The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] This supplementary reflection today on the discussions I had the opportunity to lead here in Stuttgart will focus on adding a few points to what has already been said, in order to round it out, so to speak.

[ 2 ] To begin with, it will be best if I pick up where I left off in yesterday’s public lecture. There we saw how the human soul, in its threefold nature, relates to the physical and to the spiritual. And we emphasized in particular that the emotional element of the soul has connections to the body through the respiratory life; that, in a sense, what constitutes respiration in the body—in the broadest sense, with all its ramifications and branches—serves as the instrument for the emotional life. On the other hand, we have been able to point out that the life of feeling has a special relationship to everything that is accessible to inspiration in the spiritual world. But what is accessible to inspiration in the spiritual world is also, at the same time, everything contained in the world to which we belong with that part of our being that passes through births and deaths—that is, the world we experience between death and a new birth, the world in which we naturally also live between birth and death. Only this world is veiled by sensory perceptions and ordinary imagination—that is, by physical life. Thus, that which corresponds to breathing and feeling actually points us outward into the vast, all-encompassing world into which we ascend when we pass through the gate of death—the world to which we belong when we no longer make use of the instrument of our physical life. The instrument of our physical life binds us, so to speak, to earthly existence. From various lectures given over the course of many years and recorded in the cycles, you know that once the soul has passed through the gate of death, it is no longer bound to earthly life but ascends into the cosmos to live in the spiritual worlds of that cosmos—in what can indeed be called the spiritual world. Is it not to be expected, then, that the emotional life—which corresponds physically to breathing and spiritually to the inspired world—that is, the emotional life together with the life of breathing—stands in a much, much more comprehensive relationship to the cosmos, to the great world, to the macrocosm, than our narrowly limited perception and imagination? What, after all, do we actually perceive? We perceive, in truth, only a very small part of the world; a small part of the world flows into our physical existence between birth and death through our eyes and ears. Even if we are people who take great pleasure in life and look around to see all that we perceive through our senses and then process in our imagination: it is a small part of the world that flows into our existence.

[ 3 ] But what happens when we turn our attention from the nervous life—to which the life of imagination belongs—to the respiratory life, to which the emotional nature belongs? A concept that is at the same time capable of elevating our sensibility can be provided by something that might approach our soul in the following way: You all know, of course, that in spring the sun rises at a certain point. At the beginning of spring, on March 21, the sun rises in the morning at a specific point. But this point is not always the same, as you know; in ancient times, the sun rose at the beginning of spring in the constellation of Taurus, then in the constellation of Aries; so the vernal equinox continues to move and has now entered the constellation of Pisces. If we turn our attention to what I mean now, we observe the progression of the vernal equinox through the zodiac. The vernal equinox itself moves further along the zodiac. When a point moves along a circle, it must naturally return to the same spot after a certain time. Now, conventional astronomy is well aware of this progression of the vernal equinox and its return to the same point in the zodiac. That is to say, if in a certain year in the past the vernal equinox was in Aries, the next year a little further along, and so on, and then moved into Pisces and so forth, it will return to Aries after a certain period of time. The time it takes for the vernal equinox to move through the entire zodiac is approximately 25,900 years, or about 26,000 years. This figure of 26,000 years thus expresses a measure of the outer cosmos: the measure by which the vernal equinox progresses. In a sense, this number represents the measure by which the Sun’s course through the cosmos is gauged. That is how we might roughly describe it. If we hold fast to this number, we can add another consideration to it, which we will now undertake.

[ 4 ] People breathe in and out, taking a certain number of breaths per minute. We do not take the same number of breaths at every stage of life between birth and death, but there is a certain average number of breaths per minute that a man of average strength typically takes. That is eighteen breaths per minute. Now let’s calculate how many breaths a person takes over the course of a twenty-four-hour day. First, we must multiply the number of breaths taken per minute by sixty, which gives us one thousand eighty; then we multiply that by twenty-four, and we get the number of breaths a person takes in a day—that is, day and night: this comes to 25,920 breaths. It’s remarkable: when we count the number of breaths a person takes over the course of a twenty-four-hour day, we arrive at the same number as when we calculate the number of years resulting from the sun’s progression through the vast cosmos. The vernal equinox advances by that many years, in regular intervals: as many times as it advances, so many times does a person breathe in a day. The same number! Just imagine how wonderfully that biblical saying is fulfilled: that the wisdom of the world has ordered everything according to measure and number. — A number inscribed in the cosmos reappears to us in our twenty-four-hour breathing. One can therefore also take this number into account, and one will find that human breathing is related to the great world in precisely the way that was elucidated yesterday from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 5 ] But now let us, so to speak, consider once again something that is also a form of breathing, for breathing is nothing other than a special case of the general rhythm of the world. The essential aspect of what was meant by breathing yesterday is the rhythmic movement, the rhythm. Let us consider something that is quite similar to breathing—another rhythmic movement that we know from our spiritual scientific observations. When we fall asleep, our “I” and our astral body leave our physical body and etheric body; when we wake up again, our “I” and our astral body enter our physical body and etheric body. I have often compared the peculiar behavior of the “I” and the astral body—this moving out of and into the physical and etheric bodies—to exhaling and inhaling. Just as we exhale and inhale air in one-eighteenth of a minute, so, in a sense, over the course of twenty-four hours as physical human beings, we inhale our “I” and our astral body when we wake up, and exhale them when we fall asleep; when we wake up again, we inhale them once more, and when we fall asleep again, we exhale them. It is simply a more comprehensive exhalation and inhalation of our “I” and astral body over the course of the twenty-four hours of an ordinary astronomical day. How remarkable—something is breathing there; something is breathing! Let us first set aside the question of what is breathing: there is indeed a rhythm that, in a sense, represents a slow breathing, with one breath lasting twenty-four hours. Now, as you know, the Bible speaks of the age of the patriarchs—seventy or seventy-one years. This does not, of course, mean that this is anything other than the average age. Some people die very young, some live to be a hundred, even over a hundred years old, but the “age of the patriarchs” refers to an average. So when we speak of an average human lifespan, we can say it ranges from seventy to seventy-one years. Let’s calculate how many days that is. If we calculate this, we would find out how many of these great breaths we take in an earthly life, where, over the course of twenty-four hours, we exhale the “I” and the astral body and inhale them again. Let’s calculate this: We take approximately three hundred sixty-five such breaths in a year—as many as there are days in the year. In seventy years, therefore, seventy times that many: that would come to 25,550. But let’s assume we calculate seventy-one years; that brings us a little closer: that makes 25,915. So a person need only live a little over seventy-one years to reach 25,920 such breaths. This means that when a person reaches a little over seventy-one years of age, they have exhaled and inhaled 25,920 times with their “I” and their astral body—just as often as a person takes their usual breaths in and out during the day. Just think: the same number again!

[ 6 ] So you see that we can regard human life as a day, and the individual day we live through as a breath: then our seventy-one- to seventy-two-year life is determined by the number that is also the number of the advance of the vernal equinox, which is the number of breaths in a day. Our life is one great day, and the great being—at the center of which one can imagine the Earth—breathes in and out the “I” and the astral body just as often as we breathe in and out with our individual breaths. Thus, our individual earthly life would be one day—a day of something. But what is this one day? If you multiply seventy-one by three hundred sixty-five, you naturally get a year for the seventy-one-year day. If you count seventy-one years as one day and ask, “What is one year of this day?” it is three hundred sixty-five times as much. But that, in turn, is 25,920 years. This means that if we count our single earthly life—with its 25,920 breaths, which are both waking and sleeping—as a single day, count a human life as a single day, and see which year corresponds to this one human life with its 25,920 breaths: it is the cycle of the vernal equinox—25,920 years! We arrive at a wonderful numerical rhythm.

[ 7 ] That is why I said: We are given an idea that must be uplifting to our sensibility, for through measure and number we may feel ourselves placed within the macrocosm. Numbers reveal to us what confirms our realization that what pertains to breathing—and thus to our emotional life—is the inspiring world, the great world to which we belong, not only between birth and death, but also in the time between death and a new birth, and throughout our repeated earthly lives. We lie, as it were, in the bosom of the rhythm of our entire solar system, mimicking in our individual breathing movements the great macrocosmic rhythm of our entire solar system. This is a thought that undoubtedly places us within the whole great life of our solar universe. Over time, people will have to engage in many similar reflections, and then they will come to realize that in this way they will once again arrive at spirit-filled perceptions of humanity’s relationship to the universe. We need spirit-filled perceptions for our age and for the ages to come—in the sense explained here the day before yesterday—as inspirations for inner life. In ancient times, it was indeed the case that insights came to human beings, so to speak, from the outside. This has been lost today due to the nature of humanity’s regressive ages. We now stand in an age in which—if humanity is not to sink completely into decadence—a development of the human soul must begin energetically from within. And only those who understand that it is a necessity of earthly evolution for spiritual life to take hold of the innermost core of the human soul—from the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in which we live, into the era toward which we are to evolve—can truly grasp what our time requires. What spiritual science says about this is not based on some arbitrary idea or agitative sentiment, but is stated out of an awareness of the necessity of human development.

[ 8 ] Today, let us once again examine the development of humanity from a slightly different perspective. Let us return once more to the first post-Atlantean epoch—that is, the epoch immediately following the great Atlantean catastrophe. The day before yesterday, after having already done so on several occasions from a different perspective, we emphasized how, in this first post-Atlantean epoch, human beings were still connected to that series of beings which we call the Archai in the hierarchies, or the Spirits of Personality. Spiritual life still manifested itself in these ancient times of humanity, precisely because the stage of life at that time was such—in a sense, a regressive stage—that we can compare it to the current stage of life between the ages of fifty-six and forty-eight, as I explained the day before yesterday. Human beings, so to speak, received instruction from spiritual beings. How did these spiritual beings approach human beings? In those days, people did not view nature the way they do today. For people today, nature is simply a kind of mechanical order. People today regard abstract, almost mathematical laws of nature as their ideal—an abstract order. Consider the scenes that unfold around you when you go out into nature. Compare what is out there with what is written in botanical and zoological textbooks about plants and animals. Compare these distorted, abstract concepts with life itself, and you can say: What is written in these books on botany and zoology is what reveals itself to the human spirit today. Such botany, such zoology, of which humanity today is so immensely proud, did not exist in that age. When one compares what modern botany, modern zoology, and modern biology have to say about nature with what sprang forth and flourished in nature for that ancient understanding, one inevitably arrives at a different outlook. Such botany and zoology did not exist back then, but there was something else in their place—something that is still quite difficult for modern humanity to comprehend. It arose from nature itself, and I would like to call what emerged from nature: the light-filled, formed Word. Just as we see nature today through our senses and our intellect, so these people did not see it; rather, nature sent them figures of light, and these figures of light also sounded, said something, expressed themselves about what they are. And every person could, in certain states of consciousness, experience this atavistic clairvoyance, through which the light-filled, formed word came to them from nature; one could also say “words,” for a multitude of such forms emerged from nature, each expressing itself. The human being knew: You, too, belong to this world from which these light-filled words emerge. You, too, belong there. But now you are here in nature, where minerals, plants, and animals surround you. You are in nature because you bear an outer physical body; through this, you belong to this natural world. But nature brings forth the light-filled Word: to this you belong by virtue of your soul-being, just as your physical body belongs to the outer world of minerals, plants, and animals. In this world of the light-filled, light-formed Word, you existed before your birth or conception, and you will be in it after your death. You will live there again.

[ 9 ] In the first post-Atlantean epoch, one could still hear at least an echo and see a afterglow of the world in which one lives between death and a new birth, by observing nature in certain states of consciousness. In the second post-Atlantean epoch, things were already somewhat different. There, the word for these atavistic states was lost. The figures no longer spoke, but they were still there; light-filled figures were still there, only they had become silent. What lay externally before the senses was perceived as darkness within this light-filled inner form, and one’s own body was perceived as a part of that darkness. So that one could say: Light and darkness! One’s own body is ruled by darkness. As it comes from the light and enters the darkness, it enters earthly life through birth or conception; as it passes through the gate of death, it passes through the dark world back into the light. In the world there is a struggle between light and darkness, between Ormuzd and Ahriman. Thus spoke Zarathustra, who was the teacher of this second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, to his disciples. One cannot understand what Zarathustrianism means by its teachings on Ormuzd and Ahriman unless one relates them to the way people viewed the world at that time.

[ 10 ] Things had taken a different turn in the third post-Atlantean epoch. Outwardly speaking, the light-filled forms had gradually disappeared from view during the third post-Atlantean period. But people still had the power to enter—just as we do today when we fall asleep—an intermediate state between sleeping and waking. All they had to do was exert a little effort. After all, one does not need to exert oneself when sleeping, but in this different state, one had to exert oneself somewhat. Yet when one did exert oneself, one could conjure up around oneself a world of light that now came from within and was similar to the one that had previously come from nature, from the outside. So what was the actual progression from the second post-Atlantean cultural period to the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian era? What was the transition like? Well, in the second, the Persian cultural period, people could still see, when they looked outward, the beings of light and could say to themselves: My soul belonged to this world of light before it passed through conception. In the third cultural period, this world of light forms no longer shone in from the outside, but human beings could, as it were, press it forth from within themselves; then, from within their own souls, they conjured up for themselves what had existed in the spiritual world before their birth or conception, and what will exist there after their death. So that we can say: the third post-Atlantean epoch experienced the world of light as a soul experience. People experienced the world of light as a soul experience; thus, human beings had, so to speak, been turned back from the outer world more toward their inner selves. It was no longer the natural way for human beings to look out into the outer world and see the world of light—that is, to see the spiritual world in their surroundings. Therefore, it had become necessary during this period to continually initiate a small circle of people in a mystery-like manner, so that they might once again be able to see the outer world of light and bear witness to the fact that what was brought forth from the innermost depths of the soul was truly the same as what existed in the spiritual realm.

[ 11 ] Then came the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greco-Latin period. In this fourth period, light no longer rose when a person entered a special state, as it had in the third period. The light no longer came; that which would have been an echo of the soul’s life before conception and of the soul’s life after death no longer rose up from the depths of the human being. But a certainty still arose: that the inner being of the human being is filled with the soul. This certainty arose. One still sensed something of what one had previously beheld when one directed the soul inwardly to behold. One no longer beheld the light, but one still sensed the warmth of the light. Such was the case in the Greco-Roman era. Here we must say: The world of light was no longer experienced as a soul experience within, but the soul itself was experienced as a soul experience.

[ 12 ] But naturally, this had to grow weaker and weaker over time. And how, then, is this whole relationship expressed? It was expressed in the following way. We must look specifically to the Greeks if we want to understand this: The Greeks, like the average person today, were conscious of their bodies. But because of what I have described, they were also conscious that the soul permeates the body. They sensed the soul as animating the body, living through it. This sense, which the Greeks still possessed, has been lost. The fact that history makes no mention of this—that this sense has been lost today—is solely because we live in the age of materialism. No one truly understands Homer, no one understands Sophocles or Aeschylus, unless they read them with the awareness that the Greeks had a different experience of the soul than people do today. If one were to read Aeschylus with this sensibility, one would produce translations different from those that are produced today—and sometimes admired—which, precisely in the most intimate details, truly bear no resemblance to Aeschylus. But the fact that this was so had a very specific consequence for the Greeks, namely that the Greeks felt the life-giving element of the soul within the body precisely during the time between birth and death, and thus also arrived at another perception—the perception that the body and the soul are in fact intimately connected. Never in the course of human development has this perception been as vivid as it was in the Greek era. For in earlier epochs preceding the Greek era, people had always felt that the soul belonged to the world of light, the world of the Word, the world of the Logos, in which the human being lives before birth and after death. Now, in the materialistic age, it is the case that people no longer sense the soul at all. In the Greek era—and to a somewhat lesser degree, translated into a dry and intellectual form in the Roman, or Latin, era—there existed a sense of the intimate unity of body and soul. The Greeks regarded the body as the outer form of the soul. The growth and decay of the body appeared to the Greeks as an expression of the growth and decay of the soul’s life. The Greeks loved the body just as they loved the soul. This sense, as it existed among the Greeks, did not exist in the same way in earlier times—as I have just explained—and does not exist today either. But the result of this was that sense which is so profoundly expressed in the words attributed to Achilles: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows.” The Greeks had to pay for the beautiful harmony they felt between body and soul by losing, if they were not initiates into the Mysteries, any conception of what happens to the soul in the spiritual world after death. Now, what is remarkable is precisely that the great Greek philosopher Aristotle—who was a great thinker but was not initiated into the Mysteries—spoke in a magnificent way about the soul’s experience after death, as one could speak at that time if one was able to grasp the intimate harmony between body and soul in the manner of the Greek era.

[ 13 ] And when Aristotle was revived in the Middle Ages in what is known as scholastic philosophy, the scholastics said: In philosophy, one must think about the soul the way Aristotle did. If one wants to know more about it, that knowledge can come only from faith. Mere human inquiry cannot take us any further than Aristotle. — How far did Aristotle actually go, he who so truly embodies the philosophical expression of the Greek view of body and soul? He truly arrived at what can be so beautifully expressed in the words of the recently deceased masterful Aristotelian scholar Franz Brentano, who says: If a person has lost a limb, they can no longer use that limb; in a sense, they are no longer a whole person. If they have lost two limbs, they are even less of a whole person. Now, if he has lost his entire body—as Aristotle says, and Franz Brentano agrees—and the soul still exists after death, which Aristotle does not deny, then he is in a state of incompleteness compared to the state in which he exists between birth and death. He is not a complete human being. — And that is, in fact, the true doctrine of immortality taught by Aristotle, the greatest thinker of the Greek world: that a human being is a complete, perfect human being only here, between birth and death. When he passes through the gate of death, he is only a fragment of a human being; he is indeed immortal, but at the cost of no longer being a whole human being. This is, in fact, the price that Greek civilization had to pay for its beauty and harmony: that it entered that stage of human development — as you know, compared to the human lifespan — where one could indeed sense the soul rising up from within, but where one could not yet behold the life of the soul in the spiritual world, where one had to say of the soul: after death, it is no longer a complete human being. Only to those who were initiated into the Mysteries—that is, to whom powers of knowledge beyond the ordinary had been bestowed—was revealed what the soul experiences between death and a new birth. This, indeed, is the great difference between Plato and Aristotle: that Plato was initiated into the Mysteries and Aristotle was not. Therefore, Plato must be understood in a completely different sense than Aristotle, who reached the “Chimborazo of thought” but could not penetrate the mysteries of the spiritual world.

[ 14 ] That is why those who held power in that age sought something other than what can be achieved in ordinary human life. Who were the men who held power, who were able to develop this power? Certainly, there was a vast, significant world of initiation, spread here and there through the mysteries and permeating the cultural world of that time; but these mysteries gave people what Plato said would lift them above the mire of transience. Those who held power in this fourth post-Atlantean epoch sought, above all, something within the soul that would enable them to participate in the spiritual world. According to the general karma of humanity, one normally had to wait, in accordance with the principle of initiation of that time, until one was admitted into the Mysteries. This was common practice in Greece. The Roman Caesars did not need to do this. The Roman Caesars, who gradually rose to dominate the world of that time, were able to use their power to have themselves initiated into the Mysteries.

[ 15 ] And so we see that, beginning with Augustus, the Roman Caesars sought initiation simply by virtue of their immense power. They compelled one priesthood or another to initiate them into the mysteries. Thus, in this fourth period, a peculiar phenomenon can be observed: On the one hand, we have the principle of the mysteries, the knowledge of the mysteries, which still existed but was gradually fading away, gradually declining—I have often described why this had to happen: precisely because the Mystery of Golgotha took its place—while on the other hand, the priests were forced to reveal their secrets to the Roman Caesars. Augustus was the first emperor to be initiated in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch; but his successors, too, were such initiates. They differed in their very nature from the other initiates, who had been initiated into the mysteries on the basis of moral qualities—specifically, moral development. The Roman Caesars were initiated by virtue of their immense power, in that they were able to compel the priesthoods to reveal their secrets to them. And so we see that even a successor to Augustus such as Caligula was an initiate. Consequently, however, a man like Caligula was acquainted with the secrets of the spiritual universe. He knew that the impulses of this spiritual universe are reawakened in the soul, that the human “I” is a divine aspect within the Divine. What was a sacred truth of humility among the initiated priests became for the Caesars a symbol of external worldly power. For what did a man like Caligula know? The others gazed upon the mythological figures of the gods that had been handed down to them from ancient times; they worshipped them. An initiate like Caligula knew what these gods signified. Above all, he knew that human beings, in their innermost essence, belong to the same world. From experience, Caligula knew that he belonged to the same world as those beings who find their likenesses in these gods: Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury, Apollo, and Zeus. Caligula knew the secret of how, in a sleep-like state, he could commune with the gods of the lunar world. And it is not merely a myth, but an absolute truth, when it is said of Caligula in particular that, as was claimed, in his sleep—though what is meant is in another state of consciousness—he consorted with Luna, the moon goddess, and drew sustenance from this for his sense of power. “The world lives within me,” he told himself, “for I am within it.” As he gazed upon the gods, he saw himself as a god among gods. And the initiated Roman emperors meant this quite seriously when they said it. The initiated priest knew how to enter the abode of the gods, and thus the Roman Caesar compelled himself into communion with the gods. “My brother Jupiter,” “My brother Zeus”: these were titles that Caligula, in particular, used time and again. And it was Caligula who once asked a tragedian which was greater, Jupiter or he, Caligula. And when the tragedian refused to answer that Caligula was greater than Jupiter, he had him flogged. These are not myths; these are historical facts. Hence, too, the processions in which Caligula appeared before the people as Bacchus, bearing a thyrsus and wearing a wreath of epheu, because he was aware that he was permitted to transform himself into those figures he recognized as images of the gods. He appeared as Hercules with his club and lion’s skin, as Mercury with the caduceus, and as Apollo with a radiant crown, surrounded by choirs. This is how he presented himself, to instill in his people the awareness that he belonged to the gods and not to humanity. Such were the times, in which, one might say, the Roman world presented a less than ideal reflection of what was great in the Greek world. Of course, no one understood this better than Caligula or other initiated emperors such as Commodus and others. Caligula once heard that a trial had taken place in which a judge had sentenced a defendant to death. And when the matter—since it was a special case—was reported to him, he said: “The judge might just as well have been sentenced to death, for he is worth just as much as the other.”—That is how he viewed the moral state of his time. Roman culture truly appears to be the opposite of Greek culture. We no longer have any conception of the inner nature of Roman culture during the Caesarian era. But we must form a conception of it, for this is one of the roots from which our new, our fifth cultural epoch has developed as it flows onward.

[ 16 ] Nero, too, was such an initiate, an initiated emperor. And it was precisely because of this that Nero was able to perceive something quite special. Those who were initiated into the mysteries at that time knew that evolution had declined to a certain point; it must rise again, but it must also become more spiritual. This, in fact, is what is meant by the “Parousia,” the new age of which Christ Jesus also speaks.

[ 17 ] If you compare what is alive in all these ancient cultural epochs up to the Greek era with later times, you will find that in these ancient cultural epochs, the soul-spiritual is still revealed in a certain way through the physical. Then this ceases; it no longer reveals itself, and must now be sought through other means. If a person wishes to seek the spiritual and soul-life through what he can see with his eyes and hear with his ears, he can no longer find it. The realms of heaven used to reveal themselves through the bodies; now they must arise in the spirit. The realms of heaven must draw near. This is the prophecy of John the Baptist. This is also what Jesus Christ means by the Parousia. Yet, in a certain sense, theologians still hold to this day the peculiar view that Christ meant, by the Parousia, that the earth must undergo a physical transformation. Blavatsky, too, criticizes Christ Jesus’ statement about the Parousia—the coming of the kingdoms of heaven—by saying: It was foretold that the kingdoms of heaven would come to earth, yet the grain has not improved; the grapes are no more plentiful than before; no heavens have come to earth. — All the people who speak this way do not understand what is meant. What Christ Jesus meant, what John meant, had already come to pass: the kingdoms of heaven had already descended to Earth through the Christ Himself incarnating in Jesus of Nazareth. The process must be understood entirely as a spiritual one.

[ 18 ] But an initiate like Nero knew this from the mysteries as well; he rebelled against it. He actually came to the delusional idea of telling himself: “Well, the world is in decline, so let it perish!” — And that is actually the psychological reason why Nero had Rome set on fire—which he actually did—because he wanted at least the spectacle of the fire that would spread from there and burn the whole world. For he no longer cared for this world. He did not want to allow the renewal that came through the Mystery of Golgotha. Yet, even though he was a madman, he was still a genius. Through the full extent of his power, he had forced his own initiation; hence, all his ideas were grand, greater than they are in others who lacked this prerequisite. That is why Nero is, in a certain sense, the first psychoanalyst—but a magnanimous one, not a psychoanalyst like those named Freud or others. For Nero idolized the physical, in that he truly sought—like the psychoanalyst—to bring the spiritual and soulful up from the subconscious. Today’s psychoanalyst says: What is down there in the soul? Disappointments, all sorts of faded life experiences, and so on—and then he says: The animalistic sludge of the soul is down there; there isn’t much beauty down there. — When one listens to the psychoanalyst today, it is as if a person were describing a field that has just been fertilized and then sown with seeds for the coming season, but the person sees only the fertilizer, the manure. In the same way, the psychoanalyst sees only that which is truly manure in the soul—figuratively speaking, of course. He does not see the eternal in the soul—that which passes from life to life. That is why psychoanalysis is so dangerous: although it descends into the subconscious, instead of seeing the spiritual-soul core of the being, it sees the animalistic sludge, just as one sees not the sprouting seed but only the manure. Nero was a great psychoanalyst in that he said: “There is absolutely nothing in human beings but the animalistic sludge; everything else is simply an illusion. It used to be different, when people were still close to the divine, but now human beings consist only of this animalistic sludge; there is not even the smallest part that is pure—everything in human beings has gone to ruin,” so said Nero. From this one can see—and one senses it especially in those who had forced their way into initiation in this manner—the world’s descent into materialism. Indeed, in these circles, the ancient, spiritual principle of initiation was translated quite literally into the material realm. When Commodus—who made himself not only an initiate but also an initiator—wanted to deliver the symbolic blow to one whom he himself was to initiate, he struck him dead on the spot. Instead of consigning him to spiritual death—that is, to resurrection—he struck him dead! Such was Commodus, the initiator. This is a historical fact.

[ 19 ] What occurred during this fourth epoch is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha. And since the spiritual can no longer arise from the outer, material realm, the spiritual must once again be won. The ascent within has received an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha. But we are living in the fifth epoch, where this conquest has not yet progressed very far, where precisely those forces that emerge so grotesquely in Roman times are still strong within human beings and are fighting against the impulse of ascent brought about by the Mystery of Golgotha. And so it is understandable that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the age of materialism has primarily come to the fore in the way people think and feel.

[ 20 ] The Mystery of Golgotha has already provided an impetus, so that the great depravity of the Romans has, for the time being, diminished somewhat; but humanity has not yet reached the point where the spiritual-soul aspect shines forth again naturally within its soul. This requires further impulses; it requires a more intense, a more thorough familiarization with the Christ impulse. This impulse must take root ever more deeply. And so, in the fifth cultural epoch, the average person does not face the soul itself when he experiences himself. The sense of the soul, the inner experience of the soul, has disappeared for the average person. Human beings perceive themselves through the experience of the body; they perceive themselves as the body, as the natural body.

[ 21 ] The body’s self-experience! And that is why the spiritual realm has vanished from science in particular—and continues to vanish from it more and more. This spiritual realm must simply be reclaimed from within. The fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, which began around the years 1413 and 1415, is, after all, still in its infancy. Humanity will have to develop further within it in such a way that the spiritual is truly reclaimed more and more within. But this first makes itself felt precisely in the realm of the soul through a peculiar phenomenon—namely, the phenomenon that something material appears within human beings themselves that was not previously so material: thinking itself, to be precise. Such thinking, as we have it in the fifth epoch, would have been impossible even for the Greeks, let alone the Egyptians, Chaldeans, or ancient Persians. Behind the Greeks there were still, to a certain degree, imaginative conceptions—even more so in earlier times; and anyone who can truly read Aristotle will notice, even in the dry Aristotle, imaginations that are still active, because thinking still took place more consciously in the etheric body. Now thinking has been drawn entirely into the physical body; it has become purely cerebral thinking, and thus it takes on the abstract character of which our age is so proud. Thinking that becomes entirely abstract is thinking that is truly bound to matter—to the matter of the brain. And this kind of thinking is precisely what manifests itself in the most epoch-making impulses, which in turn must be deepened; otherwise, thinking will become ever more materialistic. And as thinking becomes ever more materialistic, life, too, must become ever more materialistic. Fundamental ideas—that is the defining characteristic of our current fifth epoch; these ideas, which are meant to act as impulses, function only as abstract ideas.

[ 22 ] And there was a time when abstraction, as a principle of life, had reached its zenith. Everything is necessary—please understand me correctly—I do not mean to criticize it outright; I am not speaking from the standpoint of sympathy or antipathy; I am characterizing it as one would scientifically. So I do not wish to reproach—let no one think otherwise—the fact that there was an era in which abstract ideas about the world celebrated their greatest triumph. That era was when, with the utmost abstraction, three ideas were articulated: liberty, equality, fraternity. They were articulated with the utmost abstraction. This is not said from a conservative or reactionary standpoint, but rather to characterize the development of humanity. Everyone was calling for liberty, equality, and fraternity at the end of the 18th century—not from the heart, but from the intellectual mind. And this continued to develop throughout the 19th century to such an extent that we still feel its echoes everywhere today, as if it were a habit. Over the course of the 19th century, people have become terribly accustomed to the abstraction of thought and are content with the abstract nature of thought because it makes them feel so clever. They believe they have found the truth in thought and feel no need to immerse their thinking in reality. We must relearn how to immerse ourselves in reality; otherwise, we will be left merely declaiming abstract ideas that have no value in life.

[ 23 ] That is the great malady of our time: the declamation of abstract ideas that have no value in real life. When people say today that a time must now come in which the capable are given free rein in the world, where the capable are placed in their rightful positions—well, what could be more beautiful than this idea! Isn’t that a wonderful ideal: a free hand for the capable! — Sometimes, in today’s materialistic age, people believe that by voicing such an ideal, they are carrying the entire future within their hearts. But what good is such an abstract ideal if it amounts to nothing more than considering one’s son-in-law or nephew to be the most capable? What matters is not that one acknowledges, articulates, and proclaims an abstract ideal, but that one is able to immerse oneself with one’s soul in reality, and understands how to see through, recognize, penetrate, experience, and work with reality in its essence. Expressing beautiful ideas and taking pleasure in expressing them will prove more and more harmful. Love for reality, understanding, and adaptation to reality—that is what must take root in our souls. But this can only happen if people learn once again to recognize the whole of reality—for sensory reality is only the outer shell of reality. If someone who sees a horseshoe-shaped magnet says, “This is the best way to shoe a horse’s hoof”—does he have the whole of reality? No, only when he recognizes that there is magnetism inside that iron does he have the whole of reality. But just as one acts who knows nothing else to do with a magnet than to shoe a horse, so too does one who seeks to establish a purely external natural science or political science on the premise that everything is merely the visible world and can be grasped through concepts borrowed from the visible world. This is precisely part of the extreme abstraction, of the harmfulness of abstract ideals. And one does not recognize this harmfulness because the ideals are true, because they are also good—but they are ineffective. They serve only human intellectual egoism, which takes pleasure in living within such ideals. But no world is governed by them. At most, they govern a world such as it became in the first half of the 20th century.

[ 24 ] One must indeed surrender to such feelings if one wishes to understand our time more deeply. The spiritual life within the human being—which, as I have described, has gradually withdrawn from our environment, from the environment we perceive—must come alive again. Ideas must become concrete and alive again. Brotherhood is a beautiful idea, but expressed as an abstraction, it means nothing at all. If, first, one knows that the human soul lives here on the physical plane within the body and through the body—that is, as both physical and soul—and, second, one knows that the human being is not merely physical and soul, but is truly soul, and third, if one knows that the soul is filled with spirit—that is, if one understands the soul as threefold and the human being as threefold, and knows the human being in its composition of body, soul, and spirit—then one has taken the first step toward making the three abstract ideas of brotherhood, freedom, and equality concrete. To say of human beings in general—of this abstract human being—that they should live in brotherhood, freedom, and equality is nothing but a torrent of words. What is necessary is to gain a living understanding that human beings, insofar as they live in the physical world through their bodies, need a social order founded on genuine brotherhood; yet brotherhood can only be understood if one regards human beings as bodies. This is the beginning of the true idea of brotherhood. Brotherhood has meaning only if one knows that human beings are a trinity and that brotherhood applies to the physical body. Freedom: To understand this, one must know that human beings have a soul, for bodies can never become free. There is no mechanism by which bodies can become free; the development of humanity can only take place in such a way that souls become free. Freedom, expressed as a general human ideal, is an abstraction. Free souls in harmony with bodies living in brotherhood is a concrete idea. Human beings are equal in spirit. An old proverb was even aware of this: After death, all become equal. — This focused on the spirit. Since human beings live as spirits, they are equal here on Earth; but speaking of equality makes sense only when referring to this third aspect of the human being—the spirit. It must come to life, my dear friends, so that we may say: That which walks here on Earth in whatever order lives in body, soul, and spirit. Development must proceed in such a way that bodies live in brotherhood, souls in freedom, and spirits in equality. There is not enough time today to elaborate further on this matter, but you will already notice today the very significant difference between abstract ideas of equality, freedom, and brotherhood and the concrete ideas imbued with insight, which are then applied correctly.

[ 25 ] But what is the reason for all this—that we have become so abstract? Well, humanity has completely lost sight of what was, until relatively recently, still a mystery truth: that human beings consist of body, soul, and spirit. Among the Greeks, it was still common to view human beings as body, soul, and spirit. For the early Church Fathers, it was still a matter of course. That which lay at the root of the decline in human development—a decline that requires a return to the Christ principle—was dogmatically established in the year 869 by the Council of Constantinople, when the spirit was abolished. Forgive me for expressing this in such grotesque terms. After all, what was merely stated outwardly was what had emerged in human consciousness as a result of the circumstances I have described. From that time on, it was no longer permitted to teach in theology that human beings consist of body, soul, and spirit—but instead one was required to teach: “Man consists only of body and soul”—as philosophy professors still teach today. And when a distinguished scholar like Wundt or another philosophy professor of our time actually has no inkling that man is a trinity, but constantly speaks of body and soul, he has no idea that he is merely following the decrees of the Council of Constantinople of the year 869. He has no idea that his teaching is merely a replica of this council’s decision. Indeed, this “unbiased” science—when one examines its history of development more closely—sometimes has quite peculiar presuppositions. The unbiased science of our present age in philosophy is, in fact, inconceivable without the Council of Constantinople; it’s just that these gentlemen are unaware of it.

[ 26 ] What has been obscured—namely, that human beings consist of body, soul, and spirit—must be regained through spiritual science. That is why, with full awareness, the very first thing I sought to emphasize—specifically within our Central European, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—had to be structurally embedded in the book *Theosophy*, namely, the division of the human being into body, soul, and spirit. The entire book is built upon this. This had to be radically presented to humanity again and again; thus, through the course of evolution, humanity came to understand the threefold human being.

[ 27 ] You can see how, when one stands on the foundation of spiritual science, everything finds its justification down to the smallest detail; but you can also see how spiritual science is capable of giving us such ideas, such impulses of feeling and will, that can make us true collaborators in the proper progress of humanity’s recent development. And I always hope that I can evoke a sense that spiritual science must not remain a theory or a doctrine, that it must not remain something one merely cultivates as a science, but rather that it can become a truly living, inner spiritual life. This seems to me far more important than the mere enrichment with concepts—which, of course, is also necessary—for if something is to be brought to life, it must first be understood. We must have the concepts within us, but the concepts must not remain dead; rather, they must come alive. Spiritual science then works of its own accord in such a way that, when it is truly grasped, it stimulates the whole human being. But then it is also necessary for the whole human being to strive to understand it through feeling and will. But when the whole human being understands this spiritual science through feeling and will, then he can live accordingly within it. Yet his love for true knowledge and for humanity as it continues to evolve must never run dry. This very love is still a tender little plant in our time. And it is understandable—though infinitely sad—that in the realm of the spiritual science movement, as we conceive of it, because personal interests—sometimes of a less than noble nature—still distort the tender little plant of love for the knowledge demanded by our times, hatred runs rampant precisely among those who do not approach spiritual science out of a pure thirst for knowledge, but rather in such a way that, once their vanity is not satisfied, their false love immediately turns to hatred. For only true love can triumph over hatred; false love is itself a source of hatred.

[ 28 ] If we truly feel this, then we will also be able to cope with the phenomena I have already pointed out twice—those phenomena that are so sadly looming over our Anthroposophical Society, in which we see that the most intense haters are emerging precisely from within the circles of the Anthroposophical Society. We will not overcome these things as long as we continue to apply a principle of our materialistic age—as we are so fond of doing today—namely, the principle: “I want to be left in peace!”—when we close ourselves off from these things or refuse to call them by their proper names. If numerous defamatory writings are now appearing, nothing is achieved by taking these writings so seriously that one refutes each individual statement. For gentlemen such as those who are writing now do not care whether they put this or that forward as a statement. To such a gentleman, for example—who had to be rejected when he submitted a manuscript that could not be published by us, who felt his pride wounded as a result, who, having previously followed our Anthroposophical Society, subsequently became an enemy—one must say: What you write is simply nonsense; you know better yourself; you’re writing all this simply because your manuscript was rejected.” — That is the truth. If one knows how to serve spiritual science, it is not a matter of refuting all these things in detail as fabrications and inventions, but rather of showing in their true light those who ostensibly belonged to the spiritual science movement and then went on to engage in such activities as many are now beginning to do—and which will be carried out even more in the future.

[ 29 ] Or there is someone—as I told you a few days ago—who wanted to become a great painter but tried to achieve it by begging to be allowed to study; yet when every effort was made to help him progress, he thought he knew everything better. He believed that one does not become a great painter by learning, but by declaring oneself a genius! If one then has the misfortune of failing to become one, and—despite being provided with teachers—cannot learn to paint but only daubs, and if others are unable to recognize these daubs as great paintings, then one comes along and says: it is the fault of the exercises. The proper way to cure such a person is by telling the truth. It must not appear as though spiritual science is in danger and that things are not being set straight.

[ 30 ] Things are already working out karmically. The right things should also happen in our circles in many other details, just as they have on points of fundamental importance. Just think about the fact that all ties with Mrs. Besant’s Theosophical Society have been severed since 1911, and that England’s war against Germany did not begin until 1914. This is something about which one may say: The Anthroposophical Society acted prophetically. — There is generally a great deal of slander—which, of course, is not directed against the English people, but against the slanderers who today abuse the principle of nationality in this way—but the way Mrs. Besant slanders our Anthroposophical Society and me, against all better judgment, is indeed a rarity. And now that we have first popularized the book *The Great Initiates* in Germany and staged Schuré’s plays, we must now also endure being attacked by Schuré in the most outrageous manner. These are things that, in a sense, play out more on a broader scale. But even in our immediate circle, enemies are gradually emerging.

[ 31 ] The anthroposophist must cultivate a little foresight and a little willingness to see what is happening and what is to come. One acquires this foresight by taking seriously the principle that has rightly been adopted as the motto of our Anthroposophical Society: “Wisdom lies only in truth.” Those who are able to grasp this deeply enough—“Wisdom lies only in truth”—will take the right stance.

[ 32 ] With that, my dear friends, I must take my leave of you for now. I hope that our gathering this time can serve as the starting point for fruitful collaboration in spirit, even if we cannot be together physically. If we strive to think, feel, and will in the spirit of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then we will truly work together effectively.