The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Essential Aspects of Consciousness for the Present and the Future I

[ 1 ] Today, I would like to summarize and expand on various points that have been discussed here over time, because I want to use this as a foundation for some further fundamental discussions that we plan to have here in the near future.

[ 2 ] In spiritual scientific research, a third form of consciousness is added to the two forms of consciousness familiar to every human being—dream consciousness and ordinary waking consciousness, in which we live from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep—namely, what we call contemplative consciousness. In everyday life, however, we experience dream consciousness only as a kind of interruption of continuous consciousness. But this is only because people remember only a small portion of their dreams. In fact, we dream continuously from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, and what we usually refer to as the content of our dream consciousness is, after all, only those parts of our entire dream experiences that we remember in our waking daily life. From the standpoint of spiritual science, we must therefore say: We recognize three stages, or three types, of consciousness: dream consciousness, ordinary waking consciousness, and intuitive consciousness, to which the supersensible world is open. |

[ 3 ] Now it will be easy for you to familiarize yourself with a characteristic of each successive state of consciousness in relation to the preceding one—if we start from the top, from the observing consciousness. Just think of dream consciousness: It gives us images. We know that dream experiences are images. If you are level-headed, you cannot simply fit these dream experiences into the causal context of waking life. If you were to do so, you would mix dream life and waking life; you would become a fantasist. So in dream experiences, we are dealing with images, in contrast to reality. We call waking experiences “realities.”

[ 4 ] But when we examine the relationship between ordinary daily experiences and the content of the contemplative consciousness, we find something quite similar. For what the contemplative consciousness experiences as a spiritual, supersensible reality is reflected in what we experience in ordinary daily life, from waking up to falling asleep. Thus, insofar as a person is in contemplative consciousness—that is, in an awakened state—they can certainly say, provided they do so with prudence: “In this contemplative consciousness, I experience a true reality, and in comparison to this reality, what is otherwise called reality is merely a sum of images.”

[ 5 ] As abstractly as this may be stated, it has little value. Certainly, many people are quite satisfied simply by expressing such things in abstract terms. They believe that by speaking in such abstract terms, they are solving the mysteries of the world. But that is not the case. Such a matter has value only if one addresses the very concrete, the immediate realities of everyday life. But this is only possible in specific areas.

[ 6 ] Over time, I have already drawn your attention to an area that we must consider again and again if we are to make progress in spiritual science. This area—the one closest to us, yet often so far removed from our understanding—is the human being itself. People usually believe they know the physical human being; they simply do not know the supersensible human being. But even that is only true to a certain extent. What is commonly referred to in everyday life as anatomy and physiology is, in fact, interwoven with countless illusions. Today we will begin—though only seemingly—with the outer form of the human being: the physical human being. In doing so, we will refer to that threefold division of the physical human being that I have mentioned on several occasions.

[ 7 ] If we consider the human being in relation to the supersensible world—that is, as an image rather than as a reality in the sense of conventional anatomy and physiology—he can be divided into three distinct parts, even with regard to his external physical form: the head-human, the human being who is primarily concentrated in the head; the torso-human; and the extremities- or limbs-human. However, we must imagine that this third human being does not consist solely of arms and legs, but that these limbs continue their “inflow” in contrast to the “outflow”—and that this constitutes the whole human being. Let us now consider these three. One could not really speak of three human beings without doing injustice to the reality of the supersensible; for, with regard to the supersensible aspect of the human being, there is a very significant gulf between these three members just mentioned. The various forces—or, shall we say, currents of force—that participate in the formation of these physical members point in entirely different directions. When one examines the human form with supersensible knowledge, the head is in fact formed in such a way that one must actually seek its formative forces before birth or conception. One must go backward into the spiritual world, not into the physical current of heredity. Just as the human head is formed—and here one must, of course, go into the finer aspects of its formation—so this formation is primarily influenced by all those forces in the spiritual world that permeate the human soul before it unites with the physical current of heredity through birth or conception. And what plays a primary role in the formation of the head is not so much what a person experienced in their previous earthly life—not in terms of their physical form, but in terms of their conduct, their deeds, and, to some extent, their feelings. When supersensible knowledge has advanced to the point where it has awakened within itself a sense of such a form, it looks from the shape of the head into what is called the previous incarnation. This touches upon extraordinarily significant mysteries of human development. And to a greater extent than is usually assumed by initiates of a lower order, the shape of the human head is connected to the karma that has carried over from the previous incarnation.

[ 8 ] _Let us now, leaving aside the torso-human, focus on the limb-human, but with its extensions directed inward. In this limb-human, we find something that by no means presents itself to us in such a distinct, such an individual form as in the human head. Every human being has an individually formed head, because the head points back to earlier earthly lives. With regard to the organization of the extremities—with which the sexual organization is essentially connected—the human being points toward his or her subsequent earthly lives. There, everything is still undifferentiated. The soul-correlate for this organism points toward the subsequent earthly lives. It is also particularly important to consider the trunk organization. It is an interplay of forces that are at work in the human spiritual life before birth or conception and after death—that is, between death and the next birth. Thus, what surrounded the soul between its last death and this conception or birth interacts with what will surround it between this death and the next birth or conception. These forces are interwoven. And this interweaving of forces is at work in the human trunk organism, and it does so in such a way that it becomes most vividly apparent in what is, after all, the most outstanding aspect of the trunk organism’s activity: the breathing process, so that exhalation is, par excellence, an image—and here, too, I come to the term “image” — of what has taken place within the soul from the last death up to this conception; and inhalation is an image of what will take place in and around the soul in terms of forces between the death that will befall us after this incarnation and the next conception or birth.

[ 9 ] Here you have a concrete example in this field. When conventional anatomy and physiology examine the human form, they do so by placing things side by side: here, the head, torso, and limbs are all, in the same way, a sum of nerves and blood vessels. Supersensible knowledge must distinguish between these things; for it, the various parts of the human form have different significance. This is how conventional anatomy and physiology perceive immediate realities. Our spiritual science sees in the form of the head the image of the deeds and feelings of the previous incarnation; it sees in the exhalation—which takes on an individual form in every human being, for to the extent that a person’s head is differentiated, so too is their breathing process—an image of the forces that surrounded the soul between the last death and the next birth, and the inhalation process is, after all, a reflection of the forces that will surround the soul between the present death and the next birth. And in the process of the extremities, we already have an image of the next earthly life. Thus, just as daily life is interwoven with images in a dream, the magnificently expansive supersensible life that opens itself to the beholding consciousness is also interwoven with images. But these images are our given reality, the reality given to us in waking life. We thus come to the realization that we perceive every subsequent world of phenomena—beginning with the contemplative consciousness—as images of the next phenomena. Our prosaic reality is an image of the supersensible reality, and our dream reality is an image of the ordinary reality experienced in everyday life.

[ 10 ] What I am saying here actually becomes truly clear only to the observing consciousness, for the simple reason that one cannot truly discern what I have just described from the outer form alone. Suppose, for example, that someone possessed a low degree of clairvoyance—specifically the kind in which one senses more than one can grasp with full clarity—then, by observing the head, the torso, and the limbs, they might intuitively arrive at what I have just described. Even with a low degree of clairvoyance, this would not be particularly difficult. But one would have no certainty; one would hardly be convinced unless one could critically examine it through that clairvoyance which also perceives the corresponding states of consciousness for what I have just described as the members of the human form. For this head is not only such in its outward form that it points to past lives, but it is also such that, with regard to its soul life, it is, first of all, well differentiated from the other parts of the human being, and it is also remarkably differentiated within itself. The matter is simply hidden from ordinary consciousness. For ordinary consciousness is either dreaming, or—during the course of everyday reality, though it does not realize it—it has, if I may use the expression, “underlaid” the human head with something else. What I mean by this is the following: In our waking consciousness, we go through our everyday experiences; through the consciousness conveyed to us by our head, we fill ourselves with external perceptions, with the images that come to us from the senses, and with what we form as concepts based on these sensory images. All of this is so vivid, so intense for ordinary waking consciousness that a finer consciousness that constantly trickles beneath it—which is why I said it is “underlying”—a deeper consciousness that does not resonate as strongly as everyday consciousness, is overlooked.

[ 11 ] Our mind, in fact, is constantly dreaming while we are awake. The important point is that, behind our daily consciousness, our mind is constantly dreaming. You can already tap into this continuous dreaming; you don’t need to do very extensive exercises to do so. All you really need to do is try to enter that state of mental life in which you have empty consciousness—where consciousness is awake, but has neither perceptions nor thoughts. In ordinary life, things usually go like this: one is either somehow directed toward the external world of perception, or has memories of these perceptions, or has thoughts arising that are also connected to these memories. More often than one realizes, one surrenders to mere waking consciousness, but one does not notice it. It is dull. But if you try to attain in your state of mind what I would like to call “nothing more than being awake”—nothing that stems from external perceptions, memories of them, or thoughts based on those memories—if you simply try to be awake, then perceptions that are not quite neatly clothed in ideas will soon arise within you. These perceptions that arise have a kind of dull, emotional quality. You could say: They appear like images, but they appear in such a way that they lack the full weight of images. One often meets people who experience this state. They say: There is a state of mind within me in which I perceive something, but I cannot describe it; it is perceived, but it is not a form of perception like that used to perceive the external world.” — It is not inaccurate when people speak this way, and there are far more people than one might think who, once one becomes familiar with them, are able to speak about such things.

[ 12 ] What arises there is the weaving of this underlying consciousness I have spoken of. And this underlying consciousness is a kind of dreaming. But what is being dreamed? It is the previous incarnation, the previous earthly life, that is being dreamed—actually dreamed. The interpretation, however, is difficult. But what resides in consciousness—in the main consciousness—is a dream of the previous earthly life. In this subjective way that I have described, one can already find the dream of the previous earthly life, even if the interpretation is difficult. We will talk more about this later.

[ 13 ] Thus, what I have described as the human head is also, in a spiritual sense, something complex, in that two forms of consciousness actually converge within it: the ordinary waking consciousness and the underlying dream consciousness, which is a kind of reflection from the previous incarnation.

[ 14 ] We can describe another interesting characteristic of the soul by considering another pole of the human being: the human being of the extremities, the human being of the limbs. This human being of the limbs, too, is—in terms of his soul, that is, in his soul-correlate, which corresponds to him in a soul-related sense—actually quite complex. I have often pointed out that, in relation to this “limb-human,” we are asleep, whereas in relation to our head, we are awake. And our will truly seems to be asleep. After all, we have only the idea of what our will is doing. When a person carries out the thought, “I am moving my hand,” no one is conscious of how this is connected to the entire organic apparatus. This is as subconscious as the processes of sleep. Sleep continually permeates the daytime consciousness of this “limb-human,” namely because the human will is immersed in a state of sleep.

[ 15 ] But here is the curious thing: When at night, during sleep, a person is outside their physical body—that is, when the “I” and the astral body have left the physical body and the etheric body, so that consciousness and self-consciousness are either absent or functioning only dimly—then, in a certain sense, it is precisely this “human being of the extremities” who is awake. However, at the present stage of human development, a person has no way of discovering this through ordinary consciousness. Because, while asleep, a person can only exercise their consciousness in a dull manner, they cannot use their consciousness to observe what the “limb-human”—who sleeps during the day—actually accomplishes at night, when self-consciousness is not present within the physical body. It is also a kind of dreaming. This “limb-human” actually dreams at night. Just as the head dreams during the day under the bright consciousness of the day, so the “limb-human” dreams while asleep under the dull consciousness of sleep—one might say, in parallel with the dull consciousness of sleep. And what does he dream? He dreams of his next earthly incarnation. As human beings, we do indeed carry within us—not only in relation to our outer physical form—the past and the future, but we also carry within us, in our soul life, in the form of dreams that are usually imperceptible, in the form of all kinds of underlying consciousness, past earthly lives and future earthly lives.

[ 16 ] And the “torso-human.” The processes of exhalation and inhalation are not clearly followed by ordinary consciousness, but the organic functions are nevertheless more closely linked to them. It is precisely these processes of exhalation and inhalation that are followed by Easterners—which is no longer appropriate for us; we must enter into contemplative consciousness in a different way—in such a way that they are raised into consciousness. The Eastern practitioner, as a seeker of the spiritual, attempts to dull and suppress the consciousness of the head, and in contrast to stimulate and illuminate the consciousness of the torso. He truly attempts to carry out the breathing process in such a way that consciousness arises within the breath. This is a different kind of consciousness. By following the inhaled air as it spreads throughout the organism, and by following the exhaled air as it flows out and leaves the body, he brings into consciousness what would otherwise remain largely unconscious. As a result, he develops a very clear awareness of what the breathing process symbolizes: life in the spiritual world between death and birth. This clear knowledge—which Westerners actually have no concept of at all, but which is still far more widespread in the East today than one might think—is why Easterners and Westerners often find it so difficult to understand one another—this clear awareness that a spiritual-soul life precedes birth and a spiritual psychic life follows—this is no theory there, but rather a certainty just as certain to them as it is to you when you have walked a path somewhere, stop, look back, and survey what you have traversed, and then look backward. Just as it is a certainty for you, right there beside you, that the path before and the path after contain this and that, so for the Eastern person it is not a theory, not something he arrives at through a chain of imagination, but rather what he beholds—beholding it through his breathing process raised up into consciousness: what lies before birth or conception and what lies after death.

[ 17 ] This part of the human being—the “trunk human,” so to speak—dreams constantly. It does not fully wake up when we are awake, nor does it fully fall asleep when we are asleep. There is, after all, a difference between these two states. The consciousness—the dream consciousness—of this “torso-human” during the day is duller than its dream consciousness while asleep, which is somewhat clearer; the difference is not that great, but there is indeed a subtle distinction.

[ 18 ] Thus we see that we are not only a threefold human being in terms of our outward form, but that we also carry within us complex states of consciousness. This, however, is the essence of our inner life. These states of consciousness interact with one another and are reflected in one another. It is primarily through the waking consciousness of our head that what we call our life of imagination and thought comes about; through the continuous dream-consciousness of our torso-human arises what we call our emotional life; and through the dream-consciousness of the limb-human—which sleeps during the day and is awake at night—arises what we call our volitional life.

[ 19 ] Now there is just one thing left. If we consider only the outer aspect of the human being, we are not dealing merely with the visible physical organism, but we also carry within us a subtle, ethereal, supersensible organism, which—to avoid any misunderstanding—I have called the “body of formative forces” in my recent articles in the journal Das Reich. This supersensible organism is less differentiated in relation to the outer physical organism; it is, in fact, more of a unity; and it is only through a superficial observation that we attribute a unity to the outer form of the human being. The true unity of the human being lies in its etheric body. This etheric body is to be structured in exactly the same way as the physical body, but not in such a way that the parts lie side by side; rather, the structure of the etheric body must be understood as I have most recently described with regard to states of consciousness. This etheric body is also in a state of constantly changing consciousness, such that in daily life, from waking until falling asleep, it has a different consciousness than from falling asleep until waking. Here again, with this supersensible body, we carry something very significant within us. When some theosophical theorists believe they have already accomplished something special by dividing the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body, and so on, this is actually a kind of self-deception. It is a kind of systematization, and systematizations are never really of any value. One gains insight only when one examines more closely what is actually happening within this etheric body. For if one merely says, “The etheric body lives within us”—then at first a person has only a word, deceives themselves, and believes they possess something by imagining a mist as thin as possible and so on. But that is self-deception. What matters is that we have something very essential within this etheric body; it’s just that people cannot perceive it in ordinary life. But what is constantly weaving and living within this etheric body in daily life—from waking until falling asleep—is the karma of past earthly lives; that is what they are looking at. Indeed, this etheric body weaves within our subconscious, and its weaving is the perception of our karma from past incarnations. The fact that the clairvoyant knows something of karma is based on the fact that he learns to use the etheric body just as he otherwise uses the physical body. Once one learns to use it, one cannot help but see karma as a reality. For from the moment of waking until falling asleep, the etheric body is concrete, perceived as reality—specifically, in that it contemplates karma: from waking until falling asleep, the karma from past earthly lives; and from falling asleep until waking, the karma yet to come. This is again described from the clairvoyant point of view.

[ 20 ] So we do not merely dream in our hearts of what we have experienced between our last death and this birth; we do not merely look back on the past in this way, but we also look upon what it imposes upon us as karma—which, beneath our ordinary consciousness, is perceived by the etheric body through the function of the lower abdomen, as past karma, as if before a spiritual eye. And we do not merely perceive, through our consciousness of the limbs and through inhalation, what is connected with a future incarnation; rather, our etheric body becomes the spiritual eye through which we perceive the karma-in-the-making in a way that remains unconscious to ordinary life. It is not easy for people today to advance the exercises of their soul to this extent, although it is absolutely necessary for every human being to truly perceive everything I have just described. This presents certain difficulties, the details of which are discussed in the book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. This was much easier in the era corresponding to the past stage of human development on Earth. For historical life, too, is more nuanced than one might think, and a particularly important point in the historical life of humanity—which is also characterized in my Outline of Esoteric Science and in other writings—is the period when the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch succeeded the third, marking the beginning of what we call the Greco-Latin culture. This period is the one in which it has become so difficult for civilized humanity to penetrate the worlds I have just described. Before that, it was relatively easier, and the Easterners have retained something of this easier nature. Westerners have not retained this quality; therefore, they cannot perform the exercises described by the Easterners, but only those described, for example, in the book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. The era that began in the 7th and 8th centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha is already the one in which human beings were cast more fully into the physical world. Another era will come again—the 3rd millennium will mark the clear beginning of this era—and preparations must be made for it. Something indefinable will then arise from human nature within every soul; it will be impossible to interpret it without the help of esoteric science, without approaching it through spiritual science. What spiritual science must prepare and establish for the next millennium is truly not merely a subjective ideal or a subjective tendency, but corresponds to a necessity in human development. The middle of the third millennium will mark a significant turning point in cultural development, because that is when human nature will have reached a stage where it will react in an unhealthy way if, by then, people have not internalized the concept of repeated earthly lives and karma—a concept that has been lost since the 7th or 8th century B.C. Previously, human nature reacted healthily, for the knowledge arose from within it. Afterward, it will appear pathological if people do not provide it with this teaching. We can only understand our age if we recognize that we are caught between two poles. One lies in the past, behind the 7th and 8th centuries B.C., before the Mystery of Golgotha. That was the time when human nature itself provided the knowledge of the supersensible experiences of the human soul. The other pole will be the third millennium, when the human soul must acquire supersensible knowledge in a spiritual manner—precisely as described in the book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—so that the body, into which health must then radiate, does not react with illness. One can understand our age—in its outer and inner manifestations—only if one can take this into account. This, of course, develops slowly and gradually. And for those who do not wish to dream away the most important things of their age in a dull, sleep-like state, but who wish to live self-consciously and alertly, it is fitting for them to take notice already in our time of what is seeking to enter into life. This will not fully come into being until the middle of the third millennium. But it is entering little by little, and humanity must now bring everything into consciousness; it must consciously prepare for what is about to enter. One must learn to observe life; then even in external phenomena—initially in the phenomena of human life—a superficial insight will reveal that what “I have just said” is true. In the coarse development of the brain, which is today the norm for most of humanity, what must be acquired through understanding—as we describe it in spiritual science—does not readily become apparent. But I would like to say: In a tragic way, one sees, as it were, what unknown forces—which I will discuss in the next lecture—actually want from humanity. There are certain pathological natures in the present—that is why I said “in a tragic way”; they are pathological for the present; nevertheless, they foreshadow many things that will befall humanity in the healthy days of the future.

[ 21 ] I have often mentioned the name of a very peculiar contemporary figure whose life truly oscillated between health and illness: Orzo Weininger, who wrote the peculiar book Sex and Character. Weininger is, after all, a highly peculiar individual. Imagine a person who, in his early twenties, bases his dissertation on the first chapter of the aforementioned book—a book that has inspired enthusiasm in some and irritation in others—neither of which is well-founded; rather, something else, something objective, would have been necessary. Then, more and more, a truly peculiar immersion into the problems raised in Sex and Character. He then takes a trip to Italy, records his experiences, and sees things in Italy quite different from what other people see. I find much that is quite remarkable in Weininger’s Italian diary. You know, I describe many things that can only be described in the realm of the imagination: from the Atlantean era, from the Lemurian era, and what it was like in times that can no longer be traced today through external, nor even historical, consciousness. In doing so, one must use certain ideas and concepts to present to human consciousness what is described in such terms. When I read Weininger’s notes, some things strike me as a successful, artistic caricature of the truth. Weininger’s life, in general, is a strange one. He was twenty-three years old when a thought struck him that utterly mesmerized him: that he must murder himself, because otherwise he would have to murder someone else—the thought that a murderer, a criminal, dwells within his soul. A phenomenon that can be explained very well in occult terms. Yet in this life, something grand and precise is intertwined with coquetry. He leaves his parents’ home, rents a room in the Beethoven House in Vienna, stays there for one night, and in the morning he shoots himself.

[ 22 ] This soul had the peculiar characteristic that it was never fully connected to the body. To the superficial psychiatrist, Weininger was a hysteric; to those who saw through the surface, the reality was that there was an irregular connection between his spiritual-psychic and his physical-bodily aspects. What is otherwise normal—that the spiritual-psychic aspect leaves the physical-bodily aspect upon falling asleep and rejoins it upon waking—was different in Weininger’s case. I could cite passages that show how, at times, his mental-emotional aspect would drift slightly away from his physical-bodily aspect, then quickly submerge again; and as it submerged, a thought would dawn on him, which he would then write down, often in a dry manner; but in that submergence, he would become imaginative and quite remarkable. Thus, to the one who sees through the matter, what appears is an irregular connection between the spiritual-psychic and the physical-bodily, and into this irregular connection enters, in a strange way but in a very special manner, a knowledge that humanity will have to possess in the future. Just imagine: in a person who, to a completely narrow-minded psychiatrist, is a hysteric, a form of knowledge emerges that humanity will need to possess in the future—though here it is also caricatured. Based on what I have said today, you can easily imagine that, through certain abnormalities, something like “pioneers of the future”—just as there are “laggards of the past”—appear among us, a future in which people will have to know about repeated earthly lives, about karma, and about the dreams of karma. And because such people appear as forerunners of such future times, this knowledge does not heal the organism but renders it pathological. Then, in a somewhat caricatured way, what will one day become humanity’s knowledge will emerge through the medium of this pathological organism. Take, for example, a passage like the following from the book On the Last Things by Weininger, edited by his friend Rappaport: “Perhaps no memory of our pre-birth state is possible because we have sunk so deeply through birth: we have lost consciousness, and being born entirely on impulse requires no rational decision and no knowledge, and that is why we know nothing at all of this past.”

[ 23 ] One thing is clear here—even if the knowledge that has been illuminated here is exaggerated—that someone has written down this knowledge again, where it became an absolute certainty for him: Through my birth, I have passed from a state of spiritual life that I had previously experienced. — If someone had written this down in the 10th or 12th century B.C. or even in the age of Origen, it would not be surprising; but in our time, someone writes this down in his own emotionally charged way; it is something that flashes directly into consciousness, not something theoretical.

[ 24 ] I could cite many such phenomena. What do these phenomena reveal? Nothing other than that this supersensible knowledge, which now seeks to enter human nature, is announcing its arrival; and because it is not yet being sought through the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, it enters through cataclysms, entering in such a way that it shakes human nature, making it pathological to the same degree that it made Weiner’s person pathological. I say “sick,” by which I mean nothing philistine, but simply the outward reality that there is indeed something pathological about a twenty-three-year-old man shooting himself because he finds a hidden murderer within himself and wants to save himself from murder through suicide.

[ 25 ] One could demonstrate this with a hundred, even a thousand examples: This knowledge is eager to come forth! And it would be good if as many people as possible came to realize that this is the case. The longing for such knowledge is immensely widespread in people’s subconscious minds. External forces, which I have described on several occasions, are holding this knowledge back. We must take very seriously what emerges from the remark I made at the end of my essay on Christian Rosenkrentz in the journal Das Reich. We should take into account what was already foreshadowed in the 17th century—and indeed, as early as the 15th century—even though it is becoming louder and louder. But now we must speak to our contemporaries about this using standard scholarly language. Back then, however, it happened in the way I described in the latest issue of Das Reich, where I showed that Johann Valentin Andreae wrote The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. Now, this has caused philologists a great deal of headache: this Johann Valentin Andreae wrote down the Chemical Wedding, in which a profound, occult knowledge is actually hidden, and afterward he actually behaved very strangely. Not only does he take it upon himself to quibble over certain words he spoke regarding writings composed during the time he wrote the Chemical Wedding, but—despite having written this great work—he reveals himself to be a person of whom one can say with certainty: He understands nothing of what he has written. The Pietist pastor, who went on to write all sorts of other things, understands nothing of the Chymical Wedding nor of the other writings he composed at the same time. He was only seventeen years old when he wrote the Chymical Wedding. Now he has not changed; he has always remained the same—only a completely different power has spoken through him. Philologists rack their brains and compare all sorts of passages in his letters. His hand wrote it down, his body was present, but through his human form, a spiritual power—which was not incarnated on Earth at that time—wanted to proclaim this to humanity in the manner in which it was proclaimed back then.

[ 26 ] Then came the Thirty Years' War, which buried much of what was meant to come into humanity at that time. During the Thirty Years’ War, people should have understood—but did not—what they had just buried. The “Chymical Wedding” had already been written by the person who outwardly called himself Johann Valentin Andreae; it was verifiably written down as early as 1603; but no one paid attention to it, because the Thirty Years’ War began in 1618. Before wars begin, such things sometimes happen. Then it is right to read the signs of the times, so that one knows: What has been sown as a seed must also bear blossoms and fruit!

[ 27 ] This is part of what I just alluded to—what must be gleaned from the signs of the times in our truly catastrophic era. More on this next week.