The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] The times we live in are so serious that it is simply not appropriate to think about personal circumstances at this moment. And so please allow me to briefly express my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed chairwoman for her kind words, and to move right on to what I believe I have to say to you, since we haven’t seen each other here in Holland for quite some time.

[ 2 ] The circumstances of our time are far more serious than most people today realize. Here, we may discuss these circumstances from the perspectives provided by our many years of study of anthroposophical spiritual science. We know that we are living in an epoch whose distinctive character began in the 15th century. At that time, it slowly began to develop its own characteristics. And those who, as initiates into the spiritual conditions of human development, can survey this development know that the second half of the 19th century marked a particular low point in human development within modern civilization, especially European civilization. And this low point—which we can characterize as the emergence of a particular strain of selfishness in all segments of civilized humanity, a selfishness unlike anything that existed before—this wave of a particular development then sent its terrible offshoots into the 20th century, and these offshoots still hold humanity in their grip to this day.

[ 3 ] When I say, “A wave of selfishness has swept through modern civilization”— I am not speaking in the trivial sense of what is commonly called selfishness, but rather in the sense of selfishness that we will seek to understand a little more clearly in the course of this morning’s reflection, and which is clear to anyone who has been initiated into the true mysteries of recent human development.

[ 4 ] We are, of course, familiar with the aspects of human nature. We know that for a long time now, the soul elements of human nature have been undergoing a special transformation, a special development. We know that when we go back to the ancient times of human development, we find, within the context of ancient Indian development, a special formation of the human etheric body; but then a special formation of the astral body begins, and that a certain intermediate phase of development took place during that period of European development, which began around the year 747 B.C. in southern Europe and came to an end in the first third of the 15th century. It was then that the epoch of human development began in which we still find ourselves today. In 747 B.C., prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, that phase of human development began in which, in particular, the so-called intellectual or emotional soul unfolded. And everything that humanity still values today as Greek culture developed precisely because, during this time, the intellectual or emotional soul was at its highest stage of development. However, while the truly wonderful Greek culture was developing, what we call the intellectual or emotional soul was in a phase of ascending development. It had not yet reached its peak. For such peaks are always, in a certain sense, times of trial for human development. The Greeks had, so to speak, the youthful freshness of the intellectual or emotional soul to experience as part of their development. And out of this youthful freshness of an intellect not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human spirit, the Greek civilization—so admired by posterity—then arose. Latin culture, Roman culture, had by then already adopted something of this intellectual-soul character, which was in a state of decline and decadence. Anyone with a deeper understanding of what lived within Roman culture knows that the intellect had already reached its culmination there. There, the intellect rises to a pinnacle. That is why the Romans developed such abstract concepts—they developed what did not yet exist in the entire ancient East, and what, in the sense we know it in Europe, did not exist even in Greek civilization: the Romans developed legal concepts, juridical concepts. Today, people view the world in an extremely superficial way; and they regard what we think of as “jus,” or law—which actually springs from the Roman rational soul—as something that must have already existed in the ancient East, for example in the time of Hammurabi and the like. But that is not the case. Both the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments—and what is found in other documents from that time were, in essence, something entirely different from our modern legal concepts. These are abstract concepts, something that is no longer very close to the human soul. And everything that constitutes this kind of intellectual development reached its peak within European civilization during an era that, outwardly speaking, has received little historical attention, but which is extraordinarily important and significant for anyone who wishes to view human development from a spiritual perspective.

[ 5 ] The pivotal year that can be identified as particularly significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha marks the midpoint of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the point in time when a fluctuating understanding of the world and a fluctuating understanding of humanity coexisted in Europe. There was nothing of the penetrating understanding of the world that the Greeks still possessed; nor was there any proper grasp of the inner life—instead, there was a wavering among people, sometimes toward a longing for great knowledge of the world, sometimes toward a longing for self-knowledge, for self-awareness. The human soul of the European peoples has indeed gone through a great deal, especially during this fourth post-Atlantean epoch. At that time, Roman civilization was heading toward its downfall. It left behind only its language; it bequeathed to European humanity, so to speak, the valuable core material of its culture. And so humanity lived through the second half of this fourth post-Atlantean epoch right up into the 15th century, when our own epoch began.

[ 6 ] From the preceding epoch—during which most of us have lived through one or more earthly lives—we have, in one way or another—partly through physical inheritance, but chiefly because we were the souls who had previously incarnated—brought the legacy of this fourth post-Atlantean epoch into our fifth post-Atlantean epoch and taken up this legacy. This legacy of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives on in everything that constitutes our civilization today.

[ 7 ] We have integrated the intellect, the act of thinking, into the soul of consciousness. This is significant. The soul of consciousness, which leads the human being to a true penetration of and understanding of his or her “I,” first took hold of thinking, the life of the imagination, and the intellect at the beginning of this fifth epoch. Humanity has become clever and intelligent, but intelligent within the soul of consciousness. In the development of humanity, this represents the refinement of egoism to its finest degree. We must not merely condemn this age of egoism; we must not merely set about criticizing it. Rather, we must recognize this age of egoism—despite the many temptations it brings, despite the great spiritual and external dangers it poses to human beings—as the era in which ego-consciousness manifests itself with particular acuity. This makes it possible for people to take in a true sense of freedom. This sense of freedom is something none of us had in our earlier incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human development. We had to pass through egoism—which presents so many temptations—in order to arrive at the longing for freedom that only modern humanity possesses. And it is one of the most important anthroposophical insights that we know: we had to take on something in order to transcend an important stage in human development—the stage leading to the development of freedom. But precisely for this reason, we must be aware that this transition is fraught with many temptations and dangers for humanity—both in the soul-spiritual and physical realms. And an anthroposophically oriented understanding must enable us to fully embrace the sense of freedom, but at the same time to refine it, to permeate it once again with a spiritual understanding of the world which, despite the mature sense of “I” and the mature “I”-consciousness that already exist, nevertheless leads humanity to solve tasks that are not merely tasks of egoism, but tasks of the entire development of humanity—indeed, of the entire development of the Earth and the entire world.

[ 8 ] In this regard, we are facing a major turning point today in the entire history of modern civilization. A time of trials has arrived. Humanity faces great challenges. But recognizing these challenges is extremely difficult, and it is made even more difficult by the fact that we have just emerged from an age of great selfishness.

[ 9 ] We sleep from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. That is correct. During that time, we are in a state of diminished consciousness. Most of you are probably familiar with sleep through the negative way it announces itself—precisely because consciousness is diminished. But people do not judge the waking state in the same way. This waking state—the time from waking up until falling asleep—was actually different even during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. People today believe that they are awake in the same way that, say, people were awake around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. That is not the case. The entire state of the soul was different. People were awake differently back then. They had a much stronger awareness of their bodies. You see, modern people know, when it comes down to it, extraordinarily little about bodily processes. The Greeks—not the Greeks of later times, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic or pre-Platonic era—knew an extraordinary amount about the processes of their own bodies. The truly educated Greek, for example, would look up at the sun. He received light from the sun. Through this, he experienced a sensation that he was absorbing something ethereal, that the light was being transmitted within him. And when he thought, he would say: “The light, the sun, thinks within me.” For the Greeks of the pre-Socratic era, this was still a real sensation. He did not think about thinking in such an abstract way as we think about thinking today. He thought: The sun thinks within me; it allows its light to be absorbed through me; the light that shines upon things out there, that makes things visible out there, works within me by, so to speak, reflecting back upon itself in such a way that thoughts spring up within me. — The thoughts that were within him were sunlight to the Greeks. They were, at the same time, that which lived within him thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings in the macrocosm. They were, at the same time, that which actually lifted him above his ordinary human dignity toward the divine. A person felt lifted above the earthly realm when he experienced the sunlight within himself as thought in this way. — And when the particularly educated Greek ate, he regarded food—through which he took in not what the sun directly provides, but what comes from the earth—as a necessity of life; yet at the same time he felt transformed into the food that, through his mouth, his esophagus, and the rest of his digestive organs, became a part of himself. He felt at one with this food, just as he felt at one with the sunlight. And he felt the weight of the earth as he digested. He felt, in a sense, like the snake—which he did not yet hold in high esteem but observed with some wariness—that writhes its way through the earth, yet which, once it has eaten, carries out digestion in a particularly visible manner. Thus the Greek felt what was taking place within his body, whether it was what he perceived as the bright sunlight thinking within him, or whether he experienced within himself that which bound him to the earthly realm—the act of eating. Through the intimate connection of the intellect with his own body, he felt in a particularly vigorous way that which also lived within him as a physical human being. You can also glean this from the following:

[ 10 ] When we paint people today in the usual way—as numerous painters within the current generation have done year after year, decade after decade—we are, in fact, lying. We look at people from the outside and believe that we are producing something from what we experience. But it is not true at all that we can experience this. We could only experience it if we could conjure up within ourselves the way in which human beings used to feel themselves at one with all of nature, as was the case with the Greeks. We must first learn this again in a completely different way than the Greeks did. Since the middle of the 15th century, we have attained—in an abstract and theoretical sense—an inner state of mind that no longer allows us to truly live through our bodies, but instead lives in concepts that are abstract, because we have harnessed thinking for the sake of egoity, for the “I.” We must be aware of this. And we must become aware that we must once again take up spirituality from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, so that the ego can be filled with something, so that what is truly within us—what the Greeks experienced directly and elementally, but which could not endure—may once again enter our lives, now in a different way. For after all, when the Greek walked, he did so with a natural necessity, much like a bolt of lightning flashing through the clouds, or thunder rolling. He knew nothing of freedom. He knew the human being. He even knew more about the human being than we suppose today. For example, he still knew how to coin terms that clearly show that human beings understood something of the connection between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily. The Greek terms—or those terms that have survived from the Greeks—are still far more revealing today than those derived from our therapeutic or pathological perspective, which no longer recognizes anything. Hypochondria, for example, is “cartilaginousness of the lower abdomen.” This is a term the Greeks coined—based on their full understanding of how the cartilaginous condition in a certain part of the body is caused by the spiritual-soul activity in people who are hypochondriac. These terms mean far more than people today realize, and far more than modern medicine can ever derive from its abstract thinking, even as it experiments, dissects, and so on. All the things that are realities—which allow us to see through the world once more—we must first take in again. But this is the task of spiritual scientific deepening: that we may return to realities, to true realities.

[ 11 ] It is during this fourth post-Atlantean epoch—in which human beings, so to speak, underwent a process of physical self-knowledge, a process of gaining insight into the human-physical—that the greatest event in Earth’s evolution, the Mystery of Golgotha, takes place, specifically in this epoch—approximately in its first third. What is the nature of the era in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place? The further back we go, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek era, the Egyptian-Chaldean era, the Persian era, and the ancient Indian era—such an immediate understanding of the entire human being. This understanding of the entire human being then disappears. The last remnants of it were still present at the time the Mystery of Golgotha took place. There was still something of this instinctive, ancient human insight remaining. For example, the figures described to us in the Gospels as the apostles or the disciples of the Lord still possessed some of these ancient insights, though they were entirely instinctive and did not live clearly within their souls. Others, too, still possessed such insights. Such insights were often in a state of decline at that time, but they were still there. They were dying out, fading away, but so much of the ancient knowledge had remained for those times that a large number of people could still comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha in accordance with these ancient insights; especially when the Apostle Paul—who had been initiated by divine powers and who himself had beheld the spiritual world—was introduced into the course of historical development. Through all this, the conditions of the time were created from which the Mystery of Golgotha could still be understood in a certain original, instinctive way. Many people were already in a later stage of development. In particular, the educated Greeks and Romans already had concepts that were far too abstract to truly grasp the Mystery of Golgotha. But certain people had preserved the last remnants of ancient, clairvoyant knowledge—and especially clairvoyant traditions—and they still understood that an extraterrestrial power, the Christ, had truly united with an earthly human being, Jesus of Nazareth. The year 333 was, in a sense, the year in which the last stragglers of those who truly understood the Mystery of Golgotha within Europe were still present; but they did not understand it, for example, through our anthroposophical spiritual science—which, of course, did not yet exist at that time—but through the remnants of ancient knowledge, what remained of Gnosticism, and the like. A certain spiritual insight still existed. Ancient, human heritage lived on in human souls. With this, they were able to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 12 ] What remains of this mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions. Ancient gnosis became theology—a mere logical understanding of the divine. Theo-logy; mere logical understanding, no longer a beholding of the divine.

[ 13 ] And from the year 333 onward, the direct contemplation of the mystery of Golgotha fell into ever-deepening decadence, until the fateful 9th century dawned, when, at the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in the year 869, the dogma was decreed, that human beings do not consist of body, soul, and spirit, but that it is the duty of Christians to acknowledge that human beings consist only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses certain spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy—as it was called—the sole and only possible understanding of human nature, namely that man consists of body, soul, and spirit—was dogmatically abolished, and it was decreed that the dogma stating that man consists only of body and soul must be accepted as orthodox. Modern philosophers often claim to proceed from a form of knowledge free of presuppositions, and they speak of the body on the one hand and the soul on the other. They speak of the spirit, at most, in a very clichéd way, for they do not know it. They would only come to know it if they were to acknowledge anthroposophical spiritual science. This “unbiased philosophy,” which is widely taught today—what is it, really? It is the result of the dogma of the Eighth Ecumenical Council in the year 869. And while the great philosophers of our time proclaim that they are pursuing science without presuppositions, they are in fact doing nothing more than recasting in new forms what the Eighth Ecumenical Council prescribed as dogma for Christendom.

[ 14 ] One must see through this. One must be absolutely clear that even the mere mention of the Spirit in the context of the emergence of modern civilization was already regarded as dangerous in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Today we are faced with the obligation to once again point humanity toward the spirit that, for a long period of European civilization, was virtually declared to be the devil. And after the year 333, all that remained, in essence, were traditions of the old Christological insight. Traditions!

[ 15 ] When it comes to art, it is easier to see how it has remained a tradition. Take, for example, the paintings of Cimabue; you will see that a world lived there which, the moment it appears in Giotto’s work, becomes something else entirely. In Cimabue, something still lives on—as it did in Dante, for example—that later generations no longer experience at all. But this immersion in the spiritual world, which was still present in Cimabue, ceased later on. Later on, it became a form of pretense to paint a gold background. For Cimabue, this was still a matter of course. And look at the Russian icon—it is not just something made according to a model, but rather something in which ancient traditions still live on; traditions of clairvoyance that were still present at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and made the Mystery of Golgotha comprehensible to humanity. Then came the times when traditions were upheld through external means of power. And then came the 19th century, when the ordinary spiritual vitality that had borne such great and significant fruits in the natural sciences and technology was also applied to theology. But what has become of theology as a result? Christ Jesus, the embodiment of a super-earthly being, became “the simple man from Nazareth”; certainly the most exceptional human being, but not the bearer of a super-earthly being. Theology became naturalism. The more humanly modern theologians conceive of Jesus of Nazareth, the less they are moved to engage in Christology—and the more they love it. Even in theology, they wish to rise only as far as describing the human being Jesus of Nazareth, not to grasping Christ as a supernatural being who dwelt within the human being Jesus of Nazareth.

[ 16 ] Anyone today who is spiritually attuned to world events must see many things differently than people do based on outward appearances. That Central Europe which is now experiencing such a tragic fate has, among other things—which are beyond the scope of this discussion—endured the notion of regarding Adolf Harnack as a great scholar; that man who managed to assert that the Son does not belong in the Gospel—only the Father does—and that the Gospel should be understood in such a way that one speaks only of the man Jesus of Nazareth and of what this man taught about God the Father. Harnack’s theology was intended to eliminate any gaze toward the spirituality of Christ. Harnack’s “theology” in Central Europe actually meant renouncing Christianity, denying Christianity, and establishing a worldview that explicitly declares: We want nothing more to do with the spirituality of Christ. This is the significant development that has befallen modern humanity—that the most perverse views now prevail regarding the most vital concepts.

[ 17 ] And so humanity today knows what sleep is—from falling asleep to waking up—but it is usually unaware of the other kind of sleep—from waking up to falling asleep—when we go about our daily lives and indulge in illusions and dreams about the most important things. Modern humanity does not sleep only when lying in bed at night—which is, in fact, the better kind of sleep—but modern humanity sleeps within the realm of its selfishness, when it shuts itself off within its inner self, when it fails to get to know the human body, and when it also refuses to advance toward spiritual self-knowledge. It is a different kind of sleep than the time spent from falling asleep until waking up. To understand this, however, we must first examine the nature of falling asleep and of sleep from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. What actually happens to a person during that time? Why does it seem to the modern human mind as though sleep, in terms of the soul’s state, were the same for people today as it was for the ancient Greeks? The Greeks did not stay awake—and the Egyptians certainly not—the way people do today, nor did they sleep in the same way. We must come to know precisely this state of the soul specific to each age. When the human soul—that is, the “I” and the astral body—detaches itself during sleep from the physical body and the etheric body, which then remain in bed, where is the soul—that is, the “I” and the astral body—during sleep?

[ 18 ] Such external descriptions—that a cloud rises outwardly above the physical body, which is indeed a fact for external, for purely external clairvoyance—are not enough, however. One must look to the inner realm. One must look at what the soul truly experiences between falling asleep and waking up. In modern human beings, the soul experiences, between falling asleep and waking up, those very experiences that are in turn lived through by souls not yet incarnated on Earth. So let us take an event that has just now, at this very moment, before I began this lecture, come to my attention: a little daughter has been born to an anthroposophist. She was in the spiritual world a year ago and has been attempting ever since to descend into the physical world. So she had been in the spiritual world for all the decades prior—decades during which we were already older than this girl who has now been born. While we were asleep, from the moment we fell asleep until we woke up, we were in fact also living in the world that this girl experienced before her conception or birth. That is also our world. The souls who have not yet incarnated experience certain things; in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we live together with them while we sleep and in all events similar to those such souls experience in the spiritual world. — In contrast, from the moment we wake until we fall asleep, we live with what we miss while awake, within the legacies of our old earthly life. What remains of the Indian, Persian, and Egyptian eras—but which has been spiritually experienced on Earth—is what we live with, all tangled up and selfishly within ourselves, because we carry it into our incarnation. We live with this during the day, sleeping through the present—for it holds many spiritually perceptible events—but clinging tightly to the ideas we have from the past, which we even stubbornly hold onto in our language, for language often contains crystallized ancient wisdom. We resist, however, allowing this ancient wisdom to influence our souls in any way. Today, for example, we speak of a knife and scissors, and we usually do not consider, when we think of the cutting action of scissors, that the word is based on “shearing,” which you will find written on every barber shop here. And with the knife, there is a moral concept underlying it; this is connected to measurement, to the act of measuring out. The knife was the instrument with which one had cut out and measured out a gift for another. The things crystallized in words are ancient spiritual life. We use these words thoughtlessly today, but these things lie deep within our being. When language flows from us, we are, in a sense, reliving ancient earthly times. From the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, we experience ancient earthly times spiritually, even while sleeping; and from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we experience those events that point to the descent of souls into earthly life.

[ 19 ] You see, these are realities, these are truths. A new humanity must take these truths to heart if it does not wish to become acquainted solely with the forces of decline, but also with the forces of ascent. It would be much better if a larger number of people did something different in the evening before going to sleep than what people do today. Just think for a moment about what the last thing on many people’s minds is when they go to sleep at night. For humanity today, it would be right to say: “I want to enter the world where the forces of ascent are present, where the forces that lead souls down into the earthly world are experienced; where these forces are experienced spiritually.” Today, human beings experience the forces of the future between falling asleep and waking up. And they should therefore develop a certain longing for those teachings that speak of the spiritual world—teachings that foster an awareness of what souls experience when they are in a similar state, but consciously, just as souls are otherwise between falling asleep and waking up. It is from this world that the great impulses must come to advance civilization and, in turn, to heal it. It is from this world that the spiritual, political, and socio-economic impulses must arise, which must unfold as healing forces for our civilization. For in our time, we must once again regain the ability to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual-psychic way.

[ 20 ] Look, what is the essential—or let’s say one of the essentials, since there are, of course, countless essentials—in the Mystery of Golgotha? A God, a supernatural being, descended and took up residence in Jesus of Nazareth. One characteristic of such beings is that they cannot die. All the beings you have described—who are described in my *Outline of Esoteric Science* as the beings of the higher hierarchies, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so on, up to the highest, the Seraphim and Cherubim—do not die in the same sense; you can read there what their life destiny is; they do not die in the same way that human beings die. What did the Christ, who emerged from these higher hierarchies, take upon Himself? He dies in a human body. That, you see, is His most significant transition to active work among humanity on Earth. He died in a human body. He underwent the experience of dying that other gods connected to the Earth do not undergo. This was still understood to some extent up until the year 333; we must learn to understand this again. We must learn once more to understand that, in fact, an extraterrestrial being has shared in the experience of dying and, through this, has become part of Earth’s evolution, living with us within Earth’s evolution. But we must develop the great humility to recognize that this being naturally stands far above what the human soul can experience. This being has descended from worlds where death does not occur. Who are the serving beings for this Christ being? Not all have made the same sacrifice; not all have descended to Earth and died. Beings, ranging from the hierarchy of the Angeloi up to the higher hierarchies, serve the Christ who has united Himself with Earth’s evolution. But we do not perceive them unless we rise to the super-earthly knowledge of the higher hierarchies. That which leads to the Christ must be sought through the knowledge of spiritual worlds. We first need spiritual science so that we may once again come to a knowledge of Christ. For Christ is on Earth, but that which surrounds him belongs to the world of the higher hierarchies. And it was the great temptation of humanity in recent times that, as it went through the great triumphs of modern natural science, it absorbed within itself the recognition of mere external natural forces. But behind all these natural forces live spiritual beings. What modern natural science says is indeed correct, but behind these natural forces, guiding and directing them, are the spiritual beings who serve Christ. Christ is present in all of earthly evolution. Supernatural beings serve Him, but supernatural beings can only be recognized through spiritual science. That is why spiritual science also has a task of boundless significance for the renewal of Christianity. You can see from this that we cannot practice this spiritual science today in such a way that we regard it merely as a personal matter. This spiritual science is today a matter for all of civilized humanity. And that is why it was an inner necessity that, from the very beginning, within the circle that later came to be known as the “Anthroposophical Society,” spiritual science was pursued in a different way than, for example, in the Theosophical Society. From the very beginning, the Theosophical Society had something sectarian in its entire constitution—something that counted on the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy had been entrusted with the task of engaging with modern consciousness; of engaging with what is otherwise the outer culture of humanity, and of bringing the results of spiritual insight into it. In comparison, all the minor disputes and squabbles are of no consequence whatsoever. What was essential was that I had to preserve in its pure form that spiritual movement which engages with modern science as a whole. In this regard, it does not matter to me whether one person or another acknowledges this or that. Let the whole world still rail against it today; let the whole world offer only negative criticism—that is not what matters. What matters is that, in reality, what I represent as spiritual science is in full harmony with the modern scientific mindset and the modern moral conscience. — I had to begin with *The Philosophy of Freedom*, the proclamation of karma. I have often had to hear, with deep sorrow, within the circle of theosophists, that they said: If this or that person suffers, or if this or that person is a socially oppressed being of a lower class or caste, then that is simply part of their karma; they have simply deserved it. — That was an interpretation of the idea of karma suited to the needs of the selfish people of the 19th or 20th centuries. These people did not consider that we do not live only in this present earthly life, but that we will also live in future ones. And today we do not always have to look back on what we experienced in past earthly lives; rather, we must also bear in mind that in future earthly lives, what we are experiencing now will be the first thing we look back on. Freedom is fully in harmony with the concept of karma, except that everything that appears in the ledger of life is connected to karma.

[ 21 ] If I add up the assets and liabilities of one’s life’s destiny and then calculate the difference, I arrive at a life balance sheet; but this does not mean that the individual figures are subject to a natural necessity, any more than the individual figures in a commercial ledger depend on diligence and the like, even though a balance sheet ultimately results out of necessity. Thus, in the karma of life, freedom is absolutely compatible with the concept of karma. We must not succumb to the convenience of fatalism if we are to present the concept of karma as something fully justified. Likewise, spiritual science must be in complete harmony with the modern conscience and with the moral outlook of modern humanity. And that is why, at a time when, in a sense, a catastrophe befell everything that modern humanity’s egoism had caused—spiritually, mentally, and physically—the necessity arose to work extensively with spiritual science.

[ 22 ] Would it have been honest and sincere to constantly preach that spiritual science exists to help humanity, and then to have no social views at a time when social demands have become as urgent as they are today? Shouldn't love for humanity progress toward social awareness? Should we merely stick to rhetorical declarations about love for humanity? Should we not rather move forward toward real social impulses? Consider this progression toward real social impulses as a result, as a fundamental insight of spiritual science, as a result of what I have told you today about waking and sleeping, about sleeping while awake, and about the awakening from sleep brought about by spiritual science; view it as a result of the insight that tells you: the serving spirits of Christ—they only become clear to us when we look up into the spiritual world; through this, too—through spiritual science—the Mystery of Golgotha once again becomes clear to us in a sense appropriate to humanity today; —regard it as a result of the fact that spiritual science today must not remain confined within any sectarian lodges or branches, but that we must carry it out into the world as best we can, each according to the position in which they stand. In Dornach, it was not merely a matter of creating a sectarian site; rather, a site had to be created where all sciences, the whole of active life, social life, and artistic life could be enriched. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must become a matter for the broad masses of humanity, even though we pursue its most essential aspect—that which truly touches our hearts and stirs our inner forces—within the narrower circle of our branches. There we are to gather our strength so that we can cultivate a certain higher knowledge, which we first absorb within these branches. But this insight must be cultivated. For we live today in an age in which people do not really know what they want—because they are missing out on what is most important in life—yet in which they all long for a rediscovery of the spirit. As pioneers—I would say—of spiritual renewal, as anthroposophists, we must feel this in the depths of our hearts.

[ 23 ] That is why I also wish with all my heart that within the branches—including those in Holland—there may be such a serious, diligent, and earnest study of the insights that can be imparted from the spiritual worlds within our movement. I wish for a truly diligent study within the branches. But I hope that this does not remain confined to activity within the branches; may what is undertaken in the branches serve only as a starting point for reaching out to all people—each in their own way—so that the longings that exist today throughout all of humanity may be fulfilled precisely through the anthroposophically oriented spiritual perspective. This is also why we should understand what these longings of modern humanity consist of. Let us not believe that we are becoming materialistic by spiritualizing matter. Let us be clear that a great misfortune lies ahead for humanity if it is not recognized in the right way so that it can be averted.

[ 24 ] The Eighth Ecumenical Council in 869 drove the focus on the Spirit out of humanity. Those who are truly materialistic in their outlook wish to prepare the next stage; they wish to prepare the way for abolishing the soul as well, and to make it a general dogmatic tenet of modern and future life that human beings are nothing but physical bodies. And certain diabolical initiates are devising ways to educate people materialistically—not through spiritual influences, but through ingredients, through certain juices extracted from nature—and to prepare human beings entirely as bodies. Based on principles other than those of the Waldorf School—whose spiritual protests are directed against modern materialism—other people are exploring experimental psychology, which today conducts all manner of experiments to test abilities. This is merely the preliminary stage of what they actually want. They no longer wish to educate the child through spiritual means, but rather through external, material means, so that abilities may develop in a physical sense. We are heading toward the automation of human beings if we do not reflect at the right moment on the fact that we must not pave the way to abolish the soul as well as the spirit—which has already been abolished—but rather that we must pave the way in the opposite direction, as has been done since the Eighth Ecumenical Council; that the path must be taken to rediscover the spirit, and to nurture what can be rediscovered of it within humanity, in all branches of practical human life.

[ 25 ] Now that we have been able to see each other again after such a long time, this is what I would like to place in your dear souls, in your hearts. First and foremost, cultivate spiritual science as a matter of the heart, just as each individual must do today in order to make progress on their own. Then, nurture what you yourselves have taken into your hearts by carrying it out into humanity in all areas of life. Then you will gradually find the way to do what is right—each in their own place—amidst humanity’s current difficult and serious time of trial.