The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In union with death, love is created by the soul; in union with unconscious life, memory is created by the soul: and in memory [only] is self-awareness created. In the realm of love, the objective spiritual world comes into being; in the realm of memory, the subjective spiritual world comes into being. Memory is imagination set in physical life; love is intuition set in physical experience.

In the consciousness of the self, memory creates the image of the self; in the experience of death, love creates the substance of the eternal world.

The knower of the supersensible is not born into the normal life of the human being before the age of 35: He should not be obscured by the dying body. Before the age of 35, the human being has the eternal within him as an “object”. He only becomes the “subject” at the age of 35. In our time, the so-called initiation can take place at the age of 35 if the conditions have been established beforehand. Before that, people could perceive the spirit in the descending life, but they had to learn to understand it through the mysteries.

Today, at the age of 29, the human being enters the age when he can begin to look back in order to perceive something objective within himself.

Sensory perception: seeing death in the field of the external world.

Inner, spiritual experience: sensing life in the field of the inner world.

We are separated from life by memory; we draw the power of love from death.

We should not seek the “I” within. It is there no more than air is in the lungs. The “I” comes with perceptions and thoughts. In the course of life, it passes over into feeling and will.

When you look at youth from an older perspective, the eternal is revealed in the young person. In old age you become a “father”; before that you were a “cosmic knower”; with the “young person” you still see the “world of the spirit”; before that you see “humanity in yourself”

Before: “the human being” Before: the soul still turns against humanity: 21st-28th year.

Before: the soul turns against “cosmic lawfulness”.

Do not just ask: Is the soul immortal? Instead, ask yourself: What is initially experienced in consciousness is there because of the mortal body? You must first get to know what is immortal within the soul. The soul is in the realm that it leaves with death – its body is removed from this realm. In it, between birth and death, it reflects what is not in the spiritual world; through it it cannot reflect what it itself is. This would be reflected if what is newly developing in the body were to look at what has entered the body. In this, the soul is intuitively united with the universe: hence no capacity for love.

In the soul that is in the body, the ability to remember is preparing itself so that the self can become conscious.

The right questions only arise for a person in the second half of life. In the first half, one only feels these questions. The questions are received from the “elders” - in the second half of life, a life of perception and imagination arises in the life of feelings and will.

The spiritual being of the human being closes in on itself.

As a result, the other, material world enters the vacuum; in this vacuum the spiritual world is only reflected. The “I” has no positive reflection, but is merely a mirror image.

From the universal Saturn sun are the reflections: in the bone-muscle system.

From the telluric Saturn-Sun beings: sense system, apparatus of representation.

From the universal Moon: nervous system.

From the telluric Moon: vascular system.

From the Earth: circulatory system.

Spiritually: I

Spiritual: I

turned towards the “I”: nervous system
turned towards the “etheric body”: vascular system

Physical:

The reflections of the pre-earthly systems have been filled.

As the human being develops physically, his ego descends into the body; it reappears when the body organization recedes; but it comes up empty if it does not draw from the spiritual world, because the withering away of the body no longer yields spiritual substance.

1. The processing of nature observation by the intellect leads away from the connection in which man initially stands in perception with nature. This connection is a living one - senses and thinking are involved in it -: man loses himself in it - nature offers what it has as living spiritual.

1. Modern natural science has concepts that no longer include the soul. (This was still different in the 16th century).

2. Only by penetrating into the supersensible is it possible to observe nature. This shows that the sensory side of nature is one with the inner world of the human being. It brings man to his own ephemeral being. Either you stop at observation and description, in which case you live in the living world; but you have not understood it. Or you proceed to explanation, which brings you more and more to experimentation, and then you have understood it, but in a dead way. There lies the transition to the pure supersensible.

Behind the world of the senses lies the supersensible; but man in the world of the senses as a sensual being. The supersensible is contained in the sensual. The supersensible is experienced in such a way that one strives for a kind of knowledge that goes in a completely different direction.

3. A social science will be a barren one if it does not absorb the powers of supersensible knowledge. A social theory modeled on natural science and put into practice creates processes of destruction. A purely anthropological foundation of sociology does not really speak at all of the forces at work in social life, but only of the processes of social dissolution. In this respect, the scientific study of life exposes humanity to the greatest dangers.

4. A scientific age cannot remain on the ground of the old cooperations. For science isolates the human individual.

5. The supernatural, grasped through science, does not give the personal relationship to the divine that is necessary for man. This belongs to the special field of religion. Man of the scientific age alone would lose the religious if he did not gain it through supersensible knowledge.

Theologia naturalis, Raymund von Sabunde, † 1432.

6. The age of religious justification is over; it is impossible to speak of a “religion of the future” because that personal relationship of man to the divine, which must take place in a religious justification, no longer exists. It requires the direct working of the spirit in the human soul, which has ceased with scientific thinking. Revival is necessary in each individual. Stronger inner powerful worship for the supernatural.

Jesus seen as earthly king.

My kingdom is not of this world. — Jerusalem = temple = destruction of the temple =

The human being is born in the sign of equality; it veils itself in the world order present in the sensual world; freedom develops within, in death the human being is free in the external; during life, fraternity should prevail, which has its culmination point in the middle of life.

Thus, in the course of life, man goes from the spirit through the body to the soul – for the spiritual in the earthly belongs to the earth: the talents are Luciferic; the body is of the earth: the habits are Ahrimanic –: the “human being” is to rise above both.

Greek attempts at justification, etc. Roman body.

Jesus' birth – this thought leads to it.

The characteristic peculiarities and deeds of the peoples are the after-image of past spiritual processes — what appears as the mission of a people is only the living out of the spiritual past; and in this there is nothing that has any other significance for people of the present than that in it the germs of the individual human beings develop for their abilities in the future.

Everything that lives in such historical events is Ahrimanic: war, material progress. Sleeping man is led out of the luciferic sphere, so that Jahve can work on the luciferic during sleep.

The working person is led out of the Ahrimanic, so that the “Holy Spirit” may work in him. Insofar as a person lives spiritually with other people.

Christmas: a festival of childhood - reminding us of spiritual equality.

Christ has nothing to do with processes of destruction; these are processes on the physical plane - man participates in them through selfishness, untruth and illness (death); the contemplation of Christ is a contemplation of supersensible truth - it invigorates (makes one newly born) the power of imagination; it destroys appearances by impressing upon it the revealing essence; it dispels selfishness by presenting a matter of concern to all mankind; in Christ men might understand each other if they would take him supersensibly — if they would regard him as the sun, which has different reflections in the nations, but can be regarded in itself as it moves. The differences should be recognized; but “man is not of this earth,” the nations are. Through ordinary judgment and conclusion, man reaches only to the “spirits of personality”; but they already escape this ordinary conclusion — and man would be condemned to worship a mere folk spirit as “God” if he did not ascend to imaginative knowledge. Man is seen to be slipping away from himself – how he becomes incomprehensible –: –

In social life: one treats labor as a commodity; one should recognize the unchristian aspect of this – one turns a part of the human being into a machine –; how did slaves come about? Through conquest. Christ overcame that. He equalized the difference before men through equality before God. What one has made should be judged according to the value of consumption.

The concept of value cannot be applied to nations in the same way as to people.

Today, many people talk about the “social question” as if it were a matter of replacing existing social systems with others in which certain demands will be met that are raised by broad masses of people as being necessary for a dignified existence. Some institutions are seen as anti-social and efforts are made to develop social ones. When one speaks of the transfer of the means of production from private to common ownership, this is currently based on such a way of thinking. Under the influence of this way of thinking, one does not notice that the administration of the means of production by the community can have just as unsocial an effect as private-capitalist administration if those administering behave unsocially towards their fellow human beings.

In recent times, we have had to experience that the social order has taken on an anti-social character. We are looking for the causes of this. We see that we live in private capitalist economic systems. We form the judgment from this that these economic systems have undermined social justice. We exclude the human element by forming this judgment. One believes that the institutions, by their own nature, impose their character on social life.

As long as such insights remain within the circle of “scientific thinkers”, they are harmless. Other such “thinkers” come and refute the one-sidedness. The harmlessness ceases as soon as one sets about making institutions that have been conceived out of such one-sidedness. The present is faced with the danger of reshaping the order of life in a way that corresponds to the one-sidedness described. In large areas of Eastern Europe, things are happening that put humanity in such danger.

Recognizing the fatal errors that are made when such a transformation of social life is undertaken is one of the most important tasks of the present day. Realized errors kill life. The temptation to fall into such errors is great. This is because it is brought about by recognizing the damage in what already exists. These are there; and they show that something new must be created. Whether the new does not lead to even worse damage is not considered as long as one is hypnotized by one-sided ideas that one wants to realize.

Karl Marx thoroughly understood the damage of previous economic systems. He saw that this damage resulted from private capitalism. In it arose the idea: If there is no private capitalism, the damage will be eliminated. This idea hypnotized him. And the hypnosis caused him not to penetrate to the question: How did private capitalism produce the damage?

Anyone who asks this question and has a sense of the realities of life will find that private capitalism as such is not the cause of the damage. It is not because individuals or groups of people manage capital that life becomes anti-social, but because these individuals or groups exploit the results of their management in an anti-social way. Private capitalist management makes it possible for the individual with ability to extract the greatest conceivable value from the management. The social interests themselves demand that this should happen. If management by the individual with ability is replaced by management by the general public, the productivity of management is undermined. For within this generality, free initiative, the full effect of individual ability and willingness to work, cannot be realized.

The Marxists saw how the modern relations of production concentrated the masses of capital in the hands of a few. They formed the opinion that the administration of the concentrated masses of capital could one day pass over to the generality. They did not see that with this transition everything that can be achieved through the power of individuals must disappear with concentration. The point is not to eliminate these achievements based on the power of individuals, but to introduce them into the cycle of the social organism in the right way.

Let us face the facts. The demands of the modern economy have brought private capitalist management to a certain level. Its productivity depends on this level. At the same time, however, this productivity has given rise to an anti-social structure of the social order. If we strive to make economic life itself social, we will take away its productivity.

A truly social way of thinking must strive for a way of life that does not detract from the fertility of economic activity. It must leave the management of the means of production to the individual. It will therefore have to ask: How can the anti-social aspects that are necessarily brought about by this management be transformed into a social one?

It will not be possible to achieve the social through a retrogressive transformation of economic activity. But it is a retrogressive transformation to endanger what has become fruitful through the fact that the individual has been able to fully apply himself in economic life. We must not go back to economic forms in which the individual is again more bound by the community. The opposite must be striven for. The effect of the power of the individual must be encouraged.

With this impact, the power of the individual grows, if this growth depends solely on economic life. Within economic life, institutions cannot be created that would remove the disadvantages that arise when the individual comes to a power that harms his fellow human beings. They must arise outside of economic life.

The idea of the threefold social order does not seek to shape economic life in an impossible way, but rather to channel the social flow of forces into the economic cycle through the separate administration of the legal and spiritual life, which it can never develop from within itself. By its own nature, economic life can be neither social nor anti-social. It can only be administered in such a way that the goods needed by the community are produced by the economic activity of people with the appropriate expertise and skills. People attain their positions within economic life through their expertise and professional skills. They can only act in these positions in a socially just manner if no other relationships arise with their fellow human beings as a result of holding them. But this can only be the case if the tendency of economic life to produce such other relationships can be continuously counteracted. Man cannot do this in a position in which he is economically active. He can only work fruitfully in it if he does not need to have any other considerations in mind than to satisfy the manifest needs of his fellow human beings from the economic sources available to him. The other relationships must be established in a way that economic life has no influence on. Such other relationships are the cultivation of spiritual and legal-political life.

It is only because the results of economic work, the cultivation of spiritual life and the legal and political institutions are organized in each other in the whole of life that people believe they must also manage the interacting factors from a central point. Because a person must have the abilities to work profitably in economic life, people believe that they must also obtain the institutions through which these abilities are developed from economic life. But this does not promote the cooperation of spiritual life with economic life, but hinders it. The only thing that can be decisive for how a person works when he holds an economic position is what economic life demands. Economic life cannot do anything to develop abilities for this position. Therefore, he should not be able to get such a position through something that is based in economic life itself. The head of a business should work in such a way that goods are produced in the most appropriate way through his work. The independent spiritual life should ensure that the abilities for such leadership are developed in the human being. Abilities only develop when they are cultivated from a spiritual point of view. To cultivate them, it is necessary that there is an area of life in which the abilities of people are developed appropriately from their own being.

An obvious objection to the idea of the threefold social order is that a state that proceeds to implement this idea would disrupt its international relations with other states that retain their old institutions. This objection prevents many who understand the timeliness of a threefold social order from approaching the idea of its corresponding practical design.

These misgivings arise from the justified insight that a state which attempts to carry out socialization on its own in the sense of orthodox or modified Marxism would be unable to maintain undisturbed economic relations with states organized differently. It is therefore important to establish whether the concerns that apply to such socialization also apply to the threefold order of the social organism.

This clarity cannot be gained without considering the way in which humanity's economic life has developed in recent times. And the most striking fact here is that this economic life has the most pronounced tendency to regard the historically given state borders as non-existent for itself. National economies tend to merge into a unified world economy. The historical conditions that gave rise to the demarcation of states have gradually ceased to be of decisive importance for the economic interests of the people living in those states. The international tendencies of both capitalist and socialist circles are connected with this tendency towards the formation of a unified world economy. This is most evident in international socialism. However, it fails to recognize what is really demanded by the development of the times because it focuses only on economic life. It sees that this life has taken on forms that cannot be taken into account if the institutions of the state, which have become historical, determine the motives of the individuals and groups of individuals who engage in economic activity. He therefore wants to reshape these institutions so that they correspond to world economic conditions. He has a world economy in mind, in which the individual economic sub-areas are to be the states that have come into being historically. However, he wants to transform these into large cooperatives. He is thus on the way to turning the state into a mere economic society. He does not shrink from pursuing this idea because, under Marxist influence, he has developed the belief that the corresponding legal and intellectual institutions will arise “by themselves” from the economic institutions. Anyone who realizes that this is a fallacy must do justice to the tendency of the latest time after the formation of a world economy in a different way.

The more the unified world economy develops, the more it will require that what happens in its area be dependent on economic considerations. A necessary condition in this regard can be brought about if, within states, the legal relationships of citizens and their intellectual interests are separated from economic life. If, as a result of this separation, economic life is administered only as such within a social organism, it will only enter into relations with other social organisms through institutions that stem from it. The legal and intellectual organizations with which the economic sphere is associated are not considered in terms of economic relations with the outside world. The individuals or groups of individuals of one social area enter into direct contact with those of the other, uninfluenced by state relations.

In more recent times, this contact has been impeded by the fact that the interlinking of economic life with legal and political interests and intellectual interests from older human developmental epochs has been preserved and has opposed the urge for world economy. This interconnection can be seen in the facts that led to the catastrophe of the World Wars. One of these facts was the situation in southeastern Europe, where this catastrophe originated. The spiritual antagonism between the Slavs and the Germans was the underlying cause, leading to conflict. Political events came into play. The old Turkish regime was replaced by the democratically oriented Young Turk regime. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria and the declaration of Bulgaria as a kingdom were the result of the political upheaval in Turkey. Thirdly, Austria's urge to expand its trade relations to the south worked together with the other two. (The endeavor to lay tracks in this direction in its interest is an expression of this urge.) The concatenation of these three factors in the efforts of the unified states that were interested in them made it possible for the catastrophe to occur. And anyone who has followed the negotiations that have been conducted because of the Baghdad Railway can see how national antagonisms, that is, intellectual interests and state aspirations, repeatedly play a decisive role in a matter that could have been purely economic. These are two striking examples among many. In the southeast of Europe as well as with the Baghdad Railway, measures that would have been undertaken only in the interest of the world economy would not have become causes of world catastrophe in themselves. They became so because the unified states combined different interests with economic ones.

It might now appear that the consideration of these facts fully justifies the objection raised against the threefolding of a social organism in the midst of such states, which retain their old structure, as fully justified. For one might think that the economy of these other states, supported by state power, would crush the social organism, which does not want this state power behind its economy. This applies to an economic state that is organized in line with Marxism, because such a state wants to use the framework of the existing unitary state to impose economic forms that it considers beneficial. The result should be that all the disadvantages that have arisen from the fact that the economies of individual states have opposed the trend of the world economy would be greatly increased. The world economy strives to shape economic relations between individuals and groups of people purely according to their needs. The state economies interfered with this process by shaping what should arise from economic demands according to their own interests. If the states become economic cooperatives, the interference will have ceased to be a determining factor.

The opposite must occur if, in accordance with the idea of the threefold social organism, economic life is completely removed from the state sphere and stands on its own. Then the people belonging to this organism will be able to enter into free economic relations with foreign countries. How these foreign countries enter into relations with them will depend only on which economic interest is present in such a transaction.

When speaking of spiritual science, it is assumed that there is an interest that is detached from the human being – a state of mind that is not readily available. If I wanted to win followers for a personal opinion or aspirations, it would be illegitimate. This movement is only justified if the necessary insights are proclaimed. Those who only want personal gain will not understand this - people may say to me: Why don't I make it clear what should not be? But the resistance tires - and this resistance is abundant: a response to the intentions that have been made clear is rarely forthcoming. All the more often a bending of these intentions - one can always, what arises from human compassion, from the standpoint of cold reasonableness condemn - and what is done out of cold reasonableness, from the point of view of compassion condemn. But one should bear in mind that events sometimes necessitate one or the other point of view: anyone who did not act in this way would not be able to speak of spiritual science in the present day: At most, he could, but this is antiquated and would be an anachronism, brood over his spiritual experiences as a hermit. I have repeatedly met people who wanted to do this – people who were disappointed by mystical movements. I had to say to myself: These people do not consider that what they do in secret, after it has matured in the next incarnation, would come to Earth too late. I understood such people, but I could not do as they did. If I had done as they did, it would have been more comfortable - because the way I did it challenged those who wanted to put the matter into their personal service.

Why are the attacks so hateful? Because they do not want to get into the matter; because they want to discredit the matter through personal attacks. They are actually opponents of the truth; but they do not want to admit it to themselves – they do not want truth at all, but authority. – The opponents are only the necessary counter-strike of those who believe in authority.

It is necessary to found a bank-like institution that serves economic and spiritual endeavors in its financial activities, which are oriented towards the anthroposophically oriented worldview both in terms of their goals and their attitude. It should be distinguished from ordinary banking enterprises in that it not only serves the financial aspects, but also the real operations that are supported by the financial side. It will therefore be particularly important that loans, etc. are not granted in the way they are in ordinary banking, but rather from the factual point of view of the operation to be undertaken. The banker should therefore be less of a lender and more of a merchant who is in the know, who can realistically assess the scope of a transaction to be financed and make practical arrangements for its execution.

The main focus will be on financing such ventures that are likely to put economic life on a healthy associative footing and shape intellectual life in such a way that legitimate talents are placed in a position where they can express themselves in a socially fruitful way. What is particularly important is that, for example, enterprises that currently yield a good return are centered in order to support other enterprises with their help, which can only bear economic fruit in the future and above all through the spiritual seed that is now poured into them, which can only come to fruition after some time. It is necessary for the bank's officers to have an insight into how the view of life that comes with anthroposophy can be translated into economically fruitful action. To do this, it is necessary to establish a strict associative relationship between the bank's administrators and those who, through their ideal work, can foster an understanding of an enterprise to be brought into being.

An example: a person has an idea that promises economic fertility. The representatives of the ideology can evoke understanding for the social consequences. Their activity is financially supported by the amounts to be received, which at the same time are intended to support the economic and technical realization of the idea.

The main focus must be on supporting the centers of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement itself. The building in Dornach, for example, cannot support anything at first; nevertheless, it will bring a mighty economic return in later times. It must be made clear that anyone can support it materially, even if it means compromising their financial conscience, if they can see it as being materially fruitful in the long term.

The undertaking must be based on the realization that technical, financial, etc. activity can develop branches which, although they may temporarily produce favorable results for the individual entrepreneur, have a destructive effect in the context of the social order. Many of the latest undertakings were oriented in this way. They were capitalized, and it was precisely through their capitalization that the social order was undermined. Such endeavors must be confronted by those that arise from healthy thinking and feeling. They can be integrated into the social order in a truly fruitful way. However, they can only be supported by a social mindset inspired by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

It is true that an undertaking such as the one characterized here can initially only overcome the social-technical and financial possibilities of crisis and that it will face social difficulties as long as these, as the actual workers' question, still take the form that comes from the old mode of production, which is doomed to crisis. The workers involved in the new ventures will, for example, behave in the same way in wage differences as they do in relation to old-style ventures. However, one must not underestimate how quickly a company of the kind characterized here can have socially beneficial consequences if it is managed correctly. This will be seen. And the example will be convincing. If a project of this kind comes to a halt, then the workers involved will have their convictions with them when they get back on track. Only by aligning the interests of manual workers with the spiritual leaders of enterprises, through a way of thinking that affects all classes of people, can the forces of social destruction be counteracted.

The basic condition is that spiritual endeavors be intimately connected with all material ones. We cannot achieve such an orientation with the forces currently available in the anthroposophical movement because we do not have a practical enterprise in its bosom that has grown out of its own forces, except for the Berlin Anthroposophical Publishing House. But this alone is not enough to serve as a model, because its economic orientation is only the external expression of the power of spiritual science as such. Only those enterprises that do not have spiritual science as such as their content, but that have a content based on the spiritual-scientific way of thinking, can truly serve as models. A school as such can only be considered exemplary in this respect when it is financially supported by only those enterprises whose entire institution has emerged from spiritual-scientific circles. And the Dornach building will only be able to prove its social significance when the personalities associated with it have brought into being such enterprises that are self-supporting, provide the people who support them with the appropriate maintenance and then still leave so much that the deficit always demanded by a spiritual enterprise can be covered. This deficit is not really one at all. For it is precisely the fact that it arises that brings about the fructification of material enterprises.

You just have to take things really practically. That is not what the one who asks does: How, then, should one do a financial or economic enterprise in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science? That is simply nonsense. Because you don't do anything practical with mere thoughts. It is essential that the powers organized in the anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement itself undertake the enterprises, i.e., that bankers, factory owners, etc., join forces with this movement, that the Dornach building become the real center of a new entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, no “social”, “technical” etc. “programs” are to be set up in Dornach either, but the building is to create the center of a way of working that is to become the way of working in the future.

Those who decide to give financial support to the Dornach enterprises must understand that we have now reached the point where supporting enterprises in the old sense means investing in the sterile, and that supporting one's money today means supporting future-oriented enterprises that alone are capable of withstanding the devastating forces. Short-sighted people who still believe that such things have never borne financial fruit will certainly not support the efforts in Dornach. Those who do support them must be far-sighted people who are truly capable of financial and economic judgment and who realize that continuing to muddle along in the old ways means digging a secure grave for themselves. These people alone will not follow in the footsteps of the destroyed livelihoods of the last four to five years. Working with companies in the same old way means nothing more than using up financial and economic reserves. Because even the reserves of raw material and agricultural production, which last the longest, are being used up. Their financial and economic fructification does not lie in the fact that they are there, but that the labor is possible through which they are supplied to the social organism. But this labor belongs entirely to the reserves. Everything for the future depends on a new spirit also getting the leading position for the individual enterprise.

The absorption of nutrients allows the cosmic activity to immediately flow into the sphere in which the human etheric body is active. This transition is already conditioned by the forces that underlie the human form. Within this absorption into the etheric body process, the cosmic forces of movement intervene insofar as they are concentrated in the seven organs, so that the gall process still represents the descent of the human ego into the first nutritional processes.

Then, in the liver, human astrality descends, so that it contributes to the inner life process through the spleen; from the body tissue, human astrality now begins to intervene in the overall life process, insofar as it acts through the etheric body on the physical body; it comes to life in the lymphatic system; from the heart (blood) the human I intervenes, which acts through the astral body on the etheric body and from there on the physical body; the descending processes of muscle tissue, cartilage tissue and bone tissue arise. And now one can work the processes of salting from the outside onto the blood, from the inside through the nutritional process. These interventions take place until the absorption through the blood from one side, and through the fluids until the transformation by the seven organs from the other side. The metallization goes into the seven organs and their soul correlates. The easily combustible substances go as far as the exchange process of lymph and 7 organs; they thereby regulate the processes associated with body warming; the forces active in the plant kingdom directly intervene in the sphere of 7 organs and lymphatic system; they go directly to the life processes, insofar as these are ascending.

Mineral substances on all systems = internally on bones, cartilage, muscle system (arbitrarily) on the organs, if their nutritional processes are not in order. —

Herbal substances on the life systems, if their functions are not in order.

The outside world forms in the exoderm, so that it goes inward until it is connected to the nervous system.

The impression of the outside world then progresses to the muscle and bone systems in the mesoderm; (outside) the inner world presents itself as the older one in the lesser muscle and vascular systems... inner mesoderm.

The inner world pushes this system towards the outside and is present from the inside in the intestinal gland system - which opens outwards. Entoderm.

With the first inner world, the lymphatic system pushes its way into the organism [to absorb what is produced by the inner world in the organism itself], and the system of inner perception.

With the second inner world, the system of unlocking the outward with the corresponding drainage system and the upwardly differentiated sensory system pushes forward.

When the cell is rejected, all nascent life = germ cell = this has all the nascent processes and is not viable because the cosmic processes can give less than it demands; it dies from excessive energy, which does not allow the outer mesoderm to completely close the skin and deposit bones, and the inner mesoderm to form organs. The sperm cell contains the predispositions for those processes that condition the opening up of the organs inwards in such a way that they can cope with the outside world; they kill the outer mesoderm to such an extent that it can reach the point of bone deposition and skin closure; the inner mesoderm in such a way that the organs harden around the [pulsating] substances and forming tissues.

I must now approach some details through which the general truths of this subject will come to light. Everything would become much clearer through a little practical exercise.

But I must put the subject in as general a light as possible, so that no obstacle arises for the reader's judgment. And when I use the term “nothing,” I presuppose something other than the possession of a rule by which it can be said how the facts are. By knowing, I mean that the facts of a subject are available in the mind to come actively into consciousness when attention is directed to them. Michel Angelo recognized the human form; he could give every smallest fact about it. If he were to name it in a picture, he would see, mentally, how every muscle and every wrinkle of the hand lay in relation to the surrounding parts. We must achieve a knowledge as good as Michel Angelo's. There is a great difference between Michelangelo and us; but let us express this difference, not in our way of perceiving, but in the difference between the things he perceived and those we perceive. We now take simple lines and know them as absolutely as he perceived the complicated structure of the human body. Let us take a block of cubes; it can be any number, but to achieve consistency, let us put together 27 cubes to form a large cube of 27 parts. Let each cube be labeled so that it can be recognized, and let each be given a name so that it can be referred to. We assume that we have become acquainted with this block of dice in such a way that each of them is known, so that each is individually recognized and its relation to the others is known.

Now that we have acquired this knowledge of the block as it stands before us, we ask ourselves whether there is any self-element in our knowledge of it.

Undoubtedly, there is such a self-element. We have come to know the dice as they stand in accordance with their own convenience in relation to each other. We see the lower ones first; and the others above them, and we see those below as the bearers of the upper ones. Now, however, this relationship does not have to do with the dice themselves; it depends on the conditions under which we stand to grasp the block of dice; it depends on our own position in relation to the earth's surface when gravity is an important factor in our perception. In fact, our vision is so accustomed to taking gravity into account when considering things that when we look at a landscape or an object with our heads upside down, we do not see it in reverse, but we reduce it to this knowledge of gravity and get an impression little different from that in an upright position. If we are not things in space, then comprehending in space is the way in which the unrecognized us exists as spirit.

The Anthroposophical Society is dedicated to the cultivation of spiritual scientific research. The basis of this research is the realization that it is possible and necessary for our time to experience a similar change of views regarding the spiritual as human views experienced a similar change 4-5 centuries ago through Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Giordano Bruno and others regarding the natural sciences. This spiritual science is based on a real exploration of the spiritual world. In this respect, it is strictly opposed to all materialistic - or, as it is often called today, monistic - dogmatism. It seeks to apply the real methods of spiritual research and is of the opinion that materialistic world views and mere natural science simply do not know these methods - or have no inclination to deal with them - and therefore reject them. It takes the view that this rejection is currently arising from the same blinkered mentality as that which once opposed the Copernican worldview. The view of repeated lives on Earth is not a dogma of faith for spiritual researchers, but a result of their research. It seems just as incredible to people today as the assertion that the earth moves and does not rest once seemed to them. Thus, the Anthroposophical Society is to be regarded as a scientific society, not as a religious community or sect. The insights of spiritual research that are already possible today can be found in the writings of Dr. Rudolf Steiner. The building in Dornach near Basel, which is currently under construction, also serves to cultivate this knowledge. The artistic expression flowing from the insights of the spiritual world is also expressed in this building.

Since the spiritual-scientific results concern the important facts of the human soul life, it is natural that people's minds should also be interested in these results, that these results can become the innermost personal convictions, valuable to each one, which support and sustain him in his ethical, in his whole spiritual and also outer life. At the same time, it remains true that there can be no question of the Anthroposophical Society founding a religion or anything similar. The Society is far from even touching on any religious worldview. It can have the adherents of any religious confession in its midst. It cultivates spiritual scientific research and has nothing to do with any creed. It presents what can be investigated by spiritual science, just as natural science presents what can be investigated by natural science. Just as true natural science can never interfere with religion, given a proper understanding of the relationship between the two, so spiritual science cannot do so either. At present, anthroposophy no longer has any community with the so-called theosophical societies. It stands completely independently of any other society on the basis of the spiritual research characterized above. It is understandable that it faces opposition from religions and also from materialistic science, since its research results are currently still misunderstood, misinterpreted and the like. She will have to struggle not to appear like a sect, but like the bearers of such knowledge, which at the time of its appearance seems like fantasies, but which then become the basic pillars in the progression of the human worldview.

However, anyone who believes that there can be no other view of the spiritual world than the traditional one, or that such a view must be preserved for “belief”, will inevitably misunderstand the whole nature of spiritual research. But one should recognize that this currently reveals the same attitude as that which rejected Copernicus because it was believed that the Christian canon was contrary to the Bible.

Those who are familiar with spiritual science are of the opinion that the establishment of the fundamentals of human life in the broadest sense can lead to an elevation of the moral and of all life in general, and that with the spread of spiritual science, many an ideal will be realized, for which the best and most honest minds yearn; or in whose realization many despair because they see no possibility of realization in the materialistic present. Perhaps he will no longer do so when he penetrates into the real meaning of spiritual research. The Anthroposophical Society would like to serve knowledge and life in a calm way, based on genuine science. But it is based on a science that does not stop short of exploring real spiritual realms. —