also have to develop sharp mental abilities. I must say that any kind of oppression of the free intellectual life leads to an oppression of the intellectual life in general. We should never think of using political measures to bind or restrict our opponents in the field of intellectual life, or anything of the sort; only in this way is it possible to really move forward. I think that when intellectual life sheds all the dark sides that still remain, for example specialization – which can be completely shed in anthroposophical education – then the pastor will actually be able to be the leader that he must be. There is simply no other way in the rural communities out there. There is no other possibility for the pastor than to really be involved in all matters concerning the community – I also want to talk about community building – he simply must be. One cannot say “he will be”, but one can say: he must be. We must say with Fichte: Man kann, was er soll, and when he says: ich kann nicht, so will er nicht. That should be our motto.

Christian Geyer: I would like to make a small suggestion. Unfortunately, some of us have to leave. It was originally planned that the course would last until tomorrow, and some will not be able to attend the continuation. I don't know if it is immodest of me to ask if you could at least give a rough outline of how the creed will be formulated.

Rudolf Steiner: Tomorrow. It is no longer possible for us to continue. Tomorrow, yes.

My dear friends! We shall now continue our discussions of the various rituals. I would just like to start by adding a discussion of the so-called Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Catholic Mass and which plays a certain role in the confessions. Before I discuss this Credo, however, I must explain something about how the point of view from which I must treat such a Credo is to be characterized. First of all, in view of the many discussions that take place about the Credo, it must be said to what extent such a Credo can play a role at all within a confessional community of Christianity. When the Credo is discussed today, the question is often whether one should include this or that sentence or not, and how the Credo should be formulated for this or that occasion, or rather, for this or that reason for using it, and so on.

Now it seems to me that a credo, that is, a confession of faith, could at most only make sense to those who are simultaneously willing to recognize that they have reasons of an inner, cognitive nature that compel them to utter such a credo or at least make it possible for them to utter such a credo. Of course, it is quite impossible to demand such a credo from a confirmand, for example, that is, to demand a credo from a confirmand at all. Is it even possible to have such discussions – as they have been held about the credo – whether a person who is perhaps 15 or 16 years old should profess one or the other, which basically cannot be understood in a lifetime? Nevertheless, the discussion proceeds from the standpoint of what can be signed by one or the other of these creeds? You have seen that the Jugendfeier ceremony that I showed you here, of course, contains nothing of such a creed. When I first treated the ritual of the Mass Sacrifice in its main parts, I pointed out that in the Catholic Church the Creed is inserted between the reading of the Gospel and the Offertory. But if one wants to either justify or refute the insertion of the Credo at this point in the Mass, then again various things must be taken into consideration. I am not here to justify or refute anything that concerns the Catholic Church, but to discuss the issues. What would have to be asserted in the face of the Creed at this point, what could be said in justification, is this: First the Gospel is read, and now the one who celebrates the Mass, who is thus the actual agent in the Mass, can give a kind of response in the Creed to what is heard as the inspired word in the Gospel. If the Mass sacrifice is now understood to mean that it is actually only the sacrifice celebrated by the ordained priest, then all the faithful who participate in this Mass sacrifice are naturally not at all connected with it – in principle – to recognize everything that the priest confesses during the act of celebration as that which lives in him. Besides, the priest also says silent masses where he is at most concerned with the others in the idea. What is expressed in the Credo of the Catholic Mass must not be understood as if it were a confession for those who participate in the sacrificial act of the Mass, sentence by sentence. It is a different matter as to what extent the Catholic Church demands confession of the Credo from its faithful. That is certainly the case to a certain extent. What is required here is actually all based on a somewhat liberal interpretation of church practice, but the idea is that the confession of the Credo is required, as I have read it to you. The Credo also forms the content of [Catholic] catechism lessons and is taught to children in the very form that I have read to you. The Credo also forms the content of a certain part of the ordination of a priest, which we shall have to discuss later. Here it takes on a completely different meaning and is undoubtedly justified in this context, since it contains what can really be advocated within the Church. Thus, it is quite impossible to demand a credo, to incline towards a credo that contains, as the usual credo does, I might say, a certain essence of world wisdom, of all world feeling and world will — for that is what is usually contained in a credo. In so far as the Catholic Credo contains this, one cannot help saying that it cannot, in the Christian sense, be taught to the faithful in the way it is. If it is to be discussed from an anthroposophical point of view, only the following can be said, because it really requires a great deal of knowledge to meaningfully accept what can be offered by a creed.

Anyone who professes to believe in a pedagogy that is truly based on knowledge of human nature will never advocate teaching children only things that they immediately understand. Anyone who did so would not take into account the whole of human life; for example, he would not take into account what it means in terms of rejuvenating strength, in terms of the real influx of inner life force when, let us say, in the fortieth year of one's life one remembers something that one authority in the tenth year, and now, in the fortieth year, you say to yourself: You have come through your life experience so far that you now understand from your own inner being what you learned by heart in the tenth year. Simply the fact that you understand things later on, which you can recall from memory, means that you are receiving real vitality. Another educational theory might advocate the following: the child should not be encouraged to do anything that it cannot immediately put into practice, or perhaps one should only teach the child what its hands naturally want to do.

Now, I have made this pedagogical digression so that you can see what kind of attitude can prevail in a pedagogy that is based on real human knowledge. But then, when it comes to something like the credo, the feeling must be evoked not to urge the child to believe these things, but the child must have the clear idea: the person who is dealing with him, believes in them. That is the most extreme idea that can be evoked: the person who is dealing with the child believes in it because he knows the things, and the child must also have the feeling that he can grow into an understanding of what the adult believes. Without this feeling, it is not possible to establish a community that is permeated by inner truth; but above all, this must be the case in a Christian community.

Having said that, my dear friends, I would like to present to you some of the elements of a credo that could arise out of anthroposophical knowledge. I ask you to listen to it as it is meant, namely that it arises out of anthroposophical knowledge, and that anyone who has a certain anthroposophical knowledge can , but that it is really extremely difficult to find even remotely adequate words in which to express what can only come about in the course of a wide-ranging anthroposophical realization. The words must be chosen in such a way that for someone who is not immersed in the whole process from which these words ultimately arise, they are in many respects merely a sound. I have tried by every possible means to express in concise words what, according to anthroposophical conviction, should be in such a credo, but do not think that I believe I have succeeded in doing so. What needs to be said is perfectly clear to me; but it is extraordinarily difficult to put into words, because our words have lost their values in all languages, because our words are often only external signs. So, even if some of it shocks you, I would ask you to accept what I am about to read as a possible anthroposophical credo, bearing this in mind.

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, fatherly preceding his creatures.

Christ, through whom people attain the revival of dying earthly existence, is to this divine being like the eternally born son.

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earthly world as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, who, in order to spiritually heal the “sickness of sin in the flesh of humanity,” prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of the Christ.

Christ Jesus suffered death on the cross under Pontius Pilate and was buried in the grave of the earth.

In death, he became the helper of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then he overcame death after three days.

Since that time, he has been the Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the paternal deeds of the foundation of the world.

In the progress of the world He will unite Himself with those whom He can snatch from the death of matter through their behavior.

Through Him the healing spirit can work.

Communities whose members feel the Christ within themselves may feel united in a church to which all who feel the saving power of Christ belong; they may hope for the overcoming of the disease of sin, for the continued existence of the human being and for the preservation of their life destined for eternity.

They naturally find in it essentially what is already contained in the traditional Creed. But I cannot help saying that in the traditional Creed, insofar as it is translated into newer languages, what is actually in it can no longer be found. That is why I tried to translate the Credo of the Catholic Mass in the way I have already read out, which I will now present again. But it is one thing to try to reconstruct what is available as tradition and quite another to try to express what can really be advocated today. In my opinion, the Credo would be translated as follows:

“I believe in the One God, the almighty Father, who made heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible.”

The word “made” is already in it, although it contradicts the Gospel of John; no other text is possible in opposition to the Gospel of John than:

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, who fatherly precedes his creatures.

Christ, through whom men attain the revival of the dying earthly existence, is to this being of God as the son born in eternity.

But here it says further:

“And in the One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God. Who also proceeded from the Father before all time. He is God from God. Light from Light, true God from true God.”

Well, my dear friends, it must be translated like that, but it is impossible to imprint in such words what can be experienced today originally from the spiritual worlds. The most striking fact that can prove this to you, for quite external reasons, is that in the dictionary [by Fritz Mauthner] the two most problematic articles are those about “spirit” and about “God”. This dictionary of philosophy has really emerged from the essence of more recent philological scholarship, and in this German dictionary the article “God” is treated in such a way that one must say: The deepest scholarship is no more capable of filling the word “God” with a living concept than anything else that can be found. In the very word that is most important to humanity, a word sound is pronounced that cannot be filled with a living concept if one wants to somehow arrive at the origin of the word “God” etymologically, philologically. Today's science cannot do it. Fritz Mauthner brings it together with the word “gießen” (to pour), that is, that which is poured out, which pours itself out into the world, and that would then lead back to an old word “Götze” (idol), which would be related to “Gott” (God). You see, that is the situation today with those who have spent a lot of time trying to find the origin of the word “God”.

What can be said from the spiritual scientific point of view is that the word 'God' points to something that expresses a relationship, and which still resonates in the common language in individual dialects that have the word 'God': the feminine 'Godel', which is also found in the name 'Goethe', which originally was 'Goede'. It is the godfather, it is the one to whom there is a spiritual kinship. The word is intimately connected with the fact that this kinship was felt in the monotheistic sense, that the one great godfather of the world, whom one felt like the father imagined in the spirit, was contrasted with some random godfather. So the word probably grew out of primitive, monotheistic stages of religion and probably once meant in North Asia the “Ongod”, the one great godfather, and this prefix “On” definitely points to the monotheistic origin of those ideas that correspond to the word of God.

So you see, anyone who chooses words with true inner conscientiousness is not in a position to utter them as lightly as is usually the case today. Empathizing with these words, living into them, must actually be a process of life. Today, when people believe that they can translate from one language into another by simply using a dictionary and then inserting the word that appears in the dictionary into the sentence, no one can have any sense of what is actually involved. This is because the word in the dictionary is usually the least useful one if you want to translate the real meaning. At best, the dictionary word can help us arrive at what is meant, and it is characteristic of this that even school dictionaries have become terribly poor in this regard over the course of fifty years. We are hardly familiar with all the dictionary blunders that have been made since then.

But now we find in this creed, in addition to “he who is God of God, true God of true God”, also “light from light”. Now, my dear friends, perhaps twenty or twenty-one years ago I once wrote an essay that contained something like the following. I wrote: In physics, light is spoken of as if it were given as a gift; but I ask: has light ever been seen? You can see colors; all colors, including white, are something that arises from light, but light is something that no one can see with their eyes. It is the mediator of seeing objects in color, but light itself remains invisible in the light-filled space. Just imagine standing in the middle of a room that contains no objects, only light. Would you see anything? You would be just as if in darkness, only you would feel differently, but you could not see the light. Everywhere one speaks as if one could see the light. Physics has — most terrible of horrors — instead of a color theory a light theory. They know, of course, what light is: wave motion. Now imagine that and compare it with the idea of light that you cannot have from external experience, then you will see what significance such a theory has. This is roughly how modern man must feel in his truth when he hears the words “light from light”.

Now there is a sentence in the Creed which, if it is a mere translation, cannot be translated differently than as it stands here:

“Descended, but not produced, of one essence with the Father: through whom all things were made.”

Christ... is to this divine being like the Son born in eternity.

which does not refer to a birth in time, but indicates that the Word is now born and must not now be taken in the sense in which it is usually taken.

"Who descended from the heavens for us men and for our healing. Who also came in the flesh by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

I cannot get any other text than this:

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earthly world as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, which, in order to spiritually heal the sin of the body of humanity, prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of Christ.

If it is desired, we can also talk about the virgin birth in another context that does not belong to the ritual.

“Who was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, who died and was buried.”

Now, it is the case that one must express it in this way:

Christ Jesus suffered crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and was laid in the tomb of the earth.

Yes, now it continues:

“And who was resurrected on the third day in the sense of the scriptures. And who was raised up into heaven again.”

These are, of course, ideas that must be given correctly:

Since that time He has been Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the Fatherly deeds in the foundation of the world.

[In the translation of the Credo]:

"And he who has been lifted up on high, who sits at the right hand of the Father, will reveal himself again to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom is endless. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. Who is worshiped and revealed together with the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets. And in the only holy catholic and apostolic church. I profess one baptism for the wiping out of wrongdoing. And I hope for the resurrection of the dead and for a life in future time circles. Yes, so be it.

So, as I said, I cannot say anything other than what I have shared here with regard to what can now, with all the difficulties, be summarized from anthroposophical foundations as a real credo. You can regard what is summarized here in such a way that it can truly be signed off in the sense of anthroposophical knowledge in every single word, if the word is now really taken with all its inner values. For it turns out that this anthroposophical insight, too, requires us to hold fast to the idea of resurrection, and to hold fast to what we encounter in the words that you also find in the Catholic Creed, at least in most versions, namely that Christ descended to the dead – or as it is also called, “into hell”. I had to express this by saying:

In death, he became the helper of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then, after three days, he overcame death.

It is indeed a fact that is perfectly recognizable to spiritual science that not only does the evolution of the living take place in all its differentiation in the successive epochs of earthly existence, as you know from anthroposophical descriptions, but that the life of the dead also evolves. And this life of the dead at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha was such that the ancient Greek saying, which was connected with the Mysteries of that time, was indeed true: better a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of shadows – that is, the dead, for the dead in those days were in danger of losing the divine, the astral, that which was present in humanity, and they had to give up their divine existence altogether. The Christ came to them to save their lives.

This is truly not at all a reminiscence from Catholicism, as one might easily believe when spiritual science presents it. A very clever person of the present day, a philosophically educated person, as they are called today, would necessarily say that only someone who experiences it as a reminiscence would come up with something like that. Well, I can give you the assurance that I never had the opportunity to experience Catholic reminiscences, but I had to be forced by the knowledge of the facts of the supersensible world to each of these things.

If the formation of new communities in the Christian sense is at issue, then I do believe that this Credo could initially serve as a basis for the cohesion of the communities through the leading priestly figures. But I also believe something else: I believe that long theological studies on the exegesis or interpretation of what is contained in this Credo should be established, at least for those who want to prepare for the priesthood. I cannot believe otherwise, because these things can indeed only be achieved step by step, and because it seems to me that after a certain transitional period – if, as I hope, the revival of religious life, as it is being pursued by our friends, is successful – then indeed the theological study must be established afterwards. And then it seems to me that a few years of theological study will be necessary to understand the Credo. But if this will evoke a true sense of truth in the person, it will naturally prevent demanding a credo or the like from confirmands.

Christian Geyer asks Dr. Steiner to read the Credo again.

Rudolf Steiner:

An almighty spiritual-physical being of God is the reason for the existence of heaven and earth, and walks before his creatures as a father.

Christ, through whom human beings attain the revival of dying earthly existence, is to this divine being as the eternally born son.

In Jesus, the Christ entered the earth as a human being. Jesus' birth on earth is an effect of the Holy Spirit, who, in order to spiritually heal the disease of sin from the body of humanity, prepared the son of Mary to be the vessel of the Christ.

The Christ Jesus -

Please note that here the two words are combined: Earlier was “Christ”, and then was “Jesus”. Now the two words are combined here:

The Christ Jesus suffered crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and was buried in the tomb of the earth.

I can only express it this way.

In death, He became the support of the deceased souls who had lost their divine being; then He overcame death after three days.

Since that time, He has been the Lord of the heavenly powers on earth and lives as the fulfiller of the Fatherly deeds of the foundation of the world.

In the future He will unite with those whom He can snatch from the death of matter through their behavior for the progress of the world.

Through Him the healing spirit can work.

Communities whose members feel the Christ within themselves may feel united in one church, to which all who feel the saving power of Christ belong;

They may hope for the conquest of the disease of sin, for the continued existence of the human being,

And on the preservation of their life destined for eternity.

And now, before I go further in discussing the sacrifice of the Mass, which after all has already been discussed in its four main parts, I would like you to see how the things we are dealing with here can also lead to the living word of the gospel being incorporated into everything , talk about how a funeral ritual can come about, and specifically the funeral ritual that our friend, Pastor Schuster, used at funerals in my presence, so that for me the use is thoroughly tried and tested from direct observation.

This funeral rite, which can also be used for cremations, has the following content. First, the part that is performed at the house of the deceased. It is, as it seems to me, as befits a funeral rite, simple:

Into the peace of the soul's being
wanders the soul of our dear departed.
Into the light of the spiritual world
steps the spirit of our dear departed.
Eternal Spirit, who art with him,
Eternal Spirit, who art with us,
fill our souls.
Christ, who art in us,
Christ, who art in him,
Fill our thoughts.

The Lord's Prayer is now recited. After the Lord's Prayer:

Let him find, eternal Spirit,
The power of life in the light of the soul,
Let him weave in your world will.

— here the name is mentioned —

leaves
and goes into the realm of the infinite
of the timeless world existence,
into which he now enters,
to live in the power of the will,
which in Christ has been able to gain eternity for humanity,
Who has opened the soul's eye for humanity
To see the world of eternal being.
Into the calm of the soul's being
The soul of the dear... (name)
Into the light of the spiritual world,
The spirit of the dear... (name)

Now follows a sprinkling with holy water. This is the ceremony in the house.

The ceremony at the grave or at the cremation site:

The sign of the cross is made over the grave or the cremation site, then the following is spoken:

At the place where we unite

Your mortality with the transient nature of the elements, our thoughts rise to the place of your soul, in the revelation of the Father (sign of the cross), the Son (sign of the cross) and the Holy Spirit (sign of the cross). Amen.

Eternal Spirit,
In whose will the souls weave,
Grasp your servant's soul weaving
And let him experience the spirit of the spirits
Through the power of the Christ,
Who is in him
Who is in us.
I am the rebirth in death,
I am the life in dying,
Thus speaks Christ,
Who is in us.
Whoever feels me in himself,
He lives,
Even if he dies;
Whoever receives me in his thoughts,
He passes through time into the timeless.
Eternal Spirit,
Look upon us.
Christ in us.

And now follows the Lord's Prayer again. After:

Let him find, eternal Spirit,
The power of life in the light of the soul.
Let him weave in your world will.
Hear, eternal Spirit, your servant's thinking,
That rises to you.
May the spirit fill the hearts of those present.
Those present send their thoughts
From the realm of the earthly,
From the realm of the dear... (names) departs
Into the realm,
Into which he enters,
And where the love of the spirit weaves
The soul's eye to the blessed spirit
To see the world of spirits.
There he sees the existence of the spirit,
There he works in the realm
To which he is inclined
His thoughts,
Rather than the realm
That his soul
Called his home.
Through Christ, who is there in him.
therefore our thoughts follow him
where he works as a spirit among spirits.
Through Christ, who is in him. Amen.

The Weihwedels are dipped into the Weihwasserfaß and the corpse, or rather what it is in, is sprinkled with holy water:

With the Breath of Light

— so it is spoken further —

let this soul be imbued

with the triune Spirit,
the Father (sign of the cross), the Son (sign of the cross) and the Holy Spirit (sign of the cross). Amen.

Eternal Spirit, grant him

The peace of soulfulness,

And may the light of the spiritual world shine upon him.

Incense is poured over the corpse.

Remember, O man,

That you are indebted to the spirit

For everything you accomplish

In thought, word and deed.

May you find, eternal soul,

In death, rebirth through the power of Christ,

Who through his death has overcome

the death of the soul;

May you receive

His strength,

as you leave the earthly for the spiritual. Amen.

Eternal Spirit,

let him find the peace of the soul's being.

May the light of the spiritual world shine upon him.

This funeral ritual could basically be understood as an adaptation of common funeral rituals. As I said, it is a tried and tested funeral ritual. When this funeral ritual is spoken with the right attitude, it is actually the spiritual processes that are at work, those that best guide the soul of the dead person from the world of physical existence into the world of spiritual existence. When we speak of a ritual, it really is a matter of living in it to the full, according to one's ability and capacity, in the things that are at stake. There is much to be learned from what has been handed down. For example, there is a great deal to be learned from studying the ancient church constitutions regarding the performance of the sign of the cross by the faithful and by the priest. The faithful make the sign of the cross by saying: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The sign of the cross is made on the forehead for the Father, on the chin for the Son, and on the chest for the Holy Spirit. The priest does not make the sign of the cross in this way, but rather makes the sign in one go over the whole upper body. This is meant to point to a profound mystery, I would say to that mystery that shows us how the one who is on the way to becoming immersed in life, which must be called the religious life, feels in a different way than the one who has reached the end of this path to a certain degree. These two different signs of the cross show that it requires a profound experience to gradually find the three in the one.

Of course, my dear friends, I have an understanding and perhaps I may even say a heart for all the criticisms that have been raised against the fact that three should be one and one three in the divine Trinity. I have an understanding and a heart for it, and I can understand it in the case of anyone, whether it be a person who today, let us say, is one of the very clever, or the youthful, high-spirited Goethe. But true understanding of these things lies so deep that critical discussion of them is usually nothing more than proof that one has no access to understanding. You see, it is easy to say that three is not one. Arithmetic certainly teaches that, and the outer sensory perception also teaches that. But this arithmetic, which we only carry into the outer sensory perception, is, after all, first shaped by ourselves on the basis of this outer sensory perception. And the arithmetic we have today does not go back very far in the history of humanity. Even Pythagoreanism, which lies only a few hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, cannot be understood from the present-day arithmetic. For how does present-day arithmetic count? One, two, three. Each is one, and all three are just three. That is how you count. If you just adjust your counting for the physical world, it is quite good. But this counting loses all meaning when you want to apply it to the supersensible world. There you have to count quite differently. Of course you can enter the supersensible world and, if you calculate that which is inspired there in much the same way as you calculate things on earth, then you can apply earthly arithmetic; of course you can apply it, but you won't gain anything from it. There is no need to count money there, and you would get nothing out of the other things if you were to treat them with arithmetic as in the physical world and count them in an earthly way. You have to count differently there, I can only sensualize it (it is drawn on the board):

Here you have everywhere \(1=1\), \(1=2\), \(1=3\), \(1=4\), and so on. Not the law of counting, but the law of analysis is the one that allows for real practical application in the world of the soul — not just in the intellectual world. While we can manage with counting here in the physical world, when we synthesize, the arithmetic of the supersensible is an analytical one. The point here is that all numbers are contained in the one. And it will only be possible to study psychology again when the dreadful doctrine of association, which is a subjective thing where one thought is added to another, which does not correspond to reality in the slightest, has finally been removed from the doctrine of the soul. For one is dealing [in the supersensible] with such processes that can only be grasped by such counting and calculating, where unity includes every number. Only when one begins to understand how that which is a unity in a higher world, which can be seen as a unity, actually appears as three in a lower world, does one gradually begin to understand the mystery of three in one and one in three, although it is by no means merely something arithmetic. The arithmetic is only the very least, the beginning of these things. When we enter into the qualitative, which is also contained in the God of the Trinity, then we must also come to count in this way (it is written on the board):

That is, one must proceed to qualitative counting, and qualitative counting is something that is connected with the inner nature of things. Qualitative counting always leads to concrete differentiations, while our synthetic counting leads more and more to abstractions. Try to use today's usual synthetic counting: 1 apple, 2 apples, 3 apples. Well, yes. But if there is an apple, a pear and a plum here, you can no longer remain in the concrete when you add them up: 1, 2, 3; you cannot say that there are 3 apples or 3 pears or 3 plums, but at most you can say that there are 3 pieces, which means that you are entering into the abstract. It is precisely the opposite path that quantitative arithmetic takes to qualitative arithmetic, which leads more and more into the concrete. It has a creative element in the concept of the number contained in the sentence: “For God has ordered the world according to measure, number and weight”. He certainly did not order it like a general orders his troops, but according to the creative, qualitative, analytical order of numbers.

If you say that such things are not necessary today, because we can develop a good religious life without knowing these things, then I say to you: certainly, all this may apply to the faithful, but the pastor must know these things because he must fulfill his task in harmony with the whole course of human development. He must know that these things have a very real significance.

Let me give you an example of where these things can have a very real meaning today. You see, today you learn the Copernican theory of the world at an early age. This Copernican theory of the world is traced back to two sentences of Copernicus, while his third sentence is always suppressed. What today's astronomers do is this: they add up the revolutions of the earth around itself. These rotations of the Earth around itself, around its axis, are now made each year in the path of an ellipse, progressively, over the course of 365 days to 24 hours. But while the Earth is turning around itself, astronomers say that it turns around itself yet another time. You can imagine it like this: When you turn around on your own axis, you make one revolution when you are back to where you started. But if you simultaneously turn around a central point or an interior, you have to turn a little further than one revolution each time. If you now add up 365 plus one, you do not realize that in the world things are different than when a person turns around like that. When the Earth or the world turns once, then the matter becomes concrete, then you have to say: 365 Earth days plus one world day; and if you add that up to 366, it is exactly the same as if you add up 4 pears and 1 apple gives 5 pears. And the error that underlies this has led to the fact that even today people believe that the earth revolves around the sun in the course of a year, which is not the case in reality. It follows behind the sun in a curve, the sun moves in a spiral – (during the following demonstration, it is demonstrated on the board) – the earth follows it in the same spiral. If you look at it this way, the sun is on the line when the sun has set and the earth is here, so look at it this way; this creates the illusion that the earth is moving around the sun. In reality, it follows it in a spiral.

I only mention this, of course I cannot explain it in the breadth in which it should be explained, but it is actually based essentially on a lack of insight into the way in which creating arithmetic and creating geometry work in relation to that which we use as arithmetic and geometry applicable to the sensory world. One must know how little it is right to simply take up the scientific concepts of today; the most important ones are not right. They can easily be taught to people; one can then move from this rolling [of the earth] around the sun to the circling of a nebula, as in the Kant-Laplacean theory and the splitting off [of the solar system] from it. This can even be done very vividly; the object lesson in the sense of today's pedagogy can achieve anything, can't it? You take water and alcohol and let a ball form out of a substance that floats on water, an oil ball, take a piece of a map that you stick with a pin exactly in the middle of the ball. Now you start turning: Tiny spheres separate out and the miniature world system is created. Why shouldn't it be the same outside? For the simple reason that it would be necessary for the great teacher to stand there and stick the giant pin through. When describing an observation, one must describe it very precisely. Otherwise, unselfishness is very good, but this omission of the teacher from an experiment is scientifically far too much unselfishness; because he is there and he must not be denied.

It is true that anyone approaching the renewal of religious life must deal very thoroughly with all those things that today confuse the concepts, that create such confused concepts. He must deal with the fact that they are held to with no less authority than the concepts that are church dogmas. For truly, the Trinity has never been more firmly believed in than modern people believe in such world theories, and they do the latter not with more reason than the others have done or do the former. Today, the belief in authority is only attracted to a different area. And people are truly white ravens when they talk like Herman Grimm – I think I have already told you – who, with reference to the Kant-Laplacean theory, said that a carrion bone around which a hungry dog circles is to be regarded as a more appetizing piece than this world theory, the madness of which later times would wonder at, and will wonder at the fact that this delusion in a time like ours could be adopted by wide circles. Understanding this will one day become a difficult problem for the cultural history of later times.

Emil Bock: There are a number of technical questions regarding the Mass and other services, namely: Should the Mass be spoken freely or read? — What role should freely composed speeches play in the rituals? — At what point should the sermon be in the Mass and what should its length be within the Mass? — Then the question has been raised as to how to arrive at a new selection of sermon texts. What role should congregational singing play? ¹

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, we will first address the question: can the new mass also be read or is a free recitation possible with it and with the other acts? What needs to be said first is this: I naturally had to present the essence of the mass to you and essentially had to present the texts for the four main sections. In a complete mass, the idea is that certain parts and the whole structure of the mass are constructed in a similar way – as I will show – to the sequence of breviary prayers. So you have the complete text of the mass, varying according to the time of year. However, the main things always remain the same, so that if you have to say Mass, you will have to refer to the Missal, which is of course available, and according to common usage there is actually no other way of saying Mass than reading it. Of course, it is perfectly conceivable to know the Mass by heart, but it is not usually done. There is basically no real reason to think that it would be necessary to either read the mass or recite it by heart. It says here: Is the new mass also to be read or is extemporaneous delivery to be aimed for with it and with the other acts? — Extemporaneous delivery is not necessary for the other acts either; it can be read quite well. It is always very nice when our Waldorf school celebrant delivers the free speech in essence, but I have rarely seen anything in the Roman Catholic Church that was part of the liturgy delivered freely.

The next question: the meaning and use of church music in the mass. - Well, an ordinary silent mass can certainly be performed in such a way that one is only dealing with a kind of reading, but originally a mass is actually associated with the recitative of the text, so that at the real liturgical mass one is dealing with a recitation of the mass according to notes. In the missal, you will therefore also find notes if the mass is to be celebrated in a truly liturgical manner. So the text itself is to be read in a recitative-like manner, but in addition, the mass is to be thought of as thoroughly musical, so that in a truly solemn mass, the motifs can also be set to music and the organ music, as well as other music and singing, should play a role.

Regarding the question of congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony: these things, congregational singing, choral singing, antiphony, should not actually disappear from the action; on the contrary, they should be further developed. Congregational singing as such is essentially designed to increase the sense of community, just as the musical and vocal element should not be underestimated. We are too accustomed to regarding language merely as a means of expressing something. When we speak as we are accustomed to doing today, language is essentially only suitable for expressing abstract or sensual things, but it is not really an instrument for expressing the supersensible. You will notice when I express in my lectures that which is to be expressed directly through language as supersensible, that I then try to shape the language and approach a matter from different sides. Rhythm, musicality in general, and the musical-thematic element in particular, is what actually leads us into the supersensible world. In a poem, the prosaic, literal content is basically not what one should look at if one wants the artistic element. Recitation and declamation — I always say this with reference to our eurythmy performances — is completely misunderstood today. The art of recitation and declamation does not lie in emphasizing the content of the prose, but in bringing in the rhythmic and musical and musical-thematic, and thus basically also in the painting of the sound and so on. We should therefore work towards ensuring that this treatment of language and this elevation of the linguistic to song, to the musical, should not only not disappear, but should be developed more and more.

A participant: Could we not already have a new selection of sermon texts, even if it is only for half a year, that would specifically correspond to the situation from a spiritual science point of view, given to us by Dr. Steiner?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, it is not quite so easy to put together a collection of sermon texts in this way. But apart from that, it does not seem to me to be something desirable in the end, that such prescribed sermon texts are handed out. It would perhaps even be good, I think, if you want to build community in such a way that not only the individual communities build community, but that you build a community of pastors, if you were to swear, by some means to be agreed upon, never to adhere to such prescribed sermon texts. By doing so, you would make a significant contribution to revitalizing what you are actually supposed to do. Because you can be quite sure of this: anyone who needs prescribed sermons, who absolutely must have them, should actually be considered a bad preacher, and anyone who can write their own sermons but still likes to use a sermon text as a leader is forgetting how to preach and becoming lazy. It is really a matter of understanding the sermon in a different way, which is not how I have often seen it. You see, in preaching, it is important to be familiar with the Christian doctrine, but also to have a certain command of symbols and images, in the sense that I mentioned last week, and in this way to actually do the work in such a way that you can draw on what can enliven the sermon. Of course, one cannot expect everyone to speak about everything under inspiration, but one must at least strive for the following kind of preparation for preaching: the point is to have the text as such, but one should actually have found it alive, so that the task is then to address the topic; then the preparation should be a kind of meditation. It should consist in devotion to the subject, not in the elaboration of the individual word, but in devotion to the subject. If we really develop this devotion to the subject, then we grow much more together with the matter than if we try to chisel out the word and the like.

Of course, there are all sorts of gradations. Dr. Rittelmeyer recently told the story of how two preachers once discussed whether they delivered their sermons under inspiration. One said: “Well, I deliver all my sermons under inspiration.” The other said, ‘No, I don't do that anymore; the only time I waited for the Holy Spirit was when He said, ’You're a lazy slut!'

Now, these things are of course different according to human abilities. But it is certainly true that we learn to do our preaching better and better if we do it the way I have just indicated.

The next question: The word of Jesus: Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. This saying should be considered in connection with another Bible saying, namely, “Be ye good, as your heavenly Father is good.” You see, these two sayings are only really understandable in context, although they seem to contradict each other. Why, no one is good but God alone. But now, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

Now, if you want to grasp the aspiration, the tendency in man that leads to the good – and with regard to the good, of course, the Christ must be the guide – if you want to understand this tendency, this leading to the good, then you must really grasp that the idea that one can be good impairs being good through and through. Nothing detracts so much from real goodness or at least from the pursuit of goodness as the opinion that one can achieve the good. The good is something that man can only aspire to by presenting it in such a way that, to a certain extent, the model of goodness is unattainable for him. While Christ actually wants to awaken the mood of striving for the good with such words, He presents it in such a way that one should not call Him good, but that one should call the origin of the world good as united in God, thus in Father, Son and Spirit, but not Him as He walks around on earth, even if He lives and is inspired by Christ. He rejects the idea of simply calling that which is walking around on earth good, no matter how strongly it is inspired by the spiritual, because only the pursuit of the good actually constitutes the good, and one cannot truly pursue the good if one does not move it away from oneself into an objective.

Therefore, subjective ethics, the autonomy of ethics, subjective autonomous ethics, is never really a real instruction for the good. So let us understand this connection of the two sayings: Man should strive for a perfection as the Father in heaven is, but never imagine that he can be good. Only the Almighty God is good. So it is a practical instruction for the practice of good deeds. You see, this is a very broad subject. It becomes especially clear when people want to have an explanation of what is called repentance for sins in religious practice, especially in Catholic religious practice. Repentance for sins very often has an extremely selfish coloring, and people should be instructed to bring this selfish tendency out of repentance. What does the feeling of repentance often consist of? It consists in wanting to have been a better person than one actually was. This “wanting to be a better person than one actually was” contains something that, in essence, contradicts a morality imbued with Christ. One must, in essence, take responsibility for one's sins and not want to be considered a better person than one really was. Repentance only makes sense if it strives for an unprejudiced recognition of one's imperfections, if one is inclined to reproach oneself for the full severity of one's imperfections, and if this full recognition gives rise to the resolve — but one that leads to action — to abandon these imperfections. Thus, the essence must lie in the soul's work for itself in the future. Repentance is the intention to discard these imperfections through a precise realization of them. In practice, this can be seen as a teaching that arises from such sayings as the one quoted here.

Another question: could we learn something about textual corruption in the New Testament? Yes, I am not sure what is actually meant by this, if not what I have already discussed in various ways. But perhaps the questioner would be so kind as to say what he actually means.

A participant: For me, it was simply a matter of perhaps getting a few more examples from which one can see even more clearly from which source and with which intention this corruption of the text was undertaken.

Rudolf Steiner: I could, of course, look for specific examples. In general, I would just like to say this: I do not think that much can be gained by looking for intentions behind the corruption of the text. The corruption of the text has basically come about through a more or less self-evident development of humanity. Over time, the fully substantive, most ideal, spiritual substances for the words are simply lost, and the things that can still be fully felt in one generation are basically already pushed towards the words in the next generation. This is how corruptions arise, and they are the most important ones. You can still study this today. You see, today, when we do not have such, I would like to say, inwardly living text in the individual branches of science, we notice exactly the same thing in some of them, if we take a little what in any science tends towards a world view, as was the case with Haeckel, in whom the scientific tends towards a world view; that satisfied him in the highest sense. Even a student of Haeckel, just any student, who simply takes over the subject, who reads what Haeckel himself observed, can no longer have the same thing in the words and can no longer find satisfaction in the world view. And then there are the many descriptions that are given today of embryology, from the first germ cell back to the first. People believe, of course, that by reading about things they can form some idea of them, but very few of those who have written books have had any kind of direct experience of what they are describing; they have only seen pictures. For example, there are very few specimens of the earliest stages of the human germ cell, and even fewer people have been able to see them. Producing such a specimen is, of course, a very difficult matter.

So we can observe the removal of the word from the thing in external science when it is to become a world view; and it is actually this removal of the word from the thing that essentially matters. I would like to say that this is precisely the historical aspect of text corruption. It is the case, for example, that almost all of the oriental texts cannot be used, as can the biblical text if it is taken as we usually have it. It is good to occasionally ask ourselves how what we have today as a text should actually force us to search for a living text. Of course, it will take a lot of work and effort to create the text of the Gospels in such a way that it can apply to the present day. For you, it is enough to first understand that the search for the text is absolutely necessary, and I think that with what I have presented here, you will often come to understand something like this earlier, and if you take the whole of anthroposophy, you will perhaps find a kind of key to understanding in anthroposophy, at least to begin with. Take, for example, such a sentence – I will pick out something, it is not easy, without preparation, to find a characteristic example – take the eighth verse of the seventh chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans – you of course know the context: 'Sin, seizing the opportunity, aroused through the commandment all kinds of covetous desires in me, for without the law sin is dead.'

Now, I do believe that many people think they understand such a statement without further ado. But those who sense something quite profound in such a statement and believe that one really has to go deeper than the interpretation that is often given in a very superficial sense are better off. Because people look at you very strangely when you tell them that something like this has to be taken literally. And the literal interpretation of such a sentence always has a very definite consequence, my dear friends. It has the consequence that normal people today — anthroposophists are not considered normal, but rather crazy — think of you as anarchistic. It is then difficult to make them understand that they must also consider the Apostle Paul an anarchist, because the fact is that the sentence says nothing less than: Sin will not be present if, for example, you abolish state laws. Abolish all state laws, and then there can be no sin. Where there are no state laws, there is no sin. — Let us say, for example, in a flock of sheep, we have no laws, and there is no sin. So when we look after a herd of sheep or a herd of cows, when we look after those creatures that live together in nature simply out of instinct, without intellectually formulated laws being present, then we cannot speak of sin. Sin arises, that is, it shows itself, reveals itself, at the same moment that the law is given, and sin is only the other pole of the law. Sin is thus revealed through the law. But it is not merely a one-sided effect, but rather there is a reciprocal effect; the law produces sin in that human nature works against it. And whereas the animal has no laws, and so can indeed abandon itself to instinct, man's actions are inconceivable as sinful if the law is there. Only when instinctive life is permeated by the power of Christ, which stands as far above nature as instinct stands below nature, is there again that relationship which needs no law. So take this here (see drawing on the board) as the level of the law, any law; that which lies below it in terms of instinct has no law. Where there is law, there is sin. Sin absolutely accompanies the law; but that which lies so far above it is what arises in us as a spiritual-soul impulse through the Christ. There we stand above the law and hold the Christ within us. Then we may dispense with the law. To dispense with the law altogether — that is what people consider to be true anarchism.

But that is exactly what the Apostle Paul meant. He meant that the law is overcome by the body of Christ. I must confess that an example such as this makes it particularly clear to me that today the actual living aspect of Christ's activity is not even considered, because otherwise one would see with full seriousness that the Christ actually had to present the law as that which is to be gradually overcome by him. Not abolished, but overcome, should be the law that is accompanied by sin. It would not be enough just to say what I have just said, but we must go further. We must also realize that the Apostle Paul spoke from a consciousness that also contained the following: He asks himself: Is the law — which can only ever be grasped in abstractions — enough? Is the law enough to banish sin? No, it is not enough to banish sin. Socrates might have believed that the doctrine of virtue was enough, but it is not enough to know what is right; rather, there must be a Christ-power present that counteracts sin, whereas the law can do nothing but make sin recognizable. It makes no sense whatsoever to think of the law in any other way than that it makes sin recognizable. This verse 8 should be translated as I always try to translate it: The tendency to sin was brought about by the legal prohibition, because where there is no law, sin as such cannot be alive. If only the law—the 13th verse should read—if only the law existed about what is good, I would still fall prey to moral death, because only through the law should sin become recognizable. And so on.

Another example: Now then, my brothers, by living in Christ, we are not obliged to the flesh, for he who lives in the flesh alone must perish. But if you receive the Spirit within you and overcome the flesh, you may live, for all who bear the living Spirit within them are destined to be children of the Godhead.

Of course, someone can come today and say that such a translation would be tendentious. But in this sense, one must strive to find the original text of the Gospel, and one will see that there is still truly great in it. But the rule of the spiritual-scientific method is that one must also really produce the text and also allow that to flow into the interpretation, which one can gain by producing the original text.

Now, there is still the question here: The Saints and the Belief in Saints, Invocation of Spiritual Entities. — It is obviously meant to convey the significance of invoking spiritual entities. Now, the fact is that, according to modern consciousness, one cannot, of course, limit oneself to saints established by some church, without one's own conviction leading one to do so. One can therefore only speak in relation to those Christian ancestors whose particular personal value one has recognized. As far as these are concerned, one cannot but say that leaning towards them in order to work in the sense of their power does indeed have a certain meaning, that it gives strength. It must not go so far as to somehow impair the basic feelings one has towards the Divine, towards the Christ, through these things. In the Catholic Church, the veneration of saints often takes on the character of idolatry. This is what must naturally be avoided.

Now comes the question of the immaculate conception of Mary. — Here it is really a matter of truly understanding the Gospel in relation to these things. Let us first take the Gospel of Matthew: “Now the birth of Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together in the flesh, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. But Joseph, her lover, that is, her beloved, who was a righteous man and did not want to accuse her of evil, decided to treat the whole matter as a secret.

This is more or less what was translated into the sentences that are usually found at this point today. So it actually means: Joseph, who understood how to live in the sense of righteousness – you could also say – wanted to treat the whole thing as a mystery. As he was visualizing this in his mind, the image of an angel appeared to him, and the angel said to him: Joseph, son of David, consider Mary your wife, for what is happening is happening through the determination of power in the sense of the Holy Spirit. Call the son she will bear Jesus, for it will be he who will take away the burden of sin from men.

Of course I have to tell you the truth about such things, because there is no other way, but some of you may be shocked by what has to be said as the truth in this case. You know that I have described the time on Earth that lies roughly behind the year 8000. What is concluded in today's geology through analogies and all sorts of things is pure nonsense compared to reality. We have received many fairy tales, but the strongest fairy tales are the things that geologists tell about the Alluvial, Devonian, Tertiary, Silurian, and so on; especially when they get into calculating numbers, then things are certainly interesting, but somehow a realistic thinking is not in it at all. It is sometimes downright funny how that true science deals with such things. For example, there are physicists today who calculate what the earth will be like in a million years, if we imagine certain physical analogies. They then describe, for example, how egg white, if spread on a wall, will glow wonderfully. But on an earth where egg white glows so wonderfully, humans will no longer be able to exist, everything would be extinct. I might say, people always take isolated little facts and then paint the rest of the picture around them. But things are not really like that. When they are seen in the light of spiritual science, they look quite different.

If we go back further than 8000 years, we come to a certain catastrophe on Earth, which I always call the Atlantean catastrophe. Before this catastrophe, the distribution of land and water was essentially different in the areas that we now call the areas of Western civilization. Where the waves of the Atlantic Ocean are today, Atlantis was above. Much of present-day Europe was sea and alluvial land, as was still the case with a large part of America. We are dealing here with the old Atlantis, but in this old Atlantis the physical conditions of life on earth were essentially different from what they were later, after this catastrophe had passed. The conditions were such that, for example, the air was always present with a certain greater intensity in a watery state; man could not have lived there with a substance with which he lives today. In relatively recent times man was still endowed with a substance very similar to the present-day fish substance. And when we come more to the beginning of Atlantis or even to the middle, man was such that he could not be seen better with physical eyes than the transparent jellyfish of the sea. Man was therefore relatively quite different from how he is presented by those who today believe they are pursuing exact science. But he was also different in soul. You know that when spiritual science traces development back, it must go back to about the eighth century BC. That is around the time of the founding of Rome. Until then, we can follow the age in which the intellectual soul or soul of mind was developed. But there was a time when the human soul was very different. The remains of it are still present in a few writings, but these are little understood because people no longer understand this remarkable development of the sentient soul, which was much more directed towards an understanding of the extra-sensory than of the sensory present on earth. If we go back to after the fifth millennium, we come to the time when a culture prevailed that can no longer be compared to today's at all - in my “Occult Science” I called it the ancient Persian culture - and we then come back to the ancient Indian culture and with this to the eighth millennium BC. There we approach the Atlantean catastrophe and then return to Atlantean civilization. However, the use of this word is particularly unusual, because the development of the soul was still a completely, completely different one. For example, it is quite true of ancient Atlantis that, in the case of procreation, there could never have been any awareness of the act in humans, that is, in the human ancestors. Procreation had always been carried out in complete unconsciousness; at most, in the later days of Atlantis, what had happened began to be experienced in the imagination, but this was essentially subjectively colored. But all these things are preserved in the image atavistically, only one must not grasp them roughly, but one must be clear about the fact that these things must be grasped extremely delicately. So the one who wrote the Gospel of Matthew rejected the idea that at that time feelings of procreation had somehow flowed into Mary, and he also rejected the idea that they were present in Joseph. Those who do not know that such things were a natural possibility until the fourth century of the Christian era and that it only stopped then cannot understand this matter even in its outward meaning. So we are dealing with a pure, immaculate procreation because it was unconscious. This is not a means of providing information, but, as I said before, you may or may not be shocked by it, but that is just the way it is. In Atlantis, it was taken for granted that one never spoke otherwise than that the children of men were sent by the gods, and that still extends into the post-Atlantean period and lives on in legends and myths. I advise you to study the Hertha legend in all its profound significance. There is something tremendously significant about the way in which this Hertha saga is connected with the whole spiritual development of humanity in this direction. It is shown how Hertha appears at a certain time of year, [...]² But the slaves who serve her are immediately thrown into the sea, must be killed. The man became aware of the act of procreation earlier than the woman, and those who had become aware of it in this age – this is hinted at in this saga – even had to be killed. These things must be handled with great delicacy; one must not hint at them with crude concepts. One must know something about the development of mankind, then one will be far removed from belferting like Haeckel, who says that the immaculate conception, which is asserted in the Gospel, is an impudent mockery of human reason. Human reason as such has nothing to do with the immaculate conception; according to what man justifiably calls human reason, the immaculate conception could of course not exist in the grossest sense. Yes, of course, people talk about it today as if it were a mystery, even though the words are by no means appropriate: Joseph, who was a righteous man, decided to treat the whole matter as a mystery. — No consideration is given to what led to this sentence, namely that Joseph wanted to direct the whole matter, which has happened, precisely into the mystery, that is, into what can only be perceived in the spirit, thus into what can be perceived in innocence; he really wanted to make a mystery out of it.

The concept of a miracle, as it is often understood today, is not mentioned at all in the Gospels. Rather, the Gospels are concerned with a time when the effect of soul on soul and thus from body to body was much more intense than it is today, and when, let us say, miracles are mentioned, we must understand that this is said entirely from the factual world of the time. These are the things that we must take into account when considering the Gospels. In my cycles on the Gospels, you will find numerous examples of how the concept of a miracle, as understood today, is not present in the Gospels at all. What is a miracle, as it is understood today? I have tried to reveal the resurrection of Lazarus in my book 'Christianity as a Mystical Fact'. If you read there how the so-called miracle of Lazarus is revealed, you will find that it is only possible to penetrate the mystery through supersensible cognition, but that one must simply penetrate the mystery through it.

Miracles are — I do not say this out of some kind of prejudice, but I can say this from the real knowledge of the facts — miracles are what arise in the consciousness of modern man. A miracle is a process that today's man no longer understands, but that could have taken place in the course of human development as a process. It is only because things are no longer understood that they are thought to be miracles. On the one hand, people today help themselves by thinking of things as miracles, but on the other hand, they help themselves by extending what has taken place over the course of a few millennia to 20 million years, whereby the funny thing is that with respect to geological periods, one [researcher] differs from the other by the trivial fact that one calculates some period as being 20 million years in the past, while the other calculates it as being 200 million years in the past. It is only that they are not noticed because one is usually taught only from one side. If you read about some geological period, Devonian or Alluvium, and according to some teaching 20 million years are claimed for their length, then you do not immediately read another geological writer, but you may read it only after ten years, and when he then writes that this geological period dates back 200 million years, then you have long forgotten the other. These things abound in humanity, and today, in all seriousness, everything should be paid attention to. And so, when faced with a mystery such as the Immaculate Conception, it is necessary to understand things in the right way. I have already told you that in addition to the actual dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, [the Catholic Church has also] established [the dogma of] the Immaculate Conception of St. Anne, and of course this should go further back, but that is not possible; I have already spoken about this.

Perhaps we can discuss one or two more questions, because some of you are leaving, so that we cover as much as possible. [Here is the question from Pastor Neuhaus:] The Roman concept of transubstantiation is different from that in Dr. Steiner's new mass formula. Would you (to Pastor Neuhaus) perhaps be so kind as to comment personally.

Constantin Neuhaus: The consecration, the transubstantiation formula, which is in your mass formula, is: Receive with the bread my body, receive with the wine my blood. And in my opinion, these words can only be understood in the sense of Lutheran theory, that the body and blood are expressed symbolically, while the Roman Catholic Church assumes actual transubstantiation, the disappearance of the substance of the bread, and in return the substance of the body of Christ is given. I would ask for a little clarification, but perhaps the question is only interesting for Catholics.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I don't know why you have concluded from the formula I gave this morning that the matter is as you assume.

Constantin Neuhaus: I think that yesterday, when you said mass, the actual consecration formula was the following: Receive my body with the bread. Now Thomas Aquinas did expound this doctrine, that the substances do change in transubstantiation. That has also become part of the people's consciousness. So according to the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, there is no bread at all, only the accidents, only the form of bread... In your mass it says: Receive my body with the bread.

Rudolf Steiner: Is your question based on the fact that I used the expression “with the bread my body”, “with the wine my blood”?

It is, of course, necessary to bear in mind that linguistic usage itself determines what needs to be said. It is not the case that when a Roman Catholic theologian wants to explain transubstantiation philosophically, he needs to explain that the accident is not inextricably linked to the substance. Therefore, you will find in the approved Catholic philosophies that when the concepts of substance and accident are discussed, the corresponding chapter concludes by stating that it is indeed possible to connect the concept of accident with the fact that substance changes and becomes a different substance through the accident. That is the case there. So it is only necessary to understand the matter philosophically for those who want to find their way into the Catholic version. I have expressly pointed out that I have met Catholic priests who have taken everything possible back to Aristotle to help them to understand transubstantiation at all as something conceivable.

Now, you have seen how I meant today how necessary it is to formulate the words in such a way that one can grasp the correct meaning with the sentence. It is something else to simply formulate the sentence “This is my body” or “Receive with the bread my body”. In fact, there is actually no difference, but for today's people it is more vivid to feel the matter if one does not give them direct preparatory instruction in the way that it is actually only treated in the approved Catholic philosophies in the discussions about substance and accident. Perhaps such arguments are also present among the Old Catholics, but in any case they are modeled on the Roman Catholic scholastic philosophies.

If you simply stipulate: This is my body – hoc est corpus mei – then you can cause all the misunderstandings that you could possibly encounter. People don't understand that. But let me present the following image: Let us say I have a friend; I received a note from this friend saying that he had had a son, but due to some obstacles I was unable to see him for three or four years, until the boy could already walk. Now my friend brings him to me, since the opportunity has arisen, and as he enters through the door he says: “Take, I show you my son” or ‘Receive this, this is my son.’

With these words, ‘with what I bring you I show you my son,’ a perfectly possible figure of speech is given to modern man, for I really show him the body when I say: Receive with the bread my body. It is not possible to express it in any other way [that the body is received] than in connection with the bread, not the substance of the body, of course, but that which in the bread passes over into the communicant. It is not a matter here of discussing the concept, but merely of whether the formulation is useful. This formulation was chosen simply to make it clear to today's people — who do not want to get involved in the abstraction that the accident can separate from the substance — with the formula: If I show him something and he sees bread on the outside, then that is not ordinary bread, but it is the body of Christ. That should already be in the formula. This, of course, eliminates the second part of your question: “What is the sacrificial character of the Mass according to Dr. Steiner?” — That is something, as I said, that I wanted to avoid with my formula. Merely this phenomenon, which I have characterized, that the host acquires an aura, that the transformation also becomes outwardly visible, I wanted to express that in some formula that can be grasped more vividly. But I can hardly imagine that the Lutheran interpretation could be heard in this and that it could be taken as the Lutheran view. What must be avoided, of course, is the kind of nonsense that prevails there. I ask you, what does the communicant of today basically imagine, if he has not studied scholasticism, what is actually at the root of it? What does the person imagine today, who communicates as a Catholic or receives the communication, that transubstantiation takes place in the sacrifice of the Mass? What does he really imagine? He may imagine many things. But what does he really imagine?

Constantin Neuhaus: I am of the opinion that the well-informed Catholic has a certain clarity. Because in Catholicism, this point is emphasized to such an extent that the Catholic says to himself: when I communicate, I receive not only the smell and taste of the bread, but also the essence of Christ. He believes that he understands something about communion, and it is remarkable that even primary school children struggle with the concept of transubstantiation. For example, I have to teach in a totally Protestant area, and I experienced just when I had to give communion lessons and was very much concerned with the fact that this point of accident and substance has already been somewhat understood even by children.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, to a certain extent that is true, certainly. I think it is true that these things are right, and it lives in Catholicism. But can one really say that what lives in this way, for example when it is emphasized in Catholicism, leads to a possible clear conception? I have actually hardly found such clear ideas, and I have met theologians with great capacities and discussed a lot with them. I admit that the discussions are very lively, but the great liveliness stops when you enter the theological faculty. As long as you are a second-year student, you admit that you can have a say without getting close to the matter with a real idea. But then, when they enter the theological faculty, people usually become quieter, and I have met an extraordinary number of those who have resigned themselves to not understanding the subject at all. Isn't it true that it is relatively easy to discuss with someone who is not very far along in the formation of such concepts, but with the trained theologians, the discussion will take on a completely different form. I must confess that a conversation I had with one of the most important theologians at the Vienna Theological Faculty about the nature of Christ, which is connected with everything that led up to it, will remain significant to me for a long time. He simply said when I tried to develop my idea of Christ: “Now we come to a point where I need concepts that I am forbidden to think.”

Yes, that is what must be brought into the formulation of the matter and what underlies it: that one takes the process of transubstantiation as a real one, that something does indeed happen through transubstantiation; then it is something different from merely getting stuck in the formalities. I have, after all, characterized in detail what happens there. I have characterized how the process that takes place there is the outer process for an inner developmental process, how it is, so to speak, the polar opposite of it. So I have tried to characterize the matter from the real, and I had to do that because I believe that the concepts I have given here cannot actually be encompassed in any way by the traditional concepts. But that will be the case if a religious renewal is based on anthroposophy. Then it is impossible that one can be required, for example, by anthroposophy itself to lean towards a Catholic or a Protestant or any other confession, but one must just recognize the matter.

Constantin Neuhaus: All this makes a lot of sense to me and I personally like it, because I don't really understand the term transubstantiation either. But the term transubstantiation implies that something is transubstantiated, and I think that what is at issue then is that the substances actually change.

Rudolf Steiner: Because of the use of the word transubstantiation? It is quite right that the word transubstantiation is used, of course, in reference to the word that was mainly used in the tradition of the Mass. It is just a common word that has been taken historically [from tradition]. But I believe that I mainly used the word when I wanted to approach the historical tradition of the Mass in the sense of Catholicism. I believe that I have said “conversion” when I meant the real process. When I myself developed these things, I believe that I used the word “conversion”. But if I say, for example, “I was in a church in Italy and saw the aura after transubstantiation,” then I can of course say that, because the expression “transubstantiation” applies there. But I would never want to force it, because it is quite natural that the expression can be used to characterize a situation. I believe that for those who have been sitting here, the term “transubstantiation” is something perfectly common.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is the sentence in 1 Corinthians 11:30, “Therefore many of you are weak and sickly, and many sleep,” connected with illness and healing through Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is not true that today the two concepts of sin and illness, of sanctification and healing, are very far apart because we have an abyss between the moral world order and the physical world order. But it is absolutely the case that these concepts actually belong together, so that one must say that sin is, in physical terms, quite literally illness, and the healing process is a process that takes place within the soul. At most, one could perhaps take offense at the fact that one process looks more like an objective one and the other more like a subjective one.

Constantin Neuhaus: I remember that it is said: Receive the body of the Lord, which preserves you from sickness of body and soul. There is a connection with the healing of the soul through Communion. Now I wanted to point out the passage in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 28: “But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.” Now it continues: “For he who eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not discern the Lord's body from common food. For this reason many are sickly among you, and many sleep.” Is there also a connection here?

Rudolf Steiner: I have already hinted at this. I once said: One must, of course, be aware that someone who, let us say, comes from a weak constitution to a very healthy area, which the robust person experiences as a delight, may be ruined by this healthy area. That means that the unprepared person, that is, the one who does not approach healing in the right way, is, well, I would say, destroyed, is ruined by being given something as a cure that can only help him when he can experience it in the right way. That is it. Basically, there is only a slight difference between illness and death. We are constantly dying. We begin to die the moment we are born, and the moment of dying, of actually dying – what one calls dying – is really nothing more than, I would say, the integral of all the differentials of dying between birth and death. We collect all the individual deaths in every moment of our lives. That is what must be considered right away, that in such a sentence “therefore many are sick among you and a part have fallen asleep” the same cause is present, depending on one's state. Because dying is only quantitatively different from being sick. We experience as illness that which is partial dying, if these are partial dying processes that intervene only in such a way that we can overcome them. We experience them as death if we cannot overcome them.

• 1. Editor's note: The questions were apparently submitted to Rudolf Steiner in writing, because he reads them again in the course of the following remarks.
• 2. The transcript contains a gap here. For more on the Hertha saga, see Rudolf Steiner's lecture of December 21, 1916 in the volume “Zeitgeschichtliche Betrachtungen” 1. Teil, GA 173.

My dear friends! Today we have something to discuss that is very intimately connected with what can be felt from the whole of today's spirit of the age as the need for religious renewal. First of all, I have to present to you what can lead to the creation of a kind of breviary. This breviary should be what gives the pastor the strength to work, and perhaps I may take this opportunity to point out that in this respect, too, we should not confuse the intellectual with what, in the truest sense, can be the religious impulse that comes from the whole human being. Here it is really a matter of us communicating properly. There is a great deal – and this includes, in particular, because it has just been mentioned in the questions, charity – there is a great deal that must, so to speak, flow naturally from the mind, that must, as a matter of course, emanate from the pastoral care, but the pastoral care must first have acquired the appropriate mind. And that is why, to a certain extent, things that are happening inwardly are even more important today than the intellectual description of some external measures. The latter follow naturally in many respects when the inner life is in order.

Now I do not intend to go so far as to compile a literal breviary right now, but rather to bring about what a breviary can achieve. For the man of today, a breviary can no longer consist merely of reciting prayers, but must be a kind of emotional meditation in the fullest sense. Now I would like to give you the elements that, according to my findings, should make up what the pastor should experience over the course of a year, so that he can prepare himself in the right way and perform the pastoral ministry in the right way.

We begin with the time that lasts from, say, the end of November to around the end of December, until Christmas. So we begin with what can be called the Advent season. This Advent season is felt in the right way by us when we go through it as preparation for the Christmas season itself. But this can only be the case if we truly awaken within us all that is, as it were, alive in the development of the world and of humanity itself within such preparation, and these are essentially the following details for the Advent season. He who wants to live through this Advent season should first direct his meditation to that which, as a certain mystery, is included in what can be called the Word, the Logos. (The following is written on the board):

1. Word (Logos)

He should feel, in particular, how the concept of the Logos must be expanded so that one feels what it contains in everything that is actually the world, that one feels the working of the Logos in the blowing of the wind, in the moving of the clouds, in the course of the stars, the sun and the moon, in the becoming and growing of everything that surrounds us, but also in all that is becoming in man, without man adding anything to it through his own power of soul development at first. In this process, we do not yet feel the Logos or the Word in its entirety, but the most essential thing about meditation is that one begins with an incomplete beginning, like the plant with the root, and that one allows what one begins with, as it grows within oneself, to become what it can become. The second thing that can be particularly felt during this time is what I would like to call the commandment, (it is written on the board):

2. Commandment

that is, what arises when a person looks more inwardly. One could say: If one wants to visualize what is meant by this commandment or law, then one can turn, on the one hand, to the Old Testament image of the proclamation of the law to Moses at the burning bush, or, on the other hand, one can try to feel what is still felt today in ritual terms as the right thing to do when completing Jewish worship by saying: O Adonai. The third thing to focus on is, I would say, the natural event (it is written on the blackboard):

3. Natural Event

with its necessity, which must be felt in such a way that the person who sees both the sprouting and the destructive forces of nature, who sees, let us say, the proliferation of a jungle as the characteristic of growth, who sees earthquakes or volcanic eruptions as the characteristic of destruction, feels the necessary power of nature to become. In essence, this is the feeling that properly brings us to what the Old Testament calls the root of Jesse. The fourth thing we have to delve into is what can now be called the moral force in man, which in our time speaks from some vague depths as conscience, for example. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Moral Power

This is essentially what is already felt in the sense of the Old Testament as the source in man, through which he is a closed self in relation to the outside world, which can therefore well be called: the key that opens and no one locks, that locks and no one opens. We have meditatively immersed ourselves in those points that can also be felt with regard to the human being himself. If one then turns more outward, one awakens in oneself the light that pours through the world, but at the same time one feels it by taking that which is there for the senses as light and, for the spirit, as the justice of the universe. (It is written on the board):

5. Light: Justice

In the languages of earlier times, right means something that is connected with “judging”, and this in turn is connected with the ray. One can then feel how that which is felt as luminous justice penetrates into the darkness, into the shadow, as the invigorating element that works into the shadow of death. It is images that we must mainly devote ourselves to, and from this pictorial composition, after we have, so to speak, felt the sun of righteousness, the possibility arises for us to let the sun of righteousness arise from this image, when we have felt this deeply, and also that which is summarized in one the good and the evil, that it turns out for the good through the power that radiates from it – not radiating from evil, but from that which we are to grasp – so that we do not place ourselves alone among those who claim justice through a certain inward arrogance, but also among those who are recognized as sinners. Finally, as we pass through this series of images, we rise to the perception of Christ, (it is written on the board):

6. Christ

who unites life with death and death with life. And finally, from there, I would like to say, we can be brought into the perspective that leads directly to Christmas, the perspective through which we can see the Christ in the Jesus who is also called Immanuel in the New Testament, because in Jesus is God. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Jesus = Immanuel

If we meditate on these images in the organic context just characterized during the Advent season, then this is what can be lived out, as I would like to show you using this example: by inwardly expressing what we have experienced in words, which might sound something like this:

The word permeates heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human soul, the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that in the early days of human development, the language that was given and which then led to poetic forms, to the art of language in humanity, was never given than from such an inner experience of the cosmic currents and from such an experience of the world, so that every sentence in older languages and also in older poetry can be related to something like that.

When we have gone through this way to the Christmas season, we should then actually use the following four weeks until January 25 to understand the essence of this Christmas season in a holistic way. And it is connected with the understanding of this essence of the Christmas season, a large part of what can also be called the understanding of Christ. I would like to say that it is important to cross the threshold from the Advent season through the consecration evening, through the Christmas night to the actual Christmas celebration. What can we feel when we are really standing in the world as human beings? Well, my dear friends, we can feel that everything I have given you now as a meditation for the Advent season, no matter how vividly it was in us, in a certain sense destroys our humanity, as we experience these things inwardly, I would say, as an inner perception, but we do not understand them. I would like to say that throughout the whole Advent season, one believes to understand it, but precisely by having gone through it, one gets the feeling that understanding must first follow, the word must first become a name that makes sense to us, that makes the word understandable to us. And whereas we used to feel, I might say, with a certain depression, the word flowing through the world, we now become aware of it as power, as the power of becoming of existence, the name of which we have grasped; and we become further aware of it as the active factor in all activity. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Name: The power of existence of being.
2. Active being.

The commandment ceases to be a mere intellectual concept that one is supposed to obey; one becomes aware of a power of being that also prevails in the moral realm, and one becomes aware, as a third thing, of how the naming and the named are one. Here, in the quiet interior, lies the experience of the sense of self. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Name to name

The natural law ceases to be mute, it begins to speak: name to name. And in this naming of the name, we now feel through Christ as that which leads through illness and death, through darkness and bondage. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. The Guide through Death and Darkness

And what was previously only felt as a kind of glow of justice flowing through the world is revealed to us as something that belongs to our own being in this experience of the Christmas season; the light of justice is transformed into the ancestor Christ. (It is written on the board):

5. Ancestor Christ

And then we feel how man needs Christ, how he lives unreconciled with the earth without Christ, how the earth can only bring him something that, in a certain sense, takes him away from the spiritual. If we allow these feelings to precede, we can see the reconciliation of earth and heaven emerging from them. (It is written on the blackboard):

6. Reconciliation of Earth and Heaven

And then one can feel in a very natural way how the earth denies the spirit in a certain way and now something is happening in one whereby one comes to the spirit that the earth cannot give. (It is written on the board):

7. Spiritualization of the earth

I would like to emphasize, my dear friends, that I try to give the words as I am giving them right now, because I believe that a living force is already at work in the words, and because, when one gives the words in a certain way and the other person immerses himself in the word in full inner freedom, then, if the words are chosen correctly, one can arrive at much, much more than is originally contained in these things, or at least than is contained in them according to the use of language. So I would like to express things in such a way that the word can come to life in you in a certain sense. Once more I would like to give an example of how one can summarize what has been experienced here by constantly looking at Christ Jesus in the Spirit:

In the man on earth He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him He speaks the word about His own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens
In Him, a new ancestor has appeared to man
Through Him, reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him, matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

The experience of the Christmas mystery should actually extend into January, until, yes, let us say, January 22, 23, 24, 25. The time that now comes, until about February 23, 25, should be devoted to a meditative sense of what Jesus became in his transformation of humanity.

It is necessary, my dear friends, that we also feel how, through such a deepening in all becoming, being and weaving, how through such a feeling the pastor of souls can automatically come to open the testament and take from it the things that he then also brings to humanity in the reading of the gospel, and how he can come to carry out what he is to bring to humanity for understanding. In this time, which is the time of February, the third season for the Christian, we will meditate in particular on the way Jesus becomes wise. (It is written on the blackboard):

1. Jesus becoming wise

Everything that we can recognize, for example from the appearance of twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, everything that can otherwise be recognized about the development of Jesus in his youth, belongs in this meditation. Secondly, however, we are to find our way into the meditation of the one who cannot be tempted, who cannot really be tempted in temptation. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. He who cannot be tempted

Thirdly, we are to confront that which lies in a concept that we are actually to feel completely; that is the concept that the One who becomes wise, the One who in temptation is not to be seduced, is the Son of Man. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. The Son of Man

is therefore the one who is intimately related to all humanity, but who, due to the fact that he entered into earthly existence under the conditions you already know, does not represent that human being who bears the disease of sin, but rather that human being who bears within him the calling to fulfill the nature of the human being in such a way that the disease of sin may fall away. This, however, leads directly to what the fourth aspect has to present: the World Physician. (The following is written on the blackboard):

4. The World Physician

that is, the one who heals sick humanity. We can apply to ourselves everything in the Gospels that relates to this, and we can bring it to others in the appropriate way. But only through this are we properly prepared for what we are to feel about the Gospel and, in general, through our relationship with Christ Jesus as the special way in which Christ Jesus finds the disciples. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. The Finding of the Disciples

There are infinite depths to the Gospel narratives when we make the meditation just on these, on the way the Christ is approached by his disciples, how they follow him, and so forth. It is only when we have this feeling that we have a correct sense of the next, of the teacher, (it is written on the board):

6. The Teacher

by the Teacher in the sense in which I have indicated it to you in the course of these lectures, in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. And only when we have felt this will we be able to experience inwardly what I have said about the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, because the earthly kingdom is actually destined to perish, and so the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. (It is written on the board):

7. Establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom

We have immersed ourselves in an understanding of Jesus in this way, and in a sense we have become mature through it. Then we have become mature in a sense to the point of Christian self-knowledge. This would then have to be fulfilled from the end of February to March 21 to 25, or so. And we would come to such human self-knowledge by properly fulfilling the period of Lent, the time of fasting, which of course must essentially take into account the process of transformation within. In this way, the human being would first feel how the earth takes hold of him with its forces, but how he, through this taking hold of the forces of the earth, is, as it were, making his way with the decline of the earth. (It is written on the board):

1. Earthly Decline

But precisely from such a feeling of earthly decline, another feeling can arise, which I would like to characterize in the following way. One senses that in all that announces itself as external nature, there is an element of decline. One feels connected to this element of decline through the nature of one's body, and one is seized by the fear that the moral within oneself must also perish. Thus, one senses a danger for the moral in the face of becoming earthly. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. Danger for the moral sense.

Certain denominations accommodate this sentiment by ordering fasting, that is, not eating as sumptuously as is otherwise the case during the year, but rather abstaining. In this way, although it is attempted in a physical way and such physical things should actually be far removed from our time, there is indeed an increased sense of the human being within himself, and with it a transition from the otherwise merely natural feeling to the finer feeling with regard to the moral. However, fasting must not be arranged in the way it is often arranged in the Roman Catholic faith. Recently, we learned of a decree issued by the bishop to whose diocese Basel also belonged in the 12th and 13th centuries; in this episcopal ordinance, the provost of the Basel cathedral was obliged to slaughter eight pigs every day at Christmas for his canons – I believe there were twelve of them. I think there were more like 26 canons, but that's enough. In any case, the menu that was indicated was more than enough for Christmas, thanks to an episcopal decree. And then it was also indicated how to fast. But I could not find out that through this fasting precisely that could be achieved, which I have now indicated to you as the meaning of the Lenten commandment. But then, when this danger to morality has been felt, one can also have a sense of the distinction between what is actually the eternal heritage of man and how this eternal heritage of man, which is to be restored through Christ, differs from what man has become through mere earthly existence. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Eternal heritage of humanity and temporal humanity.

And now, and this can also be the case, a strong feeling should arise from this, how man as an earthly human being is in need of healing, how he is in need of the leader, how he is in need of light, how he is in need of a transformation for that kind of mind that he has only from earthly forces, how he is in need of that kind of mind that he has only as an earthly human being. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Needing healing

5. Needing a guide

6. Needing light

7. Needing a change of mind

We have thus characterized something of what we are to live through as meditation during the March time of the year, February to March, during Lent, and are now approaching what arises as the contemplation of Christ's death as the March-April time that fills the Easter season. The first thing we are to include in our meditation is looking up to heaven. Let us try to have a sense that the Easter season is connected with the fact that, in a sense, the spiritual falls away in the sky, that we are pushed towards a physical relationship. So (it is written on the board):

1. Looking up to the Physical Sky

The second thing we are to feel, looking up to the physical sky on the one hand, is the grave, in reference to Christ's descent into the grave. (It is written on the board):

2. Grave.

The third, which we should then feel deeply, is death as the effect of being in the earthly body. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Death

We will try to put ourselves in these feelings during Passion Week, in order to find the right way to make the transition during Easter days, to feel the resurrection as the effect of being a spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Resurrection

But then, when we have grasped the resurrection, when resurrection stands before us, as we have tried to do in our lectures, then the right worship of the one God arises, but then also the right self-containedness, the right “Christ in me.” (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Worship
6. Christ in me

And only after all this, what the felt connection between looking up at the starry sky, but which determines the times, and looking down at the grave, feeling death in the body, feeling the resurrection as a spirit, permeating ing of our soul with devotion in worship, of the closing in on itself of the power of Christ, all that can be deeply felt can then be summarized in what can be called the Christian confession, which is best achieved through meditation. (It is written on the board):

7. Confession

And now we come to what the May days, April 24 to May 25, can encompass. Once we have gone through all this, the days of May will give us a sense of the immediate presence of the supersensible, which we can learn to perceive in the way the resurrected Christ Jesus walks with his disciples, insofar as the Gospels give us clues. (The following is written on the board):

1. The Presence of the Supersensible

From this presence of the supersensible, from what we can feel from the fact that we feel, just as things surround us in relation to our eyes and ears, so the beings of the supersensible surround us, from this a feeling for the existence of the moral arises. (It is written on the blackboard):

2. The Existence of the Moral

And only when we have developed the right feeling for the existence of the moral will we be ready to perceive the external phenomena of the world as appearance; before that, it will always remain more or less a cliché. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. World as Appearance

But then, when we perceive the world as appearance, this carries us over to a perception of the truth that is hidden in the world. (It is written on the board):

4. Hidden Truth

And now we all have within us the elements that enable us to penetrate more concretely with the Christ, to penetrate with the Risen Christ. (It is written on the blackboard):

5. Penetrating with the Risen One

Only in this context can we really have a proper sense of how to be a disciple, not of someone facing death, but of the Risen One, which is what Paul then became. (The following is written on the board):

6. Disciple of the Risen One

And then you can feel with him in his world, feel in the spiritual world, feel in a different world. (It is written on the board):

7. Feeling in a Different World

And now we come to the time of Pentecost, that is, to the time of the appearance of the Holy Spirit, May-June. If we have gone through all this in advance, if we feel we are in another world, we get an idea of how we can have a new living realization, not the realization that we peel off as words from the things around us. So (it is written on the board):

1. New Living Realization (gospel)

We are beginning to feel the gospel in its liveliness, and now it turns out that we are learning to feel it promisingly, that a moral world is emerging, because the moral will be its continuation after the demise of the purely natural world. The second thing is therefore the prospect of the existence of the moral. (It is written on the board):

2. Prospect of the existence of morality

This will be a very concrete sensation when we have first gone through everything else, after we have come to the feeling of danger for the moral during Lent. And after we have opened up this prospect of the being of this moral, we learn to recognize, I might say, how the truth in the spirit, holding itself up, floats away from all earthly heaviness. (It is written on the board):

3. Truth that holds itself in the spirit.

This is something that one must first experience separately in its concreteness in order to have it as a human being. Everything we can experience on earth, everything we can combine through the senses and with the mind, carries within it a certain element that I would like to compare pictorially with the following: Imagine an athlete stepping up to us and showing us a weight that says, let us say, 1000 kg. We marvel at his enormous strength. But then he shows us that there is nothing inside by shaking it, and we stop believing in the reality of the appearance. Why do we stop believing in the reality of the appearance? Because we see that the earthly power of gravity is lacking, and the earthly ceases to have a being for us in the true sense of the word when it lacks the earthly power of gravity. The spiritual has the inner gravity, the inner power of retention. We do not get a correct sense of this inner power of retention of the spirit until we have gone through the things I have spoken of. But then, when we have gone through this, we realize that what appears to us separately in spirit as the truth of the world is also present in material things, so that it is not the material things that are an illusion, but only their appearance as mere matter, that matter is actually spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

4. Matter as Spirit

When we have sensed this, then, my dear friends, we must experience something like an invasion of the power that we have gained through this entire meditation into our word. That is the moment when, in our inner meditation, what can be expressed by the words: “My tongue is loosed,” arises. (It is written on the board):

5. The tongue is loosened.

One senses the word of the world in the spoken word. One senses it as something that one experiences, I would say, in the utterance of the word itself; just as one has a taste when swallowing food, so when one speaks the word, when the tongue is loosened in this sense, one senses what the word as a world word allows us to feel, not just to understand. One then feels oneself in the word, one feels oneself raised up out of what our mere body is, one feels oneself weaving with its essence on the waves of the word, one feels the liberation. (It is written on the board):

6. Feeling of liberation

And then one also feels the union with that which has liberated one, the union with the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard):

7. Union

We now come to the so-called St. John's time, June-July. We have, in a certain way, meditatively completed what we must, after all, to a high degree work out with ourselves as human beings. We are now ripe to immerse ourselves in what is going on around us, and we are indeed called upon to do so by what has already been prepared in the outer world. My dear friends, we can look at what is happening and has been prepared in the outer world in such a way that our inner eye is not spiritually solar; then we see the plant world, prepared in spring, extending into the ripening of the high sun, but we do not feel the spirit in the making concretely and distinctly enough. Only when we have brought all this with us to the time of June, for the training of our spirit, do we also experience the spirit in the making. (The following is written on the board):

1. Spirit in Becoming

And when we experience the spirit in becoming, then, in a sense, all being continues for us; we feel, in a sense, when we look beyond the seed, how the seed does not merely conclude with its upper fruit, but carries within it the power, which we feel spiritually, to shoot up further. And we feel how the long light of night at this time carries within it the power to become even brighter spiritually. That the growth of the light of night can remain until the time when the actual summer begins is transformed into a spiritual growth of the universe. We feel that which in pre-Christian times could only be felt by the world, that in the post-Christian era, when we can relate to Christ in the right way, it transforms into the spiritual vision in the becoming of the light in the darkness. That which we have developed for Christ in us is also carried into nature. We also feel the light in nature outside as the spiritual in the darkness. From what we feel in the continuation of the power of growth in the plants, in the continuation of the becoming light, we are given images that are hidden in the world, which we grasp in the imaginative life. We are given the power to express ourselves in images. We learn to follow the Pentecostal call, we learn to preach. We learn to preach by learning to penetrate nature spiritually. We learn to preach by developing a deep feeling for nature, by being able to say to ourselves: the plants do not stop growing there, but the spiritual extends beyond their physical growth. The light also shines where it is on the wane. We understand the words of John: 'I will decrease, but thou shall increase'. Thus we have a sense for the light in the darkness, for the becoming in the being. (The following is written on the board):

2. Light in the Darkness. Becoming in Being.

We feel nature around us and become aware that what we feel around us, wherever we carry the spirit through our mind's eye, has a relationship to our sleeping, but that we are unconscious when we experience our sleeping, and that by looking out [into nature] we feel the waking sleeping of nature. (It is written on the blackboard):

3. Nature's waking sleep.

And we feel, my dear friends, how that which was the Christ impulse can now actually be carried into the contemplation of the outer world. The time is ripe for this, because the present time must spiritualize a Christ-less natural science, to christen it; otherwise no new formation of religion arises.

The description of this process through the year in the early Church has come to an end; the time had not yet come when it was possible to carry the Christ impulse out into the outer natural world. You see how what was given in a certain abundance for the preceding period passes over into something that now has no relation at all to the development of time. You must begin — if you stop with the old development of the church — to do something like what the Catholic Church does when it has developed the Gospel up to the time of Pentecost and developed it out into the time of St. John: you must adhere to the feasts of the apostles, you must adhere to the feasts of the saints, to the feasts of Mary, you must adhere to the Acts of the Apostles, you must adhere to the letters of Paul. But basically you do not have that innermost relationship to what actually only emerges here and deepens more and more in the following time. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, had the Gentile view, which related to nature, to connect with the Jewish view, which related to the inner man. Therefore, if we feel very deeply during this time: What was the consciousness of John as the forerunner of Christ Jesus, how did he experience the Christ, and how did he, above all, express his own activity in relation to the appearance of the Christ? If we then find the transition [to the question]: How was Paul's life in relation to the living Christ? — and if we draw a comparison in ourselves in this time of John between John and Paul, then we lead over in the right way to the actual task of Paul, which is felt to be so because it could not have been fulfilled in its time.

But, my dear friends, we are not getting anywhere here; we only have three points, whereas we used to get seven points in a very natural way. And we must be content with the inner development, with the meditative development of these three points, for the time around St. John's Day. We must feel what the spirit gives us in a more lively way, how it expands, I might say, into the distance, but thereby also has less content than what arises for the spirit in what has gone before. Therefore, anyone who wanted to continue schematically with what I have given would not be able to arrive at a correct inner handling of what I must actually describe as the meditative content of the month of John for the pastor.

This afternoon I will also write down the time from July to August for you. This is the time when we experience the actual maturing of nature in the Christian sense. This is also the time when we will be particularly moved by what Paul says about his perception of the living Christ, his rapture into a spiritual world. For we will, so to speak, feel that which we previously sensed as the spirit in the process of becoming, as the presence of this spirit in the ripening nature that surrounds us. We will feel, when we can immerse ourselves in the right way in what has come to fruition, how the light has really shone in the darkness, in everything that is out there, where the light lives on in the ripening, and we will be able to feel how that which comes into being, that which lives on in the ripening, can also take root in us. We can only feel this if we can now experience, out of the earlier feeling of the waking-sleeping spirit, the calm of the August nature and the spiritual that is weaving in the calm, living in the splendor of the sunlight, and we will be able to transfer this image to that which we can experience in ourselves through Christ. Then, as a fourth point, a very lively experience of the external world emerges, and a fourth point follows from the other three. In a sense, the external and the internal come together in us. In this way, one can sense external and internal maturity, and one gets the images for inner maturity from the fact that the external fertilizes one.

I would like to continue from there in the afternoon and write down the last few points for the rest of the time.

My dear friends! I have been meditating on the course of the year up to the time that would fall roughly on 21-23 July to 22-23 August, the time that I have called the time of ripening. If we permeate ourselves with the world during this time, let ourselves be permeated by the world, then we feel - after we have immersed ourselves in meditation in what I presented this morning - not only how the spirit works in what is becoming and, so to speak, towards the light, but we feel the becoming of the outside world itself as spirit. And I can then say for this time in the same sense as I did for the other times in the morning, that is, for the time erwa from July 22 to August 23: Firstly, becoming as spirit that fills. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. Becoming as spirit that fills.

Secondly, I will try to feel how the light not only continues to work as I said during the transition from the time of St. John to this time, but how the light is born, as it were, in the darkness. So: the effect of light in darkness. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Effect of light in darkness

And when I can feel this, I will sense all around me the calm of the spirit weaving in nature. This morning I already pointed out how the whole, which matures there, appears to me as poured out calm, in which the light of the sun blows spiritually. So: the calm of the spirit weaving. (It is written on the board:)

3. The tranquility of weaving the spirit.

And fourthly, I feel myself indistinctly in the outer spiritual, as part of the spiritual, thus: the co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The co-experiencing of the outer in the spirit.

This would be meditation, which can be developed by watching nature mature in August, and we will find that it is precisely during this time that Paul's writings can have such an effect on us if we approach them with understanding. While in previous periods the contrast between John and Paul should be placed before our souls or by us before the soul of the community, it becomes particularly significant for this time if we place the full significance of Paul before ourselves or before the community.

Then we come to the time when summer draws to a close and autumn sets in, when nature gives us that mood that can be called the expectation of the gifts of ripening, when we expect how that which has first worked on us as ripening will then fall to us. This is therefore the time from August 23 to September 23. As this ripening process unfolds, we will look to the spirit, in the dying away of the outward budding of nature, in the dying away of nature itself. (The following is written on the board:)

1. Look to the spirit

Secondly, we will have confidence in the power of that which lives in dying, since we see how these gifts are, as it were, brought to us by nature as it fades away. So (it is written on the blackboard:)

2. Confidence in the spirit

We will learn to revere the power that reveals itself to us in withering nature, in nature that fades away for our senses, from which the spirit confronts us, especially in view of what becomes of us from nature, in view of the harvest. We will learn to revere the power of the world in this nature.

3. Worship of the Power of the World.

Now we are ready to feel how what comes to us as gifts of the harvest does not confront us in images of the external world, but how the external world itself becomes increasingly darker, and we feel ourselves surrendered to what comes to us as a gift as the gifts of nature come to meet us. We can then feel our own inner radiance in the darkening external world. (It is written on the board:)

4. Radiant interior in the darkening outer world

And we will now condense the feelings we used to have towards the maturing into a grateful look at the radiant maturing of our own becoming. (It is written on the board:)

5. Grateful regard for the ripening of our own radiance.

These are the feelings that, as you can see, are, to a certain extent, much more abstract when they are expressed than those we have developed for Advent, for Christmas, for Easter and so on; but that is the given.

And now we come to the time from September 23 to October 23, when we experience the gifts we can receive and the harvest of the world. In beholding what is taking place there, where the world literally imposes a moral relationship on us, our feeling spiritualizes in beholding. It is impossible for man, when he feels in a fully human way, not to experience with gratitude what he can feel at the time of the harvest. (It is written on the board:)

1. The feelings spiritualize in beholding.

Our whole relationship to the world, even as it is a relationship to nature, acquires a moral character; we develop a moral view of the world. (It is written on the blackboard:)

2. Moral world view

But just as we are morally perceiving the world, it is as if the world would be forgotten as such with the approach of the harvest and as if it would become dark. (It is written on the blackboard:)

3. The world is forgotten and darkens

It is precisely in this world that is eluding us and darkening that we are compelled to withdraw into our inner selves. The luminous inner self can best learn a prayerful mood in this autumn meditation, or rather, in the meditation of the world moving towards winter. (It is written on the blackboard:)

4. The luminous inner self learns to pray.

Here meditation takes on the character that it very often, I might say as if by instinct, takes on in the case of deeper philosophical natures. By contemplating the world for a long time and forming their ideas, deeper philosophical natures very often have the feeling that all existence is only provisional because, as it presents itself to us, it does not contain seeds for the future, but because it fades away. In this mood, the mood for prayer best develops for meditation. In this mood, I would say, in this helpless mood, where the world has disappeared from our radiant inner being, it is also where we begin to pray while meditating, that is, we begin to turn to something. Here we best learn the necessity of the commandment or law. (It is written on the board:)

5. Feeling the necessity of the law.

But just by seeing the approach of the spirit, by experiencing the approach of the spirit inwardly in meditation, one feels something like a faintness in the spirit. We can say that the overabundance of the spirit can be felt there, this almost nightmare-like feeling of the spirit. (It is written on the blackboard)

6. The overabundance of the spirit is felt.

It is indeed an absolutely self-evident process that from Johanni onwards – where we have seen how only three stages of our inner meditative experience can come – through the following months, it so happens that in August there are four stages, then five stages, then six stages. This is something quite necessary. As we approach the Christmas season, the inner life of the spirit becomes more differentiated again, we live our way into a more differentiated life.

And now we come to the time from October 23 to about November 23 or 24. This is the time when everything can guide us through the following meditation: We have empathized deeply with the growth and maturation, but then also with what the decline of growth and maturation is and the approach of the gifts out of the decline. We have learned to apply all this to our own inner life. We are, to a certain extent, living with nature and can now, first of all, have the feeling of how a power such as that which brings us the harvest gifts wants to stir in us as well. But precisely now, when we still have a vivid echo, we can feel towards nature in decline how our will is without drive. (It is written on the blackboard:)

1. The will without impulse.

One feels that the moral should enter into the will. (It is written on the board:)

2. The moral wants to seize the will.

Now one can prepare oneself for the mood in which one actually finds Christ's will for the first time. You can say to yourself: I see the world around me, but what I see is not the world. I am seeking a real world. The world is a decayed world; what I see is not the world. You must have already mustered the courage to find the world somewhere else than in what you see and hear and perceive with the other senses. (It is written on the board:)

3. What I see is not the world.

You have to have the courage not to want to see the sun where it was in April, not to perceive the spirit where it sprouts and sprouts, but in the darkness, in death I must seek the sun. (It is written on the board:)

4. In darkness, in death, I must seek the sun.

But through this one will be able to feel oneself in darkness, (it is written on the board:)

5. Man is himself in darkness.

One feels, while one used to feel with the world, now the world is dying. (It is written on the board:)

6. In man the world dies

Everything can now come together in the question (it is written on the board:)

7. How does the world live again in man?

Then the Advent mood can come, which I characterized in the morning as the first one, which begins with the sensation of the word, with the sensation of the Logos. We have truly come through the moods of the year to be able to feel what the Logos is, and we can now develop the mood in the Advent season that is to lead up to the Christmas season.

May I read to you the experiment that I began this morning, such as how, by meditatively surrendering to what I have written on the board here, the meditation can be experienced inwardly in these words, how these words can be experienced in a breviary-like manner.

For the Advent season:

The word flows through heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, through itself to the hidden

It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness
It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now the Christmas season:

In the earthly man, He speaks from nature of the mystery of the world
In him, He works as the creative power of the world, full of light
In him, He speaks the word about his own nature
In his speaking, the gate of death and darkness opens.

In Him a new ancestor has appeared for man
Through Him reconciliation with the heights of the world is achieved
Through Him matter reveals spirit, spirit creates matter.

And in the time following Christmas, when we reflect for ourselves and with the community on those parts of the Gospel that deal with Jesus' youth until his preparation for death, when we meditate ourselves in the way I showed you this morning, we can summarize this meditation in the words:

And walking on earth, the power of wisdom grew in him
And he could not be reached by the tempter
The son of the lost human being
The healing power of the world
The disciple finds in his being
From it he taught
And founded the kingdom of the spirit in the sphere of the senses.

And the time of Lent:

The earth sinks from its original state
An abyss is destined for the good sense
Earthly man has lost the heritage of eternity
The sick require healing
A leader must arise for the directionless
The light must shine for him in the darkness
The power of the senses must turn spiritually.

And so, in the spirit of the meditations and Easter Gospels mentioned this morning, we come to the following Easter saying:

I see heaven's radiance
I feel the grave as a spiritual effect
Death comes to me as a physical fall
The resurrection is placed before my spirit
The resurrection lives in my prayers
The Risen One lives in me
My mind is directed towards Him.

Now the walk on earth after the resurrection, the time that follows Easter, before the time of Pentecost:

The supersensible has revealed itself
The meaning of good is the germ of existence
The sensory sphere is only appearance
Truth secretly rules being
I permeate myself with the power of the Risen One
I want to be a disciple of the Risen One
With Him, I want to be a being of another world.

Whitsun time, June:

Insight in the spirit can live,
In a new world, the meaning of good will take effect
In the spirit, truth carries itself
In the image of the mind, it reveals itself
It loosens my tongue
It frees my soul
It unites the divine with the human.

And we come to the time of St. John:

In the becoming of space and time, the spirit weaves
In the darkness of matter, the spirit is powerfully active, forming images
A being awakens in the sleep of the sensory world.

We come to the time of Paul, the time of ripening, July to August, the time after John:

The spirit rises from the world of becoming
In the darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the web of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Toward September 23, in anticipation of the gifts of maturity:

My soul's eye looks at the spirit
And trust weaves into the gaze
Providence escapes the law of nature
What seems dark on the outside shines brightly on the inside
My gratitude flows to the peaceful spirit.

Now at the harvest of nature's gifts:

I look at the world with a spirit-filled feeling
The spirit feels my way of thinking
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spiritual being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Now in the time leading up to November 23:

I lack the strength of my will
The sense of good wants to work
I see a world that destroys itself
In the destruction I must seek the light of becoming for myself
Darkness spreads in me
dying in the world in being human
How do I find the world in my darkness?

Next month, Advent will answer that.

In this way, we actually get the twelve stations of the breviary if we really get involved in the whole thing. And at the same time, you see something in what I have developed for you that is like an inner call for religious renewal. If you take the church year as it is in the traditional churches, once you have found your way through what has, of course, been corrupted in some ways, to the beauty of this church year, you have the significance of the Advent season, the wonderfully sweet intimacy of the Christmas season, and you can also shape all of this for the congregation in the sense of the Gospels. We then have everything we can do for ourselves and for the community in relation to Jesus, who in his youth grows ever wiser, develops until he cannot be tempted, and develops until he can appear as a teacher. We then have Lent, into which we can place everything that human self-knowledge can become so that the Easter event can be experienced in a dignified way. We also have the Gospel accounts, and these are particularly magnificent, of the events surrounding Easter; we also have the walk of the risen Christ with one or other of his apostles, which we can also gain from the Gospel; we then have the time of Pentecost with everything that follows the Feast of Ascension. But by developing the year in this way, we now lose touch with the world. The Old Catholic Church has now inserted the work of the apostles at this point, the feasts of the apostles, the feasts of the saints up to the feast of the dead for All Souls' Day and so on. But with that, the Pauline task in inner experience has actually been dropped. According to his commission, Paul had to go to those who had previously experienced the divine only as pagans in their souls. This mood, which we particularly need in the present time, which has taken away the religious from us – while we should give it back to the world – must also be in the human being. In this time, the religious feeling must find its way into nature, just as we have found it in the John mood, in the Paul mood of maturation. In the September mood, where we will see that we can very well experience what is given to us in the letters of Peter, we will be able to carry what we have developed in the harvest mood as the meditative life into the feeling of the [... gap in the postscript], without it falling prey to fantastic mysticism. During the time leading up to Advent, which I have just characterized as the time between now and November 23, we will be able to incorporate everything we have to say to the community and to ourselves, from the time of the Apostle's disciples, from the time of the Church Fathers.

If you take this concise month, August, you will be able to sense in its fourfold structure the indication of the structure of the month in weeks, while for the other months the weeks are effaced in their conciseness. A complete breviary will now have to be compiled in such a way that the fourfold division of the month and the twelvefold division of the year are included in meditations, or that the weekly meditations are included in the annual meditations. Then one can also proceed to the daily meditation in such a way that the meditation expressed in the breviary is a threefold one for each day. The weekly verses would follow on from the annual verses, which I have shared with you as they have emerged for me. However, the weekly verses would be repeated in each month, and these would be followed by the daily verses, which run each week from Saturday to the following Sunday. So we would have year-month verses, month-week verses, week-day verses, 21 lines, three times seven lines, except for the middle months, where we have four lines in August, three lines in the St. John season, five lines in the September season, and so on. Thus the breviary is also structured inwardly according to number, and one really experiences that into which we are subconsciously placed in the world. We bring the spirit up into consciousness in the experience of the year. I will speak more about this tomorrow. So tomorrow the formation of the breviary will take us a short time and then we will move on to discussing community building.

(The following is a response to questions submitted in writing by Rudolf Steiner)

Question: When it comes to the content of the breviary, should we also consider similar methods to those used in the Catholic breviary? Days of the Saints? Examination of Conscience?

Rudolf Steiner: I have tried to develop for you, as it were, the principle of the breviary as it arises directly out of the present time, and I cannot see that a religious renewal could be possible if a renewal of breviary prayer does not take place in this direction. The hours can be taken in such a way that we have the opportunity to delve into the content of the breviary meditation three times a day, in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Question: What is the connection between the calendar of the soul and the weekly sayings of the breviary?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the weekly sayings refer to the moods that are in the calendar of the soul. Isn't that right? The one who seeks these things out of the spirit, out of real supersensible experience, always has the very concrete situation before him; and in trying to research for your breviary, I had your minds before my soul. When I once formulated the twelve seasonal verses and the weekly verses, I had before me the very different moods of an anthroposophical context, within which no one could yet know that knowledge would arise somewhere, that a religious renewal was necessary. But you will feel that if you compare what we have in mind here with the moods of the annual week proverbs, the two will complement each other perfectly, and each will support and illuminate the other.

I will have to talk about the question of the consecration of holy water and the ordination of priests tomorrow when we come to the topic of community building. All of this is part of it. I will also talk about the place of the sermon in the service tomorrow.

Question: Should the traditional names or new names be used for the prayers and rituals? Wouldn't the latter be better?

Rudolf Steiner: I cannot understand what is meant by the question. So far I have spoken about the baptismal ritual and I do not know why this should not be mentioned by that name.

Questioner: With this question, I am mainly concerned about the names that could arouse suspicion on the part of the outside world, as if Catholicism were to be represented here, for example, the name for the new ritual, “Mass,” or here, “Breviary.” For us, these names are perfectly understandable, but I mean to the outside world.

Rudolf Steiner: I must confess that I am now using words that can make the matter understandable to you, and that will probably have been achieved. But everything that now has to do with putting it into the world should be done by you. Of course, this or that can be guessed here or there, but it is not really the anthroposophical task to intervene in the reality of community and church building.

Question: What is the significance of celibacy in the past and in the present?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, I have spoken about celibacy in relation to the Catholic Church. It serves the aims of the Catholic Church in a very consistent way, as we have seen in the context of the lectures. But now the question is that today, people must rather more strongly ask the question, that is, answer the question: How does the pastor achieve the mood that can sustain pastoral care, even though he is not subject to celibacy rules or at least cannot be required to observe them? In the time in which we live, the important thing is not to alienate ourselves from the world with religion, but to penetrate the world with religion; that is the important thing.

Question: How are the triangle and the square related to baptism?

Rudolf Steiner: The triangle and the square are only the preliminary stages of the cross. The cross is the one that underlies the whole of human development. Although the cross on Golgotha is thoroughly historical – the external reality, as it is often disputed, cannot be disputed in this way – on the other hand, in the sign of the cross we have the sign for the physical and etheric human being. But before we come to the sign of the cross, we have that which lives in the human being as an astral being. Isn't it true that what lives in the sign of the cross, the physical and etheric human being, is completely unconscious? What lives in the astral body is semi-conscious; it is best expressed in the square. It is truly expressed in the square, and what lives in the I is in the triangle. So we see: I – triangle, astral body – square, the whole human being as he lives as I and astral body in the physical and ether bodies – the cross. This is entirely connected with the feeling one has towards I and astral body and towards physical and ether body. (See Chart 18 above)

Question: What is the basis for the symbols of the lamb and the dove?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that would lead extremely far if it were to be fully developed. It is absolutely the case that there is also a spiritual natural history, if I may use the paradoxical expression. Those who look at the world of birds with a spiritual eye see in the world of birds something in which, albeit in its Ahrimanic ramification, the spirit has worked more than, for example, in the human form. The being is not formed from the inside out, but from the outside in. We have here a formation out of the cosmos in the formation of the feathers, in the whole formation of the bird, which should not simply be represented as it is represented by our sensory natural science today, but should be represented in such a way that its bone structure corresponds to a reproduction of the human head, so that the bird is actually a head with the mouth, because the bird's head is merely a complicated mouth. One must learn to understand this whole design, and when one learns to understand it, then one already gets the necessity, not just the possibility, to see that which one wants to express as the healing spirit in the dove, and to see that which the sacrifice offers in the shape of the lamb. In the time when such symbols were conceived, the lamb or the ram was usually depicted as a recumbent lamb, looking backwards with its head. This form is even something essential; it means that one does not turn one's gaze towards the world, but turns one's gaze away from the world, so to speak, one tries to look into oneself.

Question: What is the Christ experience in the Gospels besides the Father experience? And to what extent does the Christ experience or the Christ mystery in the Mass seem to be only a Christ experience compared to, for example, Paul's Christ experience?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the thing is that in the newer human being, the Christ experience and the Father experience cannot be distinguished from one another, because the newer human being perceives in nature only what grows and sprouts, and thus in nature actually perceives only that which does not carry death within itself, because the human being does not perceive the fruitfulness of death. The Christ experience only comes into confrontation with the Father experience when we can feel, for instance, that we – adding the experience of the Holy Spirit – make the negations [of the Christ experience and the Father experience] clear to ourselves in the following way. The Father-experience simply arises as the summary of the whole human nature out of the consciousness of the healthy human being. The healthy human being is organized in such a way that just as he must see and hear, so he must have the Father-experience. That is why I always said to my listeners when discussing these things: Not to have the Father-experience is an illness. Not to have the Christ-experience is a fate, because it cannot be acquired through what is merely in the blood, but because, as it were, through self-education, the encounter with the Christ in the outer world and within the human being must be experienced. That is an essential difference. And because today we cannot have the Father-experience as we did in pre-Christian times, arising from a healthy organism – I have discussed this – we have to have an inadequate Father-experience today. With our organism, which has now become such that it can no longer grasp the spiritual, we have to have the Father-experience as a memory. The Christ-experience must be a present experience. We must be able to make this clear distinction. If we wrestle with the question, where is the Father? —, then we are too weak with our present organism to find him. And if we then go to the Christ because we cannot find the Father and seek the Christ through the inner in the outer, then we experience the Christ-experience as a destiny, while one can experience the Father-experience as health. And when we wrestle with the questions: Does the Christ also give us what the Father has given? Is the Christ in what He gives us only similar to the Father or is He equal to Him? — when these questions of Arianism, of Athanasianism, take on a living form again, as we still see, for example, in Eastern philosophers such as Solowjow, then the differentiation between the experience of the Father and the experience of Christ and also the experience of the Holy Spirit in man comes to life again quite clearly, because not to recognize the Spirit is folly. Not recognizing the Father is illness, not recognizing the Christ is fate, not recognizing the Spirit is folly. And we must fight our illness in order to come to the Father, we must bring about our fate in order to come to the Christ, we must fight our 'folly' in order to come to the Spirit. This, of course, only hints at the beginning; what is at issue here is the extraordinarily differentiated experience of the Father and of the Christ. I cannot find that these two experiences are differentiated in the modern Protestant feeling; there is even something strongly Theistic or Deistic about it. One could say that one person feels more what can be achieved in the mind, he feels more Christ, but it is just only an undifferentiated feeling, and the other feels more the Father, but here too it is undifferentiated again; no Christianity comes out of this experience.

Question: What is the position of anthroposophy regarding the supersensible of the universe outside our solar system, including Uranus and Neptune? Are there beings outside the earth that are similar to humanity, and is there also a Christ impulse for them? Do they also need to be redeemed?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, my dear friends, why should we concern ourselves with this question? We get to know the world as a sensual world, and we arrive at the supersensible insofar as our own being is placed in this supersensible. Such questions do not actually arise in this abstraction for the spiritual researcher, because he stands in concrete life. I am often asked what the ultimate goal of the world is, because: If I do not know the ultimate goal, some people say, then I will not set myself in motion with regard to the course of the world and its development. — I always had to answer: If I want to go to Rome and someone only knows the timetable to Bern, there is bound to be someone who knows the route to Ticino and there will be someone else who knows the route to Milan and so on. So I can rest assured with my timetable to Bern. Likewise, I can be reassured if I know the present and what the near future holds, because I will first have to perfect myself in order to recognize the path to the next stage at the next stage. So it is really a matter of seeking living knowledge, knowledge that one can experience, and not of pushing intellectualism to its very limits. In doing so, we lose ourselves completely in the formless.

Question: How can we explain cruelty in the animal kingdom?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course one could answer such questions, but one is misunderstood if one answers them in short sentences. One has to go into everything that is a real force in nature. One has to start at a seemingly completely different end to arrive at an explanation of these things. Start where you are confronted with the spawning of fish, with the release of milt into the sea, and how countless of them perish and only a few become fish. But this is only an outward appearance, because it is actually not known what happens to the undeveloped fish spawn from the aspect of a world that lies immediately behind our sensory world, which is also there. It also undergoes its development. That which is deprived of development in the sense undergoes development in the spiritual. It is destroyed in appearance, but it is preserved in its inner becoming. And in the situation of this fish spawn, which becomes a fish, are also all those wheat grains in the field that are used for sowing again, that is, that turn into wheat again. But all the grains you consume with the bread are capable of becoming fish spawn, because they do not reach the goal that is set for them in the sense world. Just ask what would become of the world if all those beings who do not achieve their goal in the sense world were to withdraw from their other goal, which is not similar to the goal that can be seen in the sense world. The world is indeed very complicated. It is certainly deeply true that the lamb and the one who feels with the lamb must find it cruel when the lamb is eaten by the wolf, but it would be terribly cruel for the wolf if there were no lambs. It is just that what the wolf feels is important for a completely different world than the one in which we live with our senses. One must already have a sense of the world's unfathomability and of the possibility that the world presents itself quite differently from other sides than from the side from which we look at it here. Therefore, our combinative mind, which is actually only intended for the sensory world, fails when faced with some questions, and if we want to use it to explain cruelty in the animal kingdom or other things in the way we are accustomed to explaining [with the combinative mind], we cannot understand these things.

Well, that's what I can answer today. I'll maybe prepare the next two questions, including the one about holy water, for tomorrow.

My dear friends! Today we will try to bring to a conclusion the things we have been discussing and which are part of our program.

I have given you the annual and monthly moods as a basis for a breviary, and within the annual and monthly moods we must now seek the weekly moods. These weekly moods arise, as I began to indicate yesterday, when we look at how the weekly mood is actually already indicated in the August mood, so that within this August mood we already have the first week within the monthly mood. Just as in a living organism certain limbs have a little more of the whole [organism] and of the other [limbs] than others, so it must also be with what we find out organically as our behavior in relation to the world, and so the August mood would be the mood for meditation for the first week of the month, the September mood for the second week, the October mood for the third week, the November mood for the fourth week. In this way, the weeks intertwine with the months in a corresponding way. It cannot be otherwise, and we must make sure that we go with the months in the weekly arrangements. However, sometimes shifts will have to be made so that we can get the weeks into the course of the year. Then the daily moods follow the weekly moods, and these daily moods, which must follow the weekly moods, lead into the whole context of the world in a different way from the preceding parts of the breviary. I will now read the daily moods slowly, beginning with Saturday: Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the revelation of the essence of Being
The World Spirit rules in the World Matter
The World Spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The World Spirit creates in man his image of being
The soul reveals the creative power of the spirit
The soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

Sunday:

The spirit reigns full of light
Into the darkness it shines
The darkness seems to live from the light
The spirit weaves in the darkness, essentially
Darkness is enlivened by light
Light makes darkness good
The light's glow is the good in the darkness.

Monday:

Darkness seizes the received light
It wants to shine, not be illuminated
It takes possession of what it has received
It lets its own light prevail
It should not flow towards the original light
It should be itself
Darkness deceives the light.

Tuesday:

Light-Unity fades
Darkness turns away from the light
Darkness turns against the light
And so darkness is against darkness
As light is darkness deception
As light is darkness evil
As light is darkness destruction.

Where is the light in darkness?
Where does the soul find the spirit?
On Golgotha stands the cross
Christ shines on the cross
He guides through death
He shines in the darkness
He is the light of my soul.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Urlicht is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To God's All He leads man's self.

Now, as on a higher level, Friday returns to Saturday:

Friday:

With Christ, my will is done
His cosmic goals flow into my will
Christ reigns for the future of the earth
Christ lives in the Father, shining through himself,
revealing through the healing spirit
Christ creates the spiritual goals in the soul
the soul can absorb the essence of Christ
the soul can feel: Christ in me.

The word pervades heaven and earth
It spoke authoritatively to Moses on the mountain
It forms world beings, for the revelation to man
It weaves in the human interior, to the hidden through itself
It shines as the sun from the light into the darkness
It lives in Christ, bright out of the darkness, gentle in the brightness. It comes to earth in Jesus.

Now comes the third week:

I look into the world with a spirit-borne feeling
The spirit feels my nature
The world sinks into darkness
The inner being shines in prayer in the spirit being
The inner being needs a ruler in the darkness of the world
Oh, the spirit takes a level head.

Thursday:

Christ leads souls
From darkness He leads
Light in the Primordial Light is His power
Life from death He wrests
Salvation from evil He wrests
Rise from ruin He wrests
To the All of God He leads the human self.

Or let us take the first Saturday in August:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
In darkness, light is born
The spirit rests in the being of the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

The first week repeats the same saying in this case:

The spirit of the world of becoming arises
Light is born in darkness
A spirit of spirit rests in the senses
The spirit lives in my life.

Now Saturday:

My gaze is directed towards the divine spiritual ground of being
The senses behold the ground of being's revelation of being
The world spirit reigns in the world's substance
The world spirit weaves in the dead, in the living, in the sentient
The world spirit creates in man an image of its being
Soul reveals the spirit's creative power
Soul strives for spiritual fulfillment.

So it is possible, my dear friends, to use this breviary by arranging it in the appropriate way, and if you use it correctly, you will gradually find the opportunity to learn to preach in pictures; the word can come alive in you. But do not believe that the word can somehow come to life without practice. Only the practice that is in harmony with the ruling intentions of the world, only the practice that we carry out in us in accordance with the intentions of the world of becoming, draws the power of the living word from within us. And it is important that you connect these things, which are intended for pastoral care, with the appropriate trust, with the appropriate faith. The spirit cannot be given to anyone who does not fully believe that he is living in the weaving of the spirit. I ask you to pay particular attention to this, my dear friends, when I now speak about community building and about ordination.

I am now speaking about these matters as they arise from what has been said to me by those who really want to take on the task they have spoken of in all seriousness. I would like to answer the question: How can communities be founded, how can communities be led?

Of course it is not possible to simply stand up with all the things we have now discussed as our goal and now go into church planting in abstracto, but rather the first work must be done as a beginning. Therefore, I can only imagine that it can be done in a favorable sense by first bringing to the people what we consider to be the right thing to do in our whole context. I can therefore only imagine that such participants in these endeavors appear in the most diverse places, who initially simply take up the way in which one must currently work on people, so that they begin by making known what they want, through lectures that clearly reveal the goal that one sets from the outset, in such a way as to be understood. First of all, the necessity of religious renewal must be proclaimed. It must be made clear that such a religious renewal is necessary. For this, of course, one must be truly convinced of the necessity of such a religious renewal. But for that one must also be imbued with the tremendous seriousness of the situation in which present-day humanity finds itself with regard to inner spiritual and religious matters, and in which it also finds itself with regard to external world events, which, after all, are nothing more than a consequence of the fact that humanity has lost sight of the actual spiritual content of the world. If we succeed in showing from today's overall decline the necessity of a new beginning, which must be taken into the hands of individual serious people, if we succeed in explaining the whole situation of the world and the situation of religious and moral life before humanity, then the spirit will be found that works in the sense of such an ascent, and the first members of the community will emerge from those who can hear it first. For those who look impartially at what is today – which, after all, very few people do – there can be no doubt: If you speak in this way, purely lecturing at first, to all those who want to hear it, and if, above all, you find warmth in your words so that people not only believe in your mind but believe in your heart, the number of community members who come to you will not be small in a relatively short time. For there are very many who are seeking today. There are far more today who are seeking than those who can lead, and if a group can be found that can lead, then it will certainly also find those who are seeking.

My dear friends, it is my unshakable conviction that the saga of Dr. Faustus contains a profound truth in the following: In the time when it was still attributed to Dr. Faustus that he had made a pact with the emissaries of hell, Dr. Faustus was seen as the co-inventor of the art of printing. However useful the art of printing has become for modern humanity, its use is, to a certain extent, of the devil, because the art of printing erects a wall between heart and heart in relation to humanity. We must not take such things so much to mean that we should now become radically conservative, radically reactionary, and say that we must work against the art of printing. On the contrary, we must profess a completely different attitude in this regard. We must be clear about the fact that before the art of printing existed, when a pastor had to speak to a congregation from the pulpit, the congregation was entirely dependent on him for an understanding of spiritual matters. We must realize that the power the pastor had to apply in order to speak intimately to his congregation was small in those days and could be small in relation to the power that must be applied today. And I see, my dear friends, that everywhere people would like to hold on to the fact that this power can remain so small. We must be clear: the art of printing must be there. We must realize that everything that the modern world has brought forth must be there. But our strength must increase in order to make good and overcome that which has been done by the world that Christ described as the kingdom on earth into which He had to bring the kingdoms of heaven.

We must not carelessly say: What was expected in the early days of Christianity did not come to pass, so the statement of the millennial kingdom was wrong. It is a lie to accuse the Bible of making an untrue statement. It is not so. Bit by bit, the de-divinized world has emerged, and bit by bit, what could previously be sought through the world must now be sought through the spirit. The art of printing does not prevail in a world that is standing still and becoming more even, but in a world that is perishing and whose decline must be countered by the dawn. If we cannot get used to thinking about these things in sharp images, then we cannot rise to the occasion in which we want to place ourselves, and above all, we cannot come to trust in the workings of the spirit, which we must have. How can we speak of the spirit if we have no trust that the spirit will work with us? How can we speak of the spirit if we only ever weigh up intellectually whether this or that can be right? How can we speak of the spirit if we are not able to connect with the spirit? Whatever echo the world sends back to us, we connect with the spirit to bring about what we recognize as right in its sense. And we cannot work in the spirit if we do not extend this trust to everything we can do in our community. We must stand in the community objectively and judiciously, we must stand in the community knowingly. The modern pastor has basically become a stranger to his community. He goes around in the community without realizing what tragic worlds are taking place among those who pass him by. The pastor needs knowledge of human nature, and he only gains this knowledge by taking an interest in the experiences of his community. There should be nothing that community members do not see in such a way that they have the judgment: when they come to the pastor with it, they will find an open heart, but also wise judgment. We should not let any opportunity pass us by to find out what the laws of the world's phenomena are. We should thoroughly study everything that is going on in the spiritual, legal, political and economic life of the world in order to be able to help people from these three sources of all human development. We should know how to truly be close to the souls we are responsible for. Much will be well if these souls know that we are aware of their weaknesses and concerns, and that we have a proper judgment for them, one that is accompanied by openness of heart.

My dear friends, we must be careful not to become Catholic, but we must have an open heart and goodwill for what must be regarded as human and humanly necessary within the community. Very few people today know what is going on in many people. Very few people know how the people around us are really struggling in their souls today. In recent times, the misery has become so great that those who still live a little in the abstract intellectualism have no faith at all and no insight into the magnitude of this misery. Today, many souls that cannot be opened up because intellectualism has withered away everything we can say to them, everything we can give them, are on the verge of returning to the Roman Catholic Church, which could experience an immense influx. They are therefore close to converting to the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church – albeit in its external and often disastrous way – really did know how to establish with ironclad consistency what souls need apart from intellectualism, for example through confession. ©, I got to know them, these Protestant pastors, who kept saying: What do we do with our preaching, which has become so intellectualistic, if we don't have something like the Catholic priest has in confession? — and who, as pastors, longed for confession. And I have also met brave Catholic priests who, for certain reasons that are not to be discussed here, felt a deep obligation to remain within the Catholic Church, but who were deeply aware of what they owed to their inner selves by lending an ear in confession to those who had deep emotional suffering to report.

Infinite things, my dear friends, are healed in the world by approaching souls in this way, which can be characterized as I have just done. But we will never be able to rediscover the possibility of relating to souls in this way if we are not also aware that we must become fighters for what is happening in the big wide world, that we have to fight for many of the rights of the spiritual ministry on the ground of the spiritual ministry, but that these rights have been taken away from the spiritual ministry in the materialistic world and continue to be taken away. How much, my dear friends, has been taken from the spiritual ministry by the materialism of doctors! People do not think about it, they do not even know. One of the sad phenomena is that the hearing of confessions has passed from the clergy to the psychoanalysts, who carry it out in a materialistic sense. Such phenomena of the time are usually not understood at all in all their depth and significance. As a servant of Christ, fight against the Ahrimanic effects that express themselves in this way in the world, for without doing so you will not be able to work in the individual as the effect of the community must be! Let no opportunity pass by to again furnish proof that there can be a pastoral psychology and pastoral psychiatry! Try to gain knowledge of the world and knowledge of human nature in this sense! Do not believe that the thoughts and aspirations of the pastor can be fulfilled by disputing the correctness of faith and knowledge. My dear friends, so much has happened in this regard that the salvation of millions of souls has been lost. Take these things seriously and consider the situation of the soul in view of what has happened and in view of the need for religious renewal today. Do not regard it as a digression from the task of the pastor as a religious worker to be expected to know what can affect the lungs of a person from the soul. Look at the spread of lung diseases and do not consider this as something that you can only learn from the materialistic medical world. Notice how worries work, brooding over them in solitude, without being able to hear the words of someone who seems wise and capable of judging such things. Listen, I say, hear something of what takes place in the outer illness as a result of the troubles over which one broods in solitude, and sense how much you can do by contemplating the solitude of those who brood over troubles; sense what you can do for the recovery of the outer life. For there are two kinds of lung disease: one is a disease of the lungs as an organ, the other is a disease of breathing, but this breathing cannot take place in the right way if the lungs are not otherwise healthy, and in the diseased lungs are the afflictions that have been brooded over in solitude. Do not consider it an impertinence, one that cannot be addressed to the office of pastor, when one asks what it is that eats away at the human organs that are supposed to refresh the organism. Unhealthy feelings, about which one is uninformed, make the liver sick and make everything that is to be regenerated by the liver and spleen sick. Do not consider it unnecessary to point out that there should be a pastoral physiology again. Consider it a question of your office: What eats away at the air organs? The unsocial feelings of people eat away at the air organs, those feelings that do not allow the potential for love to be expressed in the appropriate way. And by cultivating social feelings and mutual social respect within your community, you will help your community to breathe healthily, insofar as this is to come from the soul. Do not consider it to be outside your office to ask: What has a destructive effect on the blood and its circulation? Try to find out that the destructive effect on the blood and its circulation is caused by the feeling of the futility of existence, by insensitivity to the word that reveals itself from the Divine-Spiritual. If you can see into the mysterious connections between insensitivity to the word that reveals the divine-spiritual and the disturbances in circulation and heart diseases, and if you look at everything that strikes back - the pendulum not only goes there, it also goes here - of a materialistic attitude that comes from a ruined blood circulation and a ruined heart, which comes from this insensitivity to the spirit-filled word. Then you will be able to gauge what the situation of present humanity has actually become, and then you will feel in the right, serious way what religious renewal must actually mean. Then you will also sense something of how healing can be found in the sacred and how one does not need to lose healing in the abstraction of sanctification. It will depend entirely on this spirit, and above all, it will depend on you speaking the truth at every moment to those who belong to your community, for whose souls you are responsible, so that you are not merely administering an office, but speaking the truth.

My dear friends, mistrust is at an all-time high today. Among the forces that have developed most strongly in recent times is the mistrust from person to person, and also the mistrust of man towards his pastor. Only knowledge of human nature can counteract this increasing mistrust. Today, many people are particularly ill in their souls, but very few know anything about the mysterious connections between mental and physical illnesses. Most of the world's leading people are actually embarrassed to stray even a single step from the path of intellectualism. They always ask questions in an intellectual sense; they ask little with the heart. They ask a lot with the mind, but the hearts that want to hear cannot listen to the mind. And so something has happened that is one of the most terrible phenomena of our time.

You will find, my dear friends, that the members of your community who come to you first are many who will show that they do not come merely because there is strength in your words and your actions that attracts the fundamentally human. Rather, many will come who, when you really talk to them intimately, will say: I come to you because everything else I have tried has offered me nothing, but I don't know if you can offer me more than the other things that offered me nothing. — Many will come with precisely this attitude, and they have not developed any sense of the differences between what approaches them. Should it nevertheless be the case that you speak to people more out of the spirit than others have spoken out of the spirit, then you will find how dulled the souls are and how they can no longer even notice the difference today, and you will have to find ways to overcome precisely the dullness of the souls. Especially with regard to people who come to you with true feelings [of longing] for a life in the spirit, but with dull souls, you will not get by with anything other than being able to evoke a clear feeling of the inner intimate truth of what you have to say. Many will say to you: I cannot tell the difference between what I have been offered so far and what you are offering me. You will only get such questions if you want to convince people with intellectual arguments, but you can do without intellectual arguments if you want to enter into intimate contact with your parishioners; you can do without intellectual arguments. Learn to build on completely different arguments. Learn to build on those reasons that flow, for example, from saying: It is best if you believe me no more than you believed the others, if you believe me perhaps even less than you believed the others; I completely dispense to explain to you the matter that I have to discuss with you, with all kinds of reasons; but look and really observe everything with open eyes; see if you can't see that many things are different; and then don't let me judge, but judge for yourself. And if you then also give such people a sense of how you yourself feel about the reasons that may be put forward against your own pastoral care, if you evoke a feeling that you also know the other side and that you do not even have the slightest spark of fanaticism for the cause you represent, then you will be able to build something that you will never be able to achieve through intellectualism, which is the father of fanaticism. I say with full awareness: intellectualism is the father of fanaticism, because in no religious community has there ever been such great fanaticism as among the modern scientific communities. One must only be familiar with the currents that are flowing. One must realize how far removed from admitting the infallibility of the Roman Pope someone may be who invincibly believes in the infallibility of a professor or even in the abstract “modern science”. The faith in these things is so great because one is not even aware that it exists at all, because one takes the faith in it for granted. One does not even notice how one is stuck in a maximum of fanaticism in this area.

But, my dear friends, you will achieve nothing if your enthusiasm for the cause is not great enough to enable you to rise to such concepts, if you yourself still suffer from something that prevents you from see through the full power of this fanaticism and similar fanaticisms that live in the world today, and if you, so to speak, cannot decide to also confront this fanaticism with the spirit of Christ.

Your church planting can only be one that, first of all, starts from the right attitude, but secondly also from a strong attitude. The time when it was possible to believe that half-measures could achieve something is over. The time is over when it was possible to believe that intellectual discussions about world affairs make a difference. We must never forget that we live in the age in which humanity is to be irrevocably given freedom, and that the coming of freedom means that, if work is to be done in the spirit, it must be done from a source and origin; it means that something truly new must come into the world and that [really everything] must be ruthlessly seen and done in the spirit of this newness. Your work would be a passing one if you did not take into account that this attitude is indispensable for this work.

My dear friends, you must awaken in people everywhere the realization that modern man must be pointed to his deepest inner being and that he must draw from this deepest inner being the impulse for what he thinks, feels, wills and does. It is out of the question to think of carrying out this cult in such a way that it is in any way Catholicized. The cult, the fundamental features of which we have indicated, must be practised in such a way that it is felt to be something that really comes from the spiritual world today. It must be perfectly clear that the Catholic Church has been able to achieve such immense power because, in a sense, it is precisely because it is consistent that it can adapt to all manner of contemporary phenomena; and the Catholic Church does not do this in the way that certain newer currents have, which are characteristic of the intellectualism of modern times.

At the beginning of the 1890s, for example, we saw something emerging in Central Europe that was then called the effort to establish a Society for Ethical Culture. The movement started in America and also took hold in Europe. I was at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv at the time when the most important events took place to establish this society for so-called ethical culture in Europe, and I asked one of the leading personalities at the time [of the Society for Ethical Culture] at the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv: What do you actually want with ethical culture? — I was told: The name itself says it all. — I could only answer: But first you have to understand the meaning of a name. If you asked people what they wanted with ethical culture, you would get a confession of immense weakness, you would get something like the answer: Yes, in relation to religious beliefs, in relation to world views, people differ so much that in the end everyone can have their own world view and everyone their own religion; religion will become more and more a private matter, but you can't live with that, you have to come to an understanding; so let's make ethics free of religious and ideological foundations and spread an ethics that is free of any religious or ideological basis. I always objected: Yes, but there have never been any other ethics than those that have emerged from the foundations of religions and worldviews and that were their consequences. — As a rule, no answer was given to this, because people were so intent on making an abstract extract from all that could be gained from the various religious beliefs, stripping away the religious character and then handing it down as a non-religious ethic, as a mere “ethical culture”. It really does not need to be directed against people when one speaks out sharply against it, and in an essay on the Society for Ethical Culture at the beginning of the nineties, I showed with all severity the impossibility of getting out of this chaos that one has finally gotten into. A fanatic of this ethical culture published a pamphlet against this essay in which he insulted with a matter of course what can actually be thoroughly substantiated. Other people also could not see that the time had come when these things had to be treated with complete seriousness. After I had written this essay, I came to Berlin, visited Herman Grimm, who said: What do you actually want with this fight against ethical culture? Are you going to this meeting? I found that they are all very nice people. — I never doubted that all the people sitting there were very nice people, but I regretted all the more that these nice people had this monstrosity implanted in their souls as if it were something self-evident. Even the leaders in spiritual life could no longer see at all what the seriousness of our situation was and is. This realization of the seriousness of the situation will actually be the most important thing with which you leave here, because everything else can only be of value if you leave here with this most important thing.

And now, so that we can discuss in the afternoon what is on your minds in relation to this, I would like to say a few words about what might be along the same lines as what is in other confessions as regards ordination. I would ask you to bring up the most important things first.

It is difficult, my dear friends, to speak about ordination today, because the times when the ceremonies that served the old ordination still had a meaning are over, and those who want to recognize these ceremonies are no longer in touch with the present day, not since the middle of the 15th century. For a new age has dawned. But those who have immersed themselves in the spirit of this new age have basically abolished the ordination of priests, and they have also abolished it within the denominations. And so today we are faced with the fact that those who have been ordained no longer live in the times, and that those who live in the times perhorrescize the ordination of priests. It cannot work in the same way today as it did in times gone by; it must be thoroughly brought into line with the spirit of our age. If you take this, so to speak, as a basic condition, I may say a few words to you about the ordination itself and its ceremony, as it is revealed to me for the present time. It is important that you really understand that I am, in a sense, communicating something revealed to me by the spirit.

It would be necessary for the transmission of the priestly ministry to take place in the presence of older priests, so that first of all older priests are gathered together, and that then the process of placing the person to be ordained in the overall context in which he is to be placed is begun. If I say that older priests should be present, it is of course extremely difficult to carry out at the beginning, but the beginning must be made in such a way that you, in the sense of what you impose on your central leadership, also order the beginning of such a matter in this sense. Then the things that need to be ordered in this way will also be available to you. Of course, there may not be older priests present at the beginning, but that must become the custom.

Then, first of all, there must be a very solemn presentation of the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John to the person who is to be ordained. I would like to emphasize that simplicity must be the supreme law in the face of such an act. If this act becomes complicated, it cannot be what it should actually be, that it should be on the mind at least once a day of the person who has gone through this act accordingly. The spiritual experience of this act should always precede the recitation of the rosary. If properly cultivated, it can be accomplished in a relatively short time, in my case in one minute. But this can only be done if the whole act is not complicated but has a unified character.

So the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, which begins with the words: Let not your heart be troubled. Trust in the power that leads you to the divine foundation of the world and that leads you to me. - And which concludes with the words: The world shall see how I love the foundation of the world, and how I act in the sense of the foundation of the world, as is laid upon me. Do likewise, then we can leave this place in peace. — And this should be followed by the introduction to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of John, the resurrection of Lazarus, and so it should affect the person being ordained that he feels through and through from this chapter how the power to resurrect that which is dying lies in the Christ-being. I believe, however, that in order to interpret this chapter in the right way, what I have given in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” as an interpretation of this chapter can still serve.

Once this has been done – I am stating things fully, perhaps they cannot be done in this fullness at the beginning – the application of the garment that I have shown here in the illustration as the one that represents the etheric body would have to be carried out. This is the beginning of the symbolization of the effect of pastoral care.

Now one has to take oil – there is still a lot to be said about the consecration of oil and water, so that you can be quite clear about it – and apply this oil in the appropriate way to the pulses on the arms and – the person to be admitted has to wear sandals – to the corresponding places on the ends of the balls of the feet. With that, the sacramental act has been performed.

By leaving only what happens to the oil in the picture and making it as clear as possible in the picture, so that all bystanders - I say all bystanders, not just those who are to be introduced to pastoral care - can clearly perceive and remembrance of the picture that has been enacted. Only after the picture has been enacted should the words be spoken, and these words should be simple so that they can always stand before the soul in the way I have described:

In the name of Christ, you are authorized
firstly to administer Communion,
secondly to perform the sacrifice of the Mass,
thirdly to administer the sacraments.

After this has been done, the stole and chasuble are to be put on, that is, everything that leads to the astral body, and then there is something else to be done – so that the matter is simple, but it must be succinct – which must be deeply engraved in the soul of the person to be received: one consecrates the host as one does in the sacrifice of the Mass. One hands the host to the one whom one would not have handed to before the anointing with the oil, and afterwards lets him himself perform the consecration of this host and after this consecration perform one's own communion. Then one consecrates the chalice, as one otherwise does in the sacrifice of the Mass, and hands the chalice to the one who is to be received, so that he consecrates it in the same way and, by drinking from it, pronounces the words that have just been expressed as the words of the sacrifice of the Mass, and which he actually speaks for the first time with authority.

After this has been done, my dear friends, the question is asked in a lapidary way:

Do you vow to continue to work in the sense in which this authority was conferred?

And his answer should be:

I vow:

To teach in Christ's name To work in Christ's name To pray in Christ's name To sacrifice in Christ's name.

All those present say:

Yes, so be it, amen.

After this has been done, the headgear that the priest has to wear only during part of the ceremony and that is to be regarded as the thing with which he sets out to teach and with which he leaves teaching and so on, this headgear is handed over by, as it were, doing that which lies in his ego effect as the crowning of the whole ceremony.

Then it would be a matter of having the person preach a sermon on a topic that has been discussed with him at length, in front of those from whom he has received the ordination, as a trial sermon, but also as a solemn investiture into his office. Then the corresponding ceremony would be over.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you this morning. I now ask you to prepare for the afternoon everything you might have to say in connection with this or with earlier events, so that we may part as befits our serious time together.

My dear friends! Perhaps I may first say a few words about consecration in general, including the consecration of substances or the like, before we formulate the questions that still need to be asked. To do this, I must first give a brief characterization of the concept of consecration.

My dear friends! Consecration actually means to lead something back to the effectiveness of its origin. Take salt, for example, as it is deposited in water or similar. If we consider salt and how it has changed its properties in the course of the earth's development, we find that the further back we go, the more the salt ceases to have only those properties that it manifests to man today; it approaches the stage of existence that we have at the very beginning of a development, let us say, at the beginning of a planetary development. Salt is such that, as matter, it is at the same time permeated by spirit, and as it settles in water, what I have already characterized happens: the spreading of that which is actually the same power that permeates us when we become wiser and that radiates as thought power in the universe. It is indeed the case that we must be clear about how, for example, the process of our own becoming wise takes place. This process is such that it is not the case that our brain atoms or brain molecules start to vibrate, that these vibrations are the material correlate of thoughts – such an assertion contradicts the whole process of human development. The preparation for the grasping of the thought consists in the fact that the material at the nerve cord is broken down, so that, as it were, a hole is created in the material, and into this hole the thought ray pours. (It is drawn on the board.) So our brain is only necessary for our thoughts, in that it forms a reserve, just as the ground is necessary for me to step on it; and the one who claims that our brain activity has something direct to do with thinking makes a similar claim to like someone walking along a road with ruts in it and saying: There are ruts, I want to look for the force below the surface that created these ruts, what pulled or pushed there, so that I can understand how it came about, how these ruts became possible. Of course, they are not caused by forces in the earth at all, they are caused by the fact that wagon wheels have rolled over them, which has nothing to do with [forces in the earth]. Likewise, what brain processes are is nothing more than making room for our thought processes. That is the true process, that wherever salt is deposited by brain processes, as, say, on the surface of such a nerve cord, the possibility is offered for wisdom rays to work within. I could even say, without my dear friend, Pastor Geyer, resenting it: the cleverest person is the biggest blockhead, because he has to make the most holes in his brain so that wisdom can find room in him.

So we come to what I would call the still undifferentiated spirit materiality when we go back to the beginning of any substance.

I hope you have noticed that the substance underlying the world [the expression] was used at one point in the Credo: spiritual-physical. This is also related to this. At the starting point, at the origin of things, we do not have the completely separate matter that we have now. And so 'to consecrate' means nothing more than to give that which one applies sacramentally its original spiritual-material power. You now only need to know that by performing such a process, as I have shown in baptism, we attain precisely that which is significant for the baptismal act. There are other ways to consecrate water. It is not necessary to always use baptismal water, although this would be perfectly suitable for sacramental acts. But it is also possible to consecrate in such a way that one has pure water. Originally, in the beginning, water has the power to renew that which is perishing. Thus, the power of eternal renewal lives in water. Now the point is to try to give the water back what it had in the beginning in the sacramental form. So you have pure water, take salt, this salt will dissolve in the water when you throw it in, then you develop smoke by taking wood flour and sprinkling incense over it, you treat the smoke as that which absorbs our word, and you then speak this word to the water:

In this water lives the power of eternal renewal
With this power may this water be connected
As it was connected in the beginning.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

So speaking the words into space always means something like forming the word in the material, so that in this way you bring the word to that which you want to consecrate. Then you can use such water, which has now received its original power sacramentally, to consecrate by sprinkling.

All you really need to know is that you can treat the ashes in the same way. And if you treat the ashes in the same way, then to consecrate them for the baptismal water, if you wanted to do so beforehand – although the act is sufficient as I said the other day – you would have to say:

In the ashes lives chaos,
From which new beings can be brought forth.
Let these ashes be joined again
As they were joined in the beginning.

And again: In the name of the triune God.

Now I would like to point out that the oil can be consecrated by knowing that the oil, by acting in a substance, imbues that substance. Actually, what I am saying essentially applies to plant substances in life. So, by permeating the plant substance, the oil makes it, as one might call it, more loving, so that everything that one does with the oil as a consecration should be related to making it more loving; that is why the anointing oil is used in the ordination of priests, as I explained this morning.

So when you get to know the different spiritual properties of the substances, then you will, through this principle, return the substances to what they were in the beginning, through the formula: In that and that, the power lives forever, what it now is or was, with it may the substantial be connected, as it was connected in the name of the Trinity, that is, the three forms of the Godhead.

Now I would like to answer, not as an example, but in response to a question from yesterday, which is the question about the passage in the 14th chapter of the Gospel of John, verse 28, which is usually read as follows: “If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, ‘I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.’”

I do not believe, my dear friends, that this passage, when presented to us in this way, could ever evoke any feeling other than this: it is incomprehensible. For one hears only words, and these words, in turn, do not correspond to everything that is said in the Christian sense about the relationship between Christ and the Father. But I would like to draw your attention to the following, which can significantly help in translating this passage, namely that, especially in sacred language in earlier times, words were not used as they are used today. When we use words today, we actually always assume that the words stand side by side, and we trace things back to the words. A word means this or that. This is not the case in sacred language use. There, as in a living process, one word leads into another, so that one would not have felt authorized to simply say the word “child” without being aware of the context. Rather, one would have had to feel in the word “child” that the concept of growth is contained and that in this process of growth, which connects one with the essence of the child, one has the right, when aiming at the whole human being, to use the word “child”, “young man” or even “old man”. So there was a certain fluidity in the use of words. Now there was a relationship between this use of language in the mysteries and the use of language at the time when the mystery of Golgotha was approaching for humanity; there one used — however strange this may seem to you today — the word 'Father' for the ground of the world, alternating as if one were flowing into the other. But [it was felt with] the concept that this world reason through the events that are indeed hinted at in the Old Testament - which are then also clearly hinted at again by Paul in the old and new Adam, through the fall of the angels, with whom human beings also fell - that this fatherly world reason has gradually led to death. It was the case that in the mysteries, for a time, those who spoke in the mysteries used the words “father” and “death” in alternation, on all possible occasions. And so we would have to translate: If you truly loved me, you would rejoice that I have said that I am going to die, for death was once more powerful than I – one would actually have to say “more magical”. In the older mystery language, the word “magical” always has something to do with “powerful”. So here it is an indication of the conquering of death. It is therefore necessary, or rather, the disciples must rejoice that Christ Jesus has declared himself willing to go to the Father, but in this age that means to death.

I can well imagine how forced such an explanation may appear to one or the other, because the things that the interpreters do with the gospels today are just about the most forced things one can imagine, because they do not agree among themselves or they do not agree with the dogmatics and so on. So we have to be willing to go back a little to the living use of the words and not just interpret the words literally; this is absolutely essential for such a passage.

Question: It has been said that the laws of nature apply only within the earth's radius. How do you explain the prominences and the lines in the spectrum of the sun?

Rudolf Steiner: Today's physicists would be very surprised if they could design their airships in such a way that they could go to the place where they suspect all kinds of gas to evaporate and the like, while the matter is quite different. So, for example, one would have to say that even empty space still has an intensity, namely the intensity of zero. Take any intensity for a substance, let's say for air; air has a certain intensity, water has a greater intensity, earth an even greater intensity, and if you then go back again, you come to the so-called empty space, it has the intensity zero in relation to the effectiveness. Just as you can arrive at zero in your wallet and then, if you go further, incur debts and arrive at a negative figure, so intensity can also become negative, that is, holes can be drilled into outer space, so that you do not have space there, but negative intensity, hollowed-out space. Physicists would find it in the sun if they could travel there. But in doing so, you have already pointed out something that naturally precludes explaining the prominences in the way that today's physics explains them. So these things lead so far afield, and I can of course only hint that one should try here to get involved in spiritual science. Because that does not actually belong to our immediate path here, otherwise we would have to deal with the whole of anthroposophy here, and that is impossible.

Now I would like to believe that your questions, which rest on the seplen, could at least be answered in the main, as far as that is possible.

Question: What about the communication of individual parishioners with the chalice and bread?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, Communion should be celebrated in such a way that it is celebrated under both forms, because it is actually about the body #rd about the blood, and from the ritual you have also seen that the two parts of the action, the breaking of bread and the taking of bread and that which is done in relation to the cup, are not quite the same and that therefore [these actions] are two parts of a whole. At the time when there was a dispute about whether the cup should be given at all or not, the actual realization of this matter was essentially corrupted. And today one would even be inclined to look at the matter from a sanitary point of view, which is of course a terrible thing.

Question: How should we think about the distribution of the weekly verses over the months that last more than 28 days, when one time the verse is meditated on for two weeks?

Rudolf Steiner: I said that in the morning that I meant that one should try to integrate days for the saying. I thought that the weekly saying should not always be for seven days, but that one should try to distribute it so that it would last for a year. If you do a little calculating, you will get there. In such matters, it is never the absolute number that is important, but the rhythm that continues. Not that it should be done for two weeks, but that some weeks should be extended by days.

Question: To what extent can free speech pieces also be included in the rituals? What should be the position of the sermon in the service?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it is best, although it is different in some church areas, to insert the sermon before the Gospel reading. The sermon should precede the Gospel reading. I have not had the opportunity to give you certain formulas for what, so to speak, entwines around the four main parts of the Mass. In Catholicism, for example, we have the relay prayers, that is, the prayers below [at the steps of the altar] before the steps of the altar are climbed; we have a certain reading on the right side of the altar, while the gospel is read from the left side; and the sermon should actually always be inserted before the gospel reading. But with the exception of the sermon and the communion of the faithful, which should be performed after the priest has taken communion and before the final formulas of the mass – which I have not yet been able to explain to you either, but I will send them to you send it to you in some form or other – so with the exception of the sermon and the Communion of the faithful, which is not even connected with a single word, extemporaneous speech should not take hold within the Mass and within the ceremonies.

Of course it cannot be that you regard what I have just formulated – and I have told you how difficult it is to formulate – as something dogmatically established, but what is ritual should be stereotyped in a certain sense.

Question: Do Catholic and anthroposophical views of worship and the sacrifice of the Mass flow from the same source? Does the Catholic chasuble go back to the recognition of the supersensible nature of the human being, and is there still an awareness of these things in Catholicism today?

Rudolf Steiner: This question is extremely difficult to answer in the absolute sense. Let us start with the first question: Does the Catholic chasuble go back to the realization of the supersensible nature of the human being? — One can say: It goes back to that, but this realization, which one would have to fall back on, actually lies in a time before the Catholic chasuble was introduced. It was introduced into the old service and retained at a time when one could no longer see these things. So it has been taken over traditionally, and today, if one has access to supersensible vision, one can recognize the extent to which these things apply. As far as I know, the symbolism given in the Catholic Church in relation to the chasuble is, compared to what I have told you, extremely arbitrary. At least, as far as I know, I have found little that can be traced back to the four limbs of the human being.

Constantin Neuhaus: I know of nothing.

Rudolf Steiner: You know nothing about it? So in Catholicism it is certainly the case that the symbolism appears much more arbitrary; it is certainly not the case that one would understand things immediately. So one can hardly say that the question “Is there still an awareness of these things in Catholicism today?” could be answered with an absolute yes.

Now the question: Do Catholic and anthroposophical views on worship and the sacrifice of the Mass flow from the same source?

Yes, as I said, what is there has simply been taken over from tradition, just as much has been based on tradition that has now been abandoned, let us say, for example, the golden backgrounds in Cimabue. Yes, they were used because it was simply traditional to have gold backgrounds when depicting saints or anything related to the transcendental world. Because the solar nature of the transcendental was how it was imagined, it was traditional for many to always paint the images of saints in the way they were painted at the time of Cimabue. Only Giotto began to break away from tradition. Of course, you can't find a golden background in the sensual world, but in the world to which, traditionally, what was depicted in Cimabue's time corresponded, it was quite possible that the gold could also be seen as a background.

Now, you can even see in certain pictures — anthroposophists have even gradually come to love some of these images — how the tradition of the two Jesus children was still present as a tradition for a long time. Since nothing is known about it today, people naturally scoff at these things. Well, people “scoff at themselves and know not how”.

Question: Does the new cult not also include an episcopal church constitution?

Rudolf Steiner: It seems necessary to me, my dear friends, that you take into account the development of the matter. We are really not yet so far that we need to delve deeper into an episcopal church constitution right now. There is no doubt that something like a church constitution will arise. But do you not see that what we have brought before our souls here as the beginning of the cult – and that is enough for the time being – is really practised without a fully developed episcopal church constitution? As for what will then have to be done in order to make a start on the cult, I believe that it will be done if this start can be made. I do not think it would be advisable to start with cult forms and ordinations before the matter is sufficiently well established, so that the individuals who want to stand up for this renewal of religious life have their full task in a very firm way. Then we will be ready to say: When those concerned have gathered their community, then we will answer the question of how this is to be done in detail. Now, of course, this is also related to the next question: Who can ordain, either only the one who has already been ordained or everyone involved in the religious renewal? If the first case applies, who can perform the ordination?

It is really only about the very first case. Then it is necessary – for there to be real unity – that things are done in such a way that the consecration comes from a first person. But the first from which this emanates is again something that must arise, and then, when it has arisen, when, so to speak, the self-evident agreement, of which I have spoken before, is there, then what must be done to bring about what is necessary will certainly be found.

Perhaps you have other questions?

The question is asked about the design of the altar.

Rudolf Steiner: Design of the altar? Well, it seems to me that first of all the altar should be designed in such a way that it works through its correctness on the one hand, but through its simplicity on the other. The essential thing about an altar would of course be the following in its simplest form: There is, of course, a kind of table, and it is good if, because it is about the sacrifice, this table also remains what it was intended for, actually a tomb; so you have a tomb in the form of a table, with steps leading up to it. There is now a lampstand in which lights are arranged in such a way that there are three on the right and three on the left, and one in the middle, which is elevated. There are seven lights on the altar, and above the seven lights, in some way, the triune God, that is, God in the three forms. It is important that we really relate ourselves to what is expressed in the Mystery of Golgotha: the taking up of death into the power of the Father, so that we do well if we – of course without superstition or idolatry — leave the Father in the form of an old man; the Christ is already best represented as he has been represented since the sixth century, even for the present time, because it is true for this time that the contrast of Christianity to earlier perceptions is sharply emphasized. You know, of course, that it is said of Buddha that he arrived at his teaching as a result of the sight of a corpse. According to the account that is usually given, it was actually from this sight of the corpse that the Buddha's teaching emerged, because Buddha was horrified by the corpse, because he recoiled from the corpse. Among the manifold things that... [space in the transcription], it is a fact that six centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha people looked up to the body on the cross in jubilation, while 600 years before the Mystery of Golgotha the Buddha turned away from the body in disgust. This memory, even if only in our feelings, is something that should be presented even today when it comes to the representation of the Trinity. For reasons that we have already mentioned, the Holy Ghost was [represented] in the form of the dove, the innocent winged creature. That is, after all, approximately what matters most at the altar. Everything else is then, in part, too much for today's consciousness or it is tendrils. What should be striven for, of course, if possible, is to have the Sanctissimum, that is, the monstrance, which I have drawn, wherein the consecrated host is located, and that is something that beginning and before the end of the sacrifice of the Mass, and it is also entirely appropriate to add to what is to happen through the sacrifice of the Mass the viewing of the consecrated host, the consecrated host.

The altar will naturally be covered with cloths, which in turn go through the same annual development as I have shown for the priest's robe. The altar is to be so equipped that it essentially matches the color of the cloths with which it is covered, the priest's robe, and the external chasuble. Of course, it is important to ensure that the implements that are used, the chalice and the monstrance, are also consecrated, and that only consecrated items are used to touch them. That is probably the most important thing to say about this.

A participant asks about the technical possibilities for performing the breviary prayer and asks for a statement on Catholic kneeling and folding the hands in connection with meditation.

Rudolf Steiner: The meditations are never Catholicizing and the question of bodily positions does not arise for them, because it is always emphasized that what constitutes meditation in our Western world is independent of bodily positions. The only thing that is good for the meditator of the West is that he does not choose a position that makes him too sensitive, so that he is not distracted by uncomfortable sensations but can be completely within himself. The oriental meditations, to which, by the way, things like kneeling and the like can be traced back, also take into account the immersion of the self into the currents of the universe. This is something that should not really be considered for prayer with a breviary, but the concentration that occurs should actually replace and balance these external aids. That is why I did not go into things like kneeling, because they really do not have the same significance for the [Western] human being who is more liberated in his organization as they once had, and who would actually lower the whole cultural experience by one level than we are allowed to place it today. I believe that, as some of you have already seen, in the Sunday activities in the Waldorf School, every movement, every position is made as simply as possible, just as it arises from the situation; and that is what should actually be aimed for: to do what is done in this direction, out of the immediate situation.

A participant: Pastoral physiology and pastoral psychology were mentioned this morning. This reminded me of an expression found in old dialects and still used today in popular speech: to put something through its paces. Is that related to what was said this morning?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, if one wanted to give a complete answer, one would also have to go into anthroposophical medicine, anthroposophical anatomy and physiology. In every organ we see the outward sign of a spiritual connection in which the human being stands with the whole world. If we look at the human heart, we see everything concentrated in the heart that connects the human being with the forces that make up the will-like nature of his thoughts, so one might say, not the content of his thoughts, but the will-like nature of his thoughts, his volition in the spirit. In the kidneys we have to seek everything that is the feeling nature of the human soul; so that when we say “to test someone through their heart and kidneys”, we are saying in a vividly concrete and therefore true way what would mean in our present intellectualistic language, namely, one tests a person according to his volition and his feelings, not merely according to the content of his thoughts, but one tests a person according to his real inner attitude, when one puts him through his paces.

But these things are so far removed from today's consciousness that I believe one could have already come so far as to be embarrassed to say “through and through”, or on the other hand one could have come so far as to consider this to be crude materialism; crude materialism consists namely in looking at matter in a crude way, because one makes the spirit into an abstract in a nebulous way.

One participant feels that the Lord's Prayer and the High Priestly Prayer in John's Gospel convey two different impressions regarding the concept of the Father.

Rudolf Steiner: You have a different impression? If you examine it, you will see that precisely in the High Priestly Prayer the meaning [of the concept of the Father] shines forth more deeply if you take this [what I said about the Father God]. A participant: But in the Lord's Prayer...?

Rudolf Steiner: In the Lord's Prayer, one has to think of the foundation of the world. In the Lord's Prayer, the first sentence does not actually refer to the later becoming, but to the beginning, to the origin. The Lord's Prayer is actually intended as a measure of time, so it refers to the beginning... [gap in the transcript].

A participant: In the Catholic Church, it is necessary for the faithful to cleanse themselves through confession if they wish to partake of communion. What should take the place of confession in preparing the communicant [in our church]?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, this morning I also spoke about a kind of confession, my dear friends, at least about a connection between the community and the pastor, so that the pastor is already the confessor. These things can be taken up in a certain sense, if they are done in a free way, not in such a rigid form and almost business-like way, as is often the case in the Catholic Church. There is a difficulty that arises when Catholics become anthroposophists. On the contrary, one does not want to fight the denominations in the anthroposophical field. One would actually like everyone to progress through their denomination. I do not mean to progress to anthroposophy, but to progress religiously, as you would like to progress by speaking of a renewal of religious life. It is not the confessions that should be fought, nor the practice of the confessions. But now there is a difficulty with Roman Catholic believers that they say: Yes, how are we to practice communion when we do not receive it if we have not confessed beforehand? And that is indeed a difficulty that is insurmountable in the anthroposophical field, for example, because one cannot advise someone to make a compulsory confession that is of the kind that often occurs in Roman Catholicism. Thus, Roman Catholicism has organized things in such a way that they either require an absolutely firm adherence [to the Church] or a complete departure, in which case, however, damnation is pronounced. But much of what makes up the strength of Catholicism depends on this. You cannot be a real Catholic in a casual way, because you cannot even receive communion at Easter if you have not first made your Easter confession. The very fact that they exist in Catholicism shows that these things should be more free and also more true and sincere. After all, it is not that rare, comparatively speaking, to have a Catholic maid, and if chance would have it, you might find a note in the servant's room where she has written: I stole my master's gold watch – and only now realizes that she stole my gold watch; but she had written this down so as not to forget to confess it. Even if it is not always a matter of gold watches, these things do exist, and they make the whole thing seem trivial, untrue, un-Christian. This could be overcome precisely by the attitude that amounts to the communicant, if he feels it is necessary, first discussing it with the pastor, seeking him out, and that the pastor also knows whether he can give him Communion without having spoken to him. Much of what is always thought of in rigid terms and in rigid laws must be introduced into the practical side, into the whole management of parish life. That is what I meant this morning when I talked about parish life.

A participant: Many of us would be very grateful if we could get a hint about the right way to help the dying and how best to comfort and uplift the seriously ill.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, first of all, it has to be said that it is extremely difficult when one is obliged to try to lift someone's spirits at the moment of death or during a serious illness with some kind of catchphrase or pep talk. The essential thing should actually be to have so much influence on the whole life of the person turning to you as a pastor that the sick person or the person dying after death feels differently through this whole life, through their way of thinking, their powers of feeling, than they would if they only needed special strengthening in each individual case. But especially when one has previously entered into such a relationship with a member of the community, or when someone else who works in the same way has done so, the spoken word will always be valuable in that situation. But if in such moments something is simply to be said in the form of a formula, it will not usually help very much. For one can only speak to a person in a way that is truly understood if one is able to find an echo in his soul. Now, if a person is healthy, one will naturally be able to find an echo for many things, but in moments of illness or death, one needs preparation in order to find an echo for what is spoken out of the situation.

They could experience that at least anthroposophists fall ill and die differently than materialists, and that with them, comfort can very well be spoken out of the situation and out of the matter, and that — as I mentioned this morning — encouragement always helps if the person concerned feels lonely. Sometimes it is more important who says something and how they say it than what is said. But it is true that one can say: In all cases involving illness, when it is a matter of speaking to the dying person, and when it is a matter of consoling the bereaved, it is easier if one can speak on the very broad basis of leaning towards the spiritual through what has come before, than if there has not been a living previous influence. I would strongly urge anyone to try to attend the funeral of an Anthroposophist, to look at those left behind, to listen to how Anthroposophists have died, and they will see that they will ultimately have to answer the question as follows: What we do for the sick person, we should actually do for them while they are healthy; what we do for the dying, we should do for them during their lifetime, and what comfort we have to give to the bereaved, should also be there for them beforehand. Then these things can be done and they will be worthy, because these things sometimes have a very unworthy character.

A participant: I still have a question that could perhaps be answered. We have heard about the veneration of Christ and also that in the Catholic mass the “dominus vobiscum” was, as it were, a wrong translation and should be translated as “Christ in you”. But how is a veneration of the spiritual-physical reason for existence to be realized, since there are circles in the youth movement today that venerate God as the B. Sun?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, what it is about is that one forms a relationship to what I have often called the triune God, because through this veneration or worship or however you want of the triune God, everything that, when it afflicts people, actually corrupts them or even makes them ill, is avoided. If you take the triune God, you avoid such one-sidedness as pure, naked worship of nature, as it is in a service to the sun, in whatever form it may appear. But at the same time you have also avoided – as the matter demands – then taking the idea of God so far away from the human being that you no longer have any concrete content for it at all. For in the second form of the Godhead, in the second person, in the Christ, the Godhead is to be conceived as thoroughly human within, while we know that in the Father God it has more of a symbolic character. It is absolutely the case that the expansion of our understanding of the divine through the Trinity – if we are not speaking merely in definitions, but are entering into something very concrete – also gives the content of God a fullness that cannot be attained by anything else. If today some people fall back into a nature service, into an idolatry, it is because through a non-supernatural understanding of the concept of God, it has been greatly removed from what we now have in the visible world as the so-called most perfect in us, in man.

I can only say that, because I don't know what you meant by your question. I mean, where do you see a difficulty?

The same participant: The question only arose for me because I feel the need to also include the Father, who is still to come as the Christ. It is just the way it is for me personally.

Rudolf Steiner: The Father? Yes, but in fact: to think of the Father without the Son is actually to fall back into the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. There is a strong tendency towards this today. The tendency towards this is so strong today that it is one of the most important world-historical phenomena of our time. Just consider what divides nations today. Individual nations do not feel the human context, which is felt in a Christian way, but the national context, and what they accomplish in the national context, they often accomplish “in the name of Christ”, while something that is to be accomplished from the national context can actually only be accomplished in the name of Yahweh. So that basically today, in the way we treat nationalities, we have the phenomenon – as grotesque as it may sound – that all nations have become Jews, except that each nation has its own Yahweh; there is no right to speak of the Christ. Now, of course, one can truly say today that one does not want the Christ, but if one does so, one must also be honest enough to return to Judaism if one values the Father more than the Son. A participant: I feel the need to honor the Father more than the Christ.

Rudolf Steiner: If you feel the need to honor the father more than the Christ, then you are not going along with the actual mission of the Christ. Of course it may be natural to you, but it is not Christian.

A participant: In the Catholic Church, after confession, the pastor assigns certain penance exercises. How and with what does one help a person so that he is able to overcome his spiritual distress himself?

Rudolf Steiner: What do you mean by what is given in the Catholic Church?

The same participant: Making amends for a debt incurred. That would also be possible here. I believe prayers or something like that.

Rudolf Steiner: But of course this also has its dangerous side. You see, within Catholicism you confess as a child. You say your sins, which sometimes can be very formulaic. At least that is how I was introduced to these things, that children confess sins for which they do not understand the words they say in the slightest. Isn't that right, the children get a piece of paper like that – I still know these papers quite well – all the sins are on it; you cross out the ones you haven't committed, and then you confess the ones you've left. Not so long ago, this was not uncommon. The child does not understand how superficial it is. Sometimes the most terrible things are written on these pieces of paper, which the child is better off not knowing. But sometimes it is just as superficial as when the priest says: “Say five Our Fathers and one Creed.” What does this praying of five Our Fathers and one Creed have to do with the commandments, and what does it have to do, in the abstract, with what is actually supposed to be achieved when there is real spiritual distress or even just dissatisfaction or something similar in the soul? Naturally, the community should not exceed a certain size. Through the encouragement of the word and through everything that the confessor – if I may call him that – then considers necessary, a certain amount of amends can of course be made, can't it? All sorts of things will happen, it is hardly possible to avoid them if one really seeks the advice of a confessor. But dangers lie in the imposition of prayers or, let us say, the payment of indulgences or the ordering of masses.

The same participant: I was thinking more of a simple meditation for one person.

Rudolf Steiner: That is right, a meditation can only be given individually. No prescription for a meditation can be given, and therefore, when the priestly practice is there, it will arise precisely from what I meant today. Of course it can be there, but it must not be externalized by making patterns for it.

Heisler: It was said a few days ago that it is difficult to establish a connection with deceased people who have died without an inner relationship to Christ. What specifically can be done to help such a deceased person to find a connection with Christ?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is true. In fact, the only thing one can do is what I have already mentioned. One can try to establish a connection with the deceased through their thoughts, to cling to this connection. I did not say to Christ, but to the supersensible world in this case. Of course, for most people today, finding the supersensible world is in turn tied to a connection with Christ. The things that were indicated at the time must simply be tried. Otherwise it is of course necessary to bring about the possibility, precisely by constantly thinking of the dead person, by occupying oneself with him, to prepare oneself so that after one's own death one can then help him. It may well be the case, because he was too distant, that one cannot help him.

A participant: How should one behave in the following two cases: firstly, when a person has led such a life that one must assume that he is lost, and secondly, when one has to say a dying prayer for a seriously ill person who no longer knows anything about what is happening?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, of course [regarding the first part of the question] one must say that one should never make such decisions, that someone is lost. Because the karma of the person is clearly [to be considered], one must never take away the possibility of turning it around and helping. So under no circumstances should anyone be given to understand that he is lost, because to do so would be to add to the possibility of his loss by presenting it as a truth. Here one must remember that one should naturally avoid the thought that someone is lost, should not have it at all.

The second question is whether one should still say a prayer for a dying person if they have no sense of what is being said to them? You should definitely do that! I would ask you to always bear in mind that the soul, the spiritualized soul of the person, is indeed there, and that it is not at all just a matter of whether what the person can take in is done with the help of the physical instrument, but rather it is so that, for example, when one speaks a blessing over a person or otherwise speaks to his soul in any way, this can certainly also happen when one is quite sure that the person concerned cannot take it.

I must confess that I have always held the opinion, based entirely on the realization that many people who now listen to lectures on anthroposophy are not able to absorb things in this life. Nevertheless, I do not consider it unnecessary to speak to them, because their souls do absorb it, and they carry it through death into the next life on earth. Truly, to believe in the spirit is different from believing in the intellect, and to believe in the spirit of a person is different from believing in that person's intellect.

A participant asks whether advice could be given on how to cure mental illnesses from an anthroposophical perspective.

Rudolf Steiner: This is, of course, an extremely extensive chapter. You see, much more than one might think, so-called physical illnesses — in the sense in which I also spoke this morning — depend on spiritual-soul preconditions, and actually there are no real soul illnesses at all, but soul illnesses are basically always based, albeit sometimes on very distant, minute physical illnesses. I would like to emphasize that anthroposophy does not take the view that one speaks of mental illnesses and the like and also wants to heal the so-called mental illnesses spiritually. The point is that in this area in particular, today's external, materialistic medicine — which has almost entirely become a description of abnormal states of mind, in this respect there are indeed the most detailed medical histories — is very much mistaken. The cure for so-called mental illnesses is usually to be found in physical healing, because it is the case that the spiritual-soul is not ill, but can only fail to appear, cannot express itself, through the sick physical. One could even go as far as the paradox: physical illnesses go back to spiritual causes, mental illnesses go back to physical causes. Of course, one must not press such a paradox.

So we are being led beyond all the amateurishness that appears today in the teachings of hypnotism, suggestion or even psychoanalysis, to a healthy medicine that works with the physical and spiritual. It is true that you will sometimes have to ask yourself: Where is the possibility of treating a physical lunatic? — and one often encounters the greatest difficulties with this, because the things that are at issue are extraordinarily difficult to deal with.

A participant: Could we not learn something about the significance of the cult of Mary, especially the May devotions?

Rudolf Steiner: It should be said that the cult of Mary is related to the cult of the Holy Spirit, and that in a certain sense, one can look up to the Holy Spirit on the one hand and to Mary on the other. There is even an old trinity: Father, Mother, Son, and there are even sects that call the Holy Spirit “the Mother of God”. Indeed, in the female organization, one can already see something of the physical organization... [gap in the transcript], as I have explained in these days. On the other hand, however, the Catholic Church developed the cult of Mary at a time when far too little was understood about all these things, and so it allowed itself to exercise a certain amount of arbitrariness. In fact, you will find arbitrariness in all that has been hinted at to you in the Catholic breviary from Pentecost to the feasts of the apostles and saints. The saints' days have actually fallen into arbitrariness because one does not really have a real knowledge of these things, and some things, aren't they, are really set with the greatest arbitrariness, for example, the Feast of Corpus Christi. In the case of the Feast of Corpus Christi, it is actually not even clear — given the precisely defined dogmatic tradition — what it is really about, and, if it is about the body of Christ, for example, why this feast falls precisely at this time. You only have to look at the history of such festivals to see how numerous ambiguities have arisen from materializing knowledge.

Now I do not believe that it is necessary to go too far in the elaboration of such festivals from the very beginning. I have, for example, because I do not allow myself to speak quite objectively about things in the anthroposophical field, of course, also spoken in Protestant areas of the veneration of Mary and the like, of the position of Mary, and that has often greatly angered precisely Protestant minds. They could not bear it, they found it to be a Catholicizing tendency.

Constantin Neuhaus: If we have to free ourselves from personal sins through self-redemption, why do we need a sacramental act of repentance? And if we do, how does this sacramental act of repentance work?

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that the cause of committing a personal sin lies in the weakness brought about by the general sin. The personal sin, or the very personal part of the sin, as I once put it, must be removed in self-redemption. But is it not possible to help a person with something that he is supposed to accomplish through himself? Helping him and strengthening his strength does not contradict the principle of self-redemption. So the sacramental act is essentially a strengthening act. Now, what must be said here is actually that every sacramental act is power-strengthening, that every sacramental act, not just penance, contributes to acquiring this power in order to be able to bring about self-redemption in the course of one's life on earth. So one can express this in very pure terms, if I may express myself in this way. It is therefore quite possible to say that man should be helped as much as possible in this direction, precisely because he is dependent on self-redemption with regard to personal sin. A participant: There are very useful people today who, for some reason or other, do not want to know anything about Christianity on principle, for example Ellen Key. But surely we can ask whether these people do not unconsciously have a living relationship to Christ, or whether knowledge of the spiritual content must be added?

Rudolf Steiner: It is extremely difficult to answer this question in general. As for Ellen Key, for example, since you mentioned her yourself, you see, you have to take the reality into account. A person does not always show what is really in him, and it does not always express itself through his words either. You can, by living in a culture, say with your language, simply feel emotionally that it would make no sense to feel without Christ as one does. If you take Ellen Key's writings as a whole, there is a great deal about her. She denies what she herself has. That is absolutely the case; she has many ideas that she could not have [outside of the Christian context] because they could not have arisen in any other way than within the Christian context.

And so it is with what I said yesterday about Nietzsche. With Nietzsche it is like this: he is the son of a pastor, piously educated, his mother terribly pious, she was truly an extraordinarily pious woman even in old age. And from all this background... [gap in the transcription], there was an inner tragedy, a drilling against himself, that Nietzsche behaves like an executioner towards his own conceptual world – you can find the word from him, by the way. Now he turns against Christ, and when he finally fell into madness in Turin, he wrote letters in which he signed himself: “The Crucified”. So he wrote like that out of his madness, but a person's inclination towards the Christ cannot have disappeared, who signs 'The Crucified' in his madness, even if he wrote the book 'The Antichrist'. So these things are such that one should, I would say, handle them with great care.

Well, my dear friends, everything must come to an end sometime, and we may now conclude this course, as you must now hurry home. I will just refer to what I actually said this morning about community building as a kind of farewell word. I would like to believe that, above all, this course should be based on the most serious consideration of what religious renewal should be achieved by those who have already come together here and by those who will continue to find their way here. It is truly a relief in the deepest sense of the word to hear something like this today: a group of people are coming together to help bring about the ascent of humanity, which is so deeply involved in the movements of decline. But do not forget, my dear friends, that today it takes strength to work for something as you have set out to do. You will be able to muster this strength when you are aware of the full magnitude of the task and when, on the other hand, you are aware of how far humanity has strayed from that which is actually beneficial to it. Those who see the misfortunes of our time in the area on which you have focused as something small are simply being too complacent. Only when one sees the full extent of the decline and, at the same time, the magnitude of the task that we have, can one move forward.

If, from the content of what I have been able to give you, it has also emerged to some extent that you are looking at the current situation with all seriousness and are deciding your actions in the near future based on the seriousness of the matter, then the most important thing that these lectures and these negotiations have been able to strive for has been achieved. And what I would like to give you today from the bottom of my heart is given out of a consciousness that every word wants to shape out of the power of the spirit, that everything that can be connected in hopes, in strengthening wishes for this movement, will accompany you out into your effectiveness from me. My thoughts will be with you, my dear friends, because I see your work as extraordinarily important and meaningful for the present. If you succeed in finding the necessary strength, then it will be so – let us hope that we all find the necessary strength to do so, that we all immerse ourselves so deeply and that we can will so strongly – that what we have set out to do will happen.

In this sense, my dear friends, I would like the words and word attempts that have been presented to you during these days to continue to resound in your hearts, in your thinking, feeling and willing. Let us continue to work in this spirit!