The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] My dear friends, we once again begin by remembering those who stand out in the vast fields of current events:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To the earthly people entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 2 ] And for those who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these events:

Spirits of your souls, watchful guardians,
May your wings carry
The pleading love of our souls
To the beings of the spheres entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth in aid
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

[ 3 ] May the Spirit we seek through our striving for spiritual knowledge—the Spirit who, through the Mystery of Golgotha, brought healing to the Earth and freedom and progress to humanity—be with you and your heavy responsibilities!

[ 4 ] Eight days ago, we engaged in a kind of reflection on imaginative meditation, and we saw that this reflection, too, shows us how all knowledge that is to be a true knowledge of the supersensible worlds must be gained through a body-free observation of the world, by freeing ordinary, everyday knowledge from the conditions imposed by the body, the senses, the nervous system, and so on. Ordinary everyday knowledge arises, after all, when the human spiritual-soul aspect makes use of the physical instruments. Now, this spiritual knowledge consists of certain finer processes that take place within the human being, and it is these processes that we wish to highlight today in the first part of our consideration. Finer processes, I said. These processes are finer—finer than the ordinary everyday processes of cognition, observation, and perception—because human beings can only start from what they are accustomed to in daily life and can gradually rise only to finer, more intimate processes. Now, we would all be able to gain the most satisfying, the highest insights into the spiritual world if we were able, without further ado, to spend at least a part—indeed, just a small part, for my sake, just one minute—of that state of our life which we spend between falling asleep and waking up, in full consciousness; not merely in a dream-like state of consciousness, but in full consciousness. For all initiation consists in making conscious that part of us which, during the night in sleep, remains unconsciously outside our body.

[ 5 ] A truly higher process of cognition3 never consists of anything other than bringing to consciousness that which otherwise remains unconscious from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. |

[ 6 ] Now, however—and this may surprise you—there is a part of the human being, the physical human being, that is essentially always in a dormant state, that is always asleep. One need not concern oneself with these matters right at the outset of the anthroposophical life; in a sense, the subtleties of Spiritual Science research can only come to our consciousness slowly and gradually. We naturally assume, when it is described that the human being is awake by day and sleeps by night, that by day the ego and the astral body are fully united with the physical body and the etheric body, and that by night the ego and the astral body exist outside the physical body and the etheric body. At first, we think quite correctly in this way, for only gradually can we turn from the coarser conception of facts of Spiritual Science toward the more specific truths. In broad terms, then, it is correct that during sleep the human being, with his ego and astral body, is outside his etheric body and physical body. But for one part of the body, it is nevertheless true that, essentially, even from waking until falling asleep, this part of the body sleeps—at least essentially. And curiously enough, this is precisely the part of the human body that we call the head. It sleeps precisely when we are awake. And although one might easily believe that the head is the most awake, in reality it is the part that is least awake. For the waking activity of human thought—and of mental processes in general—rests precisely on the fact that even while awake, the ego and the astral body have such a relationship to the head organs that they cannot fully—that is, the ego part of the head, the astral part of the head—with the physical and etheric parts of the head, but always, so to speak, lead a life of their own outside the physical and etheric parts of the head. Only when one has a headache does a deeper connection still take place between the astral head body and the physical one. And when one has a very severe headache, the connection between the astral part of the head and the physical part of the head is at its strongest. It is precisely when one has a headache that one is least able to think. This is because an excessively strong connection then arises between the astral, physical, and etheric parts of the head. Now, however, our waking thinking and the rest of our waking soul life are based precisely on the fact that, in a certain sense, the ego and the astral body of the head are outside the physical and etheric bodies and are thereby reflected in the physical and etheric bodies of the head; just as we can only see ourselves in a mirror when we are outside it. This reflection, after all, provides the images of our everyday consciousness. These are mirror images that we experience and perceive cognitively in everyday life. And through this life outside the head, through this sleeping of the head, and through the reflection of the activity of the ego and astral body caused by the hardness of the skull, it is brought about that we perceive the inner life of the ego and the inner life of the astral body as our own. If, as is the case with the other parts of the organism, the activity of the ego and astral body were to work even more deeply into the vitality of the physical and etheric bodies, then we would perceive digestive activity, and perhaps also rhythmic activity such as that of the heart, in the head; or perhaps not perceive them at all; but there could be no question of a thinking activity, for this is based on the fact that this activity is not absorbed but rather reflected back. The heart and the other organs, which absorb, take in the activity of the ego and astral body. The organs of the head do not take it in; rather, they reflect it back; therefore, it can then be experienced in the inner life of the soul.

[ 7 ] Now, during the night, from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, the entire ego and the entire astral body are, so to speak—though even that is not entirely accurate, but roughly speaking—a much larger portion of the ego and the astral body is outside the physical and etheric bodies. From the moment of falling asleep until waking up, the human being is able, with regard to a much larger portion of the ego and astral body, to relate to it in the same way as he relates to his head while awake. But the rest of the organism is not yet as far along as the head; it has not yet developed to the point where it can radiate back, as the head can. Therefore, no consciousness can arise during sleep. When we observe the movement of our hands, we must tell ourselves: In these hands, to the extent that we can move them while awake, we naturally have the relevant members—the ego, astral body, etheric body, and physical body. All of this is present; all of this is active when we move our hands. Now imagine that a person were placed in a situation where his hands were bound to his organism, and in such a way that he would never be able to move them, but that they would be firmly attached to the organism, that they would be firmly bound to the organism. And let us suppose that this person were simultaneously granted the ability, while he cannot move his bound physical hands, to move the etheric body or at least the astral body of the hands alone. This would have a very significant consequence. He would then, as it were, extend his astral or etheric hands from the physical hands that he could not move, that were bound. We do not attempt to carry out this procedure at all; when we move something of the astral and etheric aspects of the hands, we move the physical hands along with them. Now, on Earth this cannot easily be carried out as something natural, but in the course of evolution it will be carried out, just somewhat differently than in the crude manner I have just described. It will be carried out in such a way that, as the human being continues to unfold in the course of Earth evolution and grows toward Jupiter, what will in fact occur is that his hands—the physical hands—will become immobile. On Jupiter, human beings will appear in such a way that their physical hands are no longer movable organs, but are fixed in place; in return, however, the astral and also the etheric hands will be able to move outwards to some extent. Thus, on Jupiter, there will be only immobile traces of the physical hands, whereas the astral and etheric hands will move freely like wings. This will be the basis for the fact that this Jupiter human is not merely a cerebral thinker, but that his fixed hands will then give him the ability to radiate back into what is now connected to the physical hands, and he will thereby have a much more vivid, a much more comprehensive thinking. Because a physical organ comes to rest, the corresponding spiritual-soul member belonging to that physical organ can be liberated and can then unfold a spiritual-soul activity. For this is truly the case with our brain: when we were still lunar beings, we had organs that moved here like hands, and these organs have been fixed in place. On the Moon we did not yet have a fixed brain case; there the organs that are now folded together in the brain could move like hands. In return, the human being on the Moon could not yet think as on Earth. But for those who examine thinking through clairvoyance, it is clear that the organs located in the sleeping brain actually move like wings in the waking human being, just as I have described to you how astral and etheric hands would move if the physical hands could remain fixed. So this is what actually happened in the transition from the lunar state to the Earth state: that here, as it were, the hands have been restrained and are now still held in place by the solid brain case, and that as a result the etheric and astral are free. But the organs must continue to develop. These hands cannot remain as they are as we evolve toward Jupiter; rather, these hands will undergo a transformation in a substantial sense, just as our brain has undergone a transformation, so that it has become a reflecting organ. This process is what one might describe as natural evolution.

[ 8 ] Another process is the initiation process. It consists of mentally placing some form of mantric meditation at the center of our consciousness and becoming completely absorbed in it. When we do this, it is truly important that we do not use our physical body to form this thought, to have this thought, but that we actually withdraw from the physical, the physical-sensory realm with this thought, that we remain within it, that we have no support from the physical world while meditating. In ordinary everyday thinking, the physical body helps us; the physical world helps us. We think when impressions are made upon us through the senses. This makes thinking easy for us. For the world makes both an ethereal and a physical impression upon us. This is a support for our thinking. When we meditate, we must set ourselves apart from everything physical, including all mental images. We must, entirely of our own free will, place a thought at the center of our consciousness. Through this, something highly peculiar occurs, which is a more subtle process compared to the process of perception. When we reach the point where we are, as it were, oblivious to the rest of the world—as if the rest of the world were not there, as if there were actually nothing in space and time but that single thought—when we have reached the point where the whole world is indifferent to us and we live only in the thought of meditation, then something occurs that, of course, no physical science can observe: through this subtle process of meditation, a certain subtle consumption of heat is achieved, so to speak; heat is consumed, is carried away. It is a process that, of course, cannot be physically observed, but the consumption takes place, and we will speak about it on another occasion. Then we will see how, through phenomena that anyone can observe, one can demonstrate to physical science that the process of meditation is linked to a subtle process of heat and a subtle process of light.

[ 9 ] We consume some of the light we have absorbed internally; we consume light. We also consume something else, but let us focus here on the fact that we consume heat and light. What we consume is precisely what brings about what I discussed here eight days ago: that something like a subtle, living entity forms out of the process of meditation. When we think in the ordinary processes of daily life, something also lives within us that imprints itself on our organism and brings about a process that also has to do with warmth; that imprints itself there, and what takes place there causes us to have memory. But this must not happen during meditation. When we live fully immersed in the pure content of thought or feeling, then what we consume there does not imprint itself in our body, but rather imprints itself in the general ether. This causes a process outside of us. Yes, my dear friends, when you meditate truly and earnestly, you imprint your thought-form upon the general ether; it is there within it. And when you then look back on a meditative process, it is not ordinary recollection, but a looking back upon what has been imprinted upon the world ether. It is important that we take note of this. This is a subtle process that we carry out in such a way that it represents a relationship between us and the surrounding etheric and astral world. The person who develops ordinary, everyday perception and thinking has only to do with themselves; it is a process that takes place solely within us. But the one who engages in true, genuine meditation lives in a process that is at the same time a world process, a cosmic process. Something happens there, even if it is only something extraordinarily subtle. And what happens is the following: During meditation, some warmth is consumed. When it is consumed, coldness arises; the general world ether is cooled when we meditate. And since light is also consumed, it is dimmed; darkness arises, along with subdued light. So that when a person meditates in a certain place in the world and then leaves, they leave behind in that place a slight cooling and, at the same time, a dimming of the light. The general state of light is dimmed, has become darker. With clairvoyance, one can always trace where a person has meditated, where they have truly carried out the meditative process. When they leave again, a shadow image of them remains there, which is even cooler than the surroundings. A cool, dark specter has thus been placed in that spot; we have engraved it there. And in the subtle, in the very subtle realm, something has truly taken place at that spot, which you can roughly compare to what is created on a photographic plate. A kind of ghost has truly been formed there. This is therefore a process that takes place not merely within the human being, but truly on a cosmic scale, through which the human being integrates into the cosmos.

[ 10 ] There is, however, one thought that a person meditates on, even if they are not a meditator at all, even if they know nothing about any kind of Spiritual Science. A person does meditate on one thought. And this one thought—it seems quite small, but is infinitely important for life—is the thought of the “I.” For the thought of the “I” is always conceived in such a way that it is conceived as separate from the body. And insofar as we have a relationship to the world through our “I,” certain things connected with our “I”—even if people do not realize it in life—are conceived in such a way that they are, I might say, like branches on a tree. Thus certain thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will become like branches or even like antennae, mobile antennae; these will be grouped around the “I.” So that in fact, throughout their entire life, human beings constantly leave behind what they conceive as the “I” and what extends such mobile tentacles in all directions. A ghostly jellyfish is what a person always leaves behind, throughout their entire life. But this is a very real thing, for it contains at the same time everything that the person—insofar as they conceive and feel it in their ego—has lived through. That remains. And when a person has passed through the gate of death, they gradually learn to look back upon what has been left behind, and this makes it possible for a connection to exist between what they experience after death and what they have left behind.

[ 11 ] In meditation, we as earthly human beings must first learn to control our bodily functions through the power of our will; and the possibility of meditating correctly depends on our truly freeing our thinking, feeling, and sensing during meditation, so that the body does not interfere and we can thereby concentrate so intensely inwardly that only what we want—not what we do not want—is imprinted, photographed, as it were, into the world ether. We must always emphasize that true, proper meditation is a real process, a truly real process.

[ 12 ] When we consider that a person leaves this behind, and that essentially all their experiences are contained within what they leave behind, and that this remains, we will also come to realize that when a person has passed through the time that lies between death and a new birth, and returns to Earth—that they will still find within the world-ether what they left behind there. Here we have a real example of how karma works. For there is that which the human being has created as their ghost, and which now acts upon them and, in connection with their later life, forms precisely what unfolds in karma.

[ 13 ] One can only come to an understanding of these things slowly and gradually. Because this is the case—because a real process is taking place that transcends us, that reaches into the cosmos—the meditator gets the feeling that meditation is something different from ordinary thinking. With the latter, we have the feeling that it is we who piece the thoughts together, who link one thought to another; it is we who are judging there. In meditation, one gradually gets the feeling that it is not merely you who is thinking, who is meditating, but that something is happening in which you are indeed involved, yet which also takes place outside of you as a lasting event. And one must arrive at this feeling. Just as when one has the feeling that, if one throws a fragile object against the wall, not only does what happened before the throw occur, but afterward something related to it: it breaks—that happens once it has detached itself from us—so in meditation you get the feeling: it is not you who thinks, but rather you do indeed set your thoughts in motion, yet then they continue to swirl; they swirl and exist. You are then no longer merely their master, but they begin to lead an independent life and existence of their own. And this feeling of being immersed in the atmosphere, in the weaving and living atmosphere of one’s thoughts—as if the thoughts were even moving through our brain like waves—beginning to feel this is what gives rise to the firm, certain feeling: you stand within a spiritual world; you yourself are merely a weaving link in the general weaving within it. And it is important that we truly attain such stillness, such peace of mind in meditation, that we arrive at this significant feeling: you are not the only one doing this; it is being done. You have begun to set these waves in motion, but they spread out around you. They have a life of their own, of which you are merely the center.

[ 14 ] You can see from this, my dear friends, that it is an experience that actually brings about the recognition of the spiritual world. And this experience—one must wait for it with patience. It is of extraordinary importance, but it requires patience, perseverance, and self-denial to wait for it calmly. For this experience alone is sufficient to gain full conviction of the objective existence of the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] What you can gather from the discussion we have just had is that these alternating states of wakefulness and sleep are, in essence, quite universally necessary. Here, we sleep and wake in the manner that is familiar to us. For this reason, we sleep and wake so that our brain, which is active throughout the day, can also submerge into the part that supplies the organs during the day and remains inactive and unconscious at night. This rhythm of sleeping and waking must take place; but we have seen that it also occurs in the great evolutionary process of the universe. If we now have our brain actually asleep so that we can think, and our hands awake—that is, our entire relationship with our hands free and awake—while we do not move them in sleep, then on the Moon we were quite awake with regard to our brain, and we have learned to sleep; we can develop earthly thinking precisely because we have learned the sleep of the brain. While it was still awake on the Moon, it attained the ability to sleep here; and through this, the human being can think. The middle body will learn to sleep on Jupiter, and through this, thinking will become a further experience. Thus the states between sleeping and waking pass through the course of evolution. But these states are quite general; they manifest themselves in all possible spheres. One might say: Wherever one looks, one sees that alternating states of sleeping and waking are truly necessary. I will cite a peculiar example of this, a peculiar example that may nevertheless be somewhat relevant to us in our time.

[ 16 ] Isn’t it true that if you want to learn what was happening in the literary and intellectual life of the early nineteenth century, you can look up a work of literary history to see which poets were significant and which were insignificant; and the picture stops at a certain point: namely, the poets who were completely insignificant at the time are not mentioned at all. And people, if they know anything at all today, know which poets were significant or insignificant in the first half or the middle of the nineteenth century. That is common knowledge; and of some who—this cannot be denied—also wrote in the nineteenth century, many people—I won’t say all—know absolutely nothing anymore. Isn’t it true that there are already people about whom we know absolutely nothing anymore? Well, there will certainly come a time when we will have a different picture, a completely different picture of what is called, for example, the literary and intellectual life of the nineteenth century; when we will certainly devote only half a page to poets to whom we now dedicate many pages, and ten to twenty pages to one whom we do not mention at all today. These things will change. And there is even a necessity for these things to change thoroughly. Especially when one considers that Spiritual Science must be something that now enters into the cultural process of humanity and takes hold of and permeates human knowledge—when one takes this into account, then one will know how people will have to relearn, will have to learn to think. I would like to mention one thing. Is it not true that in place of today’s knowledge—which is actually gained only by accepting as the sole true knowledge that which the human being gains with the aid of the physical body—something else must develop, something that also accepts as valid that which can be attained through the spiritual path of initiation? Today the situation is such that the true scientist accepts only that, regards only as certain, which is gained through the cognition acquired by the instruments of the body. Everything else is a figment of the imagination. At most, he may still accept it as a hypothesis. But that must not go very far; otherwise, he will already regard the hypothesis as something highly fantastical. So that is how it is today. A time must come when not only is that which is attained through spiritual knowledge accepted, but when that which is perceived in the physical world is also examined and, in the true sense, only then fathomed through spiritual knowledge. This must come to pass.

[ 17 ] Well, one can say—not merely in a comparative sense, but in all reality—that we are now living in a time when humanity is asleep with regard to knowledge, at least people in general; after all, it is very easy to be polite, since those interested in Spiritual Science are excluded; they, therefore, remain awake with regard to spiritual knowledge. But the rest of humanity sleeps with regard to spiritual knowledge: it is drowsy. And precisely what is the most revered science arises from the fact that it is, in reality, asleep. We are living in a time when this true reality is being slept through by humanity in the most intense sense. This has been in the making for a long time, and, one might say, just as falling asleep always takes place before sleep itself, so too can we observe how a kind of dream state and a struggle with sleep was present precisely in the nineteenth century. Now we are living in the age when, with regard to spiritual knowledge, humanity is most asleep. Now it slumbers sweetly. But it has not been easy to attain this sleep completely, and we see, for example, how in certain major phenomena in the first half of the nineteenth century a struggle with sleep takes place, in that in certain people a certain premonition, an inner experience of spiritual truths and spiritual conditions still arises. As the nineteenth century progressed, it could do nothing else to enter this sweet state of slumber than to forget the poets who still knew something special about the spiritual world. They do not fit into this spiritual state of slumber.

[ 18 ] But I have already drawn attention to a poet, Julius Mosen, who in his *Ritter Wahn* and even in his *Ahasver* truly produced works of poetry from which we can see that Julius Mosen maintained a living connection with the spiritual world. Ritter Wahn, whom Julius Mosen portrays—based on an older legend, but whom he has imbued with certain ideas that reveal his connection to the spiritual world—Ritter Wahn searches the earth for the one who can enlighten him about the conquest of death. This is essentially the theme of Julius Mosen’s poem “Ritter Wahn”: that Ritter Wahn—that is, the one who is in ordinary perception, which is a delusional perception—that this Ritter Wahn seeks out someone who can enlighten him: How does one transcend the delusional perception of physical life? And he holds the one who enlightens him in high regard. Julius Mosen then provides descriptions relating to how Knight Wahn seeks to find the one who will enlighten him regarding the body-free insights:

From now on I will roam through all the lands,
Eastward, as far as my brave steed will carry me,
Wandering from castle to castle, from land to land

Until someone can tell me with certainty:
I can save your life from death,
I can break his power and defeat him.

To that one, from eternity to eternity
I will serve with my battle-hardened hand,
Work for him, fight mightily for him.

[ 19 ] This Knight Delusion thus seeks enlightenment on how to attain a knowledge that is not subjugated by the body, but rather subjugates the body itself, a knowledge that endures for eternity. So this longing is already present. And now Knight Wahn—as Julius Mosen says—first battles an old man named “Ird.” Well, people haven’t understood that: Ird. But one could have looked up the name in the original; then one would not have translated Ird as “Death,” as the Leipzig professor of literature Rudolf von Gottschall did. One would have had to translate it as “Earth” or “World.” Well, the Knight of Delusion first struggles with this old man Ird. He overcomes him. Last time we spoke about the overcoming of the earthly by the spiritual, the victory of the spiritual over earth, time, and space. He then overcomes the old man “Space” and reaches the gate of heaven, that is, the spiritual world. Then he feels a longing to return to earth, because he has not lived life to the full. This entire beautiful poem, “Knight Wahn,” shows us that there was already someone who wrestled with the problem of initiation, who knew something of the fact that such a problem of initiation exists. And in his “Ahasver,” Julius Mosen again depicts something similar.

[ 20 ] There is another German poet, Wilhelm Jordan, who is often mentioned, but whose work is least frequently cited—the very work through which he expressed his most spiritual insights: *Demiurgos*. This “Demiurgos”—the work was published in the 1950s—is a truly significant work, for in this “Demiurgos” it is truly expressed how spiritual beings, spiritual powers, both good and evil, approach human beings, penetrate the human soul, and manifest themselves here on Earth with the help of human beings. So that when we have a human being before us, we must remember: this person certainly consists of all that we know, but working within them is that which comes from higher spiritual beings. And “Demiurgos” is based largely on the depiction of this connection between the human being and the spiritual world. In three beautiful volumes, Jordan depicts in his “Demiurgos” how spiritual beings interplay within the human soul. This is the struggle with sleep, which then fully sets in. These are people into whose dreams still enters that which humanity must attain through Spiritual Science, emerging from the sweet slumber of purely external, positivistic knowledge. We must truly regard this as a process in which people, through spiritual dreams, bring themselves into laziness, into a slumber of idleness.

[ 21 ] If we now ask ourselves: What is the reason, then, that there is still a person like Julius Mosen who is capable of depicting spiritual processes—who portrays something like the initiation process in the journey of his “Knight Wahn”—where does that come from? It is very strange: Julius Mosen fell ill and spent a large part of his life almost completely paralyzed. But what did this paralysis mean? That the physical body, as it were, withered away and detached itself from the etheric and astral bodies. Through this paralysis, the astral and etheric bodies were freer. What we must laboriously attain through the process of initiation was brought about in him through a process of illness. Of course, this process of illness must not be regarded as a genuine process of knowledge, nor should it be brought about as something desirable; but as it were, in an age that was slipping into laziness, the world order placed a human being into the world to whom it gave such a relationship between the physical and the spiritual-soul members. So he lay there, paralyzed, unable to move a limb, yet with a lively soul and a lively spirit, which were thereby set free and penetrated into the spiritual world. That which initiation seeks to achieve in a healthy way was brought about here through illness. There lay a human being, paralyzed in bed for a large part of his life, but triumphing over the paralysis of the body, the spiritual-soul aspect broke free. That is why this human being was able to truly produce something that strikes us as so spiritual. It could, of course, also be achieved in a healthier way than in the case of Julius Mosen, but perhaps precisely because of that, it would be less profound.

[ 22 ] It could also be achieved in a healthier way. Even in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was possible for a poet to portray the cultural-historical process of humanity in such a way that the connection between the spiritual worlds and what walks the earth as a human being shines through in all its forms. There is a beautiful poem from the 1830s, “Alhambra” by Auffenberg. This Auffenberg is a spiritual poet, and “Alhambra” is a significant work, so that we have three works—four, including “Ahasver”: “Ritter Wahn,” “Ahasver,” “Demiurgos,” and “Alhambra” —though much more would need to be said about works that are not easily available today—so that we have four such works which show us how, in this age, humanity’s connection to the spiritual world is, as it were, dreamlike, fading away in the face of the general materialistic slumber of existence. Previously, humanity was already open to the spiritual world; only, naturally, those who now describe it—the spiritual world—omit the very people who had a complete awareness of the spiritual world. When one writes a history of philosophy today, one also omits whether someone has an awareness of the spiritual world, or one does not mention this interaction with the spiritual world in the case of the most outstanding figures.

[ 23 ] It is quite interesting to compare *Ritter Wahn*, in which true spiritual life pulsates, with Jordan’s *Demiurgos*, in which spiritual life also resonates. Jordan was likely in good health; unlike Moses, who had a paralyzed body, he could not separate the spiritual-psychic from the physical body. The consequence of this was that Jordan only arrived at the idea of the “Demiurgos” during his more agile youth, when he still grasped the spiritual-psychic through inner energy, elasticity, and logic; later he fell into a crude, materialistic Darwinism of cultural history, which then runs as a thread through his “Nibelungen” and so on. He must therefore go along with the descent into the lullaby of materialism. But this is the significant point: that we realize our time has the task of introducing into the spiritual process, into the process of human development, a recognition that springs from truly spiritual insight—the recognition that the world spirit has, so to speak, hinted at this through the tragic fate of a Julius Mosen: Human beings can no longer enter the spiritual world spontaneously and without further ado; there were times in the past when they could do so, when, due to the purely natural constitution of human beings, the spiritual-soul, astral body, and etheric body were also freer and more independent of the physical body; but that time has passed. In our present materialistic age—and this must remain so for the rest of our earthly existence and become even more intense—human beings, in their natural state, must maintain a close connection between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily. Yet this connection does not allow human beings to attain any awareness of the spiritual world through natural conditions alone. But this must occur precisely for that reason, so that the will can do so; so that, through permeation with the moment of Spiritual Science, human beings may, out of inner impulses of the will, out of freedom, in meditation and concentration, detach the spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily. For if one were to arrive at spiritual insights in the same way as human beings did in the past, one would have to be ill, paralyzed, and spend the second half of one’s life with paralyzed limbs. With the current organization, that was necessary. It was not necessary in the past. There, the human being did not need to be paralyzed; rather, the connection between the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body was such that clairvoyant insight was present. Today, it was only possible through illness. This was, so to speak, established as a hallmark, which came to light in the case of Julius Mosen.

[ 24 ] Thus, one must bring to mind the profound spiritual connection between worldly phenomena precisely through Spiritual Science, but one must also realize the deep historical-spiritual impulses with which is intimately connected that which makes it necessary for people to gradually turn to Spiritual Science. This is not dictated by the arbitrary will of any individual, but by the great course that the development of the world spirit must take throughout the entire history of the Earth. It is humanity’s mission and task to transition more and more into genuine spiritual experience as we look toward the future, so that humanity does not wither away along with the entire culture of the Earth, and so that the spirit may truly continue to live on the Earth.

[ 25 ] Among the many things that such an insight can suggest to people is what I have already stated repeatedly: that numerous people are now carrying their soul-beings upward in a relatively short period of time, carrying them upward in such a way that they have unspent etheric bodies that still contain forces which could have sustained their physical lives for decades, and who, by passing through the gate of death as a result of this terrible historical event, bring their unspent etheric bodies up into the spiritual world. These, however, will become the great collaborators in the spiritualization of human culture. And besides everything else, this great event of our time has precisely this immensely profound significance in human development: that through the creation of unspent etheric bodies, forces can flow out into our earthly development that will be able to bring the spiritual to life. But just as it would be of no help, my dear friends, if there were as many suns in the world as there are, if people did not take in the sunlight through their eyes—just as the words spoken by Goethe are true: “Were the eye not sun-like, the sun could never see it,” just as the sun would shine in vain if there were no eyes to receive its light—so too must the organs awaken within the souls of earthly human beings to truly receive that which flows down as spiritual life from the cosmos and also from the world where human beings spend their lives between death and a new birth, and where the unused etheric bodies also reside. Thus must that which is sacrificed through the great war victims be connected to spiritual cosmic existence; it must be received by human souls who are receptive to the spiritual. And it would be a terrible thing if only that science were to survive which today considers itself the sole authority, doing nothing other than recording externally perceptible facts and using them to pass intellectual judgments about them. If science is merely a repetition of what exists without science, it cannot connect with the Divine-Spiritual. Only that which can truly awaken in the human soul beyond the sensually perceptible—only that can connect with the real divine-spiritual, so that the Earth’s own process of development remains spiritual and spiritually alive. All human progress rests upon the penetration of the spiritual into the process of human soul development, and it is solely from the spirit that one must decide whether anything is true or false. People today believe they can decide this or that, or prove this or that, without the spirit; yet the final authority for deciding even regarding sensory truths is spiritual experience.

[ 26 ] When the old spiritual experience came to an end in the first half of the nineteenth century, what the spirit was able to accomplish in certain individuals was, one might say, held up once again as a symbol to demonstrate the emptiness of an argumentation focused solely on the external and sensory. A man writing under the name Dr. Mises achieved quite a lot during this very period to demonstrate how one can prove everything—absolutely everything—and also prove the opposite of it, and how the ultimate authority is, after all, only the connection with spiritual life. For example, this man had experienced various developments in the natural sciences and medical science—he was a physician himself—and he had witnessed how a new remedy for this or that disease appeared at every turn. And so he lived through the very time when people began prescribing iodine for goiter. It was a time when this remedy was celebrating particular triumphs, a time when people sought to prove—it was in the 1820s—just how valuable a remedy iodine actually is. So Dr. Mises set to work and demonstrated that one could easily prove, according to all the principles of natural science, that iodine was something exceptional for the very reason that one could actually demonstrate that the moon consists of iodine. And he provided irrefutable proof that this was the case. He wanted to show that one can prove anything one wants. And that is indeed possible. The intellect, which is bound to the brain, can truly prove “yes” and “no” with regard to any matter. And it is almost always the case that some scientific view emerges, and the opposite is present at another time; that people can prove “yes” just as well on one side as “no” on the other. But that which is not such an Ahrimanic rise and fall of the yes-no wave, but rather the true progress of the good divinity of human evolution, is based on the spiritual. And we must be clear that the present has brought forth its particularly characteristic cultural realities precisely because it is the time of slumber for spiritual science, and that over everything that often fancies itself to be science, this spiritual slumber is spreading to a special degree. This spiritual slumber is necessary. This is not a criticism I am offering, but merely the statement of a fact. With all love, it must be said, it must be emphasized, that it was indeed necessary for a time for all of science to fall asleep with regard to the spiritual world. But now is also the time when the living awakening of spiritual life must arise—this spiritual life whose longing we truly feel everywhere. And this is what can give rise to the feeling, my dear friends, that must now enliven us in this time ravaged by pain. To the extent that we can gain even a glimmer of the idea that human beings can find the path into the spiritual world, we must seek this path; we must seek to have our spiritual thoughts meet with what flows down from the unspent etheric bodies. And this will truly make it possible in the future to look back upon our pain-filled and fateful days from a certain spiritual height. This spiritual height will come when more and more people find the impulses of Spiritual Science within the true content of their life-consciousness. And then precisely what I have always presented to you from the depths of my soul as a concluding thought in these observations here at this point in recent times will come to pass—something we wish to embrace as a hope, as a hope that anyone connected to Spiritual Science who is living through these fateful days can have, but also should have:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of battle,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Toward the realm of the spirit.