The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth 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 brought salvation to the Earth and freedom and progress to humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha—be with you and your heavy responsibilities!

[ 4 ] My task today will be to summarize some of what we already know in part, but which can always be summarized in such a way that it provides us with certain guidelines for our endeavors in Spiritual Science. Above all, we must familiarize ourselves more often with the idea that our earthly life, as we live it between birth and death, is essentially an intermediate life between what has gone before—numerous earthly lives and numerous lives that have passed between death and new birth—and, in turn, between what lies in the future—numerous earthly lives and numerous lives between death and new birth. I say that this life of ours is an intermediate life. Accordingly, we can expect that something will manifest in our life that we can, so to speak, regard as an effect of what has gone before, but that there is also something in our life that we can regard as pointing us toward the future. Today, I would like to discuss a few things, particularly with regard to the latter.

[ 5 ] When people look at their lives in this way, they might easily believe that nothing in this life actually points to the fact that the seeds, so to speak, for a future life already lie within us. Yet this is indeed the case. It is truly the case that what is to happen to us in the future is being prepared within us. We need only interpret our lives in the right way, and then we will be able to discover what lies hidden within us for the future, just as the seed lies within the present plant for the future plant, for the plant that is yet to come into being. Something incomprehensible in our present life is, after all, often the dream life with which we are all so thoroughly familiar. This dream life, certainly, contains within it a part of which we can truly say that it is, to a certain degree, comprehensible to us. We dream of things that remind us of this or that which we have experienced in life. Certainly, it happens very often that the things we experienced yesterday or in the past—and of which we dream—are then altered, that they take on a different form in the dream, that they are somehow transformed. But in such a case, we will often be able to see with a certain ease that in what we dream—even if it has changed—there are parts of our life contained within it, just as we have lived it. But I believe that no one who pays even a little attention to themselves and their dream world can deny that there are dreams which present us with such strange things that we really cannot say they are attributable solely to what we have experienced here and there in life. It is truly the case that a person need only reflect a little on their dreams, and they will already be able to clearly perceive that, if one may put it that way, they dream of things which, according to everything they can recall, could never actually have been conceived by them, nor could they ever have come up with them.

[ 6 ] We will understand this whole context once we take a closer look at the nature of what actually happens in dreams. As we know, in the sleeping state we are, with our astral body and our I, outside of our physical and etheric bodies. The physical and etheric bodies lie on the bed; with the astral body and the I, we are out there. Now, as things currently stand on Earth—unless a person acquires some special abilities—it is not possible for a human being to consciously experience what the astral body and the I go through while the person is asleep. This takes place in the unconscious. But clairvoyant insight shows us that what is experienced there is just as manifold, that what exists outside the physical body is just as distinct as what is experienced by the physical body; that it is just as manifold, just as multiform as much of what is experienced here on the physical plane; only the consciousness cannot grasp it, but it is present, it is experienced. Dreaming arises because the astral body and the I, which are otherwise, so to speak, so far removed from the physical and etheric bodies that the physical and etheric bodies are unaware of the processes taking place with the astral body and the I, come so close to the physical and etheric bodies that the etheric body is now able, as such, to receive impressions of the processes in the astral body and the I. When you wake up and know: I have been dreaming, then, strictly speaking, it is actually the case that the content of your dream comes into your consciousness because the astral body and the I recede; and before the physical body is able to become conscious that it has the astral body and the I within it again, the etheric body takes over; and as the etheric body rapidly absorbs what the astral body and the ego have experienced, the dream arises. There is thus an interaction between the astral and etheric bodies through which the dream arises.

[ 7 ] But this gives the dream a very specific character. It takes on, I would say, a kind of coating. You know, of course, that when a person passes away and emerges with the astral body, the I, and the etheric body, the person in the etheric body has an immediate retrospective view of their earthly life. This retrospective view is actually attached to the etheric body; when it dissolves, the retrospective view ceases. The etheric body thus contains the capacity to imprint all the events of our life within itself. What we have experienced in life is truly imprinted in the etheric body.

[ 8 ] This etheric body is a very complex structure. If we could isolate this etheric body in such a way as to preserve its form, it would serve as a mirror of our present life, a picture of our life up to the point, up to the moment, that we can remember. Because we plunge into the etheric body with the astral body and the ego, and the etheric body meets the plunging astral body, it brings forth things—memories of things it has experienced—to meet what is entering from the astral body, and clothes what is truly in the astral body in its own images.

[ 9 ] Let me explain this more clearly. Let us suppose that, while asleep, a person experiences—in their astral body and in their I—an encounter with a personality. The person is unaware of this. They experience such an encounter; they experience that they will feel a certain friendliness toward this personality, that they will undertake a joint endeavor with this personality. Let us assume they experience this outside their etheric body. That may be the case; but they know nothing of it. Now comes the moment of waking up. The astral body and the ego return to the etheric body, bringing their experience to meet the etheric body. The etheric body brings what is within it—its world of images—to meet the astral body, and the person dreams. They dream of an event they experienced perhaps ten or twenty years ago. Then the person says to themselves: Yes, I have dreamed of what I experienced ten or twenty years ago. But perhaps, if they reflect carefully, it has changed completely. Yet it does remind him of something he experienced in the past. What actually happened there? If we trace the process closely with the aid of clairvoyant insight, we see that the ego and the astral body have experienced something that will actually only take place in the next incarnation: an encounter with a personality, something one has to do with that personality. But the human being cannot yet grasp this in his etheric body, which contains within itself, and can only grasp, the images of the present life. When the astral body now submerges, the etheric body clothes that which actually belongs to the future life in the images of the present life. This peculiar, complicated process actually takes place continuously with the human being as he dreams.

[ 10 ] If you take everything you have heard so far in Spiritual Science and put it all together, it will not seem strange to you. We must be aware that in what emerges from our physical and etheric bodies—in our astral body and the I—we have within us that which seeks to pass over into the next incarnation, that which is preparing within us for the next incarnation. And as one gradually learns to distinguish dreams from the images of one’s present life, one comes to understand the prophetic nature of dreams. The prophetic nature of dreams can truly reveal itself to us; one must only learn to strip dreams of the present-day images in which they are clothed. In the case of dreams, one must look more at the way one experiences them than at what one experiences, and say to oneself, for example: The fact that I dream of a certain personality comes from the nature of my etheric body, from the way my etheric body, with its present images, meets the experiences of the astral body. In what one experiences, in order to recognize what is already prepared for the next life, one must focus more on the manner of experience to distinguish it from the image in our etheric body. Indeed, in dreams we truly have within us prophets of our future experiences. It is extraordinarily important that we take this properly into account. Human life reveals itself more and more the more we regard it as something complicated. One would like it to be simpler—that would certainly be more convenient—but the fact is that it is complicated.

[ 11 ] You see, the person who exists in the outer physical world is not aware that all sorts of things lie within them. Now we have come to know what lies within us as a prophet of future lives. But there are many other things within us, and self-knowledge rests on the fact that we come to recognize more and more what lies within us, what works within us, making us happy and unhappy, for all the things that lie within us make us happy and unhappy. Thus, people usually do not realize that they have indeed gone through a lunar life before this earthly life—not they themselves, but that which made them into earthly human beings—the lunar life. We know something of the lunar life, as well as of the preceding solar life and the ancient Saturn life. Let us first look at the lunar life! At present, we are indeed living the earthly life, but the lunar life was necessary for the earthly life to come into being. In the lunar life, the cause for the earthly life was prepared, and in a certain way, this lunar life still lies within us. On the Moon, the human being was a dreamlike clairvoyant. In dream images, they took reality into themselves. But what we were on the Moon, we still carry within us today; it is within us. Certainly, the lunar human has become an earthly human. But within this effect, the cause still lies; we still carry the lunar human within us. When we look at this lunar human, we can say: he is that within us which we call the dreamer. In fact, we all carry a dreamer within us, a dreamer who, I would say, thinks, feels, and wills in a less dense, more ethereal way, but who is actually wiser than we are as Earth humans. We carry a dreamer within us. We all carry a subtle human being within us. As we go about our lives as Earth humans with our thoughts, our feelings, and our will, this is what Earth evolution has given us. Something from lunar evolution has remained within us, which is a dreaming human being. But in the dreamer, however, we are given more than what we can have in our thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will, and this dreamer is not entirely inactive. We do not take this dreamer into account, but we do many things—very many things—that we actually only half-know ourselves, which the dreamer within us directs and guides. We arrange it, but the dreamer also does something within us; it directs our thinking here and there; for example, we formulate a sentence; the dreamer causes us to utter the sentence in a very specific way, to give it a certain edge, to clothe it in some emotional nuance. This dreamer is what has remained within us from the Moon. I would like to point out an outstanding personality and draw attention to how this dreamer can be observed in them. When people get to know one another in life, or when they get to know outstanding people through literature, people usually concern themselves with what the other person is as an earthly human being and not with what they are as a dreamer, as a poet. Yet it is in this that they express themselves more deeply.

[ 12 ] There is a great writer: Emerson. Emerson truly had the peculiarity that he always immersed himself so deeply in the subject he was currently addressing that one can easily point out contradictions in his work at times, because he is always completely absorbed in the subject he is addressing and then becomes wholly absorbed in it, without considering that what he is then characterizing contradicts what he had characterized when he was immersed in a different subject. But with Emerson in particular, it is always noticeable that when he immerses himself completely in a person or a subject, then faint undertones of Emerson’s moon-man, that the dreamer, speak along with him. Now, Emerson has written two fine essays: one on Shakespeare as the quintessential representative of the poet; one on Goethe as the representative of the writer. Now, it is the case that people skim through Emerson’s essay on Shakespeare, skim through the essay on Goethe, and are then satisfied, contenting themselves with that. But one can go further and ask oneself: Does one not sense something special resonating softly in Emerson? And there one discovers something most remarkable: Emerson does not merely wish to characterize Shakespeare as Shakespeare, but rather to present him as an exemplar, as an example of the poet; and it is now very peculiar that, as Emerson delves deeply into Shakespeare, one perceives what comes to pass when one hears the faint ringing of undertones resonating within.

[ 13 ] You will not suspect me of wanting to say anything disparaging about Shakespeare out of chauvinism or for nationalistic reasons. Of course, Shakespeare is the great poet to me; I naturally regard him as one of the greatest poets of all time. But I want to highlight the subtle undertones that Emerson brings to light when he characterizes Shakespeare. He says that originality is not actually what makes a person a great man. When one wants to characterize a great poet, one should not demand that this great personality be entirely original.

[ 14 ] And now we see that, in characterizing Shakespeare, Emerson emphasizes that the poet goes everywhere to take whatever pleases him and incorporate it into his poetry. Emerson seems to be trying to excuse the fact that Shakespeare is not original, that he gathered from everywhere—from Italian, Spanish, French, and German sources, and of course from English history—everything that he incorporated into his poetry. It is very peculiar that Emerson, who immerses himself so lovingly in Shakespeare, uses the following words to characterize Shakespeare: “Great men are distinguished more by a comprehensive mind and by the height of the vantage point from which they look down than by originality. If we demand that kind of originality which, like a spider, spins its own web from its own entrails, which finds the clay itself, shapes stones from it, and erects the house, then great men are by no means original. The essence of truly valuable originality does not lie in dissimilarity to others.”

[ 15 ] So he excuses Shakespeare for being so unoriginal, for having gathered bits and pieces from everywhere. Indeed, he goes so far as to say: to understand Shakespeare, one must look at the entire English audience of that time, whose tastes Shakespeare strove to please. Emerson speaks strange words about Shakespeare: “It is easy to see that everything that has ever been best written and done in the world was not the work of one man, but came about through a far-reaching, collective effort, where a thousand, as one, all driven by a single impulse, lent a hand.” And the most remarkable thing Emerson says about Shakespeare, whom he characterizes affectionately—the most remarkable thing, please, listen: “It has become a sort of practical rule among writers that whoever has once shown himself capable of creating something original may henceforth also discreetly steal from the works of others.”

[ 16 ] Thus, Emerson attempts to assign Shakespeare his rightful place in the world precisely by showing that great men steal from one another. That, in fact, the motifs of his many works have been gathered together. At first glance, this can be detected as a subtle undertone in Emerson’s characterization of Shakespeare. And now let us turn to Goethe’s affectionate assessment. Goethe characterizes Emerson as the one who represents the writer. But in contrast to Goethe, Emerson says: Nature everywhere depends on its wonders being expressed. Every stone, every plant, every being in nature waits to be expressed one day through the human soul. The writer will always stand in direct connection with nature. It is as if the Creator himself had prepared the idea that the writer would one day appear. It is remarkable, says Emerson now with regard to Goethe, how this man, in terms of his talent, owes nothing at all to his people, his country, or his surroundings, but how everything springs forth from within himself. Goethe alone decides on truth and error as well; everything originates from within himself.

[ 17 ] When Emerson characterizes Goethe, he seeks to gather concepts from all sides; yet while he characterizes Shakespeare as a magnificent robber, he portrays Goethe as a figure at the center of the world, as Nature itself. Let us hear a few passages in which Emerson speaks of Goethe: “The secret of genius is not to tolerate that a lie should remain for us. To make everything of which we are conscious a truth, to inspire faith, certainty, and trust in the refinements of modern life, in art and science, in books and in people, and to honor every truth—at the beginning as at the end, in the middle of the path as for all eternity—by not merely recognizing it, but by making it a guiding principle of our actions.” Or he says of Goethe: “In my eyes, the writer stands as a man whose place was intended in the structure of the world.”

[ 18 ] He characterizes Shakespeare as being exactly what the audience wants him to be; Goethe as a man who was predestined from the beginning of the world; “he owes nothing to the profession or position he held, but entered the world from the moment of his birth as a free, watchful genius ... .” Or: “He is all eyes and instinctively turns toward where the truth lies. Say something, and he will immediately know whether it is true or false. He detests repeating the old wives’ tales, even if they have enjoyed the good faith of humanity for a thousand years, and allowing himself to be made a fool of by them.”

[ 19 ] This sentence appears in the character sketch of Goethe. The character sketch of Shakespeare states that he cannot do enough, especially when it comes to collecting everything that has been written. I would say that Emerson succeeded, in a truly wonderful way, in highlighting the difference between Shakespeare and Goethe in their respective character sketches. But then one can discern, intuitively, what the dreamer has shaped in the two of them—that is, how Emerson came to characterize Shakespeare as a great robber and Goethe as a great ally of truth. This is extremely interesting, for it is not a conscious choice; yet this spirit pervades both characterizations.

[ 20 ] As you can see, there is another way of reading that differs from simply picking up a book and going through it. You don’t learn what’s truly important about things by merely taking them in one by one, but rather by comparing them, by letting one thing sink in alongside another.

[ 21 ] I felt compelled to cite this example because the dreamer truly speaks through Emerson quite often. One could indeed find it quite striking how two personalities speak within him, for what the casual reader perceives as contradictions, Emerson himself was, after all, well aware of. After all, there are such glaring contradictions in Emerson that they must strike everyone. On the one hand, he calls the English the first people in the world; on the other, he places the Germans higher. Sometimes this is spoken from the higher consciousness, sometimes from the dreamer within. And it is particularly interesting when you simply read the two conclusions of the reflections on Shakespeare and Goethe one after the other. In the case of Shakespeare, Emerson comes to say: None of those who have worked so far have yet achieved what the poet is in the world: “The world is still waiting for the poet-priest.” It is something like resignation that runs through the Shakespeare reflection as a feeling at the end. At the end of the reflection on Goethe, however, stands the exact opposite: that through him we are inspired to honor every truth not merely by recognizing it, but by making it a guiding principle for our actions. While a sentence of renunciation stands at the end of the reflection on Shakespeare, a sentence of confidence stands at the end of the reflection on Goethe.

[ 22 ] We now live in a time when it is important to take these things into account to some extent, to recognize them to some extent. We will then find that this dreamer lives within every human being; he reveals himself in people’s actions, and while he is perceived in clairvoyant consciousness, we can recognize him in ordinary life when we study people. We can do this with Emerson. Studying Emerson is of interest.

[ 23 ] This dreamer within us is the very thing upon which everything that is meant to influence us from the spiritual world—without our knowing it—now acts. In what we experience as earthly human beings, we form thoughts and generate impulses of will. What we know in this way is what we find in our lives. But the inspirations of the angels, the beings of the Angeloi, play a role in our dreams, and these are in turn inspired by beings of the higher hierarchies. What enters our dreams—more in one person, less in another—is wiser than what we carry within us from our everyday life, than everything we can grasp in our everyday life through thinking, feeling, and willing. That which guides us, that which is more than what the earthly human being is and was, enters our dreams.

[ 24 ] You see, this dreamer is also the very thing that can evoke much within us—though it is currently unconscious. Certainly, everything that acts upon us from the higher world, indirectly through the beings belonging to the hierarchies of the Angeloi, acts upon the dreamer; but everything Ahrimanic, everything Luciferic, also acts first upon the dreamer, truly works its way into the dreamer, and a large part of what people assert—I would say, not entirely out of their consciousness, but out of instinct—has been worked into the dreamer from the spiritual world.

[ 25 ] I would like to give you an example of this as well. I would like to draw this example from a somewhat broader historical context. I have often told you that one recognizes the European peoples by understanding how the folk-souls speak: to the Italians through the soul of feeling, to the French through the soul of understanding or the soul of the emotions, to the English through the soul of consciousness, to the Germans through the ego, and to the Russians through the Spirit-Self. But this speaking through the Spirit-Self implies that the Russians today possess instincts that will only develop in the future. Only in the distant future will it become clear what the Russian folk-soul has to say, once the human soul has developed to the stage of the Spirit-Self. That is why everything that emerges in the East still has a germinal quality. Now, however, these peoples of the East instinctively feel that they belong to a different cultural current. They feel that they must wait. But no one likes to wait when they reflect on their present consciousness. This is precisely what they are meant to do: wait and consciously take in what European culture is. In contrast, the instinct lives within them that they must steer and lead, that they cannot kill Europe off quickly enough, whereas the natural course is for that which can develop from the dialogue between the Folk-souls and the ego to unfold in Central Europe.

[ 26 ] The Russian folk-soul must, as it were, go to school in Central Europe, and once it has assimilated what has been prepared there, it will one day be able to contribute what it has to contribute to European culture. Instead, something quite peculiar arises from disordered, chaotic instincts, from which we can see that these instincts are stirred in the dreamer by all manner of Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. These Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses are, in fact, the very reason why the East has now turned against Germany in such a dreadful manner.

[ 27 ] You see, there is a spirit through which its dreamer speaks: Yushakov. I would like to draw your attention to the ideas of this spirit, who in 1885 spoke out about the relationship between Russian and English culture, and one would now like to see quite a few people of the present day come to understand such ideas, which not so long ago sprang from a Russian mind and were written down by him. We must consider these ideas not for their content, but as symptoms of what lives within the entire Russian people.

[ 28 ] Yushakov says: There we have the rotten West, ripe for destruction. Everything in the West has outlived its time and must dissolve. That is where Russia must step in. But Russia must not only civilize the West, redeem the West from its barbarism, but Russia must redeem the entire world, especially Asia. And Yushakov describes this redemption of Asia for the soul in the following way.

[ 29 ] Let us look across to Asia. True Asian culture originated in Iran. This Iranian culture originated with Ormuzd; the Iranians recognized the struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, and one has always seen how the Iranians did everything in their power to spread the blessings of Ormuzd throughout Iran. But then came the Turanian peoples, who were under the influence of Ahriman, and they continually harassed, fought against, and overcame the Ormuzd culture. At first, Ormuzd and Ahriman fought in Iran. But when we see how the peoples of Europe behaved toward this Ormuzd culture, we see how the beautiful Ormuzd culture spread in the regions that the English, above all, took possession of. The English have shown themselves to be the worst barbarians in their opposition to the Ormuzd culture. Russia has much to make amends for in Asia regarding what these wicked English have committed there. The English went there, seized entire parts of Asia, and exploited and bled dry the Ormuzd culture. What was the English's mental image of what they would do there? Such an Englishman had a mental image of this culture existing for his sake; such an Englishman says that all of Asia exists for no other purpose than to clothe itself in English fabrics, to fight among themselves with English weapons, to work with English tools, to eat from English vessels, and to play with English trinkets. Asian culture, he claims, exists for nothing else. All of Asia would be England’s booty. He expresses himself very precisely: “England exploits millions of Hindus, but its entire existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting the rich peninsula; I wish nothing of the sort upon my fatherland—I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently removed from this state, as brilliant as it is sad.” Written in Russian in 1885 by Yushakov. What have the Russians done? — says Yushakov — the Russians have not yet been able to act as the Western European peoples, as the English have done, by unlawfully invading and appropriating what in Asia was the Ormuzd culture. They went only where the Ahriman culture existed and held back the peoples in whom Ahriman was at work, so that they could no longer be harmful to what Ormuzd had accomplished for Asia. After the Russians have liberated the peoples of Asia from the evil Ahriman, they must also liberate them from the sins the English have committed against the Ormuzd culture in those regions. So that they may prepare for the task they still have before them for Asia after having liberated Asia from Ahriman, they must still make amends for what the European peoples, namely the English, have done to the Ormuzd culture. And if one asks why these peoples cannot continue the Ormuzd culture, he answers this question by saying that these peoples have fallen prey to industrialism and individualism, that they always think only of themselves first, whereas the Russians think of themselves only last. Such people are of no use; and by interweaving industrialism with their individualism, they have become the bloodsuckers of Asia. Russia will bring about other unions; the union of the brilliant military Cossacks with the farmer who cultivates the land. And from this union will arise the liberators of humanity in Asia. The liberator of human development will arise in Asia. — This is Yushakov’s ideal: that from the union of the Cossacks with the farmer who cultivates the earth, the liberator of the world will arise.

[ 30 ] You see, my dear friends, an ideal has been constructed that will leave you in little doubt that something of the spirit of Ahriman has worked its way into Yushakov’s own mind—specifically, into the mind of the dreamer. But this influence on the dreamer has gradually given rise, as a general public mood, to what is now to be found in this part of Eastern Europe; for what we are dealing with here is a public mood such as that expressed in Yushakov’s words.

[ 31 ] You see, I also wanted to point out that Spiritual Science allows us to look ever more closely, to gain ever deeper insight into what people say and dream; for we all carry this dreamer within us; this dreamer is within all of us. The good forces have an influence on this dreamer, and the evil forces have an influence on this dreamer.

[ 32 ] Just as we have this dreamer within us, who has brought the lunar nature into us, so too do we carry within us the solar human from the solar evolution. He, however, can no longer dream. His consciousness is structured in the manner of plants. We carry within us a sleeping plant-human or solar human. And then we also carry within us a completely dead, stone-like Saturn-human. Just as we carry the Sun-human, who now sleeps, we carry within us the one who lies even deeper in his consciousness, beneath the sleeping consciousness: the Saturn-human. What is a dreamer within us is the Moon-human; what lives within us with a constant sleeping consciousness is the Sun-human; and the Saturn-man lies, I might say, as our oldest cause, as the innermost core within us. But this Saturn-man has a profound significance in our entire life. All the insights that human beings gain today, whether in external life or in science, arise because the external world acts upon the human being as upon the Saturn-man. This effect does not come to the person’s consciousness, but it is there. What we think, feel, and will penetrates down to the Saturn human. And this Saturn human is what ultimately remains of us on our Earth, regardless of whether we are cremated in regard to the physical body, regardless of whether we decompose.

[ 33 ] What the dreamer is does not remain; what the solar human is does not remain. The Saturn human passes into the elemental world of the Earth in the form of fine, fine grains of dust; that remains, and it always bears the traces of what was within us. If you examine the elemental world today, you can find—albeit in fine grains—what were once the remains of Abraham, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle; you can find what their Saturn-men were. What the Saturn-man was is given to the Earth; it remains with the Earth, preserved in the Earth along with our enduring character.

[ 34 ] This was not the case in earlier times. It is only in the present era, since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that this has been so. In the past, the whole human being dissolved; only those who, like Abraham, Plato, and Socrates, were ahead of their time, gave their remains to the earth. Now, of course, this is gradually becoming the case for all human beings. For that is the peculiar thing: everything that is currently achieved through external science is imprinted in this Saturn-human and goes with this Saturn-human into the earth.

[ 35 ] Everything else that humans possess will be lost, dissolving into the cosmos once the Earth has reached its destination. What you have around you in the form of minerals, plants, and animals will perish; only what you were as a Saturn human remains as fine dust particles, passing from Earth into the existence of Jupiter and then forming the solid framework of Jupiter. These are the true atoms of Jupiter. Those people who today study external science, who think externally, affect their Saturn-human in such a way that they form the atoms for Jupiter within this Saturn-human. Through this, Jupiter receives its atoms. But if that were all, the entire Jupiter would come into being in such a way that it would actually be nothing more than a mineral or mineral-like sphere, on which no plant could grow. What we can carry over to Jupiter through our Saturn-man only causes Jupiter to be a mineral sphere. Plants could not grow there. If plants are to grow on Jupiter, then the Sun-man within us must also receive something. This Sun-man within us, however, only truly receives something from now on and into the future through the fact that people take in concepts of Spiritual Science, for those concepts that we take in from the outside, that we take in from external science, go into the Saturn-man. What we take in as thoughts of Spiritual Science goes into the solar being. That is why Spiritual Science requires more activity. Its thoughts differ from those of external science in that they are active. They must be grasped vividly; one cannot behave passively toward thinking, as one does in the outer world. In Spiritual Science, everything must be actively conceived; we must be inwardly active. This affects our solar being. And if there were no solar being within the human being, a Jupiter would arise on which everything is mineral, but where there would be no plant world. People who develop spiritually carry over something that leads to a plant world on Jupiter. With the solar being within us, we carry over what emerges as a plant world; and all it takes to make Jupiter barren is to reject Spiritual Science. We can now establish Spiritual Science so that there may be vegetation on Jupiter.

[ 36 ] We Spiritual Science scholars, however, are not the kind of people who, like others, boast that we have “come so far.” Just listen to a contemporary doctor who truly stands on the current standpoint, or listen to a contemporary philosopher and so on; they say: We don’t need to go back that far to find people who were actually nothing at all; a man like Paracelsus was actually an idiot, and today’s high school teacher is smarter than Plato. This is a philosophy that has already been parodied by Hebbel. Recorded as a dramatic idea in his diary is the notion that a high school teacher had the reincarnated Plato in his class. Hebbel wanted to portray this as a dramatic figure and show how the schoolmaster deals with the reincarnated Plato, who can understand absolutely nothing of what the schoolteacher says about Plato. That is what Hebbel wanted to portray in a drama. It is truly a pity that he did not portray this idea in a drama, for it is truly a very beautiful idea.

[ 37 ] However, we do not take the view that we have “come so wonderfully far.” We take a different view. What is now called philosophy stands on the uplifting principle that what lies ten years in the past is already a stage that has been overcome. We know, of course, that today we must speak of Spiritual Science as we do; but we also know that a time will come when what we now call Spiritual Science will be nonsense in the future, when things will have to be done quite differently within humanity. What we must now call Spiritual Science takes the form of the present, seeking out of eternity what is for the good and welfare of the present. But a time will come when it will be necessary for us to seek to influence the dreamer just as we influence the solar human, just as our entire external science influences the Saturn human. What external science makes of the Saturn human establishes Jupiter as a mineral mass; what Spiritual Science makes of the solar human establishes his vegetation. That which will be animal life on Jupiter will be shaped by something that will follow our present Spiritual Science; it will be established by what will be the future of Spiritual Science. Then there is something else that will act upon the human being on Jupiter; this is yet to be developed, and it will provide us with the foundation for the actual culture of Jupiter.

[ 38 ] Thus, in the course of life, we are now in the period in which we are preparing the mineral core for Jupiter through external science, and in which Spiritual Science is working upon its plant existence and establishing vegetation on Jupiter. Something is coming that will influence the dreamer, which will then give rise to the animal world of Jupiter. And only then will come that which corresponds to what human beings now bring forth through thinking, feeling, and willing—a process guided by a higher wisdom, so that when Earth’s evolution is complete, human beings themselves can carry themselves over to Jupiter as human beings.

[ 39 ] This is how we stand within the evolution of the Earth; this is how we see, from our own human perspective, how we are placed within the great world, within the macrocosm. And so we know that we are doing nothing that is not important. Thus we know that by engaging in Spiritual Science together, we are fostering the vegetation of Jupiter, and that through what we express in words, we are creating that which will be handed over to the world of the future in the Jupiter existence.

[ 40 ] Just think, my dear friends, I have said that everything in the mineral world evaporates into the world, everything in the plant world evaporates, and everything in the animal world evaporates. Nothing passes from the Earth to Jupiter except the mineral atoms of human beings, the Saturnic elements of human beings. Nothing from the mineral, plant, or animal kingdoms passes to Jupiter. Only that which is now the Saturnic human within us passes over; that becomes the mineral kingdom on Jupiter.

[ 41 ] I don’t know if some of our friends remember where we started, how many years ago in Berlin—at first just a small group, some of whom are still with us today—we began to reflect on these matters. Let us transport ourselves to the later Jupiter. What are the Jupiter atoms? These are the Saturn parts of the present human being. And it is nonsense to speak of such atoms as physicists do. That which humanity gains from the entire Earth enters into the Saturn human and becomes Jupiter atoms. To speak of the fact that our minerals, animals, and plants contain what the physicist seeks in them is pure nonsense. That which is now Earth atoms was prepared in the lunar existence; it is what will prepare us to become Sun-beings, just as we are now preparing our Saturn-beings. I have spoken before about the atom as something prepared from the entire cosmos. You can find this again in those earlier lectures, which were held right at the beginning of our work in Berlin. Now I can only make it brief, given what we have gone through in the meantime.

[ 42 ] But even what our stars are—the external physical stars, the physical sun, the physical moon—that we see out there in the universe—it is not as the physicist sees it. Physicists would be very surprised if they could ever travel up to the Sun and find there absolutely nothing of what they have constructed in their minds. They would be very surprised by what they would see there. What one would find there, if one could ever travel up—in modern terms, that would be in a balloon of the future, in an ether balloon—it would be quite something else, what one would find there. What physicists construct, one would not find; one would find absolutely no physical body. It only looks that way. For what surrounds us as the sun, moon, and stars belongs to the whole that once arose after the lunar evolution. After the lunar evolution, not only did the moon perish, but everything that constitutes the visible universe entered into the night at that time. And everything that exists in the universe actually belongs to the Earth, so that when the Earth eventually perishes, not only will the plant and animal kingdoms perish with it, but everything that exists out there in the cosmos will perish as well; the present form of the stars will fade into the night. And then what will become Jupiter will take shape. Its atoms will be the Saturn-like parts of human beings. Its environment will look entirely different from our earthly environment.

[ 43 ] If you consider all this, a person who grasps it today might say the following: What, then, will remain of the present world when the Earth’s evolution comes to an end? The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—all of that will disperse and pass away. What humanity gains today as human beings, what it forms today through its outer power of judgment, will pass over into the mineral kingdom of Jupiter; what it gains through Spiritual Science will pass over as the solar human and form the basis of vegetation; what we speak—the words—will pass over; whatever moral developments take place will pass over.

[ 44 ] Could not the one who was to give meaning and direction to the entire development of the Earth have spoken a very special word? Could he not have said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”? — Are we not now beginning to grasp the incredibly profound meaning of Christ’s words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”? Is this not literally true?

[ 45 ] Words that flow from external science and affect the Saturn human pass over and form the atoms of Jupiter. Words that spring from Spiritual Science and affect the Sun-men pass over and form the vegetation of Jupiter; what then affects the dreamer passes over and forms the animal kingdom of Jupiter; and what humanity gains in morality and through the words of Spiritual Science of the future becomes the human beings of Jupiter. It will be words; it will be wisdom of thought. That will endure. What is all around in the cosmos will pass away. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

[ 46 ] Thus we gradually come to realize how profound words of wisdom flow from this central workshop we call the Mystery of Golgotha. They flow from there. I once said: the entire subsequent development of the Earth will be there to gradually understand what was said by the one who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I tried to explain to you, from the entirety of Spiritual Science that we have pursued so far, a word—the word of Christ: “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Time and again, people will come who will interpret other words of Christ in light of what Spiritual Science is able to explain. Much will have to come to understand the full meaning of Christ’s words, because they are guiding words, words given from the Spirit, but which can only be understood over time through all that is brought forth by the science of the Spirit.

[ 47 ] When we translate this into a feeling, only then do we gain a sense of the immense uniqueness of the Mystery of Golgotha; through perception that looks up to the Infinite, we gain that wonderful insight into what gives meaning to the Earth from the beginning of the world to its end—the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 48 ] My dear friends, since there will be a few weeks ahead when we will not be able to speak with one another, I felt it was my duty today to speak of something we can take to heart and meditate on deeply over the coming weeks. I wanted to plant a few thoughts in your souls that you can then develop further. This has always been our summer task of Spiritual Science: that we further develop what has taken root in our souls, and that through this our souls are made more alive and mature; for it is not by taking in Spiritual Science as something theoretical, not merely by absorbing ideas, that we make progress in Spiritual Science, but by transforming these thoughts into our entire soul life, into our living feeling. Yes, when we allow this thought of humanity’s place within the macrocosm to take such an effect on our souls, we feel ourselves as human beings within the whole. All timidity, all hesitation, all hopelessness must vanish in the face of the grandeur of this thought. We must first feel ourselves as human beings in all humility. And everything that we can take in as Spiritual Science and that can and should work within us as a living force from Spiritual Science—which has always been our principle— we must emphasize it all the more in the present; for again and again, in our reflections on the present, we must recall what stands before us so solemnly in the great events of our time; again and again we must think of those who leave their etheric bodies behind at a young age, who will be a great help in the spiritualization of future culture. If this spiritualization is to take place, then there must be souls who understand something of these spiritual connections, who look up into this world and know that up there is not only what is called attraction in the abstract sense, but up there are the living dead, that which they have given from their own lives to an earthly humanity: the unspent etheric bodies. The souls who understand something of these things must work together; their thoughts must rise up to that which flows down from the unspent etheric bodies of those who have passed away before their time.

[ 49 ] That we must permeate our souls with this convergence of the spiritual and the earthly—above all with all our thoughts, with that which is already spiritual within us—and look up toward the spiritual: I always summarize this in the words that are also to form the conclusion of our reflection today:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruit of the spirit grows—
Guiding souls with spiritual awareness
Toward the realm of the spirit.