The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism XIV

[ 1 ] Yesterday I explained to you what is known as the Rosicrucian initiation, up to the third degree, the “Knowledge of the Occult Scripture.” We have thus become acquainted with what, in the Rosicrucian sense, is called the “Study,” then the “Attainment of Imaginative Knowledge,” and subsequently what is called “Immersing Oneself in the Occult Scripture”—that scripture which is drawn from the laws of nature themselves. It now falls to us to proceed to the fourth stage of Rosicrucian initiation, to what is called the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone.” I ask you to set aside everything you may have read in any books about the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone” and to be aware that it is only in our present time that one can report on what the Rosicrucian actually means by the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone.”

[ 2 ] Under this name, certain guidelines for ascending to the higher worlds have existed ever since the well-known founder of the Rosicrucian Order established this movement in 1459. You must be aware that this movement has always been treated with the utmost caution and has always been kept secret. It was toward the end of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th century that, through improper means—a kind of betrayal—certain secrets of the Rosicrucian Order were made public. At that time, various things were printed about it; one could gather from them that those involved had heard something but had not understood it. Yet they had at least heard the right words—picked them up, so to speak—including those about “the Philosopher’s Stone.” At that time, a series of reports even appeared in the then-current Reichs-Anzeiger about a society that had made the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone” its mission; and among these reports there is one that only someone who knew what it was all about could understand. It reads: “Yes, the Philosopher’s Stone does exist; most people actually know it; most have even held it in their hands—it’s not that hard to find, but most people just don’t know it!”

[ 3 ] This concept of the “Philosopher’s Stone” came to be associated with the idea that it gradually teaches one to recognize the immortal part of the human being—the part that cannot succumb to death—and that it leads one up into the higher worlds. When a person realizes that this immortal part cannot succumb to death, then by possessing the “Philosopher’s Stone” they attain eternal life; through it, they overcome death. This was interpreted to mean that one would never die. What is meant, however, is that through it, a person comes to know the world in which they will live after death. Furthermore, the “Philosopher’s Stone” was also regarded as an elixir of life. All of this made the “Philosopher’s Stone” extraordinarily desirable. Anyone who knows what it is must, in a curious way, find these words to be true, for they are indeed true; it is just that those who do not know the secret cannot make much of them.

[ 4 ] Now I’d like to briefly show you what this means. If you want to understand this, you’ll have to follow me in examining a very simple scientific fact: You must be clear about the relationship that exists between human beings and the plant world. The fact is that anything that breathes like a human being could never exist if there were no plants. So you need to familiarize yourself with the process that takes place between you and the plants.

[ 5 ] You breathe in the air; you need the oxygen it contains. If there were no oxygen, you could never live. When you take in the air and process the oxygen in your body, you exhale carbon dioxide—a compound of carbon and oxygen. So you must tell yourself: Human beings constantly take in oxygen and thereby sustain their bodies, and they exhale carbon dioxide—thus constantly producing a toxin that would ultimately kill them. In this way, you are constantly filling your surroundings with a toxin. — What does the plant do? In a certain sense, it does exactly the opposite. It takes in carbon dioxide, retains the carbon, and releases the oxygen, which is useless to it. So you give the plant what it needs, and in return, the plant gives you oxygen. This process of carbon dioxide respiration and oxygen release far outweighs the plant’s uptake of oxygen. What, then, does the plant do with the carbon it retains? To a certain extent, the plant uses it to build its own body. In a sense, you are giving the plant the opportunity to build its body from carbon in a way that is appropriate for it. When, after millennia, you excavate the plant from the earth as coal, you find the same substance within it.

[ 6 ] The plant gives you oxygen, and you take it in. You give it carbon dioxide; it retains the carbon from it, uses it to build its own body, and gives you oxygen in return. This is a marvelous exchange process that takes place. That is how it is today. But now humankind is in the process of evolution, and in the future the human body will be such that it will possess within itself the organ that converts carbon dioxide into oxygen, and it will retain the carbon within itself.

[ 7 ] Today I am pointing—in a different way than yesterday during the Rosicrucian training—toward a future state of humanity. In the future, human beings will possess a desire-free body of a higher order—the kind you find at a lower level in plants: they will be able to build a body that, at a higher level, will be plant-like. In the organ that is today their heart, they will then have a mechanism that will perform the function that plants perform today. Today, plants and human beings belong together; one could not live without the other. If there were no plants, all oxygen-breathing beings would die out in a short time, because it is the plant that provides us with oxygen; we cannot even conceive of life without the plant. And what the plant does outside of us today will, in the future, be done by that organ into which the heart will develop within us, once it becomes a voluntary muscle. We extend our consciousness to the plants; we grow together with the plant world, so that what the plant does outside of us today will later take place within us; then we will also retain within ourselves the carbon that we release today and build our own bodies from it. We will become plant-like on a higher level of consciousness.

[ 8 ] Since time immemorial, occultism has clothed all of this in a wondrous legend; for truths have been preserved through images and legends for millennia. It is the Golden Legend. And what I have told you today was taught to the initiate through images in that legend. It went something like this:

[ 9 ] When Seth—the son whom God had given to Adam and Eve in place of the murdered Abel—once entered Paradise, he found the two trees, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, growing together; their branches were intertwined. And from this tree, Seth took three seeds at the behest of the angel who was guiding him. He kept them safe, and when Adam died, he placed the three seeds in Adam’s mouth. And a tree grew out of Adam’s grave; to those who knew how to look, this tree revealed a message written in letters of fire; the words were: “Ehjeh asher ehjeh—I am who was, who is, and who will be.” Now Seth took wood from this tree, which grew out of Adam’s grave, and from this wood various things were fashioned: among them, the staff that was Moses’s staff. And it was passed down further; from it was fashioned the gate to Solomon’s Temple, and later, after it had undergone various other fates, the cross on which the Savior was crucified.

[ 10 ] Thus, the legend links the wood of the cross at Golgotha to the tree that grew from the seeds of the Tree of Paradise in Adam's grave.

[ 11 ] This legend conceals the very same mystery that I hinted at to you today. The intention was to say: In primeval times, the human race was such that it had not yet sunk into a flesh filled with desire, but was chaste and pure, like the plant that stretches its calyx toward the sun. Then, through the Fall, human beings fell: their flesh became filled with desire. But everything that human beings once possessed in a state of innocence, they shall possess again when, through the path of knowledge, they have created for themselves a body free of desire—the body as it once was, before human beings entered into knowledge; remember where the “I” originates. The fact that he no longer has that body is connected to the fact that humanity has become a lung-breathing being, that it has been able to form its red blood. Thus, the present form of humanity is connected to respiration and blood circulation, and to the fact that it was able to become a bearer of knowledge in its present form.

[ 12 ] Now imagine yourself in your present body. There you can picture how the oxygen flows in, how it stimulates the red blood, how the red blood flows through your entire body like a branching tree, and how the blue blood then flows back, filled with carbon dioxide.

[ 13 ] You have two trees within you: the red and the blue blood trees. Without these two, human beings could not exist as bearers of the “I.” For this to happen, the red blood must be absorbed; this is the way in which our present-day knowledge is brought about. But death was linked to this; for you transform the red blood into the blue, carbon dioxide-filled blood. That is why the Old Testament secret teacher said: Look at yourself—you have the red blood tree within you; had you not received this tree, you would never have become a human being capable of knowledge. You have partaken of the tree of knowledge; but at the same time, this has deprived you of the ability to give yourself life from within yourself.

[ 14 ] What was once a tree of life has become a tree of death; therefore, the blue blood tree within us is the tree of death. That is the current state of affairs. For the initiate, however, a future state presents itself to the soul, in which human beings possess the nature of plants within themselves, and in which they will, through the heart mechanism within them, transform the blue blood back into red blood. Then they will have transformed the tree of death into a tree of life. Human beings will then have become immortal beings; what they were on a lower level, they will once again be on a higher one. He will then possess within himself the system that is found in plants today. — Thus, in Paradise, we have a final state of humanity. And Seth’s mission was understood to be that he sees what lies at the end of time: the balancing of the two principles within human beings themselves. Thus, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge intertwine in Paradise; within human beings, they can only come together when a person takes refuge in the plant. But how does a person acquire the capacity for the two trees to intertwine within them? By developing within themselves the three higher aspects of human nature.

[ 15 ] We have come to know the human being as composed of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I; and we have seen how the I, when it works on the astral body, attains the first higher member of the being; when it works on the etheric body, the second; and through its work on the physical body, the third. Thus, the human being of the future will be the sevenfold being, who will also possess the Spiritual Self, the Life Spirit, and the Spiritual Human. Once the human being has thus transformed his lower nature, he will possess within himself the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Thus, at the starting point of his development, the human being has been given the prerequisite for his three higher members of being in the potential of his I.

[ 16 ] Seth takes three seeds, and the first “I”-human, Adam, causes these three seeds to grow into a tree. This tree embodies what runs through all your incarnations. Your “I” was at a very low level in your first incarnation, and from incarnation to incarnation it reaches ever higher levels. What grows from it is the symbol of the eternal within the human being, which will find its highest fulfillment at the end of the earthly state. But man can attain this only if he unites himself with all that is highest that has come his way on the spiritual path. Everything that has guided humanity up this path—the staff of Moses, the Temple of Solomon, and finally the Cross of Golgotha—all of this helps man to fully express the higher Trinity. And the Cross of Golgotha was what pointed the way to the highest human perfection. It had been placed in Adam’s mouth at the beginning as a seed from which that tree grew—one could not express it more beautifully than has been done here—and it emerged from the wood that Seth had obtained in this way. There you have depicted the path of humanity as it passes through the course of time—the path of humanity through time. What humanity must achieve in the future—the transformation of its very being, the ability to produce carbon within itself through its own power—is what the plant is capable of today. And this alchemy of the plant is what humanity will be able to master in the future.

[ 17 ] The alchemical preparation of what I have just described is achieved by giving the Rosicrucian student specific instructions on how to regulate his breathing process. This is something that can only be understood according to the principle: “Constant dripping hollows out the stone.” But the Rosicrucian student works at it. Just as the drop—small and tiny as it is—eventually hollows out the stone over a long period of time, so too is the evolution of the human body brought about through this process of regulating the breath. These instructions, which the Rosicrucian student must practice, are designed to set him on the path to making preparations even today so that his “I” acquires the ability to build up his next bodies in a different way. This, however, is linked to the fact that what you will later have in the physical environment, you already have now in the spiritual world. This Rosicrucian guidance consists in preparing, through a slow process, for a future state and acquiring the ability to perceive this state even now in the higher worlds. The Rosicrucian student thus does two things: First, he works in advance for the future of humanity, and second, he acquires for himself the ability to perceive the spiritual world; he sees what will later descend into physical reality.

[ 18 ] Now you also understand the instructions that the strange man had printed but did not understand himself. The “Philosopher’s Stone” is ordinary black coal; but you must learn the process that teaches you to transform carbon through inner power: such is the progress of humanity. In today’s coal, you have a model of what will one day be the most important substance for humankind, even if it will look quite different. Remember the brilliant diamond: it, too, is nothing but carbon! — This, then, is what is called the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone” in the Rosicrucian worldview. Behind it lies a process of human transformation and a call to work toward the future states of humanity. All who work in this way are laying the groundwork for the human bodies of the future—for the bodies that souls will need later on.

[ 19 ] There is a word that beautifully expresses this work on the future, and we will understand it once we grasp the difference between the evolution of the soul and that of the race. You were all once Atlanteans, and those Atlantean bodies looked quite different, as I have already described to you. The same soul that once resided in an Atlantean body is now in your body. But not all bodies were prepared, as yours are today, by a few colonists—those who migrated from west to east at that time. Those who lagged behind—who, as they say, became part of the race—have degenerated, while the more advanced ones founded new cultures. The last stragglers on the path eastward, the Mongols, have retained something of the Atlantean culture. Likewise, the bodies of those people who will not continue to develop progressively will outlive the next turn of the ages and form the Chinese of the future. There will once again be peoples in a state of decadence. For there are also souls living in Chinese bodies who, because they were too strongly drawn to that race, will have to be reincarnated once more in such races. The souls that are within you today will later be incarnated in bodies that come from those who are working today in the manner described, and who are creating the bodies of the future, just as the first colonists of the Atlanteans did in the past. And those who cling so strongly to the everyday, who do not wish to connect with what lies ahead in the future, will merge with the race. There are those who wish to cling to what has been handed down from antiquity, who want nothing to do with what it means to move forward; who refuse to listen to those who lead the race toward ever-new forms of humanity.

[ 20 ] The myth has captured this tendency in a wonderful way. It could not portray it better than by pointing to one of the greatest who ever spoke these words: “Whoever does not leave father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple,” and, in contrast, portrays the sadness in a person who says, “I want nothing to do with such a leader!”—and rejects him. How could this be expressed more clearly than in the image of the one who rejects the leader and is unable to ascend! This is the legend of Ahasver, the Eternal Jew, who sat there and rejected the greatest leader, Christ Jesus, wanted nothing to do with spiritual development, and who must therefore remain with his race, must return again and again to his race. These are the kinds of myths given to humanity as an eternal reminder, so that it may know what is at stake.

[ 21 ] Thus, this fourth stage of Rosicrucian training must be understood as something immensely profound, and in this way, the “preparation of the Philosopher’s Stone” becomes an integral part of humanity’s evolution.

[ 22 ] The fifth is the “correspondence between the microcosm and the macrocosm.” The entire complex human body, as it is today, came into being in a specific way. I have guided you through the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth stages. Of all that is in your body today, only the earliest rudiments of your sensory organs were present on Saturn, embedded in the Saturnian mass just as crystals are embedded in mountain ranges today; your eye was like a quartz crystal in a mountain. On the Sun, your highest organs—all the glands—were arranged so that they covered its surface. On the Moon, the organs that today make up your nervous system were spread out across the Moon’s surface. The Moon had a nervous system, and the individual human-like beings that existed there first became partakers of the nervous system on the Moon. On Earth, human beings acquired their skeletal system, for a mineral kingdom did not yet exist on the Moon at all.

[ 23 ] You can see, then, how artfully the human being has been composed. What is now the eye within us was once spread out as an eye over the entire planet Saturn; what was in the great world has been drawn into us. The Esoteric Doctrine can now tell you, for each individual organ, how it is connected to the greater world outside: the liver, spleen, heart, and so on—how they correspond to their counterparts in the external world and what had to happen in the external world for them to form. There are methods in Rosicrucian esoteric teaching through which we delve into ourselves, using our sense organs as a point of reference; we immerse ourselves inwardly in the eyes and ears, and thereby gain a clairvoyant insight into the formation of these organs.

[ 24 ] I have guided you to that point in Atlantic evolution when the etheric body was still so far removed that it could not connect with the point located here in the head, above the bridge of the nose. We have seen how the etheric body then moved into the physical body, and how the physical body subsequently took on its present form. There is now a method of meditation involving a very specific formula, which is communicated only from person to person. If, through this, you immerse yourself in the point where the head is connected to that part of the etheric head we spoke of, then insight will dawn on you regarding that point in Earth’s history—the way the Earth looked back then—when this part of the etheric head moved into the physical head. In this way, you can delve into every limb of your microcosm and thereby come to know the forces of the macrocosm—that which the architects of the world have built within you. Following the guidance of occultism, you can thus come to know the macrocosm; for every thing in the world, out there in the macrocosm, there is a corresponding organ in the microcosm. Human beings are the most complex beings. Just as you can infer the sender from the message in a telegram, so too can you, by immersing yourself in an organ of the human body, come to recognize its creator.

[ 25 ] We have thus already touched upon the sixth stage, what is called “immersion in the macrocosm.” Anyone who has come to know within themselves the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm has expanded their understanding to encompass the entire world. This is the meaning behind the ancient saying: “Know thyself!” — Much harm has been done by the Theosophists’ assertion that “the whole God is already within you; the Supreme is already present within you. You need only look within yourself, and then you will know the whole world!”

[ 26 ] This brooding within oneself is the most foolish thing imaginable; through it, one comes to know only one’s lower self, which one already possesses. No one learns more through it than he already knows. True self-knowledge can only be attained in the complex manner described, and it is, at the same time, knowledge of the world. True theosophy is not in a position to make things so easy for people; it must say: Through calm, serious contemplation, you must come to know even the most complex being that exists. You cannot come to know God in any other way than by getting to know Him piece by piece in the world. Patience and perseverance are part of this process. It is through calm, slow progress that one comes to know the world. Theosophy cannot provide you with a single, all-encompassing formula for attaining complete knowledge; rather, it can only point you toward the path by which you will arrive at self-knowledge and, through that, knowledge of the world. Then, too, knowledge of God will come to you.

[ 27 ] This insight, which comes to a person on the sixth level, is not a dry, intellectual understanding; it is an insight that brings us into an intimate connection with the world. Whoever has attained it has an intimate relationship with all things in the world, such as modern man knows only in the mysterious relationship of love between a man and a woman, which is based on a secret understanding of the other person’s essence. Such a relationship—through which you not only understand but feel connected to all beings, just as a lover today feels connected to his beloved—comes to you when you contemplate the macrocosm. You then have an intimate relationship, a kind of loving bond, with plants, with every stone, with all beings in the world. Your love for all beings becomes more specialized; they tell you something that they would otherwise reveal only if you had not yet descended into knowledge. The animal eats what suits it and leaves what does not; it has a sympathetic relationship with one thing and an antipathetic relationship with another. In order to attain today’s level of understanding, human beings had to lose their direct relationship with things; but they will regain it on a higher level. How does the occultist today know that the plant’s flower affects humans differently than its root? How does he know that an ordinary root has a different effect than a carrot? Because things speak to him again in the same way they do to animals. This intimate relationship exists on the lower levels, excluding intellectual consciousness; on the highest levels, human beings will once again be conscious of it.

[ 28 ] Once you have reached this point, the seventh stage follows naturally. From everything you have read so far, you can already see that this involves an understanding of emotional impressions and feelings. There is nothing here that would not move a person’s heart in the most vivid way; therefore, you must not distinguish between ideal, intellectual, and spiritual insight. To move you, to tell you all sorts of beautiful things—that is not the occultist’s intention. The occultist tells you the facts of the spiritual world; he would consider it shameless to try to appeal directly to your emotions. But he knows that the facts, when recounted, speak for themselves; they themselves are meant to evoke feelings. Therefore, for the Rosicrucian, the person of the teacher is never a factor. The teaching has nothing to do with the person. The teacher is there merely as an opportunity for the facts to speak to people. And the more he makes himself a vehicle for conveying the vision of the higher worlds, the more accurately he will speak. Anyone who still believes, thinks, and holds views that are uniquely his own is not suited to be an occult teacher. For if emotion, rather than objectivity, were to decide, then you might say: two times two is five!

[ 29 ] Thus you can see how the Rosicrucian, through the various qualities he must cultivate within himself, gradually ascends to the knowledge of the higher worlds. This, of course, requires guidance, which everyone will find at the right time if they seek it earnestly.

[ 30 ] You must not assume that, in personal instruction, these seven stages are completed one after the other; rather, the teacher selects what is particularly suitable for one student or another. I also wanted to mention the preliminary stages. From these, I will now single out just two things to show you that there are other aspects that must be developed before proceeding to the more rigorous exercises. There is one thing that must be practiced from the very beginning: concentration—concentration of the thought life. Just consider how your thoughts flit about within you from morning till night! Thoughts come to you here and there and carry you away. Now, as a Rosicrucian student, you must set aside a time when you are master of your thoughts, when you take an object that is as uninteresting as possible and reflect on it. This will have an immensely beneficial effect on you. Time is irrelevant; energy, patience, and perseverance are necessary for this.

[ 31 ] The other is what is called “positivity,” which consists of seeking out in life what is best characterized by a Persian legend about Jesus Christ: Once, when Jesus Christ was walking along a path with his disciples, they found a dead dog lying by the side of the road that had already begun to decompose. The disciples, who were not yet as advanced as Jesus Christ, turned away from the repulsive sight; only Jesus Christ stopped, looked thoughtfully at the animal, and said, “What beautiful teeth this animal has!”

[ 32 ] No matter how ugly the world may be, there is still beauty in the ugly, a grain of truth in every falsehood, and good in every evil. You don’t have to stop being critical at all! People often interpret this to mean that one must no longer find anything bad, and so on; but what is meant is that there is still a grain of beauty in everything ugly and something good in everything evil. This brings forth the higher powers of the soul. All of this is already part of the preparation.

[ 33 ] I had initially wanted to give you an idea of the spirit in which Christian-Gnostic training takes place. In Rosicrucian training, you will find the deepest, most authentic Christianity; you can be a Christian in the truest sense of the word, despite all aspects of modern life. It was possible to be a Christian in the old style as long as there were more opportunities to withdraw from the world, and as long as the thought forms that make it so difficult for us to be Christians today had not yet taken root within us. However, these ideas, formed out of a scientific way of thinking, make it difficult for people to embrace Christianity in its original form. It is precisely the noblest spirits who say: “I can no longer reconcile myself with Christianity today.” — The spiritual world certainly lives in our surroundings, but the thought forms produced by our materialistic age also live within us. We are constantly surrounded by the thought forms of material life that have been shaped in this way. Thus, anyone who is conscientious must say to themselves: Our time needs a means that can prove itself amidst these ideas flowing into us, in order to sustain us in the face of everything that flows into us from the world. — Spiritual science provides us with this remedy. If one rejects this remedy, if one does not wish to make it one’s own, then one is an egoist. Spiritual science sees itself as the executor of the legacy of what medieval theosophy had already sought to achieve. Yet it can be understood by everyone, even by those familiar with all the legitimate objections raised by the natural sciences. Today, everyone will be able to find in Rosicrucian-oriented theosophy that which leads them to an understanding of the world, as well as to peace of mind and security in life. The Rosicrucian theosophy is not merely a theoretical understanding that can be debated with mere arguments; rather, it is a form of knowledge that must permeate our entire culture. The Theosophist trained in the Rosicrucian sense knows full well all the objections that can be raised; he is himself familiar with all the counterarguments. If one were to argue against it with logical reasoning, it would turn out as it once did for Eduard von Hartmann with his Philosophy of the Unconscious. Eduard von Hartmann published his Philosophy of the Unconscious. In it, he had made statements about Darwinism and other matters that appeared to represent a higher perspective than the materialistic standpoint of scientific research. The scholars all rose up against him, and a flood of critiques appeared against this Philosophy of the Unconscious. Eduard von Hartmann was called the greatest dilettante! — Among these many pamphlets, one appeared by an anonymous author; in it, the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was brilliantly refuted with everything one could possibly cite when one has mastered the knowledge of our time. This pamphlet was met with great acclaim everywhere. And Oscar Schmidt, the famous zoologist, said, for example: “It’s a pity we don’t know who wrote this rebuttal, for this is a person who stands at the forefront of natural science in his time!” — And Ernst Haeckel said: “Let him reveal his name, and we’ll count him among our own!” — Indeed, this pamphlet caused quite a stir. And a second edition was published bearing the author’s name: Eduard von Hartmann! The natural scientists now began to remain silent, and the matter did not become widely known. But it had, after all, existed at one time.

[ 34 ] You see, anyone who has mastered a higher perspective can already present the counterarguments themselves; they need only lower themselves to a different point of view. And we, too, if we’d had the time, could have presented some such counterarguments. But given the limited time available, it was important that we be informed of what spiritual science is already able to reveal today about the realities of the higher world. What matters is that these teachings can have a healing effect on people, and that spiritual science is able to show how they can become increasingly integrated into all branches of human life and enrich them. And when it exerts a enriching and healing influence, it will thereby have provided the best proof of its validity. This is also the proof that spiritual science seeks. That is why the theosophist remains quite undaunted when people still say today: “All of this is just fantasy!” — After all, everything that has become a blessing to humanity was once regarded as fantasy. Here is an example from the last four decades of the 19th century: At that time, our ordinary postage stamp did not yet exist. The postage stamp was, after all, only invented at the end of the 1840s by a certain Hill—actually, by an amateur. The person who had to defend it in Parliament gave a curious speech. First, he said, it simply cannot be that traffic is increasing in the way this man calculates, and if that were the case, then one would have to make the building bigger! — What today seems entirely self-evident—that one also enlarges the building when traffic increases—was dismissed in this manner. Another example: When the first railroad was to be built, the Medical Council in Bavaria was consulted on the matter. The gentlemen there said that no railroad should be built, because it would have the most terrible consequences for the nervous systems of the people riding it. But if a railroad were to be built after all, then high wooden walls would have to be erected around it so that others wouldn’t suffer concussions from it!

[ 35 ] Everything was regarded as something fantastical when it first appeared. But if spiritual science is to become a fact of life, it must penetrate directly into what surrounds us every day. Only when it becomes a force that inspires our entire life, one that permeates our most everyday actions and activities, will it have proven itself as a reality. Rosicrucian theosophy proceeds from this perspective, and it is from this perspective that I ask you to understand everything that has been said in these lectures. In the future, it will be able to develop into something that acts upon the creative powers of human beings and will give them new impulses in the fields of medicine and education, art and higher knowledge—impulses that will flow into all branches of life, animating and enlivening them.

[ 36 ] These lectures are given from this perspective, and it is from this perspective that I ask you to listen to them.