The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have seen that the best way to approach the deeper meaning of the Gospel of John is to seek to gain access to it from various angles; and yesterday we were able to point to one of the most significant mysteries of the Gospel of John from a certain perspective. Now, in order that we may gradually arrive at a full understanding of precisely the mystery mentioned yesterday, it will be necessary for us to consider the appearance of Christ Jesus in our post-Atlantean era as such. We have gathered a wide variety of material in order to trace the development of the human being and, within that, the Christ principle. Today we will attempt to understand why Christ appeared as a human being precisely at that point in our development when he walked the earth. In doing so, we will have to build upon what we have already heard in part during the previous lectures, and we will need to focus specifically on the development of humanity in the post-Atlantean era.

[ 2 ] We have repeatedly mentioned that, in a time long past, our ancestors lived over in the West on a landmass that is now covered by the Atlantic Ocean. Our ancestors lived on ancient Atlantis. The day before yesterday, we were able to point out specifically what the outer physical form of these Atlantean ancestors of ours looked like. We have seen that what is perceived today by human beings through their outer senses—the physical body—actually only slowly and gradually attained the physical density it possesses today.

[ 3 ] We could say that it was not until the final phase of the Atlantean epoch that human beings began to resemble their present form to some extent. But even toward the last third of the Atlantean epoch, human beings were still substantially different, even if they did not appear much different to the external senses. The best way to understand the progress humanity has made is to compare modern humans with any of the living higher animals. For various reasons, it must already have become clear to us in what ways human beings differ fundamentally from even the most highly developed animals of today. In every animal, we find that on the physical plane—or in the physical world—the being of that animal consists of the physical body, the etheric or life body, and the astral body; and that these three components constitute the essence of the animal in the physical world. You must not, however, believe that only physical phenomena exist in the physical world. It would be a great mistake to assume that everything ethereal—or, more specifically, everything astral—is to be found in the supersensible world. Of course, with your physical senses, you can see only physical phenomena in the physical world. But that is not because only physical phenomena exist in the physical world. No, in the case of animals, an etheric body and an astral body are present in the physical world, and a person with clairvoyant abilities can see this etheric body and this astral body of the animal. Only when he wishes to reach the animal’s true “I” can he not remain in the physical world; he must ascend into the astral world. There lies the group soul or the group “I” of the animals. And the difference between humans and animals lies in the fact that, in humans, the “I” is also present here below in the physical world. This means that, in the physical world, a human consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and an “I,” although the three higher members—starting with the etheric body—are perceptible only to clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 4 ] Now, this difference between humans and animals is also expressed in a certain way through clairvoyance. Suppose a clairvoyant observes a horse and a human being. He finds that, extending beyond the horse’s head—which extends down to its muzzle—there is an etheric protrusion, and he says to himself: “The etheric head protrudes above the horse’s physical head and is powerfully organized.” In the horse, however, these two do not coincide. In modern humans, clairvoyant observation reveals that what constitutes the etheric head corresponds in shape and size to the physical head. Viewed clairvoyantly, the elephant looks particularly grotesque, as it has a remarkably large etheric head; so that, seen clairvoyantly, this elephant becomes a very, very grotesque animal. But in modern humans, the physical head and the etheric head coincide; they are quite similar in shape and size. This was not always the case with humans. We first find this to be the case in the last third of the Atlantean epoch. The ancient Atlantean had the etheric head protruding powerfully above the physical head. Then these two grew closer and closer together, and it was in the last third of the Atlantean epoch that the physical and etheric heads came to coincide. There is a point in the brain—near the eyes—that today coincides with a very specific point on the etheric head. In ancient times, these points were separate. The etheric point was outside the brain. These two important points have moved closer together. It was only when these two points coincided that human beings learned to say “I” to themselves; that is when what we called the “consciousness soul” yesterday emerged. Through this convergence of the etheric head and the physical head of the human being, the human head underwent a very significant change. For the head of the ancient Atlantean looked quite different from that of modern humans. If we wish to understand how today’s development became possible, we must also consider to some extent the physical conditions in ancient Atlantis.

[ 5 ] If you had walked through ancient Atlantis over there in the West, you would not have experienced the same distribution of rain, fog, air, and sunshine that you see today across our present-day landmasses. The northern regions west of Scandinavia, in particular, were shrouded in fog at that time. The people who lived where Ireland is today—and further west—never saw rain and sunshine distributed in ancient Atlantis the way they are today. They were always shrouded in fog, and it was not until the Atlantean flood that the time came when the masses of fog also separated from the air and fell to the ground. You could have searched all of ancient Atlantis, and you would not have found there a phenomenon that is known to all of you today as a marvelous natural phenomenon—it would have been impossible to find a rainbow! It is only possible with such a distribution of rain and sunshine as exists in the atmosphere today. In Atlantis, before the Great Flood, you will find no rainbow. Only gradually, after the Great Flood, did the phenomenon of the rainbow emerge—that is, it became physically possible. If you now receive this information from esoteric science and recall that the Atlantic Flood is preserved in various legends and myths as the Great Flood, and that Noah emerges and is the first to see the rainbow after the Great Flood, then you will gain an understanding of how profoundly true—literally true—the religious records are. It is true that it was only after the Atlantic Flood that human beings saw the rainbow for the first time. — These are the kinds of experiences one can have who lives through occultism and then, bit by bit, begins to understand how literally the religious texts may be taken—though, of course, one must first learn to understand the literal meaning.

[ 6 ] Toward the end of the Atlantean era, it became apparent that the external and internal conditions were most favorable for human beings in a specific region of our Earth’s surface, located near present-day Ireland. Today, that landmass is covered by water. At that time, conditions there were particularly favorable; and it was there that, among the Atlantean peoples, the most gifted people emerged—those most predisposed to ascend to free human self-consciousness. And the leader of this people—who in theosophical literature has come to be known as the “Proto-Semites”—was a great initiate who, to put it simply, selected the most advanced individuals from among this group and journeyed with them eastward, across Europe and into Asia, to the region of present-day Tibet. A relatively small but, especially in spiritual terms, highly advanced fraction of the Atlantean population migrated there.

[ 7 ] During the last Atlantean period, the western regions of Atlantis gradually disappeared, becoming submerged by the sea. Europe began to emerge more and more in its present form. Asia was still such that the vast Siberian landmass was still covered by extensive bodies of water; but the southern regions of Asia, in particular, already existed, albeit in a different form. The less advanced populations partly joined this core group of people, which was moving from west to east; some went further, others followed only a short distance. But the ancient European population also came into being largely as a result of masses of people migrating from Atlantis, settling there, and populating ancient Europe. Masses of people who had been driven out earlier—including, in part, those who had come to Asia from other regions of Atlantis, as well as from ancient Lemuria—joined this migration. Thus, masses of people with the most diverse talents and spiritual abilities settled in Europe and Asia. The small fraction led by that great spiritual individuality settled over in Asia to cultivate the highest spirituality possible at that time. From this cultural center, cultural currents spread to the most diverse regions of the earth and to the various peoples.

[ 8 ] The first cultural current flowed down to India, and there, through the influence exerted by the spiritual mission of the great individuality, what we call ancient Indian culture took shape. We are not speaking here of that Indian culture of which remnants have been preserved for us in the wondrous books of the Vedas, nor of what was later passed down to posterity through tradition. Everything that can be known about this outer culture was preceded by a far more magnificent earlier culture—the culture of the ancient holy Rishis, those great teachers who, in the distant past of humanity, bestowed the first post-Atlantean culture.

[ 9 ] Let us now immerse ourselves in the spirit of this first cultural movement of the post-Atlantean era. This first culture of post-Atlantean humanity was humanity’s first truly religious culture. The preceding Atlantean cultures were not religious cultures in the true sense of the word. “Religion” is essentially a characteristic of the post-Atlantean era. Why? Well, how did the Atlanteans live? Because the etheric head was still separate from the physical head, the old, twilight-like clairvoyance had not yet been completely lost. To the greatest extent, when a person was out of their physical body at night, they could see into the spiritual world. While during the day, when they were immersed in their physical body, they saw physical things here in the physical world, at night they could still perceive, to a certain degree, the realms of the spiritual world. - Imagine yourself in the middle or the first third of the Atlantean epoch. What was life like for human beings then? They would wake up in the morning. Their astral body would withdraw into their physical body and etheric body. The objects of the physical world were not yet as clear and sharply defined as they are today. When a city is shrouded in fog and you see the streetlights in the evening surrounded by halos of color—so indistinct, with fringes and beams of color—that gives you a picture of what it looked like in Atlantis during that time—not with clear outlines, but as if you were seeing the streetlights outside in the fog today. On the other hand, there was also not such a sharp separation between bright daytime consciousness and nocturnal unconsciousness as emerged only after the Atlantean era. Although the astral body slipped out of the etheric body and the physical body during the night, the etheric body remained partially connected to the astral body, so there were always reflections of the spiritual world. Human beings could always experience a twilight form of clairvoyance; they lived within the spiritual world and perceived spiritual beings and spiritual processes all around them.

[ 10 ] What you read, for example, as Germanic myths and tales of the gods—scholars sitting at their desks tell you: “Those were once made up by ordinary people out of the popular imagination!” Wotan and Thor and all the gods, they say, are personifications of natural forces, and so on. There are entire mythological theories that speak of the “fecund folk imagination” in this way. When you hear this, it’s easy to get the impression that such a scholar was born from a test tube, like the homunculus in Goethe’s Faust, and has never seen a real human being. For anyone who has truly observed the people would certainly be unable to speak in such terms of a “creative popular imagination.” These tales of the gods are nothing other than the remnants of real events that people in earlier times actually witnessed with their own eyes. This Wotan really existed! At night, humans walked among the gods in the spiritual world and knew Wotan and Thor there just as well as they know their flesh-and-blood counterparts today. What primitive natures continued to perceive through clairvoyance for a long time back then is the content of myths and legends, particularly the Germanic ones.

[ 11 ] The people who migrated at that time from the West to the East, into the regions later called Germania, were people who, to a certain degree—some more, some less—had retained a certain degree of clairvoyance, so that at least at certain times they could still see into the spiritual world. And while the highest initiate moved with his disciples to Tibet and from there sent the first cultural colony down to India, initiates had remained behind among the peoples of Europe, cultivating the spiritual through the mysteries. Among these peoples, the mysteries included, for example, the Druidic mysteries and the Drotten mysteries, of which humanity today knows nothing—for what it does know is nothing but fantastical nonsense. What is important, however, is that when people spoke of higher worlds back then among the Druids or among the people of western Russia and Scandinavia, where the Drotten mysteries were practiced, there were always a number of people who knew about spiritual worlds. When people spoke of Wotan or of the event that took place between Baldur and Hödur, they were not speaking of something that was entirely unknown to them. Many had themselves experienced such events in special states of consciousness, and those who had not experienced them heard about them from a neighbor whom they considered credible enough.

[ 12 ] And wherever you might go in Europe, there was still a vivid memory of what existed in Atlantis. What existed there? Something that could be called a coexistence of human beings—a natural coexistence of human beings with the spiritual world, with what we today call heaven. Human beings constantly entered the spiritual world and lived within it. In other words, they did not need any particular religion to point out the existence of a spiritual world. What, then, does religion mean? Religion means “connection”—a connection between the physical and the spiritual world. Back then, people did not need a special connection to the spiritual world, for it was a world of experience. Just as no one needs to teach you to believe in the flowers of the meadow or the animals of the forest—because you see them—so too did the Atlanteans believe in the gods and spirits—not out of religion, but because they experienced them.

[ 13 ] As humanity progressed, things developed in such a way that human beings attained clear daytime consciousness. The post-Atlantean epoch is thus the period during which human beings attained clear daytime consciousness. And he attained it by having to relinquish the old clairvoyant consciousness. This will be restored to him in the future, in addition to his present clear daytime consciousness. — Among our ancestors here in Europe, it was often the case that legends and myths preserved memories of the ancient times. But what, exactly, was the essence of the most advanced among them? As strange as it may sound: the most advanced of all—those whom the leader led eastward as far as Tibet—were most advanced in that they had lost the old dreamy, clairvoyant consciousness. What does it mean, then, to progress from the fourth race into the fifth? It means becoming clear-eyed, losing the old clairvoyance. The great Initiate and Guide led the members of his small group away so that they would not have to live among those who still stood on the stages of the old Atlantean people; and among the former, only those who trained themselves deliberately, who deliberately underwent occult training, could be led up into the higher worlds.

[ 14 ] What, then, remained for the people of the early post-Atlantean era of their former connection with the spiritual-divine world? A longing for it! For although the gate to the spiritual world had closed to them, the longing remained. Those people felt it something like this—as they gathered from legends and traditions—: There was a time when our ancestors looked into the spiritual world, when they lived with spirits and gods, when they were immersed in the deeper spiritual reality. Oh, if only we could enter there too! — That is what they said to themselves. And out of this longing arose the ancient Indian method of initiation, which emerged from the yearning for what had been lost and is based on the idea that a person temporarily leaves behind the bright, clear consciousness of the day in order to wind back their consciousness to its former state. Yoga is the method of ancient Indian initiation, which, through its technique and practice, achieved the artificial recreation of what humanity had lost through natural processes. — Just imagine such an ancient Atlantean, whose etheric head still protruded far above the physical head. When the astral body then emerged, a large part of the etheric head remained connected to the astral body, and thus whatever the astral body experienced could be imprinted into the etheric body; in this way, one could bring those experiences into consciousness. When, in the late Atlantean period, the etheric part of the head withdrew completely into the physical head, the astral body emerged entirely from the etheric body every night. In the ancient initiation, therefore, one had to attempt to bring the etheric body out artificially; that is to say, one had to induce a kind of lethargic state in the person—a sort of death-like sleep that lasted three and a half days—during which the etheric body protruded from the physical body and was loosened, so that what the astral body experienced was imprinted upon the etheric body. And when the etheric body was then guided back into the physical body, the person knew what they had experienced in the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] That was the ancient method of initiation, the yoga initiation, through which a person, so to speak, detached himself from the world into which he had now been placed, in order to return to the spiritual world. And the cultural atmosphere that emerged from this initiation is the one that found its echoes in later Indian culture. It was the atmosphere in which a person told himself: Truth, reality, actuality, and essence exist solely in the spiritual world—that spiritual world into which a person enters when he withdraws from the physical-sensory world. Now human beings are in the realms of the physical world, surrounded by the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. But what surrounds human beings in this way is not the truth; it is only outward appearance; they have lost the truth since time immemorial and now live in a world of appearance, of illusion, of Maya. — And so the physical world became the world of Maya for ancient Indian culture. This must be understood in accordance with the cultural spirit of that time—as people felt it then—and not as a dry theory. To the ancient Indian, especially one who seeks to be particularly holy, the world of Maya is worthless. This physical world is an illusion to him; the true world exists for him when he withdraws from this physical world, when—through yoga—he is allowed to live once again in the world where his ancestors lived during the Atlantean era.

[ 16 ] The purpose of this further development, however, is that human beings gradually become accustomed to appreciating the physical world—which is presented to them in post-Atlantean culture—according to its value and significance. The second cultural epoch, which goes a step further than the ancient Indian culture—and is also a prehistoric culture, though we name it after the peoples who later lived in these regions—is the ancient Persian culture. Again, we are not referring here to the later Persian culture, but to a prehistoric culture.

[ 17 ] The second period differs quite significantly in mood and emotional content from the ancient Indian era. It became increasingly difficult to detach the etheric body, but it was still possible, and in a certain sense it continued to be accomplished right up to the time of Christ Jesus. But there was one thing these people of the ancient Persian culture had achieved: they had begun to appreciate Maya, or illusion, and to regard it as something valuable. The Indian felt at ease when he could escape from illusion; for the Persian, it had become a field of work. Admittedly, it still appeared to him as something adversarial, but as something that had to be conquered—from which later emerged the struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, in which humanity unites with the good gods against the powers of the evil gods entrenched in matter. This gave rise to the prevailing mood of that time. The Persian still did not love this reality; but he no longer fled from it, as the ancient Indian did; rather, he worked on it, viewing it as a stage on which one could work, where there was something to be overcome. A step had been taken toward the conquest of the physical world in this second cultural stage.

[ 18 ] Then came the third cultural stage, and we are drawing ever closer to historical times. In Esoteric Science, we refer to it as the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian culture. All of these cultures were founded by colonies sent out under the leadership of great leaders. The first colony established the culture of ancient India; the second established what we have just described as the ancient Persian cultural center; and a third cultural current went even further west and established there what formed the foundation of the Babylonian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian culture. This marked an important step forward in the conquest of the physical world. To the Persians, it still appeared as a formless mass that had to be shaped if one wished to work within it using what they conceived as the good spirits of true spiritual reality. Now they had become more familiar, more intimate with physical reality. — Consider ancient Chaldean astronomy, which ranks among the most remarkable and magnificent achievements of the post-Atlantean human spirit! There you can see how the orbits of the stars were explored, how the laws of the heavens were investigated. The ancient Indian had still looked up at this sky and said: “No matter how the stars move or what laws may be expressed in them, it is not worth the effort to investigate these laws!” — For a member of the third cultural epoch, it was already very important to fathom these laws. For a member of Egyptian culture, it was even very important to investigate the conditions of the Earth in particular and to develop geometry. Nature was studied, and external science emerged. Human beings study the thoughts of the gods, and they feel that they must establish a connection between their own creative work and what they find inscribed within matter as the “script of the gods.” You would gain a different conception of a state if you were to investigate the earlier conditions of Egyptian-Chaldean state life than the one people can have today. For the individuals who governed and guided such states were sages who, at the same time, knew the laws of the celestial orbits by which the celestial bodies move and were fully aware that everything in the universe must correspond with one another. They had studied the paths of the stars and knew that there must be harmony between what happened in the heavens and what happened on Earth. Based on events in the heavens, they prescribed what was to unfold on Earth over time. Even in the earliest Roman period, the fourth cultural epoch, people were still aware that what takes place on Earth must correspond to what is revealed in the heavens.

[ 19 ] In the ancient mysteries, at the dawn of a new epoch, it was known for long periods of time what events would unfold in the future. Through the wisdom of the mysteries—for example, at the dawn of Roman history—it was known: A time will follow in which the most varied destinies will unfold, and these will take root in the region of Alba Longa. - For anyone who can read between the lines, it is clear that this alludes to a deeply symbolic expression, that priestly wisdom, so to speak, laid out the framework of ancient Roman culture. “Alba longa” is the long priestly robe. In these ancient regions, therefore, the future events of history were—if one may say so, to use a technical term—laid out in this way. People said to one another: Seven epochs must follow one another; they divided the future according to the number seven, and they laid out the outline of history in advance. And I could easily show you how prophetic historical tables are encoded within the seven Roman kings, who were already inscribed in the Sibylline Books at the very beginning of the Roman era. But back then, people also knew: We must live out what is written there. — And whenever momentous events occurred, they consulted the sacred books; hence the reverence and secrecy surrounding the Sibylline Books.

[ 20 ] Thus, the human being of the third cultural epoch worked the spirit into matter and permeated the outer world with the spirit. Countless historical testimonies to this are hidden in the development of the era of this third cultural current—the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian culture.

[ 21 ] One can only understand our time if one knows what important connections exist between our time and that time. I would now like to point out a connection between these two eras so that you can see how wonderfully things are interconnected for those who can look more deeply, who know that what is called egoism and the principle of utility has reached its peak today. Culture has never been as purely egoistic, as unidealistic as it is today, and it will become even more so in the near future. For today the spirit has descended entirely into material culture. Humanity has had to expend immense spiritual power on the great inventions and discoveries of modern times, particularly those of the nineteenth century. How much spiritual power lies in telephones, telegraphs, railroads, and so on! How much spiritual power has been materialized, crystallized in the world’s commercial relations! How much spiritual power was required to have a sum of money paid out—say, in Tokyo—on the basis of a piece of paper written here, a check. And so one asks oneself: Is this spiritual power being applied in the sense of spiritual progress? — Anyone who really looks at the matter closely says to themselves: You may build railroads, but you only transport what you need to fill your stomachs; and even when you travel yourselves, you still only go where your needs take you. — Does it make a difference to spiritual science whether a person grinds his grain with a few stones or obtains his grain from far away via telegraphs, steamships, and so on? Enormous spiritual energy is expended, but it has been used in a thoroughly personal sense. What will be the whole point of what people are conveying to one another in this process? Probably not anthroposophy—that is, spiritual truths! When they use “telegraphs and steamships,” the primary concern will be how much cotton one wants to transport from America to Europe, and so on—that is, matters pertaining to personal need. People have even descended into the deepest depths of personal need, of the most materialistic personality. But such an egoistic principle of utility was bound to emerge, because it will make the ascent in the course of humanity’s entire development all the more effective.

[ 22 ] But what has happened that causes human beings to place so much importance on their personality? What makes them feel so strongly that they are unique individuals, and what has led to the situation today where human beings feel so strongly, in their existence confined between birth and death, that they stand in opposition to the spiritual world?

[ 23 ] The most important aspects of this were developed during the third cultural epoch, when people sought to preserve the form of the physical body beyond death in a mummy, determined not to let that form dissolve in an embalmed body. This led to such a deep-seated attachment to the individual personality that it reemerges today in reincarnation as a sense of personality. The fact that this sense of personality is so strong today is a consequence of the mummification of bodies during the Egyptian era. Thus, everything in human evolution is interconnected. The Egyptians embalmed the bodies of the deceased so that people in the fifth epoch might have the greatest possible sense of personality. There are profound mysteries within human development!

[ 24 ] Thus you can see how human beings descend further and further into the Maya and permeate matter with what the human being is capable of achieving. In the fourth cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin epoch, the human being first projects his inner being out into the external world. There, you see first how, in Greece, human beings objectify themselves in matter, in forms. Human beings enshrine their own form in the figures of the Greek gods. In Aeschylus’s dramas, there is still an echo of how human beings seek to artistically express their own individuality. They step out onto the physical plane themselves and create an image of themselves. And in Roman culture, human beings create an image of themselves within the institutions of the state. It is the worst kind of dilettantism to trace what is today called jurisprudence back further than to Roman times. What came before is, by definition, something entirely different from “jus,” from law. For the concept of the human being as an external personality—the legal concept of the human being—did not yet exist in earlier times. In ancient Greece, it is the “polis,” the small city-state, and the individual feels himself to be a member of that small city-state. It would be difficult for a person today to relate to this consciousness of the Greek era. In Roman culture, the physical world is entered to such an extent that the individual human personality—as a Roman citizen—also emerges legally. Thus, everything progresses step by step, and we will have to continue to trace how the personality increasingly comes to the fore and, with it, the physical world is increasingly conquered. Human beings are delving ever deeper into matter.

[ 25 ] Our culture is the first culture following the Greco-Latin epoch, that is, the fifth of the post-Atlantean era; this is followed by a sixth and then a seventh cultural epoch. The fourth culture, the Greco-Latin one, is the middle one—and it is within the time of this middle post-Atlantean culture that Christ Jesus appears on Earth. This event is prepared for within the third cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era, because everything in the world must be prepared. It was during the third epoch that the groundwork was laid for what was to become the greatest event on Earth during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, when human beings had advanced so far in their development of personality that they projected themselves outward, making their gods in the likeness of human beings. In the Greek era, human beings created a world of gods in their art according to their own reflection. They then created a repetition of this in the state. Humanity had descended to the point of comprehending matter, to the union of Maya and the Spirit. This was the moment when humanity had also reached an understanding of the individual personality. You will understand that this was also the time when humanity could comprehend God as a personal manifestation, when even the Spirit belonging to the Earth had advanced to the level of the individual personality. Thus we see how, in the midst of post-Atlantean culture, God Himself appears as a human being, as an individual personality. One might say that what happened back then appears to us as in a picture when we see how human beings create an image of themselves in Greek works of art. Is it not actually the case that, as we move from Greek culture to Roman culture and observe the archetypes of great Roman civilization, it seems as though the Greek images of the gods had descended from their pedestals and were walking about in their togas! One can practically see them!

[ 26 ] Thus, humanity had progressed from the time when it felt itself to be a part of the Godhead to the point of perceiving itself as a personality. At that point, it was able to comprehend the Godhead itself as a personality who had descended and dwelt among humankind in the flesh.

[ 27 ] Let us take this to heart: why Christ Jesus appeared precisely at this stage in humanity’s development. How this mystery unfolded further, how it shone forth prophetically in earlier stages of development, and how it continues to exert a prophetic influence on distant, future times—we will discuss this next time.