The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Nineteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to offer some additional insights to supplement the diverse occult facts and perspectives we have explored here this winter. It has often been emphasized how what we call spiritual science should influence human life and how it can become life, action, and deed. Today, however, we will take a few supplementary glances at the great evolutionary processes of the universe as they are expressed in the human being. And first, I would like to direct your attention to a fact that can shed much light on the nature of world evolution, if only you are willing to see it in the right way.

[ 2 ] Let’s first consider the difference between animal and human development from a purely external perspective. You need only say a single word to yourself and keep a single idea in mind, and you will soon notice the difference between the concept of animal development and that of human development. You need only keep the word “upbringing” in mind. True education is impossible in the animal world. One can, of course, train an animal to a certain extent to perform tasks that deviate from what is instinctively ingrained in it—what is inherent in it from the outset and then manifests itself. But one really has to go to great lengths—given the enthusiasm one might develop as a devoted dog lover—to deny the very radical difference between human education and what we can achieve with an animal. Now we need only recall an important insight from our anthroposophical worldview, and the basis for this seemingly superficial fact will become clear to us.

[ 3 ] We know that human beings develop gradually in a very complex way. We have repeatedly emphasized how, during the first seven years of life—up until the change of teeth—human beings must undergo their development in a completely different way than they do later, up to the age of fourteen, and then again from the age of fourteen to twenty-one. We will only touch on all of this very briefly today, as you are already familiar with it. We know that, from a spiritual scientific perspective, human beings undergo multiple births.

[ 4 ] A human being is born into the physical world when he leaves his mother’s body; he sheds the physical maternal sheath. But we know that once a human being has shed the physical maternal sheath, he is still enclosed within another, second, etheric maternal sheath. As the child grows up to the age of seven, what we call the child’s etheric body is completely surrounded by external etheric currents that belong to the environment, just as the physical body is surrounded by the physical maternal sheath until birth, And with the change of teeth, this etheric membrane is shed, and only then is the etheric body born, at the age of seven. But even then, the astral body is still enveloped in the astral membrane, which is shed upon reaching sexual maturity. Afterward, the human astral body develops freely until the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, when the human’s true “I” is, in essence, only then born, when the human first awakens to full inner intensity, and when that which has developed as an “I” through the various incarnations the human has previously undergone begins to emerge from within.

[ 5 ] A very special fact becomes apparent to the clairvoyant consciousness. Observe a very young child over the course of a few weeks, or perhaps even months. You will see the child’s head surrounded by etheric and astral currents and forces. However, these etheric and astral currents and forces gradually become less distinct and fade away after some time. What is actually happening here? You can actually deduce what is happening without clairvoyant observation, but clairvoyant observation confirms what is now being said. You can tell yourself that immediately after birth, the human brain is not yet as it will be later, after a few weeks or months. Although the child already perceives the external world, its brain does not yet possess the capacity to connect external impressions with one another in a specific way. There are individual connecting nerves that run from one part of the brain to another, and these are only developed after the child is born. These connecting pathways, through which a person gradually learns to mentally link what they see in the outside world, develop only little by little after the child is born. A child will, let’s say, hear a bell and will also see the bell, but will not immediately connect the auditory and visual impressions to the judgment: “The bell is ringing.”—It learns this only gradually, because the part of the brain that serves as the instrument for perceiving sound and the part that serves as the instrument for visual perception are only connected to one another over the course of a lifetime. Only then does such a judgment become possible, and the child can say: “What I see there is the same thing that is ringing.” - Thus, such connecting pathways are formed in the brain, and the forces that structure these pathways appear to the clairvoyant in the first weeks of a child’s development as something that still envelops the brain. But what envelops the brain enters the brain and later lives within it; it no longer works from the outside but from within the brain. This force, which works externally during the first weeks of a child’s development, could not continue to contribute to the overall development of the growing human being if it were not protected by the various layers. For when what I have just described—that which acts from the outside and then enters the brain, becoming part of it—develops under the protective covering first of the etheric body and then of the astral body, it is not until the age of twenty-two that what had been acting from the outside begins to act from within. What was initially outside the human being during the first months of his existence—what was then drawn inward—becomes active without a covering only between the ages of twenty and twenty-two; there it becomes free, and then it develops the intensity that has already been mentioned.

[ 6 ] Now let us consider this human development, which proceeds step by step. Let us compare it with the development of the plant. We know that the plant, here in the physical world where it first appears before us, has only its physical and etheric bodies; in contrast, it has the astral body surrounding it; but internally, it has only the physical and etheric bodies. The plant emerges from the seed; its physical body forms, and thereafter its etheric body also develops gradually. But the plant has only this etheric body. Now we have seen that the human etheric body still has the astral body surrounding it until sexual maturity, and that only then is the human astral body truly born. The plant, however, cannot give birth to such an astral body after reaching sexual maturity, for it has none. The necessary consequence of this is that, upon reaching sexual maturity, the plant no longer has anything that needs to be further developed. It has fulfilled its task in the physical world when sexual maturity is reached. After it is fertilized, it dies. Indeed, you can observe that something similar is true even in certain lower animals. You can observe how, in lower animals, the astral body has not yet been fully drawn into the physical body to the same extent as in higher animals. Lower animals are characterized precisely by the fact that the astral body is not yet fully within the physical body. Take the mayfly; it comes into being, lives until fertilization, is fertilized, and dies. Why? Because it is a being that, much like the plant, has its astral body largely outside itself and therefore can no longer develop anything once sexual maturity has been reached. In a certain sense, humans, animals, and plants develop similarly up to sexual maturity. The plant now has nothing left that would require further development in the physical world; it dies after reaching sexual maturity. The animal still has the astral body, but no “I.” Thus, after reaching sexual maturity, the animal still possesses a certain reserve of developmental potential. The astral body becomes free, and as long as the astral body continues to develop freely—as long as the potential for development remains within it—further development continues in higher animals after sexual maturity. However, the astral body of an animal in the physical world does not contain an “I.” The animal’s “I” is a group “I”; it always encompasses an entire group and exists in the astral world as a group “I.” This group-I in the astral world has entirely different possibilities for development than the animal here in the physical world. But what the animal possesses as an astral body has a very narrowly defined potential for development. The animal carries this potential within itself as an innate disposition from the moment it enters the world. The lion possesses something in its astral body that manifests as a sum of drives, instincts, and passions. And whatever lives in its astral body in the form of drives, desires, and passions is able to play itself out. This continues until a “self” could be born; but this “self” is not yet present—it exists on the astral plane. Therefore, when the animal has just reached the stage where a human being enters the twenty-first year of life, its potential for development is completely exhausted. Of course, lifespan varies according to circumstances; for not all animals live to be twenty-one years old. But what is essentially animal development is lived out by the human being up to the age of twenty-one, when the “I” is born. Of course, you must not now say that human development up to the age of twenty-one is animal in nature, for it is not; rather, what is set free at the age of twenty-one is already present within the human being from the very beginning—from the moment of conception—and it is now set free. Since there is something within the human being from the very beginning that is then set free at the age of twenty-one, the human being is not an animal entity from the very beginning; rather, this “I” is at work within them from the very beginning, even if it is not yet free. And it is this “I” that can actually be educated. For this “I,” together with what it has developed in the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, is what passes from one incarnation to the next. If nothing new were added to this “I” in a new incarnation, the human being would be unable to take anything with them at physical death from their last life between birth and death. And if they could take nothing with them, they would stand at exactly the same stage in the following life as in the previous one. Because we see human beings undergo a process of development during their lives, and because they acquire and assimilate within themselves what an animal cannot assimilate—since an animal’s potential for development is limited to its innate dispositions—they continually enrich their “I”; through this, they rise higher and higher from one incarnation to the next. That is why—because human beings carry within themselves the “I,” which is not born until the age of twenty-one but is already at work beforehand—education is possible for them, and that is why they can be shaped into something other than what their innate nature would have made them from the very beginning. The lion brings its lion-like nature with it and lives it out fully. Human beings bring with them not only the general nature of the human species, but also what they have already acquired as an “I” in their last incarnation. However, this can be transformed further and further through education and life experience, so that it is imbued with a new direction when the human being passes through the gate of death and must then prepare for a new incarnation. This is what we must bear in mind: that the human being absorbs new elements of development within himself and continually enriches himself.

[ 7 ] Now let us ask ourselves: What actually happens when a person is outwardly enriched by such facts of development? To begin with, we must turn to three very important concepts that are somewhat difficult to grasp. And since we are here in a branch that has been working on this for years, there will likely be an opportunity to move on to somewhat higher concepts that are more difficult to grasp. To understand these three concepts, first consider the entire mature plant—take a lily of the valley, for example. There you have the plant in one form before you. But then you can also have the same plant before you in another form—as a tiny seed. Imagine you take that seed; there you have a very small entity before you. When you lay it before you, you can say: Yes, everything that I will later see as roots, stems, leaves, and flowers is contained within that seed. So I have the flower before me both as a seed and as a fully grown plant. But I could not have the seed before me if it had not been produced by a previous lily of the valley. — Yet for the clairvoyant consciousness, something else is also at play. When the clairvoyant consciousness observes the fully grown lily of the valley, it sees the physical lily of the valley permeated by an etheric body—a kind of body of light currents—that runs through it from top to bottom. But in the case of the lily of the valley, the etheric body does not protrude very far from this physical plant body and does not differ greatly from it. But if you take the tiny seed of the lily of the valley, you will find that the physical seed is small, yet a beautiful etheric body is structured within this seed, radiating all around it—in such a way that the seed sits at one end of the etheric body, just as the nucleus relates to the tail in a comet. The physical seed is actually nothing more than a condensed point within the light body—or etheric body—of the lily of the valley. When someone grounded in spiritual science has the fully grown lily of the valley before them, the essence that was initially hidden is revealed to them. When they have the tiny seed before them—where the physical is very small and only the spiritual is large—they say: The true essence of the lily of the valley is enclosed within the physical seed. Thus, when we look at the lily of the valley, we must distinguish between two states. One state is where the entire essence of the lily of the valley is involution: the seed contains the essence wrapped up, involved within it. As it grows outward, it transitions into evolution; but then the entire essence of the lily of the valley slips back into the developing, new seed. Thus, evolution and involution alternate in the sequence of states of a plant’s being. During evolution, the spiritual disappears more and more and the physical becomes powerful; during involution, the physical will fade more and more, and the spiritual will become more and more powerful.

[ 8 ] In a certain sense, we can say that in human beings, evolution and involution alternate—only in an even more striking way. There you have the human being before you, between birth and death: the physical body and the etheric body coincide as the physical aspect, and the spiritual aspect also coincides in a certain way—the human being has evolved as an earthly human being. But when you see the human being pass through the gate of death—observed clairvoyantly—what remains of their physical life is not even as much as the seed of a lily of the valley; the physical aspect disappears so completely for you that you can no longer see it, and everything is enveloped in the spiritual. Human beings now pass through Devachan; there they are in a state of involution with regard to their earthly being. Evolution occurs between birth and death; involution occurs between death and a new birth with regard to the earthly human being. But there is a vast difference between human beings and plants. We can speak of evolution and involution in the case of plants, but in the case of human beings we must also speak of a third factor that comes into play. If we did not speak of this third factor, we would not be able to fully encompass the entire development of a human being. Because the plant always goes through involution and evolution, it follows that every new plant is a repetition of the old one, exactly like the old one. The essence of the lily of the valley is constantly winding itself into and out of the seed. But what is the case with human beings?

[ 9 ] We have just recognized that human beings take in new elements of developmental potential during their lives, between birth and death. In this way, they enrich themselves. That is why human beings are not like plants. The evolution of human beings on Earth is not a mere repetition of what came before; rather, it is linked to an elevation of their existence. What human beings take in between birth and death, they also weave into what was already there before. And that is why what occurs is not a mere repetition, but rather the emergence of that which evolves to a higher level. Where, in fact, does what a human being takes in come from? How are we to understand that he receives and takes in something new? I ask you now to follow very closely, for we are coming to one of the most important—and also the most difficult—concepts. And it is not without reason that I am saying this in one of the final lessons, for you have the entire summer to reflect on it. One should reflect on such concepts for months and years, because only then does one gradually grasp the full depth that lies within them. Where does that which continually enters into the human being come from? Let’s try to understand where it comes from using a simple example.

[ 10 ] Suppose you have a person standing before you who is facing two others. Let’s take everything that is part of human development and consider it as a whole. Let’s take the one person who is looking at the other two and say: He has gone through previous incarnations; he has developed what previous incarnations have instilled in him. This is also the case with the other two people standing before him. But now let’s assume this person says to himself: The one person next to the other looks very nice here. — He takes pleasure in the fact that these two people in particular are standing side by side. Another person might not feel this pleasure at all. The pleasure that one person derives from seeing them standing together has nothing to do with the developmental potential of the other two, for they have not earned the right to please the third person by standing side by side. This is something entirely different; it depends solely on the fact that he is standing face to face with these two people. So you see, the person forms within himself a feeling of joy at the sight of the two standing together before him. This feeling is not conditioned by anything related to development. There are things in the world that arise solely from the fact that certain circumstances are brought together. It is not a matter of the two people being connected through their karma. Let us consider this joy he derives from the fact that the two people standing side by side please him.

[ 11 ] Let’s consider another case. Suppose a person is standing here at a certain point on Earth and gazes up into the heavens. There he sees a certain constellation. If he were to take five steps further, he would see something different. This sight evokes in him a feeling of joy that is something entirely new. In this way, a person experiences a series of facts that are entirely new, facts that are in no way determined by his earlier development. Everything that the lily of the valley brings is determined by earlier development. But this is not the case with what the environment imparts to the human soul. Human beings have a whole host of experiences that have nothing to do with their earlier development, but which arise because they come into contact with the external world through certain circumstances. But because the human being experiences this joy, it has become something within them; it has become an experience for them. Something has arisen in the human soul that is not determined by anything that came before, something that has arisen out of nothing. Such creations out of nothing arise continually in the human soul. These are the experiences of the soul that one does not experience through facts, but through relationships—through connections between facts that one forms for oneself. I ask that you carefully distinguish between experiences derived from facts and those derived from the relationships between facts.

[ 12 ] Life truly breaks down into two parts that merge seamlessly into one another: experiences that are strictly determined by past causes—by karma—and those that are not determined by karma but enter our field of vision anew. For example, there are entire areas of human life that fall under this category. Suppose you hear that someone has stolen something somewhere. Now, of course, what happened there—that is, the entire act—is conditioned by this or that karmic process. But let’s suppose you only know about the theft and do not know who committed it; in the objective world, however, there is a very specific person who committed the theft. You know nothing about that person, though. But the thief doesn’t come to you to say, “Lock me up—I stole something”; rather, you have to piece together facts from all sorts of clues that can provide you with proof that this or that person is the thief. The conceptual processes you go through here have nothing to do with the objective facts. They depend on entirely different things, including how intelligent or unintelligent you are. What you piece together does not make that person the thief; rather, it is a process that takes place entirely within you, one that is superimposed upon what exists externally. Essentially, all logic is something that is added to things from the outside. And all judgments of taste, all judgments we make about beauty, are such things that are added. Thus, human beings continually enrich their lives through what is not determined by prior causes—what they experience by placing themselves in this or that relationship with things.

[ 13 ] If we now quickly review the entire course of human life in our minds and visualize how it unfolded through the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods up to our Earth evolution, we find that on Saturn there could not yet have been any question of human beings being able to establish relationships in this way. There was only necessity. It was the same on the Sun and also on the Moon, and just as it was with human beings on the Moon, so it is today with animals. Animals experience only what is determined by preceding causes. Only human beings have entirely new experiences that are not determined by preceding causes. That is why only human beings are capable of education in the truest sense of the word. Human beings alone continually add something new to what is karmically determined. It is only on Earth that human beings gain the ability to add something new. On the Moon, their development had not yet progressed far enough for them to be able to add anything new to what was inherent in their nature. There, although not an animal, they stood at the level of animal development. In what they undertook, they were conditioned by external causes. But this is still true today, to a certain extent; for only slowly do those experiences that are free experiences creep into human beings. And they creep in all the more as human beings reach a higher stage of development. Take Raphael’s paintings and imagine a dog standing before them. The dog sees what is objectively there; it sees what emerges from the paintings themselves, insofar as they are sensory objects. But suppose a person stands before these paintings; this person sees something entirely different in them; he sees what he can only conceive because he has already developed to a higher level in previous incarnations. And now take a genius, for example, Goethe; he sees much more, he knows what it means, why one thing is depicted this way and another that way. The more highly developed a person is, the more he sees. So the more a person’s soul is already enriched, the more they add such connections between soul experiences. These become part of their soul; they become what is imprinted within it. But all of this has only become possible with humanity since the development of the Earth. Now, however, the following happens.

[ 14 ] Human beings develop in their own way through the following epochs. We know that the Earth is succeeded by Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. During this development, the sum of the experiences that human beings have had—that is, those beyond their earlier causes—becomes ever greater, and their inner being becomes ever richer. What they have carried over from past causes—from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras—will become less and less significant. They evolve out of these past causes; they shed them. And when human beings, together with the Earth, reach Vulcan, they will have shed everything they absorbed during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages of development. They will have cast all of that aside.

[ 15 ] Now we come to a difficult concept; it will be explained through an analogy. Imagine you’re sitting in a car; imagine you received it as a gift or inherited it. You’re driving this car. One of the car’s wheels breaks. You replace the old wheel with a new one. Now you have the old car, but with a new wheel. Let’s say that after some time, a second wheel breaks; you replace it, and now you have the old car and two new wheels. In a similar way, you replace the third, fourth wheel, and so on, and you can easily imagine that one day you will in fact have nothing left of the old car—you will have replaced everything with new parts. You have nothing left of what you inherited or were given; you’re sitting in it again, but essentially it’s a completely new vehicle. And now apply this to human development. During the Saturn era, human beings received the blueprint for their physical body; they gradually developed it, forming the etheric body under the Sun, the astral body under the Moon, and the ego on Earth. They develop these gradually. But within this “I,” they develop more and more new experiences, shedding what they have inherited—what was previously given to them by Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. And a time will come—this is the time of Venusian development—when human beings will have cast off everything that the gods gave them during the lunar, solar, Saturnian, and first half of Earth’s development. He will have cast off all of that, just as, in our analogy, the individual parts have been cast off from the chariot. And he has gradually replaced it all with what he has absorbed from his circumstances—things that were not there before. Human beings will therefore not be able to arrive on Venus and say: “All of this from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of development is still within me”—for by then they will have cast off all of that. And at the end of his development, he will still carry within himself that which he has not received but has worked out for himself—that which he has formed out of nothing. There you have the third element that joins evolution and involution; there you have creation out of nothing. Evolution, involution, and creation out of nothing—that is what we must take into account if we wish to grasp the full grandeur and majesty of human development. And so we can understand how the gods first gave us our three bodies as a vehicle, how they gradually built up this vehicle, and then gave us the ability to gradually transcend this vehicle once more—how we may cast off the vehicle piece by piece, because the gods wish to fashion us, bit by bit, in their own image, into that which can say: “I have been given the potential for what I am to become, but from this potential I have created a new being for myself.”

[ 16 ] What human beings will one day, in the distant future, come to regard as a great and wondrous ideal—not merely having awareness of themselves, but having awareness of their own creation—has already been developed by great, higher spirits. And what humanity will experience only in the distant future is already being developed at this very moment by certain spirits who were previously involved in our evolution. We have said that during the Saturn evolution, the Thrones poured out what we call the substance of humanity, and that the spirits of personality poured into this substance of humanity what we call the forces of personality. But the spirits of personality, who were powerful enough at that time to infuse their personality character into this substance poured out by the Thrones, have since ascended higher and higher. Today they have reached a stage where they no longer need physical substance for their further development. On Saturn, in order to be able to live at all, they needed the physical substance of Saturn, which was at the same time the foundation for human substance; on the Sun they needed the etheric substance, which flowed out to form the human etheric body; on the Moon, the astral substance; and here on Earth, they need our “I.” But from now on, they will continue to need what this “I” itself shapes—what human beings create anew from pure relationships—that which is no longer the physical, etheric, or astral body, no longer the “I” as such, but rather what emanates from the “I,” what the “I” brings forth. The spirits of personality will make use of this, and they are already using it today in order to live within it. They lived on Saturn in what is today our physical body, on the Sun in what is today our etheric body, and on the Moon in what is today our astral body. Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, they have begun to live in what human beings can bring forth from their “I” as something higher.

[ 17 ] What higher things do human beings bring forth from their “I”? Three things. First, what we call lawful thinking—our logical thinking. It is something that human beings bring to bear on things. When a person does not merely look out into the external world, does not merely observe, when they do not merely chase after the thief to find him, but rather in such a way that the lawfulness of observation becomes apparent to them—forming thoughts that have nothing to do with the thief, yet still capture him—then that person lives in logic, true logic. This logic is something that is added to things through the human being. By surrendering to this true logic, the “I” creates beyond itself.

[ 18 ] Second, the ego transcends itself by developing a sense of approval and disapproval toward the beautiful, the sublime, the humorous, and the comic—in short, toward what human beings themselves produce. Let’s say you see something out in the world that strikes you as silly. You laugh at it. The fact that you laugh at it does not depend on your karma at all. Someone else might come along who finds precisely what you’re laughing at to be clever. This is something that arises from your own unique position. Or let’s say you see a hero against whom the world is raging, who holds his ground at first but ultimately meets a tragic end. What you see there is determined by karma, but the sense of tragedy you feel in that moment—that is something new.

[ 19 ] The necessity to act is the first; pleasure and displeasure are the second. The third is the way in which you feel compelled to act under the influence of circumstances. How you feel compelled to act is not merely determined by karma, but also by your relationship to the matter at hand. Let us suppose there are two people who, on the one hand, are placed in such a relationship to one another that they are destined by their karma to work through something together. But at the same time, let one of them be more advanced in their development than the other. The one who is more advanced will work through it; the other will set it aside for later and will work through it later. One will develop kindness of heart; the other will not empathize. This is something new that emerges in the course of development. You must not regard everything as predetermined; rather, it depends on whether or not we allow ourselves to be guided in our actions by the laws of justice and fairness. New elements are constantly being added to our morality, to the way we fulfill our duties, and to our moral judgment. In our moral judgment, in particular, lies the third element through which human beings transcend themselves, through which the “I” is ever more elevated. The “I” brings this into our earthly world, and what is thus brought into the earth does not perish. What human beings bring into the world from epoch to epoch, from age to age—in the form of the results of logical thinking, aesthetic judgment, and the fulfillment of duty—forms a continuous stream; this provides the matter and substance into which the spirits of the personality are embedded in their present development.

[ 20 ] The way you live your life is the way you develop yourself. And as you develop, the spirits of personality look down upon you and continually ask: “Do you also give me something I can use for my own development?” And the more a person develops in terms of the content and richness of their thoughts, the more they strive to refine their aesthetic judgment and fulfill their duty beyond what karma dictates, the more nourishment the spirits of the personality receive; the more we sacrifice to them, the more these spirits of the personality become embodied. What do these spirits of personality represent? Something that, in the human worldview, is called an abstraction: the spirit of the age, the spirit of the various epochs. For those grounded in spiritual science, this spirit of the age is a real entity. The spirits of the age—which are nothing other than the spirits of personality—march through the ages. When we look back at ancient times—from the Indian, Persian, Chaldean-Babylonian, and Greek-Latin eras right up to our own time—we find that, apart from the nations and apart from all other human differences, what we call the spirit of the age is constantly changing. People thought and felt differently five thousand years ago, differently three thousand years ago, and differently today. And what changes there are the spirits of the age, or spirits of personality, if we speak in the sense of spiritual science. These spirits of personality undergo a development in the supersensible realm just as the human race undergoes a development in the sensible realm. But what the human race develops into the supersensible realm is food and drink for these spirits of personality; they delight in it. In a time when people would go through life without developing a wealth of thought, without pleasure or displeasure, without a sense of duty that goes beyond mere karmic impulse—in such a time, the spirits of personality would have nothing to eat; they would waste away. Thus, our lives are connected to such beings, who invisibly interweave and live through our lives.

[ 21 ] I told you that human beings add something new to the process of development—creating, as it were, out of nothing to supplement involution and evolution—but that they could not create anything out of nothing unless they had first received the causes into which they have placed themselves, as into a vehicle. In the Saturn evolution, this vehicle was given to him; bit by bit, he casts it overboard and evolves into the future. But he must have received the foundation for this, and if the gods had not first created the foundation for him, he would not have been able to accomplish anything that can be created out of nothing. The fact that the conditions of our environment can affect us in such a way that they are truly fruitful for our further development depends on such an event, on a solid foundation. For what has made it possible for human beings to create something new out of their circumstances, to turn the relationships in which they are placed into a foundation for new things they create for themselves, and to become capable of thinking beyond the things they experience in their environment and feeling more than what lies purely objectively before them? What has come about as a result of humanity’s ability to act beyond its pressing karma and to live in accordance with the duty of truth, fairness, and kindness of heart?

[ 22 ] The fact that human beings have become capable of thinking logically and of developing a sense of intellectual necessity has also created the possibility of error. The fact that human beings can take pleasure in beauty has also created the possibility that they will incorporate the ugly and the filthy into the development of the world. Because human beings are capable of raising the concept of duty above mere karma and fulfilling it beyond karma, the possibility of evil and of breaching one’s duty has also been created. Thus, precisely because human beings have the ability to create beyond mere circumstances, they have been placed in a world in which they can also shape and weave their spiritual nature—so that this spiritual nature becomes filled with error, ugliness, and evil. And it was not only necessary to create the possibility for human beings to create at all from within these circumstances, but it was also necessary to provide the possibility for human beings, through their struggle and striving, to gradually create what is right and beautiful from within these circumstances—to gradually cultivate those virtues that truly lead to further development.

[ 23 ] In Christian esotericism, creating from relationships is called “creating in the Spirit.” And creating from relationships that are right, beautiful, and virtuous is called the Holy Spirit in Christian esotericism. The Holy Spirit blesses human beings when they are capable of creating what is right or true, beautiful, and good out of nothing. But in order for human beings to become capable of creating in the spirit of this Holy Spirit, they first had to be given the foundation—as is the case with all creation out of nothing. This foundation was given to them through the entry of Christ into our evolution. By being able to experience the Christ event on Earth, human beings became capable of rising to the level of creation in the Holy Spirit. Thus, it is Christ Himself who creates the most eminent and profound foundation. When a person reaches a state where they stand firmly on the ground of the Christ experience—where the Christ experience is the chariot into which they enter to develop further—Christ sends them the Holy Spirit, and the person becomes capable of creating what is right, beautiful, and good in the spirit of further development.

[ 24 ] Thus we see, as it were, the final culmination of what has been imprinted upon humanity by Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, the Christ event has come to Earth—an event that has given human beings the highest gift, enabling them to live with a perspective toward the future and to draw ever more from circumstances—from that which is neither here nor there, but depends on how human beings relate to the realities of their environment—which, in the most comprehensive sense, is the Holy Spirit. This, in turn, is yet another aspect of Christian esotericism. Christian esotericism is connected to the deepest thought we can conceive regarding all development—the idea of creation out of nothing.

[ 25 ] That is why no true theory of development will ever be able to abandon the idea of creation out of nothing. Suppose there were only evolution and involution; then there would be an eternal repetition, as is the case with plants, and on the volcano there would be only that which began on Saturn. But in reality, creation ex nihilo is added to evolution and involution and occurs at the very center of our development. After Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon have passed, the Christ appears on Earth as the great enriching element, which brings about the emergence of something entirely new on the volcano—something that did not yet exist on Saturn. Anyone who speaks only of evolution and involution will describe development as if everything were merely repeating itself in a cycle. Such cycles, however, can never truly explain the development of the worlds. Only when we add to evolution and involution this creation out of nothing—which introduces something new into the existing conditions—do we arrive at a true understanding of the world.

[ 26 ] The lower entities show, at most, a hint of what we might call creation out of nothing. A lily of the valley will always remain a lily of the valley; at most, the gardener might add something from outside that the lily of the valley would never have produced on its own. Then there would be something that, in relation to the essence of the lily of the valley, would be creation out of nothing. Human beings, however, are themselves capable of bringing about this creation out of nothing. But they become capable of this only by raising themselves to this freedom of self-creation through the freest act that can serve as their model. What is the freest act? The freest act is this: that the creative, wise Word of our solar system itself resolved to enter a human body and participate in the development of the Earth through an act that was not rooted in any previous karma. When the Christ decided to enter a human body, he was not compelled by prior karma, but did so as a free act grounded solely in a foreknowledge of humanity’s future development—a foreknowledge that had never existed before and first arose within him as a thought arising out of nothing, from that foreknowledge. It is a weighty thought, but Christian esotericism will never disregard it, and everything rests on one’s ability to add the idea of creation ex nihilo to evolution and involution.

[ 27 ] But then, when one is able to do this, one also gains great ideals in life—ideals that may not extend over the vast expanses one might call “cosmic,” but which are, in essence, quite closely connected to the question: Why do we come together, for example, to form an Anthroposophical Society? To truly understand the purpose of an Anthroposophical Society, we must once again turn to the idea that we work for the spirits of personality, for the spirit of the age. When a human being is born into this world, they are initially shaped by the most diverse circumstances; these influence them and thus form the first stage of their self-creative activity. If only people could realize just how this is truly the preliminary stage—how, through birth, a person is placed in this or that location—and that the way these circumstances affect them is, in fact, like a powerful suggestion. Let us try to imagine how a person’s circumstances would be entirely different if, instead of being born in Constantinople, they had been born in Rome or Frankfurt. As a result, they would have been placed in different circumstances, including certain religious circumstances, under the influence of which a certain fanaticism for Catholicism or Protestantism would have developed in them. But now let us suppose that if a small cog in the karmic mechanism had turned and they had been born in Constantinople, would they not then also have become a fairly decent Turk? There you have an example of how suggestively environmental conditions affect human beings. Yet a person can step out of the merely suggestive influence of these conditions and unite with others according to principles they have chosen and understood for themselves. Then they say to themselves: Now I know why I work together with other people. Thus, out of human consciousness, such social associations arise in which material is created for the spirits of the age and of the individual. Now, one such association is the Anthroposophical Society, where this connection is established on the basis of brotherhood. This means nothing other than that each member contributes to the association in such a way that, on a small scale, he or she acquires all the good qualities through which he or she becomes a reflection of the entire society. Thus, whatever he develops in terms of thoughts, emotional richness, and virtues through the Society, he offers as nourishment to the spirits of personality. In such a society, therefore, what fosters human coexistence is united with the principle of individuality. Through such a society, each individual is enabled to offer what he produces as a sacrifice to the spirits of personality. And everyone prepares themselves for the standpoint taken by the most advanced individuals, who, through spiritual training, have progressed to the point where they envision the following as their ideal: When I think, I do not think to satisfy myself, but I think so that the spirits of the personality may draw nourishment from it. I place my best and most beautiful thoughts upon the altar of sacrifice for the spirits of the personality, and what I feel, I do not feel out of selfishness, but I feel it because it is meant to be nourishment for the spirits of the personality. And whatever virtues I am able to practice, I do not practice them to be regarded as this or that, but to make offerings, to provide nourishment for the spirits of the personality. Thus, we have set before us as the ideal those whom we call the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings. For this is how they think and prepare the development of humanity that will lead people more and more to create something new—and ever new—and ultimately to develop a world of effects from which the old causes have vanished, a world from which a new light shines into the future. The world is not subject to a constant transformation in which it takes on entirely different forms; rather, the old is perfected, and this improved old becomes the vehicle of the new. But then this vehicle is cast aside; it vanishes into nothingness, so that something new may emerge from this nothingness. This is the great, powerful idea of progress: that something new—and ever new—can come into being.

[ 28 ] But the worlds are self-contained, and you have just seen from the example I gave that, for this reason, we cannot speak of a true destruction. It has been shown how the spirits of personality, on the one hand, lose their influence on human beings, but on the other hand resume their development, so that we are dealing with a world that is constantly renewing itself, yet of which we can say: That which is shed would prevent further progress, and it is given to another so that he, in turn, may continue to progress. No one should believe that they must let something sink into nothingness, because they have been given the opportunity to build from nothing. But what will emerge as something new on the volcano will always take on new forms and cast off the old, and what is cast off will seek its own path.

[ 29 ] Evolution, involution, and creation ex nihilo—these are the three concepts through which we should understand the true unfolding, the true evolution, of worldly phenomena. Only in this way can we truly arrive at concepts that explain the world to human beings and instill in them a sense of inner life. For if a person were to tell himself that he could create nothing other than what is inherent within him as a cause—that he could bring to life only those effects—this would not strengthen his powers or kindle his hopes to the same extent as when he can say to himself: I can create values of life and continually add something new to what is given to me as a foundation; the old will by no means prevent me from creating new blossoms and fruits that will live on into the future.—But this is part of what we can characterize by saying: The anthroposophical worldview gives human beings life forces, hope for life, and confidence in life, for it shows them that they can collaborate in the future on things that today lie not only in the bosom of causality but in nothingness; it offers them the prospect that they can, in the true sense of the word, work their way from being creatures to becoming creators.