The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Individual Spiritual Beings and the Unified Foundation of the Universe III

[ 1 ] Today I would like to build on some of the observations we have made over time, drawing on one or the other to supplement this or that. If you follow current events closely, you will occasionally notice that, in the thoughts, feelings, and impulses in which people have long found the very things that have brought us “so wonderfully far,” we can no longer find what can carry us into the near future. Yesterday, one of our members handed me a copy of the *Frankfurter Zeitung* from last Wednesday, November 21, 1917. In it, a very learned gentleman expresses his views—he must be a very learned gentleman, for he has not only the title of Doctor of Philosophy but also that of Doctor of Theology before his name, and on top of that, the title “Professor”: so he is a professor, a Doctor of Theology, and a Doctor of Philosophy—in other words, a very intelligent man, of course. He has written an essay dealing with all manner of contemporary spiritual needs. In the course of this essay, there is a passage that reads as follows: “The experience of the Being that lies behind things requires neither pious consecration nor religious evaluation, for it is religion itself. It is not a matter of sensing and grasping one’s own individual essence, but rather the great irrational that is hidden behind all existence. Whoever touches it so that the divine spark leaps across experiences something that claims a primary character—what might be called a ‘primordial experience.’ This unites the experiencer with everything that is moved by the same stream of life, bestowing upon him—to use the favorite term of the new age—a cosmic sense of life.”

[ 2 ] Forgive me, dear friends, I am not reading this aloud to evoke any particularly lofty notions in you regarding these vague sentences, but rather to present you with a symbol of our times: “A cosmic religiosity is emerging among us, and the perceptible growth of the Theosophical Movement—which undertakes to discover and unveil the cycles of that hidden life—shows just how strong the longing for it is.” — It is, of course, difficult to stumble through all these vague concepts, but isn’t it true that, as a symbol of our times, this is quite a curiosity? He goes on to say: “This cosmic piety is not a quietistic mysticism that begins with a turning away from the world and ends in contemplation, but rather something that is received precisely in the surf of events and constantly gives rise to new stirrings”—and so on.

[ 3 ] You certainly can’t make any sense of these sentences! But since “Professor, Dr. theol., and Dr. phil.” is written there, one must of course take it for something sensible; otherwise, one would take it for something expressed in a stammering, unclear tirade—such as the learned gentleman’s admission that he has reached a dead end on the path he has been following and now feels compelled to point out something that is also there and does not seem entirely hopeless to him.

[ 4 ] We should not be at all delighted by such remarks, for above all, they must not lull us into any kind of complacency regarding the fact that, once again, someone from some quarter has realized that there is, after all, something behind the spiritual science movement. That would in fact be very harmful. For those who make such remarks are sometimes the very same people who feel satisfied with them—remarks that go no further, that merely point, with such vague generalities, to something that is striving to enter the world—and yet they belong precisely to those who are far too far too comfortable to engage with what is necessary for a serious study of spiritual science—and what must truly break through and take hold of people’s minds—if that which is connected to reality is to become so intertwined with the current of becoming that something healing can arise from it. It is, of course, easier to speak of “surf” and “cosmic feelings” than to seriously engage with those things that—as demanded by the signs of the times—must now be proclaimed to humanity. That is why it seems necessary to me to state here and now the very things that have been presented in the public lectures and will continue to be presented, with particular emphasis on the difference that exists between what has passed away—what is no longer viable and which led us into these catastrophic times—and what must truly take hold of the human soul if any step forward is to be taken.

[ 5 ] With the ancient wisdom through which humanity has arrived at our present time, thousands of congresses can be held—world congresses, people’s congresses, and whatever else—and thousands upon thousands of associations can be founded: yet we must be clear that these thousands of congresses and thousands of associations will achieve nothing unless the spiritual lifeblood of the Science of the Spirit flows through them. What people lack today is the courage to embark on a genuine exploration of the spiritual world. As strange as it may sound, it must be said once and for all: all that would be needed, for example, as a first step, is to distribute the small pamphlet *Human Life from the Perspective of Spiritual Science* as widely as possible, and this alone would go a long way toward awakening an awareness of the connection between human beings and the cosmic order. It is precisely this knowledge that is highlighted in this little brochure, *Human Life from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*; specifically, it draws attention to how the Earth changes its states of consciousness every year and so on. Precisely what is said in this lecture and in this brochure is said with full consideration of the needs of our time. To take this in would mean more than all the vague talk of cosmic feeling and of “riding the waves,” or whatever—I have just read these very things to you; I cannot repeat them because they are too meaningless in their formulation.

[ 6 ] Of course, this does not mean we should not pay attention to these things, for they are important and essential. What I want to emphasize is that we must not delude ourselves; we must be clear-headed, and utmost clarity is necessary if we wish to work for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

[ 7 ] Once again, I would like to point out that humanity is about to enter, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, a phase of special engagement with the great questions of life, which have, in a certain sense, been obscured by the wisdom of the past. I have already referred to them. One of these great questions of life can be described as follows: We must attempt to place the spiritual-etheric into the service of external, practical life. — I have drawn your attention to the fact that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will have to solve the problem of how human moods—the movement of human moods—can be transmitted in wave-like movements to machines, and how human beings must be brought into connection with that which must become ever more mechanical. That is why, eight days ago today, I drew your attention here to the external manner in which this mechanization is being carried out in a certain part of our Earth’s surface. I have presented you with an example of how, based on American thinking, attempts are being made to extend the mechanical realm to encompass human life itself. I cited this example of the breaks that people seek to exploit so that, instead of far fewer metric tons, up to fifty metric tons can be loaded by a certain number of workers: one need only truly introduce Darwin’s principle of natural selection into real life.

[ 8 ] In such instances, there is a willingness to combine human power with mechanical power. These things must not be treated as if they were something to be fought against. That is a completely mistaken view. These things will not fail to happen; they will come to pass. The only question is whether, in the course of world history, they will be brought about by people who are selflessly attuned to the great goals of Earth’s evolution and who shape these developments for the benefit of humanity, or whether they will be brought about by those groups of people who exploit them solely for selfish or group-egoistic purposes. That is what is at stake. In this case, it is not the “what” that matters—the “what” is certain to come—but the “how,” that is, how one approaches these matters. For the “what” simply lies in the nature of Earth’s development. The fusion of the human being with the machine will be a major, significant problem for the remainder of Earth’s development.

[ 9 ] I have deliberately drawn attention to this point on several occasions now, including in public lectures, that human consciousness is connected to forces that are in the process of decay. I have said this twice in public lectures in Basel: We are dying into our nervous system. — These forces, these forces that are dying within us, will become ever more powerful. And a connection will be established between the forces dying within the human being—which are related to electrical and magnetic forces—and external mechanical forces. Human beings will, so to speak, be able to channel their intentions and thoughts into these mechanical forces. As yet undiscovered forces within human nature will be discovered—forces that act upon external electrical and magnetic forces.

[ 10 ] That is one problem: bringing people together with the mechanisms that are bound to become increasingly widespread in the future. The other problem lies in what spiritual conditions will call upon for help. However, this can only be done when the time is ripe and when a sufficient number of people have been properly prepared for it. But it must come to pass that spiritual forces are mobilized to master life in relation to illness and death.

[ 11 ] Medicine will become spiritualized—very, very spiritualized. Certain quarters create caricatures of all such things; but the caricatures merely show what is bound to come. Once again, the issue is that this problem is to be tackled from the perspective I referred to in connection with the other problem—in an outwardly egoistic or group-egoistic manner.

[ 12 ] The third is: to introduce human thought into the very process of the human race’s coming into being—in birth and procreation. I have pointed out—as has already been the subject of conferences—how there are even plans to establish a materialistic framework for the science of procreation and the interplay between man and woman in the future. All these things point us toward the most significant developments currently unfolding. It is still easy today to ask: How is it that those who truly understand these matters do not apply them? In the future, people will come to understand the nature of this application and what obstructing forces are still at work today—for example, preventing the establishment of a more extensively spiritualized medicine or a spiritualized economy. Today, all that can be done is to speak of these things until people have understood them sufficiently—those people who are inclined to embrace them in a selfless spirit. Many already believe today that they are capable of this; yet many factors in life still prevent them from doing so—factors that can only be properly overcome when an ever-deeper understanding takes hold, and when, at least for a time, one refrains from immediate practical application on a large scale.

[ 13 ] All these things have developed in such a way that one can say: Little remains of what actually lay behind the old atavistic striving that persisted well into the 14th and 15th centuries. People talk a lot today about ancient alchemy; they also occasionally recall the process of creating a homunculus and so on. What is said about these matters is mostly inaccurate. Once one understands what can be said in reference to the homunculus scene in Goethe’s work, one will be better informed about these matters; for the essential point is that, from the 16th century onward, a veil of obscurity has been cast over these matters; they have receded into the background of human consciousness.

[ 14 ] The law that governs these matters is indeed the very same law that also determines the rhythmic alternation of waking and sleeping in human beings. Just as human beings cannot ignore the need for sleep, so too could humanity not, in regard to spiritual development, shut itself off from that “sleep” of spiritual science that has characterized the centuries since the 16th century. Humanity had to sleep through the spiritual for a time so that it could reemerge in a different form. One must simply recognize such necessities. But one must not allow oneself to be weighed down by them. One must therefore be clear that the time of awakening has now come, and that one must participate in this awakening; that events often outpace knowledge; and that one will not understand the events taking place around us unless one is willing to make the effort to gain knowledge.

[ 15 ] I have now repeatedly pointed out to you that certain groups of self-serving occult seekers are at work, acting precisely in the direction I have repeatedly alluded to in these reflections. First, it was necessary for a certain kind of knowledge to recede within humanity—knowledge that is today described with misunderstood terms such as alchemy, astrology, and so on—for this knowledge to recede and be forgotten, so that human beings would no longer have the possibility of deriving spiritual insights from the observation of nature, and so that they might be directed more toward themselves. And in order for human beings to awaken the forces within themselves, it was necessary that certain things first come to light in abstract form, which must then take on concrete spiritual form again.

[ 16 ] Three ideas have gradually emerged over the course of the past few centuries; in the form in which they have come to be known among people, they are actually abstract ideas. Kant misnamed them; Goethe named them correctly. Kant called these three ideas: God, freedom, and immortality; Goethe correctly named them: God, virtue, and immortality.

[ 17 ] If one looks at the concepts behind these three words, they are indeed the very same ones that people today view in a more abstract way, whereas in the 14th and 15th centuries they were understood more concretely—and, in the old, atavistic sense, also in a more material sense. People experimented in the old way; back then, in alchemical experiments, they sought to observe processes that revealed God’s work at play. They attempted to create the Philosopher’s Stone.

[ 18 ] There is something concrete behind all these things. This philosopher’s stone was meant to enable people to become virtuous, but it was conceived in more material terms. It was also meant to lead people to experience immortality, to establish a certain relationship with the universe, so that they might experience within themselves what transcends birth and death. All the vague ideas with which people today seek to understand these ancient concepts no longer correspond to what was intended back then. These concepts have simply become abstract, and modern humanity has spoken of abstract ideas. God sought to be understood through abstract theology; virtue, too, was seen as something purely abstract. The more abstract a concept, the more modern humanity likes to speak of it—and the same goes for immortality. People speculated about what in human beings might be immortal. In my first lecture in Basel, I spoke of how the branch of science that, as a philosophy, deals today with such questions as that of immortality is a starved science, a malnourished science. This is merely another way of expressing the abstract nature in which such matters are pursued.

[ 19 ] But in certain brotherhoods in the West, the connection with the ancient traditions has been preserved, and attempts have been made to apply it in a corresponding manner, putting it at the service of a certain form of group egoism. It is indeed necessary to point these things out. Of course, when this topic is discussed in public exoteric literature from this corner of the West, people speak of God, virtue, freedom, and immortality in an abstract sense. Yet in the circles of the initiated, it is known that all of this is merely speculation, that these are all abstractions. For oneself, one seeks what is aspired to through the abstract concepts of God, virtue, and immortality in something much more concrete. And that is why, in the relevant schools, these words are translated for the initiates. God is translated as gold, and one seeks to uncover the mystery that can be described as the mystery of gold. For gold—the representative of the solar principle within the Earth’s crust itself—is, in fact, something that encompasses a significant mystery. Materially speaking, gold stands in the same relationship to other substances as the idea of God does to other ideas in the realm of thought. The only question is how this mystery is understood.

[ 20 ] And all of this is connected to the group-egoistic exploitation of the mystery of birth. The aim here is to attain true cosmic understanding. Modern man has, after all, completely replaced this cosmic understanding with a telluric one. When people today want to investigate, for example, how the life germ of animals or humans develops, they use a microscope to examine whatever happens to be present at the spot on Earth where they direct their microscopic gaze; they regard this as the very thing that is to be investigated. But that cannot be the point. One will come to realize—and certain circles are close to realizing this—that what acts as forces is not contained within that upon which one directs one’s microscopic gaze, but rather that these forces come from the cosmos, from the constellations in the cosmos. When a seed of life arises, it arises because forces from all sides of the cosmos—cosmic forces—act upon the living being in which the seed of life is forming. And when fertilization occurs, what results from it depends on which cosmic forces are at work during fertilization.

[ 21 ] There is one thing we will come to understand that we do not yet understand today. Today people think there is some kind of living being, let’s say a chicken. When a new seed of life arises within this being, the biologist, so to speak, investigates how the egg grows out of the chicken, as it were. He examines the forces that are supposed to cause the egg to grow out of the chicken itself. This is utter nonsense. The egg does not grow out of the chicken at all; the chicken is merely the substrate. Forces acting from the cosmos bring about the emergence of life on the ground prepared within the chicken. What the biologist observing under a microscope sees today leads him to believe that the forces that matter are present within the scope of his microscopic field. But what he sees there depends on the stellar forces that interact at a single point in a certain constellation. And when one discovers the cosmic here, only then will one discover the truth, the reality: it is the universe itself that conjures the egg into the hen.

[ 22 ] All of this, however, is connected above all with the mystery of the sun, and—from an earthly perspective—with the mystery of gold. Today I am making, so to speak, a kind of programmatic hint; in time, these things will become much clearer to us.

[ 23 ] In the schools under discussion here, virtue is not called virtue, but is simply referred to as health, and the aim is to understand the cosmic constellations that are related to human health and illness. By studying these cosmic constellations, however, one comes to understand the individual substances found in the Earth’s surface—the vital fluids and so on—which in turn are connected to health and illness. From a certain perspective, a more material form of health science will increasingly take shape, though it will be grounded in spiritual principles.

[ 24 ] And this website is intended to spread the view that it is not through the abstract study of all manner of ethical principles that a person can become good, but rather that a person can become good by, say, ingesting copper under a certain constellation or arsenic under another. You can imagine how people with a group-egoistic mindset could exploit these things in the interest of the principle of power! One need only withhold this knowledge from others, who then cannot partake in it, and one has the best means of controlling large masses of people. One doesn’t even need to talk about these things at all; one simply needs, for example, to introduce some new delicacy. Then, for this new delicacy—which has been appropriately tainted—one can seek out sales channels and take the necessary steps, provided one views these things from a materialistic perspective. One must simply be clear that spiritual forces are at work in all material things. Only those who know that, in the true sense, there is actually nothing material at all—only the spiritual—can uncover the mysteries of life.

[ 25 ] Likewise, the aim is to steer the problem of immortality into materialistic waters from this perspective. This problem of immortality can be steered into materialistic waters in exactly the same way, by taking advantage of the cosmic constellation. Then, although one does not achieve what is often speculated about as immortality, one does achieve a different kind of immortality: One has a kind of brotherhood—one prepares oneself, as long as it is not yet possible to influence the physical body in order to thereby artificially prolong life— one prepares to undergo certain experiences with one’s soul that will enable one to remain within the brotherhood even after death, to assist there with the powers then at one’s disposal. Immortality is therefore simply referred to as life extension in these circles.

[ 26 ] You can, of course, see outward signs of all these things. I don’t know if some of you have noticed the book that caused quite a stir for a while, which also came over from the West and is titled *The Nonsense of Dying*. These things all point in that direction. They are only just beginning, for whatever lies beyond the beginning is still very much preserved for group egoism today, kept very esoteric. But these things are indeed possible if one steers them into materialistic waters, if one transforms the abstract ideas of God, virtue, and immortality into concrete ideas of gold, health, and life extension, if one exploits—in a group-egoistic sense—what I have presented to you as the great problems of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. What Professor Dr. theol., Dr. phil. vaguely refers to as “cosmic feeling” is already being presented to people by many—and, unfortunately, by many in an egoistic sense—as cosmic knowledge. While science, for centuries, has focused solely on what interacts side by side on Earth and has refrained from looking up to what is approaching as the most important aspect of events originating from beyond Earth, it is precisely in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that the utilization of forces penetrating from the cosmos will come into consideration. And just as it is now of particular importance for the typical professor of biology to have a microscope with the highest possible magnification, the most precise laboratory methods, and so on, so too will it be a matter of concern in the future—once science has become spiritualized—whether certain processes are carried out in the morning, in the evening, or at noon; whether one allows what was done in the morning to be further influenced in some way by the effects of the evening, or whether one excludes or neutralizes the cosmic influence from morning until evening. Such processes will prove necessary in the future and will indeed take place. Of course, a great deal of water will still flow down the Rhine before the purely materialistic lecture halls, laboratories, and so on are handed over to spiritual scientists; but they must be replaced—if humanity does not wish to sink entirely into decadence—these laboratory activities must be replaced by work that, for example, when it comes to the good to be achieved in the near future, is carried out in such a way that certain processes take place in the morning, are interrupted during the day, and that the cosmic current then flows through them again in the evening, and this is rhythmically preserved until the morning. So that the processes proceed in such a way that certain cosmic effects are always interrupted during the day, and the cosmic morning and evening processes are initiated. For this, a variety of measures will be necessary.

[ 27 ] You can already see from this that, if one is not in a position to participate publicly in what is happening, one can only talk about these things. But from the very same side that seeks to replace God, virtue, and immortality with gold, health, and a longer life—from that very same side—the aim is not to work through the morning and evening processes, but through entirely different ones. And I pointed out to you last time that, on the one hand, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha is to be removed from the world by introducing, from the West, the other impulse—a kind of Antichrist; that from the East, the Christ impulse—as it emerges in the 20th century—is to be paralyzed by diverting attention and interest away from the Christ who is coming from the etheric realm.

[ 28 ] The side that, in a sense, seeks to introduce the Antichrist rather than the Christ aims to exploit that which can act particularly through the most material forces, yet which, precisely through these most material forces, acts spiritually. Above all, this side seeks to exploit electricity—and specifically, the Earth’s magnetism—to produce effects across the entire Earth. I have already shown you how the Earth’s forces rise up within what I have called the human double. This mystery will be unraveled. It will be an American secret to use the Earth’s magnetism in its duality—as north and south magnetism—to send directing forces across the Earth that act spiritually. Take a look at the magnetic map of the Earth, and compare it with what I am about to say: the course of the magnetic lines, where the magnetic needle deflects toward the east and west, and where it does not deflect at all. For now, I can offer no more than hints regarding these matters: Spiritual beings are constantly at work from a certain cardinal direction; one need only place these spiritual beings in the service of earthly existence, and then—because these spiritual beings, acting from the cosmos, can convey the secret of Earth’s magnetism—one will uncover this secret of Earth’s magnetism and be able to exert a very significant group-egoistic influence with regard to the three things: gold, health, and the prolongation of life. It will simply be a matter of mustering the hesitant courage to undertake these things. And within certain circles, that courage will indeed be mustered!

[ 29 ] From the eastern side, the task will be to reinforce what I have already explained by, in turn, placing the inflowing, active beings from the opposite side of the cosmos in the service of earthly existence. A great struggle will arise in the future. Human science will turn toward the cosmic; but human science will attempt to approach the cosmic in various ways. It will be the task of good, wholesome science to discover certain cosmic forces that can arise on Earth through the interaction of two cosmic currents. These two cosmic currents will be: Pisces and Virgo. Above all, the mystery to be discovered will be how that which acts from the cosmos in the direction of Pisces as solar power connects with that which acts in the direction of Virgo. The benefit will be that we will discover how forces from two sides of the cosmos—morning and evening forces—can be placed at the service of humanity: on the one hand from Pisces, and on the other hand from Virgo.

[ 30 ] These forces will be ignored in places where people will try to achieve everything through the dualism of polarity, using positive and negative forces. The spiritual mysteries that can allow the spiritual to flow through the Earth—with the help of the twofold forces of magnetism, the positive and the negative—originate in the cosmos from the Twins; these are midday forces. Even in ancient times, it was known that this involved cosmic forces, and it is, after all, exoterically known to scientists today that positive and negative magnetism are somehow at work behind the Twins in the zodiac. The aim here, then, will be to paralyze that which is to be gained from the cosmos through the revelation of duality—to paralyze it in a materialistic and egoistic manner through the forces that flow to humanity particularly from Gemini and can be placed entirely at the service of the double.

[ 31 ] In other brotherhoods, on the other hand, which seek above all to bypass the Mystery of Golgotha, the aim will be to exploit the twofold human nature; this dual human nature, which—as humanity has entered the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—contains, on the one hand, the human being, but within that human being, the lower animal nature. The human being is, in a sense, truly a centaur: he contains the lower animal nature in the astral realm, and humanity is, so to speak, superimposed upon this animal nature. Through this interplay of the dual nature within the human being, there is also a dualism of forces. This is the very dualism of forces that will be exploited by certain egoistic brotherhoods, drawing more on the Eastern, Indian tradition, in order to seduce even the European East, which has the task of preparing for the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And it makes use of the forces that work from Sagittarius.

[ 32 ] Conquering the Cosmic for humanity in two wrong ways or in one right way—that is what lies ahead for humanity. This will bring about a true renewal of astrology, which in its old form was atavistic and cannot continue to exist in that old form. Those who understand the cosmos will come into conflict with one another, as some will apply the morning and evening processes in the manner I have already indicated; in the West, they will prefer the midday processes while excluding the morning and evening processes, and in the East, the midnight processes. Substances will no longer be produced merely according to the chemical forces of attraction and repulsion; rather, it will be understood that a different substance is created depending on whether it is produced using the morning and evening processes or the noon or midnight processes. It will be understood that such substances affect the threefold order— God, Virtue, and Immortality—Gold, Health, and Longevity. Through the interplay of what comes from Pisces and Virgo, nothing wrong will be accomplished; rather, one will achieve that which, while in a certain sense detaching the mechanism of life from human beings, cannot establish any dominion or power of one group over another. The cosmic forces drawn from this realm will produce remarkable machines, but only those that will relieve humans of their labor, because they themselves will possess a certain intellectual power. And a spiritual science that itself reaches toward the cosmic will have to ensure that all the great temptations emanating from these machine-beasts—which humanity itself brings forth—do not exert a harmful influence on humanity.

[ 33 ] In addition to all this, however, it must be said: It is essential that people prepare themselves by no longer mistaking realities for illusions, by truly entering into a spiritual view of the world, into a spiritual understanding of the world. Seeing things as they are—that is what matters most! But one can only see them as they are if one is able to apply the concepts and ideas derived from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to reality. To a great extent, it is precisely the dead who will play a part in the remainder of our earthly existence. How they will contribute—that is what will be at stake. Above all, the great difference will become apparent: through the behavior of people on Earth, the contribution of the dead on the one—the good—side will be directed in such a way that these dead can then act where the impulse to act emanates from themselves, where it is drawn from the spiritual world that the dead experience after death.

[ 34 ] In contrast, many efforts will arise that seek to artificially introduce the dead into human existence. And through the detour via the Twins, the dead will be introduced into human life, causing human vibrations to resonate and continue to vibrate in a very specific way within the mechanical operations of the machine. The cosmos will set the machines in motion via that detour I have just indicated.

[ 35 ] The key point here is that, when these problems arise, one must not resort to inappropriate means, but rather use only those elementary forces that are inherent in nature; one must refrain from introducing inappropriate forces into mechanical life. In the occult realm, we will have to refrain from harnessing human beings themselves into the mechanical engine in such a way that the Darwinian theory of selection is exploited to determine human labor, as I illustrated with an example last time.

[ 36 ] I am making all these remarks—which, of course, cannot cover the subject exhaustively in such a short time—because I imagine that you will continue to reflect on these matters, that you will try to build a bridge between your own life experiences and these ideas, especially those life experiences that can be gained right now, in these difficult times. You will see how many things become clear to you when you view them in the light that such ideas can shed upon them. For truly, in our time, it is not a matter of the forces and constellations of forces standing in opposition to one another—as is so often discussed in external, exoteric life—but rather of entirely different matters. The point is that, in fact, a kind of veil is currently being cast over the true impulses at stake. After all, certain human forces are indeed striving to save something for themselves. What, then, is there to save? Certain human forces are now seeking to uphold—in an Ahrimanic-Luciferic spirit—the impulses that were legitimate up to the French Revolution and were also advocated by certain occult schools; they are upholding them in order to maintain a social order that humanity believes it has overcome since the end of the 18th century.

[ 37 ] Essentially, two forces stand opposed to one another: the representatives of the principle that had been overcome by the end of the 18th century, and the representatives of the new era. Instinctively, of course, a large number of people are representatives of the impulses of the new era. Therefore, those who are supposed to be representatives of the old impulses—still rooted in the 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries—must be harnessed by artificial means to the forces emanating from certain brotherhoods that act out of group egoism. The most effective principle in modern times for extending power over as many people as necessary is the economic principle—the principle of economic dependence. But this is merely the tool. What is at stake is something entirely different. What is at stake is precisely what you can deduce from all the hints I have given. The economic principle is linked to all of this in order to turn a large number of people across the globe, so to speak, into an army for these principles.

[ 38 ] These are the things that stand in opposition to one another. This points to what is actually at war in the world today: a principle rooted in the West in the 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries, which conceals itself by cloaking itself in the rhetoric of revolution and democracy, adopting this mask and striving to gain as much power as possible through this means. It is advantageous to these aspirations when as many people as possible do not seek to see things as they are, and instead allow themselves to be lulled time and again in this realm by Maya—that Maya which can be expressed, for example, by the words that there is currently a war between the Entente and the Central Powers.

[ 39 ] That doesn’t actually exist at all; rather, the true realities behind this Maya are entirely different matters. The latter—the struggle between the Entente and the Central Powers—is merely the Maya; it is merely an illusion. What is actually in conflict with one another—that is what one comes to realize when one looks behind the surface of things, but examines them in the way I have just hinted at for certain reasons. One must at least strive for oneself not to mistake illusions for realities: then, little by little, the illusion—insofar as it must be dispelled—will be dispelled. Above all, one must strive today to view things as they present themselves to an unbiased, genuine mind.

[ 40 ] If you take everything I have developed so far into account, then even a seemingly incidental remark I made in the course of these lectures will not seem incidental to you. I once mentioned a certain remark that Mephistopheles makes to Faust: ‘I see that you know the devil’—a remark he certainly wouldn’t make to Woodrow Wilson—then that is no trivial remark; it is something meant to shed light on the situation! One must truly view these things without sympathy or antipathy; one must be able to view them objectively. Above all, we must be able to reflect today on what constellations signify in any given situation and what inner strength means; for behind this inner strength often lies something entirely different from what lies behind the mere constellation. Just consider, without any preconceptions, the question of how much Woodrow Wilson’s brain would be worth if it were not seated in the presidential chair of the North American Union. Suppose this brain were in a different constellation: there it would reveal its own power! It all comes down to the constellation.

[ 41 ] There is certainly—if I am to put it abstractly and radically now, not, of course, to characterize the case just mentioned—that would not occur to me in such a neutral country, but regardless of that, there is certainly a very important insight—when, for example, one asks oneself the question regarding a brain as to whether it thereby acquires any value, because it is truly illuminated by a special spiritual soul force and prompted to act, whether it thereby possesses spiritual weight in the sense in which I have spoken of spiritual weight in these reflections, or whether this brain is actually not worth much more than what would result if one placed it on one side of a scale and weights on the other.

[ 42 ] For the moment one penetrates all the secrets of the doppelgänger mentioned to you last time, one finds oneself precisely in the position—and I am not speaking of anything unreal—of bringing brains to the value they possess only when placed on the scales as mass, because one is capable, if they are to be animated, of having them animated solely by the doppelgänger.

[ 43 ] All these things seem grotesque to people today. But what is grotesque about them must become something people take for granted if certain things are to flow from an unwholesome current into a wholesome one. And what good does it do to just keep talking about it! You must come to realize that all this vague talk about “cosmic religiosity,” or “how strong the longing for it is,” or “the movement that sets out to discover and unveil the cycles of that hidden life,” and so on—that all this talk is really just about spreading fog over things that ought to enter the world only in clarity, that can have an effect only in clarity, and above all, that ought to be carried into humanity only in clarity as practical, moral-ethical impulses.

[ 44 ] I can only offer a few hints. I leave it to your own meditation to build upon this subject. In many respects, these matters are aphoristic. But from a compilation such as the zodiac presented here (see illustration on page 229), if you truly use it as material for meditation, you will have the opportunity to gain a great deal from it.