The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] People often find it difficult to make sense of the course of world events, especially when viewing these events from a higher perspective. People are so reluctant to look impartially at the truth, which often resolves certain conflicts in life only over long periods of time. People, even if they do not always admit it to themselves, are all too eager to be led by the hand by the powers of the world. In particular, it becomes difficult for people to find their bearings impartially when, in any given incarnation, they are forced to live in such catastrophic times as are the case now, for example. They then tend to ask: Why do the gods allow such things to happen? — They are reluctant to inquire about the necessities of life. After all, they have, in a sense, a longing to view things as pleasantly as possible. In a time such as ours, however, human beings must look upon many things that are emerging from the chaos. Chaos is necessary for the overall course of events. And human beings must often place themselves within the chaotic just as much as within the harmonious. In particular, our fifth post-Atlantean epoch is one that causes human beings to experience much that is chaotic. But this is connected to the entire peculiarity, to the very nature of this epoch. We are, after all, living in an era in which human beings are meant to pass through those developmental impulses that set them on their own feet and imbue them with individual consciousness. We are, in fact, living in the age of the conscious soul.

[ 2 ] In light of everything we have now considered—having brought together the most diverse elements that can help us understand our own time—we must now ask ourselves: What, then, is the most profound characteristic of our era and of the development of the conscious soul? The most profound characteristic of this period is that human beings must become acquainted, in the most thorough and intense way, with the forces that resist the harmonization of all humanity. Therefore, a conscious awareness of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces that oppose humanity must gradually spread in our time. If human beings were not to pass through these developmental impulses—in which the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces play a part—they would not attain the full use of their consciousness, and thus would not develop their conscious soul. However, in this integration of the conscious soul into human nature, we must recognize an impulse that is antisocial in the most eminent sense. Thus, what is peculiar about our age is that the emergence of social ideals appears as a reaction to precisely what is striving to emerge from the innermost essence of human nature: the development of individual consciousness. I would say that we have such a cry for socialism in our time precisely because the innermost essence of the human being, especially in our time, is most averse to this socialism. We therefore need to look at everything in the cosmos, in the universe, that is related to the human being, so that we may become aware of the relationship between the antisocial impulses welling up today from the depths of the human soul and the cry for social harmonization, which acts as a reaction to what wells up from within the human soul. One must simply realize that human life represents a state of equilibrium between opposing forces. Any conception that assumes, for example, a mere duality—say, a good and an evil principle—will never be able to shed light on life. Life can only be illuminated if it is portrayed in terms of a trinity, where one element is the state of equilibrium and the other two are the two poles toward which the state of equilibrium continually oscillates. Hence that trinity which we wish to represent in the Representative of Humanity, Ahriman, and Lucifer within our group, which is to form the center of this edifice.

[ 3 ] This awareness of a state of balance that is being sought—one that is constantly in danger of veering in one direction or the other—must become the essence of the worldview for this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. As the human being passes through the soul of consciousness, he develops upward toward the spirit-self. This age of the development of the soul of consciousness will last a long time yet. But in reality, things do not proceed in such a way that one stage follows the other in a neat, schematic sequence; rather, one is, so to speak, encapsulated within the other. And while we are developing the soul of consciousness into an ever stronger and stronger force, the spiritual self is already, I might say, lurking in the background, and it is to emerge just as strongly in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch as the soul of consciousness has in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Just as strongly as the soul of consciousness exerts an antisocial influence as it develops, the spiritual self will exert a social influence. So that one can say: In this epoch, human beings develop antisocial tendencies out of the innermost impulses of their soul; but behind this, a spiritual-social force is at work. And this spiritual-social force driving the process from behind will emerge in its essence when the light of the spiritual self dawns in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It is therefore no wonder that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, what can only truly take root in humanity in an orderly manner during the sixth—the post-Atlantean epoch following ours—appears in all manner of abstruse, hyper-radical forms.

[ 4 ] Throughout this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, humanity will be exposed to the foreshadowing of what is to come in this sixth post-Atlantean epoch, and everything will depend on gaining an understanding of what we must go through during this fifth epoch. Antisocial impulses will play an enormous role, and they can be tempered and integrated into a genuine social life only if people, as I explained recently, draw upon what emerges as social science from general spiritual science.

[ 5 ] Thus, in the background—because it is premature—there lies a social demand behind the various endeavors of the present and looking toward the future. But we must repeat time and again, from a wide variety of perspectives, that this social structure, which is being called for, could not be viable unless it is linked to two other things. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, this connection will arise more or less of its own accord. In this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, social life must be regulated through the cultivation of spiritual science. And any other attempt to regulate social life outside the realm of spiritual science will only lead to chaos and hyper-radicalism, which makes people unhappy. With regard to the social organization of life, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch in particular is, in the most eminent sense, dependent on spiritual science. For let us consider once more—as I already indicated yesterday and also recently in a public lecture in Basel—that human beings are, in a sense, the conquerors of that nature which is distributed throughout the animal kingdom. They are the conquerors of animal nature; they carry animal nature within themselves.

[ 6 ] Naive Darwinists claim that human morality is merely an evolution of the social instincts found in animals. But social instincts are innate in animals, and insofar as they are social instincts in animals, they become antisocial instincts precisely in humans; and humans can only reawaken to social life if they transcend that which has developed in them from the animal realm into the antisocial. That is the truth. So that, if we wish to conceptualize human beings schematically in this way (a diagram is drawn), we can say: Human beings overcome their animal nature; they develop beyond it. What is social in animals becomes antisocial precisely in human beings. But human beings grow into the spiritual realm, and in the spiritual realm they can once again attain the social. Human beings attain the social on a higher level than that which they have in the age of the conscious soul, when they have outgrown animality; in the chaotic, it shines into the intermediate state in which we currently find ourselves.

[ 7 ] Now, two further points must be added. If socialism, emerging as a fundamental impulse, manifests itself as a demand within humanity, then this socialism alone will always lead to misfortune. Socialism can only lead to a blessing if it is paired with the two other things that must first develop within humanity by the end of our post-Atlantean era, by the seventh post-Atlantean epoch: what might be called a free life of thought and an insight into the spiritual nature of the world that lies behind the sensory nature. Socialism without spiritual science and without freedom of thought is an absurdity. That is simply an objective truth. But human beings must awaken to freedom of thought and prepare themselves for it, especially in our age of the conscious soul. Why must they awaken to freedom of thought?

[ 8 ] You see, in the course of human evolution, humanity has, in a sense, reached a decisive point in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Up until this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, human beings had carried with them the possibility of the pre-birth period continuing to influence life after birth. Let us be very clear about this. Right up to our own era, human beings carry within themselves forces that they have not acquired in the course of their lives, but which they already possessed when they, as one says, “saw the light of day”—that is, when they were born—forces that were imprinted upon them during the embryonic period. These forces, which are imprinted on the human being during the embryonic period and which then continue to exert their influence throughout life, were present in human beings right up into the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. And only now are we facing the great crisis in human development: that these forces can no longer be decisive, that they can no longer be as fundamentally effective as they have been until now. In other words: In this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, human beings will be much more at the mercy of life’s impressions, because the forces that counteract these impressions—which are acquired before birth during the embryonic period—are losing their sustaining power. This is something of immense significance: that these forces are losing their sustaining power.

[ 9 ] There has been only one aspect of life up to now in which human beings could acquire something between birth and death—that is, something that was not instilled in them during the embryonic period. But this was possible only through what follows. Yesterday we discussed peculiar phenomena of sleep in relation to social life. When a person sleeps, their ego and astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. During sleep, there is a different relationship between the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other, than there is during wakefulness. A person relates differently to their physical and etheric bodies when they sleep. Now, there is a certain similarity between our sleep and our embryonic period—similarity, not sameness! In a certain respect, when we fall asleep, our life until we wake up becomes similar—not identical—to the life we lead from conception—or actually three weeks afterward—until birth. When we rest in our mother’s womb as a child, we lead a life similar to the one we lead later when we sleep. The only difference is a very significant one: breathing—breathing the outside air. That is why I could only say “similar,” but not “the same.” We do not breathe the outside air when we rest in our mother’s womb. We are called upon to breathe the outside air when we are born. This, in turn, distinguishes this life in sleep from embryonic life. Now keep this in mind: When a person sleeps, their life resembles embryonic life in many respects. However, something comes into play that can only exist between birth and death, not during embryonic life: breathing comes into play. Because a person breathes the outside air, their organism is influenced in a certain way. But everything that influences our organism affects all our life expressions, including our soul expressions. We understand the world differently when we breathe than when we do not breathe.

[ 10 ] Now there was a cultural element in the development of humanity—we are touching upon a significant mystery of human development by exploring this— and that was the Old Testament element, which was particularly deeply imbued among its initiates with the fact that, between birth and death, the human being is distinguished from embryonic life—to which his life of sleep is otherwise similar—by breathing. The relationship that the ancient Jewish initiates—the Hebrew initiates of the Old Testament—had with their God Yahweh was built upon this inner understanding of the nature of breathing. The God Yahweh revealed Himself—as we need only learn from the Bible—to His people. Who were the people of Yahweh? They were the people who had a special relationship to this truth about breathing that I have just expressed. And it is connected to this that precisely this people received the revelation that human beings became human by being given the living breath.

[ 11 ] But one gains a very special understanding when one builds upon this nature of human breathing. One gains an understanding of the abstract life of thought—referred to in the Old Testament as the “life of the Law”—and of the capacity to grasp abstract thoughts. As strange as this may sound to materialistic thinking today, it is nonetheless true: the human capacity for abstraction is fundamentally conditioned by the process of breathing. The fact that human beings can abstract—that they can grasp abstract thoughts in the same sense that laws, too, are abstract thoughts—is also physiologically linked to their breathing process. The instrument of abstract thought is, of course, the brain. This brain is engaged in a continuous rhythm that corresponds to the breathing rhythm. I have spoken about this relationship between the brain’s rhythm and the breathing rhythm here before—even repeatedly. I have explained to you how the brain is embedded in cerebrospinal fluid, how, when air is exhaled, the cerebrospinal fluid flows down through the spinal column and pours downward into the abdominal cavity; and how, upon inhalation, the fluid is pushed back up again, resulting in a continuous vibration: with exhalation, the cerebrospinal fluid sinks; with inhalation, it rises, embedding the brain within the cerebrospinal fluid. The human capacity for abstraction is also physiologically linked to this rhythm of the respiratory process.

[ 12 ] A people that placed particular emphasis on the process of breathing was, at the same time, a people of the process of abstraction. Therefore, by perceiving things in their Yahweh-like way, the initiates were able to give their people a very special revelation, because this revelation was perfectly suited to abstract thinking. This is the secret of the Old Testament revelation: that humanity received a wisdom tailored to the capacity for abstraction, the capacity for abstract thought. And Yahweh’s wisdom is suited to abstract thought. In the ordinary state of consciousness, humanity sleeps through this wisdom of Yahweh. Those initiated into Yahweh simply received during their initiation what human beings experience through breathing, from falling asleep to waking up. For this reason, those who love half-truths very often describe Yahweh as the deity who regulates sleep. This is indeed the case. He has bequeathed to humanity the wisdom that a person would experience if they became as clairvoyant as the initiates had become, in order to consciously experience life from falling asleep to waking up. This was not experienced by the ordinary consciousness in Old Testament times, but was given to people as a revelation, so that through the wisdom of Yahweh, people received as a revelation that which they must sleep through. It must be slept through, because otherwise the process of life could not continue.

[ 13 ] This is the essence of Old Testament culture: that Yahweh is revealed as the Wisdom of the Night. To a certain extent—but please note: to a certain extent—this possibility had been exhausted for the people of that time as the Mystery of Golgotha drew near. For this wisdom, which is, so to speak, the wisdom of sleep and breath, is one-seventh of the wisdom that human beings must develop in the course of their evolution—one-seventh! It is the wisdom of one of the Elohim, Yahweh. The other six-sevenths could and can only reach humanity through the Christ impulse flowing into humanity. So one can say: As Yahweh reveals Himself, He reveals—I would say in advance—the wisdom of night-breathing. The six other Elohim, who in their totality now, together with the seventh Elohim, constitute the Christ impulse, reveal the rest of what, apart from breathing, reaches human beings between birth and death.

[ 14 ] Within the cultural context of the Old Testament, human beings would have become entirely antisocial beings had Yahweh not revealed the social element to his people through that abstract law which governed and harmonized the very life of this people. Now, Yahweh was able to establish this sole dominion by pushing back the other Elohim—as I have explained to you—and, in a sense, dethroning them. As a result, however, other, lower spiritual beings gained access to human nature and took possession of it. Humanity was exposed to these other beings, so that during the Old Testament period we find two things: first, the harmonizing wisdom of Yahweh in what the Jews called the Law, within which social life was also enshrined; and second, that which resisted this social cohesion—the lower beings close to human nature—because the other Elohim were not yet permitted in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. These lower entities directed their powerful attacks, in an antisocial sense, against the Yahweh element.

[ 15 ] Now we are faced with the peculiar fact that in the mid-nineteenth century, in the 1840s, Yahweh, so to speak, could no longer exert his influence over the rebellious spirits, with the result that they gained this particular power. And it was really only in the course of the nineteenth century that the need arose to truly understand the Christ impulse—which, as I have often mentioned, had previously been only in preparation—because without it, human culture cannot move forward. It was precisely the social element of human life that faced this significant crisis, requiring that the Christ impulse be understood in the most profound sense for the future. Without understanding this Christ impulse, no social demand can lead to any salutary goals.

[ 16 ] All the centuries—there have been nearly twenty of them—during which Christianity has spread thus far were merely preparations for the true grasping of the Christ impulse. For the Christ impulse can be grasped only in the spiritual realm. Everything happens gradually, and in our critical time—a time in which, precisely with regard to the things I have mentioned, a crisis exists—the situation is this: There still lingers, as a remnant, the impulse toward mere Yahweh wisdom—that wisdom which depended on what is acquired during embryonic life and is modified through the process of breathing, which, however, remains unconscious. The process of breathing remains unconscious. Yahweh wisdom must be revealed to consciousness. This continued as long as the soul of consciousness had not developed to a certain degree. Now that the soul of consciousness has developed to this degree, it is no longer possible to continue functioning with the Yahweh wisdom attuned to breathing. But this always manifests itself in such a way that the desire arises to continue operating with that which, according to inner necessities, can no longer be used. Because, for life between birth and death, that which is connected with breathing remains unconscious, Jewish culture was not an individual human culture, but a national culture in which everything is connected with descent from the common progenitor. Jewish revelation is essentially a revelation intended for this Jewish people, because it takes into account precisely what is acquired during embryonic life and is modified only through an unconscious process—namely, the process of breathing.

[ 17 ] What are the consequences of this in our critical times? That those who do not wish to profess the wisdom of Christ—which brings into the human being that which is acquired between birth and death other than through the process of breathing—wish to remain with the wisdom of Yahweh and to orient humanity solely toward national cultures. And the current call for the division of humanity into nothing but individual nations is the Ahrimanic, backward-looking call for the establishment of such a culture, in which all nations represent only folk cultures—that is, Old Testament cultures. The nations across the earth are to become like the Jewish people of the Old Testament—that is the call of Woodrow Wilson.

[ 18 ] This brings us to an extraordinarily profound mystery, a mystery that will reveal itself in the most diverse forms. A social element that is antisocial in relation to all of humanity, that seeks to establish the social only within individual peoples—this is what rises as an Ahrimanic element; the Old Testament cultural impulse must be preserved as Ahrimanic!

[ 19 ] As you can see, things are not as simple as many people today imagine—that one need only come up with this or that to prescribe ideals to human beings. One must be able to engage with reality; one must be able to describe what actually prevails and is at work within that reality. Humanity now has the prospect of no longer relying on the mere unconscious, but rather on the conscious in life between birth and death. The unconscious is based on the process of breathing and thus, quite naturally, on what is connected to the process of breathing—on blood circulation, that is, on ancestry, on blood ties, on heredity. The culture that must emerge cannot base its social order solely on blood ties, for these blood ties provide only one-seventh of what must be established in human culture. The other six-sevenths must be added through the Christ impulse: one in the fifth epoch, the second in the sixth, the third in the seventh, and the remainder will then carry over into the subsequent epochs. Therefore, what is connected with the true Christ impulse must gradually develop within humanity; and what is connected with the mere Yahweh impulse must be overcome.

[ 20 ] And what will be characteristic is that, for the last time, powerful, far-reaching efforts of the Yahweh impulse will take place within what the proletariat understands as international socialism. It is, in essence, the final rumbling of the Yahweh impulse. We are faced with the peculiar situation that every nation will become a Yahweh nation, and at the same time, every nation will claim the right to spread its Yahweh cult—its socialism—across the entire earth.

[ 21 ] These, in turn, will be the two opposing forces between which a balance must be sought. Into everything that asserts itself as an objective necessity in the course of human development, the feelings and emotions of people—who take one stance or another toward the various ethnic groups—then intermingle, and these have a disruptive effect within the objectively necessary course of development. Through the wisdom of Yahweh, one of the seven gates to human connections is opened. A second gate will be opened when it is recognized that what human beings now carry within themselves as their physical and etheric natures becomes diseased in the course of life. Of course, this does not refer to an acute illness, but now, in our fifth epoch, “living” means a slow process of falling ill. This has been the case since the fourth epoch; it is particularly so in the fifth epoch. The life process, though gradual and slow, is the same as an acute illness, except that the latter progresses rapidly. Therefore, just as an acute illness must be cured through a specific healing process, something must enter human life that restores health.

[ 22 ] The natural life of human beings from the fifth post-Atlantean epoch onward is thus a kind of continuous, slow process of falling ill. All education and all cultural influences must work toward restoring health. This is, in a sense, the first, true manifestation of the Christ impulse: healing. To be the Savior, the Healer—this is his very special calling in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The other forms of the Christ impulse must remain in the background. For the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the Christ impulse must act particularly in favor of clairvoyance. This is when the spiritual self comes into development, within which human beings cannot live without clairvoyance. And in the seventh post-Atlantean epoch, a prophetic nature will emerge—for it must lead prophetically into a completely new era—as the third aspect develops; the other three aspects of the sixfold Christ Wisdom will be active in the subsequent epochs. Thus, the Christ impulse must take root in humanity—as a healing process, a process of clairvoyance, and a prophetic process—over the course of the present and the two following cultural epochs, as the element that permeates humanity socially. This is the actual taking root of the Christ impulse. It runs through all the other aspects of development we have already mentioned. A gate has been opened by the wisdom of Yahweh. Yet this gate became impractical in the middle of the nineteenth century. If it is to be passed through alone, the inevitable result is that, in a sense, all peoples will develop cultures modeled on the Hebrew form. Other gates must be opened; that is to say, the wisdom of initiation—which is revealed through a second, a third, and a fourth gate—must join the wisdom that has been revealed through the Yahweh Gate. Only in this way can human beings grow into contexts other than those governed by blood ties—that is, by the bonds of respiration—and this will be of particular importance to them in the future.

[ 23 ] This, in turn, is the critical issue of our time: that people, in an Ahrimanic way, wish to preserve from ancient times a world order based on blood ties, while an inner necessity strives beyond these blood ties. In the future, the regulation of social life cannot be based on kinship of any kind; rather, in the future, only that which the soul itself can experience through free will as the regulating principle of social order will hold true. In a sense, an inner necessity will guide people in such a way that everything that intrudes into the social order through mere blood ties will be eradicated. All these things first come to the fore in a tumultuous manner. In our age, spiritual insight and freedom of thought—particularly freedom of thought in religious matters—will have to develop. Spiritual science must develop because human beings must enter into a relationship with one another as human beings. But the human being is spirit. One can only enter into a relationship with another human being by starting from the spirit. The earlier relationship that people entered into arose from the unconscious spirit vibrating in the blood, in the sense of the wisdom of Yahweh, which, however, leads only to abstraction. The next stage to which human beings must be led must be something that is grasped in the soul. In their imagery, stemming from atavism, the pagan peoples had myths in ancient cultural forms. The Jewish people had their abstractions—not myths, but abstractions—namely, the Law. This has continued. That was humanity’s first ascent into the power of imagination, into the power of thought. But from their present outlook, in which only the commandment “You shall not make for yourself any graven image” still lives on, human beings must return to that capacity of the soul which can once again—and now consciously—form images. For it is only through images, through imagination, that social life will be properly structured in the future. Through abstractions, social life could only be regulated on a national basis, and the most eminent form of national regulation in social matters was that of the Old Testament. The next phase of regulating social life will depend on the ability to consciously exercise the very same power that lay, unconsciously or semi-consciously, in an atavistic manner, within humanity’s myth-forming capacity. People would become completely filled with antisocial impulses if they were to stop at merely propagating abstract laws. People must arrive at imagery through their worldview; then, from this conscious creation of myth, the possibility will also arise for the social to develop in human interaction.

[ 24 ] You can get a sense of what the “Group” is like: the representative of humanity, Lucifer, Ahriman. There you have before you what is at work within the whole human being, for the human being is the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Let the impulse permeate your life to approach every person in such a way that you see this trinity within them—see it concretely within them—and then you will begin to understand them. And this is an essential force that seeks to develop in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch: that we no longer pass each other by like one ghost passing another, so that we form no image of one another, but define the other person solely through our abstract concepts. For that is exactly what we are doing now—we pass each other by like ghosts. One ghost forms the idea: “That’s a nice guy”—the other: “That’s a less nice guy,” “That’s a bad person,” “That’s a good person”—nothing but such abstract concepts. In our interactions with one another, we have nothing but a bundle of abstract concepts. This is the essence of what has emerged in humanity from the Old Testament commandment “You shall not make for yourself an image,” and what, in the most profound sense, would lead to an antisocial existence if we were to continue down this path. What radiates from the very depths of a person, what seeks to manifest itself, is that when one person encounters another, an image, as it were, wells up from the other person—an image of that particular state of equilibrium that each individual expresses. This, however, includes that heightened interest which I have often described to you as the foundation of social life—that heightened interest that a person should take in another person. Today we still lack a deep interest in other people; that is why we criticize them, why we judge them, and why we form our judgments based on likes and dislikes rather than on the objective image that leaps out at us from the other person.

[ 25 ] This ability—that we are, so to speak, mystically inspired when we encounter another human being—this ability seeks to realize itself. And it will enter into life as a special social impulse. On the one hand, the consciousness soul strives to assert itself antisocially to the fullest in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand, something else emerges from within the human being, striving to form images of the people with whom we live and whom we encounter in life. Social drives, social impulses—these things lie much deeper than is usually supposed when one speaks of the social and the antisocial.

[ 26 ] Now the question may arise in you: How do we gradually acquire the ability to have the image of a human being leap out at us? We must acquire this ability through life experience. Certain abilities are given to us at birth; we develop these during embryonic life. Later cultural influences will not make it so easy for a person; he must also develop, over the course of his life, the abilities he is meant to manifest. Education must incorporate much more concrete and definite principles than those that are so confusingly applied in pedagogy today. Above all, the impulse must be instilled in people to look back on their lives more often—but in the right way. What people often develop as memories of past experiences still tends to have a very self-centered character today. If one looks back more selflessly on what one has experienced in childhood, youth, and so on—depending on the age one has reached—then, as if emerging from the gray depths of the mind, various people appear who, under the most diverse circumstances, have played a part in our lives. Look back, my dear friends, on the course of your lives—not so much focused inward on yourselves and on what currently interests you about your own worthy selves, but rather on those figures who have approached you, educated you, befriended you, encouraged you, and perhaps even harmed you—sometimes in a very beneficial way. From what rises up from the gray depths of the soul, from what comes to us, one thing will dawn on you: how little cause a person actually has to attribute to himself what he has become. Often, something important within us is connected to the fact that, at a certain stage in life, we encountered this or that person who—perhaps without their own knowledge, or perhaps very much with their own knowledge—drew our attention to this or that. In a broader sense, a truly selfless reflection on life is composed of all manner of things that do not lead us to immerse ourselves selfishly in our own inner world or to brood selfishly over ourselves, but rather to extend our gaze to those figures who have come into our lives. Let us immerse ourselves lovingly in what has come to us. We will often find that what struck us as unpleasant during a certain period, once enough time has passed, no longer strikes us as so unpleasant, because we see an inner connection. The fact that we had to be struck by this or that person in an unpleasant way may have been quite useful to us. We sometimes gain more from what a person does to us than from what a person does to help us. It would be of great benefit to a person if they were to engage in such selfless reflection on life more often, if they were to imbue their life with the conviction that springs from this self-examination: How little reason do I actually have to concern myself with myself! How infinitely richer my life becomes when I let my gaze wander over this or that figure who has entered my life. — Then, in a sense, we detach ourselves from ourselves when we engage in such selfless reflection. Then we move beyond the terrible evil of our time—which afflicts so many people—the brooding over ourselves. And it is so infinitely necessary that we break free from this brooding over ourselves. Anyone who is moved even once by such self-reflection, as I have just described it, will find themselves far too uninteresting to want to dwell too much on their own life. Infinite light spreads over our lives when we see them illuminated by that which enters this life from the gray depths of the spirit.

[ 27 ] But this enriches us in such a way that we truly gain the imaginative powers to approach the people we encounter today in a way that allows us to perceive in them what would otherwise only become apparent to us years later, in retrospect, when looking back on the people with whom we have lived. Through this, we acquire the ability to truly see images emerge from the people we encounter.

[ 28 ] The cultivation of social life—which in the past arose almost exclusively from blood ties—is not so much connected to any socialist programs as it is to the fact that human beings become spiritual-social beings. But this happens when a person awakens within themselves, in the manner described, the deeper forces that stimulate a vivid, imaginative perception of other human beings. Otherwise, we will always remain antisocial beings who can approach the people with whom we are meant to live only on the basis of sympathies and antipathies, and cannot approach them through the image that can well up from within each of us—if only we ourselves develop the powers of imagery in our interactions with others. It is precisely in social human life that the maxim must apply: You should form an image of your fellow human beings. But then, when we form an image of our fellow human beings, we enrich our inner life; with every human acquaintance, we bestow a treasure upon our inner life. Then we no longer live as “A over there,” “B over there,” “C over there,” but rather A, B, and C live within D; A, B, and D live within C; C, D, and E live within A; and so on. We gain the ability for other people to live within us. But this must be earned; it is not something that is simply offered to us. And if we were to continue cultivating only those qualities that are innate to us, we would remain stuck in a culture of blood ties, not in a culture that can speak of human brotherhood in the true sense of the word. For we can speak of human brotherhood—which at first appeared merely as an abstract concept—only when we carry other people within us as we do ourselves. When we form an image of the other that is implanted as a treasure of our soul, then we carry something of them within our soul, just as we carry something of our physical brother through our blood. In this concrete way, kinship by choice must replace mere blood kinship as the foundation of social life. This is something that truly must develop. It must depend on the human will how brotherhood among people awakens. But precisely because brotherhood will awaken in this way, there must be a counterbalance in an entirely different realm—namely, through freedom of thought.

[ 29 ] Until now, people have been separated. They are to socialize in brotherhood. To ensure that diversity is not lost, it is precisely that which is the innermost element—thought—that must be able to take shape individually within each person. The entire people had a relationship with Yahweh. Each individual must have a relationship with Christ.