The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Original Revelation to Humanity

[ 1 ] In these difficult times in which we live—times in which the hardships are felt anew and with increasing intensity every day—it is surely fitting to engage in reflections within our circle that are suited to familiarizing us with the great historical goals and impulses of humanity. Underlying this is the idea that it is deeply, deeply necessary in our time to turn to the great and meaningful things that can be revealed to us from the spiritual world, because what we are now going through will most certainly bring about times in which people will be in great need of that which can bring the human soul strength, power, comfort, hope, and confidence from the spiritual worlds. We must cherish this thought all the more because we are living at a time when true spiritual deepening—that is, deepening into the true spiritual life that human beings need—is, in turn, infinitely difficult for humanity and actually encounters immeasurable obstacles. These are obstacles for which, in a certain higher sense, people of the present day are actually not at all to blame; they simply arise from the conditions and developmental impulses of the present, holding people back from truly embracing spiritual life—which is becoming so necessary, one might say even more necessary, in our present time from week to week, and will be especially necessary in the time that closely follows our own—a time that, in many respects, will by no means be any easier than that of our immediate present.

[ 2 ] In the past few hours, I have attempted to present some reflections to you on the connection between certain insights and practices cultivated in individual spiritual communities and the general course of human development. Today I would like to delve deeper into these reflections in a certain respect, although what I have to say will be entirely independent of what has been said and can be understood without it. I would just like to draw your attention once more to the fact that I have already explained how, in a sense, throughout the entire educated world today—and even among the uneducated, indeed, perhaps even more so, albeit in a different sense, certain human communities are widespread that cultivate occult knowledge and that also use occult knowledge—as I have shown—to infuse it, in a certain way, into what they do, thereby attempting to influence the course of human development, in their own way, for better or for worse. Now, one thing is noticeable in a large portion of such spiritual communities—namely, those that have developed these spiritual communities up to our time—and they do not yet understand what must now emerge anew in such communities as a special necessity in our time; that is, although they possess the old traditions and the old teachings, but do not yet understand what must be incorporated through that which is now revealing itself from the spiritual world. In these spiritual communities, then, which are not yet able to stand at the full height of the times, there is, so to speak, a common formula that dominates a large number of them. And this formula is the one through which they speak of the creative power that pulses through and permeates the worlds. When they wish to direct their attention to these creative forces that pulse through and permeate the world—that is, to the divine-spiritual that pulses through and permeates the world—these communities speak of the “sublime Architect of the World.” This is a frequently used expression: the sublime Architect of the World.

[ 3 ] For those who, through the study of the Spiritual Science, understand the course of human development, the fact that—for example, in certain Masonic communities, but also in others—people speak of the Sublime Architect of the Worlds proves the ancient existence of such communities and their origins in ancient institutions. It proves that everything that can historically be said with a certain degree of justification about the later emergence of such communities is incorrect; that in truth such communities do indeed go back far, far into the past—even if they took different forms in earlier times—and in an unbroken succession to ancient communities that existed during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch among the Greeks, the Romans, but also among the ancient Egyptians—indeed, we could go back even further. And it is from these communities of ancient times that the present-day communities, which are of the kind I have described, are derived—except that these present-day communities do not, so to speak, stand in such direct communication with the spiritual world as their leaders did in the earlier communities, but rather preserve what they possess as knowledge more as handed-down knowledge.

[ 4 ] If one wishes to understand what the phrase “the sublime Architect of the Worlds” means—or rather, why this particular phrase is used to refer to the sublime Architect of the Worlds, the great Architect of the Universe—then one must recall various facts that, in truth, could already be known today, but which has by no means yet penetrated the general consciousness of humanity, not even among scholars. In certain writings by more enlightened theologians or scholars of antiquity, you can already find the concept of “primordial revelation” today. What do people mean by “primordial revelation”?

[ 5 ] This concept of “primordial revelation” appears in writings that are already recognized as having a certain value in the academic world today—writings that are not regarded as “crazy stuff” the way our writings are. So the concept of primordial revelation does, after all, appear in those writings that are taken seriously—at least to a certain degree—within the realm of the four faculties. Now, this concept of primordial revelation can become particularly clear when one tries to familiarize oneself with ancient religious texts. One really only needs to go back to the writings of Gotama Buddha. There, if one goes back to these writings—to older religious texts in general—if one is open-minded enough, if one is not as foolish as, for example, the writer who discussed certain Egyptian conditions in the latest issue of Zeitgeist—if, that is, one is reasonably open-minded, you will notice in the ancient religious texts that the people who were involved in the creation of these texts possessed, millennia ago, a knowledge that has been lost to humanity—a knowledge that has, I would say, gradually seeped away amid increasing materialism. As I said, you need only read the writings of Gotama Buddha that are available to you with an open mind, and you will see: what is said there is based on a vast body of knowledge—knowledge that must already have been handed down to him, dating back to much, much earlier times, to a primordial knowledge. Well, given the way people now acquire their knowledge in the four faculties, this knowledge could not, of course, have been attained. I believe that even an unbiased observer of contemporary scholarship would not exactly dispute this. And a biased person certainly would not, for a biased person rejects all this knowledge and regards it as foolish nonsense. Isn’t that right? He views it historically and certainly accepts books that deal with it historically—provided they have sources and can cite evidence. But the knowledge itself—he does not accept that. So he certainly cannot admit that one could arrive at such knowledge through current natural methods, for he does not accept it, does he?

[ 6 ] So we are led back to a primordial knowledge. We must therefore assume—and anyone with an open mind must accept this based on the ancient religious texts—that it is possible to go back from the present to earlier periods of human development, and that we can trace a path from the present day, in which we have made such magnificent progress in every field, and have even brought about the terrible murders of the present day, haven’t we?—back through the earlier centuries to what people used to know, which, for our time—which has come so wonderfully far—is such confused nonsense as we find in Jakob Böhme, Paracelsus, and so on. And then we come back to the time when people were conducting alchemical experiments in retorts, and then further and further back, to a time when—even if they were learned—they were, by today’s standards, simply “superstitious,” and then we go back even further. But we say that if the open-minded person now traces the centuries back through Roman, Greek, and Egyptian civilizations, they will arrive at a humanity that once possessed a body of knowledge that was spread throughout the world in a way that modern humans cannot attain. Of course, it is difficult for modern people to form a mental image of this concept, for they imagine that the human being of the time we are speaking of was, in fact, still merely an ape—Pithecanthropus erectus, the ape-man. But despite all these theories about the ape-man, the unbiased observer must, as I said, conclude even today from actual historical records that there was originally a body of knowledge which modern humans, with their present-day intellect, cannot attain—a knowledge that is infinitely deep and extends to an extraordinary degree across the spiritual worlds, that this knowledge contains not only an awareness that one can ascend into spiritual worlds, but also that one finds in these spiritual worlds other beings who are not embodied in flesh—beings whom we today encompass when we speak of the higher hierarchies of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so on. We even find in these ancient religious texts that people speak of these higher spiritual beings as beings with whom they have interacted. As I said, this can be verified from the texts themselves.

[ 7 ] What actually underlies this fact? Well, from a certain point of view—that of an initiate—one can come directly to the heart of this mystery that is hinted at here. But one can already—I would say—from a certain lower level of initiation, from the very ordinary, easily attainable level of initiation, arrive at what actually underlies this mystery through a process of analogy. We know, after all, that the world around us is not limited to what modern sensory science describes, but that this nature we speak of today is underpinned by the so-called elemental world—the world for which we have terms only when we go back to ancient mythology, in the various elemental beings that underlie the mineral kingdom as gnomes, the aquatic and plant kingdoms as undines, the air-animated kingdom as sylphs, and the entire earthly realm as salamanders.

[ 8 ] Unless one happens to be part of this enlightened society, one must, even today, feel ashamed to speak of these things in all seriousness; but we are among ourselves, after all, and can discuss them. This world—the nature that surrounds us—is thus founded upon elemental beings. Now, one must not form a mental image of these elemental beings as merely existing to be recognized by people who become clairvoyant and to simply laze about with nothing to do. Of course, one must not form such an image; rather, these beings have an important role to play in the world—they have a great deal to do. They are active in a way that, however, is often dismissed in external, materialistic science as “everything happens on its own.” But it does not happen on its own! Those whose eyes are open to this elemental world can see how these elemental beings, in essence, must undergo a sort of annual cycle throughout the year: how forces from the spiritual worlds act upon these beings in different ways in spring, summer, fall, and winter—that is, how they spread out an elemental realm here on Earth around us, which underlies the natural realm in the manner described, and how these forces pour down, one cannot call it a lesson, but a pouring forth of forces, so that in spring these beings gain the power to form the plant cover from the earth. Certain spiritual beings carry down the forces of the Spirits of Form and impart them to these elemental beings, so that a new world of forms sprouts forth in spring. As summer approaches, they receive, as it were, a later course of instruction, so that they can once again bring about what takes place toward the end of summer. And so, over the course of the year, an interaction takes place between the spirits of the higher hierarchies and the elemental beings who weave and live in the nature that surrounds us. This means that we are constantly dealing with a rising and falling, a flowing up and down of spiritual beings from the higher hierarchies, whose pupils and students are the beings that must in turn impart the life-giving forces to everything that sprouts and grows throughout the course of the year. For everything that sprouts and grows in the course of the year, everything that comes into being and passes away—all of this has not merely grown out of our earth, but stands in direct interaction with the heavenly-spiritual realm. And those people who believe that the plants and animals that come to life each spring simply grow out of the forces of the earth—these people can be compared, let us say, to worms that constantly crawl beneath the earth’s surface and never come to the surface, and who, as they crawl from plant root to plant root, would believe: “There are only plant roots,” and whatever lies above the earth—which they never even catch a glimpse of—they will, of course, deny. And if, just once, a worm were to come along, burrow a hole, come up, and see that there are leaves and flowers up there—that something from the roots reaches up into the sunlight—and if it were to return and tell the worms crawling below, who know only the plant roots, about this, then they would say: “You’re a completely crazy worm, you’re a totally twisted little worm—none of what you’re telling us even exists!” _ Yes, perhaps we don’t have this among worms; worms are probably smarter; but among humans, we certainly do.

[ 9 ] So, as I said, whatever sprouts and grows throughout the course of the year is in direct interaction with the beings who allow their forces to flow upward and downward and pour them into this elemental world. But just as today, my dear friends, sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders receive their influences from these beings of the higher hierarchies—who ascend and descend according to the course of the year—so too, in ancient times, when human beings were not yet so closely bound to their physical bodies, they received instruction from the spirits of the higher hierarchies as they floated up and down. And all the legends and myths that have survived—which tell us that in ancient times human beings received instruction from such beings who themselves descended from the spiritual world—these myths are based entirely on truth. Humanity itself was among those spirits, among whom today only gnomes, sylphs, undines, and so on are found. And while these spirits receive the forces through which they develop the forms that spring up from and down into the earth throughout the course of the year, in ancient times humanity received its instruction from the beings of the higher hierarchies who soared up and down. And what he received in those ancient times is what remains in the form of the last vestiges found in such writings that have been preserved for us to this day, and from which an unbiased person can demonstrate—as I said, from external writings—that such a primordial revelation took place.

[ 10 ] So such a primordial revelation did take place. And in the times preceding the eighth century B.C., the last remnants of this primordial revelation flowed down to humanity. We can even specify the year 747, in which, so to speak, human beings—through the further development of their physical nature—were excluded from direct participation—though, of course, all this happens gradually—in the kind of instruction I have just described. All that constituted ancient science flowed into humanity in this way through the direct instruction of spiritual beings. And the ancient sciences that have been handed down—and which are no longer understood today—came to humanity in this way. We must now consider the last science that came to humanity in this manner. What, then, has humanity experienced over the course of time, beginning in the earliest days of ancient Atlantis, when such primordial revelation flowed down? Humanity has come to understand the connection in which it itself, as human beings, stands in relation to the spiritual worlds. For the human being is a microcosm, and within them all the forces and processes that otherwise take place in the greater world unfold on a smaller scale. The last thing humanity has learned in this way—that which has flowed to them from without—is geometry and arithmetic. And anyone who still allows geometry and arithmetic to take effect upon them in the true sense of the word will still sense that something different approaches them through these subjects than through other forms of knowledge. Other forms of knowledge are gathered from experience. But geometry and arithmetic are something in which one senses that they are true apart from external experience, apart from all sensory experience. No one can prove—by drawing a triangle and creating a mental image of it in sensory experience, then measuring the angles—that they total one hundred eighty degrees. At most, one might arrive at that conclusion; but one can prove it only through the inner experience of thought. And likewise, no one can prove that three times three is nine merely by external counting, but only through a mental image. One does not need peas or beans for this, nor even one’s fingers; one need only create a mental image, and one will arrive at the truth inwardly: three times three is nine.

[ 11 ] In a broader sense, however, what is understood here as geometry and arithmetic is based on everything that finds expression in the forms of architecture. Even in Egyptian times, there was a connection to something even older—a primordial knowledge in which geometry and arithmetic were revealed. In the Greco-Roman era, this ancient knowledge was then imparted to people in the mysteries in such a way that they were told: If you look deep within yourself, you will bring forth from within what had been revealed to you in earlier times, when you lived on Earth, by the spirits of the higher hierarchies. — In the Egyptian mysteries, this was not necessary, for the high beings still descended themselves. In the Greco-Roman era, the Master gathered his disciples by telling them: “You were there in earlier incarnations; you went through a process of human development in which the spirits of the higher hierarchies participated.” This has become firmly established in your souls—bring it forth!—Thus, the Master of the Greek and Roman Mysteries still had his disciples bring forth what was present in the human soul in this way. For everything can be found in the human soul, because in the primordial revelation, everything flowed down into humanity through the spirits. What we bring forth from within ourselves today—truly bring forth from within ourselves—is something we have already experienced once before in the teachings imparted by the higher hierarchies.

[ 12 ] Then came the year 1413/14. And from that point on—for that is when the materialistic age truly begins—human beings can no longer become aware of what is actually contained within them from earlier spiritual teachings. From that point on, the close union of the soul with the physical body veils what is within our souls. But throughout the entire period from 747 B.C. to 1413, it was possible to draw up from the soul what had flowed into it in earlier times in the manner I have described. Think about how such a person, especially in ancient Greece, must actually have felt. Precisely in ancient Greece, he felt as I am now suggesting to you. He said to himself: Geometry, as it finds expression in the forms of a building, once flowed down from the outer world through divine-spiritual instruction. It revealed itself. People were surrounded by forms. Now, when a person wants to draw a triangle, they take a piece of chalk and draw it. The ancient Greeks did not yet need to do that; instead, they only had to turn their attention inward, and then they could still see the triangle before them, as it were, through clairvoyance—etheric clairvoyance. So they could still “draw” what constituted geometry before their eyes through clairvoyance. It was the same in prehistoric times with writing, but in an even earlier prehistoric era. Back then, people didn’t just write on papyrus; they also wrote before their eyes—they wrote before their eyes through clairvoyance. But as I said, what found its way into the forms of architecture, people placed all around themselves, so that during a certain period of the Greek mysteries, they were instructed in such a way that they were told: “Now reflect very clearly upon yourself!” If you reflect on the divine human being who lives within you—that is, if you do not merely focus on your transient earthly human being, but instead reflect on the divine human being within you—then a structure composed of geometric forms will arise around you; you are right in the midst of it.

[ 13 ] Just as a spider spins its web around itself, so did such a student of the Greek mysteries spin an ethereal web around himself; he spun the whole thing geometrically, and into this the rest of human knowledge then found its place. All he then needed to do was to create this externally around himself: then he had the Greek temple. The Greek temple is nothing other than the filling with physical matter of that which, in this way, stands around the human being in geometric forms, visible to the clairvoyant eye. The Greek temple merely inserts stones into what stands there in this way. That is why the Greek always has a tendency to place a divine figure inside the temple, just as he must actually conceive of his own divine human being there within. Thus, in the times when temples were actually being built, he did not simply construct a temple, but rather, within it, the image of a god—Pallas Athena or some other deity—because these belong together; because this is, as it were, what erects the structure around itself: the microcosm together with that which reveals itself from the macrocosm, but which now, of course, must reveal itself from within for the reason indicated. So here you see the connection between the building of the temple and a primal form of clairvoyance.

[ 14 ] That is why those who built during that era sensed something divine in architecture—something deeply connected to all of humanity’s inner revelations. They felt that building should not be done as it is today, where one learns all sorts of things in college and then sets out to build. That is why people find it so unnatural that we want to build the Dornach building based on our own Spiritual Science. They would find it natural if an ordinary architect were to build it, and they would not expect that ordinary architect to know the first thing about our Spiritual Science. For today people do not realize that what the building serves must find expression in the entire surroundings, in the entire structure. But in the era when people perceived architecture as the revelation of the spirits of form, that was indeed the case. Hence the distinctive way in which even Vitruvius, the great architect of the age of Augustus, speaks of the architect. He speaks of the moral qualities that the architect must possess, of his sense for the divine meaning of the universe. And now I would like to read to you a remarkable passage from Vitruvius, which is intended to show you what Vitruvius demands of the architect. He says of the architect: “He must therefore possess not only natural gifts but also a thirst for learning; for neither genius without scholarly education nor scholarly education without genius can make a perfect artist. He must be proficient in writing, experienced in drawing, knowledgeable in geometry, not ignorant of optics, and well-versed in arithmetic; he must know many stories, have studied philosophy diligently, understand music, have knowledge of medicine, be familiar with jurisprudence, and have made himself acquainted with astronomy and the movements of the heavens.”

[ 15 ] Why, according to Vitruvius, must the architect know all this? For the reason that the forms of architecture are the manifestations of the higher hierarchies—people were aware of this—because in those who created them, people actually saw the beings of the higher hierarchies. That is what is immensely significant. And what was the mindset of such an architect? Wouldn’t today’s architect look rather puzzled if he were asked not only to know what is taught today at technical universities, but also to be knowledgeable in medicine, philosophy, even astronomy and the movements of the heavens—in other words, to be, in a certain sense, an initiate in the Spiritual Science? Why was that the case? It was so because Vitruvius himself still felt the following: “When I build,” he told himself, “it is not this finite human being who must build, but rather this finite human being must become an instrument for a being of higher hierarchies, who acts through him.”

[ 16 ] But this possibility of entering into connection with the higher hierarchies—so that when stone is set upon stone in a building, it is not this finite human being who creates, but rather the spirits of the higher hierarchies—this possibility was available only in the secret mystery temples. There, one had to be initiated into the connection between the divine and the human. One had to have a fundamental understanding of medicine because one had to shape the forms in such a way that they were truly like an imprint of the human being itself—comparable, in a certain sense, to how a snail’s shell is an imprint of the snail, built from within its very being, which is imbued in it, emerging from the macrocosm. Thus did the human being feel that this divine-spiritual being was at work within him, guiding his hands and his spirit, and working its way into the forms of architecture.

[ 17 ] Because the forms of architecture were the last things to be revealed, everything that lives in such occult societies and in their offshoots—which I spoke of last time—stems from true architecture and from the spirit that the architect possessed in true architecture. Above all, what lives on in these occult societies—albeit as a distorted image, a caricature—is the idea that whoever joins them sets out on the path into the spiritual worlds: First Degree. Whoever enters sets out on the path into the spiritual world. Second degree: He establishes relationships with those who are with him in the occult communities—relationships that do not merely stem from external social circumstances, nor are they determined by them, but rather extend from soul to soul. He becomes a fellow member, a comrade, in the second degree. And finally, he learns to feel what it means: Here I stand as a human being and feel myself, as a human being, to be the outer shell of that which lives within me as the Spirit-Man—to whom the beings of the higher hierarchies speak, toward whom they stoop, and who must not utter a single word that is not inspired by these spirits of the higher hierarchies. — Even if there is little awareness of this among those who are in the third degree of such occult brotherhoods and who then call themselves Masters—Masters of the third degree—this fact nevertheless underlies it all. And because the revelations no longer take place, because things are not allowed to have such an intense effect today, because there is no direct connection with the spiritual world, they take the traditions—they take what has been handed down—and then shroud it in secrecy, not allowing others to participate, so that others do not know. But in such communities, the primordial knowledge is preserved from century to century, from generation to generation—though often distorted into that nonsense, applied in that harmful way to human knowledge, as I also mentioned last time.

[ 18 ] The fourth post-Atlantean period, extending into the fifteenth century—until about the year 1413—serves precisely to allow the direct connection with the spiritual world to gradually fade away. The remarkable thing is that finer, more sensitive souls were acutely aware of this precisely during the time when the years had passed in which what had previously been a connection to the spiritual world had gradually faded away. Throughout that entire period—as I have already indicated—from the year 747 B.C. to approximately 1413 A.D., a certain connection to the spiritual world did indeed exist. During those years, it was still possible to bring it to life from within, at least from memory. That came to an end with the fourteenth century. And even beyond the fourteenth century, sensitive souls still sensed that the spirit, so to speak, was still at work. People who study history today—as I have often pointed out—approach it as if human life had always been the way it is today, when we have made such magnificent progress. But that was not always the case! Anyone who wants to understand, for example, the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries must gain an inkling that those were, in a sense, times when the breath of spiritual life still swept across the earth. In earlier times, when a person took in their surroundings with their inner eye, they did not merely perceive: “Out there are plants, there are clouds, the wind is storming, there is lightning”—but rather, they felt themselves surrounded by elemental beings; they sensed them just as much as they sensed plants and animals. But that faded away, it disappeared—not all at once, of course—so that we must create a mental image of the times that are as early as the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and even the seventeenth centuries in such a way that more receptive souls knew: the spirit weaves and lives all around us.

[ 19 ] Well, what came through from the spiritual world was not viewed back then in the same way as it is today. Today, when someone is influenced by the spiritual world, people say: “Hysteria, hysterical!” — Of course, it may be hysterical, but that doesn’t mean anything. It may well be hysterical; yet the spiritual world can still influence the person. These two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Today, people are content with the materialistic interpretation. But in those days, people still knew something of the facts; they did not regard what came into the human world from the spiritual world as mere symptoms of illness—which, of course, they can also be in our materialistic sense. We simply do not understand certain things if we do not take this into account.

[ 20 ] I would like to draw your attention to a fact. Today’s historians, for example, speak of the time of Savonarola in the fifteenth century in such a way that they are really talking about Florence back then just as one would talk about a city today, wouldn’t you agree—just as one might describe how people today, for my sake, gather in front of the butter shops and are in a certain mood there. That is how one speaks of Florence back then. People don’t consider that one must first put oneself in the mood of that time, in that atmosphere where the spiritual was still somewhat experienced. What was it, after all, that during a certain week in Florence caused everyone—every single person one might see on the street—to walk along with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes, as if under a heavy burden? It was because Savonarola had said the previous Sunday: “If morality continues as it has been, then the Flood will come.” And he had concluded with the words: “Ecce ego aducam aquas super terram”—“I tell you, the waters will flow over the earth!”—And these words were animated by the Spirit, and the Spirit poured forth. And under this spiritual influence, the inhabitants of Florence remained for a week, walking as I have described. One of Savonarola’s contemporaries was Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Mirandola, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century and was fully immersed in the spirit that prevailed in Florence at that time. You see, we are in the century where the fourth post-Atlantean epoch transitions into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Pico of Mirandola is one of those souls who were among the most receptive, who sensed that the Spirit was disappearing from our surroundings, and who at the same time felt a deep longing to still feel this Spirit, to bring it back in. Yes, there were quite a number of people in Florence at that time, during that era, who lived in this spirit. They felt: for ordinary human life, the spirit is fading away; but we must bring it back. These Renaissance figures called themselves Neoplatonists at that time. And no one could enter their academy unless they had at least one experience through which they had demonstrated connections within their soul—forces that showed they had still had a direct perception of the Spirit that acts and exists around us. That was still in the fifteenth century. One was not even permitted to enter the Academy of Florence, which cultivated Neoplatonism—the revival of Plato—unless one had first striven to have an experience through which one knew directly: the spirit lives its way into the life of the senses. And Pico had several such moments. And that is why he understood Savonarola’s words, which, albeit in a peculiar way, were imbued with such spiritual currents. This Pico understood Savonarola in his own way. Pico of Mirandola was simply too vain to respond to what Savonarola wanted for him. Savonarola actually wanted to make him his comrade. But Pico of Mirandola could not reconcile this with his vanity. When Pico of Mirandola, still a relatively young man, was nearing death, he had such an experience once again. And this experience made a deep impression on him: As he sensed his end approaching—he was still very young—he looked into the spiritual world. The forms in which the beings of the spiritual world manifest themselves depend, of course, on the individual’s subjective state. What was revealed to Pico from the spiritual world took the form of the Madonna. In short, the Madonna appeared to him, so to speak, and she said: “I will not yet completely surrender you to death.” — Mirandola did not even understand this at first. He believed he could continue to live as a physical human being. Nevertheless, he died, and Savonarola himself delivered the eulogy. And it is significant for us to immerse ourselves in the entire atmosphere that marked the transition between the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. It may be good to recall the words Savonarola spoke at the grave of Pico della Mirandola, for in these words one sees how seriously people at that time took the fact that a man like Pico della Mirandola had such a relationship with the spiritual world that, even before his death, the spiritual world revealed itself to him in this way through a vision. Savonarola said at the time at the grave of Pico della Mirandola—and this is also a sign that funeral orations were not merely delivered as flattery back then—:

[ 21 ] “There is no one among you who did not know Giovanni Pico. God showered him with great blessings and high favors. His knowledge was vast, and his spirit soared above that of mortals. His death is also a grave loss for the Church. Had his life not been so short, I am firmly convinced that he would have eclipsed all the scholars of the past eight hundred years. A divine voice in his heart called upon him to take holy orders. At times, he was willing to heed that call. But he kept postponing his entry into the monastery, whether out of ingratitude toward God, or because sensuality held him back, or because, given the delicacy of his constitution, he shrank from the hardships of monastic life, or finally, because he believed that his scholarly work alone was already sufficient to further the cause of religion. For this reason, I had been threatening him with the scourge of God for two years, and I confess that I implored the Most High to chastise the procrastinator a little. But even toward him, God showed His forbearance. Although the soul of the deceased has not yet entered into heavenly bliss in the bosom of the Father, neither is it eternally condemned to the torments of hell, for it is undergoing its atonement for a certain time in the fires of Purgatory. What I have told you about Pico’s death is not contradicted by the promise made to him by the Blessed Virgin. “At first I considered this promise to be nothing more than a delusion inspired by a demon”—Savonarola is thus referring to Pico of Mirandola’s final vision—“but then it became clear to me that, in the confusion of his final hour, the dying man had meant ‘the first death’ by that promise, while the Madonna had meant ‘eternal death.’” That is to say, the Madonna told him that he would not be punished forever, but only for a short time after his death—so Savonarola believes.

[ 22 ] I simply wanted to characterize the atmosphere in which spiritual phenomena were discussed on such occasions back then. And this example serves to characterize it, for Savonarola was not the sort of person who would have professed belief in spiritual phenomena merely out of hypocrisy, simply because he was a priest. Savonarola was the kind of person of whom one had to assume that, in every situation and every position he found himself in, he followed only the voice of that which he had personally come to believe. He did not speak merely to please the Church—which, in fact, did not approve of him and treated him accordingly—but rather, when he spoke of the spiritual worlds, he spoke of what he knew from his own experience. For what Pico knew of the spiritual world from his direct experience was, of course, far surpassed by the direct revelations that Savonarola himself had received from the spiritual world.

[ 23 ] I simply wanted to illustrate to you just how much we must take into account the prevailing attitude toward the spiritual world if we are to understand this rapid, sudden transition from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century. What we have heard speaks to us like a longing: a longing to return to a time when it was still easier to receive impressions from the spiritual world! But these people were now isolated. They had to perform special ascetic exercises in order to attain what they longed for—at least in certain moments of life, perhaps even in a distorted way. It really isn’t the way today’s scholarship has in its mental image—that everything develops so slowly and gradually. “Nature doesn’t make leaps,” they say. That’s the most foolish thing one can say. It doesn’t make leaps, to be sure, but it does make constant transitions—powerful transitions. The flower petal does not gradually transform into a slightly smaller flower petal, and then again into an even smaller flower petal until it becomes a petal; rather, the green plant leaf ends with the sepal, and the colorful flower petal is there. It is nonsense to say that nature makes no leaps! But such words are perpetuated time and again as trivialities.

[ 24 ] The next task that now lay before us was this: to appeal to those forces that were to take the place of the old capacity for understanding the spiritual. And so it came to pass that there were usually two paths. One path was simply that of transmission through tradition. People were content; they passed on through tradition what the ancients had seen and revealed. This gave rise to many secret societies. But there were also people who strove to come to terms with the new power of the soul that had emerged. They attempted to translate what had previously existed in a completely different form—in the form of images, in the form of direct perception—into the form of intellectual power bound to the physical body, this intellectual power that we now possess as a normal human faculty in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. One of those who strove to bring the former architectural principle—which naturally presents itself to us in a completely different way through images and symbols—into the proper context of the times was the great Amos Comenius. I believe that even today people no longer know much about Amos Comenius, the true founder of the entire modern school system, the creator of the primer, the man who, living in the sixteenth century, actually brought about what today constitutes the entire system of children’s education. Perhaps it is not uninteresting, after all, to read a few passages on this subject, since so little remains today of what one might call an awareness of Amos Comenius. Among the various books—not all of which I would call good—and among the anthologies now being published is the book Comenius and the Bohemian Brethren by Friedrich Eckstein. Friedrich Eckstein is one of those who, along with me, were part of a small theosophical community in Vienna at the end of the 1980s. He then went his own way. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time, and now this little book on Amos Comenius has been published by him, which is very commendably compiled. Eckstein says of the so-called “Orbis pictus” that “its primitive illustrations, even in modern, truncated, and watered-down editions, delighted us all in our youth.” In the 150 woodcuts of the original edition, with their brief German and Latin text—entirely in keeping with the dual purpose of teaching both the real world and language—the main concepts of life were presented to the child’s mind, beginning with God, the world, the heavens, and the elements, plants, fruits, animals, the human body and its limbs, all the way to individual activities and crafts, were presented to the child’s mind with moving, heartfelt simplicity and clarity in both word and image, and one immediately understands how this book must have made the deepest impression on children of many generations. Herder and Goethe loved it above all else in their childhood and undoubtedly drew inspiration for life from it. “At that time, no libraries for children had yet been established,” Goethe reports in the first volume of Poetry and Truth—“the older generation still had a childlike spirit and found it convenient to pass on their own education to their descendants. Apart from Amos Comenius’s Orbis Pictus, no book of this kind ever came into our hands.”

[ 25 ] And the entire approach to creating children’s books—that is, books for schoolchildren—was based on the work of Amos Comenius. But this Amos Comenius was a man—born in Moravia—who, in the course of his life, came into contact with the numerous secret brotherhoods scattered throughout Europe, such as those I have told you about; for they were to be found everywhere. And he established genuine relationships with all of them; he sought to influence them all. And just how he knew how to exert this influence is particularly well illustrated by what he says in his Pansophy.

[ 26 ] So here we have Amos Comenius in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the beginning of our period, a man who knew: A turning point has come; a new era is dawning. One must translate what once was into the form of the external intellect. One must not preserve it merely as tradition. Tradition culminated in the last thing that had been revealed: the building of the temple. Whether one took the Greek temple or the Temple of Solomon is irrelevant. It all came down to the building of the temple, to the images of the temple’s construction, and everything was derived from those images—symbolically, imaginatively.

[ 27 ] In his Pansophy, Amos Comenius set out to describe how the soul functions in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. He says:

[ 28 ] “Whatever name one might prefer, we chose that of Pansophy because we wanted to inspire all people to understand everything and to be wise in general, to fill the mind with the truth of things and not with the smoke of opinions. One could also call it the science of the Best, of the Chosen, or even the science of not knowing, if one wishes to recall Socrates or the Apostle. But why should the temple of Pansophy be erected according to the ideas, standards, and laws of the supreme Architect himself?”

[ 29 ] Here, Amos Comenius draws on the “sublime Architect of the Worlds.” This “sublime Architect of the Worlds” is invoked because we know what architecture—true architecture—was in ancient times. It is to be taken quite literally, but in a spiritual sense. Yet Amos Comenius now attempts to translate this into the language of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Listen to how he does so:

[ 30 ] “But why should the Temple of Pansophy be erected according to the ideas, standards, and laws of the Supreme Architect Himself? Because we follow the archetype of the whole in terms of the dimensions, numbers, arrangement, and purpose of the parts, just as the wisdom of God Himself has prescribed—first with Moses in the construction of the Tabernacle, then with Solomon in the building of the Temple, and finally with Ezekiel in the restoration of the Temple.”—He might just as well have cited the Greek temple. — “If we wish to erect the Temple of Wisdom, we must always remember that the temple to be built was great, magnificent, and worthy of praise throughout all lands, for our God is above all gods. The worthy and skilled builders must therefore be summoned from wherever they can be found, so that they may help find and create what is necessary. Solomon’s Temple was built on Mount Moriah by God’s command; Moriah means ‘the vision of God.’” — Just as man was fashioned from the bosom of the Deity! You have seen: Vitruvius demanded that the architect possess all wisdom concerning man in his spirit. — “The foundation of the Temple of Wisdom will thus be a vision of God”—so through modern knowledge, too, the vision of God, that is, the revelation of God, is to be revealed—“that is, through all that is visible, the invisible Master Builder of the world, with His omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness, is to be recognized and beheld by the human spirit. The building materials of Solomon’s Temple were stones, wood, and metals—namely, precious stones, marble, and gemstones; rich and fragrant woods, firs, and cedars; and the purest metal, refined gold. “Three forests provide the timber for the Temple of Wisdom”—he now translates—“that of the senses, that of reason, and that of divine revelation; the first provides the comprehensible, the second the living, and the third the imperishable.” — In the past, this was depicted in images of stone and wood, with inlaid gold. He translates this into the language of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: The first provides the comprehensible—the senses; reason provides the living; revelation provides the imperishable. There you have the translation. — “From the stones,” he continues, “walls were made; from the wood, paneling; and from the gold, sheets to cover the paneling and the marble paving, and then the sacred vessels and utensils. Thus, the walls of the Temple of Wisdom are made of that whose truth rises to the level of sensory certainty”—that is, what the senses provide forms the walls of our Temple of Wisdom—“the paneling is provided by the rational conclusions that are added”—the wood—“and the gold on it comes from the harmony of what is known with revelation. The Temple of Solomon was built of perfectly hewn stones, and during its construction no hammer, no axe, and no iron tools were heard. Likewise, in the construction of the Temple of Wisdom there should be no strife or contention, but everything must be prepared in advance so that it requires only assembly; wisdom must already have been discussed and worked out in every detail beforehand.”

[ 31 ] No quarrels or disputes in the pursuit of wisdom! Therefore, my dear friends, what we must once again seek in our society—spiritual wisdom—also depends on there being no quarrels or disputes among our members. If we are to achieve our goal, quarrels and disputes must be excluded from our ranks. As you know, recent times in particular have shown how strictly this golden rule is followed. — Amos Comenius goes on to say:

[ 32 ] “The parts of Solomon’s Temple were in the most beautiful and perfect proportions in terms of number and measurement, and an angel with a measuring line, etc., drew up the blueprint for Ezekiel.” — There you have the reference to the Angelos again. — “So, too, in the Temple of Wisdom, everything is to be well proportioned, so that the Spirit may be preserved from all error. In the Temple of Solomon there were ornaments, sculptures, embossed work, cherubim, palm trees, and flowers. In the Temple of Wisdom, beauty—the beautiful representation—is to be the ornament. Everything enclosed within the walls of the Temple of Solomon was holy. So it shall also be with the Temple of Wisdom; its contents shall be pure and holy, dedicated to the highest purposes. But what God once promised to the builders of the Temple in Jerusalem—His presence, His help, His blessing—the builders of the Temple of Wisdom may also expect; for He says: ‘I love those who love Me,’ etc., and ‘I will fill their treasures.’ Finally, when the foundation of the walls of that Temple of Solomon was laid, the Levites and priests stood in their finery and, together with the people, praised the Lord with cymbals and flutes.”

[ 33 ] That’s how it is in our time, as you know! Here, people seek spiritual wisdom as it is revealed through the spiritual worlds, and the pastors of all denominations stand outside—as you know—and praise what is found with cymbals and pipes, together with the people of the Lord. Surely you have already seen how this happens among these pastors and scholars of the present day!

[ 34 ] “Thus, when the Temple of Wisdom is built, all god-fearing people should gather together and praise the name of the Lord from now on and forevermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting. We desire a school of wisdom, of universal wisdom—a pansophic or all-wisdom school—that is, a workshop where all are admitted for training and gain practice in everything necessary for life—both present and future—and do so in a thoroughly comprehensive manner. And this in such a sure way that no one will be found there who knows absolutely nothing about these matters, understands absolutely nothing, or is incapable of making true and necessary use of this knowledge.”

[ 35 ] One might say: What Goethe depicts in Wilhelm Meister, particularly in the Wanderjahre (Years of Wandering), and what he seeks to make of human beings, is a continuation of what Amos Comenius had envisioned. And again, without needing to be immodest, but simply by looking objectively at what should be the goal of our striving, we can see how the foundation was laid as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and how our task is simply to position ourselves correctly within the course of human development. Then what we want will indeed be quite right—not what arises from subjective whim, but what has become necessary through the course of human development.

[ 36 ] One can hold the belief—and I have often expressed this—that modern natural science works from one side, and Spiritual Science works from the other, and they must meet in the middle to arrive at the whole truth. Natural science and Spiritual Science do not contradict each other. Just as those who build a tunnel can, so to speak, work from one side and the other and meet precisely in the middle if everything is arranged geometrically in the correct way, if the leveling and everything else is correct, so too must modern natural science—if it proceeds honestly and uprightly—and Spiritual Science—if it proceeds honestly and uprightly—meet. And they can meet; they will indeed meet. We already have evidence of this today, and I would like to cite a few examples of this in conclusion. I could cite many examples, but in closing I would just like to mention:

[ 37 ] A book by Karl Ludwig Schleich has been published in recent days—a book grounded in the natural sciences. It is titled The Mechanism of Thought. It is an extraordinarily interesting book, written by an honest natural scientist and physician who seeks to work from the full breadth of sensory science. This book also contains a most remarkable chapter that is virtually destined to mark a new era in our time, because it truly stands in such a way that one can say: this approaches the subject from one side and must converge with what Spiritual Science offers from the other side. This chapter is titled: “Hysteria—A Metaphysical Problem.” It does, however, list some remarkable cases of hysteria. I’d like to read just a few of them to you:

[ 38 ] “A hysterical young lady is sitting on her divan. An electric fan stands on a small table in one corner of the room. During a visit to a sick person, the young lady—truly hysterical and utterly terrifying—says: ‘My God, it’s buzzing so loudly! What if it were a big bee?’ — So it’s a fan! — “Well, young lady, then we’d shoo it out the window.” “No! No! It might sting me. Oh God! If it were to hit my eye…” While I tried to reassure her that even that would be a treatable, non-fatal injury, the poor woman’s lower eyelid swelled—amid my soothing words and her constant wailing—into a swelling (edema) truly the size of a chicken egg, with a doughy consistency and a distinctly inflammatory redness that was extremely painful.”

[ 39 ] So the mere imagination that there was a large bee there, when in fact it was just a fan humming, was enough to cause a real swelling on the lower eyelid—one so large that you could say it was the size of a chicken egg! Other things may be less suitable for reading aloud here. But I would like to read aloud an interesting case that is quite significant—a “case from the recent past of our military hospital experiences”:

[ 40 ] “A noncommissioned officer, as dark-skinned as an Italian, with dark, fiery eyes and a wild, uncontrollable temperament, came to us with bullet wounds through both upper arms and severe joint abscesses on both sides. We managed to bring him close to recovery—that is, the fever was gone, and there was already enough mobility in the stumps of his upper arm bones that he could play the harmonica again, that favorite harp of our army. Then a soldier was brought into the bed opposite him, with a gunshot wound to the brain, feverish, half-unconscious, and suffering from intermittent convulsions. During the discussion of the indications for surgery, the careless remark was made in the same room: “Perhaps it’s tetanus.” Well, it wasn’t tetanus; a piece of skull bone was removed and the patient was cured, but in the meantime, on the third day after being admitted with the head wound, our sergeant—whose upper arm wounds had almost healed—suffered his first tetanic seizure.” — So simply because he had heard the word “tetanus” and knew that it was tetanus! — “And that was four months after his admission.” — So any infection was completely ruled out; the other man hadn’t even had tetanus yet! — “All the symptoms were present; only a fever was missing. We injected antitoxin into his spinal cord, to no avail. The sight of the patient made me suspicious. We performed the standard, absolutely reliable test of inoculating a rabbit with the cerebrospinal fluid from the spinal canal. The test came back negative. No tetanus bacilli were found either. After a few days, he recovered following a definitive explanation: ‘It’s not tetanus at all.’ So the case was a case of hysterical tetanus.”

[ 41 ] So he didn't actually have tetanus; physically, there was no sign of tetanus in him. And now Professor Schleich goes on to say:

[ 42 ] “And now a few more observations that demonstrate that hysteria can lead all the way to the final, most severe stage—an active inhibition of life. There are cases of hysterical apparent death, which Arndt also mentions, and so on... Cases of apparent death due to hysteria have certainly been observed by other authors. I am not familiar with them from personal experience.”

[ 43 ] I would like to emphasize that all the cases listed here are very well known to Spiritual Science and are by no means anything out of the ordinary for it. Yet they still come as a surprise to today’s medical professionals. But now for a very special case:

[ 44 ] “A very wealthy merchant, who ran his office personally, came to me one day and begged me to amputate his arm, for he had pricked his finger with a pen and knew that he would now die of blood poisoning. I would have laughed, had the man’s fear-stricken features not stifled any mockery. He said he had already been to several leading surgeons, including von Bergmann, and they had all refused to amputate his arm. I should take pity on him and amputate his upper arm, where it was already twitching and throbbing all over. Naturally, I, too, had to send him home after trying every possible way to comfort him. I visited him that same evening. No rise in temperature, no sign of swelling or inflammation at the small wound—which, incidentally, I had cleaned, bandaged, and even suctioned. But he was in a state of immense agitation. “Why won’t they amputate? I could be saved.” The next morning, the man was dead. My friend Langerhans performed the autopsy. No infection. No toxins in the blood. No cause of death at all. My diagnosis: death from hysteria.”

[ 45 ] So you see: As Schleich fully admits, through the power of thought one can not only cause a swelling of the eyelid and so on, but one can even kill oneself. That is the power of thought. This leads the modern physician, who is honest about his science—as in this case—to say: In the former case—that of tissue production through a hysterical impulse—the metaphysical problem of incarnation arises. So the modern physician speaks of incarnation: the thought incarnates, takes on a physical form, just as the soul takes on a physical form when it descends from the spiritual worlds and stirs the entire organism. Thus, the physician is very far from the other side in terms of openness. And in the second case, that of mediumistic vision: a kind of clairvoyance regarding potential illnesses. The honest modern natural scientist must speak of clairvoyance and incarnation if he wishes to reflect on what experience simply provides him with.

[ 46 ] You see, it is not just a figment of the imagination when we say that we do not want anything arbitrary, but rather that the natural sciences and Spiritual Science must work from two sides. In the word, they will meet. This is not spoken out of caprice, nor out of a fanatical craving for agitation, but rather out of an understanding of the conditions of our time. Of course, an investigation is necessary, and one will easily recognize: Ordinary thought cannot, of course, produce a swelling. Just try it—no matter how hard you think, you will not develop a tumor: You certainly will not develop such a tumor. Thank God, I would say—ordinary thought cannot do that, nor will ordinary thought kill you; you can rest assured of that. There are mysteries behind all of this. But above all, there is one thing behind it: as long as one remains with the ordinary “I” and the content of one’s thoughts, one will not find a way forward. What happened to the hysterical woman who developed swelling in her lower eyelid? The thought that took on a visual form in her mind—the image of the ventilation—became an imagination and rolled down into the astral body. From there, it can then incarnate through the etheric body and into the physical body. One must be clear about this: If one stops at the “I” and the astral body, and does not include the etheric body and the physical body, one cannot explain any of this. The “I”-thought did not kill this merchant either; rather, what lived within that “I”-thought had penetrated down into the astral body, and the astral body stands in direct connection with the forces of creation and decay. So we will first have to discover what Spiritual Science contributes from the other side of natural science. Unfortunately, we often still talk past one another in our words. We already agree on the facts, but in our words we often talk past one another, and it would be good if that would finally come to an end. And truly, not to criticize this excellent book—which can indeed mark a new era even from the perspective I have indicated—but to show how we talk past one another due to the circumstances of the times, I would like to point this out. It is perhaps better to demonstrate this in the case of a thoroughly honest researcher than in the case of someone whose honesty is not beyond all doubt. You see, Schleich also discusses in this book—specifically in the chapter preceding the other one—the “myth of metabolism in the brain.” For him, the myth of metabolism in the brain is nothing more than a myth. That is very fine; it is epoch-making. But now he says: Goethe already knew that the skull—the skull bones—are transformed vertebral bones. That is, of course, widely known. Now he points out, however, that one need not be satisfied with this, that one need not stop there. It is very insightful of Schleich to realize that one need not be satisfied with this, but rather: the entire skull itself is transformed ganglion, transformed parts of the spinal cord. And now he says that Goethe was truly a seer in his own way, and suggests that Goethe might also have already come up with the idea that not only are the bones transformed from the vertebrae, but that the entire brain is also transformed. Schleich concludes this chapter on the myth of metabolism in the brain very beautifully by saying:

[ 47 ] “If Goethe, that seer and prophet, observed so many interconnected aspects of the divine nature and proved that the skull, with all its layers, is nothing more than a cervical vertebra rolled up into a flat disc—since all the components of the latter can be detected in the bony shell of the brain—then I would be surprised if he had not also been tossed about, just as we have been, in the labyrinth of his thoughts by the very idea we have just expressed, “of the brain’s formation from the elements of the spinal cord”—just as we have, in the labyrinth of his thoughts. It would not surprise me if some little note by Goethe on this subject were to be found once again. For why else would the vertebra have arched upward with swan’s wings, if it had not had something to receive, to cover, to protect: the soaring domed structure of the central organ?”

[ 48 ] So in 1916, Schleich said he wouldn’t be at all surprised if a note by Goethe were found stating that he had discovered this. I had already found this note in 1892 at the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar, and I have also repeatedly published this entire line of thought—which Schleich is now repeating—along with this discovery from the Goethe and Schiller Archive. So what Schleich is referring to—that such a note might one day be found—actually happened in 1892 and is well known. You see, we’re talking past each other. It can be objectively demonstrated that we’re talking past each other, because, unfortunately, the structures of today’s literary world aren’t such that one is truly—I’d say—naturally led toward mutual understanding. Here we have a striking example where, out of the best of intentions and with the necessary genius, someone comes to the conclusion: “This might actually be there.” It’s been there for more than twenty years! But today he speaks of it in such a way that he wouldn’t be surprised if it were ever discovered. Very interesting, you see, for the whole nature of the current interplay between what science is pursuing. There is an extraordinary amount to be learned from such things, especially when one can be certain that there isn’t a shred of ill will behind them, but that the matter is being handled with absolute honesty. But at the same time, you can see from this how what is happening on the part of Spiritual Science is truly not based on arbitrariness, but rather on the recognition of an inner necessity in the spiritual development of humanity. And this spiritual development of humanity truly shows us that a certain body of spiritual knowledge must flow into humanity and be shaped for the benefit of humanity.

[ 49 ] In this regard, too, the time is ripe for many things, and it must not be overlooked—today, at a time when blood heralds such a dawn for a new era, when so many souls speak to us who have passed through the gate of death as victims of the times—that the spiritual world is knocking at the gates that lead from the spiritual world into ours. This must not be overlooked; the call for the spiritual must not be ignored today. For the Spirit is already coming. It announces itself in the most diverse ways. It only needs to be guided along the right paths. And here one must certainly say: What seeks to walk along these right paths is not always met in the correspondingly right way. When, as in our case, an attempt is made to introduce the spiritual world in a manner truly grounded in scientific rigor, this is certainly not met with the cymbals and pipes of today’s priests and Levites, but rather with all manner of opposition—opposition that is at times by no means above board. One need only consider the full significance behind this fact. On the one hand, there is the attempt to open up the revelations of the spiritual world to humanity in a manner grounded in scientific rigor. Then all sorts of people come along who meet these attempts in various ways—ranging from those you already know, down to people who, with the air of being quite intelligent—such as Thassilo von Scheffer or the like—criticize everything coming from our side with their empty rhetoric. But on the other hand, we see how—I would say—certain truths of the spiritual world are being forcibly drawn into the channels through which they can come today. Not only is Strindberg’s significant A Dream Play, for example, now being performed everywhere—in which one can see such an irruption of the spiritual world, an irruption from which much can be recognized—but we also have other, less beautiful, less significant forms of the spiritual world’s irruption into our physical world. Take, for example, a writer today who can have an impact on a wider audience—on the one hand, because he can genuinely be of interest to people, since certain avenues into the spiritual world open up to him to an extraordinary degree. Much flows into him, yet within him everything is distorted and caricatured—but perhaps that is precisely what makes it interesting to so many people today. And this gives him the ability to influence these people, for he depicts things in a truly futuristic way—not as a painter, but as a writer. When you read Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem, you encounter something about which one can only say: A torrent of spiritual life bursts in violently, yet distorted and caricatured, taking forms that can do more harm than good to those who lack a firm foundation. But it emerges as a phenomenon of our time. A torrent from the spiritual world bursts in, one that lives on in the short, excellent story Cardinal Napellus. It is precisely in this “Cardinal Napellus” that you will find, in a wonderful way, certain insights the man has into the peculiar workings of the Akashic Records and so on. This is depicted even without all the chaotic, wild futurism that comes to the fore in “The Golem.” There you will truly find—and one could list many, many such phenomena in the present time—that the spiritual world is seeking to enter. And it is simply part of the seriousness to which we are called today that we also gain an understanding of this aspect of that seriousness, which leads to an opening of our soul, our heart, and our mind to the currents of the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] Then, in the sense that I have often spoken of, what must come to pass—particularly through endeavors in the field of Spiritual Science in the face of the great, weighty realities of our time—can be fulfilled:

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
Their minds toward the spirit realm.