The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Nietzsche admired the greatness of the personalities and the impulsive natures of the ancient philosophers. It took the greatest courage of thought to think the thoughts that were thought in the tragic age of the Greeks: by Thales, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras. No one understands these sages unless they can build up a picture of their personalities from their thoughts. We are not interested in their teachings, but in their characters. We are drawn to explore their questions, to find out what kind of person Heraclitus was, because we have the feeling that his philosophy was only a condition of life that Heraclitus had to create for himself in order to be able to exist. One can wander through dreary stretches of modern philosophical history; nowhere is there such a necessary connection between character and the world of ideas. With most of the philosophers of the present day, one has the feeling that they pursue philosophy as an external business; one can also imagine them without this business. Indeed, the connection between the world of the senses and the personality rarely interests them. They strive for “objective truth,” that is, for that insipid and weak construct that arises from cowardly thinking, because not the whole personality is active when philosophizing. The ancient philosophers before Socrates were artists. And Nietzsche is another such philosophical artist. Only a fool would choose him as a master and swear by his words. Only the artistically sensitive person can gain a relationship with Nietzsche. He created his world of ideas like the ancient philosophers of the tragic age, because he needed it to live. Truth for him is not what can be supported by the strict proofs of school logic, but what proves to him to be life-promoting.

He does not prove his views, he tries them out on his own body to see if he can live with them. His rich, bold, deep nature needed dangerous truths to sustain itself. This is the charm of Nietzsche's writings: they always point us to the great man who creates a zest for life in them. A nature as rare and lonely as Nietzsche's could not easily get along with the world. He erected his thoughts between himself and the world in order to be able to endure the world.

Not the rigid thinking, not the so-called scientific drive, but the mood conjures up Nietzsche's thoughts. They detach themselves from him as products of the personality. All thoughts that go beyond a mere description of actual observation arise in this way. It's just that those who believe in objective truths don't have enough insight to understand this.

Even their most objective truths are the products of subjective personalities, only tailored for a certain average way of life. Objectivity means nothing more than being suitable for a large number of people to live by. But the select personality needs select truths. The more objective a truth is, i.e., the more universally valid it is, the more trite it is. Anyone who demands that we accept their truths must also assume that we are similar personalities to them. It follows that only the most stale truths can be universally valid.

If a god could write a philosophy, it would presumably contain all objective truth; but for us mere humans, it would be irrelevant because we do not see the world from an absolute, divine center, but rather from our own individual vantage point. We would presumably not know what to do with a divine truth that was not tailored to our point of view.

Friedrich Nietzsche by Lic. Dr. Eugen Kretzer. Enthusiastic and understanding approval with regard to the first writings. – Correct insight that “Zarathustra” does not signify a new epoch – no understanding of the second epoch. Everything is explained by illness. A Christian's protest against the Antichrist. The point that matters in Nietzsche's last period is nowhere sharply emphasized; in his last period, Nietzsche is namely the negator of all kinds of knowledge, because he is the affirmator of life. Knowledge presupposes a reality that we do not have, that we strive for. Nietzschean reality is to be within ourselves, to be created by us. We are not to be cognizers, creators; we are to be commanders. This also applies to morality. Anyone who clings to a “should” and wants to recognize good and evil is placing the source of morality outside of themselves. Nietzsche wants to determine morality; to create, not to cognize – and therefore, to be beyond good and evil.

Goethe did not expect any political revolution to happen. He knew that the world of ideas, which still dominated European humanity at the time, was outdated and overripe. The old forms of government and life went together with the old world of thought and feeling. There was a thirst for freedom, a desire to break out of the old forms of life and society; but it could not be done because in feeling and in thinking people still lived deeply in the traditional conceptions.

Hegel was the right philosopher for this old world view. In the Prussian state, this world view found its corresponding realization.

It was not the political revolutions that overthrew the old sentiments; they do not truly revolutionize. And more important than bloodshed and bayonets for the progress of humanity are the spiritual revolutions.

That such a revolution was announced in the French dispute was felt by Goethe. And he felt it because he himself, in his youth, had confronted the dying ideas with the ideas of the new world order. What Geoffroy proclaimed in France, Goethe proclaimed in Germany 40-50 years earlier.

Goethe felt the need for a worldview. The urge for knowledge dominated his entire being. But it was not the urge for knowledge as most researchers see it. That is something that is learned.

Goethe's personality strove for the all-round development of the personality. Nothing should be missing that belongs to the individual in order to be a whole person. The great fundamental question belongs to this personal wholeness: what is man's relationship to the world? What is his task? How can he fulfill his mission? What is his responsibility? Can he set his own tasks; or does he have to comply with the decrees of a higher being?

Goethe would have liked to have had contemporary philosophers teach him about these questions. He could not find anyone who could have given him an answer to the questions of knowledge that he had to ask. What the philosophers could tell him contradicted his nature. He did not understand his surroundings. This lack of understanding of his surroundings is vividly illustrated in [text breaks off]

Around the same time that the idea that was to become the most important for his scientific thinking took shape in Goethe's mind, he also found the words that sharply characterize his relationship to science. On May 17, 1787, he writes to Herder that he is very close to the secret of plant development; and on Aug. 18, he writes to Knabel:

After what I have seen in Sicily and near Naples of plants and fish, if I were ten years younger, I would be very tempted to make a trip to India, not to discover anything new, but to look at what had been discovered in my own way.

He made it clear that he was not interested in discovering individual facts, but in achieving a conception of nature that was in keeping with his way of thinking. When, after his arrival in Weimar, he began to occupy himself with natural things, driven by inner compulsion and external circumstances, he found the science of these things among his contemporaries in a state that was completely at odds with his way of thinking. This circumstance shaped his entire preoccupation in this direction. He sought enlightenment in the works of naturalists. He always found himself compelled to look at things from points of view that were foreign to the researchers he turned to.

This is most evident in his botanical studies. In this field, Linné was the leading authority at the time. Goethe immersed himself in his writings, but was soon forced into opposition to his way of thinking. Linné sought out the characteristics of the individual plant forms. According to the degree of their relationship, he placed these forms in a systematic series. He does not ask whether there is a natural relationship between the different forms. This is because his conception of nature is dominated by the theological idea of a plan of creation: “We count as many species as different forms have been created in principle.” Anyone who starts from this basic view cannot see what the forms have in common. Rather, he will emphasize the distinguishing features in order to get to know the diversity that lies in the plan of creation. Goethe's way of looking at things was the opposite: “That which he - Linnaeus - sought to keep apart by force, had, according to the innermost need of my being, to strive for union.”

The difference between Goethe's and Linnaeus's approach lies in the fact that Goethe seeks the creative forces within nature itself, which bring the manifold forms of life into existence, while Linnaeus assumes that the creative power exists outside of nature. Therefore, Goethe must seek to immerse himself so deeply in nature until this creative essence becomes visible to him, whereas Linné is content to study the created in its diversity and surrender to the belief that this diversity is based on a wise cosmic plan. It was against Goethe's nature to surrender to such a belief. This nature is characterized by a statement he made to Jacobi:

God has punished you with metaphysics and given you a thorn in the flesh, but blessed me with physics. I follow the atheist's (Spinoza) Verbum Deo caro factum (The Word of God made flesh) and leave to you everything you call and may call religion. You believe in God; I see.

Just as one sees external sensual facts with the eyes of the body, so Goethe wanted to see the deeper-lying facts with the eyes of the spirit, which contain the reasons for those external facts. He searches for an essence that is contained in all plants, because - as he writes down in Palermo on April 17:

There must be such a thing! Otherwise how would I recognize that this or that structure is a plant if they were not all formed according to one pattern.

For Linnaeus and his like-minded colleagues, this question is superfluous, because the common pattern of all plants, in his opinion, does not lie within, but outside of nature in the idea of creation. What is outside of nature cannot be the subject of research.

One can see what is important to Goethe. He includes an element in research that excludes the opposing world view from it. Goethe had the courage to scientifically recognize what others believed should remain a matter of faith: therein lies the essence of his view. Kant found such striving contrary to the human spirit. He believed that our intellect is only called upon to bring the sensual diversity of beings into a conceptual unity. What this unity, which exists only in our minds, corresponds to in reality, we cannot know, he said. Goethe opposed this view. He was convinced that it is possible for the human mind to penetrate to that real unity of things (see the essay “Anschauende Urteilskraft”).

What Goethe calls the primal plant, the primal animal or the type of animal are components of this real unity of nature. These primal plants and animals cannot be perceived by the external senses. They cannot be given to us as sensual, but only as spiritual intuitions. No single actual plant is a primal plant. In this respect, Goethe's view differs from that of contemporary natural science. The latter believes that it has found the original essence when it can point to a single, sensually perceptible organism that has the simplest possible structure and from which more complex living beings have gradually developed. Goethe, on the other hand, says:

But once you have grasped the idea of this type, you will [only] realize how impossible it is to establish a single species as a canon. The individual cannot be a model for the whole, and so we must not look for the model for all in the individual. The classes, genera, species and individuals are related to the law as individual cases are to a law; they are contained in it, but they do not contain and give it.

When we survey the individual classes, genera and species, an ideal form arises in our mind that is not realized anywhere in the senses: and this is the original being in the sense of Goethe's conception. The modern naturalist would call such a form a mere idea, a thought. Goethe, however, sees in it a real being. This is characteristic of him. He regards the ideal as a reality, as truly present in nature.

From this basic view, Goethe's relationship to the modern conception of nature and his significance within it can be seen. This conception of nature differs fundamentally from the one prevailing at the time of Goethe. But it also differs from his own. Under the influence of the research of Lamarck, Darwin and others who followed similar paths, a revolution in natural science took place in the nineteenth century. It was recognized that one organic form can change into another over time. The consequence of this idea is the assumption that one form is not similar to another because it was originally created similarly by a higher being, but because it actually gradually emerged from the other. The forms of predators are no longer seen as similar to each other because they are all originally designed similarly, but because one actually emerged from the other. Thus, the view was arrived at that originally there were only a few or only one organic form, which developed over immeasurably long periods of time into today's diversity. What was previously seen as existing side by side is now seen as emerging from one another in a temporal sequence. This is essentially the difference between the modern conception of nature and that of Goethe's contemporaries.

This modern view of nature is, however, initially nothing more than a description of a state of affairs. And it stops at this description. It differs from the usual approach in inorganic science. When two elastic spheres in motion meet, they both change their motion. Inorganic natural science is not satisfied with describing the process of the change of motion, but seeks a law from which this process can be explained. Once this law has been recognized, the process can be understood. One can develop the process of motion after the encounter from the one before it.

The corresponding process in organic natural science is that one living form can be developed logically from another in thought. One then not only describes its temporal emergence from this other, but also comprehends it. The means to this comprehension in the organic realm would have to be something like the natural law in the realm of the inorganic.

Goethe strove to discover in organic nature that which corresponds to the law in inorganic nature. And he recognized it in his Primordial Plant and in his Primordial Animal. Through the inorganic laws of nature, an ideal unity is brought into the abundance of mechanical, chemical and physical phenomena; through them we see what is next to each other in a large, structured context; Goethe also wanted to recognize such a unity in the organic world of forms. The extension of the physical-mechanical way of explaining to the whole field of natural science is the characteristic of his view. It must be admitted, however, that modern natural science is moving in a similar direction. But it does so in a fundamentally different way from Goethe. He sought for the organic world something that would explain the diversity just as the laws of nature explain the inorganic phenomena, but which is of a higher nature than the latter. Today, we look for the same laws in the organic realm as we do in the inorganic realm. We imagine that the laws of organic action are actually physical laws, only in complicated combinations that are not easily understood. In exactly the same way, it is thought, as hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water under certain conditions, so under more complicated conditions, carbonic acid, ammonia, water and protein combine to form living substance, without the need to imagine special organic physical-chemical forces in addition to the physical-chemical ones.

This is not Goethe's view. He does not want to see inorganic laws applied to organic life, but he wants to discover new ones for this field that correspond to them. For anyone with a deeper insight, contemporary natural science virtually demands expansion in the direction that Goethe has taken.

When it comes to actual discoveries, one can fully agree with du Bois-Reymond, who said:

Even without Goethe's participation, science would have progressed as far as it has today. ... Sooner or later, others would have made the advances he achieved.

This applies perfectly to the individual facts that Goethe discovered. But these facts are not the essence of his scientific endeavors. This consists in the indicated basic direction of his scientific thinking.

In this respect, it is remarkable how Goethe came to his individual discoveries.

When he set about studying the animal and human organism, he was guided by the idea that both must be based on a common archetype, which appears in man only at a higher stage of development than in animals. This was demanded by his fundamental view of the unity of ideas in nature. However, the most important natural scientists of his time saw a significant difference between the organization of higher mammals and that of humans in that the former have the so-called premaxillary bone in the upper jaw and the latter does not. Goethe could not do anything with this assertion of the natural scientists. He therefore looked for the premaxillary bone in humans and found it. In the embryonic state it is still separate from the laterally adjacent bones, but in the developed human being it has grown together with them. In individual cases, if the development is not quite normal, the separation can remain. So Goethe did not make the discovery of the intermediate bone for its own sake, but to dispel an opinion that contradicted his basic view. It will become clear in what follows that the same applies to the discovery of the vertebral nature of the skull bones.

Fundamental to Goethe's scientific ideas is his concept of the metamorphosis of plants. In this area, he consciously set out to find an ideal form that underlies all the diverse plant forms as a pattern. He felt as if he were studying botany as if he had a text in front of him that he couldn't read at first, but could only look at the individual letter forms. The individual organs of the plant appeared to him as a diversity that must correspond to a unity, and the abundance of plant forms also seemed to point to something that they all have in common. He relentlessly pursued the goal of being able to move from one structure to another in such a way that this transition becomes a continuous unity, as when moving from spelling to reading. And on [June 15, 1786] he was able to report to Frau von Stein: “[...] my long spelling has helped me, now it works all at once, and my quiet joy is inexpressible.” It was, however, a long way from spelling to actual reading. In his estate, which is in the Goethe Archive in Weimar, there are diary-like pages on which he has recorded the individual stages of this journey. (See Goethe's works in the Weimar edition, 2nd section, volume 7, p. 273ff.) They were written during the Italian journey. The opulent world of forms in the south offers him the opportunity to recognize unity in abundance. He is tireless in his efforts to find plant specimens that are suitable for shedding particular light on the laws of germination, growth and reproduction. If he thinks he is on the trail of some law, he first formulates it hypothetically and then tests it for accuracy in the course of further experiences. One such hypothetical law is: “Everything is a leaf, and through this simplicity the greatest diversity becomes possible.” Finally, on May 17, 1787, he writes to Herder about his completed discovery with the words:

It had become clear to me that the true Proteus lies hidden in that organ of the plant that we usually refer to as the leaf, which can hide and reveal itself in all formations. Back and forth, the plant is always only a leaf, so inseparably united with the future germ that one cannot be thought of without the other.

Goethe means that all the organs of the plant, from the germ to the fruit, no longer appear to him as mere diversity, but he can, in the idea, carry out their emergence from one another just as it develops in reality before his eyes. Just as a sentence is formed out of words into a spiritual unity, so all the organs of the plant are united in the ideal image of the primal plant. Therefore, the term “leaf” should not be taken literally either. It is only intended to convey that the unity of the plant's being lives in the other organs as well as in the leaf, only in a modified form. When he set down his idea in the essay “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants” in 1790, he therefore expresses himself more clearly:

It goes without saying that we would need a general word to describe this organ that has been metamorphosed into such different forms and to compare all the appearances of its shape with it; at present, we have to be content with getting used to holding the appearances backwards and forwards against each other. For we can just as well say that a stamen is a contracted petal as we can say of the petal that it is an expanded stamen; that a sepal is a a stem-leaf that is contracted and approaching a certain degree of refinement, than we can say of a stem-leaf that it is a sepal that has been expanded by the intrusion of rougher juices.

When Goethe speaks of the unified organ that underlies all visible organs, he means an idealized structure that enables the observer to see the sequence of forms present in the plant in a living sequence and development. He has described how the text that he reads from the individual letters is formulated in the aforementioned essay and in the poem 'The Metamorphosis of Plants'.

Does the unity that Goethe perceives in the plant from germination to fruitfulness suddenly come to an end? He answers this with a decisive 'No'. In the fruit, the potential for a new plant is present in the form of the seed. This is a whole plant, only contracted into a sensually simple form. During germination, it undergoes further transformation, and the new plant thus presents itself only as a continuation of the parent plant. Goethe expresses this by saying that procreation is only a growth of the organism beyond the individual. However, since the basic ideal organ is changeable in its sensory appearance, the plant forms that descend in continuous succession from a progenitor can also take on different forms over time. And thus the present-day view that the diversity of forms has gradually developed in a temporal sequence from a few or only one original species is justified by Goethe's view. What is today called the theory of descent thus finds a lawful explanation through Goethe's view.

It was in Goethe's nature to extend the ideas that had occurred to him for explaining the plant world to the whole of organic natural science. As early as 1786, he wrote to Frau von Stein: he wanted to extend his thoughts about the way in which nature, as it were, plays with a main form to produce the manifold life, to “all realms of nature, to all of her realm”.

Therefore, after his return from Italy, he also eagerly continued his studies of the animal organism, which he had already begun in the mid-1770s and which led him to the discovery of the interosseous bone. In this field, however, he did not succeed in achieving results as perfect as in the science of plants. He was unable to create an ideal structure in this field, as he had done with the “primordial plant”. The essays he wrote in 1795 and 96 (“First Draft of a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, based on Osteology” and “Lectures on the First Three Chapters of the Draft of a General Introduction to comparative anatomy, proceeding from osteology), written in 1795 and 96, as well as the earlier fragment, “On the Form of Animals,” found in his estate and published in the Weimar edition, contain only rudiments and preliminary studies for the general idea of the archetypal animal. Nor is there more to be found in the poem “Metamorphosis of Animals” (AOPOIEMOR). He has only achieved something more important in one detail. He recognized the relationship between the brain and the limbs of the spinal cord, and also that between the bones that enclose the brain and the vertebrae that enclose the spinal cord. Goethe's efforts were obviously aimed at tracing all the organs of the animal body back to an ideal basic form, as he had already done with plant organisms. This is much more difficult for all the organs of the animal form than for plants, because the more perfect a creature of nature is, the more diverse the outward appearance of the organs that are the same in their ideal form. The simplest case is that of the mutual relationship between the spinal cord and the brain and the bones that enclose them. Through his general view of nature, Goethe came to suspect that the bones that enclose the brain are not only spatially adjacent to the vertebral bones of the spinal cord, but are also ideally related to them. Full certainty was brought to him by a chance event that he experienced in 1790 on the dunes of the Lido in Venice. He found a sheep's skull that had so happily disintegrated into its individual bony components that the observer could recognize remodeled vertebrae in the individual pieces. Contemporary science has not entirely confirmed this isolated discovery by Goethe, but it has confirmed it in its essential parts. The anatomist Carl Gegenbaur conducted research on this subject and published his findings. They deal with the head skeleton of the selachians, or ancestral fish. The skull of these animals is clearly the remodeled end part of the backbone and the brain is the remodeled end member of the spinal cord. One must therefore imagine that the bony capsule of the skull of higher animals also consists of remodeled vertebral bodies, which, however, in the course of the development of higher animal forms from lower ones, have gradually shape that is very different from vertebral bodies and that are also fused together in such a way that they have become suitable for enclosing the brain, which also developed from a limb of the spinal cord. Over time, this adhesion has become such a permanent feature of higher animals that a separation into the individual components, as in the case of the interstitial bone, cannot even be observed in the embryonic state in which the organs concerned are still soft. On the contrary, the separation into individual skull bones occurs only at a later stage of development in higher animals today. Initially, they form a continuous cartilaginous capsule.

But this case is characteristic of Goethe. He discovers something that later natural science rediscovers by completely different means, simply because it follows from his general view of nature. Goethe also viewed the relationship between the brain and spinal cord in the same way as the later research mentioned above. In 1790, he made the following entry in his diary:

The brain itself [is] only a large main ganglion. The organization of the brain is repeated in every ganglion, so that each ganglion [is] to be regarded as a small subordinate brain.

Today, when speaking of Goethe's relationship to science, many people feel that the most important question is: Did Goethe believe that over time one species of plant or animal actually transforms into another, or did he not go beyond the observation of the ideal unity? From what has been said so far, it is clear that his approach provides a meaningful explanation for an actual transformation. In contrast to this, it seems completely irrelevant whether he actually spoke about such an actual transformation. One must bear in mind that such an expression was far less necessary in his time than it is today. It would also not have seemed as significant as it did a few decades later. All experiential foundations for how one was to imagine the actual relationships and transformations in detail were lacking. Therefore, the actual science could not do anything with such ideas. It was only when Darwin created scientific foundations for individual thoughts in this direction that one could talk about them. Goethe, according to the state of empirical science at the time, could only form very general concepts. And he spoke about such concepts clearly enough.

But if we consider all forms, especially organic ones, we find that nothing exists, nothing rests, nothing is closed off, but rather everything is in constant motion. (Formation and Transformation of Organic Beings [on morphology). The intention is introduced.

This, then, we have gained, and can claim without fear that all perfect organic natures, including fish, amphibians, birds, mammals, and at the top of the latter man, were all formed according to an archetype, which only tilts more or less back and forth in its [very] constant parts and still daily forms and remodels itself through reproduction.

If Goethe had expressed his view of the transformation of organic nature more clearly than in such phrases, he would have been lumped together with the fantasists who had all kinds of adventurous ideas about the metamorphosis of natural beings. We also have a statement from him about this: “However, the time was darker than one can imagine now,” he writes in retrospect in

For example, it was claimed that it only depends on the person to walk comfortably on all fours, and that bears, if they remained upright for a while, could become people. The audacious Diderot dared to make certain suggestions as to how to produce goat-footed fauns to be placed on carriages in livery, for the special pleasure and distinction of the great and rich.

Just as far as the science of that time was from such ideas, just as close was the un-science to them. He was careful in his indications of an actual tribal or blood relationship of the organic forms, so as not to see his explanations mixed up with the latter.

Goethe wanted to extract everything necessary for the explanation of natural phenomena from nature itself. This has been shown by considering his studies of the organic world. This fundamental view of his mind can be observed just as clearly in his theory of colors. In Goethe's time, this field of natural science was built on assumptions that were not taken from nature. And even today it still bears this character. The eye's perception provides light and dark and the variety of colors. The theory of colors seeks to discover the relationships between these elements of perception. Light is the absolute brightness; its opposite is absolute darkness. Goethe, in accordance with his entire nature, had to stop at the sensory perception of light. Newton, the founder of the more recent color theory, did not do that. He was of the opinion that light is something other than what it directly presents to the eye, namely an extremely fine substance. What presents itself to perception as light should be substance in reality outside of perception. And white light, as it reaches the earth from the sun, for example, is said to be a composite substance. This composite substance is broken down into its individual components, which are the seven primary colors, by the prism. So this theory explains a vivid process, namely the appearance of colors in the illuminated space, by means of a non-vivid, hypothetical process. Present-day natural science takes a similar view. It has only replaced the substance with a wave motion of that substance. Goethe could not work with such a view. Within the world of the eye, there are neither substances nor movements, but only qualities of light and color. He wants to work with them alone, not with hypothetical entities that cannot be found within experience. He observes how the sensory elements of perception of the eye relate to each other. He notices that where light and dark meet, color arises when the spot is viewed through a prism or a glass lens. He records this immediately perceptible fact. He conducts experiments that are suitable for elucidating the phenomenon. If a white disc on a black background is viewed through a convex glass lens, it appears larger than it actually is. Through the edges of the enlarged surface, you can see the black background below. The part of it that is covered by the enlarged white disc appears blue. The situation is different when a black disc on a light background is observed in the same way. The edge that appeared blue there now appears yellow. Goethe does not go beyond these perceptible facts. He says: When a light color is moved over a dark one, the blue color arises; when a dark color is moved over a light one, the yellow color arises. These colors also arise in a similar way through the prism. Through the inclination of the prism surfaces against each other, just as through the lens, a dark color is passed over a light color or vice versa, when a point is observed where the dark and light colors meet. A white disc on a black background appears displaced when viewed through the prism. The upper parts of the disk slide over the adjacent black of the background; while on the opposite side the black background slides over the lower parts of the disk. So through the prism you see the upper part of the disk as if through a veil. The lower part, on the other hand, can be seen through the superimposed darkness. The upper edge therefore appears [blue], the lower edge yellow. The blue increases towards the black, a violet tone, the yellow downwards a red tone. With increasing distance of the prism from the observed disc, the edges broaden. At a sufficiently large distance, the yellow from below spreads over the blue from above; and green is created in the middle. To further educate himself, Goethe looks at a black disc on a white background through the prism. This causes a dark color to be pushed over a light color at the top and a light color over a dark color at the bottom. Yellow appears at the top and blue at the bottom. When the prism is removed from the disc, peach blossoms appear in the middle.

If the light is broken up into so many colors there, [I said to myself,] then here, too, darkness must be seen as broken up into colors.

Goethe calls these experiments subjective because the colors do not appear fixed anywhere in space, but only appear to the eye when it looks at an object through a prism. He wants to supplement these experiments with objective ones. To do this, he uses a water prism. He lets the light shine through this prism and catches it behind it through a screen. Because the sunlight has to shine through openings cut out of cardboard, a limited illuminated space is obtained, surrounded by darkness. The limited body of light is deflected by the prism. If this deflected light falls on a screen, an objective image appears on it, which is colored blue at the upper edge and yellow at the lower edge if the cross-section of the prism becomes narrower from top to bottom. Towards the dark space, the blue turns into violet; towards the light center, it turns into light blue; towards the dark, the yellow takes on a red tone. Goethe explains this phenomenon as follows. At the top, the bright mass of light radiates into the dark space; it illuminates a dark area and makes it appear blue. At the bottom, the dark space radiates into the mass of light; it darkens the brightness, which then appears yellow. If the screen is removed from the prism, the edges broaden; and at a sufficiently large distance, the blue in the middle shines into the yellow; and green is created. Through such experiments, Goethe finds the view that he has gained from subjective experiments confirmed by objective ones. In his opinion, colors are therefore produced by the interaction of light and dark. The purpose of the prism is to superimpose light on dark and dark on light. Yellow is light subdued by darkness; blue is darkness attenuated by light. Where yellow is further dimmed by overlying darkness, red arises; where blue is attenuated by darkness, violet appears. These are the basic laws of Goethe's theory of colors. They are nothing more than the expression of the experience given to the eye. And because they are brought about by the simplest conditions, Goethe calls them the archetypal phenomena of the color world. All other phenomena within this world arise when further conditions are added to the simple ones. One then obtains the derived phenomena, which, however, can be traced back to a sum of simple ones. In this way of thinking, Goethe's theory of color remains strictly within the bounds of empirical observation. Because Newton and the physicists did not proceed in the same way, Goethe became their opponent. He attacked Newton so fiercely because he felt that he lived in a completely different conceptual world from his own. However, he did not become fully aware of this fundamental contradiction. Otherwise he would have simply developed his own point of view and ignored the other, which was based on entirely different premises. Instead, he went through each of Newton's experiments individually, seeking to prove the error in each particular case. This is how the “polemical” part of his theory of colors came about.

Goethe's efforts in the fields of mineralogy, geology and meteorology were less successful, although he also tried to penetrate the phenomena of these fields from the point of view of his world view. Here, too, he succeeded in making individual discoveries. But again, the guiding ideas are more important than these individual discoveries, although he remained stuck in the rudiments everywhere. In mineralogy and geology, too, he seeks to explain phenomena by striving to expand the world of concepts. He believes that he can recognize how large inorganic masses are formed during his journeys into the resin. His view that not only the sensually perceptible but also the spiritually perceptible is real is also evident in this area. He imagines the stone masses to be permeated by an ideational lattice work, and indeed a six-sided one. As a result, cubic, parallelepipedal, rhombic and columnar bodies are cut out of the ground mass. This lattice work should not be just an idea, a thought, but a real system of forces at work in the stone mass. This lattice work of forces represents a transitional stage between the inorganic processes and the archetypes that Goethe sees as underlying organic nature. He sees geology as a realm between physics and organic. Therefore, he also rejects the idea that the composite rocks have arisen from their components by aggregation, but believes that these individual components were originally contained in a uniform groundmass and have been separated from each other by internal formative laws. Unfortunately, Goethe did not succeed in applying these fundamental ideas to a larger number of inorganic formations. But from them we can understand his antipathy to the volcano theory of the Earth's formation as defended by Hutton, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Buch and others. This view explains the development of the Earth's surface in terms of violent revolutions. It is now impossible for a mind like Goethe's, which always adheres to what is empirically given, to assume that at any time in the earth's development forces were present that do not currently fall within the scope of experience. The only natural view is that which derives this development from the forces recognizable by observing the present conditions, from which all earth formations can be explained if one only assumes that these forces were active for a sufficiently long time. To Goethe, nature appeared consistent in all its parts, so that even a deity could not change the laws innate to it and ascertainable through experience. He therefore could not see why these laws should have expressed themselves in the past by “lifting and pushing, hurling and throwing”. The fight against the volcanic theory led him back to individual discoveries, to the one about the origin of the boulders found in some areas, which, based on their composition, must once have belonged to the mass of distant mountains. Volcanism provided the explanation that these “erratic blocks” were hurled to their present location by the tumultuous uprising of the mountains far from their present location. Goethe found an explanation that corresponded to his view in the assumption that [breaks off]

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And each group represents one of the two main currents that make up the intellectual life of the second half of the century.

In the youth of each of us there is a struggle between these two currents. One current can be characterized by the word: longing for freedom in all its forms:

— independence from divine providence.

— independence from tradition and the inherited sentiments of our ancestors.

— Independence from the influence of social and state powers.

— Independence from prejudices acquired by education.

The other current is that which stems from modern science.

We descend from the most highly developed mammals. Our nature is similar to that of these creatures, only more perfect. We can only act as we are organized. Our actions are more complicated, but the political revolutions of the century are not, because they thought, they felt, as one has thought and felt for millennia. As long as the old worldview lived in people's minds, the old forms of society and state were also justified.

Hegel recognized this. He understood that the old world order is the way it must be according to the old world of ideas. Reality corresponded to the old way of thinking, the old reasonableness.

Hegel was one of the most intelligent people of all time; a person of sophisticated thinking who knew the world of ideas of his time down to the finest ramifications and who could see that the existing reality in [here are missing two manuscript pages] original natural forces, which work out of themselves, without divine intervention. One could explain nature from its own source. And with that, a completely new position within the natural order was indicated to man. According to the old worldview, he had to derive his origin from the wise creator, from whom he derived all the rest of nature. This wise creator determines the laws of nature, this wise creator also determines the fate of men. Man had to bow to the will of this wise creator. He had to look up to him in humility, to explore his counsel and to follow it. With the new world view, this being standing above man was now extinguished. Man felt that he could feel like the highest being in the order of natural things; he could give himself direction and purpose in his existence. He could feel that he stood above all other beings, but he no longer needed to feel a power above him. In place of the philosophy of humility, the philosophy of pride, of self-confident humanity, could arise.

In this change in the world of feeling lies the great revolutionizing of minds in the nineteenth century.

The first person in German intellectual life to awaken this new world of feeling within himself and to proclaim it to the world was Goethe. Forty to fifty years before Geoffroy, in his dull and elementary way, proclaimed his battle cries against Cuvier, Goethe had already proclaimed the new gospel.

At the end of the last century, Goethe lived, thought and wrote poetry in accordance with the new view, which even today has remained the possession of only a few.

The way in which Goethe developed the new world view is a psychological fact of the very first order.

It grew in him as if out of nothing, as if out of the productive imagination of the individual genius, while he was surrounded by minds that were thoroughly in the thrall of the old world view. Goethe did not know that he was a century ahead of his time in terms of feeling. He did not know the future-proof impact of his thinking and feeling, and because it was a completely new plant in modern times that flourished in him, because he saw only contradiction and other views surrounding him, he felt insecure.

A mighty urge for knowledge lived in Goethe. An urge that expresses itself in the speeches of his Faust in such a moving way. He strove for truth, for knowledge of the deepest reasons for things. For he was imbued with the eternal truth, and that was what he, as a poet, wanted to proclaim to the world. He was not one of those lucky people who stick to the surface of things and believe that if they describe this surface faithfully, they are telling the truth. He felt that those who seek truth must delve into the depths of things, far below the surface.

The direction that his quest for knowledge took was such that all his immersion in the works and speeches of his contemporaries was of no use to him.

This contrast between Goethe's view was most clearly expressed in the conversation with Schiller, which Goethe himself described.

This old world view sees a deep chasm between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit, the world of thought. Goethe believes he can see his ideas with his eyes, just as one sees colors and light with the eyes. And for him, the human mind is an organ for seeing the ideas that belong to things just as colors belong to things.

That ideas belong to things contradicted all feelings of European cultural humanity at the time of Goethe.

Centuries of education in a false world view have thoroughly driven out this natural feeling.

The first person we can say with certainty has worked on this false education of European humanity is Parmenides.

Plato was Plato's foundation. The world of the senses is an illusion. The world of ideas alone is the truth. Despite Aristotle, European humanity was educated in this wrong world view. Christianity greedily adopted Platonism. From the illusion of the world of the senses, which has no truth, it made the sinful, the bad world, the earthly vale of tears. From the world of ideas, it made the hereafter, after man's longing. From the Platonic world of ideas, Christian providence was made. The ideas were transferred to the mind of God.

Nature was deprived of its rights. The mind, which belongs to nature, was snatched from it. And since man also belongs to nature, the spirit was also wrested from him, that is, this spirit was no longer to rule within man, no longer to be a part of him, of which he is master, which he possesses, with whose help he rules the world. No, the spirit was to lead an independent existence outside of man and through divine grace the blessings of this spirit were to flow to man. Man could not say: I am the spirit and what I do, I do by virtue of my spirit, but had to say: The spirit is above me and I do what it commands; man could not say: I descend into my spiritual being and explore the world of thoughts within me if I want to know the truth, but had to look up to God if he wanted to have knowledge.

Humanity was oppressed by the spirit throughout the Middle Ages. And when a new light dawned on some minds in modern times, it could not possibly unfold equally brightly; it could only dawn.

Christianity has not only filled the head with unhealthy thoughts, it has also led the heart and the life of feeling astray.

This can be seen in Baco and Descartes. The former restored the sense world to its rightful place, but the spirit was neglected. Descartes did not respect sensory knowledge. And Spinoza wanted to develop all wisdom and virtue from the spirit. The bond between the sense world and the spiritual world had been broken. One had become accustomed to the contempt of the sensual world. Therefore, the spiritual production also remained empty. Spinoza spun a logical web that makes the healthy person shiver.

Kant [gathered] the errors of the centuries in himself. He was full of the educational prejudices of these centuries.

Kant's gospel was the distressing gospel of Faust, that we cannot know anything. And Goethe, when he realized the bleak bleakness of this world view, could well say: it almost makes my heart burn.

What no German philosopher could give him, Goethe found in the contemplation of Greek works of art in Italy. In these works of art he found the sure truth, the ideal essence of the things he was seeking.

The high works of art.

The subject: nature.

(“When healthy nature works in man as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified [and valuable] whole, when harmonious comfort gives him pure, free delight – then the universe would rejoice if it could feel itself and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.”)

In man, nature reveals its secrets.

But Goethe lacked something for the full development of the proud human consciousness.

How did you get this far?
They say you have done well!

My child! I have done it wisely,
I have never thought about thinking.

And so he fell back into the old world view, into the old world of feeling. And it was in the spirit of this old world of feeling that Goethe rewrote his Faust.

What would have become of Faust if Goethe had remained true to his old world view?

What happened to him under the influence of his age?

Goethe the old man could not resist the world of feeling and imagination that assailed him from all sides; he finally bowed. But when he sensed Geoffroy's spirit in his spirit, all the thoughts and feelings that he had had in his own youth were kindled again. Geoffroy's cause was his cause after all.

And this cause of his has become the spiritual driving force of the nineteenth century.

Feuerbach came; Stirner came.

They were the two destroyers of the old misunderstood world of ideas, the restorers of the mistreated nature. Stirner marks a milestone.

The great Mephistopheles of the nineteenth century.

In his Nothing we hope to find the All.

The yawning abyss, the great Stirnerian Nothing had to be filled.

It had to be filled in a different way than Goethe did. With high [two manuscript pages missing here] there. When man says I will, this wanting is an earthly one. Man no longer needs to feel respect for a higher being; he is the highest being he knows; he has become the master of himself.

For Goethe, it is not important that the petal or carpel of a perfect plant was once a real leaf in an imperfect plant form; rather, it is important to find the idea of the plant. It is only from this idea that it is possible to understand that the individual moments of a more complicated form can also form a simple form as such. We do not understand how the composite is formed from the simple, but rather we always understand the simple through the composite. We understand the whole world through its most composite product, through man. What does it mean to understand? We experience processes. The highest experiences are those that we experience in ourselves. In analogy to this, we think other processes. It is quite ridiculous to want to explain what is perceptible to the ordinary eye through the microscopic. When we observe the act of procreation under the microscope, we basically have no more before us than what we see in ordinary life. A new organic form develops from a male and a female. By using the microscope, we expand the range of our perceptions, but not the sum of our concepts and ideas. And it is these that ultimately matter. Everything else can be seen as an enrichment of our experience.

The existence of the present human being is characterized not by just one, but by several states of consciousness. The usual one is the one in which the human being finds himself from awakening to falling asleep. In this state, he perceives things through his senses and forms ideas from his sensory perceptions. This is how the physical world comes into being for him. And the powers of his soul, his thinking, feeling, willing and acting, also relate to it.

This state of consciousness is now followed by two others: dream-filled sleep and deep, dreamless sleep. These states are often referred to as 'unconscious'. However, this term obscures the facts under consideration here. They are in fact only different types of consciousness. One could call them duller types of the same.

The dream-filled sleep does not show objects like the waking day consciousness, but images that arise and fade in the soul. However confusing these images may appear to the ordinary consciousness, the illumination of their essence is apt to lead deeper into the nature of the world. What they present themselves as in the nightly life of the soul cannot provide a proper basis for their knowledge. Such a basis is only available to the human being who, in the sense of such a training as described in this book, develops his higher powers of knowledge that lead him to an insight into the supersensible worlds. This chapter is intended to give a description of the facts that apply to these higher worlds. Those who themselves enter the path of knowledge into these regions will then also find these facts to be true.

What must first strike us about the world of dreams is the symbolic character that appears in its images. With a certain subtle attention to the colorful diversity of dream experiences, this character can become clear. From simple symbols to dramatic events, all intermediate stages can be found in this world that flits through the soul. One dreams of a conflagration; one wakes up and realizes that one had fallen asleep next to the lamp. The light of the lamp was perceived in the dream; but not as it presents itself to the senses in the ordinary world, but as a symbol, as a conflagration. Or you dream of a troop of riders that you hear trampling past; you wake up, and the horse trampling continues immediately as the beating of the clock, which has been symbolized in this way. - You dream of an animal scratching your face; when you wake up, you feel pain in that particular place, which has found its dream symbol in the way described. - A longer “dream could be something like the following. Someone dreams that he is walking through a forest. He hears a noise. As he continues walking, a person emerges from a bush and approaches him. The attacker shoots. At this moment, the dreamer wakes up and realizes that he has just knocked over the chair next to his bed. The impact of the chair has been transformed by the dream consciousness into the symbolic action described. In this way, external events or even internal facts, such as the example given above of the animal scratching, can be perceived as symbols through the dream. Affects and moods can also be represented in this way. For example, someone suffers from the oppressive feeling that an unpleasant event will occur for him in the next few days. In the dream, this feeling presents itself in such a way that he is in danger of drowning.

The examples given above serve to characterize two properties of dream consciousness: first, its pictorial, allegorical character, and second, something creative in it. This creativity is not inherent in day-consciousness. Day-consciousness presents the things of the environment as they are in the physical outer world. Dream consciousness adds something from another source.

How is this source opened? Through nothing other than the fact that the sense activity on which day consciousness depends has ceased during sleep. The silence of this sense activity is expressed by the fact that the self-consciousness of the person disappears. This self-consciousness is bound to the activity of the external senses; when these are silent, it sinks into an abyss. In occult science this fact is expressed by saying: the human soul has withdrawn from the physical world. If one does not want to assert that a person ceases to exist when falling asleep and is reborn when waking up, it is not difficult to recognize that during sleep a person exists in a world other than the physical one. This world is called the astral world. The reader may accept this term for the time being as a name for that world of which man gets a presentiment through his dreams. The justification of this term will appear from other chapters of this book.

During sleep, the human being dwells in the astral world. The facts and beings of this world present themselves in images. Consciousness perceives these images, but the self-consciousness of the human being is absent. A comparison with everyday life can give an idea of what is actually taking place here. The human being perceives an external world only insofar as he has organs for it. Without ears, there would be no world of sound for him; without eyes, no world of light and color, etc. If a person were to develop a new organ in his body, something completely new would appear in his environment, just as light and colors appear as something completely new for the blind-born after his operation.

Just as the physical body of man perceives the physical world through its [organs], so during the dream another body - a soul body through its own organs - perceives the other world, the astral world. Only that there is no self-awareness associated with this body. In this state, this is outside the realm of man.

If it were impossible for the human being to become self-aware in this state, he would never be able to understand the conditions under consideration here. However, this is possible through the higher schooling mentioned above and described in this book, which is also called initiation. Through this training, the human being learns to develop similar organs in his astral body to those in his physical body for perceiving the physical world. And when these organs are developed, then a self-awareness arises during the dream that is also similar to that which he has during the waking day. When such a level of existence is reached, the entire dream world is indeed transformed to a considerable extent. It loses the confusing colorfulness that it has in the ordinary sleeper; and in its place comes an inner order and harmony that not only does not fall short of the ordinary physical world, but in terms of these qualities, it greatly surpasses it. Man becomes aware that there was always another world around him, in the same sense that the world of light and colors is around the blind man. He could only not see it because of the lack of organs of perception, just as the blind person before his operation can not see the world of light and colors. The significant moment when the astral organs of perception begin to be active in man is called awakening or rebirth in the occult science.

In this moment of awakening, the human being experiences that he is surrounded by a higher world in which not only the things of the sensual world that he previously knew have different properties, but in which there are facts and entities that were previously unknown to him. - And now it also becomes clear to him that in this other world the images from which the things of the sensual world are formed are present. It is not an inappropriate comparison to say that the way the physical world arises out of the astral world is like the formation of ice from water. Just as ice is transformed water, so the physical world is the transformed astral world. And just as water is a fluid element, so the astral world is the background of the physical world as an ever-changing world of images. Nothing fixed or closed can be found in its forms, as in the ordinary world. Everything flows into each other, transforms itself. And a physical thing or a physical being only comes into being when one of these flowing images freezes for a moment. Anyone who tries to apply the concepts of the physical world, with its fixed boundaries, to the astral realm, only reveals their lack of real insight into this very different world.

Just as the beings of the physical world are embodied in the physical body, so the astral images are the expression of entities that do not enter the physical world. They find this expression in a different substance from that of the physically living human being, who finds his in flesh and blood.

What then is this astral substance? It is none other than that which man actually has within himself. It is only during the waking hours of everyday life that it is, as it were, covered over by the sensual perceptions. These sensual perceptions are linked to human desires, wishes and abominations, to his sympathies and antipathies. He desires one object and rejects another. The source from which the dream consciousness also draws when it transforms things into symbols is to be sought in nothing other than these desires, wishes and abominations. The self-awareness of daytime life, with its external perceptions, provides the desires and longings with the corresponding nourishment. When the activities of the external senses cease, another creative force takes over and forms images out of the material of desires and longings. Secret Science says that the dreaming person is in the astral body, which is woven from desires and longings, and that the physical body is abandoned by the self-consciousness. In the case of the initiate or the awakened person, the situation is such that he has also abandoned his physical body, but his self-consciousness dwells in his astral body. Just as the physical body can mediate the perception of physical things because its organs are formed from the same substance as the physical world, so the initiate can perceive the beings of the astral world because he has organs made of the substance of desires and longings, in which they find their expression.

The difference between the uninitiated and the initiated person is that the astral world is not visible to the former as an external world, and is to the latter. This astral world remains for the unawakened a mere inner world; he experiences it in his desires and longings; but he does not see it. The initiate not only feels his desire; he perceives it as a thing of the external world, just as the unawakened perceives tables and chairs.

Now, the ordinary dream world is only a faint echo of this world of the initiate. It can only be this because self-awareness is not involved in it. But where is this self-awareness during the dream? It has withdrawn into a higher world in which the human being is not present as such at first. The relationship between the human being and this world can initially be clarified by means of a comparison. Think of a human hand and a tool that it is holding. As long as the hand holds the tool, the two form a unity, as it were. The latter performs the actions determined by the former. But as soon as the hand lets go of the tool, the tool is left to its own devices; and the movements of the hand are only expressions of the will in the person to whom it belongs. Thus, during the waking hours of daily life, the physical body must be seen as a tool of the limb of a higher being. When this higher being extends a member into the physical body, sensory activity and thus self-awareness occur in the body. When this member leaves the body, self-awareness ceases. Thus, the innermost being of the human being, which can have self-awareness, is a member of a higher being, from which it is temporarily extended and covered with the physical body. But we shall form an even better idea of this if we regard the stretching out as a severing, as if during wakefulness a drop detached itself from the higher being, and during sleep it is absorbed again. For during wakefulness man is not conscious of his connection with a higher entity; he is therefore actually cut off from it. During sleep he must lack self-consciousness, for it withdraws into the higher entity; this absorbs it; and he thus rests enclosed in it.

When dreamless sleep sets in, the world of images disappears. The physical body appears to lie there completely unconscious; in reality, however, its state of consciousness is only one that is even duller than in dream-filled sleep. The power that generates images has also left the physical body. Therefore, only the insights of the awakened can provide enlightenment about this state. The unawakened lack the perceptions about it. For the awakened, however, the image-generating body, which was previously loosely connected to the physical body, appears to be lifted out of it. And it is now not inactive, but has the task of restoring the physical body's energies, which are showing signs of exhaustion due to fatigue, to their proper strength. This explains the refreshing effect of healthy sleep. The physical body sinks into sleep exhausted. In this moment it surrenders its self-awareness to higher beings. In the intermediate state of dream sleep, the soul still remains in a loose connection with the physical body. The characteristic of this soul is its creativity. With the moment of waking up, it begins to apply its creative power to processing the perceptions mediated by the senses into the human inner life. At the moment of falling asleep, external sensory perceptions cease. In the intermediate state of dreaming, the creative process is still shaping itself into the symbols described; then these symbols also fall away; the soul applies its entire creative power to the body, which it now works on from the outside. - Anyone who wants to disregard the communications of esoteric science could, from the fact of refreshing himself in the morning upon awakening, see what characterizes the soul's nocturnal activity. The life of the day has something disharmonious and chaotic about it. The things of the physical environment affect people from all sides. Sometimes this, sometimes that, finds its way into their inner being. This disrupts the inner formative forces, which are accorded by their original nature. During the night, this is balanced out again. The soul restores order and harmony. During the waking life, the physical body gradually looks like an air mass, which is permeated on all sides by wind currents, and whose parts move in an irregular manner. When we awaken, however, it can be compared to an air mass that is set into regular vibrations by the rhythm and harmony of a piece of music. And in fact, for the initiate, the soul's work on the body during sleep appears as a resounding of the two. During sleep, the human being immerses himself in the harmony of the soul's life. And this is the same harmony from which he was formed. Before the physical body first opened itself up to the outer world through the sense organs, it was completely under the influence of this harmony, which structured it. This harmony permeates the whole world as the harmony of the soul. Man is surrounded by its sounds just as he is surrounded by the images described above. Just as this world of images becomes perceptible to the awakened one through schooling as his real environment, so too, on a still higher level, this third world. It begins to resound and resound around him. And in these tones, the meaning of the world reveals itself to him. Just as the form of the physical world arose out of the images, so these forms received their inner meaning and essence from the sounds described. From this point of view, all things are sounds that have become form.

Thus, during waking hours, man is a being composed of three parts: the physical body, which perceives the physical world through the organs implanted in it from the external world and encompasses self-awareness; a body that has mobile character; its images are at the same time the archetypes of the physical body, whose clearly defined forms have arisen, as it were, through solidification from the changing images of the second body; and furthermore, both the physical and the image body are permeated by a harmony of sound, a third body. In the dream-sleep the soul withdraws from the physical body; it still remains in connection with the other two bodies, permeating the tone body and interspersing the image body with images. These latter penetrate into the physical body and communicate the shadowy images of the dream to it. In dreamless sleep the soul is connected only with the sound body; what was in the physical body during waking is now outside it and works upon it from without. The activity flowing from the soul into the physical body produces in it such a dull consciousness that it is not perceived by the person.

In fact, there are three states of consciousness of the physical body: waking consciousness, dream consciousness and dreamless sleep consciousness. For the initiate, the dullness of the last two states of consciousness brightens; through this illumination, he lives in higher worlds, just as the unawakened person lives in the physical world during waking life. There are thus five states of consciousness, which, according to their increasing brightness, can be categorized as follows:

1. the consciousness during sleep without dreams
2. the dream-sleep
3. the waking consciousness during the day
4. the consciousness of the pictures of the initiate
5. the consciousness of the sounds of the initiate.

If we consider that through training in esoteric science the last two states of consciousness are attained by the initiate as a higher stage of development of humanity, it will readily be apparent that the waking consciousness also represents a higher stage of the two subordinate states of consciousness, and thus has developed out of them. This is what is presented by esoteric science. It explains that in the distant past man passed through a stage of development in which he had only a dull consciousness of sleep, interspersed with no dream images; then he rose to a dull dream consciousness, to finally arrive at the waking day consciousness of today. The person to be initiated continues this line of development. He develops the two higher forms of consciousness. But now an even higher kind of consciousness is attainable for this initiate. It can be seen from the above that even in sound consciousness the soul is still connected with the human body. This connection can cease altogether. The soul can leave the body completely. This is what the initiate learns. And then he must have developed organs of an even higher kind than before if he still wants to perceive anything. If this is the case, then the meaning of the world is expressed directly in his surroundings, without the mediation of sound. This is called the highest level of consciousness, the spiritual or purely spiritual consciousness. In the sense of the preceding list of levels of consciousness, this would have to correspond to a state in the present-day human being that represents an even duller consciousness than the dreamless consciousness of sleep. In terms of meaning, this is certainly the case. But the present human being cannot live this state in reality. His soul would then have to be completely outside the body; the dreamless sleep would have to be interrupted by a completely soulless state. This would in fact be tantamount to the physical body being temporarily abandoned to itself, that is, to a temporary killing. The physical body must not be exposed to this if it is not to run the risk of no longer being receptive to the soul.

In development, however, this state has indeed preceded dreamless sleep consciousness, so that the complete series of human consciousness levels is this:

1. a low, dull consciousness
2. a dreamless sleep consciousness
3. a dream consciousness
4. the bright day consciousness
5. the image consciousness
6. the sound consciousness
7. the spiritual consciousness.

The human body has only penetrated as far as the fourth level of consciousness in the present. The initiate can reach the higher levels of consciousness. But they also lead him to higher worlds. The development of man is to be imagined in such a way that the physical body has formed itself through the first three stages and has currently assumed such a form that it still shows two other forms of consciousness during sleep as remnants of previous stages. The first stage has been completely erased by evolution. The three higher levels of consciousness of the initiate cannot at present express themselves in the physical human body because the body cannot develop organs for them. They are prophetic prefigurations of forms that this physical body will yet take.

If we start from these considerations and try to form a correct picture of the present world, it presents itself as fourfold: first the physical world of the bodily senses, then, enveloping and permeating the former, a world of images, then a world of sound that interpenetrates both of these, and finally a spiritual world that underlies them all.

This world was preceded by another in which man lived like a dreaming creature. His physical body was then in the state in which it is during dream-filled sleep. The surroundings resembled a panorama of moving pictures. There were no fixed outlines of things. This state was interrupted by another one, which corresponds to the present dreamless sleep. And this in turn was followed by one that can no longer be realized today and that was filled by the first of the forms of consciousness characterized above.

In an even earlier world, man could not rise to an experience of dream images either. His highest consciousness was that of dreamless sleep, and this state was interrupted by the lower, dullest consciousness, which is already blurred at present; this in turn was interrupted by a state that has lost all significance for present development.

In the first world, to which occult science points back, man also lacked the dull consciousness of sleep; the first of the described states is his highest; two others, which are not considered today, alternated with it.

Thus we look back into the remote past of evolution; we survey four stages through which the physical human body has passed. But we also look into the future, in which the three forms of consciousness, which are today accessible to initiates in higher worlds, will find their realization in the physical world. Our world will be replaced by a future one in which physical human bodies will have organs through which a self-aware human being will perceive an eternally moving world of images, and indeed see himself as such. And further on, one sees a world in which the images will be permeated by harmonious sounds that will express their inner essence. Finally, a world with a spiritual nature, but which will have poured out its spirit into physical nature.

This is how esoteric science presents the development of the world in which man passes through his successive stages. And it designates these stages of development by names, which have then been transferred to the planets surrounding the earth as designations. The stage of development at which man stood with the most dull consciousness is called Saturn development; the second, in which man lived with the consciousness of dreamless sleep, as solar development; the third, in which dream consciousness appeared, as lunar stage; the fourth, the present one, in which man has struggled to the point of clear day consciousness, as earth development. And the stages of the future, on which the levels of consciousness that are currently attained by initiates in higher worlds will find their physical expression, are successively called the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan developments.

The difference between the states of consciousness of the initiate and the states of consciousness of future human beings during the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan developments lies in the fact that the former must rise to higher worlds in order to live in the corresponding consciousnesses, whereas future human beings will have them in the physical world. This is because the initiate of the present time forms corresponding organs of perception out of the forces of the higher worlds; in the future, equivalent ones will arise out of the physical environment in the physical body of man. Man can perceive as his environment precisely that world which provides the material for his organs. In the future, the physical environment will have formative forces that currently still belong to the higher worlds alone. Thus, the development of the world can be described as a succession of higher and higher physical embodiments. The earth is a fourth embodiment. Its physical structure enables it to impress the organs for clear day-consciousness on the human body. In the sense of esoteric science, it developed out of another physical state in which it could imprint on the body only the organs for dream consciousness. This state is designated by the name 'moon'. Thus the earth forms out of this 'moon' by acquiring a new faculty, namely, the development of the organs for waking consciousness. The 'moon' has come into being out of the 'sun'. That which has now become Earth was therefore then “Sun”. Secret science describes as the “solar state” the state in which the world body that is in a human body can only generate the organs for dreamless sleep consciousness. And before the Earth was “Sun” in this sense, it was at the stage of “Saturn”.

How does such a world body acquire the power to form the corresponding organs in the human body? It could never do so if these organs were not preformed in relation to higher worlds by human beings that are ahead of us. By preforming the Jupiter organs in the present in higher worlds, the initiates create the possibility that the surrounding world of images takes on a physical character. The solidification into the physical-corporeal is effected by the forms that are to take it on first being there in a spiritual way. Thus the initiates become the transformers of the world body they inhabit. The formative forces radiate from them, as it were, which subsequently call into existence the things of the physical human environment.

Thus the initiates of the lunar stage have spiritually prefigured the physical form of the earth. The present-day earthly environment of man formed the content of their soul experiences. They perceived the earth as their object of a higher world.

In this sense, esoteric science recognizes seven great world cycles, or world periods, through which passes that being which, in its fourth stage, represents the earth. Each such period is linked to an upward transformation of the human body. - Out of this knowledge, this science sees in the “fourfold” that which characterizes the present stage of world development. What, for example, Pythagoras and his school designated by the “fourfold” is characterized by this. The “four” is the number of the “great world”, that is to say, of the world which man now inhabits. It has raised him to the fourth stage of consciousness.

Secret Science contrasts the human being with this “small world” of this “great world.” In his potentialities, he already has within him, as soul, that which the “great world” is to become physically. He is therefore on the way to expanding his inner “small world” into the “great world.” Within him is the creative womb of the latter. In this sense, esoteric science sees in the soul a creative germ for the future, an “inner being” that strives to realize itself in an outer being.

But in order to be creative in the outer world, this soul must first mature. It must first experience inwardly what it is later to shape outwardly. For example, before the soul possessed the ability to impress organs upon the physical body for the waking consciousness during the day, it itself first had to go through a series of developmental stages in which it gradually acquired this ability. Thus, the soul first had to experience within itself the first state of consciousness before it could create it; and so correspondingly for the other forms of consciousness. In The Secret Science, these developmental stages of the soul that precede the creation of the types of consciousness within it are called stages of life. There are therefore seven stages of life, just as there are seven stages of consciousness. Life differs from consciousness in that the former has an inner character, while the latter is based on a relationship to the outer world.

Applied to the earth, one can say that before the bright state of daytime consciousness appeared on it, this world body had to pass through four states, which can be understood as four stages of life.

The stages of soul experience arise when one thinks in an internalized way about what is perceived in the states of consciousness as the external world. First, there is the dullest state of consciousness that precedes dreamless sleep. In this latter state, the soul works harmoniously on the body; its corresponding state of life is the harmonization of one's own inner being. It thus permeates itself with a world of sounding movement. Before that, in the dullest state of experience, it was in its own motionless inner being. It felt this inner being through on all sides with indiscriminate indifference. This lowest state of life is called the first elemental realm. It is an experience of matter in its original state. Matter comes into being through the most diverse directions of movement and agitation. The first level of life is the first elementary realm, which is the self-awareness of this mobility. The second level is reached when rhythm and harmony arise from these movements. The corresponding level of life is the inner awareness of rhythm as sound. This is the second elementary realm. The third stage develops when the movements transform into images. Then the soul lives in itself as in a world of images that are both formed and dissolved. This is the third elementary realm. In the fourth stage, the images take on fixed forms: a single element emerges from the changing panorama. This means that it can no longer be experienced inwardly, but perceived outwardly. This realm is the realm of the outer bodies. In this realm, one must distinguish between the form that it has for the bright day-consciousness of man and the form that it experiences in itself. The body actually experiences its form within itself, that is, the substance forming itself into regular shapes. On the next level, this mere experience of form is overcome; instead, the experience of changing form occurs. The form forms itself and transforms itself. It can be said that at this stage the third elementary realm appears in a higher form. In the third elementary realm, movement from form to form can only be experienced as an image; in this fifth realm, the image solidifies into an external object, but this external object does not die in the form, but retains its ability to change. This realm is that of growing and reproducing bodies. And its ability to transform itself is manifested in growth and reproduction. In the next realm, the ability to experience the external in its effect on the internal is added. It is the realm of sentient beings. The last realm to be considered is that which not only experiences the effect of external things within itself, but also experiences their internal reality. This is the realm of compassionate beings. Thus the stages of life can be categorized as follows:

1. dull material experience
2. experience of inner movement
3. experience of inner shaping
4. experience of a fixed boundary
5. experience of transformation
6. experience of the effects of the outside world as sensation
7. experiencing the outside world.

The inner experiencing of the soul must first be preceded by the creative activity of this life. For nothing can be experienced that has not first come into existence. While the Science of Mystery designates the inner experiencing as soul-life, it designates the creative activity as spiritual life. The [physical body] perceives through organs; the soul experiences itself inwardly; the spirit creates outwardly. Just as the seven stages of consciousness are preceded by seven soul experiences, so these soul experiences are preceded by seven types of creative activity. In the realm of creativity, the dull experience of matter corresponds to the bringing forth of that matter. Matter flows into the world in an indifferent way. This realm is called formless. In the next stage, the substance divides and its parts enter into relationship with each other. Thus we are dealing with different substances that combine and separate. This realm is called the realm of form. On the third level, matter itself no longer needs to enter into a relationship with matter, but forces emanate from matter, matter attracts and repels matter, etc. This is the astral realm. On the fourth level, something material appears, shaped by the forces of the environment, which on the third level merely regulated the external relationships and which now work on the inside of the beings. This is the realm of the physical. A being at this level is a mirror of its environment; the forces of the latter work on its structure. Further progress consists in the fact that the being not only structures itself in accordance with the forces of its environment, but also takes on an outer physiognomy that bears the imprint of this environment. If a being in the fourth stage presents a mirror of its environment, then one in the fifth stage expresses this environment physiognomically. This is why this stage is called the physiognomic stage in esoteric science. At the sixth stage, the physiognomy becomes an emanation of itself. A being at this stage forms the things in its environment in the same way that it has only just formed itself. This is the stage of forming. And at the seventh stage, forming develops into creating. The being that has arrived there creates forms in its environment that replicate, on a small scale, what its environment is on a large scale. This is the stage of creativity.

The development of the spiritual is thus divided into the following stages:

1. Formlessness
2. Shaping
3. Incorporation of power
4. Shaping in the sense of the forces of the environment
5. Physiognomic expressiveness
6. Formative power
7. Creative ability.

When the development of Saturn began, the human body was in a state of formlessness. It first had to develop the creative ability before a soul could experience its first material life in it. This means that the body first had to develop through the seven stages of creative activity before its soul could live through it. This soul must now come so far that it can communicate its inner movement to each of the seven forms of the body. The first time the body passes through its seven forms, it is still quite lifeless. It only comes to life at the seventh stage, when the body becomes creative. And it must now awaken, because the body expends substance in its creative activity. These must be replaced by the soul. And now a second cycle begins. The substance that flows into the body as a replacement passes through the seven stages from formlessness to creative ability. When it has reached this point, the soul no longer limits itself to the experiences that the movement of the incoming substance brings about, but instead begins a new stage of life. The incoming substance, having itself become creative, begins to fill the body internally. Before, it only made up for what was lost; now it is deposited in the body. And again it passes through all forms from formlessness to creative ability. First it is deposited in the body without taking on form, then it gradually takes on forms, develops powers, fashions structures, gives them a physiognomic expression, etc. During this entire cycle, the soul undergoes its third stage of life. It harmonizes this inner structure and balances what has been disturbed by the inner processes. When the material has been shaped internally, it then proceeds to a fourth stage, in which it allows the outside world to have an effect on it. It can do this because the soul that inhabits it has now matured to experience the impressions of its surroundings in a dull way and thus to repeatedly restore order to the disorders caused by the outside world. In the next cycle, the body no longer stops at organizing itself; it transforms itself under the influence of the outside world. The soul has matured to regulate this transformation. Then a cycle begins for the body in which it perceives the effects of the outside world as sensations. The soul again forms the regulator of this level of existence. Finally, the body has reached its last stage: it can experience the outside world. The soul is now so far that it experiences a next stage, namely the next level of consciousness in a higher world for the Saturn existence. It thus undergoes the dreamless state of sleep during this last Saturn cycle. And it now transfers this to the physical body during the first solar cycle.

It is evident that the physical human body has gone through a physical stage seven times during the Saturn cycle. Each time it reached such a stage, the soul attained a higher level of experience. At the seventh stage, it went beyond Saturn's development and pointed to the stage of the sun in its experience.

When the solar cycle begins, the physical body is ready to take on its own form. Whereas the soul used to be the regulator of this form, it now has its own form within it. This is called the etheric body. The soul is no longer in direct contact with the physical body; the etheric body stands between them as a mediator. Its experiences are transferred to this etheric body, as they were previously transferred to the physical body. Now, the seven formative states must first be passed through again by this etheric body, from formlessness to creative activity. As the etheric body has a formative effect on the physical body, it loses its tension progressively. And this is repeatedly regulated by the soul. In a similar way, the development of the sun also passes through seven physical stages. And in each of these, the soul appears at a higher level; in the seventh, it presents a new state of consciousness. While it is still witnessing how the etheric body becomes the creator of new forms that replicate the entire solar world, it already senses within itself a world of images that undulates within it.

During the first cycle of the moon, she transfers this world of images to the etheric body, which now shapes the physical body in accordance with these soul images. Just as the formative etheric body has been interposed between the physical body and the soul at the stage of the sun, so now the characterized image body is interposed between the physical body and the soul. In esoteric science, it is called the sentient body. For just as human sensations flow from the outside world into the inside world, as it were, and thus make the content of the outside world the property of the inside world, so the images of the image body work from the inside out, imprinting their content on the ether body, which in turn transmits it to the physical body.

During the development of the moon, the human being again passes through all states of form seven times, in order to allow the soul to mature to a higher level in each of them. During the seventh stage, the soul has the ability to give its images the most perfect form; it can experience everything that is going on around it on the world body, so that its world of images is an expression of the whole moon world. At the same time, it has the heightened state of consciousness of the next stage as a previous experience; it begins to see fixed forms within its world of images. This makes it ripe to also affect the etheric body in such a way that it forms organs within itself that have something lasting. - And with that, the transition can be made to the first earthly cycle. Within it, the physical body takes up the fixed forms of images; these become its organs. Thus a fourth link begins to develop in the human being. Between the image body and the soul, the perceptions of external objects are inserted. In a certain sense, the body has now outgrown the soul; it has become independent. What occurred in it before were the results of the images that the soul has appropriated from the outside world. Now the outside world directly causes perceptions in it. And the inner life of the soul proceeds as a co-experiencing of these perceptions. The expression of this inner life of the soul is self-consciousness. But self-consciousness matures only gradually. First, the human being must go through a cycle of forms in which only a dull material life is felt in his organs; in a second cycle, the influence of matter causes an inner movement; the etheric body thereby experiences the outer world and transforms the organs into living tools of the physical organism. In a third cycle, the body of images also becomes capable of reproducing the external world. It now stimulates the organs in such a way that they themselves produce images that live within them, but are not yet copies of external things. Only in the fourth cycle does the soul itself become capable of permeating the bodily organs; in doing so, it detaches the images from these bodily organs and covers external things with them. Thus an external world stands before it, with which it enters into opposition as an inner, independent being. But now it is also the case that from time to time the bodily organs it uses become exhausted. Then the possibility of being in contact with the outer world ceases. Sleep sets in, during which the soul again acts on the physical body in a balancing way through the image and etheric bodies. Thus, for esoteric science, sleep appears as a vestige of earlier stages of development. In the present day, human beings have gone a little way beyond the middle of the fourth Earth cycle. This is expressed in the fact that they not only perceive external objects in their clear day-time consciousness, but also the laws on which they are based. The soul has begun to experience the inner transformation of things.

During the Saturn development, the human body was at the stage of dullest consciousness. However, one should not assume that other levels of consciousness were not present in beings that had their existence in connection with this earlier embodiment of the earth at that time. Above all, there was a being present at that time that had a consciousness equivalent to the present waking day consciousness of man. But since the conditions in the vicinity of Saturn were quite different from those on Earth, this level of consciousness also had to operate in a significantly different way.

The Earth human has minerals, plants and animals around him as objects of perception. He regards these entities as being below him, and regards himself as a higher being in relation to them. With the Saturn being, the opposite was the case. It had three groups of entities above itself and had to consider itself the lowest link in the realm of what was perceptible to it. In The Secret Science, these three higher groups of entities were given different names, depending on the language of the people and the time to which the secret teachers belonged. The designations of Christian esoteric science, listed from top to bottom, are: dominions (Kyriotetes), powers (Dynamis) and authorities (Exusiai). The being characterized joins as the fourth and lowest link, just as the earthly human being joins the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms as the highest link. In keeping with these very different conditions, the nature of perception itself was also different. The initiate knows this nature from experience, for it is equivalent to what he reaches as his third stage, beyond waking day-consciousness: spiritual consciousness. It is as if the impressions do not come to the senses from external objects, but as if they push their way to the senses from within, flow outwards from them and encounter objects and beings out there, in order to reflect on them and then appear in their reflection to consciousness. This was the case with the Saturnian being. It poured its life-force out upon the things of the planet, and from all sides the reflection was thrown back to it in the most manifold ways. It perceived its own life from all sides in the form of a mirror image. And the things that reflected back its essence were the beginnings of the physical human body. For the planet consisted of them. What was otherwise perceived did not appear on the planet, but in its surroundings. The beings called Exusiai (forces) appeared as radiant beings that illuminated the world body from all sides. Saturn itself was a dark body in itself; it received its light not from dead sources of light, but from these beings that inhabited its surroundings and illuminated it as radiant beings. Their light revealed itself to the perception of the Saturn being in the same way that the animal body is presently perceived by man. The beings, which are called Dynamis (Powers), revealed themselves in a similar way from the periphery through spiritual tones, and the Kyriotetes (Dominions) through what is called in esoteric science the world aroma, a kind of impression that can be compared to the present smell.

Just as the terrestrial man rises above the perceptions of external things to ideas that only live within him, so the Saturnian being, in addition to the entities mentioned, which revealed themselves to him from within, also recognized entities that he perceived from without; in Christian esoteric science they are called seraphim, cherubs and thrones. There is nothing in the sphere of experience of man on earth that can be compared with the exalted characteristics in which they appeared at that time. Finally, this Saturn being was aware of a third kind of fellow inhabitants. They populated the interior of the planet. This consisted only of a composition of human bodies, as far as they had developed at that time. If you want to get an idea of these bodies, you can do so by comparing them to automata made of the finest ethereal material during the times when they appeared in physical form. As such, they reflected the life of the Saturn beings; but they themselves were completely without life and without all sensation. But they were inhabited by two kinds of beings, which developed their life and their ability to feel within them. These needed a certain basis for this. For they lacked their own physical body, and yet they were so predisposed that they could only develop their higher abilities in one. Therefore, they used the human physical body.

Thus, the physical, soul and spiritual elements were present on Saturn in a similar way to how they occur on Earth. However, on Earth they come together to form the threefold nature of man: his body, his soul and his spirit. Each of these parts of the human being consists of three sub-parts: the body of the physical, the etheric body and the sentient body; the soul of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul; the spirit of the spirit self, the spirit of life and the spiritual man. On Saturn, the physical, the soul and the spiritual are not present as members of one entity, but as independent entities: the physical body as the first formation of the human body and the actual material basis of the planet itself; the etheric body as an angel, the sentient body as an archangel; the sentient soul is represented by the characterized Saturn being itself, the mind soul by the forces, the consciousness soul by the powers, the spirit self by the dominions, the life spirit by the thrones, the spiritual being by the cherubim; the seraphim stand above all.

Saturn, in the times when it was on its physical level, thus represented a composite body consisting of fine etheric bodies; within it, the angels and archangels ruled as the life and nerve forces currently do in the human body. And just as the human body has sensory organs on the outside, so Saturn itself was covered with nothing but senses on its surface; only these senses were not receptive, but reflective. They reflected everything that made an impression from the orbit of the world body. There the luminous powers irradiated the surface of Saturn, and their light was reflected back many times over from the surface of the same. Sounds from the powers resounded, and these sounds were reflected back into space as a manifold echo; finally, the surface of Saturn was illuminated by the aroma of the powers, and it returned this in a manifoldly changed form. And the soul life of that marked Saturn being consisted in the perception of all these reflections. One can call this being the actual planetary spirit of Saturn. For there was indeed only one of its kind, just as in the human being there is a multiplicity of members, senses, etc., but only one self-consciousness. The whole of Saturn was the body of this planet spirit.

The development of Saturn now consisted of seven cycles, which represent the unfolding of the soul's life. In each of these seven cycles, the planet passes through the seven forms, from formlessness to creative ability. In the first cycle, the Thrones form the directing soul element; in the second, the Dominations; in the third, the Powers; in the fourth, the Authorities; and in the fifth, the Saturn Planetary Spirit itself. This did not have full, clear consciousness right from the beginning of Saturn's development, but only acquired it in the fourth cycle. It is only then that it actually experiences the planetary processes in a spiritual way. Thus, in the fifth cycle, it can itself work as a soul. During the fifth cycle, the archangels develop an inner soul life, the content of which is taken from the Saturn processes. They can do this by making use of the human bodies that have been developed for them into the appropriate instruments. This enables them to lead the sixth cycle as independent souls. The same applies to the seventh cycle with the angels.

In the fifth cycle, the planetary spirit of Saturn could not function as a soul in the way characterized if it remained within the body of Saturn. For the nature of the latter does not permit such a thing. The Saturn spirit must therefore step out of the body of Saturn and act upon it from the outside. Thus, in this cycle, a separation of Saturn into two celestial bodies takes place. Of these, however, the one that has emerged can be described as the soul of Saturn. It is, as it were, the prophetic prefiguration of the next planetary embodiment: the sun. Thus, during its fifth, sixth and seventh cycles, Saturn is orbited by a kind of sun, just as the Earth is currently orbited by its moon.

Something similar must occur in the sixth cycle for the archangels. They leave the mass of Saturn and orbit it as a new planet, which is called Jupiter in the secret science. And in the seventh cycle, something similar happens with regard to the angels. They draw their mass out of that of Saturn and orbit it as an independent planet. In esoteric science, this planet is called Mars. These are processes that have already taken place in a similar way during the previous Saturn cycles. In the third cycle, the forces guided the soul's development. During the fourth, they left the planet and orbited it as a brightly shining independent planet, which in esoteric science is called Mercury. In the third cycle, the same thing happened with the powers, which became independent as the planet Venus.

Within the development of the sun, the previously automatic body of man comes to life within itself. This happens because the light, which previously irradiated Saturn from the orbit as an emanation of the luminous beings, is now absorbed by the components of the solar body itself. The Sun becomes a shining planet. The perfected human bodies develop a shining life. The world aroma now sounds in from the surroundings, and it flows from the corresponding beings.

A transformation has taken place with the Saturn planetary spirit. It has multiplied. Seven have come out of One. Just as the seed is one and in the ear that forms out of it there are many, all of the same nature as the one, so out of the One Saturn Planetary Spirit, in the transition to the sun stage, seven shoots germinate. And his life now becomes different. He acquires the ability to perceive a sphere that stands one stage lower than he does. This is possible because a number of human bodies, having remained behind in their development, have stopped at the Saturn level. They are thus unable to receive the radiant life of the Sun. They form dark spots within the radiant Sun planet. They perceive the seven Sun Spirits, who have emerged from the Saturn Planetary Spirit, as a kingdom of nature standing above them. And so these seven entities live on the surface of the sun. Among them they perceive a realm whose beings have bodies that are one level lower than the bodies of the human beings on the sun. These bodies themselves, however, give them the nourishment they need in the light they radiate. While the Saturn bodies were only the reflectors of the Saturn spirit, the sun bodies take on the same position in relation to the sun spirits that the sun currently occupies with its light in relation to the beings of the plant kingdom. In terms of bodily organization, the human being during the development of the sun is on the same level as a plant being. It would not be correct to say that he himself passed through the plant kingdom at that time. For a plant kingdom, as it is today, can only develop under the unique conditions of the earth. If one wants to use a comparison in this regard, one would have to imagine the human body of the sun as a plant being that turns towards its own planet organs similar to those that a plant currently develops as a flower. And just as the present plant receives its light from an external sun, so the human sun plant received its light from its own planet, which was, after all, a sun. What the plant sinks into the earth as its root was turned towards the incoming sounds and odours in the solar body; it absorbed them and processed them within itself. One could call the present plant a human body that has remained at the stage of the sun and has turned completely around. It therefore stretches the organs of growth and reproduction, which the human being has covered and turned downwards, chaste towards the sun upwards.

In this way, the human body was only fully developed during the fourth solar cycle. The three previous cycles were a preparation for this. The first cycle is actually only a repetition of the existence on Saturn. And its seven stages of formation are seven repetitions of the stages of life in the cycle on Saturn. But it is only in the second solar cycle that life flashes in the human body. The human body is not yet fully developed enough for the archangels, who take up their position on the sun that the planetary spirit occupied on Saturn, to find satisfaction in this life. Rather, the powers that can flow from this life absorb the strength. During the third cycle, the seven entities that arose from the spirit of Saturn take their place; and during the fourth cycle, the archangels live in the life of the earthly bodies, as the planetary spirit was reflected in the bodies of Saturn. During the fifth course of the sun, the archangels ascend to a higher level of existence, and the angels take their place on the planet. During the sixth course of the sun, the angels have also developed so highly that they no longer require the physical part of the human body; they only use the incoming and outgoing light for their purposes in order to live in it. The physical human body has become an independent entity, the model for the present physical body of man. And at this stage it also behaves entirely like a physical apparatus; only like one whose parts are alive. It is, so to speak, a living sensory instrument, but its perceptions are not absorbed by itself. It lacks the necessary degree of consciousness for this. He is in a plant-like sleep, which is his highest level of consciousness. What is conceived in him as perceptions passes into the consciousness of the angels, archangels, etc., depending on the sequence of the various solar cycles. These higher beings watch over the sleeping human body.

What, then, are the causes under the influence of which the sun developed out of Saturn? We can recognize them by taking a look at the final stages of Saturn's development. Let us assume that the seventh cycle has reached the fourth stage of form, the physical. The human body has developed to such an extent that it can serve the angels as sensory organs that reflect their nature. At this stage, they have a kind of human consciousness, which, however, is only granted to them through the use of the senses of the human body. Higher beings work on the planet from the same orbit. They successively develop the higher levels of consciousness. At the moment when the angels also develop into such higher forms of consciousness, they can no longer make use of the human body. The consequence of this is that they leave the body. The person must die. But this means nothing other than that the physical Saturn body disintegrates before the physiognomic form of the seventh orbit develops. This physiognomic stage is therefore no longer physical at all. The planet only exists as a soul planet. The physical form sinks into the abyss. In the soul-planet the angels live in a superphysical consciousness of images. And the higher beings are active in it with corresponding higher forms of consciousness. At the moment when the angels, too, have outgrown this consciousness of images, the soul-planet must also disintegrate. In its place comes another on which the formative form is developed. But it only hovers in the world in which the earthly initiate finds himself when he dwells in the higher tone consciousness. For the same reasons, another planet develops from this planet, which belongs to an even higher world at the end of the seventh Saturn cycle. In it, the creative form of existence is realized. It has been shown that as the higher beings ascend into corresponding forms of consciousness, side planets of Saturn always separate out and have to float in higher worlds because Saturn's main form cannot accommodate such types of consciousness. But now Saturn itself is ascending to such higher worlds. The consequence of this is that every time he arrives in such a higher world, he unites with the secondary planet that is present in the same world. At the end of Saturn's seventh cycle, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury and the Sun are reunited with Saturn for this reason. Everything forms one world again. But in this One World is found the creative form of the Saturn life-power. Through this world, which has spiritualized itself in the manner indicated, is led back again to the lower stages of existence. This takes place in the evolution of the sun. In the course of its cycles, the planets formed out of Saturn emerge again. Each of them now appears only one step closer to physical existence.

If a human observer with senses could watch the development of the planets in their present form, he would only see the world body emerging from the darkness at certain intervals; in the long periods in between, when it only exists in higher worlds, it would disappear from such an observer. It would only remain recognizable to an observer whose consciousness can dwell in higher worlds. Therefore, one differentiates between the physical states of planetary existence during twilight or nighttime. However, one should not imagine that during such interim periods the planet and its beings fall into inactivity. This activity only falls into higher worlds and expresses itself in a much more real existence than the mere physical.

When the sun has completed its seven cycles, the time begins when the human body is so far developed that it can not only receive the influxes of light and be enlivened by them, but it acquires the ability to let the world of sound that flows around it, which is formed from the “powers”, take effect within itself and to reproduce it as sounds. At this stage of existence, which is called the development of the moon, the human body becomes a resounding entity. While the sound reflected back from the planet into the environment at the Saturn level was only an echo of the surroundings, it now sounds out into this environment in a changed way. It is so changed that it reflects what is going on in the human bodies in the most diverse way. These human bodies have thus taken up a third element into their being, the sentient body. For it is their inner nature: their world of feeling that resounds outwards. — But the seven entities that developed out of the Saturn spirit during the development of the sun have become seven times seven. Their environment has now become such that they experience their own world of feeling in the sentient bodies that have formed. These sentient bodies are the bearers of their bright day consciousness. They now feel themselves surrounded by two realms that are below them, and one that is above them. This realm hovering above them can be sensed from the realm of space as the aroma of the world; they experience themselves as sounding beings, and the two realms that are below them have come about because one area of human bodies has remained at the Saturn level, and a second at the sun level. Thus these moon beings are surrounded by automaton-like beings, who continue their Saturnian maturity on the moon under completely different conditions than they existed on Saturn itself; and furthermore, by plant-like sun bodies, which are in a similar situation. Thus, three types of beings are present in the actual mass of the moon. Those automaton-like beings that are dark within themselves and that have retained from Saturn the ability to radiate life around them. They are not inanimate beings in the sense of the present minerals. A mineral foundation such as the earth has did not exist on the moon at all. In its place was one that consisted of the characterized being. One gets an idea of it if one imagines it with a life that runs through it completely, so that on the moon, for example, instead of the mineral arable soil of our planet, there is a living, pulpy mass; in this, lignified parts are inserted like the rock masses into the softer rock of our earth. In this living foundation, which in its parts can be called plant minerals, the characterized solar beings were rooted, standing on a level between the present animal and the present plant. And the mobile beings that inhabited the moon were the human bodies, standing in the middle between animal and human in terms of their development. They were the hosts of the descendants of the Saturn planet spirit. But this could not have developed an alert day-consciousness in them. To live in such a consciousness, these beings had to step out of their bodies each time. When they were within the body, that is, when they were living its life, then they were only imbued with a consciousness filled with dream images. In this consciousness, they saw nothing of their physical surroundings; but they sounded their inner experiences into the environment. What was expressed in sounds during the sleep of the moon beings were their passions and desires. To emphasize only one aspect of this experience, it should be noted that what is now called the love life, for example, and which underlies reproduction, took place on the moon during the dream-filled sleep. The waking life of the day was without love or desire, devoted entirely to observing the world around him. The human ancestor on the moon knew nothing of sexual relationships in his waking life. What man today feels in sexual love was played out on the moon in dream images that only expressed in symbols what is now objective reality. Thus it was not the human forebears who experienced the world of images in an awakened state on the moon; rather, the beings who stood immediately above humanity, the angels, lived in this world. For them, the dream world of humanity played out, as it were, as bright reality of day. They watched over the dreaming world of humanity as the archangels watched over the world of the sun as it slept in a plant-like state.

The first two lunar cycles were only repetitions of earlier developmental states. The seven forms of the first cycle repeated the seven Saturn cycles, and the seven forms of the second the seven solar cycles.

In the third lunar cycle, the human body is so developed that the beings on the archangelic level experience its dream images as their environment; in the fourth cycle, this is the case with the angels. In this cycle, the descendants of the Saturn planet spirit can use the human body to such an extent that, when they envelop it from the outside and make use of it, they attain a bright daytime consciousness through it. In the fifth cycle, these beings have risen to such a height that they no longer need the physical human body; the latter now perceives its surroundings, but it only attains a low level of consciousness in relation to these perceptions. During this time, these beings require only the etheric body and the sentient body. In the sixth cycle, they also leave the etheric body to itself, and in the seventh, the sentient body.

The moon is a re-embodiment of the sun planet. Now, in the period in which the stage of sun development is repeated on the moon, that is, in the second cycle, the sun body emerges from its mass. Within this emerged sun body live those beings who have attained a level of consciousness and life for which no conditions can be found on the moon itself. During the second cycle, these are the elemental forces; during their life on the sun they have also experienced the life of the physical human body. Now on the moon, this stage of the sun only leads a stunted, retarded existence in the animal plants described above. The elemental forces cannot live in them. Rather, they animate these beings from the outside, sending them the light they need from their sun. During the third lunar cycle, the descendants of the Saturn planetary spirit have also risen to a level where they can no longer find existence on the moon. And so, during the fourth cycle, the archangels leave the moon, which in this period of time is also the dwelling place of the “angels”, just as the earth is later, in its fourth cycle, the dwelling place of human beings.

Just as the other planets gradually emerged during the development of the sun, so it happens to them again during the development of the moon. Only this time they are one step closer to physical existence: at the point in time when the moon is at the height of its development, that is, from the physical form of its fourth cycle onwards. During the fifth orbit, Mars, which is then inhabited by angels, takes on a fine, ethereal-physical form in the vicinity of the moon; during the sixth orbit, a similar process takes place in relation to Jupiter, the dwelling place of the archangels. During the seventh lunar cycle, finally, the same thing happens to Mercury. Mars and Jupiter have become even denser in the meantime; the former has a density that enables it to develop heat through the movements of its components and to flow out into space.

The development of the earth takes over the fruits that have ripened on the moon. The human body has passed through three stages of development. In the first stage, it was able to serve as a physical instrument of perception for those beings who had already advanced so far at the solar level that they could dispense with such an apparatus. Thus they already belonged to those beings who, from the outside, could dedicate their activity to the sun planet as creators. The place they held on Saturn was taken by the archangels on the sun. The Saturn planetary spirits did not have their corporeality on the sun planet, but in the creative powers that sustained the sun life. On the moon, the archangels had then become the creative powers. The angels of the moon, who at that time had a bright day-consciousness, could admire their corporeality when they looked up at their creators.

These three planetary stages of development were now repeated in the first three earth cycles. During these, the human body was to prepare itself to transform into experiences the images that had formed during the moon consciousness. It had to become capable not only of harboring a life and image body within itself, but also of inwardly reflecting its environment in its images. On the moon, he had progressed so far that his images could be contemplated by the angels. The moon body of man was the environment of the angels. And they had also progressed at the same time in the contemplation of the moon man; they had struggled through so that they could now create at a higher level what they had perceived on the moon. After all, in addition to the two realms that were below them, they still had the beings of their own kind in their environment. After the developments on the moon had come to an end, they were able to imprint their nature on the human body. The human being on earth could then see this in his physical surroundings while inhabiting his body, which the angels on the moon could only see when they ascended to a higher world: their own kind.

But only gradually could the human body be directed to such an ability. And that happened during the three earth cycles. In the first, he was able to perceive himself as he was on Saturn; in the second, as he was on the sun; in the third, as he was on the moon. During the first cycle of the earth, his fellow human beings were still nothing more than walking automatons to him; during the second, they appeared to him as plant-like creatures; and during the third, with animal-like characteristics.

When the fourth cycle began, man had become able to perceive the creations of the angels, his own kind, around him. But the angels were three levels of consciousness above him. They could create what he perceived. The human body now acquired four aspects: the physical aspect, which became a mirror of the environment; the living aspect, which could translate perceptions of the environment into internal movement; the aspect of images, which was able to transform internal movements into the character of symbols , and finally the body, which became the carrier of bright day-consciousness, which harmonizes the inner images with the impressions of the environment, and thus creates the connection between inner experience and the processes of the environment. But the bright consciousness of day remains limited to the outer world of the physical; the processes of life and the images of the body of images are experienced inwardly, but not perceived as the environment. His body of images remains the object of the next higher level of being, the angels, and his life body even that of the archangels. Everything in a person that is connected to the life body, the laws of its growth and reproduction, is therefore hidden from the person themselves; they only have the consciousness of it that is present in dreamless sleep. For the archangels, however, these processes are things of the external world and their workings, just as a person's work on a physical machine is present for them. And everything that is connected with the consciousness of images, the laws that are more mysterious to man, that give his face a certain expression and play of features, his walk etc. certain forms, thus what is expressed in his character, temperament etc., that is under the rule of the angels. Only what he achieves in his environment is under his own laws.

In the fourth cycle on earth, man has developed into a being that can be characterized in this way. But the angels, who during the stage of the moon had developed to the consciousness of creators, could no longer find a place for themselves on earth at the moment when the body of images began to belong to man himself, that is to say, from the time when the second cycle had passed its midpoint. Then they withdrew to a higher community with new living conditions; the sun separated itself from the earth again and from then on sent its forces to it from the outside.

In the third cycle of the earth, those human bodies that had not progressed far enough in the second cycle to have their image body supplied by the powers gathered on the sun, had to decline to a subordinate existence. They sank to the animal level from the animal-human level. Where could they now get the powers for their image body? They were no longer receptive to the solar powers of the perfected angels. But at every stage, beings fall behind in their development. They had fallen behind in their development until the third cycle of angels, and therefore could not find a place on the sun. During the second half of the third earth cycle they could not yet find the disposition to ascend to the sun. But they were also not made to continue to work on the image bodies of the perfecting human being. They had the gift of working only on such image bodies that had remained at the stage of lunar existence. Therefore, they withdrew from the earth's mass as the present moon. This is therefore a world body, which represents an earlier stage of the development of the earth in a hardened state, as it were. It is the dwelling place of those entities that did not want to become creators of the perfect human body. Their activity is found in the image bodies of animals; but they also continually direct their attacks at the image body of man, which is, after all, the sphere that has grown out of them. As soon as man strays even a little from devotion to his higher nature, which is revealed to him through the impressions of his senses, as soon as he falls prey to the powers that work in his image body, these beings gain influence over him. Their activity shows itself in wild dreams, in which the animal desires coming from his lower nature are reflected.

When the third cycle of the earth reaches beyond its center, where the earth has become physical for the third time, there are initially no conditions for the existence of the form of the physical human body, which can receive external perceptions. The physical element decays. The consequence of this is that the omission sin of the remaining angels is no longer felt so painfully by the beings that have ascended to the sun. The moon is therefore re-incarnated into the earth body. And when the cycle continues, when the whole earth has ascended to a higher world through the existence of images, it also reunites with the sun. In this way, the forces in the human body that were only able to see the animated body in their environment in the third cycle acquire creative ability. This enables them to enter the fourth cycle. At first, they are still in a world that can only be perceived by spiritual consciousness, but they gradually descend to ever deeper worlds. Finally, the human body is ready to develop organs of perception for its own kind in a fine ethereal form. The physical body thus acquires the abilities of its earthly form. This is also the point in time when the earth can no longer be a place of activity for the perfected angels; the sun emerges with them from the earth and shines on it from the outside. The physical body continues to develop. The images of the image body acquire a vividness that was previously not their own; the organs of the physical body feed them in the mirror images of external objects. The time has come when the outer earthly environment snatches these images from the remaining angels. These have to draw the part of the earth that can be their dwelling place out of the earth. The moon separates again from the earth and orbits it as its satellite planet.

What is the state of the human body at this point in time? It has developed its fourfold nature. It is organized in such a way that it can be the carrier of an etheric or life body, that it can house an image body. And in addition, its sense organs allow the earthly environment to be reflected in these images. The physical human body has now reached a completely new level. It reflects inward, just as it reflected outward the essence of the Saturn planet spirit on Saturn. As a result, that part of this spirit, which was then the lowest link of the same, can now live in him. This part therefore disconnects from the Saturn planet spirit; it loses the ability to receive the revelations of the upper realms and becomes the carrier of human self-awareness. Man learns to perceive himself as an 'I'. From now on, he bears within himself the nature that on Saturn the planetary spirit revealed like a circumference of the planet.

Thus, man has reached the stage at which the archangels revealed themselves in his [etheric body], the angels in his image body, and the planetary Saturn spirit in his self-awareness. He can now ascend to the level at which the Saturn spirit within him is able to have a relationship with the image body that is similar to that which the Saturn spirit itself attained when it gradually outgrew its own planetary existence and became an inhabitant of Jupiter. But since man remains an inhabitant of the earth, such forces can only have an effect on him from the outside. That is, the earth comes under the influence of the forces of Jupiter. At a later stage, something similar happens in relation to those beings who were at a stage where they only have an external effect on the etheric body from Mars. The earthly human being comes under the influence of Mars.

When the Sun, Earth and Moon still formed one body, the human body on this planet was made of a substance that had an air-like state. Apart from human bodies, the only ones present with a body in a liquid state were the descendants of the human animals of the Moon. The offspring of those lunar beings that lived there as plant minerals had reached the solid state. In addition to the liquid human animals, however, there were still animal-plant-like creatures in this [earth body] that had emerged from the plant animals of the moon. But while the former had a more watery appearance, the animal-plant-like creatures consisted of a dense, pulpy mass that, when it became coarse, approached the substance that currently forms mushrooms.

When the sun drew its matter out of the earth, so that the latter only had the mass of the moon left in it, all conditions on the planet changed. The substance of human bodies condensed into a liquid substance, which can be compared to today's blood. The previously liquid beings took on a solid form, and the solid plant minerals acquired a very dense materiality. Before the departure of the sun, the life of the human body was essentially a kind of breathing, an absorption and release of air-like material. After that, a way of nourishing itself developed out of the liquid environment. And reproduction was also connected with this nourishment. The viscous human body was fertilized from the reproductive material of its environment and split under such fertilizing influence. Its development, while the moon substance was still within the earth, proceeded in such a way that it formed semi-solid parts within its liquid mass, which condensed to the point of becoming cartilaginous. He could not yet form solid, bone-like limb inlays during this time, because the earth mass was not suitable for this as long as it contained the moon. Only with the departure of the moon, when the coarsest materiality was removed, did a solid framework develop in the human body. And this was also the time when the possibility of taking the fertilizing substances from the environment ceased. With the mass of the moon, the earth substances also lost the ability to have a fertilizing effect on the human body. In the time before, there were not two sexes in the human body. Man was a being of a feminine nature, to which the masculine essence in the earth environment itself was. The whole moon earth had a masculine character. With the departure of the moon, some of the human bodies were transformed into those with a male character. Thus, it absorbed the fertilizing forces that were previously contained in the sap of the earth itself. The female nature of the human body underwent such a transformation that it could be fertilized by the emerging masculinity. All this happened because a kind of double-sex human body changed into a single-sex one. The earlier human body fertilized itself with absorbed substances. Now the one form of the human body, the female, only received the power to mature what had been fertilized. This happened in such a way that the male power in her lost the ability to prepare the fruit material. This power remained only in the etheric or life body, which has to bring about the ripening. The male form of the human body lost the ability to do anything with the fruit material within itself. The feminine in her was limited to the etheric body. Thus it is that in present-day humans, the etheric body of man is female, but that of woman is [male]. The acquisition of these abilities coincides with the development of a solid skeleton.

But this was preceded by another important process. When the human body changed from an airy to a liquid consistency, the ability to absorb airy matter in a special organ was created at the same time. This marked the beginning of separate breathing. One must only realize that at that time the earth did not yet have a separate atmosphere. The substances that later formed the liquid and solid masses out of the common mass were still air-like themselves at that time, enclosed in the air. And when the liquefaction began, the human body did not live on solid ground, but in the liquid element. A kind of floating suspension was its locomotion. And the air above the liquid element was much denser than the later air. It contained not only all the later water, but many other substances in dissolution. Accordingly, the entire respiratory system of the human body was different.

Before the departure of the sun, the whole breathing process had a different purpose than in the period that followed. It consisted of absorbing and releasing heat from the environment and into it. One can say that the warmth that humans today produce within themselves through their blood circulation was then inhaled and exhaled by them from the environment. It was only after the exodus from the sun that the process was transformed in such a way that the air, after it has been taken in, generates warmth through its effect in the body. Thus, with breathing in the present form, the human body had become a generator of warmth within itself.

This transformation in the human body is connected with a cosmic event that is called in esoteric science the withdrawal of Mars from the earth. Mars is the planet whose inherent forces in the human body before this withdrawal brought about what the blood circulation subsequently took over in the human body itself. As the blood on Earth took over the activity of Mars, the spiritual beings were able to lift themselves out of the Earth, so that the influence of Mars on humans became one that worked from the outside. Physically, this came about because iron became an important component of blood; and iron is the substance on which the forces of Mars have a particular effect. Thus, the present form of breathing is connected with this withdrawal of Mars. But through this, man received everything that can be called the inner power of his blood. The inspiration was thus given. Indeed, with the breathing of the air, man breathed in his living soul.

As long as the earth was connected to the sun, the sun's power was what regulated the other effects in the human body. The solar force contained what worked simultaneously as male and female in the human body. And under its influence, the absorption and release of heat emanating from Mars also acquired law and order. When the sun moved out, certain human bodies began to change in such a way that they became infertile. These were the forerunners of the later male natures. As long as the lunar forces were still connected to the earth, the other part retained the ability to self-fertilize. With the moon's withdrawal, it lost it. From now on, the sun was at work, and the beings who now inhabited it, the angels, worked on the ability to reproduce. The male etheric body came under the influence of these sun beings. The female etheric body, which is male, retained its relationship to the beings whose realm had become the moon. Accordingly, the woman's physical body came under the influence of the sun's forces. After all, it had developed the form corresponding to it when the sun was already shining on the earth from the outside. The male physical body, on the other hand, came under the influence of the moon because it had taken on its form, which is infertile in terms of reproduction, under the influence of the planet still united with the earth. Alongside all these processes, the senses are developing at the same time, bringing the world of images of the sentient body under the influence of the earthly environment and thus placing the human being under the influence of the descendants of the Saturn planetary body. Furthermore, the pulsating power of the blood is developed within, whereby the soul is formed and, with the sensory perceptions, an inner life, sympathy and antipathy with the environment can develop.

Man has arrived at this stage when the earth emerged as an independent physical planet in its fourth cycle and had detached itself from the sun, moon and Mars.

At that time, man had thus completed the separation into two sexes. He looked through his senses into his surroundings. He felt attraction and repulsion towards his surroundings. And because he was different from his surroundings, he was endowed with the beginning sense of self. The human body had become a fourfold being. And within the fourth limb, soul inwardness had arisen through the blood, which allowed the forces of Mars to enter.

Thus man had developed within himself all that he could have as the fruit of the first three planetary stages of development. And he had a fourth limb of his body, which had come into being because other influences, which could have nothing to do with its development, had withdrawn from the earth.

In occult science, this humanity is called the third main Earth race. Actually, one can only speak of race formation from this point in time onwards. For only now did human reproduction occur, and with it differences within humanity, which were brought about by the interaction of human beings themselves. That which can be called inheritance and kinship arose. But now the earth, the fourth planetary form of development, had no influence yet. The perceptions of the surroundings had only taken hold of the images of the sentient body. The etheric body was not yet influenced by the earth's environment. The fourth planet had no influence on the inheritance conditions. Only the first three. Therefore, the race in which this was the case is called the third.

It was followed by the fourth, within which the earth environment itself had an effect on the ether body. This could only happen when beings gained influence over humans who had reached such a level in their development that they lacked the creative ability to influence the etheric body in the sense of fertilization, but who were nevertheless beyond merely receiving sensory impressions from the physical environment, just like humans. Those beings who had not ascended to the level of creative beings on the moon, that is, during the previous embodiment of the earth, were those who could populate the sun, but who had nevertheless reached the stage beyond which one can merely lead an inner life through the images of the human body. Within the evolution of the earth, they have the ability to perceive through the senses of man, but not to create these senses. These beings can... [breaks off]

[Beginning missing] Among the greatest of these upheavals is that of the outgoing Middle Ages. One after another, those ideas that had been taken for so long as an external expression of divine creative wisdom faded away. At the same time that the profound Meister Eckhart and the strong-minded Johannes Tauler were preaching to bear witness to the Christian God, who had risen in their hearts in new glory, the ingenious Roger Baco was pondering the workings of natural forces in a different way than the Middle Ages were accustomed to. The latter believed that they were giving this idea of God a new firmness when they showed how every human being spiritually relives his suffering, his death and his resurrection; the former pursued his deeds in the outer world with the acumen of the intellect and the tools of the physicist. And behold: these deeds looked different in this light than they had been believed for centuries. A rebirth of the “Word” was experienced in the meaningful writings of Jacob Böhme; but Copernicus and Kepler transformed the world view in which the creative power of this Word had been so long admired. Those who had first proclaimed the Word had different thoughts about the earth and the stars than those that were now imposed on the searching humanity. Was it not natural that with the doubt about their conception of the world, the associated conception of God and the soul also became shaky? Could one still have confidence in a writing about the nature of the spirit if this writing presented the deeds of the spirit in a way that one could no longer profess? And did not those who saw in this writing the guarantee of the salvation of their souls have to condemn the men who shook what they believed was intimately connected with this writing? Could what Roger Baco achieved in the mastery of the forces of nature come from the spirit of good, if he thereby intervened in the preaching of centuries? Nature seduced these minds to relate to the world differently than this proclamation had commanded them. The view had to arise that research in nature was “sin” and that the spirit that arises from such research is “devil”, as Goethe put it in precise words. The “spirit of nature” had been recognized in its contradiction to the higher spirit that makes its voice heard in the human heart. Faust, the ally of this spirit of nature, who put the Bible under the bench, had to fall prey to evil forces. Lucifer, this spirit of nature, which, like the “morning star”, should point to the sun in eternal harmony, seemed to fight the luminosity of this star. Human wisdom, from which the wisdom of God once originated, seemed to be its worst enemy. And so it has remained throughout the centuries. More and more, human wisdom shone into the eternal workings of the forces of nature. Just as God's creative power seemed to recede from the heavens when Galileo's telescope illuminated the infinite spaces, so in the nineteenth century this creative power seemed to recede from the wonderful structure of living beings when the microscope allowed a view into the forces by which they are built and when the striving gaze revealed the laws according to which the forms of the living are shaped. On the basis of his scientific discoveries, Newton had established a cold, sobering attraction where seraphim had once been. Attraction and natural law were to be viewed with understanding where it had been believed that the love of the seraphim for God moved the heavenly bodies around the Earth, proclaiming the glory of the Creator. Natural selection has displaced the great Darwin from where, according to earlier opinion, God's power of thought had placed species next to species in manifold perfection. Even Carl von Linné, the greatest naturalist of the eighteenth century, was still allowed to say: there are as many species of plants and animals as God originally created. In obedience to eternal, immutable laws, the new spirit of man allows the incomplete to develop out of the complete without the intervention of wisdom. What an evil companion this spirit has become for man in modern times! Lucifer, the morning star, Lucifer, the light-bearer, has changed from a guide to the Divine into a seducer to un-divine things. A barren and terrible faith it is that this Lucifer seems to have given to man. He points his telescope and shows him worlds that, according to their necessary laws, revolve around each other, and in their space the inquiring eye finds no space for the old God. He shows him the forces of life in the cell and in the human body, and promises to reveal to him one day how these laws shape the thoughts of the soul in the parts of the brain. And then this inquiring mind will no longer be able to find the old God in man's inner space either.

We must not blind our spiritual eyes to this process of development! We must not hide from ourselves the fact that the old way of belief and the new way of knowledge have brought about a world war in the hearts of men, which opens up a terrible perspective for the future. People who cover their eyes and form their judgments only according to what they want to see may be of the opinion that this old way of believing will again conquer the circles of the apostates. Those who look at the world with a free and open eye cannot form such a judgment. It fills them with fear and apprehension when they follow the battle between “belief” and “knowledge”. For he knows, he sees it daily, that in the course of the day the power of knowledge is the greater. He sees how, despite all the efforts of the “strong in faith,” a sober, soulless world view is being built up, conquering the masses, freezing the heart, and condemning man to despair of his “eternal destiny”.

These clear-sighted people also know that in the long run this world view will not prevail, that a higher view of God will shine over the earth again. But they also feel that man is not here to stand idly by and watch what happens without him; rather, he is called upon to shape the perfect out of the imperfect, the higher out of the lower. When the weak-willed and strong-in-faith tell us that God will lead people back to the light, then the strong-willed may reply: God's highest earthly tool is man, and he demands that this tool not fail. God's wisdom wants to work through human will. We are called to promote what God's counsel is in the world. We should not be lulled into a sense of complacency by the thought that what is to be will come to pass, but should cling to the search for what needs to be done in order to regain the lost spirit.

From the imperfect contemplation of nature, the great sages have taken the ideas with which they showed how the God who reveals Himself to them in their souls realizes His glory in the external world. These ideas have changed. Is it not perhaps only because of our weakness that we cannot find in our ideas what our ancestors found in theirs? In the book that Faust placed under the bench, these ancestors have told how they saw the ways of eternal wisdom. They too have read in the “book of nature”, and according to what was revealed to them there, they have clothed the inner word of God externally.

Our way of reading has certainly changed. But should the reading destroy the content? Could it not be that the new reading only bothers us for a while? Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to be numbed by the fact that the microscope has enlarged the space in which what previously escaped us is taking place, and the telescope has led us into spaces that previously only the imagination was allowed to inhabit. Could not an intensified power of the soul also find the spirit in the enlarged space, and also in the spaces that have been illuminated!?

You represent a materialistic world view and rely on Copernicus and Darwin. Your ancestors represented a spiritual world view and relied on Plato, Moses and Aristotle. You fight Plato, Moses and Aristotle and say that you rely on your reason, while your ancestors relied on the written word. But be honest and true to yourselves. Is your “reason” anything other than the “faith” of your ancestors? What they proclaimed about the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit, they felt, and you call it “faith”; what Darwin and Haeckel say, you feel, and call it “reason.” And ask yourselves, how many of you have examined the paths by which your naturalists have arrived at their assertions? Just as few have followed the paths by which lonely soul researchers have come to the Trinity. You “believe” as they “believed”. And what you think you can deduce from your “reason” you have read in Haeckel's “natural history of creation” just as your ancestors read their ideas into the Bible.

One of those who, under the impression of the new natural science, fought the “old faith” (D. Fr. Strauß) said: “That from the belief in things, some of which are certain not to have happened, some of which are uncertain doubt as to whether they have happened, and only to the slightest extent beyond doubt that they have happened, that belief in such things should depend on man's salvation, is so absurd that it no longer needs refutation today."—No objection is to be raised here against this sentence. At most, that it is self-evident and banal. But the following sentence seems to be just as self-evident: That our entire happiness should depend on things observed through a telescope in outer space, where it is uncertain whether the ideas we associate with them are assumptions or not; and on other things that a naturalist has “overheard” through the microscope about the and of which we certainly do not know how they came to their existence, should depend on the entire happiness of man is so absurd that it should no longer require refutation in the shortest time.

Everything that is aimed at here was already said by the great Master Eckhart in the thirteenth century: What use is it to me that my brother is a rich man and I am a poor man; what use is it to me that so and so many years ago Christ suffered and rose again, if the true man does not rise in myself. Let the divine live in your own soul; do not let yourself be blinded by the telescope and microscope; find the highest in yourself, who is closer to you than the nebulae of outer space and clearer to you than the combinations of substances that the chemist calculates for you. But one thing is necessary for such a discovery. You must listen to the words of those who speak to you of the paths that lead to the matter, just as you listen to the astronomers who teach you about the Milky Way, and just as you pay attention to the zoologists who speak to you about the development of human germinal systems.

When Darwin and Haeckel speak, you listen with faith and form your world view according to their research. Far be it from us to take this belief away from you. Because we ourselves have this belief. We admire the eternal forces of nature in the sense of the “natural history of creation”. But why do you not listen just as attentively when the psychologist speaks to you of the laws of spiritual life? Why do you call him a fantasist when he tells you of the things that have been revealed to him, when he speaks of the destinies of the soul on the basis of his sure research methods, while you treat natural scientists differently? You cannot perceive within yourself what the psychologist tells you. But how many know from their own observation the germinal life of organisms? In order to really judge for themselves, they would first have to become acquainted with the extensive methods by which the natural scientist arrives at his results. Without doubt, they will admit this after some reflection. But few are willing to admit it today for the laws of intellectual life. But just as you cannot fully understand Haeckel without walking in his footsteps, you cannot understand the soul researcher without walking the paths he has walked. No amount of “reason” could give you the right to contradict Haeckel before you have learned how he arrived at his results; but do the same with the soul researchers. Then, and not before, may you speak of a rejection of what they say. But then you will no longer behave so contradictorily.

The paths of those who investigate spiritual life in their own way are much more difficult than those that lead to the external life of nature. But those who speak out against the results of spiritual researchers look no less strange than those who speak out against the results of germinal life without ever having observed an animal germ in its development.

This journal will deal with the facts of spiritual life. It demands nothing, absolutely nothing, of people, except that they approach it with the same attitude that countless people today approach natural scientists. Based on their own, deepest experience, perhaps only a few will be able to immediately verify some of what is said here. But is it any different with the facts of nature? However, no one can be excluded from the possibility of testing it.

And closer to us than any object in nature is what is being discussed here: the human spirit. What everyone here talks about is, after all, none other than the human spirit itself. It is the human spirit to which it is seemingly so close, and yet which it usually knows so little about. There are many who have little inclination to care for this human spirit. What the great Fichte says about them applies to them: the spirit, about which they care so little, will give them sunshine and rain, clothe and nourish them at the right time – for that is what their body demands; their spirit has not yet awakened, they do not care about it.

But for all those who are looking for the sun of the spirit, we want to speak up. We want to seek this sun behind the clouds, which only part when the much-misunderstood signs of the book are read correctly, which Faust once wanted to exchange with the Bible. We do not want to let the microscope or the telescope, the laws by which the planets revolve, or the material processes that we suspect under the skullcap, cloud our free spiritual view into the fate of souls. We want to be allies of science; but not slaves to its misunderstood conclusions, but companions who walk in spirit the paths that it follows in matter.

[Part I]

What the mind, which is directed towards the finite (kama manas), calls truth is only a subspecies of what the esotericist seeks as “the truth”. For the truth of the mind refers to that which has become, which is manifest. And the revealed is only a part of existence. Every thing in our environment is at the same time product, creature (i.e. what has become, what is revealed) and germ (what is unrevealed, what is becoming). And only when we look at a thing as the two aspects (what has become and what is becoming), then we see that it is a link in the One Life, the life that has time not outside itself but within itself. Thus finite truth is also only a becoming; it must be enlivened by an evolving truth. The former is grasped; the latter is “noted”. All mere scientific truth belongs to the first kind. For those who seek such truth alone, “Light on the Path” is not written. It is written for those who seek the truth that is a germ today in order to become a product tomorrow; and who do not grasp what has become, but pay attention to what is becoming. If anyone wants to understand the teachings of “Light on the Path,” then he must generate them as his own and yet love them as completely different, just as a mother generates her child as her own and loves it as different.

The first four teachings, when understood, open the gateway to esotericism. — What does a person bring to the objects of his knowledge? Whoever examines himself will find that joy and pain are his response to impressions from the sensual and supersensible world. It is so easy to believe that one has discarded pleasure and pain. But one must descend into the most hidden corners of one's soul and bring up one's pleasure and pain; for only when all such pleasure and all such pain is consumed by the bliss of the higher self, only then is knowledge possible. One thinks that one will become a cold and sober person as a result. This is not the case. A piece of gold remains the same piece of gold - in weight and color - even when it is transformed into a piece of jewelry. Similarly, Kama remains what it is - in content and intensity - even when it is spiritually transformed. The power of Kama should not be eradicated, but incorporated into the content of the divine fire. Thus the eye's subtlety shall not discharge itself in tears, but gild the received impressions. Dissolve every tear and give the radiance it has to the ray that penetrates the eye. Wasted power is your joy and your pain; wasted for knowledge. For the strength that flows into this joy and this pain shall flow into the object of knowledge. “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.” He who still abhors the criminal in the ordinary sense, and he who still worships the saint in this ordinary sense, has not weaned his eye from tears. Burn all your tears in the will to help. Weep not over the poor; recognize his situation and help! Murren not over the evil; understand it and change it into good. Your tears only cloud the pure clarity of the light. You feel all the more tender the less sensitive you are. The sound becomes clear to the ear if this clarity is not disturbed by the rapture and sympathy that meet it at the entrance to the ear. “Before the ear can hear, its sensitivity must fade.” To put it another way, let the heartbeats of the other resonate within you and do not disturb them with the beating of your own heart. You should open your ear and not your nerve endings. For your nerve endings will tell you whether a sound is pleasant or not; but your open ear will tell you what the sound itself is like. When you go to the sick person, let every fiber of his body speak to you and absorb the impression he makes on you.

And to summarize the first two sentences: Reverse your will, let it become as powerful as possible, but do not let it flow into things as yours, but inquire into the nature of things and then give them your will; let yourself and your will flow out of things. Let the radiance of your eyes flow out of every flower, out of every star; but hold back yourself and your tears. Give your words to the things that are mute, so that they may speak through you. For they are not an invitation to your lust, these mute things, but they are an invitation to your activity. Not what they have become without you is there for you, but what they are to become must be there through you.

And as long as you impose your desire on a single thing, without that desire of yours being born of the thing itself, you wound the thing. But as long as you wound anything, no master can listen to you. For the master hears only those who need him. But no one needs a master who wants to impose himself on things. Man's lower self is like a sharp needle that wants to dig in everywhere. As long as it wants to do that, no master will want to hear its voice. “Before the voice can speak to the masters, it must unlearn the wounding.” As long as the sharp needles of the “/ch will” still stick out of the words of man, his words are the messengers of his lower self. Once these needles have been removed and the voice has become soft and pliable, wrapping itself around the secrets of all things like a veil, it weaves itself into a spiritual garment (Majavirupa), and the master's delicate sound clothes itself in it. With every thought that a person devotes to the inner truth of things in the true sense of the word, he weaves a thread to the garment in which the master may clothe himself when he appears. He who makes himself a messenger of the world, an organ through which the depths of the world's riddles speak, pours his soul's life into the world, his heart's blood moistens his feet so that they carry him swiftly to where work is to be done. And when the soul is where the lower self is not, when it is not where man stands enjoying himself, but where his active feet have carried him, then the Master also appears there. “And before them the soul can stand, the blood of the heart must moisten the feet.” He who remains within himself cannot find the Master; he who wants to find Him must let the strength of his soul - the blood of his heart - flow into his deeds - into his active feet.

Such is the first meaning of the four fundamental teachings. Those who live by this first teaching can have the second revealed to them, and then the following ones. For these teachings are occult truths, and every occult truth has at least sevenfold meaning.

[Part II: The following explanations refer to sentences 17 and 18 from Chapter 2 of “Light on the Path”]

§ 17.2. Chapter.

[Ask the innermost, the One, about its ultimate secrets, which it has held for millennia.

The great, difficult battle, the conquest of your own soul's desires, is a labor of millennia. Therefore, do not expect the prize of victory until you have gained experience over millennia. When the time comes that this last teaching becomes truth, man enters the threshold that lifts him above humanity.

These last few paragraphs of the second chapter of “Light on the Path” contain wisdom of the deepest kind. In No. 17, there is the invitation to ask the “innermost”, the “One” about his “secrets of the last”. Whoever shines a light into the depths of this “innermost being” will indeed find the results of “millennia”. For what man is today, he has become through long millennia. The “innermost being” has passed through worlds, and hidden in its bosom are the fruits it has taken from these worlds. That our innermost being is as it is now, we owe to the fact that countless formations have worked on its structure, that it has passed through many realms and that it has formed organs out of these realms over and over again. Through these organs, it has entered into an exchange with the worlds that have surrounded it in each case. And what it has gained from this interaction, it has taken over into new worlds, in order to have ever richer experiences on new levels, equipped with the achievements of the past. And today we use the differentiated essence of our innermost being to have a sum of experiences on the “planet” we call “Earth”. All the experiences of the “moon planet” and the earlier ones are in our innermost being. They were already in this innermost being when, through a pralaya, it developed into “earth”. And so these experiences were in the Pitri nature of this innermost being, just as the whole lily is - latently - in the lily seed. Of course, the lily seed is still something physically visible. But the Pitrisame, which slept its way from the moon to the earth, was incarnated in the highest kind of matter, perceptible only to the eye opened to the Dangma. But just as the lily seed, when it is placed in suitable soil, organizes the elements of earth, water and air in such a way that a new lily is formed, so the “Pitrisame”, in its cycles through earthly existence, the “Pitrisame” arranges the matters in such a way that in the course of these cycles the full “human being” gradually emerges, who, after the 6th and at the beginning of the 7th earthly round, may truly be called “God's image”. Until the middle of the fourth round - until the end of the Lemurian period - the human Pitrinatur divides itself in the work on its own organism with “formers” of the highest and higher kind; but from this point on, more and more of the human “innermost” must take over this work itself. K. H. says the following about this work: All you have to do is become a complete human being. For know that in your physical nature alone you are now already almost a human being. For you will only be a complete human being in your physical nature at the end of the fourth round. Your astral body, your mental body and your ego body (higher manas) are still unorganized and chaotic. Just as your physical body is complete after the fourth, so must your astral body be after the fifth, your mental body after the sixth, and your arupic (higher mental) body after the seventh, if you are to reach your destiny at the end of the earthly cycles. And only when you have reached this destiny can you, as a normal terrestrial Pitri, pass over to the next planet.

Those, however, who want to walk the occult path should work more and more consciously on this threefold externalization of their higher bodies from their “innermost being”. That is the meaning of meditation. One shapes (organizes) one's astral body by elevating it to the higher self and by self-examination. Just as extra-human forces have worked in past rounds to build the organs of today's physical body, so the inner human higher self works on the astral body so that it may become an “image of divinity” or also “fully human”. Then it becomes suitable to experience the secrets of higher worlds through its organs in the same way as the physical body experiences the secrets of the physical-mineral world through its sense organs. We examine ourselves in the evening with regard to our experiences during the day; we rise to our “higher self” through the well-known formula. In both activities we have an organizing, building effect on our astral body. Only through this do we make it into an astral organism, into a body with organs, whereas before it was only a kind of carrier. This “formula” is this: “Brighter than the sun, purer than the snow, more subtle than the ether is the Self, the Spirit, in the midst of my heart. I am this Self. This Self is me.” However, this opens up the view to a ‘work of millennia’, as it says further in $ 17. Just as millennia were necessary before the outer physical likeness was achieved, so a work of millennia will be necessary before this likeness is achieved for the higher bodies. Only then will man stand at the ‘threshold that lifts him beyond humanity’. And he must come to this threshold in the 7th round in the same way as he had to be at the threshold at the end of the lunarian (moon) epoch, which raised him above the lunarian pitritum.

Through the mental meditation of a sentence from the inspired scriptures, the meditator organizes his mental body. When a person takes such meditation sentences from the Bhagavad Gita or from other scriptures that the theosophical literature provides, then he is working on the organization of his mental body. It must be emphasized again and again that in this meditation it is much less important to intellectually go through the sentence - this should be done separately outside of the actual meditation - than to live with the sentence with a completely free field of vision of consciousness. It should tell us what it has to tell us. We should be the ones to receive from it. If it is an inspired sentence, then it begins to live in our consciousness, then something alive flows out from it, then it becomes abundance in us, previously unsuspected content. As long as we speculate about it, we can only put into it what is already in us. But that does not help us to progress.

The organization of the ego body depends on the devotional part of our meditation. The more we achieve through this devotion, the deeper and more earnest it is, the more we will resemble the being that we are to emerge from our planetary life to the tasks that will be set for us in a later being.

§ 18.

[The knowledge you now call your own is only yours because your soul has merged into one with all souls and become one with the innermost. A treasure from the Highest is entrusted to you. But if you betray its trust, abuse your knowledge, let it slumber when you should use it, then even from the heights you have reached, a fall is still possible. Even at the threshold, exalted ones still recoil, unable to bear the responsibility and unable to soar higher. Therefore, always remember this moment with holy fear, with anxious trembling, and prepare yourself in advance for the fight.

We must experience that we are one with all that lives. We must be clear about the fact that what we call our own has no life if it wants to be an idiosyncrasy. It has just as little life as our little finger would have life if it were cut off from our whole organism. And what for our little finger would be the physical-sensory cutting off, that would be for our peculiarity a knowledge that only wanted to refer to this peculiarity itself. We were one when we entered the planet, which was the third before our Earth, within an all-divine essence; we were within the all-divine essence and yet a peculiarity, just as each note in a symphony is a peculiarity and yet one with the whole symphony. And what we dare call our individuality shall have an effect on whatever it encounters in the 343 worlds through which it passes (seven planets, seven rounds on each planet, seven so-called globes for each round = 7 x 7 x 7 metamorphoses = 343). What we are able to experience there is laid in us at the beginning as an inclination. And that is the treasure, “familiar to you from on high.” And just as the treasure is familiar to us, so we should place it in the harmony of the planetary symphony. An experience will present itself again and again to him who fully understands these things. All deepening within us remains barren and empty if we want it only for ourselves. To strive for our own perfection is only to indulge a higher form of selfishness. Our knowledge must always flow out from us. This is not to say that we should always teach. Each person should teach as they can, and when they can. But the smallest action in everyday life makes it possible to be a living result of selflessly acquired knowledge. And when we have the feeling that all life is one, that all separateness is only based on Maya: then all our deepening into our inner being is also acquired with the living feeling that it should come to life in the All-One Life. But then our deepening is always rewarded with fertility. Then we are sure that we cannot fall. Those who strive for knowledge only to know, only for the sake of their own perfection, only to advance on the ladder of existence, can still fall even if they have already risen very high. And above all, we must be aware of the “responsibility” that we take upon ourselves by acquiring higher knowledge. Only a certain measure of development is allotted to humanity as a whole in the path of development. If we perfect ourselves, if we acquire a measure of perfection earlier than would be possible in normal progression, then we take something from the common measure of humanity for ourselves. We make the scale tip in our favor; the balance leaps up on the other side. Only by giving in some way can we make up for what we have taken. But we must not think that it is better not to take. That would mean being selfish again and avoiding taking so that we would also be relieved of the duty of giving. Not taking and not giving means death; but we are meant to serve life. We must acquire the ability to give; therefore we must take on the responsibility of taking. But we must be aware of this responsibility at every moment. We must constantly reflect on how we can best give when we have taken. This gives rise to a “struggle”, a serious, sacred struggle. But this struggle must be. We must not shy away from it. We must always prepare ourselves for this struggle. In particular, the great significance of this struggle was and is demonstrated to the adepts of all schools of initiation. They are admonished to fulfill themselves, to imbue themselves with the consciousness of this struggle. When our innermost being breathes the life of this struggle as the fundamental mood of the soul, then the inner sight and the inner hearing awaken in this innermost being. And when we are able to be calm, completely calm, on this battlefield, then higher secrets begin to flash across our astral and mental heaven. Then feelings and thoughts are symbolized in us as spiritually tangible realities; and out of the mist of these spiritually tangible realities, the voice of the Master sounds and the form of the Master takes shape. We begin to enter into higher communication. We no longer remain mere actors in the world, but become messengers (angelos) for it.

What is described here as an exegesis of No. 18 is, sentence by sentence, reality, higher reality to be experienced. And whoever imbues themselves with the meaning of this sentence (No. 18) in this way becomes a citizen of higher worlds. (To be continued in the very near future).

From time immemorial, man has been regarded as a “world in miniature” in relation to the “world at large”. Not only the human mind, but also the heart, reaches this conclusion, as it rises up to the lofty starry sky and to the ideals of the human spirit with equal reverence and pious awe. Kant says that two things fill the mind with ever-increasing admiration and awe: “the starry sky above me, and the moral law within me.”

But how unequal the two are: the starry heavens with their eternal immutable laws, in which eternal wisdom is inherent; and the changeable moral and spiritual nature of man, which only uncertainly follows its laws and strays every moment. The greatest admiration arises in the face of the starry heavens in those who know and study its immutable laws. Kepler was filled with admiration when he had explored the secrets of the planetary orbits of our solar system. The human heart, in contrast, with its fickleness and confusion, evokes the most misgivings in those who know it best. Goethe, one of its most profound connoisseurs, liked to flee from its meanderings and wanderings to the unerring laws of external nature.

Why is it that our perception of the two is so different? Goethe was probably on the right track with his: “Noble, helpful and good, be man.” That is a commandment that no one applies to nature. Man is condemned for leaving the paths of justice and virtue, but not for being a volcano that wreaks untold havoc. We have to find harmony with nature, even if it has a destructive effect: we know that its laws are immutable. Have they always been? No; the laws Kepler celebrates in discovering them were only revealed in the solar system: harmony was born out of the chaotic primeval nebula. But this lawfulness has reached a certain conclusion. The battles in this field are over. This is not yet the case with man. He carries his law within himself. He should not be what he is today tomorrow, because he should perfect himself. His development, that is, his life, is perfection in all areas. He works his way from desire to virtue, from error to truth. He will then be what he should be when the law of his inner being completely permeates his outer being, when what he now feels to be his highest ideal will be his immutable law, as the law of the starry sky is presented today on that sky. And it is not only in this respect that man has the feeling of disharmony between his present existence and his law. He applies the principle of justice to this existence of his. He seeks a connection between this principle and his will. At first, external observation shows a discordance between fate and will. The good must suffer, and the wicked are happy. The question of the connection between destiny and character has occupied all ages.

The question can never be resolved by looking at just one lifetime. Just as no one can understand the structure of the human hand without following it from the simpler, unfinished forms of the locomotor organs of primitive creatures, so no one can understand the character of a personality without seeking its causes in a past life. Karma explains facts that would otherwise be completely inexplicable. Our abilities in this life are the fruits of the desires and efforts of previous lives; what we wear as a habit in this life were often cherished thoughts in previous lives; what we possess in the way of wisdom we have acquired through previous experiences, and our conscience is the result of many painful experiences. Our thoughts are facts that shape our desire body, and it shapes the physical body. Sleep is the brother of death because in each new life a person finds what he has prepared for himself in the previous one, just as in the morning a person finds the results of the day's work from the previous day. Fatalism does not follow from karma, because the laws of nature also submit to freedom. And karma does not contradict benevolence. This understanding leads to helping. But karma does contradict the materialistic view of man. It must contradict. For just as a clock does not build itself, so too man's life does not build itself. Man is a citizen of three worlds. But he must open his senses to the higher worlds. He must not pull them down to himself. He must ascend to them. Spiritualism is also a form of materialism. It should not be confused with Theosophy. The person whose senses are opened lives himself into the higher worlds. He also acquires the memory of earlier lives on earth. He becomes more and more like the man-God, who vouched for the eternal existence of the spirit by saying: “Before Abraham was, I am.” All the arguments about the divinity of Christ can only arise in those who do not know that the human soul is of divine nature. The firstfruits of humanity will reach divinity before the others. Then they will become, in their humanity, the carriers of the divine original spirit. Theosophy brings Christianity again. The one that knows why the disciples thought their master had risen again. - Annie Besant's and my book. Then it will be self-evident to think of the Christ-life in the perfection of the sun-myth. Christmas is the birthday of the sun. The Egyptian, the Mithraic, the Budhistic sun-myth.

The Christmas hymns speak of the eternal in human nature: Our savior is born. And when the Christmas bells ring, their sound echoes:

You, man, are on your way to a goal that makes you perfect, like the sun that is born today for a new year – to go your way, unchanging like it: that is its proclamation.

Facts like the lamps.
No one is invited. —