The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! I would like to add a few words to what we were considering last time, and then perhaps someone will have a new question.

The question that was asked concerning man's origin can be rightly understood and answered only by looking back at the whole evolution of humanity. The assertion that men were originally animal-like, that they had an animal-like intelligence, and so forth, is nothing but a science fairy tale. It is contradicted by what has been found from the earliest historical times, and what—even though poetic in form—indicates the existence of great wisdom among the human beings who lived during those primeval earth conditions. At that time men did not feel inequality among themselves as they feel it today. The feeling of inequality always comes to the fore in an epoch when men have more or less lost real knowledge.

Only think how at a certain period in ancient Egypt slavery was widespread. But slavery was not always there; it developed at a time when men had lost real knowledge of the world, had lost real science, and no longer knew what slavery signified. And if you think intelligently you will certainly ask yourselves: Why is it that, for instance, a labor movement had to arise with such forcefulness?

Naturally it was bound to arise because conditions made it necessary, because people had come to feel that things could not go on as they were, and they wanted to call attention to how the conditions should be bettered. What makes the labor problem such a burning question is the fact that industry and all the various discoveries and inventions have gone in one particular direction. Before the spread of industry, need was not so oppressive. Why is it, then, that the advent of industry has brought this burden in its train?

As every reasonable person will admit, those few human beings who do not live in actual need—shall we say, the capitalists, as they are usually called—do not create this need deliberately for the pure joy of it. Naturally, they would prefer the needs of all human beings to be satisfied. Obviously, that must be taken into account. But then this other question arises: Why is it that the few who reach leading positions lack the capacity to change conditions so that the needs of the masses will be satisfied?

It is always the few leaders in the trade unions upon whom all the others depend. As things have developed, it is quite natural that it is always the few who lead, but they lack clear insight. And the masses of workers feel that these few do not themselves know what should be done. It has become obvious, especially just recently, that these few do not know what they should be doing. So one must say: Something is quite obviously lacking. And from the view of spiritual science, the thing lacking is knowledge of the spiritual world. This knowledge would confirm that it is absolutely untrue to say that at the beginning of their evolution human beings were unintelligent, dull, and that now they are enlightened. That is the general opinion today and it is simply not true.

At the beginning of their existence on the earth, human beings possessed a knowledge not only of what was on the earth but also of the stars in the heavens. The reason why today this knowledge has degenerated into superstition—I have often spoken of this—is that, as time went on, these things were no longer investigated and hence came to be misunderstood. Originally there was a widespread knowledge of the stars; today the only knowledge of the stars that exists is one that makes calculations about them. But it is unable to penetrate to their spiritual reality. If a being living on Mars were to know only as much about the earth as our ordinary consciousness, our ordinary science, knows about Mars, that Mars being would believe that there is not a single soul on the earth—whereas actually there are fifteen to twenty hundred million souls on the earth! It is the same with the ideas people hold now about the stars; actually the stars are full of souls—only the souls are different.

Of course you may say: But one can't see into the world of stars, so one can't know or observe the conditions there. That is an enormous error! Why can a man standing here see the piano over there? Because his eyes are so organized that he is able to see it. His eyes are not over there in the piano. In exactly the same way—as spiritual science, or anthroposophy, shows—if a human being not only develops from childhood to the level to which our modern education takes him, but develops further than that, he will in very truth be able to perceive what is spiritual in the stars, just as humanity originally perceived it. And then he will know that the stars have an influence upon the human being, each star a different influence. If, for example, it can be shown that Mars has an influence upon the development of grubs into cockchafer—it can also be shown that all the stars have an influence upon man's spiritual life. They have it indeed! But this knowledge of the stars has entirely disappeared—and what has come in its place?

In earlier times, when men looked at the moon, they knew that from the moon come the forces for all propagation on the earth. No being would have offspring if the moon did not send to earth the forces of propagation. No being or creature would grow if the forces of growth did not come from the sun. No human being would be able to think if the forces of thinking did not come from Saturn. But all that people know today is the speed at which Saturn moves, the speed at which the moon moves, and whether there are a few extinct volcanoes on the moon. They know nothing more and don't want to know anything more. They simply find out by calculation what they want to know about the stars.

But now let us turn from the world of stars to the world of men. Industry has come on the scene. In the age when all people could do about the stars was to make calculations, they began to do the same in the domain of industry. They did nothing but reckon and calculate, with the result that they forgot man altogether. They treated the human being himself as if he were part of a machine. And so the conditions have come about that prevail today. Conditions will never be satisfactory if people merely calculate what kind of conditions ought to prevail on the earth; they will have to know something beside that. That is the point. But then it must be admitted that human knowledge has deteriorated to a terrible extent in the very age that claims to be “enlightened.”

I told you that at a recent Farmers' Conference it was the unanimous opinion that all agricultural products have been deteriorating for decades. The reason for this deterioration is that, with the exception of certain peasants who have instinctively hung on to bits of the earlier knowledge, nothing is really known about the way to take care of a farm. But how is such knowledge acquired? Certainly it can never be acquired by calculation, knowing that the moon will be a full moon again in twenty-eight days, but only by knowing, for instance, how the moon forces work in the fruition of grain, and so forth. This knowledge has been entirely forgotten. People don't even know what goes on in the soil in their fields. And they know still less what is going on in the world of men.

Social science has produced nothing more than series after series of calculations. Capital, working hours, wages, are nothing but figures that have been calculated. And calculating does not come to grips with human life, or indeed with any life at all. The curse of the modern age is that everything merely is to be calculated. Instead of things being merely calculated, they should be studied and observed as they actually are, and this is only possible through first gaining knowledge of the stars. Today, the moment people hear the phrase, “knowledge of the stars,” they say immediately: That's idiotic! We've known for a long time that the stars have no influence whatever. But to assert that the stars have no influence upon what is happening on the earth, that, gentlemen, is the real idiocy! And the consequence is that there is no real knowledge left. That is a concrete fact. Take capital, for instance: It can be expressed in figures, it can be counted—and what is the result? If capital is merely a matter of calculation, it is of no importance who owns the capital, whether a single individual or everyone in common. For the same results will invariably ensue. Not until we again take hold of life so that our concern centers upon the human being as the prime reality, not until then will there be a social science capable of doing anything effective, a social science capable of really achieving something.

That is why I also like to say this: Let us see what will come about through anthroposophy. It is, of course, still only in its beginning, and naturally it appears to be similar in many respects to the other science. But it will develop gradually into a complete knowledge of the human being. In the domain of education, for instance, it has already brought into being the Waldorf School. Not until this stage of knowledge has been reached will anthroposophical science be able to be applied effectively to social problems. Today you can only realize that the world's current knowledge is incapable of really effective intervention in life; it comes to a standstill everywhere.

That is what I wanted to add. Are you satisfied so far? (Yes, yes!) Of course, a great deal could still be said, but there will be other opportunities for considering many aspects of the subject.

So now, has someone else, perhaps, thought of a question?

Question: Can anything be known about man's origin? Where he comes from?

Dr. Steiner: That is a question about which many of you who have been here for some time have heard a great deal from me. Those of you who have come recently are naturally interested in such questions, so those who have already heard my answers will perhaps be willing to hear them again.

When we look at the human being as he moves about on the earth, we see his body first and foremost. We also notice that he thinks and feels. If we look at a chair, no matter how long we wait, it doesn't begin to move about—because it cannot exercise will. We perceive that the human being wills. But speaking generally it can be said that we really see only the body.

And it is very easy to form the opinion that this body constitutes the whole of man. Moreover, if this is believed, many arguments in proof of it can be found. (You see, in anthroposophy other people's opinions cannot be treated lightly. All points of view must be seriously considered.) And so it can be pointed out, for instance, that people can lose their memory if they take poison and are not immediately killed by it. The implication is that the body is a machine and everything depends upon the running of the machine. If the blood vessels burst in a man's brain and the blood presses on the nerves, such a man may lose not only his memory but his whole intelligence. So it can be said that everything is dependent upon the body. But that kind of thinking does not hold water if one really examines it thoroughly. It simply does not hold water. If it did, we could say that man thinks with his brain. But what is actually going on in the brain when a man thinks?

Well, a real investigation of the human body shows that it is absolutely incorrect to say that when a man is thinking, something constructive is going on in his brain. On the contrary, something is always being destroyed, demolished, when he is thinking. Substances in the brain are being broken down, destroyed. Death on a small scale is perpetually taking place there.

The final death that happens once and for all means that the whole body is destroyed; but what happens all at once in the entire body when a man dies is also taking place throughout the body during life, in a piecemeal process. Man excretes not only through his organs of excretion, the urine, feces, sweat, but in other ways as well. Just think what your head would look like if you never had your hair cut! Something is excreted there, too. And think of the claws you'd have if you never cut your nails! But not only that: man is all the time sloughing off his skin—he just doesn't notice it. Man is casting off substance all the time. In the case of the urine and feces the process is not very significant, because for the most part these simply contain what has been eaten, material that has not gone into the whole body, whereas what is excreted in the nails has gone through the whole body.

Suppose you take your scissors and cut a fingernail. What you now cut away, you took in, you ate seven or eight years ago. What you ate went into the blood and nerves and passed through the whole body. It needed seven or eight years to do that. Now you cut it away. Just think of the body you have today, the body in which you are sitting there. If you had sat there seven or eight years ago, it would have been in quite another body! The body you had then has been cast away, has been sweated away, has been cut away with the nails, cut away with the hair. The entire body as it once was, has gone—with the exception of the bones and the like—and within a period of seven or eight years has been entirely renewed.

So now we must ask ourselves: Does thinking originate from the constant upbuilding of the body or from the constant tearing-down of the body? That is an important question. If you have something in your body that brings about too much upbuilding—shall I say, if you drink one tiny glass too much, or not just one—most people can manage that—but if you drink enough more so that you know you're “loaded”—what happens then, gentlemen? The blood becomes very active and a terribly rapid process of upbuilding takes place. When that happens, when the blood becomes too tumultuous, a man loses consciousness. Thinking is not the result of an upbuilding process in the brain, but of a process of small, piecemeal destruction. If no tearing-down process took place in the human body, the human being would simply not be able to think.

So the fact is that thinking does not come from our building up the body but from our continual killing of it bit by bit. That is why we have to sleep, because we don't do any thinking then. What is continually being demolished through our thinking is quickly restored in sleep. So waking and sleeping show us that while we are thinking, death is always taking place in the body on a small scale.

But now picture for a moment not a man's body, but his clothing. If you take off all your clothes you are not, it is true, fit for the drawing room, but you are still there, and you can put on different clothes. That is what man does through the whole of his earthly life. Every seven or eight years he puts on a new body and discards the other. With animals there is a clear illustration of this: if you were to collect all the skins that a snake sloughs off every year, you would find that after a certain number of years it has discarded not only the skin but the whole of its body. In our case, of course, this is not so noticeable! And what about the birds? They moult. What are they doing when they moult? They're discarding part of their body; and after a period of a few years they've discarded it all, with the exception of the bones. What is it that remained?

You yourself are sitting there today although you have nothing at all of the body you had some eight years ago. And yet there you are, sitting here. You created a new body for yourself. The soul, gentlemen, sits there. The spirit and soul sit there. The spirit and soul work on the body, building it up all the time. If you go for a walk and find a large pile of stones somewhere, you know that a house is going to be built; you will certainly not assume that the stones will suddenly have feet and will place themselves very neatly one above the other and build themselves into a house! Well, just as little do substances assemble to form themselves into our body.

We receive our first body from our father and mother; but this body is thrown off entirely, and after seven or eight years we have a new one. We do not get this one from our parents; we ourselves have to build it up. Where does it come from? The body we had during the first years of life came from our parents; we could not have had a body without them. But what builds up the second body comes from the spiritual world. I do not mean the substance, but the active principle, the essential being, that is what comes out of the spiritual world. So we can say: When the human being is born, the body he has for the first seven or eight years of his life comes from his father and mother, but the soul and spiritual entity come from the spiritual world. And every seven or eight years the human being exchanges his body but retains all of himself that is spiritual. After a certain time the body is worn out and what earlier came into it as spirit and soul goes back again into the spiritual world. Man comes from the spiritual world and returns to the spiritual world.

You can see, this is also something that has been entirely forgotten—simply because today people have become thoughtless and do not penetrate to the reality of things. Once they have seen how the body is renewed over and over again, they will realize that the force which brings about the renewal is a soul force working within the body.

And now, gentlemen, what do you eat? Let us consider the different foodstuffs a human being eats. The simplest substance of all is protein. Not only in eggs but in the greatest variety of foodstuffs, in plants too, there is protein. Then man eats fat; he eats what are called carbohydrates—in potatoes, for instance—and he eats minerals. All other substances are composite substances; man eats them; he takes them into himself. They come from the earth; they are entirely dependent upon the earth. Everything we take in through the mouth is entirely dependent upon the earth. But now we don't take things in only through the mouth; we also breathe, and through our breathing we take in substances from the air. Usually this process is described very simply by saying: Man breathes in oxygen and breathes out carbon dioxide—as if he did nothing but breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out! But that is not the whole story. Very fine, rarefied substances are contained in the air we breathe. And we live not only on what we eat but also on these nourishing substances from the air. If we did nothing but eat, we would be obliged to replace our body very often, for what we eat is very rapidly transformed in the body. Only think how troublesome it is for someone when he does not get rid of what ought to be excreted within about twenty-four hours. The food that is eaten and then excreted passes through a rapid process. If we lived only on what we eat, we certainly wouldn't need seven or eight years to replace our body. It is because we take in very delicate, rarefied nourishment through the air, which is a slow process, that the replacement takes seven or eight years.

It is very important to know that man receives nourishment from the air. The food he eats is used, for example, for the constant renewing of his head. But the nourishment he needs in order, shall we say, to have fingernails does not come from what he eats but from the substances he draws from the air. And so we are nourished through eating and through breathing.

But now the really important fact is that when we take in nourishment from the cosmos through our breathing, we take in not only substance, but we take in at the same time the element of soul. The substance is in such a fine, rarefied state that the soul is able to live in it everywhere. So we may say: Man takes in bodily substance through his food; through his breathing he takes in, he lives with a soul element. But it is not the case that with every inhalation we take a piece of soul into ourselves and then with every exhalation breathe out a piece of soul again. In that event we would always be discarding the soul. No—it is like this: with our very first breath we take the soul into ourselves, and it is then the soul that brings about the breathing in us. And with our very last breath we set the soul free so that it can go back to the spiritual world.

And now that we know these things, we can make some calculations. Most of you will already know what follows, but it may still surprise you. If you investigate, you will find that a human being draws 18 breaths a minute. Now reckon how many breaths he draws in a day: 18 breaths a minute, 18 x 60 = 1080 breaths an hour; in 24 hours, 24 x 1080 = 25,920 breaths a day.

And now let us calculate—we can do so approximately—how many days a human being lives on the earth. For the sake of simplicity let us take 72 years as the average length of human life, and 360 days in a year. 72 years X 360 days = 25,920 days in a man's life. And that is the number of breaths a man draws in a day! So we can say, the human being lives as many days in his life as he draws breaths in one day.

Now we know there are one-day flies—and there could also conceivably be 1/18-of-a-minute beings! (For the length of time is not the essential point.) So if the human being were to die every time he breathes we could say: He breathes the soul in and out again with every breath. Yet he remains—remains alive for 25,920 days.

So now let us reckon those 72 years as a single breath. As I said before, with his first breath the human being breathes his soul in and with his last breath he breathes it out again. Assuming now that he lives an average of 72 years, we can say: This inbreathing and outbreathing of the soul lasts for a period of 72 years. Taking this period to be one cosmic day, we would again have to multiply 72 X 360 to get a cosmic year: 25,920! If we take the life of a human being as one cosmic day, we get the cosmic year: 25,920 cosmic days!

But this number has still another meaning. On the 21st of March, the day of the beginning of Spring, the sun rises at the present time in the constellation of Pisces. But it rises only once at that exact point. The point at which it rises shifts all the time. About five hundred years ago it did not rise in Pisces (the Fishes) but in Aries (the Ram), and earlier still in Taurus (the Bull). So the sun makes a circle round the whole zodiac, finally getting back to Pisces. At a definite time it will rise again at exactly the same point, having made a complete circuit. How long does the sun need for this? It needs 25,920 years to go around and return to the same point at which it will rise at the beginning of Spring.

When we have breathed 25,920 times, we have completed one day. Our soul remains while the breaths change. When we have completed 25,920 days, we have awakened as often as we have slept. In sleep, as we know, we do not think, we do not move, we are inactive. During sleep our spirit and soul have gone off to the spiritual world for a few hours; at waking we get them back again. Just as we let the breath go out and come back 18 times a minute, so in a day we let the soul leave once and return. Sleeping and waking, you see, are simply more lengthy breaths. We do short breathing 18 times a minute. The longer breathing is our sleeping and waking. And the longest breathing is our breathing in the soul and spirit when we are born and breathing it out again when we die. But there is still the very longest breathing of all; for we go with the sun as it completes its circuit of 25,920 years; we go into the world of the stars. When we think of the soul, gentlemen, at that very moment we leave the earth and go to the world of the stars.

So—this is just a beginning of the foundation for an answer to the question which the gentleman asked. Just think what order and regularity prevail in the universe if again and again we get the number 25,920! Man's breathing is a living expression of the course of the sun. That is a fact of tremendous significance.

So—I have begun to answer the question. I will continue next Saturday at 9 o'clock.⁴¹

• 41. This scheduled lecture did not take place. The lecture of September 24, 1924, concluding this volume was the last Rudolf Steiner was able to give to the workmen. His illness began within a few days.

This volume contains a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner to people working on the construction of the Goetheanum, a great building of molded concrete that Rudolf Steiner designed and which was to replace the first Goetheanum that was burned on Dec. 31, 1922. The workmen had approached Steiner and asked that he speak to them about questions that interested them. The lectures are very casual and often take the form of a conversation, with the workmen asking first one and then another question and Steiner responding impromptu.

Steiner had never intended that this material be published as it did not have the carefully structured character of his books or even of his more formal lectures, and the reader of this volume must bear this fact in mind. Moreover, the readers unfamiliar with Steiner's fundamental writings are advised to first take up the study of either An Outline of Occult Science or Theosophy. In these works they will find a discussion of both the basic findings of the science of the spirit and of the scientific method employed in spiritual research. An understanding of these writings is absolutely necessary in forming a judgment regarding the soundness of the information conveyed by Steiner in a volume such as this one.

And this volume in particular contains certain statements that can all too easily be misunderstood and lead those who have not made a thorough study of the methods of the science of the spirit to pronounce hasty judgments about its validity. In particular there is a statement about the planet Mars in the tenth lecture that is problematic in this respect:

“Mars consists primarily of a more or less fluid mass, not as fluid as our water but, shall we say, more like the consistency of jelly, or something of that kind.”

In the light of the fact that an object weighing over 200 lbs landed on Mars and sent back pictures by means of equipment that has proved effective in similar situations and that these pictures show Mars to be a rocky desert, the above statement of Rudolf Steiner can only be judged inaccurate. But the matter is far more complex than the simple juxtaposition of these two statements suggests.

To form any judgment about these two statements we must have some sense of how Steiner reached his conclusion. We know that he was able to enter higher states of consciousness that he labeled Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. In the state of Imagination the human soul moves within a realm that can be compared with a two-dimensional space of color images. In true Imagination, consciousness does not experience itself as observing these images from outside the two-dimensional realm but experiences itself as spread out over this two-dimensional realm and as interwoven with all the images. Before even elementary observations can be made with accuracy, the soul must undergo considerable development in the direction of self-knowledge so as not to confuse itself with the objective Imaginations.

The development of Inspiration and Intuition then allows one to interpret what is experienced. Even after these states have been achieved, it constitutes a considerable task to direct one's gaze toward specific Imaginations. In particular, Steiner makes clear that it is possible to find within the Imaginative world the inner realities that relate to specific outer events in space and time. However, the quality of the Imaginative world is movement. Space and time are both derived from movement as was already known to Aristotle who characterized time as the number of movement relative to space.

Finding one's way in Imagination to a specific time with regard to a specific spatial reality, for example, Mars as of the time of the lecture may have been particularly difficult. The description Steiner gives of Mars is quite consistent with his general picture of the evolution of the cosmos, only it appears to be more characteristic of the earlier condition of the world. Readers familiar with his evolutionary picture will know that he views the world evolution as a gradual condensation of solid forms out of originally much softer forms. In earlier ages a more watery condition was the densest condition obtained by matter. Still earlier worlds achieved only the state of air or gas. And most problematic for materialistic thinkers is the idea that the first material condition, which is preceded by purely soul and spiritual ones, is that of pure warmth, radiant heat.

It is possible that Steiner did make a mistake in his location of the actual time in his description of Mars as it appears in lecture 10 in this volume. Another possibility is that he was unable to adequately translate the living images of the Imaginative world into conceptual form in this particular case. Incidentally, the reader should be aware that this translation is by no means an easy task and that Steiner is the first occultist to accomplish this work on a vast scale.

A third possibility was suggested by Dr. Unger in a lecture delivered in Spring Valley in 1985; namely, that Steiner did not even want to fully translate the imaginative picture because he might have wished, in view of the coarse popularization of science, to give his listeners a true if old spiritually valid picture. He might have done this to insulate the souls of the workmen from the deadening influence that materialism works on the soul in the life after death. In considering this possibility one should realize that only the workmen were allowed to attend these lectures.

A final consideration which could account for the discrepancy between Steiner's statement and the one resulting from the recent space mission is that there is after all a time difference between these two events of some 60 years. Though most people would find it far-fetched, it is possible that Mars actually went through a considerable condensation over that period. On this point Dr. Unger, in the same lecture, observed that the intensity of materialistic thinking in our time is a force leading to such densification of the cosmos.

While the above thoughts do not offer a clear resolution of the discrepancy, they do point to the complexity of the issue, and they also should make clear that even if Steiner was not completely accurate on this point, it does not constitute a challenge to the totality of his work, a work that has born fruit in many practical applications such as the Waldorf Schools, Bio-Dynamic agriculture and anthroposophical medicine, to mention a few. These practical applications were all the result of his spiritual research, and their world-wide success and acceptance lends support to the validity of the underlying method out of which they arose.

With these thoughts in mind and an understanding of Steiner's basic writings the reader will find in this volume a fascinating collection of Rudolf Steiner's ideas. He will also meet a very lively mode of presentation and an informality which is not found in Steiner's other works.

Stephen E. Usher

I have spoken to you of our wish to look further into the history connected with the study of the world that we have undertaken. You have seen how the human race has gradually built itself up from the rest of great Nature. It was only when conditions on the earth were such that men were able to live upon it, that is, when the earth had perished, no longer had its own life, only then could human and animal life develop on the earth in the way I have pictured.

We have also seen that to begin with, human life was actually quite different from what it is today, and its field of action was where the Atlantic Ocean is now. We have to imagine that where today the Atlantic Ocean is, there was formerly solid ground. I will make a rough sketch of this. Today we come to Asia over there, this is the Black Sea, below is Africa, this is Russia, and there we find Asia. Here would be England, Ireland, yonder America; formerly all this was land and very little water, but over here in Europe at that time there was actually a really huge sea. These countries were all in the sea, and when we come up here, on this side there was sea too. Below where India is today—that is Indo-China—the land was appearing a little above the sea. Thus we actually have some land here, and here again land. Where today we find the Asian peoples, the inhabitants of the Near East and those of Europe, there was sea—the land rising up only later. This land, here, went much further, continuing right on to the Pacific Ocean where today there are so many islands, Java, Sumatra, and so on, which are all portions of the continent formerly there—all this archipelago. Thus, where now the Pacific Ocean is, there was a great deal of land with sea between.

Now the first peoples we are able to follow up have remained in this region, where the land has been preserved. When we look around us in Europe we can really say: ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand years ago the earth became sufficiently firm for men to dwell upon it. Before this only marine animals were there which developed out of the sea. If at that time you had looked for man, it would have been where the Atlantic Ocean is today. Already fifteen thousand years ago, however, in Asia, in Eastern Asia, there were also men. These men have naturally left descendants, and their descendants are very interesting on account of their culture, the most ancient on earth. These are the peoples referred to today as Mongolians; they include the Japanese and Chinese. They are interesting as being the remnants—the remaining traces—of the oldest inhabitants of the earth.

As you have seen, there was a much older population on the earth, who, however, have been entirely wiped out. They were the peoples who lived in ancient Atlantis, of whom nothing remains. For in this case even if any remains did exist we should have to dig down into the bed of the Atlantic Ocean to find them. We should have to get down to this bed—a more difficult thing to do than people imagine—and dig there to find in all probability nothing, for as I said those people had soft bodies. The culture resulting from what they did is impossible to unearth because it is no longer in existence. Thus, what was there long before the Japanese and Chinese is not accessible to ordinary science; we must have some knowledge of spiritual science if we want to make such discoveries.

What has remained of the Japanese and Chinese peoples, however, is very interesting. You see, the Chinese and older Japanese—not those of today, about whom I shall be speaking presently—these Chinese and Japanese have a culture quite different from ours. We should have a better idea of this had not our good Europeans in recent centuries extended their domination over these spheres, bringing about a complete change. In the case of Japan, this change has been very effective. Although Japan has preserved its name, it has become entirely Europeanized, its people have gradually absorbed everything from the Europeans, and what remains to them of their ancient culture is merely its outward form. The Chinese have preserved their identity better, but now they can no longer hold out. It is true that the European domination is not actively established there, but in these regions what the Europeans think is becoming all-prevailing, and what once existed there has disappeared. This is no cause for regret; it is in the nature of human evolution. It has, however, to be mentioned.

Now if we observe the Chinese—among whom things can be seen in a less adulterated form—we find there a culture distinct from all others, for the Chinese in their old culture do not include anything that can be called religion. The Chinese culture was devoid of religion.

You must picture to yourselves what is meant by a “culture without religion.” When you consider the cultures that have religion you find everywhere—in the old Indian cultures, for instance—veneration for beings who are invisible but yet seem to resemble human beings on earth. It is the peculiar feature of all later religions that they represent invisible beings anthropomorphically.

Anthroposophy no longer does this; anthroposophy no longer represents the super-sensible world anthropomorphically, but as it actually is. Further, it sees in the stars the expression of the super-sensible. The remarkable thing is that the Chinese have had something of the same kind. The Chinese do not venerate invisible gods but say: what is here on the earth differs according to climate, according to the nature of the soil where one is. You see, China in the most ancient times was already a big country and is still bigger than Europe today; it is, as you will admit, a gigantic country, has always been gigantic, and has had a tremendously big, vigorous population. Now the idea that the population of the earth increases is just superstition on the part of modern science, which always makes its calculations from data to suit itself. The truth is that also in the most ancient times there was a vast population in China, also in South America and North America. There, too, in those ancient times the land reached out towards the Pacific Ocean. If that is taken into account, the population of the earth cannot be said to have grown.

Thus we find a culture that is quite ancient, and today this culture can still be observed as it actually existed ten thousand, eight thousand, years age. These Chinese said: above in the north the climate is different, the soil is different, from what they are further down; everything is different there. The growth of the plants is different and human beings have to live in a different way. But the sun is all-pervading. The sun shines in the north and in the south; it goes on its way and moves on from warm regions to those where it is cold, and so on. Thus these people said: on earth diversity prevails, but the sun makes everything equal. Hence they saw in the sun a fructifying, levelling force. They went on to say therefore: if we are to have a ruler, our ruler must be like that; individual men differ but he must rule over them like the sun. For this reason they gave him the name of “Son of the Sun.” He was called upon to reign over the universe. The individual planets, Venus, Jupiter, and so on, act in their various ways; the sun as ruler over the planets makes everything equal. Thus the Chinese pictured their ruler as Son of the Sun. For they took the word son essentially to imply “belonging to something.”

Everything, then, was so arranged that the people said: the Son of the Sun is our most important man; the others are his helpers, just as the planets and so on are the helpers of the sun. They organized everything on earth in accordance to what appeared overhead in the stars. All this was done without prayer, for the Chinese did not know the meaning of it. It was all done without their actually having what later constituted a cult. In what might be called their kingdom, everything was organized in such a way that it was an image of the heavens. It had not yet reached the point of being a state—that is an infliction of modern man; they appointed all their earthly affairs in the image of what appeared to them in the stars above.

Now something came about through this—naturally quite different from what happened later—a man became the citizen of a kingdom. He did not profess any particular creed but felt himself just as member of a kingdom. Originally the Chinese had no gods of any kind; when later they had them, these gods were taken over from the Indians. To begin with, they did not have gods, but all their connection with the super-sensible worlds found expression in the essential nature of their kingdom and its institutions. Hence these institutions had a family quality. The Son of the Sun was at the same time father to all other Chinese and these were at his bidding. Even if it was a kingdom, it partook as a whole of the nature of a family.

All this is possible only for men whose thinking has no resemblance to that of later comers; and the thinking of the Chinese at that time did not at all resemble that of later men. What we think today would have been quite foreign to the Chinese. We think, for example, animal; we think men; we think scales or table. The Chinese did not speak in this way, but they knew: there is a lion, there a tiger, there a bear—not there is an animal. They knew: my neighbour has a table with corners; someone else has a less angular table, a table that is rounder. They gave names to single things, but what a table is never entered their head; the table as such—of that they had no knowledge. They were aware: there stands a man with a bigger head, there one with a smaller head, with shorter legs, and so on; there is a smaller man, here a bigger man, but man in general was to them an unknown factor. The Chinese thought in a quite different way, in a way impossible for man today. They had need, therefore, of other concepts. Now if you think table, man, animal, you can extend this to legal matters, for jurisprudence consists solely of such concepts. But the Chinese were unable to think out any legal system, everything with them savouring more of the family. In the family, when a son or a daughter wants to do anything there is no thought of any law of obligation. Today if anyone wants to do anything in Switzerland, the law of obligation, marriage laws, and so on, all come in. This is implicit and has to be applied individually.

Inasmuch as human beings still retain something of the Chinese within them—and there always remains a little—they do not know what to make of the law and must have recourse to a lawyer. They are at sea, too, with general concepts. As for the Chinese they never had a legal code; they had nothing at all of what later took on the nature of a state. All they had was what the individual man could see in each individual case.

Now, to continue. The whole Chinese language, for instance, is influenced by this. When we say “table,” we at once picture a flat surface with one, two, or three legs, and so on; but it must be something that can stand like a table. Were anyone to tell me a chair was a table, I should say: a table? How foolish you are; that's no table; it's a chair. And if someone else came along and called the blackboard a table, we should tell him he was even more foolish; it was not a table at all but a blackboard. In accordance with the character of our language we have to call each thing by its special name.

That is not so in the case of the Chinese. I will put this to you hypothetically; it will not give you an exact picture, but you will gather some idea of it. Say, then, that the Chinese has the sound OA, IOA, TAO,¹ and so on. He has perhaps a certain sound for table, but this same sound signifies many other things too. Thus, let us say, such a sound might mean tree, brook, also perhaps flint. Then he has another sound, let us suppose, that can mean star, as well as table, and bench. (I don't mean that this actually is so in the Chinese language but it is the way the language is built up.) Now the Chinese knows: there are two sounds here, for example LAO and BAO, each meaning some things that are quite different but both signifying brook as well. So he puts them together—BAOLAO. In this way he builds up his language. He does not build it up upon names given to single things, but according to the various meanings of the various sounds. A sound may signify tree but it may also signify brook. When a Chinese therefore combines two sounds which, besides many other things, signify brook, the other man knows that he means brook. But when he utters only one sound, no one knows what he means. In writing there are the same complications. So the Chinese have an extraordinarily complicated language and an extraordinarily complicated script.

Indeed, a great deal follows from this. It follows that with them, it is not so easy as with us to learn to read and write—nor even to speak. With us, reading and writing can really be called quite simple; indeed we are disappointed when our children do not learn to read and write—so it must be simple enough for them. In the case of the Chinese this is not so; in China one grows quite old before one can write or in any way master the language. Hence you can imagine that the ordinary people are not able to do all this, and only those who can go on learning up to a great age can at last become proficient, In China, therefore, spiritual nobility is conferred as a matter of course on those who are cultured, and this spiritual nobility is called into being by the nature of the language and of the script. Here again it is not the same as in the West where some degree of nobility having been conferred, it can be passed on from generation to generation. In China it was possible to acquire rank only by being learned.

It is strange that if we are willing to judge superficially, at this point we are emphatic: then we do not want to be Chinese! But you must not understand me to say that we ought to become Chinese or for that matter particularly to admire China—although that is what some people may easily say afterwards. When two years ago we had a congress in Vienna, one of us spoke of how some things in China were managed even today more wisely than with us. Immediately the newspapers were saying that we wanted Chinese culture in Europe! But that is not what was meant. In describing Chinese culture, in a certain way—but only in a certain way—praise must be given for what it has of spiritual content. It is primitive, however, and of a kind that can no longer be adopted by us. So you must not think I am looking for another China in Europe. I am simply wishing to describe this most ancient of human cultures as it actually existed.

Now—to proceed. What I have said here is connected with the whole manner of Chinese thinking and feeling. Indeed the Chinese, and the Japanese of more ancient times as well, occupied themselves a great deal, a very great deal, with a kind of art—they painted, for instance. Now when we paint, it is quite a different affair from the Chinese painting. I will show you this as simply as possible: when we paint a ball, for example, if the light falls in this way, the ball is bright here, and there dark for it is in shadow—the light is falling beyond it. There again, on the light side, the ball is rather bright because there the light is reflected. Then we say: That side is in shadow, for the light is reflected on the other; and here we have to paint the shadow the ball throws on the ground. This is one of the characteristics of our painting—we must have light and shade on the objects.

When we paint a face, we paint it bright where the light falls (a drawing is made), and over here we make it dark. When we paint the whole man, if we paint rightly, we put shadow in the same way falling on the ground. But besides all this we must pay attention to something else in our picture. Suppose I am standing there and want to paint; I see Mr. A. sitting in front; there behind, Mr. M., and the two other gentlemen sitting right at the back—I must paint these too. Mr. A. will be quite big and the two gentlemen right at the back quite small. Were I to photograph them, in the photograph also they would come out quite small. When I paint I do it in such a way that the gentlemen sitting in the front row are represented as being quite big, the next behind smaller, the next again still smaller and the one sitting right at the back has a tiny little head, a tiny little face. There you see we have to paint in accordance with perspective. This too has to be done with us. We have to paint in accordance with the light and shade and also with perspective. This is inherent in the very way we think.

Now the Chinese in their painting recognized neither light nor shadow, nor did they recognize perspective, because they did not see at all in the we do. They took no notice of light and shade or perspective, for this is what they would have said: A. is certainly not a giant any more than M. is a diminutive dwarf. We can't put them together in a picture as if one were a giant and the other a dwarf, for that would be a lie, it would not be the truth! This is the way they thought about everything, and they painted as they thought. When they learn to paint, the Japanese and the Chinese do not learn by looking at objects from the outside, they think themselves right into the objects; they paint everything from within outwards in the way they have to imagine it to themselves. This constitutes the very nature of Chinese and Japanese painting.

You will realize, therefore, that learning to see came only later to mankind. Human beings in China at that time thought in their own way in pictures; they did not form general concepts like table and so on, but what they saw they apprehended inwardly. This is nothing to wonder at, for the Chinese descended from a culture during which seeing was different. Today we see in the way we do because there is air between us and the object. This air was indeed not there (this is no longer so in modern China. I am speaking of the regions where the Chinese were first established). In the times from which the Chinese have come down, people did not see in our way. In those more ancient times it would have been nonsense to speak of light and shade, for there was not yet any such thing in the density of the air. Thus with the Chinese it is a case of their having no light and shade in what they paint—nor do they have perspective. That only comes later. From this you see how the Chinese inwardly think in a quite different way; they do not think like the men who came later.

All this, however, did not in the least hinder the Chinese from going very far where cleverness in outward affairs is concerned. When I was young—it is rather different now—we learned at school that Berthold Schwarz invented gunpowder, and this was said as if there had never been gunpowder before. Berthold Schwarz, when making alchemistic experiments, produced gunpowder out of sulphur, nitre, and carbon. But the Chinese had made gunpowder thousands of years before!

At school we were taught that Guttenberg discovered how to print. We learned many things that are quite correct, but it always looked as if formerly there had been no knowledge of printing. Thousands of years ago the Chinese already possessed this knowledge, just as they had the art of woodcarving—knew how to cut the most wonderful things out of wood. In these outward affairs, the Chinese have had an advanced culture. This culture was in its turn the last remnant of a former culture still more advanced, for one recognizes in this Chinese art that it goes back to something even higher.

It is characteristic of the Chinese, then, to think not in concepts but in pictures, also to project themselves right inside objects. Thus they have been able to make all those things which depend upon outer invention—that is, when it is not a matter of steam engines or anything of that kind. So the present condition of the Chinese, which we may say is degenerate and uncultivated, has actually arisen as the result of years of ill-treatment at the hands of Europeans.

Thus you see that here we have a culture which in a certain sense is really spiritual—a culture which is quite ancient and goes back ten thousand years before our time. Comparatively late, in the millennium preceding Christianity, people like Lao Tse and Confucius made the first written record of knowledge possessed by the Chinese. Those old masters simply wrote down what had arisen out of the family intercourse in this old kingdom. They were not conscious of inventing rules of a moral or ethical nature, but merely recorded their experience of Chinese conduct. Previously this had been done by word of mouth. Thus everything at that time was basically different.

This is something that may to a certain extent still be perceived in the Chinese—hardly in the Japanese any longer because in everything they follow European culture. That this culture has not developed out of themselves can be seen in their inability to discover on their own initiative what is purely European. For example, the following once really happened. The Japanese were to have steamships and saw no reason why they would not be able to manage them perfectly well. They covertly made a study of how to turn the ship, to manipulate the screw, and so on. They then had instructors, Europeans, to work with them for a time until one day the Japanese said with pride: Now we can manage on our own, appoint our own captain! So the European instructors were put ashore and off steamed the Japanese to the high seas. Wanting then to try revolving the ship they turned the screw, when lo and behold, the ship twisted round—but no one knew what to do next, and there was the ship whirling round and round on the sea, puffing out smoke and just turning and turning. The European instructors watching from the shore had to take a boat and bring the revolving ship to a standstill. You remember perhaps Goethe's poem called “The Magician's Apprentice”—we have performed it in eurythmy—where the apprentice listens to the spells of the old master- magician. As a result, to save himself the trouble of fetching water, by mean? of a magic formula he converts a broom into a water-carrier. One day when the old magician is out, the apprentice decides to put this idea into practice, and remembers the words to start the broom working. The broom gets down to the business of fetching water, of bringing more and always more water. Now the apprentice forgets how to stop it, Imagine if you had your room flooded and your broom went on fetching more and more water! In his desperation, the apprentice chops the broom in two—then there are two water-carriers! When everything is drowned in water, the old master comes back and says the right words to make the broom become a broom again.

Well, the same kind of thing happened with the Japanese; they did not know how the screw had to be manipulated, and so the ship continued to go round and round. A regular ship's dance went on out there until the instructor-; on land could get a boat and come to the rescue.

It becomes clear from this that the invention of European things is an impossibility for both the Chinese and the Japanese. But where the invention of older affairs is concerned, such as gunpowder, printing, and so forth, they had already got as far as that in much more ancient times. You see, the Chinese is much more interested in the world around him, in the world of the stars as well as in the outside world generally.

Another people who point us back to ancient days are the Indians, but they do not go as far back as the Chinese. The Indian people also have an old culture. This old culture, however, might be said to have arisen from the sea later than the Chinese. The people in India who were the later Indian people came more from the north, settling down here as the land became free of water.

Now whereas the Chinese interested themselves in what was in the world outside, could project themselves into anything, these Indian people brooded more within themselves. The Chinese reflected more about the world, in their own way, but about the world; the Indians reflected chiefly about themselves, about man himself. Hence the culture that arose in India went deeper. In the most remote times Indian culture was still free of religion; only later did religion enter into what at first was still without it. Man was their principal object of study, but this study was of an inward kind.

In this case, too, I can best explain matters by the way in which the Indians used to draw and paint. The Chinese, looking at a man, painted him simply by entering into him with their own thinking—without light, shade, or perspective. That is really the way they painted him. Thus, if a Chinese had wanted to paint Mr. B., he would have thought his way in to him; he would not have made him dark there and light here, as we would do today; he would not have painted light and shade because they did not yet exist for him. Neither would he have made the hands bigger in comparison because of being in front. But if our Chinese had painted Mr. B., then Mr. B. would really have been there in the picture!

It was quite different with the Indians. Now just imagine the Indians were going to paint a picture; they would have started by painting heads. They too, had no such thing as perspective. But they would at once have had the idea that the head might possibly be different, so they straightway made another, then a third again different, and a fourth, a fifth. In this way, they would gradually have had 20 or 30 heads side by side! All these would have been suggested to them by the one head. Or in the case of a plant, if they were painting a plant, they imagined at once that this might be different, and there arose a number of young plants growing out of the older one. This is how it was in the case of the Indians in those very ancient times. They had tremendous powers of imagination. The Chinese had none at all and drew only the single thing, but made their way right into this in thought. The Indians had this powerful imagination.

But you see those heads are not there; if you look at Mr. B. you see only one head; hence if you were painting him it is only one head that you can paint. You are, therefore, not painting what is outwardly real if you paint 20 or 30 heads; you are painting something merely thought-out in your mind. The whole Indian culture took on that character; it was a quite inward culture of the mind, of the spirit. Hence when you see the spiritual beings of the Indians, as the Indians have thought of them, they have been represented with numbers of heads, numbers of arms, or in such a way that what is of an animal nature in the body is made manifest.

The Indians are quite different people from the Chinese. The Chinese lack imagination whereas the Indians have been full of it from the beginning. Hence the Indians were predisposed gradually to turn their culture into a religious one, which up to this day the Chinese have never done; there is no religion in China. Europeans, who are not given to making fine distinctions, speak of the Chinese having a religion, but the Chinese themselves do not admit it. They say: You in Europe have a religion; the Indians have a religion; we, say the Chinese, have nothing resembling your religion. This tendency was possible, however, in the Indians only because they had particular knowledge of something of which the Chinese were ignorant—namely, the human body. The Chinese knew well how to put themselves into anything external to them. Now when there are vinegar, salt and pepper on our dinner table and we want to know what they taste like, we have first to sample the pepper, salt, vinegar on our tongue. In the case of a Chinese in olden times, this was not necessary. He tasted things that were still outside him; he could really put himself into things and was quite familiar with what was external to him. Hence he had certain expressions showing that he took part in the outside world. We no longer have such expressions, or at most they signify for us something of a figurative nature. For the Chinese, they signified a reality. When, on getting to know someone, I say of him: what a sour fellow he is!—we mean it figuratively; we do not imagine him really to be sour in the way vinegar is sour. But for a Chinese this meant that the man actually evoked in him a sour taste.

It was not so with the Indians; the Indians for their part could go much more deeply into their own bodies. If we go deeply into our own bodies, it is only when certain conditions are present that we can feel anything there. If every time we have had a meal, this meal remains in our stomach without being properly digested, we feel pain in our stomach. If our liver is out of order and cannot secrete sufficient gall, we feel pain on the right side of our body—then we get a liver complaint. When our lungs exude too freely, secrete too much so that they become more full of mucous that they should be, then we feel that there is something wrong with our lungs, that they are out of order. Human beings today are conscious of their bodies only in those organs that are sick. Those men of more ancient times, the Indians, felt when a man's organs were sound; they knew how the stomach or the liver felt. When today anyone wants to know this, he has to take a corpse and dissect it; he then examines the condition of the separate organs inside. No one today knows what a liver looks like unless they dissect it; it is only spiritual science that is able to describe it. The Indians thought man from within and would have been able to draw all his organs. In the case of an Indian, however, who had been asked to feel the liver and to draw what he felt, he would have said: Liver—well, here is another liver, another and yet another, and he would have drawn 20 or 30 livers side-by-side.

But you have there a different story. If I give a complete man 20 heads, I have a fanciful picture. But if I draw the human liver with 20 or 30 others beside it, I am drawing something not wholly fantastic; it would have been possible for these 20 or 30 livers really to have come into being! Every man has his distinctive form of liver, but there is no absolute necessity for that form, it could very well be different. This possibility of difference, this spiritual aspect of the matter, was far better understood by the Indians than by those who came later. The Indians said: When we draw a single object, it is not the whole truth; we have to conceive the matter spiritually. Hence the Indians have had a lofty spiritual culture; they have never set great store by the outer world but have had a spiritual conception of everything.

Indians thought it very important that learning should actually be acquired in accordance with this; hence, to become an educated man was a lengthy affair. For, as you can imagine, it was not just a matter of a man going deeply into himself and being capable all at once of knowing everything! When we are responsible for the instruction of young people, we have first to teach them to read, write, and so on, in this way imparting to them something from outside. But this was not so in the case of the Indians. When they wanted to teach anyone, they showed him how to withdraw into his inner depths; he had indeed to turn his attention as far as possible away from the world and to focus it upon his inner being.

Now if anyone sits and looks outwards, he sees you all sitting there and his attention is directed to the outer world. This would have been the way with the Chinese; they directed their attention outwards. The Indians did something different. They said: You must learn to gaze at the tip of your nose. Then the student had to keep his eyes fixed so that he saw nothing but the tip of his nose, nothing else for hours at a time, without even moving his eyes.

Yes, indeed, the European will say: How terrible to train people to be always contemplating the tip of their nose. True, for the European there is something terrible in it; it is impossible for him to do the same. But in ancient India, that was the custom. In order to learn anything, an Indian did not have to write with his fingers, he had to look at the tip of his nose. But this sitting for hours gazing at the tip of his nose led him into his own inner being, into what was within—for the tip of the nose is the same in the first hour as it is in the second, and nothing particular is to be seen there. From the tip of his nose, however, the student was able to behold more and more of what was within him; within him everything became brighter and brighter. This is why he had to carry out the exercise.

Now as you know, when we walk about we are accustomed to do so on our feet; and this going about on our feet has an effect upon us, we feel ourselves to be upright men when walking on our feet. This was discouraged for those in India who were to learn something. While learning they had to have one leg like this and to sit on it, while the other leg was in this position. Thus they sat, gazing fixedly at the tip of their noses, so that they became quite unaccustomed to stand and had the feeling they were no longer upstanding men but crumpled up like an embryo in the mother's womb. You can see the Buddha portrayed in this way. It was thus that the Indians had to learn. Gradually they began to look within them, learned to know what is within man, came to have knowledge of the human physical body in an entirely spiritual way.

When we look within us, we are conscious of our paltry thinking, learn something of our feeling but almost nothing of our willing. The Indians felt a whole world in the human being. Naturally you can imagine what different men they were from those who came later. Then, as you know, they developed those tremendous powers of imagination expressed in poetical form in their books of wisdom—later, in the Vedas and in the Vedantic philosophy, which still fill us with admiration. It figured in all their legends concerning super-sensible things—even today objects of wonder.

Now look what a contrast! Here were the Indians, here the Chinese, and the Chinese were a prosaic people, interested in what was outside, a people who did not live from within. The Indians were a people who looked entirely inwards, actually contemplating within them the spiritual nature of the physical body.

I have begun by telling you something about the most ancient inhabitants of the earth. Next time I shall be continuing, so that in our historical survey we shall finally arrive at the actual time in which we are living.

• 1. The German pronunciation of the vowel sounds has been used:
  German a, English ah (as in father)
  German i, English ee (as in feet)

A number of questions have been handed in, which can lead in a quite interesting way to what we are going to discuss today. Someone has asked: “What has man's cultural development arisen from?” I am going to consider this in connection with this second question: “Why did primitive man have such a strong belief in the spirit?”

It is certainly interesting to ask how men of former times have lived, and about this, as you know, even looking superficially at the matter, there are two opinions. One opinion is that originally man was at a high level of perfection from which he has fallen to his present imperfect state. We need not have any particular objection to this nor concern ourselves about the various ways the different peoples have interpreted this perfection—some talking of Paradise, others of other things. But until a short time ago the opinion held good that man was originally perfect, degenerating to his present state of imperfection gradually. The other view you have probably come to think of as the only true one, namely that man was originally imperfect, like some kind of higher animal, and evolved gradually to greater perfection. You know how people try to draw upon the primitive condition prevailing among savage peoples—or so-called savage peoples'—in order to get some idea of what man could have been when he still resembled an animal. It is said: We in Europe and the people of America are highly civilized, whereas in Africa, Australia, and so on, there live still uncivilized races at their original stage, or at least at a stage very near the original. From these it is possible to make a study of what people were to begin with.

But, curiously, in this way people are making far too simple a picture of man's evolution. To begin with, it is not at all true that, for example, all civilized peoples imagined that man as a physical being was originally perfect. The Indians are certainly not of the opinion held by modern materialists, but, even so, their conception is that the physical man who used to go about on earth in primitive times looked like an animal. When the Indians, the wise men of India, speak of man in his original earthly state, they talk of the ape-like Hanuman. So you see it is not at all true that people with a spiritual world-conception always imagine that originally men were in some way as people today imagine them to have been, that is, of a paradisian nature, for indeed it is not so. We have, rather, to be clear that man is a being who bears within him body, soul, and spirit, each member going through its own particular evolution. Naturally, when people do not speak of spirit, they cannot speak of the evolution of spirit. But once we admit that man consists of body, soul, and spirit, we can go on to ask in what way the body develops, in what way the soul and in what way the spirit evolve. If we are to speak of man's body then we shall say: Man's body has gradually been perfected from lower stages. We must also say that the evidence we have provides us with actual proof of this. As I have already pointed out, in the strata of the earth we find the original man exhibiting a very animal-like body—not indeed like any animal we have today, but animal-like, and this must have developed gradually to its present state of perfection. There is no question, therefore, of spiritual science as pursued here at the Goetheanum coming to loggerheads with natural science, for the truths of natural science are accepted by it.

On the other hand, we must come once more to recognize that in those times—which may be said to be only about three or four thousand years ago—views we re current from which today we not only can learn a great deal but which we are obliged to admire. When today we have a certain amount of relevant knowledge and study with real understanding the documents that have appeared in India, Asia, Egypt, or even in Greece, we find the people in those times far in advance of us. What they knew, however, was acquired in a quite different way from how we acquire knowledge today.

Today there are many things we know very little about. For example, from what I have shown you in connection with nutrition, you will have seen how necessary it is for spiritual science to come to our aid in the simplest nutritional matters. Physical science is unable to do so. But we have only to read what physicians of old had to say, and rightly understand it, to become aware that in reality people up to the time of Hippocrates in Greece knew far more than is known by our modern materialistic physicians. We grow to respect, deeply respect, the knowledge once possessed. The only thing is that knowledge was not imparted in the same form as it is today. Today we clothe our knowledge in concepts. This was not so in the case of ancient peoples; they clothed their knowledge in poetical imaginations, so that anything of it remaining to us is now just taken figuratively—as poetry. It was not poetry to those men of old, however; it was their way of expressing what they knew. Thus we find that when we are able to test and thoroughly to study the documents still existing, there can no longer be any question of men originally having been undeveloped spiritually. In spirit they are infinitely wiser than we are!

But there is another thing that has to be remembered. When men of primeval times went about he acquired great wisdom spiritually. His face was more or less what we should certainly call animal-like, whereas today in man's face his spirit finds expression, his spirit is as it were incorporated in the physical substance of his face. This, is a necessity if man is to be free, if he is to be a free being. These clever men of yore, the clever men of primeval times, were very wise but they possessed wisdom in the way the animal today possesses instinct. They lived in a dazed condition, as if in a cloud. They wrote without guiding their own hand; they spoke with the feeling that it was not they who were speaking but the spirit speaking through them. In those primeval times, therefore, there was no question of man being free.

This is something in the history of culture which constitutes a real step forward for the human race—this consciousness man has of his freedom. With it he no longer feels the spirit driving him as instinct drives the animal; he feels the spirit actually within him, and this distinguishes him from the man of former times.

When we consider from this point of view the savages of today, it must strike us that the men of primeval times—called in our question here primitive men—were not like the modern savages, but that these have descended from the primeval men. You will get a better idea of this if I tell you the following.

In certain districts there are people who harbour the notion that when they bury in the earth some little thing belonging to a sick person—for example, a corner of his shirt—that this can have the magical effect of healing him. I have even personally known such people. I knew one who, at the time the Emperor Frederick was ill, wrote to the Empress asking for a piece of shirt belonging to her husband. It would be buried in the cemetery and the Emperor Frederick would then be cured! You can imagine how this request was received. But the man had simply done what he thought would lead to the Emperor's recovery. He himself told me about it, adding that it would have been much less foolish to have let him have the piece of shirt than to have sent for the English doctor Mackenzie, and so on. That had been absurd—they should have sent him the piece of shirt.

When this kind of thing comes to the notice of a materialistic thinker, he says: This is a superstition that has arisen somewhere. At one time or other, a man or several men got the notion that burying part of a sick man's shirt and saying a little prayer over it would cure the man.

But nothing has ever arisen in this way. No superstition arises by being thought out; it comes about in quite a different way. There was once a time when people had great reverence for their dead and said to themselves: So long as a man is going about on earth he is a sinful being; besides doing good things, he does many that are bad. But—so they thought—the dead man goes on living in his soul and spirit and in death makes up for all deficiencies. Thus when they thought of the dead they thought of what was good, and by thinking of the dead they tried to make themselves better.

Now it is characteristic of human beings to forget easily. Just think how quickly the dead, those who have left us, are forgotten today. At that time, there were those who wanted to give their fellowman various signs to make them think of the dead, and thus to benefit their own health. Let us say someone in some village had the idea that if a man was ill, the other villagers should look after him. It was not the custom in villages to collect money for the sick, there were no poor-boxes, that kind of thing is a modern invention. At that time the villagers all had to help one another out of kindness; everyone had to think of those who were ill. The leading man in the village said: Because people are egoists they have no thought of the sick if they are not spurred on to get out of themselves and have thoughts, for instance, of the dead. So he told them they should take, perhaps, a corner of the sick man's shirt by which to remember him, and this was to be buried in the earth; through this they would remember the sick man. By thinking of the dead, they would remember to take care of someone. This outward deed was contrived simply to help man's memory. Later, people forgot the reason for all this and it was put down to magic, superstition. This is o in the case of a great deal that lives on as superstition; it has arisen from something perfectly reasonable. What is perfect never arises from what is imperfect. The assertion that something perfect can come from what is not so appears to anyone with insight as if it were said: You are to make a table, but you must make it as clumsy and unfinished as you can to begin with, so that it may in time become a perfect table. But it is not like that; we never get a well-made table from one that is ill-made. The table begins by being a good one and becomes battered in course of time. It is like that, too, outside in nature, anywhere in the world. You must first have things in a perfect state, out of which comes the imperfect. It is the same in the case of the human being whose spirit to begin with, though still lacking freedom, was in a certain state of perfection, but whose body, it is true, was imperfect. On the other hand the perfection of the body lay in its being soft and capable of being so moulded by the spirit that cultural progress could ensue.

So you see we are not justified in thinking that human beings were originally like the savages of today. Savages have developed into what they now are—with their superstitions, their magical practices, and their unclean appearance—from states originally more perfect. The only advantage we have over the savages is that, starting from the same conditions, we have not degenerated as they have. I might therefore say: The evolution of man has taken two different paths. It is not true that the savages of today represent the original condition of mankind. The men who, to begin with, looked more animal-like were highly civilised.

Now when you ask: But are these original, animal-like men the descendants of apes or of other animals? it is a quite natural question. You look at the apes as they are today and say: From these apes, men are descended. That is all very well but when human beings had this animal form, there were no such animals as our present apes! From apes as they are today, therefore, men have not descended. On the contrary, just as our present savages have fallen from the level of the human beings of primeval times, so the apes are beings who have fallen still lower. On going back further in the evolution of the earth we find human beings formed in the way I described here a short while ago, from a soft element and not from any animals as we have them. Human beings have never arisen from the kind of apes we now have. On the other hand, it might easily be possible that if conditions prevailing on earth today, conditions in which everything is based on authority and power—and wisdom counts for nothing—it might indeed happen that the men who thus want to found everything on power gradually take on animal-like bodies again, and that two great races may arise. One race would consist of those who stand for peace, for the spirit and for wisdom, whereas the other would be made up of those who re-assume animal forms. It might indeed be said that those who care nothing today for the progress of mankind may be running the risk of degenerating into apes.

You see, all manner of strange things are experienced today. What newspapers say is, of course, largely untrue, but sometimes in a quite remarkable way it shows the trend of man's thinking. During our recent travels in Holland, we bought an illustrated paper. On the last page of this paper there was a curious picture—a small child, quite a baby and its nurse, looking after it, an ape, an orang-utan. It was holding the child quite properly, and it was said to be installed somewhere in America as children's nurse.

It is possible that this may not be actual fact—as yet, but it shows what many people are hoping for: apes installed as nursemaids. And if apes are employed in this capacity, what an outlook for man! Once it has been discovered that apes can be employed to look after children, that in certain circumstances an ape can be trained to look after the physical needs of children—then people will develop this strange desire and the social question will be on a new level. For you will soon see what far-reaching proposals will be made for teaching apes in this way; they will be sent to work in the factories. Apes will be found to be cheaper than men, hence this will be looked upon as the solution of the social problem. If people really succeed in making apes look after children, we shall be inundated by pamphlets on how to solve the social question by training apes.

It is indeed conceivable that this might happen. Think—other animals besides apes can be trained to do many things; dogs, for instance, are very teachable. But the question is whether this will be for the advance or decline of civilization. Civilization will most definitely decline; it will deteriorate. The children brought up by ape-nurses will quite certainly become apelike. Then indeed we shall have the perfect changing into the imperfect. Thus we must be clear that it is possible for certain human beings to become of an ape-like nature in the future, but that the human race in the past was never such that men developed from the ape-like. For when man still had an animal-form (quite different indeed from that of the ape) the present ape was not yet in existence. They themselves have deteriorated; they have fallen from a higher stage.

When we turn to those primitive peoples who may be said to have been rich in spirit but animal-like in body, we find they were still undeveloped as far as understanding, intelligence, goes. Those men of ancient times were not capable of thinking. Hence, when anyone today who prides himself particularly on his thinking comes across ancient documents, he looks for them to be based on thought and looks in vain. He therefore says: This is all very beautiful but simply poetry. But indeed we cannot judge everything by our own standards alone, for then we go astray. Those men of yore had above all great powers of imagination, imagination that worked like instinct. When today we use our imagination we often pull ourselves up, saying: Imagination has no place in what is real. This is quite right for us today, but the men of primeval times, primitive men, would never have been able to carry on without imagination.

It will seem strange to you how this lively imagination possessed by primitive men could have been applied to anything real. However, here too we have wrong conceptions. In your school history books you will have read about the tremendous importance for man's evolution attached to the invention of a paper made from rag. The paper we use for writing—which is made of rag—has been in existence for only a few centuries. Before that, people had to write on parchment which has a different origin. Only at the end of the Middle Ages did men discover the possibility of making paper from fibre coming from plants—worn threadbare after having first been used for clothes. Human beings were late in acquiring intellect which was needed for making this paper. But the same thing—except that it is not white as we want it for our black ink—was discovered long before. The same stuff that is used now for our paper was discovered not just two or three thousand years ago but very many thousands of years before our day. By whom then? Not by human beings at all, but by wasps! Look at any wasps' nest you find hanging on a tree. Look at the material it consists of—paper! Not, however, white paper, not the kind you write on, for the wasps have not learned to write, otherwise they would have made white paper, but such paper as you might use for a parcel. We have indeed a drab-coloured paper for parcels which is just what the wasps use for making nests. The wasps found out how to make paper thousands of years ago, long before human beings arrived at it by means of their intellect. The difference is that instinct works in animals whereas in the man of primeval times it was imagination; they would have been incapable of making anything had not imagination enabled them to do so, for they lacked intelligence. We must therefore conclude that in outward appearance these primeval men were more like animals than are the men of today, but to a certain extent they were possessed by the spirit, the spirit was working in them. It was not they who possessed it through their own powers, they were possessed by it and their souls had great powers of imagination. With imagination they made their tools; imagination helped them in all they did, enabled them to make everything they needed.

We are terribly proud of all our inventions, but we should consider whether we really have cause to be so; for much of what constitutes the greatness of our culture has actually arisen from quite simple ideas. For example: when you read about the Trojan War—do you realize when the Trojan War took place? About 1200 years before the founding of Christianity. Now when we hear about wars like this which didn't take place in Greece, but far away in Asia, it did not happen in those days that the result was known in Greece the next day by telegram S Naturally at that time this did not happen for the Greeks had no electric telegraph. What then did they do? Look, (drawing) the war was over here, this was sea, here was an island, there a mountain, and there again sea, over here an island, a mountain and then sea, and so on till you came to Greece. It was agreed that when the war was over, three fires should be kindled on the mountain. Whoever was posted on the nearest mountain was first to give the signal by running up and lighting the three fires. On seeing the three fires, the one on the next mountain lit three fires in his turn, and in this way the signal arrived in quite a short time at Greece. This was their method of sending a telegram. The process was a quick one and before the day of the telegram, it had to suffice.

How is it then today? When you telephone, not telegraph, but telephone—I will show you in the simplest way what happens.¹ We have a kind of magnet which, it is true, is produced by electricity; and at this place (drawing) we have something called an armature. When the current is off, this falls in place; when the current is switched on, the plate is released and swings to and fro. It is connected by a wire with the next one which oscillates with it and transmits what is generated by the plate in just the same way as in those olden times the three fires conveyed messages to men. It is rather more complicated but still the same idea, though electricity has been used in applying it.

When we have actual knowledge of it we come to respect what the human beings of those ancient times devised and organized out of their imaginative faculty. When we read the old documents with this respect, we say: These men have accomplished great things purely spiritually and all out of imagination. To come to a thorough realization of this you need turn only to what men believe today. They believe they know something about the old Germanic gods—Wotan, Loki, for example. Pictures of them in human forms have appeared in certain books, Wotan with a flowing beard, Loki looking like a devil, with red hair, and so on. It is thought that the men of old, like the old Germans, had these ideas about Wotan and Loki. But that is not true, those men of old had, rather, the following conception: When the wind blows there is in it something spiritual—which is indeed true—Wotan is blowing in the wind. When they went into a wood, they never imagined they would meet Wotan there in the guise of an ordinary man. Describing a meeting with Wotan, they would have spoken of the wind blowing through the wood. This can still be felt in the very word Wotan by anyone who is sensitive to these things. And Loki—this did not call up a picture of someone sitting quietly in a corner; Loki's life was in the fire!

Indeed in various way, the people were always talking of Wotan and Loki. Suppose someone to be speaking about Wotan, for example: When you go over the mountain you may meet Wotan. Wotan will then make you either strong or weak according to your deserts. You see this is how people felt, hew they understood these matters. Today people say: That is superstition, a superstitious notion. But in those times they did not understand it so. They knew: When you go up there, to that corner so difficult to access, you do not meet a man in a body like any ordinary man. But the very shape of the mountain gives rise to a whirlwind which is met with especially in that place and a special kind of air is wafted up from an abyss. If you withstand this and keep to your path, you may become well or you may become sick. In what way you become well or ill, the people were willing to tell; they were in harmony with nature and would speak—not in an intellectual way but out of imagination. Our modern doctor would try to express himself intellectually—thus: If you have a tendency to tuberculosis, go up and sit at a certain height on a mountain every day, then come down. Go on doing this for some time; it will be most beneficial. This is the intellectual way of talking, but what one says when speaking imaginatively is this: Wotan is always to be found at that corner; it will help you if for a couple of weeks you visit him at a certain time each day.

This is the way in which people came to grips with life out of their imagination, and in this way too they worked. You will all at some time or other have been in a country district where the threshing was not done by machine but by hand—in time, in rhythm. The people know that if they have to thresh for days together and go to work without any rule, just at their own sweet will, they will soon be overcome by exhaustion. Threshing cannot be done in that way. If, however, they thresh in rhythm, if they keep in time together, exhaustion will be avoided, because this rhythm will be in harmony with the rhythm of their breathing and of the circulating blood. It makes a difference whether they beat with their flail on the out-breath or the in-breath, or whether they do it. as the breath is changing over from one to the other. Why is this? It is easy to see that it is nothing to do with the intellect, for today it no longer happens; everything of the kind is being wiped out. But work that was done by the people—for instance, the contrivances they had to tread or anything else in which time had to be kept—all this was done rhythmically.

Now, I don't fancy you can really think that if you take a piece of wood, a few strings and so on, and deal with them in a haphazard fashion, the result will be a violin. A violin results when mind, spirit, is exerted, when the wood is fashioned in a particular way, when the strings are put through a special process, and so on and so forth. This then is what we must say—particularly because people at that time did not yet think for themselves—the way in which machines were originally made could only be ascribed to possession by the spirit, that is to say, the people having the spirit working in them. For this reason, primitive men who did not work with intellect but with imagination were naturally inclined to talk of the spirit. When today someone constructs a machine by means of intellect, he does not say—and rightly does not say—that the spirit has been helping him. But when a man of those early times who was not conscious of thinking, had no capacity for thinking—when he constructed anything, he immediately felt: The spirit was helping me.

When the Europeans, the “superior” men, first arrived in American, and when even later, in the 19th century, they came to the regions where Indians such as belonged to more ancient times were still living, these Indians spoke of the “great Spirit” ruling everywhere. These primitive men in general have gone on speaking in this way of the Being ruling in everything. It was this “great Spirit” who was venerated particularly by the human beings living in Atlantean times when there was still land between Europe and America; the Indians still had this veneration, and knew nothing as yet of intellect. The. Indians then gradually came to know the “superior” men before being exterminated by them. Paper on which there were little signs, printed paper, was held in abhorrence by Indians; they took the little signs to be small devils and abominated them, for these signs were intellectual in origin. The man whose activities arise out of imagination abominates what comes from the intellect.

Now the European with his materialistic civilization knows how an engine is constructed. The intellectual way in which a European constructs his engine could never have been the way the ancient Greeks would have set about it, for the Greeks still lacked intellect. Intellect first came to man in the 15th or 16th century. The Greeks would have done their constructing with the help of their imagination. Since the Greeks ascribed to good spirits all natural forms and to bad spirits all that has no part in nature and is artificially produced, they would have spoken thus: In the engine there lives an evil spirit. They would certainly have done their constructing out of imagination and it would never ha/e occurred to them that in this they were not aided by the spirit.

You see therefore that ultimately we have to ascribe more spirit to the original primitive man; for imagination is of a more spiritual nature in the human soul than the mere intellect so highly prized today.

Old conditions, however, can never come back. Hence we have certainly to go forward, but not with the idea that what today exists in the animal as pure instinct can ever be developed into spirit. We ought not therefore to picture primitive men as having been possessed of mere instinct, for they realized: What is working in us is the spirit. This is why they had such belief in the spirit.

All this contributes a little to our understanding of how human evolution originated. So we must allow right on both sides—on the side of those who imagine human beings to have arisen from animal forms; well, so indeed they have, but not from such animal-forms as we have now, for these came into being later, when human beings were already in existence. But those animal-forms which in the course of human evolution have gradually grown into man's present form, together with the faculties existing at that time, have arisen because the spiritual—not intellectually, it is true, but imaginatively—was more perfect than it is today. At the same time we have always to remember: This original perfection depended upon man, though lacking freedom, being, as it were, possessed by the spirit. Intellect enables man to become free; by means of intellect, he can be freed.

Just consider this. Anyone who works with his intellect may say: At a certain time I am going to think out such and such a thing. This cannot be done by a poet for he still works today with imagination. Now Goethe was a great poet. When, because someone wanted him to write a poem, or he himself felt inclined to do so, he set himself down to write—well, the result was execrable! That people are not aware of this today comes simply from their inability to distinguish good poetry from bad. Among Goethe's poems there are many bad ones. Imaginative work can be done only when the mood is on the poet, and when the mood is on him he must write down the poem at once. You see, that is how it was in the case of primitive men. They were never able to do things out of free will at all. Free will is something that developed gradually, but not wisdom. Wisdom was originally greater than intellect and must re-acquire its greatness. That means our having to come back to the spirit by way of the intellect.

That, you see, is the task of anthroposophy; it has no wish to do what many people would like, that is, to bring back primitive conditions among men—old Indian wisdom, for example. It is nonsense when people harp on that; anthroposophy sets value on a return to the spirit precisely in full possession of the intellect, with intellect fully alive. It must be strictly borne in mind that we have nothing at all against the intellect; we have to go forward with it. To begin with, human beings had spirit without intellect; then the spirit fell away whereas the intellect increased» Now, by means of the intellect, we have to return to the spirit. Culture is obliged to take this course, for if it does not do so—well, people are always saying that the world war was unlike anything seen before and it is a fact that men have never before so torn each other to pieces—but if mankind refuses to take the course of bringing their intellect with them on their return to the spirit, then still greater wars will come upon up, wars that go on becoming more and more savage. Men will exterminate each other like two rats that, shut up together in a cage, gnaw each other till there is nothing left but two tails. That is putting it brutally, but in actual fact men are on the way to mutual extermination, and it is very important to know whither they are going.

• 1. This greatly simplified explanation of a very complicated process was given to the workmen in order to save time.

Goethe often described, in many different ways, a feeling of which he was persistently aware. He said, in effect: When I see the irrelevance manifesting in the passions, emotions and actions of men, I feel the strong urge to turn to all-powerful Nature and be comforted by her majesty and consistency. In such utterances Goethe was referring to what since time immemorial humanity had brought to expression in the Festivals. The Festivals are reminders of the striving to turn away from the chaotic life of men's passions, urges and activities to the consistent, harmonious processes and events in Nature. The great Festivals are connected with definite and distinctive phenomena in the Heavens and with ever-recurring happenings in Nature. Easter is one such Festival. For Christians today, Easter is the Festival of the Resurrection of their Redeemer; it was celebrated not only as a symbol of Nature's awakening but also of Man's awakening. Man was urged to awaken to the reality underlying certain inner experiences.

In ancient Egypt we find a festival connected with Osiris. In Greece a Spring festival was celebrated in honour of Dionysos. There were similar institutions in Asia Minor, where the resurrection or return of a God was associated with the re-awakening of Nature. In India, too, there are festivals dedicated to the God Vishnu. Brahmanism speaks of three aspects of the Deity, namely, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The supreme God, Brahma, is referred to as the Great Architect of the World, who brings about order and harmony: Vishnu is described as a kind of redeemer, liberator, an awakener of slumbering life. And Shiva, originally, is the Being who blesses the slumbering life that has been awakened by Vishnu and raises it to whatever heights can be reached. A particular festival was therefore dedicated to Vishnu It was said that he goes to sleep at the time of the year when we celebrate Christmas and wakes at the time of our Easter Festival. Those who adhere to this Eastern teaching celebrate the days of their Festival in a characteristic way. For the whole of this period they abstain from certain foods and drinks, for example, all pod-producing plants, all kinds of oils, all salt, all intoxicating beverages and all meat. This is the way in which people prepare themselves to understand what was actually celebrated in the Vishnu Festival, namely, the resurrection of the God and the awakening of all Nature.

The Christmas Festival too, the old festival of the Winter solstice, is connected with particular happenings in Nature. The days leading up to this point of time become progressively shorter and the Sun's power steadily weakens. But from Christmas onwards greater and greater warmth again streams from the Sun. Christmas is the Festival of the reborn Sun.

It was the wish of Christianity to establish a link with these ancient Festivals. The date of the birth of Jesus can be taken to be the day when the Sun's power again begins to increase in the heavens. In the Easter Festival the spiritual significance of the World's Saviour was thus connected with the physical Sun and with the awakening and returning life in Spring.

As in the case of all ancient festivals, the fixing of the date of the Easter Festival was also determined by a certain constellation in the heavens. In the first century A.D. the symbol of Christianity was the Cross, with a lamb at its foot. Lamb and Ram are synonymous. During the epoch when preparation was being made for Christianity, the Sun was rising in the constellation of the Ram or Lamb. As we all know, the Sun moves through all the zodiacal constellations, every year progressing a little farther forward. Approximately seven hundred years before the coming of Christ, the Sun began to rise in the constellation of the Ram (Aries). Before then it rose in the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). In those times the people expressed what seemed to them important in connection with the evolution of humanity, in the symbol of the Bull, because the Sun then rose in that constellation. When the rising Sun moved forward into the constellation of the Ram or Lamb, the Ram became a figure of significance in the sagas and myths of the people. Jason brings the golden fleece from Colchis. Christ Jesus Himself is called the Lamb of God and in the earliest period of Christianity He is portrayed as the Lamb at the foot of the Cross. Thus the Easter Festival is obviously connected with the Constellation of the Ram or Lamb. The Festival of the Resurrection of the Redeemer is celebrated at the time when, in Nature, everything awakens to new life after having lain as if dead during the Winter months.

Between the Christmas and the Easter Festivals there is certainly a correspondence but in their relation to the happenings in Nature there is a great difference. In its deepest significance, Easter is always felt to be the festival of the greatest mystery connected with Man. It is not merely a festival celebrating the re-awakening of Nature but is essentially more than that. It is an expression of the significance in Christianity of the Resurrection after death. Vishnu's sleep sets in at the time when, in Winter, the Sun again begins to ascend. It is precisely at this time that we celebrate our Christmas Festival. When the Easter Festival is celebrated the Sun is continuing its ascent which had been in process since the Christmas Festival.

We must penetrate very deeply into the mysteries of man's nature if we are to understand the feelings of Initiates when they wished to give expression to the true facts underlying the Easter Festival. Man is a two-fold being—on the one side he is a being of soul-and-spirit, and on the other side a physical being. The physical being is an actual confluence of all the phenomena of Nature in man's environment. Paracelsus speaks of man as the quintessence of all that is outspread in external Nature. Nature contains the letters, as it were, and Man forms the word that is composed of these letters.

When we observe a human being closely, we recognise the wisdom that is displayed in his constitution and structure. Not without reason has the body been called the temple of the soul. All the laws that can be observed in the dead stone, in the living plant—all have assembled in Man into a unity. When we study the marvellous structure of the human brain with its countless cells cooperating among themselves in a way that enables all the thoughts and sentient experiences filling the soul of man to come to expression, we realise with what supreme wisdom the human body has been constructed. But in the surrounding world too we behold an array of crystallised wisdom. When we look out into the world, applying what knowledge we possess to the laws in operation there, and then turn to observe the human being, we see all Nature concentrated in him. That is why sages have spoken of Man as the Microcosm, while in Nature they beheld the Macrocosm.

In this sense Schiller wrote to Goethe in a letter of 23rd August 1794: “You take the whole of Nature into your purview in order to shed light upon a single sentence; in the totality of her (Nature's) manifold external manifestations you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organisation you proceed, step by step, to the more complex, in order finally to build up genetically from the materials of Nature's whole edifice the most complex organisation of all—Man.” The wonderful organisation of the body enables the human soul to have sight of the surrounding world. Through the senses the soul beholds the world and endeavours to fathom the wisdom by which that world has been constructed.

With this in mind let us now think of an undeveloped human being. The wisdom made manifest in his bodily structure is the greatest that can possibly be imagined. The sum-total of divine wisdom is concentrated in a single human body. Yet in this body there dwells a childlike soul hardly capable of producing the most elementary thoughts that would enable it to understand the mysterious forces operating in its own heart, brain and blood. The soul develops slowly to a higher stage where it can understand the powers that have been at work with the object of producing the human body. This body itself bears the hallmark of an infinitely long past. Physical man is the crown of the rest of creation. What was it that had necessarily to precede the building of the human body, what had to come to pass before the cosmic wisdom was concentrated in this human being? The cosmic wisdom is concentrated in the body of a human being standing before us. Yet it is in the soul of an undeveloped human being that this wisdom first begins to manifest. The soul hardly so much as dreams of the great cosmic thoughts according to which the human being has evolved. Nevertheless, we can glimpse a future when people will be conscious of the reality of soul and spirit still lying in man as though asleep. Cosmic thought has been active through ages without number, has been active in Nature, always with the purpose of finally producing the crown of all its creative work—the human body.

Cosmic wisdom is now slumbering in the human body, in order subsequently to acquire self-knowledge in man's soul, in order to build an eye in man's being through which to be recognised. Cosmic wisdom without, cosmic wisdom within, creative in the present as it was in the past and will be in future time. Gazing upwards we glimpse the ultimate goal, surmising the existence of a great soul by which the cosmic wisdom that existed from the very beginning has been understood and absolved. Our deepest feelings rise up within us full of expectation when we contemplate the past and the future in this way.

When the soul begins to recognise the wonders accomplished by the cosmic wisdom and when clarity and illumination have been achieved, the Sun may well be accepted as the worthiest symbol of this inner awakening. Through the gate of the senses the soul is able to gaze into the external world because the Sun illumines the contents of that world. Fundamentally speaking, what man perceives in the external world is the result of the Sun's reflected light. It is the Sun that wakens in the soul the power to behold the external world. An awakening soul, one that is beginning to recognise the seasons as expressions of cosmic thought—such a soul sees the rising Sun as its liberation.

When the Sun again begins its ascent, when the days lengthen, the soul turns to the Sun, declaring: To you I owe the possibility of discerning, outspread around me, the cosmic thought that sleeps within me and within all other human beings.

Such an individual is now able to survey his earlier existence—one which preceded his present understanding of the activities of cosmic thought. Man himself is more ancient than his senses. Through spiritual investigation we are able eventually to reach the point in the far past when man's senses were in process of coming into existence, when only their very earliest beginnings were present. At that stage the senses were not yet doors enabling the soul to become aware of the environment.

Schopenhauer realised this and was referring to the turning-point when man acquired the faculty of sensory perception, when he stated: This visible world first came into existence when an eye was there to behold it.

The Sun formed the eye for itself and for the light. In still earlier times, when as yet man had no outer vision, he had inner vision. In the primeval ages of evolution, outer objects did not give rise to ideas or mental conceptions in man, but these rose up in him from within. Vision in those ancient times was vision in the astral light. Men were then endowed with a faculty of dim, shadowy clairvoyance. It was still with a faculty of dim, hazy vision that they beheld the world of the Germanic Gods and formed their conceptions of the Gods accordingly. This dim clairvoyance faded into darkness and gradually passed away altogether. It was extinguished by the strong light of the physical Sun whereby the physical world was made visible to the senses. Astral vision then died away altogether.

When man looks into the future, he realises that his astral vision must return, but at a higher stage. What has now been extinguished for the sake of physical vision will return and combine with physical vision in order to generate clairvoyance—clear seeing in the fullest sense. In the future, a still more lucid consciousness will accompany man's waking vision. To physical vision will be added vision in the astral light, that is to say, perception with organs of soul. Those whom we have called the leaders of men are individuals who through lives of renunciation have developed in themselves the condition which later on is established in all mankind—these leaders of men already possess the faculty of astral vision which makes soul and spirit visible to them.

The Easter Festival is connected spiritually not only with the awakening of the Sun but with the unfolding of the plant world in Spring. Just as the seed-corn is sunk into the soil and slumbers in order eventually to awaken anew, so the astral light in man's constitution was obliged to slumber in order eventually to be reawakened. The symbol of the Easter Festival is the seed-corn which sacrifices itself in order to enable a new plant to come into existence. This is the sacrifice of a phase in the life of Nature in order that a new one may begin. Sacrifice and Becoming are interwoven in the Easter Festival.

Richard Wagner was conscious of the beauty and majesty of this thought. In the year 1857 in the Villa Wesendonck by the Lake of Zurich, while he was looking at the spectacle of awakening Nature, the thought came to him of the Saviour who had died and had awakened, the thought of Jesus Christ, also of Parsifal who was seeking for what is most holy in the soul.

All the leaders of humanity who know how the higher life of man wakes out of the lower nature, have understood the Easter thought. Dante too, in his Divine Comedy describes his awakening on a Good Friday. This is brought to our attention at the very beginning of the poem. It was in his thirty-sixth year, that is to say, in the middle of his life, that Dante had the great vision he describes. Seventy years being the normal span of human life, thirty-five is the middle of this period. Thirty-five years are reckoned to be the period devoted to the development of physical experience. At the age of thirty-five the human being has reached the degree of maturity when spiritual experience can be added to physical experience. He is ready for perception of the spiritual world.

When all the waking, nascent forces of physical existence are amalgamated, the time begins for the spiritual awakening. Hence Dante connects his vision with the Easter Festival.

Whereas the original increase of the Sun's power is celebrated in the Christmas Festival, the Easter Festival takes place at the middle point of the Sun's increasing power. This was also the point when, in the middle of his life, Dante became aware of the dawn of spiritual life within himself. The Easter Festival is rightly celebrated at the middle point of the Sun's ascent; for this corresponds with the time when, in man, the slumbering astral light is reawakened. The Sun's power wakens the seed-corn that is slumbering in the earth. The seed-corn is an image of what arises in man when what occultists call the astral light is born within him. Therefore, Easter is also the festival of the resurrection that takes place in the inner nature of man.

It has been thought that there is a kind of contradiction between what a Christian sees in the Easter Festival, and the idea of Karma. There seems at first to be a contradiction between the idea of Karma and redemption by the Son of Man. Those who do not understand very much about the fundamentals of anthroposophical thought may see a contradiction between the redemption wrought by Christ Jesus and the idea of Karma. Such people say that the thought of redemption by the God contradicts the fact of self-redemption through Karma. But the truth is that they understand neither the Easter thought of redemption nor the thought of the justice of Karma. It would certainly not be right if someone seeing another person suffer were to say to him: you yourself were the cause of this suffering—and then were to refuse to help him because Karma must take its course. This would be a misunderstanding of Karma. What Karma says is this: help the one who is suffering for you are actually there in order to help him. You do not violate karmic necessity by helping your fellow man. On the contrary, you are helping him to bear his Karma. You are then yourself a redeemer of suffering.

So too, instead of a single individual, a whole group of people can be helped. By helping them we become part of their Karma.

When a Being as all-powerful as Christ Jesus comes to the help of the human race, His sacrificial death becomes a factor in the collective Karma of mankind. He could bear and help this Karma, and we may be sure that the redemption through Him plays an essential role in its fulfilment.

The thought of Resurrection and Redemption can in reality be fully grasped only through a knowledge of Spiritual Science. In the Christianity of the future there will be no contradiction between the idea of Karma and Redemption. Because cause and effect belong together in the spiritual life, this great deed of sacrifice by Christ Jesus must also have its effect in the life of mankind.

Spiritual Science adds depth to the thought underlying the Easter Festival—a thought that is inscribed and can be read in the world of the stars.

In the middle of his span of life the human being is surrounded by inharmonious, bewildering conditions. But he knows too that just as the world came forth from chaos, so will harmony eventually proceed from his still disorderly inner nature. The inner Saviour in man, the bringer of unity and harmony to counter all disharmony—this inner Saviour will arise, acting with the ordered regularity of the course of the planets around the Sun. Let everyone be reminded by the Easter Festival of the resurrection of the Spirit in the existing nature of man.

One of the most important lectures on the etheric appearance of Christ was given at Nuremberg on the 13th of November 1910. The text of this lecture containing many details was published in the News Sheet in 1937 (page 105) under the title “THE WISDOM CONTAINED IN ANCIENT DOCUMENTS AND IN THE GOSPELS. THE EVENT OF THE CHRIST.” The text of the lecture which preceded it was discovered on looking through the notes of the lecture. This lecture of the 12th of November contains many valuable details on the effects and influences of Karma. And it should meet an objective and historical interest to publish this brief resume of the lecture given on the 12th of November in the News Sheet.

MARIE STEINER

Today I must tell you a few things on morality and karma and tomorrow I shall speak on the appearance of Christ and reveal a few facts which have not yet been revealed.

Theosophy becomes really fruitful if we can observe its influence on our own life and if it becomes living substance within us. Theosophical principles can be looked upon as interesting doctrines, but theoretically it is difficult to gain a real conviction of the truth implied by the spiritual-scientific doctrines, in the real meaning of the word. Of course, all theosophical facts discovered along the path of genuine spiritual-scientific investigation can be tested by the human intellect and recognized through logic; but if we take in spiritual-scientific truths we are still a long way from being able to test them. Among our audience many people prefer to tread an easier path, which is to accept spiritual truths on the authority of a teacher. This is far more comfortable. On the other hand, however, there is hardly any other alternative for the great majority of people, for the independent testing of spiritual-scientific truths is a very difficult path; the other path, of observing life in itself, is far easier. But if the laws of Karma hold good, life itself must take on a form which shows us how Karma works in the experiences of life and in the development of character. Those who strive after spiritual truths will more easily gain a conviction of these truths by observing facts supported by life itself.

I shall take two widely-spread qualities as a starting point in this lecture. Taken as moral qualities, there has always been a strong, instinctive repugnance against them. ENVY and FALSEHOOD have always been considered as a special moral failing. This special aversion may be seen in the fact that in the case of no other human error is the repugnance so strong and instinctive as in the case of envy and falsehood. This feeling may be found in great men and in insignificant people. Benvenuto Cellini, who was a great man, once said that he felt himself capable of every kind of sin, but that he could not remember any real lie which he had told. Also Goethe found a certain relief in being able to say that he had never harboured any feeling of envy. Consequently the souls of the simplest people and the souls of highly developed men have an instinctive repugnance against envy and falsehood and defend themselves against them.

Without taking into consideration the theosophical aspect it may be said, first of all, that envy and falsehood are visibly an offence against a fundamental element of social life: they are an offence against the feeling of compassion. Compassion does not only imply sharing another's grief and pain, but it also implies experiencing his value. Compassion is a quality which is not greatly developed among men. It still contains a great amount of egoism. Of Herder it is said, for instance (he intended to study medicine) that he fainted when he first entered an operating theatre where a corpse was to be dissected; he fainted not through compassion, but through weakness and egoism, because he could not bear that sight. Compassion must become less selfish; we should be able to rejoice at another person's success and rise; we should be able to look upon his good qualities without any feeling of bitterness.

Compassion is a fundamental element in the soul life which we share with others because all human soul experiences are connected with each other. Envy and falsehood in particular offend against the capacity of appraising another person's value. We damage our fellow man through envy and falsehood.

Envy and falsehood bring us in opposition to the course of the universe; by envy and falsehood we harm the laws which govern the world's course of events. They can easily be recognized as errors and people do not tolerate them.

As a rule both envy and falsehood have occult backgrounds. Certain mysterious laws hold sway, which easily escape our observation, and they work in such a way that both envy and falsehood can arise in the same person in later years.

Envy does not always take on the form of conscious green envy. Of course, if anyone is conscious of this feeling, he tries to get rid of it. Envy as such is a quality rooted in the astral body of man. We know that feelings, passions, etc. should be looked for in the astral body. There is a certain law according to which qualities arising in the astral body and which are so detestable that we wish to get rid of them, gradually insinuate themselves into the etheric body. There they take on delusive aspects and appear in the guise of certain definite judgments which we pass on other people. No envy is contained in these judgments, yet we criticize people and find everything in them bad. This is a secret form of envy which creeps into our etheric body. There it takes on the form of an opinion, of a critical judgment. We say: This person has done this or that, and our statement may seem perfectly correct; nevertheless it contains envy in a masked form. What has taken place? A very significant process has taken place.

We know that the human soul passes through many incarnations and that there was a moment in the development of mankind when the tempters, Lucifer and Ahriman, crept into the human soul. In what form do Lucifer and Ahriman live within us today? This is not easy to discover without the aid of clairvoyant investigation, and Goethe expressed a deep truth when he said: “Folks do not notice the Devil, even when he takes them by the scruff of the neck!” IN fact, it is possible to ignore the devil; it is possible not to see him. From the standpoint of modern natural science it is easy to say that Mephistopheles does not exist; nevertheless, Lucifer and Ahriman live in human nature. Ahriman lives in the etheric body and Lucifer in the astral body of man.

Lucifer is a power that tempts the human soul by drawing it down morally and by leading it away from its origin. He casts us into the depths of earthly nature and we should beware of this. Lucifer is the power that draws us down into the depths of passion.

Ahriman, on the other hand, is the spirit of falsehood and error and he falsifies our judgments.

Both Lucifer and Ahriman are powers which are hostile to human progress. Yet they get on very well with each other. Envy is a quality in which the Luciferic power comes to expression. It is a detestable quality and that is why people dislike it. They seek to get rid of it, to overcome it and drive it away. When a person first discovers that his soul is filled with envy, he begins to fight against Lucifer, the source of envy. What does Lucifer do in that case? He simply hands over the matter to Ahriman, and Ahriman darkens the human judgment.

When we fight against Lucifer in the astral body, Ahriman can easily insinuate himself into the etheric body, darkening our judgments on other people. This is falsehood and falsehood is an Ahrimanic quality.

People also feel a strong dislike for falsehood and they try to fight against it. When we try to overcome falsehood, we can see that Ahriman hands over the scepter to Lucifer, so that a quality creeps into the astral body which appears in the form of an extremely pronounced EGOISM. Egoism is restrained falsehood.

These two qualities, falsehood and envy, are a crass expression of the way in which Lucifer and Ahriman work within the human soul.

It is possible to observe the influence of envy and falsehood even in the course of a single incarnation. Let us now speak of facts which prove the truth of theosophical teachings. Let us observe a certain period in a person's life and let us suppose that this person was strongly addicted to telling lies. The law of Karma would in that case exercise its influence and we should wait until this becomes manifest. It is, however, possible to observe in the present incarnation the connection which exists between an earlier and a later period of life. A study of human life may show us that a person perhaps lost the habit of telling lies—for life itself is a great school—but he will reveal instead a new, plainly marked characteristic: a certain timidity. There are people who cannot look us in the face and it is possible to observe a certain relationship between a feeling of shyness in later life and hypocrisy at some earlier period of life.

Another example: A person may be filled with the feeling of envy. When this has disappeared, when it has been overcome, we can observe that at some later period of life such a person is dependent on others; he will lack independence in the way in which he faces life—be a weak and swaying person.

These connections between falsehood and shyness, envy and lack of independence, which can already be observed in one and the same incarnation, are Karmic connections.

In reality, Karma works in such a way that a faint fulfillment of its laws already comes to expression in one and the same incarnation, though the decisive influence upon man's character only appears in the next incarnation. Helplessness and lack of independence will arise in old age, when envy appeared during youth. This is a faint nuance of the influence of Karma; it remains after death, works throughout kamaloka, etc., and it will be contained in the forces which build up the next life; it will become interwoven with the fundamental character which expresses itself in the three bodies: the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Goethe expressed this in a very fine way by saying: The desires of our youth are fully realized in our old age. This applies, of course, both to good and bad desires.

In the next life the character qualities build up the three bodies, our character is then the architect of these three bodies. If envy has been a fundamental quality during one incarnation, it will exercise an influence upon the three bodies during the next incarnation and produce, as a result, a weak physical constitution. It works upon the human organism during the next incarnation.

When we see someone facing life in a helpless and dependent way, we must say: “Envy must have been at work during his past incarnation,” and we should behave towards him accordingly. If the laws of Karma hold good, it will soon appear whether our attitude is justified. When we see someone entering life with bad health and a weak constitution, we may take for granted that envy played a certain part in his life during his past incarnation.

When there is such a person in our environment, we must say that Karma led us together with him for a definite purpose: perhaps we were the object of his former envy. What can we now do for him? If Karma is a fact which can be reasonably accepted, if it is a valid truth, it should become manifest that by adopting the right attitude towards such a physically weak person in our environment, a good result can be achieved. What he needs is forgiveness; he needs to encounter this forgiving attitude in the widest measure. Under the condition that we have something to forgive him, we should envelop him in an atmosphere of forgiveness. “You have to forgive him something—therefore do it”; this is what we say to ourselves, but not to HIM—we shall act accordingly and await the result, and we shall see him gaining health and strength. Simply try to do what is right and the result will not fail to appear. This is how we may live in accordance with the laws of Karma and the whole of Theosophy will then become living substance.

Now someone might come along and say: It is quite right that things should have gone wrong with that person, for this is the retribution for what he did during his past incarnation. It is very reasonable that things should have taken this course, because his Karma demands it. People who say this do not understand Karma, for to understand Karma we must know that another person's Karma does not concern us at all! The fulfillment of Karma will come of its own accord; our only task is to help him! We must, however, draw in everything which might bring about a favourable change in his Karma. To know and to feel this forms part of a deep understanding of Karma and its laws. It is another matter when someone is passing through an esoteric development; in that case advice may be given as to the best way in which he can live out his Karma.

Moral qualities in fact produce results; they bring about Karmic effects. They may change during one incarnation. But in the next incarnation they must descend right down into the physical organism.

We said that falsehood may change into timidity during one and the same incarnation, so that a person withdraws into himself. All the more will falsehood in one incarnation produce timidity in the next incarnation. Such a person is born as a timid soul, full of fears. He will not only be shy towards the people of his environment, but he will also fall a prey to certain pathological conditions of fear. The timidity which appeared in one incarnation as a slight karmic effect of falsehood, will therefore appear in the next incarnation as a fundamental organic quality also of the physical body.

What is the right attitude towards a person in whose case we must assume that he told many lies during his past incarnation? We say to ourselves—we do not say this to him—and this should determine our actions: He will have told us many lies during a past incarnation; he misled us. We must try to bring him fruitful and valuable truths. Those who are led together with him by Karma must try to penetrate into his soul with love and devotion. Falsehood must be recompensed by truth; these are two extremes which bring about a kind of compensation.

The secret of the whole matter is that a favourable influence cannot be exercised upon him by anyone, but just by those who are karmically connected with him. Those who adopt this attitude will see what good results can be achieved if he brings him positive truths and has real understanding for him.

Karma is a real law; its result will appear in a very peculiar way. If we lovingly penetrate into the weaknesses of such people, our influence upon them will be an immense relief to them and bring them freedom and health. If we can immerse ourselves completely in them, we shall have a rejuvenating influence upon such people.

Our attitude towards people may be an understanding one or a critical one. What is the effect? We may help them or be unable to help them. We may come towards a person with understanding; i.e., immerse ourselves lovingly in his soul, with a real understanding for his weaknesses, if Karma demands this from us, as a task. But we may also criticize him and remain by this.

Let us observe life in both cases. What is the effect of criticism and rebuke upon the object of such rebuke? One effect can be that the reproaches helped him, but it may also be otherwise. People who habitually criticize and rebuke others will also bring about a certain result: a certain feeling of isolation will take hold of them; they will feel themselves cut off from the others.

Let us compare this with the effects produced in one incarnation, when we immerse ourselves with love and understanding in the other person's soul, in spite of his failings. In this case, too, the result may be a good one or a bad one, but the effect upon the soul will undoubtedly be a favourable one.

This shows us that entirely different laws hold sway when we remain standing, as it were, by criticism and rebuke, or when we progress as far as real understanding. Rebuke recoils upon ourselves and forms new Karma, but understanding gives rise to a store of wealth in the other soul; it dissolves Karma, smoothens it and eliminates it.

This is a very significant fact in life. Let us now recapitulate the result of our observations in a sentence which constitutes a deep truth; namely, that we are in the position to be of very little help to ourselves, and that we can, on the other hand, harm ourselves greatly. We can, however, be of great help to others, whereas we cannot cause them much harm by our own errors. Our good qualities can therefore be of great help to others; our bad qualities cause us great harm, but cannot cause much harm to others, at least not permanently.

This is a very peculiar law. It shows the effect of Karma in one and the same incarnation: for one who helps another person by his good qualities and by immersing himself lovingly in his soul, may be sure of a favourable effect in his own life at some later period. Do not say that this is egoism, that it is selfish to be good and noble. No, goodness must be something quite natural, and its good effect at some later time arises as a natural consequence.

If we do not go beyond our own interests, if we have no understanding for other people and only criticize them, no good effects will arise. The strange thing is that unless we are good towards others we cannot progress; this is a condition for our own progress.

This is a fundamental law passing over from one incarnation to the other, and appearing in a wonderful way. If in one incarnation we are instinctively led to goodness, if a kind of life instinct draws us towards a good life, this will appear in the next life as Theosophy, which will already have exercised its influence. Let us for instance imagine a person who was good to us at a time when we were not yet able to guide ourselves. Here we see a great difference between the different qualities of good—there are the good things in life which we do not deserve (we speak of undeserved good) and we can see that in one case its effect may be a favourable one, whereas in another case it is useless.

The clairvoyant may now perceive something quite special: Another person's good actions towards us, at a time in which we did not deserve them, appear as goodness which we earned back from him. If this is the case, their effect upon us will be a good one; if this is not the case, they cannot have any good effect upon us. When we observe the workings of Karma we should bear in mind that every action has its effect, even though it may not immediately appear to the physical eye.

The paths of Karma are very intricate paths, but if we study life we may understand them, for life contains the proofs for the way in which Karma works in the world. If we study Karma and act accordingly, the success in life itself will show us that we went out from a real law, which holds good.

There are three ways in which we can face Karma: We may not believe in it at all; we may believe in it, and then we may apply the test by observing life itself. This will enable us to recognize the truth of its laws. Theosophy is not only a theoretical truth, but a search for proofs which establish this truth in life itself.

If we really grasp Spiritual Science, it gives us strength and confidence in life. How can we introduce it into our life so that it may help us to advance? Many people think that when they acquire knowledge in this sphere and accumulate spiritual truths it is not a help but a hindrance in a sound human life. Why, they ask, do we need all this knowledge of the spirit, why should we have to learn so much about the development of the earth and of a whole planetary system? Why do we need this at all? We are true theosophists, they say, when we strive to find the higher self within us and are enabled thereby to advance as human beings. There are others whose minds are more theoretical and who enjoy hearing of the different members of man's being, of the development of mankind through the different epochs of culture, and of the regular, numerical periods. They wish to learn of all these things as quickly as possible, noting down the most important truths in a few words and circulating them in a catechetical form. But we must affirm that neither of these notions correspond in any way to what Spiritual Science can mean to us, and does mean to those who have adopted the right attitude to life through It.

It is true that we must begin by learning that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an Ego. But it is a mistake to think that by enumerating them we know something of man's being for when we do this we merely schematise. We really know something about man only when this knowledge is applied to life. But this is impossible unless we realise that the essential thing is not only to know the names of these four members, but how they are connected within the human being. When we look upon a human being, it is essential to know how his etheric body is connected with his physical body, whether the etheric and astral body tend towards each other and seek a close connection, or whether they are loosely connected. A closer observation shows that the relationship between these members of the human being changes in the course of mankind's development on earth. In the past, this relationship was different and, in the future, it will be different from what it is to-day.

If we study the ancient Egyptian in the first thousand years of Egyptian culture, thus looking upon ourselves in past incarnations, we shall find in him a human being whose physical, etheric and astral bodies were loosely knit together. But when we consider a human being of the present time, we find instead a more intimate and a closer connection between his different members. And in future, this connection will become closer and closer. This explains why we have to pass through the different epochs of culture. When we say that man reincarnates so and so many times, we may also ask: Why does he reincarnate?—Because the connection between his enveloping members always changes, so that the human being whom we meet in the external world during the different epochs, also changes. When we were Chaldeans, we had a quite different bodily constitution from that of to-day, and in the future, we shall again be differently constituted. Because of these differences our experiences as human beings are different.

It is now essential to develop the right kind of thoughts regarding the true relation of man's inner nucleus passing from incarnation to incarnation, with its enveloping sheaths—the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. In reality, ordinary science does not know anything about the deeper laws ruling from one incarnation to another. It deals only with what is external. It ignores even the deeper significance of the laws ruling the external sheath. We may convince ourselves of this by considering some of the connections accepted by ordinary science or rejected by it.

It is very interesting to note that for a long time science was inclined to ascribe free will to man. Yet I have pointed out to you that in many respects modern science denies the existence of free will. It refers us to external scientific research which tells us to observe the external course of life. For example, statistics can establish how many suicides occur in a particular place. A certain regularity may be ascertained in regard to these suicides. Statistics show that this occurs at certain regular intervals. A certain number of people is simply condemned to commit suicide. How is it possible then to speak of free will?—One might go still further by drawing attention to the technique of insurance calculations which formulate and reckon out how many of a certain number of people will still be alive after thirty years. This is expressed arithmetically. Death and birth are thus imprisoned within external laws of Nature. Ordinary science admits this. It will, however, be forced to admit very different things also, for it is already evident that certain facts are coming to the fore which will compel people to think in a spiritual-scientific way. Generally speaking, science is not readily inclined to accept new ideas. In this direction it follows a very strange habit. One can hear people declaiming that in the Middle Ages there were men who opposed Kepler's discoveries. The greatest efforts were needed before his teachings could assert themselves against the dark minds of his age. The very people who more than others now draw attention to this fact, are those who adopt the same attitude, not only towards Spiritual Science, but also towards scientific facts which force us in the present time to seek spiritual laws.

A physician in Berlin, for example, ascertained certain numerical connections which appear in the course of human life. This doctor, Fliess [Wilhelm Fließ (1858-1928)] by name, began to register the connections between births and deaths by following them up in different families. For example, a female member of a certain family died on a certain day. Her first grandchild was born 1428 days before her death, the second grandchild 1428 days after her death, so that in this case the grandmother's death lies symmetrically before and after the birth of a grandchild. In the space of 7 times 1428 days after her death, a great-grandchild was born. By following up this case, we come to definite numerical connections, which finally determine in a very wonderful way the relationship between cases of death and birth. Fliess ascertained this in many instances. But apparently modern science does not wish to recognise it, because it goes too much against its own direction.

Even improvements in health-conditions are based on numerical connections. When we compare the number of deaths through tuberculosis during a certain epoch, with the number of deaths of the preceding decades, we again find that this is regulated by certain numbers. Doctors say that by hygienic measures they have been able to diminish the cases of death through tuberculosis. But Fliess proved that this decrease can be reckoned out on the basis of arithmetical connections. This is most inconvenient to modern science, but in the end it will be forced to admit the existence of objective arithmetical laws. It will return to the sentence of Pythagoras: "Number is something which rules everything that weaves and lives". With our soul we calculate, but the higher Spirits made these calculations long ago and set into the course of life something that is in keeping with numbers. The Pythagorean saying, "In calling the world into being, God is a mathematician" seems to come into play. On the other hand, if this is so it would strengthen the attitude of ordinary science which denies that man's inner being has any share in the destiny of his life. For if birth and death are connected in such a way that the distance between them is equal to 7 times 1428 days, it is possible to calculate when we have to die and in that case our inner being really appears to be imprisoned within violent external conditions.

Apparently, we must renounce speaking of special laws which rule our inner being. External reasons may however be adduced which tell us that this isn't quite right after all. According to calculations, a certain number of suicides may indeed take place at a definite place, but is it possible to determine arithmetically what person will commit suicide? According to the theory of probability it is possible to calculate the probable duration of human life. But I do not think that anyone will admit that he will have to die on the day fixed by arithmetical calculation. These laws based on mathematical formulae are of no consequence to man's inner being.

But how do matters stand when Fliess proves that 1428 days lie between a case of death and two births? Does this prove anything in regard to the inner laws of our Ego? For it is impossible to recognise right away the connection between the inner nucleus of our being and the external course of life. How can we explain this with the fact that we follow Karma, that we must follow our inner Ego? This is not easy to grasp.

Let me explain this by an analogy—it is quite possible that two events, two strains, two facts connected with each other should follow completely different courses. Consider this: when you travel from Baste to Zurich you go by train. You consult the time-table to find out when your train leaves. You become, as it were, intimately connected with the figures. Your thoughts, your objectives and so on are dependent on them. (There are, of course, many other figures in the time-table). But is it not the case that alongside this sequence of facts there is another (sequence of facts) that has to do with the development of your soul: that you want to progress or "catch the train?" When you consult the time-table it tells you nothing about yourself—whether you are good or bad, wise or foolish and is of no importance for the soul's being. Similarly, the figures that result from the calculations of Fliess are of no importance for the Karma of our life. We catch a certain train in life, entering a definite stream controlled by laws which are connected with our inner being only through things that we ourselves bring about. We decide which train to catch. In the same way we have to decide, through the inner laws of our Karma, to enter a certain stream of life which is then determined by arithmetical laws.

I speak of these things because those who seek the spirit should more and more acquire a feeling that life is complicated; it is something that cannot be encompassed by slack, easy thoughts. Those who think that it is an easy matter to grasp the whole of life, and that a few sentences taken from Spiritual Science suffice for this, are very much mistaken. We must be willing to penetrate more and more into these connections. We should acquire a feeling which shows us that the thoughts that lie at the foundation of the world's structure, are also valid for the human being. If no connection whatever existed between external laws and human Karma, our whole life would fall asunder.

Two facts can prove this. In Spiritual Science we endeavour to make the best possible comparisons. In a certain way the numbers in the timetable are connected with practical life. Even though it does not concern the time-table whether or not you travel to Zurich, even though you do not see any connecting link with your journey, the time-table is nevertheless connected with human conditions. For men have compiled it in such a way as to correspond, not too awkwardly, to the conditions of life. It is adapted to human conditions of life in general. Something similar is the case with human Karma and the stream of life which it controls. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies fixed the "time-table" in accordance with numerical conditions, which are then discovered in the regular numbers of statistics. Outwardly, these correspond to human conditions in general. When we reincarnate, we may have an easy or a difficult life. Not in every family do we come across the law according to which a grandchild is always born 1428 days before or after its grandmother's death. But when we consider that 1428 is divisible by 28, that it is equal to 51 times 28, then it is easier to understand this numerical connection. These calculations will not always give the number 1428, but as a rule we find a multiple of 28 between the death and the birth of any member of a family. The multiples may be 30, 17, 26 times 28, and so forth, but they will contain the number 28: this is included regularly.

In accordance with the time-table we have the possibility to catch different trains, and according to our Karma we may arrange life in an easy or a difficult way. I mention this to indicate how complicated these conditions really are.

I also wish to point out that a moral conclusion may be drawn from all these truths. This constitutes the immensely important element given by Spiritual Science. We may say: I live in this world and I find in it numerical connections which show me how external life is regulated. It required long periods of human cultural development before this was discovered. But how much do we really know of these regular laws? Here we must admit that we know very little indeed. Slowly and gradually we discovered something of this divine wisdom. But just as we discover the most beautiful and important facets of wisdom, the wisdom admonishes us to be humble; it shows us how little our thoughts are able to encompass life.

This will stimulate us to continue striving for the Light. This moral feeling, this reverence which we have for the wisdom contained in the universe, is what we may acquire, so that we become better human beings. We acquire this feeling towards wisdom, it takes hold of us, when we recognise how near it was to us during our life between death and a new birth. When we have to come down to a new earthly existence, we choose the train by which we travel, so that we may fulfil our Karma. It is then that we choose our family-ties. If someone were to ask us now which family would be the best for our present incarnation, we would have no idea. If we had to depend only on our own forces, we could not make the right choice.

Before our incarnation we are far wiser than afterwards for at that time we make the right choice. The feeling that now we are not cleverer than before we were born, cannot fill us with pride in regard to our own achievements. For during our existence between death and birth we were filled with other forces besides those we have the moment we step into physical existence.

When we enter physical life, the substances of the earth's realms pervade us and exist within our body. On laying aside the physical body when passing through the portal of death, the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies receive us and we share their substance during our existence between death and a new birth, even as here we share the physical substances of the earth. These physical substances assert themselves—for example, iron streams through our blood in accordance with external laws—and similarly the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies assert themselves between death and a new birth by working within us, and it is their wisdom which pushes us towards the right stream of life. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are filled with the wisdom which we need, even as we are filled with physical substance. Humility is therefore a justified feeling, it is the moral consequence of the knowledge that during our physical life we have absorbed only a very small portion of the mighty wisdom of those Spiritual Beings.

Between death and a new birth, we are embedded in the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. If we do not submit to them, this would be the same as trying to live on earth without taking in certain physical substances, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and so forth. It would be absurd to live without complete submission to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Those who bear in mind the fact that between death and birth we must completely surrender to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies will ask themselves: What is the best preparation for that existence? And they will give themselves the following answer: The best preparation is to unfold, already during the present earthly life between birth and death, a feeling of devotion for the divine-spiritual world. If we are pervaded by the right feelings, the truths which we receive will change into feelings of devoted surrender. Humility and reverence for the spiritual world will then live in all our feelings.

If we begin to think and live in this way, we shall also discover the true balance in the environing world, for thoughts of this kind regulate and harmonize all our other feelings.

Many mistakes of the external world are brought into the spiritual-scientific movement; they are mistakes which do not come from Spiritual Science, but which are brought into it from outside. For example, a person may be diligent and active in the outside world, but his activity might be characterized by saying that he is ambitious and does too much; he ruins his forces and does not notice that he should observe certain limits in his work. When such a person enters Theosophy, he will come across quite different ideas from those which he had in the external world. But he also brings into Theosophy his own characteristic qualities. He may, for example, hear that a certain amount of study is needed for the soul's progress. He begins to study,—yet he should learn to notice how much he can really do in accordance with the forces allotted to him by his Karma; he should not pursue theosophical studies which surpass his strength. Also, if for example, he becomes a vegetarian he must ask himself whether it agrees with him or not. Otherwise he will ruin himself.

The disciple of Spiritual Science must maintain the right balance. He must know if he can really follow the strictest obligations. A calm and humble observation of his Karma, of his own capacities and forces, may be acquired by accepting in the right way what Spiritual Science can give us. Those who have advanced furthest in occultism, faithfully observe the rule of maintaining the right balance. Some people try to force matters, when external circumstances obstruct a real training; they strive with all their might towards the aim which they have in view, work spiritually like slaves to obtain an immediate answer to the problems which rise up. But those who have really progressed, never do this. First of all, the existence of a definite problem should be clearly envisaged, and then the disciple of Spiritual Science should ask himself: Are you at this moment capable of obtaining a full answer? Wait (he should say to himself) until the Beings of the spiritual world send 3ou this answer. A true disciple of the spirit if he has to strain and push at the outset will give up for the time being. He knows that he must wait, and he can wait because he is filled with the knowledge of the eternity of life and that Karma, which he never forgets, gives each man his due. Then comes a certain moment in which he obtains a strange inner hint ... it is then that the Powers of the spiritual world may give him an answer. Perhaps after many years, even after many incarnations. But it is characteristic of a right attitude to be able to wait, to practise patience, to unfold soul-harmony.

Those who allow themselves to be influenced in the right way by the teachings of Spiritual Science will learn to master their feelings and sensations, so that they are always able to maintain a harmonious balance. If we adopt this attitude, our Ego sends forces into the astral body, so that the astral body absorbs the truths which come from the spiritual world, in the same way in which a sponge absorbs the water into which it is dipped. Spiritual knowledge gradually passes over into the astral body, and the astral body is pervaded by it.

We live in an age in which it is necessary, and in which it will be more and more necessary, to pervade the astral body with spiritual wisdom. The times change more and more, and they change also in regard to the crossing of the threshold of death. In future epochs, when man again returns to the earth, his astral body if not imbued with spiritual knowledge will not find its way about the spiritual world and will be filled with darkness. But if it is filled with the truths which we now absorb, it will become a source of light and it will shed this light on its environment, thus perceiving the wisdom which we take in here on earth, in the light of the spiritual world.

If we now ask ourselves why this future light of the spiritual world does not yet exist, we may say: It has not yet come, because in the past a primordial wisdom existed which could be impressed on man without any effort on his part. It existed as an inheritance which man had received from the old Moon. With this inheritance he could penetrate into the spiritual world. This lasted until the Christian era, when man could no longer obtain spiritual wisdom in an immediate way. In the present time he must first fill his soul with spiritual-scientific truths, which will constitute the power enabling him to enter the spiritual world, guided by the light in his soul. Human conditions change from epoch to epoch.

Every form of occultism knows that a wisdom exists which came from the old Moon and was still active, in its last traces, during the 15th and 10th century A.D. When the human being entered the spiritual world, he could see the light, which shone without any effort on his part. But in the present time, the whole wisdom of the past, which existed as an old inheritance, may unite with the human soul, but the soul no longer shines when we cross the threshold of death. Only the wisdom which we take in through Christ, by saying, "Not I, but Christ in me", will become a shining light, when in future we cross the threshold of death. We therefore take in the Christianized Spiritual Science in order that our astral body may become a source of light and that we may lift it out, when we cross the threshold of death.

When we take in this Christianized Spiritual Science and fill our astral body with it, it does not remain mere wisdom, for it permeates our feelings. We then learn to know the life-conditions of the past planetary stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and finally of the earth.

If you penetrate livingly into the descriptions in my Occult Science, you will be able to feel that the description of Saturn has an entirely different note from that of other planetary conditions. In the description of Saturn, you will be able to feel that conditions there are described with a certain harshness. Your soul will feel it. And this is essential. The Sun-existence will be experienced as if it contained a blossoming, growing life, and in the description of the Moon you will feel a dark, melancholic note in the conceptions pertaining to it. A sensitive person will even be able to taste it, he will feel its flavour on his tongue.

Fools may object that there are discrepancies in the descriptions and that a uniform style was not maintained. But we should realise that these differences are essential, and why. We should know why a melody of three definite notes must re-echo in the words of these descriptions, and when we know this, we are able to transform this knowledge into feelings which we send out into the world. These feelings undergo a change. The wisdom absorbed by the astral body changes into a freely willed surrender to the conditions of the world, and this takes hold of our etheric body. If we are wise, we shall prepare the path for this. The forces which enable us to descend into our subsequent incarnations form the etheric body and pervade it. If during our earthly life we have filled our etheric body with genuinely devout feelings and it then dissolves in the universal All when we die, we hand over to the universe an etheric body filled with devoutness, an etheric body which may be of benefit to the whole world. If on the other hand we have not been devout, but materialistic, the etheric body which we lay aside after death will have a destructive and explosive effect when it dissolves in the universal ether. In the same measure in which we gain wisdom, we help not only ourselves, but indirectly the world also, by acquiring better forces. And in the same measure in which we unfold devout feelings, we help the world in a direct way, for devoutness is imparted to the whole world.

Spiritual Science is not only able to bestow wisdom and unfold devout feelings, but it also gives us confidence and makes us aware of the body's vital forces. The conscious connection with the spiritual world in itself gives us these vital forces.

Fichte was aware of this connection of forces. He, too, had this confidence in life, so that when speaking of man's being he was able to say: Because I know of my connection with the eternal and that my innermost being is rooted in the eternal, I have such confidence in life that I am able to say: I look up to you, ye rocks and mountains; fall down upon me, crush my physical body; clouds, cover up everything that constitutes my being; thunder, split up everything which pertains to me; I shall nevertheless defy your might! Life-confidence streams out of the consciousness that we are rooted in the spirit's eternal essence. Can a man thus rooted in the spirit's eternal essence ever grow weak? It is Spiritual Science which gives him his strength, constantly pouring into him something of this strength.

What happens with this life-confidence? Wisdom gives the astral body the power enabling us to overcome more and more the obstructing forces and gives the etheric body its right structure. But the force which streams into our body through the knowledge of our connection with the eternal, is confidence in life, which penetrates into the very forces of our physical body. Maya, illusion and deception withdraw from us, if we are equipped with these forces. It is an illusion to say that our physical body decays into dust when we die. No! The structure of our physical body, the way in which we formed it, is not an indifferent matter. If this confidence in all that is eternal lives in the physical body, we give back to the earth this confidence in life which we gained for ourselves. We strengthen the earth-planet with the forces acquired during our life. Through our physical body we give the world confidence in life. The decadent part of our physical body is only a Maya. When we trace the physical body beyond death, we see that the amount of confidence in life which we acquired during our earthly existence streams into the earth.

We thus strengthen our astral body, our etheric body and our physical body by wisdom, devoutness and in life-confidence, the best forces which we were able to develop as human beings for the whole evolution of the earth. In this way we work upon the planet earth and we acquire a feeling which shows us that man does not lead an isolated existence in the world, but that the forces which he unfolds within himself are of value to the whole world. Every speck of dust bears within it the laws of the universe; similarly every human being builds up or destroys the world by what he does or leaves undone. We may give something to the progressive process of the world, or deprive it of something, and we may crumble away from it by ignoring it, by failing to acquire confidence in life. These sins of omission contribute to the decay of our planet, whereas the wisdom, the devoutness and confidence in life which we acquired, help to build it up. We may thus gradually obtain an idea of the feelings which Spiritual Science can give us, when it takes hold of the whole human being.

Many souls are sleeping their lives away without a glance toward the spiritual world, without any connection, through prayer or otherwise, with the spiritual world. Think of a sleeping city where the souls have all gone out of their bodies. Whatever these souls took in of a spiritual nature during the day now lives on in them. If they took in nothing, nothing can live on in them during the time between falling asleep and waking up. But if something spiritual is experienced while awake, or if something is raised to the spiritual through prayer or meditation, then this will be for the dead, when it has been carried over into sleep, just what the cornfields are for living persons. If nothing thrives in the cornfields, people starve. What people take with them into sleep is like seeds for the fields where the dead sojourn. What we bring with us in the way of spiritual thoughts, of devotion to the world of soul and spirit, is what the dead live on, nourish themselves with, consume. And as famine ensues here on earth if the fruits do not thrive, so a sort of famine ensues when souls live materialistically and carry nothing with them into sleep. This is the connection between life in the spiritual world and life on earth.

Now someone might say: Maybe there will be a great number of deaths over there. That cannot happen. The dead souls can experience hunger and the pangs of hunger, but the dead cannot die. This brings us to an important question.

You see, death is something known only in the physical world. It is present only in the physical world, and not at all in the supersensible world.

Let me point out something to you. If you go through all the sciences here, you will find that they have worked out all sorts of laws. But science has one ideal, an ideal that one would have to say was fantastic, even if it could be attained; and that is to know life directly. Chemical and physical laws can be investigated any time, but to investigate life is an ideal. Life can never be understood by means of physical laws, because it flows into the physical world from the higher worlds.

Thus, life is something that is not known here, while death is something that is not known in the higher worlds. It is senseless to think that death could occur in the higher world. Pain and suffering have a meaning in the supersensible world, but not death. The beings of the higher hierarchies know nothing about dying.

The angels veil their faces before the mystery of man's creation, they know nothing of it ... They can learn about it only through what they are told by beings who enter the physical plane; they cannot know it directly. This is true of all the beings of the higher hierarchies. Only one of them learned to know death, the Christ. This is the profound significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, that a being became acquainted with death through terrible suffering.

If one thinks this over, meditates on it, one may come to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and to see Christ as the only being that learned to know death.

So, what happens to the souls who are starving over there for the reasons we have described? They feel their connection with the earth fading away. They are living in a world where they must say to themselves: The earth is being withdrawn from us, it no longer enters into our existence. And for the disembodied persons this means great pain, terrible suffering. It means that these souls begin to long for death. But since there is no death there, their hunger causes endless pain as they long for death.

Thus, we see how spiritual science works as seed for the dead, filling them with the proper nourishment. Only if we know things like this can we form a right opinion of spiritual science and see that it is not a theory but an elixir of life, and that it bridges the gulf between the living and the dead. We must see that: through it our souls can build a living bridge to the dead. And because this is so, we must shape the anthroposophical work in the branches in such a way that we learn what a living person can do for one who has died before him. The simplest thing he can do for him is to read to him, read ideas, concepts, notions that are related to the supersensible world. Spiritual science is a language that can be understood by the dead as well as the living. And it can be of service not only to those who occupied themselves with anthroposophy while they were alive, but also to those who would have nothing to do with it. Those who were already anthroposophists here will feel it as an especially good deed if we read to them.

It is often objected that the dead, being already in the supersensible world, must know all about it and thus have no need of what we read to them on the subject.

My dear friends, the earth is not only a vale of tears, it is something that has a real efficacy. The dead can look at the supersensible world, but they cannot form ideas and concepts from merely looking. After all, there are animals on earth. They can look at things, but they cannot form concepts as men do. If the earth had never come to be, the human soul would live in higher worlds but it would never attain concepts about the higher worlds. Men have to go through life on earth if they are to form concepts and ideas. So, a soul that goes through death without an inkling of the spiritual world will live there without experiencing any of the concepts and ideas that we are able to study here through spiritual science. It would have to return to earth to do this.

Thus, a soul can be helpful on earth by reading to the dead, because it can be understood by the dead. And even if the dead persons took in nothing of spiritual science while on earth, we need not assume that they will reject it after death. On the contrary, many who raged against anthroposophy and wanted to know nothing of it are now yearning to hear about it. Not only the things around us are entangled in Maya. There can be a Maya that overcomes a person who rages against spiritual science. What happens in the depths of the soul is often very different from what is on the surface. A person may work up a rage in his daily consciousness, yet have a great longing in him. It is quite hopeless to try to bring such a person to anthroposophy, but in his soul, he may be a better anthroposophist than others. After he dies, however, the Maya is lifted. Then we see what was in the depths of the soul. Here the soul raged, but now the longing comes to the fore. It may be that our reading is in vain, but this we must risk ...

...

We come into closer connection with the dead if we devote ourselves to anthroposophy in the right way. We must fill ourselves with understanding for the necessity that spiritual science should make an impression at the present time.

The more we work with spiritual science, the more we notice that the dead also work back upon the living. For example, in educating children who have lost their fathers at a very early age, we must take this into account. Often one can feel the father sending an influence from the spiritual world. I once had to tutor children whose father had died early. I tried to train them in my own way, but it would not work, simply would not work. But when it occurred to me to allow for the influence of the father from the spiritual world, then it went very well ...

...

If you work out something about incarnations in a clever theoretical way, it will usually be wrong. It must seem strange that Raphael was the same person as a thorny character like John the Baptist.

How could it happen that this thorny man, who had to pave the way for the Mystery of Golgotha in such a violent way, reappeared as the gentle, pliable, charming Raphael? But look at this. Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi, died when Raphael was eleven. He was a painter. He was not a great painter so far as external achievements go, but he had great ideas in his head, although he could not put them on camas because he had no technical skill. He was also a poet. There was a great deal of fantasy in him, but the physical capacities simply were not there. He went early through the portal of death, and then his forces worked into his son. In Raphael's hands and imagination worked all that his father could send into the physical world. One can say that the old Giovanni Santi was a painter without hands in the supersensible world, for in a wonderful karmic relationship he supplied, in combination with the Christ-filled individuality of the Baptist, what came to expression in Raphael. The supersensible world had to work with the physical world to achieve this result. It shows how the so-called dead are able to influence those who have been left behind ...

...

Life on earth has another important mission. When we have gone through the portal of death, if we are not to be lonely, if we are to know something of other souls, we must meet these other souls. We could be together with them there, yet know nothing about them. We must make some connection with the souls here in order to be acquainted with them over there. In the spiritual world souls can walk through each other and know nothing about each other. It is important for those over there that they be read to by persons whom they have known here. The connections we make here are also connections over there. We found societies and build up friendships on a spiritual basis in order to establish connections that will endure beyond death. Not as a mere whim, but as a need that extends beyond death, we are trying to bring our spiritual life into a sort of societal form. Thus we see that, by building up connections with other souls here on earth, we make sure that we will not be hermits in the world between death and a new birth, that we will have a sociable life there as well as here. We will have understanding for the other souls after death only if we try to see into them now.

Therefore, in order not to be shut off from more remote souls, we interest ourselves in their life. For instance, we study religions because we cannot know much about other souls if we are not familiar with their beliefs. We build a close tie with the souls that are near to us. But we can also have some connection with the people whose religious beliefs we study. We must learn to understand seers and to perceive that they cannot do otherwise than bring to other men what they themselves see, in order that what is needed may come to pass in the world and the mission of the earth may be fulfilled.

It must be conceded that over there only those souls who have taken in something spiritual here can have a full consciousness of their influence on the physical world. And since we should learn more and more about these matters, I will mention a fact that is important even if it is not easy to understand. Let us take a soul that never bothered about the supersensible world while it was here. This soul can work on the physical world with its intentions. But although this soul can see the souls that have remained behind—at least, if they know something about the spirit—it is not aware that its intentions are working on the physical world. This knowledge is lacking. There is after all a certain difference between living in immediate communion with your fellow men and being hindered from having such communion so that your intentions reach them only invisibly. You would see everything as in a mirror. The dead person who entered the spiritual world without spiritual knowledge sends down his intentions, but he is not conscious of doing so. This is far less satisfying for him than if he knew: Now you have this intention and you are sending it down.

This direct knowledge of the connection with the living is available only to those who had some kind of spiritual life here or to those who are instructed by the reading of spiritual ideas after death. The reading can replace the knowledge. And it will more and more be the case that men here on earth will achieve consciousness of the influences of the dead, so that there will not be a one-way influence by persons here working on the spiritual world, but persons here, as they learn more about the supersensible world, will be aware of what is coming from over yonder.

We are only at the beginning of anthroposophical development. Therefore, what is being said now will be little heeded. But it will be heeded more in the future. One will have moments when one sees quite clearly how the dead are working. Not every moment of our lives is favorable, but people who fill themselves with spiritual science will base such moments. We really experience very little of what is going on around us. We experience only what happens near us from hour to hour. But that is the least of what is really there, or could be there. Take the following example. Someone goes to work at eight o'clock every morning. His way leads through an old garage. One day he is delayed in starting, and when he comes to the garage he sees that it has collapsed. This happened just at the moment when he would normally be passing through.

Such a case shows how much does not happen that really could happen in our lives. How do you know what would have happened to you if you had crossed the street three minutes earlier than you did? Admittedly there are karmic necessities here, but there are also thousands of possibilities that do not become facts. What actually occurs is one of innumerable possibilities. Just these moments when something could have happened but did not do so because we, so to speak, missed the opportunity. Just these are the right moments for glimpsing the spiritual world. Take another example: You miss a train through being delayed. You should accept this calmly because there may be karma behind it. You should cultivate calmness, and if you do, you will notice a shadowy thought arising in such moments when some accident could have occurred but did not. This thought will be something that a dead person is saying to you, something that may be an important communication from over yonder.

In order to receive a direct communication from the spiritual world, we need a certain soul-training. Spiritual science can furnish such a training. This can go so far that through someone who has died before us we experience, for example, that he is continually concerned about us. If he died very young, he has conserved certain forces that he had in his life. These forces are still available to him and, if the conditions are favorable, he can project them into earth-life. Perhaps the dead person loved us and wants to send us his forces. And we use these forces, although we are not conscious of this. Then it happens that we avoid an accident, by missing a train or something of the sort. Then we see, like a living dream-picture, the imagination of the person who loved us and is sending us his forces. We have an inkling of him, and he shows us that he is concerned about us. We will know how to understand this.

Think how the love that souls have for one another can be increased if one knows that one is not torn away from those whom one leaves here, but can still work for them. And this working will gradually reach the point where a bridge can be built to the souls. If one thinks in this way of the souls that feel themselves close to the dead and strengthen their love through the possibility of further active loving, then the love between soul and soul will be kindled through what spiritual science can give, and this can really be something very substantial when compared with what usually exists as love today. Souls will be brought together in the right way for the first time when people realize that the dead and the living belong to one world.

To bring people to understand that life here and life yonder are only changes of form, this is part of the mission of anthroposophy in our time. And we understand this mission only if we see that through spiritual science we tear away the wall that now seems so threatening because materialistic attitudes are spreading so widely over the earth ...

...

In the life between death and a new birth the soul is no less occupied than here. The circumstances over yonder are not the same as here, but they are prepared here in earth-life ... Continually flowing into the physical causes are forces that come from the powers of the higher worlds. If one has had no conscience here, he will have to go through something terrible. He will become the slave, the servant, of the beings who have to bring illness and early death into the world.

There are persons who generate enthusiasm and love, zeal for their work; who do gladly what they must do in accordance with their capacities and their karma. There are also many vocations in which people really cannot work with any enthusiasm, and this will be the case more and more. Therefore, it is necessary that souls who, in spite of it all, punctually discharge their duties, should have something else to which they can turn with enthusiasm. Through spiritual science one can have something that he can do with love and enthusiasm, and through which forces will develop in one's soul. Thus, we can become the servants over yonder of those beings of the higher hierarchies who pour freshness, growth, and health into earth-life.

All these connections enable us to look beyond death and know that we belong to the macrocosm, that we are not living for physical existence alone while on earth but are developing important forces that will come into their own between death and a new birth. We become able to live in such a way that we do not hinder the fruitful development of mankind, but rather generate forces that can further it. We can regard this as the mission of anthroposophy.

Answers to Questions

It should be a selfless service that one does with the reading. The dead understand our speech for 4 or 5 years after dying. Our thoughts for a longer time.

Photographs are of no use in finding the dead. Handwriting is better. You will not succeed in finding them with photographs. The connection is achieved much better by quietly concentrating on their handwriting.

The science of spirit, about which I have had the honor to lecture for many years now, here in Stuttgart, as well as in other places, is, I believe, based upon a need arising out of the cultural and spiritual life of the present time. It does not arise simply because someone may feel it to be a good idea. In order to realize that it is just at the present time that this science has to make a start, it is perhaps necessary to see how particular spiritual impulses arise at certain moments during the whole evolution of human spiritual and cultural life. It is not so difficult to see that the science of spirit has a connection with the present time similar to the connection that the Copernican outlook had with its time. Just as the latter could not have existed at an earlier period, so, too, with the science of spirit. We only have to compare, on the basis of true knowledge, the way the scientific outlook obtains its results—and has obtained them for some time—with the way this outlook is taken up by the widest circles of humanity in order to provide a basis for questions concerning the soul and the spirit. We need only to look at the method of research and the way it has spread and to compare it with the scientific outlook of centuries ago, which had prevailed for thousands of years of human evolution. In those earlier times people looked at nature and its phenomena in quite a different way from today and the last two, three, four hundred years. In earlier times when people looked at nature and its processes they took something spiritual, something of a soul nature, into their own soul and spirit life. It was not like today when the phenomena of nature are investigated purely as phenomena, as far as possible eliminating everything of a spirit-soul nature.

This is not a criticism of the modern scientific outlook—on the contrary. The success of the scientific outlook, which certainly has a significant purpose both for the present and the future, is due to its efforts to eliminate everything of a spirit-soul nature from the observation of natural phenomena. It concentrates solely on observing processes in nature without bringing into these processes anything of a spirit- soul nature. On the other hand it has become absolutely necessary to satisfy the unquenchable need of the human soul to approach the great riddles of existence scientifically from a different viewpoint. It is just because natural science has to keep to its serious and conscientious method and is obliged to eliminate spirit-soul nature that a science of spirit, based on the example and ideal of natural science, must take its place alongside natural science, working in the same way as natural science, but from different sources.

It cannot be said that the present time has got very far in formulating a view about the relationship of natural science to any endeavors of a more spiritually scientific kind. It is just the most serious questions about the life of the soul and the spirit, about the eternal nature of the being of man, about human freedom and all that is connected with it, that are excluded and have been banned from the outlook based on natural science since the middle of the 19th century. And it is a fact that great and outstanding scientists of the present time find themselves in a strange position. We have already seen how it is only recently that outstanding scientists have shaken off the scientific romanticism of Darwinism prevalent in the second half of the 19th century.

We could take hundreds of scientists and thinkers to illustrate our point, but we shall take one as an example. We have seen how a scientist like Oskar Hertwig has managed to bring the fantastic tendencies of naturalism, which have threatened to run wild, back on to a saner basis. And a book such as Oskar Hertwig's Das Werden der Organismen, Eine Darwinische Zufallstheorie, a book by an eminent pupil of Haeckel,—such a book, even from a scientific viewpoint, has great significance. Much could be added in this respect that is equally significant or nearly so. We can see from such achievements, which cannot be sufficiently recognized in their own sphere, what predicament serious scientists are in regarding questions of the soul and spirit. In reading Oskar Hertwig's influential book we have just referred to, we cannot help being aware of a certain feeling or attitude toward questions of spiritual life. We find that a scientist like Oskar Hertwig makes quite clear that he cannot approach questions of the soul or spirit with the means at his disposal, the means of a stringent science. On one page he says this clearly and definitely: Science can only concern itself with the transitory sense world; science cannot approach the eternal in human nature.

So far, so good—and one would think that the way is now open for a science of spirit, for the scientist himself points out that a science of spirit should exist alongside natural science. But, unfortunately, there is something else to be found among scientists, which is not said explicitly, but which can be read quite clearly between the lines. The opinion is spread abroad—albeit unconsciously—that the method employed by the scientist is the only exact one, and that it is possible to be scientific only so long as one keeps to the outer sense world.—People then believe that a departure from the sense world is bound to lead into a world of fantasy and dreams.—What is so dangerous in this is that it is not clearly expressed, but arises as a kind of feeling out of what is achieved and spreads into the widest circles of people. It is to be found in those who believe they understand a lot about the scientific outlook and wish to draw conclusions affecting spiritual life from the scientific outlook, and also in those who think themselves enlightened because they read the supplement of their local paper every Sunday which breathes this kind of feeling I have described as spreading into the widest circles.

Thus, on the one hand, the scientific outlook points with great emphasis to the need for the coming into being of a science of spirit, but on the other it takes the ground away from under its feet. This was crystallized in a famous speech by Dubois-Reymond, the great physiologist, which I have referred to here in Stuttgart, and which he gave before an obviously enlightened meeting of scientists in Leipzig in the 70's. It was crystallized in his lecture, The Limits of Natural Knowledge, where he stated that natural knowledge is not able to give any information about even the simplest phenomena of the life of the soul, and that science comes to an end where the super-sensible begins.—With this it is admitted on the one hand that natural science is not able to say anything about the super-sensible, but on the other it emphatically takes away the ground for all super-sensible investigation. The science of spirit has to struggle against these aims and efforts today. For it sets out to face and treat scientifically the questions which the human soul turns to in great longing—the question of the eternal nature of the human soul, of the freedom of human action and the countless other questions which are connected to these two main questions.

But now from another viewpoint we come to much the same result. If in trying to inform ourselves about such matters we turn, not to science, but to the work of philosophers, we find just as little satisfaction there. What is offered is, on the whole,—for someone really seeking spiritual substance in cultural life—nothing more than a collection of abstract concepts, which do not offer anything pertaining to the pressing questions about the life of the human soul and spirit. But it is perhaps just in this subject that we can ascertain why it is not possible at the present time to find out anything substantial about these questions outside the actual sphere of the science of spirit. And it is just the work of philosophers which reveals something rather odd, which is also the reason why I have called today's lecture a study of man as a being of spirit and soul.

In looking into a modern textbook on psychology or into anything philosophical in order to inform ourselves about the questions we are considering, we come across a way of regarding things which, even if we go beyond purely materialistic thinking, is completely tied up with the idea that man is a being of body and soul. This idea of man as a being of body and soul governs the enlightened and impressive philosophers of today. It is therefore imperative to show that this outlook leads us astray when it comes to investigating the complete being of man. If in investigating the human being we start with the premise that everything that arises in connection with the soul and body should be divided into body and soul, we are doing the same as a chemist who assumes from the start that a substance he is investigating can have only two constituent parts. Therefore when he makes his chemical analysis, he finds he cannot get very far. Another person discovers that a result was not possible because the substance the chemist took was composed of three elements, and not of two as the chemist had imagined. It is just the same with the way people look at the being of man. It is imagined that we have to find two elements, body and soul. In fact, we can make progress only by dividing the being of man into three parts: body, soul and spirit. Otherwise, we always arrive at an impossible mix-up between spirit and soul, which is no more use for acquiring enlightenment concerning the human being than a mix-up of the bodily life and soul life which comes about through not differentiating them .properly. What is really meant by dividing man not only into a being with a soul and a body on the one hand, but into a being with a soul and a spirit on the other, becomes clear in looking at the way the physical sciences of man, biology, physiology, anatomy, and so on, arise out of purely human experience, out of the experience of physical life of the human being. Let us take a particular case. The human being experiences hunger, satisfaction, need to breathe, and so on, in life. These are immediate, I would like to say, inner experiences. In the first place they are really dependent on material substances, but hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe, are also experienced in the soul. The scientist investigates the bodily basis of hunger, satisfaction, the need to breathe, and the like. If we want to found a physical science, a science of the human body, we cannot stop at the fact that hunger is experienced in different ways. If we wanted to experience being very hungry or not very hungry, very thirsty or not very thirsty, or different kinds of hunger or thirst, we would not be able to found a science of the physical body. We have to go beyond the purely inner experience and investigate the body with scientific methods. We then discover that hunger, thirst, the need to breathe, evolve certain chemical, physical processes in the physical body and we arrive at a physiological and biological science of man. We have to go beyond what we experience purely inwardly, and subject the body by itself to scientific investigation.

Just as on the one hand we have to go beyond our immediate experience to lay the basis for a physical science, just as the body provides the physical basis for our soul experience, so on the other we have to go beyond our soul experience to find the spiritual reality that underlies it.

In examining our physical nature the ordinary scientist discovers certain physical processes in the digestive system which correspond to the inner experiences of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe. The question is bound to arise: Is there something—if I may use what is naturally a paradoxical expression—that corresponds to the soul experience from the other direction, which could be called a kind of “spiritual digestion” as compared to physical digestion? Of course it sounds like a paradox, speaking on the one hand about ordinary digestion, which is perfectly acceptable because it belongs to the province of a recognized science, and on the other hand about a spiritual digestion, a change which takes place in the spirit. Nevertheless we shall attempt to show today that this paradoxical expression does in fact correspond to a real situation.

It is no more possible to arrive at a science of spirit by investigating inwardly the nature of the soul, which surges to and fro in our thinking, feeling and willing as our inner experience, than it is to found a physical science only on the basis of an inward observation of hunger, thirst, and the need for breath. We have to appreciate that as far as our normal, everyday consciousness is concerned, our physical nature only reveals its outer surface. What does the human being in his everyday life know about all the complicated processes, the physical, chemical processes, which physical science brings to the light of day as the basis of what we experience as hunger, thirst and the need to breathe? Just compare what we see of the body in everyday life, which is more or less its outward form, its capacity for movement, its physiognomy, just compare this, which is something everyone can know about without bothering about science, with the picture of the human being as shown in anatomy, physiology or biology, and you will see how our ordinary experience of our bodies is related to the investigation of science.

But now on the other hand it is also a fact that the spirit reveals itself no more to the human being than does the body reveal itself beyond its outward form, and that from the sphere of the spirit just as little or just as much is hidden to the human being as is hidden to him in ordinary life of those processes which have first to be investigated by science.

What is it then that belongs to the spirit which is actually orientated toward our inner experience? We shall see today that the part of his spiritual life that is orientated toward the human being, but which he does not always even recognize as such, is nothing other than what is encompassed in the simple, unequivocal but significant word “I.” This “I” we shall see belongs to the spirit, but it is related to the whole spirit in the same way that our outward form, our physiognomy, the movement of our limbs which is all orientated toward the ordinary body, are related to physiology, biology, to the science of the body. We can never arrive at a science of the body by feeling a little or very hungry, or by comparing one state of hunger with another, or by immersing ourselves in our hunger; neither can we arrive at a science of the spirit of the human being by immersing ourselves in our experience of feeling, thinking and imagination. We have to realize that so-called mysticism, which is supposed to be an immersion in one's own inner being, and which seeks to experience this inner being in a somewhat different way from our normal experience, that mysticism, this kind of inward immersion, cannot lead to a science of spirit any more than a differentiated experience of hunger, thirst and the need to breathe can lead to a science of the body. We have to start with our purely inner experience of hunger and thirst and proceed from there to the body, to the things that are arrived at through scientific method. Likewise we have to start with our purely mystical soul life and proceed from there to what lies spiritually outside this soul life. And this spiritual nature has naturally to be investigated according to scientific method in the strictest possible way, just as the life of the human body is investigated.

Now it is true that the methods of investigating spiritual life are in fact spiritual, and therefore are quite different from the means employed by natural science. And so my first task is to indicate the purpose and significance of the methods used by the science of spirit. It is not possible to embark upon the investigation of spiritual life without first having arrived at certain things in ordinary, everyday soul life. Without having reached a certain point in our ordinary soul life, in which we follow the course of our own inner being, we are not able to train ourselves to be a scientist of spirit. As long as we are satisfied with our ordinary, everyday soul life, as long as we derive full satisfaction from mystical experience and revel in it in order to immerse ourselves in our soul life, we shall never be able to train ourselves as real scientists of spirit. The preliminary qualification for the science of spirit is that in a particular respect we feel the insufficiency of our ordinary soul life as a result of our own experience of it.

I have pointed out in earlier lectures that it is particularly a study of the so-called border areas of science that can help us to acquire this feeling. In dealing with this subject I am fond of citing a really significant question which arises in connection with these border areas, and which the eminent scientist, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, came upon as he was struggling to clarify his own outlook. He came to ask—and you can find this in his beautiful treatise, Die Traumphantasie—what is the real connection between the soul and the bodily nature? And here he lighted upon a real question relating to the border-area of human knowledge. Vischer says: it is quite certain that the soul nature cannot be in the bodily nature, but it is also just as certain that it cannot be sought outside the body.—Hence he arrives at a complete contradiction. Such contradictions often arise where we do not simply consider knowledge as concerning outward, tangible facts alone, but where we really have to struggle inwardly to acquire our knowledge. Those who know what it is to have to struggle for knowledge speak of hundreds of such border-points occurring in knowledge. It is only a superficial mind which, when faced with such questions, is content to say that human cognition can go only a certain distance and no further. In contenting ourselves with this information, we are blocking our own way to a real science of spirit. For here we are not concerned with evolving all sorts of logical thoughts about such questions, but with steeping our wrestling souls in them and really experiencing them, and this means giving up the logical approach where it can no longer be applied. We have to get to the heart of what for normal human cognition is a contradiction in such a border-area, and feel the full weight of it on our souls.

If we do not simply regard these questions as comfortable cushions upon which to rest and proceed no further, but if on the contrary we really seek to experience them, then we find that it is just what lives and moves in such a living contradiction that kindles our inner soul life in a way that does not happen in normal life, that it is at just such a point as this that our inner soul life can reach a stage beyond its normal experience. In order not to become lost when we reach such a point in the experience of a border-area, we have to be able to grasp inwardly how in certain moments of his life the human being is unable to get beyond himself, but yet is able to point to something beyond himself. What is needed is that a particular inner feeling is developed which can be the result of living at such border-points of knowledge. This feeling can be characterized in the following words. It can be characterized very easily, for the experience which this feeling brings is something that cuts deep down into the soul. If we experience the questions of the border-areas properly, we do not say that there are limits to human knowledge, but we say that we are unable to cross the threshold with all the things we have acquired through our thinking and research into the outer sense world. We can impose a certain resignation, a certain renunciation upon ourselves, we can learn at such points not to want to judge the super-sensible with what we have learned and experienced in the sense world.

It is here that the main obstacles lie for most people in entering upon the science of spirit. They see the limits of knowledge but they do not then have the courage to renounce or resign. They do not say that they cannot try to enter into the spiritual world with what they have learned and experienced in the sense world, but they try to penetrate beyond these limits, even if only in a negative sense, by using the kind of concepts and ideas acquired in studying the sense world. The one person does it by constructing all sorts of hypotheses about what could exist in the super-sensible, the other by rejecting the super-sensible completely on the basis of his study of the sense world; in other words, taking upon himself the capacity to make judgments about the super-sensible with the concepts he has acquired from the sense world. Those also have not understood the experience of the border-areas of knowledge who, like materialists, monists and the like, begin to decide that nothing exists beyond the sense world on the basis of the ideas and concepts acquired through the life of the senses.

This is the point where something quite special must arise within human soul life, where what I have just characterized, this renunciation of the concepts acquired through living in the sense-world, where we do not just wish to make a statement or bring something intellectual and logical to expression, but that this renunciation becomes an inner intellectual virtue, something that—if I may be excused the phrase—cuts into human soul life, so that at certain points we really acquire a subtle feeling that we should not proceed further with what we have learned in the sense-world. For if this renunciation is not just a logical admission or an intellectual conclusion, but an inner virtue, then this virtue arising out of the renunciation radiates toward the inner life of the soul, and then what we have renounced outwardly is taken up into the inner life of the soul. The renunciation makes us fit for undertaking in course of time the two spiritual functions necessary to penetrate from the sphere of the soul in human experience into the spiritual world. For this two inner functions are necessary, but which, as you can see from my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, involve many individual functions and exercises, which are contained in these two main aims, for which there are two main functions. The first is that we achieve real self observation; the second consists in striving to experience the soul-spirit sphere that is no longer dependent on the bodily nature, but proceeds purely in the spirit. However paradoxical it may appear to present-day humanity, it must nevertheless be said that this second function consists in the human being forming his soul-spirit life in such a way that when he investigates the spirit, his soul-spirit experience is no longer in the body, but outside it. This is no doubt something that appears quite ridiculous to those who think they keep firmly within the province of the scientific outlook. But the science of spirit will bring home to people that many of our ideas will have to be changed, even into the opposite of what we are accustomed to, just as the Copernican outlook meant a complete reversal in the way people thought about the relationship of the planets to the sun.

What is normally called self-observation, an introversion of the soul, is not what is meant by true self-observation by the science of spirit. It is true that one can start from this brooding in oneself in order to find the way one has to go toward true self-observation, but real self-observation has to be taken in hand much more seriously and much more energetically. For it includes something which even earnest psychologists maintain is impossible. I have already pointed out in earlier lectures that when philosophers speak about the human soul they find it characteristic that in certain respects the life of the soul is not able to observe itself. They point out that if we have learned a poem by heart and then wish to recite it, but at the same time observing ourselves as we recite, we begin to falter and interrupt ourselves. It is not possible to carry out something and at the same time stand by and observe ourselves. This is cited as being something characteristic of the human soul, that it cannot do this. Now it must be said that those who find that this is in fact so, that it is impossible, will not get anywhere with the science of spirit, because this “impossibility” is just what the scientist of spirit has to achieve. The ability or capacity which is brought to our notice in normal life when we observe ourselves reciting and make ourselves falter, this ability has to be acquired by the scientist of spirit. We have to be able to split our soul-life wide open so that we can observe scientifically what we ourselves do. It is not all that important to learn a poem to achieve this, although this is one way of doing it, providing we do the necessary practice, and it is also good preparation for the real exercise of self- observation if we do it. It is a form of preparation to achieve reciting a poem with all its shades of feeling sufficiently automatically—if I may use such a crude expression—that we do not interrupt ourselves when we observe ourselves while reciting. The important thing, however, is not to concentrate on the outer aspects, but to apply such activity to the life of the soul itself. This means that we have to observe how one thought follows another, our thinking and imaginative life, so that at the same time we can allow the thought processes to proceed while on the other hand we can observe them in full consciousness. It would lead too far now to describe how this is done, but you can read about it in my books, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment, in Riddles of Man, and similar books. It is absolutely possible to achieve real self-observation in this way. It is not then a mere intellectual process, but it is something real, for it is a first beginning of the emergence of the spirit- nature out of the soul-nature. The experience of the soul is observed by the spirit which has really tried to separate itself from the soul-nature. But this is only one aspect of what can be observed.

Now it is necessary to add that renouncing entering the super-sensible with the concepts and according to the laws taken from the sense world becomes a virtue and permeates the entire life of the soul, and when this has happened it not only produces the kind of modesty we are used to from normal life, but it produces an inward, intellectual modesty and humility which make us suited in the first place to exercising self-observation of the kind I have just been speaking about. We are not intimately organized enough, as it were, to be able to carry out such self-observation until we have radiated this intellectual virtue over our own souls.

But, on the other hand, something else is necessary. What then is attained when we achieve such self-observation? What is achieved when self-observation is practiced is that what normally disturbs the human being when he carries out a soul function is taken in hand, and our will is strengthened and driven out of the sphere of the soul into the sphere of the spirit. Then there is something further that has to be striven for: the will itself has to take on a new direction, has to acquire a new mode of activity in the soul. This can happen only if the human being does not employ the will as he normally does in ordinary life in carrying out outward functions, but if he employs it in carrying out inner functions. In living in his sense perception and in the ideas and images derived from these perceptions, the human being is accustomed in the way and sequence in which his thoughts are constructed to being led by the sense world. He allows one thought to follow another because he first experiences one event in the sense world, then a second one, and so on.

The human being allows his thoughts to follow the sequence of outer events and in ordinary life he hardly ever gets used to leading his will into his thought life, into the inner processes of his soul, which are to be perceived just by this true self-observation. But this he has to do if he is to become a scientist of spirit. He has to try—for a long time, energetically and patiently—to lead his will into his thinking and power of imagination. Again and again he has to try to carry out a process of the soul which in an objective and genuine sense can be called meditating, an inner reflection, though not a dreamy, mystical reflection, but one which represents a real process in the inner life, so that the will is really led into the thinking. Whereas we are normally accustomed to arranging our ideas according to outer events, we endeavor in moments set aside for the purpose, to formulate ideas whose sequence is determined solely by the inner will working according to a much greater view of life. We guide the will into our life of images and ideas. In this way we come to recognize what sort of relationship can exist between the inner will of man and his life of images and ideas. We do not become acquainted with this at all in our normal consciousness. In order to make this point perfectly clear, I would like to give the following illustration. Imagine a person living in a semi-sleeping state in dreams. He knows full well that these dreams are pictures passing before his soul according to certain laws. These pictures surge to and fro. Because they appear, so far as normal life is concerned, as dream pictures, the human being cannot control them with his will. If in his semi-sleeping state he were able to pull himself together to such an extent that he could control the sequence of dream pictures, he would then more or less be in the position I have been talking about, where our own will controls the ideas and images we ourselves make.

But this is not the point that matters ultimately. Everything we have discussed so far is only a preparatory exercise. For we naturally do not arrive at anything real only by the inner will controlling the sequence of ideas, which we know are not remembered, but arise out of the body. We do not arrive at anything special by piecing together ideas we have made, and can survey. But we do attain something when we set to work on the exercises with the mood which makes the renunciation into an intellectual virtue. Then we gradually notice something quite special in the life of the soul. And I may be allowed to say that what I have to say here about the science of spirit, by means of which we can really penetrate into spiritual spheres and which should be imagined as already having attained a certain development, and which also empowers one to say something about the spiritual world, that it should not be thought that it is like maintaining that natural science has its strict method which takes years to learn, and now the science of spirit comes along and talks about such inner ideas and images. This is not the case. Those who have acquainted themselves with biology and physiology, and know about their scientific methods and have then taken up the science of spirit know that however difficult it may be and that however much patience is demanded over the years by scientific method, significant results can be experienced in the science of spirit only if even more patience and even more work, even when this work is purely spiritual, are employed. Years of inner work are necessary to achieve anything of any consequence that can penetrate into the spiritual world, work which has been characterized as the leading of the will into our thought life by means of the inner functions or exercises which you can find in the above-mentioned books. We only have to know the one and the other to realize that the seriousness of the one is not inferior to the seriousness of the other. But what is important is not that we do the exercises, but that we achieve what we are able to achieve by means of the mood of renunciation. And we gradually notice that it is not our will alone, not the will which we have led into our thinking and imagination, that lives in what happens in our souls, but something else lives in them.

In our observation of the outer world we see how one event follows another, how one object is related to another, and how the sequence of our ideas follows what we see, follows the thread of outer events. Now we discover what it is that permits one idea to arise out of another, what it is that ensures that we do not add just any soul experience to another, but order such experiences according to an inner process. We discover a continual current in the life of the soul. Just as outer sense-nature is inner physical nature, so spiritual nature lives in the life of the soul. Whoever believes that we can still act arbitrarily or out of prejudice does not know this inner necessity. It is just as much a necessity as is necessity in ordinary life, and it fashions an inner, spiritual experience just as our ordinary experience comes to us by necessity according to the course of events in the physical world.

One who has had to do with the science of spirit for decades may well be allowed to speak of his experience, and this is, that this experience reveals what it is like through its own nature, its own character; arbitrariness ceases, and it is the spirit that orders the sequence of soul experiences. This comes to light when we set out to penetrate a particular sphere of the spiritual world with assumptions, acquired according to our images of the sense world, that spiritual beings or processes have to behave in a particular way. In countless cases—and this is so significant, so incisive for a true scientist of spirit—we experience that things turn out to be quite different from what we had expected, having formed a judgment according to the standards of the outer sense world. It transpires that on this path once we have grasped the inward spiritual necessity, we achieve results that cannot in any way be imagined on the basis of what we know from the sense world, because as far as the sense world is concerned they are quite contradictory. In experiencing this, which can in no way be compared to anything in the sense world, we know what it means to say that the spirit, which we have discovered, orders the sequence of our soul experiences just as our ideas which we formulate about the outer sense world are ordered according to the physical sequence of events.

And these two things come together: what we have acquired in inner strength by means of true self-observation, and what we have acquired of the objective course of the spirit, which is like the course of the outer sense-world. These come together and lead the human soul into a region of the spirit to which it belongs with its spiritual organs, just as the ordinary scientist is led into the bodily organization when he proceeds from hunger to non-physical processes in the body. When we use the soul as the starting point for investigating the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life take on a new aspect. When the scientist of spirit is touched in this way by the real form, the real character, of the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life become quite different. This happens, above all, when, by means of the spiritual nature he has acquired through self-observation, the human being has come to recognize the spiritual which gives direction to the soul life. It is only then that he is able to formulate a true idea, a true concept, of what we call the ego of the human being, which bestows as much of the spirit on the human soul as is bestowed of the body on normal human consciousness by the visible form and physiognomy. We cannot investigate the ego by philosophizing about it, but only by making the will into thinking and the thinking into an act of will. By means of self-observation the will becomes an instrument of thinking and the thinking an instrument of will. This is a 'change of spirit' rather like the change of matter which is sought and found in the physical world in our digestion. We then approach the ego not by philosophizing, speculation or hypotheses, but we first acquire a real spiritual observation of the ego and are only then in a position to formulate a correct view of it. This correct view of it proves to us that it is impossible to achieve such a view of the ego in ordinary life, in our ordinary consciousness. The picture which this ordinary consciousness (which is also prevalent in natural science) has of the ego, is that the latter gradually evolves as the body grows. A child does not appear to have an ego. As the body develops and gradually acquires its proper configuration the ego appears to wrestle its way out of the body. This view is held as a matter of course, and with the normal outlook of today it is not possible to arrive at any other view. And this is just what one has to achieve as a scientist of spirit—that one has to give the ordinary outlook its due in its own sphere and not become intolerant because one realizes that only one view is possible in the sphere in which materialism can operate.

In achieving spiritual observation and observation of the ego it is possible to see where the error of the ordinary outlook lies. It can be characterized in the following way. If we reflect about the relationship of the lungs to the air, we know that lungs and air belong together. But because in this case ordinary observation suffices to ascertain the true relationship, no one knowing things only from a superficial viewpoint would come to any other view than that air comes from outside, penetrates into the lungs, is then breathed out of the lungs and returns to the atmosphere outside. Because this kind of observation suffices, no one could maintain that the lung itself creates the air, that the air which is breathed out somehow has its origin in the lung itself, that the lung produces air. Our ordinary observation gives us insight into the relationship of the lungs to the air. Likewise our higher, spiritual observation gives us insight into the human ego. When we can use this observation which I have described, we know that the human ego is no more connected to the bodily nature, that is, to everything we have inherited from our father and mother, than the air which comes from outside has to do with the lungs. We get to know the ego as it really is and we know that in taking over what is inherited at birth or conception, in a sense it inhales out of the spiritual world. As a mass of air that at a particular moment is in our lungs, has flowed in from outside, so the ego flows out of the spiritual world into the bodily nature, out of the world in which it existed before the body could even be thought of in terms of conception and birth. Likewise, when the human being goes through the gate of death it flows out again, just as air which has been used up by the body flows out again from the lungs. We get to know the connection of the ego to a spiritual world that is independent of the world of the human body, just as in physics we learn about the connection of air to a greater mass of air which is independent of the human lung. This is how we rise to real knowledge of the ego, and it is the first thing we come to know about the nature of the ego. From this point we learn more and more by intensifying our spiritual observation by means of the methods described in the above-mentioned books. We learn about the ego as something independent of the life of the body in the same way that we learn about the body by using hunger and thirst as our starting points for investigating the chemical and physical processes of the body with physical methods. Only we discover the spiritual, which gives us our first view of the ego, as a state where the ego is embedded in spiritual beings. In order to know the physical body in all its aspects, we divide it into its various members. In a similar way we have to link the ego to other spiritual beings, which can be observed by spiritual observation with the methods I have described. The ego is linked to them and we find a complete ego-organism. This then extends beyond the individual life of the body.

Starting from the ego, from the part of our soul life that is directed toward the ego, we find that it is embedded in a spiritual life that exists before birth and continues after the gate of death is passed through. In the spiritual world we find a soul-spirit world that in the first instance is independent of the physical world. The ego belongs to this soul- spirit world. The first entities that we find there are spirit- soul beings with whom the ego of man is connected, beings that are human souls before or after death, with whom the human being is himself connected, and also other beings. When we observe the sense world we find a kingdom below man, the animal kingdom. In the soul-spirit world we find first of all a sphere to which the human ego belongs, which it fits into organically, where it performs its transformation of spirit, its spiritual digestion—a spirit-soul sphere which in the first instance is of a purely spirit-soul nature. Then we find a sphere ranking above this one, just as the animal kingdom ranks above the plant kingdom, and it ranks higher because in these higher spheres beings are to be found which are not only connected to us in our soul and spirit nature, in our inner life, but which are still more powerful because they bring about the harmony existing between the spirit-soul and the physical-bodily nature. For our spirit- soul nature has to be brought into relationship with our physical-bodily nature. This relationship is brought about by higher spiritual beings than we first meet.

Having made a start with spiritual investigation, we should not hesitate to speak about these real, concrete, spirit- soul beings that we really discover. The spiritual regions are discovered in which the ego performs its transformation of spirit, just as the physical kingdoms are discovered when we direct our attention to the animals, plants and minerals. And we discover further where lies the mystery of the soul entering and leaving the body. For we come to know how the relationship of the ego to the body of the human being works.

Here, it is true, we are entering a sphere which is quite remote from the present-day outlook, but which in future will have to become more and more a part of this outlook. If we observe the ego in this way we find it is related with the spirit-soul beings of the higher spiritual spheres, which range above the purely natural spheres. But in the transformation of spirit, which is analogous to the transformation of matter in digestion, the ego undergoes a certain process. To begin with, it can only be associated with spirit- soul beings. This is the case before birth and after death, where it has a purely spiritual being for its organization and this is linked to the rest of the spirit world. As the ego proceeds through the spirit world, as it develops in the spirit world, it increasingly acquires a self-orientation and becomes gradually separated from the spirit world. The picture we have of the ego from the science of spirit is that long before birth or after death it has a special connection to many, many spiritual beings. Then as its development proceeds, it separates itself off and becomes in a sense dependent upon itself. It is in undergoing this separation and limitation that it evolves the power of attraction toward the bodily nature. This power of attraction impels it to unite itself—as the air unites itself to the lungs—with the bodily nature that arises in the course of human generations as a result of heredity. The ego enters into this when it comes from the spirit world.

Thus we gain a true view of the eternal working within the bodily nature of man, within the human being as a whole, not by philosophical speculation, but by laying bare this eternal, by entering into the eternal ourselves with our souls. This is the way spiritual observation works. We must be quite sure to realize that everything I have described—the striving for self-observation, the striving to guide the will into our thought and imaginative life, the striving to attain the transformation of spirit—that all this is really only a preparation. Everything else has to be waited for. Just as we have to wait for what the sense world speaks to us when it approaches the soul from outside, so we have to wait for what the spirit-world speaks to us. Self-observation, the guidance of the will into the thought and imaginative life, these have to be striven for in order to prepare the soul to experience the spirit. Spiritual life then begins, but it has to penetrate toward the sphere of the soul and of the spirit.

Thus I have outlined the ways which lead us to see our real soul life in thinking, feeling and willing as an expression of the spiritual, just as hunger, thirst and the need to breathe are an expression in the soul of what lives in the body. This then leads to the differentiation of the eternal-spiritual from the soul nature.

Tomorrow we shall have to describe how something of the eternal in the human being finds its way into ordinary consciousness as a revelation of the unconscious. My intention today was to show how we rise from the sphere of the soul to the spirit. This description, which is a description of knowledge gained by the science of spirit, appears, it is true, to be paradoxical to the normally accepted concepts of today. But you will perhaps have seen that the science of spirit takes its science just as seriously as does natural science. Natural science leads to the perishable and transitory, the science of spirit leads to the eternal, to the imperishable, without which the perishable can[not], in fact, be explained. Thus we can say that from the vantage point of the science of spirit we are able to have an overall view of what is portrayed in natural science. It is only then that we can really appreciate the value of natural science, and are then in a position to judge it. If we get no further than natural science we arrive at the judgment or belief that a stringent science is only possible within the sense world, that it cannot rise to the eternal. If we take up the science of spirit, we know why the natural scientist has to say this if he does not get beyond the position of natural science. But by developing our normal consciousness, by laying bare the spiritual forces slumbering in the soul, we recognize that man can penetrate into the eternal of his own being, into what is really immortal in himself, for this immortal part of him, in fact, makes its own existence known itself. The red color of the rose does not have to be proved. The spirit in us that goes through birth and death also testifies to its own existence when we are able to observe it.

Anyone basing his observation on the science of spirit has an overall view of natural science as well, and he also gives the latter its due. He does not do what those who follow only natural science do, who—consciously or unconsciously—undo what the science of spirit does and wish to take the ground away from under its feet. We may well say that the scientist of spirit has nothing to be afraid of. He need not fear the objections which come from various quarters, for he knows what these objections are worth, and can also recognize why they have to be made. He is quite justified in thinking that he does not need to try to prevent someone from recognizing the methods and progress of natural science. On the contrary. The scientist of spirit is able to say to someone wishing to go into natural science: Go your way to natural science and if you do not only look at it with the eyes of the natural scientific outlook, but with the eyes of the spiritual way of investigation, you will not only find no contradiction between natural science and the science of spirit, but you will also find everywhere in natural science the confirmation and revelation of what the science of spirit says. And we should not believe that the scientist of spirit has any wish to prevent those whom he addresses from following any particular religious confession. It is the greatest misunderstanding of all to believe that we wish to set up any sort of religious gulf between a religious approach and the science of spirit. Dr. Rittelmeyer has shown quite clearly in an admirable article in Christliche Welt how in a quite objective way the science of spirit can be a foundation for religious life, that it does not take anyone away from true religious life, but, on the contrary, leads them toward it.

The science of spirit does not need to keep people away from religious life. Just as it can say: go to natural science in order to realize what the science of spirit is, so it can also say: go to religion, come to know religion, experience religion, and you will find that what the science of spirit is able to give to the soul gives religious life its foundation and strengthens it.

Go out into life itself and you will find that the concepts given in the science of spirit do not deaden you to life or make you unfit for life, but that they make the spirit mobile, agile, and place the human being into life, ready for action. Practical life, too, will be a confirmation and proof of what the science of spirit is able to give to the human being.

Because natural science has to keep to its own course, has to direct its attention solely to nature and may not mix nature with anything of soul and spirit, it is imperative for the science of spirit to find its place alongside it as equally justified. The science of spirit must penetrate from the soul to the spirit, just as natural science has to penetrate from the soul to the physical body. The time will then come when the real essence, the real basic concept of the science of spirit, will be understood, when the intentions of the scientists—to take the ground away from the science of spirit—will be seen in their true light. Forty or fifty years ago Dubois-Reymond was able to say: “Science ends where the super-sensible begins.” In the future this saying will be confronted by another arising out of the spiritual scientific view: What was really happening when natural science wanted to formulate a system of thought, a view of the world that is super-sensible, when it restricted itself to nature above? In a sense one could see that there is something that surrounds the human being in his existence and in which he has his roots, that comes from a particular origin. One saw it rooted in the spirit, but could not penetrate into this spirit.

The science of spirit shows how we can penetrate into spiritual life. The kind of position which natural science has occupied regarding the spirit—if I may use the comparison—is rather as if one were to see a tree which has its roots in the ground. The tree cannot be seen entirely, for the roots are in the ground. The tree is then dug up in order to see it in its entirety, for nothing of the tree may remain hidden. The tree will dry up and will no longer be able to flourish.—This is what has been done by the scientific outlook. It has dug up the being of man out of its foundations in order to acquire an overall view. The resulting view is then like the tree that has been taken out of the ground. The tree has to wither away, and the life that arises out of this view of the world has to wither away. Once this is realized, the way to the science of spirit will be found.

In order to acquire an overall view, the being of man has been deprived of its roots. For the sake of life, for the sake of real life, the human being will once again be immersed in what is popularly called the unconscious, but which, when it is revealed in the sphere of consciousness, can be raised into the sphere of real knowledge of the super-sensible. Then the time will come when the view will be firmly implanted in the human mind that the eternal core of man's being is rooted in the spirit and that if we want to get to know the human being in his entirety we have to penetrate to the spirit. Then it will no longer be said, as Dubois-Reymond did, that science cannot find the super-sensible, not even in its simplest form of manifestation, that this is where science stops, but the science of the future will say that all science that is not rooted in the super-sensible will not be in a position to explain existence, will not be able to lead us into the life of existence, but will only be able to kill existence. It will not be said that science ends where supra-naturalism, the super-sensible, begins, but, the life of science ends where the human being no longer takes his stand in the super-sensible, and the death of science enters where the super-sensible is abandoned.

I took the liberty of pointing out yesterday that there is some antipathy on the part of the ordinary scientific outlook toward the nature and the entire method of the science of spirit which can and must be placed alongside ordinary science. I pointed out further that there is a certain subjective prejudice at the present time which makes it difficult for people really to go into and acquire an understanding of the science of spirit, that is, for people who think they stand on the sure foundation of science—on which, of course, the science of spirit also stands—but who are of the opinion that it is not possible to bridge the gap from this kind of foundation to a real science of spirit. However, a fact about the soul-life of present day humanity emerged from my exposition yesterday, the fact that it is joist in immersing ourselves in the scientific knowledge of the present time that we are bound to long, and indeed, do long to acquire knowledge about the human being that goes beyond the ordinary everyday life of the soul, which, of course, of necessity is tied to the observation and experience of the physical sense world.

Now it is naturally possible to say that the views of the world generally held, that have arisen through the influence of scientific ideas, are proving to be increasingly incapable of dealing with methods of research other than those which are concerned with what is physically present in the world. And so now it is intended to investigate what lies beyond normal consciousness with the same kind of sense perception—providing we really do want to investigate it, and not just drop it—as science uses to investigate nature. For this reason the existence of one border area at least in human experience has found recognition recently among people who want their work to remain on a scientific basis but who, on the other hand, desire to penetrate the mysteries of human soul life, inasmuch as this lies within the conscious sphere that is, as I have said, more or less tied to the world of the senses. People have gradually become convinced that it is not possible to investigate the mysteries of soul life, that there is much that rises up into the soul life of the human being out of unknown depths, or one could also say, out of unknown heights, that is well suited to provide information about what the core of man's being really is, rather than what is to be found within our ordinary consciousness. But because, generally speaking, the science of spirit is regarded as something not sufficiently tangible, as something that leads one away from the real world—so many would say—an attempt is made to investigate a kind of border area by ordinary scientific means.

The science of spirit has therefore every reason from its point of view, to refer to this border area and to deal with it. It is the region that we have more recently become accustomed to call the unconscious. There is also another reason why it is especially important for the science of spirit to offer some thoughts about this area of the unconscious, and that is because some of the things that are said in this connection are misunderstood, so that the science of spirit is confused with what is said about this border area, more or less justifiably, by those representing other approaches to the problem. By “unconscious” one usually means what rises up from unknown regions and flows into one's conscious life. It would of course take a very long time if I were even to give an outline of all that science over the whole world has had to say about this region of the unconscious. In the cultural life of Central Europe the expression “the unconscious” has of course become well known since the 1860's through the popular philosophy of Eduard von Hartmann, who sought the reasons for all that the human being experiences consciously in a spiritual unconscious, whether it be below or above the conscious.

If I may be allowed, by way of introduction, to make a personal remark—the way in which Eduard von Hartmann approaches spiritual life, which is supposed to remain unconscious for ordinary consciousness (although he is dealing with something spiritual and although he sees a revelation of the unconscious, of the spiritual unconscious, in the physical sense world), his approach and outlook are in a way diametrically opposed to the view which I am putting forward. And through being personally acquainted with Eduard von Hartmann I tried already in the 1880's to thrash these things out with him personally and in correspondence. I tried to show the difference between the anthroposophically orientated science of spirit and an outlook founded on the unconscious like, for instance, that of Eduard von Hartmann. I discussed this difference recently in a rather personal way in the February number of the second year of the magazine Das Reich. I shall now indicate in a few words what is discussed more fully there:

Eduard von Hartmann points out that everything the human being is able to reveal in his ordinary life rests on something spiritual and unconscious. He maintains the view that this unconscious can be reached only by means of the power of logical thinking; it deduces something unknown that abides, that can be reached only conceptually and grasped in hypotheses from what is perceptible in the sense world. And he points out that this unconscious is not in itself conscious in the same way that the human being, for instance, is conscious.—In these two respects the science of spirit is radically different from this view of Eduard von Hartmann: firstly the science of spirit is founded on the fact that—I described this more fully yesterday and named the books which provide the necessary basis—it not only seeks to penetrate the spiritual spheres by means of hypotheses and logical deductions, but by bringing out of the soul certain forces that slumber in it which remain unconscious for our ordinary consciousness, forces that are raised into our consciousness by means of a strengthening and intensification of our soul life. These unconscious forces in the soul are able to enter into the consciousness of the human being, so that he can tread the path from the sense world to the super-sensible world in full consciousness by means of spiritual observation, so that he can observe this super-sensible world in a spiritual way, just as he can observe the sense world. The science of spirit, therefore, does not describe a hypothetical path from the sense world into the super-sensible, but a real path that can be experienced. And on the other hand, the science of spirit has to emphasize that something spiritual that is unconscious, in which no consciousness can be found, is really of no more value than the great unconscious sphere of purely material atoms and their processes, the purely physical foundation of existence. What would be the point of something spiritual that is supposed to underlie the sense world, if it is unconscious? For then the human being would be the only conscious being to raise himself out of a world, which, as far as consciousness is concerned, would have no more value than the unconscious world of purely material phenomena?—The science of spirit, therefore, does not deal with this unconscious, which in itself is devoid of consciousness, but is concerned with spiritual beings existing behind the physical world and which are just as conscious as human beings, and in some respects even have a higher consciousness than the latter.

This is what differentiates the view of the anthroposophically orientated science of spirit about the unconscious from such a view as Eduard von Hartmann's, which is actually held by many people today in the same sense as he held it, even if they do not intend getting away from the scientific viewpoint.

Today we shall have opportunity to show in what way the science of spirit can really penetrate into the sphere of spiritual life, and we shall do this by taking into consideration the unconscious phenomena in human soul life which enter into our consciousness in a less complete way than does the science of spirit.

But I must take certain things for granted, which were described yesterday—that by means of inner processes in the soul (if we wish to be particular, we should call them “exercises”) our ordinary soul life, even if it is only a mystical soul life, can be treated in such a way that the human being can rise from this soul life to the spiritual, just as from another aspect he can descend from soul life to the physical by means of scientific observation. Having acquired this perception of the spiritual or—to use Goethe's expression once more—the eyes of the spirit and the ears of the spirit, we are then in a position to view what normally appears in our conscious soul life from unknown depths or heights from our newly-won viewpoint in a quite different way.

Now of course the border areas with which we are concerned cover a wide field. Today I shall select only a few of them, but they will shed light on everything else in our unconscious soul life and its manifestations. I shall take something which is well known to everyone, but which remains an enigma in human existence: our world of dreams. I shall then deal with a subject that more recently has become the child of all those who seek to penetrate into the spiritual super-sensible world, but who shy away from practicing the real science of spirit; and that child is what is called “somnambulism” and also “medium-ship,” which is related to it. I shall then proceed to another aspect where it is certainly sufficiently well known that it arises out of the unconscious depths of soul life, and this is the whole sphere of artistic enjoyment and creation, which I shall deal with briefly. Then I shall come to a subject which perhaps many people do not consider belongs to the unconscious and its manifestation, but which at least can be seen—by those who are reasonable about it—to be something that plays into our semiconscious life, and this is the sphere of human destiny, which will be considered from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, the real and true clairvoyance. I am not fond of the word clairvoyance because it is mixed up with all sorts of amateurish and other nonsense, but the way I use it today will perhaps be justified, and should be self- explanatory. I shall indicate what is the sphere of the science of spirit itself, for this science feels itself called upon to raise what is spiritually unconscious into consciousness.

I would like first of all to describe one or two characteristic properties of the real experience the scientist of the spirit has of the super-sensible, spiritual world. This will then form the basis for what I have to say about the other phenomena of the unconscious, which I have so far only just mentioned and which I shall describe later from the viewpoint of the science of spirit. As we have not much time, I shall not be able to go into the ordinary scientific view of these things as well.

When the human soul has reached the point with the scientist of spirit of being able to approach a spiritual world in the same way that we approach the physical sense world with our physical eyes and ears and the other sense organs, then the human being perceives the spiritual world and can grasp its connection with the physical sense world.

I pointed out yesterday that it is quite unjustified to object that what the science of spirit describes is really only put together out of the physical sense world and then transferred to the spiritual world. And I also pointed out that anyone who has conscientiously used the methods of the science of spirit for several years knows that he often finds himself in the position that what he experiences in the spiritual world looks quite different from anything that can be experienced in the transitory physical sense world. Even in the experience of the spiritual world, the whole mood and constitution of the soul is radically different from normal soul life. And so I would like first of all to describe one or two characteristic properties of this experience in the spirit.

If one has only a superficial understanding of what we mean by the science of spirit it is easy enough to say that the scientist of spirit lives in a kind of self-deception:—he puts things together in his mind and thinks that the resulting idea is the revelation of a spiritual world, having overlooked or forgotten how he really gained the idea through sense perception in the first place.—Of course, it is true that if the scientist of spirit were to experience spiritual perception in the same way he gains ideas from the sense world, then he would naturally become suspicious of the science of spirit. But this is not the case. One of the most fundamental characteristics of what we are able to perceive in our thoughts of the sense world appears quite different when compared with real spiritual experiences. The ideas and images we form through contact with the sense world are impressed upon the soul, and we are able to recall them after a while; they can be raised up out of the treasure of our memory. The spiritual experiences which the scientist of spirit has are different, for it is not possible to recall them in this way. What the soul experiences when it approaches spiritual perception is not just an idea. For an idea can be incorporated into the memory, but a spiritual experience of this sort cannot be directly incorporated into the soul. A spiritual experience or perception disappears, just as our view of a tree that we have looked at for a time disappears when we turn away from it. When the perception comes to an end, it can no longer be experienced by the soul—we have to approach it again in order to see it as it really is. The image or idea we keep in our memory, but to see the actual tree we have to go to where it is. Just as we no longer see the tree when we have gone away from it, so the spiritual perception is no longer experienced by the soul when the perception itself has ceased. From this it follows that with experience of a spiritual nature we are not dealing with a mere combination of ideas, thoughts and images, for they can be remembered.

But then one could object that if this is in fact the case, it would never be possible to report such spiritual experience if it could not be remembered—nothing could be said about it, for it would disappear from our soul life as soon as it had been experienced.—But actually it is not like this at all. The scientist of spirit can formulate ideas about what he has experienced spiritually, just as we are able to formulate ideas about things, beings and processes in the sense world, and these ideas can be retained. It depends on the scientist of spirit being able to differentiate actual experience from the images and ideas which arise out of it, just as in ordinary life we distinguish our sense perception from the idea which arises from it. We can look at this in another way. If we wish to have a spiritual experience in the same way a second or third time, it is not sufficient just to recall the image or idea of it. For in this case it is clear that we do not then have the full experience, but only a pale image of it.

If we want to have the experience again, we have to reawaken the slumbering forces of the soul and to enter into the experience afresh. With certain characteristic phenomena of the spiritual world we can only remember the way we approached the experience—this can be recalled, and the experience attained a second, third or fourth time. But then it is certainly not a case of the experience following the same laws that underlie the normal way of imagining and thinking.—This is the one aspect. You can see from this that the scientist of spirit is no dreamer, but that his own inner self- perception enables him to be absolutely clear about what leads him to real experiences.

The second aspect is that an experience attained through the science of spirit has a relationship to our soul life quite different from an experience that takes place in our normal consciousness in the physical sense world. What would be the use of our physical life if we were not able to acquire certain skills, certain habits, if we were not in a position of being able to try and do something better a second time, when the repetition of an action would serve no purpose? The repetition of an action is incorporated into our normal experience as a habit. But spiritual experiences cannot be incorporated into our soul life in the same way. Many—those who are beginners in spiritual experience—find this out, to their surprise. It is comparatively easy—I say comparatively easy—to achieve certain initial experiences of the spiritual world if one carries out the exercises described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds, and beginners are always overjoyed when they have their first experiences of a spiritual nature. But then they are all the more surprised when these experiences cannot easily be repeated, or when they cannot be repeated at all. And one can feel very miserable because an experience which one has had cannot be recalled; one does not seem to get any better at it. It is not possible to turn what has been experienced in the spirit into a habit. On the contrary, with repetition it becomes increasingly more difficult to do the repetition. Thus, as a matter of fact, a large part of the exercises that have to be done if we wish to bring about a repetition of certain experiences, consists of doing quite different things the second or third time. Experience of a spiritual nature has therefore a quite different relationship to the physical, since it works against habit.

There is a third aspect of what is characteristic in spiritual experience, and that is, however odd it may sound, that real spiritual experience—which has absolutely nothing to do with anything concerned with the body—is something that is over in a split second. In fact, this is even a reason why so few people today attain spiritual experience. In ordinary life people are accustomed to take a certain time to assimilate something that appears on their horizon. If the experience is a spiritual one, it is over before the person has been able to notice it. What is therefore necessary above all in order to have real spiritual experience, is what one could call presence of mind. If we want to have spiritual experience we have to get used to situations in ordinary life which demand quick decisions, where the situation must be summed up immediately, and where there is no time to delay by changing our minds. People who have no wish to make any progress in this kind of self-education, to make quick decisions in certain situations, to see quickly what has to be done, are not suited to gaining the necessary control over their own souls in order to achieve spiritual experience easily. The kind of person who can tackle a situation, not by looking at it from every possible angle and fussing about, but by making a decision immediately upon being confronted with the situation and then also sticking to it, has a good foundation for spiritual experience. For spiritual experiences within us have to be gone through just as quickly as we have to grasp some situations in life and make decisions, which if they were not made quickly would perhaps lead to misfortune and ruin.—I am not saying that spiritual experience can lead to ruin, for in this case it will not have existed. This attitude toward it is necessary.

And now there is a fourth characteristic—that spiritual experiences are always individual. In the physical world we are accustomed to dividing everything into particular classes or categories, in fact we divide the whole of life in this way. We speak of the famous—if not notorious—“Scheme F.” Everything has to belong to a certain category, to be put in its particular place. People believe that law is to be found in the world of phenomena only when everything is fitted into various categories. We should imagine for once how we should deal with nature, which we quite rightly divide into categories, if everything were individual. And we should imagine what human life would be like if it were not, for instance, possible in every single instance to turn to a book of laws, if it were not possible to fit a particular case neatly into a ready-made compartment, but if we had to face it with individual judgment. People are accustomed from experience in the physical world to making everything fit into patterns. All this putting things into categories, classes, determining a particular order with particular laws, all this has to be given up, though not in connection with the physical world, for this would make one unfit for the latter, but for the sphere of spiritual experiences. What is experienced in the spiritual world is always portrayed as something individual. This is why people so often take a stand against the science of spirit. If we speak about what has been discovered by the science of spirit—and having given lectures for so many years now, I do not hesitate to present concrete examples about this science of spirit—let us say, for example, that I describe how the sudden death of a person has the effect in the spiritual world of his experiencing spiritually in the single moment when his physical body is destroyed through an accident, as much as he would have been able to experience in twenty or thirty years in life. If such a thing as this is described, then it can be related only to a particular case. Of course, someone else comes along and says,—Sudden deaths have this and that effect. He would like to make a law of it. Such laws, if I may put it this way, are the enemy of the true way of knowledge of the science of spirit, because in spiritual experience each single case represents something individual and unique, and because one always has to be surprised how something can always appear—and in life people like so much to stick to the old. One can write down the most subtle experiences of the physical world in a notebook and can put it in one's coat pocket. Such a procedure is impossible with knowledge derived from the science of spirit. This is why there are so many different kinds of descriptions that the scientist of spirit must give. Those of you who are here now and who have often been present at the lectures which have been given here for many years, will have heard me deal with similar subjects, never in the same way, but always varied in one way or the other, individualized. Last winter, for instance, I spoke on the same theme in many German cities, sometimes for several days in succession, but each time in a different way, describing the same things differently. Knowledge derived through the science of spirit makes a claim upon the spirit which we can describe as the mobility of this spirit. We conclude therefore that the important thing is not the content, the actual content of the words, but that this content is drawn and spoken out of the spirit itself.

You will see from this that it is always necessary to become accustomed to a quite different kind of mood and disposition of soul when we rise from the transitory to the intransitory, when we approach the part of man that belongs to the intransitory world, the eternal core of his being. It is therefore understandable that the science of spirit is not only considered to be difficult to understand, but is attacked, misunderstood and confused with all sorts of other things. As someone said recently (someone who prefers to hear only what he has heard before)—it is irritating. Of course it is irritating to someone who only wants all his old dogmas warmed up once again.

Thus it is not only that what the science of spirit has to say about the eternal, the spiritual, is different from what is to be found to be real in the physical sense world, but also that the attitude of the soul toward the spirit is different from its attitude toward the physical sense world. With the kind of attitude of soul I have just described in its characteristic properties, it is possible to approach the part of man that goes through births and deaths, the eternal core of the human being, which as a spiritual entity belongs to the spiritual world just as man as a physical, bodily creature belongs to physical nature and its kingdoms.

What the science of spirit finds in this way is at first something unconscious for our normal consciousness, but it can be drawn into our normal consciousness. This is the essential thing about the method of the science of spirit—that it sets out to reveal what in normal life is generally hidden in the unconscious of the human soul. For the science of spirit brings nothing new to light and does not invent it, but the eternal core of the human being goes through—to use yesterday's expression—a spiritual digestion, just as the physical body has a material digestion—this exists in every human being. The scientist of spirit only brings to light what functions and weaves within every human being. It is his task to bring to consciousness what otherwise remains unconscious. All he talks about is nothing other than the foundation out of which everyone speaks and thinks and acts. Only it so happens that the sphere of the spirit is either subconscious or superconscious—i.e. unconscious—for our normal consciousness.

Now, seen from the viewpoint of our normal soul life, something iridescent and vacillating enters into the sphere of this soul life. What is meant here belongs to the border areas which I have spoken about. Everyone is familiar with this border area which appears so ordinary and which yet is so mysterious: the remarkable sphere of our dream life. This dream life with its pictures that enters into our ordinary soul life, gives the investigator quite different problems from the person who just lets it pass him by, or at the most approaches it with a few superstitious ideas.

A lot could be said just to describe some of the more outward characteristics of our dream life, but here I only want to give a sketch of this dream life as seen by the science of spirit by calling special attention to a few of its characteristic properties—those properties which will serve to enable us to come to know the nature of it.

Presumably everyone knows—and many philosophical approaches to dreams have recognized this—that many of our dreams are stimulated by a sense impression. The world of dreams that we experience is very much connected with the world of our unconscious sleep. When a person is deep in unconscious sleep he is completely cut off from his environment, both by his senses and his limbs. If we are really in unconscious sleep there is nothing in the room, whatever may be there, that can affect our senses. We cannot think about anything that is around us, and in really dreamless sleep we are not able to do anything either. We can establish no relationship at all to our environment—in a sense we are isolated from what surrounds us.—What is characteristic of our dreams is that we really remain in a dreaming state in this isolation and even if the isolation appears to be broken by a sense impression, it is really only in appearance. What are such dreams? Everyone knows them. Someone dreams, for instance, about horses trotting by; he wakes up, and after waking knows exactly where the sound has come from—the ticking of a watch that he had put down nearby. He had heard this ticking because of a particularly sensitive functioning of his ears which must have started at that moment. But now what goes through the mind, the perception, does not work in the normal way as it would in the outer world, but in a dramatized form. Therefore we do not establish a relationship with our environment through our senses, but remain in an isolation which sleep has brought about, and what affects the senses is transformed in the soul. We dream, for example, of a red hot stove, we hear it roaring.—The beat of our heart has become stronger, and becomes the symbol in us of the roaring hot stove. We even have the same relationship to our body as we have in dreamless sleep; the soul simply transforms the impression that comes from the body. Thus we maintain the same relationship with our body when dreaming which we have in dreamless sleep—isolated even from our own body.

We all know that we go on whole journeys in dreams, journeys we could never undertake in real life, journeys where we fly with wings. But at the same time we know that all this does not change our relationship to the outer world, as it would do in real life. Even regarding what we experience as a relationship of our being to an environment in our dreams, nothing changes our relationship to the outer world.

So we can say that what is characteristic of dreams is that in an important respect they do not alter the relationship the human being has to his environment and to himself by virtue of his spirit-soul-body constitution operating through his senses, movements and his own physical body. This also distinguishes dreams from all the other unconscious regions I shall characterize today. It also distinguishes them from everything based on a change in the relationship of the human being to his environment. Even ordinary observation bears out the fact that dreams may not be confused with anything abnormal in soul experience, that they are quite normal and healthy, and are not abnormal in the way they appear in normal human soul life.

A peculiarity of dream life that is particularly important for what I am going to say is that the course of our dreams shows that we cease to join the sequence of dream images in a logical way. We are no longer connected to normal logic. We cannot be logical in dreams. There is one objection to this, however.—The scientist of spirit always knows the objections that can be made. Of course, the unfold-ment of some dreams is such that we can say that the pictures are joined together in a logical sequence. But, in fact, it is different, for exact observation reveals that as long as a dream appears logical, it consists only of reminiscences of life, which had a logical sequence before. Whatever has a logical sequence in life can be dreamed again, but it does not become logical in the dream. The logic that is normally present in our soul life is therefore not present in the action of our dreams. Moral feelings and attitudes concerning human actions are also missing. We all know the many things we are capable of doing in dreams. We all know that in dreams we achieve things and ascribe them to ourselves, that we would condemn in ordinary life. Not only does logic come to an end in dreams, but our moral outlook as well.—These are two important characteristics that we must hold on to if we are to investigate the nature of dreams.

It is of course true that much can be said about dream life from the ordinary physical viewpoint, but we do not want to touch upon this today, for a merely outward scientific method of observation cannot get at the real nature of dreams—for the simple reason that there is nothing with which our normal consciousness can compare dream life. Dreams enter into our normal conscious experience as phenomena that cannot be compared with anything else. And if something cannot be compared with anything else, if it is not possible to incorporate it into a particular scheme, if it portrays something individual through its own particular nature, it cannot be studied by an external scientific method of observation. Only from the point of view of the science of spirit is it possible to gain a true picture of dreams and their nature, for the simple reason that by means of the development of the soul, which I have outlined today, the scientist of spirit attains a pictorial or other kind of spiritual experience which, while radically different from dreams, nevertheless in its form, experience, its intensity of experience, is somewhat similar to dreams. We can leave aside for the moment the question of how dreams are related to reality. We do not wish to go into this now. But the scientist of spirit knows that in what he experiences, which at first is pictorial, he stands before a real spiritual world, he experiences a spiritual world. He can therefore look at the world of dreams and describe it from the world he experiences. This is the one thing. By means of this he acquires a view given to him by his actual observation of what dreams really are in the human soul. Seen from the viewpoint of ordinary consciousness, it is not possible to know what dreams are. Dreams rise up in our soul life, surge up like unknown waves out of the depths, but we do not know what it is that is active, that is dreaming in our souls. But now the scientist of spirit, in practicing the activity necessary for spiritual investigation (as described yesterday), experiences another self, the same self, but in another form, the true ego—he experiences the spirit-soul nature of man independently of the bodily nature. However great a horror it may be for many people, it is nevertheless true that spiritual experiences are achieved outside the body. The scientist of spirit therefore knows what it means to be outside the body, and he can now compare this with the world of dreams. In seeing the world of dreams on the one hand, and knowing spiritual experiences on the other, he knows that the same thing that normally dreams in the soul is experienced spiritually when practicing the science of spirit. It is one and the same thing: what dreams and what is active in the science of spirit, only in investigating the spirit we stand before the real region of the spirit, and in dreams—and this is what is important:—What is it that we stand before in dreams? The difference between standing before the reality of the spirit with our own self in the investigation of the spirit, and in our dreams, is that the scientist of spirit has prepared his soul beforehand to enter into the spiritual world, in which he then perceives in the same way that we normally perceive with our eyes and ears in the physical world, and through his investigation he discovers that in sleep the human being leaves the body. But because he lacks the necessary organs to perceive there, his consciousness remains dull and unconscious from the moment of going to sleep to waking up. Now when a human being has fallen asleep, his spirit-soul nature lives. The scientist of spirit can compare what he perceives in the spiritual world with what the unconscious spirit-soul nature experiences from the moment of going to sleep to waking. He experiences the spirit-soul nature unconsciously in the spiritual world, draws himself again into the physical body on waking, and then makes use of the physical body in order to establish a relationship to his environment.

Now it is not sufficient simply to describe what happens to the body between going to sleep and waking, and what sort of organic physical processes take place in it. For significant things also happen to the spirit-soul nature at the same time. The soul is quite different when it awakens and returns to the body from when it leaves the body. And in entering the body once more it can happen—as in ordinary life—that the spirit-soul nature simply submerges into the body and makes use of the body, and having penetrated it like a fast moving arrow it becomes active and uses the body as a means of perception. But it can also happen that the forces, the content that the spirit-soul nature has acquired from the moment of sleeping to awaking, are—if I may use the expression—for a moment too intense to enter into the body. What the soul upon waking has acquired since the moment of going to sleep, does not fit into the configuration of the picture that the body has of the soul, and so what then happens appears to be a reflection of what the soul has experienced unconsciously during sleep. Something like a mirror picture is reflected back upon waking, because upon waking the soul cannot at first be adapted to the body. In this way the soul clothes these quite different kinds of experiences of the spiritual world, which it has gone through during sleep, in pictures borrowed from our memory, from ordinary life, or which are transformed sense or bodily impressions. It is the eternal that dreams in the human being, just as it is the eternal in the human being that investigates the spirit, but it is clothed with the events of everyday life.

Thus we can say that in dreams the eternal in man perceives the temporal. It is the eternal in man that perceives what takes place in time. And in this respect dreams, despite the fact that the content of their pictures, which is taken from temporal life, is nothing special, even for the scientist of spirit, if it is a normal dream, are a real revelation of the unconscious eternal-spirit nature living in man, of the super-sensible. The scientist of spirit is in the position to be able to distinguish between what dreams present in pictures, and what they are really based upon.

I have recently spoken about the various phenomena of human soul life from a different viewpoint in another city—a city where a great deal of work has been done on Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis deals among other things with the world of dreams. There were some gentlemen present who, as so often happens with the science of spirit, completely misunderstood what I said. In relation to what I said about dreams they thought they were very much more clever. They said: This person and his science of spirit, he speaks about dreams. We psychoanalysts know that dreams only have a symbolical meaning. We know that dreams should only be handled as a matter of symbolism, but he takes dreams to be something real! He is on quite the wrong path.—As I said, they thought they were very clever. But the matter in which they thought themselves clever, in fact, arose only out of their own lack of understanding. For the scientist of spirit does not take the content of dreams to be symbolical or anything else. The scientist of spirit who is accustomed to observing such things knows that what really happens in the soul during sleep can be the same with ten people, but when these ten people relate their dreams, all ten are different. The scientist of spirit knows that although the ten people have dreams, all with a different content, the same or at least very similar spiritual and unconscious experience is the basis for all of them. Moreover, the scientist of spirit would never simply take the content of the dream by itself, whether symbolically or not symbolically, for he knows that the same dream can be clothed in ten, a hundred or a thousand different ways, because the eternal regards the temporal in such a way as to clothe itself with it. The scientist of spirit therefore studies the course of the dream, the way in which tension is released, whether a rise or a fall follows. It is the inner drama, the type of rhythmical sequence, I would even say, the musical nature, that comes to expression in the most varied ways in the pictures of a dream. That is what he studies. Dreams are the witness of real spiritual experience; their content is a garment which clothes the experience. But when one is experienced in such things it is possible to see through the content to what can be experienced. This is the one aspect of the nature of dreams that the science of spirit points to.

The other aspect is the following. When the scientist of spirit progresses and comes to have experiences in the spiritual world, he notices that his dream life changes. Among the many who have already had practical experience with ways of the science of spirit are some who acquire a convincing idea of the science of spirit and feel that it means a lot to them by seeing how their dream life is transformed. They see that what normally happens in dreams is that there is a succession of quite arbitrary images, but then they see how it becomes increasingly full of meaning, and that finally they are able to direct the dream in certain respects. In short, the most varied people entering into the science of spirit notice that the changes which take place in dreams take dreams in the same direction as the first stages of real spiritual knowledge. In fact, it is by means of this transformation of the world of dreams that the scientist of spirit is able to get at the actual nature of dreams. He raises his dreams out of their temporality through what he has become as a scientist of spirit. Dreams then no longer have the tendency to clothe themselves with temporal things.

It is a great moment when the scientist of spirit has progressed sufficiently to dream not only the outer pictures that have symbolical value, but in his dreams to enter into the sphere which normally he would only enter arbitrarily.—It is a great moment when he learns how the spiritual world sends him experiences in his dreams that penetrate like an act of grace into his normal experience, and which really are no longer dreams, although in certain respects they may appear like dreams. Thus the science of spirit shows that dreams flow out of the eternal spirit-soul sphere, but that the human being who has not managed to be conscious of this eternal spirit-soul sphere clothes the events which happen between going to sleep and waking up with his memories, with his impressions of everyday life.

Whether dreams are subconscious or unconscious events, or whether they are grasped by the scientist of spirit, they can be regarded as something healthy and normal. This is more than can be said of the other border areas. It is remarkable that there are philosophers, Eduard von Hartmann among them, who compare dream pictures, the origin of which we have just recognized, with hallucinations and visions. Whereas dream pictures originate in the spirit-soul sphere, and only come into being in coming into contact with the bodily nature, visions and hallucinations are very much connected in their origin with the bodily nature. And whereas dreams in their essential experience flow out of the spirit- soul sphere and the bodily nature only provides the cause of their appearance, the bodily constitution is the cause of everything in the way of hallucinations, visions, somnambulism, mediumism and everything abnormal of this sort that enters human soul life. You can see a characteristic of human experience purely from the viewpoint of the science of spirit, to which the scientific viewpoint can easily be added, when you understand that it all depends upon looking at man as a being with body, soul and spirit, that he has a relationship of the spirit to the body only indirectly through the soul. The soul takes its place in the center. Even when dreaming, a human being cannot simply establish a relationship of his spirit to the body, but only indirectly with the help of the soul. In normal life the soul is an intermediary between the spirit and the body. What happens in the human organism when certain abnormal phenomena in spirit-soul life are produced, is that the normal relationship of the spirit to the body through the soul, where the spirit first works upon the soul and then the soul upon the body, is broken because of temporary or permanent illnesses in the organism, which then blot out the proper functioning of the soul. This elimination is not occasioned by the outer sense organs, but rather by the inner organs. If certain organs are diseased, then the spirit-soul nature cannot get hold of the whole body by means of which it establishes a relationship to the outer world, but it often has to make use of the body without the diseased organs. Then instead of using the soul, the spirit enters into a direct relationship with the body. In a sense, the soul is by-passed. This brings irregularities into the consciousness; the consciousness is broken through. If something spiritual is experienced without being mediated by the soul because a particular organ of the brain or the nervous system or the circulation is diseased, if a spiritual experience is not received so that the soul can use the body in the right way for the experience to be digested properly in the soul, then the spirit has an immediate effect upon the body, and does not work through the mediation of the soul. The immediate experience of the spirit—for it is an experience of the spirit, even if it is such that it penetrates the human constitution in an abnormal and unhealthy way—turns into hallucinations and visions. The science of spirit has nothing to do with this sort of thing.

The aim of the science of spirit is not to break down the relationship existing in normal life between body, soul and spirit, but to make the life of the soul richer, so that the relationship of the spirit to the body is brought about by a rich soul life. A poverty-stricken soul life can come about, however, when by illness a human being is prevented from using his whole body to establish a relationship with his environment. These kinds of experiences—visions and hallucinations—that do not have the same relationship to spiritual life that dreams have, must be regarded from the viewpoint of the science of spirit as being spiritual experiences, but not such as have more value than our ordinary sense perception; in fact, they have less value. For in this kind of irregular spiritual experience like hallucinations, visions, somnambulistic speech and action, mediumism, (which is an artificial kind of somnambulism) the human being is less connected with his environment than he is in his sense perception. This is the important thing. This is what must be realized.

In order not only to perceive his environment but also to arrive at a reasonable and logical understanding of it, a human being needs what one calls an ability to make judgments about the world, and for this he needs the use of the whole body. If the body is formed abnormally, he cannot form a sensible judgment about what is presented to him spiritually. Whereas the human being, when awake, can grasp with reason what he experiences in dreams, he is not in a position to transform what he experiences in hallucinations and visions into the normal experience of his waking condition, and to understand it.

Now the significant thing is that when the body, viewed outwardly, reveals such abnormalities, there are apparently spiritual experiences—this the scientist of spirit admits—only they should not be induced. If they appear naturally, they are the evidence of disease; if they are induced artificially, they lead to disease. Even good and important scientists go astray in these things which are, after all, phenomena of life itself, when they investigate them in an external way in the laboratory, and seek to explain them according to formulas of the scientific method. I would like to cite an instance, which I have mentioned before, because it is a typical example of how much scientists long to penetrate into what they call the super-sensible sphere but at the same time do not want to approach the science of spirit, preferring to stick to their own normal scientific methods. I am not discussing this case because I wish to take a stand on its truth or untruth, but only to show how an irreproachable and outstanding scientist of the present time acts in relation to the sphere of the spirit and super-sensible.

It is the case which Sir Oliver Lodge describes at considerable length in a long book, and which has aroused so much attention for such things do not often reach us from the front-line of battle. The events are as follows. The son of the famous scientist was at the battle-front in France. The father received a letter in London written from America, informing him that a medium has said that something important and decisive was about to happen to his son, but that the soul of a deceased friend of Oliver Lodge would take the son under his wing at this decisive moment.—Naturally this is a message that can be taken in various ways. All sorts of things could have happened and, outwardly at least, the message could have been true. The son could have been in danger of his life and have been saved and the writer could have said—Of course, Myers, the soul of the friend, stood by the son and so he was not killed. But now the son was killed. So the argument then was that the soul of the son had passed over and that his soul was helped on the other side by the friend who had already been there for many years. Whatever had happened it would have been possible to interpret it in the light of the message, because the latter was so vague.—Sir Oliver Lodge, however, is a person who describes the events from a conscientious and strictly scientific viewpoint, so that the case can be understood by anyone on the one hand working conscientiously according to scientific method, and on the other knowing what conclusions can be drawn. It is therefore quite possible to glean information from the book about what really happened.

Now after Sir Oliver Lodge had lost his son, various mediums were sent to him.—In the case of a famous person there are always ways and means of sending mediums and somnambulists to him. Sir Oliver Lodge only wanted to go into this conscientiously, observing the utmost care imaginable. He then describes how the mediums bring messages, either in speech or writing, which purport to originate from the son. There is a lot in this that makes no particular impression upon the reader, as is so often the case with spiritualists, but one thing did make a deep impression on Sir Oliver Lodge. Even the skeptical journalists in the widest circles were impressed. And this is the crucial experiment that Sir Oliver Lodge carried out. It is the following: The medium said: A message is now coming from the deceased son; Myers soul is also present. Both make themselves known. But the son indicates that there is a photograph which was taken at the battle-front in France, shortly before he was killed. He is in the photograph with a number of his friends. The picture was taken several times. In one picture the son rests his hand upon the shoulder of a friend, in another his position is different, and so on. Good! The pictures were described exactly. But they were not there. No one knew about them, no one could know about them, neither the medium nor anyone else. It appeared at first to be nothing but a fraud. But the important thing is that after, I believe, two weeks a letter arrived with the photographs, which had still been in France when the medium had spoken. The letter arrived two weeks later in London and it was possible to convince oneself that the pictures tallied exactly with the description. The photographs were there—a crucial experiment.

Of course this was sufficient to convince Sir Oliver Lodge's and many other people's scientific conscientiousness. One can understand it. But as a scientist of spirit one approaches the matter from quite different viewpoints. Just because Sir Oliver Lodge has described it all so exactly, we can discover the true facts of the case. If we are only a little familiar with the relevant literature we can only be surprised that such a person as Sir Oliver Lodge does not compare such a case, which, however odd it may be, can always be convincing if obvious points are not always rejected, with the countless cases which are known with somnambulists as—if I may use the expression—an infection of the sense organs with judgments of the understanding.

Who has not heard of a case, if he is familiar with literature, of someone who has a vision having the impression—in three weeks' time when I am riding I shall fall from my horse. He sees the visionary picture exactly before him. He even tries to avoid it, but this only helps it on. Such things can be found frequently in literature. They are called up by disturbances due to disease, when the body is not fully under control, so that what remains unconscious in a normal organism rises up in a refined form into the consciousness enabling a person to have long-distance view into space or time of things that belong to human culture.

Now upon reading through Sir Oliver Lodge's book it is clear that what the somnambulistic medium saw was nothing other than such a long-distance view in time. The photographs arrived two weeks later. The medium foresaw the photographs just as the other person foresaw his falling off a horse. This has absolutely nothing to do with a revelation from the super-sensible world, but is only a refined perception of what is already present in the sense world.

In such matters we must be sure of distinguishing where the spirit has an immediate effect on the body. This is not something that leads us into the super-sensible. It is just because the science of spirit sets out to lead the human being into the true super-sensible world that it has to stress the necessity of understanding the nature of abnormal cases, in which a refined life of the senses experiences something which is only a message from the ordinary physical world, only that it is experienced in an abnormal way. I could say much about what comes to light by means of this kind of intensification of the senses, and which is based upon something diseased in the human being. What characterizes this second sphere of the unconscious is a predominance of the animal functions over the soul functions. The spiritual, it is true, is involved, but what Sir Oliver Lodge wanted,—insight into the super-sensible world,—could never come to pass in this way.

If we wish to form a bridge between someone who is here and someone in the super-sensible world as a so-called dead person, we have to do it with the methods of the science of spirit. We have to develop our own souls to find the way and not do it by allowing a dead person to speak through a somnambulistic medium. It is just such things as these that must be observed. Because the science of spirit keeps its feet firmly on the ground—one can enter the spiritual world not only in a general but also in a concrete way—it has to reject everything that is gained without the development of the soul, that is gained by means of hallucinations, visions and a refined life of the senses, which does not lead beyond the sense world and which says nothing about the eternal. Although the spiritual reaches into the human body, nothing can be found out about the super-sensible except by raising the spirit-soul nature of the human being into the super-sensible world.

For the science of spirit, therefore, the visionary world, the somnambulistic world, the world of artificial somnambulism, the mediumistic world is a subsensible world, not a super-sensible world.

The time is pressing, and I cannot go into this any further, for I must turn to another aspect which can be discussed briefly, and this is the way the super-sensible world appears in human life when we consider real art and artistic enjoyment. The science of spirit can follow the soul of the real artist or the soul of a person receptive to real art. What the soul experiences and later fashions into poetry or other kinds of art is just as much experienced in the spiritual world as what always remains unconscious in sleep or at the most becomes conscious for our ordinary consciousness in the temporal pictures of our dreams. But the poet, or artist generally, is able to bring what he experiences unconsciously in its immediate form while in the spiritual world, into the physical sense world, though still unconsciously, and to clothe it in pictures.

It has been quite rightly pointed out that it is not in its content but in its cause, its origin, its source, that real and genuine art has its roots in what the artistic soul experiences in the super-sensible. Therefore true art, and not naturalism, has been rightly regarded by humanity at all times as a message brought into the sense world from a super-sensible world. The difference between the poet and the seer, the person who perceives the super-sensible consciously, is only that the seer raises his consciousness into the super-sensible world for the time he has experiences in the super-sensible world, and transforms with complete presence of mind what he has experienced there into images and ideas, so that the whole process is conscious. With the poet, the artist, the process remains unconscious.—He certainly lives in the super-sensible, but because it does not come into his consciousness he cannot compare it with the spiritual world. After he has experienced it, he brings it down and clothes it in pictures which then became messages of the super-sensible. The whole process which is conscious in the seer is, in its origin, partly unconscious in the poet and artist. What reaches into the world as revelation of the unconscious is what graces human life with beauty, and we shall appreciate its real value when we are convinced that true art is a messenger from the world of the eternal, that true artistic enjoyment brings the human being near to the super-sensible world, even if unconsciously.

We experience our destiny semi-unconsciously. How do we normally understand our destiny, which accompanies our lives from birth to death? Most people—quite rightly as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned—regard the individual acts of destiny as something that comes to them from outside; they just come. This may be quite right and is right from the normal viewpoint. But there is another way of looking at it.

Let us assume that as a forty year old person or younger, as one who has a tendency to reflect, we consider what we really are in our souls and compare this with our destiny. And then we ask what we would have been if we had had a different destiny, if different things had happened to us. We would then make a remarkable discovery. We would discover that if we speak of what we really bear in our inner nature, of what we really are, and not about an abstract self, that we are nothing more than the result of our destiny.—If destiny were only a series of things that happen to us, a series of chances or coincidences we should only be the sum total of these chances. What we have suffered, the things that have given us joy, what has come to us in life that we have assimilated and has become part of our ability, wisdom and habits in life, this is what we are—but it arises out of our destiny; we are this destiny ourselves.

The science of spirit also tries to study destiny, and tries to do it in such a way that its observation of it follows the same course as our normal conceptual life, without the human being doing anything about it. I say this to make clear the significant factor I wish to express. Imagine that you remember something that happened a long time ago, that you experienced when you were ten or seventeen. The memory has a particular characteristic. When the experience took place you were present with your whole mind, you did not only experience what you recall as an image, but you were wholly present. Consider how very different it is to remember how you felt and to remember the image of the experience. The feeling, the condition of soul, cannot be brought back. The memory-image can recall a kind of feeling, but pain that you experienced twenty years ago cannot be recalled. The image or idea can be recalled, but not the condition of soul, the pain. And it is just the same with joy.

In our normal memory of life our experiences are incorporated into the memory, but the feelings are not taken in and the image alone remains. We can therefore experience again later in images what we have experienced earlier. But now, what the human being does of his own volition in life in separating the feelings off from what is incorporated into the memory, can also be carried out in relation to the experiences of our destiny. In describing it, it appears easy, almost trivial. Should it be undertaken, then it belongs to the kind of preparation of the soul that I have been describing yesterday and today, and it consists in stripping of feelings all the things that come to us as acts of destiny. What is so characteristic of ordinary life is that we find some things in our destiny sympathetic, others not; that we willingly take to some things, but wish to reject others. Imagine that we would succeed in getting rid of this so that we could look at our own destinies as if they had not affected us, as if we were describing the destiny of someone else, or as if we could feel someone else's destiny as our own.

Let us get rid of it all for the moment—and only for this one moment, or we would become unfit to live properly—and consider our destiny! We have to look at destiny in such a way that everything connected with the feelings plays no part, as if we stood outside our destiny. Then, like a thought rising up, giving back to us in our individual personal lives an experience out of the past, our destiny, when looked at in the right way, stripped of its personal, subjective character, will of necessity and with the utmost conviction be seen as the expression of earlier experiences in life, which we have gone through and which are connected with the whole life of the human being and are the expression of the fact that we live through repeated lives on earth and lives which are spent between death and a new birth.

By means of this true view of destiny and of several other things, we can perceive how what we experience over the years as entering into our real and personal experience of our destiny, what is derived as a germinal force from earlier lives on earth and becomes a seed for future lives,—how all this has an effect upon our lives. What the science of spirit has to say about repeated lives on earth is not something made up by a fanatical mind, but is a result of conscientious observation of life itself, a different observation of life from what is usual, because it raises what enters semi- unconsciously into our lives and is revealed as our destiny—thus also a revelation of the unconscious, the unconscious raised into the consciousness.

Unfortunately I have only been able to describe to you a few aspects of the world which remains unconscious to our normal consciousness, and to show how the science of spirit approaches such things. I have only been able to give an outline. But it is just a consideration of the border areas that shows how the science of spirit is in a position to point out the region of the eternal, in showing how the spiritual is revealed in ordinary life in dreams in both a normal and abnormal way, and in showing just from its particular viewpoint how the unconscious is revealed in human experience. In studying the border areas in this way it becomes clear for the science of spirit that the human being is certainly able to reach into the sphere of the super-sensible when he goes beyond the normal limits of his senses, that he can penetrate from the transitory to the intransitory, that he can establish a relationship to the eternal spiritual world through his own spiritual nature so that his spirit-soul nature, his eternal nature, can feel in harmony with the spirit of the whole world.

In describing such things as these one notices that the science of spirit can only be taken in the way I mentioned yesterday—that whereas it can appear in the world today because of the particular configuration of present day spiritual and cultural life, its content is true for all times—just as the Copernican outlook had to appear out of a particular configuration at a certain time. But there is, nevertheless, a difference between the nature of what appears in ordinary science and what appears in the science of spirit. Today for the first time the science of spirit is expressed in clear and well-defined concepts and ideas. But it has always been divined and desired in both universal and quite definite forms by those who have undertaken a serious study of the great mysteries of existence. One feels as a scientist of spirit, therefore, at one with those who throughout the history of humanity have been able and have wanted to give something to humanity.

Of all the great number of personalities who could be mentioned here, I will choose only one. I do not do this to prove what I have said, for I know quite well that in citing Goethe the objection can be rightly made that it is always possible to quote the opposite from his writings, to cite passages where the opposite view is proved. But this is not the point. A person like myself who has devoted more than thirty years not only to the content of Goethe's outlook, but also to the way in which Goethe approached the world, can only sum up what he wanted to say in such a discourse as today's in a few words which express a kind of intellectual joy in finding again what has only now been revealed by conscientious investigation in a tremendous presentiment of a human being, a presentiment which must have appeared before him when he wrote:

“If the healthy nature of the human being functions as a complete whole, if he feels his existence in the world as belonging to a great, beautiful, worthy and valuable whole, if this feeling of harmony gives him a pure and true joy, then the universe, if it could feel itself, would shout for joy because it would feel it had reached its goal, and it would be amazed at the culmination of its own evolution and being.”

I believe that in expressing the harmonious accord between the inner being of man and the universe, Goethe wanted to say what the science of spirit sets out to formulate in clear, well-defined scientific terms—that man can experience in his inner being in various ways how his spirit-eternal nature exists in relation to the spirit-eternal nature of the outer world, and that the great harmony between the human individuality and the universe is actually present in the human soul.—For what makes the science of spirit into an absolute certainty? It is that the human being can take hold of his eternal nature by approaching the spirit of the world in all sincerity and truth as a spiritual being, the eternal spirit of the human being can take hold of the eternal spirit of the world.